#like i know it basically stems from the fact it was easier for me to get an A in STEM classes while putting in minimal effort

[coffeebanana]

Every time I read classic books I feel this pressure to enjoy them, and I just...never do? I can appreciate why they're important or influential for their time, and I appreciate that they exist, but...I just don't enjoy the style? Like they tend to be very repetitive and they have a lot of scenes that frankly...don't do anything to move the story forwards. The kinds of things that today would get the story tossed aside by publishers. And obviously I'm not saying it is bad writing, because again--different time period. Different style. But I wish I could be completely comfortable saying I just don't enjoy those books. For me personally, reading them is often more effort than what I get out of them. And sometimes I will read them anyways because I want to understand references people make to them in other books or media, but at the end of the day they don't bring me joy like modern books or fanfiction do and I think that's okay.

[razorblade180]

Not really in the mood for writing a prompt so I’m just gonna ramble about how cool Weiss is in TSF AU

I basically made her the closest thing to a witch I could without stepping into magic territory. It always bugged me how her semblance and Dust was so compatible but it was never tested to its limits, so I imagine Weiss learned to basically be a pro in the field of dust manipulation. Has a real intuitive sense for it, which is why her kids are so good for their age. A lot of it stems from always getting unarmed in battle.

She learns that she can grab a dust cartridge and put a glyph at the end of it to pull it out and construct things like a saber of pure Dust. Eventually she gets creative enough to throw vials and catch them with glyphs to trigger timed explosions.

In crystal form, Weiss gets the hang of making glyphs and simply pushing the crystal into it to create a flame thrower affect. The most reckless and dangerous trick is using the refined powder state. Even with gloves on, the margin for error when throwing or outlining a pattern with it is small cause a chain reaction could lead the effect back to her hands.

Dust for water isn’t actually a thing, but through countless trail and error, Weiss knows how combine fire and ice Dust to create the desire effects. She even helped researcher and companies create vials with ratios already mixed so other huntsman and individuals could have access to the element.

Is the one who helped teach her brother how to use their semblance. Also started the idea along with Ruby to plan “hunting trips” where Weiss or any of her relatives would go off to kill a powerful a Grimm to add to their summon abilities.

Weiss has in fact killed a dragon. Took her an entire month and she did it for free. She learned create magma during this time and gained a fondness for more practical uses of rock Dust. Eventually she learned to make constructs out of most materials. Even lightning.

Is the manger and agent for both of her children when it comes to their professional lives. Most collaborative works don’t make it past her before she even thinks about bringing them up to her kids.

Regularly considered Penny’s science partner in the study of Dust and its utility. One of them is also pitching ideas to the other and showing rough blueprint ideas. Their most popular hit and meaningful success is modern dust weaving into clothes. Suddenly, winters in Mantle weren’t as harsh and Weiss’s daughter could live an easier life with her condition.

Helped fund Oscar’s therapy practice. Was also his first patient. Some might conflict of interest. Those people don’t know Oscar “I’m not gonna sugarcoat it” Pine. Was a super big help in her darker moments after adjusting to parenthood and old family trauma.

Occasionally surprises her friends and family with appearing in a modeling catalog or runway. It helped her gain some confidence back after having twins. She also likes to make a point that Jaune’s wife is incredibly hot so there’s no point in random women thinking he’s going anywhere, and to make any guy that looked down on him feel shame. Jaune matches the energy by also looking gorgeous when the opportunity arises.

Weiss also makes no effort to hide any scars. That includes wearing a half shirt or bikini that shows where Cinder stabs her or the two scars on her face. That way her daughter and even her brother, feel more comfortable about their scars.

If you ask her what her biggest sacrifice is, it’s making sure she never matches hairstyle or clothes with her daughter. Weiss kinda misses the ponytail but Summer will look at her a little funny despite them not being the same kind. Eventually Summer will stop caring and rationalize they look alike regardless of anything they do. They’re both just two pretty ladies other people get jealous of. She doesn’t have this attitude with Winter!!!

The top of everyone’s emergency contact list. Also the only adult aside from Ruby that every child (except her own daughter) feels immensely comfortable with emotionally. Even Yang’s kid is pretty soft around Weiss. Practically karma for how much Weiss’s son adored Yang when he was little.

[princelylove]

Dearest Prince,

Your La Squadra post is one of my favorites and it got me curious about some of the guys.

Ghiaccio is a name we barely see on your blog and I would love to know more about your interpretation of him. Whatever it is you got; from the regular facts to the complete degeneracy, I am interested in knowing.

Thank you for your time and interest, as well as your patience, I've been lacking in the "sending asks" department.

Heart heart xoxo

Oh, Ciocio. My favorite 4chan user. Sure.

Ghiaccio is one of those characters that, to me, are so established in my head that I feel as if I'm doing nothing by elaborating. It's very clear cut. Incel that actually goes to the gym and has a job, so he's automatically better than other forum users, yet he's not because he's always on there and is the first to make fun of 'the losers.'

Ghiaccio has a certain sense of superiority because he's not in that sort of Hazamada-ish porn addict incel category- yeah, he's a virgin in his middle-to-late twenties, and has basically no eye are el friends, but he's not a fucking degenerate. He's better. Yeah, he doesn't inherently see women as objects- it's just, uh, factual that they're only after... certain things.

Ghiaccio has a very complex relationship with women. They trigger his abandonment issues worse than any man could, even if all they're doing is acting indifferently. No matter what you do, you can't win. Play into it without trying? Tease. Don't play into it without trying? Prude. Bitch. Play into it on purpose? Whore. Don't play into it on purpose? You're playing hard to get. It's not like Ghiaccio actively thinks of women as lesser, or just less intelligent- obviously he doesn't think like that, intelligence has nothing to do with sex, jackass- it's just that those are the first words that pop into his head when he's angry and it seems like the one he has eyes for is leaving.

Always leaving. It's always something. He did something wrong again, and your stupid woman brain thought he'd just get it and would understand entirely when you didn't tell him what it was, and- He'll calm down eventually.

His relationship issues with women could stem from a lot of things. It could be his mother, the fact that he never had a long term relationship with a girl his age, the fact that he mainly consumes media (porn, or fetish content.) that objectifies them- any number of things could be it. His sexism actually isn't in the classic 'women are in their prime when they're younger' way, it's more of a 'women prefer older men because older men are real men' way. Which can get confusing at times, because he's the type to project heavily onto the women in his life, and he's not very good at explaining himself.

It's easier to ramble about a set topic with clear facts. It's objectively correct that Venesia- yeah, Venesia, say it in their fuckin' dialect you God damn [REDACTED. Reason for redaction: contains slur.]- is the actual name. Feelings aren't something you can fact check on a different tab.

It affects him more when a woman doesn't show interest in him. When a guy does it, it's like yeah, of course, fuckin' low value male would be jealous of him. Ghiaccio struggles with his self worth and meeting his own expectations. It's a lot of internalized loathing that presents itself as "Of course you're using me for dinner and want me to pay. You're trying to cuck me." Since Ghiaccio never really learned proper coping mechanisms, he usually just beats the shit out of whatever piece of furniture is closest to him. Goodbye, end table. It was nice knowing you.

Ghiaccio knows nothing of gentle love, but he knows he has to act right or his darling is going to freak out on him and give him a massive headache. He thinks he's above the guys that hit their bitch their partner, but he always manages to bruise them in some way, shape, or form. He has a bit of a problem with grabbing his darling too tightly and not easing up.

It's both a possessive thing and a complete accident. He just doesn't know what to do when you panic in front of him- holding you down works, usually? Yeah? Going for your throat should be fine, you can feel like you're secure in one spot, why the fuck are you hitting him now???? He's not going to seriously hit you, stop freaking out, holy shit. He's not a bad man that's planning on raping you or some shit, jesus christ, can you just calm down and think rationally?

When you actually calm down, likely after he gets pissed and fucks off for a while, he'll come back to check on you. He likes you. You should eat. He cut up some shit things for you. He just doesn't like when you're sobbing and assuming shit and acting hysterical.

He's really trying. He's really, really trying. It's hard to calm down and be the man his darling needs, but you keep saying such moronic shit- it's fine. It's fine. You're just a little stupid, he can work with that, if you start to listen to him.

Ghiaccio's good for hugs and that's about it. He won't let anything harm you. It's stupid to think that he'd just allow some other guy to touch you or speak to you enough to harm you. Come on, stop crying, he's right here, he can give you what you need to survive and be happy, he can be good to you if you don't piss him off intentionally. He can, and will. He's just frustrated right now.

The next day, when the bruises form. . . it's hard to hide how pleased he is. God, that's hot. Should give you more. What's a better way to get frustration out of his system?

[scribble-dee-vee]

Writeblr Intro circa 2024

Hi writeblr!! Sooo, I've been around here since about 2014. (Yes, I am ancient.) However, I've been dormant for the past 4-5 years. Blame college and a brief stint on Twitter. Now that I'm active again, I thought I should make an updated writeblr intro so ppl know my Deal. Basically, I want to engage with other folks who write fiction (esp original SF), and that's a little easier if I have a clear post that outlines what I do. Here to make connections and hear about your blorbos :)

About me

Hi, I'm Vee! They/them, 23, 💖 🤍 🧡

I do journalism/comms in western New York

My literary jam is feminist/adult SF and gothic lit (OG or modern) 🥀 ⚔️ 🌙

Enthusiastic about gay people, body horror, and sociopolitical allegories

I cook, run, play tabletop games, and occasionally draw. Other than that, I'm mostly writing (for work and for fun)

If you were on pre-2020 writeblr, you likely know me from my eight billion daily tag games. (I still like tag games and appreciate u for tagging me. I have also gained adult responsibilities and better mental health, so I respond very slowly now. <3)

Always happy to get asks or dms, tho as I've noted: I may reply slowly.

Sometimes open to beta read! I only read one longer project at a time, but it's always super fun :)

I tag very consistently – happy to tag triggers for followers/moots

Fun fact: I love mushroom hunting and worked as a mycology TA. #cottagecoreera 🍄 🧚‍♀️ 🌱

About my creative writing

I write,,,, feminist/adult SF with gothic leanings (surprise!)

Longform and short! Trying to do more short writing this year, and I'll likely share a bit on Tumblr. It's easier to clip a short story than a 150k novel, god bless.

The Aesthetic: moral g(r)ays, Victoriana, androids/cyborgs, Women™, monstrous femininity, incessant Hamlet/Frankenstein motifs, extremely boring socioeconomic worldbuilding, evil queens and/or dilfs, psychosexual witchcraft, probably a cat. Also, an ominous, plot-relevant letter laced with anthrax from your unhinged and brilliant ex-wife. Open if you dare.

Major projects

I'm going to be writing some short work this year, but these are the longer projects that I have going in the background. If I reblog blorbo-related text posts, they probably have something to do with these.

Let me know if you want to be added to any project-specific taglists 😎

Heart of Lead – Series

The big one

Perpetually evolving

Never ceasing

Pls send help I can't stop adding shit

5-book gothic fantasy epic that I'll definitely publish one day but probably no time soon! My bastard child, my wicked firstborn, my greatest love <3

Character-oriented political drama set in a pseudo-Victorian, dystopian oligarchy where everyone's heart is made out of metal. It's about coming of age and discovering queer identity in a world that is absolutely fucked. God is an extraterrestrial lesbian who gives ppl very traumatizing magic powers. There are cyborgs, shapeshifters, and morally gray women in STEM. It's tight as fuck idk what else what to tell u.

Book 1 is about achillean monarchists, and book 2 is about sapphic anarchists. There are only two genders, I guess.

At this point, I've drafted most of the books at least once. Working to refine a lot of raw material atm!

Tag: "heart of lead tag" or "hol tag"

Lost Letters – Book

Aka the current active HoL WIP, and book one in the revised series structure

Length: 80k as of now; around 120-140k when the first draft is finished, I presume.

Genre: adult fantasy, gothic, noir detective drama?? um?? If you want me to frame it in BookTok terms (why?) it's a dark academia villain x villain tragic romantasy. Hrgh.

Summary: Cyborg soldier goes to college, joins a shady socialite frat, and falls in love with the jilted heir-apparent to the throne. Hilarity ensues.

(By "hilarity," I mean a militant revolutionary faction and a tragedy of Greek proportions.)

POV characters: Charles (the cyborg), Dale (the heir), and Cecelia (Charles' sister, a junior detective, the love of my life and potentially the Chosen One???)

This book is twisty and dark and immensely fun to write.

I'm about halfway through the first full draft! Hoping to share snippets and vaguepost about my children here.

Tag: "lost letters tag" (also "hol tag," tho that one's less specific)

The Last of Mortal Tourists – Book

The next longform project on the docket!

Length: a standalone work that will hopefully fall on the shorter novel/novella spectrum.

Genre: literary SF, cyberqueer, psychological space quest

Summary: The consciousness of a dead coding genius, trapped inside a spaceship, seeks a new planet to sustain their sister, the last surviving human, after the destruction of Earth.

If you're here to get wildly philosophical about gender and the myth of essential self, this is the story for you! That's why I'm writing it, lol. 🏳️‍⚧️ 🚀 🤖

This one started out as a short story (100% finished) which I want to expand.

POV: Archer Alto, the coder. Spaceship? Human? Soul?

Supporting Cast: Pandora, the last human, and Abby, a holographic impression of Archer's childhood consciousness

Tag: "the last of mortal tourists tag" or "tlomt tag"

If you read all this way, you get a whole bouquet of flowers that are certainly NOT poisonous: 🌸 🌹 💐 🥀 🌺

<3

[csuitebitches]

Heylo, I don’t know if you answer to personal relationship questions. I have recently stumbled to your account and I really love your content and I would love your advice on this.

I have recently realised I am not comfortable around masculine energy. I mean I always knew but I thought I had a progress and like I would want a relationship with a guy with healthy masculine energy. Turns out, being around masculine energy still scares me and I just don’t know what to do. How to overcome this uneasiness?

Hmm. I used to be the same way. I’m not sure if my story will resonate with you but see if it helps.

Growing up I wasn’t the beautiful friend. I was the chubby, spectacled, shy girl with a stutter. It took me a while to get myself sorted and feel confident.

But as a result, guys never really paid attention to me till I turned about 16-17. Which, for a girl, is pretty late considering that my friends were all dating boys since 11-12 (not like it even counts but basically the fact their crushes reciprocated their feelings and mine never did was a bit … crushing).

This meant that I began dating boys, that very frankly, didn’t deserve me. I began dating boys who were ready to “settle” for me because I thought I could never get the guys I wanted anyway. Or I began dating guys I would have the upper hand with; as in, I knew they liked me more and I could leave the relationship anytime. I know it sounds psychotic.

Confident guys made me nervous. Even as I grew older, lost all that weight, grew my hair out till my waist, learned how to use make up, got a dermatologist, went to speech therapy and became objectively 100x more attractive, I still felt like that “ugly” 12 year old on the inside even if i showed a very confident front. As my confidence had grown in another aspects of my life, my career, hobbies, academics were good - but men still made me nervous.

I realised that the problem was with me.

The fact that I dated men “below” my level showed what I thought of my own self, what I thought I truly deserved.

My fear stemmed from the fact of never being good enough for a man, not being beautiful enough, smart enough, fun enough. All these other girls were so seamlessly confident and I seemed to only have the fake kind of confidence.

True confidence can be spotted from a mile away.

Here’s what helped me. I began focusing on myself and began cultivating healthy platonic relationships with good men. I can never date these guys but they’re like my family now.

I think what made me sort of wary of confident, healthily masculine men was that their sense of identity was very strong. They knew what they liked and didn’t like, they knew who they were, they weren’t afraid to say what was on their mind. The last guy I was seeing projected exactly this and in that relationship (it was healthy, ended for other reasons) I felt very comfortable in my feminine. Which he was equally appreciative of. But I still felt not good enough.

You need to essentially develop friendships with men. Don’t look at them as creatures from other planets. Talk to them, make them your friend. Men are much more easier to befriend than women in my opinion - I’m always more conscious of myself around women than men. (that doesn’t mean that i don’t like being friends with women; I love my girlfriends, I feel it’s harder to impress a woman than a man).

At the same time, work on your confidence and try to figure out the root cause of why exactly you feel so uncomfortable.

Here’s another post that I had written about this topic.

[outfoxt]

Affixes, Clitics, and Particles

i think that these parts of language are really cool! so im going to try to explain them :D also i definitely did not get sent down an hours long rabbit hole of linguistic papers and i also definitely didn't find out that the reason i wanted to make this post is actually a misconception :D i love ignoring things :D

Affixes:

the wikipedia article for affixes says that "in linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form."

in hopefully simpler terms, this basically means that an affix is a letter, or a group of letters that form a single sound or syllable, that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form.

some examples of these are the somewhat well known prefix and suffix, but also the beloved infix:

prefix: undone suffix: spotless infix: abso-fucking-lutely

sidenote: my favorite thing about english infixes is that they pretty much only work with expletives. in fact, there's a tom scott video about expletive infixations!

Clitics:

wikipedia defines a clitic as such: "a clitic is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on another word or phrase."

in layman's terms: a clitic is a letter, or a group of letters that form a single sound or syllable, that has the function of a word in a sentence, but depends on another word or phrase based on the sound rules of the language.

a few examples of clitics can be seen in finnish (which also has a great many affixes but we're not talking about those right now):

-ko/kö -han/hän -pa/pä -kin

the spelling of the clitic depends on vowel harmony. if you want to learn more, this dissertation is all about finnish clitics!

you may be asking yourself how to tell the difference between clitics and other parts of speech. well this study has just the thing for you! quite a few tests are suggested by the author of this study if you want to be able to tell if something is a clitic or not, including some of the following:

a phonological test observe how the clitic forms a phonological unit with an independent word. (do not ask me how this one works i dont know) accentual test "clitics are accentually dependent, while full words are accentually independent." put simply, if you can't put stress on it, it's probably a clitic syntactic test a word can stand on its own and be subject to normal word processes such as tense changes while a clitic cannot do this

Particles:

"'Particle' is a cover term for items that do not fit easily into syntactic and semantic generalizations about the language[.]"

read: "particle" is a miscellaneous, catch all term for anything that doesn't fit into the above two categories (or any other word categories like nouns, verbs, etc.)

the author of this study (who i'm going to refer to as Zwicky from now on because it's easier) says that theres no such thing as a particle and that its distinction from affixes, clitics, words, and clauses is unnecessary. i think thats an. interesting take.

anyway even though Zwicky just said theres no such thing as particles (which, how could he do that? theres kids around! we dont want to ruin the magic!) he concedes that there is actually a group of words that are commonly called particles that he agrees are actually particles. but he decides to call them discourse markers instead. because fuck you.

i dont like any of the words that Zwicky included so i made a list of my own:

-ね (ne) eh (canadian english) innit (common transcription of "isn't it", british english)

the funny thing is im coming out of this still not entirely clear on what a particle is. i thought i knew, i did some research, realized i didnt know, and now i'm here. based on how Zwicky puts it, it feels like the category of "particle" exists to accommodate the fact that there might be words* that arent affixes, clitics, words, or clauses but it feels like Zwicky is just being contrary. I should probably have done more research but this post was supposed to be done 24 hours ago.

out of context highlights from my research process: - sanskrit - the panini rule - doch - verbosely long section titles

*i dont actually mean words, i mean a morpheme which is a letter or a group of letters that form the representation of one sound that carries meaning, but i didn't want to make that sentence long and unreadable

if i'm wrong, please tell me! i would appreciate being corrected, i know i am not an expert on this topic in the slightest.

[chocogoblin]

ToA x LMK (?)

Had a random crossover idea. Spoilers for people who haven't seen the last season of Trollhunters, but then again that show is years old so like :p

Basically, in the final fight between the Trollhunters and Morgana, when Claire and Morgana go into the shadow realm. Yano how it's not shown? Yeah had a funny idea if Macaque from LMK was coming through, and looked at the two and was like (to Morgana) "Bitch for the last time I told you not to start fights here," and beats the ever loving shit outta her.

Anyways, bro is looking around and is like "oh shit kid you're still here-" as he looks at Claire, who is still recovering from the fact Morgana is dead and gone now, and everything is over, and hey the shadow realm is nice without the fear of Morgana being there looking over her shoulder.

This is my convoluted way of saying that Macaque after seeing a baby shadowmancer, (cause you can never find any of those these days who aren't absolutely ancient) just looks at Claire and goes "you can do better than that" and starts helping her with shadow magic. Maybe at first it was a way to get more power and then he just starts to care for her. But in my head a majority of the reasoning that Mac decided to help her is because it's a dying art and she's probably the youngest shadowmancer in the world at the moment.

I can see a lot of stuff coming out of this. Like just from the top of my head:

-Claire becomes one of those immortal wizards and flash forward to the future meets LMK crew. (from this idea stems my second idea of Pigsy and Tang trying to unlock Claire's tragic backstory(TM) even though there isn't much of that here.)

-Dad Macaque, because, come on.

-ROTT movie just, not happening now that there's a monkey on par with the guy who beat up all of heaven including all it's gods on their side. I'd imagine Demi-gods (because that's what arcane order is listed as on the wiki) is alot easier than gods, and def a lot easier than losing (lol) to Sun Wukong.

-Angsting to eachother. Think of any lmk x toa pairing, and you can make an angst conversation out of it some way or another.

-Half-troll Jim just going to Megapolis with Claire to visit Mac and becoming obssessed with the anti gravity arcade because it's open at night and just hell yeah.

-Lore building perhaps with the two universes mixed together??

-Claire helping out with the shadow play stuff while she visits Mac. Bonus points if she gets a mention in his vent play about the hero and the warrior.

-Toby and Mei playing games together, and Toby getting his ass absolutely handed to him.

-Mac going away to visit Claire during s3 or between seasons to vent about "what the fuck is going on kid- " because alot of the lmk villains don't go outside asia except if they want to rule the world (cough, lbd) so they can't really find him all the way in California, America lol.

-Bonus points if Claire learns how to speak Mandarin or Chinese (i forgot what the LMK gang spoke originally because i'm a silly lil english speaker who only watches the eng dub) so now she's trilingual. Spanish, English, whatever the hell the lmk gang speaks.

I dunno the ToA fandom is pretty dead, and I don't know how many LMK fans know about ToA, so. rip me ig. if this post gets a few notes i'll consider posting the art i made for this so far ('art' as if i'm not talking about a few sketches in my lil book of sketch).

[littleweowmeow]

I see you repost a lot of pro zuko post in the last weeks and I wanted to ask, have you notice how much more anti zuko post have been posted in the last months ? I don’t usually mind zuko metas but the last ones I’ve seen are sooooo full of bullshit, they’ll claim things that didn’t happen in the series or misinterpreting things, to make him appear more villainous or more unredeemable ? kind of weird.

i do understand that the sudden rise of zuko’s hate comes from fanon zuko who’s basically a whole ass new character and certainly not canon zuko, but it’s seriously annoying. like I feel that this happens also with Aang. he also gets shit on by soooo many people for the wrong reasons, always citing things that didn’t really happen (or at least not like it’s usually cited) and… is the atla fandom seriously regressing ? how is it possible to misinterpret things like that in a children show. ofc atla is pretty mature for a children show, but it’s also not some Faustian bible with hours long needed interpretation to understand something.

Oh, of course I noticed. Actually, I used to be a fan of reading canon/fanon Zuko comparison posts, but then I realized something. The people writing such posts (mainly Azula Stans) just took advantage of the hype around canon/fanon Zuko, and the one they call the "canon" Zuko is actually not Zuko from the series at all. Seriously, Zuko is much cooler than all this. In fact, this is just a covered-up hatred in order to expose their favorite (Azula) better than she really is, because of incorrect characteristics and other bullshit addressed to Zuko. In general, the tag "anti Zuko" is blocked because I will not tolerate this diarrhea in my feed, but it continues to appear. This is not a criticism or discussion at all, so it's not worth paying attention to.

It seems to me that Atla fandom has sunk to the point that when I see a person saying the right and ironically obvious things, I almost idolize that person because damn it, is there really a person with brains here. What is happening in the fandom is either a special incitement to hatred for God knows what reasons, or people are really degrading at the speed of light. I know that a lot of hatred for Zuko stems from the ship wars (it's just ridiculous), but there is another point. Due to Zuko, it is easier to put your favorite in a more favorable light (it does not matter what specific example we are talking about) For example, this idea that Zuko is a bad firebender is a lie hammered into his head by his abusive father and the show actively refutes this idea. Some people just benefit from picking it up, it's something like "woooo Zuko is a prince and he's had the best teachers all his life and he's still worse than the "character name". Although this is a complete discrediting of the facts and not a desire to take into account the fact that Zuko's mental problems had a strong effect on his bending. And of course this nonsense about him being bad because he's not a child prodigy. There are many such examples, some of them have become considered canon. For example, that he is bad at firebending and stupider than the rest. Now there is really a lot of mischaracterization and humiliation of Zuko, but this is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to make their favorite seem better. It's just not worth a drop of time.

About Aang, I don't often see content with him, but my God, the reason for almost all of Aang hate is the ship wars. I may be wrong, because I have never participated in ship wars, so this is just a look from the outside. I'm sure that Aang hate reasons are almost the same as what I said about Zuko.

[bismuthbookshelf]

A Marine Biology Review Of The Original Little Mermaid (part 1?)

I would love to give this a proper explanation or some decent-sounding context, but really all I can say is: I had an idea!

Okay, well, a bit of context I can provide is that I have a playlist of narrations that I listen to whenever I'm struggling to sleep (they work with 98% effectiveness!), and one of the narrations on that playlist is of the original Little Mermaid story (link to the youtube video/audio of the narration HERE if you're interested). So I've heard the story a fair few times now, and I'm an Ocean Nerd, so I thought it would be fun to have a look at the descriptions of ocean/marine stuff in it and talk about what's accurate and what's not. And, well, I recently graduated university with a bachelor of science, with a marine biology major, so that gives me some validity, right? :P

Note that my intention is not to tear the story to shreds and call it terrible - I just like to analyse and ramble and try to educate when I can. Anyway, I'm just gonna keep going until I decide this post is long enough, and then we'll see if I make a part 2. But without further ado, let's go!

(Final note, THIS is the translation I'm referencing, as obviously the original original Little Mermaid is in Danish, not English)

Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it.

So you might be aware that "fathom" is both a unit of measurement used for the ocean (about 1.83 metres, or 6 feet), and also a word meaning "understand or comprehend", but actually neither of those definitions are at play here! As the Merriam-Webster page for the word says: "By the 1600s fathom had taken to the seas, with the verb being used to mean "to measure by a sounding line". So basically this sentence is saying that the water is so deep that it cannot be measured! Lacking fathom in more ways than one! ;)

Anyway how deep are we talking? Sunlight can't penetrate any further down than 1000 metres (~3,280 feet) at maximum, but really the ocean often begins to "get dimmer" once you go below 200 metres (~656 feet). However, we must also remember that the concept of depth can be kinda relative/subjective (depth is in the eye of the beholder?), and what is considered deep to a dude in 1837 might not be considered as deep to someone like me now when it comes to talking about the ocean. What we can say is that this depth has to at least be longer than the length of a ship's cable, which itself could apparently range anywhere from 169-220 metres. So let's say that the depth is around 300 metres, (~984 feet) - a good, round number, definitely can't be measured by a single cable, and still close enough to the surface that there would be at least some sunlight penetration getting down there. Moving on!

We must not imagine that there is nothing at the bottom of the sea but bare yellow sand.

Lovingly, this may in fact be the truest sentence in the whole dang story.

No, indeed; the most singular flowers and plants grow there;

And goodbye to the accuracy!

The only type of flowering plant (i.e. in the Angiospermae clade) that lives in seawater is seagrass, but 1, they aren't exactly known for their flowers (they can be quite small and not always very flower-like), and 2, the deepest water that any species can survive in (specifically Halophila decipiens) is 85 metres (279 feet) - a depth most definitely fathomable, and a bit different to the depth estimation I came up with!

the leaves and stems of which are so pliant, that the slightest agitation of the water causes them to stir as if they had life. Fishes, both large and small, glide between the branches, as birds fly among the trees here upon land.

First of all, I know Hans (yeah I'm just gonna call him Hans; it's quicker and easier) was trying to make an analogy, but when I think of fish moving around at the bottom of the seafloor or like in a reef or something, I'm imagining small fish that dart about, rather than gliding (and for that matter, most birds wouldn't be 'gliding' through a forest either - gliding is for wide open space!)

And second of all, any plants that have thin, delicate stems, are not likely to have "branches" coming off of them, aquatic or not!

(Also I swear I'm not gonna talk about every single sentence but there's just a lot to talk about in this opening paragraph).

In the deepest spot of all, stands the castle of the Sea King. Its walls are built of coral...

Dead coral? Actually, there are some species of deep-sea coral that can grow anywhere from 150 feet to 10,000 feet below sea level, but still, you can't expect any coral species to just conveniently grow into the shape of a massive castle, so I guess it'd just be used as a building material?

...and the long, gothic windows are of the clearest amber. 

"Clearest amber" definitely sounds like an oxymoron - 'amber' is also a colour term for a reason! But turns out that the concept of amber in the ocean is not as dumb as I initially thought. Amber, in case you don't know, is fossilized tree resin, and obviously there aren't any actual trees growing in the ocean (more on that later), but there is amber that came from large trees that lived many millions of years ago that got washed away by large rivers and eventually carried to the ocean, and in some parts of the world (most notably in the Baltic Sea Region), amber can (or at least could) sometimes be found washed up on the beach! (But seriously, those windows would be a translucent orange or yellow colour at best).

The roof is formed of shells, that open and close as the water flows over them. Their appearance is very beautiful, for in each lies a glittering pearl, which would be fit for the diadem of a queen.

I'm not sure whether the shells kind of act as 'hatches' that let water and oxygen move between the inside and outside of the castle (helping equalize pressure?) or whether it's just a bunch of clams/bivalves sitting on top of a roof foundation thing, because of the pearl mention which implies that they have an underside. I kinda like my first idea better, though.

on that account she wore twelve oysters on her tail;

I wanna know how exactly Hans was imagining this to work. Like would they all be stuck to the caudal peduncle area (the tail minus the fins)? Would some be on the fins? Oysters secrete a special adhesive substance to help them stick to rocks and stuff, but would that even work on a mermaid tail, and if it did, would it make it harder to swim?

the youngest was the prettiest of them all; her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose-leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea;

Idk about the skin being "delicate", but honestly a mermaid living 300 metres below sea level, where the sunlight would be somewhat reduced compared to further up in the photic zone, honestly probably would have fairly pale skin (a mermaid living in a tropical coral reef, however, might have darker skin, to be better suited to the large amount of sun exposure).

The large amber windows were open, and the fish swam in, just as the swallows fly into our houses when we open the windows, excepting that the fishes swam up to the princesses, ate out of their hands, and allowed themselves to be stroked.

The windows have hinges? Do they use the same kind of "hinges" that bivalves use?

What are they feeding the fish?

I would love to pat fish underwater though ngl.

Outside the castle there was a beautiful garden, in which grew bright red and dark blue flowers, and blossoms like flames of fire; the fruit glittered like gold, and the leaves and stems waved to and fro continually.

"Come with me, and you'll be, in a world of pure imagination!"

It feels very self-indulgent to me, but honestly I kinda feel like I gotta respect the commitment!

I guess Hans was trying to provide answers/explanations for what exactly the mermaids would eat, but honestly I feel it'd be more likely for them to be largely carnivorous, feeding on stuff like fish, crustaceans, and mussels, with maybe also some inclusions of macroalgae like kelp/seaweed in their diet as well.

The earth itself was the finest sand, but blue as the flame of burning sulphur. 

Hmm no I don't think so. But anyway we're gonna be skipping ahead just a little bit now!

She planted by the statue a rose-colored weeping willow.

I hope I don't have to make it clear to you that trees don't grow underwater, and definitely not weeping willows!

She could see the moon and stars shining faintly;

The moon? Yeah sure benefit of the doubt. But seeing the stars from that far down below? Yeah nope ain't no way

(Also, if the water really is that clear, with such high visibility, then there mustn't be many nutrients in the water, and they likely would in fact be some distance away from any coastline, and be moreso in open ocean).

...to lie in the moonlight, on a sandbank...to listen to the sounds of the music, the noise of carriages, and the voices of human beings, and then to hear the merry bells peal out from the church steeples;

Do mermaids have super-sensitive hearing or something? Ain't no way you could hear all of that from a sandbank! Like if it said that this mermaid sister was on some secluded beach near a town, then maybe, but a "sandbank" is a little area above the water level that's out beyond the shoreline! Maybe not super far out to sea, but to hear carriages, people talking, and music? The only way this would be somewhat plausible in my mind is that it was a seaside town, and the sandbank was relatively close to shore, in which case wouldn't this mermaid be at risk of getting spotted???

she swam up a broad river that emptied itself into the sea.

How wide though??? 'River' can be such a vague term, because it might mean something like a large creek, or it might mean something that's a good couple of miles/kilometres in width, if not bigger than that. But for this instance I imagine it as being more like a large creek, like one that might run through bushland after some periods of heavy rain here in Queensland.

On the banks she saw green hills covered with beautiful vines; palaces and castles peeped out from amid the proud trees of the forest;

Again I wanna know what exactly was going on inside Hans' imagination when he was visualising this. Like why are there vines on hills? How close are they to the river? How big is the forest and how many palaces and castles are clustered together in this area? (Ngl this may just be a case of "who cares about the logistics, it just sounds nice", and as a bit of a hobby writer myself, honestly Mood)

the rays of the sun were so powerful that she was obliged often to dive down under the water to cool her burning face.

Again, there are hills and forests close by to the river, yet apparently there are no shadows being cast over the water at all? (Idk maybe she was just swimming around midday). Also was she doing backstroke or was she just frequently stopping to look around at stuff?

She had seated herself upon one of the largest [icebergs], and let the wind play with her long hair,

Sitting on an iceberg??? Girl how are you not freezing? (Also, like with the first sister, how was she not spotted? Like yes all the ships were trying to steer away from the icebergs, but surely that still involves someone keeping an eye on the water to make sure that the boat is moving away from danger and not towards it? And surely a mermaid would stick out like a sore thumb?)

only that the mermaids have no tears, and therefore they suffer more.

Hans casually drops a line like this and then just moves on like it's no big deal, bruh.

Aquatic mammals such as whales do not in fact have tear glands, but they do still have special eye glands that secrete an oily substance to help clean and lubricate the eyes! (And humans are the only species (as far as I'm aware) that produce tears as an emotional response).

she placed a wreath of white lilies in her hair, and every flower leaf was half a pearl.

"Flower leaf" as in petals, or like the actual leaves? And you mean they were made of pearls, or did they have pearl halves sitting on top of them??

Then the old lady ordered eight great oysters to attach themselves to the tail of the princess to show her high rank.

She ordered the oysters to attach themselves to the princess's tail? I definitely somehow missed or forgot that from all the times I've heard this narrated.

Okay so I guess the mermaids can communicate with oysters and likely other sea life (sure why not), and I guess this low-key implies that the oysters are using their natural method of attachment, i.e. special adhesive substance which is kinda sorta like their own form of concrete.

“But they hurt me so,” said the little mermaid.

So like do they actually make it harder to swim? And how long do they stick on for? Forever? Until you tell them to get off of you? How big/small are these oysters?

Oh, how gladly she would have shaken off all this grandeur, and laid aside the heavy wreath!

I mean I guess the use of pearls in the wreath would make it heavier than a typical flower crown, but surely it still wouldn't feel that heavy underwater? With like water density and stuff?

(Though for that matter, how would any sort of crown stay on your head underwater when moving around, unless it was like fixed tight on top or something?)

.

I was originally planning to go a bit further into the story on this post, but I've done a fair bit of rambling already, and I don't want this post becoming too long, so I might go ahead and make a part 2 post (at some point, I can't say when), and depending on how this post goes, I might make a part 3 as well! Who knows!

[polliwoggers]

The design on that lore-dump is absolutely on-point, by the way. Cool and easily readable. :3 The deterioration of Dark and Heart Matters got me wondering about where Kirby fits into things...I'm assuming he's ah. Y'know. Not natural. :) (And for that matter, how's this affect Meta-Knight...?)

Thank you so much!! I did my best to keep it interesting and easy to read, so I'm super happy it came across that way! :D -- and, I'm glad you asked! i hope you don't mind me rambling for a minute here; i'm always very eager to jump at opportunities to talk about kirby lore lol. under the cut because it got kind of long.

I'll start with Meta knight because he's easier. Essentially, he is the very last of the original line of Puffballs within the primary dimension most kirby games take place in. He does not have enough Heart matter to be able to safely donate any to potential offspring -- if you yourself only have, say, an atom's worth of the stuff, you can't really donate half of it without blowing yourself up in the process. Splitting atoms and all that.

Dark Meta Knight is in a similar boat; as dimensional boundaries solidified over time, some early puffballs got caught in different dimensions and founded their own parallel lineages, of which DMK is now the final product of his own.

Galacta knight is a holdover from a previous generation of puffballs many centuries ago, and has a comparatively higher concentration of Heart matter in his body than either MK or DMK do. He is the only one who I could confidently say would be able to create an offspring without dying in the process, but that'd require freeing himself of the crystal first, which seems very unlikely.

GK is also, like, mega insane from being sealed away for an eternity outside of time, so I don't know that he'd be a great candidate for mentoring a young one, assuming the thought even crosses his mind. Regardless, GK, MK, and DMK are the only remaining true-blue puffballs out there in the galaxy.

I left it purposely vague in the post what I meant about Kirby's unnatural-ness, so that people could feel free to fill in that void with whatever origin story they prefer, whether that be an elder god's dying bid at happiness or a precocious experiment of Nightmare's gone rogue. In cases like these, the "unnatural-ness" just refers to how he doesn't have a lineage stretching back to the dawn of time like MK and the other knights, and is instead the product of something newer.

…buuuut, when it comes to what I personally like to think about Kirby's origins, that "unnatural-ness" has another aspect to it. I like to think of Kirby not as a continuation or reincarnation of Void, but moreso as a sibling to it. That is, if Void's creation of all matter is meant to represent the Big Bang, then Kirby is just that: another Big Bang, possessing infinite energy and potential. It happened spontaneously once, why shouldn't it spontaneously happen again?

The reason why this origin is extra "unnatural" is that, with infinite energy, it might be more accurate to say Kirby is made of Chaos than he is Heart matter. I have another lorepost about how Chaos works here (on the last slide), but suffice it to say that it's basically the "stem cells" of matter, and can twist itself into any matter type its wielder likes -- Dream, Dark, Heart, or Soul.

For Kirby, that has always meant embodying Heart matter, giving him the appearance and powerset of a natural puffball with a high Heart matter concentration. No outsider -- nor even Kirby himself -- would be able to recognize him as anything other than a particularly powerful puffball. Except Meta knight.

Being, effectively, the last of his kind, Meta's experience with other puffballs is quite limited; but he knows enough to suspect Kirby is more than meets the eye. There are little idiosyncrasies that just don't add up.

Kirby's demeanor, his abilities, the fact he doesn't visibly age, that he hasn't begun growing wings or horns after having been alive how long, now? -- his complete disinterest and irreverence toward puffball history, the fact he doesn't have parents, and his willingness to give everybody -- even Dark matter -- a chance. These things would be unthinkable to a "true" puffball. Everyone on the outside looking in assumes the friendly, bouncy Kirby is the "normal" one, and that Meta knight is the overly-stoic oddball, but it is very much the other way around.

When first encountering him, Meta also assumed that Kirby was just a "regular" but powerful puffball child that had somehow slipped through the cracks. However, over the years (and after Kirby's repeated victories against enemies that even MK couldn't ever hope to deal with), these small peculiarities became more and more apparent to MK, sometimes even verging on straight-up uncanny. Nowadays -- and especially after the fight with Void Termina -- Meta knight doesn't know what to think anymore.

Of course, that doesn't stop MK from respecting Kirby as a long-time friend and rival! Even as Meta slowly realized Kirby might be more than even Kirby himself thinks he is, they grew closer as friends and allies. Also, with how friendly and kind he is, Kirby's just hard to hate. They respect each other a lot, even if Kirby's "unnatural-ness" sometimes triggers an uncanny valley response in "true" puffballs.

[guhamun]

Kitty wants me to ramble about Neuvi and emotions so I will ramble KJHFDSDSF. Basically, everything with Neuvi is a work in progress with him. You’d think that hundreds of years around humans would have taught him a great deal about feelings and whatnot, but the thing is, it hasn’t. He’s still very much learning, and this primarily stems from the fact that he doesn’t actively ask about these things with others. Him talking to W.riothesley that one time during the Carol event, or when N.avia talked to him after it rained when she confronted him about her father, is not the norm. Most of the time, he sits in contemplation and tries to figure these things out on his own as he does not wish to burden others with whatever is floating about in his head. As a result, many of his feelings tend to come out as the rain that falls over Fontaine.

This isn’t necessarily negative emotions as it can rain because he’s just feeling really happy, but during the time where he had to do trial after trial and it made him melancholic, it rained quite a bit as a result of him not knowing how to process those feelings. Sadness is what the Fontanians have connected with rain as it is sadness that is normally what brings it about (this has changed since the incident with the Archon, though). Emotions like love are quite complex, far more than most realize, and as such, it is something that would take him some time to understand and work through as he is still, very much a dragon in human form. Being among humans has opened his thoughts to different things, opening the door to questions he might not have really pondered. It is much easier for him to work through what he's feeling by talking to someone else, but getting him to actively talk about this is not an easy feat without a great deal of trust such as him talking to the Traveler -- primarily because they are an outside presence and not Fontanian.

[lightinlimbo]

I'll make a more thought-out version of this post some time but man religious trauma and plurality can manifest itself in some real fucking particular ways. For me namely it has been through the largely Christian idea (or at least modern/popular Christian ideas in the US) that a being existing in a body other than the percieved original is either an angel or (more likely) a demon.

Both of these things carry huge weight with them, the former in the past making me feel like I have to be some perfect role model or guide and the latter making me feel like everything I do is secretly evil, causing harm to us, or that my existence in our system is something parasitic.

This would be easier to let go of if it weren't for the fact that a lot of popular depictions of "multiple personality disorder" growing up that we can recall from media showed it as essentially one degree away demon possession if even that distance from it.

I have also seriously considered if I could actually be some kind of supernatural or metaphysical beinv multiple times due to this but

1. I do not practice Catholicism anymore, havent since childhood, nor have I ever truly believed in it as it is actually written just been very affected by the guilt

2. The descriptions of angels I have read about from a wide range of sources outside of pop culture, Christianity, and really basic modern readings don't really match up to me or my experiences very much, at least as far as I have read. Some of the shit I read about fallen angels def made my guilt brain worms worse for a bit due to the relations with humans thing and my intrasys stuff but I don't feel confident knowing enough about that subject to even know if I understood what was meant by that correctly. Ultimately my intrusive thoughts on the matter stem more from depictions of these beings that often themselves are vastly oversimplified and not accurate to their various source materials.

I wish people would ultimately not place moral value or harsh treatment toward the condition of those who experience multiple consciousnesses in one body, whether it's due mental or spiritual origin or anything else.

It's so sensationalized as this fucked up inherently harmful experience requiring violent exorcision and I see this mentality bleed into how people view CDDs sometimes whether others realize it or not (this isn't the fault of spiritual plurals btw and they don't deserve to be treated like shit for their experiences either).

And being accepted only as a guardian angel is not inherently more helpful either and has given me complexes that are just as fucked up.

[venture-through-the-mist]

Character Info: Operator Mag

So, as the title says, I’m going to be posting a list of basic information for my Operator, basically anything that one might want or need to know about her to understand my writing. It’s obviously not integral to read this, but I think it might be helpful for those who may be a bit more interested about the characters I write about. I’ll try and update it whenever I think of stuff, just so it has the most current information. So, for anyone interested, the info is under the cut. It’s rather long, so I apologize in advance, my thoughts ran away from me lol.

Name: Magdalēnḗ, though she prefers to be called Mag. She finds it somewhat funny that she ended up forming an attachment to the ‘Mag’ Warframe. I almost never refer to her by her full name in my writing.

Pronouns: She/Her

Age: I generally write her as more of a teenager than a child, though she still has her moments, which is to be expected given the fact that the Tenno never really got to grow up ‘normally’. If I had to quantify her age other than ‘ambiguous teenager’, I’d say I usually write her in the areas of 14-16 ish.

Appearance:

Personality:

She’s a very caring kid, though tends to be a bit shy. However, she also has some anger issues—that can be pretty intense at times—, which she hasn’t had a chance to properly work through. These mainly become apparent when she’s scared or worried, but Mag can and has said some…terrible things that she regretted almost immediately. (Mostly to Lotus. Almost entirely to Lotus. She can’t take back what she’s said.)

She doesn’t generally work with the other Tenno, but she absolutely will if the mission requires it. Plus, she has to admit, having a squad makes defense or survival missions much less monotonous.

Normally though, if it’s a simple resource-gathering mission or something, she’d much prefer to go alone. She can control the outcome much easier that way. Less potential for others to cause problems or get hurt, too.

She really hates disappointing people, but also gets insanely frustrated when she’s sent on a mission that seems impossible for her to complete (especially alone).

Like most Tenno—at least, I’d imagine—, she can have her moments of being very serious and focused on the task at hand. She was forced to be a child soldier, after all. She had to learn discipline quickly. But, she also has the rare moments where it’s easy to see just how young she really is.

Missions:

She’s a fan of the ‘run sword-first into combat’ strategy. She loves using a bow, but she definitely isn’t the type to fight from afar. With that being said, she does, from time to time, like missions where she can challenge herself by sneaking around.

For spy-type missions, she prefers to enter the vaults in her Operator form. She’s naturally very quiet, and when that combines with her ability to walk around unseen, well, let’s just say she finds herself quite satisfied when she can sneak around right under her enemies’ noses.

Other Info:

She swears. A lot. Lotus probably isn’t a fan, but she allows it.

Mag has some issues with her eyesight stemming from an incident that happened back when the Tenno were still coming to terms with their newfound Void powers. It was an accident. (It wasn’t anyone’s fault. She knows that. Right?). Luckily, she somehow didn’t go blind, but her vision is fuzzier than it should be, and she has issues seeing things at a distance. She’s also prone to migraines—which she assumes stem from the heightened light-sensitivity after the accident—, and seemingly random pains in her eyes. These are more annoying than harmful at this point, in her mind at least.

She really cares about Lotus, Ordis, and her pets. To her, they’re the closest thing to family she’s got.

That’s about it for now! Feel free to ask questions about my characters lol, I have over 100,000 words written about these idiots and would love to share XD.

[kiwikipedia]

Not me rushing to finish this just before valentines day ends lmao. Also two pieces in one day? Slow tf down you’ll die by the end of the week Kiwi

Ahem. Anyways. It’s been like 6000 years since I’ve drawn either Clay OR Seph. Despite the fact that Seph is literally one of the easier OCs of mine to draw lmao. Nonetheless, happy valentines times day or whatever I guess (lol)— have the Rough and Tumble Cowboy Businessman and his Pastelcore Pastry Chef wife.

(minor notes/lore and also taglist under the cut~)

For anyone who doesn’t know me via Pisscord Discord/hasn’t read my attempt at a PLA AU (Even the Gods Cowered) which is basically Dad Clay and the Nimbasa Trio, Persephone “Seph” Spring is the younger twin sister of Naomi “Nomi” Spring and the two run a teahouse together with one other friend of theirs who is a menace to society— Lila Archibald— on the edges of Driftveil City.

In Even the Gods Cowered, however Seph has since passed away, leaving Clay with a house that’s a bit too big for one man, and a few pokemon who he since inherited from her. Don’t worry, she’s only dead in this AU. That I will finish one day. Maybe. Hopefully. (probably??)

The two sisters hail from Galar originally with one parent being from Galar and the other from Hoenn, having moved across to Unova when they were in their teen years— though Seph’s team is primarily Galarian and Hoenn in nature with her starter and ace being a massive Corviknight she named “Lancelot”. He does show up in Even the Gods Cowered.

Both Spring sisters have shown up briefly in my SW universe as well, where their roles are pretty much the same, save for the minor fact that their tea house doubles as Bounty Hunter Guild informant building and spa.

Clay and Seph’s ship name being “Elysian Shipping” “Elysian Duo” is a bit of a lore joke that stems from Greek and Roman mythos. Clay's moniker is the "Underground Boss" which I linked to Hades' roman counterpart, Pluto— who is also the god of riches found beneath the earth. riches → mining. And Pluto = Hades, and Hades’ wife is the goddess of spring, Persephone. The two rule the Greek underworld and Elysium is one of the realms in the Underworld.

So yeah. There’s that bit.

Ok im done talking for now lfkhdskfhsd

Taglist:

@jedifisto​​ @spaceydragons​​ @purgetrooperfox​​ @spacerocksarethebestrocks​ @insanelytomato @babygirljoelmiller​ @certified-anakinfucker​ @d3epfriedanger​ @genifer-first-of-her-name​​ @thecodyagenda​ @babygirl-leon-kennedy​ @txtalnyx​ @jawajawas​

Taglist Form or feel free to ask me to get tagged (just DM!)

[jojotier]

so for your spy au you have Rose adopting both Dirk and Roxy, but later on you say that Dave is taking care of Dirk? how does Dirk end up with Dave?

yeah!! so basically Rose adopts both Roxy and Dirk bc for her spy mission she needs kids to send to a prestigious school so she can slide in and make connections with the parents, but later on Dirk ends up kinda moving more in with Dave, though he officially still lives with Rose, and the crux of that comes down to

Dirk cannot function in a traditional school.

He's a smart kid, but traditional schooling kinda eats him alive- it's both incredibly understimulating and overstimulating for a 7-yr-old, and he's not particularly good at playing with other kids or socializing the way Roxy does.

Compounding it all, though, is his telepathy. He can't turn it off. So every day he's in a classroom with about 30 or so other voices loudly talking in his brain over the teacher, who has two monologues going simultaneously, and he's got his own internal monologue- it's a Mess. eventually comes the moment where he kinda breaks and, with the special ed resources lacking, Rose agrees to pull him from the school.

but that leaves Rose in a Predicament. Because Dirk still needs an education, but she can't stay with him during the day, because she has spywork to attend to. There's the option of hiring private tutors, but that also adds unnecessary risk to the mission, since anyone onto her could try to slide in as a tutor to counteract her spying.

And Rose absolutely cannot send Dirk back to the orphanage (because she loves him) because with Roxy being her only in with this prestigious school, the mission rests on Roxy's mental health being intact, and sending Dirk away would cause unnecessary stress.

So Rose tries to get a few of her civilian friends' help. Kanaya turns her down (because as Auxiliatrix, Kanaya has to hunt down Agent Arachnid and her house is just full of weapons), as does Ms Vris (because as Agent Arachnid, there's this fucking terminator esque character trying to murder her???). Karkat just flatly tells her that she doesn't want any of his connections teaching her kid shit. Jade agrees to help a bit, since she homeschools Jake, but she's fairly STEM-heavy and tends to get lost in her (nuclear research) florist work fairly easily, so it's not a long-term solution. June is still likely in the enemy camp, to Rose's knowledge, so that's a no-go.

So finally in comes Dave for weekend babysitting duty and finally he sighs real big and goes hey Rose? I can take it from here. And Rose is a bit... dubious, about having Dave be in charge of teaching any children, and Dave's just like you do realize I have a master's, right, I know how school works, and Rose is like I didn't realize you went to school, and it just kind of goes unsaid that 'maybe you'd know if you didn't disappear for 15 years and make me think you were dead'. But they both silently know it's there.

and lo and behold- Dave's actually probably the most well-suited for teaching Dirk. He's got a working knowledge of politics, philosophy, economics, history, anthropology, archaeology, art history, literature, art and more, and even if he doesn't quite know science or the real advanced mathematics, he can usually outsource to Jade and teach himself first before passing it on to Dirk. (And hey- if that knowledge just so happens to make the wheels of the propaganda machine he runs turn to trying to turn the Prospitian public against nuclear power, that's just a coincidence)

so at first Dirk bounces between being taught at Dave's apartment during the day and then going home to Rose at night, but as the months go on and he starts being able to stomach not being in the buddy system he and Roxy have been in since they broke out the lab, he starts asking to stay over with his Bro more.

It suits Rose fine. In fact, it makes things easier in the long-term- when the mission is finally over, and when she is asked to shed this identity and become someone else once more, kill this persona and burn the name Rose from her memory- when she has to leave this pretend family behind- she won't have to send the kids back to foster care. Dave will take good care of them. She doesn't trust anyone in the world more than her twin.

[eisforeidolon]

Question: I wanted to ask you about emotional scenes. When you were filming Supernatural, you said that initially you had to think of something that made you sad and then once you keyed into Dean, and Dean became you and you became Dean, it was easier to act his feelings because they were your feelings. So when you took on Beau Arlen, that you haven't done for fifteen years, or even a year, and Ben, Soldier Boy, how did you - did you go back to basics and start thinking again about sad moments in your life to help the scene or were you able to key in a lot quicker this time because you're more experienced?

Jensen: Hmm, that's a really good question. Yeah, very perceptive in the fact that I didn't have all of those years with those characters, but there were emotional scenes - much, I would say there was probably more of an emotional, humanistical emotions - [Jensen gets distracted by a commotion in the audience] All right, calm down. Okay, thank you, where's the prayer bowl, let's - I'll, get, there's a story that they're all referencing right now that I told in the Meet & Greet. Yep, see, this is ... great. Okay, I'll get to that in a second. Siddown! I didn't have that history with the characters so I did kind of have to dig into personal feelings. I'll speak about Beau first, cause I'm actually trying to think of what would the emotional scene with Soldier Boy, and I don't know - I don't know that there was one?

Question: There is.

Jensen: Which one?

Question: The one where he's with Butcher and is telling the story about his father -

Jensen: Oh! About his father, sure.

Question: That broke my heart, so.

Jensen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I have an interesting, that actually, now that you bring that up - 'cause see, these things [sigh]. This is the thing about being an actor is my long term memory has been shoved aside a little bit to make room for the short term memory of memorizing lines? So I have intense, there's an intensity in the short term memorization that I have in bringing that to life, and then once I do that, I kinda just ... purge it, and like, let it go. And I don't know, I'm sure there's a psychologist in here that could analyze that and tell me why I do that, I don't know why I do that, but I do it. So we'll go back to, we'll go to Beau first, and I'm guessing you're talking about the scenes when he's talking about his daughter?

Question: Yeah, or also when he's interrogating Avery, and you see the change from sort of like anger and resentment - it's not an emotional scene in the sense that he's crying, but it's really really intense.

Jensen: Right. So that all stems from my - basically I dive into what would I do as a father in this situation. And then how can I relate that to this character. And so I take what I think I know and how I think I would react and then I put that into this character's hands and kinda just tailor it a little bit, and then that's what you see. So even with Dean, you know, the vast majority of Dean? Is me. I just tailored it to tell the story through this character's eyes, but I wasn't trained professionally, I didn't go to school for this, I didn't learn methods, I didn't learn how to separate myself from the character. I basically find what relates to me as a person, within the story, within the character, I extrapolate on that and then I apply it to the character. Same thing really with Soldier Boy. In fact, what I was getting to is that scene, I thought a little bit about - because I have a good relationship with my father - so I had to dive a little bit into something that I was familiar with that maybe didn't, and that was Dean. So I kind of dived into a little bit of Dean and John relationship, even though Dean loves his father and idolized his father for many many years, but there - it was a strained relationship. And at the end of the day, I just pretended. [laughs] 'Cause that's essentially what acting is, you try to find the most honest emotion that you can muster up within yourself, you try to identify that, you try to portray that within this character in order to tell the story. And it's - some people can do it and some people can't. It's like some people can ... write amazingly, some people can do math amazingly, some people can sing, some people can create - paint. I can't paint, I can't draw worth a lick. I mean, I'm lucky to get a stick figure that looks remotely well. But there are some people that just see it and can - and I just, for some reason - you guys seen that movie Good Will Hunting? When he talks about how he can math? He's like, Beethoven could just see the piano and he could play. And I'm not saying that I'm Beethoven as far as acting goes, by any means. But I can play. And so I try to play as much as I possibly can, and that's using what I have in my life, using what I think would be the right emotion, and then I just expand on that.

Question: Ben is just a little boy searching for his father's approval. At the end of the day, which is kind of what Dean was -

Jensen: 100%. Absolutely. So I was able - I'm like, hmm, am I getting typecasted here? Is this? But no, you're absolutely right and so there was some, there was a core relation there between Dean and Soldier Boy and that's why I thought it was such a fantastic plot twist when Soldier Boy was, like, given this opportunity to have a son and a grandson and change that. But then he reverts to his DNA and becomes what he always hated -

Question: What his father was.

Jensen: What his father was, yeah. And that's just great writing, but it's also really fun to take that character on that journey. And then it's just, you know, it's just pretending. It's painting with a paintbrush that I know how to paint with.