#i made memes of very precise things related to my course

[ficsempai]

I realise one of my biggest talent is to be able to make memes about pretty much anything.

Idk how to market that on my resume :(

[bebx]

Thank you for responding back! I am glad that my texts had you having a "good kind of whoa" moment :)) Of course, I still remember your amazing participation with diversely intriguing takes in spite of mainly focusing on only a couple of characters throughout your peak era. You have been my gateway to Tumblr and to confidently celebrating my love for a show, its characters and dynamics so profoundly. And I am ecstatic that my introduction to the world of fandom thriving here happened with you unknowingly guiding me through its orientation. Because after I had to venture around on my own, despite behind the shield of lurker, I realized how toxic and vainly spiteful some people can be, all due to differing opinions, framing then harassing one another, overall devolving the ambience of this site to downright Instagram toxicity when they all should be equally rejoicing about their common subject of enthusiasm getting a feast and that just made me long for re-experiencing your peaceful way of practicing free speech more. You radiated a very warm, uncomplicated aura with an assertive mind, despite the blood and gore and other unconventional topics of interest, compared to the absolute exhaustion one suffers by just skimming through their blogs or archive which are otherwise also saturated with thought provoking analysis. So, it has been very grey haha when I had to go exploring independently and not remain reliant about any ST news or fanarts, especially concerning Hawkins Lab Plotline on your blogs anymore since November 2023. Brightest side of this rollercoaster exposure is that I discovered many others with alike interests as well as views! Although I have to sacrifice my morals and principles while checking out the posts of some of them who tend to have a very strangely twisted and unavoidably problematic side. I feel wrecked by guilt while liking their posts which are relevant to what I predominantly seek them for but then I remember "hey just because I like Harry Potter doesn't mean I will have to stand by J.K Rowling". So yeah...haha that helps in upholding the neutrality, but this just makes me miss the simple times more. You have been such a great source of collecting the finest qualities of fan materials either through your own blogs or the posts you reblogged. Very well researched and organized. It was an authentic and easy way for me to keep a track of all the most artistic crafts related to the fandom through the exhibition on your archive. This is why I previously said in my preceding text that I appreciate people with a good taste of art, referring to you. But I am also thankful for the opportunity of liberation and self-dependence this unforeseen phase paved a way to, resulting in various discoveries which may have missed your radar. So yeah this is pretty much why I still remember, I hope I have sketched a bigger picture of my timeline with everything here and how you play the key role in it. It's always the little things with bigger meanings. But this is not the only reason, this was just for starters, I will shed light on other factors ahead.

Secondly...(yeah Ik I have written so much, I should just stop but I just have so much more and vital stuffs to say which I hope you would like to hear too.) I never felt your posts were all silly other than the intentionally hilarious ones such as incorrect quotes and other memes which could make the day of anyone who is familiar with the show. Underneath or beyond the humor, I felt they had a lot of heart and soul. Which is precisely why I was so anticipated for the marriage between the new *gasp inducing as well as fulfilling* updates and your insightful approach, full of creativity and writing skills with your characteristic capturing of classic human themes that know how to intricately weave so much of complimenting theories, observations and heartbreaking as well as heartwarming stories around it which I religiously consider as some of the best and underrated fanfics out there. I don't know how much you have been aware with TFS spoilers as I am not sure what did you exactly mean by not stumbling upon any real spoilers but so many things you stood for when there was hardly any substantial evidence, it's like you literally spoke them into acknowledged existence. I am not gonna risk spoiling most of it for you but I would just say that you made a post once, commenting on a theory highlighting the potential relation between Vecna and Mindflayer, the question of the true master of puppet and "how each time a gate opened, a boy was taken" and that has aged so well, that's all I can say. Rediscovering that post gave me chills. So you see, so many of your interpretations have hit the bull's eyes, as without giving something massive away, the prequel has humanized his character extensively. Like this was everything JCB could have asked for since S4 released and poor guy had been alone taking a mysteriously empathetic stand for him in public, which we got pleasantly mystified by as it also vindicated our resonating defense deep down, so we followed after. Subsequently I had this inside joke from that time (Nov 2023) that, "Damn, the makers humanized him more than any fanfic ever did, even collectively." So, in a way, this is everything we could have asked for, ourselves. You have this incredible penchant for seeing beyond what's purposely being misleadingly narrated, once it got backed up by a vaguely but still authoritative source, you get to the bottom of all the potential alternatives. Trusting your instinct based on Jamie's subtle and interesting support paid off! You realized something so unpopular once and presented compelling reasoning points which were the closest to what it is canonically revealed ultimately. You perfectly encapsulated the soul of something or someone which was too monstrous for the majority to be a subject of deep thinking let alone any redemption, which can be magnificently seen through every fanfic, short or lengthy, you wrote about him and Eleven and not merely through some "peek into mind" insights posts here and there. This play literally calls for a celebration. You have been nearly a lone wolf, I mean yeah there were plenty others here however with your unique perspective and standard nevertheless differentiating from other stans, this was almost your sole battle which in my view has been surprisingly validated by the stage play so much, beyond expectation actually. Like a perfect reward for loyalty and dedication. I still am halfway through what I am here to convey, the text limit is gonna reach soon so, will share the rest on another upcoming part.

I read everything and this is one of the kindest things anyone has said to me. thank you for your kindness and authenticity, it means so much to me and it may have awoken that part of my Henry hyperfixation, that’s been laid dormant for a while, a little too.

I wish words could describe how grateful I am for you, but I’ve definitely screenshot these and saved them so I can come back to look at them later when self-doubt starts making its presence known.

thank you for being so thoughtful, supportive and kind. it means more to me than words could ever describe.

also, yes, I’ve seen The First Shadow trailer and it’s absolutely beyond expectations. I have no doubt that the play is exceptional in every way.

[mariacallous]

On January 1, Mike Neville gave Midjourney the following prompt: “Steamboat Willie drawn in a vintage Disney style, black and white. He is dripping all over with white gel.”

There’s no polite way to describe what this prompt conjured from the AI image generator. It looks, very much, like Mickey Mouse is drenched in ejaculate.

At the start of every year, a crop of cultural works enters the public domain in the United States. When copyright expires on particularly beloved characters, people get excited. This is an especially eagerly anticipated year. An early version of Mickey Mouse, colloquially known as Steamboat Willie, entered public domain in 2024 after nearly a century of rigorously enforced copyright protection. Within days, an explosion of homebrewed Steamboat Willie art hit the internet, including a horror movie trailer, a meme coin—and, of course, a glut of AI-generated Willies. Some are G-rated. Others, like “Creamboat Willie,” are decidedly not. (Willie doing drugs is another popular theme.)

While a contingent of the people sharing naughty Willie images are simply goofing around, others had surprisingly sober-minded intentions. Neville, an art director who posted his image on social media using the handle “Olivia Mutant-John,” has a lively sense of humor, but his experiment wasn’t solely a scatalogical joke. “My interest in generating the assets was to explore copyright thresholds and where the tools are currently,” he says. He’d noticed that it was easy to find examples of copyrighted characters on popular image-generating tools (a point also recently made by AI scientist Gary Marcus, who posted AI-generated depictions of SpongeBob SquarePants as an example) and wanted to see how far he could push an image generator now that Steamboat Willie was in the public domain.

Neville isn’t the only person conducting AI Willie experiments with copyright on his mind. Pierre-Carl Langlais, head of research at the AI data research firm OpSci, created a fine-tuned version of Stable Diffusion he called “Mickey-1928” based on 96 public domain stills of Mickey Mouse from the 1928 films Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy, and Gallopin’ Gaucho. “It’s a political stance,” he says.

Langlais firmly believes that people should be paying closer attention to where AI tools get their training data; he’s working on several separate projects focused on creating models that train exclusively on public domain works to that end. He whipped it up in hours, because it’s essentially a filter laid atop of Stable Diffusion, not a totally custom data set. (That would be a far more labor-intensive project.)

As anything related to AI artwork tends to stir up controversy, he’s been pleasantly surprised by the joyful reception his tool has received online; because it is built on a tiny set of low-quality images, the works it creates tend toward the rough-hewn and glitchy. (“You should not expect consistently good results from Mickey-1928,” his project description warns.) Langlais originally intended to add to the data set to improve its quality, but now he’s going to leave it as is. “I think people liked that it was slightly bad,” he says. “It created some funny results.”

Others liked it precisely because of its political valence. “It’s pretty satirical,” says emerging technology researcher Eryk Salvaggio. The Steamboat Willie iteration of Mickey Mouse entering the public domain is a big deal partly because people love all things Disney, but also because Disney played a role in shaping contemporary copyright protections specifically to shield this character. As Salvaggio points out, people nicknamed the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998—which, as its name suggests, extended copyright terms—as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act,” because Disney lobbied aggressively in favor of prolonging copyright.

“This particular Mickey Mouse, from Steamboat Willie, is now in the public domain at a time when questions about what we can grab and use are up for debate,” Salvaggio says. “It’s an interesting confluence.”

At least some of the AI-generated Steamboat Willie images are explicit middle-fingers to Disney. On the social network Bluesky, for example, a user called Virtual Balboa posted an image of Willie smoking a joint. (They asked to be identified by their pseudonym so their family “doesn't get swatted by some random lunatic.”) In an email, they detailed their motivations for creating doobie-smoking Willie. “I love the idea that Disney will be forced to spend money and resources looking at my stupid pictures to check if they are too far removed from Steamboat Willie to count as public domain,” they wrote.

While people like Langlais and Neville are experimenting with Steamboat Willie in part to test the guardrails put in place by generative AI companies, Virtual Balboa is deeply skeptical that enhanced copyright protections will benefit regular people: “Any guardrail-type laws will be written by computer-illiterate geriatrics and only make life harder for people trying to use ‘ethical AI’ to do legitimate work.”

Putting aside considerations of how digitally savvy regulators may or may not be, the rush to remix Steamboat Willie with AI tools demonstrates, once again, the growing inescapability of these products.

[nanabbi]

Look. I love Hizashi as much the next person. But his Hero Hairdo? No. Just a plain no from me. I like the memes and yeah, it’s pretty characteristic, but what the heck was he thinking???

It’s A Matter of Spite. Thank you, @onemaebee for checking this over!

“Excuse me…?”

Hizashi couldn’t help but wonder if the battery of his hearing aids was running low again.

“Objectively.”

The Hero Public Safety Commission representative --or the stickler for short, as Hizashi had mentally dubbed him in his inability to gather enough investment to memorize his name-- who had summoned him here to supposedly speak about his Hero career, gestured vaguely in Hizashi’s direction.

Well… More precisely, he gestured at all of him.

“Objectively speaking, you are pretty,” the stickler added and sat straighter up his chair. Someone should have colored Hizashi surprised at this point, because he wasn’t expecting the dude to be able to sit any more like he had a cane up his--

“You have nice features,” he continued, clearly missing Hizashi’s distaste with how this conversation was going “And despite your--” his eyes very pointedly scanned over Hizashi’s leather jacket and its extra spiky shoulder-pads “--packaging, you have managed to attract certain demographics.”

Sure he had, and not thanks to your organization, bro.

Newbie Pro Hero with loud personality. Self-sacrificial and badass to a tee. Endearing human flaws. Excellent fashion sense and taste in music --thank you very much-- and all of that at barely twenty one.

Of course Present Mic was appealing to certain demographics.

“You are interested in media entertainment, aren’t you?” The stickler continued to speak when Hizashi failed to find a proper way to respond.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have a comeback, it was more that… HPSC did kind of have the power to defame him if he ended up running his mouth as he felt it right now. Having his fashion sense insulted by a man wearing a terrible plaid tie was one thing, but having them chip strongly on his career because he insulted their bureaucracy? Better be cautious with that.

“Radio,” Hizashi replied and hoped that he didn’t sound as annoyed as he felt.

“I am interested in radio, specifically. I have a voice quirk, as you might be aware?”

If the stickler noticed the sarcastic tone, he didn’t show it. Instead he clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes, letting out an exasperated sigh as if Hizashi was being unreasonable.

“Yes, I know. But why? That’s kind of a waste, isn’t it?”

“Because that’s what I like!” The water glass he had been offered vibrated threateningly. Hizashi didn’t raise his voice much but catching the right frequency would be enough to shatter it. He took a deep breath and composed himself. “What exactly am I here for?”

“What do you think you’re here for?” The stickler asked, not seeming particularly bothered by the small ‘outburst.’

Hizashi glared. It wasn’t that he didn’t have many reserves of patience to offer, but this particular occasion didn’t feel worthy of his restrain.

“You want a poster boy,” he stated. If they stopped beating around the bush, maybe he could get this over with already.

Bad-tie-man had the audacity to smile and give Hizashi a patronizing nod of approval.

“Precisely, Mic. Appearances are the beginning and end to preserve good relations between Heroes and regular citizens. You have the looks already, and your persona is appropriate for handling crowds. If you decided to work with us and became a little more camera-friendly, we could put you on the top ten –if not top three- popularity chart when it comes to Heroes. You could help us keep common folk happy.”

“Camera friendly.”

There was no much hiding the pure un-amusement and borderline disgust Hizashi’s tone held at this point as he repeated these words.

The stickler’s plastic smile fell slightly, being replaced with a more professional strictness.

“You have a style. We respect that and wouldn’t dream of changing it completely. You are remembered by it after all, but we would have to implement some edits to show off your features more. Your fashion choices are so loud that I doubt people even notice what’s underneath it.”

Yeah. That was kind of the whole point, actually.

Hizashi loved the persona he had created. Present Mic was a great escape for him. He loved to entertain while being him. He loved to save people and be as over the top as he felt like, without worrying about how that looked, since it was part of the act. As an over-the-top Hero, acting the part didn’t raise many questions. He loved forgetting Hizashi’s problems when he strolled around like a peacock in Present Mic’s shiny leather clothes too.

He also loved how rarely he was recognized when he wasn’t Present Mic.

Hizashi needed some time of his own, to be as silent and still as he felt like, with no expectations to be anything more than a lazy pile. Kayama and Tensei didn’t mind him when he was like that. Aizawa… Well. Who knows what Aizawa was thinking about Present Mic, these days. Or even Hizashi for the matter.

The sleazy voice, coming up after translating his silence as an invitation to continue, was welcome this time.

That was a line of thinking he would rather avoid for the time being. It only ended to long alcohol-filled nights and Hizashi couldn’t afford that again. Present Mic was supposed to be on patrol tonight and he already had to ask Kanaya to cover for him twice this week.

“I’ve noticed you’re growing your hair.”

Taken aback by the observation, Hizashi’s fingers reflexively came to brush the hair, styled to heavily fall on one side and kept there with many layers of hair-spray. Hizashi had yet to decide how to style with the additional length so for now he had settled on the emo-punk look. It went well with Present Mic and nobody expected appearance-consistency so early in a Hero’s career (plus he hated people touching his hair and having it gelled discouraged them from it). The audience knew they would get Present Mic 2.0, 3.0 etc. It happened with most heroes.

“Yes?” He asked, sounding much more tired than he did a few moments ago, still feeling the remnants of pain that came whenever he thought of Aizawa these days. “What about it?”

“It is what drew our attention actually,” the stickler almost sung with a grin that made Hizashi fidget uncomfortably in his seat. “Made us take a closer look. Notice your potential.”

“Glad to know that through my work as a hero, it was my hair getting fancier that made you notice my potential,” Hizashi replied without even bothering to fake politeness. This felt like it was supposed to be a compliment but to Hizashi it sounded very much like an insult towards his abilities. “Cool priorities, there.”

This time, the stickler didn’t give him an eye-roll, but Hizashi felt the spirit of it passing over him anyway.

“I wouldn’t have called you if we didn’t already know of your skill.”

“But you did call me, because ‘I am pretty,’” the last words rolled off Hizashi’s lips laced with three doses of sarcasm and two of venom.

“It’s a package deal,” the stickler’s reply was drowned at the end by the sound of Hizashi’s chair scrapping against the floor as the blond stood.

“And a deal you won’t be getting,” the sleazy sweetness in his own voice, was overstated enough to make sure it was seen as fake. “Thank you for the interest. I think I am doing fine with my current agency.”

Hizashi expected to be interrupted before reaching the door. HPSC should start hiring less predictable people, with less predictable approaches (though it might be a good thing, no unpleasant surprises).

“Mic. Even if you don’t work with us, keep my words in mind. Image is important and you could use it.”

“Certainly,” Hizashi sang without even sparing the man a glance.

The door closed soundlessly behind him.

The bang came a week later.

Hizashi made damn sure that the fight in which he debuted his extra-gelled, pointy, cockatiel-stage-one hair was captured on camera and broadcasted on skyscrapers. It wasn’t even the final touch to the message he wanted to send to the Commission. It would take a few more months or maybe even years, but boy, could he not wait for their commentary on the upcoming moustache.

💛💛💛

[panharmonium]

...and damn the consequences

These are just some thinky-thoughts that I suppose could be an addendum to this old piece about Morgana, since I saw a couple of different discussion threads in that general vein in the tag a while back, and you know reading about this show always gets my brain going. :)

Most of what I ran into was written with the intention of shifting the blame for Morgana's issues away from Merlin, which is something I appreciate, personally - I've talked plenty myself about the myriad reasons why Merlin does not owe Morgana his secret and does not deserve "blame" for the things she does.  

But when the blame is shifted (rightly) away from Merlin, it does sometimes end up getting pushed onto others.  And while I do understand where that impulse comes from, I actually tend to approach this from a slightly different perspective, so since I don't think I've ever typed up anything about this particular subject before, I figured I might as well set down a few potential things to consider about a) Morgana (in relation to Gaius, specifically), and b) the more general question of "the blame" (and whether it's really a productive line of discussion, given that the question only has one legitimate answer, for me, at least).

disclaimer, as always: these are just my own thoughts, and nobody is obligated to share them!  If my particular perspective isn't interesting to you, don't worry about it - I'm just hanging out talking to myself on my own blog, so feel free to scroll past and continue interpreting the show in whatever way is most enjoyable for you!

i. my favourite patient is always welcome

So, first of all - some thoughts about Gaius.

I was really surprised at how infrequently Gaius appeared, when I first started poking around in the fandom.  For such a major character, and for someone who is such a huge part of Merlin's life, I definitely thought he would be more prominent, but essentially the sorts of posts I've seen about him are mostly restricted to two things: 1) memes, and 2) call-outs (he's in a very similar position to Kilgharrah, in that way).   

I don't necessarily think those things do him justice, and there’s a lot more we could talk about when it comes to his character, but for now, the only thing I'm really interested in working on is maybe adding some nuance to the perpetual question of Gaius, Morgana, Merlin, and "the blame."  

(For clarity’s sake: nothing that follows necessarily means that Gaius makes the “right” decisions.  The entire point of his character's history is in fact his failure to always do the right thing - see: Kilgharrah's line where he tells Gaius to “do nothing," because “that is, after all, your talent."  What I’m saying in the section that follows is just that there's more to consider about the choices Gaius makes than “he's a coward.")

So - some things to consider, when we think about Gaius and Morgana:  

1) One thing I'm not always sure people realize about this show is that neither Gaius nor Merlin knows that Morgana has magic until 2.03.  

And I definitely can see why people don’t necessarily realize it, because as we all know this show can be a little haphazard/loosey-goosey with its worldbuilding, but just to help clarify: until 2.03, Gaius does not know that Morgana has magic.  He knows that "some of the things she dreamt" have indicated certain future events (NOT all of them, importantly - more on that later), but her dream-visions are also specifically stated to be a separate gift from sorcery - dream-visions and magic are clearly established to be different things in this show, and prior to 2.03, Morgana has only ever demonstrated one of these abilities.  

At the end of 1.07, Merlin asks, "Is she like me?  Does she have the gift?" and Gaius's response is, "I hope not, for her sake."  Earlier, he also says, "The gift of prophecy is too close to the work of magic," indicating that the two things are, in fact, different abilities (if equally dangerous ones, in Uther's eyes).  “It's said to be an innate ability.  Those who have it are born that way.”  Whereas magic, in the Merlin-verse, is a learned skill.  We spend so much time around Merlin that we tend to transfer his experience to all other magic-users, but we have to remember that Merlin, in this world, is directly stated to be unique.  He uses magic without spells, without study; he tells Gaius he was born doing it.  But when Gaius hears Merlin say this, his response is, "That's impossible."  It's not something that happens.  

In the Merlin BBC-verse, people can be born with the "gift" - the ability to use magic - but their magic doesn't just manifest on its own.  What happens to Merlin (being able to use magic "before he could talk," with no training and no spells) and Morgana (starting a fire accidentally) is NOT something that is indicated to ever happen to other magic-possessors.  We aren't being introduced to a world where magical children will automatically start manifesting their magic in dangerous ways unless they're trained to use their abilities (ie, the X-Men model, or the Force-sensitive child model, where choosing not to teach someone is automatically irresponsible ).  Magic, as presented to us in this show, is something that cannot be used without training or specific spells/power-amplifying artifacts.  Merlin (and, later, Morgana) are exceptions to a universal rule.

And this is just something to keep in mind, because it does provide some context for Gaius's decisions.  It doesn't mean people have to agree with the choices he makes - it doesn't even mean *I* always agree with the choices he makes, to be honest - but I do think it's worthwhile to at least remember that Gaius doesn't make his decisions thoughtlessly.  As far as Gaius knows, even if Morgana did have magic, there is no way that it could ever manifest and become an issue for her without her being trained.  If she doesn't learn how to use magic, she can't use it, period.  And if she can't use it, no one will ever know she has it.  And if no one ever knows she has it, no one can ever kill her for it.  

(Once we hit 2.03, the conversation changes, obviously.  It becomes clear that Morgana is some kind of anomaly as well, and at that point, the only appropriate path forward is to tell her she has magic.)

(Which is, of course, precisely what Merlin does.)

2) According to the show, only "some of" Morgana's dreams have actually played out in real life; others have just been regular nightmares (and we see later on that even some of her prophetic dreams are vague to the point of incomprehensibility - eg, she dreams about a raven in 2.01, but how would she ever know what that meant, or if it meant anything at all, barring external context?)  Some of the risk/benefit analysis on Gaius's part has to take this problem into account - what if he did tell her that some of her dreams might be prophecies?  There would be no way for anyone to sort out which ones were real and which ones were just nightmares.  And Gaius has known Morgana all her life - he knows what she's like; he knows how headstrong she is.  She would assume all of her dreams were real, and she would act on all of them, because what if the one time she ignored a dream, something bad happened to someone she cares about?  

Gaius is familiar enough with Morgana to know with absolute certainty that this is what she would do.  And he knows that this could SO easily end up getting her killed, either by Uther, who would quickly figure out that something was going on, or by the sheer dangers associated with Morgana throwing herself into confrontations based only on uncertain visions (or worse, regular old dreams).

3) We also have to think about what this show tells us about prophecy in general.  Trying to act on prophetic information, in this world, is firmly established as a dangerous game, one which, more often than not, ends up directly causing the outcomes one was trying to prevent.  Trying to change the future, in the BBC Merlin universe, backfires on people every single time.  In 2.10, the Crystal of Neahtid is framed as holding "a terrible power," and Merlin knows instinctively that "no good [will] come of it," even as he feels compelled to look into it.  In 3.05, Gaius himself says of the Crystal Cave that "the crystals are treacherous," and Kilgharrah says that "to change the future is no simple matter, Merlin.  To do so is fraught with danger."  In Season 5, of course, we all know what happens with Merlin's attempts to prevent Mordred from killing Arthur - it ensures Arthur's death!  And that's not even mentioning all the collateral damage it causes - Kara's execution, Mordred and Morgana’s eventual deaths, etc.

I thought I could alter the future, but instead, I caused it.  I made it happen.

What you did was dangerous, even for someone as gifted as you.

These are truths about the universe in the BBC Merlin world, not Gaius's personal opinions.  Gaius had been brought up steeped in the rules of the Old Religion; he knows how that world works.  The risk posed by Morgana interpreting all of her dreams as prophecies (and the absolute certainty that she would constantly attempt to alter their outcomes) is not a trivial concern or something he should ignore.  It is real, significant, and extremely dangerous, for both Morgana and the people around her.

So in general, I do think there's a broader context to what Gaius does than we typically look at.  I'm not saying that it isn't a sticky situation, and I'm not even saying that Gaius makes the right calls.  All I'm saying is that I think it's worth acknowledging that the decisions he makes are a) always sincerely intended to protect Morgana from a number of very real dangers, not just Uther, and b) founded on more than simple cowardice or carelessness.

ii. of course what really matters is the blame / someone you can blame

More generally -

Whenever I see discussion circulating about Morgana’s descent into villainy, occasionally the conversation can start to feel to me a little bit like that scene in Into the Woods where all the characters start going "so it's HER fault/HIS fault/YOUR fault" as they backtrack further and further along the chain of events and tear apart every single character's innocuous decisions (the consequences of which could not possibly have been foreseen) in order to escape any scrap of personal responsibility, until the Witch interrupts their bickering and rips them a new one for worrying so much about who to blame when they have a real problem to solve.

These blame-placing conversations about Morgana, much like this scene, are interesting and enjoyable to think about in their own ways, but they rarely get quite where I want them to go.  I definitely love seeing people articulate the "we shouldn't blame Merlin for what Morgana does" angle, but things often then slide into "we should blame X person instead", where X person is Kilgharrah or Morgause or Gaius or Uther or whoever.  

And for me, that analysis doesn’t quite hit the mark.  The correct endpoint of "we shouldn't hold Merlin responsible for Morgana's actions" isn't "we should hold X person responsible instead."  The correct endpoint is "the only person responsible for Morgana's actions is Morgana."

The last time I wrote about Morgana like this, I mentioned that ultimately, the difference between Merlin and Morgana for me is that Merlin owns his choices.  He feels guilt, he expresses regret, he apologizes for his mistakes, and he blames himself for his missteps (as well as for other things that aren't remotely his fault).  Morgana, on the other hand, never apologizes for anything (despite the fact that she's made plenty of mistakes worth regretting), and sometimes it feels like in fandom we don't necessarily expect her to do so, as if it's a benchmark we don't need her to meet.

So because I really do have strong feelings about the double standard we use when it comes to Merlin and Morgana, I want to talk for a minute here about Merlin and Gaius’s relationship, to provide a comparison.

Morgana isn't the only person who's had important information about her parentage and potential abilities withheld from her.  Gaius hides both Merlin's dragonlord heritage and the identity of Merlin's father all the way until the end of Season 2, when necessity forces him to reveal the information.  Merlin's mother, for her own part, has been hiding this information from Merlin all his life - out of valid fears for Merlin's own safety, of course, the same way Gaius is trying to protect Morgana.  But still, from Merlin's point of view, in the moment when the information is revealed to him, the justification offered by his guardians is unacceptable.  He is angry and upset, and he feels cheated out of knowledge he deserved to have, the absence of which has negatively affected him all his life.  “I had a right to know,” he keeps saying, on the verge of tears.

Has Merlin been harmed by the choices his guardians made for him, even if said choices were made to protect him?  Yes.  Does he have a right to feel hurt, betrayed, and angry?  Yes.  Is he entitled to every ounce of his righteous rage?  Absolutely.  

Is he also responsible for how he reacts, now that the information has been revealed?  YES.

Merlin has no say in what his parental figures do to him in the name of protecting him, and he has no choice about how it makes him feel.  He does, however, have a choice about what actions he will now take in response.  He can react in a way that hurts others, or he can choose a path of lesser harm.  And there's plenty we can say to justify both options, certainly, but either way, the decision he makes is on him.  

What that means, in short, is this: Merlin is not responsible for what was done to him.  But he is responsible for what he himself does next.  

The same goes for Morgana.  In absolutely no universe would we classify Merlin's behavior as acceptable if he'd reacted to the revelation of his Dragonlord heritage by assassinating Uther, claiming the throne for himself in the name of his murdered kin, and then shooting innocent civilians in the street when the knights refused to recognize his legitimacy.  We would never say that was okay.  And we definitely wouldn't then blame Merlin's downfall on Gaius, saying it was Gaius's fault for withholding information about Merlin's powers for so long.  The choice to act in a harmful way would still be Merlin's, in that situation.

The same standard holds true for Morgana - particularly when she has access to resources that Merlin can't even dream about.  She is rich, beyond his wildest fantasies.  One of her dresses costs more than everything Merlin has ever owned in his life - his house, his land, his livestock, every bushel of wheat he's ever harvested.  She isn't the 1% in comparison to Merlin; she's the 0.0000001% - a princess in all but but name, and one who would presumably be heir to her father's entire estate in addition to everything she already has in Camelot.  

Morgana has the wealth to go anywhere she wants, including places where magic is practiced freely (see Helva, as mentioned in S5).  She has the prestige to affiliate herself with powerful people outside of Camelot, if she chooses to do so.  Any person in her position would have a broad, high-status network of friends and allies, and indeed we do see that Morgana has political ties outside Uther's court (see: how easily she's able to go to Cenred, Agravaine, Annis in Seasons 3/4 and be admitted, recognized, and trusted, as well as her repeated ability to recruit and/or take command of external armies).  

She could leave Camelot if she wanted, learn about her abilities, and build a life for herself elsewhere.  She could stay in Camelot and use her considerable resources to work toward her people's liberation, without indiscriminately murdering and enslaving the innocent poor.  She could seek out other magic-users like Alator in the spirit of true solidarity, as opposed to just using them as tools to get what she wants and then turning on them when they decide that they don’t want to use her sort of tactics to achieve their liberation.  She has hundreds of options, none of which necessarily even require her to forgive or reconcile with the people who harmed her, and none of which are even remotely open to Merlin, who (like Morgana) is still learning about his own abilities, and who (unlike Morgana) has no money, no social power, and no connections that he can leverage or lean upon, besides a tiny village of dirt-poor peasant farmers on the other side of the border with Cenred's kingdom.

Morgana has options.  The choices she makes are hers.  Gaius's decision not to tell her about her dreams is not equivalent to her receiving a blank check for harmful behavior.  She has so many resources.  She has so much power.  She could have chosen so many other paths - like Merlin tries to plead with her, in the crypt, after he tells her that he does not believe she deserves to be executed, despite what she's done: “We can find another way.”

She's the one who says, “There is no other way.”  She makes that decision.  She chooses to dismiss the thousand other paths available to her.  

That's on her.  That is always going to be on her.

iii. i'm going to give you one more chance

This last section...it’s more just a muddle of feels-riddled musing as opposed to a real opinion.  It's not something that has a right answer or a solution; it's just something I ponder sometimes.  

When we talk about harm being done in the real world, we talk about how intentions don't matter.  And that is absolutely true, in terms of both the impact of harmful actions and the harm-doer's responsibility to own what they did/make restitution.  If someone knocks you down, and you break your arm, the impact of that event doesn't change depending on whether the person in question did it on purpose or not.  Your arm's still broken, either way.  Intent doesn't matter, in terms of impact and responsibility - the actual harm done is the same, and the person who knocked you down should still be apologizing and making amends, regardless of whether they intended for you to fall or not.  

However - intent does matter when you're considering the future of your relationship with the person who knocked you down.  It affects how you react to what they did.  It changes how you respond to their actions.  If someone threw you to the ground on purpose, you'd (probably) feel differently about that than if a friend knocked you down because they were trying to pull you out of the way of an oncoming vehicle, or because they were carrying too many things in their arms and didn't see you turn the corner.

I think about this sometimes when it comes to Morgana and Merlin.

I don't want to frame this as "Morgana should have forgiven everybody who hurt her," because I don't think that's the case.  I've written before about how I fully understand her reasons for ultimately rejecting Arthur, Gwen, Merlin, Gaius, etc.  She's not required to reconcile with anybody if she doesn't want to.

At the same time, though, I do wonder sometimes about intent.  And sometimes I ask myself how things might have been different if Morgana had considered intent, before things went completely to hell, and whether the story’s ultimate outcome might have changed, if she had given even just one of these people a chance.

Morgana has plenty of reasons extend some degree of understanding to the people who caused her pain.  The vast majority of the people who caused Morgana harm did so either a) out of love, in a sincere attempt to protect her from being killed, b) without any knowledge of the fact that she needed help, or c) after they thought she was attempting to kill everybody in the city.  Everything Gaius ever conceals from her is concealed with the intention of keeping her safe.  Arthur knows absolutely nothing about Morgana's parentage until after Morgana has already violently invaded Camelot, and he knows nothing about her prophecies/magic, either.  Gwen, too, is never told anything about Morgana's parentage or her magic, even though Gwen supports Morgana when Morgana thinks her dreams might be sorcery.  And Morgana never comes to Merlin for help, despite his demonstrated support in 2.03 - what he does later, in 2.11, is a response to him legitimately thinking that she is actively trying to kill everyone in Camelot.  When she comes back a year later, he forgives her for it immediately, and when he realizes she has turned against them again, he STILL tries to talk her around, to offer his hand.  

So I think about that sometimes.  And I wonder what would have happened if Morgana had chosen to recognize things like this.  Merlin, for his own part, always chooses to recognize things like this when it comes to the people who've done him wrong (and by this I do not mean to say that his response is always the best one - I'm not talking about him consistently allowing Arthur to continue oppressing him and his community, here.  I'm talking about him, on an interpersonal level, being able to recognize when the people who've harmed him did so in an attempt to keep him safe, or without fully understanding the potential consequences of their actions.)  

Merlin understands that his mother lied about Balinor and the dragonlords in an attempt to protect him, and he continues to love her in spite of the fact that the deception legitimately hurt him.  He understands when Gaius gives Finna up to Arthur, because he know that Gaius sincerely believed her to be a trap laid by Morgana.  He understands many of the things Morgana does, too, and he gives her all kinds of chances - he knows why she tries to kill Uther in 1.11, and he holds no grudge.  He knows she tried to steal the Crystal of Neahtid in 2.10, and again he holds no grudge - he doesn't even suspect her, at the beginning of the next episode, when the entire city falls asleep.  He forgives her in 3.01 after she (as far as he knows) tried to kill the entire city at the end of the previous season, and even after she reveals herself to be a traitor in 3.02, he tells her he doesn't believe she deserves to be executed for who she is.  He still feels for her.  He still understands.  He wants to connect with her.

And, admittedly, neither Morgana nor Merlin are obligated to extend this kind of understanding to the people who've harmed them.  The impact of the harmful actions is the same, and Morgana doesn't have to give her friends a chance if she doesn’t want to.  She doesn't have to consider their intentions.

But she could have.  And I think that in some of these situations, there are compelling reasons why she should have.  

It's important to me to recognize that Morgana's choice not to ever consider her friends' intentions, particularly when it comes to people like Gwen, who didn't even understand what was going on and who were given no chance to prove their willingness to help Morgana before Morgana attacked first - completely obstructs the possibility of making amends, working things out together, making a connection, or seeking a more positive outcome.  Morgana’s actions come out of nowhere, for most of the people who know her.  She starts trying to kill them before they ever even know anything is wrong.  She doesn’t give them a chance to help her.

And she doesn’t have to, certainly.  But I wonder sometimes what things would have looked like if she had.

[wrongdoeir-a]

( androgynous | he/they | fionn whitehead ) —— isn’t that SEVERUS SNAPE? yeah that is them, sitting there at the SLYTHERIN table with those other SEVENTH years. when sybill looks into that crystal ball of hers, she sees worn and old robes, ancient books that thrummed with age and malice, faceless shapes in a sea of smoke, the cold steel of a dagger in the dark, and a long, thick cord stretched into a fogged distance, hanging over an abyss. on each side is a vast wall of a rocky mountain. the fall is steep and endless. balance is key. which seems about right for that NINETEEN year old. anyway i’ve heard they’re pretty AMBITIOUS, PASSIONATE, and SPITEFUL. apparently they’re a DEATH EATER in VENIT TEMPESTAS and a HALFBLOOD but i’m sure that’s not related… —— [ ellie : 25+ : she/her ]

name:

Severus Dynastes Snape.

Severus — severed. Cut off.

Dynastes — dynastic prince.

Eileen was not subtle when naming her son. Even in such a matter she let her spite lead her way. Severed Prince, indeed.

birthday:

January 9th, 1958.

dorm :

Seventh Year, Dorm Two.

clubs:

Slugclub.

Stargazing club. Purely for the chance to stargaze, of course!

Chess club.

DUELING CLUB. 

the extras

The following is a meta i wrote in response to meme questions i got on a previous rp blog. it still applies to how i write Severus so i thought I’d add it here just to showcase my interpretation better.

What does my muse equate with success?

Recognition. Severus’ roots, class, blood status and general unpleasant disposition make it difficult for people to want to openly recognize his skills and achievements, and thus dragging words of begrudging acknowledgement and praise from the mouths of noble-blooded and well-bred purebloods is a true marker of success for Severus. It’s not enough to be as smart as the smartest pureblood student his year, it’s not enough to be twice or thrice as skilled as the pureblood candidate applying for the same apprenticeship or position as himself. Severus has to prove he’s unimaginable leagues above anyone else in his field for his skills to be recognized properly. And a lot of times that’s not nearly enough. So being recognized by people who hate you and what you are, precisely against their will – that’s what he equates with success.

Does my muse consider themselves confident?

In some aspects, about certain things, yes. Severus is confident in his magical prowess and his skills in potions and the dark arts. If given the time and the resources he can make any potion, invent any concoction, craft any spell. He can study and learn anything that holds his interest long enough and make himself an expert in a matter of months. He’s a genius. He knows that. Everyone knows he knows that, too.

He can navigate politics like a proper Slytherin. In a roomful of snakes and politicians and ill-intending enemies he can hold his own just fine. Would feel quite within his element, in fact, after years of handling snobby classist purebloods and learning the careful balance, how to toe the line of being amusingly antagonistic and shockingly offensive. He learned, in his own way, to be coveted. For his skills and his wit. He knows his place, and knows how to operate within the confines of his blood status and still push and test his limits to their extent, and then beyond. He can make his betters feel small in his presence.

However, if he was put in a social situation where he wasn’t trying to prove himself in some capacity, where he didn’t have a clear opposition or a threat or a danger, in a completely non confrontational setting … it’s safe to say he’d feel very much out of his depth.

( for comparison – if one of the many elderly McKinnons at the farm knocked on his makeshift lab’s door and asked ‘ could you make something for my back dearie ’ he’d pause, blink, clear his throat, and then after a long and awkward silence would say yes, of course, it’ll be ready in an hour. If a Black or a Rosier made a request at a pureblood party with 30 layers of hidden meaning and motives he’d be able to pick the unsaid apart, dodge the question and direct the conversation somewhere more suitable to his interests )

Also … Severus tends to view himself — and others — like data on a sheet. Halfblood, poor, skilled, achievement 1, achievement 2, achievement 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. etc. He can operate on these terms just fine. Everyone has a place and a role and expectations that follow said place and role. Dig a little deeper though, into something more personal, and he clams up. Flounders. Suddenly nothing is familiar and everything is strange and unknown. It drives him up the fucking wall. Being perceived as an individual human being with wants and feelings and a soul? He would rather not, thank you very much. Please continue seeing him as separate parts on a sheet of paper than one whole individual thank you very much again.

TL;DR — for the most part, yes, he considers himself confident. But only in the things he thinks matter. The rest is better left unaddressed.

What makes my muse feel like they’ve lost control?

When he doesn’t know what to do next. Severus always has a plan, a backup, a backup for his backup and a backup for that backup too. He can always think of something to do in case X went wrong or Y went sideways … if there’s a point in time where his future is almost entirely unclear to him and he can’t think of what to do next, or can only think of two or three steps ahead, then he’d feel very much like he’d lost control in a fundamental capacity.

When faced with a choice will my muse go for what they know or what is new?

Depends on the choice. By default, Severus goes with what he knows --- better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. He can prepare for that, not so much for something he can’t predict. But if what he knows is unacceptable, if what he’s going to lose is more than he’s willing to give up or risk -- pros and cons -- then he’s going to take a leap of faith and choose something new. His choices are always calculated. with a few notable exceptions.

What is my muse passionate about?

Magic. Spellcrafting, potions, exploring magical homes and libraries. He’s extremely sentimental over books, old or new, and loves acquiring new texts and adding them to his collection. He’s very passionate about learning new things about magic.

Is my muse good about communicating how they feel?

Not in the slightest. Severus struggles with identifying how he feels to himself, and thus struggles with communicating said feelings to other people. He grew up in an emotionally and mentally and physically abusive household. Any emotional openness or vulnerability was used against him and exploited / manipulated / mocked by the people who were meant to protect him and keep him safe and teach him how to deal with the mess of being a human being with feelings.

He was taught growing up to be ashamed and to hide, and to be angry and to fight, and he was taught that anger was the only feeling that made one powerful --- he grew up with the image of an adult’s anger trumping reason and logic and mercy and compassion and love. It trumped all else without exception. Anger made him feel in control. it’s easy for him to identify anger, deal with it, explore it, exploit it, follow it through to the end. Anger is easy. Easier than fear, doubt, love, anxiety, etc etc. Not that he doesn’t deal with those feelings as well -- he does so, overburdened and brimming with the intensity and volatility of his feelings, but always in private, and always with secrecy as his main priority. No one is allowed to know him at such a level of intimacy. The fear of it being exploited and thrown back in his face is constant. The fear of it being used and exposed, not just in a personal level but with his position in this war in mind and his ability to tip the scales drastically through his actions and words, is constant.

He came a long way in controlling his anger and understanding it in a multifaceted and nuanced way, but it’s still there, the emotional space he occupies the most. When he’s emotionally vulnerable or is in a position that requires him to be, he gets defensive and retreats to what’s comfortable, which is anger and scathing mockery.

[romansrace]

Season 13 Sassy Reviews: Taking stock as of E07 ‘Bossy Rossy Ruboot’

So we know it’s not a good season.

Now all we’re watching to find out is is it AS BAD as season 7 or season 11?

It’s definitely up there for producer tomfoolery.

Let’s hit it.

So we know that going in to a new season, some queens are cast to go far, some queens are cast as filler (this year hilariously lampshaded by Joey Jay, self-aware queen), and some girls are cast to go midway and be allowed no further.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a certain proportion of queens are also now cast specifically to have a storyline of failing first time to set them up for an arc on Drag Race AllStars. (Why would producers care that it costs queens upwards of $10k per season to go on and that queens would probably prefer to only have to do that once?!)

As I mentioned in my last review, for some reason it seems that the production’s goal this time was to craft a season around Kandy Muse, a queen who was already fairly-well-known in the drag fandom scene for being a meme (just the one though) with links to existing Ru-lumni Alaska and Aja (and I suppose, Dahlia Sin).

If I had been in charge of production and wanted to craft a season around one queen (which, let’s be honest, has been pulled off successfully before: S3 Raja, S4 Sharon Needles; and semi-successfully before: S12 Gigi Goode and [Redacted], S6 Adore Delano and Bianca Del Rio) I would probably make sure to cast queens that didn’t threaten, or didn’t fill the same lane as my chosen frontrunner.

In season 4, this was probably most successfully previously done. Sharon was posited as the only drag queen in the world with a horror aesthetic, and compared favorably in that regard to her more middle-of-the-road competitors.

Raja, in season 3, was posed as away and above all others the #1 fashion queen. I would hazard that Manila Luzon may have auditioned as more of a comedy queen (given her reliance on Asian stereotype humor through the season) and ended up being more of a threat to Raja’s dominance than prodution initially counted on.

Season 6 was set up to follow the storyline of Adore and see how far she would grow through the competition. This was both helped and hindered by Bianca Del Rio’s dominance, although at least she excelled in precisely the kinds of challenges Adore struggled at, and vice versa. In this season, I suspect that BenDeLaCreme was not cast to be a fan favorite, but that ended up happening when she proved to be unexpectedly strong and versatile at challenges outside of the theatrical remit that she probably played up at her audition.

And in season 12, of course, all the groundwork was laid in Meet the Queens and in all the pre-show interviews for a season-long rivalry between plucky fashionista strategic player Gigi Goode, and old-school campy theatrical comedy queen posed as the relatable heart of the season, Sherry Pie. It would have gone well, had the latter not been revealed to be a sexual predator sociopath, resulting in a hasty re-edit that led to a lot of the (I imagine) originally less visible queens getting more talking heads to fill in the pie-shaped gap in episode content.

So we come to season 13, where it seems one of two things has happened to the show. Either:

1. After the smash success of season 12 last year, the editors got comfortable to try a different and more experimental tack of focusing on queens who were all personality and less good at challenges, in the belief that personality alone was what invested viewers in queens, or

2. Season 12 was ALSO originally edited like this (as was its predecessor, S11), to focus on a small group of queens at the detriment of all others, and the finished product (that was a smash success with fans) only wasn’t like that because of hasty re-editing that they didn’t feel the need to do this time.

Because for this S13E07 episode...

The strongest performing queens (Rosé and Denali) were for the third episode running, absolutely sidelined, even after drasticatically improving on the previous challenge that tested these comedy performance skills, which is surely a ready-made dramatic narrative.

Queens who performed alright, moderately who happened to fall into the group of queens production is favoring were praised to the high heavens, extremely effusively, as if what they had done was absolutely groundbreaking and incomparable to anyone else in the show’s history. (e.g. in what world is a silent character that performs physical comedy the hardest character to play, rather than easiest, in an improvisation challenge???)

Queens who performed poorly were only acknowledged as doing so if they had been cast as filler queens, otherwise, their performance was excused and not mentioned, or even some praise was found for very basic attempts.

This was all even emphasized inside the show itself by the filming technique of setting the queens who weren’t performing up on lawn chairs as an audience in another room to comment on each others’ performance, all suspiciously having the same comments which didn’t really match up with what we were actually seeing on screens.

Speaking as a fairly involved Drag Race fan (I mean, I make hypothetical videos of things that didn’t happen in the show...), I don’t watch this show to watch a scripted reality series focusing on performed characters. I watch the show for a competition in what’s essentially a queer community sport medium, an artform, to be judged by professionals with experience.

For queer people’s hard work to be rewarded, and their struggle recognized.

And this way of favoring the same people week on week, regardless of their craft or skill level, while leaving others to sit underappreciated, essentially televising the results of the creative queer struggle - at that, pretty much inadvertently recreating the feeling for these competitors of what it feels to be marginalized by a normative society that doesn’t respect your art and presentation... Mama, this isn’t it. It’s not the kind of thing I want to be spending my time watching in 2021, and it’s not feeding my soul.

[thecagedsong]

Cool, so one of my fandoms is having a really bad day, and since I care about Fablehaven until this monster of a fanfic gets finished, how about some wholesome meta? I don’t really care what the drama was about, so don’t tell me. We’re all a little high strung, and I tend to take disagreements personally in a way that I’m working on, and don’t need to be involved in. 

Now that that disclaimer is out of the way, who wants to talk about the Five crowns? Because I had a 14 hour car ride yesterday, listening to the second half of Evening Star and Shadow Plague, and I am so ready to let you all in on the code I cracked. I found the unifying magic diagram of the Fablehaven verse. The key to ultimate satisfaction, and if there was a magic research journal in universe, I would post this in and win the Top Magic Nerd of this Century award.  My goal is to make this as accepted canon as possible, because I am ridiculously right. No characters involved, so no drama except of the scolastic kind, relying on heavy references to canon. 

Ready? 

SO, I made a pretty big claim. But I’ve been toying with this theory since before Dragonwatch three came out. I need some reviews before I inform Brand Mull that I’ve cracked his secret and won the game. If this symbol isn’t on the spine of the Journal of Secrets, what is even the point. 

A good symbol does three things: identifies the pieces you are dealing with, helps the viewer reach a new understanding about the pieces, and map onto the cultural understandings of the audience. aka a cross with four quadrants of airplane, mitochondria, love, and toe nails is a terrible symbol. See common memes for usually pretty good symbols and graphs. 

So you got five crowns right? That means you have a pentagon and a five pointed star, and the biggest trick was figuring out where each crown went, and how they related to each other. 

Examine five-part belief systems, see where the crowns match, unifying symbol explains everything, move on. Easy.

NO.

You wanna know why?

BECAUSE FIVE POINTED STARS AS SYMBOLS ARE MORE WORTHLESS THAN AAA BATTERIES FOR WATCHING TELEVISION

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, obviously they are very useful for things like organizing systems within a single body. Who functions as the head, the shield arm, the pivot foot, etc. But the point of that diagram is that they are equally important and dependent to every other part. Which doesn’t work when the different groups keep trying to break each other’s kneecaps (see b5: fairies v demons).

It also falls apart on the five-piece cultural scale. The most well-known 5-piece cultural scale is obviously the chinese elements: Fire Wood Water Metal Earth.

Now, I don’t pretend to be an expert on those at all. But it all broke down on fire, TBH. Were dragons fire? But a large point was that their breath weapons weren’t always fire. Were demons fire? Even the ones covered in sludge. Were demons earth? Was the underking earth? All I got were fairies as water, in the end. If someone wants to give that a go, be my guest. 

I drew so many pentagrams trying to figure it out, and it never worked. No matter the arrangement, it never told me more about the crowns except that there were five of them. I was about to despair. 

But then the muses sang: The Forgotten Crown. 

(That’s the title of my thesis, btw)

Like I said, five pointed stars were trash for this system, but what if I added another crown, one that no one bothers to count, because by their nature, they can’t do anything. That’s right:

The Forgotten Crown of the Fair Folk. 

The symbol slipped into place like sharp pointy things into Warren. And now I can get to the real meta after sharing this image:

Isn’t it beautiful? After I cracked this code, I showed it to my little sister. She smiled contentedly, calling it satisfying. It is so satisfying. It speaks to so many levels of understanding. 

First, I depicted for you, we have the morality and the terrain triangles. 

Morality triangle is the easiest, if you feel uncomfortable labeling drown-happy naiads as good and all demons as evil, congrats, thinking about the nature of good and evil is precisely what Mull was going for. Since I am suddenly one of those people, I’m going to be using the creation/destruction dichotomy, but acknowledge that both of those work. 

Fairies can be most easily understood when Kendra asked the Fairy Queen what she should do with her life. She’s an unlimited fount of the Fairy Queen’s own power, allowed to do whatever she wants, and the Fairy Queen tells her to nurture life. Be fruitful, put good things in the world, help people grow. Their goal is to create, their magic is defensive, beauty is wonderful for its own sake. The better you are at respecting and nurturing life, the stronger your magic is. Dryads are responsible for the whole forest, and throughout the series they are seen as more powerful and serious than fairies, which can make the plants they interact with grow and hamadryads, who are connected only to their tree. Certainly more powerful than the petty, waterbound naiads. 

Ganalus’s speech to Seth about his own nature is where you can understand demons in this world. They like to destroy and torture, they find amusement in things like plague and clipping live beings to their belts and dragging them around. They are driven by the need for more power and control. Their nature is to harm and break apart, and that has its place in this world, but we care about the stuff and people here, so mortals and fairies have got to keep these punks in check.

And of course, the Fair Folk. Here’s where this triangle gets fun. The worst of the worst gets to be Demon King, the best of the best get stronger fairy powers. That means the most neutral of the neutral get to be the leader of the Fair Folk. We’ve heard references to the main city of the Fair Folk: Selona, somewhere in Europe, and a mysterious exert that I’ve seen images of with Lord Dagrel that I’m trying to pin down. I’m posing that their powers come from being neutral. They talk about the terrible consequences of the last time they went to war, what if it the equivalent of their fallen state, when they break their neutrality, and changes them fundamentally. 

This breaks down the most, but they are the Forgotten Crown for a reason. They hold themselves apart from issues of the other crowns. No one even remembers that they have a crown, because as Seth and Celebrant have shown, who cares? They aren’t going to do anything about it. Everyone collectively forgot/don’t care about them. But their abilities are equal in strength to the others, but different in use, and less valued by those who have battles to fight. Their neutrality puts them exactly between good and evil, creation and destruction. They take the choice not to act, and there is power there too. 

Next is the Terrain Creatures. 

Sky giants control the sky, obviously. Thronis and his ability to control the weather, their height, while their feet are on the ground, far as we know, everything important happens in the sky. 

Underking gets under the ground, again, obvious. Different from the other two points of the terrain triangle in that there is a lot of creature classifactions in their domain, but think of how big the surface of the earth is, underneath it, all theirs. 

Dragons, they dwell in the sky and below the surface, putting them in both. Water dragons and Dromadus both primarily function beneath the surface, and their wings let them be in the sky. while not stronger necessarily than the other terrain crowns in their own domains, they are top of the food chain for the creatures living on the ground, and could probably take out the undead that venture near the surface, and I have high hopes for seeing a Sky Giant v Dragon in the next book. 

Cool, we got our organization of information. We learn something about them based on their placements within the triangles. But is that our symbol? No! Symbols are different than graphs, we should be able to squeeze ridiculous amounts of meaning from them, and we aren’t done yet. The two triangles map really, really well together.

What does the placement of the two triangles together tell us about the individual components?

a WHOLE TON. This is what makes this symbol the most satisfying, the triangles create two separate categorizations of their powers and abilities, but they inform each other. The morality of the terrain beings, and the domains of morality beings. 

Dragons run the whole spectrum from creation to destruction. We see a lot more of the destruction dragons, because our kids are in a war, but Raxtus hits really close to the Fairies and can heal and grow with his breath weapon. We also have wizards, who chose mortality for the ability to use magic to create. All the way to effing Navarog, honorary demon. They run every shade of the creation/destruction spectrum. We also see dragons that don’t depend on destruction because we know that there are some that agreed to behave if it meant they weren’t shoved into sanctuaries. 

Sky giants, the group we know the least about, are good enough that their queen was deemed able to be the caretaker of a dragon sanctuary, so no inherent thirst for destruction and chaos. But they run the neutral side of creation, they weren’t going to step in to stop the demons, they like magic and creating from what we know of thronis, but they fit right here. 

Underking - fall between neutral destruction. The underking wasn’t orchestrating the opening of the demon prison. They crave life, its a food source, but more than that, they want to endure. They might fall closer to demons in their taste for extinguishing life, but they need their wanting of life to continue existing. They might have individual prizes and desires for life, but because they depend on wanting life for their own continued existence, they will never organize themselves into taking over the world. Congrats, you’re only half as destructive as demons.

The morality on the terrain is much easier to see blatantly. Fairies have wings, but in no way do they control the sky, and they live on the ground. Demons...I’m sure some of them fly, but they tend to prefer caves like Granulas and pits like Jubaya and Kurisok. Prefer the night, though the light doesn’t harm them. Fittingly, the Fair Folk do not have the ability to fly on their own, and they live on the ground, not under it. 

sO SATISFying how those fit together. Are you weeping yet? This is harmony on the organizational level. 

But I claimed this was the perfect symbol, the ultimate. There is one more layer describing how every piece relates to every other piece, per the best symbols. 

Opposites

This is the least defined level of interaction, and each line is unique, while still being opposite its counterpart. We’ll start with the ones we have the least information about and go from there. 

Demon/sky giant: We know nothing, at the moment. They have never commented on each other, and have never interacted. Why didn’t sky giants show up to the Zzyzx party? Who knows! So I’m going to speculate here, and propose that they just really can’t stand each other’s presence. Demons stay away from sky giants, because giants are way bigger than them, and it is hard to feel powerful when you only come up to their knee, and sky giants don’t like demons because...eww, demons. 

Fair Folk/Dragon: We know that there are Fair Folk at all seven dragon sanctuaries. We know that the Fair Folk were there long before the sanctuaries were created. Fair Folk neutrality let both parties trust the dragons to part of their watch. It also seems that Dragons have a very difficult time staying neutral. We’ve seen a lot of flavors of dragon, but the one flavor we haven’t seen, possibly by its nature, is a neutral dragon. The closest we came was Dromadus, who was an abstaining pacifist for two books, but kept lending help to the innocent and those aligned with the innocent. His neutrality broke literally the week someone asked him to break it.

 Fascinatingly, the talents of the Fair Folk are actually the closest analog to the breath weapons of the dragons. One unique ability, can be augmented by training, can do something unique to the characteristics of the user. This is enough to make their uses of magic foils for each other in ways that they can’t be with the other races. In fact, they take human shape, their wizards act a lot like the talents of the Fair Folk.

Their final opposite string: physical appearance. Fair Folk are attractive (symetrical) humans. Dragons are hulking reptiles of scale and claw meant to let everyone who can see them know who is the top predator around. Fair folk are disarmingly beautiful. 

Fairy/Underking: The dichotomy that we know the most about because it’s the one the protagonists find themselves on opposite side of. I could double the length of this post talking about these opposite foils, but this is already ridiculously long, so I’ll keep it brief. Consult upcoming thesis for full analysis.

Most obvious aspect of this line? They literally cannot co-exist, one must overpower the other. Nova Songs are consumed by darkness, while crown-fueled Kendra literally turns the undead into bones and dust. The darkness and light can’t balance like the demon cursed area + Fairy shrine stone did in Shadow Plague, there is no middle ground.

While fairies and demons make the creation-destruction spectrum, Fairy and Underking make the Life-death line. Unicorns, who have so much life and youth that lectoblixes overdose to death on them, and the undead that give up the joys light and live to continue. Because Death lasts as long as life. 

And finally my favorite line of opposites, their crowns functions in exactly the opposite ways. The under-crown does not share power. It accumulates, you become one of consciousness of the crown. They swallow you up, and you will never take power from them. They will continue. Meanwhile the Fairy crown has had several owners, as identified by Risenmay in dw2. And the Fairy Crown shares magic in a way that the other crowns don’t. The fairy Queen shared her magic with Kendra, yes, but she also shared it with her husband. All the male fairies fell with the Fairy King, turning permanently into imps. Unless the Fairy Queen isn’t being honest about how that happened, that meant that the male half of the kingdom was under the authority of her husband when he fell. Which makes sense for this crown. One person can’t make a new person on their own, they have to have a male and a female genetic coding. For the crown that is all about creating and preserving life, that power isn’t meant to be wielded alone. The Fairy crown can share, can give, while the Undercrown can consume and take. They are complete opposites in this.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading through this preliminary thesis. Counterpoints, additions, and commentary are welcome. I want to flesh this out a little more before sending my transcendent, beautiful, unifying symbol to Mull and have him announce that I have officially cracked the code. Really tho, the fact that I can pull this together into a unifying symbol is pretty cool in terms of Mull’s worldbuilding. 

Well...only works if he acknowledges the forgotten crown. Dragonwatch 5: the Crown of Selona. I can’t wait. 

[erubadhriell]

AND YOU THOUGHT I WOULDN'T SEE THE ASK MEME MUAHAHAHA! For the Get to know my d&d characters! numbers 6, 7, 14, 20, 22, 42, 46, 51, 52, 63 and 69 for Rikko! I'll send the same numbers for the other Characters since Tumblr has a word limit! :D

Hi Dj Fat Chip! Thank you very much for asking about them all! <3 xD

Rikko by Anna Helme

6. which party member do they relate to the most?

Ulene. Rikko feels guilty due to some of his past actions, and because of that, he feels as if he doesn’t belong to his home anymore. Ulene was exiled from her home. They both have this feeling of trying to find their place in the world, somewhere to belong to. They feel it deep inside them, calling them to a home they don’t know anymore. Somewhere they can rest and close their eyes and just be free. They also share their love for art: Rikko with his music and Ulene her dance, and these arts can be connected together. They also have their dark sense of humor, laughing at their own disgraces. And a thing for competition, especially at throwing knives. A “rogue thing” as Valquíria would say.

7. which party member do they understand the least? 

Well, I think you probably know the answer for this one already. Mortty, of course. Rikko will never understand Mortty’s obsession for the eternal life, not to mention that the fact he messes with unnatural things such as necromancy. Rikko believes that this world is made of fragile and fleeting things, they weren’t meant to last. Someone that lives forever would live long enough to forget who they were, what and who they used to love. And what life really means to them. 

14. what is something they love about themself? 

Rikko loves the fact that he’s a quick learner. For someone that loves to learn more about the world around him, that seeks knowledge, this characteristic comes in handy. He also loves his determination of keep going, never give up, despite of all the tragical things that happens around him. Sometimes he even doesn’t know where he gets so much strength to keep on his path. But he has it all inside him and will take advantage of it.

20. which of the five senses do they rely the most on?

Rikko probably relies the most on three senses: sight, touch and audition. Sight because he’s a very observant person, he notices details that might that can go unnoticed by most people. Touch because he was trained to use it a lot on places he can’t see well enough, like dark places, but he also can’t use his fire magic, so he learned how to touch things and get a notion of distance. And audition, since he’s very much connected to music, he started to notice the sounds with more clarity and precision.

22. what is a promise they’ve broken?

Rikko:  Watching the waves and listening intently its quiet song, the memories became clearer. I had promised her the world, she wanted to see the sea.

His answer, the promise he had broken.

42. what are three words they would use to describe themself?

Rikko: Damn unlucky bastard.

LOL Ok, now serious, I would say determined, sarcastic, stubborn. It’s actually really hard to describe him in three words, even for me being his creator.  

46. what do they deprive themself of?

He deprives himself of his own home. The guilty is heavy on him, he feels as a danger and unworthy of his own family. That’s why he left, he wants answers, he wants a way to deal with the problem that lies deep inside him and he believes the best way of doing it is going alone, this way he won’t risk anyone. And because of that, he’s very much hard on himself to let people get to him and become a part of his life. He has also been depriving himself of friendship and maybe even love. Although it eventually doesn’t work out, as people start to travel with him, and he can’t deny they became part of his life.

51. what is the most beautiful thing in the world, for them?

Hm. I don’t think he has only one thing he would call the most beautiful thing in the world, but there are few he would call that. His girl, his daughter and the connection, meaning and love between them. They brought meaning to his life, to his pain and sacrifice. Because of them, he doesn’t have that big void inside of him anymore, he started to feel as if he mattered and could make the difference. As he likes to say, when he realizes that, “it feels as if I breath for the first time of my life.”

52. from whom do they seek validation?

From no one other than the person he chose to spend his life with. And also Divinity. Rikko is the type of person that never really cared about what others think. It was never between him and them, but him doing what’s right, regardless of what others think what’s right, he does not believe in relativism. And he eventually starts to care about his girl thinks, because that’s important, as she will spend her life with him, then they have to work together to make it right.

63. what fight has scared them the most?

Probably his last battle in the book, because then he start to have something to hope for and to return home. Before that, he doesn’t really care much if he would live or die in a battle, he was not that much afraid, unless if you count the natural instinct that creatures have against death. There were times he wished he had died in a battle. But, at the same time, if he survives the battle, he will do what he can to stay alive. As if he was wishing life like water in a desert, but drinking death as if it was wine. It means a strong desire for life that takes the form of a willingness to die. And, yes, he sometimes can be paradoxal. In the last one, he would really like to return home and see who would be waiting for him, but he was also willing to give his life for them, even with fear inside him. Ah, and he is always afraid of the battle inside him against himself, against his own deep and dark passions. But that one is a battle he fights every day.

69. how would they describe their party members?

Rikko: A bunch of unlucky misfits that somehow fit together and joined forces to find answers, meanings, a way out of their own miseries. 

Thank you very much for asking, Dear! That was really fun! <33 

[moondeerdotblog]

On Dragons

A brief note for short attention spans: stick around if you wanna see how I manage to seamlessly (and I do say so myself) tie together dragon mythology, weaving, and politics into one giant point about worldview diversity and problem solving efficacy (even got a Trumpian meme for y’all towards the bottom if that is more your bag).

I have always been fascinated by the common thread stretched about humanity that links up our narratives. The similitude with which humanity engineers itself by independent means.

Take dragons for example. Damn near everyone thought up dragons.

They thought ‘em up in Egypt, where Apep was the very embodiment of chaos.

Egypt also thought up my personal favorite, Ouroboros, who was a manifestation of the snake god Mehen.

They thought ‘em up in Mother Russia where it would appear three really is a magic number. One would assume their mastery of weather and water source got ‘em the gig at the bow of this Russian Viking ship.

This handsome three-headed fella, who goes by Zmey Gorynych, is from Russian folklore. He liked taking human form and seducing him some laadiees.

In Greece, dragons were hurling up namesakes. Here we see a depiction of Athena watching as the Colchian dragon, guardian of the Golden Fleece, disgorges Jason.

Greek dragons were also being raised solely for the purpose of slaying Heracles (pictured here failing miserably is the Lernaean Hydra).

The Greeks also liked stickin‘ ‘em in mosaics, as with this depiction of a sea dragon or cetus.

In China, where dragons were thought to bring good luck to those worthy of such fortune, you’ll find them carved into walls. I mean … be kinda awkward not to find dragons at Nine-Dragon Wall … am I right?

The last imperial dynasty of China, the Qing dynasty, chose to stick one of the dragon gods, the Azure Dragon, on their flag.

It wouldn’t be long before the Chinese dragon would make its way to Japan, as evidenced by this Hokusai painting,

as well as to Korea, as evidenced by the murals found at the Goguryeo tombs.

The first known portrayal of a fully modern, western dragon may be found within a medieval manuscript.

Native Americans painted dragons on bluffs. This fearsome piasa bird craved human flesh.

So what is the point of my little dragons of the world presentation? I believe it worth considering the discrepancies and commonalities amongst such cultural invention.

Let us begin with commonalities. The nearest I can tell, the single common thread among these narratives defines a dragon as a serpentine, legendary creature. Let me paint my point metaphorically.

We often speak of storytellers as though they were spinning yarn. It would not, then, be much of a stretch to reimagine them as weavers, and their creations as tapestries such as the two below.

We might think of the universally common as the warp threads running through these tapestries. Something structural. Not the good stuff.

What they all saw the same way isn’t really the interesting bit, is it? Seems to me the good stuff is what each culture thought of a little bit differently, the weft threads of the tapestries.

That which makes the Chinese dragon on the right something entirely different than the Celtic dragon on the left. Different … but no less beautiful … and the world is richer having known them both. Having known them both, what might one weave next?

Consider, then, what invention becomes possible with all things considered.

What might I be able to learn from someone with whom I share nothing but warp threads (were we each provided our very own babel fish … obviously).

What might he learn from me? After we have finished feeding our fish and gone our separate ways, how might we be affected? What ingenuity might we have unlocked for future endeavors?

Not enough? Not yet convinced of the beneficiality of discrepant embrace? Another example, then.

What must this untouched Amazonian tribe have thought possible that they hadn’t only moments earlier?

I don’t want y’all thinkin’ I only value discrepancy. We value the shared human experience, that which binds us as a species … the things about our lives, about the human condition, one finds to be as true beneath the canopy as they are in my backyard.

Without such warp threads we might find those outside the purview of our particular worldview entirely un-relatable. We might consider children one such thread. Entirely relatable.

What I find to be most valuable, however, are those weft threads … the good stuff. The stuff that tells us not who we are, but who we might be … who we might become. It is the unique that drives us to want to try out something new … that has us saying, “huh, I never thought to do that,” or “I haven’t thought of it that way before.”

It is the unique that allows us to glance up at the sky and say to ourselves, “I never knew that was possible.”

Thinking about folklore and mythology in this way got me thinking about world-views, and the current political climate in our country.

When Trump was first impeached, I became deeply invested in the plight of our nation. If I was awake, the television was tuned to MSNBC and I was absorbing all of it. The reality rejectionist platform pushed by the GOP, the militia grooming, the election theft, the fascist coup, etc., etc. You all know the story.

The things is, I was getting there weeks, if not months, before anyone I was seeing on my television (or Twitter for that matter). I began wondering why. I mean … me … a guy with a political knowledge gap the size of those Texan power bills.

Then there seemed to come a moment at which point everyone caught up. Biden was declared victorious.

I was caught up in the jubilation

and felt as though, perhaps, the whole divergency irritant had been flushed.

It hadn’t been. Coinciding with the beginning of Trump’s second impeachment trial, even more so than before, my read diverged from any other I could find. Maximum dissidence was reached immediately following the Senate’s vote to acquit, when Mitch stepped up to the podium and began speaking.

Wait … wait … that wasn’t Mitch.

Okay, that’s Mitch. So Mitch got up there and did precisely what I feared he might … he pivoted away from a doomed reality rejectionist platform. My surprise was in how everyone else responded. I have yet to find anyone anywhere not surprised by Mitch that day.

“So what, then, is your point?” you ask. “It seems as though that vuvuzela isn’t all you’ve been blowing,” you say (in a rather accusatory tone I might add). Here is my point with regard to my power to prognosticate.

I have grown convinced that I have uncovered the force at play here. It is precisely that political knowledge gap which has turned me amateur prognosticator. Without the knowledge of political norms and precedents pressing into my mental map of possibility, my imagination would not be limited to what has come before. My expectations were unflappable when met with a world that no longer made sense, while so many clung to a pre-Trumpian set of expectations. They, consciously or subconsciously (mind is tricky that way), feared the unrecognizable now.

I want to return, briefly, to that Amazonian tribe, staring up at that plane. No doubt you had a similar reaction to my own upon seeing that image, postulating what magic they must invent to explain that which they have seen.

I want you to consider something that perhaps you wouldn’t have thought to consider. Let’s reimagine magic. What if Trump were piloting that plane? (Nailed it, right?)

Of course the plane crashes. It was held aloft by norms and precedents. Say everyone survives the crash. Which group, the planites or the tribe, now possesses the most accurate view of what surrounds them?

Politically, societally, pick-your-ly … who among us has the most accurate view of what surrounds us today?

Well … I mean … you’re not wrong. We have a hell-of-a-lotta problems (and thanks for participating, couldn’t pull this off without ya) … problems requiring masterful weavers work together in fabricating solutions.

Let us, then, consider carefully whom we shall invite to sit down at our table … with which unique perspectives we shall be outfitted.

What might discrepant world-views or experience engender as we begin weaving? What might we see in the weft threads of our tapestry that we never knew was possible?

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

OK Bookchin

There is perhaps no modern thinker who has done more to damage the term “anarchism” than Murray Bookchin. Beyond all the physical repression over the centuries, by both capitalists and communists, the right and the left, Bookchin’s piece “Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm” stands as the most notable instance of ideological sabotage against anarchism.

Even the title of the piece is a lie. The only reason this “chasm” exists, is because Bookchin and his followers have been harping about it for the last 20 years. Additionally, individualist and social anarchism share a long history of tolerating each other, if not working together. Bookchin conveniently ignores that fact that many individualist anarchists were members of the First International, right alongside social anarchists, and even Marxists. There may have been tension between these groups, but there was no chasm, as there was no chasm until Bookchin created one.

Bookchin starts by going through the history of individualist anarchism, making sure to label them as terrorists pretty quickly out of the gates.

“individualistic anarchists committed acts of terrorism that gave anarchism its reputation as a violently sinister conspiracy.”

This is patently false, as shown in the work “The Anarchist Beast” by Nhat Hong. If Bookchin knew what he was talking about, he would have known that the drive to label anarchists as terrorists was going strong since likely before the 1880s. Yes, some individualist anarchists were terrorists, but anarchism had largely been stuck with that label already. The deeds of terrorists are not what established the label, it was the fear of those in power, and their need to discredit anarchism.

“Despite their avowals of an anarchocommunist ideology, Nietzscheans like Emma Goldman remained cheek to jowl in spirit with individualists. “

Here, we see Bookchin using Nietzsche like his name is some type of slur, in addition to using him to discredit Emma Goldman. Goldman did far more to advance anarchy in this world than Bookchin ever did, and often did it side by side with more social leaning anarchists. Where is the chasm then? Of course Bookchin wants to dismiss Goldman away, as her very life disproves his thesis here.

“The period hardly allowed individualists, in the name of their ‘uniqueness,’ to ignore the need for energetic revolutionary forms of organization with coherent and compelling programs.”

Moving past the 1800s and early 1900s, Bookchin moves on in time, suggesting that social anarchists in the period past that had “compelling programs.” What were these programs exactly? Allying with the Stalinist red fascism in Spain and getting murdered? While individualist anarchists may have been focused on smaller scale actions, the larger scale actions of the social anarchists of the 1930s ended quite literally, in fascism. I would hardly call that compelling or coherent.

“These trendy posturings, nearly all of which follow current yuppie fashions…”

It is at around this point in the piece that Bookchin abandons his delusional version of history, and moves on to mere ad hominem attacks and mere complaining. Bookchin is the last person who should be complaining about anything fashion related! Look at his hat! Bookchin constantly looks like how he thinks a worker should look like, and could absolutely deal with some sense of fashion other than his self-styled “assembly line chic”.

“the 1990s are awash in self-styled anarchists who — their flamboyant radical rhetoric aside — are cultivating a latter-day anarcho-individualism that I will call lifestyle anarchism. Its preoccupations with the ego and its uniqueness and its polymorphous concepts of resistance are steadily eroding the socialistic character of the libertarian tradition.”

Here, Bookchin attempts to coin individualist anarchism as something he created, a “lifestyle anarchism”, if you will. He claims lifestyle anarchism erodes the socialistic character of anarchism? So be it! The socialistic tradition in anarchism is what has led historically to anarchists buddying up to, and later being murdered by, socialists and communists. If erosion of this socialistic character is what it takes for anarchists to stop thinking that leftist traditions have their best interests at heart…Erode away!

“The ego — more precisely, its incarnation in various lifestyles — has become an idée fixe for many post-1960s anarchists, who are losing contact with the need for an organized, collectivistic, programmatic opposition to the existing social order.”

What Bookchin does not realize, is that this type of collectivist, programmatic “opposition” has become ingrained in the social order itself. Mass politics, with its programs for social change, has become part of the status quo. The system itself would much rather have people mimicking its structures and playing within its rules, as opposed to the infinitely diverse forms of resistance available to all individuals at any moment. The state understands how to deal with the same dogmatic resistance it has faced for centuries. It is not prepared for outbursts of individuality, fluid and innumerable in their scope.

“Lifestyle, like individualist, anarchism bears a disdain for theory,”

Yes! We do! We disdain those who fetishize thought, while cowering from action. Unlike Bookchin, who spent his life writing dozens of books, and many more pieces outside of them, the individualists see the world as their parchment upon which to write. Action is worth more than a million words, and also the most effective way to breed more action. People have been theorizing about the same things for centuries now, to little effect. It has been those who commit themselves to enacting theory, rather than steeping themselves in it, who have made the strongest stands against rulership.

“The price that anarchism will pay if it permits this swill to displace the libertarian ideals of an earlier period could be enormous.”

And here is where we see that Bookchin is not interested so much in opposing rulership, as he is using anarchism as a method of control. As evidenced above, Bookchin cares more about anarchism as a static ideology, than as a fluid attempt by people to not be ruled. He is concerned with anarchism as a monolithic entity, because as a singular and dogmatic ideology, anarchism becomes another box in which to contain people’s ideas, and thereby control people’s actions.

“Thus, instead of disclosing the sources of present-day social and personal pathologies, antitechnologism allows us to speciously replace capitalism with technology, which basically facilitates capital accumulation and the exploitation of labor, as the underlying cause of growth and of ecological destruction. Civilization, embodied in the city as a cultural center, is divested of its rational dimensions, as if the city were an unabated cancer rather than the potential sphere for universalizing human intercourse…”

Bookchin also attempts to attack currents of thought like primitivism and anti-civilization, but really just proves that he does not understand the critique these strains are making. Anti-civilization ideas are generally not “anti” technology, so much as they are insisting on an honesty about technology. The technology that exists, exists because of a globalized system of coercion. As anarchists, we need to be critical of this system, and understand that without coercion modern technology would simply not exist. Those who critique technology often do not oppose technology itself, but the manner in which technology is produced. Bookchin’s claim of “antitechnologism” is either a misunderstanding, or a purposeful falsification.

It is also worth noting that Bookchin again vulgarizes primitivism and anti-civ ideas by equating civilization with cities. He dares not address something like Fredy Perlman’s idea of civilization as the roots of all hierarchy…as simply rulership. Instead, Bookchin shows his cowardice by addressing anti-civ ideas with a meme level understanding of it, avoiding those who have thought deeper on the subject.

“Lifestyle anarchism must be seen in the present social context not only of demoralized black ghettoes and reactionary white suburbs but even of Indian reservations, those ostensible centers of ‘primality,’ in which gangs of Indian youths now shoot at one another, drug dealing is rampant, and ‘gang graffiti greets visitors even at the sacred Window Rock monument,’ “

And, of course, no old white man rant would be complete without some statements that just end up sounding like a confused racism. Bookchin actually attempts to claim that lifestyle/individual anarchism is responsible or related to the severe marginalization of people of color?! I believe that responsibility lies with capitalism and the racist structures it has created, not some individualist spectre.

“Social anarchism, in my view, is made of fundamentally different stuff, heir to the Enlightenment tradition…”

Finally, Bookchin comes clean, after the thinly veiled racism, and comes forth with an admission of his true forebearers…the archetypical “old white dudes” of the Enlightenment. Bookchin’s anarchism is not rooted in a simple desire for “no rulers”, but tied up in the liberal white supremacism of Enlightenment ideas.

“it describes the democratic dimension of anarchism as a majoritarian administration of the public sphere.”

Bookchin cannot rid himself of statist ideas, as he goes on to talk about his notion of Communalism. Bookchin does not stop to think “What if the majority does not want to administrate anything?” To him, anarchism is just another system of rulership, albeit a “majoritarian” one. Anarchism to him, becomes less about “no rulers”, and more about “everyone rules”.

“The sovereign, self-sufficient ‘individual’ has always been a precarious basis upon which to anchor a left libertarian outlook.”

Clearly, Bookchin does not believe in any sort of “bottom up” egalitarianism, or else he would not be so quick to dismiss the individual. Free and empowered individuals make up free and empowered societies, and should absolutely be the basis of liberty. One cannot force a system onto people, and then call those people free, no matter how inclusive the system.

“Democracy is not antithetical to anarchism; nor are majority rule and nonconsensual decisions incommensurable with a libertarian society. “

Any sort of rule…Any sort of nonconsensual decision is antithetical to anarchism. Here, again, Bookchin shows his desire to control others in the name of freedom. He literally attempts to reconcile the very tools of the state with anarchism!

“That no society can exist without institutional structures is transparently clear to anyone who has not been stupefied by Stirner and his kind.”

Again, his blatant statism is laid bare. Is “institutional structures” not simply another name for “rulership”? Of course, given the many societal blueprints that Bookchin created in his lifetime, it is clear that Bookchin saw himself at the helm of, or at least a theoretician of these “institutional structures”. Bookchin is incapable of rejecting these structures, because he views them as instruments to be used in ruling over others.

“Certainly, it is already no longer possible, in my view, to call oneself an anarchist without adding a qualifying adjective to distinguish oneself from lifestyle anarchists.”

And again, Bookchin shows that he is the one attempting to dilute anarchism, by attempting to add qualifiers and appendages to it. If anarchism can be obscured by adjectives, then its true meaning of “no rulers” can be watered down and even changed into something else.

“Mere opposition to the state may well unite fascistic lumpens with Stirnerite lumpens, a phenomenon that is not without its historical precedents. “

Bookchin finishes with a bit of classist flair, using the same terms that Marx used with disdain when talking about the underclasses of people. Bookchin, the “good worker”, must berate and chastise others. In a fit of workerism, Bookchin then plays the card common to leftists, and sinks to claims of fascism, putting to rest the notion that he ever had any real argument to begin with.

This final cry of “fascism!” truly shows Bookchin’s true designs here. He is willing to use the threat of fascism to scare those who might not be convinced by the piece’s end into complying. This final statement perfectly illustrates the authoritarianism masking itself as anarchism that Bookchin exemplifies.

“Follow my ‘organized’ and ‘coherent’ plans, or you are a fascist!” he cries.

OK Bookchin…

[purplesurveys]

773

What’s the name of a song you’ve listened to a lot recently? Prepare for another Hayley answer folks. I’ve been listening to nothing but Petals For Armor this whole week – even lo-fi got a break :o – and Dead Horse is very easily my favorite track so that’s been racking up plays.

Are you texting anyone at this moment? No. I currently have a conversation with Gab on Messenger but replies on both ends are choppy because we’re doing our own thing.

Recently, who in your house has gotten on your nerves the most? It’d be a surprise if someone still doesn’t know the answer to this, but it’s my mom. We just have very different personalities and traits, and that is mostly because I have made it my life’s mission to not end up like her.

Think of the most recent time that you went out to eat with someone, who ended up paying? We split the bill, as we always do. That last time was in my favorite ramen place I now realize :( I miss the outside worldddddd.

Is there anything that’s been weighing on your mind as far as a decision your contemplating whether to act on or not? Explain. Everyday it’s always a mental battle whether I’m touching my thesis or not for that day. It’s such a big deal for me and there’s so much pressure to produce an excellent one that I’m always too scared to look at it, even if it is MY work.

What all has pissed you off today, if anything at all? My mom was making unbelievable statements about ABSCBN (the major network that the government pettily hates and demanded to shut down) and how they deserve the ordeal they’ve been going through...fucking unbelievable. I wasn’t going to let her slide so I offered up my arguments, but I felt her cowering and my suspicions were confirmed when she changed the topic. 

How often do you talk to the person you currently have feelings for? Well I’m already with her, so we talk pretty often throughout the day. It’ll decrease if we’re both super busy, but when it’s one of those days we make sure we at least talk when we wake up and before we go to bed.

When was the last time you couldn’t stop laughing? A Tiktok Angela shared with me. Holy shit it was so funny - it was of a girl going through Twilight and reading every single time Stephenie Meyer used the word ‘chuckled’ with a hilarious voice filter.

Out of all of your friends who have you gotten in the worst fight with? Explain what happened. I super hate having conflicts with people I’m close to, so I honestly can’t tell you an argument I’ve had with a friend even if I try racking my brain for one.

If you had $100 dollars, how would you spend it? I’d rather save it till I’ll have to go job-hunting. I’ll spend the money on gas to go to job interviews.

What’s something you would love to have happen right now? I just want the reassurance that I’ll end up in a good job eventually. This whole period waiting for graduation with nothing happening isn’t good for me, and with the lockdown still in place I’ll have to also wait till I can start legit applying for jobs, so these days I’m essentially just living with double the amount of anxiety I’d normally have.

You were given the opportunity to get a new cellular device, what do you choose? iPhone 11 Pro Max.

Which of your classes in school is most capable of killing a good mood for you? Business reporting. Before the quarantine, that class absolutely ruined my Fridays which used to be my favorite day of the week. I had a great teacher who opened every avenue possible to help us because it was objectively a difficult class, but that’s all I saw it as – difficult. All my other classes were okay.

How nice of a person are you, honestly? I’m super nice and am always that way with everyone. Though if I encounter someone with a behavior that I don’t like, like being a lousy co-worker or if they support the government lolol, I’ll be less nice but like still not an asshole. It’s a waste of time being a shitty person to other people.

What good things have happened today? My dad bought Pringles yesterday so I got to have them today and holy shit, they are so so good. It also wasn’t that hot today - weather was still awful of course, but at least I didn’t sweat through my shirt or have to breathe heavily, which is good enough for me.

Can you honestly say that at this point and time you’re happy with the way things are going in your life? Not yet, but I’ll get there.

Is there anyone of your preferred sex who tends to mess with your head? I don’t have a preferred sex.

What have you recently gotten the most compliments on? Honestly nothing. I haven’t been on social media lately because the country is shit and citizens are always saying stupid shit, so I haven’t talked to that many people lately.

When you get to go shopping for new clothes, where do you go to find your clothes? Feliz.

How do you feel about inter-racial couples? You do you. I don’t see anything wrong with it and besides, Filipinos marrying foreigners has always been a common sight.

Have you ever thought you were in love, and then realized later on that your feelings weren’t as strong as you had thought? No.

When will be the next time you travel out of state, where will you be going? I have no clue. All travel plans have been put on hold for a while, so I’ll have to wait until that eases out.

If I were to see you face to face, who would you more than likely be with? My dog.

What is one assumption people make of you, by just seeing you? That I’m grumpy. It’s not inaccurate at all, I definitely have a bit of a short fuse.

When deciding the significance of someone in your life, what is an important deciding factor? How much I can trust them, if we’ve had memorable times together, and if they have the ability to make me feel better when I’m down.

What is something that you have come to realize doesn’t work for you? Trying to have a rational disagreement with my mom. She will always handle conflict immaturely. I will always wonder why she has lasted this long without anyone calling her out on such a poor behavior.

Have you ever grown apart from someone, and then over time you came back into each others lives? Yeah dude, Gabie. I lost her for a while after our first breakup, which was technically two losses for me because she’s also my best friend. We grew apart for around four months but after that we reconnected, patched things up, and realized being friends wasn’t gonna cut it so we ended up dating again haha.

On a scale of 1 to 10 how shy are you? 12 for people I’m not close to, maybe a 6 for those I know well already.

Chose one quality of yours that has caused you problems, explain one situation where the quality was apparent. Mmm when I’m anxious or not having a good day overall, I tend to ignore everyone. I will open messages but not reply to anyone of them, and on the worst days I won’t reply even to the work-related messages. And if anyone asks me if I’m ok or not, it’s going to be seenzoned; if anyone sends me a meme, it’s going to be seenzoned, you get the idea.

I was having a rough time the other day when JM asked me to take over a task for the org, and while I had every intention of doing it, I a) didn’t reply to him, and b) didn’t feel like doing the task until after dinner. When I opened my laptop to get on the job, I already got a message from JM apologizing and saying he had to overstep and do the work himself because he didn’t get a reply from me and because I haven’t done the task yet. I can honestly that’s never happened before and as a perfectionist I was super disappointed in myself and I must’ve apologized to him a thousand times.

Is there something you should be doing right now, besides this survey? Taking a shower.

When was the last time you turned down making plans with someone, why did you? I think it was just that party with Rita’s sister’s DJ friend. I don’t normally turn down plans because I’m always game for anything lol.

Who did you last confide in, what did it involve? I was telling Gabie how much I hate the Mother’s Day posts from everyone on Facebook. I didn’t use Facebook last Sunday precisely because I wanted to avoid seeing any of them, but when I loaded my feed now they were still all over my timeline. I had had enough of waiting for them to go away, so I vented to her.

[clocksfanfiction]

A Dance.

Pairing: UKUS/Libertea Rating: SFW Wordcount: 1411 In progress/Complete/Uhhhh Misc: Omegaverse, regency au, omega Alfred & alpha Arthur. Summary: Alfred dances with the increasingly intriguing Mr. Kirkland. A/N: I posted an incomplete wip of this au once because of a fic author meme. I’ve had this and a couple of other related wips in my folders for a while and I was recently reminded of it since,, i’m due another anual rewatch of Pride and Prejudice. Also it’s listed as ‘uhhh’ rather than complete or incomplete as this is an unplanned fic, you can read of the two published parts as stand alone ficlets, but if I post more then it might be better for context to read them chronologically, but again that’s not necessary. This one is set in essentially the same scene as the other. 

“Do you not think that we should be speaking, Mr Kirkland?”

The alpha addressed looked up sharply, the same dusting of colour that had decorated his cheeks when he’d met Alfred’s eye before once again returning to his features. Just as swiftly as Mr Kirkland had met his eye, his gaze was averted again, hidden in an excuse when the movement of their dance forced them apart momentarily.

Mr Kirkland was certainly odd. When he’d returned for Alfred’s hand for their first dance, he had been so stiff and short with his expressions in taking the omega’s arm that Alfred might’ve thought he couldn’t stand his company if they’d spent long enough together for such a dislike to form. He might otherwise have postured that Mr Kirkland disliked his scent so terribly that being near him simply repulsed him. But he’d held Alfred’s hand with such a gentle assurity that Alfred could only assume he either couldn’t bare to let go or could not wait to be free. Another omega might’ve taken offence, but Alfred was only all the more intrigued.

Especially as Mr Kirkland had only taken one more dance with another omega -- Mr. Fairway’s son -- which had clearly been only on account of the fact he’d been cornered and could see no way out of the situation but to offer his hand. Alfred didn’t know the alpha very well, hardly at all in fact for all the forty minutes they had been acquainted, but despite the most gentlemanly manner he presented to Master Fairway, it was not difficult to discern his discomfort. And for the more flattering fact of the matter, Mr Kirkland had once again appeared near Alfred a short time after, joining a very one-sided conversation between Alfred, his brother, and Miss Vogel. Though it was pleasant to have Mr Kirkland in the conversation, for though he had spoken a grand total of two sentences both were intelligent and charming enough to urge laughter from Alfred, it was far more pleasant to have him ask once again for a dance.

It had certainly stirred conversation between the omegas and more talkative alphas in the room. Alfred could already imagine what rumours would spread by the morning about the mysterious Mr. Kirkland and how he paid attention only to Mr. Jones’ son the entire evening. Either, Mr. Kirkland would come out as mysterious and ever the more an exciting bachelor to the families with single omegas. Or, he may be painted as rude, his polite dance with Master Fairway interpreted as a slight, and condemned by half of the town already. Alfred found himself hoping it would not be the latter; for all Mr. Kirkland’s stiffness so far, he had been the height of manners.

“It is a dance, Master Jones, I don’t believe that speaking is the point.”

Mr Kirkland finally gave his reply when they were joined again, Alfred’s hand returned to that so curiously tentative grip.

“But it is a social occasion!” Alfred laughed lightly, brushing past his partner in a turn. “Would you have me believe that no one spoke in all your previous attendance at balls?”

Mr. Kirkland had shied away, his manner still delightfully unclear. Though he held his posture perfectly and retained a calm expression, his gaze was cast down just so that one could only assume he was uncomfortable. That, or he was a particularly shy alpha, but he walked around the room with precisely the confidence expected of an alpha of his standing. Discomfort, at least in Alfred’s presence, didn’t make a sensible explanation either, as Mr. Kirkland had so expertly avoided every omega attempting to dance with him, yet deliberately sought Alfred out. He was delightfully intriguing.

“No, but I would have you believe that I do not often dance.”

Alfred blinked at him, a smile on his lips that he had been told countless times by his mother was unbecoming of a distinguished omega. Far too wide or brazen or something of the like. But Mr. Kirkland caught his gaze and that endearing blush coloured his cheeks once again and Alfred could think of no reason to cease smiling.

“You dance exceptionally well for an alpha with little practise.”

Mr. Kirkland’s complexion darkened further with fluster, the colour of his cheeks highlighting freckles which had gone unnoticed by Alfred until that moment. It was odd to see; so often a splash of freckles across an alpha’s nose would have been associated with one of happy disposition, a boyish charm and outgoing nature. Mr. Kirkland had revealed himself to be none of those things, yet Alfred had to think that such an endearing feature to juxtapose Mr. Kirkland’s impeccable (if stiff) manner was decidedly in character.

Mr Kirkland cleared his throat, lifting his hand for Alfred to turn under.

“I thank you, Master Jones, that should be quite the compliment given how often you’ve taken the floor.”

Were Alfred the bashful, reserved omega his mother had always wished he was, it likely would have been his turn to blush. He had, after all, danced with a fair few of the alphas around the room, but fair more than half of them had been married fathers of his close friends or otherwise family acquaintances. However, he was not so inclined to embarrassment as his mother wished him to be, and instead smiled wider at the still pink-cheeked Mr. Kirkland.

“Are you to tell me you’ve been watching me all evening, Mr. Kirkland?”

Perhaps it was cruel to tease the man, so particularly as it seemed ever the more evident to Alfred that Mr. Kirkland was a man of easily embarrassed disposition. And proven more so when the alpha’s eyes widened almost comically and Alfred was forced to bite his lip to keep back an impolite chuckle. He was kind enough to avert his gaze as Mr. Kirkland floundered for an answer, love as he would have done to watch the progression of thought cross his features.

“N-No, merely that I have observed as much throughout the evening.”

The stammer was a wonderful surprise, utterly undermining the otherwise carefully even tone of the alpha’s voice. Every passing moment seemed only to provide Alfred with something new about Mr. Kirkland’s manner to puzzle over. He was quickly proving to be the most interesting alpha of his acquaintance, and glancing up again to meet those striking green eyes made all the greener against the redness of his cheeks, Alfred began to allow himself to think that Mr. Kirkland might just have been quite handsome as well.

“Of course.” He inclined his head. “I shouldn’t flatter myself to think I’d garner so much of your attention.”

Alfred was glad for the way the dance forced them briefly apart once more, or else he may have not been able to contain his laughter at Mr. Kirkland’s sudden spluttering. By the time they reunited, the alpha’s mouth was set in a firm line, his eyes averted from Alfred’s own twinkling gaze. Matthew would be sure to berate him for his behaviour when he related the dance to him at home.

Mr. Kirkland opened his mouth, clearly wrestling with the possibilities of a reply undoubtedly to delight Alfred in either its awkwardness, or just perhaps to flatter him with a compliment. But, to his disappointment and Mr. Kirkland’s saviour, the dance ended, leaving them to step apart and clap politely for the musicians.

It was Mr. Kirkland who spoke up first, surprising Alfred with the once again controlled pallor of his face. He was rather disappointed to see the flush gone from the alpha’s cheeks, but he did suppose that he’d been a little relentless in his teasing and Mr. Kirkland and the alpha was well deserving of respite.

“I thank you for the dance, Master Jones.”

Alfred smiled, remembering for once his mother’s voice reminding him to at least pretend to be demure and restraining a little of the expression. He swallowed, returning Mr. Kirkland’s slight bow with an echoing curtsey.

“The pleasure is mine, Mr Kirkland. It should be a delight to see you dance more often.”

“Perhaps if there was the right partner.”

For the first time that evening, Mr. Kirkland offered Alfred just the slightest hint of a smile, near startling the omega with the softness of it. But before Alfred could respond, he excused himself, leaving Alfred to puzzle the implications of the sparkle behind Mr. Kirkland’s eye as the alpha wandered away.

[gem-quest]

[ I N F E R N A  . . . ]

Real Name: Victoria Chang (goes by “Vicky”)

Age: 22

FC: Hoyeon Jung

Species & Class: Fire-Mage, Rogue

Guild: Obsidian

“Middle finger up, F you pay me”  —Blackpink, Boombayah  

Description of In-Game Powers: Inferna (Vicky) can generate and manipulate fire. She should theoretically be able to put it out, too, and control it in a more precise way, but so far, no luck. Over-using this ability results in dizziness and fatigue. 

In addition, Inferna has a natural affinity for fire-related ability scrolls, potions, and items. She is invulnerable to fire, though water and being underwater in general gives her up to -2 in defense.

Place of Birth: The suburbs surrounding Baltimore, USA

Appearance: Although Inferna’s natural hair color is black (technically, dark brown), she had it dyed red when she first got to college. In-game, she changes her hair color very often, utilizing a bunch of H-rank potions that are only there for cosmetic effects. She also gives herself a bunch of face tattoos in-game, just because she can. Currently, she has some of the lyrics from Blackpink’s DDU-DU DDU-DU tattooed around the area of her left eye, like so.

“I just think that it’s kind of lame that there isn’t even a Starbucks out here. I mean, all this fancy mead is fine and all, but sometimes I just really want a frap, you feel me?”

Places Most Likely to be Found In-Game: Inferna adores the Level 7 Tearoom. She’s always been keen on spilling the tea, both literally and metaphorically (plus the sweet treats don’t hurt!).

Inferna’s also a pretty regular sight in Yue City, trying to market her Inferna Sauce and Inferna Sriracha to beginner players.

Current Inventory: 

Flaming daggers x4

Regular daggers x2

Pocketknife x1

Silver dust x5

Dispelling amulet x1

Crossbow x1

Ignitium potion x2

Lock picking set x1

Ictuium potion x7

Black pearls x3

Blue pearls x3

“Inferna Sauce” (AKA hot sauce that tastes like Lao Gan Ma/chili sauce that she made using in-game ingredients to spice up the bland-ass white people food available in the marketplaces) x10

“Inferna’s Sriracha” (same deal ^^^) x14

Shortsword x1

Murmurationium x1

Assorted sweet treats from the Tearoom x22

+ assorted foodstuffs/drinks, and more coins than anyone would ever need because she’s such a goddamn hoarder

Strongest Character Trait: Flippant

“Leak college textbook pdf files, not nudes. Jeez.”

Strengths: Inferna’s a total boss at League of Legends (she was Diamond before she decided to check out Gem Quest), meaning that she’s pretty familiar with a lot of the game mechanics that GQ was founded on; in-game, she’s very good at appearing out of nowhere and then fucking off with whatever she decided that she wanted to steal; despite the fact that she thinks computer science is boring as all hell, she’s not bad at it - she hasn’t failed so far, which is a sign that she must be doing something right; somehow passing 3 years of CS courses means that Inferna’s pretty well-versed in a variety of programming languages (Python, Java, Haskell, Ruby, C++, etc); has a very good memory, despite her general flightiness; her in-game character is very speedy, if not always very stealthy; quick reflexes and good hand-eye coordination (Inferna would like to thank her eleven-odd years of playing League); a natural curiosity about the game has led to Inferna exploring all the little nooks and crannies of every level she’s been to so far, so she knows about many little secret passageways and the like

Weaknesses: In real life, Inferna’s primary motivations are 1) food, and 2) being petty, and this is definitely true in-game as well - the primary difference being that in real life, Inferna does not have the ability to whip out flaming daggers whenever she wants to; in general, Inferna is ready to throw hands way too often for it to be healthy; very reckless and impulsive; tends to jump to conclusions and rush into things without thinking it through; fickle as actual fuck; flighty and easily distracted; probably more fixated on trying all the pastries in the Tearoom than actually clearing the game; stubborn, headstrong, and bullheaded when she focuses on something long enough to decide that she wants it, no matter what - Inferna has a very ‘my way or the highway’ attitude; can and will pack so many meme and vine references into one sentence that it’s practically incomprehensible; what is self-control?; is avoiding all her responsibilities 24/7

Player Stats: Inferna’s got pretty high strength stats for her class, mostly because she decided to spec into fire-mage abilities (”Honestly, I just wanted to be like Uncle Iroh from ATLA and breathe flames from my mouth”), but her cautiousness is abnormally low for a rogue.

STRENGTH: 8

DEFENCE: 7

CHARISMA: 6

PSYCHE: 5

WILLPOWER: 7

CAUTIOUSNESS: 3

AGILITY: 9

ENDURANCE: 7

INTELLIGENCE: 6

LUCK: 5

Inferna’s general personality is better suited to being a Knight or a Rider, but on the intro screen she read that Rogues tended to get easy money, so she was immediately sold.

Personality: Well, to be perfectly frank, Inferna is...kind of a bitch (and, in real life, she was kind of an attention whore as a teenager, though she mellowed out a bit once she got to college). Inferna's perfectly aware of this, but she also like, doesn't care. With her sarcastic and irreverent sense of humor, Inferna is flippant and frivolous, always brushing other peoples' concerns and criticisms off with a breezy "eat a dick" (or something along those lines). Inferna is also a bit vain, especially when it comes to her hair, and has a very irreverent/ironic sense of humor (and she always appreciates a good nerdy science pun).

Although she really isn't the nicest person around, Inferna’s outgoing nature and spunky spontaneity (paired with a healthy dose of snarkiness) has still made her a couple of friends (and said friends are usually just as thick-skinned as Inferna can be). She's a bit too cocky and reckless for her own good, and she can be blunt to the point of being cruel. Inferna has no sense of tact nor subtlety whatsoever, and she means something when she says it. Inferna's not afraid of confronting someone head-on, and she has absolutely no patience for pussies who would rather subtweet her than talk trash to her face.

Flighty and fickle, Inferna's not always very good about texting back or making plans. She's extremely petty and makes way too many smart remarks for her own good, and has quite the temper on her - Inferna is both easily excited and easily angered, and can be rather capricious if she hasn’t had any coffee. However, she's also quick to forgive (if not necessarily to forget), and she can be surprisingly perceptive and observant sometimes. Inferna's a bit of a hypocrite in that she's not afraid to call out stupid bullshit when she sees it, but she's also very much full of bullshit herself, a fact that she will freely admit to. And although she doesn't seem to take anything seriously, Inferna can and will hold a grudge until the end of time if you piss her off enough.

Finally, some people can find her downright annoying, which Inferna is also perfectly fine with. She's quite self-aware, despite what one may think after interacting with her, and she's definitely not as clueless or oblivious as some people think she is-it's just a matter of if she cares enough to confront somebody about something. And, spoiler alert: nine times out of ten, she doesn't.

“I do things for two reasons, and two reasons only: 1) spite, 2) the aesthetic. That’s it.” 

Biography: Inferna had a pretty normal childhood, all things considered; she was a rebellious kid for sure, but her parents were patient with her and let her do what she wanted, so long as her grades didn’t slip (granted, her mom was pretty pissed when she decided that she wanted red hair on a whim one day and just went ahead and got it dyed, but beyond an annoying lecture, there were no other consequences). Inferna got into the gaming scene pretty quickly as a kid - she passed over stupid games like Call of Duty for ones where she could fuck people up and look cute, like League of Legends or World of Warcraft. 

Inferna got into a fairly decent public university in Baltimore, and was subsequently pressured into pursuing an undergrad degree in computer science by her parents. Inferna thinks that CS is alright - it’s not her favorite thing in the world, but it’s not unbearably boring like reading wack ass Shakespeare plays and then bullshitting a 2000-word essay about it - and so far, she’s passed all her classes. Which has to count for something, right?

Inferna decided to check out Gem Quest not long after it was released to the public, during the summer after her sophomore year of college. The only reason she really decided to was because she was tired of forking over $10 for each damn skin in League, and with a game like League, what was the fucking point if she couldn’t have a cute character? She slowly got more into it as time went on - the character customization options were absolutely gorgeous, plus she liked being able to actually sample the in-game foods - and it was strangely freeing, in a way, to be able to go on her own adventures and explore everything the levels had to offer. A way better use of her time than sitting in the library trying to debug her goddamn code, in Inferna’s opinion.

As Inferna began to take Gem Quest more seriously, she built a reputation for herself as That Bitch (TM).Thanks to her penchant of hoarding items and coins, she has gotten quite coin-rich, and thanks to her affinity with games that were similar to Gem Quest, she quickly advanced through the easier levels. 

Inferna was...surprisingly nonchalant, regarding G’s recent announcement that players could not freely leave the game anymore. She figures that if something horrible happens, she can always steal a relinquium potion from some rando, but until then, she’s just going to enjoy life. G told the real world about the development, Inferna’s assuming, meaning that her parents won’t be expecting her anytime soon. It’s selfish of her to just leave them out there worrying about her, really, but Inferna doesn’t want to go back to the real world, not just yet - one day, she’ll steal that relinquium potion and finish her degree like she’s supposed to, get a 9-5 office job like she’s supposed to, spend all her time on boring software development like she’s supposed to - but right now, she just wants to have some fun.

Relationships:

ENTHRONED - Inferna met Neddy for the first time in Finvarra’s Gardens (Level 10), which Inferna beat a long time ago but returned to because she remembered that the level had the most gorgeous pastries (she forgot that eating/drinking anything would trap her on the level for the rest of the game). Neddy reminded her of that rule, and Inferna spent an inordinate amount of time fawning over Jack like he was a puppy (before asking to ride him, which Neddy agreed to). Inferna thinks Neddy is super cute and generally likes both her and Jack.

Eventually: realizing that Inferna and Plagueis have run into each other before + Inferna has heard the rumors about him and Bloodbriars having the Supernova scroll, Inferna helping Neddy beat Level 30 because she thinks dodgeball is fun

MORNINGSTAR - Inferna met Morningstar in the depths of the Descend one day before the first event. Noticing Morningstar’s potioneering supplies, Inferna asked her if she had anything that would “make it feel like being high on weed, not this red gas stuff that’ll probably give me cancer” (Inferna’s not like, that big on weed, but she likes it on occasion, and kind of misses getting high). 

Eventually: form a small two-person party together, Morn being all starry-eyed about Inferna telling her about how she’s fucked around in general (going to college parties, getting absolutely wasted, getting twisted, just generally dumb college freshman shit), somehow realizing that Inferna knows Emily through a League Discord server

CHAR -

Playlist:

"DDU-DU DDU-DU” by Blackpink

“Fire” by 2NE1

“Friends and Foes” by Higher Brothers ft. Snoop Dogg

“Dalla Dalla” by Itzy

“Icy” by Itzy

“My New Swag” by VAVA ft. Nina Wang & Ty

“Solo” by Jennie of Blackpink

“Boombayah” by Blackpink

“Just Like Fire” by Pink

“High Hopes” by Panic! at the Disco

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ayzrules/leak-college-textbook-pdf-files-not-nudes-gq/

[superchartisland]

Super Mario All Stars (Nintendo, SNES, 1993)

Any overall roadmap for this project (and my brother’s related predecessor) is very lightly sketched, but this is a useful point to reflect on it. We grew up playing Dizzy games; part of what we’re doing is trying to reclaim video game history as we and many other Brits lived it, to demonstrate how the American-led received wisdom is a rewriting of the record. All of my research suggests that we were in the majority there -- in the UK the NES didn’t get a look in, and we’re not going to properly encounter the Game Boy until it’s a decade old.

Even this first Nintendo direct encounter is somewhat of a guess. Super Mario All Stars was a documented best-seller for the SNES, but in an absence of evidence I don’t know for sure that it was big enough to be an overall UK #1. I remember hearing about it a lot at the time, and by then the SNES had had a chance to build an audience, but remember that this blog covers games which were a #1 but not necessarily always the #1. Yet at the same time as I refute the story that Nintendo swept in to replace a dying industry -- neither happened like that in the UK -- we’re pretty keen on many things Nintendo. I have a NES Classic Mini, SNES Classic Mini and a Famicom Classic Mini sitting under my TV: loving recreations of consoles which I never owned.

In the internet era, this kind of adoption of history is probably more common. When I wrote the first version of this post I had recently watched the period piece music video for Satellite Young’s “Don’t Graduate, Senpai!” and was overwhelmed with contented nostalgic feelings, left with the power of a glimpse into a familiar and loved past. All that despite the fact I’ve hardly ever listened to the Japanese genre that it takes after, City Pop, or watched shoujo anime, and never when I was growing up. The person who it is precision targeting isn’t me. But it needn't be. There can be a feeling that is just as real, but second hand, a gravity exerted on adjacent culture that was invisible until something made me look over and notice its force.

There are lots of ways that the influences on the song and video reached me. My partner did grow up with a lot of Japanese pop culture in Hong Kong, and talking with her about that and having watched a couple of episodes of Creamy Mami means having a feel for her fond memories. I have years of happily browsing tumblr gifsets of Sailor Moon, absorbing love for it and its place in culture. I can still get good use from a “but you didn’t do anything!” meme even if I’ve never actually watched the show. I’ve listened to 80s referencing music elsewhere, and modern Japanese music taking cues from City Pop, and that has added up to giving the sounds of the song a similar personal gravity.

And all of that has been made easier by the world getting smaller, by the internet giving providing an easy route to interests you share with people elsewhere in the world and from there to interests they share that you don’t. Look at it negatively, and it means a winning narrative can travel faster and become more comprehensive than ever, reaching into places where it doesn’t belong. But at the same time, it gives us a Japanese band and some Swedish animators uniting in their shared nostalgia, and it reaching out to me through next door culture which I’ve taken in via friends from all round the world, and me having feelings shared with those friends. That’s an amazing thing.

In common with most people I knew, we didn’t have the internet when Super Mario All Stars came out, and the world was still huge. Nintendo had other tools to work with, though. Their games were successful enough to reach out and have an outsized cultural impact beyond the limits of people actually playing them. 

When I started primary school, before football stickers, there was a craze for Nintendo sticker books, and friends and I collected images of all of their games. People tried to negotiate enhanced swaps for stickers of Game Boy screenshots by maintaining that they were gold stickers, even more valuable than the special silver ones. I knew more about the characters and background for Mario through Saturday morning cartoons, and I remember watching American TV programmes where people competed through playing Super Mario Bros. levels. I assume it made it to the UK’s own Gamesmaster at some point too. And of course, many of the European games we were playing took their own influence from Nintendo. I may have been unaware of Metroid until years later, but hours spent playing Turrican still gave my first impressions of it that nostalgic gravity.

Mario was Nintendo’s most successful reach out to the wider culture, and that wider culture drove people back to Mario’s original form. That could work better for Nintendo if Mario games were easier to access, and so we get Super Mario All Stars. What to do when moving on from the NES to the SNES? Reissue, repackage, re-evaluate the games! Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, and Super Mario Bros. 3, now brought together in one place. With an extra track, no less, in the form of Japan’s very different Super Mario Bros. 2, new to the rest of the world and hence called The Lost Levels. From 2019 the very idea of levels being lost feels faintly absurd – someone will dig it out in a mod, or you can just log onto your alternate Japanese online console account, surely? I guess a handful of British people probably did own imported Famicoms even in 1993, but everyone else got their cross-fertilisation of culture mediated by Nintendo’s eccentric international release schedule. 

Super Mario All Stars presents each game in its entirety, complete with newly upgraded graphics. Yet, in some way, the games seem to shrink in the transition. The act of selecting a game to play from a menu, turning them into pinned specimens labelled by year, emphasises the overall history and starts you off with a reminder that each world is only a part of a newly defined whole. Maybe that's why there is no Super Mario All Stars on the SNES Classic Mini, an assessment that the bird-inside-a-bird effect of featuring a retro collection on a retro collection would be that bit too spookily recursive. 

And that idea of recursion is where the realisation struck me as I played Super Mario All Stars. It wasn't the first version of Mario I played, (it was the first Super Mario Bros. 3 that I ever played, though, the briefest of enchanting glimpses). But it feels absolutely right as my version of these games, even for Super Mario Bros. 2 where I'm pretty sure I'd never played this version before. The very sense of diminished scale, the way that All Stars exists as a Mario game aware that not only each individual game, but the games as a whole, are but a small part of the Mario out there in the world, feels totally fitting. The feeling runs through everything. The upscaled renditions of the music which expand on it but nonetheless can't escape how iconic the basic originals were. The decision to put Super Mario Bros.’ underwater waltz on the title screen with the new confidence that duh, it rules. The little portraits of what to expect that have been added to the start of each level, not spoilers but cute reminders. This is a Mario for the late to the party, an artefact of the games' immense second hand cultural gravity, reflected back into the games themselves. It's a sign of so much to come.

In reflection of it being the first time these games have come up on my route through history, here are miniature entries for each of the four games on Super Mario All Stars, pinned to one place:

Super Mario Bros.

It’s all about the movement. Specifically, the jump, the balletic means of progression which sits at the tempting boundary of predictability and control. It is not the only game jump, it was not the first game jump, but it is somehow still the Jump. When you press the jump button the moment stretches in time, a repeated joy that resounds slightly differently from Jump to Jump. Sometimes the Jump is relaxed, sometimes the Jump is tense, sometimes the Jump is a celebration of achievement. Gravity and momentum make their claim on you, and you must not reject them or bow to them, but turn towards them, take their hands, and dance. Only when you are the lead in the dance can it proceed in its full majesty. All of the subtle design, killer music and cleverly revealed secrets play their part too, of course. The richness of the world, day and night, water and dungeon, clouds and green groundclouds, isn’t to be underestimated. The dance wouldn’t be as kaleidoscopically beautiful without all of that. Fireworks might not always be necessary, but they are still fireworks. And yet it is the dance of the Jump that gives meaning to it all.

The Lost Levels

It’s common in games for many a character or object to be accompanied by its inverse, its mirror, its shadow. Maybe it’s a product of how games are made, were made, of the commonality of repetition and the short distance from repetition to repetition with a twist. Super Mario Bros. 2 (“The Lost Levels”) introduces one such shadow as almost its first move with the poison mushroom, power-up turned to power-down. It takes that to a whole new level with the negative warp zones: welcome to warp zone, now a trick on you. The whole game, in fact, is a cruel mirror held up to Super Mario Bros., a reflection that looks right but doesn’t wave back. Much of its cruelty comes from luring players into familiar actions and then turning them back against them. This game is a dance too, but it’s one where the floor is trying to throw you off, where the steps and flow that you have learned are not only impossible to use but will quicken your downfall. But for some people who already know the dance back to front, perhaps trying to freestyle your way through some spiky math-rock is an enjoyable next step.

Super Mario Bros. 2

It’s common in games for many a character or object to be accompanied by its inverse, its mirror, its shadow. Maybe it’s a product of how games are made, were made, of the commonality of repetition and the short distance from repetition to repetition with a twist. Super Mario Bros. 2 (“Super Mario Bros. USA”) is the Waluigi of early Mario games, a mirror of a mirror. It doesn’t focus on the shadows of objects and characters, though, but whole shadow worlds. Pick up a magical potion and you can open a door anywhere, take a subtle knife to the fabric of the universe, walk through the doorway and find yourself literally in shadow. Even outside of that mechanic, there are doors everywhere, and each one could go anywhere. This is the world of the subconsciousness, where possibilities extend to such things as a playable princess and gliding across the world on a gravity-resistant egg. Super Mario Bros. 2 is barely even a Mario game, and handles more awkwardly than one. Yet among all of its doors, it opens one to one of the series’s futures, platforming which is first and foremost a series of puzzles and doors to unlock.

Super Mario Bros. 3

This is the game where Mario learns to fly, tail flapping, on unseen wires in front of platforms casting shadows on a sky painted on sheets. The game is a show, and it’s some production. It has a cast of thousands and is the introduction point for almost as many iconic series images as the original. Its brilliance as sequel and as theatre is in taking the solid and dependable gameplay and mechanics of the original and using those as building blocks, the platforms of its stageset, then rearranging them. Each world rejigs and relights them and makes them interact with new props and characters for a set of dramatically different scenes. Water levels go from brief distractions to an entire world; the desert and an idyllic grassland emerge; World 7 turns off all of the lights to interact with the bare mechanics of pipes. The transitions between levels feel like curtains down and a chance to move things round. And then occasionally it breaks all the underlying rules and throws you into giant world or climbs up through the clouds, and there is nothing to do but laugh in delight. This is the game where Mario learns to fly. 

SNES chart, Edge 004, January 1994

[doktoreth]

Rebuttal against dragon-ball-meta

So my stupid ass has no idea how tumblr works, even to this day. After meta responded, I wasn’t able to reblog his stuff, message him, or even follow him. I’m quite certain he blocked me, which is . . . unexpected to say the least. And sad. A real eye-opener, that is. Here’s my rebuttal to his response. Someone let me know if he replies again or something, maybe copy+paste his shit for me, I dunno. Let’s begin:

Hey, thanks for responding, man. Appreciate it.

It’s Toriyama’s words against yours, pal. Regardless of how it was ignored or overwritten, none of this actually precludes its canonical connection with the main story. This isn’t actually an argument against filler’s canonicity, it just reaffirms the admittedly nonsensical connection Toriyama himself decided to establish. Let’s examine the entirety of the last scan(remember, fourth post):

“12: From time to time, il would happen that people whom I didn't even know were approaching me about the anime. Things were often said like: "Oh jeeze, between the manga and the anime, you must never take any time to let yourself breathe!". In reality, I had hardly worked at all on the anime, I had put confidence in my collaborators. I had enough to do just with the manga. I didn't want to work myself to death, you know...

Toriyama: I want to live until I'm 100 years old!

13: For example, drawing an image of a movement in a manga is relatively simple, but to animate this image, you had to decompose the movement and draw all the intermediary movements. That demands a colossal amount of work. (Ok, the example of Kame-sennin might not be the most appropriate...)”

Nothing much here. He’s essentially elaborating on how much his work is cut out for him. Now all that’s left is the final quotes:

“14: Of course, those who have read Dragon Ball have noticed that certain stories which are found in the anime didn't existe in the manga.

Oolong: What's this? I never saw that in the manga....”

Toriyama and Oolong mention the original stories found in the anime, the filler stories. Obviously.

“END: As one adventure in the manga corresponds to about 10 minutes of animation, and since one episode comprises on average 30 minutes, the entire series of Dragon Ball would have passed by very quickly. The team of animators therefore had to insert some original stories. I admire what they have done, that's a hell of a job!”

Toriyama’s reasoning for inserting original stories is padding, as you know. He’s not talking about how it’s fine if people like both or how the padding didn’t upset him. Anywho, we know that when he speaks of “original stories”, he’s speaking in a narrative context.

“Toriyama: Dragon Ball, it's the anime and the manga!”

Whereas the previous quote denotes his reasoning, this final quote confirms his overall treatment of the anime, being that it along with the manga comprise one wholesome narrative. Everyone knows it’s for the sake of padding. That’s been obvious from the very beginning. Still doesn’t negate Toriyama’s clear and explicit connection between the two mediums. Remember, Toriyama > You/Me.

I’m not sure what your point is in saying I think those types of alterations are “akin” to the driving episode. My view on the filler’s canonicity is akin to Toriyama’s. I also think it was a stupid decision on his part to establish such a connection for reasons I’m sure you’d agree with, such as character breaking moments and inconsistent power levels. I see filler as supplementary evidence for Plague, honestly. He doesn’t need ‘em to defend Tien.

See, the issue there is that all that fandom backlash and meme shit is frankly an insignificant indicator as to where his popularity is concerned. Weekly Jump 1993 has Krillin living the good life just behind Piccolo, Weekly Jump 1995 has Krillin taking more of a backseat and yet he’s still popular enough to remain in the top 10, and Dragon Ball Forever has Krillin just catching up back to Piccolo. He’s evidently the most popular human character, so I’m not at all out of line in connecting the dots (or votes, in this case) to his relevancy in the series. No conceit or irrational dislike here, meta, when I’ve mostly no problems with Krillin’s treatment in the series, only how others like Tien are being left in the dust.

Christ, this again? I can tell this conversation is heading to, “Oh, Krillin’s progress makes sense for his status as the strongest human” instead of addressing Plague’s overall gripe. Frankly, the exact point of plateau is too vague and arbitrary to pinpoint for any of these guys. Meta, please listen, just listen: I believe you. Krillin’s progression making him surpass Tien WITHOUT artificial power boosts is realistic. Would it have happened eventually or inevitably? Neither of us know, but that was never the point, which is that Tien’s importance as a fighter is no less than that of Krillin, and yes, even Yamcha. Plague’s premise was never reliant on Tien being the strongest, he touched on that for literally only a few seconds near the end, so let’s drop this tangent on who would’ve surpassed whom, yeah?

Well, first off, I would respectfully ask you to quell your bias for Krillin, as Plague’s video on Tien touches on him quite infrequently anyway. You spend too much time on this subject, and while I’m happy to engage you on it, it’s quite the digression. His videos being internet comedy videos (scroll down and you’ll find his comment), he makes sure to stay on point without rambling off-topic. The comedic value of his content would be severely diminished if he was all like, “Tien is fading into irrelevancy in comparison to other fan favorites”, instead of saying, “This is a Toriyama handjob.” You can call this intellectual dishonesty from a dishonest hack, I call it what it is: comedy. If you can discern no difference between the two in relation to his actual points, then I can’t help you there. I can only hope I’ve made everyone here more open-minded and vice versa.

I’m beginning to think you haven’t watched his video, meta. He doesn’t think Toriyama hates Tien. He called Tien’s stand against Cell his “greatest accomplishment” in the end of the video, albeit begrudgingly. Any examples in Z are mere digressions, anyway, as he specifically criticizes Tien’s treatment in SUPER. Anyone can look at Tien’s entry into the ToP and take that to mean he was kept important; Tien’s performance was a joke comparatively even in terms of strategy, forget power. His only notable achievements are Tri-Beaming an already incapacitated Za Priccio, courtesy of Roshi, earning Tien a knockout and his FIRST EVER ATTACK landed on an enemy that isn’t a Frieza soldier, and the most humiliating ringout ever in the form of using clones to tackle Harmira off the ring AFTER Tien’s original body was thrown off when he just as well could’ve used one measly clone as bait beforehand. Yes, power isn’t the sole indicator, but it’s the most important one in Dragon Ball. So when the ToP is played up to be needing more strategy, Tien is still treated as a joke of an afterthought.

That’s great, meta. Neither do I and neither does Plague.

I wildly disagree. His thoughts are spot on precisely because he acknowledges Tien’s motivations as a character. I don’t find them argued from emotion any more than I find yours regarding Krillin, tbh. It’s okay for you to be wrong sometimes too, meta.

P.S. You’ve said this already. I agree. I think the same can be argued for Tien given the extremely vague context as to what certain side guys have been doing off-screen. I’m literally watching the Tien video for the third time (you don’t stop talking about this, so I need to make sure), and I get the impression that Plague’s mad about Tien’s piss-poor performance comparatively rather than him being the strongest human (again, this was NOT the crux of his argument).

P.P.S You’ve . . . made this point already. Nobody said this. Plague didn’t say this. Jesus. He never even spoke of Krillin’s popularity to begin with. I know why Krillin’s popular. Hell, I loved his character from the very beginning. Krillin, Krillin, Krillin, Krillin, Krillin. We get it, meta.