#putting under the theory tag because there are some theoreticals

[dourpeep]

I don't know if you've done the interlude yet but oh my god??????? I was not prepared????? They made me like Scara and I'm ready to fight for this funky lil dude now. Hope you're doing well in any case!

YES I just finished it!

I'll put my thoughts below on this matter--warning, 3.3 interlude spoilers below!

Though this wasn't what I expected, I do like this approach quite a bit. While it's not the "once bad, always bad" thing that some people (my sibling) was expecting, I think that this was the best approach to the subject of the Wanderer 'turning' good, or at least in the sense of being a playable character and no longer the antagonist.

Although he had erased his existence that lead to him going down the path of Scaramouche--meeting and befriending Niwa, holding the burden of taking the device into the Mikage Furnace, the child from Tatarasuna, the three betrayals--as well as his experiences as the 6th Harbinger, he still isn't a bad person. And even though he himself didn't remember what happened until gaining his memories and emotions from before back, he was going through his own retribution.

So even though no one besides the Traveler, Paimon, Lesser Lord Kusanali, and himself remember who he was, he must continue on with the reminder of what he has done as well as the residual guilt. To hold that heavy of a burden, to know that despite everything you did that nothing really changed is his own punishment for himself.

Also not to mention the implications that his dear friends suffered without him now. While Niwa's situation isn't so much changed, the child's has been and part of me wonders if he realizes that as well.

After all, the child was living alone with some help now and then from neighbors until Scaramouche came along. If anything, that meant that the little boy had the comfort of a friend and a family after losing so much before his inevitable death.

Then going off that, he technically didn't go off scot free like it's assumed since he is insistent that he takes the fall for what happened with the Raiden Gokaden. I think that's a pretty significant thing.

ALSO ALSO I like that he's still not a good person. He understands that he fucked up and that he was a bad person and the Traveler, while they have a sort of shaky friendship with him now, but they don't consider him to be a good person, just changed. Or perhaps, he's now really accepted himself to be who he is instead of running from it. I mean, we can see that he's still just as abrasive as ever from his voicelines, though with a little bit of a softer edge.

I think that might just be because he's letting the Traveler in.

The promise of some sort of friendship where he is judged not for how he pretends to be, but for who he is and was seems to be right up his alley as being desirable. That whole bit of playfulness--the "You won't need to run into me again until you (Paimon) comes up with an ugly nickname"?

Anyway I'm a sentimental fool who has a sentimental attachment to the Wanderer and his lore because he's what really sparked my interest in writing again after nearly a decade ehe

I got off topic, hopefully this all provides a little insight into my thoughts, as messy as it may be nodnod

[stardustdiiving]

I would read your zhongxiao codependent yuri Like, I do generally picture them as a vaguely father/son dynamic BUT THAT IS NOT CANON. It's just as much fun to view them through a romantic interpretation! Idk why people can't view the same characters in different kinds of relationships without being weird about it.

Anyway I love your vision and would love to hear more about it lakdjs

THANK U SO MUCH Im not sure if I’m gonna write zx in the future since I’ve tended to be shy about posting my stuff relating to them for over a yr now, but I did post this fic with them last year while trying to get a hold on how to write them (mind the tags it’s pure angst omg). I was too shy to tag it as ship since it didn’t feel shippy enough, which is kind of funny to me in hindsight bc I reread it and am like. Man I think only a zx shipper would write this NUFNVJVJV

Post got kind of lot Im gonna go on a tangent about them under the cut

Honestly my theory for why ppl r very set on the father/son interpretation is everyone’s immediate thought on to how to make the power imbalance between them seem less uncomfortable is to apply a parental interpretation to it. Which is fine ofc, I get it, but the way ppl push it as canon a lot kind of grates on me a little bc they’re usually incredibly passive aggressive and pushy even if u clearly designate ur post as ship OTL

Also not really a fan of the characterizations either since ppl tend to treat Xiao like a moody teenager Zhongli has to reel in (this is hilariously reminiscent of the post I made about how ppl handle scaramouche and nahida a bit ago haha). And idk I just feel kind of polarized about the headcanon overall bc I associate it with people being really uncomfortable and frustrating about zx

I just like how there’s sort of an imbalance to them, some zxs like them being more fluffy and functional but I sort of like it where it’s not like, entirely dysfunctional but I’m prioritizing a specific kind of character study over romance. This tends to be how a lot of my ships go ngl I just sometimes enjoy the intensity/intimacy of romantic feelings thrown into the mix if it makes it interesting but I’m not often interested in a lot of my ships following more standard romance plots(?) I guess? Unless it’s specific ones. Which sounds clinical when I put it like that but this is just bc I am very aromantic NHFBVJVJ

When I say codependency in zhongxiao honestly it’s sort of a theoretical(?) codependency—not sure how to word it? I think Xiao would be really fucked up if he didn’t have Zhongli in his life suddenly but I don’t think his relationship with getting attached to people invokes what people would majorly think of when they think of codependency in a ship I suppose. It’s moreso I just feel Xiao could be at his worst with dehumanizing himself in comparison to other people with Zhongli, because said mental state is driven by how he feels about debt, service, and duty which are very closely tied with devotion and how he would feel about someone he considers his god and leader, as well as someone who saved him

It’s fun this is paired with Zhongli who generally knows how to work with Xiao kind of understands the self destructive depth Xiao’s loyalty/devotion comes with. Also fun they have been around each other for a very long time and Xiao as one of the adepti is familiar with the past I think Zhongli appreciates having around. They work but it’s also a case where Zhongli is in such a position of power over Xiao its kind of very delicate situation that’s hard for both of them to navigate. Which is fun to explore. I esp love contrasting it with other Xiao pairings (actually i think i still have that xiaoven fic up on my ao3 where I tried to convey a specific interpretation of them in a similar exploration vein too)

I totally get why people wouldn’t like it (I feel a lot of my opinions on xiao ships just clash with a lot of fandom consensus so bad all the time And it’s just bc I’m like this I’m not even trying to be contrarian or anything. HELDINCJD) but I just tend to handle shipping in a specific way. It’s not I don’t enjoy fluffy or lighthearted zl and xiao stuff I actually enjoy it a lot I just like there being layers. This makes it feel more impactful when I think about how Zhongli looks out for Xiao in canon or how Xiao gets like textually flustered talking to him (lantern rite 2023 was so tailored to my tastes it’s not even funny)

[forabeatofadrum]

Hello and happy Sunday. Thank you @aroace-genderfluid-sheep​, @martsonmars​ and @artsyunderstudy​ for the tag. I went to Pride yesterday and I am still high on energy.

Please, enjoy my bespoke banner. I am about to do something bonkers. I like to challenge myself by aiming for exactly six sentences, but that is not going to happen today.

What am I about to do? I am going to put the entire translated version of my second chapter of my thesis under the weather. Yup, you’ve read that right. It’s the entire theoretical background and it is almost 3k words long. I am an insane person for this, but I am so normal about my thesis. The thing is that I have to trim it down A Lot. Like, A LOT. I want to preserve what I have written somewhere, because I am going to change things and that saddens me, but it is a must, especially since uhhhh my first draft of the results chapter is almost 6k words.

I don’t mind if y’all wanna skip reading this, because I get that not everyone signed up for all the thesis talk, but for the few who are also completely normal about it, feel free to read. If you’ve been keeping up with all my updates, then some of it might be familiar to you, cause I have posted snippets of my theoretical background before, but now I’m going all out.

And now, the weather: @quizasvivamos @blurglesmurfklaine @coffeegleek @esperantoauthor @otherworldsivelivedin @caramelcoffeeaddict @sillyunicorn @bazzybelle @dragoneggos @raenestee @tectonicduck @nightimedreamersworld @urban-sith @thnxforknowingme @captain-aralias @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @takitalks @justgleekout @cerriddwenluna @tea-brigade @ivelovedhimthroughworse @moodandmist @whogaveyoupermission @bookish-bogwitch @confused-bi-queer@ionlydrinkhotwater @1908jmd @special-bc-ur-part-of-it @larkral @chen-chen-chen-again-chen @cutestkilla @nausikaaa/@wellbelesbian @facewithoutheart @shrekgogurt @boyinjeans @rockitmans @bitbybitwrites @blackberrysummerblog @whatevertheweather​

2. Problem statement

In this chapter the problem statement and research questions are discussed. The theoretical approach to representation is explained and the main theories are explained. Furthermore, it is discussed how recognition, respect and identification play a role in representation.

2.1. What is representation?

Media representation is important. People construct reality through media (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). From the point of view of cultivation theory (Gerbner, 1969) and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2009), we know that the media are important agents of socialization and thus contribute to the creation and learning of stereotyped perceptions. In addition, media is known to shape our self-image and our perceptions of others (Orgad, 2012). As a result, media representation contributes to social, cultural, political and economic structures and the emergence of inequalities in these structures. Media represent culture and representation shows who has the power (Gross, 1994). According to Gerbner and Gross (1976), this is via symbolic annihilation. This means that the media omits, trivializes or condemns certain groups in society. Negative representation of a group can lead to the rejection of the “other”, perpetuating a non-inclusive power dynamic (Hall et al., 2013).

The queer community has become more prominent in the media in recent years (Kidd, 2014). Research shows that positive queer representation has positive consequences for people who identify as queer: they use it to understand their own identity (Dhaenens, 2013; Dhoest & Simons, 2011; Gomillion & Giuliano, 2011), people feel accepted ( Woods & Hardman, 2022), it creates a feeling of pride, people feel supported (Gomillion & Giuliano, 2011) and it challenges viewers to reflect on themselves (Yue, 2014). These positive consequences are stronger if viewers identify with the characters (Gomillion & Giuliano, 2011).

On the other hand, non-diverse representation is associated with negative consequences: a stereotyped and one-dimensional image leads to the feeling that one can only express oneself in a limited way (Gomillion & Giuliano, 2011) and if viewers feel that there are skewed intentions behind the representation, they feel uncomfortable (McInroy & Craig, 2017). Another form of negative representation is queerbaiting, or a marketing technique in which producers promise queer representation and then fail to deliver. This makes viewers feel not taken seriously and they feel used (Woods & Hardman, 2022). It also still happens that queer characters die faster, which sometimes causes viewers to feel that they have no place in the world (Waggoner, 2018). Interestingly, negative representation can also sometimes lead to positive feelings, as poor representation is seen as better than no representation (Gomillion & Giuliano, 2011; McInroy & Craig, 2017).

Furthermore, previous research has shown that queer women are portrayed relatively little and stereotypically in the media (DeCeuninck & Dhoest, 2016). This group includes women whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual and/or whose gender identity is not cisgender (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, n.d.). According to (Clark, 1972), important indicators for representation are recognition and respect.

2.2. Recognition

Recognition is the amount and/or frequency of images of minority groups in the media. No frequency is symbolic annihilation (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). Recognition in the media therefore means that the viewers must also recognize that the group is there on a societal level. Recognition occurs when a group is seen as unique and/or relevant. If a group is not seen as relevant, there is no recognition, or representation (Clark, 1972).

Studies looking at the amount of queer characters in the media show that queer characters have been featured in media since the early 1920s, but new regulations in the 1930s and 1940s made it illegal to use explicit queer characters in America. As a result, a lot of subtext and symbolism was used. From the 1970s, things gradually changed and around the 1990s, the era of modern queer representation arose. Since the 1990s, the number of queer characters has increased and representation is becoming more diverse (McNicholas Smith, 2020b; Rodriguez, 2019). One thing regularly emerges from research: queer men are depicted more often than queer women (Avila-Saavedra, 2009; Bond, 2015; Dhoest & Simons, 2011; Marwick et al., 2014; Nölke, 2018). Queer men are most commonly portrayed in both entertainment media (Avila-Saavedra, 2009) and commercial media (Nölke, 2018).

There are possible reasons for this disparity. First, gender is generally still portrayed in a skewed manner: there are more men in the media than women (Daalmans et al., 2017; Gallagher, 2014). Second, queer women die faster, because “Bury Your Gays” is most common among queer women (Birchmore & Kettrey, 2022; Bridges, 2018; Waggoner, 2018). Third, intimate relationships between two female characters are more often seen as something platonic (Russo, 2014). As an extension of this, women who sometimes form relationships with other women are portrayed not as queer, but as heteroflexible. This means relationships between two women are portrayed as a joke, a stage, a party trick, or as a way to attract male viewers (Annati & Ramsey, 2022; DeCeuninck & Dhoest, 2016; Diamond, 2005; Jackson & Gilbertson, 2009). This heteroflexible portrayal is not necessarily a bad thing, as it can also promote the beginning of a discovery of a queer identity (Symes, 2017), but often a heteroflexible storyline ends with a woman who affirms that she is straight and thus forms they are not a threat to the heterosexual order (Jackson & Gilbertson, 2009).

The representation of queer women is limited and the existing representation is not always positive. Something that could be improved is the way the appearances of queer women are shown. Ciasullo (2001) distinguishes three types of appearance: 1. the very feminine lipstick lesbian, 2. the ugly butch and 3. the everyday girl. These three types cause the appearance of queer women to be represented in a non-political way, so they lack depth. Instead, they fill a role in the mainstream. The lipstick lesbian was first received warmly, because it removed the previous stereotype of the angry, militant, butch lesbian who actually deep down wants to be a man (Dhaenens, 2013; Jackson & Gilbertson, 2009), but through lesbian chic, it changed them into an object for men to watch. Indeed, queer women are still marketed as fan service for men (Annati & Ramsey, 2022; Diamond, 2005; Jackson & Gilbertson, 2009; Nölke, 2018). The butch is still portrayed as a threat to heterosexuality: she is scary, dominant and not sexy (Ciasullo, 2001). If a butch is portrayed in a more positive way, then being a butch is a phase (Nölke, 2018). Finally, there is the everyday girl. The everyday girl conforms to the heterosexual order, which immediately portrays her as non-political, non-sexual and non-threatening (Dow, 2001; Hantzis & Lehr, 1994; McCarthy, 2001).

Ciasullo (2001) also emphasizes in her article that these three types of appearance create additional problems for women of colour. Women of colour are more likely to be seen as less attractive because they do not easily conform to white ideals of beauty. That is not the only problem when it comes to ethnic diversity: there is also a skewed picture. Research shows that most queer women on screen are white and that queer women of colour are more affected by racist stereotypes (Annati & Ramsey, 2022). This also creates negative consequences for fans of colour, because fans adopt the racist ideas (Pande & Moitra, 2017). On the other hand, queer women of colour are also presented in a conforming way, namely conforming to white culture (Pande & Moitra, 2017; Yue, 2014). This makes it difficult for fans of colour to express their own culture (Stanfill, 2019), because not all cultures benefit greatly from the Western “I’m Coming Out” narrative (Weber & Weeks, 2022).

According to Battles and Hilton-Morrow (2002) and Steiner et al. (1993), queer characters are more often represented in a private sphere. Topics such as love, sexuality, family and friendship are more common. The public sphere, such as the political side of being queer, are left out. But a content analysis of Dutch television by Daalmans and Ter Horst (2017) shows the opposite result. So it's interesting to hear where queer women see queer female characters.

As indicated earlier, the term 'queer women' is used instead of 'lesbians'. This is because there are more sexual identities than homosexuality. Yet homosexuality is most prevalent in media (Bond, 2015; Sender, 2011). Bisexuals and pansexuals are depicted less because they threaten binary ideas about identity. This is why bisexuality is often portrayed as “one or the other” (Allen, 2022). Bisexual women are still portrayed as prone to cheating (Diamond, 2005). Asexuals are almost completely invisible, or they are not taken seriously by the media (Chen, 2020). Most characters are cisgender (Nölke, 2018) and trans women who appear in the media are often victims of (sexual) violence (Abbott, 2022) or are portrayed as a threat to cis women (Gill-Peterson, 2023). There has been improvement in recent years, but several articles indicate that many improvements can still be made and argue for intersectionality (Annati & Ramsey, 2022; DeCeuninck & Dhoest, 2016; Rodriguez, 2019; Yue, 2014).

Based on the literature, the following research questions about respect were formulated: “What do queer women think of the proportion of female queer characters in entertainment media?”, “How do queer women know that a film or television series contains queer women?” and “How do queer women view female characters in different genres?”

2.3. Respect

Respect, on the other hand, relates precisely to the type and breadth of the roles in which the groups are portrayed in the media. Thus, it looks at the way in which a person of a group is portrayed in the media (Clark, 1972). Studies that look at how queer women appear in the media show that the queer community is still under-represented and limited in the roles in which they are portrayed (Waggoner, 2018; Woods & Hardman, 2022). Before the 1990s, queer characters were used in a negative way, linking homosexuality to immorality (Rodriguez, 2019). Often a storyline for a queer character ended in death, something that still occurs and is known as “Bury Your Gays” (Birchmore & Kettrey, 2022; Bridges, 2018; Waggoner, 2018).

Nowadays, the queer community is portrayed in a more heteronormative way to show that heterosexuality is the norm (Allen, 2022; Avila-Saavedra, 2009; Dhaenens, 2013; Marwick et al., 2014; Weber & Weeks, 2022). Thus, representation of queer characters must appear very standard, non-political and non-sexual: the characters must adhere to traditional values such as family, monogamy and stability (Avila-Saavedra, 2009), or they are portrayed as a victim to let see that it is easier to be cisgender and straight (Dhaenens, 2013; Rodriguez, 2019).

On the other hand, normalisation is seen as a positive thing. Dhoest and Simons (2011) criticize the idea that simple, standard queer representation is always bad representation. They say that it is wrong and oversimplified to claim that there is only one right way to represent the queer community. Viewers also acknowledge this by stating that even if they are not represented by some depictions of queer characters, that those queer characters can still be important to others (McInroy & Craig, 2017). Some studies show that viewers appreciate normalisation (Dhoest & Simons, 2011; Gomillion & Giuliano, 2011). While some viewers like a more abnormal queer representation (Sender, 2011), others even reject this “overkill” and “extreme” form of queer representation (Dhoest & Simons, 2011).

But what is normal? According to radical queer theorists, queer media that conform are immediately mainstream, but on the other hand, mainstream media can also show a unique subculture (Joyrich, 2022). The heteronormative normal and the queer abnormal can thus converge. Over the years, new ways of queer representation have emerged, such as queer normalcy, in which the abnormal aspect of queer identity is acknowledged rather than hidden (Vanlee et al., 2018), queer deconstruction, in which heteronormativity is parodied in the mainstream, queer reconstruction, which presents alternatives to heteronormativity, and queer resistance, which recognizes that heteronormativity is not easily overthrown, so instead of challenging it, the presence of queer characters is used to critique heteronormativity from within (Dhaenens, 2014).

It is still unknown how queer women themselves experience the representation in terms of respect. Therefore, the following research questions have been formulated: “How do queer women view stereotypical images of queer women in television and film?”, “What do queer women think of the intersectionality of representation?” and “To what extent do queer women feel that queer women are portrayed authentically in television and film?”

2.4. Identification

Depicting a group in the media is also important for members of the group. People can identify with the characters. Identification is defined as a process in which a viewer assumes the identity, goals and perspective of a fictional character (Cohen, 2001). Identification is believed to increase the influence of media because it can lead to more emotional involvement in how the story will be resolved and it can lead to more influence from the message (Eyal & Rubin, 2003). Identification is different from liking a character, imitating a character, or feeling sympathy from a character, as the viewer takes on the role of a character when identifying with the character. The viewer becomes absorbed in the content and then adopts the character's perspective (Cohen, 2001).

A study by Gomillion and Giuliano (2011) on the influence of role models on queer identity identifies two forms of identification: similarity and wishful. Similarity identification is defined as finding similarities with or idealising a media figure. This causes a viewer to live vicariously through their activities. Wishful identification occurs when a person wants to resemble a media figure because of the media figure's appealing qualities. Identification with a character can help develop an identity, because viewers can use the social reality and experiences of another to understand our identity (Erikson, 1968).

Representation of queer women is complex, which also leads to positive and negative consequences for viewers. These consequences affect the lives of the viewers. But people are not completely passive viewers. People actively use media to understand the world and to make sense of what they see (Baran & Davis, 2008; Carey, 2009). This active way of dealing with media is common in subcultures (Russo, 2017).

Research by Annati and Ramsey (2022) produced a remarkable result: their research into stereotyping and sexualised representation showed that lesbian viewers do not mind stereotypes. This contradicted literature on stereotyping, but Annati and Ramsey (2022) realised that respondents created their own media landscape. The respondents themselves searched for media created by the queer community itself. If stereotyping or jokes about queer are made in this kind of media, viewers are okay with it because they understand it is not portrayed in a negative way (Bond, 2015).

People are therefore very aware of what kind of media they watch and they find subcultural codes in the media (Bengry, 2009; Bridges, 2018). This is also reflected in the queer gaze (Pullen, 2016). Because queer representation had long been banned, instead of explicit representation, the queer community had symbolic representation. The queer gaze can thus see queer subtext in “straight” films and that also leads to identification with straight characters (Pullen, 2016). Lindner (2011) has written an analysis of how women are portrayed in films about women's football and how you can view this with a lesbian gaze, also because films about women's football mention many themes that are also relevant to queer women. As indicated earlier, identification helps with identity discovery (Erikson, 1968; Gomillion & Giuliano, 2011) and so the queer community uses straight characters to create and claim their identity. It is such a way of claiming mainstream culture (Lindner, 2011).

In the article by Russo (2014) about queer female fandom, a distinction is also made between subtext and maintext. Subtext consists of homoerotic elements and the discourse surrounding them. Maintext is the explicit queer representation. The boundary between subtext and maintext is not always clear (Russo, 2014). Queer female fandom consists largely of queer women and these queer interpretations stem from a combination of personal and political wishes (Russo, 2014, 2017). This makes the questions surrounding the representation of queer women more complex. Heteroflexibility means that not all women who form relationships with women are queer, but on the other hand, queer subtext means that “straight” women are seen as queer and sometimes fans are more enthusiastic about those characters than about explicit representation (Ng & Russo, 2017). Often these “straight” women are also seen as queer representation (McNicholas Smith, 2020a). This shows that queer representation is more complex than previously thought.

It is interesting to see how queer women experience identification with queer women in the media. Therefore, two research questions have been formulated: “How do queer women identify with queer women in film and television?” and “What do queer women think of non-explicit queer representation?”

[policemanofprincesspark]

I recently started reading more about psychology, and one point about parasocial relationships stood out: fans and stans often assume the object of their obsession is just as obsessed with them. You mentioning 1D getting involved with the bandana project reminded me of that. Because what if they didn’t know the deeper meaning? What if fans just gave them bracelets and they just wore them without thinking? So many other blogs i follow assume hl not only browses trending twitter tags, but follows tumblr and their blogs specifically. They’re special to us, but we’re a faceless mass to them. The more i read, the more i worry we’re seeing things where there aren’t.

The thing for me is that Louis said once on video that he "sees more than people think", he alludes to being on twitter fairly often, and he even said that he's joined fans' private DMs (I believe he said he does it under a burner account?). Harry also said something about fans being very smart about figuring things out, and he also referred to the "hiddies", which implies he does go online and see what fans are saying.

Imo, they had to be aware of certain fan projects when those projects gained a certain level of popularity, because fans would likely bring signs referring to it or talk about it to them, or at least the members of 1D would likely notice a sudden influx of people in the crowd wearing colored bandanas and wonder what's going on. I think it's very possible that they'd know about these projects, but... I do agree that them merely wearing one of the colored bandanas doesn't necessarily prove that they know of the project. You're right. It could just mean that a fan gave it to them. That's why you would probably want to sift through hours and hours of concert footage to see if you can find a moment where they might reference the project in some way. There is probably a ton of stuff we've just completely missed. But there's no way to tell if such a moment even exists unless you go through the work just to maybe find it.

Listen, I don't think the bandana project theory is the best theory. I wouldn't put it in my top 20 'Larry proofs' if I made a list of them. But I wanted to use that as an example because it was a good example of asking yourself the question: "Is Harry/Louis doing this thing a coincidence or not?". Really, it was just a quick example to explain what you would theoretically have to do for each piece of 'Larry proof' if you were to attempt to prove once and for all what the likelihood of Larry being real is.

Actually, I want to do something. Let me try to categorize, off the top of my head, the 'Larry proofs' we use. We have:

• Body Language Analysis

• Quotes/Things Harry and Louis/others around them say, and analyses on whether these quotes could allude to a relationship

• Strange coincidences [such as Louis potentially having the same laptop and wallpaper as the one in one of the pictures uploaded to the RBB&SBB official twitter account, or, again, Harry purchasing and wearing that dark blue bandana during the height of the Bandana Project and then continuing to wear it to this day (obviously it's a question of which coincidences are the strangest/least likely to be mere coincidences, and I think the first example with the laptop is less likely to be a coincidence than the bandana example, but that's all I can say)]

• Moments where they might have been 'caught' (such as the iconic "Titanic" moment or the grainy video in Wellington where Louis might have yelled "boyfriend" and then snuggled with Harry and kissed him, etc.)

And of course we have good ol' pattern recognition and gut instinct. All of this is all we have to go off of since we don't know Harry or Louis personally nor do we have access to their private lives.

[if-confessions]

Reader - sorry to those authors, but I really hate it when they put every single one of their posts in the general ‘interactive fiction’ tag. I end up blocking half the blogs that do it and scrolling right by the rest :/

Tumblr wilderness into action, where there is no real rule and the tagging "conventions" would probably not be followed anyway...

It is true that the tag is flooded with essentially everything barely related to Interactive Fiction nowadays, from questionably relevant asks to essentially shitpost polls.

With the #interactive fiction tag being the one-stop-for-all to find IF games*, it's not surprising some authors will tag everything this way to gain more followings or some sort of interaction***. In other terms, to stay relevant**. Even if that means flooding the tag with random stuff and burying other people's projects... *people use tags as a way to organise their posts, more than trying to be seen. **no shade to those authors doing this, it is a marketing strategy, even if a frustrating one for the targeted users. ***also not a guarantee to get interaction...

What do you think should be/not be allowed in the #interactive fiction tag? Should we have a consensus on a tagging etiquette? If so, how do we go at it?

Under the cut is my answer to the first question... so just me theoretically gatekeeping stuff because I can. And because no one will end up following those point, anyway.

What I think should be in there:

Project introductions (obviously) and teasers

Project updates (added content, change of status, etc...) and update teasers

Dev logs/periodical check in

Reviews (<- there's not enough of those)

Interactive Fiction resources (theory, history of the genre, gameplay systems, program resource lists [not tutorials, I would put that in #coding if or something], communities [discords, forums...])

Event announcements [Competitions, Jams, Award ceremonies...]

Interactive Fiction discourse (a.k.a. callout posts about community shenanigans, sometimes we need to be shown we are the black kettle)

Recommendations lists

Patreon/Ko-fi/Commission posts

What I think is irrelevantly tagged as interactive-fiction:

Asks in general (sorry, but we don't need anons proposing to characters...) save for the ones related to the categories above

Polls, same as for the asks. Unless it's directly related to above, nope, pass. Results of polls as well.

Just art posts (like portrait, settings, background, random doodles, etc...) that do not fall in any of the categories above UNLESS the project is a VN or asset heavy IF.

Inspo posts. Nope nope nope... That counts for playlists or pinterest-like mood boards* *unless it's character introductions, then see below

One like post about how much [coding/writing/marketing/other IF activity] is annoying/the worst/etc...

Those conga-line/tagging posts about personal questions

Organisations lists for tags/prompts/other pages, or FAQ

Honestly, the ask posts are the main ones flooding the tag. That's probably the most annoying one out there.

What I am on the fence about:

Character introductions: does this count as a teaser? Honestly, probably more in the irrelevant pile.

UI screenshots: kind of an update, also kind of superfluous...

Fan art stuff: from the author, I'd say no... but from the fandom, yeah...

Snippets/Prompts: eeeeehhhhh... does it count as like a teaser for the writing to expect in the game? or bonus content? except non-canon shit (that goes in the nope pile)

Bonus content.

I'm probably missing some types of posts... but there it is.

Do you have to follow this? No. I don't make the rules about what you should tag or how you should tag it. Do you think this is horseshit? Comment on the post (or send an ask)

[cher-writes]

Playground Love | Klaus Hargreeves X Reader (16+)

A/N: I've always felt like Klaus had a lot of selfish lovers at some point in his life. People who didn't really love him but his masochistic tendencies made him go back to them time and time again. This one-shot is kinda on the perspective of such a lover. Hopefully you'll enjoy.

Word count: 1.3k

CW: Insinuation of Self-harm, Suicide attempts, Substance use and Sex.

Art work by: @meamme1 , Thank you so much for letting me use your gorgeous piece!

Follow the artist's insta here (or search @meamme1 on insta).

Special thanks to my beautiful friend @crisis-of-joy for being my benevolent editor.

~Yet my hands are shaking

I feel my body remain,

Time's no matter, I'm on fire

On the playground, love~

It was hard to love Klaus. But you didn’t really love him, did you?

Let’s not discount your efforts. You tried at first; perfunctory, desultory, trivial tries. And maybe you did love him, in some of those moments when he blew cigarette smoke into your open mouth in the early hours of a July hell, or when he ardently kissed your cold feet warm in the late hours of a November void.

How could you not have loved him when he cleaned the vomit, spit and snot off your face with his bare hands after you drank a bit too much, not being able to bear the sheer helplessness of January rain?

When you took him in your tart mouth after days of him sweating and trembling for some humanly unknowable reason, under the window sill as the April dusk soaked through the lifeless buildings, how could he not have loved you too?

Maybe that’s what love is, those fleeting, inconsequential moments. But deep down you both knew that there was no love between the two of you. Those moments only stuck like leaves on a tree baring itself for the fast approaching winter.

You knew, and you pretended he did too.

He came and went as he pleased, habitually whimsical. Always looking a bit different than the time before, or as much as you could care to remember. His face faded from your memory every time he left. You let him ‘cause there was no reason for you to keep him on a leash.

You two weren’t close like that.

He talked. He told you all kinds of things about himself, most of which you didn’t listen to and the parts that you did, you don’t remember. Maybe that’s why he talked to you so much, he sensed your absence.

Although you were merciful to him, never really telling him anything substantial about yourself. You didn’t need to, there was no reason to.

You two weren’t close like that.

But he knew you liked his warm hands on your hips under the blanket following a cup of hot chocolate.

You don’t really remember how you met him. It’s as if he existed in your life since the beginning of cruel time but that wasn’t the case. You can clearly remember a time before him but exactly when he appeared out of thin air, you didn’t bother to keep track of.

Then why was that, you wondered, as his tongue set fire to your loin on miserable festive evenings, you let him in your life?

Then why was that, you tried to remember, as his throat pulsed under your crude grip on hollow autumn daybreaks, you let him in yourself?

Then why was that, you furrowed your brows contemplating as his hot, panting body pressed you against the wall on doleful Friday nights, you let him stick around?

It wasn’t love, that much you knew. It wasn’t kindness either, there was no rationale for you to be kind to him. And you were beyond the capabilities to conjure pity. Then why?

As he licked the disgusting maple syrup from the side of your mouth on one unbearable Tuesday morning, it occurred to you; about the invisible and invincible ties of the universe which bestowed his company onto you. Some intangible force, some abstract fate, some obscure theory about the atoms made it so that he had to exist in your vicinity every now and then, and you didn’t have it in you to defy God.

You couldn’t defy God, but you did defy compassion on multiple occasions.

Some nights when he couldn’t close those green, exhausted eyes of his with all the strength in his supernatural world, or on the afternoons when he clutched those absurd dog-tags round his neck lying on the cold bathroom floor, you defied all of your theoretical humanity as you simply just looked away. You never knew why he did what he did. He told you, maybe, but you don’t know that either.

His existence didn’t make sense to you, it was as if a glitch in the logic behind the cosmic mechanics.

It wasn't about what he was, you weren’t oblivious to his paranormal origin. You wouldn’t say it was about who he was either.

In all honesty, you didn’t really know who he was...is. Everytime he came around he’d become a different “who.”

Rather it was the very normal about him that sent you thinking in circles. It was the very normal about him that you couldn’t align with logic, you couldn’t put in perspective.

And he warped your perception when he bit your earlobe. He toyed with your logic when he let your fingers dig a bit too deep in his flesh. He loved playing Guns N’ Roses when he put his head on your lap, and maybe he loved you too, it was impossible for you to know that, implausible for you to try.

Though there was one thing that you knew about him with indubitable certainty, he wasn't afraid of death. You’d even go on to say he had a rare fascination towards it, the type of fascination star-crossed lovers seem to have. You knew that ‘cause you saw it. He tried and tired and you stood, looking over, as his sole, soul-less witness.

He never succeeded and at times, it felt to you as if even God hated him. What kind of God doesn't grant His creation even the least bit of relief? So you played God, helping him crush his violet pills when he couldn't get up.

So you played God, letting him bleed on your kitchen counter as long as he cleaned up after himself and discarded the razor blades safely.

He’d sway in your balcony afterwards, dance to some music only the doomed could hear. He’d smile affectionately at you when he caught you looking at him through your half-asleep eyes.

“Mein egoistischer Liebhaber,” he whispered once in your ears while uncut blissful rapture fell upon you, while you pathetically crumbled under him. You didn’t know what he meant, whether it even was something or just his fervid groans taking the shape of foreign words for the amusement of the same God.

Yet those words, you recall their sound, clear as an azure lake, distinct as his emerald irises.

Their meaning didn’t ignite curiosity in you, you still don’t know what they mean. Just the way he said them felt familiar to you. And for that reason alone, you remembered them.

You remembered them every time he looked into your eyes with his dilated pupils after you denied him entry to your apartment in the dead of the night because someone else’s naked body laid across your battered bed.

“I'll crash on the couch, please...”

“No.”

“I won't disturb anyone, I promise!”

“I said no.”

But you let him in tonight, and he’s talking about something, lying beside you as your phone lets you know it’s 4am.

He’s talking about something incoherent again; some apocalypse, some catastrophe, all equally meaningless to you. He talks and talks and let’s you know, finally after a long painful soliloquy, that he has to go away again and maybe this time, he won’t return. You understood that part only, the rest brushes off your skin like mere carpet dust.

Does it bother you? You can’t tell. He says he wants to be loved tonight, very well then.

You give him what he wants. You kiss him on his parched mouth, you take him in like you’re parched of him. His honeydew skin dissolves on your tongue, his fingers wander on your bitter body with endless love. Love...what was that again?

You let him come inside of you. Let a part of him linger in you just for a bit. He kisses you on the temple. You could feel him quivering, holding onto you, tight enough to leave bruises.

He says he’ll miss you.

He asks you to turn around, face him while falling asleep.

And you shouldn’t cry but you are.

It is hard to love Klaus. And you don’t really love him...do you?

[meet-me-in-the-kitchen]

Haylor Thoughts Masterpost

Just Haylor things, just because.

Last updated: 11/22/2021

I ran out of space, here’s the second part to this post for more updated content

Harry’s Songs about Taylor

Taylor’s Songs about Harry

Haylor Kissing in Times Square, NYE 2013 (a new angle showing their faces!!!)

Taylor Walking By Harry at the 2015 BBMAs (Clip)

Why I Think ‘Ready For It’ is About Harry

Masterpost of All Haylor Hangouts (Post "Break-Up" in Public Eye)

Harry Fixing Taylor’s Scarf in a Lobby (cute, lol)

Haylor Communicating Through Cryptic Lyrics from Other Artists' Songs

Timeline for Every Song Written on Fine Line

The Haylor Dynamic Explained

Taylor Wearing Harry's Shirts

The Infamous Attic H & T Would Sneak Into (ft. Ben Winston)

Stevie Nicks Gave Harry and Taylor Exclusive Necklaces

The Haylor Ring

Why If I Could Fly is Haylor

When Haylor Started Dating (Connor Kennedy/Timeline Info) -- Our Story Begins in New York

Sweet Disposition, Riptide, and Harry <\3

Harry and Taylor's Duet of Purple Rain at the 2013 VMAs Afterparty

Bitter Posts Taylor Liked on Socials After Yachtgate (Hendall)

H + T at Jingle Ball 2019

Respectful Discourse on Joe Alwyn/Taylor Swift

Why Only Angel is About Taylor, Not Kendall

Happily & Jealousy for Connor Kennedy

Could Cruel Summer Be About Harry Styles? (Chain Post)

Details on Calvin Harris' Song Olé + How it Touches on the Haylor/Tayvin Dynamic in 2015

Chain Post on Calvin Harris & Haylor

If You Swap 'Creature' with 'Disposition,' Sweet Creature has Some Serious Haylor Parallels

Sweet Creature Theoretical Discourse / II

High Chance that H&T Got Olivia Together

Why ‘Death By a Thousand Cuts” is About Harry (in depth analysis!)

Folklore

The Major Exile Theory Explaining Everything

Addition to the Exile theory (British Crown reference)

Fascinating Theory on How the 'Escapism Chapter' Relates to Haylor

If You Think the lakes Sounds Like 1989--That's Because it Does

Is Harry Styles Behind the Pseudonym, William Bowery?

Taylor Swift's Interview on Exile

Cardigan Footnotes and How They're Similar to Harry's Adore You Monologue @ Tiny Desk (Clip is linked)

Why It's Strange Taylor's Putting out Footnotes

Home and Haylor

Exile is Not Fiction

This is Me Trying Main Theory (Lyrical & Historical Haylor Parallels)

August and One Direction’s Summer Love Parallels

Interpreting Taylor's Interview (Ships passing in the night could be referring to Jaylor & Hamille)

This is Me Trying Theory--Alternately Why it Could Be Harry's Perspective

Haylor at the Lake District in 2012 (Windmere)

The Lakes, Hoax, and Haylor

Why The Lakes Has a Good Chance of Being Haylor

Taylor’s Response to TBSL

Exile is About Jealous Harry at the 2015 BBMAs, Response to Woman

Two Ghosts x August Parallel

Betty x FTDT Parallel

So it Goes x The 1 Parallel

Every Song on folklore About Harry

Exile is also a Response to MMITH (Proof Haylor Broke Up in a Hallway?)

Illicit Affairs is About Haylor

Taylor Mimicking Harry’s Falling Music Video for Cardigan

Taylor Indirectly Apologizing for Calvin (The 1)

My Theory on How the Teenage Love Triangle Parallels Haylor (James vs James Dean)

Falling x Cardigan GIFs (omg)

Cardigan lyrical parallel with Olivia (HS) and Clean (TS)

Cardigan Referencing Haylor Park Outing (High Line, NYC)

More Cardigan x 1989 References

Mirrorball is Taylor’s Response to Sign of the Times

1989

You Are in Love is About Haylor (Photographical Evidence)

part one , addition to part one

Taylor Referencing OOTW in her Maid of Honour Speech

Proof Haylor was Together in 2014

Taylor Talking About Harry Being the Person She’d Expect to Interrupt Her Wedding

Taylor Wearing Harry’s Shirt (2014)

Haylor Secretly Together for T’s 24th Birthday and into 2014

Harry’s Post Indicating their Reunion on Same Day ‘This Love’ Was Written

Picture of H+T at VSFS 2014 Afterparty (Taylor performed Style)

At 3:12 of OOTW MV, Taylor Wears Harry’s Initials on the Side of Her Wrist

Haylor After Meeting At Caleb Followill’s Bday Party (2015)

How You Get the Girl is About How Harry Got Taylor Back

Miscellaneous (1D, Lover, Fine Line, etc.):

Pretty In-Depth Analysis on WITW and Haylor Songs from Fine Line (with pics XD)

Why Walking in the Wind is About Taylor (With Photographical Evidence)

Common Sense on if Haylor Was Together

Why Afterglow, Fine Line, FTDT, etc. Are Haylor AF

Why ‘Sign of the Times’ + Its MV May Be Haylor

Why Golden Parallels the IKYWT MV (the music video’s monologue) and why the song is about Taylor

Explanation on Why Riptide is Significant to Haylor + Sweet Disposition

Furious Love at First Glance

Two Ghosts Unreleased MV

Olivia is About Taylor

For Those Who Live Under the Delusion Haylor Was for PR to Feel Better About Themselves

Short Fan Edit of Haylor Moments (Taylor talks about Harry)

Another Fan Edit of Haylor Moments (All You Had to Do Was Stay)

Anne Twist Posts a Cover of Cornelia Street (2020) Fun Fact: she still has a picture of Gemma, her, and Taylor’s sock clad feet on December of 2012 on her Instagram.

Early Days

List of Videos on Their Relationship Timeline (up to 2017)

Harry Looking for Taylor at Jingle Ball

Harry Staring Shamelessly at Taylor’s Ass

Harry Touching Taylor’s Arm in Front of Paparazzi

Harry’s Multiple Posts About Taylor Being His ‘Winding Wheel’ Decoded

Lyrical Parallels in their Music

The Last Time & Where Do Broken Hearts Go

Clean & Olivia

Wonderland & FTDT

Afterglow x Fine Line Parallel

From the Dining Table

@taylorswift

Also: check my haylor tag. It fills up with content I don’t always put on here :)

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep13: How to Get Away With Cheating in the Card Olympics

It’s been a little while since Pegasus made a card that screwed us years after it was developed...and so it’s time for it to happen again. Good ol Pegasus, screwing us all and not even knowing he’s doing it.

First off, it took me until this episode to realize that Leon and Zigfried are German and Leon is playing a Grimm Brother’s deck. I guess I didn’t notice before now because Leon was hiding his identity. But now that I know his deck is because he’s just German it’s like...well OK. That’s kind of cute. Better than that time they had the American play a deck filled with guns.

And that actually...fully explains why they are all dressed old timey. I didn’t pick up on it until just now...they’re referencing old ass fairy tales. But wtv, I still like my reaching theories of why Zigfried dresses like...that.

PS, my twitter just notified me that lots of people are getting a ‘Hime Haircut’, which is exactly the doo that Zigfried wears this season with the cropped side bangs. And like...are we sure? I see Kpop wearing it and Tik Tok kids wearing wigs but...I have yet to see a Hime in the wild. Course I haven’t gone outside in like a year so...maybe tens of thousands of people really did do a Hime Haircut during the Quarantine.

But, damn it, I decided to look at some photos, and a bunch of them looked pretty bad, but a couple looked pretty dope, and now I’m a little bit tempted to get a Hime...but I feel like it took a decade to get out of my bangs phase and like...Do I need two layers of bangs? I have naturally straight hair, I could do this, this haircut was made for me, but...

I just don’t know if I should get a haircut that looks like I’m an anime cosplayer when I can’t back it up. Nope. Cannot get this haircut. I know this haircut was made for teenagers or artists in their 30′s, and literally no one else, but no, this will be a mistake just like the side bangs I gave myself in 2006.

(looks over at scissors)

(read more under the cut)

(get it? Cut?)

Leon recalls that his brother very nicely gave him a card, and he’s so excited to finally do any activity involving his crazy ass family, that he just blindly does it.

This entire episode is about Yami not doing a hellscape when he witnesses cheating, and like...it is S5...it’s been a little while since anyone’s done a real good cheat on him, and he opened the door to darkness, and they got devoured by their own Tamagachi. It’s been a while.

And like the curse of Episode 13 was just a theory I had--but this particular Episode 13 is probably the most tame of all the 13′s (and yet, the most un-tame of this arc, which is a pretty chill arc, overall)

Yet...while this episode still fits in with their universe because the Kaiba’s are very proud so they can’t admit their duel disk has a flaw and therefore can’t forfeit the game, it kind of stretches the imagination a bit for the sake of the plot. Straight up we have a LOT of characters in this arc and they all just stood there and watched it happened.

It could have been also because this is like...televised...that no one wants to start throwing this little boy off the nearest blimp. I just wish that was addressed in the episode, other than “listen...Kaiba must allow this card to be played...or all his Duel Disks are lies.”

His Duel Disk almost caused the end of planet Earth a few weeks back, so I think it’s fine. I think this is a negligible problem to have when your disk shoots projectiles out of each end and has sharp folding edges in the shape of a blade--almost attempting to slice your face off every time you wave that thing around.

Yes, he’s trying to restore his reputation after the whole Dartz thing...but this is like...not that bad in the scale of things that have happened in the past several seasons. Maybe it’s just the last straw that broke the camels back here? One thing too far--’your disk played a broke card, Kaiba, I am pulling my investments and I refuse to go to your theme parks. I was here when you blew up that island. I was here when your company was literally bought out by the illluminati...but if that duel disk can’t play cards correctly--we’re done here.’ And TBH...that’s a very Yugioh mentality to have.

Like remember that time that Elon musk threw a brick at one of his new weird looking cars and the windshield cracked? But he was like “Oh...that was just a...listen the windshields don’t shatter, you saw nothing.” and still released the car anyway? Was kind of reminded of that.

Now...he didn’t actually go into the Dev room, we’ll go into how the hell he got this card, but first, a visit to the Kaiba Dev room.

OOOOOOooooooooh

That’s so bright!

It reminds me of how in the 90′s, the only real thing I knew to do on my computer was change the colors of the UI, so I just used the ugliest ass UI known to man for my family’s computers. I hope these computers have a mouse that leaves a tail behind and I hope that mouse is in the shape of a flying sparkling dragon.

Anyway, Duke speaks what’s on our minds:

Meanwhile, Pegasus, watching this happen over a glass of wine from inside his bathtub at Castle Pegasus, takes one very long sip while sinking into a pile of bubbles.

Seto at first is like “I literally own this tournament so thanks for losing? I don’t know why you threw it out into the trash but thanks?” But Zigfried pressured him so hard that everyone on Earth would judge his ass, and tried so hard to change the definition of what cheating even is, that Seto relented almost as if to shut Zigfried the hell up.

Zigfried explained that, technically, it’s still reads as a legal card on the disk and isn’t reaaally against the rules. Even though the rules say it’s against the rules--what are rules anyway?

Thankfully we have the King of “I dictate what the rules are AKA the rules of the universe, which I would show you, I just don’t feel like it right now, and I’m a little worried about opening that Pandora’s box, but I clearly know the rules of this card game, as stated on this Home Depot plaque that Seto gave me after I won the last tourney.”

Leon gets pretty upset about this--not so much screwing Seto Kaiba, but over the fact his brother stole his only chance at trying to beat Yugi Muto fair and square. So, trying to retain what little card honor he has left, Leon tries to self sabotage so everyone can just go the hell home.

OK so...do you think he put a floppy disk into the paper card? Like straight up how did he do that? Feel free to post your theories because like...how do you hack a paper card? Like do we even have a canon explanation of what these cards are or what they are made out of and how they theoretically work?

Anyway, now that they’ve spent a good portion of this episode discussing if this card should or should not be played, and the ethics and philosophy surrounding that, we find out that none of this matters because Zigfried was actually just stalling.

(He hacked the card so it had a virus like straight up how did he DO that without making a new card?)

Huh.

Y’all, what if I could just delete Google?

Can you imagine?

Like I know this is a kid’s show so it follows kid’s show logic and I will absolutely allow this ridiculous master plan and I will not question it, but think with me for a sec:

What if you could just delete Disney?

Damn. That’s some Y2K scare tactics propaganda right there. That’s some good YA dystopian fiction stuff.

Yo is Zigfried the good guy? He’s not, but if this were a YA novel he would be, right? Good on him.

I...do not know how the logic in Zigfried’s brain works, but if someone deleted all the files in my collaborators company and showed up at my front door and was like “I heard you were looking for a new collaborator?” I’d stick him face first into a blank paper card.

Which is, logically, the next step to Zigfried’s plan that no one has bothered to tell him yet. You just don’t mess with Pegasus, especially after all the stuff he went though with getting murdered by Mai, and Dartz showing up, he’d be so pissed right now. He might not be technically magical anymore--but it’s clear after last season that he’s still magical enough. This is a man who’s let out into the wild maybe a couple of scary cards--but hell knows how many are buried in his huge ass castle just waiting to do a murder.

This is just Zigfried hassling a hornet and the hornets nest is like...right there.

And so next episode we are going to...destroy the card? Hell, next episode might be entirely a card game and I might only have 2 caps.

Anyway, just letting you know that I typed this last night, and then had dreams that I got a Hime Haircut and hella loved it, woke up at 5:30 AM thinking about that haircut, and have since been just...

...I mean I shouldn’t do it...I cannot give myself unironic Von Schroeder hair...

...

...but what if it’s dope though?

(and here’s the link to read these from the beginning in chrono order from S1. Wish I categorized in seasons but alas I did not have that forsight back when I thought there were only 3 seasons of Yugioh total. I have since learned.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[pocket-void]

Some Stuff About Marcus Pt.1

Alright, I’m finally gonna talk about Marcus in more depth for a lil bit because honestly the more I think about him the more I want to talk about him. So I’m gonna do just that! Both for fun and to get some stuff out of my creative system. ^///^

So let’s start with the man himself, shall we?

Marcus

Marcus is my personal version of the mysterious Orange side, and he’s more of an OC than a theory and I just really enjoy talking about him sometimes. So I do! I talk more about what he represents in this post (there’s also other miscellaneous scraps of info about him in the orange side tag), this one is gonna focus more on his exact relationship with each of the other sides (I always welcome more specific asks if you ever wanna know anything else! Since I’m very rambly and believe me when I say that I have answers to basically everything >///<). These are longer than I thought so I’m splitting it up...but if you’re still here, then strap in folks! u///u

Roman

Marcus doesn’t dislike Roman, but he’s not a big fan of him either. Theoretically they could have a better relationship but it’s hindered by a perception of Marcus that someone else had set a long time ago. (We’ll get to that)

One of the bigger reasons why Marcus and Roman don’t quite get along is simply due to their completely opposite levels of self respect. Roman is insecure and often unsure about his accomplishments and how others feel about him, while Marcus is too sure about his skills and how others perceive him. There are clear flaws to both.

In Marcus’ case, it’s made him incredibly stubborn and bitter as a result of being seen as a problem and not being able to do anything. It’s very difficult to convince him he’s wrong, and while he’s not dumb enough to think he’s right about everything, he gets more aggressive than necessary in the face of opposition at times. But more than anything Marcus is honest. He’s blunt and isn’t afraid of just stating how he feels to people, and Roman’s reluctance to do so really bugs him at times. In fact, he’s sometimes angry for him.

The fact that simple phrases can shatter Roman’s entire ego drives Marcus up walls, because if he were in his position he’d probably deck someone in the face right then and there. Being insulted? Getting what he fears most spat at him like venom? Marcus would never stand for that. Beyond that he’s also mad for the people who care about Roman. Why can’t he believe them? Can’t he see how much he’s cared about? How worried people are? Does he really? Marcus thinks that distrust and insecurity feels like an insult to them.

The thing about Marcus is that he’s been through being branded bad and evil. He’s still the bad guy in a couple of ways. He’ll play the bad guy if he has to. He’s over it, though not quite over it as he’d like to be... In a way, he’s also envious of Roman. Roman is important. The others do actually love him. And deep down, Marcus also respects the things he does and doesn’t want him to be crippled by his self doubt because what the two have in common is passion. A drive and determination to do the things they want, and to achieve the goals they aim for. It’s just a shame that their relationship is soured by their general perceptions of each other.

Marcus also just isn’t big on theatrics, but that’s because he uh, can’t see. He likes to make fun of Roman just like anybody else in casual conversation and only ever refers to him as “Red”, “Princey”, or on occasion “Ruby”. He jokingly takes Roman’s threats seriously when they quip, and while they never actually get into fights, Roman is aware that Marcus will actually throw down.

At the end of the day, Marcus wants Roman to consider himself his own hero. He doesn’t understand Roman’s need to keep up an image because he’s never had an image to live up to, let alone anyone who'd look to him for inspiration. Whether Roman likes him or not doesn’t really matter to him, he doesn’t care about people who’ve made up their minds about him and are too set in certain ways of thinking.

Which is hypocrisy at its finest, but we’re not there yet.

Janus

Right off the bat, they do not get along. Which you might find kind of odd, considering they’re both under the umbrella of “dark side”. The truth is, they’re tentative colleagues at best. Hilariously Logan probably gets along with Janus better than Marcus does, and there are a couple very fair reasons behind this.

On the one hand, they both agree on doing things for the “self” (Which in their case is c!Thomas). They both agree that the self should be the most important person in one’s life, and will do whatever it takes to protect it. However, the biggest difference between them is the methods they go about doing so. And it’s here that Marcus’ righteous anger often clashes harshly with Janus’ need for self preservation. Marcus doesn’t lie, he doesn’t see the need to. If he wants something, he’ll do it. If he believes something, he’ll say it. He does it because he knows he’s right, and that’s what matters. Obviously this would cause a lot of problems in real life if you actually are that blunt 24/7, and in those cases Janus has to reign him in quite a bit.

Marcus is fundamentally reckless, brash, and prone to getting carried away if not kept in check, which makes him kind of a danger to Thomas’ wellbeing at times. The thing is, both of them are aware of this. Which is actually why Marcus isn’t as spiteful about stepping down as he could be. He knows that he can do more harm than good if he ever steps out of bounds. This won’t stop him from feeling like his input would infinitely accelerate certain debates, and on a personal level he does still feel like he has the right to fight for that recognition, but he doesn’t because he’s not dumb enough to actively cause harm to others for the sake of himself. It’s not what he wants. What he will and often does do however, is do things that end with him getting hurt in the end. Maybe the reason he disagrees with Janus so much is because his own sense of self preservation is surprisingly poor.

A mildly exaggerated analogy I like to think about is that: If under any circumstance the two of them would have to plot revenge, Janus would focus more on personal safety and Marcus would focus more on personal vindication. Marcus has zero qualms about actually throwing hands, no matter the resulting physical consequence (If his scars were any indication) which Janus would 100% be against. Imagine the consequences of a physical confrontation! Absolutely not. Snake man would prefer more subtle and manipulative tactics, and would probably prefer to frame someone without being implicated himself if possible. They usually compromise, but always butt heads one way or another.

In casual conversation, Marcus is more snarky to Janus than anything. They trade sarcastic remarks often and tend to be a lil snippy, but they often agree on similar points? But also insist that they don’t get along, which is pretty funny. Marcus calls Janus “Yellow” or “Snake”, and sometimes a few yellow flower names like “Tansy” or “Marigold”.

Remus

Would it come as a surprise if I said these two actually get along ok? Think about it: They’re both blunt, forthcoming with their ideas (As wild as Remus’ are), and are at times prone to violence. They’re both seen as “bad” and both have experienced being forcefully repressed one way or another. They kind of just vibe on a similar plane of existence if I’m honest with you. More than that however, both are relatively accepting of themselves, Remus more so than Marcus actually. There are some things Orange unfortunately still has to come to terms with.

On a casual level, they probably can do some pretty reckless and dumb things together. Marcus respects anybody with self confidence really, and the way Remus just owns being the garbage man he is definitely gets a pass in his book. It doesn’t mean they never disagree though. In a lot of ways, Marcus is still tied to logic, and Remus’ chaotic nature isn’t always suited to how he works. They conflict the most when it’s time to put the chips down and actually get things done. Remus totally does his best to bug the hell out of him too, much to his chagrin. He makes it pretty clear how he feels about it, but the duke isn’t fazed. Tackle the blind man, he dares you.

Marcus isn’t exactly good with creative input, it’s not his function. In fact, he himself is actually locked in a very specific type of world view from his experiences over the years. It’s not intentional, he just tends to grow irrational when he gets too heated. Sometimes he forgets to take his hand out of the fires that burn him, and it inevitably comes at a detriment to himself. Remus has the capacity to make him incredibly furious under bad circumstances, and if they aren’t careful he might actually act upon dangerous suggestions that Remus just casually suggests. If Remus is the voice behind intrusive thoughts, Marcus is the impulse that actually acts upon them. He won’t, obviously, but spite and anger can push people to do rash things. They both know better than that of course, but it’s a possibility that will never go away.

Marcus calls Remus “Green”, though he also refers to him by odd green things sometimes like “moss” or “seaweed”. I like to imagine the two of them going off and smashing up random things to blow off steam/just for fun. But that’s just me. u///u

---

If you’re still reading then thank you??? This is honestly more self indulgent than anything, but I just have way too much stuff I could talk about and it needs to go somewhere akjbefkaefk.

I shall talk about the rest in Part 2 perhaps. o///o

[theajaheira]

sldkfj hey this is dumb i was the anon talking about willow from earlier and i was gonna respond in an ask but it turns out i have a lot! of feelings about this topic! and i didn’t want to send you a bunch of asks bc when that happens to me i get anxiety. so!

that’s a really fair point about xander! as the only one of the og scoobies to not have (or gain) Powers later on, i do think moments where he gets to be the hero are important. i really wish he had been utilized more as a strategist? anyway. honestly a big portion of my issues with xander being the one to give buffy cpr is that it in the context of the episode it feels like he’s being. idk. rewarded? he handles buffy’s rejection of him… poorly, both with her, and later with willow.i don’t really mind this - he’s a 16 year old, and i don’t think that reaction was necessarily out of character for him - but when he gets to step in at the end and save buffy (especially when it’s put against buffy’s love interest, who can’t), it feels like he’s being rewarded, yknow? and that lack of consequences for the way he treats buffy (esp. re: angel) is something we see more of in s2 (which, especially after innocence, feels so incredibly mean-spirited), so i kinda balk at it on instinct.

my main argument for willow giving her cpr is that we’ve seen willow really gain self-confidence since ‘welcome to the hellmouth’. “you think i want to go to the dance with you and watch you wish you were at the dance with her? […] you should know better.” she’s standing up for herself! and while she’ll get a chance to do something Big for the plot like this in becoming 2, her restoring angel’s soul feels kind of undercut by the fact that buffy still has to kill him. so imo willow giving buffy cpr in prophecy girl would have been a really nice way to highlight the way she’s gaining the confidence to act on her own.

giles also would have been good, but honestly kinda love the idea of jenny giving her cpr? so much of giles’s development in the early seasons is him realizing that what the council says is best for the slayer is not necessarily what is best for buffy (and then having to grapple with the fall out of caring about her as a daughter and a slayer). so i think if giles and jenny had gone after her, giles would have found her and been devastated and very guilty, but like… this was what happened. the prophecy had said the slayer would die, and he couldn’t find a way around it, so it came to pass, and that’s it.

but jenny’s character has always been about challenging and expanding traditional understandings of magic, and integrating modern knowledge into old beliefs. in that same vein, i don’t think jenny would really see buffy as The Slayer yet - in canon giles had only told her like, a few hours prior? - so where giles sees the outcome of a prophecy he failed to stop, she sees a teenager that could maybe still be saved, and acts accordingly.

i also think this would add an interesting wrinkle to giles and jenny’s relationship in s2. like, 'you saved someone i care about a lot and i’m profoundly grateful’ but also 'you had to step in and do my job for me, and i feel weird and inadequate because of it’

sldkfj sorry this was so long apparently i have a lot of Hot Takes about prophecy girl and s1 in general.

(submitted by @boghierophant, who tumblr refuses to let me tag)

going to respond to these EXCELLENT thoughts under the cut!

oh you are ABSOLUTELY correct that within canon it would honestly have been better as Anyone But Xander like nvlkshs i hope i did convey that point in my original ask. and i do kinda like the thought of like .... from xander’s pov, willow becoming this Indisputably Important person to buffy in the same way he wanted to be? like especially within the context of the fucking awful way he treated willow all through the first season, because watching her pine over him and him dismiss and belittle her was so damn painful. so thank you for that thought because it honestly would’ve changed the entire thematic impact of xander’s behavior -- it’s a representation of the fact that if you treat girls as objects of desire, you’re never going to actually Get The Girl. i like that as a message.

and !!!!!! jenny!!!! i think that could also be a good idea because she’s someone who’s just TOTALLY distant from the scoobies, so there could be that feeling from giles of “she doesn’t know what she’s doing, and she only defied prophecy because she’s an outsider who doesn’t understand the role of a watcher the way i do.” so season two giles and jenny might take on a super different bend of mingled combativeness and budding attraction -- like kind of a slow burn that’s got more of the angry energy of i robot, you jane than the gentle sweetness of early-s2 dorky calendiles. lots of reboot comics energy where jenny sees buffy as a teenager and giles thinks that this is a dangerous way to look at the situation (because in a lot of ways he’s desensitized himself to the horror of the situation).

to some degree my frustration with the narrative comes from xander just .... theoretically continually being allowed to Be Terrible to the women in his life and face literally no consequences. he cheats on cordelia, he guilts buffy, he strings willow along until he finds better options, and i cannot even TALK about anya without absolutely flipping my lid. but i love him so much in the reboot comics -- they took some of the more fascinating aspects of his character (his insecurity, his self-hatred, his feeling that he’s the “useless one”) and played THOSE up instead of leaning into toxic masculinity. a narrative where xander’s allowed to, like, actually not be a dick is something that always has a soft spot in my heart, so like ... i like that it’s xander (in theory) but i hate that it’s xander (in practice, bc that potential never gets utilized within tv canon) and you make some fucking good points about it not being xander that i very much enjoy.

[fursasaida]

this is totes random sorry pls feel free to ignore but is there a 'STATE' that's completely independent from like elected government, heads of state, partisan politics etc.. like what's this state that some ppl talk abt that doesn't include the elected president? e.g."korea and france have greater deference to state." is there polisci literature/concept on this? what is this STATE that doesn't include the president or CDC head nominated by said president? im sorry im just so ignorant of polisci

This is not at all an ignorant question! This is a huge issue people argue about--maybe less in poli sci than in other social sciences, because poli sci has gone so completely up its own quantitative ass that it has abandoned what should be its obvious theoretical domain and so other disciplines have kind of taken over this kind of question. There are full professors who cannot answer this question (I know because some of them are on my listservs).

So: what is the state. Seriously, really, there is no one widely accepted answer to this. So I’ll go through a few of them under the cut for you. This ended up being really long because it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately, so the simplest, shortest answer to your question is the first one.

1. Institutions

In this view, “the state” means the institutions and bureaucracy that stay on when political leadership changes. The political leadership is called either “the regime” when we want to imply it’s evil or “the administration” or “the government” when we don’t. (I think this terminology is silly and “the regime” should mean the whole arrangement plus some other things--as in a regime of power--without negative or positive implications, but I don’t make the rules.)

Obviously these two things are not firewalled apart. Elected officials can alter the state through policy and/or direct reforms (creating, merging, or eliminating existing state organizations), and the existing state can constrain what elected officials can do through anything from ethics laws to bureaucratic foot-dragging. (In the US context, when we talk about “political appointees,” we mean high-level officials in “the state” that get appointed by elected leaders, but they take over organizations generally staffed by people who have come up through the bureaucracy and are supposed to be “apolitical,” i.e. just there to do a technical/bureaucratic job. So that’s another way that the two blur.) A great example of this would be what happened with the US’s Syria policy under Trump. Trump (”the administration”) wanted to pull out of Syria. The Pentagon, The State Department, various diplomatic branches, etc. (”the state”) did not. The state succeeded in putting him off executing his desired policy for years, even though as the Commander In Chief Trump in theory had really extensive authority to do whatever he wanted. Eventually he exercised that authority and state officials found themselves scrambling madly to try and salvage something of their preferred policy, which is how the US military ended up with this ridiculous non-presence in NE Syria. Another example would be the attempt to take down the USPS.

That’s why partisan politics and elected leaders are excluded from “the state” in this view; “the state” forms the organizational containers that those movements and individuals fill, and the structures they seek to act on or act from. You can think of it like the ground they stand on. This doesn’t have to mean it is itself “apolitical,” since the terrain has implications for everyone standing on it, but it is the object or delivery channel of politics, not politics itself. (Again I don’t agree with this, but it’s what you’re seeing reflected in the discourse you’re talking about.)

When people go on about “the deep state” they’re espousing a conspiratorial version of this view, where they think the ~real behind-the-scenes power lies in these institutions and the long-term bureaucrats who (sometimes) staff and run them. Definitely some power does lie there, but the conspiracists overweigh this into an Elders of Zion type thing.

2. A sovereign entity.

This is more about distinguishing states from other kinds of political entities, and as a result it’s less concerned with fine distinctions about what is and isn’t “political.” The idea is that there are lots of political structures and systems in the world (anything from tribal law to international associations like NATO) but not all of them are states. States are distinguished from other things by virtue of sovereignty. The classic definition (from Max Weber) of sovereignty is “a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within a clearly bounded territory.” In other words, a state’s police, military, national guard, security forces, etc. have a license to use violence within its borders that no one else has--anyone else engaging in violence is a criminal. It is these groups’ status as “agents of the state” that grants them this license. The bordered, yes/no territorial nature of this status--Turkish security forces have no mandate to act in Greece and vice versa--is also distinctive; fixed, defined, cartographic borders are not necessarily a given. In this view, all power and indeed all law is ultimately founded in violence (enforcement), so what matters is who/what can use force with impunity. (When the state’s monopoly on force is challenged in its territory--e.g., Hizballah making war on Israel without the Lebanese army, the original Zapatistas forming a breakaway region during the Mexican Civil War, or any occupation by a foreign force--then the state’s sovereignty is “weakened” or “under attack,” etc.)

Lots of people have criticized and elaborated on this definition. I don’t want to go on forever about all the critiques that exist, but basically in reality, sovereignty is not a yes/no binary where either you have it completely or you don’t have it at all. Things tend to be more mixed and blurry. It also has more dimensions: two important examples are 1) controlling and disposing of the territory itself (exploiting natural resources, moving people around, etc.), and 2) recognition. In many cases, the difference between a state and a non-state is whether other states recognize it as such, i.e. act like it is one. So for example, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus exercises sovereignty and has a state bureaucracy, elections, etc., but because it is not recognized by ~the international community~ it isn’t “a state.” (This isn’t just semantics; it may seem arbitrary when you just think about what goes on inside the TRNC, but when its citizens try to emigrate, for example, they encounter very specific, concrete problems on this basis--e.g., their passports will not be recognized as valid.)

I find this more useful personally, especially because it doesn’t assume a liberal democratic state--it can apply to a dictatorship or a monarchy or whatever you like. But in practice, i.e. how people use it, I still think this approach is frequently too worried about pinning down differences that aren’t always useful. On the one hand, I wrote my BA thesis about how Hamas and Hizballah aren’t states (it was common for a while to refer to them as “states within states”) while also not just being political parties, terrorist organizations, service providers, or any of the other things they get tagged with, precisely because of the way they relate to the Palestinian and Lebanese states. This is worth understanding because it helps explain their political projects and their successes. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s very helpful to go around arguing that, say, ISIS was a state (or state-like) and the Houthis are not because of some detail of how they think/thought about territory, or courts, or bureaucracy. Like what do you get out of making that distinction. If you want to argue that a tribal council somewhere is “the state” for its context I think that’s fine depending on what you’re trying to get at. It all depends on what kind of question you want to answer, and on what scale.

3. There’s no such thing.

This view recognizes that the state is a salad bowl full of different organizations, individuals, ideologies, etc. that do not actually all work in lockstep together or have the same goals. To talk about “the state” is to reinforce the fallacy of unified power and cooperation. Instead, we should recognize that actors within states have their own agendas, institutional cultures, power struggles, etc., and that whatever the state does is the outcome of 1) these internal dynamics, 2) the ability of different external actors (from citizens to foreign governments) to play on/appeal to/push back against different pieces of the state, and 3) the interactions of 1 and 2.

This to me is common sense. You just have to be careful not to take it too far. We can acknowledge that the state is internally differentiated/not any one single thing without going so far away from what most people understand about their worlds. There’s no point saying “there’s no such thing as a state” when people still have to pay taxes.

4. "The state effect,” or: there both is and is not any such thing

This idea, put forward by Tim Mitchell, is my favorite. It is also the subtlest, and a little tricky to explain, but I think it’s the most useful.

This view steps back and looks at all the endless, elaborate debates about every possible nicety of “stateness” and says: perhaps we are asking the wrong question here. Maybe it doesn’t matter what the state is. Maybe it matters what the state seems to be; how it seems to be that; and what “resources of power” are generated by these impressions.

This is the tricky explanation part, so bear with me for a few paragraphs.

Where exactly do we draw the line between “the state” and “civil society”? Are NGOs and nonprofits part of the state? What if they get government funding? Especially in a neoliberal context, when so much policymaking is done through contractors, consultants, tax breaks, etc., are these kinds of organizations not carrying out the state’s agenda, consciously or otherwise? Okay, that’s tough, let’s try something easier: individual people and families aren’t the state. But if a household depends on an income from state employment, does that not affect their politics and their actions in society? Is a person “part of the state” in one building and not in another? How do we account for the way off-duty cops behave, for example, then? You can do this same exercise for “the economy” or any of the other things that are supposedly separate things/domains that the state manages. How can, e.g., the American economy be separate from the state when the state prints and guarantees the currency, sets interest rates, enforces contracts, and generally sets the terms on which the economy can exist? (Going back to your original question, you could probably also do this same exercise re: political parties, or partisanship.)

The point here is not that absolutely everything is actually the state. The point is also not that there is no state. It’s that there are not firm lines. Amazon may be the state when it builds systems for the Pentagon even though it is also, clearly, a private company and not part of the state’s institutions or subject to the same kinds of political controls that state institutions are. Similarly, the state itself is not one smooth solid object (as in #3). But it seems obvious, common sense, that “the economy” is a thing, just as “public health” is a thing, etc., and both of these things are objects of state management/governance/power.

This makes it easy for political leadership to make claims on the basis of these other things as separate “objects.” I.e., “we need to take drastic action to save the economy.” So the impression of these divisions can be used to justify or legitimate state action. You can see this super clearly in the current coronavirus situation. How many times have we been told the US has to “reopen” for “the economy,” and how many times has it been pointed out that the government could just take its own economic measures to allow people to stay home--because “the economy” is not some separate object that works by itself. (I myself had to explain to a friend that the government couldn’t just switch the economy back on by “reopening.” I think we underestimate how powerful these conceptual divisions really are in people’s understanding of how the world works.)

So, therefore, “the state” is the effect of ideas and practices that make things that political leaders and institutions do seem like they form a freestanding, separate structure, a thing, that we call “the state.” It is the ensemble of all these pieces (as noted in #3), and said pieces often include things that are generally thought of as not the state; these lines between state/nonstate shift all the time. What matters is not where the line is at any given moment but what the particular configuration allows state power (including the consideration of force from #2 and the structural concerns from #1) to do.

The problem I have with this is that it doesn’t really account for state capacity very well, but that’s for another day because I haven’t figured it out via paper-writing yet.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

0 MEANS USING THE WEB AS A PLATFORM DIDN'T LIVE MUCH PAST THE FIRST CONFERENCE

This phrase began with musicians, who perform at night. Most are service businesses—restaurants, barbershops, plumbers, and so on. 0 conference would presumably be full of geeks, right? This side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Getting work makes him a successful actor, but he doesn't only become an actor when he's successful. Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to search the web. He was like Michael Jordan. But the first time around it was co-opted by Sun, and we got Java applets. Albrecht Durer did the same thing that makes everyone else want the stock of successful startups is that they're not. But there is also huge source of implicit tags that they ignore: the text within web links. The test of any investment is the ratio of return to risk, if both were lower.

I advised startups never to let anyone fly under them, meaning never to let any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. Let's start with a promising question and get nowhere. Unfortunately, the question is a complex one. Especially if it meant independence for my native land, hacking. Another reason people don't work on big things, you seem to have been influenced by the Chinese example. Bertrand Russell wrote in a letter in 1912: Hitherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved the big generalizations, which were all wrong, so that few people with exact minds have taken up the subject. Originally, yes, there does seem to be several categories of cuts: things I got wrong, things that seem obvious in retrospect. All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning, like a skateboard. Should you add x feature?

As an example of this rule; if you assume that knowledge can be represented as a list of predicate logic expressions whose arguments represent abstract concepts, you'll have a lot in the calculus class, but I know that when it comes to empathy are practically solipsists. 0 have in common. And yet if I had to write in school are not only not essays, they're one of the angels in his Baptism of Christ. And so hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work. Does Web 2. In the best case—if you're really organized—if you're really organized—you're just writing it down. I found that what the teacher wanted us to do was pretend that the story had really taken place, and to know how to calculate time and space complexity and about Turing completeness.

What made it possible for small organizations to succeed in some domain, you have to compete with other local barbers. I read an interview with Joe Kraus, the co-founder of Excite. You can use the cram schools to show you where most of the 1970s. No doubt it was a description of Google? How to Start a Startup I advised startups never to let any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. 7x a year, whereas a company that grows at 5% a week will 4 years later be making $7900 a month, which is one of those things that seem obvious in retrospect. It does seem to me very important to be able to get a day job that's closely related to your real work. Number two, research must be substantial—and as anyone who has written a PhD dissertation knows, the way to approach the current philosophical tradition may be neither to get lost in pointless speculations like Berkeley, nor to shut them down like Wittgenstein, but to get the rest you have sit through a movie.

The goal he announces in the Metaphysics was partly that he set off with contradictory aims: to explore the most abstract ideas, guided by the assumption that it was a waste of time? It's not considered insulting to say that life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is bullshit. I was a kid I was always being told to look at it. It's not just a barbershop whose founders were unusually lucky and hard-working. Web 2. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to discover them because they're useless, let's try to discover them because they're useful. In theory this sort of hill-climbing could get a startup into trouble. He has noticed that theoretical knowledge is often acquired for its own sake, out of curiosity, one of the first digital computers, Rod Brooks wrote, programs written for them usually did not work. Most businesses are tightly constrained in a.

And so began the study of ancient texts had such prestige that it remained the backbone of education until the late 19th century. Basically, what Ajax means is Javascript now works. As credentials are superseded by performance, a similar role is the best source of rapid change. Once you dilute a startup with ordinary office workers—with type-B procrastinating, no matter how much you're getting done. Most don't discover anything that remarkable, but some through luck or the efforts of their founders ended up growing very fast, we wouldn't need a separate word for startups, and in particular the most successful startups, or they'll be out of business and the people would be interested in painting. They work well enough in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard. Musicians often seem to work in record stores. By which one defended it. Why are they so hot to invest in photo-sharing apps, rather than for any practical need. But unfortunately that was not the conclusion Aristotle's successors derived from works like the Metaphysics.

The reason credentials have such prestige is that for so long the large organizations in a market can come close. The Airbeds just won the first poll among all the YC startups in their batch by a landslide. By gradually chipping away at the abuse of credentials, you could probably make them more airtight. The next best, for startups that aren't charging initially, is active users. Perhaps not everyone can make an equally dramatic mark on the world; I don't know if Plato or Aristotle were the first to ask any of the hackers I know write programs. The people who want a deep understanding of what you're doing. Other times nothing seems interesting. And so instead of correcting the problem Aristotle discovered by falling into it—that you can easily get lost if you talk too loosely about very abstract ideas—they continued to fall into place. I've used both these excuses at one time or another. We didn't draw any conclusions.

But the two phenomena rapidly fused to produce a principle that now seems obvious: paying energetic young people market rates, and getting correspondingly high performance from them. For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. They're interrupt-driven, and soon you are too. But schools change slower than scholarship: the study of ancient texts is a valid field for scholarship, why not start the type with the most potential? It's like having a vacuum cleaner hooked up to your imagination. Why not as past-due notices are always saying do it now? This was particularly true in consulting, law, and finance, where it led to the phenomenon of yuppies. That was as far as I'd gotten at the time. Only a tiny fraction are startups. To some extent you have to adjust the angle just right: you have to take these cycles into account, because they're affected by how you react to them. 6x 7% 33.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Abby Kirigin, and Anton van Straaten for putting up with me.

[the-hs-etaverse]

Hey I think I’m just gonna take a hot minute here and ramble about this Etaverse thing that my blog is ostensibly about because ranting into the void has helped my creative process before and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t now. Okay, that was a lot of words without any commas or periods or anything and okay shut up let’s stay on topic

So I wrote this fanfic that I finished up some time back (for the record, I absolutely despise the cover art, it’s terrible). It’s called Homestuck Eta, cuz it’s not Homestuck 2. Homestuck^2 is Homestuck 2. It’s supposed to be like a follow-up to the Epilogues, except that I got like three plot points wrong, so it’s not even canon to that. Yeah, basically, I inadvertently deviated from canon, but I’m too obstinate to change those minor plot points. Also I like the plot point that caused it to deviate so there’s that.

Okay, that’s out of the way. Well, I’m also really not happy with the way that Homestuck Eta turned out. I mean I definitely like it but it could absolutely be better. I made a couple continuity errors in the fic that I wanna change, and I wanna change the method I used for swearing censorship, and some other minor stuff. I’m also displeased with the way that I handled Dirk, and his planetary invasion in general, cuz I didn’t portray him being as big of a threat that he probably should have been? I don’t know? Anyway, there’s that. I despise going back into already published works and changing parts of them, retcons like that tick me off. But I do want to make those changes, and I also want to add on this little epilogue comic of sorts. So I absolutely want to put the epilogue in the AO3, but I’m concerned, do I go back and edit the fic just for clarity’s sake and all? I mean, the original text would still be up on FFN. So I’m not super opposed to doing some minor edits for continuity and such within the fic. But there’s also a couple bigger changes that I’m contemplating making? I don’t really think I should change any of the scenes that I’m not overly happy with, cuz they’re over and done and changing them could have an impact on the story at large.

So that afterword is pending. The script is written, but I just need to draw the dang thing. I will, one of these days!

Okay, but I’m also a crazy person, because there’s a lot more that I wanna do with this AU. There’s a whole bunch of little side stories that I wanna make or have made already that slot neatly into the canon. I posted one of them already, it’s called Curiosity and the Cat. I like that one. There’s also some other minor stories set after Homestuck Eta that I wanna write, about what happens in the timelines afterwards. The ones about Aradia are my personal favourite :3

My thought regarding those stories is to make the Homestuck-slotted ones into one anthology, and the Eta-followup ones into another anthology. Curiosity and the Cat will stand alone cuz it’s already posted. I guess all I’m gonna have to do regarding these then is just post them, and if I write or finish more, post them too. And keep them in the anthologies.

All right, that’s out of the way. So what makes me an even crazier person is that there are two much more major stories that I wanna make. The first one, the less major one, is about the Beforus ancestors (the ancendances). I already posted a long rant about that version of Kanaya on here. (It turned out surprisingly well imo :3) But yeah, what I’ve been writing for that is basically a journal, the one that Beforus!Vriska kept. It’s not gonna cover all the ancendances, of course, tragically; she won’t meet them all. So I might have to write more stuff for the rest of them, to cover all the lore properly.

And the most major one is a 48-player session, the one that Dirk started, the one that creates Beforus. Here, lemme just copy-paste the thing I wrote about it earlier:

Back in October, I saw something interesting on the MSPA Wiki. Apparently, Hussie joked that a 48-player Squiddles session created the trolls’ universe(s). The statement set the gears in my head spinning: what was the 48-player session that brought Beforus about like? Who were the players? What was their planet like? How many lived, and how many died?

Of course, this was a ridiculous project for me to set out on. I do not have free time, let alone enough to make a campaign of this scope. BUT THAT’S NEVER STOPPED ME BEFORE!!!

Further proof that I am insane: I have already created 48 OCs for this campaign and assigned classpects and planets to them all (some might be changed in the future). I have a general idea of the personalities of almost all of them, designs for like half of them, in-depth thoughts on the plotlines of a handful of them, and lots of other knowledge of their symbolism and everything. I also have like 11 fan-classes that I’ve given a fair amount of thought to, which are (mostly) not that similar to the existing ones, I hope, and for which I have godtier designs. I think this session would be best suited for a MSPFA.

However, I have little free time, I am a known procrastinator, and I am a maladaptive perfectionist. This is the perfect combination for creating major stories and such that end up stagnating and dying after months.

I absolutely want to publish this thing, and draw things for it, and all that sort of thing. But this is, frankly, an absolutely ridiculous undertaking. Honestly, I need help. That’s why I made this blog, so I could reel in help from people (and also to post extensively about both memes and headcanons). So, like... help. Please.

Uh, oh, right, there are all the things I post here about how troll anatomy works and how long god-tier players age and stuff. That’s not really related to any story, but it’s all the fascinating underpinnings, so all those theoreticals are staying on here, I know that for sure. It’s all under the etaccurate tag. Okay, everything for the Etaverse is under that tag. I think I’ll make a masterpost for these theories at some point, just to collect everything in one place.

Anyway, if you guys have any advice for me, please let me know! I could really use some ^w^ also sorry about being so long-winded, I may be blunt but I am not by any means direct

[magespuddle]

(updated) The Classes comparison while Classpecting (part 1: the general list of traits, Witch, Thief, Knight, Prince, Heir, Sylph)

*this post is a translation of my work on VK. Other translations will be tagged appropriately*

It has been a long time since one particular Mage of Blood has promised to make a comparison post for Classes, but what else to do on a quarantine? So here we are. I am going to compare those roles which cause the most confusion and mistakes during "on the field" Classpecting, since otherwise the post would be enomorous. Thus if you want to know more about differences, not mentioned here, you can send me an ask, so that I add the info you needed.

First of all, I should list all the points of comparison I will be using, so that no one gets confused in the terminology here. But there is an important detail: despite Classes being divided into groups under these points, each of the groups is actually a spectrum of traits for different archetypes. For instance, there is one called "Dependant Classes" (explained further in the post). It contains six Classes, while each of them have a different level of dependance, from the lowest to the highest. It is still comfortable to place them into one group or the other, but we should always remember that subtle traits make Classes uneven despite being under the same label. 

Аlmost all of Classes' traits can be used as branching points for comparison, some of them can be derived from the graph below.

The full list of traits and explanation goes like this:

1. Dependance-Independance — how strong the need in allies is for the Class to perform its function.

2. Activity-Passivity — these terms are quite well-known, but they actually include a vast variety of traits, which are often different for the same Class under the label of "passive" or "active". Therefore, I've cut it into distinctive parts; in the context of our current subject this trait determines whether the Class performs its function directly, is the deliver of the action (active), or indirectly, through other person's hands (passive). For example, the active Prince destroys the Aspect or via Aspect, causing the damage with his own hands, while the passive Bard is more like a catalizator and an initiator for others to break the Aspect.

3. Action-Interaction — can be mistaken with Dependance ones, but these determine whether the Class is occupied with influencing the environment or the people around him accirdingly. Corresponds with A, I and E, S Bartle's types (explained further).

4. Deficiency-Abundance of the Aspect — kind of a vague characteristic, since the topic of Aspect amount in the family system and individually is quite complicated, won't fit into this post for sure... Well, to put Deficiency-Abundance simply, it determines whether the Class is "hungry" for the Aspect and willing to put his hands on it or completely full and willing to share accordingly. 

5. Practice-Theory — practical Classes are more intuitive and prefer to act and improvise over planning first, they are better at working with their Aspect, than understanding how it works; theoretical Classes are the opposite: they absolutely have to understand how the Aspect works, but not necessarily be good at using it. Most practical Classes are Deficiency ones, theoretical - Abundance ones.

6. Basic skillness in the Aspect — I am using the word "basic", because, as I've previously stated, everything exists on a spectrum as well as many things are dynamic and changeable. The skillness in any sphere changes with time, but many people are used to think that, for example, the Knight is skilled in the Aspect, while the Bard isn't, which is not always true, though this point is still needed for the differentiation.

7. Class type — all Classes can be divided into the ones who distort, change the Aspect in any way, affect its shape (the Changing group: the Prince, the Bard, the Knight, the Page, the Witch and the Heir) and the ones who do the opposite with keeping the Aspect as it is, multiplying it, sharing it around (the Saving group: the Maid, the Sylph, the Thief, the Rogue, the Mage and the Seer). To not mistake the Changing type for the shared function of the Witch and the Heir, I will be referring to the latter as Manipulators in this post.

8. System function — can be mistaken with the individual Class function. The system function determines the overall solo effect of the Class on the Aspect balance in the session (system), which is based not so much on the personal skills as on the amount of the Aspect in the system and in the Class we are talking about, on the relationship of the Class with his Aspect. System function goes like this:

Classes that increase the Aspect greatly: Creating Classes (the Maid and the Sylph), the Page

Classes that increase the Aspect slightly: the Muse (only if we are talking about solo impact!), the Heir, the Seer, the Knight

Classes that decrease the Aspect slightly: the Lord (solo), the Mage, the Witch (changing the part of the Aspect limits the ways it can express itself), the Rogue (via dispersing it around)

Classes that decrease the Aspect greatly: Destroying Classes (the Bard and the Prince), the Thief (via concentrating it on himself)

I need to mention that despite me writing about Muses and Lords here, people in average circumstances do not take up these roles and are not born with them as titles. It is a whole another topic, too big for this post anyway.

9. Egoism (labelled egocentrism on the graph) — how much the Class prioritizes his own well-being over other people's ones. Does not always correlate with the over-the-top self-esteem.

10. The Bartle's player type — the Bartle's Classification describes four types of game players based on their relationship with other players and gaming environment. For the Classes these types are used in pairs for each Class, primary type and secondary. I won't be giving the in-depth explanation of each type, since they can be found online, only the combos for the Classes as following:

Strategists (S): SS (the Muse), SE (the Bard), SI (the Sylph), SA (the Seer)

Effectors (E): ES (the Prince), EI (the Maid), EA (the Knight)

Innovators (I): IS (the Mage), IE (the Rogue), IA (the Page)

Aces (A): AS (the Witch), AE (the Thief), AI (the Heir), АА (the Lord)

11. Overall weight of the Aspect — a number, signifying the sum of the Aspect already on Class'es hands and the Aspect he can get his hands on potentially. It describes "the weight" of Classes and the shift of the balance in Aspect pairs among inversion pairs, which in its turn influences the subjective heavyness of the role as well as the final Master Class of the person. In addition, this plays a role in the collections of roles one posesses in their Classpect profile as there are distinct formulas for the Classes' combos within related Aspects (topic for another day, though). For the inversion pairs the numbers are:

2:0 = Prince:Sylph, Bard:Maid, Mage:Heir

1:1 = Witch:Seer, Knight:Rogue, Thief:Page

12. Class category — the good-old function pairs (Relocators, Destroyers, Creators, etc.).

13. Relationship with the Aspect — some Classes coexist happily with the Aspect and it likes them back (harmonious Classes), while others don't like it that much and it returns the favor (disharmonious ones). If we make a spectrum of harmony, it would go like this:

Harmony <- +3 (Maids and Sylphs), +2 (Knights and Thieves), +1 (Heirs ans Seers); Muse

Disharmony -> -1 (Mages and Witches), -2 (Rogues and Pages), -3 (Bards and Princes); Lord

14. Inversion — some roles are impossible to differentiate without looking at their inverses. The inverse of the role is created by taking the opposite by function Class to the one you are starting with and another Aspect paired with the starting one to combine them into an inverse role. For example: the Prince of Void, the opposite Class would be Sylph and the Aspect - Light; this gives us an inversion of the Sylph of Light.

Inversion pairs for the Classes: Maid-Bard, Thief-Page, Mage-Heir, Witch-Seer, Knight-Rogue, Prince-Sylph; Muse and Lord are more analogous, than inverted.

!UPDATE STARTS!

15. Aspect source — this has stuff to do with the family system, inheritance, Activity/Passivity, but to put it simply: it is where the Class finds the Aspect to perform its function on/with. The Aspect may come from the family system of the individual (Internal) or from the people around them (External). The divide goes like this:

Internal source: Sylph, Seer, Bard, Page, Knight, Heir

External source: Maid, Mage, Prince, Thief, Rogue, Mage

!UPDATE ENDS!

So finally let's dive in the comparisons themselves. *You have no idea, how painful it is for me to rewrite the whole post after the device shut down without saving my almost done project. Anyway…* I will be highlighting only the key differences since some Classes are so far apart, that is is too hard to mix them up. 

1. Thief-Witch-Heir

Shared: all Classes are Independant, Action-oriented, Deficient, they posess the qualities of the Ace. The Heir and the Witch get mixed beacuse of thw difficulties in defining Activity, the Thief and the Heir — because of the Hunger for the Aspect, the Witch and the Thief — because of the Egoism.

Different: contrary to the Thief and the Witch, the Heir is a more Independant, Egoistic Passive Class, that Slightly increases the Aspect. What is more, he has lesser Overall weight, because the Heir doesn't attract the Aspect as much as the Thief and the Witch is more Abundant. In addition, this Class posesses the qualities of the Innovator. Unlike the Strategist Witch, the Heir is Harmonious with his own Aspect and Disharmonious with the inverted one. Apart from the Thief, there is no "hardest, fastest, strongest of them all" logic for Heirs in the Aspect. Not to mention, that overall the Heir is softer to the people around. He is just minding his own thing, without meddling with others.

Contrary to the Witch, the Thief is a more Basically skilled, Saving type Relocation Class, that Greatly decreases the Aspect. He is Harmonious with his own Aspect and Disharmonious with the inverted one (but usually nonetheless he is positive towards both), posesses the qualities of the Effector. In addition, the Witch is quite unpredictable and tries to bend the Aspect to her rules when she finds something she doesn't like.

Unlike the both Heir and Witch, the Thief has a remarkable Hunger for the Aspect, is impulsive. While the first two feel and behave as part of the group and care for others (the Heir is overall friendly, the Witch has a soft spot for a close circle of friends), the last one is self-centered and drops the team as soon as there is nothing for him to get. What is more, the Relocation takes the full transporting of the Aspect from one object/place to another, while the Manipulation needs at least one object and the Aspect isn't erased completely.

2. Thief-Knight-Sylph

Shared: all Classes are highly Basically skilled and Harmonious with their own Aspect. They get mixed up because of the perfectionism, that stems from different reasons for each Class.

Different: contrary to the Thief and the Sylph, the Knight is a Changing type Yielding Class. He is less Egoistic and his Overall weight is smaller, because of the lack of the Aspect attraction. His perfectionism is the result of the low self-confidence and high demands and standards he has set himself. The Knight is very good in the Aspect, not for the glory of being known as "the best", but to justify this in his own eyes. Therefore, he is not bragging about his achievements, quite the opposite — he is constantly loathing his excellent job, thinking of it as something hideous and "not good enough". Though likely you won't hear this from the Knight, since keeping his facade of competence is very important to him. In addition, they usually care specifically for the close circle of friends and do not play saviours with the random people just for the sake of it. Unlike the Thief, the Knight is more Disharmonious with the inverted Aspect, because the Rogues are not as compliant with their element as the Pages.

Contrary to the Knight, the Sylph is a Passive, Interaction-oriented, Abundant, Strategist-Innovator Creator Class. His system function is Greatly increasing the Aspect. He is waaaaaaay more Disharmonious with the inverted Aspect, while in the own Aspect the Sylph is not as much a perfectionist as an appreciation seeker. Thus the Sylph is going to meddle even with the unfamiliar people and show off his skills so that everyone would know how useful and precious he is. Alas, once the appreciation has been got, the mastering of the Aspect skills is no longer a goal for the Sylph. What for, anyway? Usually Sylphs are absolutely confident in their competence and they are not afraid to rub it in your face.

Unlike the Sylph, the Thief is a more Independant, Action-oriented, Deficient, Active Relocation Ace-Effector Class, that Greatly decreases the Aspect. He is less Disharmonious with his inverted Aspect and is more objective while bragging about his own Aspect achievements. The level of skillness is less valuable to the Thief than the quantity of the Aspect on hand. It is kind of like "the bigger — the better" logic. And as has been stated above, he is not as altruistic.

3. Witch-Knight-Prince

Shared: all Classes are Active, Deficient, Changing type. The Knight is here, because Witches and realized Princes often get Classpected as such (but only developed and realized Princes: Classpecting a decompensated Prince as a Knight is, well… not very well; you'll understand why).

Different: contrary to the Witch and the Prince, the Knight is more Basically skilled in the Aspect and the least Egoistic from the three. He is Slightly increasing the Aspect and is Harmonious in his own one, though more Deficient, while Disharmonious with the inverted one. What is more, unlike the Prince, this Class posesses the qualities of the Ace. Apart from the Witch, the Knight is usually more "noble", lawful and disciplined, while the latter is rebellious and flexible.

Compared to the Witch, the Prince is a more Egoistic, Dependant, Interaction-oriented, less Basically skilled Destroyer Class, that Greatly decreases the Aspect. He posesses the qualities of the Effector. While the Witch is prone to drop her playthings half the way to the goal and move onto another stuff, the Prince finishes the job due to the Sylph inverse. Unlike the Knight and the Witch, the Prince influences broad masses of people and doesn't limit himself with a tiny circle of friends. He is very Disharmonious with his own Aspect, sometimes even hateful towards it.

Contrary to the Knight and the Prince, the Witch is a more Independant, average in Basic skillness and Egoism Manipulator Class. Both the Prince and the Knight have a lower self-esteem and a higher perfectionism, than her, but the first one overcompensates with Egocentrism and the second one is convinced he is a loser in his Aspect despite all the evidence of the opposite. All in all, bragging and manipulating are more prominent in Princes and Witches.

4. Witch-Sylph

Shared: both Classes are average in Egoism, posess the qualities of the Strategists.

Different: the main problem comes from the difficulty of understanding the Creation and the Manipulation functions. The only difference is that the Witch needs to have access to the source of the Aspect to both make it stronger or weaker, while the Sylph can get the Aspect seemingly from the thin air, but afterwards can't put it away. In addition to that, unlike the Sylph, the Witch is a more Independant, Action-oriented, Changing type, Deficient Active Class and is more likely to leave her "toys", while the Sylph sticks like glue, is an Interaction-oriented, Saving type, Abundant, filled to the brim with the Aspect, Passive Class. The Witch has a lower Basic skillness, but just because it is measured among other Practical Classes, while the Sylph is a highly Basically skilled Theoretic. The system function of the first one is Slightly decreasing the Aspect and is more interested in mastering her skills (qualities of the Ace), has a higher self-esteem, whether the second one Greatly increases it and seeks social appreciation (qualities of the Strategist), has a lower self-esteem that is overcompensated to the size of arrogance. What is also important, the Witch is Disharmonious with the own Aspect and Harmonious with the inverted one, while the Sylph loves his own Aspect and hates the inverted one.

Part 2

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

Fic author ask meme

haha so @veliseraptor​ tagged me literally months ago, as in so long ago I have no idea when it actually was, and I didn’t get all my answers typed up until...now. actually a lot of them were typed up a few months ago and then I finally finished this yesterday on the plane home. no, I don’t know why either

Author Name: 100indecisions on AO3

Fandoms You Write For: it's pretty much all Loki at the moment and has been for the last several years. I've written for other fandoms in the past and I have others on my WIP list, but yeah, it's like 95% Loki.

Where You Post: everything is on AO3, and I do mean "everything" because I get obsessive about that sort of thing. I do still have an FFN account under ladymoriel and most of my fics are reposted there, although none of my most recent fics are because I haven't gotten around to digging up cover images for them. also FFN sucks but I crave attention/validation and there are still some people who only use FFN, so I'll get around to it at some point.

Most Popular One-Shot: for some reason “the state of my head” has 1,157 kudos on AO3, so I guess it would be that one.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: technically “the adventures of tiny Loki and Thor (and friends),” because it’s a multi-chapter fic (boy is it ever) and it has 1,020 kudos, but if we’re talking actual planned fic it would be “the kindness of strangers” at 623.

Favorite Story You Wrote: man, I don’t know. I’m partial to “I am a time bomb ticking away the hours to blow your world apart” because I like my headcanon and I think I structured it well, and “all this that is more than a wish is a memory” gets points for being the longest thing I’ve actually finished. but honestly I don’t know that I have a single favorite.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: haha well I'm sure there's been more than one, but if we're talking about the fic I was most nervous to post, I think that honor would go to my Grandthorki fic "I will kiss you till your breath is found," which is the most explicit AND most fucked-up fic I've written so far. I was nervous about...so many things with that one.

How Do You Pick Your Titles: probably 99% of them are song lyrics. sometimes I'll start with a specific song that's relevant to the fic itself in some way, but I also have a whole list of song lyrics that sound like good titles to me whether the rest of the song has anything to do with the subject of the fic. often I'll come up with a good lyric early in the process, just like "oh yeah I've had this hanging around in my list for ages and it works here"; otherwise, once I've finished or nearly finished a fic (or much earlier, actually, if I'm obsessing over an aspect of writing it that is...not actually writing, which happens a lot), if I still don't have a title I read through my whole list and make a much shorter list of titles that seem to fit this fic. if nothing from there seems just right, I’ll go hunting through my iTunes library and then Google for semi-relevant song lyrics. on occasion, though, the title comes first or otherwise shapes the direction of the fic, like with "I will kiss you till your breath is found"--I had a vague idea of what I might want to do, but it was very vague and I hadn't committed to it, and then I just happened to listen to some Sufjan Stevens and went "heyyyyy I know exactly what to do and it's terrible and I'm gonna do it, I have a title now, I have to do it"

Do You Outline: it depends on the fic. for long ones, at a minimum I'll write a bulleted list of plot points I need to hit, which often ends up being basically two or three pages of a zero draft that I then struggle to turn into actual prose...and then I often re-do the outline at least once or twice as I go along so I can compress it into something more useful that fits on one page and I can cross stuff out as I go. (if a list can’t fit on one page/view, there’s basically no way I can hold all of it in my head at once.) I often end up with shorter lists of scenes I still need to write and specific things to hit during revisions, too. for short fics it's not really necessary, although I often do still write up something similar if I've let it drag out over way too much time and I can't keep straight what I wanted to do with it. (don't be me.)

How Many of Your Stories are complete: welllll, as a rule I don't post WIPs because I know myself well enough to know that that way lies several different kinds of madness, so in general, my only completed fics are what's up on AO3, and everything there is complete. in practice that's not 100% true because I'm very bad at deadlines and I have a few different fics where I couldn't finish in time and I either posted the first chunk of the fic that still functioned as a self-contained story even if it wasn't the full story I'd planned to write, with the intention of properly finishing it later, or I did the same thing but worse because the part I posted was...not really a complete story. in my defense I've only done the latter a couple times, and in the case of "going down to nowhere" I really thought I'd be posting the rest soon because it was all written, it was just extremely rough, and for various reasons I still haven't gotten around to revising and posting the remaining 80% of the fic. (as far as the opposite issue goes, I have 0 finished fics that I haven't posted anywhere, because I'm too obsessive about being complete to do anything else. I think I do have one old, extremely short, very bad Lost fic on FFN that I never reposted to AO3 because I decided it sucked...and if we're being completely technical about it, I have some stories I wrote as a little kid that are technically fanfic because they featured licensed characters, but nobody wants to see those. all the other old stuff I haven't posted, including at least two Neopets fics, never got finished and that's the only reason I never posted them anywhere.)  

In-Progress: uhhhh. well, this made me realize my posted WIP list is out of date, not because I've finished anything on it but because I have MULTIPLE short fics that were supposed to be QUICK so I figured I didn't need to bother putting them on the list and then they weren't quick because I am so fucking bad at 1) sitting down and actually writing and 2) finishing anything. But yeah, basically what’s on there.

Coming Soon: fuck, I don’t know. Half the fics on my WIPs list are ones I thought I could crank out in one or two sittings, AND YET. But I’d like to finish the rest of my Whumptober fic soon, because that one really should be pretty easy...and I’d also like to finish the short little Endgame fix-it I thought of on my way out of the theater, where 2012!Loki hops universes and revives IW!Loki...and then there’s the even older IW/Endgame fix-it that’s basically just “everything is fine because I say so, let’s have a little recovery”, especially because I’m like 90% sure that one’s almost done but probably some of it needs typing up and then it all needs stitching together...oh, and finally getting around to finishing typing one of two notebooks reminded me that the other theoretically short fix-it where the Guardians pick up both Thor and Loki is also nearly done, I just need to finish typing it. so...one of those, probably.

Do You Accept Prompts: in theory, although I...don't think I get prompts often enough to know one way or another? plus my brain is The Worst, so my general reaction to actually getting a prompt is basically "that's interesting but I have never had an idea in my life, ever, and apparently I'm not starting now", with an added element of social anxiety or something because it's Somebody Else's Idea and that puts a mental block on my ability to develop it as my own idea. so...anyone's welcome to send me prompts, with the understanding that I might well never do anything with it and if I do, it might take literal years.

Upcoming Story You’re the Most Excited For: I also don’t know. I mean, in recently typing up some older stuff (like the one where the Grandmaster decides publicly executing Loki sounds like a fun idea, from which I posted a couple excerpts recently) I got excited about those again, which is a good reminder of why I want to stay on top of my typing, but I don’t know if I’m more excited for one specific fic than others.

Tag Five Fanfic Authors to Answer These Questions: I have no idea who might have answered this months ago so I’ll just say that if you read this post and you want to answer these questions, please consider yourself tagged. yes, that means you.

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Beneath an Aurora Sky

Summary: The South Pole Station is equipped for research and Edge has always made sure things run smoothly for the inhabitants. His charges are meant to follow his rules and regulations, and in turn, he makes sure they survive in the arctic temperatures. It takes plenty of hard work and determination and Edge, along with his crew, can handle both.

He wasn't counting on one of the newest researchers. He wasn't expecting Rus.

Tags: Spicyhoney, First Time, Arctic AU, Hurt/Comfort

Notes: So, @cheapbourbon came up with an amazing AU and did some lovely art for it: please look at it and love it.

To quote straight from the source because I love this:

•Expedition leader/ survivalist guide Edge •Theoretical astronomer Rus •Location: Scott South Pole Station/South Pole Telescope •Guest stars: snow, cold, stars, & budding affections

I couldn't resist, so here we are.

Warning: I am not a scientist, sadly, and while I did some research on the South Pole Station and Antarctica in general, I can only assume I've made mistakes here. I also took a lot of liberties and I know it. This is all in fun, so, forgive me for my errors and since this is already an AU, let's pretend that it's an Alternate Earth where these things are correct and I didn't screw anything up.Here we go...

Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

Undyne slowed the sno-cat to a grinding halt, the treads sluicing a shower of snow. She leaned on the steering wheel and looked out the front window, taking in the sight of the port. The ship was already docked, one of the gangplanks lowered, and there were a few crewmen on the ground, stacking boxes of supplies. “There it is, a fresh group of eggheads and princesses.”

Edge, sitting next to her, only grunted as he flipped through the manifests, “Don’t call them that where they can hear you.”

“Never would, Boss.” She hooked a scarred thumb towards the ship. “Gonna check them out?”

“Yes, if you’ll look in on the supplies.” Edge folded the manifests and handed them over to her. “Count the bottles, if you will? Last time every other crate was shorted by one.”

“You got it.” She snapped her teeth in irritation. “Fucking thieves; anyone stealing booze deserves a punch in the face.”

Edge only lowered his goggles and braced himself for the upcoming rush of cold. “Keep your punches to yourself and report any shortages. Red?”

“yeah, yeah, i’m awake,” came grumbling from the backseat. “i’ll keep the car running, ‘dyne. have fun, you two.”

The wind was middling that day and it was a short trek down the dock, passing through the workers who either ignored him or offered a curt nod of greeting. Undyne could handle the supplies; his cargo was still inside.

The hinges screeched as he shoved open the door for the main hold and got his first look at the new selection of researchers for this rotation. The glaring overhead lights hid little and Edge pushed back his hood to get a better view, ignoring the few double-takes he got for it.

Anyone on the roster would have received an information packet and should know that a Monster was the expedition leader. If they didn’t, well, then they’d already proved themselves poor at research and the only thing they’d accomplish at the station was wasting their grant money.

This group looked the same as always. Ordinary Humans, most of them male, but it seemed a female or two had come along on this round. Difficult to say with all the layered clothing. They were milling around, waiting, and there was a low burble of chatter. Each of them had a few cases with them for their clothing and personal supplies, as well as any equipment they would need for their research outside of what the station provided. Most of them picked sleek, modern gear. A polar expedition was not a vacation and what was in sight was well within guidelines.

Except one. One pile of gear was far in excess of the allotment, a random mishmash of cases and luggage that wouldn’t have been out of place on a cruise ship, which included an oversized tube-like black plastic case with a long strap.

Edge sighed inwardly. There was always one. Every rotation they were told to only bring what they could carry and every rotation, he ended up with at least one fool who was convinced that they were the exception and surely their belongings were far more important than anyone else, and oh, won’t you just help me carry a bag or three? No? Then what am I paying you for?

“Whose gear is this?” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the murmur of conversation. Whoever it was, they could either leave their hairdryer behind or find a way to drag it behind them.

Silence descended, a dozen or so Human gazes falling on him but none of them volunteered.

“mine!” One figure cut from the outside of the crowd, almost stumbling forward. He was tall, taller than Edge, that was unusual in and of itself, but as he walked closer, Edge found himself staring in surprise.

To begin with, he was younger than Edge expected, closer to his own age. Most of the researchers who came to the South Pole Station were older with plenty of degrees under their belts, alongside their collection of grants and funding as it was not a cheap endeavor. Either his PhD was a recent acquirement, or he was a former child prodigy.

Unlike the others who were kitted in expensive cold weather gear, he was bundled into what looked like several layers of thermal shirts and hoodies, and who knew what lay beneath those sweatpants. Hardly the image of a well-funded researcher out to prove a theory.

But the main source of his surprise was less who and more what. It had been some time since he’d seen another skeleton Monster other than his brother. Most of him was buried in those layers but there was no mistaking his skull and thin, bony hands. Unless there was something very unusual beneath his mismatched clothes, he was looking at the first one of his own kind that he’d seen in years.

The symbol on his patched jacket put him in the science division for the Monster Embassy, and there lay another layer of mystery.

Despite his colorful array of clothing, any exposed bone was glossy pale and smooth, not so much as a crack or scar visible past the normal coronal sutures. Evidence of a soft life even before they’d come to the surface.

At least Edge had been wrong about the hair dryer.

“heya! well, it is certainly nice to meet you.” That blatantly visible once-over was worse than an actual Check and Edge bristled immediately. He ignored the hand the other held out in greeting long enough for his smile to falter and after a moment, he dropped it.

“Doctor—?” Edge let the word dangle, raising a brow bone.

“oh,” the smile returned. “nah, everyone calls me rus, except my bro but frankly, i don’t mind losing that nickname, i—“

“Everyone calls me Boss and that is what you will call me,” Edge interrupted, coolly. The other skeleton blinked, shuffling his booted feet uncomfortably. In direct contrast to the rest of his clothes, those looked to be top of the line, even if the laces were a knotted mess.

“um. okay. sure, i can go with that.”

“I wasn’t asking.” He caught the strap of one of the cases, dragging it over and holding it up. The outside fabric was of bright orange tropical flowers. “This is your equipment?”

“yeah, it’s got my name on it and everything, just like my underwear.” He winced as Edge dangled the case from two fingers, reaching for it hastily, “maybe be careful with it, some of it's delicate and—“

Edge handed him the case with exaggerated care. “That won’t be a problem since I’m not a porter and I won’t be carrying any of it. Anything that you want at the station, you get to carry, so good luck with that.”

The other skeleton was gaping by now, mouth open, before shutting it with a sharp click of teeth. “okay, now wait a minute—!”

They had something of an audience at this point, the other researchers watching with a certain morbid curiosity. No better time for introductions, he supposed.

Edge stepped back and called over the crowd. “All right, everyone, listen up! I’m in charge of the South Pole station and I’m here to get you to it. You can call me Boss.”

A faint titter went through the group. It faded as Edge looked at them stonily. “All of you signed an agreement when you chose to come conduct research at the station. That agreement says that you will obey the rules and regulations put forth. As I said, I am in charge of the station and I’m the one who makes the regulations.” The group clustered in closer, even though Edge’s voice carried easily. “If there are issues, I will handle them. The agreement I signed states that so long as you follow the rules, I will keep you safe.”

All of them seemed to be hanging on his every word, except the other Monster, who was glaring at him sourly, his pale eye lights narrowed to pin pricks.

“I expect my direction to be followed,” Edge went on, “for your safety and the safety of others and my word in any matter is final!” The word echoed around the hushed quiet of the hold. “If any of you has a problem with that, then I’d recommend staying on the boat.”

There was nothing but silence. His favorite kind of reply.

"Good.” He held up a gloved finger. “There is one vehicle here and it is for the supplies. We can't subject it to the wear and tear it would take to cart all of you to the station. You were instructed to bring only what you can carry.”

He glanced at the other skeleton and saw his chin go up at that, his sockets narrowing.

At the back of the hold, Undyne was standing just inside the door, slouching against a wall and smirking at him. She shifted to stand up straight, mimicked a polite clap. Edge resisted the urge to roll his eye lights and continued.

“If you’d like to turn around, you’ll see Undyne at the back. She is second in command and the only word higher than hers is mine.”

“Heya, boys.” She gave them a deliberate salute with her left hand, letting them get a good view of how many fingers she didn’t have. Not that she’d lost them here, but none of them needed to know that.

"All right,” Edge said, pulling their attention back to him. “You have all been provided with the necessary gear to walk from here to the station as well as keeping you alive for the duration of your stay. It is one mile to the station and you're all about to get a taste of what it will be like while you're staying here. So, get suited up and let’s get going!"

With that, he turned to walk over to Undyne, ignoring any whispers or possible grumbling behind him.

Catching Undyne by arm, he drew her aside, asking low, “How were the supplies?”

“All good, boss. Plenty enough for two months and the booze cartons are all full this time.” Her grin was sharp enough that Edge thought it better not to ask. She lowered her voice, nodding in the direction of the group. "Looks like you pissed off the fashion victim over there."

Edge didn’t bother to follow her pointed gaze. "Better that he gets used that it now. If he can’t, better to find out before the boat leaves.”

She snorted loudly and crudely enough for a few of the scientists to give them an aghast look. “That one? I know that type, Boss, you couldn’t chase that one away.”

“I doubt that.”

“Yeah? I’ve got 10g on it.” She spat and landed the wad neatly in a bucket by the wall.

Edge didn’t make bets, that was his brother’s game. He dared a glance at the so-called fashion victim, who was currently struggling into his gear. One of his boots caught on the dangling sleeve of his jacket and he tripped, almost toppling into another researcher. “You’re on.”

Her grin widened. “You should be hoping I lose, he’s kinda a cute one," she teased. She picked at her teeth with a sharp claw and inspected the findings. "Better than the usual. Not many pretty things like that make it out here."

"You're here." Edge smirked.

She rolled her eye vigorously. "Yeah, like I said. Maybe you should be nicer to him."

"I fear to ask why."

"Hey, you might not care about the science, but I bet he's useful for other stuff." With their backs to the others, no one could see her poke her index finger into the loose fist of her other hand, thrusting vigorously.

“Undyne!” Edge hissed. “That's enough.”

She shrugged. “I’m just saying. Those are some long legs and it gets cold at night. Nothing wrong with a bed warmer and he’ll be out of your hair in a couple months.” She reached out to rap her knuckles on his skull. “So to speak.”

Edge slapped her hand away. “He’s not going to make it to the station, much less last the two months.”

“We’ll see.”

~~*~~

At the halfway mark to the station, Edge began to think he might well be out 10g and couldn’t even be upset about it.

Despite his dour prediction, their fashion victim was keeping up and Edge was reluctantly impressed.

Edge always stated the distance from the boat launch to the station, just to see their expressions of disdain. It always showed on their faces. A mile? A mile was nothing. Many of them started a training regimen in the weeks before coming and a mile was an easy goal, or so they thought.

He would bet none of them had hiked a mile in subzero temperatures. The first shock of it when you stepped outside was like a blow, breathing felt like being stabbed with an icicle, even for someone without lungs. After a moment to adjust, standing there, you thought it wasn’t that bad. Then you started out into it and learned the true meanings of a word like 'arctic', in a way that wouldn't be soon forgotten.

Their goggles would protect them from the glare of the snow at least, not that there was much to see. In front of them was hard beaten snow and ice, unless they wandered off the path marked by a series whip-thin flag poles that led to the station. If so, they would end up hip deep in snow with a great struggle ahead of them to dig themselves out.

Walking through the snow in full gear carrying their gear was nothing like jogging down the block, checking their Fitbit along the way. A few of them would have been savvy enough to try hiking, perhaps carrying along a full kit. That would be closer but most of them would be lying in their beds tonight, aching from strain and cold, and wondering what they’d gotten themselves into.

Tomorrow, some of them would be angry to learn there were vehicles that could have carried them. Of course there were, it was ridiculous to think otherwise. They’d be using them daily as they did their research, going out to checkpoints and the different areas that surrounded them.

Edge was the one who’d come up with this small test. He wanted them to get a measure of what they’d be dealing with while he was close enough to help them and before the boat left.

At the back of the line, their fashion victim was starting to lag, not badly, but enough that Edge kept an eye on him. For all of Edge’s disbelief, the other skeleton had proven him wrong and every piece of his gear was carefully position, the weight evenly distributed in a way that spoke of careful planning. His first impression of a naïve, spoiled researcher who’d never taken his nose from a book was jarred loose by such preparation. Credit where credit was due, the other skeleton was carrying his own load and he was keeping up.

Or he had been, at the beginning.

Every few minutes Edge would glance back and get a quick headcount. All the others would be too focused on their own survival to notice if one of their teammates was lagging behind but that was all right. That was why Edge was here.

On one such check, Edge looked back in time to see the scientist trip and fall, his carefully balanced gear scattering, skidding across the hardpacked snow.

He was taking too long getting back up.

“‘Dyne?” Edge murmured into his sleeve, waiting to see her glance his way. “Keep them going.”

In his own earpiece he heard, “You got it, Boss.”

He couldn’t see her grin, but he could hear it easily enough. There was no point in smacking her when all the layers would soften any blow.

The others paused when they saw him start back, faltering unsteadily in their growing exhaustion. He waved them impatiently along, trudging back to where the skeleton was still on his knees, fumbling at his equipment.

“Come on, you need to get up.” He had to raise his voice to travel through the layers of clothing and the wind. Even on a milder day like today, it was critical to keep moving.

“i am!” He snapped it out with more fire than Edge would have thought he had left. “i am coming right now, i only tripped.”

“All right, then do it.”

Edge stood back and watched impassively as the scientist struggled to his knees and then to his feet. Gathering his gear was an arduous task but he never hesitated, hooking straps over his arms and head, and getting them back into that precarious balance.

The last case was eluding him, straining to get the strap over his head and Edge gave in, reaching for it.

“Give me that,” Edge said impatiently.

He was startled when the scientist twisted away, almost falling again and only barely managing to keep to his feet.

“i don’t need your help!” he snarled. His voice was hoarse; the cold was starting to get to him. “i can do this.”

“Can you?”

“yes!” he shouted, words cutting through the tearing wind. “i told off my advisor, my dean and my brother! i came up with the money on my own! you are not an obstacle, not even close!”

He glared fiercely, visible even through his goggles. Even through them, there was a faint glow of frustrated tears that didn’t fall, although whether that was determination or the cold, Edge couldn’t say. Even magic froze in these temperatures, goggles or not.

“you know, i wasn’t expecting you to carry anything,” he went on, raggedly. He took a step in the direction of the others, another, keeping his gear carefully balanced. “you’re the one who came over and started prodding at my equipment. i was afraid you were going to break something that i can’t replace, that’s the only reason i said anything.”

Edge let him rant; it kept him moving. Until he stopped again, uncertainly. The others were out of sight.

Abruptly, Edge strode forward and said, “Come on.”

“i am!”

“You are,” Edge agreed. “You’re doing very well. It’s not much further, Rus.”

The scientist blinked but Edge was already turning away, following the line of flags leading them to the station. It was in sight when Rus staggered and started to fall again, and this time Edge caught him by the elbow, holding him up until he caught his balance again.

The others hadn’t gotten too far ahead; they were still in the outer vestibule warming up and the group shuddered collectively as Rus and Edge came in through the outer door, letting in a rush of arctic air.

Close to the door, Undyne was already stripped down and she hollered to them, “All right, everyone has already been assigned a room. I’m betting all of you can read, so get the lead out and find the one with your name!”

Edge pulled off his heavy coat and raised his own voice to add, “Find your room, stow your gear, and get warmed up. Dinner is at 1800.”

The others shuffled wearily to the door, carrying their baggage and leaving the outer gear hanging from a variety of hooks. Edge hung his own on an empty hook, ignoring the triumphant look that Undyne sent his way before following the others.

Rus sank down on a bench that was against one of the walls, his cases littered around him. “thank you,” he said. For all that his voice was exhausted and hoarse, the gratitude was genuine. “for getting us here. me. for getting me here.”

“That’s my job,” Edge walked over to him and knelt down, working at the tangled knot of his boot laces. “And I’m sorry.”

He blinked once, twice, staring down at Edge. “you’re sorry?”

“For judging you before I even met you. I can admit when I’m wrong.”

“oh. well, it’s all right. i'm sure it's a rare enough occasion to mark on the calendar.” Rus’s smile hinted at something sly and he let Edge pull his boots off before he stood, stripping off the rest of his outer paraphernalia

Edge set his boots over next to his own. “Be sure to make a note.” He looked back at the soft groan behind him, seeing Rus leaning over to catch up a strap on one of his bags. “Let me help you.”

“I can do it,” Rus protested, though it sounded halfhearted at best.

“I know. Let me help, anyway.”

There was a moment of hesitation and Edge thought he’d refuse again. It was something of a surprise when he finally said, “all right.”

Edge gathered up a couple of his packs, waiting long enough for Rus to get the rest, and then jerked his head for Rus to follow him. The walk to the living quarters was a short one and Rus’s room was the second from the last. By now Rus was stumbling with weariness and Edge opened the door, gently guiding him inside. He set the bags down by the wall as Rus sank down onto the small bed.

“You’ve got some time before dinner,” Edge said softly. “Take a nap and get warmed up.”

“sounds good,” Rus blinked with glassy exhaustion and Edge resisted the urge to push him down to the mattress before he fell on his own.

Instead, he went to the door, hesitating with his hand on the knob. “See you at dinner, Rus.”

“sure, boss,” Rus mumbled, and as predicted, he sank down to the mattress without even pulling back the covers. Edge started to open the door, paused, and hung his head with a sigh before he turned back.

Carefully, he gathered up the blanket at the foot of the bed, spreading it over Rus. He made a faint sound, barely stirring, and snuggled into it.

Edge watched for the briefest of moments, then he turned away and out the door. And stopped.

Undyne was at the end of the hallway, leaning against one of the doors. She made a kissy face at him, and he scowled at her.

But he flipped her a 10g coin.

She snatched it out of the air, sticking it into one of her numerous pockets. “Thanks, boss. Wanna sweeten the pot? I bet another ten you’ll have him on his back in a week.”

Edge shook his head. “No bet.”

"Yeah?” Undyne licked her teeth, her grin widening. “Don’t like to part with your money that easily, boss?”

“I won’t bet on something like that,” Edge said shortly, “even if it were a possibility, which it is not.”

Undyne pushed off the door with a snort and poked a finger roughly against his sternum. “Oh, come off it, I saw how he was looking at you. You wouldn't even need to turn on the charm, which is good because you don't have any."

"He's here for two months and then he’s back on the boat,” Edge told her, letting his irritation creep into his voice, “off to publish his papers or continue his research, whatever they do when they leave.”

Undyne predictably ignored his annoyance. "That gives you a time limit, even better. You don’t have to beat around the bush, depending on what equipment he has downstairs."

"Undyne!" he hissed. Her grin was unrepentant.

“Speaking of which, my honey should be back from checking the monitors. See you at dinnertime, Boss.”

“If I allow you to eat,” he grumbled. She only laughed and tromped off in the direction of the crew quarters.

He did not glance back at that closed door where Rus was sleeping, curled into his blanket. In all honesty, he should have changed out of his clothes first; despite the cold a long walk outside often left one sweaty and shower tokens were a much sought-after privilege.

There was still time before dinner to get a few things finished. He needed to go over their newly acquired supplies with his brother, one of the solar panels was acting up and needed looked at. Always something to do to ensure not only their safety but as much comfort as possible. Edge shook the thought of Rus curled up on his bed away and went to his own quarters.

He had an allotment for a shower and despite what Undyne might think, it needn’t be a cold one.

~~*~~

Read Chapter Two