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moonlit-tulip · 2 years ago

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Tales From The Runescape Economy: The Rise and Fall of the Blast Furnace Clans

For all the complexity of its supply chains and resulting market behaviors, the Runescape economy is in many ways very limited. Most significantly, it has nothing resembling lastingly-binding enforceable contracts. One can make whatever instantaneous two-person trades one wants and have a game-mechanical guarantee that both parties will, in fact, give the other what they said they'd give; but there's no similar mechanism for binding a person's future actions.

Because of this, there are many forms of complex economic organization one doesn't encounter in Runescape. There's no enforceable way to short-sell items; as a result, it's hard to turn a profit on a successfully-anticipated price crash, and the market is thus less efficient in updating prices downward than in updating them upward. There's no enforceable way to offer players venture-capital to fund short-term equipment or stat-leveling in exchange for a share of their longer-term profits gained through the aid of that equipment or those levels. Et cetera.

Despite this handicap, though, sometimes Runescape players manage some genuinely impressively elaborate feats of economic organization, to enable productive market activity above and beyond what the trade system and Grand Exchange might straightforwardly seem to enable. The most impressive such feat to have come to my attention, over the course of my time playing Runescape, was the rise of the Blast Furnace clans, which, over their year or two of operation, forever changed the shape of the economy around Smithing in Oldschool Runescape.

1. The Blast Furnace

At most furnaces in Runescape, one can smelt ores (supplemented, in some cases, with coal) into bars, gaining Smithing experience in the process, at a rate of one bar produced per 2.4 seconds. Taking into account the time spent running between the furnace and the bank (withdrawing ores and coal-if-applicable from the bank before running to the furnace, then taking the produced bars back to the bank before withdrawing the next round of ores), it's difficult to produce much more than 1,000 bars per hour, even for those ores such as silver and gold which don't require coal to smelt or otherwise have associated complications that might slow things down. Smelting is thus, under normal circumstances, a relatively slow process.

The Blast Furnace is a unique and specialized furnace which makes smelting far more efficient, both in terms of speed and in terms of resources. Unlike other furnaces, the Blast Furnace can take in an entire inventory's worth of ores / coal simultaneously, and process them all into bars simultaneously, rather than going only one bar at a time. Moreover, when making bars of varieties which require coal, it uses only half as much coal; steel bars made at the Blast Furnace require 1 coal apiece rather than 2, mithril bars require 2 rather than 4, et cetera. And, in the style of the most usable ordinary furnaces, the Blast Furnace has a bank right nearby. Where ordinary furnaces can produce at most 1000ish bars per hour, the Blast Furnace can get closer to 6000 if used at optimal rates.

Offsetting this advantage is a complication: unlike ordinary furnaces, which are permanently operational without requiring any sort of player intervention, the Blast Furnace requires maintenance in order to remain operational. It has components which can break, requiring repair; its internal heat needs to be regulated through a mix of "shovel coke into the stove" and "operate pump to send hot air from the stove to the melting pot"; also, it has a conveyor belt which needs manual pedaling to move the ores into the melting pot. On the whole, then, while the Blast Furnace, operated optimally, is an extremely fast device for smelting, there's a lot of logistical work that goes into operating it optimally.

For a time, there were essentially three major approaches by which people could handle that logistical work and use the Blast Furnace. One was to use the furnace solo, on a server with no one else around, and just eat the time costs of keeping it operational in between rounds of smelting. Another was to jump to one of the standard "everyone who wants to do massed-up Blast Furnace goes here" servers, which were full of many people all trying to use the Blast Furnace, all hoping that someone else would handle the maintenance for them while they go about their smelting. (These servers were, I think, among the more beautiful demonstrations I've seen of the Tragedy of the Commons, somehow managing in many cases to underperform even soloing.) And another was to try to coordinate a group of friends to run the Blast Furnace together on an otherwise-empty server, each taking on a share of the furnace-maintenance work, with sufficient social bonds in place that people wouldn't defect and just make bars without contributing to the maintenance; this was the most efficient among these three options if one could pull it off, but it was difficult from a coordination perspective and wasn't, in practice, something most people would be able to take advantage of very often.

Somewhere around 2014 or 2015—I wasn't active in Runescape in 2014, and wasn't paying enough attention in early 2015 to remember whether it had happened yet, but it definitely happened before July of 2015—a fourth approach was introduced to this field, one which outperformed the others by such a large margin that it shifted the Blast Furnace from an obscure piece of content which sat mostly unused despite its potential over into being one of the economic cornerstones of the Smithing skill: that of the Blast Furnace clans.

2. The Rise of the Blast Furnace Clans

The business model of the Blast Furnace clans most closely resembled the third of the models described above—the friend-group model—but it was depersonalized and taken to an extreme. In place of a friendgroup's members each taking on shares of the furnace-work as a cooperative endeavor while spending their time in between those chunks of work smelting, the Blast Furnace clan model had a much clearer delineation of duties: three furnace-maintainers maintain the furnace full-time and do no smelting whatsoever; arbitrarily many smelters use the very-consistently-maintained furnace at full efficiency, without needing to do any maintenance themselves, in exchange for a modest fee; and one coordinator sits in the middle of all of this, advertising the situation to the smelters, taking their fees, and passing shares of the earnings on to each of the furnace-maintainers. (Traditionally an even four-way split.)

The cooperation between the smelters and the coordinator-plus-maintainers team—which is to say, the part where the former paid the latter a fee in exchange for their services—was enforced, not by bonds of friendship, but by a tit-for-tat strategy on the part of the team: anyone free-riding on the furnace the clan was maintaining would be banned from the clan chat channel, which was where they advertised which server they were set up on at a given point in time; someone who did the free-riding thing once would thus set themselves up to forevermore need a laborious search through hundreds of servers to find where the clan was set up, each time they wanted to take advantage of the clan's services. The expected cost of such a search, in terms of time spent searching rather than smelting (and thus in foregone profits and experience), was larger than the fee for essentially anyone capable of using the furnace at all; thus the incentives pointed strongly in the direction of paying up.

(And, indeed, monitoring for free-riders was another of the central jobs of the coordinators, alongside their advertising and accepting payments and passing profit-shares on to the maintainers. Because that incentive system worked only as long as the "free-riders get banned from the clan chat" rule was enforced, after all.)

So, through the efforts of the Blast Furnace clans—which each generally did their best to keep a furnace-maintenance team running at all times, in order to keep customer loyalty—it became possible for people to use the Blast Furnace at full efficiency, no difficult Tragedy of the Commons-dodging required, in exchange for only a small fee per person.

This, in turn, had major effects on the economy around the Smithing skill more generally: ores and coal became worth more (since smelting them was more viable as a source of profit and/or experience), and bars became worth less (since the Blast Furnace's influx of users was driving bar supply up while simultaneously driving bar demand down (the main use of bars was as a source of relatively-fast Smithing experience, and the Blast Furnace offered that too, siphoning off some of the demand for the bars)). Which, in turn, made profit margins at ordinary furnaces lower and in some cases negative (since ordinary furnaces used up more coal per bar created than the Blast Furnace), feedback-loopishly siphoning yet more people to the Blast Furnace, until it became one of the central economic cornerstones of the Smithing skill.

3. The Fall of the Blast Furnace Clans

...and then problems started popping up. Or, more precisely, one big problem.

As previously discussed, the Blast Furnace requires maintenance in order to run efficiently. The conveyor belt needs to be kept moving; the pipes need to be repaired; the stove needs to be fueled; the air needs to be pumped; et cetera. And, most importantly: the temperature needs to be kept in the proper range. If it's too low, the furnace won't run, and the maintainers will need to pump more hot air in until it's back up. If it's too high, the furnace also won't run, and there's nothing to do but wait for it to drop down on its own.

So, one day, someone associated with one of the Blast Furnace clans had a bright idea: let's send someone to go sabotage our competitors! Someone associated with one of the clans went and started deliberately overheating the furnace-instance being run by one of the other clans. Because, after all, that way, their customers will be incentivized to look elsewhere and potentially come to us, right?

This worked out in thoroughly-predictable manner. Which is to say: the targeted clans started retaliating, and, before too long, the Blast Furnace clans were once again pretty evenly matched in terms of quality-of-product, except that quality was lower, because instead of ~100% furnace uptime, they were now offering only however much furnace uptime they could maintain through the occasional rounds of sabotage they underwent, which, while still very much higher than the uptime one could expect if bypassing the clans altogether, was noticeably sub-100%.

This went on for a while, and the game developers Did Not Approve; while they were fine with the Blast Furnace's prior state as a living example of the Tragedy of the Commons and of profits foregone through coordination-failure, the escalation from mere failure-to-profitably-cooperate up to direct sabotage was too much for them. Soon after the sabotage became a trend, they made an update to automatically kick people who overheated the furnace too much out from the furnace area temporarily; the clans responded by stubbornly continuing to sabotage one another, just with more saboteurs and/or more calculated pacing in order to avoid all getting kicked out too quickly.

Finally, after about a year of this mess, the developers ran a poll: should we add some NPCs to one of the servers who do the furnace-running automatically in exchange for payment comparable to that demanded by the Blast Furnace clans, and who block players from operating the furnace in any way other than smelting with it? (While still leaving other servers with the Blast Furnace unmanned-by-default, for players who want to take their shot at handling the coordination themselves.) The proposal passed with 87.8% of voters voting in favor; the NPCs were added; and, with that, the Blast Furnace clans fell to pieces, unable to compete with the NPCs service-quality-wise since they were subject to sabotage and the NPCs weren't.

4. Now

The Blast Furnace remains, to this day, an economic cornerstone of the Smithing skill. The Blast Furnace clans may have fallen, but their economic impact lives on through their replacement, the Blast Furnace servers. (What started out as a single NPC-maintained Blast Furnace server has now grown to fifteen of them, on account of that one's immense crowding.) The Blast Furnace servers fill much the same economic niche, albeit NPC-run rather than player-run, and with the side effect of doing some gold-sinking since the furnace-users' service fees are going to those NPCs rather than to other players.

For all that the new arrangement might fill the same economic niche and provide a higher-quality user experience, though, I remain somewhat nostalgic for the old days of the Blast Furnace clans, sabotage problems and all. They were one of the most complex bits of economic organization I've seen players set up throughout my time playing Runescape, and while the NPC-run servers may fill the same economic niche and lead to a very similar gameplay experience for the smelters, they lose that complexity, replacing it with a simpler and less interesting "pay coins to NPC and NPC does things" arrangement with no room for non-smelter participants in the exchange.

One day, I hope, the Runescape community will find some new opportunity to build other similarly-complex pieces of economic infrastructure. Ones which lack the "devolving into PvP and thus driving the developers to come in and undercut the player market" failure mode which ultimately sunk this one.

#Archive #Runescape #Economics #Infodump #Tales From The Runescape Economy

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miekasa · 3 years ago

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any dad!levi hcs for father’s day today🥺🤲🏽

Absolutely!! I’ll do this I guess using the kids I have for him in my parent au? If you’ve read that, you know about Holden, but there are two more so prepare to meet them :’) happy father’s day to Levi <33

To begin with, you guys would plan to have your kids (to the best of your abilities; you were intentionally trying to have kids at a time when you both knew you were ready for them.

Although accidents to do happen, and Levi would welcome an unplanned child all the same; that being said, if you’re both want a family, you would have discussed it beforehand (which is to a degree, is a lot about mental preparation for himself).

In his perfect world, he’d have two daughters. They’d be equal parts him and you, and they’d be quiet and curious and lovely and life would be good. He’d spend his days with you and his two tiny daughters, raising his little family and doing all he could for his favorite girls.

So, naturally, he does get two daughters, but also a son in between; and the latter two kids are far from easy in their own unique ways lmfao

You might have already met Holden, and she’s the oldest in my dad Levi au, and the most like him. Levi’s dark hair, his grey eyes, his overall unimpressed visage, his knack for cleanliness and organization—down to the way she holds her sippy cups, she’s damn near Levi’s doppleganger.

Holden is somewhere between 3.5-4 years old before you have your second kid, and in that time is when Levi confirms he thinks he was cut out to be a certified Girl Dad.

Both Levi and Holden take quality father-daughter time very seriously. It’s impossible to change plans once they’re set: “Daddy, you promised we would go to the famer’s market on Sunday. You pinky promised.” And Levi wouldn’t dare break a pinky promise, so he makes time for it.

Levi doesn’t play favorites with his kids, but there is something special about Holden as his first born. He’s constantly in awe of just how much she resembles him. Four years into raising her and it’s still hard to wrap his head around.

Much to his chagrin, Hange and Eren are Holden’s favorite adults. Maybe Levi understands the admiration for Hange, but Eren... come on, Holden, you’re breaking his heart at that point.

It’s almost out of character for your daughter to be so openly affectionate about someone outside of your immediate family, but she really loves having Eren as a babysitter; and you know she’s playing favorites, because she remains neutral on Armin, even though he and Eren always babysit as a duo.

She doesn’t have a favorite grandparent, but Kenny spoils her the most. Levi tells him he shouldn’t, but when has Kenny ever listened to Levi. The man isn’t a fan of kids, but he thinks yours and Levi’s are pretty cool, and Holden is about the coolest 4 year old he could ever meet.

When she was learning to walk, Levi’s favorite thing was holding her little hand and guiding her around. Even now, when she can stand perfectly fine on her own two feet, Levi loves it when she reaches for his hand; Holden is a pretty independent kid, even at 4 years old, so Levi never takes affection from her for granted.

They’re best friends and Holden goes everywhere with him. Their favorite father-daughter activity is going to the grocery store, and Levi lets Holden point to and assess her favorite fruits and veggies while she sits happily in the shopping cart.

Sometimes there are other parents struggling with a kid throwing a temper tantrum. Levi simply clicks his teeth, while Holden shakes her little head. “That’s pretty embarassing, daddy,” she says, looking at the poor parent with an unamused glare that rivals Levi’s. He nods and pushes the cart past the scene, “Tell me about it, kid.”

Your second kid is a boy, and he looks more like you than Levi, but manages to have Levi’s signature hair color and pout when things aren’t going his way.

He comes as a shock to both you and Levi, because after your ultrasound, you were told you were having another girl. Turns out, they’d accidentally mixed up your files, and you were having a boy instead, which you do not find out until your mid-term check up a few months later. Cue Levi buffering like an old computer.

Kiaan is welcomed all the same, even tho Levi is still in disbelief; he was mentally preparing to have another daughter on his hands. He puts more pressure on himself with his son; not that he wasn’t trying his best to be a parent to Holden, but any insecurities he might have about being a good come out when your son is born, because Levi has no “man of the house” example to follow from.

You reassure him that your son will turn out to be just fine, and raising him the way you raised Holden, and would have raised another daughter is perfectly acceptable. Of course Levi rises to the occasion after the initial shock; he’s determined to be the dad to his son that he never had.

Where Holden is more reserved, Kiaan likes to talk and babble about anything whenever and wherever he can, to whoever is around. It’s not uncommon for you or Levi to find your son completely entertained by telling a story out loud to himself while playing with his toys.

Loves to rope Levi into making his toys interact and have “conversations” with each other, and Kiaan genuinely thinks his dad is hilarious, even if he doesn’t completely understand what he’s saying. It always makes Levi smile to hear Kiaan try and copy the bass and tone of his voice when he’s mocking him.

Kiaan loves messing with his dad, and Levi’s all talk, so of course he lets him. He’ll be on a Zoom meeting for work, and Kiaan will be sat in his lap, running little toy cars across the desk in front of him, or tugging on Levi’s hair, and Levi just lets him. It makes quite the cute sight, and Hange has definitely taken a few screen recordings.

That being said, your son is more of a mama’s boy than anything. Kiaan loves messing with Levi, but if you’re in the room, there’s a 95% chance he’ll be on your lap or at your side shadowing whatever you’re doing.

Kiaan is a universal copycat tho, so whatever you, Levi, or Holden say or do, he tries for himself. This makes him especially susceptible to repeating Levi’s foul language and bad habits than Holden. (“Kiaan, you can’t sleep on the chair, it’s not good for your back.” “But daddy sleeps on the chairs sometimes!” “...Alright kid, you got me there.”)

He’s a very loving kid with his words, too, always thanking people and proclaiming his love, so he doesn’t exactly have a “favorite” adult or babysitter, but he does get particularly excited when Erwin or Farlan come around. He feels especially tall when Erwin lets him sit on his shoulders, and Farlan always entertains his story-telling.

He’s a sucker for his grandma though, and gives Kuchel a million kisses whenever she comes around. Does not let go over her for the entire time she’s over at your house, and will sit on her lap throughout dinner.

The most affectionate child, so where Holden only likes holding hands, Kiaan loves cuddling with you and Levi, and likes to be held whenever possible. Levi spoils him a little too much, and more often than not, if you’re walking outside for more than two hours, Kiaan will end up on Levi’s shoulders or in your arms.

Your last kid is another girl, and, yeah she’s just a baby no older than a few months, but Levi can’t help but think she’s especially tiny, and he can’t help but to look at her and hold her whenever possible. Your baby girl also leaves Levi a little dumbstruck because she manages to look like a combination of you and his mother.

As she grows, it becomes apparent that you’ve got another daddy’s girl on your hands. Doesn’t matter if you’re literally breast feeding her, Aria will throw a tantrum if she’s separated from Levi for more than an hour.

The good news is, her sleep cycle is as irregular as Levi’s, so he’s got someone to keep him company when everyone else has gone to bed for the evening. Unfortunately, this also means Aria naps a lot during the day, which leaves Levi a little bored since Holden is old enough to be in school full-time, and Kiaan is gone for at least a portion of the day.

So, he would never tell you, but sometimes he wakes Aria up from her naps just a little bit early to spend more time with her (and cure his boredom). Having an infant trying to grab at his hair with her ravioli sized baby fists while he tries to cook lunch certainly makes the task more difficult, but it also adds welcomed color to his day.

You and Levi have to hold Aria constantly when she’s awake or else she’ll cry (although, if you leave her in the arms of her siblings, she does settle down, too); that, or she’ll find her tiny baby hands somewhere they shouldn’t be. Like dipped in a jar of strawberry jam. Or peanut butter. Or both.

Levi talks to his kids like he would any other adult, so it’s not uncommon to find him brewing tea with a baby strapped to his chest, narrating the steps to good tea-making out loud to her for her to hear. He swears she can understand him, and he attributes Holden and Kiaan’s growing vocabularies, and the early ages at which they started speaking to this.

Aria will be in her little chest strap thing while Levi’s cooking dinner, and he’ll look down at her like, “Alright, we’re gonna julienne your carrots today. Yesterday we cubed them, but you’ve got grabby hands, so this will give you more room to work with.”

Kiaan loves holding Aria and honestly just being around her, and you and Levi think it’s adorable how he loves to play with her, and how he knows to be gentle with her. He shares a room with her, and loves sharing his bedtime story times, so you or Levi will read them to sleep together.

Holden isn’t crazy about babies, but she’s a good older sister, and Aria seems to be obsessed with her. She crawls and scoots towards her if given the opportunity, and Holden will always look to you or Levi before attempting to hold or lift her up, as if asking permission. She’ll pat Aria’s head to get her to stop crying, or let her play with her hands.

Levi thinks one of the best parts about being a dad is seeing the different dynamics and relationships between your kids. Holden isn’t most physically or verbally affectionate, but she’s still compassionate, and Kiaan looks up to her; and Kiaan is the perfect middle ground, knowing when it’s appropriate to bother (affectionate) Holden, and when to give her space, and curiously hovers around his baby sister, too.

#anonymous #dad levi dad levi dad levi dad levi!!!!!!!!#levi x reader #levi fluff #aot x reader #levi ackerman x reader #levi smut #aot imagines

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aryaarianne · 3 years ago

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I remember reading ADwD and thinking am I reading it right, Jon is so passionate about Arya it's like his dormant Targaryen was unleashed. And then the Jonrya letter leaked and I had to reread the books because I had been reading it right.

Sorry, anon - I intended to write about how much I love Jon and his ADWD arc, but I ended up spiraling into a rant about George’s writing and fandom response instead! Hopefully you don’t mind me stepping on the soapbox.

TL;DR: You get me, and all of us who picked up on it have to stick together. :) Mentioned rant is under the cut!

I fully agree - I think the scope and scale of the series overall really allows some people to distance themselves from how, like, unsubtle some of the hints George has dropped in ADWD really are. Because there’s so much text to sift through, people are less inclined to take certain details or patterns as seriously as they deserve.

Has George’s original storyline mutated over the years? 100% it has. Has it changed so much that Jon and Arya’s dynamic is no longer romantic? I find it difficult to say one way or the other - there’s a lot of factors to consider, end of the day, including marketability. Jonrya just isn’t that popular.

But has the storyline changed so much that Jon and Arya’s dynamic is no longer crucial to the plot and key factors in the arcs of both characters? Absolutely not. They may not be the most important factors in each other’s arcs anymore, maybe, but theirs is certainly the most relevant relationship to their arcs. It’s more or less spelled out for us in their POVs.

George is an incredibly efficient writer. He has no intention to waste the reader’s time, and no patience for mind games. He’s extremely deliberate - his text isn’t simple or straight-forward by any means, but it is constructed with a consciously considered purpose. Honestly, people like to moan about how long George takes to finish his work, but just as many people, and often the same, will discount exactly how meaningful each line of text that he includes is. He spends that long editing and drafting and deliberating each word, and so it seems only fair to assume everything he includes has a specific purpose.

The thing with George is that when he writes POV chapters, the text is neither generally omniscient nor a comprehensive catalogue of the perspective character’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations. Unlike some authors, George doesn’t dissect a character’s unconscious near-explicitly in the text - he gives the readers room to breathe and settle and consider for themselves. He asks more of his readers, and the simple fact is that mainstream audiences, and that includes fandom, read the series just for leisure - not judging, that’s a totally fine way to engage with the text.

And further, the nuances in Jon’s character in particular have suffered from how mainstream audiences have engaged with him. He is easily the most frequently simplified character, and the reduction is one of the most extreme in degrees, as well, especially if you factor in what a big fucking deal he is. What I mean is - take Arianne. While I love the Martells, and Arianne in particular, there is a lot less text dedicated to them and to her than there is to Jon, or even most POV characters. It naturally follows that readers would generalize or simplify her character as easily as they do. (I don’t like it, but it tracks logically.)

In comparison, Jon, with so many POVs and being easily the most important character, perspective or otherwise, to do with the entire Ice half of A Song of Ice and Fire, has had his arc and his themes diluted down to the point they’re near meaningless to the gen fandom, and it is fucking wild to witness! It's hard to really get a grip on as a fan of his, but a big part of it goes back to the fact that George’s writing style is a) relatively dense and b) relatively demanding.

I’m a pretty critical person, but I should say there’s a lot of things I do like about the ASOIAF fandom, and a lot of the time I don’t mind the community around book-accurate Jon, Arya, and their dynamic being smaller, because I think it gives opportunities to more people to voice their thoughts and be heard, and also we’ve got some of the most talented artists, editors, writers, and meta-writers in the fandom, easily.

But it can be frustrating to have a legitimate view of the text, so much so it’s clearly explicitly supported by textual and meta textual evidence, and yet be dismissed so easily by the wider fandom. But luckily the community has some really great members and allies, and blocking is easy enough - I do it at the drop of a hat, lol!

Agh, I should wrap this up. Thanks for the ask, and it makes me happy that you came to me with the sentiment - I feel you, anon, you get me

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life-and-law-studies · 4 years ago

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My approach to law school // January 3, 2021 This is an overview of my approach to law school and general advice. **There isn’t one way to be a successful law student** 

1. MENTAL / PHYSICAL HEALTH - your health is THE most important factor in your law school success. Unfortunately, law school tends to normalize constant stress and exhaustion. Prioritize your health over your studies and you will be a much more functional student.  

Do things that make you happy: read a book for fun or go on a long run/walk/bike ride with a friend. Do things that have nothing to do with law school! 

Therapy: it isn’t accessible for everyone, but if you can, do it.  Take sick days: rest and nourish your body when you are sick. You will recover faster and be a better student because of it. The same goes for mental health days. 

Practice community-care: check-in with your friends and support your classmates. Ask your friends and family about their lives and don’t dominate conversation with law school stories.  

Drink plenty of water and eat well.  

2. ORGANIZE 

Plan ahead: every Sunday I look over my schedule for the upcoming week and write my to-do lists for homework, law review, and my internship.  

Tab, label, and index: I tab my Bluebook, casebooks, and notebook to find sections more easily. In my notes I include an outline/index of key concepts and cases with page numbers. (I will share a photo of an index in the future) 

Keep your workspace organized: I clear my desk of all notebooks and casebooks except for the ones that I need for an assignment. This keeps me focused on one task at a time. At the end of each day I clean my desk so that it’s nice and neat for the next day.  

3. SCHEDULE 

Treat law school like a full-time job: I have free time on the weekends and sometimes during the week because I stick to my work schedule. On weekdays I get up at 6:45 am and workout until 7:45 am. Then I eat breakfast. I begin studying/homework/class at about 8:30 am every day and work until about 6 pm. I give myself 45 minutes for lunch sometime between noon and 1:30 pm, but then I get straight to work again. Most days, I spend another 1-3 hours in the evening doing homework, but I always take time to eat dinner and hang out with my roommate for a couple hours first.  

Find a calendar/planner system that works for you: I use my planner for assignments and use my Outlook calendar to keep track of class time, homework time, and internship time.  

Schedule “fun” time to do things other than law school and put it in your calendar.  

4. STUDYING / HOMEWORK  

Pomodoro method: timing study session in segments of 30-45 minutes is extremely helpful because it keeps me on track with my schedule and forces me to take breaks to stretch, drink water, and use the bathroom.  

Note-taking: depending on the class, I handwrite 50-100% of my notes and type the rest in OneNote. I find that handwriting helps me absorb information better than typing, although typing does have its advantages (it’s so much faster). I read through an assignment/case and highlight it, then I go back through and take notes. (I will post a photo of my notes in the near future) 

Highlighting: it’s no secret that law students dominate the highlighter market, and for good reason. I highlight reading assignments and my notes. I also use different colors to signal different things, such as statute law versus case law.  

Case briefs: some cases are so confusing that the holding is nowhere to be found and the entire thing seems to be in a different language. Do the best you can to write your own case brief before looking online for one. There’s no shame in using Quimbee every once in a while - in fact, it is a great source for reviewing - but you still need to do the work.  

Find a conducive study space: I spent a lot of time in the law library studying with friends because it is quiet and full of good study energy. Now that I’m working from home, I try to recreate that atmosphere. I even play “library ambiance” sounds on Youtube while I do homework. Make sure you are comfortable and that your space isn’t full of distractions.

 5. NETWORK 

Make friends: as an introvert, I loathe socializing in large crowds for long periods of time and find networking difficult. However, I forced myself to network and socialize a lot during law school orientation and made so many incredible friends! I appreciate them all and I don’t know how I would survive law school without them.  

Internships: I recommend talking to 2Ls and 3Ls about their internship experiences. It’s great to talk to career advisors too, but you are more likely to get the most candid details and advice from fellow students. When I was a 1L I befriended a 2L who was interning at a restorative justice legal clinic. She gave me great advice and a great recommendation to her boss. Long story short, I now intern at the same restorative justice clinic and love it.  

Office hours: talking to professors one-on-one is terrifying at first, but in my experience, professors LOVE when students come to office hours. Talking to professors in office hours can make it less intimidating to raise your hand in their classes or when you are cold-called (the horror!).  

6. EXAMS 

Outlining: write your own outline. Using another person’s outline as a reference is fine, but write your own! All of my best grades were in classes where I created at least 80% of my outline on my own.

 Go over your outline several times and cut out things you don’t need or won’t be tested on. A long outline isn’t necessarily the best outline.  

Practice exams: do at LEAST two practice exams for each class using your outline so you get used to using it as a reference. Time at least one of these practice exams so you get used to the pace.  

7. REMEMBER WHY YOU ARE HERE 

On the first day of my internship, my boss said, “the first thing you lose in law school is the reason why you are there.” Law school is overwhelming, stressful, and at times, soul-crushing. It is easy to forget why you decided to go to law school and you are likely to second-guess every life choice you have ever made at some point or another (I do ALL the time). Therefore, it’s important to remember why you are here. If you want to go into social justice, look into social justice law courses you can take. If you want to represent athletes, look at sports law and contract law classes. Bottom line: step back and recenter yourself to remember why law school is worth the hard work.

#lawstudent #lawschool #lawblr #studying #studyblr #my desk #desk view #desktop #moleskine #study motivation #studyinspo #studyspo #advice

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samstree · 3 years ago

Text

and the wolf was nowhere to be found (2/3)

Jaskier pays the price of his lies. With blood and tears and a few broken hearts.

(4.3k, lying spell/potion, cursed jaskier, blood and injury, miscommunication, mutual pining)

Previous | Read on AO3

The reverse trope series: [1] [2] [3] [4].

Jaskier wakes with a crick in his neck and an aching heart.

He goes through the motion of packing, their morning routine too familiar to distract him from the heavy guilt in his chest. Jaskier wonders if Geralt is actively avoiding him—the way his back is turned at every chance can’t be a coincidence.

The only time he so much as spares a glance is when Jaskier puts the lemon cake in their rations bag, wrapped perfectly and untouched. Geralt stills for a split second, his jaw clenched.

Jaskier wants to brush it off.

Finding an excuse is the first instinct he has, thinking of a lie as to why he didn’t eat something he’s been drooling over for ages, and erase that crestfallen look on Geralt’s face, the one that is breaking his heart.

Because he can’t exactly tell the truth, which is that he’s more likely to be sick if he ate it. Another lie, however, would turn his stomach even more.

Jaskier remains silent.

Even Roach is judging him as they walk out of the stable. Jaskier bears her side eyes and annoyed headbutt without putting up a fight. The mare is too perceptive to miss the tension in the air, and her protectiveness is more than justified. She’s a smart girl. Of course, she knows Jaskier is one making her broody witcher brood even harder.

She tries to bite his doublet again, and it’s Geralt who stops her with a soothing hand down his mane, murmuring confused questions into her ear. Sweet, kind Geralt, who has been rejected by Jaskier so many times for no reason in the past few days, is still trying to defend him.

Jaskier needs to make it right.

“Geralt, look—”

“Master Jaskier!”

Someone in the distance rudely interrupts Jaskier’s nervous attempt. He turns by instinct and watches a boy in lilac doublet jog up to them. He’s so young, no older than twenty, still with that joviality and naïvety in his features. The way his matching doublet and trousers could catch the eyes of any crowd reminds Jaskier of himself in his early years.

“Sweet Melitele, I’m your biggest fan! Oh my…” the boy proclaims, awestruck. “I’ve been following your ballads for years, and now I get to meet you in person!”

Jaskier looks to Geralt and then back at the man.

“Ah, I’m flattered. It’s always nice to meet a fan, but you see—” Jaskier gestures to the horse and the man behind him. “—I’m in a hurry to leave town.”

Besides, he’s in no mood to converse right now. The quicker he can get Geralt alone, the better. With this weight on his chest, Jaskier feels so drained just talking to anyone but his witcher, let alone dealing with an enthusiastic fan.

“Oh but you must listen to my set first!” The boy looks at him expectantly. “I dream of writing a hit song just like Toss a Coin. I could be just as big—”

“I’d love to, but the circumstances won’t allow it.” With the biggest smile plastered on his face, Jaskier dismisses the guy. “I’m sure there’s promise in you, especially now you’ve chosen the correct role model—”

“You can go, Jaskier.”

Jaskier snaps his head to Geralt, confused as to what he just heard.

“We need to leave this morning, my dear. That’s the plan.” Jaskier frowns. “Remember?”

He excuses himself to the young man and drags Geralt away too quickly, too rudely—on another day he’d feel contrite ignoring a fan like this, but today he’s mind is occupied by something much more important.

Once out on the street and alone, Geralt’s befuddled frown deepens. “Why did you—”

“I need to tell you something,” Jaskier interrupts. “Before I say it, I know you will get mad at me, but you have to understand that the past year has been hard on me, Geralt. When you showed up in Oxenfurt out of the blue, I didn’t have enough time to process everything or what it would mean for us to travel together again. That’s why everything is so wrong now and I need to make it right.”

“I know what you want to say.”

The world stops.

All he can see is that pained look on Geralt’s face, the one that’s breaking his heart and making his blood run cold. Of course, he knows, witcher senses and all. As if Jaskier has ever gotten away with lying to Geralt’s face in the past.

“You do?” he breathes, the crack in his voice unmistakable.

Geralt lets out a sigh. He’s not mad. At least, he doesn’t look like he’s angry with Jaskier. “It’s been obvious in the past few days, and I… I do understand.”

“Oh.”

There’s still hope then. Jaskier just needs to come clean and apologize, and, definitely, throw whatever game he’s been playing out the window. They will be fine. The two of them, the bard and the witcher on the path, just like the old days—

“I can leave now,” Geralt starts. “With me gone, you’d be free to stay here for longer. You have so many things to see and so many people to meet. You can go back and talk to the boy. Finally, there’s someone who can wax lyrical with you. It’ll be for the best.”

“What?”

“You don’t need to say it, Jaskier. I can see now that it’s better if we part ways. Let’s not make things more difficult.”

Jaskier stares, gaping like a fish out of water. He can’t believe what he’s hearing, after all this time, after the mountain. Geralt wouldn’t do it.

He wouldn’t.

“You are leaving me here?”

Geralt looks as if he’s stricken. His shoulders tense like every time he wants to appear smaller.

“It’s for the best,” he repeats.

Jaskier shakes his head. “Wait, I thought you understood. I’m sorry, Geralt, for the past few days. I didn’t mean to… I wanted to apologize, so you know I didn’t mean it.”

The smile at the corners of Geralt’s lips is too sad.

“You don’t need to apologize. It wasn’t fair of me to ask it of you to begin with—”

“Ask me what?”

“—Us traveling together again… It was only wishful thinking. There was never a second chance and I never should have gone to find you.”

Jaskier takes a step back, swallowing the lump in his throat. Suddenly the collar of his doublet is too tight and the lute on his back is too heavy. He has to look away from Geralt’s resolute face just to stop the stinging in his eyes.

“You promised…” he mumbles. “You promised not to leave again.”

Geralt falters for a second, his hand resting on Roach’s saddle as if to steady himself. When he answers, his tone is cold, colder than Jaskier can take.

“How can I keep you when everything catches your eye, Jask? You are not made to stay... Not with me. Not after everything that happened.”

Disbelievingly, Jaskier retreats. His hand fists around the strap of his lute case, digging into his palm. “Not made to stay? Seriously?”

“It’s for the—”

“If you tell me it’s for the best one more time, I swear, Geralt…”

“Jaskier.”

Geralt calls out his name without heat like he’s placating an unreasonable child. Jaskier exhales in exasperation.

“Maybe you are right that it was only wishful thinking.” he forces the words out, his heart sinking. “For once it was actually my fault, and you can’t wait to ask for life’s one blessing again.”

“I—”

“Fine. Have at it,” Jaskier hisses. “I don’t care.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

Jaskier lands the biggest lie he’s ever told in this mess. He drags his feet to cooperate, to take him away and put some distance between him and the worst disaster that’s ever descended upon his life.

Roach neighs, but the sound is far-away. Jaskier grabs at the doublet at his chest and wonders if the witcher-shaped hole within can ever be filled.

Jaskier doesn’t stop.

He walks into the bustling crowd of the market, heedless of cheery townspeople going about their day, and he keeps walking until the noise dies down.

Jaskier stops at the riverbank with nowhere to go, so he sits down on the ground and finally lets the dam break.

Crying does very little to ease the ache, and yet when the tears bring a release for the pent-up pressure in his chest. It’s hard to feel justified in letting the pain be cried away when he’s so aware of his own faults in the once-again ending of their companionship.

After all, Geralt couldn’t wait to throw him aside on top of that mountain when he’d done nothing wrong. What makes him think Geralt will tolerate him when he intentionally fucks things up.

Jaskier gasps for air, but only a whimper chokes out. How pathetic, to regret the most precious second chance destiny has ever granted him.

Now he knows for sure that he doesn’t deserve to cry, to let himself feel even just slightly better in the wake of his destruction.

Jaskier tries to stifle the tears with a hand at his mouth, and breathes. In and out, one breath after another. It’s like trying to contain a storm threatening to wreck through his entire being.

But he manages, after an eternity.

Jaskier sniffles one last time and wipes away the tear tracks. There’s a tremor in his hands but he pays no mind. The lute case is laying carelessly in the grass where he dropped it. He slings it onto his back and realizes that in a frenzy, he’s left everything else he owns in Roach’s saddlebags.

He could laugh at the idea of going back there, tail between his legs, as if being kicked out of Geralt’s life—for good this time—isn’t humiliating enough. His only hope hangs on the possibility that Geralt may have left his packs at the inn so they don’t have to face each other. Why would Geralt want to see him anyway? The witcher should be long gone.

Jaskier doesn’t make it too far when a streak of lilac pops out of nowhere.

“Oh! Here you are, Master Jaskier. You are a hard man to track down.”

The boy still looks too chirpy for Jaskier’s liking, too bright and too carefree. His mood is soured even further.

“Look, I’m not fit for company today.” Jaskier walks right past the young man, heedless of his insistence. “Mister—what is your name? Maybe you’ll catch me at the next festival if fate allows.”

The boy ignores his deflection and stops right in front of Jaskier’s face, which successfully draws his full attention and pisses him off completely. “I said—”

“Why are you in such a hurry?” The kid doesn’t relent. “I thought the witcher is determined to abandon you for the second time. Don’t you think he’ll stick to it this time?”

Strangely, the other man doesn’t look nearly as young up close. His face is youthful for sure, smooth and unblemished, and yet there’s an inexplicable weariness in his blue eyes. Now that Jaskier notices, these blue eyes look eerily similar to his own. With just the eyes, he could be looking into a mirror.

Jaskier wants to squirm.

“Did no one teach you that eavesdropping is rude?” He pauses, startled. “Wait, a second time… You knew—”

“Oh.” The man looks sheepish. “Can’t blame a fan for keeping tabs on you, can we?”

An overly zealous fan is nothing new, but somehow, this one sends a shiver down Jaskier’s spine.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Jaskier says, trying to back away. “I need to get back to town. You know, where the inspirations are, so I’ll find it in me to… um, compose more of those pieces you love so much.”

“Oh, don’t kid yourself! You are not going back to him, are you? Twenty years! All the sweat and blood and singing his praises and this is what you get after all this time!”

The guy grabs at Jaskier’s arm, which he shakes off in horror.

“You know nothing about me. Or Geralt.”

“That witcher will never see you!” he exclaims. “I was there when your first ballad swept the continent off its feet, Jaskier. From that moment on, I knew you were special. What appreciation has that mutant shown you? Only insults and scorn.”

“Geralt is not like that, he—”

Jaskier freezes to the spot.

He forces his attention back to the boy’s face. His eyes are still startlingly blue, even more so in anger. There’s not a single trace of age at his temples, and yet…

“My first song was twenty-two years ago,” Jaskier states, something akin to fear creeping into his voice. “What did you say your name was again?”

At those words, the man’s face shifts. It’s like watching someone shed a layer of skin, a façade, and another being emerges. A much more powerful one.

“Does it matter?” When he answers, there's magic in the air, sizzling with power. The blue of his eyes shimmers under the surface, ever so slightly. Jaskier’s heart clenches.

Not human.

Definitely not human.

“We never got to know each other, well,” Jaskier stalls. “I think now it’s not too late.”

He has an inkling that getting away will not be an easy feat. He can hope to distract this… this creature long enough for a chance to run. His hand tightens around the strap nervously, and the man’s eyes follow the movement without a beat.

Shit.

Jaskier turns to run, to take the lute case in his hands as a weapon, but it’s too late. The next thing he knows, the case is thrown against the ground and he’s backed against a tree. The other man’s grip around Jaskier’s wrists is like a vice, securing his hands right above him.

Jaskier wants to scream, but no sound escapes his throat. His body shakes all over, out of control.

“The fae never reveal our name easily,” the creature hisses.

Those blue eyes are too sharp and there’s a scent growing overwhelmingly strong. Fae, as it turns out, smell like newly cut grass and wildflowers, like the forest.

If only Jaskier can live long enough to share the trivia.

And then, with both their hands occupied, the fae presses his forehead to Jaskier. He struggles but to no avail.

The touch is cold and something is slipping into Jaskier’s mind like an icy stream in the spring. It trickles probs at every corner of his memories.

“Oh, even now you are loyal to the witcher. You still believe he’ll save you, little songbird.”

Jaskier’s vision turns fuzzy. His soundless whimpering breaks into breathless gasps, like a wounded animal waiting for a mercy kill. At the back of his mind, he’s achingly aware of Geralt’s absence. His witcher in shining armor won’t come this time, not after all the—

“All the pretty little lies. Every single one of them, born out of love, misguided.”

However true that statement is, Jaskier doesn’t want to hear it. His love for Geralt shouldn’t be spoken with malice. He fights against the fae’s iron hold with everything he can muster.

There’s a crack of bones before the pain hits him, exploding from his wrists all the way down his arms. Jaskier sobs, the edges of his vision darkening, the shock threatening to pull him under. He still can’t make a sound.

“What can we do?” The fae’s voice comes from a distant realm. “How can we have your loyalty as the witcher does? Oh, how fierce you are, songbird. To have your voice at our court… Perhaps, more lies will do. Yes, it was your choice, what your heart desired. A gift from us.”

Jaskier can’t process anything he’s hearing. He’s too tired from the searing pain in his wrists.

“Just a few lies. They’ll be easy to roll off the tongue, and yet, such powerful weapons.” The fae retreats. “A gift of lies. Thank you for the inspiration, Jaskier the bard. We hope you enjoy it as much as we will.”

Without the brute force holding up his body, Jaskier sagas against the tree, his legs unable to support his weight. His lungs burn and his mind turns fuzzy, bereft of the fae’s presence.

Jaskier needs to move, needs to scramble away from this place. But before the sweet relief of freedom even hits him, magic seizes him again and, finally, finally, a world-ending scream explodes from his lungs.

The world goes to black soon after.

Jaskier wakes to someone shaking his shoulder, someone gentle.

His body pulses like a bruised nerve. The back of his head feels like it’s been trampled by a whole army and his neck creaks at the barest move. Jaskier’s nose is buried in damp grass and he chokes, which jostles his neck even more.

He groans miserably and tries to touch, only to be stopped by the burning in his wrists. He lets out a hiss.

Right, broken bones. Blue eyes that look the same as his. Fae.

“Careful… Fuck, Jaskier, what happened?”

A gravelly voice comes through the fog.

Geralt.

Oh, Jaskier can sob with relief. He arches his back, slowly propping himself up on his elbows. His eyes are so sore from lying on the ground face down, but the sight of his witcher is unmistakable.

Jaskier wants to call out for his witcher, but a sob is the only thing that gets out. He cradles his hands and finds his right wrist is swollen red and sensitive to the touch, but the left looks more or less the same. Only a throbbing pain tugging at his fingertips.

He reaches to the back of his head with his left hand, where the crick is prickling at his nerves, only to find a gash at his nape and hair caked with blood. He doesn’t remember hitting his head while falling. He doesn’t remember falling at all.

So, one wrist sprained, the other broken, plus a gaping hole in his head. Jaskier can cope.

If he doesn’t die from the embarrassment, that is. He whines pathetically, already exhausted.

“I told you not to move.” Geralt catches Jaskier’s tilting body. Amber gold flows with concern. “What happened to you, Jask?”

The question comes out soft, more of a whisper to the witcher himself than demanding answers. Jaskier’s lips wobble at the endearment. He needs to tell Geralt everything. Fuck his injured pride. Geralt came for him. This wonderful, beautiful, sweet man came to him after the disaster that is this morning and he’s still trying to help Jaskier.

All because Geralt is safety. He’s safety and home, and Jaskier needs to tell him—

“None of your business, witcher.”

It takes a moment for Jaskier to register what left his lips, the venom that drips from these words so foreign. He’s never aimed at Geralt before. From the looks of it, Geralt is equally startled if the tiny crease by his lips is any indication.

“You hit your head,” Geralt says patiently, hovering close to Jaskier’s face in an attempt to check the wound on his neck. “It’s bad. Here, let me see—”

“Get your filthy hands away from me!”

The words fly out on their own volition. Jaskier flinches, the same time as Geralt takes back his hand as if burned. He closes his mouth with a pop and the feeling of something severely wrong weighs down on his stomach. That’s not what he meant, not at all. The only thing he wants to do is lean into Geralt’s touch and melt into a puddle. Whyever did his mouth betray his heart? Why did he…

Why did he…

…Lie?

His mind focuses on a sing-songy voice.

A gift from us.

A gift of lies.

It’s like a bucket of ice water thrown over Jaskier’s head. He sobers up immediately. The inspiration they took from him. The fae’s gift.

The fae’s curse.

Geralt’s brows are knitted together, amber eyes imbued with hurt. He is still crouched in front of Jaskier, hands fisted at his side and shoulders taut. He’s got the look now, that lost look that only appears when a mob drives him out of town with pitchforks and stones. Jaskier has seen that look one too many times.

And now he's the one causing it.

“Jaskier?” Geralt asks, shocked, unsure.

Jaskier breathes hard and tastes the bile rising in his throat. Geralt doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve to have that hopeless look on his face or to be shunned by the world, by anyone, and least of all, by someone he’s let stay beside him for so many years. By the Gods, Jaskier needs to let Geralt know he’s the kindest person on earth and more human than any human. He’s Jaskier’s friend and protector, his dream, his heart—

“You are a mutant, a freak,” Jaskier feels the words slip out, too late to realize the mistake of opening his mouth. “No better than the monsters you slay.” The magic compels his tongue. He bites down on it but it’s only futile. “You feel nothing and give nothing but death to those around you.”

Jaskier recoils, tasting blood. In front of him, Geralt mirrors his movement. The entire time, the wolf medallion rests against his chest plate, Jaskier’s last hope, sitting still and unresponsive.

And Geralt…

He doesn’t defend himself.

Of course not. Geralt never defends himself against the stoning even when he can easily defeat most humans with his bare hands. There’s a faded scar near his hairline, a solid proof of men’s capacity for prejudice and violence.

Now Jaskier has joined their ranks.

Geralt looks like he’s been suck-punched in the gut, his eyes wide and crestfallen. And yet, wide amber eyes gaze upon Jaskier without accusation, only quiet acceptance. Jaskier shudders with disgust and fear, which must be the reason Geralt is backing away further.

“I’ll leave… If you—” he pauses, before standing up. “I see. This is goodbye, Jaskier.”

Don’t go!

“Get away then!”

Jaskier shakes his head, putting all the force he can muster into biting into his lips, scared of what may come out. His wrists burn but he has to force his mouth shut by pressing his palms over it.

Why can’t Geralt see that something’s wrong? Why can’t he see Jaskier?

See me! Jaskier pleads silently through the tears.

Geralt’s face falters as he spares one last glance at Jaskier.

Look what you’ve done to him, the sing-songy voice returns. This is your choice. You chose to lie, little poet. Be careful what you wish for.

Jaskier crumbles like a puppet with his strings cut. He barely contains the choked-out whimpers. The burning in his lungs is nothing compared to the anguish. He could die at this moment and it would be a sweet release. Hurting Geralt like this, it’s worse than a thousand broken bones and a million cuts on his skin. In the darkest corners of his mind, he wants Geralt to walk away from him. If Jaskier has to spew any more venom towards the man he’s loved for more than half of his life, he’d surely want to walk into the ocean and never come out.

He presses his ears to the grass and remembers the cold wind on the mountain. He was a fool to hope Geralt could come to him then. He is a fool now.

The witcher drags his feet away, one step after another, trampling the soft flora under him, and then—

And then, by some miracle, he stops.

Jaskier watches as his witcher turns around and rushes back to his side, his jaw clenched and eyes determined. His heart bursts with hope, but his fists press against his mouth harder. There’s more blood coating his tongue.

“I can’t,” Geralt states as he kneels next to Jaskier’s curled body. The betrayal in his eyes ebbs away and in its place is something��tortured.

Jaskier shakes his head, or is he trembling again? His vision swims with blood loss. He won’t be able to stay awake for long.

“I can’t leave you here, Jaskier,” he muses to himself, frowning deep. “Shit. You are bleeding again.”

Jaskier scoffs into his fist, almost hysterical.

“You are in shock, and you are about to pass out. I don’t know what happened, but your wrists are a mess. Jaskier…” The name comes out like a prayer. “I heard your wishes. Loud and clear, this time. I know you loathe my presence in your life, but… I have to make sure you’ll get better. Please, forgive me.”

Geralt tries to gently pry Jaskeir’s hands away, but he struggles blindly. Through the haze of his mind, Jaskier’s last thought reminds him to keep his mouth closed.

“Forgive me,” Geralt mutters in anguish, “I can’t let you hurt yourself because of me. Forgive me, just one more time.”

His hand makes the familiar sign of Axii, and everything turns…soft.

The pain is gone, the magical hold on his tongue too. Jaskier loses himself in the mellow sensation of giving up control. The ground disappears under his body and his head lolls against Geralt’s chest.

“I was wrong.” Regret rumbles deep in Geralt’s chest. “I was the curse that befell you. After all the hurt you’ve received by my side, Gods, and I still can’t keep myself away from you. I will not make the mistake of forcing myself into your life again, Jask. Allow me a few days to see you safe, and then... Never again.”

The vow is so wrong, but Jaskeir is powerless to protest. He catches a broken whisper before darkness claims him for the second time on the same day.

“I’m sorry, Jaskier. For my heart.”

Jaskier welcomes the oblivion that drags him under, as well as the nightmares that follow.

I'm...sorry.

One more chapter to go. Hopefully this time I won't have to up the chapter count. Some real communication and comfort are on the way! <3

Tagging: @wanderlust-t @a-kind-of-merry-war @rockysstupidity @flowercrown-bard @alllthequeenshorses @mothmanismyuncle @percy-jackson-is-sexy- @constantlytiredpigeon @behonesthowsmysinging @kitcatkim3 @endless-whump @rey-a-nonbinary-bisexual @llamasdumpsterfire @dapandapod

Please feel free to tell me if you want to be removed or added to the list <3

#geraskier #geraskier fic #lying spell #cursed jaskier #miscommunication #mutual pining #jaskier fucks up real good in this one #and bears the consequences #geralt x jaskier #again i'm sorry #i meant to end it with geralt walking away #and thought #in this economy?#but somehow this is... worse?#hurt jaskier #jaskier whump #hurt geralt #everytime i hurt geralt's heart i go 🥺🥺

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shihalyfie · 3 years ago

Note

With Digimon Ghost Game starting, I thought about how different it is from previous Digimon series, though it's still undoubtedly Digimon... and then I realized all Digimon series are like that. So I wonder, what do you think sets each Digimon series apart from the rest?

I think both Ghost Game but also the reboot have been a wake-up call for people in terms of realizing that likes, dislikes, and tastes are subjective, and I think it's especially important in terms of this fanbase that is so obsessed with this idea you can objectively rank things by quality -- especially when each series is often deliberately trying to have its own identity, so it's arguably apples and oranges -- and forcing this idea of what's Good and Not Good on everyone else (especially when there's a nasty double standard phenomenon where Adventure and often Tamers get to be so impervious to criticism that people conveniently forget they're perfectly capable of being scrutinized for a lot of things they're weaker in). Very frustrating to see everyone who likes less popular series treated as if they have to accept that they like a "badly written series" for some things and everything else is a guilty pleasure, which I find to be incredibly dumb.

The most important take-home here is that the fact each series has its own identity is always going to be the main factor in what makes it "good" or not to you, not some arbitrary bar of comparison that's based on some narrow-minded view of "good writing" (which is usually unreasonably based on Adventure). For instance, the reason why 02 is so important to me is because (see below), to me, it has the highest amount of meaningful, important life lessons and themes that it wanted its audience to remember, to the point that I frankly do not care about where the plot goes in comparison. That may not be the case for everyone else, and that's fine, but should my tastes be called unreasonable for that? I think we're also coming to realize that because of Adventure (and kind of 02)'s precedent, so many people have been judging series purely by how intimate their individual character development style is, but this is unfair because Adventure and 02's ridiculous level of character depth to psychological detail is extremely unusual and unrealistic to expect of others; Adventure and 02 only achieved this by practically considering the plot utterly subservient to its character arcs, and it's arguably why they have some of the weakest "plots" in this franchise. It's so bizarre that I can see character development in other Digimon series that outstrips even most kids' anime on the market, but it's not as much as Adventure's so apparently it's bad. And, moreover, as it turns out, some people have priorities other than characterization; just because Adventure had that as its strength doesn't mean that's the only thing anyone should care about. Is the plot fun? Is there a meaningful message besides characters (also important to me)? Do you vibe with the tone being dark, or being silly? How much do you care about resourceful usage of Digimon lore? That kind of thing. Everyone is different, so that's why everyone has their own priorities. If you’re someone who prefers darker content, you may not realize that writing good and well-timed comedy is actually a very, very difficult task, especially when said comedy simultaneously has meaning (in comparison, it’s surprisingly easy to write “dark” but shallow content).

I think it's fair to like every Digimon series for its own thing, depending on your personal tastes. I can't speak for everyone, but my impressions are that it has to do with the following:

Adventure: Significantly easier to understand than 02 due to its more straightforward plot, and focus on individual character development ("individualism" being a strong point here). In terms of characters, it goes a lot into some very real social problems (the divorce around the Ishida and Takaishi families and the pressures surrounding Jou, for instance) in a very realistic manner. Also, it has that sense of mystique and absurdism to the Digital World that's both whimsical but also mysterious, and while 02 has it too, Adventure's the isekai story that has it the most.

02: The first is its focus on the importance of human relationships and the compelling group dynamic unparalleled in this franchise, and the second is its important themes and life lessons that I think are some of the strongest in said franchise. I have a whole tag for the ridiculous amount of nuance packed into every detail and dialogue line for this series, and I think every time I've rewatched an episode I've learned something new about it because there are so many things that clearly wanted to be said in each line. The entire series is basically an unpacking of the feelings of insidious self-hatred and the crushing feeling of being subject to society's expectations, and ones that are so deep-seated that you often don’t even have a single answer to how to unpack it (for instance, Miyako hardly has a tragic single event in her backstory, but she says and does a lot of things that'll be painfully familiar to those who have experienced chronic anxiety). Almost every plot point can be said to connect to each character arc in some way, and the mantras for appreciating and treasuring your own life and living life the way you will make this, in my opinion, the strongest series in terms of speaking to those who struggle with this kind of existential crisis for reasons of depression or otherwise. (Oops, I think I went too passionate about this; my biases are obvious...)

Tamers: I think it forms an interesting study and unpacking of the kinds of things you take for granted in Digimon or the monster-collecting genre in general, and an examination of how they'd work in a real-world context (although 02 had a focus on daily life, it didn't quite merge the Digimon and the real world factors until very late in the series). Also, probably the second highest on "hard sci-fi" (the only one that outstrips it is probably Appmon, but Appmon has a very different, more simplified take on it).

Frontier: A series that lies somewhere between Adventure's scale of individualism and 02's scale of group dynamic, and one more discussing the feeling of having your heart hardened from being an outcast, and what it takes to accept the idea of opening yourself up to others again. Recommended for those who like transforming hero and magical girl stories, too. From the Digimon perspective, also the one with the most detailed and consistent Digital World mythos.

Savers: I think this is the series that most drives home "life is complicated" (i.e. there isn't a single mastermind behind everything) in the most tasteful manner, because while it drives home the point that you can't just simplify everything into a good side and a bad side, some bad things really are evil (hi, Kurata), and it doesn't change the fact that everyone's responsible for cleaning up the fallout. The portrayal of the evils of government bureaucracy is probably the most realistic out of any of these series.

Xros Wars: For those who like fun, most of all! For those who like seeing Digimon finally get more of the spotlight and individuality since so much of it had been geared and biased towards the humans prior to this. For those who really like worldbuilding, and, after all, this is called Xros Wars, so it's interesting to see shakeups on the usual formulas in the form of the different factions and their priorities. Hunters is very different in tone, but I do think they have some of these aspects in common; that said, it being closer to having single partnerships brings it a bit closer in line to conventional Digimon partnerships, and it also has more of a picture of daily life. Also, as much as Tagiru is probably your-mileage-may-vary since he's not exactly a very nice kid (I get it if you don't vibe with that), which may also rub those hoping for not nice kids to become nice the wrong way, I do have to say I find him to be one of the funniest characters in this entire franchise, and you'd be surprised how hard good comedy is to write.

Appmon: Probably one of the strongest theme narratives besides 02, since it has a very clear and obvious theme about the importance of kindness in a world where technology is dominating and we're almost encouraged to strip the feelings out of everything. (Bonus for more straightforward plot than Adventure or 02 while still retaining a lot of its elements in terms of how to characterize them.) Also the first series to be speculative about the near future instead of taking place around the time it airs, and it's very obvious it wants to provide important and necessary commentary about what we need to do in the incoming era, especially as a lot of what it has to say becomes increasingly relevant.

Reboot: For those who like Digimon mythos and null canon -- this is probably the only series to show it off in this level of detail -- and the kind of cool action fights that would usually be saved for the climax in prior series (and animated in much more intimate detail with battle choreography than prior series would have). There are a lot of people into this franchise who felt like it genuinely was not making enough use of its Digimon roster and its potential because it kept going back to the old standbys (especially Adventure-based ones), so it was a huge relief for that crowd to see attention finally being paid.

#digimon #shiha's ask box #demonoflight #digimon multi series talk

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britishassistant · 4 years ago

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So imagine that Reporter Yuu and Student Yuu have to meet up to drop off the heads to their respective worlds , V!riddle and s! Riddle are comparing which version of aduces is worse. V!leona is telling s!leona to drop out. V! Azul and s! Azul are comparing business models and leech twins. V!jamil is flexing his independence on s!jamil, whose planning to hex him to hell and back. V! Vi and S! Vil are being shady drama kings towards each other. V! Idia and S! Idia are swapping anime recommendations and ortho upgrades. And v! malleus and s! Malleus are having an argument over favorite gargoyle architect or something lmao

Thank you for the ask, dear anon!

Riddle is a little confused by the fact this supervillain in a half red and white mask insists on talking to him about Ace, Deuce, Trey and Cater, while simultaneously insisting that he has no relation to him.

All the same, he advises the supervillain to tell Dr. Rosehearts to try talking to his mother— it was hard for Riddle to do over the holidays, but he at least managed to get her to look at him and see him as himself rather than as her “project”, even if it was only for a moment.

It’ll still be hard from here, but Riddle knows it’s better than just blindly following his mother’s rules and letting her have her way.

Royal Flush is taken aback by the words from his younger self. Personally, he’s unsure if that will really change anything, or just make his life harder than it has to be, but if there’s a chance...

Leona isn’t sure whether to be offended or not when King tells him to either graduate or drop out of Night Raven College already. He’s leaning towards it on principle, because this adult version of him is just presuming to tell him what to do with his life.

King asks him if he has any better ideas for flipping the bird to Farena—after all, sitting around on his ass is the same as admitting his goody-two-shoes brother has already won by doing nothing, isn’t it? King has an entire evil lair and an army of minions at his fingertips, and his version of Farena is forced to deal with him disrupting the peaceful little realm he inherited, unable to bring King to heel or make him toe the line.

An evil kingdom of his very own that can’t be taken away from him.

Leona points out that King still has to babysit Cheka. King changes the subject.

Octo Dealer places his hands on Azul’s shoulders and offers his sincere commiserations for having to deal with the younger Leeches.

He then tries to make a contract with him to ‘make poor unfortunate Azul’s life easier’.

Azul smiles thinly and offers a counter-contract to take the adult Leeches off of Octo Dealer’s hands if he believes dealing with them is so difficult. Azul can personally think of several things he could achieve off the top of his head if he had adult versions of his friends under his control, and the competition would be interesting enough that he could play them off each other masterfully...

Octo Dealer has never felt so proud.

Snake Charmer is pretending that he’s conversing with the younger version of a hostage he’s taken while talking to Jamil, not that he thinks for a moment that his younger self actually buys the lie. But both of them know the importance of keeping up appearances in front of others, so neither address what both know.

Of course, Snake Charmer can’t resist taking advantage of this to subtly boast about all he’s accomplished, partly to challenge his younger self to aspire to the same heights, partly because he can’t resist showing off to someone who knows his true identity but cannot expose him. He has freedom, the power to do whatever he wants whenever he wants, followers who are lousy with loyalty, admirers throughout the city and nemeses who cannot touch him no matter how they wish to bring him down. But a mere babysitter to a spoiled heir wouldn’t know what that feels like, now would they?

Jamil grits his teeth behind his calm smile, and rolls his magic pen between his fingers.

He retorts almost innocently whether all those things are really accomplishments if they can only be achieved while hiding behind a mask and fake facial hair.

The way Snake Charmer’s eyes narrow at him as he smiles back lets Jamil know he’s won this round.

Vil admires the high quality of Poison Queen’s costume and persona, even if he personally scorns the ugliness of stooping to supervillainy to try and surpass a rival who’s little more than a glorified flasher with good publicity. He’d hoped his older self would have the dignity and beauty to be able surpass someone who plays around in bows and frills.

Consider the costume itself—if Poison Queen could use their skills in designing to market a line of clothes aimed both at consumers and costume departments, whoever his civilian identity is would have his prestige boosted to new heights the likes of that crass ‘White Neige’ could never hope to reach.

Why waste all this talent and effort on supervillainy instead?

Poison Queen scoffs at Vil’s moralizing, making a snide comment about the rasp that’s audible when the little prefect from Vil’s school breathes and talks. It catches them off-guard a lot when they hear it, so it’s a new development, one that’s been induced artificially rather than developed naturally. What, exactly, would Twst!Yuu have needed to be exposed to in order to develop an affliction like this? Some kind of airborne toxin perhaps? A potent one, to be sure, requiring extensive and perfectionist experience with poisons to be able to brew something that left that kind of damage. But what circumstances would have necessitated the creation of such a thing, hm?

Vil goes quiet after that. Poison Queen takes it as a sign of victory. It may be ugliness, but Vil of all people shouldn’t pretend that he’s free of it. Hypocrisy is the ugliest thing of all.

Idia has some questions for Charon about the few robots he caught sight of in the lair before escaping to go to Yuu’s apartment. Charon, who has never been to Yuu’s apartment in person, starts muttering that it’s typical that even an alternate version of himself has better luck than him.

Idia struggles with this idea for several minutes.

Eventually Charon grows impatient enough with his blue-screening that he orders Idia just to ask what he was going to ask. He softens a lot once Idia begins asking about how to reproduce some of the taste sensors and digestive systems of the giant robotic three-headed dogs so that Ortho can eat candy with him while they play games together.

They quickly descend into a jargon-filled back and forth as they debate about how to best merge the technology of the supervillain world with the magitech of Twisted Wonderland so that Ortho not only can eat candy, but convert the sweets into fuel to supplement his current power source.

Twst!Yuu is very confused at how two people can hold a conversation entirely through tablets while standing right in front of each other and looking at each other.

Tsunotaro and Malleus appear to get along at first, chatting quietly about the different gargoyle architecture available in each of their universes, and if the loneliness ever gets more bearable.

And then R!Yuu claps their hands and says everyone needs to get a move on back to their home dimensions as they’re burning daylight, and Tsunotaro nods, picks up Twst!Yuu, and tries to walk back through the portal to the supervillain universe with them safely tucked under one arm.

When R!Yuu grabs him and asks what does he think he’s doing, Tsunotaro just blinks owlishly. “That dimension isn’t suitable for this child to grow up safely in. Wouldn’t it be better to taken them home so we can look after them together?”

R!Yuu is reduced to sputtering at the insinuation, the other supervillains feeling supremely irritated at the display.

Malleus seizes onto Twst!Yuu’s arm. He refuses to just stand by and just let his older self take away his first friend. Tsunotaro asks menacingly if his younger self really thinks he’ll stand a chance against an adult fae’s power, if he can’t even protect one human.

From there it devolves into a standoff between the two powerhouses, the other NRC students preparing to draw their magic wands if it turns into a fight for the prefect, Reporter Yuu trying desperately to get Tsunotaro to just let the other version of themself go before the colliding magic and superpowers do something catastrophic to both portals.

It only calms down once Twst!Yuu pipes up that while they appreciate the offer, they want to go back to Night Raven College with their friends, pointing out that they’d be even less safe as the child of a supervillain in a world they have no idea how to navigate than they currently are as just a magicless student. Besides, they say, a thumb brushing over the bandages on their throat. They have a friend they need to go talk to. If they just left without doing that, they’d probably hate themselves for it for the rest of their lives. They can’t turn their back on him and leave him alone.

Between the two Yuus, Tsunotaro is convinced to reluctantly put them down and let them return to the other students. He’s sulking a lot though.

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novelconcepts · 4 years ago

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Hello Dr. Concepts. I’m fairly new to the Bly fandom and to your blog. I don’t know if you’ve discussed this before, but I wanted your take on why you think Dani and Jamie are such an appealing ship? I mean, I’ve had many OTPs throughout the years ranging in different genres, but for whatever reason they stick out above all the rest. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I honestly believe (granted I don’t know what the future holds) that they will have a special place forever in my heart. Like, no matter what what other ship comes along, I don’t think they’ll ever be on par with Dani and Jamie. I could be wrong, but it’s a very strong feeling that I’m getting when it comes to these two. I know you can’t speak for other people, but maybe give some insight in why they are so important to us. Thank you in advance, and all your contribution to this fandom is very much appreciated.

I’m honestly on this exact same page—I’ve shipped a lot of things in my life, and often shipped them hard, but this is on a level all its own. Some of that has to do with when the show was released, and how it was delivered: Bly was so careful to keep the love story out of the marketing, so that when it did hit our screens, it traveled completely on its own merit. It wasn’t there to be "an event”, or to fill a quota; it was a nuanced, respectful, devoted story of two women who mean the world to one another, and a love that transcends all trauma and death. That right there is enormous. But beyond that, it’s also...a really kind story. And I know it ends with Dani in the lake, and Jamie alone, and that sucks--but it’s the kind of suck that is representative of real life. Not of “oh, we did it for drama”, but because that is...how marriage, in its most ideal state, ends. Someone dies. Someone goes on carrying the story of their love. It’s traumatizing, and it’s painful, and it’s real--and I think the show being written entirely around love, and loss, and the worthiness of love despite--or because of--the eventuality of death is huge. Especially right now, in a time where everything is insane, where there’s so much instability and uncertainty in the world. This wasn’t a story that could only hit this hard in a global pandemic, with political chaos and civil unrest making everything feel unbalanced, but it certainly didn’t hurt to have a narrative that presses the importance of “one day at a time--it’s all we get, when you get down to it” right now.

And it brings us back to the kindness of the story. We have two women with hugely difficult pasts. We have two women who are guarded, and for good reason. We have two women who carry pain, and anger, and fear--and these women still find each other. Still admire, and respect, and adore one another. Still listen, and engage with, and allow space to grow into the people they need to be, and need each other to be, even when the circumstances around their love are terrifying. The love itself is stable. The love itself is bigger than anything that can come at them, including and especially death. Normally, when we get a love story where one party dies, that’s a trauma to overcome, and there’s a huge element of that here with Jamie processing her grief through storytelling...but in the end, we recognize the most human truth: that she’s not going to get over it. That she doesn’t want to get over it. And that Dani is there with her, unequivocally, whatever that may mean to each viewer. It is a story that, despite its depiction of very real tragedy and mental health and grief, is genuinely hopeful in its own way, even in the pain. It is aware of its worth, and its value, and that the hardest parts are sometimes also the sweetest. And, more than anything else, it is predicated on the stark difference between love and possession. It is predicated on trust, and respect, and kindness--Jamie being kind when Dani thought she was losing it, Dani being kind when the alternative (taking Jamie down with her so she didn’t have to be alone) would have been easier, both of them constantly there for one another no matter the strain. It is a story of two people whose love is big enough that, when they can carry nothing else but one another, they still find the courage to walk into the dark together. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I needed this story in 2020. I needed this love story, these two specific kinds of characters, this honest and painful and hopeful expression of love being bigger than the tragedy of life. I’ve never come across another story that quite achieved what I personally needed, in terms of the power of memory, of story, of love, like this did. And that it was beautifully written, gorgeously performed by both Pedretti and Eve with utter fearlessness, and came out of left field without shame? It’s going to stay with me for a long, long damn time, and I am deeply grateful for it.

#ask #the haunting of bly manor spoilers #the haunting of meta #dani x jamie #damie #I think that's the most concise I can be about it #but...yeah. it didn't do the things I'm so used to love stories on TV--especially queer ones--doing #it didn't explode with drama and jealousy and cruel twists #these are two people who started falling in love without meaning to--who found each other without looking--and who #even when the road ahead looked like it was going a very specific way still chose each other every day #still choose each other even after dani is gone #and they never feel trite or bigger than life or boring #they feel...genuinely authentically in love. and like that matters most even when thereare literal ghosts to face #it's a really effective story and a really effective set of performances that build seamlessly off of each other #and I could watch it forever without getting bored

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dwellordream · 3 years ago

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“Because informal camaraderie between the sexes was an unfamiliar phenomenon, figuring out how to relate to each other was a complicated matter for both men and women. As one young man noted in 1924, "Nowadays when a woman goes everywhere and does everything, it is very difficult for a man to figure out how to treat her." "How is a man to know how to treat a woman anymore?" asked another bewildered soul. Obviously, these and other young men were at a loss when it came to relating to women as friends and companions. Did female companionship mean, they wondered, that men had to be courteous and gentlemanly at all times?

Would they have to refine their language and manners in order not to offend female sensibilities? Or should young women simply be treated as men would each other? Most often they found no clear answers to these questions, and they had a hard time imagining new ways of behaving. "No matter what I do," grumbled one young man, "I never seem to do the right [thing]." Young women seemed equally unsure about how to interact with the opposite sex. On the one hand, they longed for frank conversations and easy rapport. On the other, they did not need advice columnists and etiquette experts, or their mothers, to remind them that "nothing is as delicate as a woman's reputation."

As they well knew, simply seeming too anxious for male companionship or too careless in selecting one's company was sufficient to cast doubt on a woman's moral rectitude. Yet, showing too much reserve might mean missing out on having fun. Their concerns were therefore of a different kind than young men's. Was it really true, they wanted to know, that men found women who went out at night by themselves to be "cheap"? Did men approve of women who wore lipstick? And under which circumstances could a woman allow a young man to walk her home? "I don't want to be prudish, but I don't know what is appropriate," one nineteen-year-old woman wrote, summarizing the dilemma she and many other young women faced.

In public discourse, the uncertainty over new codes of behavior came to a head in discussions over the seemingly trivial issue of male chivalry. Throughout the 1920s, young men and women debated this matter with an astonishing passion, and for that reason alone it is worth examining. What were these discussions about? What caused them? What was it about this issue that triggered such intense feelings? And what does this tell us about the difficulties associated with establishing cross-gender camaraderie? On the surface, the lines of conflict were clear enough. Over and over again, young women complained about what they perceived as rudeness among men. "Why are Danish men so ill-mannered?" "Femme" wanted to know in 1923.

"Girlie" was convinced that "chivalry and courtesy disappeared along with the crinoline." Writing from Italy, another woman was sure that Scandinavian men would "die of embarrassment" if they saw the gallantry with which "even lowly dock workers on the Arno River treat a woman." Adding insult to injury, one of the few Langelinie girls to speak out in public claimed that her interest in the visiting sailors stemmed solely from the fact that the foreigners were "considerate," "gentlemanly," and "chivalrous" companions who did not try to take advantage of "a decent and well-behaved young girl" like herself.

"A Copenhagen Girl" agreed. Since "you can use a very strong magnifying glass and still not discover even the tiniest trace of chivalry" among Danish men, she didn't find it surprising that nice girls like herself preferred the company of men like "Pierre and Giovanni, Tom and Jack." In most cases, young men declared themselves guilty as charged, but, they argued, this was only because chivalry was an outdated form of conduct entirely incompatible with the kind of camaraderie women seemed to desire. "What is it that determines that a man must always be chivalrous toward a woman?" a self-described "nonattentive gentleman" thus asked.

Another young man who defiantly labeled himself "nongallant" wanted to know whether "a young woman has any right to be offended because I do not pick her up before a dance but ask her to meet me at a trolley stop?" "Mack and Jack" were equally annoyed by what they saw as unreasonable demands on the part of female companions. "We are two young men," they wrote to an advice columnist in 1923, "who would like to hear your opinion about the behavior of two young ladies. The other night after we had been out dancing together, the young ladies wanted us to escort them home, but we live at the opposite end of town and escorting them home would have taken more than an hour out of our night's sleep, so we refused. Now they don't want to see us again."

The unmistakable tone of anger, resentment, and indignation that runs through this discourse suggests that more than etiquette was at stake in the controversies over chivalry. When young people debated whether men ought to open doors, assist with overcoats, carry packages, offer cigarette lighters, give up their seats in trolley cars, and walk companions home, they were, of course, trying to determine what constituted proper behavior in an era when gender norms were being redefined. That in itself was fraught with difficulty, and the confusion they expressed was genuine.

But because both men and women perceived chivalry as a source of power and control, their "conversations" are therefore best understood as part of a much larger struggle over the relative status of men and women in a changing cultural context. For that reason it became such an intensely contested issue. Certainly, women's insistence on male chivalry was not merely motivated by a desire to indulge in the pleasures that spring from a companion's service and attentiveness. In their eyes, chivalrous behavior indicated, among other things, a certain level of male regard. After all, it had in the past only been disreputable women who could not legitimately demand such treatment.

Insufficient male chivalry was therefore seen, even among many self-proclaimed "modern" young women, as an insulting sign of disrespect. More importantly, young women also perceived chivalry as a sort of sexual safety mechanism. At the heart of the ideology of chivalry lay the notion that men were responsible for serving and protecting women. Therefore, as long as women could hold men to a code of behavior that emphasized courtesy and (sexual) self-control, their ability to protect themselves from physical and moral danger seemed all the greater. And if this potentially greater degree of safety came at the expense of what seemed more egalitarian companionship, that was a price worth paying for most women.

Besides, despite their modernity, young women were not out to eradicate gender-differentiated forms of behavior. While they were eager to assert their independence from older patterns of social interaction and to develop new forms of camaraderie with men, they still insisted on their femininity and on having that femininity acknowledged by male companions. "It might well be," one women poignantly argued, "that women in this country have reached their goal in terms of equality with men, but that does not mean that they have stopped being women."

That sexual equality and continued male chivalry were demands not incongruous with each other was a claim many men found hard to accept. "We don't understand how young girls can demand to be equals and at the same time demand to be treated as ladies," two male friends explained. "Women have by now for many years sought equality with men," another man elaborated, "and it is therefore my infallible [sicl] opinion that the ladies must either be entirely independent in all matters and renounce gentlemanly gallantry, or they must relinquish their equality with men." With such comments, young men laid bare what was for them at the heart of this matter.

Clearly, they expected women to reciprocate for the favors and attentions they received with a certain degree of modesty and deference. As Karen Dubinsky has pointed out, the flip side of chivalry and protection is power and control. When men no longer felt they had power and control over women, they were, as they repeatedly stressed, no longer willing to respect a code of conduct that endowed them with a specific set of duties and responsibilities. Underlying the controversies over the issue of chivalry were therefore much more profound conflicts, most of which derived from young men's resentment over losing a set of gendered privileges and an authority over women that older generations of men had been able to claim.

Even though many young men were attracted, at least in principle, to the idea of having fun and enjoying themselves in the company of female peers, they were also deeply ambivalent about young women's entry into what had previously been male territory and their encroachment on what had traditionally been male prerogatives. As one newspaper columnist complained in 1921, "Women have forced their way through every door—into the labor market, into politics, and into entertainment. They are getting more and more rights—rights to this and rights to that—but what about us men? We don't seem to be getting any more rights."

Many young men also took offense at women's relative independence in public arenas. As long as young women had money of their own, they did not have to depend on male companions in order to partake in public entertainment. Although most men had greater earnings and more spending money than their female peers, even those women with the most limited funds were usually able to afford a movie ticket, the admission to an amusement park, or a cup of coffee in a restaurant, and unlike in the United States, for example, young Danish women typically paid their own way when they went out with male companions, at least as long as they were not engaged or going steady.

"Of course, we paid for ourselves when we went out," insisted Stine Petersen. "Yes, naturally! Naturally, we paid for ourselves," exclaimed Netta Nielsen, seemingly surprised at the suggestion that men might pay for female companions. While hard on their pocket books, such financial self-reliance had several advantages for young women. First, it allowed them, as Michael Curtin has pointed out, to signal that "the relation between themselves and [male companions] were of a public and egalitarian nature, not romantic as between lovers." Perhaps more importantly, it released them from any obligation to male peers and from the moral suspicion that surrounded any woman who accepted gifts and treats from men who were relative strangers.

Besides, paying one's own way also protected young women from ending up, as Nikoline Sorensen phrased it, in an "awkward position" where men "might expect things" in return for their generosity. But rather than appreciating the potential for egalitarian friendships that such practices produced, most young men resented the self-reliance of their female peers, perceiving it as a challenge to male initiative and a lessening of their power. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, much of young men's resentment grew from their sense that women were in fact not only becoming less dependent, but were also acquiring a whole new kind of power over men.

"What are men to do? How can they protect themselves against these attractive, scantily dressed young girls? We are under their spell," a twenty-two-year old man complained in a statement that interwove two of the most common strands in male discourse on postwar gender relations. First, men of all classes and ages spoke of young women as increasingly bewitching and seductive. Whether it was their short skirts, deep necklines, freer body language, or seeming flirtatiousness that led men to this conclusion, they generally agreed that the new generation of women possessed an unprecedented degree of sexual allure.

Second, they constantly complained that women were using their wiles, their charms and their bodies as unfair means to gain control over men, who were ill-equipped to withstand such an onslaught. "This is the last and final battle in the war between the sexes," one observer declared in 1924. "After suffrage and all the other rights women have obtained, they are now plotting their final assault. With their physical allure, they are striving to master men who are, after all, only men." In this light, young men's unwillingness to behave chivalrously begins to take on its deeper meaning. In a situation in which many young men believed that women were gaining the upper hand, they were less than eager to engage in behavior that smacked of servitude to women.

In earlier generations, a man who fetched a woman's coat or carried her packages had discreetly underlined his own masculinity through a show of physical ability. By the 1920s, the very same gestures seemed to many young men simply to demonstrate service and subordination to a new generation of women who already possessed too much power over them. Quite understandably, they therefore resisted any involvement in such behavior. Although the debates over chivalry are revealing of the underlying conflicts that seriously circumscribed any effort to create more frank and egalitarian relationships between young men and young women, they may ultimately be read as fairly innocuous.

After all, having to fetch one's own coat is at most an inconvenience, and while ungentlemanly behavior might offend a woman's sensibilities it hardly impairs her autonomy or her freedom of movement. But because (sexual) self-control was a central component of the ideology of chivalry, young men's increasing unwillingness to adhere to this long-standing code of conduct had more serious consequences. Predictably, although unfortunately, it led to an unprecedented level of physical and sexual danger for all women who ventured into public arena.”

- Birgitte Soland, “Beauties and Boyfriends, Bitches and Brutes.” in Becoming Modern: Young Women and the Reconstruction of Womanhood in the 1920s

#becoming modern #birgitte soland #history #1920s #gender

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rogueonestan · 4 years ago

Text

shereshoy

shereshoy - wanting to live everyday to its fullest and more

word count: 2.3k

pairing: the mandalorian (din djarin) x reader

summary: din reveals his true feelings for you through an anecdote from his childhood.

masterlist

Faint laughter and the sound of the soft splashes of the nearby lake are what calls Din’s name.

So when he returns back to the Crest after a quick supply run to find you and the kid enjoying yourselves, he can’t help but smile underneath his helmet.

The sight isn’t much to see. You’re laying down on the grassy floor as the green little baby is currently running around as he’s trying to catch something. The baby will leap towards his prey, only for the prey to run away, resulting in the baby giggling as you follow suit. To others, it may not be much, but to Din, it’s everything. It’s been such a long time since he’s experienced this kind of feeling before. He can’t exactly put his feelings into words, but it’s a feeling that he never wants to go away. It’s a feeling that he used to feel all the time with his family back on Aq Vetina before he was taken in by the Mandalorians. It’s a feeling he's associated with the life that was stripped from him. A life that he always dreamt that he would be able to get back someday.

The closer he gets to where you and the baby are, the more his heart soars. The baby continually is running around, enjoying himself, as your eyes remain close as you take everything in. You don’t even notice his return until he makes himself known.

“Enjoying ourselves?”

You didn’t realize that you were in such a trance until you’re greeted with the familiar ‘T’ visor that you’ve familiarized yourself with over the past few months. The tranquility of your surroundings are what made you first lose yourself in the moment. From the baby’s giggles to hearing the birds sing to the soft waves hitting against the rocks in the nearby lake, it was easy to lose track of time.

“You’re back.” A soft hum comes from Din in response as you continue, “how was your trip?”

“Good. There’s a local town that’s a few miles up north and I was able to stock up on a few things that we were running low on.” Now it’s your return to mimic your partner and hum in response, “it’s a nice little town, you would enjoy it. Maybe all three of us could go there tomorrow.”

“I would like that. Were you looking for anything in particular while you were there?”

“No.” Yes, but it’s not like he would tell you that- not yet, anyways.

“Do you want lunch? I was just thinking of making some.”

“You stay- I’ll go make it.”

A few rebuttals leave your lips, saying that you can do it and pointing out that he just returned, but Din ignores your pleas, insisting that you continue resting and watch over the kid.

As Din leaves to go back inside the Crest to put his purchases away, what makes him walk a little bit faster is the laughter that comes from both you and the baby. How in the galaxy he was able to be blessed with a life as good as his, Din will never know. After all of the ugly decisions he’s made in the past, he’s one of the last people who deserves a life as great as his. To be able to wake up every single day and know that he has a new family that will support him through anything. To have someone as devoted and generous, traits that his own mother had, is something that he thinks about as he makes the three of you lunch.

The lunch that Din ends up making is something that you’ve had on multiple occasions before, just a stew made out of the items that he picked up from market earlier, but it’s the company of Din and the soft breeze brushing against your cheek that makes it so much better. When Din comes out with the two bowls of food, a smile immediately appears on your face as the spices from food linger in the air. The feeling of fresh air that you got used to now is mixed with the scent of Din’s cooking. It’s not often that you get to eat home cooked meals, let alone meals made by Din, but it’s a welcome rarity. Din’s cooking isn’t the best that you’ve ever had, but his skills improve each time he prepares food for you.

The spices in the stew are a bit intense at first. You nearly choked on the pure flavor of peppers that surprised you at first, but the more you eat, more like devour, your food, the more you enjoy it.

“How is it?” He asks.

When you look over at him, you notice that he doesn’t have a bowl of food in front of him, giving the baby the other bowl, as he studies your actions. Nearly half of the food is already gone.

“It’s really good, Din.” With a smile on your face, you cover one of your hands as you take another bite.

“Yeah?”

You nod your head at him. The food that’s in your mouth is a little bit more difficult to chew as you try to fight the smile that’s threatening to appear on your face. The idea of not only him making lunch for you, but also wanting to know your thoughts on it as well is what makes you smile.

The hand that covered your mouth a moment ago covers your partner’s hand.

The warmth that radiates from the palm of your hand is the same warmth that fills Din’s body. The transition of your relationship going from friendly to romantic is a recent change, so the feeling of your skin touching his is a new one. Foreign but welcomed.

“It’s much better than the last meal you made for us.” A chuckle leaves his modulator.

The last time Din cooked a meal for the three of you was only a few weeks ago, but it was so disastrous. After seeing how tired you were by watching the baby for a few days, Din offered to keep an eye on him as you used the refresher. Once you finished, the sight you returned to was not what you expected. Din wanted to surprise you with a warm meal, but instead of spices from the food lingering in the air, the smell of smoke welcomed you once you finished what you were doing in the refresher. As you rushed out, you saw that Din was struggling to look over the baby and cook simultaneously. In summary, you ended up eating dinner from the local town that night.

“That wasn’t my fault.”

“I never said it was. I’m just saying that you’re getting better. Who knows, maybe next time you’ll be able to cook a meal that doesn’t have anything to do with burning.”

“I didn’t burn this one.”

“Tell that to my mouth.”

“Oh.”

“It’s still good though!” You reassure him, interlacing your fingers with him as you give his hand a soft squeeze, “just, don’t go as heavy with the pepper next time, my love.”

“Hmm.”

The baby feels the same way of Din’s cooking as you do because half of his meal is on his face as he takes gigantic mouthfuls. How he hasn’t choked on his food yet is a miracle.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Later.”

“Din-“

“I promise, ner cyare, I’ll eat later.”

As much as you hate to scold him, you drop the subject. Din isn’t the best when it comes to looking after himself, but he’s getting better at it thanks to you. You know that he would never break a promise he’s made to you.

“Well, then I guess we should start heading back inside.” You say as you lay your free hand behind you to support yourself, but before you’re able to, Din’s hand squeezes yours.

“Cyar’ika, if it’s alright with you, I would like to stay out here for a little bit longer.”

You nod your head as your body goes back into its relaxed position. You’re not one to say no to spend a little more time with him, but you really want to make sure that he, too, is able to enjoy the food that he worked so hard on.

“Whatever you want, Din.”

Giving your hand one final squeeze, he tries to force out the words that have been stuck in his throat ever since he returned, but he still doesn’t have enough courage to say them.

“I lied earlier, well, kind of.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I left earlier, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular when I was in town, but supplies weren't the only thing that I got.”

There’s more that he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how to say it. He knows exactly what he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how to say it.

“When I was younger, my mother, she-“ Din cuts himself off. The right words just can't seem to leave his mouth. But that’s okay because you’re more than patient as you wait for him to continue on. Being so open and vulnerable about his feelings and thoughts is very new for Din, but you would wait for an eternity just to hear what he has to say.

The soft yet reassuring squeeze of your hand is what makes him continue, “Something that my father used to do to show his love for my mother was to surprise her with gifts when he got home from work. We didn’t have much money to live off of so he didn’t do it that often, but it always brought a smile to my mother’s face whenever he did.

And my mother did the same. I remember helping her pick out a gift for my dad. It was something that we would always look forward to and it was a tradition between the two of them. Once a month they would surprise each other with a gift, the other not knowing when it would happen, and it’s something that I would like to do as well, with you.”

The last of his words barely managed to come through his modulator. Just thinking about his parents brings tears to his eyes, let alone telling a story about them. It’s been such a long time since he’s revealed something as special as a memory of his parents that he reflects on a lot. Every time he’s thought of them lately, it’s always been of the last day that he got to spend with them. But maybe now, he’ll be able commemorate them by carrying on one of their traditions with you.

Like Din, tears brim your eyes. Not only is this the first time Din revealed his true feelings to you by saying the word ‘love’, but he also revealed something to you that no one else in the entire galaxy knows. You knew that he harbored the same feelings as you do (he never spoke them outright), but revealing such an intimate thing from his childhood just shows how much he loves you.

Not only did he share a story from his childhood, but he wants to entwine it with your lives.

“I would love that.”

“You would?”

“More than anything.”

Suddenly, Din reaches in one of his many pockets to fish something out. Within a matter of seconds, a small mesh bag is in his free hand. The white color of the bag stands out by the contrast of Din’s dark glove.

When you take the small bag from his hand, you can feel your heartbeat in your throat. In all of the time you’ve spent with him, you don’t think you’ve ever been this nervous around Din.

Gently pulling on the strings that have secured the gift inside, you let go of Din’s hand to take a peek of what’s inside.

A small gasp leaves your lips as you look inside. With one of your hands out, his gift to you lays in the middle of your palm.

“I know it’s not much, but it reminded me of you.” Your focus is entirely on what he has given you. What lays in your palm is a simple gold ring. Not much can be said about it: it has a simple band, no jewels or anything, but it has a textured feeling to it by the years it’s lived.

“It’s perfect.”

“So you like it?”

“I love it, thank you.” You say as you admire the way the ring reflects off of sunlight. When it’s on your finger, it may not look like much, but you’ll be able to remember this afternoon because of the ring. You’ll be able to remember the way you’re feeling, how much you love your partner, and how he shared such a big part of himself with a simple ring.

“If I had known, I would’ve gotten you something as well.”

“Getting to wake up by your side and call you mine is the best gift I could ever want.”

His name leaves your lips as you groan at his cheesiness.

Din’s hand tugs on yours to pull you closer to him, but before you’re able to, the baby that’s been almost radio silent this entire time finally decides to make his appearance as his hand pulls at Din’s sleeve.

“We’ll continue this later.” He says as he scoops up the little baby and makes his way back to the ship.

You can’t hear what he’s saying to the baby, but your heart soars at the sight of your partner shifting from his romantic confession to his role as a father-like figure to the little one. Just thinking about what your partner meant is what makes you quickly pick up the bowls you used for lunch and follow your partner inside.

taglist (i don’t have one yet but let me know if you want to be added):

#hi im struggling during midterms and i wrote this #hopefully you enjoy this sweet and dumb lil piece i wrote #this was originally for v day but i never got around writing it until now #my writing #star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #the mandalorian x you

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celestial-ringleader · 3 years ago

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https://celestial-ringleader.tumblr.com/post/658246663116341248/mushroom-cookie-bears-send-me-a-character-and

Remy & Pietro??

@lucifers-favorite-child Buckle in y’all because this is gonna be a long one

Remy LeBeau:

favorite thing about them: So. Many. Things. I can’t decide on one so I’m just gonna list off my top three:

- His entire aesthetic is just so cool to me?? I love the idea of his character, just him being a thief (and an heir to an entire Guild on top of it) but I also like how he’s often seen as siren-like with how he can pull people in and smooth-talk his way out of almost anything. Also his eyes are so fucking cool idc what anyone else says. The black with red sclera is just so awesome.

- His powerset, omg people seriously underestimate what he’s capable of. Some think his power is just throwing explosive cards when it’s so much more than that. Like do you have any idea how useful it could be to manipulate energy?? He could literally make a moving object stop because he can just sap out the kinetic energy within it. On top of that he made a missile explode in Excalibur which I think was an interesting way of using his powers. Also his goddamn reflexes are broken as all fuck, like he can sense a bullet coming even before anyone else notices it and dodge it perfectly. And if he’s quick enough he can hit it back at the person who shot at him. It’s fucking insane. And let’s not forget that in an alternate universe he was able to kill the Dark Phoenix and destroy his whole planet in a fit of his powers overloading. So.

- This is gonna be cheesy, but I love the way he talks. I like how no matter how much time has passed, he hasn’t changed how he speaks and is proud of it. Besides, his accent is just,,,so good.

least favorite thing about them: Aside from the moments where he’s characterized and portrayed poorly, I can’t think of anything.

favorite line: “I ain’t a thief, or an assassin. I’m an X-Man and I’m never comin’ back.” He said that to Belladonna in X-Men: The Animated Series and it stuck with me so much.

But also the line “You need ta get a life. Seriously.” is so good too. Just ANXF in general had a lot of good lines.

brOTP: Oh boy I have so many so I’m listing them off:

-Remy & Ororo Monroe

-Remy & Laura Kinney

-Remy & Anna-Marie (and before I get people asking, I personally don’t ship them romantically. Not saying no one else should, it’s just a personal preference.)

And some bonus crack brOTPs:

-Remy & Neena Thurman

-Remy & Felicia Hardy

OTP: There’s a lot here too,,,

-Remy/Pietro Maximoff (obviously)

-Remy/Fantomex

-Remy/Johnny Storm (this is more of a crack pairing, but I blame rping on discord for this)

-Remy/Kurt Wagner

-Remy/Warren Worthington III

nOTP: Honestly Remy is so shippable with a lot of people so I don’t really care all that much. Like,,sometimes I like people exploring him in toxic relationships (like with Sabertooth or Mister Sinister) so I really don’t care skjvbdkj

random headcanon: I like to headcanon that Remy has ADHD, which mostly shows itself through him having special interests, stimming, and having a bad case of RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria) because of past trauma associated with him being abandoned by those close to him. Also I like to imagine he uses playing cards to stim and his special interest is science fiction and space operas. Let him be a nerd.

Also he’s an Omega Level mutant. There I said it.

unpopular opinion: Okay, nobody get out the pitchforks and torches, but I don’t like this common headcanon that he’s a himbo and a narcissist. Usually a himbo is described as a character who is dumb while also being kind and beefy, but Remy just doesn’t tick all those boxes in my opinion. He’s incredibly clever and learns quickly, but he also doesn’t waste his time with knowledge that won’t help him. Like maybe he can’t do basic calculus but he understands how to get a lock to break based on it’s materials. Also because he was a physics teacher and I’d buy that he understands physics very well, especially since energy is such a big part of physics. So to me, he isn’t a himbo, he’s just a decent man. And as for the narcissism thing, he just doesn’t fit into the personality of someone with NPD. In fact, most of the time he talks down about himself and thinks himself less worthy....the exact opposite of a narcissist. Sometimes he’s just full of himself because he loves himself for once and that’s perfectly okay to me.

song i associate with them: “Blood on my Name” by The Brother’s Bright, it has a southern gothic feel and it fits well into his backstory. Also “Poker Face” because why not. And also “Addict” by SilviaHound (yes it’s a Hazbin Hotel song but the vibes fit him so well)

favorite picture of them: I have,,,way too many I like. But these ones are just so good.

Also this one because it genuinely made me laugh

okay and now onto pietro

Pietro Maximoff:

favorite thing about them: There’s so much I love about Pietro so I’ll just list it off again ajkdbvkj

- His powers are actually really fucking cool. Like people think he can just run fast but forget that running fast is just one thing he can do. He can literally vibrate himself fast enough to go through walls, he has been shown to have some control over metal like Erik, he ran faster than the speed of sound (and possibly light), and he can leg press over 2,000 pounds. Also his superhero name is just so good, not even being ironic, the name Quicksilver is so badass.

- I love his relationship with Wanda, like sometimes it’s written really bad but other times it’s the cutest thing ever. Like he feels so protective over Wanda because of the environment they were raised in, but at the same time he learns when to let go of his own insecurities and let Wanda be her own person. Like,,their sibling dynamic is one of my favorites.

- His entire backstory is so tragic and I love it. He always feels like he isn’t good enough and tries to be as good as he can despite it all, but he’s also unabashedly pissed off about the circumstance he’s in. Like Pietro has every right to be bitter and I love seeing him call people out on their bullshit (especially in Quicksilver: No Surrender when he calls out people for marketing and appropriating Romani culture)

least favorite thing about them: ...I literally can’t think of anything akjdbvkj

favorite line: Oops it’s all gamquick

Remy: Are you being difficult on purpose?

Pietro: What other reason is there to be difficult?

And also-

Pietro: Well, that’s a step up from a blow-up doll, isn’t it?

Remy: Did anyone ask you?

(Yes these are both from ANXF)

brOTP:

-Pietro & Wanda

-Pietro & Lorna Dane

-Pietro & Clint Barton (not MCU)

OTP: Okay I really only have two but I’m gonna gush about gamquick for a minute-

-Pietro/Remy LeBeau: I don’t even know where to begin with these two, I guess to start out with they both just look so good next to one another. They also bounce off one another banter-wise very well and while neither of them take bullshit from anyone, they still don’t mind messing with one another because it’s strictly playful. Also both their backstories are similar and lends itself to them finding solace in one another, they both recognize each other’s pain and will try their best to alleviate it as best as they can. They both understand what it feels like to be abandoned and abused and would never inflict that on each other, they both came from poverty and find it hard to fit into the “normal world”, but also Pietro usually never shows his softer side to anyone, but with Remy he’d make the exception because Remy wouldn’t hurt him like that. It’s also cute to explore them being able to settle down and get away from the superhero life for a while, but also them being a battle couple is A++

There’s just so much to say about them ajbdvkj

-Pietro/Namor Mckenzie: This became one of my favorite Pietro ships mostly because of @imperiuswrecked but also because apparently they were gonna be a couple in House of M?? Like that sounds so good to read about! Like Pietro is more carefree than Namor in some instances and it would be nice to see Namor relax a little bit more around Pietro. But also because I love imagining them being That royal couple and it’s so good.

nOTP: Pietro/Crystal. Just no. That ship is a garbage fire and it should’ve burned out ages ago.

random headcanon: Pietro has darker roots because his hair used to be the same color as Wanda’s before his powers manifested themselves. Also I like to headcanon/draw Pietro with darker skin.

unpopular opinion: Sometimes Pietro is seen as being misogynistic towards Wanda and I hate that interpretation of him. He’s protective over her, but he still allows her to make decisions on her own. Also people need to stop blaming Pietro for the events of House of M. For the love of god stop that shit.

song i associate with them: “Dollhouse” by Melanie Martinez

favorite picture of them: Need I say more? Pietro carrying his Cajun bf goes without saying

This was a lot of fun to write out and there’s so much more I can say but for now I’ll leave it here ajdbvkj

Ask Meme

#robin speaks #gamquick #remy lebeau #pietro maximoff #silverfish #long post #ask meme #gambit #quicksilver

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