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gyuuberryy · 2 months ago

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𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐎𝐌 !

pairing: venom!jay x reader

genre: venom au, one sided rivalry, loser!jay, office coworkers, superhero

synopsis: when a geeky coworker’s transformation catches your eye, curiosity leads to a discovery far darker—and more thrilling—than you ever imagined. now, blackmail has you entangled with jay and his possessive alter ego, venom, in a dangerous game neither of you wants to end.

warnings: kissing, fighting, venom??

note: where are my marvel girlies at whoo hoo! venom is so pookie and my biggest "hear me out" hehe he got me sobbing in the theatre. jay as venom would be SO hot kjvfbvnjb >< so i wrote this to make up for me going mia for a while, i have too much school work so writing will be slow. anyway enjoyyy reading!!

word count: 2.5k

your office life was a balancing act between emails, deadlines, and… keeping your one-sided rivalry with park jongseong alive. jay(as everyone else called him), with his slightly too-short ties and endearing but tragic fashion sense, was the clueless office geek. he was awkward, quiet, and too nice for his own good. yet, no matter how awkward he was, jay always managed to excel in everything he did, effortlessly snagging the praise you thought should have been yours.

what irritated you most was that jay never seemed to notice your rivalry. he was too busy offering you help or giving you his signature polite, bumbling smile. and sometimes, you’d even catch yourself watching him a little too closely, feeling a reluctant warmth for his harmless, good-guy charm.

one afternoon, you wandered over to his desk, smirking as you noticed his usual setup: notebooks organised to the millimetre, a stack of neatly sharpened pencils, and a sticky note that read “be confident!” in his looping handwriting.

he looked up as you approached, adjusting his slightly crooked glasses and giving you a shy smile.

“hey, park,” you began, leaning casually against his desk. “did you remember to double-check the new client report? i know how thorough you like to be.”

jay blinked, his cheeks turning pink. “y-yeah, i went over it twice… just to make sure everything was right.”

“of course you did,” you replied with a playful eye roll. “wouldn’t want our employee of the month slipping up, now would we?”

he smiled, looking down at his notebook. “just doing my best.”

you shook your head, laughing softly. for some reason, you loved seeing him blush, getting him all flustered with a few well-placed jabs. jay was sweet, awkward, and, despite your constant teasing, he never seemed to hold it against you.

but the next week, everything changed.

jay showed up to work that monday looking like a different person. gone were the slightly wrinkled shirts and too-short ties. instead, he wore a fitted, charcoal button-down with the top few buttons undone, revealing a silver chain against his collarbone. his sleeves were rolled up, showing his forearms in a way that made you do a double-take. and he’d traded his old glasses for sleek, dark-rimmed ones that suited him way too well, giving him a smouldering look.

you did a double take as he walked by, giving you a casual, confident nod. “morning,” he said, his voice low and smooth. the bumbling, endearing jay you knew was nowhere to be found.

you shook it off, convincing yourself it was just a fluke. but over the next few days, you couldn’t ignore the transformation.

he traded in his ill-fitting clothes for tailored shirts, stylish watches, and a few artfully unbuttoned collars that showed off his neck and a hint of muscle. it seemed like his glasses had now permanently changed, now sleek and sophisticated, accentuating his jawline in a way that made you, against your better judgement, find yourself staring a little too long.

and it wasn’t just his style—jay’s entire demeanour was different. instead of blushing and stuttering, he’d catch you looking, smirking with a confidence that left you flustered.

one afternoon, you approached him, determined to regain some control of the dynamic. “wow, park,” you said, crossing your arms. “fancy new look. trying to impress someone?”

he looked up, a slow smile spreading across his face. “why? is it working?”

your cheeks heated, but you forced a laugh. “don’t flatter yourself.”

“oh, i don’t need to,” he replied smoothly, leaning back in his chair. “you do a pretty good job of that.”

his words left you speechless, your usual comebacks fizzling as he held your gaze with a smirk. flustered, you turned away, cursing under your breath.

when had park jongseong become… hot?

over the next week, his flirtations continued, growing bolder and more direct. every time you tried to tease him, he’d have a response that left you stumbling. gone was the stammering, geeky coworker you used to playfully bully; in his place was someone who knew exactly how to get under your skin, his newfound confidence throwing you off balance.

but one night after work, things took an unexpected turn.

you’d noticed him acting strange, glancing at his arms as though trying to keep something in check. he slipped out of the office quickly that evening, his face tense, and curiosity got the best of you. you followed him, keeping your distance as he made his way down the street, eventually ducking into a dark alleyway.

hiding behind the corner, you peeked around, pulling out your phone and hitting “record” just in case. what you saw left you speechless.

jay was standing in the middle of the alley, his body tense, his hands clutching his head. dark, inky shadows pulsed along his arms, twisting and curling like tendrils wrapping around him. his posture shifted, his shoulders straightening as the shadows coiled around his body, transforming him into something that was equal parts terrifying and mesmerising.

suddenly, jay let out a deep, guttural growl, his face contorting as sharp, gleaming fangs appeared, his once-soft eyes turning pitch black.

“finally,” a rough, raspy voice rumbled, oozing from jay’s mouth with a sinister excitement. “let’s go for a little… snack.”

a cold chill shot through you as you held up your phone, capturing the whole transformation on video. your heart was racing, but you couldn’t look away. whatever was happening to jay was unlike anything you’d ever seen.

as he turned, his gaze fell on the man who’d appeared in the alley, a figure holding a crowbar, his face twisted in anger. jay’s lips twisted into a wicked grin as he stalked toward the man, his voice dropping into a dark, predatory tone.

“ohhh, you picked the wrong guy to mess with tonight,” the voice sneered, dripping with a twisted glee. “i am going to enjoy this.”

the man froze, his face paling as jay’s shadows coiled around him, binding him in place. jay’s grin widened, his fangs gleaming as he leaned in close.

“run along, before i decide you’d make a nice little snack,” he growled, his voice a terrifying blend of jay’s and something far darker.

the man didn’t hesitate, stumbling away into the shadows. but as jay straightened, his gaze flickered over to you, and his eyes narrowed. in a heartbeat, he was in front of you, his inky black tendrils stretching out to trap you, pinning you against the wall.

you swallowed, trying to keep your breathing steady as he loomed over you, his dark, twisted grin sending a thrill of both fear and fascination through you.

“you… got that on video?” he murmured, his voice back to normal but tinged with a rough edge.

you held up your phone, smirking. “every second of it.”

his eyes flashed with a dangerous glint, and he leaned closer, his face inches from yours. “we could just… eat you, you know. save ourselves a lot of trouble.”

you raised an eyebrow, refusing to back down. “please. you didn’t even eat that guy. there’s no way you’d hurt me.”

he chuckled, the sound low and dark, his gaze flicking over your face. “hmm, true… i like you too much for that.”

the words left you breathless, your heart skipping a beat as you stared up at him, stunned. his face softened, a small, genuine smile replacing the sinister grin.

“so… about that video,” he murmured, his voice laced with amusement.

regaining your composure, you smirked, crossing your arms as best you could with his tendrils pinning you to the wall. “i think i’ll keep it… as insurance. you know, just in case you feel like getting hungry again.”

he tilted his head, his expression thoughtful. “so… what, you’re blackmailing me now?”

“exactly,” you replied, your grin widening. “you’re going to help me out with a few things, and i’m going to keep my mouth shut about your… secret.”

jay sighed, the shadows retracting as he released you, though he kept his gaze locked on yours. “fine. but don’t push it.”

you grinned, savouring the thrill of having the upper hand. “deal.”

over the next few weeks, you took full advantage of your “arrangement.” you had him running errands, fixing things around your apartment, and even carrying your heavy boxes at work. gone was the bumbling, geeky jay you’d known, replaced with someone who wielded both power and confidence—and didn’t hesitate to let you know it.

curiosity getting the best of you one day, you found yourself pulling him aside. “so… about your little… transformation,” you began, eyeing him carefully. “is he, like, a shadow monster or something?”

jay’s eyes widened, and he looked genuinely affronted. “shadow monster?” he repeated, crossing his arms. “he’s a symbiote. and he’s got a name, thank you very much.”

you raised an eyebrow. “a symbiote? i mean, he looks pretty shadowy to me.”

jay sighed, clearly unimpressed with your description. “no, he’s not ‘shadowy.’ he’s a sentient being that forms a bond with his host—me. he’s venom,” jay clarified, the name coming out almost reverently, and with a slight glint in his eye.

“oh, i see. so, he’s a person?”

“well, he has his own… opinions,” jay replied, wincing as he paused. “we’re a package deal, so to speak.”

“damn right, a package deal,” a deep, gravelly voice suddenly rumbled from within jay, and you felt a slight chill as the symbiote made its presence known.

you stared, both amazed and slightly unnerved. “oh… hey there, venom.”

venom chuckled, the sound reverberating low and menacing. “hello, sweetheart. i hear you think i’m a 'shadow monster.' "

jay rubbed the back of his neck, looking slightly exasperated, but there was a hint of amusement in his eyes as he said, “see? he doesn’t like being called that.”

you smirked, glancing at jay and then back at venom. “got it, venom,” you replied, a teasing lilt to your voice. “no shadow monster remarks. i’ll be sure to remember that.”

that evening, you called him over to help fix a squeaky window in your apartment. when he arrived, his sleeves were rolled up, and those dark tendrils emerged, forming into tools as he worked. you couldn’t help but watch, fascinated as he tightened the screws effortlessly, his movements precise and fluid.

he glanced over his shoulder, catching you staring. “see something you like, darling?” he teased, his voice low, laced with that familiar dark humour.

you scoffed, crossing your arms. “keep dreaming, park.”

jay smirked, his gaze flicking over you with a look that was anything but innocent. “oh, i don’t have to dream.”

your face heated, but before you could respond, he leaned closer, his breath warm against your ear. “you know, all you have to do is say the word.”

flustered, you quickly turned away, ignoring the smug grin on his face.

one night, as you were heading home from work, you felt someone following you. before you could react, a man grabbed your arm, yanking you into a dark alley. panic surged through you, your heart hammering as you struggled against his grip. but before you could scream, a low, guttural growl echoed from the shadows.

jay emerged from the darkness, his face twisted into a terrifying, fanged grin, his body wrapped in shadows that made him look both monstrous and mesmerising. he moved faster than you’d ever seen, dark tendrils coiling around the man’s arms, pinning him against the wall with a force that made your would-be attacker whimper.

“didn’t anyone tell you?” he snarled, his voice laced with dark satisfaction, his grin widening to show those gleaming fangs. “not to mess with what's ours.”

the man’s face turned ghostly white as he struggled against jay’s grip, terror flooding his eyes. jay’s smirk only grew, his shadowed form tightening its hold as he leaned in close, as if savouring every second of the man’s fear.

“i should just eat you,” jay’s voice growled, laced with menace and barely-concealed delight. “but you’re too pathetic for even a snack.” with a dismissive sneer, he released the man, letting him stumble away in blind terror, tripping over himself as he fled into the night.

when you looked back at jay, his inky tendrils had retracted, his monstrous form dissolving into something closer to the man you knew. yet his eyes still held that dangerous, possessive glint, and his breathing was still heavy, his gaze locked onto you with an intensity that made your pulse race.

“you okay?” he asked, his voice softer now, but with an edge of something raw and wild. his hand moved to rest on your arm, fingers lingering as if to reassure himself you were safe.

you nodded, swallowing as you tried to steady your breathing. “thanks to you…”

a wicked chuckle escaped him, his head tilting as his eyes darkened with a new, eerie glow. you could feel the presence of that “other” entity in him, lurking just beneath the surface. “oh, she’s safe with us,” it rumbled, making your skin prickle. “but i think she owes us something, don’t you, jay?”

jay’s gaze softened for a moment before that twisted smile took over again, his features shifting, the shadows flickering as he allowed his alter ego to take control.

“you really think i owe you?” you asked, trying to keep your voice steady despite the thrill that coursed through you.

“absolutely,” jay, or rather venom replied, his grin widening. “we didn’t just save you. we protected what’s ours. and i think a little… reward is in order.”

you arched an eyebrow, unwilling to back down. “and what kind of reward does a shadow monster want?”

jay leaned closer, his breath warm and tinged with something dark. “i have a few ideas.” he chuckled, his sharp fangs glinting in the low light. “but don’t worry, sweetheart. we won’t bite… unless you ask nicely.”

your cheeks flushed despite yourself, but you kept your cool. “i don’t think you’re as scary as you want me to believe,” you teased, meeting his dark gaze. “you wouldn’t hurt me.”

his eyes gleamed with amusement. “oh, i could… but where’s the fun in that?” he tilted his head, observing you with a dark curiosity. “besides… jay likes you too much. and, maybe… so do i.”

the admission left you momentarily breathless, your heart pounding as you stared up at him. just as you were about to respond, his face softened, his gaze flicking to your lips before he leaned in.

without waiting another second, jay captured your mouth in a fierce, consuming kiss. the roughness in his embrace was offset by a possessive tenderness that made you melt, your hands gripping his shirt as he pulled you closer.

when he finally pulled back, his eyes flickered between jay’s gentle warmth and venom’s dark amusement. “so, boss,” he murmured, his voice laced with that familiar, playful edge, “any other tasks?”

with a grin, you pulled him closer, “i think i can come up with a few.”

jay chuckled approvingly, his voice a husky whisper against your ear. “good… because we’re just getting started.”

and with that, he leaned in once more, his mouth claiming yours in a kiss that promised this was only the beginning of a thrilling, dangerous new game.

𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 ©𝗴𝘆𝘂𝘂𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗿𝘆𝘆 on Tumblr

˚ · .𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗱

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nopanamaman · 3 months ago

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What’s the deal with Tsar and Arthur?

Today we’ll look at the two most popular members of Sanya and Yura’s friend group, Tsar and Arthur, a.k.a. Anger Management. How did they meet? What’s their life like? And most importantly, why the hell are they so angsty?

Let’s start with the older one.

Arthur Sokolov

Joining the orphanage

Arthur was brought to the orphanage not long after being born. He never met any of his parents.

Growing up in a state-funded shelter meant developing a clear understanding of what kinds of behaviours will and won’t result in getting your shit kicked in. You can’t be too cocky, and you can’t be too weak. Follow the hierarchy, but don’t let your fear of elders show.

Arthur learned to navigate that little society well. He had earned respect among kids his own age and younger, and avoided being pushed around by the older teenagers too much. Less due to a noble heart and more because of being too proud to act like a doormat.

However, that didn't make him immune to peer pressure.

Correctional psychiatry

Business trip.

Many low-end orphanages across the former USSR had been essentially transformed into incubators for future gang members. “Businessmen”, either by bribe or threat, came to these institutions to recruit impressionable children into their organisations. One such uncle visited Arthur’s foster home.

For kids like him, the course of action was simple:

misbehave;

get sent to a mental institution for corrective treatment;

sneak as many bottles of trihexyphenidyl as you can into your bag during your stay;

leave the hospital as normal;

transfer the trihexyphenidyl to a gang representative and get your paycheck.

Under that business model, Arthur became a frequent guest at psychiatric wards. Having witnessed their indifference and medical callousness firsthand, he had developed a massive disdain for all kinds of mental health professionals.

It started even before joining the gang, of course – way before. It’s hard not to foster a vendetta when you get thrown to the looney bin for any misstep. At first he tried to honestly convince the doctors working there that he was fine, but he eventually realised it was futile: they were always in on the punishment.

Hustling continues

Arthur and Ivan at 15 and 17 respectively.

As Arthur grew older, he got more deeply involved with the gang’s activities alongside other kids. This meant participating in transfers, standing watch during certain deals, acting as a “treasure man” (i.e. hiding drugs in agreed upon places for clients to pick up), and so on. Fights were frequent.

He knew it was a slippery slope, but getting out was not an option – not an easy one, at least. This was the period during which he grew close to Ivan, who was commonly assigned to work with Arthur and other children from their institute.

They bonded on the basis of wanting to leave the business, though for different reasons: most of all, Ivan didn’t want to disappoint his grandma.

Getting out

First meeting with Yura.

The sudden disbandment of the gang was a relief to both Ivan and Arthur. A major member got caught and ratted almost everyone out, except for the dozens of orphans involved. So while Ivan went to turn himself in, Arthur got to walk free.

Before going, Ivan suggested Arthur replace him at his pop’s car repair salon. The boy seemed to have a knack for fixing things, and the two had developed a trusting relationship over their time working together.

While everything was looking fine, Arthur still wanted to destroy all traces of his activities - even those that couldn’t reasonably be tracked down to him. This led to him encountering Yura. Despite the very rocky start of their acquaintance, they went on to hang out together pretty regularly.

As of today, Arthur continues to do part-time at the workshop alongside Ivan. Both are committed to never getting back into the criminal business. Unless you count Sanya's Dynamo. Which you shouldn't. Having experienced what actual gangs are like, Arthur finds it hard not to look down at the girl's little roleplay.

Tsar

Joining the orphanage

Before coming to the orphanage, Tsar lived with his grandma. She died when he was 6. Since his parents had lost their parental rights due to alcoholism a couple years prior, there was only one place for him to go.

Tsar had a very hard time adjusting to the rigid hierarchy of the foster home. He was lucky enough to catch Arthur's attention and, in a sense, got scooped under his wing. The boy disliked relying on the older kid too much, but was too weak to stand on his own.

Gang involvement

How come mom lets you have two trips to the mental ward

Since Arthur got dragged into gang activities earlier than Tsar, the younger kid felt jealous. He, like most other children, fully bought into the romanticised idea of criminal life that was pushed by the uncles visiting the orphanage.

But as years went on, he saw the toll it had begun to take on Arthur. Tsar had taken a couple of correctional trips to mental wards as well, though he'd never participated in any illegal schemes. Those times were bad enough - he couldn't imagine going there again and again on purpose.

By the time Tsar would be old enough to get recruited into the business, Arthur forbade him from it. The kid still wanted to join to prove his worth, to earn his share, to show his guts. But his trust and respect for Arthur were stronger.

As much as he hated the idea, he stuck to the sidelines.

Contact with parents

Teatime with family.

Tsar’s parents reached out to him a couple years after he was transferred to the orphanage. He could only meet with them under supervision up until he was 13 years old. Afterwards they were allowed private meetings.

Today, he occasionally comes to visit them at their apartment. They still drink, but to Tsar, they just seem quiet and pitiful. He usually lends them the pocket money he receives from the orphanage. He knows they won't return it.

Anger Management

Ural models are known for their incredible durability and a baffling number of switches.

Tsar found a creative release in music and wrote songs to vent his frustrations. The orphanage had an old acoustic guitar that he learned to play, but it got completely broken when the boy was 13. After Arthur joined the workshop, he bought a black Ural from Ivan’s dad for cheap, upgraded its port, and gifted it to Tsar.

As it turned out, Ivan’s dad was hopping from one band to another in the 80s-90s, so he was happy to accommodate the kids' creative endeavours. He allowed them to use the spare garage space to practise and even supplied an incomplete drum set.

Tsar begged Arthur to back him up with drums. The latter begrudgingly agreed to learn them, but ended up really enjoying hitting barrels with sticks. Right now their band has a tiny local following, mostly in the face of Sanya Kazarina.

Some notes

I remember sitting down and reading about actual orphanage experiences in the post-soviet space – it was eye-opening, but also gave me a lot of material to work with, as heartless as that probably sounds. A lot of things simply clicked into place.

I didn't go into too much detail here, but FYI, I've downplayed the severity of certain situations. Trauma aside, I'd say both Tsar and Arthur got quite lucky in the end.

#fixed some awkward wording from the patreon version so hopefully it reads better now #cw alcoholism #cw child abuse #cw medical malpractice #parties are for losers #deepest lore #loredump #bg gang #anger management #arthur #tsar #ivan #yura #sanya #myart #scraps

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astrocafecoffee · 6 months ago

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Astro observation (part 2)

✨ For entertainment purposes only, enjoy ✨

✨ MASTERLIST

✨ ASTRO OBS. (PART 1)

🔥 Taurus sun individuals usually eat slowly and savor their food enjoying each bite. They dislike being rushed during meals.

🔥 Sagittarius rising peoples thrive on variety in their excercise routine. They might regularly switch between different types of workouts to keep things interesting.

🔥 Capricorn rising peoples might enjoy dishes like roasted meats , stews and well balanced meals that provide both comfort and nourishment.

🔥 Sagittarius sun - very good in mathematics and calculation.

🔥 Groom conjunct your vertex/ Hera asteroid in draconic synastry can indicate they being your spouse/ you have a soul tie with them.

🔥 I have seen many Libra 12th house peoples often have people pleasing tendencies and have problems with creating healthy boundaries.

🔥 11th House mars people's communication style with friends can be direct and assertive, which can sometimes come across as agressive if not managed carefully.

🔥 Mercury in its debilitated sign ( Pisces) individuals may struggle with tasks that require precision, detailed analysis or strict logic.

🔥 I have seen when someone's 9th lord in their 12th house or vice versa , they often marry people from other states, cultures, and countries .

🔥 Aries moons can be quick to anger but also quick to forgive and forget.

🔥 juno in 7th house of Groom persona chart means your fs is your wish fulfilment, ( dreams come true 👀)

🔥 Virgo placements may excel in stock market.

🔥 Aries placements tend to tackle problems head on with immediate action. They prefer to address issues rather than letting them linger or escalate.

🔥 water placements are obsessed with beaches and coastal environments , where Earth signs with mountains.

🔥 I have also seen this many water placements either love water areas or hate it. There's no in between. I have seen cancer moons/ Pisces rising peoples having thalassophobia.

🔥 in Vedic astrology, Rahu in 7th house / rahu conjunct Venus/ rahu conjunct 7th lord indicates foreign spouse.

🔥 Webb asteroid in natal 11th house is self explanatory 🙃.

🔥 prey Asteroid ( 6157) in 4th house individuals often see their home as refuge where they can shield themselves from outside world. If it's negative side manifests in someone's life then there might be themes of feeling vulnerable or taking advantage within the family and home environment.

🔥 Gemini placements individuals are often misunderstood by peoples.

🔥 cancer moons emotional up and downs can weaken their immune system , making them more vulnerable to infections.

🔥 Scorpio placements likes to feel in control of their surroundings and emotions and they fear situations where they feel powerless.

🔥 Aquarius mars peoples value their independence highly and can be quite stubborn about doing things their way.

🔥 Jupiter in Aquarius people may involved in activism , volunteering or supporting charitable organisations.

🔥water moons , Capricorn placements often prone to depression.

🔥 Venus in Capricorn peoples may fear being vulnerable or getting hurt , which is why they often appear guarded more in relationships.

🔥 Aries mars often have fear of rejection . If they sense any hint of rejection they might quickly pull back or move on to avoid facing their fear.

🔥Pluto in Sagittarius peoples maybe fascinated by esoteric subjects, occult and hidden truths. This interest in the mystical and unknown can lead them to explore astrology, tarot or other metaphysical studies.

🔥 Asteroid Medusa conjunct midheaven in natal chart means this individual's career may dealing with controversial and taboo subjects , leading to transformation and growth. They could work in fields related to psychology, healing, crisis management or any area that requires confronting difficult truths.

🔥 Asteroid Born conjunct juno in synastry suggest a relationship that feels spiritually significant , with a strong sense of being " meant to be" or karmic linked.

🔥 Hera asteroid conjunct sun in synastry means the Hera person might view the sun person as an ideal partner, seeing them as someone can commit to for the long term . This aspect can indicate a relationship that has potential to lead to marriage or a deep , committed relationship.

Thanks for reading 🖤

- piko ✨

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ayeforscotland · 6 months ago

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What is Dataflow?

This post is inspired by another post about the Crowd Strike IT disaster and a bunch of people being interested in what I mean by Dataflow. Dataflow is my absolute jam and I'm happy to answer as many questions as you like on it. I even put referential pictures in like I'm writing an article, what fun!

I'll probably split this into multiple parts because it'll be a huge post otherwise but here we go!

A Brief History

Our world is dependent on the flow of data. It exists in almost every aspect of our lives and has done so arguably for hundreds if not thousands of years.

At the end of the day, the flow of data is the flow of knowledge and information. Normally most of us refer to data in the context of computing technology (our phones, PCs, tablets etc) but, if we want to get historical about it, the invention of writing and the invention of the Printing Press were great leaps forward in how we increased the flow of information.

Modern Day IT exists for one reason - To support the flow of data.

Whether it's buying something at a shop, sitting staring at an excel sheet at work, or watching Netflix - All of the technology you interact with is to support the flow of data.

Understanding and managing the flow of data is as important to getting us to where we are right now as when we first learned to control and manage water to provide irrigation for early farming and settlement.

Engineering Rigor

When the majority of us turn on the tap to have a drink or take a shower, we expect water to come out. We trust that the water is clean, and we trust that our homes can receive a steady supply of water.

Most of us trust our central heating (insert boiler joke here) and the plugs/sockets in our homes to provide gas and electricity. The reason we trust all of these flows is because there's been rigorous engineering standards built up over decades and centuries.

For example, Scottish Water will understand every component part that makes up their water pipelines. Those pipes, valves, fitting etc will comply with a national, or in some cases international, standard. These companies have diagrams that clearly map all of this out, mostly because they have to legally but also because it also vital for disaster recovery and other compliance issues.

Modern IT

And this is where modern day IT has problems. I'm not saying that modern day tech is a pile of shit. We all have great phones, our PCs can play good games, but it's one thing to craft well-designed products and another thing entirely to think about they all work together.

Because that is what's happened over the past few decades of IT. Organisations have piled on the latest plug-and-play technology (Software or Hardware) and they've built up complex legacy systems that no one really knows how they all work together. They've lost track of how data flows across their organisation which makes the work of cybersecurity, disaster recovery, compliance and general business transformation teams a nightmare.

Some of these systems are entirely dependent on other systems to operate. But that dependency isn't documented. The vast majority of digital transformation projects fail because they get halfway through and realise they hadn't factored in a system that they thought was nothing but was vital to the organisation running.

And this isn't just for-profit organisations, this is the health services, this is national infrastructure, it's everyone.

There's not yet a single standard that says "This is how organisations should control, manage and govern their flows of data."

Why is that relevant to the companies that were affected by Crowd Strike? Would it have stopped it?

Maybe, maybe not. But considering the global impact, it doesn't look like many organisations were prepared for the possibility of a huge chunk of their IT infrastructure going down.

Understanding dataflows help with the preparation for events like this, so organisations can move to mitigate them, and also the recovery side when they do happen. Organisations need to understand which systems are a priority to get back operational and which can be left.

The problem I'm seeing from a lot of organisations at the moment is that they don't know which systems to recover first, and are losing money and reputation while they fight to get things back online. A lot of them are just winging it.

Conclusion of Part 1

Next time I can totally go into diagramming if any of you are interested in that.

How can any organisation actually map their dataflow and what things need to be considered to do so. It'll come across like common sense, but that's why an actual standard is so desperately needed!

#AyeforScotland #crowd strike #Dataflow

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tavyliasin · 5 days ago

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BG3 2025 Creative Challenge!

Baldur's Gate 3 Fandom Artists, Writers, and Creatives!

I would like to invite you to a year of prompts to create whatever you would like! SFW, NSFW, whatever medium you would like to create in, the choice is yours! The idea is that we have on prompt per month so it should be easier to follow along without becoming overloaded. You don't have to create something specifically for the event either - if you have a WIP or other work you're publishing that month that fits the description you are more than welcome to add that in! I'll make a new post at the start of each month with the details of that month's challenge prompt, but this will be our masterpost to start the year off with a bang. Details below the cut!

The Year Of Prompts

January - New Year New You Pick a new character, trope, or pairing. Something you haven’t tried before. Make it a challenge to do something new and different! February - Romance Novels Go for something romantic, or if romance isn’t your cup of tea try something around the Necromancy of Thay instead! March - Marching Forwards March to your goal to finish a WIP or LongFic, or March into a new world by making something in an AU! April - Fools Rush In Make something humorous, something fun, whether it’s based on a meme or a joke pairing or just something with a bit more whimsy and some laughs~ May - Maybe? What If? Reverse a trope or reimagine a part of the canon - what if things were different?

June - June Bugs Create something centred around a game glitch or exploit, past or present! July - Why Would July To Me? A piece around lies, deceptions, and other ways the truth can be twisted or obscured. August - When In Rome… A piece themed around the customs of specific races, backgrounds, regions, or Guilds. Are they followed or broken? That’s up to you! September - Seven Deadly Sins Pick one, or more, of the classic “seven deadly sins” and see how that can relate to one or more characters or tropes. October - Days of the Dead Create something around a character death, a memorial, a lingering ghost, or find a way a character might cheat their death or be brought back from it~

November - Gnomevember Either create something centred on Gnome characters from the game, or the other story points around them (Steel Watch, Iron Throne, Runepowder, etc) December - Season of Giving Create a surprise gift for someone in fandom, or write a piece around a gift being given by or to a character or characters!

Rules

The rules are very simple!

Create your piece in 2025, preferably within the prompt month but if you post a little early or late that's fine too!

All pieces must be your creations or a collaboration - No AI or chatbot content

You are free to work in whatever medium you like for each and every prompt!

Set your own goal - you can do a short 100-500 word minific, some simple sketches, or write a whole 10k word one shot epic, or draw a full page comic. What matters is that it's a goal YOU want to achieve!

There will be options to submit prompts and fill prompts in the AO3 collections - this is entirely your choice! You can take a prompt if you like, work on something you had already started, or create something entirely new!

Have fun!

The Goal

The aim really is simple - to set some targets, and work on at least 12 things this year so at this time next year you can look back on your progress and celebrate your achievements. If you miss a month or turn in late, that's fine! Do what works for you!

AO3 Collections

For those of you that would like to, there will be a parent collection for the year event as a whole and some sub-collections for each month to allow us to keep everything nice and organised. It's completely optional if you would like to put your work on AO3 or not - you're more than welcome to just keep it on Tumblr or wherever you usually share your works!

This event is for you to use however you feel best, to inspire creativity, working towards manageable goals, and trying something different.

Social Media Tags

Use the tag #BG32025 if you would like to! I don't know if anyone else is using this one but I'll cross my fingers that we're the only ones~ Feel free to share the event and please do support each other through our creativity! A character or pairing or kink or trope might not be your cup of tea, but let's celebrate how it is there for someone else who might really enjoy it, and keep a positive and passionate view whilst respecting boundaries by tagging works appropriately as always <3

Thank you for reading this far and I hope to see you all through they year adding your works and creativity to our fandom <3 we have so much amazing talent here, I'm delighted to have the privilege of seeing it all~

#baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fanart #BG32025

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sxorpiomooon · 6 months ago

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D10 ASCENDANT AND WHAT IT MEANS

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Aries-

You will never have a home office or working at home sort of thing. You WILL always have to present in order to earn money. This also means that you will also initiate the things, the one who will have to put all the effort to climb up in your life one man army is what I heard. Someone who will take all the risks. You will do all that taking the paths one cannot even imagine taking. Extremely ambitious and having an i am going to make it happen sort of approach. Facing so many challenges yet being able to accomplish things. You'll face the most challenges but will come out strong every single time. There is also a big karma regarding authority, you might have to be treated like a servant at times. You will be forced to follow the same routine everyday to climb up for a long time. You will also have to go through a major transformation with a death in your family. You will want to be in the actual setting to do something or feel the passion energy to do things. You will want to always have a mentor or guru in your life in your career, your problems will be solved with the help of the guru. Your communication will be very rough especially with small talk. You wil excel in works where you just have to do the actual work instead of communicating. You will have to physically get shit done. You will want to be a part of an organisation. This will be the kind of job that will make you run for everything. You will always be surrounded with people and competition having to prove yourself and will have to do some sort of corporate work at least once in your life. You will also always somehow have to impress someone by being at the right place at the right time. You will always want to be put in different kinds of teams just to rule them or just to come out as the one who shines the brightest. Also something that's seen is that these people usually never have the authority being nice to them and they have to work very hard to be picked by them.

Taurus-

You will go after the value of things, you will chase values. Before doing anything you will ask "what is in it for me" "how does it includes my value" etc. You will be inclined towards getting financial support in doing what you are doing, you will not be scared of asking for help. Very charming with your communication, charming and people will always be attracted towards you. Naturally will want to work with alot of people. You will love attending conferences they will help you in rising your status. You will be good at gathering people in one ideal place haha. Your business partnerships will always be 1-1. There will always be transformations in your career, the partnerships will come and go, your relationship with subordinate will always have struggle regarding passion you will always find partners that will not have as much as passion as you, they will be too analytical with you, you guys will not share the same vision on doing things or they won't see the value of things like you do. There will hardly be any collective interest on any topic. You will love speculative work and will have alot of several good support systems in your profession. Women in your career will bring you success. You will always want to have a strict boss because toullexcel under them, they wish for their authority to be firm. Travelling for your career will be very beneficial for you if not for money then for fame, your coworkers will have a strong emotional connection with you and will be very nourishing towards them. Commercial property will be seen and you will always gain from the politics of your office but will have issues with partnerships. There is also karma with marriage as in you might have a hard time balancing marriage and career as in either you'll be focusing too much on career and too little on your marriage or vice versa. When your mentor will pass away, you will stumble upon wealth out of nowhere. Their mentors will be very secretive. You will never share where/who you get your values from.

Gemini-

you will fulfill your karma through media, sports, marketing, writing etc in one way or another. You are naturally multi skilled to achieve your goals, you will do bunch of things to gain success and money. Major karma in dealing with daily routine, they will not want to be repetitive ever. You will like to be left alone and free in doing your work and making your money. You don't like people looking at you while you are working. They hate judgements regarding their work. You will have to take debt in career or marriage. You will love making money for food. You will want to try out expensive food for which you'll want to earn money. It will be your motivation to earn money and be successful. You will find respect only when you communicate as an authority. To be treated as a surperior, communicate and say your opinion. You might also feel restriction about sharing your opinions as in there will be a delimma regarding that. "I want to say something but I fear I'll be judged if I do so after" things like this might make you feel extremely restricted. Your marriage or first child birth will help your career in rising it could be a turning point especially in business the prestige and recognition will increase. You will be good at networking, you'll have a good circle. You will be good especially with men they might help you in your career. Extremely creative even with the smallest work you will finish the work with your own sparkle. You will personify everything also excellent at marketting anything that they're passionate about

Cancer-

You will play the most politics in work, you will know how to keep everyone in control and in your environment you will feel a need to control things sort of like also nourish anyone. You will be extremely selfish in your career, you will look out for yourself before anything or anyone else. You have major karma with your subordinates you will not be able to ignore any issue regarding them and will have to deal with it. You will be forced in situations where you'll be stuck. At one point in your career you will be embarassed at in a large group of people. You will be humiliated at work place. The entire situation will actually not be too big but you will make big for yourself. There will be a big blunder with finances in career or fame in career. You'll be very calculated in your career can be completely different in their workspace and personal life. Even calculative with communication you will want to get advantage of things. There will be alot of support networking circle for you because you'll be extremely hypnotic and charismatic. After you sign your home documents you'll have more leverage in career. You will lack mentors in your life and counselors at work will be very young for you. You will love to start your own projects etc.

Leo-

Only after birth of children career takes off, you will only want the kind of work where you'll be able to have subordinates. You will have alot of pride and will want to distribute tasks and show people working under you that you will also want to take care of them. You will always deal with opposition of large group of people but the authority will always have your back. You will see that they won't like most of your decisions. You have major karma with your offices or place of work. As long as you work you'll never have peace of mind as it'll always be disturbed by work in one way or another. Having a female or feminine boss will help you in excelling in your career, your mentors will always back you when you need them to and you will feel secure due to that. You will at some point be taking professional debt in behalf of your company etc. In business be very careful with this as it might be deritmental to your fame repaying for the loan will be hard. Your subordinates will always be more smarter than you and you will have to get their help. Unless people see that you working, you won't get the same amount of fame or respect. You will always sort of travel very emotionally there will be profit in business travel(if it's your own) once you sign or get your own first house.

Virgo-

You will always have unnecessarily enemies trying to bring you down out of no where in daily life no matter what profession, they will purposely try to stop you from finding some sucess or promotion atleast one or twice in life directly. There will be alot of rumors said about you. Serving will be the most important thing for you, it will be a need want and an obligation to the society. Any career won't work out if you take something from people your health will suffer. You will have to take debts to progress in life. After a girl will be born in household your health, career will improve. You enemies will disappear. You will have to take care of administrative duties frequently as in accounts finances etc. your communication with your boss will be the best especially when they're younger to you. You will also see your older bosses always seeing you as a competition or challenge. You will always have ups and downs with your coworkers and will go through a major transformation when a co worker will pass away but will have the best subordinate. Might have one student or subordinate that will have some sort of injury to limbs. Any female mentor that you have especially one that is in some way connected to foreign will give you million dollar advices.

Libra-

You will feel an imbalance and unfairness in your partnerships whether it's in marriage or a proper business partnership. You will always somehow be dominated by your partner, even in their marriage uou will be dominated by the other person or atleast it'll be seen like that. Even if your partner is a very kind person people will always sort of see it like them having this power over you or being assertive and dominant over you. You will try out business atleast once or twice in your life but it will remain extremely unfair as stated above. Your life will become about other people. Sharing everything, naturally always wanting to mother their working environment. You will also have really moody bosses lmao and will face very awkward situations with them. You will also become selfish, forgeful and dramatic in your communication. You will like to publish and write and will indirectly or directly have to publish something once in your life I heard "land in an opportunity". Your coworkers will become your real mentor and you will find the most wisdom from there. Your real actual bosses will always be like a friend for you lmao. You will always be chatting with them and there will be constant communication. You will have really powerful connections and will always need or require a partner in order to feel balanced. There will also be unbalanced transformation with money and you'll learn to to save alot of money due to that. You will always have subordinate that will be eccentric and hard to understand. You will also attend many confrences with your subordinate and will gain alot of money from them including insights. You will love to work in a home like setting and will have the least amount of enemies in career

Scorpio-

major karma and will go through many ups and downs and transformation before you make it. Will have to go through the lowest of the lowest and highest of the highest, involvement with hidden wealth secret dealings gain and will attain secret information through which you will rise. You will also have to deal with secret contracts in order to grow. You will see that birth of children will be important for fame and to gain authority you must support group of children in some way donate if you can if not money then time. You will always be the most excellent vocalist or speakers since you'll have tremendous wisdom even when you are young due to going through so many transformations. It is not what you are communicating but how you are communicating. Guru is important help to accumulate wealth and success. Sexual relationship will connect you to success and you will be excellent at last minute negotiation and dealings. Take care of the plumbing issues in your career as it'll affect your fame and health. Spouse will have best ideas for you in terms of making money. You will be extremely interested in politics after the age 34 or 40. You will also want to fight for a cause. There can also be addiction issues so take care of that. You will have a great bond with a person who will be from the foreign lands. There will be a sistery or brotherly sort of bond. A job where projects keep changing will be extremely beneficial for you.

Saggitarius -

You have the ability to teach and counsel in your work. You will be extremely strategic in your work and will have to display the ability to perform and teach others during work at the same time. You will sort of be like dictionary of wisdom, sort of like a "coach" to others improve other people work while doing yours. You will value information and knowledge more than anything. It will be your most perseved asset being more valuable than money and will have a very professional way of communication. You will get the message across. Your coworkers will be eccentric and moody extremely scientific too. You will be extremely negotiable with your career to the public. Very liberal indivualised thought process will have very harmonious subordinates. Your business competition will have very childlike communication and enemies will always be amateur than you. Your partners won't have the same level of knowledge as you but your partnership will work out well. You will have a sort of father child dynamic with them. You hide emotions insecurities in your workspace. Your authority will be powerful and will be nitpicking but they'll help you in improving your career. Your mentor will be connected with government in one point of your life and your professional network circle will be good.

Capricorn-

You will give extreme importance to having a title for example phd ceo etc. The title will make you feel as if now you can do something or are something. Extremely workoholic and extremely feminine in your workplace won't be aggresive or rude but very moody. You will love having partnerships this also includes having a pa etc. it will be something you will need, want and cherish. Your emotional stability will depends on that particular partnership you will completely rely on them and will feel like you can't function without them. You will pay them the most to satisfy them. You will also extremely eccentric to confused with your savings as in one moment you'll want to save it and another moment you'll want to spend it on buying some big ass random shit. You will have the most polite communication with people yet people working with you will be the most oblivion to your dreams and communication. They will not understand what you mean and want. You will have a strange bond with your female boss and it'll take alot from you to balance your relationship with them. You will be satisfied hrough your subordinates and when you hire or have people working under you. You will have foreign mentor gives you wisdom and who helps you this person will be nitpicky and detail orientated. They will be enemies with much younger and childish people and will always have words of words with them.

Aquarius-

You will be a part of a large organisation, large group setting and will want to be part of collective to execute work. You will want to attend conference work and will be easily influenced by activitism. You will be very political and will get sucessful through powerful partner yet will never be able to accept that. You will want to be free and make your own decisions and will have a love/hate relationship will that. As in you'll gain with them yet you'll hate to accept that. After the birth of first child especially with women within three weeks you will get a higher status in life. You will be extremely emotional and attached to your work. Your work can drive you mad too and emotional stability will depend on your career. You will hate to get involved with enemies and won't like to deal with it at all your relationship with mentor will always be turbent and will always have ups and downs. You will see that after passing away of some authority there will be a major transformation in career. you will have to service to goverment or boss with the little pay or respect as in it won't be balanced or fair in some way. You will get along with subordinates and will have alot of exchange of ideas with them. Your communication will be straightforward and people will have to actually spend some time with you to get your communication or understand it atleast third. You can be very radical and will think that you are right and everything else is an attack on you. You will have boundaries in doing your work, will find the most unorthodox way of doing work that others will not get. Network circle will always have mature, religious, philosophical people in it. Might have to go to a foreign place to establish themselves or foreign company. You will get wealth and money by listening to a mentor guru but will hate to accept that the guru knows more than them

Pisces-

You will always be on the move, always looking for a change and actively looking for opportunities. You become the protector in your career. Great importance of safety through your careerand will be the one who guides. You will have strong connection with farway bodies as in across oceans. Trouble with communication as you can be the most harshest communicators. Very direct and blunt in your communication as in "what is wrong" "fix this" etc short and direct. You value people being proactive and only respect people who are like this. You will love starting new career or projects. You will have beautiful relationship with your coworkers and will tind great joy through your work. You will also always have subordinate who will take care of you and will be very nourishing towards you might even take care of you when you are sick. You will always have powerful business competition or rivals. There might be issues with govt some sort of debt major transformation in expenses and mentors. You will love having secret work relationships, you will find it exciting. You will always have educated bosses at authority. You will have connection with highly political people. One of them might even become your rival so be careful with that. You will love to attend conferences in foreign land and will have to spend a lot of money on that but usually you guys are blessed by a devi(goddess) to do well financially

Thankyou sm!!!

alot of this is taken from krs channel and other pdfs found on google and a very few of them are my observations since most people around me are not yet working or doing anything regarding their career if you can and want to help me by sharing your or your loved ones d10 chart for me to make my own observations please feel free to do so I'll be very grateful<3

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dandelionsresilience · 2 months ago

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Dandelion News - November 8-14

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!

1. Agrivoltaics for sustainable food, energy and water management in East Africa

“[… C]ertain crops […] thrived under the partial shade provided by solar panels. The shade also helped to reduce water loss through evaporation, leading to more efficient water usage. Additionally, rainwater harvested from the panels could be used to supplement irrigation needs.”

2. The world’s largest wildlife crossing is now standing in California

“The structure crosses a 10-lane freeway and has been built to help protect all sorts of wildlife[….] And it’s not just for fauna: some 5,000 plants grown from seed collected within a five-mile radius have been nurtured in two specially created nurseries. The bridge will be topped with wildflowers, shrubs and native grasses that will also benefit insect populations.”

3. Judge rules the military must cover gender-affirming surgery for members' dependents

“[Judge] Torresen found that [gender-affirming] surgery is indeed medically necessary and that the Defense Department had not shown that any important governmental interest was advanced by denying the coverage.”

4. Social Media Can Boost Caracal Conservation

“The team found that searches on the species doubled after the project [using “social media to educate about the caracal”] launched. […] ”The research demonstrates how a public interest in urban ecology and the global phenomenon of ‘cats on the internet’… can be harnessed to leverage conservation action.””

5. US Labor Board Bans Captive Audience Meetings to Ensure 'Truly Free' Worker Choice

“[T]he National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday ruled that employers cannot force workers to attend anti-union speeches. [… W]orkers will no longer have to take part in so-called "captive audience meetings," which employers often use as a union-busting tool and a form of coercion.”

6. Study links grazing with plant phenology and abundance

“In general, plants where caribou or muskoxen were present experienced earlier green-up and greater abundance later in the growing season. “We're used to thinking of the timing of plant availability as impacting the productivity of grazing animals, but not the reverse," Post said.”

7. Frog populations once decimated by disease mount a major comeback

“"These results provide a rare example of how reintroduction of resistant individuals can allow the landscape-scale recovery of disease-impacted species, and have broad implications for amphibians and many other taxa that are threatened with extinction by novel pathogens."”

8. California Announces Special Session To Protect Trans People

“Newsom’s directive is clear: safeguard reproductive healthcare, support immigrants, and shield LGBTQ+ people from what is viewed as existential threats to civil rights and democratic norms. […] California has a unique opportunity to set the blueprint for other states in resisting a Trump administration[….]”

9. When ‘OK, Boomer’ Means ‘Let’s Go Protest’

“Youth activists across the country recognize the efforts of their eco-minded predecessors and welcome them as mentors, role models, and collaborators in their battle against the climate crisis. […] “The idea that Boomers don’t care, he said, is “just misinformation.””

10. How Aussie Waste Warriors are Redirecting Excess Food to Those in Need

“A growing movement is working to reduce perfectly good food going to waste by redirecting it to homes and charities. [… C]haritable organisations [… are] transforming fresh produce that would otherwise have gone to waste into millions of cooked, nutritious meals for people in need each year.”

November 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

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lisafication · 2 years ago

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For those who might happen across this, I'm an administrator for the forum 'Sufficient Velocity', a large old-school forum oriented around Creative Writing. I originally posted this on there (and any reference to 'here' will mean the forum), but I felt I might as well throw it up here, as well, even if I don't actually have any followers.

This week, I've been reading fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3), a site run by the Organisation for Transformative Works (OTW), a non-profit. This isn't particularly exceptional, in and of itself — like many others on the site, I read a lot of fanfiction, both on Sufficient Velocity (SV) and elsewhere — however what was bizarre to me was encountering a new prefix on certain works, that of 'End OTW Racism'. While I'm sure a number of people were already familiar with this, I was not, so I looked into it.

What I found... wasn't great. And I don't think anyone involved realises that.

To summarise the details, the #EndOTWRacism campaign, of which you may find their manifesto here, is a campaign oriented towards seeing hateful or discriminatory works removed from AO3 — and believe me, there is a lot of it. To whit, they want the OTW to moderate them. A laudable goal, on the face of it — certainly, we do something similar on Sufficient Velocity with Rule 2 and, to be clear, nothing I say here is a critique of Rule 2 (or, indeed, Rule 6) on SV.

But it's not that simple, not when you're the size of Archive of Our Own. So, let's talk about the vagaries and little-known pitfalls of content moderation, particularly as it applies to digital fiction and at scale. Let's dig into some of the details — as far as credentials go, I have, unfortunately, been in moderation and/or administration on SV for about six years and this is something we have to grapple with regularly, so I would like to say I can speak with some degree of expertise on the subject.

So, what are the problems with moderating bad works from a site? Let's start with discovery— that is to say, how you find rule-breaching works in the first place. There are more-or-less two different ways to approach manual content moderation of open submissions on a digital platform: review-based and report-based (you could also call them curation-based and flag-based), with various combinations of the two. Automated content moderation isn't something I'm going to cover here — I feel I can safely assume I'm preaching to the choir when I say it's a bad idea, and if I'm not, I'll just note that the least absurd outcome we had when simulating AI moderation (mostly for the sake of an academic exercise) on SV was banning all the staff.

In a review-based system, you check someone's work and approve it to the site upon verifying that it doesn't breach your content rules. Generally pretty simple, we used to do something like it on request. Unfortunately, if you do that, it can void your safe harbour protections in the US per Myeress vs. Buzzfeed Inc. This case, if you weren't aware, is why we stopped offering content review on SV. Suffice to say, it's not really a realistic option for anyone large enough for the courts to notice, and extremely clunky and unpleasant for the users, to boot.

Report-based systems, on the other hand, are something we use today — users find works they think are in breach and alert the moderation team to their presence with a report. On SV, this works pretty well — a user or users flag a work as potentially troublesome, moderation investigate it and either action it or reject the report. Unfortunately, AO3 is not SV. I'll get into the details of that dreadful beast known as scaling later, but thankfully we do have a much better comparison point — fanfiction.net (FFN).

FFN has had two great purges over the years, with a... mixed amount of content moderation applied in between: one in 2002 when the NC-17 rating was removed, and one in 2012. Both, ostensibly, were targeted at adult content. In practice, many fics that wouldn't raise an eye on Spacebattles today or Sufficient Velocity prior to 2018 were also removed; a number of reports suggest that something as simple as having a swearword in your title or summary was enough to get you hit, even if you were a 'T' rated work. Most disturbingly of all, there are a number of — impossible to substantiate — accounts of groups such as the infamous Critics United 'mass reporting' works to trigger a strike to get them removed. I would suggest reading further on places like Fanlore if you are unfamiliar and want to know more.

Despite its flaws however, report-based moderation is more-or-less the only option, and this segues neatly into the next piece of the puzzle that is content moderation, that is to say, the rubric. How do you decide what is, and what isn't against the rules of your site?

Anyone who's complained to the staff about how vague the rules are on SV may have had this explained to them, but as that is likely not many of you, I'll summarise: the more precise and clear-cut your chosen rubric is, the more it will inevitably need to resemble a legal document — and the less readable it is to the layman. We'll return to SV for an example here: many newer users will not be aware of this, but SV used to have a much more 'line by line, clearly delineated' set of rules and... people kind of hated it! An infraction would reference 'Community Compact III.15.5' rather than Rule 3, because it was more or less written in the same manner as the Terms of Service (sans the legal terms of art). While it was a more legible rubric from a certain perspective, from the perspective of communicating expectations to the users it was inferior to our current set of rules — even less of them read it, and we don't have great uptake right now.

And it still wasn't really an improvement over our current set-up when it comes to 'moderation consistency'. Even without getting into the nuts and bolts of "how do you define a racist work in a way that does not, at any point, say words to the effect of 'I know it when I see it'" — which is itself very, very difficult don't get me wrong I'm not dismissing this — you are stuck with finding an appropriate footing between a spectrum of 'the US penal code' and 'don't be a dick' as your rubric. Going for the penal code side doesn't help nearly as much as you might expect with moderation consistency, either — no matter what, you will never have a 100% correct call rate. You have the impossible task of writing a rubric that is easy for users to comprehend, extremely clear for moderation and capable of cleanly defining what is and what isn't racist without relying on moderator judgement, something which you cannot trust when operating at scale.

Speaking of scale, it's time to move on to the third prong — and the last covered in this ramble, which is more of a brief overview than anything truly in-depth — which is resources. Moderation is not a magic wand, you can't conjure it out of nowhere: you need to spend an enormous amount of time, effort and money on building, training and equipping a moderation staff, even a volunteer one, and it is far, far from an instant process. Our most recent tranche of moderators spent several months in training and it will likely be some months more before they're fully comfortable in the role — and that's with a relatively robust bureaucracy and a number of highly experienced mentors supporting them, something that is not going to be available to a new moderation branch with little to no experience. Beyond that, there's the matter of sheer numbers.

Combining both moderation and arbitration — because for volunteer staff, pure moderation is in actuality less efficient in my eyes, for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this post, but we'll treat it as if they're both just 'moderators' — SV presently has 34 dedicated moderation volunteers. SV hosts ~785 million words of creative writing.

AO3 hosts ~32 billion.

These are some very rough and simplified figures, but if you completely ignore all the usual problems of scaling manpower in a business (or pseudo-business), such as (but not limited to) geometrically increasing bureaucratic complexity and administrative burden, along with all the particular issues of volunteer moderation... AO3 would still need well over one thousand volunteer moderators to be able to match SV's moderator-to-creative-wordcount ratio.

Paid moderation, of course, you can get away with less — my estimate is that you could fully moderate SV with, at best, ~8 full-time moderators, still ignoring administrative burden above the level of team leader. This leaves AO3 only needing a much more modest ~350 moderators. At the US minimum wage of ~$15k p.a. — which is, in my eyes, deeply unethical to pay moderators as full-time moderation is an intensely gruelling role with extremely high rates of PTSD and other stress-related conditions — that is approximately ~$5.25m p.a. costs on moderator wages. Their average annual budget is a bit over $500k.

So, that's obviously not on the table, and we return to volunteer staffing. Which... let's examine that scenario and the questions it leaves us with, as our conclusion.

Let's say, through some miracle, AO3 succeeds in finding those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of volunteer moderators. We'll even say none of them are malicious actors or sufficiently incompetent as to be indistinguishable, and that they manage to replicate something on the level of or superior to our moderation tooling near-instantly at no cost. We still have several questions to be answered:

How are you maintaining consistency? Have you managed to define racism to the point that moderator judgment no longer enters the equation? And to be clear, you cannot allow moderator judgment to be a significant decision maker at this scale, or you will end with absurd results.

How are you handling staff mental health? Some reading on the matter, to save me a lengthy and unrelated explanation of some of the steps involved in ensuring mental health for commercial-scale content moderators.

How are you handling your failures? No moderation in the world has ever succeeded in a 100% accuracy rate, what are you doing about that?

Using report-based discovery, how are you preventing 'report brigading', such as the theories surrounding Critics United mentioned above? It is a natural human response to take into account the amount and severity of feedback. While SV moderators are well trained on the matter, the rare times something is receiving enough reports to potentially be classified as a 'brigade' on that scale will nearly always be escalated to administration, something completely infeasible at (you're learning to hate this word, I'm sure) scale.

How are you communicating expectations to your user base? If you're relying on a flag-based system, your users' understanding of the rules is a critical facet of your moderation system — how have you managed to make them legible to a layman while still managing to somehow 'truly' define racism?

How are you managing over one thousand moderators? Like even beyond all the concerns with consistency, how are you keeping track of that many moving parts as a volunteer organisation without dozens or even hundreds of professional managers? I've ignored the scaling administrative burden up until now, but it has to be addressed in reality.

What are you doing to sweep through your archives? SV is more-or-less on-top of 'old' works as far as rule-breaking goes, with the occasional forgotten tidbit popping up every 18 months or so — and that's what we're extrapolating from. These thousand-plus moderators are mostly going to be addressing current or near-current content, are you going to spin up that many again to comb through the 32 billion words already posted?

I could go on for a fair bit here, but this has already stretched out to over two thousand words.

I think the people behind this movement have their hearts in the right place and the sentiment is laudable, but in practice it is simply 'won't someone think of the children' in a funny hat. It cannot be done.

Even if you could somehow meet the bare minimum thresholds, you are simply not going to manage a ruleset of sufficient clarity so as to prevent a much-worse repeat of the 2012 FF.net massacre, you are not going to be able to manage a moderation staff of that size and you are not going to be able to ensure a coherent understanding among all your users (we haven't managed that after nearly ten years and a much smaller and more engaged userbase). There's a serious number of other issues I haven't covered here as well, as this really is just an attempt at giving some insight into the sheer number of moving parts behind content moderation: the movement wants off-site content to be policed which isn't so much its own barrel of fish as it is its own barrel of Cthulhu; AO3 is far from English-only and would in actuality need moderators for almost every language it supports — and most damning of all, if Section 230 is wiped out by the Supreme Court it is not unlikely that engaging in content moderation at all could simply see AO3 shut down.

As sucky as it seems, the current status quo really is the best situation possible. Sorry about that.

#archive of our own #endotwracism #end otw racism #content moderation #sufficient velocity #i hate how much i know about this topic

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probablyasocialecologist · 6 months ago

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In place of blanks on the map, we’re now able to see highly cultivated landscapes with massive infrastructure stretching back to the early centuries BCE. Road networks, terraces, ceremonial earthworks, planned residential neighbourhoods, and regional settlement systems ordered into patterns of geometrical precision can be traced across Amazonia, from Brazil to Bolivia, as far as the eastern foothills of the Andes. In certain parts of Amazonia, the forest itself turns out to be a product of past human interaction with the soil. Over time, this generated the rich ‘anthropogenic’ earths called terra preta de índio (‘black earth of the Indians’), with levels of fertility far in excess of ordinary tropical soils. Scientists now believe that between 10,000 and 20,000 large-scale sites remain to be discovered across Amazonia. Similarly startling finds are emerging from Southeast Asia, and we might reasonably expect them from the forested parts of the African continent too. Of course, the same procedures are changing our picture of tropical landscapes that did witness the rise and fall of great kingdoms, and even empires. Archaeologists now believe that in the year 500 CE, between 10 and 15 million people lived in the Maya lowlands of Yucatán and northern Guatemala. For comparison, the Atlas offers a figure of just 2 million for all of Mexico in the same era, including the Indigenous cities of the Altiplano (at least some of which, we now know, were organised not as empires or even kingdoms, but fiercely autonomous republics, long before the Spanish conquest). It is easy, encouraged by works such as the Atlas, to imagine ancient history as a chequerboard of kingdoms and empires. But it is also very misleading. Ancient polities in the Maya lowlands and Southeast Asia had porous boundaries, constantly shifting, and open to contestation. Authority waned with distance from the centre. Warfare and tribute were largely seasonal affairs, after which coercive power shrank back behind the walls of the capital. As the archaeologist Monica Smith points out, only the most naive historian would assume that the claims inscribed on imperial monuments are a simple reflection of political reality on the ground. Of course ancient rulers loved to present themselves as ‘sovereigns of the four quarters’, ‘masters of the known world’, and so on. Yet no ancient world emperor could even have imagined powers of surveillance, such as those now enjoyed by any minor dictator or oligarch. On a global scale, we are witnessing a revolution in our understanding of ancient demography. To ignore it, these days, is to indulge in a cruel sort of intellectual prank, by which the genocide of Indigenous populations – a direct consequence of the planetary revolt against freedom, in the past 500 years – is naturalised as a perennial absence of people. Nor can we just assume that if we want to understand the prospects for our modern world, the only ‘big’ stories worth telling are those of empire.

5 July 2024

#archaeology #ancient history #david wengrow #demographics

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astrogre · 1 year ago

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People Represented in each House

Including niche examples

Yourself, your persona. You as an individual. Your role models (projection of your ideal self)

Business partners, business collaborators, acting/modelling/any agency you are under. Podcasters you listen to, literal social media influencers, salesman, your self esteem mentors,your real estate agent, your savings coach, your bank, your stockbroker

2H includes people who influence how you earn money. 2H represents people who can influence your personal values and your self esteem E.g a Ben Shapiro to a politically curious individual, the kardashians to a teenage girl. 2nd house can also represent people involved in the maintenance, acquisition and management of your possessions and finances

Your siblings, your neighbours, your relatives like extended family, peers and acquaintances like the people in your class you know of but don’t talk to enough to say they’re your friend, peers, acquaintances, colleagues/coworkers, professors, educational teachers, speaking coach, language teacher

3H is related to intellectual pursuits, learning, just all forms of intellectual development, mercury sits well here. It’s about the people who you interact with daily as they influence your way of communication The individuals here would influence your communication style, interests and knowledge

Your mother (mother figure if you don’t have a mother), your parents but particularly your mother figure, the collective of your whole family, ancestors, caregivers, people that live in your house like your flatmates, your housemates, housekeepers, butlers

4H represents the physical home, the mother, familial connections, nurturers etc. so the people here would be the ones living in it and those who have influence in your domestic life

Your children, your inner child, you as a parent, your nieces, your nephews, romantic partners (short term), artistic partners E.g co-writers, collaborators, people involved in your projects, your students, your mentees, your investors, your hook up partners, people who you gamble or just play games with.

5H represents children, creativity, your mentoring to others, gambling, fun, joyful light love affairs, it’s also ruled by Leo. So we have these people involved with these themes

Coworkers, colleagues, employees, staff (individuals who work under you or provide a service to you), your doctor, your contractors, your nurses, your teammates, your healthcare providers, your therapist, your career coach, your internship mentor, your assistants, your service providers, your pets, your gym colleagues, your fitness instructor, your nutritionist, your organiser, your HR department, your vet

6H represents work environment, daily routines, service, health and well-being, these are the people that you find under that setting

Romantic partners, your spouse, life partner, your closest friends, confidants, allies, your supporters, your business partners, anyone you form a pact with, your clients, your customers (the kind you engage with in professional settings), your lawyers, your legal team, your competitors, your opponents, your matchmaker, your wedding planner, your relationship therapist

7H ruled by Libra represents all relationships that also includes bad ones btw, business relationships, marriage, 7H represents companions, partnerships, professional relationships, legal matters, professional representation so the people that fall under this house would be those that build relationships with you

Financial partners/advisors, therapists, inheritors, beneficiaries (who you inherit from), occult teachers, your intimate long term sexual partners, your accountant, your councillors, your psychologist, your insurance agents, your estate planners, your morticians

8H is associated with death, sex, psychology, transformation, joint resources etc. and so these are the kind of people that 8H would represent

Your professors, your teachers, your spiritual leaders, your priest, your pastor, your favourite scholars, your favourite philosophers, your lawyers, your judges, your legal advisors, your authors, your educational materials, your foreign friends, your foreign connections.

alike to 3H in education but 9H rules higher education so it’s an octave higher than 3H in terms of the teachers associated with it. 9H also represents justice and law so it would include people that work in this field that you encounter

10H

Your father, your boss, your mentor, your manager, people of authority, your parents (father in particular), influential figures you look up to, e.g your fave celebrities, government, politicians, your PR team, your publishers, you as a role model, your admirers like the people who look up to you, influencers, your business, icons

10H association with self-image and reputation and classic Saturn authority would include those who are involved in those themes

11H

Friends, peers. Social activists, humanitarians, philanthropists, inventors, forecasters, visionaries, leaders, community organisers, trendsetters

different from 3H in the sense that with 11H friends, you actually share the same goals and interests in mind whereas with 3H it’s mostly an exchange of communication about these parts of yourself and they are less as significant in your social life compared to 11H type of friends

12H

Spiritual beings, your religion, spiritual forces, your subconscious mind, artists, creative people, writers, hospital patients, prisoners, monks, religious people, volunteers, dreamers, charities.

12H represents those that can derive what is within their inner secluded world and bring it into reality. It’s associated with empathy, mental/spiritual state, seclusion and the bed. The people here would be those that would retreat, help others and tap into realms beyond the physical)

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fawnforevergone · 1 year ago

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The Ultimate List of Dante References in Hozier's "Unreal Unearth" !!

Hello and welcome to my new-and-updated ultimate compilation of all 'Inferno' references I found in Hozier's new album! If I think of anything else, or if anyone else suggests something, I will be sure to add it, but, for now, enjoy this ridiculously long (you've been warned) list I made!

Since I didn't wanna make a post for every individual song and spam you all, the songs are separated by their respective circles! I hope that organises stuff a bit more :]

Usual disclaimer: I could be wrong about some stuff! I've read 'Inferno' and try to stick to the objective references, but sometimes I let subjective interpretation bleed through. If anyone has any corrections for anything, just lmk!! Okay, cool <3

DESCENT:

"De Selby (Part 1)"

We start the album not in the circles, but instead at the Gates of Hell. One of the main themes of Inferno is darkness, and these first two songs are embodiments of that.

The lyrics mention the idea of this being a "new empty space", suggesting that Hozier is being introduced to the feeling of Inferno through the relationship he's singing about, and, so, we begin the descent.

"The likes of a darkness so deep that God at the start couldn't bear." God is obviously a large theme of Inferno and is, biblically, the creator of light, hence the absence of it in Inferno. In fact, the first three stanzas all reference the heavy darkness of the threshold and its estrangement from God.

The Irish/Gaeilge lyrics roughly translate to: "Although you're bright and light, you arrive to me like night fall. You and I, together. You and I, metamorphized. Although you're bright and light, you arrive to me like night fall. The art of transformation is a dark art." The imagery of light and dark mixing together mimics the idea of walking from the brightness of Earth into the darkness of Inferno.

This entire album appears to be the recounting of a relationship and how it feels like walking through Inferno. Here we see the beginning of this relationship, of Hozier losing himself to the threshold.

"De Selby (Part 2)"

Part one appeared to be the step through the gates, whereas part two seems to be Hozier being enveloped by the threshold. In 'Inferno', Dante says the entrance to Hell is a darkness that no stars could shine in. We hear this shift from Earth to Unearth through the production alone; the weightlessness of part one falling into the heavy grunge of part two.

"Your heart, love, has such darkness, I feel it in the corners of the room." The theme of dark continues, as it will through the entire album, but, this time, Hozier feels it radiating from within his lover rather than the space around them. Though, him saying his lover carries darkness is not an insult. This extra depth to his lover is something more to know, something more to love. This idea actually differs from Dante, who sees the darkness as deceitful.

"I want to be so far from sight and mind." Inferno is a lawless place. He would be far from sight due to the darkness, and far from mind due to the insanity that persists within the circles.

"Let all time slow, let all light go." This lyric shows me that he has been submerged in the threshold. Again, the lack of light, but also the slowing of time. Punishment after death is eternal, something that time has no grasp on. Hozier is willing to let these aspects take a hold of him.

"I'd still know you not being shown you, I'd only need the workin' of my hands." Christianity is a heavy theme of Inferno, and this lyric plays on the proverb 'Idle hands are the devil's workshop', a proverb Hozier also hinted at in his song "No Plan" (from 'Wasteland, Baby!') - "My heart is thrilled by the still of your hand."

Now, though, Hozier's hands aren't idle, instead the opposite, his hands are working as God intended. Drawing us back to that idea we were given at the end of part one, we get the feeling that Hozier is bringing something light/Godly to Inferno, and he and his lover are fusing the ideas of Heaven/Earth and Hell.

FIRST (LIMBO):

"First Time"

We now enter circle number one, 'Limbo'. Limbo is an uneventful circle for those not worthy of punishment but also not fit for Heaven. It is mainly for those who do not believe in God, the unbaptised.

Firstly, to get to circles, Dante and his guide, Virgil, must be chaperoned by the Greek Psychopomp Charon down the river Acheron, and we see that in Hozier's first couple stanzas.

"And the soul - if that's what you'd call it, uneasy ally of the body - felt nameless as a river, undiscovered underground." This appears to be Hozier mentioning the river Acheron, one of the five rivers of the Underworld that surround Hades, and, in 'Inferno', are used to transport the souls of the dead to their respective circles.

"The first time that you kissed me, I drank dry the river Lethe." The river Lethe is another one of the five rivers, and is one that causes anyone who drinks from it to forget everything they know. Hozier is simply saying that kissing this person wiped his mind clean, similar to the end of "De Selby (Part 1)" where he mentions partaking in a transformation.

"Some part of me died / Some part of me came alive the first time that you called me 'Baby'." Relating to the previous quote, souls that drink from the river Lethe usually do so before being reincarnated, so they forget their past life. Hozier seems to experiment with the idea of being reborn by his partner's love for him - an idea prevalent throughout his entire discography.

"To share the space with simple living things, infinitely suffering, but fighting off - like all creation - the absence of itself." This lyric tells us that we should not ignore the privilege of living just out of the fear of dying. This lyric is reminiscent of "All Things End" and the circle of Heresy. Since Limbo is home to those who don't believe in God, the theme of Heresy is a very fitting one.

SECOND (LUST):

"When I was young, I used to guess 'Are there limits to any emptiness?'" The punishment for those in Limbo is to exist eternally with the curse of a hollow, empty feeling meant to represent the lack of God in their lives. This punishment seems referenced in this lyric.

[ i ended up thinking about this song more so if you want even more "first time" content, here ya go: "first time dante references." ]

"Francesca"

Into circle number two, 'Lust', we have the story of Francesca Da Rimini, a woman Dante spoke to during his visit to circle two. Francesca fell in love with her husband's brother, Paolo, and when her husband discovered the affair he murdered them both.

Hozier seems to be singing from the perspective of Francesca/Paolo but throughout the album we see Hozier liken his lover to aspects of Inferno - darkness in "De Selby (Part 2)" or Lucifer in "Unknown / Nth" - so the story of Francesca and Paolo is fitting as another metaphor here.

"Do you think I'd give up? That this might've shook the love from me?" Even in Hell, Paolo and Francesca physically cling onto another. They do not let their death affect their love.

"My life was a storm since I was born. How could I fear any hurricane?" The punishment in Lust is an eternal storm meant to replicate the throws of passionate love - a storm also depicted in the production of the end of this song. Hozier/Francesca/Paolo says that it's impossible for them to care about this punishment when life was already as treacherous as it was.

The whole chorus emphasises the imagery of Francesca and Paolo not being able to let go of each other.

"When the heart would cease, ours never knew peace. What good what it be on the far side of things?" Francesca and Paolo lived their love secretly and anxiously, so what good would peace be in the afterlife when they've already become accustomed to difficulty?

"Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I." In the opening songs of the album, Hozier describes his lover as darkness, akin to something God cannot bear. Due to the depth of his lover, the mix of light and dark they've made, he believes Heaven would crumble beneath the weight of their relationship. That something as corrupt as Inferno is the only place suitable for them to live.

"I, Carrion (Icarian)"

Still in circle two, Hozier plays on Dante's own metaphor. In Canto 17, Dante refers to his own dread of descending Inferno to the same dread that the 'ill-fated Icarus' must've felt on his fall from the sky.

Hozier twists this, instead comparing his love to the hope Icarus must've felt as he flew towards the sun. He said, during a live show, this song is based on the idea hat Icarus never realised he fell, and woke up dead, too clouded by joy to realise what had happened.

"If the wind turns, if i hit a squall, allow the ground to find its brutal way to me." Again, we mention the storm of circle two. Lust is also said to have treacherous terrain - sharp rocks and jagged stone - that seems to be hinted at in the second half of this lyric.

"While you're as heavy as the world that you hold your hands beneath." This imagery seems reminiscent of the Greek Titan, Atlas, who holds up the Earth on his back. Dante talks about seeing Titans and Biblical Giants at the transition point of circle eight to circle nine, 'Fraud' to 'Treachery', which makes this lyric a sad hint to where Hozier will end up finding his lover; Taking the place of Lucifer in the deepest part of Inferno.

THIRD (GLUTTONY):

"Eat Your Young"

We enter the third circle of Inferno, 'Gluttony'. There are no specific references to Inferno, but the concept of gluttony is apparent. Hozier does what he frequently does throughout this album; He refuses to see the sin as "right or wrong" as Dante so stubbornly implies.

Hozier often divulges in a grey area, a spectrum or sale of severity, when it comes to the sin. Hozier's perspective seems more nuanced than Dante's, seeing sin as layered rather than objectively bad. In this specific song, he displays the different sources of hunger in humans, and where the line should be drawn.

"I'm starvin', darlin', let me put my lips to something, let me wrap my teeth around the world." We start, and reference back to in verse two, a sexual hunger, a harmless passion between two people. This is an innocent side of the sin, not deserving of the punishment of Lust which is to be ripped apart by Cerberus (the three-headed dog from Greek mythology) for all eternity.

However, Hozier moves onto the hunger of politics.

"Pull up the ladder when the flood comes." The government refusing to help the people when the sea levels rise.

"Throw enough rope until the legs have swung." When you don't have a ladder, you use a rope. This lyric plays on the notion of when governments give the impression they are helping, but are only making things worse - a take on the saying 'Give someone enough rope and they'll hang themselves', since what else are they meant to do with it?

"Skinnin' the children for a war drum, puttin' food on the table selling bombs and guns." The hunger for power manifests in war.

"It's quicker and easier to eat your young." Here, Hozier uses the common saying in a more literal sense, saying that if these politicians are hungry enough to destroy the world, they may as well physically eat their young, since it'll have the same effect.

FOURTH (GREED):

"Damage Gets Done"

This song takes place in circle four, 'Greed'! The title of the song alone is already very meaningful. In circle four, the main punishment is that the inhabitants are split into two groups and are forever forced to charged into each other and fight. Dante describes them are being so injured and damaged that they have become 'unrecognisable'.

The song is about greed within the changing of the world. It's about growing up and losing the naivety and innocence you once had, no longer able to ignore the burden of politics and money. Hozier and Brandi sing about the excitement of being young and in love, but, with the rise of inflation, it's hard to exist like that anymore - You need greed to survive.

"Wish I had known it was just our turn being blamed for a world we had no power in." This seems to be a reference to two things. One, the idea that governments blame the people for their own poverty, and Two, the idea of arriving in circle four by no fault of your own. It's not their fault they wanted more money with the world being how it is, but, nevertheless, they're being punished for it.

"I haven't felt it since then. I don't know when the feeling ended, but I know being reckless and young is not how the damage gets done." They talk about the enjoyment of the love they're singing about fading, and how they miss that, but they know that, again, this is not their fault. They know they didn't change, the world did, and they won't take responsibility for their 'sin' when all they did was adapt.

As aforementioned, the inhabitants of the fourth circle suffer extreme injuries, so Hozier saying "I know being reckless and young is not how the damage gets done" is him saying "I know that we are not at fault for being served the punishment of Greed."

FIFTH (WRATH / ANGER):

"Who We Are"

We enter the fifth circle, 'Wrath', where the inhabitants spend their time fighting to stay at the surface of the river Styx, another one of the five rivers of the underworld.

"Falling from you drop by drop." / "To hold me like water." These lyrics obviously give the idea of water, representing the river Styx.

"Or, Christ, hold me like a knife." This lyric comes in quite loudly, Hozier's voice strengthening with it. The subtle blasphemy of "Christ" and the violent imagery of "knife" comes across as a sort of anger. Being held "like a knife" is representative of how those is Wrath must feel - like they are something particularly dangerous, but still desperate to be held.

"We're born at night, so much of our lives is just carving through the dark to get so far." Again, this theme of darkness that is so frequently displayed in Inferno is mentioned again. After this song comes "Son Of Nyx", which Hozier said was the transition into the darker half of the album, and Nyx is the Goddess of the Night. Being "born at night" would make Hozier the son of the night, the son of Nyx. This gives the impression that, if the album is following on chronologically, this is the point where the relationship portrayed in the album begins to fray as Hozier starts to be consumed by the darkness.

"And the hardest part is who we are." Those in the circle of Wrath possess a 'savage self-frustration' that Hozier seems to represent throughout this whole song - A fierce annoyance with the way he and his lover let things go: "We sacrificed, we gave our time to something undefined", "Chasing someone else's dream", Etc.

SIXTH (HERESY):

"Son Of Nyx"

We have no lyrics for this song (though you can hear him faintly saying some things, one of which is him saying "who we are...") but we know it takes place in circle six, 'Heresy'. Heresy is a belief or opinion that is contradictory to religious doctrine, especially Christianity. As aforementioned, Hozier said this track is a transition song meant to replicate a descent into the darker half of the album.

Nyx is a Greek Goddess and is often known as the personification of night. She had many children all representing different things but the title would essentially mean 'The Son Of Night', and, as dissected in the previous song, we can see that Hozier sees himself as reborn into the darkness.

Once again, darkness is a large theme of Inferno, but Hozier saying in circle six that he is the Son of Night is particularly meaningful due to the association of light with God. He has been reborn as something that could not be further from God, something that opposes the idea of God, something of a Heretic.

Nyx was feared and respected by all, including Zeus, and, though I believe there is no reference to her in Inferno, she was described as residing in the dark recesses of the Underworld, which is heavily incorporated into Inferno.

"All Things End"

This song does not have many overt references to circle six but definitely incorporates the idea of heresy. As mentioned, heresy is an idea that contradicts (especially, but not always) Christianity. In this song, Hozier talks about the ephemeral nature of all things, particularly romance.

"When people say that something is forever, either way it ends." Whether it be death or a break-up, God doesn't plan for you to be able to spend eternity with your lover.

"Movin' on in time and taking more from everything that ends." Hozier, however, argues that things still have meaning beyond their end. That, even after moving on, we will remember and learn from the things we have lost.

"Just knowin' that everything will end should not change our plans." Throws back to the idea of the second verse of "First Time". If you avoided something just because it was going to end eventually, you would never achieve anything. That's like refusing to finish a movie just because you don't want to get to the credits.

When this concept of ignoring the end comes to death, we ultimately cross the concept of God. There are many rules people follow in religion, avoiding certain things because they are against 'God's Will'. Although this practice can be kept in moderation, it can quickly become self-imprisoning.

Not living your present life out of fear for an unproven afterlife can be limiting, especially if you dictate who you love due to what supernatural punishment may or may not follow. Hozier sings that we should not let God's plan interfere with what we need from life, allowing ourselves to indulge in love even if it will end - ultimately, Heresy.

SEVENTH (VIOLENCE):

"To Someone From A Warm Climate (Uiscefhuaraithe)"

This song places in circle seven, 'Violence'. Violence is split into three subcategories, or 'rings'; Violence against others, violence against self, and violence against God. I believe this song gives an overview of all three.

With this song, we recognise that the title says "To someone..." and Hozier said this song was a gift to someone who was from a geographical warm climate, but there is also a lot of heat in circle seven.

"A joy, hard learned in winter, was the warming of the bed." Throughout this song, Hozier describes himself as cold, and his lover as warm. The idea of warming the bed is a concept Hozier mentioned in his song "Nobody" (From 'Wasteland, Baby!') where he sings that, if he had a choice between the warm bed of his lover or performing on stage, he'd go home to the bed. Since this song comes after "All Things End" (the break-up song), this call back to "Nobody" could be instead referencing a permanent distance, rather than a temporary one (like the temporary distance in "Nobody").

"And, darlin', all my dreaming has only been put to shame." This could have two meanings. One, Hozier waking from a dream about his lover to find them not here. Or, two, Hozier's expectations of his lover falling short as their relationship has finally fallen through. These expectations could be a form of violence against self, the second ring, as he set himself up for heartbreak.

"And I wish that I could say that the river of my arms have found the ocean. I wish I could say the cold lake water of my heart- Christ, it's boilin' over." As mentioned, Hozier is cold, his lover is warm. His wishes he could find something to to fill the loss of his relationship, but he still feels the heat from his lover in every part of him.

"It's boilin' over." References the river of boiling blood in the first ring, violence against others, Hozier could be talking about the way his partner loved him, how that was almost an act of violence with how hard it is to now let go.

"Butchered Tongue"

This song has less references to 'Inferno', and is more of a commentary on the act of violence itself. Hozier sings of places and cultures lost to the violence of man, and he mourns this deeply.

"To say 'Appalacicola' or 'Hushpukena', like 'Gweebara'. A promise softly sung of somewhere else." This grieving for a time when native land wasn't colonised and culture wasn't violently erased is prevalent throughout the song.

In the second verse, he sings very strongly of the brutal acts inflicted upon Irish rebels by the British forces in the Wexford Rebellion of 1789. As we know, Hozier is from Ireland, and he incorporates both the Irish language and history into this album, and recounting such violent acts for this song feeds into the grieving of what has been lost: "Between what is lost forever and what can still be known."

In the context of 'Inferno', it feels as though Hozier is listing the sort of actions that would land someone within the circle of Violence whilst also appreciating the efforts those above ground take to preserve erased culture. Altogether, the song is a very moving commentary on modern violence.

EIGHTH (FRAUD):

"Anything But"

The eighth circle is 'Fraud', split into ten subcategories that are positioned around the circle in trench-like ditches, known as 'Bolgia'.

"I wanna be loud, so loud, I'm talking seismic," follows up with, "I want to be as soft as a single rock in a rain stick." Who he wants to be fluctuates between moderation and severity. He is changing, unreliable, possibly referring to bolgia one, Panders and Seducers. Seducers tend to 'lead astray', as Hozier's unreliable narration does.

The punishment of bolgia one is to be marched backwards and forwards rapidly whilst being whipped, very much evoking the imagery of a stampede: "If I were a stampede, you wouldn't get a kick." This alludes to the fact that if Hozier were sent to hell for the various sins he commits for his lover, he wouldn't resent them for it at all.

"If I was a riptide, I wouldn't take you out." The second bolgia of Fraud is for Flatterers, 'the act of giving excessive compliments, sometimes for romantic courtship'. Obviously, the song is filled with these compliments.

"I hear He touches your hand and then you fly away together. If I had his job, you'd live forever." The imagery of "fly away" gives the idea of ascending, perhaps to Heaven, as hinted at again by the idea of the longevity of living. Bolgia three is for Simoniacs, those who would sell church roles, offices, or sacred things. This seems to fit with Hozier saying that if he had a divine role, he wouldn't follow protocol, he would allow his lover immortality.

Simoniacs were sinners because they were disobeying God's trust, because the selling of divine roles would lead to corruption in the Church. Hozier is using this hyperbolically, saying that if someone were to sell him the role of God, he would most definitely be a corrupt power.

"I'd lower the world in a flood, or better yet I'd cause a drought." In bolgia four we have Sorcerers. Although Dante used this term in a more logical sense for fraudulent sorcerers - false prophets, fortune tellers, those who lied about the plans of God - Hozier uses the term in a supernatural sense. Sorcerers were punished for trying to interrupt God's prerogative, whereas Hozier is blatantly saying he would summon another flood, usurping God's plan overtly.

"I'm talking seismic." The bridge that leads to bolgia seven was collapsed by the great earthquake and, as we know, seismic activity leads to earthquakes.

"Worry the cliff side top as a wave crashing over." There happens to be a cliff near the entrance of circle eight that a large waterfall plunges over.

"Abstract (Psychopomp)"

This song appears to be the crossover point from circle eight to circle nine that I mentioned when discussing "I, Carrion (Icarian)". Before we get to that, the title itself is significant.

A psychopomp is a chaperon of death; Someone like the Grim Reaper, or Charon from "First Time", or Dante's guide through Inferno, Virgil. Here, Hozier is describing the act of hitting an animal with your car as taking on the role of a psychopomp, whilst also relating this idea to the act of letting a relationship die, leading it from life to death.

In the crossover point from eight to nine, Dante and Virgil stand and look at the large well that leads down to circle nine, 'Treachery'. The Titians and Giants burst out of the well, to big to fit, but their feet stand stubbornly in Treachery. I believe that, at this point in the album, Hozier stands here, too. He's visited all eight circles, and has one last place to go before he leaves Inferno, and ultimately his lover, behind. This song is him realising he has to let his relationship end, he has to act as a psychopomp for his love.

"Sometimes it returns like rain that you've slept through." Circle nine, 'Treachery', is a frozen over lake, aka a memory of water, similar to the residue of rain. With viewing this song as the predecessor to "Unknown / Nth", we can take this as a hint of what's to come.

"The Earth from a distance." Since Inferno is arranged in rings (like a circular staircase), Dante could feasibly look up and still see where he started his journey. The same way Hozier could look up and see where his relationship began, "De Selby (Part 1)", The Gates.

"Streetlights in the dark blue." We have the mix of light and dark again, as mentioned in the opening track, referencing back to Hozier and his partner falling in love.

"Darling, there's a part of me I'm afraid will always be trapped within an abstract of my life." Of course, Hozier is talking about the memory of the animal hit with the car here, but the way this relates to circle nine is beautiful. As we'll properly dissect with "Unknown / Nth", sat within the most central point of circle nine, the deepest part of Inferno, is Lucifer, the fallen angel. Lucifer was thrown down to Hell from Heaven, and found himself trapped in Treachery, his body too big to escape. Dante says that the more he struggles, the more stuck he becomes.

That moment he was struck down to hell is a moment he finds himself forever stuck in, just as Hozier is saying here. In the next song, Hozier relates his lover to Lucifer, but these lyrics are a gorgeous mirroring of Lucifer's experience, and another hint at the final circle we will now head to.

NINTH (TREACHERY):

"Unknown / Nth"

Okay, buckle in.

The ninth circle, 'Treachery', is also one split into subcategories, yet Hozier appears to be singing about the centre. The frozen over lake of Treachery gets more frozen the closer you get to the centre. The inhabitants start half-submerged in ice to fully plastered in it. Throughout Inferno, and the deeper we descend, a soft breeze becomes a strong wind, that, as we reach the centre, we find is caused by the violent flapping of Lucifer's wings. Here he sits, stuck and chewing on Judas, another one of God's biggest betrayers.

After "Abstract (Psychopomp)" Hozier is now exploring the final stage of his relationship. The circles of Hell had mirrored the love he once had, and Treachery is where it shall be buried. He also represents his lover as Lucifer, though not maliciously. In interviews, Hozier spoke about the song being about a heavy betrayal he suffered from someone he truly loved, and likening this to God and Lucifer is just heartbreaking.

"You know the distance never made a difference to me." The song is about knowing someone in their entirety, discovering their best and worst parts. Hozier uses Inferno to talk about the tiresome journey of finally knowing someone. He says he would've made the trip all the same, that he would've walked this far for his lover no matter what.

"I swam a lake of fire, I'd have walked across the floor of any sea." This mirrors the previous lyric, but also references specific parts of Inferno. The are many fires in Inferno, particularly in circle seven, 'Violence'. The sea floor lyric reminds me of the lake of Treachery. Though a surface, not a floor, the lake would still be below any seabed, since Inferno is geographically below the Earth.

"Funny how true colours shine in darkness and in secrecy." You guys are probably sick of hearing me say it but... Darkness is a big theme in Dante's Inferno. It is meant to represent the deceiving nature of humans when light is not being shone. Secrecy is a running thread through 'Inferno', too, as Dante finds many people he thought had done no wrong residing there. Hozier is simply saying how (sarcastically) funny it is that he only truly knows his lover in the remains of their relationship; How he only knows them after seeing them in their cruellest form.

"Where you were held frozen like an angel to me." There are many angel lyrics, but this one specifically references the ice of Treachery. The fallen angel is indicative of Hozier's experience: Seeing someone he regarded highly, even heavenly, falling from that pedestal and turning into something that couldn't be further from God's work.

"You called me angel for the first time, my heart leapt from me. You smile, now, I can see its pieces still stuck in your teeth, and, what's left of it, I listen to it tick. Every tedious beat going unknown as any angel to me." Hozier references his ex-lover chewing on his heart the way Lucifer chews on Judas. He listens to it somehow still ticking, however slowly, and at the end of the song we hear something akin to a heartbeat. The beats are "going unknown as any angel to me" since he can no longer recognise his own heartbeat after it has been mangled by another, and, since he mistook someone alike Lucifer to an angel, the idea of angels must be "unknown" to him.

"Do you know I could break beneath the weight of the goodness, love, I still carry for you? That I'd walk so far just to take the injury of finally knowing you?" We again have this imagery of walking far, referencing the journey of Inferno, and, even though he's aching with the realisation of who his lover truly is, he can't help but be grateful that he does now know them, no matter how painful that may be. That he would do this all again if it meant he at least got to the answer of who they are.

His weak heartbeat follows him through to final track as we begin the Ascent.

ASCENT:

"First Light"

The title is very meaningful for the Ascent. The song references both Dante and Virgil's ascent and the creation of light by God himself. Dante and Virgil leave Inferno through a tunnel that Lucifer left in the Earth as he was thrown down to Hell, and they emerge on the other side of the hemisphere. This song signifies Hozier stepping away from the relationship as he also makes that journey out.

"One bright morning changes all things." Dante is disorientated when he exits Inferno. He'd become so accustomed to the darkness that he asks Virgil, 'How is it that the sun progressed so rapidly from evening to day?' Hozier seems to recognise here that his relationship is no longer fit for him, that the darkness has become too encompassing, just as Dante realises on his ascent.

"The sky set to burst, the gold and the rust, the colour erupts...the sun coming up." Not only does this give the imagery of the birth of light, but it also represents Dante's view on his exit: 'Until...I saw the lovely things the sky above us bears. Now we came out, and once more saw the stars.'

"Like I lived my whole life before the first light." Hozier says that the darkness from his lover was so overbearing that it was hard to believe he'd ever felt light before - that light could not have exists with a darkness this heavy alongside it. It is a call back to "De Selby (Part 1)" - "A darkness so deep that God at the start couldn't bear."

"One bright morning comes. Darkness always finds you either way, it creeps into the corners as the moment fades." He speaks of bringing light to a moment between them, but has it quickly smothered by the darkness inherent in his partner. Another call back, this time to "De Selby (Part 2)" - "And your heart, love, has such darkness, I feel it in the corners of the room."

"After this I'm never going to be the same, and I am never going back again." This lyric is heart-breaking. Hozier states that Inferno has changed him, but he has no wishes to re-enter it. At the beginning of this album, he was begging for the likes of Inferno - "De Selby (Part 2)": "Let all time slow, let all light go." - and now he is desperate to get away from it. In "Francesca", he said, "At the end, I'd tell them, 'Put me back in it.'", yet, now, he's at the end, he's ascended, and he has no desire to go back at all.

He is letting go of his lover because he recognises that this pain was not worth it, that this love was not worth the punishment he received, so he leaves.

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That was Hozier's Inferno !! I hope this was helpful to some people since it was very fun to make (I'm exhausted) and it's very enlightening to see how these lyrics relate to Inferno (I'm heart-broken) !! Okay, wooooo !! Enjoy !!!

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