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99pansy · 2 months ago

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ss/mayo blogspot lore + frerard theory

hi I'm about to drop some insane lore that I don't think a lot of mcr fans/frerard theorists know about. this isn't discussed often so I figured I should write about it here before all the evidence is lost to time.

this is probably gonna be a long one so buckle in! i have gathered as much evidence here as possible but there's no way to be certain about anything. i'm trying to maintain as much journalistic integrity as i can throughout this post (also trying super hard not to insert my opinion too much) because i think a lot of this speaks for itself.

so i have a pretty significant frerard theory but i have to give a lot of backstory and documentation for it to fully make sense. this will not be in chronological order (to best suit the narrative) but i hope it makes sense

many people know about frank's F.T. Willz endeavors which have been proven as him in recent years. however, "ss" or "shitsubou shita" was another blog he had before this which is not widely known

around 2007, there was a major theory in the fandom that gerard and frank were running secret blogspot accounts where they'd post journals, poetry, etc. frank's account was iamthemodernprometheus.blogspot.com and gerard's supposed account was its-mayonaise.blogspot.com. both accounts are still up, though i'm not sure if any posts have since been deleted. this probably sounds crazy so i'll explain everything!

evidence for frank as SS/shitsubou-shita/iamthemodernprometheus

i strongly believe this was frank's personal blog, but you can come to your own conclusions based on this info

frank's supposed original blogspot handle was "shitsubou-shita." once fans realized this was his account, he deleted it pretty much immediately. you can read some fan discussion about the fall out from this in a comment thread here. this comment thread will be linked a few times in this post because most of the screenshots on this post originate from there.

apparently *frank* was posting some very personal thoughts/feelings on this blog that he did not want to be discovered. i'll go over some of the deleted posts in a minute, but first i need to give more a little more context.

at the same time the blog is found, someone comments "your fired" on a recent post. apparently some fans thought the comment looked strangely out of place, and it was one of the last comments left before the account's deletion, on one of the final posts made.

this will be relevant later on, and we'll get into the account's posts soon.

my theory is that someone on the "inside" could have found his personal blog and tried spooking him, which could have been the final straw for him. or, the account being deleted could be completely unrelated to the weird comment. all of this can be found here (same link i posted previously)

months after deleting their blog, shitsubou shita begins posting under a new url "iamthemodernprometheus" (but still under the pen name "shitsubou shita" or "ss" as fans called him)

in his new blog, and similarly to F.T. Willz years later, he still leaves plenty of crumbs for fans to figure out it's him. screenshot sources are below

latin heading: his page had a latin heading that when translated, reads "keep the faith"

bio on blogspot: "industry - chemicals", and "you dont stop playing cos you get old…you get old cos you stop playing" both sound suspiciously personal to frank

his url choice: "the modern prometheus" is the full title of mary shelley's frankenstein. frankenstein is a character that frank has always deeply resonated with due to his namesake, love of horror, and being born on halloween

spelling of wierd: SS and frank both spell "weird" as "wierd"

i think he enjoyed the mystery of having a secret online persona, which eventually led to the creation of F.T. Willz in 2008. it seems like wanted to leave just enough evidence for people to suspect it was him, but not enough to prove it.

here are some snippets of 2007 era discourse about the identity of "ss" and their deleted blog. you can find all of these comments and more context here. this was around the time gerard got married and fans felt like the dynamic on stage was different, and they were concerned about the future of the band. it's a LOT to go over so i would advise reading the comments if you want more perspective

on the next page, an anonymous comment is posted which fans immediately begin to speculate is SS (frank). again, if you click the link you can get way more context than i'm able to provide here.

this insinuates that SS frequented the comments on mayo's blog, which i don't think he would have done without believing/knowing mayo is gerard

there was a lot discussed in this thread including pretty solid evidence that frank/ss wrote the ancient and historic "eliza post"

if you are not aware of the eliza cuts drama, that's a totally different and equally as insane rabbit hole you'll have to research on your own

tldr; she is gerard's mentally unstable ex-fiance who he was engaged to very shortly before lindsey

gerard and eliza got engaged on may 22, 2007 (the last show of the black parade tour) according to this reddit comment.

the "eliza post" went up on june 4, 2007. here is the post in its entirety:

"Hi I felt I had to write to you guys to allay some of your fears regarding the rumours and speculation surrounding Gerard and Eliza and the future of the band. This is the only time I will ever post. I will not be able to respond to your comments or enter into discussion or debate on what I'm about to say. We are aware that this is one of the most popular message boards for MCR fans and we know you guys are the most dedicated and loyal fans in the world. It saddens me to see such division amongst the fans over one woman. If it's any consolation, you guys are not the only ones affected. She is merely tolerated by both band and crew. Believe me, nothing anyone can say will change his mind. She's been the cause of numerous conflicts and while we dont have to like it, we have to accept it, at least for the forseeable future. From day one this woman has had a hidden agenda - her manipulation knows no bounds. Some of you may find this difficult to believe but I assure you I have personally witnessed the two sides of this woman. Her so-called 'good deeds' are nothing more than PR exercises for his benefit. But he does not see what goes on behind closed doors. We have tried to draw his attention to her blatant self-promotion and diva demands. This is a prime example of love being blind. His feelings for her do run very deep. Her feelings for him, however, are questionable at best. Many people believe, including myself, that he is being used as nothing more than a stepping stone. It's disheartening to see someone you care about and have worked with for a very long time change as a person, becoming more detached and causing the group dynamic to change as a result. There have been conflicts and differences of opinions and compromises have had to be made She does not accompany the band on the European legs of the tour. Since being on this current European leg, he seems much happier which suggest she doesnt make him as happy as he thinks. Despite being asked more than once to remain discreet, she blatantly disregards his wish to keep his personal life private by continually fuelling the internet hype. The band has always been about the music and the fans. This will not change. MCR have never endorsed any type of clique as it encourages and promotes the kind of high school mentality that MCR have always fought against. Your continued support is appreciated and rest assured this woman will have no adverse affect on the band and the music. For obvious reasons I am remaining anonymous. Eliza, we know you trawl these message boards and you probably know who I am - but I'd like to see you try and prove it!!!"

it's clear that whoever wrote this had a very strong distaste for eliza and was deeply troubled by the idea of gerard marrying her. based on the language used and style of writing, i strongly believe frank wrote this post. i'll be circling back to this in a minute, because i have a little more to go over.

for more evidence that SS is frank, we can reference this reddit comment made just 9 months ago by someone heavily involved in the blogspot community at the time, kapunua. their username on this post is "ReallyKapu."

if you read through the comment links I provided earlier, you may see their name pop up. they are also mentioned by name on the "iamthemodernprometheus" blog. if you also search "kapunua mcr" on google, you can verify their involvement in the blogspot community at the time.

kapunua is also mentioned in its-mayonaise's post here (no screenshot provided for this one, its just a small mention)

there's also a screenshot of a different comment kapunua made about 9 years ago with similar information. i found the screenshot here.

evidence that "mayo" is gerard

as mentioned in the post above, mayo often used british english syntax in his posts. he also posted about some pretty juicy stuff including a blowjob poem (you can seek that out yourself)

using british english isn't out of the ordinary for gerard. he often used an accent on stage during this time. moreover, he is a writer who has written multiple characters with this type of accent, showing he has a certain appeciation for it. i think his persona for the "mayo" account could been a sort of character he put on to disguise his idenity.

if you decide to view mayo's blog, you'll see each post has nothing but comments from mcr fans exclusively. i find it very interesting that the writer of its-mayonaise never bothered to make a post saying "hey, btw, i'm not gerard" in the 4 years this blog was run for

we have somewhat less definitive evidence that gerard is mayo. however, it is clear that at the very least, they had to have been someone involved with MCR or their crew at the time.

mayo makes a post alluding to their identity here, which you can find in the first screenshot below. this section sounds a lot like something gerard would write:

"I have been asked to reveal myself to you. You all know me. I am whoever you want me to be, I am an artist, a poet, a singer, a motherfucker, and a contradiction, a mouthpiece, a friend, and an enemy, a brother, an informant, a whipping boy, a basket case, a queen, and a criminal...(credit to John Hughes.)"

there are THOUSANDS of comments, many of which speculate the identity of mayo on each of his blogspot posts. you should definitely do your own detective work and see what you think, because there is far too much info to go through here.

a frerard theory

as i previously mentioned, frank had deleted his original blog for shitsubou-shita in late september. however, prior to this, he made and then deleted some particularly turbulent and questionable posts

for context, the frerard fight happened on august 22, 2007, and gerard and lindsey got married on september 3, 2007 (just four months after gerard was engaged to eliza)

gerard and lindsey are married on the last night of the projekt revolution tour.

mcr takes a break for one month after this, where we can probably safely assume that freshly-married gerard and frank did not plan on seeing one another.

i think this was very troubling for frank for many different reasons. gerard had just freed himself of the eliza situation and here he was making the same mistake again. he was on the verge of losing his dearest friend yet again, and i believe that despite his best efforts, he could not get through to gerard.

obviously, gerard and lindsey are still married to this day. however, many fans might be aware of what happened between her and mikey. there's also a lot of other questionable information about lindsey circling the web, but that's a different story for another time.

weeks later, similarly to the eliza situation, shitsubou-shita makes and deletes the following posts on his original blog (this was prior to the creation of iamthemodernprometheus):

Friday, September 21, 2007 Abandon hope, all who enter here... What the fuck happened? Why didn't I see this coming? I made a point to keep out of it this time, but at what cost? I'm trapped between a rock and a hard place, it's a lose/lose situation. I've always been honest with you, shouldn't that work both ways? What's with the double standards? People are starting to notice. I'm not talking about kids, I'm talking about people in their mid 20's and 30's. People with life experience who can see the cracks starting to show. What am I supposed to say? I just dont have the answers. How can I reassure them when I need reassurance myself?

he says "i made a point to keep out of it this time" which seems like a reference to the situation with eliza i mentioned previously. he alludes to the idea that fans are beginning to notice the band's dynamic is not the same anymore. this was specifically around the time when "frerard" moments came to a pretty abrupt end.

he says "i've always been honest with you, shouldn't that work both ways?" which can be interpreted in a few different ways. he may feel deceived due to his best friend's sudden marriage. however, the intensity of the language used in this post shows he probably had some very intense feelings toward the situation.

it seems like the writer was having a considerably difficult time coping with these feelings. a day later, this post is made:

Saturday, September 22, 2007 Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Bullshit. I've always been a smart ass, even as a child, although my mom would prefer to use the term precocious. I've always had trouble keeping my mouth shut, I'm an open book, completely ingenuous - secrecy and circumvention are not my style. But then I've never experienced extreme paranoia. So I'm writing this blog. I know you will never read it, I wouldn't want you to. Not everything is about you. This blog is for ME, a perverse catharsis, I need this right now to preserve the small amount of sanity I have left. A blog fuelled by disappointment, frustration, confusion and dejection. I am not laying the blame at your door. The burden of blame is mine. I didn't speak up soon enough. I didn't want to rock the boat, I've been there before. I didn't want to fight or endure days of being given the silent treatment. Its not fair on the others. Why do you always make everyone feel like they have to take sides? If I had been a better friend, I would have stepped in regardless of the consequences. I acted selfishly because I didn't want to lose you, but ironically, I may have lost you anyway. I meant every word I said at the diner and although I didnt show it, your smirk and glib response hurt me more than you will ever know. I don't know who you are anymore. I cant seem to find the right words. Nothing I say seems to reach you. You are wrong. I DO care. I love you. I refuse to give up on you and I refuse to let you push me away. I am going to fight for our friendship, you aren't the only one with a stubborn streak. We are in this together, for the long haul, I promise. I want my friend back. I miss him.

it seems like whatever the writer is feeling toward the subject of this post goes beyond the boundaries of a typical friendship. the final paragraph says everything we need to know.

we can assume that based on this post's mention of meeting a diner, that frank and gerard likely met up during their month-long break to talk about the way things went down

lastly, i know there's at least one interview floating or blog post around where frank says he was a difficult teen and a pain in the ass as a kid, but i can't find it right now. if anyone has the link to that i would love to add it here, because i remember it sounding pretty similar to that first paragraph.

Sunday, September 23, 2007 Is the pen really mightier than the sword? And so you continue to blog, as do I. The difference is, I am not hurting anyone. I'm just trying to gain some perspective while you are publicly making a fool of yourself. Your words are hungrily devoured and dissected by the masses, you seem to revel in the chaos and controversy. At the moment your identity is pure speculation, but have you thought about the consequences if anyone was able to prove your identity? Not just for you, but for all of us? Have you lost your mind? How can you be so selfish? You have become a self obsessed megalomaniac. I know what I get out of writing my blogs - but what do you get out of writing yours? Do you even bother to read the comments? Some of those comments break my heart. These aren't just nameless, faceless strangers, these are real people with real lives and real feelings. These are the people that allowed us to bring our music into their lives. These are the people that we see on tour, the people that wait outside for hours in the cold and rain just to meet us, the people that write us letters and make us scrapbooks, the people who care enough to bake us cookies and brownies, the people that send us birthday cards and bizarre, crazy ass gifts, the people that have given us their love and support, the people that cheer us on, the people that made us. Why are you so hellbent on destroying not only yourself, but everyone who loves you? You wanna see how far down I can sink? Your mom called last night - and I lied to her. After everything she has done for us, I lied to her. How do you think that made me feel? Do you even care?

this last post, for me, solidifies the identities behind each blog. it is so clear through the details in this post. to me, it seems like frank was hurting so bad, and in such a vulnerable place, that he completely let his guard down and made this post.

the mcr lyric included "You wanna see how far down I can sink?" is undoubtedly mind-boggling and speaks volumes to how carelessly obvious frank was (maybe intentionally?) willing to be

there's so much to unpack in this post and i honestly can't even begin to wrap my head around it. i would love to hear anyone's opinion!

later in the post, it seems clear that he is referencing the iam-mayonaise blog and gerard's seemingly wreckless posting. but mostly, i think he was lashing out due to pain of betrayal after losing the closest person to him and someone he deeply loves not once, but twice.

again, it's hard to believe how obvious he was being here, but i really think it was a result of the pain/suffering he felt

if you scroll back up to the first screenshot of this post, you can circle back around to when he removed his entire profile after making this final post, eventually rebranding to "iamthemodernprometheus"

the its-mayonaise account makes this post on september 30, seemingly as a response. the title could apply to frank, who as we all know, was gerard's best friend and right-hand man. the rest of this post can be interpreted in many different ways, so you can make whatever you want out of it:

however, the last paragraph does give me pause... i would love to see/create a full analysis of this post, but i'm trying to stick to facts here so you can form your own judgement

after gerard's wedding and mcr's month long break, they play two shows in mexico (oct 4 & 7, 2007) and then the hoboken show takes place, where frank yells "lie to me" during i'm not okay and seems very low energy and unlike himself

i believe things gradually improved between them after this point, but i'm not sure if their connection was ever completely the same.

conclusion/my opinion

coupled with all of the other available evidence about gerard/frank's tumultuous friendship/relationship/situationship, i think this information strongly alludes to the idea that at the very least, frank had some very intense feelings for gerard that were not fully reciprocated. i would love to hear what anyone else's opinion is on this topic, because it definitely isn't discussed often

i think it's completely heartbreaking (especially with everything else we know) but i do think their incredible connection is a massive contributing factor to mcr's legacy

if you notice any inconsistencies in this post or have any questions, please send me a message! i want to keep this as consistent, comprehensible, and well-sourced as i can!

lastly please follow me if you liked this! i spent months researching and compiling sources for this post and i would so appreciate it <3

#frerard #my chemical romance #mcr #gerard way #frank iero #frerard theory #ss/mayo #ss mayo #shitsubou-shita #its-mayonaise #mcr history

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starwarsanthropology · 6 months ago

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Canon genders the clones, both individually and collectively, pretty aggressively. They're men, brothers, boys, sirs. Omega is notable for being the "female" clone, to the point where she's not recognized as a clone in a meaningful way.

But the clones grew up without gendered social groups! Despite how clones are gendered by external factors, gender is functionally a nonentity in their lives until they meet civilians, and civilians do a load of other weird shit anyway.

So why do they still use gendered language?

My argument is that feminine language isn't used as a gendered form of address, but as a form of address that reflects a specific kind of power dynamic and relationship between parties.

Given the structure of the clone army, the only people a vast majority of young clones interact with who could insist on being called ma'am are exclusively kaminoans.

The kaminoans view clones not as autonomous subjects, but as property. They have and expect complete control over their lives and actions. Incidentally, the female kaminoans we see (such as Nala Se) tend to demonstrate an even more proprietary perspectives on the clones.

You can question a sir, like your superiors or trainers, at your discretion, but you can't question a ma'am. A sir is someone who has power over you, but is somewhat responsible for you. The have personal accountability to you in some way. Sirs are responsible for men under them. A ma'am is someone whose power over you is absolute, an authority without accountability, who is not beholden to you but that you must obey. You are tool or a number to a ma'am.

And when you bring clones out into the wider galaxy, I'm not sure anyone would figure it out that quickly.

Say you're a new jedi general. You meet your men, and they address you as "ma'am". Maybe you correct and move on, figuring that they've grown up surrounded by thousands of identical men and aren't great at guessing genders based on social and appearance cues. Scuttlebutt has your forms of address spread through the men by the end of the day, and you don't think about it again.

The clones, on the other hand, take this correction as he/him jedi stating that they want to work with them and suppourt them despite having so much power over them, which fits with both what they know of the jedi and, most often, their leadership style.

She/her jedi (see Shaak Ti especially!), clones maybe treat a little more as absolute authorities. This gendered divide in behavior gets met with, "hm, maybe they're just not used to women." For many jedi, they eventually switch to calling them sir as well, especially as they build rapport.

For Shaak Ti specifically, she is an absolute authority as the representative of the Jedi on Kamino, not just as a figurehead but as a decision maker and educator. Even as the clones grow to trust and love her, she's a relatively distant and all-powered figure. She has near total authority over them, and clones might ask for help or suppourt, but there's no social obligation for those requests to be met, she's just kind. It's compassion, not duty.

Senators, there's a good mix of different factors that make it confusing. "Senator" is always an acceptable form of address if you're not sure how'd they react, even if they should be ma'ams by default, but they're either trying to build rapport for some reason or genuinely want to work with you when they say to call them sir, regardless of the actual power dynamic at play. The she/her senators that respect the clones are in the same boat as Shaak Ti: Padme Amidala may care about clone rights, but I am still just one of hundreds to her and she has no personal accountability to me. Her position is such that she should not and cannot owe me anything. Same with Riyo Chuchi, Mon Mothma, etc. etc.

And a civilian that insists on being called ma'am or sir is going to be an asshole either way, and they technically have power over clones without personal accountability or responsibility for them. It works.

Finally, Palpatine.

He's a slimy rat fuck who pretends to be affable and kind, so of course he's going to laugh and say, "Oh, no, call me Sir!" when you call him ma'am. He is not personally accountable to you, and he does not care about you, but it helps his image and it helps him manipulate people to pretend, so of course he's making you use sir to build false intimacy despite the fact that he's the ma'am of ma'ams, both in power gaps and lack of accountability for his treatment of clones.

So having clones using sir vs ma'am not as a reflection of gender but as a reflection of power? Yeah, I think it works.

#sw tcw #star wars meta #clone culture #trans clone troopers #admittedly this is pretty out there BUT its fun to me #also love the idea of transfem clone being addressed as ma'am and immediately bluescreening #bc like Hi I Still Respect My Brothers As People?#or like trans clones continuing to use he/him bc to clones its not gendered thats the Default Singular Pronoun For Everyone*#gender #miscommunication #Clone gender culture #original speculation

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saintsenara · 2 months ago

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How do you think memory charms work from a brain science perspective, and what might the implications of such technology be? Given the complexities of memory—how it works, its function (e.g., in identity formation, decision making, psychological well-being, etc.)—the fact that these spells are so routinely used on Muggles who witness magic—especially under traumatic circumstances—is so sinister…

thank you very much for the ask, pal! a very interesting question to think about!

as you say, memory is the central part of human experience. it's integral to who we are, why we understand ourselves to be that way, and how we function daily. without the ability to remember things we've learned or which have happened to us in the past, we don't have the ability to understand the present or plan for the future, or apply context to why we behave in or feel certain ways. memory is so important to our understanding of our own existence that many people would say losing it is the thing they fear most...

and i think there's a very credible case for jkr being one of them.

in its understanding of the body, the harry potter series prioritises cognitive function above all things.

physical illnesses, injuries, or disabilities don't upset or frighten it unduly. this is partially because its genre conventions need to take this approach to physical impairment in order for their plots to advance - harry being able to take a bludger to the head and live to tell the tale is the same as john wick being able to fall from the top of a six-storey building, get up, and keep going: they're action heroes, and the person following their exploits wants that action to continue.

but it's also because the series' central theme is choice - and, specifically, the choice between good and evil. this choice - as the books understand it - is something freely and rationally made, with no cognitive impairment preventing it.

[hence - as i've written about elsewhere - voldemort's horcruxes do not - despite common fanon - make him insane.]

as a result, injuries, disabilities, or experiences which lead to a loss of cognitive capacity - thereby making it impossible for choices to be freely made - are presented by the text as uniquely horrifying.

the revelation that frank and alice longbottom can't recognise neville after they're attacked by the lestranges brings a "bitterness harry had never heard there before" into dumbledore's voice.

lupin is primarily ashamed of the loss of rational thought his transformations bring, and the wolfsbane potion works by preventing this loss of rationality:

"As long as I take it in the week preceding the full moon, I keep my mind when I transform... I am able to curl up in my office, a harmless wolf, and wait for the moon to wane again. "Before the Wolfsbane Potion was discovered, however, I became a fully fledged monster once a month."

harry thinks that "bathilda bagshot" [really nagini in disguise] is starting to forget how to perform magic, and equates this loss of function with the dark, dank, foul-smelling house in which she lives.

ariana dumbledore's trauma-induced cognitive disability gradually ruins her family’s lives.

harry, our hero, is never, ever affected by the imperius curse.

and, of course, the dementor's kiss - which canon understands as the single most frightening thing which could ever befall somebody - brings about a state where bodily functions continue, but cognitive ones are lost:

"You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no... anything. There's no chance at all of recovery. You'll just - exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever... lost."

as a result of this, canon presents memories as things which are straightforward and factual. while they may be interpreted subjectively - harry's horror at snape's worst memory, for example - they are - in and of themselves - objective accounts of events. the memories which harry views in the pensieve, for example, are not "witness statements" - subjective, personal accounts of how an individual experienced an event, which might be contradicted by another person's own subjective recollection - they are fact. what they say happened actually happened. sirius' version of snape's worst memory would be identical to snape's.

and canon understands that memories are - therefore - devoid of things like perception, assumption, imagination, habit, and emotion. indeed, these things are not only irrelevant to the memory... they are detrimental to it.

slughorn's attempt to modify his memory of telling tom riddle about horcruxes is because he wishes to soothe an emotion - shame, at giving riddle the information he needed to commit such evil and then not telling anyone - by presenting an imagined version of events in which he looks better. his attempt to apply these two things to the memory are what curdles it. what dumbledore is asking harry to do, in sending him out to retrieve the unmodified memory from slughorn, is to acquire the objective facts:

"He has tried to rework the memory to show himself in a better light, obliterating those parts which he does not wish me to see. It is, as you will have noticed, very crudely done, and that is all to the good, for it shows that the true memory is still there beneath the alterations."

in saying that slughorn's "true memory" remains accessible, what dumbledore is saying is that slughorn should be judged as having full cognitive capacity. he's compos mentis, he's of sound mind. if the true memory did not remain - if slughorn had managed to corrupt his memory to such an extent that he genuinely believed that his conversation with riddle had never occurred [rather than knowing it did but wishing he'd behaved differently and therefore pretending he had] - then he would, in the eyes of the series, be insane.

now... this - unsurprisingly - is not how human memory actually works. memory is fragile, inconsistent, and subjective. we forget things. we misremember things. we remember things through subjective lenses. we invent false memories.

but we can - nonetheless - use what we know about human memory to uncover a wizarding theory of memory formation which would explain why they think this way.

and why they feel so comfortable tampering with people's memories.

[and why this is horrifying.]

what are memories?

in canon, memories are presented as something tangible - wisps of silvery liquid. and memories actually are physical things - albeit absolutely microscopic ones - which take up physical space in the brain. they're just kept out of the way of our conscious awareness until we need them.

[basically, they're christmas lights in a box in the attic. they physically exist and they're physically present in the house, but they sit - turned off and with no attention being paid to them - until they're needed, when they're brought out of storage and switched on.]

they are made - like almost everything to do with the brain - from neurons, which are a type of cell. neurons work like the wires in a telephone exchange - they transmit chemical and electrical signals across the brain [and, therefore, across the body] in a vast, high-speed, interwoven network:

a digital model of the neural network from a sesame-seed-sized fragment of human brain. there are about 50,000 connections shown. [source]

a neuron receives a signal, which it then interprets. it then sends a response [or action potential] along its stem [axon].

at the end of the axon, there are synapses, which form a bridge to other neurons, linking a chain of communication together.

synapses are generally activated by chemicals called neurotransmitters - such as serotonin, melatonin, adrenaline, dopamine [which are likely to be the ones most people have heard of], and others.

so: neuron x receives a signal, interprets it, and transmits that interpretation as an electrical signal along its axon, causing the release of adrenaline into the synapse linking it to neuron y. this activates the connection between neurons x and y. the signal passes across the synapse into neuron y, which interprets it, and the process continues.

each neuron has thousands of synaptic connections to other neurons. and these connections aren't static - they get stronger or weaker depending on exposure. the more we use the connection, the stronger the connection is.

one way to think of this is to imagine the synaptic connection as a volume dial, which controls how loudly two neurons "talk" to each other. if the connection between neuron x and neuron y is very strong, the synaptic connection allows them to shout at each other, thereby understanding each other clearly. if the connection between neuron x and neuron y is very weak, they're only whispering to each other, are having to strain to hear each other, and will probably only partially hear the communicated information.

the brain will therefore prioritise the information it can "hear" the clearest. this is why, if you learn two pieces of information, and then revise the first piece of information every day for a month and do no revision of the second piece, you will find it much easier to recall the first piece when asked - the brain prioritises the "loudest" voice.

when we learn or experience something we create synaptic connections, linking neurons into circuits in an ever-changing map across the brain.

these circuits are memories.

remembering something is the process of activating a specific neuron cluster, thereby retrieving the information it contains and communicating it as an electrical signal to another part of the brain.

this process of remembering can be unconscious - a smell might prompt us to remember something without us actively intending to; when we write something, we're not consciously thinking about how we learned to write, we just do it - or conscious - we might sniff a particular perfume bottle in order to summon up a specific memory; we might intentionally decide to remember a day we spent writing in a particular place.

what are the different types of memory?

there are two main categories of memory - short-term and long-term.

short-term memory is the brain's capacity to actively hold onto a small amount of information [about four things, on average] for a brief period of time [and by brief we mean around 15 seconds - any memory which can be recalled after that period of time is a long-term one] in order to allow you to do things, like take down a telephone number.

long-term memory, in contrast, is something the brain possesses an infinite capacity for. it can be divided into two subcategories.

the first of these is implicit memory. this refers to recollections which are unconscious, habitual, primed, or conditioned. learned motor skills - things like holding a pen or riding a bike - which you can do without having to think about how [procedural memories] are an example of implicit memories. so are things we are conditioned to do via the association of an action with a stimulus - like pavlov's dogs salivating when they heard the ringing of the bell - and things we are primed to do by general knowledge or contextual experience - like being shown the word "bread" in a word association game and responding "butter" without having to actively think about why that connection exists for us.

the second is explicit memory, which refers to the conscious recollection of a specific thing. explicit memory has two subcategories: episodic memory - the recollection of events or experiences - and semantic memory - the recollection of knowledge or information.

i know that belfast is the capital of northern ireland and paris is the capital of france. these are semantic memories.

i know i went to a restaurant in belfast with my partner last week and that i went to watch the french open in paris with my friend this spring. these are episodic ones.

episodic memory is highly dependent on context and association - you can remember where you parked your car by thinking about the shop you parked next to - some of which is semantic memory in its own right - you can tell that your friend has misremembered a story they're telling about your teenage years because you know you were sixteen when the event took place, your friend is talking about driving, and you possess the semantic knowledge that the legal driving age in the united kingdom is seventeen.

explicit memory is the aspect of memory most clearly affected by conditions like alzheimer's disease, while implicit memories tend to be recalled for much longer.

explicit memory is also the thing most clearly affected in canon by memory charms...

how are explicit memories formed?

at its most basic level, the brain is divided into three parts - the cerebrum, brainstem, and cerebellum. the cerebrum is the thing we’re concerned with today.

its main part - comprising about half of the brain’s weight - is the cortex, which is the wrinkly surface you probably picture when you hear the word “brain”. the cerebral cortex is divided into two hemispheres. each hemisphere has four lobes [so you have eight lobes in total] which relate to specific functions.

[here's a video of a dissection of a real human brain - if you fancy it - which goes into its anatomy in more detail]

nestled in each hemisphere of the cerebrum are several deeper structures.

in the temporal lobe, we find two of these structures - the hippocampus and the amygdala - which are crucial to memory formation. we have one of these in each hemisphere [so two hippocampi and two amygdalae in total] as part of our limbic system - a group of brain structures that regulate things like our sense of smell, emotions, memories, and autonomic behaviours [heart rate, breathing, sweating, etc.].

[here's a dissection of the limbic system, again - fair warning! - using a real human brain]

the hippocampus

when our brain decides it wants to hold onto a piece of information, it's channelled from the prefrontal cortex [in the frontal lobe], which controls short-term memory functions, to the hippocampus, which is then responsible for linking all of the relevant context surrounding the information together - like it's making a patchwork quilt.

let's go back to the example of being asked to take down a phone number. and let's imagine that the person who asks us to take down the phone number is also our fandom-style soulmate. several pieces of information will be created in the brain at once - the memory of being asked to take down the number, the memory of physically doing that, the sensory input of what our soulmate looks, sounds, and smells like, other sensory inputs [what the broader environment looks, sounds, and smells like; the fact we're drinking a coffee; the fact we're wearing a scratchy jumper], the emotion of knowing we've met our soulmate - which are then sewn together by the hippocampus into a coherent, linear account of what occurred.

the hippocampus is selective - it's more likely, even in an episodic memory as emotionally powerful as this one would be, to hold onto information which is comprehensible to it [so, for example, if a song is playing when you meet your soulmate, but its lyrics are in a language you don't understand, it's less likely to retain that as a key part of its account than if it's a song you understand and, especially, a song you already know and like].

it's also inventive - it will fill in gaps in the recollection of an episode. these inventions are often logical and based on both your semantic knowledge and parts of your implicit memory. for example, in the memory of being a child and going to hospital to meet your new baby brother, he is likely to be wearing a blue hat. it is highly unlikely that you actually remember the colour of the hat he was wearing - especially if you were quite young - but your brain settles on blue to fill that gap in your recollection because it knows you were raised in a culture which associates the colour blue with baby boys.

but they're also subjective. you may, for example, have more than one memory of the same event - with each memory's patchwork quilt having a slightly different pattern. to go back to the memory of meeting your soulmate, you might have one version of the memory which was stored by your brain on the day you first met, in which the thing you primarily remember is how nervous and awkward you were and how you were worried your soulmate didn't actually like you. you might then have a second version of the memory which is altered by contextual information you learned after the first version was created - after your soulmate asks you to marry them, for example, you are less likely to dwell on the parts of the first memory which are about worrying they didn't like you.

while the hippocampus is integral for the formation of long-term explicit and implicit memories, it's not the place where these long-term memories are permanently stored. instead, long-term memories appear to migrate [or awaken] from the hippocampus throughout the cerebral cortex, and to become progressively more independent of it over time. when it comes to explicit memories, the older, stronger, or deeper a memory is the more likely its independence from the hippocampus will be.

we know this because of a man called henry molaison, who had most of his hippocampus surgically removed in the 1950s in an effort to treat his epilepsy. following his operation, molaison was only able to form new episodic memories which lasted for less than a minute before they vanished forever from his consciousness, and essentially lived every single day as brand new, with no context surrounding it. the exception to this rule was that he could recall memories relating to significant experiences in his life which he'd formed years - and often decades - before his surgery. he could also recall certain facts - semantic memories - which he'd already known, but he couldn't form new semantic knowledge.

semantic memory also appears to become progressively independent of the hippocampus over time, much like implicit memories we have acquired through conditioning or priming. for example, the memory of the first time we drank a coffee while tired transforms into the general knowledge that drinking coffee generally helps us with tiredness, bolstered by the semantic knowledge that caffeine is a stimulant.

the amygdala

in the analogy of memory formation as being like creating a patchwork quilt, the amygdala is responsible for one of the most important squares the hippocampus sews together: the emotional significance of the memory.

this is one of the most important bits of context which the hippocampus applies to its account of a memory. the more emotive a memory is, the more likely it is to be remembered.

and this isn't just the case when it comes to specific episodic memories - such as remembering your wedding day, or the time you were in a car accident. it applies to semantic memory - if i tell you that paris is the capital of france and then punch you in the face, you'll remember it - and to implicit conditioned and primed memories.

imagine you are three years old, you're in the park, and you meet a dog. the dog is on a lead, calm, quiet, and well trained. you are asked if you'd like to pet it and you say yes. the dog is happy to be petted - it wags its tail and it licks your hand - and you enjoy the experience and start laughing.

the hippocampus takes care of the "bullet points" of this event - the actions and the order in which they occurred, where they took place, and so on. the amygdala assigns an emotional response to the specific episodic memory - that is, when you recall it later, you will feel happy - and to the implicit memory you have accrued from the experience - that is, the next time you see a dog, even if it's not the dog you petted, your brain will be automatically primed to feel calm, safe, and happy.

and now imagine you are three years old, you're in the park, and you meet a dog. the dog is loose, agitated, barking, and much bigger than you. it bounds up to you while you're playing and knocks you to the ground. it growls and you see its teeth. you're afraid and start crying.

the same process occurs, but with a fear response. the hippocampus remembers what happened and in what order, the amygdala remembers how the specific memory made you feel and extrapolates from this to assign that feeling to your implicit memory. the next time you see a dog, even if the dog is on a lead and behaving perfectly calmly, your brain will be automatically primed to feel afraid.

and this reference to fear is important. as i've said, the brain prioritises remembering emotional memories… but it prioritises remembering stressful and/or frightening emotional memories above all other kinds. and it also tends to really cling on to things we have acquired by fear learning - the process by which we unconsciously associate a stimulus with a frightening event.

to return to the scenario above, if you met the nice dog first and then met the frightening dog later, your brain would prioritise the memory of the frightening dog. if you met the frightening dog first and then met the nice dog later, your brain would still prioritise the memory of the frightening dog. and even if you lose the ability to recall the specific episodic memory of meeting the specific frightening dog, your brain would still remember that it was afraid of dogs in general.

the amygdala plays a major role in this fear learning and fear-based recall. and it does this via channels of communication which don't need to involve the hippocampus - it communicates bi-directionally with the cerebral cortex, both with and without the hippocampus also being part of the conversation.

and this has an enormous implication for our wizarding theory of memory.

and so - at last - we come to...

the neuroscience of memory charms

we know from canon that memory charms focus on the removal of explicit memories - and, specifically, the explicit episodic memories which the series understands as objective snapshots of events.

we also know that short-term memory and implicit memory can experience collateral damage when the explicit memory is removed - especially if the charm is performed poorly. we learn in order of the phoenix, for example, that gilderoy lockhart lost the ability to write [an implicit procedural memory] after his charm backfired, and has had to undergo something akin to physical therapy [the way someone who'd received a head injury would] in order to regain this motor skill:

"I'm very well indeed, thank you!" said Lockhart exuberantly, pulling a rather battered peacock-feather quill from his pocket. "Now, how many autographs would you like? I can do joined-up writing now, you know!"

we also know that the recovery of an implicit behaviour - his fondness for signing autographs, a response based in an unconscious assumption he makes whenever he meets anyone [that they're a fan] - is taken by his healers as a sign that his self-perception is stabilising:

"He was rather well known a few years ago; we very much hope that this liking for giving autographs is a sign that his memory might be coming back a little bit... This is our long-term resident ward... For permanent spell damage, you know. Of course, with intensive remedial potions and charms and a bit of luck, we can produce some improvement... Gilderoy does seem to be getting back some sense of himself."

crucially, we see here no expectation that any specific memories - episodic memories, canon's factual accounts which prove someone to be of sound mind - will return. what the healer means by "his memory might be coming back a little bit" is something general. a memory charm - as the text understands it - affects something discrete.

but lockhart also shows us that the specific episodic memory impacted by a charm isn't deleted from the brain. it remains in storage - and, therefore, retains the potential to be reactivated.

and he also shows us that this potential reactivation is very likely to depend on an emotional stimulus, especially a negative one:

The smile faded slowly from Lockhart’s face. For a few moments he gazed intently at Harry, then he said, "Haven't we met?" "Er... yeah, we have," said Harry. "You used to teach us at Hogwarts, remember?" "Teach?" repeated Lockhart, looking faintly unsettled. "Me? Did I?" And then the smile reappeared upon his face so suddenly it was rather alarming. "Taught you everything you know, I expect, did I? Well, how about those autographs, then? Shall we say a round dozen, you can give them to all your little friends then and nobody will be left out!"

lockhart clearly associates a stimulus - something to do with harry - with a fear response [probably from being frogmarched at wandpoint and forced to jump into a hole]. this emotional context calls out to an episodic memory it has been severed from, but can't get there and falls silent again, drowned out by the louder activity of the implicit memory, telling lockhart to talk about autographs because these are fans.

so lockhart hasn't lost this specific episodic memory - he just can't access it. from this, we can conclude that memory charms block communication across synaptic connections, thereby preventing a memory from being retrieved.

and we can also conclude that - since wizards regard episodic memories as objective, factual accounts of events, which are unaffected by things like perception, assumption, imagination, habit, and emotion - they only understand the formation of these memories as they happen in the hippocampus. and, specifically, that they understand memory formation only as the hippocampus ordering events into a coherent, linear account - which they regard as objectively correct. we can further conclude that they do not understand anything other than this ordering of events as forming part of the episodic memory process, and, therefore, that they do not understand memory charms as needing to affect anything other than these "factual" snapshots.

which means that a memory charm will block the retrieval of the "bullet points" of an episodic memory from the hippocampus - and, therefore, someone whose memory has been modified won't remember the specific order of events surrounding the memory.

but it won't block the other bits of information - other patches of the quilt of the memory - from being retrieved. it will just remove them from their context.

and - right on the canon page - we learn that this failure to remove anything other than the bullet points, even in memory charms which are accurately and skilfully performed, makes the experience of having a modified memory profoundly disorienting to the person affected.

we see this - for example - in the case of morfin gaunt:

"So the Ministry called upon Morfin. They did not need to question him, to use Veritaserum or Legilimency. He admitted to the murder on the spot, giving details only the murderer could know. He was proud, he said, to have killed the Muggles, had been awaiting his chance all these years. He handed over his wand, which was proved at once to have been used to kill the Riddles. And he permitted himself to be led off to Azkaban without a fight. All that disturbed him was the fact that his father's ring had disappeared. 'He'll kill me for losing it,' he told his captors over and over again. 'He'll kill me for losing his ring.' And that, apparently, was all he ever said again. He lived out the remainder of his life in Azkaban, lamenting the loss of Marvolo's last heirloom, and is buried beside the prison, alongside the other poor souls who have expired within its walls."

morfin's verbal tic is a manifestation of a emotional response which now lacks any other context - the fear caused by his nephew visiting him, on the day the riddles were murdered, and incapacitating him [in a way which would allow him to steal his wand] just before the crime took place. in repeating it, what he's saying is "i know i didn't do this, even though i confessed, but i can't explain how i know this, and i am afraid".

and we know that dumbledore is able to use this emotional clue as the end of a line of string, which he can then follow back across deactivated synaptic connections to the suppressed [and, in canon's view, objective] episodic memory of tom riddle meeting his uncle:

"But he had this real memory in him all the time!" "Yes, but it took a great deal of skilled Legilimency to coax it out of him," said Dumbledore, "and why should anybody delve further into Morfin's mind when he had already confessed to the crime? However, I was able to secure a visit to Morfin in the last weeks of his life, by which time I was attempting to discover as much as I could about Voldemort's past. I extracted this memory with difficulty. When I saw what it contained, I attempted to use it to secure Morfin's release from Azkaban. Before the Ministry reached their decision, however, Morfin had died."

we see something similar in voldemort's treatment of bertha jorkins:

"But Wormtail - displaying a presence of mind I would never have expected from him - convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him on a nighttime stroll. He overpowered her... he brought her to me. And Bertha Jorkins, who might have ruined all, proved instead to be a gift beyond my wildest dreams... for - with a little persuasion - she became a veritable mine of information. "She told me that the Triwizard Tournament would be played at Hogwarts this year. She told me that she knew of a faithful Death Eater who would be only too willing to help me, if I could only contact him. She told me many things... but the means I used to break the Memory Charm upon her were powerful, and when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair. She had now served her purpose. I could not possess her. I disposed of her."

something we are told about bertha jorkins across goblet of fire - including by both sirius and dumbledore, characters the doylist narrative of this book trusts to be telling the truth - is that she loved gossip. and this - feeling intrigued in, scandalised by, and excited by a piece of information - is an emotional response.

voldemort - like dumbledore - seizes on this emotional component as the end of a line of string. bertha provides him with a piece of semantic information - the triwizard tournament is to be played - which makes her think of piece of general information - she knows barty crouch sr., who is organising it - which causes an emotional response which places the string in his hand - barty crouch sr. = scandal. voldemort then follows that string across deactivated synaptic connections to the suppressed [and, in canon's view, objective] episodic memory of bertha discovering that barty crouch jr. [about whom she possessed various contextual information, such as the fact that he was found guilty of being a death eater] was alive.

ergo, memory charms block the point-by-point recollection of specific episodic memories, unless someone is determined either to do a lot of careful forensic work or to commit murder.

but they do nothing to block the additional context - above all, the emotional context - which is so important to memory formation and recollection. and this is what makes the casual use of them - especially the casual use of them on muggles - so terrifying. because their efficacy is dramatically reduced in circumstances where a memory has an emotional context.

and witnessing someone performing actual magic would undoubtedly inspire quite a strong emotional response...

the circumstances in which they work well will be those like tom riddle sr.'s run-in with morfin. the ministry response to the incident is speedy, which means the memory hasn't been consolidated for long-term storage beyond the hippocampus. the incident seems to be the first time riddle ever interacts with morfin - meaning that he doesn't retain a conditioned implicit response that morfin is frightening or dangerous. riddle talks about the gaunts in a way that suggests he thinks they're funny and ridiculous, laughs at bob ogden as he's chased from the shack, and is happy riding along the lane where he was attacked, which shows that he didn't develop a fear response to the incident [nor, indeed, any significant emotional response at all]. preventing him from recalling this memory is simple, and it has no repercussions.

[in terms of his brain health, that is. obviously, it has a major repercussion in that it removes any pre-warning he might have given himself about merope…]

but outside of this context - in which the ministry essentially gets incredibly lucky that riddle sr.'s brain reacts in the only way which actually makes them viable - memory charms are clearly nowhere near as effective as wizards seem to think.

because, when it comes to people's strongest, deepest memories, the only thing being removed is the ability to run through the summary of events - to go down a checklist of what happened, and to contextualise an emotional response [for instance] by situating it within the account of the event which triggered it. the emotions these memories provoke, and the way in which they're bound up into the knowledge which helps us understand our place in the world, remain. all that happens is that these feelings can't be situated in a point-by-point context which explains how they might have occurred.

and so, to come to the memory charm the series thinks is noble and benign... what hermione does to her parents is remove the bullet points surrounding the most important memories of their lives from their heads, leaving profound, lingering emotional responses, which respond to stimuli even though the grangers can't understand why...

when she says that they don't know they have a daughter, what she means is that they don't remember the list of events which proved that fact to be true. mrs granger doesn't remember that she took a pregnancy test which was positive, mr granger doesn't remember that he witnessed hermione being born, neither of them remember taking her to the cinema to see the little mermaid, or buying her first school shoes, or taking her to see her grandparents on her sixth birthday.

but the evidence of canon is that the emotions attached to these events - and the unconscious knowledge which emerges from them - would remain.

and this is why hermione's modification of her parents' memories is an example of the series' black-and-white, protagonist-centred morality which i absolutely loathe. not because the watsonian text isn't horrified by it [why would harry know how memory charms work] but because the doylist text handwaves it away as something easily reversed [via jkr saying that hermione immediately restored her parents' memories the second the war was over] which left no adverse effects.

because - sure - i'm not quibbling with the need to think of hermione's decision to wipe her parents' memories as necessary, but it needs to be understood as one of those horrific choices which only become necessary because the alternative is worse.

and this necessity doesn't erase the fact that what hermione does to her parents is meaningfully no different from what bellatrix and company do to the longbottoms. we see that alice longbottom retains the emotional context to a memory - she knows that she loves neville and wants to give him a present - even if she no longer remembers who he is and what his relationship is to her. the same thing will have happened to the grangers.

and so "monica wilkins" might have found herself driving down a street in suburban melbourne one december afternoon when a christmas song came on the radio… and for reasons she doesn't understand, she burst into tears… and she went home and started making dinner… and she'd adapted the recipe she was using so it didn't have any coriander in it… but she doesn't know why, because she likes coriander just fine, and so does her husband… and then "wendall" came in, and she told him about her strange experience… and he said that he turned on the tv and meet me in st louis was showing and he had to change the channel because he thought he was going to cry… and this made them both intensely uneasy… because they've got no reason to behave so strangely… so irrationally... they don't have any memories associated with that song or that film… right?

but that's because they don't remember the facts of how their only daughter - who's got the coriander-tastes-like-soap gene - only lasted two days of a family skiing trip in december 1995, even though they hadn't spent any significant time with her since august 1994, before she swanned off back into a magical world which seemed to be robbing them of her piece by piece.

they can only remember how sad it made them feel.

#asks answered #asenora meta #real special interest hours who's up?

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directdogman · 6 months ago

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(Sorry if I have bad English, I'm from Spain.)

I'm super hyperfixated on the original managers, so I have 2 questions.

1. In Dialtown, Tango/Terrence says no one called him Tango before. Assuming that in the DSaF universe he also liked that nickname, did any of the other original managers call him Tango or not?

2. A headcanon I've seen in the DSaF fandom is that Abel hated everyone BUT the real Scott Cawthon, and that Scott was the only one that tolerated Abel (some ppl even ship them). Is that close to canon? Or the og Scott Cawthon also hated Abel? I really want to know what they thought about each other.

Btw, I really love your games, I've played the DSaF trilogy many times, and the Dialtown demo (I haven't played the full version of Dialtown yet, but I've seen gameplays and I'll buy it for my birthday), thank you for making 4 incredible games <3

I don't answer many DSaF questions these days, but this one's interesting so here goes:

1)Tango's nickname is a DT invention as far as I remember. If he preferred the name in DSaF's universe, Harry would've used it for sure, given how much he liked Terrence and since he's literally using a name he doesn't believe is really 'his' because it makes him feel better. He of all people would understand.

2)Yeah, that's a pretty good way of stating it, but there's a little more nuance to it that explains a little bit more about Abel/Joe's rift.

Basically, the original Scott Cawthon was a unifying figure. He got on with every single one of the original managers and they all thought the world of him. The Phone Guy process was started in an attempt to recreate him by Abel (and the other managers at first) and you gotta consider why they'd all want to do that. He was the glue that held the group together, the only manager liked by everyone else there without exception, someone who could defuse tension and resolve conflicts amicably.

It's true that he had the most patience for Abel and never badmouthed Abel to the other managers and even defended him earnestly, knowing Abel the best of the other managers and knowing some of Abel's early life and where he came from, while the others were more willing to honestly discuss Abel's short fuse and occasionally mean nature (even Terrence to some extent!) This led Abel to develop more of a bond with him than the other managers and somewhat distrust the others.

While Abel was essentially Scott's number 2, as time went on, Joe became more and more integral to the running of their budding company, since he was a skilled accountant and managed to balance the books despite Scott's somewhat reckless spending at times (he was overgenerous to the point where it sometimes led to financial trouble for the company, a stark contrast to what Freddy's became later.) Since Joe was so blunt (and Abel's biggest critic), Abel was incredibly jealous and insecure that if the trend continued, Joe would supplant him.

This also explains why Abel was so willing to toss his other managers into the 'machine' when each of them suffered accidents. Ultimately, it wasn't just sheer cowardice, it was him trying to recreate the past - to recreate the one person who seemingly saw him as anything other than a vampire. Someone who actually wanted him around. Of course, no two snowflakes are ever exactly the same. Abel was a poor replacement as the owner of the company, Joe was barely able to keep things afloat amidst a messy and chaotic expansion and Harry wound up presiding over the company's demise.

There's a pretty widespread narrative theme in DSaF of damaged people trying to recreate something they've lost - Dave trying to turn Jack into the new Henry, Jake and his family, Harry and his former identity, the Kennedy family reuniting.

“Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!”

But, the fact is, you can't recreate the past. The only way forward is to pick up the pieces and build something new.

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neptunes-sol-angel · 1 year ago

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BOO! 👻🎃🕸 How are you scaring people with their shadows? Pick the picture(s) that you're drawn to the most then scroll down for the corresponding message(s). Happy Halloween my Sol-cherubs!!

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Pile One

"SHE AIN'T NO DIVAAA!"

You trigger others in a way that threatens their confidence and provoke them into a cycle of evaluating their self worth and identity after an ego death that's probably been long overdue. Some people in this group may hinder themselves back from speaking to people about anything in general, like expressing your opinion on something, talking about yourself, joining in a conversation so that you can be outgoing and network with others because you could feel like developing normal interactions with others is difficult for you. You could feel that people may find what you have to say as meaningless, they could even talk over you, or maybe you fear that people will hate you for what you say. You could also find yourself in too many situations where people are dedicated to misunderstanding you by twisting what you say or snubbing you. But despite their reactions, people strongly value what you say, and are often changed personally by even just a few words that you mention and could still think about what you've said years later whether it's from a normal conversation or an argument. I feel called to mention to this group that you shouldn't restrain yourself by muting your verbal expression in order to please others, because I'm getting that even though you aren't aware that there are people who want to listen and do listen to what you have to say and will like and respect you for who you are, you understand the weight of your words and the repercussions you face when you defend yourself and but there are times you don't in order to keep the peace. You must understand that peace is simply an illusion when you keep putting your feelings and wellbeing aside to keep people that are not even for you in your life. Tip toeing around others is not what's going to keep you safe—you gotta step on some toes to free yourself. This group has to learn both when it isn't your fault for when you trigger someone and when it is. Because I'm getting that another part of this group is more so in the darker aspect of this trait, you don't hold your tongue for anyone and when someone goes low, you go to straight to the pits of hell. You're fully aware of how you know just the right words to break someone and to intentionally offend them. Your brutal honesty isn't needed all of the time and sometimes you're not being blunt, you're just being an asshole. Reserve your poison for the people that deserve it, but it will benefit you to learn that the same way the magnitude of your words can be poison to others it also be venom used to help others heal. I know it may feel like that someone's always trying it with you but you gotta calm down and start seeing the good in humanity, because not everyone is a piece of filth that you need to sweep. The shadow work that you make other people do eventually creates a balance that keeps their egos in check and where their humility is holding them back.

Pile Two

What's chilling about you is how elusive you are. This can mean a variety of things, but one of the scenarios that I'm getting is that this pile could be adamant when it comes to holding grudges. People hate that you don't forgive them because it gives them a reality check with how entitled they feel to treat others and how they expect them to react about it afterwards. You seem to unfortunately attract a lot of people that don't take any accountability. They show up as either someone who feels like they have the right to mistreat others and have control over how their victims feel or perceive the situation or people who have lived their entire lives as victims but are in disbelief when they are in situations where they have made someone else a victim so they manipulate the situation to confirm their bias and lack of self awareness. These people are possessive over outcomes and how they want to be seen. You are very much capable of forgiving others, but you are strong with your boundaries to the point where you don't make yourself accessible anymore to the people have hurt you and this confuses them. They're used to thinking that words have more meaning than their actions or that forgiveness is something that's automatically given when asked for it, but you show them that's not exactly how it works. This makes them have to unpack guilt that they will deal with for a very long time or your absence reminds them of how powerless that they feel. Both are situations that are hard to sit with alone so these people may tend to latch on others and surround themselves with company. The shadow work that you make others do is to reflect on situations where they are habitually self-undoing.

Pile Three

What makes other people shook about you, is how unmoved you are but how you always seem to ironically move others. You could have this radical intelligence and self sufficiency where you don't care who's on your level or not. You could be isolated by others a lot, and on the outside it could look like you're out of touch with humanity, but no, you're actually way ahead of your time, they just need to catch up. The same things that people have tried to shun you for, end up becoming trends in the future. You guys are very secure with yourself and it intimidates others, but you've grown or will grow to not let that effect you anymore. I see that your purpose involves leading others. You guys could be coaches to help people break habits that maladaptively stagnate their lives, you keep yourself strong, in order to pass this on to others who finally decide that they to help themselves. Your insight isn't going to be accepted by the majority because those people are still stuck on outward appearances or are complacent with their own delusions, and it's not your responsibility to help everyone, but you're good at what you do and you have the potential to save a lot of lives with the changes that you help other people make within themselves. It doesn't even have to solely be changes either, you could motivate others to recognize what they already have within themselves too and that's so empowering. If you guys are tarot readers that are feeling down about the messages that you're trying to bring to people, I'm getting that you guys need to keep going, what you're doing is meaningful even if you can't physically see it, you awaken others deeply to things that they may not be ready to publicly share with others so give it time and remember your mission. You aren't here to entertain any thoughts of staying the same, you are here to promote growth. Don't downplay your gifts, you know what you know.

#divination #intuitive #psychic #pick a card #tarot #spirituality #pac #tarotblr #tarot community #the tarot community #pick a pile #pick a picture #halloween #spooky szn

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patricia-taxxon · 1 year ago

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So, I watched that response stream that DeadwingDork made about my furry boinking video, here it is if you're curious.

youtube

By some accounts, this gentleman seems like he means well, with regards to pronouns he pulls the "when in doubt, they/them" gambit, which is partway there. If he finds this, I'll politely let him know I don't use they, just she & it. Thanks!

I have good reason to believe he began this journey in good faith, but over the course of the video he slowly gives up being charitable, and it's very frustrating to watch. There's a few key moments of miscommunication I noticed that I'd like to clear up.

DeadwingDork and I got off on the wrong foot very early on, and part of that's my fault. I start the video openly lusting after Garth Alphandomega, and this put him on edge. This might be an ideological difference we can't get past, he says that Garth is "Just a wolf" when I personally think he's quite different from a wolf. After that, I do the joke where I say "If the opportunity presented itself I would fuck my-" and cut to The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe, but he didn't have the context to understand what I'm saying by cutting to that album in particular, so he thought I was jokingly saying I would fuck my dog. He spends the rest of the stream with that initial impression of me lusting after what he perceives as literal animals, it's kinda the initial rock that starts the avalanche and closes him off from understanding basically anything that I'm saying, until the end, where he's convinced I've just spent 43 minutes coming out as a zoophile.

This might just be a difference in artistic philosophy, like he interprets Alpha & Omega to be about wolves whereas I interpret it as being about people through the aesthetic lens of wolves. Metaphor isn't just for abstract art movies, after all. Garth walks on 4 legs, but he has enough obvious persistent human-like traits both visually and behaviorally for me to understand him as a person delivered via wolf. For the same reason, he is disturbed by my lusting for Shoukichi Pompoko, because he interprets that movie as literally being about tanuki. I think this the main reason the concept of a character being "simultaneously human and inhuman" completely whiffed on him. He skimmed over my segment on how Leo can be both a wolf and hispanic & didn't understand the relevance, because I don't think that contradiction can be resolved in his head.

The most frustrating part of this stream is the way he clearly picks up on a lot of the overarching subtext that I'm putting down, but by that point in the video he doesn't have enough faith in me to interpret it as being put there intentionally. He treats the connection between my special-ed dog training and my current animal identity as an unintentional self-report, when it isn't. There's this *maddening* segment where I talk about Pom Poko for the first time, and he... honestly quite accurately picks apart the picture I'm illustrating about alienation, but he handwaves it away in favor of his horrible mangling of the exact literal sentence I am saying at that moment.

He says:

"There's clearly a story here, but it's being buried. There's a lot of stuff that's leading towards... 'oh, you watched this movie and this movie and your parents did this and your fuckin' teachers did this, and that's why this is happening.' That's like the fuckin' undertones of this video, [but] the main takeaway is supposed to be that this movie... I dunno, makes you f.. is supposed to feel like how fuckin' animal people feel like they're... whatever, I don't, I don't... whatever."

He grabs at the subtext, the story I'm obviously telling with the surface level anecdote of my experience seeing Pom Poko when I was young. I say obviously, because he and his chat both understood it. But then he discards that, assumes it was unintended, and importantly, he doesn't have a good answer for what I'm actually saying divorced from that. Because... what's even left after you remove the subtextual story I'm telling with this anecdote? The anecdote itself? Of course he's empty handed.

Other notes:

He can't decide whether I'm an over zealous recruiter trying to call everything furry, or that I'm a gatekeeper trying to force robust definitions of 'furry' into the general lexicon. This isn't very important, it's just kind of funny.

He is dismissive of me saying I won't report news if my only source is Kiwifarms, but he doesn't really give a good reason for it. I am having trouble summarizing his argument for why I should have referenced a website whose users doxxed me. He hilariously suggests that I should negotiate with them to have my address taken down, as long as I'm not a "lolcow" about it. I'll be charitable and say that I don't think he's thought this through very much.

He hates that I "compare autistic people to animals," when that really just doesn't mean anything on its own. A comparison is a comparison, a follower of mine pointed out to me they could say that trans people are like cockroaches & it could either mean they are doggedly resilient in the face of harsh circumstances or that they are pests that need to be exterminated. I meant something specific by using an animal metaphor to describe my autistic identity, and it transcends the literal reading of "calling autistic people animals."

He derisively calls Echo a "gay furry sex game" when it simply is not. I'll forgive him for this because he hasn't played it, but Echo isn't porn, it's a horror game. There's sex in it, and it has the framework of a dating game, but it is far from the main appeal. I'm not saying this to elevate Echo above the degrading label of "porn," because Adastra is definitely porn and it's almost as good, just not as easily recommendable to outsiders.

He thinks its commendable that Sean Booth bought my album, which is nice.

Overall, I don't think DeadwingDork is outwardly hateful, but he is quite gullible. He accepts hate speech at face value and buys into narratives useful for hate movements. There's echos of trans groomer panic, that old "you're the reason people are transphobic" chestnut, and of course, using Kiwifarms as a news source. He said he came into the video knowing nothing about me and had no reason to be approaching me in bad faith, but he clearly doesn't trust me enough to think the main rhetorical thrust of the video was intentional.

bad stream lol

#mini essay #long post #cilantromixture #Youtube

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karniss-bg3 · 1 year ago

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The Tragedy of Faith

So between tumblr and twitter I've read various takes on Kar'niss and what draws people to him. For some it's the monster fucking appeal, for others it's the desire to fix a clearly broken individual. There are in-betweens and of course this is subjective and depends on the person. Act 2 spoilers ahead. Where my personal interest comes from is how good Larian communicated the tragedy of faith and what a cult can do to a person. Kar'niss is a creature that has been broken by not one God, but two. Lolth broke him physically, the Absolute broke him mentally. His entire identity has been lost to a deity to the point he raises her in his speech. Referring to her as "Majesty" and "Queen", two terms you don't really hear anyone else address her as, he has elevated her to his final savior and leader. He also often refers to himself as "we" and "us", cementing him as part of the hive mind rather than holding any individuality of his own. When he does refer to himself as "I", it's mostly to show further loyalty to the Absolute, to maintain a position of importance in his fractured mind. Cults are notorious for targeting the most vulnerable in society as they are the easiest to mold and manipulate to their doctrine. The fact that goblins are one of the main races that fall to the Absolute's influence is telling in that regard, as they are often dismissed by the other races. Kar'niss was ripe for the picking, an easy target to lure into her arms. No doubt he was found shortly after Lolth twisted him into a drider and banished him, he didn't stand a chance.

Not even taking those elements into account, Kar'niss came from a society that is infamous for cruelty and violence, especially toward males of their species. Drow greatest hits include, but are not limited to: -Killing their young if they are not aesthetically pleasing enough. In other words, ugly. -Sacrificing every third born son to Lolth.

-If a male finds the favor of two competing females, it often doesn't end well for the male. The rival woman will kill the male and chuck his dead body into his opponents bedchambers, just for the sake of being petty.

-Love and emotions of any sort are in short supply, if not outright unseen as a general rule. The nature of drow to backstab and seek to rise in the ranks makes it near impossible to be anything other than fierce and domineering.

With these things in mind, it's easy to assume that Kar'niss had a turbulent upbringing and likely suffered untold abuse from many around him. It's not to say that good or reasonable drow don't exist, it's just not commonplace in a Lolthite society. Unfortunately, the game doesn't give us a great deal to go on as far as his past. What little he reveals only happens after he's dead, and even then its really a cliffs notes version. What we do know is that his devotion is intense and unwavering. He's willing to die for the Absolute because in his mind the Absolute are the only ones who care about him. We even see fellow followers talk down to him, dismiss him, and verbally eye-roll the guy. To them, his fanaticism is over the top and they follow the same God he does.

All told, this leads me to the conclusion that Kar'niss has never, or rarely, known true compassion in his entire life. He's been used as a puppet for one deity or another, and likely mocked or cast aside even when he did everything right. It doesn't surprise me that there are folks who desire a romance option, or barring that a side venture to break him free of the Absolute's hold. We don't know if Kar'niss did terrible things in his past, or where his moral compass sits as his entire personality revolves around God. But I'd love to know, and I crave more background on him in one form or another.

I've spent too much time thinking about different paths that could happen in-game. I also understand it's incredibly unlikely he'll ever become a companion. The sheer amount of time and resources needed to give a character a satisfying arc is likely more than Larian can do with other constraints, but maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised. So Kar'niss lovers, platonic, romantic, or everything in-between...I gotchu fam. We stan the spooder bby. Someone get that man a blanket and a nice mug of hot cocoa. And a cult de-programming kit, one of those would be good.

#baldur's gate 3 #kar'niss #bg3 #drider #karniss #baldurs gate 3 #drow #early morning ramblings #this entire post was the long way of saying “I can fix him”#no judgement to the ones who want an ass full of web #act 2 spoilers #bg3 spoilers #my writing

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gallavichthings · 2 months ago

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Gallavich Masquerade 2024

Let's have a New Year's Masquerade Ball!

This time it'll be a mixed one, for fic writers and fanartists! The fanworks will be revealed on December 31st and people will have up to January 31st to cast their votes.

As you now know, in a Masquerade, creators (fic authors and fanartists) will produce their works anonymously. These fanworks will all be revealed at the same time on December 31st - our New Year's Masquerade Ball! - and fans (previously called readers and admirers) will have a month to attempt to guess who's behind each mask, that is, who made what. Creators are encouraged to try to fool everyone!

Details after the read more, but don't forget to please spread the word. This will be fun!

Requirements

All fics must have between 2,000 and 5,000 words. For art, there are no requirements. (Needless to say, AI "works" are not allowed.)

No theme is required or forbidden, but, as this is an event in which the goal is to have as many people checking out our work as possible, fanworks in niche categories are not advised. Regardless of what you do, please tag accordingly.

I don't know what to write/draw about!

You can get inspiration from anything you want. It can be canon-compliant, canon-divergent, after the show ended, AU...

But, if you still need some ideas, you can find some here, here or here (not to mention @callivich always has tons of prompts lists).

Sign-ups

Signing-up is required and can be done here. For this event, sign-ups can be done up to the time of posting. Unlike other events, this is one where you will need to sign-up only at the end, after the fanwork is done. You'll be required to add your AO3 username and the title of your fanwork.

What if I don't have an AO3 account?

Then I'm very sorry, but in this case, you won't be able to participate (as a creator). For this event, having an AO3 account is mandatory so that you can post in the collection. That being said, a lot of people have AO3 invites, so ask right now and someone may be able to send you one.

Posting

Posting will be done on AO3 and AO3 only! This is because the Masquerade Collection will be unrevealed and anonymous. All posting must be done until December 29th. On December 31st, all fics will be revealed and available for the readers. (The two days different is to ensure that everyone has posted before I reveal them.) The fanworks will remain anonymous until January 31st, when the game ends. (Please take note that this may be extended if there are a large number of fics). On February 1st, the authors' identities will be disclosed (and your fic will appear under your account just like any other fic).

As an creator, all you have to do is, when posting on AO3, choose to do it under the Gallavich Masquerade 2024 Collection (as in the picture below). I'll take care of the rest. It's important to do so when posting and not after, or it won't work. You can go to My Works > Works in Collections to confirm that it worked.

Voting

Voting will be done via a new form, which will be disclosed only after the fanworks are posted. All titles will be displayed and fans will chose from a menu who they think the creator is. This time, voting is mandatory in all three guesses. If you don't know who to vote for or if you haven't had a chance to read a fic, for example, just take a guess. Also, you might as well guess three different creators to increase your chances, even if you think you're sure who it is.

Points

There are two ways of winning this game, as a creator and as a fan.

Creators are awarded 1 point for each person who correctly guesses their fic/fanart on the first try, 2 for correct second guesses, 3 for correct third guesses and 7 points for each person who wrongly guesses it (that is, matches three different creators to your fanwork). That's right, you get more points if you're actually able to deceive everyone.

Fans are awarded 5 points for each fanwork they guess correctly on the first guess, 3 for each correct second guess and 1 for each correct third guess (obviously the points are only awarded once, so there's no need to guess the same work more than once). No points are being deducted this time.

Creators can also be fans, so they have twice the chance of winning. There will be separate winners for artists and writers.

Prizes

Winners will get boasting rights! XD Plus, of course, a special post for them.

If anyone would like to make fanworks for the winners (like art for the winning writers, fics for the winning artists, edits, whatever), please let me know, that would be super nice!

#GM2024 #Gallavich #Ian x Mickey #Shameless #Shameless US #Gallavich events #mod post

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captainkirkk · 10 months ago

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✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.

Miraculous Ladybug

Open My Eyes by buggachat

Adrien smiles as he eats breakfast with Nathalie, smiles as he walks through the halls of his new lycée, smiles as people stop him on the street and tell him time and time again what a "hero" his father was.

(Adrien wishes he could've been a hero, too. He should've been. Maybe then his father would still be alive.)

(But he's surviving. Everyone may be treating him as though he were made of glass, but he can still go through the motions, he can prove them wrong, he can still smile.)

“And you’re… happy,” Marinette spoke carefully, a nervous tilt to her voice, “... right?”

(Adrien has some things to find out.)

the good, the bad, and the power hungry by konan_konan

dim trake ☑ @timdrakeceo・8hr if one more person tweets about #superlex unironically im gonna end it all 391K Views | 200 Retweets | 13 Quote Tweets | 22.1K Likes

j-son of a bitch ☑ @jsntdd・8hr ↳ replying to @timdrakeceo hurr durr these are the consequences of ur actions bitch 201K Views | 109 Retweets | 4 Quote Tweets | 18.4K Likes

or: lex luthor makes bad choices. and then, so does everyone else.

call me cute and feed me sugar by suzukiblu

Tim Drake had absolutely no intentions of ever becoming anyone's sugar daddy when he met Superboy.

This would have worked out better for him if Superboy had ever had an actual legal identity or an actual legal guardian or just . . . literally anything whatsoever in life. Ever. At all.

Just a bank account, even.

how big, how blue, how beautiful by merils

Kon-El is not good with medical settings. One could even say he's quite bad with them. How bad, exactly?

Well, let's put it this way: Very few things in the world can make him scream for Superman to save him.

(Superman will save him. That's what family's for, right?)

Clone Wars

The Kenobi Chronicles by WobblyCat

General Kenobi isn't actually dead. Someone should really tell that to his troopers, though.

Or: The clones under General Kenobi's command have a groupchat dedicated to him. Cody wishes his subordinates weren't so fucking stupid.

SVSSS

Shen Yuan's Forced Shen Qingqiu Redemption Arc by SpicyReyes

The System's OOC function won't unlock all at once - instead, character traits have to be added individually, through quests. This leads to Shen Qingqiu having to jump through endless hoops just to complete enough side quests to unlock the ability to be a decent person - all while avoiding the effects it has on those around him. If only the cheapskate System wouldn't keep changing the cost of point values - he needs to know what the hell Yue Qingyuan told the others about him that makes them all look so sad when he does manage to be nice! He's breaking his back here, can't we just appreciate his work?!

second-hand alibis by nex_et_nox

"All right. I’m in Proud Immortal Demon Way," he says, once he's had a chance to compose himself again. He sits back up, tossing his stupidly long hair back over his shoulders where it belongs; he is totally calm and ready to grill the System for more information. "Who am I supposed to be?" Please please please don't let it be someone who Bingge violently murders. Though given the fact that he's a man in PIDW, his chances are already skewed, and not in his favor. Ugh. [Bound Role: Shen Yuan, Rogue Cultivator. Weapon: the sword Heng Li. Starting B-points: 100.]

or: Shen Yuan transmigrates as a rogue cultivator, one completely unconnected to any canon characters or events. Right, System? Right?

#my laptop broke :(( can i get an f in the notes #i'm using my super old one from high school rn and i am Struggling #my posts #weekly fic round up #fic recs #svsss recs #dc recs #sw recs #ml recs

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broadwaycutie16 · 7 months ago

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Hey, I hope you don't mind me asking, but what is this whole Karma of Lies thing about? I often have some of your posts showing up on my dashboard about how people are not listening to you clarifying things about your story, but I avoided looking into the whole situation myself because I don't want to expose myself to so much (Adrien) salt which I know is at the initial root of all this (or at least, thats how it came across to me)

Would you explain for me what this situation is about? I'm always intrigued by this whole thing whenever I see another post from you, because of how wild reading about it all out for context is, but now curiosity finally got the best of me x3

So basically, KoL starts as your basic salt plot. Marinette’s being bullied by Lila, her friends are extorting her and accusing her of being unfair to Lila, Adrien’s just like “everything’s fine, Marinette” and telling her to just take all the crap from everyone.

Then Hawkmoth’s identity gets out, and Lila decides to cut her losses and get the hell out of there, but not without getting something out of the deal. She gets Adrien to send her money to her, and because Adrien is so trusting, he puts in the info for his family’s emergency bank account right where she can see it, not even thinking that Lila would try to screw him over. Spoiler alert: She does. She drains Adrien’s whole account of fifty million, leaving him without a cent in this catastrophic time in his life, and skips town by telling her mom a sob story. She also tricks the class into giving up their most expensive possessions, and then sells them to other people after she leaves.

So now Lila’s committed a grand felony, and she’s clear to continue her reign of terror anywhere she wants, with her newfound wealth goving her limitless potential on destroying lives. And you know what Marinette does to stop her?

NOTHING.

Marinette refuses to lift a finger to get Lila arrested. The narrative would have you believe that it’s because she’s setting boundaries and taking care of her mental health for a change, but it’s easy to figure out the REAL reason. She gives all these excuses over why she’s unable to do anything about it, using lots of loopholes, completely ignoring the fact that she’s supposed to be a superhero and thus has a moral obligation to stop Lila, if nothing else just to save all the innocent people she’ll destroy in the future.

Meanwhile, Adrien becomes penniless, his father goes on the run, and his aunt refuses to personally take him in because she’s more concerned about the scandal than about her orphaned nephew, basically resigning him to live in Marinette’s old apartment with hardly anything to call his own while Marinette moves into his old room at the mansion after getting a job with Audrey Bourgeois, who has now taken control of Gabriel’s company. And all through this, Marinette and the narrative are basically saying, “you didn’t help me when I needed you to stick for me, so now I’m not gonna help you when you need it”, basically ignoring the fact that what’s happening to Adrien is a hundred times worse than what happened to her.

Even worse, Marinette trashes all her friends’ reputations on live TV, calling them out for mistreating her without stating the reason why they mistreated her, so the public doesn’t know the full story. And Adrien, desperate to get his life back, makes a stupid and arrogant mistake and tries to take down Mayura by himself, but is easily fooled by her to give her opportunity to steak his ring. The villains are defeated, but now everyone in Paris thinks Adrien gave Nathalie the ring on purpose, and accuse him of being a willing accomplice to his father, effectively crushing any little particles of hope he had left for his future.

But what truly makes this fic a dumpster fire of a story, is how the author directs the whole narrative to try and make you believe that everything that happened to Adrien was 100% justfied, that not supporting Marinette and letting some girl bully her and turn her friends against her, a problem that was temporary at worst and that basically was nothing more than some schoolgirl drama, means that he, a fourteen year old boy from an abusive household, deserves to be virtually homeless, bankrupt, disowned by his entire family, and falsely accused if terrorism, and doomed to living the rest of his life out on the streets, without even the slightest conception that maybe it was a little too much.

Oh, and the only punishment Lila gets is some vague warning from Marinette about her future, and apparently, that’s supposed to be enough to stop the girl who knowingly teamed up with a terrorist and was willing to doom the city just to get back at one person for one embarrassing incident in front of one person.

Basically, The Karma of Lies is the worst salt fic of all the salt fics, punishing Adrien for childish stupidity with permanent life damage beyond anything written in salts before, and trying to send the message that it’s okay for Marinette to let it all happen just to get back at him for not being a better friend.

Trust me, do not read it. It is a garbage fire. I regret reading it every day. It’s really messed with my head. Even now, I’d wholly welcome an infinite number of sequel fics punishing Marinette and her “friends” (read: evil minions) for what they did, because if the story says that Adrien deserves his fate for doing nothing, they deserve even worse. This fic is the epitome of everything wrong with the Miraculous Ladybug fandom.

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #ml salt #adrien agreste #miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir #miraculous salt #marinette salt #adrien sugar #marinette bashing #the karma of lies #ml the karma of lies #karma of lies salt #karmic backlash #ml karmic backlash #writers PLEASE write more sequels to this #my mental health will thank you

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suzukiblu · 1 year ago

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Day four of fic NaNoWriMo, obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU.

"Dead," Tim says, because it's not like it's a secret in the community or anything. "Joker happened to him."

And a lot of other things. Sheila Haywood and Felipe Garzonas and Bruce's eternal control-freak paranoia and constant inability to just talk, to name a few. But Joker, in the end.

Still, Tim can't help thinking about the chances to have avoided what happened to Jason. Especially when thinking about what's currently happening to Kon.

If Kon gets taken advantage of or hurt or killed because no one's paying enough attention . . .

Tim takes another drink.

"That sucks," Kon says with a grimace. "No wonder Batman goes all weird mama Bat on you all the time."

Tim chokes on an incredulous laugh and also a mouthful of soda, because Bruce is definitely not that and this isn't something to make light of either, but–

But also, he thinks about how no one ever goes "weird mama Bat" on Kon. No one ever has, as far as he knows.

No one takes care of him at all.

Tim really, really doesn't like that. Kon shouldn't have to rely on working for people who think they can build custom-designed personal-use superheroes based off of stolen dead bodies and are constantly making clones that are just inhuman-looking enough to not be able to blend into society outside the lab, and therefore don't have a choice about where they live or what they do with their lives.

Maybe it's not as bad as it sounds, or at least not as malicious as it sounds, but it's still the results of what Cadmus is doing either way. Kon has the option of being a superhero, at least, but he also has a custom-designed face that looks exactly like the face of one of the most famous heroes in the sector and was given absolutely no idea how to either establish or support a civilian life, so that's just about his only option.

Aside from, again, just working for Cadmus for the rest of his life.

Tim definitely hates the world.

"Please don't call it 'going mama Bat'," he says to distract himself.

"Please tell me what else you'd call it," Kon says.

"Micromanaging," Tim replies matter-of-factly, and Kon chokes on a laugh of his own.

"What, is being Robin your after-school job?" he teases. Technically it is, Tim supposes, but he doesn't exactly think of it that way.

"I consider it more of an unpaid internship," he says, since explaining the whole "emotional support sidekick" thing would probably damage Bruce's Bat-mystique, and if he tells Kon the full story there he's basically telling all of Young Justice. Kon barely seems to understand the concept of secrets, much less the concept of keeping them. "Like I get an expense account but not a paycheck, you know? And sometimes we get cookies in the Batcave."

"Cookies. In the Batcave," Kon echoes, his eyebrows shooting up. "Are they bat-shaped?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Tim replies with a pleasant smile. Alfred doesn't usually bother with anything quite that on the nose, but according to Dick there are Halloween cookie cutters in the kitchen that he's not above bringing out when Bruce has been being especially ridiculous, so . . .

"Oh my god," Kon says delightedly. "Does he make them himself? Is there a Bat-apron? A Bat-oven? Or does he just order them special from the Bat-bakery?"

"There is not a Bat-bakery," Tim says, trying not to laugh again. Goddammit, Kon shouldn't be so fucking funny all the time. He's not even that funny, objectively; Tim is just a smitten idiot.

"So there is a Bat-apron?" Kon says with a smirk.

"I plead the fifth," Tim says, since explaining the novelty Halloween apron Jason bought Alfred when he was thirteen is not actually on the table. Details compromise identities, loose lips sink ships; all that.

"Listen, man, Cadmus doesn't have a bakery unless you count the test tubes they cook us up in," Kon says with a snigger, grabbing himself another slice. Tim thinks thoughts about incendiary devices. "They buy our cookies frozen or just get the industrial-sized pudding cans. Or make bread pudding, the bastards. So you gotta tell me about the Bat-cookies."

Tim winces at the thought of industrial-sized pudding cans and bread pudding, because that sounds absolutely horrifying and he never, ever wants to taste industrial pudding. Ever.

"Well, they're definitely not frozen," he says. "But Nightwing started being Robin a lot younger than I did and the last Robin started younger than me too, so I think I'm just reaping the benefits of younger kids needing after-patrol snacks and everyone else getting in the habit of it."

"I could get into that habit," Kon says musingly as he tears a bite off his newest slice. Tim immediately resolves to order takeout after every possible Young Justice mission that he can. Or they could go get ice cream or something, he doesn't know. "What do you think, wanna make me Bat-cookies sometime, Rob?"

Every weekend for the rest of their respective lives, although Tim would never actually say that. He's not even a good baker. He doesn't even like to bake.

This crush is definitely a problem.

"You're not Gothamite enough to handle Bat-baking, Kon," Tim says dryly, and Kon sniggers.

He also ducks his head a little, looking . . . oddly soft, for a moment. Tim doesn't understand why, until he realizes–oh. It's because he just called him "Kon", isn't it. He wasn't even thinking about it; just did it reflexively.

Tim is pretty sure he needs to ruin the credit of every single "responsible" adult in Kon's life for not naming him sooner. Well–Dubbilex can have a pass, considering he was also made by Cadmus and his own name is Dubbilex, so it probably never occurred to him that "Superboy" wasn't a perfectly acceptable name. And also he probably doesn't have credit either. But all the rest of them, definitely and for sure.

Superman is getting an envelope of powdered Kryptonite in his fucking mailbox, to start. Or maybe Tim could aerosolize it and pepper-spray him with it. That might work.

"You don't know, I could be," Kon huffs, putting on a mock-offended expression. "I was born and raised in a lab, I'm way tougher than the average guy."

"A Metropolis lab," Tim says pityingly. "Might as well be a kindergarten science class."

"Oh fuck you, Batboy!" Kon protests with a laugh. "Tell that to the next alien invasion."

"Aliens know better than to invade Gotham," Tim says. Kon laughs again. It's–weirdly nice, honestly. Usually Kon's too busy trying to act cool in front of whatever "audience" he thinks they have to actually, like . . . just talk all that much or anything. And also usually he gets offended really easily or starts being annoying about something he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does about or just . . . something.

Tim admittedly is less and less annoyed and more and more endeared by that kind of stupid behavior these days, but still. It's the usual pattern their interactions follow.

He guesses they're actually just, like, hanging out right now. It's not like there's a bad guy or a crisis or even any teammates around or training to do, so . . .

Yeah. He guesses they're just hanging out.

Kon decimates the pizza and wings, Tim pretends to be helping and takes a few mental notes on how much Kon is eating and what that may or may not say about his required caloric intake, and they just kind of keep . . . hanging out, really. And they talk, at least as much as Tim lightly interrogating Kon and subtly evading providing any personal identifying information counts as "talking".

Tim really doesn't know if the guys at school or Young Justice are more authentically his "friends", at this point, but at least Young Justice knows there are things they don't know. Everyone from school . . .

Not so much, with them. They all only know Tim Drake, and none of them have any reason to suspect the existence of Robin. Young Justice only knows Robin, but at least they know there is a Tim Drake somewhere, whether they know him or not.

Maybe they are the ones who are more his friends, thinking of it that way.

It'd explain why things never really go anywhere with civilians and he's developed this stupid inadvisable crush on Kon, at least. Though not why things fizzled with Steph, since she knows Robin better than anyone in Young Justice. If he should be having a stupid inadvisable crush on anyone, at least it could've been someone with an equally stupid and inadvisable crush on him.

Unfortunately, he and Steph have officially friend-zoned each other and also Kon exists, so Tim is having his stupid inadvisable crush on an alien hybrid metahuman clone in a terrible living situation with stupid taste in sunglasses and a mysteriously infinite-seeming supply of leather jackets. So now Tim is in this situation and his supervillain timeline needs recalculated, and also he's going to be buying Young Justice so much takeout to make sure Kon gets to eat something that isn't cafeteria food in a way he won't get offended by.

Hopefully, anyway.

"Well, I'm glad the new job's working out," Tim comments eventually, after some very careful conversational maneuvering, and Kon . . . pauses.

"I guess," he says after a moment, picking olives off the remains of his current slice and not quite looking at him as he says it. Tim resists the urge to absolutely pounce on the blood in the water and makes himself wait. "I mean, it's fine, it's not like it's bad there. Like, I don't love that it's my only real option and I don't love the same lab that made me out of DNA that it literally got out of a literal grave being in charge of me, but it's not like Westfield's still running the place or anything. So like, could be worse."

Tim hates the world. All of it. Seriously. Alfred's snickerdoodles get an exception and that's it. Nothing else.

"I'm sure it'll all work out," he says, because yeah, he officially needs to actually do something about this. He doesn't know what something, but something. If he doesn't, who else is going to?

Kon puts on a fake grin and says something stupid and easy in reply, the comment lighthearted and dismissive and a screamingly obvious coping strategy from someone who doesn't see any way out of their current situation but through, and Tim . . .

Tim finishes his Zesti and starts to think.

#timkon #tim drake #kon el #conner kent #dc robin #superboy #young justice #young just us #wip: obligatory sugar baby kon #long post

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