#i think this would go under cyber writes

[cyberniix]

hi guys.... poll time...!

to those that are fans of my cits AU fic flowers, would you be interested in a comic rendition of it? id make a blog made specifically for it & everything but it wouod most likely just follow the fic word for word (maybe.. MAYBE some other stuff if i feel like it....)

ive been thinking about it, but i dont know if i should do it if no one has interest in it...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How plausible sentence generators are changing the bullshit wars

This Friday (September 8) at 10hPT/17hUK, I'm livestreaming "How To Dismantle the Internet" with Intelligence Squared.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

In my latest Locus Magazine column, "Plausible Sentence Generators," I describe how I unwittingly came to use – and even be impressed by – an AI chatbot – and what this means for a specialized, highly salient form of writing, namely, "bullshit":

https://locusmag.com/2023/09/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-plausible-sentence-generators/

Here's what happened: I got stranded at JFK due to heavy weather and an air-traffic control tower fire that locked down every westbound flight on the east coast. The American Airlines agent told me to try going standby the next morning, and advised that if I booked a hotel and saved my taxi receipts, I would get reimbursed when I got home to LA.

But when I got home, the airline's reps told me they would absolutely not reimburse me, that this was their policy, and they didn't care that their representative had promised they'd make me whole. This was so frustrating that I decided to take the airline to small claims court: I'm no lawyer, but I know that a contract takes place when an offer is made and accepted, and so I had a contract, and AA was violating it, and stiffing me for over $400.

The problem was that I didn't know anything about filing a small claim. I've been ripped off by lots of large American businesses, but none had pissed me off enough to sue – until American broke its contract with me.

So I googled it. I found a website that gave step-by-step instructions, starting with sending a "final demand" letter to the airline's business office. They offered to help me write the letter, and so I clicked and I typed and I wrote a pretty stern legal letter.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked for a campaigning law-firm for over 20 years, and I've spent the same amount of time writing about the sins of the rich and powerful. I've seen a lot of threats, both those received by our clients and sent to me.

I've been threatened by everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Ralph Lauren to the Sacklers. I've been threatened by lawyers representing the billionaire who owned NSOG roup, the notoroious cyber arms-dealer. I even got a series of vicious, baseless threats from lawyers representing LAX's private terminal.

So I know a thing or two about writing a legal threat! I gave it a good effort and then submitted the form, and got a message asking me to wait for a minute or two. A couple minutes later, the form returned a new version of my letter, expanded and augmented. Now, my letter was a little scary – but this version was bowel-looseningly terrifying.

I had unwittingly used a chatbot. The website had fed my letter to a Large Language Model, likely ChatGPT, with a prompt like, "Make this into an aggressive, bullying legal threat." The chatbot obliged.

I don't think much of LLMs. After you get past the initial party trick of getting something like, "instructions for removing a grilled-cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible," the novelty wears thin:

https://www.emergentmind.com/posts/write-a-biblical-verse-in-the-style-of-the-king-james

Yes, science fiction magazines are inundated with LLM-written short stories, but the problem there isn't merely the overwhelming quantity of machine-generated stories – it's also that they suck. They're bad stories:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

LLMs generate naturalistic prose. This is an impressive technical feat, and the details are genuinely fascinating. This series by Ben Levinstein is a must-read peek under the hood:

https://benlevinstein.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-large-language

But "naturalistic prose" isn't necessarily good prose. A lot of naturalistic language is awful. In particular, legal documents are fucking terrible. Lawyers affect a stilted, stylized language that is both officious and obfuscated.

The LLM I accidentally used to rewrite my legal threat transmuted my own prose into something that reads like it was written by a $600/hour paralegal working for a $1500/hour partner at a white-show law-firm. As such, it sends a signal: "The person who commissioned this letter is so angry at you that they are willing to spend $600 to get you to cough up the $400 you owe them. Moreover, they are so well-resourced that they can afford to pursue this claim beyond any rational economic basis."

Let's be clear here: these kinds of lawyer letters aren't good writing; they're a highly specific form of bad writing. The point of this letter isn't to parse the text, it's to send a signal. If the letter was well-written, it wouldn't send the right signal. For the letter to work, it has to read like it was written by someone whose prose-sense was irreparably damaged by a legal education.

Here's the thing: the fact that an LLM can manufacture this once-expensive signal for free means that the signal's meaning will shortly change, forever. Once companies realize that this kind of letter can be generated on demand, it will cease to mean, "You are dealing with a furious, vindictive rich person." It will come to mean, "You are dealing with someone who knows how to type 'generate legal threat' into a search box."

Legal threat letters are in a class of language formally called "bullshit":

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on-bullshit

LLMs may not be good at generating science fiction short stories, but they're excellent at generating bullshit. For example, a university prof friend of mine admits that they and all their colleagues are now writing grad student recommendation letters by feeding a few bullet points to an LLM, which inflates them with bullshit, adding puffery to swell those bullet points into lengthy paragraphs.

Naturally, the next stage is that profs on the receiving end of these recommendation letters will ask another LLM to summarize them by reducing them to a few bullet points. This is next-level bullshit: a few easily-grasped points are turned into a florid sheet of nonsense, which is then reconverted into a few bullet-points again, though these may only be tangentially related to the original.

What comes next? The reference letter becomes a useless signal. It goes from being a thing that a prof has to really believe in you to produce, whose mere existence is thus significant, to a thing that can be produced with the click of a button, and then it signifies nothing.

We've been through this before. It used to be that sending a letter to your legislative representative meant a lot. Then, automated internet forms produced by activists like me made it far easier to send those letters and lawmakers stopped taking them so seriously. So we created automatic dialers to let you phone your lawmakers, this being another once-powerful signal. Lowering the cost of making the phone call inevitably made the phone call mean less.

Today, we are in a war over signals. The actors and writers who've trudged through the heat-dome up and down the sidewalks in front of the studios in my neighborhood are sending a very powerful signal. The fact that they're fighting to prevent their industry from being enshittified by plausible sentence generators that can produce bullshit on demand makes their fight especially important.

Chatbots are the nuclear weapons of the bullshit wars. Want to generate 2,000 words of nonsense about "the first time I ate an egg," to run overtop of an omelet recipe you're hoping to make the number one Google result? ChatGPT has you covered. Want to generate fake complaints or fake positive reviews? The Stochastic Parrot will produce 'em all day long.

As I wrote for Locus: "None of this prose is good, none of it is really socially useful, but there’s demand for it. Ironically, the more bullshit there is, the more bullshit filters there are, and this requires still more bullshit to overcome it."

Meanwhile, AA still hasn't answered my letter, and to be honest, I'm so sick of bullshit I can't be bothered to sue them anymore. I suppose that's what they were counting on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/07/govern-yourself-accordingly/#robolawyers

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[neoarchipelago]

And they were roommates

Word count: no idea

TW: arachnophobia, slight mention of steamy stuff. Future smut, 18+ stuff if this keeps going.

A/N: I don't know what this is. I started writing this as  multiple small headcanons so it might be a recurring series but we'll see. I think it'll depend on whether you guys like this or not. It will turn into romance and smut but it'll be the slow burn we all expect.

Please be kind i haven't written anything in a very long time...

________

You were thrilled yet anxious. The two bedroom apartment felt tiny now that the news had fallen. Someone was moving in with you. The army had provided the housing. You were after all their little bird. You cringed at the thought. You were actually a hacker. Before being part of the team you had been one the most searched cyber criminal of the decade. Sparrow.  Being young hasn't stopped you from being very skilled in what you do. 

Eventually you grew tired of the hiding. So you accepted a deal. Now you were the little bird in a golden cage, hidden from the world by the army. The golden cage being a spacious two bedroom apartment near one of the bases, not too far from downtown. Sometimes moving around the world, always in a new place but this, this was your 'home'. 

But a week ago, a knock was heard at the door. Laswell passed by for a coffee and dropped the news that someone was being affected to this apartment too. You were shocked at first. 

"Lieutenant Riley will be taking the second bedroom. He's… how do I say it…"

She frowned. 

"Intimidating. But he's not mean. You'll be perfectly fine."

You kept fidgeting with your fingers, the tv playing on the wall completely forgotten as you waited for your new roommate. The couch was big, you had bought many fluffy pillows and blankets for movie nights. You sighed letting yourself fall down to the left. 

You were so used to living alone. Would you two cohabitate well together? Will he be ok with your gaming on the big TV? Maybe he'll play with you! 

You sat back up at the thought, excited for a second to maybe, just maybe, feel less alone in this world. 

You jumped from the couch when the door unlocked in the hallway and Laswell's voice rang. 

"You are free to do as you wish with your room, the rest of the house, including the bathroom, is common space." 

You bit your lip, slightly excited to see who would show up in the living room's doorway. 

Laswell appeared first, a soft smile on her lips, sending a wink your way. You stood next to the couch, hands behind your back. 

Right then, he was there. Black hoodie black sweatpants. A big duffle bag on his shoulder. But mostly, the most noticeable thing was the mask. A black balaclava with … is that a real skull?! You swallowed the lump in your throat. His gaze was dark, scanning you. You felt like a prey under the eye of a predator. A chill ran down your spine. 

Yes. He was intimidating like she warned. But you were still attracted to his frame. Curiosity prickling at your skin just by looking at him. 

"Sparrow." 

You smiled at Laswell, stepping closer to them, leaving at least two feet in between. 

"Lieutenant, this is Sparrow. She's a hacker for the army. One of the best. She will be your roommate." 

She then turned to you, a soft smile on her features. 

"Sparrow… this is Lieutenant Ghost. He's part of squad 141. I purposely avoided voicing your real names. I'll leave it up to you two if you feel comfortable enough for it."

Silence fell again. It was heavy. Laswell broke it before it could engulf you. 

"Sparrow. I'll leave it to you. You can show the lieutenant around."

You nodded, biting your lip again. She spun around, the sound of her boots hitting the floor before the door was heard. 

You looked up at the man in front of you. He easily towered you, his frame imposing. 

"H-hi…" you smiled. 

Your voice was slightly shaking. You didn't know if it was the adrenaline or the curiosity. 

"Hello." 

His deep voice sent a shiver down your spine again. You cleared your throat. Looking around the room you started your little speech.

"So hum… this is the living room, as you can see it opens to the kitchen. I've made some space in the fridge for your stuff but you can get some of the stuff that's in there as much as you want. Hum… you can pretty much use whatever you need in the cupboards." 

You looked back up at him. He glanced around before letting his gaze fall back on you. 

"Let me show you the rest of the house…" 

You smiled, turning around to walk him through the rest of your now shared apartment.

—

It has been a week your new roommate moved in.

The heat of the stove on your skin felt amazing in this cold weather. Your mind kept running around to the man sleeping in the room facing yours. 

You had barely spoken in a week. He got up early, came back around 8 pm and went back to his room. You had noticed a few things missing from the fridge but nothing that could be a meal. For some reason you were worried. That wasn't healthy at all. 

You kept stirring the pot in front of you. The clock on the wall showed 9:30 pm. You were cooking a late dinner after working on a new program all afternoon. He had walked in at 8 pm as usual, throwing a polite good evening your way as you sat at the counter working on your laptop before heading to his room. He had come out once to go to the bathroom but went right back to his little hideout. 

You bit your lip again, a noticeable habit of yours in stressful situations or deep thoughts. You didn't understand why your hands were slightly shaking when you placed the food on the plates. You were just hoping he wouldn't get mad at you or take offense.

You firstly took your plate and a can of soda to your room, placing it down on your desk. Heading back to the kitchen next to place the second plate on a service tray, with a knife and fork, a spoon with a strawberry flavored yogurt, a can of soda and a cup of water. You had added a little note wishing him a good night. 

You took a deep breath, slowly lifting the tray, calmly walking to the door facing yours. You put the tray down, and stared at the door in front of you. Lifting your fist you knocked on the door. You waited just a second to make sure you could hear him walk to the door before darting to your own room and closing the door behind you. 

You held your breath, listening through the door as he opened his own. You were hoping that he wasn't going to come screaming and knocking at your door. And it didn't happen. You simply heard his door close again. 

Slightly opening your door ajar, you glanced at the ground, smiling as you noticed the tray gone. You made sure to close back your door as silently as possible before going to eat your own dinner. 

In the morning you woke up around 10. You had stayed up late, indulging yourself in some gaming. Opening the door to a small bag in front of it. Picking it up you glanced inside to see some muffins with a little note. 

'good morning' roughly scribbled. 

You smiled. You walked to the living room freezing as you noticed him sitting at the counter in the kitchen. He was looking at a file when he glanced back at you. 

"Good morning." His deep voice rang in your ears. 

"Good morning!" You answered, awfully cheerfully compared to his tone. 

A soft silence set before you both interrupted. 

"Than-"

"You didn-"

Silence again. You chuckled slightly. Apologizing. You walked up to the counter and you stood next to where he sat. He smelled of fresh shampoo. You supposed he went for a run around the base and had showered. 

"You didn't have to share dinner." 

You looked at his eyes. You tried to distinguish a little ounce of his thoughts. Was he angry? Annoyed? Grateful? 

"I know. I did it because I wanted to." You answered. 

"Thanks." He added. 

"Thanks for the muffins" you spoke with a wide smile. You took the seat next to him, you noticed him stiffening for a second as he straightened his posture but didn't leave his spot. 

"You're welcome." 

You grabbed a muffin in the bag, taking a bite and humming at the taste. You could feel his glance on you at the sound before he turned back to his file. 

"Do you not cook?" You asked, making him look back at you. 

For a second you worried you might have overstepped. After all, this was the closest thing to a conversation you both had since he moved in. 

"No." 

You swallowed. 

"Why?" You asked. 

He looked at you, sizing you up. You could see he was questioning himself if he could tell you or not the answer to that. 

"I… I'm not good at it." He finally let out. 

You blinked before nodding in understanding. Looking at your muffin you took another bite.

"Well…" you started, mouth half full. 

"Dinner will be ready at 8:30. Do you have any allergies? " You asked, turning back to him. 

"It's alright, you don't have-." He started. 

"I Know." You interrupted making him wince under his mask. 

You smiled at him. 

"We live together. I cook for myself. I don't mind at all cooking for both. Let's make a deal. You bring breakfast, because… clearly you're an early bird. And I make dinner. I can't promise that it'll always be good, because I'm not a great cook, but warm meals are a must in this house." 

You looked at him, your mind repeating again and again that this was too much that you fucked it up. 

"Deal." He finally answered. 

You smiled even brighter at him. 

"Perfect!" You squealed before biting again the poor muffin. 

You got your phone out to roam through social media as his voice reached your ears one last time that morning.

"You're a good cook." 

—

A little routine had settled in. Ghost, as you now called him, got up early, went for his morning run, brought breakfast and showered while you got up and brewed coffee or tea. 

During the day he'd either go to base or stay home, watching TV in silence with you or writing a report if you were working. During the evening you made some tea again if he was home.

You'd prepare dinner for the both of you, trying new things since you were now cooking for someone else. You were glad that all this time being alone stuck in a house had given you plenty of free time to work on your cooking skills. 

Eventually the night would slowly come to an end with either a bit of tv or working. 

You were pretty happy with how things were turning out. You were both slowly learning to trust each other and that was heartwarming to you. 

You stood in the kitchen drying the dishes ghost had washed from lunch. You were humming softly, a cup in hand. Ghost had gone to his room to take a work call. Your thoughts softly roamed over your work in the morning. 

Since you had started to get breakfast with ghost, you had started waking up earlier. It did give you more time to work during the day then having to do it during the night. 

You spun around, going to place the glass in your hand on the counter when your eyes stumbled on a huge spider. Near the edge. 

You dropped the cup, glass shattering on the floor as you stepped back, climbing on the counter behind you. You yelped. God it's huge you thought. You both stared at each other, as if the spider was as shocked as you by your reaction. 

Ghost appeared running from the hallway where the bedrooms were. Glancing at your scared face he frowned. 

"What's wrong?! What happened?!" His tone urged. 

You breathed, seeing his agitation caused by your little scaredy self. 

"I-i'm sorry… it's nothing… i just…" you tried through the guilt of worrying him. 

Worry..? He was worried..? No. It must be his soldier's instinct.

He approached your frame up on the counter, before following your frightened gaze. As he saw the spider his shoulder lowered with a sigh. It was indeed nothing. He reached for it, softly grabbing it, making you yelp again. He walked to the window opening it before dropping the friendly yet apparently terrifying thing out. He closed the window again, now turning to you. 

"I'm sorry…" you simply said in a small voice, as he just stared at you. 

He glanced down at the broken glass, careful to not step on anything as he made his way to you on the counter.

"It's alright. If you would have screamed I would have brought a gun." He joked. 

You whined at his teasing, ready to drop yourself down to the floor. 

In a flash his hand came to grab your hips, immobilizing you. Your hands immediately flew to wrap around his wrists. You felt your cheeks burn at the sudden touch. His hands softly traveled up to your waist. Making your  breath hitch. The big baggy t-shirt you were wearing slightly hitching up your thighs. 

It was the first time he was actually touching you. His hands were big. His grip was strong, you knew you couldn't slip away. 

"W-what is it..?" You asked, looking at him. 

He was frowning. One of his hands left your waist to wrap around your left ankle as he squatted down to inspect it. 

It finally hit you as you saw the small droplets of blood. You must have cut yourself with the glass pieces. He rose again. Even while sitting on the counter, you had to look up to look him in the eyes. 

"You ok?" He asked. 

"Yes… it's nothing. Barely hurts." You smiled.

He nodded. 

You tried to get off the counter again but he reached for your waist again. 

"Don't." He ordered. Sending a chill down your spine. 

He seemed to think for a minute. Debating on the next move. He spun around, now back turned to you. His hands met your exposed thighs and you felt goosebumps. For the second time today it hit you that he wasn't wearing his gloves. Something rare for him. His skin burned against yours. 

He pulled you to him, legs spread, surrounding his waist. You finally understood what he was trying to do. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders as he lifted you up onto his back. You tried hiding your blush in his neck. He was stiff at the action but walked to the couch anyhow. Dropping you softly on it he kneeled once more in front of you. 

"Ghost… really it's just a scratch…" you tried again with an embarrassed chuckle. 

Your breath hitched again feeling his hands wrap around your ankle. His touch was gentle. Something contrasting with his imposing frame and usual cold gaze. 

"Stay. I'll go get something to clean up the wound." He said standing up, planting his eyes right into yours. 

You felt tiny. And he was taking care of you. A ping of guilt shot through you again. 

"I'm sorry I'm bothering you." You let out in an awfully tiny voice. 

"You're not." He answered. He paused for a second before his gaze ever so slightly softened. "Next time just call me." 

On that, he left for the bathroom, leaving you on the couch, heart stammering against your chest. 

[iwonderwh0]

I had this snippet in my notes for a really long time. I hoped maybe I'll figure how to write more things around it, but ultimately today I decided to set it free and post it. It's part of my multibodied au that I post about sometimes under "single mind multiple bodies" tag

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

Hank never liked androids, although he wouldn't be able to answer for sure, whether it was really the androids he disliked or rather what they represented.

A multibillion-dollar corporation, disguised as a pretty face, a fake promise, but so appealing and convenient it was easy to grow dependant, get too used to the level of the never-ending entertainment and patience to tolerate another human, suddenly too imperfect to complete with a dopamine trap of a CyberLife substitute. That's what it was, a substitute, but most of all — it was an attempt to steal human connection. Steal and sell it back for profit. A precious resource that should have only been shared with other people but was now wasted for nothing. A toy, not even an animal like a pet.

At some point, Hank wasn’t even sure if it was really the androids that were getting progressively "more human" or people who were rapidly becoming less so. It was entirely possible, he thought, that the change was proportional, as if humans strived to assimilate themselves among the new crowd of soulless imposters.

The thought of it never failed to make Hank angry, sick. It made him sick to his stomach to think about an entire generation that was doomed to become the lonliest history has ever seen, denied a chance to fully experience probably the only thing actually worth living for.

And they won't even know it.

Hell

Hating androids instead of those who brought them was no more productive than being angry at the rock for being thrown. Still. Hank couldn't help but feel the surge of hatred every time he saw them. Irrationality, he wanted to see them destroyed, to be the one to destroy them personally, as if the damage could in any way be translated back to CyberLife.

He hated Connor. Despite agreeing to take the job by his own decision, he couldn't help it. He thought he knew enough about what he was going to be dealing with to be prepared to ignore all the attempts at fooling him. It wouldn't work, not on him. He wouldn't let it make him forget about what it was. Or rather, what it wasn't. That's what he told himself. That's what he kept repeating.

But working with Connor kept challenging him in ways he didn't expect.

Most of all, it made him suddenly aware that he had absolutely no idea what androids actually were because whatever he had imagined them to be, Connor was not.

Just as Hank imagined androids would, it tried to be nice to him, talking to him with that bubbly attitude that Hank so hated, the one he had learned to associate with a phony act. That much was true. The thing was, Connor stopped acting this way fairly quickly and switched instead to finding new ways to get on Hank's nerves. To annoy him. Provoke a reaction.

He caught him smoking once, and as Hank palmed his own coat, searching for his pack, he realized that the android must have pickpocketed him at some point. He didn't even notice when or how.

"Aren't you afraid of getting some cyber-cancer?" Hank asked him, approaching.

Connor eyed him, unimpressed.

"I've already got you," he said.

Hank snorted, surprised.

"Was that funny?"

"Yes," Hank shook his head. "That was a good one."

"Oh, sorry. I meant it as an insult." Connor said in a voice that might as well have said 'I think there was a misunderstanding'.

Hank laughed again, and for a moment, he almost found himself liking Connor.

It surprised Hank at first, before he got too used to it to care. On another thought, he pondered, it might still have been a part of the android's programming. If Connor couldn't provoke positive emotions, he would still try to provoke some.

Another thing that rubbed Hank the wrong way about Connor was his ability to fake emotions, specifically, the unconventional choice of them. They were not what Hank expected an android to imitate. But then again, he had never owned one to know if it was common or not. Connor pretended to be annoyed when Hank didn't want to follow his suggestions and frustrated when he was unable to get an expected outcome, be it a task of his own or an attempt to provoke a reaction. He would get angry at Hank for doing something wrong -- even if it was just incorrectly pronounced word -- but devastated and anxious when he did something wrong himself.

It went against Hank's conviction that androids were agreeable and indulgent, not to mention flawless. But, if he thought about it, Connor wasn't a companion android. His intended function wasn't to appeal to anyone, especially not to Hank, but instead to pass as human and accomplish specific tasks by any means necessary. Which, Hank realised, happened to include emotional manipulation.

This makes it worse.

Hank was stupid enough to fall for it. He shouldn't repeat his mistakes.

God, did he hate androids.

Surely, the damn thing couldn't feel anything.

There still was a doubt. It was lumping in Hank's throat when he saw the android checking itself in their shared bathroom mirror, spending a wasteful amount of time doing so, a weird kind of worry written on its face.

Maybe he's doing something else in the process

It pried at him at the sight of an android stopping at the mall to take a closer look at the fish inside the hall aquarium.

This could be his attempt to evoke your sympathy.

It was pulsing in his head at the memory of the android leaning into his own tight embrace of his other body in an action no androids should be doing on their own. There was no reason for him to do that. And yet he still did.

Surely, Hank could further hypothesize about being the intended audience in a well-planned performance, but unlike other sound explanations, this one made no sense at all. There was nothing to gain from it, or at least, Hank couldn't think of any potential use for it.

Could he just want to do it? Not for anyone but for himself.

Could he be alive?

The thought scared him. Not so much because of the possibility of it being correct, but because the implications of what this fact would mean in a wider sense.

If Connor is alive, are other androids too?

Could they all be?

Have they always been?

It would, however, be a lie to say that the thought wasn't unnerving in its own. Although talking to an android, it was easy to forget that Hank was talking to, essentially, answerphone, he had never once before fully considered, that he might be actually judged — not just by an algorithm trying to decide which ad to feed him next time he goes online, but by something that could actually see him, think about him, form an opinion about him, be in any way affected by his words.

There was always this sense of permissiveness in talking to an android. It was a crime with no witnesses to recognise it as such.

And then, suddenly, there was one.

[puckpocketed]

hello i was tagged by @18minutemajor for WIP Wednesday. it is not Wednesday but i am also not a cop so . here we gooo!!!!!!! tagging my esteemed colleagues (very politely and with no pressure!!!):

@neonfretra @oensible @sorrellegiance @moregraceful @stereax

@wheelsnipecelebrini

@korshrimpski (EDIT: it won’t?? let me tag you. unless these are on separate lines <3)

what's in-progress in your life <3 writing? art? recipe? skill acquisition?

if any crafty people see this - if ANYONE sees this - and would like to join in, feel free and consider yourself tagged <3 (and tag me back so i can see your stuff!!!) link to 18minutemajor's post if yall curious :3 my VERY long wip dump + ramblings under the cut!

its christmas soon and i like to paint gifts for my friends + and i'm finally revisiting my anime/lineart/inking era (here you are K!! my lineart past, present, and future!! <3) so here are some things i've been working on/coming back to/MAY NEVER FINISH: hockey related:

this is juraj slafkovsky and his dinky little middle part which he can absolutely learn to style into something a little less dinky but never does. i am so charmed by him. i imagine he just rocks it because his pretty privilege supersedes dinky middle parts . LMAO!!

here is Sasuke from my Naruto Hockey AU. I am a little stuck on jersey mockups lol. here he is. our haunted little 1OA who is absolutely normal and regular about his captain (LOUD incorrect buzzer):

personal oc art

wanna know some puckpocketed deep lore? i've never been one to make OCs. i was just not a very creative kid tbh. spent all my time drawing sailor moon instead. i still go back to her sometimes because she is one of my favourite shapes in the WORLD!!

in my 20s i took up playing d&d because of the. uh. plague. <3 and got pretty close to having OCs!! those count right? anyway. here is my tavern-wench-turned-wizard!!! i think i painted this 2 years ago? <- put dates on your works guys it saves lives. her name is Mel (short for Melins (pronounced like melons. on account of her knockers. can you tell i never grew out of my 12 yr old booby/cock joke era?) i revisited Mel recently and have started painting her in earnest again!! :3

I briefly dated someone who was very into streetwear and fashion, and I fell down a techwear/gorpcore/cyberpunk rabbit hole for a couple days out of curiosity. i remember literally zero salient info on any of it except the broad strokes of silhouetting and Vibes. what i emerged with, however, was a ?? sorta OC?? im not sure what to call them. they dont rly have a name or gender. I did this little sheet ages ago + the aborted attempt at a portrait later:

Here are my most recent explorations (i have been doing SOOOO much art. <3) which include:

unfinished character sheet + chibi art. I played with their jacket (much more structured/square/tailored thing) and added a lotta random buckles and belts. i took textiles class years ago and have a little experience in garment construction. and i know for a fact this thing does not make any sense. it hurts me to look at a little bit LMAO so i've paused it while i go draft patterns (badly. i was never good at drafting. i think i may have to break out my scrap fabric stash and hand sew a real life mock-up. HELP!)

here is me having fun with them and imagining them as some kind of cyber-fisherman. the best part of every game is the fishing mini-game to me. i love fishing mini-games so much. I made their hair really big because i wanted them to have big unwieldy hair and the vibes told me i should add more movement to the piece aside from the fishing line. I messed with their jacket AGAIN because i can't stop thinking about what kinda jacket they'd wear. gorp-core ? idk. it sure is something!

gifts for my friends :3

back in my weeb era for real YAYYYY!!! up til now i'd been making hockey art using a zero pressure sensitivity pen brush because i simply did NOT want to deal with that. it is and has always been a barrier to me making art that uses line art. <3 easing my way back into it though!

I used to paint gifts for my friends and then get them printed into lil posters and mount them on nice backing :3 i am now ready and back to painting.

Here is my girlbestie's OC. just a rough pose sketch. i think im pretty unsatisfied with the gesture of the head/hand. i wanted to include her gun in some way. i fear i may have to rework the pose entirely <3

For the genshin girlies.. here are some of my friends fave characters.

Yelan - this one i started many holidays ago and put on the backburner because the colouring was wigging me out. you can see where i started rendering stuff + got sidetracked and started on something else (the crystal choker IM LAUGHING @ past me...)

Ayaka - I reaaally like what i did here with the perspective + foreshortening. I don't know if the pose or expression is in-character or not, but i had fun :3 got stunlocked looking at references of genshin weapons so this is where i left off:

if you made it all the way down here hi... <3 ice hockey really cracked the ketchup bottle open for me when it comes to making art again. i love the communities i've found, and i'm inspired by every artist on here every day. thanks for being so cool + have a great day :)

[cheesycatz]

INSTAGRAM ASKS BELOW WOOHOO I CAN NOT SHUT UP ABOUT THIS FREAK

(I updated the lore posts on here in like May because there was outdated stuff I completely missed and finally updated it on instagram too woopsies🧍‍♂️)

He draws. In used school notebooks, across old books, over discarded mail. Broken pencils, dried up markers, dull crayons, chewed pens. He draws the trees he will never climb, fields and fields of flowers, discolored leaves and vines. Sometimes he adds himself.

He keeps a faded journal in one of the jacket's many hidden pockets. A way to pass the time while waiting for prey to… sell to. He only draws “Spamton” in it, not himself. Nothing incriminating.

…never drawn an addison before.

In all seriousness, I've dedicated a lot of thought to Wormton's art style and what he draws. It's relevant to the fic; as foreshadowing, as angst, as fluff, as a plot device. It's meant to appear childish—as in, made by someone who just wanted to make something without caring about what it looks like. The lines are jagged and dig into the page, often ripping through. I held the pencil with three fingers, and used my right (nondominant) hand to write the text and color. His face is drawn in an abstract way where it doesn't resemble his mask, but anyone who hasn't seen his real face would assume it is the mask. He draws himself bigger than he really is, draws his three fingers in place of his mittens, and colors his eyes in the wrong order because he uses his mirrored reflection as reference. He draws Blue's face nearly the exact same as his because he doesn't know how to draw anyone but himself, and forgets their fourth fingers and scribbles them on after the fact. His spelling and handwriting is incomprehensible half the time.

Other than drawing, he also spends a lot of time hunting for food. He explores the Trash Zone, looking for things to sell or keep. He spends time performing maintenance on his disguise, either attempting to clean it or do repairs. He takes time to groom his fur, genuinely hating how filthy his costume and having to look in dumpsters makes him. He likes to inspect and rearrange all the trinkets in his nest before he burrows into his vast pile of shredded blankets, stuffing, and old pillows for the night (or morning? He's not quite nocturnal but he goes to sleep at like 3 am).

Blue's fear definitely does not go away. They might not be as grossed out by certain things (like if they saw an insect or centipede rubbing its legs against its antennae, they'd now understand that it’s simply grooming itself in the same way Wormton cleans his nose). But, I think that the majority of their fear for “creepy crawlies” (and Wormton initially) come from how unpredictable and fast they can be. They're hard to keep track of, you can't tell if they're crawling on your face or if your brain is being paranoid, spiders and centipedes specifically come out when the lights are off, Wasps will sting you for doing absolutely nothing, it goes on. They invade your safe space, you can't tell which can kill you and which are harmless, and nothing you do will convince them to leave your home.

Fortunately for Blue, Wormton's pheromones scare away pretty much any animal with a sense of smell, and he eats whatever is left. There's no birdsong around their home. He's the only one they have to worry about raiding the pantry, building nests in the walls, and crawling on the ceiling.

Yeah, I imagine that Ralsei and/or Queen would have to announce to the general public that Spamton is under protection so that he can finally exist without his disguise. Out of the volunteer researchers who weren't killed and didn't leave Cyber City before Deltarune takes place, I don't think they would dare enter his presence. Personally I would not try to speak to the last surviving member of a genocide if I had previously experimented on and killed thousands of their people's children

There's a lot of hatred for invasive species, especially ones that cause severe damage to both property and people, like malworms do. Some take joy in killing as many as possible. But, I think it's important to remember that species don't choose to be invasive. This is especially apparent with malworms, since they're sapient (though that information isn't really known by darkners). They've been taken out of their natural cave-like environment in the Deep Web and thrown onto the Surface Web with no hope of returning. The bright lights, loud sounds, and open areas of the city are disorienting and terrifying. But, without natural predators or competition, malworms multiply quickly. They destroy buildings, chew power lines, and kill anything they come across. But, the malworms can't stay, can't be reasoned with, and eradicating them was the only option Cyber City had. I suppose it's a miserable fight on both ends. Nobody really wins.

Technically, the only plastic required in a malworm's diet is polyethylene, and gift cards are usually made of polyvinyl chloride acetate. But, malworms like chewing and eating inedible things in general, so it wouldn't be surprising if one did eat a gift card. They like stealing/eating physical money because it annoys people and because Cyber World's dark dollars happen to be made out of the plastic they need.

[imptwins]

ALRIGHT, no more messing around I suppose.

Over the last twelve months my close friend @kimberlyeab and myself have been the targets of sustained harassment by a series of "anti-ship" accounts, that may or may not be the same person, that I am not going to name up here because I do not want to give them any more traffic than necessary. This is over some of the content we make, 18+ fiction revolving around Undertale and Deltarune, and sometimes involving dark kinks. I'm going to ask you to put aside whether you think this is immoral for the moment.

Under the break below is what I wrote a few hours ago. Things have since escalated. Both myself and Kim have been targeted by email bombs on our business emails, services/bots that spam your email address with garbage signups, rendering your email address completely unusable. At worst, this can overwhelm your email service so much that your account is unable to process new emails and is eventually disabled by the provider. I'm still getting bursts of activity after over 200 emails, so I'm not sure if it's dying down, or if it's so backlogged that this is what's happening.

This is literally a crime, by the way. It's classified as cyber abuse.

On top of this, whoever has done this has access to personal information. A full legal name, first and last, was used in several of the signups, so they are either implicitly threatening to doxx us, or simply flexing that they could. Likewise a crime.

Additionally, this seems well coordinated, but there are no suspicious recent results for us in The Usual Places. This makes me believe this person is probably using some foul back-alley site like KF to organize this. I don't think the legal name in question could have been acquired by one person, it's extremely difficult to trace back.

tl;dr: whoever is doing this knows their way around the internet and is actively dangerous, they are severely impeding our lives and have the potential to become incredibly, incredibly dangerous.

Why am I posting this? Not really to get those accounts in trouble (although you should absolutely stay the hell away from them, and severely scrutinize anything they leave a mark on). I don't think they'll be punished, nor would it help since they constantly block evade, and at this point I don't think this recent online abuse crap is actually them, just someone attaching themself to their crusade. Though I'm not sure.

What I want to illustrate is how these kind of callout posts feed into targeted harassment of minorities. This is just another reason why things that make you uncomfortable should be dealt with by curating your experience using tags and blacklists and blocks, rather than trying to assign moral value to what people make. If my content makes you that uncomfortable I *actively encourage* you to block me.

It doesn't matter whether you personally dislike minorities or not, or whether you're subconsciously targeting them, or whatever. Someone else who does will latch on. That person who writes nothing but callout posts, yet they're always for small trans creators who make some 'icky stuff' and never for big-name bigots who parade their bigotry out in the open; is it because they're a sock puppet of an overt reactionary, or just because they want to feel some control over their life so they subconsciously focus on vulnerable people?

Simple: you can't know.

These people are the dangerous ones. Not people who just make content, properly tag it, and mind their own business. But these people, obsessed with ruining other people, with finding 'evil' in the world so that they can purge it? You can find their name below if you really want, and literally their entire blog is just constant callouts, broadcasting people doing callouts, trying to network with other people who do callouts. This is why these people were originally called 'antifans', their entire fandom presence is centered around tearing other people to shreds.

Do your due diligence and fact-check, before you broadcast that someone in your fandom did something awful. Make sure they actually hurt someone. I know mega-bastards will use 'you can't prove it' as an excuse, but actually analyze it a bit. It's almost always painfully obvious, I know, I spent years doing antifascism. And more than anything else, neither entertain, nor broadcast, nor embolden the kind of people who dedicate their entire existences on the internet to lateral abuse. Not just these particular ones, but ANYONE who dedicates their life to this online torch-waving garbage over fictional content. Whether they're a reactionary or just projecting trauma, whether they actually hate x y or z minority or they just happen to always go for the most vulnerable people, whether the person they're targeting makes content that makes you feel very icky and gross or not, these self-ordained Crusaders are consistently, unquestionably, dangerous.

That's one page out of 4. Also some of them have between 10 and 80 updates in the one email from the same address. There's about 300 emails all up. And there's zero reason they can't do this again.

===

Anyway. The accounts in question are @snowcollecter/@brieffamilycat/@krispy-chicken-shipping/@bonniehbunny. First two are definitely them, I highly suspect the latter two are their main, or at the very least someone who constantly signal boosts them. We have endured over 12 months of:

calling for brigades against us, and at least 4 other people

block dodging to constantly screenshot and reference our posts

literal libel by accusing us of grooming a child despite screenshots, as well as both statements and direct requests to stop by both the supposed groomed child and their actual friends who witnessed all interactions we had

spamming anon asks to literally every single person that they can find who we ever interact with

using tiktok cen)sor)ship nonsense to get past peoples' blacklists and force this stuff in front of them

using no less than 3 confirmed alts with about 5 more extremely suspicious accounts in attempts to artificially broadcast themself and again evade blocks (when the original account itself is transparently an alt too)

joining multiple random discords to try to shove this stuff in peoples' faces

now spamming Kim's business email at signup services

probably being behind the attempts to doxx and raid us last year on a certain hate-monger website, since the signup spam demonstrates they're cool with bog standard channer troll tactics

They also pretty tellingly refused to even talk to this minor we supposedly groomed, who attempted to tell them personally that we hadn't done the shit they claim we did. You'd think someone who is this caught up about the safety of minors in fandom spaces would jump at the chance to help this kid, to tell them not to talk to us and get them away from us, to convince them to stay away? No, they said 'I don't talk to minors' (this is demonstrably untrue: their discord accounts are in many all-ages spaces) and immediately blocked them.

Of course. Because this was never about the safety of minors. Flip a coin; if it's heads, they're a far-right sock puppet who just knows they can use the 'think of the children' angle to drive a wedge into queer communities. If it's tails, they're just a routine runt who's projecting their lack of ability to do anything about the ACTUAL assholes of this world onto other queer people, wailing and flailing and doing anything they can to have some influence despite getting 3 notes on almost everything they ever post. Hence the anon asks, and Discord spam, and blacklist/block evading. If they can't have a platform - because anyone who looks at their garbage for more than a month at most sees how absolutely deranged they are - they'll just force people to see it.

Do they ever attack actual transphobes, which this fandom is not at all short on? Well, sort of! They did one or two callout posts about a TERF who used to run in these spaces... But didn't say anything about the TERF shit. Just the porn. The porn constantly put behind age confirmations and thorough tags/content warnings. This person spouted generic 'all-powerful trans lobby' 'social contagion' 'please look at this study about desistance I found on a hard-right website' bullshit, but no, it was them drawing aged-up highschoolers (REMINDER: NOT EVEN CANONICALLY UNDERAGE, JUST VAGUE HIGHSCHOOLERS, *AND* THEY WERE EXPLICITLY OLDER IN THEIR CONTENT!) that was apparently the greater evil.

I'm not even really sharing this to call them specifically out or draw attention to them. Regardless of whether they're a chud in a mask or just someone who severely, *severely* needs psychological help about their obsession, they're not going to stop. They've made that plainly obvious. At this point I've basically just accepted I'm going to have this deranged stalker until I leave the fandom, which I don't plan to do anytime soon so buckle up I guess.

No, I just want people to see what these people are like. How they ignore the people they claim are victims. How they employ the same tactics as doxxing websites and old channer trolls, or even outright enlist them. How they only EVER put sustained effort into taking down queer people with small platforms because going after the in-plain-sight actual bigots and scumbags would just be too much effort, a reflection of how this is about feeling righteous and powerful, not actually making the world better. They create nothing, they contribute nothing, they bring nothing but arguing and drama and isolation to the spaces they inhabit.

These kind of people are blights on the fandoms they cling to. And any time you act like their *miserable* Hays Code, Jack Thompson With A Rainbow Flag, no kink at pride, BDSM is abuse, drag queens are indecent, cover those ankles *garbage* warrants any notice at all, you deal another blow to the fandom you are in, because nobody wants to be around these little goddamn nightmares. edit: I know how red-flag any grooming allegations are, if you want the full story to that I already addressed it here. tl;dr, no, we did not let a child look at our porn let alone show it to them, we in fact stopped them from doing so. We are not in some secret private 18+ server with them, we actively ensured they STOPPED making themself unsafe, and have strained extremely, extremely hard to keep our very limited interactions with them transparent, scrutinizable, and appropriate. The only reason we even stuck around was because it became rapidly apparent they were in an abusive living situation which we occasionally gave them advice to manage, eg helping them look up boarding options, unlike the torch-waving dipshits who did NOTHING to reach out to them or help them in any way. They're doing much better, both in their home life and in terms of not following or privately palling around with 18+ creators anymore, thanks to us, and at the expense of both our mental health and reputations. You're fucken' welcome.

[soaringthroughthegalaxy]

Prompt: someone is mean to wrecker and the rest of the batch either chooses violence or chooses to comfort wrecker

Hello there!

I saw this as an opportunity to write about the Batch as cadets, and I RAN with it. Though I broke my own heart having to write a few mean things about Wrecker 😭 They’re sweet babies, and I want to give them the galaxy 🥹

No reader in this, just the boys. Hope it's okay!

Art by @alligatorpie1945 - go check out her awesome art! I kept her 'Through the Ages' series on my screen while writing to help get me in the headspace. All her art is gorgeous!

Brotherly Bonds

The holonet can be a wonderful yet vicious place. When Wrecker’s feelings are hurt, and he questions his place in the squad, his brothers rally together to fix it and comfort him.

Word count: 2.5k

Warnings: Bit of whump, Wrecker being cyber-bullied by a Reg, caring brothers, protective brothers, bully gets called out, conflict is resolved, comfort and reassurance, happy ending.

The light of his datapad casts a blue glow over his face as he reads. It’s late, their barracks dimly lit by the moonlight, but Wrecker can’t sleep. His eyes trace the words repeatedly. Slow. Clumsy. Idiot. Each one feels like a vibroknife between his ribs.

It started a few days ago after a training drill with his brothers and a handful of Regs, who had seen him struggling with hand signals and tripping over his feet. It wasn’t his fault he was bigger than everyone else and that hand signals all looked similar to him from a distance. He’d been made this way. He was trying his best with what he’d been given. One day, he’d grow into his size and understand the signals. He was sure of it.

Wrecker sighs softly, turning onto his side to face the wall of his bunk. He pulls Lula closer, tucking her under his chin as he continues to read. He knows he should stop, that he’s only making himself feel worse by continuing, but he wants to know what everyone’s thinking and doesn’t want to walk into the mess hall tomorrow and be caught off guard.

The mean comments continue in the thread posted to the cadet chat boards. He and his brothers frequently ignore them, not caring for gossip, but Wrecker had heard things whispered under a Reg’s breath at mealtime – a Reg who hadn’t been part of their earlier drill. Other than hearing it through the grapevine, the boards would be the only other place.

Wrecker’s fingers tighten around the edges of his datapad, the cold metal digging into his palms. He takes a deep breath, trying to shake off the hurtful words. Despite his tough exterior, the comments on the chat boards have chipped away at his confidence. The camaraderie he shares with his brothers shields him from most insults, but the online world has found a crack in his armour.

As he scrolls through the thread, Wrecker can’t help but notice the lack of empathy in the words of his fellow cadets. The faceless avatars behind the comments don’t understand his challenges, trying to fit in a world where he doesn’t – metaphorically and literally. He wonders if they’d say the same things to his face or if the anonymity of the virtual space emboldens them.

Lula provides some comfort amid his turmoil, a reminder that his brothers care and love him, the stuffed tooka being a present from them. He squeezes her a little tighter as he contemplates shutting down the datapad, shutting out the negativity, but a stubborn curiosity keeps him scrolling. It’s as if he’s searching for that one comment that might offer understanding or support, even though he knows the likelihood is slim.

Wrecker’s brow furrows as he reads a particularly cutting comment. ‘Idiot can’t even understand signals. How'd he even make it out the tube? The rest of them are carrying him.’ The words sting, and Wrecker feels a surge of anger, but beneath it lies a more profound, more insidious emotion—doubt.

He glances at the sleeping forms of his brothers in the dimly lit barracks. They trust and depend on him, yet the doubts the Regs have planted in his mind start to take root. Wrecker wonders if he’s genuinely holding the team back. Maybe his brothers would be better off without him in the squad, with someone more agile and quick-witted in his place.

Lula’s stitched eyes seem to gaze at him with understanding, and Wrecker can almost hear Tech’s voice in his head, rattling off statistics and probabilities to prove that their team is more robust with him in it. But those voices are drowned out by the relentless comments scrolling on his datapad.

In the solitude of the night, Wrecker quietly shuts off his datapad and gets up, careful not to wake his brothers. He steps outside into the bright corridor and starts walking, going until he reaches one of the many bridges connecting different parts of Tipoca City. It’s cool out, but the earlier stormy weather has passed.

Leaning against the railing, Wrecker looks up at the stars. The vastness of the galaxy puts his problems into perspective. But the doubts linger. As he contemplates his place in the squad, he wonders if he should ask to be transferred. He doesn’t want to be the weak link, not when his brother’s lives are on the line.

A voice startles him. “Hey, Wreck, having trouble sleeping?” It’s Hunter, concern etched on his face as he reaches him, standing at his side at the railing.

Wrecker tries to shrug off the unease. “Nah, just needin’ some air.” He slaps on a grin. “Was hopin’ to see that big ol’ creature they say lives out here.” His gut rolls with the lie as he gestures to the choppy sea surrounding them, not wanting Hunter to worry. Although they were still cadets, he knew his older brother was already carrying a heavy weight, and he was being primed to lead them once they were old enough to fight.

Hunter studies Wrecker for a moment, his sharp senses missing very little. He sees beyond the forced grin and recognizes the turmoil in Wrecker’s eyes. Without saying a word, Hunter leans on the railing beside him. “Yeah, I heard about that creature too.” He says with a faint smile as he plays into his brother’s lie. “But I think it’s just a story to keep cadets like us from wandering too far.” He adds on. Silence lingers for a second before he speaks up again. “You doing okay, Wreck? You seem a bit off tonight.”

Wrecker hesitates, then sighs, the weight of the words on the datapad still lingering in his mind. “Just... things people are saying. About me. On those chat boards.”

Hunter’s expression tightens as he glances at Wrecker. “You shouldn’t let those get to you. People don’t know what it’s like for us.”

Wrecker nods, but the doubt remains evident in his eyes. “I know, but sometimes I wonder if they’re right. If I’m really holding the squad back.”

Hunter turns fully towards Wrecker, his gaze unwavering. “Wrecker, you’re an essential part of this squad. Don’t let some unfounded comments make you question that. We’re not just soldiers; we’re brothers. And brothers stick together. You’re not holding us back; you’re lifting us up with your strength, both in training and out of it.” His tone leaves no room for doubt.

Wrecker looks at Hunter, a mix of gratitude and uncertainty in his eyes. “You really think so?”

Hunter reaches out, placing a hand on Wrecker’s shoulder. “I know so. Who else could toss droids across the room like you do? Who else could diffuse a bomb so quickly without breaking into a sweat? We need your strength and steady hands, Wrecker, and more importantly, we need you. We wouldn’t be the Bad Batch without you.”

Wrecker’s tense shoulders gradually relax under Hunter’s reassuring touch. The doubt in his eyes begins to fade. He takes a deep breath, absorbing Hunter’s words.

“Thanks, Hunter. I appreciate it.” Wrecker says, a genuine smile breaking through his earlier turmoil.

Hunter nods, squeezing Wrecker’s shoulder before letting go. “Anytime, vod. Remember, the opinions of others don’t define you. We know your worth, and that’s what matters.”

Hunter’s words gradually sink in, pushing back against the doubts that had taken root in Wrecker’s mind. As they head back to the barracks together, Wrecker can’t help but feel grateful for the unwavering support.

The following day, as Wrecker takes his turn in the fresher, Hunter slips across to Tech’s bunk, gesturing with a hand for Crosshair to join them. The three boys gather, and Hunter shares what happened last night. Before he’s finished the story, Tech reaches for his datapad and other equipment strewn around his bunk area, fingers flying over the screen as he starts to pinpoint who started the thread and the names of every cadet who’d commented.

Crosshair’s expression darkens as he listens, his hawkish eyes narrowing on the information on Tech’s datapad. “We’re going to have a little chat with this individual.” He hisses, anger curling through his body that Regs were daring to pick on his brother. None of them deserved to be tormented, especially not Wrecker – he was the softest.

Tech nods in agreement, his fingers working efficiently on the datapad. “I’ve already gathered enough evidence to expose them.”

The day progresses as usual for the squad, with their training and drills occupying most of their time. Though still carrying the weight of the hurtful comments, Wrecker finds solace in his brothers’ unwavering support. Hunter keeps a watchful eye on him, and Tech and Crosshair discreetly work on their plan to confront the Reg who had started the thread.

As night approaches, the boys gather in their barracks after dinner. The atmosphere is tense, a mix of anticipation and determination. Wrecker can sense something is brewing, but his brothers maintain their usual poker faces. He decides not to pry, trusting in their brotherly bond.

They settle in for bed, comfortable in their bunks. Hunter, Tech, and Crosshair wait until they hear the familiar sounds of Wrecker’s light snores before they move, pushing back the flimsy sheets to put their plan into action.

The trio slip out of their bunks with practised stealth, moving like shadows through the dimly lit room. As they exit the room, the hallways of Tipoca City are eerily silent at this hour. Tech guides them towards the quarters of the cadet responsible for starting the thread.

They arrive at the designated quarters, one of many identical doors in the sterile corridor. Hunter knocks firmly, and a moment later, the door slides open to reveal a surprised cadet dressed for sleep.

“Hell do you want?” the cadet asks, eyeing the trio suspiciously.

Without a word, Crosshair steps forward, scowl firmly in place, making the cadet uncomfortable. Tech, meanwhile, holds up his datapad, displaying the evidence of the derogatory comments. Hunter’s gaze is stern.

“Axel, right? We need to talk.” Hunter says calmly, but there’s an undeniable edge to his voice.

Axel stammers, realizing the gravity of the situation. The brothers are not here for idle chit-chat. The door to the next room opens slightly, curious faces peeking out to see the commotion.

“Your comments about Wrecker end now.” Crosshair declares, his tone cold and uncompromising. “And we’re making sure everyone knows the consequences of targeting one of our own.”

Tech steps forward, his datapad at the ready. “We have evidence of every comment you made and the names of those who joined in. You can either stop this now and publicly apologize, or we can take this to General Ti and let her handle it.”

Axel, now visibly nervous, stumbles over his words. “I... I didn’t think it would get this serious. It was just banter, y’know?”

Hunter narrows his eyes. “Banter or not, it stops. Now.”

Axel nods quickly, realizing he’s caught in a situation he hadn’t anticipated. “Okay, okay. I’ll delete the comments, and I’ll apologize. Just... don’t involve General Ti, please.”

Crosshair leans in, his eyes piercing. “You mess with one of us; you mess with all of us. Remember that.”

The trio leaves Axel’s quarters, their message delivered. As they walk back to their own barracks, Tech speaks up. “I’ve ensured that the evidence is backed up in multiple locations. If they try anything again, we have leverage.”

Hunter nods in approval. “Good. Hopefully, this won’t happen again. We’re a team, and we protect our own.”

The three brothers slip back into their bunks in their barracks with the same practised stealth. Wrecker stirs slightly, arms tightening around Lula, but he remains blissfully unaware of the nocturnal mission his brothers had just undertaken on his behalf.

In the morning, as Wrecker and his brothers assemble for training drills again with the Regs, there’s a noticeable shift in the air. Although he’s still feeling a lingering sting from the chat boards, Wrecker picks up on the change. Only when they pause for a break, and he’s approached, does he start to piece together bits of the puzzle.

Axel approaches Wrecker with a hesitant expression. His eyes avoid direct contact, and there’s a nervous shuffle in his stance. The other cadets nearby glance between them, sensing that something is about to unfold.

“Wrecker.” Axel begins, his voice a mixture of discomfort and reluctance. “I... I wanted to apologize. I started the chat board thread, and what I said was out of line. I didn’t realize how much it would affect you. It was just stupid banter, and I didn’t think about the consequences.”

Wrecker looks at Axel with a mixture of surprise and scepticism. He wasn’t expecting an apology, and part of him wondered if this was just another act. Hunter, Tech, and Crosshair watch from a distance, ready to step in if needed.

Axel continues. “I deleted the comments, and I’m sorry for any hurt I caused. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Wrecker studies him for a moment, then nods. “Apology accepted.” He says, surprising not just Axel but also himself. Despite the hurtful words, Wrecker knows that people can make mistakes, and perhaps this is an opportunity for growth.

Axel visibly relaxes, a mix of relief and gratitude on his face. The tension in the air began dissipating, and the other cadets exchanged glances, unsure what to make of this unexpected turn of events. Wrecker, however, feels a strange sense of closure, as if a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.

“Thanks.” Axel mumbles, still avoiding direct eye contact.

Wrecker grins, clapping a hand on Axel’s shoulder, being careful not to jostle him. “No hard feelings. Just remember, we’re all in this together.”

Axel nods, and with that, he retreats to his group, who shoot curious glances in Wrecker’s direction. The training drills resume, but the atmosphere has shifted. Wrecker notices a few glances exchanged among the cadets and the odd appreciative smile as he uses his strength to help them, but this time, he holds his head high.

Later that day, as he and his brothers gathered in their barracks, Wrecker couldn’t help but feel a sense of gratitude towards them. They hadn’t said anything, but he knew they’d played a part in Axel’s apology. Hunter, Tech, and Crosshair may not have erased the pain caused by the hurtful comments, but they’ve shown him that he’s not alone. They’ve stood by him, defended him.

As the evening progresses, the solidarity among the brothers remains strong. They fall into their usual cuddle pile, sharing laughter and snacks salvaged from the mess hall, reinforcing their unbreakable bond.

Wrecker reflects on the events of the past few days in the quiet moments before sleep claims them. The weight of doubt and hurt that had burdened his shoulders has been replaced by a newfound resilience. His brothers, the pillars of strength in his life, have reassured him of his worth and taken action to protect him. 

As Wrecker drifts into slumber, he clings to the knowledge that, no matter what challenges they might face, he’s part of a united family. In the moonlit barracks, the Bad Batch rests, stronger than ever, ready to face whatever the galaxy throws their way.

Tag list: @clonethirstingisreal

[misscammiedawn]

Dissociative Identity Disorder in Mr. Robot

So I have been writing little essays about Mr. Robot recently.

Dom's Sexuality, Gay Marriage and Whiterose

Back to the Future and Brainwashing

Today I wish to talk about the DID representation in Mr. Robot.

Actually I want to talk about the DID representation in the Hulk comics but there are 40 years worth of storylines involving it and it would require me to write about clinical understandings from the 1980s when it was called MPD (admitedly Mr. Robot's stumbles at the finish line with some of these same outdated treatment models) and that would take a while. Suffice to say it will happen eventually*. I shall make a new tag "Media Myself and I" and post it under that when I have more time to do it justice. Maybe I'll do others. I am uncertain. I believe I want to focus on positive depictions where there are no murder alters. The goal is to get people to want to enjoy things, not to steer them away. I have a few shows and games in mind at the very least.

Regardless… Mr. Robot is an easier topic to cover and is my hyperfocus of the moment.

So Mr. Robot is a show about isolation in the modern world. It's a show about socioeconomic stress, late-stage capitalism and what it means to enact meaningful change on a broken world.

But above all it is about the healing journey of Elliot Alderson, a man with dissociative identity disorder.

I say that at the start because Elliot's condition is never named until the final episode. In many ways a realistic depiction of a real world disorder was an afterthought noted in the final hour of the journey as a means of justifying the split personality trope and hiding a final twist. In spite of that the roadmap for the show was always leading to this destination and along the way they managed to get some fairly good representation out of the mix.

Season 2 even involves the only time I have ever seen a piece of fiction depict "blending" on screen. Blending isn't a symptom listed in either DSM or ICD manuals. It is, however, something one would hear about if they had a conversation with someone who had DID. I have used that scene to depict what it feels like to my partners.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

I love Mr. Robot. It is currently my favorite show of all time. If you have never seen it then please give it a shot. This post will be spoiler heavy and I'd hate to rob anyone the opportunity to watch S4E7 and have a pure emotional reaction to it. The show is on Amazon Prime and the full box set is available for $35-50 depending on format and vendor.

Go with my blessing.

-

The first season of the show begins with Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) living a double life. By day a cyber security expert and by night he spends his time at his computer hacking people's accounts and satisfying a "little itch in the back of his head" that guides him to uncover the murky facts about people. The first scene of the show has him take down a cafe owner who hosts an illegal and deeply unpleasant website. I have seen individuals walk away from the first episode thinking that the show is "Dexter but with computers" but it is more lulsec activism with a Fight Club aesthetic.

The show has 4 seasons and each season depicts a different stage of Elliot's healing journey and with it completely different rules and depictions of his condition. I'll break down each season for what they do right and what they do wrong.

Season 1: Discovery

Elliot's system in season one is undiscovered but he has overt symptoms, meaning he is unaware that he has any alters but he suffers from clean breaks in his consciousness and drastically altered behavior patterns both which are a detriment to the "hidden" nature of the condition.

Commonly most people do not discover their condition until their 30s. I was 37/38 when our therapist started guiding us towards accepting our condition.

DID manifests in childhood but it's a hidden illness that does its best to go undetected. The point of the condition is to remain hidden. The internet and the educational resources it offers are helping younger individuals to recognize their symptoms and advocate for themselves at an earlier age but the standard medical understanding is that most people are developed adults before they are diagnosed.

Published statistics for DID indicate the global population of those with the condition is about 1.5% (some organizations argue the number should be higher due to how difficult it is to receive an accurate diagnosis, but 1.5% is the most consistent figure) which is rare but not to the point of never encountering it. For comparison, according to a 2023 census 1.0% of people in the USA identify as transgender. There are no tested classifications for Covert vs Overt display of symptoms but it is widely agreed that an overwhelming majority of cases within the 1.5% are covert.

We learn that Elliot is desperately lonely, abuses morphine and has paranoid delusions about men in black stalking his every move. Whenever Elliot is on screen we can never be sure what is real and what isn't, so there are times when men wearing black suits are on screen and we cannot be sure if Elliot is paranoid or delusional.

The show takes place through his perspective after all and we are a character in the show.

See… the narrative device of the show involves Elliot speaking to "friend", us. The audience. "Hello, friend." is a common refrain spoken throughout the show. The narrative begins a short while after Elliot had a complete mental breakdown and smashed up a server room, he is seeing a court appointed therapist, is socially paralyzed to the point of which we see him linger outside a birthday party and retreat home to cry in loneliness.

The entire first season Mr. Robot is depicted as another character, akin to Tyler Durden, a wild revolutionary who wants to encrypt the data of the world's largest bank in order to seal the debt records and reset everything back to 0. He starts off appearing in scenes involving the men in black stalking Elliot to mingle him in with the paranoid delusions and eventually begins interacting with him in earnest. Though the reveal is treated as a twist 8 episodes into the show Elliot does accuse the audience of knowing the entire time and he refuses to speak to us for some time, even going as far as to keep secrets from us because he cannot trust us any longer.

It's at this point that I will note that media depictions of DID tend to lean heavily on the phrase "it's a visual medium" and depict ways that characters can see, interact with and communicate with alters/parts in a dramatic setting. Off the top of my head Hulk is about the only form of fiction I've seen where the temptation to do this doesn't take over and even then the old "other face in the mirror" trope shows up there.

So for what it's worth the paranoid thinking and hallucinations are not DID symptoms and typically a person with the condition cannot see or hear their alters. In fact a testing criteria included in the MID exam is to rule out schizophrenia by eliminating the possibility that the voices heard are external or that any hallucinations exist. In Mr. Robot they are likely caused by Elliot's morphine addiction, but he gets clean after season 1 and Mr. Robot is always there.

There are some plot elements which I want to talk about but they do spoil the final "twist" of the show. So I want to warn again that anyone in the process of watching should be warned we are getting into entire show spoiler territory.

The Elliot we see in the show is the result of the stress fueled breakdown that Mr. Alderson had 6 months prior to the show starting. The timeline is fuzzy in my head but there were two triggers which set him off and began his condition flaring up (and/or caused him to lean harder into his drug addiction which in turn fueled his condition). The one we know about is that he was locked in a server room and forced to work long into the night on an issue and the already upset and stressed Elliot snapped and had a black-out.

We come to learn that he has had these his whole life but this is the first time such an incident occurred that he couldn't self-justify what had happened. He smashed up a server room, something he felt himself not capable of.

But the second trigger is the more important one.

His sister, Darlene, moved to NYC and started visiting him.

The bigger and better twist of season 1 is that Elliot and Darlene are siblings. This is hidden from Elliot and the audience for the first 7 episodes and her presence is treated much like Marla Singer from Fight Club, of whom she likely contains some inspiration, where she keeps showing up in Elliot's apartment and acting overly familiar with him.

In the earliest episodes when we are learning about Elliot's lonely life he looks at a photograph of himself and his mother at Coney Island. Due to some hallucinations we know that Magda is an abusive mother and screamed at/hit Elliot a lot. We learn more about her in future episodes and she is a truly horrible parent. Likely more than was ever depicted in the show.

The photo is actually of the full Alderson family including Darlene and Edward but is not shown as such until the reveals that Darlene is Elliot's sister and Mr. Robot is modeled after Elliot's father. The photograph is a reference to Back to the Future.

But it also is a fairly good visual representation of self-filtering information, even when it is contradictory in nature. This is common not just in DID but in all forms of CPTSD.

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition that develops during prolonged exposure to trauma and makes radical changes to the nervous system. CPTSD is considered a root of DID and it is universal for those diagnosed with DID to have a CPTSD diagnosis also.

One of the ways CPTSD symptoms manifest is "Emotional Avoidance". The nervous system is activated when triggers related to the trauma exist within the person's life. In order to function their brains push away these reminders and naturally avoid interacting with them. This causes those with the condition to become withdrawn, to isolate and to have distorted and often contradicting patterns of thought. For instance Elliot needs connection and safety that he associates with family but his family were his primary abusers and so he edits his memories to focus on positive associations such as a family trip to Coney Island that has become an obsession to him in adulthood. We later learn that Elliot's obsession with movies was born from it being his primary way of connecting with his father... which is fairly relatable.

His positive memories of his parents are held in high regard even though we know that his father "pushed him out of a window" and his mother used to put out cigarette butts on Darlene, tried to force her to commit animal cruelty and is often depicted in hallucinations as beating and screaming at Elliot.

In a case where it is impossible to avoid the traumatic trigger, for instance the return of relative who is a living reminder of his abusive childhood, the individual may begin to dissociate. Dissociation being where a person, overwhelmed by what they are experiencing has a separation from their normal state leading to a disconnect from emotions, sense of self and reality.

Episode 8 in particular contains a visual depiction of it when Elliot is having a quiet meltdown over finding out he has a 2 day deadline and his boss at work has known about the server exploit he installed all along.

(the show often uses the camera in ways to emphasize emotional walls, dissociation and isolation like this. This sequence does so by having hard cuts, shaky cam and frantic pace melt into a gliding slow lull where the background noise filters out and we can share in Elliot's distance from his situation for a moment)

Elliot's form of blocking out is extreme but has half a foot in reality (and half a foot in the logic born from the "twist" ending) in that in order to continue interacting with Darlene he views her as a member of Fsociety and edits out their connection until it is revealed in episode 7.

A small brilliancy about Fsociety is that the entire group is formed around Elliot and Darlene's need for childhood safety. The hacking elements of the show undoubtedly born from 9 year old Elliot spending time at Mr. Robot computer repair with a smile. The anon-mask that the show uses comes from an in-universe movie that Darlene and Elliot watched every Halloween and their base of operations is Coney Island. A place that both siblings seem to associate with safety and happiness...

Which is extra messed up when you factor Season 2's revelation that Darlene was kidnapped while on a family trip to Coney Island.

Darlene's panic attacks, need to feel special and her abusive upbringing are not the topic for this essay, but I wanted to make mention that Magda was such a horrible mother that a 4/5 year old Darlene thinks of being kidnapped from a family trip to Coney Island as one of her most precious childhood memories.

The desire to reach into the past and change things to create an ideal future is a heavy theme of the show and I feel it's important to note that though the Alderson siblings reject Whiterose and her scheme, they are both living in an almost literal fun house distortion of the few unambiguously GOOD childhood memories that they each have and have wrapped them around themselves like a protective blanket.

The plot of season 1 gets a lot more uncomfortable when you realize how much of Fsociety is two traumatized kids recreating positive elements of their childhood and trying to live inside of those memories while lashing out at those who took their father away from them. The entire plan is centered around events from 1995. The show takes place in 2015.

Mr. Robot himself is, of course, the ultimate symbol of that take on events.

Edward Alderson was a monster. He's referred to as such overtly in Elliot's detox fever dream. Everyone asks him who his "monster" is while handing him the key that we learn was to his childhood bedroom. A key that he hid to prevent Edward from entering his room late at night.

Yet throughout the first 3 seasons of the show we are only shown him in context of the positive memories that he and Elliot shared. Elliot was 9 years old when Edward passed away from leukemia.

At a point, Elliot is picked up from school. He has a bruise on his cheek and the scene begins with Edward asking "If I had to guess, you didn't tell Principal Howard your side.", assuring him it's okay to share his side of the story. Because Edward is convincing him to tell his side I am going to assume Elliot got into a fight but it's not impossible to assume that the school pulled Edward in to discuss the signs of physical abuse on the child. Edward would never tell Elliot to tell his side of that story so I assume it was a fight.

It's unclear if Mr. Robot is the one who participated in those fights (we only have 2 confirmed instances of Elliot's alters showing up in childhood. The window incident and the day Edward died) but Edward picks him up and protects him from his mother's wrath and bonds with him during that drive, he reveals his diagnosis to Elliot before inviting him to work with him at the computer repair store. Likely this is what leads to Elliot's hacker skills being born.

A hauntingly similar event in my own life is why I am a photographer.

Given that the majority of Season 1 has Elliot in the dark about his condition we are only given context as to why he is the way he is and see the display of dissociative symptoms which manifest from CPTSD. Mr. Robot existing at all is actually not required for this to be a good depiction of adults who grew up in abusive environments and the way they maladaptively cope.

I also want to give a little praise to the "itch at the back of [Elliot's] head" that shows up when he feels the desire to hack someone or dig deeper and the way he pushes forward with his own will until he calms down enough to let a creeping hesitation overcome him and prevent him from acting.

Passive Influence is part of DID. It's a situation where a "fronting" (that is to say part that is in control at a time) performs an unthinking action or is emotionally swayed by the influence of another part/alter that is not presently conscious. These are one of the biggest ways that the condition flies under the radar for many. When they are close to discovering proof of their condition they will often feel an unconscious push away from it. The phenomenon is fairly easily brushed aside internally as "a gut feeling" or an "impulse" but it's observable under the right conditions.

An instance I can think of in my own life is when our survival part is trying to push people away and our emotional part desperately tries to reach out. I will often find my hand grabbing a person's wrist and clinging tightly to it without even noticing that I've done it.

In the show Elliot is compelled by Mr. Robot when he feels someone is a danger or has a weakness that can be exploited. Part of him knows he needs to do something about it and so he lets himself be guided.

The season ends with The 5/9 Hack succeeding, all the financial data being encrypted and Elliot sent to prison for (minor) hacking charges.

He knows who Mr. Robot is now and he fears him as his enemy.

Season 2 (and the book): Exploration

The first 8 episodes of Season 2 are a filter for those watching the show, many drop off. Personally I love it but I can see why it's not for everyone. Season 2 is much slower than the first and Elliot is in prison for those 8 episodes. He's also imagining that prison is his mother's house.

That daydreaming coping mechanism is largely there to add a fairly unearned sense of mystery to a character development season and make things a little more visually interesting. For the most part I don't really want to focus too much on it or the way Elliot treats "us"/"friend".

The fact is that for this season Mr. Robot and Elliot are in direct conflict but they are feeling out their landscape and trying to find common ground. They are pulling in different directions but they are reacting and responding to one another. The show uses a chess match as a visual symbol of this and in such they are keeping one another in a constant state of check. They are opposed to one another but they are communicating and working things out.

So let's start by looking at the book. The book is a recreation of the in-universe journal that Elliot keeps while he is in prison. We see him writing in it during the show and the entire thing is available, it even includes little ARG elements to let you decode the messages Mr. Robot is receiving from The Dark Army.

The book is detailed like this and it's possible to note when Elliot's handwriting turns into Mr. Robot's handwriting. There are even points where there is "blended" handwriting. It's easy to spot in the above image because Mr. Robot writes with a heavy hand and in all caps where Elliot is soft and uses lower case, in the top line of the second page "you NeeD atteNtioN aNd aRe Willing to pay a lotta MoNey to get it." you can see Elliot slipping from one headspace to another while becoming upset at society.

Even still if you look above the FUCK SOCIETY image you see Elliot's calmer handwriting as clear and flowing.

When we were in denial of our condition we poured through journal after journal and chatlog after chatlog hunting for evidence to prove or disprove the theory.

It was when I looked at our old gaming journals (we took notes in pen/pencil live during TTRPG sessions because memory issues are gonna memory issues) that we noticed similar. Cursive used in some phrases, individual letters separate on another, the letters g and y getting curled at times and not at other times.

Subtler than what is displayed above but no less real.

Season 2 introduces us to Ray the warden brilliantly played by Craig Robinson. He empathizes with Elliot because he speaks to his dead wife as a means of coping with grief and assumes that Elliot is the same.

He offers Elliot guidance by asking him to play chess "against himself" and this leads to Elliot and Mr. Robot playing endless games of stalemate against one another with deletion on the line for the loser. It's the same brain and neither side wants to lose (nor do they truly want to win, Elliot admits as much in Season 3 that he likes having Mr. Robot and misses him when he's not around) and as noted above with passive influence, the games are always guided to end in a stalemate because no matter how opposed they are as forces, they both want the same things.

So... how about the Sitcom episode?

Elliot breaks his promise to Ray and looks at the website that he is tasked with doing tech support on. It's--- not good.

Ray uses a combination of crooked cops and convicted Neo-Nazis to have Elliot beaten into submission so he won't report what he saw. Elliot cannot handle this and has a mental break and wakes up in a 90s 4 camera sitcom world.

Alf is there. Because old episodes of Alf are playing in the medical ward at the time Elliot is being treated for his wounds.

The entire time he is taking a beating Mr. Robot is protecting Elliot by fronting and forcing him into an inner-world fantasy.

Okay... so Inner-Worlds.

In the show we actually had one of these in Season 1 during the detox trip but I want to talk about it now and round back and talk more in Season 4.

Inner-Worlds are a thing within DID treatment. Emphasis on the word treatment. It's one of the more commonly misunderstood things within discussion on the condition because it's regularly reported as part of the experiences within those who are diagnosed with DID but it's important to know that the existence of the diagnosis indicates the existence of treatment.

During any adapted 3 or 4 phase trauma treatment program that includes parts work, whether this be Internal Family Systems model which is used for individuals who do not have DID or system mapping and stabilization for those who do, the patient must work on creating a "meeting" space to visualize (or sense out emotionally for those with aphantasia) and much of the work of developing safety and structure within comes from filling that space with comforts and generating communication between parts.

I'll talk more on the "conference table" in Season 4.

It is possible for those not going through therapy to create one outside of the context of a therapeutic alliance but the creation of one is an intentional act. Not something that comes free with your childhood trauma.

Elliot's trip to the inner-world keeps him from experiencing any of the beating that the body is receiving and at the end Mr. Robot earnestly says he only wanted to take the punches for Elliot, nothing more. Elliot falls against him, tearful and whimpers out "Thank you" before we are given the flashback of the day Edward picked up 9 year old Elliot from school after the fight and confesses his leukemia.

For the record, my heart swells every time I see Mr. Robot acting as a protector.

So, let's talk S2E9 and the "blending" incident.

Blending is what happens when two parts/alters are co-conscious and are present enough that they are sharing control of the body. It's an uncomfortable experience. Co-Consciousness means that more than one part/alter is actively perceiving the world at any given time.

It's more complicated than binary yes/no. Every one of these experiences exists on a spectrum and no two people with the condition experience it quite the same way but there are levels of presence that one has.

The following is me talking more from anecdotes and personal experience than textbooks. I like to be clear when I'm not being academic because I do not want to spread misinformation in my arbitrary analysis of TV shows that will get 20 notes on Tumblr Dot Com.

Front is to be driving the body, to have your inner monologue playing (if you have one, most people do, but it's not a given) and have your emotions interact with the nervous system if you are grounded enough to feel your experiences. As I said, it's a spectrum. Everyone gets dissociated at times and can just go into auto-pilot or a trance. That all still counts as being in front.

To be conscious but not front is to exist in an emotionally reactive state. If Fronting is driving then co-consciousness is to be in the passenger seat.

It's truly difficult to describe and my therapist doesn't even fully comprehend it despite her being the one who educates me on these topics. Presently as I type this I can only feel one of our system (5 parts) active and "with" me right now. She's not speaking but she's reacting. I can feel her apprehension to us typing this much about our personal life, little flits of paranoid thinking that we'll get anon-hate or that people from our former life will see this and judge us. It's a presence and exists on a gradient. She's "awake" right now but I do not consider her fully "co-con" because if I asked her to tell me what she thinks about this sentence I can feel an emotional reaction (apprehension) but not a direct answer akin to "I think you should edit out references to our journal and focus on talking about the show" (which is what I imagine she would say right now). That's the spectrum.

Closer to the front a part/alter is the more direct communication happens.

There's also "asleep" and "dormant" when they are unresponsive. Pretty self explanatory. Elliot's system has 5 parts(plus "friend") and until Season 4 we only really see Mr. Robot and the main character version of Elliot. Magda and Young Elliot show up in hallucinations in Season 1 and Young Elliot is co-con in Season 4. Magda never shows up outside of emotional flashbacks and the inner-world.

So after Elliot and Mr. Robot combine forces (though Mr. Robot is still working with the Dark Army and is trying to move in secret) they have moments where they rapidly switch and cannot keep straight who is fronting at any given time.

There's a scene where Elliot is in another room thinking to "friend" when he hears an argument in the next room and realizes Mr. Robot is in the argument. As he walks in, Mr. Robot is surprised to see that Elliot is aware when he is fronting and he trails off and they switch.

Mr. Robot says that something feels off about how they are acting and that they feel like they're overheating.

A later scene depicts Elliot phasing out mid-conversation on the subway and picturing himself in the next car observing Mr. Robot talking to Cisco while a passenger plays erratic music on a keyboard.

That is such a horrifyingly accurate depiction of something we live with that I was stunned to see it on screen. I've included it in some of my stories that go over living with these experiences but the idea is when we are stressed out, can't keep our head straight and are blended like this we tend to have snippets of music playing over and over in our head. We also get what I refer to as "static" and that seems to be relatable in support groups.

A++ for the show depicting something about the DID experience that simply does not get spoken about outside of the spaces of people dealing with it. It was the moment I knew they actually spoke to people who experience this stuff and did proper research that wasn't just media depictions and medical textbooks.

The final part of Season 2's wild ride I want to talk about is the "lucid dreaming" bit.

Mind awake. Body asleep. Mind awake. Body asleep.

This again goes into Overt DID which I cannot comment on as much as covert depictions but the idea is that Elliot trains himself to remain awake when Mr. Robot takes over. We have seen from the blending experience that he is starting to remain when Mr. Robot is active and so he tries to force himself to stay when Mr. Robot is active.

In therapy this would be achieved through trust, communication and awareness. It's said in communities that systems tend to become more overt as they go through treatment as they are able to identify lines, parts can advocate for themselves and there's better understanding of what "self" means for every alter.

In my experience there's also an element of trying to pretend to be consistent and whole. We were coming out transgender when our therapist guided us towards DID diagnosis and there was a lot of tearing ourselves apart because we needed to act in a certain way for our safety and inability to do so put us at risk of being targeted. In accepting our system we have stopped trying to be the same individual and that has lead to a more overt presentation. As I tell my therapist "we need to act out our gender expression anyway. Every action we take is a performance."

That is to say, Mr. Robot has never attempted to maintain the illusion that he is Elliot Alderson (albeit he never identifies himself. He's even surprised to learn that Elliot calls him that) and Elliot doesn't even know he is "The Mastermind".

In opting to remain hidden and conscious he gains a greater degree of control and agency in his situation.

These things get easier as you learn your condition, build system trust and allow yourself to experience that which you feel comfortable experiencing. With the example of the beating earlier, Mr. Robot shut Elliot out and took the beating for him and Elliot resisted but ultimately did not want to be present. In this episode he learns that if he wishes he could have pushed through and been there and experienced everything, albeit as a passenger rather than the driver.

Therapy also teaches how to "go into the back room" to maintain stability. A technique that lets you volunteer to not be involved in a situation. My system all use this whenever I (Dawn) perform erotic intimacy of any kind. They cannot handle the thought of associating with those acts and prior to treatment it would emotionally disregulate our nervous system if parts that couldn't handle the concept were to be present during those moments because parts of me would be trying to dissociate while I am trying to act. It would either trigger a switch, cause blending or make a part shut down and become unresponsive for a large period of time- one of our partners actually discovered our system this way. She saw us shut down during a scene and realized it wasn't just a "mood swing" as we had insisted.

Elliot learns how to intentionally open up and be present when Mr. Robot is active and because Plot happens he is shot and decides to use this skill to close himself off and create a stronger divide between parts.

Season 3: Rejection

If Season 2 was the pair working things out on a chess match where they keep one another in check then Season 3 is after Elliot has tossed the board and decided to shut Mr. Robot out completely.

The arc words are "battling in our own voids", in Season 1 Mr. Robot was always aware of what Elliot was doing but Elliot was unaware of Mr. Robot's actions and in Season 2 they were fairly co-conscious to the point of overheating. Season 3 the connection is shut down. Mr. Robot has no concept of what Elliot is doing and Elliot no concept of what Mr. Robot is doing.

This goes back to the Overt/Covert thing mentioned at the start. It's a rare thing even within a rare disorder to have that level of amnesia barriers between parts and so I can't really comment on accuracy. It's a frustrating season for me in that regard because Season 2 was doing so well at depicting something that I have lived through that going back to Fight Club tropes was fairly disappointing to me.

Season 3 is great by the way. It's a debate on if 3 or 4 is the best but it's close enough that there is a debate.

The real meat of the discussion, spare for the events of the final episode where they reconcile, is in how other people treat them and talk about their condition.

Angela Moss is Elliot's childhood best friend and also lost a parent to the disaster that claimed Edward Alderson's life. She discovered Elliot's condition during his breakdown in S1E8 and was brainwashed by the show villain Whiterose in S2E11 (I have a write-up of the psychological principals at play with the brainwashing here).

In Season 3 she acts as Elliot/Mr. Robot's handler and is responsible for helping Mr. Robot continue his hacktivist terrorism without Elliot finding out. She betrays Elliot and exploits his condition. She also tells people about it without his knowledge or consent, which is pretty fucking monstrous in my eyes.

Don't out a person. Just don't do it.

When Mr. Robot asks how she can tell who she's talking to she responds "Your eyes. You're never trying to look away." which is accurate enough that I messaged my girlfriend to be sappy and grateful towards her as the first time she noticed our condition she told me it was our eyes.

From a 2022 IM chat, shared with permission:

"it's ... well, it's [...] your eyes soften, kind of, when going to Cammie. Dawn has this piercing gaze, like she's looking right into my heart and soul. Camden is just very alert, noticing so many things but not the level of piercing. Cammie... her gaze is softer. More focused, but in a ... drinking everything in, rather than seeking it out sort of way"

and added today when I asked for permission to share the quote:

"(for the record, Craig draws his eyebrows down in a particular way that makes his gaze intense in a good way)"

The show works as hard as it can to never let the audience wonder who they are seeing on screen at any time. Most scenes where Rami Malek is depicting Mr. Robot it is a brief perspective view to remind us what the other characters are seeing before switching back to Christian Slater playing the character. There are a few scenes which involve Rami playing the character for a full sequence. One is the context for a flashback where we see a scene Slater performed through another character's eyes where they see Malek.

The others usually involve us being in Darlene's perspective to highlight her unease and uncertainty of what is happening with her brother.

The only scene where it is ever treated as a surprise is when Darlene plants a bug on Elliot's computer while staying overnight and is roughly interrogated by "Elliot", only to realize midway through the conversation "Jesus. It's you".

The camera cuts back to reveal it has been Mr. Robot the entire scene. They avoid that trick throughout the show so it has large impact when it actually happens.

I feel like that scene (as well as the scene where Elliot wears the real Mr. Robot jacket and gives birth to the 2 Stage plan to take down Evil Corp) are important for reminding that no matter how differently Malek and Slater play their roles, to an outside observer they are the same person and when he acts "out of character" it could easily just be an emotional outburst.

Incidentally you can see the physicality of the acting if you go back and watch it again.

The end of the season has Elliot, betrayed, alone and terrified for the safety of his sister; finally reach out to Mr. Robot and open a dialogue.

He even goes out of his way to have this discussion on the Ferris Wheel at Coney Island both as a Season 1 callback and as a sign of trust. Elliot admits in this conversation that he missed Mr. Robot while he shut him out and wants him to be part of his life and in the season finale Mr. Robot says that he wants the two of them to keep talking.

Elliot also finds out that the window incident wasn't his dad pushing him out of a window. They jumped. Elliot asks in a kind and soft way to Mr. Robot, representing both his protector and an element of the loving father he wished he had, "did you know?"

Mr. Robot, the one who jumped. The one who wanted to protect Elliot from Edward says nothing. But he finally feels an alliance form with Elliot.

The road to healing finally has opened.

Season 4: Integration and Fusion

So let's address the elephant in the room right away. The show uses the word "real" to describe the Elliot who existed before the show started and considers him to be the only legitimate alter. There is enough wiggle room within the show to think that is in-universe ignorance but the show does nothing to prevent the fumble at the finish line.

I want to say upfront and before I start dissecting this season that outdated models of DID believed that there was a crack formed in a person's sense of self and that healing involved restoring the identity prior to the crack.

This is 100% UNTRUE and it upsets me that people once believed it. DID is formed in childhood during a time of a person's life (between ages 4-9) where the child is taking in data from their surroundings and integrating it into their socialized survival mechanics to form a personality. The child is working out what traits it can exhibit to receive nurture, care and protection from other humans and will adapt to those processes. Attachment Theory goes into greater detail about how this relates to the formation of psychological disorders, especially personality disorders.

For a traumatized child they will find that their environments do not offer consistent and reliable safety and thus they are unable to adapt to a version of their reality where they are able to maintain stable safety. This may be horrifying forms of physical, emotional and sexual abuse placed upon a child and is often depicted as such but it can also be a confused child trying to get affection from a cold and distant parent or having a parent who abuses alcohol and becomes inconsistent in their ability to give affection and care. Child psychology is a heavy and depressing field, sadly.

The result is that the child never forms a permanent sense of identity. This is a large factor in the formation of Borderline Personality Disorder and is why DID and BPD are so often thrown together within medical treatment and diagnosis. It's at the point of which when my therapist gave me our diagnosis she presented a clinical list of "myths" regarding DID and "BPD is the same thing as DID" was 5 on the list of 6.

The point of this detour is to say that there is no original self. A person who has DID never managed to form a stable sense of identity in childhood and thus they find themselves acting as chameleons in their day-to-day life, adapting to what they feel they need to become in order to receive the things they need from their surroundings. It's why there is a stigma in the BPD community over the concept of being "manipulative". In reality people with that condition are unconsciously adapting to their environment as a survival mechanism. With DID the added layer of dissociation is there to help the self function even when they are forced to interact with materials that are incompatible with their ability to function.

Pre-show Elliot was living a fairly comfortable life but his emotional needs were not met and at the time he was alienated from his sister. He was miserable and lived in a society that he felt was crumbling. His daydreaming gave birth to "The Mastermind" to remove the threats from his reality and Mr. Robot who had been there all along went into Protective Sicko Mode and decided to expedite the process in a way only a protector's morality could.

We'll get into system roles a little later.

The point is that day-to-day life Elliot (Janina Fisher's book "Healing the Fragmented Self" refers to the part untouched by trauma as the "going about daily life" part) is not Real. He is not The Original. Those terms do not exist and are meaningless in this space.

True/Real/Orignal-Elliot is as much a construct as Mr. Robot. He's a version of Elliot who does not have to think about the trauma, he can just live a happy normal life. The kind that Elliot speaks often and derisively about in Season 1.

With that out of the way, I'm going to ignore the bad use of language and talk only about what is depicted on the screen and not said out loud. Because if you remove the misconception about real/original from the mixture, this is a perfect depiction of final fusion model healing.

Season 4 introduces us to the conference table in the inner world. A conference table is a therapeutic technique used in trauma therapy where you bring the alters/parts to a conference. The idea is that it needs to be a neutral ground where everyone is comfortable and able to share their thoughts and ideas. With practice it can be a space one can close their eyes and imagine, seeing their system and allowing communication to happen between parts.

Mine is based on the Minerals Gallery in the Natural History Museum in London. I refer to it as The Library. You didn't need to know that but I didn't want to discuss this section without mentioning it.

Elliot's is the conference room in Evil Corp where he and Tyrell spoke in the first episode.

Interestingly enough there are only 4 seats in this set. I'm not sure what the implication is here as in the scene depicted above Magda (Persecutor Alter) is scolding Young Elliot (Child Alter) for sitting in a chair that isn't his. They mention all 3 alters who are not present (Elliot, Mr. Robot and The Other One).

My thought is that this is the show going all in on the idea that Elliot ("Real") is not an alter and does not take a seat at the table. Which I have issues with.

I'll note as I did with the inner-world that this is a therapy technique and not something Elliot would just have in his mind. It's an accurate depiction of DID treatment but Elliot isn't being treated for DID. Krista is no way near close enough to be able to help Elliot. She's wonderful and deserves the world and more for how she handles things in this season but she's in the pre-stabilization phase of therapy where she knows more than Elliot is willing to accept and needs to wait for him to come around.

Speaking of Krista. Episode 7 is the greatest hour of television rivaled only by Ozymandias from Breaking Bad and the M*A*S*H finale. At present it has a 9.9 on IMDB.

The episode is structured as a bottle episode in way of a 5 act play depicting the stages of grief. This is the episode where Elliot peels back to dissociative layers and understands the truth. The truth of what his father did.

I won't type it.

I don't need to.

The next episode involves Elliot seeing Young Elliot and following him to a museum exhibit with a model of Manhattan. In Season 1 when Elliot had his psychotic break after realizing Darlene is his sister Darlene and Angela checked this location stating it was a place he used to go in times of crisis.

It turns out when he was young Elliot hid the key to his bedroom here to prevent Edward from getting in. All these years later adult Elliot (or "The Mastermind" if you prefer, which I do not) discovers it and has a heart-to-heart with his younger self, screaming into the emptiness that he's sorry for not protecting him. Sorry for letting him get hurt.

The scene is lit in the golden hues that symbolize safety in this show. The final season also takes place during Christmas in New York so it gets to show off that color palette more often which is great for symbolism and aesthetic.

Young Elliot shows that the act of hiding the key from their father was protecting him. It was fighting back. Sometimes surviving is the best you can do and you need to forgive yourself for not being able to do more.

God I love this show so much.

That episode ends with the scene I most want to just overtly show off to an audience.

I already loved the show. The final episode may have broken my heart a little with its talk of "Real" but this scene? This scene gets it.

Prior to the above video clip Mr. Robot cautiously approaches and says "Hey, kiddo". Something he always says. It's who he is. Regardless of anything else he, Mr. Robot, is designed from the father Elliot wishes he had and when he hears Mr. Robot-- no Edward's voice he tenses up in terror, allowing the above scene to take place with Mr. Robot so scared that he has failed as a protector by allowing Elliot to remember and that he cannot be there for him any longer because of who he is based off of.

Those with the condition commonly create alters who are based on the traits of those in the child's life at the time the symptoms developed. I... have experience.

The lines I want to focus on the most are:

Mr Robot: If I could go back in time and change everything that happened to you... just make it all go away...

Elliot: Then I wouldn't be me... *He turns to finally look at Mr. Robot* ...and I wouldn't have you.

The final arc of the show is where the "Mastermind" twist takes center stage and Elliot enters his inner-world and finds out that he created a peaceful reality for "Real" Elliot to exist in so that he is unharmed by the horrors of the world that is crumbling in reality. Mr. Robot, as a protector, wanted to expedite the whole hack and destruction of capitalism in order to rescue "Real" Elliot from the inner-world prison. In time he came to accept "Mastermind" as a part of the whole and not a rogue alter who was endangering the body and their "Host".

S4E13 lays it all down. An imagined version of Krista speaks directly to Elliot and explains the system and their functions. Mr. Robot a father and protector who could prevent Elliot from intolerable situations. Magda, a persecutor who blamed Elliot for the abuse. Young Elliot, who Elliot could push the traumatic situations on, a common thing that many do unconsciously in CPTSD situations, dissociating from the person the trauma happened to, disconnecting until they are just another version of self.

Elliot then says "I guess she doesn't know about you." referring to us, the audience.

Krista(*) looks into the camera and addresses us directly, calling us the voyeurs who pretend we're not a part of it even though we have been here for it all. She even claims we are on her side in getting "Mastermind" to accept he is a constructed personality who was there to lash out at the society that caused him so much pain.

"You loved him so much you wanted to keep him safe, no matter the cost."

The episode ends with "Mastermind" Elliot waking up in a hospital and reuniting with Darlene only to realize that she has known the entire time that the person we have been following throughout the show wasn't her "real" brother.

...and god damn it I hate this element of the show so much.

I'll accept that they had very little time to clean things up and needed to get a way to have Mastermind agree to the fusion. I'll even demonize Darlene and say she was being selfish and ignorant in saying something hurtful because she missed the version of her brother that existed before Fsociety.

But Our version of Elliot says that he loves her and she doesn't reply. Her disappointment and resignation causes Our Elliot to go back inside and agree to the fusion.

The show ends in a first person perspective of Darlene seeing her "real" brother wake up and that's it. I'm glad we never actually see "Real" Elliot, that feels fitting.

Here's the thing about that last minute fumble though.

Let's talk about Integration and Fusion. They are different things.

Integration is when dissociative barriers come down. The system is stabilized to the point of which the alters are capable of communicating openly, sharing thoughts, memories and experiences and every part has the ability to opt in or out as life goes on.

"Functional Multiplicity" is what happens when a system is in harmony, no memories are being withheld and the system is able to go about everyday life with minimal disruption or disregulation. It is a valid goal for trauma therapy and there's a decent amount of medical stigma around it being used as the goal and not a step towards the goal. Many clinicians prioritize the appearance of normalcy over the function of the individual(s).

Fusion is when you go the extra step and take this communication and sharing of memory and experience and as you tore down the dissociative barriers you tear away the division between parts.

A system is made up of parts that make up a whole person and Fusion is the process of all parts uniting to "become" that whole person. It is a valid and normal goal for treatment. It shouldn't be held up as the only legitimate method of healing but it shouldn't be demonized for being an option. I say this because I have seen some people in support communities get real upset when the topic comes up.

The final sequence of the show, prior to Elliot opening his eyes, involves the system at the inner-world conference table agreeing to go through with it and walking towards a cinema screen. Elliot says this will only work if we go too.

The family (and audience) sit down in the movie theatre and memories flood onto the screen and pour out until all experiences and emotions are shared in one pool and Elliot Alderson opens his eyes with all 5(+audience) alters fused into one.

It was almost perfect if only Darlene hadn't have rejected the "not real" brother.

The cinema screen projecting memories, all the thoughts and experiences being shared as the Alderson System accept their parts in the whole and agree to the process? It was a beautiful visualization of a healing journey.

There are imperfect moments here and there. There are great moments I skipped over such as S3E8 (I'm not up for talking about Self-Deletion today) but all in all it's the best depiction of DID for a main character we'll likely get on TV. It's a whole and complete narrative and I love it so much. It makes me feel seen.

[jeremy-queere]

Screw it, I'm posting SQUIP lore anyway

I just spent an hour writing the word "squip" over and over with varying capitalization nuances, so I am posting the exposition whether it is needed or not.

Okay. OKAY. ok. SO. In the pre-musical days where the Be More Chill novel was published and the internet was young and exciting, there was a tie-in website.

I lied. There were TONS of tie-in websites. They all existed in-universe and were ridiculously interconnected, and thank god for the wayback machine. Be More Chill was advertised - or as Jeremy says, "I wrote that above. I wrote Be More Chill too, with the help of my squip, under the name Ned Vizzini, which I figured was so dumb no one would think was real." The websites were linked as product testimonials or website ads (cheekily disclaimered as "Ads by Squipple").

I don't know if I can even collect all the website urls quickly without missing some but here's a spattering (with the link going to the wayback machine). Most of these websites aren't just a single page but an entire site:

Humiliationsheet.com for a list of Jeremy's daily mortification events

Squipette, a SQUIP - but pink!

Bemorechill.com, Jeremy's book website

InterSquip.com for people worried about cybersecurity - with or without a squip, take this pill and see who has one installed!

GenerationSquip.com - Sort of an unreality disclaimer that also serves as fan hype. (How do we know it's old? It suggests we "google 'squip'" and helpfully provides us with a hyperlink to the google home page.) It calls this "the squipiverse" a "100% participatory reality"

Squipped.com - a gossip rag collecting user testimonials about bad experiences with squips. It, like many of these sites, collected fan-submitted content - "Tell us about what happened to you when you came in touch with a squip! (If you don't have a story, use your imagination--we need ruthless tactics to fight the industry.)"

Squipnews.com - collecting SQUiP tips from the community in the fields of Business, Technology, SQUiP & Society, Health, and Entertainment

Iwanttobecool.org - Promoting the use of squips despite those naysayers Squipsters Against Squips. As the site poll asks: "How should we deal with anti-squip cyber-terrorists? - jail time - fines - physical dismemberment"

SQUIPusa.com - SQUIP-specific insurance which regrettably does not cover squipotomy or squipiatry, but does cover some SQUIP viruses: "SQUIPusa squipsters are now entitled to one free virtual session with an Intersquip squipnician for each week they have lost their "coolness" due to a National Squip Board-recognized virus. Valid up to six weeks"

Squipsoft.com, the parent company of squip technology. Its homepage addresses important questions like: how can you get good grades that aren't so perfect as to tip off the authorities? Use "Squipsoft School" which promises "guaranteed averages of 96.82 in every subject" except for Business Ethics or Compubiology. Or install SquipServer, which is an honest-to-god VPN ad: "Using a virtual private network (VPN) framework, this revolutionary technology turns your squip into a server capable of temporarily extending your coolness to up to three acquaintances."

CelebritySquip.com - "What percentage of American Idol finalists have squips?"

SquipWorks.com - Offering add-on tech for your squip like the MakeOut Optimizer 4.0 or the Nanolyzer (which picks up on social clues to one billionth of a meter).

SquipWorld - A more chatty experience of Squips spotted in the wild and other squip news.

Squipzophrenia.com - (I'm not endorsing the term...) - Information about the phenomenon in the novel where, if a SQUIP is turned on while the user drinks alcohol, it starts ordering them to kill people. This site has academic research on the subject and related Squip disorders. "However, [avoiding alcohol] is not a foolproof plan. Marijuana and mescaline can also cause squipzophrenia, although with the mescaline we're not sure and just think it might be the mescaline, you know?" Other squip disorders include "Loss of recognition of squip insertion i.e. 'I didn't take a pill, I'm just cool naturally!'" which can be cured via the Konami code; Squip flashbacks after a Squip is removed (which the site describes as likely false claims for the sake of "perpetuating insurance fraud"); the dangers of buying used Squips on ebay; or feeling that you can't live without your squip: "acute squipdependence. The solution is to surround yourself with calming bright plastic objects and remember that everything is fine."

Squipsters Against Squips - The notorious anti-Squip lobbying group advocating for a National Squip Registry.

Squipster - A squip-based social media platform that sadly doesn't seem to have made it to the public yet.

[osomatsuconfessions]

vaping and general smoking thoughts long long long

osomatsu: sticks with just cigarettes mostly, antiquated frame of reference where old and comfortable is the best with little change allowed. matsuzou smokes so i think oso just followed by example and liked the relaxed feeling and repetition aspect. he would maybe try a vape under the idea that a buzz is a buzz and a buzz feels good but would find the synthetic taste and experience to be offputting. has many complaints that comically go against audience expectation: 'whats the point! it doesnt even smell bad! it doesnt even make YOU smell bad! it doesnt even make my lungs burn!' etc etc

karamatsu: impossibly weak nicotine tolerance, smoked one cigarette and got extremely sick and took it as an omen. wouldnt vape because sucking on a little rectangle doesnt line up with his idea of coolness. holds cigarettes and cigars in his mouth to get the image of being intimidating and tough without ever lighting them.

choromatsu: WOULD be interested in vaping out of the fear of what smoking is actively doing to his body and what it says about his restraint and responsibility over himself by putting his lungs in danger, plus (kiddish and so, hard to admit) the flavors sound appealing. would sneak hits of tottys vape really obviously in the middle of the house any time hes not around and would over time want to start branching out with different pods, making his own rankings in his head. choro does not see this as lame but instead something akin to taking up wine tasting as a hobby (same level of prestige in his mind but less cost so its even better. hes even better). writes whole entries in a journal bought specifically for this purpose about the notes and undertones and things. to him this is for explorational AND educational purposes. this is the hobby of a discerning mind. this is not him being addicted to drugs. this is not JUST some guy vaping a ton for the sake of vaping its DIFFERENT. the other matsus find the journal and mock choro and his analysis of unicorn 50w by reciting passages back to his while she goes catatonic and silently switches back to cigarettes. never gets any buzz ever again from the insane tolerance build up but will never share this fact or think deeper about what it says about his habits

ichimatsu: explicitly doesnt smoke nor would vape. shit in his lungs is shit in his lungs it all sucks

jyushimatsu: intermittent cigarette smoker just whenever the chance presents itself. in line with him sharing the coffee milk with osomatsu where its probably more about the taste and getting to chug it and spin around than the effects of caffeine, its a vessel for comedy and appearances (for reference humor to specific archetypes or doing physically impossible tricks) and stuff more than an actual enjoyment of nicotine. he probably finishes other peoples but doesnt start his own. also thinking of jyushimatsus fixation with chewing and teething on shit like cybers heads or the lollipops theres no way hes not chomping the shit out of the filters. i think vapes initially would kind of confuse him same as all the others, but hed be reeled in by the idea of super sweet flavors and the comedic potential of making giant clouds. hed be like a fog machine. teeth marks on the vape too nothings safe if its going in there

todomatsu: would vape, specifically orange or strawberry pods. totty also doesnt really get it but it SEEMS like its hip cause there was a lot of buzz about it a couple years ago and he is forever multiple seasons late to any kind of trend so hes more than willing. hitting it around other people makes him feel like his fingers on the pulse of modern culture and not a guy who spends his time gambling and fishing like an old man. confidence booster plus he thinks it makes you smell better to women, especially compared to tobacco smoke, which is another plus (and cuts down on buying gas station perfume 2 in 1 bargain). when not accompanied by people totty means to impress (the other matsus) he would smoke cigarettes. he (like the rest) is a fiend of habit and behaviors set by osomatsu especially are ingrained so its pretty inevitable that he followed along in earlier adult years and then got hooked. but by s3 hed give it up more (riceballs using their electronic vape things further pushing the idea that this is futuristic and impressive and something that they should get with the times on, which totty would feel self conscious about not understanding/already doing + additionally having already made his extreme departure from following osomatsus actions beat for beat as he otherwise was predisposed to in s1) but would have an itch for it that hed mostly only scratch when drunk or making excuses. to compensate for his late switchover and to further distinguish himself as The Sextuplet In The Know Of Things hed rub in their faces how bad tobacco is for your lungs and how hes gonna live way longer and chide them about how they prioritize getting a hit in over living a long time like 'good luck having sex when youre DEAD with TAR LUNGS idiots!!!' when asked how vapes are at all better for your lungs he goes silent and looks away

.

[tvlandofficiall]

seam ships ranking tierlist?

this is a little less of a tierlist and more of an unsorted assortment of the pairs i'm invested in, but;

SEAVIL

gamewise; i admit i will forever be most partial to the shopboss pairs because – in my humble opinion – they really have it ALL. seam watching jevil descend into madness and – rather than being horrified by it – being were so intrigued that even now what jevil had said in those moments of madness lingers deep within them. seam wishing they hadn't locked him up for that madness at all because he gave them more of a "purpose" than anything their fate or their status as "object" could offer them. the ambiguity as to whether they were even friends at all, or if it was solely their positions in the court and the thrill of the "numbers game" that kept them coming back to one another.

headcanonwise; the phrase "mutually unrequited love" made absolutely zero sense to me until i thought too hard about these two. they're both one another's "one that got away" – they both think they should've professed their love before jevil had to be locked up and think of one another almost like fleeting mirages (only worsened by having both seen the state of their being in the light world.)

SEAMSWATCH

what can i say? these two have absurd chemistry every time i do a writing "sketch" where they're the subjects. they're admittedly the relationship that's the most my own invention out of any of these, but i think there's a lot of really fascinating stuff you could do with them. they're both in the same position of having a shadow crystal holder that was close with them – seam is really the only person swatch can talk to about spamton now that they're in castle town. and too; what does seam know about the lightner that created neo through their hands? why are they so mysterious? just what was the crystal in neo? there's an interesting detective & them fatale (get it?) dynamic to be found there and their personalities are both so charged for it that i just can't get enough of them.

SEAMQUEEN

i'm honestly surprised these two didn't take off more after ch2 given mysterious past relationships seem to be the name of the game for deltarune fans. aside from said mysterious shared past though these two are classic character foils – queen believes wholeheartedly in her own mistaken assumptions about the machinations of this world and seam is by contrast so aware of said machinations and said world that they've given up on it near-entirely. just that alone provides a lot of fascinating ways the two can bounce off of one another; especially in snowgrave where the violence of queen's entire world being pulled out from under her becomes apparent to her. seam meanwhile knows that sort of thing is inevitable – one way or another queen's world would be destroyed and one way or another her people would be discarded. in fact, it's happened to them already! why worry? why not come stay with them a while? (and even in a normal route, consider they seem to know about other game files – would they know of a snowgrave file then? could they look with nothing but their own detatched fascination at an old friend who they far surpass in knowledge now? she seems to have been gone from the kingdom some time before jevil was locked away – or i think so, at least – and so she's no idea of just how much her old friend has changed.)

and on queen's end; i think she and the pandora palace crew are quite close, but i don't doubt she misses the old court crew, especially while she's first finding her footing as the sole ruler of cyber world. there's no way seam wasn't sneaking around with queen back when they were younger; they're the sort i think queen would have a blast just drinking and going back and forth with. she's the kind of person who prioritizes a good time (doesn't everyone?) and so seam – who's always had a layabout streak – is happy to take her side when trying to get the kings to throw grand balls or when she just wants to ditch 'em entirely. all in all very underexplored very classic yuri that deserves to have more than three posts in the tag in my humble (read: extremely biased) opinion.

SEAMKING

this is the one i would not say i "ship" but that i will say i think happened in the time between jevil being locked away and the knight arriving / all the kings being locked away / the remaining court members being fired. spades king spent many a night privately telling seam about his ire towards the kingdom's state of abandonment. seam was seam about it. they probably laughed mysteriously at him about it. he probably hated it. he probably liked it a little more than he'd like to like it. you know how it is.

[stuffedsand]

for the violence ask game: 8 common fandom opinion everyone is wrong about. for milgram. i know exactly what you're going to say i just want to see you go off again

Hiii bestie. You do know what I'm about to talk about. Yippee

Disclaimer that this whole essay is like. For fun and how I say things is ramped up to be funny. I don't mind if you disagree w me cuz like that's the nature of things! We disagree but we can get along.

Anyways short answer for people who don't wanna see the essay: organ harvesting theory. This is about shidou.

Idk how prevalent it is rn since not many people even talk about shidou but it was prevalent enough in June when I got into milgram that I believed it for a bit anyways the rest in under the cut cuz I'm insane sorrg

SO the main reason I think the theory is WRONG (hyperbole‼️) is because I just think it's unrealistic. Man works in a hospital in Japan. How would he pull it off. Scuff an operation bad enough to cause braindeath/death and I'm p sure they suspend your medical licence, if he participated in an organ harvesting operation pre-family-accident his case would then be black and white cuz he was doing it in complete sound mind with no regard for human life. Also it wouldn't justify the extreme reaction he's had to realizing, specifically, "what I've been robbing people of" (t1 voice trailer), and he wouldn't have as heavy a focus on the relatives' feelings and reactions. At least story writing wise it'd make less sense since it doesn't allude to anything if that's the end goal? Imo at least. Idk maybe this is because I really like tragedies in media. Also because it'd be a really disproportionately severe crime compared to every other direct murderer???? Like. We have strangled someone, stabbed someone, bludgeoning, bludgeoning, kicked someone to death. Organ harvesting looks cartoony in this context. It's also not a very prevelant issue in Japan iirc.

Also to prove my point further. If we use this theories the murders would be

Strangling, abortion??????, cyber bullying, stabbing, organ harvesting, toxic r/s, telling the truth (lmao), bludgeoning, bludgeoning, bludgeoning (minus weapon). Organ harvesting is goofy cuz it seems so.... Extreme,,,,,,,

ALSSOOOOO funny point. If he's not directly involved in his murder (as in, unintentional and indirect) that makes 5 direct and 5 indirect. Silly.

Also also his murder seems somewhat tied to how he feels about his job itself ("I wanted to contribute to society (about his career choice)/I had thought my work was a contribution to society", use of past tense) and to me it reads like hes disillusioned w his job esp since his reason for getting a highly sought after, high paying and high social ranking job is "I wanted to contribute to society". Doctors with that empathy can be affected by the death around them more severely and I think that's a fun topic to look at

I count this under "common fandom opinion" cuz it was common enough around June (whenyours truesly got into milgram) that I believed it. I mean I introduced shidou to my friend (hello clown) as "maybe Dr malpractice. Organ harvesting dude" and said friend (hello again clown) is also the one who's heard me bash the organ harvesting theory like 6 times at least now so. Yippee.

Take none of this seriously I just got off a plane and am so very eepy. If you like the organ harvesting theory good for you!!!!!!!💥💥💥💥💥 you do you bestie !!!!!!!!!!!!!! I literally do not think less of anyone who believes that theory I just personally dont lmao

[valkyrievega]

Valkyrievega's Writing Masterlist

I figured I should put everything in one place, at the very least! Everything goes to ao3; same username over there, if that's how people prefer navigating :)

Following Fandomss are under the keep reading:

No Country For Old Men, Ranfren, Skyfall, and Dune (admittedly Dune is a singular work so far), Arcane

Side note: it would be far too long a post to put the actual summary of each on them; so I've just put tiny descriptions instead.

Arcane

Short fics/ oneshots:

Spark

Sevika becomes your (only) client at the brothel. Sapphic yearning ensues. Also it's 54k

After a long day

Sevika lets off some steam

Dune

oneshots:

Holy Water (and how to find it)

You and Stilgar hatch a plan; and you receive your payment.

Skyfall

oneshots:

Rabbithole

Silva cyber-stalks you, and you really, truly don't notice.

Just Follow Along

Silva 'helps' you plan your escape from his headquarters

Ranfren

Long Fics:

Cat Dragged In (in progress)

The Ivory household gains a new pet; and she sure does question the status quo.

Short Fics/oneshots:

It Needs Doing.

Luther's had more than enough; and she recognizes it.

Crossover fic:

Stress relief

Luther's capital S Scheming allows the house a good opportunity for, well. Some stress relief. (It's you. You're the stress relief.)

No Country For Old Men

(this is about to get embarrassing- everyone look away)

Long Fics:

Out Of Country (completed)

Set 5 years after the events of No Country; Anton is tasked with a pick up.

The Old Ways (In progress)

What if the way Anton presents himself is from a different cause? (I.e. A/B/O re-imagining; a pretty feel-good story in comparison to other long fics I have)

Moby Dick (completed)

"Can you feel it when someone else is watching you? A lot of people thought so.” - Cormack McCarthy, No Country For Old Men.

(or: Anton is 30% crazier, and it's doomed from the start. Dead Dove Do Not Eat and severe content warnings.)

Short fics/oneshots:

Let Me Keep the Colour

A slice of nightlife, from someone who's struck a deal with Anton.

By the Lamplight (AFAB only - AMAB chapter potentially coming?)

He breaks into your hotel room.

By the Streetlamps (AFAB only- AMAB chapter potentially coming?)

Direct sequel, thematically, to By the Lamplight. You get him back.

See no Evil (AFAB only- AMAB chapters potentially coming on request)

Can you witness something, when you're blind?

Careful, He Bites.

The cat and mouse chase scene from the book goes very differently. (i.e. Llewelyn isn't an idiot)

Rocking the Boat

Anton fixes the local siren problem.

Stay in the Dark (3 chapters, completed)

Anton takes advantage of a vulnerable position. He sees her having got out of one impossible situation; and wants her to try her hands at another.

Heel.

Association is a hell of a thing (and so is the way Anton views other people).

In Front of the Fire (please, can't I come in?)

He keeps you out while it's snowing. How rude.

In For a Twig, In For a Switch.

Anton uses a good excuse to scare you. And then some.

Happy Holidays to You.

Anton comes home for Christmas.

Meet Me in the Hallway.

(Older) Anton teaches evolutionary psychology at university; and more besides.

When the Wolf Comes Home

Some hurt and comfort with a werewolf Anton

Trouble in Paradise

He turns up at the doorstep of his ex-wife. Perfect.

Crossing the Threshold

A night in the life, roughly a year after the events of Meet Me In The Hallway. (or: profton two electric boogaloo)

Beggars Can't Choose at all.

Anton fucked up. You deal with it.

Scratching at the Glass

Hybrid Anton won't leave you alone. Why is that? (Catton timeeeeee we all go crazy for him)

Kinktober 2024 (Antober)

There are many prompts. There are many fics. All are, in my opinion, good, especially if you actually enjoy the kink/prompt listed. There is also occasionally gross things, because I think (correctly) Anton is a freak.

[jamiesfootball]

hey, it's leverage anon back at it again! do you think roy and keeley crossed paths previously in this au, maybe on opposite sides of a job where roy was hired to protect something keeley was trying to steal (and keeley wins obvi)? or do you think they've only heard of each other through word of mouth and when they actually meet, it's like the spiderman meme with them pointing at each other like "ROY KENT???" "KEELEY???"

Oooohhhhh

I do think that at first it's in the same vein as Ted Lasso, where they know of each other, they've moved in similar circles for years, their names are all over London but they've just never had occasion to meet.

I think the spiderman meme comes screeching into play when they have a Rashomon Job moment where they both realize they foiled each other's heist going after the same golden scepter on the same night and they're both like, "THAT WAS YOU?!!"

In Keeley's defense she was undercover as a waiter so of course she was rocking her Bjork wig with the purple stripe so people wouldn't take a closer look at her face. And there was this guy there, a real proper intellectual type, with the glasses and the sweater, and the look he kept giving her! Piercing eyes, like they could see deep into her soul. She was so rattled that once she went into the vents to make her move, she didn't want to come back out!

In Roy's defense he was at a low place, making the switch from hitting to retrieval specialist, and his hair was like. So long. So curly. Bushy beard. And he was wearing glasses he stole from a guy in the car park (and busy cursing himself because fuck he might actually need glasses), and he had a cozy nerd sweater on so like. Everyone was looking but it wasn't because they were looking for Roy Kent, they were looking for a different reason, you feel?

Meanwhile Rebecca's like "you BOTH were trying to steal my ex-husbands tacky golden scepter under my nose? While I was trying to steal it?" And that confuses Ted because, "If you were already married to him, why would you need to steal it? It's technically yours at that point," and Rebecca is like, "Exactly. I was married to him, Ted. Of course I wanted to steal it."

Meanwhile Beard is just side-eyeing Jamie who ain't said shit.

And the longer Keeley, Rebecca, and Roy go round and round the only thing they agree on is there was this skinny little teenage kid at the museum like on a fucking field trip and he was annoying like he was just constantly underfoot no matter where they went-

"Oh, I know who you mean! He was rather sweet. Kept asking for a glass of champagne- cheeky little thing."

"Was that the one who kept wandering off from the pack? Insufferable. Every time I thought I had an opening, security would interrupt to tell me they found a child wandering into the cordoned off areas. By the time I had a chance to intercept the stupid sceptor, someone had replaced it with a champagne bottle."

No, he was fucking annoying and he dogging Roy's heels and asking Roy questions about Rothko and Hockney ("It's not about the composition. The colors are richer because of the depth of the layers" and "Because he's a twat," respectively). Roy finally thought he got lucky when he nudged the kid towards a buffet table and he started scarfing down food but then the kid almost choked to death and Rebecca does remember that actually she had to take him in the back so they could make sure his parents wouldn't sue have some medical doctor guest take a look at him.

And now Beard and Ted are both just looking at Jamie, and Ted has a bit of a smile on his face, and he's just like, "Jamie? Do you have anything you want to share with the class?"

Jamie winces and admits it was his one and only cyber heist - drawing up a fake school record to get in with a field trip, writing a little program that would temporarily disable the security cameras and motion sensors- he'd done it as a dare to himself to see if he could do it. And- "I never technically stole it. Got as far as stashing it in my school bag, and then the bag went missing. Lost my homework and everything."

And now it's Ted's turn to look apologetic, "Well I am awfully sorry about your homework, but let me tell you- that essay you wrote on Napoleon? Really good stuff. If I was your teacher, I'd have given you an A."

And that's the record scratch moment because Ted? Turns out he was the """medical doctor""" who volunteered to go with Jamie, but was actually there to keep an eye on things for his old security company.

Also they shouldn't beat themselves up to bad about losing because the scepter was a fake. See, once he found it ("in a highschooler's backpack no less!" "no, Ted, we don't call them that here") he got to thinking that the whole thing was mighty suspicious so he did what any normal midwest man would do if he thought he was being taken for a fool -- he called up a friend he knew who'd been to prison and asked if there was a way to tell if gold was fake.

"Lick it."

"Pardon?"

"Lick the scepter. If it's real gold you'll be able to tell."

"...Okay, but for the record I just want it to be acknowledged how much trust exists in this relationship."

And that's how they all (failed) to steal Rupert Mannion's (fake) golden scepter (what a twat).

[izzyspussy]

About Me!

Hi, I'm Jack! I'm 29 and I use he/him pronouns. You might know me as @/calicojackofficial - which still exists as a writing and art sideblog, now @calicoy. On this blog you'll find fandom and personal posts. Everything is tagged for easy filtering.

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