#i wrote 'questionable qualification'

[spilledmilkfkdies]

Driven?

I'm gonna pretend these are not the exact same ones I colored for Blicy. Clearly we're crossing into territory in which I have no fucking clue what I'm talking about. But at least the blobs are different shapes, so you can tell I didn't just recolor them. Effort!

Kinda the same story as Blicy as well. I don't mind the ship, but I don't actively engage with it either. Maybe I would have a stronger opinion if I did wow imagine that right

[f1goat]

his teammate + lando norris x part four

In which you find yourself getting closer to your brothers new teammate who's a dick.

lando norris x fem!verstappen (sister) + cursewords + eventually smutty i wrote this before, but i'm rewriting it because i missed somethings. you can comment if you want to be added to a taglist :) thanks for reading!

masterlist x playlist

You can’t stop yourself from searching eye contact with Lando. He just walked in after his qualification session. Something tells you it’s beter to stay unnoticed. Lando doesn’t even know that you were watching in his side of the garage. Why didn’t you think about that earlier? With Max his previous teammate, it was normal that you could watch here. But with Lando, you have no clue. Fuck. You try to stop looking at Lando, but you fail. 

“What happened?” Christian is quick to appear and question Lando. You get it. It’s vague what happened in his qualifications. He was having a great lap, until he crashed. 

“Not now,” Lando answers annoyed, “I need some time for myself.” 

“You have an hour,” Christian tells him, “Then we will have a meeting with the team about what happened.”

You look away from Lando and Christian. Instead you focus your gaze on the screen in front of you. They are replaying Lando his crash. They were already 3 minutes into Q3 when Lando crashed. Meaning the other drivers are now waiting until the red flag is gone, so they can continue their session. You look at the way Lando seems to drive spontaneously into a barrier. What happened? It almost seems like he did that himself. 

Lando looks at you in the mean time. He cringes from seeing his crash on the big screen again, but that doesn’t stop him from looking at you. When you turn around, Lando is quick to catch your gaze. You notice the sudden eye contact with Lando. It almost looks like his look softens a bit while looking at you. You think about going to him. Maybe he wants to talk about his qualifications? You shake off the thoughts, he’s probably not interested in that right now.

In the mean time Lando has the same thoughts. Would it be weird to walk closer towards you? He could use someone to talk to right now. Now that he thinks of it, what are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you be in your brothers side of the garage? He doesn’t stop thinking about you and possible scenarios in which he walks up to you. What would he even say to you?

Eventually Lando lets out a soft sigh and turns around. He walks away from you instead of closer to you. You watch his movements, but don’t stop them. Lando walks towards his driver room, he needs to think properly. And maybe he needs some distraction from his ongoing thoughts about you. His teammates sister. 

After a bit of thinking Lando decides to text another girl. He scrolls through his contacts. Then he finds what he’s searching for. Angel (Jeddah). He mentally thanks himself for putting the race track locations in their contact information as well. Without giving it a second thought he sends a simple text towards the girl, inviting her to his hotel room for later tonight. She’s quick to accept his invitation. Not that he expected anything else. Girls are easy.

Almost every girl is easy when you’re Lando Norris himself. He can walk up to almost any girl and have her in his bed in only a few minutes. Expect one girl. 

Why is it that he’s the most interested in you? The girl who’s the hardest to get. And probably the one who will bring the most trouble with her.

He takes a bit more time for himself before thinking back about the crash. He tries to think back at the moment as good as he can. What happened? It’s important to fix the problem before tomorrow. He’s sure it wasn’t all his fault. Lando was focused on his lap. He didn’t just drive the car in the wall. Then he remembers. It felt like he drove over something. He needs to tell that to the team. Maybe there’s more damage from that? Maybe they can check it? He walks out of his drivers room. He feels ready to talk about it now. Since he’s starting from tenth place tomorrow, he needs to be sure that his car is in shape again if he wants to end up on the podium. 

The first one Lando sees is you. All of his thoughts about his car are quickly fleeting away from him. He’s still wondering what you were doing on his side of the garage. Maybe he can have a short conversation with you? He doesn’t even think about it any further, he walks up towards you. You notice him directly. Before he can even greet you, you’re already talking towards him. 

“I’m sorry about that lap,” you tell Lando without even greeting him, “it looked like you were going for a great lap.” 

“You watched my lap?” Lando can’t even stop himself from asking that terrible question. He thought all your attention would be on Max, who was doing a lap on the same time as him. 

“Of course,” you reply, “I was sitting here, so yours was on the screen.” 

Lando almost feels disappointed from your reaction. Of course he should have thought about that. If you were sitting here, you didn’t have much choice in who’s lap to watch. 

“Why were you sitting here?” Lando continues to ask, “Normally I’m the one who invites pretty girls to watch here.” 

You chuckle. “You just missed the handsome mechanic who asked me to watch it here with him,” you joke towards Lando with a sarcastic tone. 

“Which mechanic?” Lando asks. He mentally slaps himself from asking that question so fast. But still. About which mechanic are you talking? Does he needs to talk to him as well? He can’t have someone steal you away from him. Right? 

You let out a laugh. Lando wonders if you’re laughing at him. You’re probably are. He sends you an annoyed look. 

“I was joking Lan,” you say. 

Since when are you calling him Lan? Lando can’t shake off the feeling of how good that feels. 

“There was no mechanic,” you continue, “Max has friends over and I don’t really vibe with them. So I thought I could watch here this weekend, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course I don’t mind!” Lando quickly exclaims, “You’re always welcome here.” He almost slaps himself again. He’s responding way too fast and enthusiastic. Fuck. He doesn’t even recognize himself like this. 

You smile at Lando. You like it how he’s happy like this. 

“That’s nice,” you tell Lando. You decide to tease him a bit, “Maybe I can find another handsome mechanic while watching the race here.” 

You just wanted to tease Lando with not realizing you were sarcastic before, but when you see the smile disappear from his face you wonder if he gets you. He actually looks annoyed. What’s going on with him today? 

“Lan, I’m still sarcastic,” you tell him eventually. 

He lets out a relieved sigh. He’s still surprised by his own behavior. Since when is he this easily frustrated by those things? It almost seems like he’s jealous. That can’t be it, right?

“I’m glad,” he tells you. 

“You’re glad?” You ask surprised.

“Yeah, you still need to find out my dick is not small. Hard to do that when you’re dating someone,” Lando improves to tell you. Hopefully you will buy his remark and don’t question his real reason. 

You sigh. This is the Lando you know. Maybe it was stupid to hope for a longer normal conversation with him. You take another look at Lando. You notice the way he looks at you. It causes you to shiver. What’s going on between the two of you? You have literally no idea why it’s Lando who causes you to feel different. Things with him don’t feel normal. That can’t be good.

You feel relieved when Christian is calling Lando over to him. Only a few seconds later Max shows up. Now that you think about it, you have no clue where he ended up. You guess he took pole. If you see the way he smiles and is getting congratulated by everyone you almost know for sure. Max walks up to you. Without thinking about it, you congratulate him as well with his qualifications. 

“Yeah second is nice,” Max states, “but I do need to get by Russel safely tomorrow.” 

Oops. No pole apparently. 

“But I came here to tell you we’re having dinner with Christian tonight. Maybe with Lando too, but normally he doesn’t show up,” Max continues.

You tell him that you’re excited for dinner. Together you decide to get back to the hotel. 

+++

You can’t help yourself to feel a bit nervous. Max just told you that Lando is coming as well. You’re already sitting in Max his car, so the outfit you chose before needs to be nice enough for this news. You wonder if it is. The dress is nice, but it’s nothing special. If you knew earlier you might have changed into something more exiting. You wonder why you’re so busy with this. Since when do you care about Lando? Since when does he make you nervous? 

Max and you leave the car to walk the last meters to the restaurant. You watch your own reflection in the windows you’re passing on the way. You look nice enough. The long white dress you’re wearing suits you. The split gives your legs a bit more attention. The color looks nice on your tanned skin. You get a hair clip out of your bag and use it to put up your hair a bit. 

Lando sighs annoyed at himself when he sees the text message he just received. How did he forgot about the girl he texted earlier today? How could he forget about Maisie? Fuck. Now that he thinks about it, he knows exactly how he forgot about her. Since Christian asked him to join himself, Max and you to dinner tonight, Lando had been stressed. He never ran this fast to got back to his hotel room. He needed every little bit of time to make himself ready. He tried on multiple outfits, only to throw a lot of clothing on the floor after trying them on. Eventually he settled for a beige pantaloon with a white blouse. He made sure to leave a few buttons unbuttoned. 

He doesn’t even know why he spend so much thoughts and time about dressing nicely. He does know it’s not for Max or Christian. But why does he care what you think about his outfit? Deep down he already has a feeling. He wants to make an impression on you. A better impression than he did the last couple times. Maybe he wants you to think that he’s good looking (and maybe even nice or polite). This dinner is getting important for him. It’s his chance to show you that he can be nice. You probably think that he’s annoying, rude and arrogant. He wants to change that. Maybe you will even think that he’s sexy when he’s dressed up. A lot of girls think so. Maybe you can join them? 

You’re getting more hungry with the second. Lando is late. It’s not like you’re surprised by this, he doesn’t have manners after all. But you’re really annoyed by this. You’re hungry. The menu is looking way too good and makes you even more hungry. You think about how Lando will show up in a few and how he doesn’t even care about that he’s late. He’s probably used to everyone waiting for him. The waiter already wanted to take your orders, but Christian decided to wait for Lando. Fucking great. 

When Lando finally shows up, he doesn’t even apologize for being late. Just like you expected. You let out an annoyed huff. Of course he’s not apologizing. He’s rude.

“You’re late,” you state annoyed when Lando greets you. 

“Sorry princess,” Lando replies with a small smirk, “but I had a reason.” 

“Of course,” you sigh. 

Lando almost tells you that he did have a reason, but he keeps his mouth closed. You would probably make fun of him when he tells you that he did have some fashion stress and that you were the cause of that. And if it isn’t you who makes fun of him because that, it’s probably Christian or your brother. 

“Care to share?” Max asks jokingly.

Lando notices that Max is actually trying to befriend him lately. He has been acting friendly since their conversation with Christian on Zoom. Lando is glad to return this behavior and he can safely state that he’s starting to like Max. The only problem is, is that he doesn’t like this question from him. What can he answer? 

“It was probably a girl,” Christian jokes, “but we’ll see that on the gossip accounts soon enough.”

Lando realizes that he does deserve a remark like this. Before it was always like that. He was even late to sign his contract because he was fucking some random girl. But not anymore. 

You start to get even more annoyed. Why were you even waiting for Lando when he was busy fucking some girl? Why did you even care about his opinion on your outfit when he wasn’t even thinking about you for a second. 

“It wasn’t a girl,” Lando mutters.

“It probably was,” you argue. 

“It was not,’ Lando replies quickly. 

‘Don’t lie,” you sigh annoyed.

Lando feels himself to get frustrated. Why do you think he was with a girl? Why don’t you see that he was busy finding an outfit to impress you with? Before he can say anything, you continue to talk. 

“We all know you always have a new girl around after a free practice, qualification or race. Oh and for the rest of your free time,” you say, “and this time you made me wait for my dinner with that. I’m hungry and annoyed but hopefully she was worth it.”

“For fucks sake,” Lando mutters, “Want to know the real reason I was late princess? The reason that isn’t about some girl or meaningless sex.”

“Yes.”

Lando grunts annoyed. “I didn’t know what to wear,” he then confesses. 

Max lets out a loud laugh at Lando his confession. Christian is grinning as well. The both of them are enjoying this discussion a bit too much. 

“Since when do you care about that?” Christian asks Lando with an awful grin plastered on his face. 

“Since I wanted to make an impression on Y/N here.”

Fuck did he really just say that? Lando sighs about his own dumbness. Why did he even say that? He notices the confused look that’s plastered on your face. He really fucked it up this time. There’s not coming back from mistakes like this. It seems like you want to say something. He wonders what. Is this the moment you’re gonna make fun of him? 

“Is everyone ready to order?” The waiter distracts everyone from their conversation. 

Christian tells the waiter his order. Lando realizes that he didn’t even look at the menu yet. What is he going to eat? He listens to the orders of you and Max. Eventually he tells the waiter that he’ll take the same as you just ordered. He can only pray that it’s not fish. 

“You’re not getting away with that remark this easily,” Max continues to talk about the subject when the waiter leaves your table, “You had stress about your outfit because you wanted to make an impression on my sister? What kind of impression?” He questions further. 

“Leave it Max,” you intervene, “He’s probably joking around.”

Lando sighs. The damage is already done by now. He can better tell the truth. 

“A good one,” he says softly, “I wanted her to think something else about me instead of rude, spoiled, arrogant and so on. Something positive.” 

You look up from your drink. It’s the first time since Lando his statement that you dare to make eye contact with him. You feel how hot your cheeks are. You realize that you’re probably blushing like crazy right now. What is even happening? Did Lando just confess that he wanted to make a good impression on you? Lando is looking at you as well. That makes you only more nervous. It can’t be good that you’re feeling like this because of Lando. Fuck. 

“Nothing to say Y/N?” Christian asks with the same awful grin as earlier.

“That doesn’t happen a lot,” Max jokes.

You wonder about Max his reaction. Why isn’t he mad or annoyed with Lando for all of this?

“I uh,” you stutter for a bit while thinking about a reaction, “I uh don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Lando tells you, “but I want you to know that this is not a joke princess.”

That damned nickname again. It’s making you blush even more. You don’t reply verbally to Lando his statement. You just send him a simple nod. Max is quick to change the subject this time. He asks Lando about his qualifications and what went wrong. You listen to the conversations around you. It doesn’t take long before the waiter comes back with your dinner. When the plate of food is standing in front of you, you’re quick to start eating.

Lando is just happy that you didn’t order anything with fish. When he starts to eat, he is surprised to find out that the food is actually really good. 

After dinner you’re standing by the cars awkwardly. Lando and you are both silent, when Max and Christian are still talking with each other about the race from tomorrow. You notice that Lando is standing closely next to you. Is this the moment to ask him about his confessions from earlier? Before you can ask him anything, Max is talking to you. 

“Do you mind if Lando brings you back to the hotel Y/N? I still have some things to talk about with Christian,” he asks you. 

“That’s fine,” you reply, “if Lando doesn’t mind of course.”

“No,” Lando is quick to say, “I don’t mind.”

A few seconds later you’re sitting with Lando in his rental car. It’s silent and awkward. You let out a small sigh when you remember that it’s a twenty minute drive back to the hotel. Should you say something to Lando? Is this your moment to ask him about his confession? 

“Did you mean it?” You ask Lando softly. 

Lando doesn’t even need to think about what you’re talking about. He also doesn’t need to think about his answer.

“Yes,” he states, “I’d actually like it if you think I’m good looking instead of the other negative things you think about me.”

You realize that it’s now your time to make a confession. Fuck. How did Lando even dare to do this? “For what it’s worth, I do think you’re an arrogant dick but I also think you’re good looking,” you confess. You feel that you’re starting to blush again. Why did you even tell him this? 

“Good looking or sexy?” Lando asks while smirking. 

Fucking hell. Wasn’t your confession enough for him? You take a look at Lando and his outfit. Of course you can’t deny that he’s making you feel things. All kind of things. The buttons that are still open are doing things to you. It’s unfair that he looks this good. 

“Sexy,” you sigh, “but if you would have shown up in your standard hoodie I’d still think you were sexy.” 

Lando smirks again. 

“I think you’re pretty sexy as well princess.”

taglist ; @whore8io & @chonkybonky

part five

[fordpinesthemanyouare]

Ford x Fem!Reader

Math Assistant Pt.1

Summary: Ford needs himself an assistant, Stanley makes an online post for him and BOOM there you are, coming to meet him for an interview at the diner.

Warnings: Erm... this is a nothing sandwich I THINK. Please let me know if I should add something

A/N: My brothers in christ please this is my first fic that I wrote on a whim, I had an idea and I started writing. I have never written fan ficiton in my life so pls be nice... also who up wit dey werm to Stanford Pines HOOBA HOOBA!!!!! Okay also I want to write SMUT for this so imagine this is like the really really really long winded plot to the porno. K thanks bye read if u want or dont i dont control you.

——————

Ford shook his head at Stanley who was seated in front of a new computer now placed in the living room, “I’m still confused on why we should be posting the ad listing “online” rather than the local paper, or putting up flyers around town.” Ford used air quotes for emphasis, he still found the whole idea strange, he liked the computer for being a tool he could use to further research. He didn't like it so much as a vessel for finding candidates for a job he was offering, the thought that he had no idea who was communicating with him unsettled him a bit. Especially knowing the kind of work he was going to be having this future assistant… well assist with.

“Because yer never going to find someone with the qualifications yer asking for in this town” Stan looked over his shoulder at a crossed arm Ford. “Hiring someone for a summer job who has a PhD in Application Math, whatever that means-“

“Applied Mathematics, Stanley” Ford interrupted.

“Whatever it is you're not going to find that here, you and fiddleford are probably the only people in this town to actually have a college degree” he said with a chuckle, turning back to the computer. He was clicking around on some website that Ford had never heard of, let alone just recently finding out what the internet was. “I'm setting up a job listing on some of the local college websites, ya know for people that are studying or just done studying”. The clicking of the mouse and the typing of keys continued as Ford ran the motion through his head, overthinking perhaps every outcome of Stanley posting that job listing. Ultimately though Ford knew he was right in that, no one with at least a degree in Applied Mathematics was going to be residing nearby.

“Just please be careful about the information you include in this job posting, try to keep it minimal as possible. If they ask more questions about specifics you can let them know that I can explain in person.”

Stan looked over his shoulder, his eyebrows slightly downturned with a smirk rising on his face, “I didn’t realize you had hired me to be your assistant, you're going to have to cough up if you want me to do this for you”. Ford groaned in annoyance of his brother, “Stanley you know I don’t know how to use any of that”.

“Exactly why you're going to want to have me help you out with this”, Stanley moved his arm to drape across the back of the chair he was in, looking more directly at him. “That’ll be twenty dollars”, he held out his hand expectantly at his twin. A beat of silence passed between the two as they had a small staring contest, both men’s brows furrowed at the other.

Ford finally reached for his back pocket after he felt he had glared at his brother enough, he slipped a twenty dollar bill from the leather wallet and practically slammed it in his hand before walking in the opposite direction without a word. While Stan on the other hand, was more than beaming when he saw Ford’s hand fall to his back pocket, Stan half shouted as Ford strode out of the room.

“You’ll thank me later when I find the perfect candidate!” He laughed as he said it and returned to more clicking and typing around the website.

Ford returned to the lab to finish up some things before the kids were scheduled to get there later in the month. When they returned from the long months at the ocean, Ford wanted nothing more than to work on something in his lab again. He loved feeling the anticipation of a project becoming something, but of course he knew he could easily get carried away. After Dipper and Mabel left last summer, before Stanley and him were going to head out, he had made a major discovery while working in the lab. He had discovered an atom that was capable of recreating a direct clone of itself and in as many atoms he could count. He continued to work on the project until Stanley was practically dragging him from the house to leave to sail around the world.

While sailing towards one of their final destinations at the end of the trip, Ford finally opened up to Stanley about his worries of falling into the same pits as before. He was worried that he would become too involved, as he already felt himself doing as they were leaving for their trip. He also desperately needed some alone time from Stanley, but he didn’t mention that to him while they were on the boat.

“What if you hired someone to help you with the project?” Stan had offered a possible solution, while he had sat in the boat looking at Ford who was deep in thought over his dilemma. “I mean obviously the last time that happened, it wasn’t great either…” He trailed off after the look on Ford’s face became apparent, regretting the thought of his old college friend.

“I know the last time wasn’t great” Stanley pushed forward, “but maybe if you have someone hired to help with the smaller stuff. Things like using the calculator or something, whatever the small stuff even is to you” he said the last part under a fake cough which earned him a glare from his brother. However, the idea wasn't… terrible, Ford thought. He pondered over the possibilities of having someone helping him out, along with having the two kids upstairs to bother him. If he were to have someone who he didn't have to know that well take on most of the minor details, the equations and such, he would be able to prioritize the best parts of the project while also having time for his family. At least, that’s what he had hoped for when Stanley initially offered the idea.

“That could be a good idea…” Ford said after taking several moments to ponder the possibilities. “I would need someone who could do advanced mathematical equations, with room for equations that could possibly extend what they know…”. Stanley just looked at him deep in thought, wondering how there could be that many things to think about, the answer seemed clear to him.

Back in the lab, Ford could hear Stanley groaning loudly about some ‘unknown error message’. He continued to monitor and take note of the atoms under his advanced microscope for a while, waiting until Stanley had further news of any postings. He wondered what his new assistant would be like, if they could have the same passion for knowledge and understanding as he does.

———

A few days had passed, Ford falling into old habits quickly, holing himself up in the lab for hours upon hours. The only time he was seen over the last 48 hours was to grab more coffee from the kitchen, he caught naps in between work, falling asleep over his piles of scrap paper filled with numbers and letters. Ford had not anticipated how much mathematical reasoning was going to follow the atom cloning discovery, he was falling behind on moving forward with more discoveries on the atoms, but over hundreds of miniscule details that needed solving kept him at the desk. Stan walked down on the 49th hour of Ford’s lock down in the basement, opening the door noisily and making as much noise as possible on the way down to let him know he was on the way. Ford was scribbling away on the nth page of scrap work, crossing out failed attempts of solving equations as Stan broached the lab floor.

Stan awkwardly cleared his throat at Ford when he didn’t turn around, even though Stanley was sure to have made enough noise on the way down. Ford turned his head over his shoulder, his body seeming to not want to move from the space it had cramped into. He raised his eyebrows in a questioning manner, as if asking ‘What? Im busy’. Stan gave a huff of annoyance before starting,

“I have about 3 applications that I thought were worth looking over, most of the idiots who applied didn’t even have math degrees. All they see in the listing is free housing and they flock like birds trying to claw their way in” he said with a slight chuckle. He strided over to Ford’s desk, as Ford leaned back finally interested in what Stan was saying. He took the papers from Stanley and began to look over them. He began thumbing through the few resumes, looking over each one carefully noting that all three people had at least some qualifications in mathematics. He looked up to Stan and gave him a tight smile.

“I appreciate you getting these for me, I’ll reach out to the ones I feel are qualified.” A beat passed between them, Ford paused for a second wondering if he should just return to work at this point or if Stanley had something else since he hasn't made any move to leave.

“I think the one on the bottom will be the best fit.” Stan said with a certain look in his face that Ford couldn’t place, as he turned to leave. Ford looked at him as he walked towards the stairs with a questioning look on his face, wondering what could have led his brother to place a preference on one of these resumes even though he didn't know what applied mathematics was. As Stan trudged up the stairs Ford called to his brother,

“I'll be sure to look at that one, thank you Stanley.” Which made Stanley pause and turn to look at Ford, a distant smile on his face as he nodded and continued up the stairs. Ford turned back to his desk and pulled the resume on the bottom up to the top, the header in nice bold letters a fine print used, he noted.

Y/N YL/N

He also took note that this was the only two-page resume offered to him, with the education list taking up most of the room. Several universities/schools were listed and his eyes read over the names and degrees that followed. He read all the way to the bottom where it listed your highschool with graduation dated in 1999. He noted this person was in their early 30’s with several bachelors degrees in several sciences, two master’s degrees in statistics and biology, and of course a Ph.D in applied mathematics. The latest graduation listed was University of Oregon masters program in statistics for April, which he noted it was now early May noting it would be fresh on the mind. He moved your resume to the back of the small stack, looking over the first two he skipped over, and honestly he wished he saved yours for last. The first two were jokes compared to the advanced knowledge you listed, he set the first aside after noting that the education list was no longer than a paragraph, and the second resume didn’t take long to set aside either as his eyes raked in the many spelling errors.

He read over your resume again looking for a way to contact you to set up the interview. He noted the phone number and email in the corner of the first page, and made to move upstairs to the kitchen phone. As he stood up however, his muscles almost molded into place from sitting at the desk, stopped him from moving further. He groaned as he began to stretch himself out, thinking about how he couldnt wait to stop looking at math problems for hours on end.

Heading back upstairs he reached the phone and quickly gazed at the microwave clock, 3:49 pm. He was glad it wasn’t later than five, as he picked up the corded receiver and began to punch in the numbers. The phone rang a few times before your voice fluttered over the phone, “Hello?”. Ford cleared his throat awkwardly, “Hello! Yes, is this Y/N YL/N? Oh it is, great, this is Stanford Pines calling about a job posting for the assistant position. I was hoping to set up an interview to discuss further details of the position.”

“I was just wondering if I would hear back from this offer,” the light voice on the other end laughed a pleasant laugh a little before continuing, “I’d love to join you for an interview regarding the position, I’m free anytime, anywhere this coming week and the next.”.

Ford offered a time for tomorrow at the local diner, which he provided the address to. The voice on the phone wished Ford a great rest of his night and that they would see him tomorrow. Ford wished them the normal pleasantries he hated to conduct while making mundane phone calls such as these. He was slightly relieved to find you weren’t completely strange, at least right off the bat. When he hung the phone back on the hanger, Stan suddenly spoke, causing Ford to jump from the lack of warning.

“So did you end up going with the one I said?” Stan looked smug as Ford met his gaze, knowing damn well he scared Ford on purpose. Ford rolled his eyes after he settled after the slight scare,

“Unsurprisingly, as you could probably assume. You shouldn’t have even bothered with the other two. One only had a few community college classes under their belt.” Ford turned to make more coffee, he figured he would stretch his legs now as he was planning on working on some more equations before the meeting tomorrow. Stan gave a hearty laugh, “She’s also quite the looker, surprised me when I was pulling resumes”. Ford gave his brother a look as he asked, “Can’t you make your picture anything you want online?”. He remembers when they got the computer last time the kids were here, Dipper had shown him how he had his profile for online DD&MD. He absolutely didn’t understand it, but Dipper assured him this summer he would teach him. Which would benefit him from not having to pay Stanley anytime he needed something done the modern way (this was not often).

“Yeah but this was on a college website, everyone has their picture I think. It looks all like student ID’s… Oh don’t look at me like that! I looked at all of their profile pictures. She just happened to have the best looking picture.” Stan finished with a shrug and a laugh. Ford had looked at him like he was crazy for looking through all the people who applied profile pictures before feeling the need to ask, “You did give me recommendations on experience, not looks correct?”.

Stan shook his head, “I know you would kill me if I passed on a math nerd over an actual good looking girl” he laughed, turning “I'm going to head out gotta meet some people, don’t wait up for me.” Stan said as he was walking out the door, grabbing the keys as he slammed the door. Ford shook his head and decided to take his brother's word for it, his mind replaying what his twin mentioned, “quite the looker” as if that could have any effect on anything. Ford thought he didn't care much at all for how a person appeared as long as they could solve these problems that's all that mattered, and maybe that they were decently pleasant to work with. He couldnt help but reflect back to the phone call, your light and airy voice filling his ear with pleasant sound, at least you didnt have a horrible voice and he could probably get used to hearing that voice more often, he thought. Ford filled his cup with coffee and headed back downstairs not giving the interview tomorrow much more thought than your voice on the phone.

—————

A/N: Yay I did it!!! yeah so what if its a nothing sandwich?? Didnt i literally say that before hand.. hope you enjoyed if ya read! <3

[thewarfox]

DEI is racist.

I wrote this as a comment to a youtube video, but I am relatively certain that it will get shadowbanned. I'm pretty happy with the thoughts I wrote down, so I decided to bring them over here: The reason DEI has a negative inclination is the same reason that Affirmative Action has a negative inclination. Even if the person being hired is qualified, you cannot be certain they got the position because of their merits, or because of their 'diverse' qualities. Let's say that, hypothetically, you have two equally qualified candidates that have to be decided between. One has to be picked. The only difference between them is that one is a white man, and one is a black woman. Same age, same education, same records, everything else is equal. When you have a culture of DEI, you immediately run into a problem. If you DON'T hire the black woman, you risk being called a racist and a sexist. If you do hire her, you risk being accused of picking her for her immutable characteristics instead of for her qualifications. On the side of the hypothetical black woman, if you get picked for the job, you can't be completely certain that you were picked for your qualifications, or if you were picked for your God-given characteristics. On the side of the hypothetical white man, if you get picked for the job, you can't be completely certain that you were picked for your qualifications, or if you were picked because your employer is a racist or sexist. There are obviously other possibilities, but we're trying to narrow the thought experiment for simplicity. By utilizing DEI, you are putting discrimination on the table. You are stating that you have an agenda to shape your workplace based on categories that have nothing to do with qualifications. You are subjecting people hired under it to be insecure about the circumstances of their employment, and their true role in the organization. Are they there to do a job, or are they there to check off a box? Have they really earned the position, or are they being used to signal to outside observers? And finally, like any system humanity creates, people take advantage of it. Does it happen very often? Hopefully not. But it certainly does happen, however rarely. And the fear that the people you're hiring might be a grifter of some kind does poison the well. A rotten apple can spoil the bunch. It can breed distrust of potential selectees based off of the actions of a few bad actors. It opens the door for behaviors and worries and conflicts that don't need to exist. There are places where DEI has no place, and everything works fine. Take basketball for instance. You don't see anyone saying that a certain percentage of asian or white players need to be on every team to reflect the population. Any team that does such a thing will likely be at a competitive disadvantage to the teams that don't do it. They are composing the teams of the best players, and they happen to mostly be black, and no one has a problem with this. DEI didn't have to be implemented to get black people onto the teams, their own skill, ability, and effectiveness got them there. If they failed to get onto the teams because the rules forced them to hire other people for the team, how many black basketballers would not be able to get on the team when they otherwise would? In fact, one could say that DEI-like thinking kept black players out of basketball in the early days, and only when teams started taking risks by hiring them, and they started winning games more as a result, the inherent competitiveness of sport demanded that other teams had to hire black players as well if they didn't want to be left behind. It was only by abolishing a policy of composing a team by race that the sport was allowed to take its modern, superior shape. DEI is not a recipe for competitiveness. It is inherently anticapitalistic. It promotes unhealthy discrimination. It opens the door for ugly and unhealthy criticism. It calls into question the capabilities of people, and whether they are qualified for their positions.

[anotherdayforchaosfay]

This week, word got out that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was looking to hire “world-class talent to work long hours identifying/eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.”  It turns out that people had a lot of ideas about who should apply for those jobs. Elon Musk and his team of 19-24 year old tech minions have been bulldozing through federal agencies, hacking into sensitive data, shutting down USAID, threatening federal workers with termination, and a host of other illegal and questionable activities. Protests against Musk and DOGE erupted in cities nationwide. Now, the hiring site join.doge.gov has become a focal point for the outrage as people submit mock applications.  Hitler, Mussolini and Franco all “submitted” applications. One comment quipped “There’s a lot of out-of-work fascists since WWII.” Under qualifications, their applications mentioned things like “good at getting rid of bureaucratic red tape” and “leader in downsizing populations.” Cruella De Vil (using the email hatespuppys@disneyvillainsunited.com) let Musk know that she has experience in breaking up Black/white relationships, views DOG(E)s as part of her brand, and has conducted round-ups before. Ebenezer Scrooge, though ineligible for being a British citizen, nonetheless lauded his world-famous “penny-pinching” and “ruthless cost-saving measures” and “willingness to work on holidays.” The Grinch wrote, “I stole Christmas. What more do you need?” At one point, the website threw up blocks to prevent online attacks. It’s back now (in case you were wondering).

This flood of spam comments and fake responses to the DOGE hiring site is one of many similar campaigns aiming to overwhelm hotlines and emails.  A Missouri government tip site for submitting complaints about gender-affirming care was taken down after people overwhelmed it with rambling anecdotes and the “Bee Movie” script. Similar protest emails have been sent to the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, which is trying to get reports of noncompliance with their anti-trans efforts. Sending messages to defendingwomen@opm.gov, people are attempting to use a flood of complaints to prevent snitching from targeting federal workers upholding trans inclusion. After the Trump administration warned federal employees of “adverse consequences” for not reporting colleagues resisting orders to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, citizens began submitting false reports to the special email account: DEIAtruth@opm.gov. Here’s one example: “A man named Donald Trump is doing affirmative action for billionaires and oligarchs against the mandate to stop hiring minority groups.” Another campaign has been emailing the DOGE Caucus and suggesting that they cut the military budget or SpaceX contracts instead. (DOGE itself has no publicly available emails, but people can contact this pro-DOGE group at: doge@mail.house.gov) The tactic of spamming websites, emails and hotlines tries to render them inoperable, or at least inconvenient, to those trying to use them to report or repress resistance. These kind of tactics have been used numerous times, often to great success. In 2021, Reddit users supported striking Kellogg’s workers by crashing the scab hiring website. In 2022, a teen coded a program to help other teens spam a tip line for reporting critical race theory being taught in schools. In 2024, Utah and Indiana’s snitch lines on bathroom accessibility was overwhelmed with hoax reports. Humor and rebellious defiance play an important role in these bleak times. The fake applications aren’t just about jamming up the system. They’re returning a sense of agency to people, affirming their humanity and unleashing a bit of much-needed laughter. 

Click the link at the top to read the rest.

[littlesparklight]

why exactly was paris chosen to be the judge?

I could SWEAR I'd gotten a similar ask quite recently and could just link my answer, but now I can't FIND ANYTHING so... I guess I just imagined that fdbhdfkdf

Anyway, mostly we don't know.

Partially because we have very few sources that, even when they touch on the Judgement, say anything about any reason for why Paris was chosen. Partially because, for those fragmentary sources we have that might have given some reason (or not), the part where that might have been spelled out hasn't been saved.

So, while, say, Cratylus' Dionysalexandros might have given an answer, we don't have that part. (Also to note, it was a satyr play, so, comedy does tragedy basically, and any answer it has would need to take this into account.) And again, while Sophocles' Krisis was also literally about the Judgement, what few fragments survives does not touch on "why Paris". (It, too, was also a satyr play, however.)

Here's some more considerations, ordered chronologically: "“Lay aside thy fear!” the winged herald said to me; “thou art the arbiter of beauty;[…]" Ovid, Heroides 16, lines 69-70

This doesn't actually say anything about "why Paris", unless we should understand a symbolical as well as literal reading of "arbiter of beauty" = that is, that Paris is beautiful and so he can judge beauty.

"Give him this message: `Paris, because you are handsome, and wise in the things of love, Zeus commands you to judge between the Goddesses, and say which is the most beautiful[…]" Lucian, Judgement of Paris (Dialogues of the Gods)

As you see, that line of reasoning (Paris is beautiful, thus he is qualified to judge) is spelled out literally here. But Lucian also writes satire, so are we supposed to take this seriously, or is this poking fun? I could see either reading being the intent, since even comedy and satire doesn't necessarily mean everything in it doesn't reflect something seriously meant.

"[…] one Paris, the splendid youth, who tends his herds on the hills of Troy, give to him the apple;[…]" Colluthus, Abduction of Helen, line 74-75

Colluthus, again, much like Ovid, doesn't spell anything out. The closest we get is in that Paris is called splendid (physical splendour, I assume). So IF that's anything that might imply reason, we're again on the "his physical beauty qualifies him to judge". Beauty knows beauty, so to speak.

"To them he said: 'Go to mount Ida which is over Troy, and there you shall find Paris the shepherd; only he can judge among you, for he is a just judge.'" Excidium Troiae

Here's something else entirely. The Rawlinson Excidium Troiae is a Medieval document, but the consensus is that it does reflect earlier Antiquity-based Trojan War traditions, from sources that simply haven't survived.

The reason this texts calls him a "just judge" is because this is the source that contains Paris pitting his favourite bull against others, and giving it a golden crown each time it wins; finally he promises that whoever (whichever bull) can win over his bull will get the crown. Ares, in bull form, challenges Paris' bull and of course wins. Contrary to how these things usually go, Paris does exactly as he's promised and gives the crown to Ares.

While it's of course impossible to say whether this idea of Paris' qualification is something based in earlier tradition is of course impossible to know. But Paris having a (really stellar) favourite bull has precedent in the versions of his recognition at Troy where he goes to participate in the funeral games to get his favourite bull back.

Maybe whoever wrote the Rawlinson Excidium Troiae had Hyginus' Fabuae and simply took inspiration of Paris trying to recover his bull to invent this Paris-Ares incident. Maybe that part of the Fabulae reflect not just potentially Sophocles' Alexandros (lost), but also part of a later development in Antiquity that elaborated on the bull story to make it part of an answer to the "why Paris?" question.

This is as close as we get to anything as an answer, I'm afraid!

Whether we take Lucian seriously or not, he has provided us with one, that might or might not be reflected in more "serious" texts. And whether we want to heed a source as late as the Rawlinson Excidium Troiae, it also provides an answer.

(And of course, given that the tradition of Zeus having cosmic need to reduce humanity, if the calculation implied is "if no natural disasters, then war, and if war, Troy must be the place, then = a trojan prince is needed". That's most of an answer, which the above bits and pieces are then finishing, as well as they might.)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Abigail Shrier

Published: Jan 31, 2025

Loving, naive parents believed medical science was above politics and beyond question. Now, with the stroke of a pen, a destructive ideology has been eliminated.

When the history of 21st-century gender mania is written, it should include this signal entry: In 2020, a website called GoFundMe, usually a place to find disaster-relief appeals and charities for starving children, contained more than 30,000 urgent appeals from young women seeking to remove their perfectly healthy breasts.

Another entry, from June 2020: The New England Journal of Medicine, America’s platinum medical publication, published a piece explaining that biological sex is actually “assigned at birth” by a doctor—and not a verifiable fact, based on our gametes, stamped into every one of our cells. In fact, biological sex ought to be deleted from our birth certificates—the authors claimed—because a person’s biological sex serves “no clinical utility.” Breaking news to gynecologists.

Public schools began asking elementary kids whether they might like to identify as “genderqueer” or “nonbinary.” Any dissent from this gender movement was met with suppression. The American Civil Liberties Union’s most prominent lawyer, Chase Strangio, announced his intention to suppress Irreversible Damage, my book-length investigation into the sudden spike in transgender identification among teen girls. “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on,” he tweeted. Weeks later, Amazon deleted Ryan Anderson’s book criticizing the transgender medical industry.

I could go on. But as of January 28, 2025, I don’t have to.

On that day, President Donald Trump signed an executive order announcing that the federal government would no longer “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another,” and that it would “rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”

To the practitioners and promoters and numberless devotees of pediatric “gender affirming care”—a euphemism for the vast apparatus pushing junk science on vulnerable children and confused families—it came as a much-needed slap in the face.

If it seems odd that the spell of pediatric gender medicine should have been ended by politicians and not physicians, consider that in America, politics is how it began. Specifically, it began with Obamacare.

Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature legislation incentivizing and coercing private insurers to offer their products on a government exchange, prohibited those companies from discriminating on the basis of sex. And in May 2016, six years after the bill’s enactment, the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services added this fateful qualification: Discrimination on the basis of “sex” was to include discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.”

“Obama effectively wrote into law, through healthcare, that gender identity is a protected class,” healthcare executive and gender-medicine researcher Zhenya Abbruzzese told me. And that opened a huge new source of funding for these treatments. “Because once these insurers feel like they have to cover it, that’s it. You have just turned on the engine,” Abbruzzese said.

If an insurer covers testosterone to treat a man who was deficient, then, according to gender ideology’s cracked logic, the insurer would also need to cover testosterone for a woman identifying as a man. If a procedure to remove a man’s unwanted breast tissue was covered, then a similar procedure for a woman identifying as a man must also be covered. Denying those claims could subject insurers to federal enforcement action.

To mandate coverage for gender treatments, activists “snuck in gender identity without Congress ever voting for it,” Abbruzzese told me. Transgender rights groups filed lawsuits, to test whether judges agreed: Suddenly, a “woman” was anyone who claimed to be one, as far as provision of healthcare was concerned. Luxury cosmetic treatments became available even to minors covered by their parents’ insurance—at fire-sale prices.

While gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists (“puberty blockers”) have never received FDA approval to treat gender dysphoria in youth, doctors could prescribe them “off-label” as long as they had reason to believe they would be helpful to patients. Everywhere physicians looked, activists and medical accrediting organizations (increasingly, one and the same) and every news outlet of legacy media assured them, as if with one voice, that these were “lifesaving” treatments.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an activist organization styled as a medical one, issued guidelines used as the “standards of care” by all major insurers and Medicaid to justify the provision of, and reimbursement for, gender transition services. WPATH represented their guidelines as evidence-based. Court-ordered discovery in a 2022 lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice to overturn Alabama’s ban on gender treatments for minors revealed that WPATH’s guidelines lacked solid evidentiary basis, but also that WPATH leadership knew it.

The organization suppressed publication of systematic reviews of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries undertaken by Johns Hopkins University. That research would almost certainly have revealed, as so many systematic reviews have now done, that while the risk of sterility, cardiac event, osteoporosis, and bone fracture were high, any alleged mental health benefits of the WPATH-approved puberty blockers-to-cross sex hormones protocol remained unproven.

But the Biden administration pressed onward, suing any state that enacted bans on medical transition for minors. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a transgender adult, successfully pressured WPATH to drop minimum age requirements for gender medical treatments and surgeries in its September 2022 standards of care. Again and again, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris used the bully pulpit to assure “transgender Americans . . . especially the young people” that “your president has your back,” as Biden declared in an April 2021 address to Congress.

In 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services published a fact sheet claiming that gender affirming treatments for youth were “crucial to overall health and well-being.” Any physician or therapist who might otherwise have been tempted to discourage trans-identified youth from immediate and irreversible medical transition sat up and took note.

The Obama and Biden administrations worked in tandem with activist organizations. Federal funds poured into tainted research. Gender physician Johanna Olson-Kennedy received nearly $10 million from the National Institutes of Health to study the effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on gender-confused adolescents ages 11 and up. (She later lowered the age to 8.) Olson-Kennedy and a team of colleagues recruited hundreds of transgender-identified minors. They gave one cohort of the children cross-sex hormones and another puberty blockers—to determine if either treatment produced improvements in mental health. (There was no control group.) After only one year on cross-sex hormones, two of her 315 subjects had committed suicide.

As for her nine-year study on puberty blockers, Olson-Kennedy didn’t like the results so, by her own admission, she shelved them. “She said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to the bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states,” according to The New York Times. She told the Times she intends to publish the data, but that getting her work to a place where it wouldn’t be “weaponized” required it to be “clear and concise. And that takes time.”

The public that had funded her research has never had the opportunity to review its results.

Trump’s executive order directs federally funded institutions to stop reliance on WPATH, calling its recommendations “junk science.” Cut off from what Abbruzzese calls WPATH’s “evidence laundering,” insurers will be forced to evaluate the gender medical evidence and issue policies on their own. Systematic reviews and investigations already undertaken in England, Finland, and Sweden indicate it’s not likely they will find the evidence for medically transitioning children to be terribly impressive. Activist researchers into gender medicine might soon see their federal grants dry up.

Every healthcare entity accepting federal dollars (nearly all of them, in Obamacare’s world) risks losing contracts with Medicare and Medicaid if they continue to provide pediatric gender transitions.

This executive order does not abolish pediatric gender medicine. Boutique practices that do not rely on federal funding can still offer “top surgery” to minors, for instance. There will surely be litigation to challenge the reach of Trump’s order.

But that order does break the spell—and the spell was always our biggest problem. Parents who allowed their children to transition are often caricatured as Hollywood eccentrics, the sort who bequeath their estates to teacup Chihuahuas. The parents I spoke to—even those who allowed their children to transition—are nothing like that.

Many are conscientious and loving and afraid, if a little naive. They believed medical science was above politics and beyond question. They had wandered into a Truman Show, an all-consuming simulacrum, designed to convince them to abandon their protective instincts. If the parents still weren’t convinced, therapists coerced them into allowing their daughters to undergo gender transition with this thinly veiled threat: “Would you rather a live son or a dead daughter?”

If it seems, suddenly, that only a fool would fall for this, then it is worth pointing out that millions of us were fools for a while. This social contagion spread far beyond teenage girls. It touched corporate executives who rushed to put pronouns in their profiles, pastors who raised the transgender Pride flag at their churches, and school administrators that actively deceived parents about the new gender identities they had selected for the parents’ children.

A lot of bad actors—pediatricians, surgeons, endocrinologists, therapists, teachers, even clergy—took advantage. No reason to let them off the hook: The science is, and always was, shoddy. When I published Irreversible Damage in 2020 and became, overnight, socially radioactive even among many conservatives, the medical risks were as plain to the experts then as they are today. One only needed to take an interest.

Desperate parents who transitioned their own children during this period, against their better judgment, made an understandable, if devastating, error. Harmonizing one’s views with the powerful reflects the oldest social survival instinct. We are engineered to stay within the herd and get along.

Disagreeable contrarians who resisted gender fever are the real oddballs. Some combination of personality quirk and conviction that occasionally makes us obnoxious employees and intolerable cocktail-party guests also inoculated us against gender madness. There is no reforming us.

But we served a vital function: Together, a ragtag crew of truculent journalists and outcast researchers stopped the entire herd from running off the cliff. None of us ever expected to be welcomed back into the same elite circles that, only recently, had cheered or looked away as a generation of tormented girls took themselves apart.

==

In November of 1692, a soldier in the city of Gloucester in Massachusetts became convinced that his sister had fallen under the influence of witches. The girls from Salem were duly called to verify the presence of Satan, but on their journey something unexpected occurred. As they crossed the Ipswich Bridge they passed by an elderly woman. Almost by instinct, the girls broke into convulsions and cried out their usual accusations of sorcery. But the passers-by simply ignored them, or moved away. Without an audience to validate their cries, the girls had little choice but to fall silent and resume their journey. After this remarkable event, it is said that the girls made no further accusations.

This is our Ipswich Bridge moment. While those in authority continue to heed the cries of the new puritans, our society will continue to be dominated by the witches of their imaginations. If we continue to indulge them, we make ourselves party to their collective delusions. Starkey rightly observes that the half-truth is the most dangerous of falsehoods, and while we are right to be alert to the ongoing injustices in society, we would be unwise to give too much credit to those who exaggerate them for their own ends.

-- Andrew Doyle, "The New Puritans"

[hyylia]

For the requests: Zelink, prompt "did you drop this?"

oooh i love this prompt so much!!! thanks for sending it to me! <3

i wrote this with five paces back in mind, but be warned that there's probably some conflicting info because i wrote this as a warm up and didn't bother rereading my fic LOLLL (i'm the worst)

---

It was painful—trying to get his attention. She’d tried everything that she could possibly think of: prying about his family, his training and qualifications, even once bringing up war strategy to see if it interested him. At times, he’d slipped. Once, he’d told her about his younger sister, Aryll, and how similarly she looked to their late mother. Another time, he’d briefly mentioned his arduous training at the military camp. Yet, after each slip, he’d immediately clammed up and ignored any further questions. She’d been faced with that silent, stoic guard once more.

More than feeling irritated about it, Zelda found her interest in him agonizingly growing. 

He was handsome, she thought, in an unfair sort of way. Where Zelda had to sit in front of her vanity each morning, spending time on her appearance, he rolled out of bed and just… looked like that. She caught herself staring at him sometimes, standing guard in the corner of her study, looking all toned muscle and soft jaw and beautiful hair. He had an easy-going voice, the kind you wanted to hear: soft and quiet, but with the slightest edge that made her breath catch. She could have begged him to talk more—wanted his companionship—and yet he would not give it.

One night, she got desperate. 

It was a classic trick, written about in countless stories she’d read and often witnessed firsthand at large gatherings. A ring or a handkerchief dropped, a fan conveniently left behind. She’d chosen something more obscure, smaller, easier to deny if asked: a single sapphire hairpin from the updo she’d requested that morning. She hadn’t been sure if he’d even recognize it as hers—did he even look at her?—but she’d left it in the hallway regardless. Part of her had felt hopeful in that moment, the other part had felt dread.

It was only a few minutes later, Zelda standing frozen behind her door, when he’d knocked. She’d opened it instantly, thoughtlessly.

“Your Highness,” he’d said, immediately dropping into a bow. “Did… Did you drop this?”

In his left hand, gleaming in the golden light of her blazing fireplace, was her sapphire hairpin. He’d held it out for her to take. 

“Yes, I must have,” she’d said softly, retrieving it from his hand. It was one of few times they’d ever stood so close, face-to-face, and she’d found herself searching his eyes. He’d stared right back, letting her look. 

The thought that he’d known it was hers, that he’d acknowledged her, the longing look in his eyes, the very sound of his voice… It was all too much. Something in her heart had stirred then, and she could have sworn that he’d felt it too. His eyes had widened. He'd cleared his throat uncomfortably. A moment later and he’d looked away.

“I am glad to return it to you, Your Highness,” he’d said quietly, bowing once more. “I... should return to my post now.” 

“Of course.” She’d watched him leave, a shy smile slowly forming on her face.

[four-alligators-in-a-trenchcoat]

Transitioning to a Flip Phone: Beginning

As my semester started winding down, and finals started ranking up I found myself going back to the ever-present though of transitioning to a flip phone. I finally did it! Here is how it is going. I had done tons of research about transitioning to a flip phone months before hand, I didn't have many requirements like needing WhatsApp or any particular apps as I had access to my computer for specific things such as banking and schoolwork. I ended up going with the Sunbeam Bluebird for a couple reasons, despite its price. (also I just wrote it off as a reward for completing my semester lol)

Accessibility: I knew I wanted a T9 flip phone, a QRTY keyboard would have never worked for me at a flip phone size, woe to my fine motor skills. Voice-to-text is an option if you pay for the subscription (I do) and so although I try to exclusively type as a way to get proficient, longer more urgent texts can be sent quickly. Its very accurate as well! Restrictions: No social media! No googling! No videos! Nothing! Its all I have ever wanted from a flip phone, restriction wise. Instagram reels is/was such an addiction for me, and even with time-limits, greyscale, and just un-downloading it, I always came back to scroll. I was debating on whether or not I wanted a search engine, because although I love to google all the random questions I have, I also will absolutely read on AO3 for as much time as I can possibly allocate to that. Although I am not a huge fan of reading FF on the laptop, its a small workaround for the benefits im seeing. On the case of music: Spotify, I REALLY wanted to keep this as an app, but knew that with what I was looking for I would need to take that loss. I can download music onto the phone through an SD card, and it still has bluetooth which means I am still able to use my noise-cancelling headphones. Additionally, I mainly listen to music while im studying, which means I can just listen through my laptop; and I dont mind driving in silence. Basic Qualifications: Number one, navigation, Im in an area where the construction is crazy and I cant always rely on road signs. I live out in the country, so I havent needed or had the chance to memorize anything other than my usual routes and highways. Luckily, the Bluebird has Waze (which I had never used before) but it works really well! I will need to find a way to attach it to my dash so I'm not looking down at my lap though... I mentioned bluetooth in restrictions, but it was important to me that I could connect my QuiteComfort Bose headphones, especially being on a loud college campus and needing some peace and quiet to study properly.

The transitionary phase was incredibly easy, I have an AT&T phone plan and I just switched my SIM card from my iPhone to my Bluebird. Boom. Done. I imported my contacts with a MicroSD card which was equally as efficient. I can still access and use Messages on my MacBook, but they don't sync to my flip phone. All messages go through to the device I last messaged on. I did have to manually set up my voicemail, but that didnt take much effort.

The only difficulties I have had to deal with is that both my job and my school require apps for two-factor authentication. I believe I can work around that for my school, and get authentication codes by text message, but for my work I don't have that option. This is a big reason why I am considering keeping my iPhone useable, just without a SIM.

On the note of what I am going to do with my iPhone, for right now it is being kept charged and usable, because I'm still transitioning some of the information (like menstrual trackers) and the mentioned need for TFA. Another PRO about the Bluebird is that it does have hotspot capabilities, so Im assuming I would be able to connect my iPhone if I was ever out in the wild and needed to use it, assuming of course that I had taken my iPhone with me.

Day 3 Final Overview:

I have gotten quicker at typing on the T9 predictive keyboard and feel confident responding to messages without using text-to-speech. I also figured out how to attach media to my messages, which means everybody is receiving grainy low-quality pictures of my cats. Im finding that I have so much extra time to do things during the day. Where keeping up with household chores sometimes gets overwhelming by becoming a huge task to schedule into my day, I can do smaller things during downtime. Reheating some food for lunch? Five minuets in the toaster? Boom, I can clean off the counters, sweep the floor, and pick up a little as I wait. That makes such a huge impact on my day-to-day especially compared to the 40 reels I could have seen and than totally forgotten. I learned how to change the ring-tones for my contacts and notifications. There is a 'wolf howling' option that has been dedicated to my friends, of course. The little jingle of my phone can only mean that someone has texted me, so I'm less paranoid about notifications and the urge to pick up my phone whenever I see the screen light up. That was such a huge distraction in my day, picking up my iPhone to check my notifications quickly turned into a 'quick scroll' through Pinterest (my beloved) or Instagram, which was constantly detrimental to my studies. In overview, I'm having a good time and I'm excited to stick with it, especially as winter break approaches (TWO MORE FINALS LEFT LETS GO) and I have a ton of free time I would have spent on my phone. I'm excited to start reading more!

[jeannereames]

I see you talk a lot about historiography! What would you consider the most important development of Alexander’s historiography?

What the Hell is Historiography? (And why you should care)

This question and the next one in the queue are both going to be fun for me. 😊

First, some quick definitions for those who are new to me and/or new to reading history:

Historiography = “the history of the histories” (E.g., examination of the sources themselves rather than the subject of them…a topic that typically incites yawns among undergrads but really fires up the rest of us, ha.)

primary sources = the evidence itself—can be texts, art, records, or material evidence. For ancient history, this specifically means the evidence from the time being studied.

secondary sources = writings by historians using the primary evidence, whether meant for a “regular” audience (non-specialists) or academic discussions with citations, footnotes, and bibliography (sometimes referred to as “full scholarly apparatus”).

For ancient history, we also sometimes get a weird middle category…they’re not modern sources but also not from the time under discussion, might even be from centuries after the fact. Consider the medieval Byzantine “encyclopedia” called the Suda (sometimes Suidas), which contains information from now lost ancient sources, finalized c. 900s CE. To give a comparison, imagine some historian a thousand years from now studying Geoffry Chaucer from the 1300s, using an entry about him in some kid’s 1975 World Book Encyclopedia that contains information that had been lost by his day.

This middle category is especially important for Alexander, since even our primary sources all date hundreds of years after his death. Yes, those writers had access to contemporary accounts, but they didn’t just “cut-and-paste.” They editorialized and selected from an array of accounts. Worse, they rarely tell us who they used. FIVE surviving primary Alexander histories remain, but he’s mentioned in a wide (and I do mean wide) array of other surviving texts. Alas this represents maybe a quarter of what was actually written about him in antiquity.

OKAY, so …

The most important historiographic changes in Alexander studies!

I’m going to pick three, or really two-and-a-half, as the last is an extension of the second.

FIRST …decentering Arrian as the “good” source as opposed to the so-called “vulgate” of Diodoros-Curtius-Justin as “bad” sources.

Many earlier Alexander historians (with a few important exceptions [Fritz Schachermeyr]) considered Arrian to be trustworthy, Plutarch moderately trustworthy if short, and the rest varying degrees of junk. W. W. Tarn was especially guilty of this. The prevalence of his view over Schachermeyr’s more negative one owed to his popularity/ease of reading, and the fact he wrote on Alexander for volume 6 of the first edition (1927) of the Cambridge Ancient History, later republished in two volumes with additions (largely in vol. 2) in 1948 and 1956. Thus, and despite being a lawyer (barrister) not a professional historian, his view dominated Alexander studies in the first half of the 20th century (Burn, Rose, etc.)…and even after. Both Mary Renault and Robin Lane Fox (neither of whom were/are professional historians either), as well as N. G. L. Hammond (with qualifications), show Tarn’s more romantic impact well into the middle of the second half of the 20th century. But you could find it in high school and college textbooks into the 1980s.

The first really big shift (especially in English) came with a pair of articles in 1958 by Ernst Badian: “The Eunuch Bagoas,” Classical Quarterly 8, and “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia 7. Both demolished Tarn’s historiography. I’ve talked about especially the first before, but it really WAS that monumental, and ushered in a more source-critical approach to Alexander studies. This also happened to coincide with a shift to a more negative portrait of the conqueror in work from the aforementioned Schachermeyr (reissuing his earlier biography in 1973 as Alexander der Grosse: Das Problem seiner Persönlichtenkeit und seines Wirkens) to Peter Green’s original Alexander of Macedon from Praeger in 1970, reissued in 1991 from Univ. of California-Berkeley. J. R. Hamilton’s 1973 Alexander the Great wasn’t as hostile, but A. B. Bosworth’s 1988 Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great turned back towards a more negative, or at least ambivalent portrait, and his Alexander in the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (1996) was highly critical. I note the latter two, as Bosworth wrote the section on Alexander for the much-revised Cambridge Ancient History vol. 6, 1994, which really demonstrates how the narrative on Alexander had changed.

All this led to an unfortunate kick-back among Alexander fans who wanted their hero Alexander. They clung/still cling to Arrian (and Plutarch) as “good,” and the rest as varying degrees of bad. Some prefer Tarn’s view of the mighty conqueror/World unifier/Brotherhood-of-Mankind proponent, including that He Absolutely Could Not Have Been Queer. Conversely, others are all over the romance of him and Hephaistion, or Bagoas (often owing to Renault or Renault-via-Oliver Stone), but still like the squeaky-nice-chivalrous Alexander of Plutarch and Arrian.

They are very much still around. Quite a few of the former group freaked out over the recent Netflix thing, trotting out Plutarch (and Arrian) to Prove He Wasn’t Queer, and dismissing anything in, say, Curtius or Diodoros as “junk” history. But I also run into it on the other side, with those who get really caught up in all the romance and can’t stand the idea of a vicious Alexander.

It's not necessary to agree with Badian’s (or Green’s or Schachermeyr’s) highly negative Alexander to recognize the importance of looking at all the sources more carefully. Justin is unusually problematic, but each of the other four had a method, and a rationale. And weaknesses. Yes, even Arrian. Arrian clearly trusted Ptolemy to a degree Curtius didn’t. For both of them, it centered on the fact he was a king. I’m going to go with Curtius on this one, frankly.

Alexander is one of the most malleable famous figures in history. He’s portrayed more ways than you can shake a stick at—positive, negative, in-between—and used for political and moral messaging from even before his death in Babylon right up to modern Tik-Tok vids.

He might have been annoyed that Julius Caesar is better known than he is, in the West, but hands-down, he’s better known worldwide thanks to the Alexander Romance in its many permutations. And he, more than Caesar, gets replicated in other semi-mythical heroes. (Arthur, anybody?)

Alfred Heuss referred to him as a wineskin (or bottle)—schlauch, in German—into which subsequent generations poured their own ideas. (“Alexander  der  Große  und  die politische Ideologie  des Altertums,” Antike und Abendland 4, 1954.) If that might be overstating it a bit, he’s not wrong.

Who Alexander was thus depends heavily on who was (and is) writing about him.

And that’s why nuanced historiography with regard to the Alexander sources is so important. It’s also why there will never be a pop presentation that doesn’t infuriate at least a portion of his fanbase. That fanbase can’t agree on who he was because the sources that tell them about him couldn’t agree either.

SECOND …scholarship has moved away from an attempt to find the “real” Alexander towards understanding the stories inside our surviving histories and their themes. A biography of Alexander is next to impossible (although it doesn’t stop most of us from trying, ha). It’s more like a “search” for Alexander, and any decent history of his career will begin with the sources. And their problems.

This also extends to events. I find myself falling in the middle between some of my colleagues who genuinely believe we can get back to “what happened,” and those who sorta throw up their hands and settle on “what story the sources are telling us, and why.” Classic Libra. 😉

As frustrating as it may sound, I’m afraid “it depends” is the order of the day, or of the instance, at least. Some things are easier to get back to than others, and we must be ready to acknowledge that even things reported in several sources may not have happened at all. Or at least, were quite radically different from how it was later reported. (Thinking of proskynesis here.) Sometimes our sources are simply irreconcilable…and we should let them be. (Thinking of the Battle of Granikos here.)

THIRD/SECOND-AND-A-HALF …a growing awareness of just how much Roman-era attitudes overlay and muddy our sources, even those writing in Greek. It would be SO nice to have just one Hellenistic-era history. I’d even take Kleitarchos! But I’d love Marsyas, or Ptolemy. Why? Both were Macedonians. Even our surviving philhellenic authors such as Plutarch impose Greek readings and morals on Macedonian society.

So, let’s add Roman views on top of Greek views on top of Macedonian realities in a period of extremely fast mutation (Philip and Alexander both). What a muddle! In fact, one of the real advantages of a source such as Curtius is that his sources seem to have known a thing or three about both Achaemenid Persia and also Macedonian custom. He sometimes says something like, “Macedonian custom was….” We don’t know if he’s right, but it’s not something we find much in other histories—even Arrian who used Ptolemy. (Curtius may also have used Ptolemy, btw.)

In any case, as a result of more care given to the themes of the historians, a growing sensitivity to Roman milieu for all of them has altered our perceptions of our sources.

These are, to me, the major and most significant shifts in Alexander historiography from the late 1800s to the early 2100s.

[vodika-vibes]

Convenient

Summary: Now that the war is over, you should leave Kamino. But, well, Kamino is just so damn convenient for you. And Alpha-17 has some questions.

Pairing: Alpha-17 x Reader

Word Count: 1823

Warnings: Suggestive

A/N: I'm in a Fox mood, but I can't think of an idea for Fox, so I wrote for Alpha-17 instead.

Divider by saradika

You hate Kamino.

You had the hospital white walls, and the way it always smells like antiseptic and soap. And you really hate how the Kaminoans look at you like you’re somehow lesser than them.

As if you’ve ever been lesser than anyone a day in your life!

Still, you are very well paid for your services, and Kamino does not have extradition treaties with Republic planets, which is the whole reason that you agreed to take the job in the first place.

You are a thief. Well…a con-artist, really. And you are very, very good at what you do. The Kaminoans don’t know that…though you’re fairly sure that Master Ti at least suspects that you’re not what you claim you are.

Which is categorically untrue. You started your career as a Hacker, after all. Which makes you more than qualified to teach. Well, sort of. Technically your qualifications are all fake, but you’re the only person who knows that.

But now the war is over, and technically you can leave Kamino, and the judgemental Kaminoans, and the even more judgemental Jedi…but you don’t want to. 

Partly because Kamino still doesn’t offer extradition to Republic planets, but mostly because you’ve become attached to your kids, and you don’t want to leave them.

But right now you aren’t working.

Right now you’re sitting in a communal kitchen, curled up on the one comfortable couch, with your gaze focused on a datapad.

The young Queen of Naboo is throwing a gala in two months and there’s going to be a stunning dagger on display and you want it. Conning someone from half a galaxy away isn’t that hard, really. Not so long as you prepare.

You don’t even look up when you hear someone enter the room.

“You do know that you have a room, right?”

“Oh, is that what that room is? I hadn’t realized.” You reply lightly as you type a few more things, and then turn off your datapad as your plan goes into motion.

“What are you doing anyway?” You look up at Alpha-17, who watches you from the corner of his eye as he makes some more caf.

“A lady never reveals her secrets, Alpha.” You reply lightly, as you adjust on the couch and watch him with a secretive little smile.

Alpha-17 is one of the oldest clones. He also has the honor of being the most dangerous man on Kamino, and the most stubborn man you’ve ever met in your life. And you’ve met a lot of stubborn men over the years.

He watches you, all the time, and he’s not subtle about it at all. Likely because he believes you’re a threat to his brothers.

You respect that about him. Grudgingly, at first, and genuinely as time passed.

And, over the years, that respect has grown into a genuine attraction.  

He turns to look at you, “A lady, huh? Didn’t know there were any ladies on Kamino.”

“Then you must not be looking all that hard,” You reply as you smoothly untuck your legs and stretch them out in front of you, “After all, Shaak Ti and myself can hardly be compared to the…hm…thugs that made up the cuy’val dar, no?”

You smother a grin when you notice his gaze drag down your legs, and then back up to your face, “Well,” he says roughly, “General Ti isn’t a thug.”

“Oh Alpha,” You practically purr out his name, and you feel a surge of triumph as his gaze snaps to your lips, “I’m hurt.”

“You’ll get over it,” He counters, “You don’t look that upset. In fact, you look downright thrilled.”

“Well, I do enjoy talking to you, Alpha. No one else gives me the time of day. Except, of course, for my babies.” A fond smile crosses your face as you think of the dozen or so boys who lovingly call you mom.

“Maybe they’d be more willing to talk to you if you didn’t call them thugs,” Alpha offers sarcastically, as he walks over to you and stands close. Close enough to be uncomfortable if you were any other person.

“They are thugs.” You reply blithely.

“And that’s why no one here likes you,” He says.

“Hm…including you?” You ask as you smoothly push to your feet, allowing yourself right into Alpha’s personal space. 

And Alpha, who’s never backed down from anyone in his life, merely raises a single brow. “Why do you care if I like you or not?” He asks.

“Well, we are co-parenting, dear.”

He takes a sharp inhale, and you don’t even bother to hide your amused smile, “We’re not co-parenting.” He says after a moment.

“Agree to disagree then.” You say lightly, and then you gently tap his arm, “Excuse me.”

He moves to the side, allowing you to pass, but before you can make it to the sink, and grabs your wrist and spins you around fast enough that you’re off balance, “What are you working on, mesh’la?”

“Just a game, Captain,” You say to him, completely unafraid even though it would be so easy for him to hurt you, “No need for you to fret.”

His grip around your wrist tightens slightly, “General Ti doesn’t trust you. She says that you’re planning something.”

“I’ve been on Kamino, training those boys, since before she even knew Kamino existed.” You counter, “And I have never done anything to harm those boys.”

He raises an eyebrow, “You don’t deny you’re planning something.”

“I have lots of plans, darling.” You reply, your voice a whisper, “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Tell me your plans.”

“Hm…” You flash a sly smile, “I have a twelve step plan based solely around getting you into my bed.”

His grip around your wrist loosens slightly, “You’re lying.” Alpha says with narrowed eyes.

“Am I?” You lean closer to him, until you’re pressed against the hard plastoid of his armor, “You’re not a dumb man, Alpha. And you’re not unobservant.”

His lips press into a thin line for a moment, “Fine. You’re not lying. But you’re not completely telling the truth either.”

You hum quietly, “Well, full disclosure, when I applied for the job it was…convenient.” 

“Convenient?”

“Mm.” You hum your agreement, “Convenient.”

“In what way?” Alpha demands.

You hum thoughtfully, and then you grin, “That’s a secret, I’m afraid. But, you can go and tell General Ti that my only plans involve seducing you.”

“You think she sent me to interrogate you?” Alpha asks.

“Oh Alpha, of course she did.” You say with a laugh, “Now…since you don’t want me in here, I suppose I’ll just have to return to my room.” You lightly tap his hand, and he releases your wrist. You favor him with a warm smile as you back out of the room.

The walk back to your room takes ten minutes. And you manage to get the door open, and then shut, and your datapad plugged in, before there’s a knock on the door.

You open the door and don’t even bother to hide your amusement at seeing Alpha-17 on the other side. “Is there something else General Ti needs from me?” You ask lightly.

Something dangerous slides across Alpha’s face and he steps into your room. He reaches out and shuts the door with a hit of the door panel. “So far as I’m aware, she doesn’t know I’m here.” 

“She’s aware of where you are, Alpha. She’s a Jedi.”

He scoffs, and his deft fingers start stripping his armor off, his gaze locked on yours, “I find myself very interested in this seduction plan of yours,” He said, his voice a low rumble, “But I’m also not half patient enough to wait for you to put your plan into play.”

You quirk a single brow, “Is that right?” You ask as you watch him strip his armor off and set it next to the door.

“It is right.” Once his armor was neatly stacked next to the door, he advances on you, “So you’re going to tell me about why Kamino is convenient, and then I am going to claim you as mine.”

“What if I don’t want to be claimed?” You ask.

His hands settle on your hips, and then slide down to your thighs, and you squeak when he lifts you effortlessly, “I think you’ll find that I can be very convincing, cyar’ika.” He says once he encourages you to hook your legs around his waist.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” You agree with a laugh.

He walks you across the room, to the bed, and he settles you in the middle of the bed, and then he settles himself over you, using his hips to pin you in place. “So,” he says lightly, as he lightly grips your wrists and pins them next to your head, “Why Kamino?” Alpha asks as he presses his face into your neck and presses a hot kiss against your pulse.

You jolt at the kiss, and then again when you feel him nipping the same spot, “Uh…maybe I like the rain.”

He hums against your skin, and his lips trail down to the juncture of your neck and shoulder, where he kisses, and then bites down just hard enough to leave an obvious mark, “Try again, cyare.”

You whine as he moves his lips again, and bites down a third time, “Kamino doesn’t extradite anywhere.” You say through a quiet moan.

You feel him grin against your skin, “That’s an interesting thing for you to worry about.” He growls as he moves his lips to your throat.

You let out a breathless laugh, “I’m a con-artist, Alpha. A con-artist and an art thief. And I really don't want to go to jail.”

He pauses, and pulls back to look at you, “I’ve seen how you train the cadets, mesh’la. Are you telling me you’re a thief and a tech wiz?”

“I started out as a slicer and decided to evolve into something more challenging.” You admit with a sheepish grin.

“So your credentials?”

“All fake.”

Alpha stares at you, and then he laughs, and crashes his lips against yours, “Good to know.” He mumbles against your lips, “But I can’t seem to bring myself to care.”

You laugh quietly, “If I knew that all I needed to do to get you in my bed is tell you that I wanted you there-” You tease lightly.

His eyes glimmer with mischief as he sits up a little. And then he slowly drags your hands over your head, and pins them in place with one hand, and he uses his newly free hand to start peeling your clothes off. “I’m going to strip your clothes off, and then I’m going to unmake you three or four times before I claim you as my own.” He promises, and then he kisses you.

You grin into the kiss. Alpha always keeps his promises, after all.

[balrogballs]

I’m new to the Ballhive but I’ve been a big fan your writing all year so I’m sorry if you already answered but 2 questions. 1) I am in love with your descriptive prose, it never fails to give me a physical reaction and I often reread your stories just to feel it again. Can I ask advice on how to write descriptions that give an emotional impact because when I try it becomes ‘purple’ but you avoid that and go for the jugular. 2) Do you really by Dr. Balls or should I call you something else?

NOT THE FUCKING BALLHIVE i have been on this website for two goddamn months 😭 answer under the cut

1. I think I know what you mean re: emotive descriptions but tbh I’m not really qualified to give advice, I did not do an MFA or have any writing qualifications pre book… and really fanfic is just stuff I do for fun so I try not to think too technically about it. However, happy to share my way of going about it if that may help?

My approach — and again this is tailored to my own style and isn’t at all a prescriptive — is to come at the description as feeling-first, rather than image-first. So essentially I write the scene viewing whatever image I’m describing through the lens of the feeling I want it to convey. As an example here’s a bit from my latest —

In a sense, the story of Formenos was no different from the story of the Fëanorians — closeness tempered by circumstance, violence etched by loss, a crumbling, ominous ruin visible only in high-wind and lightning-stuck storms. But the building that glitters before them is not Formenos, the towering, impenetrable fortress with a threshold soaked in their grandfather's blood and a watchtower rising to the sky.

This house has pale-cream walls and robins-egg minarets, the grass around it tall enough to come up to elfling-twins' freckled shoulders, a row of seven windows tall enough that climbing isn't a temptation and low enough to the ground where if someone did end up climbing, the fall would not be so grievous. It is something Mandos-wrought, either miracle or mirage. It is their home in Tirion, stuck atop the ground upon which Formenos once sat, the songs of Fëanor and Nerdanel and their seven sons bouncing off its walls, growing fainter with each passing year. It is another story, no different from the story of the Fëanorians.

Essentially I knew what I wanted to convey — the idea that both ‘stories’ of the Fëanorians are part of a whole - counterparts. And to convey that two-sides narrative through a description of the buildings, I wrote Formenos through the lens of its position in the world at large, as a fortress viewed from a distance, very much battered by the environment. The house in Tirion is then written through the lens of a ‘family house’, and the descriptions match that — grass measured against elfling shoulders, house layouts described through childhood bedroom windows, etc.

I think I’m explaining this really badly (again, no formal expertise on my end — my academic background is in area studies, not creative writing) but I guess my go-to is to always think of anything I describe as a character in itself, and any description as being something said character feels. So if I wouldn’t give a My Immortal style “purple eyes, pale face, dark hair” description to a character, I’d not do that to the environment.

Hope this makes sense!

2. LMFAOOO yes I do just go by Balls here, I initially considered making up a nickname but people just started calling me Balls and frankly I find it very endearing so yes go ahead and call me that 💀💀💀

[juana-the-iguana]

Navigating media during war

Here are some tips to navigate the conflict without a paid subscription. Disclaimer, I am based in the United States and this advice is for people in the US. These tips may apply for all wars, but I wrote this with the Israel-Hamas conflict in mind.

My qualifications: I am a reporter who has worked on both local, state, national and international stories. I have covered breaking news, and have done enterprising news and investigative journalism. I will graduate with a MA in Journalism in a month. 

Reasons to question my authority: I have less than five year of professional experience. I have never reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or anywhere else in the Middle East. I speak neither modern Hebrew nor Arabic. 

Moving on:

The best tip I can give you is pick a few good news sources and wait two days after any given event or incident before claiming to understand what happened.

In the United States, our news industry is incentivized toward breaking news, which means that organizations sometimes air information without having time to thoroughly fact check it. This becomes especially evident in times of war, when it is hard to obtain information and even on-the-ground reporters don't have the full picture of what's happening.

You are not going to find a perfect news organization. They're all going to fuck up in some capacity. If you have a strong stance on this issue, you're going to be more sensitive to those mistakes and real or perceived biases. (And, for the record, it is possible for one organization to hold multiple biases depending on the time of day, presenter and facet of the war being discussed.) That's why it is genuinely important to consume multiple news sources.

So if you're wondering why I chose these sources it's because a) they're free, b) they issue corrections when they're wrong and c) they do not engage in disinformation.

In no particular order: BBC, Reuters, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, AP. You should not rely on only one of these. You should fact-check these against bias sources that don't outright lie. 

Now onto the sources you should avoid. Let's get into disinformation: What is it? 

Disinformation is the intentional spreading of false information. It's lying. Misinformation is inaccurate information that is spread around, but not done with malice.

All news organizations have misinformation at some point. You should NEVER trust a news organization that engages in disinformation, about anything, unless several years have passed, the people responsible for the disinformation have been thoroughly purged from the group and they cite every goddamn thing they said.

The two big organizations I recommend avoiding because they engage in disinformation are Fox News and Al Jazeera.

Fox News lied about the 2020 election in the United States and actively contributed to an attempted insurrection. Al Jazeera is an arm of the Qatari state and has lied repeatedly about, well, just about everything of interest to the Qatari government, but especially Israel. They have made several highly consequential lies in this ongoing conflict that have had tangible, catastrophic consequences on the entire globe. 

Advocacy groups are not news outlets.

Also, don't trust terrorist organizations. Yes, the UN, WHO, Amnesty International and pretty much every NGO under the sun and the vast majority of news organizations cite them, but that's not because they're reliable, it's because they're the only group releasing information from Gaza.

You shouldn't take the IDF at face value either, but if what the IDF is saying is verified by the US, EU and/or other reliable, third parties, then that information is probably true. 

No news source is perfect. That's just a fact. I cannot stress the importance of looking at multiple sources.

Here are some things to look out for when watching/reading the news.

- If a news source is attributing facts to two different sources, ask yourself, "why?" Information is hard to come by. Sometimes one source doesn't report everything you want to know. But sometimes you know your source is unreliable, you don't have any alternatives, so you want to distance yourself from that. What does this look like? 

You might see people cite two sources to report death counts in Gaza: the Palestinian Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, and Save the Children which analyzes information about the number of children killed. Save the Children gets the estimated number of deaths from Hamas. 

- Does it make sense to have this information at this time? If there was an explosion and a government states that 500 people died in it, well, how much time did it take them to count those bodies? Does that sound feasible?

- When you're listening to eye-witness interviews, do their perspectives or narratives match up with the physical scenes you are seeing? They might not be lying, it could be a miscommunication, but for the context it is presented in, it might not be accurate.

Language to look out for:

Occupation, blockade, siege, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, ethnic cleansing, legitimate military targets and apartheid are all distinct things. All of them, with the exception of apartheid, have specific legal definitions. If people are using these things interchangeably, maybe they're sharing opinions. That doesn't mean that what they're saying isn't valuable, but it does mean that you probably shouldn't cite them when debating international law.

Now let's elaborate on "occupation" for a second. Egypt occupied Gaza from 1949 to 1967. Then Israel occupied Gaza until 2005. In 2007 Israel started the blockade on Gaza and last month, after the 10/7 massacre, they started a siege. As noted above, these are distinct things.

If people are talking about occupation or settlements in the context of this conflict it means either one of four things:

- They are talking about the West Bank, which is under occupation and where settlements do exist

- They are talking about the history of Gaza pre 2005

- They do not know that Gaza isn't under occupation and that there are no longer settlements there (which means that they are not an informed source)

- Or they assume the entire Israeli state is occupying Palestine which, whether you like it or not, is not factually or correct

Just because something feels wrong doesn't mean it is illegal. Occupations, blockades, sieges, the use of white phosphorous and bombing areas where you know there are civilians are all legal in certain contexts. 

Legality might not matter to you personally, but when you're watching the news and trying to assess who is sharing facts and who is sharing opinions, you should keep this in mind.

Other notes:

- Rockets need fuel. Ventilation systems in tunnels need fuel. 

- Movies and tv shows are filmed in Gaza and the West Bank. If you see a photo of someone in a body bag texting or women laughing while painting a baby doll red, it might be a behind-the-scenes video from one of those things.

- There are a lot of AI generated pictures being used, especially in propaganda. Count fingers, arms, legs and look at backgrounds to see if what you are seeing makes sense. But for the love of god, if you don't like something, that doesn't mean it's AI.

- There are a lot of photos circulating from past wars. Be careful before you reblog. Reverse Google image search is your friend. 

- If you are not sure if something is real or not, wait a week. If the US, EU and dozens of journalists say it is true, believe it.

Finally, social media. When is it appropriate to use social media for news?

News aggregates are usually okay. I'm talking places like r/worldnews. They are pulling from other news organizations, so they can repeat those flaws, but they give you a mix of headlines from multiple sources. And they'll very often post large parts, if not the entirety, of articles from sources from the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal that have paywalls in the comments. But also beware the comments because they can be disgusting.

Social media is also very good for sharing the individual human experience. The issue with that is that you can't always vet the person on camera or being spoken about, so they could be lying, spreading misinformation and it isn't the whole picture. 

This needs to be said again and again: social media dehumanizes people. You know this, but you will fall victim to it anyway. Your algorithm will do its best to show you the best versions of the people and groups you like, and the worst versions of the people and groups you don't like to make you feel justified in adopting dehumanizing beliefs. 

For anyone interested, I'm going to update the list of news sources I think are trustworthy in the next few days. I've found a few small, independent and/or foreign outlets that use open source intelligence (OSINT) in their reporting and they seem pretty reliable to me, but I want to vet them a bit further.

EDITED: Removed the name of a news organization that I previously said I thought was reliable. They did not issue a correction after uncritically repeating Hamas's lie that the al-Ahli hospital parking lot bombing was an Israeli airstrike that killed 500 people, and spent days repeating these false claims as if they were fact.

[areyougonnabe]

I'm nearly 150 pages into Worst Journey and Priestly keeps showing up and he is telling me so many interesting things but I'm still not sure what his Job is on this expedition all Cherry's told me is that he A) wrote a book and B) served with Shackleton and I have discerned that he Takes Photographs which is Important!!! But I am wondering if he is also perhaps. A geologist or something? PLEASE HELP.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT SWEET BABY RAY

this stylish dude began his polar career when he was chosen to go on shackleton's nimrod expedition in 1907. he was a geology student at bristol university at the time, only two years into his degree at age 20 and without any qualifications to speak of. shackleton asked him two questions in the interview (“Would you know gold if you saw it?” “Can you play a musical instrument?”) and then he was hired!

he mainly was like... the Young Man of the expedition (alongside brocklehurst who was his age but brocklehurst's role was the Rich Kid) ... the most notable incident was when he slept outside a tent during a blizzard on mount erebus (bc there wasn't room for him inside 😭), got pushed down the hill by the wind in his sleeping bag and nearly died. but he was ok!!! didn't even lose any toes!!! unlike that loser PHIL

(bb priestley on nimrod. early in his baldness journey)

there were two other qualified geologists brought along on the expedition, Edgeworth David and Douglas Mawson, who he learned a lot from, and after the expedition he spent time in Sydney cataloguing and studying the Antarctic samples underneath Professor David. this led to him getting picked right back up by Scott again when one of the Terra Nova's geologists dropped out due to tuberculosis and he asked David who he should take instead.

he wasn't part of the main cape evans party on scott's expedition but was instead the geologist for the Eastern Party, which became the Northern Party and ended up having a ludicrously bad time, trapped in a tiny ice cave for six months. (for more about that check out The Longest Winter!!)

but they rescued their own asses and ended up all getting out OK. while waiting to get picked up by the ship, priestley and debenham hung out at shackleton's cape royds hut (where priestley had lived back in the day) and sketched out the plans for what would eventually become the SPRI!!!

after the expedition, all the scientists went home to england and hung out at priestley's family home in tewkesbury while working on their scientific results. this had the hilarious consequence of two of his sisters getting married to his expedition friends (Doris to Griffith Taylor and Edith to Charles Wright). and deb missed out somehow... tough luck bro.......

(baldness journey well advanced. he is transforming into mark gatiss)

aaaand after that a lot of stuff happened.. like the war.... he got a degree in agriculture (?) then helped deb and wordie found the SPRI, and eventually became a career university administrator. he was very active in lecturing about the antarctic throughout his whole life! and even went back as a tour guide for prince philip in the 50s lmao

in conclusion: priestley you have to stop. you smoke too tough. your swag too different. your bitch is too bad. they'll kill you

[hornyhermitry]

Professional translations & public witch hunts

For starters: If you think "TL;DR, who cares, I ain't reading all that" and are incapable of processing words for a prolonged amount of time beyond 240 character clickbait, you are not entitled to an opinion on translation to begin with.

I will take sufficient time for this one.

General:

In recent weeks I've repeatedly had the misfortune of coming across public harassment and incited hate mobs towards Jujutsu Kaisen's manga translator.

There's hordes of anti-social harassers pushing for someone to get fired from a professional job - in which he works because he is equipped with the necessary qualifications - purely due to disliking occasional translation choices in a comic.

This behavior has reached levels of exaggeration and reality disconnect, it'd be funny if it wasn't so sad due to a real person's livelihood being attacked.

This is not normal and tolerable behavior. It is equal to drumming up a hate mob in front of a café and threatening some employee inside, throwing rocks at the window and demanding for a barista to get fired because you didn't like the coffee beans they chose, or sure, maybe because they put actual sugar instead of sweetener into your coffee.

This is not a normal and acceptable way to behave.

If you think it is, there is something deeply wrong with your perception of society and what's respectful conduct towards another human being. When you encounter another person, you act respectfully at the very least. Kind, ideally.

Feel free to imagine yourself at work, making a mistake and thousands of people starting to call, email, shitpost online and harass you over it, dragging you publicly, shouting on the parking lot for you to be fired. Please reflect on yourself.

Now:

This dude does comic translations.

He did not authorize biochemical weapons in a war. He did not pass a law to deport all migrants and close the borders. He did not accidentally kill someone during a surgery. He did not hack & rob the annual employee bonus' account.

He wrote a word you don't like in a comic.

Planet Earth to Werry hater: Please come back down to reality and dial it back a few notches. This is a non-issue. Whether he makes mistakes or not, this level of hate and harassment is ENTIRELY out of pocket.

Moving on to translations.

Translations/criticizing translations:

Opinions on translations are like assholes - everyone got one. But that doesn't mean you need to pull them out in public. And especially not that you have to shit into random people's lives with them.

I've been reading manga and playing games in private for 27 years. I speak 4 Western languages and A2.2 Japanese. I've been working in the international entertainment industry with a focus on Asian to Western markets for over a decade, including Chinese, Japanese & Korean.

A lot of my time at work is filled with liaising between East and West, internally as well as externally. In my career, I've spent a lot of years supporting and later on consulting on localization.

I know what it is like to be a fan, and I am fully aware of the work reality behind translation.

I'm also intricately aware of the difficulties one faces when interpreting (!) from a source language as abstract and contextual as Japanese to a spelled out language such as English, French, Spanish, German, etc.

You cannot do a 1:1 translation. The nature of these languages is so different, you have to decide on one of many ways to translate something. And oftentimes, the content is so vague with so few indicators, the only thing you can do is guess and hope for the best - unless you happen to hit a rare jackpot of a person who has a guide with additional info and is able to provide this within the short deadline you are left with.

Even the most basic words already illustrate this difference.

Look at the example of

元気ですか / げんきですか = Genki desu ka

Genki is an adjective, "desu ka" is a question particle similar to "is it".

Genki already has many similar variants in meaning: "lively; full of spirit; energetic; vigorous; vital; spirited"

It is commonly translated as "How are you?" but that is not what it literally means.

Since "Genki desu ka?" is commonly used after the initial greeting when meeting someone, "How are you" is the closest equivalent to it in EN, due to it's function and usual placement within a dialogue.

The literal translation would be "Energetic is it?", or "Lively is it?"

That is obviously is no proper English.

Adjusting for grammar, it could be changed to "Are you lively?" - but the "you" is already a "fictional addition" to the sentence, as the original JP has no adress like this.

And asking someone if they are "lively" is also out of place. So more changes are needed.

Further adjusted for "natural sounding" would be "Are you doing good?" which now has 2 additional made up words, to transfer the question from JP to EN - "you" and "good".

This sentence does not necessarily have to mean "Are you good/How are you?". If I tell you my aunt Emma sends her regards, and you reply "Ah. Genki desu ka?" the translation would be "Oh. How is (Emma) doing?/Is Emma doing good?" JP's grammar works without these precise indicators who is talking about whom and is highly contextual whereas - Western languages need those.

Concluding, depending on who is talking to one another, who was mentioned on a page before, etc. a simple "Genki desu ka?" can be anything from "How are you?" to "Is (Panda) doing good?".

There is no literal 1:1 translation possible. The languages are too different.

The reality of translation is unclear source material open to multiple interpretations, once you settle on an interpretation having another dozen options to decide on for the specific wording, then having to adjust that to character and spacing limitations and doing all that with little turnover time.

On top of that, official translations work with styleguides and glossaries.

There could e.g. be a kind of character bible with notes about all characters and their peculiar ways of talking and what character traits those convey and an instruction to use approach XYZ to convey that.

"Speaks in a very poetic way, very roundabout and meandering" which could e.g. lead to overhauling the literal translation to add "personality" based on that.

Going by "(O) genki desu ka?" suddenly "How are you?"for the "poetic trait" becomes "How has life been treating you?"

Again - at the end overhauled again to make room for character limits and such, so maybe it becomes "How fare you?"

This change could have been added not because this particular line offers the exact context, but it is rooted in a style instruction to work with a certain speech pattern/type for a character - since the JP indicators at another spot might not offer satisfactory EN translations, so you have to add the "personality" elsewhere.

Translations of ongoing works utilize glossaries and you cannot use new terms if there is already a term established and submitted. Else it would be a mess of e.g. Cursed Energy in Chapter 2, Jinxed Force in Chapter 25, Hex Flow in Chapter 112, Curse Power in Chapter 156, Hex Energy in Chapter 287, etc.

Even if some months or years in you think another translation would be better suited, you are obliged to keep consistency with previous mentions and cannot just change these.

This also means if you take over translation work started by someone else, you have to work with their groundwork and established rules and terms and cannot change them.

Official translations commonly aim to make a foreign work accessible to local readers. If there is a bunch of teenage characters going to school, they should be relatable to local teenagers. As a result, regional and current slang might be added to make it sound more natural whereas the JP might just have "informal" indicators but less variance in vocabulary. The goal of a translation is to make a work accessible to a whole new language audience, hence the focus lies on making it readable without a prior 8 year degree in cultural studies. Things get simplified or changed for that reason.

Usually translators for a work consult with each other what the difficulties translating are, what possible options are, and what each language will run with. These considerations take a lot of time.

Having fans work out occurences deviating from the OG and explaining the specifics behind is it AMAZING community content and something for the people passionate about a story and about learning more about a culture. But it's not needed for the average joe buying a comic at a gas station.

This kind of deep dive is fandom! Enjoy and share and get excited! Enrich each others lives and understanding of a story! It's one of the best things there is.

Finally, a translation has to be timely & approved. There are multiple people involved in this.

It is not on poor John alone to make all decisions as he fancies and send it straight to print after going rogue, but he works within the guidelines & constraints this jobs brings with it. It's his name on the page but there are a lot more people involved in the final result.

Publicly claiming things like a translator "brutally butchers" a story or "is incapable of doing a job" because in a sea of solid translations of a very vague source language, every few chapters there's a specific word deep fandom who spends all their free-time on this particular story would have translated differently, is wildly inappropriate.

Interpreting differently is not doing a wrong job.

People on social media love attention and shitstorms. You get one narcissist with a following pointing out a debatable translation in a snarky smartass way and everyone wants a piece of the smartass cake.

What I struggle with is how people who don't speak a second language & often barely speak their own language with literacy above elementary school, feel entitled to an opinion here. What makes you an expert on cross-cultural art interpretation? What makes you think your opinion holds any weight here? Oh you read a Tweet by s/o else? *clap*

What makes you think you have the right to go after another person's job for no reason other than spite and some internet gotcha over a comic?

If you really value the creation of near perfect translations that much, be the change you want to see in the world.

Learn another language. Get that degree. Get that job in animanga and do your best.

Or for a start, send a polite mail about your concerns to VIZ instead of starting a personal witch hunt for some guy doing his job.

[vague-humanoid]

Below is a transcript of the keynote speech I delivered for the 14th Conference on East-West Cross-Cultural Relations at the American University in Cairo.

How the fuck am I supposed to teach Mark Twain? 

I repeated this question as I sat on the bus traveling to campus.  It was my first time meeting classes since October 7.  I would be walking onto the same campus, but the world in which it is situated had forever changed.  Trying to separate campus from Palestine was no more viable than trying to separate Christ from the crucifix. 

Mark Twain has something to do with Palestine—he wrote about it, after all, in a way that would please Zionists a few generations later.  With a bit of imagination, everything has something to do with Palestine.  This is so because Palestine, while formally absent as a nation-state, exists as both a historical and sociological presence in the minds of people across the world.  Indeed, we affirm the reality of Palestine with every refusal to grant legitimacy to its occupier. 

Still, Twain wouldn’t cut it.  Nor would the more politically-oriented readings assigned to my other two classes.  I wanted to discuss Palestine as Palestine, without analogy, without mediation.  The beginnings of a genocide were already evident.  There’s a simple, inviolable rule about genocide:  normal life must come to a halt until it is defeated. 

What can a literary critic and college instructor do to help defeat genocide?  The obvious answer is “nothing,” but I’m not willing to concede the point so easily.  What we can do depends on how we conceptualize the scope and purpose of literary criticism.  Scholars like to call emphasis on revolutionary outcomes prescriptive, and I suppose they’re right, but certain events in the world demand a kind of vigor socialized out of us by graduate school and the job market.  I’m saying that sometimes it’s okay to be prescriptive.  Who does it help when we spend all our time slogging around in nuance and ambiguity?  What purpose does it serve other than social climbing and self-gratification?  In Palestine right now, not too far from where we’ve gathered, millions of people are being bombarded, starved, displaced, imprisoned.  I condemn it without qualification or concern for the bourgeois etiquette of higher education. 

And I can condemn it in literary criticism without sacrificing the creative touch that often makes the genre so rewarding.  Ghassan Kanafani has already shown how it can be done.  So have Toni Morrison, Robert Warrior, Raymond Williams, Viet Nguyen, Audra Simpson, James Baldwin, and Christina Sharpe.  In his book On Zionist Literature, recently translated into English, Kanafani offers a rigorous analysis of Israeli culture and society, adeptly interrogating Zionism’s discursive norms, philosophical assumptions, and ethical inconsistencies.  He fulfills all the conventional tenets of literary criticism and still manages to affirm national liberation.  There’s no contradiction.  The liberatory aspects of criticism have been suppressed by publishers, by tenure committees, by culture magazines, by scholars affiliated with the CIA—in short, by various organs of the ruling class.  National liberation isn’t considered an unacceptable methodology because of some natural, ahistorical standard of proper literary study.  The standard is political.  It was always political.  And it’s most political precisely when nonpolitics is the demand.