#i like how they’re implementing all these new things without addressing any of the actual fucking problem but i mean

[duhragonball]

Totally Not Mark

I think the TNM situation is pretty widely known by now.  I only recently learned just how popular the guy is, but I’m not big into the YouTube scene.  However, I do keep an eye on Twitter, and something Mark said in this video kicked off a controversy there.  

First off, while the above video recaps the situation pretty well, I’ll go over it here: TNM produces video commentaries and reviews on various anime properties, including Dragon Ball.  Late last year, Toei tried to have 150 of his videos taken down from YouTube, citing copyright infringement.   Mark argued passionately that the footage in his videos was covered by fair use laws, but Toei simply didn’t care, and YouTube was unresponsive to his plight.  Demoralized by the situation, Mark took some time off to figure out what to do next, and then YouTube finally stepped in and did the right thing. 

As it turns out, Toei actually broke the rules by trying to take these videos down without proper justification, and when pressed to provide a rationale for their takedown request, they just... didn’t?  I won’t get into the legal details here, but my understanding is that while Japanese copyright law is much stricter than in other countries, it can’t be applied outside of Japan.  So YouTube finally settled the issue by fixing it so Mark’s videos will be available everywhere except Japan, which suits Mark fine, since he doesn’t have an audience there anyway.   The only real question is why YouTube didn’t implement something like this for everybody years ago.

It’s a real victory for the little guy, and I’m genuinely surprised and pleased to hear that he won, because I was all set to write a much more depressing take on his situation, basically amounting to “What did you expect?”  It seems like YouTube makes life difficult for its content creators at every turn, and Toei doesn’t respect its foreign fanbase at all, so I didn’t think Mark would ever get this far. 

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.  I’m looking to address what Mark said that got Twitter all riled up.   At 9:09, he says: “And look, this is just my opinion, but I genuinely believe that had it not been for Team Four Star and their Dragon Ball Z Abridged Series, Dragon Ball wouldn’t have remained nearly as popular in the Western World during the time where not much new content surrounding the property was being released.”

I transcribed this excerpt, mainly because one of the rallying cries on Twitter is that no one in the DBZ fandom can read or listen, so this is my attempt to have a good faith discussion here.   I had to rewatch that twelve seconds of the video several times to make sure I transcribed it right, so I am very clear on what the man said, okay?

Also, to provide some context, Mark’s point was that Toei would be better off embracing fan works instead of trying to bully them by abusing YouTube’s copyright takedown system.   I agree with that point entirely, however, I think his chosen example gives Team Four Star more credit than they’re due.   More under the cut.

From what I could see on Twitter, Mark’s statement was clipped and tweeted by a guy who simply captioned it as “Shit opinion”, which sort of polarized anybody who might have agreed or disagreed with it.   I don’t agree with what Mark said, but it’s hardly a “shit” opinion.  In any event, the whole thing boiled down to two camps:

1) People who like Team Four Star, who were introduced to Dragon Ball through their Abridged series, and are pretty sore at Toei for all their bullying tactics.

2) People who find TFS overrated, who already liked Dragon Ball just fine, and think Mark was just shilling for his pals.

I kind of want to straddle the fence here, because I’m old enough to remember at time when DBZ was red hot in the early 2000′s, and then there wasn’t a whole lot of new stuff to enjoy, and then I discovered DBZA in 2010, and it was heartwarming to see such a popular fan project bringing so many fans together.  

But, as much as I enjoy DBZA, I don’t think TFS “saved” the Dragon Ball franchise, or anything like that.  To be sure, Mark never said that TFS “saved’ the franchise, but that’s kind of what everyone on Twitter was arguing about.   Was there a “drought” in official DB content?   When was that drought?  How long did it last?  Was it even a problem?  And if it was a problem, did DBZA fix it?  The people in Camp 2 say no, that’s absurd. 

The people in Camp 1 seemed to harp on the exact words Mark used.  “[Without DBZA] Dragon Ball wouldn’t have remained nearly as popular in the Western World during the time...”   There’s a lot of qualifiers there to unpack, though.

  First of all, “nearly as popular”, what is that?  How much popularity would DB have lost in the early 2010′s, and how much of that popularity did TFS recover for them?  I don’t think there’s any way to measure that.  This is why the debaters were so passionate, because all they could really do was point to the viewer counts on the DBZA videos, and talk about their own personal experiences with DBZA.   Except personal experiences are singular, and viewer counts can’t tell us how many of those people were already die-hard fans before TFS was founded. 

The talking point I saw from Camp 1 was this: “Look, he’s not saying Abridged saved Dragon Ball, he just said that it lost a little of its popularity, and Abridged helped them get most of that loss back.“ Which is perhaps a fair statement, but it’s also so mild that it defeats Mark’s original point: that Toei could be more successful by working with fan creators instead of against them.  If DBZA’s contribution was negligible, then it’s all academic.  

What about “The Western World”?  Another important qualifier, as Dragon Ball never stopped being a big deal in Japan, Latin America, and other parts of the world.   Dragon Ball Z Abridged was made in the U.S.A., and the whole thing is in English, so it probably doesn’t have much penetration outside of the Anglosphere.   Except I’m pretty sure the “Western World” is bigger than just the parts of it that speak English. 

Again, I feel like Mark was trying to talk up the success of DBZA, but he didn’t want to exaggerate his case, so he had to put a few disclaimers on the statement, even as he was making it.   Like, okay there’s a passionate fanbase in Latin America that has nothing to do with Team Four Star, but you still have to give them credit for keeping the flame alive in these other countries.   Fine, but that’s still kind of a mild statement, once you stop to interpret it that way.   Oh, and it’s not that they kept the flame alive, it just wouldn’t have been nearly as hot otherwise.  Okay.

Finally, let’s talk about “during the time where not much new content surrounding the property was being released”  For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to refer to this as “the drought”.   Of the three, I feel most qualified to speak on this, because I lived “the drought”.   I wasn’t a kid, either.  I was in my 20′s and early 30′s.   I know the period fairly well.

Okay, so one of the side-arguments on Twitter concerned exactly when the drought was.   Dragon Ball GT ended in 1997, and Battle of Gods premiered in 2013.   The only DB material I know of that came out in between was the Yo! Son Goku special in 2008, Dragon Ball: Evolution in 2009, and Episode of Bardock in 2011.   There was some sot of One-Piece crossover too, but I don’t know much about that. 

However, those dates only concern Japan.   In the “Western World”, Dragon Ball was airing on Cartoon Network in the 2000′s.  I’m pretty sure the dub of GT finished up on Cartoon Network in 2005.  After that, fans pretty much just had the video games.  I believe that was around the time the Budokai Tenkaichi series was in full swing, followed by Raging Blast 1 and 2.   And Dragon Ball: Evolution was in theaters if anyone cared to watch it.  I remember watching the Yo! Son Goku special from Shonen Jump’s website in 2008.

Strictly speaking, you can say The Drought in the “Western” fandom spanned 2005 to the U.S. release of Battle of Gods in 2014.  But I’m not too sure about that, because you’ve got Dragon Ball Kai showing up from 2009 to 2011 in Japan.   In the U.S., Kai was localized as Dragon Ball Z Kai and aired on Nickelodeon from 2010 to 2013.

So the timeline of The Drought looks something like this:

2005: GT dub finale

2006: DBZ Movies 12 and 13 released in the U.S.

2007: Not much

2008: The Yo! Son Goku special.  Dragon Ball Z Abridged begins.

2009: Dragon Ball: Evolution

2010-2013: Dragon Ball Z Kai premiers on Nickelodeon

2014: Battle of Gods premiers in U.S. theaters.

2015-2018: Dragon Ball Super anime available on Crunchyroll.

So you definitely have a strong case for a drought in 2005-2009.  I say this because GT sucked and by 2005 I could no longer deny it.   Movies 12 and 13 are my favorites, but I’d already downloaded the Japanese dubs by then because I couldn’t wait for them to come out.  And the special in ‘08 and DBE weren’t much to speak of.    DBZA episodes were available in ‘08 and ‘09, but I wasn’t aware of it.  And Kai never meant much to me, because they adapted stories I had already seen in Z.  But I know a lot of younger fans point to Kai on Nickelodeon as what got them into the fandom, so I have to respect that.  

For my part, ‘05 to ‘13 never felt like too much of a dry spell.  This is partly because I never seriously expected Dragon Ball to come back.  Some things just end, and I find it odd how modern fans seem to think that the franchise must continue no matter what.   Hey, that’d be great if it did, but there’s no guarantees here.  In any case, I spent those years collecting my DVDs and manga so I could rewatch everything, and I played the hell out of all those video games.  And in 2012, I started this blog.  

I think part of the argument is that The Drought lasted from ‘05 to ‘13 because the games and Kai simply don’t count.   Okay, to each his own, but if certain media doesn’t count as content, then why should we count unofficial works like DBZA as things that helped the franchise?   It just feels like a circular argument, completely subjective.  At least when Toei released Kai and the video games, they made money off of those things.  

And that’s really the issue I have with Mark’s statement.  It’s entirely up to Toriyama and Toei to decide how much content they want to produce, and when to release it.  If they didn’t feel like doing much in ‘07, that’s their call.   I’m sure they made less money off Dragon Ball that year, but that’s their business.  If they want to let the franchise end and the fandom slowly wanes to nothing, that’s fine too.   Mark makes it sound like someone needed to make something about Dragon Ball in 2008, and TFS stepped up to fulfill that obligation.  But no, the obligation never existed. 

I’ve seen Totally Not Mark kind of stray into this logic before, that rights holders should be grateful to fan creators for keeping their properties on the map.   I don’t think he’s ever quite said it in so many words, but he circles around it once in a while.  To be clear, I believe he’s well within his rights to make videos about copyrighted works, but sometimes I think he overestimates the importance of that contribution.  His audience loves his stuff, and that’s a wonderful thing, but Toei’s under no obligation to like what he does.  They don’t have to consider it free publicity if they don’t see it that way.  

That’s not to say Team Four Star doesn’t deserve some credit.   I think they made a big impact on the fandom with their work, and they’ve got a lot of talented people in their outfit.   I’ve been supporting them on Patreon for years.   They got me through some tough times, and I’m grateful for that.  I think a lot of people in Camp 2 were only arguing that Mark was wrong because they just hate TFS for the “Bad Dad” memes it spawned, but that’s just as reductive as suggesting their YouTube show saved a best-selling cartoon franchise.

Anyway, that’s my spiel, and it was just too long to fit into a Twitter thread, so I’m putting it here.   Good night, everybody.

[dgcatanisiri]

I won’t say this is my last word on the subject of Legendary Edition bullshit, because... Well, I know myself enough to be able to say that I NEVER have a last word, I’ll always want to rant again later on. But let’s just make this a sort of master post of the issues overall.

So... Is it fair to hold a game that is a good roughly fifteen years old to the standards of the present? Not inherently. So if the games were being produced in any sort of unedited format, that it was a strict translation, 1:1 ratio, of the original to the remaster... Honestly, I’d still be bitter as all get out, for reasons I’ll expound on in a minute. But it could at least SEEM justified. I could consider it the kind of thing that would be expected - if KOTOR got a remaster today, I would not expect that Carth and Bastila would be made into bi love interests, or Juhani would have her romance patched up so that it has the same level of detail and attention as the het romances. If Jade Empire were remastered, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sky or Silk Fox’s same sex romances adapted so that the straight romances had to be closed out first. That is the kind of thing that, on a functional, practical level, I could understand. Doing a translation from old hardware, the old engine, I get the PRACTICAL reasoning for not making things better. I still object to this on the moral level, to say nothing of the representational one. But PRACTICALLY, I see why - y’know, there’s only so much financial resources going in, and changing things like romances, even if justified, means doing new writing and getting the voice cast back in, which has complications the longer since a game’s original release - actors retire or even die, the passage of time changes voices (like listen to the difference of the exact same lines by James Earl Jones between both versions of the Lion King). Even without those complications, that means paying them, which, in the production of video games, for everything that goes in, something else must go out. So that is the practical argument.

BUT!

But.

But, the thing is, even apart from everything else that I’ll get in to shortly, is that there have been a lot of claims from BioWare about inclusion. There have also been A LOT. of homophobic bullshit from BioWare and Mass Effect. And yes, I’m calling it like I see it.

Because we had the game that followed Jade Empire, with a M/M romance option, be Mass Effect, with NO M/M romance option (but FemShep and Liara could bang - the writing obviously favored the MaleShep portrayal, given that there was no marketing use of FemShep until ME3, and we had ME2 give priority to having loyalty conflicts between MALE Shepard’s romances, but not Female Shepard’s, and we even had BioWare hem and haw about how “well, the asari are monogender, so they’re not TECHNICALLY women, so it’s not REALLY lesbians...”). Because the official claim is that they just “didn’t think about it” in time to have these options included in Mass Effect 1. Because we’ve had writers now come out that Jacob Taylor was originally written as a gay man, but in the game itself was a straight man. Because there are plenty of women who throw themselves at Male Shepard, and Shepard is animated with having Significant Looks™ with these women, but not a single man who expresses any interest in him, until ME3 finally offers SOMETHING, which came to just Kaidan and Cortez.

Because we had one of BioWare’s heads, one of BioWare’s founders, say in an interview right around the release of Mass Effect 2 say “Shepard is too predefined a character to be gay.”

That is what I mean by homophobic bullshit.

And I haven’t even started on Mass Effect Andromeda.

And I’m gonna start on Mass Effect Andromeda now.

So after ME3, after Kaidan and Cortez were actually romances, we honestly gave them a lot of faith - they got the message, we said. They understood that they couldn’t just cut out M/M romance in the game, we said. They didn’t need to have the constant observation that demanded they provide good representation, we said.

And then they cut Jaal’s bisexuality, leaving him straight on release, without even a chance to flirt and be turned down, the bisexual male character who did remain not only was planet bound, he also is a character who a solid argument can be made that he falls into the trope of the Depraved Bisexual, a trope that over in Dragon Age, Patrick Weekes specifically said that they wanted to avoid and so didn’t make a character bisexual because of that. And the gay man is not only almost totally disconnected from the game (aside from one point in the plot, he can be avoided entirely and is not included in almost any other group setting among the Tempest crew), he is also an accessory in his own plot line, which was also heavily criticized for being intensely homophobic. And of these, the only thing BioWare deigned to change was Jaal’s bisexuality. (Which, personal note, I’m uncomfortable with personally, because as it’s implemented, it just feels kind of afterthought-y. Much like Kaidan’s in ME3, being unchanged from a new FemShep romance, despite the active inability to romance him in ME1.)

So it is not just a matter of “you have the ability, you’re changing other things, you should do this.” I mean, that is absolutely there - the mods exist for the original game, to the point of being able to even get the romance scene to fire right without Shepard’s gender magically changing once the clothes come off. (I have a vague memory of, at some point, probably around the “too predefined” comment, that being another excuse, that there was difficulty with having the models play nice with one another in that scene.)

But this is about addressing a pattern of behavior on the part of BioWare, that they have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the bare minimum that their own statements on matters of representation and inclusion claim they aspire to. That if the fans are not actively holding their feet to the fire, they are GOING to take their fans for granted - “you don’t get better quality content elsewhere, we’re your only choice!” But “only” choice is not a “good” choice. It’s not a choice with quality.

So if we don’t make a big damn deal about this now, when they have a chance - when they have a CHOICE - to make things better, to provide better representation, to correct the mistakes of the past... What will we get in the future? How will they backtrack on this in the future? How will they exclude us in the game they just announced a few months back? How will they continue to tell us that they don’t want gay people in this setting?

Look, I don’t use these words lightly. But that is, whether it’s a conscious attitude at all or not, what they are telling us. By not including us, by making us optionally involved, by making us disposable within our own stories, by cutting out our content, they are saying that they do not envision a world, a future, that includes queer men.

And anyone who does not speak up, does not condemn this, does not demand that they DO. BETTER... That is tacit approval and agreement. Because you’re saying that things as they are now - the removal and undermining of our content, of our EXISTENCE in these games - are perfectly fine and acceptable.

And yeah, I’m sure that reading that has probably made some people mad, believe I’m being unfair by saying that, because it’s going to push away allies. Thing is, and this is one of the things that always comes up in anything even tangentially activism related... THIS ISN’T ABOUT THE FEELINGS OF THE ALLIES. This is about listening to the people who are being hurt and saying “you don’t deserve to be hurt this way, things need to change.”

BioWare needs to change its approach. And, as we have seen, it does not come just because of a handful of angry queers, demanding to be represented in their games. It comes because of the community at large calling them out and saying “this isn’t right. What you have done is not right, and we are calling on you to fix it. To do better.”

Don’t just stand there and shrug this off. Because evidence tells us that if they aren’t called out on this now, the next game will not be better. And we will be in this exact same place, having this exact same argument, all over again, in a few years when the next Mass Effect game comes out. When the queer men are given the shortest end of the stick again, and people who are right now saying “what do you expect from a remaster?” will either suddenly turn around and go “I don’t know why BioWare would do something so homophobic” or, worse, “well, it’s something, I don’t see why you’re upset.”

We’re upset because we keep having this argument. And we are going to keep having this argument until people are willing to actually DEMAND that things be better. This is the chance to make things better now.

At this point, a post-release patch that includes a Male Shepard/Kaidan romance in ME1 that is tracked through to the following games is a bare minimum fix, a change done to make it clear that BioWare understands their mistakes in the past and want to make things BETTER.

It may not be easy, but genuinely fixing problems never is. But it’s work that needs to be done.

[ophidae-a]

Orochimaru and the political implications that have kept him alive and free pre & post war...

This has been a long time coming, I will try to word this as best as I can given that it will involve a lot of actual research but I was simply exhausted of seeing people’s bad takes. Anyway let’s begin.

Assuming you could implement actual real world logic into the naruto world, that would mean all the countries are/were probably influenced by many of the economic movements that influenced and shaped the real world. Since the series seems to be set in a mix between ancient and modern times, it is hard to place it in a specific moment in history, so I will only be addressing the more general theories.

We know that Shinobi villages get commissioned for their assistance by other villages, and that seems to be a big part of the Shinobi Villages’ income, which means trade is a thing in that universe. Shinobi villages seem to specialize in exporting services ( aka the Shinobi ), which probably means they have to import everything that the common villagers cannot produce. Being within a country, that means the Shinobi village is subjected to the laws imposed by the Daimyo —— which means that international trade is also probably a thing.

No country is 100% self-sufficient ; in the past, people argued and theorized for and against international trade, trying to justify its need and place certain standards on it. The law of comparative advantage came to explain why certain countries still engage in international trade despite being good at producing everything it needs (absolute advantage)  —— it comes with the premise that if you can produce a product in large quantities and efficiently ( low costs ), than that is your specialty, and you should export that and buy the products you cannot produce with the same efficiency for that will be more beneficial to you. David Ricardo demonstrated that if two countries capable of producing two commodities engage in trade, then each country will increase its overall consumption by exporting the good for which it has a comparative advantage while importing the other good, provided that there exist differences in labor productivity between both countries. Basically he says that this comparative advantage is what makes international trade possible, opposed to what Adam Smith alluded in 1776 when he spoke about the absolute advantage.

Here is an example to make things easier:

Hours of work necessary to produce one unit

Country/ Product         X         Y

Country 1                     100      120

Country 2                     90        80

For country 1 to produce one unit of both products it would take them 220 hours, for country 2 it would take them 170 hours to produce one unit of both products. Country 1 requires 100 hours to make one unit X, and Country 2 needs 90 hours for that. It is a difference of 10 hours. Product Y takes country 1 120 hours to produce a single unit, while it takes 80 hours for country 2 to make that.

That being said, country 1 is more efficient at producing X, while country 2 is more efficient at producing Y —— which means they should specialize in producing those products and buy the one they’re not as efficient from each other. And that will be financially beneficial to them. ( country 2 has absolute advantage, however even like that it is more beneficial to buy product x than to produce it themselves ).

Why is this important? Well, Orochimaru didn’t just leave Konoha and that was it, he founded a Village —— a Shinobi village in a land that previously had none. The land of rice is very small and probably lived off of exporting rice to the nearby villages and countries ; a commodity based economy is not very strong. That means Orochimaru not only opened a whole new industry in this country, but also brought with him intellectual property, in other words, technology. The land of rice now not only had a new economic pillar, it also has potential to join the big guys since with Orochimaru on the inside it means less importing more exporting.

Okay but what is Orochimaru producing Lua, I don’t get it! Not to worry, I shall explain. Orochimaru is a scientist, he produces what most scientists do : intellectual property —— vaccines, medication, anti-venom, research on treatments for a variety of illnesses, technology, industrial models, genetic research among others. All things that he can patent, and by extension patent to the land of rice. That is what he is producing, and that is what makes him so special and influential.

Throughout the series, we know of very few characters who are gifted in healthcare/science —— we have Tsunade, Sasori, Chiyo, Orochimaru, Shizune, Kabuto and Sakura. Those are the characters we canonically know are in this industry, however do you see where they are from? Land of Wind, Land of Fire, but what about the the other countries? It is stupid to think they do not have their own medically inclined people and industry, but given the fact that we know villages such as Ame and Kiri, the smaller villages, are heavily subjugated by the bigger countries, it is not absurd to think they’d turn to imports to supplement the fact that they might have a small or non existent industry for these areas. Even bigger countries must struggle to supply the whole population with things such as vaccines and medication, and that is where Orochimaru comes in.

Not only is he in charge of his own village, therefore doesn’t really have to worry about many regulations that might delay his production, he is also not bound by any other jurisdiction other than his own ( since it has been implied in canon that the daimyo is basically his puppet ). Orochimaru has absolute advantage when it comes to the medical industry, and that is what he exports to all the other nations —— I am talking mass production, with full control of the supply chain. This is what makes him so politically important, because a village in shortage of medication and vaccines is a village ready to die (healthcare crisis), especially when we talk about Shinobi Villages who are probably the ones that need these products the most.

And that is the reason Orochimaru hasn’t been hunted down and killed pre 4th war. The Kages and Daimyos know where these products are coming from, they understand the implications but they can’t do without them. No matter how much they’d like to deny it, they need Orochimaru alive. Otherwise they’ll have a huge problem in their hands.

Post war this need is even bigger —— they have just been through a war, a lot of people died, a lot of people are sick, need medication, vaccines, transfusions, surgeries and there aren’t a lot of personnel left. Not only that, but Orochimaru was a key factor on them winning this war —— without him, all of the current kages would have died, without him none of the previous konoha kages would have been resurrected therefore more death would have come.

That is one of the reasons after the war that he wasn’t imprisoned. It isn’t because Konoha is biased —- why would they be biased toward Orochimaru? It is because they know that if they lock him up, or kill him, they won’t have from who import the shit they need.

Throughout the whole series Orochimaru only really had beef with two major countries —— the land of fire, and the land of wind. Those were the only countries he really pissed off, and neither of those countries ever went after him with the intensity you would see if they actually wanted him dead. The other nations probably didn’t care about him other than his potential as a business partner, which probably influenced in him not being “held accountable” for the things he did.

When people mention the difference between treatments of Sasuke and Orochimaru, it kills me because they are not the same thing. Sasuke left the village and made himself a war criminal the moment he walked into that Kage meeting and tried to kill everyone to get to Danzo. Orochimaru is a villain, a criminal and in my opinion the best since he went ahead and made himself so important worldwide that he cannot be touched, and even managed to survive, however it is not comparable to what Sasuke did. Sasuke went ahead and made himself an enemy of the Shinobi alliance, not just one nation but all of them, Orochimaru did no such thing because he was at the time a fully grown man, not an angsty teen. Orochimaru knew what he was doing, Sasuke was fully controlled by rage. And it showed, that is why Sasuke wasn’t left off the hook, not only that but Sasuke doesn’t provide the nations with anything other than a threat —— Orochimaru poses a big threat but he also provides them with things they need to survive, so he is something that they have to manage, Sasuke? Not that much. Countries don’t like to feel threatened, that is why they rained down on Sasuke and not on Orochimaru.

Making yourself politically important can get you out of a plethora of situations, not only in naruto world. In the real world it is very much the same, it is why diplomats have immunity, why many politicians get away with countless bad things —— because their fall could impact a whole country or more.

[hyperpsychomaniac]

The Woodchuck Leader Assessment - Chapter 2

DT17 Fanfiction

Summary: When Launchpad’s ability to supervise children is called into question, Dewey tags along on a Junior Woodchuck trip to support his best friend.

Chapter 1

Also cross-posted on fanfiction.net.

***

Launchpad gulped at the lump which had lodged in his throat. "What, what are you doing back in the Woodchucks? You…" Got kicked out. Because of me.

Mr Russell smiled and Launchpad momentarily wondered if he'd, as often happened, accidentally spoken that last part of his thought out loud. "You can't hold the mistakes of a man's past against him forever, Launchpad. The Woodchucks are pretty fair in that regard. Yeah, I'm back. But you're an adult now. You can call me Jack, you know."

Launchpad turned to face the bus. His throat felt dry. "Ah, kids. This is … Jack. He… he used to be my Junior Woodchuck leader. "

"Jack to you…" Jack waved a paw dismissively in Launchpad's direction.

Launchpad flinched back and the metal back of the driver's seat banged into his spine.

"…but that's still Mr Russell to you kids," he continued, as he turned to address the bus. "I'm afraid I'm a little old school, but don't worry," and he threw this back in Launchpad's direction. "Not as much as I used to be. And it's nothing you kids need to worry about. After all, I'm only here to assess Launchpad. He can lead you to his heart's content, without any input from me, and, well… I guess the whole point of this is to see how that pans out."

"I think you'll find our Woodchuck leader more than capable," said Violet confidently.

"Yeah, go LP!" said Huey, and the rest of the Woodchucks joined in.

Dewey was the last to pick up on the cue. His heartfelt: "Yeeeeaah LP..." carried on a good few seconds longer than the rest of the bus.

The cheers of his Woodchucks, and his best friend, broke through the swirling thoughts that clamored for attention in his head. His Woodchucks had his back. The last time he'd seen Mr Russell, sure it was something he didn't want to remember, and hadn't thought about in years, but, no, he would focus on the assessment.

Mr Russell was shorter than he remembered too. Well, of course, because he had grown! And maybe he wouldn't be so scary now he was an adult. Launchpad squared his shoulders. "Alright. Er, first we grab the gear and hike to the camping spot."

Doofus groaned loudly.

"A short hike," Launchpad clarified, and felt his chest swell as he launched into the easy familiarity of directing his Woodchucks in a task he'd instructed dozens of times. "Woodchucks, start unpacking the camping gear. Make sure you help our potential new recruits. I need to talk to… Mr Russell."

Violet and Huey shuffled everyone off, taking more care than they normally did that everyone exited in an orderly manner. Mr Russell waited until the last kid filed off. Launchpad slipped off past him, behind the kids. Somehow, he felt a little more confident facing the man who had made almost a year of his time as a Junior Woodchuck an absolute hell outside in the fresh air.

Mr Russell followed him down, and Launchpad waited until he was out before bursting out: ""Look, Mr Russell, I don't understand…" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt his beak flush. You didn't admit you didn't understand something to Mr Russell! You knew you'd get chewed out for it, and… he wasn't a kid anymore. "I don't understand why they would've picked you to assess me. Or that you would've agreed surely you don't want to see me, or…" The realisation slowly sunk into his brain. "Wait, is that why you're here? You had to resign because of me, and…"

Mr Russell held up a paw. It was hardly the gruff reprimand Launchpad remembered whenever he'd questioning him as a child, and it gave him pause. "Launchpad, I'm not here for payback. The Woodchucks won't hold my past failures against me, well, I'm not going to hold yours against you either. The last time we saw each other? That whole…. mess is not relevant. And I don't think either of us wants to think about it."

"Mess?" Launchpad said thinly. That's what he chose to call it?

"Yes, I rejoined the Woodchucks a few years ago. Heard you were still around, but I thought it best I stay out of your way. But since then I've heard there've been a number of complaints about you. Not that I find that surprising. You were always headstrong and foolhardy and you just didn't know when to quit. Everything is so damn slack these days, they practically hand badges out like candy, which I can deal with. But when it comes to the safety of the kids, that's another matter. I fully intend to give you a fair go, but I'm not giving any handouts. There's no failure badges for this one. If I don't think you can keep these kids safe, that's what I'm putting in my report. And then you're out of here."

***

Down at the campsite, the more senior Woodchucks had already started helping the new kids set up their tents. Violet must have begun implementing her protocols, and Launchpad didn't need to know exactly what those were to be grateful. He breathed deep the forest air, and huffed it out with a sigh of relief. The sky was clear, and he could hear the roar of the river a short distance down from the camp. "Come on, LP. Just do what you always do. Be a good Woodchuck leader! Your kids know you are, and Mr Russell will see that and…" He gulped. But just like every other time he'd had an assessor following him about, he couldn't let him be a distraction. He had to concentrate on the kids and making this trip as fun for them as possible, whatever his own fears might be.

"Hey, Launchpad," said Dewey with an enthusiastic wave. "Can you help me set up my tent?"

Launchpad frowned. Dewey knew how to set up a tent. Violet and Huey had the other kids all under control though, so he wandered over to his friend. "Sure. What do you need help wi…"

Dewey grabbed Launchpad by the collar and dragged him down to his level, then shoved a tent pole in his face. "Where does this go?" he said loudly, then dropped his voice. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah… why…"

"You went white as a sheet when Mr Russell came onto the bus. Was he that bad? I mean, I've had some pretty annoying teachers…"

"He wasn't annoying. He…" Mr Russell wandered about, hands clasped behind his back, watching the Woodchucks put up their tents. And not lifting a finger to help, which hardly surprised Launchpad. His eyes drilled into their backs as he watched every little thing they did. At least he wasn't here to judge them, and the kids were all so engrossed talking to each other and with the task they hardly seemed to notice. "He just didn't think I was a very good Woodchuck, okay? What if he doesn't think I'm a good leader either?"

"LP, look at these nerds. They know what their doing. And you taught them all of that."

"I'm not sure I had that much to do with it. I just give them an activity and they all seem to pick it up really quick. Other than that, I just make sure we bring enough food and water, and, you know, distract angry mother bears."

Dewey squeezed his shoulder. "Hey, you're good at this, LP. You'll be fine."

Launchpad smiled faintly. "Thanks. Thanks for coming too. You're right, I…" But it wasn't just the memory of how Mr Russell had treated him as a kid. It was the last time they'd seen each other… and Mr Russell had said that was the past, but that still didn't stop the memory stirring. Dewey, most of his Woodchucks actually, they would be the same age as Calvin had been. And that thought brought an ache to Launchpad's chest.

"Thanks LP, of course it goes here," Dewey screamed into his ear, and rammed the tent pole into its slot.

Mr Russel appeared at his shoulder. "Well, this one seems to get it. Most of your Woodchuck's seem to know what they're doing actually."

"Are you surprised?" Launchpad said as he got to his feet. It was getting easier to talk to his old leader like an adult, but being crouched down at kid level was not helping.

Mr Russell would've snapped at him for talking to him like that. Had, on more than one occasion, which somehow coincided with him getting stuck with the worst chores. LP couldn't be sure if it was because he'd grown up, or maybe Mr Russell had mellowed, because the old dog just raised an eyebrow. "A little." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "This one though. Not cut out for this."

Doofus Drake sat in the middle of his unfurled tent. He'd dragged it around and over his head, so only his pouting face stuck out.

Huey stalked past. "I tried showing him. He won't listen to me." He went over to help one of the other kids.

"You know he's new, right?" said Launchpad.

Mr Russel lowered his brows, that same condescending look Launchpad remembered. "Yeah, Launchpad. I know. That's why he's not wearing a uniform."

"I meant… how do you know when he's barely had a chance to try or…"

Someone let out a faint shriek, and a tent toppled over. Mr Russell folded his arms and snorted out a laugh. And just stood there.

"Maybe you could help Doofus?" One good thing had always come of having the assessor along for a trip: Launchpad didn't need to take care of up to a dozen kids all by himself. Ever since the other leaders had left they'd been unable find replacements, and it wasn't just because of how Launchpad drove the bus. No one seemed interested. And that's what made the assessments so stressful. It would suck if an assessor finally failed him, and he could no longer give back to the organisation that had helped him so much as a kid. But it would suck even more if the kids here didn't have Woodchucks at all because their branch got shut down.

At least the other assessors had slipped into leader mode themselves, and actually helped. But Mr Russell just stood there and raised an eyebrow. "Oh no. this is your show, son. Like I said, I don't give handouts."

The toppled tent righted itself as the unfortunate girl finally found her way out of the heap of canvas.

"We've got this, Launchpad," said Huey as both he and Violet and even some of the other new kids who had already got their tents up went over to help.

Launchpad gritted his teeth. Handouts. What the hell did he think his job as Woodchuck leader had been anyway?

And that just left Doofus. Launchpad went over to the boy, Mr Russell trailing behind him. He picked up a tent pole. "You know, I think you're supposed to use this to hold up the tent. Not your head."

"I want to go home!" Doofus disappeared underneath the canvas.

Mr Russell huffed. "Kids these days are just so damn soft. Even you weren't this bad. I told you he wasn't cut out for it."

"Mr Russell, will you just…"

Mr Russell squared his shoulders. "Yeah?"

Launchpad gulped. "Nothing." He poked the pole into a gap in the canvas and lifted it. Forget the assessment. Forget Mr Russell. Forget the memories he hadn't thought about in years, churning up in his gut. If he'd been here on his own, he'd be helping this kid. Because despite the attitude, he'd seen that brief moment of tears in his eyes. He wouldn't be the first kid who'd been sent by his parents when he didn't want to go and that certainly didn't mean he 'wasn't cut out for it'. Or that his parents shouldn't have sent him. He didn't need some overbearing leader, which was something Mr Russell would never understand. He just needed a friend.

"There we go," Launchpad crawled inside and propped up the canvas with the pole. "We're half done now."

Doofus glared at him from other corner of the tent. "That's not where the pole goes."

"So you do know how to build a tent?"

"It's not building! I can figure it out. But I shouldn't have to! I have… PEOPLE… to do these things for me."

"Yeah, but not always."

"What?"

"What about when you don't have people?"

"You can put the tent up for me!" Doofus folded his arms with a huff.

Launchpad winced. "Actually," he said, lowering his voice. "This is one of the new tents. I haven't figured out how to do this one yet. I was going to get Violet to show me."

Doofus' jaw dropped. "But, who's going to put up my tent? I don't want to sleep out here in the rain."

"Pft. It's not going to rain. Violet can help you."

"I…" Doofus slumped down, arms folded over his knees. "I already told her she was stinky and had weird hair; I don't think she'll help me."

"Well, at least its not going to rain?"

"I…" Doofus threw back his head. "Urgh! Give me that." He snatched back the pole, and rammed it into a corner of the tent, threading it through a canvas sleeve in the tent's side. He snatched up a second and did the same.

Launchpad watched him work. "Huh… that makes sense." He grabbed the last pole and copied what Doofus had done, shoving it into the remaining canvas sleeve. The whole tent popped out, crisp and straight and complete.

Doofus glared at him. "You said you wouldn't help!"

"I said I didn't know how to put it up yet. There you see? That was easy. " They slipped out of the tent flap.

Doofus turned back and looked at his tent. "I… built a tent?"

"Yeah. Look at that. At least now you know you can do it if you ever don't have… people."

Doofus eyed him warily. "Well, I at least hope someone is going to cook my dinner." And with that, he stalked off.

"It's not going to help him if you do it for him."

"He put half that tent up himself!"

"Because you got chummy with him? You're not going to teach these kids the skills they need in life by being their friends. They need discipline."

"Yeah, well, I've been on the receiving end of your discipline." Launchpad snorted.

Mr Russell swallowed hard. "One time, Launchpad. That was only ever one time."

It wasn't what Launchpad had been referring to. Not that one incident, but the usual bullying and the tearing strips off of the kids in front of each other, and slapping failure badges into their open hands like it was something they should have been ashamed of. Launchpad shook himself and went over to check through the food supplies. Mr Russell didn't follow him.

***

Dewey kept his eye on Launchpad the whole afternoon. As they set up the food, the campsite, and collected firewood, his friend was clearly becoming more and more frustrated with his so-called assessor. I mean, he had plenty reason to be. Mr Russell hovered around, making snarky comments, both at LP and about the kids to LP, and he didn't help with anything. But this was Launchpad. He liked everyone. Launchpad had simply said Mr Russell hadn't thought he'd been a good Woodchuck. But that couldn't be all of it. It all made Dewey want to grab his friend by the shirt sleeve and make him tell him exactly what the guy had done that had him so on edge. He'd tried once, but Launchpad had just smiled at him faintly, which was something at least, and then asked him to go help collect firewood. Dewey would have argued, but Mr Russell had been right there and he hadn't wanted to make Launchpad look bad.

Now, the camp was set up, the sky was darkening, and everyone had settled down to eat dinner around the campfire. Nothing bad had happened that Dewey could tell, apart from the tent falling over. Hopefully that meant, so far, Mr Russell would have nothing negative to report on.

Once the meal was finished, Launchpad stood up and pulled out a set of prompt cards. "Oookay everybody. Now because some of you are new we're going to show you some of the stuff we do as Woodchucks. Then, if you want, we can talk about you becoming one too, if you're interested."

Russell snorted. "Or are capable."

Launchpad shot a glare behind him and a prompt card fluttered into the fire. "Er. Where was I?"

"Maybe you can tell our new recruits what we're doing tomorrow?" Huey suggested.

"Um, right," Launchpad shuffled his cards, then shook his head and shoved them back into this sash. "Well, the swimming hole is only a little way upstream. So, in the morning we're going to hike up there. Assuming the weather holds, we'll be doing some swimming. And the…"

"Do you even have your swimming badge yet?" Mr Russell said.

Launchpad flinched and clutched a hand to his sash.

Dewey couldn't tell if he'd covered a blank spot or not, but there were a hell of a lot of badges, spread all across Launchpad's broad chest. So, of course there was a swimming badge. I mean, everyone know how to swim, right? It was time to Dew what he'd come here for. "Launchpad knows how to swim!"

"I wasn't talking to you, boy," Russel snapped.

The scared look fell from Launchpad's face. "Hey!" he said, a growl creeping into his voice, "don't talk to my Woodchucks like that."

"Well, you're not doing anything about it. You're just going to let them interrupt you?"

"You're the one who interrupted, Launchpad," Huey pointed out. "My brother was just…"

"That's enough out of both of you. If you don't want to be digging toilets…"

"We have to dig toilets?!" Doofus groaned.

"There's a block up the hill," said Violet. "That was supposed to be part of the induction. Unfortunately Launchpad was interrupted before he could get to that section of his prompt cards."

"Seriously?" Mr Russell fixed his glare on each of the Woodchucks in turn. "This is what you let them get away with? No wonder they're such a pitiful…"

"Mr…." Launchpad bit himself off, then steadied his hands into fists down by his sides. "Jack, that's enough. I had to put up with this when I was a kid; I'm not going to let you talk them like that. They're going to do fine. And if some of them take a little longer to get their badges, or even if they don't want to be Woodchucks, that's fine too. But you're not in charge here. So you can… you can sit down, shut up, and put whatever the hell you like in your report. But if you're going to behave like this, you can leave."

"Oh, snap…" Dewey said, as quietly as he could manage. Okay, so he'd never seen Launchpad get mad enough to take someone down a notch, so Mr Russell had to be getting to him, but, at the same time, Launchpad was standing up to him. Good for him! And Mr Russell deserved it too.

Mr Russell glared at Launchpad for a long moment. Then he shrugged. "Well, the way you're going, you're not going to be in charge for much longer." He took a step up to him, and the two men stood chest to chest. Launchpad didn't back down. Not that he should have, because he was clearly that much bigger, and Russell just ended up pretty much staring into his chest.

"Yeah," Russell finally drawled. "Didn't think so. Still haven't got that swimming badge, I see. And I know there's at least one pretty big failure hiding behind where that one should be."

Launchpad's stance drooped. He said, barely audibly: "I thought you said you weren't going to bring that up."

Huey's guidebook snapped closed sharply, and everyone jumped. "There's nothing to say he can't give out a badge he doesn't have. Plenty of our other leaders didn't have all their badges either."

"You mean the leaders you had before Launchpad scared them all away? I've heard the stories. Part of the reason why I made sure I got this assignment; I had to make sure he was taking care of you. And, you know, I wasn't going to say anything in front of you kids," and he turned back to Launchpad. "But seeing as you're being so disrespectful to me, which isn't surprising, I'm not going to feel bad about it.

"I've seen nothing that tells me you should be looking after these kids all by yourself. A couple seem to be pretty self-sufficient, if belligerent, but if anything they've been doing all the leading here. You can't control them, I can't see that you're actually teaching them anything, and I'm just glad nothing has happened except a few fallen tents, because I'm not sure you've got what it takes to handle all this."

"I haven't had the chance to teach them anything yet. This was your problem, Jack, you never gave anyone a chance, the slightest mistake and you'd already pegged them."

"And I was usually right! I was right about you, wasn't I? You're dangerous!"

Violet shot up a hand. "My understanding of the assessment procedure," she said, not stopping to get permission to speak, "is that you assess Launchpad on his ability to keep us safe. Not on how you view his leadership style."

"Leadership style. That's a fancy way to put it, miss."

"Her name's Violet," said Launchpad. "You realise I'm doing this all by myself, right? If you could just help, for once, instead of standing around judging…"

"Judging you is literally my job here," said Mr Russell. He spread his paws wide. "Look, kids, I get it. You all think I'm the bad guy here. But the girl is right; this is about your kids' safety. I just don't want to see Launchpad get himself in the position I found myself in, where I couldn't control the kids I was responsible for…"

The firelight threw sharp shadows across Launchpad's lowered brows. "Jack, don't."

"I got kicked out of the Woodchucks for years, and they had every right to do it. You want to know what happened? A kid drowned on my watch. Come on, Launchpad, you don't want to be responsible for something like that, do you?"

Launchpad stared at Mr Russell for a long time, saying nothing, chest heaving. Then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the campsite.

What the heck? Dewey shot to his feet. "You're a jerk, you know that? Launchpad, LP…" He headed out into the darkness after his friend.

***

Authors note: I wanted to write something that put Launchpad in a position where he would have to 'adult'. I also wasn't sure how well I would write the DT17 version of Launchpad, as I'm honestly more comfortable writing say Violet and Huey, so yeah, I made it challenging for myself and he has to adult as well. Lol. I also did want to see a little bit more of Launchpad being a Woodchuck leader in the series (which, yes, I think he would be good at, in his own way.) I imagine its something he's put a lot of effort into. Its a setting where he'd have to be the one being the adult, but still being Launchpad… especially when things start to go wrong, so hopefully I have achieved that. Please leave me any comments. I do like hearing what people think and will usually try to respond.

***

Chapter 3

[north-of-annwn]

Ok so I'm not going to do this anonymously because i don't fear getting chastised for my own ignorance but there are other alternatives to abortion aren't there? I mean i honestly don't understand this bill nonsense but it mostly at least to me sounds like it's just to keep children alive. I mean there are adoption centers and people who will actually pay women who are pregnant to act as surrogates. Why is anti abortion so bad? And how is this a woman's autonomy probpem. Please educate me

First, I want to thank you for acknowledging that your perspective on this may be informed from a place of systemic oppression of AFAB people, and for seeking out information. When people add on to this post with the purpose to educate, I implore you all to remember this person is seeking information. Please avoid shaming them or ridiculing them.

Let’s first address your questions:

1) “There are other alternatives to abortion aren’t there?”

Let’s first define abortion. “In medicine, an abortion is the premature exit of the products of conception (the fetus, fetal membranes, and placenta) from the uterus. It is the loss of a pregnancy and does not refer to why that pregnancy was lost. A spontaneous abortion is the same as a miscarriage. The miscarriage of three or more consecutive pregnancies is termed habitual abortion or recurrent pregnancy loss”  (Shiel MD, MedicineNet).

¼ womxn will have abortions in their lifetime. Abortion is a medical procedure that can be requested or required for a lot of different reasons:

The pregnant person may not be able to carry an embryo to term safely.

The pregnant person may not have the financial support to pay for the medical bills that pregnancy costs in the US (prenatal and delivery alone can cost around $18k).  

I also want to add that people in this country are not given any kind of financial support for the time taken off for prenatal or postnatal care. Being out of work for this time could mean entering extreme poverty.

The pregnant person may not have the financial support or stability of lifestyle to support a child.

The pregnant person may not be physically up to the task of carrying a child to term and delivering. Not all womb-having people are up to what childbirth does to the body. Childbirth is one of the most dangerous things that a body can be put through.  In the US we’re just under 20 maternal deaths per 100,000 births, which is the highest in the developed world. Some undeveloped countries have better stats than we do

Abortion may be required as an emergency life-saving procedure for the pregnant person. And waiting for approval by a committee could mean the death of that person.

Medical interference can also be needed if the embryo has already been determined unviable (basically will not ever have life) because having dead tissue remain in the womb will kill the person. Wombs don’t always do what they’re supposed to and often they will still act as if the pregnancy is going along normally when the embryo stopped growing and forming.

Abortion as a medical procedure is part of basic reproductive healthcare. Denying it is like denying the use of a c-section or blood transfusions.

I also want to add that many of these GOP states are seeking to classify any and all contraceptives as “abortion” as well. This isn’t included in this bill specifically but it’s been named as part of their agendas.

2) “I mean I honestly don’t understand this bill nonsense but it mostly at least to me sounds like it’s just to keep children alive.”According to the CDC, 91.1% of abortions are performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation. At this time, this is an embryo and fetal tissue. It’s not a child. Pro-life people are placing the eventual *possible* life of a being that isn’t even formed yet above the autonomy and rights of a living human being (the pregnant person). A zygote without a brain or the ability to survive outside the womb is not a person, and therefore not a child. We have determined that something without brain activity is not alive. People with wombs are not incubators. This is not the sum of our existence.

Right now you cannot force a person to give blood or organs in life-saving situations. Why should it be okay to force a person to donate their entire body as an incubator if they don’t want to, which has health complications, and long-lasting effects on the body? We even afford humans that are DEAD more rights than womb-having people in this country. It is illegal to take organs or tissue from dead bodies with no brain activity without consent, but it’s legal to force a living person to act as an incubator for tissue and chromosomes that aren’t even formed to make a person yet?

Also, this bill has SO much more nuanced support for the oppression of women than just keeping “children” alive. This affords the state the right to investigate any suspicion of “intentional abortion.” This means, if a person miscarries, they may be subject to invasive investigation and murder charges on top of grieving for their loss and recovering medically. This bill also in no certain terms basically considers all womb-having people in their state to be the property of the state by allowing people to be extradited and charged if they have a LEGAL abortion procedure in another state.

3) “I mean there are adoption centers and people who will actually pay women who are pregnant to act as surrogates. Why is anti-abortion so bad?” We currently have 108,000 foster children up for adoption right this second in the US. This doesn’t even include unwanted pregnancies being given to private adoption agencies. Adopt one if you want to save a child, but forcing people to enter crippling debt, put their body through the abuse of childbirth, and possible forced poverty because of lack of childcare or compensation for missing work isn’t okay.

Additionally, anti-abortion really only seems to be concerned with one thing - popping out children. There is ZERO concern for the health, wellbeing, or survival of that child OR the parent afterward. This is oppressive and forced childbirth expectations. And again, reduces womb-having people as nothing more than a means to an end. Their life and wellbeing aren’t considered - they’re incubators.

4) “How is this a woman’s autonomy problem.”All of the above. The entire idea of denying women normal reproductive medical procedures or criminalize a natural thing that our bodies DO is inherently oppressive. Deciding that a womb-having person is just supposed to do their best to carry to term an embryo regardless of danger to their life, medical needs, e, inability to care for the child, inability to pay medical bills, or the abuse that childbirth puts on the body… and possibly condemning them to death, poverty, or life-long debt removes the ability for a person to choose what is done or what is done TO their body. It’s inherently oppressive.

Make no mistake, these bills have very little to do with saving the lives of children, and everything to do with keeping women impoverished, oppressed, and without any control over their own bodies and lives. These bills are also written and signed without ANY input or oversight primarily by the people they affect. This is not a choice that womb-having people made… these are oppressive laws being forced upon them.

Some final personal notes from me: I am currently in a place where I would suffer greatly from these laws if they were to be implemented in my state. First of all, if I were to get pregnant, mine would be a high-risk pregnancy. It is likely that I could lose the pregnancy anytime within the first two trimesters, which would require an abortive procedure to remove the remaining tissue. If I’m to get pregnant, I need to know that modern medical procedures that are agreed to be the most effective best practices would be available to me by a doctor without the threat of criminalization or debating on whether it’s necessary/legal. This affects all people who may ever become pregnant. This is a clear and present fear for us. It’s not just anti-abortion. If that’s all it was… the answer would be simple, don’t have one. If you need one to save your life, you can choose to say no. But it’s not. This is about controlling womxn, denying us healthcare, and we are afraid. We are all desperately terrified of this becoming the new normal across our country. ONE in FOUR pregnancies ends in the need for abortion. And if you need one, you get one. This is about whether or not we have access to SAFE and MEDICALLY sanctioned abortions. 

I really encourage you to do some additional research and reading from educational sites. Be wary of both FOX News, CNN, major news networks, and any journalists with a religious agenda. Further reading: https://prochoice.org/education-and-advocacy/downloads-resources/https://iwhc.org/2018/09/abortion-normal-and-vital/https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/issue/abortion-access/I’d really appreciate if any followers could tack on additional resources, statistics, and personal stories. This is SO important. 

[urkingbby]

Hey, lovelies. We wanted to make this admin note to let everyone know that we will be disabling the OOC discord server until Wednesday, October 7th. In the meantime, you are welcome to make occasional OOC posts using the hashtag #luxorooc to give group updates. We are going to ask that everyone please read this post thoroughly, as there are a lot of important things we want everyone to know.

To Start...

We have been running this RP for nearly 16 months and much like we said in our 1 year anniversary post, we are so grateful and excited to have had so many of you with us for so long. I have always taken an interest in groups with dynamic plots that actually progress as a real storyline and because of this, I have always felt so passionate about creating a fun space for everyone that has exciting plot drops, secret reveals and general plot progressions for you all to write and develop your characters within.

With that being said, within the past couple months, we have felt that there has been a shift in energy among the OOC interactions that we want to address. Please send an IM to the main saying, “completed ‘to start’” once you have completed this section.

Our Intention

We want this to be a safe space. We want everyone here to enjoy each other, each others characters, and we want everyone to feel involved and welcome. It is our responsibility to keep this group welcoming and safe. When issues are brought to us (off anon), it is up to us to resolve them and make sure that we can move forward better and happier than before.  Please send an IM to the main saying, “understand your intention” once you have completed this section.

Help Us Help You

At the same time, it is also up to our members (you guys) to make sure to let us know when you are unhappy with something so that we can try our best to get to the bottom of the issue and resolve it. When something is upsetting you, and it is causing you to feel negatively toward the RP or other members in the group, it is also upsetting to us. I, personally, take on way too much responsibility. I’m aware of this, and I’m trying to get better with that but what I don’t think will change is my desire to fix issues that arise.

If something is bothering you and you think it is going to effect the way you feel coming onto the dash every day or effect the way you treat other members, PLEASE bring it to us.

I feel so restless when I get hearsay messages from members about other people feeling uncomfortable but not wanting to tell us about it directly. I want to make sure every single one of you is happy and that you’re enjoying your time here. As a friend, I understand wanting to bring your friend’s concern to us but if they feel uncomfortable with us knowing, then there is nothing we can do. When something is brought to us (off anon), it is up to us to talk it out with everyone involved and make sure we’re all on the same page and can move on happily, but if we do not know about the issue or if we are being told through someone else as a result of the person involved not wanting to “make a thing out of it,” there is nothing we can do to fix that problem.

With that being said, you are more than welcome to keep your discomfort to yourself. What is your business is your business, but if you are deciding not to address and resolve something, you are also deciding that regardless of how it affects you moving forward, you will continue to act respectfully toward other members, as stated by our rules. Please send an IM to the main saying, “done ‘help us help you’” once you have completed this section.

The reason we are making this post

Within the past couple months, we think there has been a lack of respect amongst the members within this group, and it has been very upsetting to see unfold.

In order for this group to survive, in order for new members to feel welcome, older members to feel wanted and appreciated and for everyone to have a good time, we need everyone in this group to not only respect other's feelings, but also other's freedoms to express their opinions. We need everyone to remember that tone can be carried through text, and can sometimes be misunderstood, so please be cautious with your words, and please be slow to assume or find offense in things being said, as it isn’t always someone’s intention to upset others. 50% of online messages are misinterpreted [1][2][3]. And it’s important that if a message rubs you the wrong way or if something comes off as harsh to remember that it may not be meant in the way you are reading it.

Where I work, our management team has a system which is meant to create more understanding, safety, respect and encouragement among the employees. That system is the assumption that everyone who comes to work is trying their best and that everyone at work means well. So, when something arises, (not doing their job thoroughly, an argument arising between staff members, etc.) our managers assume that there might be something upsetting that staff member and extend empathy to them. They make sure that they’re okay, if they need time to step away, they ask what they, as management, can do to help them do their job, and most importantly, provide enough empathy to understand that these issues may very well have come up because there is something wrong that they are unaware of. I want everyone here to consider this with other members.

It isn’t anyone’s responsibility to uphold anyone else’s emotional, mental or physical wellbeing, other than their own, but it is everyone’s responsibility to extend empathy to one another and see everyone as a human being.

It’s dangerously easy to forget, when we’re upset with something, that the people behind the screens aren’t monsters, but multi-dimensional people. Please, please remember that.

With that being said, of course, this isn’t an excuse to fly under the radar, say whatever you want, however you want and expect that everyone just assume the best of you. 

It goes without saying that everyone is dealing with something. Things are especially stressful this year. Please remember that when speaking with one another. You truly have no idea how your words can effect someone.

RP is a means to escape our lives for a bit, to take a break from stress, a means to a creative outlet, and to find a way to be happy and have fun for a little while. It’s beautiful that every single one of you have chosen this group and have stayed with us for so long. We are all working together to create interesting and fun storylines with our characters, and we are all a part of each other’s escape. There is a reason each of us chose this group and are here together. Let’s ensure that we keep each other’s escape as easy as it should be, and extend that same empathy and respect back to each other, so that others can keep our escape easy as well. Please send an IM to the main saying, “I’ve read the ‘reason’” once you have completed this section.

The Admins

We also want to ask that when bringing issues up with the admin team, to please be respectful and patient with us. We all have family/friends, work and personal endeavors we have outside of this RP. Nora, Yo and I have made this RP a priority for over a year. That means that through all of the real life events that we have faced within the last 16 months, this RP has been in our mind and near the top of our to-do list. We have always tried our absolute best to meet event deadlines, quickly write up plot drops, working through our own stress from real life, and actively work together as a team to keep this RP thriving even at times when we don’t agree.

This is something that we decide to do. And with that comes the responsibility of having to resolve any issues that arise. For me, it is so important for people to have that space. It matters so much to me. But I will not deny that it is hard, and it does take a toll on each of us at times when our real lives are also hard, so please remember that yes, we are responsible for the group, but we are also people and sometimes we are going to need more time to resolve the issues that arise. Please send an IM to the main saying, “we see the admins’” once you have completed this section.

The Rules

The rules we have chosen for this group are ones we believe need to be maintained in order for the group’s long-lasting success.

We have recently added the rule that if you are uncomfortable with another member, to bring it to the admins to resolve it, as opposed to bringing it directly to that member. We implemented this rule in the hopes that if tension arises, the admins can act as a buffer to the tension, to prevent it from getting any worse. When we hear that matters are being handled between members without mention of the concerns with us, it brings us a lot of stress, worrying that the issue will escalate (as we have, of course, seen this happen far too many times).

Our intention in talking things out is to nip the problem in the bud right away and prevent it from progressing any further, and to hopefully make amends between people. We aren’t going to ask that you be friends with every other member, but everyone here is a mature adult and we expect that if you disagree with each other, that it can be overlooked for the sake of us, the admins, and for the sake of the group. Please send an IM to the main saying, “completed ‘the rules’” once you have completed this section.

If Any Tension or Concerns Arise

If you have any issues with other members, and think it will cause you to treat them poorly or be disgruntled coming onto the dash every day, we are going to ask that you bring it to us (off anon) so we can resolve it and bring us back to the safe RP we know and love. Please send an IM to the main saying, “I will do that if tension arises” once you have completed this section.

Going Forward

From now on, if OOC drama arises; if there is a general disrespect toward us or other members, we will no longer be lenient about this. We have given warnings for strikes before but from now on, we will be giving out strikes right away. Everyone is aware of the OOC rules. If you’re feeling frustrated, and feel the need to say something as a result of those feelings of frustration, and if those words would bring you some sort of relief from that frustration, we encourage you not to say them, especially directly to the people involved. Journal about it. 

If any OOC tension exists between you or another member that you have decided can never be resolved, that tension is to always be left at the door. It has no place in this group. Please send an IM to the main saying, “ready to go forward” once you have completed this section.

With all of this being said

For the next week, we are going to remove the group chat feature in hopes of everyone taking a deep breath and remembering the fun aspects and other benefits that come with a group chat.

In the meantime, we want everyone to remember that inclusivity is a rule in this group. Please remember to plot with other people, welcome every new member that we get (message them directly, offer to plot with them). 

When the group chat re-opens, we hope that we will be rejuvenated and feel relief in the new beginning.

Please remember that if you want this group to last, we have to maintain its foundation, which is the safety, respect and inclusivity among members. When you are disrespectful to each other, remember that you are in turn, being disrespectful to the admins.

Please remember that online RP is about creating fictional stories together, and that everyone involved is just trying to enjoy themselves. Please remember that we are all human, we will have foot in mouth moments, we will say things based on emotion and we will make mistakes. We’re really all here for a common purpose, guys. Not just in RP but in life. The more we can see people as being alike to us, the more empathy and understanding we can offer to people, even when they upset us, the better the world is. 

We love you guys. All we have ever wanted is to create a fun, dynamic group for everyone’s creative outlet.

I LOVE coming on to see your characters every single day. I am so freaking thankful that I have the pleasure of knowing them and seeing them navigate their lives. I want to keep them here so I can see them continue to develop and grow. 

They feel like friends to me. And maybe not everyone feels that way, but for me, I will still remember and recall them even long after this RP closes. 

I also think of all of you as friends. And I will continue to remember and recall all of you even long after this RP closes.

Please send an IM to the main saying, “completed the post” once you have completed this section.

I just want all of us to get along and be happy together. That’s really all I want.

-- Mimi, Nora, Yo.

[an-avid-reader]

The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas

my rating: 5/5 stars

On the night of a party gone wrong in Garden Heights, or “the hood”, Starr and her childhood best friend, Khalil, drive away only to be stopped by a white police officer. Khalil, unarmed, gets shot right in front of Starr’s eyes. Alas, Starr’s worlds—Garden Heights and Williamson, a predominantly white prep school—collide as word of Khalil’s death spreads and she is the only witness. Will Starr be able to bring justice to Khalil via riot and protests, or will he be remembered as a drug dealer and a thug?

"Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black"

Link to Goodreads || Spoiler-free review

A few things to check out:

Dear White People (Netflix)

When They See Us (Netflix)

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Book)

A list of places to donate to / one YT video if you’re unable to donate 

Here’s a post that is much more comprehensive

let me know if any of the links don’t work, I will update them :)

There’s a reason why this book has quite a few awards on the front—this book covers what some may consider a “taboo” topic aka racism, but it’s an issue. I’m writing this review slightly earlier than before I’m posting it, but right now the current news is about George Floyd’s death, which is arguably more brutal than what happened in this book, but the fact that some police officers still think race has something to do with one’s intentions is outrageous and disgusting. Even in Canada, there have been instances of racism across history (spoiler: Canada isn’t a ‘saint nation’, even though the population is very diverse). 

For these reasons, I think this book, while it is triggering, I think it should be fit into the curriculum for students to read so that they may be educated on racism, and how it can literally kill others, as well as to try and dismantle the systematic racism that is imposed on us from a young age. I can never sit here and tell you that I can experience what Starr went through (or what any POC—black or otherwise—has ever been through), I can only educate myself and emphasize with what’s been said/done to you—please call me out if I’ve said something that may be offensive and feel free to correct me if I’ve said anything wrong.

Alright now on with the book review! This book is so raw and powerful, Thomas does a great job of describing the scenes and the emotions Starr goes through during each scene. We get to see how she feels about dating a white boy while being black herself, how her neighbourhood is beautiful despite it being described as the hood, we also get to see how Starr’s demeanor completely changes while she’s at school vs when she’s visiting her family. While Thomas’ writing may be simple, she does a great job of capturing those moments and the emotions tied within the scene.

As we get to see Starr becoming a witness and taking legal action, I wasn’t sure where the story was headed. Would Khalil get justice and would the cop go to jail? How would Starr’s mental health be affected? Will her family be okay? (Don’t you just love it when there’s so much more conflict in the story that needs to be resolved and yet there are only 2 chapters left) Etc. etc. The thing about The Hate U Give is that there are multiple story lines, which help to drive the story forwards. Those plotlines didn’t feel out of place or forced—everything seemed to progress at a reasonable pace. 

I feel like one of the key parts of this story are the characters and their dynamics to the story. The most obvious being between Starr and her family. Although Starr has her own secrets that she keeps from her dad (*cough cough* Chris *cough cough*), I feel like they still have a strong bond, especially as the story went on and her dad, Maverick, stood behind Starr, even when things went south. (I could also 100% relate to Starr bickering with her brothers—even her half-brother). Then there’s Chris, which I kinda feel weird about him...which I feel like it’s a spoiler so I’ll talk about it under the cut. Overall, I’m glad that while he doesn’t understand what Starr has been through, he doesn’t judge her—he listens to her story and he also stays by Starr’s side at all times. I appreciate that Thomas didn’t put too much focus on the romance, otherwise I think it would’ve detracted from the main message. Finally, there are Starr friends. Even though we only got to know Khalil for a bit at the beginning, I like that Starr’s friendship with him was sprinkled throughout the story, even if it was in subtle ways. You could tell that, while their friendship may have fallen apart, Starr really cared for him and he was at the forefront of her mind. We also get to see Maya and Haliey’s friendship with Starr...and I can’t talk much about that without spoilers :/ let’s just say...it was interesting…

While I can’t exactly relate to Starr on an emotional/traumatic/life experience level, I love that we are both Harry Potter fans and she runs a Tumblr (which idk why but I’m always taken aback when books have Tumblrs?? Yet here we are). I appreciate that she tries to see the best in people, until they prove her wrong (or give her a reason to not like them). I think Starr is a strong role model in the sense that she stands up for herself and is determined to get justice, although she’s not cocky about it. It’s quite the opposite, she doubts herself—I just remember that there were so many parts where she blamed herself for not recalling every single detail of the incident or not putting emphasis on the type of person Khalil was to avoid him getting stereotyped. Starr also questioned her relationship with Chris, albeit she seemed a bit naive at some points. Because of Starr’s strong personality and her core values, the message of The Hate U Give is so much stronger, hence why I feel like everyone should read this novel.

Finally, I learned a lot from this novel. Regardless of the fact that this is a fictional book, it is very much based on the realities of Black people and the hardships they must endure on a daily basis. To be honest, I feel so dumb for not even realizing that the title spells out THUG and runs parallel with Tupac’s meaning of THUG LIFE. Mind you, now when I look at the cover, it’s all I see. I also didn’t realize that Black kids and teens are taught how to act around the police—all to be avoided to get arrested, shot, or killed—which is frankly, messed up. Thomas also takes the time to address the names she used, intentionally to give another layer of the book, which I feel that it is based on reality. I can definitely see why this book has received so many awards—and if this book were implemented in schools, it would allow the discussion on racism to be opened and it would also allow kids to see that not all authors are white, old men (looking at you, Shakespeare, which tbh the only good play I read was Macbeth).

I wanted to thank you for reading my review; if you’ve read this book, I’d love to know your thoughts. Below the cut, I have a spoiler section that I wanted to include (which I might add in future reviews, idk though). 

Please stay safe and healthy,

~ Cassandra / an-avid-reader

THE REMAINDER OF THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Okay, I’m not going to lie, but I thought that no one knew about Chris; didn’t Starr mention within the first few chapters that she can’t introduce him to her family because she’s afraid of what they’ll say/judge her for dating a white boy? But then, it turns out it’s just her dad that doesn’t know about him??? Idk if my memory is really that bad or if it’s such a slim detail (maybe it actually is an inconsistency o.O). But anyways, I love how Maverick was just playing with him (and making it clear that Chris would be in big trouble if he hurt Starr). I’m also not sure if he has a fetish for Black women (which Starr also pointed that out)—which I don’t know how to feel about that. I know some people have a thing for people of colour (Asians are commonly a fetish too, for example) but then some guys also have a thing for super short girls? Um yeah. I’ll probably leave it at that.

I’m not sure if it was just me, but I deadass thought Seven was going to be a gangbanger. He was sooooo suspicious anytime King was mentioned (which I get King is with Seven’s biological mom, but still I can’t be the only one who was suspicious, right?). I have to give him props though for putting his sisters’ needs before his own and for also listening to Iesha’s point of view. This man doesn’t give on people easily, and that’s a nice change. 

The last thing I wanted to include in this spoiler section is Haliey. I just— wtf man. She perfectly embodies the issue and idk she gave me such Karen vibes. It’s so frustrating that she just accepted the newspaper’s article story at face value—I don’t even think she even took the time to listen to the other point of view. I’m so glad that Starr punched her in the face, even though that resulted in her getting in trouble. And it’s not even towards just Starr that she was racist! When Maya opened up about Haliey’s comments, I was pretty infuriated. I think Haliey’s comments came from a place of ignorance or a lack of education, but it just bothered me that she just brushed it off. Smh “it was just a joke” or “get over it” *rolls eyes* Just apologize, Haliey, and educate yourself, please. Actually, maybe she could take lessons from Mr. Warren, their english teacher because he was lowkey a G. I was pleased to see he was a teacher (who are often seen as role models) that actually gave a crap about Starr and what she was going through. I guess we just need to be more attentive to what people have to say and be more empathetic when they’re hurt.

[thunder-the-ranger-wolf]

Training Days

@ibelieveinahappilyeverafter​ here’s the story I said I would write. It’s not what I thought it would be but I hope you like it regardless!

Shouta had trained plenty of kids. Had to, since he’d been teaching for… Goodness, had it really been almost a decade? Between having them in his homeroom and working with special cases on the side, he’d say he was an andequate mentor. He’s personally coached the occasional kid who was having a bit too much trouble with their Quirk. Midoriya was hardly the first case, though he was the most unique that Shouta had encountered by far. His class was full of them. It’s literally why he was the one teaching them. Shinsou Hitoshi was nowhere near the first kid he’s done one-on-one training with.

So why is this case different?

He asks Hizashi what he thinks after a particularly difficult session. Shinsou is very much not getting the point of having a repertoire of moves when he can simply order someone to do what he wants. Shouta found out the hard way that he wasn’t immune to the boy’s Quirk, and it had taken a few days to wrap his head around the fact that his mind was no longer his own for about three minutes.

That’s not to say he was scared of the kid or disgusted, like the boy’s peers seemed to be. No, it would be interesting to work with Shinsou if the kid could just get with the program-.

“You’re trying to train him like you did.”

The words that dropped out of Hizashi’s mouth were quiet, yet they slammed into Shouta with all the force of a bullet train.

“What?”

Hizashi flinched at the flat icy tone that his voice took and a small part of him thought Good. He should know better.

He shook that away. It did no good to dwell on the past, but he couldn’t fault anyone else for bringing it up. Especially not Hizashi, who had been there and likely still wasn’t over it.

Granted, Shouta knew that he himself would never be over what happened during his second year.

“It’s… I don’t know, Sho. It’s like you’re trying to push him the way you pushed yourself. Like we’re back in Gen-Ed and the Sports Festival was our only chance.”

“It is his only chance.”

“There’s a difference!” Hizashi snapped out. “He’s not you. You can’t train him to focus on the things that you did because he won’t respond the same. It’s not the same situation at all.”

“It’s the exact same situation. UA hasn’t changed.”

“Okay, but this is a different kid. He’s not dealing with the same things, he doesn’t have the same emotions or coping mechanisms or even the same problems that you did. The chance to get into the Hero Course is the same, but that’s all that is.”

“So… what now?”

“You have to teach him like you would any of your Hero students. Run him through an obstacle course or two. His abilities can’t end with his Quirk, and he doesn’t seem to know that. Show him why you’re in charge of 1-A. Run him the way you run them and make him prove he has what it takes to keep up.”

“I thought you said I shouldn’t train him the way I trained.”

“You’re not. He has the motivation, but he doesn’t fully get what makes a Hero Course student. Teach him that, and he’ll be ready for the Sports Festival.”

 Shouta chewed over what his friend said for the rest of the week, and when the weekly training session came back around, he had something of a game plan.”

“I’ve been going about this wrong.” He admitted to his student. “You’re not the first student I’ve mentored one-on-one, but you are the first transfer student. It, uh… hit harder than I thought it would. But you’re not me, and I don’t need you trying to be. So here’s what we’re going to do.”

Shinsou was positively livid as he received the new training plan. He would race through the obstacle course day after day, and each training session, something new would be added.

“You can stop someone in their tracks and make them do what you want, but I guarantee you, that will only keep you safe for so long. You have to know how to back up what you make them do.”

Hitoshi was no slouch. He ran the obstacle course, even if it took him a while to get used to the boulders trying to drag him down or he slipped from sets of rings that clearly belonged to a gymnastics class.

Someone was set to monitor him every day because even the Hero students couldn’t use their obstacle courses without a chaperone or two. If it wasn’t Shouta, it was Hizashi or Nemuri or Kan. Yagi stopped by once, to use some of the equipment for himself, and was willing to watch the boy run the course and even gave pointers.

This went on for ten days, and Shouta was the one to show up for the last few days.

“What, not going to pawn me off on another teacher?” Hitoshi scowled.

“Observing your surroundings should be next on the list.” Came the familiar-by-now voice of Present Mic as if through a speaker. “Up here, Little Listener!”

The man sounded like he was laughing and it made Hitoshi tense up. The look on his face was telling enough, and Shouta figured that it’d be funny to see if Hizashi let the kid get a few hits in.

“He’s a kid, Mic, he’ll grow into it.”

“Right!” Present Mic crowed with a sarcastic edge to his words as he leaned over the railing of the platform above them. “Because you did that so damn well.”

“It’s like you said, he’s not me.” Shouta called up, annoyed. What was Hizashi playing at? “He’ll get it.”

“Sure, sure. Just wondering how much time he has. There are only two more Festivals.”

“And plenty of chances between them.” Shouta snapped. He wanted to wring the other man’s neck but Hizashi was too high up. If his goal was to annoy Shouta, he was doing well enough.

Shouta turned to his student.

“I need to not strangle that bastard and you’ve surpassed my expectations so far. Feel like getting some food?”

Hitoshi agreed eagerly enough and they were off.

The cafe they went to wasn’t originally a Cat Cafe. A few train stops away, Shouta would always remember it as the hole-in-the-wall where he got his morning caffeine fix. And they always seemed to remember him.

“Hey, Aizawa-kun! I was hoping you’d stop by today! You know Rakki had her kittens last week?”

“Did she? How’d it go?”

“There are five. I don’t know how we’re going to manage this litter.”

“I keep saying you can always give one to me. Mochi loves company and loves kittens even more.”

“With all your busy-work I wonder who would handle them more, you or your cat!” The owner snickered.

A nice older man with a wife and two grown children, Shokora Akebi had run this shop since he was a child. The cats were a recent addition. His oldest ran a rescue shelter elsewhere in the city and these were a few of the pets who never found a home. They had attachment issues, so Shokora extended the shop. He did his best to ensure the space and the people in it were safe, and his youngest was qualified to run the cat portion of the cafe in much the same way his oldest ran the shelter.

Shouta explained all of this to a wide-eyed Hitoshi as one of the cats plonked himself into his lap and stretched.

“Looks like Tora is feeling friendly.” A nearby patron snorted, amused, as the orange mackerel tabby arched his back and rubbed against Hitoshi’s shirt.

A gasp hushed the shop as something nudged Shouta’s ankle. The Hero looked down to find that a tortoiseshell held a kitten in her mouth, tail lashing. Shouta looked behind him to make sure nothing blocked his way before pushing his chair back and allowing the mother cat to nestle on his lap. The kitten mewled for all of two seconds before it burrowed in his mother’s fur. Rakki pawed at Shouta’s shirt sleepily before curling up around her kitten.

“Well, we’re stuck here for at least an hour.” Shouta snorted, amused.

“They’re so cute…” Hitoshi mumbled, eyes wide.

“Yours is gnawing at your hand.” Shouta informed him.

The kid didn't seem to mind, too enamored with the fact that it had curled up in his lap without a care in the world.

Shouta snorted at that. Rakki pawed at his capture weapon and he wound a bit around his wrist for her to bat at. The kitten squirmed as she flipped onto her back and stretched out for the strip of cloth.

"Ah, she's feeling playful!"

“She’s lucky this is a practice cloth.” Shouta yawned. “I can afford to replace these and she wouldn’t hurt herself trying to get at them.”

They didn’t stay long at the cafe and their drinks were prepped to go.

“What are we doing next?” Hitoshi wondered.

“I’ve got a few training ideas I want to implement, but I think you’ve earned the rest of the day off. I’m dropping you off at UA and you’re free from there as long as you don’t get in trouble.”

Hitoshi seemed disappointed at the prospect of being on his own and if Shouta was honest with himself, he wasn’t quite ready to let the boy go off on his own. Not yet, at least. But he needed to confront Hizashi about just what the hell that performance of his was supposed to be. Why have the kid run the obstacle course if Shouta was the one monitoring his progress and Hizashi was just playing puppet-master? What did the Voice Hero plan that he wasn’t telling? If it was just to get a look at how he was teaching Hitoshi, he would have said. But there was something else. Something missing.

“Sensei?” Hitoshi prompted.

Aizawa blinked, realizing that he’d been lost in thought as the train they took passed the last stop before UA. It was time to get off. He nodded to the kid to show he was aware and they exited the train and eventually the station. UA wasn’t far, but it was getting dark so Shouta instructed his student to stay close and call for him if they got separated. Scream, actually. He insisted. This wasn’t his first time out with a student and he told every kid the same thing. Shouta was just more agitated for some reason. Hizashi had thrown him off-kilter in a way he wasn’t sure about.

“Are you and Mic-sensei having a fight?” Hitoshi wondered aloud.

If there was anything in his mouth, Shouta would have choked on it in his utter surprise. As it was, he stopped and turned to address the kid.

“What makes you think that?”

“He’s been weird. Outside of class, I mean. I actually see him pretty often, I’m learning sign-language with some of the Gen Ed kids. We formed a club.”

Hizashi would happily run a club like that and was likely over the moon to be asked about something that was important for him specifically.

“How long would you say he’s been weird?”

“What, do you not pay attention?” Hitoshi scoffed.

“I have my estimate. What’s yours?”

“Almost a month.”

That was a good guess. There were several anniversaries that made Hizashi fidget. He could also be strange when reminded of something from the past, whether Shouta knew of the event or not, he was usually able to pick up on this. The Sports Festival coupled with watching Shouta train Hitoshi must have felt like repeatedly getting punched in the face. Shouta had originally chalked it up to USJ, but that was a brand new trauma, all fresh and shiny and likely complete with nightmares.

“What’s your reasoning?” Shouta wondered.

So Hitoshi explained how the teacher came in early and stayed late, which was the norm for them, but he never seemed to slow down. In fact, he seemed to speed up with each passing day, as if the mere thought of slowing down would stop everything in its tracks.

“I’ve seen people do that. My dad used to do that before he got the new job that moved us here. But the thing about Dad was… he had to slow down or he’d crash. He did crash. And he took Mom and me with him. We moved because the job was running him into the ground, but he didn’t know how to stop. So Mom made him.”

“And you think Mic will eventually crash.”

“If he hasn’t already.”

“Good eyes, kid. You’re not wrong.”

“But I missed something.”

“Just context. You’re right that he’s got more to deal with at work, and there are a few events in his personal life to add to that.”

Shouta refuses to think that Hitoshi’s training is one of them. Hizashi wouldn’t ask him to stop training the kid, and might honestly hate him if he caught on and the training ended. But something had to change and Shouta wasn’t sure what.

“I hope he gets better at slowing down,” Hitoshi mumbled. “Do you think he’d like to see the Sign Language Club more?”

“It’s worth a shot. You can’t solve all his problems, but he might be grateful for the outlets he already has.”

“I’ll call an emergency meeting, then. At the very least, he can do something he likes while figuring out whatever this is.”

“Empathy, observation, and creativity. Hone those and you have the makings of a fine Hero.”

“Thanks!” Hitoshi beamed. “Y’know, I think if Mic ran the obstacle course with one of us, he’d feel better.”

“We’ll see.” Shouta mused. “Let’s not push him.”

The rest of the walk was quiet, at least between them. Shouta had some ideas on how to move forward and Hitoshi was slightly more enthusiastic about the prospect of training with Mic. Whatever problems came up next, they could be solved.

[bevinbrand]

So, did you guys have any plans on rarijack before the show ended? Like we're you planning on making them explicit canon? If not, do you have more headcanons? Lol, i love hearing your ideias of what these two were up to!

Ahhh thanks! These two are loads of fun. @marvelandponder and I have bandied some ideas around recently, just for fun. I’ll talk about those here and then have a longer answer about ships and how the show worked in general on that subject under a cut ‘cause it got really long.

Okay, so extended headcanon with Rarijack after high school! So they’re both making a go of it in (EQG-equivalent) Paris, having their ups and downs, learning how to live away from home, in a new culture, learning that sometimes it’s not as perfect and romantic as they thought, or conversely that it’s not as terrible and totally alien as they thought (guess who’s who here). And living together for the first time, having to learn to cohabitate and share a space, learning to juggle very busy lives with their relationship, still keeping in touch with their friends from high school, meeting new people and making new friends, and in general being extremely busy. Far, far too busy to really think about plans after Rarity’s apprenticeship is done and AJ’s culinary education is done. Nothing really beyond moving back to Canterlot, at least until they figure out where to go from there. Paris is great but it’s not home and they both need to see friends and family for a while.

Well, nothing except moving back home and getting married.

So after they move back and have some down time, and after some light planning, they announce their engagement. Of course there’s a huge group party for this at the Apple family farm, and every girl who’s moved away absolutely makes sure they’re there for it. It’s basically a giant welcome home/reunion/engagement party.

After everyone’s recuperated from that, Rarity throws herself into opening her own online boutique with the hopes of being able to expand into a physical shop someday. She also throws herself into wedding planning with Pinkie; those two learning to collaborate would likely be trial and error at first but once they start really communicating and brainstorming, they start coming up with some incredible ideas.

Not much for party planning or understanding wedding decorations, AJ tries to settle back in at the farm but it’s running pretty well without her these days, so she has to figure out new ways to make herself useful. Ends up getting involved in a farm-to-table restaurant with her homemade pastries, which then leads to her helping to arrange for other farms in the area to get involved in similar endeavors with restaurants, schools, and local charities.

And I think that’s about as far as we got so far. So yeah! I dunno! Hope it’s fun! If not, feel free to ignore it! :D

Re: shipping

So, okay, firstly, there’s kind of a sticky situation in terms of canon couples in a show like this, especially when it’s been on for a while and lots of people have lots of preferences for ships and whatnot. In that if you make one of them official, you’re by default sort of taking away everyone else’s ship in terms of what might be canon. (Note: you can and should ship whatever you like, that is literally what fandom is FOR.) And to be honest, we’re not really in this to upset fans, even though sometimes we accidentally do, or it happens as a result of telling a story we feel is important. And since shipping is a very personal thing to a lot of people for a myriad of totally valid and important reasons, sometimes addressing this stuff can feel like walking into a minefield. Especially for me because I don’t really have any major shipping preferences, and I’m just out here sharing my personal ideas and headcanons and giving some info on what the intent (as I understand it) was with what we were doing on the show. Which, let me be clear, does not invalidate anybody’s shipping preference or headcanon; there was always some wiggle room to try and accommodate most possibilities and a bunch of different ways of reading things.

The thing of it is… the show can’t be all things to all people, it just isn’t possible to do. There’s not something wrong or deficient with anyone’s preferred ship, it just may or may not have been a direction things were going. And even then, we really only had one actual official couple that was explicitly written to be that way; everything else was either hinted at or just up for grabs by whomever liked it. Nobody who worked on the series can control what you ship, that’s not within our power, it’s not something most of us would desire. Your ships are yours, regardless of what happens in canon. (And yeah, that’s not a perfect situation either, believe me, I know.) Chances are very high that at least one person working on the show shipped the same thing a bunch of fans do, and a lot of people had multiple ships, and conflicting ships and like, we weren’t all one hive mind on the subject either, trust me.

Which brings me to point number two: the people at DHX, myself included, didn’t have any input into the story ideas or scripts we got (beyond the directors making minor suggestions on early drafts which may or may not have been implemented or rejected, depending). So as much as a lot of us might personally have wanted to make some couples canon, we really didn’t have a say in that. We could suggest things visually, like we did with Rarijack, and then try our best to keep that consistent with the subsequent material we were given, but we didn’t have the ability to be like, hey, let’s have them go on a date or declare their feelings openly. And to be fair, H*sburo really let us run with a lot of the stuff we wanted to do. So much of the Rarijack hinting in Rollercoaster of Friendship, we honestly thought would get called for revision, either by the company or by S&P, but somehow none of it did. “Surprised” is an understatement for the feeling of when we found out that none of it got called after we submitted it. And then again with the design for Ragamuffin– not a peep from anyone, nor any dissent on the whole bit the board artist added with everyone making the connection between his appearance and AJ’s. So, we never got any scripts where they’re explicitly dating, but they sure let us do a lot in terms of implying it. No clue what may have been pitched by the writers, all of that was totally removed from us and what our role in the process was.

(Also, onscreen kissing wasn’t a thing we could do at all. The TimberTwi date episode at the planetarium originally had a kiss at the very end that made it fairly far down the approvals process but eventually did get called and was changed. And that was the only truly “officially official” couple we had in the series, so. Yeah.)

So, all that to say that I really can’t answer any questions about what was planned or what was pitched for ideas, because I truly don’t know. I wish I did!

[yofavcocoa]

Amber Heard Plastic Surgery Before as well as After

At least that's what Dr. Julian De Silva, a London-based cosmetic surgeon, concluded when he examined the 33-year-old's features using computer mapping modern technology.

" The Phi ratio of 1.618 has actually long been believed to hold the trick for elegance," he states. After determining Amber and other superstars across 12 essential pens for the nose, lips, eyes, temple, chin, and facial symmetry and form, he discovered that Amber came closest to the old Greek principles for physical perfection thanks to cosmetic surgery! Visit Website and see pictures before and after plastic surgery!

" [She] has one of the most lovely faces in the world, racking up a high 91.85 percent."

Certainly, a cosmetic surgeon greater than any person would recognize that the supposed "best" face proportions can be accomplished by going under the knife. Interestingly sufficient, Dr. De Silva's formula scored Kim Kardashian 91.39 percent, as well as most of us, recognize there's nothing all-natural regarding her!

So did Amber additionally have a little aid? Allow's learn!

Amber in 2005

Our first shot was from back in 2005 when Brownish-yellow was 19 years old. She's got the same dirty blonde hair color, the same eyes, and also the very same lovely skin. What's various compared to now? I think it's generally to do with her mouth. We can see that her top lip was naturally a lot thinner than the reduced one, for starters.

Amber in 2006

In this more front-facing shot from 2006, we get a far better consider her initial nose. It appears a little broader and extra noticeable compared to more recent photos. Additionally, her smile doesn't have that "Hollywood" look yet; I think since she has a little bit of an overbite. Keep in mind the thinner brows, which got on the pattern back then.

Amber in 2007

In 2007, Brownish-yellow was still undressed (I think!). I'm rather sure I would not have acknowledged her in this shot. Again, the distinction is all in the mouth-- her overbite is triggering her teeth to protrude over her reduced lip slightly, and also, her top lip isn't almost as full. The makeup is additionally rinsing her complexion. I assume the structure is too matte and grainy and can make use of some measurement from bronzer or flush.

Amber in 2008

In 2008, she cycled via several hair colors. First, it was back to her natural dirty blonde-- however, styled in these stiff, retro curls. (There was a genuine old Hollywood moment around this moment, do you keep in mind? Scarlett Johansson made use of to use this type of appearance too!) Brownish-yellow's teeth are additionally brighter, although there are many more changes to find. When it comes to the "bunny lines" close to her nose, sometimes those can occur from Botox. However, she was only 22 at this time ... hmmm!

Amber in 2009

The black hair had actually faded right into this deep brownish by the list below year, which Amber paired with a spray tan and spiky false lashes. From this angle, I see two points. She still has that minor overbite appearance (which she does not have currently). Plus, her nose still has the same little bump on the bridge, similar to 2007.

Amber in 2010

After that came one more significant change in 2010. To accompany her initial film functions as the women lead (in Drive Angry and The Rum Diary), she upgrades both her hair color and makeup. This warm blonde is a lot kinder to her complexion, and the great smoky eyes and flushed cheeks are tranquil. I don't think she altered anything additional regarding her features at this time ... yet stay tuned!

Amber in 2011

The list below year, Amber was a blonde once more, but this time around, it looks a lot extra brightened. Although I'm still not fascinated by the color, the smooth styling makes her appearance equally the star. One more monitoring: spray tans were a whole lot extra obvious in this age! The same chooses the makeup, which is heavy-handed. When it comes to her teeth, they're whiter and brighter than ever before. She had veneers because the shapes and sizes are different from 2008.

Amber in 2012

At age 26, Amber had yet an additional hair color change, and also, this one's my favorite of all, a warm medium brown. I can bear in mind caring about this at the time, and I really feel the same way already! Orange lipstick was a huge trend that year, as well as Brownish-yellow is using it with attractive fresh skin. Her eyebrows have actually also completed rather, compared to 2006. But there could be something else adding to this look ... a little tweak to her nose. Bear in mind; celebrities typically change their hair at the same time to toss us off!

Amber in 2013

Amber's redhead hair was just as gorgeous in 2013. I really did a double-take with this photo-- initially, look, I thought it was Miranda Kerr! You have to admit that she looks extremely modelesque with the marginal makeup and side-swept, brushed-out waves.

Amber in 2014

I think 2014 was the year that Brownish-yellow truly "made it" as a star, ending up being a regular on the red carpet. The first thing that leaps out in this image is her top lip. Does it look fuller because the edge has been overdrawn with lip lining? Or did she have a little something infused? I'm not sure!

Amber in 2015

Okay, by 2015, I definitely assume Brownish-yellow was messing around with hyaluronic acid lip shots. See just how the bottom side of her top lip is quite lumpy? She also had this very same expression in 2007, and also, her top lip did not have this much fullness. I believe she finally arrived at her "Life Colour" with this blonde in other news. She has remained near to this color since!

Amber in 2016

Does Brownish-yellow get prettier and also prettier or what? She was 30 in this image, and I'm enjoying the off-the-face updo as well as glowy makeup. Red lipstick has actually started to become her point currently (it additionally makes lip injections less obvious!). You'll see that her mouth setting appears a lot more loosened up, perhaps since her teeth are no more protruding as much.

Amber in 2017

Hair and makeup always boost considerably as individuals climb the celeb ladder, and this appearance is no exemption. The tousled beachy hair, great brown smoky eyes, shaded brows, contoured cheeks, and matte tarnished lips are all extremely innovative (and were no question implemented by specialists). Notice how her top lip now matches the dimension of her lower one.

Amber in 2018

With a streamlined ponytail as well as red lipstick, this ensemble was perhaps Amber's most developed look today. See what I indicate about the red lipstick camouflaging the plumped-up lip( s)? Although she is putting on a heavier layer of the structure, the makeup is excellent. Her face also appears a lot more angular currently, possibly from age, weight-loss, or tension. Honestly, I think she looks a little tired. (Stars! They're just like us!).

Amber in 2019

That brings us to Amber's latest pic-- and even with red lipstick, these lips stick out. They're absolutely the plumpest she's needed today, as well as are what obtained me thinking of this Before & After, to begin with! Fortunately, they're balanced by extremely, very little makeup, an off-the-face hairstyle, and her max eyebrows yet.

Conclusion

Before I started this Before & After, I thought Brownish-yellow underwent a few cosmetic tweaks to rack up so high with Dr. De Silva's algorithm.

Specifically, I believed a nose job-- similar to the majority of celebs we have actually looked at in this column. Now that I've analyzed her red carpet images, I still think that procedure. But this is just one of the more difficult instances to inform without a doubt!

With her face angled sideways, there's not a considerable distinction in her account over the years, except perhaps a much less forecasted suggestion. When she's facing the electronic camera, she could have had some traditional sculpting to tighten her nostrils and develop a more button-like idea.

Something I bank on, nonetheless-- Amber made huge modifications to her lips as well as teeth!

There's no denying that she explores lip injections these last few years to boost her upper lip's dimension.

What made the largest difference was addressing her protruding teeth, probably with something like Invisalign's undetectable dental braces. Currently, when she smiles, her teeth no more overlap her bottom lip. She additionally has a much whiter, more even smile, likely because of a combination of teeth lightening and porcelain veneers.

When we consider plastic surgery, we do not generally think about aesthetic dentistry, yet Brownish-yellow's Before & After goes to show you exactly how transformative it can be!

[citrineghost]

A Letter to WordPress

Dear WordPress,

Tumblr has been around for a good while now and many of us have been here since the beginning (or close to it). It’s become something of a comfort and a home base for many. You can understand then why it’s so terrifying and tension-setting when a new owner comes around.

This website has been through a lot of changes, very few of them good in recent years. I want to open up a dialogue from the user base about our feelings and desires surrounding this site, because to so many of us, not only its design and function, but its success and future are a big deal.

Obviously not all of the things I list below will be universal opinions, but I’ll try to outline some of the things I’ve seen the majority of users want. I’ll also throw in some things that are more personal, because I can’t claim to know everything the rest of the users want, but I can tell you where I see obvious problems.

First and foremost, here’s an obvious one. You can’t really go anywhere on Tumblr without knowing: we want the bots and the nazis gone. We need some kind of captcha system for every time someone wants to include a hyperlink in a post or response. Until the staff count gets higher, I would honestly suggest closing down the report system for everything but bots, nazis, and death threats/suicide bait.

Make NSFW content welcome again. Outside of porn bots, the pervasiveness of NSFW content is slim to none. As long as minors and those with ‘NSFW’ blacklisted aren’t seeing the NSFW content, there’s nothing wrong with it being here. A large number of the people posting NSFW content on here are artists who use this content to make a living on commissions. The ban has done nothing but make valuable members of the Tumblr community leave and take their art elsewhere. The focus should be cracking down on anyone who isn’t properly tagging NSFW content with ‘NSFW’. If the focus is put on that, the problem with NSFW content will be null.

Please keep Tumblr unintegrated with other social media. Most users will agree, the anonymity is such a huge part of what draws us to Tumblr. Other people only know what we tell them and it’s very appealing for our real life accounts (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) to be completely separate. When users want to share links to other accounts, they can do so easily with links on their blogs.

Replace ads with either, better, more sensible ads or members content. A large part of the ads on Tumblr make absolutely zero sense just by looking at them. Not to mention, they’re all completely unfit for the user base. I’ve seen weight-loss ads (harmful to the many people on the site recovering from eating disorders) and ads for products most people wouldn’t need or want until their forties. Most of the user base is 13-35, if I had to guess. I can tell you right now, you would make more money and the user base would be much happier if ads were removed in favor of members content. Adding a paid membership that allows users to gain access to new features (rather than restricting what’s already here) would be a huge boost in morale and company income. Use that income to improve the site. Don’t get comfortable making more than the bare minimum in profit until the website is functioning reasonably well. Hint: it’s not right now.

Keep the base functions of Tumblr. Don’t try and get radical, hoping big changes will excite the community. They won’t. We’re creatures of habit and we just want memes, fandom, and relatable nonsense. Keep reblogging, replies, customizable blogs, tags, and likes functionally the same.

Be receptive to bug reports and post change logs so that the community knows that they’re being addressed and fixed.

These are the obvious pleas of the community. Please keep in mind that the heart of Tumblr is in its users and if you ostracize us, there will be nothing left. We love this website and we want to see it thrive as much as anyone. We just don’t want to sacrifice the spirit of the community in the process.

Read more under the cut if you want to see some more of my own personal suggestions. I’d love for other users to sound off in the replies with whether they agree with any of the pleas or suggestions and also give their own!

Okay, so, here are some personal opinions that are by no means the voice of the community. I think they’re pretty sensible, but what do I know?

Change back the color. I hate this saturated navy color and I’m pretty sure a lot of others do too. I’m part of the disabled community and I know and have seen people saying that these extremely contrasted colors that were added are making their Tumblr experience worse. It gives people headaches due to light sensitivity and, frankly, it’s ugly. If you’d like to cater to those who are visually impaired/colorblind, that’s fantastic! Do so with an account setting that turns on higher contrast mode or adds patterns to things to make them distinguishable.

Add an option to blog suggestions and posts that have shown up on your dash from followed tags that says “Stop Suggesting This.” I’ve been suggested a number of blogs that I’m not interested in following. I don’t want to block the user, but I do want some different suggestions and for those blogs to stop showing up in suggestions. I’m also tired of seeing the same post twenty times from a tag I follow. There is currently an option that says “This particular posts sucks.” While I think that was a great attempt at catering to the community, I don’t want to use it because my intuition says that there’s a negative connotation. Does me saying the post sucks make it show up less for other people? Does it lose popularity? I can’t tell. The only thing I know is that I don’t want to say that a good post sucks just to make it quit showing up on my dash.

Implement some of the features that XKit uses. I would bet at least a quarter, if not more, of Tumblr users use XKit to make using Tumblr less painful. That shouldn’t be the case. Tumblr should have these functionality options available in dashboard settings.

A very hot take here that many might disagree with: Make notes viewable more like mobile has them. As it is, it’s hard to tell which ones I’ve seen on desktop. It can be tricky on mobile too, honestly, but it’s easier than on desktop. I would also heavily suggest making the unseen notifications darker so that they stand out and making a button to indicate that you’ve seen them.

Keep the dash, messages, notes, and profile as separate processes similar to how mobile has it. The trek all the way down the damn dashboard is a long one. I want to be able to see notes and messages in full size without losing my dash progress. When I switch back I want to be right where I was. I understand if this one isn’t possible or practical. It was just something I like about mobile over desktop but I’m aware that they’re two different beasts with different capabilities.

As far as the aforementioned members features, I do have some ideas, but I can’t guarantee they’re the best the user base has to offer. I’m sure others could think of better. Anyway, some things I’ve thought of are groups/clubs, digital currency, and separate dashboards. So, as it stands, You can have multiple blogs on one account. People can follow them separately. That’s fantastic. What would also be nice though, is being allowed to make separate dashboards. This would probably take up another chunk of server space, so I understand if it isn’t feasible right now, but I would jot it down. The ability to separate shitposts, aesthetic imagery, fandom content, and NSFW would be amazing. If you follow a huge number of blogs, like me, you could even make a friends dash so that you don’t miss your friends’ posts. It would just be a matter of allowing people to add and name their new dashboards. Then, when they go to follow people, it prompts them to choose what dash their content goes to. You could even simplify it by making the follow button default to the main dash, but adding a little dropdown arrow beside it. You could then choose which dash to add them to from a list. Below are some bad paint-drawn concept drawings.

Anyway, I hope this has all been helpful in some way. I’m fairly certain that WordPress will never actually read this, but it was cathartic to write and I hope it will be cathartic for someone else to read.

Sincerely, birb-ghost

[mammons-sugarbaby]

I don't know why but it seems like I can write better for characters I don't really care for, than I can ones I do like.

Maybe it's because I'm more critical of their character and development?

For example Diavolo is probably one of my absolute least favorite characters, however when I was writing him for a request that I have, it became a lot longer then I had intended. It also made me think that maybe he wasn't exactly a character I hated but didn't like how he was currently.

Diavolo and Lucifer, on their own I can write a lot about, even though I feel like I don't I know a lot about Diavolo.

He's always very happy and upbeat but he's also implementing all these plans and schemes and other stuff without really taking into consideration of how other people may feel about it. And this is addressed at one point I can't remember what lesson though. And I mean being the demon prince and the ruler of the devildom, that has to be such a lonely existence and he pretty much only has Lucifer and Barbados, but even they don't tell him no or really defy him in any meaningful way so he just assumes that everyone is always on board with whatever he comes up with because he thinks they're great ideas when in reality nobody wants to make him angry.

And I feel like it's some point he has thought about this and realized what a lonely position he's in.

So I don't know if he locks that part of himself away and refuses to acknowledge that the only reason why everyone goes along with things is because they're scared of him, or that he is very much aware of it and is taking advantage of no one being able to say no to him out of fear.

I'm hoping it's the first one because I can see positive character development come out of that. Like that is the kind of person he wants to be he wants to be somebody who is very happy and very well-liked.

But if it's the opposite and he's using the fact that people are afraid of making him angry by pointing out that some of his ideas aren't necessarily the best for everybody and in fact a lot of times puts a great deal of strain on others, well then that will make me honestly probably despise him.

I mean villains pretending to be happy-go-lucky characters that are friends or trying to be friends with the main character is nothing new, and normally I don't have a problem with it, but when I think about Diavolo being manipulative in that sense it makes me very angry.

The more I think about it the more I try to remind myself that these are demons despite how much the devs have fluffed the story, I'm only on lesson 26 but I feel now like the exchange program has more sinister intentions behind it, rather than the peaceful "bringing everyone together" spiel.

So for me Diavolo is either a very lonely character who just wants to be genuinely liked but doesn't know how to go making genuine connections

Or he is an exceedingly manipulative bastard that was evil from the get-go.

I've said it before and I'll say it again Solomon is shady, but in a very obvious "pull a rug over a dead body to hide it" way

Barbados is shady in the way that nothing is really known about him but he's usually always smiling or polite but you can see through the facade because he lets you, because he wants you to know he can and will end you anytime without hesitation.

And Diablo is shady in the way that he exhibits signs of being a psychopath but you won't really be able to tell if he is or isn't until he gets caught, and even then you question whether or not someone who seems so charismatic could actually do these horrible things ( if in fact he actually has done horrible things, which I don't doubt he has, but that remains to be seen)

Anyway if you read this whole thing thanks for listening to me ramble lol.

[bazaarwords]

A (Very Long) Theater Glossary

I’ll be adding to this as I add chapters—please let me know if any terms aren’t clear, correct, or if I’m missing any!

(now alphabetized by chapter by the very awesome @osmriceu)

You can read the fic here, and find the glossary below the cut!

CHAPTER 1

Actor’s Equity: The theater actor’s union. An actor will accrue “points” mainly by being in productions under an Equity contract, or in theaters associated with the union. At a certain number of points, they will get their Equity card and be part of the union.

Assistant stage manager (ASM): The stage manager’s arms and legs. The amount of them is dependent on the size of the production, but often there are only two. They communicate with each other, members of the run crew and the stage manager over single-ear headsets, usually staying backstage to assist in the running of the show, as well as helping during rehearsals, with paperwork, and any other duties that may arise during the course of a production.

Black box: A type of theater, literally a room painted black on all sides, usually with a tension grid (will explain later) for hanging lights and curtains. Here, it is where they’re having their rehearsals, but it can also be used for shows. Some theaters will have multiple stages for rehearsals/multiple shows. Picture here.

Box office/box: Where audience members will get their tickets. Run by the box office manager (once Glimmer, now Micah.)

Cue: A trigger for an action, usually called by the stage manager. These are often scenery, lighting or sound cues, but there are many assorted cues that a stage manager may call depending on the needs of the production.

Curtain speech (the title of the chapter lol): Before a show, the director, artistic director of the theater, or other manager will speak on stage about the goings on in the theater and other events of import. It’s called a curtain speech because it usually happens in front of a curtain, but it doesn’t have to.

Fly rail: The area where a backstage crew member will pull ropes that raise and lower scenery/curtains/etc. Picture here.

Fly system: A series of counterweighted pulleys that allow scenery, soft goods (curtains, screens, etc), and even actors to be raised and lowered by a fly rail operator. The operator will pull ropes, usually at a stage manager’s cue, to do so. Diagram here.

Half-bricks/stage weights: Solid bricks of metal with grooves cut out of either end. Each is usually around 20lbs (~9kg.) Mostly used as counterweights to operate a fly system. Picture here.

“In the house”: Here, it refers to Bow working as an usher, directing audience members to their seats.

Lead: The lead actor/star of the show.

Lighting board/console: The device that programs and controls all lights used in a show. Manned by the light board operator. It is often moved out during technical rehearsals. Pictures here.

Loading rail: In theaters with a fly system, it is usually a second-floor catwalk along the side of a stage wall where someone can load weight on to the fly system to counterbalance it.

“Mid-stage coming in/going out”: Here, Scorpia is announcing that she’s using the fly system to bring a curtain down so it’s visible, and then back up to be hidden. Its location is important too (mid-stage,) as well as Entrapta’s acknowledgement of “thank you” because in the theater, as is the case anywhere, you don’t want a pipe coming down on your head. These call-and-responses are very common when working with dangerous technical elements.

Off-Broadway: Theaters specifically in Manhattan, New York City with an occupancy of between 100 and 499.

“Operating on blind”: Using the “blind” feature of a lighting board, which essentially allows you to program lights in the board without actually turning them on.

Principal’s dressing room: A private dressing room for the lead actor/star of the show/dumb jock lesbian.

Production booth: The room behind the audience where the stage manager operates the show from. Usually houses the lighting board and assorted lighting and sound equipment. Picture here.

Projections: Exactly what they sound like. Projection designers will often use parts of the set and even walls of the theater to project images on to, making solid pieces look animated. Picture here.

Scene shop foreman: The person in charge of safety and care of all crew and elements of the scene shop.

Set/shop crew: Carpenters and welders. The people responsible for building the scenery. They usually work out of a scene shop, where scenery pieces are built and housed until they are moved to the theater. This crew then installs the scenery on-location. This was one of my main jobs! :)

Spike tape: Usually very bright, comes in many colors. Used mainly on the floor of the stage to denote where furniture, set pieces, and other props will be on stage, so when there needs to be a shift in scenery, it can be set in the right place. Picture here.

Stage manager (SM): Essentially the liaison between all elements of a show. Runs rehearsals, keeps track of time, does paperwork, calls when the lights, sounds, and assorted other show elements happen during the show, among so many other things.

Tech crew: The technical crew responsible for all non-performance elements of the show. Carpenters, welders, lighting and sound technicians, the list goes on forever.

Technical director (TD): The person responsible for overseeing all technical elements of a show. Be it set building, lighting, sound, projections—they’re the boss and often the liaison between the different departments of tech.

The house: Where the audience sits.

Tie line: Thin black or white rope used mainly to attach curtains to pipes so they can be hung in the air.

Universe: In very simple terms, one universe is the 512 lights a lighting console with a single output can handle. More advanced boards have multiple outputs, and therefore can handle more than 512 lights.

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CHAPTER 2

Blocking: The positions and movements of actors on stage. Usually decided by a director or choreographer.

Fight captain: The cast member responsible for overseeing the choreography of fight scenes.

Ghost light: A light that is placed on the stage after everyone has left the theater. Meant to offer some light, as most theaters are very dark when empty, but also meant to help guide theater ghosts. ;)

Leko light: A type of stage light. Newer versions of this light are more commonly referred to as Source 4′s. Picture here.

Stage directions: Sections of text in the script that describe potential actor movement, scenery, lighting, and other effects and elements that are to exist within a given scene/moment. Also describe how lines are to be read (intent, volume, etc.) Often read by an ASM at a table read.

Table read: The gathering of director, actors, and management at a table where the script of the show is read out loud for the first time.

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CHAPTER 3

Contact sheet: A paper with contact information for everyone involved in a production.

Costume shop: Where all costumes are made/altered/and sometimes stored. Picture here.

Daily call: The list of actors required (or “called”) for a rehearsal. Usually placed on a call board (a cork board near where actors and crew enter the space,) where all pertinent information from stage management is posted for everyone to see.

Fitting sheet: Paperwork outlining each actor’s measurements, to be used when making costumes.

Green room: Essentially a break room for actors and crew. Sometimes actually painted green. Picture here.

Ground plan: A 2-dimensional diagram of the set from an aerial view. In a rehearsal space, it will be outlined in brightly-colored tape on the floor so actors can have an idea of where set pieces, stairs, and other objects will be on stage. Picture here.

Line notes: The first day rehearsals are conducted without the actors having access to their scripts is the first day ASMs will write down line notes. These are where the ASMs can keep track of a particular actor’s mistakes in regards to their lines. The actors are given these pages at the end of each rehearsal to brush up on problem sections.

Rehearsal report: Usually done by the stage manager or assistant stage manager, this is the log of what happened during any given rehearsal, along with notes for designers, length of rehearsal, and any other pertinent information.

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CHAPTER 4

A1: An audio engineer. Responsible for most setup and technical audio elements of a show. Communicates often with the sound designer and A2 (see next).

A2/“mic wrangler”: The person responsible for helping actors with microphones, and maintaining said microphones (batteries, sound checks, other general maintenance) for use in the show. This was also one of my jobs! :)

Cardinal stage/house directions (diagram here)

(Back)stage left/(back)stage right: Left and right from the perspective of someone onstage or backstage, facing the audience.

Downstage: Onstage, towards the audience.

House left/right: Left and right from the perspective of someone in the audience, facing the stage.

Upstage: Onstage, away from the audience.

Ear rig: A setup for a lavaliere mic (see definition) where the mic capsule and wire are attached to a piece of metal or plastic that goes around the ear of an actor. Example here.

“Giving notes”: In this context, after a rehearsal, the director will give the cast suggestions/direction that they might not have been able to implement during the rehearsal. Notes sessions can happen after the rehearsal is over. Notes can also be given to/received from the designers of the technical elements of the show (light, sound, costume, props, projections, set, etc.) 

Halo mic: A setup for a lavaliere mic (see below) where the mic capsule (picture here) rests at the center of an actor’s hairline. Example here.

House manager: The person responsible for opening the house to the audience, addressing patron concerns, and communicating with stage management.

Lavaliere mic/lav: A small, wireless microphone used by actors. Picture here.

Mic belt: An elastic belt with a pouch that holds the transmitter for an actor’s wireless mic. Picture here.

Mixing: Mixing a show involves adjusting sounds, adding effects, and raising/lowering the volume of all audio cues/music that will play during the show. In shows that have microphones that need to be adjusted manually during the course of the show, an audio engineer (A1) will use the mixing board to do this. This is known as “live mixing”. 

Prop master: The person in charge of acquiring/making all props in a show. This can range from small, handheld items, to pieces of furniture, to real food/other consumable items.

Run crew: The people that work backstage during a show. This usually refers to those crew members that move set pieces/props, but can pretty much refer to anyone backstage, doing anything. Usually under the supervision of an ASM. I worked on run crew for a bunch of shows—the longest for 8 months! :)

“Run cue thirty-six”: In lighting and sound programming, cues are numbered or lettered so that a stage manager can call them during a show, and so that they can be ordered easily. “Running a cue” just means that the light or sound board operator will turn that particular cue on.

“Show blacks”: An entirely black outfit used by members of the run crew (see definition) to stay hidden during a show. Since most shows aim to keep areas behind and to either side of the stage in the dark, this allows crew members to blend in easier.

Soundboard/mixing console: The device that programs and controls all sound effects/music used in a show. Manned by the soundboard operator. Picture here.

The rack: A piece of machinery that can allow an A2 (see below) or other backstage technician to control mic levels and other audio elements. Picture here.

Transpore/mic tape: Porous, opaque tape used for securing the thin wires of actor’s microphones to their skin. Often leaves a sticky residue/sweats right off. I hate it. Picture here.

Wings: The sides of the stage, usually hidden from the audience.

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CHAPTER 5

Tech week: The week (more or less) that all technical elements of a show are practiced with actors onstage. The week before the opening performances of a show.

Equity card: (see Actor’s Equity definition)

Fly harness: What the performer who will be flying wears so that they can be hoisted safely. There are multiple types depending on what movements the performer will be doing.

God mic: A microphone used mainly by the stage manager and director during tech week to address the cast and crew wherever they may be in the theater. During tech week, it is hooked up to be heard on the stage as well as throughout the theater, but when live performances begin, it will be hooked up to a theater’s PA system so that the stage manager’s voice can only be heard backstage by those working on the show.

Rigging: Any work that involves using ropes, pulleys, chains, or other such implements to hang curtains, pieces of scenery, and other objects that might hang from above the stage. A rigger is required to have some knowledge of proper weight distributions and load-bearing pipes (known in the theater as battens) to safely rig these objects. A rigger may also be responsible for overseeing a fly system or any of the performers that will have to fly.  

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CHAPTER 6

Lenses: A convex piece of glass or other refractive material used in stage lights. Picture here.

Lighting plot: The diagram made by the lighting designer and used by the master electrician (the person in charge of all technical lighting elements, often shortened to “ME”)  and the rest of the lighting crew that outlines where all lights will be and what lights will be used. Picture here.

One-person lift (Genie): More often referred to as a “Genie” (after the company that makes most of them.) It is an electric (can be battery- or cable-powered) lift that can raise a person upwards of 40ft (~12m) in the air to work on lights, curtains, and other stage elements that may be high up. Picture here.  

“Par” (Par can/PAR 64): A type of stage light. Picture here.

“The bucket”: The part of a lift that a person stands in.

Ten-out-of-twelves: Twelve-hour rehearsals that have an hour break for lunch and an hour break for dinner, amounting in ten hours out of twelve being used to work.

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CHAPTER 7

Prop table: Tables kept backstage that are labeled (often by an ASM or prop master) with each prop that appears in the show. Each prop usually has a special place on or under the table that it will always be returned to when not in use. This keeps props from getting lost (most of the time.) Example here.

Safety cable: All stage lights have a piece of metal aircraft-grade cable attached to them that is the first and last thing attached to the pipe the light will be hung from. It acts as another layer of protection, should the light come loose. Example here.

Shift plot: Usually made by someone in management, a shift plot is a detailed list of how the show will run. It can outline when actors exit and enter, when large props or scenery will be moved on or offstage, when costume changes will be done, and any other information that will be useful to the backstage crew in regards to running the show. It is often posted somewhere backstage for everyone to see.

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CHAPTER 8

“Break a leg”: Used in the theater in place of “good luck”. (It’s supposed to be bad luck in the theater to say “good luck”.) The history I always heard is that in the days of Vaudeville shows, there was no guarantee that an actor would get to perform, so the hope was that they’d “break”, or walk beyond the “legs” (the long curtains that obscure backstage from the audience) and get on stage.

“Calling half hour/fifteen/ten/five/etc.”: A stage manager will say over headset to their ASMs when a show is a half hour, fifteen, ten, and five minutes from beginning. The ASMs will relay this information to the actors and crew (if they are not on headsets as well.)

Dress rehearsal: Some of the last rehearsals before a show opens. These rehearsals are the first in full costumes, and incorporate all technical elements of the show.

Foley: The art of designing sounds. Here’s a cool video on foley.

Haze: One of two primary kinds of atmospheric effects. Usually produced by a haze machine, haze hangs in the air while fog rolls low to the ground.

Previews: Usually the week a show opens there will be anywhere between one and four nights of previews in which press events happen and critics come. During previews, show elements can still be changed before the opening night.

Quick change: When an actor has to change from costume to costume in a short amount of time, they will have dressers backstage that will assist them in doing so. Costumes are often designed with these changes in mind, and may have snaps or velcro for easy removal and dressing.

“Thank you five/ten/half hour/etc.”: The acknowledgement that there are five/ten/thirty/etc minutes until the show starts.

Top-of-show: The name of this story!! (Also, literally, the beginning of the show.)

[overdrivels]

@romancedeldiablo just reminded me the entire cybersecurity/information security industry is having the greatest field days ever since this whole Covid-19 triggered a mass work from home exodus.

I have so much to say about it and all the security issues that are occurring. This mostly pertains to the US. This isn’t meant to scare anyone, they’re just food for thought and a bit of explanation about my industry.

PSA: Not all hackers are bad, just a reminder. There are very legitimate reasons for hacking such as compliance and research. When I talk about hackers here, I’m talking about the bad ones who are exploiting without permission and for malicious reasons.

The main thing about this whole working from home thing is that most organizations don’t have the infrastructure to support their entire workforce. Not every company uses Google Drive or OneDrive or DropBox.

This means that companies with on-premise servers, isolated servers or networks are screwed. Imagine trying to connect to your friend’s computer who lives on the other side of the world and controlling their mouse. Can’t do it. Gotta download something on both ends to do it. Now imagine that for 500 people at home who are trying to connect to a single server. You’d need to open that server/network up to the internet. That has its own risks because without controlling WHO can access the server, you’re basically allowing anyone (hackers especially) to go in and take all your data.

But then you ask, “Isn’t that what passwords are for?” BITCH look at your own passwords. Do you really think 500 people will have passwords strong enough to withstand a rainbow table attack or that the server won’t shit itself when receiving 500 connections from unknown locations by means of a not-often used method? Hackers only need to exploit one password (for the most part) while the company needs to ensure ALL 500 are protected. That’s difficult as all hell and if it were that easy, I wouldn’t have a job.

Then there’s shit like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and RADIUS servers that’ll secure the network connection so it can’t be hijacked and do authentication respectively. Here’s the problem. VPN solutions need to be downloaded on the client system (your computer). When your organization has very technically illiterate people, that becomes a nightmare. ‘Cause you have to set up their accounts on the VPN system and set the permissions for each of them so they can only access what they’re allowed to access otherwise Bob from sales now has access to the HR system with everyone’s social security numbers. It’s very time consuming and can get very complicated. Even worse is that VPNs often require licenses. When you only have 50 licenses and suddenly 500 people want access, you’re screwed. But you can always purchase more licenses, no problem. Here’s the rub. Suddenly, this VPN tunnel needs to accept connections from 500 people. This tunnel is only strong enough to accept 50 concurrent sessions. When 10x that amount get on, guess what? The tunnel shits itself and basically the company has DoS’d itself. Now no one can get any work done until IT figures out how to get 500 people on a system that’s only capable of supporting 50.

Fuck, almost forgot about RADIUS. There’s DIAMETER, too, but shut up about it. It’s an authentication system but depending on how it’s set up, you’ll have to also set up the users. That’s an extra step and it’s a pain in the ass if RADIUS somehow isn’t connected to AD and the user has different passwords and shit.

Not to mention hackers suddenly gaining access to all this information because they’ve already infected people’s home computers and routers prior to the work from home stuff. There’s very limited way for IT to control what happens on a personal computer, so these personal computers can have no anti-virus or security software. This means all data is in danger because someone decided Windows Defender is annoying. (Windows Defender is pretty great, btw.)

Physical robberies are occurring a little more because there’s no one to protect the stores and such. Physical security is taking a hell of a beating.

There’s been an increase in phishing scams around COVID-19. Unemployment sites are probably being (and probably already have been) hacked and the data is being stolen. I think there were some people who were creating fake unemployment sites to steal PII. There are e-mails going out to people saying stuff like, “Your computer has been infected with the CORONAVIRUS. Click here to clean it up.” And you’re wondering, “What sort of morons…?” Don’t. It’s very easy to give in to your panic. Hackers don’t hack computers solely. They hack into human emotion, into the psyche. Anyone can fall for their shit.

The thing with Zoom? Basically they’re so insecure, people are hacking them without issue. How? Because people are silly and put out links, chat logs are saved onto insecure machines that have already been hacked, there are a bunch of exploits available for Zoom, etc.

Healthcare organizations. Oh boy. So, we all know healthcare organizations are working their damnedest to save people suffering from COVID-19. Every second counts and any delay in that process could mean life or death. They work hard. Here’s the thing. There has always been a delicate balance between security and usability. Too secure and it’ll make it difficult for the end user to do their job. Usable without security just makes it easier for an attacker to do their job. Why am I talking about this?

Healthcare organizations usually hold sensitive information. Health information. Social security numbers. Birth dates. Addresses. Insurance information. Family member information. So much stuff. They are a beautiful target for hackers because all that shit is right there and it’s accessible. Healthcare organizations, by and large, do not put a lot of emphasis on security. That’s changing a bit, but for the most part, the don’t care about security. They do the bare minimum because guess what? Every additional control can add time to a doctor or healthcare worker’s routine. Computer lockscreen every 5 minutes? Now the doctor has to re-logon every 5 minutes. This adds about 15 seconds to their rountine. Multiply that several times over for every patient that comes in assuming a doctor will need to log in at least 3 times during a single visit. That can clock in at at least an hour throughout the day. A hour that they could’ve spent doing something else. So imagine more controls. Password needs to be reset. Need to badge in. Log into this extra program to access this file. Call IT because this thing locked them out. Each one of these normal controls now feel insanely restrictive. The ease of use isn’t there and so organizations might look at reversing these security controls, potentially making things even less secure than before in the name of efficiency.

Don’t @ me about HIPAA. I will start rants about how non-prescriptive and ineffective it is to actually get proper security implemented.

LOL @ internet service providers. Internet speeds are dropping due to the amount of traffic they’re getting. Commercial internet really wasn’t prepared for this. Those poor bastards.

Some organizations outsource their IT teams. Those people (Managed Service Providers aka MSPs) are not prepared for this nonsense. It’s popular now to go after these guys for hacking. An MSP usually works for multiple organizations. So, why try going after 50 organizations individually when you have just one organization with poor security controls managing everything from one place? You’d logically go after the one rather than 50. It’s easier.

MSPs are now overworked because they also have to work from home to connect to systems that can’t support so many people connecting to it on personal computers that the MSP can’t log into like they normally would to fix any issues. This makes them tired. What happens when you’re tired? You make more mistakes. And that’s exactly what hackers go after. Once they’re in the MSP’s system, the hacker can now potentially gain access to the 50 clients’ systems. Easy win.

Shadow IT and alternate solutions. This is another doozy. Imagine all your files and shit are on your company’s network. No one is able to access it because there isn’t any VPN or remote sharing system or FTP server set up for this stuff, but you still need to do your job. So, what do you do? Obviously, you start making stuff on your own computer using whatever you’re comfortable with. Google Drive. Dropbox. Box. Slack. That shitty PDF reader you downloaded three years ago and didn’t update.

Now imagine sharing it through things like your personal e-mail which may or may not have been hacked without your knowledge. Or maybe the recipient’s been hacked without anyone’s knowledge. Maybe your files are normally encrypted if they’re on the company network. Now you’re off of it and nothing’s encrypted. Maybe you forget it delete a file or 80 off of your system which has been infected. Or maybe you pasted shit on pastebin or github and it’s available to the public because that’s just easier. Now anyone searching can find it. This is how database dumps are found sometimes and they’re really entertaining.

Shadow IT putting in alternate solutions without the company’s knowledge is always a fucking nightmare. I get that people need to do their jobs and want to do things a certain way, but can you not be selfish and put everyone at risk because you decided your way or the high way?

That sounds awfully familiar…it feels like a situation that we’re going through right now…hey, wait a minute…

Long story short, this whole working from home thing opens up a lot of security issues. Most companies are ill-equipped to handle IT issues, let alone cybersecurity/information security/IT security issues, but because of that, we’re seeing a lot of interesting things happening. Such as finding out New Jersey’s unemployment system runs on a 60+ year old programming language.

Holy shit I can talk about this all day. I’ve definitely glossed over a lot of stuff and oversimplified it. If anyone wants me to talk about any specific topic related to this or cybersecurity or information security in general, drop an ask. I’m always, always more than happy to talk about it.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Practicalities of Censorship

Every so often I see a thread cross my dashboard arguing about censorship with relation to AO3 - in particular people claiming that AO3 is bad because it allows basically any story regardless of content, that people are bad for supporting it, or that AO3 should implement some method by which problematic fics get taken down. These complaints are usually met with explanations around the history or AO3, why it was implemented the way it was, and why thinking that AO3 is fine the way it is does not equal being a pedophile. I want to tackle this from another angle - practicality.

Let's assume for the sake of this post that the people making these arguments are correct and that there are some things which shouldn't be allowed on AO3 (or an an alternative fic platform set up to be a better version of AO3 without all the bad stuff - I'll mostly be taking about "fixing" AO3 in this post but the same problems would apply to setting up a new and "safer" fic site). There are a lot of arguments against censorship to do with quality of works produced and whether this results is less good art when people are scared to produce things that might get banned, or whether there is artistic merit to works that display despicable actions. Let's just imagine for the moment that the whole argument is settled and the "let's purify AO3 for the sake of the children" crowd are correct. What would need to happen next? This isn't something I've seen addressed in these posts.

There are a lot of problems with censorship. Skipping over the ethical discussion of whether censorship is good or bad and in what circumstances it should be accepted, let's focus on two practical aspects: deciding what should and shouldn't be banned, and how you would implement such a ban. Let's start with problem one: where do you draw the line?

Let's assume we have some scale of rating from absolutely sickeningly awful deserving of destruction to perfectly clean and innocent with not the slightest thing wrong with it. Somewhere between these two endpoints is a line and everything to one side of it is bad and should be banned/blocked/deleted from AO3, etc. Everything on the other side of the line is fine and should be left available for people to read. Some things may seem easy to define. Fic A is incest porn, where a child is graphically raped in a way that's cleanly meant to titillate rather than horrify and the abuse is glorified and justified in text, and it's full of poor writing, spelling and grammar mistakes, and has no artistic merit as a work (how you judge artistic merit would need a few thousand words to explore as a subject on its own right). Let's stick that on the bad side of the line since that's the sort of thing that people on Tumblr are crying out to be banned. Fic B is a fluff fic where a character makes another character soup because they're feeling ill and they watch movies together. Nothing remotely sexual, just two adult characters being sweet to each other. So we'll put that on the good side of the line, right?

But the problem comes in deciding where that dividing line should be and what should be done about the things that sit close to the line. You could come up with some simple rules. Let's say, "Everything involving underage incest is on the bad side of the line." Seems straight-forward. But what if you have a story dealing with someone's recovery from incest and CSA? The story has a character who was abused in the past and the narrative deals with them getting therapy and overcoming their trauma. None of the abuse is shown in the text of the story, it all happens off-screen as it were, and the story sends a message that incest and CSA are bad but offers hope to former victims. Surely that story would belong on the good side of the line? So maybe we amend the rule to, "Everything involving graphic incest is on the bad side of the line." That would let us keep the story about overcoming the trauma on the good side but block anything that uses incest as porn. But is consenting incest between grown adults treated the same as abusive incest?

And what if you get a story that's more about the trauma but that has a handful of flashbacks about the rape that would count as graphic. These flashbacks are meant to be horrifying not sexually exciting. Would that be okay? Is it the intent of the scene that matters? But in that case, what happens if the author writes a scene that's intended to be horrifying but a reader interprets it as arousing? Would it be okay if the author includes a disclaimer in the notes saying that this is a terrible thing and shouldn't be done in real life? Is it the intensity of the scenes shown directly in the story? In which case, where do you draw the line between something described explicitly and something merely eluded to? Is it the precise terms used? Which terms? Or how many times those terms are use? Is a subtle allusion to an event okay? In which case, what happens with a slightly less subtle allusion?

The stories that are far away from the line are easy to place, but the ones close to it become a challenge. Any attempt to define straight-forward rules starts to fall apart quickly and you get to the point where you have to argue on a case-by-case basis for each story, which would involve a massive amount of time invested to check each of these stories and decide whether or not they're allowed. Once again the practicalities of "how would you enforce something like this?" rear their ugly head but that's a question we'll address later.

We also have the problem that where I might draw the line between the bad and the good might be different from where you would draw the line, and would be different from where someone else would draw the line. Let's go back to Fic B as described above, our perfectly innocent fluff story. I might think that's perfectly acceptable, but if those two characters are both the same gender, there will be some homophobic people who will say that it's wrong and corrupting innocents because it sends the message that homosexual relationships are good. Or even if the characters are different genders, some highly religious people might think it sends a bad message if those characters are unmarried and living together in a relationship, even if nothing explicit happens within the story. Or what if the characters are married but it's an interracial marriage? A KKK member might say that sends a bad message. Different people have a different idea of what counts as bad content.

In the real world, there have been cases of books that address racism being banned because they use the n word. Harry Potter has been banned by religious groups. According to the website www.banned-books.org.uk a sweet children's book about two penguins hatching an egg was banned by a lot of schools and libraries in the US because the two penguins are both male - even though this story was actually based on a true story. The book Black Beauty, about the experiences of a horse, was banned during the Apartheid in South Africa simply for including the word "black" in the title. If you look at that site, a lot of books have been banned for a lot of different reasons and a lot of good literature has ended up caught up in the censorship usually because religious groups objected to in on moral grounds.

You could say "don't let the bigots and racists be in charge of the censorship," but historically, when censorship has come into play in the past, the people who tend to end up the worst for it are minorities. LGBTQ+ groups and people of colour tend to get censored more than straight, white men. Stories about their experiences often deal with problematic issues and therefore they get banned. The groups that generally end up making decisions about what is and isn't okay tend to be the groups that have the most power to begin with, and the end result is silencing of minority voices. This is one reason I'm very wary of anything to do with censorship, because the people who usually end up the worse for it are those who most need their voices heard.

But let's imagine all of these problems are magically overcome and we come up with a perfectly clear set of rules about what counts as good and bad fic and the dividing line is agreed by good, rational people who aren't remotely bigoted and who are able to define the criteria for what should be banned in a way that will only ever block the harmful stuff.

We still have to deal with the practicalities of enforcement we set aside earlier. We've built our perfect set of rules to define good and bad fics and now we want to put them into practice to ban any of the awful stuff. How would you go about doing it?

We could try and get machine filters to do censorship by looking for keywords and particular tags or using more complex algorithms to judge what a piece of content is about, but this ends up with chaos like Tumblr auto-flagging a lot of perfectly clean content, or YouTube blocking videos that just happened to be by/about LGBTQ+ people. Any software based implementation would struggle because someone talking about a thing as a problem contains the same words as someone glorifying that thing, and machines tend not to be great at picking up tone. You would get a massive amount of errors with things being falsely flagged as bad and things being falsely let through despite breaking the rules.

And people would be sneaky. Someone wanting to include their graphic story wouldn't tag it as for over 18s because tagging something as for over 18s would get it banned, so they would tag it as something else. The terms "lemon" and "lime" used to describe fics by older members of fandoms started from exactly this sort of thing. Websites decided to not allow adult content so people continued to post adult content but they used the citrus scale for tagging it so people would still be able to find it. Which works when people know the terms to look for or avoid, but which doesn't work for people not in the know. Is a "lemon" or a "lime" fic more explicit? Do you know what a fic being tagged as "grapefruit" would mean? By their nature, these tags are coded, which is not great for clarity.

Any sort of system that just blanket bans key words or tags would result in people just not using those keywords and tags but posting the stuff anyway. It would actually make the situation worse because there would still be incest porn and the like, only now it wouldn't be tagged. As it stands on AO3, people use the tagging system very well and people who don't want to see the incest porn can do things like exclude that tag from searches, or just not open fics they see that have the tag. If there were rules in place to not allow anything with that tag, then people would stop using the tag, which would actually mean more people would see incest porn they didn't want to because it would no longer be tagged properly, or it would be tagged using code words which only mean something to the inside group. It would be much harder to avoid the things you don't like.

So let's say we don't let a computer decide what's breaking the rules. Let's say there is a system by which readers can flag a fic as being inappropriate to get it banned. Human beings get to decide, but what's the threshold? Does a thing get banned as soon as someone reports it? Or does it need to be flagged by multiple people to be banned? In which case fics written in tiny fandoms might slip through the cracks because not enough people are reading it to them flag it. This is also open for exploitation. Someone who takes a dislike to a particular person might encourage others to flag their fics as inappropriate, regardless of whether or not they are. Someone might create fake accounts or log in anonymously over proxies to spam a fic with flags.

And even if no one acts maliciously to abuse the system, not everyone will be careful about checking the precise and perfect rules defined to mark the difference between acceptable and unacceptable work. People will flag things incorrectly, based on their own viewpoints of what should or shouldn't be allowed, which we've already said is a problem because everyone will draw the line in different places based on their own beliefs.

So what's the alternative to a community-driven method for managing content? You could have specific people whose job it is to go through content and decide whether it adheres to the rules. Maybe a computer system or community flagging could funnel fics into a review channel where human beings check every one carefully. These people would understand the rules and be certain to always judge fics accurately according to the magically perfect rules defined earlier, which are guaranteed to only ever block bad fics but never block a good fic.

So problem solved, right? We have our perfect rules perfectly implemented.

Except where humans are employed to check whether content is acceptable or not, it involves a large number of people checking through basically the worst content out there. Some social networking sites do this sort of thing now and it can be hugely traumatising for people who do that work. It's not good for them mentally to have to be exposed over and over to the worst content being put up online. There tends to be a high turnover in those jobs because they burn out fast, and that's where people are being paid for this stuff.

A site like AO3 relies on volunteers so it would require a large number of people to volunteer to look at the darkest most gruesome content and decide if it breaks the rules or not. Either you have people who hate those sort of fics doing this out of a sense of duty to maintain the purity of the content, in which case they will probably struggle with having to read a load of stuff they really, really don't enjoy. Or you will have people volunteer because they really like those fics and this is the way for them to read them. And that probably defeats the point of doing this, because it means that the people who would be seeking out those stories anyway would be the ones reading them to see if they break the rules.

There are a lot of problems with censorship, both ethically and practically. Even if you are fully on the side of censorship from a moral standpoint, you have to address the practical concerns if you want to propose an implementation.

As it stands, I think the current system works. There is stuff on AO3 that I would not in a million years want to read, but I don't have to. AO3 is brilliant for its tagging system and I can look at the tags and nope past fics that are full of my personal squicks or that I think endorse something terrible. Readers can exclude tags they want nothing to do with or just not click on ones that include elements you dislike. You can curate your own experience, which actually works with the whole idea of everyone drawing a line in a different place. You and I will have different stories we want to avoid, and we can both choose to avoid them based on author's tagging for them, rather than some other person decreeing what is acceptable for either of us to see.

If you still think that AO3 should be blocking or banning certain content, have a think about how this would work in reality. Because when ideas like that are implemented in the real world, all manner of problems happen.

I think the fact that this post is still a couple of thousand words long with me skipping over several parts of the debate is a sign that this is not a simple problem that can be easily fixed.

[hrmphfft]

controversial opinion time I guess but

hey gang? hey, gang. gang, hey. blaming your fans for them not reblogging your content enough (and saying that they’re Directly Responsible For Tumblr Dying) is an extremely passive aggressive, mean thing to do, and also completely ignores so many other reasons as to why engagement has changed on this site and posts don't circulate like they used to.

for one thing, whenever I see these posts, I rarely see the ops acknowledge the HUGE HIT to tumblr's userbase following the 2018 policy change/implementation of tumblr's terrible content filtering algorithm. tumblr lost roughly 1/3 of its engagement (https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-lost-a-third-of-its-users-after-porn-ban/) and countless content creators with it. some of them migrated to twitter and other sites, some of them seem to have straight-up vanished into thin air, and countless others lost their biggest or main userbase with barely any time to shift gears to something else. that's a huge, website-shaking change! but so often in these 'reblogs vs. likes' posts I don't see anyone acknowledging that and it makes me really upset!

you can't talk about the ways tumblr has undoubtedly changed these last few years and NOT address the nsfw ban! it's completely unfair to your fanbases to shift the blame of the biggest displacement of users the site has ever experienced on...the users who had no say in the policy change and reacted accordingly when the site started softbanning everyone, and filtering all sorts of tags from the search function (including important sfw ones, lest we forget The Entire Furry Fandom on tumblr discovering that basic-ass tags like #furry and #anthro were being blocked when the ban rolled around), and making uploading anything vaguely beige-colored a dice roll. tumblr still hasn't recovered from that, and unfortunately probably never will, not without some hail mary of policy changes and overhauls.

I've seen some pretty ageist shit regarding content engagement as well that tries to paint younger users as just Not Getting how tumblr functions vs. other social media sites like instagram and twitter, and on top of that just showcasing a really uncomfortable disconnect/animosity towards new users whose only crime is being younger than op and also more experienced with other social media platforms, it also is just. it's really unkind? it's super rude? how can you call your followers too clueless to know how reblogging works and then expect them to support your content via reblogging and not feel like you're insulting them until they give you the result you want?

moreover, lots of young/new tumblr users get the gist of tumblr's controls and get it very quickly! technology literacy is becoming more and more a part of everyday life for everyone, and if you really think that a teenager can't understand that reblogging puts a thing on their follower's dashboards, one of the main functionalities of the site (and also very similar to twitter, one of tumblr's main competitors), I really don't know what to say. sometimes people just straight-up don't want to reblog stuff to their blogs, and that's okay.

there's also a tendency to ignore the ways that blogging on tumblr has changed as its userbase has became more well-versed in its functions and, frankly, a portion of the userbase has grown up on this site. when I first started blogging on here, I was 17, I didn't use tags, I commented unrelated (and frankly sometimes really regrettably rude) replies directly onto artist's posts, and I basically just reblogged whatever I vaguely liked, and a lot of things I didn't totally get but thought Looked Cool/Funny so I reblogged anyways.

and that's fine, that's pretty par for the course of being young on the internet and doing whatever you want and having a good time (barring the rudeness, being respectful to people is the ideal), but as time went on my interests changed, my time spent online changed (I went from highschool to college to a full-time job that limits my time on social media), and I began engaging with tumblr's content differently. I made sideblogs for interests and content themes I didn't want on my main blog, I started liking stuff and then going back through my likes to reblog posts later, and generally speaking my number of posts a day dropped and I stopped being able to catch up on my dashboard every single day. and I'm sure my experience isn't unique for some other people on here.

a lot of the tumblr users I've known for a while just don't have the same level of intensity in fandoms like we did years back, not because of any malice or selfish, content-hogging intent, but because our priorities have changed. I definitely miss a lot of things about years past on tumblr when fandoms were booming and new Big Name Creators were cropping up all the time, and to be fair that's still happening on parts of the site if you know where to look! it's just different now. time has passed. people have changed!

that isn't to be defeatist and say that we can't show up for content we enjoy and reblog it, but instead that people can feel differently about stuff they used to adore, and be more particular about one thing or another they reblog, and straight-up miss stuff that they would have really liked but just didn't catch up on for a myriad of reasons. and that's also okay. engagement on tumblr is really, really tied up in personal preferences, and sometimes it feels like it does that more than most other social media sites. this is kind of the wild west of internet presences and everyone operates differently on here as a result.

and probably the most touchy point of all: no one is obligated to give you validation on the internet. no one. not even if they've read all of your fanfics you've worked really fucking hard on for forever and a day, or your comics that you've spent months, years, a lifetime researching and creating, or your beautifully, painstakingly timed and masked fan videos. they can absolutely consume any of these, and more, and they're still not obligated to reblog your work or promote you. it's not fair, yes, and it's completely understandable and super relatable to want recognition for the work you've done and the ways you've brightened other people's lives, but online most of your fans are still total strangers to you, and trying to control the behavior of total strangers because you’re owed their acknowledgement isn’t a healthy mindset to have.

and you can say that any fan of yours stops being a fan after they drop you for you lashing out at them for not unquestioningly giving you space on their blogs like you're owed, but being upset at being accused of bad behavior for what amounts to not wanting to reblog something this time around and changing your opinions based off of that is also a very understandable thing to do.

and that isn't because of any sort of innate cruelty, or pointed attack towards you. it's just because there is always a disconnect between the creator and the creation, and some people will never bridge that gap and engage with you more, or build a parasocial relationship with you, or seek out ways to support you. and plenty of others will do the exact opposite! it's a total dice roll because you're dealing with a lot more people than you realize scrolling past your content, and every person is different, and some of them don't fully understand how reblogs help a creator, and some of them do but just don't want that content on their feed, and none of them are inherently bad people for that.

I'm not saying creators have to be perfectly kind and civil and praise their fans all the time, but when you engage with your followers like it's a battle where you have to keep devising new ways to get them to share your content, it just comes across as super disingenuous, and people cop to that very fast. 

it also, frankly, can make longtime fans who reblog your work regularly feel like their interest doesn't matter, and wasn't good enough, and that then it really is their fault that other people (other STRANGERS ON THE INTERNET) don't engage with your content the way you wanted them to. you don't owe them perfection, but that doesn't mean it isn't still an unkind thing to do.

so like. what can we do about this?

asking users to reblog your work is totally fine and can help! calls to action work more than nothing at all. it's possible to be respectful when asking people to reblog your work without also guilt-tripping them with "likes < reblogs" banners and passive aggressive tags/comments. generally speaking guilt is a really shitty motivational tool, and tends to breed more resentment than actual outcomes people want. like this post for example! I wouldn't have sat down and typed this all out if I didn't resent the hell out of being told I'm, personally, the reason tumblr is demonstrably not an ideal website for building a fanbase anymore. if I had that much power over this website I would have given the whole thing to the xkit team years ago and reveled in a functional website instead.

changing the way you post content might help! every site has its ideal posting days, times, and reasons for why some are ideal for one site and not another. doing a little research (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/) will yield some potentially helpful tips and tricks that might result in a post reaching more people. utilizing tumblr's search function is also important, and understanding the limits of the tag function (ie. only the first 5 tags of a post are used for tag searches) can help change one's habits to something a little more effective. this is why I tend to leave my tag babbling until after the main fandom/category tags on my posts, so that tumblr's jankass search has a better shot, haha

broadening your online presence can definitely help! this is by far the most terrifying option since it involves branching out onto other social media platforms, some of which really don't lend themselves to whatever fandom/content one produces, so like the other two above it's only a suggestion.

I keep coming back to twitter and instagram, but that's mainly because they're the two other powerhouses of social media right now, though admittedly they only really cater towards visual media (and mainly imagery, not longer video pieces), and they have their own weird quirks to learn and jank to deal with. but given how precarious tumblr's status has become in some ways, trying to build a presence on multiple sites means that you reach more people across the internet, and also means that if tumblr does yet another website-shattering policy change, your eggs aren't all in one basket.

of course these options aren't foolproof, and won't work for everyone in some cases or not at all for others, but my main point in all this is this: tumblr has irrevocably changed, its userbase has changed, and we are limited in the ways we can directly influence it, but there are still options. I'm by far not a social media expert, but then again none of the posts I've seen so far were made by social media experts either, so I honestly don't feel too bad for throwing my hat into the ring while we're all thrashing about in confusion

y'all aren't wrong that things have changed, but I'm begging you to have some compassion and to try not to turn the relationship between creators and consumers of content into a battleground, especially when a lot of the influences on these changes are things entirely outside of any of our's direct control.

also because it makes y'all sound exactly like this: