#insular society

[hollcwboy]

lockwood & co is dystopian fiction

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

me reaching for my phone and opening tumblr.com/dashboard as soon as I wake up: wow, I can't believe lindy opens her bubble as soon as she wakes up. talk about chronically online

[femtocloaca]

the issue is not that exposure to something depicting violence will make someone interested in perpetuating that violence its that everyone has already internalized a fuck ton of messaging that begins at home/school/what have you or experienced that violence like actually or witnessed it before they can work out Mass Media Messaging as well, like dont get tortured.

[tuxedolascribalblogger]

AoA for Peaches of Rusted Woodlands, words by Lydia Webbe. Jacques Herbin "Shogun" ink and Coliro Arabic Gold watercolor on 6x8" Fluid watercolor paper. Irish Half-Uncial script.

[gongyussy]

somehow it got impossibly more wholesome:

quick translation: おかえり: welcome home あ 終わった 終わった: ahhh, it's over! it's done! コーヒー? お茶?: coffee? tea? コ~ヒ~ ありがと: coffee, thank you~ ネクタイレア★★ ネクタイ取るレア★★★★: seeing him with a tie on, rarity level ★★, seeing him take a tie off, rarity level ★★★★ にあうな~: it suits him~

also please do follow: AraigumaSha: sensei's twitter account marureviere: maru, who does such valuable work highlighting bl manga for an international audience

good thing from jp twitter this week is queen of old man yaoi michiru sonoo discovering the term old man yaoi

[malcolmschmitz]

The Insider and Outsider Detectives

So there's a lot of discourse about detectives floating around, ever since 2020 shifted a lot of people's Views on the police. Everyone likes a good mystery story, but no one seems to know what to make of a detective protagonist- especially if they're a cop. And everyone who cares about this kind of thing likes to argue over whether detective stories hold up the existing order or subvert it. Are they inherently copaganda? Are they subversive commentary on the uselessness of the police?

I think they can be both. And I think there's a framework we can use to look at individual detectives, and their stories, that illuminates the space between "a show like LAPD straight-up exists to make the cops look good" and "Boy Detective is a gender to me, actually".

So. You can sort most detectives in fiction into two boxes, based on their role in society: the Insider Detective and the Outsider Detective.

The Insider Detective is a part of the society they're investigating in, and has access to at least some of the levers of power in that society. They can throw money at their problems, or call in reinforcements, and if they contact the authorities, those authorities will take them seriously. Even the people they're investigating usually treat them with respect. They're a nice normal person in a nice normal world, thank you very much; they're not particularly eccentric. You could describe them as "sensible". And crime is a threat to that normal world. It's an intrusion that they have to fight off. An Insider Detective solving a crime is restoring the way things ought to be.

Some clear-cut examples of Insider Detectives are the Hardy Boys (and their father Fenton), Soichiro "Light's Dad" Yagami, or Father Brown. Many police procedural detectives are Insider Detectives, though not all.

The Outsider Detective, in contrast, is not a part of the society they're investigating in. They're often a marginalized person- they're neurodivergent, or elderly, or foreign, or a woman in a historical setting, or a child. They don't have access to any of the levers of power in their world- the authorities may not believe them (and might harass them), the people they're investigating think they're a joke (and can often wave them off), and they're unlikely to have access to things like "a forensics lab". The Outsider Detective is not respectable, and not welcome here- and yet they persist and solve the crime anyway. A lot of the time, when an Outsider Detective solves a crime, it's less "restoring the world to its rightful state" and more "exposing the rot in the normal world, and forcing it to change."

Some clear-cut examples of Outsider Detectives are Dirk Gently, Philip Marlowe, Sammy Keyes, or Mello from Death Note.

Now, here's the catch: these aren't immutable categories, and they are almost never clear-cut. The same detective can be an Insider Detective in one setting and an Outsider Detective in another. A good writer will know this, and will balance the two to say something about power and society.

Tumblr's second-favourite detective Benoit Blanc is a great example of this. Theoretically, Mr. Blanc should be an Insider Detective- he's a world-famous detective, he collaborates with the police, he's odd but respectable. But because of the circumstances he's in- investigating the ultra-rich, who live in their own horrid little bubbles- he comes off as the Outsider Detective, exposing the rot and helping everyone get what they deserve. And that's deliberate. There is no world where a nice, slightly eccentric, mildly fruity, fairly privileged guy like Benoit Blanc should be an outsider. But the turbo-rich live in such an insular world, full of so much contempt for anyone who isn't Them, that even Benoit Blanc gets left out in the cold. It's a scathing political statement, if you think about it.

But even a writer who isn't trying to Say Something About The World will still often veer between making their detective an Insider Detective and an Outsider Detective, because you can tell different kinds of stories within those frameworks. Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote is a really good example of this-- she's a respectable older lady, whose runaway success as a mystery novelist gives her access to some social cachet. Key word: some.

Within her hometown of Cabot Cove, Fletcher is an Insider Detective. She's good friends with the local sheriff, she's incredibly familiar with the town's social dynamics, she can call in a favour from basically anyone... but she's still a little old lady. The second she leaves town, she might run into someone who likes her books... but she's just as likely to run into a police officer who thinks she's crazy or a perp who thinks she's an easy target. She has the incredibly tenuous social power that belongs to a little old lady that everyone likes- and when that's gone, she's incredibly vulnerable.

This is also why a lot of Sherlock Holmes adaptations tend to be so... divisive. Holmes is all things to all people, and depending on which stories you choose to focus on, you can get a very different detective. If you focus on the stories where Holmes collaborates with the police, on the stories with that very special kind of Victorian racism, or the stories where Holmes is fighting Moriarty, you've got an Insider Detective. If you focus on the stories where Holmes is consulting for a Nice Young Lady, on the stories where Holmes' neurodivergence is most prominent, or on his addictions, you've got an Outsider Detective.

Finally, a lot of buddy detective stories have an Insider Detective and an Outsider Detective sharing the spotlight. Think Scully and Mulder, or Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde. This lets the writer play with both pieces of the thematic puzzle at the same time, without sacrificing the consistency of their detective's character.

Back to my original point: if you like detective fiction, you probably like one kind of story better than the other. I know I personally really prefer Outsider Detective Stories to Insider Detective Stories- and while I can enjoy a good Insider Detective (I'd argue that Brother Cadfael, my beloved, is one most of the time), I seek out detectives who don't quite fit into the world they live in more often than not.

And if that's the vibe you're looking for... you're not going to run into a lot of police stories. It's absolutely possible to make a story where a cop (or, even better, an FBI agent) is an Outsider Detective-- Nick Angel from Hot Fuzz was originally going to be one of my 'clear-cut examples' until I remembered that he is, in fact, legally a cop! But a cop who's an Outsider Detective is going to be spending a lot of time butting heads with local law enforcement, to the point where he doesn't particularly feel like one. He's probably going to get fired at some point, and even if his badge gets reinstated, he's going to struggle with his place in the world. And a lot of Outsider Detective stories where the detective is a cop or an FBI agent are intensely political, and not in a conservative way- they have Things To Say about small towns, clannishness, and the injustice that can happen when a Pillar Of The Community does something wrong and everyone looks the other way. (Think Twin Peaks or The Wicker Man.)

Does this mean Insider Detective Stories are Bad Copaganda and Outsider Detective Stories are Good Revolutionary Stories? No. If you take one thing away from this post, please make it that these categories are morally neutral. There are Outsider Detective stories about cops who are Outsiders because they really, really want an excuse to shoot people. There are Insider Detective stories about little old people who are trying to keep misapplied justice from hurting the kids in their community. Neither of these types of stories are good or bad on their own. They're different kinds of storytelling framework and they serve different purposes.

But, if you find yourself really gravitating to certain kinds of mysteries and really put off by other kinds, and you're trying to express why, this might be a framework that's useful for you. If your gender is Boy Detective, but you absolutely loathe cop stories? This might be why.

(PS: @anim-ttrpgs was posting about their game Eureka again, and that got me to make this post- thank them if you're happy to finally see it. Eureka is designed as an Outsider Detective simulator, and so the rules actively forbid you from playing as a cop- they're trying to make it so that you have limited resources and have to rely on your own competence. It's a fantastic looking game and I can't recommend it enough.)

(PPS: I'm probably going to come back to this once I finish Psycho-Pass with my partner, because they said I'd probably have Thoughts.)

(PPPS: Encyclopedia Brown is an Insider Detective, and that's why no one likes him. This is my most controversial detective take.)

[uniteds]

https://www.tumblr.com/presidentconnoroy/718761423660023808?source=share

why do u care about these people who dont even know you exist . our celerity obsessed culture needs to die WHO CARES

because it's funny and not that deep? why do you care so much that people are having fun with football gossip?

[soarrenbluejay]

Supervillains for a community. (Well, except those jerks over in Gotham, insular lot, but they’re they’re one problem) Of course they do- supervillains are a group defined by strong opinions and a willingness to see them through, often with a healthy dash of societal failures and trauma as a catalyst.

The fentons, while not active even on the online message boards, are well known and explosive when they do show up, full of fascinating insights and hours long rants on mad science on hair pin turns courtesy of that ADHD attention span. Bit of the cryptids you feel honored to bump into kind of deal. Besides, like a good quarter of the community as it aged, they’d settled down and had kids (not necessarily in that order) and taken it very seriously! Out in the middle of nowhere, where even the most fearsome government outpost members, the local branch of the IRS, quake before them in fear. Out of the way.

Reveal gone okay-ish, Danny moves to Gotham still to get some air bc now things are Akward and he landed that engineering scholarship which is loads better than any other college would give him with his track record. So- the mysterious Fenton children are finally crawling out of hiding! Everyone is psyched! And roll in to Gotham en masse to witness the fireworks!

Except Danny is Determined To Be Normal. He’s had enough of the throwing himself into harms way shit for a lifetime- he wants to be free to peacefully built Rube Goldberg machines and unintentional increasingly complex bombs to his hearts content. JAZZ, on the other hand- the coveted token Normal One, has finally snapped! She’s watched her baby brother she practically raised throw himself into danger over and over and could do nothing, and now that she’s exposed to this whole network of superheroes outside of small town Amnity, some of those uglier emotions are coming out. And boy is she pissed! And can’t afford to show it much while filing the paperwork to have Arkham legally razed to the ground!

See I love this idea of like, niches in superhero society. A villain the heroes know they can plop their kiddo down with for an exciting afternoon brawl while they take care of a particularly grisly case and come back to a few hours later ranting about some new life lesson and a new move they really want to try. A villain who has a functioning moral compass despite their somewhat batshit long term goal and you can contact to fuck with another villains’s plan so they can laugh at them and you can have an easy afternoon. One who pries up hostile architecture and fills in pot holes, idk man. Get creative here, there’s such potential!

So Jazz becomes a Training villain- someone the heroes know their sidekicks will walk away from in a fight 100% of the time, usually with some new lesson to ponder and only a couple of bruises. Sometimes even snacks!

She also absolutely ambushes mentors to check that they’re worth the kiddo, which they appreciate once they get over being jumped in a dark alley by a 7 foot Amazon trained force of nature. They are not used to being on that side of the jumping, it’s a little unnerving.

(Yes, she low key adopts Shazam upon checking in with him on cursory ‘is the main hero of this city and asshole’ checkin. Yes, the super clones get yoinked out from under Superman’s negligent thumb to go have a blast with Ellie. What about it?)

This however only encourages more assorted weirdos to crawl out of the woodwork. It’s not often one of their own forfeits their potential spot for the running of the coveted Most Normal I Swear prize, but when they do it’s bound to be good! But jazz is off hounding various heroes and punching the faces in of pedophiles and shit whenever there’s no cape within easy reach, and so is a mite bit harder to contact than Danny, who has innocently gotten an apprenticeship under a clockworker for access to their workshop and is gleefully going about doing nerdy shit with great abandon.

Plus this is Gotham. No one gives a shit if someone in the Mad Alchemist uniform and still smoking from their latest experiment pokes their head in a window to bother the local shrimp teen- none of the usual social rules apply, everyone’s crazy here! So everyone drops any and all attempts at masking and just acts their genuine unhinged selves, much to the alarm of the Bats and frustration of Danny.

Bc he cannot get these mfers to go. Away. Even liberal use of the creep stick has little effect when the interloper is calibrated for an opponent with super speed or laser vision or whatever, and he’s trying to maintain his guise as a Normal College Student Do No Investigate.

So he calls in the big guns. He’s not super active in the supervillain kids group chat ever since things in amnity calmed the fuck down post becoming King and then immediately using a loophole that says he will not take the throne until he is grown, as defined by finishing learning his trade a la the medieval standards Pariah set up. So he can just take his sweet ass time with his graduate degree and out of inter dimensional bull shit that much longer! Point is, he hasn’t taken the chance to rant over there in a while, so his Crazy friends are getting a lil worried.

The change to come over and shout at their batshit crazy but (mostly) well meaning parent AND see Danny? Score!

The bats, however, are getting awfully suspicious about this one kid that villains from all over the country are flocking to, especially young and upcoming ones as of recently! And he’s acting his engineering course- all the worst rogues are known to have flown through their PhD studies prior to Cracking. They seem to have a real problem on their hands with this Fenton guy.

[waytoomanyhobbies]

Me (looking at Lindy Pepper Bean):

[tuxedolascribalblogger]

[morbidology]

June and Jennifer Gibbons are often referred to as "The Silent Twins." They were identical twins that were born on April 11, 1963, in Barbados and raised in Wales. Their unique and mysterious bond captivated public interest and psychological study for decades.

From an early age, the twins exhibited a deeply insular connection, communicating exclusively with each other in a private language that made them nearly unintelligible to others. This behavior, combined with their selective mutism around anyone else, led to them being labeled as "silent."

As they grew older, the twins became increasingly withdrawn, retreating into a world of their own making. They were eventually placed in a special school, but their behavior only became more erratic and detached. The Gibbons sisters began to engage in petty crime and acts of vandalism, leading to their arrest and subsequent confinement in Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric institution, in 1982.

While at Broadmoor, the twins' mental health further deteriorated, but they continued to share an intense, almost telepathic bond. In 1993, after 11 years of confinement, Jennifer Gibbons suddenly died of acute myocarditis, a rare inflammation of the heart, shortly after the twins were transferred to a lower-security facility.

Her death came just days after the twins had reportedly agreed that one of them needed to die for the other to live a normal life. After Jennifer's death, June began to speak more freely and gradually reintegrated into society.

[steelandscience]

I have thought about this so much, because Viktor being spotlighted so frequently in the trial scene is just so interesting. I think part of it is partly just foreshadowing that This Character Is Going To Be Important, of course, but I do think there’s more.

There’s a couple really great ways you can read their early pre-journal-stealing-Viktor interactions, but I think my favorite is just… ego.

It’s one thing that the arcane versions of Jayce and Viktor very much have in common with their League counterparts (if you see them as separate). We definitely see bits if Jayce’s ego throughout the show, from the way he is fine with playing along with Heimer’s advice in the trial until they start calling him an incompetent failure of a scientist, to the bits of preening and social prowess he shows as he gets rebranded as the Man of Progress. A lot of Jayce’s character conflict stems from the fact he knows he is right about Hextech/magic, but he either cannot get other people to see that, or he cannot reconcile his own vision with Hextech’s place in the real world.

However, Viktor is just as confident and egotistical as Jayce.

This is a man who beat the odds of his birth and absolutely believes he is one of the smartest— if not the smartest— in the room at all times. This is a man who is happy to work on illegal, experimental projects because he knows he is smart enough to figure it out. He’s even confident enough to do it twice in the show, once with Hextech and once with Shimmer! I think Arcane Viktor is certainly tempered with a lot of empathy and a clear drive for survival as opposed to his League counterpart, but he is just as concerned with Legacy and scientific success as Jayce, Heimerdinger, and Singed are— it’s just that they view that success in different ways.

(I’d like to add that I personally prefer to think of Jayce and Viktor in Arcane as a proto-League version of themselves, with the League lore that currently exists.)

So my favorite way to read the scenes where Viktor gets Jayce arrested is simply that it’s not about Jayce in particular, but that Viktor simply thinks he’s a better scientist. Viktor came from very little and already succeeded “beyond his beginnings”, he knows he is consistently smarter than most of the graduates in the Academy, and he already has some beliefs on how Heimerdinger himself is wrong. He will happily go on to challenge Mel and the ideas of power and law in Piltover repeatedly. So it’s not about Jayce, but about the fact that Jayce is yet another scientist who got in over his experimental pay grade, and Viktor gets to watch another rich Piltovan university student realize they aren’t actually all that great. He did have a presupposed image of Jayce, even if it wasn’t about Jayce Talis in particular— though it could have been, because we know from Jayce’s Journal in the league client event circa 2021 that Jayce was failing most of his classes because he was obsessively working on Hextech, and that Heimerdinger was worried about him. Maybe Viktor even knew that before he walked into Jayce’s ruined apartment.

Jayce failed. Publicly and catastrophically. Viktor would never.

And I think it isn’t until he hears what Jayce was trying to do that Viktor realizes how alike he and Jayce are. He wasn’t some failing rich kid who got in over his head; he’s a sponsored student willing to push the boundaries of experimental and illegal science and magic in the name of progress. It’s easy for Viktor to switch to needing to work with this man because he realizes Jayce isn’t stupid, that Jayce has very similar goals to Viktor right now, and that Jayce is also every bit as insane as Viktor is in his pursuit of progress. Suddenly Viktor realizes he may not be the smartest in the room, just like Jayce realizes he might not be the only one smart enough and ballsy enough to create Hextech. They match each other, and continue to match each other, in brilliance, drive, and ego for the better part of a decade. Even in League, they met at an Academy party and bonded over the fact that they hated being there and how they were both so much smarter than anyone else in the room.

Obviously we don’t know how they will fall apart in Arcane S2 (I have so many theories but we will see soon enough). But in League, their egos are also a massive part of why they fall out, but continue to be almost single-mindedly obsessed with the other person for the rest of their lives. They are the only person who matched each other’s intellect, goals, and drive for years, and even though Piltover and Zaun are filled with brilliant people, they never really care about anyone else besides their old partner. I think a big part of that is that each of them, respectively, believes the other hurt their own pride and ego in an unforgivable way, so they are going to spend the rest of their life making it the other person’s problem.

Hi why did Viktor seem almost glad that Jayce was being arrested and put on trial in ep 2?

Like…he has this haughty, kind of contemptuous attitude towards Jayce throughout the episode until after the trial—when he realizes that Jayce’s research on magic may be something worth looking into.

But BEFORE that, when Jayce’s apartment is being searched, everything about Viktor’s demeanor seems to indicate that he’s putting Jayce below himself. When Jayce expresses distress about the situation, Viktor responds with sarcasm or nonchalance: “I believe someone should have said that earlier.” and then when prompted he introduces himself not as a person, but by describing his position: “I’m assistant to the dean of the Academy, who it may serve you to remember is also head of the Council.”

He seems glad to hand Jayce over to the enforcers and does so with a SMILE, and later in the episode when Jayce walks into the Council room for his trial, there’s this lingering shot of Viktor smirking at him as he passes!! And it’s 1000% on purpose—Viktor’s the only character besides Jayce (in a crowd of people, mind you!) who’s fully lit up in that shot.

It’s like the writers wanted to clearly convey that Viktor had a “you’re getting what you deserve” mentality towards Jayce, which is odd considering Viktor’s characterization after the trial is nothing but amicable towards Jayce throughout the rest of Act 1 before it turns into fondness over the rest of the season.

So…if this haughty attitude towards Jayce was put there on purpose and not just as an introduction to the smartass counterpart to Jayce’s optimistic charm, then why does Viktor have such contempt for Jayce if they don’t even know each other?

see this is why we need a novelization or at very least the published script because i wanna know what these characters were thinking

[saintsenara]

JKR really could’ve done with throwing at least one successful wizarding/muggle couple in there…

as much as i hate to say it, i actually quite like that wizard/muggle mixed marriages canonically don't really work, whether or not it was an intentional decision from jkr to present it this way.

the wizarding state is really quite authoritarian, and the sole motivation for its repression is to prevent muggles from learning about magic's existence. it also seems to have social mores - especially around gender - which are much more old-fashioned than those in 90s britain, which is only to be expected from a small, insular community.

the only plausible theory we can draw from canon is that - while this might change post-war [hence ron taking a driving test] - living in the magical world means separating yourself entirely from the institutions of muggle society. unless you actively insist upon it [which is my theory about ron learning to drive - i think hermione makes him as a point of pride in her muggle heritage], you don't have a passport, or a bank account, or a national insurance number [so you can't work in the muggle world], you don't use the nhs, you don't have any muggle-recognised qualifications, and so on...

everything you might do which would generate a record with the muggle state - getting married, buying a house, having a baby, etc. - has its own parallel system in the wizarding world.

[to the extent that - surely - a witch who marries a muggle man in a muggle ceremony isn't legally married in the eyes of the wizarding state? tom riddle might be a legitimate heir in the muggle world and a bastard in the magical one...]

and while we know there are wizarding agents embedded in muggle institutions [from snape saying in deathly hallows that petunia's letter to dumbledore must have been intercepted by undercover wizards working for the post office], their purpose isn't to facilitate cross-community interaction... it's to contain breaches of the statute of secrecy and stop muggles finding out about magic.

as a result, i think it's really likely that muggles married to witches or wizards have literally no rights in the magical world. and i think that opens up two ways of thinking about mixed marriages which are worth exploring:

firstly, that the number of abusive magic/muggle relationships must be enormous - and not just because of the violence the power imbalance caused by magic has the possibility of inflicting, but because the muggle partner has absolutely no hope of having their abuser face justice.

[after all, i guarantee that the only thing which would happen if a wizard was arrested by the muggle police for assault is the state's obliviators swanning in to wipe the memories of everyone involved... there's not a ministry worker we meet in the books who seems likely to think that muggle women's rights were more important than upholding the statute of secrecy...]

and secondly, that there must be plenty of non-abusive magical/muggle relationships which end up being impossible for the people involved to sustain because it's just too difficult to deal with the restrictions placed upon the couple by the wizarding state.

the complete legal separation between the two worlds - and the implied difficulty this causes in making it possible to form cross-community relationships - is one of the really subtle, insidious ways that the ministry maintains blood- and magic-supremacy, which canon hints at but never really delves too deeply into. and so i think it's worthwhile for us to take that and run with it...

[stargildedskies]

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Living in Japan, you were used to people’s negative perceptions of your tattoos. An old man giving you a world-class stink-eye was more common than rain on a cloudy day, and those views were only compounded by the insular Jujutsu Sorcerer society you found yourself working in….. But what would the famous 7:3 Sorcerer think?

Pairing: Nanami Kento x afab!reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ minors DNI)

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: Brief canon-typical violence, brief hurt/comfort, smut, inappropriate use of a cursed technique, you know what you're here for

A/N: Major thanks to @pseudowho for being so wonderful and encouraging. You should all go read her brilliant fics if you haven't yet!!

Click here to join my re-vamped taglist!

You hadn’t officially met the 7:3 Sorcerer until you were assigned a very lengthy mission together. Still, as soon as you started to learn about him from others at Jujutsu High, you knew your tattoos had to stay hidden at all costs. 

Gojo, a man world-famous for understating things, had described Nanami as “a bit of a grump sometimes,” and you had even seen poor Ijichi nearly in tears at the thought of disappointing the severe blonde. So, in other words, you were right fucked. At the very least, you planned to hide the tattoos so you could make it through the next few weeks without aggravating your partner every time he laid eyes on you.  

You saw Nanami briefly on the day before your mission, and the suited man cut such a clean, no-nonsense figure that you were certain of two things. First, he would absolutely hate the ink on your skin. Second, you’d simply pass away from embarrassment if the achingly handsome man ever had a negative remark about the sentimental art. 

Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t even bat an eye at someone’s poor opinion of you- actually, you’d probably respond with a cheeky grin and a crude gesture- but Nanami was different. He was respected and loved by so many other sorcerers despite his serious nature, and he was infuriatingly attractive. No man had ever been more your type; at some point, you considered going to a shrine to interrogate the gods about when they read your grade-school diary because Kento was the golden-haired prince of your dreams.  

Thankfully, it was the middle of winter, and all the forecasts called for was endless snow. 

“Even the weather is on my side,” you murmured cheerfully as you packed for the mission, dutifully shoving every long-sleeved shirt and pair of pants you owned into your small suitcase. Everything was in place, and you had accounted for every possibility… or so you thought. 

– (time skip) –

The driving, snow-laden wind stung your face as you sprinted toward the last curse, sword in hand. You could barely feel your lips or fingers, chilled to the bone and beyond exhausted, but this was the last one. The pitiful creature that skittered across the snow in front of you was the only curse left standing. It kept you from a warm bath and a strong drink back at the hotel, and if you let it get away now, you’d never catch up to it again after the storm. 

“C’mon… just a little bit more,” you bargained with your aching body, groaning inwardly as the curse seemed to gain more ground. 

The heavy snowfall muffled every sound and drastically reduced your visibility. Some small voice in your head screamed for caution, for you to go slower, but it was wholly overshadowed by your need to be warm again as fast as possible. Weirdly enough, that small voice sounded exactly like Nanami’s. 

Suddenly, the curse tripped with a yelp, and you pounced on it with feline grace, ready to finish it off. A sickening crack rang through the air the instant you sank your blade into its body. You looked in horror as the ice underneath the curse shattered, revealing a roiling abyss of water below. 

“Shit!” You screamed and dropped your sword, latching onto the ice's edge as the curse sank in a silent struggle.

It fell out of sight as your gloved hands slid on the ice, the loss of purchase sending your body further into the glacial water. You whimpered in pain, almost daring to believe that any second help would arrive- that Nanami would be next to you. Darkness swam in your vision, and your pain seemed to dull. You fought to keep awake, dimly aware that sleep meant never waking up again. 

“N-Nanami, p-please… Help...” You begged into the uncaring snow. 

Suddenly, a strong force grabbed your arm and hauled you out of the frosty water, picking you up almost effortlessly. You instinctively buried your face into your savior’s warmth and were rewarded with the deep, spiced notes of Nanami’s cologne. 

You tried to mumble something, but the blonde sorcerer quickly hushed you, “No, save your strength. You have to stay awake. Promise me that you’ll stay awake.” 

You couldn’t miss the panic in his voice as your eyes fluttered shut. 

– 

*Warm…. Content… Safe….* 

It felt like liquid sunshine had been poured into your veins, thawing every inch of your frozen body. You were curled against something large and warm… Something that smelled wonderful. 

Nanami’s hushed voice washed over you, thick and slow like warm honey, “How are you feeling?” 

You slowly opened your eyes, and your heart immediately jumped into your throat. Your body was pressed against Nanami’s, your head tucked into the soft crook of his neck as if it were the most natural thing in the world. His bare, muscular chest was pushed directly against your plush breasts, his skin radiating pure warmth as the scent of his cologne made your head fuzzy. 

With that image now firmly seared into your brain, it took another second for the rest of your thoughts to process. The first was good news: you were alive unless the afterlife was identical to your hotel room. But the second…. Well, maybe drowning wouldn’t have been too bad because you couldn’t feel that you had any clothes on.

“Nanami?” As you spoke, your voice sounded panicked and far away, almost distorted to your ears. “Where are my- what happened?” 

His head shifted slightly against yours. You couldn’t see his face, but Nanami sounded as uncomfortable as you felt. “I needed to get your body temperature back up… Shoko once told me that skin-to-skin contact was the best way to prevent hypothermia.”

You weren’t sure if you should slap the Doctor or send her a bottle of liquor as he continued, “I did my best to respect your privacy, but it was necessary. I apologize.” 

Nanami’s apology sounded so blunt and detached that it stung. Your face burned at the thought of him undressing you, immediately replaced with a feeling of growing horror. Surely, he couldn’t have missed all the tattoos as he removed your clothes? 

“Oh god… He must think I’m disgusting.” 

Your thoughts and insecurities began to pile up as you lay in his arms, silent and stewing in your mortification. The two of you had grown vaguely close in the past two weeks- close enough to have dropped most honorifics and pretenses with each other. Outside the mission, the two of you had spent time idly chatting about life, and you’d developed a comfortable routine around each other. You had even almost worked up the courage to ask him out for coffee when the mission was over.

Nanami spoke again, disrupting your thoughts, his voice tentative beneath a forced layer of calm. “I can close my eyes and let you dress if you feel up to it.” 

You could only nod worldlessly as your face burned red in embarrassment. His arms dropped away from your back to untangle the layers of blankets that sandwiched you two together, and you bit back a groan of protest. 

“Alright, you’re good to get up.” 

Nanami rolled over, facing the opposite wall. You winced at the sting of cold air as you slipped out of bed and away from him, quickly noticing that the only light in the room was from two large candles and the fireplace. Another groan fell from your lips, “Don’t tell me the power is out.” 

“Unfortunately,” came the curt reply. “The storm dropped enough snow to block the roads and cut off the power. 

“We better get some fucking hazard pay for this,” you swore quietly. 

Nanami was silent for another minute; under any other circumstance, your comment might’ve made him chuckle, “I set out some clothes for you. They’re thicker than the ones you brought.”

You opened your mouth to argue but instantly shut it. You knew he was right. The black pajama set you favored was cute and long-sleeved but made of thin material.

“If you’re sure.” You sighed in resignation as you dug through your own bag for socks and underwear. The only two things you had left were a cotton thong and a pair of thick winter socks with bears stitched on them. You committed to your fate, slipping on the sweatpants and blue thermal shirt Nanami had set to the side before turning back around. 

As soon as you did, another image permanently seared itself into your brain. Nanami lay on his side, hair mussed from its usual neat style, and you were treated to a mouthwatering view of his muscular back. His skin glistened, reflecting the flickering firelight, and your mouth went dry. It was all too easy to think about him looking like this after a more intimate activity.

“W-what will you wear?” You managed to force the sentence out. 

“I have the pair of pants I’m currently wearing, but you have my last shirt.” Nanami paused momentarily. The usually self-assured sorcerer was oddly hesitant as he spoke again, more quietly this time. “I hope it won’t bother you.” 

You stared at the back of his head incredulously. “You? Bothering me? Nanami, you just held my naked body for I don’t even know how long to keep me from freezing to death. You’ve seen what’s all over my skin. I probably disgust you now, and you’re worried about bothering me?”

Nanami froze mid-breath, turning to lie on his back and stare at the ceiling. You couldn’t see the expression on his face in the low light, but you could feel intensity rolling off him in waves. “You really think that I’m disgusted by you?” 

You clap a hand over your mouth, cursing yourself for letting that slip. “I-I don’t- I mean, I don’t want you to be…”

Your voice felt thick, your mouth dry like it had been stuffed with cotton as you covered your eyes and wished you could magically disappear into the ground. You were so distracted that you didn’t notice Nanami slide out of bed and cross the room.  

A gentle pressure suddenly appeared on your shoulder, and you looked up, jumping slightly as Nanami’s warm coffee-colored eyes gazed into yours, his hand firmly gripping your shoulder. 

“I’m not.” His voice was rough and strained. “I could never be…. Fuck, you have no idea, do you?”

You blinked slowly, the look on your face akin to a deer caught in the headlights. Nanami squeezed your shoulder to emphasize his next point, “I have spent the last few hours pointedly trying to ignore how beautiful I think you are.”

“But…”

Nanami held up a single finger, a motion for you to wait. He removed his hand from your shoulder and extended his arm for you to see the black ink nestled against his inner bicep. “Believe me more now?” 

Your gaze washed over the neat, tidy lettering. The tattoo was Roman numerals- a date? You raised your hand slowly, gently tracing your fingertips along the lines as if entranced. Nanami shuddered at your touch.

 “Careful, now.” He warned. “I can’t do much more of this.”

“Hm?” You stepped back to give him a bit more space, but your eyes were instantly drawn to the massive bulge in his sweatpants, the outline of his erection clear against the fabric. 

“I have been trying to be a good man. I have been trying to be a considerate mission partner.” Nanami sighed tersely, his muscles flexing in the dim light as he reached up to push his golden hair away from his face. “I told myself that having a- a crush on a mission partner was juvenile and unprofessional…”

A slight blush crossed the usually stern man’s face. “I wanted to ask you to dinner after we returned- to do this properly…. but when I started taking off your clothes and found…” 

His sentence trailed off as he gestured up and down your body, and your heart lurched. 

“You found?” You questioned softly, almost not daring to believe your ears. 

“You’re a work of art,” Nanami murmured. “I need to know if I’m making you uncomfortable… the last thing I want is for you to feel forced into anyth-” 

He didn’t get to finish before your soft lips collided with his. Your eyes fluttered shut at the taste of him, savoring it. Nanami’s hands instantly returned to your body to pull you in even closer. He held you closely as if you were the most important thing in the world, and you melted against him, sighing gently.  

“No, you’re not.” You whispered against his lips. “I feel the same way about you.” 

His large, battle-calloused hand cupped your face with heartwrenching tenderness. Nanami’s thumb caressed the swell of your lower lip before he tilted your head back so he could look into your eyes. The tender, intimate gesture pulled a quiet sigh from you, and Nanami chuckled, a low, rich sound you felt in your bones.

“What do you want from me right now, beautiful girl?” 

His gaze was intense and magnetic as it drew you in, causing desire to blossom in your lower body. Its electric tendrils wound throughout your veins at the sound of Nanami’s rich voice. You were usually so outspoken and confident, but this damned man made your head swim. 

He stroked your cheek again, “I need you to use your words. Can you do that for me?” 

Another sharp pang of arousal pierced your heart and fell straight through your core like a shooting star. “I want you, Nanami. I-I want to have sex with you. I want more than that, but right now…..please.” 

You trailed off, acutely aware of how your pussy subtly ached and fluttered at your own words. It begged for attention, the small scrap of cotton underwear you wore already damp with arousal. Nanami’s small smile turned into a rather roguish grin, voice rough and low. “Good girl. Let me take care of you.”

Nanami’s praise forced another whimper from your lips as he pulled you flush against him. One of your hands splayed against his chest, the other tangled into his fine hair. He captured your lips in a searing kiss; you felt the thick strain of his erection press against you so insistently, even through the layers of fabric you both still wore. 

With one swift motion, Nanami swept you up and off your feet. You wrapped your legs around his waist, keening as you rocked your aching pussy against his cock, forcing a hiss from the usually stoic man. 

“Too many clothes,” you whined, drawing another short laugh from your lover. 

“As much as I want to see more of your lovely body, we’ve gotta keep you warm, pretty girl.” Nanami cooed, nipping at your bottom lip. He pressed kisses down the column of your neck as he pulled your hips down, encouraging you to grind against him again. “Fuck, that’s it.” 

You swore you could cum just like this, humping his clothed cock like a desperate schoolgirl eager for her first fuck. The friction between your bodies moved the seam of your panties against your swollen clit, making you cry out. His lips returned to devour your cries of pleasure, your kiss becoming desperate, filled with tongue and teeth. 

“‘Nami, please…. not like this. Wanna cum on your fingers.” you beg, unable to stop yourself from chasing your rapidly approaching orgasm, despite your plea. 

Nanami growled, swiftly crossing the room to deposit you on the edge of the bed. “No, I’m going to taste you first. You’re going to cum on my tongue.” 

You sobbed, both from his sinful words and from the loss of his body against yours, as Nanami hooked a finger into the waistband of your sweats. He slid them down and threw them across the room unceremoniously, causing you to giggle. 

That same giggle quickly turned into a wanton moan as his thick finger reached down to ghost over the scrap of cotton that barely covered your pussy from his gaze. Your legs fell open, begging him for more, and Nanami tsk’d softly, his legendary impatience flaring to life. 

Through the heady haze of your lust, you felt Nanami’s fingers hook through your underwear in two different spots. His cursed energy flashed, and his fingers tore through the material like it wasn’t ever there. 

“Nanami Kent-!” You didn’t get the chance to finish chastising him before he knelt with predatory grace, cupped either side of your hips, and pulled your hips closer. He licked a fat stripe through your glistening folds, and your head fell back against the bedsheets; the last syllable of his name instantly turned to a cry of ecstasy. 

He chuckled again, lazily dragging his tongue along the same path before pressing a light kiss to your clit, “I’ll buy you more,” he murmured, “Needed to taste you.” 

You whined as Nanami grazed your clit, the pressure enough to tease but not enough for true satisfaction. He spread you open with his fingers and watched in desperate fascination as your pussy seemed to beg for him, soaked and clenching around nothing. Your back arched off the bed as Nanami took the small bud between his lips and sucked. 

He growled in approval, the sensual timbre of his voice traveling through your body and causing your cunt to clench again, “So perfect.”

Nanami held you firmly in place with his arms as he continued his blissfully torturous assault on your body. He alternated between sucking your clit and thrusting his tongue into your core, feasting on you with abandon like he needed your taste to live. Every so often, his nose tapped against your swollen clit, and you saw stars. 

You moaned his name as Nanami’s clever fingers traced your opening, and you nearly cried as one thick digit fully slipped inside. He moved the finger experimentally, completely entranced by the way your velvet walls fluttered around him, begging him to stay inside you.

“Need to cum…. please.” You sob, desperately trying not to wrap your legs around his head and hold him in place forever.

“You’re doing so well for me- so fucking beautiful.” Nanami praised roughly and slipped another finger into you, scissoring them and stretching your walls experimentally. Your back arched off the bed again as he leaned down to tongue your clit at the same time. His fingers caressed your g-spot insistently; stars danced in your vision, and the arousal in your body all coalesced into one aching, burning knot. 

“It- it’s too much… Nanami, nnnnguh ‘m gonna-” 

Your sentence broke off into a desperate, airy whine as Nanami sucked your swollen clit between his lips once more, sending you over the edge of a mind-shattering orgasm. His hands stroked the inked skin of your hips, and you sobbed his name as he greedily lapped up the cum from your soaked folds. You gazed between your legs and watched, enraptured, as Nanami slowly stood and licked your cum off of his fingers. 

“Absolutely delicious,” He groaned appreciatively at the taste, and you whimpered in response; the sight was easily one of the most arousing things you’d ever seen. You rubbed your thighs together, wholly lost to desire, the movement shifting the blue thermal you still wore even higher up your body. The fabric moved against your pert nipples, giving them enough friction to tease.

You tipped your head back as you rolled one of your nipples between your fingers with a practiced flourish, and Nanami’s impossibly hard cock twitched at the sight. If you were more lucid, you’d have seen that he was just as affected by the show you put on. The sight of you toying with your plush breasts, wearing only his shirt, half your tattoos clearly visible, and nipples strained against the fabric … If he were a weaker man, he’d have already cum while still in his pants. 

“You put on such a pretty show ‘f me,” Nanami murmured as he slipped a hand into the band of his sweatpants, his gaze heavy-lidded, content to watch you play for a moment. However, you had other ideas. You flashed a coy, lust-addled smile and reached your foot out, tucking it next to his hand to gently tug at the waistband, a clear signal for the pants to come off. 

“So impatient,” He chuckled roughly, instantly complying with your demand. Finally, you were treated to the view you’d been dreaming about. Nanami stood before you, completely nude and almost painfully aroused. A trail of neatly groomed, honey-blonde hair led down his toned abdomen, guiding your eyes to his deliciously hard cock. It was long, with a prominent vein that ran down the side to disappear before it met the thick, swollen tip. 

You spread your legs invitingly, and Nanami crawled between them, the bed dipping under his added weight. He stroked his cock experimentally, hissing as he traced the tip through your warm folds before kissing the tip to your clit. You whimpered at the lewd, wet sounds, your pussy fluttering desperately every time his swollen tip circled your entrance. 

“Please, Nanami….” You meweled, hips rocking involuntarily against him. He needed no further encouragement to slide into your warmth; Nanami hissed and groaned, slowly pushing into you, fighting the urge to just slam his cock inside your core. You took him in deeper, inch by agonizing inch, until his swollen cockhead kissed your cervix, and you sobbed in ecstasy. 

With another low growl, Nanami rocked his hips slowly, watching you fall apart at the unhurried drag of his cock against your velvet walls. “Like that, pretty girl?”

You babbled and whined complete nonsense, biting and kissing into his shoulder as Nanami began to thrust his hips at a faster pace, enraptured by the pearly ring of your combined fluids that coated the base of his cock. In mere moments, he was drilling into you with ruthless efficiency, the room filled with the pornographic sounds of your lovemaking. 

Every one of Nanami’s thrusts sent an electric shockwave of pleasure through your body, and you rocked your hips against him, desperately chasing another orgasm. You wrapped your legs up and around his waist, shifting your hips slightly, and his cock hit even deeper. 

“Good girl… Good fucking girl,” he growled as your hips ground against each other. “Taking me so well... Cum for me one more time- shit, I need to feel you cum on my cock.” 

Your nails dug into his back and arms desperately as the tight coil inside you built and built until it shattered completely. Sparks of blinding white flashed in your vision as your orgasm burned through like wildfire, and your pussy clenched around him desperately. Moments later, Nanami came with a look of sheer bliss on his face. Ropes of his warm cum coated your walls, stuffing you and giving you a feeling of delicious fullness.

A few minutes passed in blissful silence as you both caught your breath. Nanami made no real move to pull out, and you weren't complaining. Instead, he simply maneuvered into a lying position, pulling you close with his cock still buried deep inside you.

 “It’ll help you stay warm tonight,” he murmured lovingly, tucking all the blankets back into place around your intertwined bodies.

Tagging some friends: @saradika, @thefact0rygirl, @babygirl-leon-kennedy, @hereforthesunrise, @ashotofspotchka, @ironandglass, @amyroswell, @cassandrablacker, @lady-valtieri, @justanothersadperson93

Click here to join my taglist!

[thedubiousdallon]

Okay, fuck it, I've built up enough goodwill with this sideblog - let's risk it all by sharing my opinions on how Amy is handled in Ward.

It's kinda complicated I think.

Okay, now that I've resisted the urge to immediately hit post for the bit: I think the way her interludes are written substantially flattens her character in a way that I find distasteful and unpleasant, but I find the overall shape of her arc and her role in the narrative compelling. The things I dislike have been well-covered by plenty of other people in the fandom, so I'm going to focus on the things I like.

To talk about Amy's role in Ward, I first need to talk about my interpretation of Ward as a whole. To me, Ward is, above all else, about trauma and recovery. Society is traumatized by the end of the world, the shards are traumatized by the death of Scion and their loss of purpose, individuals are traumatized by all the things individuals are traumatized by. As an aside, this reading is a big reason why I'm not too bothered by a lot of the world building choices that other people frequently (and fairly) criticize - I think many of them serve this theme effectively.

One specific facet of that reading that I find particularly compelling is Ward's interest in people who are traumatized not just by the harm done to them, but by the harm they've done. Characters don't just regret what they've done, they don't just want to be better, they are traumatized by it, and their reactions to that trauma are as messy and complicated as any other traumatized people. I don't always agree with the stances the text takes on how to deal with having done harm and been traumatized as a result, but I find the exploration of the topic compelling.

Enter The Altruistic Amy Dallon.

Amy's arc in Worm was, to a degree, a prototype of this kind of storytelling. She is repeatedly and horrifically traumatized, the actions she eventually takes in response to that experience inflict equally horrific trauma on her victim, and she is further traumatized by her own actions almost to the point of ego death. She removes herself from the environment she was in, begins rebuilding her sense of identity and ethics, and reemerges having grown, prepared to do better going forward and to make reparations for her past actions as best she can. Arc done! It's satisfying and cathartic, and we leave content in the knowledge that the part she's on will take her to better places. It's the quintessential appeal of a redemption arc, and it's a strong example of its type.

There's something people like to say a lot when talking about mental health and personal growth in real life, and that is that progress isn't linear. It's an important truth to understand.

It's rarely true in fiction. Very often, in redemption arcs, in personal growth arcs, after a series of false starts and setbacks, the character reaches a critical point where they resolve their conflict and either overcome it or succumb to it. From that point on, their nature or behavior is fundamentally changed - if they've grown they never relapse past a certain point, or do so only fleetingly, or else never improve past a certain point. This makes sense from a storytelling perspective, but it doesn't map to how growth often works in real life.

In Ward, Amy occupies the very rare narrative position of being who completes her arc of growth and redemption, who crosses that critical threshold of lasting, meaningful change... but backslides anyway, to the point of essentially losing all that progress.

It's an outcome that I find very believable for her, honestly. Her newfound worldview and conviction were forged in the very insular environment of the Birdcage - of course they would be impacted by her new environment. She says at the end of Ward that she had been able to excuse all of her worst behavior because she had convinced herself that she could fix anything - and at the end of Worm, I can see how she would come to think that! She's been pardoned and released from Forever Prison, she overcame her old aversion to brains to create Khepri and thereby saved the world, she's formed a positive relationship with the father she never thought she'd meet, she's receiving love and support from parents she never felt good enough for, she's using her powers to help people in a way that doesn't make her want to die, and she even "fixed" Victoria, when failing to do that before was the final nail in the coffin she just finished clawing her way out of! The sheer number of seemingly impossible things she's accomplished, of apparently irreversible failures she's seemingly put right, is mind boggling! It'd be the easiest thing in the world to let that go to your head!

Her social circle is also a perfect environment to enable her worst tendencies - there's no one left in it whose opinion she trusts that's willing to call her on her shit. Marquis doesn't see anything wrong with her behavior, Carol is trying to make up for a decade of neglect and unwarranted criticism, Mark just wants everybody to get along and be happy, and Riley and Rinke are pretty shaky on this whole human decency thing themselves! With a (not unjustified) pride in how far she'd come, a circle of willing enablers, a complete lack of moderating influences, and a bulletproof get-out-of-moral-culpability-free card, and two years to spiral, I find her backsliding to be completely believable. And given that Victoria is the fly in the ointment to all of this, that her continued refusal to have anything to do with Amy gives lie to Amy's belief that she can fix anything, and thereby puts the entire edifice of her self-rationalizations at risk, it also makes perfect sense to me that Amy would become fixated on her, on proving that she really can fix anything.

Of course, being believable isn't the same thing as being compelling. The thing that makes all this so resonant for me is that, at the end of Ward, after being this grasping spectre that haunts Victoria the whole book, after rejecting countless opportunities to demonstrate a hint of self-awareness or the slimmest motivation to change - Amy does. She sits down with a therapist. She rips off the band-aid - both the metaphorical one and the literal one made out of Victoria's skin, jesus christ Amy - looks at what she's done, at how she went awry, and resolves to do better. And we end with her in essentially the same place she was at the end of Worm: prepared to do better going forward and to make reparations as best she can. But the journey she has taken to get there gives the destination entirely new meaning for me. She's already fumbled her chance at redemption! But her journey gives lie to the idea that you only have one chance, or two, or any finite number! Every moment you draw breath is a chance to do better.

To me, Amy Dallon's arc in Ward shows that the most important step you can take is the next one, and no matter how many times you walk up and down that road, it never stops being true. And I find that compelling as hell.

[taffywabbit]

"why not just make your own website?"

with the announcement of cohost's death and amidst all the other tumultuous shit currently going on with social media as a concept (i am AMAZED twitter has survived this long given the circumstances), one suggestion that i've been hearing a lot is "we should just go back to the good old days of personal websites. let's all just make neocities pages!!"

(this is gonna be a long one sorry)

and like. idk! it's certainly something i've considered, i think it would be a fun thing to have, but it also feels like the equivalent of "capitalism sucks so let's all just run off into the woods and live in a cabin outside of society" to me. like it would be nice, it would be fun, but it doesn't ultimately solve the actual problems that are present with the modern internet, it just evades them. more importantly in my case and many others, it does not really help people who rely on the modern internet and the connections they're able to make there for their income. sure i can make a website and host my art and blog posts there, but who's going to see it? i can't build a consistent audience and make a living off of random passersby who peek at my website once, say "huh, neat!" and MAYBE add it to an RSS feed or whatever if they really like it. there's minimal potential for meeting and impressing new people outside my existing circles if i don't ALSO still have some manner of social media platform to promote the website on.

a lot of the "solutions" i see people proposing for the slow, painful decline of social media as a user experience keep coming back to old-fashioned, more isolated/insular systems. we miss forums, we miss personal webpages, we miss newsletters, etc etc. but like... those things were ideal in the "old web" because the old web was more about sharing hobbies and interests with whoever happened to pass by and check them out, and even just USING the internet was a niche hobby in and of itself for a lot of people. if you wanna be kinda cynical about it (and not unjustifiably so), web 2.0 is much more blatantly business-oriented, and its algorithms and carefully crafted UX's are primarily meant to funnel you towards viewing ads and spending money on products. looking at it that way, it sure does suck and Everything Was Better Before! but the modern web is ALSO more powerful than anything before it for just like. connecting people. spreading information and news. showing your art/music/writing/thoughts/etc to strangers who never knew you existed an hour ago. putting the tools to reach out to someone and tell them you think they're cool right there on the same website where their art is hosted, just a comment or a message away.

if you're able to avoid patterns of engagement-bait and obsessing over follower counts as a measure of self-worth (a big "if", i realize, but i view it like installing an adblocker - it's just kind of a basic prerequisite for modern internet safety and survival), a lot of these systems can genuinely be really positive and life-changing in ways that were simply not possible 20 years ago! almost all of my current closest friends are people I met through sharing our art on platforms like Twitter who were complete strangers at the time. all of the art clients that regularly pay my bills and support my work came from places like that too! the "social" part of "social media" is really what makes it ultimately worth keeping around in any form, and makes the pursuit of a Good social media platform still valuable.

there's a lot to love about the old web - its aesthetics, simplicity and freedom for personal expression - but every time someone says "just delete your socials and make a personal website" i am forced to confront the fact that i could never do what i currently do or be the person i am on the old web. if i was stuck hanging out in my own little space and only ever interacting with people who openly and loudly share my interests, i couldn't support myself with art full-time, i probably would never have met the kind and quiet strangers who are now my best friends and have made me who i am, and i'd just generally get a lot less insight into the vast range of experiences and perspectives that exist outside of my own. my life would be on a fundamentally different trajectory in countless ways without the advent of web 2.0.

and that's not to say "well twitter and facebook and tumblr all suck but you kinda still have to hand it to them" cuz you don't, obviously. they're corporations, and their job is to take the personalities and thoughts and art of the people who use their products and try to scrunch it all into something uninform and marketable that generates profit and pleases their shareholders. but like, you CAN still make a good thing out of them! these websites are tools just as much as geocities or myspace or IRC used to be. and the one thing these newer tools are pretty much all REALLY good at is discoverability. if you're just a hobbyist at the things you wanna share on the internet, then you likely don't have a lot of use for those tools, and perhaps you WOULD genuinely be happier just keeping a personal blog site or hanging out in private groupchats or sticking to specialized federated Mastodon instances or whatever. it just isn't feasible for me, and there are a LOT of people in my same situation. my entire industry of online freelance artists barely existed 20 years ago, and the web culture of that era is largely incompatible with my continued survival in the mid-2020s. i would LOVE to run off and live in the woods in concept, but all my survival skills are adapted for city living and i would just eat the wrong berry and die out there. i want- i NEED people to try and improve the spaces we're in, and support better forms of social media (like what cohost was trying and largely succeeding to do!) instead of just complaining that it all sucks, everything was better when we were kids, and digging ourselves little holes to hide in. much like all the other problems and frustrations and systemic issues of the world we live in, the modern web isn't going to go away if you just ignore it, so we may as well try to make it better for everyone.

anyways tl;dr i probably WILL make a neocities at some point. it could be fun, even if it doesn't help my career stability or whatever. but i do also need ALL THE SOCIAL PLATFORMS I USE FOR MY JOB TO STOP EXPLODING PRETTY PLEASE, and failing that, some actual half-decent alternatives that aren't going to fizzle out in a month would also be great thanks ✌