#that’s not like…. provable I guess

[kiradical]

.

[snailcheeserulz]

Childhood trauma? I hardly know 'er!

[marsbotz]

smth i noticed earlier skimming thru eps is that inho has to introduce himself to the vips and explain his role… so like he never met them before seemingly..? or at least not as the frontman. but they get led thru his quarters to get to the vip lounge. hmmm

[teaboot]

Okay so like. You know your own name as a kid, right?

You remember how it sounds, how your parents say it, how your friends say it- you learn how to spell it, and maybe even what it means and why it was given to you, and it's yours.

It's not a tangible, physical thing, like your hair or your fingernails, but it's yours. It belongs to you.

So, like. Imagine there comes a point in life where everyone gets their name tattooed to their forehead, or something.

Could be when they're two. Could be when they're twenty. Hell, it could be when they're eighty, or ninety-nine, or whenever. But it's everybody, and it's inevitable, and it happens.

Now imagine the time comes for you, and you get up after and look in the mirror and realize they spelled it wrong.

And you have to go outside and live your life in a world where everybody is so totally used to knowing people's names on sight that not a single person second-guesses that your parents named you Susam, or Ahley, or Benjabib.

And you know it's wrong, every time you hear it, but you can choose to explain every single time- every time you're called in a coffee queue, every time a teacher picks you in class, every time you meet a new person or bump into a stranger or are greeted on the street, by children and employers and door-to-door salesmen and your fucking waitress- or you can kind of just learn to grit your teeth and ignore it.

You still notice, of course- maybe you learn to accept it, maybe you hate it every time, but whether you do anything about it or not, you still know. You know people have the wrong word for you in your head.

You know they still mean YOU, but it's not you.

So what's your solution?

Do you shrug, decide it doesn't matter, and go about your life?

Do you smear the typo over with foundation, pencil in new letters every morning?

Do you stare into the mirror sometimes and think, "wow, I should really get that fixed"?

Maybe you save up your money and get it removed, or covered up, or changed to something else. Maybe the whole damn thing was wrong, and you've been a Jacob running around as a Hailey this whole damn time.

That's the best way to explain it. It's not an easily-provable thing, or a demonstrable thing, or a feeling I can one-for-one substitute as something else-

but that's what it's like to know you're not a girl.

[thewertsearch]

KANAYA: As Nice As It Sounds To Move On KANAYA: I Dont Know If I Can Stand Three Of Your Human Years Of More Darkness

We have a Light Player! We have your Light Player, Kanaya! Come on, we can sort something out!

ARADIA: but kanaya you still have important work to finish too! […] KANAYA: What Are You Talking About ARADIA: our race is extinct remember […] ARADIA: your job was to see to the resurrection of our people KANAYA: What Real Hope Is There For That KANAYA: The Orb Was Destroyed KANAYA: I Was Never Able To Duplicate It The Grist Cost Was Astronomical

I've got a workable solution for this one, actually.

Four new Lands means four new Grist Hoards.

Since the kids' four-Player session was supposed to make a universe, we can assume that the Hoards of the original four Lands are sufficient to fulfil that purpose. Therefore, the B2 Hoards are redundant, and Kanaya could potentially dip into them to make another Matriorb.

KANAYA: Doesnt Rose Know KANAYA: Cant You See The Path To Victory On This Matter

Alright, now Hussie's just fucking with me personally.

Like, I know for a fact that the phrase 'path(s) to victory' didn't show up in Worm until 2013, so this really is just a bizarre coincidence. Hussie just keeps making these incredibly on-the-nose references that are, nevertheless, provably accidental.

ROSE: It's hard to say. ROSE: Does the repopulation of your species qualify as victory? ROSE: These things aren't always clear cut. Some outcomes are for your own judgment. ROSE: What outcome would you like the most?

I thought that this would be the catch. Rose can see the path to anyone's personal 'victory', but she has no control over what that victory actually looks like. Plus, since we can't really control our own deepest desires, her targets can't manipulate this ability either.

They simply get a path to whatever they happen to want most, at that exact moment - and based on how Rose is describing things, she doesn't even get to know what that is. She sees the path, but not the goal.

KANAYA: I Would Like To Have The Orb Again And To Keep It Safe This Time KANAYA: And I Guess To Not Be A Total Failure

Aw, Kanaya...

If I had to take a guess, I'd say that what Kanaya wants the most is to revive and protect trollkind, including the trolls standing around her right now.

ROSE: If you follow my advice, I can at least promise you will find yourself in the best position to determine whether that may come to pass.

And Rose.... can't even confirm if there is a path to that.

Unlike Contessa, she doesn't get to know if her path is unachievable in all possible timelines - so she'll never know if her current task is fruitless. Not until the very end.

KANAYA: … ROSE: Can you please come? ROSE: Between the two of us, you with your inexplicably heretofore unmentioned phosphorescence, and I with my nigh-reflective traffic cone orange sun-sari, the meteor should never be too dark.

Come on, Maryam, that was so smooth.

Surely you have to come with us now, if only to hear more Lalonde Pickup Lines.

KARKAT: (sollux, oh my god is it me or is everybody already just fucking hitting on each other left and right? oh god i can't take sweeps of this shit, don't leave me alone here, please don't)

Too late, motherfucker!

[snovyda]

Fanfic Plagiarism alert!

Attention, especially for the people in the following fandoms: Mission: Impossible (specifically Benthan) and Top Gun Maverick.

It brings me no joy to say that we have a big problem in these fandoms - a shameless serial plagiarist who copies other people's fanfics from other fandoms, changes character names and sometimes a few desciptions of the settings or adds a few sentences or paragraphs when they feel generous, and posts them as their own. It is literally Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V type of thing.

My friends and I have reported this person repeatedly on ao3, but we still have not received any response from the staff.

Seeing posts from fellow Benthan fans who are excited about the fact that we are getting close to having 1000 Benthan fics on ao3 makes me sad because of this, because I know quite a few of them are just not legit, and, since ao3 has not responded in months, I guess I have to do a good old public call-out.

This person is known on ao3 by the pen name rosexpetals. If they are reading this, I can only recommend them to delete the stolen works (not just the ones listed in this post, if more are stolen, they can be found later anyway) and take a long look at themselves and reflect on their actions. I wish for them to discover the actual joys of writing something of their own, of expressing their own feelings instead of hijacking other people's.

Below the cut are the links to the works and their sources that I and a couple of friends were able to find using just a simple quick Google search. Out of their 96 published fics, at least 29 are provably stolen (and those are just the ones we were able to find via simple searches), which gives off a strong feeling that none of their work is really original. Some of them were copied from the same source twice. 9 more fics are copies of each other, but in different fandoms (very likely just copied from the same sources). As you will see below, sometimes they didn't even bother to change the title of the original fic they were stealing from or its summary:

Fandom: Mission: Impossible (Benthan)

Fic: where's the trophy? (he just comes running over to me) Plagiarized from: where's the trophy? (he just comes running over to me) (by riceenthusiast)

Fic: and i'll hold onto you Plagiarized from: Tender Loving Care (by as_with_a_sunbeam)

Fic: bedroom eyes like a remedy Plagiarized from: Keep Me Afloat (by Atalia_Gold)

Fic: i'm sinking, our fingers entwined Plagiarized from: Kisses to Make it Better (by steviewashere)

Fic: the way you hold me (is actually what's holy) Plagiarized from: scars. (by letthesongtakeflight)

Fic: call it what you want to Plagiarized from: care & feeding (by glim)

Fic: my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand Plagiarized from: Their Fingers Run With Blood (by FoundInTheStars)

Fic: cause saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts Plagiarized from: Shrill Wails That Steal The Air (by Metalbvcky)

Fic: wherever you stray, i follow Plagiarized from: the fate of a con (by shrewritesall)

Fic: fall into me and i'll catch you, darlin' Plagiarized from: Safety II (by zozofia)

Fic: i hear the sound of my own voice, asking you to stay Plagiarized from: ['til you sizzle, what a lovely way to burn] (by tacos_are_tasty)

Fic: all's well that ends well to end up with you Plagiarized from: would it be enough if i could never give you peace? (by playthetyrants)

Fic: this most assuredly counts Plagiarized from: Must've Done Something Right (by fides_rationem)

Fic: something to rely on Plagiarized from: Unguarded (by trufflemores)

Fic: your string of lights is still bright to me Plagiarized from: your string of lights is still bright to me (by blueberriesandcream)

Fandom: Top Gun: Maverick

Fic: bigger than the whole sky Plagiarized from: Bigger Than The Whole Sky (by catrasredemption)

Fic: look at this godforsaken mess that you made me Plagiarized from: for you i would ruin myself (by mraudersmoon)

Fic: i love you, i adore you (i lay my life before you) Plagiarized from: All That I've Been Yearning For (by Sokkas_First_Fangirl)

Fic: starry eyes sparkin' up my darkest night Plagiarized from: Of Speeches and Sofas (by as_with_a_sunbeam)

Fic: i don't wanna lose you (that's the kinda heartbreak time can never mend) Plagiarized from: would it be enough if i could never give you peace? (by playthetyrants) - yes, same fic copied again

Fic: you can see it with the lights out Plagiarized from: Tender Loving Care (by as_with_a_sunbeam) - yes, AGAIN

Fic: and i'll forget you (but i'll never forgive) Plagiarized from: Hold Me Closer (by sweet_symphony0)

Fic: you can hear it in the silence (you can feel it on the way home) Plagiarized from: I'd search you in all of my lives (by sunflwrs)

Fic: and my destination (makes it worth the while) Plagiarized from: Pushing Through The Darkness (Still Another Mile) (by Sokkas_First_Fangirl)

Fic: give up on you, my dear (i will never) Plagiarized from: I Lay My Life Before You (by Sokkas_First_Fangirl)

Fic: as if you were a mythical thing Plagiarized from: The Ghost in the Attic (by as_with_a_sunbeam)

Fic: you drew stars (around my scars) Plagiarized from: Value (by trufflemores)

Fic: in my life (i love you more) Plagiarized from: Whistle, I'll Be There (by lovetheblazer)

Fandom: The Beatles RPF

Fic: can't ignore the rest of the world; can you stay and make me feel better? Plagiarized from: love me, always (by darkdisrepair)

Self-copied fics posted by the same person in different fandoms (possibly copied from the same sources)

Benthan fandom: sit with you in the trenches Top Gun fandom: you're all i want, i'll never let you go

Benthan fandom: i vowed i would always be yours Top Gun fandom: standing at the crossroads, no desire to run

Benthan fandom: can we always be this close? Top Gun fandom: in all your pain (i will carry you, always)

Benthan fandom: i know you're scared (and your pain is imperfect) Glee fandom: i'll never let you go The Beatles fandom: my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand

[bonefall]

a while ago you said that Starclan cats design kittens and customize them with patterns and colors from their parents genes. So, do the clan cats raise any eyebrows when it comes to people who know cat genetics? Is there a geneticist who is holding their head wondering how these two cats have this colored kit while their starclan designer was just playing around? Or do the Starclan designers still have to stay within the rules?

Basically, do the humans notice that some of these clan cats are sparkle cats lol

I try to not get too "lost in the weeds" since the humans aren't the focus of the story, just taking care that they DO have real motivations behind their actions rather than construction crews materializing out of nowhere to Do A Chaos, but...

First, the genetics of cats in Albion are different than humans in equivalent Great Britain.

Partially, this is because I honestly just don't really enjoy learning about in-depth genetics or applying them realistically. I like drawing anime characters and writing anime battles, so they have anime genetics. But more than that, off-screen, the intelligence of cats has altered the timeline of this world.

If cats really were capable of higher thinking, that totally would have had some butterfly effects. I like dropping crazy alt-history and then not elaborating on it, because it's funny. Archimedes' cat helped him invent a death ray, btw.

On that note of genetics though, you guessed right. StarClan designers DO have to work with what they have. Whatever the genetics of this alternate universe of cats are, every kit born still abides by the laws of nature.

Which brings me to...

Second, the researchers do notice that the Clan cats are special. In fact, there is a "study of magic" in this universe-- Thaumatology. "The science of wonder."

(There's no world where magic actually factually exists that science isn't all over it lmao)

Thaumatology facts I haven't shared so far since it's all offscreen and just Bonus Worldbuilding;

It is a "soft science," not a hard one.

It has a LOT of problems with replicability. Thaumatologists and Quantum Physicists have a lot of in-jokes.

The most well known (to the point of being a cliche) is "magic and quantum particles both hate being watched."

Magic is highly variable based on a bajillion very personal factors, like emotion, environment, culture, personal background, etc, so it's severely difficult to re-create it in controlled environments.

Thaumatology has a lot of overlap with sociology, archeology, and theology, so people from these fields work together a lot.

There was absolutely not a dedicated Thaumatologist working in the Research Team early on, sadly.

It was probably discovered when the Battle of the True Eclipse blew out a bunch of field cameras.

It's pretty common that photography equipment fritzes out a bit during "supernatural" times like eclipses, but the damage was extensive enough to be noteworty

The Clan cats were initially notable just for the fact they had advanced culture.

Cats are usually comparable to crows and monkeys, in this universe. So cats with fire and a crude writing system were enough to SHAKE the field of zoology.

The fact they're cats helped a lot. The public loves cats, enough that since their discovery after Speckletail attacked a bulldozer, massive outcry has secretly helped the Clans several times.

The discovery that the culture also has Thaumatological elements is more of a goldmine for a scientist than the public, though.

It's common knowledge that "animals are magic," because humanity projects traits onto them. "Of course they do, they're cats...?"

The Thaumatologist is freaking out because "THE CAT IS PROVABLY DOING ITS OWN THAUMATURGY"

Most people don't know the difference between Thaumaturgy (the functional work it does on the world) and Thaumology (the study of that as a whole), so this particular scientist is going to have a hard time explaining WHY this distinction is so special.

(And possibly even offensive to certain groups, who would insist only humans are capable of this)

In any case, eventually there would be Thaumatological interest in the Clan cats, but they weren't there in the mid to late 2010s when BB!ASC takes place.

[thosearentcrimes]

Read Too Like the Lightning, part of the Terra Ignota series, by Ada Palmer. I generally try to be a lot nicer about books written by living authors, on the off chance that they read what I'm saying. For example, I tried not to be very mean about the Baru Cormorant series, which I thought was pretty bad but had some strong points I could highlight, but I was perfectly willing to go in on Madame Bovary. All I can say is, I tried. You see, Too Like the Lightning is straight up terrible, and it is basically impossible to find anything nice to say about it at all.

Too Like the Lightning is an unbelievably stupid book. Now, I don't require total scientific fidelity from my science fiction, not unless the author signals I should. But I do think authors should be at least broadly aware of what laws they are breaking to get what they want, and Palmer very clearly isn't. Basically everyone has the predictive/prescient powers of Dune characters through mathematical oracles, despite this being provably impossible. Everyone travels in cheap supersonic private jets that probably also have VTOL capability, which are powered by Fucking Magic presumably, the author sure as hell doesn't seem to care. This wouldn't be as annoying if the book didn't spend so much time musing on the deep sociological effects of the FM-powered aircars, while entirely forgetting that evidently both Fucking Magic and oracles apparently exist and should probably affect society in some way also. There's also more minor points. At one point, the first of the aircars is analogized to the Nina and Pinta and Apollo XI, all of which were notable exploration vessels, not technical breakthroughs. The appropriate comparisons would be to something like the Kitty Hawk Flyer or Stephenson's Rocket or some of the Trevithick machines. Sure, it's a minor error, but for a novel this pretentious, all errors are serious. There is no appreciable narrative reason for this error either. If the book were edited, perhaps someone would have noticed.

The ideological and historiographical (more on this later) background is also just kind of dumb. The book is trying to make some tedious liberal points and also say that we need to have very serious discussions about like sexism and racism or whatever. What the content of these discussions is supposed to be is extremely unclear, and as far as I can tell simply the existence of them will basically fix things on its own because discussion is magic and leads to Truth and such, except, of course, when the narrative needs for it not to. Also destroying a book is kind of like killing a person, and other trite garbage. Anyway, where the book actually ends up is in my opinion quite far from the apparent intent, but unfortunately not in a very interesting way. Suffice to say, if I wanted to read kinda racist gender-normative rapey fiction with clockwork twists scattered around, where all the characters are secretly serial killers (notably Mycroft and the Saneer-Weeksbooths) because that makes them edgier or something I guess, I suspect I could still do a whole lot better than Too Like the Lightning, for example by reading self-insert Wattpad romance novels about pop stars, or werewolf erotica, or self-insert Wattpad erotica about werewolf pop stars. The incest is boring as hell and cowardly, too. It's a book that's trying to shock you, but the author doesn't know how to actually do that because, again, just not very good at writing at all. It doesn't help that the pacing is so horrible that none of the shocking twists actually land, especially since absolutely nothing keeps actually happening. Sure, Too Like the Lightning is the way it is for a reason, but so is the werewolf erotica, and helping other people jack off is a far more noble pursuit than jacking yourself off.

If the book is so stupid, why do a lot of fairly intelligent people seem to like it so much? Well, a lot of those people are Rationalists it seems (or close enough to it), and Rationalists have insanely bad taste in fiction for some reason. Actually Rationalists have insanely bad taste generally speaking but it's especially marked in fiction. And it's obvious why Rationalists would like the book, it treats intelligence as a comic book superpower the way they do, there's group homes and libertarianism and all sorts of other stuff they like. But there's a more fundamental feature that I think a certain kind of nerd loves about Too Like the Lightning. It's the omnipresent didactic tone, just like with Baru Cormorant, though here it's somehow even more obtrusive. Some people evidently like it when the author has a character read an encyclopedia entry for a paragraph or two for no particular reason, or pointedly make and then exhaustively explain a reference. I suspect it's because if they knew the reference, they feel like very clever students who read ahead, and if they didn't know the reference they feel like they are learning. I think it might be a form of high school nostalgia, the nerd version of student athletes unable to move on. Which is normal I suppose, I still think about doing amateur theater after all, but it does seem kind of embarrassing. To me, at least, the didactic tone always feels insulting regardless of if I knew the reference or not.

This insistence on transforming most of the characters into condescending lecture or encyclopedia entry delivery mechanisms understandably has serious consequences for the readability of the novel itself. It is impossible to believe that any of the supposed 10 billion people in the Hives that we barely ever see any actual traces of are actually persons in the eyes of the author or the narrative. Nor are most of the several dozen very important characters we do meet, to be fair. There is a single character, Eureka, who reaches the dizzying heights of "is an actual character" and she barely shows up. Thisbe is the only other one under consideration, but, eh, nah. Everyone else is functionally just a rhetorical device, because outside of the exposition most of the novel is poorly stylized as philosophical dialogue in Enlightenment style.

According to the Author's Note, Palmer sincerely wants to be participating in the Great Conversation. Now, this is a lost cause from the start. You cannot engage in a conversation by just parroting the words of others, and if you don't have any ideas of your own (and it is quite reasonable not to, there are so many people and so few ideas to be had), then a bare minimum would be the ability to rephrase or synthesize them. Now, maybe Palmer can do this, in lectures to students. Or maybe not, I have known instructors like that too (especially in history, lately). All I know is that Too Like the Lightning is no thoughts, all cliches. But if there were original ideas, the framing device would interfere anyway. You fundamentally cannot participate in a conversation while maintaining plausible deniability for everything by hiding behind your fictional characters, as Palmer does with Mycroft. Whenever I object to, well, more or less any feature of the novel, its fans can always say that actually I just haven't been paying enough attention to the unreliability of the narrator. This objection tends to be either false or irrelevant, but it's a pain in the ass to prove, and the only reason it is possible in the first place is that the author is actively refusing to stake out a position to be held to.

For what it's worth, I don't think it's out of cowardice. Palmer seems to have noticed that the tradition of the conte philosophique and the genres that take off of it includes a lot of different styles and narrative devices, and has ultimately decided to use most of them, invariably quite poorly. I've read conte philosophique, and it does not read like conte philosophique, sorry, the writing is all so painfully 21st century. Ironically, the one major device for philosophical stories I can think of that was not used, the travelogue, is the one I think is clearly most appropriate to the sort of worldbuilding-based speculative fiction Palmer is engaging in here, both from a practical and a historical perspective. The eclectic stylistic muddle makes the novel much longer without giving it any additional depth, the styles do not complement each other, and also the author very obviously does not have the skill required to pull any of it off. Authors, unless exceptionally competent, should pick at most one gimmick per work. Might not have helped here, but it's good practice either way.

One of the techniques that gets talked about with regards to the book is the unreliable narrator, probably because the device is referenced in the book right at the start. In fact, contrary to what people insist, it is not really present in the sense I would understand it, of a narrator styled as deliberately deceiving the audience in order to promote his own agenda. Since the narrator of Too Like the Lightning, like basically every other character in the novel, evidently only actually has an agenda or motive as an informed attribute, there is no way for the reader to reason their way to the implied meta-narrative of what "actually happened", because I'm pretty sure that meta-narrative doesn't actually exist. As far as I can tell, the only actual function of the extremely tedious and obtrusive in-universe narrator is to justify telling the exposition in a particular twist-preserving order, which, again, is not what the unreliable narrator is.

The novel really does consist almost exclusively of dry narration and loredumps. Nothing ever happens in this miserable 460 page slog. I really mean this, nothing actually happens and nobody really does anything except flit around irrelevantly at supersonic speeds. A bunch of characters talk to each other, or talk at each other, or read the encyclopedia at each other. But it turns out none of that actually matters, because enough of the characters are basically omniscient (except for all the stuff they can't know otherwise the story falls apart, even though there's no conceivable way they wouldn't know) that there is no appreciable difference between characters talking at each other and thinking at each other, which they also spend way too much time doing. None of the dialogue serves to develop the characters, because, as discussed earlier, there aren't any. None of the dialogue serves to establish the plot or stakes, because the plot gets retconned every other chapter with yet another tedious twist so there's no real point in following the intrigue, which I'm pretty sure consists mostly of plot holes by the end anyway. Worst of all, a consistent pattern in these retcons is that it becomes clearer and clearer that an alarming number of the conversations in this book are actually functionally just a guy talking to himself.

It kind of makes sense that the novel is more or less entirely people talking to each other (well that and poorly done metatextual horseshit) because it turns out the novel endirses a fundamental theory of historical change consisting entirely of people talking to each other, specifically, a variation on Great Man Theory that says change happens because the most important members of the very real and existing natural aristocracy get into a room together in order to figure out what's going to happen next by finding the smartest bestest boy from among them all and all just doing what he says, and then maybe some other stuff that doesn't matter happens after who cares, all of the actual persons have made their decisions. History of ideas people are basically all wacky, but this seems extreme even for them, so I sure hope Palmer isn't actually teaching anything like this. In addition to being based on a variant of it, Too Like the Lightning references and then explains its own reference to Great Man Theory, and naturally has its own Great Man in the narrative itself, the guy talking to himself from the last paragraph, and boy is he unbearable.

The guy in question, Y.U.D.D. MASON, is genuinely in the running for the most insufferable character ever written. I wouldn't mind him being written like a particularly annoying teenager with delusions of grandeur who has evidently somehow read both far too much and far too little philosophy so much if the novel did not take every single opportunity to make it absolutely unquestionable that this horrid little git is in fact an unparalleled superhuman intellect omniscient oracle capable of outright mind control through speech alone. And no, that's not a unreliable narrator thing. My understanding is that somehow this gets much worse over the course of the rest of the books, which I will not read because frankly 460 pages was an unreasonable test of my patience and commitment to reviewing everything I read and finishing everything I review. Apparently at the end he starts a civil war and becomes God-Emperor of Humanity or whatever, who even cares.

Look, a persistent obsession with Mars, nonsensical car-based revolutionizing of transportation, references to De Sade, excessive confidence in mathematical oracles, these are not the preoccupations of a serious thinker, these are the preoccupations of Elon Musk. Musk really is a convenient example of the sort of Great Man that actually exists by contrast to the ones you get in fiction and in Carlyle. Richest man on the planet, widely acknowledged power behind the throne of the most powerful state out there, owner of what was once (you know, before he bought it) regarded as the online public square, AI magnate, rocketman, surely here we have the Great Man of our time? Except, wait, we know him. We know him from his irrepressible habit of Posting, his now decades of pathetic self-promotion, his desperate need to turn himself into a living meme to get the attention he never got from his father, and which he in turn will not give to his two dozen kids. He is a massive loser whose aesthetic interests consist of the most accessible symbols of coolness and futurism that he can find, up to and including the glyph 'X' and memes that got old over a decade ago. What does it say about Too Like the Lightning that half of its aesthetic language is not only shared with this fucking loser, but is even projected out to the 26th century? Nothing good, that's for sure.

It is my opinion that novels should be edited. Unfortunately publishers do not seem to agree. Editing could never have made this book good, but it might at least have informed the publishers of the scale of mistake they were in the course of making. This novel was a lost cause the moment it was accepted for publication, which happened by a mechanism I am still quite unable to explain. The Author's Note does contain a very helpful list of the extraordinarily many collaborators allegedly responsible, of whom I would pick out for particular discredit the editorial decision-makers and the peers who apparently encouraged the creation of the work. That this book was written was a mistake, that it was published was a travesty, that it got sequels is an absurdity. The existence of Too Like the Lightning is an enormous embarrassment to the entire genre of Science Fiction, whose reputation was frankly already quite bad for very good reasons. Anyway, I'm never going to read Worm that's for damn sure.

This novel made me afraid to write my own intended stories, for fear that they will end up like this. Ordinarily, this is where I mention what kinds of person might enjoy the novel, recommend it to someone even if I did not like it myself. Frankly, I think I have provided enough information for people to figure out whether or not they would like it, but I have to confess that I do not think anyone should read this book, including the ones who would enjoy it. It's not for moral reasons or anything, I just think the book is that bad.

[dayreaming-insomniac]

✨☺ What it Would be Like to...

Show Them Physical Affection☺✨

(JOHNNY DEPP + HIS CHARACTERS VER.)

•~✂~• Edward Scissorhands (Edward Scissorhands, 1990):

He would probably flinch a bit at first due to the sudden contact. But then he'd just stare at you (or down at you if you're shorter) with those big puppy dog eyes. He'd probably think something like “...Me...?”! He's very innocent so you know he's going to be very happy to finally figure out someone truly loves and cares about him (Besides Ms. Mother-Figure Peg!❤)

•~🍫~• Willy Wonka (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 2005):

He'd probably flinch at first and give you a face of disgust, one that SCREAMS “Ew, back away you germ infested individual” like how he feels around kids, and people who chew gum. (I headcanon his face would look like the face at the end of the GIF lol). He would possibly warm up to you and give you a very tiny pat on the back for a second along with a nervous smile and awkward chuckle.

•~💉~• Ichabod Crane (Sleepy Hollow, 1991):

He would provably widen his eyes, mouth dropping, BUT! only for a COUPLE of seconds. I feel like he would hug you and give off a simple kind smile while doing it. He would just simply clear his throat afterwards. Just hope while you're hugging him that he doesn't have one of his...FLASHBACKS...

•~☕~• Mad Hatter/Tarrant Hightopp (Alice in Wonderland 2010/Through the Looking Glass 2016):

I feel like he would be so happy. He would probably giggle and hug back immediately. I feel like he never really got any affection when he was younger. Afterwards he would look up at you with those big eyes and smile widely.

•~🔪~• Sweeney Todd (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 2007)

Good luck trying to hug him, even if you're really good friends. He'll just slit your throat and make you into a pie. But POSSIBLY he won't if you're his significant other. Let's be honest, after all that happened to him, he needs comfort, even if he won't admit it.

•~⚓~• Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean, 2003):

Personally I feel like he would freeze then widen his eyes, but then just simply give you a smug smirk, like his moods just change completely. He would say something that would probably be hilarious, probably like “guess you want it to work between us huh mate?”

•~💕~• Johnny Depp:

I feel like he's such a huge hugger!! Especially when it comes to Lily-Rose Depp. He seems to like that type of affection and comfort considering he probably didn't get that with uhh *ahem* specific person that was in his life not to long ago.

I worked really hard on this hehe! More will come soon so dw. I LOVE writing so more (hopefully better/longer stuff) will be posted in the future. Thanks! (p.s Edward Scissorhands is my favorite so I worked a lil harder on him rather than the others so sorry if any of them are out of character.)

DO NOT COPY, PASTE, PLAGIARIZE, OR TRANSLATE MY WORK PLEASE. THANK YOU~!

~ MiKY00_ (daydreaming-insomniac) 4/14/2025

[sparrowsarus]

It always makes me raise an eyebrow when people get so pressed on Ulder wanting Wyll to join the Fist and become the marshal. Gosh, I wonder why the fourth son of a tradesman might want his kid to have a steady income with a provable path of promotion? Like, my dad is proud of me for going to university but he still kind of thinks I should have gone into the trades! Because it's a guaranteed source of income and I would have union benefits, a normal thing for parents to want for their kids.

ETA: The moment Wyll says he doesn't want to do that, that he thinks he would do more good going to Avernus with Karlach and fighting infernals, his father is instantly supportive. So like...learn to read I guess??

[d0gbite]

to be honest, I just see people talking about physically shape shifting.. organs, bones, body changing. and even saying that others have witnessed it. and it is talked about so matter of factly. like this is real and there’s a whole like class of human you’re born into considered supernaturals - vampires, shapeshifters, dragons, etc. with powers. and like very specific collective “lore.” a huge community. it makes my brain a little confused. bc there’s no proof and science says that this isn’t possible. but are supernaturals with powers genuinely real or are these individuals collectively experiencing delusions/hallucinations without the ability to double book keep? like they just don’t know it’s not real bc it’s real to them? I say not real to mean.. not actually possible and perceivable to everyone- like what they think/perceive is happening is not actually happening irl. it’s just like. should I be believing in this stuff or would I be getting myself sucked into delusion. at what point do u tag/consider something unreality. genuinely don’t want to hurt or invalidate anyone but i guess i just want to ask someone on the outside what is real. what is happening.

cw for physical shifters/CLCZ on reality checking(?)

i get what you mean, and i so understand how it’s confusing, and i say this in the most sympathetic way possible: i think you’re overthinking it.

if you don’t believe it, then you don’t believe it. that’s fine. me either, since i believe (just like you seem to) in science and provable reality. i’m not qualified enough at all to be diagnosing anyone with anything so i wouldn’t say definitively that they are all experiencing delusions/hallucinations, but i do believe that what they are experiencing is not actually happening in the physical, tangible world since it hasn’t been proven.

BUT. imo it just doesn’t matter. it’s real to them, and it’s not helpful to share what i believe randomly without anyone asking for my opinion. the same way i’m not going to share my atheist views with random religious people simply talking about their religion. it’s just not necessary. one of my favourite ideas that i fall back to time and time again is “i don’t believe you, but i respect you”.

i can’t tell you what to believe, but i can tell you to stick to what is evidence-based if that’s what is “real” to you. that’s what’s real to me. honestly i don’t love the word “real” anyway, because it is just so subjective. who’s to say the experience they are having, that they know they are having, isn’t “real”? it is real to them. i kind of love the question “when do you tag it as unreality” because it exemplifies this so well: it’s reality to them. they wouldn’t, because they don’t believe it to be unreality. i just know it’s not evidence-based, and i know most people would not believe in it without evidence.

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Why don’t people curse, hex and put spells on politicians? (I know that there are people who do that) but it seems like people opt out of using that kind of magic to help the masses. Idk what kind of question this is haha but if you wanna respond you can haha

Okay, I was gonna wait longer after Huge Bitch Monday to answer this one, but I've been sick for several days now and I'm tired of looking at this message in my inbox and getting mad at it.

You said it yourself: There are people who already put spells on politicians.

But magic isn't guaranteed to work and it's really not that verifiable.

And pushing "help the masses" as the most important thing for everyone to do is exhausting. Like yeah, it's nice to help others, but why use magic for that when there are other (and often easier or more verifiable) methods to accomplish the same thing? Volunteer work, donations, activism, making connections, helping your neighbors - all of these and more can count as "helping the masses".

And some of us do that but don't use our magic for it. Case in point, me. Hi hello, guess who does a lot of volunteer work in the emergency management and response fields? You can bet your ass that I don't use my magic for that because magic is my downtime away-from-work hobby.

Sure, you (general you) can use your magic to cast spells on politicians. But that's not going to change things in the same way that more direct actions will. Voting, showing up at commissioners' meetings, signing petitions - these often have more obvious, concrete, provable results than just lobbing a spell does. No amount of "dick fall off in the Olive Garden" curses are going to change someone's entire political affiliation to match yours.

Don't get me wrong, you can absolutely use politicians as magical guinea pigs. It's fun and gives you a guilt-free target for curses. But not everyone does that, and that's fine.

TLDR: Magic can only do so much.

~Jasper

[starstruck-sillies]

Now Sophie has moved on to just making up lies and trying to get her followers to spread them for her

LMAO I just looked and she damn sure is intentionally making shit up. She said, and I directly quote;

"I'm wondering if you guys would be willing to help me start and spread a hoax..." -Literally word for word what she said

Just because it's a hoax meant to make Trump look like a dipshit doesn't mean it's okay to do. Besides, there's really no damn point to trying to get him to show how stupid he is when he's already made it abundantly clear he's a complete moron. You don't need to lie about a damn thing, the truth is more than damning enough as is, completely unaltered. Try spreading around actual tweets that the president has made himself, try sharing videos of him saying vile shit that he genuinely believes. Try talking about the crimes of him and his gaggle of douchebags have provably committed.

He's been incriminating himself since before his first term, it'd be way more impactful and useful to tell the truth, and it's way less likely to backfire. Also, trying to give the CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation a potential out on a stupid decision isn't very anti-fascist of you Sophie. We eat the rich for dinner, don't try and make them smarter. It won't work anyway, it's a stupid plan to begin with.

Also, I see she continues to be intersexist. Honest to god blatantly refusing to listen to a word intersex people say when you've said yourself you aren't intersex isn't being an ally. You're still a fucking bigot Sophie.

We aren't intersex either, but guess what? We still fucking listen to what intersex people say about the kind of oppression they face and trust them to know what affects them. Intersex people know a hell of a lot more about intersexism than we perisex people do, you can't just fucking say to their goddamn faces that they don't know the reality of their oppression. Stop acting like you know more than they do on issues you don't face the consequences of.

If you only listen to the intersex people you agree with, and ignore the ones saying things you don't like, you're not an ally, you're just a bigot feigning inclusivity. Fetishization is not representation, it's just oppression with a mask of support slapped haphazardly on it, and you fell for the mask.

[chaifootsteps]

Another victim of BlackGryph0n has come out, this time with some of their Snapchats.

While the small chats that are shown that remained didn't have the really incriminating stuff that the victim describe in their testimony that were deleted (another dick pick, him guessing she was Latina because of her hips, etc.), what is there is still pretty welling. They sent pictures to each other, the girl asked Gabe for advice on a project she was doing for one of her 10th grade classes, the girl vented to him and said she really trusted him... even in the chats that remain what is left is Gabe having very casual private conversations with a minor who trusted him so much she'd vent about her life to him.

People can't handwave this the way they could before. They can't hand wave it as "Michelle and Claire say they weren't groomed, and Destiny has no evidence". There's physical receipts. It's provably his Snapchat. The texts 100% sound like how he talks.

I strongly suspect that more will likely come out in the future.

-Afterlife Anon

God...yeah, I'd say the writing's on the wall at this point. There's no reason a grown adult should be talking to a strange child that way. Fucking disgusting.

[quark-art]

im not gonna reblog it and start a fight cuz i dont really feel like arguing with someone i kinda look up to, but a webcomic creator i follow made this post that was like "lol webcomic creators will make 1000 pages of a comic, start out rough, never edit the early stuff and act surprised when people dont read their comic" and it kinda pissed me off bc it shows a complete ignorance of the reality of webcomics.

if a webcomic has over 1000 pages i guarantee it has at least a moderate following, otherwise the creator wouldnt have the motivation to make 1000 pages. (although, if that theoretical person does exist, way to punch down i guess?) also, if a webcomic has over 1000 pages and the early stuff is kinda rough, that means their audience (which PROVABLY EXISTS. i am thinking of MULTIPLE REAL PEOPLE who fit this exact description right now) doesnt actually mind because they see the passion the creator has for their story and accept the storys flaws as the natural result of a comic artist getting better at making comics in real time. it is actually kinda COOL to see a comic artist improve, even if the early art is bad, even if the writing isnt the best, seeing the creator get better is really engaging for a lot of people. that is not something they merely tolerate, that is part of the appeal.

everyone is always talking about how perfection is an impossible standard but no one recognizes how that necessitates the presence of flaw. there are always going to be flaws. an artist is allowed to just accept them and keep going. they do not have to turn around and desperately try to fix them so they wont feel embarrassed anymore. and when you make fun of people for daring to have flawed art on the internet youre basically just reinforcing the fear every artist has that "my old work is embarrassingly bad and i need to hide it."

also, most of us are literally just doing this for fun??? youre just being mean to people who are having fun???? stfu???

[murdlygirly]

Thinking about how Logico has solved thousands upon thousands of cases, but Irratino probably remains to be his biggest mystery. 

I mean, Logico only believes in things that are provable. And from his perspective, taking Irratino’s word, all of Irra’s methods should be a load of baloney. 

Like bro should not know that the suspect with the same height as Aureolin had a marot card from talking to a ghost he knew. Or be able to deduce that Night had a bag of coins by looking at the stars. But that’s what Irratino claims, and most perplexing about it all is that his hints are always right. 

If Logico ever sat down and questioned how Irratino might know what he knows, he’d just get more questions.

Irratino’s explanation for his methods is rooted in the occult, which Logico does not believe in. So does that mean that Tino is finding this information through other logical means and is just dishonestly crediting the occult? Surely not. He wouldn’t want to risk damaging the occult’s integrity.

So, is he just guessing? He might have convinced himself that the guesses he comes up with are proof of the occult. But he’s always right. What are the odds of that? Some of his hints are very detailed. Was he lucky when he just so happened to use a pendulum to determine that the tallest suspect had a stranglin’ scarf? But then again, the concept of luck can be seen as illogical, too.

Probability then. How probable is it for Irratino to always hit the mark? Every suspect has their own singular weapon in their own location, with maybe one particular motive, so the probability isn’t zero. But to do it every time, throughout all the cases they’ve done. How would he be able to nail the cases where he wasn't even physically there for? The chances will be lower, especially if he isn't briefed on the case information. How is it also that Irratino mainly supplies information that Logico didn’t find himself?

So many questions! I can’t answer them either. The only concrete information here is that Logico likes his cases the same way he likes his men: mysterious. And good for him.