#these are just the basic facts but i needed to put a precise context before analizing Mine's memoirs
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18th-century-mental-health · 4 months ago
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"The character of Hans Hermann von Katte through the eyes of Wilhelmine von Bayreuth, sister of the King of Prussia"
So I wrote an article about them for class, and since it was Wilhelmine's birthday (july 3rd), I decided to post it here. It's a bit long and entirely in French so i'm gonna translate it all (mistakes incoming, hope there won't be too much) but slowly, so for now, enjoy the introduction/context of our dear blorbo's lives!
The memoirs of someone are a fascinating way to tell History as a story, creating a better approach for the reader, and also can be considered as reading for entertainment. Here we will talk about some extracts from those of Wilhelmine von Bayreuth (1709-1758), princess of Prussia, who, in more than informing us about the conditions of his daily life, gives us information on the life of his brother, Frederick, as well as on the mysterious main character of this article, Hans Hermann von Katte.
The kingdom of Prussia experienced a real growth during the 18th century, under the reign of King Frederick II, known as “the Great”. Reigning from 1740 to 1786, he is known to be a great war leader, but also an important figure of the famous intellectual, philosophical and artistic movement of the Enlightenment. He was a complex character, deeply influenced by the events that occurred during his life. We will focus here on one of these events, perhaps the most marking of his life, and constituting a decisive turning point in his self-development: the so-called “Katte” affair or “the escape of 1730”.
We’re in 1730, Frederick just turned eighteen and has been suffering for more than twelve years of mental and physical abuse from his father, King Frederick William. The latter believing that his son, a bad soldier and good artist - the opposite of the Ideal Prussian - is a disgrace to the country. The young man is exhausted from all of this and considers a radical solution to escape his suffering, whether by fleeing the country - probably for England, via France - or by suicide. He confides on this point to his two closest confidants, his elder sister Wilhelmine and his friend - and (more than) certainly lover - Hans Hermann von Katte, a lieutenant of the Gens d’Armes.
In August, the decision was made: it would be the escape one. After trying to make him renounce, Katte decides to accompany Frederick in his project, and to flee with him, ignoring the consequences. They will be helped by another friend, Peter von Keith, former page of the prince. The plan went as well as one could expect from the one of a desperate teenager, the organisation was bad, and our three friends were caught. Only Keith was able to escape, the other two were thrown into prison, and, after weeks of rigorous interrogation aimed at determining whether this escape had purpose to overthrow the king, the verdict fell: they were guilty of desertion. The martial court condemned Katte to be imprisoned for life, and turned to Frederick-William, not considering itself qualified enough to judge the crown prince. In one of his infamous anger moments, the king decided to “break” once and for all the mind of his rebellious son by having Katte executed and forcing his son to watch. As we can expect, it was a terrible trauma for Frederick, and we can find its impact throughout his life.
But, let's focus back on Katte. Although surrounded by an aura of tragic destiny worthy of a Shakespeare tragedy, only few sources give details about who he really was. The point of view that will interest us here is the one of Wilhelmine, who knew him personally and wrote about him in her memoirs. These, having been written years after the facts, as well as the subjectivity of the person concerned, depict us a colourful portrait of Katte and his actions, allowing us to think about this type of sources and their historiographical value. In this, we will focus on two passages: Katte's presentation, as well as his last conversation with Wilhelmine.
To be continued...
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nohoperadio · 7 months ago
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That cool bee book I was talking about a while ago mostly refrains from philosophical digressions (which I think is a strength, I appreciated how the author had total confidence that just clearly presenting the facts about his subject would be enough to make a fascinating book without the need for any "...and here's why that should blow your mind" editorializing, and he's totally right), but there was one towards the end I've found myself thinking about a lot, which is: he wants people to stop using "self-consciousness" (i.e. the concept exemplified by the mirror test but used implicitly or explicitly in tons of other contexts) as a criterion for which animals can be considered sentient/morally relevant/having significant inner lives/however you want to describe it. Not, as you might expect, because he thinks it's an unreasonably high bar to meet, but because it's such a low bar that it produces no distinctions: he argues that basically any animal with any kind of developed central nervous system has to have some kind of self-consciousness almost by definition.
The example I remember best is: imagine you can see an object in your visual field getting closer to you. No matter the specifics, it's obviously always going to make a huge difference to how you evaluate this situation whether the cause of the object getting closer is a] the object is moving towards you, or b] you are moving towards the object. If a, then something might be pursuing you or falling on you or a thousand other things that are just not even worth considering in the case of b. But visually the two cases are indistinguishable; if you're going to be able to track the difference, your brain has to be putting at least some work into keeping tabs on what your own intentions are and what choices you're making as you move through the world, predicting the expected consequences of those choices, and maintaining a fairly tidy mental separation between stuff in the world that you're making happen and stuff in the world that's just happening of its own volition. Otherwise, every time you walk towards a rock you'll freak out and think the rock is rolling into you, or vice versa.
And it's not hard to see how this applies to your entire sensory world right, it applies to sounds and tactile sensations and even feelings internal to your body to some extent, if you're going to both perceive the world and take actions in the world then it's mandatory to mentally separate yourself and the world before that's going to yield even an ounce of helpful information, you just can't function successfully on the most basic level if you're processing stuff that you're doing on the same level as stuff that's happening, if you're in that state then you simply don't have a usable model of the world at all, you just have chaos.
So you can very easily eliminate a certain seductive narrative about the evolution of consciousness, which starts with very primitive animals who are mentally processing nothing but basic sensory inputs, then as you rise up the chain more complex animals are forming concepts of objects and building up a more nuanced understanding of the world, until finally you approach humans and the mind becomes so subtle and sophisticated that it gains access to this special advanced meta-level of thought where it can even understand itself! No, the self is precisely the one idea that has to be in place from the very beginning, before any of it has even the most rudimentary practical value. Self-consciousness isn't the pinnacle of the mind's evolution, it's one of the lowest, most basic foundations that everything else builds off of.
I think this is really cool stuff! I don't know enough about the relevant academic philosophy of mind debates to say how far all this does or doesn't speak to that, maybe someone will tell me the "self-consciousness" concept being attacked here is a strawman somehow, I don't know. But it's definitely impacted the way I (just a dumb guy who likes creatures) think about our small small cousins and what their lives might be like and I think it's super interesting. If you think it's interesting too then maybe you wanna buy The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka and read it. It's mostly not about this stuff, as I say it's light on philosophy and heavy on bee-life immersion, but if you actually read this whole post then you're probably in the market for that I feel like.
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meiloorunsmoothie · 5 months ago
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finding neverland, a review of sorts
hello! this is a sort of an after the fact "live blogging" (except all in one post 💀) of my thoughts as i was watching finding neverland (a.r.t. version). i basically just wrote whatever i was thinking down as i was watching, so this is truly very raw (obviously, i've gone in and cleaned some things up + added gifs to help those who read it (and myself if i come back to this post) figure out what on earth i'm blabbing about).
...read at your own risk! (also, in case it wasn't obvious, spoilers ahead)
act 1
THE SCOTTISH ACCENT
when he sings with it too 😭
i was not expecting this to be as funny as it is for some reason
"i don't know why you talk to that dog like he's a person" XD
"and what precisely is this poor wretch's crime?" "he's my younger brother" - yep, checks out
i'm 13 minutes in and i love it already
can we talk about how thayne jasperson as porthos weirdly works
okay wait, but is jeremy actually kind of doing choreography...?
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OKAY BUT THIS RIVER SCENE IS SO CUTE
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also when he randomly loses the accent
laura michelle kelly is amazing
uh she just coughed. i'm scared and paranoid...maybe laura actually just needed to cough, but i'm going to keep this here in case it is something... (EDIT: IT WAS AND I WILL NEVER RECOVER)
i'm obsessed with this (retroactively, why doesn't it show up again 😭)
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"nice try, but no." jack is me.
this is me every day and it's a problem ⬇️
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THIS IS SO FUN HOW HAVE I NOT WATCHED THIS SOONER
"perhaps having fun is more important than everything being perfect" - yes!
okay but the ex-ballerina in me is going crazy for the maid choreography
okay sobbing cause "neverland" just happened—it's weird that i've never listened to him sing this before and i'm unsure whether i should just pause now to recover or rewind and watch it again (edit: i did both)
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"well at this rate, we'll also have to imagine that there's an audience" - THEM LOOKING AT THE AUDIENCE AFTER THAT IS ABSOLUTELY GENIUS
sylvia's dress is so pretty lol
...this is interesting choreo
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but i love the door merry go round
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okay i've seen "hook" and "stronger" before, but this is so much better with context
maybe my boot is just really bad (it is) but did he just pull a stick out of his pant pocket
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i can't i have no words
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act 2
i would very much like to see what's happening on the other side of the curtain
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PRINCESS DIGGORY
SHE'S COUGHING AGAIN
this bar scene reminds me of lotr for some reason but i like it, it's very fun
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WHAT YOU MEAN TO ME my beloved
the singing while lying down 😳
i am unwell
oh a kid song, let's go - okay but actually, i love this number
HELP THIS WAS LITERALLY ME AND MY SIBLINGS okay how much will i have to pay them to watch this
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NOOOOO WHY
WHY
WHY
i'm so upset i can't even bring myself to put a gif here, but we all know what scene.
aiden gemme is doing a great job as peter.
OK BUT THIS DUET
SOBBING
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why is there upbeat music do you not know what just happened.
i love it when the audience is part of the show
this whole scene MY HEART I CANNOT
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this is so chaotic but i love it it's perfect
CHILLS
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i. love. laura. michelle. kelly.
that was beautiful even though it was sad
"mary, you're outside!" akdfasdhflashdfas
i can't (how many times have i said that). this is such a perfect ending
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la fin
(until my next rewatch which could be right now)
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runwayrunway · 1 year ago
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No. 28 - A Further Explanation of the Star Alliance Test
This is a main-series post, despite not being a review of a specific airline. I just think it's something that belongs in the series, that should be read. Don't worry. Today's airline is going to come later. This is a necessary preamble to get out of the way first, and it's also me making things right with an airline I've covered already.
Stick around and I promise it'll make sense. I had to rewrite this entire post from scratch, so if I could have changed this fact I would have, but fundamentally before I talk about today's true subject I need to talk about the Star Alliance Test (SAT for the remainder of this post). 
So let's begin with a question. You don't have to get this right. Just take a brief look at these pictures, don't try to examine them closely or anything, just a look-over, and tell me which one of these planes - we'll call them 1, 2, and 3, left from right - flies for an airline we’ve touched on briefly before, Avianca.
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Got your answer locked in? Hit the readmore and let me tell you why I asked you this!
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That's right! The answer was No. 1. You can tell because it says Avianca on it, if you look closer. But...why? Why would we want to be put in a situation where 'which of these three airlines with completely different liveries, identities, and brands does this plane fly for' is a question that could feasibly come up? 
I don't know. I didn't make that choice and I was probably on some other wall during that meeting. Oh, and to the best of my knowledge I also hadn't been born yet. But it's a thing airline alliances do. And Star Alliance is the subject of the Star Alliance Test - one of my metrics for determining if an airline deserves a grade of F. 
The Star Alliance test has been used precisely once - in my SAS post, regarding the 1998-2019 livery (henceforth referred to as red engine SAS or RESAS).
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This monstrosity, for those blessed enough to not remember.
Here are the rules of the test. 
The Star Alliance Test has exactly one question. Would I prefer that all this airline’s planes were forcibly repainted into Star Alliance liveries instead of allowed to remain in their current state?
If the answer is 'yes', the airline automatically gets a grade of F. 
Why Star Alliance? After all, it could be better but I don't think it's that bad. Well, I choose it because the Star Alliance test isn't really about being aesthetically pleasing - at least, not exclusively. Let me explain. 
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Star Alliance is the largest airline alliance in the world. Flightradar24 estimates there are 106 planes flying in a Star Alliance livery. It has 26 member airlines, shown above. Note the variance in color scheme, in logo, in origin. 26 is so many airlines. These carriers span every continent except Antarctica and basically only share three features: being international, being full-service, and being members of Star Alliance. I think it's safe to say that in any other context, nobody would ever associate THAI and Avianca, or Shenzhen Airlines and TAP Air Portugal, or Aegean Airlines and EVA Air. 
Each of these airlines has a livery of their own, except for Copa. I've covered Lufthansa and SAS already. Croatia Airlines and Air New Zealand are on my request list. Another several are on my own private 'short' list. (It is 50 airlines long. You don't want to know how long my longlist is.) 26 airlines comes out to at minimum 26 reviews, but actually more because you saw me squeeze four out of SAS. I will say up front, Star Alliance runs the gamut of liveries. There are a couple I like, a couple I think are very bad, and most I think are middling. But each of them, except Copa, is its own. Some of their designs are minimal, disappointing, ugly, but they are all designs made in an attempt to reflect the airline's identity and distinguish it from the rest of the tarmac, even if they create something ugly or boring or cowardly or all three.
A livery can be very, very bad indeed. But in my own mind an F, an outright failure, is the inverse of an A+ in a sort of cosmically symmetric ontology, and these are not the inverse of an A+ livery. They do not embody a transcendent bad to balance the scales against transcendent good. To reach this point you must be not only ugly but a gnawing void eating away at your own self. A livery worthy of the grade F do not fail to execute a good concept, or even fail to execute a bad concept. They have no concept and they fail to justify their existence.
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One of the worst liveries I've covered vs one of the best.
The SAT is a litmus test for this astronomical, pernicious state of utter failure. It takes more to fail the SAT than to just be uglier than the default Star Alliance livery. Plenty of liveries are uglier than Star Alliance's and they pass by light-years. To fail the SAT requires more than bad design, blandness, or anything else of that nature. It is monumentally difficult to fail the SAT. It’s like stalling an Airbus. You can do it. We know this. People have managed to do it, when the perfect storm arises and the world enters that uncanny state where luck and circumstance conspire to make the absurd a reality. But it’s really not something you can do, broadly speaking. Just pulling the nose up too far or forgetting to keep track of your airspeed isn’t going to do the trick. Icing on the wings won’t either. Even forgetting to extend your flaps on takeoff probably won’t be enough. It’s rare enough that it straddles the border of being an urban legend. It seems so easy to do thoughtlessly but it’s only happened a couple of times. Even doing it intentionally is harder than just designing a good livery. I'm not even sure it's possible to do it intentionally.  
To fail the SAT, you must fail so comprehensively that you should no longer be allowed to design your own livery. You should, in a paternalistic manner, have your entire fleet forcibly repainted into the Star Alliance colors. 
A livery is meant to distinguish and represent an airline. Even a bad design is still a design. The reason that RESAS fails the SAT, in my mind, is that it doesn't feel like a design. It's not coherent. It's not intentional. It doesn't feel like improperly integrated parts, or even multiple liveries stapled together. It feels like it was designed by random number generator. It utterly fails to represent the airline, utterly fails to look good, and utterly fails to even seem like thought was put into it.
To fail the SAT is to get to the point where I genuinely think it is so shameful to paint this on your planes, so inept on every level, that it would be better to just not have a livery. It would be an act of mercy to become indistinguishable from other airlines instead of staying as it is, a thing you could only ever pity and never truly love. Never respect. The most wretched sort of creature. If your shirt is stained too badly, you just can't keep going on like that. People will point and laugh at you, and that's never fun. They'll say 'that guy's shirt is covered in mysterious substances', and you have to just put on a jacket and cover it up until you get home and fumigate it with kerosene. From 1998 to 2019, SAS would have been better off just not having a livery than they were flying that...thing.
It doesn't have to be Star Alliance in particular. Just something which renders the airplane mostly generic. They can keep a little logo on there but they don't get their own design. It could just as easily be, say, forcible repainting into the default manufacturer liveries Airbus and Boeing use for prototype aircraft.
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Not the end of the world, right? These are surely not unbearable liveries. I don't think it's any worse giving up your identity to say you're part of Star Alliance than it is to subdue it in favor of the model of plane. If you're SAS pre-2019, this may be a decent option for you. If you're literally anyone else, the mere concept should be philosophically repugnant.
I am actually being kind, though. If I were to be even harsher, I could have easily made this the SmartLynx Test.
I asked you all about SmartLynx. To begin with, not a single person believed they could recall seeing one of their planes, or that they had flown with them. I didn't think they'd be able to. That's not a question I can really answer about myself either, at least not with any confidence. But what is SmartLynx?
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The vast majority of responses just expressed bewilderment. I got 50 total replies to the questionnaire itself. Keep in mind that some people declined to answer, and I didn't include them, and even still the number of people who actively expressed that they did not know is nearly half of all responses. Few of the answers were especially confident, either. I'm fairly sure the ones about transporting animals were all jokes, and nearly everyone expressed that their answer was a guess. Someone just said 'bad', which I thought was pretty funny. I liked that answer.
I got two people who said that SmartLynx are airplane lessors. Actually, one said 'private airplane sharing company', but I've interpreted that as meaning lessor. Anyway, they're right. The people who said charter also aren't wrong.
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SmartLynx are a Latvian airline which specializes in wet leases. For those unaware, a wet lease (very bad term) in aviation is a lease of an airplane that comes with a crew to operate it. Generally everything else, like fuel and various operating fees, is on the airline leasing the plane, and they're also the ones who market and sell the tickets. Basically, you could get on a flight, your ticket says, for example, Oceanic Airlines Flight 1, you bought it from the Oceanic Airlines website using your Oceanic Airlines miles, and be none the wiser that SmartLynx owns the airplane and pays the pilots flying it. These vary a little, but generally a wet lease provides ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance, and insurance), and if you ever see the term 'damp' or 'moist' lease that means the cabin crew is provided by the lessee rather than the lessor, but apparently neither sees much use. Which is a shame, because I think this is one of the few situations where more categories actually might make this easier to parse.
If all of that is sort of confusing and a lot of information upfront, you are not alone in feeling like this! I'm still pretty shaky in my own understanding of it. I'm a history person, not a business person. You can think of it as codesharing but never mentioning that's what you're doing, if that's any easier. It's also similar to regional brands of larger carriers, like Delta Connection flights being flown by Endeavor Air or SkyWest, though these carriers aren't going as far as to lease and are still on the hook for their own operating costs.
Every time I explain this to someone for the first time they think it's pretty deranged, and I don't completely disagree, but it's very normal. There are plenty of reasons airlines might wet lease, generally involving them not having the capacity to fulfill demand. All sorts of airlines provide wet leases, and all sorts of airlines hire them. It can create weird legal loopholes regarding who is allowed to fly in whose airspace, but typically it's just one airline not having enough planes for the holiday peak. They usually last for a few weeks or months, rather than the many years of a 'dry' lease which includes a plane only.
SmartLynx fly basically everything you can think of - passenger, cargo, holiday charter. Some airlines they've leased for are EasyJet, DHL, Finnair, and victim of the blog condor. Because they never operate flights under their own name, there is absolutely no reason for them to have their own livery. Indeed, it makes more sense not to, since it would be easier to leave their planes blank in case they want to repaint them into another airline's livery for a longer-term lease.
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If you fail the Star Alliance Test, I think you would be better off painting your entire plane white.
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SmartLynx has no identity because their entire point is to assume that of others. They basically do the airline equivalent of paying somebody to take an exam for you. This is a SmartLynx plane with Saudia logos on airasia color-blocking. It's a bit weird-looking, sure, but it betrays nothing about SmartLynx because their entire job is to not have a brand. Nobody has ever seen a SmartLynx plane because they exist literally but not philosophically - the job of a SmartLynx plane is to fly for a different airline. They are the stagehands of aviation, scurrying around in all black to stand out as little as possible.
But SAS isn't SmartLynx. SAS is a big airline, a flag carrier, and to say that they fail the SAT means that I would prefer their planes all be wiped from existence in an apocalyptic flood of liquid paper. I do not think the 1998-2019 SAS livery deserves to exist. I keep repeating myself because I need to stress how profoundly difficult it is to get me to this point. I would rather a livery be clumsy, bare-bones, poorly executed, cowardly, genuinely ugly, absolutely dismal, than it be non-existent. It takes something absolutely tremendous to bring me to the point RESAS has, where there is nothing, no vision, no meaning, no direction, no design, that justifies its existence.
...so what about condor?
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condor was the first airline to get a grade of F. The second was the aforementioned red engined SAS livery, now mercifully retired and thus reduced to a footnote in a post about how far SAS has come. The reason I brought up the SAT in SAS's post and didn't in condor's is that condor emphatically passes the SAT. 
I began with the assumption that the SAT was a good measure of if a livery deserves an F, and maybe it still is, but it's definitely not all there is to it. condor is different from Copa and RESAS, it just is. And I think the best evidence of this is that, of all the reviews I've posted, condor is the only one where a significant portion of people who reblogged it disagreed with me. I do understand that at the end of the day everything I say is subjective, and I don't mind when people have opposing views on something, but combined with my own thoughts on the livery, and the process of researching and writing my BWIA post, it pushed me to an epiphany about what makes a truly great and truly terrible livery. And, partly out of curiosity and partly to follow this new path of personal evolution, I asked survey-takers what they think of the condor livery. Maybe I should have left it as a free-response question, but I wanted figures, numbers. So here's what I got. (Free responses have been merged into whichever category they match closest for the sake of simplicity.)
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These results are fascinating. First, you may notice that this is missing two options. Not a single person said that this livery was boring, or that they felt neutrally towards it. Even people who are still making up their minds are a dramatic minority.
Second, people who had a clear-cut opinion of the livery, positive or negative, made up just over a fifth of respondents. Most people were at least to some extent conflicted, although which specific variant of conflict varied. There are people who appreciate the idea but do not like the appearance of the livery, and then there are people who find some charm in it. Around 2/3 of these people cannot force themselves to fully insult what they see as a sort of goofy creature, while the other third cannot allow their emotions to sway their rating. If my post on the matter didn't fully convey it, this is probably the closest to my own opinion.
If I was condor, and I saw these results from a focus group (replicated on a scale far larger than my survey, of course) I would probably say to go ahead with this livery. All press is good press, as they say. You're going to end up with a livery that sticks with people, and they're going to respect that even if they think it's hideous. At the very least, they're going to notice you.
Condor's livery is ugly. I will not change my stance; it does not look good. It is unpleasing to my eyes. But it is not the opposite of an A+ livery. In fact, it has a lot in common with them. The reason I love PSA, BWIA, and Amakusa Airlines so much isn't just that they make good use of the plane's shape, have pleasing colors, and generally look nice, but because they are built on the bedrock of a concept which goes beyond designing an airplane. In BWIA's review in particular I discussed the fact that it takes the approach of building a livery around an idea rather than an idea around the concept of what a livery should be; this is what distinguishes an A+ from an A, and the gulf is far larger than the gulf between any two other grades. The difference between 'it's on the better side of okay' and 'I somewhat tepidly like it' can be rather small compared to the difference between 'it's very good' and 'it's genius'. 
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In the 2022 film "Nope", protagonist OJ asks if there is such a thing as a 'bad miracle'. To me, condor is something similar: bad genius. condor takes a once-in-a-decade great concept and executes it incomprehensibly poorly, and now they're the infamous ugly stripe planes. It has failed spectacularly but it has failed in perfect harmony with itself. It is unlikely that someone attempting to make an ugly livery as a joke or a parody could come up with something quite this sad. I've struggled for a little bit to think of a way to convey what it means to me, and I think I might have finally found it.
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The town of Borja, Spain has a population of under 5,000. Although it was largely unremarkable as far as this sort of work goes, they were quite fond of a fresco painted on their church wall around 1930 by the artist Elías García Martínez. All art begins to deteriorate over time, and frescoes are notoriously difficult to conserve. In 2012, an octogenarian with no relevant training had a vision of a gorgeous restored painting. She definitely should have thought before acting. Just because you see something in your mind's eye doesn't mean you can make it real. And if you rush into it you might make...well, you see the picture on the right.
This picture is hideous. And it has brought in crowds of tourists hundreds of times the size of the town's actual population. Their money has funded pensions and built infrastructure. It has become a cultural icon. Nearly everyone with an internet connection has seen it. It's by far the most memorable thing about this tiny town. It is a work of bad genius.
Say what you will about condor's planes - and I myself have said many mean things about them. They are ugly and they are iconic. They are condor's grand statement, and no matter how ugly I think they are the world would be losing something if they were assimilated into identical Star Alliance liveries.
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This striped livery is terrible, and it is great. It is worse than many liveries are good. And it does not fail as a livery. It is fundamentally condor's, and there is nothing like it. Distinctive, coherent, unique...and also ugly.
I've realized that condor belongs as a fundamental landmark in my understanding of liveries, just like Lufthansa or BWIA or PSA. Now that I've said all of what I've said in this post, I think giving condor an F just doesn't work. It doesn't belong in the same category as liveries which fail the Star Alliance Test. It doesn't deserve a better grade though. Something so bombastically, almost elegantly hideous requires a rethinking of the scale I've been using.
condor gets Runway Runway's first ever Z rating.
It does a tremendously poor job at being good, but a fantastic job of being a livery. In order for the Star Alliance Test to retain its meaning and the F tier to retain its coherence, condor needs to be reclassified. It is awful, hideous, sloppy, a waste of potential, but it is potential, and 'awful' originally referred to something which inspired awe.
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atticoratticus · 5 months ago
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Asmo rambles I wrote at like 1am a couple months ago and forgot about until just now FJSJJDJ
This is from when I was a lot more early on in the game than I am now and I think it kinda shows, but yk
Several of the obm fellas have fronts that they put out, but Asmo in specific probably has the most notable one. Most of what we see of him is undeniably, yk, HIM, but I'm pretty certain there is a LOTTTT a lot more under the surface that we aren't shown. He's pretty much shown that he's uncomfortable showing genuine vulnerability - whether it be his own personal preferences via only wanting to put out as 'appealing' of an impression as possible or instead it being a result of the pressure being put on him to behave a certain way and fit the expectations those around him may put upon him (and that he puts on himself).
Asmo is undeniably confident, but it would honestly be weird to assume he doesn't struggle with some sort of insecurity alongside that. His confidence isn't an act - he KNOWS he's attractive and desired by others - however it could be precisely because of that that he might feel he has a certain level he needs to be on in order to constantly fit that image.
Especially because vanity is one of the most obvious parts of who he is as a person, I would imagine that pressure (whether it's something he's super conscious of or not) would be even greater as a result. If anything it could also be a self-imposed pressure alongside subconscious pressure by those around him. (Hell, he's shown as being jealous of the beauty of some of the people around him. I very much doubt this is because he views himself as less beautiful than them because duh, it's Asmo, but it does provide some food for thought. He also is absolutely the type to get jealous easily outside of that, like thats canon BFBSDB)
I genuinely do think what he desires above most else is genuine connection, even if at some point he might have viewed such a thing as being too far out of reach for someone who is as commonly perceived as shallow a guy as he is. It's basically canon that he's a hopeless romantic, though it's mostly noted in a lustful sense rather than the actual romance aspect of it (his 'desire' in general is almost exclusively brought up in that context at least).
HOWEVER. In terms of his actual thoughts vs what he's shown saying/what others say about him I do think it would provide a neat contrast for him to actually want a genuine, romantic connection above purely the sexual parts of it. Ofc because it's Asmo we're talking about it wouldn't be a one or the other thing - the two would go hand in hand - however it would be much much more balanced than what others might have expected of him.
Honestly he might have some attachment issues??? He's a dramatic guy to begin with, but him being in tears saying how much he missed MC when they went back to the human realm for that short period of time has been living in my head. Pretty much everyone else was more focused on the fact that MC was back and was overjoyed, but Asmo seemed to me like he was thinking more about how MC left (more specifically, left him) in the first place and genuinely seemed distressed at that fact before he inevitably cheered up as well. Once again this is linked to my thoughts about him wanting genuine connection with someone - and once he does find that connection, the thought of ever having to let go of it even for a moment is very very much distressing to him.
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loregoddess · 6 months ago
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So, I started thinking a bit too hard about this post here, wrote something up, let it sit in the drafts for a day bc I wrote most of it half-awake before work early in the morning while suffering IBS pain, and wanted to check it later, and decided I did in fact need to get this out of my system bc I've spent an unfathomable amount of time thinking about 3H and enjoy writing in-depth analyses for fun, and then I wrote the rest of it half-asleep late at night, still suffering from IBS pain, rip. (I did at least take time to edit at a later time though).
Anyhow the initial post that got me writing was talking about how insane the eastern/northern houses in the AM route were, since Houses Fraldarius and Gautier (and a few other minor houses of the eastern/northern Faerghus territories) were able to stave off the Empire's attempts to conquer them for a whole 5+ years resulting in a deadlock. Like, with all the resources Edelgard has at her disposal (both from the Empire, and from the Agarthans), she cannot squash the last resistance in Faerghus. And then I was like, "I get the joke here, but actually this reminds me of something from The Art of War, and might actually be good writing."
(full analysis continued below bc it's basically a short essay)
I actually think the writing for this specific part of the story is kind of ingenious since it takes historic military strategy into consideration for how the last of the Faerghus lords should have acted to best optimize their chances of survival. Sun Tzu explains how soldiers tend to act in dire situations in The Art of War, Chapter XI:
23. Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve. Officers and men alike will put forth their uttermost strength. 24. Soldiers when in desperate straits lose the sense of fear. If there is no place of refuge, they will stand firm. If they are in hostile country, they will show a stubborn front. If there is no help for it, they will fight hard. [...] 58. Place your army in deadly peril, and it will survive; plunge it into desperate straits, and it will come off in safety. 59. For it is precisely when a force has fallen into harm's way that is capable of striking a blow for victory.
(quotes cited from here)
By this logic, we can assume it is because the last of the Faergus lords have everything to lose if they're defeated (their lands, their lives, their peoples' safety, their way of life and culture) and everything to gain if they manage to win, that they fight as if they're already dead, because in a sense they are.
Sylvain actually displays a different, but similar mindset in his monastery dialogue during Chapter 22 of Verdant Wind:
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[image transcript: "Sylvain: I mean, I'll still fight like I want to die because that's worked so far, and why change at this late date, right?"]
(for context this is said in reaction to the prospect of fighting against the risen Nemesis's army, you can read the full conversation here)
So we know that the idea of the "my choices are to fight like hell or die, so I might as well fight" mindset is present at least in the Gautier house, and considering the military history of Faerghus it would make sense that all the major houses teach and utilize military strategies. The Art of War also has an entire chapter dedicated to the importance of spies, and it's implied or outright stated several times in both Houses and Hopes that House Gautier has one of the most expansive information networks in all of Fodlan, on par with House Vestra's, Judith's, and Yuri's spy networks.
Therefore it makes a lot of sense actually that even if it's just Houses Fraldarius and Gautier, and a few other minor lords, that they'd be able to hold out, since they were the military powerhouses in Faerghus and also the "best" equipped (decent home resources as compared to Galatea's territory, best spy network of Faerghus, long military history, more military experience, a strong reason to fight to the death, etc.) of the remaining Faerghus noble houses to put up a last-ditch resistance and actually manage to hold out.
Actually I want to expand on my "more military experience" note there. Insofar as I can tell, the Empire actually has the least amount of recent military experience, while Faerghus probably has the most. I say this because it's made very clear that Faerghus, specifically House Gautier, has been fighting off invasions from Sreng for decades, if not several generations of Gautiers (according to the account of Laetitia Gautier fighting off the first invasion from Sreng, from Hopes). Furthermore, the attacks from Sreng are frequent and recurring, enough so that Lambert led a campaign against Sreng. So all the eastern/northern houses of Faerghus have had constant military praxis for decades.
The only other major family to have similar and recent military experiences would be House Goneril, which often repels attacks from Almyra. It was an invasion from Almyra which prompted the formation of the Officers Academy, and yet no such response was ever made to Sreng. In fact, Sreng and Faerghus's struggles with them seem to be entirely unknown to the rest of Fodlan, or at least ignored. Which means that while Holst Goneril gains fame for his might on the battlefield, no one in Fodlan really knows about the strength of the eastern/northern houses of Faerghus.
The only major military conflict the Empire had to deal with in recent events leading up to the start of the game's story was the Dagda and Brigid war, which was resolved within a year's time and resulted in the complete destruction of House Nuvelle, which is far from a clean victory. The only notable person associated with that war is Count Bergliez, making him the foremost expert on military strategy in Edelgard's army. Edelgard herself started a multi-front war in her late teens with literally no actual military experience. (Not to say the training at the Officers Academy was useless, but military education and a handful of field battles are not the same as prolonged warfare).
Sure, Edelgard has the Agarthans, but even if we assume that the same major Agarthans have been cybernetically transferring their souls from one host body into new host bodies when needed, they don't technically have "war" experience since their MO is to act in the shadows, sowing chaos and discord. They don't know how to manage an army (and even if some of the Agarthans, like Thalas, had survived from the initial war with Sothis, and would technically have knowledge of warfare, that war ended with the near-annihilation of the world, so it seems foolish to assume they have any practical knowledge of military strategy).
So, Edelgard starts this multi-front war, and has to divide her resources between the Faerghus front and the Leicester front, and since everyone in Fodlan knows of Holst's battlefield prowess, she decides to have Count Bergliez hold down the Leicester front, leaving Faerghus to be dealt with by the Agarthans through Cornelia. And sure, Cornelia succeeds in winning the western lords to her side and toppling the capital, executing Rufus and attempting to kill Dimitri, but neither she nor the western houses have the same sort of experience with war the way the eastern/northern houses do because of Sreng. And everyone consistently underestimates the strength of the eastern/northern houses, possibly especially Cornelia bc she's an Agarthan and thinks herself above humans to begin with.
So between the fact that Cornelia (and technically Edelgard) didn't start off by taking the eastern/northern houses seriously, and the fact that Houses Fraldarius and Gautier and the surrounding territories were backed into a corner with everything to lose and everything to fight to the death for, it really does make sense that a deadlock would result on that specific battlefront, and not just solely because of the military culture of Faerghus.
(To be entirely fair, Edelgard is more or less doomed to lose the war she started in every timeline except CF, where the key variables are significantly different, because of her lack of military experience, mismanagement of resources and assets, and a general lack of understanding and knowledge of the rest of Fodlan, paired with the fact that her and the Agarthans are at odds from the start, so there's a ton of internal rifts and clashing objectives within her forces. Like, she really wasn't going to win from a strategic perspective. Why the Agarthans never use their orbital missiles to deal with Fraldarius and Gautier is beyond me, and why Edelgard didn't sieze Garreg Mach and use it as a strategic stronghold is also beyond me--on a Watsonian level at least. The writing for the Agarthans is consistently lackluster, so with the writing for eastern/northern Faerghus's military might being logically solid, I'll take my wins where I can).
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duckapus · 11 months ago
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In Deep: part 2
(okay so I don't have the motivation to properly word the opening, but basically Sonata demands an explanation for why the Airship group is in her kingdom and SMG4 manages to recover enough to tell her what's going on. And for as ridiculous as the whole thing sounds from her perspective, she can't help but wonder...)
"Your majesty, you can't seriously believe this crap!?"
"Patience, Admiral." she sighs and sinks slightly in her throne, "I am not yet fully convinced, but you must admit the idea has merit. Tell me honestly, can you remember anything in detail from before the barriers rose?"
"W- well..." he thinks about it, really thinks beyond his own stubbornness and the slight pinch behind his eyes, "...no, I can't. It's all broad strokes. More like the preamble to a story than a life lived."
"Precisely my point. Our actual memories are mere days old, the same days since the event SMG4 speaks of."
"I...alright, so maybe they are telling the truth. That doesn't change the fact that their so-called "plan" falls apart in the final stretch. And you've seen the way the red and yellow ones behave. Do you really think it's wise to put the fate of our kingdom in the hands of these...these morons?"
"...You have a point. Still, there's something about them that..." she trails off, then turns to address their guests, "I've come to a decision."
The group looks up from whatever they'd been discussing in their own huddle.
"While I'm not certain that I fully believe your story, I'll admit that it makes a great deal of sense. Still, I must prioritize the safety of my subjects, and your quest stands to put us and the other regions of this "Mushroom Kingdom" in grave danger. So, I have a proposition. Your party shall face seven of my kingdom's greatest champions in the arena. Defeat them, and the seed is yours. But should you fail even once, you and the rest of your cohorts on the surface shall be banished from my kingdom."
SMG4 gulps, but quickly shakes off his nerves and nods firmly, "We accept your challenge, your majesty."
"Uh...we do?"
"Not like we have much of a choice Cubot, we need that seed."
Sonata grins brightly, which turns out to be pretty intimidating between her shark teeth, her size, and the context, "Then let the games begin."
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Soon enough, the group is in a decently sized room with a few guards, the gateway to the arena before them. SMG4 turns to address the others, "Okay guys, we've got no idea who we'll be up against, and they've got home-field advantage, so be ready for anything."
There's scattered affirmations, with Meggy and the twins looking determined, Mario going walleyed again, Cubot shaking nervously, and Sig just looking bored as usual.
One of the guards swims towards them, "Alright, first up are the one in the green poncho and the yellow box thing."
"I am ready."
"Oh boy..."
The two are led to the doorway, while the other five are brought to a viewing area, and they get their first glimpse of the arena. It's about what you'd expect, big flat circle with high walls, fully packed seats, architecture that fits what they've seen so far, even another throne high up in one of the seating areas where Sonata is watching from. But Cubot notices a few...unusual details.
"Uh...is it just me, or are those speakers up on the pillars?"
"I believe so. And the front row of the queen's section appears to have a DJ table instead of seats."
As they reach the apparent starting position and the gate across from them opens, the guard that's accompanied them hands each of them something and then swims off. Marcy looks down at the microphone on her sword in confusion, then the other gate finishes opening and she looks up to see who their opponents are...and groans.
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"Oh you have got to be kidding me."
(Yeah, remember how I said in the Explanation post that the Undersea Kingdom is a musical ocean? We haven't seen much of that so far, now have we?
Anyway, tune in next time for episode 2 of the Undersea Kingdom's time in the spotlight (because why shouldn't Lily get two episodes instead of the one every other Zone is getting? Well, besides Muppetopia but that one has extenuating circumstances) "So You Think You Can Rap 2: Undersea Encore!")
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limeade-l3sbian · 2 years ago
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you're correct about ozai. i only loosely remember the comics, but the additional context there is pretty much that ursa was the grandchild of roku (whose family went into hiding precisely to avoid being roped into fire nation politics), that she already had a lover when ozai's father found her and set her up to be married to ozai (presumed to be zuko's actual father), and that ozai treated ursa as basically a trophy wife, going as far as to tell her that their wedding was the last time she would see her own family because she's "his." the man has a very solid background to be a misogynist, and they just didn't touch on it at all in the show, except to imply he was a bad husband (which...no shit).
i kind of respect the attempts to make more rounded female characters, including a female long-term villain, but i think they dropped the ball when considering misogyny and female oppression as topics (even though the writers clearly had it in mind at some points, they could never seem to commit or go all the way; it was better than a lot of other media, but it was FAR from perfect). i'm not necessarily against fully evil female characters, though i'm not very into wholly evil characters in general, and i'm mostly bothered by the fact that the younger girl sibling was irredeemably evil when the older male sibling was fully redeemable. also, i lowkey think that azulas traits play into some misogynistic tropes (as a little sister who was always accused of being a liar who faked her emotions to "get her way" (but was also "overly emotional," as well??) and was seemingly assumed not to care about anyone or anything else other than herself and her own self-satisfaction, her depiction stung to see quite a bit).
even though the writers clearly had it in mind at some points, they could never seem to commit or go all the way
YES
They wanted the credit of having these themes but were unwilling to give them the full depth that makes people truly appreciate them. While I think Azula's slip of mind was horrifying in a good way, I think it was rushed entirely too much. I think the earliest we see this "slip" is Boiling Rock when she's "betrayed" by Ty Lee and Mai. There's definitely a shock in her expression when Mai basically tells her "you haven't been controlling me with fear the way you think you've been".
But we should have see more. You can't provide to me this calculated queen of battle and then three episodes before the finale be like "oh but naw, she's losing it". Like, why would she be losing it over some bullshit like her hair was fucked up or she JUST started thinking about her mother? She just got everything she's been hounding for!
If you want me to think she's losing it over her new position as firelord (by the way, I love the genderless title of the throne. Kind of like Pharaoh), have her flashback to the betrayal of Ty Lee and Mai. Show me how she's looking around and putting on unnecessary acts of force to keep intact this method of control she's used her whole life. Show me an example of her thinking she's got everyone in the palace under her control of fear but its somehow revealed that they only really follow her because they're more afraid of Ozai.
That is a problem with this franchise in general. If you're gonna do it? DO IT.
I LOVE the ending of Amon's season. There was no redemption! And his brother knew that so he KILLED THEM BOTH. And we don't know what that tear was! Was he crying because he was happy to be reunited with his brother? Was he crying because he, the master blood bender, could sense what his brother was doing? I personally love that ending because they followed through. This guy was indoctrinated by his father but rebelled too far and overall, was just too far gone.
I do not think at any point Azula was too far gone. Yet, that's what they kept trying to sell to me.
Azula wouldn't be some compulsive liar. She would be so brazened in her fear tactics that there would be no need to lie. She'd say "I only lie when I'm afraid, and what do I have to be afraid of?"
They have a better show of female rep, but like you said, I hope people don't hail it as perfect.
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whyohwhydoris · 5 months ago
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Man oh man, there is just so much that is wrong with this.
Let's start with a little basic multiverse theory: If every conceivable universe could exist, then, by definition, all possible cross-universe relationships are "selfcest". Which is a fancy word you've made up for "ew, I don't like it and I need to articulate a reason to hate it because of a faux obsession with modern concepts of rationality, which I am blindly applying to art as if there was any sense of objective truth in art."
But, you ask, how so? Well, if there is an infinite envelope of possibility, then, by definition, there is a universe in which Loki is Mobius, and a universe in which Mobius is Loki. It's really rudimentary.
"Ah ha!" I hear you say, about to postulate about how our Mobius isn't a Loki and vice-versa! Doesn't matter. If the argument is that "any degree of life-path congruence across an arbitrary separation of universes is selfcest" - and that is your argument: That Loki and Sylvie is wrong because - despite existing in two separate universes, manifesting different skills and appearances, and having quantifiably different lives - they both share a similar enough life, then the reasonable extension of that is that all people are the same across the multiverse and that individuality is an illusion imposed by our limitations as inhabitants of a single one of those universes. We know that all persons in the TVA are variants, and that variant timelines are culled when discovered. This mean that Mobius and Loki are from different universes, and because we know over an infinite number of potentialities Mobius is Loki, Lokius is selfcest.
But, I've got more for you. It actually does matter that Loki and Sylvie engage in a bi-for-bi relationship which is not same-sex presenting. Research shows that Bisexual people, despite being a larger share of the population than their homosexual comrades, also face the greater prejudice within the queer community. And that hostility and hatred is often focused precisely on the fact that different-gender relations within the context of a Bi relationship are still inherently queer.
In the context of shipping and fandom, there has long been an obsession with homosexual romance. This stems from the historical and continuing under-representation of queer characters, but in recent decades has morphed into a decidedly fetishistic strain as well, with a Bi-phobic character where openly and explicitly Bi characters are involved. A Bi character is treated as insufficiently queer if not placed into a performatively queer relationship. And the assertion that someone must be shown with "both" a man and a woman to be Bi is equally Biphobic, as it erases Bi experiences in which sexual attraction is present to multiple genders and expression, but where relationships have not been as diverse. This creates the false notion that one must not just be attracted to but also engage with multiple genders in order to be Bi, and represents the broader queer community doing what it normally does, which is to thoughtlessly perpetuate Biphobic standards in media and discourse while excluding Bi persons from queer spaces for "insufficient" queerness.
As a Bi person, let me put it this way: Keep your shit out of my sexuality. Bisexuality is big, and it's complicated, and sitting there and calling what is intrinsically an expression of Bi identity "part of the problem" is Biphobic.
You want to ship Lokius? Do that. You want to say "most people don't want to see Sylkie happen"? To bad, because it is literally the text of the fucking show. But don't try to dog-whistle my sexuality to cover for the fact you don't like something. And, if it happens to be your sexuality too? I don't care. You can express a Bisexual Loki in love with Mobius all you want without policing what Bisexuality is and has been since before either of us was born. I'm not going to stand for it. Too many people get fucked up in this world because all they're fed are lies and misconceptions, and I'm not going to see a single Bi person out-there get gaslit into thinking they are less queer or less worthy because their life didn't check a pretty little box. The fact that Loki and Sylvie are Bi is Bisexual representation, and Bisexual people do not need to justify their place in queer spaces by being performatively homosexual. You want to say "people have a right to feel disappointed"? I have a right to feel offended when authentic bisexuality is discarded because it isn't pretty enough for people.
I remember seeing this one post that was like "erm you guys can't ship Lokius, there's no evidence they like each other, that's biphobic, you only want to see Loki get with a man" like what??
First off, who cares if they "canonically" love each other or not, there are ships built off of characters who never interact, I doubt them not expressing their feelings on screen really matters compared to this
Second, Lokius is not a biphobic ship nor are the people who ship it are. There definitely ARE weird people who want to only see Loki get with a man, but the majority just don't want Sylki to happen
Bc. You know. Sylki is selfcest
(And a very toxic relationship at that but I'm not getting into that rn)
Also is it bad that many people wanted Loki to show attraction to men as well? Throughout the whole series, Loki only shows attraction to women; ofc that doesn't make her invalid as a bisexual person, but to claim that bi rep was so important to you yet the only characters they are shown to romantically like are women is part of the problem
And then to justify your lack of bi rep by going "look both of these characters are bi, it's bi rep", knowing full well it is a very straight-passing relationship just adds to it
Again, Loki and Sylvie are in a bisexual relationship; them being straight-passing is not the issue, the issue is that they use the fact that both of them are bi to justify the lack of bisexual representation in the Loki series. People have a right to feel disappointed that they didn't feel represented when creators claimed they would, and to go off and say that they should've been is not the way to go about it
Just let Lokius be, y'all, it's not the end of the world, it's not biphobic, calm down
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daughter-of-sapph0 · 2 years ago
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whoever programmed the tiktok auto captions to change the phrase "9 to 5" into the text "4:51" needs to be hit by a bus.
yes, the time is literally nine minutes til five. but no one says "nine to five" and means that it's nine minutes before five o'clock. they're talking about their fucking shift, or the Dolly Parton song.
I've never met a person outside of old boomers who say "it's blank til blank" when talking about the time. and even then, it's "til" not "to". and even then even then, it's never as precise as nine minutes. it's always intervals of five minutes. if you need to be so precise that you need to indicate that it's specifically nine minutes before five, you'd just say "four fifty-one"
auto captions should not change the text you say. they should change nothing at all. they should simply put down exactly what you said. they are for deaf and hard of hearing people to understand what is being said by someone. if the captions don't exactly match the text, then deaf and hoh people are missing information that hearing people get, and that's ablist and discrimination.
imagine if asl interpretators just signed something completely different to what was being said. imagine if you tried to translate something to a different language and the translation software completely changed the meaning of the sentence. imagine if you looked up the lyrics for a song and they were entirely different to what was being sung. that's what this stupid auto caption thing on tiktok is like
this isn't the first time the auto captions have been completely fucked up on tiktik. a while back, it would capitalize every instance of "us" into "US". every instance. that includes people saying the letters that rhyme with "you ess"... as well as the word "us", the pronoun meaning you and me... as well as in the middle of words, like "trUSt". literally it was the most basic logic ever. "if the letter U is followed by the letter S, then capitalize both letters, no matter what". it doesn't check if you're actually talking about the acronym for the united states or not, it doesn't care if your saying a completely different word, it doesn't even care if it's in the middle of another word. it capitalized every instance of "us" ever. and unless you went in and manually changed it, which almost no one did, it was stuck like that for months.
another glitch is with numbers. it fucking hates numbers. I'm gonna write out a few examples of spoken text, followed by what the auto captions SHOULD say, and then followed by what I actually saw it put on tiktok.
spoken: "twenty nine percent"
should be: "29%"
what it shows up as: "29"
sometimes the percent sign doesn't show up at all, for whatever fucking reason. not the word percent either. so a sentence that's spoken as "there's a twenty nine percent increase" would show up as "there's a 29 increase".
spoken: "it weighs fifty pounds"
should be: "it weighs 50 pounds" (even "it weighs 50lbs" can be confusing for some people)
what it shows up as: "it weighs £50.00"
given the amount of people who talk about imperial weight is probably far more than the amount of people who talk about the price of objects in British pounds sterling, as well as the fact that a simple ai could easily figure out the the context of the conversation is about weight, not price, this one just makes me really mad.
and my fucking favorite one
spoken: "five hundred thousand"
should be: "500,000"
what it shows up as "5,001,000"
I think it thought it was "five hundred" followed by "one thousand" but somehow combined those two numbers in the same way prek kids think 1 plus 1 is 11, and then adds commas every three digits
anyway, tiktoks auto captions fucking suck. this is a billion dollar social media website. how the fuck does it function so fucking poorly? there is no reason for it to be like this. it's almost intentionally bad.
the only option for users to fix this is to manually go into the captions for each and every one of your videos and manually type out everything you said. and if it's a video longer than a few seconds, it's just unfeasible to type everything and sync it up perfectly to when it's being said. and that's just the people who care about making their videos accessible. most people don't care about captions at all, and just let deaf and hoh people suffer with the shitty auto captions, and when the captions are broken they might make a correction or joke about it in the comments. some people don't even know that captions exist at all. like they could really care less if it was fixed or not. it doesn't concern them because they can hear normally.
tiktok could easily fix this. they have so much money and people and staff and resources that it could be solved perfectly, not just in English, but in all languages, in under a week. but they don't. because they do not care about disabled people at all.
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noteguk · 4 years ago
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be quiet | jjk | m | drabble
[ ! ] this is a drabble for bad influence. It can be read as a stand-alone. 
— summary; in which jungkook is the best at picking the worst possible place for a quickie. 
— contents and warnings; smut, pwp, the endless adventures of badboy!jk x goodgirl!reader, enemies with benefits, public sex (library), doing the nasty in the theology section, dirty talk, unprotected sex, mid-sex arguments, jk is a mean lil shit (nothing new), kind of dom!jk, creampie, oral (female receiving), cum eating, cum play
— words; 3.1k
— author’s note; this was requested by anon and I thought it would be a nice thing to drop before the angsty parts begin 😌 also, for time context, this happens a bit after “bad behavior”
~
You were pretty sure that Jungkook had chosen that section on purpose. Because he hated you, that’s why. 
Never once in your life had you wondered so far into the university’s library, past the known biology and chemistry shelves, and into the dusty alleyways of the humanities courses. And that was the shameful reason why you didn’t even know that there was a religious section in the first place. 
The realization was obvious if you actually stopped to think about it: there were so many classes related to theology in your university that it would be ridiculous not to have books on that. And yet, you couldn’t help but feel like the old, hardcover bible was staring at you in endless disappointment as Jungkook turned you around and threw the hem of your dress over your hips. 
“Shhhh, baby, keep it quiet,” he shushed you after a small whimper had escaped your lips, his palms spreading over your ass cheeks. “Someone’s gonna hear you.” 
Because Jungkook hated you (as previously established), he instantly contradicted himself with a loud slap against your ass. 
“You’re such a fucking idiot,” you hissed, fumbling closer to him as he tugged your underwear to the side. The cold air hit your wet folds instantly, spreading goosebumps through your skin. Jungkook was an expert at noticing the most timid, basic ways that your body reacted to his touches, so the clear asymmetry between your rough speech and the shivers running through your body was enough to make him snicker. “Keep it down. This isn’t funny.” 
Jungkook chuckled behind you, the sharp noise of his zipper opening sounding like a gunshot inside that quiet building. “No. It’s hilarious, actually.” 
You sighed, praying to all the books around you that no one would stumble across that erotic spectacle. You had no idea if there was another living soul wandering around the library so late — in fact, the place was like thirty minutes away from closing and you were positive that the librarian was already dozing off on the front counter when you arrived, so she was probably balls deep in REM sleep by that point. There was no one cramming for midterms, no night owls to interrupt the two of you and, just to top it all off, it was a fucking Friday. The library was so empty that you didn’t even know why you went to that place. 
Okay, that was a lie. You went there because Jungkook had booty called you — yeah, yeah, boo-hoo, shame and disgrace — but, in your defense, you honestly thought he was just in desperate need for some extra help with his project (which was what he had initially told you). Turns out, “extra help” in Jungkook Dictionary didn’t mean the academic one. It meant that he was pathetically hard and he wanted somewhere to stick his dick in (instead of doing it like a normal person and using his hand). 
Regardless, your position was equally embarrassing. You could’ve just walked away when you realized his true intentions, and not followed him into the theology section of the library, for fuck’s sake. You really needed to start exercising some self love and put some limits in that chaotic situationship before you got yourself in serious trouble. 
Still, all those mental promises turned into silence when you felt his fingers playing with your folds, teasing their way between them. “So fucking wet,” Jungkook’s horniness dripped from his voice like honey, so soft and deep that got your knees buckling, back arching so he could reach your heat better. “Such a needy girl. Always begging for cock.” 
“I didn’t beg for anything,” you weren’t in the mood to deal with his bullshit; looking over your shoulder just so you could stare him down. Somewhere along your messy make-out session and the Bible-induced guilt, Jungkook had already moved his pants and underwear halfway down his thighs, his cock standing erect and proud. His timing was fantastic when he was actually interested in something. “You’re the one that can’t keep it in your pants.” 
He scoffed. “Don’t ruin the mood.” Jungkook punctuated his sentence with the plunging of two of his fingers inside your pussy, making a surprised whimper fall from your mouth — which you suppressed a second too late. “And of course I can’t, not when you’re dressed like this.”
You rolled your eyes, fighting the pleasure that started to build up at the pumping of his fingers in and out of you. “My knee-level dress is neither sexy nor an open invitation, you troglodyte.” You had chosen to wear that dress because it was a deliciously warm afternoon, not because you wanted to get railed while staring at religious texts. Jungkook, however, seemed to stare at your choice of clothing like he was looking at an “all you can eat” bouffet. You groaned. “But if you’re gonna do it, can you rush? I don’t wanna get caught.” 
It was Jungkook’s turn to roll his eyes, a sigh escaping his lips as his digits left your heat. You knew he’d tease you endlessly if you didn’t say that, and you two were on a tight schedule. “You never do,” he mumbled. 
“Duh,” you said, watching as his hand curled around his cock, pumping it a few times. You placed your own hands on the shelves and refused to look at the books any longer. “I have a future, you know. Don’t wanna get expelled halfway through the—”
“Shut up,” he interrupted you, holding onto your hips. Jungkook aligned himself with your entrance, coating his crown with your wetness and grunting at the sensation. “Fuck. Don’t wanna talk about your stupid high marks right now.” 
Jungkook made his point clear with a swift roll of his hips, his thick length gradually entering your pussy. You bit down on your lip, closing your eyes as you marveled at the aphrodisiac sensation of his cock opening you up. “Shit,” you moaned — a whispered, breathy moan that wiped all your fierceness away. “You’re so — fuck — so annoying.” 
“I said shut up,” Jungkook hissed, his cock hitting deep inside you with a strong hit of his hips against yours. You could feel him everywhere, mercilessly pushing his way inside your tight walls and stretching them wide for him. 
Your eyes instantly fell shut, eyebrows raising as he started to set a rhythm, moving in and out of your soaked heat. The sounds of your bodies meeting was dirty and, worst of all, it was super perceptible to any one passing by — however, in typical Jungkook magic, you quickly forgot about most of your worries. “Oh my… Jungkook,” you gasped, feeling his grasp on your skin grow tighter at the uttering of his name. “Someone’s… someone’s gonna hear us.” 
But you had successfully managed to piss Jungkook off, which was a terrible sign in that specific (public) situation. “Shit, you’re always like this,” he groaned, raising the force of his thrusts. A desperate moan died on your throat at the feeling of his cock drilling in and out of you, your breath shallow. That couldn’t be good. “Can’t stop fucking talking.” 
Thinking was starting to get difficult, and speaking was even worse. “That’s not what I—”
Another whimper broke your sentence, your trail of thought long forgotten, and he used that opening to his advantage. One of Jungkook’s hands slithered from your hip to the front of your body, moving between your breasts before, at last, settling on your neck. There was no strength on his actions when he pulled you backwards, making your back press against his chest. “Why can’t you understand when I tell you to be fucking quiet, uh?” His voice was a rough growl close to your ear, filled with so much hunger that you almost lost your balance. Before you did, however, the tap of two of his fingers on your lips made your focus shift. “Do both of us a fucking favor and put your mouth to good use.” 
For the first time that night, you were obedient. Without hesitation, you parted your lips so his fingers could move inside your mouth, a deep exhale leaving his chest once you started sucking on them; muffling your whimpers. 
“That’s it, fuck,” he praised, his momentaneous anger slipping away from his grasp. You could feel Jungkook throbbing inside you every time you swirled your tongue around his digits, his length splitting you open like no one else could. “You’re so fucking tight. The only reason why I don’t stuff your mouth full of my cock right now is because this pussy is too good.” 
You clenched around him, tried to say something that sounded like gibberish with his fingers still in your mouth. Amazingly so, Jungkook understood what it was. 
“Are you gonna cum, baby?” He asked, breathless. You could only nod, your body bouncing up and down with the force of his precise thrusts. “Yeah?” He chuckled. “You know, I should just leave you like this, see if you learn to shut up for once.” 
“Pfflease, no,” you struggled to get out. 
“No? Now you listen to what I have to say?” Jungkook kept teasing you, watching as your initial petulant attitude was washed away. Doing that to you seemed to be a habit that he couldn’t let go, no matter how hard he tried. There was something about the way you fumbled and whimpered under his grasp that inflated his ego more than anything. “You only listen when I have you like this. Don’t you think that’s funny?” 
Jungkook pulled his fingers out of your mouth, using that hand to press your body closer to his; tattooed arm wrapped in an iron grip around your waist. “Sorry,” you didn’t even know why you were apologizing at that point; you were just trying to grasp at anything that could bring you some sort of salvation. Maybe if you tried to appease his pestering spirit, he wouldn’t be so cruel when it came to your release. “Jungkook, please.” 
“Please what?” He asked, his breath ragged against your ear; sounding like he was almost getting lost in your pussy. 
“Please let me cum, please,” you begged. You didn’t know how he managed to do it: to make your entire personality crumble down into a desperate, needy mess with little to no effort. He knew just the right buttons to push; just the right way to fuck you. It was a dangerous game that you were playing and the score clearly wasn’t in your favor. 
“I’ll think about it.” He groaned, a particularly loud moan ripping itself from his throat at another hash buckle of his hips. He was fucking your so well that you couldn’t even remember where you were for a second, all inihibitions pushed aside as your mind turned into a hazed, disconnected mess. “First, be a good girl and let me fill you up.” 
You nodded desperately, not trusting yourself to say anything else. The heat in your stomach was building up at a worrisome speed, threatening to spill over at any given second, and yet you didn’t think it would happen quick enough. 
Just as you expected, Jungkook was cumming a few thrusts later, spilling himself inside your pussy as he groaned against your shoulder. “Fuck, baby,” he was fighting for air, trying to keep his moans as quiet as he could manage them. And yet, when his mouth right next to your ear, you could hear with divine clarity the beautiful, airy sighs he gifted you as he continued to fuck you through his high. “Take it, come on. Fuck.” 
You were almost pleading for your own body to hush and allow you to cum before Jungkook pulled away but, once again, you weren’t that lucky. You were left with shaky legs as he removed himself from your heat; feeling awfully empty as he swirled you around before crashing his mouth against yours in a messy kiss. 
Yes, Jungkook fucked you like no one else could, but kissing him managed to be even more heavenly sometimes. Time and time again, he would surprise you with kisses that left you seeking for air; the slow drag of his tongue against yours matching perfectly with the way his hand cupped your cheek, thumb delicately caressing the skin. It was the eye of a hurricane, the tranquil skies before the storm hit, and you could get lost in it with such ease that it scared you sometimes. 
But then he pulled away, and the magic left you just as quickly as it had arrived. “J-Jungkook, I didn’t—“ 
“Shh, baby, I know.” Another tender kiss against your lips, and his mouth moved to your jaw, nibbling on the skin. “Gonna clean you up, princess. Don’t worry.” 
Brain too overwhelmed to react, you were left speechless as Jungkook trailed a path of sloppy kisses down your neck, sending shivers down your spine before, at last, getting down on his knees before you. A question got trapped in your throat, rapidly forgotten, when he raised one of your thighs and placed it over his shoulder. “Hold this up for me.” He signed at the hem of your dress, and you did as he requested, pulling the fabric to the level of your breasts. “That’s my girl.” 
A shivering sigh danced on your tongue as you waited for him to move, his eyes eagerly taking in the way his release dripped between your folds, mingling with your own wetness. Jungkook loved to watch his work. “So pretty,” Jungkook mumbled, as he always did; sounding like he was trapped in a daydream. Like you weren’t actually supposed to hear that. “Always so pretty for me.” 
You got lost in his praise for exactly two seconds before he was leaning in and pressing his mouth against your heat. Your hips buckled forward, barely held in place by his strong arms around your thighs. “Jungkook,” you called his name, making his dark eyes snap towards yours. His tongue prodded against your opening once, twice, teasing your pussy a few times before he licked his path up your slit, lips wrapping around your clit. “God, so good.” 
Jungkook hummed against your heat, lapping between your folds like he was a starved animal, not caring about the fact that his own cum was mixed with your arousal. You were starting to consider that maybe he had a bit of an oral fixation, because you never saw him so focused as when he had his face buried between your thighs; his tongue playing with your sensitive spots so eagerly that you couldn’t help but whine out his name. 
“Oh— Fuck,” you whimpered, feeling  as that familiar pressure started to build on the base of your spine. Your hands were sweaty, clenching onto the fabric of your flowery dress as Jungkook continued to moan and lick his way around your pussy. “Fuck, I’m so close.”
Jungkook was looking up at you through the thick curtain of his messy hair, his devilish eyes sparking up in a silent dare for you to make a mess on his tongue. At the same time that he told you to keep quiet, you knew that he got off when you were loud — especially in a place like that, where the two of you could get caught. He was a fucking demon when he wanted to be, and he seriously didn’t have any trouble dragging you to hell along with him. 
The worst part was that you liked it. You liked it since the very first time he had you, liked the way he took your precious control away from you. You liked when he had you like that: a shivering, desperate mess hanging by a thread; dwelling in the fantastic sensation of his wet muscle prodding your entrance, fucking it open as he stared up at you like he could eat you whole. 
It was always the sight of Jungkook like that — between your thighs, eating you out like you were his favorite sweet — that pushed you over the edge. You pressed the back of your hand against your mouth, muffling your needy cries as you finally reached your high, his tongue still playing with your clit as you came down. Jungkook groaned as a small wave of your arousal dripped on him, his mouth expertly cleaning it up, just like he had promised. 
“S-Stop,” you whimpered, a violent shiver overtaking your muscles as you started to feel the effects of your sensitivity. “Too much.” 
After a final stroke of his tongue against your slick, Jungkook tugged your panties back in place and removed your thigh from his shoulder before, finally, he moved back to his feet. Your hand, weak, let go of the fabric and allowed your dress to collapse back into place, covering the mess between your legs. 
He smirked at your overwhelmed, fucked-out state as he tugged himself back inside his pants. The sound of his zipper was once again a noisy interruption, which brought along a new wave of panic as you remembered your location. 
You grabbed Jungkook’s wrist, twisting it around so you could look at his watch. “We have five minutes until closing time.” You sighed heavily, looking up at him with your typical irritated stare. His magic didn’t last for long, after all. “Why are you always like this?”
“Like what?” Jungkook raised one eyebrow, unable to hide the entertainment in his voice as he watched your expression. He ran one hand through his dark hair, pushing it back. “Incredibly handsome? Charismatic? Good at everything? Including eati—”  
“I was going to ask why do you have the inherent need to defile religious places, but whatever helps you sleep at night,” you interrupted. “By the way, this,” you pointed between you two, “is not happening again. So I hope you had a good last time.” 
Jungkook chuckled, holding your chin with his fingers. “This is like the third time you’re saying that, baby.” He pulled you in for a quick kiss, barely a tender press of his lips against yours. “But whatever helps you sleep at night.” 
 ~
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fandomcrysis · 3 years ago
Text
All the hours I lost // 01
Part one: Familiar things wither
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Pairing: Gojo Satoru x gn! reader
Genre: Fluff and a little angst
Warnings: Cursing (I have a dirty mouth :/), alluding to sex/making out (I didn't specify so it's up to interpretation), hinting at manipulation on Gojo's end (let's be honest this man lives by the words gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss)
Summary: Meeting your soulmate is magical for everyone. For you it's even more so, after all Gojo Satoru is a man like no other.
Word count: 5.1k
A/n: This fic was written for @yuujispinkhair 's Enchanted to meet you collab. She is absolutely lovely please check them out for amazing content. Thank you so much, Winter, for hosting the collab 💖💕🥺💓💗❤️💘💞🥺🥰💓💞💘💗💖😘
This is a song fic, to get the full context please check out All too well by Taylor Swift! (You don’t have to it, makes sense without it but it makes more sense with it)
It's incredibly long because I have a lot to say about this man. (If it wasn't clear from the word count already. He has me by the neck if you will xddd) I hope my beta reader could make the fic eligible for human consumption. I kinda feel like I’m sending my kid off to school rn I spent months with this fic being basically done but not ready to roll out xdddd Please enjoy! And have a great day! 💕
Part two
Taglist💕: @cerealfrdinner797
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It was a chilly September day. You remember it clearly, in fact it’s the only day in your life that you could play minute by minute in your head. You aren’t really sure if it’s because of the impact it had on your life or if it's just natural to remember, and in the end it doesn’t matter. You are grateful for it because you think back a lot to that day. Everything is so vivid, the feelings, the sensations, even the thoughts that were running through your head.
It was your first fall out of school, your first full time job, you were delighted that you are finally putting your degree to use. Fate works in mysterious ways, if it does exist, because there was nothing special about that day. You were on your way to work, right on time for once, so you were in no rush. You went the exact same route as every day; first the metro then a few minute walk to the bus and that drops you off right in front of your work building. The walk from the metro to the bus stop is pretty; the short, faded buildings have a certain charm and atmosphere, their old elegance reminding you of a time long gone.
You adjusted your big red scarf that might have been just a little too warm for the day, your eyes grazed over the houses. As interesting as they are, after a few months of walking by them, the view became quite monotone and the walk itself isn’t particularly fascinating on its own. Today’s walk, however, is different. The soft music and gloomy grey clouds had you distracted enough that you would’ve never paid any mind to the small street that crossed the one you were walking on or where that street could lead to.
Not until you felt the unmissable, strong pull for the first time in your life, one that led you right down that street. As many before described it, you knew what it was right away. It was as compelling as it was undeniable, your soulmate was near you and you needed to find them. You might’ve been late for work if you missed your bus, but you couldn't care less about work right now. This was beyond curiosity or a want, there was simply no other option than to find them. Even if that meant exploring a narrow, run-down street, only to find the strangest looking man you’ve ever seen. Especially since you followed the pull to find him, to find the best and worst thing to ever happen to you. The day you met Gojo Satoru, you remember it all too well.
That day, more precisely the second your eyes met, presumably you aren't sure since he was in sunglasses, you felt a small tingling feeling on your wrist. Ever since, you have a counter on your left wrist, it counts how much time passed since you met your soulmate. It was strange at first, like a tattoo that was always changing. It’s hard to get used to knowing that this is your own skin. It’s a part of your body that is changing to show you how long it has been since you became whole. It is endearing for sure, but that doesn’t make it any less unusual.
2 weeks 4 days 5 hours 8 minutes 34 seconds
Satoru is... different. He is certainly unique in a way that nobody else is in your life, he would be even without him being your soulmate. His whole personality is kind of bizarre, it’s like he’s living in a completely different world. His humour is absurd and he seems to have absolutely no dignity, yet he’s so arrogant at the same time. That being said, you appreciate it, you find him funny and entertaining no matter what he does. Guess there must be something in this soulmate thing, because you just click. He can make you laugh until you cry just by talking about nothing in particular.
And he does that a lot, he talks about nothing whenever the conversation isn’t about you, which most of the time it is. He has a way of making you talk or maybe you are just all too eager to share, either way you always end up going on and on about something in your life. Your family, your friends, your hobbies, your work, anything and everything. You are pretty sure that he knows way too much about you for someone you met a little more than two weeks ago. But that’s how it's supposed to be, isn’t it? He is your soulmate, he should know more about you than anyone else and you about him.
Well, the other way it’s complicated. Technically you know a lot about him, you know his favourite spice girl, his favourite kind of particle and you even know how long he can hold his breath underwater. All trivial things, but you know little to nothing about his life. His friends or family, the work he does or even the reason why he constantly wears those weird sunglasses. He is wealthy, that was more than obvious from the very start. His tailored clothes, pricey cologne and luxury car did nothing to hide it, yet he said that he’s a teacher in a religious private school of all things.
You don’t want to distrust him already, he might just inherited his fortune, but he also said that he’s away on work trips a lot, which a teacher wouldn’t do. Despite your gut feeling of something being fishy, you choose to trust him. You’ve known him for a few weeks and you don’t want to start off the relationship by accusing him of lying. And even if he does lie he probably has a reason. You are his soulmate yes, but still a complete stranger right now.
1 month 2 weeks 5 days 11 hours 14 minutes 17 seconds
Satoru is lovely, he really is. He looks handsome in his suit as he walks around to open the door for you like a gentleman. You know he isn’t even close to being one, but you appreciate the effort. He decided to take you out to an expensive restaurant to celebrate him coming back from a trip overseas. He even got you some more formal clothes for the occasion. You honestly couldn’t wait for him to come home, so this invitation made your whole week. As little as you still know about him as a person, he undeniably has a piece of your heart already. Even with his cocky attitude and unmatchable arrogance, he is as charming as it gets.
“I know I said it before but you look amazing, Angel.” He smiles when you get out of the car. “If you doubt me you can ask the gentleman across. He’s been staring at you for a while,” Satoru adds when he pulls you closer by the waist. His smile is more wolfish now, and you know he thrives off of being envied. That’s exactly why you made sure to clean up this well, even if he doesn’t need another ego boost, you want to do this for him.
“You can’t blame him for having a good taste, now can you?” You bicker back while you flash a smile at your admirer. God, this man is starting to rub off on you. He always makes you feel so empowered. Whenever you’re with him you feel like nobody can touch you; it’s a strange feeling, maybe it’s because of his attitude or evident wealth and in turn influence, but you can’t pinpoint one reason. Thankfully, you’re still way more down to earth than your companion, and everyone should absolutely be more grateful for that. The world would be on fire if you created as much chaos as your soulmate.
“Wine or champagne?” Your companion offers when you get seated on the top floor. The restaurant has the most amazing view of the cityscape, that coupled with the slightly dim lighting made the atmosphere flirty and romantic. You certainly feel like Gojo chose this restaurant for a reason.
“Champagne. We’re celebrating, aren’t we?” you suggest without any kind of shyness. You’re finally financially stable and you’re going to enjoy it. When you look into his eyes you can almost see the hearts. It really seems like Gojo Satoru loves bold people. And spending money...
1 month 2 weeks 5 days 13 hours 25 minutes 21 seconds
“Jeez Toru, there are still people around,” you chuckle when you see how he looks at you. The light blue of his eyes contrasts the deep dark of the sky, but right now you swear that you can see the stars shine in them. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking but your future as well – one big adventure as you grow old together. He laughs with you but he doesn’t stop staring – to be completely honest you weren’t expecting him to. This man has never once in his life cared about decency, and you don’t need more than a month to know that.
When you finally get to the car he opens the back door and gently pushes you in. You don’t resist it: you hop in, you move even further to let Gojo get in as well. He really doesn’t care how obvious you are with this. Everyone in the parking lot must think that you are acting like horny teenagers and being wildly inappropriate. And they would be right, you are doing both of those things. Is this any of their business though? If you aren’t disturbing the peace then they can’t really say anything, can they?
Without a second of hesitation he pulls you to straddle him once the door is closed. His hands run up your side and then pull you even closer. He kisses you and you can still taste the sweetness of the dessert on him. He always manages to catch you off guard. You expect him to kiss you like a man starved but he doesn’t. It’s slow, contrary to the rush he was in to get here. He takes his time, and you feel so alive your heart all but aches.
3 months 1 week 3 days 4 hours 21 minutes 10 seconds
“Where are we going this time, Satoru?” you ask with a smile as you put your bag on the back seat of his SUV. He came to pick you for another one of your drives around the country, where you end up completely lost.
“Are you ready for the adventure of your life?” His smile is suspiciously wide while he looks at you. What does he have up his sleeve this time? You start to feel giddy, his sweet attitude can make you forget anything, especially your bad mood and doubt in him.
“Aye aye, Captain. Just give me the keys.” You giggle as you hold out your hand for them.
“What? Why? Wanna drive, Baby?” He looks genuinely surprised as he peeks at you above his sunglasses. ‘Jeez, his eyes are so pretty’– you think as you get completely lost in them. After a long second you snap out of it, this is exactly the problem: he can even distract you in the middle of a conversation. You shake your head a little as if you were trying to clear it and go back to the topic at hand. Thankfully, Gojo chooses to ignore your little technical break.
“Yes, after the last time I don’t trust you with driving,” you smirk at him as you finally have something to tease him about too. Almost not stopping at a red light nonetheless, you can’t even fathom how you ended up distracting him enough to do that. You waited so long for revenge – he teased you when you tripped and almost fell in the cinema spilling some popcorn. Or when you didn’t notice a biker behind you and he had to pull you out of the way. Or one of the many other times you did anything remotely clumsy.
“You’re so mean,” he pouts like a little kid, but he complies. He tosses you the keys, and you try to catch them, but instead you stumble and promptly drop them. You look at the damn keys with disbelief and you both laugh as you shamefully pick them up from the ground. You swear that Satoru did this on purpose while you look at the words on his keychain.
“‘Fuck the patriarchy’, eh? Funny and not bigoted? I really hit the jackpot, didn’t I?” you muse as you open the door and get in. Oh lord, this man drives like this? A meter from the steering wheel?
“Well, I won’t deny the obvious,” he winks at you as he watches you set the mirror from the passenger seat. You did it now, didn’t you? You have to pay full attention to the road while this handsome clown does whatever he wants. Which will probably be annoying you, he has a bad habit of doing that. Despite, you can’t be mad at him at all, he is just too cute for that.
7 months 0 weeks 5 days 1 hour 4 minutes 45 seconds
The first thing you feel is a pair of chapped lips on cheeks, and as your eyes sleepily flutter open, the first thing you see is your boyfriend’s face. The white haired man is leaning over you leaving soft kisses on your face to wake you up. You are certainly a lot happier starting your morning like this than getting tickled awake like the last time.
“Good morning, Gorgeous,” he hums as he drags his, for once, warm hand along your side. From the top of your ribcage to the side of your hips, where it settles only for his thumbs to draw little patterns on the front of your hips. His touch is familiar, it became familiar through all those days and nights you spent together. Yet waking up in his house, not yours or not in a hotel, was new.
He always made you feel like your relationship was an affair – he didn’t introduce you to any of his friends or family and he never took you home. Of course, you thought he had a spouse or partner already, Occam’s razor exists for a reason. Being soulmates isn’t inherently romantic, he could have a whole family with a spouse he doesn’t want to leave for all you know.
Last night however, he took you home, to his home, not to a fancy hotel like he usually does when you are on a trip. A penthouse at the top floor with a view, it is as flashy as you expected from Gojo Satoru. It’s definitely not the kind of house where kids would be running around. Rather, it’s a typical man cave – you can’t really see a lot of signs of anyone living here, especially not two or more people. You still have some doubts about the whole thing, but you’re just happy you’re making progress. This gives you hope, maybe if you give him time he will let you in.
“When you wake me up like this, how could it not be a good morning?” you chuckle sleepily before he has the chance to shut you up with a kiss, which he does right after you finish your sentence. You stroke his messy hair, as if you were trying to flatten the cowlick on the top of his head.
“Someone woke up on the right side of the bed, didn’t they?” He references the “fight” you had last night. You both wanted the same side of the bed and he somehow lost. He flops down pulling you on top of him with a charming smile. His hands shift from your hips to the side of your thighs, they never stop even for a second.
“I fought for this side, so you bet I’m going to enjoy it. It’s a lot comfier knowing that I earned it,” you murmur into his chest. Gojo can try all he wants; he won't be able to get you more energized this early. In fact it's the opposite, you're starting to blink longer and longer, with his arms around you and with the steady rhythm of his heartbeat you are half asleep already.
“Tired, Baby?” he coos in a low voice. Not even he has the heart to disturb you when you look so adorable clinging to him. He knows that you had a rough week with a lot of late nights. He hates seeing you tired or sad and at this point he would do almost anything for you. You brought a lot of sunshine to his life, the kind of light he doesn’t deserve. He feels like it’s so fragile, so easily breakable; he needs to keep you in the dark, he’s not willing to taint you too. In the end isn’t the dark where the light shines the brightest? He knows that you have doubts, rightfully so. And still he can’t bring himself to face the music, not yet, maybe not ever. Gojo Satoru can’t be honest with you but he can stay relatively still for another hour or two.
9 months 3 weeks 4 days 11 hours 57 minutes 11 seconds
“Sorry, Honey, I really can’t make it. I’m really busy.” You listen to him cancel on you the second time this week, both times about an hour before the meeting. You are glad that you would’ve stayed in your house to have dinner, because you honestly couldn’t take it if you had gotten ready for nothing. Well, not like you can take it this way, but the effect would be a lot worse. You look at the really nice dinner you made. You had a terrible week and this date with Satoru was supposed to make it better. The project you’ve been working on for months got called off a week before its launch. You spent so much time and energy on it, so many sleepless nights and it just got cut completely.
“This is the second time this week, Satoru. You could’ve warned me sooner at least, so I don’t spend my whole evening cooking for nothing.” You know he doesn't do it on purpose but that doesn’t make you feel any better.
“I’m sorry but you have a tasty dinner, isn’t that cool?” He tries to cheer you up absentmindedly.
“Yeah, I could’ve had instant ramen, it doesn’t take more than 10 minutes. And that way I wouldn’t have spent hours of my free time cooking something I don’t particularly like, because I wanted to make my terrible boyfriend happy,” you double down; you are upset and you won’t just let him hurt you again without saying anything.
“I’m sorry, Babe. I’ll make it up to you,” he promises but you have none of it. You don’t want another expensive gift, no amount of diamonds and luxury items can make this up. You especially don’t want him to guilt trip you into thinking you are the problem, making you feel like an unreasonably clingy partner.
“It’s okay, it’s not your fault. I know you don't want to cancel either,” you force yourself to give in, an argument is the last thing you need right now. You desperately hope that Gojo buys it because otherwise he will bother you about it until you can’t take it anymore.
“Yes, exactly, it's not my fault. You shouldn’t be mad at me,” he agrees with you and it takes all your willpower not to end the call right then and there.
“Bye, Satoru,” you force it out trying to keep up your peaceful façade, but honestly you just want to punch him right now.
“Hey, don’t go, I’m just kidding,” he tries to ‘reason’ with you, but you have heard enough of him for today.
“It’s okay you said that you’re busy and I don’t want to take up your time. We’ll talk later. Bye.”
You are just tired. You love your work, you really do, however that doesn’t make it less draining. Particularly with all this emotional stress on top of the weeks of pressure it makes you want to scream. Probably you just need a good night’s sleep, some chocolate and a good cry to let it all out.
You are almost tempted to call Satoru back and tell him to fuck off for canceling on you now. The only thing holding you back is the fact that you don’t want to tell him about the project failing. You want him to comfort you but you don’t feel like you can open up to him. You crave to share your feelings and your thoughts, yet the fact that he doesn’t do the same makes it uncomfortable to depend on him. He just feels inhumanly perfect, it’s making you deeply ashamed of your own failures.
It makes you feel like you are whiny and dramatic. Sure, you are an emotional person and you’ve always been, but you like to think that you are reasonable. Even if your emotional side has always been something that you have constantly been made to feel bad about. ‘You should just suck it up and deal with it.’ You tried. It doesn’t work. It only makes things worse, but you’ve been pushed to the point where you can’t cry in front of anyone without shame burning in your chest.
It’s better when you’re alone though, so you let it all out. The cold of the kitchen floor is slowly seeping through you until you become a shivering, sobbing mess. You wrap your arms around yourself trying to gather some warmth, but your embrace just isn’t enough to make you feel better. Quite the opposite. You are alone and suffering, just like you always are.
11 months 3 weeks 5 days 14 hours 23 minutes 44 seconds
“Is everything alright, Toru?” you ask as you walk with your partner hand in hand, a gesture so small, yet it makes your heart skip a beat. You’re even willing to forgive him for dragging you out this late. You rarely ever have these moments, as Satoru isn’t really willing to touch you in public. Well, it’s not like he deliberately avoids ever touching you, but he doesn’t do anything that could be taken as a sign that you two are close; not romantically, not platonically. Which is a huge switch from the way he acts in private, though this part isn’t all that surprising. Many people are uncomfortable with PDA, but not with simple affection behind closed doors.
The shocking part is that he doesn’t give an absolute damn about anyone. Gojo Satoru is not shy by any means. On the rare occasion when he does show affection in public he isn’t bothered at all. He isn’t uncomfortable with showing you love, that much is obvious – something else is up. You can’t help but be curious, he is hiding too many things in this relationship. You don’t want to know everything about him, you don’t need that kind of codependency. You just want some honesty, just anything to make your trust in him valid.
Right now there’s no mutual trust to build this relationship on. The foundation for it is your effort and the fact that you are soulmates. This all is just heartbreaking for you, a soulmate is supposed to make you feel significant. You are supposed to be soulmates because you are special to each other, not the other way around.
“Nothing, nothing. I just saw some squirrels in the trees. Actually, your shoelaces are untied. You should sit down on the bench and tie them!” he blurts out and starts to steer you towards the bench.
“And while you do that I’ll be right back.” He tries to dip but you grab his sleeve to stop him.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?! You show up at my house at almost midnight, you take me to a creepy ass park and you want to fucking leave me here with the worlds flimsiest public light as my only company?” You are at your wits’ end. You want to scream. Honestly another word from Gojo and you probably will.
“Yeah, what was I thinking? Let’s go home~” he says while he slaps his forehead like he just realized how weird it is. He then proceeds to grab you and, without any effort or strain, throws you over his shoulder.
“Have you completely lost it?! You better put me down, Satoru. I’m fucking serious, it’s not funny nor will it ever be. I’m not a sack of potatoes, you caveman.” you protest the treatment, but he just laughs. Which makes you even more mad, to the point where you are speechless.
“Don’t be so snappy~ I would love it if you carried me like this too, or in your arms like a princess. Yes we should do that sometimes.” His attempt at lightening the mood is futile, you are already fuming in silence, refusing to answer him. Your patience ran out completely, you are tired and you only said yes to this outing because it’s him. You know you shouldn’t take this so seriously, but this describes your relationship so painfully well. You are helpless while he does whatever he wants.
The short walk over to the car is just enough for it to settle in, he doesn’t care at all. He doesn’t care that you are angry and confused, he doesn't care you don’t find this amusing or enjoyable. At this point you are so far in your own head that you don't even question if a single blow of strong wind in the calm night is weird or out of place. Gojo is extremely thankful for this, and for the fact that you can’t hear the whimpering and screaming as the curse’s body twists in itself. Although the treeline is quite far he didn’t want you to go anywhere near a curse. He isn’t ready to open that particular can of worms.
When you get to the car and he puts you down, you don’t say a word, you don’t even look at him. You just wrap your arms around yourself to shield you from the chilly air of the night. Or at least you try to make it look like that’s the case, in reality you just try to hold it together, try to soothe yourself so your tears don’t spill. Everything over these past months just built up and the dam holding everything back has way too many cracks to not let it seep out.
You open the door and sit in the passenger seat, trying to get this over with so you can get home and have a proper cry alone. You don’t need soothing, you need to let this out or the whole thing will explode in both of your faces. Sadly, Satoru notices everything, especially if it's you. He puts his hands on your knees and turns you towards him – you are now sitting in the car with your legs hanging in the open door. The white haired man squats down to meet your glossy eyes as you stare intently at the ground.
“Baby? What’s wrong? Can you look at me?” he gently pleads with you, trying his very best not to break you. He fails, quite miserably might I add, as the tears start to roll down your face silently and you feel the shame accompany every single drop. So you hide your face in your hands. You refuse to let him see, you want to shut him out, he doesn’t deserve to see you vulnerable if he treats you like this.
“I didn’t want to make you cry, Love. I didn’t think it would upset you this much. Please forgive me,” he soothes you with the most amount of panic in his voice you’ve ever heard.
“No, you don’t understand and you never will. You don’t want to understand or put in the work to make this relationship function like it is supposed to. It’s not just about today, it’s about every single time when you forget that I’m a person with my own life and feelings and not a pretty little doll that exists for your entertainment,” you sob into your hands as his own caress your thighs trying to calm you.
“You can’t do this, you can’t toy with me like this. If you’re not willing to care about me or love me I just can’t continue anymore.” As you finish your sentence you break down completely, even the thought of breaking up puts you into a wild panic and your sobs become uncontrollable. Your words hit Satoru like a brick and he feels his heart drop. He knows it would be for the best but he just can’t let you go.
“Please don’t say that. I love you and I’ll try harder. It’s just hard, I don’t know how to let you in, but I want to, I swear I do.” Satoru begs, he would feel ashamed but the need to stop your sobs is way bigger than his pride. He has to keep you by his side, and he will do anything to stop you from leaving. You are positive that your ears are setting you up. Love? He loves you? He catches you so off guard that your sobs calm down a bit. You lower your hands from your face, to observe his with your puffy, red eyes, trying to find out if he really means it.
Satoru takes this opportunity to caress your cheeks with his hand wiping away the stray tears that still roam your face. His gaze is soft and careful, there’s a feeling in it, you just aren’t sure if it’s love. Despite that you choose to believe him, because you want to believe him.
“I love you too,” you answer as you rub your sore eyes. He stands up and pulls you along, only for him to sit down in your seat and with you in his lap. He gently makes you rest on his chest and embraces you. His hug is warm and secure, exactly what you need right now.
“How about we go home, put on a movie and cuddle? How does that sound, my love?” he hums tenderly. He slowly rocks back and forth waiting for you to completely cool down. Seems like this time he managed to get you to stay, but it’s only a matter of time before his words won’t be enough without actions.
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osovereign · 5 months ago
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❛ yes, the inn. ❜ only a few feet from their antecedent position back to the hostelry but still, it allowed kratos to ponder on just where he’d begin with such a misplaced language lesson ( while not blowing his hidden ploy ): it wasn’t that the angelic language was anymore strenuous than the common patois of modern day aselia, but for any vernacular ( especially for one with characters that could express entire thoughts and phrases ): there was bound to be a bit of stupefaction, biggest component was vowels, to the untrained eye and ear they’d follow grammar rules of the present day but say everything incorrectly, perhaps even something rude depending on the context. walking through the doors, kratos looked at genis before deciding to head into his and lloyd’s room ( seeing it best not to bother raine while she had her own tasks to occupy her time ): to say that he had any faith in his own bloodline having any kind of educational tools was a… massive understatement but to his genuine shock, lloyd, amongst all his carelessly placed supplies had an empty journal next to one that seemed so out of place amongst the clutter. in precise lettering was: astronomy. curiosity got the better of the angel of cruxis and he flipped through the pages, perfectly detailing various constellation’s, there distance from others, and meaning behind them. kratos quickly closed the book; having invoked a sentiment that had no place in the here nor now.
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sitting on his bed, he begins, posture angled slightly to give him a better way of putting thought to paper. one by one he transcribes each letter of the alphabet above in angel language and again in its modern counterpart ( though, modern aselian had twenty-six letters and the ancient tongue only twenty-two ): trying his best to imitate copybooks of yesteryear from his time spent amongst educational tutors and the knight academy. ❛ like aselian, vowels of the angel language compose the five basic sounds: a, e, i, o, and u. though, different is the fact that vowels make no sound unless they are directly related to a consonant. ❜ his words remain steady, trying to recall the fact that while his young stopgap pupil was bright, genis was still being taught a concept so foreign to everything he knew.
❛ so to make the sounds a, e, i, o, u in angelic, there is a need to use the consonant known as alef, with each of those vowels. there is also no equivalent nor rule of ‘y’. ❜ finishing his contrived workbook, kratos gestured for genis to come forth and inspect his script, which, for such a rush job ( like all that the mercenary seemed to do ): looked on par with the texts you’d find from the palmacosta academy or the research institute of skyback. ❛ i thought it best to have a visual. forgive my chirography it has been, ages since i last composed in such a way. ❜
Just from that first statement Kratos had used in the angelic language, Genis already was picking up that it wasn't the easiest language to learn in the world. Considering that Colette had spent her whole life learning it, though, he thought that that made sense. Genis was no less determined to try, though. If learning was as simple as just being exposed to something and learning it through osmosis, maybe Lloyd would have had more book smarts by then. Friendly jab toward Lloyd aside, though, Genis stood that little bit more taller and nodded as Kratos spoke.
"I kind of already worked out your teaching methods probably would be different from Raine's," Genis confessed. "That's fine, though. No two teachers are going to be exactly the same. And I'm still set on learning. Especially if I can help Colette that way." Genis wasn't sure, honestly, if he'd be able to finish learning in time to really benefit Colette. That was okay, though. He was sure she'd appreciate the effort anyway.
If there was one thing Kratos was right about, it was how bright Genis and Raine both were. All the more reason Genis wanted to learn. He had to put his skills to use somehow, didn't he?
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"Anyway. If it were easy, I feel like a lot more people would know the language. Even someone like Lloyd. But it's just you and Colette in our group," Genis pointed out. Debateably, there also was the fake Chosen and her group. Huh. Whatever had happened to them after they'd crossed paths in Palmacosta? Something to think about for later, he guessed.
Now that he thought about it, though, why did Kratos know the angelic language? It wasn't something so common and easy to learn that everyone knew it, as Genis had touched on. Maybe there was more to Kratos than it first appeared? Or perhaps it was just because he was a mercenary. Even that felt like a little bit of a stretch.
Hmm... something to think about later, Genis decided. He didn't want to put a damper on the mood by voicing the thought out loud.
"Anyway, I'm ready to start whenever you are. Should we go back to the inn, or...?"
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eevvvaa · 2 years ago
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Hi Vivi!
How are you?
I kinda came here with a question about your writing!
I know you write very big chapters (which i Really like) but I am curious about the process behind it!
Do you write it all in one go? Do you have the whole storyline in your head? Do you know from chapter 1 how it will end?
I am very curious 🤓
Hiiiii !! ^^
I'm very good, how are you ?
I'm so soooooo surprised that you ask me that, I mean, I never expected someone asking me the process behind my writing ! It's almost sureal, really. But it's, wow, it flatters me that you're curious about this, thank you for wondering !
First of all, it's always a relief when someone enjoy big chapters because I know mine are so long comparing to others series on here that I read and love, so I'm glad that you enjoy them even if they are awfully long sometimes ^^' So, thank you !
Okay, so, first of all since I don't post my series when it's over but post the chapters as I write them, the whole writing part really depends. Sometimes I can spend a week writing every day, being totally motivated and then something is blocking me, a sentence, a scene, a character and I can't write anymore so put it on hold, thinking of a way to get myself out of the mess I created on my own ahah and this explains the long period between my chapters 😬 Also motivation comes and goes but I think it's the same for everyone who writes !
I do. I basically know everything that I want to happen in the series, everything that will happen (hopefully 🤞) and how. I have some really precise things in mind that will happen in sooooo long (I'm so afraid that this series will go on forever, I'm sorry in advance) and I know the consequences of scenes and all. For most parts, I mean. I created a whole time-line for my story, with precise dates where things need to happen but for those to happen, I need other things to have happened before. I don't know if I make sense 😅 But I more or less know what will happen in chapters that I write and how to go from point A to point B. And if I don't, I make it up as I go, or think about it until I know. (Another reason why there is time between each chapters)
For example Spoilers of A Supernatural Journey ahead for those who didn't read it :
I knew I wanted Emily to patch up Sam at the girls' place, I knew that it would be the opportunity to exchange numbers and that it would lead to seeing them again, in another context. But the whole talk in the morning in the kitchen between Eva and Dean or the fact that they stayed to eat with them, or the interactions between the girls and all, I hadn't particularly think about it and it came up to me when I wrote the chapter.
I also have scenes completely written in my head, like, in the last chapter, the shower scene. I had the very little dialogue, the description, the movements and all in my mind since May 2021. So when I wrote this chapter (so, very recently) I knew exactly what would happen and how.
As for the chapters themselves, I usually know where to start them and almost always when to stop them and as I know what will happen in it I put some -> with the big things that I need to happen and write around them
And at first, when I started this fic, I got the idea on new year 2021 and it was supposed to be just the case with The Banshee, in 3 or 4 chapters. And then I decided to continue it. That's when I created the whole time-line where I know what happened and it which order and I more or less know how it ends. I don't have the final sentence but I mostly know what will be the last thing. But the thing is, everytime I have a new idea, I add it to the list and I'm so scared that this story will have way too many chapters and will never end before 20 years ! 🙈
Oh my God, I'm so sorry I talked way too much !!! But I hope that it will answer to your questions and that I made sense ! I'll be glad to talk about it again if you have more questions or about anything else, really :) Thank you so much to ask me about this, I loved talking about it (it explains the way too long answer !) I'm still so surprised that you were curious about this !
Anyway, thank you !
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wordsnstuff · 4 years ago
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Guide to Drafting
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Planning v. Discovery
The first thing you must decide when you embark on the journey of drafting a story is how you’re going to get it done. Typically, there are two groups you can fit into, though most writers are somewhere in between. There are writers who plan meticulously before they begin writing to create a very clean first draft, or there are discovery writers (otherwise known as “pantsers”) who find more success in choosing a premise and then using a zero draft to explore the idea before gluing down any details. You are most likely someone who falls between those two methods. Some initial planning to feel familiar with your idea before you do some of the planning through the writing itself. Having some semblance of a method will help you narrow down your own process, which is immensely important if you want to get any substantial project near completion.
Consistency
Drafting is a difficult process because it’s either the revisitation of ideas you’ve already had, or the generations of ideas in quick succession. If you want to have a draft in a reasonable amount of time, you must develop a consistency in your writing. I won’t say that it must be a strict routine because time management can be a luxury, but you must make the consistent effort to write, and keep it in the forefront of your mind. Even if you don’t write every day, it should be something you try to make time for every day.
Know What You’re Trying to Accomplish
To get a draft done, you need to set expectations for yourself and they must be realistic. That doesn’t mean they have to be easy, or an amount of work you’ve been able to accomplish in the past. Considering how much time you dedicate to writing and your skillset, it should be a goal within reality. In addition, you must accept that you cannot create a masterpiece in one draft. For each version of your story that you write, you must have a focused goal, such as maintaining consistent characterization, making the plot concise and engaging, or making the prose more fluid and efficient. If you have a specific and attainable goal that you can accomplish in a reasonable amount of time with a fair amount of precision, each draft will be better than the last.  
Designate Work to Phases
As mentioned in the last section, it maximizes your time and effort to have specific and attainable goals for each draft. This doesn’t mean that you rewrite the draft each time (though that is very common amongst writers), but that you designate tasks to draft versions. I find it very helpful in clearing my mind and soothing my perfectionist anxiety to make a “schedule”, outlining what I’ll accomplish in each version following the zero draft. For example, my draft schedules usually end up something like this:
Zero Draft: Main plot line, basic characterization, key world building
First Draft: Finalize Timeline, research for world building, structure
Second Draft: (Rewrite) Plot Development Fine Tuning
Subplot development
Foreshadowing
Build up to climaxes
Tone & Pace
Third Draft: (Intermittent Rewrites) Character Development Fine Tuning
Backstory
Subtextual Development
Making sure motivations are clear
Relationships between characters
Reinforcing character arcs
Checking dialogue
Fourth Draft: (Give to Beta Readers) World Building & Prose
Descriptions & Flow
Finalize settings
Checking grammar & punctuation
Reader Immersion
Fifth Draft: Incorporate Beta Reader Feedback
Write for Yourself First
In what some call the “zero-draft”, there are no rules. This draft is purely for your eyes. It’s you telling yourself the story for the first time. So, you don’t have to write in chronological order, or know the right word you’re looking for, or take a break every time you run into a problem. The purpose of the zero draft is to get a rough idea of as much of the story as you can and avoid getting snagged on minor details. This part is important. A lot of writers like to outline meticulously before they begin drafting and if that works for you, that’s great, but the majority of writers who attempt that get stuck in the planning phase, or burnt out on their story before a word of it exists. The easiest way to avoid those two situations is to do a zero draft, which can be as long or short as you want if it provides a skeleton for you to add meat to later.
Common Struggles
~ How do you estimate the number of words/chapters?... That depends on the genre, mostly. However, that’s usually something you decide in the second draft and beyond, and it can vary because of factors you haven’t got locked down until the plot and character arcs are firm or final. This is also something you’ll probably do a lot of tinkering with, and receive feedback on, especially from beta-readers, who can advise you on where natural breaks could occur from their perspective.
~ Why, after planning everything out, do I always struggle to write the draft?... 99% of the time, it’s because you’ve either burned yourself out, or accumulated too much pressure. When you put that much effort and time into a story, you can either slip into a headspace where you feel little excitement about it because you’ve already done all of the problem solving and had all of the revelations. It’s usually beneficial at this stage to take a step back (even if you’re not burnt out) and give your story some space, so that once you come back to it, you’re enthusiastic enough to fully realize your vision. If instead you’re struggling to write because you feel a lot of pressure to do justice for a story you’ve put so much love into already, take a step back, remember that the first draft is just for you, and work on letting go of the idea that the zero draft is meant to serve any purpose beside simply existing. 
~ How do I come up with the necessary scenes to move the story forward between major plot points?... Most writing problems can be solved by asking yourself the right questions. When you’re trying to figure out what your reader needs to see next in order to effectively set up the next major event, ask yourself “What would happen between event A and event B that would add context or make event B more impactful?”. Treat it like a real situation and try to map out all of the tiny, notable moments that would take place between the major plot points, and then assess those moments on the basis of how impactful they would be to the coming scenes, and whether they can add context, set the tone, or aide in the rising action.
~ How do I balance sticking to the draft and following my own creative instinct in the moment?... This is a judgement call. Sometimes you’ll realize that maybe you should have just stuck to the outline, but remember that you can always go back, rewrite, test things out, etc. Always save every version of every scene, just in case, and go wild. Don’t be afraid to take detours just to explore. The writing process is anything but linear. 
~ How do I maintain momentum in my writing progress when I constantly have distractions or other responsibilities that take priority?... Work at it. There’s no magic trick or piece of advice I could say that gets rid of your personal responsibilities. Write when you can, don’t make excuses on top of the reasons you have no control over, and remember that you create your own deadlines and expectations. Be kind to yourself, do what you can, and don’t spend potential writing time punishing yourself because there isn’t as much as you’d like. 
~ How should I designate space (words/pages) to specific scenes/description/conversations, etc?... Trust your instinct and remember you can always cut/add later. In the earlier drafts, I’d advise you try to create as much material as possible to work with, and in the later drafts, be ruthless when determining what is necessary and adds value, and what doesn’t.
~ How do I finish a draft if I regularly lose motivation or interest in my projects?... Accept the fact that motivation is fickle, and that no writer in history has ever maintained “inspiration” for any project from the beginning to the end. There are going to be days where you’re like “ugh this is not what I want to do right now”, probably more than there are days where you’re stoked to work on your project, but that’s reality. If your goal is to finish a draft, you must recognize that writing is work, and nobody wants to work all the time. Try to supplement the lack of motivation by setting a positive and enjoyable routine so that, even when you’re not particularly motivated, you still know that your writing time will be peaceful and comfortable. 
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alignallofthelights · 4 years ago
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Dean Cas Wedding Tweet Report
Now that the dust has settled, I wanted to do a quick after action report on the #DeanCasWedding trend. For those who aren’t aware. #Dean Cas Wedding trended on Twitter, based on some recurring Supernatural castmates sending a tweet about Dean and Cas getting married at the roadhouse. 
Destiel fans ran with this theory and created a fictional wedding between Dean and Castiel on Valentine’s Day. The hash tag trended for 8 hours, and peaked at #4 on Twitter’s United States trending top 30. In the end it generated 46.3k tweets. 
I am doing a deeper social media analysis of the hash tag findings to better understand Destiel fan activity, during this campaign. Further details are shared here as follows: 
Overall Campaign Metrics
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As posted before the majority of this campaign was based on retweets - 67% of this campaign was based off of retweets from 13.7k original tweets. 33% of the campaign came from original content. For scale that means of the 46.3k tweets that were generated during the Dean Cas Wedding trend ~30k came from retweets. 
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This means that the Destiel fan base has a predilection to retweet and spam  continuously to get their hash tags to trend.
Size of Destiel’s Fanbase/Stanbase
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So this is the interesting story. Of the individuals who participated in the campaign there were 2.6k active contributors, 5.3k total contributors, this means we can deduce that 2.7k or so were just retweet contributors. The 2.7k numbers are “passive” contributors in that they did not create any new content with their tweets. While the 2.6k active participants are the tweeters who created original content that fueled the hashtag. This means that 5.3k people in total fueled enough content to create a 43.6k hashtag campaign. 
Supernatural’s Viewership Cross Reference
For context the average Supernatural episode in the last season attracted 1.1 million viewers. Quick facts to put this in perspective: 
For every 208 general fans of Supernatural you will find 1 Destiel, Misha Minon, or Destiel Extreme shipper stan
Destiel as a fanbase is less than 1% of the Supernatural audience/fan base (precisely less than .5% of the general audience)
The average Destiel fan tweets 5-8 times to get something to trend
When an extreme Destiel fan screams that “they made Supernatural what it is”, “that they are the majority of the audience”, and that everyone wanted “Dean and Castiel together”, show them these numbers. All in all, the reach of this fanbase is quite small. Their hash tag campaign had an overall reach of 3 million people. 
Cross comparison: Destiel’s hash-tag vs. Walker’s Live Tweeting
For scale Walker reached 12 million people when they trended for “Don’t Fence Me In” with a fraction of the tweets they had (46.3k vs. 11.7k). 
#DeanCasWedding (2/14)
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#Walker (Don’t Fence Me In, Live Tweet 2/11)
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What Corporations Value
This is why Supernatural and CW executives do not take Destiel and their hash tag campaigns seriously. 67% of this campaign is basically just re-tweets, which is what devalues this campaign in terms of meaningful social media engagement that corporations and stations look for. The value of the campaign is not there despite the high tweet count (Trended at #4, and generated 46.3k tweets but with no substance). The problem for Destiel fans is that their conversation is all insular, which is why the reach is so small. You have a max of 5k people talking about a ship, and a less than 3k actually pushing it. It is basically just these small .5% of audience members talking to each other and passing the ball between themselves back and forth.  
Destiel’s existing echo chamber
If you are interested in knowing who those individuals are look no further. I broke down the Top 10 Most active members during the campaign and top 10 for original tweets and retweets. You may see some familiar faces: 
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Lastly, we will delve into the age of the twitter accounts who were active during the campaign. 
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As seen here a sizable portion of this tweet campaign comes from twitter accounts that are less than 1 year old. This is an obvious indicator for multiple accounts and fake accounts. It shows that the two biggest splits here are twitter accounts that are less than 1 year old, and others that are 6 years or older. Combine this finding with the retweet threshold (67%) it’s highly likely that there  is some double dipping going on here. Remember the average Destiel account retweets things 5-8 times. As we can take a look from the most popular tweeters during the campaign some of them tweeted an excess of 400 times just from one handle. The top 10 tweeters during the campaign generated 3k tweets just amongst themselves.  
As such it’s likely that the 5.3k number shared here is inflated, with much of this engagement coming from fake accounts, double accounts which aren’t a genuine reflection of actual population size. I hypothesize that about a third of this fanbase is a result of multiple accounts. Especially since many Destiel fans say that they’ve been watching since season 4. How is it that a third of the audience just came aware of Destiel in the past year, when Castiel has been on the show since Season 4? 
Summary
The Destiel fans need things to cling onto. Often when they try to trend spontaneously as in response to Misha’s instagram video on the 13th the trend only got 8k tweets before it collapsed. They need to latch onto a social justice themes to trend (Eileen), they need to latch onto Jensen and Dean’s fanbase along with LGBTQIA+ representation that exists in other fanbases to partner in order to trend (Shameless Gallavich, MCU’s Stucky and Teen Wolf’s Sterek). But even for all of their efforts it doesn’t really mean anything in the end, when you look at the numbers and review the context of their campaign.
In conclusion, I know this is a long post but I wanted to double down on a few things. The Destiel, Misha Minon, Extreme Destiel fans are not the majority. They don’t have a lot of power amongst their group. The economic value of this hash tag campaign doesn’t compare to the likes of live tweeting events generated from the CW during their live tweet shows: Batwoman, Legacies or Riverdale. Definitely not Walker. Even when they try to trend with all their might they can’t equal or make a significant dent in social media engagement that means anything to the network. This is why the CW has ignored them. As such I hope that this tumblr post can help people understand how small the fanbase is, and how their bullying and smear campaigns are insignificant and don’t amount to anything. I hope this number can give people perspective and context to what this crazy stan base has led to with all their tantrums, doxing, anti-voting sprees and generally toxic behavior. Ultimately I hope this post shows that they are insignificant. Let’s let them be so. 
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