#it's taken this long to make it relevant i'm realistic!!!

[mindfulstudyquest]

❥﹒♡﹒☕﹒ 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲-𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝗮𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄

𝟭. set SMART goals ( 📒 )

make sure your goals are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-bound. this will help you maintain focus and track your progress over time. how many times has it been you and your unrealistic to-do list against the world? well, it seems that a mile-long to-do list is not a good ally at all. remember that you are a person and not a machine, and that just dedicating four hours to deep work and concentration is A LOT. be kind to yourself and don't overload yourself with more work than you can humanly do.

𝟮. daily planning ( 🧸 )

mea culpa because i'm the first one who doesn't plan their day. to-do lists generally stress me out and make me feel overwhelmed as if i don't manage to complete all the tasks an asteroid will end up hitting the earth. but i recognize that it is a good starting point. sometimes i have too many things to do and i end up doing nothing in total confusion, but having at least a general list to follow gives me more motivation. moreover do we want to talk about the dopamine released when you tick an empty box? marvelous. maybe don't write down tasks that are too onerous and demanding, break them into several smaller tasks, also try to write simple activities such as "drink a glass of water" every now and then. having these low-commitment activities will help you stay motivated while completing more important tasks.

𝟯. reverse-engineering method ( 🪴 )

start with the end goal and work backwards to plan the actions needed to achieve it. this helps you maintain clarity on the steps to take and focus on the most relevant actions. the best thing to do is plan based on the time available and do your best to stick to your daily goal.

𝟰. timer roulette ( ⏳ )

choose a task from your to-do list and set a random timer between 15 and 45 minutes. work on that task with all your concentration until the timer goes off. this helps you fight procastination and keep your mind fresh.

𝟱. mind mapping time ( 📍 )

before starting a study session, take a few minutes to create a mental map of the subject you need to cover. this helps you see connections between concepts and organize information more effectively.

𝟲. task batching ( 🫒 )

group similar tasks together and tackle them in batches. for example, reply to all emails in one session rather than doing so at scattered times throughout the day. this helps you reduce transition time between tasks and maintain focus. contrary to popular belief, human beings are not truly multitasking (only a few possess this great ability) and when we do multiple things together we do nothing but shift our attention from one task to another, greatly reducing the quality of our performance. if possible, try to avoid these switches that are harmful to your focus and concentration.

𝟳. the pomodoro method ( 🍅 )

okay, y'all probably already know this one because it became so popular in the last year but if you don't, the pomodoro method is a time management technique developed by francesco cirillo in the late 80s. it is based on the idea of working for short periods of time, usually 25 minutes, followed by a short 5 minute break. after four rounds of work, a longer break is taken, usually 15-30 minutes. this technique helps improve concentration and productivity, as it breaks down work into manageable tasks and offers regular breaks to rest and regenerate energy. i personally prefer the 50/10 ratio while i'm studying but you decide which time ratio is better for you, i find it really useful and it helps me a lot while i'm studying for my exams.

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo Devlog #5 | 08.31.23

August is OVER and that means a brand-new Lost in Devlog!!! 💜 We are very excited for September to begin because that will definitely mark a new era of Lost in Limbo's production as the whole team will be finally free of the shackles of the spanish education system!

This devlog contains mainly progress in the programming and writing department (yours truly in charge), but we have also made some progress in the art department.

In addition, we will use this devlog to discuss a few changes and decisions we have taken in regards to the course of the demo—so feel free to grab a drink and join us for the ride!

First and foremost...A glimpse of our main menu! 🎉💜 I have been working hard this month to implement the UI as we finally got the files, and I've also animated and programmed the main menu screen, the configuration screen, save/load, etc. The dialogue box and everything else is also implemented and working perfectly, and of course we have a custom cursor thanks to miss Raquel! 🎉

Needless to say, LiL is my first coding adventure, so I'm sure our code isn't perfect or in optimal condition, but hopefully our Kickstarter will allow us to hire a programmer to fix that. I think I've done a pretty good job considering my lack of experience!

Also, special thanks (again) to our dearly beloved @crescencestudio for bearing with me and graciously lending a hand when I struggled the most. They are officially my ren'py mentor and I'd like to take a moment to illustrate our my struggle to y'all with a simple screenshot:

(Also it's kind of funny we both have animal crossing pics in our discord accounts, that was ✨ a coincidence ✨)

<<Inside the holy judgement chamber of the Silver Spire, may your words carry only truth, lest punishment is what you seek.>>

This month our dear Raquel has been working on backgrounds when she's had a moment, and this is one of the pieces she has been rendering and polishing! We'll also take a look at another background (a really important one) to bring it up to our new standards. As I said in another devlog, the master degree we were (and still are, until the 15th) attending has changed our way of seeing and approaching art pieces, so we are looking into improving pieces that are still in the making!

First of all; we are super proud and happy to welcome a new member to the team of Ravenstar Games: Allie! They'll be our editor and proofreader, and I'm sure you know and love some projects she's been on, like Blooming Panic! or our recent and beloved Intertwine. They are a fantastic fantastic writer, an incredible person and a passionate dev that I've had the pleasure to know and work with for a while now, and I would trust no one else with the script of our baby! (and if you are a writer, you know how hard it is to let others read your stuff sometimes. It's like baring your soul to them; it could only be Allie for me!) So please give them a big warm welcome!!

For the writing department, some devlogs ago we talked about the script suffering some changes—well, they have officially solidified now!

We have cut some content that was not exactly relevant for the first experience we want y'all to have with the game. A lot of context and exposition that helps, but is not absolutely necessary to enjoy what is perhaps the most important thing for an indie team and their game; the first demo and the impression it leaves behind. That content has not been scraped and we have decided to save it for an extended demo; the first demo will still be as long as it was in the beginning, as a lot of new content has also been added to prioritize the LIs, which is what you are here for.

We also made this decision because we were once more faced with the reality of: there's only four of us and it's not realistic to do seven LIs + six supporting characters + their expression charts + 13 backgrounds + everything else for a first demo. We are learning as we go, for better or worse, and sometimes you have to sit back and say "right. this is not going to work" so we had to do that. Sadly, we were not realistic with what we wanted to do, but hey, we all get too excited and dream too big sometimes!

This changes will ensure you get the best first experience with LiL without losing important, meaningful content, and hopefully be excited for what will come later. In my humble opinion, the demo script is now in much better shape than it was a month ago. Trust. And just wait for Allie to edit it—that's going to bring it to perfection.

Oh! We'll also be modifying the Masterpost soon as some things are a bit outdated and can be improved, so expect to see some new stuff in there!

It's 1 am here right now as I write this. I'm in bed. Today has been a day. Tomorrow I'll take a look at this and correct a million typos. See? Another reason we need Allie with us. There's screenshots to take, videos to make, and everything is slowly coming together. We are in really good spirits, motivated and hopeful for the near future. This has been long enough as it is, so as always, thank you for being part of Lost in Limbo's journey, and for the love and kindness you give us again and again. We hope you all are doing great, staying hydrated, and taking care of yourself 💜 See you very very soon!!

[compacflt]

Hello, me again back with another question about the US Navy that I can't find an answer to online so I'm turning to the only source I can think of that may help. And yet again I know you say your knowledge of the US military isn't as deep as it seems but it's better than mine considering I'm not from the US, I just wanted to know how officers get off aircraft carriers? It seems like a very basic question but I'm just wondering about if in Top Gun Maverick the carrier they were on was in port and they took it to wherever the Dagger mission takes place, or they got taken to the ship if it was already at sea? If so, how would they get there? If there was an emergency, say a family member was dying, they were in the middle of the ocean and got emergency leave approved, how would they get to land? Would the ship have to port at the nearest US Naval Base? Or would you have to land on the carrier somehow? This has been on my mind for a while so any help would be greatly appreciated, your blog really adds a realistic layer to Top Gun that is refreshing

navy logistics is some of the most interesting stuff in the world. especially World War II navy logistics (the infamous ice cream barge!!!). But even today how equipment & rations & personnel (and MAIL!!!) make it on/off boats is SO fascinating & takes ungodly amounts of coordination. take a look at this video posted by the uss gerald ford (CVN 78) a couple days ago.

those are sh-60s (Sea hawks—navy black hawk variant) dropping palletized goods from a cargo ship onto the flight deck of the carrier. Including sailors’ mail, overseas goods, food etc. just awesome stuff.

in terms of officers getting on/off ships, yeah you could do it a few ways. Number one would be when the boat makes a port call. Fun fact, It used to be a huge time-honored tradition for crews to make “cruise jackets” with the names of every place your ship/carrier had stopped. not too sure if it’s still done but it was a big thing after wwii. both mav and ice would probably have them.

port calls would be when crewmen and officers especially could leave the boat & party it up on dry land. so you get the stereotype of navy officers cheating on their wives with foreign women in “foreign ports of call.”

number two, if it’s a high ranking officer like the carrier strike/battle group commander (typically a RDML) who needs for some reason to leave the carrier at the center of the CS/BG formation & go to another ship, yeah you just send over a chopper like an SH-60 to go pick them up and ferry them to wherever they need to go. when I wrote ice (RADM) as deputy Cdr of third fleet (four carriers) that might be one way he’d get around the fleet. (But also not 100% sure he’d even be at sea. That was kind of just for plot/emotional reasons to separate him from mav.) but so like.. if the fleet commander/deputy cdr had a family emergency (say: found out that Carole is gonna die soon) and he got cleared to leave, he could hop on a helicopter in range (SH-60 has a range of about 400 mi for instance—the similar USCG HH-60 jayhawk, which was canonically what picked up mav & brought him back to base after he blew up the darkstar, has a range of 800 mi; if not in range he’d have to move his carrier closer [wouldn’t happen, he would be SOL]) which would take him to the nearest allied airfield with a plane to fly home. Which is what happened in my fic. lots of hurdles to clear. it’s very inconvenient & obviously not encouraged.

here is a relevant section from my wips.

for the mission in Top gun: maverick, obviously we don’t know for sure where the mission takes place, but it’s clearly somewhere in the northern INDOPAC region close to the ocean in specifically third fleet’s AOR (area of responsibility). (the list of reasons I chose southeast Russia to be the enemy location in my fic is soooo unbelievably long.) the navy would have a carrier strike group in the region for some time before. then it would make the most expeditious sense for the aircrews (mav, rooster et al) to be flown in from SoCal to somewhere closer, like a navy/air force base in Japan or South Korea, before they get transferred either by land (walk onto the carrier) or by air (chopper pick-up). given the time constraints of the mission I’m going with chopper. Carriers are fast… like really fast by boat standards… but not “travel across the Pacific Ocean in a day” fast. and not “waste time for a port call pick-up” fast.

also (random piece of nautical knowledge I know for some reason) there are some (possibly non-military) reasons why you’d do a personnel transfer by sea. take cruise ships for instance. When they pull into a port, there’s a whole guy whose job it is to take over for the captain to steer the boat into the port they presumably know very well. so this is actually how local cruise ship pilots get onto cruise ships. disney cruises included.

sketchy as fuck. I’m not sure if there’s a similar concept for aircraft carriers when they pull into unfamiliar ports… but I wouldn’t be surprised. however that’s for the captain of the boat. I would be shocked if high-ranking managerial officers ever needed to embark & disembark like this. but i just think it’s kind of funny.

[sflow-er]

To August anon 2

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply! I don't know if you'll even see this as I've decided not to risk the backlash of putting it on the main tag, but I hope you do.

[Earlier posts: August anon 1, August anon 2]

I want to curate the discussion a bit now that you've shifted part of the focus on Sara. I don't share your position of liking both her and August for being 'morally dark' people, and I fear it may be a bit jarring to any Sara fans reading this. So I've decided to screenshot your message and put it under the cut instead of replying directly.

We disagree on some fundamental things when it comes to August's and especially Sara's characterisation, and I doubt we're going to reach consensus. But that's okay! I'm just going to explain some parts of my POV below, and then we can agree to disagree. There are also a few areas where we seem to be getting our wires crossed (e.g. what we mean by 'understanding' the consequences) so I want to clear those up.

Most of this rambling essay was written before the S3 trailer came out, so I'm not focusing much on the glimpses we see of them in the trailer. But I am still using the spoiler tags just to be safe.

CW: negative take on Sara (but the anon actually likes her); couple of suicide mentions

Okay so... I'm going to start by clarifying a couple of things:

Understanding vs. understanding

Infantilising vs. taking young age into account

When I talk about August and the consequences, I'm not saying he lacks the intellect or analytical thinking to know/predict them. I'm saying he lacks the empathy and relevant frames of reference to understand them. I think we're just using the word 'understand' to mean different things - maybe internalise, empathise or relate would be a better choice for what I mean by it?

To revisit my previous example, August as an incredibly privileged member of the elite cannot understand i.e. relate to Simon's experience as someone whose ability to make his own reputation and get by on his own merit has been permanently affected by the video. As a very confidently straight man, he also cannot relate to Wille's experience as someone whose non-straight sexuality, a deeply personal and private thing that he wasn't even done figuring out, has suddenly been exposed to the world and potentially even some homophobic hate.

I'm not saying this to infantilise, defend, or excuse August. I'm saying it because to me, it partly explains why it's so easy for him to dismiss the harm to Simon and see his betrayal of Wille as just a matter of loyalty - the only moral code he knows - instead of something that would've been wrong no matter who the victim was. It's a thought pattern that stems from his upbringing and worldview, and it would have to be dismantled for him to feel proper remorse. Which I think would probably take professional help at this point.

(I agree with you that August would be extremely prejudiced against Boris. A glimpse of him googling therapy providers or booking an appointment for after graduation might feel more realistic to me - but I guess it depends on what the writers want to do with him. We already saw very quick progress with Wille in S2 so it's safe to say they can take some liberties.)

I still believe that August will lose his social status in S3, likely towards the end. But it's fair that you don't, and the trailer is certainly edited to support your position. If he retains his status, then you may be right about him remaining the same old asshole! If he does lose it, then my original point about him likely not being resilient enough to cope with the consequences still stands. He is very much the kind of person to whom suicide is the "proud" way out compared to the shame of losing everything.

Now, the age thing.

Respectfully, I think you may be ascribing too much meaning to August and Sara being of age in S2 (note that Sara was still 17 when she made the deal with August in S1). Eighteen is the age of legal adulthood, yes, but it doesn't make them fully grown and mature adults in the (neuro)biological, psychological or social sense.

[This feels like a good point to say that I am not going to try to account for Sara's neurodivergence here. I definitely don't have the insight, so if anything I've written below is in any way inaccurate or offensive to persons with AuDHD, please let me know!!]

Firstly, it's important to note that that the human brain matures gradually and unevenly. The prefrontal cortex i.e. the 'reasoning centre' only matures in the mid-to-late 20s, while parts that handle things like right/wrong, risk/reward, and emotional responses (e.g. the amygdala) mature earlier. This can cause teens and young adults to struggle with things like impulse control, assessing the long-term consequences of their actions, understanding others' emotions, and rational decision-making in situations that trigger a strong emotional response. Reason can get overtaken by emotion on a chemical level; sometimes the young person can't even fully explain afterwards why they did something they rationally knew was wrong all along.

[I don't think August was in a particularly analytical state of mind when he decided to post the video. He was an intelligent but emotionally unstable and empathically challenged 18-year-old who felt like he had nothing left to lose and the only moral code he knew (i.e. loyalty) was obsolete. He was also still stewing in the emotional turmoil of his humiliation and likely stuck in a negative feedback loop. It feels very plausible to me that he could be in a very bad place for a pretty long time and still function enough to plan his revenge (more on the revenge part below).]

Secondly, both August and Sara have also had some pretty traumatic experiences (Sara's bullying, August's dad's suicide, the influence of both their dads while they were still in their lives). These may have impacted their emotional and psychological development in various ways and created some thought patterns. Not to play arm-chair psychologist, but I don't think it's a coincidence August's decision to post the video is related to his family estate and legacy, while Sara's decision to make a deal with August is related to the threat of being sent back to Marieberg.

[This feels particularly relevant for Sara, whose bullying was brutal and long-term enough for her to have to repeat a year. The negative attention on Simon after the video probably seemed less severe in comparison, and also like a 'first incident' (in fact, she might have even felt like Linda was applying a different standard to Simon's ordeal compared to hers by immediately wanting to take them both out of Hillerska).]

[I vehemently disagree with Sara's idea that the damage to Simon was already done and it wouldn't have made a difference whether he knew who was responsible, but I think it matters to some extent that she didn't know the history between Simon and August. To her, the video probably seemed like something that was mostly between August and Wille. That idea was likely reinforced by August consistently dismissing Simon's side of it - and also by Simon seemingly moving on with Marcus and no longer being the talk of the school after Christmas. This kind of rationalisation may have even made Sara feel better about pursuing a relationship with August in S2.]

[I also think Sara probably felt like she had the right to be selfish after everything she'd been through. Simon's support during her bullying wasn't conditional; she didn't feel like she "owed him" any sacrifices. It was clearly Simon's idea to follow Sara to Hillerska, and she may have even felt like he was hovering a bit (I doubt S1E1 was her first time saying she was fine now and he didn't have to be there). Then, Simon started to keep secrets and even see Micke for reasons Sara didn't know, altering the terms of their relationship, while Sara was finally daring to dream of things she'd been denied for so long. Friends, a better future, even romance. To her, it felt extremely unfair to have to give all that up and go back to a school that was a nightmare to her but not to Simon. Especially when her and Simon's lives weren't as intertwined anymore and she finally felt like she was gaining some agency in her own.]

Thirdly (circling back to the point about maturity), it's good to keep in mind that both August and Sara are still in the high-school phase of life. A phase when most people are a bit selfish, and their past and current dramas and dreams for the future are everything to them. They haven't really acquired much experience or long-term perspective yet. So I really don't think we can call them that much more mature in the social sense than, say, Wilhelm and Simon. They are still messy teens living their messy teen lives, shaped by their upbringing and limited life experience, all the while thinking they are basically grown adults.

So am I saying all this to infantilise August and Sara and excuse their actions? I'm sure it sounds that way; hence, not putting this on the main tag.

But the way I see it, to infantilise them would be to say they weren't responsible for their actions or didn't know what they're doing. They are responsible, and they do know. All the factors laid out above (and also in my previous August posts) explain their reasoning and actions to some extent, but they do not excuse them. The fact still remains that they both applied their best judgment and deliberately chose to do the thing that they knew was wrong.

You're right that they took time to consider their decisions in S1, although I don't think we can know for sure exactly how long August takes. The timeline is a mess at that point; he is still at the Palace wearing the same outfit when the others make their statement, and I doubt he could've been there overnight. But he does take several hours in any case, and although he isn't thinking rationally at that point, he still knows what he's doing is wrong. In fact, he does it with the sole intention of hurting others, which makes it all the more reprehensible.

I just want to caution against labelling him as some evil, fundamentally unfeeling mastermind. He's just a very selfish and immature young man with a very warped view of the world, who needs to see some consequences for his own sake as much as his victims'. I think part of the reason we saw him turn so soft with Sara in S2 was to underline that he is capable of empathy and caring; it's just a matter of unlocking those emotions. They haven't exactly been nurtured growing up, so he is only applying them to the people he deems "worthy", instead of all his fellow human beings. That selective empathy is another thing he seriously needs to work on, alongside the lack of accountability.

As for Sara, she takes several days to consider what to do about the video, which makes her betrayal of Simon more severe. But as explained above, it's so much more nuanced than her not caring about him. (Or indeed her being some poor victim who didn't know what she was doing and fell in love with The Devil! Don't get me wrong, August definitely let her believe she was guiding him in a better direction, which may have even pushed some Micke buttons in her subconscious and/or memories of Simon's insistence that everyone deserves a second chance... But she still made her own decisions and is responsible for them.)

It's easy to forget that we do in fact see Sara aware that her actions are wrong even before the end of S2. She looks conflicted/unsure when she and August make out in S1E6, cries when Simon earnestly proclaims "I like you when you are you" and "I'm trying to be your friend again because I need you" after she has just betrayed him, and again looks conflicted when the siblings talk about loving the "wrong person" in S2E5. She did some very selfish things and hid them for much too long, yes, but I believe her regret is genuine. It will take some skilful writing to make her and Simon reconcile in a way that makes sense, doesn't feel rushed or reduce her to an archetype, and doesn't just magic away her leftover feelings for August (as those will probably take some time to clear out). But I do have faith it can be done.

So I think that just about covers what I wanted to say. This isn't a comprehensive essay by any means, and I'm sure it won't go down well with everyone. I also don't expect it to change your mind about these characters, anon, and that's okay!

I mostly just wanted to push back on the notion that Sara and August being 18 means all their bad decisions are now on par with bad decisions taken by fully grown adults and their character development is now set in stone. I highly doubt the show will end with them both proudly standing behind their poor choices - I can certainly see August doing that if he doesn't see any repercussions, but not Sara.

In any case, thank you for taking the time to explain your point of view on these characters, and sorry again for taking so long to respond!

[sunriseverse]

What are you uh...what are you salty about? (I'm nosy as hell, give me the tea)

okay SO. disclaimer before i start: if anyone seeing this likes the youtuber mentioned, understand i am not calling her a bad person; i have some very specific umbrage with her, and i will detail why. you don't have to agree with me, but if you, in any way, inform this youtuber of this post and what i'm saying, you will be blocked, because this is meant to be on my personal blog only and a severe violation of my boundaries to tell her about this.

let's begin, shall we? (below the cut, since this got a bit long; my apologies.)

for context, since i started watching zmyx, i have been periodically checking youtube for amvs of the show so i can add them to my playlist. while doing so, i stumbled across this video by AvenueX. i had watched a video by her previously on the show under the skin, and mostly enjoyed it. i love hearing people react to batshit cdrama, well, drama, and "this show was up for bare hours before being taken down" definitely counts as something i like hearing reactions to.

i cannot directly upload the clip into this post, but i'll put the subtitles in for the relevant section, which begins at the 12:25 mark and ends at 14:59.

AX: Basically, there is a BL drama that was made quite a few years ago and hasn't come out like all the BL dramas, Zhiming Youxi. It's based on a novel called Wanghuatong [sic] and is a clear BL drama. The platform was iQiyi, and they cast Huang Junjie and Xia Zhiguang. These two guys have been multiple other stuff ever since then, and if you watch a lot of Chinese dramas, you probably have an impression of who they are. Neither of them are considered to be good actors, very young, and not really coming from professional sort of trained actor background[...]I'm not so interested in the story to start with and not interested in these two actors either, because BL dramas is hard to do well; you have to be good actors to pull it off, and you actually have to know what type of acting you need to be doing. You're not actually playing realistic gay people, you're playing imagined version of [here she makes a sound i can only transcribe as the auditory equivalent of tilting your hand back and forth], that whole complicated psychological thing on the back end, and if you're not clever and experienced enough actor you actually easily make a mess. Based on the leaked out footage I see on the internet, it's embarrassing, in terms of the acting, and they stole the most important line from Word of Honor, which is 'there's light on you and I want to grab it and take a look'. Every BL drama has a classic line[...]and this drama shamelessly took a completely, and that part of the video is online. I've watched it, and I'm like, 'oh my god, oh my god, just because you're another BL doesn't qualify you for stealing literally the line from another BL drama[...]just because of that I'm like, oh, okay, now I can make fun with other people together on this drama being living [sic] on the internet for like, what, three-four hours[...]it's a good thing this drama is buried now, and please don't show up again. I don't want to see it. It's embarrassing, it's embarrassing, okay.

bolding mine; these are the portions i have umbrage with.

let's go through the points she makes, shall we?

this show is "embarrassing", in terms of acting; presumably, this is connected to the earlier line about the actors not being known as "good actors", and not having professional acting backgrounds.

it stole a line from shl.

she thinks this drama deserves to be made fun of for "being embarrassing" because, presumably, the actors don't play bl roles the way she thinks they should, and "make a mess of it".

i must reiterate: she can have these opinions. these are opinions she is entitled to. i disagree with them, but i respect her right to have them. however, because i also have the right to my own opinion, i am allowed to be pissed about these opinions she has.

i will go through a point by point breakdown of my responses and thoughts on each point.

i think it's really stupid to judge an actor based simply on them having a professional background or not. when it comes down to it, the most important thing for actors, especially co-leads, in a show, is their ability to do their job and create believable dynamics with their co-actors. in my opinion, xia zhiguang and huang junjie do this very well in zmyx. their dynamic feels natural and realistic to me, and, more importantly than that, it compels me. i don't say this as a "fan" of either actor; it was a nice bonus to me that hjj had also played another character i like, but even if he hadn't, i would be judging this performance as lin qiushi based on its own merits. i have never seen xzg in anything, and again, i am judging his acting in this show on its own merits. also, i should add there's something hilarious about her holding up shl as a "good" bl, when you could argue that those leads aren't "good" actors, either. i mean, look at advancing bravely! or, maybe, i don't know, it's possible for actors to improve over time and do better in certain projects than others? and someone doesn't have to be the "best" in all areas of their field, just the right choice for the role they're playing??

this is just stupid, in my opinion. the line is not stolen; it is altered and becomes its own line in zmyx. in shl, the line is, as she says, "there's light on you and i want to grab it and take a look". in zmyx, the line is "there's a light on you that i don't see on others". this is, at most, a reference—and zmyx isn't the only bl that references other media! this is a silly, petty argument, in my opinion, and frankly annoying as hell. if it were a crime to reference any other media in the same genre as the media doing the referencing, we'd miss out on so much. to me, this reference doesn't read as an appropriation, but as a nod of appreciation to another bl which was heavily censored. also, if her claims are anything to go by, and zmyx did film "years ago", it's possible that, actually, zmyx used the line before shl did. even if that isn't the case, who fucking cares? genuinely, i think this is a stupid point and i hate it.

she thinks the actors made a mess of the show by not playing the roles in the specific way bl roles are "meant" to be played. we could spend years arguing about the "right" way to play a bl role, but to me, it sounds like she has a very specific idea of the roles bl actors must fit into and fulfil—specifically, that they must play an exaggerated, unrealistic mimicry of gay male relationships, or else it's a "bad" bl. i don't know AvenueX's sexuality, but as a person of the homosexual persuasion myself, if not one attracted to men, i personally don't like exaggerated mimicries of gay relationships, and i would wager a guess that many gay and bisexual men are probably in this same boat. when i watch a bl show, i prefer that the dynamics are driven not by the idea of what gay people should act like, but by 1. the plot, 2. their own characterisations and character motives, and 3. their relationships and dynamics with each other. in this regard, while zmyx isn't a "good bl", i think it's a good depiction of the relationship between two characters. i don't say this to be holier-than-thou, or to claim i'm somehow "better" than other people who do like specific exaggerated tropes in bl; i say this because i feel like AvenueX entirely disregards the possibility that the thing that she doesn't like about zmyx are things that other people will.

(additionally, while she never says this, i get the impression that one of the things she doesn't like is that the chemistry between the characters isn't the "typical" bl chemistry. i, frankly, don't give a fuck. i think the leads have fantastic chemistry, and it annoys me that she thinks they "made a mess" just because they don't fit the idea she has for what a bl "should" look like. i, for one, think it's a good thing that we're moving away from caricatured depictions of gay people in media, especially danmei and dangai. myself and other asian gay people, especially east asian gay people, have pointed out how harmful caricatured versions of gay asian characters are.)

(also, as an unrelated, and petty aside, if i remember correctly, she's a british film school grad, and not to be judgemental, but, yeah, i can fucking see it.)

so, yeah. that's my two fen and indignance on this. but, hey, what do i know, i'm just some random tumblr user ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[bomberqueen17]

Lotfus Bralette Sewalong: Construction 1

ok things I've learned: it'd be easier if I used a different fabric for main and lining, and it would be easy if that fabric had an obvious right and wrong side. Despite all my labeling and stickering and everything I *still* sewed a panel in wrong, and it was a nightmare making sure everything was mirror-imaged correctly.

All that said, I had to unpick a total of one seam (but unpicked two by accident, argh), and there's a sudden point where you have everything assembled and you're like..... none of this needs labels any more, and you have to peel them all off before you can continue. And it comes suddenly. So.

I'm not finished but I'm really near the end. It's a lot of fussy little sewing, but the seams are like ten inches long max, it really doesn't take very long.

This being my muslin, I have focused on getting everything put together and have not paid attention to seam finishing, trimming, grading, pressing etc. My next version, I will do those things, but I've omitted them from this version because I still don't know if the thing is going to fucking fit, I'm not topstitching something if I might have to tear it all back out, though let's be realistic I'm not going to disassemble this thing, if it turns out unwearable I'm just going to cut the notions off and start over. It's not that much fabric. I will make minor tweaks probably, but generally it is not going to be worth it to pull this apart. (Exception: if it's too large I would cut seams off and sew it smaller. But it will not be too large, I already know that from the approximate shove-my-boob-meat-into-a-half-of-it not-exactly-try-on-- it is certainly not too big, but I can't tell if it's too small because without the elastic and fasteners it's not pulled closely enough to me to be sure. It feels like there's not enough fabric to go around, but I know the wide band elastic covers a lot of territory, so I'm reserving judgement.)

So. How far did I get? Well.

[img description: this is the cluttered basement setup. Image shows a blue rubbermaid tote lid with a tall rim leaning on a pile of stuff on a cluttered desk, and on the lid is a Kindle with the sewing instructions loaded up, one half of the bra cup assembled, several pattern pieces, and next to the rim is a large box of yellow-headed quilting pins.]

I sent this setup photo to my family groupchat when we were discussing what we're doing with our weekends. (One younger sister is camping in Vermont with husband and kid, the other was gardening and found a big shed snakeskin which was cool, Mom was visiting a brew pub in fort edward and sent a photo of what looked like a pole to me and said "there's edward" and i don't get the joke, and the oldest sister had just taken her daughter to get her ears pierced, which among our people is a sign of young adulthood. Not that it's relevant to the sewalong but this is my blog after all, LOL.)

I had to unpick a seam but progress was quick after that.

[image description: an assemblage of fabric, with a pin in it, going through the throat plate of a sewing machine. The lower fabric is pink, the top fabric white. Both are decorated with Sharpie marks around the edge. The pink is nonstretch nylon tricot, the white is heavy duty powermesh.]

When it came time to attach the powerbar to the cup lining, I felt that the video sewalong had said to have the powermesh side up. The issue here is that the bra cup and lining are non-stretch fabric, as the pattern is written, and the powerbar and back band are stretch fabric, specifically powermesh (which has superior recovery to other stretch fabrics and so is indispensible in bras and compression garments). And attaching stretch to nonstretch is always a little bit of a nightmare, and generally is inadvisable, but bras break the rules in many ways and that's why so many of us are intimidated about bras.

I discovered immediately that sewing with the nonstretch side against the feed dogs and the stretch side against the presser foot was a NO GO. The stretch fabric would get pulled by the presser foot wildly out of shape, and I kept having to raise the presser foot and shove at the fabric to keep it aligned, and I kept wobbling my seam all over the place and it was awful. So I flipped it over and put the stretch fabric against the feed dogs instead, and then had zero further issues. I have not re-checked the sewalong, and the pattern instructions do not specify, but for my own reference, always put the stretch fabric against the feed dogs, that is unambiguously what worked here.

I also broke my anti-topstitching-on-muslins stance here and did topstitch the seam after I attached the back band to the cups. I wasn't doing it anywhere else, but I think it's necessary there, to hold everything down. There's gonna be SO much strain on that seam.

[image description: a pale pink, quite substantial bra, though it only looks fully assembled, lying on the talbe in front of a sewing machine. There's no center gore so it's only arranged as if assembled. But the cups are visibly partly self-supporting, because they're now three layers of fabric, so they're approximately boob-shaped, and hilariously fleshtoned in this light, I did not think this through.]

I got this far, both cups and linings assembled, with the powermesh in the middle. And then I had to make the center gore, which didn't go together the way I expected at all. You sew it in two halves, and then sew the halves together, which I had not expected and could not make myself understand. I did it, and then re-watched the sewalong afterward, and i'm still not sure I did it right, but mine did go on and looks right so I guess even if I did do something not the way the sewalong suggests I did it right enough that it works.

The frustrating thing is that you make the center gore and then set it aside, though, LOL. So I had to make it, then put the neck elastic on, and then check again.

I was SO confused by the elastic. You sew it on right sides together, and then flip it to the inside of the bra and topstitch it from the outside. So you want to sew it in such a way that just a little edge of it, which may or may not have decorative picots because it depends what you bought, will overhang when you flip it. So you want to sew it down along the MARKED SEW LINE on your strap, and if there's a bunch of extra wobbly edges and shit, sew to the inside of that, and you can trim them off after. This is where you compensate for wobbly cutting and wobbly sewing and wobbly putting-layers-together, and it's brilliant.

I didn't do it right but I will next time now that I understand that. And Jenn from Porcelynne *does* explain that, explicitly, in the sewalong, but I watched the sewalong ahead of time and couldn't remember in the moment. So this is me reinforcing it: your whole neckline edge, sew that elastic just so and once you flip it, it will look like you lined everything up perfectly. And you don't have to stretch as you sew for the whole strap bit, and there's only a tiny bit of stretching as you sew down around the cup, and it ends right where your powerbar came in, so it's a nice continuous band of stretch all the way around your boob.

And THEN you stick the center gore in, sandwiched, before you flip the elastic, and it looks weird as hell and no way could this be right. But then once you flip the thing, sure enough, there's just a cute decorative bit of elastic between the cup and center gore, and it looks good as hell.

(I mean, it doesn't on my muslin, but it will when I make a nice version. My muslin is hideous LOL, and I'm not worried in the slightest.)

[image description: an expanse of pale pink fabric with disconcertingly peach-colored elastic running down the middle of it.]

That's what the elastic looks like topstitched down, and there's the center gore with a big sharpie mark down the middle because i meant to turn that bit to the inside but put it in backwards. Oh well.

and this is the back, where the elastic's sewn down: if I was doing a finished one, I could trim off all those odd little bits sticking out where the three layers of fabric didn't quiiiiite go together evenly, and it would look finished and polished and lovely.

[image description: a bit of pale pink fabric flipped to the back. The peach elastic at the top has a couple wobbly lines of stitching on it, and some sharpie-bordered white fabric is sticking out and looks wobbly and terrible, and there are unclipped loose gray threads from construction everywhere.]

I'm not even saving that much time by making the muslin shitty, LOL. I'm just figuring, I need to see how it goes together before I get hung up on the cute details. I have enough of this exact fabric to use it again, but I also have a cute kit, a bunch of salvaged notions, and an intense desire to use a whole variety of other nontraditional bra fabrics, so I'm not that worried.

I should buy cuter elastic though. Elastic can't really be salvaged, not nicely. I'll have to pick up some cute stuff with decorative picots and whatnot. The supply list doesn't specify that you need picots, but then the instructions assume you have them, which confused me. The point is, you should sew the elastic at a point where some of it will protrude past the turned edge, because that's the correct look and function, and you should buy elastic that's not too scratchy.

I know a lot of people are concerned with bras being scratchy. I personally have never been irritated by the seams or fabric of a bra, but I HAVE been wildly irritated by the edge of the hook-and-eye band, the tips of side boning if there is any, and the STRAP elastic being shitty. So I will be focusing my energies on those.

I'm also thinking about making a bra in one layer, with binding over the seams and the powerbar made of stretch lace with a decorative edge, and put on the exterior of the single layer. That would be possible. The two-layer construction of this is kind of bulky and I get why it's like that, but my heavy-duty chestmeats aren't necessarily that heavy-duty.

I'm also going to make this in knit fabric, and am perusing all the Cashmerette Club discussion boards (where much of the pattern design team does lurk) for pointers on alternate materials and such, and I'll compile what I learn and post it here don't worry. (The number one thing is that if you make it in knits, size down one cup size. The number two thing is that if you make it with a fabric that stretches, match the stretch between the outer and lining fabric, it HAS to be the same. And example one is a fellow-commenter told me she made the whole thing in powermesh, sized down one cup size as per recommendation, and it worked perfectly. So we have that as a datapoint.)

(I don't love powermesh for its own merits but I cannot deny, it recovers perfectly, until it doesn't and you throw the bra out, so from a functional standpoint, it's The Thing to use. I'm taking apart old bras for notions and that's the thing I see-- when the powermesh went, I had to stop wearing that bra. But most of them, I busted the underwire channeling or the hooks first. Because they were DDs and I was a J, mostly, but. Hey. Yeah some other time I'll write a post about my horrible struggles with bras and how long I spent with everyone telling me it wasn't possible to be more than a DD and i must be having a body wrong somehow.)

ANYhoo.

I had to stop to make dinner after attaching the neckband elastic and center gore. So at some point today I will venture back down and keep working. The next step is the underarm elastic, and then the straps, and then the hook and eye closure, and then it's done. So I'm pretty close really, but my cat just got into my lap so I won't be headed down there imminently, LOL.

cat tax:

[image description: a white lady in a chair heavily overshadowed by a small gray cat with a white chest patch in the foreground looking extremely smug]

She's helping me post.

[olderthannetfic]

You might get a kick out of this article someone linked me to, to try and argue that BL is in fact fetishizing (because Yada Yada women consume it and produce it and all that)

https://www.youthoutright.org/articles/fetishization-of-the-queer-community

Article is a fairly short read. But I have to chuckle at it as "evidence" since it makes a fair amount of claims with 0 sources:

That young teenage women make up a majority of fandom (and that's whose consuming/producing BL)

Straight, white women get paid more to write gay romance novels (and that these novels often feature Adonis like males with 0% body fat and no body hair; play into gender/hetero norms)

Etc.

Honestly the....article, if I can even call it that, isn't cohesive. I do find myself agreeing with its first two paragraphs...and surprisingly only the first two. However, this article spends a lot of its time focusing on fetishization of Trans bodies and chasers who go after transfolks bodies (which I'm not too familiar with this so if anyone wants to speak up on this point...)

I'm very confused by how someone could read this and think "this proves my point!"

--

Sigh.

I don't even agree with the beginning. Trashy "girl-on-girl" isn't what's making men think women exist to serve them. Society is doing that. Porn is a reflection, not a cause.

Not to mention the fact that f/f-for-dudes is astronomically common compared to shitheads pestering lesbians in bars. The latter are too common because the correct amount is 0, but just based on the numbers, a lot of dudes are capable of consuming this porn without being confused about what's fiction and what's reality.

The mass quantities of f/f-for-dudes do make it hard to find f/f-for-ladies, but this article has taken the wrong message from that. The correct takeaway is that we need better labeling and search features that are driven by the nerdy desire to categorize and not by algorithms that want to sell you stuff.

As long as het romance novels or porno movies for straight guys or bestselling thrillers or whatever are popular, they're going to drown out the algorithmic results for more niche things one is interested in.

Libraries and AO3 don't have this problem. Amazon and Youtube do.

the world of “slash fiction” (fanfiction portraying a romantic and often sexual relationship between characters from a given source) began centering gay men

Wow, article writer. So you know nothing then.

it’s been claimed that straight, white women are paid more than gay men by publishers to write gay romances

I'm honestly embarrassed for this article writer. First, most of this burgeoning field is selfpub anyway. Second, many established writers in the romance field are women, and established names will probably have a shot at better pay than new people.

Third, anyone who injects "white" like this is a moron and a wanker. If we're talking about racism in the Romance field (and boy howdy is there a lot), white gay men are no better, and men's race is just as relevant as women's. Either we're talking about race or we're not.

As it stands, this author just comes across as a misogynist piece of shit.

The overwhelming majority of these romances portray relationships between white, cis, abled men with no fat or body hair.

I have bad news for them about cis gay men's media. (Well, okay, some of that has a lot of body hair and interminable descriptions of the smell of ball sweat and stinky armpits, but still...)

Men who fit the first archetype will take the position of “top” in the numerous, inaccurate, graphic-as-possible sex scenes that are central to these stories and also appear to be central to many readers’ enjoyment.

I see we're in the usual "I, a sex-repulsed person, speak for all of humanity" mode.

People like horny art. News at 11.

These are complex issues deeply rooted in society. It’s difficult to envision mitigations and solutions. However, somewhere to begin would certainly be promoting more positive, intersectional, realistic representations of queer people and queer relationships. A vital action that can further this goal is choosing to consume media with queer representation that was created by queer people whenever possible.

Honestly, my response to this ending is:

Fuck off, you entitled git.

This uninformed little whiner is equating all kinds of unequal things. Chasers are all over the place, but they aren't the ones writing fanfic or any other amateur, personal writing. We have no right to other people's hobby time. Sure, we can vote with our feet, and we should, but this article doesn't really sound like it's advocating that: it sounds like it's crying that other people have different taste from the writer. Boo, hoo, hoo, someone I don't like got attention.

It's the usual ignorant trash.

Embarrassing.

[dreamingofmuses]

New Year's Resolutions: RP Edition

Howdy all, Ash here. I've been having a think while with family this week, and I've decided I'm going to implement some new 'resolutions' to try and help make writing in 2024 be way more successful than in 2023. This will include things from the running of blogs to jobs I really want to get finished. I'm putting them under a read-more to keep the dash nice and clean.

I will say, this has taken me an hour to write up, and I'd recommend you doing likewise if you think there's little ways you want to improve.

-

Overall Running of Blogs

I'm going to experiment a new approach to running the blogs. For this, I'm going to put all active blogs to low-medium activity. In other words, even if I am personally lurking on mobile, I won't be constantly writing things if I'm not able to. (Work is just about to get super busy and I'm anticipating chaos)

A queue/schedule function will be used for all blogs. I intend to dedicate one weekday evening to working without interruption on replies. Taking commutes to the city and family visits into account, this is looking to be a Thursday, which is the only day I am neither travelling to the city nor have a guaranteed family visit. Of course, this may fluctuate, but that's what I'm hoping to work with, assuming those things stay as they are.

However! What all this means is that I am going to tentatively take skullandbowties off hiatus. With that blog being quiet, it should be possible to juggle it better now. Plus, it's officially off-season so the demand for him from new blogs ought to be low. I'm very smart :D

I also plan to update all pinned posts. I am aware some of them are marking a vacation from months ago.

Individual Blog Maintenance

Create "New Here?" posts to add to the pinned posts/info tags. This is going to be a very quick crash course on what to expect from the blog, especially where some characters might diverge from fanon expectations.

FINISH. WILF'S. BIO. It's not actually relevant to anything being written on the blog itself at present, but I really want to flesh out his character and show that he was stuck in stories for years, decades even! The doc has the word count to 4,888 at this precise moment. This is a mix of summary and brainstorm. Since it's getting a 'little' out of hand, I intend to have a 'tldr' at the start that people can read, and then longer versions if they're curious to get the full story. Maybe even have it that they can jump to particular parts but... I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Likewise, Noah's version of Space needs to be finished. This one is going to be a summary, but it's a case of making sure the pieces are in place sufficiently to have parts match canon Space, but also make it clear that there is a lot of differences between canon and what he went through, with his plot entirely spiralling away for 'Part 2'. This is at 5,794 words, and the ending has yet to be ironed out...

(I am going to stop creating needlessly long-winded projects for myself that realistically add nothing of value to my blogs. These two projects are exhausting...)

Theauthorlives is returning to a very small multimuse. Any muses that aren't ones I genuinely enjoy writing are being fully archived, unless they are muses that get no traction but I want to keep the possibility open. Details of that will be shared when I do this.

Redo some muse icons (not all of them!). Though the selection I have for particular sets is a lot, I still feel like I'm missing some expressions or poses. I would like to remake one batch of icons for three characters, and finish iconning a third. Replies seem to be shifting toward iconless, but I like them for asks or IC commentaries.

OOC/Mun Related stuff

Following matters that have happened both online and IRL, I've decided to take a step back from actively engaging with people. My focus will be people that I have been in good communication with for the last twelve months (as well as people I don't talk to frequently but am on friendly terms with) rather than people I feel I have to 'chase' after. Saying that, I'm going to try and not let past experiences meddle with anything in with new writing partners - whether these are brand new to the community or people I've not had the chance to properly interact with prior to this. Just be aware that I might not be super outgoing at first. (This is where setting limits and boundaries is good practice, everyone! Don't sell yourself short, and don't spread yourself out too thinly!)

Which is where I now say I want to send even more asks! Not just memes or sentence starters, but general questions about headcanons or muse opinions. I want to get people thinking more.

My stance on Discord still stands, in that it's solely for OOC stuff, but I'm not giving it out to everyone. However, I have been in two group servers that have little-to-no connection with writing rp threads in them. I would hope that I can fully regain my sense of comfort using Discord as a whole.

Art related

Despite socially stepping back, I still want to keep some semblance of 'community' where my blogs are active so people don't feel isolated. For instance, I want to do something that encourages invasions of ask boxes. That was good fun to watch as the chaos began to spread, and when people are good-humoured to go along with my silly ideas.

I want to have one huge art-related event at some point this year. I'm not entirely what or how to do it, but I think it would be a great excuse to practice something. Portraits, comics, something like that. I'll have a think. (For those who remember, the water gun event was supposed to have an art conclusion but plans for that fell through.)

I want to try and upload drawn responses to heythereneighbor once a week if I can. Obviously, this is depending on how busy it is.

I'd also like to try doodling more on other blogs? But I'm not sure if this is even something people want to see anymore. People might prefer I focus on writing if I have free time instead of doodles or little comics.

... the writing blog. I need to do stuff with that in general. Whoops.

Finally, I want to do what I can to the best of my abilities on a particular day. I've always told people over the years that real life comes before rp, and I still stand by that. Whether I'm around or not every day isn't the end of the world. The communities I write in are a lot slower paced than they were when I started, which is great! I need to remind myself that I don't need to be writing just because I have a bit of free time.

[dalesramblingsblog]

Now I don't want to seem too sour on The Time of the Doctor... even if one might argue that taking a break from the arc for two and a half years was a mistake I think that there's some very nice emotional moments.

Do you think that it was consciously being the opposite to The End of Time, in 11 accepting his fate and saying how it's natural? As I know that 10's last words and his angsting about how regeneration is death... well, they haven't exactly been popular and all the other New Who Doctors have taken regeneration much better.

I'll be honest, this is one thing I've never really understood about the fan reaction to The End of Time. The done thing seems to be to read it as Davies crying about how the big meanie Moffat is gonna come along and take away his precious Doctor Who by casting some nobody called Matt Smith in the role, and I just... I'm so tired.

(Not saying it's done by you in particular, mind, as usual I'm just kind of using a point in our conversations to springboard into talking about generalised fan reactions.)

Even as someone who generally prefers Moffat's handling of the mythologisation of the Doctor, I've never gotten the impression that Davies ever intended a lot of the hubris of the Tenth Doctor to be taken remotely seriously, and the fact that so many fans opt to do so and present it as evidence that the era uncritically embraces "The Doctor as God" or whatever.

Do I think that the Doctor occasionally exerts a little too much gravity over the narrative in the Davies Era? Absolutely. But realistically, it's not too much more gravity than they exert in basically every other era of the programme by sheer dint of the fact that the show is named Doctor Who.

Moreover, Davies' musings on "regeneration as death" are not really too dissimilar from points made by Kate Orman in The Room With No Doors about a decade earlier. Those Davies-esque distinctions which do exist come about mainly as concessions to the fact that where Orman was writing the functionally-penultimate novel in a line of books which had garnered a small yet passionate cult following only to be smothered by the BBC once they realised just how profitable this whole Doctor Who thing might actually still be, The End of Time came at a point where Doctor Who was a legitimate cultural behemoth.

And while one might be tempted to write off any suggestion that that behemoth status was attained by elements specific elements to Davies as auteurish hubris of the worst kind... it's not an entirely incorrect judgement.

Obviously Doctor Who survived without Russell T. Davies; the fact that we're still here nearly fourteen years later talking about it as a regularly airing television programme - a gap almost as long as the Wilderness Years themselves, mind - proves as much.

(The unjustifiably snarky comment to make here would be that we're doing so barely two weeks removed from a return by Davies to the position of showrunner, but that runs the risk of being rather uncharitable to both Moffat and, yes, Chibnall.)

Indeed, Doctor Who continued to be enormously popular without Russell T. Davies, and eventually managed to be enormously popular without Matt Smith, even if we had to take the long way round - sorry - by suffering through a good decade's worth of "Here's why Kill the Moon/Hell Bent (reader's choice) is the worst episode evar!!!1" takes.

While I do think it's certainly possible that Moffat could have, somewhere along the line, decided to structure The Time of the Doctor as a response to The End of Time - Hell Bent loudly rejecting the climax of the episode that serves as the absolute zenith of Doctor Who's cultural relevance within the United Kingdom certainly proves he's not above a bit of friendly nose-tweaking of the Davies years' "greatest hits" - however, I think that belies the frankly far more interesting way in which it serves to pay off themes that were baked into the Eleventh Doctor's characterisation ever since The Eleventh Hour.

Hell, it really pays off themes that have been evident in Moffat's wider oeuvre since at least Joking Apart, in its focus upon deeply flawed men who really could do with learning not to consistently disappoint and fail the women in their lives.

(And yes, here's the point where I note that this is just as reductive a reading as boiling down Moffat's use of gender - which certainly has its flaws, don't get me wrong - to "Oh he's a raging misogynist who despises women and gets high off his own cleverness." So I mean, if this post happens to reach that side of Tumblr, hello, how're you doing?)

Anyway, this all kind of gets at what I was talking about last time, where modern Doctor Who fans really seem to desire a very rigid and auteurish brand of showrunning, to the point of treating each showrunner as if they're a League team with their own set of rivalries, as opposed to three guys who seem to be on basically good terms with one another on account of having come up through pretty much the exact same wave of fandom.

And it is, I think, a little silly.

[joannerowling]

(spoilers for The Running Grave) What did you think of Charlotte's character arc now that it has ended? I haven't seen much discussions of it but personally I think the chapter about her suicide was one of the most well written parts of the book. Strike's thought process afterwards, and his character development, really struck me too. Something I really love is that Jo's books are always more about how to survive death than they are about death itself. You see that all the time in both CS and HP, grief is an important part in all of those books. Everytime there's a scene dealing with grief, that's when her writing never fails to go straight to my heart. I'm thinking about Harry's reaction to Sirius' death in Dumbledore's office, or the way he learns and talks about his parents, Cedric, Sirius; about how Strike remembers his mother, etc. These moments are so moving. And in HP, she takes this even further, as the story is not about death but about literally surviving death (Harry surviving Avada Kedavra in book 1; Harry making peace with his own death in book 7 (that moment right after he watched Snape's memories and he's lying on Dumbledore's office's floor and it dawns on him he is meant to die, I think that's a very underrated HP moment)). Then you also have the fact that CS is just as much about the suspects/the characters who grieve than the victims/the characters who die. I think her approach to death, grief, surviving, is very interesting.

And also, the message behind Charlotte's suicide, that you can't help people that want to be saved, reminded me of the way the house elf liberation plotline was explored in HP and I thought it interesting to see that's the kind of messages Jo put in both her series.

Not to mention the social message behind it. When Strike thought that her death was a sort of "relief" because he won't ever again die of anxiety wondering how Charlotte is doing, because he should have seen it coming, because it was very likely to end like that -- god, as someone who has had relatives dying after following a self-destructive path, I felt that. It is incredibly depressing yet so realistic and Jo's awareness of those issues is beyond what I typically see in any other sort of media.

Anyway, I had many, many thoughts about that, sorry I rambled!

Thank you for your message (i'm keeping part 2 for a different response, since this one's getting long already!)

I was also really moved by Charlotte's death, specifically the deceptive lack of fanfare that makes it look almost anticlimatic at first glance. She kills herself, predictably for a character who has been presented as passively or actively suicidal from her introduction. Her death doesn't happen at the end and isn't relevant to the case. And yet it echoes one central theme of the book: self-destruction, which is what you do when you join a cult (it's a destruction of the individual). This is also hugely important in Strike's character journey, since TRG is the book where he rises above his most self-destructive impulses. Worth noting that Charlotte dies smack in the middle of the book too (ch. 64), so "central" is to be taken quite literally there.

It's almost as if Charlotte survived so far because Strike kept clinging to self-sabotaging impulses, and she could sense that. But as he truly has a new determination to move on and become a person who acts responsibly towards his own needs and the needs of others, she can no longer hold on to existence. There's both symbolism and realism there - we often talk about men committing murder-suicide on their ex-wife/girlfriend when they realise they no longer have any power over them; Charlotte doesn't go so far but the harm she attempts as her last gesture (the letter blaming him) is no less intentional.

I would just nuance the parallel you're making between Charlotte and the Elves situation in HP. The Elves are not beyond rescuing, they just need to be treated with respect, and that's the lesson Hermione learns from that subplot, not that she makes a mistake trying to change things. Whereas Strike does have to learn not only that he couldn't save Charlotte, but also, her happiness is not his responsibility, and playing hero to mentally ill women is a terrible coping mechanism for his issues in general.

[clementine-kesh]

Yea, true, I didn't really consider alien programming languages, that's a good point, we have no way of even imagining what those might be like. Point taken, you were right lol.

That said, I defo wanna address some of the stuff mentioned by @a-girl-called-bob in their comment because it's pretty interesting.

Metaprogramming is an interesting one I hadn't considered. I haven't done much of it myself so I'm mostly drawing from what I've heard from others but it's probably even more relevant in the far off future. Again, I'm no expert, but I think it's probably likely it would mostly be done in one language (tho I doubt it'd be a descendant of Lisp by then, probably a new language created with metaprogramming as its core goal or a descendant of that) that, while potentially very different from other then modern languages, would likely be more commonly taught. But I may be wrong about that.

As for pointer access... I'm gonna be a little controversial here. I know programmers are notoriously resistant to change (tho at least in this case it'd honestly be unfeasible to update all existing code still running important systems within the foreseeable future but you know what I mean) and C++ has failed to deter even new programmers from using raw pointers in brand new code for decades, but I think that especially in a 'utopian' society like star trek, either some evolution of smart pointers or just straight up references (depending on which 'side' wins lol) would be the norm, making pointers obsolete. Again, I know this is controversial but I think it's realistic. Not necessarily better tbh, I do love being able to fuck things up as much as I want if I feel like it, but safer and more reasonable.

Monads... I'll just admit, I cannot say. I've not personally done any functional programming and the people I know who have I haven't discussed it with. So no comment there.

Object oriented features tho are already present in so many languages I doubt there's many (if any) programmers who aren't familiar with them so I honestly don't think it'd be much of a roadblock for anyone, today or in the far future.

Just as I wrote that last sentence I saw a new comment come in from @egg-tats and yes, that's basically the point I tried to make initially: learning a modern language with documentation and/or internet access is pretty easy, at least to about mid level proficiency. But yea, this would in no way be applicable to alien or otherwise unrelated ones and also not really to certain advanced concepts as some of the ones mentioned by Bob. Come to think of it, who knows how alien computers would even work, their concept of programming might be so fundamentally different it's not even recognisable to us.

But yea, long story short, y'all make some very good points, it would probably not be as easy as I want it to be 😔

Consider my mind changed.

-Levi

(including both replies for posterity)

to your other point the idea of alien programming languages is so fascinating to me. there’s this assumption that the way we build programming languages (and other data infrastructure) is based on some sort of universal logic when like… the way we conceptualize and classify things is so different even just across human cultures. just look at how many papers there are on integrating nonwestern conceptualizations of space into gis and other technologies built on western assumptions. really interesting and eye-opening stuff. i can’t imagine what that would look like for actual aliens, i need to hang out with some vulcan programmers for real

[anubisisms]

25, 26 and 27 for any fic you want :D

Since it remains my primary hyperfixation, once again I must apologetically answer all of these in relation to TOOWH. Huge shocker, I know!

25. Share your favorite line

I think I'll go ahead and share a line that's been patiently sitting and waiting to be written into the overall story for a while. This one is going to be incorporated into Chapter 35, in a scene that has been marinating in the brain juices for a long time:

“How much air, realistically speaking, do you think is actually down here? Are you going to strangle me to death for the last lungful?”

I just like how it scratches at my brain, idk.

26. Share your favorite detail

Hmm, hard to pick, since I have essentially taken Exandria, shaken it down for parts, and made up whatever I felt was necessary to make up, so there are a lot of intricate little things I enjoy. But I'd probably go with Molly's tarot cards; similar to a lot of other CR fic authors, I saw fit to make a lot of them up or adjust them rather than stick to the actual Major Arcana.

Some are world-relevant, and others are painfully personal to Molly himself. In addition to coming up with names and designs for all of them, I've made sure to name more than a few chapters after said cards, because of ~thematic relevance~. It's been very fun!

27. Share a piece of lore you made up for the story

Again, I have made up a lot, but one area I just completely said "Nope, my sandbox now" is the Claret Orders. I have ignored pretty much everything laid out in TNEOL and just done whatever I wanted. Changed the personalities of the named Bloodhunters, shifted up how training works, details about the Bane, the whole works. I'm especially proud of my overhaul of the location of the Orders themselves. If you aren't adding extra body horror to a story with a Bloodhunter protagonist, what's the point, right?

Hope that answers your questions!!! Thank you so much for the ask <3

[jas-michaud]

“yay!” she says apropos of absolutely nothing. “yay!” and this time she grabs his arms and jumps up and down. “i’m happy, are you so relieved?!” jas can tell scott’s been even more nervous around her than usual. not because of the imminent threat of crossing her and earning the wrath of her friends, but because she’s been less upbeat than usual (understatement). but she’s already kissed louis about fifty times tonight so she’s in the best possible mood. “i feel like you’re not, though.” and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why! his lack of kisses from someone else whose name also starts with l! / @scottrileys​

[thegirlwhowrites642]

Can you write parallels between July and hinny?

The one that always knew

The similarities between James and Ginny are many but let's stick to the ones that have relevance in their dynamics with Lily and Harry.

These two are the romantics. In Snape's memories, we see James pretending to have a sword, talking about heroes and courage, and then we have Ginny who is really no different. Grown-up with the story of the boy who lived, completely fascinated by him and this legend.

So it's not surprising at all that they are the ones who knew long before their counterparts about their feelings. And they make it known, even if their approaches are quite different, and very gendered which is realistic.

James is bold, he right out asks Lily out, the way he does it is very questionable and difficult to be taken seriously but still. Ginny is shy and pretty much wants to kill herself for not being able to stop blushing, yet there's a boldness to her too with the poem. Technically it was meant to be anonymous but is still a very bold move.

Obviously, for the fandom James' approach needed to be praised while Ginny was a psychotic maniac because God forbid, a woman making a guy the object of her affections putting him in a passive position. What is this? Feminism???

James and Ginny are two awkward messes in this specific area, but they are very in touch with their feelings and were certain enough about them to not be able to fully get over Lily and Harry even if they had to wait a while. I'm sure they would both tell you that it was worth it.

The maturity

James and Ginny's behaviors when Lily and Harry were around needed to be changed for them to show their true selves to the objects of their affections.

I mean, the problem could have been solved by locking in a room the pairs, or Harry and Ginny going to the Yule Ball together, but that would've been too easy, no?

It's made very clear by Sirius that while for sure James had some things to improve about himself, his attitude when Lily was around wasn't his average one, he was, well, too James? A very exaggerated version of himself?

And with Ginny, well we know the story. Just like James, she had to stop letting her feelings take control of her actions.

When James and Ginny managed this, oh... how the tables turned...

The one that was clueless

Now it's time to talk about our resident green-eyed idiots.

It took a while for Lily and Harry to understand their feelings for James and Ginny but the pull, the attraction, the Je ne sais quoi, was always there.

Again, with Harry, we know the story. From the inability to take his eyes off Ginny at King's Cross to descriptions of setting suns to Ginny being the first person he looked at on the dance floor. The pull was always there but until Ginny didn't show her true self, Harry's subconscious really didn't know what to do with this attraction.

We know a lot less about James and Lily obviously and yet it's made quite clear that Lily was drawned to James. From the traitorous smile that escaped her lips even when she was angry at him to Sirius a bit too sure assurance that she never really hated James.

The external factors

The real obstacle for these two couples revolves around external factors.

For Harry and Ginny, we have traumatic life-altering events that include possessions, alleged murderers, mortal tournaments, dark lords, and other minor love interests to distract them.

With James and Lily, the obstacle has a name and it's Severus Snape. Lily's best friend and James archnemesis. Let's do a couple of calculations, shall we? James and Lily got married really young, we know that they started dating in their seventh year, so the most reasonable assumption is that they started dating at the start of the year. This means that things between them changed during their sixth year. Now if only something major happened at the end of their fifth year... oh, wait. The moment Lily gets rid of her friendship with Snape and his insistent attempts at putting James in a bad light in her eyes, Lily falls for James, what a coincidence.

The symbolism

Both pairings of Potters enter the soulmates' dynamic. Admittedly, Harry and Ginny a lot more because we have seven books about them and an inside point of view. But a major point of this type of dynamic is the fact that the characters need to be like two magnets drawned to each other so if you want to keep them apart you have to make it impossible for them to be together, and how do you do that? External factors, inability for a long time to be around the other, things like that. Just think about Amy and Laurie from Little Women.

Another important point for soulmates' dynamics is symbolism. The thing is, soulmates are not something that objectively exists. So unless you are writing a world-building where there are like soulmates marks or that kind of thing, the author has to rely on things like symbolism to make the reader understand.

With Harry and Ginny, we have Ginny's name, three hundred different metaphors, Ginny's association with light, Harry's death sequence, and so on...

With James and Lily again we have a lot less material but between the matching patroni and the fact that their love gave birth to the guy who saved the world with his ability to love, the message is pretty clear.

[There's a lot more to soulmates dynamics, and every author has some liberty for variations, but I'm keeping the elements of hinny that jily presents too. There's a lot more for hinny.]

[ellesliterarycorner]

hello :D do you have any tips on how to drop info without info dumping?

Hi, anon! I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get to your ask! Info-dumps are definitely some of the hardest things about writing, and I have always struggled with finding the balances between giving your readers necessary information and info-dumping things that are completely irrelevant to the plot. For anyone who doesn't know an info-dump is whenever an author gives a very long exposition either in the narrative or through dialogue, just dumping all of the information on the reader instead of weaving it through the story. One thing to keep in mind though: Info-dumps can be extremely subjective. Some things that I considered reasonable world-building, some of my friends have thoughts were terrible info-dumps, so definitely keep that in mind, and not all info-dumps are bad. Sometimes they're necessary for the story, so here's how to drop info in correctly.

Ah, Those Villain Monologues

Unfortunately, these days it’s not just villains who are monologuing. Everyone from heroes to villains has decided that right in the heal of battle that its their new favorite pastime. One way I often see authors disguise an info-dump monologue is by having a character tell another character a story of some important historical event, but it’s still an info-dump, unfortunately. You can make a monologue work in your story, and there are certain book monologues that I actually do enjoy. BUT, having more than one info-dumpy monologue in your story probably isn’t a good thing. They will inevitably bore your reader, and the information may not even get across in the way you imagined it. Plus, realistically, how often do people monologue in real life? Not every often. If you really need to get all the info across in a specific point in your story in dialogue form, a conversation between two or more characters can probably get the job done in the same way and will probably be more way more engaging for your reader! Also, a conversation can allow you to reveal characterization and the relationship between your characters which will advance the story even further!

But Is This Relevant??

You would be shocked at how many info-dumps I read that are not at all relevant to the story, or ones that are relevant, but are simply out of place. Info-dumps like these pull the reader out of the story. It can mess up your pacing and make you lose any momentum you have in the story. For example, even though descriptions are important and setting a surrounding for your readers is good, stopping in the middle of a fight scene to describe the dungeons your characters are fighting in is probably counterintuitive. To remedy this, evaluate all the info in a scene, within the context of the scene. A description of the dungeon, from my above example would be helpful to create visualization for the fight scene, but dumping that info at the top of the scene before the fight starts would be much more beneficial. If you need to dump a little bit of information, make it related to whatever is happening in the story. Readers are more likely to forgive an info-dump that relates to the current happenings of the story and that help them understand it.

Weave The Info Throughout The Story

Information in a story to me is like ranch on top of a salad. Bear with me here. Most people don't want to dump the ranch on their salad all in one spot. Most people nicely drizzle the ranch over their salad, making sure that the whole bowl gets the ranchy goodness. That was a weird analogy, but I hope it helped illustrate my point. Dumping all of the info at one point in your story serves no good, especially if it's info that foreshadows an event or plot twist. Drizzling the detail throughout the story is a much better, more enjoyable option. This can hard, so I actually would recommend writing a big chunk of information that you want to share about a current event. Then, break up the big blocks into smaller parts and look for places where you can stretch it out across the story! This helps you know what info you want to share while also making sure that you're not info-dumping it.

Elle's Bonus Tip: Check the Starts

Just like animals prefer certain climates, info-dumps prefer the starts of things. The first chapter, the first time you meet a new character, the first time your character visits a new place. If you go back through your story, those are all of the most common places for info-dumps to make their home. It's natural for writers to want to explain every little detail about a new character or a new place because we think that information is necessary. And while the reader shouldn't be left in the dark, they probably don't need all of the information that's inside of your head on their first time seeing a place or meting a character. You want readers to be intrigued enough to turn the page, and not dumping info and giving them just enough to keep going is the perfect place to do it.

[my-mt-heart]

NuShowrunner is going to have Gimple so far up his ass that SG will be peeking out between his tonsils. Zabel most likely wants a paycheck and the spinoff might look attractive to someone who has experience but isn't very relevant. (Mercy Street was a good number of years ago.) I doubt he feels like he won the lottery, though. He's just a guy who wants to pay his bills and for all we know, he could be massive Carol fan. I think he was picked because he has enough experience that there will be some sort of product at the end and his credits are very traditional, which fits the 1980s mindset (all male, all white, with lots of things that go boom) this spinoff seems built around.

AK spent two season rebuilding the show and Carol and Daryl's relationship is at the core of her vision, but what she can deliver in 11C depends on Gimple. I don't think he dares to mess with Carol because he might need her down the line, but he definitely has an iron grip on the season. Narratively, the only ending to TWD that makes sense is that either Daryl is forcibly removed from orbiting Carol, or he's going after Carol and runs into Rick while trying to find her, but Scott Gimple isn't real big on narrative cohesion or emotional realism, so nobody should hold their breath.

I'm so tired of muppets who somehow keep failing upward. (It's not even that hard to be a good boss: just look after your damn talent! All of them, including the ones whom you don't like or are jealous of. They are what makes you look good.) I understand why AMC needed to get rid of Gimple without firing him, but waiting too long and moving him into a position with more power? They must have known that he couldn't deliver on the features because he ran the show into the ground and a vanity title should have been plenty enough.

[I realize this isn't spreading any kind of cheer, so feel free not to post it. I should be motivating you, not making you more disillusioned about the business side of things. Sorry about that. :( On the bright side: you don't work for Gimple!]

I always love getting your insight. Somehow it calms my mind that's always racing to make sense of things. I completely agree that those two avenues, either Daryl getting taken or Carol getting taken, make the most if not the only narrative/emotional sense at this point despite the "vanishing loved one" being completely overused and just making a terrible series ending. It would definitely convince me enough to watch the bro show, but like you said, unlikely to happen since Gimple and AMC only seem to care about maintaining their male audience. The failing upward trend for men infuriates me. To think how different S11 and this spinoff situation would've turned out if they had just let Angela craft her vision. I'm not sure I'll ever get over it.

Question for you. There's a lot of bts/filming evidence to suggest Daryl and Carol are going to have tons of scenes together in 11C. But with everything going on lately, how much do you think AMC will even promote Caryl? Will they promote them harder to try to lure us back in or do you think they're going to try to cut their losses with that fanbase and focus on drawing in the Rick crowd. I'm wondering how realistic it is for them to think they can rely that heavily on Rick to keep them afloat.