#just to have you suggest the original phrasing back at me in the comments

[tacosaysroar]

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”

— someone who wrote copy for other people, probably

[petermorwood]

@nimblermortal sent me this last week:

A second blade weapon became increasingly common in the later Viking Age. It does not have a formal name, being often referred to as a fighting-knife or battle-knife, and it was essentially a development of the one-handed, long seax knife of the Migration Period. A single-edged blade with a thick back that added weight to a short, stabbing blow, it seems to have been intended as a back-up weapon. By the tenth century, battle-knives had elaborate scabbards that were worn horizontally along the belt, allowing them to be drawn across the body from behind a shield if the sword was gone; a variant hung down at an angle from an elaborate harness. It seems they may also have been worn on the back - again for a swift, over-the-shoulder draw. Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price @petermorwood (Mr Morwood! Mr Morwood!) I found an archaeologist claiming people were doing over-the-shoulder draws! Would you care to weigh in?

*****

Would I ever! That's a button well pushed. But things got odd when I tried, because as soon as I'd written even the smallest reply and saved to Draft, this happened:

Letting it stand would have seemed like I was trying to avoid comments, corrections or criticism, but despite poking around in Settings there was no way to turn things on. It was only by cut-and-pasting @nimblermortal's entire original as a Quote starting a new post that the problem was resolved.

Anyone else encountered this?

Anyway, on with the lecture response. :->

*****

As regards Back-Carry / Back-Draw of "battle-knives", I'm not convinced.

("Battle-knife" is a term I've never seen in connection with any Viking Age weapon. What's the Old Norse for it? German "Kriegsmesser" (war-knife) refers to something much bigger from 500 years later, also not back-carried or back-drawn - which from here on will be BD / BC.)

To get where he is now, a full professor, Neil Price will have defended his PhD, and should know such a statement as "It seems they may..." will need evidence to support it.

That phrase is easy to write, as is "According to legend..." and "It is said..." However these are IMO default History Channel phrases, with all the authenticity that implies. None of them actually PROVE what they're speculating.

"Experiments conducted by museum staff wearing authentic armour reveal that IT SEEMS medieval knights could use smartphones."

But does it prove medieval knights USED smartphones? See what I mean?

*****

I first asked if anyone had actual proof of BC / BD on Netsword almost 30 years ago, and to date there's been nothing. I've also posted about it quite a lot on Tumblr, so being poked with this particular stick is no surprise. :->

The quotation from "Children of Ash and Elm" is the first time I've heard of a trained archaeologist making a claim for BC / BD, and the odd part is that Prof. Price also states the weapon was intended for "...a short, stabbing blow" - which means wearing it horizontally in front makes far more sense. From that position it can be drawn far faster and with less telegraphed intent than "...on the back - again for a swift, over-the-shoulder draw."

Reaching up for any weapon carried across the back, whether long or short, is a bigger movement - and thus less "swift" - than snatching out the same weapon worn at the hip or across the front at waist level, especially if - as he suggests - that move is masked behind a shield (or for that matter a cloak, a door, or a half-turned torso...)

Try both moves in front of a mirror with a ruler or even a length of dowel, and you'll understand.

With a weapon-hilt visible behind one shoulder or just a cross-belt suggesting something slung out of sight, what's a Norse warrior going to think when his potential opponent reaches up there? At a moment of hot words and high tension, will he wait while an itchy back gets scratched or until an attack happens?

The explosive violence described in sagas suggests not.

If Prof. Price has solid proof for his BC / BD notion in the form of artefacts or art - and it'll need more than a one-off example - I'll be very pleased to finally see some "show me" evidence.

(It won't do anything for longswords of 500 years later, of course, though I bet the uncritical back-carry brigade would leap on it regardless.)

But without that evidence, I'm taking "it seems" with a wary pinch of salt.

*****

There's a weird internet fixation about BC / BD (which are NOT the same thing) and an equally weird need to show that back-draw "works", whether with hooks under the guard and a leather condom at the point...

... or by being open most of the way down one side.

Neither are real-world historical, so let's see how they work in fantasy.

IMO they're not appropriate there either, because the designers are so eager to provide working BC / BD that they ignore the main function of a scabbard, which is to carry the weapon in something which protects people from the weapon's edges, and the weapon from the elements.

Real scabbards for real swords went to some trouble over that. They protected people, including the wearer, with a completely enclosed wooden, leather and / or metal case, and protected the blades by having them fit into their case well enough that inclement weather stayed out.

This fitting could involve metal collars (Japanese habaki), or tight-gripping lanolin-rich fleece linings, or leather flaps, caps and rain-guards mounted on hilt or scabbard-throat. Real scabbards didn't have exposed metal and weren't open-sided rainfall buckets, because the priorities of actual sword users were very different to those of back-carry fans.

Given the number of posts I've seen about the technical side of fantasy world-building - history, geography, even geology and meteorology - I think this difference is worth noting.

*****

The first time I recall seeing back-carry mentioned in a historical-not-fantasy context was in "Growing Up in the Thirteenth Century", © Alfred Duggan 1962. Here's the extract in question:

Unfortunately Duggan - though according to his Wikipedia entry "His novels are known for meticulous historical research" - doesn't give any cited source for this; his introduction to the book says:

I know the feeling! :->

I'd still trust him more than some modern historical writers who seem over-willing to add a touch of fantasy speculation / interpretation if it rounds out something inconclusive, makes the history more interesting or chimes with a personal agenda.

"Accurate" is better than "interesting", and "I don't know" is better than making stuff up.

*****

To repeat: I've yet to see any museum-exhibit or manuscript-illumination examples of BC / BD ever done For Historically Real with Western European swords, especially the hand-and-a-half longswords on which modern back-draw fans seem fixated.

A seax, scramasax or just plan sax is shorter, but yet again, this is the first time I've read anything even remotely scholarly about them or their later Viking-age version (saxes were associated more with Saxons than Vikings, guess why?) being BC / BD.

By contrast, there are at least three art instances of saxes worn horizontally, on 10th century crosses at Middleton Church, Yorkshire:

The art is backed up by surviving examples with scabbard-fittings still in place, indicating how they were worn. Here's one example, from the Metropolitan Museum, New York which makes that very obvious.

The little decorative masks (originally part of the top of the scabbard, now corroded onto the blade) are clearly meant to be This Side Up, and also show that this scabbard was This Side Out for a right-handed draw, since there's no detail on the back.

There's a similar fancy-front / plain-back / right-hand-use leather sax scabbard at the Jorvik Centre in York.

There's only a single photograph of this bigger one - 54cm (21.5 in) overall - from the Cleveland Museum of Art, with no way to see if the L-shaped scabbard mount is decorated on just one or both sides. However it does indicate the weapon was meant for horizontal wear.

I've also flipped the website photo to show right-hand use, because "It seems..." (hah!) more probable. Here's why I did it:

For most of history being left-handed was unusual, a disapproved-of aberration and the origin of the word sinister.

Left-handers were useless in any formation from Ancient Greece through Ancient Rome to the Saxon and Viking period where the shields of a phalanx, testudo or shield-wall had to overlap for mutual support.

In the Middle Ages, both the specialised armour and the layout of jousting courses were almost 100% right-hand only.

Most surviving swords with asymmetrical hilts, such as swept-hilt rapiers, are made to for right hands not left.

Even nowadays many weapons - including the current British Army rifle (SA-80 / L85/A2) - are set for right-handers only.

*****

The longest saxes are called Langseax (surprise) though this may be a modern-ish term. Here's one from the British Museum, the so-called "Seax of Beagnoth"...

...which is 72 cm (28.5 in) total / 55cm (22 in) blade.

That's about the same as a Roman gladius (another sword never back-worn despite its convenient size) and is a good 25-30cm (10-12 in) shorter than the average "proper" sword of the same period, which means it could be drawn over-shoulder...

However the layout of its runic engraving shows it was almost certainly meant to be worn horizontally As Per Usual.

*****

And now we've come all the way back around to Prof. Price's claim that Vikings did BC / BD with their battle-knives.

Such a claim needs proof.

Please, show me some.

[gunnerfc]

Manchester Date | Alex Greenwood x Man City!Reader

summary: an off day in Manchester means having time to actually go on a date with your girlfriend!

warnings: none!

WC: 1.3K

AN: to the anon that requested this, I'm sorry it took ages! Writer's block sucks but I hope you enjoy!

You groaned as you were woken up by your girlfriend’s alarm, waking you up earlier than you needed to on your day off. You could feel Alex shuffling beside you to turn the rude alarm off, hoping that she would ignore it and stay in bed with you. 

However, you opened one eye to see her stretching before getting out of bed. You groaned one more into your pillow knowing she was going to make you get up as well. 

“It’s too early, babe. Come back to bed,” you whined, hoping it would convince the blonde to listen. 

Alex laughed as she leaned over to give you a quick kiss to your forehead before whispering “the grind doesn’t stop, baby.” A phrase you were known to say whenever Alex complained about long gym sessions. 

You buried your face further into your pillow before a muffled “fuck off” was heard. Alex laughed once more as she left you to get ready for a session at your local gym. You let out one final groan as you sat up in bed, not looking forward to having to work out on your day off.

The entire you spent getting ready, you made your displeasure known and each time all you got in response was a teasing comment from your girlfriend. After you were done getting ready and had a quick breakfast, you were both out the door and headed to the gym. 

You only stayed about an hour at the gym and you refused to tell Alex that working out did make you feel a bit better. If you had, you would have heard “I told you so” all morning, and while you didn’t mind being teased by Alex, you were still a little upset you couldn’t sleep in on your day off.

After you both had a shower and a bite to eat, you found yourselves lounging on the couch with a random game on. You enjoyed these quiet moments with Alex since your jobs demanded so much of your time, it always felt like you didn’t have enough time for each other. But, you’ve made it work so far.

“We should do something fun later, y’know. Spend our day off having a date night or something,” Alex said as you watched the home side score. 

“Well, I thought sleeping in would have been fun,” you huffed jokingly, but Alex knew there was a little bit of truth to your words.

Alex rolled her eyes at your words, knowing you were just being dramatic for the most part.

“I’m so sorry you had to wake up earlier than you liked, baby.” the blonde gave you a fake look of sympathy before returning to her original statement. “We could go try that new restaurant that just opened that we’ve been meaning to go to,” Alex offered.

You nodded your head at her suggestion before adding to it, “and maybe we could go play mini golf at the place we went to with the girls.”

“Do you think you could handle losing, y/n/n? You’ve already gotten up on the wrong side of the bed,” the defender joked as she stood up to start getting ready.

You let out a dramatic gasp as you followed her upstairs, all but shouting “WHO’S FAULT WAS THAT?”

You both took your time getting ready, not wanting to rush. You were ready before Alex was and were waiting on the edge of the bed when the blonde finally exited the connecting bathroom. You gave her a quick look up and down before an overly dramatic whistle. 

“You look so pretty, my love,” you cooed as you stood from the bed and met her halfway.

Alex pulled you into a quick kiss before giving you a light push to your chest. “I’m not gonna let you win, babe,” she promised before leaving you in the bedroom.

“I don’t need you to let me win, for your information. I’m great at mini golf!” You exclaimed in disbelief, even though you both knew you were lying. The last time you played mini golf with a few of your teammates, you came in last place. 

Alex didn’t comment verbally, instead giving you a look that meant she obviously didn’t believe you. You tried your hardest to convince her and yourself the entire walk to your car but you knew it was doing nothing for you. 

The drive to the mini golf place went by faster than you would have liked, giving you no time to try and hype yourself up to do well. You beat Alex before she could pay for your time on the course, still hoping you would magically be a pro at mini golf. 

Your hopes came crashing down as Alex made a hole-in-one on the first hole while you took five shots before the brightly colored ball finally went in. Alex tried to hide her smirk when you finally joined her at the other end but failed when she saw the look on your face. 

“Shut up.” You mumbled when you passed her, knowing your losing streak was going to continue. Alex laughed at the tone of your voice but didn’t say anything as she got ready for the second hole.

You were right, your losing streak did continue with Alex beating you by a landslide. You huffed as you made your way back to the car, the smirk the blonde tried to originally hide now proudly gracing her features. Once back in the car, you reluctantly pulled up the directions to the restaurant without saying a word.

“It’s okay, baby, you’ll get better soon,” the defender joked and was met with a pointed look in response. 

You didn’t say anything as you pulled out of the parking lot, ready to leave the mini golf experience as fast as possible. Alex’s hand joined yours that was resting on the center console as she laced her fingers with yours. While keeping your eyes on the road, you brought your joined hands up to place a small kiss on the back of her hand. 

The new restaurant was only a few minutes away, yet the parking lot was packed. It took longer to find a parking space that ended up being one of the furthest from the door. 

The wait for a table didn’t take as long as you thought considering the number of cars outside, which you were grateful for. Sitting down, you took in the newly opened place, the vibes of the restaurant were very pastel and fun and just overall happy. You and Alex quickly scanned the menu before deciding on what you both wanted and enjoyed just being on a date while waiting for your food.

When the food did arrive, you quickly thanked the waiter before taking a bite. You both offered the other a bite of your own food so you could try a bit, making a note to order something new each time so you could experience the full menu. 

As you ate, your mood gradually got better from your embarrassing loss at mini golf and you were just happy to be able to spend time with Alex away from the pitch. Since you paid for golf, Alex made sure to beat you to pay the bill. You playfully rolled your eyes as she quickly picked up the piece of paper before you could.

After paying, you took your time walking back to the car. You swung your intertwined hands back and forth as you went, the happiness fully taking over. 

“I had fun today, we definitely have come back,” the defender spoke as you got the car. You were quick to open the door for her, getting a quick kiss as a ‘thank you.’

Once you were back in the driver's seat, you responded to her statement, “for sure, maybe without the mini golf though,” you joked. 

Alex laughed as you started the car and began the journey home. You may have gotten rudely awakened before you wanted and you may have lost at mini golf by an embarrassingly large margin but you were still over the moon to have the day off to spend time with Alex.

[yuseirra]

I really love your kamiai comics. The warm stories about their communication and interaction completely make up for my regret of not being able to see how they get along in the original work. btw, your analysis is also very good. I like it very much.Can't wait for your next update!❤️

(A small something before I start typing)

Thank you so, so much dear anon!! This really lifts my spirits up so much, you're very kind to expend your time to send me positivity. I appreciate it because I'm the shy type. I know how hard it can be to muster up the courage to talk to someone sometimes. So when I receive messages like this, I get really happy... it'd be nice if the people who were able to send me some kindness felt it was paid back :) I may not be able to reply fast but I try to get back so please be patient with me 'v')9!

HHngh thanks! I'm rereading your ask every word and savoring it! These two don't get that much screen time but what's been shown is really significant, they did have their moments! I'm so glad you feel the way you do after reading my comics and interpretations of them, that's the best reaction I could ever want from someone!! There are still things that are left ambiguous and are yet to be unfolded(I hope it does get explained more) so I'm worried as I draw them out sometimes... but reading this makes me feel empowered!! I feel like I've been doing pretty well, that's what your comment does for me. I'll do my best to think up something good to share with you, thanks for sharing your feelings with me!

Speaking of which, I have another analysis!! I'd like to share it with you here, I'd been writing it up earlier and it's not entirely unrelated to the hikaai situation:

I think it might have been Nino who's sent Ryosuke to Ai. Based on the behavioral patterns, Nino is the type who'd impulsively do something extreme in a fit of anger and later regret it. Even Nino might not have anticipated things would unfold this way, however. The phrase, "I only meant to scare them, I never thought they'd actually die," seems more like how Nino would feel about the situation, rather than Kamiki to be honest? That's a very absurd thing to say, but considering Nino's relationship with Ai, Nino might have been in a blinded, irrational state because she almost worships Ai. So, it's possible that she genuinely didn't think it would turn out this way somehow... she's a teenage girl with a lot of mood swings.

There’s a common scenario in horror movies where a second-place person, driven by jealousy, does something reckless, thinking, "If only the top person were gone, I could..." but not truly realizing the consequences. (It happens a lot as an east-asian trope) Jealousy has the power to paralyze rational thinking. Nino not only hated Ai, but she likely had a twisted affection for her as well. When Ai disappeared, she probably fell apart.

It's hard to imagine Kamiki acting this way, right? He wouldn’t have been unaware of the danger of sending someone like Ryosuke to his girlfriend. If this character did something like that, it would have to be out of serious malice or murderous intent, but Kamiki doesn't seem like the type to harbor such cruel emotions toward Ai. (Or just anyone at all, actually; we never really see him lashing out towards people. Even when he brings Ryosuke, or Airi up... he.. actually talks in a pretty soft sense despite they're absolutely horrible individuals. Even adds a -san and -kun to their names; I was surprised.) In Nino's case, on the other hand, it might have been something done without much thought, as her actions suggest she has that kind of streak. She’s the type who can say, "I wish you'd just die!" to someone but then cry if it actually happens. Her emotions fluctuate a lot.

We also have to note that Hikaru is just as good of a liar as Ai is. He's really used to lying, and that's what's brought him and Ai to relate to each other, bring them together and a crucial characteristic that's had Ai deem "he's the same as her". When he says he's the one who sent Ryosuke as he mentions "he wanted Ai to feel the same despair he's felt", we don't see his face and we only see him from the back. This is similar to the panel where Ai says "I can't love you", which was a well-meant but a really hurtful lie. Hikaru believed Ai and Aqua wants revenge on him. I think he may have tried to save Aqua of feeling even a slight sense of pity towards him as a person, making sure he really isn't worth feeling that way about. In fact, we don't see his expressions at all in that entire sequence, and what he says feels so off and ridiculous for a person with common sense to say. I feel like a lot of it could be a lie. AND I feel like he was putting on a facade for most of the scenes he's been in before the final arc- before he came to meet the twins. He's probably always been pretending to be okay with a smile on his face but he probably was pretty despairing and dead inside (his eyes turn black when he's in despair, you know)

At least so far in the story, Kamiki has never shown much interest in Ai's idol activities in the scenes he's been in. Instead, it was Ai who learned something from Kamiki. The fact that Ai is an idol, a star who attracts attention, was never portrayed as particularly important to Kamiki during their relationship. Ryosuke is a big fan of Ai as an idol, but there’s no clear reason why Kamiki would connect with someone related to Ai in that way. To Kamiki, Ai was like a light—a single, unique person he deeply depended on and loved, as if he could live with just her by his side, yeah, but it's a little different from viewing her as a idol. He probably depended on her a lot, but it seems he loved her not because she was an idol or someone shiny and valuable, but because she was someone who could understand and care for him. He doesn’t have the mentality of "I can't forgive an imperfect Ai." That kind of anger, resentment, or desire to make Ai suffer seems more likely to come from Nino. Kamiki even seems to think it’s natural that Ai wouldn’t like him back. He’s too accustomed to that feeling.

Kamiki’s actions suggest a certain helplessness. He seems to accept everything without resistance, always at a loss for words. This has been consistent from the moment he was introduced. When he asked Ai, "You love me, right? You won’t leave me, right?" and her response was something like, "I don’t know," he ended up going outside and crying in the rain. When he was gaslit by Airi in an absurd way, he despaired and stood there, frozen in panic. Even when Ai said something harsh and broke up with him, he couldn’t say anything back. Even 15 years later, he watches a video and is rendered speechless, reaches out to Ai, and curls up. This sort of behavior is so consistent that I realize this character doesn’t have any self-defense. He just accepts everything as his fault and internalizes it. It’s like he’s been so used to terrible things happening to him from a very young age that he doesn’t even think "I hate this" but rather, "People like it when I do this, so this must be right." With that kind of mentality, he gets pushed around. He seems to accept every negative judgment about himself and engages in self-destructive behavior.

The likelihood of this character doing something aggressive like sending Ryosuke to Ai is, in my opinion, less than 2%. Suddenly lashing out four whole years after the breakup? He probably went to cry after he got the phone call. Didn't he just reach his drinking age? Maybe he went to drink for the first time because he was so distressed after receiving the call… and somehow, in that state, he met Ryosuke and accidentally let the address slip, which led to Ai’s death, and now he feels like he has to save her with all he's got. Ai's the one who saved him, and it's kind of natural for him to feel like "Now I should save her in return, I don't care what happens to me!" That would make sense, right? The lyrics, the character’s personality—it all fits if you take it this way. And his personality doesn’t seem to have changed all so much actually. While reading the manga, I thought, "What’s with his way of speaking? He has such low self-esteem." Now, reading it again, it feels like he’s deeply immersed in self-blame.

The song Fatal starts with the lyrics being:

Waking up from another dream, I open my wet eyelids I curse my helplessness from those far days which dreadfully remain Will this despair that burns my body feed me someday? I keep burning myself from it as I crave adoration

This is totally how Kamiki would feel after he learns about Ai's death, if that's not what he's ever expected to happen. He'd be in utter despair and feel so helpless about not having been able to do anything as the only love of his life die like that. That's why he's so desperate in the entire song,

Without you, I cannot live anymore I would sacrifice anything for you I can’t get enough of your love What should I use to fill in what’s missing?

These sets of lyric's too intense for it to be Aqua's, but it fits his dad's mentality perfectly. Kamiki's life's been so miserable.

Ai is an exceptionally well-crafted character. When you consider the details, like the story of her trauma from the glass shards in her white rice (which broke my heart when I read it), you can see how much thought the author put into crafting her psychology.

Why write a story where she asks a favor to her own dear children to help out the person who's the very cause of her death? How could that character be portrayed as if they truly, desperately loved Ai? Isn’t that incredibly cruel to Ai, the victim? If it were me, I wouldn’t write the story that way. I don't think the writer would have either. I really feel that Hikaru isn’t the type of character who would do something like that. And since Ai’s affection for that character aligns with that sort of interpretation, with it being really consistent, I think… it's a lie and a misunderstanding.

I think that, unable to forgive himself for unintentionally leaking the address and thus contributing to Ai’s death, Hikaru wanted to be punished and ended up telling Aqua a ridiculous lie. If someone could open Ai’s heart to that extent, it could only mean that this person was genuinely beloved by her. For someone as wounded as Ai, finding a person she wanted to love that deeply isn’t easy. But if that character had committed such a terrible act, what would it mean? It would feel so unsettling. It would conclude that Ai failed to find someone to love, that she trusted the wrong person, and that the protagonists’ father was someone who harmed their mother. When you consider what the manga is ultimately trying to say, the less responsible the character Ai loved is for her death, and the more genuine their feelings for Ai, the greater the impact would be. It would also make sense in the context of Ai, who wanted to give love, finally finding someone deserving of it.

I couldn’t form a solid opinion until Chapter 154 and Fatal came out. I wasn’t sure how things would turn out and just watched. But after those chapters, I felt that this interpretation was correct. When you interpret it this way, it aligns with the psychological depictions throughout the story. It’s not that I deliberately interpreted it favorably because I liked this couple, but rather that as I analyzed it, this interpretation made sense, which made me more favorable towards them. There's certainly a difference between the two.

I was really happy when I received your message and a few other ones saying that my interpretation was warm, persuasive, and made you appreciate this ship ;v;.. Oh, I really want to get this right too... thanks guys, I very appreciate your kind words, sorry if what I say turns out to be wrong but I am trying my best!!

I take psychology very seriously, so if this turns out to be right, I’d be thrilled! This is what makes the most sense for me at this point, so I'll hold onto it until things clear up~

Again, super long reply! I hope you're okay with it, anon! Lots of love, thanks for the cheers and kind words!!

[canonicallyobserving911]

Hello again! Thank you for the detailed and thorough response!! Love it!

Also, I was just thinking about two other moments - Tommy's audacity in fondly saying to BUCK about EDDIE "this guy", like, how dare he lol, followed by Tommy referring to Buck as EVAN to EDDIE???

It really feels like small "subtle" ways to signal to the audience that Tommy is a presumptuous outsider taking liberties. And it seems designed to make the audience go uh excuse me? You don't get to call him Evan? Etc.

If they're really trying to set up tommy as a love interest for BUCK, who'll be well-received by the audience...it doesn't feel like a good start...🤔

Otoh, if they're trying to set up tommy as someone who at first seems like an ok guy...but who turns out to be a jerk later...i can see that.

Hi @blutterlie thank you for the ask and I have to say, the two things you mentioned above made me cringe when Tommy said them.

I believe you're right, Tommy's taking liberties and overstepping the boundaries between Buck and Eddie and after carefully analyzing the things he said and did, I think his actions are being done on purpose.

First, I'll start with Tommy's "This guy" comment because that was just weird and tainted especially when it's defined in the context he used it in. Before I include the definition, I have to say, 9-1-1 is keen on using specific words for specific reasons in their scripts and I've posted about use of the word "nice" before (linked here). The context it was used in when Eddie said it about Ana in season 4 and when Vanessa said it directly to Eddie in season 6 wasn't pleasant. Most people hear the word and think it's harmless but when its origin is identified, they soon find out it wasn't always viewed to be a compliment.

Now here's the thing with Tommy's use of the phrase "This guy". Even though he was looking at Eddie when he said it, after the words left his lips, he immediately touched Buck's arm and back. While the verbiage may sound like another harmless phrase, the truth is, it isn't and here's the proof.

According to Dictionary.com, the slang definition of "This guy is an expression used to highlight when someone has done something stupid or unbelievable". It appears he was being derogatory and the further proof of it is the way he described Eddie as a "SOMETHING" instead of a "someone" or even by his name. When Buck suggested he let him buy him a beer, Tommy replied, "I'd love that but I have to take a raincheck because I should have SOMETHING that should be arriving right now" 🙄. Based on when he said, "This guy", who he said it to and what he said next, it appears he was referencing something Buck did that was stupid or unbelievable. Please note, Tommy NEVER CALLED "EDDIE" BY HIS NAME. He never said the name "Eddie" but Buck did.

I mean like WTF is Tommy trying to do here because not only does he have a hero complex, he spoke to Buck like he has access to something (Eddie) that Buck wants and Buck is being stupid or unbelievable for not realizing it 👀.

Second, Tommy's use of Buck's legal/government name was not only peculiar; it was NOTICEABLE and JARRING. I thought it was interesting that Buck didn't respond the way he usually does when someone other than Maddie or Eddie calls him Evan. He corrected Bobby when he first arrived at the 118 and he wouldn't even let his parents call him Evan in 4x5 because he told them to call him Buck because people who know him call him that which is a bunch of BS since Buck is a persona, it's not his name. He hides behind it because that's who he wants people to see, Buck the firefighter instead of Evan the emotionally abandoned child who grew into an emotionally starved and scared to be left behind man.

When Tommy said, "I was giving Evan a tour", he said it like he's familiar with who Buck is and it was suspicious. But the kicker was neither Buck nor Eddie called him out on it even though Buck should have. Eddie called him Buck so it made me wonder why neither of them corrected Tommy. Also, how long have they really known Tommy because the familiarity with someone they just met last week is interesting?

I think Buck's going to tell Tommy "You don't know me" in 7x5 and Tommy's use of Buck's legal name could be the reason for it.

I've never considered Bommy as a ship and I believe Tommy's use of Buck's legal name was a red flag and it was done on purpose so viewers would question it. The ones who watched 4x5 and 4x14 know Buck doesn't like people calling him that and it probably made them cringe. I sure did and from the comments I've seen on reblogs, many others did too.

Finally, IMO, Chimney, Hen and Bobby probably told Buck about Tommy after he arrived at the 118 since he took Tommy's place. If they did then Buck should know Tommy's not a good guy and hopefully he'll remember that.

Their interactions were weird and kind of cringey so it'll be interesting to see how they act when the three of them are on the basketball court.

Thanks again for the ask and Tommy's actions in that sneak peek further prove why I don't like him.

[canmom]

NieR Orchestra Concert 12024 [the end of data] (London, 15/2/2024)

NieR concert was incredible just as expected. Honestly, from the moment I got there - the cosplayers, the general atmosphere, it was just a good place to be surrounded by NieR nerds lmao. So many people happy to chat with the stranger next to them, kind of a con vibe.

But of course we were there for the music! And it was fuckin amazing. The emi evans/j'nique nicole duets😭These were special orchestral arrangements specifically for this concert, and the way the sound of the orchestra fills the space, how you can see a phrase physically ripple across the orchestra... I don't get to go to a lot of concerts but I really should try to go more often, because it's something else to hear orchestral music.

below: further comments on the concert, lots of cosplay photos.

The multimedia elements also worked really well - every piece was accompanied with backing videos using either demosceney abstract visuals or images from the games, along with text that told a short story over the course of the concert, with some segments voice acted by the English voices of 2B and 9S (Kira Buckland and Kyle McCarley, who have previously made their own performances of the original Japan-only concert readings). I won't spoil the story in this post since there are still concerts to come, but it was... not that substantial I'll admit, but sweet, and a nice framing device to create a flow through the songs and various moments from the games.

Hearing J'nique Nicole's voice live though, that was incredible. Emi Evans was there just as last time, and just as amazing as always - but this time we had both of them on stage together, and it was absolutely sublime. We all went wild. They performed duets in several songs, with the standouts naturally being A Beautiful Song, Ashes of Dreams, and of course Weight of the World. I think we all thought that was the end because we gave it a standing ovation but then Emi came back out to perform Kainé. After that we got into the groove of standing up and stood up again like three more times lol.

Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito showed up at the end and made a bunch of rapidfire jokes in Japanese that the translator couldn't keep up with, bless her. But we got to give them like the fourth standing ovation of the night, and made a lot of noise when Yoko Taro suggested it would persuade the president of Squeenix to fund a sequel. I'm sure they appreciated it lmao. I think it must be so weird for Yoko Taro to go from someone with a career of niche, unsuccessful games to being internationally renowned to the point that a massive auditorium full of people in multiple countries will go absolutely nuts just to hear him speak a language we mostly don't speak.

Good mix of people who were at a NieR concert for the first time and people who'd been to the last one. There was a guy near me who had apparently been to the Berlin concert just a few days before, and snagged a ticket for this one literally yesterday just to get it again with better acoustics. I respect it lol. Everyone I spoke to was remarkably friendly - last time I went to one of these things I felt really nervous about approaching anyone but it seems I've gotten better about that kind of thing in the last few years. Anyway, people had come from all over - I chatted with a pair of Americans from Boston all the way down the merch line.

Here are some pictures, mostly of cosplayers. I am still getting used to shooting with the DSLR my friend gave me, so not all of these came out perfectly steady and some of them the exposure wasn't right,, but there are some nice ones in here...

bokeeeeehhhhhhhhh... I spoke a bit to the owner of this 9S doll. Her mum was there too, and it turns out she's a haberdasher who makes cosplays for her daughters and has now done over 70. That's a legendary mum right there.

The 9S cosplayer here gave me his instagram. he's a pro photographer so I feel a little embarassed at the quality of the photos I took of him ^^'

I got some merch too, since I understand it's the main way events like this support themselves.

That Kainé thing isn't a print, it's a vinyl record with a few arrangements of Kainé. Though I was totally prepared to buy it as a print because it's a lovely drawing. I don't actually own a record player, but one day I'll surely listen to it ^^'

I was too fatigued to make a cosplay this time, but I'm sure there will be another concert and next time, for sure, I will go as Devola or Popola. Unless Yoko Taro comes up with another redhead character in the meantime lmao.

[the-nosy-neighbor]

Wave Up High! You're the Most.

I have been curious about this one for a bit, and have seen a little discussion on it. Why does W's sign off in "News" change?

The different sign offs we have seen:

Happy New Year, neighbor! Now make like Barnaby and have a ball! (1/13/2023) Related to New Year's, "drop the ball"

Have a wonderful day! Show the world your best smile! (1/15/2023) Maybe we just haven't established it yet?

More information will arrive as we prepare for this exciting installation! Stay tuned and remember to wave up high! (2/25/2023) 1st instance of the phrase, "remember" isn't what I think when I think of this phrase. The first time I visited was in March of 2023. Maybe closer to April. I think the guest book was still open at that point.

So many guest signatures… So many of them are trying to communicate. What are you telling me for? Do you think I can answer. What are you trying to do to me. I’m closing that guest book, I’m not playing this game anymore. The ringing is enough. (Unknown) Too sad to sign off properly? W is pretty upset.

We believe that concludes everything our beautiful website has to offer in this most recent update! As always, thank you for your patience and have a wonderful day! Don’t forget to wave up high! (7/22/23) Here we go, that's the one we expect. This is the first big update I was here for.

Until then, have a happy Halloween! Don’t forget to wave down below! (10/13/2023) This just seems a twist on the phrase for Halloween? Demons and whatnot.

Don’t forget to wave up high! Ho ho ho! (12/25/2023 stated date, but actually between then and March 9. I think on the update, it was updated either immediately or the next day. Based on awayfrompryingeyes.net, it is in March 2024) Back to the general statement.

Please remember to wave! (3/9/2024) From the post "Mistake." They are thrown off in this one, having realized the date was wrong. Also, they blame someone else for the mistake. No, they refer to themself as a separate person. "I assumed it was still December." to "the individual posting this must not have been paying proper attention." Are they trying to duck the blame? Is there more than one person in their person? Or are they suggesting that someone else wrote it, they posted it, and neither of them knew it was March?

On Away From Prying Eyes:

Don’t forget to wave up high. (3/2024) On this post, they are back to the most common statement of the phrase.

This is a hard one. It is interesting that it starts with something else entirely. In my mind, it was always "don't forget to wave up high." I always assumed it was supposed to be some kind of slang from the time period, in the same way "you're the most" is.

This interesting theory believes it is a reference to puppeteers: https://www.reddit.com/r/WelcomeHomeARG/comments/15m4j5b/dont_forget_to_wave_up_high_and_wallys_eventual/

And that does make sense, given the orientation of the puppeteer--

(Got to love those bell bottoms. I wonder if those are adidas or k-swiss?) Any dancing of the puppet, and some dialog have to be a wave for the puppeteer. Henson was known for several kinds of puppetry, but this style here was often called a "Hand-rod muppet." For more information about muppeteering, visit: https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Puppetry_Techniques.

So, the important point is this: if it is a phrase that puppeteers would use, is W a puppeteer? Was that their original interaction with the material? I don't think it is referenced outside of the "News" section, or hasn't been so far.

The Most

I can't find a history of the phrase "the most" but it is agreed that it evolved in the beat subculture from the late 40's to the 50's. People in the movement were known at "beatniks." Based on a quick search, some consider them different movements. But a common representation of them are like so:

This is Danny Kaye in White Christmas doing the number "Choreography," which is a lighthearted jab at the new generation and their art movements rejecting tap for interpretive dance and popular music for jazz (though in truth, they were already exploiting the heck out of jazz during this period in mainstream entertainment).

Anyway, Audrey Hepburn famously played a beatnik at least once. The trappings are: black beret, turtlenecks, winged eyeliner, bongos, coffeehouses, smoking, jazz, snapping instead of clapping, cool cats you dig, and a general sense of being unwashed. This movement is a counterculture, darker way than the bright and happy hippies, that focuses on deep thought and creation of important art instead of common entertainment, most likely built on the model of the Parisian coffeehouse movement of the 18th century.

Far too much detail just to say that "the most" is an old term even for the run of the show, in the late 60's to early 70's. I wonder why Wally would make such an old term his phrase? Looking up slang from the show's period, we have such gems as "what it is?" (though, like a lot of slang that gets popular, it was originated in the African American community) "peace out," or "keep on steppin'." If he wanted to be current, then he'd go with "groovy."

I wonder if it isn't just that old slang doesn't anger parents, whereas old folks tend to judge the up and coming generations harshly.

I’m curious about other indicators of the time placement. Could Wally be an older puppet than the others?

[dribs-and-drabbles]

Dead Friend Forever ep 1

I finally got sucked into watching. And since there's so much speculation around the characters and their actions/motives I thought I'd document my observations as I go. (small comments in brackets are things I've gone back to after the ep ended)

Who did the axe man hit for the guy on his own (Non, right?) to get splashed with blood, because the guy with him (Jin, right?) had already run off, unless it was his own blood from a wound lower down on this body... (So I'm guessing this is the original film that they made with Non years ago...no, wait, if Non was the 'killer' in the mask in the film then why is he running away from another masked person with Jin here? Is this also the film or is this their real experience. Oh ho hooo the mystery thickens...what's real and what's played out for the 'camera' [including for us]?...).

Also, I can't believed I'm watching this 🙈

I think the only way I'll get through the scary gore bits is to analyse their believability.

Ok, let's go! I like the opening credits music.

It's a good job it's difficult for me to figure out all their names because the things I've seen/read about the show so far mean nothing or very little.

The first believable thing! - no phone signal and no wifi in the middle of nowhere. I used to experience the same thing in the Swedish countryside.

Ok, I see those looks between Fluke and green-shirt-big-money guy...what secret do they have about what's on that external drive... And embroidered shirt guy doesn't know...or does he and he's a good liar?

EVERYONE IS JUST SO SUS.

So green shirt guy, Fluke, Jin, and embroidered shirt guy (Top!) were in this movie? And Non was the 'killer'. And Phee pretends he doesn't know who Non is even though I've seen that he and Non knew-knew each other... The two who don't know Non (for realsies?) is brown jacket guy (White?) and the guy sat opposite Jin.

Wow green shirt guy was quick to jump in to say he had a camera in the house to remake the film - that Phee suggested. SO SUS. Jin and tall guy (Tee!) did NOT like that.

"I don't want him [White] to get involved in what we have done" - What HAVE you done Tee? 👀

Also I love that all this is happening with White in a "Sexy Summer Time" t-shirt on 😂

An asthmatic who smokes 🤦🏽‍♀️ Yeah, he's definitely not going to find his inhaler when he needs it. (Is that Tan?).

Oh what if White isn't the innocent cherub he's made out to be? What if he's manipulating this to get revenge for Non? I've seen people say they want him to be the last girl standing (or whatever the phrase is) but what if he's orchestrating all this?

Whyyyyyy did green shirt guy (Por!) leave the house and go into the woods???

So, interestingly, Tee and Fluke instigated the search for Por, then Phee doled out instructions once they found him... Hmmmm...SUS

Por seems alive and conscious, why is no one asking how it happened? Also, even in his second year, Fluke should know to stay calm so as not to panic the patient more...

Who keeps jump cables in the house and not either in the car or in a garage/outbuilding, especially somewhere like that??!?

Again, they're in a house in the woods. Surely there would be a saw in some kind of garage/workshop? Why are they looking in a kitchen for a knife to cut a tree branch?? WHY IS THE SAW IN THE KITCHEN UNDER THE SINK?! 😂

It's incheresting that White concludes it's an attempted murder 👀 Thus sowing the seed in everyone else's mind...

BOYS, proving that there's a ninth person is NOT the priority here. Getting Por to a hospital is. 🤦🏽‍♀️

Also incheresting are the deleted scenes 👀 HOW COULD POR GO INTO THE WOODS ALONE ESPECIALLY AFTER HE COUNTED NINE PEOPLE?! Also, Tan was not part of the failed re-staging of the film...SUS.

Alright. I'm hooked on the mystery. I should make clear that I in NO WAY want any answers that will spoil the mystery for later in the series. Please and thank you! 🙏🏽 I'm just laying down some thoughts to come back to once more info gets revealed. Comments that don't spoil anything are absolutely welcome though! 😁

[feedthefandomfest]

Hi, I absolutely love this project and all the ideas but may I suggest an addition? I've seen a lot of posts trying to help people to comment, with the dos and don'ts, different ways to comment etc. but I have never seen a post on how to reply to comments as an author. Yet I've seen a lot of authors express that they don't actually really know how to reply or feel insecure about it.

So if we want to foster a fandom space that's more about community and less about content creators and consumers, maybe some resources about replying to comments might also help?

Ooh, yes. There are a few scenarios that come to mind where I commonly struggle in replying to comments:

just as a story that stirred up a tornado of amazing emotions makes a comment difficult to compose, a COMMENT that stirred up a tornado of amazing emotions makes a reply equally difficult!! how to express the jumbled joy and gratitude and excitement and and and

i find myself tone matching the comment? or trying to? only if the comment has a tone or style that i feel awkward utilizing, i'm afraid that awkwardness is coming across, and not in a charming way (ditto for feeling self-conscious if my reply is longer that the original comment. which... makes no sense?? it's like i'm afraid of coming across as desperate or something and i'm trying to play it chill 😂 THIS MIGHT JUST BE ME. I TEND TO OVERTHINK THINGS)

it's a WIP and i feel guilty for not updating in awhile, so my avoidant personality quirks hamstring my ability to reply... it's like i feel undeserving of the kindness? or like i use the comment to bargain with myself--go make progress on the WIP and then you can mention that in your reply!!--and then i fail to make progress and the bargain falls apart 😅

as a writer, i feel bad if my replies to different comments sound too similar. as though similarity = insincerity. OR like when you're drafting and you're like OH NO can't use that particular word/phrase because i just used it in a recent paragraph and surely others will notice the awk repetition and deem me clunky 🙃

very rarely, there are comments that make me feel shitty, often through some thoughtless phrasing (I truly don't think any of them intended to hurt my feelings), and so I'm left in the strange position of wanting to defend myself/my fic while wanting to avoid confrontation because i hate confrontation while wanting the commenter to be aware of how they might word things more sensitively in future while fearing i might alienate a reader when i need readers to LIVE 😭

Looking back on this list, it's very possible these are all manifestations of my very particular quirks and idiosyncrasies and whatnot, but it's also possible others are struggling in similar ways so I'm gonna post it anyway.

Any other aspects of replying to comments that writers struggle with? Any tips or tricks for how to reply to comments in a way that fosters community?

I'll start working on my own list of how I navigate the issues described above. Because I DO reply to comments and think it's so important for nurturing fandom life and inviting goodness into your own life.

Not to be too sappy but one of my best friends started out as a rambling raving commenter. One of those every chapter rambling raving commenters (the GOOD STUFF 🤌🏻), and I replied in kind, and then he found me on tumblr, and fast forward just shy of a year and he's one of my top precious people.

Posting fic, reading someone's fic, commenting, replying to comments -- all of these are weirdly intimate acts, in a way. Hence the awkwardness? Depending on the fic, it's like "hello, this is the product of my brain and my fingers touching the keys, and i may or may not have poured my heart and soul into it." and commenters who may or may not detect such things sometimes have the wherewithal to reply, "it was beautiful. wonderful. i loved it." and then what do you say? "thank you" doesn't feel adequate at all. AT ALL.

[seeminglyseph]

It is a little wild sometimes seeing Invincible the superhero series being written about as like... "new and innovative" or something... because I did absolutely read the comic in 2010, and there were multiple trade paperbacks at the time.

I mean, I know full well "I read the comic" is a useless phrase because The Boys is also coming out, and the comic for that is just as dated and I avoided it for the most part because I liked DC Comics and didn't want to read Ennis' unhinged gore porn. DC was going through its Dork Dark Age that needed commenting on that is fully lost in commentary now, I feel like a madman trying to explain that now that like... "I mean I think this is around the same time Teen Titans decided to bring back the Wonder Twins, Wendy and Marvin from the old cartoons, including their Wonder Dog, only it turns out the dog was a monster who ravaged and mauled them to a bloody mess. Marvin is killed on the panel, and Wendy is gravely injured and paralyzed from the waist down. She got an Oracle moment in a different book with a more optimistic tone, but that was far from the original intention, or the only Teen Titan killed in a gory and gratuitous way on the pages of Teen Titans. The comic most likely to be picked up by children because of brand identity."

I fully stopped reading DC Comics because of Lian Harper back in the day... like. Then they rebooted the universe so it fully didn't matter but like. It very much confuses me when I hear like... "it's so innovative to see superhero media where it's fucked up."

And like. Clearly, the only superhero media you are consuming is MCU movies or spinoffs. That's the shit that I was pretty sure these comics were commenting on. That's the hell Frank Miller built for us.

Injustice: Gods Among Us came out in 2013. How are we still acting like "Superman but bad" is the most shocking concept. Anthony Starr's acting is fucking stellar and I do enjoy most of Kripke's writing. I did my time in Superhell. But like... I mean the fact that the Seven are a Justice League parody and The Boys have to bed over backwards to try and parody Marvel is like... man, this was written when someone else was on top, and now modern audiences are mixing metaphors because the DC references just aren't relevant unless sexy Harley Quinn is in it.

I have a migraine and maybe no actual point... I don't want to return to the era of pointless gratuitous violence in comics. Like I said, it made me stop reading because any time I even started to get attached to a character, they were brutally murdered or went through something traumatic and changed or left or were sidelined or something. It was just... exhausting and stressful. And paying money to be stressed out and disappointed was like... not fun or interesting. I think a lot of The Boys fans are experiencing that with this most recent season, which feels authentic to the comic experience. (A season four event is very close to a real-life trauma for me, so I'm making a mental health decision to not watch it at the moment. But I am watching fans spiral into disappointed rage. It's interesting...)

Anyway, this has been a rant about Superheros that doesn't really go anywhere. I think I'm gonna go smoke a blunt for this migraine and the stress. I'd suggest people broaden their horizons since like... there's been grimdark superheroes forever, but it's like... it's a mostly miserable slog through various fluids and rushed art and bad plotlines that go nowhere. And most people probably got revealed to be sex pests at a minimum by now because the industry appears to be full of monsters... I'm very tired.

[crinkled-emotions]

Day 9: "Just a little longer, okay? Hold on a little longer."

I am now three days behind but I can work with that. My mum was up for a couple of days so I really just wanted to spend some time with her :)

Original prompt here!

-

“It’s only a week, guys, what could possibly go wrong?”

The Daggers exchanged looks across the room; Hangman sighed, Phoenix groaned and Bob buried his head in his hands.

“Whoops,” Maverick grinned, “did I say something wrong?”

“Maverick,” the Daggers collectively complained. He covered his chuckle with a cough, reaching to start the presentation.

“Alright, now that I’ve jinxed you guys for the rest of your lives, let’s go over what’s going to be happening while I’m gone...”

“Sir; who’s going to be taking us?” Hangman asked. Maverick paused.

“I was hoping Hondo and Cyclone could handle things here; if things change I have no doubt Hondo will let you know. And no dumb antics this time, okay? Leave your whoopee cushions and salty coffee’s at home. You’re all over thirty now- happy birthday for last week by the way, Fanboy.”

“Thank you, sir.”

-

The team walked into the classroom the following morning and Hondo waved at them from his desk at the back of the room.

“Take a seat everyone, Cyclone and Warlock are in their morning meetings but should be here shortly.”

Hangman glanced over his shoulder at Rooster, an eyebrow raised.

“You good?”

“Just as good as you are, Bagman,” he commented nasally. Phoenix grimaced, nudging Bob to scoot over another seat so as to avoid sitting shoulder to shoulder with her friend. Payback offered a blister pack of Strepsils on his way to his seat, nudging Rooster’s shoulder too.

“Dude just go back to bed, it’s not like Maverick’s here to-“

“-attention!”

The team leapt up to stand to attention in front of their seats, staring straight ahead at Hondo’s call. The sound of boots against the hard concrete floors in the classroom echoed in the otherwise silent area; Rooster could feel the sweat dripping from his temples and knew it was going to be a long day. A very. Long. Day.

“I am Captain Jones and I’m going to be the one guiding you lot through the next couple days whilst Mitchell is gone. First things first; I do not tolerate the antics that he does and I do not want you to address me by my callsign, it will be Captain Jones and nothing else. The punishment for insubordination will not be pushups; it will be a march down to the Air Boss’ office and a written warning. Mitchell does not run a tight ship but I like order and I like it when my subordinates obey my directions. I understand one of you is a Lieutenant Commander now?”

“That would be me, sir,” Phoenix replied. The Captain pointed at her.

“You are only to speak when spoken to.”

“I thought it was phrased like a question,” Hangman murmured. This had the Captain’s attention, his eyes narrowing.

“Lieutenant Seresin; you’re next to be promoted if the rumours are to be believed. If you would like that promotion to be approved, I would keep your mouth shut.”

That did indeed make him quiet; mouth drawn into a thin line, Hangman chose to keep his eyes forward and his shoulders up. The others subtly looked between him and Phoenix for guidance, but it was Rooster who spoke.

“Sir, I don’t think Mav would appreciate-“

“-and you, Lieutenant Bradshaw. I am surprised you’re still here.”

That had Rooster’s eyebrows raising, and he cleared his throat.

“I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

“Well; your father was dead long before he was your age-“

“-sir, perhaps it would be beneficial to start the training for today?” Hondo gently suggested. The Captain hummed.

“Let’s get a move on. Today we’re going to be looking over some possible scenarios...”

-

The fever started during lunch; Phoenix was still fuming over being insulted within the first five minutes of class and Rooster couldn’t put up with her ranting when his head was pounding and it felt like there was a fire in his entire body. When he looked up from his disdain Hangman had Phoenix around the waist and was threatening to dunk her head in the trash can but she wasn’t pissed; instead she was howling with laughter, grasping on to his shirt so if he did actually do it he was going in too. Fanboy and Bob were either side of him, ready to help with said dunk.

“Do it Bagman and I swear to god I’ll show everyone your Tinder-“

“Dagger Squad!”

They all started frantically scrambling to stand to attention when Captain Jones approached them, confusion and irritation in his eyes. He blew out a breath, hands on his hips. Rooster could see Maverick doing the same thing, but with a more... fond exasperation rather than outright anger. As much as they were trained naval aviators, best of the best, they were also young adults and they were people that liked to have fun. Striding across the room, Captain Jones squared up to Bob and Fanboy first... Bob flinched ever so slightly but Fanboy stood his ground... ever so slightly behind Bob’s taller frame.

“Is this what Captain Mitchell has trained you to do? He’s turned some of the US Navy’s- if not the world’s- great aviators into children?”

“Sir,” Rooster started, but he got a hand waved in his face.

“I’ll deal with you later. Lieutenant Trace-“

“-Lieutenant Commander-“

“-Lieutenant Trace, report to the Air Boss’ office and explain to him why you are wasting his time.”

Phoenix gasped like the air had been shot out of her, while Rooster cleared his throat.

“Sir... I’m not sure what you have against me or ‘Nix, but-“

“-you let him address you like that?”

Captain Jones turned back to Phoenix, who shrugged.

“Rooster- sorry, Lieutenant Bradshaw- and I have been friends since our flight school days, he can call me just about anything he wants because he knows I’ll do the same.”

“I wouldn’t understate her rank though sir, she bites,” Payback said. The Captain threw his hands in the air.

“You know what? You can all go to Admiral Simpson’s office and explain yourselves. I’m surprised there weren’t more disciplinary records in your files!”

With that, Phoenix glanced around her.

“Let’s go, Daggers. Hopefully Cyclone’s eaten by now.”

-

Glancing up from his cup of coffee, Cyclone sighed when he realised who was standing in front of him.

“What have they done this time?”

“They’re all standing by my office door looking like kicked puppies.”

Cyclone checked his watch, gesturing toward the door.

“Let them in, Warlock. My meeting can wait a couple minutes.”

“If you say so,” Warlock mused. He stepped back, opening the door to Cyclone’s office. Sure enough the Daggers filed in, but they were silent as they all stood to attention, hands behind their back. Cyclone looked between them and Warlock helplessly, clearing his throat.

“What can I do for you, Daggers?”

“Sir, we have been instructed to report to you,” Phoenix started. Cyclone checked his schedule for the third time, frowning.

“This was not in my meeting plans for today.”

“It’s disciplinary action... sir,” Hangman filled in.

“You’re reporting to my office... on your own volition... for disciplinary action?”

Warlock choked on his coffee and Cyclone’s eyes narrowed.

“Is this a prank? Did Maverick put you up to this? He’s not even here, he’s not going to witness his own-“

“-insubordination, sir.”

Warlock sharply turned to Rooster.

“If this is a joke we need to know now. You know insubordination can get you-“

“-court martialled, we know sir.”

Phoenix stared straight ahead, but her fingers hooked into Rooster’s belt loops behind their back. Cyclone looked between the group, slowly turning back to his computer.

“I’ll let you off this time; who sent you?”

“Captain Jones, sir, he is apparently taking our classes whilst Maverick is gone.”

Cyclone’s brows furrowed further.

“Hondo and I agreed that I wouldn’t be able to lead the class but I was of the understanding that he would speak to Maverick and organise one of his Top Gun buddies to assist.”

“Maverick never got the call, sir,” Rooster filled in. The team slowly turned toward him, Phoenix’s hand going to his arm when he stifled a cough into the crook of his elbow.

“You alright, Rooster?” Warlock checked gently. He nodded, going quiet again.

“Alright, I’m gonna say it. Sir, it feels like Captain Jones has it out for us.”

Payback didn’t hold back, both Cyclone and Warlock groaned.

“Okay, okay. We all know you lot can be a handful; behave yourselves for the rest of this week and stay out of my office. If you come back in here for insubordination again I will write you up.”

“Yes sir,” they all muttered. As they filed out, Cyclone and Warlock shared a look of Admiral-style what the fuck?

-

The next morning Rooster forced himself down the hallway, cursing himself for sleeping in to the point that he was five minutes late to his first lecture of the morning. He slipped into the last row of seats in the classroom and was surprised to find Hangman there, arms crossed across his chest with an unimpressed look on his face. Rooster frowned at him but Hangman waved him off.

“Don’t fuckin’ ask, Bradshaw- ugh. What’s that smell?”

“Where’s your gum?”

Hangman frowned as he subtly passed it over.

“You been pukin’?”

“Only this morning.”

“Fuck him. Go home, you should be in bed.”

Rooster snorted.

“Like you would.”

“Do as I say, not as I do. Look; you’re in enough trouble as it is, why not take the opportunity and call out?”

Rooster sent him an incredulous look.

“Cyclone won’t accept that I’m sick after I got reprimanded for insubordination yesterday, no way.”

“I dunno; think he’s got a soft spot for your ass.”

Rooster rolled his eyes, elbowing Hangman in the ribs.

“What are you two doing back here?”

Both jumped when they realised Hondo had taken the third seat in the row, an eyebrow raised. He took in Rooster properly and hauled him up by his shirt, dragging him out of the classroom without pulling attention from the Captain droning on.

“Come with me,” Hondo hissed at him. As they walked down the hallway Hondo did a quick glance around and then pushed Rooster into the bathroom.

“We need to talk.”

“In here? It stinks.”

“Shut up and listen. You need to go to Cyclone and excuse yourself for the rest of this week; I’ll give you the learning material but you’re a) not well enough to be here and b) Captain Jones spent the five minutes you were late ranting about you, Maverick and your da-“

“-my dad?”

Hondo’s eyes softened and he gestured toward the door.

“Get the fuck out of here, man, save yourself.”

“Alright, alright I get it. What about the others?”

“You leave them to me.”

-

Cyclone glanced up when he heard the knock at his door, surprised to find Rooster standing there. He gestured to the seat in front of his desk.

“Come sit, I’ll sign you out for today-“

“-sir?”

“-you’d be surprised how damn sneaky Hangman can be. He already let me know via email that you shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh...”

Rooster carefully lowered himself into the seat, arms protecting his stomach. Cyclone typed away for a moment, then reached to grab the piece of paper from the printer.

“Before you go, Bradshaw... Hondo also mentioned that there was some tension between Captain Jones and Maverick. Do you know anything about this?”

“No sir,” Rooster replied automatically. Cyclone regarded him for a moment, then took a deep breath.

“You Daggers give me a migraine; at least when Maverick’s here you’re... tolerable.”

He signed the form, taking one final look at Rooster.

“One chance, Rooster. Tell me what’s going on.”

His stomach flipped and he grimaced at the impending nausea.

“Uh, sir, I’m sorry, I gotta...”

“Go,” Cyclone sighed. Rooster bolted at the first opportunity.

-

“Bradley, what the... fuck.”

Bob and Phoenix paused in the doorway to the living room of Rooster’s house, hands on their hips. He waved from the couch, bottle of water and bucket on the floor.

“How’s it going, Roos?” Phoenix asked. He shrugged.

“I’m fine now but I don’t think that’s goin’ to last long; how’s Jones doing?”

Bob grimaced.

“He’s a real... piece of work.”

Phoenix laughed, reaching for the water bottle.

“I’m gonna refill this and then you’re going to bed. Seriously, man, I don’t think you should be vertical.”

“It’s a one day thing at worst, I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“Suuuuure,” Bob replied, “and Hangman wasn’t pouting all through class today.”

-

“Bradshaw; thank you for bothering to get out of bed. The good news is we’re doing hops all day, so gear up and I’ll meet everyone in the ready room.”

Captain Jones stopped everyone before they could even enter the classroom, gesturing for them to go back to the locker rooms and get changed. Payback opened his mouth to protest but Phoenix elbowed him in the ribs, sending him a firm don’t. Fanboy glared at her, then at Hangman when he also shook his head. Rooster was staring dead ahead, questioning if his sinuses would allow him to get into the jet with the congestion he was feeling. He’d tried the steam in the shower trick that morning but it hadn’t worked and the Strepsils weren’t doing their job to numb his throat.

“Roos; are you sure you want to go up?”

Thank god for Coyote; level-headed and never willing to start a fight. He’d been observing the last couple days; Jones had separated him and Hangman the previous morning but it had let him watch the others and listen to their reactions. He’d also seen the way Hangman had been giving Rooster pepto chews all morning like it was candy.

“I don’t think I have a choice, man-“

“-you’re right, you don’t. Bradshaw, you’re first with Trace and Floyd. Go.”

“Uh- sir... respectfully-“

“-we’re going to do this, Machado? Go and see Admiral Simpson; consider yourself excused.”

Captain Jones dismissed Coyote, gesturing for Rooster to head for the locker room. By the time he got there the nausea was worse and he was contemplating sitting in one of the stalls but Bob caught him by the shoulder, grimacing.

“Dude; you cannot fly today. Blowing chunks in your jet is not recommended and neither is having a literal sinus infection.”

“I know, man, but I can’t avoid it. I have to.”

“Why don’t you go back to Cyclone- or Warlock, I’m sure either of them can help you.”

Rooster shrugged, clearing his throat as his stomach flipped uncomfortably again.

“You good? You don’t look good.”

Payback nudged Rooster’s arm in passing, Fanboy nodding in agreement whilst he struggled into his flight suit. Hangman, in his flight suit sans boots, grimaced.

“I know that look. He’s gonna blow-“

Rooster whipped around to run for the stalls and Bob followed to make sure he was alright. The other guys exchanged looks.

“Text Phoenix; we need a plan.”

-

“Another insubordination complaint from Jones?”

“Sir, we don’t make a lot of requests because we know we’re on thin ice a majority of the time.”

Cyclone glanced up at the Daggers (minus Rooster) standing in his office, putting the piece of paper in his hand down and taking off his glasses.

“I’m listening.”

“Jones is sending Rooster up in the first hop today; he’s sick and there’s no way he should be in the air,” Bob said. His blue eyes were confident but calm, which settled the others who were admittedly full of nervous energy and coffee. Cyclone rubbed at his temples.

“Jones is sending him- wait, Bradshaw is here? I was expecting him to call out today considering how he was yesterday.”

“It’s worse,” Phoenix admitted, “Bob and I checked on him after work yesterday and he wasn’t great but he’s even more nauseous and dizzy because of his sinuses.”

“Are the rest of you in agreement about this?”

When Cyclone’s eyes shifted over the rest of the Dagger Squad, his eyebrows raised.

“Alright; I’ll talk to Jones. Get Bradshaw to the infirmary... and someone tell Maverick, I don’t get paid enough for that.”

-

“Seresin; you seen Bradshaw, Trace or Floyd? They’re supposed to be... hang up the phone.”

Hangman glanced up, grimacing.

“Mav; I’m gonna have to call you back-“

“-Jake? Jake don’t you dare- Bagman-“

Hangman promptly ended the call and shoved the phone into his pocket, leaning against his locker.

“Jones! Perfect timing. You know, it’s the funniest thing. Bradshaw was so sick, we had concerns that if he did go up, and he was going to, that-“

“-did you just call me Jones?”

“Uhhhhh... yeah.”

Hangman reached for his toothpick, chewing on it casually. Captain Jones put his hands on his hips, approaching Hangman and trying to intimidate him. Hangman looked down his nose at him, smirking at the man a good three feet smaller than him.

“How’s the air down there, sir? I’m so sorry, I totally ripped ass right before you came in-“

“-Jones! My office!”

Cyclone appeared in the doorway, yelling for the Captain. Jones whirled around, shoulders straightening.

“Cyclone, I want Seresin written up for-“

Cyclone hummed.

“Insubordination?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, and Hangman’s eyes widened. He knew exactly what was coming. He quietly backed away from Jones towards the bathroom stalls, tapping twice on one of the doors which yawned open.

“Up, Roos. Just a little longer, okay? Hold on a little longer.”

Hangman hoisted Rooster’s arm around his shoulder, borderline dragging him out of the locker room. Jones watched, face scrunched like he’d crossed a bad smell when Rooster and Hangman made their exit. Cyclone let them go, closing the door behind him.

“Jones, my understanding was that you and Maverick worked together briefly back in 84 and again in 2000. Am I correct in saying it was briefly?”

“Sir?”

“Am I?”

“I knew Maverick, yes... I’m not sure I understand where this is going?”

Cyclone smiled, leaning back on the wall.

“Take a seat, Jones.”

-

Taking a seat on the end of Rooster’s bed in the infirmary, Maverick gently nudged his leg.

“Anti-emetics working now?”

 Rooster stirred, glancing up with a lazy smile.

“Hey, Mav... what about your conference?”

“I was more concerned about what was going on back here. I’ve been gone 36 hours, Roos, what the hell happened? You had Jones as your instructor?”

Rooster sat upright, eyebrows raising.

“You knew Jones?”

“Ha, yeah, more like I... knew his girlfriend. To clarify; I asked if she was seeing anyone and she said she’d just dumped him. Turns out Jones didn’t accept the dumping and he said it was my fault for-“

“-You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling?” Rooster filled in. Maverick rolled his eyes.

“That too. When your dad tried to help me out of the situation, Jones didn’t find it all that funny so Goose told him straight up that he’d been dumped and he had to get over it.”

“Let me guess; Jones didn’t appreciate it.”

“No he did not.”

Phoenix led the rest of the Daggers into the room, everyone perching in various locations and positions. Maverick patted Rooster’s shoulder, standing to give the others hugs and greet them.

“Big couple days, huh guys?” Maverick said when he returned to Rooster’s side.

“Sir; we did not salt his coffee nor did we whoopee cushion him.”

“I know. Cyclone told me what’s been going on as well as what Hangman has mentioned. I don’t have a problem with how you handled yourselves and neither does he. Right now we’re just making sure Rooster gets some sleep and we can return to training tomorrow.”

“What about Jones himself?” Payback asked. Maverick hummed.

“I understand his weekend is going to be occupied with a seminar on bullying in the workplace. Really, he’s just delaying the inevitable forced retirement.”

“Aren’t you delaying the inevitable forced retirement?” Rooster deadpanned. Maverick glanced over his shoulder and hushed him.

“That’s different, Bradley- and aren’t you supposed to be sick?”

-

[heelsandhalos]

Good morning everyone.

I noticed that no one seems to be taking to the structure of devotional we have been doing lately with the reflection questions, so I thought I would switch it up a bit. Please let me know what you think or which style of devotional you prefer in the comments.

This morning I asked God to reveal to me the message he'd like me to share with you all. Originally I had opened my Bible to Isaiah 29:13.

"The Lord says: 'These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught."

But then I sat the Bible on the bed for a moment and when I came back it had flipped to Isaiah 14:31, so I took that to be a sign.

I had to research this message, and had to ponder on why it was God wanted me to share it with you all. I almost didn't, but who am I to deny the will of God.

With that being said, let's get into our Tuesday morning devotional. 🌄

Title: Facing the North Wind

Scripture:

"Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved: for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in his appointed times."

Isaiah 14:31 (KJV)

Devotional:

In this verse, the prophet Isaiah delivers a sobering message to the Philistines, forewarning them of an impending calamity. The imagery of gates howling and cities crying evokes a sense of inevitable destruction and profound distress. The phrase "thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved" signifies the complete unraveling of their society. This is not just a military threat; it is a divine proclamation of judgment.

The "smoke from the north" symbolizes an approaching force that is well-organized and relentless. The mention that "none shall be alone in his appointed times" suggests that this invasion is divinely ordained and meticulously executed, leaving no room for escape or survival outside of God's plan.

Reflection:

As we ponder this passage, it’s essential to recognize the broader spiritual implications. This verse reminds us of the certainty of God’s judgments and the importance of aligning ourselves with His will. Just as the Philistines faced the consequences of their actions, we too must consider how our lives reflect our commitment to God.

Are there areas in our lives where we have become complacent, ignoring the warnings and promptings of the Holy Spirit? Are we prepared to face the challenges and trials that come our way, trusting in God’s sovereignty and justice?

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, we acknowledge Your supreme authority over all nations and peoples. Help us to heed Your warnings and align our lives with Your will. Give us the strength to face the trials ahead with faith and trust in Your divine plan. May we seek refuge in Your grace and live in a way that honors You. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

Action Point:

Today, take a moment to reflect on any areas in your life where you might be ignoring God's guidance. Seek His wisdom and make a commitment to realign your actions with His will. Trust in His timing and sovereignty, knowing that He holds the ultimate plan for your life.

I hope this devotional brings you encouragement and reflection. Have a blessed Tuesday everyone.

Images by ️Heels and Halos

Tool: CoPilot Image Generator

[aboxthecolourofheartache]

20 questions for fic writers meme, tagged by @chubsthehamster -- thank you, friend! :D

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

42 at the moment

2. What’s your total ao3 word count?

269,795. Almost half of that is one fic though, lol

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently most active in Trigun, perennially/intermittently active in Nirvana in Fire, currently dormant in CritRole, and hiatus in Sandman. Interests wax and wane! And who knows what I'll discover next? Not me, that's for sure.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Mate, I write mostly gen fic. I'm not here for the numbers. A kudos means that a whole human being with thoughts of their own spent some of their precious moments on God's green earth reading my thoughts and kinda liked 'em.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! ...........eventually. sometimes several years later. And why? I dunno, it just feels polite? Also human connection, even digital. That's a thing.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Inference, but that's just because of the canonical main character death. Visitation Hours is bleak in implication, not in actual ending. My definition of "angst" does not always align with readers' definitions of "angst," which can be hilarious for me when I get weepy reactions on something I thought was relatively lighthearted.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I do 'equivocal' better than 'happy,' I think? The goal is emotional resolution or emotional discordance. Happy's incidental, which almost certainly means I don't write a lot of happy endings by the standard measure.

8. Do you get hate on fic?

Not hate so much as people who are belligerently confused? I get some bonkers fucking comments and anons sometimes, which I delete, a smattering of entitled weirdos, and a sprinkle of (typically unintentionally) back-handed compliments.

9. Do you write smut?

Nope! Suggestive, sure. Dirty language, if relevant. Implication, when called-for. Smut? Nope.

10. Do you write crossovers?

I have written a short series of crossovers between Machineries of Empire and Nirvana in Fire. Haven't written any since, but they're not off the table.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yup! More plagiarism than theft in entirety, though. At least once had someone lift a whole scene, dialogue, phrasing and all, and claim it as their own with obvious intent to get mileage without credit. And I have happened upon recognizable lines from my fics in other fics enough times to have several nickles. I get miffed about the latter, but the charitable assumption is just that it was a phrase fresh in their minds/recalled without association.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Into Russian, I think? Godspeed, fanfic translators, the strongest of us all.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I've co-written original stuff before, but I don't think I could ever do it again, original or fanfic. Not that it wasn't a pleasant experience at the time!

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

I don't have a favorite ship, but I do have a favorite dynamic, which is the mutual "you're the only motherfucker in this club who can handle me" a la that one Lorde tweet. The buckwildness has to be compatible, preferably complimentary. We're not talking enabling, though that can be part of it. It doesn't even have to be a ship. That grok/trust combination.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t?

Look, I don't know what WIPs are going to get finished until I post them, okay?

16. What are your writing strengths?

I like character studies! And I feel like I am getting better at limited points of view, though they keep wanting to slide omniscient.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Same-hatting with @chubsthehamster here: plot. What the characters are doing in any given story is largely just to break up the dialogue and introspection. Things happening? They don't, sorry. Gotta work on this.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

For straight dialogue in another language, it's still dialogue, and it still has to serve the story, so if it makes more sense to drop it untranslated, drop it untranslated. If the reader needs to know what's being said, italics or paraphrase.

For mixed languages, it's totally situational and depends on the character, too. Did they just get back from an exchange program in France and they're insufferable about it? Are they a very new second language speaker? Are they an expat? A bilingual parent who wants their child to grow up speaking one language preferentially? An academic, or someone who learned their whole vocabulary based on a single vocation (ie: a doctor who can get by using Spanish in a medical scenario but not outside the clinic)? All of that is going to influence their speech pattern.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Nirvana in Fire!

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Just as interests wax and wane, I like some fics more and some less, and today's favorite could be tomorrow's cringe.

Please consider yourself tagged if you see this and would like to play! @ me, if you like!

[pilcrowtudinous]

I don't know how asks work because I only used Tumblr in a very basic way like 11 years ago and came back to it three months ago but hey. I also only started writing fanfic three months ago. NOW. Questions. ❤️ What is your favorite line that you’ve written in a fic? Can never pick single favourites of anything but I'm fond of: ‘We could all get I survived the Delta Quadrant and Kathryn Janeway and all I got was a Starfleet commission and this lousy shirt t-shirts.’

💥 What is one canon thing that you wish you could change? I mean, it feels like a given, but more actual Saffi interaction in S3

✨️ Out of the comments you’ve received on your fics, what are two or three of your favorites? on one hand, any really long and in-depth ones are always a gift and I wish that I were better at giving them in return. But anything along the lines of a 'Never let anyone tell you that you don't know who your audience is.', as one recently received one said, is always nice. Or praise on capturing character voice! Like 'I've said it before, your Raffi voice is just so perfect, from the phrasing to the way she just gets it, and gets right to the heart of every issue. So, so good.' 🥺

👻 What is your wildest headcanon? OOOH. If we're going for wildest HC that could actually be real canon canonised? I'm super here for Raffi is related to the Burnhams.

✍️ What’s your ideal writing setup? ideal would be having a desk with my own laptop and an ergonomically sound chair. but that is not the case. so instead it's usually lying down in bed or on couch with work laptop or phone.

🚀 Do you like to outline your fic first or create as you go? I want to start outlining, but I've never been that person, in fic or original writing.

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share? sure. this is from the bookshop AU that I've dropped one short intro chapter of: 'She’d considered and disregarded multiple fancy new models that Soji had suggested – and instead, found a hefty oak dining table in a local thrift shop.The surface was scuffed, scratched in places – but it felt right under her hands, faintly warm to the touch as if it still held the memory of the sun it likely hadn’t seen for decades. The plastic and metal contraptions from the wholesalers didn’t have that going for them.'

🏷 Is there a tag you like to search for when looking for fanfics to read? I literally mostly just pull up my ships' tags and see what's new tbh

⏰️ Do you like to post fics on a schedule or at random? I would LIKE to be a schedule person. I never will be.

👓 What helps you focus when you write? avoiding anything with words around me (no videos, only music without words)

💕 What is your favorite fic that you’ve written? honestly a day-to-day shift but i think that my ongoing epistolary-ish post-PIC-s3 one that I'm working through at the moment is one of my better ones?

🐇 Do you write for yourself, for others, or both? myself in that I desperately need to rebuild writing habits if I'm ever going to write anything of substance, others too now that I know the joys of the community and its support.

🥳 Why did you start writing fanfic? because I spent enough time reading it that I ended up in a relevant discord and then couldn't help myself what with all the bouncing around of ideas.

🦋 Which character is your favorite to write? I honestly couldn't pick between Raffi and Seven, though I think I find Raffi a little more straightforward.

🦈 Which character is the toughest to write? My favourite admiral, Katy Janeway. Kate made her iconic, but by god her writing was inconsistent.

🍬 Do you write for multiple fandoms? If yes, what is your favorite fic of yours for each fandom? so far, no! In fact I've only written one Trek fic that isn't in the PIC era. but I'm expanding those horizons so never say never.

🌻 How often do you read your own fics? from time to time? usually if it's been a minute since I've worked on something and I need to refresh my memory of where it's at.

📗 Do you want to write something outside of fanfiction? If so, what about? yes and there are WIPs in that space too, but they're kind of on hold because I'm finding myself much better at habit building with fic right now. so I need to get to the point where that can rub off on original specfic or YA sapphic romance.

🎬 If a movie or show were based on your fic, which fic would you choose and who would you fancast? going to be That Guy and say 'fall into an ocean of you' because #legacy

💭 What inspires you and your writing? little noticings and the desire to have written something

🧪 Do you research for your fics? bro you need to see how many memory alpha tabs I have open at any one time.

😎 What fics do you prefer on a scale of canon compliant to wildly original? I like canon compliance where possible, and definitely prefer character compliance – super OOC stuff throws me. like what's the point?

💎 Do you often write about a relationship or focus on an individual? most of my stuff is relationship focused – but in order to do that the focus on the individuals is critical

🔥 Have you included any sexy scenes in your fics? If yes, do you find them easy or difficult to write? despite the fact that when I started out I thought 'lol I could never' YES I do write smut and yes, kind of tricky? but no more tricky than so much else?

💘 Is it easier to write angst or fluff? bothisgood.gif

🚦What sort of endings do you prefer to write: ambiguous, bad, happily ever after, etc.? on a scale from bad to happy with ambiguous in the middle, I think that the worst I could handle would be halfway between ambiguous and happy

💡How many WIPs do you currently have? ummm. I think I have like six on AO3 currently awaiting chapters but like another 15 or so in progress (anywhere from a throwaway line deserving of a fic at some point to more developed partial drafts)

🔎 Does anyone beta read or edit your fics? no, and that's fine with me. half the joy of fic writing/publication is that it's on the fly. my editorial and book industry life is quite separate from this.

📚 Is there a fanfic or fanfic writer you recommend? to be perfectly honest you can rarely go wrong with Saffi writers? everyone I know from the server who publishes does some really cool stuff? (and I don't want to leave anyone out!)

🤩 What led to your interest in the fandom? I could (and will) write a whole goddamn essay on my particular journey into Trek – I feel like many of us could) but basically DISCO > PICARD > VOY > all Trek and falling into Saffi and J7 holes

🤖 Are non-fandom friends aware that you write fanfic? absolutely not

💛 What is the most impactful lesson you’ve learned about writing? that's a wild question! I mean, I guess, just getting it done? and also I regularly tell my students that it's okay and normal to kind of hate what you've written after you've written it. I have to tell myself that too.

👑 Do you like writing short fics or long fics? I've tended pretty short so far but I'd like to push myself further to build longer pieces. so far my longest is a mere 16000 though

🎯 Do you have a writing milestone you’re working towards? aside from finishing IRL wips and having them published? not really

🔮 Any advice for writers working through burnout or writer’s block? this too shall pass is trite but true.

🤔 Would you ever want to write something canon if you got the opportunity? I'd bloody love to

💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write? I don't think so! But my knowledge of fic tropes is still developing tbh.

🎨 If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see? OOH. anything involving Raffi, Seven and Raffi's granddaughter.

Fanfic Writer Ask Game

These are always fun so I wanted to make one! Reblog this and let others send you an ask based on any of these emojis/questions:

❤��� What is your favorite line that you’ve written in a fic?

💥 What is one canon thing that you wish you could change?

✨️ Out of the comments you’ve received on your fics, what are two or three of your favorites?

👻 What is your wildest headcanon?

✍️ What’s your ideal writing setup?

🚀 Do you like to outline your fic first or create as you go?

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

🏷 Is there a tag you like to search for when looking for fanfics to read?

⏰️ Do you like to post fics on a schedule or at random?

👓 What helps you focus when you write?

💕 What is your favorite fic that you’ve written?

🐇 Do you write for yourself, for others, or both?

🥳 Why did you start writing fanfic?

🦋 Which character is your favorite to write?

🦈 Which character is the toughest to write?

🍬 Do you write for multiple fandoms? If yes, what is your favorite fic of yours for each fandom?

🌻 How often do you read your own fics?

📗 Do you want to write something outside of fanfiction? If so, what about?

🎬 If a movie or show were based on your fic, which fic would you choose and who would you fancast?

💭 What inspires you and your writing?

🧪 Do you research for your fics?

😎 What fics do you prefer on a scale of canon compliant to wildly original?

💎 Do you often write about a relationship or focus on an individual?

🔥 Have you included any sexy scenes in your fics? If yes, do you find them easy or difficult to write?

💘 Is it easier to write angst or fluff?

🚦What sort of endings do you prefer to write: ambiguous, bad, happily ever after, etc.?

💡How many WIPs do you currently have?

🔎 Does anyone beta read or edit your fics?

📚 Is there a fanfic or fanfic writer you recommend?

🤩 What led to your interest in the fandom?

🤖 Are non-fandom friends aware that you write fanfic?

💛 What is the most impactful lesson you’ve learned about writing?

👑 Do you like writing short fics or long fics?

🎯 Do you have a writing milestone you’re working towards?

🔮 Any advice for writers working through burnout or writer’s block?

🤔 Would you ever want to write something canon if you got the opportunity?

💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write?

🎨 If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

[critical-skeptic]

The AI Bait Farm: Social Media’s Death Spiral Toward a “Dead Internet”

Social media, once hailed as the digital agora—a global forum for connection, community, and expression—is now collapsing under its own weight. What we’re seeing isn’t just the rise of engagement bait or low-effort content farming; we’re witnessing the systematic erosion of authenticity, creativity, and relevance in real time. A plague of AI-generated imagery, emotionally manipulative captions, and algorithmic engagement farming has turned platforms like Facebook into breeding grounds for digital junk food: empty calories designed to elicit clicks, not meaningful interaction.

It’s tempting to dismiss these posts as benign annoyances, but that would underestimate the scale of the problem. These aren’t isolated gimmicks but symptoms of a much larger trend that risks accelerating the so-called “Dead Internet Theory.” And while this theory may sound like dystopian hyperbole, the patterns emerging are impossible to ignore.

What’s Happening Right Now?

Scroll any social media feed, and you’ll encounter the same formulaic garbage on repeat:

Emotionally Charged AI-Generated Content: Glamorous “old” women, impossibly muscular veterans, or attractive models in bizarrely curated patriotic or religious contexts. These images aren’t just unrealistic—they’re uncanny, almost dreamlike, betraying their machine-made origins. The posts are paired with captions like “God bless veterans 🇺🇸,” or “My husband just called me fat… Should I leave him?”—phrases designed to spark outrage or sympathy and lure you into engaging.

Engagement Loops: The visible caption is always vague or incomplete, forcing curiosity-clicks. Comments are flooded with spam or scam accounts promoting phishing links, further eroding trust and degrading the space.

Virality via Exploitation: These posts prey on universal human emotions—empathy, nationalism, anger, or intrigue. But their purpose isn’t to inspire or connect; it’s to hijack your attention, feeding the algorithmic gods who reward viral reach with ad revenue or data exploitation.

Proliferation of Bots and Bad Actors: Many of these accounts are entirely fake—AI-created personas operated by bot farms or individuals running automated content machines. Their purpose isn’t just engagement; it’s often outright malicious, funneling traffic to scams or phishing attempts.

The Connection to “Dead Internet Theory”

The Dead Internet Theory suggests that much of the content we interact with online is no longer produced by humans but by bots, algorithms, and automated systems. According to this idea, the internet as we know it is no longer a thriving ecosystem of organic human activity but an elaborate facade—an echo chamber of fake engagement designed to sustain platforms financially.

Here’s why this matters: platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are beginning to resemble the early symptoms of Dead Internet Theory in action. Just as spam and bots overtook chatrooms like Yahoo Messenger in the late 2000s, social media is now becoming a wasteland of fake interactions, auto-generated content, and meaningless noise. Back then, the spam crisis killed platforms overnight as users fled the sinking ship. Today, social media is far too entrenched in our lives to collapse outright—but it’s showing signs of terminal decay.

Why This Matters

Proliferation is Exploding: AI tools have made it absurdly easy to generate realistic images, plausible captions, and entire fake personas. What used to require a skilled designer or content creator can now be achieved by anyone with access to free tools. This democratization of fakery is flooding the internet at a scale unimaginable even five years ago.

Authenticity is Losing the War: Social media’s original value was its ability to connect real people and foster genuine conversations. When most of what you see is fake, the ability to trust anything erodes. Even legitimate content creators are overshadowed by bots churning out endless garbage.

Runaway Algorithmic Incentives: Platforms profit from engagement, no matter how low-quality it is. Every click on an AI-generated post boosts ad revenue and data collection. In a perverse way, platforms have no incentive to fix this problem because the garbage works. It keeps users scrolling and interacting, even if that interaction is meaningless.

Psychological Exhaustion: Fake content exploits human emotions, but the constant bombardment of manipulative bait is exhausting. Users disengage not just from the fake posts but from the platform itself. This creates a vicious cycle: as genuine users leave, bots and bad actors fill the void.

The Parallel to Chatroom Collapse: Yahoo Chat and similar platforms died when spam and bots overwhelmed the system. Users fled because the signal-to-noise ratio became unbearable. Social media risks the same fate—but on a global scale.

Where This Leads: The Dead Internet in Action

If unchecked, this runaway trend has clear consequences:

A Content Wasteland: As fake posts dominate feeds, genuine voices will be drowned out. Social media will lose its relevance as a platform for real interaction.

Hyper-Skepticism: As more content is exposed as fake, users will begin questioning everything—even legitimate posts. This erosion of trust has broader implications for how we engage with the internet as a whole.

Collapse of Platforms: While platforms like Facebook might be too big to fail outright, they risk becoming relics of a bygone era, replaced by smaller, niche platforms that prioritize authenticity (or so we hope).

What Can Be Done?

Demand Better Algorithms: Platforms need to prioritize authenticity over engagement, even at the cost of ad revenue. This means investing in better moderation tools to weed out bots and spam, rather than rewarding it.

Raise Awareness: Most users don’t realize how prolific and fake much of their feed is. Calling it out—not just with comments but through larger discussions—can help push the issue into the spotlight.

Support Genuine Content: Follow and engage with real creators, especially those calling out or exposing these trends. Visibility matters, and genuine content needs all the help it can get.

Educate Yourself: Learn to spot fake content. Look for subtle tells: overly smooth skin, incoherent details (like garbled name tags), or too-perfect lighting. The more you recognize these patterns, the less likely you are to fall for the bait.

Final Thoughts: A Warning Shot

Social media is heading down the same path as the chatrooms of old: a slow, suffocating decline into irrelevance. But unlike Yahoo Chat, which we abandoned without much consequence, social media is woven into the fabric of our lives. If it collapses—or worse, becomes an entirely “dead” internet of bots and fake engagement—the consequences for society are far-reaching.

What’s happening now isn’t inevitable, but it is accelerating. And unless platforms, users, and creators fight back against the onslaught of AI spam and engagement farming, we’ll find ourselves living in a digital wasteland, endlessly scrolling through meaningless noise. The time to act is now—before the last vestiges of authenticity are buried under a pile of algorithmic garbage.

[respectable-username]

Based on the responses to my post yesterday wanting to know more, here's my guide to

🧑‍💻Code in Hermitcraft (and other SMP) Fanfic🧑‍💻

Note: This is just the interpretation of one Jr Software Engineer. If other developers have a different interpretation, I'd love to hear it in the comments or reblogs!

It's super common in Hermitcraft (and I'm assuming other SMP) fanfiction for the plot to revolve around errors in the game itself and how they affect players. The problem is, as a software engineer, this almost always immediately pulls me out of the story as the ways the game errors are described frequently don't make sense.

This is not a condemnation of writers who use game bugs as parts of their stories, as nobody expects all SMP fanfic writers to have a CS degree. Some even do it well and I adore those stories when I find them! But here are some high-level suggestions to have your glitchy plot points make a little more sense. Usually, it's just a slight change in wording that's required.

Code vs Data

"His code is glitched! He's evil now!"

"They carefully pulled at the strands of her player code, trying to find the bug that was causing her pain."

"Wow, your code is so ancient! You're from Alpha, right?"

These sorts of phrases are probably the most common ones I see that yank me right out if a story. Why? Because they're confusing data and code!

So, what is the difference?

Think of code in this scenario like the laws of physics. It's the rules that guide what can and can't happen in the world. It's what says "if you walk, you move forwards", "if you eat, you'll be less hungry", "if you use a shovel on a dirt block, it will end up in your inventory".

Data is the actual "stuff" in the world that the code changes via its rules. Data is the specific blocks in that building, that item hovering above the ground, the mobs staring at you from under the trees, the player character, the player's health, the player's inventory, the player's skin, and, in the fanfic context, the player's personality and memories.

In other words, if it's an action that can happen, it's probably code. If it's a specific thing, it and everything that makes that particular thing unique is data.

Of course, there can be bugs or glitches in the code which means that data does something it shouldn't, such as "if you put some TNT, some dead coral, and a minecart in this very specific configuration, you can duplicate the TNT." In this case, the act of duplication (ie the rules that let duplication occur) is a glitch in the code (the rules allow something they shouldn't), but the duplicated TNT itself isn't code; it's data. Data that shouldn't exist but does anyway because of that glitch in the code.

So, how could you rework the sample phrases above to make more sense?

"He got too close to a glitch, and his personality data got corrupted. He's evil now!"

"They carefully prodded at her player data, trying to find the broken property that was causing her pain."

"Wow, your data structures are so ancient! You're from Alpha, right? I can't believe you've survived so many updates without compatibility issues!"

Code vs Logs

"Xisuma looked through the code to find the source of the glitch."

This one's a little less clear cut, as there are circumstances where players could look at a version of the code. Some of the Minecraft code is Open Source (ie free to look at), and the rest can be decompiled from the Minecraft .jar (ie turned from machine-readable ones-and-zeroes back into words and stuff, although much less human-readable than what the original code would have been). The super-technical players such as the SciCrafters and I think Doc too will look at the code, which is how they make their super efficient farms and find and exploit glitches to, say, put 8 spawners in one chunk.

But generally, the code is not the first place you go when encountering a glitch. I mean, if it were that obvious from the code alone, it probably would have been caught before being shipped!

When something goes wrong, the first place to look is the logs. The logs of what the players have been doing, the logs of previous commands that have been run, the update changelogs for the game, the version history of the (admin-editable) config files, any warnings or error logs from the server itself. For example, if you have a malicious user such as, say, a Helsmit in your story, the logs would show when they entered the world and where, unless they also did something hacky to cover their tracks.

Personally, I also wouldn't say you'd have to stick to exactly what a server would realistically log if it makes your story more interesting. It's easy enough to hand wave that an admin has a mod in place that surfaces more information if it'd make the story better!

In a multi-server setting, this is also the point where the admin of your world could also reach out to the admins of other worlds and discuss if they've seen the issue before and how they solved it. The in-universe equivalent of looking it up on Stack Overflow or Reddit if you will!

Once the admin has looked at the logs and maybe chatted to others, if they still can't fix the issue via commands or config file changes, then it might make sense for them to try looking into the code if they can. Note that not all server admins are necessarily confident at programming as it's not a core part of their job.

But at the very least, at this point the admin should have a better idea of what part of the code could be bugged. This will make it easier to either a) make a patch for the bug or, more likely, b) understand what circumstances trigger the glitch and avoid those circumstances.

TL;DR: The code is not the first place admins will go when glitches cause issues; the logs are!

And as before, example sentence:

"Xisuma trawled through the logs, trying to find any indication of the source of the problem."

To Conclude

Code is the rules that govern what stuff can do and how stuff interacts. The stuff itself is data. When something goes wrong, that typically results in the data being in a state it shouldn't be in, wether that be because that thing's velocity is much higher than it should be after taking advantage of the ravager flight glitch, or because a player and a mob's data structures got combined on accident to leave them a player-mob hybrid.

Of course, this broken data is likely caused by a bug/glitch in the code. It could also be caused by somebody malicious who's purposefully trying to break things by messing with the memory in another way. It could also be because a cosmic ray hit a piece of RAM and flipped a single bit (this is an actual thing that happens believe it or not).

Either way, when something goes wrong, the admin's first point of exploration is the logs, not the code. The logs will give the admin a better idea of what the cause of the issue is, and talking with other admins could give them a solution without ever touching the codebase. But worst-case scenario, it is indeed possible for an admin to go spelunking through the codebase to find the cause of an issue and create a patch for it.

This just covers the most common code-related plot points that I personally see in Hermitcraft/other SMP fanfiction. If you have any further questions about writing code-related plot points, feel free to ask! And also, just to reiterate, this is all just my interpretation. Others may interpret differently, and if you do, I'd love to hear what your alternative interpretations are!

PS: I was also planning a section on hacking here, but this post is already getting long and that's complicated, and also I'm bad at hacking. But let me know if you have any questions related to that that you'd like to see in a follow-up post!