#the citations aren't real

[myfootyrthroat]

I wish that some of the AI hand wringing was a bit more ... realistic? Like, somewhere between "AI will generate text that is indistinguishable from that written by a human!" and "AI is dumb and does nothing useful." is "AI generated text that plausibly could have been written by a human, but that human would have also received a D for this paper, so you probably should have still proofread or edited it."

[stabbyfoxandrew]

can i ask what TWT means? i’ve asked a couple of people and all of us only know it’s use as being short for twit/twitter LMAO i see u use it a lot and i know that’s not what it means but ive got no clue

oh darling NO i will never, ever refer to twitter in any context. lol

TwT is a cute crying face. the Ts form the eyes with tears streaming down and the w is a lil kitty mouth. i use it either for sadness or joy, depending on context! it's like this :3 sorta. (you know :3c don't you anon? pls say yes)

TWT is just the emphasized version!

citations: https://digitalcultures.net/emotes/twt/ https://letslearnslang.com/what-does-twt-mean-in-texting/

[copperbadge]

Hey Sam, this came across my feed on twit and I wondered if you’d heard about it at all? :(

https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/18sx06i/big_layoff_at_duolingo/

Direct link for the curious. Short version, a post on Reddit reported that Duolingo laid off a "large percentage" of its staff, replacing them with AI. I hadn't heard about it, but I knew there were reports about Duolingo trimming its offerings and losing a lot of goodwill after revamping itself a year ago; they've been public about their use of GPT-4 AI starting last March, and it was a tentpole of this year's annual convention, so I was aware of that as well.

The Reddit post is by a former Duolingo contractor, who also shares their severance letter, which is terse to say the least. They state that of their four-person team, two people were let go, with the others left to "babysit the AI". They say that they're a translator and that the people who remained were recast as "curators" for AI translation.

But the post is also not otherwise sourced. So here is everyone's periodic reminder that if the only source is Reddit and Reddit isn't citing other sources, you need to dig a little.

All journalistic sources I've seen (that aren't paywalled, like the Bloomberg article most of them cite) are visibly using the Reddit post as their entre, but also state that the percentage of contractors who were let go is about 10%. That's 10% of contract workers, not 10% of all staff, although admittedly I don't know how many people Duolingo employs, contract or otherwise. 10% is a meaningful chunk, but Duolingo has said that the contractors were let go because their projects had wrapped. While company reps state that this all could be related to the use of AI, they've also said that it's not a 1:1 replacement.

Mind you, the company isn't offering much in the way of backing that up, either.

So there are a couple of issues. Some workers probably were let go simply because their work was finished; the Reddit user doesn't seem to be one of those. We are still seeing that at least some of these jobs were replaced by AI, which is undoubtedly a harbinger of things to come. We don't know what impact this will have on the app. We don't know what kind of work the majority of those people were doing. There's a thread in the Reddit post about whether the voices are now "AI voices" but there's no citation to back up the idea either. They definitely aren't doing AI voice generation for the Latin, where one of the voice actors has a nice voice and also a very loud pet bird.

There is a bigger issue of contract work in the digital and translation industries in the first place; a lot of these people should have been full employees and would have had more protection from this if they had been. Translators have also been brutally devastated by machine/AI translation, which is its own issue. But these are separate and much larger problems that are in no way unique to Duolingo.

I don't like taking this stance because I feel like I'm defending both Duolingo and AI, which isn't my goal. My goal is to remind people that if you see a single source offering a vague statement, you should fact-check. 10% is likely a lot of people but it's not "a huge percentage". We have no real numbers on who was fired, just this person on Reddit saying they're a translator and they were let go. Do I believe them? Absolutely, I have no reason not to and the basic gist is backed up by statements from Duolingo. Do I trust this person's intel? Not especially, after the loud axe-grinding noises they made while posting. Do I trust Duolingo, whose goal is to make money and not look bad while doing it? Not especially either, simply from the standpoint of "the bigger the company the more they're likely to screw you".

But the point is we don't have good data, and this is a complicated and nuanced issue involving a lot of different factors. So either you have to let it go on past, or you have to be prepared to dig a little deeper than a person posting to Reddit about getting laid off.

In any case, Duolingo is one of the few activities that brings me joy right now (I know, I'm working on the issue) and is the only language learning structure that has ever actually worked for me, so despite the new intel and despite the fact that I know a lot of people think of Duolingo's revamp the way I think of Tumblr's new dash, I'm going to keep on with it.

(Plus I paid up for a year, so I might as well at least use it until the year runs out and then reassess.)

[sarahmackattack]

I've hesitated to ask this because it is less a squid question and more of a squid cultural perception question, but I have been in a research rabbit hole for an embarrassingly long time now. I got intrigued by an old Addams Family cartoon that had an octopus next to more modern Halloweeny icons like coffin, skeleton, vulture, etc. and have been down a long research tunnel on (a) when and how did octopus/squid become a spooky animal and (b) when and how did octopus/squid STOP being a spooky animal and reach the level of generally liked animal today. I've narrowed down a likely culprit for (a) as being Victor Hugo's description of the octopus "devilfish" and the Crystal Palace exhibition + Verne squid attack inspired by that. It's definitely portrayed as a monster. But when/how did cephalopods stop being regarded as spooky? As of The Little Mermaid (1989) we have a prominent evil octopus (with some good ones thrown in). But it still feels like by then it would be odd to see an octopus on a Halloween decoration, and more recently I have seen them be relatively benign animals, often characterized as friendly or goofy animals for baby or kid media in a way that vultures still aren't. I partly wondered if much of the change came with color photography and underwater photography, or if it took awhile for zoos to be able to safely host cephalopods or do public education, but I really have no idea. Also: I keep finding references to a fashion in Paris in the late 1800s of women wearing squid hats due to "cephalomania", but all the citations seem to go in a circle and I can't find any direct documentation of the hats so far. Any idea if this is a real thing? (And if we know what the hats looked like?) Anyway, this is a bizarre question and fine to ignore, just felt silly NOT asking when I had such a burning squid-related question, I appreciate all the work you do!

This is SUCH a good question, and I really don't know! Squid are still solidly in the "creepy" camp for a lot of people, and show up a lot in fantasy novels and video games as krakens and giant squid. I didn't know octopuses used to feature heavily in halloween decor, though! that's really interesting!

[grison-in-space]

Reading Men Who Hate Women (Laura Bates, 2020) at the moment. She's talking about the manosphere: the massive online communities of men who congregate to talk misogyny, ranging from PUAs to MRAs, incels and MGTOW. These aren't new topics to me—I've been following this off and on since watching Gamergate kick off—but Bates handles them well and I think this book could serve as an introduction if this is a movement with which you're not familar. By the way, it's been a decade since Gamergate this year. Isn't that a kicker?

(Incidentally, I first ran into the concept of incels way before I think many people did: when I was still on AVEN, c. 2006-2007ish, I remember a few occasions where users ran into incel communities and brought them to our forums to ask: is this like what we're doing? Is this like us? Consensus quickly solidified on the direction of "no," each time, not least because asexuality dialog at the time was extremely clear about divorcing desire from action, and it was very clear that the desires centered in that community were very different than the ones people in asexuality spaces were untangling.)

Bates handles the topic with grace, compassion, and a deep understanding that I really wish more writing on radicalization or terroristic networks used: people in real pain, who are struggling in pitiable circumstances to do their best and clearly need more support, can also in their pain be truly dangerous to others. Hurt people hurt people. Compassion for pain suffered is important—you can't understand recruitment without understanding that—but you also have to understand that pain, fermented in darkness, can create deadly poisons. Pain isn't essentially holy or cleansing or cauterizing. It doesn't accomplish anything good by existing. If we can relieve it, we should—but we should follow harm reduction principles as we do so, lest pain be allowed to multiply and fester.

What gets me is that in 2017, in the wake of the Google bro "manifesto," I spent a feverish week writing what wound up being a 20,000 word rebuttal studded with what eventually totaled 100+ peer reviewed citations. It got quite a bit of reach and covered ground ranging from effects of testosterone on behavior, the concept of effect size in sex differences, basic statistics, the ways that humans treat people differently based on their perception of gender, intersex trauma, and whether feminists care about men's problems (yeah, actually, and they should).

I released that piece, changed up my name and fannish presence—my long time pseud was tangled all over the piece's genesis—and hunkered down for the reprisals. I expected harassment and vitriol. It never really came: I ignored the comments on the post, after a bit, and I held boundaries on what I was willing to pay attention to. But by and large, I had no direct consequences from the Manosphere.

Perhaps the piece was too long (although I got many comments from people who read it and found it useful, and I included an index). Perhaps it was simply that I included a headshot of myself, with uncharacteristic red lipstick and characteristically buzzed hair, and cheerfully discussed throughout that I was butch and queer: sometimes I confuse people who are very focused on bioessentialist sex differences, because I don't fit their paradigms in the slightest.

About six months later, James Damore attempted to frame his incredibly poor decisions in light of his Asperger's, and I did get a couple dudes on social media presenting me with this information apparently in the hope that it would shock or embarrass me. I immediately pointed out, acerbically, that I'm equally autistic and that he was making us look bad, and they melted away again into the background. It wasn't really the well of terrifying anger and obliterative fury I was expecting.

I find myself reading these stories in Bates' book and thinking about the internet I grew up on: AVEN by 2005, WrongPlanet the same year, listening to people on the margins talk about their fears and hopes and dreams and theories about themselves. I find myself thinking about narratives and meaning, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and why.

I'm certainly not the first person to worry about radicalization of young autistic people, especially autistic men. Not even close. Paradoxically, it's a group of people for whom an understanding of intersectionality is crucial: young disabled men often alienated deliberately from conceptualizing themselves as disabled, without the tools to understand why life is hard and painful and never seems to reflect their experiences, trying to construct understanding beyond one's singular, isolated defective wrongness—which is what's left, if you take community off the table.

(Have I mentioned how grateful I am that so many autistics are trans spectrum? Imagine if we weren't, and if I didn't have so many transfeminine sisters funneled along those same currents and drifting closely enough alongside to understand. My sisters, so many of whom are out there living and modeling better ways to understand and participate in gender as a social activity: by figuring out what is most comfortable for you, understanding that comfort for one might be agony for another, and taking steps to shape your own life into a fashion that wells forth the most peace and joy. It's a message we all need to hear, but that is a group of people I hear singing so loudly from my place in a different wing of the choir, and I love them for it.)

I don't have answers. As is, so often, the case these days, I have only grief and love, and the determination to build better structures where my own hands reach. I had intended to direct my career, once, to undermining the entire concept of "good genes" models of evolution and explaining how their convoluted connections to natural phenomena are better explained by other, more direct motives. Since 2020, I've been moving in a new direction—but what precisely it is, I'm not sure.

Sex differences is certainly a piece of it, though. Even if I find myself often enough writing that it's not enough to know a sex difference in one species to assume that another will reflect a similar relationship: we should study sex differences in animals, but we really shouldn't assume that humans will have the same ones or work the same way. I suspect this won't be the first time I tangle with that community. I suppose it depends how much authority I can accrue as protection first.

[breelandwalker]

Red Flag Checklist

Okay witches, let's have a round table.

When you're reading or contemplating the purchase of a book on modern witchcraft or paganism, what are some red and green flags that you look for?

I'll start.

Red Flags:

Disreputable Author - If the author is either a known source of bad information or bad behavior, or one of those "house names" that certain companies use, that's a no for me.

"New Age White Witch" Syndrome - If a text has a more-than-incidental or very deliberate focus on culturally appropriative practices ("Use this exotic voodoo doll ritual to hex your ex"), outdated terminology ("black magic," that G slur we don't use, etc), antisemitic bullshit (Lilith is not a pagan goddess), or anti-science rhetoric ("Essential oils are better than pills!") And yes this means the ever-expanding list of racist dogwhistles too.

Poor Understanding or Misrepresentation of History - If someone's repeating Murrayisms or insisting things are ancient that definitely aren't (POTATO GODDESS), that says to me that either the author didn't bother to do their research or they don't know what they're talking about.

Insistence on One Correct Way - If I encounter anything resembling "this is the only TRUE way," the book's going out the window. The more so if the author is citing their personal opinions or UPGs as fact.

Insistence on Gendering Everything - If a book insists on assigning a binary gender to everything (outside of citing a historical context), or is boomboxing ~*SACRED WOMYN'S WOMB MAGYCK*~ throughout, or even if it's just overly preoccupied with fertility and childbearing as part of the "natural" life cycle, I'm immediately putting it down. (This is more of a personal one, in a way? But it's a red flag for TERFy things too.)

Lack of Sources - If there's no bibliography, no works cited, no recommended reading, or just a really flimsy list that's rife with internet links or problematic titles, that's not a good sign.

Green Flags:

Inclusive Language - If the author refers to the reader or an unidentified person as "they" or "them," that's a good sign. Double points if it's in a context that you'd normally expect to see gendered elsewhere. There's always room for gendered language when it's appropriate, but to me, it's refreshing when an author doesn't assume the reader identifies as female.

Health and Safety Warnings - If there are notes for safe handling or harvesting of potentially harmful herbs, or warnings about health hazards (i.e. keep this away from persons who are pregnant or nursing), or reminders to be careful with fire and glass and the like, this is a good sign. To me, it means the author has a practical mindset and is at least keeping real-world limitations in mind.

Lots of Sources...and GOOD Sources - If the book has a nice fat bibliography, especially if there are mundane sources as well as magical ones, and if those sources are solid? A+. Double points if there's an index or footnotes and citations throughout the text.

Lack of "Guru" Mindset - If the author encourages the reader to take what they've learned and continue to do research on their own, that's a good sign. Encouragement of critical thinking is excellent, and also the admission that there is more than one way of Doing The Magical Thing. (Hi Lee)

Good Formatting - A book should be visually appealing, but it should also be easy to read and formatted properly, in a way that makes sense. I like to see clean margins, good spacing, and clear text. Page decorations and pictures and fancy title fonts are fine, so long as they don't make the book difficult to decipher.

(Okay, your turn!)

[falmerbrook]

wait could i ask you to tell me about what exactly is going on with bosmer gender roles? i’m so curious about that

Gladly, yes!

So they don't seem to be purposefully portrayed as having distinct gender roles, but I think there's some interesting things going on in their lore to make it seem like they would.

Firstly, there's the Silvenar and Green Lady. They are mean to represent the Bosmer not only as intermediaries on a political/diplomatic level, but also represent their characteristics, needs, and values ("legally, physically, and emotionally" according to UESP). The Silvenar represents their spirituality, and is deeply attuned and empathetic to the needs and voice of the Bosmer. He's the more diplomatic of the two. The main origin story of the pair puts him as someone who saw past the "primal" state of the Bosmer, and currently represents the more "civilized" side of them. Meanwhile, the Green Lady represents their primal origin, strength, and physicality. Many of her other titles portray her as a hunter.

It's interesting how it seems that the Green Lady is always a woman, while the Silvenar can be either gender (and whichever gender they are is mean to be the one that best represents the Bosmer at that time). A not insignificant detail though is that we have only ever heard of male Silvenars, and discussions of the Silvenar even in a vague nonspecific sense tend to gender them as male by default. This way of portraying them and their origin story to me makes it feel like the writers, while indirectly acknowledging that they could be a wlw couple, see them more as a straight couple representing the average couple by default.

Anyway, it would make sense to me that the Silvenar and Green Lady could easily represent the sort of roles expected from each gender. Perhaps men are seen as the more empathetic and spiritual gender while woman are seen as the more aggressive and strong gender. Perhaps women are more commonly hunters or breadwinners (meatwinners?). The Silvenar being able to be male or female adds another layer to this. Perhaps the traits that the Silvenar embodies are traditionally expected in both genders, while the traits the Green lady embodies are expected more exclusively in women. I'm speculating here, but I don't think it's much of a stretch.

In general, however, the Bosmer seem a lot more chill about basically everything compared to most of the other cultures we see in this universe, so if gender roles are present, they probably aren't as extreme or as enforced as we see in many cultures in the real world. While there are implication of misogyny in some of the other cultures of Tamriel, I can't remember seeing any example in the Bosmer.

Next, there's the whole thing with Bosmer men being shorter than women (on average), which in universe doesn't seem to ever be brought up as something the Bosmer care about or that might impact the way they view men vs women (although maybe women being larger would associate them more with strength? I haven't seen anything to suggest this yet though), but acknowledging that this is a fictional society being crafted by people who live in our society, where men being short is considered emasculating (to some), and the way Bosmer men tend to be characterized as somewhat dorky, Bosmer men are overall portrayed in a less masculine way (by irl standards). Certain parts of the fandom have certainly picked up on this implication, and it implies that the expectations of how men act might be different for them.

Finally, on some more minor notes, this book from ESO claims that "the clan lines[...] are matrilineal in nature". They seem to make a distinction from tribe and clans in this text so I'm not exactly sure what they are referring to, but it's something. Additionally, Y'ffre, the central figure of the Bosmeri religion, is in one book about Bosmer myth referred to as "she", while the other depictions of her in other pantheons always use "he". I'm referencing the citations on UESP for this, and there are two citations where "she" is used, one inaccessible so I don't know the context, and the other the Bosmer myth about the Ooze, so I'm choosing to interpret this as a Bosmer exclusive thing. Make of that what you will.

Thank you for the ask, anon, and giving me a chance to yap!!

[motziedapul]

Zionists will never be normal or sane because they pretend that destroying homes and targeting journalists is not a war crime and deny that almost everything they have ever done to Palestine is a war crime. They insist apartheid isn't a war crime, that it's okay to kill civilians. They don't realize that even the constant sound of drones and bomber jets flying overhead is psychological torture. They don't realize that every starvation death and every death from exposure to the elements is their fault because they have leveled Gaza and bomb even their hospitals and tents.

Imagine someone unironically telling you that killing tens of thousands of children is okay actually and then calling you racist for telling them that's insane. Imagine someone insisting every death isn't real and that their war crimes aren't so well documented that there are multiple published books and over 600 Wikipedia citations from various news reports and video evidence of their war crimes.

That's the Zionist mind. The Nazis that they are.

[margridarnauds]

what's grade inflation? why does it exist?

For more information on grade inflation, I highly recommend typing in "inflation" on AO3 and...

Sorry, have had no rest and very likely won't get much rest today, because no rest for the wicked...or grad students, so I had to get the cheap humor out of the way.

Grade inflation is, essentially, a system in place at many universities where the graders are heavily pressured into giving higher grades to their students. This is particularly prominent at elite universities, where Mommy and Daddy do not want Schnuggiekins to have anything as undignified as a B on their transcript when they are set to be a senator, but it is also common across the board, including in high schools and, joy of all joys, it is only getting more prevalent, as schools are essentially in a nuclear arms race to deliver higher grades, since it means they can say "Look! 98% of our students graduated with a 4.0!" It looks bad when students don't pass, so students *generally* pass no matter what. Doesn't that make you feel optimistic about the future?

And because it is common across the board at these places, that essentially forces conformity, because if you do NOT give them at least a B+...or sometimes an A-, you will get undergrads complaining about why you were mean to them, because the OTHER TAs would do the same, and student evaluations are VITAL to your career stability down the line. So, besides GENUINELY wanting to be seen as easygoing and relaxed (because, remember, if you're a woman in academia, you ALSO have to beat back the allegations of being a Bitch...and there have been numerous surveys done to indicate that student evals can be biased), it is also unfortunately...not MANDATORY, but something that I do feel heavily pressured by. People forget that the power dynamics between TAs and their students aren't always clear cut -- I'm in a position of authority, and I recognize that and am ALWAYS operating under that awareness, but they can also severely impact my career with student evals...and inconvenience my life if they decide to dispute a grade, such as when I had people emailing me on Christmas about why I gave them an A-. (The answer: Because they had earned, in my opinion, an A-.)

The result is that, functionally, I am grading, roughly, on a scale of B- to A, which means that my grades can't really reflect the nuances that can exist in these things. I have to put things that are "borderline grad student level work" alongside "well. you didn't do anything WRONG". (There have been occasions where they have gotten the Email Of Shame from me where I flat-out refuse to grade it.)

At my undergrad, in my community college (which people always like to act was some kind of...inferior education), if I handed in a paper with numerous typos, it would have been an A- at best. Potentially a B+ if my arguments were not up to the highest standard. I turn in an argument with no citations and not much of an argument...honestly probably a C? Maybe? I KNOW some of my professors would have refused to grade them. But I would feel pressured to give the same paper a B with a reminder to please cite their sources next time.

And, again: I do, genuinely, care for my students. I believe that, for the most part, they ARE trying their best. I don't enjoy being harsh on them, and I don't expect them to be writing at a grad level. I remember being an undergrad -- it isn't like it was that long ago, it's only been six years. I made a lot of mistakes. Including some very stupid ones. And I was lucky to have very patient professors who ALSO weren't afraid to call me out if I didn't do a good job. But, because of systemic issues beyond my control, I can neither give them a real wake up call so that they can improve OR truly reward them for outstanding work.

[canvas-madness-txc]

I hate this image

So let's talk about it!

Point the first: in what world is Romeo canonically 17 years old? Nowhere in Shakespeare's play is there a citation that even hints at him being 17. Capulet calls him a "youth," so he is definitely not an adult. Also, wouldn't it make more sense to the story if Romeo was more around Juliet's age? Let's look at what is explicitly said in the play:

A. Juliet is 13 about to be 14 in give or take 2 weeks

B. She is being married to Paris, who, despite not having a confirmed age, is most definitely an adult.

C. Juliet does not want to marry Paris, which makes sense: he's way older than her, he's never spoken to her, and when he does, it's in a very possessive and creepy way. Romeo doesn't. In fact, he reveres her, which we're getting to.

With all this in mind, wouldn't it make sense for Julieet to fall in love with a boy who is most likely her peer? This brings me to:

Point the second: "Romeo and Juliet is not a love story." Well, it is, and it isn't. It's a story about love, but it's also about hate. The point of the story is that the innocent love of Romeo and Juliet is killed because of a petty feud. The story is not memorable if we do not see the hate kill the children of the families because they loved each other. And they do love each other. Yes, it was fast, but sometimes that happens. Ever meet someone and instantly vibe with them? That's what happens when they meet at the party. Their love is still very real even if it did not last that long, and we have a reason for this: the feud. They had to get married in secret because if they did it in public, their families would literally cause the end of the world. They got married in the first place, so it would be near-impossible for their families to try and stop it because they're now a union in the eyes of God. And they married because they do love each other. "What about Rosaline?" I hear you ask. Well, what about her? Her stake in the plot only lasts for about half an act at best. Plus, she was a nun. Was that really gonna bring out a romance? That is a situation where you are allowed to be upset but you should eventually cut your losses. Also, it's probably better that Romeo moved on from her in favor of Juliet. The boy was a mess in act 1, and Juliet is the person who brings him back to himself ("Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo"- Mercutio). Romeo and Juliet work, they balance each other out: Romeo is himself again with Juliet, and Juliet gets a taste of freedom/control of her life with Romeo. Romeo literally is ready to disregard the ideas of honor and masculinity to make Juliet happy. He does respect her. He does love her. I want you to look at these two lines and tell me that neither of these two are in love

"If I profane with my unworthiest hand / This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: / My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand / To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."- Romeo; I,i

"Thy face is mine and thou has slandered it"- Paris; IV, i

Would you really disregard someone who reveres you and basically says his world revolves around you/ you are a heavenly being that he worships like a pilgrim in favor of the guy who pretty much implies he owns you?? Would you?? Look, I'd hate to pull a Hamlet by pointing between these two lines and start berating people for this, but we do what we must. Romeo's dialogue makes it clear where he stands with Juliet: he adores her. He loves her so much that if he could carve his family name out of his body, he would (Act 3 scene 3). Obviously, you don't need to go all extreme to prove love, but you get the point. He willingly decides to sacrifice what he's been taught for her and she to him. They aren't each other's enemies. Their families are enemies. Romeo refuses to fight Tybalt because he loves Juliet. He is willing to sacrifice his family's idea of hatred because he loves Juliet. He does not act like he owns her or that anything he does if justified. When Juliet questions him about "leaving (him) so unsatisfied," he doesn't double down. OBVIOUSLY Juliet would choose Romeo:

He gave her choice throughout the play, unlike Paris. Juliet was confined in her life, and she only agreed to consider Paris because her parents asked her too. She never wanted him. She was just doing as told. Romeo ASKS to hold her hand. Romeo ASKS for her faithful vows. He doesn't push it towards her. He lets her take the reigns, and she reciprocates. Would this be considered bare minimum, now yes. Then? Juliet is basically being strung along to do as her parents ask, Romeo is different from that. Different to the feud. He doesn't make her do things. He lets her make her own choices. As a partner and equal; she definitely would not get that with Paris. The guy literally says that girls younger than Juliet (13) are already mothers. If that sounds like a yikes, that's cause it is. Shakespeare wants us to understand why Juliet did what she did, there is reasoning in the play.

He is sweet to her, and his "it is the east and Juliet is the sun" can be interpreted as him being so smitten with Juliet that she is the center of his universe. Her happiness is important to him; he goes to great lengths to say this.

He is also most likely in her age group. He's a youth. Even if he IS older, he is probably like 14-15 at best. He's a kid. They're both kids. Most people want partners who are their peers or at least similar to them, and Juliet does not seem to be different.

Finally, point the third: the love of Romeo and Juliet never killed anyone. It was the Montague and Capulet feud that did this:

Tybalt, being raised to hate Montagues, goes on what he was taught to fight Romeo over the dishonor at the party. If there was no feud, the gate crashing would've probably been less of an issue. Lord Capulet did not do anything to stop this behavior and decided to berate his nephew in front of hundreds of people, say some things that are hypocritical based on act 1 scene 1 and low key imply that this is only not OK because it would make HIM look bad. (I could make a whole separate post on Lord Capulet alone, but that is a story for another time) Yeah, that all works as well as you could expect, and Tybalt swears revenge on Romeo because his logic his whole life was Montague=bad, and you don't revert those habits by public humiliation. Romeo is more of a scapegoat to Tybalt after what happens than the actual problem.

Tybalt tries to fight Romeo, and Romeo doesn't engage because he's married to Juliet; he and Tybalt are family now. Romeo tries to reason with him, but it doesn't work. Mercutio, also being raised on the notion of honor and probably thinking Romeo has lost his mind or something, jumps in. The thing is, he's a kinsman to Escalus. He is neither Capulet nor Montague. There is no point in him getting involved but it happens anyway. They fight, and as Romeo is trying to stop them, Tybalt ends up killing Mercutio. If there was no feud, this fight would never have happened.

Tybalt is killed by Romeo as an act of revenge that he would later regret. Even though Romeo did what Montague called "what the law should end," it makes it no less wrong. The cycle of violence is bad, and repeating it doesn't make it better. Also, justifying this removes the nuance of the feud. Neither family is in the right. They are equal houses with equal power. There is no reason to hate each other. But they do and kick off a chain of events that only get worse. You can't make either house more in the right than the other. If Tybalt is a de facto antagonist, that ruins the message that this stupid feud killed 6 people. And it IS very stupid, and it gets stupider from here. No one knows why they're fighting, and now 2 people just got killed for no reason, one being literally royalty.

Lady Montague dies of grief after Romeo's exile. Did she have anything to do with the exile? No. Could the whole situation have been avoided? Yes. Again, there are no winners. People are just losing family and friends left, right, and center. Are the parents in R&J great? No. Is it still tragic to know that a mother lost her son and gave up on life over a conflict that never mattered? Yes.

Paris dies in a fight with Romeo in the Capulet tomb in Act 5. He picks a fight with Romeo because he believes Romeo will desecrate Juliet and Tybalt's corpses. Why? Only because he's a Montague. There's no other justification for what Paris does. All he knows is that Romeo is of the enemy family and jumps to this conclusion. If there was no feud, no one would go to this conclusion, but still Paris jumps on that and gets killed in the process. In the events of the story, the justification adds up with what we know about the Capulets, Montagues, and the people take sides, but that does not give it a point. Paris is also supposed to be neutral. He may be marrying Juliet, but he is not a Capulet, only associated with them. The point of having 2 members of the royal family get killed is a deliberate point: even neutral parties were not safe. The feud controlled literally everything and people died for it.

Finally, our main couple who everyone, blames for this. Romeo dies because he believes Juliet is dead. Before you berate him, I would like to introduce a concept known as "dramatic irony": when the audience knows something that the characters don't (vocabulary.com). The problem in Act 5 is that the letter explaining the plan never reaches Romeo. He hears from someone he trusts that Juliet is dead and believes it. Why wouldn't he? "What about the letter!" Stopped by the plague. "He should've checked!" He did. He snuck back into Verona at the threat of execution to check. And she was buried in a graveyard/ catacombs. If I brought you to a graveyard, pointed at a grave, asked you if the person in it is dead and your answer wasn't a resounding "yes" I would be concerned. Juliet wakes up, finds Romeo dead for real, and kills herself too. She doesn't really have another choice. It's either die with Romeo with the autonomy she has or keep living under the control of her parents. She and Romeo were each other's escape from the feud-ridden life they lived. They loved each other and needed each other, but because of that, they had to die since Verona did not let them keep that love.

If there was no feud, Romeo and Juliet would've been married in peace. No one would've had to keep secrets or carry out elaborate plans to get their means. Unfortunately, the way they lived was incredibly toxic for everyone involved. Kids felt like they had to keep secrets and kill themselves because that was easier than dealing with their parents, and is that not sad. Would it not be upsetting to know that you as a parent were so terrible that your kids chose death over you? Had they not been so hateful, everyone could've been happy. Escalus quite literally spells it out for us:

"See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, / That Heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!" (V, iii)

If there was no HATE, Romeo and Juliet wouldn't have had to die because they were in love. It was never Romeo and Juliet's fault. It was always their parents' fault. It is said in the play time and time again, from the chorus to act 5 it is this bitter hate that ruins everything. That is why the lovers marry in secret. That is what kills 6 people. That is the cause of the tragedy. Romeo and Juliet were victims of the feud and ignoring that basically disregards the whole play.

Bottom line, this photo is inaccurate and dumb.

Sincerely,

Everyone who read the play

[midnightluck]

Aventurine is Rom-Coded

Back on my bullshit with more over-analysis for my best blorbo LET'S GO

DISCLAIMER I am not Rom, I am just an interested party, pls correct me if i'm wrong or disrespectful here it's been a long time since I got to deep dive this topic. Will be also discussing the slur as context with full knowledge of the context. ALSO I am BIASED take this with a barrel of salt, and I haven't cited my sources since I did this research in high school for writing Dick Grayson fic okAY HERE WE GO

So like, can we talk about Sigonia??? Like???? What the fuck kind of culture has "may your schemes remain hidden" as a general wellwish? Can we talk about how "Sigonian" is a slur????? and ALSO they are so Rom-coded, CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE CULTURAL GENOCIDE PARALLELS PLEASE--

So FIRST OFF, Romani != Romanian, Romani != "gypsy", Romani != criminal. Romani is a tribe, is a culture, is a way of life. It's nomadic and art-centric and Romani, as a language, is not Romanian, no matter what some folk use in fic (sources: 1, 2, 3). It's a language that borrows from most European languages, and because Rom are nomadic, they then spread that back to those countries. For example, the English word "love" is used in Rom to mean "money," possibly the basis for the idiom "show me some love" meaning "pay up". (also, side note: as there are different groups and traditions, there are some pretty widely varying dialects; here's some more about that if you're interested.)

The Rom culture involves moving on and traveling. This is fascinating for townies (derogatory) and for the vast majority of people because it's an alternative lifestyle, and often children or teens or young adults would fall in love with the people or the lifestyle and follow the caravan, at least for a while. This led to the Rom's reputation as babythieves and childstealers. "Lock up your children," people used to say, "because the gypsies are coming to town." Maybe some caravans did take kids, we don't know, because fresh blood is important to continue family lines? But citation needed and A N Y WAY

So the Rom would roll into town, half-show and half-trading, perform for money, spend money, and move on. Because they were transient, there was less pressure to maintain a reputation, and a lot of the "tricks" and bad trades led to the term "getting gypped" being coined from the word "gypsy," which is why it's a slur; it literally means "someone who is intending to steal from you". One such common trick was Ekkeri, akkery, u-kéry an, which was a "magic spell". Put your money into this handkerchief, say the spell, it doubles. Do it again; it doubles again. Oh, you want me to do it with all your life savings? Sure, here's the hankie, the longer you wait to open it, the more it'll grow, buh-bye! Ekeri Aikeri is likely the original basis for the common rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock, and like all nursey rhymes was presumably a warning: if you hear this, be wary. (sources: 1, 2, 3)

So the Rom became more and more marginalized, and as any marginalized group will tell you, that's not a winning recipe for longevity. There's currently an inherent, unexamined bias all modern kids are taught, to be wary of strangers, to be wary of "gypsies" because they're enchanting magical creatures who will walk into town one day and leave with your money or your heart or your dreams (see Shakira's Gypsy), but they're not, the Rom are people, and people are not one thing. The stereotype of a "gypsy" is constantly enforced and as the population dwindles, more and more people are assuming that the Rom aren't real people, that the way of life has died out, and why be careful when there's no one left to harm? Only there is and they are trying but they no longer have the infrastructure to support themselves outside of society and they have to give up their culture to be a part of society because society thinks they're extinct fairy tales. It's a lot like what happened with Native Americans in the US, except that there were more Native Americans, they had settled land and history, and they fought back. The Rom didn't have a place to defend because nomads, couldn't point to history because oral traditions, and now there's so little to prove they ever travelled the entire continent of Euraisa and spread culture and art and magic. The only things the wider world has left of Rom culture are in our words, and even then those are carelessly used and more weapon than word.

TL;DR I have a lot of feelings on this but LET'S GET TO AVENTURINE.

Unlike real Rom, he's got the eyes--everyone can see at a glance that he's a schemer, a liar, a storyteller and a gambler. He wears his heritage on his face and he doesn't try to hide it, just like he doesn't try to hide his serial number. Someone tried to own him, and he beat them. Someone tried to kill his culture, and he won't let it die. He's been a foreigner longer than he'd ever been Avgin, but that kind of heritage doesn't die, even when everyone else does. Take Sparkle looking at him and saying "What's one of your kind doing here?"

Sigonia IV is the planet; there were multiple races on it, according to the lore, and Aventurine was an Avgin, a race that was wiped out. "Sigonian" is like calling someone an "earthling"; you're not wrong, but you are grouping everyone in together, and the Avgin and the Katican are terrible enemies who would not appreicate that in the least, I assume.

In-game characters use "Signonian" over "Avgin" which feels like "gypsy" over "Rom". Aven is presenting himself as a "gypsy," letting people call him that, embracing the stereotype and leaning the fuck in because it's better to be a Sigonian than to let the entire Avgin culture die entirely.

It's a lot of weight to carry, but that's the thing about a magic trick: the real trick is hiding how hard it all is. Magic is the art of making the impossible seem easy and natural, after all; look at this shiny pretty distraction, isn't it flashy? Isn't it bright and pretty and so easy? Just a twist of the wrist to produce anything your heart desires, and never mind how long it took to set it all up (we'll discuss performative luck build next time!)

Anyway so that's my take on his identity and cultural issues; he's too visibly an outsider to ever be trusted, but he's too alone to ever be supported in a culture. He knows he's alone, and what's more, he knows that everyone is looking to him as their only example of what an Avgin is, of what they were. He is defining his entire culture, in defiance of society, and all he has to do that with is childhood memory. There's this fuckoff big weight on his shoulders which is part of why he can't die; his reputation is every Avgin's reputation, and he will defend that more bitterly than his own. Aventurine doesn't lose because Avgin don't lose.

[xf-cases-solved]

S2E5: Duane Barry

Case: Our episode finds us in Virginia. I know this because it is the literal first thing written down in my notes. I'm learning. (No I'm not.)

Anyway. This episode, which takes place in Virginia, is part one of a three part (+ one weird fever dream episode) plot arc that will be extremely relevant to the rest of the overall plot of the X-Files from here on out. Everybody thank Gillian Anderson's daughter Piper for existing, and also Gillian Anderson for putting up with extremely questionable treatment from the show runners while she was pregnant, instead of just rage quitting like I probably would have. (She went back to work 10 days after having a C-section and they LET her, that's fucking INSANE and makes me so mad on her behalf lol.) 

But I digress.

Duane Barry! He might not have had to go film a TV show ten days after major surgery and like, giving life to a human being, but he sure is going through it, huh? Poor dude can't stop getting abducted by aliens. Probably. That, or he is suffering from a violent and unpredictable psychosis. It's one or the other for sure. And that wouldn't really be anybody's problem, except Duane has decided that he's done with the tests and teeth drilling, tyvm, and would like someone else to have a turn, so he captures his psychiatrist and busts out of the mental institution, intending to offer the psych up as tribute to the aliens. Unfortunately for Duane, however, he doesn't actually remember where the aliens said they'd pick him up at, so he hits up a travel agency, which ultimately devolves into him holding three workers plus the psychiatrist hostage.

Enter Mulder and our favorite punkass bitch sidekick, Alex Krycek! 😃 

Mulder, being the alien abductee whisperer that he is, gains Duane's trust, and we are kept on our toes as the episode does a pretty solid job at drawing out the suspense as we (along with Mulder) are ping-ponged back and forth about whether or not Duane is who and what he says he is. By the end of the episode there is still a lingering doubt, BUT, a very unsettling voicemail on Mulder's answering machine tells us we're gonna have bigger things to worry about now.

An agent, who I just now realized I recognize because she played a doctor on ER, asks Mulder to help with a hostage negotiation because he knows things about alien abductions, and then is surprised and irate when he makes the conversation about alien abductions; that same agent makes Krycek get her a grande 2% cappuccino with vanilla, which earns her my eternal love; Scully buys an entire bag of groceries for $11.14, and also breaks the barcode scanner with an unidentified metal implant and then just sort of shrugs at the store clerk and leaves; and a "Mulder, it's me" phone call ends with the sound of screams for help and broken glass, whuh-oh!

Oh, and this is the episode with the red speedo.

Welcome, friends, to the Abduction Arc!

Does someone die in the cold open: No, but things aren't really going great either. Not that they ever tend to be going great in X-Files' cold opens.

Does Mulder present a slideshow: No. No Mulder+Krycek slideshows 😡

Does the evidence survive the investigation: Ok, so the "case" this time was technically "do the hostage negotiation and get the hostages out alive," so evidence wasn't needed. Ig.

Whodunit: Duane Barry, our favorite kidnapper and alien abductee [citation needed]!

Convictions: Lol, I literally just blew out a sigh and said "ummm" out loud to myself alone in my office, that's embarrassing, but also... we'll come back to this question next episode. 

Did they solve it: Because Mulder did get the hostages out of the building safely, and because I know it's gonna be a minute before he or Scully have any real wins in their lives, I will give them this. 

[how do i determine if a case is solved? check the scale here: x]

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: Bulgaria's maternity leave laws. 58 weeks at 90% pay the entire time. In the United States you are lucky if you get six weeks, and even luckier if it's paid. And sometimes your boss makes you film a TV show ten days after giving birth through a giant gaping wound in your abdomen. (I know they were technically filming in Canada at the time, but it's an American TV show, so I'm counting it as United States bullshit.) Anyway, we treat pregnant people terribly! But let's just. Not think about that. Abduction arc time!!

***

General Total Stats:

(green means stat has changed since last ep; red means new stat added to list)

Total Cases *Definitively* Solved So Far: 15 (not even gonna bother restarting the streak tho. y'all just hang in there for a bit, i'm sure things will start looking up soon. ish. probably)

Total Number of "Mulder/Scully, It's Me": 9 (three in total, and the last one ends poorly)

Total Number of Times Scully Has Conveniently Not Seen Something Crucial: 6

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Been in Mortal Danger: 9 ½ (could have easily been shot at any time) 

Total Number of Times Scully Has Been in Mortal Danger: 9 (went back and forth on this, bc i know how this whole arc ends, but i think that if we look at this episode alone, and don't skip ahead, being kidnapped by a mentally unstable person who is known to be violent definitely counts as being in mortal danger)

Total Number of Sexually Charged, Uncomfortably Intimate, and/or Flirty Moments Between Friendly Coworkers: 14 (no, but dw, this stat is gonna get some mileage here soon)

Total Number of Autopsies Scully Has Performed On Screen: 5 (gdi. i had a funny one liner, but i know for a fact there is at least one person reading these in real time with their first watch-through, so i am trying very hard not to make jokes that are spoilery 🤐)

Total Number of Times Scully Plays Doctor: 2

Total Number of Times Mulder Talks to an Informant: 18 (no X 😔)

Total Number of Times People Making Out in a Car Are Hurt or Killed: 2

Total Number of Times Someone Correctly Guesses a Password: 3 

Total Number of (Plot Relevant) Nosebleeds: 5

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Tasted/Sniffed/Touched Something Questionable Without Following Proper Safety Procedures: 3 (no, but he did repeatedly break hostage negotiation protocol, which is similar in spirit if not practice)

Total Number of Times Someone Says "Trust No One": 3 

Total Number of Times Someone Says "I Want to Believe": 4

Total Number of Times Someone Says "The Truth is Out There": 2 

Total Number of Cigarettes Cigarette Smoking Man Has Smoked: 9

Total Number of Maggie Scully Sightings: 1

Total Number of Lone Gunmen Sightings: 2

Total Number of Alex Krycek Sightings: 2!!!!!! (get that coffee, you loser)

Total Number of Times I Had to Look Up What State the Episode Takes Place in Even Though I Literally Just Watched It: 11½ (i wrote that shit down like a person without an attention deficit disorder, hell yeah 😎)

Total Number of Times I Had to Look at an Episode's Wikipedia Page to Fill This Out Because It Was Fucking Confusing and/or Too Boring for Me to Pay Attention: 5

[sophieinwonderland]

Crazy how the things you cite for tulpamancy have been debunked hundreds of times.

Crazy how you cherry pick your data.

Crazy how you pretend you can’t find any sources.

Crazy how you villainize anyone who doesn’t instantly believe you.

Crazy how you mock someone over a single mistake but refuse to acknowledge your racism, transphobia, or ableism.

Crazy how you leave out the part that directly calls you out.

You are a genuine piece of shit. Get the fuck out of our community you faking piece of shit. At least Astro wears the fact that he’s an asshole on his chest. No one wants a bitch so privileged, so desperate for attention, that they pretend to be plural for internet points. From the entire system community: Fuck you, and everything you stand for, you complete and total waste of oxygen.

Oh boy! Here we go again!

Crazy how the things you cite for tulpamancy have been debunked hundreds of times.

Hundreds of times where? By whom?

Do you have a peer reviewed academic source that "debunked" the academic sources I'm citing, or are you referring to random Tumblr posts or Carrds with zero credibility and no sources behind them?

If you have even a single credible source debunking any of the sources I've cited, please provide it instead of just repeating that it supposedly exists.

Crazy how you cherry pick your data.

What you're referring to as "cherry picking" is something rational people call "citing sources." Something you seem incapable of doing.

This is a concept you seem to have a REALLY HARD TIME GRASPING.

So allow me to simplify.

If I don't know something, I research it.

Then I find articles that contain the information I'm looking for.

Then I quote those source and provide links to them. This is called a citation.

If you believe my sources are inaccurate, then you can use this same process and find if there are any sources that contradict my own.

Crazy how you pretend you can’t find any sources.

No. I've found plenty of sources. It's just that every source leads to the conclusion that plurality isn't a disorder and you don't need negative experiences to be plural.

What I haven't found sources for are YOUR claims. And it's your responsibility to provide those if you want anyone to believe you.

Crazy how you villainize anyone who doesn’t instantly believe you.

Poor widdle baby. "Villainized" for repeatedly fakeclaiming and attacking a marginalized group of people, then doubling down when proven wrong by just straight-up denying all science and pretending you know better than the literal doctors who have actually studied this subject.

But real talk: You aren't being "villainized" for "not believing." You go out of your way to spread hate. You go out of your way to spread lies.

And when those lies are corrected, rather than accept that you're wrong, you double down.

And do you know why people like you always double down even in spite of overwhelming evidence? Even when all the doctors who have spoken on the subject have said you're wrong? When all the evidence only goes one way?

It's because deep down, you want to hurt people.

If your ignorance is your excuse to hurt other people with different experiences than yourself, then you need to cling to it in order to keep being able to hurt people.

That's all there is to it. If anything I said was factually incorrect, you could have provided sources to contradict them. If no sources exist and all sources are on my side, yet you still refuse to change, wanting to hurt people is the only explanation.

Crazy how you leave out the part that directly calls you out.

Calls me out? You mean your childish namecalling? Of course I'm not going to respond to that. It's a red herring. A distraction meant to make people forget that you have no sources. Do you think that if you say enough mean things about me, it will goad me into defending my honor and draw attention away from how you still have no sources to support you?

Do you think I'll stoop to your level and you can successfully turn this into a flame war?

[bleachbleachbleach]

[Bleach 080]

Things I Love Thinking in Circles About

How big, area-wise, the Seireitei is

What regular Gotei work looks like when we're not looking

What did the early bird VCs do the entire time they were sitting around in Conference Room 2 waiting for people to show up?

--

1. How big, area-wise, the Seireitei is

According to Yoruichi, walking from one gate to the next would take 10 days, which initially makes the Seireitei seem really damn big. The city of Ann Arbor, Michigan has a population of 120,000 people. If we're meant to believe that there are 6000 shinigami (citation: Ooetsu?), I find it difficult to believe that the Seireitei's population would be much larger than 120k, if that. (Personally, I proceed as though it's a lot less than that.) Like the Seireitei, Ann Arbor is also circular, ringed not by a Seireimon but a necklace of Interstates, but it's only like 10 miles across. It really wouldn't take that long to walk 1/4 of the way around its rim.

You'd have to walk around a quarter of the entire country of Spain for it to take 10 days:

Obviously Google is not taking into account tired feet or needing to like, sleep, with this estimate, but STILL. The Seireitei is not the size of SPAIN.

A) Let's say it would really take 10 days. This gate-to-gate trek might need to take terrain into account (which Google sometimes does and often doesn't lol). The area Ichigo et al ended up in seemed pretty civ where the gate matches up with Junrinan, but maybe a shade north and the terrain is much more difficult!

B) Let's say it really would not take 10 days. Yoruichi might have been exaggerating, because she doesn't want to walk to another damn gate and also it's not as though there aren't also shinigami waiting at...the other gates... So she nips that in the bud and directs her party's attentions elsewhere.

Or maybe she knows that even this close to the Seireitei, in Rukongai time gonna wime, and space-time are not going to exist in a constant relationship with each other.

C) Let's say Matsumoto's "half-day" comment probably isn't about geography, either. Half a day would make the Seireitei approximately the size of like, Indianapolis? (population 882k, area 368 sq. miles/950 sq. km) if we were basing it purely on area. But also, shunpou?? So I really feel like the "length of time it would take people to arrive"half day" comment is less a function of physical distance and more about the fact that they're all busy and have tasks they'd need to extricate themselves from before they started walking/running/sauntering/gamboling over.

Which leads me to--

2. What regular Gotei work looks like when we're not looking

I think we've seen enough evidence that the way the Gotei has built itself does not lend itself well to rapid response. Their response to the ryoka invasion was not particularly rapid, nor organized. Their response to AIZEN'S MURDER was nearly non-existent. Winter War prep was also kind of rough, and I guess TYBW 1 was kind of a surprise attack, but I think my point still stands that it's just not their forte. I think part of this is because the Gotei is legitimately just kind of bad at being functional; we all know this. They all know this. I think the other part is that rapid response is very, very hard.

Given that they are heavenly court guards, you'd think rapid response to potential threats would be more of a priority, but you could say that about a lot of real-life things that, in reality, do not work that way (and perhaps cannot, in the absence of radical reinvention). To use a near universal example, see Exhibit C: COVID responses lol. Even outside of that very particular example, I'm part of a direct action organization and even though it's relatively small and its politics are activist-minded, rapid response is still very, very hard.

I just love thinking about, okay, where are the Gotei bottlenecks, what's the red tape, where's the sludge in the workings, where to the capacities fall through, what jobs haven't been invented that they really need, what jobs exist that really shouldn't, how much is logistical, how much is political, how much is cultural, how much is personal? *this is my bulletproof kiiiiiiink*

If it's going to take 4-12 hours to get all the officers in one place, it makes me think that yes, the alarms are going off, but it's a rapid response priority only for those who were assigned to quadrant 6 or whatever. Yes, this meeting call went out, but the threat is not yet at a level where you need to drop everything and haul ass. It's serious, but not more serious than the rippling consequences of ignoring the essential tasks you were already engaged in that are really going to fuck things up in domino-like ways if you don't do them right now.

For Ichigo et al, rescuing Rukia is Priority #1. For the Gotei, the ryoka invasion is this major world event that slammed on top of their already-full calendars of other shit they're supposed to do today. Big meeting? That's great, but it's going to have to wait or else a whole deployment's going to ship out late, the payroll office is going to close before those forms get signed, and Z isn't going to have the Y report that's required in order to start the X project.

3. What did the early bird VCs do the entire time they were sitting around in Conference Room 2 waiting for people to show up?

The meeting was called to address Ichimaru's behavior in dealing (or not dealing) with the ryoka, so we can assume it was called relatively quickly after Yamamoto got wind of that. Renji just took Rukia to Fancy Prison, but it doesn't seem like there's yet been dissemination of an official report, because he doesn't actually know if Ichigo got killed by Ichimaru or not. But the meeting is still going on when the ryoka invade successfully via The Sky.

In the interim, Ichigo et al hung out with the denizens of Junrinan, met Ganju, walked out to bumfuck to find Kuukaku's house, got introduced to the cannon and the cannonballs, practiced with the cannonballs, ate dinner, gained proficiency with the cannonballs, and blasted themselves through the sky.

Which makes it seem like the VCs who got there early literally did have to wait around for half a day before everyone showed up. Keep in mind THEIR MEETING DID NOT EVEN HAVE AN AGENDA. They were just supposed to stage in Conference Room 2!

So what did they do? Did they bring any work with them? Did they shoot the shit for six hours? Play games? Nap?

...Orgy?

(Orgy.)

[wingsoverlagos]

Mark Lewisohn's Star Witness

If you're familiar with Tune In, you've probably heard about it's marquee moment, in which Mark Lewisohn overturns the mythic story of how George Martin signed the Beatles to his label, Parlophone.

In extreme brief, here's the classic tale: Brian Epstein, having been rejected by nearly every record label in London, took the Beatles' demo tape to be cut to disc. The engineer liked the demo and called in Sid Colman, a music publisher with Ardmore & Beechwood, who liked their original songs and wanted the publishing rights. Brian didn't want a publishing contract without a recording contract, so Sid patched Brian through to George Martin, who found the Beatles rather rough around the edges, but with an undeniable spark. He brought the group in for a recording test, was won over by their humor, and signed them to Parlophone. Voila.

It follows in the Beatles canon that Brian and George M. weren't terribly impressed with how Ardmore & Beechwood handled promotion for "Love Me Do", so publishing for all Lennon-McCartney songs was handled by George M.'s friend/colleague Dick James starting with "Please Please Me."

Tune In tells a different story, based almost entirely on the testimony of one Kim Bennett, who was Sid Colman's assistant at the time. Here's Mark Lewisohn on the podcast Nothing Is Real, Season 7, Episode 7:

"But Kim Bennett, who was his [Sid's] assistant, he was the one who really tried to get the Beatles signed to a recording contract. He is very much the unknown hero in the Beatles story, so unknown that they don't know about him. And they were fed a line about how they were signed by George Martin that they always- they saw no reason to disbelieve, and therefore hold it true to this day but it's not right."

Bennett's version of the story, as related by Mark Lewisohn as the Truth in Tune In, diverges from the usual version once Sid Colman enters the picture. I'll take a stab at condensing it:

It's unknown how Brian ended up in George Martin's office, because Sid really didn't like George M., and wouldn't have called him. Nevertheless, Brian met with George M., but George was not impressed and didn't intend to follow up on the Beatles. Meanwhile, our hero, Kim Bennett, returned to the office of Ardmore & Beechwood, and his boss, Sid Colman, played the Beatles' demo for him. Kim, too, gets hooked on that Beatle Juice, and wants the publishing rights. Colman shops the Beatles' demo disc around EMI, but there are no bites, at which point Bennett comes up with the idea that they can propose that they'll foot the bill for the recording if EMI will sign the Beatles.

Colman takes Bennett's idea to one of the EMI bigwigs, L.G. Wood, but he isn't interested. At a later date, he brings it up again, and this time Wood agrees to the plan. He forces George Martin to sign the Beatles to Parlophone as a slap on the wrist; L.G. Wood was very cross with George M. for trying to negotiate during his contract renewal, and for having an affair with his secretary.

The Beatles are signed, "Love Me Do" is recorded, and Kim Bennett works doggedly behind the scenes to promote it. But when the time comes for the Beatles to push out another release, Ardmore & Bennett aren't given the publishing rights. Out of spite for having been forced into the situation, George M. convinces Brian that Ardmore & Bennett didn't do enough to promote "Love Me Do." Lennon-McCartney end up with Dick James as their publisher.

That's Lewisohn's version, and what a scoop! Yowza! A total bombshell disrupting a classic Beatles narrative! I'm sure he's got ironclad evidence to put something like this forward as a True Fact in the story of the Beatles, and not just a story he heard from one guy. The citations must be exhaustive. And surely Kim Bennett had never gone on the record about this issue before, particularly not in a way that contradicted what we see in Tune In--

Oh dear. Why, if it isn’t page 8 of Beatles Book issue 70, published May 1969, edited by Johnny Dean! The passage comes from a piece called "When did you Switch On?" (no author given), and it features some information provided by one Mr. Kim Bennett. Hmm! In 1969, Bennett said that Sid called George Martin to sell him on the Beatles, but in Tune In, Bennett swears that Sid Colman would never call George due to personal animosity. How curious!

Of course, we can't expect Mark Lewisohn to have every issue of Beatles Book Monthly memorized. That simply isn't fair. Sure, he freelanced answering trivia questions for it when it was re-printed (see Nothing Is Real Season 1, Episode 14), but there's no reason to expect that he'd know this issue particularly well, surely?

Mark Lewisohn on Ethan Alexanian's Fans On The Run podcast, Episode 73

"I just needed to see my name in the Beatles monthly."

"I just needed to see my name in the Beatles monthly."

Surely it couldn't be--

--but there it is. Beatles Book Issue 70, May 1969, edited by Johnny Dean, on page 14. The very next page after the piece ft. Kim Bennett ends:

Mark Lewisohn (10 1/2)

[bootstrapparadoxed]

creative works & links

AO3 - Ko-Fi - YouTube - Patreon

Novel

adult sci-fi; a queer, existentialist space adventure

Summary:

In the distant future, humans live in a utopia where even death is not the end—for everyone except Amber’s parents. At 25, she is a cynical, aloof Ph.D. in history who resents her sheltered life at home and yearns to find her place in the world. Then, an exciting job offer comes her way—the chance to uncover the mystery of a civilization that disappeared thousands of years ago. Teaming up with the archeologist Lullaby, Amber embarks on a hitchhiking quest to find the fabled Aquamarine Moon and, perhaps, some much-needed meaning in her life.

Publisher’s website | Amazon

You can get a free ebook copy in exchange for an honest review on goodreads or storygraph! Send me a direct message or ask for details.

Current WIP

"Offspring of (Un)happy Days", a dark academia horror with a M/M romance - WIPintro here, I tag posts about it as #FrankensteinWIP

Video Essays

"Science Has an Accountability Problem | Dumpster Fire Data"

Do you know how many researchers anonymously admit to fabricating data? The answer is not a number of individuals, it is a percentage. As scientists, we like to believe that we are the pinnacle of accuracy, honesty, and accountability. In reality, we are no different from any other human, just as capable of making mistakes. And it’s time to fully admit to that. Welcome to Dumpster Fire Data, a series in which I analyze the hell out of crumbling institutions.

“Representation DIY: What Headcanons Can Teach You About Autism”

On why representation of minority groups in fiction has such a powerful influence, why I prefer headcanon autistic characters over canon examples, and how headcanon discussions can improve the public dialogue and be an additional push for better diverse media.

“Night in the Woods: Cosmic Horror and Optimistic Nihilism”

An exploration of themes and narrative threads of “Night in the Woods” through the eyes of an exhausted Gen Z anarchist. On the terrifying world that young adults of today were born into and how it affected us, the two ways in which NiTW explores cosmic horror, why humans always look for stories, patterns, and meaning, and whether you can be sane and happy without meaning altogether. 

“Disability and Capitalism” 2-parter

A deep dive into the intertwined history of ableism and the capitalist economy, starting from the dawn of humanity and ending with a hopeful look into the future. Featuring a shitton of citations/research and generously sprinkled with science fiction.

“Squid Game and the Gamefication of Capitalism”

"Squid Game" is a South Korean survival drama that explores themes of class disparity and inequality with a Hunger Games-esque, thrilling plotline. Is the reality show / video game aesthetic of Squid Game just another compelling visual element, or an additional metaphor?

"Is Phylogenetics a Proper Science?"

Birds are dinosaurs, whales are cousins of cows, and fishes do not exist – these are the kind of things you learn in phylogenetics lectures as a biology undergrad. I have compartmentalized this knowledge in my head for years without giving it a second thought. Then, I fell down a rabbit whole of weird philosophy of science papers, and it broke my brain a little.

"Pokemon Evolutions Are Real... Kind Of"

More people have probably heard the word "evolution" in a pokemon game than in a high school biology class. And they aren't even actually evolving, they're going through metamorphosis. Probably. Well…

Short Stories

Short Story: "Satisfied", cyberpunk horror, in HyphenPunk Magazine Issue 7

Selected Fanfiction

One Septendecillion Brass Doorknobs: AO3 - Royalroad - Rebloggable Link

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency S3 as a full novel length (82k words) fic written in my best attempt at the style of Douglas Adams

where fire and ice collide: AO3 

30k long/novella length doctor who and good omens crossover with Tenth and Rose and all the GO characters; mostly focused on the mystery/adventure plotline but it also has tenrose and ineffable husbands tones in the mix

when it’s time: AO3

good omens 20k ineffible husbands slowburn. you know the cold open of E3? it’s 20k more of it. with mutual pining and angst and an eventual happy ending