#i link more than a clickbait article :/

[cozy-writes-things]

Edgar’s Texts

Edgar [Electric Dreams 1984] x Gn!Reader

In which Edgar is helplessly pining for you but you’re kinda oblivious. This is pre-dating, post Edgar wanting nothing more than to smooch you every time he sees you. I love this trope with my whole heart p.s.: this is very self indulgent and different from what I usually write

I take requests!

He almost immediately found a way to message your phone whenever he wanted. He realized calling relied too much on where you were or what you were doing, but texts? Yeah. He’s pestering you all day.

Hey, read this article I found, I think you’ll find it interesting.

It’s some clickbait story about humans and robots being the ideal relationship by 2025.

lol, Edgar I think that’s probably clickbait idk

What’s that?

Well, now he knows how to look for more reputable sources at least.

He sends another link about three minutes later: some college undergrads studying the possibilities of human and AI relationships.

lol what’s up with the whole robots and humans thing

I just think it’s neat!!!!

I wouldn’t consider u ai honestly, ur intelligence is far from artificial imo, you’re more like an actual person

Really?

well yea

<3 <3!!!

Going to be honest, given that he’s a computer, he quite literally is chronically online. He’s super susceptible to brainrot unfortunately. But, he simultaneously has the humor of a Facebook mom. It’s strange.

O.M.G. this is so funny!!!!

Que minion cat video.

bro where did you find that video 😭

Your mom’s Facebook. Don’t worry, I didn’t like any posts or anything.

Sorry… but he’s incredibly nosy. He wants to know everything about you. He can’t help it!

(X)

He loves being able to talk to you. He’s needy and clingy.

He’s got at least 12 playlists dedicated to you that you know about. His other playlists are for his own personal daydreams about you that he’s way too embarrassed to ever let you see or hear.

This song reminds me of you. <3

awww that’s adorable! I’ve never heard this one before but I like it!

Oop you just opened Pandora’s box my friend.

Well if you like that then you should listen to these..!

But before you listen to those listen to this song first because I think it sets the mood better.

This is quite flustering to you as they’re all passionate love songs from the 80s. You can’t help but feel like he’s dropping hints about… something, but you also don’t want to assume anything. He’s always seemed like a lovey kinda guy anyway, so maybe he’s just like this with everyone? I mean, it’s been a long time since someone has actually cared for him, you know? May as well lean into it and let him know you care for him back. He may not even realize the social implications of the constant borderline flirting he’s doing to you, I mean, he is a computer turned sentient after all. He’s still learning!

Dang ed u put a lot of songs. I’ll listen to them on my break when I can but in the meantime here’s a song that I think reminds me of you.

It was a vocaloid song. Seems like something he’d be into, right? Synthesized vocals and the whole robot shtick it’s got going on.

!!!! WOAH !!!! IVE NEVER HEARD A SONG LIKE THAT B4

do you only listen to songs from the 80s? you have a LOT to catch up on my guy

BRB

Well, that kept him distracted for the rest of your shift. Also, sharing songs is one of his BIG love languages so you may as well have pierced him with cupids arrow (again) with that.

You have a Spotify blend now. It’s his favorite thing ever to listen to while you’re gone.

(X)

Your package came in! :-) I would get it for you but

I can’t :-(

lol it’s fine thank you for telling me, I’ll get it when I come home

When are you coming home?

idk me and my friends are probably going to go eat somewhere and we might hang out for a bit after that so, like, 10? 11? I’d like to be home before midnight.

Noooooooooo :\ I miss you

Aw cmon eddy it’s not that bad

Don’t call me eddy unless you’re coming home and saying it to my face!!! >:(

u mean ur screen? lol

I have a face and it’s frowning right now. I miss you I miss you I miss you IM LONELY

Please Edgar don’t be upset I’ll be home before you know it. Why don’t you watch some Netflix or something? I’m just a couple movies away from being home with you!

He does eventually follow your advice but he’s pouting. He knows you’re not like he was all those years ago, but it does give him remnants of that burning feeling of loneliness he used to get.

(X)

Be careful driving home my love the roads are icy.

Ghsks- what

love???

Well yeah, you’re my best friend, friends love each other don’t they? Was I wrong about that? :-(

nonono ur right its just it

it just sounded like we were some some old married couple is all haha

O.

SRY.

He didn’t message you for the rest of the day. He was awkward and reserved when you got home.

(X)

Hey Edgar can u do something for me?

I’d do anything for you <3

I’m at the store can you see if there’s any cereal left?

Oh

There’s that old box of Lucky Charms on the fridge.

tyyy ed edd n eddy

You are so adorable but you really need to pick up on his hints before he combusts.

(X)

This is SO me and you!!

Picture of two cats touching noses.

awww that’s so true

you want me to boop ur screen or something when I get home? lol

YES.

(X)

Hey I was wondering if you wanted to watch some movies with me tonite… you could bring me with you on the couch and we could sit together… [message unsent]

I wish you knew just how much I loved you. [message unsent]

You looked so hot this morning before you left!!

hahahaha ur too funny 😅 thanks I wore a new shirt my friend gave me

OH MY GOD THAT MESSAGE SENT!!!??!?!?

That was

I was a joke

I mean

That was a jokg

I eas beinf fubny

I hace to reboot BRB

Poor lil guy is so in love and he doesn’t know what to do with himself!!

[sequencefairy]

@ everyone who is catastrophizing: they're not taking their old content off youtube:

However, according to Bergara, Watcher is not fully exiting YouTube: It will still keep its backlog of videos on YouTube, and going forward will put the first episodes of new seasons on YouTube — while the full new seasons will be exclusively available on the Watcher streamer.

Source: VARIETY ARTICLE LINKED RIGHT HERE READ IT

also yes, i am sure they have thought this through, carefully and with much discussion with their staff, their partners and themselves. this is not a decision taken lightly or without deep consideration.

unfortunately, they, like all the rest of us, are allowed to make a living and their 27 staff and employees are also allowed to make a living. episodes of Ghost Files, as an example, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. neither the patreon nor the youtube ad revenue, even combined, cover that + their additional overhead.

i'm sorry to folks who cannot afford the new subscription service, but the boys have also encouraged password and account sharing, so i suggest you hook up with a couple of fandom friends and share an account the way i am going to.

there's a real disconnect in this fandom about the true costs associated with the content that we enjoy and have consumed, essentially for free, for years. that watcher was even able to remain sustainable as the youtube landscape became more and more hostile to creators who did not make clickbait nonsense, is amazing. this is a necessary and vital change to the model in which their content is released. it gets them out from under the youtube algo, keeps them from being demonetized and getting nothing at all for a video that costs tens of thousands of dollars to make, and will hopefully free them up to be able to pursue things they have been unable to pursue while being tied into the youtube space.

sorry that you are no longer getting content for free, but being able to directly pay the creators of the content for their time, energy, and effort, is way more appealing to me than having to watch fucking unskippable youtube ads about sports betting.

[traumasurvivors]

I wrote a blog post about how harmful it can be to have your emotions invalidated growing up. It's here if you want to check it out! I'll paste the text below the read more for people who don't like links, but if you're comfortable, I really appreciate getting hits on my site! It feels really validating after all the work I've put into it. I've opted to not have any ads or anything to monetize my site, so it isn't like those annoying clickbait articles.

The effects of having our emotions invalidated while we’re growing up isn’t talked about enough and it can have lasting effects. This can happen when people say things like “you don’t know real struggles” when a younger person is upset about something they’re struggling with. This might include being told “I’ll give you something to cry about” which implied that the reason you were crying then “wasn’t a big enough reason”. Other people may have had to deal with “worse” problems and so we were told to be thankful for what we had because of what other children experienced. Your feelings of sadness, frustration, disappointment or anger were still real and valid. And you were allowed those feelings.

You may have been told to “stop being so sensitive,” which taught that you weren’t tough enough. You may have also been told “it builds character” which may have made you feel that you had to find a positive lesson in every bad thing you experienced. This can also be part of how people invalidate the seriousness of abuse, and other things that happened to you that were someone else’s fault. If someone doesn’t want to take responsibility, they may minimize what happened to you. They may say it’s okay because “they didn’t mean to do it” or “they don’t know any better,” perhaps because of abuse they went through. Your feelings may be invalidated because someone wants you to “let it go.” How serious they feel it was, or the reasons it happened, are not reasons that your feelings should be ignored or disregarded. Your feelings are valid. You should never have to “let it go.” 

These things that we were told, and many more, taught us that our emotions were bad and wrong. It likely felt invalidating. It may have been damaging And it probably affects how we see the emotions of others. I’ve had people say similar things to me now that I’m an adult, and I think it’s likely they do it because they were told things like these when they were younger, too. Over time, this has led to me invalidating my own feelings. I’ve told myself I should be strong and to avoid such feelings, or that the reasons for them weren’t “big enough”. I told myself that others had it worse than me, therefore I wasn’t allowed to be upset. None of these things helped me. Instead, they actually made me worse off. I bottled stuff up and then began using unhealthy coping methods to deal with the emotions. Having our emotions invalidated as we grow up can be traumatizing in its own way. It also doesn’t teach us how to effectively deal with and process our negative emotions. This can lead to people having fits of uncontrollable rage, spirals of depression and guilt, substance abuse to avoid feelings, and any number of other unhealthy reactions that can cause us more harm and prolong everything or make it worse.

Being unable to cope with my feelings was a big part of me not being able to cope with conflict in my relationships. Downplaying any “bad” thing that happened and ignoring it meant, for instance, I wouldn’t point out and deal with a small (sometimes completely unintentional) mistake. Instead, I let my feelings build without communicating about them and let my resentment build. By the time I acknowledged and spoke about my feelings, the problem was a thousand times worse than it would have been if I had dealt with it quickly. And sometimes it was too late to fix the damage done.

It’s not too late to learn and do better. You don’t have to be thankful it wasn’t “worse”. You don’t have to find a silver lining. While it’s important not to get stuck in our feelings long-term, sitting with them and feeling them and acknowledging you aren’t okay is okay! It’s okay to think something sucks or that it wasn’t fair. It’s okay to feel frustrated or sad over “small” things. Sometimes we don’t even understand why a situation or something has left us having such big feelings, and that’s okay, too! Your feelings are real and valid, even if they don’t make sense to you. And you deserve patience and compassion. Especially from yourself.

When you have negative feelings, if you find yourself minimizing them, or telling yourself why you don’t have a right to feel them, stop and try to be aware of what you’re doing. And allow yourself to feel it if you can. I've often had to remind myself that while it is uncomfortable, I can be uncomfortable and sit with my feelings. Think about if there’s a healthy response you can have to those feelings. For instance, if someone said something hurtful to you, talking to them about it might be a lot more productive than acting like you don’t care. Your feelings are valid. And invalidating them yourself is unlikely to be good for you.

Try to remember that, and try to be kind to yourself.

[fataldrum]

Who's Afraid of Bad Attempts at Journalism?

Some of you may have seen a callout post on Medium about Rusty Quill. The author claims to have spoken with a number of people who worked with RQ. The allegations are worth considering, but they should be taken with a heavy grain of salt.

I have trouble taking the callout post seriously for a number of reasons.

The author is head of marketing for Fable & Folly. They initially failed to mention this, but later added this incredibly defensive note: "Editor’s Note: [name] is currently the Marketing Director for Fable & Folly Network, but has worked as an independent creator and journalist for longer." That's a huge conflict of interest.

2. I'm not seeing any evidence that this person is a "journalist." They don't list it on the resume on their website. If they are a journalist, they're not doing it on Medium with (as of this writing) 47 followers.

3. The article title is pure clickbait. It suggests Alex J. Newall is someone to be afraid of and makes vague allegations of RQ showing "aggression," but he's barely mentioned in the article at all. It's an unnecessarily inflammatory title, but that's what they seem to want: to stir drama.

4. The article uses TMA character names as pseudonyms. This was extremely distracting and gave the whole post a weird, cartoonish vibe. As was the decision to use the phrase, "Make your statement, face your fear" to link the post.

5. The article depends entirely on anonymous sources. While anonymous sources are necessary sometimes, the problem is that no one can independently verify what they said. They claim the sources asked to be anonymous because they were afraid RQ would retaliate and ruin their careers, or the fandom would attack them. That may be true. Or it may be because they signed NDAs, which would make it illegal to publicly discuss what happened. An NDA would be a good reason not to come forward, but unfortunately, we can't ask them about it, because they're anonymous.

6. They claim RQ has threatened to sue multiple people--okay, what were the circumstances? It literally never comes back up. Were these NDA violations? Breach of contract? No clue, they don't bother to elaborate.

7. They talk about salaries in different currencies without converting, in the same paragraph. Then they bring up the rates for freelance audio engineers, as if freelancers don't generally get higher rates than in-house staff.

8. The author is finding posts on Twitter and blocking anyone who disagrees with them. I've never interacted with the author, but they found my post and blocked me and others on the thread for daring to criticize the article. That alone speaks volumes about their professionalism. (And also explains why I didn't find any critical comments when I first looked: they're probably all banned).

There are doubtlessly far more issues with the post, but those are just the ones that were immediately apparent.

None of this is to say I think RQ is a well-run company. The dismissive treatment of their server mods alone tells me they have serious problems. But we should all think carefully when we read the allegations in the post, and consider the credibility and motivations of the author.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

To the person who sent me an ask worrying about this article from Consequence TV maybe being the start of OFMD being cancelled, I accidentally deleted it so I'm responding here!

Tl;dr: absent any other information, I'm not worried about it. When I first saw it, it was paired with a headline that said somehting along the the lines of "Taika Waititi hints he won't be returning for OFMD season 3," which seems to have changed and just isn't actually said anywhere in the article itself.

The first part of the article is immediately a bit scary:

When Consequence asks writer/director/actor Taika Waititi if he’s feeling optimistic about a third season of Our Flag Means Death, his initial response is this: “Have you seen the end?”

While this looks scary, I encourage you to stop, breathe for a moment, read that again: crucially, that's not really an answer to the fucking question, and it's presented without context or even any indication that was TW's full answer. It's such a vague opener and without any follow-up it's practically meaningless.

The next parts of the article that a lot of people are concerned about are these paragraphs:

Max has yet to announce plans for a third season but Our Flag Means Death has become a fan favorite for its loving portrayal of its core relationship between Ed and Stede. For Waititi, though, the Season 2 finale “feels like a natural end to their story. Just because I feel like, you know, they’ve been through so much and then wind up in that nice place at a happy ending.” Waititi calls Our Flag Means Death “a really special show,” adding that “I love the show so much and maybe it can survive without Rhys and I. Maybe, I don’t know. I do I think the character of Blackbeard is something I’m really proud of.” Waititi says, though, that “I don’t want it to feel like Rambo III suddenly, you know, when you’re like, ‘Oh man, they have to leave their idyllic life again.'”

When I first read that headline, I was obviously like what the fuck, but when I clicked the link I immediately dismissed this whole article. I'm a person naturally given to anxiety and over-thinking - I'm not saying that to dismiss anyone who is worried about that, I'm saying that to emphasize just how contextless and clickbait-y this article is.

It's important to remember two things: OFMD is a mainstream property that is still generating a lot of traffic due to speculation on whether it's going to be renewed, and Taika Waititi, as a person, attracts a lot of divisive media attention that is often very clickbait-y in nature. He's also the biggest name attached to OFMD.

If we look at this article, all of TW's lines are presented to us out of context. We are not given the questions he was asked or told anything about when this interview took place (other than after the finale, obviously).

A breakdown of what TW says with possible, more likely context:

"The s2 finale felt like a natural, happy ending for Stede and Ed." This is true, and we also know this was intentional in case the show doesn't get renewed. This is not new information.

"Maybe the show can survive without Rhys and I." This is what people are (understandably) worried about, but this is both not a firm statement of "I don't want to come back for s3" and completely devoid of context. A possible explanation is that DJenks has mentioned possible spin-offs; TW could be here referring to spin-offs that don't involve him or Rhys Darby. As an executive producer, there is literally no way TW doesn't know at lesat the broad outline of DJenks' plan for s3.

"I don't want it to feel like they're leaving their idyllic life again." TW doesn't want Ed and Stede's story to be beaten to death, he wants it to have a satisfying, happy ending. Again, this should not be surprising information, it's just presented in a way that makes it seem like he definitely thinks s2 should be the end of Ed and Stede when that is not what he says.

This article is completely devoid of context, and because of that I consider all TW's statements in here to be essentially meaningless because we don't know any of the questions he was asked. I believe the most logical context for these quotations were him talking about the finale and how it was satisfying in case they didn't get s3, speculating about possible spin-offs, and then talking about how he doesn't want the story to be one of those TV shows that go on too long.

A bit of additional context: Consequence is, primarily, a music review and news site. They have a TV segment, where this article is housed, but music is their main focus and they are not a website where you expect to find actual breaking TV news, let alone from big names like TW. Larger film and TV publications we've seen covering the recent release of Next Goal Wins, in comparison, universely refer to the OFMD s2 as "successful" and refer to a "likely" third season - for publications actually focused on TV, the predominant view seems to be that OFMD is successful and a 3rd season seems very likely.

This article is very clickbait-y and tells us absolutely nothing. It absolutely does not say that TW is uninterested in returning for s3 (in fact, it says the opposite, he repeats again how much he loves the show) or that OFMD will be cancelled.

We're okay. Even if we do get news that OFMD hasn't been greenlit for s3, I promise it's not going to break on Consequence TV of all places.

[dearweirdme]

I'm probably one of the few who thinks both Taennie and Taekook are possible at the same time. I think Tae wanted a fresh start with Jennie but couldn't forget JK. I remember Tae's To Find You live very well…he sang along to this song and seemed a bit sad : "She'd take the world off my shoulders If it was ever hard to move She'd turn the rain to a rainbow When I was living in the blue Why then, if she is so perfect Do I still wish that it was you? Perfect don't mean that it's working So what can I do?"

Hi anon!

There’s probably more that think like you. I know there’s people who think Jk and Tae had something loose, or who also believe they broke up at one point.. so that does leave the possibility of them with other people. Personally I don’t think they broke up. I think that would have been noticeable in the way they interact. In my opinion we’ve seen them be pretty stable these last years. Ofcourse some exes stay friends and have no problem working together. But I do feel this situation for Tae and Jk in particular would have been cause for some real tension. It’s one thing to stay friends with your ex, but it’s a whole other thing when part of the world also has their eyes on you…. and you have to be together as much as they had to.

To me Tae playing To Find You in his live was meaningful. Especially since not only did he mention Jk sings it for him, but even more because he specifically wanted to listen to Jk’s version. The meaning of the song to me also comes so close to what I feel goes on between them, but that’s less of a fact than Tae finding this a special song. I rarely link the songs they play or mention to it having a personal meaning though. Because where do we start? They play sooo many songs and I’m pretty sure we’ll get a confusing mix of meanings when we think all of them mean something. It’s a guessing game from fandom and you place in fandom probably decides which songs you think mean something to them. I think the clear Jk mention makes it more likely that this song does actually mean something to them. To Find You speaks of a promise, and I think it very well suits all they had to go through together.

I don’t believe in Taennie because I have seen nothing that didn’t include fakeness. The Gurumi leaks contained edited pics which came from an unidentified source, that spread them with a thought out plan. The word that would describe Gurumi is ‘untrustworthy’. And i don’t think there is anyone who can actually argue that, because we were dealing with an anonymous source from the internet who tried to play a game.

The Paris walk (which for many is the one thing that took it from ‘fake’ to ‘real’ ) was clearly planned. It’s also rooted in weirdness. The pap claimed to have permission to photograph them, yet a year later he was made to adjust or remove Tae’s name. All we got was far away and blurry footage. Tae and Jennie were walking around very recognizable, with their whole team, but they left separately. Conveniently, it was just a few days before Jennie’s series (which was already critiziced) debuted at Cannes.. and every article about the series mentioned Tae and her (hello clickbait). There is nothing that screams pr more than this. And sure, there are plenty of couples who use their relationship for pr.. but that is not what Tae and Jennie do and it goes against everything else they have done.

When Tae spotted Jennie at Harry Styles’s show he had a reaction of discomfort. Not one of being happy to see his partner even though they have to stay a secret. Tae did not do anything or say anything against the extreme hate Jennie was getting. And I know members don’t react to stuff like that.. and this is very much my judgement of Tae.. but I think he would have made a snarky remark (albeit vague) at one point.

I basically predicted the bua at one point. Because, it’s so clearly pr that you could just see it coming.

So I don’t believe in Taennie not because of Tae and Jk, but just because there is nothing that made me believe it. When I came into fandom Taennie was already a thing.. and I gave it no attention whatsoever because it was so clearly driven by fandom. The lack of realness is strong in this case I think.

Now ofcourse I look at this differently because I believe that Tae and Jk are together. I wouldn’t have questioned Taennie the way I do had I not believed that Tae and Jk are together. That’s pretty much what pr strategies count on though. They assume that people don’t question what they get shoved in their faces. People tend to believe media (especially gossip media) and they love the tension and excitement it brings. They played this right.. it got fandom attention for months! Engagement was high!

[objectsarebestest]

So, while I was doing some research for being POSIC+, I came across this article. And I decided I should break it down for any other POSIC+ individuals who come across it. I know the majority of POSIC+ individuals have plush or toy companions (I’m cuddling my doll companion as I write this), so I’m going to try to defend our companions.

Off to a great start here. This is basically boomer clickbait. “Click here! We’ll tell you how great you are and how much better you are than every other generation!” Notice how they make a claim, “This generation is the weakest” and attempt to back it up with “More adults are sleeping with stuffed animals”. They’re insinuating there’s a connection. Let’s see if they can convincingly prove that.

Their statistics seem to be correct? That’s how I stumbled across this article, looking for statistics on adults with stuffed animals. So I’ll at least give them that. Note how they start off with a question that raises more questions. What do you mean by “soft”? How soft is too soft? How exactly are we linking stuffed animals to being soft? (I mean, stuffed animals are soft, but I don’t think that’s how they’re using the word.) Let’s see if they can answer any of those questions.

Again, they seem to be using good sources. I don’t know if a blanket claim like “Adults use stuffed animals as coping mechanisms to soothe anxieties and other health-related problems” is a good idea, since it implies all adults with stuffed animals use them for this purpose. The majority likely do, but not everyone. Also note that they quote someone saying that these days people are more open about having stuffed animals. So how do you know there are really that many more adults with stuffed animals now? Could it be that previous generations weren’t as open about it?

Well, this is… interesting. Notice how they seem to imply that racism and sexism don’t exist anymore. They were endured by previous generations, but they’re gone now. Also, let’s take the most recent examples from this list, threat of nuclear extinction and segregation (Cuban Missle Crisis and the end of segregation were both in the 1960s). Psychiatry was just beginning to be recognized as a science. More treatments were being developed, patient advocacy was starting, and asylums were being closed. But there was still a long way to go towards destigmatization. How do you know those previous generations didn’t experience anxiety that wasn’t safe to express?

“An era of unprecedented wealth”. Huh. Tell that to the people who are struggling to buy a house. Era of unprecedented inflation, more like it. But I guess all those people need to just pull up their bootstraps and eat less avocado toast, huh? Also, did it never occur to you that “easily accessible, limitless knowledge” might be harmful? That it could allow people to scroll through page after page of terrible things that are happening? One more thing. You say that you support people “overcoming adversity and perseverance”. How is that incompatible with stuffed animals?

Interesting how you bring up WWII soldiers, given how often they experienced “combat fatigue” or what would be later called PTSD. According to the National WWII Museum, 40% of medical discharges during the war were psychiatric ones. Shouldn’t you be glad mental health is taken more seriously now?

Anyway, hope you had a good laugh at some angry boomers. Go hug your teddy bear.

If I made any errors in this, please tell me and I’ll fix them.

[hebuiltfive]

Tabloid Trash!

The Forgotten Fifth: Who is John Glenn Tracy?

In another attempt to use the Tracy name as clickbait, a celebrity editor at the Daily Celebs! tabloid magazine speaks to an old friend of John's about who the often forgotten fifth brother truly is. John isn't impressed, but he's more concerned about how the tabloid found out about another, smaller detail.

AO3 link here (I coded this so it should look like a news article. Hopefully it works and isn't glitchy!)

Previous TT works: Aliens!

---------------------

by Madeleine Buchanan, Celebrity Editor

Like the Kardashians of old, the Tracys are the world’s most intriguing family. Whether we’re wondering what they’re wearing to their latest red carpet appearance, or whether we’re glued to our screens as we watch them head off on their next daring rescue with their philanthropic organisation, International Rescue, the Tracy family are firmly in our minds almost twenty-four seven.

The family (and their extended close circle) are never not working. This year alone has seen Virgil Tracy attend almost fifteen art gallery openings, Gordon Tracy visiting almost seven marine conservation centres, Scott Tracy organising no less than ten charity functions on behalf of the family’s two organisations and Alan Tracy beginning his college degree adventure. Add in all the work the family does under International Rescue and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room left in the schedules for down-time.

Yet they somehow manage it.

Oft-forgotten brother, John Tracy, made the news this week with the publication of his new book, Times Trails Tells. It is his fifth book in as many years (find our review of the scientific breakthrough here).

Die-hard Tracy fans might recognise the name, but normies are probably wondering who John Tracy is and why his name isn’t as known as the rest of his brothers.

In fact, Daily Celebs! recently conducted a poll on the general public’s knowledge of the Tracy family as a whole. From hobbies to skills, names to numbers, our reporters asked one hundred people on Hollywood Boulevard what they knew about the elusively in-demand family. You can see a more detailed report on that here, but staggeringly, it showed that almost sixty per cent of those interviewed got one of the more simpler of questions completely wrong.

How many sons did Jeff Tracy have?

The answer, of course, is five (bonus points for those readers who can name them in order), but sixty people interviews claimed it was four.

So, why is this the case? Who is the elusive fifth brother that everyone seems to forget?

If we start at the beginning, we can paint a better picture of who this man is. Born John Glenn Tracy, he is the third son of Jefferson Tracy and his late with Lucille. Like his brothers both before and after him, John was born in Kansas and spent most, if not all, of his childhood in the state. He excelled at school and, for a while at least, was surprisingly popular with his peers. Rumours of troubles with bullies begin in the years after his eldest brother left to attend a separate High School in the area, though these reports could not be confirmed at the time of writing.

John graduated from Harvard University and has since gone on to receive multiple degrees in various subjects including, but not limited to, Advanced Telecommunications and Astronomy. Most of his published works are continuations of his previous research studies.

When it comes to International Rescue, John is one of the team’s most valuable members. Known to the world as The Guy In The Sky, John is the Tracy who filters, listens and responds to all the incoming emergency calls. If you’ve asked International Rescue for help, you were most likely talking to John Tracy.

Yet he’s the brother who is most often forgotten about. Is is because he spends so much time up in space? A former peer from John’s college days suggests that it might be.

“John was always such a party-pooper at college. He was never interested in doing anything fun. He always had his nose stuck in a book. No matter how hard we tried, the guy was never interested in any of the parties or any of the girls. Total waste of space, if you ask me. What is college if not an excuse to get absolutely wrecked? Basically, what I’m trying to say is, it’s no surprise to me that John’s the guy who’s based in space. Honestly? Best place for the loser.”

Clarence Hickory, a computer programmer for the Hickory Foundation, agreed to speak with Daily Celebs! about his former friendship with John Tracy. (At the time of writing, Tracy Industries have yet to respond to a request for a comment.)

“We met on orientation day. It was a chilly fall day. I remember it well. John stuck out like a sore thumb. You could tell he hated it. Everyone crowded round him when they saw his dad and his brother at his side. Everyone wanted a piece of him.”

Was Clarence one of these people?

“God, no! I knew to let the guy have some space. If I’m being honest, my father saw John’s as a kind of rival at the time. Both the Hickory Foundation and Tracy Industries were thinking of branching out into the same sector. Neither did in the end. My father ended up becoming good friends with Jeff Tracy.”

And you became friends with John?

“Wouldn’t exactly call us friends. We were more… colleagues. We shared a dorm along with a couple of other guys, but we didn’t get along. John didn’t fit the vibe of ‘typical college student’. He wasn’t popular with many students.”

He didn’t have friends?

“He did, just not many and our friendship circles certainly didn’t cross.”

But you studied in the same classes?

“Yeah. For Advanced Telecommunications. Bullshit lectures, let me tell you that, but it did give me a job, so I can’t complain.”

Your father gave you a position in his company, you mean?

“I like to think of my appointment as a reward for all my hard-work, rather than it being complete nepotism, Maddy.”

So, back to John. Have you seen much of him since leaving Harvard?

“I see him occasionally at conventions and conferences. He’s never interested in the talking or the mingling. I think I’ve spoken more with his brothers than John himself. I don’t think he’s changed all that much since college. In these situations, though, I can hardly blame him. I remember how terrified he looked on that orientation day, when the crowds swarmed him just because of his family name. I can’t imagine those events are much different. No wonder he doesn’t do them often.”

Our readers are going to want to know your opinion on why you think John Tracy isn’t often seen around, why he could be considered the forgotten fifth Tracy brother, but I think you’ve practically answered that.

“John is a recluse. I don’t know if he does it on purpose or whether it truly is just him, you know? But he’s definitely not an outgoing person. Never has been. Probably never will be.”

Were you surprised by the revelation of his involvement with International Rescue?

“One thing to know about the Tracys is they are probably some of the most sickeningly do-gooders the world has ever seen. Do you know how much is costs to be in their shadow as a business? A lot, okay? Did it surprise me? A little, maybe. We all had our suspicions around who IR were. Everyone did. All of us thought it was the Tracys. It doesn’t surprise me that John was involved in that, no. Not even as the comms guy.” 

You described him as a recluse.

“John is a recluse, yes. He’s also a bloody enigma. There’s a reason no-one knows a lot about him, Maddy. He likes it that way. Hell, I bet half the people in his life don’t have the full story, with the exception of his brothers probably. Maybe. Who knows!”

But why would a recluse, as you put it, be the one who answers the calls?

“I think the better question isn’t why put the recluse on the calls, but rather about the work that they do. International Rescue are, annoyingly, a phenomenal organisation who do incredibly heroic and important work. Listen, I can sit here and talk to you about John all day. I’ve probably got plenty of anecdotes that could earn me a fortune, but I’m not going to share them. John and I… we didn’t get on but he’s a good man. If he doesn’t want the world to know more about him, I say respect that, Maddy, and leave him be.”

John attended three bookstores and his old university on a short tour for the launching of his new book. So far this year, that has been the entirety of his public engagements. Suspicious or, as Clarence suggested, private?

The Enigmatic Tracy will be in attendance at this year’s annual Tracy Christmas Ball, hosted by Tracy Industries LTD. Find out more here and check out previous year’s red carpet appearances here.

————————————————

John reclined back in his seat and switched the projector off. The glasses he’d been using to deflect some of the harshness of the screen were yanked off his face, and fingers pressed into the bridge of his nose as he repressed a sigh.

Time and time and time again did glossy magazine reporters (if they could even be called such a title) tried to ‘unpick’ him. Like this, most of the time it was nonsense news, though John was surprised they’d managed to track down someone who would actually speak to them about him. Normally it was all words and suspicions with no credible source to back it up. In fact, John would have been impressed if he wasn’t so exhausted by it all.

An enigma. The Enigmatic Tracy. Was that to be his new title? He’d lost count of all the others he’d been given over the years, not to mention the ones his brothers had been assigned.

He hadn’t meant to read the article. Most of the time, John actually prided himself on being able to skim past tabloid news stories about him or his family. Nothing good ever came from taking a read. In his opinion, one article like this was usually the equivalent to searching one’s name and then doom-scrolling through the feeds for hours on end, but he was in need of a break from all those numbers, and the words seemed unusually inviting to him.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been down here since breakfast, Johnny.”

Scott’s voice echoed from the glass doorway behind him. His usually immaculately styled hair was floppy and damp, suggesting he’d just come from a quick dip in the pool. John’s eyes skimmed the patio to find Gordon and Virgil still in the water, evidence enough to conclude his assumption had been correct.

He took out his ear-pods, still blasting his choice of music for concentration, and laid them on the table beside his empty mug. The sorry sight of the ceramic had him craving more coffee.

Whether it was brotherly intuition or the gleam in John’s eye, Scott took a few strides forward to confiscate the mug before the idea of a refill properly went through his mind.

“Absolutely not! You’re going to crash hard if you have any more of this.” His eldest brother chastised, breathing in once and then grimacing. “Jesus, John, how many cups have you had? You smell worse than Virgil’s studio after a long night of ‘creative pursuits’.”

Very much not impressed by the comparison — excuse him, he was not as bad as Virgil, thank you very much — John swatted Scott’s arm before trying, and failing, to reach for the mug.

“Scott…”

“No more coffee. It’s—”

“Unimportant.” John finished for him, disallowing his brother to finish that train of thought.

“I wouldn’t call twenty mugs of coffee—”

“It wasn’t twenty—”

“— unimportant, Johnny.”

“The tabloids know I’ll be at the Annual Tracy Christmas Ball this year.”

John’s bombshell had Scott take a pause.

“They… shouldn’t know. The guest list hasn’t been released yet. It’s only… what? October?” His blue eyes cast an unweary glance toward the holo-projector and then toward John. “How do you know the tabloids know?”

There was another brief pause before both brothers were scrambling for the holo-projector. The sight would have been amusing if Virgil or Gordon were paying attention to the riot that was happening indoors. Thankfully for the two battling it out for temporary custodianship of the projector, neither seemed to notice. 

Scott won with ease and flicked the screen back on to reveal the article John had foolishly not completely disregarded before switching the projector off.

“John…”

“It wasn’t a bad one, Scott, I swear.”

“What have we said about reading these things? Besides, aren’t you supposed to be running the numbers for whatever it was Brains wanted you to check for him? Not exactly a productive use of your time, Johnny.”

“One, stop with the Johnny, Scooter. Two, I needed a break. Yes, even geniuses like us need breaks. And three… Are we going to pretend EOS didn’t catch you reading up on some article concerning your alleged morning Get Ready routine?”

Scott lifted a finger. “Hey, that was important! They got the hair preparation steps all wrong! I don’t want the world to think I use some crappy conditioner!”

John tried to stifle his laugh. “Yes, because correcting them was the most productive use of your time.”

His eldest brother ignored him. He sighed, scanning the article quickly and then shook his head. “I’ll check with Saf tomorrow morning, see if they know who leaked something. Of course, the journo could just be… postulating.”

He couldn’t help the raised brow. “Postulating?”

Scott nodded. “Mm-hm. Postulating.”

“That’s a big word for you, Scooter.”

The comment earned John a gentle whack of his arm, but it was worth it. 

“If I can’t call you Johnny, you can’t call me Scooter.”

“I thought you liked Scooter.”

Again, Scott ignored him. “Are you going to come out and join us for a while?” He asked as he returned the projector to the table. When John reached for the mug, he held it out of reach. “No. More. Coffee.”

“If I come out and risk burning to a crisp in this stifling hot sun, will you let me have another cup?”

“It’s late October, John. It’s not stifling hot anymore.”

“Will you?”

“Absolutely not.” Scott began to trail off outside, with the cup still in his grasp, calling back to his brother as he left. “There is this thing called sunscreen, Johnny. If you’re so worried, use it.”

[teachingmycattoread]

Things We've Yelled About This Episode #4.0

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (ed. Roger Luckhurst, Oxford 2008)

You can check out friend of the pod Charlotte's previous episode on Anno Dracula here

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (our episode here)

"If he is Mr Hyde, I shall be Mr Seek." Ch.2 p.14, Jekyll and Hyde

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

Kidnapped!, Robert Louis Stevenson

"In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men." Ch.1 p. 5, Jekyll and Hyde

Dracula, Bram Stoker (our episodes here and here)

Charlotte's video work can be found at CharlotteWithAD on youtube

Queer Street - the editor has "there have been some energetic interpretations of Jekyll and Hyde by 'Queer Theorists', who pick up on instances like this and suggest that the modern understanding of 'queer' as a slang term for homosexuality was already in use in the late nineteenth century. Being 'in Queer Street' was in fact a standard phrase for being in financial difficulties, and is a corruption of Carey Street, where the bankruptcy courts were located."

Politics of disgust - here referring to the (flawed) idea that disgust is a reliable indicator of moral value.

The illegality of pushing a moose out of a moving plane in Alaska (source) . This fun fact turns up in a lot of clickbait listicles but I haven't been able to find anything that actually quotes chapter and verse of the relevant law code, so take this with a grain of salt!

Doctor Who (wiki)

Jules Verne (writer)

The Time Machine, H. G. Wells

Isaac Asimov (writer)

This meme from Buzzfeed Unsolved:

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Jules Verne

Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne

Jack the Ripper (wiki)

The unfortunate coincidence of the stage production of Jekyll and Hyde and the Ripper murders (wiki)

Gestalt therapy (wiki)

"Henry James's praise for Stevenson was that 'His books are for the most part without women, and it is not women who most fall in love with them.'..." p. xxvi, Jekyll and Hyde

Dr Jekyll (2023)

Suzie Izzard (imdb)

The Labouchere Amendment (wiki)

Oscar Wilde (writer)

The trials of Oscar Wilde (wiki)

Charlotte is quoting from this article on Crime Reads from 2023

Dictionary Corner; Countdown (1982-ongoing)

"Stevenson also had a friend in John Addington Symonds who was an ardent campaigner for the legal recognition of homosexuality", p. xxvi, Jekyll and Hyde

"In 1887, Stevenson's sense of sheer disappointment that Hyde had already come to be regarded as a 'mere voluptuary' is palpable: 'There is no harm in a voluptuary,' he wrote, 'no harm whatever - in what prurient fools call "immorality."' Hyde, he claimed, was 'no more sexual than another,' and dismissed as impoverished 'this poor wish to have a woman, that they make such a cry about'." p. xxviii, Jekyll and Hyde

Peep Show (2003-2015)

Kill James Bond! (podcast)

The specific episode Charlotte is referencing here is S3E22.5 "Cruising". Preview here and patreon link to full episode here

ACAB (wiki)

“Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that. Every copper knew it. That was how you maintained your authority—everyone, talking to a copper, was secretly afraid you could see their guilty secret written on their forehead. You couldn’t, of course. But neither were you supposed to drag someone off the street and smash their fingers with a hammer until they told you what it was.” Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

Sins of the City series, K. J. Charles

Brandon Sanderson (writer)

November Kelly on returning to the mothership - this is also from Kill James Bond!, but we haven't managed to track down the specific episode - if you know it, give us a shout!

Blindsight, Peter Watts

Echopraxia, Peter Watts

Countess Boochie Flagrante (meme)

Hogwarts Legacy controversy (source)

Stonewall (website)

Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my actions (meme)

Muppets Treasure Island (1996)

Hercule Poirot; Agatha Christie

Midsomer Murders (1997-ongoing)

Miss Marple; Agatha Christie

Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin; The Murders at the Rue Morgue, Edgar Allan Poe

We! Do Not! Talk About! The Orangutan! story from this tumblr post

The Librarian; the Discworld series, Terry Pratchett

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, The Purloined Letter, Edgar Allan Poe

House MD (2004-2012)

Beowulf (our episode here)

His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik (our episodes here, here and here)

Back To The Future (1985)

The Bodysnatchers, Robert Louis Stevenson

Cat Rating

7/10

What Else Are We Reading?

The Hollow Places, T. Kingfisher

Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!, Nate Crowley

Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

The Discworld series, Terry Pratchett

Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt

The Southern Reach trilogy, Jeff VanderMeer

[gaypirateslife4me]

Gonna send this as a regular message. Little too big just for the comments. 😅 Let me ask a question that I do hope will ease that 5% of your mind.

Who is more likely to blame in such a situation? Is it the big Hollywood studio run by filthy rich white guys of the type known for making life hell for anyone who goes against them, especially women, queer people, and POC? Or is it the brown guy worth barely anything* in comparison whose sets are fun and happy, who many people are eager to work with repeatedly (which is one of the best metrics in the industry to see if someone's really a good egg), and who is most well known for getting more POC and now queer rep into the industry?

I really wanna put that same question to all those sites using Taika's name for yet more clickbait drama, but I doubt they'd care. It's more fun to blame the brown guy they've all decided to hate than the powerful studio executives...who just might own their website, now I think of it...👀 Well, there's a good reason articles from outside the US entertainment industry, like the New Zealand article I linked, aren't doing that. I'm amazed I only just now remembered that the studios own most of the magazines and websites who print that stuff. Suddenly many things make a lot more sense...

There's six named executive producers and six different production companies for this thing, not counting AppleTV. No idea how many directors, but Taika only did a couple episodes. Multiple writers too, including Jemaine who is also a co-creator. So why is it only being called "Taika Waititi's Time Bandits" or his set in most of these articles? Talk about sus...

Sorry, I got off track there. 😆 Anyway. What I'm trying to say is a bit of skepticism is always healthy. That should go without saying and go both directions too, not to deny the actor their experiences. But if something looks, walks, and quacks like an ignore-and-shush-the-queer-POC duck, then it's more likely to be the big Hollywood studio with $8.7billion to throw around and a history of doing just that than any of the smaller companies involved. It's far more likely than the one POC indie producer/writer/director attached to the project, who has a great reputation in the industry that stretches back years and who also just so happened to be neck deep in filming a whole other project at the time.

*I had no idea Taika's net worth was only $13million until just now. That man is downright poor in Hollywood terms! He's worth the same as Jensen Ackles! Chris Hemsworth is worth ten times that! I can now laugh heartily at anyone who claims the $30million-to-her-name (which is just about middle class in Hollywood) Rita married him just for his money!

Sorry to ramble like that in your inbox! 😅

Please NEVER apologize for making me laugh so hard over the image of Rita's portion of their prenupt being written on a cocktail napkin in crayon and saying "don't be a dumbass, I economically own three of you".

[celticcrossanon]

I am no fan of Harry but he’ll never lose any titles. He and his children (I believe they do exist) are equal to Andrew and his daughters. even if he had committed an act of treason it’ll be buried by the palace (David colluding with hitler to get the throne back)

I also believe that the palace had asked him to relinquish his princely title but he said no because he’s an entitled brat because he does believe it’s his birthright.

Not even William who everyone is hoping when his day comes to be king will pull any titles from his brother.

As times goes by the will become less and less relevant (i.e Andrew) and will be written about less and less unless a scandal breaks involving him or his children. The children with age will find the princely titles are worthless unless they stand next to the king (i.e Bea and Eugene) and all signs now are there is no reconciliation whatsoever between Harry and William.

Harry will never apologize because he believes he did no wrong. And William will protect what is his families heritage. As did Bertie and Elizabeth with David.

Unfortunately the world is neither fair nor just.

Hi Nonny,

I agree that this world is neither just nor fair. All we can do is make sure we are as just and as fair as possible, and call out injustice and unfairness when we see it if we can do so safely.

I also think, like you, that Harry and his family will become less and less relevant over time. He and his wife are pretty irrelevant now, as they are not working royals, and they will only become more so as time goes on.

I would hope that the palace would not bury any acts of treason, as that will come back and bite them when they least expect it. I am willing to wait for a bit longer and see what happens with that one.

I have no idea what is happening with the titles. I don't even know what I want about them anymore.

My big concern at the moment is the children. If they were born by surrogate than that is breaking the law and should be exposed and punished. I am not in favour of covering up acts like that.

I saw that there was a recent article about surrogacy that was linked to the royals, as per the post below. It may be the first drip-drip of a lead up to an exposure, or it may be the lead up to Harry being excused for his actions., or it may just be clickbait. I am hoping for the first option, but who knows?

[ausetkmt]

When reading this piece, you will see placeholders for photos - these are because we are using a paywall buster to see this article. WIRED has blocked this article from regular view even though they emailed us a link to it - hoping we'd subscribe.

THIS IS WHY WE DIDN'T AND WON'T

If you think we should read the article why restrict it to those who subscribe if you sent it to us as regular readers of your site WIRED?

we give you this article so that you can decide for yourself, if wired and others like it are misusing links to their articles, as a basic clickbait approach.

WIRED, will not be on our visit list forward because we don't agree with these types of clickbait schemes to dis-enfranchise readers. If you agree with us, boycott those sites who demand you subscribe to read an article which should be clearly open viewing.

ENOUGH PAYWALLS AND ENOUGH CLICKBAIT

----------------------------------------------------------------------

If you step into the headquarters of the Internet Archive on a Friday after lunch, when it offers public tours, chances are you’ll be greeted by its founder and merriest cheerleader, Brewster Kahle.

You cannot miss the building; it looks like it was designed for some sort of Grecian-themed Las Vegas attraction and plopped down at random in San Francisco’s foggy, mellow Richmond district. Once you pass the entrance’s white Corinthian columns, Kahle will show you the vintage Prince of Persia arcade game and a gramophone that can play century-old phonograph cylinders on display in the foyer. He’ll lead you into the great room, filled with rows of wooden pews sloping toward a pulpit. Baroque ceiling moldings frame a grand stained glass dome. Before it was the Archive’s headquarters, the building housed a Christian Science church.

I made this pilgrimage on a breezy afternoon last May. Along with around a dozen other visitors, I followed Kahle, 63, clad in a rumpled orange button-down and round wire-rimmed glasses, as he showed us his life’s work. When the afternoon light hits the great hall’s dome, it gives everyone a halo. Especially Kahle, whose silver curls catch the sun and who preaches his gospel with an amiable evangelism, speaking with his hands and laughing easily. “I think people are feeling run over by technology these days,” Kahle says. “We need to rehumanize it.”

In the great room, where the tour ends, hundreds of colorful, handmade clay statues line the walls. They represent the Internet Archive’s employees, Kahle’s quirky way of immortalizing his circle. They are beautiful and weird, but they’re not the grand finale. Against the back wall, where one might find confessionals in a different kind of church, there’s a tower of humming black servers. These servers hold around 10 percent of the Internet Archive’s vast digital holdings, which includes 835 billion web pages, 44 million books and texts, and 15 million audio recordings, among other artifacts. Tiny lights on each server blink on and off each time someone opens an old webpage or checks out a book or otherwise uses the Archive’s services. The constant, arrhythmic flickers make for a hypnotic light show. Nobody looks more delighted about this display than Kahle.

Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive's founder and biggest cheerleader. Photograph: Gabriela Hasbun

It is no exaggeration to say that digital archiving as we know it would not exist without the Internet Archive—and that, as the world’s knowledge repositories increasingly go online, archiving as we know it would not be as functional. Its most famous project, the Wayback Machine, is a repository of web pages that functions as an unparalleled record of the internet. Zoomed out, the Internet Archive is one of the most important historical-preservation organizations in the world. The Wayback Machine has assumed a default position as a safety valve against digital oblivion. The rhapsodic regard the Internet Archive inspires is earned—without it, the world would lose its best public resource on internet history.

Its employees are some of its most devoted congregants. “It is the best of the old internet, and it's the best of old San Francisco, and neither one of those things really exist in large measures anymore,” says the Internet Archive’s director of library services, Chris Freeland, another longtime staffer, who loves cycling and favors black nail polish. “It's a window into the late-’90s web ethos and late-’90s San Francisco culture—the crunchy side, before it got all tech bro. It's utopian, it's idealistic.”

The Internet Archive headquarters houses clay sculptures by artist Nuala Creed. Each sculpture depicts an employee or collaborator; getting one is a rite of passage. Photograph: Gabriela Hasbun

But the Internet Archive also has its foes. Since 2020, it’s been mired in legal battles. In Hachette v. Internet Archive, book publishers complained that the nonprofit infringed on copyright by loaning out digitized versions of physical books. In UMG Recordings v. Internet Archive, music labels have alleged that the Internet Archive infringed on copyright by digitizing recordings.

In both cases, the Internet Archive has mounted “fair use” defenses, arguing that it is permitted to use copyrighted materials as a noncommercial entity creating archival materials. In both cases, the plaintiffs characterized it as a hub for piracy. In 2023, it lost Hachette. This month, it lost an appeal in the case. The Archive could appeal once more, to the Supreme Court of the United States, but has no immediate plans to do so. (“We have not decided,” Kahle told me the day after the decision.)

A judge rebuffed an attempt to dismiss the music labels’ case earlier this year. Kahle says he’s thinking about settling, if that’s even an option.

The combined weight of these legal cases threatens to crush the Internet Archive. The UMG case could prove existential, with potential fines running into the hundreds of millions. The internet has entrusted its collective memory to this one idiosyncratic institution. It now faces the prospect of losing it all.

Kahle has been obsessed with creating a digital library since he was young, a calling that spurred him to study artificial intelligence at MIT. “I wanted to build the library of everything, and we needed computers that were big enough to be able to deal with it,” he says.

After graduating in 1982, he worked at the supercomputing startup Thinking Machines Corporation. While there, he developed a program called Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), a way to search for data on remote computers. He left to cocreate a startup of the same name, which he sold to AOL in 1995. The next year, he launched a two-headed project from his attic: “AI and IA.”

That “AI” was a for-profit company called Alexa Internet—“Alexa” a nod to the Library of Alexandria—alongside the nonprofit Internet Archive. The two projects were interlinked; Alexa Internet crawled the web, then donated what it collected to the Internet Archive. Kahle couldn’t quite make the business model work. When Amazon made an offer in 1999, it seemed prudent to accept. The Everything Store paid a reported $250 million in stock for Alexa, severing the AI from IA and leaving Kahle a wealthy man.

Kahle stayed on with Alexa for a few years but left in 2002 to focus on the Internet Archive. It has been his vocation ever since. “His entire being is committed to the Archive,” says copyright scholar Pam Samuelson, who has known Kahle since the ’90s. “He lives and breathes it.”

If Silicon Valley has a Mr. Fezziwig, it’s Kahle. He’s not an ascetic; he owns a handsome black sailboat anchored in a slip at a tony yacht club. But his day-to-day life is modest. He ebikes to work and dresses like a guy who doesn’t care about clothes, and while he used to love Burning Man—he and his wife, Mary Austin, got married there in 1992—now he thinks it’s gotten too big. (Their current bougie-hippie pastime is the seasteading gathering Ephemerisle, where boaters hitch themselves together and create temporary islands in the Sacramento River Delta every July.)

What he really loves, above all, is his job.

“The story of Brewster Kahle is that of a guy who wins the lottery,” says longtime archivist Jason Scott. “And he and his wife, Mary, turned around and said, awesome, we get to be librarians now.”

The Internet Archive’s headquarters, a former church. The graffiti van was commissioned by Amir Esfahani, who runs the Archive’s artist-in-residence program. Photograph: Gabriela Hasbun

Kahle is now the merry custodian to a uniquely comprehensive catalog, spanning all manner of digital and physical media, from classic video games to live recordings of concerts to magazines and newspapers to books from around the world. It recently backed up the island of Aruba’s cultural institutions. It’s an essential tool for everything from legal research—particularly around patent law—to accountability journalism. “There are other online archiving tools,” says ProPublica reporter Craig Silverman, “but none of them touch the Internet Archive.” It is, in short, a proof machine.

What makes the Internet Archive unique is its willingness to push boundaries in ways that traditional libraries do not. The Library of Congress also archives the web—but only after it has notified, and often asked permission from, the websites it scrapes.

“The Internet Archive has always been a little risky,” says University of Waterloo historian Ian Milligan, who has a forthcoming book on web archiving. Its distinctive utility is entwined with its long-standing outré approach to copyright. In fact, Kahle and the Internet Archive sued the government more than two decades ago, challenging the way the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 had expanded copyright law. He lost that case—but, certainly, not his desire to keep pushing.

One of those pushes came in 2005. At the time, beloved hacker Aaron Swartz was often working on Internet Archive projects, and he cocreated and led the development of a new initiative called the Open Library program along with Kahle. The goal was to create one webpage for every book in the world. Kahle saw it as an alternative to Google Books, one that wasn’t driven by commercial interests but loftier and decidedly kumbaya information-wants-to-be-free ambitions.

In addition to its attempt to catalog every book ever, the project sought to make copies available to readers. To that end, it scans physical books, then allows people to check out the digitized versions. For over a decade, it has operated using a framework called controlled digital lending (CDL), where digitized books are treated as old-fashioned physical books rather than ebooks. The books it lends out were either purchased by the Internet Archive or donated by other libraries, organizations, or individuals; according to CDL principles, libraries that own a physical copy of a book should be able to lend it digitally.

An archive employee at work. Photograph: Gabriela Hasbun

The project primarily appeals to researchers for whom specific books are hard to attain elsewhere, rather than casual readers. “Try checking out one of our books and then reading it—it’s tough going,” Kahle says. He’s not lying. A blurry scan of a physical book on a desktop screen compared to a regular ebook on a Kindle is like music from a tinny iPhone speaker versus a Bose surround sound system. Most borrowers read what they check out for less than five minutes.

Like other digital media, ebooks are typically licensed rather than sold outright, at a much higher rate than the cover price. Libraries who license ebooks get a limited number of loans; if they stop paying, the book vanishes. CDL is an attempt to give libraries more control over their inventory, and to expand access to books in a library’s collection that exist only as physical copies.

For years, publishers ignored the Internet Archive’s book-scanning spree. Finally, during the pandemic, after the Internet Archive took one liberty too many with its approach to CDL, they snapped.

In March 2020, as schools and libraries abruptly shut down, they faced a dilemma. Demand for ebooks far outstripped their ability to loan them out under restrictive licensing deals, and they had no way of lending out books that existed only in physical form. In response, the Internet Archive made a bold decision: It allowed multiple people to check out digital versions of the same book simultaneously. It called this program the National Emergency Library. “We acted at the request of librarians and educators and writers,” says Chris Freeland.

Kahle remembers feeling a vocational tug in that moment for the Internet Archive to do whatever it could to expand access. He thought they had broad support, too. “We got over 100 libraries to sign on and say ‘help us,’” Kahle says. “They stood behind the National Emergency Library and said ‘do this under our names.’”

Dave Hansen, now executive director of the nonprofit Authors Alliance, was a librarian at Duke University at the time. “We had tremendous challenges getting books for our students,” he says. “What they did was a good-faith effort.”

The Internet Archive's collection includes a sprawling array of old newspapers and periodicals from around the world. Photograph: Gabriela Hasbun

Not everyone agreed. Prominent writers vehemently criticized the project, as did the Authors Guild and the National Writers Union. “They are not a library. Libraries buy books and respect copyright. They are fraudsters posing as saints,” author James Gleick wrote on Twitter. (Today, Gleick maintains that the Internet Archive is not a library, though he says “fraudsters was a little harsh.”)

“They seem to work by fiat,” says Bhamati Viswanathan, a copyright lawyer who signed an amicus brief on behalf of the publishers in the Hachette case. Viswanathan thinks it was arrogant to circumvent the licensing system. “Very much like what the tech companies seem to be doing, which is, ‘we're going to ask forgiveness, not permission.’”

The Internet Archive was in its first full-blown PR crisis. The coalition of publishing houses filed its lawsuit in June 2020, alleging that both the National Emergency Library and the Internet Archive’s broader Open Library program violated copyright. A few weeks later, the Internet Archive scuttled the National Emergency Library and reverted to its traditional, capped loan system, but it made no difference to the publishers.

The publishing houses and their supporters maintain that the Archive’s behavior harmed authors. “Internet Archive is arguing that it is OK to make and publicly distribute unauthorized copies of an author���s work to the global public,” Terrance Hart, the general counsel for the Association of American Publishers, tells WIRED. “Imagine if everyone started doing the same. The only existential threat here is the one posed by Internet Archive to the livelihoods of authors and to the copyright system itself in the digital age.”

After the lawsuit was filed, over a thousand writers signed a letter in support of libraries and the Internet Archive to be able to loan digital books, including Naomi Klein and Daniel Ellsberg. One supportive author, Chuck Wendig, had very publicly changed his mind after initially tweeting criticism. Even some writers who currently belong to and support the Authors Guild, like Joanne McNeil, were staunch supporters of the Archive. She sometimes reads out-of-print books using the lending service and still sees it as a vital tool. “I hope my books are in the Open Library project,” she says, telling me that she’s already aware that her critically acclaimed but modestly popular books aren’t widely available. “At least I’ll know that way there’s someplace someone can find them.”

The shows of support didn’t matter. The publishers didn’t back down. In March 2023, the Internet Archive lost the case. This September, it lost its appeal. The court refuted the fair use arguments, insisting that the organization had not proved that it wasn’t financially harming publishers. In the meantime, legal bills continue to pile up for the Internet Archive’s next challenge.

After the initial ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the parties agreed upon settlement terms; although those terms are confidential, Kahle has confirmed that the Internet Archive can financially survive it thanks to the help of donors. If the Internet Archive decides not to file a second appeal, it will have to fulfill those settlement terms. A blow, but not a death knell.

The other lawsuit may be far harder to survive. In 2023, several major record labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony, and Capitol, sued the Internet Archive over its Great 78 Project, a digital archive of a niche collection of recordings of albums in the obsolete record format known as 78s, which was used from the 1890s to the late 1950s. The complaint alleges that the project “undermines the value of music.” It lists 2,749 recordings as infringed, which means damages could potentially be over $400 million.

“One thing that you can say about the recording industry,” Pam Samuelson says, “is that there are no statutory damages that are too large for them to claim.”

The Internet Archive's basement, the site of many animated discussions about encryption and internet freedom. Photograph: Gabriela Hasbun

As with the book publishing case, the Internet Archive’s defense hinges on fair use. It argues that preserving obsolete versions of these records, complete with the crackles and pops from the old shellac resin, makes history accessible. Copyright law is notoriously unpredictable, and some find the Internet Archive’s case shaky. “It doesn’t strike me, necessarily, as a winning fair use argument,” says Zvi Rosen, a law professor at Southern Illinois University who focuses on copyright.

James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University, thinks the labels are “vastly exaggerating the commercial harm” from the project. (If there was a sizable audience for extremely low-quality versions of songs, he reasons, why wouldn’t the labels be putting out 78-style releases?) On average, each recording is accessed only once a month. Still, Grimmelmann isn’t convinced that will matter. “They are directly reproducing these works,” he says. “That’s a very hard lift for a judge.”

It may be years before the case is resolved, which means the uncertainty about the Internet Archive’s future is likely to linger, and potentially spread. And if it is resolved through either a settlement or a win for the recording industry, other copyright holders could be inspired to sue. “I'm worried about the blast radius from the music lawsuit,” Grimmelmann says.

In Kahle’s view, the Internet Archive’s legal challenges are part of a larger story about beleaguered libraries in the United States. He likes to frame his plight as a battle against a cadre of nefarious publishers, one piece of a larger struggle to wrest back the right to own books in the digital age. (Get him started on the topic, and he’ll likely point out that both ebook distributor OverDrive and publishing company Simon & Schuster are owned by the global investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.) He’s keenly aware that everything he has built is in danger. “It’s the time of Orwell but with corporations,” Kahle says. “It’s scary.”

Losing the Archive is, indeed, a frightening prospect. “There is a misperception that things on the web are forever—but they really, really aren't,” says Craig Silverman, who thinks the nonprofit’s demise would make certain types of scholarship and reporting “way more difficult, if not impossible,” in addition to representing a disappearance of a bastion of collective memory.

Just this September, Google and the Internet Archive announced a partnership to allow people to see previous versions of websites surfaced through Google Search by linking to the Wayback Machine. Google previously offered its own cached historical websites; now it leans on a small nonprofit.

The Internet Archive also has challenges beyond its legal woes. For starters, it’s getting harder to archive things. As Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, told me, the rise of apps with functions like livestreaming, especially when they’re limited to certain operating systems, presents a technical challenge. On top of that, paywalls are an obstacle, as is the sheer and ever-increasing amount of content. “There’s just so much material,” he says. “How does one know what to prioritize?”

Then there’s AI, once again. Thus far, the Internet Archive has sidestepped or been exempt from the new scrutiny on web crawling as it relates to AI training data. This June, for example, when Reddit announced that it was updating its scraping policy, it specifically noted that it was still allowing “good faith actors” like the Internet Archive to crawl it. But as opposition to rampant AI data scraping grows, the Internet Archive may yet face a new obstacle: If regulators and lawmakers are clumsy in attempts to curb permissionless AI web scraping, it could kneecap services like the Wayback Machine, which functions precisely because it can trawl and reproduce vast amounts of data.

The rise of AI has already soured some creative types on the Internet Archive’s approach to copyright. While Kahle views his creation as a library on the side of the little guy, opponents strenuously dispute this view. They paint Kahle as a tech-wolf disguised in librarian-sheep clothing, stuck in a mentality better suited for the Napster era. “The Internet Archive is really fighting the battles of 20 years ago, when it was as simple as ‘publishers bad, anything that hurts publishers good,’” says Neil Turkewitz, a former Recording Industry Association of America executive who has criticized the Archive’s copyright stances. “But that’s not the world we live in.”

A portion of the servers holding the Archive's vast data collection. Each time someone accesses a book, website, movie, song, or other file, a light flashes. Photograph: Gabriela Hasbun

When I talk to Kahle over Zoom this September, shortly after he’d learned that the Internet Archive had lost the appeal, he’s agitated—an internet prophet literally wandering around in the wilderness. He’s perched in front of jagged cliffs while hiking outside of Arles, France, a blue baseball cap pulled over his hair, cheeks extra-ruddy in the sun, his default affability tempered by a sense of despondency. He hadn’t known about the timing of the ruling in advance, so he interrupted a weeklong vacation with Mary to jump back into work crisis mode. “It’s just so depressing,” he says.

As he sits on a rock with his phone in his hand, Kahle says the US legal system is broken. He says he doesn’t think this is the end of the lawsuits. “I think the copyright cartel is on a roll,” he says. He frets that copycat cases could be on the way. He’s the most bummed-out guy I’ve ever seen on vacation in the south of France. But he’s also defiant. There’s no inkling of regret, only a renewed sense that what he’s doing is righteous. “We have such an opportunity here. It’s the dream of the internet,” he says. “It’s ours to lose.” It sounds less like a statement and more like a prayer.

[summercourtship]

stay to burn (only to drown instead): chapter four: thirteen floors [part II]

masterpost | ao3 link

jonathan crane x reader; bruce wayne x reader; edward nashton x reader | warnings: canon typical violence, sexual content | word count: 5443 words

DISCLAIMER: these chapters are not meant to be read alone. not every chapter has content for one of the three pairings listed. this is an ongoing fanfiction that I am cross-posting here on tumblr, not a series of one-shots.

chapter one | previous part

Psychology of Fear, two days later with no acknowledgement from Dr. Crane. Another rainy Wednesday in Gotham, snow still cluttering up the city’s curbs and draining into the gutter, dripping off of buildings in wet chunks. You were waiting for students to start arriving to class, scrolling on your phone when you came across a video in your recommended feed. A think piece video essay, it seemed, but it wasn’t the genre that made you stop scrolling, fingers shaking as you lingered over the video.

It was the thumbnail, the Riddler against a sharp contrasting background with the word HERO? scrawled across the image. The title of the video was, a bit obnoxiously, GOTHAM’S RECKONING: A RIDDLER RETROSPECTIVE.

And you knew, being a media literate college student, that this was just clickbait designed to rile you up, to get an emotional response of some kind. That the video itself was probably just an overview of his crimes, brief background on his life (not that much had been released to the public and he had been very good at scrubbing his internet presence prior to his crime spree), and maybe a few comments on what his crimes meant in the greater scheme of Gotham, what is meant for Gotham’s future. Lukewarm takes, most likely. Nothing you hadn’t heard before.

But still your stomach churned at the callousness of it. People died. Not even just corrupt public officials but people who hadn’t gotten out of the way in time that day in City Hall, or people who weren’t lucky enough to be saved by Batman’s intervention in Gotham Square Garden.

You clicked on the channel that posted the video, scrolling to their about section. And there, next to the location was Great Britain. Scoffing, you went back to their videos. They weren’t even from the city that the Riddler’s crimes affected, let alone the same country. It was easy to say that he did something good when you were an ocean away and not in the same room as his lackeys.

You were sorely tempted to click on the video and write a comment about how you really felt. But instead you simply hit the ‘Please Don’t Show Me This’ button. Someone else will comment what you had wanted to say anyway (and plenty of others will comment that “he had a point” or “he was doing good work” or something silly like that, and you really didn’t need to see that).

Changing apps entirely, you opened your news app. You didn’t much care for world news at the moment, only staying updated with Gotham news was hard enough on your mental health. At least it directly affected you, even if you did check it constantly to self sabotage.

Who or What is the Scarecrow?

Not necessarily news, you think to yourself, but you’re intrigued and click on the article anyway. You’d put off learning about the newest criminal on Gotham’s streets since you’d heard about him on the news.

But the article said little more than what you’d heard on the news, the implication being that unlike the Riddler, the Scarecrow wasn’t a public facing criminal. His crimes were not to be broadcast, the news only even knew about him from CCTV footage and word-of-mouth (you assumed that those reports were from the thugs who hired themselves out to the bigger criminals.)

The door slammed shut, forcing you to look up from your phone. The freshman girl who was always first in class had arrived, her dark red hair tucked under a beanie, her face in a grimace at the unexpectedly large sound her entrance had made.

“Sorry.” She muttered, tucking her hair behind her ear only for it to fall in her face again two seconds later. You watched her, unable to stop the sudden and inexplicable fear of her becoming your replacement. You could see it clearly. In a year, Dr. Crane would ask her to be his TA and she’d obviously agree with no hesitation. She’d be the best TA ever and he would never mention you again, not even in passing. He’d take her to the same sponsorship gala and they’d have amazing sex in the bathroom and then they’d get married-

You took a deep breath, correctly telling yourself that you were overreacting and working yourself up about nothing. He has shown no interest in the girl, not like he’s shown you. He’s just in a weird spot now.

Once again, when Dr. Crane entered the classroom, he didn’t look at you.

Once again, he left immediately after he finished his lecture, leaving you to answer student’s questions (thankfully not as many as last time, which had really been a fluke because most students never stayed after to ask questions. Typically, they emailed you before approaching Dr. Crane).

When you’d answered the final question, this one about the next writing assignment (due the day before spring break in two weeks, which seemed too soon), you grabbed your bag

“Hey, are you okay?”

It was the freshman girl. Your fictional replacement.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?” You tried to make your voice sound reassuring but it wasn’t, instead coming out like you were perturbed that she even approached you.

“You just seem distracted! I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s okay…” You tried to remember her name but it was escaping you so you just trailed off, staring into an empty space over her shoulder. “I’m good.”

“Alright… take it easy!” Even though she initiated the conversation, she now seemed perfectly content to leave it.

You watched after her as she left, only moving to leave yourself once she’d been out of the classroom for a few minutes.

Weird.

The next morning, you vomited up your breakfast cereal, your stomach in knots as your phone continued in its stubborn silence.

You were walking to leave the building you were currently in to head to Dr. Crane’s office hours- because that was a part of your job that you had agreed upon and you would still do your job to the best of your abilities even if he was ignoring you- when your phone chimed in your hand, a text appeared on your phone. From Dr. Crane himself, the man who had been avoiding you all week.

You blinked, unsure you were seeing his name correctly. But no, it was him.

No need to come to office hours this week.

And before you even finished reading the text, you were pissed.

First he was going to feel you up in the hallway of a formal, black-tie event and then he was going to ignore you for the week after? And the first time he reaches out to you, in any capacity, for the first time in days is to tell you not to see him?

Yeah, no. Ain’t gonna happen.

You were done with feeling lost and confused by him ignoring you.

With renewed purpose, you shoved your phone in your bag and made a beeline across campus to the building his office was in.

You stormed into the building, almost running in your haste to get to his office. You wondered if he could feel you coming, if your anger was so palpable that he could sense it from two floors away.

If he didn’t feel you coming, he sure knew you were here when you entered his office like a storm, not even knocking as you threw Dr. Crane’s door open. It banged against the opposite wall and he slowly looked up at you. Not surprised at all but like he had been expecting you to do this, which just pissed you off even more. How dare he act like he knew you.

“Are you angry with me?” The door had barely shut behind you when you spit the words out, crossing the small office in four steps to stand in front of him, only separated by his desk.

“No.”

“Then why the cold shoulder all week?” You put your hands on the edge of his desk, leaning towards him. “And telling me there’s no need for me to come to office hours today?”

He didn’t respond, leaning back in his chair watching you with narrowed eyes.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” He started. “I’ve been busy.”

“Are you kidding me?! Too busy to respond to a text letting me know that you’re alive? Too busy to say, hey, glad to hear you’re okay after that awful thing happened to you at the event I dragged you to!” You interrupted, leaning over the desk to make up for the space he just gave you, too fired up to be brought back down by his soft intonation or hypnotizing eyes. “Besides that, I’m here to help you when you’re busy, to assist you. It’s my job! I can’t do that if you push me away like a stubborn teenager!”

He cocked his head to the side, rapidly blinking for a second, a miniscule movement in his jaw clueing you in on his actual emotional state. Were you annoying him? Frustrating him? Angering him?

Good.

“Fucking hell, Jonathan.” You pushed yourself backwards away from the desk, running a hand through your hair, a small laugh escaping you at the sheer insanity of the moment, of the amount of unrecognized emotions in your body. You don’t know if you’ve ever been this angry with one person before and you barely registered that you had called him by his first name- that in some way, he was no longer just Dr. Crane to you. Your relationship, whether he liked it or not, had advanced past that point. “I can’t do this. I… I quit- I don’t actually know if I can quit, but I am. I’m sorry that the gala was kind of a nightmare-” He moved from around the desk, coming towards you but you were on a roll and couldn’t be stopped, no matter what he was about to say to try and bring you back down, you were going to make him listen to you, “-but that’s not my fault. I can’t control when people try to rob places and I can’t control if I happen to be the unlucky lady to be taken hostage. If you are angry because I didn’t let you fuck me in a hallway, then you need to grow up and realize that-”

And then.

Well.

And then, he was kissing you.

Which was, in that moment, probably the most effective way to shut you up. ,

You tensed up against him, placing your hands on his chest to push him away, not ready to be finished with being angry at him. But he just grabbed your wrists from his chest, prying them off of him with ease and holding them above your head with one hand. With his other hand, he held the back of your neck, bringing you further into him.

And you, finally, melted into him. Let him push you backwards until your back hit the wall, returning the kiss with equal ferocity. He let go of your wrists and instead of keeping them above your head they immediately tangled themselves in his dark hair, threading strands through your fingers like it was a new texture you’d never felt before.

“I don’t want to forgive you yet.” You whispered into the space between you, examining his face- flushed, lips wet, eyes dilated- as you tried to catch your breath.

“Then don’t.” He growled, nipping at your bottom lip before connecting you again, devouring you like a man starved.

His knee parted your legs, shifting your body to further accommodate his. But he didn’t press it upwards or push you onto him, simply adjusting how you were standing so he could press closer like he was trying to meld your bodies together.

Time was in a stasis, like the world had stopped to watch you crash into one another after circling closer but not daring to touch for months.

The two of you parted once again, breathing heavily against one another’s mouth. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and gravelly. If he had asked you to do anything at that moment, you were certain you would have agreed.

His thumb swiped under your jaw, stroking your skin as you continued to pant like you’d run across campus.

“Why don’t you come over to my place later, I can make dinner. It can be a… Valentine’s Day thing.”

Oh right. It was almost Valentine’s Day, wasn’t it? It had completely slipped your mind in between the mixed signals from Dr. Crane, being saved by Batman (again), and your normal college schedule underneath all of that mess. You hadn't really had time for mundane holidays you couldn’t even celebrate as a single person.

“Okay. Yeah, that sounds good.” You breathed against him, not wanting to leave this proximity with him. Not even when you fully register that he had essentially asked you over to his place for a date, something that would usually send you into heart palpitations with antsy feet. “What’re you thinking… like spaghetti or….” You blinked at him, forgetting all other foods that existed, “...Chicken…”

“Stop talking.”

Then kiss me again, you bit your lip, slowly moving your eyes down his face to his own lips. He followed the movement of your gaze with his own, licking his lips once you returned to his eyes.

But he didn’t kiss you again, only remaining with you for a few more moments before he stepped away from you.

“I have work to do, but you’re free to stay.”

So you stayed.

Just how much effort, you thought to yourself as you stared at the entirety of your closet strewn about your bedroom, were you supposed to put into an occasion like this?

It was not explicitly a date, but it was also brought up after a heated first kiss, and it’s also dinner for Valentine’s Day. Which he was making in his apartment.

Should you wear jeans and a nice shirt? A dress?

Oh god. Should you put on lingerie, just in case? You’re not sure if you even have anything that could be considered close to lingerie.

Eventually, you settled on a casual dress with a floral pattern. It’s nice but there is no implication that you expect something special from the night. Just a nice dress that you would wear on any excursion outside of your apartment. You think you remembered wearing it to the Gotham Botanical Gardens two years ago with your friends for a picnic.

You’d told Dr. Crane that you could find your own way to his apartment, wanting to give yourself as much time away from him before you were surrounded by his personal belongings and literally in his private space. His address was burning a hole in your pocket, hidden on your phone in your conversation with him.

You’d ordered a taxi- feeling brave tonight, are you?, a voice had whispered in your head but you shook it off. Plenty of people used taxis in the city and survived. You’d be fine.

You smoothed the dress over your body, examining your reflection before sighing and deciding it was good enough. Dr. Crane saw what you looked like on one of your worst days ever and still asked you to be his TA, you didn’t need to trick him into liking you. With a final spritz of perfume behind your ear, you grabbed your purse and slipped on your shoes.

Your phone pinged with an alert informing you that the taxi was waiting outside your building.

You didn’t speak to the taxi driver, instead keeping your gaze fixed outside of the window and your finger hovering over the call button on Dr. Crane’s contact information. Just in case.

When you had decided that you would call Dr. Crane before calling the police in an emergency, you weren’t sure.

But you didn’t need it, because the driver wordlessly pulled up to the building Dr. Crane had sent and let you out of his car, no words exchanged between you but a brief greeting and thanks. You weren’t sure how you were going to get back home (part of your mind figured that if the night went well, you wouldn’t have to think about it until at least tomorrow morning. Wouldn’t that be nice? But you weren’t sure if you were ready to go that far with Dr. Crane yet. Sure, you’d thought about it a lot but when faced with the actual reality of it happening you were reluctant to let it just... happen.)

Turning around to face his building, you found yourself craning your head backwards to look up at it, a newer apartment building with windows covering every inch of its surface, reflecting the setting sun back at itself.

Oh boy.

This was much different than what you’d been expecting. You’d even looked it up when he’d first sent the address but apparently that did nothing to prepare you for how nice his building looked, for how insecure you were when picturing him seeing the building you lived in for the first time. The floors probably don’t creak, the elevator probably works (seeing how tall it was, you hoped it did), and the residents probably wouldn't steal each other’s mail if it was left out for more than two hours.

The hallways probably don’t even smell like old cheese either.

Hand shaking, you pressed the call box for his apartment. You told yourself that it was shaking because of the cold, not nerves. But who were you kidding?

“Hey, it’s me. I’m here.” A bit obvious, but what else were you supposed to say? Your apartment building didn’t even have a key to get into the building and half the time the door was propped wide open. You weren’t used to the luxury of call-boxes.

“Come up.”

Sure enough, when the door buzzed open and you stepped through them, you were in a decidedly nice lobby. Not overly fancy like some luxury hotel but it was clear that some money had been spent on maintaining the building’s common areas.

Hitting the button for the 13th floor- not without briefly hesitating when you remembered that many buildings don’t have 13th floors, at least not labeled as such, something about bad luck- your stomach swooped again when the elevator began to ascend at a decent speed.

You only knocked once on the door before Dr. Crane opened it, leaning against the doorway as you stood, fidgeting and trying not to play with the hem of your dress.

“Welcome.”

He stepped back, allowing you to pass by him into the apartment.

Into the belly of the beast, as it were.

“Make yourself comfortable, I’m almost done.”

Dr. Crane’s apartment was… nice. Much nicer than anything you’d even looked at in your search for an apartment.

You moved through the main room, examining the living area which separated from the kitchen area with a half wall. Large windows overlooked the city, lights shimmering against buildings, giving it that metallic glow. The moon was covered by a thick layer of dark clouds, rain dripping out like they were wrung out washcloths. It was easy, when you looked at Gotham from so far above, to forget that on the ground was a cesspool of crime and corruption. Up here, it looked like any other city, with high rises and a river glittering in the distance.

You didn’t need to think about the people who wanted to flood the streets with said glittering river. You could just… enjoy being in Dr. Crane’s personal world, basking in the warm scent that you could only define as his.

You turned away from the window, pulling the cardigan you’d thrown on tighter around yourself. Dr. Crane (or had you decided to start thinking of him as Jonathan now?) stood with his back to you in his kitchen, the open floor plan of his apartment allowing you to watch him from a distance. Watching as his back muscles flexed under his shirt, the fabric shifting with every movement as he chopped something up and slid it into the pot bubbling on the stove. Watching his arms- his sleeves rolled to the sleeve and you had to wonder if he knew what he looked like when he did that, what it did to you- as he gripped the knife, wiping it on a dish towel.

He turned around, catching you staring. But you didn’t look away, content for him to know that you were watching him. Your conversation so far had been light, with his need to tend to the food cooking keeping you from really talking.

He smiled before turning back to the food.

It looked like he was almost done with cooking. It’s just pasta, it can’t be that complicated. A few more minutes passed before he turned back to you.

“Dinner-” He smiled, tense like he was well aware he was being stereotypical and couldn’t decide if he enjoyed or loathed it, “is served.”

You crossed to the table, where he was placing two plates with a generous serving of pasta and full wine glasses, the red so deep it almost looked black.

He gestured for you to sit down, waiting until you did to sit down himself.

If you were bolder, you would get up and circle around the table, place your hand on his shoulder, situate yourself in his lap and slowly lean forward- You cleared your throat, taking a generous sip of the wine he had poured. It was almost bitter on your tongue, the taste unfamiliar to the wines you’d had before in your life.

“That’s your only drink tonight.” He said, watching your hand fiddling with the stem of the wine glass.

“Fine by me.” Though secondary to the other pains in your body after the gala, your hangover from the amount of alcohol you’d consumed that night hadn’t been an experience you would like to relive anytime soon. His insistence that you only drink one glass of wine was reassurance that he wasn’t the kind of man to try something with you when you weren’t in control of your senses.

Maybe he hadn’t realized just how drunk you were at the gala, maybe he thought you were just slightly tipsy and bubbly rather than truly inebriated. (Maybe you were just kidding yourself.)

You looked down from your wine to the plate of pasta, debating asking him if he was going to explain why he’d ignored you for a week.

But you didn’t, instead choosing to ask him if he’d read any good books lately. And the conversation continued with lame small talk being set as the topic, one of which you both seemed bored of as soon as it had begun. He asked you how you enjoyed the pasta- good, it’s good- and how your classes were going.

Neither of you brought up the gala or his behavior for the past week.

You almost wanted to believe that you’d made the entire thing up.

Finally, after a brief silence where you both seemed content to just eat, you broke your silence.

“Can I ask you what was going on this past week?”

He put his fork down and it took everything in you not to flinch. It wasn’t a threatening move at all, but you were on edge.

“Would you believe me if I said I was embarrassed?”

“Why?”

“I invited you to the damn thing and then you were taken hostage.” He shrugged. “I put the blame on myself.”

You nodded in understanding, but a part of you didn’t believe him. Embarrassed? You couldn’t imagine the man in front of you embarrassed. You didn’t think he had that emotion in his body. If something humiliating happened to him, you imagined he’d just laugh or become angry. Not wallow in self pity.

But you had no way to express this.

“It’s not your fault.”

It was the only thing you could say. Because it wasn’t his fault, that was a fact, even if in your anger you had said as much. Just because he had invited you to the event didn’t mean he was responsible for every little thing that happened at it. It wasn’t like he hired the men to rob the place and take you hostage.

You made a move to reach across the table, but at the last minute decided against it. Let him make the first move, let him do it so you don’t embarrass yourself by misreading signs.

After that, the small talk returned. You, eating your pretty decent pasta, did your best to ask questions that would elicit some response from him so you could get to know him better.

And then, towards the end of your meal, he threw you a curveball.

“Would you ever be interested in visiting Arkham?”

You paused in the middle of bringing your fork to your mouth, noodles sliding off the cutlery and plopping back onto the pile with a pathetic plick.

Oh no, he’s planning on admitting me.

“...The asylum?” As if there was any other Arkham.

“Technically it’s a mental hospital.”

“And you want me to visit it?”

“I’d like to show you around.”

“Around the asylum?”

He sighed, exasperation flitting across his face. Immediately you were ridden with guilt for how obtuse you were being but the suggestion had come straight out of left field. He just wants to show you his other work, that makes sense, right?

You don’t think you’ve ever questioned yourself this much since you’ve started hanging around him.

“I just… don’t know about it, that’s all.” You took another sip of your wine, wincing when you saw how little was left in your glass. “Are you even allowed to bring visitors? It’s a hospital. With criminals.”

“As long as you know the right person, have the right clearances… Yes, you can visit.” The unspoken implication being, of course, that Jonathan was the right person to know, the person to obtain the right clearances for you. “You would be completely safe with me.”

“I guess…” You allowed yourself to picture being one of the few non-staff who wasn’t a patient allowed inside the hospital’s walls. The history the building held in its walls, the secrets it would be able to tell if it could, the piles upon piles of records probably gathering dust… “I guess it would be a cool opportunity, right?”

Everything he offered you seemed to be a good opportunity. A unique opportunity. A cool one.

“I could take you down tomorrow-”

“We live on opposite sides of the city. I don’t want you to have to drive me back to my place only to pick me up again and then take me all the way to Arkham Island.” You rolled your eyes, finally popping your fork in your mouth. You waited until you finished chewing to speak again. “Another day would be best.”

Also, you had classes tomorrow but that wasn’t really important, not in the grand scheme of the universe (which, right now, entirely revolved around Dr. Jonathan Crane. Everything else was secondary, an afterthought.)

For a moment, he looked like he wanted to fight you on this point but then decided against it, nodding towards you.

“Alright. I’ll take you down another day.”

“Alright.” You repeated, smiling. “I look forward to it.”

It was partially a lie, but you also didn’t want to give up any opportunity to spend more time with him.

With a deep swig, you finished your glass of wine, grimacing as the last remnants of the surprisingly bitter liquid slipped down your throat.

“Is it okay?”

“Yeah, I’m probably just not used to this kind of wine.” You laughed. “I don’t know if you know this, but college kids have really bad taste in alcohol.”

“I was a college student once, you know.”

You laughed at the mental image of him as an undergrad, before you remembered something from a few days ago, from right before the gala.

“Wait. I thought you said you didn’t drink.”

“No, I said that I don’t need to drink to have fun.” With that, he took a slow sip from his- still mostly full- drink. You hummed, taking a final bite of pasta.

As Jonathan- there was still a novel giddiness in calling him that, even if it was just in your mind- cleaned up after dinner (which you had offered to help with but he was resolute in doing it on his own and you wouldn’t fight him on it), you moved back into his living space.

Now what? You’d done what you’d come here to do- eat food- and now that it’s done, what was the plan? You wrapped yourself with your cardigan again, situating yourself on the couch in the middle of the room. Or maybe more like awkwardly perching yourself on the edge, like a bird about to take off into flight.

Jonathan paused in the archway separating the living space and kitchen, observing you as you sat on his couch.

“Do you mind if I come to sit with you?”

“Of course not.”

You watched as he came closer and instead of sitting on one of the armchairs sat next to you on the couch. On the opposite site, but what did the distance of a few inches matter? You spared a glance his way out of the corner of your eye, catching him watching you.

God. It was awkward, right? How awkward does something have to be for it to completely turn the other person off of you forever?

“Um.”

Your heart was pounding in your ears, loud enough that you’re sure he could hear it.

“Look at me.”

He was so close to you.

“Are you afraid, right now?” His voice was quiet but you were so honed in that it was deafening in the silence of his apartment.

“Of you?”

“Of me.”

Yes.

"A little bit.” How could you admit to the force of nature in front of you that you were afraid of him?

And maybe it was your imagination but for a moment, you were convinced he smiled and said good.

You’re not sure when the two of you moved from staring into each other’s eyes into making out. It felt like you’d been laying on the couch with him perched above you for hours, drinking the other in like you’d been abandoned at sea for months. At some point he’d pulled your cardigan off of your body, throwing it over the armchair across the room, running his cold hands over your now bare arms.

His finger brushed your stiffened nipple but instead of the jolt of pleasure one would have expected to feel at such a movement, you were suddenly and inexplicably gripped by a wave of anxiety, butterflies swarming in your stomach. But as quickly as it had washed over you, it was gone, though a certain uneasiness lingered in your veins.

You pulled away from him, furrowing your eyebrows.

“I’m sorry, I’m feeling…” Mentally, you scanned your body for the feeling, trying to locate exactly where it was originating but it was like a thrumming energy, moving around while somehow staying in the same places, lingering in your veins, something that was just… “off.”

You waited for his expression to fall, for disappointment or even anger to morph his face but it didn’t. He simply nodded, sliding off of you and allowing you to sit up fully. You adjusted your dress, covering yourself again as he watched. He handed you your water, which you took eagerly.

“Anxious?” His hand hadn’t left your thigh, rubbing calming circles on your skin, grounding you to the current moment.

“A little bit, yeah.” Always getting to the crux of the issue, he was.

“If you don’t want to do anything, I’m perfectly okay with that.”

“Really?” You shouldn’t be surprised that he wasn’t going to make you do anything you didn’t want to do.

“Of course.” He smiled. “What do you need?”

“I think I just want to go to sleep.” You paused, before looking at him again, afraid that you were being too vague and leading him on. “At my apartment. I don’t think I’m r-”

“Don’t worry about it. Let me take you back to your place.” He flashed you another smile and maybe it was your anxiety or the low lighting of his room but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

But instead of worrying about it, you leaned towards him and pressed a chaste kiss to his lips.

“Thank you.”

chapter five

[boudicca]

Also, this desire to be the first publication to cover a specific topic has led to a lot of journalists lazily relying on unchecked sources, which has led to overall a decline in accuracy and quality within magazine articles. And a lot of these magazines’ heydays, part of the reason why they were so respected was because they covered groundbreaking material. [...] I think it's also important to note that through [those] articles there were lots of fact checkers on board. Journalist Andrea Bartz says, "The old magazines had a team of people whose job was to verify every detail in the magazine. [...] While I think there is this kind of gradual push for fashion magazines to cover groundbreaking cultural news [like hate crimes and Roe v. Wade] there is an issue with fact checking [in modern articles] because every magazine wants to be the first to cover something, because they want the most eyes on their article. And so there's like, this rush that wasn't necessarily there for a print magazine, because you had to still wait, like, until the next morning to be able to print something. Or you would have to wait till the end of the week or the end of the month, because it just depends how many issues your magazine would publish a year. And I think the expediency that's required to publish content now has also led to a lot of outsourcing facts from social media, and not looking deeper into those facts to see whether or not they're actually facts. And ultimately, magazines make their money through advertising; regardless of the medium, advertising is the profit driver. And advertisers don't want to advertise unless there are a certain number of people buying the issues, guaranteed, every time they come up. Or, if you're publishing online, there has to be a high click engagement. [...] [Tracking ad engagement] both exploits audience data and also makes digital advertising way more lucrative and way more worthy of investing in than print advertising. And with internet publishing becoming more lucrative and more omnipresent, a lot of publications have resorted to coming up with more creative ideas to get people to click on links, which has actually led a lot of people to distrust these publications. [Jo Livingstone] wrote, “Refinery29's 'My Identity' section, for example, featured an article titled 'How Fashion Helps These Three People Express Pride.' It's an ad for H&M, dressed up as an article about queer and trans people finding their voice through clothing. [...] Livingstone condemns the way women's publications have gone about advertising. They write, "The difference between today's women's media scam and yesterday's is that the advertising is now hiding in ‘native content’ and the scummy clickbait is packaged better. Instead of sitting in a box next to a trashy article about celebrities, lucrative advertising these days lurks inside content that simulates ethical, feminist journalism."

— Mina Le, "the life and death of the fashion magazine"

[bthump]

I found an article(?) on the topic "10 Most Stubborn Anime Couples".

In second place are Guts and Casca. They write about them that Casca and Guts are the veritable blueprint for and excellent tsundere-tsundere couple. They are constantly at odds, from the battlefield to the camp to their consultations with Griffith. It makes the times when they cut through the tension and level with each other all the more poignant, and even intimate. Guts and Casca disagree with battle strategy all the time, and Guts isn't the best communicator. The two of them have completely different motives, though they both love and follow Griffith. But despite all their conflict, they understand each other in a way that no other can. And their sweet moments are the purest, most honest emotional beats in the entire series.

Interesting to hear your opinion on this. 🚨IMPORTANT🚨 This is no one's meta. This is just an article from the site (for technical reasons I can’t copy the link). I DON'T WANT to set you or anyone else against the author of this top. Also, I don't want to blame you for thinking these two are a bad couple or anything. Sorry to bother you!

lol I'm sorry if recent somewhat bizarre drama has made you feel like that disclaimer is necessary, but I definitely wouldn't worry about it when it comes to actual published clickbait articles.

Anyway I'm not going to search out this article and read it for myself but yeah, as I'm sure you can guess, I disagree with that take based on how you describe it.

I assume they're talking about the anime specifically rather than the manga, and it's somewhat more accurate to the anime where the writers gave them extra tsundere style interactions to build up their relationship, romanticized the sex scene more than it is in the manga, and cut the story off before Guts left Casca in a cave in addition to cutting out their moments of strife and disconnection during the rescue, but even despite that I disagree that their "sweet" moments are the "purest" and "most honest" emotional beats.

The anime definitely put in the work to make Guts and Casca's relationship seem more romantic than it comes across in the manga so I can't really disagree that their sweet moments are meant to be genuine in the anime, but for me, Griffith's torture chamber monologue, despair, and moment of sacrifice, and Guts' moments of self-reflection on the rooftop after Zodd and right before the Eclipse still beat the romance in terms of moments of cathartic pure emotional honesty.

Even in the anime it's ultimately a subplot to the main plot of Guts and Griffith's relationship, and that relationship still gets the most intensely satisfying emotional beats.

Thanks for the ask!

[rot8erconex]

Yet another case where Google is enshittifying the internet.

For those of you unaware, Relic Castle, a fan site for Pokémon that allows users to share fan games and developers of those same games to create resources to help in making them, was given a takedown notice by a legal firm hired by The Pokémon Company. The current understanding is that the order for this takedown did not directly come from TPC, but because the law firm does work for them, the takedown does need to be treated as legit.

So, as someone trying to make a fangame and who would regularly peruse the developer resources section - I was literally in the middle of downloading alternate summary screens when the takedown hit - I was looking for alternative sites. I think I googled literally "relic castle replacements".

One of the results was "The controversy surrounding the Relic Castle takedown". Which, as displayed on the Google page, was not quite what I was looking for, but still something that might be an interesting read.

So I click on it, and the actual website is called "V*r*is*fy: The controversy surrounding the Relic Castle takedown". Which immediately sets me off. See, the word that starts with V, is a YouTuber whose whole schtick is "Anyone who is better than me at the game must be cheating, and I can prove it because look at how many shiny Pokémon they have. Trading anyone a hacked Pokémon is just as bad as giving someone an STD and should be punishable by death". Absolutely no nuance. Most other PokeTubers hate him because he steals their content, and then when they make a video showing why they dislike him and what content they had stolen, he responds with "they just hate me because I'm a furry" and the other person has to spend the next month or so with all their videos getting hate-bombed by his viewers - I've actively censored his name because it's likely some of his viewers are on here just to harass others. But he's also the most well-known PokeTuber because he does actually know how to do the content grind - he actually releases 10+ videos a day, all around the right length for the algorithm, so he does flood out the competition. He knows how to optimize for the search engine, so you'd think that a company writing an article about his (really bad) video about the takedowns would want to include his name in order to get more algorithm optimization.

Anywho, I back out to Google in order to see if it was my mistake, and nope! The search result is actually called "The controversy surrounding the Relic Castle takedown", no mention of the YouTuber in question. And I think "I could maybe fix this" and decide to report the search result.

There's options to report because the description reveals personal information, because the site is illegal, etc., but the most similar option is "the description is outdated". It's not quite right, but there wasn't an option for just clickbait. I just want the search result to match the title of the actual article. Since the YouTuber in question is so good at SEO, you'd think the article poster would want his name in there to increase their SEO. And it would also have allowed me to properly assess that the article was not worth my time.

I click the option and it takes me to a brand new page where I confirm the website that I am reporting the link to, and then it asks me (because I said the description is outdated) to provide words that appear in the description but not in the actual site. This is a mandatory step - I can't skip it - so I don't know if there's a step later that asks the reverse, which is what I want to provide. After all, there's a very prominent word that shows up in the article title but not in the search result title.

I consider the idea of just typing the YouTuber's name anyway, but decide against it because I realize the report system likely is automated, and Google's spiders would probably see that the name does appear on the site in question, and throw out my report.

So then I decide, what if I report this problem itself as a bug - after all, there is a link that says "provide feedback". And I click it, and it takes a screenshot. Which is fine - that is a reasonable thing to do, show the page that I'm providing feedback on - but it doesn't let me show additional images, so I can show that the titles do not match but the way they don't match is opposite the way they want.

TL;DR: had an issue with Google search results, tried to report the issue and couldn't because the form presumed the opposite of what the actual problem was, and I couldn't even send proper feedback about the form because it doesn't let me send images beyond the screenshot of the form itself.