#concept existed for a year prior as most of our stuff is.

[cozymochi]

A teaser wip of what’s to come because of a certain weird twist of fate (read: favorable pulls from a joke threat) made me obligated to go public. It’ll drop in full completed at some point idk, I will not go into detail until then.

ko-fi

[storiesofsung]

Yuu OC - Mulan ⚔️

Pt1 An interesting concept

I’ve always been curious about the direction that TWST could go in regards to MC being a girl.

One of my favorite examples of this being this fic by DuckInSuits on Ao3

Now this inspired me to watch Mulan because it is one of the most famous “girl disguised as boy” story (other than OHSHC) that I know of.

Since literally almost everyone is twisted off someone (idk who Jack is tho) +the Disney references that make me cringe sometimes just because I know the existence of Disney, why not make the MC also twisted off something?

(lol Grim as Mushu tho imagine)

I just feel like the in canon MC does seem like the type of person to kind of work hard with what ingenuity they have since they live in a worn down building and pass classes they have zero prior knowledge on.

And they do kinda use their brains to figure out shit, especially with the overblots !!

Idk i just think it would be an interesting dynamic to work through

None of that liar arc tho, that usually stretches on too long but like… yk

I really enjoyed the fic because it made us connect with Cater (and I believe Ruggie?) in ways the normal canon didn’t explore. It made me empathize with them and actually be invested in their relationship with the MC. And I like how it shows just slice of life stuff like MC making pancakes in Ramshackle dorm/needing feminine pads.

Moments like these really give us a moment to stop and breathe to notice the story’s surroundings while making it believable and lived in. It balances out action and pure dipshitness.

Pt2 “Also I really like Mulans songs”

Honor to us all + Reflection

in regards to this while listening to Honor to us All, it actually made me think of a believable motivation for my said OC, she ran away because she didn’t want to get married, and didn’t want to pretend to be someone else just for her parents (and by extension society) to accept her

Now I know this motivation is more selfish than not wanting your elderly father to fight in a war but remember TWST characters ≠ their twisted counterparts. (Ex. Rollo is less pure evil than Frollo). And I think this could be an interesting motivation since her journey going to TWST could make the MC realize her actions and make her decide whether she did was right or wrong (=character development)

A Girl Worth Fighting For

You cannot make me believe every single man in an all boys school is 100% feminism core.

I think that’s where a girl worth fighting for could come in. (Deuce not included he is a feminist) but the 1st year friend group being a lil (while unknowingly) sexist in regards to how they see a female romantic interest, then later drinking respect women juice after realizing the strongest (they fought 6 overblots stfu yes they are) one in their fg is in fact a woman (and later apologizing to her lol)

Make a Man out of You

It’s self explanatory based on what I said earlier but I’m not sure who could be Shang in this song 😭😭. Personality based it’s either Vil or Riddle, Physically it’s Leona (he would not give a shit other wise), unless it’s for spelldrive)

Summary: Overall this is more of a Yuu not based on having a love interest, but as a character based on an icon (✨).

This has just been on my mind for a bit about an AU that I do not have the skills to write about l…but it’s for all you girlies who prefer pants over skirts and generally dont like to be categorized as feminine 🔥

[hylianengineer]

Pausing in my anthropology homework to come scream at the internet about it, again. In a positive way this time!

Most of us have this conception that the Americas and the rest of the world were super isolated from each other prior to 1492, right? Well, that's not true. We've been lied to by our history classes and Euro-centric perspectives.

From about 1250AD to 1450, both the Norse and an Indigenous North American group called the Thule (predecessor to the Inuit) were both in Greenland. It's kinda uncertain whether they interacted directly, but Norse goods have been found at Thule archaeological sites. Either they were interacting and trading, or they got their hands on Norse stuff some other way - one possibility is by salvaging shipwrecks. Still very cool and mindblowing that the Eastern and Western hemispheres were meeting like that a couple hundred years before most of us are aware of!

But wait, it gets better. The Thule people lived all across the Arctic from Greenland to Alaska into Asia. On the other side of the Bering Strait! They were engaged in trade across the Bering Strait, using boats, for hundreds of years! Way before Europeans had any idea the Americas existed. That's huge. That turned my entire understanding of North American history and interconnectedness with the rest of the world on its head. Holy shit. That's fucking cool.

[noonmutter]

bit of a rant about Mists of Pandaria Remix below, skip this if you don't want to read what's mostly just me venting about some stupid shit the team did years ago. this involves minor spoilers about plot points that are largely irrelevant to the overall story but if you wanna be surprised you'd prolly be mad at me for mentioning

so I'm running through MOP Remix just like a huge chunk of WoW players right now, right

and this was the expac that'd come out before the expac I joined the game in, which was WoD. The Tanaan patch of WoD. I joined during an objectively awful part of WoW. People had a habit of singing MoP's praises (at least for the story) a lot in comparison to WoD, although the bar wasn't very hard to clear.

So I played MoP's story as a character that vastly outleveled it and didn't have to gear up and grind my way through it, and I had the same general experience as most new players did, which was constantly wondering what I was missing because a few fairly significant story beats were relegated to happening in novels or just had cinematics that weren't accessible in the game anymore, shit like that

and I remember actively avoiding the main alliance v. horde plot because I really didn't care, I wanted to see what the Shaohao stuff was about, because man those cinematics were gorgeous (and at the time, unique to MoP; they hadn't gotten lazy and reused the art style for Diablo 3 where it didn't belong yet). I wanted to know what those were about and how they expanded! And gosh, that was great and rewarding! Wow!

so in Remix, I'm running ALL the storylines, because every quest rewards a buttload of bronze and stuff, and gimme gimme gimme, I wanna collect all the cool shit.

but oh. my GOD.

I can't even evaluate the story from a watsonian perspective, where I look at the actions the characters take and their political ramifications and whether X person made the right call or if Y could've stopped this other thing if they'd just found the magic doodad or whatever. I simply can't. It's all written in such a hamfisted, "we don't understand politics or what actually causes systemic hatred or bigotry or the general concept of moral nuance" way that I cannot evaluate the characters because the writing is just not good enough to stay immersed in it when big plot points hit.

I can't sit here and compare Jaina's stupid murderous kirin tor rampage with Garrosh's Anything At All because I'm too busy thinking about all the ways both of them were poorly written into their respective story beats.

The Alliance and Horde stories do not depict the same events. An Alliance player sees the Horde do things that Horde players never even hear about, and vice versa. And it's not minor stuff. Alliance players do not experience an Alliance airstrip being built in one part of the Jade Forest, where they take Pandaren slaves--including children--to do it. We don't see it, we don't hear about it, it's never referenced even as a throwaway line later on. It's just a thing that happens completely in a vacuum. When I encountered this event in the Horde storyline, it was so unknown to me as an Alliance player that I went looking for the air strip and was surprised to actually find it accessible on the map. I fully expected it to actually not exist, phased or some shit, if you weren't Horde. That's how divergent it was. And that's bad. That's not like 'ooh wow what a twist,' that's 'who the fuck directed this?'

Remix really shines a spotlight on how immature the writing in MoP got, because it shows a fundamental lack of comprehension of the basic concept of equivalence. We didn't need to see both sides take slaves in order to accept that they were both equally morally wrong for perpetuating a racially-motivated war; they've already been doing awful shit to one another for years prior to the expansion that was good enough to showcase it. We especially did not need to not see our own side take slaves in order to stir up more hate against the other faction.

If that event needed to be included in the game so bad, it absolutely should've been something Alliance players found too. We should've been faced with the idea that xenophobia, zealotry, and hatred were not relegated to The Other Guy and that the guys who looked like us and wore our colors could be monstrous bastards, too. It would've played beautifully into the general theme of Pandaria.

But that writing team failed to do that at every opportunity, and given how beautiful and poignant other chunks of the story (the parts largely divorced from AvH) were, I can't think it's because the team itself was incompetent. It stinks of executive meddling and the kind of mentality that led to shit like the "build an entire expansion just to justify this cool image I have of Sylvanas burning down Teldrassil" incident.

It's just so disappointing to go through it and see it and be able to point a big neon arrow at it and go "this right here was a dev team actively encouraging its player base to actually hate each other" which is very different from encouraging competition. Even though the overarching theme of Pandaria was learning to let things go and swallow your pride before it destroys everything you care about, the actual plot frequently made the players experiencing it hate each other as people.

and I think that might very well have been an underlying point of Remix. because man does it make me appreciate the current story team even more than I already did.

[northwest-cryptid]

I'm not gonna lie, I sort of despised my time as a Vtuber on twitter because of how much drama seemingly springs up out of nowhere. I mean people would literally become hypocrites in a matter of a week if it made them look like the good guy of the day. I couldn't stand the constant "one upping" that would happen and it made me feel sick, like literally anxiety stricken sick to interact with people since a major of the time if you didn't have a big following people would throw you under the bus just to go posting about how righteous and woke they were. I still remember people straight up telling me in a private call "I just see you as a man, I don't believe non-binary people exist" and then no joke, a week later posting "I go by She/They now and you have to respect my pronouns" which I'd love to say "people change, maybe they grew and learned about themselves" about except for the fact this post was made following this big social debate about pronouns which I only know about because 3 people who stopped talking to me, and basically said I was "bad for their brand" decided to say how I was "their friend" and how great they were to be friends with an NB to the point of calling out people mid-stream in the most dramatic ways during collabs because "IT'S THEY NOT HE!" When I openly stated that it's really embarrassing to have people do that, and to please just trust that if I have a problem with the way someone is addressing me I'll say something myself; when you go through this for the better part of a whole year (almost a year and a half since I was part of the community prior to having an avatar and the whole vtubing set up) it begins to take all the fun out of being a streamer.

I'm a Vtuber because I love the concept behind being represented by a character that can look however I want to look instead of being called out or judged for the way my hair looks or if I dress in a way someone doesn't like, I've always said that those comments are pointless since I'm here to stream a game and entertain an audience; my appearance should never be the main focus and I got tired of being on webcam because of how often people would point out something about me even when it was meant as a compliment. That being said you can imagine how absolutely infuriating it is to be told by someone who's " a successful and popular vtuber " because they have 1k+ twitter followers (and 2 active viewers, one of whom is me, and one who is them...) that I'm not good enough to be their friend or even talk to them or collab with them until I "get my numbers up" and "figure out my brand" I'm an entertainer, I love to create! I gave up on vtuber teams, I gave up on collabing with people, I gave up on even streaming for a long time.

But the more I interact with people on tumblr the more I remember why I love vtubing, as a character designer it's so much fun to see the characters people make and stream with. It's like this huge game of improv D&D and even people like myself who don't really play up a character or have any lore or such, can still really enjoy just sharing our characters with others and having some brainrot over our favorite games. You know, all the stuff I loved about vtubing and streaming and being creative. It really makes me want to reach out to more vtubers here on tumblr and potentially try to make some friends; I'm shy as hell and I unfortunately have dealt with a year of basically being told "you're not cool enough to sit with us" lol but who knows, I've met some really cool people who openly accept me for who/what I am and I'd love to connect with more streamers and vtubers provided my insecurities and shy personality don't get in the way.

If you've ever wanted to be my friend, like genuinely wanted to get to know me; just pester me about shit. I promise even if it takes me 3 weeks to get back to you; it isn't a bother I'm never bothered I love getting asks, DMs, whatever. It's just fun to connect with people and get to know people.

I literally met my partner via this site and she will attest that it took like 4 years for her to get me to talk reliably, I accidentally ghosted her several times because I was too shy to talk to her even though I really wanted to be her friend, and now we live together so like; yea please by all means if you want to be my friend just like nicely harass me about shit I promise it'll pay off eventually :P

[rookie-critic]

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023, dir. Rhys Frake-Waterfield) - review by Rookie-Critic

On January 1, 2022, the classic Winnie-the-Pooh character lineup became public domain, meaning anyone and everyone could use the names and likenesses of these characters without any threat from Disney of legal action. Of course, less than half a year later, it was announced that an independent British director would be making a horror film based off the property, and thus Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was born. I love stuff like this: I think it's hilarious, I think it's fun, and, if done right, it can be genuinely good to boot. I was excited going into the film, and was ready to see Pooh Bear and Piglet go on a Roger Corman-esque, Birdemic-y B-movie murder spree. That definitely happens, although the results were definitely mixed at best.

I'll start with the positives this time, and say the most impressive thing by far in this is the Winnie the Pooh head. From what little promotional material I'd seen prior to watching the movie, Pooh and Piglet's heads kind of just looked like rubber Halloween masks, which can provide a lot of hilarious campy fun, so I wasn't complaining, but that's not what they ended up being at all. Pooh's head reads as fully animatronic; the ears wiggle, the mouth moves, the area around the eyes moves, it helps bring so much personality to the this murderous version of the character. Piglet's is a little less impressive and doesn't have as much articulation as Pooh's does, so he definitely feels a little more mask-y, but like I said before, that provides its own level of campy charm. I'll also give the actors credit: I wouldn't call the acting in this movie good, by any means, but for something like this you're normally getting the bottom of the barrel scrapings and some truly horrible performances, but these weren't terrible. Nikolai Leon, who plays Christopher Robin, I especially took note of. Again, it wasn't "good" acting, but I was surprised by how not awful it was.

Sadly, I think the good stops there. I had a good handful of issues with Blood and Honey, and none of them have to do with the quality of the film's technical side. Yes the CG blood was bad, yes the camerawork was sloppy, blah blah blah, whatever. This is the Winnie the Pooh slasher flick, I'm not looking for Lawrence of Arabia. There are two big problems with this film. One is that, even taking into consideration an almost entirely female cast and the fact that this is a horror movie, the film seems maliciously cruel towards women. The second is that, for something with as hilarious of a concept as this and that seemingly had some decently creative ideas, the kills and the scares were kind of boring. As far as that first problem goes, this is something we've seen time and time and time again in horror, especially in slasher films. There are a lot of tired, sexist tropes that just don't seem to die, and Blood and Honey contributes to a lot of them. I actively rolled my eyes multiple times, including an incredibly uncomfortable scene in which a female character with no arc and no defining characteristics is brutally killed in a gruesome way that, to me, went on for way too long, with some incredibly unnecessary nudity thrown in for good measure. It's not as bad as THAT kill scene from the first Terrifier film, but it wasn't fun to watch, nonetheless. Our main character, who surprisingly isn't Christopher Robin (another issue I had), is given this empathetic and traumatic backstory that Frake-Waterfield had absolutely no interest in weaving into the larger narrative, which really begs the question as to why we even bothered with anyone other than Pooh, Piglet, and Christopher Robin to begin with. The central group of women really only exist as cannon fodder for our beloved children's story characters, and the setup as to why this had happened to the furry residents of the Hundred-Acre Wood was interesting enough to be able to carry a 90-ish minute film by itself. Instead, we get something that's largely a "paint-by-numbers" B-movie slasher film, which leads me into my second problem from earlier; the movie as a whole, and specifically the kills, feel really uninspired. There are moments where there seem to be sparks of creative instinct (Pooh has the absolutely wild ability to control the bees that inhabit the Hundred-Acre Wood, there's a scene in which Pooh whips Christopher Robin with the nail end of Eeyore's tail, stuff like that), but these ideas go largely unexplored. Instead, we're relegated to watching Piglet and Pooh chase after our protagonists with chains and sledgehammers for most of the film, and that's really too bad.

I don't mean to rant and make it seem like I'm taking the Winnie the Pooh horror film too seriously, because I definitely was not, but I feel like there are ways to make these really low-concept, dumb-but-fun, shtick-y horror films not suck, and it's not even that hard. Just be creative, have fun, and stay away from harmful and tired genre tropes, simple. While this film certainly had fun, and was running at maybe 20% creativity, it just couldn't accomplish what it set out to do.

Score: 4/10

Currently only in theaters.

[zeurille]

Resurgence

♪��Here I am, being who I want, giving what I got, never a doubt now ♪

Man I wish I was as confident as Kira. But I find myself stumbling over and over again, repeatedly expressing frustration as I feel like I'll never get anywhere. But I guess resilience is still on my side, because I'm writing here now, my first ever legit post, just to record my journey in the scary world of game dev. 

I want to record my findings, my thought process, and hopefully, my growth. I chose to post it online for better archiving, free storage in the cloud and a more accessible way to post images that I produce from the computer--coz let's face it, I am dedicating my life to the computer now. 

I also keep this separate from my IRL journals coz I have so much more to say, and this is more optimized and more sustainable method for me. It's faster and my hands will also suffer less with all the ideas I want to write down.

Optimization and sustainability: two important things to consider when writing code-heck, when making a game. So once again, here I am, doing another attempt at diving in and learning how to make a game.

Maybe this blog-writing thing will help me maintain a bit of accountability, even though I know I'm the only one reading this. Then again I can be accountable to myself, as I will look back on this years later and hopefully I will witness growth. Hopefully this blog-writing will help untangle my thoughts, generate ideas, and brainwrite things into existence.

I gotta tell you, writing for myself feels wonderful. I haven't written anything in a long time, not even to express myself. Maybe the last thing I wrote for myself was that self-insert fanfic, that if you, dear reader, are interested, then maybe I will reward your visit to this lonely site with more information about it

I feel more in touch with myself, and I can hear myself more. Free from the hulabaloo of the outside world, I can come here and collect my thoughts in peace, and then articulate them in writing.

And in here, there is no one I need to please but myself.

It's cozy. It's familiar. It's safe.

Then maybe I can think a little clearer, maybe work a little better.

Then again, only time will tell.

~~~

With the introduction out of the way, I am to report my latest activity regarding my game dev journey

I am starting from zilch, and what I'm learning right now is a course that I bought called 

The Ultimate Guide to Game Development with Unity (Official)I am currently on the "Player Lives & Damaging".  But let's go back some more to where I actually legit started to learn, and some of my small accomplishments that I also want to note... 

"Wisp"

I should tell you that I have already coded my first game, called "Wisp". It was my entry to Game Jam, where I attended with my sister, who was in charge of the art, concept and story. I stepped down from the creative side to focus on coding, and I had to make a little detour from the Unity lessons to search for tutorials and tips that cater more to the output of our game. How, pray tell, were we able to make a game within less than three days without prior experience in coding? I was asking myself that same question on that very day the Game Jam started, and I was on my feet quickly grasping for answers.I managed to code a working prototype by the skin of my teeth, and there are factors that I have to consider and be thankful for or else I wouldn't have survived Game Jam. I will make an attempt on breaking them down to the best of my memories: First there was my sister, who managed the art and story and concept. She was able to provide something tangible on the first day, enough for me to translate it into simple game mechanics and fit them into what I can do in Unity. Not only did she give me an idea to start with, she was able to do the tasks I couldn't do and that helped me focus on my coding. Then there was my effort to focus, not to sweat on the small stuff, and focus on what matters most in the game. Now that I have a basic knowledge of the mechanics, the characters and the goal of the game, I can find some coding that can work with those. It helped me make decisions faster, and I HAVE to make fast decisions. 

| screenshot of the game

Yes, we are doing 2D. So I will translate all the coding I learned so far from my Udemy course from the default 3D to its 2D counterparts. The character is a disembodied "soul", so I turn off gravity and have it floating around, being manipulated by the directional buttons from all sides. The goal is to collect memories by "touching" certain points, so I will have to incorporate "OnTrigger" to the game objects that require interaction with the player that will trigger specific events.These specific events are revealing parts of an entire background as a storytelling device. Once everything is revealed, the portal to the next level opens, and the player can move onwards.

public class Memories : MonoBehaviour

{

    public Transform BGOneObject;

    private UIManager BGOneUI;

    private void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D collision)

{

        if (collision.tag == "Player")

        //access Player script and add coins method here

        {

            //log

            Debug.Log("Got first memory!");

            //create a reference variable to the component we want, then assign

            Player player = collision.GetComponent<Player>();

            //null check to see if it exists

            if (player != null)

            {

                Debug.Log("Player is here");

                player.AddMemories();

            }

            BGOneUI = BGOneObject.GetComponent<UIManager>();

            if (BGOneObject != null)

            {

                Debug.Log("UI IS HERE");

                BGOneUI.MemoryRevealA();

            }

            Destroy(this.gameObject);

        }

    }

}

 | Excerpt of my script. This is from the Prefab "Memories"

This is when I went beyond the knowledge I learned from my Unity course at that time. I searched for code and syntax that will allow the gameobject to reveal parts of an image, and to trigger the portal to the next level once the image is "complete". I also have to define in code what it means for the image to be completed, and I figured it's the number of gameobjects collected. The image appearing is just an indication of the gameobject being collected. I also searched for the basic code for level change, the menu, and the "Play Again" button. I gotta admit that these were added at the very end, just to give the game a "finished" feel.

I wasn't too hyped after submitting it, maybe because I didn't allow myself to celebrate over a "little thing". Though now looking back at it, it seems like there is an idea there that can be polished and upgraded, to a full-on working game. Maybe I will pick it up again in the near future. There is still a lot of work to be done, and I hope I won't falter from it.

Resurgence pt. 1

I was in a long hiatus from game dev for months after submitting Wisp. It was a lot of things: the new sideline and balancing multiple jobs, moving to a new apartment with family, and a slight fear of going back to it again. So I never managed to get back to it Until now. It took me 3 days, a few pages each day, to re-read the notes I wrote during my Unity lesson. The thorough note-taking helped me recognize and visualize what the lesson was explaining. I can still understand the logic behind the code and remember how I typed it in Visual Studio. I forgot a few parts and code, and I tried not to beat myself over it and just re-learn; get -re-acquainted with it. I realized I cannot get them all on the first try, even though I have created my very first game. I need to read and re-read, diligently take down notes and revisit some basics to get the hang of it.  I really need to make an effort, no matter how busy I am, to put aside time to learn game development. I should not let it out of my sight. I should spend at least an hour every day until the program feels like second nature to me and the fear subsides. I have made many attempts to overcome my fear and busyness and tackle game development, and I felt like I was going nowhere for years. But in writing this, I was reminded of what I did, which was a legit working prototype of a game, and what I need to do, which is to constantly practice and learn. This I haven't tried yet. Knowing these, I can say with some certainty that there is still hope for me, but the journey is not going to be easy. I hope that I will go through this journey nevertheless.

✦Zeu out✦ 

[biglisbonnews]

Dove Cameron Is Re-Introducing Herself It’s not uncommon for a former Disney star to successfully navigate pop stardom on their own terms as an adult, but Dove Cameron has spent the last year determined to take the artistic reins back with a vengeance. After coming to prominence on Disney Channel show Liv and Maddie and releasing music of her own as far back as 2019, Cameron made the decision to remove her prior solo output from streaming and pivot to something that felt more true to her — a set of bolder, biting singles clued into the current pop music landscape. In February 2022, the multi-hyphenate released the first of these singles: the dark, alt-pop-influenced swing of “Boyfriend,” which put a boastful (and unabashedly queer spin) on a tale of fatal attraction. Following the track’s success — it’s been certified platinum and has accumulated over 1 billion global streams — she shared singles “Breakfast,” “Bad Idea” and a gender-flipped cover of Edwyn Collins’ 1994 hit “A Girl Like You,” retitled “Girl Like Me,” all of which will appear on her debut solo album Celestial Bodies (which she estimates will be finished and out in the world by “late fall”).Related | Dove Cameron Reimagines a Post-Roe World With 'Breakfast'Now, she’s sharing the video for the album’s fifth single, “We Go Down Together,” a pulsing torch ballad and duet with Khalid. While it exists in the same sonic universe as other recent material, it unveils a more emotional side of the new Dove Cameron, serving as an eerie ode to a battle-tested love. The accompanying video sees Cameron and Khalid performing on a spare, monochromatic set, leaving Cameron’s pale blue gown as the one burst of color against their otherwise muted backdrop. It’s a shadowy, striking visual companion to the actress and singer’s most vulnerable release yet.To mark the video’s release, PAPER caught up with Cameron to chat about the creative process behind the song and video, dealing with imposter syndrome and what people can expect from her forthcoming full-length debut.Take us through the creative process of “We Go Down Together” as a song. It feels like a departure from what we’ve heard from you before, like we’re seeing a more emotional facet of you as an artist. How did the collaboration with Khalid come about? The song was written by my collaborators, Connor [McDonough] and Riley [McDonough], who I work with quite a lot and who I have a bunch of stuff coming out with soon. As we were beginning to work on my album together, they played this for me and they were like, “We've had this for ages and we really want to hear your voice on it.” They were singing on the recording I heard, so I was like, “It sounds beautiful as it is! It's so stunning, I would never want to take this from you.” We just did it on a whim one night, and it was so obvious that we were having a magical experience recording the song.We were imagining who we would want the male vocalist to be, and Khalid was obviously the first person to come to mind. We were so lucky, because we sent it to Khalid’s team and he felt the same way. There’s something about this song to me that feels so otherworldly. It sounds dramatic, but when I listen to it and close my eyes, I feel like I'm tumbling off the face of the earth with the love of my life. It's so rich, and almost spooky and eerie. So, I was really excited to get our boy Khalid, who’s a really wonderful guy, and I was really lucky that Connor and Riley gave me the song. It feels like such a big moment for me, because I’ve never released a ballad.After that magical recording process, what were the conversations like surrounding the video? What was it like coming up with a concept that complemented the specific atmosphere of the song? We knew that we wanted a video that was just going to be all about the visuals. I'm really big on doing narrative videos, as people probably have come to see. I try to make short films that last three minutes because I think that's really fun. I love getting a story across, but for this one, it just felt like we wanted to focus on the emotion of the song. We wanted to focus on creating a haunting atmosphere where you could feel the dissonance between all of these clashing elements. It’s definitely got this postmodern thing where it feels like you’re on another planet. It's definitely a strange combination of elements that our director Audrey just came to us with. She had this idea of sand falling from the sky and making it feel near-apocalyptic, like this “last night ever” kind of romance. I think she was really able to bring that off-putting element out while maintaining the beauty of it. It's really dreamy and I think it fits the song and the narrative perfectly.Do you think you’re attracted to things that have that dissonant quality when you’re creating?This is gonna sound funny, but as someone who’s like, a highly traumatized human [laughs]... I think that everything that I respond to has to feel like we're making something emotionally resonant in secret, small ways. Anything that is too straightforward in its execution just doesn't really bump me in any way that sticks with me. As much as possible, we should be communicating emotionally with each other. Otherwise, what's the point in making music or movies or anything? It's not like anybody’s doing cartwheels in the video, and we're not, you know, rewriting the Declaration of Independence, it's not complex [laughs]. But I wanted there to be space, because the story of the song is actually more complex than a normal love song.There are these lyrics, like, “Sometimes we fly, sometimes we fall/ Sometimes I feel like we're nothing at all.” How I hear that is that the love that these two people share is so intense that it's all-consuming. Sometimes, that's not always a positive thing in a relationship. A lot of people have been there, to the point where it almost knocks your life off course. It’s asking, Is love so multifaceted that it can’t be contained? I've definitely experienced all kinds of different loves, and some of them have brought me great joy and some of them have brought great complexity. Some of them have brought my issues to the surface, and some of them have done all three. I definitely think we were able to show that in this music video because of the simpler concept. There was a lot more pain in the eyes that we were able to exhibit, which is really important to me, because if you’re not showing that human experience, even in small ways, then it’s just a fucking music video, you know?Do you feel like your experience as an actor plays into expressing those emotions in your videos? Does that skill set transfer from one medium to the other?I’ve never actually thought of it as linearly as this, but the songs do fit into my own story, so the line between acting and purely existing and emoting as the character that is me is pretty blurred. We are telling a story, but I'm not pretending to relate to these lyrics as a character. I really am relating to these lyrics because, often, they're my words. It’s a funny thing that I think about a lot. It’s like, what's the line between a musical artist who's telling their own story and allowing people to see that experience played emotionally for them on camera, and then an actor who is able to play the role of the music artist for the music video? It's kind of both. Luckily, I’m so naturally an actor that it feels like the same thing for me.Has your comfort level changed over time in terms of how vulnerable you’re willing to get in your work?Yeah, definitely. For years, I had a high level of imposter syndrome. What a lot of people don't know about impostor syndrome is it can have absolutely nothing to do with your actual career, and it has more to do with your identity and your experience of your own life. I read about this a lot, and a lot of people with complex PTSD have an inherent, ridiculous amount of imposter syndrome. Obviously, it can exist for a multitude of reasons, but that's been something that has plagued my life to no end. I can intellectually understand and dismantle those feelings every day, but my brain is always on a setting that says, You don’t know what you’re doing. One day, everybody's gonna find out that you're a full-blown freak and everything's gonna burn to the ground.But, I definitely feel that since “Boyfriend,” because it wasn’t premeditated and I couldn’t have reverse-engineered the kind of success that record had, it’s been good for me to realize, Oh, this thing was completely out of your control. That was actually a huge stroke of luck, because it helped me with just like a piece of evidence that maybe I actually can write music. Maybe it's only me who's telling me that I can't do it. So now, I’ve definitely gotten out of my own way, which is nice, because at the end of the day, we're all doing what we're doing for some form of self-actualization and to feel more connected to people around us. That's really what this music has been doing for me and that's really exciting.Now that you’re in the middle of writing and recording the album, what about it do you think will surprise people about it when they finally hear it? Well, I definitely still have a romance with big sound. “Boyfriend” was a great first hit for me to have, because it gave me permission to do singer-songwriter stuff. It gave me permission to do romantic music, sexy music, big sound, pop, jazz or even slightly dubstep-influenced stuff. It kind of touched on so many genres that there aren't too many things that I could follow it up with where people would be like, “What the fuck is that?” [laughs] It didn’t pigeonhole me. You can definitely still expect that kind of sound from me, but maybe less than you would think. I think the thing that’s going to surprise people most is that a lot of what I’ve been working on has been influenced by Daft Punk, Justice and a lot of French pop artists. I wouldn’t say that the album’s going to lean that electronic, because that would be misleading, but I would say there going to be more of that French funk with this huge sound and distorted horns and all that.Then, on the other hand, there’s going to be this very hard left turn into, genuinely, my first time ever talking about like my trauma, my mental health, my depression, my anxiety, my eating disorder... I'm going to be openly speaking about things that in the past I've been afraid to speak about. People think that trauma is something that you talk about in therapy, and then you go to sleep and you maybe have a nightmare, but the rest of it is fairly normal, and that's just not true. Trauma permeates absolutely everything. It's in every small decision. I didn't give myself permission to talk about that because I was like, Who am I to talk about this? I live such an incredible life now and I'm living my dreams. But if I don't talk about it, there's 70% of me that people just don't have access to. My label has been really supportive and has been like, “You gotta learn to put this shit down and trust people with it and give it to the audience because it's who you are. Until you do that, you won't feel honest as an artist.” I think that's really true, so some of the tracks will be very dark and honest, and for people who don’t know me, that will probably seem like a big departure.I’m grateful that everyone has been so generous with me in this big second half of my career where I’m constantly just trying to play catch-up. [Laughs] I'm learning fast and I'm trying to sort of get to the juiciest part of myself as a human. I want to be able to develop the craft of putting myself into the music as honestly as possible and I’ve had to really retrain myself to not apologize for speaking about my life experience. It’s been like learning how to walk in heels backwards or ride a bike up a hill. [Laughs] I'm really, really grateful that everybody has been so kind to me about it all, and right now, I'm excited for everybody to hear this song and see the video. Photography by Ashley Osborn https://www.papermag.com/dove-cameron-we-go-down-2659397174.html

[lorenfangor]

the other piece of reading Animorphs 30 years later (in conversation with the concept of “this story should have gone harder in discussing these issues”) is trying to piece together the text’s responses to societal trends or genre fiction tropes or children’s literature standards that genuinely don’t exist anymore, and if you weren’t there or actively reading books published in that time and era, it’s very difficult to explain the full media landscape

off the top of my head -

the obvious one and the most-discussed one is that the books are episodic with an introduction in every one that talks about the characters, who the villains are, what they do, etc, so that any kid reading out of order could have a complete adventure and a total sense of what’s going on. nowadays it’s totally normal for kids’ books to be serialized with tight continuity and no time wasted on explaining all of those things

limitations on things like how dangerous villains could be, the kinds of stuff depicted in the main series, when and how you could say “die”, etc. all this is editorial mandating and is intended to satisfy concerned parents. the biggest reason Visser Three is kind of an ineffectual Saturday Morning Cartoon Bad Guy for the first 45ish books is because he’s got to be menacing enough to scare you but not so menacing that you worry our heroes won’t get away

a lot of the antiwar and military-critical elements are responding to a cultural landscape that doesn’t exist anymore courtesy of 9/11 - the antiwar movement was a LOT more prevalent and a lot of the things the text leaves unsaid are unsaid because people were already thinking them. the Andalites are so very obviously crafted in a pre-War-on-Terror landscape that I do genuinely wonder if it’s possible to see them in their originally intended light if you’re too young to remember The Before Times and how the military was seen prior to that phase of American history

the depictions of torture or threats of torture in 29 and 33 were in response to the SFF tropes of torture being something you could be manly enough or strong enough to resist, and that it wouldn’t leave a lasting mark on you or traumatize you, and that if you were just bold and brave and masculine for a long enough stretch of time you’d be totally fine. contrast Wesley in The Princess Bride’s “I can take torture” with Tobias breaking in 33, contrast any schlocky swashbuckling flick’s “We have ways of making you talk” with the fear of what will happen to Aftran

Cassie’s and Marco’s nonwhite identities + Jake’s and Rachel’s Judaism being footnotes to their characterization was the way you were supposed to write minority characters as a white ally author in the 90s. This was a decade that was big on “racism and bigotry are solved by treating everyone equally, people are people!” and you got an explosion of diverse casts where everyone was basically culturally identical except come Christmas there’d be an episode about other winter traditions like Kwanzaa and Hanukkah and Diwali. There’s a lot of buzz today about shows like A Different World etc providing accurate and real representation, but the dominant cultural narrative was that everybody was the same and “I don’t see color” was how you were supposed to treat your characters. Cassie’s parents being middle-class farmers and veterinarians and Marco being middle-class and going to a good school and speaking English without an accent was good rep by 90s standards. this is probably the thing that has aged in the most frustrating fashion.

Rachel’s whole “you can be feminine and fashionable AND be a kickass fighter! girl power” thing was part of a larger 90s backlash to previous decades’ concept of feminism as something that rejected femininity and embraced masculinity; the diversification of feminist thought into something that didn’t devalue femme aesthetics and girly interests was at the time genuinely important even as it’s kind of trite now

there is. a lot more than this. but that’s sort of a beginning? it’ll be interesting both to see how this series continues to age (and what its staying power will be, as the standards for socially-progressive kidlit continue to rise) and how new adult readers who’ve spent their entire lives in the 21st century approach it

[drummergirl231-2]

I’m really curious about what would be next for May and June.

Since the show is over, this ^ is technically all we’re going to get, but ya know... fanfiction brain.

I couldn’t help but notice while re-watching the finale that almost all the lines about wanting answers as to why they exist were given to May.

And almost all the lines about wanting family were given to June. 

In this way, they each embodied a different desire of Webby’s: to have answers about her origins, and to belong to a family. 

Further examples from May’s lines:

“If we learn everything about you, maybe we can figure out why F.O.W.L. made us!” “Webby, we’ll never get answers about who we are from those people, and neither will you.” “This is the only way to get answers. Director Buzzard left us behind and said if we brought him the Missing Mysteries, he’d tell us everything... the truth about us! Don’t you wanna to know?  “Your name is whatever he says it is because he created us all and we are THIS close to learning why!” “Focus! It’s almost over. We gotta keep these guys on lockdown so that we can win, and learn all our secrets, and then Heron and Buzzard will be so, so proud of us!” “That’s why we were made? So Bradford could find some dumb piece of paper and get rid of us?!”

Meanwhile, June’s lines revealed she’s far more family-oriented. 

“May says we’re not related to any of these people.”  “Come with us, sister! Please?” “WE WANTED YOU TO BE OUR SISTER! WHY’D YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT SO DIFFICULT?!?” “They’re so sweet! Family together, just like us!” “HI MOMMY!” “MOM! NOOO!”

Even in this moment when they shared one sentence, June’s half was focused on Heron - the only “mother,” she ever knew - being gone, and May’s half was about not knowing her purpose.

All that being said, it’d be fascinating to speculate how the two would adjust to being part of Clan McDuck. I think this moment could be a big hint.

June was so touched by Webby’s speech about family, and immediately smiled when Webby included her and May in her list of family members. Meanwhile, May still looked devastated.

At the end of the day, June will be getting what she craved most - a family that loves her. But May’s heart’s desire was to discover why she was created. The trouble is... she didn’t like what she found out. Who would? Her dream came true and it turned out to be a nightmare. 

This could make her cynical about June’s dream, as well. She may struggle with trust, and have a much harder time adjusting to life with a family... not that it’ll be easy for June, either. 

Despite appearing to be the same age as Webby, they were only created a few weeks or months prior and then artificially aged.

Their young chronological age, coupled with not being loved and nurtured at all, has left them immature for their physical age. 

For example, June deciding it was okay and even helpful to start wrecking Webby’s board, something she treasures and that she’s worked so hard on, without even asking, is something I would expect from a child 5-7 years old (based on my childhood experiences involving younger friends or playdates with no malicious intent thinking that cutting or ripping up my stuff was okay or helpful). 

In May and June, the brain development that occurs in children through nurture hasn’t happened. They haven’t been shown affection by those they consider their parents. They haven’t been taught right from wrong, or appropriate from inappropriate. They haven’t been disciplined in a healthy way when they do something bad. 

To sum up... they are both developmentally advanced, and developmentally delayed. Chronologically, they’re only a few weeks or months out from their conception. Physically, they’re 11 or 12. Emotionally, they’re about half that. 

I can definitely imagine them having some behavioral problems going forward, especially given the trauma they’ve both recently experienced, and the verbal and emotional abuse they received before that. 

These two are so lucky to be in Donald’s care, and I’m sure Daisy will love them, too. There’s just so much they’re going to have to get used to, and then once Donald and Daisy inevitably get married, they’ll have to adjust to that new situation, too. There are bound to be conflicts with the other children, and the adults might not always know the best thing to say or do to guide them or help them heal.

But gosh darn it, you know this fam is going to make it work and show these girls the love and devotion they need. And I’m sad we won’t get to see it, but we can imagine, at least.

[zen-garden-gnome]

Long post about whiteness

I’m seeing a lot of false-start questions based on a narrow understanding of whiteness. Whiteness (and recovery from whiteness) can be tricky to unpack because it has a lot of layers that have been added over the years. So you’ll run into a layer and may be tempted to stop there, but it goes deeper.

1) Racial identity was a vague belief before it was officially named, but it’s not as old as many think it is. Prior to European Expansionism, travelers and merchants and militaries alike have generally referred to people based on their place of origin or their language. The idea of vaguely lumping hundreds of ethnicities together based on a handful of physical attributes started to kick up when Portugal began capturing and enslaving huge numbers of sub-Saharan Africans in the mid-1400s. As slave traders and “explorers” brought shiploads of captured, multi-ethnic Africans to Portuguese auction blocks to be traded all over Europe, what set these enslaved people apart from anyone else there (including other enslaved people) was a) the fact that they were to some degree darker than the Portuguese despite displaying a wide range of skin tones, b) were from Africa at the time, and c) were enslaved. When Christian militant and royal biographer Gomes de Zurara was hired in 1453 to write about the life and “accomplishments” of Portugal’s most famous slave trader, Infante Henrique aka Prince Henry the Navigator, he officiated, in writing, the idea that all these newly enslaved people were their own class of people with no differentiation between them. Here, race is a burgeoning social narrative invented to praise European slave traders, and this racial concept is defined in relation to slavery, African origins, and skin tone. Racial concepts appeared in tandem with racist concepts, because races began to be envisioned in order to excuse the abuse of others. The ideas of whiteness and blackness were birthed simultaneously, specifically around slavery, and they became deeply entrenched beliefs before they were ever officially named.

2. “Negro” became the first major racial term before “white” was widely used, binding the development of racial concepts even more securely with the practice of European slavery. In fact, race and racism became encoded in colonial-American law in 1640, when African servant John Punch ran away from his European buyers along with two European servants. He was eventually recaptured, as were his Dutch and Scottish companions. However, the colonial judicial system sentenced Punch to a lifetime of slavery, while the two Europeans had an extra year added to their initial servitude. This marks the first record of a Euro/American legal precedence for lifetime sentencing of enslavement based openly on race. John Punch’s African lineage and the other servants’ European lineage were the differences between their sentencing. Here, European origin was what freed a person from being of the “negro race” and therefore severely reduced one’s likelihood to enslavement. It was also the requirement for incoming settlers who wanted to be able to buy land. Only white people were allowed to develop inter-generational wealth, at a time when this continent was being carved up by land speculators for massive profits.

3. The concept of whiteness was officially named by Carl Linnaeus in order to rank Europeans as superior among other conceptual categories of people. It involved grouping hundreds of ethnic groups together to form white, yellow, red, and black races in he text “System Naturale" (1735). While primarily an introduction to our current taxonomy system, it included these racial categories. It was highly regarded by Europeans eager to cast themselves as superior because it a) created a popular “scientific” framework for excusing the most obscene (and profitable) crimes against humanity, b) officially outlined/invented the white race and identified it with everything good and the black race as everything bad, and then c) clearly defined Europeans as the basis of whiteness, “Homo sapiens europaeus.” Here, whiteness is coined to describe European ancestry, particularly in relation to “grotesque” non-whites.

4. An individual’s personal ideas of whiteness fluctuates with time and circumstances. As governments, social institutions, literature, etc all work to redefine history and clean up their image, people have different/less information to work with, but the effects are the same. The popular spoken definition of whiteness is often simply a reference to a relatively pale skin tone caused by European ancestry. Obviously there are pale people in other places around the world who aren’t European and weren’t related to the slavery of European Expansionism, so pale skin isn’t enough. The relation to Europe’s capitalistic global expansion is key. But what about European countries who didn’t go expanding this way, or whose involvement is harder to pinpoint? After all, most of the trading of enslaved indigenous peoples from Africa and North & South America were carried out by the Portuguese, Genoese, Dutch, French, British, Spanish, and Americans. Well, the rapid enrichment and development of the rest of Europe for centuries to come was specifically made possible by all the labor, resources, and capital brought in by this period of the European slave trade. European ancestry links every white person to privileges and developments born on the backs of black and indigenous enslaved peoples. Furthermore, simply being white makes one safer from these kinds of exploits, and today it also makes one safer from the effects of generations of racial prejudices and resource extraction on the global scene. Which brings me to...

5. Whiteness tends to involve one’s relative freedom. Freedom of movement, both physical and social, without immediate threat of policing. Freedom to explore one’s ancestral history without being blocked by 500 years of forced removal, renaming, forced childbirth, etc. Freedom to exist without having to actually know or respond to one’s racial identity. This one’s really important. Whiteness involves not having to think about being white, usually in relation to living in a country/region whose laws and norms are defined and enforced almost exclusively by other white people. Since whiteness and blackness arose mutually around the European slave trade, blackness is inherently tied to a lack of rights/freedoms and whiteness is inherently tied to an abundance of them. That doesn’t mean that every white person experiences these equally, and there will always be exceptions to the rule. But the exceptions don’t make the rule, and after centuries of globalized white supremacy, whiteness has become a subconscious signifier of power for people all over the place.

The big take-away is this: whiteness is inherently toxic. There is nothing positive to defend in whiteness. It was born out of ugliness and it is ugly to its core. That’s why it feels so bad. It’s why “white pride” is always ugly. However, the solution is not to disconnect from our ancestry. All that does is leave us trapped here, in an ugly set of circumstances, with no concept of who we are except what we’re living in, now. The real work to be done is to connect with our ancestry before whiteness, with the ancestors who related to the land as a living entity, before the land was limited in social memory to a source of private capital, servitude, and empire-building. This land, this Earth, is the backdrop against which all our relativity is measured. From this place of relative security, understanding, and development of the spirit, we can withstand the reality of our more recent ancestors, and finally heal from the last 1000 to 2000 years of trauma.

I know I’ve said this before, but now that I have this huge post, I’ll repeat it: Dr. Daniel Foor’s Ancestral Medicine is a really helpful book and/or course for this whole process. It’s not the end-all be-all resource, but it’s a great start! I’m also always down to talk about this stuff. Hit me up. I need to be able to talk about it, too.

(I should add, while blackness was created by white people and therefore was born out of the racism of whiteness, blackness was forced on people, while whiteness was claimed by the takers. It’s no white person’s place to have an opinion about "black identity.” White people started race, so white people are responsible for deconstructing our own race--no one else’s. We cannot be “post-racial” while everyone else is still living the violent reality of racism.)

[keltonwrites]

Where no one knows your name

How many times is a person meant to make new friends? When I moved into an apartment in DC with an absolutely iconic girl from Craigslist, I wrote in my journal, “you never know when you’ll meet your next bridesmaid.” Charmingly juvenile, as I was 24 years old. Ironic, as I never had any bridesmaids. And embarrassing, knowing I wrote something that’s surely been embroidered on a bachelorette party t-shirt by now. My point was: you can meet people you fall in love with anywhere, anytime, assuming your heart (and calendar) are open. Now my heart and calendar are open and I am one of Elizabeth Bennet’s sad sisters, cloying and desperate for attention while everyone at the ball ignores me. Meeting people here is unnerving and hapless and eye-clawingly vulnerable. My first new friend told me she was moving away in a few months. Do you invest deeply in hopes of another faraway friendship? Do you just go back to waving as you pass on the street? I like this girl! What an embarrassing thing to have to say to someone! Do you just invite people to every and anything like a lunatic? I can’t even remember to call the people I am forever-and-ever in cahoots with. I’m also deeply bound by what I’ll call the Movie Trap: say it’s 3pm during not-a-pandemic, and you get the urge to see a movie. You look at the showings, and there’s one you really want to see at 7:15. You think to yourself, “I should make an effort,” and you text a friend. “Hey, you wanna go see This Cool Movie at 7:15 tonight?” No one ever says yes. Don’t give me an example of when someone has, because it’s always one of these answers:

“Oooh, I’m actually seeing it with Kate tomorrow - wanna come?”

“Can we go to the 9pm showing? Stuck at work.”

“Yeah but let’s see Movie You’ll Fucking Hate instead.”

Now maybe I’m just lighting flares guiding you to the worst parts of my personality, but this drives me nuts. No, Liz, I don’t want to go tomorrow. I want to go tonight. At 7:15. So I can be in bed by 10. And you’d have to drag my dead body and prop open my eyes to get me to see something like Marriage Story in theaters. The Movie Trap is a big reason I usually hang out by myself, or I make plans weeks in advance. (Don't I sound like a blast.) Just the idea of being like, “I like you! Wanna hang out in October?” makes me want to collapse into a puddle of sad adulthood. Which is why on Friday at 4:30pm, when a girl I’d met a week prior asked if I wanted to grab a drink, I just said yes. I put on a pretty dress, did my makeup, put stuff in a purse, and drove the 25 minutes to town. It was really fun! And how novel to have new contacts in my phone like “Maggie blue house” and “Jess concert friend” — a throwback to the days of “Greg guy on L train” and “Devon ad party.” The very concept of not knowing someone’s last name or even needing it, and a year from now updating their contact info and smiling at your origin story. But for the most part, no one is in our phones. In terms of phone numbers collected, here is the list:

Two friends we knew prior who thank god you guys exist.

New friend who is moving away.

New friend who is game to drink tequila and ride mountain bikes.

Neighbor-not-yet-friend who I really fucking like and am not sure how to cross hang-out threshold with.

​Not to say there aren’t any other prospects or people I’m platonically gaga over, but I don’t have their phone numbers. There are honestly a lot of people like this because when you live in a small town (and you’re from the Midwest) you say “oop, sorry” to every person/object you bump into, and you say “hi :)” to every person you see. These are the rules. If I drive by you and don’t wave, it’s because I was so deep in a daydream I probably shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. This isn’t acceptable, because in our urgency to tattoo our vaccination status on our foreheads so we can make friends, it turns out just driving by someone can be a viable strategy. A few days ago, a man was driving by our kitchen window and then our driveway, and then he reversed back up to the kitchen window and started waving. Ben went outside — it was that kind of wave. The man had seen from his car a smokejumper emblem on the back of a truck in our driveway. “Hey, are you a smokejumper?” We aren’t. But my dad was, and he was in town visiting, accompanied by the emblem on the back of his truck. The guy said we should drink sometime. Numbers were not exchanged. We’ll call that a node, because it’s not quite a connection. And it’s mainly nodes, waiting to be connected, to have relevance. But first, no matter who you’re trying to befriend, you have to answer everyone else’s Do I Care Quiz. The quiz is employed by 93% of locals to determine how they feel about you existing within their personal 50-mile radius. The first question is non negotiable:

1) Are you visiting?

Variations on this question include “how long are you in town?” or “what brings y’all to town?” or my least favorite and most insulting, “did you just finish Jeeping?” I know I have blonde hair and say y’all, but how dare you. (Also, to be clear, you can own a Jeep, customize your Jeep, mod out your Jeep, and love your Jeep, but you’re not Jeeping until you drive too fast through a tiny town so you can hurl your Jeep over a mountain pass without ever getting out of it.) So the answer to “are you visiting” is “no, I live here.” Which brings us to the next question, my favorite for how loaded the gun, kneeling in the grass, scope on, target locked it is.

2) Are you part-time or full-time?

The first time I answered this question, I didn’t realize it was essentially like asking how someone voted in the 2020 election. The judgment was cocked and ready and the palpable relief/joy/or at the very least, tolerance, exuded by answering “full-time” was like when the sun comes out from behind the clouds on a 40 degree day. I was fine, but wow that does feel better. The third question though does not have a standard hoped-for answer. This is where nodes turn to connections turn to phone numbers.

3) What brings you here?

It seems like the best possible answer would be saying you work in town, and you’re going to begin construction on displaced-worker housing to ensure the people who run this town can actually live in it. We’d have everyone’s phone number. Saying you’re a writer who works remotely and bought a house from a legendary and beloved local who could no longer afford it is really something you keep to yourself. But in the interest of making friends, I just word vomit my entire history. We might as well find out at the onset if I make your eyes roll back into your skull. Not at all threatening that all it takes is a single social signal misinterpreted to be the absolute death knell of my ability to make friends in a town of some 1400 adults. In fact, I’ll share one such interaction. I was hiking with Cooper, about 5 miles by foot away from my house. I was on a trail, crossing a sloped meadow, and a group was traversing up the hillside to the trail. I said hi, where y’all coming from. One girl answered and we talked about the trail. She eyed me up and down. “Did you just move here?” “I did!” “I served your family last week,” she said. “Oh,” that phrasing. “Must have been my in-laws.” “Heard you bought Jack’s house. Such a bummer when locals like that are forced out.” “We didn’t even know about his house,” I said. “We were looking at another house and he asked his realtor if he could get us to come see his house. We just loved it, and him!” She had no emotional reaction to this. “You moved from California?” she asked. (Dangerous question.) “Yeah, got these sea level lungs, haha,” attempting to disarm with humor was a failure, “but couldn’t be happier to be out of California.” “It’s not like this all year. Winter’s really hard here, you’re in for a rude awakening.” “Well California’s the last place I lived, but I’m not from there. I’ve lived in brutal winters. At least Colorado gets sun!” I laugh with cloaked loathing. “It’s different when you live at altitude,” she said, like no human aside from her had ever been literally anywhere. “Are you trying to go around?” She indicated the path behind her. “No, y’all go ahead, just gonna wait to give you your space. I’m sure you’re faster than me.” “K, good luck making it to the lake." Maybe she was thirsty. Maybe she was hungover. Maybe she just has vicious delivery, but it felt like every blade of grass was leaning against the wind to listen. She was with four other people and not one of them said a word. I left that interaction not wanting to see another human ever again. But that interaction, and her intimate knowledge of exactly which house I lived in, made me want to decorate like we lived in a gingerbread house, all candy canes and plum drops, screaming to any passerby that we’re friendly. One of the mayor’s first questions to me was “what are you going to do to the house?” There are rules here about what your house can look like, and I kept emphasizing we bought the house because we loved it, not because we wanted to change everything about it. And now, instead of wanting to decorate the interior, I want to put up shades so we don’t contribute to light pollution, I want to hang a sign by the water spigot saying “grab some if you need” for hikers and mountain bikers, I want to paint a sign for the wild mint by our door that says, “I mint to tell you to take some,” because our neighbors were openly panicked they wouldn’t be able to just grab mint from the cabin’s garden anymore. Without question, COVID makes things harder. Dinner parties feel like dares. Dropping cookies off at someone’s house feels invasive. Grabbing a drink feels like the ultimate sign of trust. But at least we have nodes who can connect who can think to invite us and who can see that despite having lived in California, we’re not all that bad. In the meantime, I’ll be painting signs about water and mint, hoping to garner the benefit of the doubt from the so beautifully, earnestly, and waiting-to-see-if-you’re-worth-it doubtful.

Subscribe to the newsletter at tinyletter.com/keltonwrites — high altitude relocation and renovation in a tiny mountain town.

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Questions to Help World Build

I’ve realized I have a big problem with my writing. I am awful at world-building. Like, I just start writing without thinking about the world. And since I write fantasy. Well. That’s pretty no bueno and leads to all kinds of problems down the road. So I did some brainstorming with my friends and we created a list of over 100 questions to help think about our stories’ worlds and make them more concrete. Thanks to everyone who chimed in and gave me a hand! 

A traditional Japanese clock, wadokei, that counted hours from 9 to 4, starting from sunrise, and then starting once again from sunset. (1-3 were not used for religious purposes.) They’re super interesting and confusing. You should definitely check them out.

Temporal

Is your story set in the past, present, or future?

Specifically, what year(s), month(s), day(s)?

Are days 24 hours? Or does time pass differently in this world?

How many months are there in a year? Is it a seven day weekday? Does the concept of weekends exist?

Have most existing societies developed a timekeeping device?

Is there a way to communicate across long distances?

The concept of time zones is still relatively new to our world. Prior to the late nineteenth century, timekeeping was a purely local phenomenon. Each town would set their clocks to noon when the sun reached its zenith each day. Do standardized time zones exist across the world?

Geographical

From a planet perspective, is it Earth? If it is not Earth, or an alternative version of Earth, what is it like? Is gravity the same? Does it have a moon or multiple moons? Can you see other planets? Is it closer or further from the sun? If so, what impact does that have on the climate and passage of time?

What town, state, region, country, continent, planet does this story take place in? What are its bordering/nearest neighbors? Draw a world map if you want.

What kind of land is it? Landlocked? Mountainous? Along the sea? Desert? Tundra? Tropical forest? Plains? Agricultural? Industrial?

What kind of plants and animals are common to the area? Are there any that do not exist in the real world?

What are the most common crops and livestock in various regions? What geographic features influence certain regions ability to grow/raise their crops and livestock (positively and negatively)? Are the regions diets strongly influenced by what they are able to grow themselves, or do other circumstances (like strong international trade) allow them to have more varied selections? How does religion influence what is considered ‘normal’ to eat?

What, if any, natural disasters are common to the region? Earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, monsoons, blizzards?

How many seasons does it have? Are any longer than others?

What is the typical weather like for those seasons?

Does the region have any unusual geographical features that set it apart? Perhaps there is some weird thing like Devil’s Tower just chilling out. Or hot springs because of volcanic activity?

Is it easy to travel from place to place within the area? Is it difficult to travel because of terrain/technology issues, or because travel is strictly regulated?

Main Locations: Cities

Many stories take place within one city. In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, a character remarks, “So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams.” What personality does this city have? What soul does it have? What does it dream of when it slumbers? If your story takes place within a settlement, town, or city, give these questions some thought.

Exactly where is it located within the lands you conjured up in the above Geography questions? Does it have a bay? A river? Does it butt up against mountains? Draw a map of the city.

How big is the city? Is it compact, or sprawling?

How old is the city?

What is the history of the city? How did it come to be? What tumults and triumphs has it seen?

What is the population? Is it currently increasing, decreasing, or remaining the same?

Does the town have any claim to fame? Any tourist attractions? What are they? What’s the story behind them?

If it’s a big enough city, how many and what kind of districts does it have? Residential, Commercial, Industrial, etc. Where are they?

Are there any areas that are deemed unsafe? If so, where are they and why are they unsafe?

Is there public transportation? What kind, bus, tram, train, subway, monorail? Is it good?

How do people get around this city if not by public transportation?

Are the roads narrow or wide? Crisscrossing in a methodical grid or higgledy-piggledy?

What are the buildings like? What materials are they made of? If they’re wooden, are they new wood, old wood? If they’re painted, what colors? If they’re stone, what stone? If they’re brick, is it new red brick or blackened, crumbling brick? If they’re glass and metal, are they sparkling with new hope or dull and jaded?

Are there many skyscrapers? Or are most buildings 1-3 stories tall? What does the skyline look like?

Are there many parks?

How is the city powered? Coal? Hydroelectric? Wind? Nuclear? Has it always been so?

What is the city’s main source of revenue? Agriculture? Tourism? Manufacturing? Mining? Something else? A combination? Dive deeper into this. If it’s agriculture, what do they grow? Tourism–what is famous? etc. This will help to determine what a lot of people do for a living.

What are the demographics? Ethnicity, age distribution, distribution of upper, middle, and lower class, etc.

How many schools are there? Universities? Are any of them good? Do they specialize in anything? Do schools even exist? Perhaps there are clans that teach their children everything they need, for example, or education isn’t viewed as important.

Are there any particular landmarks within the city that standout?

How many and what kind of restaurants are there?

Are there supermarkets, open air markets, or both?

Where do young people go to spend time? What about adults?

Do people there bustle or do they amble?

What are the nights like? Does the city grow quiet, or does it grow rowdy?

What does the city smell like?

If you had to give your town a color, one that represented its personality, what color would it be?

Main Locations: Houses (or buildings, but mainly houses)

There are many stories that have a house or headquarters or hospital or some sort of building as their main setting. These questions will mostly be geared towards helping you figure out a house, but you can apply these to other buildings too probably.

Exactly where is the house located within the city or outside the city? How does your character usually get there? Draw a map. 

What year was the house built?

Was this house built by the current family or their ancestors? Who else lived in the house before the current dwellers? What were they like? Did they leave their mark on the house somehow?

What style is the house? Bungalow? Cabin? A shed? A cave? (makes the following questions mostly useless if so lol)

How many stories is it?

What is it made of? Wood? Brick? What color is it?

Does it have a lot of windows?

Are the curtains usually open or drawn? Are thee curtains at all?

What does the front door look like? 

Is there a porch?

You enter the front door. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you use the side door because the front door is for show or something. Anyways. You enter the house. What room do you step foot into?

Draw out the floor plans for each floor. How many rooms are there? Where are they? How big are they? How are they connected? What color are they? What style of decor?

Is there a basement? Is it used or is it just a home for spiders and darkness and unwanted things? How about an attic? Crawlspace?

How many bathrooms? 

Are there any rooms that only certain people are allowed to enter? If so, why? 

What is the flooring? Carpet? Wood? Tile? Linoleum? 

What does the house smell like?

Government/Military/Economy

In other words, “the boring stuff,” if you ask me. But this is a very important aspect of any world. 

What sort of government is in place? Democracy, oligarchy, etc? Is it a just or corrupt government?

How are goods exchanged? Bartering? Money? Coins and bills? Credit cards? A specific kind of sea shell? Lol

What are the police like? Strict? Lax? Is there a curfew?

Do taxes exist? If so, do the people feel as though they are heavily or unduly taxed?

Where is the intersection between theology and law? Is it common to have religious leaders in positions of power? Are laws based around religious ideology, or is there an effort to keep them separate?

Is there an organised structure devoted to halting criminal acts? Are they corrupt? Who runs the organisation? How does their reputation change based on demographic? What is the history of the organisation, and how does that history influence how it operates today?

Regarding potentially criminal acts, what is the elgality of prostitution, sex work, ect.?

What about drugs and other illicit substances? Alcohol, illicit drugs, recreational use. Legality, festivity, age limits, etc.

Underbelly. How prevalent is crime, what sort of crime (scaled from pickpocketing to human trafficking) is there? Are there areas that have bad reputations because of it?

Regarding war, are there currently conflicts in the world? Are they international or civil wars? How common is it to have an active war? What is the history of war? What does current warfare look like (Is it dudes in metal suits swinging swords? Have longbows been invented? Gunpowder? Tanks? Missiles?) Is military service mandatory or voluntary? How is the military seen? Is there a sense of patriotism for the military, or does the common man fear it?

Is there stigma around certain genders entering the military? Are come genders regarded as better recruits than others? Is it illegal for some genders to enter the military? Does a person's sexuality affect their ability to serve?

How has religion influenced war? Have there been holy wars in the past? Do any religious institutions hold their own military forces?

Cultural/Historical

I’ve put these together because events in history lead to cultural change. You can apply these questions not only to the world/country, but also the city or even the neighborhood, workplace, or school that your story takes place in.

What is the history of the region? Who was it settled by? Was another group of people displaced? After that, did any new cultures come in? Did they get along?

Were there ever any wars or serious conflicts in the region? What was the cause and what was the outcome of the war if there was one?

In our world, the internet, social media, and film/tv are massive cultural drivers. They determine the latest fashions, jokes, topics, and expressions. What are the big cultural drivers in your world? Books? Plays? Radio? Oral tradition?

Is it a collectivistic or individualistic society?

What languages are spoken by your characters? Is multilingualism common?

What sorts of cultures can be seen? Do any clash? Do any mesh?

What sort of foods are most common?

What superstitions do people hold? Is there a version of “knock on wood” or throwing salt over your shoulder after a funeral? What are the roots of these superstitions?

Are there religions? If so, what are they? Do any conflict with each other? Are zealots or extremists an issue?

Does slavery or indentured servitude exist?

Are there any class or caste systems? If so, what are they, and what does an average day look like for a member of each class/caste?

How does a person's appearance change from country to country? Do certain countries have very distinct fashions? If so, are the fashions influenced by religion, surrounding countries, the cultural majority or international trade partners?

How does a person's clothing relate to their social standing? Is it very easy to assume someone's roll by appearance alone? Are there punishments for dressing above or below your social standing?

Does the society place a great deal of importance on a person's presentation, or is the society more lenient on such things?

Is there an emphasis on conformity to a dress code, or is individuality encouraged? How strictly is clothing regulated by gender binary? Is it commonplace to see a man and a woman walking down the street in the same cut of clothes? Is there a social stigma when a person does not conform to the most common form of dress for their gender?

How are sexual rights viewed? Does the LGBTQ community have the same rights as people outside the community? How are sex acts between people of the same sex viewed? Is it legal? Taboo? Are there cultures that encourage those relationships in some circumstances (like how the romans were down with guys with guys in the military)?

Are there any groups of people that are victims of prejudice? If so, who are they, who holds these views against them, and what views specifically are they?

In regards to gender, do certain societies hold differing beliefs? Is there a commonly accepted number of gender identities or does it change regionally? Is the most common gender spectrum a binary, or do certain racial and cultural differences allow for a wider range to be seen as the baseline?

Are children raised by their biological parents or are children considered to be in the care of the wider community? Is it common/acceptable for extended family to raise children, such as parents needing to study, work, or serve time in the military? Is adoption a common thing in society? Is there a stigma around adoption/being adopted? Do cultural or religious views impact how adoption is seen by the wider community? What is adoption like for a single perspective parent? When adopting, is interracial adoption accepted/common, or is it seen in a negative light? Are some societies more open to adopting children outside of their own race?

How is sex and virginity viewed? Does religion influence it? What is the age of consent? What is appropriate on a first, second, third date? Is sex something that is talked about openly, or something taboo? Are you supposed to wait until marriage? Do couples stay monogamous while dating? Do some regions place higher importance on virginity than others? Do some place higher importance on one gender’s virginity than others?

How is marriage viewed? Are arranged marriages a big thing, or are people free to choose? Is monogamy common? How is a marriage symbolized? A wedding ring, or something different?

How is divorce viewed? What is the divorce rate? Can people remarry?

Magic and the Supernatural

If magic or spooky stuff doesn’t exist in your story, disregard this section.

Does magic exist? If so, who can use it? What are the limitations to their magic? What things are they capable of using their magic to do? What things are they incapable of doing?

Are there laws against what kind of magic can/cannot be used? What sort of laws? Who enforces them? What are the punishments for breaking said laws if they exist?

How does the existence of magic affect religion? Are there religious institutions that infuse magic into their worship? Are there religious sects that see magic as immoral and in direct opposition to their faith? Have there been conflicts in recent or ancient history between religion and the supernatural? Do some sects employ people to hunt and/or enforce law over the supernatural?

Assuming that magic does exist, is it taught? Are there different schools of magic? Is there a system of ranking for magic users based on their skill level?

Do non-magic users look towards magic users with respect or fear?

What role does magic play in this world? Has technology not advanced because magic solves many problems? Or has technology advanced and the use of some magics has become unnecessary?

Are there any mythological creatures/monsters, such as vampires, demons, skinwalkers, dragons, or other creatures of your own creation? Are they common? Do people believe in their existence? Do people worship them? Where can they be found? Do they interact with humans? Do humans fear them or try to put up with them as they do nature?

Do the dead continue to exist in some form, such as ghosts or zombies or the like? Can the dead be summoned or brought back to life?

Are there human/supernatural hybrids? Perhaps a half-demon half-human, for example? How are these people viewed by their peoples, and by society as a whole?

How has the supernatural influenced war? Do armies tend to have a mix of regular and supernatural soldiers/weapons? Have there been wars between the supernatural/magical and those without? How does magic influence a person standing in a mixed army? Is it more likely for a magical being to be promoted than a non-magical being? Conversely, are supernatural being forced into service and seen as pawns?

The End!

Please feel free to reblog and share, and add on any questions you think should be added!

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #31 - Ammo and the Anti-Glowup

So, the Lost Light disappeared, stranding all the crew in space in their little escape pods. 200-some robots just lost their homes and worldly possessions. That’s absolutely horrible. What a devastating thing to happen.

Anyway, here’s Drift with a flashback sequence.

No hips, fingers all the exact same length, hockey pucks embedded in his forearms- Rojo, this is a crime you’ve committed. When will the long arm of the law stop your sinful, pancake-shaped hands?

About two years prior to current events, Drift, Riptide, and Pipes- yes, Pipes!- were wandering around trying to find a ship for the space yacht trip. The gang’s here to see who owns the big honkin’ ship outside. Problem is, Drift is unintentionally terrifying because he has a great deal of swords.

Now, you may say to yourself “isn’t it a bit odd that the species that has members who literally turn into guns would be nervous around a guy with swords?” This is a valid critique, until you remember that at least some of the folks who turn into guns were born that way, and Drift was very much NOT born bladed the fuck out. There’s an entire miniseries devoted to explaining this, it’s called Drift. The swords are a choice, one that he makes every day.

Drift is willing to pay an honestly absurd amount of money for the ship, if he can just find the dude with the paperwork- don’t ask where he got the money. Pipes isn’t being terribly helpful in finding them, so Riptide decides that now is the time to start practicing being proactive and pulls a Coyote Ugly.

No, no, he doesn’t.

He does climb up on a table and start yelling for the ship’s owners to reveal themselves, though. Which they do.

Now it’s time for the world-building portion of our comic issue. Let’s learn about chirolinguistics.

Drift, staying true to his Mary Sue nature, uses his near-perfect Hand skills to strike up a deal with the owners of the ship. This would be impressive, if it didn’t just look like the most convoluted hand-holding session in the friggin’ universe.

Still, Drift is rich enough to make Jeff Bezos weep with envy, so the arrangements are made and the lads go on their way, talking some mad shit about the original name of the ship as they do.

So it is revealed to us that the Lost Light is named after a festival for honoring the dead and disappeared, which makes the fact that Rewind and Chromedome were there all the more sad.

Back in the present, Megatron tells Riptide to shut up so they can figure out what the hell they’re going to do about this whole “our home and also ride has ceased to exist” situation. He’s putting an awful lot of distance between himself and the rest of the Autobots as he does it, something that isn’t lost on the more bitter people of the crowd.

But why were we even talking about the Lost Light in the first place? Not to reminisce, believe it or not. See, it’s time for Nautica to get a little panel time, and she’s going to use it to be a massive fucking nerd and explain how the quantum engines work. As she does, Ratchet notes that his hands feel funny. Must be the weight of his hand-stealing sins manifesting itself in his joints.

Nautica explains that the engines run off of improbability- it is highly unlikely, but not impossible, that the ship can reach light speed, and riding the fine line between what can happen and what can’t, results in the creation of power for the engines. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Brainstorm gave us a watered down version of this explanation back in issue #2. If it sounds familiar for a different reason, it’s because this is how the Heart of Gold runs in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Again, I’m not sure why it is that the British love this concept so much, but there you are.

Oh, it appears someone has a question. Let’s see what they want to know about, shall we?

…Rojo, what the fuck is this.

Our muppety friend here isn’t too keen on how much of a smarmy asshole Nightbeat is being right now, though I’d assume it actually has something to do with the fact that Nightbeat got smacked around with the pretty-boy stick while Getaway very much did not. While the two bicker- there’s a lot of bickering in Season Two- Nautica presents a theory on what happened to the ship; it went too far in the direction of “can’t” and made itself cease to be.

Megatron gives not a shit about quantum improbability, though. He only cares about how they’re going to get out of this mess. Which, y’know. Valid.

Blaster picks up a radio from Rodimus, who tells the gang that they’re to meet up on a nearby planet to regroup and figure out their next move. The call drops before he can get more than a couple Megatron-directed insults in, however. Megatron, in response, tries to be the bigger person, and almost immediately fails. We do get a headcount though, which is good, logistically speaking. This information is communicated to us by way of a splash page full of character head shots. We’ve got 20 ‘bots on board this ship.

Yep. 20. No more, no less.

As our friends approach the planet, we’re informed that it’s actually a Lectureworld- a planet devoted to the study of a single field. Except it’s actually a Smartplanet now, and it’s been privatized by the Galactic Council, so you’ve got to pay to go there. Cyclonus thinks that that’s bullshit, and I can’t help but agree. Crosscut tries to network with they guy about his play, probably because word got around that Cyclonus is rich as hell, when the lights cut out. When they come back on, Crosscut is nowhere to be found.

It’s time for a Whodunnit.

Tailgate immediately pegs Megatron as the culprit in this disappearance, and breaks out a gun over the matter. Megatron thinks that this is absolutely adorable, which only serves to further infuriate our marshmallow friend. I guess he’s still mad about the whole “I was a Decepticon for five minutes and got brainwashed over it” thing, and wants someone to pin the anger on who’s socially acceptable to hate.

Cyclonus and Ratchet both think that Tailgate’s not going about this the right way, but the guy is simply too het up to listen to them. Tailgate suggests that they lock Megatron in the engine room for the time being and-

OKAY WHO LET HIM HAVE THAT

Riptide breaks out his gun, and soon we’ve got a standoff going between the three of them. Cyclonus tries to deescalate, which makes Gears and Huffer break out their guns. Then Hound breaks out his gun, though he seems to be doing his own thing, by pointing it in Nautica’s direction.

Broski, I think that might be animal cruelty.

Megatron manages to shoot Ravage “unconscious” and catches him by the friggin’ throat, stating that he has zero idea how this guy got here. With the heat off the two of them for a moment, Megatron communicates to Ravage to play ‘possum for the time being. Ravage responds, and I wonder exactly how he’s doing that, considering I don’t think he has enough fingers to effectively utilize Hand as a language. Or fingers at all, really.

While this is going on, Cyclonus snatches the gun out of Tailgate’s hand, admonishing him for being reckless about picking his fights. Generally speaking, you don’t want to try to go toe-to-toe with a guy who’s responsible for the deaths of literal billions. Getaway swoops in to comfort Tailgate, calling him gutsy. I wonder if this will become a trend.

Swerve says a thing, as he is wont to do, and it’s made known that multiple folks have disappeared during this incredibly brief standoff.

Wow, Chromedome just fucked off, huh? He wasn’t even in that sequence, just left.

Everyone’s positively baffled by the current happenings. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to who’s being taken. I guess we’ve got a mystery on our hands.

And who better to solve a mystery than a detective?

Nightbeat wrangles all the leftover folks into a corner of the room, so they can figure out what the common denominator is with all the disappearees. He starts with the easy stuff.

And by “easy”, I mean the super-special racism Tyrest subscribed to.

If you’ve read Eugenesis, you know that Nightbeat was also part of the first wave of cold-constructed bodies there. However, the general populace wasn’t nearly as chill about it as they were in IDW. Also, Wheeljack was his dad. No word on if that particular tidbit made it into IDW lore.

It’s at this point that we learn about M.T.O.s- made to order soldiers. They were cold-constructed ‘bots created en masse during the war in order to keep up with the demands for troops. Pretty fucked up, if you think about it, being born to die like that.

Now where have we heard that name before…

Chromedome, can your love life not be part of the plot for five minutes, my guy?

Nautica makes the honestly horrific claim that a lot of folks owe their existence to Megatron being a warmongering fuck, and even Megatron himself seems rather uncomfortable with the idea. Some thoughts we keep to ourselves, Nautica, even if they might be technically true. And even if Ammo wants to tack on his two cents on the matter.

What did they DO to you, Ammo? You’re supposed to be hot! Where are my three-paragraphs of description as Hound stares slack jawed the entire time? I miss Polyhex Wars.

Anyway, it’s Megatron’s turn to get poked with the questioning stick, and he’s not having it. He claims that by revealing his mode of creation, he’s risking a repeat of Functionist ideology. This would be valid, if people weren’t literally disappearing without any sort of explanation as to why. As it is, he’s being a stubborn asshole, but I guess he didn’t get his reputation by being a decent person who knew when to back down, now did he?

It’s at this point that Ratchet remembers he knows all the info Nightbeat’s looking for, and the conversation on Megatron’s birth is shelved for another day. I’m sure it won’t be a major plot point later, not in the slightest.

As it turns out, Nightbeat’s theory doesn’t hold water, and folks are still popping out of existence. We get another splash page, this time with everyone’s mode of creation listed under their names, and we move on to other theories about what the fuck is going on. While Nightbeat has a minor crisis over what the answer could possibly be, the MTOs in the group reminisce on the Ten-Step Program, a series of tests they were put through to make sure they worked well enough to get handed a gun and shoved out the door. Riptide wasn’t a fan.

Riptide has more wood panelling than a 70’s-style ranch house, and I think that’s very brave of him.

It’s at this point that Ratchet remembers it’s been quite a bit since he last shat on religion, and takes the time to do so while informing the reader about Information Creep. This is a concept we’ve seen mentioned previously, during Chromedome’s runaround in Overlord’s brain, but it’s here where we get the juicy implications.

Because memories can become corrupted in the brain due to extreme age, what ought to be objective fact has to be reinterpreted due to missing pieces. This is why nobody knows what the Knights of Cybertron got up to, or if they’re even actually real at all.

The lights go out again, and when they cut back on, Cyclonus is missing, leaving only his sword behind. Tailgate is extremely distraught by this, but Nightbeat gives not a fuck about Tailgate’s impending breakdown. He only cares about the truth!

And then a giant eyeball shows up.

It’s Ultra Magnus, coming to us live from his shuttle, via holomatter avatar! He shrinks down to a far more reasonable size, in a panel reminiscent of the first time IDW readers saw Megatron.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a neat parallel, I’m just… not terribly sure why it’s happening. One could say it reflects a reversal in power dynamics, but that theory gets tossed out the window when you remember that this isn’t actually Verity. I suppose it’s just a cool little thing.

Because the comms aren’t working, Ultra Magnus has been forced to use this avatar to communicate with the folks in the Rod Pod. Megatron asks just what the hell is going on, but unfortunately Magnus isn’t sure either. Then his shuttle disappears, and it’s bye-bye grunge girl Magnus.

It’s at this point that Nightbeat decides it’s time to stop pussyfooting around and get serious. He tells Ratchet to throw HIPPA directly in the garbage and write down everything he knows about the Autobots who crewed the Lost Light. And he does mean everything, as we get the splash page again, this time with lots of neat info on our friends, including spark type.

Spark types will become plot-relevant in the storyline after this, but for now let’s focus on some weird gender essentialism that got slapped into the first print of this issue.

As we know very well by this point, Transformers as a franchise has a tumultuous relationship with the idea of women existing. You would think that the awkward introduction of other genders we got in “Dark Cybertron” would have been the end of things being weird in IDW. However, you would be wrong.

In an effort to explain why genders exist, Roberts had the idea to make it spark-based. Nautica, in the solo print of this issue, has an estriol-positive spark. Estriol is a type of estrogen, which is the hormone that develops and maintains feminine secondary sex characteristics, when present in certain levels, in conjunction with other hormones. Biology

This “spark = gender” idea is, generally speaking, not a great idea to be presenting us with, especially when the writer is a cishet male, because it implies biological essentialism- the idea that a personality trait/quality of a person is innate and predetermined by their biology, as opposed to social, cultural, or individual experiences. Because this story doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it’s irresponsible to reduce the experience of being a woman to a single, physical, unchangable asset, especially when all other assets of the same class have zero effect on one’s gender identity. You don’t exactly see many nonbinary robots running around, now do you? And there are definitely more than two spark types, despite the Transformers as a species being... very binary.

It also makes female Transformers into an “other”, which is a problem that has existed from the very start of the franchise, in some form or fashion, and really doesn’t need to be perpetrated anymore than it already is.

The estriol spark type was removed in the trade edition, and Roberts has expressed regrets over its inclusion, having realized that it was potentially offensive.

Getting back to the story, Swerve, Tailgate, and Ratchet have disappeared, though Ratchet seems to have left his hands behind. His stolen, Pharma-original hands.

That’s still fucked up to me. I don’t think it’ll ever not be fucked up.

Riptide reveals the reason that he wasn’t in Season One of MTMTE was because when he went back to grab a receipt for the ship two years prior, he’d discovered that the original owners were worshipers of Mortilus, Cybertronian god of death, and knew about the nasty little problem that was the sparkeater from the first storyline. When Riptide went to confront them about it, they beat him up so bad he was unconscious for two solid days.

Which is a long-ass time to be unconscious. That might have been a coma, Riptide. Jesus, I hope someone got him to a hospital after this beatdown happened, or at least scraped him off the floor.

With this last piece of the puzzle, we finally have the common denominator in this big ol’ mystery. Everyone who disappeared was on the Lost Light when it took off from Cybertron in issue #1, and everyone left behind- Skids, Getaway, Nightbeat, Nautica, Megatron, and Ravage- didn’t join until afterwords.

Of course, having the answer doesn’t do us much good when everyone is still missing, and Megatron seems to agree with me, because he’s about to throw hands, when Nautica lets them know that they’ve arrived at the rendezvous. Problem is, so has something else.

...

I’m sure it’s fiiiiiiiiiiiiine!

[pennylaneforthoughts]

Lokius Hogwarts AU

All right my dudes, hot take time:

I’ve seen a lot of Hogwarts AU headcanons floating around, and having thought waaaaaay too much about it, I’m here to add my two cents.

( @sortinghatchats has my favorite sorting system I’ve seen to date, since it goes so much in depth into themes throughout the HP series that good ol’ JK barely touches on in her pretty surface level commentary on the subject, so that’s the system I’m gonna use. Go to their blog to learn more about the way the system works bc I’m too lazy to go more in depth than I already have.)

This is gonna be Hella Long tho so I’m putting it under a cut.

Loki: Petrified Slytherin Primary/Slytherin Secondary - sorting: Slytherin House

Perhaps it may seem trite, but Loki really is a Slytherin Primary at heart. Yes he is ambitious and all that stereotypical stuff, but that’s not really what makes a Slytherin a Slytherin. Anyone can be ambitious. No, he’s a Slytherin because he unapologetically prioritizes himself and the people he cares about above all else. 

“Slytherin Primaries are fiercely loyal to the people they care for most. Slytherin is the place where “you’ll make your real friends”– they prioritize individual loyalties and find their moral core in protecting and caring for the people they are closest to. Slytherin’s reputation for ambition comes from the visibility of this promotion of the self and their important people– ambition is something you can find in all four Houses; Slytherin’s is just the one that looks most obviously selfish.”

However, Loki’s trauma has pushed him to something this system calls Petrifying.

“Whether through death, betrayal, abandonment (from either side), or through never having had any to begin with, the Petrified Slytherin has decided that having important people is too dangerous. Having those strong ties leaves you open to pain and weakness, and the pleasure of those connections aren’t worth the despair that comes from their seemingly inevitable loss. In this way, they close themselves off to meaningful connections out of what is ultimately fear (though from the inside, it’s far more likely to be experienced as a rational, sensible decision given the circumstances of the world), and gives them a stony exterior that seems impenetrable, resolute, and cold.” 

Loki wants love and acceptance so badly, but he is convinced that the kind of attachments and relationships that that comes from are far too dangerous and the risk isn’t worth the reward. He pushes people away, hides behind a mask of self-aggrandizement, and betrays others before they can betray him in an attempt to protect himself from potential pain.

In the series, however, we see him slowly unpetrify and move towards a more healthy style of attachment because of Mobius and Sylvie’s influence on him. Whereas his circle of priorities used to include only himself (and arguably Frigga and later, Thor, in the movie timeline), he proverbially “thaws” enough to let Mobius and Sylvie in, and tragically, because of that, the loss of them hurts him so deeply because by the end of season 1, they’re all he had.

His Slytherin Secondary, however, is obvious in his methodology. He’s the god of chaos. He loves improvisation, and plans only exist as long as another better idea doesn’t come along and usurp it. He’ll change and adapt (quite literally) to best fit the situation in front of him, and he takes joy in that. But beneath all the running and his many personas, he has his “neutral state” that he lets only a precious few see. Mobius gets to see it, and so does Sylvie, and as he progresses through the series, he starts to be more comfortable existing in that state where he’s no longer hiding behind everything he feels like the world expects him to be and he can just be himself. 

Mobius: Slytherin Primary (Hufflepuff Model)/Hufflepuff Secondary - sorting: Slytherin House

People like to put Mobius in Hufflepuff, but honestly? I don’t think that’s where he’d be most comfortable. Yes, he is kind and caring to basically everyone, and we see this over and over again in the series. The man radiates comfort. However, like it says in Inky and Kat’s description of the Slytherin Primary, 

“Wanting to help someone doesn’t mean you’re loyal to them. Wanting to help them at the expense of your comforts, your values, your commitments and sometimes even yourself–that does.”

Mobius is kind to a fault. But he is not kind at the expense of himself. Not to everyone at least. He is kind to the child in France, but he is not kind to the point of saving him from the resetting of the timeline, and he doesn’t feel guilty about that. He believes in a duty of care, but he does not believe he has any obligation to go beyond what he thinks that duty of care is. He unapologetically plays favorites, and this is mentioned on multiple occasions. Above all else, Mobius values loyalty as a virtue. Sure, he cares about the TVA and its accompanying morality, and he genuinely does believe it’s his duty to care about and be kind to others. He seems to vibe quite well with the Hufflepuff ideal of caring about people simply because they are people, but this is all secondary to his personal loyalties when push comes to shove. For Mobius,

“dropping that model in order to stand by someone you love, or in order to protect yourself, doesn’t feel like a failing. Sticking to that modelled morality at the expense of betraying or abandoning one of their own would make a Slytherin feel guilty and wrong. Being able to put the things and concepts you like aside for the sake of the people who need you feels more righteous than any moral posturing.”

It’s for this very reason that Mobius gets so angry and feels so betrayed when he thinks Loki has abandoned him for Sylvie, and when Ravonna lies to him and prunes him.

“Betraying your own is the worst kind of crime. Loyalty is precious and terrible; it makes you vulnerable. It’s given sparingly, deeply, and a Slytherin will stand by their loyalties through the same death and fire that a Gryffindor would brave for the sake of doing the right thing, or a Hufflepuff to help someone in need.”

Loki is Mobius’ own. Mobius prioritizes Loki over almost everything else, sticks his neck out for him over and over again, and is willing to sacrifice his own happiness for him. He’s even willing to abandon the whole of his former ideology and prior friendships for this relationship that has become closer to him than his own self, the highest tier of trust and loyalty a Slytherin can give.

“It’s an extreme Slytherin who would let the whole world burn for the sake of a friend, but every Slytherin Primary would be at the very least tempted.”

And Mobius very nearly does exactly that. Even says the words, “burn it to the ground” when Loki asks him what he’s going to do. And he doesn’t feel bad about it. Especially after realizing what the TVA has done to him and the people he cares about. He kicks the TVA out of his circle of care, and doesn’t look back. And he does it for Loki.

Mobius’ Secondary is where people get his Hufflepuff vibes from, I think. A Hufflepuff secondary is marked by “their consistency and the integrity of their method. They’re our hard workers. They build habits and systems for themselves and accomplish things by keeping at them. They have a steadiness that can make them the lynchpin (though not usually the leader) of a community.” And that is what Mobius is. It’s why he radiates that kindness and comfort. He quietly and carefully works at and invests in the relationships in his life to the point that people almost automatically trust him, and over time he has learned how to read people and figure out what makes them tick. 

He approaches new situations with a steady head and gentle hand that Loki is unused to, and it’s this approach that eases Loki into learning how to trust and rely on people. It’s an inherently Hufflepuff approach, and it’s the key to his success as an analyst for the TVA and an understanding friend for Lokis across the timelines.

Tl;dr - Application to an actual Hogwarts AU fic:

THEREFORE! There’s a compelling narrative to be had with a tiny, first-year Loki coming into Hogwarts. He comes from a pureblood family that’s very proud of their Gryffindor heritage (they don’t talk about Hela, and Loki and Thor don’t even know she exists until later in this story), and his brother had been sorted into Gryffindor a couple years prior, and Loki has heard very little other than contempt for Slytherin House and everyone in it. Loki doesn’t want to be sorted into Slytherin. He doesn’t want to deal with the disappointment and shame from his father and the sad eyes of his brother. But the sorting hat sorts him there almost immediately, and his heart sinks. He wanders over to the table miserably but determined. If he’s gonna be sorted into the “evil” house, might as well just run with it, right? Best not to get close to people though. It’s Slytherin. Who knows when someone will betray you.

Enter Mobius, the tiny muggleborn, bright eyed, bushy tailed, and having no clue about the prejudices between houses. The hat takes a hot minute sorting him, giving him the choice between Hufflepuff and Slytherin and telling him Hufflepuff would love a kindhearted and welcoming member like him. But Mobius has been eyeing the little black-haired kid who got sorted before him and is now sitting far apart from everyone, and he can’t help but feel like he needs to be this kid’s friend. And didn’t the hat just say Slytherin is where you’ll make your real friends? Friends are what Mobius cares about, so he’d like to go to Slytherin, thank you very much, so that’s where he goes, and he happily plunks himself down right next to Loki and sticks his hand out.

“I’m Mobius. What’s your name?”

 Loki looks at Mobius’ hand disdainfully and doesn’t shake it, but he does answer, “Loki.”

Mobius’ eyes go wide, and he smiles. “Loki? Like after the Norse god?”

Loki nods, eyeing Mobius suspiciously. People don’t often bat an eye at his name. Not in the wizarding world, anyway.

“Wow, that’s so cool! I loved reading about Norse mythology in school and Loki was always my favorite. Names have power, you know. If you’ve got the same name, then you must be just as awesome.”

Loki has no idea what to do with this kid, but he’s immediately aware of two things:

He’s absolutely sure that this Mobius kid is in the wrong house. No way a Slytherin can be this excited without a single hint of deception in his face.

He’s going to be eaten alive by the other students if Loki doesn’t protect him. What a pain.

Loki is completely wrong on both of these points.

[itsclydebitches]

Hey Clyde, did you check out Wonder Egg Priority at all? The first ep is super promising, but the series as a whole is one of those real fascinating disasters from a story and a production standpoint that might be up your alley as a thing to pick apart haha.

I’d warn that it’s also reeeeal offensive and this generally gets worse as it goes though.

Hi, Phoenix! How are you and Cube doing?

Okay, I hadn't watched Wonder Egg Priority when I received your ask this morning. Now I have. In a fit of intense curiosity I settled down for a rare binge session and tore through all twelve episodes + OVA in a single sitting. It is now nearly 3:00am as I write this because I, oh so clearly, make fantastic life choices.

A question for you: what did I just watch?

The rest is going under a read more partly for spoilers, but more-so because WEP—and the summary I'm about to give, because I feel like I need to try and explain this to tumblr's faceless void for my own, dwindling sanity—comes with about every trigger warning under the sun. Seriously, if you are triggered by anything that we might think of as a "standard" trigger (meaning, not unique to you and your own experiences), best to proceed with caution.

Right! What the ever loving fuck happened in this show? Well, let's work through this chronologically. Two genius, frat boy brothers (I get their names mixed up so I'm not even gonna bother) are locked in their apartment and closely monitored because of Super Secret Science Research. Even though, I think, they're the ones who created this company. Not important! What is important is that they're bored enough to create an AI for funsies, thinking of her as their daughter and letting her name herself Frill. Frill is the perfect, cutesy, also genius child who has a habit of popping her lips — which the camera focuses on in an incredibly creepy fashion. One day Brother #1 (the hot one) falls in love with a random woman we know nothing about and Frill gets jealous.

"Jealous in a general sense?" you ask, thinking this show is in any way normal. "Like, just of her Dad giving attention to someone else?"

"No," I respond, patting your hand. "Jealous because she's in love with him." Which, beyond the subject matter itself, comes completely out of nowhere. Frill has a line about what you'd do if some woman stole your husband away. I, fool that I was, briefly considered that these two guys were lovers, not brothers. Oh no. They're brothers. Frill just considers Dad #1 to be her "husband."

So, in true evil AI fashion, she murders the wife, leaving only her newly born child behind. Who is a daughter.

Uh oh.

Dad #1 locks Frill in a coffin-esque hole in the basement and goes on with his life. Things are great! Until years later when the daughter reveals that she has fallen in love with her uncle (Dad #2 to Frill). She knows (somehow??) that both her dad and her uncle loved her mom, so if the loser uncle will just wait a few years he can marry her instead! He brushes her off, but the next day she’s found dead of an apparent suicide.

Realizing that this was somehow Frill’s doing, he marches down to the basement and confronts the murderous child they’ve had locked up for years. She’s now surrounded by screens in, again, true creep AI fashion. How did she get all this while she was locked up? Oh, just the three bug girls she created as friends prior to killing the wife. They’re devoted slaves, I guess. So the uncle says enough of this insanity and seemingly sets Frill on fire.

OH and Frill’s subtitled dialogue also puts “uncle” in quotation marks, implying that the daughter was always Dad #2’s??

Anyway, both brothers are now super obsessed with death and claim that they think Frill has had a hand in lots of girls’ suicides, even now after her own death. This is brought into question later when it’s revealed that they might have just concocted this scheme to try and bring back their daughter. I’m really not sure. Regardless, they use hand-wavey science to create eggs that I guess contain the souls of young girls who have committed suicide, then they sucker in other young girls who have lost people to suicide to try and rescue their loved ones in a dream world, saving others along the way. A tomboyish girl, Momoe, lost a classmate who admitted to loving her, but who Momoe rejected. Rika, a former junior idol, used and rejected an overweight fan only to learn later that she’d starved herself to death. Neiru, the 14yo president of some science company (yup) was attacked by her sister before she jumped off a bridge. Finally Ai, our protagonist, is a victim of bullying who managed to make friends with a single girl, Koito, who then jumped from their school building for unknown reasons. They’re all given the chance to bring these individuals back to life, provided they protect other victims of suicide by defeating the monstrous traumas that drove them to that act in the first place.

And you know what? That concept was great. However, the execution ranges from “Okay, that was pretty good for an anime. Kudos there” to “That’s the most offensive thing I’ve seen in my life.” Needless to say, unpacking all the battles they fight would take a lot more than this already absurd summary. Basically, if you can think of something horrible to happen to young girls (and one trans guy whose existence in that egg undermines the whole message of the episode), there’s an attempt to tackle it here.

During all this the four girls become friends and Ai works through her suspicions about Mr. Sawaki, a teacher at her school. What’s going on with Mr. Sawaki? Uh… everything! He’s somehow connected to Koito’s death, he’s dating Ai’s mom, and Ai apparently loves him too because her friends say so, even though this is never actually addressed and she barely interacts with him. It’s all quite the complication.

In time though the girls complete their “mission” of bringing their loved ones back to life. Rika and Momoe manage it first, only to find that Frill’s bug-girl lackeys have arrived to kill them. Why? Because that’s what Frill does, I guess. Momoe’s crocodile familiar (cute animals the girls were gifted to help them fight) takes a killing blow for her and the bug-lady then proceeds to carve up his corpse and force feed it to Momoe. Fantastic!! Building off of that, the next bug-lady who Rika encounters kills her turtle too, following in the footsteps of her bug-sister by, presumably, forcing her to eat parts of its head. Ai refuses to sacrifice her familiar to stay alive, but luckily the suicide she was protecting turns out to be herself from a parallel universe (that's a thing now!) and she takes the killing blow herself, which is done by pulling out the eye she’s sensitive about (she has heterochromia.) So parallel Ai passes on (again?) and the three girls don’t work through this trauma at all, instead becoming more traumatized through the realization that the loved ones they brought back no longer remember them. They’re alive, but the relationship they all had with them is dead.

It’s about this point that the main storyline wraps up and I’m relieved that there’s an OVA to finish things off. Surely they can somehow bring this all together in 45 minutes.

…25 minutes of that OVA is recap.

So with only about 20 minutes left, we learn that Neiru, the only one to not complete her mission yet, has mysteriously gone missing. It turns out she was an AI/clone/something all along, made to replace her sister and, presumably, that’s what caused the whole stabbing-suicide incident. She successfully brings her sister back, but stays behind in the dream world because Frill promises her she can become human. How is Frill here when she’s dead? How will Neiru become human? Isn’t Frill the “temptation of death” or whatever? There are no answers. A flashback finally reveals that Koito was having a relationship with a teacher at another school, he committed suicide, she transferred, she tried the same thing with Mr. Sawaki, he kept refusing her advances, and finally while threatening suicide to get his attention, she accidentally fell.

(So why was she in the suicide egg if it was an accident??)

Except, all this information comes through Mr. Sawaki himself, there’s a whole subplot about whether he’s really a villain, or if Ai is just making him into one, and this show might as well be titled How Much Pedophilia Can We Put into One Anime? So make of that what you will.

A dead character randomly shows up, but it's fine because she's actually just a version from a parallel world. How did she get here? Why is she here? Lol, it's cute that you think these are answered.

Rika, the character who cuts and almost committed suicide halfway through the show, breaks down saying how much she misses her dead loved ones, right after her friends refused to let her go on another mission that would surely end in her death and… that’s it. That’s all we get about her.

Momoe too, though she’s hopefully just vibing somewhere with that longed-for boyfriend.

Ai transfers schools and then one day randomly remembers that she loves Neiru and rushes back to start cracking eggs again because that will? Somehow?? Let her see Neiru???

When I say there are too many unanswered questions to possibly list here I really, really mean it.

Finally, in a personal attack on me, the protagonist with a name that is literally AI is not in any way an artificial intelligence.

And that’s it! Congratulations, you now “understand” WEP. And see, the funny thing is that the off-the-rails, bat-shit crazy aspects kind of catch you off guard? Yeah, the first episode is fantastic. In fact, I think I got through about six episodes thinking that this was a solid, if at times really messed up anime, but I was willing to shrug off a lot of stuff due solely to the amount of sensitive material they were attempting to cover (which is always quite difficult to do). Probably the only reason I was able to binge so fast was because the first half of the series was so engaging. The characters are charming. The animation is GORGEOUS. There's actually a ton of good here that is also worth yelling about. But then the plot comes in like a freight train and I was left staring dumbfounded at my screen as more and more insanity kept happening. Having watched the "explanations" I am now more confused about the show I just saw.

Phoenix, if you’ve bothered to read this rambling, 3:00am rant: thank you. I think? Idk if I should actually be thanking you or cursing you for tuning me into this, but it was definitely an experience, that’s for sure lol.

I'm off to bed now RIP the chance of having normal dreams ✌️