#might put this on my site when it launches

[pulsarex]

Oh man, this one reminds me very heavily of Chainu from Unmei No Makimodoshi (or is it the other way around?). Major spoilers for this manga of course.

Like Homura, she has multiple twists regarding her identity: the first one is that aside from having the ability to shapeshift into what is initially introduced as exactly 7 forms, she also has a secret 8th form which she fooled everyone else into thinking this was a separate person with no relation to her. The second one is that she's a spy working against the protagonists, leaking information about them to the Clockhands.

Now, these first two twists are entirely guessable. The eighth form--Chanee--looks kinda similar to her (albeit with a somewhat inverted color scheme). Not to mention that Chainu's initial demeanor (a wimpy crybaby failgirl) does seem rather disingenuous and artificial in retrospect. There was also a poster included with the volume 2 release of the manga (long before she was even introduced) that teased her appearance and she was depicted holding her high-heels. Pro wrestling, anyone?

But the third twist is about her origins: her existence is tied to a "Predestination Paradox" (just like this but more simplified so that kids, the primary intended demographic of the manga, can easily understand it better…sort of).

I genuinely couldn't have seen this coming due to how little it had been foreshadowed. Of course, that's not to say there was never any; all of her forms seem to allude to this (they simulate a family, but other than the aforementioned Chanee--big sister--, there are no maternal figures because Chainu has already fulfilled this role), forming an analogue to Madoka and Homura's bonding amongst the flowers.

But me and the other fans probably couldn't reach this conclusion if the manga was abruptly cancelled and we were forced to make up our own theories as to Chainu's backstory.

Given the surface-level parallels between All You Zombies and Makimodoshi (time-travelling agent going on missions to save people), I don't think this was an actual ass-pull and it's likely this was on the drawing board for God-knows-how-long, and the mangaka just really needed to get it out of his system via a blank-slate character. I admittedly can't think of a better solution; Makimodoshi is nowhere near as surreal as Madoka Magica is, so there really isn't a lot of leeway for symbolism outside of things like the poster. And again, the backstory was heavily stripped down to its bare essentials compared to the inspiration, so now there's even less stuff that the mangaka can foreshadow.

(I remember a user on Twitter complaining that Chainu’s backstory felt like a rehash of Shirai’s backstory, which also involved a similar chicken-egg paradox albeit with some differences, and I get it but are you really surprised that the time loop manga has repeating elements across character arcs?)

It’s just that out of context, it really does feel shock-valuey which annoys me.

Apologies for the random tangent, I had to get this out of my chest in exchange for receiving my two nickels. As a bonus, both Chainu and Homura are pretty ladies with long black hair. This is truly a bizzare timeline.

I didn't discuss Rebellion in my earlier post about anticipating plot twists in Madoka Magica, partly because I came to it already spoiled for both reveals, and partly because at least one twist plays by very different rules than those of the main series. While I can't speak to what I might have been able to guess had circumstances been otherwise, I can talk about the structure of these twists, and how they function in the narrative.

The first twist (Homura is a witch) is relatively straightforward, and I would argue, entirely guessable on first viewing approximately forty minutes into the movie. This is the scene on the bridge connecting Mitakihara to whatever is outside of it (answer: void), where Homura and Kyouko are being stalked by zombies who are wearing masks with Homura's face on them. I mean, yes, there are Kyouko masks, too, but let's be real, the symbolism cannot be more obvious.

Not only do the zombies peacefully disperse when Homura explains the situation--subconsciously responding to her will--Homura is awfully well-versed on the nature of witches, something that only she is in a position to know. This is followed by an incredibly surreal sequence as Homura "descends" into a landscape of blurry mosaics playing out various scenes from the original series--not unlike how the "paintings" in her apartment re-played her memories in the original series, or a witch's labyrinth.

At this point in the story, all of the major players have been introduced, so the witch has to be one of them--it can't be a random person we've never heard of before with no previous connections to the main cast. Likewise, we've seen Sayaka and Charlotte's labyrinths, so the false Mitakihara wouldn't be their style, Madoka is unlikely to be the culprit, and Kyouko isn't faking her confusion. The only other person besides Homura who might concoct such a fantasy of "everyone getting along and having adventures" is Mami, and yet the plot of Rebellion kicks off with Homura joining the team, (despite the initial fake-out that makes it seem like the film will follow Madoka's POV) implying that she is the central character. And while Kyubey could certainly be responsible (and is later proven to be involved), he cannot be the witch himself; he can only manipulate what is already there, not create from scratch.

Thus, I'd argue that it's entirely possible to guess the witch's identity from the bridge scene onward, with more and more evidence piling up in Homura's favor until the actual reveal thirty minutes later. However, the second twist (Homura becoming the devil) is structured very differently and deliberately to keep it from being guessable on first viewing. Despite the fact that it is foreshadowed well in advance in the famous "flower field" sequence between Homura and Madoka, it utterly fails what I call the "Vonnegut test" after this iconic quote from Kurt Vonnegut:

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Urobuchi and Co. achieve this paradox by doing what I call "the Unreliable Narrator technique"--they show us what is happening in the flower field sequence, but they do not provide sufficient context to allow the viewers to draw the appropriate conclusions at the time. Ironically, for a movie that takes place primarily in Homura's psyche, so much of her motivation and thought process remains ambiguous, precisely because of this method. Instead, we are shown Homura's moment of epiphany, but not what it means, which remains ambiguous right up until the moment of reveal.

It is technically possible to guess this particular twist in advance, but is it likely? If the last few pages of the Rebellion script were eaten by cockroaches and fans were forced to reconstruct the ending from scratch, do you think they would all reach that particular conclusion? My guess is probably not. This kind of twist is really only visible in hindsight, precisely because the audience isn't provided with the information they need to judge the situation correctly.

So, no, I'm not just salty because I would never have guessed this plot twist on first viewing in a million years. I'm salty because I'm not sure that anyone could--and if you did, my hat is off to you and I want to know your secrets.

(Urobuchi pulls a similar stunt in Thunderbolt Fantasy S3, and it drove me fucking crazy, because it was extremely clear from context that one character was not what he appeared to be, but the show hadn't given me any hints about when the switch had occurred, so while I could infer that something had happened, I had no way of knowing what or how, because I was operating in a complete vacuum! In this case, the creators took pity on me by eventually showing a flashback scene outlining the missing steps in great detail, as opposed to merely monologuing about it after the fact, as happens in Rebellion.)

As you can probably tell, I have a lot less patience for this particular kind of plot twist--at best, I think it's not particularly fair to the audience, and at worst, it can come off as a random ass-pull. As a reader, I like to be rewarded for close attention to detail, so the author yelling "PSYCH! IT WAS SOMETHING ELSE I DELIBERATELY DIDN'T EXPLAIN THE WHOLE TIME!" is not a fun experience for me. It's the sort of twist that I can't even feel bad about not being able to anticipate because the game is so steeply rigged in the house's favor.

I'm not sure I would call it cheating, exactly, but I do think it's disingenuous, and I can't help wishing the creators of Rebellion had opted for a different route and been slightly less subtle in their approach. Fingers crossed that they don't end up bringing this kind of twist back for Walpurgis no Kaiten.

[ponett]

it really is sad that algorithmic feeds have broken peoples' brains so badly. people really do come here and go "wait, i have to CHOOSE who i follow to get posts on my dashboard???" because a social media site working the way they were always supposed to work is so alien now. people will assume the site is a ghost town because they don't follow enough active users. there has to be a constant stream of New Content every time you refresh, regardless of whether or not said Content is any good

you can never just get caught up on your feed and put the phone down, because that's not what tiktok and insta and twitter and facebook have conditioned users to expect. putting the phone down means you're not looking at more ads and generating revenue for the site. when you venture off of the following feed twitter's algorithm is very transparently designed to show you bait tweets and other things that will make you angry, because getting people to argue is one of the easiest ways to drive engagement. it's no wonder threads just launched with no following feed whatsoever, just an infinite stream of algorithmic slop. these sites don't want you to curate your own experience because then you might develop a healthier relationship with them. that's not what they want. they want addiction

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[redflagshipwriter]

Snatching Snitches the cat Part 2: Damian 1

masterpost

“Maybe we should get him a new cat.”

Damian full-body twitched at the whisper, which was unfortunately not quiet enough to keep such idiocy out of his ears as he entered the room. ��I will regain my boy,” he said sternly. “So that will be entirely unnecessary, Richard.”

Dick winced at the downgrade to his proper name. Damian huffed air from his nose, dissatisfied, but willing to consider the matter closed given the urgency of the situation. “Father, this is my budget proposal.” He used his left hand to toss the folder on the teak desk in the sunroom’s office. Father gaped at it gormlessly, not moving to pick it up until Damian lifted an eyebrow in pointed rebuke.

He waited while his father shuffled through the papers, a vaguely pained expression on his face. “Damian, I’m not sure that a million dollars is a normal amount to spend on a lost-pet advertisement campaign,” he said gently.

Dick had his best poker face on, which meant nothing to someone who knew him well enough to know that the lack of his usual expressiveness was a large tell.

Damian did his best not to roll his eyes. “Snitches is an unparalleled feline, and thus the market research for comparable campaigns was matched to something more appropriate.” He kept his tone as neutral as possible to avoid discord. “For pricing, please look at page seventeen.”

Pages flipped. “...This seems to be a list of Wayne family kidnapping incidents.” Father’s face twitched. Dick leaned over, obviously interested. 

“You’ve listed all the ransom amounts that was asked for one of us?” he checked. “Cool graph. Am I still the winner?” Dick scanned the amounts. His face fell when he encountered the humorously undignified information that, in fact, Todd was in the lead. 

“Initial amounts,” Damian said promptly. “I understand that relatively little time and money was invested into Snitches, so I chose the amount that was asked for Timothy in 2019. May, not August,” he clarified. August had been undervaluation even for Timothy.

Dick breathed out slowly through his nose, in a shamefully transparent attempt to control himself. “Tim-”

“It was before he was adopted,” Damian said dismissively. “Obviously, his current market rate is much higher. Given that Snitches was, in fact, legally adopted by myself, I thought it a generosity on my part to keep the budget that low.”

A high-pitched sound came from someone’s nose. Damian eyed his father and his eldest brother, but could not discern which one it was. How undignified.

“I understand your logic,” Father said finally. He looked tremendously old. “...Very well. One million dollars to find your cat. But that’s it!” he said, trying to regain control of the conversation. 

Damian nodded sharply. “It will be sufficient.” Just barely, but he had a plan to make it work. “Please direct your attention to pages 4 through 7,” he ordered, knowing full well that Father’s eyes would glaze over at the itemized expenses. 

“Give it to me verbally,” Father said.

Ideal. Damian launched into a painfully detailed listing of national, regional, and international newspapers which he would have a column written both in print and online, starting at Gotham and expanding regionally every day within which Snitches had not been yet located. He would have it written by Kent, as a professional courtesy. He had a list of gig work sites upon which he could recruit people to walk the streets of Gotham and put up flyers and check alleys and dumpsters. He had devised profiles of the teenagers involved in Snitches’ original kidnapping attempt, and included suggestions as to how each member of the team might use their patrol to stake out the suspects.

“I’m scheduled for 7 hours of watching the east window at a 16 year old girl’s house?” Father confirmed. His eyes were hollow and robbed of hope, exactly according to plan.

Damian gave a sharp nod. “Tonight. Todd shall do the daylight shift.”

“I doubt that,” Father said, very quietly. He cleared his throat. “Look, Damian.” 

He waited in perfect predatory stillness. 

“I think perhaps… you should rely less on patrol time for this,” Father settled on. “There are other issues outstanding, after all, such as that serial killer in the Bowery and the gang tensions.”

Damian gritted his teeth.

“Why don’t you get some other help?” Dick butted in, giving Father a warning look that Damian very much did not miss.

“Other help,” Damian said slowly, as if he had not engineered this whole conversation to lead to this conclusion. “Such as… associates?”

“Like Jon,” Dick suggested brightly. “Or your friends from school!”

“That seems like a good idea,” Father said, composed except that he winced at the word ‘friends’, knowing full well how Damian despised it. “You can get help with non Gotham vigilante associates, since we are unfortunately unable to dedicate enough time to the project.”

Damian waited a moment to sell it, portraying a struggle with indecision. He could not accept too gracefully, or someone might read his detailed budget proposal and discover that he had already allotted most of the money for specialists. “I will attempt this route first,” he said stiffly. He pretended not to notice the relief in the room. “Very well.” He reached out a hand to receive his plan. 

He left with his head held high, knowing that he was the uncontested winner in that discussion. More fools they! The obvious had escaped them in their dotage.

Snitches was, after all, no ordinary cat. He had been summoned in a ritual meant to communicate with a ghost. Perhaps he was a ghost himself, given his intangibility and near-human intelligence. The obvious first step was a consultation with one of the magicians who would accept bribery. Father disdained them, but he had, indeed, given Damian specific permission to accept help from non-Gotham vigilante associates.

Surely Justice League Dark could be counted among Robin’s associates.

[drvscarlett]

Let Him Cook pt5

Charles Leclerc x MasterChef! reader

A/N: I'm really so happy with all the love that you have given to this fic. I enjoy writing about it, let me know if you have any blurbs or scenarios that you wanna see. This series will continue on and on

Let Him Cook Series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

taglist: @bookstore-of-dreams @barcelonaloverf1life @ririyulife @minseok-smaus @mehrmonga @sltwins @charlesgirl16 @six-call @spideybv28 @casperlikej @weekendlusting @janeholt3 @evie-119 @leilanixx @randomgirlnumber-13 @itsjustkhaos

lec lerc challenge

"As you all know by now, Charles is planning to launch his own ice cream store"you started talking to the camera "And you know what funny story, he didn't even tell me"

Charles, who was by your side, was laughing like a hyena. He actually wanted it to be discovered on the the first day of April so everyone might think its a prank but then he will announce that he is very serious about it. It was an elaborate prank on top of prank. However, the news sites got a hold of it earlier.

"That's another story time. We have to get down to business" Charles reeled the topic back to the video that you two are making.

"Okay so in order to test Charlie's knowledge about ice cream, I have here ice creams that I made myself" you explained.

In front of the two of you were 10 paper cups. They have been covered on top so that Charles won't get a hint about the color.

"So my main task is to identify what's the flavor of the ice cream"Charles confirms "Easy"

"I made some unconventional flavors to throw you off" you informed him.

You can't help but giggle as you remember how you made some weird flavors for the ice cream. But hey, this was supposed to be a challenge to see if Charles' taste buds are working so it doesn't necessarily have to be a delicious ice cream.

"Okay, I am ready to scream for ice cream"

The first five cups were easy peasy. It's common flavors such as chocolate, vanilla, cookies and cream, caramel, and pistachio.

"I'm good at this mon amour"

Charles is pretty confident now. Time to throw the curveballs.

"I'm excited for you to try this"you excitedly give him the cup.

Since Charles is blindfolded as he does this challenge, the first thing he does is smell it. He is usually confident upon spelling but the frown lines forming on his face suggest that he might be confused about the flavor profile.

"This feels strange. I smelled this before but I can't put my name on it"Charles notes.

He takes a scoop from the cup and tasted it. It was evident to his face that he didn't enjoy this ice cream a lot.

"That's so sour, mon amour there are definitely strawberries in that"Charles complained.

"Strawberries and?"

There was a string of italian and french word from Charles as he tries his best to identify it. Finally, he had a lightbulb moment where he remembered the taste of it.

"BALSAMICO" Charles screamed "That is not a flavor I will put in my store, definitely"

Y/NCooks posted a photo.

Y/NCooks turns out Charles is pretty good with his taste buds. Watch me test Charles with his ice cream skills [link]

User1 Atleast we know that Charles is committed to being an ice cream man

User2 Charles_Leclerc you should definitely try the bourbon and corn flakes in the menu

User 3 Highly agree, I would love to try that User4 were all acting like were so close to milan. Babes we live across the world.

LandoNorris do you have some plain ice cream left for me

Y/NCooks i have some but its good to try other flavors every now and then Lan LandoNorris mmm, i'll try that black sesame one. that seems like a good flavor Y/NCooks brilliant. message me when i can see you Charles_Leclerc im amazed how Y/N managed to convince you of different food choices

MasterChefAU is this Charles' entry to master chef blind taste test challenge?

Charles_Leclerc MasterChef Monaco soon??? User4 I'm laughing at the number of sidequest Charles has. SIR you are an f1 driver!!!

Charles the baker

Charles_Leclerc posted a photo.

Charles_Leclerc okay i did all the measurements right. WHY DID THEY EXPAND

User1 I can hear Charles screaming with the caption

User2 Charles is such a mood when I try to bake things

User3 But is it edible tho?

Charles_Leclerc it is but its not as pretty User4 this is an internet highlight wherein Charles is sulking and asking the internet where he went wrong

maxverstappen1 recipe reveal?

Charles_Leclerc no ✨✨ maxverstappen1 don't want it anyways. i just wanted to know what you did so i won't end up like that User5 MAX!!!!! User6 your honor we love the lestappen crumbs

Y/NCooks honey maybe you should consider giving it some space, bread do expand when they get baked.

Charles_Leclerc they do?? Y/NCooks Yes they do. But in all honesty they look so cute, its alright honey Charles_Leclerc love you mon amour!

SebastianVettel maybe we should have a baking session one of these days, I can teach you a lot about baking breads

Charles_Leclerc sounds good, miss you already Seb User7 oh to be Charles Leclerc having the Sebastian Vettel teaching him bread and MasterChef Y/N encouraging him

tiktok pasta challenge

It was a fairly simple tiktok viral recipe and in your mind its something that Charles will be able to follow instructions with. So you set up your camera and told Charles about a cooking challenge that he has to do.

"Today's challenge, Charles will be using his listening skills. Lets see how well he listens to me"you greeted the camera "Are you ready mon amour?"

"More than ever, I look good in an apron"

You stayed behind the camera as Charles stayed in front of the kitchen counter. He was tying up his apron and grabbing your chef hat from one of the drawers.

"First of all, I need you to quarter an onion"you instructed.

Charles was immediately grabbing the onion and you immediately face palmed yourself when Charles started quartering the onion without even peeling it.

"Honey, you are supposed to peel it" you sigh

"Honey, you didn't say anything about peeling it. We have three cameras set up and editors should replay that you said quarter it and not peel it" Charles argued

You raised your hand in defeat, you should have been more clearer.

"Okay, I'm not gonna be vague. I'll make it clear"

The whole cooking went along smoothly until its time for Charles to cook the pasta. He has been heavily stressing to get the texture right this time or else it will further the allegations that he can't cook pasta.

"Calm down Charlie"

"I am very very very calm, I'm just checking" he lifted the lid for the fifth time "They have to be perfect"

"Charles is very honored to be taught by Gordon on a 1 on 1 session"you informed the camera.

The two have exchanged numbers and Charles will often ask his culinary questions to Gordon when you were not available to answer them right away. Gordon seems to enjoy the new friendship with the driver since he often send Charles link for cooking recipe to try.

"I don't wanna be an idiot sandwhich" Charles muttered, stirring the pot of pasta.

Charles got a perfect al dente to his pasta. He pulls out the baked feta and tomatoes out of the oven then mixed it with the pasta. It seems as if the dish looks pretty especially with the garnishes that Charles insisted.

"Plating is also everything"he says to the camera as he grates some lemon zest to the plate "Whatever this taste like, just remember that Y/N was instructing me so if there is anyone to blame then its Y/N"

"Way to throw me under the bus Charles"

Y/NCooks just posted a photo

Y/NCooks The dish vs the chef. I think they are equally yummy [link]

User1 CHARLES CAN COOK!!!!

User2 alternative title charles stressing 10 minutes straight if the pasta is al dente or not

User3 The girlfriend effect on Charles is that he is now able to cook pasta

User4 I really want to try that pasta

Arthur_Leclerc i hope you never get tired of the pasta, its the only thing he will cook from now on

Charles_Leclerc i mean she loves it!!!! Y/NCooks its pretty good arthur, you should try it!! Arthur_Leclerc next family dinner? Charles_Leclerc im on it! User24 oh to be a fly at the Leclerc family dinner

User5 I think everyone ignored the caption, miss maam thirsting over her boyfriend

User6 if i was Y/N i would too Y/NCooks facts only!!! User6 Mother replied to us!!!

scuderiaferrari so charles is approved for a cooking challenge in the channel soon?

Y/NCooks he is born ready User8 kind of missed the c2 cooking challenges

everything i cooked

Charles_Leclerc posted a reel

here is everything that I did to celebrate Y/N's birthday. This isn't a common day, its really special so I have to run at 5 to get the flowers I ordered for her. Then next I cooked up breakfast which is some pancakes, thank you Carlos for the recipe. And then I surprised her with a little bit of breakfast in bed

and then I started making our lunch after clearing the table. Y/N had been craving butter chicken and I purposely did not take her so I could make some at home. Its a fairly easy recipe, I just had to mix some spices, cook the onions then you have the tomato paste and then cream. thanks Gordon I owe you one. She loved it so much.

and then I started early on the dessert for dinner. I didn't do the ladyfingers from scratch, I don't have a lot of time so yes here we are. The tiramisu is in the fridge. And then since Y/N loved the Lady and the Tramp spaghetti meatballs scene. I did my own take on it. Needless to say she loved it. So yes happy birthday once more mon amour, I love you so so much.

User10 I know we have been making fun of Charles but the man can actually cook.

User11 My boyfriend be forgetting my birthday but Charles here is slaving in the kitchen for Y/N's birthday

User12 CHARLES IS THE STANDARD!!! User14 Imagine cooking a whole breakfast, lunch, dinner, with a birthday dessert???!!! GOD I SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE FOR OTHERS

MasterChefAU Im glad to hear you are treating our girl well, happy birthday Y/NCooks

User13 OUR GIRL??!!!! Y/NCooks he is treating me well, thank you for all the greetings

Gordongram That's a beautiful dish and effort Charles!

Charles_Leclerc Thank you !!! Y/NCooks he is screaming btw Gordongram

PierreGasly when will you cook for me

CarlosSainz55 and me?? i think there is some former teammate privileges out here LewisHamilton the current teammate is also wondering SebastianVettel you boys are not Y/N. Y/N is special. Charles_Leclerc what seb said!!!

Y/NCooks one of the sweetest gesture anyone did for me. Thank you honey for making this day extra special. I don't need any five star restaurants when I have you in the kitchen.

Charles_Leclerc I love you. You deserve the world User21 Them your honor. User22 Happy Birthday Y/N, you two are excellent for each other

[impala124]

Bad Buddy 12

My thoughts on Ep 1 | Ep 2 | Ep 3 | Ep 4 | Ep 5 | Ep 6 | Ep 7 | Ep 8 | Ep 9 | Ep 10 | Ep 11

Me, at the end of this episode:

Oh, we have a 4-year time skip!! Interesting.

Pat, where is the Nong Nao doll? I don't see it on your bed. I need answers right now.

I like the transition from Pat putting down his toothbrush to Pran picking up his own. Very clever.

Pran, quick question: WHERE ARE YOU? I see the view in the background, and that's one of Singapore's most iconic buildings, if I'm not wrong, which is definitely not in Thailand. So, boy, what's your ass doing in Singapore?

At least he's still wearing The Watch, so I have hope. Pran's a yearner through and through, so I expected nothing less from him.

We all agree that Max is hitting on Pran, right? Pran's not having any of it, though.

Poor Pat, he doesn't look too happy when Korn and Wai mention revisiting the old days.

Not the fucking elevator flashback 😭😭. Oh no, the curry Pran made for him after he confessed that he liked him. Man, this shit hurts!!

I, for one, am not at all surprised that Pat joined his father's business after graduation. I could've told you that on the day we first met him.

Sidenote, but why are these 22/23-year-olds lamenting about getting old?

Guys, Pa graduated from university and is making a movie!! My baby's all grown up now!! *wipes tears*

Ok, Wai and Korn each have girlfriends. How about instead of saving for individual dowries, you both just ditch the girls and marry each other? Just food for thought.

But why aren't they bringing up Pat's love life? Is it still a touchy topic? I mean, it's been 4 years, and we don't know what reason they gave their friends for the breakup, though, so we shall see.

What do you mean someone else moved into Pran's room? It should've been preserved as a heritage site. Contacting the people at UNESCO ASAP.

Ink and Pa are on my screen together. My boys might be miserable right now, but at least my girls are thriving.

A high school reunion, you say? If I'm not wrong, Pat, Pran, and Ink went to the same high school. Are they going to MEET at the reunion????!

Wow, Ink misses her high school classmates. Definitely can't relate to that sentiment, bestie.

Pat, sir, is that a smile on your face at the possibility of running into Pran at the reunion?

Not Pat looking solemnly at the memory wall.😭😭

THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Pran is here at the reunion!!!

Okay, so just looking longingly at each other is all I'm going to get for now.

"But some things can never change." Pat, bestie, change is the only constant in life. Fuck everything else and go get your man!!

Are you really playing a game at your reunion if the prize up for grabs isn't something like an accommodation voucher for a night at a mid-budget hotel??

Not the trip down memory lane😭. Y'all are in the same room; talk to each other and put yourselves (& me) out of this misery.

A live performance, you say? And PRAN IS SINGING. Now, don't tell me it's the song he wrote to soft launch his feelings to Pat in high school.

Yes, he is. Pat, are you listening? I know you're hearing it, but are you LISTENING to it?

EXCUSE ME! What was that sweet smile you guys just exchanged? I need an explanation!! NOW!!!

A group photo with them being pushed towards each other, which could be a metaphor for the string of fate always bringing them back together. Love to see it.

Pat, let me introduce you to something called a cab. It's really effective in taking your friend's drunk ass home, especially when your ex is giving you THE LOOK!!

Okay, Pat's on the phone with Pa (probably?) and is complaining about being hungry. You know what you should do, Pat? Go to your favorite noodle shop and wait for your ex to show up so that you can talk things through.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S PRAN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR AND ON THE PHONE??!!! My brain is malfunctioning right now.

"You said you'd sleep at your house." What in the hell is happening right now?

Crisis averted, the Nong Nao doll makes an appearance on the bed.

Okay, Pran, I see you wearing your 'happy hour' shirt while complaining to your boyfriend (?) about Singapore's air pollution.

One thing about them: they are going to use the fucking sponsored makeup remover on the other. It's quite endearing, actually.

BB Product placement stays superior till the end.

I need an explanation, stat!! Are you still mad I didn't pick you up at the airport? What is that boyfriend-ass statement, Pat?

Pran just referred to Pat as his boyfriend. "We've been together for too long."

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY NEVER BROKE UP IN THE FIRST PLACE??!!! I need a minute to process this.

My reaction till now, everyone, is the fucking Kuleshov effect in action, with me thinking that both of them are sad because of their 4-year-long separation, when in reality, they are just boyfriends missing each other.

Aww, a memory wall in their home.

Finally, THE GUITAR PICK that Pat made for Pran all those years ago makes an appearance!

So, according to the photos on THE WALL, Pat actually visited Pran in Singapore.

I do hope we get a home tour at some point; I'm really interested in seeing how Pran's OCD self blended his life with Pat's messy ass.

Unknowingly, from two people who couldn't be friends, we became two people who were more than friends.

So, they lied to everyone by saying that they broke up and began Secret relationship 2.0

Not them holding their fucking pinkies together when they pass by in the hallway ASFDGHF—

Time and space are just a construct when it comes to me and my blorbos because remember what I said when they were dating in secrecy the first time? I told them that they should have at least one person they are both familiar with to be in the know about their relationship to maintain a successful secret relationship. And Pran IRREFUTABLY heard me because Wai, Korn, Pa, and Ink knew about them this time around. I bet Einstein didn't foresee this coming.

Aww, they even visited Uncle Tong and Junior after they graduated.

I love that the parents aren't still getting along, because in such cases where the rivalry dates back decades, it feels abnormal to not continue doing so. It's almost like sunk cost fallacy but make it about rivalry.

However, I do love the little detail of Ming having to back off during their car face-off because Ming was the one who stabbed Dissaya in the back, figuratively speaking, all those years ago.

Not Pran rubbing the shirt all over his body to ensure that his scent lasts for a while💀 My boy is an actual menace.

Pat, sir, what are you thinking sending thirst pics to your boyfriend AT WORK?

They even held their pinkies together in their high school reunion photo.

Oh, I'm a happy camper because all my ships are sailing smoothly. The irony of Wai and Korn running the bar (where they used to fight with each other on a regular basis) together is just 😂 😂

Wai and Korn are soft launching their relationship, and no one can tell me otherwise. See, Pat is also a KornWai truther.

Pa, sweetheart, Ink was pining for you since she was in high school. I don't think you need to worry about her straying.

Keep up with shoving your couple photos down everyone's throats, though, just because y'all are hella cute together.

Korn does look like a middle-aged Asian uncle when he is complaining about the rival faculties breaking tables. Oh, how the tables have turned.

Yes, Wai, it's your penance for all the mess you guys used to cause all those years ago.

"Guys, I don't mind if you want to fight, but you must get a lover out of the fight, just like me." STAHP IT

Pran went from ordering three wontons to four—that's how you know he's in a long-term relationship, accommodating your partner without any prodding from their side.

Pran's "I brought your dad a bottle of liquor" is a solid strategy. There is nothing Asian dads love more than receiving imported liquor, even if they don't drink. A sure way to win some brownie points.

Kissing in front of the trashcans!!!! Oh, how far they've come.

Ming once again being the most Asian dad to ever exist by just randomly flipping through the newspaper just to appear busy.

As much as I love to hate on his quintessential Asian dad quirks, he is the most relatable of bl dads for me. Is he perfect? No, but I don't think anyone can say that he doesn't love his son.

Ink is accepted by Pa's parents, which doesn't surprise me one bit because she's perfect. PERIOD.

The dinner scene at Pat's house is a callback to the dinner scene in the initial episodes, when the dad was telling Pat to not let the neighboring boy win at any cost. Oh, how the tables have turned! Now, Pat is trying to curry favor with his dad for the said neighboring boy.

MING TOOK A SIP. Told ya, Asian dads just can't resist imported liquor.

The question of Pran's guitar. Did Pat keep it with him this time around too??!!

Ming crossed the LINE to deliver the mail, and Dissaya saw it.

Awww, his mom put it on his bed, which goes in line with my theory about parallels between Dissaya accepting Pran playing the guitar and him loving Pat. So, I'll be taking this as silent acceptance from her regarding their relationship.

I think both of them are ready to bury the hatchet, TO AN EXTENT, for the sake of their kids happiness.

Going off on a tangent for a bit, but bear with me. Let me take a moment to thank @respectthepetty for training me into thinking of love whenever I see the color pink because, what was the paint color the fathers used to draw the boundary between their houses all those years ago? Yes, it was fucking pink. It means that the answer was love all along. They were MEANT to fall in love to bridge the rift between their families. Talk about 'born to be together,' which was the exact sentiment Pran wanted to convey through The Song in high school.

Now, Pat coming into Pran's room through the window is a clear callback to the time Pat did the same to return the watch after Pran saved Pa. However, then he did it to tell Pran to not act friendly towards him in front of others, and now it's to spend some time with him without hiding from anyone, even their parents.

"If not you, I won't allow anyone else to use it. Pran, when I catch you—

Not Pran, my resident menace, trying to wake up the green-eyed monster by mentioning that Wai may have used it before💀😂

Pran's dad providing the meta commentary with his "This show is just so good." comment.

Ah, forehead kisses, my beloved!!!

Man, the flashbacks to when they were kids overlapping with them right now are just the cutest.

Everyone gather around because I just had a very big-brained thought. Remember, in Ep 8, on the rooftop, Pat wanted to share their relationship with the entire world while Pran asked what's wrong with just wanting to keep it for themselves. What if, whatever happened with their relationship after that, was just exploring both their paths? They clearly tried Pat's way first because Pran cared about him, despite his worry, and it resulted in the Ep 11 ending. After that, they took Pran's way and we all saw how it panned out for them. It might've taken them four years, but their parents are kinda onboard with their relationship.

Now that we're on this subject, let me try to provide some context to Wai pulling down the curtain on their relationship. Not defending his actions, but me thinks it was very intentional that Wai heard Pran say that although he's worried about others finding out about their (Pat & Pran's) relationship, he's willing to take the risk because he cares about Pat more. Wai's vindictive ass heard that and went through his montage of Pran lying to me about his relationship with Pat moments in his head and decided to put Pran's words about caring about Pat more to the test.

We get a post-credit scene? Truly the gift that keeps on giving.

Of course it had to be on a rooftop! Wait a second. Pat's birthday is on 23rd April, and the first time Pat slept over in Pran's room is on 24th April. The psychological implications of it all (for me) can't be overstated!!

Pran, my menace-in-residence, was really showing his horny ass by saying, 'The winner can do anything to the loser.' Never change, bestie!!

Well, I got the house tour I asked for earlier. Fucking Architectural Digest could never.

They shut the door in my face, and I said thank you!!

Honestly, I don't think I've even processed the finale yet. It was very pleasing to my lizard brain, that's for sure. I need to sit with it for a few days, and I'll probably write something about my whole experience liveblogging this BB watch and my thoughts on some of the CHOICES made in the whole series. A sneak peek of few things that are marinating in my head are—

Pat associating Pran with home because he feels lost (I was only half-joking when I compared him to a lost puppy following Pran around).

The air of sadness around Pat that just goes unacknowledged for the most part.

Pran associating Pat with freedom because he feels burdened.

Pran feeling undeserving of Pat's love.

Like I said, I'll be thinking about them a WHOLE LOT.

Quick question: Were there any talks of a season 2? Because there are some easter eggs peppered throughout the series that deserve further exploration, and they definitely have issues they need to address and work through as a couple. This ending will only count as an HFN (happy for now) in my book. I'm putting this ending on par with the To My Star ending, and I adored To My Star 2, so there's that. Still waiting for To My Star 3, though that's a discussion for another day.

One thing I can say for sure is that I'm extremely grateful for the fandom that has welcomed me with open arms and engaged with all my ramblings each episode, because let's be honest, it was just a stream of consciousness.

I wouldn't have had nearly as much fun watching the series without you guys. I'll be camping out on the rooftop for so long that I'll be claiming squatters rights for sure!!!

Tagging the usual suspects: @shortpplfedup, @incandescentflower, @starryalpacasstuff, @7nessasaryevils, @greenteadumplings, @grapejuicegay, @madworld-bbs, @usodeshou, @tao-moonb, @fanatic-freakshow @desi-yearning.

[changingplumbob]

Byron: But I mean I already know some stuff from like books and movies and tv-

Johnny: You think you know some stuff. Everything you’ve seen, I sincerely hope, is fiction. Especially the stuff on those pixel part sites

Byron: *nervous* How would you know what pixel part sites I’ve seen

Johnny: Because when dinosaurs were young I was your age. Now I know you seem to be straight but we’re going to cover queer woohoo to because it’s not all that different. Before I begin my very well planned and fact checked monologue is there any questions you want to ask?

Byron shook his head and Johnny launched into his best description of what went on with woohoo, he had talked to me first about what he was going to say. Of course I couldn’t prepare him for what questions Byron might ask but Johnny assured me he wouldn’t laugh at them.

Byron: So... pregnancy is prevented with contraception and not hot sauce?

Johnny: Hot sauce? What- I don’t even want to know who told you that. Don’t be putting hot sauce on pixel parts. Trust me, it burns

[ms-demeanor]

sorry if you've answered this before, and i hope you don't mind me asking, how do you know so much about computers and what seems to me like everything in the world? how did you become so knowledgeable? it's amazing

i just know a little about a lot of things and I probably have a fair number of things that I've dug into more than most people and less than people who actually focus on that stuff! It's kind of an illusion!

I do know a lot about computers and that's because I've worked at a computer company for 12 years and have been deep into a computery subculture for about 20 years - I do genuinely know a lot about consumer computers. That I'll own and that's experience.

I know a fair amount about literature because I've got a degree in it!

I know a fair amount about journalism because I've got most of a degree in it and I worked with journalists for a long time!

I know a fair amount about nutrition because I've got most of a degree in it and because I've been focused on reading a lot about nutrition for more than a decade because of my own food issues!

But mostly I'm just someone who falls down rabbitholes and has a decent ability to recall what I find when I run down them.

Also I get curious about things and will just go. Experience them.

Like at some point i came across a site for people who own and use RealDolls and I got interested in learning more. The site required an application because they didn't want people just trolling so I applied and I ended up reading through the whole site and reading the magazines they sent out for years after because it was just interesting. The way these guys bought clothes or compared repair techniques and cleaning techniques, the way they constructed identities for their dolls - it was all interesting! So now I know about the proper way to store a RealDoll and how their skeletons are put together and the best way to prevent rips or clean inserts.

Now imagine that with everything.

I got interested in quack medicine so I ended up reading the entire back catalogs of quackwatch and science-based medicine.

I got interested in the history of aspartame as a scare-word and I ended up reading a couple of books, SEVERAL entire blogs with decades-long runs, purchasing a military magazine from the 90s, and submitting a FOIA request.

But, like. I don't own a RealDoll or work in that industry. I am not a medical professional. I am not a chemist who works with aspartame. So I get these weird little collections of information where I know what *seems* like a lot to someone who hasn't looked into it but I know a lot less than someone who has taken the time to actually dedicate themselves to that topic.

And sometimes it's a years-long dive and sometimes it's a months-long dive and sometimes it's a few hours of me digging online until I feel satisfied with what I've learned and I never come back to it, but I've got three more talking points than your average joe at a party would.

(Also though I've attended various colleges at various levels for ten-ish years now and I've taken probably more college-level classes on a lot of subjects than most people have because I've now spent several years just kind of kicking around at community colleges and deciding that a cartooning class sounds fun or that a mesoamerican art class fills certain transfer requirements or that I might as well brush up on spanish, french, and german. Access to low-cost college classes in california is a big part of this, and having the time and money to take classes while i'm working is something that I've been very lucky with)

I've also worked pretty much continuously since I was 18, sometimes holding multiple jobs at once, and I know a lot of interesting people who do a lot of interesting things and I ask them about their interesting experiences and if they offer me a chance to go do cool shit with them, like launch a high altitude balloon or blow up some dynamite that's about to expire or join a band, I do it!

I was also one of those kids who had no friends and spent too much time at the library so I'd do things like read through medical textbooks or pull a book of home chemical formulas out of the trash and read it or take it into my head that I was going to read all of Shakespeare before I got to high school so I was a really annoying twelve-year-old and that kind of thing never really let up.

I don't know! I don't think it's that unusual and I think most people do this kind of thing I just happen to have less focus than a lot of people and talk a lot more.

[avaantares]

I've seen people talking about feeling overwhelmed by all the pleas for Gaza help -- the unsolicited money requests, the thousands of fundraisers, the sometimes-confusing instructions for purchasing things on behalf of an organization, etc. And sometimes it's hard to figure out HOW to give, when you're clicking back through a daisy-chain of tags and profiles on Instagram, looking for the actual donation link associated with a video. It can be difficult and time-consuming to choose where to put your efforts and funds.

I found myself stressing about choosing which projects to support, vetting charities, and spreading out my donations to make sure they reached a variety of people, and I thought others might be, too. So here are some helpful links to simplify your decision-making!

If you want to donate money:

Many families have started GoFundMe campaigns to help them raise the money for evacuation or medical care, but with so many needing aid, choosing whom to help can be daunting. Each time you visit Gaza Funds, the site will display one randomly-selected campaign from its list of vetted campaigns. The random rotation means every campaign gets a chance to be seen, not just the ones featured by an Insta influencer or TikTok algorithm.

If you're concerned about scams and want to know which charities are going to use your money most efficiently, here are two lists of CharityWatch's top-rated aid organizations in the region (the first is Gaza relief-specific; the second is regional). The link for each organization gives financial transparency details such as how much money goes to relief programs, how much to administration, and the salaries of their CEOs. Read descriptions to know where they are operating and what kind of work they do.

If you want to help without money:

The "Click To Help" buttons (there are six categories; click 'em all!) at Arab.org channel funds into relief organizations such as the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and other local groups. The donation amount is small, but if you don't have money to give directly, clicking these buttons every day adds up. You can click once per day per device browser, so that means you can click from both your mobile phone and your computer, and from multiple browsers on each device.

[staycalmandhugaclone]

Fool's Errand Pt 4

Part (4) of Fool's Errand, the next arc of Doc's Misadventures! If you're new, start at the beginning with Touch Starved!

Warnings: decent bit of cursing, blood, needles, minor body horror, some ptsd/ minor flashbacks, dislocated knee

WC: 4,068

Echo was shouting into the coms. I wasn’t paying attention to what he said, focusing instead on hauling Hunter back up against me as torturous silence loomed between the arc’s orders and pleas. He muted his mic, but I could still hear the string of curses as he darted toward me to return to his place at Hunter’s other side, and we ran.

“We’re nearly to our shuttle, then we’ll come to you! If you can hear me, we’ll be there soon!” He continued, and I could picture the scowl pulling at his lips.

“Can you fly?!” He asked sharply as he sprinted through the trees, and I had to fight back the rush of nausea and panic at the very thought… I hadn’t flown in years… not since…

“Not well!” I called back. “I’ll extract if you can cover me!” He nodded, but I could tell he balked at the idea, at the mere thought of me being on the ground amidst the torrent of droids while he flew overhead. There was little in the way of options, however, so he bit back his objections as we finally approached our ship.

“I’ll get Hunter secured! Go!” I shouted, already pulling away from him the instant we reached the ramp. He didn’t question me, instantly racing toward the cockpit. I’d only just managed to wrestle Hunter into a crash couch, straining with the effort to hold him upright while pulling at the harness, when the ship jerked to life. Movements rushed, I quickly latched the straps about his limp form before the ship leapt up so sharply, I couldn’t stop myself from dropping to a knee, hands desperately locked around the seat before me.

I’d hoped we might have just a few moments for me to place a chest tube, but, with the ship lurching about so violently, that would have to wait…

The sound of the shuttle’s sluggish guns boomed through the small cabin, and I shuddered at the memory of how many droids I’d seen littering the fields. How many had the others been able to take out? How many could Echo hope to destroy in the few seconds before we’d reach the crash-site? Would there be anything left to find among the wreckage?

I had to shake the thoughts from my head lest the tears gathering in my throat choked me.

“Touchdown in T minus 30!” Echo’s voice sounded thin through the shuttle intercom, but his words were clear enough. With one hand locked onto the strap of my medbag, I forced myself to move back toward the door, my other hand tightening briefly around Hunter’s for just a moment, just to reassure myself that he was still there.

“Opening the side hatch!”

I jumped before the door stopped moving, registering only that the ground was a short drop below.

“I’m clear!” I shouted, body still rolling to a stop. Outside, the boom of the shuttle’s cannons was far more deafening, the percussion hitting me with a dull thud to mark every burst of plasma Echo launched into the oncoming army as he quickly flew toward the still smoking craters.

I granted only seconds to scan the surrounding hills – Tech had managed to put some small bit of distance between themselves and the main army as they fell – before turning toward the shuttle itself.

And then I smelled the fuel saturating the air. I heard the roar of flames and felt the wrongness of numb flesh where there should have been agony from nerves destroyed by deep burns. Some distant memory screamed at me for the weight held by my ankle, and my chest wanted to cough to free myself of smoke that had once left me sputtering and choking. The distant trees blurred into those native to my homeland, and I couldn’t ignore the ghost-image of the sleeping tooka we’d painted below the red medic symbol.

My body shied back as something erupted with a small burst of neon blue near the cockpit, and I realized just how quickly I was breathing; how frantically my heart slammed against my chest. Maker, I felt like I was going to be sick… but my men were in there… Tech… Wrecker… Cross…

My leg nearly collapsed beneath that first, shaky step forward, but then I was running. I didn’t try to fight off the way my memories bled over into reality; refused to acknowledge the flicker of fire through holes that didn’t exist, the sound of metal warping and skin crackling as I reached forward. My hands shook, but I made them find purchase on the narrow opening between the rear doors, unsure if the heat scalding my fingers was real.

The right door was already partially open, but it was bent so violently I doubted anyone but Wrecker could make it budge. Even the left hung oddly, the metal too warped to slide smoothly on tracks left askew from the collision. Nearly screaming beneath the strain, I threw my entire body into dragging it down, foot hiked up to press against the hull as the slab reluctantly began to move.

Don’t stop. Don’t think. Emergency lights flickered within. Metal panels that once lined the roof and walls hung bent and ruined from what few bolts still held them up while others littered the floor, leaving the bare skeleton of steel and insulation exposed. I knew this ship – knew every hidden recess and faulty latch. The rear door must have already been partially open before the crash... Crosshair… He must have been shooting from here…

Attention turning back to the debris strewn across the floor, I began sifting through the wreckage, hoisting aside tattered panels in search of even a trace of that familiar armor.

“Crosshair! Crosshair, say something, dammit!” I barely noticed myself screaming for him, tried not to yield beneath the need to scream Emmy’s name alongside his as I twisted fear into anger if only for the façade of strength it granted. “Crossha- Cross!” I nearly tripped from how quickly I darted forward, eyes locked on the rounded corner of a boot, hands already reaching out to pull away the slab of durasteel and fallen insulation concealing him.

“Cross?! Crosshair, come on, baby, say something.” I pleaded, dropping to my knees beside him. He offered no response as my fingers slid up his neck in search of the steady dance of his pulse, and I nearly sobbed with relief upon finding it. Movements rapid, I ripped the scanner from my bag, cursing every eternity that passed in the few seconds before results began populating across the small screen. Minor laceration, minor abrasion, moderate contusion, minor concussion… Something akin to a sob shuttered passed my lips as the scan finished without listing anything life-threatening.

Shoving the device back into my bag, I quickly pulled him against me, grunting beneath the effort to haul his lanky form over my shoulder. Just as I began to push myself back to my feet, I paused, eyes catching on another familiar shape nearly hidden amongst the rubble. With a scoff, I reached out to snatch the elegant weapon before treading quickly back to the partially opened door, pausing to scan the nightscape before me.

The trees that surrounded us were wrong, and I had to shake my head to make sense of the battlefield, reminding myself that we were far from Agamar. Echo had flown back toward where he and I surfaced with Hunter, littering the ground and enemy forces alike with cannon fire as though he was still attempting to grant an escape route to someone within, a pretense that appeared to be working, though I could only guess for how long.

Movements quick but steady, I eased Crosshair and his rifle down in the short ditch carved into the earth from the crash, hopeful that it might grant him some meager bit of cover while I was gone. Turning back toward the ship was no easier the second time. I could feel my body trembling and knew it wasn’t from exhaustion, could feel some primal instinct dragging against my movements as I started back toward that ramp, jaw snapping shut to keep my teeth from clattering.

The flames were real now, glowing and hot and spreading far too quickly throughout the fore of that accursed ship. That’s where Wrecker and Tech were… My stomach lurched as I stepped back onto the ramp, and I had to brace my hand against the hull to keep my head from spinning, silently cursing myself for how quickly my heart raced, for the relentless phantom pains of wounds that had healed long ago… There wasn’t time for this… Lips pulling into a scowl, I tread quickly into the cabin once more.

The ship had crashed at a harsh angle, landing gear jutting uselessly above the scarred earth, rendering the walkway nearly unpassable without leaning heavily against the wall. I could feel the heat bleeding through my glove and tried not to obsess over the faint scent of burnt flesh lingering on the very edge of awareness.

These transports weren’t large – barely half the size of the Marauder, but each step felt near impossible from the daunting weight pulling me back toward the rear door. The heart of the ship was dark – the lights clearly having failed either from the initial impact or from the fire just peeking through rivetted sheets of durasteel, forcing me to rely on the night vision of my HUD. It almost helped – granted a layer of distance between myself and reality; as though I was watching a movie rather than having to traverse through another ruined transport rapidly being overtaken by burning fuel and the shoddy craftsmanship innate to the overworked Separatist shipyards. But then a groan would rise from somewhere beyond the internal paneling, reminding me how little time I had before the entire vessel would be engulfed, and that panic would arise anew.

“Wrecker!” I shouted as soon as the walkway opened slightly, “Tech!” but the cockpit before me was frozen in utter disarray; computer arrays lay strewn across the deck, shards of broken transparasteel catching the occasional flicker of flame roaring from the central hub. I knew that the heat drawing beads of sweat across my brow was no longer imagined, nor was the faint taste of burning fuel and electronics that even my bucket’s filters couldn’t cleanse from air growing heavy with smoke. It looked like interference on the HUD – static distorting the edges of broken interfaces and dangling display monitors.

“Wrecker!” Listening to the sound my own breath whistling through my coms had become a meditation in itself – forcing me to slow my breathing when it grew too quick as I moved rapidly through the ruined cockpit, “Tech!” pushing aside fallen panels and debris in search of either of my squadmates.

A groan instantly caught my attention, voice deep but weaker than I’d ever heard him, and, in the same heartbeat, I was racing forward.

“Wrecker?! Wreck, keep talking to me!” I pleaded even as I finally made out his form crumbled in the back corner of the room.

“…ow…” He grumbled, drawing a huff of laughter from me, but the breathless coughs that followed robbed even the glimmer of that precious taste of humor, curse catching on my tongue. He wasn’t wearing his helmet.

“Alright, we need to get you out of here.” I said, voice a careful blend of gentle yet firm as I finally reached him. “Think you can hold on to me?” His brows were drawn weakly together above eyes still clenched tightly against the pain and the smoke. His arm shifted toward me, but he made no effort to look, the movement clumsy and listless. I quickly pressed myself against his side, practically draping his entire torso over my upper back in an effort to carry enough of his weight to drag him out of here.

“Did… did we crash?” He asked, voice hoarse and slurred.

“Yeah.” I said with a humorless chuckle. “Yeah, you crashed. But I’m going to get you out of here, okay?” He responded only with a weary hum, but, when I tried to pull him upright, a sharp cry tore through the air before raising him even an inch, instantly turning my blood to ice as my stomach flipped.

“Wreck?! Wreck, where’s it hurt?” I was already setting him back down as the question left me in a rush, movements no less careful for how quickly I moved. He couldn’t answer at first, lips curled in a taut snarl.

“Kn… knee.” He finally grunted, voice thick with pain. Additional curses begged to drip from my tongue, but I forced myself silent if only to ensure the kind-hearted man beside me felt no guilt for the delay as I quickly retrieved my scanner once more. His chest bucked beneath a violent series of coughs, and I felt myself cringe at the raspiness of his strained breathing.

“Kriff…” I couldn’t hold it back any longer as I read the results, hands already tearing through my bag as I began explaining what I was doing to Wrecker. “Wrecker, honey, a couple things are going to happen pretty quickly, okay?” I didn’t wait for him to respond before continuing. “I’m going to give you something for the pain, and then I need to get that knee in a brace.” He tried briefly to open his eyes but closed them just as quickly against the ever-thickening smoke. “It’s not broken,” I assured him, autoinjector already in hand, “Just dislocated, but I can’t set it in here.” In truth, I didn’t think I was strong enough to set the joint alone even with him doped up on enough muscle relaxers to knock him out for days, but that was a problem we’d deal with later.

“Okay, quick pinch.” I warned, giving him barely a second to prepare before laying the device against his neck. His lips bunched tightly together in an almost petulant whine, and, even in the midst of the adrenaline flooding my veins, the urgency pushing me faster, I couldn’t dismiss the surge of affection that warmed my chest as the sight. “I know, sweetheart, I know; but it’ll help.” I murmured quietly, brace already set beside his injured leg. “Alright – if you can, take a deep breath and slowly let it out.” I instructed with an air of nonchalance that felt almost like a betrayal. As soon as his chest expanded, I slid my hands beneath his thigh and calf, and carefully lifted his leg onto the brace, wrenching that breath from him in a choked groan.

“Almost done.” I promised, allowing no hesitation before I began tightening the straps along the full length of the limb. His hand shook against the need to reach out and stop me before curling into a tight fist, head slamming against the wall behind him with a thud. “You’re doing so well, hon, last one.” He showed no sign of relief as I tightened that final strap, but I couldn’t let that stop me.

“All done. Now we need to get out of here.” I said, again pressing myself firmly against his side. His torso jerked with choppy breaths, each exhale a barely restrained cough. “Lean on me and try not to put any weight on that leg.” I didn’t need to say it, but I hoped hearing the confidence in my voice granted him some measure of reassurance as he struggled to shift his good leg beneath him.

Standard troopers tend to weigh around 180 pounds, with their armor adding an additional 80. Wrecker was not a standard trooper. I was already exhausted from hauling Hunter to safety. What fleeting reserves of strength garnered through dwindling bursts of adrenaline and a pure desperation that made my mouth dry and heart racing left me trembling, teeth ground beneath the effort, but proved just enough to lift him from the quickly warming floor. Had to hurry… Tech was still in here somewhere.

“I’ve got you, Wreck.” I had to whisper to hide the strain from my voice, carefully pulling him forward for that first, tentative step. “Just hold onto me, okay?” He finally seemed to be coming out of that initial shock of pain and confusion, eyes squinting but cracked just enough to glimpse the path ahead. “It’s not far – just need to get out of here.” He tried to speak, but the words broke into another coughing fit. Part of me wanted to tell him that this was why it was so important to keep his damn helmet on during missions, that flare of irritation driven solely by how worried I was for him, but that was also something that would have to wait.

I could hear his already choppy breaths catch with every jilted stride, watched as his head steadily dipped lower as the tension coiling through his massive form worsened beneath his vain efforts to bite back the torrent of coughs clawing up his throat and constricting his chest, but the closer we got to the exit, the quicker he moved.

He nearly collapsed the instant the cool night air hit him, finally yielding to lungs screaming from the heat and debris of the smoke. A sharp grunt escaped me as I hauled him forward, nearly dragging him toward the shallow ditch in which Crosshair still lay.

“…Cr…” His brother’s name caught between violent coughs.

“He’s alright – just got knocked out.” I nearly gasped, easing him down. As soon as he was settled, I reached into my bag once more. “Here; this will help.” I could barely speak from how quickly I was panting, again giving him barely a few seconds before pressing the autoinjector to his neck. By the time I returned the device to my bag, he was able to draw a slow, deep breath with only an occasional hitch.

After sparing a brief glance to confirm his blaster was still attached to his hip, I threw my pack back on and pushed myself back to my feet.

“D… Doc…” Wrecker mumbled.

“I have to go get Tech – I’ll be right back.” I was moving before I’d even finished speaking, ignoring the vertigo that wanted to drag me back to the ground. He said something else, but I was already too far away to hear him without the coms in his helmet to carry his voice.

The lights in the cabin barely flickered anymore, but sections of the far wall had begun to glow; wisps of flame dancing between bent paneling. The air was so thick with smoke, it felt like I was fighting against a current to reach the cockpit.

“Tech!” I knew it was foolish; still, as I searched through the carnage for Tech, I couldn’t help but keep an eye out for Wrecker’s helmet. “Tech!” The pilot’s seat was empty; one of the straps clearly torn from the force of the crash.

I was already mentally preparing myself for when I found him, because the alternative simply wasn’t an option: get whatever was veiling him from sight off of him, scan him for possible spinal damage, a step I’d tried to skip with Wrecker solely because of the smoke inhalation, and, barring any serious injuries, cart him to safety as well… then I could signal Echo to retrieve us… then I could treat Hunter, maybe get Echo’s help setting Wrecker’s knee… deal with whatever injuries Tech may have and ensure Crosshair was still okay… then… then I could breathe.

But when my initial search revealed nothing, that dread began to return.

“Tech!” Again, I screamed his name, no longer passively glancing through the wreckage as I, instead, began sifting through it at random; piling fallen panels together and kicking what debris remained aside as though my intent was to clean the useless ship rather than flee it, but the room was too big, and the fire was growing.

Curses flowing unrestrained from lips pulled into a scowl, I snatched my datapad, certain this, too, would be a waste of time… but I had to try something. Ear tuned for that familiar chime, I sent Tech a senseless message – whatever keys my fingers happened to strike at random before hitting send. Nothing. I moved to a different section and sent another. Nothing. I moved once again, and again heard nothing.

“Damn it! Come on!” I don’t know who I was shouting at; myself for my inability to find him; Tech for getting too hurt to answer me; the damn datapad for being too quite…

There! The entirety of my focus tuned in to the faint note, unsure if it had been my imagination; a futile flare of hope in the face of growing despair, but there was no doubting the sound that came once more mere seconds after sending yet another message.

The nav computer was nearly beyond recognition. Something had slammed into it hard enough to render half of it into jagged durasteel and cables that would surely have been sparking if power could still reach them. Movements more careful now, I set aside an overturned chair and what appeared to be the control board to the gunner’s station, and my teeth clicked from how tightly my jaw ground shut, air hissing in a sharp inhale as I finally set eyes on him.

His left arm had been caught on the torn metal, limb still twisted painfully above him as crimson dripped down the off-white plastoid of his rerebrace and shoulder pauldron. My body moved on instinct; retreating from any emotion into the simple knowledge of what I had to do. One hand slipped beneath the bottom edge of his bucket to find his pulse as the other retrieved my scanner, ignoring the flush of relief upon finding that strong, albeit rapid dance of his lifeforce beneath my fingers.

While the scanner slowly began listing off various bruises and abrasions beyond the gash carved into his arm, I wrenched a tourniquet from the quick-release pouch at my thigh. I was already clumsily easing the loop of braided nylon up toward his shoulder with one hand when the scan finished. Another minor concussion, but nothing that might grant me pause before moving him.

Something erupted behind us, just enough to buffet me with a tiny shockwave before showering me with a handful of what must have been nuts and bolts, wrenching a barked grunt from me as one burned a small hole through my blacks to scald my hip before clattering loudly to the ground. Ignoring the inconvenience, I finished lining up the tourniquet a few inches about the wound and began tightening it harshly until the bleeding stopped and he began to squirm weakly in pain.

“Hey, hey; you back with me?” The words fluttered thoughtlessly from my lips in some automatic attempt to garner a response from him as I ripped open a wad of gauze. A stifled grunt caught in his throat until I began wrapping the limb in a hasty bandage – something rushed and crude but just enough to offer some protection until I could replace it with something better.

“Ah!” The cry left him in an almost affronted gasp, head jerking up to find the source of his pain before his eyes darkened with understanding.

“Everyone’s okay!” I reassured him quickly, and the rush of relief that washed over him was palpable. “Can you stand?” He glanced down for just a moment, as though needing to confirm his legs were still there before forcing himself to move, but I could see the weakness in the attempt, hear the effort it took. I didn’t bother asking, body already moving to press against his uninjured side as my arm locked around his waist.

“I want you to hold on to me, okay?” There was a gentleness in the order, but it was an order nonetheless, and he wasted no breath in arguing, legs shaking violently beneath him as I pulled us both to our feet. His body leaned shamelessly against me, head hanging to his chest as he blindly allowed me to guide him through the ruined ship. As we reached the cabin, however, I paused.

“Wrecker?! What are-” Before I could finish the nearly shouted question, he turned just enough to reveal the limp form of a small child draped over his shoulder.

“Who the kriff is that?!”

Next Chapter

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[underspacegame]

We are less than a month out from our Early Access launch. Excited? Sleepless? Suffering from splitting migraines as you try to parse documentation that’s useless to you because Google’s search capabilities have been gutted by corporate ineptitude and your previous talents of being able to figure out solutions and leverage online resources are now useless in the vast overwhelming face of tools that have become completely mediocre in their relentless idiotic pursuit of profits via the lowest common denominator that have degraded any utility to the point of unusability and it’s 3AM and your cat is screaming at you because she wants you to play with a plastic fish she brought you and you’re not supposed to be up this late and you accidentally dropped your last pain medication pill that might have made you at least capable of falling asleep down the drain?

No? Well then, good. Yeah. Let’s talk Early Access and what to expect, to better set your expectations and illuminate what’ll be in and what’ll be not-in.

The thing I want to emphasize over everything else is that we are a very small and overly ambitious team working on a VERY large game with a scope that dwarves even many AAA releases. As it stands and when it launches the amount of content that will be in, at launch, is massive. I have no doubt that many of you will be spending hundreds of hours dredging up every perverse secret the galaxy’s hidden away.

At the same time, we’re a VERY small team. Outside of our asset creators, the only person doing coding, bugfixing, UX, QA response, server integrity, mod support, etc, is me. And just me. This isn’t so much a single developer spinning multiple plates as it is a human trainwreck trying to twirl an entire restaurant, to the severe detriment of his health and sanity.

With all this in mind, our Early Access launch will not launch with the full scope of features and content planned for Underspace. Significantly, multiplayer will launch in a very early state that does not include NPCs, bosses, or the multiplayer campaign. On the singleplayer side, several questlines, extended ship customization and cockpit textures, and many planetside and station interiors will not be included in launch.

These features or content exist or are implemented in a working state, but are often heavily, HEAVILY untested or unpolished, to the point where keeping in game before they’re at least in a state I'd be comfortable with is not something I’m comfortable with.

Before you go off creating posts on various imageboards and badly rebranded social media sites decrying the Underspace apocalypse, keep two things in mind: these features are not gone or cut from the game. It’s much like Todd Howard’s kind smiling visage: even if you can’t see it it’s still there. Watching and waiting. When Early Access releases in April, we will be putting out a nice big roadmap showing a huge amount of upcoming updates to the game. These updates will be staggered out as major releases, which will include these missing pieces of content.

This also includes features or elements such as voice acting, bugfixes (as Early Access is always buggy), and further mod support.

The second thing to keep in mind is that Underspace, when it launches, will still launch with the majority of its content and the vast majority of its game features implemented. This includes the singleplayer main campaign, over 40 quests, all bosses, all points of interest, all factions, star systems, random missions, storm hazards, equipment, flyable ships, and probably many more things I’ve lost in the hazy maze that is my fried brain currently.

It has been a long long time coming, almost seven years in constant development. None of this would have been possible with the support of our backers and community, but there’s still more to go. Contributions, supporting us during the Early Access period, and of course relentlessly shilling it your friends will all help us massively, in no small part because this will also let us dedicate more resources to improving the game and getting it out in a reasonable timeframe that also, coincidentally, doesn’t overwork me to death.

And… that’s about it! If I survive, I hope to see you out in the stormy skies on April 10th!

[fyrets]

Personal Problems on PawBorough's Patreon

So I guess I'm doing this. Kicking this off with some disclaimers.

I don't have a problem with the team putting together a Patreon. Developers need money to live. Get that bag.

I admittedly don't have much experience with Patreon either as a creator or a patron. I might be operating under misconceptions or make incorrect assumptions of what is and isn't effective when running a Patreon. A lot of this is coming from a very subjective perspective of what I think things are worth. To me.

I sincerely welcome any and all commentary or criticism on this post. It's mostly rambling, so I'll gladly try to clarify some points if asked about it. On that note, this isn't like, a full on debate. Let's be chill.

Let's get this started.

Now why am I rambling here? In short, I feel like the Patreon isn't set up to be as accessible or fair to the community as it could be. I am very aware that ultimately not everyone will be able to support the game in this way. Life is hard, and people can't always get what they want. But I think things could still be improved to make more people happy, and potentially more money for the team.

Tiers aren't the best they could be

As of writing, there are four tiers.

$1 tip jar with no benefits. This was added after it was suggested in the Discord.

$5 "Kit" - General support, behind-the-scenes content, work-in-progress updates (digital), Patreon Discord channel, and Discord access.

$10 "Domestic" - All previous benefits and a "domestic supporter" personal credit on the credits page of the game at launch.

$20 "Mystic" - All previous benefits, a "mystic supporter" personal credit on the credits page of the game at launch, and access to exclusive community polls.

As I said in my disclaimer, my opinions are extremely subjective to what I think things are worth, but something about the pricing scheme is incredibly unbalanced to me. Why does it go 5, 10, 20 instead of 5, 10, 15? I see that it's doubling from the last tier, but why? Especially when the added benefits are.. pretty minimal? A credit on the site for an added $5 from the lowest tier, but it's $15 for a different credit title and polls. People can ultimately spend their money however they want, but this seems like a bad deal.

Not only that, but I feel like it's a HUGE missed opportunity to not have a $3 tier (we could call it "Fauna" or something) with minimal benefits. If $5 is for everything, $3 could just be the Discord benefit. (Though if you ask me, I've more often than not seen $1 tiers be used for a Discord role so 🤷). If just Discord isn't a good enough deal, then they could do low resolution images of the previews or something. I think it's also fair enough to say a hypothetical $3 tier wouldn't get a credit, but on that note...

Why no Kit credit?

It was stated in the recent Kickstarter post that all backers will have a credit on the site. This is a good thing, but seeing as the lowest tier for the Kickstarter was $5, it feels unfair to me that the Kit doesn't seem to get a credit. Especially considering the fact that the Kickstarter was a one time payment.

It'll only take another month for a Kit supporter to spend more than the lowest KS tier and not receive a credit. There's already an upcharge of a different credit title when going from Domestic to Mystic, so why leave Kit out of it completely? I just don't get it.

Concerns on Discord

If the credit situation is unfair to Patrons, then I'll be honest, I think doing Discord integration is unfair to Kickstarter backers. I am aware that Patreon has tools for Discord integration that Kickstarter (last I checked) doesn't, but like, if we've already gone this far without exclusive roles or channels for people who have financially supported the project, why start now? On top of that, I think having a Patreon exclusive channel in the main server is a bad idea for a number of reasons.

First, it will create a divide in the community based on money. There are already locked channels based on Borough affiliation, but that is an extension of the game and not connected to money. I don't think Discord integration will create a literal class divide among the players, I have a lot more faith in the community than that, but again, if this wasn't done for the Kickstarter, why start now?

Second, I think there's a bit too much risk when it comes to keeping exclusive content exclusive. I think almost everyone has sent a message to the wrong channel at least once in their life. It ultimately won't be a big deal if someone accidentally makes mention of something in the public channels, but that's still something to moderate for, y'know?

Third, the Discord has already been stated to be temporary, where it'll be phased out sometime after launch. Why include paid benefits for something that isn't going to last? The next alternative to this is to integrate Patreon into the site forums somehow, but Blue already said that wasn't gonna happen.

In conclusion

Idk I think it could be better. I'd love to cough up $3 a month for blurry images. $5 for crisp ones is too much for me right now. That is all.

[nutzgunray-lvt]

My Thoughts On The Dark Izuku Arc

A popular consensus on this site and in the fandom in general is that the Dark Izuku arc was a let down. Though fans have this opinion for different reasons, I'll be using this to word vomit why I myself don't like this arc and what I personally would have done differently.

Heads up: this is a UA critical, Class 1A critical, anti Bakugou, Pro-Heroes critical post. Don't like, don't read.

When I first heard about the Dark Izuku arc, I got excited. I was hyped up to see more world building, more people in Izuki and All Might's corner regarding the secret of One For All, as well as seeing the price Izuku was paying for his self sacrificial tendancies. To a very minor degree, it delivered on those aspects. I love the bunny/fox lady that Izuku saved and how it touched on the worsening discrimination those with mutant Quirks faced, I'm glad that Izuku could finally tell other people about One For All, and I was glad to see Izuku FINALLY being told by people other than All Might that he was working himself too hard and that he could rest.

Those were the only good things this arc did for me.

As for what this arc DIDN'T do well for me, it's a lot. To break it all down, my problems with this arc are: the mixed messages being thrown out and how Izuku's point of view and wellbeing is ignored.

Just a disclaimer, I don't agree with Izuku having to put this burden upon himself. Yes, he has One For All, but he's a CHILD at the end of the day, and he should have NEVER been put in this position. HOWEVER, narratively, I completely understand why he did it.

All For One was out of Tartarus along with many other incredibly dangerous villains, and on top of all of that, AFO had Ragdoll's Search Quirk. This meant that he essentially had eyes on Izuki (and One For All by extension) 24/7. Had he wanted to, he could have launched a full-scale invasion/attack on UA, putting numerous people in danger. It was this reason as to why Izuku made the decision to leave UA in the first place. His plan to use himself as bait to lure AFO and Shigaraki out of hiding made sense narratively, but was also an incredibly dangerous one... which is why it made absolutely no sense to me why these Pro-Heroes (who are ADULTS), were fine with it.

I understand that they were in an incredibly tough position. Japan was in chaos, public trust in heroes was at an all-time low, and Tartarus just had a mass escape. Many heroes were either dying, retiring, or went over to AFO's side. They were probably stretched thin as it was, but for there to be NO ONE saying, "I really don't like this. He's just a kid, and this is incredibly dangerous for him to do. Why don't we have one or two of us traveling with him to protect him?" is just mindboggling to me.

Yes, All Might insisted on going along with him, but he was Quirkless. Physically, there wouldn't be much he could do if someone had successfully gotten the drop on Izuku.

Then, these same heroes who were seemingly completely fine with this plan get all *surprised Pikachu face* when Izuku strikes out alone and begins pushing himself to the breaking point. Yes, they tell him that he needs to take a break... but then they indirectly pressure him more by saying that he's their best and only bet against AFO and Shigaraki. At this point, Izuku is ignoring food, rest, and his injuries. At this point, they should have been putting their foot down that, "No, you're a kid and you're in no condition to be doing this anymore. You need to rest."

This keeps going and going until Izuku is overwhelmed and nearly captured by Dictator, only to be rescued by Class 1A.

Once again, Izuku's point of view and wellbeing are ignored as all 19 of his classmates corner him and start fighting him into submission. I know they had the best of intentions - they didn't want Izuku to shoulder this burden on his own, they wanted to show him that they cared - but as I said above, Izuku was NOT in the right physical or mental condition for this to happen. All it wound up doing was pushing him away from them and making him try and run away. In fact, they're lucky they didn't scare him away entirely.

What's more, they all rally behind Bakugou while doing this.

I've made my intense dislike for Bakugou clear on my blog, so I won't get into it here. But the fact that they sit by and not only allow Bakugou to blame ALL MIGHT for all of this, but also let him repeatedly insult Izuku while TRYING TO SHOW HIM THAT HE'S NOT ALONE is just infuriating. Again, Izuku is in awful shape both physically and mentally. The absolute last thing he needs to hear is Bakugou insulting him and projecting his own flaws onto Izuku.

Even worse is how the hell the teachers at UA are even okay with this?

I also understand that they're probably stretched thin as well, but they were totally okay with not just Izuku leaving, but the rest of 1A following behind him? Yeah, I call bullshit. These were the same teachers who were divided on whether or not to let the first years participate in Work-Studies, teachers who apparently regard the students at UA to be like their own children (as said in the light novels). I'll excluse Aizawa from this, seeing as how he was busy healing in the hospital.

Again, if there was more of the ethics of this being debated in universe (hell, even making the public's trust in heroes fall even lower), I would have been okay with it, because it would have been warrented.

The worst part of me is how in my opinion, the narrative itself doesn't even know how to feel about all of this.

Yes, Izuku essentially dropped out of school to go chase Japan's #1 villain. Yes, Izuku is destroying himself trying to protect everyone, and everyone's warning him not to push himself too hard... but he's getting results, GREAT results even! He's saved countless people and even defeated high-ranking villains such as Lady Nagant and Muscular, among many others. Even the Pro-Heroes are saying how Izuku is their best bet to stop AFO and Shigaraki, so which is it? Should he have stayed and let those villains run around and cause mayhem, or should he put himself in a severe amount of danger but at the cost of those villains ultimately being aprehended?

My final gripe with this arc is just how rushed it is. You're telling me that all of this took place over the course of one month? That Izuku neglected his health to the point of having to use Black Whip and Float to move around, only for it all to be made better by a bath and nap? Again, I call bullshit.

What I would have done differently with this arc is this: have Izuku leave UA without telling ANYBODY. He could still leave his letters for Class 1A, but other than that, he's gone. All Might could let the Pro-Heroes know about OFA, but they'd be trying to find Izuku and bring him into protection because as a kid, he should not even be in this position. All Might himself would also be joining them in these efforts. Izuku would spend several months aprehending villains and traveling across Japan, unlocking and mastering more parts of OFA. He could still push himself towards his breaking point, worrying the past users of OFA, but instead of the entirety of 1A swarming him, only have his closest friends come to being him back.

This brings us to UA and their reaction.

The UA teachers could finally be let in on the OFA secret, and maybe have one or two of them at a time try to find Izuku. Have them state that as students, 1A is not allowed to go out there and try to find him, as they're needed at the campus. Ochako, Ida, Todoroki, Asui, Fumikage, and Aoyama can say "fuck it, we're going anyway" and try to calmly bring him back. They can acknowledge why he left but state that, as his friends, they're not scared of being caught up in the crossfire. They can state that they'll shoulder the burden alongside him, and Izuku can still pass out and be taken to the HOSPITAL. He'd be hospitalized for a week or so and then the debate as to whether or not to take Izuku back to UA can take place. Because on the one hand... there's the whole reason he left in the first place: to protect the civillians and teachers and students there. On the other, they're not about to just throw Izuku on the streets and say "good luck. Try not to die."

For that matter, this could cause some pushback against the heroes for "using a child soldier to do their dirty work." They can truthfully say, "We don't condone this. He ran off on his own and we're trying to find him and being him back."

Anyways, that's my take on the Dark Izuku arc. I left some things out, but this is the essence of it all.

[godfrey-the-chaos-duck]

PEOPLE OF DUCKBLR

I DID A THING

I made a little art book of Della's journey in the Spear of Selene! And I set it to the lyrics of Space Oddity by David Bowie!!!

So, here it issss (under the cut, it's LONG)

Listen to the song as you read for the best effect

Apologies in advance for making everyone cry over Della Angst

@justaboot @writebackatya @christianfoxymc @minaduck and all other Della stans out here, this is for you!

Ground control to Major Tom... Ground control to Major Tom...

Della leaves McDuck Manor, and faces the journey ahead.

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on Ground control to Major Tom

Della gets ready for takeoff. She initiates the launch sequence, there's no going back now, but it'll just be a few hours, right...?

Commencing countdown, engines on Check ignition, and may God's love be with you

Gyro (who I firmly believe LIVES in that lab or at the very least sleeps there a lot) wakes up to the sound of alarms blaring - how did she know it was here?!

Della has a picture of her and her family - little does she know...

This is ground control to Major Tom, you've really made the grade And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear

Gyro, in a panic, calls Scrooge, praying he'll wake up and answer.

Though it's two in the morning, he does.

Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare This is Major Tom to ground control, I'm stepping through the door

When Scrooge hears what's happened, he is understandably horrified, and rushes to the launch site at once.

And I'm floating in a most peculiar way And the stars look very different today

Della looks out at the stars. It's an unearthly beauty the likes of which she'd never imagined.

For here am I sitting in a tin can Far above the world

The Spear gets farther and father away from familiarity... from safety...

Planet Earth is blue And there's nothing I can do

Della's journey is still going smoothly - for now.

*just pretend I did something for that instrumental break*

Though I've passed one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still And I think my spaceship knows which way to go

Scrooge sits down at the comms desk, desperately trying to get a message through to Della.

The cosmic storm has started, and Della's a bit rattled, but not scared.

Tell my wife I love her very much She knows

Scrooge and Della are beginning to realise the gravity of the situation - she might not make it out of this one. Of course, neither of them wants to think that.

Ground control to Major Tom Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong

The Spear is struck by a fierce bolt of lightning borne from the stars themselves.

Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Scrooge can scarcely bring himself to believe it - and neither can Della. The last time he'd heard her voice, and it was a helpless, piercing scream.

Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you— —Here am I floating 'round my tin can Far above the Moon

Scrooge bows his head in utter despair as tears begin to well up behind tired eyes. She's gone.

The Spear crash-lands on the lunar surface.

Planet Earth is blue And there's nothing I can do...

Della stares back to the world she left behind.

Scrooge mourns for the niece he lost.

[jpitha]

Just a Little Further 36

Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

The day dawns, and Ava and I go down for breakfast. A little before we left, I reached out and invited Raaden and Ginny to eat too. As we come downstairs to the dining room, they are already there, siting.

"Why did you invite us to your office so early today Melody?" Raaden laughs as she takes a sip of tea. Huh. I guess I do a lot of business in the morning during or right after breakfast. I can't help it, morning is when I get the most done.

"I've got some news for both of you, but first lets eat." Raaden and Ginny share a look before breakfast is brought out and we tuck in.

Breakfast is probably my favorite meal of the day. Even here on the Reach where we're thousands of light-years from a good egg or oats I can find delicious breakfast foods to eat. I've always liked sharing a meal with others, and to have friends around the table makes the meal that much more enjoyable.

After breakfast, the staff clears the table and brings out fresh tea and a coffee for me. "All right. Raaden, Ginny. We've discussed things and we are wondering if you'd both like to become Builders?"

Ginny squeals and practically jumps out of her chair "Yes! Yes, thank you Empress, thank you!"

Raaden blinks in surprise. She inclines her head slightly. "Are you sure Melody? You know who I am, you know who I used to represent. If words get home that you're siding with me, it'll mean trouble for you."

Ava looks up from her tea at Helen. "Raaden, you've been here with us for a few months now and not only has there been no word from Venus, but you have shown yourself to be a model resident, helpful and interested, as well as having good insight and good instincts. We need help, and to be frank, we need your kind of help."

I put my coffee down. "Additionally, if we're actually going to try and take over back home, it won't matter that you're from Venus right? You'll be a Builder and if we succeed it'll all fall under me." I pick up my coffee and take a sip to hide my expression. "And if we fail, we're all dead anyway, so it doesn't matter."

Ava looks at me shocked. "What do you mean?"

Raaden nods. "No Ava, Melody is right. If we're actually going to do this, we have only one option: success. If we fail we will all-" she gestures around grandly "-be killed. All of us. They will not tolerate any Builder to survive. They might even destroy the Gates."

Ginny looks between Ava, me and Raaden as we talk. "What is going on? Destroy the Gates? Kill us all? Take over? What are you planning?"

I sigh. Ginny went with us to the Wilds, but she worked with Omar on the reactors the whole time, she missed out on the conversations we had on the way there and back. "Ginny, we're tossing around the idea of amassing a fleet and... attempting to conqueror Human/K'laxi/Xenni space."

I had no idea how she was going to react to that.

Ginny looked at us, expecting us to break out in laughter. "You're serious? It's not a joke?"

"Ginny, I have the power to make people who are in proximity to me do whatever I tell them, and they don't have the ability to disobey. If word gets out to home about that, they will send people to kill me. If that fails, they will just launch a dreadnought to destroy the Starbase. Raaden and Ava have pointed out the only way to survive is to attack first and win. I get that it's a lot, and if you don't want to sign on for that, it's okay, but you should know that as of right now that's our plan."

I suppose I didn't know what would happen next. I like Ginny, she seems smart and observant but we're telling her that we plan on going to take over our home systems. As she thought about it, her face contorted into a wicked grin. "Take over back home? The whole thing? All the planets, colonies, starbases and everything? I'm in."

Ava blinked. "Just like that?"

Ginny was emphatic. "Just like that. Let's show them all what we can do."

Raaden tipped her head back and laughed. "Well then. How can I say no? Melody, Ava, I appreciate you taking a chance on me. I can emphatically say we did not get off on the right foot, but you gave me a chance and didn't just stuff me into a hibernation cabinet. I'm in. I'm with you entirely Empress. Let me help you win.

Well then no time like the present. I asked them both to stand, and went over and gave them each a kiss. Ava frowned the whole time, but she knows that it's the best way to introduce the Nanites to them. Raaden still smells good. I should find out what scent she has.

Just to make sure there's no hard feelings I go back and give Ava a kiss too. Laughing, I take my new Builders and we go out into the Reach to begin the work.

In the first of possibly many foolish decisions, I had Raaden and Omar take High Line out and with a small crew of local volunteers go to the other locations Janais mentioned. Pesmara was a Starbase like the Reach or the Wilds. It was intact but empty. That was unexpected. I figured we'd see either a cloud of dust or a full Starbase like Reach of the Might of Vzzx, but instead there was a whole, empty Starbase. Raaden linked a beacon back to us, but I told her not to go aboard. We could send a crew over to figure out what happened later.

The Heights of Gilmenny was more like the High Mars Orbitals. It was originally a series of Orbital stations above the planet Gilmenny. The planet still existed, but there were no signs of the Orbitals according to Raaden. Scanning the planet she found multiple debris fields. It seems that since Janais had seen them last, the Heights fell. Further scans could not detect any sapient life on the planet. It was good to know we had a planet under our control, and a source of mineral wealth. We're going to need it with all the ships we're going to build, but it would also have been nice to find more people.

Imperia was even stranger. According to Janais, Imperia was the old capital of the Holy Imperial Systems but when we got to the system there was nothing. No planets at all. Just a star and a cloud of dust.

"Devourers." Janais explained darkly. We could only hope that it had happened before Aeche sacrificed herself to destory them. Omar and Raaden couldn't tell how long ago it happened. seventy four plus years is nothing to an uncaring Galaxy. It might as well happened yesterday for all they were able to tell.

Still, the trip wasn't a whole loss. We found we have another Starbase to fill with people, and tenative plans are being made to decide what to do about the Wilds. The Starbase is too valuable to abandon completely, but it needs extensive repair. More work to do, more people we need.

With Ginny, Raaden and Janais as Builders, we were able to reduce the load that my other Builders were taking up. Um'reli got to have some time out of the chair finally and explore, and Raaden went with Omar and got started designing new ships. It turns out that being in command of a dreadnought gave her some ideas on other ways that we could build them. Between her ideas and Janais' experience with Builder designed ships, we've begun designing a whole new kind of ship. Janais wanted to name the whole class of ships Calamity Class Dreadnoughts. I thought it was a little over the top, but Raaden really liked it, so we kept it.

The Calamity Class ships were like a super Dreadnought. More than twice the reactors, a Stardrive from a starjumper, the largest wormhole generator we could make, room to hold two hundred troopers, and even atmospheric ability! That was Raaden's idea. She thought that since we were going to be attacking some colony planets, if we had the ability to land on the surface, we'd be able to catch them by surprise. Atmospheric manouvering also meant massive thrusters as well as control surfaces. The Calamity Class Super Dreadnought wound up looking sweeping, elegant and intimidating. It was a beautiful design.

"I mean, it's a great design. Really revolutionary." Omar looked at the designs in the Throne while Raaden, Janais, and I were connected so we could go over them. "There's just one problem though."

"What is that, Builder Omar?" Janais really has slotted herself in with us quite well. Her being a former Empress has never really come up these past few weeks. I wonder if she's just so happy to be doing something, that it almost doesn't matter what.

Also the fact that every wormhole link lets her see her partner again.

Omar sighed. "We don't have a way to actually build it. Something this big can't be done in the dockyard printers we have. We can't get much larger than a Frigate. We'd need a real orbital shipyard to make one."

Raaden nods. "We didn't see anything like a shipyard at the other systems we visited either. We'd need something like the Heinlein yards in the L2 point around Earth at least. Ideally, larger than that too."

"Okay then, so... I guess we need to build a shipyard first?"

"Yes, but the database you took from FarReach and the one that you grabbed of the Lavinia doesn't have plans for a shipyard." Raaden shrugs. "We're going to have to built one the old fashioned way. We'll have to design it, print the individual parts and bolt it together."

Janais raised her eyebrow and looked at Raaden. This was all new to her. "How long will that take?"

"Don't know. We've never built one. Heinlein yards has been in service for centuries. I think it took people around fifteen years to build it the first time. It'll probably take us longer."

"We might be able to shortcut it a bit" Omar began.

"I'm hearing a 'but' coming here Omar, what's the issue?" I took a sip of hot water. Coffee won't be coming any time soon, and I'm trying to figure out what parts of coffee I like the best. Today I have mug after mug of hot water. It's nice to have something hot to sip on, but it's still no coffee. If we have to wait fiften, twenty years before we have super dreadnoughts I don't know how I'll be able to go that long with no coffee.

"We'll have to take apart the Wilds. We can open it up and install printers and kind of turn it into almost a shipyard as it is. The shape is pretty close and it will be able to support the super dreadnought as it's being printed but it will mean that we won't be able to use it as living space. I could probably get it up and started in a year or so."

"Well, a year is better than fifteen. And the Wilds are damaged now, so people aren't living there." I turn to look at Janais. "You were living there until recently. How do you feel about us taking the Wilds of Besmara apart and turning it into a shipyard?"

Janais blinks and looks at me "You're asking my opinion, Empress?"

"Yes? You lived there for more than seventy years. If you have strong feelings about the place, I do not want to dissasssemble it to make a shipyard."

"Empress I..." Janais stops and composes herself. "Empress. That is possibly the kindest thing anyone has said to me. If I so wished, you would not turn the Wilds into a shipyard?

I shrugged. "We would look into other options. It doesn't have to be our first choice."

Janais shook her head and smiled. "Empress, with my thanks, please take the Wilds and fufil your destiny. I spent my time at the Wilds in mourning. When you arrived, you lifted the veil from my head and showed me another way. Let us take it, and use it to further your rule."

"Okay then. Omar, let's explore taking the Wilds of Besmara and making a shipyard. Could we get it over here?"

"I mean, maybe? It's too big for the Gates, so we could link it over, but it doesn't have any wormhole generators now and would probably need at least two more reactors if the existing ones were in good shape and I'll bet they are not given what we saw when we were there. Give me 4 months, and I can get the Wilds over here, or we can bring Sun Dancer and just live out of that on rotation while we convert."

As we plan and work out details, the morning goes long and becomes midday. As we get read to break for lunch, an alarm sounds. It starts with a sharp, high tone that slides low, then back high and repeats.

Empress!

What is it Starlight? What's the alarm?

There was a massive energy spike in system and a blinding flash of white and-

Wormhole link. Oh no.

Yes Empress, that's why I sounded the general alarm.

You did the right thing, we'll be right there.

"Come on everyone. Starlight has detected a wormhole link in system. Let's connect to the Reach from the Throne and see who has decided to pay us a visit."

Raaden looks worried. Ginny, and Janais confused. Omar and Ava have already left their chairs and are trotting towards the Throne.

We get there and sit down. It's very nice to have so many people connected, I think this is the first time everyone has slotted in. Ava looks over at Raaden and Ginny who approach some chairs but do not sit. "Raaden and Ginny your Nanites haven't integrated completely yet. You can sit, but please just watch. Don't try and access any systems until tomorrow."

They sit, and I can feel them enter the Reach with a surprised gasp. "Hi Everyone!" I say brightly. "So Starlight, show us what you see."

Starlight shares the last few minutes of sensor and camera data to all of us. As we watch, sure enough, I see the energy spike and in a flash something links into the system, about half way between the Gate ad the Reach.

It's huge.

It's way bigger than a dreadnought, it's nearly colony ship size. What is going on?

"Omar, what is that? I don't recognize it."

"Me neither Melody, I'll scan it."

"It looks like..." Ginny stops. "No, it can't be."

"What is it Ginny?" Ava sounds anxious. Given what Raaden has said, we're not expecting anyone friendly.

"It looks like there are two... or three Starjumpers in there! Look, if you take these parts-" She highlights some long lines in the middle "-and remove them-" She edits the image "-you see what looks like three Starjumpers. I don't know what they're connected with though."

"Ancestors Who Await my Return, I know what that is!" Raaden is practically shouting. "That's The Heinlein Shipyards!"

Omar's voice is flat, like he trying to hold something back. "What."

"I'd recognize those girders anywhere. Remember, we've been trying to capture them off and on for nearly 5 years. That's Heinlein."

"But..." Um'reli sounds worried, "Shipyards don't have wormhole generators."

"But Starjumpers do." Ava sounds amazed. "Someone synced the three Starjumper wormhole generators and stole the Heinlein Shipyards out from L2 around Earth."

Now Janais was worried "But who would do that? We don't have any allies over there."

I gasp. Oh no.

"Raaden. I think I know who it is."

"Yeah, Melody. I think I do too."

"Well don't keep us in the dark, who the heck just stole three Starjumpers and the whole entire Heinlein Shipyards?" Now, Omar sounds a little wild. I think he's having a hard time processing this.

I swallow. "It's the crew of the Vengenance of Lavinia. Or part of it at least."

"What?? Why would they do that?" We can all see eachother while connected to the Throne and Ava glances at Raaden and Ginny. They both are quiet and look like they're trying to shrink into their chairs.

"Ava, what was the first order I gave everyone at dinner?"

"Uh, 'you belong to me' or something right? I liked it. It felt dramatic and impressive."

"I also used my Voice. Everyone in the crew is officially a subject of mine. They literally belong to me. They must have been scheming to get back here almost as soon as they made it back to Venus."

"But how long has it been? a few months? They must have begun the process the minute they came home." Raaden sounds impressed. It was her crew, I guess she has the right.

Ava suddenly sounds anxious, on the verge of panic. "Melody! Those are Starjumpers! AIs run Starjumpers. You can't command AIs with your Voice, what are we going to do?"

Well I have been reading up on AI theory thanks to the Lavinia's library. So I might have a chance of getting them to listen, but it does feel too soon. Oh why couldn't they have waited like half a year before pulling something like this. We're just not ready.

Omar's head snaps up. "Wait wait wait. If that's Venus, the AIs would never work with them. The Heinlein Shipyards is where most Starjumpers are built, even now. It's possible those Starjumpers are new and don't have an AI yet."

Starlight cuts in. "Well, we're about to find out who it is. They're signaling us."

Starlight activates the radio and we can hear clamor and noise on the other end. There's a burst of static and a voice says "Empress! Empress Melody! We have returned! It was a long journey and we lost some compatriots in the firefight, but we have returned and have brought you an appropiate gift. Three nearly finished Starjumpers and the entirety of the Heinlien Shipyards includiing staff. We have them secured in the last Starumper under guard. With this gift, we hope that you will accept our return!"

As she hears the message, Raaden's expression changes from skeptisim to amazement. "That's Will! That's my second in command! It is the crew from Lavinia! Oh no, my crew alone stole the Heinlein Shipyards, something the Emperor has been trying to do for more than five years! He must be incandescent with rage." Raaden started giggling.

Ava looked at the image and then at Omar. "Well, there's your shipyard and it looks like we have three Starjumpers now to bolster our fleet.

"I won't say no, but wow." Omar shakes his head. "This paints a gigantic target on our back. We had better really get going with the Calamity Class. Also, Melody, lock the Gate. It won't stop wormhole linking, but it will stop people coming through that way."

"Oh. Yes. Good idea Omar." I take a moment and reach beyond the Reach to the Gate and lock it.

So the crew of the Lavinia wanted to come back so badly that they stole the entire Heinlien Shipyards with three almost complete Starjumpers and linked the whole thing here? On the one hand, I am completely surprised that I could inspire that kind of loyality in anyone from one command. On the other, now I have my own zealots to worry about.

I disconnect from the Throne and lean forward, putting my head in my hands. What am I going to do? We're not ready for a war and the crew of the Lavinia just made a huge swipe at Venus. The OPA, Free Luna and the High Mars cities probably already know about it. My only saving grace is that the Sol system doesn't talk with the colonies much these days thanks to Venus. I don't think most people will have any idea where they took the shipyards.

Ava disconnects and comes over. She puts her hand on my back and starts rubbing between my shoulders, right where I like it. "You okay Melody?"

I can feel the tears start to form in the corners of my eyeys. "Ava, they brought me so much! But, I'm not ready. We're not ready! Venus is going to come and attack to take it back if we're lucky. If we're not, it'll be the AIs and they'll just link in and slag us."

"Oh Melody." She bends her head down and kisses my hair. "They brought an entire shipyard. If we can hold off Venus, we can get going on the Calamity Class now! We'll be ready years ahead of schedule. This is a good thing hon. I mean it."

"But Ava, they're gonna miss it back home! They're going to try and find it."

"Earth is under the control of Venus nominally. The Heinlein Shipyards were operated by the OPA, nobody talked to anyone and hasn't for a decade. It's going to be a while before they even think to look here. If we're lucky, they'll spend years pointing fingers at each other and arguing about it without actually trying to look." Ava smiled "Besides, it's not like someone can track where a wormhole link went. They have no way of knowing it went to us. We should take this gift and use it. If we get those Starjumpers fitted out for Builder operation we'll have a formidable defence of the Reach in case anyone does come sniffing around."

Raaden disconnected and came over and heard me and Ava. "Melody, Ava is right. This is so out of the blue and so against any protocol, nobody will have any idea what the hell happened for possibly years. This is a massive head start. We've been given this opportunity. We need to grasp it." Her face hardened. "We can use this to kickstart our operation. We will succeed."

I sniffed. They knew just what to say to me. I was so worried it was all done the as soon as we realized it was the Heinlein yards that came. Ava and Raaden were able to calm me down and get me to see what a good thing this will be.

I'm so lucky to have them. I'm so lucky to have all my Builders.

As I stand, I look around to everyone. They've disconnected and are looking at me. I guess it's time to be an Empress again. "Starlight. Signal the Venusians, thanking them for their gift and inviting them to the Reach. We shall hold a special celebration in their honor. I will delcare a holiday. Make sure they bring the crew of the Heinlein too. We need to convince them to sign on and no do anything rash. I'll still command them, but I need them to get to the Reach first."

"Once you have finished Starlight, let's all go down to the docks."

"We have a delegation to meet."

Part 37

[its-short-for-jackalope]

WOW! THAT WAS SOME LORE, HUH? :D

reposting this meme bc it's true and bc I really like it, lol

I have quite literally been scribbling notes on a scrap of paper like a madman while rewatching TGOA part 3 as many times as possible, just jotting down all the mindboggling information we've been given, and some less direct stuff that I could be reading too much into but is fun and neat even if it doesn't amount to anything crazy and galaxy-brained, lol.

So click/tap below the cut for rambles about the final part of Pulp Musicals episode 3

The Ghosts of Antikythera ⚓️

Names, Names, Names!!!

Hey, might as well start with all the new names we've gotten!

The captain of the Antikythera — the ghost ship from 'someplace else' — is Addison Arvad.

Kal (my beloved/beloathed ❤ ) is Kalfu

The Traveler we met in TBS is Sia 💖💖

Ahlaam is another Traveler. I adore her already, and not just because she saved Rose.

Dakkar is... somebody. As expected, I've been going crazy in my dms with @man-down-in-hatchet-town, and she believes Dakkar is probably inspired by/based on Captain Nemo? 👀

King(?!) Itzal is... probably bad news! Kal's the one who calls him a King and he is obviously pretty loyal and devoted to him, and wants to impress him (aww), so methinks Itzal is maybe not so good???? (I am also a proud supporter of Brooke's Dylan Saunders as Itzal campaign, lol)

The Blazing World is home. It's where the Travelers and the Antikythera's Searchers (rip) are from, it was destroyed once—but is being rebuilt?—and Kalfu and Itzal seem to want it gone for good.

Lincoln Island is the mysterious island our heroes on the Ellen Austin are approaching at the end of the episode, the place Ahlaam sent Rose and the Antikythera to via orrery.

Quick *Approximate* Timeline

Eh, what can I say? We got numbers and I decided to do a tiny bit of math about it.

1874 — the Antikythera & the Ellen Austin

🔴 YOU ARE HERE

🎶 When are we? 🎶 Well, Morgan Reese informs our time-traveling heroes that, uh yeah lol, last he checked the year was 1874. What a funny question from a bunch of rapscallions!

Captain Arvad's logs from the Antikythera start in January 1874, so we know the Searchers were out and about in this same year. Their disappearances were recent and the ship hasn't been empty for all that long, I don't think.

1865 — may this monument stand forever

On this site in 1835, Sir John Herschel and Anna Hanover launched the first brick satellite, the Sagitta, in what was known as Township Number Nine. Erected to commemorate their bravery, to thank them for their gift to all mankind, may this monument stand forever.

Dedicated August, 1865.

1864 — the dark angel appears

A desperate AJ makes his ill-fated deal with Kal in exchange for his crew's safety during the Battle of Mobile Bay.

Damn the torpedoes.

1835 — the beginning of our adventure

🎶 IT IS EIGHTEEN THIRTY-FIVE 🎶 and the Great Moon Hoax and The Brick Satellite both happen in this year. Things were so simple back then!

1829 — the Blazing World is destroyed

In 1874, we are told (first by Arvad's journal, and then by Sia) that their home, that the Blazing World was destroyed 45 years ago. If my math is right and they're not hippity-hopping too much in time (they have time travel capabilities so idk for sure) that would put the destruction of the Blazing World in 1829.

If the world being destroyed is also the Event that Kal alludes to in Gunpowder and Rum, pt. 3 ("Your powers are returning and you still don't remember what happened? 😒") AND it's the one that left Margaret without her memories and powers, then... could Margaret have been feeling lost, alone, and disconnected with her phantom pain in New York for 6 whole years before the Stratfords wrote the hoax that would bring the quartet together??? 🥺

And while we're on the subject of time passing!

If Sia and Kalfu and everyone besides the quartet has gotten to 1874 the long way 'round... (which I think is the case if Kal snarked at Sia for hiding Margaret in the future—if he has a sense of the future in relation to the world and time, I'd say this also implies he & the others have a pretty consistent present?) ...have they aged? Or does their magic also lengthen their lives? I imagine it would be mentioned if Sia was visibly older, and since Samuel described Kal as looking ~40 years old, then how could he be younger than the war he's been in? lol. But idk, this is just food for thought!

Kal Loves His Lore Dumps, Doesn't he? This one's mostly about Margaret <3

"You've proven quite elusive over the years... We've searched across the seven seas... I suppose it's only fitting that I find you here by chance, looking for an orrery! I'd have settled for the ship, what's its name? An-ti-ky-ther-a. But you will be quite the prize. It's you that will seal our victory! A ship from the Blazing World would have been quite the quarry. But you? That could end things once and for all!"

"The ship, the orrery, they don't matter now. Not when I can dispatch the two biggest traitors in history with just one blow!"

Seems like our girl is pretty special~ 🥰

I mean, of course she is, she's our Margaret, but if Kal is willing to let the Antikythera go to get her instead, and he's so convinced that taking her out will win the war... our girl is Pretty Special™ right? Maybe she's a princess or something, or maybe her Radiance is just that heckin' strong. idk, but I'm excited to find out either way.

I'm also wondering if there's a connection between Margaret and the orrery/orreries... If Kal thought it was fitting to find her when he was after the orrery, does that mean something more? Could Margaret have created the orreries and/or the magic behind them? 👀

...actually maybe this isn't such a good and fun thing. 😅😟 Things don't usually go very well for special and important characters—what is the saying, tragedies love heroes? I mean, Margaret has lost her powers and memories once already, as well as her home and whatever family she may have had before. I know all our pulp blorbos have been in dire straights a few times now, but I don't want them to get MORE DIRE than this!

Kalfu, Sia, & Margaret's history

Kal: High marks for cloaking the fleet, but seriously—

...

Kal: Come on, it's a Traveler reunion.

...

Kal: Just a drink between three friends.

...

Sia: Oh, you were once a man that I trusted. Tell me, where has he been?

...

Sia: Itzal poisoned your mind!

Kal: Itzal opened my mind!

...

Sia and Margaret: *powering up*

Sia: Hey, Kalfu!

Kal: Huh? Ugh, not again.

Kal: *team rocket fog's blasting off again*

I think it's pretty safe to say that, once upon a time, these three were once close. Maybe they were friends and peers, or maybe Kalfu was once Sia and/or Margaret's mentor with that "high marks" comment. Whatever the case, they used to be allies who trusted each other.

I think it's also safe to say all three of them are/were Travelers. Obviously Sia is, and Margaret probably is/was one as well, since she and Sia have a badass combined attack (that I'm betting they used against Kalfu ~45 years prior). As for Kal... I don't know how the radiance and the fog fit together exactly, whether they've always been separate or the fog is a dark bastardization of the radiance, but it seems like he is on equal footing with Sia as far as magic powers go, and he can teleport like they do—AJ witnessed this at the Battle of Mobile Bay, and Samuel did (kinda) on the deck of the Ellen Austin. I don't know if that's the only qualification for being a Traveler, but it's worth mentioning.

It seems like Itzal was a pretty big factor in this trio splitting up—for whatever reason, Kal turned his back on Sia and Margaret to follow him, or perhaps Sia and Margaret left Kal behind when he wouldn't leave with them. I don't know, but I want to—I have questions!!!

Sia and Itzal — Future sight?

Kal (to Sia): You know, for someone with precognitive abilities, you sure like to cut things close. 😒

...

Kal: How I wish King Itzal was here to witness this. Or did he already know? Eh.

There's not much to say about this, really, I just think it's interesting.

But it does make me wonder if Sia *knew* that sending Margaret and the others to Hanover in 1874 would lead Margaret to the Antikythera and help her regain her memories, even if Sia couldn't see much more than that. Like, if she knew that Kal would be there, I don't think she would have put Margaret at risk like that when she was still vulnerable. Unless she was betting on Margaret figuring things out before Kal could make his move... gah, who knows! (Matt. Matt knows.) We do know that Sia can't see everything, though—she knows that the crew of the Antikythera are gone but has to ask Kal what he did with them.

Also, obligatory "yikes 😬" at the idea of having an enemy (King Itzal) who could possibly see your attacks/plans before you make them. That can't make this war any easier!

Fogging the vortices, you say?

Kal: We've been fogging the vortices for decades. There was bound to be an Antikythera sooner or later.

Vortices.... plural for vortex, yeah?

"A mass of whirling fluid or air, especially a whirlpool or whirlwind."

Is one of these vortices located here in the Sargasso Sea? Is that why Rose already knows plenty of ghost stories about these waters, why this is a strange place that'll one day be dubbed the Bermuda Triangle? Where are the other vortices??? How many are there??? What are they, exactly???

Okay, but what about the gates?

Kal: A war for a world of power and might

Sia: A war for a world of courage and light

Kal: Fought over decades

Sia: Over ascension

Kal/Sia: No chance of surrender, no chance of redemption

I'm just throwing darts here, but I feel like 'ascension' has to do with the gates that have been alluded to a few times now?

First, in TBS, Sia told Margaret that she couldn't take her to the gate until her memories were back. Then in part 2 of TGOA, Kal said something about the Antikythera's orrery leading him to the first gate.

I don't think these gates are the same thing as the vortices—if the bad guys have already been 'fogging' them, then Kal wouldn't need an orrery to find them.

The gates probably lead to the Blazing World, right? Kal and Itzal want to destroy the Blazing World for good, which is why Kal was trying to get the orrery, to get to the gate, to ascend to the Blazing World and turn it to dust once and for all.

Travelers and Symbols/Elements/Associations

To finish up, here's one of the things I've noticed more recently. We have four magical characters now who seem to be at similar levels of power and might all be/have been Travelers, and maybe it's just a fun bit of flavor rather than anything Extremely Vital to the plot, but they each seem to have their own kind of... niche?

Lemme run through 'em real quick.

Kalfu—

● Want a drink?

● Gunpowder and rum, too strong for some! 🎶

● And poison... is kinda my thing.

● Non-lethal fog, my latest brew

Kal's easy to figure out—he's been pretty clear with his gunpowder and rum (delicious!) and once he revealed it he's been very cheeky and upfront about his use of/preference for poison too. He also stands out as the only person wielding fog, but I'm sure that'll change as we delve further into the dark and into this war we're learning about.

Sia—

● "Was that sunlight shining in the sphere?"

● We're here to light the fuse

● Lay another hand on her and you'll go down in flames

● I will always be that feeling burning under your skin

hehe okay, Sia is the reason this whole section of my post exists lol. I noticed the references to fire in enough of her lines/lyrics in part 3 that I thought it couldn't be a coincidence, and then I looked at the others. I just think it's neat!

Maybe these lines are just nods to the fact that light can burn as well as illuminate—Kalfu would probably know, hah—but it is fun to think that maybe we could see our first and dearest Traveler friend whip out some cool fire magic later on—when she's not duking it out with somebody on a wooden boat, lol.

I'd love that for her, tbh.

...especially because alcohol is flammable. :)

Ahlaam—

Narrator: In a blinding flash, a woman materialized, and with a single motion, she pushed the water of the room with her mind

Okay, I fully admit this is mostly just a reason for me to make another waterbending joke. Ahlaam's appearance in this episode wasn't really long enough to give us much information about her, but I mean we also haven't seen anyone else do anything with water until she came along, so... if we see her do more stuff like this and she has more associations with water in episode 4 onwards, I will feel pretty smart. 😌

Margaret—

● the moon

● the sea

● astronomy

we might not know much about Margaret's magic beyond how brightly it glows—which isn't unique to her—and what she's been able to do with it, be we do know that she has a connection with the moon, of course.

I think we could also argue that she has a pull to the sea—mostly because of the view from her window and the rooftop, overlooking the water. Learning about the Searchers and the fact that Kal was looking for Margaret on the sea supports this connection, but again, that doesn't really single her out from the others.

Margaret does have an appreciation for astronomy, but even that might not be super unique, if her people have orreries on every ship and they all look up to the sky. However... my brain is still chewing on a possible connection between Margaret and the orrery, because of what Kal said. It would be pretty rad if she was the one who designed and crafted them, figured out that magic. So idk, that could be something.

If her memories are returning, maybe we'll see her really start to shine amongst her fellow Travelers as she recalls more about herself and brings together the person that resides in her memories and the person that losing her memories made her into.

phew, okay! this is a long post and I am now very sleepy, lol. I'm sure I missed a few things—I didn't take any *literal* notes during parts 1 & 2 and it'll be a few days before I get the album and lose my mind again—but maybe there's a few things I managed to catch that y'all will enjoy.

As always, feel free to reply/reblog with your own thoughts!!!