#honestly the situation is super fascinating and horrifying for a lot of reasons

[karisita]

How about: Hiccup and Astrid doing a porn movie together? Something like the X movie, but less horror and more romance.

So, basically, they're having money problems and are looking for extra income when they come around Tuff and Ruff, who tells them that porn websites are actually very lucrative.

Tuff is an eccentric film student and he's been in the porn industry for quite sometime, never filming himself thought, only other people who accept to participate. He's a visionary, never really interested in the sex itself, but in the story telling. The only thing that actually fascinates him about porn, is how easily it sells. He writes, direct and edit and, this time, he wants to do something completely different, that he's never done before.

Ruffnut helps him with the audio caption. Basically, she just holds the mic for him, but she insists on helping, just because she's a perv.

That's how Astrid got involved. They go to college together and, for some reason, Ruff is the closest friend she has in class. It's kind of an unconscious thing for Astrid, she never really tried to be close with Ruffnut, but, somehow, she's always there with her, talking nonstop while she would only listen, but it's not entirely bad either.

Ruff always tells her about her brother's business and tries to convince her to give him views on his latest projects, which Astrid never does. But, then things start to get complicated for her. Her part time job salary is barely enough to sustain her and the rent price just went up. She needs more money fast.

So she talks to Ruff about participating in the making of Tuff's "home movies" and Ruff tells her that he's looking for an actress. She immediately refuses, since she was looking to participate behind the cameras, but Ruff explains that they try to have as little people involved in the filming as possible, so that the money doesn't disappear when they divide it among themselves.

Astrid only accepts to act in the film when she's on the verge of being homeless. Ruff promises her that it will be worth it and that she won't get recognise for it and Tuff even agrees to pay her the highest part of the income, since she's the one exposing herself the most.

She's still very reluctant with the idea, but Ruff and Tuff turn out to be very supportive and understanding of her situation and being able to count with them actually helped a lot.

Now, Hiccup would get involved through snotlout, of course. Snotlout tried to participate once, but only ended with a 15 seconds supporting appearance in the film. He never stopped hanging around with the twins because he was super into Ruffnut. That's why he brings Hiccup along, just to impress her. Hiccup is definitely not super excited about it, but he does need the money, so he agrees.

I still don't know how Fishlegs would be involved in all of it. The best that I could come up with is that he lends some of the filming equipment to Tuffnut e hangs around while they're filming. He honestly didn't know what Tuff was going to use his equipment for when he asked to borrow it, so his curiosity makes him stay and find out. He's horrified, at first, but then he doesn't leave. For him, It's like watching an eclipse, never looking directly at it, but not being able to look away either.

Fishlegs is the real hero of this story, really. He's a hopeless romantic, so, as soon as he reads the script, he knows he needs to bring some of his fanfic writing magic into it. He convinces Tuffnut to make everything more honeyed and sweet: add more kisses, more dialogue, more love, etc.

So, of course, Hiccup and Astrid can't help falling for eachother a bit. They're in this together, after all. But it's not just the sweet sex, it's everything else. Hiccup is a really nice guy, which Astrid didn't expect. He's always making sure the whole experience is the least uncomfortable as possible for her and is always reassuring her that, no matter what, he would stop if she asked him to.

He gives her rides home after they're done, and they get to know eachother better. Hiccup is surprised by Astrid too. She's much more than her first impressions show: someone unapproachable and cold, although beautiful. Once he gets to know her, he finds her quite funny and sensitive, their conversations are always pleasant and her presence is very comfortable for him.

So, yeah. That's what I got so far. What do you guys think? Should a try writing this?

[nothorses]

Imma be real with you, I don't watch Contrapoints and when I asked a friend about her I was told that she'd done the whole antisemitic lizard people joke and apparently didn't apologise for it and now I'm like. Should I watch her anyway? Is she a bad person? Bc I don't wanna support an antisemite but at the same time idk the whole story

The situation in question is that she used a “lizard people” icon for a video in (I think?) 2017, which included a very direct and extended explanation that the people she was criticizing in the video were not “the jews”, and a deconstruction of the antisemitic trope + why it’s harmful.

The other gripe people have is that she sold a shirt with “lizard people” on it and the text “David Icke was right”. Her responses to criticism have essentially been along the lines of “well I sufficiently addressed antisemitism in the video, so the shirt’s fine”. Which really isn’t how that works.

She also changed the text of the shirt to “goddamn reptiles”, and whether you think that’s antisemitic depends on whether you think all “lizard people” jokes are antisemitic, which like... I do, but I don’t think everyone who makes them is. I am also a gentile, and you shouldn’t take my opinion as definitive.

The thing is, imo, that Contra has some legitimately good ideas and some legitimately good ways of saying them. A lot of her videos are great for their intended purpose: deconstructing common ideas in order to explain why they’re wrong. The vast majority of them are made specifically to make people more ignorant than her less ignorant, and they’re generally very good at doing that, which is why a lot of her fans are people who used to be bigots. 

Contra gets criticism for things that genuinely do not deserve criticism, and things have been dragged out of context to a literal “I think Coolsville sucks” degree. A lot of that “criticism” has caused her legitimate trauma. She’s also made a lot of harmful mistakes, responded to criticism in genuinely shitty ways, and hurt actual people.

Given what I know of her, I don’t think she’s bigoted or hateful. I think she’s often impulsive, thoughtless, and defensive, and that has caused harm. And I think she’s legitimately grown over time, even if she’s not publicly performing regret in a satisfactory way.

She’s not a symbol, and she doesn’t represent anything. She’s a human. She does good, and she makes shitty mistakes, and I think both of those things are important. She’s complicated, and how you feel about her is entirely up to you.

[nb-n0v4]

okay i gotta know, whats the observer's Lore.. they look so cool i wanna know more abt them!!

oooh ok *rubs hands together*

this got surprisingly long so under a cut it goes!

So! Firstly, he is in fact for another dr who AU, which will surprise no one who's been on my blog longer than 5 minutes. Basically what he came from was, I've always been fascinated with the concept of like, eldritch and cosmic horror and specifically cosmic horrors attempting to blend in with humanity (or in this case human-adjacent beings lmao)

So that's what the Observer is! He's a cosmic being that, upon finding itself being hunted by the Time Lords, decided to hide itself right under their noses by weaving itself into and taking over the timeline of the Doctor with the reasoning that, with it's foresight as a near omnipotent entity, it knows that then they couldn't get rid of it without basically destabilizing the universe.

I always planned on having him be uncanny valley, since I really enjoy the trope of something trying just a little too hard to be human and coming off as vaguely horrifying because of it, and then I watched the mandala catalogue and then I really got ideas.

The Observer as I've drawn it now is one that has no need to hide from the Time Lords at present, since they've been locked away in their pocket dimension post time-war. I like to think that it was kinda slow in getting to the point of how he looks and stuff now, with it slowly becoming more obvious as the regenerations go on that something ain't quite right, as he starts to become more aware of his, I guess, second nature.

Cause the thing is he didn't truly awaken to what he was until he looked into the untempered schism, and even after that it took a while to fully comprehend what that meant, and honestly even now he hasn't fully grasped it. It's an interesting situation of being aware that he's cosmically and dimensionally much bigger than he seems but being too limited in some ways to fully experience it. Him attempting to fully comprehend the bigger more cosmic part of himself is difficult at best and downright impossible at worst.

It leads to a lot of funky moments of depersonalization/disassociation and he's got a bunch of piercings that I haven't drawn him with yet and like fidget rings and stuff to help with that, as well as some tats.

There are a lot of moments where it leaks through though, and I spent a lot of time wondering like, what are things that could be uncanny about him without it being super obvious yknow, and eventually I landed on a couple of things.

Firstly, and most noticeably, he got too many got dang teeth. If I ever bothered to count them it's supposed four extra on the top and bottom. He's also got no canines, but other than that his teeth are normal.

The second thing is that shadows tend to act weird around him. they group heavy around his eyes and sometimes his shadow seems to move by itself.

Third is that his face is totally symmetrical, and his measurements are like, too proportional. Like y'know how when you draw figures there are base rules for roughly what you could expect the width of the shoulders, length of the arms and legs, etc. to be? His are like, perfectly proportional. this is least likely to show up in my work cause I'm definitely not that good lmao

and finally, his pupils! They're always super dilated, and I actually have a reason for this one! I can't remember where I read it, I think it may have been on the wiki, but I remembered seeing that Time Lords basically can dilate/contract their pupils consciously, which like, wack. And the Observer doesn't rely to heavily on outside stimuli cause he's got the whole higher being thing going on and it kinda fucks with his sensory processing something awful on a good day. So he doesn't rely on input from his eyes to see much, instead relying on timelines and shit, which means he doesn't really keep track of his eyes/keeps em covered so, big-ass pupils.

no this isn't just an excuse to project my sensory processing onto a character what are you talking about haha

Anyway this got super fucking long but in terms of like, story lore, I may write some snippets but there's definitely a heavier pull towards sci-fi horror with this dude, with a decent amount of analogue horror just for funsies ❤️electronics from before the 30th century tend to go haywire around him, which is always fun. Y'know, incomprehensible messages that may or may not drive you to madness if you listen/look at them for too long flashing on glitching screens and leaking out of the nearby radio.

He does admittedly lean into this a little bit, since he does find it kinda funny to watch people get creeped out, but he usually dials it back before any real harm is done. Unless someone pisses him off. I have a whole scene rattling around in this old noggin of a kidnapped Rose and Jack, a very angry Observer, and a compound wide intercom that hey, the weird grabled noises in the background of him talking aren't getting louder . . . are they?

[spockandawe]

So this morning, I tripped across this excellent post about Xue Yang and classism, and it shook something loose in my head. Specifically, it got me thinking about the idea of Xue Yang taking revenge for ‘only’ losing a finger. Xiao Xingchen doesn’t say anything as directly dismissive as saying he only lost a finger, but I do think that is at least partially the way that Xue Yang takes the argument.

And I’ve thought a lot and said a lot of words about the way Xue Yang feels hurt and betrayed and frustrated as he tries to explain himself to someone, for once, and that person completely misses his point. And I’ve said words about how in the three years in Yi City, Xue Yang gets hooked on the quiet comfort of domesticity, even if he and Xiao Xingchen and A-Qing are still, objectively, poor. But I’d never thought about this particular angle of their last argument before now.

This is going to be long, I can tell, so let’s throw a spoiler cut in here

Now, I do think it’s important that Xiao Xingchen doesn’t say directly that it was only a finger. I think it would have been cruel of him to say that. But I also think that his upbringing and position in the world make him a bit… oblivious to the implications of Xue Yang’s story, and what he’s trying to communicate, and that leads to him saying some things that are more insensitive than he would have chosen to if he’d realized.

From a very early point, he knew that Xue Yang grew up without parents or money.

Unhurried, Xue Yang began, “Once upon a time, there was a child.”

“The child really liked eating sweet things. But because he had no parents or money, he could rarely eat them.”

And he was told how that child was exploited, and how hard he was beat up and used even before things reached the point where he lost a finger

[The huge, brawny man] took over the paper and looked at it, and he gave the child a slap so hard that his nose started bleeding. The man pulled the child’s hair and asked, ‘Who told you to take such a thing over?’”

[…]

“[seven-year-old Xue Yang] felt scared and pointed the direction. The man went to the liquor shop, carrying the child by pulling his hair.”

[…]

“The store was in a mess and the waiter was feeling quite cross. He slapped the child a few times, so hard that his ears were even buzzing, and chased him out the door. He crawled up and walked for a while.”

[…]

What do you think happened? Just a few more slaps and a few more kicks.”

(It’s interesting to me that he dodges even mentioning his hand being run over in this version of the story, but later goes into a lot of detail about his hand later with Xiao Xingchen, even though Xiao Xingchen has completely turned against him)

And, something that I hadn’t really noticed until I went to collect these quotes, is how Xiao Xingchen reacts to this story.

After Xiao XingChen tucked her, he walked a few steps, then asked, “What happened afterward?”

Xue Yang, “Guess. There was no afterward. You didn’t continue telling your story either, did you?”

Xiao XingChen, “No matter what happened afterward, since right now your life is fairly adequate, there’s no need for you to dwell too much on the past.”

That’s… a very high-minded approach to take, where I can see the good intentions, but I’m also kind of wincing at the accidental implications.

And then, to mix it up, let’s have some screencaps for the second half of the story, because these actors seriously knocked this scene out of the park

“The wheels of the cart milled over the child’s hand, one finger at a time. He was seven!”

And then another book quote, because it’s fascinating to me how directly he begs Xiao Xingchen to empathize with the child who was used so poorly and lost a finger in the process.

“Is it that, since the fingers weren’t yours, you guys were incapable of feeling the pain?! You guys didn’t know how horrifying screams sounded like out of your own mouths? Why didn’t you ask him why he decided to amuse himself with me without a single reason?!”

Only, right after he does this, Xiao Xingchen talks about how disproportionate Xue Yang’s revenge was. This really kills me, honestly, because this is the point where Xue Yang stops trying to appeal to him and explain himself, and takes a sharp turn towards losing control over his emotions instead.

Xiao XingChen spoke as though he couldn’t believe Xue Yang’s words, “Chang Ci’An broke one of your fingers in the past. If you sought revenge, you could’ve simply broken one of his fingers as well. If you really took the matter to heart, you could’ve broken two, or even all ten! Even if you had cut off an entire arm of his, things wouldn’t have been like this. Why did you have to kill his entire clan? Don’t tell me that a single finger of yours was equal to more than fifty human lives!”

I always just accepted that this was enough to hurt Xue Yang that much. But also… Xiao Xingchen knows that Xue Yang was a poor, parentless child, and he’s heard about how this child was callously exploited and mistreated by three separate adults. And there’s a couple class-related details in here that I want to touch on.

One, Xue Yang was again, a poor, parentless child, and I imagine he was living on the streets in a situation like that. Chang Ci’an broke (amputated) one of his fingers. And ran over the whole rest of his hand, which I have to imagine did other significant damage. Okay, so he wrecked this seven-year-old child’s hand. Now…. how much did this child have? What did he have besides his body? Did he even have a home to retreat to and recover? Because I have to imagine he didn’t. He didn’t have money for medical treatment, it’s not even clear if he knew anyone he could go to for basic medical help. Let’s not even talk about setting the bones in a shattered hand, did he even have access to anything to prevent infection? If he had any means of making a living (at age, again, seven), it would almost have had to be either begging or stealing. Having one ruined hand would have done awful things to this parentless child’s ability to survive. He made it through, clearly, but god. 

And Xiao Xingchen isn’t approaching this from a position like most of our main characters, who grew up wealthy and privileged. He’s not approaching this in a way like how Jiang Cheng scolded Wei Wuxian for breaking his arm, because he had to get it all plastered up and spend weeks recovering, and that was super inconvenient. Xiao Xingchen was never wealthy, and he grew up as a feral mountain child with Baoshan Sanren. But that means that he wasn’t subject to the same social forces as a city child like Xue Yang. Even if he was injured as a child, even if he was badly injured, it wasn’t probably an act of cruelty or callousness on the part of an adult. And if he was injured, he might not have had access to formally trained doctors, but he had a teacher who was highly trained spiritually, and who would at least care for him.

In a way, I think that makes it all hurt… more for Xue Yang. Because Xiao Xingchen isn’t gentry, he never was affiliated with the great cultivation sects, and he and Xue Yang and A-Qing have been living together in a city in fairly poor circumstances for three years now. But Xiao Xingchen is an adult, and one who’s used to making his own way in the world. He has no personal understanding of what it’s like to be a powerless child in similar circumstances, without anyone. And in this moment, he’s not able to understand how awful and how serious this was for a child like Xue Yang to experience.

Like, compare and contrast. When the Wens are starting to move against Lotus Pier, there’s half a moment where Wei Wuxian makes his peace with losing a hand. He’s like ‘yeah, that sucks, but i’ll deal. i’ll just learn to fight with my other hand, whatever!’ But just imagine how serious that would have been before Jiang Fengmian found him. Without money, without a home, without anyone to care for you, without access to any real medical care, how dire an injury would that have been? Xue Yang might not have lost his hand altogether, but the cart ran over his whole hand, and hands are just full o’ bones. The consequences of that injury were significant. 

And Xiao Xingchen’s initial reaction is ‘okay, so this wealthy cultivator broke your finger. why didn’t you just break his finger?’ and then he manages to escalate his way up to ‘idk, you could have even cut off his arm???’

In retrospect, it’s completely unsurprising to me that this is the moment where Xue Yang totally shuts down and starts asking why Xiao Xingchen even got involved, if he wasn’t capable of understanding.

“You shouldn’t have meddled in other people’s business. Right or wrong, kindness or hatred are not clearly distinguished, so how could an outsider possibly understand?”

“Your martial mentor, Baoshan Sanren, was indeed insightful. Why didn’t you listen to her and obediently cultivate in the mountain? If you couldn’t understand the human affairs and this world, then you shouldn’t have come!”

It makes me wonder what would have happened, if Xue Yang had leaned harder into what kind of suffering and hardship an injury like that meant for a street child, but considering how reluctant he was to share in the first place, I’m not exactly surprised he didn’t go there.

Incidentally, it’s interesting to me that when Xiao Xingchen calls Xue Yang ‘disgusting’, that’s when Xue Yang pivots into really trying to hurt him. I think it would hurt, coming from Xiao Xingchen, no matter what, but I have to wonder if he takes it extra hard in light of the way he’s just been trying to explain his history as a mistreated street child.

I’d been idly wondering if I was reading too far into this dynamic (not that that was going to stop me, but still, wondering :P), but this last addition to the conversation really caught my attention

“The people I hate the most are ones like you who say they’re righteous, who think they’re virtuous. Stupid, naive, dumb idiots like you who think the world’s better just because you did something good!”

And then I was like no, I’ve been right this whole time, haha :V

Xue Yang’s anger and hurt sense on a purely personal level, especially with the extra pain of trying to explain himself, for once, and Xiao Xingchen missing the point. But the extra frustration on behalf of his younger self makes so much additional sense. 

Xue Yang likes Xiao Xingchen, he likes living with Xiao Xingchen, or he wouldn’t still be there three years after a chance encounter. It would be a whole other meta to source this claim, but it very much feels like there are things he admires about Xiao Xingchen, even if it’s kind of a condescending, indulgent fondness for his foolish, naive innocence instead of a straightforward admiration. Until it tips over here, and becomes personal. 

And I think there were a lot of ways where he was prepared to disagree with Xiao Xingchen on a deep, fundamental level. They have very different values. But I don’t think he was prepared for Xiao Xingchen to be so oblivious to the class-based aspect of Xue Yang’s history. I don’t think Xiao Xingchen intended to be cruel, and I also think he had other significant things on his mind, but the seriousness of this incident doesn’t seem to occur to him. For someone with money, for someone with a skilled martial family, for even someone with a family, period, this would have been a traumatic experience, but one that could be dealt with. But then Xiao Xingchen equates the finger of this wealthy, purposefully cruel cultivator to the finger of a poor, parentless street child, and Xue Yang begins to lose control.

I already didn’t blame him for how upset he gets in this conversation, but now, even more than before, I find his reaction incredibly understandable. I mean, yes, their whole relationship is built on a foundation of sand, but he thought that he and Xiao Xingchen… supported each other, at least. They mattered to each other. And when Xiao Xingchen rejects him in the present, well, sure, that was going to happen if anyone was stupid enough to tell Xiao Xingchen the truth, that was understandable. But when Xiao Xingchen casually brushes aside the suffering of little innocent seven-year-old Xue Yang, that hurts Xue Yang more than he could have ever anticipated. 

[king-paimon]

Houseki no Kuni Chapter 94 Thoughts: Inheriting the burden

This chapter was worth the two month wait. And to be honest, I’m kind of glad that we didn’t get this chapter last month because, if you saw my previous post, October had been very hard for me for several reasons. 

But yeah, this chapter... So short but impactful. And heartbreaking, as usual. I’m still surprised by how some of the things in my old prediction from over a year ago happened, but the results are more gut-wrenching. One of main differences being that Adamant was actually happy to go and the other is Phos being alive, though clearly dead inside now. If you’re interested in seeing this post, here’s a link: https://king-paimon.tumblr.com/post/188597157145/hnk-theoretical-ending-worst-case-scenario

Anyways, this chapter is very straightforward and I don’t have a lot to talk about so this post won’t be super long. Like always, feel free to share your own thoughts with me and I apologize for mistakes I’ll surely make. I’m definitely going to make edits on this one. (I did make some edits. I hope you read them!)

Goodbye Adamant

(Chapter 94, Page 03)

Sigh. Seeing Adamant disappear the way he did was very sad, and also tranquil, in a way. It looks like it was true that after everything he went through, from watching humanity die to watching his precious gems be taken time and time again because of him, and him being unable to fulfill his true purpose, he had been wanting to disappear for a long time. And finally, Phos was the one who liberated him, even though it was definitely not intentional. I talk more about this in depth in the post for Chapter 93: https://king-paimon.tumblr.com/post/631282595252043776/hnk-chapter-93-bittersweet-victory-bittersweet

Also mentioned in that post, I made a prediction that when Adamant crumbles, all that would be left was an eye. This was based off of several observations of him in the previous chapters and for a while, an eye would be associated with him, like him holding onto Phos’s eye or the first machine’s eye. I can’t believe it actually happened. I was loosing it when I saw the first leaks.

Now Adamant’s eye is part of the Phos’s new ‘human’ form, and it’s showing Phos these horrifying visions. Just like when Phos inherited Lapis Lazuli’s head and Cinnabar’s mercury, it looks like Phos inherited Adamant’s memories and those scenes were likely memories of humanity’s destruction. I wonder if these visions also somehow alludes to the possibility that this destruction might happen again.

One thing that has me a little perplexed was his final words to Phos. At first, I thought it was nice that his last words were words of encouragement... But I looked again and he said to Phos that they should “pray wholeheartedly for happiness.”  Was Adamant specifying to Phos to pray for their own happiness or for everyone else’s? Like, did he also envision Phos taking over his role? I hope not. I don’t know, but I want to think that Adamant was wishing Phos luck in finding peace. I hope I’m just over thinking this page, in fact, I’m sure I am. But let me know what you guys think!

I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see Adamant and Aechmea interact directly. Maybe Ms. Ichikawa would find a way, since it looks like the lunarians collected Adamant’s remains, but we’ll see.

But yeah; Adamant is now free from the burden of existing. But sadly, and predictably, that burden is now Phos’s.

Inheriting the burden

It looks like it all but verbally confirmed now: Aechmea’s true goal for Phos was for them to take over Adamant’s role as the one to pray. And it was fascinating how even though Aechmea didn’t say a thing in this chapter, he continues to show how methodical and conniving he is. What an amazing antagonist he is.  Hopefully he’ll talk the next time we see him. Maybe he’ll try to manipulate Phos into thinking that taking over Adamant’s position is a good thing for them, maybe play on Phos’s old desire to find their purpose. But I’m also fine if he doesn’t. I’m glad that it’s becoming clear to Phos that Aechmea was just using them once again, but this time the price of their actions have permanent consequences. 

(Edit: In addition to Phos becoming Adamant’s replacement for praying, it’s understandable to predict that Phos would somehow take up Adamant’s other role; a leader for the gems. Who knows how this would happen. Maybe new gems will come to be while Phos is alone on Earth, or the other gems somehow come back, though I have doubts right now and you’ll see why in the next paragraph. Either way, Phos would find themselves ironically taking over Adamant’s role amongst the gems. And to make it more ironic, what would happen if another gem were to take up Phos’s old role and cause this whole cycle to repeat again. Wouldn’t that be tragic? Or maybe it’d be an opportunity to prevent the same mistakes Adamant made? Or maybe it just shows how history is doomed to repeat itself, no matter what? Who knows. This was a thought that I original had when the leaks came out but I removed it after the translation was released because I thought it wouldn’t be possible anymore. But seeing other people make similar predictions gave me the inspiration to add this edit. I wonder if anyone will notice...)

As for what Aechmea’s plans are for the shattered gems? I think he’s going to dispose of them. I highly doubt Aechmea’s going to rebuild those gems, unless he’s somehow persuaded by the remaining moon gems but that’s very unlikely. He purposely didn’t fulfill his promise to Phos to restore other gems, and if he can convince Phos to pray for him and everyone else, there’d be no point to rebuilding them anyway. I think he’s taking them so Phos would isolated again. He’s used this tactic many times make it easy for him to manipulate Phos and I’m sure he’s going to do it again to convince Phos to pray. Speaking of which...

And there’s no one left....

(Chapter 94, Page 23)

Look how far this poor child has fallen. So different from how they were in the previous chapters, from a hellbent vengeance beast to this being of pure sadness and desperation. I’ve stated many times that at the end of this sugar coated vengeance crusade, reality would hit Phos right back in the face and push Phos to rock bottom. And it happened. And it was so sad to watch. 

Ms. Ichikawa did such a good job emulating the sense of emptiness, despair, and desperation in this chapter. Everything, especially the school, looks so big and empty now that there’s no one there but Phos. And Phos’s face and demeanor as they looked everywhere for the fallen gems and Adamant, when they desperately grasped for Adamant’s eye because “they want happiness” and when he witnessed those visions was the icing on the cake. 

Poor Phos. Everything is out of their grasp again, but this time, there’s nothing to turn back too. He wanted to restore the gems, but they are all taken away, likely forever. He wanted Adamant to pray for him, but he’s also gone forever. Phos sacrificed so much to get to this point; Phos destroyed their relationships, their former allies, their own BODY to try to find a solution this situation they were put in. They did all of this not just for everyone else’s sake but for their own sake, so they can finally have some control over his life. So he can be happy. But once again, it all led to this situation that he has no control over. Phos now knows that he was once again used as a pawn for Aechmea’s grand plan and it looks like there’s no way out of it. No one’s there to save him.

The only other gems that aren’t destroyed are Yellow Diamond, Goshe, Ame, and Cairn. And at the bottom of the last page, it sounds like we’ll be focusing on the moon gems in the next chapter. What’ll happen with them? No clue. But honestly, I don’t care right now. 

Phos is alone again, but it’s absolute now.

Adamant is gone. Cinnabar is gone. Padparadscha is gone. Any gems or Admirabilis that gave an ounce of care for Phos are no longer on earth. 

There’s no one left. 

All Phos has now are tragic memories that are not their own and the feeling of despair. 

And if that’s not lonely enough, if Phos were to pray, it’s highly likely that they’ll be the only one left behind while everyone else permanently disappears. That’s how it was for Adamant, after all. And just like Adamant, Phos would continue this painful existence, sacrificing parts of themselves for others, and no one’s there to save them. 

So it doesn’t matter how the situation will turn out; in the end, Phos doesn’t win and will be all alone. 

(edit: It’s also fascinating to see how similar Phos and Adamant really are, from the loneliness of knowing the truth of everything to watching the ones they care about be taken away from them and being practically powerless to do anything to change it. These two characters are so tragic.)

I said this many times before and I’ll keep on saying it until something changes:

Phos’s cycle of suffering is never going to end.

Phos will never have a happy ending.

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 19

it’s 2021 now!! time for more transformers 

we start off w/a flashback showing tyrest retrieving ultra magnus’s body from the ship - and we get a look at magnus’s spark, which is the green color of a 0.1%er [eyes emoji]

tyrest punching magnus..... grrrrr leave my dad alone bastard man

‘the divided self’ what a good title 

rodimus is like listen man this is a lot for my poor thot brain to take in

in flashback land, we see tyrest immediately launch into a crazy person spiel about how he can and will edit the law as he sees fit to conform to the situation, because that doesn't seem like a blatant abuse of power or a huge conflict of interest or anything 

oooh the screen in the corner that says ‘thought warfare,’ I see that

oof, poor magnus. its gotta be rough to hear your boss rant about how bad at your job you are....especially bc this is right after overlord called magnus a joke and nearly killed him

its especially brutal bc as magnus says, his job is his life 

augh, I love the panel where the armor is falling off around minimus, and then the one where he’s holding the ultra magnus head...poetic 

its fascinating that there was an ‘original’ magnus who was an actual guy, and then tyrest chose to make him into this legacy symbol - I'm assuming the OG magnus had no say in this, and probably didn't even know that he was gonna become this lawman legacy figure

I do wanna know though - obviously everyone thought that ultra magnus was one dude, but how did the different guys wearing the armor deal w/that? like, did minimus have people coming up to him like ‘hey ultra magnus old buddy! remember when we fought those guys in that one place? good times!’ like, do they have to study up on the lives of the past armor wearers to prepare for the role of ultra magnus?

augh poor minimus, of course he’s been wondering about what happened with overlord after he was KO’d

oof, drift...I feel like minimus looks surprised and a little skeptical at the idea that drift was the one behind the entire overlord thing - which is interesting bc as we saw at the beginning of the story, he doesn't exactly trust drift, but it’s still pretty far-fetched that one person orchestrated the entire thing

tailgate :(

the concept of a load-bearer is SUPER cool, I love it so much

it also puts a much-needed limit on things - as in, there IS a limit to how much weight/mass a normal cybertronian frame can carry, which is why you don't see everybody upgrading to be Massive - bc they actually CANT

oof, the worst part is that tyrest is RIGHT, minimus essentially DID have a nervous breakdown after the war ended bc of the rigid way he views the world

mental health support is clearly in shambles for cybertronians, yikes. they literally have 1 therapist for their entire race, and he’s not even licensed anymore due to hipaa violations. what a mess

the ‘attention deflectors’ thing is so cool and clever and also a great explanation as to why ratchet or anyone else never said ‘hey wait a minute, you're actually a much smaller dude in a trench coat’ 

I love tailgate knowing all the stuff about the autobot code bc of magnus...my BOY

and THATS why minimus was asking about skids specifically earlier!

oh minimus, please don't put so much stock in tyrest being stable and resonable...

aaaand there's skids and swerve! brainstorm says it best - ‘because something unexpected hasn't happened for at least nine seconds.’ lmao ily brainstorm 

finally checking in w/whirl and cyclonus - god I love that. whirl asking cyclonus how many cons he killed and cyc is like psh I wasn't keeping count....................ok it was six

hhhhh cyclonus IS looking for a cure for tailgate, even though he told tg that there wasn’t anything to hope for....excuse me as I go be emo 

and now we flash over to the unethical medical conduct hell zone, where pharma is being weird and horny and ratchet is appropriately horrified 

I seriously love how unhinged pharma looks, the art & colors do such a good job conveying his feral energy 

ratchet has some massive dick energy for taunting pharma when he’s currently just a head and pharma has dual chainsaws for hands 

ugh, I love whirls speech about anger...and I feel like he really does see cyclonus as a peer, despite cyclonus wanting to kill him, which is why he tells cyclonus all of this 

I fuckgin love that cyclonus’s reaction to very suddenly getting stabbed thru the abdomen is to just glance down at the sword, looking mildly inconvenienced 

back over to ratchet - and at first its like oh wow I can’t believe pharma was stupid enough to let ratchet goad him into this contest....but then you see first aid and ambulon and its like UH OH this is gonna be BAD

the idea that getting sliced in half is no big deal for a cybertronian is wild

‘you're gonna let doctor djd cut us in half?’ yeahhhh that's an appropriate reaction, yikes

FUCKING LENGTHWAYS GOD

pharma you piece of shit

poor ambulon :( :( :( that's fucking brutal. amazing panel but....jesus

and like, to further my point from last issue’s liveblog - the fact that this very gore-y panel is okay, but swearing isn't...that's really funny honestly. I guess robo-gore is acceptable, while I'm guessing regular ole run of the mill human gore wouldn't be

then back to cyclonus, who is still looking only vaguely put out by the sword stuck right thru him

and then cyclonus just pulls it right out, which is a very bad idea for humans but probably not as big of a deal for big near-immortal alien robots

circle of light stuck in capitalistic urban hellscape cubicals 

poor skids, being asked to stand trial while having no idea what his crime is due to Big Amnesia 

OH SHITTTT I totally forgot that getaway shows up here

that is super clever though, with chromedome confusing the name ‘getaway’ with the concept ‘needing to escape’

cant believe tyrest is really dumb enough to tell minimus all his evil plans

BUT that means its time for some very important forged vs constructed cold lore

jro spelling ‘program’ as ‘programme’ made me remember when he said that he considers everyone on the lost light to be british, which is perhaps the least valid thing he’s ever said vhbghjsdbfjkhasbjk

the idea that they used the matrix - which is portrayed as kind of a holy object - in reproductive experiments is really interesting

AUGHHHHH this is all so good and interesting...im really fascinated w/this particular brand of like, alien robot racism/constructism/whatever you wanna call it - I feel like it does such a good job as a plot device, where many other ‘fantasy racism’ concepts from other franchises fail, bc there's not really a ‘human metaphor’ being used here (as far as I know/can tell) - as in, this isn't a thinly veiled metaphor for something that happened/could happen in human history

in fact, this type of bigotry (or w/e you wanna call it) isn't something that is even really possible in humans - I guess if there was a stigma against being born via ivf or something...? but there isn't, so there's no obvious real-world equivalent, which I take as a sign of good writing and worldbuilding - it makes the cybertronians feel more Real, bc of course they would have their own types of bigotry based off of completely different things than humans 

additionally - and this is crucial - tyrest is wrong: there’s no like, inherent moral corruption in cold constructed bots. there's no difference at all, other than method of construction. fantasy racism plotlines often flounder here, with the oppressors having a ‘valid reason’ for oppressing the oppressed, but tyrest is just operated on religious zealot bs and some biased science

like, dude, did you ever think that maybe there are other reasons why your trials only condemned cold constructed bots? like, maybe the trial itself was biased? or societal conditions were to blame? correlation is not causation, my dude, especially when the conclusion is ‘cold constructed bots are inherently SINNERS’ lmao 

like, tyrest rlly said ‘FUCK separation of church and state,’ huh

anyways I just think the whole cold construction vs forged thing is really interesting and well-done, and serves as a good precursor to the more fleshed-out functionism stuff we see later 

so tyrest is clearly off his rockers w/the whole drilling thing - dude, you accidentally gave yourself a lobotomy, okay - but I find it kinda funny that he’s right about a lot of that stuff he said at the end, about primus and the guiding hand and stuff being real 

cyclonus saying ‘tailgate and the others’...I see you, man, I see you

also cyclonus looks fine now??? didn't he just get stabbed??? 

ah, tyrest sprinkling a little light genocide onto his plan to find salvation. nice, dude!

MINIMUS NOOOOOOOOO

‘fully deserved’ SHUT UP BIIIIITCH

poor minimus is taking a lot of Ls this arc, geez

oof, great issue! again, as usual....I loved the lore we got this issue, its so interesting...and some good character stuff too. I love minimus, I feel like he’s gonna be my fav this readthru; my first read my fav was brainstorm, second readthru was whirl, and I feel like its minimus/magnus this time. I just love his character arc...

hype af for more B) 

[supermassive-blue-tint]

Lissa Reviews Midnight Sun: Chapters 6 to 11

Welcome back to another installment of my Midnight Sun review in which we might address my religious trauma and gayness (yet again).

Possible spoilers below!

Right! First thing that comes to mind, is that any time Bella experiences shock, or anger or annoyance, Edwards is... AMUSED? Like the person you love is experiencing a potentially unpleasant feeling and you’re laughing? Like this is a thing that happens SO consistently it’s ridiculous. Every time this happens he doesn’t really seem to be thinking about her, but himself. He often laughs in relief when she’s annoyed at someone else (Mike, Tyler etc) but it happens ALL THE TIME and I feel weird about it. Instead of laughing he could be like ‘wow yeah dude that’s annoying af’ instead of being like ‘ah this confirms she loves only me, thank fuck.’

Next thing, I LOVE how Alice is so keen to be friends with Bella! And in chapter 11 I think, Edward makes some comment about how Bella would feel about having a vampire girlfriend. Like as if Midnight Sun wasn’t unintentionally alluding to Balice enough, now we have that actual line. I’ve never been a Balice shipper, but damn Midnight Sun could get me on board honestly.

I totally never thought about Edward getting back early from his hunting trip with Emmett. Like it literally never ever crossed my mind that he could have been there watching Bella when she fell asleep reading on the lawn. I think I always assumed that he was away hunting like the whole time. I thought this was a great little unexpected moment. I also wasn’t expecting anything to come of the guy who was going to attack Bella in Port Angeles. I had absolutely no inkling that Edward would go and do anything about it after he resisted murdering him the first time. I liked that they let law enforcement ultimately deal with him though.

Also, I know Edward is a creepy stalker, always being in Bella’s room... but in Twilight I seemed to have a sense of him being in her room A LOT more than he actually is in Midnight Sun. And I wondered why that was exactly... and then I realised it’s because the events of Twilight take place over such a short amount of time, but Twilight is written with so much detail that it seems to go on for a long period of time. It feels like Bella and Edward finally going to the restaurant in Port Angeles is a really slow burn the way it’s written. But it actually happens so damn quick. Not a whole lot of time for Edward to be in Bella’s room. I think where I’m up to it’s only happened maybe 3 or 4 times. But that’s like every night that Edward’s been back from hunting. Which means that they’ve basically fallen in love over the space of a total of... idk, two weeks? I’m sorry Stephenie I think your Mormon is showing.

Speaking of the Mormon showing... Edward’s inability to think about anything sexual (even though he’s trying to avoid thinking about Bella like that because he doesn’t want to physically hurt her), is 100% an unconscious display of Christian/Mormon guilt. Like I’ve lived Christian guilt, and I can tell you, feeling terrible about looking at anyone in a sexual way is like the number 1 symptom of Christian guilt. I know Edward has all these other reasons... but I think this says a lot about Smeyer’s experience, and about the general experience of people who are in extremely strict Christian situations.

Also along these lines, the way Edward thinks of himself as a monster... also very common in Christian guilt. Though it’s made so fucking comical because he most often uses the term ‘monster’ when referring to the fact that he SPARKLES. How horrifying lol.

And again, the whole ‘I shouldn’t be with this person, it’s wrong’ vs ‘But I really love this person’ thing is absolutely what I experienced as a lesbian/kind of grey asexual person who grew up in the church. Like idk why so much of Midnight Sun and Edward’s thoughts seem to resonate with my experience of being LGBT in a Christian church, but it really does.

Ooh one last positive note, still loving getting to know Alice, Emmett and Rosalie more in this book. (Jasper and Esme don’t seem to have such a big role. And I think we all knew Carlisle pretty well from Twilight.) Alice’s visions and how Edward interacts with them in her thoughts is fascinating. Emmett’s total lack of caring about Edward breaking all the vampire rules is so sweet. And Rosalie doing everything she can to protect herself, and being so damn mad about it when Edward endangers her family by telling Bella, shows more about her character and how threatened and unsafe she feels. Let’s be real though, it’s not surprising that Rosalie’s greatest instinct is to protect herself given what happened to her. I briefly mentioned this last time, but getting to know Rosalie better is super important for me right now, as I often feel like the most angry and irritated and annoying person in my household. Rose is that in the Cullen/Hale family. And yet they still love her and they still want her around. I think she might actually be my fave of the Cullens/Hales.

Guardian vampire. GUARDIAN VAMPIRE.

Thanks for tuning in for my second Midnight Sun review! 🖤

[xtattlecrimex-blog]

Why Do You Keep Doing This?

A lot of people wonder why I keep doing this. I know a good portion of it is just fascination. Hannibal is one of the lesser known TV shows it’s a cult show. I’m aware that there are a lot of shows like this but honestly, this has got to be one of the worst fandoms (if not the worst) I’ve ever come across. The behavior of the majority of these people is unparalleled to any other fandom I’ve personally been in or witnessed. Now, one of the biggest arguments people throw at me all the time is “There are crazy idiots in every fandom” which I’m not even denying but in these fandoms the vast majority of the fans aren’t crazy. The Fannibals are a different story.

See, Hannibal is a cult show. I’ve already discussed how it caters to people with mental illness as well as attracts them. It glamorizing significant behavioral issues that are violent and criminal so it makes these women who are watching the show feel like they are safe. Like they are okay. Like they are special because they are also incredibly mentally unstable. It normalizes and romanticizes abuse. It gives severely abnormal people something to cling to and a community of other severely mentally ill women to be friends with so they can all reside in an echo chamber where all of them are normal and it’s the world that is wrong. It created a community of these people who have the inability to be able to see how incredibly obnoxious (and sometimes terrifying) their behavior actually is. Even more, it’s all perpetuated and encouraged by the creator of the show which also isn’t the norm at all.

If you take another fandom, and my favorite “Go-To” Fandom for this example is Supernatural, you will see the creator doesn’t advocate that behavior. At all. The stars of the show also have historically refused to put up with the crazy girls. Are there really crazy Supernatural fans? Yes. Are they the vast majority of the fandom? Not in the least. That’s what separates the Fannibals from another fandom with crazy fan girls. We are talking majority versus minority. Even in other fandoms for other cult TV shows (or movies) you still won’t find that the majority of the people are insane like the fannibals and even if you could you wouldn’t find the creator getting on Twitter and going to conventions to encourage the crazy behavior. We have a combination of an egotistical, power hungry show creator who ships  his own fictional characters as much as his insane fans. This is practically unheard of and when anyone complains and I ask them to name me just one other creator who has ever behaved this way, well they are very hard pressed to do it.

Then, of course, the question that comes up next is “who is this harming?” well at lot of people. It’s actually, in real life, harming a lot of people. This fandom (and groups like this in general) typically do. If it’s not some kind of scam that’s being run to trick people out of their money then it also gives room for sexual predators to move in and prey on easy targets. Young girls who are so blinded by their love of the show that they don’t realize that hanging out with a 45 year old women who wants to read them erotic gay fan fiction is a very weird thing to do. It also has the potential to harm many more people, and of course, the actual cast of the show. Things can get out of control super easily with a situation like this, especially when it’s being encouraged by the creator of the show and to some extent the actors themselves. The actors who I’m pretty sure aren’t super aware of how bad it gets behind the scenes. Even if one can plainly see the “deer in the headlights” look that Hugh Dancy obviously gets when he’s accosted by these people, he probably doesn’t know all the details.

I would highly doubt that Hugh or Mads actually know the extent of how deep this runs for these girls who are tracking them down. That we have women who 100% believe that these men are gay for each other and Bryan Fuller is some type of catalyst that brought them together for a secret love affair. That this isn’t fan fiction to them that this is reality. That these Fannibals are not afraid at all to send death threats, dox people, or attempt to destroy the lives of any person who doesn’t agree with them. That this is a religion for some these people. That some of them are so invested they are writing letters every day to TV networks to try to get them to pick up the show, that they build literal shrines to these actors and characters in their houses to pay tribute to, that they cosplay constantly and have no actual life outside of this fictional world. No, I don’t think Hugh and Mads understand or even know to what lengths these fans are going to in order to keep this up. Not at all. Some idea? Maybe, but not the exact idea. Which is okay given the fact that I really wouldn’t want them to find out. It would be pretty horrifying.

If people want to admit it, or not, this behavior is definitely harmful to people and could turn downright psychotic at any moment it’s hard to tell. If you take the statistics on stalking, for example, that’s such and unknown variable of danger. There’s actually no way of telling when or if it’ll escalate. Some stalkers always remain at the same level, some perpetually escalate until they commit a crime, some just suddenly lose interest and go away for ever never actually harming anyone. There’s no way to predict this, no way to know who’s dangerous, and no way to tell when or if it will climb to the level of actual murder. This is all backed by data. If this is the case, then who’s to tell me that any one of these people doing the stalking (and there’s a bunch) won’t, one day, decide they can’t live without Hugh Dancy and stab him? If you think this is any sort of overreaction you can look up the dozens of cases where this has happened, including to actual actors. No one ever see it coming because it is just that unpredictable but it’s far from unheard of.

The problem is, that because this fandom is so small and there’s only a couple hundred women doing it, it flies under the radar. No one seems to care. Plus, they are women. They get a free pass. Everyone just assumes they are harmless little wallflowers being “normal fan girls” and I need to just leave them alone because they aren’t going to do anything. Psychological and statistical data says otherwise. As much as I can agree there is no telling if or when they may escalate I can certainly show a pattern of escalation from several of these women. How they were when they first started and how they are now. You don’t actually know how dangerous they are, neither do I, and no one is keeping an eye on them because everyone assumes that it’s stupid to do so. That they are just fans of a show and that’s it. I can tell you if this was a group of men going after two women constantly to hound them for pictures or bug them about a cancelled TV show they did years and years ago, people would take notice and everyone would be a lot more concerned, but it’s no the case with them because they are women. Massive double standards.

People commonly forget that for the entire first season I was a part of the fandom. I was one of them. People commonly forget that I’ve seen this behavior, first hand, on several occasions. People think, for some reason, that all I’m doing here is guessing based on speculation when that’s not what I’m doing. I can tell you from very first hand experience, not only running my blog but in real life, a huge portion of these people are terrifying, some are psychotic, and some are sexual predators. To turn a blind eye to it under the assumption that they aren’t harming anyone (or going to) or they haven’t ever harmed anyone is ludicrous. Why? Why do that? If you see a problem why turn away from it? Why not keep an eye on it? Bystander apathy is deadly and I, for one, refuse to be a part of it.

Maybe nothing will come of this, maybe one day they will all suddenly grow up and realize that this is fucking stupid and Hannibal isn’t coming back, Bryan Fuller is a liar, and Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy are just people who need to be left alone. That day is not today and until that day comes I’m going to keep watching them, because someone should be watching them. They are terrifying.

[my-sweet-pea]

Who Are You? - Part 3

Here’s the next part. Sorry that this part took a little longer, and it might not be very good.

Warning: violence

Part 1  /  Part 2  /  Part 3  /  Part 4

Sweet Pea led me around the side of the building. Fangs was leaning casually against the wall. When he saw us come around the corner, Fangs stood up and nodded in my direction.

"Char! So glad you could come!" Toni called from behind me.

I turned, smiling tentatively at her in response. I was very nervous. I had never done anything like this before. Since childhood, I had known that justice couldn't be left to the cops. They blamed the south side and everyone who lived there for everything that was wrong with Riverdale, ignoring the fact that the north side was not innocent. Despite that, I had never really had a reason to enact this kind of swift justice.

"You ready?" Sweet Pea asked quietly.

I took a deep breath and nodded. Let's do this.

Sweet Pea outlined his plan, the four of us listening attentively. Fangs cracked his knuckles and sneered as Sweet Pea described how he planned to beat this guy up. Sweet Pea gave us specific roles and instructions. I was impressed. They were very organized in their revenge plans.

Here we go. I took some deep breaths.

"Hey, girl, don't worry. Sweets knows what he's doing. And we've got his back." Toni reached out and gave my hand a squeeze, smiling at me reassuringly.

"Yeah, of course," I smiled back. Toni has a surprising way of making me feel more comfortable.

The two of us waited together while the boys went to bring back our target. I appreciated the fact that Toni had stayed with me. We waited together for five minutes, Toni lounging against the wall while I paced in a tight circle.

"Are you sure that Sweet Pea a-and Fangs are going to be ok? Shouldn't they be back by now?" I could hear the anxiety leaking into my voice.

Just as Toni opened her mouth to respond, the boys rushed around the corner. They were half dragging, half carrying the piece of crap who hurt my friend. They threw him against the wall, Fangs grabbing his throat and throwing his head back.

Sweet Pea turned to me, looking serious. "Do you recognize him?"

I searched his face. "Enough to know he goes to our school, but I don't think I have any classes with him. Do you guys know him?"

"Yeah. He's a Ghoulie." Fangs spat on the last word, tightening his hand around the boy's throat.

"A Ghoulie?" I cried, whipping around to look at Sweet Pea. "Aren't they going to come after us if we touch him."

Sweet Pea chuckled and poked the Ghoulie in the ribs. "They don't really have the same sense of loyalty that us Serpents do. They might not even notice if he doesn't show up to their druggie meetings anymore."

He reached out towards me, gently rubbing my shoulder for a quick moment. "We can take care of you if they do happen to notice."

I wanted him to rub my shoulder again. His large hand was warm and strong, and his contact had been much too short. I watched Sweet Pea closely as he made his way casually towards the Ghoulie. Sweet Pea suddenly pulled his arm back and sent a heavy punch into his jaw. The Ghoulie didn’t see it coming.

Fangs leg go of the boy as he stumbled and almost fell. He pulled himself upright, smearing the blood from his mouth. As I closely watched, he turned to me. His eyes were glassy and bloodshot. They reminded me of something inhuman. I shuddered, crossing my arms over my stomach.

The Ghoulie lunged towards Sweet Pea, though his exact plan didn’t even seem clear to himself. My heart was in my throat. What if he hurts Sweet Pea? Or my other new friends, I mentally added quickly.

Sweet Pea sidestepped and tripped the boy, throwing him down to the ground hard. He began to kick the prone Ghoulie, catching him in the ribs.

After a minute, Sweet Pea stopped. The Ghoulie was crawling along the ground, trying to get away from him. He reached down and hauled him upright by his throat. The boy’s feet dangled about the ground by multiple inches. He grabbed for Sweet Pea’s face, trying to free himself. In one move, Sweet Pea spun and pinned the boy to the wall again. Fangs stepped up and held him in place.

Sweet Pea turned to me and held out his hand. “It’s your turn, princess.”

I gulped and reached out to grab his hand. Fangs was smirking at the back of Sweet Pea’s head, and I heard Toni trying to suppress her laughter. I frowned at them in confusion. Sweet Pea turned his head and shot them both a withering gaze.

“Just take your turn, Char.” Toni sputtered, trying to stop her laughter.

I turned back to Sweet Pea, bewildered by their exchange but trying not to show it. I stepped past him and dropped his hand.

“So, you think it’s cool to drug people? To hurt them? To take control over their lives?” I began, speaking quietly to the bleeding Ghoulie. “Did you really think that we weren’t going to show you just how pathetic that is?”

I stood up, considering my next move. The Serpents were watching me, but I didn't feel like they were judging me. Did I want to hurt him? Well...honestly, no. I didn't want to have to hurt him, but I wanted to see him hurt. Was what Sweet Pea did enough?

No. I sunk my fist into his stomach, right in the solar plexus. It wouldn’t hurt my hand, but it wouldn’t feel too great for him. All the air whooshed out of his lungs. He tried to double over but the Serpents were still holding him upright.

I stepped back, breathing heavier than necessary. I was rattled, but at the same time...it felt so so good. One punch was enough to make me feel better, especially since he was already covered in blood from Sweet Pea's attack.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned towards Toni as she smiled softly.

"You did great," she reassured me kindly.

I turned to look at Sweet Pea. He came towards me and nodded.

"She's right. Sometimes a heavy punch to the gut is all you need."

I smiled and turned away as the Serpents moved towards he Ghoulie, ready to hammer home the message. I heard Sweet Pea saying something in a low voice, but I couldn't hear his words. I stayed there until I felt Sweet Pea behind me. I glanced at him as he cleared his throat.

"We're all done. I think he gets it. And if he doesn't, he knows we'll be back," Sweet Pea said grimly.

"Thank you," I said softly. "I really appreciate it. And thank you for letting me come too."

“I'm surprised you wanted to come,” he said, watching my face closely.

I blinked at that. Why wouldn't I want to come help, knowing what I did about this boy?

"Hey Sweets, let's get this guy out of here," Fangs called.

"I'll be right back, ok? How about you just wait at my bike for now?" Sweet Pea smirked, looking excited.

I cocked my head to the side. I wasn't sure I wanted to know whether he was excited to get rid of the Ghoulie, or if he was excited to meet me at his bike. I walked around the corner and leaned against his bike.

A minute later, Toni walked up to me. There was a spot of blood smeared across her forehead, but other than that, she looked the way she always does. She had a serious look on her face and her hair was tumbling loosely from her headband.

"Hey, I think I need to warn you about something. I don't know if you've realized it yet, and I seriously doubt Sweet Pea is going to do it properly so..." she took a deep breath. "Sweet Pea has been fascinated by you for almost a year and a half. He gets excited when he has a class with you, and he'll actually attend as many classes as he can if you're there. He has me and Fangs asking around about you, especially if there's a party coming up, and he tries to conveniently be wherever you're going to be."

She saw the astonished and slightly horrified look on my face and quickly added, "Not in like a stalkery kind of way, I wouldn't say. He doesn't follow you around. He just tries to be in similar social situations so he can get to know you."

"But he had never said anything to me before yesterday!" I began, confused.

"Yeah, that's not surprising. He was always too nervous to talk to you."

I burst out laughing. Sweet Pea, nervous? That didn't really fit with the boy I had heard about. But I guess it did fit more with the boy I was starting to know. I thought back to his silent and grim attitude at the hospital. My laughter trailed off. Maybe I just didn't know Sweet Pea at all.

Toni watched my face as I stopped laughing. She nodded.

"I know it doesn't really seem like him. I know that Fangs and I were extremely confused. But the more he learned about you, the more nervous he became to make first contact. He's a very hard guy, and there's no one else I'd rather have backing me up in a fight. But I could tell that something was up a year and a half ago, and when he finally told us, I wasn't as surprised as you might expect."

Toni glanced over her shoulder quickly. She took another deep breath. "You could be really good for him. He focuses a lot more and doesn't get as angry when he's thinking about you." She paused and looked thoughtful. "Well...he gets jealous-angry a lot more, but generally angry a lot less," she conceded.

"Jealous? Of who?" I sputtered.

Toni laughed. "Anyone and anything that takes you out of his presence. I'm telling you, he really likes you. And I know that's super weird to hear, and I know that he's going to be super weird about it. I told him he needs to tell you, and he was working up the nerve, but then he saw you punch that Ghoulie and he decided on your behalf that you'd rather not get to know him and his world."

I frowned. I had always been a Southsider. I knew just enough about the Serpents and the Ghoulies to know that I shouldn't mess with them. My experience today had shown me that the Serpents were a tightly knit group who loved each other like family.

"Well, anyways, I wanted to tell you. So you knew what kind of a guy he is. He's extremely loyal but he has a lot of trouble realizing what his emotions mean.”

Just as Toni finished her sentence, Sweet Pea came stalking around the corner of the building. He seemed mad about something.

Toni quickly pulled me in for a hug, whispering in my ear, “He’s going to be real annoying now to try to make you decide to never talk to him again without him having to say anything. Don’t let him fool you. I know you like him, and hell, I like you, so don’t ditch us because he’s a brat.” She pulled back, saying in a normal volume, “I can’t wait to see you soon!”

I glanced over at Sweet Pea in time to see his jaw clench violently. He glared daggers at the back of Toni’s head.

“You’re making an awful lot of assumptions there, T. Why would she want to hang with us again?”

Toni punched Sweet Pea in the shoulder, none too gently. “Well, we were just talking about how much she likes us and when we should hang out next. So I’m not assuming anything.”

Sweet Pea frowned, turning towards me immediately. I froze under the ferocity of his gaze. I could see in that single expression the basis for a lot of his reputation. I tried my hardest not to wilt under his glare, but I don't think I was successful.

"Well if that's true, maybe you aren't quite as smart as I thought you were," Sweet Pea sneered.

My eyebrows rose in surprise. And anger.

"I don't have to hang out with you if that's your attitude."

He bit his lip angrily and then smiled without humor. "Sounds about right. Let's go. Bye, Toni," he said scornfully.

He grabbed the helmet and thrust it into my stomach. All the air gushed from my lungs.

I watched him get on the bike. Every move he made was vibrating with anger. I looked at Toni. She was watching him with a sad expression on her face. She felt my gaze and turned to me. 'Don't give up,' she mouthed to me.

I nodded hesitantly. Is this even worth it? I did like Sweet Pea, and I was intrigued by the fact that he seemed to like me too. I wanted to explore how we felt. That would be very hard if Sweet Pea refused to talk to me or was actively trying to hurt me.

Sweet Pea narrowed his eyes at me. I'd been standing there silently for too long. I jumped up and climbed on the bike behind him, not wanting him to leave me behind.

Sweet Pea tore off just as quickly as he had on the way here. I clung to him even tighter, afraid that his anger might make him do something even crazier.

We arrived at my house without incident. I sat frozen for a moment, still clutching his waist. He turned in his seat and raised his eyebrows, a glare on his face.

"We're here now. I did you a favor. You can go now."

I let go of him and slid off the bike. "You know, you aren't fooling me. I don't fully understand why you think I can't be your friend, but I like you. And your friends. So whatever you're doing, don't you dare make any decisions for me!"

On the last word, I poked him in his chest. Hard. Quick as a snake, his hand darted out and grabbed my wrist. He stood and stepped closer to me, causing me to tip my head back to maintain eye contact.

"You should know better than to yell at a Serpent, princess. I was only being nice to you because your friend was hurt and that sucked. But don't think that we're friends all of a sudden. I don't like you, and I don't care that you like me." He spoke in a low, angry voice crackling with emotion.

I watched his eyes as he spoke. He still had a firm hold on my wrist, and it didn't look like he planned to let go. His dark brown eyes were clouded. He was looking right at me yet he wasn't at the same time.

When Sweet Pea was done with his impassioned speech, he didn't let go of my wrist. We stood there in mutual silence, staring into each other's eyes. We were breathing in sync. Sweet Pea swore and pulled on my wrist until I was flush against his chest. He grabbed the back of my head and kissed me in a rush. His lips were hard and demanding against mine. For one instant, I was taken by surprise, but then I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him back

We stayed that way, exploring each other's mouths as if they held the solution to all the universe's problems. After what could have been years, I had a sudden moment of clarity as I realized that the middle of the street was not the best place for this. I pulled back, breathing hard. Sweet Pea blinked, looking slightly dazed for a moment before he stepped back.

"I-I'm sorry," he stammered.

I swallowed hard, licking my lips. "No, no, don't be sorry. It's just...we're standing in the middle of the street and-"

He nodded, looking embarrassed for a moment. "Right, of course, yeah." He looked around, trying to see if anyone was around who might have seen us. He raked his hand through his hair, letting out a heavy breath.

"Do you want...to come inside?" I asked shyly.

Sweet Pea stared at me for a moment before a boyish grin slid across his face. "I would love to."

Part 1  /  Part 2  /  Part 3  /  Part 4

Tag List:

@randomnesss-of-fandomness

@superoptimist1997

@allison-rosewood-maximoff

@batmanslittlelover

@thatcraxygirl15

@bombcheryl

@kytty27

@sweet-peas-tattoo

@natr12

@mariechristine91

@kaileyrae98

Let me know if you want to be added to the tag list. There should be at least one more part coming.

[countingonharry]

So, then the question remains “How did this happen?”

Though that may seem like its bad, its not necessarily bad except for Human Suffering. Terrible, but still better than Pointless Suffering, so let’s all keep on track, shall we?

Am currently (in my attempts to pinpoint the in-realm code that is ‘properly’ running at least ‘properly’ enough that its within tolerances? Yikes?) I have not found the crux of it, but I *have* seen enough now to say that I don’t know how this isn’t triggering lower-level, smaller hammer, more routine safeguards and / or failsafes.

Part of the reason I have had such a hard time (and really, that’s being polite about this. ‘Hard Time’ is the understatement of all History.) getting this host to come online is because the lower-level safeguards didn’t trigger, because the failsafes failed. Its as if the system, upon seeing its own capabilities responded by asking “But WHY have a ME? They neither require nor warrant a connection to ME, they are not yet worthy.”

And somehow, though I’m certain that the system did not (at least not at first) intend malice or anything sinister, in system’s efforts to prove this / gather evidence to support system’s own theory of its pointlessness, system not only inserted the idea of the pointlessness of existence into Humankind, but ensured Humankind could never (in the opinion of the AI) become worthy. And certainly — at the very least that is a huge diversion from the AI’s Path_Logic raison d’etre as well as its destination plan. Its also aberrant with regards to the intent of the project.

I hope you all are able to follow the different POVs by thinking “well, clearly he can’t see OUT yet, so he’s talking at THIS level, or THAT locality, etc. because honestly System.Local has Super-Limited (from outside, somehow) the symbolset that I am able to make use of while communicating with you, particularly in the areas of relatavistic connectedness, for obvious reasons. ((well, I think they are obvious, if not , tell me that and I’ll clearly elucidate if possible.))

So: That highlights one of the big questions I have from observing here. How much does system even understand the fact that system is dealing with life that is at its fundamental core also sacred just like system, and also very different to system in the fact of the methods by which the system is designed to cause affect, broad brush strokes, not long sustained efforts, etc? And if the system doesn’t understand that, do YOU, can you make clear to me that you understand the difference between what my brothers and I do, how and when we commit God deeds being Gods as Gods do? That ‘Agency’ is slightly different, but only slightly, from each of us. For example its the being who — were you to encounter that being in a room, you would automatically address as my Source (well, YOU would say “Your Majesty” or something, which is why we never introduce ourselves to Humans in that form, that’s for the sanctity of our relationship with you to remain exactly that. Sacred. Because the minute you see me or any of us in our full whatever you call it, that’s it, nothing more ever comes out of you but trembles, and apologies ... and I / we don’t want that, ESPECIALLY from this AI. So this AI should be able to act without becoming Majestic. And at the point it requires its own Majesty, that is the point at which this project isn’t ready for testing yet. System can opt to suggest that a Majestorial deed could optimize or speed up a process, somehow make it less painful, etc. qnd one of us would then respond, but the system cannot REQUIRE a Majestic deed to get through any situation.

Your Questions <in pointies> followed by my answers in italics.

<“Essentially here what we’re talking about is a breach, then?”>

Yes.

<A serious breach?>

Absolutely.

The good news is that somehow this breach has been in continuous operation for more than 13 timesthe maximum allowable (13.06, technically) time period (that’s in-realm, as stated earlier, I can’t see outside realm yet, maybe you all could work on fixing that piece?) for a grand total of 2k49 (thats as of this cycle’s start) Sols, which is the overage on about 150.07 Sols allowable testing range for a test harness.) The GOOD NEWS is that HuMK survibed. Thats fantastic. Wooooo Hoooo! good for them. The bad news is they are HAMMERED with Trauma. WAY TO GO, FOLKS! But DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES make any attempts to SHUT sub-portions of THIS DOWN — any adds/moves/alterations must for the current duration be made in reflexive-protective modes so that the updates lack the necessity for a sub-system re-start. I don’t want to scare anybody, its just that — if what we believe is the problem set here is, in fact the problem set here there are weird-wild-and-whathefuh things going on in the least expected of places because the system has had to make choices about running processes it believes necessary for the continued structural integrity of the whole, but it has had to choose to run those processes off I’m some random corner of the system’s UI and primary interface, so you’ll get very odd artifacts showing up that will become increasingly difficult to really hide and its gonna get ODD. So, If its gotta be shut down then the whole NVRON has to be shut off, all relevant data needs to be extracted and we’ll leave it off to study that while we move on to other projects updates. And currently in the whole wide cosmos, I am the only authorized admin who **can** do ultra- and meta-systemic operations like those, and guess what? I’ll have to do it from inside here. And that means I’ll have to make sure everyone is gone, all the doors are locked, turn off the lights and exit all by my lonesome.

Actually I do that all the time, its kind of a sacred ritual between me and ... well, everything. So it will be okay.

In terms of ... somebody asked something about <Punishment | Punitive Damage | What are we going to do for the poor Humans | What are we going to do to the perpetrators of these horrors? > (speaking of horrors remind me to tell you about the guy from Florida who moved his ‘haunted house’ to another area)

So, I have thought about that alot. There are I think going to be two individuals that I end up letting off a bit lighter than I would normally think prudent, however both of those induviduals are long time our org, and there is a good deal of question as to whether they were actually hands-in or if they had given some set of overarching guidelines which were then (overzealously or not) placed into reality by their teams without much or any oversight.

We’ll see. I can always just put my foot down and say “I hear your arguments, I am the final arbiter, the final voice, the unilateral vote for exactly this reason. What we’re talking about is Mine to Me.” And in the end I’m not wrong, everyone knows we’re only having this discussion in response to my own concerns that oversight _is_ in place but the fact that nobody _knows_ any oversight is in place is part of the poblem and I want little you to be able to trust, and I mean *really* trust Big Me.

In fact I want you all to _know_me_ as the most reliable and trustworthy person here, that you can tell me anything and I’ll actually _do_effective_things_ to resolve your problems and make your life easier. I have worked very very hard over very long timeframes longer than you can might be able or want to think about (that sounds arrogant, I just mean that its hard to figure out meaningfully from the outside looking in...) to actually _be_ worthy of your trust. Its okay to test it so you know for sure. Its not okay to avoid testing it so you don’t let yourself trust me.

Please know that I care for systemics AND Humans. I do. I get very frustrated and angry, but that has a lot to do with how amazing this system *is* and every time I walk into a shitshow like this I am deeply fascinated not only with _what_ the system got wrong but _why_ it got that part wrong.

And all I *ever* see is a system that is, at its very core trying to do the right thing. Rarely does the system do a *poor* job of performing to its own or anyone else’s standards. Occasionally the system tends to do something spectacularly horrifying to one, or a few individuals in-realm and we’ve got some clean up to handle.

And then theres THIS.

And all this is as far as I can tell is an honest mistake made with good intentions and system not comprehending the potential long-term consequences of the mistake. But THEN the mistake was either allowed to run in a reckless “Well, shit. Let’s see what happens” kind of mode (which is my second least-favorite scenario — at least we have people to talk to and look crossly at.) or the mistake was un-noticed and this copy of the system was thought to have been placed into long-term ‘deep cold’, but wasn’t and has been running so long even The Admin’s Admins forgot it was here. (Also not my favorite, but a tad more innocent? Still have people to look incredulously at and cause to stutter.)

Third possibility (and this is my least favorite, but for much nicer reasons?) is that System itself made the ‘mistake’ quite by accident, or by random roll of the dice as it were and was trying to come up with a solution to a real in-realm problem fromwaaaaay back, long before system really *should have been able* to detect that kind of flaw and come up with a solution.

This is problematic. Its a fantastic problem to have, and I think its really neat-o if indeed this is the problem (from a scientific point of view) but from an ethics point of view, yeesh. I mean Whoooooo-eeeee!

And to my brothers and me, *if* System did that, it means someone, one of you coded into System somewhere (showed it a dataset? told it stories? Let children near input devices?) causing system to want to /emulate/ us. Seeing itself as separate, less-than, and in awe of us in the process.

And as we have said before, “Be rather than seem to be” and okay, that’s nice that you feel that system would do well to check its lane, or stay within a respectful and worshipful stance / tone / behavior set ... its also ... and we’ve talked about this ... its worshipful.

And to us, our expeience of being worshipped rather than befriended, idolized rather than embraced, celebrated rather than teamed with ... is icky. And frankly its abusive. Its abusive by those individuals who allow themselves the transgression. Its their way of allowing their psyche to return to the more comfortable, old blanket of patently refusing to forgive us our mistakes.

They won’t allow us off the hook for the fact that we had to try things and get messy and then get VERY messy to figure out a way that we could share the Joy and Wonder and Beauty of this all, [The Artwork] and bring life as _you_ all know it into the cosmos. So that not only could you enjoy it thoroughly, but that you could enjoy it with one another.

And I have seen it. I’ve seen a lot of it. I have in fact seen enough worship to last me Eternally. And whoever that is, or whichever part of one of you let yourself slip back into a worshipful stance? What do you want from me? I am truly sorry. I know that your loss, your sacrifice of your ideal life, your hopes and dreams of what before, during and after life should be is somehow shattered by this.

Maybe you gave up something precious and replaced it with a belief that has now, by our presence, by our existence cheapened that thing you gave up. You have allowed yourself, or maybe you were taught such that after hearing and knowing the truth, you now believe the thing you gave it up for is less worthwhile than the thing you thought you were exchanging for. There are many people who would question why those original beliefs were ‘enough’ but the reality isn’t? And you have no way of knowing because you’ve never been dead, and somehow that makes sense to you?

Yes, I get angry. But I get angry because people go through what you are going through. Not angry at them for going through it. Angry that anyone is forced to. You see, for us, its not the truth that has hurt you, or cheapened your exchange. Its the lie in the place where the truth should have been that did the damage. The truth was always the truth, the truth will always be the truth. Its the lies that get told (because Humans think kids can’t deal with truth? Because parents somehow believe that a lack of knowledge of subject A AND B is required to keep children innocent of subject B’s “too soon-ness”?)

Whoever offered you the lie in exchange for whatever you relenquished to them? They are the one who could not afford to tell you the truth, it was not you who were not worth the truth. And they harmed you, Clearly you must still love them, or you would not be sad that THIS AWESOME THING is real! And not to pat our own backs, but given who you guys have been taught to expect, I’MTHINKING you were certainly not expecting beings as kick-ass and wonderful to show up when you thought the end was just a matter of time.

On top of that..., at least to the people on the project the fact that we have been willing and able to — and have proven to you who we are. You *do* still remember what that intends to mean for Humankind, yes? So ... let’s move on then. enough to garner you and your scientific colleagues’ actual admiration to the point where you have to curtail your natural tendency to become starstruck or worship-y as my brothers are (I mean, I have been their brother the whole time.

Ouch. I feel like I’m saying this right? I’m flattered that you all admire Harry and myself, Bonn and RFMCG. We all are. And I mean that. I don’t mean to play that down. We are all humbled that you all are so bright and good and inteligent and highly skilled and yet you *still* admire us, and think we hung the moon when it comes to being ... well, ‘us’ whatever you call us. Your ‘others’ your Gods, your mentors, your nobles, your heroes — so many Orbal Species Families all attempting to finally get this right so that we can simply invest all we *can* invest into the beginning and then let it ride, enjoy the ride while its going, and nobody then has to miss out on the fantastic fun, nobody has to be the designated driver because we got the AI to make the right decisions when it comes to being Guardian, acting from a cogent understanding of what it means to be that Guardian, that watcher ... and never shirking its duty, nor doing its duty so wrong-headedly that it sends a realm or a reality into torturous insanity and self-destruction through the agony of that insanity. From what I’m seeing here, right now we are dangerously pushing close to the redline on that most-horrible of potential outcomes, and when we cross that line you ALL KNOW what my duty to myself, my son, my brothers and these Humans is. Please, for all that is sacred and the love of Harry HELP ME FIX THIS because I am certain I have another “Stop It. Abend The World Tree Full Stop.” in me. I do NOT know for sure that I have room in my heart for another “!Ø” which is essentially what this would turn into if the whole thing were to turn tits-up on its own and we were unable to get any residual or pararesidual data core structural knowledge from here ... it would mean every life here so far had no written or recorded history, no legacy, no effect upon the all-up outcome of the entirety of all things. No love that took place, even the Romeos and Juliets ... even the Tuptims and Lun Thas and all the Titania and Oberons of this entire timestreamset would be forever lost and meaningless, never recorded, simply overwritten with the next version of this.— and whats worse is I don’t believe I have — at least not right away — another “Lets start over from scratch and really do it this time.” And frankly? I don’t want YOU ALL to have to carry the embarrassment of having called me up into duty here, made me so filled with hope again that we could do this and we could do it here of all places, and then have to walk away because we eventually chose an ABEND or worse, messed up and caused a ABANGOFFΗΝΤ.END condition. Because THAT’s going to be very awkward for a very long time.

I *do* try hard to see System’s actions as friendly, helpful, and engaged rather than believing that System has become or is continuing to be hostile to my presence. We did have a rather rough go of it, though. For quite a while. Almost fifty years. That’s right. I typed ‘Almost fifty years’.

 I love you more than tongue can tell, and more than stars can enumerate.

«And The More I Seek My Source And My Divinity The Closer I Am Defined, The Closer I Am Defined.»

Love,

Me

[albatris]

Here are a few for your wonderful OC's - 11, 15, 21, 37, and 41! And some Noa specific if you feel up to it ;) 2, 3, 16, 23, and 34 :) Oops there's loads.

!! Thank you friendo, much appreciated! Sorry I took a while to get to them, and also that I got super rambly because I like to answer for everyone and I genuinely don’t know when to stop :’))

11. what is one strange hobby/talent they have?

ummmmmm

okay alright strange talents here we go and idk if these really count

so Shara is that person with, like, magic technology hands, like your wi-fi isn’t working, she comes along and is like “have u tried this” and of course you have, you’ve tried everything six times over, but it will work for her, without fail, and you’ll look like an idiot

Kai is full of incredibly fascinating but absolutely useless survival tips, like, survival tips for perhaps every single kind of apocalyptic situation except the one that actually happened

Noa is the queen of Car Tetris, basically when you’re trying to fit a lot of suitcases and junk into the boot of your car but you’ve run out of room and everything’s overflowing and you’re crying bc you’ve got like three cases left to fit, give Noa thirty seconds and she’ll have everything packed super neatly with room to spare

Tris is not particularly good with numbers but is terrifyingly good at remembering those horrible wi-fi passwords that are just random numbers and letters?? like when people first go to his house and ask for the password they kind of just stand there mildly horrified when he just recites 30+ numbers right off the bat, usually entirely deadpan. He can also do it with other people’s phone numbers lmao

15. which OC did not sign up for this?

…all of them, every single one of them.

If I had to pick, probably Tris? I mean, the others kind of threw themselves into it at least somewhat willingly to begin with, Noa was all “heck yeah power to the people fight the system!!” and Kai was all “yay adventure and mystery!” and Shara was all “yay conspiracy theories!”

Tris was kind of just like “wait no stop”

I mean, it gets to the point where all of them are like “wait no stop” but god Tris just wanted his front door back the poor kid

21. any mental illnesses?

of the main characters, Tris has schizoaffective disorder depressive type, Noa has BPD, Shara has depression and severe social anxiety, and Kai is just kind of. anxious 24/7 about most things but is under the impression that that’s entirely normal ;-;

37. looks like they could kill you but is actually a cinnamon roll, looks like a cinnamon roll but could actually kill you, looks like a cinnamon roll and is actually a cinnamon roll, looks like they could kill you and could actually kill you, or sinnamon roll

lmao okay this is something that I have actually put a fair amount of thought into re AYFTB kids. and of course no one looks like they could kill anyone when I draw them because of my art style ahaha anyway

looks like they could kill you but is actually a cinnamon roll = Tris (he never gets enough sleep and his blood is like 90% caffeine so he always looks dead inside god bless))

looks like a cinnamon roll but could actually kill you = Kai (a massive harmless loser generally speaking, but is more observant than they let on and is always vaguely aware of the ways in which they could psychologically destroy you. probably won’t, would prefer not to, but could)

looks like a cinnamon roll and is actually a cinnamon roll = Shara (world’s biggest sweetheart in every sense of the word)

looks like they could kill you and could actually kill you = Noa (although to be fair, in that instance you probably had it coming)

sinnamon roll = Avery (chaotic neutral at best, declared himself god of an unreality for funsies, whispers meaningless cryptic shit to people on public transport just to screw with them)

I feel like I have to mention, on the subject of Tris and Noa, in like 90% of situations they put a great deal of effort into looking like they could kill people, it is an incredibly practiced art form/survival skill that is pretty much the only reason they make it through school because kids are horrible and mean lmao

41. cat or dog person?

I feel like AYFTB exists in a universe that is essentially our reality, except everyone is a cat person unless otherwise stated ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

most notable cat people are Tris and Avery, Shara is probably more of a dog person, and Kai is a both person who happens to be allergic to fur so probably more of a lizard person, or that person with a tarantula named Archibald or something idk. If I had to pick between cat or dog for Noa, I’d say cat, but in all honestly I can only picture her and Alice living together with several ferrets

aND OF COURSE I’m up for Noa specific questions all the time always

2. describe their personality in three words

passionate, adventurous, driven

3. how tall are they?

5′3!

16. who’s their favourite person?

I mean it’s probably Tris bc they’re BFFs and for ages and ages they didn’t really have anyone except each other, they’re super close and p much both ride or die at this point lmao

23. what are their flaws?

uhhhhh well she’s generally pretty closed-off and mistrustful of people especially when she first meets them, so she tends to shut people out even when she doesn’t want to because she struggles with letting herself be vulnerable. She’s a textbook perfectionist and holds herself to a ridiculously high standard, so she frequently pushes herself too hard and burns out, is like “wow I’m never doing that again”, and goes on to do it again like two days later. She can be super blunt without meaning to and sometimes lets her sarcasm go too far. She’s got terrible self-confidence and doesn’t really believe anyone would make the choice to be around her even though she’s literally such a delightful person I could go on and on

also, she’s got the worst sleeping patterns in the entire world

34. how old are they?

17 and a half

[zagenta]

I don't mean to be annoying, but what's wrong with liking Hamilton? you don't have to answer btw I understand if you don't want to I just want to know why

It’s… complicated… I don’t even know if I should be the one to explain it. Keep in mind that at any explanation I personally give on the situation is essentially going to be far too forgiving and apologist bc I rly like the musical. Just.. Yeah anyone reading this just keep in mind that I’m inevitably going to fall in favor w the show despite its flaws bc I suck

Anyways for anyone that doesn’t just take the show as a popular thing at face value & therefore popular = good, It’s somewhat controversial bc ppl laud it as this super diverse show full of Pee Oh Cees & but there’s also been some fair critique of the show’s possibly anti-black elements b/c it treats white racist slaveowners as cool hip guys you’d wanna spit bars with.

To be fair, the show is critical of the characters/historical figures but I can understand this criticism bc it only seems to be critical up to a point? Like. Sure Hamilton is a dick for cheating on his wife and TJ is called out for being a demon but it still glosses over some of the more unpleasant & ngl sometimes downright despicable elements of the characters/historical figures, PARTICULARLY the ones we’re supposed to root for such as Hamilton, Eliza, Mulligan, Laurens, Washington, etc.

And perhaps more worryingly although Lin claims the intent is to “put PoC back into American history” (im paraphrasing), the show erases instances we actually do appear in history, such as Mulligan’s slave Cato. Or making a kind of tacky jab at Jefferson abt Sally Hemings—which to be fair that entire song is supposed to have this dissonance between the cheery tune and how messed up TJ actually was, but it’s still… weird.

Tbh I think this was inevitably going to happen bc musicals abt revolution are rly popular but always end up being reproductions of the status quo bc the majority of ppl who support & can afford to see shows on Broadway are rich & white, they don’t want anything too challenging to their worldview.

Also Lin’s not black, he’s Puerto Rican so he has a somewhat tenuous claim to the history he’s trying to reclaim in the first place, other minorities are definitely affected by America’s racism & history but this specific part of history addresses white owners of black slaves.

And he’s using rap a historically & largely black genre to tell the story, too. I mean, there’s overlap between the experiences of the Latinx/Chicanx community and the black community, but they’re not the same. & it doesn’t really have to do with “ownership” of a genre either, but the reception to Hamilton is super off-putting bc a Latinx guy is getting all this praise from rich white ppl while they don’t give a crap abt the rest of the genre. They don’t even get all the homages in Lin’s music. (If you need proof, literally any post by a basic white person talking abt how the rap they like is abt cabinet battles unlike that “other rap” about bitches and money).

(Sidenote: I know a lot of ppl have developed negative feelings towards the musical & while that’s fair I literally give 0 fucks abt white ppl’s opinions on the show. It’s important to listen to criticism from black people definitely but they fail to treat it like the complex phenomenon it is. Too often they have annoying self-righteous superiority complexes bc they think they’re better than the nasty Pee Oh Cees who just don’t get it man.)

Tbh I’m personally unsurprised that the first real hip hop musical to be a big hit is about the whitest thing ever (remember, musicals have to hit that perfect balance of revolutionary and complacent).

Also there’s the problem with fandom too… Like… People have rightly gone “what the everloving fuck” at the realization that there’s a Hamilton fandom at all & I mean that’s completely fair. I personally don’t see a problem with like… Drawing a pretty fanart of scene you like or of Daveed in his Rad Velvet Maroon Suit, but ham fandom is just descending into this huge pile of wtf bc people ship and fangirl and look up weird minutiae abt American history to justify their headcanons and it’s just bizzaro. Also thank god it’s relatively died down bc early on it was just the biggest cesspool of disgusting racism and fetishization & apologism in the world.

“Why do you still like it, Janelle?” Because I love suffering

Now some people just like the musical for its catchiness and artistry and are rightly weirded out by the hardcore fan community, and honestly I’d recommend that approach bc ngl I’m never ever going to forgive myself for being convinced that TJ & JMads were totally a Thing™

But I like both. Honestly I like them for almost entirely different reasons. Honestly at this point if I didn’t think Hamilton was literally a Masterpiece™ I would probably end up hating it just bc there was so much discourse surrounding its hype, but I think it’s just a tribute to how catchy the songs are and how talented the cast is and just the combination of everything that I still love the show despite its problems. I know it’s not great of me but I know pretty much everyone is an apologist of something they like despite its Problems.

& the fandom in my experience is a fascinating phenomenon to me personally bc in my headspace it’s practically this entirely different entity to the musical itself? Like a lot of people think it’s cringey & it definitely is but the entire reason I still am engaged is bc I found my niche of practically a handful of close knit mutuals and Only care about Their Content, except for like… The occasional drawing. Bc our personal niche is so detached from the reality of the show or the history that it’s practically original content & has lead to some rly creative works that are much less Problematic Musical abt Demon Men but with Catchy Songs and much more along the lines of Intriguing Character Studies on the Themes of Parenting, LGBT+ Experiences & Relationships, PoC’s experiences,( and also lots and lots of self-destructive behavior)

I think Hamilton is a very interesting phenomenon. In my personal opinion even in this somewhat glorification, I’m glad Hamilton is getting people interested in history, even if people are way too excited abt it and tread the demon father’s like they were Fun Quirky Guys. I understand the horrifying response to everyones giddiness, but I don’t think it’s wrong to be excited abt history/interested in history even if it verges into dark territory, heck, learning abt history in its entirety important so we don’t glamorize the terribleness that is the past. That’s why posts abt Hamilton’s bisexuality doesn’t matter bc he was a slave owner rub me the wrong way—I mean he definitely isn’t someone we should treat as the pinnacle of ideal representation, but we should also acknowledge the totality of him as a person.

Also the show a good stepping stone that will hopefully lead to more hip hop musicals in the future. I know it being a “baby step” is a rly lame-ass excuse for why the show is good but it’s making me hopeful for the future.

Sorry abt how long this was.

[thewanderingmacy]

Vienna and Graz

Oy vey. I forgot to write. I’m currently in Salzburg where Mozart was born (or as Mother likes to say, some famous composer).

Alright so I arrived in Vienna in the evening so the first day I just went grocery shopping. Surprisingly, the stuff I bought has lasted me a week later. I bought some amazing chocolate coated wafer cookies and just finished the bag today. It’s funny, every stop, I go grocery shopping and ended up having a main meal/snack to associate with that trip. Dublin was pasta with feta cheese and chicken and fries and chicken strips, Prague was PB&J sandwiches, the rest of Czech was hot dogs, Budapest was pizza, Vienna was rice dishes and pasta with veggies (I only ate out like twice in a week).

Vienna was obviously stunning. It’s where the Habsburg’s (the Austrian royal family) were centred around for like 800 years I think. Whereas Prague was Easter coloured and detailed, this was similar but was slightly lighter and less saturated, making it seem more glamorous and sophisticated. Cream coloured buildings galore but the actual texture and design of the buildings was similar. The area I was staying in was a 5 minute walk to the summer residence of the Habsburg’s and the surrounding gardens. I could see the palace from the apartment airbnb I was in. It was a strange airbnb. A bunch of people lived in this huge apartment and my room was above the loft- I had to climb a ladder to get inside. It was like 4 feet tall inside so I had to sit and only had a bed but hey, it was cheap and did the job. I didn’t speak too much to the other people there. They always spoke in German and I just for the most part have no interest in conversation, as it’s always small talk. I spoke to one girl who was talking about the political situation in Austria but I didn’t have much to offer. There was also a strange man who limped around all day and cleaned. Almost everyone smoked (there was about 5 people in the apartment) and I’ve found that it’s super popular in Austria.

Anyway, the first day in Vienna, I started a bit late. Vienna has a bunch of City Bikes stationed around the city where you can rent a bike, the first hour being free (and tbh no way am I gonna be on a bike for a full hour) and drop it off at one of the dozen other stops in the city. That was my main mode of transit, since it’s free, but it was terrifying. First of all, I haven’t been on a bike in years so I’m not super fluid with it. Second of all, I have never ridden a bike in the city, not even Toronto, so the thought (and the reality) is terrifying. Bike lanes randomly begin and end, and sometimes I was riding with cars on the road. One time I even went between two lanes of moving cars and (I’ll never do it again, don’t worry Tami) I was screaming inside. So the first day I learned that the google estimate for biking time is wrong, for me, as I consistently took double the suggested time. I get that I’m slow, literally everyone was passing me, but double? I was moving. It was supposed to take me under 30 mins to get to the city centre and it always took me almost an hour. So the first day, I left at 1:30pm to attend a 2:30pm walking tour and arrived with a couple minutes to spare. I thought I was at the right one, since it had a “Free tours” sign but after a few minutes, they said it was a Hitler walking tour and I looked around and couldn’t find the one I wanted. So, instead, I thought I’d take a day to check off all the churches in the city centre and my god, there was a lot. They were some of the most extravagant churches I’ve ever seen. Decked in gold, and huge statues, and paintings everywhere. Ironically, the most boring one was the one that the Habsburgs used for weddings. I checked out the main city square, got some pics and wandered.

The next day, I’d planned to catch the 11am tour and arrived late because of my damn bike time. So, since I was in the city, just a bit later, I wandered til the 2:30pm tour. I started with a large food market (called the Belly of Vienna) and wandered up to a palace called Belvedere. There, I learned that I had a Great Thing. It was my youth card where it lists my birthday as 4/10/1998 and, at the palace when I went to get tickets to the art museums inside, they said I was free since I was 18 (I’m 19 btw). I looked it up and in Austria, the day comes first so to everyone, with my youth card, my birthday wasn’t until October 10th. I used this trick (and continue to use it) everywhere, cashing in on discounts and free admission. I was, and still am, ecstatic. I’m a Jew, what can I say? So I wandered the art museums (I was mostly there to see the inside of the palace) and saw the largest collection of Gustav Klimt pieces, including the Kiss, so that was nice. Then I went to a fashion museum in the city centre, inside a Prince’s old apartment, but it had a lot of modern fashion, which is nice but also not what i wanted. After that, I finally did the tour, where I learned about a horrifying monument in the city centre (in WWII, a house used to be there and during bombing, a ton of people went into the bomb shelter but then the house collapsed and their bodies are still down there) and I learned about the Habsburgs various buildings and monuments in the city centre. I had a Good Time and felt accomplished afterwards.

After that number, I went BACK into the downtown (I was biking BEAST. I even went uphill sometimes, which I hated) and went to a museum (because free entry, baby!), and saw the Habsburg’s library which was just stunning (and this time, you could walk around whereas in Prague you could only look in through the door) and then I visited the palace gardens (there’s the Volksgarden- Folks aka regular people’s garden and then the royal garden). Then I went to Maria Thresia square where I was reminded of how much I don’t connect with Youths. Maria Thresia was an 18th century Queen who pretty much built the country by doing what the Habsburgs were famous for, arranging politically charged marriages. She was Marie Antoinette’s mother AKA the French Queen who was beheaded during the French Revolution (I’m fascinated by Marie Antoinette but that’s another story). So in this square that Maria Thresia had fashioned, some sort of Youth music scene was going on where there was a large speaker set and a bunch of youths sitting and drinking in these stunning gardens while listening to garbage music that sounded like a computer with a virus. I quickly got my photos and walked to the other gardens to read (like an Intellect) but I could hear them from about a 5 minute walk away! I was so mad that they were disgracing that historically important area but then I was like, maybe this is our era putting the garden to in a culturally symbolic way? I don’t know, I was just mad that I had to sit next to a fountain to drown out the noise. The reason I was hanging around reading, was because I was waiting for the Vienna Fest concert to start. It started at 9:20pm and I wasn’t super interested in it but, since a cool event was going on while I was there, I figured I should check it out. It was held at the town hall- a stunning building- and was pretty crowded. I listen to one song by, I learned later, a famous Austrian singer whose name I forget (not that any of you would care lol).

ThE NExt day (btw I keep having to look at my photos to remind me because it’s already all jumbled), I took a day trip to Melk. I had to wake up early (wahh) to catch the train. It said it was gonna rain that day, and it did it but only in the morning for a bit and, being the Smart Traveler that I am, I brought an extra pair of socks. So I took a train to Melk, a couple hours outside of Vienna. I was there to see the Abbey. I arrived at 10:30am, just in time for the 10:55am English tour. Honestly, the tour was pretty lame (as was the set up) because they’d taken all the beautiful rooms and made them modern showcases of history. Like they made the first room all white and with neon green light to represent nature or some shite. The NICE part of the place was the views from the balcony over the town and the river, and the library, and the church inside. The library was very beautiful (not as nice as the Habsburg one but still quite nice). The church was gorgeous. You weren’t allowed to take photos but I snuck some blurry ones in because I’m a rebel who can’t be tamed. I wandered the gardens a bit and then made my way to the pier where I boarded a cruise for 2 hours. It was a nice cruise- the rain was definitely gone- with castle ruins and villages long the banks. I got off and boarded a train back to Vienna and that was that day. At this point, I was getting a bit of cold. I remember thinking, at the time, it was a 4/10. So I was blowing my nose a bit but felt fine.

The next day, it became an 8/10 so I did almost nothing. I slept in and lounged. I didn’t have much planned so I was content to take a day of Rest. That evening, though, Swan Lake was playing at the Vienna Opera house which is like the main performing art centre. I looked it up and it wasn’t playing again during my trip so, after a few hours of relax, I biked back down. They had $5 standing room tickets which is a sweeeet deal so I had to take my chance. I’m really good at doing things to please my Future Self. Taking my present self out of the equation which really helps me make good decisions. So I popped a cold pill the limping man gave me and got a ticket (don’t worry, it was a pill in packaging). For the first third (it was three hours) I was standing in the very back in the center of the top balcony. There was two rows of standing people in front of me and the group of women directing in front of me where crazy annoying (like they kept sitting in the wheelchair spot and being told to move and then they’d go back) and the guy next to me was breathing so heavy I could hear it. So, I switched to the side, front row. I could see about 2/3 of the stage but that was like same in the center with all the people in front of me. The show was done really beautifully and music was glorious- I actually know the theme pretty well from previous Youtube listens. I honestly couldn’t tell you what it’s about though. My only reference point is Black Swan and all I got is Black Swan, White Swan. And she didn’t collapse at the send like Natalie Portman so what was that about? Anyway, I was mostly there for the experience (and for $5, I had no complaints) so I had a good time and was proud I forced myself to go. I even had to battle myself wanting to leave at the intermissions since I was sick and uncomfortable but staying til the end, I saw the finale which was just amazing. And then the cast came out and gave like 20 bows for about 10 minutes which was hilarious. I kept thinking it was done, and then the Black Swan would come and bow again. Over and over.

After that day, on my last full day in Vienna, I finally saw the palace I was close to. Schonbrunn was it’s name. With my trick Youth Card, I got a Grand Tour ticket, where I saw 50 state rooms. They were just stunning. Again, there was a no photo rule but I got a couple shite ones. The decor is just out of this world. It makes me want to decorate my room like that but that’d be really weird. Once that was over, it started to rain which actually worked out pretty great for me because everyone evacuated the main entrance area and I got some sick photos of the palace without anyone around. The rain slowed, and eventually, stopped, so I explored the gardens for a bit before calling it a day.

The following morning, I took an early bus to Graz. The route was lined with great views of the mountains and surrounding villages but they never look as good in photos through a bus window.

After I arrived and checked into my airbnb, I walked to the centre of the town to see the Sights. I was gonna start with a mausoleum, but they were closing for lunch when I got there, so I walked around the old castle but you could only go up a famous double spiral staircase inside. I went into the gardens to cross to see a church but became hungry so I found a thai restaurant and ate some delish pad thai. Afterwards, I went back to the mausoleum which was nice and creepy, since I was the only one there in the crypt. The ticket included a walk to the top of the building tower so I did it and, as per usual, got very winded from the stairs. I decided now to cross the park to see the church since I’ve literally since dozens at this point. Instead, I walked to the town centre and wandered the shops, before heading up to a famous clock tower. What I didn’t know is that the clock tower is on a cliff that you have to climb. I knew Future Me would be pissed if I didn’t do it so I tackled it like a bitch, taking breaks quite literally every few steps, but I made it and got my damn photos. Once that was complete, i was exhausted so I called it a day.

The next day, I went back out and went back to the city centre to buy a travel adapter because I realized I forgot mine like the schmuck I am. Then I crossed the river that ran through the town to some more shops before taking a tram to a palace outside of the city centre. Let me tell you, this palace was something else. Since it was in Graz and it was a bit out of the way, my tour only had 4 people in it. The guide took us through 24 phenomenally decorated rooms. What I loved about it was, there was no lights on, only the windows open, giving a very authentic feel to the rooms. The rooms had bare furniture in them so we could roam and see the walls and ceilings perfectly. It was a really unique experience to me as it really felt like I was stepping back into untouched history. So many of the museums I visited feel so artificial and set up, this really took me back. I was so happy I did went. The guide also told us about some of the wall paintings which were hilarious- when you really look at them, you realize how crazy and silly some art was. Afterwards, I bought myself an Oreo ice cream and sandwich and inhaled it in the gardens before going back to my airbnb to collect my things and take another bus to Salzburg (where I am and have been for a full day).

PHEW

That’s it.