#i've seen a bunch of posts discussing this lately

[words-after-midnight]

Eternally confused and bewildered re: people being shocked and outraged about horror (especially contemporary, psychological & gothic subgenres) addressing dark/taboo/potentially triggering topics. It's... horror? It's supposed to tackle the distressing and horrific and uncomfortable. I genuinely don't get this.

[imaginesmai]

The orange peel theory - Azriel

I saw this post by @marvelsmylife and I thought I would give it a try! I've seen also lots of couples doing this on TikTok, so here's my take on how Azriel would do it. Hope you like it!

Plot: the spring court is beautiful, oranges are beautiful, but there's nothing more beautiful than your mate.

You loved the Spring court, you really did. Unlike Cassian, who couldn’t even get out of his room without sneezing the life out of his body, you spent your time there walking through the beautiful gardens. No matter how terrible Tamlin was, how much you despised the meetings between courts – you loved the Spring court.

All your friends and family were busy that morning, most of them in said meeting. Rhys and Feyre had been the first ones to arrive, Cassian and Azriel following close. You had woken up to an empty bed and cold sheets, your mate’s training not keeping up with your late nights reading. Still, Azriel had left you a short note and a beautiful flower.

You would have spent the morning with Nesta, but she was busy with Elain preparing the last details of her wedding with Lucien. Mor and Amren had chosen to stay in Velaris, and that left you alone in those beautiful gardens.

Time flew by each time you stopped to look at a flower or insect, as you let your body soak the warm sun through the trees. You wouldn’t have noticed the morning rolling away if it wasn’t for your stomach rumbling angrily at you. Deciding leaving the gardens was too much of an effort, you looked around for something to eat.

The meeting would end soon, but you would remain for two days more. There were enough matters to discuss that the high lords needed more than one meeting. As soon as Azriel was free, he would come looking for you – and you didn’t want to waste any time eating when you could explore the beautiful court.

So, when you spotted the orange tree, you made your decision.

It was big enough that you had to step on a bench to grab the closest orange. Once you did, you couldn’t resist grabbing some more. Big and colorful, your mouth watered just at the sight. You ended up on your tiptoes, barely keeping balance, gathering the oranges between your chest and arm.

One of them rolled out of your grasp, but before it fell, shadows gathered around it and brought it back to the group. You smiled instantly, stretching slightly to take the last orange. You felt your body gravitating forward as the tips of your fingers barely grazed it, and just before you could fall over, warm hands rounded your waist.

You were lifted the missing inch and stabilized at the same time, shadows keeping your legs upright. After taking the orange, you barely had time to look at it before you were lowered to the ground, back meeting his hard chest.

“Aren’t you a little shabby for a thief?” Azriel whispered against your ear, holding you close. “Risking your life for a bunch of oranges?”

“Oh, like you would have left me fall” you rolled your eyes, resisting the urge of squirming away when his lips brushed your cheek.

“I could have been away”

“Still”

You turned around, your arms full of oranges, and met his hazel eyes. Azriel could have been miles away, in a different country, that you were sure his shadows would have found a way of keeping you from hurt, just as they always did. You knew it, he knew it, and there was no real concern under his words, just playful banter.

Politics, territorial business and high lords were hard for him, and you could guess the outcome of the meeting in the darkness under his eyes. Still, when you looked at him, they shone a little brighter, his lips curling upwards.

His wings blocked the sun from behind, but some rays peeked through and made him look even more divine than he already was. Only a few hours away, and you already missed him.

His arms circled your waist and he lowered himself until he could kiss you softly, erasing the memories of the previous meeting. He tasted like home, like safety, and you were ready to drop your treats and wrap yourself around your mate.

Barely two seconds into the kiss, it was broken by the loud sound of your stomach reclaiming you back to your previous task. Azriel tore away with raised eyebrows, and burst into a loud laugh at your rosy cheeks.

“It’s past lunch time, don’t judge me” you looked down to your arms. “Want an orange?”

“I would love nothing more than a stolen orange”

You didn’t need words when you were with him, not as you sat on the bench you had climbed on and Azriel took the oranges from your grasp. His dark leathers were a rough contrast with your soft dress, the scars on his hands contrary to your careful touch. He didn’t flinch like he used to when you wrapped your fingers around his, only smiled softly and pressed a kiss to the back of your hand.

There was no other place you would rather be but on that bench with him, the sun and shadows creating a beautiful landscape full of flowers and colors.

Azriel took the last orange from you and easily peeled its roughness away. His nails were chipped and broken, but he managed to get the whole thing off and hand it to you in small pieces. You gladly let him put the first one in your mouth, happy with not moving a muscle away from him.

“I can do that” you raised a brow as you bit on the juicy fruit.

“And I can do it for you” he bit on the next piece, eyes dropping to your mouth.

You tried grabbing the rest of the orange from him, but he easily brushed you away. It was common for him to do that type of stuff – peeling an orange for you so your hands wouldn’t get dirty, doing your hair in the morning when you were too tired, putting food on your plate before his own.

Those little things had built a comfortable relationship during your years together. You cleaned the blood off his leather when he came back from a mission and he brought you flowers each Sunday. He folded your clothes in a neat pile to you after your bath and you helped him tie his boots when he was sore from training.

The birds chirped around you as he kept peeling oranges, handing you some pieces and eating the rest of them. You watched as he carefully removed the white striped that you always complained about, checking each piece before giving it to you.

“How was the meeting?” you tried eventually, breaking the peaceful silence.

“It was” he shrugged, plucking the last part of the peel before dividing the orange. “Tamlin growled at everything and everyone. Kallias stepped out in the middle of it. Beron and Eris”

“What of Beron and Eris?”

“They were… them”

You knew without words that Beron and Eris had been the worst part of it. Maybe, if it wasn’t for them, Azriel would enjoy the politics of those meetings. He would stand in that room with his wings wide and head high. But they always managed to find something to bring him down, to make him feel less than them. And you would have gladly punched them into the knowing they wouldn’t even get close to the man Azriel was.

Azriel didn’t elaborate the answer for a while, both of you eating quietly. Once he had peeled the fourth orange and you had refused the last part, he started plucking the crumbs from under his nails.

You hoisted your legs up to his own, and made yourself comfortable on his lap. The reaction of having your body close was instant, his muscles going lax and his shoulders dropping.

“Rhys thinks Eris will stick to his part of, you know” Azriel talked softly, as if his shadows wouldn’t inform him of any presence within twenty feet. “But when he’s with his father, with that… smile and attitude, I wish he wouldn’t. I just wish it was different”

“I know” you agreed, pressing your stained lips to his cheeks. “It will be soon”

He turned to look at you and you smiled as brightly and convincingly as you could. Working with Eris was worse than any type of meeting. Having him coming to Velaris, where your home was, and letting him know where the most precious part of him lived was hard enough. But watching him play his enemy in a room full of threats and knowing he knew those things was on a different level.

It broke your heart each time he came back from those meetings, each time his vulnerability became apparent and you could do nothing about it.

Just smile, stay by his side, and stick to the promise of not letting anything happen to any of you.

You tried changing the subject for his sake and yours, anything to make him smile again like a few minutes before. Brushing the sticky stain on his cheek, you mentioned something Nesta had talked about before.

“There is a theory, you know” you started, trying to bite the smile off your lips so he would take you seriously. “About males, and oranges, and peeling them”

“Likely a theory of one of your books” he teased, and when you didn’t confirm neither deny it, he chuckled. “Or Nesta’s. I don’t know which one is worse”

“The theory says, that if your partner peels oranges for you without asking or saying, they love and care about you” you repeated what Nesta had told you a few days ago. “Getting their hands dirty and not minding about it because they love their partners more”

“More than an orange’s peel?” Azriel smiled widely now. “After almost fifty years of relationship, I hope you too love me more than that”

“You’re missing the point”

“It’s a stupid theory”

It was because he did way more than peel oranges for you. And you did way more than change the subject to stupid theories so he would take his mind off the worries. If Azriel had to peel a thousand oranges for you, he would do it. If he was allergic to them, he would still do it.

There was little Azriel wouldn’t do for you. The basics of protecting you, of giving you his love and affection, were already set at the begging of your relationship. But as he thought of the stupid orange peel, he wondered if there was something he wouldn’t do for you.

And he knew that there wasn’t.

“Let me guess” he tugged your legs closer and looked into your eyes with a deep frown of concentration. “Nesta told you about it, just as he has told you about the rest of stupid theories you have put to test. And she has also told Elain and Feyre, and you all have put it to test”

“You’re missing Mor” you smiled, knowing he would make the whole story perfectly.

“Rhys passed, for sure. Lucien too, though he would probably be a little wary and ask about it before doing it, because Elain doesn’t eat too many oranges” he guessed correctly, making you scoff a laugh. “And Cassian asked Nesta to peel his orange”

You burst into a laugh because, just like he had said, had happened.

As you tilted your head back, a ray of sun hit the side of your face and Azriel’s heart started beating a little faster. He would never not find you beautiful, but sometimes, it would hit him just how beautiful you were. How lucky he was, how perfect his mate was. The cauldron had made him wait, had made him suffer, and all of it was worthy from the moment he laid his eyes on you.

“I love you” he smiled, Eris and Beron long gone from his mind. “Even if you’re a shaggy thief”

“I love you too”

Azriel closed his eyes and let the sun bake his skin. Having you in his arms always felt good, no matter where you were. Spring court, Velaris, your home. He could be lying in a battlefield with you in his arms, safe and sound, and it would feel like heaven.

The meeting had been shitty, and the two days left in that court would be too. But if enduring it and peeling oranges for you would get him that kind of peace, he was ready for it to last forever.

Want to read more? Check out my side blog @imaginesmaimasterlists, where I keep all the masterlists! Feedback is always appreciated

Let me know if you want me to do an Azriel taglist!

[noneorother]

The grand unified theory of Good Omens S2, Hangs on a double meaning - Answering why .5 + .5 = 25 lazerii *The end?*

Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4 l Part 5 l The end?

Welcome to the end of the Bonkers Meta Series featuring your favourite Art Director/Clue detective. This is it! I'm going to wrap up this series as well as I can with what I think really happened, the final 15 and why Crowley says the things he says. Meta, Spoilers, Beware! All that. “Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don't let you go around again until you get it right.” 

If you've read my Metatron post you'll know that I thought there were *at least* two time loops with tweaks to achieve different outcomes, seeing as we seemed to be presented with two versions of events a lot of the time, two similar lines of dialogue, double meanings for lines etc etc. If you want a really good recap of a lot of the Clues that have already been compiled already you can go through them here. Yesterday I added my own : The columns in front of the bookshop get stained by a demon, and the stain stays and goes. But why do we care?

Here's my final thesis using the context I'll put together below :

The Metatron is changing the past and the present on earth using the book of life. He's forced a time loop of the last few days at least 50 times over a period of (realtime) months to get the outcome he wants : the separation of Aziraphale and Crowley to allow him to complete the second coming. It only worked once. Let me explain.

1) Not time skips, but stitched loops

My theory about the columns goes like this : a demon touches the right column in the attack on the bookshop, and dirties it. The problem is, in every episode we get multiple versions of the column that are dirtier or cleaner. Why? Because a demon has been touching that column in *more or less* the same place and getting it dirty over time, but the effects on the bookshop only layer every loop and reset, instead of being erased. The layering aspect is super important and I'll get back to it. For now, if we take it that the column gets dirtier over many loops, we now know what we are seeing : a bunch of different time loops stitched together to create a sense of time moving forward in a way that we can understand the story, but that skip forward and backward through the loops. Cleaner column = earlier loop. Here's discussion about clock hands if you want evidence, some even saying the hour hand seems to be going backwards in the first episode or the last, or even that the minute and hour hands must be backwards to make sense. If we think of time skipping ever forward and actions getting deleted (as some have said), then clocks going backwards makes no sense. But if we think about it as a time loop where things and actions are ever being tweaked and changed, then OF COURSE the times won't make sense anymore. People don't show up at the same time if they don't do the same thing they did before. The biggest time discrepancies I've seen in a single scene are A) Crowley's phone and watch being an hour apart in S2E1 and B) Inside the bookshop between Gabriel's fly flashback in S2E6 and him and Beez holding hands, there's an hour difference on the clock. I think that by the time we get to very late loops, some things are happening up to an hour later in the day. A simple example we are shown up top is the Eccles cakes. They are there in the first part of S2E1, but then they are no longer there somewhere along the way. In the first loop we see an ordering action/receiving Eccles cakes action, which takes *longer* than just not doing that and going straight to the shop, so that loop will be slightly later. It gets infinitely more complicated the more loops you are looking at, and we have at least 50 of them. How do I know that?

2) A 25 lazerii miracle

If we know that effects on the bookshop are cumulative and don't reset (because columns), then let's try this idea on for size : Aziraphale and Crowley have been performing the same half miracles on the same spot for 50+* loops, and each times they are layering and getting stronger. .5 demon + .5 angel = .5 angelic miracle x 50*ish loops = 25 lazerii miracle goes off in heaven on the latest loop. Shax then confronts Crowley in his car about a mighty miracle, so we're in a loop here where we've layered quite a lot, but not the last loop because he still has the original glasses/ *but also* Crowley's sideburns are long. Compare it to the scene directly after, and how sunny and bright it is. We're in a later loop and and earlier loop simultaneously.

3) Crowley's been testing So I've been searching for a *reason* that Crowley wears a turtleneck in S2E2 and thren new glasses and changes sideburns, and he seems to be up to some pretty crafty spy stuff, seeing as 1) he seems thrilled by it, and 2) he won't shut up about it (How will our hero cope? Jane Austen, nasty piece of work, master spy) There's also this Clue :

Crowley has a secret, as we know everyone with their hands deliberately in their pocket does in the series. I think Crowley knows before Aziraphale that something is wrong, because he's getting little snippets of memory and feeling, and so he's going off to try and change things about himself, the Bentley and the shop to remind himself in the next loop and leave himself clues or change outcomes if he fails to escape. In the early loops it seems like a fun spy mission, but by the end he's pretty tired and jaded that he doesn't seem to be making any headway on his own.

It *also* explains him throwing books and canapés on the floor in the bookshop to see if it changes in other versions. The problem being that Gabriel keeps cleaning everything up and reorganizing the titles to Crowley can't tell if it's his system or not. (lolsob)

It makes this line seem like he can't fit the loop pieces together anymore, and is trying to make headway without any information, rather than a pre-fall reference.

And this line probably much later in the loops (New sunglasses, long sideburns) :

Okay so! To recap : Everyone gets reset every time, and they make different choices because of past and present edits. But, most heavenly and hellish things don't obey earth laws, and therefore things like miracles start layering, and memories start seeping through the loops. (Point 4 is optional but absolutely hilarious, so I'd like to think it's worth speculating about)

4. The flaw in The Metatron's plan

There's a huge flaw in The Metatron's plan however, and it's that Heaven and Hell don't work like earth does. He's spent so many loops trying to get the result he wants, that he doesn't know that something crazy is *also* happening in hell. Every loop, Shax is emptying out the legions of demons until they barely have enough low level lackeys to go up at all. Hell is understaffed because no new people come into hell in the loop from earth, and they're sending all the demons that aren't subject to the reset into battle. This isn't a negotiation, it's a montage.

So the attack on the bookshop isn't one attack, but waves, and the waves get less powerful each loop. Stitched loops would also explain why Shax now hands Crowley his mail again in the last attack after *just* handing it to him on the park bench, like, 4 days ago in an earlier loop.

I don't have evidence for this directly, but if The Metatron put Maggie together with Nina successfully only in the last few loops, then she's fighting in the bookshop only a few times, and doesn't invite the demons in any other times, which might be why the only evidence is the column, and not books being ruined. But, it might also explain why the demon Eric gets discorporated a bunch of times in a row, he's doing it later and later in each loop. (These are kind of contradictory thoughts, I know.)

5. Aziraphale realizes too late. When I wrote part 4 of this series I was pretty awed by the fact that Aziraphale managed to figure out the Metatron was rewriting things after only hearing him say ONE LINE of dialogue. However after more thought, I think that he's been getting close to the truth a bunch of times by communicating with Crowley in previous loops. In each successive loop he tells Crowley later and later, and it's been getting them reset as punishment each time they figure it out together. By the end they barely communicate at all, because they can feel the danger. Watch his reaction here, in what we can assume is a *very late or last loop (because of the time on the clock)*

He stops himself from interrupting and telling Crowley something important he's just realized : that he's seen Gabriel and Beez get together before. "I know what this means..." 6. Saraqael is helping both sides without them knowing We see Saraquael helping Crowley immediately with the trial when she finds him in heaven. Why would she help Crowley without having ever met him before as a demon? The exchange of "Crowley I remember you, we worked on the Hosehead nebula together" and "I meet a lot of people, (*he doesn't say* I don't remember you)" is a code. They are both trying to communicate what they remember like spies on a bench in St.James park. Who recognizes who, who's trying to stop this madness. Maybe once Crowley gets to heaven this time he's seen multiple trials with multiple endings, and Saraquael has seen them too, I don't really know. BUT she's also communicating with Aziraphale at one point. Look at Saraqael in this scene again about the 25 lazerii miracle. She *remembers the book slap* and then the *looks* at Aziraphale in regards to Gabriel.

Yeah Gabriel, IT NEVER F*&?%ING WORKS IN ANY LOOP SO STOP DOING IT. - Saraquel, probably. Are Saraqael and Aziraphale testing later/earlier in the loops as well? Is this when the miracle was weaker? Who knows! 7. The Metatron job offer was many, many offers

It's really hard to tell with all the pieces of the puzzle moving around, but I think I can count 7 job refusal loops by Aziraphale in the last fifteen minutes. Here's a summary 1) Chinwag with Crowley in the room 2) We should go for a walk instead, here's a coffee 3) You don't have to answer immediately 4) Go tell you friend the good news (This is the important one), it's the last one where he tries to convince Crowley to come with him 5) I need to take care of my bookshop 6) The Metatron puts Muriel in charge of the bookshop, but Aziraphale wants to take something with him 7) Aziraphale straight up runs out to Crowley with "I think I-" 4, again) The Metatron takes him out of the bookshop. "Ready to start"?

Trying to screenshot all that would be insane, so just go rewatch it with all this in mind, and look at how the lighting changes inside of the bookshop and the jump cuts to different angles, and how his face resets every time. It's HEARTBREAKING. 8. The argument

I'm so blown away by the acting and writing (as well as the art direction) in this show, and it all comes to a head in the final argument. Many important lines have double meanings in series 2, because everyone is trying to speak in secret code to not get caught. Especially in the final loops.

In the last loops, we have an Aziraphale who is moving ever closer towards accepting the Metatron's offer, with the straw that broke the camel's back being he could restore Crowley as an angel**/save him; and Crowley who is moving ever farther away, by having to hide all of his Clue gathering, and confiding less and less to Aziraphale in each loop.

Check out the double meanings going on in this whole exchange if you consider that they are trying to save each other using secret codes neither one of them can hear. It's so shattering. Especially when you consider they've probably made it to this argument at least twice, and Crowley convinced him the first time. Why do I say that, you ask? 9. No Nightingales

Because I think Crowley remembers a loop where A Nightingale Sang was playing when they kissed, and Aziraphael didn't leave, but he knows they aren't in that version anymore. 10) I'm a demon, I lied. I'll probably post more abut the secondary characters because Shax, Furfur, Michael, Uriel and Nina etc all have roles to play, but for now, this is it.

----------------------------------------- Thanks so much for reading the gigantic post. If you disagree with my thoughts, or think this is terribly wrong, that's totally fine! I won't be offended. Without a real season 3, everything is just ether. Fingers crossed. I'd also like to thank The Ineffable Detective Agency, @embracing-the-ineffable, @cobragardens, @indigovigilance, @yowlthinks and more for inspiring me and feeding my brain with posts. *Loop numbers could actually be 25+ if you think that .5 demon mircales + .5 angelic miracles pour register as 1 whole miracle in heaven, I just didn't want to go into that in the main review. **The Metatron's meddling in the past seems to me trying very much to highlight to Aziraphale how *good* and righteous Crowley is, despite being a demon, in order to convince Aziraphale that joining him in heaven is a real possibility, and he should push for it.

[hyperfixatedbastard]

Hi i hope you doing well. I have a resquest... more like a headcanon. What if Adam was a dad ? What his behaviour will be ? Does he be a good or a bad father ?

I understand if you don't do it. I don't want to force you for something you don't want to.

Dadam (Dad!Adam) Headcanons

we bringing out the daddy issues on this one boys

WARNINGS: none

A/N: I haven't done a headcanon type of post yet, but they're easier to write than regular one shots and I'm too tired for that shit. The request didn't specify what kind of Reader (spouse or child), so I just went with general headcanons that don't specify the Reader at all. Insert yourself as you wish!

Also, thank you all for your patience! It's been very busy for me lately and I've been too exhausted to write much, so expect a lot more of these kinds of posts (the formatting is easier and I don't have to write a bunch of dialogue lol).

Dividers

As the father of humanity, Adam had...a lot of kids. The guy lived for 800+ years just populating the earth. That's a LOT of kids. We all know how the first two turned out. That is, not fuckin' well. To be honest, I don't think Adam valued his children. It was just kinda... a thing he had to do. (When Abel died and Cain got exiled, he fr just went and had another kid to replace them.) But I am in deep, deep denial and this is for my enjoyment as someone with severe daddy issues. So fuck all that.

At first, Adam is 100% the guy that freaks the fuck out when he finds out he knocked someone up. That man is SWEATING. He's actually pretty chill if it's someone he's in an established long-term relationship with, though. He still freaks the fuck out, but to a significantly lesser degree and with a much smaller chance of up and leaving. Once he's over the initial shock, he's shocked to find that he's kind of excited. Back when he was alive, having kids was just normal because it was such a common occurrence.

This man knows every little detail about pregnancy and infants. With the amount of kids he's had? He has seen it ALL. Sure, all his information is thousands of years old, but knowledge learned through experience is super valuable when it comes to this shit! He doesn't know what the fuck a uterus is, but he knows exactly how to make his partner the most comfortable, how to deal with cravings, etc. If his partner has a problem, he's got a solution. It might be a fuckin' weird one, but it works! He'll probably grumble and complain, but he doesn't actually mean it. Bitching is just his thing, y'know? But... pregnancy hormones + Adam's douchebag-ness = feelings getting hurt. If his partner starts crying because of some shit joke or complaint he made? He's scrambling so fast. "Shit, babe, fuck, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, fuckfuckfuck, don't cry—"

Once the baby is born, he definitely surprises literally everyone but his partner by actually doing helpful shit. Changing diapers? Easy fuckin' peasy (he does watch a tutorial online because he doesn't know how tf modern diapers work but he's a fast learner) Feeding? No problemo. Getting up in the middle of the night to do both of those things? His sleep schedule's already fucked, this shit ain't new.

When it comes to parenting and raising the kid, though... that's definitely where Adam struggles. He'd struggle with bonding. A lot. Adam mostly talks about things that you really shouldn't say around children, much less bond over. I think he'd be better at just letting the kid ramble while he's just sitting there, fully engrossed in whatever bullshit his child is saying. He's not just passively listening with little 'uh-huh's and nods, this man is active in the discussion. Have you ever heard a small child speak? They say the most random shit ever, and Adam would love it. It's peak entertainment to him. Even if it's just incoherent babbling, he'll have full-on conversations with this baby.

He'd definitely have some shared interests as the kid gets older. I think Adam's favorite shows/movies are a mix of action movies and shit like Power Rangers. He's not ashamed of it either—'fuck you, the Power Rangers are fuckin' cool.' This also goes for video games. I know that man is a toxic COD gamer boy and you can't prove me wrong. Basically, the only thing that keeps him from becoming one of those husbands that locks himself away in a man cave to play video games is the fact that he can game with his kid.

And once they get into school, he just gets really invested in the drama. Elementary school drama is such bullshit, and it'd be the best reality TV he's ever seen. "Oh, don't tell me—it's that bitch Cindy. The fuck did that little shit do this time?" He'd be gasping like it's a damn soap opera. 'Oh no she didn't!' kinda vibe.

He'd talk so much shit around his kid about the parents of their classmates, the teachers, anyone. Then the kid would repeat it and Adam would get sat down in the office with his kid like: "Your child said, and I quote, 'My dad says your mom's a bitch.'" "What? She fuckin' is." And yeah, he's not wrong - some of those parents are fucking nightmares.

If his kid got in trouble for fighting, his reaction would depend on the situation. If it was unprovoked and/or a part of bullying, he'd originally laugh it off but would be freaking the fuck out internally. He's probably a little traumatized by what happened with Cain and Abel. But if the fighting was an act of defense (whether of themselves or someone else) he would be the proudest dad ever. Fist-bumps his kid in the office in full view of the principal.

You cannot trust this man to give his kid the sex talk. It just will not go well. Like, if his kid needs advice when they're older (basically anything beyond 'where do babies come from') then he's your guy, but it's still gonna be awkward and uncomfortable. He'd probably have Lute handle most of those issues just so he doesn't have to know about his kid's sex life but can still trust that they have a responsible(?) adult if they have questions.

In terms of where Adam is lacking as a parent, there's a few areas in particular to focus on.

Emotional availability? Not his strong suit. At all. He can't deal with his own feelings, let alone his kid's. Most of the emotional support will be coming from his partner. That doesn't mean he doesn't try. But he can't show it with words all that well. He'll show emotional support in other ways—quality time, gifts, and acts of service for the most part. Like going out for ice cream, watching a movie, etc.

He's not good with discipline. To him, everything's no big deal. If his kid hasn't killed their sibling, that's good enough for him! Generally, his partner will choose when/how to discipline (with Adam's input ofc), but Adam's job is to just enforce it/not overrule it. He's 100% the type to be sneaky about it tho. If his kid is grounded, he'll go out with them to give them a break from being stuck in the house, y'know, stuff like that. Because of this, his kid forms a closer, different kind of bond than with Adam's partner. It's more friendly, I guess is the word? Like, his kid won't go to him for actual helpful advice, but if they fuck up somehow or are in a bad situation that they kinda got themselves into (drinking, car accident, etc.), then Adam is the parent they call.

I think Adam's peak parenting era would be when his kid is a late teen/young adult. 'Cause then he can actually be himself, for the most part. His personality is not very kid-friendly, so once his kid isn't really much of a kid anymore—he is so fucking excited. His relationship with his kid would be a lot more unconventional as they grow older. Like, he's really close with his kid once they're an adult. (totally not basing this off my relationship with my mom) His advice would be shit, but he'd give it if his kid needed it!

Definitely the type to text his kid more often than most parents. Mostly because he texts more like them and has the same sense of humor. Lots of shitty memes.

Also!! I think Adam would definitely make time for his partner. Date nights are a must. His kid better get comfortable with sleepovers at friends' houses or getting babysat by Emily 'cause he ain't letting parenthood fuck up his sex life.

I think that's all I got. Not sure how to end this so uh... shoutout to all you bitches with daddy issues lmao

Taglist: @little-miss-chaoss @fakeguysarehot @3sire-777

[notafragilething]

Not-So-Late Night Buck & Tommy Ramblings: I'm Back!

I have survived my chaos week and, with the help of a very large Iced Latte, I'm here to share all the thoughts that have been building up this week in the world of Buck & Tommy. I'm not going in any specific order but I'm going to start with the thing I find most significant and that is what is happening in regards to interviews with Ryan this past week.

Another clip of Ryan talking about Buddie dropped today and I've seen two extremely opposite reactions to it amongst fans. In this clip he basically said he wasn't a writer, he'd be open to it if it happened but said it was important for the storyline to be seen as a heterosexual man supporting his bisexual friend and how things didn't change. Some people think this means Buddie is definitely happening in season 8 (or even a reveal of some feelings this season) while others think this means that Buddie is getting less and less likely. Those favoring it and saying it means Buddie will happen seem to be focusing on the fact that they were still allowed to ask Buddie-related questions. I bring this up because I do think it plays into the discussion of whether Tommy will be a more long term love interest moving into season 8.

What I find most important about this answer is how it is almost exactly the same as all his other responses to Buddie-related questions from that week. He hit the exact same key points and I think it's very obvious at this point this isn't an organic answer. These are points that PR and marketing very likely told him to hit. And the fact that he is answering all Buddie related questions by explicitly saying Eddie is heterosexual is really standing out to me. That is, in my opinion, very intentional.

So what do I think it means? I think it means that they are definitely not planning on buddie happening (this season or next). They are intentionally linking all questions about buddie to very explicit statements that the one member of that pairing isn't queer. One big issue earlier this season, when Buck came out, was websites taking answers from other interviews and writing clickbait articles suggesting Buddie was going to happen. This makes it harder for those types of articles to pop up. It's why we likely haven't seen as many like we did with Oliver's statements (which were very similar minus explicitly saying Eddie was heterosexual). I personally think this is how they'll handle it for the remainder of the season and they'll progressively continue to distance themselves from Buddie moving into next season. Personally, I think there is a lot happening to suggest Tommy is sticking around and they're being intentional with how parts of the fandom are reacting to that. Especially since it's been a very positive reaction so far for this new couple of BuckTommy.

In other news, which is somewhat related, we know we're getting Tommy next week because he is was in the trailer. We also know that we're getting Captain Gerard at the medal ceremony. I've seen a lot of people predicting this will somehow impact Buck and Tommy but personally, I think this is going to play into bringing Tommy more into the 118 family. I think we're more likely to see an interaction between Tommy, Hen and Chimeny over him being there.

In my last post I also had people asking me about Oliver deleting a bunch of photos from Instagram. I did a bit of research and that seems like it's the norm for him.

Be back tonight for an update on the Buck/Tommy Hospital kiss reel because it hit 1 million views.

[giantchasm]

A Ginormous Assortment of Floralia Headcanons

Just because I haven't been posting headcanons lately doesn't mean I haven't had Kirby on the brain! Recently, I shared a LOT of my thoughts about Floralia on Discord, and I've compiled and organized them here to share! Enjoy!

On the islands themselves:

-Royal Road is the most important island of the bunch, at least when it comes to discussing the Insectoids and People of the Sky. This is where both of their homes are situated. The island is (Or... well, was) divided into two halves — those of the Insectoid Kingdom and that of Sky Kingdom.

-Sectonia took over the Sky Kingdom during her tyrannical rule, caging its people. Oddly enough, though, now that she’s been overthrown, there’s actually less of a concrete divide between the two groups. They interact almost like one big kingdom.

-Although Royal Road is by far the most populated island, the other islands have their own little communities. In particular, there are quite a few small villages in Fine Fields and Lollipop Land. These communities weren't really involved in the royal drama until Sectonia also conquered them, and with her reign of terror having ended, they've gone back to their regular lives.

Everything else (Going over Insectoid biology and culture, the history of and relationship between the two kingdoms, ETC) will be placed beneath a cut, as this post is over three-thousand words long. Please check it out, though, if you'd like!:

On Insectoid biology/culture:

-Floralia has MANY types of Insectoid. Every type of bug you can think of, they have! Ladybugs... butterflies... stickbugs— you name it! There are even beings similar to some animals we DON’T classify as insects considered Insectoids, such as spiders and snails.

-True Insectoids are not related to or 1:1 to the bugs of our world— they simply resemble them. There are many differences. For example. They’re a sort of cross between arthropods and mammals, unlike any creature we have here on Earth. They have blood (referred to as ‘hemolymph’) that’s red when inside of their bodies but that turns blue when exposed to oxygen.

-True Insectoids are the anthro, sapient insects like Sectonia and Taranza. Meanwhile, Lesser Insectoids are… well, actual bugs! True Insectoids do not see Lesser Insectoids as their equivalent or as equals and thus do not object to people eating them. In fact, they’re a staple part of True Insectoid cuisine!

-Most Lesser Insectoids (also sometimes just called ‘bugs’) are eaten already dead. However, live Lesser Insectoids are occasionally eaten by the wealthy and are considered a delicacy. Some Lesser Insectoids are eaten more or less than others. Those such as wasps and particularly poisonous bugs can only be consumed safely when prepared very carefully— somewhat like pufferfish. If not properly cooked and cut, eating them can lead to injury, illness, or even death.

-True Insectoids have more formal names for their subspecies, being called things like Arachnids, Sectra and Mantidae. Meanwhile, Lesser Insects are referred to as spiders, wasps, mantises, et cetera. Sometimes True Insectoids can be referred to by the same names as Lesser Insectoids, although this is seen as informal, albeit not impolite slang (Think of calling Taranza a spider instead of an Arachnid as something roughly similar to calling a television a TV or a cat a kitty. Like I said— not rude, but not really professional.)

-True Insectoids are one species with many subspecies. Despite looking very different and having wildly different abilities, they’re still closely related enough to crossbreed, although this is seen as somewhat taboo.

-Insectoids have a strong natural affinity for Soul magic. Some derogatory folklore posits they were created by Death itself as opposed to Void like the rest of the living beings. Insectoids themselves do not believe this, of course, but it’s, if nothing else, still a common People of the Sky wives’ tale/superstition

-Different types of True Insectoids have various abilities and unique skills, most often connected with their proficiency for Soul Magic, but not always. For example, Mantidae (mantis people) have super speed and the ability to teleport, Hercules (beetle people) have super strength, Papillon (butterfly people) have a special connection to the dead and ability to receive omens of the future, Sectra (wasp people) have the ability to influence the thoughts and feelings of the weak willed using their pheromones, and Arachnids (spider people) are capable of both puppeteering and bodysnatching.

-All Insectoids are seen as untrustworthy and scary by other species, but Arachnids especially. They’re viewed as manipulative schemers, even amongst other Insectoids thanks to the aforementioned abilities. This is despite the fact that almost no Arachnids bodysnatch and the fact that all Insectoids have similarly terrifying powers. In part, this is because of an incident detailed later in the kingdom history section, but truthfully, said incident is mostly just an excuse to have someone to step on. If it weren’t for that, they’d have found another reason to look down on Arachnids.

-Arachnid bodysnatching is a two-part process. First, they sting their victim with their stinger and administer a special type of venom. This puts their victim in a comatose state, rendering their mind dormant and unable to fight back as the Arachnid then assimilates them. Arachnids have a special organ for storing souls, and this is where they keep the souls of their victims when they bodysnatch. All Arachnids wear a stinger cover at all times, lest they accidentally jab someone. Even if bodysnatching isn’t performed, the stinger venom can cause comas, brain damage, and even death.

Aforementioned venom can also be administered via the fangs, but it’s much less potent. More often than not the fangs are simply used to administer a second type of more traditional venom used for killing prey. Or… well, it was back in the day. Now, it’s a bit of a leftover evolutionary trait, considering Arachnids aren’t doing much hunting any more

-Arachnids are one of, if not the only type of Insectoid to have hair. It’s seen as strange and generally viewed as unattractive by other Insectoids, but amongst spiders it’s a point of personal pride. They take very good care of their hair and love to style it

-Clothing is not seen as something necessary for modesty in Insect society. There is no social taboo regarding walking around naked. More than anything, clothes are simply a way of showing off status and power, as well as accentuating beauty, and are most often worn to things such as balls or coronations. Arachnids tend to wear clothes more often than other Insectoids because back in the day they used to make their own clothes with silk! This is much less common nowadays, however, although some Arachnids remain tailors!

-Sectonia wearing so little is seen as scandalous, but not because she’s near-naked. It’s because it implies she’s so perfect she needs very little to make herself look any better. It’s just another show of her ego and generally seen as conceited.

-Hercules love to decorate their horns with jewelry. This is a tradition mostly unique to them. Although- uh- is only really a ‘thing’ amongst the wealthy Hercules. There’s a very big class divide in the Insectoid Kingdom, and commoners can’t really afford those sort of luxuries.

-There are three types of Sectra: Drone Sectra, Worker Sectra, and Royal Sectra. Almost all male Sectra are worker Sectra— weaker, meek Sectra noticeably easily influenced by a Royal Sectra’s pheromones. Worker Sectra make up the majority of female Sectra and are strong, diligent fighters. Then, of course, there are Royal Sectra— those of the Sectra royal family. These can be both male or female and are MUCH larger and more powerful than other types of Sectra, not to mention far bigger: being almost three times the size of other Sectra and generally towering over most Insectoids. It’s rumored they achieve this form by being fed a special type of magical honey when they’re young, as opposed to the royal family having any TRUE difference from other Sectra

When Joronia/Sectonia assassinated the rest of the royal court, she killed all of Royal Sectra and the Worker Sectra serving them, but left the Drone Sectra alive as footsoldiers. She was able to use her new pheromones to turn them into disposable, utterly-obedient meatshields. It’s kind of horrifying

-Almost no other subspecies have gender dimorphism as noteworthy as the Sectra and their Drones vs Workers. The one exception is Antlers— Ant people with a similar hierarchy, except in small family units instead of larger groups. Because of this, Sectonia was able to create an army of Antler Drones as well.

-There is SOME, more minor, gender dimorphism in other subspecies, though, usually pertaining to size or appearance. For example, female Arachnids are noticeably bigger than male Arachnids, being able to reach twice their size. Joronia, being a trans woman, was always small, even for a DMAB Arachnid, and this is something she was super insecure about. Even Taranza was a little bit taller than her. When she took on the form of an absolutely humongous Royal Sectra she reveled in it. If it weren’t for the horrific bodysnatching thing, the euphoria she felt would almost be cute

-Floralia has no real education system. Instead, education is received through private tutors. This, of course, worsens the class divide, because only the wealthy can afford to truly educate their children. Taranza’s family taught him basic reading and writing, but he received no other tutoring. The only reason he’s as smart as he is is because he had a deep love for learning and would spend DAYS in the library studying and teaching himself things

-Before the Dreamstalk, there were “sky ferries” run by flying Insectoids that took people between the different Floralian islands. Hercules ran these most often because their super strength made carrying these ferries incredibly easy.

-Sectonia, despite being a “Sectra,” for the most part, had traits that were unnatural for them— being a beautiful Frankenstein’s monster. Sectra never have patterns as vibrant as she did, but she had them because she stole that bright indigo coloring from another type of Insectoid. Sectra never have shapes, let alone hearts in their wings, but she did, because she took those from a Papillon. In general, she was very, VERY uncanny valley— like one of those people who gets too much plastic surgery. She was a perfect, absolutely artificial freak of nature— a being who never could have been born naturally, and this gave all of the other Insectoids the heebie jeebies

On the two kingdoms/general history:

-The five most iconic True Insectoid subspecies are Arachnids (Spider people), Sectra (Wasp people), Hercules (Beetle people) Mantidae (Mantis people) and Papillion (Butterfly people). This is because these are the subspecies that make up the five royal families. It’s said that when the Insectoid kingdom of Floralia was first founded eons ago, it was founded by those five families, and as such, every one has right to the throne. Heirs from each family duel when they come of age to determine who becomes ruler until, of course, more heirs grow up and one eventually takes that person’s place.

-Duels between heirs for the throne were incredibly intense and violent, and sometimes ended in tragedy. While there were always healers on the scene, it wasn’t unheard of for heirs to occasionally die of their injuries. These heirs were always martyred, though, being seen as brave and unwavering by their people. Because of this, there was almost some pressure for heirs to actively fight to the death rather than surrender. No-one died during Joronia’s duel for the throne, though.

-(Suicide TW) Speaking of heirs dying, it wasn’t unheard of for heirs to sometimes take their own lives after losing the duel for the throne and their chance of becoming king or queen. These heirs, in contrast, were ostracized in death, and seen as cowards who abandoned their lineage.

-It’s said that once upon a time a heir actually ran away from Floralia before the duel for the throne. This heir— a Hercules, decided he wanted no part of this, and fled to the lower world, where it’s said his descendants still live. (Notably: Buggzy). Taranza sometimes fantasized about running away with Joronia in a similar fashion, but she was too fixated on the idea of winning the crown for him to ever seriously suggest it.

-There has been strife between the Insectoids and the People of the Sky almost as long as Floralia has existed, with the two groups fighting over land and power. In particular, the People of the Sky have the larger, more beautiful half of Royal Road, and this is something most Insects have always seen as unfair. Despite Sectonia being widely hated and feared by the time she launched an attack on the People of the Sky, some Insectoids supported her fullheartedly in that endeavor, at least, simply out of spite

-Several hundred years ago, there was an incident involving an Arachnid and the People of the Sky. At the time, the Insectoids and People of the Sky were at war, and allegedly, this Arachnid— a royal duke— decided to put a stop to it through dubious means. In the dead of night, he bodysnatched the ruler of the People of the Sky. Then, he pretended to be them as he slowly destroyed the kingdom from the inside out. Eventually he was caught and killed, but by then it was too late. Irreversible damage had been done to the People of the Sky’s livelihood.

When they confronted the Insectoid kingdom, the other royal families claimed they had no idea and used the duke, alongside Arachnids as a whole, as a scapegoat. Although there are rumors all of them were in on it and orchestrated the scheme together, simply using the duke and his fellow Arachnids as their fall guy in the wake of being caught.

Truthfully, it doesn’t really matter. Even if the duke DID do it alone, it wouldn’t excuse the poor treatment of Arachnids… and if we’re being real: it was never about the duke for the other Insectoids. It simply benefits the other royal families to have a family seen as “lesser,” and so they maintain the oppressive stereotype for their own benefit.

-Once upon a time, there were actually three noteworthy species in Floralia. Alongside the People of the Sky and Insectoids there was a third group: a large family of nobles who lived in a mansion in Wild World and sometimes traded/communicated with the other two. However, one day they seemingly just… disappeared. They stop reaching out, and when the People of the Sky and Insectoids went to check on them, it was as if they’d vanished into thin air. There are rumors of how they were cursed and whisked away to Hades or that one of them went mad and killed all of the others in a rampage. No-one knows what the truth is, though, just that that mansion is deeply unsettling and supposedly haunted now.

-It’s rumored that, eons ago, the lower world and higher world were connected by a tower in Nutty Noon that stretched into the sky and bridged the gap between them. However, that tower has long since degraded, and by the time of Triple Deluxe, the worlds had very little contact. The upper world still knew of the lower world— being able to peer down on them, but very few people living in the lower world knew of the upper world’s existence

-Sometimes gossip from the lower world still reached the upper world, though, particularly through flying species like Bronto Burts and Birdons. As teenagers, Taranza and Joronia heard stories of a horrifying tyrant who ruled the lower world with an iron fist. It was said this person had a hundred mouths with sharp, bloody fangs, and that he’d steal all of the lower worlders’ belongings. Joronia fantasized about one day traveling to the lower world, defeating this monster, and freeing the people. Little did she know the “tyrant—‘ actually a simple penguin, would one day end up helping free HER people from her.

-A very long time ago, back when the lower world and upper world were still connected, Ancients visited Popstar and Floralia, dazzling the people of both worlds with miraculous inventions such as the Fountain of Dreams and Star Rod. When they offered to let the two worlds join their intergalactic society, however, both declined, preferring their easygoing, lazy lives. Some people from the upper world and lower world left to join the Ancients, but Popstar and Floralia as a whole did not become a part of their utopia… and in hindsight, this was almost certainly for the best

-However, it’s through encountering these Ancients, particularly human tech Ancients, that Insectoids received their names. That’s why they’re called things like Arachnids and Mantidae despite not actually being related to real bugs. Humans simply saw them, went “They look like bugs!” And it stuck.

-Joronia was the first Arachnid ruler in over a hundred years. Her winning the duel was completely unexpected. She was a very unpopular queen, not only for being an Arachnid, but also for generally being seen as rebellious, irresponsible and childish. She tried very hard to make people like her, but never really earned the kingdom's love. This, of course, played a part in her eventually snapping while under the mirror's influence. She bodysnatched the other heirs, alongside many more bugs to create her perfect body— one that she felt the people could never reject, and went on to rule the skies with an iron fist.

-Sectonia killed… like, a lot of people during her tyranny. She slaughtered and/or assimilated the entire royal court. Public executions were commonplace. All people even SUSPECTED of being traitors were killed… sometimes, alongside their innocent families. Taranza did a lot of these executions himself, as Sectonia never wanted to get her hands dirty.

-As I alluded to earlier: nowadays the People of the Sky and Insectoids get along better, as after Sectonia was overthrown, the People of the Sky realized most Insectoids were just fellow victims of her tyranny and sympathized with them. They’ve bonded over their shared hatred of the ex-queen. You know what they say! The enemy of an enemy is a friend.

-The Insectoids and People of the Sky generally have very different cultures and traditions, meaning different holidays, although there is one they share: Floralian Independence Day. Every year, the two kingdoms get together and celebrate Sectonia’s death, having a feast and engaging in general festivities. They also leave offerings at the Dreamstalk, which they see as a symbol of their freedom. It goes without saying that Taranza loathes Floralian Independence Day with a burning passion

-Speaking of Taranza: as the tyrant queen’s right hand man and enabler, he is not well-liked. Hell, he wasn’t particularly liked even BEFORE the tyranny by virtue of not being of noble blood and only joining the royal court through Joronia DEMANDING he be allowed to become her retainer. Occasionally, Insectoids and People of the Sky make attempts on his life. When he goes out in public, people give him a wide berth. Teenagers egg the castle (which he now lives in alone) to upset him

On the People of the Sky:

-They aren’t born naturally. They’re planted. Two parents make a seed together that sprouts into a baby Person of the Sky

-When they sprout, a flower that matches the flower on their head sprouts alongside them. The two are connected. If the Person of the Sky dies, the flower wilts, and if the flower dies, the Person of the Sky becomes very ill before, most often, dying as well. These flowers continue to grow throughout their lives, and never reach a completely mature state. They can get pretty big. Nothing like the size of the Dreamstalk, of course, but some are as big as trees!

-They have a strong affinity for Flower magic and can even communicate with plants, but most plants don’t have anything too interesting to say. They mostly just make their needs (More water, more sunlight, ETC) known. The one exception to this is the plants that are born alongside the People of the Sky. Allegedly, they speak their deepest, most subconscious feelings and thoughts.

-They’ve had a democracy for a while. Their monarchy fell after the incident with the Arachnid duke. They’ve been helping the Insectoids get used to living in a democracy now that their own royal family has been disposed of.

-Their bones have rings based on how old they are, like trees. That said, I wouldn’t recommend cutting them open to find out their age. That’s just mean.

-They photosynthesize alongside consuming food, and need sunlight to live. Many People of the Sky actually died in the dungeons while jailed by Sectonia. In the dark and starved of that necessary resource, they withered away. She knew they’d die in those conditions, but did not care, having long since lost all compassion at that point.

[vriskaserketdaily]

Announcement; CW for graphic descriptions of medical emergencies & discussions of death/mortality

so, yesterday i briefly mentioned that i had been hospitalized. i unknowingly consumed edibles, became anxious and hyperactive, had a full-blown panic attack, and believing myself to be in the mother of all caffeine overdoses (2 cups of black tea) or having a heart attack or both, called emergency services, and was hospitalized with severe tachycardia.

i genuinely thought i was dying, sitting outside in my pajamas with my back to the mailbox post waiting for the EMTs to arrive. i still thought i was dying two hours later, struggling to breathe in the hospital room with my parents beside me.

i thought about a lot of things in the time between calling the emergency number and being lifted into the ambulance. i didn't want this blog to be my only legacy when i have so much more to do and be and make. i have other hobbies---knitting, crochet, playing guitar & composing music, and especially writing. i haven't drawn or written about my ocs in years, even during the recent hiatus, and i would like to change that.

to that end, i will not be drawing vriskas on a daily basis or consistently updating the fan art queue for the forseeable future. i will still draw vriska, especially if there are requests in the inbox, but i won't be going out of my way to squeeze out fan art when i'm ill, busy in other areas of my life, or generally not feeling it.

i will be keeping this blog up. i will not be changing the url because i fought too hard for a hypen-free daily vriska url and i'm not giving it up that easily. perhaps, after a year or two, i may even resume daily vriskas and normal blog operations.

COMMON QUESTIONS:

are you like, okay? i think i'm fine, physically? i was discharged after about four hours in the hospital and was able to move and eat and stuff today. i still feel some soreness/tightness in the chest, but i think that's to be expected given the circumstances.

can we still send requests? YES please omg. the interactions i have had through requests have been so positive and rewarding that it'd be difficult for me to fully give this blog up. even something as simple as "draw vriska" will function as a request. one thing that's been going through my head a lot lately is the thought that i could die and no one here would notice or care, so having tangible assurance that there is at least one person in the world who wants to see my vriska art would be very meaningful in that regard. i may not respond immediately, but i will respond to all requests that conform to the blog rules and mission (no nsfw, no pedophilic/incestuous ships, must involve vriska in some way)

will you consider opening mod applications? no, both because i don't think there would be too many takers for the position and because i know from experience that the fastest way to kill a daily blog is to load it up with a bunch of mods. (i am not the original owner of this blog and have moderated a few other multi-mod blogs before---i am currently the sole mod of the two i stuck with, this being one of them). i'd rather keep this blog half-active with just me than have it be completely inactive with me and 3-6 other people. again, there's a chance that after a year or so of taking things slow, i may come back to it.

can we tag you in art/fics/vriska posts? yes, actually, that would be very helpful. i don't expect anyone to do this, but again, i will no longer be actively perusing the character tag. feel free to @ me in vriska-related posts you think could use a little love.

if i have a daily vriska blog, will you promote me? sure! genuinely, i wish you luck---i've seen a couple of y'all come and go, and it really takes a lot to keep a blog like this running for more than three months. if you can do that you will be certified spiders for real.

where else can we find you? my main blog is @beangods, where i reblog posts that are not about vriska. you can send art requests there, too, but they cannot be related to vriska. that's what this blog is for. i also moderate @theextendedzodiacas, which is mostly fantroll-oriented. i'm on discord, too, but you won't find me on any other social media site.

is the vriskord still up? yes, it is, and you can join it, though the server is not very active. i don't plan on taking the server down or anything like that.

eighth question eighth answer 8ottom text

please feel free to reach out to me, and i'll be happy to answer any questions that i can. thank you for your understanding, and i'll see you . . . in probably a few days when i draw the 1 request currently sitting in the inbox.

thanks for reading all this.

-mod 8

[bridgertonandchocolate]

Now that Bridgerton has been released for over a week and I've had it on repeat since then it's time to process through some thoughts.

Overall this is my favorite season of Bridgerton. It's not surprising because Polin has always been my favorite pairing since season 1 and friends to lovers is one of my all time favorite romance tropes.

While I am loving the season there are still a few beefs I had while watching it that still irk me, but don't bother me as much as they did in the beginning which will be discussed at the end of the post.

Prepare for a long post and if you read it all thank you! Also SPOILERS ABOUND! Let's start with everything I have loved so far:

Mirrors. There are mirrors freaking everywhere in the season and we all know why. A lot of the side characters have mirrors in their scenes. We see Kate has a bunch of mirrors in her study, the Mondriches have mirrors. Mirrors everywhere to be found. Not only is a mirror going to play a major part in the second part, but it's so symbolic of Colin and Pen's journey of really finding themselves and subsequently each other. But Bridgerton is not subtle this season. There's mirrors everywhere you look.

Colin Bridgerton is a cinnamon roll and must be protected at all costs. My previous post already addressed a lot of the Colin hate floating around out there and I won't hear it. Our man is out there fully falling harder for Pen and not realizing how much he's affected by her. Until he does and then he's properly torturing himself.

The main characters this season are so relatable. Being a mid/plus size late bloomer female who has never received any romantic attention I relate to Penelope so much. I nearly cried in the second episode because I've had the same feelings she was having in that moment of believing you'll never have that in your life. At least she had Colin. But besides my personal connection to Pen compared to the previous two couples I think Colin and Pen are the most realistic and relatable characters.

The book references. I was a little nervous about changing the storyline to Colin having lessons with Penelope and helping her find a husband and Pen having another suitor, but I enjoyed it. It allowed them to bring a lot of humor to the show where we haven't really seen that in this show before. But they also incorporated very key aspects of the Polin relationship. The first kiss was nearly verbatim from the book and the very end of the carriage scene was also straight from the book just some dialogue switched characters. More on the carriage later.

Colin realizes he loves Pen much earlier than in the book. So glad for this change since we already knew Colin was the biggest dummy for not realizing what was right in front of his face. I'm glad we saw sparks of it from him before the first kiss. The garden confession? Please. It was practically a love confession as he was talking about all of the things he likes about her. The boy just couldn't put two and two together. And I'm really glad Pen tried to move on from her feelings it really put Colin into a place where he had to imagine his life without her and the man couldn't handle it.

Here are some beefs I have with the season but again they're pretty minimal and honestly I'm somewhat okay with it now except for one of them:

Lady Danbury not being involved with Polin whatsoever. They name their first born Agatha for heaven's sake. I really anticipated Lady D to be involved with Pen being a wallflower and practically just like her, but .... whatever. They gave Lady D other things to do this season instead.

Pen never asked Colin to help her find a husband. Okay this one still actually bothers me still. In episode 4 Penelope mentions to Colin when they're finished dancing that it was a mistake asking for his help and then in the carriage she says again that when she asked him for his help in finding a husband she didn't know he'd also deny her one (I told you guys I have watched this literally nonstop for a week). But she literally NEVER asked him to help her. In episode 1 he says, "if a husband is what you seek let me help you." At no point was she like "Please Colin will you help me?" I couldn't stand this. The only thing Pen asked of Colin was if he'd kiss her and I stand by this. That's sloppy continuity in the writing.

The brothels. Both scenes were completely unnecessary to me. The first one I've come around on slightly, but I will never get over the second brothel scene. I get what they were trying to do, but with the awkward flirting with all the ladies in the ton that was already accomplished for me that Colin was trying to act like someone he definitely wasn't. I didn't need to see Slut Colin for that. And I get it for the first brothel scene they made sure to hit that home, but the second one? The second one comes after he realizes he's fallen in love with Penelope and I don't fully understand his motivation for going there. I also am just sick of the rake storyline and since we know that's not how Colin is I was upset they tried to turn him into that. But characters must grow. To me it could've been done differently or even better yet not at all.

No flashback to baby Polin. I really was hoping for a flashback. There was a flashback episode for season 1 and 2 but none for 3. I really thought they would have done a flashback of some kind. At least Colin remembers and talks about how they met. "Do you remember when we first met?" Bro please. You don't need to ask Penelope if she remembers it's the moment she fell in love with you, bro. I'm hoping for a callback to this in the second part when she hopefully tells Colin she's loved him for years.

Last beef. That the carriage scene and love realization happened with no LW reveal. I get it. They're pushing this off to the second part. Makes sense for the drama of it all, but it fundamentally goes against season 1 Pen when she was trying to convince Marina to tell Colin that she was pregnant. Like hello. Now she's just doing what Marina did by keeping this from him. And I'm sure that's what part 2 will be about, but I don't like it. In the book he proposed to her fully knowing who she was and now in the show there's this huge chunk of who she is now missing and I DON'T LIKE IT!

This is way too long. Stay tuned for thoughts on the carriage scene, other favorite Polin moments and all my hopes and dreams for part 2.

[lokavisi]

I've been getting big in my thoughts and feels lately about something, and as I started typing I realized this isn't the first time this has happened.

I've seen a bunch of posts lately about taking deities Super Cereal™️ and that people talking about their deities like friends is somehow disrespectful? Like, Deity are so ancient and scary and acting like they're your magical BFFs is wrong. Why are we feeling angst around this? I think there's a few different things going on here that should be addressed.

First of all, not everyone relates to deity in the same way. Grow up and respect that. Just because the idea of "hanging out with Odin" or whatever the hell sounds like they aren't taking Odin "seriously" in your eyes, doesn't mean that person doesn't have respect for or have an understanding of who Odin is. Yes, Odin's been around for fucking millennia and wields some ancient, primal sort of magic that we as humans could not being to understand or experience. But you know what we can experience? Mead. Storytelling. Learning new things. I don't see why the one who slayed a giant to create our realm can't also be interested in discussing the popular literature we're reading over a beverage of choice. Who are you to say how deity like to spend their time with us? They know what they want from who. If you're their devout monk instead of their BFF, great. Who cares? As long as you know who it is you're working with, why does it matter? Just as we are complex beings with many facets to our personalities and life, so are deities. There is more to them than whatever monolithic power you ascribe to them.

On that note: everyone, on both ends of the spectrum, make sure you know who you're dealing with. Learn as much as you can about the common signs and language people seem to share with the deity you're looking to connect with, and learn to recognize signs of imposters or other potentially adjacent beings that it might be reaching out to you instead. I know I'm not an expert and I've made mistakes, but I feel like a lot of deities are more likely to be ok with meeting us half way, so to speak. If you're both serious about connecting with one another, you'll do that in whatever way works for you whether that looks like a more human-like friendship or a more ascetic form of dedication. Certain deities might have tendencies that lean further one way than the other (just as we humans might), but that doesn't mean there isn't more or less respect for the deity based on the nature of your relationship with them.

I feel like we also need to recognize, and this kind of relates back to my first point, that what the nature of deity and humanity actually are is something that we might not all agree on either. And that is ok! If you think deity are so untouchable that we should enforce some great divide between our two beings, great! If you think deity are really personable and live among us like other people with bonus spiritual abilities/incorporealness, great! Both are incredibly valid! We need to stop acting like anything in regards to religion or spiritual practice is absolute. I know there are people that connect with Loki that do not practice their path in a way that looks like mine or that I even agree with, but that doesn't mean either of our respective practices and ways of relating to Loki are any more or less valid than the other. It means we have different understandings of Loki and probably different lifestyles or religious backgrounds/worldviews. It is what it is. We all like to be Big and Right™️ all the time, but what does that really do for us at the end of the day? As long as we aren't using deity as an excuse to harm ourselves or others, what does it matter?

Personally, I like the pets analogy/metaphor my friend uses, and the more I flesh it out, the more I agree with it. They posit that we are to deity what our pets are to us. Think about it. We are not required in any way to house and care for animals of any kind for any reason. Why do we do it? Companionship. Affection. Routine (i.e., pet care). Interest in animals. Whatever our reasons, when we have a pet, we do everything we can to care for it because we love the damn thing. We might need to train it, scold it from time to time for peeing or shitting on something they shouldn't, but that doesn't mean there isn't love or care there. And that's what I think Deities do for us. They don't have to care about us. Not all of them care for every one of us humans, certainly. But when they do, they have their reasons. We can certainly shit the bed from time to time (figuratively, or literally depending on your age or life experience), and they can be harsh in their lessons and messages, but that does not mean they don't care. They potty train us and keep on loving us because we love them. We do things for each other that bring us joy in some way. We talk to our pets, they talk to us. We don't always understand each other or share the same agendas, but we still go through life together. Think about how we consider pets to be members of our family. We love those little critters. Might deities feel similarly about you? I don't see why they couldn't. You see what I'm saying? We're not equals, no, but that does not mean our connections aren't real and genuine and friendly and full of love. And them being friendly does not mean they aren't respectful.

Anyway, I'm gonna have a movie night and watch old monster movies with Loki and their Jotun family. Because giant wolves and snakes can have opinions on old school Universal horror films as much as they can keep our world from ending. Imagine that.

[buckybarnesss]

Hi! Where is it said that Derek wasn't in BH for his senior year? I've seen this a lot, but I can't remember it from canon. Love your posts in the Sterek tag, good discussions!

oh my sweet summer child. teen wolf never tells you these things explicitly so on this episode of heather versus the teen wolf timeline we'll be discussing derek hale's age.

derek was very much 16 when the fire happened. i do not understand how people think he was older.

the parallels between derek and scott are very, very obvious and pointed. one of the big reasons scott and derek clash in season 1 is because derek has a difficult time seeing scott as scott. he projects a lot of his anger at his younger self onto scott.

like code breaker pretty much confirms this:

"you're not in love, scott! you're sixteen years old! you're a child!"

you just know derek wishes he could go back to tell his 16 year old self this. kate and her actions weren't his fault but derek cannot let go of the shame and guilt at this point. he isn't there yet.

i think another thing that makes it obvious derek was 16 when kate got her claws into him is bringing ian nelson back for s4.

visionary is again heavy on the parallels between scott and derek. we understand that derek is a child here. he's a high schooler. so kate de-aging derek to the age where he'd trust her? the implications couldn't be more clear. the audience is meant to associate ian nelson with high schooler derek.

in magic bullet derek tells scott: "six years ago, my sister and i were at school, and our house caught fire."

wolf moon takes place in janurary 2011 so six years previous puts the hale fire occurring in roughly late 2004/early 2005. i personally go with early 2005.

stiles's obsession with the hale fire/derek also makes sense if it occurred after claudia's death claudia died in early 2004 shortly before his 9th birthday. this would've been an event that captured his attention for multiple reasons.

derek's quote from magic bullet also informs us laura was still in school. some argue he means college or something which i don't believe. derek couldn't have graduated before laura.

i think laura was a senior and derek was still a sophomore and that this took place only months after paige's death and his grief was taken advantage of by kate.

laura didn't know what happened or who was after them. she took her little brother and fucking ran as far away as possible only returning 3 months before wolf moon to investigate.

i think kate was sent to beacon hills by gerard to look into paige's suspicious death because he had been in town when it happened along with the three other packs.

remember he attacked duecalion and was clearly aware of kali and ennis too. he knows they killed one of ennis's pack members brutally and being the smart, devious man he is might have put the math together like peter did. teenagers are perfect candidates for the bite and ennis had just lost one and than an otherwise healthy girl dies in suspicious animal attack at the same time a bunch of alphas were the same place?

remember what kate says in code breaker when confronted by chris?

"i did what I was told to do."

kate was following gerard's orders.

in conclusion though, derek didn't graduate from beacon hills high school as he and laura had left by then so those aren't his initials.

stiles is just sentimental and missing derek so he gets gooey at seeing the same initials.

[thewertsearch]

Ask Comp 19/10

That's true - we don't know for sure that Trollian can fully emulate Sburb's surveillance capabilities.

If the trolls were sufficiently motivated, though, they wouldn't actually need to. Sollux could probably hack one of the kids' computers, to gain access to their Sburb viewport - although if he did, he wouldn't need a camera to snoop on their messages.

Is there a paranoia Aspect? I think I've finally found my calling.

anonymous asked: heya! ive just finished re-reading your ENtIRE liveblog and i to send asks about some stuff but i waited to finish so im sendind everything at once! (im gonna send stuff in a bunch of small asks so cat can stop just one instead of the whole thing in case of accidental spoilers) (aslo hi cat!) (also its ninnoy, havent sent an ask in a while but i changed my pfp to something slightly more spoilery so im in anon now) [...] the jade pen pal thing, do you have any new theories on who it could be?

None! I'm sure that it's someone derived from Grandpa Harley, but everything else is a mystery.

I have no particular theories about who he is, how he knows Jade, where he got his hands on so many endgame weapons, or why he's got such an antiquated accent if he's watching movies from the 80s. I assume time travel is involved, but that doesn't really narrow anything down in a comic like this. He (she? they?) is a complete enigma, and I'll just have to wait to learn more.

ALsO WHEREs YOUR sONAs? we havent seen them in so long im afraid sahlle might have actueally died of meteor strike (joking of course) also have you realized that "sally" and "cat" are both one letter of from a valid kid name? you could lend her one of your "L"s

I've actually been workshopping some Quest stuff for Sahlee this week! I suppose I'd need to figure out her Title first, though, and for that, I'd need to get a more solid idea of her personality, and how her experiences on Alternia have shaped her.

in one of your last posts you seemed to imply that the multiverse exists inside the timeline, but ive always read it as the opposite, the timeline inside the universe that would explain why the trolls can pick any time from the humans universe to talk to them but cant have private conversations with their own futute/past selves, its not an inherent part of trollian, they are just outside the human timeline (the memos are still trollian being time fucky) dont know if that makes any difference but its a thought also i realize the tag may be unecessary due to my quirk, but its too late to stop now

(NOTE: quirk omitted for readability, but the substitutions are [t -> 7, s -> 2] - sort of a variant of Sollux's quirk. I actually don't think we've seen any quirks which add a 7, so the voice here is distinct from any trolls we've seen so far. I like it!)

Originally, my assumption was that each timeline contained a duplicate of the entire multiverse. Doomed timelines don't seem to let you communicate with other universes/dimensions, though, so they don't need to contain other sectors of reality. I'm currently of the opinion that doomed timelines only contain an instance of the dimension they were doomed in. The only timeline which contains the entire multiverse is the Alpha.

This mechanic keeps doomed timelines simple, but in-universe, I don't know why it exists. Much like the Alpha itself, it's a mystery I can only speculate about.

has the shipping chart been updated since the last time we saw it? also you (at some point) said that equius<>feferi was a controversial ship so i had to go back to check the notes and i was the only person i found talkig about it so i guess im the whole controversy? if thats the case i would like to thank you for recognizing me as the equius<>feferi number 1 hater (all jokes of course)

I got a few skeptical asks about Equius<>Feferi, but you're the only one who discussed it on the post itself. I guess by some measures, you are the most dedicated hater, because your hate was posted publicly! 🤣

I could make one or two changes, but I don't want to post a new chart until the kids meet the trolls in person, hopefully at the end of the Act!

The Scratch, naturally - but I'm also looking forward to seeing exactly how WV was Exiled. He's currently on Skaia, and Jack has lost interest in him, so who's actually sending him through the portal?

Tavros is barely a presence on the Land he's ostensibly the hero of, and all of his actions are being dictated by a third party who can physically control his body. This third party does not acknowledge or respect Tavros's own desires, effectively forcing him to play the game in a way that she personally approves of.

She claims it will make him stronger.

@bladekindeyewear submitted: That was a long, thorough, and fantastic response! It's fascinating seeing your opinion on these things-- and I'm glad to see that considering the questions we've given you seems to have made you more paranoid. But I'm just not entirely sure you're paranoid ENOUGH. Not yet. Much like how you just found that "BREEZE" quote in your Breath research, back at around the time you've now reached in the comic, we had dozens of theory-miners combing back through everything that had been said and shown in Homestuck, over and over again, searching for anything we might have missed that might have been of some importance. [...] So, uh….. how do I put this… Would you prefer to strictly handle that sort of thing all by yourself, as you've said? Which I'd agree is still the best way that you should keep to, for the most part? Or would you mind if I gave you just a CRUMB of an example, only one? A tiny bit of text that we in the theory community only found at about the time you've reached in the comic, even though it was more than a thousand pages earlier?

Shit, this is such a dilemma. I'm honestly really torn.

See, I'd probably find old fandom theories absolutely fascinating to analyze. I'd love to know how closely my ideas align with those of the early Homestuck fandom, and whether I'm saying anything really out-of-pocket. My analysis of Sollux's ~ATH script was apparently an original theory, and it's honestly one my proudest moments.

But that's also sort of the problem, isn't it? If I dive too deeply into other people's fan theories, they'll start to affect my own - and if I'm introduced to a really compelling fan theory, it could end up replacing any homegrown theories that I could have developed in lieu of it. If someone had send me a well-reasoned ~ATH theory before I did my own analysis, I'd probably have been less motivated to make the analysis in the first place. After all, many of my questions would already have been answered by a clever theory I just read.

People are free to send me their own off-the-cuff opinions on what's happening in the comic, or their own takes on any meta I write. I get a lot of asks like that, and they're some of my favorites. There are also asks which spoil a little too much, but I'm still interested in their takes, so Cat's saving them for later. We don't really delete asks - we just delay the ones that aren't necessarily appropriate for a blind liveblog.

Obviously there's a fine line here, and whether a given ask is a theory or just an opinion is a little subjective - but in my opinion, the influence that asks and submissions have had on my analysis has been relatively minor. I don't think many of my theories have been spawned from an ask, or killed by one.

This is a little different, though, because it's part of a theory that was crowdsourced over several years. It doesn't sound like something that could be inferred by an individual, so I'm not sure if it's something an individual liveblogger should necessarily know about? If I start crowdsourcing my analysis, my theories will be less Wertsearch and more fandom consensus, and I don't think I'd enjoy that as much.

I really want to know, but I think I'll enjoy the liveblog more if I don't. When I finish the comic, I'll gleefully analyze any fan theory that anyone sends me - but for now, I'll just have to wonder, and come up with theories of my own!

Yeah, we've really been getting into it with Vriska lately. I've enjoyed trying to explain and predict her actions, and I'm glad people don't think I'm going overboard when trying to analyze her.

When a character does something interesting, I don't like to move on until I have a theory about why they did it. Sure, it may be refuted later, but it needs to be something that's consistent with what I currently know about their personality.

Vriska takes a particularly long time to puzzle out in this way. Her motivations are derived from a complex web (lol) of factors, including Scratch, Spidermom, her rivalry with Terezi, her horrendous relationship with Tavros, classism, teenage hormones, quadrant politics, highblood society and the Alternian culture of violence. They all inform her decisions, and any combination of them could have been the catalyst for the latest Vriska Incident.

I want characters to make sense to me, and Vriska is written to deliberately challenge my attempt to achieve this. Her meta is fun to write, so I'm glad it's also fun to read!

[runwayrunway]

No. 55 - Finnair [+ Centenary Livery]

So I know I'm in the process of writing a bunch of longer posts and thus haven't posted in absolutely forever, but I had to let something cut the line very quickly because in this case it was somewhat time-sensitive. I've missed the actual date by two months, but if I get in a post while it's still 2023 (...in my timezone, at least, so sorry to actual Finns busy enjoying 2024) I think that counts, and this entire blog is about what I think, so that means it counts.

On 1 November 2023 Finnair became the sixth airline to turn 100 years old, consistent with its status as the sixth oldest airline in continuous operation. I wish I'd started this blog earlier in the year, or prioritized differently, because Aeroflot and Czech Airlines also turned 100 in 2023, but...well, I didn't. You'll probably see them both in 2024 instead. Finnair, however, was requested by @kuivamustekala - particularly their centenary liveries. Requested a long time ago, even. So I'm going to hope that late is better than never and throw Finnair one last birthday party to wrap up 2023 by looking at where they started, where they are now, and what they've been doing to celebrate.

1923: PROTO-FINNAIR

Finnair, obviously the flag carrier of Finland, was founded in 1923, but its first service was in early 2024, using a Junkers J.13 (fitted with obligatory floats, as there were no suitable airstrips in Finland at the time).

image: Joseph Eaton via US Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation This is actually the US license-built version, the Junkers-Larsen JL-6, but I couldn't find any pictures of actual J.13s on floats.

Unfortunately, Finnair was founded under the name 'Aero', which is probably the actual single worst name for an airline I have ever heard. We can jest and joke about things like Jet2 and Fly Air, but I sincerely do not think I have ever seen anything with worse SEO than an airline named 'Aero'. Even for 1923 this was fairly dire - back then, as for much of history, airlines were generally named for the area they served. Aero may have been a private company, rather than state-owned, but that didn't mean they couldn't name themselves for the area they served - private airlines have always done this and still do. Incredibly enough, there was a second 'Aero' founded in Poland in 1925, but that was quickly merged into what would become LOT Polish Airlines, shedding the name like a chrysalis.

Bafflingly, even when the Finnish government bought the airline in 1946 (they still own a majority share of it today) they didn't bother to change the name. They did begin writing 'Finnish Airlines[1]' on the fuselages, but as far as I can tell this appears to have been more of a stylistic flourish of sorts than an actual rebrand, or maybe even a clarifying subtitle on the very nonspecific name. In 1953 they began marketing under the much catchier 'Finnair', but the company remained legally named 'Aero' until literally 1968 and the fuselages still read 'Finnish Airlines'.

image: Finnair An Aero/Finnish Airlines Convair 340, photographed in 1953 in a livery which included both the large 'Finnish Airlines' wordmark and 'Aero' on the tail.

Early Finnair, like most early airlines, didn't have a particularly standardized livery for its fleet, and even where it did it's not very well documented. Finnair unfortunately has some of the poorest documentation for livery evolution of any large airline I've discussed so far, which really surprised me. That said, it's when the name became Finnair that things begin to be easier to find, and so that's where I'll begin.

1968: CLASSIC FINNAIR

This original logo[2], introduced in 1968, was designed by Kyösti Varis - at least, that's what every logo database I looked in said. I actually couldn't find either Finnair or Varis confirming this[3], but I still think it's probably true. Unlike designers like Vic Warren and Lindon Leader, who wrote and gave interviews about their designs for major airlines, Varis appears to have other preoccupations. He is enormously successful and prolific, to the point where his website doesn't even mention Finnair. According to the timeline he provides he would have either been creating this logo freelance or in his very last days at Advertising Agency SEK (probably the latter, since they did the two subsequent iterations), and based on his history as a typographer I think it's safe to say the letterforms are his creation as well. Also according to his timeline, he is younger than Finnair! And we almost have the same birthday.

I like the original Finnair branding. It's not ostentatious, but it's nice and sleek, with that forward slant I love in airline branding and a long unbroken line (both in the 'F' logo and in the even heights of the letters in the wordmark). It looks aerodynamic and the rounded, blocky letters have a hint of that 60s futurism while not being gimmicky. It's kind of incredible looking at it next to the '91-'94 FedEx wordmark, which occupies the opposite end of the sliding quality scale of TRON-looking text. The design as a whole is simple enough to easily reproduce but distinct enough to easily recognize. The shade of blue chosen is a fair bit lighter than the blue of the Finnish flag, but visually pleasing enough. They basically keep iterating on this general concept for the rest of their history, which I think is fantastic - no need to get rid of something that's working for you. It's nice to see an airline not feel pressured to reinvent its logo and livery every 20 years. That's about it for the logo[4] - what about the livery?

As mentioned prior, Finnair's liveries, before quite recently, were very poorly documented. Variants definitely existed between different types and different periods in the company's history, but the broad strokes of the branding seem to have remained almost startlingly intact for around thirty years.

image: Letterform Archive The cover of a style guide from 1985. If it's changed from the 1968 original, I can't tell how.

But I'm really here to talk about one thing: the liveries.

The above image was from Finnair's own archive and was taken in 1968[5], making it contemporary with the introduction of the Kyösti Varis branding, as well as lining it up with the 1969 addition of DC-8s, like the pictured airframe.

For the majority of Finnair's history, their livery is always going to look something a little bit like this. Primarily white, with a thick blue cheatline (in what I call the domino-mask style, where it's vertically centered around the cockpit windows) that lightly flips up at the very end and a blue cross on the tail to represent the Finnish flag.

Finnair says this image is from 1960. If so, the livery was already well on its way to existing prior to 1968, with my guess being that it was introduced in 1960, along with the first jets in Finnair's fleet - the pictured Sud Aviation Caravelle, which pioneered the swept-wing, aft-engine format later seen on immensely popular jets like the DC-9 and Tu-134 - the latter of which was commissioned specifically because Nikita Khrushchev was so impressed with the Caravelle's aft engines and the quiet cabin experience they provided. It's a plane with a lot of unique visual features, featuring a nose that looks almost slanted downwards (a copy of the de Havilland Comet nose), a cruciform tail (instead of the more efficient T-tail used for future rear-engined designs), and triangular passenger windows. Most crucially, though, it was more or less the first short-range jet on the market. This made it perfect for an airline like Finnair, which at this point didn't really go that far from actual Finland.

This 1960 photograph provides a very strong blueprint for what was to come. It's the first iteration of the livery to say 'Finnair' instead of 'Finnish Airlines', and it's introduced a modern-for-1960 single-rule cheatline, although this early version was flipped horizontally, curling up at the front to frame the cockpit windows instead. (I think the white paint also cuts off behind it, leaving the space in-between the cheatline and painted nose blank metal, but in black-and-white it's somewhat hard to tell.) I do think I prefer the modern version. The use of the white downward curve with no blue hemming it in creates a really nice effect where it blends with the unpainted metal underside, due to the metal being right where you would expect to see a shadow anyway. (This effect is why I'm not quite sure where the paint ends on the Caravelle, and am just guessing based on which parts are noticeably reflective.) I definitely prefer the change made to the tail, where the single line of trim at the end of the rudder was replaced with a white canvas for the Finnish flag.

While I do tend to have a slightly pessimistic outlook on primarily-white liveries, I will say that if you're going to have a primarily white plane, and you are the flag carrier of Finland, this is a fairly understated and stylish way of incorporating it. While I probably would have done it on the main body, over where the first set of doors is, instead of on the tail, I think this is far from the end of the world. What they have is a nice, elegant taper where the tip seems to point directly at the tailplane, and it looks neat and intentional. A lot of airlines tend to just awkwardly slap a logo on their tail, which often looks really sloppy due to poor alignment or even just out-of-place entirely, and Finnair avoids that while keeping the tail from being completely blank. Having an element on the tail that's more horizontal than vertical, like the old 'AERO' rectangle or the tail rectangle on the one decent livery Lufthansa ever had.

If you look in the background, you can see that wow has the Olympic Air livery looked like that for a long time! But that's a story for soon.

Additionally, some details were added on the nose. You can see on this DC-8, photographed in 1969, that the nose features an e-girl cheek stamp of the Kyösti Varis logo. Next to it is the name of the aircraft - in this case, Jean Sibelius - in really difficult-to-read thin text. (Finnair unfortunately appears to have stopped naming their planes by the late 1970s, but at one point they would frequently be named for Finnish people and places.) The 'domino mask' goes quite a bit beyond the cockpit windows to create a wider line from the side. I wish that the logo could have been integrated some other way, because the extra little blue thing just looks cluttered, but I can't imagine how they would do it without just replacing the cheatline. I mean, that would have been an option - indeed, it's what I would have done[6] - but assuming that they keep this general look I think the logo just can't fit in on the livery. The engine nacelles, maybe? Though that would still present issues on the Caravelle, where the engines are directly over the cheatlines. I also wish they would have made it a bit easier read the name, because I like to know what the plane's name is - thankfully, some later paint jobs actually do this before, tragically, Finnair stops writing names on their planes at all.

I believe this to be the strongest iteration of the classic Finnair livery, and it was pretty obviously optimized for the DC-8. Modern airlines tend to not bother adjusting their liveries between types, creating some absolute travesties of proportion, but Finnair boldly went in the opposite direction by modifying it for each airframe and yet still having it look worse.

The sharpest deviation arises in the CV-440 version of the livery. This image is from 1971, just two years after the DC-8 liveries would have carried their first passengers, and it's wildly different. The cheatline is lowered sharply, sitting below the cockpit windows and wrapping around to contour the body of the airplane. There's a certain je ne sais quois to the domino mask that I find myself missing here. This design also has an unnecessary second 'Finnair' added to the tail, which kind of looks awkward stacked on top of the existing cheatline besides being redundant, and the Finnish flag on the tail is somewhat awkwardly made free-floating. It feels a lot less sleek and a lot more arbitrary.

On the other side of the plane the cheatline goes down quite a bit farther than on the jet models, probably because they thought it would be a better way of negotiating the Convair's rather bulbous nose, and I actually think I prefer the wide, upturned variant. This version, if anything, is too close for my taste to the livery VARIG operated in a similar timeframe. There are a lot of differences, yes, but in the 70s having one big solid cheatline on a white body and metal underbelly was the equivalent of the Lufthansa Line, so if you toed said line, be it cheat or Lufthansa, you risked becoming easily mistakeable for any airline with too similar of a color scheme. And blue-on-white was maybe the most common color-scheme at the time.

I doubt Finnair shared many tarmacs with VARIG, but here they are with Pan Am, and they could also expect to run into airlines like Sabena, Icelandair, and probably a half-dozen I've never heard of, all competing to be the one the others get mistaken for. It's a tricky position to be in.

I do quite like the livery on the left, maybe even more than the DC-8 one, but I can't seem to find any other airframes painted like this. I'm not sure why this one is.

These images are from 1971 and 1969. They are both the same model of airplane - the Super Caravelle or Caravelle 10B. Their liveries are completely different. And that's just how it was back then - not even standard within the same airline, somehow still trying to stay distinct from dozens of other non-standardized blue-on-white cheatlines.

When evaluating classic Finnair, I have to keep myself tempered in both directions. When I think it's clean and well-proportioned I have to remind myself that it's just a complete nothingburger. When I think it's a lazy and cowardly non-design I have to remind myself that, no, at its best classic Finnair does look like it was designed with some thought, and it does have some traits that feel at the very least interesting enough to merit not being totally dismissed.

But...look, I have to give classic Finnair a D+. Because they tried, and they did something, sure, but it's ultimately not something especially memorable and the implementation is just spotty.

Even given a canvas like the DC-10, they fumbled. The DC-10, in my opinion, was a big test for them. And I do mean big. In the DC-10 is a plane with all the space in the world to add visual elements, and a space where just a couple lines can go from a detail to a fin that towers over anything that isn't a 747, showing off the Finnish flag as if someone had flown it from a building mast. The third engine, which I feel like a lot of airlines really struggle with on the DC-10, gets a nice horizontal line of writing that's not intrusive but helps prevent it from feeling like a giant gap. The wordmark gets larger, is moved forward, gets to really own the space it takes up instead of being squeezed in. And...they made the cheatline just....a really thin flat line that looks bad and stiff and boring. There's nothing setting them apart from Icelandair, and Icelandair's livery from this point in time was so boring that my only comment on it was that it looked like they forgot to paint the rest of the plane. You can do white planes well, but Finnair just really doesn't get there.

...hey, Finnair? You can't just decide to do belly stripes but worse, Finnair, you're literally next door to like two thirds of SAS and that livery was designed from the ground up. They have a couple of near-misses with SAS's toes but this is the one that makes me actually go 'is this allowed?'. It seems to have been exclusive to their late-80s MD-80 fleet, but it's just incredible to me that it ever happened. (That said, those three shades of blue are so nice together and I wish they had ever brought them back. I understand the appeal of sticking to the stark contrasted blue-on-white of the flag, but there's so much potential out there!)

1997: NEW TYPE, NEW LIVERY

I really like the 757. It deserves a better livery than this.

Removing the cheatlines was a very trendy choice to make. This is the sad beast I call the Deltalite - a Deltalike but without the painted nacelles and belly that are usually slight redeeming factors. There's such a beautiful design on the tail that could have been put on the whole fuselage, honestly, and that's sad, but even on the most granular of levels...why keep the little cheek stamp if you have the logo visible on the tail now? Weird choice. Being so desperate to do the Deltalite thing everyone else is doing that you get rid of your country's flag on the tail is just a bad choice of priority, I think. There's not much to say about this. Honestly, I'd drop it to a D-. There's enough happening that it would lose something by being painted into Star Alliance colors, but it wouldn't lose terribly much.

2000: NEW FINNAIR

Oh, Finnair. Why? Did no airline resist the siren song of getting way too into airbrushing in the early 2000s?

Maybe I just have whatever the opposite of nostalgia is for the early 2000s, but this just makes me sad. They've made the wordmark look worse, overcomplicated the simplicity of the logo, and gone ham with the gaussian blur.

Look, it's not all that bad. The shades used on the actual plane are noticeably darker, and the colors at least don't look half bad now. And they've even bothered to paint the engines this time around! But...come on. You've changed 30 years of something that was working just fine for...this? Something which maybe climbs up to a flat D?

The 2000 brand overhaul, including the logo, was done by Finnish agency SEK & Grey. They're nearly as old as Finnair and have worked for brands as prominent as Coca-Cola and Kellogg's, but their about page puts Finnair front and center. They have an entire page describing their Finnair work.

Despite claiming to have included humanity and warmth and movement, I see none of this. I'll admit upfront I generally dislike what's dubbed 'Nordic' design. It's not the minimalism which I dislike but the banality.

What does any of this have to do with Finnair? What here represents the history of one of the world's oldest airlines? What here really speaks to the Finnish people? Why is just designing something generic and making sure it's all crisp (when you're photographing it fresh out of the plastic, before it's been tripped over and stepped on and yanked down staircases and accidentally sat on and stained with tea) considered a substitute for designing something that people will see years down the line and get nostalgic for? I'm nostalgic as hell for Alitalia, an airline that doesn't exist anymore. I still use the bag from an amenity kit I got on Alitalia nearly ten years ago to store small essential things like toothbrushes and medication while traveling, but I wouldn't know it was Alitalia by looking at it, because it's lovely and convenient and ergonomic but it's literally just grey. It evokes nothing, and it doesn't even say 'Alitalia' on it anywhere. Nothing here could ever be considered ephemera or memorabilia. I could steal Finnair's look at the Gap.

2010: SORRY, HERE'S NEW FINNAIR FOR REAL THIS TIME

SEK & Grey gave it another shot. This one's a lot better.

I like the change in the logo, first off. And this, the word 'Finnair', is the logo, but I'm comparing it to the earlier wordmark. 2000's attempt felt like it was taking the original and just trying to sand off the corners to make it more modern, but the 2010 take on it actually shapes each glyph into a neat little space-age thing that creates this curved shape by way of a lot of straight lines, in a way that feels visually pleasing and interesting. I enjoy the square holes in the A and R, the return of the crossbar on the N, and the extreme range of widths which gives the letters a real weight to them. This isn't a typeface - these glyphs exist in the context of the word FINNAIR in this exact configuration and one of four colorways. Finnair does have a proprietary typeface, Finnair Sans, and it looks nothing like this because this is not a font, it's a logo.

I think it is a shame that this is the logo now. I really liked the F. And they haven't gotten rid of it, but it's now been relegated to an official subordinate position, according to their branding guide:

The official Finnair logo is the text version of the logo, and it is primarily used. The F emblem is used as an additional symbol. 

Look, I'll always think it's a shame when your main logo is just the name of your company. Some airlines do it, and it feels like an empty space to me. It can be satisfactory but not outstanding. When you start out with a nice little symbol and then take it away, though, I do feel somewhat robbed.

It stings extra because I really like the way the new F looks. It has that long brushstrokey look and it almost makes me think of Hebrew characters. The way it tapers now really adds to the feeling of movement I get from it, and it's a great base for a livery. Now that it's darker, even though this does bring Finnair into competition with airlines like SAS, LOT, TAROM, Lufthansa, and even Ryanair when it comes to dark-blue-on-white, it also contrasts better with the main body, and it's still light enough that you can recognize it as blue. Anyway, it doesn't take a genius to know how to integrate this into a livery. Long line for the fuselage, go up to match the tail...

Finnair. Are you serious, Finnair?

Look! I get it! Billboards are in now, it's fine, I get it. it's probably the nicest billboard I've seen in a while, font-wise. It feels comfortable on the fuselage and it feels like it earns the space it occupies. The F is nicely centered on the tail, cuts off at a pleasant point. But...why?

I really can't be too mean about this. I want to be meaner than I actually can justify, because I think if any other airline made their plane this featureless I would hate it but Finnair's billboard livery is actually nice enough and everything is placed well enough that it's not at all unpleasant to look at. It's an acceptable livery. If maybe 25% less planes were basically all white it would shoot up in my esteem. I don't really like the fact that they put the little Fs on the inside of the wingtips of their A350s, but that's really my only nitpick. It's just sort of...bringing a really fantastic loaf of bread to a potluck when you were asked to bring baked desserts. You've done a very good job, but you didn't quite get the assignment.

It's a bit hard to critique the modern Finnair livery in detail because I think it's executed fine. There's nothing really wrong with it except that it has a logo that could lend itself to all sorts of interesting shapes, it has 30 years of variants of a very specific design to draw on, and it's chosen to go tabula rasa just to be all clean and minimal instead of doing any of the interesting things it could have with this new start.

I want to dislike this take on the Finnair livery, but at the end of the day I just don't. I think it's completely satisfactory. A lot of airlines try to get this look and somehow end up seeming cluttered for it. Finnair is one of the only instances I can think of where a white fuselage with just a wordmark has looked okay. It isn't ugly. It hasn't failed at the thing it's trying to do, but I think that it should have tried to do something else.

At the same time, though, this is the most Finnair that Finnair has ever been. The blue cheatline and the Deltalites were stumbling over well-trod ground. The modern livery, at least, isn't sloppily tail-heavy and seemingly thoughtless.

I give modern Finnair a C. This took an excessive amount of deliberation, but it really is...good enough. It's satisfactory. It's fine! I would have taken a completely different direction, but they have done a good job with their sort of lackluster idea. It's alright. We'll check on them again in another hundred years and see where they're at.

2023: CENTENAIRY

A century is a very long time. Finnair is older than my oldest grandparent. Finnair is older than over a dozen sovereign countries. Finnair is older than aerodromes in Finland. It's older than every currently operating airline except KLM, Avianca, Qantas, Aeroflot, and Czech Airlines. As of the first of November, Finnair is in triple digits.

I adore this centenary stamp Finnair has put out, celebrating the long relationship between aviation and the mail. It's not complex, but it's not barren, either. It combines the dark blue of the modern livery with the light blue of the classic one, all with the white silhouettes of airplanes elegantly soaring over an outline of Finland. The outstretched white wings on the deep blue have the grace of a giant fish swimming beneath a glass-bottomed boat.

But of course it isn't just stamps. Finnair is an airline. Airlines do special liveries. Qantas and KLM both slapped a big 100 sticker on an airplane for their big anniversaries. Finnair has of course done something similar.

Three airframes - the pictured A350-900, OH-LWR, and two A320s - OH-LXK and OH-LXM - have had a 'bringing us together since 1923' sticker applied. Matching the rest of Finnair's branding, it's certainly quite minimal, but it's a nice gesture. It's not what people have been talking about. That's OH-LWO and OH-LWP, both A350-900s, who have been given something more substantial to wear.

I'm going to assume that after its renaissance on tumblr a few years back most people reading this are familiar with the Moomin franchise. I definitely am, because when I was in my larval stage my mother first taught me to read Russian using an omnibus book of Moomin stories. Creator Tove Jansson apparently designed both the shape of the eponymous white critters and the sound of the name Mumintrollen itself are designed to evoke a feeling of softness, and it's clear why these characters are so beloved.

It isn't the first time Finnair, which frequently collaborates with Finnish brands and highlights its Finnish roots, has featured Moomins.

image on left: Antti Havukainen

In the 1990s, the airline first flew a Moomin jet. They had another in the 2000s. Both were withdrawn from service before 2010. It's been a while now since Finnair flew their last MD-11, but when celebrating their 100th birthday, a milestone that the vast majority of airlines will never see, they chose to do it by way of a soft Moomin embrace.

image: Changi Airport

And, I'll be honest, I think it's very sweet. It got an actual, sincere little smile out of me.

100 years is a really long time. In 1923 aviation was unrecognizable. What we would now consider an airliner didn't really exist yet - space for ten passengers, closed cockpits, and metal fuselages were the exceptions rather than the rule, and the Ford Trimotor was two years from its first flight. Cabin crew were barely even a concept. Airplanes, for all intents and purposes, were considered a type of boat. A nonstop flight across the Atlantic was a ridiculous concept. In a report published by the US National Bureau of Standards, it was said: 'there does not appear to be, at present, any prospect whatever that jet propulsion of the sort here considered will ever be of practical value, even for military purposes'. There were no aerodromes in Finland, so a small company called Aero attached floats to a plane just large enough for four passengers and took them from Helsinki to Tallinn.

Look how far we've come.

Footnotes:

[1]: The Finnair website's history page, which I used as a source for much of the background and several images in this post, renders it as 'Finnish Air Lines', but on the airplanes themselves it clearly has no space, so I've corrected that seeming error for them. I don't know why this discrepancy exists, because as far as I know during this period they were marketing themselves as Aero so this text would only have existed on the livery itself. [2]: Actually, I very occasionally see this version where the F logo isn't fully surrounded by the circle and the F in the wordmark doesn't have the rounded top, and I don't know which came first or if the less round version is just somehow...not real? I did try to figure this out, I swear, but at some point I realized I am literally not a professional logo historian, and nobody is going to be let down if I don't brute-force an answer despite not even speaking Finnish, and I should finish writing the post before it's 2024. [3] The closest thing to an official source I can find is the descriptions of two listings for the centenary stamp including a quote from designer Ilkka Kärkkäinen attributing it to him. I don't at all doubt that he did design it, but I always like to find concrete attribution for things if I can and would hate to spread misinformation and the sparseness of confirmation here is something I find very strange. My best guess is that there's plenty of good sources on it in Finnish but nobody has bothered to make it as clear in English. [4] Admittedly this is a stretch, and I certainly don't think it was intentional, but it does remind me of the longship prow used in early SAS liveries. This motif was introduced in 1946 and continued to see use after the Finnair logo was introduced. The overlap is fairly limited in that SAS never used the longship in their logo (...I kind of want to talk about their logos one of these days) and the Finnair livery you'll see shortly doesn't look like SAS's at all, plus SAS has the extra pink on their liveries, but I couldn't get it out of my head that they do look sort of alike. [5] The absolute hero who uploaded it to jetphotos mentioned that Finnair had given him the photograph while planning to dispose of it, and this makes me wonder if the lack of documentation is just because Finnair doesn't hold onto their old materials, which makes me very sad. A lot of companies, more broadly, didn't bother to keep records until somewhat recently, but in Finnair's case it seems to be particularly egregious. As someone literally studying to be an archivist it makes me exceptionally sad to see history lost just because nobody cared enough to preserve it. [6] Maybe they didn't want to look like backwards SAS. Who can say?

[ipso-faculty]

Today's rabbithole: the origins of "dyadic" as opposite of intersex/h-word

TLDR: "dyadic" seems to come from 1970s radical feminism and seems to have entered intersex vocabulary via gender studies. This implies it is NOT a term coined from within the intersex community.

I've been reading Cripping Intersex since it's this month's pick for @intersexbookclub (and it's not too late for you to pick it up yourself! 💜). One thing that caught my attention is Orr spends a bunch of time presenting the origins of "endosex" and "perisex" as disputed for whether these terms were coined by intersex people or not.

Orr does this because they clearly prefer "dyadic" and are trying to justify why they're talking about "compulsory dyadism" rather than "compulsory endonormativity/perinormativity" etc. 🤨

Interestingly enough, Orr makes absolutely zero attempt in the book to find an origin for the word "dyadic". 🧐 Orr also never questions whether the term "dyadic" actually came from the intersex community. 🧐 So..... rabbit hole time!

Before I get into what I found on dyadic, I wanna quickly fact check Orr on the origin of endosex. Best as I can tell, the term was first used in German in 2000 by Heike Bödeker. Bödeker is controversial for supporting autogynephilia 😬, but I've never seen anybody doubt Bödeker having mixed gonadal dysgenesis. If anybody knows of an older use of endosex, please send it my way! But as far as I can tell, "endosex" was coined by an intersex person.

Okay, onto the origin of dyadic. Orr presents this word as though its only detractors come from its implication there is a sex binary, even though as @intersex-ionality discusses here there are other reasons people don't like it. One reason is that the term is considered to originate from outside the intersex community.

Orr never questions the origins of dyadic. But intersex-ionality's post got me wondering if I could track down an textual origin.

So I went to Google Scholar, searched for "dyad" or "dyadic" plus "intersex" or the h-word and kept changing the time period increasingly far back in time. (Initially I just used intersex until I remembered the h-word slur would be more common in older articles 😬.)

I went into this thinking maybe dyadic would be related to how in early intersex studies literature like Critical Intersex (2009) you can see authors trying out terms like "dimorphic" and "dimorphous" that reference sexual dimorphism. (Neither "dyadic" nor "endosex" show up in the book.)

But the earliest works by intersex scholars that invoke dyadic tend to use it in a way that implies to me it has its own origin - e.g. Malatino (2010) talks about "at one pole, the dyad of the dimorphic heterosexual couple and, at the other, the hermaphroditic body" and "the heteronormative promised land of proper dyadic, dimorphic sex" which gives me the impression dyadic has a more sociological origin rather than the biology origin of dimorphic.

This 2010 gender studies article by Mandy Merck that talks about the intersex rights movement was my first solid lead. Merck draws a direct connection between the intersex rights movement and the 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone. 😯

In the book, Firestone explicitly talks about the "male-female dyad". This book had a fairly big impact when it came out. Firestone was a big-name second-wave radical feminist. And as Merck puts it: "[Firestone's] aim is to release women and men from the culturally gendered[5] dyad of the “subjective, intuitive, introverted, wishful, dreamy or fantastic” and the “objective, logical, extroverted, realistic”[6] into a society undivided by genital differences. This she calls “integration.”" (emphasis mine)

Pushing the search terms to before the 00s, I found I there were some 1980s botanists kinda using "dyad" as an opposite to "hermaphrodite" (example). I don't know how standard this was though, and with Google Scholar it is important to remember that digitization becomes less common the further back you go. 🤷‍♀️

Judith Butler used "dyadic" in a 1985 article about Foucault's Herculine Barbin.

The Butler article got me searching for more generally - "dyad" or "dyadic" plus "sex-roles male female". I found lots of results using dyadic to talk about female/male sex roles from the 1970s.... and a rather sudden paucity of such articles in the 1960s. 🤔

When I restricted the search to anything before 1970, I get results from symbolic interactionist sociology. I.e. the sociology use of "dyadic" (i.e. any social interaction happening between a pair of individuals).

So looks like dyadic as a sex role thing entered the academic lexicon in the early 70s. Which lines up pretty damn well with The Dialectic of Sex coming out in 1970. 👍️ And indeed, many of the 70s uses of "dyadic" explicitly cite Firestone.

I'm guessing Firestone was probably influenced by the interactionist term. Lots of sociologists were talking about dyadic relationships and/or interactions such as teacher-student, parent-child, husband-wife, etc. In this context, it's not surprising that Firestone would pick dyad as a term to talk about male-female sex roles and interactions.

Other than the 1980s botany articles I didn't actually find much from the pre-2000 biology world, and no leads from the medical literature. This doesn't mean "dyadic" wasn't being used by physicans, just that it isn't showing up in my searches on Google Scholar.

I'm coming out of this with the impression that Merck's got it right to be connecting the intersex-related use of dyadic as originating from the writing of Shulamith Firestone. If anybody knows of competing evidence for an origin, *please* do send it my way as I'd be super interested. But in the absence of other evidence, I'd tentatively say that the term dyadic came out of second wave radical feminism and *not* the intersex community.

[multiversal-bridge]

So there's been a big discussion lately about the pacing in the works of Wildbow (creator of bespoke internet fiction), particularly in his latest work, Pale, which has become longer than the others in just a couple of years of writing. I have thoughts about this and I can't get them out of my head so I'll just post.

I think the framing of this discussion leaves something out? Because I genuinely think Pale is Wildbow's best paced work.

Sounds super weird to say that when it's so long, right?

But I think there's a difference between length and quality of pacing, and I think the key to understanding what Wildbow's doing is this:

Pale is paced like a television show.

To explain a bit more what I mean by this:

Movies and television shows are forms of storytelling that are both valid in different ways, and allow you to do different things. The advantage of a television show is that you get to add layers of nuance to character's psychology as well as explore a number of different characters over the full runtime of the show. (Bear in mind I'm trying to imply a TV show that everyone agrees is good throughout its run, like the Sopranos or something.) There's advantages to doing this sort of thing, at least if you do it well.

Wildbow is a big fan of TV and talks a lot about shows he watches. So it's not surprising that his pacing is like TV. You bring on a character for an episode, and you may not see them again in the next season, but their mini-arc informed the larger arc that was going on with the protagonists at that point in the story. A chapter is basically written like an episode. 2-3 arcs roughly corresponds to a season of the show, with certain arcs ending in a major change in the status quo.

And Wildbow has a very good sense of those larger arcs. I was talking with a friend recently about what a contrast Pale is with the later A Song of Ice and Fire books. Where Martin is creating an ever-expanding list of characters going off in ever expanding directions, in Pale Wildbow keeps his characters from straying too far by tying new ideas back to the main plot. We have an arc where we meet a bunch of new magical creatures, but it's also about gaining allies and figuring out which of them are being used as pawns by the conspirators behind the main mystery. And yeah, recently, we got in theory like 18 new characters, but in practice we've only really focused on like three of them, and they're ultimately extensions of the final villain(s) in a plot that seems to be chugging toward the last station.

And I like this better than the pacing in Ward, or Pact, or Twig, or the latter half of Worm! In all of those works, there were moments where I thought oh, come on, this is stretched out way more than it needs to be. In contrast, despite its length, I've never really felt that with Pale. And I was initially skeptical about some of the plot developments!

It's true that Wildbow's chapters have gotten longer, but it feels to me like that's more about embracing an episode structure with multiple scenes in it, whereas in other works I often felt a bit cut off by one-scene chapters. Wildbow may also be playing to his strengths, as Pale focuses much more on psychological dialogues instead if action scenes. And character psychology has always been at the heart of what makes Wildbow works good.

Your milage may vary. I might just be weirdly into psychological dialogue scenes. And I freely confess that there may be a difference in experiencing the story chapter by chapter over the last two years, as I have, and maybe it might not read as well binged all at once. But I've seen writing that's badly paced before (including in other long-form web fiction), and this doesn't trip that trigger for me.

Obviously no one should feel obligated to read Pale. But may be more helpful to think of Pale as a good thing that's continued in its same good vein for a long time than something that's suffering from the sin of excess. At the very least, there are reasons why those of us who are reading it are having such a fun time.

[deeply-unserious-fellow]

I think part of why most people I've talked to like Hazbin Hotel better then Helluva Boss, and why most of the writing problems in Helluva aren't as present in Hazbin, are because Hazbin is an ensemble show that treats all it's characters as EQUALLY IMPORTANT, while Helluva Boss is an ensemble show that just. Really wants to be the Blitzø and Stolas show.

Like oh my god that show wants to be about only Blitzø and Stolas so bad. It's why Moxxie gets more focus then Millie(he's closer to Blitzø), it's why the Stolitz drama gets dragged out the way it does, it's why Fizz has been getting more attention then the rest of the supposed main cast lately. Viv and Brandon(who doesn't get brought up very often when discussing the writing in Helluva Boss despite being the main cowriter?) CLEARLY just wanna focus on Blitzø and Stolas' backstories and relationship, despite marketing Helluva as an ensemble show. Moxxie gets some time as an individual, but I think that's more of a biproduct of him being around for longer then the other side characters tbh. Like they were initially concieved FOR Hazbin, and I'm not really sure where production went from there, but I believe they were originally just supposed to be an assassin duo that showed up in Hazbin a couple times? Idk details are fuzzy so if anybody knows more and feels like sharing feel free to rb/comment with your knowledge. Anyways Moxxie has more depth because he's been in development for longer, and as season 2 progresses it really feels like they're running out of shit to talk about with him. Everybody else is secondary to those two, which would be FINE if the show was PRESENTED as being about Stolitz, but it's kinda. Not. The show, especially if your going off of the pilot, is presented more like "the Office but in Hell". That is the concept most people are drawn in by. So when the people who signed up for a funny ensemble show in Hell start watching and end up with just a bunch of relationship drama and some occasional focus on like 1 or 2 other characters, they get confused and put off. It's like trying to watch the Office but getting Bojack Horseman(I think. I don't know much abt BJH-) instead.

Meanwhile Hazbin is advertised as an ensemble show and, so far, has fulfilled that promise. All 4 of the episodes we've gotten so far have focused on different characters and, between them, given an equal amount of focus to everyone except maybe Niffty. Episode 1 had Charlie and Vaggie leading the subplots, episode 2 had weirdly Vox and Sir Pentious as the focuses?, episode 3 was about. Pretty much everyone really but Velvette, Carmilla and Vaggie got especially highlighted because of their songs, and episode 4 was focused entirely on Angel and his relationships with the rest of the cast. Like. That's how ensemble shows are supposed to work. And while Charlie is still the main focus of the show, and I'm sure we'll see her get highlighted a whole lot more in coming episodes, Hazbin is still at it's core about EVERYBODY. Even characters that aren't even close to mains are getting attention! And aside from some uh. Very obvious pacing issues, the show handles the ensemble cast surprisingly well! And like, I think the main complaint I've seen(that isn't a straight up controversy) is that the Hotel isn't the main focus of the show? Which like. To be fair we're only like four episodes in? And also fits into my false advertising argument about Helluva but honestly this post is getting long and my brain is kinda melting and it's almost 2am and I have school tomorrow so I'm gonna cut this off here.

In conclusion Hazbin Hotel is generally more well liked than Helluva Boss because it's a true ensemble show, while Helluva is actually the Blitzø show PRETENDING to be an ensemble show. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk :)

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Maple Hills Review Round Up

So I went to college at UAF, where all the hockey players were Canadian and if you referred to anyone in the state as "American" they would correct you to "Alaskan." UCMH is a far cry from my college experience, but wow were they a ton of fun to read! So for those of you who want to get a sense of all three books from one post, I have collected my reviews and put them together here. Teeeeeeeeeeechnically they're all hockey romances insofar as the male leads are all literally on the same hockey team, but if I'm being honest, Icebreaker is really the only true hockey romance of the bunch. Wildfire is a summer camp romance and Daydream is best described as a college romance. So let's talk the Maple Hills books!

This is your SPOILER WARNING and your CONTENT WARNING. I'm going to spoil all three of these books. And I'm also going to talk about sex, sexual intercourse, consent, disordered eating, brief discussions of non-consensual kissing, and probably a couple of other things I've forgotten about, so please take care, and skip this one if you need to.

Icebreaker

Ok, for a lot of reasons, I was never a competetive athlete. That said...I am Canadian and I was probably 3 or 4 years old when my grandparents bought me my first pair of skates and my parents took me to the (manmade) kiddie rink in the park to teach me to skate. My middle sister and I had skating lessons for a few years, our parents took us skating pretty often growing up, and when we moved into the big house in Alaska, we had a pond out back that we skated (and burned christmas trees--yes, it was always awesome) on every winter until I left the state. And even when I moved back to Canada, I brought my skates with me and still use the arenas and outdoor town square rink in the winter. All this to say that while I'm never going to be an Olympian, I deeply love skating, so when there was a cozy college skating romance between a figure skater and a hockey team captain...it was not a hard sell. And then I was absolutely delighted by this cozy, fluffy, very skate-y book. Let's talk Icebreaker.

The very last thing Anastasia Allen wants to do right before sectionals is be forced to share her rink with a hockey team. Then she gets adopted by a bunch of overgrown man-children with hearts of gold who enjoy body-slamming other overgrown man-children into the boards over a puck. It is possibly the most adorable thing I have ever seen, and it is the best possible embodiment of the healthy, non-toxic version of "boys will be boys" insofar as the team just genuinely love and support each other and make space for Anastasia and Lola in that world with care, respect, and joy. I love it so, so much.

Of course, Anastasia is not here just to be adopted by a hockey team. She's also very much in danger of falling deeply in love with Nate Hawkins, captain of said hockey team. Nate and Anastasia are a genuinely darling, adorable couple, and watching them together was just FUN.

Particularly in contrast to Anastasia's relationship with her skating partner, Aaron. Who is--to put it mildly--the biggest most manipulative toxic douchebag I have ever seen. There's something about his and Anastasia's relationship that managed to embody everything that can go horribly toxic with athletic partnerships and how difficult it can be when your dream relies on someone who is actively trying to drag you down.

The super nice thing though, is that Aaron is absolutely the bad guy in this book. Neither Nate nor Ryan (the adorable himbo basketball player she begins the book in a friends-with-benefits arrangement with) descend to Aaron's level. They are there to support Anaastasia. That doesn't mean they don't get angry or jealous--they're human men in their late teens/early 20s, of COURSE they get angry and jealous--but they deal with those emotions pretty freaking healthily, and they don't descend into petty ego-based bullshit. Add that to Anastasia's therapy-honed communication skills, and the relationships in this book are just so well done. Sometimes relationships in romances can get weirdly toxic for drama, but that's not the case here, which made this cozy romance GENUINELY delightful to read.

The side characters are also super well-developed and full of personality, so everyone in this book feels well-rounded, real, and delightful. From Lola to Henry, Robbie, Russ, and JJ, you get to know an ensemble of strong secondary characters in the context of the main romantic relationship, and Anastasia and Henry's platonic love for each other might be the best platonic relationship I've seen in FOREVER. I would 100% read a spinoff novel about those two buddy-ing around.

Author Hannah Grace is a self-proclaimed "fluffy comfort book writer," and if Icebreaker is any example, then ACCURATE. And I cannot recommend this book enough, it was a delight to read from start to finish.

Wildfire

This book takes place in a summer camp in California, one of our love interests is terrified of thunderstorms, and the title is Wildfire.

You Guys.

I would be LYING if I said I wasn't fully expecting this camp to burn to the ground before the end of the book. It did not do that, but I still thoroughly enjoyed watching Russ and Aurora absolutely flout the staff "no fraternization" rule. Let's talk Wildfire.

Possibly the two things I love most about Aurora are her ability to see when she and Russ are being a trope she does not like and how absolutely unhinged she is. Girl has zero filter and is more than happy to have the uncomfortable and hard conversations, and she is also MORE than happy to whip out some just bananas lines, like the following ones:

Aurora is wildly unhinged and frankly, I enjoy it just as much as Russ does. I also appreciate that Aurora is self-aware and a halfway decent communicator, because if she wasn't, the rich girl daddy issues angle would have come off as abrasive and tired rather than genuine.

I also really love that Russ--a hockey player who might typically be expected to be brash and loud and confident--is allowed to be quiet and soft and tidy and lacking in confidence. His journey to confidence and self-worth is really sweet, and honestly can we please have more Russes in romance. He is very much soft boy vibes in the best possible way.

The other really lovely thing about Aurora and Russ's relationship is that they find all the places they fit together--and I don't just mean the squishy fun time bits either. Finding that your trauma and your partner's empathy fit together like puzzle pieces and that the outcome is peace and acceptance and being valued is an incredible thing. Aurora and Russ have that, and they work through the difficult bits of it in really sweet, healthy ways.

While Aurora and Russ are the main reason to read this book, author Hannah Grace is damn good at also writing funny, compelling secondary characters that make the world of the novel come alive. Jenna, Xander, and Emilia--plus cameos of the rest of the hockey team from Icebreaker--all help the world feel bigger than just Russ and Aurora, and they add dimension, depth, and humor.

Overall, I highly recommend this book, because it manages to be soft and funny and cozy and real while also dealing with some really weighty issues.

Daydream

I have been waiting for this book for literal months, and I am SO HAPPY that it is finally here. I'd have read it in one day, except that I got 1 hour of sleep in two days, so I did actually crash before getting to finish Halle and Henry's story. It was worth it though, because watching the dynamics between a neurodivergent-coded love interest and a demi-coded love interest was absolutely fascinating. I had so much fun with Halle and Henry, and it was nice to have Nate, Stassi, Russ, and Aurora around a little too. Like, the "adopted by a gang of hockey-playing golden retrievers" vibe that I loved from Icebreaker was still here, but we also get how Henry and Halle navigate a deeply gregarious group that loves them. Let's talk Daydream.

Soooooooo...the fact that Henry DIDN'T take a swing at Will because he was so worried about how Halle would feel about a) what her dickhead ex-boyfriend said and b) about Henry's response just makes Henry the bigger man in so many ways, and that was just deeply satisfying to me as a reader. That and Halle letting her mom HAVE it because her mom has been using Halle as a third parent in the household since Halle was a kid. Hannah Grace has a knack for making character arc climaxes immensely satisfying and avoiding cliches, and I really appreciate that. I also loved how Halle and Henry both get climaxes that work WITH their character arcs. Halle learns to say no and prioritize herself, and Henry gets to BE himself and be loved and supported in his needs.

So I'm not neurodivergent, and I'm not always good at seeing it in books and book characters where it's not explicitly stated in the narrative, so I was grateful for the letter that my copy had about how there was explicitly NOT going to be a diagnosis. I will say I'd probably have caught it in Henry's case from the text and the context, but I appreciate the clarity and I also appreciate the opportunity taken to highlight that nobody needs a diagnosis to be valid or to explain their experiences and needs. Just the matter-of-fact acceptance Henry gets and the patience people in his life have to let Henry explain what he needs and then GIVING THAT TO HIM with no questions asked was lovely. I also love that it wasn't always perfect. People made mistakes in good faith when they were trying to help, and there cannot be enough good said about modeling communication, accepting new information, and doing better the next time.

Listening to and believing people when they tell you about their needs and experiences should not be groundbreaking, but holy crap do people still struggle with this, so I love that Henry never had to. He is surrounded by people who listen, hear, and support.

Which is extra nice narratively because Halle is not. Her dickhead ex-boyfriend is ten kinds of jerk, her family basically uses her as a stage manager/extra parent, and she was honestly super isolated and lonely before she got pulled into the house full of hockey playing golden retrievers (seriously, that wonderful lost keychain in a frat house tumblr post about how wonderful "boys will be boys" can be as a vibe when it isn't toxic absolutely applies here). I was never a Halle, but I have KNOWN Halles, and I cannot tell you how lovely it was to watch her learn how not to people please and to find herself in a girl squad that genuinely loved and valued her in addition to having Henry around. It was lovely and happy.

I also (and please feel free to correct me on this) read Halle as demisexual coded, and that's a dynamic that I'm not used to seeing in romance novels, but it was also one that I really enjoyed. It's never bad to reiterate that pressuring someone to do something they're not ready for or don't want to in bed is SUPER BAD, ACTUALLY, and that that behavior includes bullshit like trying to enforce arbitrary timelines or calling someone cold for not wanting sex. Also, asexual spectrum identities are entirely valid, and deserve more representation in romance.

Overall though, the thing that made this book for me was Halle and Henry's communication. They're really good at the communication thing and they're really good at BEING together, which does not mean sex, it means that they are good at existing in the same space while being aware and accommodating of each other's preferences, needs, and boundaries. AND THEY HAVE FRIEND SQUADS FOR SUPPORT. Because it is normal and healthy (and often hilarious) to have multiple sources of support in addition to your partner. I adore that Henry and Halle have that, and the side characters (both new ones and ones we know from other books) are still wonderful.

Other things I adored in this book in no particular order:

Henry being a fine arts major. That was such a fun alternative side to an MMC after Nate and Russ were SO sports-focused. Henry having that extra dimension was great.

Halle being a writer. This is very much a "ooh, it me!" moment, so your mileage may vary, but I do love me a writer character. (Yes, this is why I still have a deeply soft spot in my heart for Rick Castle. No, nobody asked. You just know this now.)

Henry being so worried about Halle being sick that he takes her home to his mother who is a literal doctor. Henry was correct, Halle needed to take care of herself, and honestly, this was the sweetest thing.

Halle getting to have her girl squad preparatory periods. As someone who also used to adore getting ready for stuff with her girl squad, there is something really wonderful about this dynamic, and it was a treat to see Halle get to experience it.

The sex painting. I was not expecting to do anything but roll my eyes at this scene, but actually? It was well handled, it was cute, it made sense in the context of their characters, and y'know what? Sure. The book not self-cringing at this also helped, and I was willing to let these two adorable college kids have their fun and make some art together.

Henry's gift giving. I am a Halle, I am SO BAD at gifting, but I appreciate the skill in others. And Henry NAILED it. A+, no notes.

Halle admitting to Gianna that she wasn't sorry she and Will broke up. That was big for Halle personally, and hot damn did it model something important to her little sister. Just excellent.

I had a delightful time with this book overall, and I'll be sad to leave Maple Hills. If we are lucky, there will be more Hannah Grace books in the future though!