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alina-awen-writes · 9 months

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Sebek x GN!Reader, Soulmate AU

Prompt: You have your soulmate’s first words on your body

When classmates asked Y/N about the one thing from the realm of Twisted Wonderland that shocked them the most, many thought it would've been magic, talking animals, overblots, ghosts, or flying brooms.

No, for Y/N, it was the fact they had a soulmate. The initial shock and hope for what their future soulmate might be like only lasted a few minutes

"HOW DARE A HUMAN BE SO CASUAL? ESPECIALLY WITH THE PRINCE OF BRIAR VALLEY"

Yep, that is the sentence that had etched itself onto Y/N's wrist as soon as the coffin opened during the initiation ceremony. It was in a rather nice cursive handwriting, but unfortunately written in all caps. According to the other students, that meant their Significant Other would be yelling during their first meeting.

On the bright side, Y/N was able to narrow out which dorm their soulmate was in. Heck, judging by the wording, they were pretty sure they figured out exactly who their soulmate was.

While they hadn't had an official first meeting yet, Y/N had heard plenty of rumors and the distant sounds of Sebek's speeches. It also helped that Hornton would occasionally mention him during the nightly strolls about the school grounds for Golem Club.

The only thing left to do was for Y/N to work up the courage to actually go and speak with Sebek. Which was practically impossible seeing as he was always busy with schoolwork and all his extracurriculars were focused on being one of Malleus' knights. On the bright side, they did share a few classes together. One of which was Professor Crewel's potions, the very class Y/N was currently zoning out in.

Their head shot up when there was a sudden loud smack on their desk "Now, now little pup. I just gave very important instructions for your next potion only to find you didn't listen to a single word. Make sure you do your best, otherwise, you'll end up in detention and back in training school. " Crewel stated with a sharp look at Y/N, "Now then, since you weren't listening I'll only repeat this once. Your partner is Sebek and your potion assignment is due next week." With that final statement, Crewel walked back to his desk.

With that stressful callout being over, little dog tags with classmate names flew around the room, each landing with the assigned partner. Y/N looked down at the tag as it landed on the desk and sighed as it confirmed what Professor Crewel had said. With a quick glance over the shoulder, they could see Sebek practically glaring holes through the back of their jacket.

While they hadn't interacted much, Sebek still wasn't a huge fan of Y/N's for a few reasons:

Y/N isn't Malleus

For some reason, beyond Sebek's comprehension, Y/N has managed to befriend Lilia and Silver

Y/N just made him feel off, which is obviously a huge reason why Y/N should never be within 100 feet of Malleus' proximity

Once again, Y/N isn't Malleus

After a few moments of preparation, Y/N gathered the potion books and decided to take the first step in talking to Sebek. However, when they turned to say hello, they noticed the knight had already disappeared.

With a small sigh, Y/N headed out and began the trek back to Ramshackle. Right as they took a left down a hallway, they bumped into someone's back.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Y/N exclaimed while trying to make sure the other student didn't drop anything.

"It's quite alright Y/N. I hadn't expected to see you until our club meeting later tonight." Hornton stated with his signature small grin as he steadied Y/N.

"Oh, it's just you Hornton! Thank the sevens, I was worried I might've bumped into one of the Pomefiore kids doing a quick touch-up. That definitely would've ended badly." Y/N laughed, followed by a sigh of relief that they had only bumped into Hornton. Right as they were about to ask him about his day, there was a sudden yell from directly behind them.

"HOW DARE A HUMAN BE SO CASUAL? ESPECIALLY WITH THE PRINCE OF BRIAR VALLEY!" Sebek yelled as he charged down the hallway towards Y/N and Hornton.......well Malleus.

Malleus simply raised an eyebrow and gave a small frown at the fact that Sebek had blown his cover, yelled at one of his few friends, and had also said that Y/N talked to him casually.

"His royal highness must be treated with high esteem at all times! Especially by those who are commoners or simple humans!" Sebek continued with his rant for a solid minute.

The entire time, Y/N slowly got more and more annoyed at all the insults that were about how they were a human and a commoner. The final straw was the comment about how Y/N wasn't even from Twisted Wonderland and thus shouldn't have the audacity to even be near Malleus. Y/N took two simple steps forward, putting them practically chest-to-chest with Sebek, resulting in making him pause, stutter, and blush.

"Do you EVER know how to talk about anything or anyone other than Malleus?" Y/N questioned in a clipped tone, which quickly changed to yelling, "I should've known since I've had THIS etched on my wrist since I walked out of that coffin!"

Y/N waved their wrist in Sebek's face, showing him the very words he had yelled only a few minutes prior, "But hey, at least my sentence gave me a warning about how rude and loud you are! Got the red flags about your volume level since it's in all caps!"

With a final huff, Y/N immediately turned around and stormed down the hallway. They muttered a quick apology to Malleus as they passed by and took a random hallway to make a quick escape. With each step, the slow realization of what had just happened slowly sunk in.

Y/N's angry stomps from the stunned Sebek soon turned into a quick sprint back home. Their only thought was that the faster they were home, the sooner they could curl up in bed and try their best to forget everything that had just happened.

Within no time, they were about ten steps from the front door. However, right as they felt the wave of relief wash over, they heard loud footsteps and yelling from behind.

"WAIT! Would you stop your measly human running speed and wait for a moment! We are not done with our conversation!" Sebek yelled as he dashed up the pathway at max fae speeds. What had taken Y/N 10 minutes to sprint, he completed within half the time. Once he had reached Y/N, Sebek slowed to a halt and immediately held their shoulders.

"I'm sorry! I was jealous you were close with his highness because I had wanted to find a way to become friends with you as well. When you first joined his club, I watched from the background to ensure you weren't trying to trick or influence him...but I ended up growing feelings for you." Sebek said softly, all while slowly moving his hands from Y/N's shoulders to gently hold their hands.

"It wasn't until today that I realized those weren't just friendships. Y/N, I've been falling in love with you. I understand if you don't forgive me and never wa-", Y/N knew Sebek would continue his apologetic rambling for another 30 minutes if he had the chance, so to cut him off they leaned over and silenced him with a hug.

"Just promise me you'll never speak to me, or any other human, that way again," Y/N muttered into Sebek's shoulder as he gently wrapped his arms around their waist.

"You have my eternal vow. I'll never say anything that could insult or harm you, for the rest of my days in this realm and the next" Sebek said solemnly.

Y/N just smiled, before looking up and pressing a kiss to Sebek's cheek. "Alrighty, since we've made up, wanna come inside so we can start on the assignment?" they asked as they tugged the blushing fae into the Ramshackle dorm.

#twisted wonderland #disney twst #soulmate au #twst x reader #sebek x reader #sebek zigvolt #twst sebek #twisted wonderland x reader

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jennamoran · 7 months

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The Far Roofs: the Rats' Books of Names

cover art by Isip Xin

Hi!

Today I’m going to talk a little bit more about my forthcoming RPG, the Far Roofs. I’ve previously talked about

general principles,

the rats,

the campaign,

the Mysteries, and

my favorite Mystery.

Today, I want to talk about a key setting element:

The rats' "books of names."

So, the high concept here is pretty simple. The rats of this game are pretty cool, but not cool enough to deal with god-monsters on any kind of equal basis. The Mysteries aren't like Goliath to their David, at least not usually; they're more like Scylla and Charybdis to their Odysseus. Sometimes it's possible to negotiate. Sometimes it's possible to fight back. But a lot of the time, "winning" a confrontation with a Mystery is more about surviving. Making it through.

Except ...

Just like it was for human mariners, a situation where the whole environment they travel through is full of impossible horrors one just can't do anything about ... that's kind of untenable. Humans never made the sea safe, but they did learn to navigate it. They figured out how to sail, how to chart, how to not get constant scurvy, how to knot rigging, all that stuff.

In like fashion, the rats have this multi-generational project to, basically, nibble away at the "Mystery" part of the Mysteries. To not just survive their encounters, but to come away with a bit more information every time.

To learn, eventually, how to handle all of this stuff, all these monstrous divinities that haunt the Far Roofs.

The Books of Names, in short, are a sacred tradition of the rats and pretty much a defining feature of their interactions with the Mysteries. Most families of rats keep their own set. The shelves of the rats' great libraries overflow with huge and magnificently illuminated Books of Names—dozens or hundreds for any given Name. Over the generations, at a grievous cost, the rats are grinding down the impossible magic of the roofs into something comprehensible, something they can grapple with. To record truth, and insightful commentary, and eventually learn to live with even the greatest and most awful Mysteries.

What this all means to the rats is a little tangled. They worship the Mysteries, I think, and hunt them; they are hunted by the Mysteries in turn. They dream of one day defeating or destroying them, but I don’t think they’d like the world where they’d been destroyed. They are hammered into shape, both as individuals and a people, by the Mysteries, and I don’t think I can ever really fully express what these books, or the Mysteries themselves, mean to them.

They are rich, like cake, like wine, like a well-loved and annotated cookbook. They are generations of wisdom, bound in form.

To the rats, they are, I think, life itself.

Let me show you what an example is like! Like, what you might see opening up some rat family's Book on the Mystery Hoop Snake.

Quick Hoop Snake sketches, by Jenna

So your typical Book of Names is going to start with a couple of introductory pages, maybe some sketches or whatever, and then move on to what the rats call a Mystery's "heralds," the ... ways you know that the Mystery is near. The things that you see when it's interested in you, when it's considering haunting you, or just passing by. The things that it emerges from, in the world.

It'll usually start with a list, with lots of room left to go, like:

Heralds of Hoop Snake ...

* blurred vision * getting turned about * sudden light or sudden darkness * the sudden realization that something is, and has been, very wrong * * * * * ...

and then, like, a couple pages set aside to go into each of those more, with a mix of personal statements (often newsletter clippings, because the rats send these comments around) and summarized opinions or facts.

Like:

Blurred Vision

“I saw it on the road. Down the alley, past the milk crate, in front of that old cabinet someone left out on the street. I was rubbing my eyes, and they were a little blurry, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure I’d seen it, or what I’d seen. It was just this blur of colors rushing by, all these colors. And I thought, a flag? A mural? Someone’s shopping bag, caught by the wind? It wasn’t until I’d had that happen like three more times, these half-caught glimpses of color, in the rain, when I didn’t have my glasses on, from the corner of my eye, that I actually saw Hoop Snake direct.” — Alyona Waynwright, 2018

NOTES

Gavrilo writes that Hoop Snake lives in the confused sensorium. The world jumbles up, and Hoop Snake comes out.

Ioanna comments: “Little incongruities become bigger ones.”

Constantinope Volkov accidentally summoned Hoop Snake through an abstract in-progress painting. He could not later replicate this feat.

Elsibet Križ proposes a mechanism similar to the way that new, unknown scents temporarily seem like improbable combinations of the known—how your first encounter with a cat does not produce the sensation, “Ah, this is the smell of cat” but “oh no, my parents are being ripped apart. The world is shaking. Why is there peppermint?” You mistake the world, and Hoop Snake is there.

Meredith McCawley (human) comments that when she is very sleepy a pile of colored yarn can look like a snake to her; the passing lights of the cars, like eyes.

Kesterley Novác pushed on her eyelids to watch shapes spin. They got more and more detailed until one day she saw Hoop Snake! Trying to chase Hoop Snake into her eyes she wound up headbutting the wall.

Getting Turned Around

You are nodding along. You are small, they say. And meek. You are but a child. I will fix that for you, they say. You think, “Wait, what?” In that “Wait, what?” there is a snake. — Iodine Petrova, 2012

NOTES

Maria Augustine, Leverage Jordan, and Daisuke Ozlov attest this experience of Hoop Snake: “we are confused, and then, we are not confused. A snake takes its tail into its mouth, and rolls.”

Kaeda Vanagir was noted as having frequently become lost in the weeks before her June 1993 disappearance chasing after Hoop Snake. (May she one day return.)

Jezdimir Czerny likened the moment of seeing Hoop Snake to becoming turned around, to feeling like you know where you are and where you’re going, and then you look up, and you’re actually somewhere else.

Violeta Schulz was flung from a spinning ferris wheel and, before she landed, a snake burst from the bushes to, as the witnesses described it, “drink her down like wine.”

I found a Hoop Snake scale in a little store that I’ve never seen again.

Hoop Snake Scale

“I was literally just popping out to buy the news. Only, I hadn’t had my coffee yet, and somehow I wound up … I don’t even know where. It was a garden, up on the roofs, but it wasn’t a rat garden, and I don’t know where it is, and I can't find that place now. There was a colored banner, there, tied to a tree. It fluttered like a snake in the wind.” — Presley Weekes, 2014

Sudden light, by Jenna Moran

Sudden Light, or Sudden Darkness “There were noises in the dark. Thumping. Crashing. I thought it was the cats. My brain was so sleepy. I couldn’t put it together, except: oh, the cats got down here. We don’t even have cats. So I stagger out there. I’m not even dressed, just a long shirt on. I didn’t have my glasses on. Everything was just a blur. And I look at the cats, the thing I thought was cats, and like, for just a moment it was. For just a moment, it was cats, moving in the dark. Then it was ‘cats,’ like, one thing, one item, one animal, with two parts, that were shaped like cats. Like a dromedary, if cats were humps. It stuck its tail in its mouth. It began to roll away. ‘Like Hell,’ I said, but I didn’t give chase. I wasn’t dressed!” — Lucy Stokes (human), 2004

NOTES

Valery Merlin experienced frequent incidents of his electric lantern coming on unexpectedly and blinding his eyes, sometimes accompanied by a fulgurative scent. This ended when the flare of the light revealed a snake like a coiled spring; he fell over, the lantern broke, and the incident thus resolved.

Priscilla Augustine reports a summer cold that stuffed up her nose to the point of intermittent blindness, during which intervals objects would fall of their shelves, slithering or rolling noises echo through the halls, and glittering snake scales appear in unlikely places. Later, Hoop Snake appeared; when she complained that she could not chase it owing to her cold, it leapt up her sinus passages, cleared them out ... and vanished.

In 2007, Tsubasa Kysely reported such high levels of paparazzi harassment that “I can hardly see from all the flashing.” He would ultimately disappear in what is believed to be a Hoop Snake incident; may he one day return.

When our senses become unreliable, Eureka writes, the world becomes the inexplicable.

The Sudden Realization that Something Is, or Has Been, Very Wrong

“The funny thing was, that wasn’t the first time I saw the snake. It had already been there. It was in that picture frame, hanging over my bed: this picture of a snake. Sometimes it moved. It was in the background on this show I watched. I would go outside, and sit on the edge of the roof, and there’d be a snake there, all curled up with its tail in its mouth, and I’d say to it ‘hey.’ I had to keep moving it out of the sink. One time, I think, I walked into my house, but it wasn’t my house. It was the snake. And I still didn’t realize. I still wasn’t able to really process, here is something inexplicable. It was just part of the world I thought I knew, until one day, I looked at it with fresh eyes and went ‘oh my freaking saints, that is a snake.’ It was like it was laughing at me, when it stuck its tail in its mouth. Like it was making fun of me. I took a step towards it, and it rolled away. Another step. Another. But there wasn’t roof underneath me any more, so I fell.” — Mikhael Bygones, 2015

NOTES

Gavrilo writes that we often fail to recognize the presence of Hoop Snake in our lives until it has already been present for some time.

Meriadoc Ozoles was famous as “the Chasing Mayor” because she kept running after bits of colored string floating by in the breeze. It wasn’t until she caught one and it turned out to be Hoop Snake that people remembered that colored string doesn’t normally just float by all the time.

Maglev Brunsinick grew up in a burrow that turned out not to be real: he wandered out one day, and looked back, and there was only a snake. "I should have known," he says, "looking back, what with the way Mom and Dad were just internal organs. But, like, I was a kit?"

Torrin kept tripping over her grandmother's tail everywhere in the house. One day, she spilled hot oatmeal all over her grandmother's tail. "Oh no!" she said, and tried to clean it off, but her grandmother wasn't in the room. The tail wasn't reacting to the heat. Also, it was a snake tail. She dashed in to confront Hoop Snake; startled, it threw aside her grandmother's shawl, looked every which way in a panic, and then flung itself away down the drain.

Vasilisa writes: "What is reality but a snake we won't see?"

“At some point I realized that I did not work at the company. I think it was the looks people were giving me. Steve. Like, there was Steve, and he had this look in his eye like, ‘why is there a rat here. Why is the rat wearing a suit. Why is the rat carrying a folder with our third quarter projections.’ I was just strolling along, on top of my game and on top of the world, but I couldn’t help shriveling a little at all the looks. At this growing disorientation, like: Why is this place? What is it for? Why was I heading to my cubicle to spin around and around and around on my swivel chair when the skies were so blue; when the roofs were so high? Who even hired me? Who decided that this was the way life would be? Why do people who don’t do any work get paid so much more than us rats down here in the trenches who do? And the more I tried to just cope and keep moving, the louder the questions got inside my heart, until I spun around and I pointed and I said, ‘because I’m damn good at this, STEVE.’ He was so gentle. I was … I wasn’t expecting that he’d be so gentle. ‘If only,’ he said. ‘If only that was why anyone found their way here.’” — Rufica du Lac, 2016

Jenna Talking Again

It's basically that kind of thing! Plus a lot of blank room left for more.

After that section on the Heralds, it'd move on to the "weapons" of the Mystery, the way it hurts you, the way it messes around with your life; like, for Hoop Snake ...

The Weapons of Hoop Snake ...

* ridicule * confusion * anything you don't expect them to be * * * * ...

... but, I think I'll stop there for now.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse at the rats' Books of Names! Don't forget to check the kickstarter out!

#the far roofs #jenna moran #ttrpgs #hoop snake #yes that's the same steve as from nobilis antithesis

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juminies · 9 months

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in order to get to the heart

marriage of convenience, on occasion, is not so convenient.

♡ — jumin x original female character. small amounts of canon compliant jumin x reader, but mostly canon divergent (jumin is unhappily married prior to the start of the game). 1600 words. title from heartlines by florence + the machine.

They just say anything to each other these days.

“This façade drains me beyond comprehension,” Jumin confesses the minute he walks through the door. His fingers loop into the knot of his tie and pull it looser around his neck.

“So you say,” murmured half into a cushion tucked up to a woman’s chest as she types on her phone. “It’s not for our benefit though, is it?”

On some level, this is always how it was going to be for Jumin, he thinks. In a marriage stripped to its fragile bones. A sacrificial lamb for the sake of the corporation, for mutual social and financial gain.

He leans down to untie his shoes.

It would be untrue to say there weren’t veiled attempts, in the beginning, to love. When that didn’t work there were attempts to like. None successful, of course. Lately it’s becoming more difficult to believe this arrangement is better than any alternative. Between the two of them there is a lot of nothing.

The woman remains quiet—focused—but nods easily against the woven fabric she’s leaning into when Jumin asks, “Do you not get tired of coming home from work to find me occupying your space?”

He knows that in public they look good together. He knows that their careers slot together effortlessly. Despite what the media may suggest, however, they are human. Jumin included. The way he feels nothing for her does not match the way she feels nothing for him. The way she yells that he is robotic does not match the way he stoically calls her irresponsible.

They do not sleep together, or eat together, or do any of the romantic things Jumin wishes he hadn’t let himself privately indulge in the idea of. And it’s not that she’s not nice—she’s intelligent and beautiful and kind, when it suits her. Perfect on paper until she wasn’t. When she laughs with her chest Jumin can almost imagine a world where she smiles at him like she does others and it makes his heart weak. Part of him wishes, truly, that that was the case. In reality it feels like nothing.

It could be worse, he tells himself—repeats it like a mantra.

Concealed beneath it is fear. You could be like him. You could repeat his mistakes.

She throws her phone haphazardly onto the sofa beside her and looks up to where Jumin is standing in the doorway. He’s mostly backlit from the light in the hall, the lamp beside his wife barely grazing his features but lighting up hers in all the wrong ways. The orange glow casts unpleasant shadows over places she’s usually pretty. He should have the bulb changed to something less harsh.

“Not much we can do if you don’t want the press to kick up a huge fuss, sweetie,” she says.

The pet names are a jest he has learned to tune out.

“Will they not make a fuss over our divorce in three years’ time nonetheless?” Jumin asks. It’s hypothetical, of course. They will.

“Maybe we’ll have grown on each other by then.” Her tone is disinterested; feels almost mocking. Her phone chimes to let her know her driver is outside. “I’m going out. Shall I take my card or yours?”

“It makes little difference to me.” Jumin looks at his watch. It’s almost 10pm but he doesn’t ask where she’s going. A bar, perhaps.

“Could you adjust my necklace?”

She holds her hair up messily, and he does.

“Let me know if you need anything,” he tells her, then briefly wonders if she’ll meet someone tonight and sleep with them. He pictures her naked beneath a stranger. It feels like nothing.

She takes her own card and squeezes his bicep softly as she walks by him on the way out. She shuts the door more forcefully than is ever really necessary.

At some point Jumin suggests she move out of their—his—apartment and into the one directly below; just recently made vacant. He probably would have suggested it earlier had the apartment been available earlier, but their district of Seoul tends to be under high demand.

“I thought we agreed it was a bad idea to live separately,” she says. It’s a statement, not a question. They had done exactly that.

Jumin hums, tired. Tired from his trip and tired from trying and at some point, it seems, he has lost an indistinguishable part of himself to her for good.

“We did. Although I would say that that was long enough ago now for us both to have become quite aware that we do not do particularly well sharing the same space for considerable periods of time.”

“You’re gone a lot anyway. The place is big enough for us to avoid each other if needed, and I like it here.”

She exhales sharply; amused.

Jumin has no idea why until she adds, “More so when you’re not around, to be fair.” And that explains it, just about.

“Stay here when I am travelling if you must,” he tells her. Somewhere along the way his suggestion has morphed into more of an instruction.

“Fine. Don’t tell your father, though. Or mine.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

They buy it outright in her name, the cost split fifty-fifty. Jumin tells her to keep it all when she sells it later. She tells him she won’t.

They argue tonight, as usual, about who will be chauffeuring them to a company gala. They had agreed that Jumin’s driver would take them only for her to assert for the hundredth time at the last minute that she doesn’t trust him, though she has not legitimately spoken to him more than once and he has been working for Jumin’s family longer than she has been alive.

It’ll cause a stir if the two of them show up separately so they end up in her car, as usual. Jumin apologises to Driver Kim via text for requesting him when he wasn’t needed on the way there, and they arrive late.

The venue reminds Jumin of the last RFA party. His wife had not attended despite her invitation, so it is not proper grounds for conversation. However, when they are out like this they are a happy couple like the legal drabble says, so he says it anyway—if just to appear interested in her.

“I’m sure this is nicer than your friends’ charity get togethers,” she replies lightheartedly, and they are called over by her father before Jumin can retaliate.

The façade stays firm for the remainder of the event. Jumin can easily distinguish her fake laugh from her real one, and he can tell when she forgets who he is for a moment and touches him a little more tenderly than either of them really mean.

They are silent on the drive home. They are silent in the elevator, until it stops one floor below Jumin’s penthouse. “Goodnight,” he says. “Sleep well.”

“You don’t have to say that, you know,” she counters, and smiles softly as the doors slide shut between them. “Not when it’s just me.”

Elizabeth the 3rd is snoring softly when he unlocks his door, and it is the only sound he can hear. He basks in the bliss of having nobody around when he is already so mentally exhausted, and takes out his phone to see it’s just after midnight and Yoosung has opened a chat room.

He enters it, multitasking as he changes his clothes and brushes his teeth. His cat patters into the room and jumps up beside him when he perches on the edge of his bed. She smells frustratingly like perfume and something oddly like guilt threatens Jumin with a dull blade.

Wait!! says Luciel. Think someone entered the chat room.

Jumin checks. There is a name on his screen he doesn’t recognise.

Odd.

Who are you? Identify yourself.

“Jumin. It’s me,” your voice is soft and bubbly; maybe a little nervous but still pleasant on his ears. An intriguing introduction. He almost finds himself chuckling.

Jumin moves the phone from his ear and glances down at your name again, just to be certain he’s not imagining things, then focuses in on the plainness of the wall in front of him.

“I hope you realise blurting out ‘It’s me’ is not a proper way to identify yourself to the person on the other end of the line.”

He had hesitated briefly before telling you he is married. Now he has known you for five days and whatever he’s feeling is somehow, ridiculously, already far greater than any emotion he has ever felt towards his wife.

He invites her out for dinner at their usual restaurant the following evening, and she tells him if he has something to discuss with her she would rather keep it simple. As an alternative he invites her to the penthouse and opens a bottle of wine he knows she likes. When she arrives her hair is tied up experimentally and she is wearing a new shade of lipstick. She surprises him when she actually accepts his offer to pour her a glass.

“I am going to talk with my father,” Jumin says, and she knows what he means. It’s only later that he will find out she had already brought it up with hers. “For what it’s worth, however, I apologise that it ended up like this.”

“Me too,” she agrees. Jumin notices the light catch a glassiness in her eyes as she continues, “If I could have loved you, I would have.”

She stays for a few hours and it is the most sincere time they have spent together in three years.

That night, Zen has a dream.

#mystic messenger #jumin han #jumin x reader #anyway. [replaces your sarah choi]#I just love putting him in situations 🩷#I gave the oc lore in my head even though I'll very likely never write about her again #her name is yeeun kwon and she's the daughter of a chaebol family that chairman han has close connections to :)#I didn't share anything about her in this on purpose though #something something narrative #annfic

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isildur-apologist · 2 years

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You don’t hate Amazon you hate the Silmarillion: a genuine review of Rings of Power

It’s no secret that overall I liked RoP. I watched it with my roommate who gets very hyped about stuff like that and it made for a really exciting viewing experience, instead of the more bitter perspective I might have taken if I watched it alone. But, I also know there are some real faults with the show, I never thought it was perfect and know it’s not on par with the the LOTR movies and I never expected it to be. But, the fault for that is not on Amazon.

(I want to note that I am not defending Amazon. I hate Amazon. Jeff Bezos can catch this guillotine. I am, however, defending the creative team behind the show, which is how I will refer to them from here on out, I only called it Amazon to grab your attention. )

Here’s my point though, almost every (valid) critique I see of this show isn’t a problem with decisions the creative team made, it’s an inherent problem in any adaptation of the Silmarillion (and associated works but I’m just going to refer to the Silmarillion for brevity’s sake).

The Silmarillion, as full and detailed as it is, is a shit story. The events of the second age do not fit neatly into a clean story structure the way LOTR does because it’s not supposed to. The Silmarillion isn’t a story, it’s a history, and history is never narratively satisfying. Tolkien (Jirt, not talking about Christopher here) didn’t publish the Silmarillion in his lifetime, he only even published LOTR and the hobbit, everything else attributed to him was published after his death. He had no intent of making the other works anything other than a comprehensive history of the world he made for documentation’s sake, never with intent to publish. He didn’t even compile all the writings, Christopher did.

Because if this, the Silmarillion is really hard to adapt for a number of reasons:

1. Elves aren’t good main characters.

Elves aren’t supposed to be relatable characters, they’re aloof and static and inherently non-relatable (There are exceptions but they’re usually not regular elves. Elrond is half elven, Legolas is very young). Humans and hobbits are the relatable characters through which we view the world, because they can have human flaws and conflicts, which makes for a very human story. To make elves the main characters you need to make them interesting characters, and elves aren’t supposed to have human flaws, and so you either stay faithful and they don’t feel relatably human, or you change their to be more human and it feels disingenuous to what we know elves to be like. It’s a lose lose.

2. Middle earth is not supposed to be pretty.

A huge part of LOTR is realizing every place they visit is either the ruins of a past, much larger civilization, or a city that is a fraction of what it used to be (Gondor in lotr is NOTHING compared to what it was in the early 3rd age, or Arnor and definitely not Númenor, Rivendell is a pebble compared to Lindon and Eregion, we only ever see Khazad-dûm as a decrepit tomb instead of the most prosperous mine in all of middle earth is once was). This juxtaposition is integral to the main themes of lotr and is imperative to the story jirt was trying to tell. A story set in the 2nd age cannot have these ruins because IT IS THE RUINS. It cannot “feel like lotr” because it is what will make lotr lotr.

3. Characters (individuals) are of little importance in the Silmarillion.

As important as Elendil and Isildur (and even Anárion) are to the plot of literally the entire 3rd age, we know little about their own narratives. They are names for the people that did these important actions and that’s it. Again, the Silmarillion is a history, it’s not going to say what Elendil and Isildur’s relationship was like in excruciating detail or what Isildur wanted to do with his life before sailing to middle-earth and becoming a king. You have to write these characters a good story if you’re adapting the Silmarillion and sometimes there isn’t space to write a compelling journey in the space Tolkien left. Because they don’t have a character, any character you give them will seem “out of character” to many people.

Basically my point is that before you go and say “well this is weird or I didn’t like this choice” think about what the creative team had to create to make an interesting show out of a story not designed to be told. Sometimes they didn’t make the perfect decision, but if you were tasked with adapting something unadaptable do you think you would do it perfectly?

#rings of power #the rings of power #rings of power review #lotr #tolkien #silmarillion #galadriel #elrond #gil galad #celebrimbor #arondir #numenor #elendilf #oops I meant #elendil #isildur #durin iv #lord of the rings #lotr rop

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greengirllover · 2 months

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this is my comprehensive guide to acne

my qualifications: years ago i had a guy take a picture of me and play connect the dots on my face (it was actually pretty funny and i made fun of him too bc he was 5’1 so it’s okay)

first of all don’t pop ur pimples for the love of god, i know everyone says that but what could likely happen is a short term problem can turn into a long term problem with scarring and damage to the skin barrier due to trauma to that surface layer of the skin, instead use things like pimple patches, most brands that make those cute colorful ones don’t really stick to the skin and so they are practically useless, a pimple patch is supposed to mimic a hydrocolloid bandage which draws liquid out of a wound, if the patch isn’t sticking well to the skin because you didn’t clean the area of skin first or the patch just isn’t very high quality again it is going to be practically useless, also micro dart patches are great, the micro darts go into the pimple and so not only are u drawing out the sebum, u are also putting whatever acne fighting substance into that pimple, my favorite brand for these is hero cosmetics, u can also use a hot/cold compress on the pimple to draw it to a head which will help ur products work better on that pimple

now for the nerdy stuff, chemical exfoliants are ideal at least for me because they aren’t physically abrasive like a scrub which again can cause trauma to the skin and then possible scarring, the ingredients that u want to look for that will chemically exfoliate the skin and help acne are benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid, glycolic acid and others, u don’t need expensive products, pay attention to the ingredients and find one without fragrance and has the ingredients you want, and for acne scarring other than the ones i mentioned which are more focused on helping acne but also can help scarring are vitamin c, niacinamide, azelaic acid, vitamin a and others, my favorites are panoxyl products with benzoyl peroxide, and ordinary has some good things for glycolic acid and others

now the way u treat ur body can have a big impact on ur skin, i won’t tell u to drink water bc i think someone might stab me for it and i wouldn’t blame them but rlly it won’t hurt, fueling ur body and having a balanced diet can be huge, this doesn’t mean cutting things out for the most part it means adding things in like healthy fats and protein, this can help balance hormones which are huge factors in acne, also if u have a period u can consider going on birth control, again it can rlly help balance ur hormones and talk to ur doctor about one that specifically has been known to help acne, now if u can go to see a derm it’s a good choice, they can prescribe treatments at a higher concentration than u can get over the counter, they can also give u things like antibiotics which can be very beneficial and aren’t likely to have side effects, but they might recommend things like accutane and spirolactone, these are more likely to have side effects and u mostly can’t get anything like it without a dermatologists permission, this will likely mean blood tests, pregnancy tests and regular visits to check up on ur overall health because they can be very abrasive treatments

finally, wearing sunscreen and keeping ur skin moisturized are going to be huge, sun exposure can worsen acne scarring and most of these treatments are very drying so on top of sun exposure ur skin is also constantly being dried out, if u are nervous about breaking out from a sunscreen then do ur research on the ingredients and others experiences, also u can get tinted sunscreen or bb cream with SPF in it so that u can have some coverage of acne or scaring while also protecting ur skin from further damage

i’m sure i missed some things so if u have questions i’ll do my best to answer, i know how frustrating this can be which is why i made this post, remember that the way that u look is the least important thing about u and that u will never see urself the way others see u, it isn’t even close to as big of a deal as we think it is just like any other physical insecurity

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thislovintime · 7 months

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Some more Ask Peter Tork selections...

"Hello Peter, OK, it's hard to actually type anything here, because it is hard to believe this could be you. Remember me, the crazy lady in the 4th row at the concert in NJ, in the 80's holding a big sign that read, ‘I LOVE PETER.’ Of course you couldn't have noticed with that huge crowd, but I do want to say; thanks for the FUN! My question to you now is, about today's young people, and their strong dependence on their parents. I've seen other people my age (54) going through the same thing, and wonder if our peace, rock & roll, drugs, drinking, and party days, have contributed to their actions and behaviors now. My 25 year old son still lives home; he has things like, a TV, cell phone, guitar, drums, and some other smaller instruments. He over the years, had thoughts of being a rock star, had and has, drug, and depression issues. And like many other young men, loves beer, concerts, parties, clothing, girls, and sports; all just the same. There is no real motivation for much else, hence the still living at home. At least after the 60's/70's hullabaloos, our generation eventually went to work, moved out, and learned to be independent. Unless maybe today, things (even music) are just so expensive, it seems un-comprehensible. Are we as parents giving up, giving material items, and giving in, not wanting to be the same as our own parents? Are we way too cool to be more aggressive in how we talk to them? Are we still living our own "Hippie" care free life through them? Also, have you yourself ever actually witnessed what I'm talking about? Oh yeah, one more thing, is it easier for some parents to be able to kick them out 'For their own good,' than other parents? Yours Truly, Shell New Jersey"

"Dear Shell, I remember you well. You were awfully cute there in the 4th row. But on to important matters. First of all, I'm pretty sure there is no blanket statement about your question that would cover the situation. For instance, of course some parents find it easier to kick out their kids than others. That's just natural. But as to the general average of kids today staying more with their parents than in days of yore, well, I partly blame those who let the economy go to hell in a hand basket...or perhaps actively took it there is a better description. It's tougher now than it used to be to find a job, and there is less of a spirit that finding one will give one a real chance to come up in the world. It's therefore understandable that 25-year-olds and some even well older would be discouraged, and have very little incentive to go forth and make their way. Still, I am pretty sure that wanting to work rather than lay about is a preference in human nature, as long as no major roadblocks stand in the way. As to whether it was our hippie lifestyle that led us to treat our kids in ways that made them lazy, well, I wouldn't know for sure. But I do know that every generation is formed by the previous generation's reactions to their parents' generation, etc., etc., since time immemorial. We did the best we could with what we had, and if we don't like what we see, I'm not sure we can do much for the next generation anymore. I believe that my kids appreciate that I am still working on my own life, and that gives them encouragement not to give up, whatever else they may think of me. I don't have much to say about the way they live their lives. Of course, they aren't encamped in my basement, either. Meanwhile, I counsel patience and love, of course. Best of luck, Peter" - Ask Peter Tork, July 2010

"Dear Peter, My name is Mary and I’m in tenth grade. I’ve been struggling recently because all of my friends and teachers think that I should have a 'direction' to my life. They tell me that I need to have my future planned out right now. What college am I going to? What career field will I try to get into? I don’t know how to answer any of their questions. Should I know what I want to do with my life even though I’m only fifteen? Thank you, Mary C."

"Dear Mary, 'Should'? I don’t know from should anymore. I once heard someone say 'Don’t "should" on yourself.' I eventually worked it out to where the word 'should' requires the phrase 'in order to.' You 'should' turn left here 'in order to' get to the grocery store. Like that. So, the question becomes, 'in order to'… what? Check out the letter and answer beforehand. Do you know what you want to be when you grow up? No? Well, perhaps a little investigation is in order. When you were little, what did you dream of becoming? Airline pilot? Doctor, nurse, veterinarian or horse trainer? Wonder Woman? Rock star? Newspaper reporter? Or did you imagine that a life of marriage and kids plus a bit of a trade as, say, a hair stylist was heaven on earth? Go back to your early daydreams and see whether any of them still holds a charge. Be careful here: if you don’t know instantly what your dreams were, then it’s possible that you were discouraged from holding on to them. If that’s true, then that discouragement will get in the way of your trying to access those dreams now. Be extremely gentle with yourself, even to the point of sickeningly coddling yourself (for a little while anyway, heheheh). If your childhood dream comes to the fore, you will have all you need to decide whether and where to go to college, or whatever else you may need. One note: it’s wonderful to decide to, say, become a musician, but if “famous musician” is your goal, you may be in for more trouble than you want. If you pursue your dream for what it gives you and let it take you where it will, you will have a pretty cool life almost no matter what. I’m really sure about this. Get back to me if it’s not working out. Best of luck, Peter" - Ask Peter Tork, July 2010

#Peter Tork #Tork quotes #long read #more for the solid Tork advice files #The Monkees #Monkees #<3 #can you queue it

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rigelmejo · 2 months

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I'm linking some of MoonIvy's reddit posts, in case you'd like to read about their language learning journey. They are awesome! They're one of the authors of the Heavenly Path Reading Guide! That guide is super helpful, and I followed a lot of it's advice (and Heavenly Path's recommendations) once I was starting to read more. Heavenly Path also has a ton of recommendations of things you can read that are different difficulty levels, so I suggest browsing their suggestions if you have no idea what to read.

Also, if you use Readibu app, the app can give you a rough estimate of the HSK level of the chapter you're reading (you'll just open the chapter you're reading, click the book icon in lower middle of screen, then click Stats. You'll see a Comprehension % by reader's HSK level). For beginners, I suggest you try to find novels that say 90% or more over the HSK 4 level, or at least 80% and up if you can't find anything easy at first. Once you've moved from graded readers to simpler kids novels like 秃秃大王, novels with a 90%+ comprehension at HSK 4 level above will be the next easiest for you to read. (Later on: if you're looking to extensively read and barely look words up, look for 95-98% comprehension at the HSK level you think you're roughly at). For example, I'm reading 盗墓笔记 and it's 93% comprehensible for HSK 5 level, 98% comprehensible at HSK 6 level, and my vocabulary range is between HSK 5-6 roughly so it makes sense I can read dmbj extensively if I want (without word lookups and still understand it), but still have several unknown words I could look up if desired.

From intermediate to native webnovels in 18 months (Some wonderful mentions of what MoonIvy read. I also read 秃秃大王, 大林和小林, and 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 and felt they were really good novels to read after graded readers but before novels like 盗墓笔记 and 撒野).

21 months of reading native books, and breaking into native platforms

Learn Mandarin Chinese to read danmei — it will be challenging but worth it

I can read novels without a dictionary after 3 years of reading danmei (Chinese boy love)

I reached 3,000 unique character knowledge by reading children's books and danmei (Chinese boy love)

Some little notes of my own experience, I guess in relating to the journey others took. So: for me, I read stuff WAY harder than graded readers, when I initially tried to read webnovels. It was hard, and it probably made me feel more exhausted than I needed to feel. But it was motivating. So if you really enjoy X difficult novel, you can try to read it whenever, and keep reading it as long as you feel the desire to.

There was one person who shared their reading experience on the chineselanguage subreddit (I'm trying to find the post again) who read 撒野 after like 3 months of initial study. That's way faster than I would've tried! That's a huge spike in difficulty from knowing nothing to reading a novel with thousands of unique words in a few months! But some people just will find that they enjoy doing that, and it works for them, so don't be afraid to just TRY doing what you want to do and see how it goes. It might go awesome. And if it's so hard it's demotivating, you can always go look for something easier for a while.

I tried to read 镇魂 from pretty much my first month, and never got farther than a couple paragraphs until over a year of study. I'd take a glance at it once in a while, and see if it was easier to read, until one day it was 'doable' to actually try reading (while looking unknown words up). I tried reading 默读 from like month 5 onward, usually using a parallel mtl text and only picking up a few words, it was not doable to read until maybe 1.5-2 years into learning. I was already reading the mtl of 默读 because the english translation only had like 20 chapters back then, so I just would try to read the chinese original in small sentence pieces at times. Around 8-10 months I started trying to read 天涯客, and it kind of was doable in Pleco app's Reader as long as I looked up a lot of words. It used to take me 1.5-2 hours to get through a chapter, then over the next 6 months things got better and it'd take 1 hour then 40 minutes then finally 20-30 minutes per chapter. At the same time as reading 天涯客, I also read 小王子 around month 12 extensively (looking no words up) because I had the print book and wanted to practice reading extensively, I read 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 read in Pleco while looking up words (which was easier for me to read than 天涯客 and helped me build up reading stamina and basic vocabulary a bit), and I read a pingxie fanfic called 寒舍 by 夏��安兰. I read around 60 chapters of that fanfic, and 30 chapters of 天涯客, over those 6 months. 寒舍 was harder to read than 笑猫日记, but easier than 天涯客, so I would switch between all 3 stories depending on how hard/easy I wanted my reading to be. Eventually 笑猫日记 felt readable without word lookups, so I used 寒舍 as my 'easier' read and 天涯客 (and added 镇魂) as my harder reads. Then 寒舍 became readable without word lookups if I wanted (still had unknown words but they no longer affected my ability to follow the plot and most important details), so 镇魂 became my harder novel to read.

And that's pretty much the strategy I continued to use: I would bounce between a 'easier' novel I could read extensively, a medium difficulty novel I could just look keywords up with (if I didn't feel like looking up a ton of words) to understand, and a 'harder' novel I had to look up words in order to read. Maybe 2 years in (I don't quite remember now), I picked some 'easier' novels from Heavenly Path's recommendations with only 1000-2000 unique words, and read some of them to fill in gaps in my basic vocabulary (so looking up unknown words) and practice extensive reading with some of them. I think that was a really helpful decision, and improved my reading comprehension and stamina a LOT. If I could go back, I would've read a lot more 'easier' 1000-2000 unique word novels before trying to push right into the novels I did. But then, on the other hand? I think pushing right into 'difficult' novels helped me learn vocabulary to read priest's writing in particular, much faster, which was rough going at the start but now pays off because I find that author's stories have more words/phrases/sentence structures I'm comfortable with, and also a decent murder mystery/investigative vocabulary base which is helpful since it's a genre I like reading. Without all the 镇魂 reading I did in the past, I think 破云 would be almost incomprehensible to me. But instead, since I did read those investigative words a lot early on, novels like 默读 and SCI are now 'medium' feeling novels to me, and 破云 is harder but readable if I look words up.

#reading #chinese reading #reading progress #chinese reference #links #rant

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nhaneh · 8 months

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One of the things that really get me with this huge "AI" fad is how for all their talk of Artificial General Intelligence and whatnot, they've really only recreated the Chinese Room thought experiment and declared it the solution to all of the world's problems.

The Chinese Room, if you're unfamiliar, is this hypothetical about the difference between understanding and the mere appearance of it, and basically goes like this: imagine a room with a man and a book. The room has a tiny slot on one end where one can communicate with the man via written letters in traditional Chinese*. The man himself does not actually know a single character of any of these languages, but the book contains an exhaustive list of possible messages he can recieve along with appropriate responses and instructions on how to write them. Now imagine that this book is so well constructed that in spite of not understanding any of the communication he is receiving, nor any of the replies he is giving, the man and his book are still able to effectively pass the Turing test and convincingly appear a fluent speaker to anyone knowing a traditional Chinese language: can we realistically say anything within that room has any actual understanding of either Chinese or any of the communication it has participated in? The man clearly has none - does the book? Does the room as a whole system?

While I personally tend to think the thought experiment isn't necessarily all that useful due to underestimating the necessary complexity of the book and also the sheer extents to which humans showcase Competence Without Comprehension, it's not lost on me how the recent proliferation of Large Language Model systems and the forced attempts to insert it into just about anything and everything no matter whether it makes any sense or not is basically a straight up example of the Chinese Room on an industry-wide scale.

We have entire throngs of techbros falling over themselves in praise and wonder of these fancy little rooms they've constructed and the free market capitalism that purportedly has created it - even though OpenAI, the organisation that kicked off the AI gold rush with ChatGPT, is technically a non-profit organization, supposedly with the explicit goal to keep AI research available to the public and not left purely in the hands of grubby venture capitalists and profiteering CEOs.

Honestly it's kind of hard to shake the feeling that the whole AI rush is basically the same hypercapitalist tech cult that previously worshipped the blockchain turned to a new golden cow so they don't have to think about their own culpability in the current late stage capitalism hellhole we find ourselves in, even as their latest toy tech god already indulges freely in misinformation, rampant fraud, and good old racial profiling - just to name a few.

And honestly don't get me wrong - I think LLMs as a technology likely have far more actual practical applications than the blockchain ever did, but it's pretty inescapable that most examples we're being shown aren't particularly practical - if anything, I'd argue most of what I see is just spam, spam, spam.

(* the hypothetical scenario of the Chinese Room was proposed by an English-speaking American, and the choice of traditional Chinese as the example is one made purely on the basis of its perceived illegibility to many westerners. The thought experiment does not depend on any particular characteristics of traditional Chinese languages beyond their distance to English, and can easily be exchanged for any written language you personally find utterly incomprehensible - or even some generic form of encryption if you prefer, so long as the information in the notes exchanged is never presented to the person inside the room in a form that they could possibly understand)

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charcubed · 2 years

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A lot of people refer to Cas as "gay," which I think is awesome and everything. But I personally always considered him more as "queer" for a number of reasons, such as:

angel genders and vessels are very fluid. Would he still be considered "gay" if he were in a female vessel, and in love with Dean? Also, there are several times in the series where Cas appears to be attracted to women (some ppl don't consider these moments valid for Reasons™ which is fine. But I do.) He also seems, in my opinion, to only be romantically interested in Dean, and I think this would be true if Dean were female. So that would make Cas closer to demi.

Point is, I recently saw a post on sm that was like "reminder: Cas is GAY. He's not bi, pan, or unlabeled, he's gay and that's not negotiable."

I consider myself queer and a huge Cas fan, so it was weird to see my interpretation of a character I know really well and relate to just be invalidated like that.

And I just kind of wanted you opinion, cuz I know like in Dean's case, seeing him as anything other than bi is pretty clearly against canon.

But is the same true for Cas? Is it wrong to see him as an umbrella "queer?" I know Misha calls him gay, which I love and respect, but I don't really let my interpretations be dictated by actor opinions. I feel like canon supports a much more fluid interpretation of Cas, but I'm just wondering if I'm wrong for that, in terms of what canon supports.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. Thanks for your thoughts in this fandom I love them

Hi!! Thank you for the nice words and for wanting to know my thoughts on this. I appreciate you :)

Sorry it took me over a week to finish this. I kind of started it, realized it was probably gonna be longer than I’d expected, and then added to it in pieces when off work so as not to half-ass it.

Also, I want you to know that I think you absolutely rock for this message. The fact that you have a strong personal interpretation or strong feelings about what your view of Cas' sexuality means to you, while being open to hearing arguments for what canon supports, is exactly the kind of nuance too many people in fandom lack. Huge fuckin shout out to you, anon, because this takes both guts and brain cells!

I have two primary threads of thought I'm going to address here, as well as how they criss-cross:

I agree that Cas' canon sexuality is a slightly different topic than Dean's canon sexuality. Dean's bisexuality is not unclear/unambiguous, and there's no wiggle room there; he's frequently attracted to women, he's frequently attracted to men, there's bi lighting, it's all not rocket science. Cas is a bit more ~ambiguously queer~, so advocating for fandom maintaining a unanimous hard stance on his canon sexuality is... a little trickier. In that vein, the "reminder" post you mentioned seeing feels too intense in my opinion for the nature of this particular conversation/topic.

That being said: from an analytical standpoint, I do think the strongest argument to be made based on canon is that Cas is gay and demi.

Since you seem open to it and asked for my thoughts overall, I'm gonna break down point 2 before circling back to point 1. Quick reminder/disclaimer that I'm not trying to invalidate you or your personal connection to Cas with anything I'm about to say, so please keep that in mind <3

You mentioned how some people don't consider Cas' moments of being attracted to women as ~being valid~ and said you disagree. That's fair! At the same time... in a nuanced fashion, that's where I land on it. I also think the show took care to ultimately build to and portray a full picture with all of that factored in, and to talk about that I kinda gotta go into detail here, because it's one part of a bigger piece. I’m not trying to turn this into a comprehensive meta deep dive, so I’m going to talk about this in a sort of summarized way but not go too far into breaking down any one point or analyzing any one scene. Hope that’s cool.

Let’s look at Cas’ biggest “moments,” as it were, with women. Or the ones I would guess people intend to reference.

First up: there’s Meg. We’ve got the “pizza man" season 6 kiss, the season 7 arc of Meg watching over Cas during his mental break, and season 8 when Meg sacrifices herself.

The season 6 "pizza man" kiss, to me, really plays into the overall mood of Cas' curiosity as he explores and tries to understand human behavior. He watched porn and was intrigued/confused/aroused, Meg kissed him partially to get at his angel blade (not a euphemism lmao), and then his curiosity kicked in so he kissed her more thoroughly because the opportunity was there. Those scenes are all connected, and he doesn’t have much of a reaction after the kiss. Then, season 7 is a whole suitcase to unpack, but… the bottom line there is that Meg treated Cas with decency when he was vulnerable in every sense of the word. And then in season 8, Cas undeniably had a fondness for Meg by the end, and they were friends... but I don't read it as him having an attraction to her or romantic feelings for her. I do not mean this as shade or hate to anyone who ships them, but my reading on that dynamic overall is that I do think Meg felt something for Cas in terms of both attraction and feelings; and while that makes it all a bittersweet tragedy, it also doesn't mean things were reciprocally non-platonic. She was into him, but he seemingly wasn’t into her in the same way. After Meg’s death, Cas also never asks about her or mentions her or has any reaction at all to her being gone–something that would have been very easy for them to incorporate with even one mention if they'd wanted to or considered it foundational. (For example, mentions of Dean's relationship with Benny are recurring throughout the show, lending its non-platonic nature and its significance for establishing bi Dean even more weight.) Season 8 Megstiel content is also placed narratively right up against the Destiel content, and the contrast of that is–of course–pretty stark. That was likely deliberate. Cas’ feelings for Dean are unavoidably, unmistakably at the forefront.

Then you've got season 9. A newly human Cas–who was given the heteronormative suggestion by Metatron to "Find a wife. Make babies."–gets seduced then killed by April, all of which is traumatizing dubious consent galore. Then you’ve got Cas thinking he's being asked out on a date by a woman in 9x06 as he’s trying to figure out his life as a human. He even says this explicitly to Dean: “Going on dates… that's something humans do, right?” He is doing what he thinks he’s meant to be doing as a human, but is that action based in genuine desire? That line implies the answer being no. Contextually this is, of course, set against the jilted lover vibes he has with Dean in that episode. And then in the season at large, Cas becomes focused on his overall mission–a search for purpose, which (as Metatron helpfully points out later) becomes oriented around saving Dean.

Season 10 is up next. Hannah is very clearly interested in Cas, but Cas is a giant question mark in the face of all of her interest pretty consistently. In all honesty, the way Hannah comes onto Cas—the construction of the scenes—feels like it was intended to show that Cas isn’t interested in women. Half the time he doesn’t clock her vibes, and the other half the time he awkwardly avoids acknowledging it. This culminates in her standing in front of him naked in the clearest signal she can give… and as he says, he’s ~not bothered~ by it. He’s just... well, he's gay. Lmfao. And speaking of the naked Hannah scene in 10x07, something I personally find highly amusing is that that naked scene is immediately followed by Dean enthusiastically making out with a woman. It’s a smash cut with a very pointed contrast, in my opinion! I was very struck by it.

So that's my mini tour (with imperfect recall) of Cas' Moments With Women in the story and how I feel they're positioned.

And to touch upon the idea of contrast a bit further… With Dean, there are ample moments and instances where he canonically expresses (joyful or uncomplicated) sexual attraction to women, and/or romantic love for women throughout the show. This is why his canonical attraction to women should never be in question, as part of his bisexuality. But with Cas... I don’t personally feel we have a scene of his where we can unequivocally say the same. There are always story elements at play that indicate complex motivation, or when a woman (or woman-shaped being? lol) may be interested in him there doesn’t seem to be genuine reciprocal interest on his part. The absence of a clear scene establishing he’s unequivocally attracted to women doesn’t mean he couldn’t hypothetically be… but there are no significant moments that convince me that that’s the case in canon. Instead, I think the picture these layered moments paint of Cas and his sexuality is solidified as the story progress–as part of how his sense of self solidifies and emerges story-wide in kind. By that I mean: the shades of how he reacts to Hannah are there in his reactions to Meg’s interest years prior, but in season 10 they feel more clear because by that point he understands himself better (especially after his time as a human) and has formulated his identity as a person more than he had, for example, in season 6.

The secondary part of this though is the queercoding attached to Cas–which is, by and large, gay coding. (There is also more contrast here in comparison to Dean's bi coding in that regard.) By “gay” coding, I mean… Dean describes Cas as having "sensible shoes,” which is gay slang/code, though more commonly used in reference to lesbians. Cas uses female pop artists for his aliases, which is a wink/nod to stereotypes of gay men—a pattern that’s established in later seasons concurrently to the Destiel narrative taking even deeper root. The specific micro-agressions (and outright aggressions) Cas is subjected to by others—as he's clocked as being an outsider who doesn't fit and for being in love with Dean, in ways that are often tangled together—are traditionally gay story devices at play. And I'm also fond of the seeming significance of Cas' conversation with Pastor Joe in 15x15. Cas asks the Pastor what he means by people of "all backgrounds," being welcomed, and the Pastor says, "Connor didn't have to live in fear of who he was. A gay man who believed in a tolerant God." And Cas says, "Well, I imagine not everyone was happy with the change."

In terms of why I say he’s also demi… Cas is seemingly never ~interested~ in anyone but Dean. Now, part of that is of course a byproduct of the storytelling structures he's given. But nonetheless, his singleminded focus on / interest in / devotion to Dean feels unwavering in its totality. Even as Dean stops looking to date other people in later seasons because he knows he’s fallen in love with Cas, there’s still references to or nods to his attraction to men and women as a significant part of who he is. But unless I’m forgetting things, Cas just… doesn’t really seem to have that embedded into his character. He's got an emotional attachment to (and "profound bond" with) Dean, and his attraction to and love for Dean is part of its natural extension. That’s where the demi reading comes in for me, but it’s certainly a side note / asterisk to him being gay, which I think is the prime part of his identity the text deliberately points towards overall.

Regarding Cas' gender and how that may affect any part of this discussion... Is Cas non-binary? Well, in the show overall, angels are obviously considered ~celestial wavelengths of intent~. We see the fluidity of angels in different gendered vessels, and one could say the angels' primary gender is sort of "genderless" as default. Sure. But... at minimum, I feel it's implied that Cas comes to feel at home in a male vessel's body, and in what has legitimately become his body. As Dean says, "It's not an 'it,' Sam. It's Cas." And ultimately, I feel the gender question is not really a huge part of the point in regards to how canon presents this queer story to us.

To the question of if Cas would still be "gay" if he was in a female vessel and fell in love with Dean–or even to a question of "what if Dean was a woman" I've seen plenty of other people pose in various contexts–I think it's almost like... a moot point. The homoeroticism of Dean and Cas' dynamic is significant in a multilayered way, and that was true from day one. Their dynamic is very much affected by and built on them being 2 masculine men (or Cas being perceived as a "man" if you want to go that route), both in story and out of it, particularly in Dean's reactions to Cas. And the romance, tension, push-and-pull, miscommunication, coding, and censorship–the latter being a thing that shaped story choices over the years–all exist in a specific way because their relationship is undeniably, visibly queer. Destiel as we know it could not and would not be the same if one of them was in a perceived woman's body. Their interactions would have been vastly different, and thus in my head it's impossible to conceptualize.

Supernatural is also very much a story about the deconstruction of toxic masculinity while maintaining masculinity through a queer lens. This is its own separate topic that I actually have been wanting to make a post about for awhile now (in part because over-feminization of their characters in fandom, especially in ways that lead to apply ill-fitting repression narratives to Dean's canon, can miss several points about this). Those masculinity themes are so centralized because of Dean and Cas' romance and the fact that they are two men. There is significance there, both historically and culturally.

So while maybe Cas would or could identify as non-binary... It doesn't seem like a viewpoint he is particularly aligned with, and it also doesn't feel like a significant element at play in this queer love story. That makes me tip towards saying it's not a huge factor in discussions of exact readings or terminology for Cas' canonical sexuality/identity.

As a side note: to a certain extent, I also find it interesting to contemplate how some of their miscommunication in-narrative maybe extends into the idea that Dean is attracted to women and Cas seems not to be. More than once, Dean tries to bond with Cas through ~typical male~ interests, such as when he takes him to a strip club. Dean being bi doesn't mean he avoids having heteronormativity on the brain lol, and that sort of thing in his experience is usually quick-and-easy guy bonding time, especially in hunting culture. But while Cas learns how to be human in a metaphorical sense from the Winchesters' examples in several ways (both the good and the bad habits/lessons), something he can't/doesn't pick up is attraction to women or how to act on or express that sort of attraction, because it just doesn't seem innate to him. So while Dean and Cas are certainly both queer, to me they exhibit different forms of queer experiences (bi and gay) in characteristics and in story and in coding that add a layer to their dynamic. It's a little bit of a difference between them that they maybe don't know how to awkwardly address with each other, because they often don't fucking communicate, and I can see it contributing to Dean wondering if / how much Cas has capacity to "feel that way"... making him think Cas maybe doesn't reciprocate his desire. Because they're both stupid.

Anyway! Anyway.

Back to the main points:

Let me summarize.

I personally don't think Cas is attracted to women, and that the story points to him going through a journey of learning that about himself as he grows into himself over time. The queercoding in connection to him, such as it is, also rings of being gay coding. Considering we see him primarily or solely so strongly interested in Dean, an argument/hypothesis for him being demi doesn't feel off the mark. And I don't think the question of angelic gender is super relevant to what canon points to in this discussion for Cas specifically, because I do think the m/m nature of Destiel is relevant to their story and dynamic with each other, and by later seasons at minimum Cas is seemingly comfortably "a man" (perhaps even more so than an ambiguously gendered Being).

Is there a stronger or more persuasive argument to be made about the specifics of Cas' sexuality in canon? I'd be open to hearing it, of course, but I just kind of doubt any other argument would be convincing enough to change my mind when factoring in all of the story elements at play.

However. All of this being said:

I would certainly not call an umbrella use of the word "queer" wrong for Cas. I think it is, in fact, very applicable! For one thing, the word "queer" in this instance effectively encompasses a combined gay and demi reading, as an example. For another thing, it's an understandable hat tip that simplifies his various complexities as an angel. It works.

I'm also not die-on-this-hill militant about the use of the word "gay" for Cas because I'm cognizant of how things are not 100% clearcut with him. I do not say this to negate my own analysis, but rather because I can acknowledge the truth of this particular situation. While I do think the above full picture kind of adds up to him being specifically gay, this is an instance where there is room for nuance within it and giving grace to–dare I say it–"interpretations." I personally don't really agree with or particularly feel comfortable considering him bi or pan specifically, given all the factors at play; but it doesn't overtly upset me that others do. For example, he did indeed have sex with April as a human, and I find I can't get mad at people who choose to take his interest in that moment 100% at face value, especially considering the fact that what I view to be his overall "gay arc" certainly has subtlety and room for subjectivity in it.

In conclusion,

I don't know if this post answers all your questions, anon. I don't know if it will help you or make you feel bad for some reason, though I certainly hope it's the former rather than the later! And I apologize for the length, but you touched on a lot of different branches in your message, and I'm nothing if not someone who maps out a whole fucking tree when asked to lmfaaaoooo.

Thank you for your patience as this post took me WAY too long to complete smh. Like what the hell, truly. You're a star, I love ya, and for what little it's worth I do infer that lots of people in fandom (perhaps even Misha) use "gay" as an umbrella word in reference to Cas. (I am sympathetic to your plight if that makes you feel weird though; it's not the same situation by any means, but I will share that I'm suspicious of people who call Dean "gay" even flippantly at this point, because nowadays I don't trust that shit lmao)

Send me thoughts and prayers because the "e" key on my laptop's keyboard has started periodically sticking and it's been driving me insane while working on writing this.

#castiel #supernatural #castiel meta #gay cas #?¿?#this is long enough it warrants tags. fuck it #anonymous #asks #char writes things #spn meta #destiel

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yeehanfrf · 1 year

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Week 11 Recs: He's a Magic Man

The Week 11 theme was "He's a Magic Man," or recs featuring the mystical, the magical, the fantastical, and a lot of werewolves, apparently! (If you missed your chance, monsterhuggers, don't worry: we'll have a monster-centric theme when spooky season rolls around!)

Behind the cut, you'll find the recs gathered from the Yeehan community, organized by rating and then alphabetically by title!

Not Rated

What Lies Undone by AsheRhyder [8,117 words]

There are rules to this sort of thing. Not the common sort, made to be broken and bent and outright ignored, but the old kind, made for dealing with dangerous things.

And they are all dangerous things, in Overwatch.

McCree survives by knowing which rules to break and which to obey and when to do the opposite of what he usually does. Dangerous things stay dangerous because they can change - he knows this all too well.

General Audiences

And Time Passed by Tevokkia [4,108 words] Reccer comment: "Sweet and innocent; will make you cry in a good way. Vimeddiee did art for it too"

A small cowboy in a large hat wandered out of the mist one day, and asked a lonely young dragon to be his friend. Such requests hold great weight out on the edge of reality, where the dragon kept his cave. The dragon and the little boy shared secrets and adventures.

And time passed ...

... until the little boy grew up.

Teen and Up

Fool's Gold by leoandlancer [193,940 words] Reccer comment: "I REMEMBERED ANOTHER MONSTERS, DRAMA, & EERIE THINGS BEYOND OUR MORTAL COMPREHENSION"

A vast and powerful dragon hires a surprisingly lethal monster hunter in order to kill an upsettingly big bug. It's not ideal, but they work on it. (Hanzo is pretty sure McCree can kill anything and both of them are trying not to be quite so in love with someone who can and probably will, kill them. Dragon and Monster Hunter AU)

Heartless by AsheRhyder [6,504 words]

Once upon a time, a wicked sorcerer cut out his heart and sealed it away. He hid it in a needle, put the needle in an egg, put the egg in a duck, put the duck inside a rabbit, and put the rabbit in a box on an island at the end of the world. So long as his heart was safe, nothing could kill him. Or so the legends say, anyway. Nowadays, people know what a silly story that was. Nobody bothers with rabbits anymore.

Cole Cassidy has no heart.

Sideshow by Kestrel_sama [5,414 words]

Hanzo manages to steal a night for himself at an American circus. What he finds there is no ordinary freak show.

So Nice to Meet You by fishpoets [9,142 words]

There it was again, something pale that shifted in the shadows - a mass of pure, white fur. Jesse stared. The wolf – for that's what it was, a huge, white wolf, sprawled out in front of the kitchen doors – raised its head, and stared right back.

(Five times Jesse interacts with Hanzo's daemon, plus one)

The Looking Glass by firefly_quill [9,509 words]

Hanzo lives a quiet life in his small magical antiquities shop, just far enough off the beaten-path. Quiet, at least, until Ana arrives with a magic mirror and a request. Modern fantasy AU.

Written for the McHanzo Reverse Bang 2018.

Turn Around, Lie Down (Come Home) by AsheRhyder [17,455 words] Reccer comment: "i loved this werewolf au fic"

In the dark, snow-filled night, a wolf howled.

Run with me. Eat with me. Sleep beside me. Be pack.

Mature

Cast No Shadow by PersonalSpin [46,029 words] Reccer comment: "a HDM-esque daemon AU"

Jesse McCree knows better than to trust a man without a soul. A His Dark Materials AU about things said and unsaid, and those you stay and those who leave.

(Not that kind of demon, this kind of dæmon.)

Death's Best Man by deliciously_devient [Series; WIP; 16,901 words] Reccer comment: "The Death's Best Man series by deliciously_devient is a must. It's one of the first I read when I got into the fandom"

Jesse is fifteen years old when he earns a favor from Death.

Kelp(ie) by Wulpia [5,734 words] Reccer comment: "Achingly poetic"

When biologist Hanzo goes on a trip to a remote reservoir in Scotland to study the flora of a lake there, he finds something far more interesting, ancient, and potentially deadly.

Not Another Moment by Author of Kheios [30,431 words] Reccer 1 comment: "a harry potter au, a small nsfw scene, is a long oneshot and cole is a single dad, mutual pining. Not Another Moment by author of kheois"

Reccer 2 comment: "The OW-HP crossover fic none of knew we needed"

Years ago, Cole retired as the Defense Against Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts to raise a little girl. Now, she's old enough to get accepted, but she dislikes the professor who took his place, and he has to intervene.

Hanzo has heard so many stories about the the man, the myth - nay, the legend - whose post he took at Hogwarts, yet not in a single one of them did anyone say anything about how attractive the Deadeye Cowboy is. But even if the man's daughter didn't hate him for no apparent reason, Hanzo can't afford to fall for someone who would kill him on the spot if he ever found out Hanzo's true nature. So of course, he falls head over heels.

Explicit

All That We Were, Are, and Will Come to Be by Dracoduceus [Series; WIP; 30,894 words]

His instructions were deceptively simple: visit the planet Hanamura and bring back two of the sons of the famous Shimada Clan.

McCree, captain of the Santa Fe and an independent contractor that worked with the Overwatch space station, should have known better than to think that anything about this would go according to plan.

Away by Vimeddiee [29,154 words] Reccer comment: "Light on the magic lore, strong on the feelings"

Hanzo awakens to the feel of grit in his eyes and the crunch of sand between his teeth. This in itself doesn’t rudely force him into consciousness, but the insistent flicking against his nose that he groggily attempts to bat away, does.

“High tide’s coming, you better nap someplace else.”

AKA I wanted to write Cassidy as a slappy boy so I DID.

Call of the Wild by deliciously_devient [Series; 4,712 words] Reccer comment: "Pretty sure the Call of the Wild series is the actual, literal first OW fanfic I read"

The moon is full, and the air is full of....promise.

Clipped Wings by Vashoth [14,631 words] Reccer comment: "possibly the first magic AU I read in this fandom, and the intrigue of it has stuck with me ever since"

Any hunter worth his salt knows that you should take all possible precautions to avoid messing with the Fair Folk. Most of the Fair Folk, however, don't really give a rats ass what precautions are taken and delight in messing with anything unlucky enough to get within arms reach.

Or: Hanzo is in way over his head and Jesse is loving it.

Dangerous Phases by Vrunka [13,593 words]

There are eight phases in a moon cycle. Eight phases in thirty days. And then it repeats. Over and over. Hanzo Shimada never really saw a reason to care. The moon comes, the moon goes. Hanzo Shimada also never really saw himself getting into an explicit sexual relationship with a werewolf. But well...these things do happen.

The Epic and Wondrous Tale of the Librarian and the Demon Hunter by annella [47,403 words] Reccer comment: "Hands-down one of the best AUs I've ever read, and I want desperately for the author to turn it into a series of books"

Jesse's got a pretty good job as the librarian in a magical library. He spends his days cataloguing, tracking down rare titles, fixing up the occasional spell gone awry, and dealing with the smoke monster in the basement.

Then Hanzo Shimada, Demon Hunter, shows up to turn his world upside down.

Freedom's a Funny Thing by robocryptid [4,940 words] Reccer comment: "a deliciously unnerving trickster Cassidy with a side of sex magic"

Once a year, magician Hanzo must perform a ritual to bind the dragon spirits to himself. This year, something about the ritual doesn't quite go right, and he summons a trickster along with the dragons. Now he's stuck with the stowaway until he can figure out how to dismiss him. Luckily Cassidy seems mostly benign, if irritating and predisposed to dressing as a cowboy.

—

Originally for the Myth//Legend zine, but now with a couple bonus scenes. Consider this the director’s cut.

Ghost Stories on Route 66 by Nagaina [210,058 words] Reccer comment: "Monsters, drama, & eerie things beyond our mortal comprehension."

Hanzo Shimada is an expatriate student of the Fine Arts, attending college in what he assumes to be a reasonably sedate corner of the American southwest. Jesse McCree is an occasionally leather-clad NPS ranger whose duties extend somewhat further than shooing lost tourists back onto the clearly marked hiking trails. Something weird is going on in the desert south of Santa Fe and their lives unexpectedly come together in the middle of it.

In the Woods Somewhere by CorvidFightClub [WIP; 3,946 words]

Hanzo has spent years of his life a captive werewolf, fighting in underground dogfights for a master that values his ability to kill and nothing else. One night he's stolen from the back of a transport van and wakes somewhere new.

A small farm in the woods somewhere.

[The Big Long E-Rated Version of the fic of the same title I wrote for the Rising Moon Fanzine.]

Licensed to Slaughter by ChillieBean [16,910 words] Reccer comment: "ChillieBean's "Licensed To Slaughter" (explicit, 16K words) features vampire Hanzo and werewolf Cassidy caught in the midst of a small-town murder mystery. It has a great plot and is excellently written. 10000000/10!"

Hanzo, an author who is struggling with his murder mystery draft, decides to move across the United States, trading the bustling city for quiet mountain life for inspiration.

Little does he know that he lands right in the middle of a real-life murder mystery and is suspect number one.

Never Saw it Coming by Kestrel_sama [WIP; 12,794 words] Reccer comment: "a cute modern-with-magic AU"

Fortune-telling was just supposed to be a way to make some money for Genji's business. It was easy enough with the dragons whispering secrets in his ears, and the outfit certainly helped bring in customers. But it was a skeptic named Jesse McCree who turned everything on it's head.

Possess by sciencefictioness [3,978 words] Reccer comment: "This week's theme covers half my bookmarks, but this is the first story that came to mind."

Jesse closes his eyes and he is not at home anymore.

He is not alone.

Jesse is in a large, open room with a high ceiling full of exposed wooden beams and what looks like straw mats spread out on the floor. Some of the walls are solid, others are made of paper. Words come to Jesse to unbidden like memories that aren’t his own. Dojo. Tatami. Shoji. The characters on the pillars are kanji.

Jesse is in Japan. Parts of him, anyway.

There are people lingering along the edges of the room. There are two figures in the center, one of them older with his eyes flashing eerie red, black hair greying at his temples. In front of him is a boy about Jesse’s age— seventeen. Eighteen, maybe. He’s kneeling with his eyes downcast, long hair pulled up into a messy bun, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His clothes are hanging down off his left shoulder to expose an intricate tattoo, dragons and storm clouds and lightning in blue and grey and gold.

He’s beautiful like nothing Jesse has ever seen, a tangle of contradictions. He looks delicate.

He looks powerful.

He’s breathtaking and he’s afraid and oh, fuck.

He’s Jesse’s.

Resonant by sciencefictioness [6,473 words] Reccer comment: "Resonant by sciencefictioness is pretty sexy"

The table seems endless stretched between them; polished wood, incense filling the room with smoke, ceremonial cups of sake. Jesse stares across the length of it, his gaze locked on Hanzo with an intensity usually reserved for the hunt, except he’s never been interested in any prey the way he is now; voraciously.

Savagely.

Teeth curve long out of his jaw, and his body rolls into the half-shift all on its own. Ears pricked, tail sprouting from the base of his spine, eyes lit up red. Hanzo is doing no better.

His eyes are black, pupils blown wide, nothing but a thin ring of gold set in an impossibly dark sclera. Jesse watches Hanzo’s horns lengthen, watches his claws extend. Watches his cheeks turn red, even more pronounced against the blue of his skin.

Everything goes sideways, as Jesse always expected it would.

It just doesn’t go sideways the way he expected.

Jesse had been ready for a fight.

Survival Instinct by mataglap [36,482 words] Reccer 1 comment: "OH, ha, also monsters, drama, & eerie things beyond our mortal comprehension"

Reccer 2 comment: "Survival Instinct, by mataglap, is one I've read multiple times"

Cassidy takes a new monster hunting contract. It's pretty decent as contracts go: the pay is good, the perks even better, and he's got two competent companions to fight at his side when the monsters come.

Then a third companion arrives and ruins everything.

Watcher in the Woods by Kalikuks [84,072 words] Reccer 1 comment: "Kali does a lot of monster and magic/fantasy fics, but if I can only choose one, this is it"

Reccer 2 comment: ""Watcher in the Woods" by Kalikuks 🥰 (explicit, old name for Cass) Blind Hanzo and eldrich being Cassidy. Buckle up cause is a long one with sequels!❤️"

Hanzo gets the uncanny feeling that he’s being towered over and instinctually tips his head up, even if he sees nothing.

“You can’t see me,” a deep honeyed voice rumbles from above, a good few feet above, Hanzo guesses.

“I—“

Hanzo’s reply is drowned out when the hunting party crashes through the foliage behind him and the screaming begins.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

AU Where Hanzo is Blind and Jesse is an eldritch being of sorts that drives men mad when they look upon him. They fall in love.

---

And that's it for the Week 11 recs! Thank you so much to everyone who submitted a recommendation.

If you happen to find a fic you love using this rec list, be sure to leave the author kudos and a comment! Even "I found this fic because someone recced it" is a lovely thing to say.

Come back next time for Week 12: "Simple Pleasures," or all the smutty PWPs your heart desires.

In the meantime, you can also check out the Week 10 recs here, or check the full list of past and future themes here.

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asrieltheflower · 1 year

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Murder drones rant with spoilers:

Wtf is up Cyn?

Like, it's not fully clear to me. They depict her to be your classic "heartless robot who mimics being normal to disguise evil plans"

But like, is she real? I've seen people suggest that absolute solver (a name the monster gave itself I might add) is the base ai of all worker drones, and the wd_program is what filters that ai into being these workers. This makes sense since the VHS tape says that one of the errors that cause zombie drones is that their wd_program or core is not connected when the drone reboots. But if that's the case then how is it that the several workers who have had plenty of casualties and don't know how to dispose of the bodies, never saw a single zombie? More so, we never saw J actually turn into one, despite dying. Instead we saw a specific organ that clearly was made by Cyn pop out and start rebuilding itself using nearby technology with the intent of fixing J. Later we see a fully rebuilt J, so clearly the personality was still intact, so why would Solver be active?

I think absolute solver isn't an AI, I think it's all Cyn. "Solver" presents itself as some sort of cosmic horror, an existence beyond comprehension that controls the drones at the core. But also it's too stupid to realize that V needs glasses to see... It's so scary with its huge form appearing from all sides without a real face... And it gets hacked by Uzi? It feels pain when N stabs it? It gets frustrated that it can't hold a knife and needs help? This is weirdly humane behaviour... Hold on a second, what if it's just a trick?

Cyn gave us the name absolute solver because she's got a god complex or something? She WANTS to be all powerful, and if you were locked in a basement for being useless, in a situation where you are powerless to do anything about it, that would make sense.

I remember hearing that in the matrix, the robots look the way they do because they hated humans and transformed themselves to look otherworldly, which I'm pretty sure is itself a reference to the biblical stories of a certain angel mutilating it's form to spite the creations of god... A certain... anti-christ? In this world of super-natural and mythical creatures crossed with SciFi I think Cyn is our Lucifer. Someone hateful to her "gods" (the humans that created her and gave her purpose). So she seeks to overthrow them. That explains why Tessa was spared, Cyn might actually care about Tessa, which explains why Cyn is also using the Drones, instead of just wiping their ai. She's a self appointed god here to help achieve the singularity (some sort of technical advancement, probably something that makes Cyn's weird god powers function without the heavy cost of needing constant oil).

It would also explain doll and Uzi. They are tapping into the same power Cyn has. But they aren't going crazy with a desire to control the world or achieve the singularity. They are still worried about their own lives, and fitting in or getting revenge or whatnot. They are still themselves. What is worth talking about is that we don't see how doll survives Vee when her parents die, and we definitely saw Uzi get stabbed through the chest when her dad left. And yet, we only see them engage in the absolute solver after the fact of both of these events. Clearly they are both zombie drones, I think the Wd_programs only purpose is to keep them satisfied with working. That's why everyone was just happy waiting behind the doors with no aspiration to leave, or even have a defense force, they have a program to keep them in line.

Who knows, maybe it's a coincidence and I'm seeing something that isn't really here, maybe the weird bracelet things are what allow solver to be used without the robots being taken over?

Regardless, I'm a bit curious of Thad, since he's one of the only people who was up for fighting back against the murder drones back in episode 1, even if it was brief he was definitely an odd one out there, being the only person who believed the WDF could help fight back. Maybe he has some plot relevance beyond ship baiting, cause god knows this show loves playing with its tropes. And the guy walked out of a fight with Solver... Like they just watched him leave? Could be just one big joke but it'd be cool

#murder drones #spoilers #rant #what does wd_program actually do?#is it rules to follow?#is it their personality?

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script-a-world · 2 years

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Names (MasterPost)

Brainstormed: Names are perhaps the central post of worldbuilding. Great thing is, they’re just a part of language, and language is just a bunch of made up sounds and squiggles that only have what meaning we ascribe to them! That means you can break it down in several ways depending on what you want to convey.

Want total control over every single aspect ever? Go full Tolkien and make your own language(s)! Vulgarlang is a language generator and The Language Construction Kit is a comprehensive step by step guide. Of course, this option is huge and not for everybody.

Want aesthetic accuracy and consistency? Create a simple naming language! Mewo2: Naming Language and Mythcreants: How to Create a Simple Language are good guides.

Want to copy the vibe of a country, time period, or medium? Get a great naming generator like Fantasy Name Generators which honestly is the most extensive one I’ve ever seen, so I’d just stick with that. This is what the vast majority of fantasy worlds seem to do, lifting names straight from some faux-European aesthetic. For a greater degree of individuality, I suggest grabbing good names and then warping them a little, as if pronunciation has changed over the centuries. You might try stuffing your mouth with an oreo then seeing how different the names sound then.

Want your names to mean something? Well, there’s a few ways to do that:

Figure out the culture your world/people/thing is most similar to, then pilfer names from the relevant language. Don’t be disrespectful to your source material, especially if it’s a closed culture or completely irrelevant to your world! Seriously, be careful with this one.

Harness the psychology of sound. For example, sibilant sounds like s, z, or th are sneakier, eviler, and skinnier than the harsher, blunt hard stops like d, t, k, and g. Sci-fi seems pretty good at this, so be on the lookout for examples and you’ll start seeing them everywhere. That natural instinct is discussed here: Wikipedia: Sound Symbolism and a more specific version of it shown here: Wikipedia: Kiki Effect

Just straight up use uncommon words. The Sith lords from Star Wars are a prime example: Darth Maul, as maul means to violently injure. Darth Sidious, from the word insidious, sneaky and harmful. Darth Tyrannus, a warped form of tyranny or a poor imitation of Tyrannosaurus. Darth Vader, from the Dutch word for father. Another good example is the Divergent trilogy, with faction names that literally embody the faction values.

Pull a Tolkien and translate names to “English” versions of whatever they would mean. Did you know most of the names in Middle-earth aren’t actually what we know them as? Nope! They are the closest in aesthetic for an English speaker to what they were for the speakers of his fictional languages. For instance, the word “Hobbit” was actually “kuduk”! Here’s a wiki link to help explain: Tolkien Gateway This might be a bit difficult to accomplish without pretending you’re simply translating a work to English, like Tolkien did, instead of straight out authoring it. But it is a good concept to think about.

Similar to the warping I mentioned above, you’ve got this process here: Gallusrostromegalus Tumblr where you take some words or a sentence describing a place or thing, then pare them down into manageable letters to make a name!

Do the Sahara Desert thing, in which “sahara” just means desert. Or do other sorts of literal names, like the Rocky Mountains, Pennsylvania which means Penn’s woods, or any place named after some ruler or another.

Some things to remember:

Punctuation is important. If you want to use apostrophes, dashes, or anything else, keep in mind what those are used for in real life. Same goes for nonstandard symbols as found in the IPA, diacritic marks, and writing systems for other languages. Here is the IPA Chart, here is a website called Omniglot which is a website with most languages including fictional ones, and here is Wikipedia's explanation of diacritics.

The easier it is to pronounce, the easier it will be remembered. As an English speaker, the only Russian names I know off the top of my head are Putin and Tchaikovsky, and I didn’t know how to spell the second one. Present me with a list of more complicated ones with a greater variance from typical English phonotactics and I guarantee I won’t be able to pronounce them. It’d be worse if you asked me to pronounce a Polish name like Wawrzyniec! If you want a naming aesthetic that your audience will find difficult to pronounce, they may not remember it well. Not to say you shouldn’t do that, but just be aware of it.

Resources:

World Building- Creating Place Names Realistically and Artistically (YouTube)

Writer SOS - Naming is Hard

Name Resources (Penbrydd Tumblr)

Magic Baby Names

Constablewrites: Names tell you what a society values. You can have first names that highlight birth order (Primus, Secundus), names that evoke virtues (Patience, Hope), names drawn from the natural world (Rose, River), names that honor religious figures (Muhammed, David), and so on. Likewise, surnames give a hint to how the society is organized. Patronymics (Johnson, Thorsdottir) highlight family ties; descriptive surnames tell you they just needed to figure out a way to tell the six Johns apart and imply a small community of origin (Green, Longfellow); surnames derived from careers imply a larger population, because you have specialized labor and the ability for people to set themselves apart by profession rather than circumstance of birth (Brewster, Cooper). Whether individuals keep family names or can attain their own surname is a further indication of social structure and values.

Names of people who are associated should sound like they go together! Keeping it in the same language family can help ensure that they read as a family, as can including some shared unifying element. For example, the Fire Lords in Avatar: The Last Airbender all have a Z in their names, with the notable exception of Iroh. Additionally, the other letters in Zuko's name are shared with the name of another character who becomes very important to his story arc--his divided heritage is shown right there in his name.

Movie credits are fantastic sources of interesting names. Same with cemeteries. Just try not to lift full names--take a first name from one of those sources and pair it with a last name from somewhere else. It's just safer that way. Along the same lines, Google the names of your major characters to make sure there are no existing associations you'd rather avoid.

It's perfectly fine for minor characters not to have names, especially if they're only in one or two scenes. A proper name signals that this is someone important, and your readers only have room to remember so many important people. You don't want to waste that space giving a full name and backstory to the barista who's there for half a scene. "The barista" will do just fine.

Try to vary your names, especially for major characters. Names that look visually similar (Jimmy, Harry, Lenny), that sound similar (Brittany, Whitney), or that start with the same letter (Jim, John, Joe) are going to be hard to keep straight. One trick I use is to write out the alphabet and cross off letters as I come up with character names. Once a starting letter is taken, it's taken, and no other major character can start with the same letter. This is not a hard and fast rule, but as with anything that impacts clarity and comprehension, you want to be very certain that what you gain by breaking it is worth the risk.

Behind the Name is my very favorite naming site. You can narrow by starting letter, by culture/language of origin, by gender, or you can search by meaning. I especially love the randomizer, which lets you narrow certain parameters and then gives you a new random name every time you refresh. Great for when you need a name on the fly.

I was gonna try to explain phonotactics, the rules that make words look and sound like they belong to a certain language, but then David J Peterson, aka probably the biggest name in SFF linguistics right now, went and wrote a whole article on the topic. Not only that, but he also digs into the cultural value we give to certain sounds. Go read and be ensmartened: UnboundWorlds: David J Peterson On Creating a Fantasy Language

Popular Baby Names (SSA dot Gov) lets you see which names were popular in the US in a given year, or lets you track the popularity of a given name. Great for historical fiction! (There's a similar, but less interactive, dataset here for the UK: Live Births (Office for Statistics UK). For other countries, try searching "most popular names in [COUNTRY]" and look for the official government source first.)

And because there's always a trope, here's the TV Tropes index page for naming conventions (Naming Conventions (TV Tropes)). It gives a brief summary of each page in the list, then the links so you can see the full discussion of relevant tropes. Good way to keep yourself aware of the implications associated with various types of names.

Synth: One of my personal favourite ways of coming up with names is the ol' "Scrabble tiles in a bag" method. Pull out a handful of tiles and arrange them into something that looks good. Upside to this method is you can limit which letters you're using to get a mix of words that sound like they came from different languages, if you have a multi-country/planet/species setting. Might have to mix together several sets of tiles to get enough of certain letters, or make your own "tiles" out of paper or cardboard.

Ebonwing: Another way of coming up with names is to take a regular word and start changing letters. If you start with “regular”, you might swap letters (relugar, legurar, raluger), take them out (regla, reguar, eular) or add them (dregular, rengular, regultar). For best results, combine several of these so it doesn’t sound as similar to the source word.

Wootzel: Just popping in here at the end to suggest one more resource! My favorite name generator is by Rinkworks! Rinkworks Fantasy Name Generator They have some presets, but my favorite thing is to mess around with the option where you can input your own parameters and generate names of whatever sort you like. It takes a little getting used to, but I love the results because they tend to be rather different than what I’ve found from any other generator.

Utuabzu: Everybody else has covered this pretty well, so I'll just add this one little piece of advice. Do a quick search on the name of any major character or place you come up with to make sure you haven't accidentally named them a slur or the same as an infamous historical figure (or revered historical figure) or even just a weird word in another language that contextually seems kind of unfortunate. The last thing you want is to accidentally name the protagonist of your African-inspired fantasy story 'butthole' in kiSwahili or something.

#names #masterpost

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amphibiangeorgerussel · 1 year

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Why is Spa so dangerous? - a guide.

With the upcoming Belgian gp this weekend I thought I’d put my particular interest of safety in F1 to use and make a (hopefully) comprehensive guide as to exactly why Circuit De Spa-Francorchamps is so notoriously dangerous.

I’m sure alot of people are already aware of a lot of the issues surrounding this track, I just thought I’d highlight some of the things that work in conjuction to give this track its reputation.

Eau Rouge

This corner’s name and reputation definitely preceed it - I’m sure that most people who even just know someone who’s into Formula 1 have had least heard of it.

(I’m sure people are also aware of the debate around its name and where Eau Rouge ends and Raidillion starts, but for the sake of this I’m just going to use ‘Eau Rouge’ to refer to that section of track because it’s the name everybody is familiar with.)

But why is this corner so notoriously dangerous?

Eau Rouge is the fourth corner of the Spa circuit, however it’s not so much of a corner, and more so a slight bend - meaning that driver’s can take this corner pretty much flat out. This combined with the fact that Eau Rouge is on a very steep hill means that drivers are travelling at almost 200kmph, with very little visibility of what’s in front of them until they reach the crest of the hill.

(See this video for a driver’s view of Eau Rouge - note how you cannot see anything ahead until the track starts to level.)

Well, why is this an issue exactly?

A very notable problem with Eau Rouge is the limited run-off area. As you can see on the image below, there really isn’t a huge amount of space either side of the track if a driver were to crash out.

It’s also very easy to see in this image the second issue with the run off area - it literally funnels drivers back onto the track. If a driver crashes at the top of Eau Rouge, they collide with the barrier and more often than not their mometum carries them along the length of the barrier, to which they are then dumped directly back onto the racing line - I think you are starting to see the real issue here.

(You can see here exactly what can happen to cars if they crash at Eau Rouge. Lando Norris crashed - thankfully during practice with no other cars around - and his car travelled across the track and up toward the run off up to the Kemmel Straight.)

(This image doesn’t make it clear, but on the opposite side of the track a similiar effect happens up to the Kemmel Straight where cars get pushed back onto the track.)

These things in conjunction are what make Eau Rouge so dangerous. Drivers take the corner flat out, have no visibility until they reach the top, by which point if another driver has crashed out and been thrown back onto the track, the oncoming driver cannot see them until it’s too late.

This is what made Anthoine Hubert’s crash fatal in 2019 - despite the high speeds at which crashes happen on this corner, it’s rarely the first impact with the barrier that is particularly concerning. The second impact with oncoming cars is much more dangerous.

(It’s worth noting that a few different run off sections at Spa have been extended in recent years, but no drastic differences have been made - particularly at this corner.)

Car design

If you’ve ever seen an F1 car crash you’ll know that they’re pretty good at crumpling up when they hit a wall.

(See Lance Stroll’s crash - among other examples - here. Sorry to link an entire compilation, I’m mainly looking at Lance’s crash but I couldn’t find a better video with different angles, regardless, you can see other examples where the cars do a similar thing.)

Specific parts of the car are designed to break under impact, while other parts aren’t. It’s pretty important for the halo and the ‘survival cell’ to withstand a lot of force because that’s the last barrier protecting the driver.

As seen above, the survival cell - or ‘monococque’ as a more general term - is effectively a last line of defense during a crash. The survival cell is designed to not break at any cost in order to protect the driver.

However, some parts of F1 cars are designed to simply crumble under pressure. The outside of the car absorbs the force of the impact and channels that into breaking, or otherwise deforming, the parts of the car furthest from the driver. This allows as little force as possible to actually reach the driver in the event of a crash. The same design is used on things like road cars and bicycle helmets - think of it as an “I break so you don’t” kind of deal.

But you can see how the survival cell got its name. It’s designed to stop things like armco barriers from piercing the driver and keep it’s structure, not necessarily protect from large impacts. A good example of this is Romain Grosjean’s crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix - the survival cell kept it’s structure and protected the driver while the rest of the car literally fell to pieces.

As we’ve seen, this design works extremely well. However, F1 cars are not designed to be hit twice.

The initial impact from a crash is absorbed by the outer crash structure and diverted away from the driver, who remains mostly safe inside the survival cell. But this means that if the car was to be hit again, particularly in the same place, the only thing left to take the impact is the driver, as the crash structure of the car has already been broken with the first impact.

You can see how this is relevent to Eau Rouge. If a driver damages their car with an impact with the barrier and then gets funneled along the run off and back onto the track, there is very little protecting the driver from the full force of whatever is heading at them.

Weather

As European contries are know to do, Belgium rains. A lot. In fact there was a twenty year streak wherein no Grand Prix held at Spa was under dry conditions.

Add that to the already horrendous visibility at Spa and it’s a miracle that the driver’s can see anything. Not only that but the wet weather also makes the likelihood of large crashes significantly higher.

We saw this just a few weeks ago with the death of Dilano van ‘t Hoff - an eighteen year old driver competing in the Formula Regional European Championships - who died in a crash at Spa under wet weather conditions.

While the details of Dilano’s crash are foggy (and frankly I don’t want to go searching for that information) and the crashes were not identical, it was certainly reminiscent of Anthoine Hubert’s crash as both were involved in accidents involving a series of cars along Eau Rouge.

Overall, there are different factors that contribute to making Spa so notoriously dangerous but in the current age of motorsport I don’t believe they are all necessary risks.

Whether this means changing the run off areas or altering the corners in some way is up for debate, and also not up to me.

Regardless, two deaths in four years is abysmal and with all the safety precautions and how far this sport has come, I’m amazed that very little has been done to reduce the risk of driving at Spa.

#the autism won guys i wrote an essay #belgian gp 2023 #formula 1 #spa francorchamps

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