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susandsnell · 1 year ago

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1, 6, 24 😉 xx

eeee, thank you so much ditty!!!! you're an absolute gem, hope this solstice thursday is treating you well!! <3

choose violence ask game 🔥

1. the character everyone gets wrong? pick a Batman Rogue. any rogue. literally any of them, and they will be Flanderized to hell and back over one to two traits they may not even have canonically possessed for two to three decades. I readily and wholeheartedly admit that this is not entirely the fault of fandom, and is at least partly owing to the broader problem with having long-running comics universes, because there is such a huge variance in characterization (and quality of said characterization thanks to the overabundance of edgelord and bigoted comics/comic media writers), in the gravity of their actions and where they land on the moral spectrum, and even in motivation that it is nigh impossible to even say what getting said character 'right' means unless the person is talking about a specific iteration (ex.: someone writing fic or making headcanons about specifically Paul Dano's Riddler from The Batman 2022, who has a very particular voice/ethos/motive distinct from your other Riddlers, though there are core shared traits). But of this bunch, i'd have to say my poor Ivy gets it the worst. I'm truly glad she's evolved beyond being just another Temptress of Men Who Hates Them But Also Needs Their Validation Through Constant Sex (although done right she's still a great femme fatale wasting their time and catfishing them for eco-terrorism purposes), and of course as a canon queer character she means the world to me, but as is the case with every popular female character, she's either Holding The Braincell (aka everyone's mom, and I don't mean in the kink way), or Irredeemable. A lot of this does arise from how poor the execution of modern canon Harlivy has been because of respectability politics, but reducing her to Snarky Husky Voiced Plant Lady Rolling Her Eyes At Harley's Antics, making her have her shit way too together (she's always sent to Arkham!), making her the one-sided babysitter/healer of Harley's problems (and by extension, the problems of any other woman), making her a snarky queer auntie to the Batkids (vomit, it's as cringe as the rest of mainstream Batfam fanon), making her have way too much emotional intelligence to the point of counselling others (she's not even one of the psychologist rogues!), having her whole existence revolve around Harley....it's exhausting. (And again, unfortunately something the writers are fucking up in canon constantly, too.)

Fandom as a whole is allergic to women having flaws that impact the narrative concretely without demonizing them for it (when the dudes doing the same and worse are adored and worshipped for it), doubly so if she's BIPOC or queer (because again, double the respectability politics), so they flatten out those flaws and it's like, is she even a villain anymore with her own motivations and ethos, or is she a big tiddy witch gf from a paywalled phone app dating sim? Let her be as complex and angry and jagged and hypocritical as the other male rogues, my god!! (Sidenote that I'm not against retooling characters' designs/presentations/tactics anew entirely for a new universe iteration, especially if it refreshes the narrative, so long as they're interesting and true to some spirit of the character. In other words, masc Ivy's are fine and more than welcome lol.)

6. Which ship fans are the most annoying?

Oh, you really want me to swing my bat at the hornet's nest with this one, huh? While the cheat answer for this is "all of them if you spend enough time in any given ship fandom", I'm the most frequently exhausted by migratory Good Girl Fixing Bad Boy fandom. Fuck it, I'll name names with periods. The Zutar.a/Reyl.o/Darkli.na/Dae.myra et cetera fandom. The ships themselves, I can take or leave (though my main gripe is frequently their execution is just boring). There's no moral objections on my part, to be clear. I'd be hypocritical to take that tack considering my own tastes in markedly more fucked-up shit and like, hello, I cut my teeth in Phantom of the Opera fandom since I was 12 and love gothic romances, so like, glass houses. My issue comes in where these types without fail are consistently smug about the potent feminism inherent to ships they specifically in fanon interpret in the most boring, gender essentialist, wattpad daddy-dom-size-difference kink ho-hum ways imaginable because...it makes them horny, and woman horny about traditional gender roles equals feminism somehow. If it stopped there, I'd've never developed such an animosity, but no no. They make arguments about how much more feminist it is than the (often canon) hero/heroine ships because Feminism Is When Woman Is Treated Like Property By The Man I Find Attractive. They act like cishet romances, usually between two white characters, is the most marginalized thing imaginable and whinge that artists/studios/creators are "too cowardly" to "include romance" if it doesn't go canon in the way they like, as if more marginalized romance stories aren't fighting tooth and nail just to get off the ground. And on that note, the bigotry I have witnessed firsthand in these circles is just appalling; this is a fandom-wide issue and certainly not exclusive to any one shipping community, but the amount of times I have seen them come off as just frothing at the mouth to be homophobic should a slash shipper not bend the knee to the Great Potent Feminism of their ships, and the amount of times the mask as come off is just. Whew. It's okay to just be horny. It really is. One does not have to make a Social Issue Thing about it.

24. Topic that brings up the most rancid discourse? Weird corollary to the above question, and kind of an overbroad answer so I apologize, but Appropriate Amount Of Condonation Versus Condemnation of both characters, and works of fiction as a whole. I feel like the purity culture discourse has gotten so toxic it's gone completely 0 or 100 "if you watch something where something bad happens You Yourself Are Guilty Of This Thing" or "nothing fictional has any impact whatsoever", when my take is a more nuanced idea of media normalizing and reinforcing certain biases, but also, it's not real lmao. If the work itself espouses certain troubling viewpoints it's unsurprising if the audience takes that on (ex: Frank Miller perpetuating racism and misogyny through his writings), but people are such whining babies about so much as glimpsing any kind of Problematic Media (especially miserable if you're a horror fan) that I understand how the knee-jerk defensiveness arose. On the other hand, the baby got thrown out with the bathwater, including by opportunistic bigots who want to shut down any and all critical discussion of social issues present in or surrounding their interests, lest it Spoil Their Fun (and to silence people over whom they're privileged), to the point that any critique from a moral standpoint is immediately branded as Purity Culture with no regard to nuance or the context of the perspective of the person making the critique. So for example, you have people who throw hissy fits about Catra from She-Ra getting a redemption arc and you have people who thoughtfully point out how the writing of certain tropes in a given work perpetuate transmisogyny, and they're all thrown in the same basket and it's exhausting. No space for nuance, you're either Pro or Anti, and to quote Sarah Z's excellent video on this issue, I for one am a tax-paying adult woman.

#thank you SO much for giving me the opportunity to bitch #hope you're doing wonderful!!! <3 #ask night

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f001onthehill · 3 years ago

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A1, A19, B8, B13, E8, L6 for Vasily

for @noirapocalypto

Thanks!

A1: What of the Meyers-Briggs personality types they most fit into? INFP, ENFT, et cetera…

So, I did the quiz for him... This is what he got: "Campaigners (ENFPs) are true free spirits – outgoing, openhearted, and open-minded. With their lively, upbeat approach to life, they stand out in any crowd. But even though they can be the life of the party, Campaigners don’t just care about having a good time. These personality types run deep – as does their longing for meaningful, emotional connections with other people." And yeah, sums him up pretty well. He did, however, land bang in the middle of that E/I spectrum (it was 52% E to 48% I) and that rings true for him, too. I honestly kinda expected him to get INFP. He's that bleeding-heart idealist peacemaker type. :-)

A19: What instantly irritates them or puts them in a bad mood?

On most days, he's actually pretty good at keeping a zen attitude about most ordinary things and it takes something genuinely upsetting or *a LOT* of smaller annoyances. But sometimes he just wakes up irritable and then it doesn't take a whole lot. On days like that, crowded places, long lines, hunger, and weather (*any* weather, frankly, but esp. the hot and humid kind) are his worst enemies and he won't even go anywhere unless he absolutely has to.

B8: Is your OC considered funny? Do they believe they’re funny?

He's an amusing storyteller and a quick-witted guy with a smartass clapback or a comment on pretty much anything. He's also a complete and utter 12-year-old sometimes and has a way of making silliness contagious. So yes. Definitely the class clown type. He's often funny but never mean, tho. And he does believe that yeah, most of the time people laugh with him rather than at him. As long as *he* is laughing, he doesn't particularly care either way.

B13: Do they have a large or small group of friends?

A lot of casual pals and good acquaintances he's on friendly terms with but whom he (however gently/politely) keeps at arm's length; only a small circle of people he thinks of as *close* buddies.

E8: What’s one of your OC’s biggest regrets?

He doesn't have many. One is that he left most of his blood family behind. But that, at least, is mitigated by the fact that his parents have two more kids still at home - and that he can send back some eddies every month. The other is not being able to save Jackie.

L6: Which OC do you think is the worst morally or behaviorally? AKA, which is supposed to be a “bad guy”?

I think I've yet to spawn a really bad one. But between Vasya and Vitaly, it's definitely the latter. Vitaly has always had a harsh, ambitious streak and it's always run pretty deep. He's been in NC a lot longer than Vasily, first on the streets, then with Arasaka - and neither street nor corporate life has done much to mitigate his somewhat ruthless disposition. While he (unlike Vasya) is a practising Christian, he's about as willing to "turn the other cheek" as the Padre. But he's probably not worse than your average merc and he snarls more than he actually bites. (But if he does bite, he goes straight for the jugular...)

#thanks!!#these were fun!#male v #npv #v cyberpunk #vasily bugayev #vitaly bugayev #long post

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knifeshoeoreofight · 4 years ago

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Part 5/?

(part 1 here) (part 2 here) (part 3 here) (part 4 here)

tw: emetophobia

Note: I wrote the storm bit before Tropical Storm Isaias happened, I intend no connection to or disrespect towards a serious real world event.

A month really is a long time. Sid sets up an office of sorts, where he can throw the shutters open to let in the sun and the sea air. He spends some time setting up his laptop securely as best he can. He hopes the VPN helps. He’s not a computer guy, that was always Flower’s department.

Flower. He misses his friends, and his family. He has some time before anyone will start to wonder why they haven’t heard from him, so he can try and decide what the safest course of action would be once people start to worry about his radio silence. Maybe letters, so nothing can be tracked electronically?

He keeps as low a profile as possible. He goes to the supermarket late at night, when the only other people around are tired and also hoping to avoid interaction.

His favorite thing about the area is the roadside fruit stand he finds the one time he wanders further than the grocery store. It’s run by a little old Cuban lady, who seems perpetually inclined to not want to talk to anyone, which suits him just fine. He returns home with a old plastic bag stretched thin with a fragrant burden of ripe guavas and papayas.

The papaya’s floral, salmon-pink flesh is the best thing he’s ever eaten and he vows to have some on hand for Zhenya to try when he emerges.

He does a little half-hearted poking at his research, but there’s not a lot he can do without lab equipment. He works out using YouTube videos. He lays out in the sun and discovers, to his annoyance, that his shoulders have a tendency to freckle as they tan.

He walks along the beach and goes snorkeling with an old mask and fins he finds in a closet. He sees clouds of silver fish and even a stingray. He wishes Zhenya were here to see it too.

Every night, before he heads to bed, he checks on the pod. Nothing looks different from day to day.

He has strange dreams at night, colors and sensations so disconcerting and, well, alien, that he often wakes up in a sweat. In many, he sees himself but distorted and strange, cast in shades of ultraviolet and blue.

It’s comforting. Zhenya is alive, and dreaming.

***

It might be his imagination, but the air feels charged when he wakes up on the morning of the thirtieth day. Zhenya had told him the time span was approximate, but he still rolls out of bed and heads out to the ship as soon as he throws on some clothes.

The air is muggy and the sky is overcast. A storm brewing, maybe. The pod, when he reaches it, is intact and unchanged.

The day drags, the hours creeping by bloated and slow. He goes for a run, he rinses off in the sea. The salt water dries tacky on his skin so he showers it off. Switches on the local news. Registers nothing. Makes himself eat. Makes himself wait another two hours before he checks the ship again in the early afternoon. Nothing.

As he suspected it might, thunder rumbles through the low-hanging clouds around 3 pm. He watches the wind pick up and toss the fronds of the palms outside the living room window. He checks the weather on his phone, and decides to close the storm shutters on the house.

The house is stifling and claustrophobic after that. He listens to the pitch of the wind increase and the first bit of drizzle begin to pat against the shutters.

The news had called it a tropical depression, but as the rainsong outside builds to a roar, though, Sid reasons that a storm is a fucking storm.

He can’t stop thinking about Zhenya-- about what might happen if he emerges to this chaos alone, disoriented by human senses. Sid makes the decision in an instant. He grabs a flashlight and his phone, and yanks the door open into the driving wind.

The rain is strangely temperate as it soaks through his clothes. He stands there in the yard for a minute, taking in the dissonant feeling of wind and rain that don’t carry the icy winter teeth he’s used to.

When a palm frond tears loose and whips him across the face, he hurries to the ship. The noise of the storm is abruptly silenced as soon as the airlock door closes behind him with a sucking hiss.

Surprise, surprise, nothing has changed. Sid sighs, and goes to try and find something cloth-like to dry off with. Poking around the ship’s bedroom for a bit results in finding a compartment with an assortment of soft, folded textiles. The texture of them is impossibly strange, but they’re clearly woven material of some kind and they absorb water well enough.

There are a few items that look different, set off to one side of the storage compartment. They’re too small for Zhenya’s original form, and they look recognizably like human clothing, in loose, forgiving shapes. Clothes intended for Zhenya post-reconfiguration, he thinks. He sets them carefully aside, and takes one of the more blanket-y things back into the room containing the pod. With a sigh, he sits against the wall and wraps himself in the blanket.

The white noise hum of the ship’s machinery pulls him into a trance, then a fitful doze that sends him in and out of awareness like a slow motion stone, skipping on the surface of a pond.

***

He isn’t sure what eventually wakes him. A sound, a sudden fountain of garbled words and images that he only senses in his mind, the coppery tang of blood.

He jerks to consciousness with a start. The pod is open. Curled up on the floor in front of it, in a spreading pool of viscous liquid, is Zhenya.

“Zhenya! Oh my god--”

As Sid staggers to his feet, he registers that the link is there, but all he’s getting is a flood of panic and can’tbreathecan’tbreathecan’t-

He falls to his knees at Zhenya’s side, heedless of the mess. He can’t fully remember what you do for someone choking. Zhenya is an unwieldy deadweight as Sid wraps his arms around his torso and hauls him up. One, two, three blows between the shoulder blades to no avail. He clenches his hands together at Zhenya’s waist and jabs up and in, sharply. Once, twice. He’s had first aid training in the Heimlich but he’s never had to use it before.

Zhenya’s body convulses, and then he’s leaning forward, vomiting. His sides heave and he draws in a harsh, gasping breath.

Zhenya Sid thinks frantically. Can you hear me? Can you breathe?

Zhenya groans, and coughs. The mad throb of panic is fading from their link. His breaths are coming more evenly now, and Sid rubs his hand over Zhenya’s back in slow, soothing circles.

“That’s it,” he finds himself crooning. “That’s it, there you go.”

For the first time, what Zhenya actually looks like now registers. Sid can’t see his face, curled over as he is, but he’s.

He’s human. Or, he looks it.

Winter-pale skin, limbs that still seem miles long, broad shoulders and a strong back. Dark hair plastered to his bent head.

The vulnerable nape of his neck makes something go tight and painful in Sid’s chest.

“Zhenya,” he says, out loud.

Zhenya takes a deep, shuddering breath and raises his head. And turns to look at him.

His eyes are glowing bright, bright blue, but as Sid watches, they fade, going dark and fathomless: human. Long lashes, spiky and wet against his skin as he blinks, slow. Strong, harsh features that he can see Natalia in, even cast in such a masculine mould.

He’s staring at Sid, and Sid can almost read the emotion that flits like scudding clouds across his new face. Incredulity? Surprise? Not quite those, but close.

“Hi,” Sid says, and smiles, because he’s so relieved and he can’t help it.

Zhenya makes a soft, helpless noise and his hands grip Sid’s arms, as if he wants to rise.

Sid stands, and anchors Zhenya as he slowly, laboriously, gets one knee up, and lurches to his feet.

“Oh, damn,” Sid says. Zhenya is a good couple feet shorter than he used to be, but he still towers over Sid.

“Can you breathe okay now?” he asks Zhenya, and Zhenya coughs again, clearing his throat. He nods, and Sid’s shoulders slump. “Thank fuck.”

Crisis over.

Sid lets himself keep looking at him. Stubborn jaw, long, lean torso, narrow hips. His hands are big enough to encircle Sid’s not insubstantial forearms.

He meets Zhenya’s gaze again. He still feels like he’s looking at a stranger’s face, not at the being who he’d grown so fond of. He’d felt something from the link earlier, but can they still--

Sid, Zhenya says into his mind, and relief knifes sweetly through him. It’s still Zhenya. If he closes his eyes, it’s like nothing has changed.

Sid- Sid open them, open your eyes--

Sid does, and Zhenya is right there, leaning in closer, staring down at him. His eyes have gone wide and his mouth is slack with surprise. Clumsily, but incredibly gently, he lets go with one hand to tilt Sid’s chin up. And keeps staring.

I didn’t know Zhenya thinks, finally.

Sid lets out a nervous, airless laugh. “Know...what?”

I didn’t know that your eyes were that color.

Sid swallows. The look in Zhenya’s eyes is terrifyingly close to wonder.

“They’re just hazel,” he says, face going hot, but Zhenya shakes his head.

I saw in a different spectrum, before, and I had no idea. They’re beautiful.

Sid feels like the bottom has dropped out of his stomach. “I, uh. Thank you?”

Zhenya tilts his head to the side, and, slowly, his lips curve up into a smile.

Or that you sounded like that. To other human eardrums, at least.

Sid thought he was flushing before but apparently his face can get even warmer.

“I have a stupid voice. I even, like, try to pitch it lower, and stuff.” He’s babbling. “Flower always teases me about having the vocal fry of a Kardashian, but--”

Your voice is lovely, Zhenya thinks indignantly. All of you, is lovely.

It’s not something Sid has really ever heard another man tell him, before. He knows what he looks like, a lot of men have had a lot to say about his lips, his ass, et cetera, et cetera. He’s been called good-looking, or even pretty, especially when he was younger. Not lovely.

“Yeah, well.” His voice cracks a little. “You don’t look too bad, yourself. “

All of Zhenya’s emotions seem to flit across his face as unconsciously and freely as a child’s. He smiles now, wide and bright.

Really? Good.

The grin morphs into a smirk that, oh no. Nope. Uh-uh.

How is my height? And my--

“We are not talking about your dick!” Sid squawks, and Zhenya laughs out loud, startling them both. He raises a hand to his mouth, looking so indignant at the noise his body made without his express permission that Sid has to laugh too.

Oh, fine. I see. I was merely going to ask about my eye color, and now you’re laughing at me?

Zhenya’s eyes dance, and he’s still smiling, so Sid just shakes his head.

“They’re nice. Really, uh, dark brown.”

Sleepy, gentle. Soulful.

Bedroom eyes, a traitorous part of his brain insists, and Sid wills it to shut the fuck up.

“Let’s, um” His voice cracks. “”Let’s get you cleaned up.”

***

#eyes emoji #sidgeno #sidney crosby/evgeni malkin #hockey rpf #zvezda #dana writes a thing

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thecrazyworldbuilder · 4 years ago

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Raclis

(Rah-ck-lee-s): a list of intelligent species that are made up by me, both alien and fantasy. This is Episode One, where we gonna see some of the races from the A litera.

(PS: I have a list of 203 fantasy/alien races and most of them are my own creation, while the others are the classical elves, centaurs, orcs and et cetera. The list is arranged in alphabetical order and for now has only the shortest descriptions: these posts will be something like a description paper for every single race. I would love questions asked and will answer them with pleasure.)

Abyss Elves

Once technically normal elves, a large group of them was sent into the Abyss (also called Aumenel) for crimes they didn’t commit. Locked here for eternity, they slowly forgot most of the information about their past. They praise the myths about the sun, the sky, a world where there is no pain and darkness. They started calling each other Foariar (Those who are without sunlight). And slowly evolved into their modern looks. Dark skin, tints of green and purple, turquoise glowing eyes, whitish pink hair. Their blood is dark purple and has an odd scent of mashed tulips.

Fast facts:

- Super good climbers and parkourists due to the terrain of the Abyss.

- Are mostly always ripped athletes.

- When cut off, their hair will glow a pretty bright light for nearly five hours.

- In sunlight they go into an euphoric state which they hardly resist.

- Are incredible hunters and gatherers: farming in the Abyss is almost impossible.

- Abyss Elves have migrated to many other realms, especially the Spring World.

- They name their realm, Aumenel, means “without sky” in quenya.

Onomasticon:

(for Spring World Abyss Elves)

Gender-reversed modern european and ancient greek names. (Aurorus, Eugenia, Xenis, Anastasius, Agath)

Anagrams from spanish. (Roucos, Roeherr, Cadoraz, Jerichoter, Viona)

(for Abyss inhabitants)

Quenya and latin hybridisation (Hravai, Ilmarinorum, Incatrix, Terrandil, Indos)

Ada’klo

One of the species from the realm of Emiare, which is bound to the very fabric of time. Ada’klo - as all the other races from the klo family - have something called a cycle: a period of time when they exist. Their cycle is ten years long. Thus, they live for ten years, and afterwards disappear only to appear again after the same ten years without aging anyhow.

Fast facts:

- Due to their cycle length they gather at the great Adakloan Temples, where their place of disappearance is kept safe.

- Ada’klo look pretty much like humans, but are slightly different on the inside, anatomically and chemically.

Onomasticon:

Use old english and european names. (Alcott, Demelza, Borden, Terrel, Sacrifice)

Ain’klo

One of the species from the Emiare realm, these members of the klo species family have a one thousand years long cycle.

Fast facts:

- Have an incredible ancient culture which has many customs, like forced marriage (from both sides), child labour, extreme xenophobia.

- Are dangerous and non educated, will fight to death only to keep their traditions.

Onomasticon:

Use ancient babylonian names and their imitations. (Akki, Marnabu, Nazarat, Buvalu, Irigibel)

Aliquenar

A race which somehow combined all of the main features of elves, dwarves, orcs, humans and halflings. Slightly greenish skin, pointed ears, not-so-long beards, big hairy feet, no need in sleep and the ability to see over the horizon. Like jack of all trades, they have a wide set of talents and opportunities, but are masters of none. Hated among all of the species they combined in themselves, they try to live peacefully in their cities, not willing to make any conflict.

Fast facts:

- Due to the discrimination directed at them from the other races, they have a trait of being shy, polite and quiet.

- Are able to learn magic on the same level as humans.

- A legend has it that they came from a city trapped in the mountains, where all the five races met and after a long long time merged into one by breeding.

- Some may have more standing out traits of a specific compound race: as, orc tusks, elven lack of facial hair and eyelids, dwarvish height or beards, strange sexual dimorphism and others.

Onomasticon:

Use the languages and names of the humans, elves, dwarves and hobbits (orcish names are way more rare), and then, if wanted, merge them together, imitate them. (Legoli, Aiwenson, Thurwise, Kurumiel, Indis)

Alfers

Species of semiquadruped lizards with telepathic minds, which are able to evolve fast, adapting to the stressful situations. Tall two and half meters in the withers (8’2 feet) and long nearly five (16’4 feet), they are agile, omnivore and strong.

Fast facts:

- Alfers evolve fastly not only biologically, but linguistically. Their language changes so fast no one will never understand what they are saying, except some separate words, taken from other languages.

- Alfers are able to speak telepathically, but only talk: not reading thought but hearing the inner monologue of someone, thus communicating.

- They have a high regeneration factor, and are hard to kill.

Onomasticon:

Any possible names, words, abbreviations and anagrams. (Villaissa, Gerdan, Menttor, Seba, Lmne)

Anciento

Race of stickman-like, three eyed beings with high power and unreachable wisdom and intelligence. Can reproduce by giving any other living thing something they call “open intellect”, and then teach them how to turn into an anciento. Well, traditional reproducing is possible too.

Fast facts:

- While reproducing they, ironically, do not know how to turn back into their original state.

- Know a wide spectrum of using life energy for different purposes.

- Are able to fall into an anabiosis state for a long time.

- Are almost instinct.

Onomasticon:

Names are mostly two syllables, unisex, and have no meaning, because of their proverb “You mean nothing at birth: give your name a meaning by yourself”. (Koni, Jaro, Neho, Mibta, Vere)

Androids of Binarica

Robots made by the techno-magic goddess-planet Binarica. Are unique from other robots by their design: solid parts are slowly merging into soft ones, and they look humane but have slightly object-like heads.

Fast facts:

- Were being enslaved for many centuries by other races of Binarica.

- All of them by custom have light-blue photosensors (eyes).

- Follow directives, which can be changed by hacking.

- Feel emotions and have souls.

Onomasticons:

Leet, deites on abbreviations, scientifical termins, or even all at once. (M45 T4R, G3x2x2, S5Z2, Tetratom, Cleleven Zero)

Anmanibes/Ri’be’li

Species from a far realm of jungles and plains, anmanibes have some unique features. First of all, they have no arms. At all. Down to the shoulderblades - no arms. But thye have a compensation for this flaw: the ability for telekinesis, and many other paranormal abilities. Anmanibes (which means “armless”) call themselves Ri’be’li - “the second born children of the gods”. They are digitigrade and have a pretty long lizard-like tail they use for balance.

Fast facts:

- Ri’be’li are one of my favourite races.

- The paranormal abilities they are known to posess are: channeling (speaking with spirits and other paranormal deities), levitation, telekinesis, telepathy, biolocation, materialisation, atmokinesis, aeromancy, pyromancy, thermokinesis, teleportation, television, precognition, and other.

- Have two pairs of eyelids: one for blinking and one for “television”, or also called telescopic vision.

- Have ears which are suspiciously pointed, like those of elves.

- One myth from their culture says that the ri’be’li were born from the us’ib’tor’tor: a firstborn race in their world. The first ri’be’li was called A’ud’ca, and he was born without arms. His parents abandoned him, but A’ud’ca had the power to bend wills of other people, and slowly he made it so other us’ib’tor’tor could give birth to ri’be’li, and then he somehow, after a long time, made the us’ib’tor’tor race vanish into the sands of history, giving place for ri’be’li to rise.

- Most of them are disgusted by arms and hands in general, calling any creature with arms an a’us’cla (limited).

Onomasticon:

Use latin, then take every syllable and put them in reverse order, placing apostrophy between each syllable. Most names are gender neutral. (Pha’al, Ta’del, Ta’be, O’di’gla, Ra’tet)

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acephysicskarkat · 4 years ago

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So I want to discuss asexuality for a bit (I’m ace, I’m allowed to).

The Split Attraction Model

This is one of the big things you need to grasp to understand asexuality, aromanticism and so on. Basically, this posits that instead of there being one scale called “Attraction”, there are at minimum three: sexual, romantic and aesthetic. These can have different values.

For example, if you’re interested in the same gender as yourself both sexually and romantically, that makes you homoromantic and homosexual, or, in the common parlance, “gay” or “a lesbian”. However, if you’re only able to develop romances with the same gender, but experience some measure of sexual attraction to multiple genders, that makes you bisexual or pansexual but homoromantic. With me so far?

Asexuality and aromanticism mean that your ability to experience attraction on the relevant axis is set very low. This does not automatically influence your position on the other axes. If you experience no or very little sexual attraction, that is not the same thing as not being interested in romance - there are asexual lesbians, panromantic asexuals, heteroromantic asexuals and so on, and similarly there are aromantic lesbians and bisexuals et cetera.

That being said, there are also many people who are both aromantic and asexual; I’m one of them! It’s just not guaranteed that anyone asexual is also aromantic and vice versa.

It’s also important to bear in mind that being ace is not about choosing whether or not to have sex; it’s about literally not feeling a desire for it. Someone who experiences sexual attraction and takes a vow of celibacy doesn’t become asexual; they’re just choosing not to act on their attraction, which, well, that’s really their own business, isn’t it?

The Asexuality Spectrum

Now, one thing to note about asexuality is that having a very low ability to experience sexual attraction is not the same thing as having it set to zero. There are people covered within the broad space of “asexual” who do experience sexual attraction - just not much, or only under very specific conditions. For example, some people are demisexual: they are able to experience sexual attraction, but only if a very strong emotional connection with the other person is already present. Others may prefer a term such as grey-asexual, which implies an existent but simply very limited sex drive. These people are entirely valid, and are collectively represented by the grey stripe on the asexual pride flag.

(Note that again, and contrary to what a well-intentioned but very misinformed supervisor I used to have at a charity shop thought, demisexuality is not an ethical position. Demisexuals aren’t choosing not to have sex outside of a relationship because they believe it’s wrong; they literally can’t experience sexual attraction without that strong underlying emotional bond.)

Claims That Are Wrong

Asexual = Aromantic, Aromantic = Asexual: I’ve already talked about this, up in part one.

Asexual = Autistic: A lot of stuff that does include explicit or heavily implied asexual rep marries it to a character who is either overtly autistic or heavily coded as such - Sheldon Bigbangtheory, for example. This is, in fact, nonsense: while people on the spectrum can be asexual and/or aromantic (again, I’m “people” here), you don’t have to be autistic to be asexual and the world is full of autistic people who want sex and romance in their lives.

Asexuals are sex-repulsed: Wrong. Many (including me) are indeed at least somewhat sex-repulsed, but even disregarding the presence of demisexuals and gray-aces within the community, there are asexuals who have sex for reasons other than personal sexual desire, such as to satisfy a partner or have kids. Similarly, asexuals can still have kinks or fetishes that give them some measure of arousal; this is a different thing from wanting to have sex with other people.

Asexuals are sex-negative: No. Like, I personally find it uncomfortable to hear about other people’s sexual experiences. I’m pretty sex-repulsed like that. But I don’t want to outlaw sex work or forbid any kind of consensual sex or deny people the right to talk about it with an interested audience, because I’m not an asshole. Some asexuals do want a society that’s less open about sexuality, but that’s an individual thing and not an innate asexual trait.

Asexuals are touch-repulsed: Yeah, this is also nonsense. As with sex, other forms of physical contact are down to the asexual in question. It’s not impossible for asexuals to be fine or even eager for non-sexual physical contact. Asexuals can be very huggy people! Or they might be very unwilling to share their personal space. It’s really down to the individual.

Asexuals and aromantics are evil: This is just bad TV talking. It’s a cheap way to make a villainous character distinct from an assumed “normal”, and does not reflect reality. The overlap between asexuality and supervillainy is no greater than any other orientation.

Asexuals are that way because of past sexual trauma: This is a myth. Many asexuals have no history of sexual trauma. More than that, though, even if they do, what business is it of yours?

Asexuals are broken: No, we’re sodding not. If you don’t experience sexual desire, there is nothing wrong with you. You are just a person who doesn’t give a fuck. (Like, there are some conditions that depress a sexual person’s sex drive - depression can, for example. But whether you identify as asexual is a personal thing and cannot be medicalised.)

Asexuals all like dragons: Actually, this one’s true. Just kidding!

Conclusion

I hope this is helpful to at least some people; if you have further questions, feel free to get in touch, or consult a resource such as the Asexual Visibility and Education Network for more information.

#ace stuff

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glee-otis · 4 years ago

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WEEK 5 Stigma of Mental Illness

1. Demonstrate to us what kind of research you have done so far?

I have done blog posts to ask for people’s opinions regarding stigmatization of mental and physical disabilities. On my previous blog posts I have written down the different replies I have gotten.

I have done scientific research on brain scans for mental illness, and I think I need to further my research in the science behind mental health.

The many interpretations and definitions make it hard to discuss mental health. A lot of stigma seems to arise from a lack of understanding and information regarding the topic.

Breaking the Stigma and Shame of Mental Illness| Kitty Westin https://youtu.be/OsRF8xGgbPA

2. Continued research this week.

Inclusivity: the fact or policy of not excluding members or participants on the grounds of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, etc.

How can we become more inclusive?

"Spreading Awareness, Reducing Stigma: Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health Introduces its Faces of Mental Illness for 2016." Targeted News Service, Jul 13, 2016. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1804516762?accountid=25324.

Article that discusses how Canada approaches mental illness awareness in a healthy manner. They hope to educate people on mental illness by allowing participants to share their story and recovery.

Quote: “ ‘By continuing to share their stories and paths to recovery with the public, the Faces help others to want to do more to erase stigmatization. They inspire many of us to seek help and to support loved ones with a mental illness, and they encourage more action on the part of policymakers,’ continued Phelps.”

"Domestic Violence's Overlooked Damage: Concussion And Brain Injury." All Things Considered, 30 May 2018. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A541372431/OVIC?u=los12365&sid=OVIC&xid=1e7f6931. Accessed 2 Oct. 2020.

Quote: “STONE: Head and neck injuries are some of the most common. And Zieman is showing just how much traumatic brain injury is a part of that. The lack of recognition has left many survivors in the dark without a diagnosis, often blamed for their cognitive impairment. ZIEMAN: They've been labeled for so long with all these horrible things. And in the end, it's not only not their fault but there is a true medical reason behind these issues. STONE: While many patients initially seek out the clinic because of physical symptoms, Dr. Zieman says their research shows anxiety, depression and PTSD usually end up being the most severe.”

"UNDERSTANDING SCIENCE OF MENTAL ILLNESS." US Fed News Service, Including US State News, May 04, 2012. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1010847577?accountid=25324.

Quote: “According to Bela Sood, M.D., medical director of the center, mental illness is still considered taboo - in large part, because it is a problem that is not obvious to the naked eye. Much of it is behavioral in nature and belongs to a spectrum of behaviors that can go from normalcy to a point where they cause a disability. The disability is then observed to occur in very specific arenas, such as at school or within the home, and it is not obvious to observers until they begin to delve into it, said Sood.” Section under Mental Health Reasearch at VCU: “ ‘The center is an excellent site for research... testing cutting-edge mental health screening, assessment and treatments, said Michael Mason, Ph.’ ”

This article discusses the science of mental illness decreasing the stigma of mental health.

Movies and tv shows involving mental disorders. 13 Reasons Why, The Joker, Silver Linings Playbook, Split, etc. Do these movies “glorify mental illnesss”?

3. What kind of take-aways and questions have you identified or stood out for you?

-This week helped me realize I needed to narrow down my topic even more. So I have decided to focus on the stigmatization of mental health.

-Finding a neutral term for mental illness may be an important step to help approach the topic of stigma. Neutral words to consider: mental health

-Instead of generalizing mental illnesses, maybe we just need to specify it as is. Ex: Depression, Bipolar, OCD, etc.

-How do we integrate mental health, into our education system?

-How can society become more inclusive towards those who are stigmatized.

-Is digital information causing more harm and miscommunication?

-More resources/funding is needed to to study more in depth about mental illness.

4. Who are people that you want to talk to about this issue? Who is active in your area? (designers, artists, activists, psychologists, scientists, et cetera) You should be sharing your project direction, but this time can also be used for further research and adding to your blog.

I would love to speak with psychologists, psychiatrists, and someone who works with neuroimaging. Then I would like to speak with activists and people who are affected by mental illnesses. I think this would give me more insight of two different views. science vs. (emotion/experience?)

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matildaisautisticandproud · 5 years ago

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April 8th - 30 Days of Autism Acceptance

April 8: What are some misconceptions/stereotypes about autism that you hate?

1. People with autism don’t want friends. Albeit this might be true to some, this isn’t true to all. Most autistics, I’ve found, want to have more friends, but either don’t know how to go about befriending people and/or people don’t want to spend time with them. Personally, for years, I always longed to have a friend who got me and that I could be open with. (I struggled to actually be myself around people my whole life and still do.) My roommate, Missy, is that friend now, but you don’t know how lonely it is going through grade school without a best friend.

Lots of other girls had besties and many of my friends had friends that they shared their most darkest secrets with; they were super close to each other. Since I didn’t know how to go about forming that connection and I am generally a reserved person, I never had that friend and it was painful. I wanted a best friend, but I didn’t know how to establish a strong connection, maintain it, and most people thought I was “weird” and didn’t really want to be my friend.

I don’t mean to throw my own pity party by saying this, but I was the person who others would one day make me feel on top of the world by including me, but then, would distance themselves once they were done with me and make me feel terrible. This constant cycle of inclusion and exclusion, interest and disinterest, was really damaging to younger me. It frustrated me and made me think the reason I couldn’t have a close, good friend was because there was something wrong with me. (There’s never something wrong with you (unless you’re a murderer or that of the like). It’s society who is in the wrong for tossing aside such a beautiful human being.)

2. People with autism can’t feel or express emotion. This statement is 100% false. By saying this, people are invalidating the emotions of autistics, which is never okay. It is true that many on the spectrum have the inability to recognize their own emotions and/or don’t express their emotions as “normal” people do, but we still have feelings. Just recently, I have gotten better at identifying what I’m feeling, but I’m still not adroit with it. Also, I think that I feel a lot more deeply that those not on the spectrum, as do many autistics. Because I don’t really express my emotions, I’ve had people say that I seem “emotionless” and “robotic” all throughout my life. I never did and still don’t think much of it; it’s just how I am.

I get scared, sad, furious, elated, and more. Just because I don’t express my emotions in a way you can understand doesn’t mean I don’t have them. My body language is just different. (Also, I’ve learned to internalize all my emotions and grievances so, no body really knows what’s going on in my head.)

3. All autistics are just like [insert name here]. As I’ve stated numerous times before, the nature of ASD is that no two manifestations of it are exactly the same. Two autistic people may share similar experiences and struggles, but autism still affects them at least slightly differently.

4. Autistics can’t understand the emotions of others and are apathetic. Many autistics actually experience “too” much empathy. Some are apathetic, but as are some people who aren’t on the spectrum. Everyone is susceptible to being apathetic.

5. An autistic person has only struggles; they’re just their autism. Yes, autism is a key part of every autistic’s life, but it is not the only aspect of who we are. I think people should focus more on what a child can do than what they can’t, overall. Sure, Mark may not be able to handle going to the mall due to overstimulation, but he is especially skilled in painting. People should focus less on faults and flaws. Just focusing on such things will make life drab and miserable; plus, people as a whole are more than just their struggles.

6. People can grow out of autism, and it is only present in children. I, along with many others, are proof that this is false. I dislike how the struggles of adults (with and without autism, ADHD, and other disorders) are ignored in society. Not all problems go away with adulthood; it isn’t some cure all.

7. “There wasn’t all this autism/ADHD/etc. stuff back in my day so, it can’t be real.” These disorders are very much real. Perhaps the numbers have been increasing, but maybe there has just been a decrease in ignorance and an increase in compassion and acceptance. Also, diagnosing has gotten much easier, and since there is more knowledge available (i.e. the Internet) than ever before, people can self-screen and then determine whether or not to be tested. The only reason I am diagnosed is because I took the time to research different disorders via the Internet and decided to get professionally evaluated.

8. “Autism is caused by one thing.” Whether this “thing” be vaccines, a gene mutation, bad parenting, trauma, etc., this statement has been proven false by science. When studying the cause of autism, scientists have found that in one person, one gene could be the contributor to the person’s autism while in another, it’s a combination of several genes. The cause is unknown, but bad parenting has been debunked. However, there is evidence to suggest that the presence of heavy metals within a person’s system may be a possible cause. (Numerous children with autism have been found to have high levels of heavy metals within their body.)

As for the vaccine statement, it is unknown whether or not they do or don’t cause autism. There was a study carried out with the goal of proving or disproving the claim, but since the data was skewed, the results are invalid. I don’t necessarily support the claim, but there is not enough evidence for either side of the argument for me to take a side. I am a neutral in this debate. Though, I don’t believe that one should risk the death of their child just because they’d rather not have an autistic child. We’re not that bad; several parents love having an autistic child.

9. Autism only affects the brain. Again, I and many others are living proof that this claim is false. Many people with autism have co-occurring conditions like allergies, food sensitivities, gastrointestinal disorders, and epilepsy. Personally, I have numerous food sensitivities and gastrointestinal issues. I haven’t gotten a name as to what is wrong with my digestive system, but I do know there is a problem given what I experience on a daily basis.

10. All autistics are intellectually disabled. All statements that start with “all autistics” are automatically false. Even if the claim doesn’t pertain to autism itself (i.e. a political belief), autistics, like other people, have their own sets of beliefs and their own lifestyles. We’re human just like you; all that’s different is how our brains are wired and the struggles we endure.

To combat this claim, many autistics have a normal to high IQ level and can excel in school. There are those who have lower IQs, but they still can excel. One’s potential to be great isn’t dictated by IQ or a disability (or an ability and/or advantage for that matter).

11. Autistic people are great at STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) classes. No. Although I especially excel with math and loved Algebra and Calculus, not everyone does. Some of us are great when it comes to STEM courses, but others of us struggle. Not all of us are even remotely interested in STEM, as well. Some of us prefer the arts, labor-intensive activities (i.e. construction), et cetera. We all have our different strong suits.

12. All autistics are savants. Some are, some aren’t. Although we all have special interests, most aren’t savants, actually. I don’t know where I fall when it comes to being a savant or not, but I’m not some super-genius. I didn’t invent some new scientific thing when I was 12 nor did I make a groundbreaking discovery. I do want to do something great with my future career, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be worthy of stardom and fame or be labeled as a savant.

The one thing I dislike is how people dismiss the existence of savants because they hate the stereotype. Autistic savants do exist, as do non-autistic savants, and saying that they don’t is harmful. Stereotypes come from somewhere, right? Savants exist and they deserve representation and appreciation too.

13. Autistic people don’t have relationships and moments of intimacy. Yes, they do. I personally don’t want a relationship right now nor do I want to engage in such intimate acts, but others do.

14. Autism kills marriages. This myth was made widespread by the infamous organization Autism $peaks. Sure, it may end some marriages, but why marry someone who is autistic then? If you truly loved the person then, you would accept them, autism and all.

15. Nonverbal autistics are all intellectually disabled. Although some are, not all are. A handful are highly intelligent. Autism isn’t a one size fits all thing.

16. Autistic people can’t do anything on their own/will never be independent. Some autistics won’t be able to be independent, but not all. Others don’t need any support while some, like me, need minimal support. People with all sorts of aid requirements exist on the autism spectrum. Each of us needs differing levels of support; also, especially so if one also has a chronic illness, some days I will be able to be completely independent, but the next day I may need lots of external support.

17. Having an autistic child is a tragedy. Yes, autism does make things more challenging, but there’s a silver lining in it. Like every other child, autistics are capable of great things and have talents. If people would just look past the struggles, label, and faults then, they’ll see an amazing person who isn’t just a diagnosis, but a fully fledged human being.

18. Autistic people are just rude. On honesty, we are not trying to be rude when saying the truth. In our brains, it is something that is acceptable to say. Many of us thrive on being honest as our brains tend to rely on logic more than anything else. By pointing out the size of your nose, we’re not trying to be rude. Personally, I don’t really struggle with being too honest, but sometimes I do say things aloud that shouldn’t be said. I just think of it as uttering an observation; I have no rude intents. When I am trying to be rude, you will know XD.

On conversational difficulties, it’s not that we don’t want to talk to you, it’s that we don’t know how to continue and/or initiate conversations. Not all autistics struggle a lot when it comes to social communication, but some do. Those who do, we just don’t know how to go about conversing “as normal”. We can’t help it. We’re not being rude. I struggle to continue and start conversations, which has led to many people thinking that I don’t like them. If you want to have a proper, lengthy conversation with me then, you have to start it and be able to keep it going.

On eye contact, we don’t mean to seem rude by not looking you in the eye when talking. For me, maintaining eye contact is distracting, which means that my focus is being directed away from what you’re saying, making me not able to adequately listen to you. Some autistics have little to no problems with eye contact.

19. “You don’t have to stim. Therefore, you’re just doing it to annoy me.” For me, it takes a lot of courage for me to feel comfortable with stimming around you. So, by ridiculing me for doing something that soothes me, you’re furthering my insecurity about it and hurting me. People who stim do it to self-soothe and to regulate themselves. Would you rather I shutdown (go nonverbal), experience sensory overload, or even have a meltdown? I don’t think so. Let people stim. Some of us don’t stim, but it is a lifeline for some of us.

20. “You don’t look autistic.” Well, riddle me this: What does autism look like to you? Apparently, we have completely different views on what an autistic person looks like. For me, an autistic person is anyone (a friend, neighbor, family member, student, teacher etc.) from any walk of life of any religion, lifestyle, culture, etc. The “autism look” is the generic person to me. Is there a specific way we should look, though? Please tell me more about your vision of how an autistic person outwardly appears.

I could go on about this subject for hours, but I’ll stop myself here. If you want me to debunk more myths and/or react to certain common sayings/stereotypes then, please leave a message in my ask box. I really, really, really! want to write more about this topic.

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ourcollectivefantasy · 5 years ago

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Honkin' OC Asks: #3 for A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, and L!

A3. Do they have any emotional or psychological conditions? Are they aware of it? Do they try to treat it?

Iloam is a pandora’s box of issues. Boy is broken to the max! He’s got PTSD from childhood trauma (all 3 types), multiple rape scenarios as a young adult, and at least two instances of being captured/held prisoner and suffering Stockholm Syndrome. He’s developed OCD as an anxiety disorder that feeds into his Anorexia-Nervosa, which appeared in his teens and hasn’t gone away. He has body dysmorphia pretty bad and is vaguely on the spectrum of gender questioning. He has mild synesthesia and trouble processing and vocalizing his emotions - mainly because he’s been sociopathic since birth. Most of that is invisible, but that’s VERY visible to the outside world is his struggles with addiction and substance dependence (mainly hard drugs and alcohol). He’s also wrestled with an “addiction” to killing but has been in remission for a little over a decade.

B3. Under what situations would they get angry at servers, staff, customer service, et cetera?

Pressuring him to eat or questioning why he’s not eating and making a big deal out of it would be a pretty big hot button for him. He might try to deflect originally but if the person continues to circle back to it or insist, he can snap and get rude real fast.

C3. Is it important for them to be with people (socially, intimately, whatever) whose major ideological tenets align with their own?

Yes. Iloam doesn’t voice them in public, but he does have strong opinions about social stratas, sexuality, religion, child rearing, etc. He’s not strongly political - but is strongly neutral and believes the factions should be disassembled. It can really grate on his nerves to be around people who loudly voice different opinions, as he prefers to bite his tongue. But for long periods that’s difficult. So he surrounds himself with people of similar views so it’s less stressful.

D3. How comfortable are they with the idea of death?

Surprisingly, not very anymore! Iloam has actually died four times and been resurrected. Once was by his mother’s doing, twice he was murdered (by the same person, lol), and last time was for a strategy. At this point he’s well experienced with death and knows exactly where he’s going when he finally dies. He has said more than once now that the next time he dies, if the Spirit Healer asks him, he does not want to return. This is an on-going argument with him and Aelberyn, as she has equally stated she will not let that happen and will resurrect him.

E3. How many languages do they speak?

Five. He speaks his native tongue (Gypsy), Common, Dwarven, Thalassian, and Orcish Common.

F3. Could they ever live in a “tiny home”?

Iloam spent his childhood living in a vardo wagon, a lot of his teens/early adulthood homeless, and then 200 years on a tall ship. He can live anywhere if he absolutely has to. He would not choose a tiny home, though. He’s very tall and it would certainly be uncomfortable.

G3. Does your OC find their family supportive? If not, what would be an example why not?

Most of the time. There are some topics he doesn’t bring up, though. Example: He doesn’t talk about his anorexia or his body dysmorphia, as he doesn’t feel they understand where he’s coming from and try to force him to eat. He still tries to hide this from them or deflect the topic.

H3. Does your OC believe there’s only one ideal partner (or multiple ideal if not monogamous) for everyone, or that there are many people who could be right?

I’m not sure what the difference between ��multiple ideal” and “many people who could be right” is. Sounds like the same thing. And that is what he’d say. Iloam is deeply in love with several people and doesn’t view love as a limited resource.

I3. Are they vegan/vegetarian (if their overall culture/species generally aren’t)? If so, why? Do they think animal products are wrong in all circumstances?

No, he is not. He would actually say he’s a big fan of venison and fish.

J3. How politically active are they?

By his own volition, not at all. In the past, he’s been hired for many political or politically motivated assassinations.

K3. Does your OC have any friends who know about their PA? Any enemies?

Most of his found-family know about his stealth ability. Only Kharris, Aelberyn & Jericho have a hard-confirmation (i.e. from his own mouth) about his past and skills as an assassin. It’s something he keeps very, very close to the chest. He will often say he spent 200 years in pirating, but seems to always leave off the 180 “missing” years after that ;)

L3. Did you create the character to be like yourself, did they end up being like yourself, or are they very different from you?

I created Iloam to be wildly outside my wheelhouse (a villain) and very unlike me. I wanted to explore dark themes and some really “problematic” personality types that I wasn’t seeing a lot of (serial killer, sociopath, abusive, hot headed). At the time, I felt like most people were RPing heroes, nice people, and “tea party RP” was reeeeeeally popular. As he grew, I used him to explore some topics close to me that I was only comfortable writing about, but not voicing/talking about in my real life.

Since his early days, Iloam has changed A LOT. He’s practically not even a villain anymore. I’d say he’s more chaotic neutral and attempting to be lawful neutral for the good of his loved ones.

We are very different. I am definitely lawful good, strictly monogamous, and kindness to everyone is very important to me. That said I’m also a huge doormat, oversensitive, and suffer depression and anxiety. Iloam is none of those things. He doesn’t care what people who aren’t his loved ones think of him and he’s confident in himself.

Phew! Thanks @twosidedsana

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kineticallyanywhere · 6 years ago

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Lets make some AU terminology

Disclaimer

I cannot possibly go over, mention, or hit, every single type of AU out there. I only hope to generate and/or explain some terms and invite the creation of more. Some of the ones I've ended up with here are: genre, trope, home grown, canon divergent, toss the canon, butterfly effect, reality twist, classic crossover, transplant crossover, framework, hog wild, character fodder, and world fodder.

Okay here we go

The Genre AU

A genre, or genre-bending, AU is an AU which takes the characters of a given canon and transfers them to a generic or original setting based on a specific genre. These are most commonly fantasy AUs, sci-fi AUs, or modern (realistic fiction) AUs. These AUs may or may not retain many or most of the original canon's story beats and plot elements. Often, however, these elements are translated through the lens of the new genre to take a new shape. For example, a character who's original fantasy story and saw themselves locked in a tower with a dragon, may find themselves in a modern AU with an overly protective parent who's installed way too many parental controls on their computer, phone, or living space.

A subcategory of the genre AU is the trope AU. These are some of the most common AUs, which take the characters of a given canon and move them into a well-established environment. (Note: this environment is not created by another canon property. Those are considered a type of crossover.) These include coffee shop AUs, high school AUs, or soulmate AUs, and fusion AUs (more on this last one later).

The Home Grown AU

These are AUs which alter a story or character canon based on ideas or headcanons unique to the canon it alters. There are two major categories of this:

First is the canon divergent AU. This AU follows canon story lines up to a specific point, where it branches into a new string of events based on certain events playing out differently than they did in the original canon. This could be based on a character making a different decision, or a previous plot element no longer existing, or a new plot element being introduced. Longer canon divergent AUs either toss the canon series of events out the window for something entirely new; or become a kind of experiment on the butterfly effect, reaching similar canon plot beats but in different orders, with different results, and/or to different emotional effect.

The second category is the reality twist AU. These AUs change a fundamental aspect of the canon world and let a story play out based on that change. These could include characters being born under different circumstances, or powers and authorities functioning in fundamentally different ways. Maybe there's a fifth Hogwarts house, or maybe a magical girl's powers hurt to use, or maybe Green Lanterns all permanently turn green. The world is at your fingertips.

Crossover AUs

There are two different categories of crossovers, and we're going to start this section by having a short naming party about them, because one of them doesn't really have a name and the other's name conflicts with a specific type of AU which is referred to by the same name.

The first one's easy, I'll be calling them classic crossovers.

The second category is traditionally called the fusion AU BUT because "fusion AU" also refers to a specific type of trope AU, we'll be having a short interlude here.

Fusion AUs

In 2013, a show called Steven Universe premiered. While it can't take the original credit for the concept or the idea (I don’t know what can, though I hear Transformers has a similar concept), Steven Universe popularized the concept of two characters being able to merge their minds and bodies into a single, new, individual. AUs which incorporate this idea of characters being able to do this do not always incorporate the mechanics by which Steven Universe goes about it, and therefore I classify fusion AUs of this kind as trope AUs, unless explicitly put in the Steven Universe universe. When a fusion AU comes up in conversation without clarification, in modern fan-talk, a typical interpretation is that this is the kind of AU being talked about.

However, "fusion AU" has, for much longer, been a term used to refer to a certain kind of crossover AU. These crossovers take characters from canon A and transplant them into canon B. For the sake of clarity, moving forward, I will be calling this category of AU (the second category of crossover AU, as mentioned above) transplant AUs.

With that out of the way, we can go into greater detail.

Classic Crossovers

The first category I will be calling the classic crossovers. These are the kinds you typically get out of TV shows and movies. In classic crossovers, story-lines and characters stay within their own individual canon and then meet another's canon on the same level. This can happen through the two worlds existing in the same setting all along, or through travel between two universes in a connected multiverse. Classic crossovers include the likes of the Avengers movies, or DCTV's CW crossover events, or some of those classic Disney Channel crossovers. Details of how these two worlds could exist in the same space may be glossed over, or pieced together where they overlap in order to fit the same space, but neither of these options fundamentally alter the canon.

My own crossover fanfic, Heroes Under Drinking Age, is a classic crossover because it combines the worlds of the shows without altering the initial stories that their canon presented.

Transplant Crossovers

As mentioned before, transplant AUs involve taking characters from one canon (canon A) and transplanting them into another (canon B). The types of transplant AUs discussed in this section have canon A's characters replace canon B's characters as the focus of the story. There are two kinds of basic transplant AUs: the framework AU, and what I affectionately call the hog wild AU.

In a framework AU, the characters being transplanted from canon A take on the same rolls as the characters originally inhabiting canon B. This results in canon B's major characters being put to the side or eliminated. If you're making a framework AU, you'll ask yourself questions like "Which of the Harry Potter trio best embodies Luke Skywalker? Who, at that point, would be Leia? Who would be Han?" et cetera, et cetera. A framework AU will largely stay true to the plot beats of canon B, however a framework AU could just as easily go off the rails from the initial line up of characters and venture to new territory based on the new characters involved. At this point, the AU begins to resemble the second kind of transplant AU.

A hog wild AU does not care to line up character roles from one canon to another. Major events of canon B's world may still take place, but the insertion of canon A's characters do not match up with canon B's original cast, and may consequently alter the world in new ways. Hog wild AUs treat canon B's set up as a playground for canon A's characters to explore, and to allow those characters to be explored in a new way by the author. In this way, these AUs share much in common with generic genre AUs, but the inclusion of a secondary setting with it's own canon solidifies the crossover classification.

A hog wild AU may or may not eliminate canon B's characters entirely. If they do not, canon B's characters are far out of sight and do not appear within the new story. Transplant stories which include canon B's characters fall under another category,

Classic-Transplant

At the middle of the spectrum between classic and transplant AUs is another type of AU we can call the classic-transplant AU. These AUs transplant characters from canon A to canon B, but retain the characters and story of canon B. Maybe canon A's characters go through the story alongside canon B's characters. Maybe canon B's characters make minor appearances, implying that the new story with canon A's characters is influencing canon B's story. Either way canon B is not fundamentally disrupted by the inclusion of canon A’s characters.

The Fodder Effect

While I'm here I want to talk about a concept I've considered while thinking about transplant AUs: that is, good canon ends up becoming either character fodder or world fodder.

Character fodder refers to canon which presents characters that are fun, well-rounded, and easy to move from world to world. Canon which can be considered character fodder is largely a matter of taste, but can generally be spotted by the size of the fandom and how prolific that fandom's spread of transplant AUs is.

World fodder refers to a canon which presents a world which is so well-structured, fun, and inventive, that it's easy to transplant characters from anther canon into it's set-up. World fodder stories are easier to spot, as transplant AUs which use a world fodder canon's world as a model can be found across many, many, completely unrelated fandoms. The most popular world fodder story is probably Harry Potter, given that it has it's own AU title: the Hogwarts AU. Other examples would be Star Wars, or the Hunger Games.

In Conclusion

This could obviously get even more complicated and I've probably missed a major category somewhere. Hopefully this can at least create some level of ease of talking about AUs, either when describing them to someone or when attempting to build one with someone an wanting to pick a category you feel the most comfortable writing from. For example, I do most crossovers as transplant AUs. From there I usually choose a framework style and refrain from going too hog wild with it. In other words, I tend to enjoy true framework transplant AUs. In canon divergent AUs, I also tend to prefer butterfly effect stories rather than tossing the canon entirely. In other words, butterfly effect canon divergence.

I hope this can be helpful for future AU discussion!

#me talking #aus #fanfiction #my writing #writing #crossovers

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kithmet · 6 years ago

Text

Astrology: VirtueMoir Edition (Part 1—Scott Moir)

On today’s edition, we thoroughly unpack Scott’s birth chart. The next post will be on Tessa’s chart (if there’s enough interest after this). Beware: long post ahead and lots of astrology talk. I’ll try to be as clear as I can.

Please note: I’ll try my best to explain astrological terms, but as briefly as possible as I only have so much time. For certain stuff I will include links to further reading if you’re interested in learning more about them.

I’ll also preface this by saying: these are my own opinions based on my own astrological knowledge. I do not present them as fact.

Scott Moir’s Birth Chart

This might look like nonsense to some of you, but I’m going to spend this post dissecting this very circle chart. It is how each of the planets were aligned when Scott was born, and the signs that were in each of those planets at the time. Please refer to this image, especially when I discuss his chart shape.

I got this from astro.com, which is the most accurate site for these readings. We don’t know his exact birth time so we will do this reading without the knowledge of his astrological house placements or his Ascendant (otherwise known as the ‘rising’) sign. However, that still leaves us with a lot to talk about.

I’ve organized this into sections in case you want to search for specific things. I know a lot of you want to know about Scott in reference to Tessa, and I do refer to her a lot throughout this reading, but this has an emphasis on who Scott is as a person.

Scott’s Important Planetary & Asteroid Placements

For this section, I’ll be dissecting how the major planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter) impact Scott’s personality. I personally don’t find Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto to be incredibly impactful on a chart as they’re so far from the sun, and change very rarely in sign between years, so I’m going to leave them out.

Sun in Virgo: the Sun sign is the core and identity of a person.

For more on how this manifests through Virgo in Scott, refer to my explanation below on his Virgo stellium. That is Scott.

Moon in Sagittarius: the Moon sign is the feelings, emotions, and tone of a person.

Scott is passionate and fiery and intense. Refer to my explanation below on his Sagittarius stellium for more information on that.

Mercury in Virgo: a person’s Mercury sign is their communication methods—their reasoning, rationality, the process of exerting and taking in information.

Scott’s Virgo in this placement might indicate that he pays a lot of attention to detail.

He might be an over-thinker, and as a result is very critical of both himself and others.

He is probably very useful because he completes all the goals he sets out to do. He needs routine and order.

Venus in Virgo: the Venus sign rules love and relationships, as well as beauty and pleasure.

Serving others brings Scott pleasure, according to this placement. It says that: “The only problem in relationships is that you may believe that people like you for what you do, rather than for what you are. You may underestimate your own worth and not understand why other people like you. Learn to love yourself as well as others.” This is incredibly relevant to Scott, as he might think that people like him because he’s an elite figure skater, and not for who he truly is. The underestimation of his own self-worth is also reflected on his self-deprecating comments, at times. He always strives to compliment Tessa, who is his best friend, but he simply says, “I’m okay,” with regards to himself.

Regarding Scott’s love life, though, @thevirtch has already dissected that aspect of his chart very well in this post.

Mars in Virgo: the Mars sign represents the energy, action, level of aggression, and sexual desires.

Virgos are perfectionists. They want to be good at everything they have to put effort into. As a human being, Scott (unless he’s on the ace spectrum, which I’m pretty sure he’s not) will have sex, is having sex, does have sex, et cetera. He’s a perfectionist at it. He wants to be good, and he will literally achieve it because Virgos set their minds to things and almost always achieve their goals.

He wants to please because, as his Venus in Virgo says, pleasing others gives him pleasure.

Mars in Virgo is notoriously known as one of the ‘kinkiest’ Mars placements in the zodiac. Proof in the link. He is down for whatever his partner wants.

Virgo Mars likely have sex to exert the stress from their lives, but funnily enough, they treat sex like it’s another job for them to excel at as well.

Jupiter in Aries: the Jupiter sign is about the life’s purpose, meaning, justice, and fortune.

His only planet in Aries. I wrote a lot about his Jupiter in Aries singleton (otherwise known as the ‘bucket handle’) in the Scott’s Chart Shape section of this post, so please refer to that in addition to this.

Scott likely attracts good luck when he acts as the leader of his communities, demonstrates enthusiasm and positivity, and inspires others. So far in his life this has been true. He’s also said he wants to continue his career by inspiring others and giving back to the skating community—I’m sure that good luck will follow him throughout his life, in this case.

I would also like to touch on some important asteroids. I’d touch on Chiron, which is a person’s biggest wound in life, but because we don’t have houses (due to not having his birth time) and I feel like it would be inaccurate because of that, so I’m leaving it out.

Lilith in Leo: this asteroid is known as someone’s ‘dark side’.

Definition: “These people are very proud, or even stuck-up. Lilith in this sign may indicate the struggle "I against the rest of the world". These people are self-centred and selfish. They do not acknowledge other people. It is not always easy to live with this attitude because the likes and preferences of our partner should be taken into account as well.”

I feel like this is quite accurate from what we know of Scott’s ‘dark side’. If you watched their reality tv show (which, of course, was a lot of bullshit but there’s some truth to the stuff that happens in it), you can see that Scott was once quite selfish, inconsiderate of how his actions or tempers might affect Tessa, and very prideful.

Juno in Aquarius: the soulmate asteroid.

Please note: Scott’s partner doesn’t need to be in the sign of Aquarius—but the way he romances them and the things he looks for in a partner might embody Aquarian characteristics.

Friends to lovers is a huge thing for Juno Aquarians. If they aren’t friends first and foremost, the relationship won’t last. Strong friendship foundations in a relationship are essential.

I’m not going to say what we’re all thinking. We’re all thinking it. We all know it. Anyway.

Emotional aloofness might intrigue Scott. He’s attracted to emotional unavailability... why? Who knows. Maybe it’s the mystery, intrigue, and challenge to figuring them out. He’s probably into people with strong air sign placements.

Can I just drop in here that Tessa has a Gemini stellium and a Libra moon, which screams emotional aloofness? Yeah? Okay, moving along...

Traditional relationship structures don’t bother Scott. He’s adaptable and open to weird arrangements, as long as it works for him and his partner.

Can we collectively say: platonic business partners, anyone?

Eros in Libra: this asteroid represents the raw sexual energy in a person.

He is flirtatious and charming. He aims for sexual equality. He might disregard his own needs because he’s focusing on pleasing his partner (because Libra signs always want to be likeable). Communication is sexy. Falling in love, repeatedly, highly appeals to him.

This is probably accurate for Scott, especially when thinking about his Virgo in Venus which is also all about pleasing your partner (and being good at it). The falling in love stuff—probably true. Scott is a serial long-term dater, so he probably chases finding that feeling.

Scott's Virgo Sun & Stellium

Scott is a typical Virgo because he has his Sun sign (which is someone’s truest identity and their core) and three other major planets in Virgo. This means he has a Virgo stellium, which is 3+ planets in the same sign. Therefore, Virgo energy is extremely present throughout Scott’s chart.

Virgos are known as perfectionists. They are analytical thinkers, and very critical—especially of themselves. If Virgos do not reach the standard which they set for themselves, they tend to be self-pitying. They have impossibly high standards for both themselves and the people they surround themselves with.

Does this relate to Scott?: Scott is said to be a perfectionist with his skating. He is extremely self-critical—when he makes a mistake in a performance, he clearly dwells on it and beats himself up about it. He continuously aims to be the best version of himself, and surrounds himself with the best people. Scott also might tend to be overly critical of the people in his life because of this.

Virgos are incredibly goal-oriented. They have a set list of goals and things on their to-do lists, and they take pride in completing these tasks. Because they’re so goal-oriented and perfectionists, when Virgos set their sights on something, they are very likely to excel in that thing.

Does this relate to Scott?: Scott is a go-getter. He wakes up early and wants to complete his goals for the day. He’s said many times that he feels a need to set goals and that completing them brings him pride. He’s also very good at the things he choses to focus his talents on. He is not mediocre at anything he wants to be good at.

It’s rarely talked about, but Virgos are also very nurturing. They want to make the people around them feel better in whatever way they can. If you need advice or someone to help you out, go to your Virgo friend.

Does this relate to Scott?: I may not know him personally, but from what I’ve seen of his interactions with Tessa, he is very comforting. He is also seems to be very nurturing with his family and the other people he cares about.

They are sarcastic—and sometimes this is used as a coping mechanism. It might come across in a bad way from time to time, because Virgos can be blunt. They are naturally funny and witty, due to the fact that Mercury rules the mind, so they are intelligent beings.

Does this relate to Scott?: He is hilarious and quite smart, but sometimes can be blunt and it comes across in a negative way.

I think that it comes out because of his Virgo, but it stems from how strong his Saggitarian energy is as well, but we will get to that later.

Examples: “I hate this event”-gate, every other time Scott has publicly criticized his competitors and previous coach, etc.

Virgos are an Earth sign (which is an Element). This means that Virgos are stable, loyal, and rely on routine. That being said, Virgos are the most flexible Earth sign because they are also a Mutable sign (which is a Modality). Mutable signs are extremely adaptable, to new people and new environments, and welcome change within themselves. (This is a link on more information about the Elements and Modalities of the signs.)

Does this relate to Scott?: I’d say so. He’s clearly very loyal to Tessa. He relies on routine. He seems to be a very adaptable individual—in that he gets along with almost anyone. He is ever-adapting and changing, but at the same time, very stable and steady in how that change comes.

Scott’s Sagittarius Moon & Stellium

Now, all that Virgo information is great and all, but we’re forgetting one of the most important parts of Scott’s personality: his intense passionate energy. Where does that energy stem from? Not his Virgo placements, but his Sagittarius stellium. Scott has Sagittarius in his moon sign (which rules his emotions and tone of character—a very important placement), and two other planets, therefore he has 3+ planets in Sagittarius.

Sagittarius is the hilarious sign—they are the ones that make people laugh. They are weird but in a good, funny way. They are blunt, straightforward, and sometimes can come across as abrasive.

Does this relate to Scott?: Scott is funny, that’s a given. He’s always doing weird stuff to make people laugh. He’s also extremely blunt: if he has an issue, he will state that issue. He also quite literally said on that reality show that he’s bringing two condoms to the Olympics. Like, who is he? Copy and pasting what I said before, but more examples of his abrasiveness: “I hate this event”-gate, every other time Scott has publicly criticized his competitors (and previous coaches), etc. Even after the Olympics, he said there was a “clear technical difference” between him and Tessa and P/C. Other people might hold that in—but not Scott.

People with strong Sagittarius placements are confident and sometimes extroverted. They are very positive—often, if a person is ruled by Saggitarian energy, they are optimistic about everything, and like to look at the silver linings. They are lighthearted.

Does this relate to Scott?: He is most definitely extroverted and confident. He always picks himself up after he falls and brings a positive energy to everything he does—rarely does he bring negative, dark energy.

Sagittarius is the sign of adventure and spontaneity. They are impulsive and reckless, and can sometimes be impatient. They want to travel to fun places and they want to try new things. They are independent.

Does this relate to Scott?: Between Scott and Tessa, he is the one that wants to visit atypical travelling countries and do atypical things (he literally said he wants to go to Australia to learn to surf and go to Africa for a safari... again, who is he?), he is the one that wants to try new foods and makes Tessa try them, he is the adventurous one, he is the spontaneous one.

I don’t think Scott’s recklessness or impulsivity need explaining, but it’s kind of clear by the things he says without thinking sometimes.

People ruled by Sagittarius are typically philosophical. Sagittarius is the sign that rules morals and ethics, so they might have a strong moral compass.

Does this relate to Scott?: With this one, who knows. From the podcasts I’ve listened to where Scott speaks, he is clearly a big thinker and likes to reflect. He’s also very well-spoken.

Everyone has heard about the cheating rumours regarding him and his girlfriends, and if they’re true, then who knows? Maybe he has a messy Rising sign which impacts that aspect.

That being said—Scott is loyal, and that relies heavily on his morals. He did not think it would be right to leave Tessa when she was injured, and therefore stood by her because of that. He also didn’t think it would be okay to leave Marina in 2013, despite the rumours that she was on the American’s side. I think it’s because of his moral compass.

Sagittarius is a Fire sign. They are all about passion, enthusiasm, and they have hot tempers. However, this sign is also a Mutable sign, which means he is adaptable and welcome to change.

Does this relate to Scott?: Obviously. Scott’s abrasiveness comes from his temper and bluntness and passion—all which come from his Sagittarius placements. His passion is evident in positive ways in how he interacts with people and how he feels due to his Sagittarius moon. Everyone and their mother calls Scott passionate, and he himself has said he has a bad temper. Sagittarius being a Mutable sign is relevant because Sagittarians are always welcome to trying new things, just like Scott.

What is his Ascendant (or ‘rising’)?

The Ascendant is one of the big three of astrology (which are your sun, moon, and rising signs). Definition of the Ascendant sign, taken from this website: “Together with the Sun and Moon the ascendant is one of the most important single factors... The sign tells us a lot about someone's personality, temperament and constitution. It typifies our immediate, instinctive reaction and shows how we present ourselves to the world.” The rising sign, lucky for us, is one of the easiest signs to guess when looking at a person. Why? Because it is how they instinctively react, and how they seem to other people.

I’m personally willing to bet my money that Scott has a water rising—that’s why he’s known as ‘the emotional one’—not just between him and Tessa, but also as an individual. Yes, his Sagittarius moon makes him passionate and full of intense emotion, but that emotion manifests in different ways in fire signs than it does in water signs. I believe Scott feels a lot of emotion as a result of his Sagittarius moon and stellium, and then presents that emotion via his Ascendant sign, which (in my opinion) is most likely a water sign.

Which water sign would that be? Not Scorpio. Scott doesn’t project Scorpio energy to me—Scorpios have darker energy, are secretive, and almost always have trust issues because of their natural paranoia. Scott, on the other hand, has a blind faith in people and trusts in the good of humans (example: Marina-gate). This is because of his Sagittarius energy, but I also really think that he isn’t a paranoid person like a lot of Scorpios. Scott does not seem like that to me, and rising signs are all about how people present themselves to others.

Personally, I think he is a Cancer rising. Why Cancer, and not Pisces? Because he is so family-oriented, and proudly shares how nurturing he is to other people. Cancers are the mothers and nurturers of the zodiac. They are also very sensitive, both as humans and to their environments and the people they interact with. Pisces risings are more dreamy.

Some more information about Cancer risings: they’re warm, kindhearted, moody (warm to cold very easily), easily hurt, defensive, and very protective of the people they care about.

If he isn’t a water rising by the grace of lord knows what—I’d vote Aries rising. They’re childlike, fun-loving, passionate, and have a lot of energy and emotion. If not Aries, then Capricorn, because they are such driven workaholics.

That being said—he already is hardworking because of his Virgo stellium, and he’s already passionate because of his Sagittarius stellium. That is why I really do believe his Ascendant is in a water sign—if not Cancer, then Pisces. He already has enough Earth and Fire energy—where does that all emotion come from? Why does he cry easily? It has to be his rising sign.

Scott’s Chart Shape

Something that is rarely talked about is the shape of a person’s natal chart. Scott’s chart shape is in the ‘bowl and bucket’ formation, which is defined on this site as: “All planets but one are distributed together (‘bowl’ of the bucket) and are opposed by another planet - singleton (‘handle’ of the bucket).”

The bowl of Scott’s bucket is tested by the handle of the bucket. All of Scott’s planets are in the bowl, which is the top right corner of the chart (and please look at the chart to know what I’m talking about). These planets are tested by his Jupiter in Aries bucket handle.

I find it interesting that Scott’s handle is in the planet of Jupiter, because Jupiter is the planet that is all about luck and fortune. Scott has indeed had insane good luck in his life—meeting Tessa, getting paired with her, both of them growing to be the exact, appropriate heights for one another, the chain of events that led them to dominating three Olympic cycles. That doesn’t happen easily. Sure, they worked very hard, but they also had the good fortune of Jupiter by their sides.

That being said, he has also had bad luck in his life. Tessa getting injured a year before the Olympics? Having to skate their first Olympics with an injured partner? Having that partner go through two surgeries?

Read this carefully: “Jupiter [bucket handle] can manifest as a God/Deity Complex. We often find the Messiah Complex with its sense of “I can do anything!”... A young man named Stephan heard a Biblical quote, “With God all things are possible.” He was fourteen at the time and blithely replied, “I don’t know much about God, but that sure is true for me!” That is a Jupiter in Aries [bucket handle], only Fire sign! One of the dangers with a Jupiter singleton is a bad case of hubris; that means the feeling that, “I am equal to or better than the gods!” Jupiter eventually extracts a price for that, for Jupiter is also the ‘wrath of God.’”

Does this relate to Scott’s life?: Hell yes. Scott himself has said that he was too arrogant growing up, too cocky, thought he could do anything. It was only when wrath was given to him by the power of the universe in bad luck that he was able to tone down his bad case of hubris and become the Scott we know today, who is much more down-to-earth.

Some other significant things about people with this chart shape:

People with this chart shape tend to have a tendency to live their lives to extremes. Jupiter in Aries bucket handles are also incredibly ambitious. This is relevant to Scott because he could have been a figure skater, but he didn’t have to be a five time Olympic gold medal athlete.

I’ll also briefly point out that this bucket handle is at the 29th degree—which, in astrology, is a critical degree and basically makes this placement even more intense. You can read more about it here.

In summary, though: the 29th degree means that this handle will be tested a lot with decision-making—so Scott’s fortune is repeatedly tested by having to make decisions as a result of either his good or bad luck. This is relevant, especially to the stuff about Tessa being injured. Scott had to make the decision to stick with Tessa during this time. He was tested, apparently, by the universe.

Other Important Notes

Below we have an image of the breakdowns of how heavy Scott’s chart is in each of the planets, signs, elements, and modalities.

Scott is ruled primarily by mutable signs (as he has two stellia in both Virgo and Sagittarius). 45% is a lot. This mutable energy can manifest in both good and bad ways:

He is extremely adaptable and flexible to new environments, new people, and trying new things.

He might be indecisive, unreliable, easily distracted.

Often changing how he perceives the world, other people, and himself as a result of new perspectives.

Unafraid of change and bringing new elements to the table, especially career-wise.

He is practically half Earth energy, which is amazing to me. Stable, loyal, committed to the things he invests energy into. His Earth energy comes all from his Virgo stellium and Capricorn Neptune.

That being said, his second biggest element is in Fire, which accounts for Scott’s passion and intensity.

The reason why Scott is an elite athlete with five Olympic gold medals? His abundance of Virgo energy, high at 24%. He is a perfectionist, driven to accomplishing the things he sets out to do, and often meets his goals.

Conclusion (TL;DR)

Scott is a perfectionist and driven because he wants to excel in achieving his goals. This is because of his Virgo stellium. He is passionate and full of enthusiasm, positivity, and intensity. He is funny and straight-forward. This is because of his Sagittarius stellium. He appears to be emotional, and I believe that is because he might have his Ascendant sign in a water sign, either Cancer or Pisces.

I would continue yapping but this bitch is the length of a fanfic one shot and it’s 7k long. What the actual fuck is this. Goodbye, and hope you’re all enlightened!

Seriously though, if you read all of this, thanks for that. Feel free to ask me any astrology questions if anything needs clarification! Love from your local Aquarius sun, Sagittarius moon, Scorpio rising. 💓

#astrology #long post #virtuemoir #scott moir #tessa virtue #i literally feel more nervous posting this #than any of the fics i've ever written wtf #i can't believe i wrote this #it's so long i'm crying #i hope you all enjoy this???#tessa's chart will happen...eventually...#i really need to write my fic b4 ppl come @ me with pitchforks #I'M SORRY I PROMISE I'M SLOWLY WORKING ON IT #fandoms ships and misc things

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manifestiv · 7 years ago

Conversation

Halfway Serious interviews ManifestiV mid-OctouR

Halfway Serious: Why do you feel people should listen to your music?

ManifestiV: This day & age there's so much tension in the air. "You're not to your fullest potential until you give time or money to this service, website, product, non-profit, charity, email scam, experimental pharmaceutical, et cetera." In the United States, everyone's made to feel less than what they already are & have inside. Other countries sadly follow suit, thinking it's the cool young thing to do, ruining its youth & self-image one manufactured solution to non-existent shortcomings at a time. We remember when the only idea that made someone their fullest was following their dreams & feeding flames of passion inside them to make the world better with their best, and combining their potentials with other similarly passionate people. This is still the case, just extremely unpopular. Our music is designed to relieve that tension of false self-worthlessness, to share sadness, to face shortcomings logically & not commercially and overcome with strength & encouragement from all directions, inside & out. We mean to spread inspiration & awakening from the smothering of humanity's potential by increasing environmental, social & mental health awareness. All that & more can be discovered in our music.

Halfway Serious: Why do you think people should go to your shows?

ManifestiV: No two are the same, simply. Every night we choose a set that reflects what we've scoped out in the places we play before the performance. Over a hundred shows in four years, we've overcame any challenge come our way, so it's like a live endurance contest. Laptops have vibrated off the stage with us finishing our parts without skipping a beat even though the beat stopped in Denton, and this was with our third member local to North Texas, Kevin. EvE narrated the fall of man with scenes of Manhattan undergoing a tidal wave projected behind her all over the Pacific Northwest. Paragraph took a backwards tumble rocking so hard during an instrumental's climax into his own guitar rack in Hollywood, while also peeling onion layers from his soul eye-to-eye with one audience member at a time after last year's Temple burn at Burning Man. The two even once took a request of a Nirvana cover by a local Thai girl in Ayutthaya, an hour north of Bangkok. Each night is beyond special.

Halfway Serious: What feelings do you feel your music offers to listeners?

ManifestiV: The entire spectrum of human emotion is conveyed in our performances. We're such extremely juxtaposed personalities that the balance always barely equalizes live on stage. EvE represents the distant past of humanity, tribalism, wholistic approaches to taking care of each other & ourselves, and absolute love & compassion, all while playing the electric vibraphone she built with her bare hands through ethereal & otherworldly effects, sometimes with a quarter scale cello bow. Paragraph represents the distant future of humanity on our current path, wearing a bio-suit to stay alive in a barren environment, shielding pain from the world & its maliciously mutated population's emotional reaction to abandonment of its well-being by its leaders and all the sorrow that comes with it, channeling the feelings of a lonely future through razor-sharp & sometimes nebula-soft guitar over carefully articulated productions spewing from the laptop. We both sing (in tandem) our reflections from within as a beacon for those who feel the same to not feel alone.

Halfway Serious: What are your goals being in this band?

ManifestiV: Reaching all eight billion on Earth to their cores with inspiration to awaken from within & in unity together serves as the first & foremost goal for ManifestiV. We spread the word with our music that the right to manifest one's own reality & destiny is worth celebrating & exercising, not a pipe dream.

Halfway Serious: What does music mean to you?

ManifestiV: It reminds us all that love is the great connector. We are all one vibration, and music ties our hearts, minds, souls & feet together, unifying us all without compromise. There's no wonder its popularity has tanked in this day & age where dividing & conquering has become the norm. With music & love, we can reverse that by showing the power of unity is far greater than those that wish to persuade us to stay divided.

#band interview #unite #enlightenment #about the journey

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buddaimond · 7 years ago

Link

Interview: Good Time Filmmakers Josh, Benny Safdie And Robert Pattinson

#Rob’s responses in bold.

Benny, you play this character who’s sort of mentally challenged, believably. I hadn’t seen you in other things and I didn’t know that was you until I had to look up other interviews. Was there someone who was the inspiration for that character?

Benny Safdie: Myself. I mean that in the most honest way. I feel I can relate to … If I were to take certain aspects of my personality and heighten them, I could really feel that. I can feel certain emotional insecurities, emotional detachment, wanting to just kind of close in. If I ratchet that to 11, I would be that person.

Clinically speaking, did you have a diagnosis in your mind when you’re writing that character?

Benny: He’s hard of hearing, he has deep emotional and social anxiety, and he has definite certain IQ deficiencies…

Josh Safdie: LD.

Benny: …so you kind of add that all together, and you get this guy who is uncomfortable a lot, because he’s comfortable only within what he wants. And now you have this guy, Connie, telling him, “You can do whatever you want, when you want,” and that is beautiful. That’s Nick’s paradise. But then it quickly becomes his nightmare, because he doesn’t know certain limitations to that.

Josh: Weirdly, we never had a clinical categorization, because Nick has never been clinically categorized. The first scene is him talking to a doctor [trying to determine that]. You could argue that he’s someone on the spectrum. You can argue that because he doesn’t have the social awareness that he doesn’t understand… Like that scene in the bank, in the middle of the bank robbery, that Connie turns to Nick and says, “What are you thinking about?” And Nick says, “Nothing.” The fact that Nick says nothing in that moment is so heroic to Connie, because anyone in their right mind, in the middle of robbing a bank, would be feeling everything but nothing. In that regards, he’s disassociated from society in a way. We’ve talked about that there’s a lot of LDs involved, learning disabilities. He’s very low IQ, and I think that had he gone through the system, probably he would be diagnosed with autism, but I don’t think that he’s an autistic guy. It’s more nuanced and tricky than that.

When you’re a non-disabled actor playing a mentally challenged character, how do you avoid being hashtag problematic?

Josh: Originally, when we first set about making this movie, our initial concept was, coming from Heaven Knows What, we were working with a lot of real people and using their real lives. Our initial concept was to cast somebody with a real disability. We worked with a lot of groups, a lot of developmentally disabled acting troupes, and we did extensive interviews with our casting director, and we ended up finding ourselves in a spot where it’s like, okay, we could cast somebody in this scenario, but the schedule that we had was so aggressive and the scenarios were so meticulous, that we would have ended up having to do things that morally I wouldn’t even feel comfortable doing, like manipulating somebody into doing things that they necessarily didn’t even want to do or have a full understanding of what they were doing. That’s kind of where we got to this place where Benny was like, “Listen. You guys wrote the character based on the character that I developed with Ronnie, I can play it.” Then Benny ends up having the wealth of knowledge of having done all these extensive interviews with people with real disabilities, so that he can also pull from.

Benny: Then I’m sitting there in the room with these people, and I’m realizing that there are… I’m feeling similarities to certain things that they are saying, and it’s just, I’m internalizing that and it becomes just a part of the character. I guess, also going into it, I never thought it would be … That it was a problem. I’m not thinking that this is going to be problematic, because I really do believe…

Josh: That you are Nick.

Benny: Yeah, I believe that there are emotions…

Josh: Nick is definitely inside of Benny. You can attribute that to a really messed up childhood of stunting things, developmentally, but then you figure out a way to get past it. But I think that that person is still in him.

Rob, do you think people still think of you as the Twilight guy, and on a scale of 1 to 10, how sick are you of this question?

Robert Pattinson: I don’t know. I guess to an extent. But, I’ve never been particularly… I don’t know. Someone was asking me the other day if I felt typecast by it. It’s always felt like such a specific character in itself, and it’s sort of different to who I was in the first place. I was never particularly worried. I just knew, as long as I could somehow keep getting jobs, then I want to do the opposite thing every single time from the last job. So I was never really worried about it. At the same time, you can’t force someone’s opinion of you to change, really. It either happens or it doesn’t. Yeah, I never get sick of questions. I love all the questions.

Sure, sure, sure. When you chose this project, it was more about being a departure from other things that you’ve done, than not specifically what you’ve become known for?

Pattinson: It’s never really from… I think, every single time I’ve tried to make a decision, which is sort of forward thinking, “Oh, this is a type of part I want to play,” or whatever, it always ends up, as soon as you find that part that you start to second guess yourself. I have a wide net of things that I’m looking to be inspired by. I mean, hopefully, the thing that inspires you it’s always hopefully surprising. I remember just seeing this still from Heaven Knows What, and then seeing the movie, and it was just… It wasn’t like, “Oh, that’s particularly the type of part I want to play,” or anything. It was, literally, just a lot of different things, and the energy of it.

Josh: We, upon our first conversation, the first seed of the idea, basically, the only thing we talked to Rob about was, we want to make this movie that’s kind of in this world of characters that investigates the American criminal, the prison ethos in America, and the only other person we know we want to be a part of this is Buddy Duress. Rob was like, “Oh, I loved him in Heaven Knows What. That’s amazing.” I think that the idea of playing opposite actors with no baggage… Buddy was not a first-time actor at that point, but he was relatively still… He’s definitely an unknown. So I think that that element was exciting, in some degree, at least I saw that twinkle in his eye.

I think that from our point-of-view, we weren’t interested in investigating the side of Rob that, as a performer, that was more of like a brooding, quiet type. Even in like the character that he does in Cosmopolis, or the character in Maps to the Stars or The Rover, these were characters that we weren’t interested in seeing him in. Because a) he’s already done it, and b) I was more interested in kind of the more manic side of him, the side of him that is super paranoid and questions the world and everything. The side of him that sends me conspiracy theories, and et cetera, et cetera.

Pattinson: It’s also that it’s quite a unique group of people to work with. I remember when we were in the prep time … There’s very few directors who, for one thing, have the connections to do some of the stuff, to meet some of the people and to have some experiences. The prep, I remember at the beginning, I really, really wanted to just go to spend two nights in jail. For, essentially, a make-up test. Because we were thinking at the beginning that I was going to have this fake nose and stuff. I was like, “How long can you do it?” It eventually got to the point that it was so complicated to do it. They know all these… The prison commission and stuff. It kind of went down that road. There’s very, very few directors that you can work with, or producers, or anybody, who it wouldn’t just be a, “No,” immediately. We like really went for it. The prison commissioner’s like, “Yeah, even if you’re in protective custody, it’s still too dangerous.” Then Sebastian, one of the producers, is like, “Why don’t you just get arrested?”

Josh: There was, for us… We wanted Rob to disappear in the city. I think the biggest triumph for us was that when he’s on the subway and nobody even acknowledges. Rush hour. We shot rush hour. The closest that anybody ever got to being, “Was that Rob?” During rush hour, where there’s a train packed with people. I’m telling Rob, “Closer, closer, closer.” He’s like, “My dick’s going to enter this guy’s face.”

Benny: But the closest we got was as he got off the train I heard, from his LAV mic, trailing away was, “Was that Rob? Was that Rob Pattinson?” “It couldn’t be.” It was like, “Yeah, right.”

You mentioned the prison ethos. Explain what, “I don’t even give a f*ck,” means to this group. It seems like their rallying cry, their aspiration. The worst thing you can say to these characters is to accuse them of giving a f*ck. What is that?

Josh: There’s this concept of kind of, “F*ck the Man,” in a weird way. If you care about what someone else thinks then you don’t know what you stand for. A whole part of the prison ethos, well, [not just] specifically in prison… I believe the prison ethos extends well past the penal system. I think it actually applies to people being in prison in their suburbans homes, and within their Twitter followers, and their weird echo chambers. I think that it does apply to that group. There’s like this idea of knowing what you stand for. Like, “I don’t give a f*ck what this person says, I know what I stand for. I know what my purpose is.” That’s a big part of the concept of being a man. What are you going to stand for? What are you going to stand up for? How far are you willing to take it?

The interesting part about this scene towards the end of the movie, between Buddy’s character and Rob’s character, where Buddy’s screaming like, “I’m f*ckin’ real.” The wildness of that scene that me and Ronnie like to talk about is that like, a lot of the movie was born out of his prison journals that he was sending me, or from my phone conversations while he was locked up.

Is that Ronny…

Josh: Ronny’s [Bronstein] the co-writer of the movie, and co-editor.

So he was in prison?

Josh: No, no, no. Buddy, who plays Ray, when we finished our previous film, he got locked up. So he was in prison, and he did a state bullet, which is basically a year. While he was locked up, I spent so much time with him on the phone and visiting him. I brought him Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares while he was at Rikers Island. I brought him a couple of other books that he had never read before, and he was devouring them. We would talk for hours and hours until, basically, his commissary account would go empty. Then I asked him to start writing about it. When he started writing about these things is when the seeds of this project kind of came about. It’s seeing society in such a naked form, which is in prison.

It’s basically a microcosm of normal society, except inverse. In prison, the white man is the minority and it’s kind of, there’s a lot of justice in that. It’s like, “No, your entitlement and your privilege doesn’t go anywhere in here.” That was very interesting to me. So my point is that, when for him, his character to scream, “I’m f*cking real,” in that moment… It’s a big thing with him as an actor, as he was constantly reading the script and being like, “Why is my character doing this? I don’t want to look like a f*cking pussy. I don’t want to do this.” It was like a big thing. It was something that we were constantly fighting with, Buddy’s ego. But in a good way, he kind of fortified the role in that way.

Benny: But then, it’s like you go back to what you said, like what it means to be a man. It’s almost like this kind of clichéd version of what a man is, that’s what all of these characters carried with them. Connie, he’s a guy who is living his life like an action movie. He takes his cues from big movies and big things, but thinks that they’re his ideas, that he came up with.

Josh: He’s a romantic. He’s a romantic.

Benny: What I’m getting at, like what you were saying, some of the things that people talk about in jails, is that they get really attached to religion and these big ideas. But they think that they’re new, but they’re really just old ideas that have existed in the world, but they’re playing them out to just a huge degree. It’s an interesting thing that’s going on in your head there.

Tell me about casting all these people. I mean, they all have this very authentic feel to them. How did that come about?

Josh: Well, we’ve always been interested in the quote unquote, “sudden star,” like the idea of someone who’s a star that you might not have seen before. That they basically have this gravitational pull and they are just emitting their own magnetism. We’ve always been interested in that. The film that we made prior to Good Time, was almost perversely interested in that. We were casting people playing parts where they were recreating scenes from their real life that happened, sometimes, a few weeks ago. So it’s like this weird psychodrama happening there. With this movie, we wanted to do like a genre film, like a thrilling piece of entertainment, but we wanted to pepper in this idea of, this movie, of it’s like a thriller, but it’s actually thrilling because you don’t know where the movie ends and real life begins. Taking that alchemy, the chemistry of taking someone who has no baggage, who’s basically playing a version of themselves, opposite someone you know is not playing a version of themselves, is creating a really cool, kind of almost dangerous element where the stakes are higher. It’s like, if Rob messes up as an actor, the failure is actually tenfold because it looks so bad opposite someone who’s just being real. It raises the stakes.

Pattinson: Yeah. If you’re playing against someone who then sees you doing something that’s phony, it’s not like another actor looking at you doing it, like, “Oh, well, you messed up that scene. Tomorrow let’s start again on a fresh page.” It’s like you will be judged as, “No, that’s who you are as a person.” It’s like, “No, I play a character.” I was always … Yeah, that’s kind of what the stakes are like anyway.

Josh: But Jennifer Venditti and Eleonore Hendricks, who were running the casting of the movie, they cast a movie called American Honey.

Yeah, I was going to say. They very much reminded me of that.

Josh: Sure. They go to real life to find these characters, these stars. Jennifer supports her feature film casting with a lot of fashion industry casting, where she’s finding people off the street who are just beautiful, but they might not even know that. So she’s saying, “Hey, would you like to do this campaign and make $80,000 for two days worth of work?” She’s a dream maker in a weird way. She’s very sensitive. She’s also a filmmaker, Jennifer Venditti. Eleonore is actually an actress. They understand these things.

Like Eleonore, who did the street casting, was the acting coach of the little girl in Beasts of the Southern Wild, and she helped find that girl. They understand finding somebody who has the confidence to hold a big movie, but also the confidence to walk into a real scenario where the stakes aren’t a bad take, but the stakes are getting caught and getting in real trouble. They understand how to thread that line really well, and it’s something that we’re going to continually work with throughout our career, because I’m very interested in taking the real world and the fiction world and combining the two.

Benny: That’s why we like to use the term first-time actor instead of non-professional, because it’s not that they’re not professionals. It’s their first time acting. They are actors. It’s just it’s their first time…

Josh: …doing it as a job. Don’t forget, Buddy Duress is a part owner of the film, which also adds an element to it. He’s like a partner.

What was he in prison for? Or jail…

Josh: He got locked up… He was on the run while we were making the previous movie, so we were constantly creating these distractions to avoid him getting arrested, in a weird way. We probably shouldn’t talk too much about that. I think he got arrested for drugs.

How did you know him?

Josh: I met him through the lead actress of Heaven Knows What. He claims we met in high school, but I don’t remember it.

#Good Time Movie #Uproxx #Josh Safdie #Bennie Safdie #robert pattinson #Buddy Duress

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kootenaygoon · 5 years ago

Photo

So,

Niles dipped his bare foot in the Slocan River, and gave it a playful splash.

It was early July 2016 and his shoulders were brutally sunburnt, so he had a voluminous white T-shirt draped off the back of his head. He hobbled along the shoreline in bare feet and board shorts, a blow-up mattress pinned under one armpit and a floating beer cooler weighing down his opposite hand. A cigarette dangled from his lips as he placed the floatie in the calm green water. At this particular bend of the river, where his sprawling property met the water, the current was almost nonexistent. The mattress floated in a lazy circle.

Niles had been making progress on his book project, and had transformed into an eager student over the past few months. He was working on a memoir that was slightly fictionalized for privacy. It was full of gleeful character assassination and vindictive gossip, and his prose wasn’t the strongest, but it was funny. That counts for a lot. As we worked through a series of drafts, I tried to tease out the details of how he constructed his manuscript. Which parts did he make up, and which parts were true? I saw names I recognized from the community, and read about events I knew actually happened, but there were other places where it seemed like he was just making shit up out of thin air.

“But you like this latest draft?” he asked, after we’d pushed off into the current and opened our first beers. The froth dripped into the water beneath us.

I nodded. “In general, you’ve taken out a bunch of that unnecessary exposition that I pointed out and you’re doing a much better job of scene-building, but I think there’s still a bunch of places where you haven’t given yourself permission to go all the way there. Not yet. Do you know what I mean?”

He nodded, smelling his fingers. “You mean I’m holding back.”

“Yes, but it’s not what you think. I’m not saying that you need to reveal more dark truths about the Kootenays. I’m not saying you need any more scenes with sex and drugs. I think you need to do some legit soul-searching, some introspection, and then work that stuff into the text. We have the story here, but we need to know how you feel about it, the emotional reality of what’s going on. It’s about being honest, being transparent to the reader.”

“Well, shit. But didn’t you say that I should market the story as fiction?”

I sighed. “No, what I said was you should be careful about how many names and details et cetera you change, because that takes you further and further away from being able to market your book as non-fiction honestly. That’s the point I was making there. Right now, though, what you need to focus on is finishing the manuscript. How to market it, and edit it, and everything else, that all comes later on in the process.��

He took a slug of beer, slapping his other hand in the water as we drifted between uninterrupted foliage on both sides of us. He’d lived here for multiple decades, raised his family here, and he was the picture of serenity as we floated along. I liked Niles, admired him in a lot of ways, though he’d made life choices that were different than mine. We’d had our little spats, mostly sorted now, but there was one lingering issue: his son Snapper. The kid’s rape trial was coming up in September, and I knew Niles had his sons’ back. What father wouldn’t? I had no doubt the kid was guilty, and I was hoping he would do time. This was an issue I was coming up against repeatedly in the Kootenays, people having a different spectrum of right and wrong than I was used to, and wondering how comfortable I was sharing space with people like that.

“A lot of changes at the Star,” Niles said. “Heard you guys lost Nesteroff?”

“Don’t remind me. I’m heartbroken about it. Greg got poached by the radio station and now he’s going to be the new Glenn Hicks.”

“No more Glenn? What’s going on with him?”

I shrugged. “I mean, Greg’s obviously going to be awesome over there and it’s a good move but I half-wonder if he was parachuting out of Black Press to get away from some of the toxic shit going on with the Carpenters.”

“No shit, really?”

“They just kept putting him in the middle of everything. And when they were coming after me, I think he’s the only umbrella that kept me safe.”

Niles lit a joint, then passed it to me. He’d heard my long-winded rambles about the Carpenters, had rubbed his hands together in child-like glee as I described the various office conflicts I’d engaged in. He’d known the Carpenters for decades, and had his own issues with them, so he was always happy to commiserate with my workplace misery.

“And so what, they hired a new editor and a new publisher?”

I shook my head, took a toke. “They’re still sorting things out. We’ve got an interim editor for now. We’ve got a new publisher already, and he’s off to the races. They’ve got him in charge of like 10 papers already. Dude’s name is Aaron Layton.”

“And is he okay?”

I shrugged. “Seems like an empty suit to me, honestly. But if that means he’s going to leave us alone to do our thing in the newsroom, then I’m all for it. Like we’ve lost Greg, but we’ve still got a power trio holding down the fort. Ed and Kai are two of the most talented journalists I’ve ever worked with, and we’ve got a good thing going.”

Niles smiled, took the joint from me. “That’s good. This area deserves a good newspaper. There’s so many stories around here, and none of them get told. Not really. Like this Ryan Tapp thing.”

I sighed. “Don’t get me started. The guy is haunting me.”

“And who’s doing anything about it? The RCMP hasn’t said shit, right? Nobody’s investigating, nothing’s going to happen, and nobody’s going to know the truth of that story.”

I took a long haul off my beer. Birds skittered through the branches overhead, the sun glaring down sharp. The thing I’d been pondering lately was whether or not I really wanted to go forward with Whatever you’re on, I want some, the manuscript I’d been working on since my MFA at UBC. I was struggling to dredge up characters and storylines and fictional settings when right in front of me was an absolute fucking circus of Kootenay chaos I could use for content. I didn’t want to be a safe writer, writing safe stories about safe people. I wanted to write about the truth.

Niles passed me the joint, and I took another hit. I blinked up at the sky, swirling, and that’s when the idea crystallized.

“Dude,” I said, swivelling towards him. “I think I want to write a book about Ryan Tapp.”

The Kootenay Goon

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