#there’s more to come so just to organize the memes I’m making from not cluttering

[mysteriousmoss]

Been tempted to post these and even more tempted now and then someone was like do it

MCNN memes

Yeah. You can get the vibe

@minecraftnewsnetwork <-MCNN themselves

Anywayssss…

Grian.

Run.

[sp1d3rpu7k]

alright, lets talk about it.

I’m an individual that would be considered neurotypical nowadays, but I was diagnosed autistic(or ‘aspergers’ as it was called then) when I was a child. I’m seeing a lot of discourse, debate, and controversy about posts and things like this online. Let me make things clear here. For autistic people, not everything you do/every characteristic or behavior you exhibit is something that is attributed to autism! I find a lot of stuff online about autistic people and specific behaviors and things they do that is ‘attributed to their autism’ or in other words, is because of their autism or is a ‘sign/clue of autism’. However, in some cases, this is just simply not true. Take this meme for example- which is essentially saying that listening to a song on loop is due to autism. In this case, this is not factually correct. Lots of people do this because music is something that is almost universally enjoyed and appreciated by everyone. Lots of individuals all around the world find specific songs they enjoy a lot and that they listen to on loop. This is normal.

I’ve also seen another post here on tumblr about autism being related to an individual thoroughly planning out their schedule for the entire day based off of an appointment they have at 2pm that day. Again, this is a case that can apply to so many people, not just autistic people! Autistic people are not the only people to do this. Lots of people are very schedule and organization oriented with their time! It’s not quite something that is caused by or is attributed to autism.

So why are there posts like this all over the internet? To come to an appropriate conclusion to this question, we first have to understand how the internet today is changing and affecting people’s mindsets, as well as how autistic people view their autism, as well as compare themselves to neurotypical people.

In today’s society, you’ll find a lot of the younger generation have been growing up in a world filled with technology and all of this mixture of cluttered opinions, beliefs, mindsets, and assortment of things that can cause anyone to become scatterbrained. With that in mind, we’ve seen a supposed increase in children and people ‘self-diagnosing’ themselves or at the very least seeming to think that they are autistic or have some sort of mental illness or disorder. This could be attributed to multiple factors- such as wanting to ‘fit in’ with the actually neurodivergent population, or they might feel insignificant or insecure to a point where they resort to desperate measures to gain attention or get the help they need. Even, in some cases, it’s likely that children and young adults can suffer from anxiety, but are denied and ignored when they speak up about it, which may end up causing them to believe that what is actually their anxiety is something entirely different(and ‘more serious’)

Now that we’ve talked about that, let’s talk about these kinds of posts specifically. I’ve already said that with cases like I mentioned, these things are not actually ‘autistic things’, nor are they only due to being neurodivergent or having autism. They are actually completely normal. However, it is absolutely possible for autistic people to become another degree of obsessive about looping specific songs, because the functions in the minds of autistic people work differently. In certain cases, we do interpret things and function completely different than neurotypical people do. In some cases, this can be in regards to music and/or sounds! If you’re familiar with autism and its labelled ‘symptoms’, you probably are aware that autism is closely related to called ‘sensory overloads’ which is essentially when an individual becomes overwhelmed by their senses- sight, scent, sound, touch, and taste. So, in this regard, autistic people can, in fact, actually be affected by music and sounds on a deeper level than neurotypical people. So in the case of this post, I can see the general idea/intention behind it, but it was not quite portrayed correctly, at least I would personally say so. The ‘me thinking its normal to listen to a song 272 times’ part of the meme is simply not correctly worded. Because that is absolutely normal for a majority of individuals! It might be more appropriate to make memes more specific about autism and autistic tendencies/characteristics, such as instead of something like this that can cause discourse, you could make something about sensory overloads or about how much music affects and stimulates your brain because of autism.

Now, with autistic individuals that make posts like these, I believe that they just are either not aware of which characteristics about them are due to autism or are just normal or they intended to come off a different way with their post/had a completely different meaning in their post and just did not specify/go into detail about that meaning and intention. It is a common misunderstanding for autistic individuals, and for everyone else too! It’s alright to misunderstand things sometimes and to make mistakes!

So, to conclude this literal essay(I’m sorry I’ve rambled, I’m sure absolutely no one will read this but whatever), I believe that while I take a neutral stance here, people just have to move on from these posts. The people in the comments and reblogs of the post talking about how this is normal are absolutely correct, but there is not quite a point to making these small comments. In the end, people will be people, and there will always be posts like these from people that are misguided or simply have come believe something that is not actually true. It is alright to correct them, but generally the right response is to simply keep scrolling on.

Anyway! That’s all I’m going to say on this subject(I’ve already said way too much)!

Thanks for coming to my TED talk I guess.

[themusiichouse]

5, 33 and 39 from the hard mode meme for Liszt and Felix - @purplepianoman 

Doing these without answering the ask directly because it won’t let me do small text in the new editor (sob emojis)

5: Your character is partial to people who _____? (Are tall, have blue eyes, tend to be rowdy, etc)

Both Franzi and Felix are partial to intellectuals and people of culture. However, Franzi prefers people of a much higher level of energy and extroversion than Felix does. Felix, being a highly cultivated gentleman, is rather more reserved in his tastes than she is; Franzi tries to meet people from all sorts of fresh perspectives whereas Felix likes those with a taste for the old-fashioned. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that Franzi tends to hang out with more young people, true to her physical age (she’s like 50+ but appears around mid-early 20s), whereas Felix prefers people who are around his actual age (also 50+).

also I just realized I answered this from the wrong meme but since it’s a good answer I’m going to keep it and start filling out the rest of the actual meme.

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

This is such a cop-out answer but I feel like they wouldn’t have anything interesting in their pockets. Both are tidy people who don’t like a lot of clutter, though Franzi is a little less organized than Felix so you might find her with her keys in her pockets for example, or a pen from her compositions, or her credit card, or her ID--though usually her pockets are clean. What does end up going in her pockets more though is her cell phone, which she’s on a lot of the time and which she can’t live without.

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

Both can take criticism very well. Felix accepts it like the gentleman he is, and is usually willing to listen--but one criticism he does not listen to is people telling him he needs to get with the times. As a painter, you can see some flavors of modernity in some of his work, though he much prefers his hyperrealistic colored pencil drawings and his expertise in Romantic styles of painting. But musically he was always more of a revivalist than an experimentalist, and things are no different in his current life. Even if you question it though, he’ll just be polite about it, and tell you calmly why he believes in drawing or composing in a certain way.

Franzi also takes critiques pretty well in terms of responding to them. But sometimes, she doesn’t take it well on the inside. Much like the historical Liszt sometimes she has huge insecurities about her more experimental work, so even though it’s always groundbreaking and innovative and pushing boundaries, she hears some of the criticisms that have been rained down on her and feels bad about it secretly. It’s never enough to get her to stop doing what she does, but it does make her pause for a moment and feel depressed sometimes--not least because she feels like her “late Liszt” experimental style and some of the new things she’s doing now will never be widely accepted.

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

As a small child, Felix was bitten by a large hellhound on his left cheek and had to get stitches. If you look closely enough at his face, you can still see a faint circular scar, and sometimes (though quite rarely nowadays), the place where his face was bitten still flares up with pain--as hellhound bites can do even decades after an injury. He’s been terrified of large dogs--especially hellhounds--ever since. Sadly for him, he lives with a dire kitsune named Wolfie Aiflos who, in his kitsune form, is basically a nine-tailed wolf that’s as tall at the shoulder as a T-rex. And on top of that, Wil has Richard Wagner’s two old hellhounds Robber and Russ hanging around and so every time Felix sees them he freaks out a little. LMFAO. Wolfie is somewhat less terrifying than Robber and Russ because even though he’s much bigger, Felix knows that the big T-rex wolf is sapient and thus isn’t going to just randomly attack him. But given that Wolfie is that size while also having the energy and exuberance of an untrained 1-year-old lab, Felix’s first instinct when he sees a 750+ pound dog sprinting toward him is still to run the fuck away--even if that dog just wants to have fun!

Though Franzi hasn’t experienced any bites of her own, she had a brush with a werewolf stalker that had the same vibes as Olga Janina. Given that she’s so hot, lots of sexist guys can’t accept the fact that she’s lesbian, so one day one of those guys decided to have the worst possible response to it. When he flirted with her on Twitter and she was like “sorry I’m lesbian,” he got pushy about it to the point she blocked him. He took it personally because he thought the only reason why she was rejecting him was because he was a werewolf (which she couldn’t have possibly known because it wasn’t prominently on his social media page--but which he assumed because he was a social outcast due to being a werewolf). So he waited outside her house on the night of the full moon so that when he transformed, he would be able to attack her and bite her. But what do you do when a dog attacks you? You get a bigger dog, that’s what. Little did he know, the aforementioned nine-tailed wolf that’s as big as a T-rex was living in Franzi’s house at the time, and he was able to intercept the guy before he managed to hurt anyone. 

Franzi woke to the commotion and came downstairs to see kitsune!Wolfie pinning this random werewolf dude to the ground with his teeth in his neck (though not in a deadly way, sometimes animals do bite each others’ throats without it being deadly). She grinned and patted one of Wolfie’s tails, telling him, “Good doggy. Now shall we show our guest outside?” To which Wolfie picked up the dude in his jaws, dragged him out back and threw him in a river, where he barely had enough strength left to fight the swift current and clamber back to shore. When dawn broke, they found him lying passed out naked on the riverbank post-transformation, and were able to take him to the police station.

[supercorpkid]

A week without Lena.

Supercorp, Kara Danvers x Daughter!Reader, Lena Luthor x Daughter!Reader, Alex Danvers x Niece!Reader.

Word count: 1382.

“Uh.” You complain as soon as you walk in the front door. Kara has left her shoes, purse and laptop on the floor and you almost tripped over it. You kick all of it aside, and throw your backpack close to them. “Momma, are you home?”

There’s no answer. You know she’s probably on another Supergirl call. Lena went on a business trip the day before, and you two promised you could go a whole week without her. Now you’re looking around and you don’t know how she believed you guys. It’s day one without her and the house already looks this clutter.

You shoot Kara a text saying she needs to pick up some food on her way back. She texts back “🔥🔥🔥🌬💨🍕👍🏻”. Great, she’ll put out some fire and get pizza.

In the meantime you decide to organize the house. Less than two minutes later you give up. What’s the point, anyway? It’ll be a mess tomorrow, and your mom’s only coming back in a few days.

It doesn’t take too long before Kara flies through the window with some bags and four pizza boxes.

“There’s nothing in here but ice cream, candy bars, cookie dough and canned frosting.” You say looking inside the bags. “Have you ever shopped before?”

“Hey! I thought you would like only eating sweets while your mom is out.” She shoves everything inside the fridge not looking at it, and definitely not organizing them inside. “But if you want, I can go out and buy some kale.”

“Ok, no need to be mean.” You open one pizza box and start eating right away. She helps herself with some slices too. You’ll never get tired of seeing her inhaling the food.

“Should I also make some tater tots?” She asks, picking the package on the fridge. Four boxes of pizza should be enough, but you know she was on some Supergirl call and that means she always comes back home starving.

“’Is that a real question?”

“No.” She says putting them on the fryer. She looks back at you on the other side of the counter. “So, do you want to watch a movie tonight?”

“Can’t. I have a French test tomorrow I haven’t studied for.”

“BOOOO.” Kara puts her hands in front of the mouth to echo the sound and you roll your eyes while laughing.

“Why are you booing me? Thought you would want me to study.”

“Not at the expense of watching a movie with your dear momma.” She eats another three slices while you think about an answer.

“Man, you’re really lonely without mom, aren’t you?” You laugh at her, and she furrows her brows in response.

“BOOOO.” She does it again. “Go ahead, leave me too. I don’t care.”

It’s day four. You’ve basically been living on pizza and sweets. You can’t really blame it on Kara because there was a crisis with an alien, and the past two days she was barely home, which means you were kind of living alone.

Then you come home from school, and you hear a loud noise in the laundry room, so you run there with your super speed.

“Oh my god, what have you done?” You look around and the place is exploding in bubbles and water and your momma is in the middle pressing every button she can see to make it stop.

“Oh Rao, kid. Make it stop.” She asks desperately and you make your way inside to reach the washing machine.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the grown up here?” You ask, pulling the cable out of the plug. Everything stops, but the whole room is still full of soap.

“You be the grown up!” She throws soap at your face and you nearly swallow it. You’re shocked.

“No!” You pick up some bubbles on the floor and throw at her too. “You be the grown up!”

“You know what would be fun?” Kara holds your hands to make you stop. She has the craziest smile on her face. “If we looked into each other’s eyes and wished to be each other at the same time, and we could totally pull a Freaky Friday.”

“Mhm. You just want an excuse to go around acting really immature.” You roll your eyes.

“So?”

“So, we don’t have to pull a Freaky Friday for that, do we?” You say pointing at your situation at that moment and Kara laughs.

“KARA? What’s with all the mess?” You hear Alex's voice coming from the front door and you both get a little desperate.

“Clean it up.” She says almost leaving through the door and you pull her back inside.

“No, it’s your mess. You clean it up.” You complain.

“It was your clothes I was trying to wash.” She says and you both look at the door to see Alex there. She shoots a disappointed look at you both.

“Honestly, I expected more from you.” She sighs turning on her heels. You and Kara both follow her to the kitchen.

“I’m trying my best, but there’s always an emergency and…” Kara starts.

“I didn’t mean you. I obviously meant your daughter, who is much more mature.” Alex puts a casserole on top of the counter. “Kelly made you guys some homemade dinner. We figured you’ve been surviving on pizza and potstickers.”

“Potstickers!” Kara yells. “I knew I was forgetting something.”

“You know, kid, you can always come stay with us these next few days.” Alex looks at you in pity, and you try to hide a laugh.

“I’m ok, aunt Alex.” Kara is pouting behind Alex and you smile. “It’s not that bad, we just had a little incident.”

“Ok, ok.” Alex looks around. The house is a mess, it does not look like just a little incident, but she doesn’t push further. “The offer stands in case you change your mind. And Kara, please, you’re the mom here. Could you, please, just… Just please be the mom. Ok? Just… Please.”

“In my defense we are Freaking Friday right now, so she is actually the mom.” Kara says making you laugh, but that makes Alex roll her eyes.

“Just don’t kill the kid or Lena will kill you, ok?” She turns on her heels and leaves. You look at Kara.

“You clean up the laundry room.”

“You meme the meme room.” It’s her answer and the only thing you can do is laugh again. You end up helping her clean the laundry room, and then the house. It’s not that bad ‘cause you’re using your super speed and flying around the house for the first time and blasting loud music with your momma.

“See.” Kara looks around very proud when you two are finished. “I knew we could do this.” She hugs you sideways. “We’re both very mature young women.”

“Young women?” You laugh. “Really? I mean, how old are you now? 70?”

“I don’t look a day over 35.” She laughs and you agree.

“You’re right. You don’t.”

When Lena comes back from her trip, you and Kara have finally figured out a way to live without destroying the entire house. As for food, you’re still mainly living on tater tots and potstickers, but it’s ok because you know Lena is going to make you eat vegetables as soon as she is back in the kitchen.

“Oh wow, look at this house!” Lena says putting her bags down. You and Kara run to the front door to welcome her. “I’m so very proud of you two.”

“Aw thanks, love. But it was all me.” Kara says running to hug your mom and you roll your eyes.

“Come here, babygirl.” Lena opens her free arm and you hug her too. She kisses your head, then Kara’s mouth. “I’m so glad you guys could do this. I have so many more trips planned.”

“Oh Rao, please no. You can never leave us again!” You say hugging her with a little more strength that you planned.

“Please don’t make me be the responsible adult again.” Kara asks on your side.

“Please don’t make me make her be the responsible adult!” You pout and Lena laughs at your reaction.

“Feels good to be home.”

[the-golden-ghost]

First/last meme: Fujiko/Goemon, 28

28. First/last photograph

~

The hideout had never been so cluttered with photos. Ever since Jigen swiped that camera during their last gig he’d been obsessed; pretending to be cool and nonchalant about it but the sheer number was enough to prove otherwise. Lupin was threatening to cut his paycheck and just convert his salary to film.

Goemon liked to look at them, though. And though Fujiko tended to get exasperated when he wouldn’t use her as a model, he often caught her rifling through them too. There was a simplicity to most of the shots; a quiet stillness that reminded Goemon of home, wherever home was.

Fujiko was curled up on the bed near him, in her slippers and ready for sleep. She’d be leaving the next day, and Lupin and Jigen had taken off just that morning, but that gave Goemon a night alone with her.

“He didn’t take any of his pictures with him,” Goemon remarked, looking at the nightstand near where Jigen had been sleeping during their stay.

“He’ll take more,” Fujiko said, her eyes shut.

Goemon had to agree, but he picked up the photos anyway and began looking through them. Mostly they weren’t of people. Jigen didn’t take portraits very often. Mainly they were interior shots taken from inside dark rooms, or close-ups of the piles of mess they tended to naturally leave around when they were heisting. There was a shot of Lupin at his worktable late at night with a single lamp illuminating him, a few pictures taken from outside the window at passing cars, and one or two that appeared to have been snapped quickly from the rope ladder of a rising chopper.

As he flipped through, Fujiko sat up and started looking over his shoulder. “There’s a lot of you,” she remarked. Goemon flushed and pretended he hadn’t noticed, but yes, there were pictures of him meditating, of him preparing dinner, and one of him dozing off in the back of the car with the city lights on his face.

It was pretty clear that Jigen had a favorite subject when it came to portraits, but Goemon was a bit annoyed that there were virtually none of Fujiko. If she appeared at all it was in the background of a shot of something else, never the main focus.

Until they got near the end, and she took in a breath beside Goemon. It was the two of them in the kitchen with the morning sun coming through and she was kissing him on the nose. As usual with Jigen’s photos he had a knack for lighting and timing so that everything fell into place. “I want to keep that one,” she said, taking it. Goemon wasn’t sure if it was out of vanity or sentimentality, or perhaps a little of both. Either way, Goemon was somewhat flattered that the photo she chose to keep was not just one of herself, but that he was there too.

Goemon would keep one or two for himself, he was sure. Jigen would probably never miss them. Maybe someday they could organize them and put the best ones in proper albums instead of scattering them to the winds, but not tonight.

Tonight they’d just sleep together. These memories would not be saved on film to last for an indeterminate number of years, but they would live on in their minds, and that would be plenty for them both.

~

It was a warm night and Goemon was engaged to be married in two days.

Instead of spending every moment with his bride-to-be, though, he was out on a walk with Fujiko. It would have seemed unkind in any other context, perhaps. But Jigen and Lupin were teaching Murasaki how to cheat at poker, and when Goemon had left the house, she was beating them by miles.

“So you’re leaving the day after,” Goemon said. “I thought maybe you’d stay a while. Lupin and Jigen are planning to spend a month here...” after that, they’d go, too. And Goemon would not.

“Well,” she said at last. “It’s not gonna be forever. When the wedding’s over I’m going to do a few weeks in Nepal, but after that... who knows. I might come back and see you again.”

And it wouldn’t be forever, Goemon knew. When he’d proposed to Murasaki the second time he’d taken her aside first and explained everything. They had to walk all the way through the village and surrounding forest and back again before it was all told, but eventually he got it out. Everything from his birth, his family history, his training as a samurai, his career as an assassin, and then a thief. His bravery and his criminality and the people he loved. He told her in the end that she couldn’t be the sole love of his life. That she’d have to share him because though he’d tried for years to make an end, he would never be able to untangle himself from the people he’d made a life with for years and years. He could choose her as his wife, and give her that space in his heart and future that would be hers alone, but other parts would belong to the three people he’d loved first and would love always.

He told her all that, and then asked her if she would still have him. And he’d been expecting a no, so the outcome he was facing now was a surprise to him, though not an unpleasant one.

“I’d like that,” he said. He didn’t think he could have said goodbye to Fujiko any more than he already had. “Oh, there’s something...” he’d meant to give it to her, and he didn’t want to forget before she left. Sometimes she could disappear suddenly and he wouldn’t know when to expect her again.

Jigen had slipped him a handful of photos when they arrived and told him to keep them safe. They were, Goemon guessed, a sort of wedding gift. Jigen would never be the sort to do anything official like that, but he realized that they were intended to be something to have with him even as he started his new life.

They were of the four of them, taken throughout the years and their journeys together. Goemon had noticed with amusement how Lupin’s jackets and Fujiko’s hair color had changed and changed back, and how Jigen stayed more or less the same although sometimes he traded his clean-cut mobster look for something more resembling a modern cowboy. How Pops even showed up once or twice, always in the background, always watching quietly.

Many were of Goemon and Lupin, or Goemon and Jigen. A few of the three of them. Even more of Goemon, Lupin and Fujiko, with Jigen’s presence being felt mostly in the angle and focus of the shot. And then a few, just a few, where all four of them had managed to cram into a single photo and stood smiling. There were only a small number of Goemon and Fujiko alone. But there was one, taken just last week in the hotel in Tokyo where they’d stayed over before making the drive to Murasaki’s home. Goemon stood looking out the window at the city, lost in thought, and Fujiko was looking at him. Neither one had noticed Jigen’s sneaky photography but it was clearly taken by him and not by Lupin. The composition was far too advanced.

He held the photo out  to her.

“This is from last week,” she said. “Are you giving it to me?”

Goemon nodded because he didn’t know how to say why, or what it meant to him. He didn’t even know how to say yes, it’s for you, so you don’t forget me while we’re apart. She never would, of course. So all he did was nod and she smiled and slipped the photo into her pocket and maybe she’d keep it and maybe she wouldn’t. But she would NOT forget Goemon.

But it didn’t matter, really. He was walking with his lover on a warm night, soon to be married, but not to her, and that was okay. His boyfriends and his fiancee back at home, the three of them already close friends. The family changing and growing and separating for now, but not forever. It had never been forever before and it never would.

Fujiko was right. And life was fine.

[hermannsthumb]

If you’re still doing summer prompts, could you do graduation for newmann?

15. Graduation

from (the very old) summer prompts meme here

enjoy some awkward pre-canon jaeger academy ~ROOMMATES~!! also I am pretty sure this message/prompt is from at least a year ago (if not TWO) but it was only today that I really thought about what I wanted to write for it and wrote in like a FRENZY. content warning for alcohol (no like intoxication tho)

--------

It was hardly to be expected that Newton would be mature over the whole thing, but Hermann finds himself in a perpetual state of agitation the final weeks of their enrollment at the Jaeger Academy anyway. Newton was very young, Hermann knows, when he graduated from university (at least he was young the first time he graduated), and he can only assume the man took it rather hard that he didn’t get to have the proper send-off he thought he deserved—all-night parties with kegerators and beer pong, one-dollar shots at dive bars, trips to the seaside with classmates. One wasn’t likely to invite someone who’d barely breached his teens and still had braces to those sorts of things, after all. It’s the only reason Hermann can think of as to why Newton has spent the month—the whole month—popping open champagne at all hours and organizing spin-the-bottle in the base rec room and generally being a great bloody nuisance to everyone they have the misfortune of sharing their graduating class with. Over-compensation is what it is.

Having Newton as his bunkmate adds a special level of unbearableness to it all. At least—and Hermann does thank the stars above for this—tomorrow marks the end of a very miserable month. A very miserable two years.

“Everyone is going to be there,” Newton says. He’s wearing an oversized pair of neon sunglasses over his regular glasses, for some reason, those abhorrently dated kind with the slatted lenses, and dangling from his left hand are two bottles of pink champagne. A bag of plastic cups dangles in the other. “Everyone. Not even just the k-scientists—the techs, the ranger trainees, the—”

“That all sounds very thrilling,” Hermann says, hefting a stack of button-ups into a cardboard box he’s labeled Clothing – Gottlieb. “You’re aware, I assume, that we’re meant to be moving out tomorrow, and you’ve not touched anything on your side of the room?”

“Dude, I have sooo much time,” Newton says. Hermann realizes now the seal on one of the champagne bottles is broken—which might explain some of Newton’s suspiciously carefree mood. “Besides, I barely even have that much shit here.”

This is patently untrue. Newton’s clothing is overflowing from his dresser; manga and monster action figures and vinyl records clutter up every inch of its top surface; there’s laundry under his bed, on his bed, his guitar picks on Hermann’s bedside table, dirty mugs on his own, half-finished reports and articles scattered over his desk… “Fine,” Hermann says. “But I haven’t finished, at any rate, so I won’t be joining you.”

Newton flops down next to him on his bed; the stopper on the opened champagne bottle wobbles dangerously, and Hermann moves quickly to push it in more firmly so he doesn’t have to add a load of bed linens to his To-Do list. “I think you need to unwind, roomie,” Newton says, grinning up at him. Both pairs of his glasses have slipped off his nose and onto Hermann’s bedspread. “We’ll have all day tomorrow after the dumb ceremony to pack, and you haven’t taken a break in, like, seven years. You’ve earned one.”

Hermann doesn’t want to take a break, or at least not in the way Newton is suggesting. Hermann wants to finish packing up his half of the room, then his designated workspace in the large k-science laboratory, and then take a shower to wash himself of the experience of being Newton Geiszler’s roommate and labmate for two years too many. Noticing his reticence, Newton adds, pleadingly, “Come for one hour? Just to do two shots with me? One shot?” He blinks, half-blind without his glasses, as if trying to discern whether or not Hermann looks likely to give in. “No shots? C’mon, Hermann, you owe me.”

“Owe you?” Hermann says, frowning.

Newton nudges him with the stack of plastic cups. “Y’know—for the sake of your ol’ penpal,” he says.

The reference to their letter-writing days jars Hermann, and despite his best efforts not to show it to Newton, his hand trembles as he deposits an unopened pack of white socks into his laundry box. He thinks it may be the first time either of them have brought it up in the entirety of their time at the Academy. It’s certainly the first time either of them have admitted to even the slightest notion of a shared history since—a week into their first year here, at an ice-breaking event for their kaiju-science peers—Newton had rolled his eyes exaggeratedly when someone attempted to introduce him to Hermann and said “Yeah, Dr. Gottlieb and I go wayyyy back.” Hermann did not admit so at the time, but the use of the honorific in place of his first name had been unexpectedly wounding—ridiculous of him, considering he made a point of referring to Newton in precisely the same way. Perhaps that little slip of the tongue had been why they were assigned as roommates scarcely a week later. An assumed friendship.

Hermann picks up Newton’s thick eyeglasses and carefully slips them back onto Newton’s upside-down face. Newton wrinkles his nose when Hermann’s thumb accidentally brushes against its tip. “I just don’t like parties very much, Newton,” he says. He’s not sure when Dr. Geiszler became Newton to him, or rather, became Newton to him again.

“Then we can do something together here,” Newton says.

He sits up and pushes the sealed champagne bottle at Hermann’s chest. “This is for you, anyway. Graduation present. Bury the hatchet, you know—odds are pretty fucking high we’re never gonna see each other again, so there’s no use hating each other forever.”

In spite of his better judgement, Hermann takes the champagne bottle. One drink won’t hurt him. And anyway, it might be a little relaxing—so long as it’s one drink only, because he still has an entire two years’ worth of research to pack away in his laboratory desk. “Do you know where you’re being assigned already, then?” he says. He was under the impression they wouldn’t find out until after the ceremony tomorrow—bit last minute, he supposes, but it’s not as if they’re making their own travel arrangements, and nearly all of their colleagues have already brought their families along with them to the Academy base.

“Nah,” Newton says, “but I wrote down a lot on my request form.” He motions for Hermann to hand him back the bottle, and he begins unscrewing the wire holding down the cork. “Tokyo—Peru—" He moves the bottle away from the bed as he pops it open with a grunt of effort, and a small bit of foam spills to the cement floor. Hermann grits his teeth and tries not to worry about cleaning it up later. “—Los Angeles. I worked on one of my PhDs in California, you know, a few weeks one July. Sea sponges. I learned how to scuba dive, I loved it—I think that’s one of the first things I’m gonna do if—once this is all over.”

He looks strangely maudlin as Hermann pours himself some champagne into one of the plastic cups and suffers through a sip. Too sweet. Hermann’s never liked sweet wines—bloody awful hangovers the next day, if one isn’t careful.

“Their entire ecosystem would be destroyed now, I guess,” Newton says. “Kaiju blue poisoning.”

“Whose?” Hermann says.

“The sea sponges’,” Newton says.

Hermann sips more of the champagne so he won’t have to respond. “I requested Anchorage,” he offers. Among plenty others, but he knows Newton will get a kick out of ribbing him for the dreary Alaskan climate. It seems to work—Newton lights up at once with a loud snort.

“Of course you did, ya weirdo,” he says. “Have fun freezing your ass off.” He takes a sip right from his bottle, then holds it out to Hermann. “Well, Hermann—you were an annoying lab partner, an even more annoying roommate, but a decent penpal, and I’m—well, I’m not gonna miss you, but I guess I can’t say I hate everything about you. Good luck with the jaegers. Good luck to whoever gets stuck with you next, actually, yikes, don’t envy them! Here’s to never seeing each other again.”

Hermann rolls his eyes, but knocks his plastic cup against Newton’s bottle. “Best of luck to you, as well,” he says. “And here’s to—well, surviving.”

“That’s cheerful,” Newton says.

They drink to their toast. Down the hall, someone puts on loud music to a chorus of equally loud cheers. Hermann reckons that’ll be Newton’s party. “You ought to head over there,” he says, turning briefly to glance at their door, which Newton has left cracked open. “Otherwise, they’ll miss—”

Newton kisses him.

Hermann doesn’t necessarily kiss back, but he doesn’t push Newton away, either. He’s more bewildered than anything. He might’ve expected this sort of thing to happen years ago—years, and years ago, before that dreadful first meeting in some dingy little Berlin coffee shop, back when a new letter from Dr. Geiszler slipped through his mail slot could make his heart thud like nothing else—but they’ve hardly been anything to each other but colleagues these past two years. Not even quite colleagues—that implies a civility they don’t possess. Professional academic rivals. He was under the impression that the man hated him, that the data when they underwent standard tests for drift compatibility was merely a fluke.

His empty cup falls from his hand and clatters to the floor. Newton slides a hand up Hermann’s jaw and keeps kissing him; he makes a small, needy noise into Hermann’s mouth.

“Newton,” Hermann finally mumbles. “What are you doing?”

Newton pulls back. A brilliant red flush is creeping steadily across his face, and he opens and closes his mouth a few times before anything comes out. “Oh, shit,” he says. “I didn’t mean—”

He stumbles to his feet. “Shit, dude, I’m sorry, I like—”

“Newton?” Hermann repeats. He feels about as dazed as Newton looks; he’s not quite sure what he’s meant to say. His lips are tingling from the kiss. “I—?”

“I’m gonna go to the party,” Newton stammers. “Sorry, dude, I—misread signals? I guess? Um—” He steps on Hermann’s forgotten cup and skids slightly, catching and righting himself on one of Hermann’s bed posts. The movement knocks Hermann’s cane (hooked there) to the floor, and Newton must bend down twice before he succeeds in picking it up. “Just—um—okay, bye.”

Hermann stares at the door for a long time after Newton leaves. Tomorrow marks the end of their two years cohabitating and working together—as Newton said, odds are high their paths will never cross again. Hermann had been counting down the days to their graduation in a little calendar he keeps pinned neatly to his wall, daydreaming endlessly of the first thing he would do once he was free from the suffocating cloud of Newton Geiszler’s presence—daydreaming of the like-minded non-Geiszlerian colleagues he would meet at his Shatterdome assignment, of a neat and orderly laboratory devoid of kaiju residue over every communal surface, of his own living quarters. He should be excited. He should be ecstatic.

Hermann touches his mouth and feels nothing but strange sort of hollowness in his chest—a black hole enveloping all else.

---

He doesn’t see Newton until their graduation ceremony the next day, an affair made all the more awkward by the seating chart’s alphabetical arrangement ensuring Drs. Geiszler and Gottlieb will be knocking elbows for the full two hours. Newton is late by nearly twenty minutes, and rushes in with badly unkempt hair and a backwards tie: Hermann has a feeling he’d been lurking outside their quarters and waiting for Hermann to leave before he dared dart in to get himself ready. He wonders where Newton spent the night. He wonders why he even cares. Likely passed out on the rec room floor after the party, judging from the confetti stuck to his left cheek—or perhaps he’d finally made a move on the fellow kaiju-biologist Hermann recalls him extolling the physicality of on more than one occasion, and spent the night with him—or perhaps he did neither, and merely wandered the base for hours, sleep evading him as it’d so entirely evaded Hermann. They don’t acknowledge each other for the whole of the ceremony.

Hermann is summoned to the office of the jaeger science program head (a severe woman with short hair) later that evening, shortly after he finishes taping up his very last box of papers in the vacant laboratory. He’s handed a small manila folder containing the details of his Shatterdome assignment: Hong Kong, as it turns out. One of his requests. “Since you and Dr. Newton Geiszler have displayed a strong work ethic when partnered together,” the woman begins, “as well as a very high level of drift compatibility—”

Hermann’s eyes snap up from his folder to her face.

“—we’ll be assigning him to Hong Kong’s kaiju science division along with you, under the assumption that together you will only continue to produce positive results.”

“Pardon?” Hermann says, weakly.

Newton has finished boxing up a majority of his belongings when Hermann drags himself through the door to their quarters an hour later. He glances at Hermann briefly, embarrassedly, and says, in a small voice, “Hey, Hermann.”

“Newton,” Hermann says.

He walks over and sits down heavily atop the pile of sheets on his stripped bed. Something pokes at his thigh, and he sets aside his cane to fumble through the sheet bundle to discover what: Newton’s forgotten neon shuttered shades. The sight of them sends his stomach twisting up in knots. “Oh, hey,” Newton says, as he wraps a Godzilla action figure with bubble wrap. He nods at the manila envelope clenched between Hermann’s fingers. “Where are they shipping you off to? I’m going to Hong Kong—should be cool. I’ve never been before.” He places the little Godzilla in a carboard box. Newt - Junk! the side says in purple Sharpie. “My flight leaves tomorrow afternoon—you’re right, I definitely should’ve started packing earlier, I have no idea how I’m gonna get this all done by then.”

Hermann stares at Newton in poorly-concealed amazement as he continues to ramble on about how to pack up his instruments and whether or not they’ll let him bring his first-ever kaiju sample with him (he’s attached to it, even though he knows it’s technically the academy’s property, but maybe he can find a way to smuggle it out in his checked bags or something). Does he not know? Did they not tell him? How could they let this fall on Hermann? “Newton,” he says, slowly. “I’ve been assigned to Hong Kong, too.”

Newton freezes. “No fucking way,” he says.

[archive-of-the-guild]

 Character Bio and rules are below the line

You can call me Shadow. i’m a 28yo male that hasn’t rped in years. Last time i did was i think 3 maybe 4 years ago so i am plenty rusty. I know this doesn’t say a lot about me but if there’s anything you’d like to know, just ask.

About Karisa

Name: Karisa

Race: Tiefling: A Humanoid people descended from humans who made pacts or crossbred with demons.

Age: 18

Height: 6'3"

Hair color: black

Occupation: Golemancer, Adventurer, occasional Blacksmith

Appearance: As a tiefling, Karisa has several traits that distinguishes her from Humans. She has Lavender colored skin, ice blue eyes, two horns, pointed ears, and a 4 foot long tail.

Personality: When it comes to enemies, Karisa can be downright ruthless. if she hates them bad enough, she will leave an enemy broken but alive to let them try again. She swears a LOT around everyone no matter who they are with the exception of children and has a habit of making enemies through her mannerisms. She’s bad enough with her words that there have been jokes made about weaponizing her lexicon and isn’t afraid to cuss out friends! BUT if you can take her words with a grain of salt and actually befriend her, then no matter what she says to you, she will protect you with her life. In her words, “You may be a cunt, but you’re MY cunt. And no one FUCKS with my cunt!”

Background:

Karisa was born on a small farm and raised by her parents until she reached the age of 8 when they passed away. Since then she would delve into golemancy as a way to cope, keeping her hands busy and moving foreword as best as she can. This is around the time she found the large crystal that would become Grom’s core. At the age of 10, she made her way to the city with her golem Grom, who was wood at the time, to try and become an adventurer. There she met the Dwarf Bormi who gave her a place to stay and taught her in the ways of the blacksmith.

Modern Verse (Hazbin Verse rewrite):

Karisa is Tiefling who was born into an organization known as The Adventurer’s Guild. The purpose of this organization is to deal with supernatural threats to society as a whole by hunting down creatures, artifacts, books, and other things that could pose a danger. If it can’t be recruited, it is to be either destroyed or relocated. People of course know about them but there is a general distrust of the organization due to their habit of employing non-humans and the Guild’s use of magic.

When it comes to the forces of Heaven and Hell, the Guild was able to get their hands on a blueprint for portal technology. The portal they have doesn’t always work and sometimes accesses realms other than Heaven or Hell. This can have a tendency to get adventurers stuck in realms outside of earth.

Skills-

Golemancy: Throughout her life, Karisa has made a variety of golems. These golems can me made from just about any solid material if given enough time. Golems made from metal, stone, wood, and even flesh are within her area of expertise. Her favorite golem is an 8 foot tall minotaur automaton she named Grom.

Cooking: Karisa LOVES to cook. She’s always experimenting with different dishes and creating a few of her own.

Basic Martial Arts: Since she turned 13, Karisa has trained with a quarterstaff and dagger so that if her golems failed, she could still take care of herself.

Magic: In addition to Golemancy, she has a small arsenal of spells at her disposal.

Fire Spells: All Tieflings are capable of fire magic. Fireball, Burning Hands, and Firewall to name a few. Using fire helps her a lot if she has to weld parts together on a golem.

Lightning Spells: Karisa can perform rudimentary lightning spells but this mostly equates to coating her hand in electricity to use. The strength of this can range from the power of a normal stun gun to enough power to jumpstart a city’s electrical grid.

3D Movement: This is a form of wind magic that allows her to “kick” the air. by doing this, Karisa can give off the impression that she is flying. This does not mean she stays in the air, only that she can move in it. she usually only uses this to get over walls or cliffs or maybe to get into a tree.

Empathy Link: This is something she originally learned in order to better deal with golems in order to find out what their orders are. it can be used on other creatures and objects to get a kind of idea of either how they are feeling or how they are used. She MUST make contact with the palm of her hand for this to work.

Golem Creation: As a golemancer, Karisa carries a number of golem cores on her at all times. These cores can often be infused into whatever matter she chooses to create a quick golem in the field. These golems aren’t as effective as one she has time to prepare but they get the job done. Golem cores are also extremely volatile! Damaging a core will cause any magic in it to go haywire and explode in relation to the core’s size. This makes golems and their cores effective bombs if she needs to!

Golem Override: This is a skill that allows Karisa to manually control her golems and see through their eyes. HOWEVER this is only a last resort because it leaves her immobile and defenseless. 

Please send Karisa questions and asks either from yourself or your characters! i will fill this out as i go!

Rules

1: i am all for fight scenes and such but please do not god-mod. meaning do not assume what happens to my character. (EX: “My character fires a gun and hits your character in the shoulder.” or “Your character tried to dodge but my character cuts off their arm before they can.”) In my responses, i’ve taken to rolling a dice to determine whether or not my character gets hit and how badly she gets hit. I do not mind my character dying in a particular thread so long as it is discussed at length beforehand and is necessary for the development of the plot. communication is key for stuff like this.

2: Don’t send hate. I don’t mind criticizing because it helps me reflect on how i’m doing. Hate is just a dick move though.

3: I reserve the right to choose whether or not i rp or answer an ask. There will be times that i don’t have the inspiration or motivation to continue it or there is not enough for me to go on. An example of this would be if i responded to an rp and the response i get back is “Character ducks.” or something as equally short.

4: I don’t mind reminders but i DO mind spamming. I will mostly be rping either on the weekends or some afternoons when i can get up the motivation. DO NOT spam me reminders every day or every other day. I have a 5 month old son and a job that has me working monday to thursday with the occasional friday up to 12 hours a day. Those come first.

5: You will see a lot of stuff on here that i will do my best to tag from gore to n//s//f//w// threads. If there is anything in particular you would like me to tag when it shows up, please let me know! Anything truly spicy will placed uner a read more and tagged as “Read at your own Risk!::NSFPC” (nsfpc stands for not safe for public consumption.

6: While i accept starters, memes, questions and comments through asks, starters and starter memes WILL be turned into a post to start a thread. I will not rp through constant asks because this can lead to more dash clutter than the post will. That being said, i will trim the post before it gets too long and will try to have any appropriate tags on it.

7: THERE WILL BE LOTS AND LOTS OF SWEARING! Enough that i will not be tagging it because it is everywhere! I will not tone down her swearing except around child muses because this is part of her character and i ask that you please understand.

8: When it comes to shipping, Karisa will make things fairly clear on whether or not she wants to be with your character. I love shipping but i also know that not everyone will ship their characters with Karisa and that's perfectly fine! Karisa WILL flirt and get touchy with people she's interested in but if the mun or character they are controlling doesn't want that, TELL HER! Not me. HER. Have your character reject her advances, tell her "no" or even smack the shit out of her if she gets too handsy! I will not be upset and i will completely understand! A lot of people plan ships out and tell others there has to be chemistry, but as I'm thinking about it, im going to be removing that little section from my rules. Why? Because failed ships have the potential to create drama, angst, and even enemies if done properly! If she comes onto a character and it makes you uncomfortable or you're just not interested, EXPRESS IT THROUGH YOUR CHARACTER! The same will apply to her! The only time i will have any sort of problem is if she says no, gets into a fight, and you try to godmod it to your liking or try to guilt ME about it. My character makes up her own mind about how to do things just like yours.

I may add more rules as time goes on but it’s pretty straightforward. Don’t be afraid to come and talk to me! I’m pretty open about things and i would love to see you around! Come and join me on discord for more Mun stuff! Just make sure you edit your name to match your tumblr url so i know who you are please! https://discord.gg/6ftZuSP8XH 

[slickbackdani]

Batman Movie Villains Ranked from Worst to Best

Recently, a YouTuber I follow by the name of Mr. Rogues released a list of Batman villains ranked from worst to best. I have nothing but the utmost of respect for Mr. Rogues as a content creator, but I took issue with his list because his long-standing biases were often the deciding factor in many of his rankings. So, I decided to do a list of my own.

I’ll be going over every Batman villain to appear in the movies, briefly analyzing their portrayals and ranking them on a scale of 1 to 5. To prevent the list from being too cluttered, I’ll be separating the villains by which movie series they’re part of. Here we go!

Burton/Schumacher Tetralogy

Bane: Perhaps the only villain in this series I’d call “bad.” The calculating tactician of the comics is nowhere to be found here; instead, he’s reduced to a monosyllabic, brain-dead stooge for the other villains. Overall, he does nothing that couldn’t be done by a random henchman. 1/5

Two-Face: A deeply layered villain in the comics, Two-Face sadly gets upstaged by the other major rogue in the movie, but that’s not to say he doesn’t leave an impression. Tommy Lee Jones gives him a manic and mercurial demeanor that, combined with his colorful design, wouldn’t be out of place in the Adam West series. The size and scope of his criminal organization make him a genuine threat, and there’s something darkly fitting about Batman’s former ally being responsible for the creation of Robin. 3/5

Poison Ivy: Mr. Rogues for some reason ranked her as the worst Batman movie villain of all time, and frankly, I don’t see why. Like Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face, Uma Thurman gives this character a delightfully over-the-top demeanor that combines with a colorful, comic-booky ensemble to make for another great “what-if-this-character-appeared-in-the-Adam-West-series” take. She does a good job juggling the differing facets of Ivy’s character: she’s the put-upon cynic, the craven opportunist, the radical eco-terrorist, and the suave seductress all in one package. 3.5/5

The Penguin: Fuck the Razzies. Danny DeVito made this role his own and set the stage for the character for years to come. He’s a bit of a departure, but a welcome one: far from the refined gentleman of crime Burgess Meredith portrayed, this Penguin is an animalistic thug warped by a lifetime of anger and hatred of the society who rejected him due to his deformities. His signature wardrobe, trick umbrellas, and Penguin gimmick are all there, but DeVito sells the role by showing amazing versatility: he can go from a comical and pitiable weirdo to a terrifying sociopath at the drop of a stovepipe hat. 4/5

Mr. Freeze: I honestly can’t say much about this character that my mutual @wonderfulworldofmichaelford hasn’t already. Arnold Schwarzenegger perfectly encapsulates both popular versions of this character: the flamboyant, pun-loving criminal genius from the Adam West series and the Animated Series’ traumatized scientist desperate to cure his loving wife of her terminal illness. Sure, the puns and hammy one-liners are what this version character is known for, but Ahnold definitely knows when to apply the brakes and give a greatly emotional performance as he tries desperately to cure his wife. 4.5/5

Max Shreck: Probably the only time you’ll see a movie-exclusive character on this list, and deservedly so. Corrupt businessmen are dime-a-dozen in Batman stories, and most of them have little personality outside of being greedy scumbags who either get defeated by the hero or betrayed by the other villains. Shreck, however, is different. Not only does he have an eye-catching fashion sense on par with any of Batman’s famous rogues, but Christopher Walken brings his signature manic intensity to the role, creating a character that’s as wicked and sinister as he is cool and stylish. You totally buy that the general public sees him as the good guy. His warm relationship with his son is also a delight to watch. 4.5/5

Catwoman: Michelle Pfeiffer does a lot to really make the character her own. She gets a lot of genuinely badass moments, but underneath all of her coolness lies the undercurrent that she’s a broken, traumatized character lashing out at the people who abused her and took her for granted. Even when she takes these ideals to unreasonable extremes, you never stop feeling like the retribution she brings on her enemies is at least a little warranted. Also, she has amazing romantic chemistry with Batman and her costume is fucking metal. 5/5

The Ridder: It’s Jim Carrey. 5/5

The Joker: This role is perhaps the one that set the standard for future Jokers to follow: Jack Nicholson’s humorous yet unnerving performance signaled to audiences early on that this would not be the goofy trickster of the Silver Age, but a different beast entirely. This Joker is a film noir gangster on crack: a disfigured mob hitman who quickly takes the entire criminal underworld by storm and unleashes his special brand of chaos and destruction across Gotham. He’s an artist, a showman, a charismatic leader, and the man responsible for ruining Bruce Wayne’s life. 5/5

Christopher Nolan Trilogy

Talia al Ghul: You know that recent trend in Disney movies where a side character we thought was harmless and inconsequential turned out to have been the villain all along in a twist with no buildup or foreshadowing with the reveal happening too late in the movie for this character to really do anything cool or impressive before being unceremoniously defeated? That’s Talia. DKR is the weakest of the three Nolan films, and I feel like it would’ve been much better received without this twist villain contrivedly shoehorned in. Also, while I could kinda forgive the trilogy’s whitewashing of other villains like Ra’s al Ghul and Bane due to the talent their actors display, Marion Cotillard doesn’t get a pass because she just doesn’t have the charisma or screen presence needed to pull it off. 1/5

Victor Zsasz: While the idea of redefining Zsasz as an over enthusiastic mob hitman instead of a serial killer is very interesting, it’s ruined by the fact that he barely even appears in the movie and doesn’t really do or say much of anything despite the buildup he gets. 1.5/5

Two-Face: Aaron Eckhart portrays Harvey Dent as a character of tragedy in a slightly different way than other tragic villains in superhero movies: he’s lashing out at a society he feels wronged him, but instead of being a lifelong outcast or put-upon loser, he was a handsome, successful crusader for the common good who lost everything he once held dear all in one fell swoop. You really feel for him even as he does horrible things. If I had to nitpick, though, I am slightly bothered by the fact that he plays some comic book movie cliches straight (i.e. they never call him by his alias and he dies at the end,) but it’s a solid performance overall. 3/5

Scarecrow: I’ll be upfront and admit that I’m more than a little annoyed that certain facets of the character had been changed in the name of “realism” — once again, they never call him by his villain name and he never wears a comic-accurate costume — but other than that, I can’t complain. Cillian Murphy plays the character with a smarmy, eerie charm that really makes his scenes stand out, his willingness to ally himself with other villains suits his character well, and the fact that he appears in three consecutive films with a different evil scheme in each really helps tie the movies together. 3.5/5

Catwoman: Much like other secondary villains in this trilogy, she really doesn’t get a chance to shine compared to the main antagonist — and, once again, it pisses me off a little that they do the whole “never refer to her as Catwoman but vaguely hint at it” thing — but she’s everything a modern Catwoman should be. She’s sly, manipulative, really holds her own in a fight, has great chemistry with Bruce Wayne... it’s all there. It’s also great to see Anne Hathaway break away from her usual type casting to play a role this dynamic. 4/5

Ra’s al Ghul: He’s a character that was in desperate need of mainstream exposure, and by God that’s what he got. Making him Bruce Wayne’s mentor adds a layer of personal tragedy to the climax where our hero has to stop the man who made him who he is from destroying Gotham with his admittedly brilliant plan. Add in a strong, captivating performance from Liam Neeson before we found out he was a racist asshole, and we’ve got one hell of an overarching villain. 4.5/5

The Joker: Everybody’s already discussed this version of the character to hell and back and likely will for years to come, so I’ll keep it very brief. He’s funny, he’s badass, he’s terrifying, he has great dialogue, it sucks that Heath Ledger didn’t live to see his performance reach the audience it got, and he basically makes the entire film. 5/5

Bane: Mr. Rogues actually ranked Bane higher than Joker on his list, and keeping it 100, I actually agree with him here. Finally, after decades of being dumbed down and misrepresented outside of comics, Bane is finally portrayed as the tactical genius from the comics. Tom Hardy plays Bane to perfection, being very believable as the peak of human physical and mental achievement, the man who broke Batman physically and emotionally. His design is iconic, his every line is quotable, his voice is weirdly fitting, and the memes are funny. 5/5

DC Extended Universe

KGBeast: Another point where I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Rogues. He is absolutely wasted in BVS, being nothing but a generic henchman for Lex Luthor. He doesn’t wear his costume from the comics, he’s never referred to by his alias, he doesn’t have his signature cybernetic enhancements, and he never does or says anything noteworthy. 1/5

The Joker: Ugh. I don’t know what’s worst: the tacky clothes, the stupid tattoos, the weird Richard Nixon impression that passes as his voice, the fact that promotional material hyped him up as a “beautiful tragedy” of a character even though he’s only in the movie for like 10 minutes and barely does anything, Jared Leto’s toxic edgelord behavior on set done with the flimsy pretense of “getting into character,” or the fact that he’s just trying to copy Heath Ledger instead of making the role his own. 1/5

Victor Zsasz: Chris Messina proves undoubtedly that Zsasz CAN work as a secondary villain in a Batman movie. He’s once again a mob assassin who enjoys his job a little too much, but unlike Batman Begins, he really gets time to shine. He’s just as sadistic and depraved as in the comics, but he also has this disarming, casual demeanor about him like he’s just indulging a hobby instead of slicing innocent people’s faces off. His close friendship with his boss Black Mask adds some depth to the character as well. 3/5

Killer Croc: Sadly, he doesn’t get much time in the spotlight, but he’s pretty cool nonetheless. The makeup and prosthetics used to create him look amazing, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s deep voice and imposing body language make him really stand out as an intimidating presence. He’s often in the background, which fits his role as an outcast by choice and a man of few words, but whenever he does get focus, he has everyone’s attention. It really would be a shame if this character’s only appearance was in a mediocre schlock action movie, but he makes the most of what he has. 3.5/5

Deadshot: Another highlight of what would otherwise be a forgettable film, Deadshot is just as cool and competent as he’s always been in other media, but this portrayal stands out for one simple reason. Will Smith was a very odd choice to play the role, but it worked out for the best here because you get the sense he truly understands the characters. He’s ruthless and pragmatic, but has just as enough charm and depth to make him likable. 4/5

Black Mask: I, like many, was skeptical when I saw early trailers depicting Roman Sionis as a foppish weirdo who doesn’t wear his signature mask, but upon seeing the final movie, I really feel like he has the high ground over other DCEU villains. Ewan McGregor is endlessly captivating in the role, portraying him as a swaggering dandy who is nevertheless dangerous due to his boundless narcissism and explosive temper. Sure, those who deal in absolutes would be put off from the differences with his comic counterpart — who is far more cold and humorless — but from a certain point of view, this flamboyant take on the character isn’t so much a departure as it is an addition to make him stand out while keeping his role the same. Black Mask has always been a middleman between the traditional mobsters of yesteryear and the colorful rogues that plague Gotham today, and this portrayal perfectly encapsulates that. He works in the shadows, but isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty; he flies off the handle and gets reckless at times, but there’s no question that the whole operation was his idea. 5/5

Harley Quinn: Margot Robbie owns this role. She’s unbelievably dazzling as a badass, funny, sexy antihero who deals greatly with tragedy and proves that there’s always been more to her than her initial role as the Joker’s sidekick. Again, not much to say, but she’s almost perfect. 5/5

[alphasmoonlit-selfships]

🏢, 💞, 🛌, 🐶 for your main f/o, Atsushi! Have fun! ^^

"Hello new anon! Thanks for dropping by and leaving a few emoji asks!" Atsushi grins a charming smile, "Just so you know, we greatly appreciate them and I really enjoy answering for My Darling, who is honestly surprised and bashfully grateful for me taking the lead for now." He chuckled with a glance to Dany. The petite brunette sketching something away on her tablet.

"Well lets jump right in!" 🐯🌙

🏢 Do you two live together?

We do! We actually bought a small two bed, two bath condominium sometime two years ago. 😄 We kind of made the decision after about two years of dating. And had to deal with the process of looking for a place, affording it and settling with one out of many possibilities; plus the paper work of essentially buying a place together, which itself took another year... I think during that time we kind of moved in together in the Agency dorms. Dany had her own dorm when she joined the Agency and I had still been rooming with Kyouka-chan since she joined. No surprise to still living in a closet at the age of 23 and with a late growth spurt I had a year or two back 😅.

Kyouka-chan more or less pushed me into doing so, if it meant I didn’t have to live in a closet anymore (which she found silly of me to have been doing for as long as I did). And so she didn’t have to occasionally walk into Dany and I’s… more affectionate moments… 😶 Which were rare occasions I swear, the dorms weren’t the most private places with it’s fairly thin w—! Ó//////Ò… Ah forget about that… >>

Ah, nonetheless, yeah, we bought a place together and it definitely took time to slowly get it to a more homey-like setting that we wanted to get to ☺️ we’ve had at least one get-together party with the Agency for one of our birthdays.

We’ve had a few ups and downs with living together of course, but it’s very rare encounters. And it’s usually over silly, trivial things everyone deals with…let’s just say Dany has the tendency to horde and clutter things on her desk and hates to move things around in our room… she always claims it’s clean and organized and will get mad if I so much move something of hers out of its place… 👀 well more anxious and tunnel minded when she can't find it, which I feel bad for doing ;;;;

I mean I have my faults too 😳 but I’m sure she’ll take the chance to tell you about it another time if a question like this comes around for her about me 😅

💞 How cuddly is S/I? What cuddling position you two like the most?

Dany is very, very cuddly 🥰😳 she is very in tune with her wolf a lot of the time, considering she’s had her ability far longer than I have. Her mannerisms and general personality is very cat-like, probably even more so due to my ability’s influence… but yeah, she’s a very cuddly person, mostly in private. Though, since we started dating she is a bit more affectionate in public ^/////^, which was different to see her do as someone not so into PDA, other than hand holding and a few kisses if no one is around us. She is shy, I think her confident moments are encouraged by her wolf. I can say similar things with my tiger 🐯🌙

Honestly any instance of either of us just having the chance of holding and nuzzling each other is the best time 💖 I think our most favorite cuddling position is when we’re resting on each other and running our hands through either’s hair. I love embracing her and resting my head on her chest while she caress my hair u//w//u it’s very comforting and soothing and I just feel sleepy when she does. She sings very softly too and it’s honestly so lulling to hear 🥰🥺🌙

With Dany, she is very small.. a petite little lass as she likes to refer to herself. She’s 24 and still 4’9, granted don’t let looks deceive you, she can protect herself just fine on her own! But she’s just so cute when I hold her 🥺 she is literally a koala when she settles on me to cuddle, usually resting on my stomach as she nuzzles my chest or neck and purring from her ability. I hold her so close and just murmur soft things to her, all while braiding and running my hands through her hair, soft and longer now UwU. She really loves and enjoys it.

We alternate these positions a lot, especially depending on either of our more draining days. We also love spooning, I admit I love how she just curls behind me, or how she practically holds me close and lulls me with her musings 🥰

🛌 Do you share a room/bed?

We do~ 💖 =UwU=

Honestly, the comfort of having someone next to you when you sleep or relax is…the best thing to experience 💖 and with Dany it’s just even more amazing 🥰 as I mentioned in the previous, she is a cuddlier and I am not opposed to it in the slightest, if anything it’s a comfort for me as it is for her 💖 especially in our rough days emotionally and mentally. Our bed is a comfort and loving zone, I think this meme Dany sent me once before best illustrates us and our abilities in general 🥰

It is lonely when either of us go on away mission ;;;w;;; it’s honestly not the same at all. For me at least it’s far too quiet and cold, even with the warmth my ability provides. It’s like missing that other half of me 😔 even though Dany is pretty quiet and light in her steps, there is a part of her as a person that makes some noise, be it in her actions or her little ticks.

My ability is far to attached to Dany’s too so I go into a strange phase of wondering the house… and talking to myself a bit too much as if she was around… I’m sure I’ve seen videos of cats doing something similar when things are just too still and quiet 😅. I refuse to let Dany go once she comes back, to which’s she doesn’t mind, cause a lot of the time she returns exhausted and missing me too 🥺💕 it’s pretty a similar experience with her too.

🐶 Do you two have a pet? Do you want one?

Eh 😅 no we don’t, yet surprisingly it feels like we do most of the time due to our animal abilities. There are instances where either of us just turn into our abilities for lazying about and end up with our bed or sofa covered in fur >.> no surprise at all that tigers and wolves have very thick fur, and shed a good amount in the summer…

So probably not anytime soon,,, we do however have several stray cats around the outside of our condo. Dany and I have a big soft spot for them, so we leave them food every so often! If we do get a pet companion in the future it will likely be a cat 🐱 we already have enough of our animal gifts so we’ll see how we deal with a third in the mix later on 😅…wait… I think that came out wrong... O////O

Er... I think that was all the questions for now! Thanks again for the asks! We sincerely appreciate it and look forward to taking over for a bit longer for Dany <3 — Atsushi 🐯🌙

[orcx-nus]

@flowerytruth​ said: “ 1,9,13 “

the be honest meme.

                  1. What would prevent you from following someone?

(( i’ll be honest, i have quite a few things that would prevent me from following someone. when deciding whether or not to follow someone i mainly look at rules, character descriptions, writing style, some aesthetic & organization, and the type of activity.

rules: i have seen a few blogs with rules like “if you write [insert some sort of common trigger here] whatsoever, even if tagged, don’t follow!” or “even if i don’t follow you i will block you if i so much as hear that you write [insert  some sort of common trigger here]” or smth like that. in which case, i avoid them entirely. first of all, i hate rules that police other’s behaviors outside of their personal interactions. as long as someone tags things properly and it’s evident that mun=/=muse, why be so hostile from the get-go? second, if they’re not gonna like what i write for character exploration purposes, then there’s no point in following to begin with. better to avoid issues before they start. also, if i see someone just doesn’t have rules altogether, or has very minimal/vague rules i tend to avoid them. nothing personal, it’s just easier to avoid problems if someone has proper rules.

character descriptions: especially if they’re an OC, if they lack any character descriptions of backgrounds, or have very minimal ones, i tend to avoid. i hate having to constantly ask questions about characters and prefer to have someplace i can come back to in order to double-check details and make sure i don’t cross certain lines. 

writing style: i tend to avoid people who write a lot of short replies (a paragraph or less) bc it gives me nothing to work with in the long-run. i used to write with a lot of people like that, and i eventually ended up just having to remake bc i lost my inspiration to write altogether. it’s not fun if i have nothing to work with. also, although it’s not necessary, i tend to enjoy those who regularly use icons and format replies at least a lil bit. just a personal preference.

aesthetic & organization: as i mentioned, it’s not super necessary but i definitely enjoy at least a little bit of aesthetic. however, i mainly apply this to replies only. in other words, if someone writes a lot, but doesn’t often use formatting (ie: small text, bolded/italicized words or ‘speech’, etc.) i tend to lean more towards not following. of course, this doesn’t always apply but i do like seeing pretty writing lol however, if someone uses too much aesthetic writing (ie: drastically formatting every other word) it makes it more difficult for me to read and i can also avoid them. basically, just format within moderation. also, if someone doesn’t have any sort of organization, especially in regards to links, i avoid. 

activity: i now i’m also not the best example of this and i may come off as a bit hypocritical, but if someone posts wayyyy too much ooc instead of interactions i tend to steer clear. it’s just not fun or enjoyable to have my dash constantly cluttered by one person constantly posting ooc and/or never actually doing any sort of rping. unless we’ve known each other for a while or i like you enough, i will generally avoid people who do this. i’ve already unfollowed some people for this. ))

                  9. What is your opinion on exclusivity? Do you practice it? Why / why not?

(( hmmm don’t care for it. i respect if others are exclusive with other partners, be it in terms of only interacting with one of each muse at a time (ie only one Makoto or Haru at a time), exclusive shipping, etc. however, i refuse to be exclusive for the time being. i think it just limits interactions unnecessarily, as well as makes exploration of relationships more difficult/boring. my muse may react differently with two different harus or two different rins, be it friendship-wise or romantically, and i really like to explore how each relationship is formed! ))

                  13. Have you ever thought about leaving rp? What caused it? What changed your mind?

(( i have actually thought of it and done it at least twice before! it wasn’t bc i hated it or anything tho. it was mainly bc my life got too busy for me to keep it up after some time, or i just lost my muse for a much longer period of time than i initially anticipated. i recently came back again, actually, for the same reason that i came back the other times: i missed rp, finally got some more free time, and i got my muses back! however, my life is getting busy once more so i may eventually have to take another semi-hiatus until i get some more things sorted out ;w; i don’t expect that happening too soon tho ))

[thewriterslament]

how to write that 17-page essay that’s high-key giving you anxiety

so it’s 4am and you’ve had three cups of coffee but you’ve only written two sentences. you look at the prompt and find it has ceased to make sense. “how the fuck am i gonna turn this into a 17-page paper” you ask. 

never fear! your friendly neighborhood college fuckup is here with an answer. buckle down and get another cup of coffee; you’re in this for the long haul. (literally. this post got long because i’m apparently incapable of writing short posts, but i also pulled a 3.9 cGPA using this method so i’d say it’s worth the read.)

first, a cheat: email your professor and ask if you can use subheaders. subheaders eliminate the need for smooth transitions between portions of your argument and also create a ton of white space, which can help you reach page count. 

second, a tip: don’t be afraid to meet with your prof. this essay probably isn’t a take-home exam; it’s likely that your prof set this paper to give you a chance to learn and write about something you enjoy. shoot your prof an email saying “hey, this is what i’m thinking, this is what i’m struggling with, can i meet with you to talk it out?” 9 times out of 10, your prof will say yes. if they say no, talk to another prof in the same discipline. otherwise talk to your uni writing center or a friend of yours. worse come to worst, shoot me a message.

what you’re gonna do now is outline the fuck out of your paper to procrastinate actually writing it. 

step 1: take apart the prompt. it’ll be asking for a few different things; mark these things with different cues: brackets, underlining, different colored pens, whatever. this structures your response.

if you don’t know your thesis yet, that’s fine! let it develop naturally as you conduct your research and plan your argument. you can change it as you go - that’s the point of researching the topic. no one will know what your first draft thesis was.

step 2: look at the dismembered prompt. write bullets with brief explanations for how you’ll attack each part of the prompt. these can be detailed or as vague as “look up that one reading and use it as a counter argument.” then figure out the best way to organize the bullets. if nothing makes sense, that’s fine too. you can write each chunk of your argument and structure it later.

these bullets make good subheaders. js.

step 3: under each bullet from step 2, list out what info and evidence you need for that aspect of your argument. don’t worry about details yet; focus on structure. write these bullets as though you’re talking to a friend about what your argument is and why is works. let it be stupid. let it be simple. say shit like “freud was a bitch and i can prove it.” 

step 4: now that you have a rough draft of your outline, go back and fill in the details. remember, you’re still outlining! you’re basically redoing step 3 with the bullets you made in step 3. this is the part where i take the most time and put in the most effort.

i tend to reach page/word count easily if my outline is half the length the paper needs to be, so i keep outlining until i reach that point. this ratio might be different for you. if you can figure out your ratio, it can tell you if you need to look for more info or if you’re good to go.

make a note of what you’re citing but don’t worry about actual citations. i like using gdocs because you can easily paste a link to your source in a comment. this way, the sources don’t clutter up your doc or artificially inflate your page or word count.

be silly! be stupid! use swear words and memes and internet lingo. you’re just outlining right now; you don’t need to sound smart and professional. you should be focusing on what you want to say, not how to say it.

by the end of this process, my outline is basically my paper in bulletpoint format, without any fancy jargon or quotes or cited evidence, and usually not in complete sentences. i’ve essentially tricked myself into writing my paper by saying “i’m just outlining, it doesn’t really matter.” it’s also less daunting to write the rest of the paper when you know you already have 9 pages done instead of 0.

step 5: write the damn thing! open a fresh doc for your paper and view it side-by-side with your outline. now you get to make your bullets sound pretentious and academic. insert quotes and other evidence. turn “freud was a bitch” into “freud knowingly perpetuated several falsehoods for the sake of his personal gain, thereby undoing decades of progress in the field of psychology.” 

don’t worry about citations right now, though! do what you did in your outline and insert the citations as comments at the points where they need to be. creating citations will interrupt your flow.

step 6: once your paper is done, go back and add citations! this can take up to an hour depending on how many sources you have, so budget your time appropriately. 

holy shit! you just wrote a whole damn paper! i’m proud of you, buddy. go buy yourself a milkshake and take a nap. 

[bluesimba]

Post Glory

Fandom: Persona 5

Pairing: Akira/Reader, Ryuji/Reader

Warnings: Heavy spoilers, explicit depictions of depression, intense grieving, and trauma.

Notes: Can we talk about how much trauma the Phantom Thieves have been through in canon

Dedicated to @ao3-actually-android <3

[I]

November 1st.

The receptionist at the front desk glances at you from under her bangs for the fourth time. She adjusts the collar of her shirt and types something with a flutter of her hands. From the corner of the waiting room, a member of your security team stares at her.

You pick up one of the magazines on the table in front of you. The glossy pages pass between your fingers, and several diagrams of the brain pop up with its functions outlined. Terms like depression and anxiety and trauma stand out on almost every page. They cycle through your head again, but this time it’s not three hours after you swallowed sleeping pills.

Breathing on beat with the ebbing and flowing of the waiting room’s music makes your head less congested.

A door locks the waiting room off from the offices, and a woman in a light pink dress steps through. Her voice carries your name. When you stand up and gesture for your security team to stay put, she smiles at you.

“Hi,” she says as she leads you to her office. “My name is Kaede. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She tells you her qualifications.

“Pleasure to meet you, too! I’m sorry I had to reschedule at the last minute. It’s been pretty hectic.”

By hectic do you mean being fused with the fibers of your bed? Or avoiding the growing mountains of clutter that sprung up in your room? How about how it’s taxing to grab your phone charger from the floor? Or worst of all, not being able to articulate why you can’t do anything, instead masking it with “busy” or “hectic” or “sorry, I can’t do that today.”

“That’s no problem. Our specialized program is very flexible with our clients’ schedules.” She opens her office door for you. You take the seat next to her desk, and while you marvel at the cohesion of colors in her office, she sits behind her desk, clicks her mouse, and brings up a tab on the computer. “Before we begin, everything we talk about here is strictly between us. Nothing will be shared unless you become a threat to yourself or others.”

“Okay.”

“So, I read over your personal statement, and you mentioned you made an appointment for therapy because you feel untethered. Can you elaborate on what lead to that feeling?”

“Sure, so I’ll start with the Phantom Thieves.”

[II]

August.

Café Leblanc’s red closed sign protects you from the swarming streets. Hives of reporters frenzy outside, lanyards around their necks and cameras in hand. Your hand knocks against the salt and pepper shakers as the others crowd in the booth, with Makoto next to you. Across from you, Ryuji inhales an appetizer.

Futaba glares at Yusuke, who sips tea from a white cup. She pushes her glasses up and scrunches her nose.

“Inari, acknowledge that your left leg is shorter than your right,” she says.

“Nonsense, my legs are symmetrical, that I can assure you.”

She pulls out her phone and ignores her cup of coffee, which is four sizes too big for her. You and Makoto exchange glances.

You lean over the table to come out from the corner. “And what’s the point of arguing over Yusuke’s leg difference, Futaba? You’ve both been squabbling more ever since. . .”

Futaba halts trying to pull up Yusuke’s medical records. Sojiro stops waxing the bar just for a minute, his pink shirt now too vibrant for the solemnity washing over his face. The legs of the Phantom Thieves sit around the table, but Akira’s absence comes with its own ghost. Two years and his ghost still follows.

Makoto seems like she’s on the other side of the world, now, from you.

Akira who solves everything. Akira who acts as the unifying pillar. He makes you ache. He makes you lonely, untethered. The thrills, the disguises, the abilities, they all have his name on them. Everything about him scrambles you.

“Anyway.” You cough. “I’ve been thinking we should do something together since we’re all off right now. You know, like the good ol’ days.”

Silence resounds in Leblanc, but Ryuji grins and it warms your heart. “That’s awesome! Whaddya say, guys?” He looks around at everyone, and his enthusiasm brings everyone back together.

“That would be nice, especially since it’s been so long,” Makoto says. She shuts her eyes for a second. “Do you have anything specific in mind?”

You hum. “How about the beach? I think the last time we all went together was when we went to Hawaii a few years ago. We could pick up a game of beach volleyball!”

“And it’d be a good chance to get some sun!” Ann says.

Everyone takes out their phone calendars, and Makoto, the master of organization herself, makes quick work of it. “How does the last Saturday this month sound for everyone?” she asks.”That way we can avoid Autumn from September to November.”

November.

November.

November.

It takes you away. It stuffs your heart in your throat. Everyone else continues planning, unfazed, but Ryuji notices. And his smile dims.

Makoto calls your name, but it doesn’t register. So does Ann.

“Wendy.” Futaba puts down her phone.

You blink. Wendy. Wendy. Your real name doesn’t bring you out of it. Wendy, your alias, with a fishing hook on it tugs you out of Neverland.

“Oh, sorry.” You blink again for good measure and to reassure everyone you aren’t a stone statue. “It’s just been a. . .” Hard? Debilitating? Exhaustive for reasons you can’t articulate? “Busy time. I guess it caught up with me all at once.” There it is. Busy.

“Happens to the best of us.” Makoto smiles. “Does that date work for you?”

“Absolutely,” you say without glancing at your calendar.

Over the next fifteen minutes the Phantom Thieves disperse—Ann with a modeling gig she’s got to make, Makoto for a lunch with Sae, Yusuke to read up on art theory, Haru for a meeting, and Futaba to make memes. Ryuji is the only one who stays.

Leblanc’s quietness disturbs Ryuji to his core. You see it by the way he fidgets and leans back to yawn. When he knows you’ve caught him, he looks away.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey. What’s up?”

Sticking his elbow on the bar, he puts his hand on the side of his neck. “You can talk to me if you need to.”

Right. November. Robin Hood. Goro.

“Thank you, Ryuji.” You avert your eyes downward. “But this is something personal.”

He leans back against the booth, putting more distance between you two, and he looks. . .he looks something you can’t decipher. Wounded? No, small. After a second he brings back his smile to mend the air. “No problem. Just gotta look out for one of my best buds.”

“Hey, do you know if Morgana is stil. . .”

“Upstairs? Yeah, I think he sleeps up there sometimes, since, you know.”

“Let’s invite him to the beach with the rest of us.”

“The cat? And sand ? Now that’s something I gotta see.”

“Don’t be mean, Ryuji!”

When he laughs you have to choke down your own. The light in Leblanc hits him just right, and he looks untouched by the corruption, by the palaces, by Yaldabaoth. Hope lives in his eyes and dreams light up his cheeks.

November’s weight sits on your shoulders. Akechi Goro’s death lingers. The Robin Hood to your Wendy is sleeping. And to think, he was eighteen.

Your brother would have been twenty this year.

[III]

The beach concaves away from the rest of society. Stray beach towels spot the sand and the waves edge up to reach for their ends. Cliff edges meet the ocean under the inky new moon sky.

Tiny lights hang up on a string and frame the entrance of the restaurant you eat at. Morgana peers at Ann from the stool next to her with hearts in his eyes. Sometimes he tries to steal a glance at Futaba’s phone, only for her to yank it close to her chest. If the beach behind you disappeared, no one would blink twice.

Morgana wanders over to you and Ryuji and hops on one of the two empty stools that separate you both from everyone else. His lip curls and a smile sneaks out. You shield your bowl of ramen in case he decides to pounce on the bar. There’s not a chance in hell you’re letting him knock over this art; a prepared egg sliced clean in half with its golden yolk on display, a spread of colors blended together, and flavors that glide over your tongue and keep you coming back for more.

“Looks like you got burned, Ryuji.” He licks his paw and glances at Ryuji from the corners of his eyes.

Ryuji’s lips screw, and he tries to cross his arms but winces because of the sunburn spread over his body. “It’s not like I knew the sun was gonna be raging today.” He looks at you. “And you knew and didn’t tell me!”

You laugh. “Sorry, but you should’ve brought the sunscreen anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. At least I wasn’t afraid to get in the water.”

A smirk cuts your lips, and you cover Morgana’s ears. “Don’t make fun of him! Of course he wouldn’t get in the water!” Turning to Morgana, you coo at him in a voice you know makes his skin crawl. “That punk didn’t mean it, Morgana. Don’t listen to him. I’ll protect you.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t get in, either! And who are you callin’ a punk?”

When you uncover Morgana’s ears, he takes the chance to slip away.

“Oh come on, Ryuji, you were being a little punk-y.”

“Was not!”

“Really? Then maybe we should get everyone else’s opinions.”

Before you can call out to everyone and make Ryuji’s skin even brighter, he hoists you up and throws you over his shoulder. He winces but starts walking to the shoreline.

“Did you forget you were sunburned?”

Two beats of silence echo between you two before he answers. “It’s no big deal. Besides, you’re getting wet at least once today.”

The fool. The absolute buffoon. The heat under your face erupts.

“You’re hopeless, Ryuji.”

He says something you don’t catch because blood detonates in your ears over and over again. Your heart chokes on an overload of sugar. It’s buried in a sugary grave. You protest by muttering into his shoulder.

Only a few inches of space are between you and the water by the time he stops walking. He’s a few inches shy of being chest-deep. If you flick your foot down, you’d skim the water for sure, but there’s no fun in tearing his dream of dunking you away.

“Hold on, gimme a sec.”

That doesn’t sound good.

It isn’t.

He shifts you around and you flail, then you wind up in his arms. Your heart, stuffed with sugar, is revived by the way he looks at you. Light rosy tinges whip over his cheeks, and he turns his head away from you for a second.

Once he collects himself, he counts off with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“One, two. . .”

“Just do it already!”

When he lets go, you see him mouth the number three. The water floods over your face and body, and you seal your eyes shut.

It’s quiet, here. You kick up some sand with your heel while trying to get your bearings straight, but the ocean swallows the noise. All you have is how the grainy the sand feels.

How did Goro feel on that sinking ship? Explosive? Confused? Destroyed?

Helpless?

Did you even know your brother well?

How can you even attempt to understand the pits of helplessness and wrath he drowned in when something like this—going for a swim—sets you off? How can you grieve for so long and know so little?

Someone’s calling your name, but the sounds are muffled by the water.

Ryuji plunges his hand in and brings you back. The ocean’s surface breaks with your head, and your resurfacing looks less “majestic mermaid with perfect hair” and more “air exists and it’s delicious.”

After a second he brings you close to him, wrapping you in a hug. You press against his collarbone.

“Ryuji, what’s wrong?”

“I just got worried, ‘s all.”

You pull back. “Well, I’m all right. You made sure of that when you pulled me out. See? Nothing bad would’ve happened.”

He avoids your gaze. “I tried calling your name.”

“I think I heard that. You might’ve had better luck if you called me Wendy. Seems like I can hear that from around the world.”

Wendy tells you what to say, how to smile, what to wear, what to think, and who to be. If you do everything she says, you can stand next to Robin Hood and Peter Pan and all the other fairytale characters who are bound to the pages of their own stories. Wendy makes you worthy.

She was always the press’ favorite.

“I ain’t gonna call you Wendy. ‘s not who you are.” He says your name under the moonless sky in such a way that it might break if the ocean got too close to it. “You ain’t Wendy.”

You aren’t Wendy.

You aren’t Wendy.

“I—I appreciate that. A lot.”

He looks at the beach. “You don’t gotta thank me. Let’s get back before the others come lookin’ for us.”

Both of you tread in silence. After a minute the water slides off you, but the sand sticks to your wet feet as you climb out of the ocean. You both wander over to his beach towel; its colors were blasted dry by the sun earlier.

When you sit down, you sit close to him and your shoulders bump. Beads of water trail your neck, your arms, and your legs. You glimpse him staring out at the ocean.

“It’s nice being out here,” you say. You reel back the words “with you” when you think about Akira.

“Yeah? Can’t say I’ve ever had a sunburn this big before.”

You roll your eyes and bring your knees to your chest, but the smile sailing over your lips slips out. “Which is because you didn’t bring sunscreen.”

“Pffft, there’s no way a stupid sunburn’s gonna get a leg up on me.”

Along the beach there are sandcastles, some in perfect condition, some folded in on themselves, and some that exist only as lumps of sand. A tiny red and white store-bought flag pokes out of a collapsing one. The tide rolls in and out and chips away at the ones along the shoreline.

“It’s kind of nice to be away from the world for a bit,” you say. “You know? Sequestered away from the reporters and everything.”

He puts his arms behind and lies on his back. “You’re telling me. Been hounding us ever since our identities were released. I mean, who does that! We were seventeen!”

“We were seventeen and arguably the most powerful force in Japan.”

“C’mon, we were kids. You should know how all that affected us better than anyone. You’re majoring in psych and all that stuff.”

“By affected you mean the stress it’d have on a developing teenage brain?”

“That! Someone should tell all those reporters to read up on that shit.”

Streams of conversation come from the restaurant. The rest of the Phantom Thieves tell jokes and bicker and bask in the restaurant’s lighting. Judging from that spilling sound, Morgana jumped on the bar.

“They’ve been hanging around my favorite places. It got bad a few weeks ago,” you say.

“Whadda they want?”

You shift. “An interview with Wendy.”

He makes a sound of disgust. “Tell ‘em to screw off. You don’t know a Wendy.”

Leaning against him right now would be nice. You’d fit next to him well, and he’d sling his arm over your shoulders. Under the moonless sky, you’d both be two halves of a complete moon.

But you do know a Wendy. If you were stronger, you could evict her right now with his help. She reminds you of the abilities you had and the times where it was you and the Phantom Thieves versus the world. She reminds you of Goro.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Waves continue to crash. Tiny sounds from the ecosystem of the beach wade between you both. He chews the inside of his cheek. When he breathes, it smothers the tiny sounds and the conversations from the restaurant.

“Y’know, I’ve been thinkin’,” he says.

“About?”

He sits up and rubs the back of his neck. “Everything we did, I guess. Changed a lot of stuff.”

You laugh. “It’d be kind of weird if nothing changed when we fought a god. Besides, I thought you’d enjoy the spotlight.”

“You kiddin’? I can’t even run in peace without someone on my ass.”

“Well.” A quick brush of your hands takes some of the sand off, and you get up and hold out your hand. “You can always try now. I’ll race you to fire up that competitive spirit!”

“For real?”

“Yeah.”

He clasps his hand in yours. “Yeah? Don’t cry when you lose.”

[IV]

Doctor Kaede slides a box of tissues to the corner of her desk and you pluck one to have something to hold onto. “What you’re feeling is valid. Have you discussed your grief with anyone else?”

“Only one person, Akira.”

“What about him made you open up?”

Kamoshida, Madarame, Kaneshiro, Futaba, Okumura, Sae, Shido. Hell, the collective social conscious of everyone wrapped up in the endless tracks of Mementos! How many times do you need to add Yaldabaoth to that list, too? Everyone talks about the humans the Phantom Thieves changed, but no one mentions the cosmic-defying entities you defied by daring to be your own people. Akira brought a rag-tag group of teenagers together to challenge the very fabric of the universe.

“I don’t know, really. I guess I thought if anyone could understand, it’d be him. He was the closest to Goro.”

She furrows her eyebrows. “Were you close to your brother?”

You fidget and rub the side of your neck. “We didn’t have that kind of relationship in the traditional sense. He had a hard time opening up, refused to, most of the time. I didn’t know anything about him other than that Shido was somehow involved, but there was something different when Akira showed up.”

“And how did you cope with Goro’s. . .actions?”

She might as well stamp the word “murderer” on his forehead. Is she wrong?

Of course! He was tossed aside by Shido and manipulated as a kid!

No, she isn’t. Goro did that of his own free will.

Come on, you of all people know the toll abuse and manipulation takes on a child.

I know. I know he was in unimaginable pain.

Then why are you sitting here and betraying him?

I’m not betraying him. These are the facts of the situation. I wanted to help him!

You can’t even imagine what he went through. Stop trying. You even admitted some guy got closer to your brother in one year than you did in your whole life.

We’re still family .

“I probably could’ve coped better.”

[V]

October.

Leblanc’s lights give you a headache.

“You gonna be okay, kid?” Sojiro asks as he unfastens his apron.

Hunched over with your forehead against a table, you groan. The bags under your eyes drag your face down, but hey, who needs concealer when no one can see your face?

“Wake me up when people obsess over something else.”

He walks over and pats your shoulder. “You can stay if you lockup. Remember to turn off everything when you leave this time.”

The door opens before you answer. Light, airy, almost, the bell rings. You lift your head, blinking, and turn toward the door. Who comes into a café five minutes before closing? His slim silhouette stands in the doorway while rain splatters on the pavement. Great, you know he’s the type to order something extravagant, expect it in two minutes, and stall closing.

Sojiro whistles and puts one of his hands on his hips. He smiles. “Finally decided to show your face around here, huh, kid?”

In one second he goes from being a stranger to someone who causes the ache in your heart; a curly black head of hair and glasses. Now, though, he’s taller, and the blazer he wears looks like it was plucked from a high-end fashion designer’s wardrobe.

“Akira,” you say. The table wobbles under your hands when you jut up. His very presence reinforces the chronic loneliness, the hollowness everyone tried to patch up with promises to get together, and the messages you and Ryuji and Makoto and Futaba—and everyone sent that were left on read or met with a single word response.

Shock registers on Sojiro’s face when you storm up to Akira, and in some place deep, deep, deep down in your head, a twinge of, what is it—shame or fear?—rears its head. But fuck it. If you looked away, Akira could pull one of his disappearing stunts.

“You asshole!” You jab a finger at him, grind your teeth, seethe, and do all the things that say I hate you, I hate you, I hate you .

Wide-eyed, Sojiro steps in to break you apart. “Hey, hey, hey—”

Akira holds out his hand. “It’s fine.”

“Two years, Akira! You could have called or texted or something, but you didn’t.” You ball your fists. “You vanished.”

Him being here means you need to answer a question: how much can you matter to someone who up and leaves?

“Both of you sit down and cool off,” Sojiro says. “I’ll make you a drink.”

Being a foot and a half away from Akira who now sits across from you makes your jaw tight. The pot in the back brews coffee.

Akira looks you in the eyes. “You’re right to be angry.”

You cross your arms over your chest.

“I needed to make sure no one would cause you any issues,” he says.

“We’ve been followed for the last two years by reporters, Akira. Anyone we know has been hounded, too. Sae’s gotten so much more shit outside the courtroom. We scrubbed Mementos, but there will always be bad intentions.”

Sojiro walks over with your drinks in hand, sets them down in front of you both, and gives you each a glance.

“Thank you,” Akira says. He picks up the mug and brings it to his lips.

“I’ll be in the back. Don’t burn anything down, kid.”

When Sojiro disappears into the back, Akira sets the mug down.

“I wasn’t talking about the press,” he says.

Oh.

“You should’ve told us. We could’ve worked together so you didn’t have to do it on your own.” You look down. “We needed you, too. I needed you, Akira.”

He places his hand on yours. “I know, and I’m sorry.”

Tears line the bottom of your eyes and spill over. “It’s hard when everyone asks about him, you know? And it’s been two years so I feel like I’m supposed to be over it, but I’m not . I keep feeling it again and again and again.” You place your other hand over his. “You have to know how it feels, Akira. No one else gets it. You have to know.”

He says your name, and if your sniffles were any louder, you would have missed it. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Yeah, you need this.

“Where?”

“Trust me.”

He offers you his arm when he gets up, and you cling to him with the skin on your arm and hand touching his blazer.

“Always.”

Quiet streets listen to your footsteps as you take the back alleys. When you're here with him, will the portals come back while you round the corners? Your grip on him tightens. Rain pelts the umbrella.

“You’re nervous,” he says.

“And whose fault is that?”

He smirks.

You pass the little red arcade nestled away from the world where you met Akira for the first time, the old bookstore with a joined café where you ran into him the second time, and a closed movie theater where he got your number the third time. Then, a park comes into view. The wet grass bends to your feet as you both walk to the bench with an overhang.

The wooden bench squeaks when you both sit down, and Akira folds up the umbrella, then leans it against the bench. Ducks waddle out from the pond hidden by bushes.

“I was starfished out on the grass here and screaming when you asked me to join the Phantom Thieves,” you say.

“Morgana thought you were in pain.”

“Oh, I was. I was cramming verb and adjective conjugations. That time feels close and far away at the same time, you know?”

Whenever he casts a glance at you, it’s distant. You could lean against his shoulder, intertwine your fingers, and have your skin on his, but the barrier between you holds. Your heart remains content in your chest instead of lurching in your throat.

He whispers your name. “You talked about Goro earlier.”

Wailed, more like it, but yeah.

“You’re grieving,” he says. “I think seeing a professional would help you.”

What? Your eyes open wide. Does he think you can’t handle it? Does he think you’re broken? Stop. You take a deep breath. You’re not broken. Seeking therapy doesn’t make you broken or fragile. It makes you strong.

“Why?”

“I’m concerned about you. I know an office. They helped me with my trauma.” He puts his hand on yours.

Trauma? Was it trauma? Okumura’s death. Goro’s insatiable craving for revenge. Your brother looking at you, red blood vessels popping in his eyes, like he’d kill you. He said he would. Sweeping away the terrifying sides of Goro let you file everything you don’t like away and lock them up.

When Akira touches you, why do you wish he was Ryuji?

Your nails leave imprints on your palms, little crescent moons. “Can you send me their phone number?”

“Sure.”

All of Akira’s attributes line up with what you want on paper: charismatic, intelligent, sociable. So, why, when he scoots closer to you, do you want him to be Ryuji? Why do you want Ryuji’s arm slung around you and for him to pull you close?

“Akira, what do I mean to you?”

You watch the ducks. He looks at you.

“Everything.”

“I’m sorry.”

He squeezes your hand. “I know.”

[VI]

You puncture holes in the tissue and avoid Doctor Kaede’s eyes.

“Before we end our first session, are you aware of the model the Five Stages of Grief?” She pulls out a piece of paper with the stages of them in one column—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

“Yes.”

“Are you practicing self-care strategies?” She runs her finger down the other column, and you hone in on one or two of the thirty or more strategies.

“Sometimes, but it’s hard to talk about when I don’t know how to put the words together.” You jam your hands together.

She nods. “Grief is especially difficult to navigate because we’re not taught how to cope and understand what we’re feeling. If you’re comfortable, talking about how you’re feeling with people you trust could also help. Sometimes we seek external understanding because we’re unsure of how we feel on the inside.”

Akira—you poured and projected on him. He became your only emotional outlet.

“Grief comes in stages and everyone processes it in different ways. No matter what, you’re not alone.”

“Thank you, Doctor Kaede.” You smile. “Can I make a follow-up appointment for next week?”

You’re not alone. You’re never alone.

[VII]

November 2nd.

You hole yourself up in your apartment, as per usual on the second of November. Glimmering stars peek through your closed curtains. All at once, numbness takes you and keeps you suspended from the rest of the world.

Rings from your phone don’t bring you down. Each minute passes on lethargic legs, and you don’t need anything or anyone to tell you it’s 12:34 a.m. As soon as it was 12:01, you knew. Packets of candy litter your nightstand. You sink into your bed.

Someone raps their knuckles against your door. You turn away from it.

Ryuji calls your name.

You slug one leg out from underneath the blankets, then the other leg. The cool doorknob sends a shiver up your spine.

“Hey,” Ryuji says. He takes a moment to catch his breath. “Sorry it took me so long to get here. I had to run.”

One blink, then two, then three. He’s here for you. He remembered, and your throat constricts.

“Hey. Thanks.”

“Wanna sit outside?”

“Yeah, I do.”

You step out, closing the door behind you. Autopilot takes over when you lead him to a sitting area with two foldable chairs next to each other. Instead of sitting, you wander over to the gray railing and peer down to the busy street. He stands next to you, and you let the silence talk between you two.

Akira is everything you want on paper, but Ryuji—Ryuji is real and here. You touch his hand and trace the veins.

“Thanks for remembering, Ryuji.”

He catches every flutter of your eyes, and when you lean into him, he laces your fingers together. His hands, steady and warm, ground you.

“‘course, I’d do anything for you.”

You ask him a medley of questions: Why are you putting so much effort in? Why do I feel this again and again and again? Why can’t I let go?

Please, will you stay?

But they all roll themselves together when you look into his eyes, hands still intertwined, and breathe his name: “Ryuji.”

His name is air for your lungs. His touch is the sun walking on your skin. His closeness is a catharsis you’d only ever caught in Neverland before.

He brushes the side of your face with his free hand and kisses your forehead under the half moon. “Anything for you.”

Together, in time, you both could make a full moon.

[leviathan-supersystem]

OKAY i finished a rough draft of the script i’m making for a youtube video version of the Currents post [link] and i’m gonna post it here for commentary- i tried to have the diagram slides roughly correspond to where i want them to be in the monolog, although in the final video there will also be zooms in to relevant details, whereas right now i just say “in the top right corner” or w/e to indicate where to look.

also deciding between these titles: “Currents”

“Memetics, Dialectics, Incentive Structures, and Superorganisms Explained”

or maybe combine the two and put the second after the first with a colon in between? idk, also if anyone has any suggestions for better titles let em rip

anyways here’s the script, let me know what you think:

People have proposed numerous methods for understanding society and how people interact with each other from a scientific standpoint, from dialectical materialism, to memetics, to analysis of incentive structures, even to viewing social groups as a kind of superorganism, with each individual as a cell in a body.

And I thought- what if you were to take those models and jam them together?

Now, this is a rough and messy attempt, and I’m sure there’s someone out there who can do better- and I hope they do! But I thought I’d give it a try anyways.

Imagine, if you will, a bunch of people, living together, interacting with each other, the usual.

Now, imagine that these people have value systems, beliefs about what actions are good and what actions are bad, beliefs which spread as memes between individuals, until you have groups of people clustered together around these value-system memeplexes. Let’s represent these with color dots, and say the blue dots are right-wingers and the pink dots are left-wingers, but lets say the yellow/orange dots represent not a political memeplex, but a religious one - let’s say neopaganism, to pick a random example.

Now, of course someone’s political or religious beliefs will in some ways affect how they interact with their friends, family, neighbors, and so forth- they’ll be likely to reward actions the political or religious value system they adhere to views as good, and penalize actions the value system views as bad, in ways which range from subtle expressions of approval or disapproval, to more extreme measures like shunning. Lets represent the influence that people have on each other in a given community through a series of arrows, with the size of the arrow indicating the degree of influence one person has on the other, with the color of the arrow representing which value system is guiding how they incentivize or disincentivize behavior.

This is very simplified rendition, of course- a perfectly accurate one would be excessively cluttered- but this works as a lose rendition of how communities interact. People with shared beliefs cluster together, and influence each other and the people they’re socially adjacent to according to those shared beliefs.

From this angle, social groups which coalesce around memplexes like this appear as almost a kind of collective organism, with each person being a cell in the body of some kind of massive behemoth, all acting in tandem to incentivize and dis-incentivize behavior according to the instructions of the memeplex they follow.

A lot of analysis which has used this sort of metaphor has framed it as strictly negative, but I don’t think that’s useful- these sorts of social organisms form any time you have multiple people together who have even vaguely shared beliefs about right and wrong, and I don’t think it’s meaningfully possible or desirable to prevent people from congregating around shared moral beliefs. We’re all cells in the bodies of vast superorganisms, we’re all conduits for forces far larger than ourselves, and that’s okay!

For lack of a better term, lets call these collective organism “currents,” building off of the sense of the term meaning “particular ideas, opinions or feelings being present in a group of people.”

But also referencing it’s more common usage as referring to a current of water - something a person can get caught in the flow of. Or an electrical current, coursing through anything which can become a conduit for it.

Most social phenomenon can be described in these terms- groups of people acting in tandem to incentivize and dis-incentivize behavior according to a memetic script- from political movements, to religions, to cults, to ethical philosophies, to governments, even to corporations and artistic movements- all of these can essentially be thought of as different varieties of currents.

And there can also be currents within currents- for example all corporations are sub-currents of the super-current of capitalism, which is the prevailing hegemonic economic current.

The incentives used by currents include everything from material incentives like money, to expressions of approval or disapproval from peers, to legal punitive measures like imprisonment- even our internal feelings of guilt and pride are ultimately based on the value systems we’ve picked up through social interaction, and thus are just another form of incentive that currents use.

Morality, rather than being some unchanging concrete law encoded into the universe, is a function of this social phenomenon- people generate memetic scripts about which actions to incentivize and which to dis-incentivize, and the effect of this incentive structure will be to varying degrees beneficial, or detrimental, or beneficial to one group at the expense of another. Morality isn’t like the laws of physics as much as it’s like a form of technology, which must always be continually updated and improved to be more beneficial to more people.

We could also roughly sort currents according to the categories of Economic and Ideological- or in Marxist terms, Base and Superstructure.

These both overlap and have a reciprocal relationship, of course, but there is a definite divide between currents which incentivize mostly through material economic means, like corporations- let’s call these Base currents- and currents which incentivize behavior through more subtle ideological and social means, such as political ideologies and religions- let’s call these Superstructure Currents

Often there will be superstructure currents which emerge out of base currents, or base currents which emerge out of superstructure currents- consider the mission statement of the ethos of a company as a superstructure current emerging out of a base current, or a boycott organized by political group as a base current emerging out of a superstructure current- or the food program run by the black panthers as a base current emanating from a superstructure current, which could have, had there been a successful revolution, evolved into a more larger and more complex base current- a socialist economy.

Our choices are so heavily shaped by the incentive structures of the social currents we interact with that insofar as we have any kind of autonomy as individuals, this is expressed more by what currents we choose to interact with or act as a conduit for than it is by what we choose to do within a given current.

While usually currents operate simply through people following the incentive structure while acting in their own self-interest, once an individual has fully absorbed the value system of a current, they will act according to that value system even beyond the point of self interest- whether this is a good or bad thing depends on the merit of the value system of that current- on how beneficial it is as a piece of moral social technology.

To give a few examples to illustrate this:

A: Two people in the desert come across water. Instead of splitting it evenly, the stronger of the two simply kills the other, and takes all the water for themselves. (Also in this hypothetical they feel no guilt and won’t ever be intervened on by society, which is a bit of a stretch, sure, but I need an example to illustrate how selfishness plays out in the absence of any kind of incentive system.)

B: Someone donates money, but the primary reason they did so was because they knew they would receive social approval for doing so, and benefit in the form of social approval outweighed the cost to themselves.

C: Someone knowingly gives their life to save the lives of several other people. In this case there isn’t even the hypothetical chance that they did it purely for selfish approval-seeking reasons, since the cost was their own life, and whatever social approval they may gain, they will never experience it. This is, nonetheless, still a function of currents- it’s just that they have internalized the value system to the point where they adhere to it not just as a means to the end of gaining social approval (or avoiding social disapproval and punishment), but as an ends unto itself, and will adhere to it even at extreme personal cost.

D: Some incel creep, stewing in forums which treat Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian as heroes, goes on his own similar spree killing, ending the spree by taking his own life. This person also will never receive any social reward from their cohorts for their actions, due to being dead, but had internalized the value system of the incel ideology to the point where they will act on it even at extreme personal cost.

So you can see that while example C and example D are both acting selflessly, example C is morally commendable, while example D morally repugnant- and while both example A and example B are acting selfishly, and example A is just as repugnant as example D, example B is only somewhat less commendable than example C- point is, acting selflessly does not inherently make you better than someone acting selfishly if the moral framework of the current you are selflessly adhering to is itself a malignant framework. (And this isn’t a static thing either, since a current which was once benign can become malignant).

So selfishness is, overall, Not Great, but the picture is a little more nuanced than “selfishness=bad, selflessness=good”

In practice, currents tend to have a certain anatomy- already in this image here we can see the different currents portrayed have a clusters within them, as well as a noticeable edge- let’s outline those to bring them into clearer focus:

When we do this, we can see an amoeba-like shape taking form- inner nuclei, and an outer membrane. Similar to how genetic code instructs cells on how to organize into an organism, this is how memetic codes instruct individuals on how to organize into collective superorganisms. And when the two memeplexes are more compatible, the superorganisms will overlap as they absorb each other, and when they memeplexes are less compatible, they’ll form more distinct boundaries, and attempt to siphon people away from each other, acting more directly in competition.

Currents have a tendency to try to place parts of the memeplex which are more appealing to outsiders on the outside membrane, and to place parts which are more alienating to outsiders near the nuclei- Scientologists don’t tell people about all the Xenu stuff right off the bat, you feel me? This especially applies when attempting to siphon people away from a competing current.

The Mormons actually have a term to describe this strategy- “Milk Before Meat”- the idea being that you must first expose potential converts to the Spiritual Milk- the more appealing parts of the memeplex- before exposing them to the Spiritual Meat- the more alienating parts of the memeplex.

In addition, incentive structures are usually more severe, and the rules more strict, the deeper you go- this similarly helps to ease the process by which someone is absorbed into a current.

In some of those nuclei clusters we can see noticeable power hierarchies, particularly the ones on the top and bottom right, which are clearly centered around specific individuals or groups who the rest of the cluster is subordinate to. To tie this more firmly into the real world, if the pink and blue represent the political left and the right in this model, then the nuclei-like clusters would be both informal and formal groups of political activists or discussion groups, with some of the more formally organized political groups having overt hierarchies and chains of command.

These kinds of power imbalances within a current can have a detrimental effect upon it, resulting in a kind of social decay.

People with power shifts their value system in such a way that it better serves their own needs- here I’m representing that shift with the shift from blue to teal-ish in the upper right corner:

and this has a ripple effect on the cluster surrounding them,

shifting it so that it better serves the interests of themselves and their cohorts, increasing their power, often at the expense of everyone else.

 So while it’s a popular narrative that we need hierarchy to maintain social order, in actuality hierarchy is in many ways harmful to the social order- the powerful have every motivation to shift the rules in their favor, change the currents incentive structures such that it acts to their benefit and exploits the people lower in the hierarchy, not to mention when there is a clear divide between the people who make or enforce social rules, and everyone else, the people who make or enforce social rules have little reason to follow them- cops, and Ted Kennedy, can get away with murder.

Luckily, the hegemonic power attempting to entrench itself isn’t the only way a currents value system can shift- and we’ll come back to that in a minute.

There’s also another kind of cluster within the currents in this chart, and that’s clusters of people who have become dissatisfied with the status quo of the social norms of the current they’re within - lets highlight those in grey.

These pockets of dissatisfaction generally emerge in response to legitimate grievances with real problems in the value system of the status quo (though they can also occasionally be founded on illegitimate grievances, like a formerly privileged class losing their privilege). Often these problems in the value system are tied into the kind of exploitative hierarchies I mentioned earlier - however, problems can exist within the value system of a current without them necessarily being to any exploitative classes benefit- sometimes the source of the problem is that the rules have been written- or re-written- to benefit one group at the expense of the rest, but occasionally there are problems in the value system of a current which are caused by simple human error, and aren’t to anyone’s benefit.

On one hand, these pockets of dissatisfaction can act as a point from which a competing current can attempt to siphon away individuals, in the form of people from the competing current reaching out to the people in the pocket and making the case that they would be happier if they were to leave their current for the competitor- in this framework it can almost be represented as one current extending a pseudopod into the other current to draw in people from it:

For example consider a group like redneck revolt, which reaches out to people in right-wing leaning rural areas and recruits them into the left, or conversely the Jesus movement, a right-wing movement which recruited hippies into reactionary evangelical Christianity- unlike a redneck revolt, which is pretty overt in what it’s goals are, the jesus movement was more deceptive, framing itself as a left-leaning progressive brand of Christianity when in actuality it’s most prominent figures were  staunchly reactionary- just look at the Jesus movement associated cult the Children of God, which marketed itself to hippies and presented itself as progressive to outsiders, when secretly it’s was preaching racist, homophobic, and antiemetic screeds to the people living on the cult commune. An especially deceptive version of the milk before meat strategy comes into play here, in this case being used as a strategy to siphon people away from the left while concealing that intention, presenting a progressive face to suck in hippies and then indoctrinating them with far-right ideology once they’ve been ensnared. So while the strategy of one current extending a pseudopod into another to siphon away members may be pretty universal, it can either be done in ways which are more honest about the intentions, like Redneck Revolt, or it can be more underhanded and dishonest like the Jesus movement was.

But on the other hand, these pockets of dissatisfaction act as a corrective force, as people who have been harmed by the existing social norms within that current create an updated version of that value system, or an entirely new value system, in response to their material needs- here represented on the left by the red cluster within the pink current.

This creates a current within that current,

which acts in opposition to it on the point of contradiction. In the classic dialectical materialist model, the first current is the thesis, then the new current growing out of the pocket of dissatisfaction is the antithesis, they synthesize into a new status quo, which inevitably will have it’s own pockets of dissatisfaction, and the process repeats.

For example, the problems inherent in the 1960’s radical scene’s social norms around sex (which was one of the points of weakness the Jesus movement exploited) was the flashpoint for the development of feminist critiques of sex and porn, then the flaws inherent within that framework spurred sex positive feminist critiques, then the flaws within the sex positive framework spurred a new wave of sex critical feminism, and so forth, this back-and forth dialectic working to shape the social norms of the left around sex.

The pattern of “people disenfranchised by the current value system create new value system, which spurs praxis which shifts social norms to better accommodate peoples needs” is visible everywhere- revolutionary action by the oppressed against the status quo is not only a force in driving social and moral advancement- it’s the primary force, the grinding dialectical engine at the heart of history and morality.

We can see this pattern playing out in the field of LGBT rights, where homophobic and transphobic laws and social mores- which are a harmful incentive system which unnecessarily punishes benign behavior- spurred the emergence of the lgbt rights movement, as the people harmed by homophobic and transphobic social mores and laws to joined together in radical action to change them.

Or for an example on a larger scale, consider the way feudalism was supplanted by liberalism and capitalism, particularly around such flashpoints as the French revolution- so we can see that this dialectical pattern can take different forms, and while sex critical feminism and sex positive feminism both acted internally within the left, the contradiction which spurred the decline of feudalism was more severe, with the liberal enlightenment current more fully separating itself from the feudal current before overtaking it.

Similarly, at this point it’s necessary for capitalism to be supplanted by an entirely new economic current- the contradictions at play here are too severe to be resolved through a more subtle internal dialectical process.

As noted earlier, the ruling class losing it’s power and privilege due to social progress creates it’s own pocket of dissatisfaction, which creates a harmful reactionary current.

Now, I’m sure some would argue that in the back and forth between sex negativity and sex positivity, one of the two was reactionary, and emerged to retain the privilege of an oppressive class and undo progress. However I disagree- I think both sex positivity and sex negativity- and the back and forth dialectic between them- played a progressive role in improving the social norms around sex within the left.

Reactionary currents caused by an oppressive class losing their power can have a significant memetic ripple effect, outlasting the actual people who lost their power- consider the reactionary current which emanated from the aristocracy and monarchy losing their power after feudalism declined, which carried as it’s central narrative the notion that progressivism and democracy were bad, and that Jewish people, freemasons, and the Illuminati were behind them (especially in relation to the French revolution)- this narrative which continues to play a central role in reactionary movements to this day, from fascism to neoreaction- though some original flavor moldbuggian neoreactionaries attempted to swap out the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theorism for a sinister Calvinist conspiracy.

The Illuminati was a small short-lived enlightenment-era discussion group, but then some deranged pro-monarchist priest named Augustin Barruel accuses them of having caused the French revolution, and from there the telephone game of the memetic ripple effect exaggerated the Illuminati into the ultimate shadowy boogeyman in the reactionary narrative. More than anything else, the fact that the whole right-wing conspiracy theory about the Illuminati is directly traceable back to the reactionary response to the French revolution shows just how severe the memetic ripple from that reactionary current was, and how firmly caught up in it’s wake a lot of modern reactionaries are. Both fascism and neoreaction can be understood as essentially mutations of the reactionary current which emerged in response to the French revolution.

However, while reactionary currents can undo progress, nonetheless the general overall trend of history is toward improvement- the long moral arc of the universe bending toward justice.

Now, if power imbalances are harmful, and if these sorts of dialectical processes correct power imbalances through social upheaval, the question must be asked- why do power imbalances exist in the first place?

To answer this question, another question- how do you create an incentive system without that incentive system creating a power imbalance between those it rewards and those it punishes?

It’s a difficult question, with no easy answer!

Of course, this may drive many to deem currents and incentive structures inherently evil- “We must cast off all binds that might shape our behavior, destroy all the authoritarian social mores, reject all coercive social systems, and embrace individualism fully!” they might say. They might also tell you you’re “spooked” and tell you to read Stirner.

Ultimately though this isn’t viable- the fact is, any time you have people in a group where some of them have shared beliefs about which actions are good or bad, these kind of social incentive systems are going to emerge- there isn’t any meaningfully possible way to stop these kind of incentive systems from emerging, and attempting to stop them by somehow preventing people from ever having beliefs about morality or expressing approval or disapproval for the actions of another would end up being far more coercive than the  incentive systems it’s trying to prevent.

And more importantly, would we really be better off if there were no social incentive systems or consequences for action? Would we really be better off if abusers faced no social repercussions? And recall here that we’re talking not only about formal legal penalties but also decentralized social penalties like “people not liking you”- which, mind you, can be a pretty powerful social tool for shaping behavior!

So as you can see, there isn’t an “out” here, and the dream of a world without incentive structures is in actuality neither desirable nor possible. The goal shouldn’t be to abolish all social incentive structures, but rather to correct what is broken, to replace flawed incentive structures with better ones, and to improve upon the social technology of morality.

So, what is the takeaway from all of this? Essentially that both Anarchists and Marxist-Leninists are right in some ways, and the way forward is to synthesize the two modes of thought- to merge the concepts of horizontal non-hierarchical social organization from Anarchists, with a sense of duty, unity, and discipline more akin to the ideas floated by Marxists in On Authority or Combat Liberalism. Through a more complete understanding of currents and how they function, we can more effectively create a revolutionary current which can supplant the hegemonic capitalist current, driving the great dialectical engine of history and morality forward toward greater human flourishing and prosperity.

[rxcusant]

HOW I RUN MY BLOG

SPEED

i do my best! generally i just try to keep the pace going but im also a turtle with very bad attention span. like everyone sometimes i have more muse for certain threads and i try to tackle those first. otherwise i?? just try to keep the ball rolling.

REPLIES/DRAFTS

imma be real here chief. I don’t use my drafts. If i put my replies in drafts i will NEVER get them done. so i either Like them or i rely on my memory fkjhgkd  i usually reply in later evening/night hours tho! I’m ATROCIOUS at replying during the day time and its just a lot easier on me in silence with no one around. I try to reply the day after my partner does but sometimes stuff happens and i get to it the next night lmao

STARTERS

I don’t mind doing them and I usually volunteer to! But Im also happy whenever someone else does cAUSE ITS ONE LESS THING FOR ME TO DO L M A o..,,, If theres one thing I noticed Im bad at tho its responding to one-liner starter calls cause i just... spit 2 paragraphs back kjfdghj and they usually end up going no where and it makes me kinda sad. But Im gonna keep liking them cause i wanna interact with people!!!! and those calls always pop up on my dash!!!!!

INBOX

listen here young man my blog is almost 5 years old. This inbox is CLUTTERED....... i try to answer everything as best i can tho!! But, as i will keep saying, I HAVE BAD ATTENTION SPAN and if i forget its not on you!! admittedly sometimes i dont know how to respond so i’ll leave it to stew over but... i end up forgetting anyway. By then i just delete it if its been awhile.

SELECTIVITY

I’m only semi selective tbh I don’t have High Standards or anything djfhkgjf I like an active dash and I like meeting people!! Im coming off a year long hiatus and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface with following people in this community.  If you really wanna know tho I don’t like following if your blog is nothing but ask memes or if youre about is just Off The Wall Crazy that i feel winded after reading it and im not sure i can see us interacting. I’m chill i swear As a side note, I do not follow personals back. 

WISHLIST

[takes out a very long scroll that unwinds and scrolls out the door and keeps going for miles] Well, now that you’ve asked -i want sorikai content..... i want sokai content....... i want soriku content....... i want trinity trio content........ i want the misery that comes with being snorts friend. i live for that. I live for riku and kairi lamenting over trying to save their best friend whos actively avoiding seeing them as much as it pains him cause he doesnt wanna get them hurt hhhhhhh I WANT THEM SNEAKING BEHIND THE SCENES SEEING EACH OTHER CAUSE THE FRIENDSHIP IS TOO STRONG AND THEY LOVE EACH OTHER TOOMUCH TO BE APART AND EVEN XEHANORT CANT DO THAT TO THEM  -I WANT..... ORGANIZATION RPS......... i want!! soranort to interact with all the other vessels!!! there is SO MUCH TO DO HERE!!! Get under his skin, remind him hes gonna beat the light out of precious friends, just!! fuck with him man. Sora will snap back and stick to his guns and make for one big sass fight. Cmon sora was LITERALLY THEIR ENEMY FOR ALL THE GAMES AND NOW HES FORCED TO SIDE WITH THEM theres a lot to do here!!!!!!!!!! And if sora does what he does best and worms into their heart and they become friends?? ALL THE BETTER!!! one of my FAVORITE old relationships on this blog was with saix! it was great!!!!!! im starving out here pls give me organization rps -v...vanitas........ listen i know i rp vanitas too but SOME OF MY FAVORITE RPS ARE WITH OTHER VANITAS BLOGS...... we can work it out man, we can plot it out, i just rEALLY LOVE OTHER VANITAS BLOGS A LOT OK its really fun seeing another vanitas tear down sora that isnt myself. Im just eternally nervous about approaching other vanitas’s in case theyre like NO I DONT WANNA  DO THIS so i sit in silence watching from afar  -DISNEY!!!!! DISNEY!!!!!!! RPS!!!!!!!! DISNEY!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LIVE FOR SORA SEEING HIS OLD DISNEY FRIENDS AGAIN AND THEYRE LIKE “hey what happened” aND HE LAUGHS LIKE “HAHAHAH NOTHING I SWEAR IM FINE HOW ARE YOU THO” OR ALTERNATIVELY DISNEY THAT ISNT IN KH, LET SORA MEET THEM NOW WHEN HES ON ORG MISSIONS ‘go do recon sora and stay in the shadows pls’ ‘okay! [immediately goes and makes 10 friends] -crossover friends!!!! i also live for Sora meeting people who dont know ANYTHING about his bullshit or KH’s bullshit and they steadily overtime see how hes not doing so well until he has to explain OR keep dancing around it because its always better that theyre not involved in all this [this one is hit or miss cause i only follow series im familiar with BUT i can make exceptions jkfhg] -vanitas meeting people similar to him. Before i reset my blogs relationships vanitas aCTUALLY HAD A FRIEND but it was only because they were both tools living with someone elses face and they punched each other to say hello kdjfhgkdj but i like exploring what happens to vanitas when you give him the warmth he spent 4 years feeling from ventus & longing after in the badlands according to the bbs novels. Vanitas is a terrible abomination but goddamn do i love watching him short circuit when someones not treating him like shit. then he gets extremely confused and angry and [chefs kiss] fun. -this is already really long and while i always have more in mind ill stop here

HONEST NOTE you want some honesty????? you want some BRUTAL HONESTY??? I am in a constant state of anxiety people will be disappointed i dont follow the herd with Popular Soranort Headcanons. like they come here expecting one thing only to see thats not what rolls here. Granted I don’t look at or know the Popular Soranort Headcanons because they made my anxiety spike more, im just ??? Its a weird feeling. Im not here to please people because how I choose to write soranort is all up to me and I love him. Its just... a super funky feeling. Theres a reason i took my hiatus but thats all im gonna say.  Im also always worried about my vanitas portrayal since hes just a Lost Soul at the moment with no goal or path or outlet and therefore doesnt really follow his canon self’s personality or behavior.

tagged by: nobody i live in a kingdom of thieves tagging: you! and you! and especially YOU

[mahkittens]

1, 7, & 15

the be honest meme.  (ACCEPTING)

1. What would prevent you from following someone?

There’s a few things I look for when it comes to following someone or returning a follow. A lot of OOC posts clutter my dash so, while I respect people’s right to post whatever the heck they want on their own blogs, I avoid following for the sake of being organized. I also can’t stand negativity/vague posting/call out culture, so if I see any of that, that’s a red flag for me. I mean, I’m 28 goddamn years old. I like to think I’ve grown up and gotten past all that myself, and I hope the same for my partners.

I also don’t follow blogs I feel I’m incompatible with from an RP perspective. Simply put, if our characters don’t often or can’t plausibly interact, I will quietly take my leave. I think that’s a pretty common practice, at least among the RPers I’ve interacted with.

Lastly, I tend to avoid blogs associated with a closed RP group, even if they are open to interacting with indies. I’ve just had some bad experiences. Nothing against people involved in them- they just aren’t for me. 

7. What’s your opinion on call out posts?

They are pointless and fucking mean. If you have a problem with somebody, confront them and communicate with them directly. If that doesn’t work, cut them out of your life. As someone who was once young and full of much more angst, I can tell you that call out posts got me nowhere. All they do is make things worse and make you look like an asshole. 

Unless someone is a literal nazi, just steer clear of the practice.

15. How has rp changed you personally?

It’s made me a better writer, for one. A more creative thinker, and a more empathetic person all around. RP has also been a major coping mechanism for me when it comes to depression and anxiety, and it’s taught me how to more effectively relax and move past some challenging times. I love it a lot, and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon.

[fedorasaurus]

Domestic Ship Headcanons

Question source: http://gabetastic.tumblr.com/post/45754507464/collating-all-the-domestic-ship-memes-together

I’m doing this for SodomRolento first, but feel free to ask me about any other ships to answer these for! Obviously these are my own personal headcanons and tend to stray toward silliness, so take my answers with a grain (or box) of salt.

Who’s more dominant: Rolento, 1000000%. I'm fairly certain that “dominance” is one of his canon character traits, although I also like to imagine that he softens on that when he's really comfortable with someone he trusts, indulging in submissiveness.

Who’s the cuddler: Sodom. He just looks like he gives great hugs.

Who’s the big spoon/little spoon: I imagine that it varies. Rol probably likes the security of being the small spoon, but on the other hand, there's also something really sweet about the physically smaller one being the big spoon.

What’s their favorite non-sexual activity: Watching anime. Rol wasn't into it at first, but Sodom eventually got him hooked on some action-packed magical girl shows (Rol admires that the protags are so beautiful and strong).

Who uses all the hot water: Rolento sometimes... zones out while he's in the shower. Sodom doesn't mind being stuck with the cold water, though; he thinks it helps him hone his focus and warrior spirit. Of course, this all assumes that they aren't showering together...


Most trivial thing they fight over: "Why do you wear your armor in bed?" "Why do you wear your GRENADES in bed?!"


Who does most of the cleaning: Rolento is pretty filthy and rugged as a person, but he's also really into keeping things organized and efficient. Also, clutter stresses him out. He can't believe Sodom lives like this.


What has a season pass on their dvr/Who controls the netflix queue: Sodom has a Crunchyroll account for sure. But also any sort of service on which he can watch his favorite old samurai movies, assuming he doesn't already have them on VHS or DVD/Bluray.


Who calls up the super/landlord when the heat’s not working: Both of them seem like the type to try to fix things themselves, but if it came down to it, Rolento would make the (hopefully not too threatening) phone call.

Who leaves their stuff around: Sodom. In fact, this is pretty much canon. Have you SEEN his stage?


Who remembers to buy the milk: Rolento. He takes this mission very seriously.


Who remembers anniversaries: They're both pretty good about this, especially with something like "the anniversary of when we blew up the Shadaloo base and drove off into the sunrise together."


Who cooks normally: Sodom, 100%. His cooking is probably the only Japanese thing he's good at. Otherwise Rolento is out there hunting squirrels and eating uncooked instant ramen.


How often do they fight: All the time, if we're talking about combat training. As far as arguments, I don't know, all of the Madgears are odd birds, so I imagine that they're mostly used to each others' quirks at this point. Maybe the occasional outburst after a bad day, but nothing that can't be resolved!


What do they do when they’re away from each other: If Rol is out of town on a mission or something, Sodom texts him every day with lots of haikus and emojis to convey how much he misses him. Rol isn't really big on mobile communication, but he might have one of his soldiers discreetly check in to make sure that things are okay at home and Sodom's business.


Nicknames for each other: Sodom calls Rolento "Rol-chan" or "Show Gun." Rolento pretty much just uses "Blood Brother," but if he's feeling extra romantic, he might tell Sodom that he's his "handsome and competent samurai man."


Who is more likely to pay for dinner: Probably Sodom, being the one with a fierce sense of honor and a legitimate source of income.


Who steals the covers at night: Sodom. Rolento can tolerate a lot of discomfort, so he doesn't really mind, and of course this is always a good excuse to initiate spooning.


What would they get each other for gifts: Rolento gets Sodom authentic Japanese swords or other equipment, which may or may not have been stolen from a museum. Sodom gets Rolento really cute cell phone charms, which he pins to his uniform like it's a goddamn medal.

Who kissed who first: Rolento, and he was nervous as hell. It was one of the few times that Sodom has seen him flustered.


Who made the first move: Rolento, though he ended up having to make a lot more moves after that because Sodom was so oblivious.


Who remembers things: Rolento remembers a lot of things that he would have preferred not to, but I guess in the context of a relationship, Rol is pretty good at keeping up on things as long as they stick to a solid plan/routine. Sodom is more good when it comes to improvising.


Who started the relationship: Rolento initiated the friendship way back when Sodom first joined Madgear and Rolento thought that his whole "urban samurai" thing was just a street fighting persona. By the time he realized that that was actually literally Sodom's THING, they were already too smitten with each other to back out.


Who cusses more: ROLENTO FUCKIN' SCHUGERG. Although, Sodom can be heard screaming in broken Japanese obscenities whenever someone messes with his truck.


What would they do if the other one was hurt: If it's during a fight or something, Rolento would tell Sodom to tough it out, but then immediately take down the person who hurt him with sort of an overkill vengeance. If Rol was hurt or got into a dangerous situation over his head, Sodom would shield him with his body and try to intimidate the enemy away using his size and spectacular fighting moves. Rolento has the most first-aid skills of the two of them, but if it's a situation of emotional pain, Sodom is the most patient and comforting one. Rolento doesn't cry in front of anyone else.

Who is the dirty talker: ROLENTOOOOOOOOO

A head canon: Being that it's Halloween at the time of writing this, here's a domestic Halloween headcanon: All the neighborhood kids know that Sodom & Rolento's house is like... the best, because those guys give out fancy Japanese sweets, and sometimes Sodom gets really hype over the kids' cosplays. Rolento has seen enough real-life horrors that he can't get very festive for spooky Halloween fun, but he respects that at least the youths are going door-to-door for candy rather than getting into trouble... for the most part. He does, however, attend Halloween parties with his Madgear buddies every year. Sodom helped him make his vampire alt costume, though the exploding skulls, he did himself.