#this is still in committee and hopefully will not get out

[squireofgeekdom]

having our local house district flip red sucks for a variety of reasons but im now faced with writing resistbot letters about the latest anti trans federal nonsense (HR734 - still in committee, doubtful to go anywhere and would be vetoed anyway but want to stomp on it hard) and like. trying to remember how i write letters to republican lawmakers. before i would be like hey i’m your trans constituent i know i can count on you to support human rights for people like me. now i’m like. this is unnecessary big government intrusion into the private lives of young women (which. is true. but me? using the phrase ‘big government’? mirrorverse shit) and everyone should get the opportunity to play youth sports because they are <checks notes> an all american tradition that instills values. hoorah?!

[flowerakatsuka]

kuroba not liking to talk about their time in high school and the one yotsubana florals employee that's actively attending akatsuka high hating kara's guts so he refuses to tell him where he goes to school is doing a lot of legwork when it comes to the whole " kurokara don't realize they went to school together until the reunion " situation.

[novemberheart]

{overview} You get attacked. Does your pack step up for you?

{warnings} violence, blood, mentions of sexual content (no sexual abuse), fem reader, cursing, poly141, pain, crying, angst, a/b/o dynamics

Chapter 10 <- Chapter 11 -> Chapter 12

It was Simon’s last day of physical therapy. If he passed this he would be cleared to get back out in the field. On his way, he dropped you off at another Omega Committee event. This one you were actually excited about. It was a hike through the forest at the far end of the base. Priya wasn't there and you wished you had the presence of mind to have asked her for her number. But luckily you ran into Anais.

“You smell like peaches and cream. Anyone ever told you that?” she asked. The sound of Johnny yelling “peaches” instantly ran through your mind.

“A few, yeah.” you smiled.

“Well that's what I'm going to call you, PC for short.” she giggled. You had been called worse. Anais was a chatter. You didn't really mind though.

“Can I ask you something- something personal,” she whispered, leaning even closer to you. Curiosity killed the cat.

“How does it work with all five of you? Do they take turns-” she whispered.

“Oh my god, Anais.” you couldn't help but chuckle, despite the flaming of your cheeks. To be honest you were wondering the same thing.

“That was too much! I'm so sorry. I was just curious and I thought we were friends”-

“Anais it's alright. If I knew I probably wouldn't mind sharing a bit of info.” You assured. She relaxed.

“So you haven't?”

“No,” you responded truthfully.

“Have you ever?” she trailed off. You hadn't. You never really had the chance. You weren't sure if your pack members would approve of you spilling this information everywhere. “I'll take that as a no.” she snickered. You gave her a playful side-eye.

“Don’t worry about it. Took me forever to lose mine too.” she signed.

“It has not been forever!” you gasped, swatting at her. She laughed loudly causing a few heads to turn. Neither of you really cared.

“Just don't get your hopes up. First times are always terrible,” she advised, bumping you with her arm.

“Thanks for the pep talk.” you huffed.

“Do you have a favorite pack member yet?” she asked suddenly. You quickly shook your head. You enjoyed them all- truthfully. “I think if I was in a pack I would have my favorites. Hopefully one would be my alpha, but you never know,” she smirked.

“Can I ask you something?” you began.

“Shoot.”

“Did it hurt when you were marked?” you questioned.

“The first time, yes. I was in a long-term relationship with an alpha who wasn't entirely nice.”

“I'm sorry Anais.”

She quickly waved you off. “Don't worry about it. It was a long time ago. The second time, not as much. He did it during my heat and it only hurt for a day when I came out of it.” she explained.

“You’re strong Anais.” you said. She flashed you a smile.

“We’re omegas, PC. We have to be.”

The hike back was partly uphill, which was nobody's favorite.

“It was so beautiful when we left. When did it get so bloody hot out?” you panted.

“Look. The heat turns you English.” Anais chuckled through her own pants. You may have picked up a few phrases from the boys.

“Alright, everyone, take five!” One of the group leaders shouted. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. You had made it to the edge of the base, still a little under half a mile to get back.

“I’m going to go refill my water. You need some?” you asked. Anais flopped down on the grass, her arms blocking her face from the sun.

“No thank you.” she groaned, rolling onto her stomach. You made your way up to the front, intending to tell one of the leaders you were going to go get some water. You huffed as the same five omegas were consuming all their attention. “Whatever.” you sighed. You knew where it was, you had filled your water bottle up with Kyle a few days ago when he took you bird watching. Besides, Anais knew where you were.

You made your way quickly towards the buildings, going between them to the other side where the water fountain was.

“My thumbs gonna fall off,” you grumbled. You had to press and hold the button down hard. Kyle made it look easy. Your ears perked up at the sound of footsteps. Your head darted around not seeing anything. You figured you didn't need water that bad and began walking back.

You were abruptly thrown to the ground. Your shorts offered absolutely no protection against the rough gravel. The whole left side of your body slid against the ground, the force of the shove sending you a few feet. There was a low growl behind you and you acted purely on instinct. You felt a hand on your ankle pulling you back. You flipped yourself around, swinging your arm luckily catching a man's face with your claws. He howled, throwing himself away from you. You quickly shuffled backward trying to find your footing.

“Shit, that's 141.” the other man with him cursed. He grabbed the bleeding man pulling him away. Even though they were leaving, you knew you weren't safe. You were finally able to get your footing and began running around the corner, almost knocking Anais down in the process.

“What the fuck!” she shrieked. You were beginning to bleed at this point. It started dripping down your left leg, and right knee. It was starting to show through your shirt on your left side, your elbow, both your hands, and your chin. “It's okay, lovie.” she soothed. You were trying your hardest to keep it together, not wanting to create a scene, however, the pain and fear were making it very difficult.

“I can't go back to the group like this,” you whined. People will think you’re crazy.

“Don't worry. This wasn't your fault. Everyone will understand.” she soothed, gently pulling you along. You held your ground shaking your head. “PC you're bleeding a lot. You need help.” she insisted.

“I want my pack.” you whimpered. You pressed the backside of your hand against your mouth, your throat constricting.

“If you come with me you can get to them.” she urged. It was the push you needed. Luckily you didn't get very far before a group leader noticed and raced towards you.

“What happened?” he questioned. You ignored him, not really in the mood to talk to strange men, and pulled your backpack forward grabbing your phone out of the front pocket. You were lucky it hadn't shattered in the ordeal.

“Someone attacked her.” Anais growled, annoyed that he couldn't use the context clues.

“Hello?” Johnny had picked up after one ring. Hearing his voice made it impossible to hold back any tears. You sobbed into the phone. You heard him repeat your name on the other end, it growing louder and louder every time it left his lips.

“I need you, please. I'm not really sure where I’m at.”

“It's alright, Bon. I have your location pulled up on my phone, I'm near there. Just don't hang up,” he assured. Your chip. You breathed a sigh of relief, leaning against the side of the building.

“I think you should head back to the group.” The group leader directed towards Anais.

“No way,” she growled. “I’m not leaving her”

“Thank you.” you mouthed.

“Of course,” she whispered back. She leaned against the building with you. The rest of the group was still there, the other group leaders trying to prevent them from getting any closer. You didn't need to worry about that, as Johnny quickly rounded the corner, gravel flying under his feet. His mouth fell open at the state of you. His arms extended out and you quickly threw yourself at him, neither of you caring about any blood, sweat, or tears.

“I got you, baby,” he whispered, causing you to lose it again.

“I want to go home.” you whimpered, against his shoulder. Your legs were wrapped firmly around his waist, his arms squeezing you so hard you might have even more bruises.

“Alright.” he soothed. He nodded his head to the group leader and Anais.

“I'll come and visit you in a few days,” Anais called after you.

“Thank you.” you sputtered back. He didn't say a word but pressed his lips against the side of your head every few feet. He stopped setting you down causing you to sob louder. He peeled off his jacket quickly. Carefully dabbing your legs, where the most blood was coming out. He didn't want you to leave a trail of blood everywhere.

He went a back way, not wanting everyone to see his bloodied-up omega. Johnny carried you like you were a feather, weaving through buildings like it was just another day. Well to him it probably was.

Luckily too many people weren't hanging out around your home, the few that did were ignored or met with a snarl. You whimpered at the sound, all your senses on overdrive. You could tell how upset Johnny was, even though you couldn't smell him. He was shaking, growls escaping him nearly every moment. “Almost there.” he soothed. He made it out of the elevator, slamming his key card against the sensor and throwing open the door.

He set you down on the kitchen counter, making no move to pull away from you. He needed to calm you down first.

“S’alright,” he repeated against your head. “I need you to relax for me, lass. Gonna get you all taken care of, aye?” he shut his eyes tightly, resting his body against yours. Your hands dug into his shirt, and you growled at the inability to smell him. “I know what’ll help.” he soothed. He pulled away causing you to whine, and he darted into John's room grabbing a shirt out of his dresser. He brought it back, holding it up towards your face. You were about to bury your face in it but stopped.

“I don't want to get it bloody.” you sobbed.

“He won't mind, bon. Plus we know how to get blood stains out.”

You didn't need to be told twice, you buried your face into the fabric, nuzzling up to Johnny again. After a few moments, your breathing returned to normal and the tears fell quietly. You were quivering now, the pain making up for the loss of adrenaline. “Gonna tell the rest, okay?” he asked, causing you to nod.

He grabbed his phone out of his pocket.

-come home asap. Omega emergency

He tossed the phone on the counter, pulling away from you, sitting down in one of the stools so he was almost face-to-face with you.

“Need you to tell me what happened,” he demanded softly. He kept his jacket pressed against your legs and used a sleeve to stop the bleeding of your elbow.

“I went to get water,” you whispered. Your eyes burned, now dry. “I heard someone walking so I started to leave then all of a sudden someone pushed me to the ground.” his face twitched, his jaw clenching so hard you worried for his teeth. “He grabbed my ankle and started pulling me back, but I turned around and scratched him across his face. One of them said something about 141 and then they ran away,” you explained.

“That’s good. Did exactly what you should've. This happen by the water fountain?” he asked.

“Mhhh,” you confirmed, wondering what he was getting at. The door swung open.

“Holy shit,” Kyle hissed, eyeing you up and down. He was a bit out of breath and you wondered if he ran all the way here like Johnny had. “Let me see.” he insisted, nearly pushing Johnny out of the way. He peeled away the sweatshirt and pulled John's shirt out of your hands.

“Some bastards shoved her.” Johnny snarled.

“By where you took me to see the birds,” you spoke up.

“They've got cameras.” Kyle said exactly what Johnny was thinking. “Should get it pulled up for when the alphas come.” As if on cue the door slammed open again.

“Where is sh”- John cut himself off. “Let me see.” he demanded, pushing Kyle out of the way. If you weren't in pain you would've laughed.

“Someone pushed me, Johnny’s trying to find it on the cameras.” you caught him up to speed. Simon moved towards Johnny glaring over his shoulder at the device. “It was my fault,” you whispered to John. Everyone's head snapped to you. John had your face in his hands, looking over your chin. “I went away from the group to get some water. I should've stayed with the”-

“You don't get to take credit for this.” John sneered. “I don't care where the hell you are, who you are around, this should never happen to you. Understand?” he ordered.

“Yes, Alpha,” you responded quickly.

“Don't make it a habit though,” Kyle spoke, hovering back over by you and John.

“Got it,” Johnny said. John left you but Kyle stayed.

“I'm gonna take a few pictures of you, love. Gotta keep the evidence,” he explained.

“Okay,” you replied softly. Your eyes trained on the three men watching the video. Johnny's face curled again, gripping his phone so tight his knuckles were white. Simon and John appeared to be fairly level-headed, trying to pick up on every detail.

“Record it before someone deletes it,” John instructed. John came back to you, pressing his lips against your forehead. “I’m going to go take care of a few things. Me and Simon’ll be back soon,” he spoke through gritted teeth, taking an inhale of your scent to prevent himself from shaking. He pulled away, Simon following behind him like a dog. “Send me the pictures after.”

“You did good, pup.” Simon praised, heading out the door with John.

Hi friends! Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Chapter 12 will be up in two days! See you then! 🧡

[jakes3resin]

Modern Reincarnation AU Part 4 ✨️

Part 3

"John?"

Bucky storms past Jack into the townhouse. It's rude, but he'll apologize later. He doesn't know why he came here instead of his apartment. Old habits dying a hard drawn out death, maybe? He hadn't been thinking clearly. Hadn't been thinking at all really until he found himself waved through by his father's security detail.

"Oh, is that John?" He hears his father call out, dress shoes clicking against hardwood as he walks closer, but Bucky stomps up the stairs towards his room before he sees the man. His breaths come out in rushes as tears keep burning his eyes.

Shit, he thought he'd gotten those under control on the train.

Slamming his door, he slides down until he rests against the floor. He tosses his bag to the side wincing at the sound it makes. Hopefully his laptop survives. At some point he does actually have to do the work he went to the library to finish.

The library.

Buck and Curt.

They wouldn't, Bucky tells himself. They wouldn't. Curt was one of his best friends, and Buck loved him. They...

Fuck they were roommates! Why the hell were they talking about that shit in public? In the place Bucky considered his? Why even pretend? Why drag Bucky into this? Why?!

Bucky buries his face into his hands. His chest hitches as he tries not to sob. He doesn't want his father or Jack to worry about him. He doesn't want to talk this through.

He wants...

He wants Buck. He wants the other to pull him into his arms. To kiss him again as if today had never happened. There was something else about being with Buck, something he'd never felt with anyone else be they friend or lover. He made Bucky feel safe and wanted. Wanted not because of his family and connections but because he was himself.

Buck would know how to make him feel better.

He laughs quietly through his tears. Distantly, he can hear Jack briefing his father downstairs, the words faint but he hears his name and tears used together. His laughter is more sob than anything else. Of course, the one good thing he'd found would end up belonging to someone else. Story of his life.

✨️

There's too much work to do. At least that's the excuse Bucky gave himself for not confronting Buck and Curt immediately. There wasn't time for a confrontation and subsequent blowup of his life.

At least that's the lie he tells himself.

Bucky chews on the straw of his iced coffee as he skims yet another chapter. There's a pumpkin muffin in front of him that he swore would be his reward for getting through this fourty page reading. Midterms have come and gone, but Bucky still has deadlines to meet and research to complete. He can't sit in his room forever, as much as his father and Jack would sometimes prefer that. Better protection from whatever sent Bucky crying to his room as his father would argue. Better protection for his father's political career Jack would quip.

Speaking of protection, Bucky glanced to the side of the cafe towards his security detail. At least these guys attempted to blend in. His father must have briefed them on his track record with previous details. Bucky smirked around his straw. They'd be easy to lose come rush hour. A bit of fun even.

Bucky turned back to his reading, squinting down at the words.

"American airmen during World War II had a dismal life expectancy. It was not a matter of if an airman was going to be shot down but when. Once downed, airmen faced an uncertain 'reception committee,' as Second Lieutenant Kenneth C. Reimer noted in a drawing he made as a POW in Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany... 'for every [ground combat] soldier killed in action, three or four others would be wounded; air combat was completely the opposite. For every man wounded, three were killed.'"

"Bucky?" A hand settles on his shoulder jolting him out of his reading.

Bucky kept his shoulders loose as he turns around. Buck stares down at him, a bright smile on his face that Bucky can't help but match despite his grief. It wasn't even something he could control. Buck smiled at him, so he smiled back. Bucky felt pitiful.

Buck's sky blue eyes are clear and happy as they dart across Bucky's face. There's no sign that he realizes Bucky overheard him yesterday.

Bucky lifts a hand to calm his detail, all alert now after Buck's friendly greeting. He sees the nearest agent settle back into their chair but knows none of them are relaxed. He darts a look up at Buck, peering at the other through his glasses to see if he'd noticed the disturbance.

Buck's gaze, as it always does, doesn't leave Bucky's face. Even when he rounds the table to sit down, his eyes are pinned on Bucky and nothing else.

"Sorry I couldn't meet up yesterday," Buck dumps his bag onto the chair next to him. Bucky's smile twitches. Buck sits down across from him. His legs tangle with Buck's own under the table, Buck's foot gently bumping his ankle.

"It's fine," Bucky chomps down on his straw. "How was your advisor meeting anyway?"

"It was good," Buck smiles at him, not even a hint of guilt on his face. "Real good."

Buck had told Bucky he was called to fill in a shift yesterday and that was why he supposedly hadn't been able to meet up. A lie Buck hadn't even bothered to remember. His advisor meetings were also always in the morning on Thursdays. Today was Tuesday.

Buck was still lying to him, and he wasn't even guilty about it.

✨️

"I went by your place yesterday. You weren't home." Buck swings their clasped hands through the air.

"Hmm?" Bucky glanced away from the traffic around them. His detail were staying a conspicuous ten feet back, but they were annoyingly keen when Buck offered to walk him back to his apartment.

Bucky would lose them another day.

Buck laughed, deep and airy. Bucky struggled not to lose himself in it. That was what made this so hard. Bucky still loved Buck, and Buck still acted like Bucky was his whole world and then some.

"Oh," Bucky finally processed what Buck had said. "No, I went to my dad's for the night."

"Really?" Buck squeezes his hand. Bucky hates how much comfort Buck's touch gives him.

Does Curt receive the same...? No Bucky doesn't let himself finish the thought.

"How was it?" Concern bleeds into Buck's voice. Bucky hates how genuine it sounds. He's starting to use that word more than any other. The longer he looks at Buck, the more he has to hate to save his heart.

"Fine," Bucky shrugged stepping further away as they came to a stoplight. "The usual."

"The Bucky I know wouldn't give such a short answer," Buck stepped closer eating up the space Bucky had put between them. "Not unless something happened yesterday. Come on, you okay?"

Bucky felt the words bubbling up his throat.

I saw you. I saw him. Why are you here staring at me like I'm the most important thing in the world when you have him? Why are you doing this to me? I love you. I love you so much it feels like my soul hurts. I hate you.

"Spent most of the night avoiding his staffers." Bucky lied. "Barely saw him, Jack either, yet he still asked me to move home at breakfast."

Buck nods, accepting his lies. Was that what they were now? Not a relationship, simply a lie? Bucky wasn't sure anymore. His heart thumped against his rib cage, anger and love in every other beat, but he wasn't sure which would win.

Buck had become his whole world in such a short amount of time. He thought the feeling was mutual, but yesterday showed just how stupid Bucky really was.

"How about this," Buck nudged his hip. "Why don't I stay over tonight? We'll binge a few movies, order something, and have night in. Then,"

Buck paused with a stupid grin that, despite himself, Bucky still found charming. Fuck, he was truly pathetic for this.

"I'll sweep you off your feet and take you to bed. How does that sound?"

"Won't Curt be expecting you?" The question pops out of him without meaning to. Gale furrows his brow, confusion growing in his eyes.

"Curt won't miss me tonight."

Sure, he won't, Bucky thinks bitterly.

✨️

"John," Jack's voice was a surprise. Especially considering it was his father's number calling him.

"You've gotten much better at your Jack impression," Bucky answers just to be annoying. "Does he know you impersonate him on official numbers?"

"You're not as funny as you believe."

"Ooh, you even have his disapproving tone down. I feel like he's in the room with us!" Bucky laughs. He peers around the corner. Buck's still where he left him, buried in his phone texting someone.

Bucky doesn't let himself think about who that person is.

"Your father wants to invite you to a dinner tomorrow. You can even bring that boy that walked you home. The one that hasn't left." Pages flip in the background as Jack talks. Probably governmental reports his father was supposed to read.

"You know you're not his chief of staff anymore?" Bucky leaned his hip against the counter. "You don't have to read reports or wrangle his kid to government dinners to help his image as a family man. You're his husband now, you're the family."

"You're my kid too by that logic, so wrangling you gets to stay on my resume." Bucky snorts out a laugh. "Besides, it's not a state dinner or anything. He just wants to see you."

Guilt gnaws at his heart. Buck pokes his head into the kitchen, phone no longer holding all of his attention.

"Fine," Bucky groans. "But if he brings up the apartment again, I'm walking out with my food on my plate even if it's the good plates."

"See you tomorrow at 7 then. Bring your boy." Jack hangs up without a goodbye.

✨️

It'll be me, and it'll be you, Buck.

Don't count on it.

Bucky jerks awake. His dream flashes through his head too fast for him to remember anything. Scenes superimpose over each other, words jumble together. At least this one wasn't a nightmare. Those always left him shakey and off balance all day.

His dreams have always been vivid, ever since he was a kid. The child psychologists he'd gone to had said it was normal and simply a sign of a well developed imagination.

Bucky runs a hand through his hair groaning when he glances towards his bedside clock. It's nearly an hour until he has to get up, but he knows that he won't be getting back to sleep before then.

Buck lays curled up next to him on the bed. Bucky reaches out to brush a hand through the other's hair. Buck twitches leaning into the feeling for half a second but doesn't stir beyond that.

Bucky sighs. Extricating himself from Buck's long limbs takes time. Somehow in the night, Buck had nearly fused them together as if even asleep the man refused to let him go. Arms layered over arms. Legs tangled together. It's an excellent distraction from his dreams but not from the problems of the waking world. If only he could forget those once he woke up like he did his dreams.

It's only when he's pouring water for his coffee that he realizes he recognizes the voice from his dream. A first for him.

It'd been Buck's.

✨️

(Not a confrontation I know, but it builds my AU lol)

[homestuckreplay]

EOA1 ==> Media, Agency and the Suburbs in Act 1 of Homestuck

It is April 13, 1959. Mr. Egbert, Sr. has recently made the move out of the city into a newly built house in the suburbs, because clowning isn't paying so well after the recession. His son John hasn't seen his friend Rose since they moved. Staring out the window at 4:13pm and glimpsing nothing but the neighbor's wall, John goes downstairs to catch the second half of a black and white episode of Truth or Consequences, losing himself for fifteen minutes in their world of pranks, hilarity and emotional family reunions. Hopefully for his birthday, his dad will get him that cool new board game and its all-important hours of distraction.

We pick up the daily newspaper, and flip to the funnies to see John's new antics.

(Essay below the cut - about 5k words.)

==> I: John’s Suburb in Historical Context, or: Johntext

During the 1940s and 1950s, mass expansion of the American suburbs was accompanied by a ‘best of both worlds’ promise. Families who moved there could enjoy easy travel to the city via car for work and leisure, but wouldn’t have to deal with the ‘undesirable’ parts of city life, such as noise, pollution, or people from marginalized groups. Suburbs were characterized by detached, single family houses that guaranteed each family their own bubble of space away from neighbors, but also promised a community of likeminded people with whom to form neighborhood associations and PTA committees. Residents could enjoy independence from city governance and increased control over their own living spaces, but anybody who might push back against current social norms would be quietly excluded. Utopian promises and attractive prices encouraged many Americans to make the move, and many of them have never left. 

Here in 2009, it’s not uncommon for people to have lived their entire lives in the suburbs - often in a single house. Promises of progress and innovation within households have remained strictly cosmetic, while the values guarding suburban families and communities have changed very little. Although people of color comprise an increasing percentage of suburban residents, white people are still overrepresented. The same is true of married couples’ overrepresentation compared to other family structures. Suburban architecture remains centralized around the car as the primary means of transportation, and the separation of residential from commercial areas. Opportunities and reasons to leave the house are both minimized. 

With the growth of the suburbs came increased criticism of their designs and ideals. Their dream of a spacious home for each family has led to feelings of isolation, while the promised communities have primarily formed around churches and strict Christian ideals. Residents lack trust in their neighbors, and as such, children are no longer left to their own devices outside of the house. The suburban goal of easy car accessibility to cities has ended in highway congestion, air pollution and lack of public transport or pedestrian access. And while the percentage of Americans living in the suburbs continues to increase, not everyone has the luxury of choosing where they live - particularly children and teenagers. 

Homestuck’s main character John Egbert doesn't directly express a hatred of the suburbs - he seems more conflicted, showing fondness for the tire swing in a kid's yard (p.27), the fireplace (p.50) and the father smoking a pipe (p.74), while also expressing that he feels stuck in his home (p.30, 253), that he avoids his father's company (p.30), and that he feels something missing from his life (p.82). He doesn't seem aware of the source of his emptiness, just that he's always felt it, and we can only guess the source through incredibly subtle context clues, such as the work's title and the way John longingly gazes towards the outside.

It's certainly possible for someone with an otherwise privileged life to feel alienation in the suburbs, but those who differ from the white nuclear family ideal tend to have these feelings heightened, and may be ostracized by the community or threatened into conformity. Similarly, the gulf between John and his dad, and their separate perceptions of that relationship, could be simply generational, or could suggest bigger, unseen differences between them.

One interpretation I and others have discussed is that John is a transgender woman who has yet to actively realize her identity, but knows on some level that she can’t achieve the strict gender expectations of a suburban community. This loss of self-understanding would contribute to John's feelings of absence and lack of control, and strain her relationship with a father who expects her to fit a male gender role. 

This might be my favorite possible explanation, but there are lots of others, any or all of which could be true. John being queer in any sense would mean he might not fit into the nuclear family structure of the suburbs as an adult. John being a person of color in an otherwise white neighborhood would visually distinguish him from his neighbors and cause them to judge him based on stereotypes, and if John is mixed race and Dad is white, this distinction could highlight differences between them too, the absence in John's life marked by a disconnection from a culture he's a part of. John being neurodivergent could impact his ability to interact with other people in the neighborhood, or to replicate the rules and performativity of daily life. Single parent family structures are more accepted in 2009 than they were in 1959, but it's still possible that some past scandal involving Dad and John's family life is hanging over them, fresh in the minds of their neighborhood - perhaps one that just like Nanna's death, Dad 'never wants to talk about'. Any of these factors could lead to John being ostracized by his community and mean that even at a young age he didn't 'buy in' to the idea of the happy suburban family. 

I believe it is intentional that Homestuck hasn’t defined John’s location more specifically than ‘west of Kansas’. Although research has shown that different suburbs have their own individual characters, critics tend to emphasize their similarities. We’re supposed to think that John would have broadly the same experiences if he lives in Arizona or Colorado, Texas or Georgia, maybe even England or Belgium. The externalities of John’s life are the same as countless other kids in the Western world, not because of John’s choices or even his dad’s choices, but due to the larger structures that organize families into houses, houses into suburbs, and suburbs into sources of constraint.

==> II: If You Love Your House So Much, Why Don’t You Never Leave It?

The suburbs walk hand in hand with advances in technology. The 1950s saw a boom in the sale of household appliances, with devices for cooking and cleaning promising to lighten the housework load for women, and television providing entertainment for the whole family from the comfort of the living room. Various corporations created model homes to display the futuristic properties of their fantastical appliances, promising consumers that in the future, all homes would look just like this. This was a marketing tactic primarily benefiting the corporations - but in some cases, they were successful. General Electric’s ‘New American’ home in Denver featured a dishwasher as early as 1935, and these increased in affordability and domestic popularity across the 1950s and 60s. Disneyland’s Monsanto ‘House of the Future’ boasted a microwave oven. The house opened in real world 1957 but was ‘set in 1986’, and by 1986, one in four American homes owned a microwave. The Westinghouse ‘Home of Tomorrow’ contained the first ever portable radios - six of them, with radio outlets in every room to grant every family member a constant supply of media. 

This idea of constant, individualized media consumption may have been the greatest called shot of these houses. In 1959, John would be limited to a handful of TV channels on a fixed schedule, fighting over the tuning dials with his dad, but in 2009 he almost certainly knows the delights of Megavideo on top of having a video game collection, DVD collection and TV on demand service. 

Televisions were marketed to families in the 1950s claiming that they would keep families closer, as parents and children alike would want to stay home and watch together instead of going out to separate places, and many parents at first expressed relief at always knowing where their teenage children were, and consequently, being able to keep an eye on them. Television altered the boundaries between public and private space, allowing people to experience a public activity such as a trip to the movies, a performance from a live musician, even witnessing the moon landing, without leaving the home or interacting with strangers. 

Increasingly, media is marketed with the promise of interactivity and agency. Television provided a world to passively escape into, but video games allow the player to actually embody a character in that world. They present fantasies of control, of being able to explore a virtual map according to the player’s whims, and offering in-character choices that allow the player to control the narrative itself. Players are compelled by the possibility of media they can customize to their own specific tastes, and media they can master and bend to their will instead of simply observe. In this way, the Nintendo Wii isn’t so different from the fridge-freezer that promised greater mastery over the family’s diet, or the modern microwave oven and its dozens of settings and options for preparing food. 

As our society moves from home televisions to home computers and video game systems into an age of portable, all in one smartphones, we and the media become more dependent on each other, and we expect to have access to it more of the time. John Egbert has found connection with a close friend who lives multiple timezones east and stays in regular and real time contact with her. That friendship enriches his life, and wouldn't have been possible without today’s high speed internet and instant messaging services. John’s computer opens up an incredible social world, but - as we’ve seen with Rose losing power - if he lost that technology, he’d also lose that community. 

So, advertisers ask, what possible reason is there to leave? Why would you go somewhere mundane, like a park or a youth club, when you could go up on a plane surrounded by dangerous criminals and outsmart them all in time to save your friend? When you can bike down the highways from Missouri to Virginia to save the girl you like from natural disasters? You can be a hard boiled detective, a monster's best friend, a scientist making contact with aliens, an oil magnate turned savior of the world, a FBI agent surgically given the face of a terrorist, and a world leading expert on ghost slime - and you’ll never get dirty, you’ll never get hurt, and your dad will be right in the next room with a constant supply of fresh baked cakes and fatherly affection. What possible reason do kids have to complain, or to feel like anything is missing from their lives, when they can master reality from couches and computer chairs?

John Egbert embodies constant media consumption. Two of his five stated interests are consuming media - specifically movies and video games - and even when he’s not actively watching or playing something, he’s surrounded by media. His room is filled with movie posters, the television in the living room is switched on even when nobody’s watching, and the first thing he does after loading his computer is check for webcomic updates. Even his thoughts are consumed. He’s constantly replaying his favorite scenes in his head, which seems to bring him genuine joy, fixating on the next game he wants to play, and filling his social interactions with references to his favorite franchises. Even before actually entering Sburb’s virtual reality, John already wasn’t present in his material space. He’s digitally transitioned from what Lynn Spigel describes as ‘the home address to “home page”... computer generations rather than genders’. 

==> III: Kids These Days Just Don’t Respect The Cultural Idea Of Childhood We Created For Them

The suburban home loves technology, but the reverse may not be true. A significant amount of mass media depicts the suburbs as the place where creativity and individuality go to die, reflecting the cultural criticisms instead of the promises. Some of the earliest sitcoms, such as I Love Lucy and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, predated widespread criticisms of the suburbs and presented an idealized suburban life. These soon gave way to the ‘fantastic sitcoms’ of the 1960s, including Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. These shows have implausible premises, featuring supernatural creatures, aliens or futuristic settings while still depicting mundane suburban realities. This juxtaposition opened up new questions about the real world, asking why we exclude certain people from communities and playing with the strict roles within the nuclear family. 

Media aimed at young people often presents a world where kids are in control and regular power structures are inverted. 1950s and 60s comic strips aimed at kids, such as Peanuts and Dennis the Menace, were also set in the suburbs - but an idealized version of the suburbs where kids could roam freely, not confined to the home and able to disobey the instructions of adults without consequences. Some parents restrict these from children, not wanting them to ‘get the wrong idea’ and copy the bad behavior they see in comics or on TV. Popular music is a site of rebellion amongst teenagers - The Kinks in the 1960s, Talking Heads and Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s, Green Day and Blink-182 in the 1990s and 2000s, and uncountable other acts have put criticisms of suburbia to music and created a cultural dream of escape by getting on the road, joining a rock band and never putting down roots again. 

In a time of rapid technological change, parents fear the impact technology and new media will have on their children, partly because they didn’t grow up with those technologies themselves. Television was feared because it gave children access to knowledge, different worldviews, and the realities of the adult world that parents wanted to keep from them, lessening parents’ control over their kids. It was also feared for its all-consuming nature, for making children want to watch constantly at the expense of homework, chores and family meals. More recently, video games have been feared for these same addictive properties, and for the belief that they negatively impact social interaction and cause increased aggression and violence. 

But John isn’t like other teenagers. His taste is striking for being exclusively movies that reinforce ideals of the nuclear family - usually suburban, with the exception of New York City-based Ghostbusters II - which suggests he doesn’t only want to escape his current life, he wants to legitimate it to himself. John’s movies end with family reconciliation, not with the kids getting one over on the parents. If John feels like he doesn’t fit into suburban ideals, he can try to connect with them by seeing them through the eyes of a character he likes. In a world where John’s primary source of agency is the media he chooses to consume, he could easily choose to reject his unsatisfying life altogether and live vicariously through outlaws and exiles, getting really into Westerns or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but he doesn’t. He chooses characters who are fundamentally conventional, despite their rough edges, suggesting he’d really like to just fit in and be content with what he has.

Sburb, however, is the game that actualizes parents’ worst fears, inverting the power structures of the house, giving Rose and John dominion over the space while Dad - formerly both the breadwinner and the homemaker - has been relegated to an unseen location. John has access to a physically dangerous inventory system and a strife specibus that encourages him to solve problems by hitting them with a hammer.

Media promises us an escape, and it undoubtedly has the power to teach us and open our eyes to new perspectives, but in many cases provides nothing more than a filter over our lives. Encouraging people to live in a state of distraction, a TV show or video game gives us an easy way to hide from reality. People look for a new technology to solve their problems instead of a social solution, placing parental controls over their children’s television and internet usage instead of having honest conversations among families about media consumption, and designing security systems to keep ‘undesirable’ people from trespassing in middle class neighborhoods without questioning why those people are excluded from suburban society in the first place.

==> IV: There’s A Fine Line Between Fantasy And Reality And My House Is Built There

In the 1935 movie Murder by Television, a money-hungry scientist manipulates the interference between telephone lines and television broadcast signals to create the ‘death ray,’ and murder somebody on the other side of a television screen. Released less than a decade after the world’s first television broadcast, this movie demonstrates our cultural obsession with the boundaries between electrical and real space, and our dream of making those boundaries permeable. The 1950s presented TV families (such as the Nelsons from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) as normal families whose lives just happened to be televised, but who behaved the same way on and off screen to the point of forgetting the cameras were rolling. To this day, reality television such as Big Brother and The Bachelor promise to show us contestants’ authentic private lives, and even when we as viewers know the show is staged, we choose to buy into the fantasy.

More recently, 1998’s The Truman Show literalizes our dependence on the media, its ubiquity in our lives, and the impact this has on our personal relationships by showing a man whose whole life has been orchestrated by a TV production company that broadcasts him 24/7. Through a lucky accident with a time portal I obtained a copy of 2023’s Barbie, in which a plastic doll lives the dream life promised by her marketing, but starts thinking about mortality and the ‘real world’ when her owner’s mother starts drawing pictures of her with typical adult problems.

In both of these movies, the characters are happy until they are forced to confront the constructed nature of their worlds. By understanding the production and design processes controlling their lives, they become disillusioned with the simulation of perfection and begin searching for something more authentic. Even though Truman and Barbie both escape synthesized worlds and achieve full human agency, their endings are bittersweet. Their ‘escape’ lands them in present day Los Angeles, with all the social constraints, local mass produced suburbs, and constant diet of blockbuster media that this implies.

Blurring these boundaries is an effective advertising strategy as well as a narrative one. Adverts invite players to ‘become’ the main character of a video game, such as a Kid Chameleon promotion inviting players to ‘change personalities faster than they’ll change helmets’ and ‘transform’ themselves into a variety of mavericks. A Mortal Kombat arcade machine advert showed real men bursting out of the machine to attack the player. Promotions for The Sims 2 featured real photographs of people with the Sims interface added digitally, presenting the controllable Sims within the game as more than just pixels.

Following in this grand tradition, Sburb takes the permeable boundary between electrical and real space and smashes a meteor through it. Sburb answers the question of ‘can technology transform our society?’ with a 'yes'  loud enough to shake the neighborhood houses from their foundations. Sburb represents the greatest and most utopian promises of technology, as well as the worst of our cultural fears around it. 

The appeal of Sburb as a game is that it promises teenagers control over their lives in a world where they’re otherwise powerless. It’s a way to speedrun growing up - alchemy mechanics offer the chance to manipulate space and create all the material goods the player wants, but the game also bestows responsibility for tackling a crisis, for maintaining the home, perhaps even saving the world. And the players who are going to want this badly enough to fight through the impossible challenges Sburb presents are the kids who really can’t wait, the ones who aren’t doing well, and who feel trapped enough in their everyday lives that they would risk it all on an experimental technology to escape. 

In truth, many scholars challenge the concepts of interactivity and agency in video games, arguing that these are players’ perceptions and not their realities. Games invite players to participate in the creation of art, but the relationship is never equal, with the creators always having the final say on exactly how much free will the player is allowed. Even a game that aims to be open world and allow for as much free play as possible is bound by the limitations of processing power and how many options a human can reasonably write and code for. 

Sburb also puts restrictions on its players. Most likely, there are limits on what objects can be created via alchemy, and Sburb would likely restrict any item that could be used to work against the game. Players being controlled by commands which are interpreted by a computer also ensure that only commands coded for in the game are transmitted to the player. When a command is incorrect, the narrator steps in to help the player (p.253). And so far, the game has dramatic ways of keeping John on a very linear path - first starting a clock so he had no choice but to focus on stopping the meteor, then cutting him off from the world so that he has to stay in his current location. It’s impossible to have agency while living within a game that can and will end your life with four minutes and thirteen seconds of notice.

The ‘homes of tomorrow’ discussed at the start of part II were designed as sentient spaces, responsive to their inhabitants and able to almost anticipate their needs. John Brehm said about MOMA’s 1999 Un-Private House exhibition, ‘one can prepare a meal with the help of a virtual chef from a favorite restaurant and have dinner with a virtual guest or friend through the liquid wall’ and suggested that the house was ‘an extension of the body or a transparency of the mind… that both protects and transcends the limitations of the body’. In 2000, the Microsoft Home in New York City showed a future where people could control the lights, thermostats, security systems and stereos directly from their phones, even from another location. The home of tomorrow promises it can be anything its owner wants it to be, without questioning the idea that the privately owned, individualized home should exist and be desired.

Of course, the houses of tomorrow are always singular, prototype homes built with no thought of neighbors and community, but perhaps sacrificing a whole neighborhood to build the perfect home is a tradeoff some people have to make. Far from the static, impersonal houses of the suburbs, Sburb allows players to create their dream houses, offering bigger bedrooms, additional floors, and an endless void to throw your father’s harlequin statues into. It’s another technology that offers transformative potential for the family home, but is ultimately still driven by it, forming an individualist utopian bubble within a larger, far more conservative and restrictive structure.

==> V: If I Die, I Wanna Die In The Suburbs

The remote control, the video game joystick, and the Sburb alchemiter all tell us we can master reality by mastering technology. If that’s the case, then John still has to master technology. A shattered window from stack modus failures and a desktop littered with enraged programming files show us just how far John is from mastering either of these things.

John’s lack of agency goes far deeper than being trapped in the suburbs. His simple choice to pick something up and put it down is controlled by external agents. Though he can choose to escape his father in the kitchen by going to his room, a variety of screens will follow him and keep him in his own personalized panopticon. Rose’s mastery over the cursor means that John can’t guarantee the objects in his room will be where he left them, and even John’s thoughts are surveilled, interpreted and transmitted outwards by the narrator.

The USA PATRIOT act of 2001 expanded the US government’s legal rights to monitor electronic communication, and the early 2000s saw increased covert network surveillance by governments and private corporations alike. John’s technological illiteracy means he probably doesn’t know how to use a VPN and might not have known as a kid that his internet activities weren’t private, but in Act 2, inside Sburb, he begins to realize. Just as parents fretted at PTA meetings, John’s media has allowed him to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and put an end to his carefully constructed childhood, all on the cultural milestone of his thirteenth birthday. 

Sburb has compounded the problem of John being surveilled and puppeted, but didn't invent it. The first 136 pages of Homestuck establish the meta-narrative restrictions on his life, from his inventory system to his being guided by commands, before he installs the game. There are layers of control over John’s life that he’ll need to break through one at a time. The first will be acquiring the Sburb server disc, which will give John greater power within Sburb, and the ability to use the full extent of its abilities. The second will be escaping the game of Sburb, which could be accomplished by simply winning the game (like in 1995’s Jumanji), or by using some kind of cheat or glitch to break out of it (2003’s Spy Kids 3: Game Over), but either way John will need to master the game mechanics. 

The final layer is Homestuck itself, and unfortunately for us, John escaping the player and narrator’s influence over his life would almost certainly mean the end of the comic. But in Homestuck the Earth is already being destroyed, and being a webcomic that doesn’t have the constraints of a two hour Hollywood movie, the story doesn’t have to stop at the level of escaping the simulation. It has the chance to go a layer further, and imagine a world where John and his friends are able to enact real and meaningful change.

John has clearly had an emotional dependency on media for a long time, and now, he has a physical dependency too. Sburb is the thing keeping him alive, and his only hope to save the rest of the world, but he’s not alone in seeing popular media as a sacred text necessary for his existence. Smethurst and Craps point out that the player reacts to the game as much as the game does to the player - if anywhere, agency can be found in players’ interpretations of a game. Increasingly we rely on fiction to shape our politics and our worldviews, while also reading texts at a surface level. While media itself is insufficient to give us agency, media literacy is a big step towards asking questions about what restricts our agency, how, and why. The way John discusses movies now isn’t too in depth, with reviews like ‘the applejuice scene was so funny’ and ‘cage is sweet. so sweet.’ But in a story about becoming part of a video game, media literacy could be a very powerful tool for John, and he could come out of this as a genuine movie critic.

==> Conclusion

While Homestuck is a distinctly modern multimedia experience, it exists in a much larger tradition of media that criticizes the suburbs, and depicts the fantasy of escape for young people. Like other metafictional works before it, it handles these themes self-reflexively, showing its main character combat the horrors of the suburbs directly, instead of depicting a fantasy where problems do not exist. 

Based on its first act, Homestuck is a story about John Egbert’s quest for agency in a world that constantly tries to restrict it. John’s life so far has been defined by the suburbs, by a single but unremarkable point in space that he’s been trapped in for the first thirteen years of his life. John is both physically confined to his suburban neighborhood, and socially confined into being the ideal of the middle class all American boy that has been presented as his only option. John’s taste in media reinforces the ideals of his society, meaning he has yet to question the status quo of his existence or examine the source of his depression. John is also controlled directly by his server player, the Homestuck players, and the narrator. 

John’s experiences playing Sburb show us that while the escape media provides for us is real and can change us in meaningful ways, it can only solve the first step of the problem - and isn’t without its own risks and drawbacks. In order to truly develop agency, John will need to question the existence of the suburbs themselves, and not only his placein them. He’ll also need to  - at some point - quit the game, return to reality, and use the skills he’s learned in the game to develop mastery over both the physical world and the story itself.

==> Sources

I wrote this essay after reading Lynn Spigel’s excellent essay collection ‘Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs’ (2001), which I would highly recommend.

Full bibliography

Filmography

[ihaveforgortoomany]

Sonetto and the Breakaway Incident:

The revised Prologue I think makes clear Sonetto does not know the full context of the Incident with Constantine's involvement (add Matilda here as well I think both of them out of the SPDM kids still alive don't have full context).

This is based on the changed "my classmate" line to "I... took a different path", as I mentioned in the translation changes the line was meant to convey Vertin unlike Sonetto is not trained in offensive arcanum (probably taught for self-defence but not the primary goal of the Timekeeper).

(Ill make a separate post about the people Vertin had met prior to Regulus once I have sufficient evidence on them maybe.)

Sonetto and Vertin have not spoken likely in 4 years (hopefully we might get more insight in those years at some point) and I speculate all Sonetto knows is that everyone else was taken by the Storm and not Vertin, not knowing Constantine's plot to manipulate the situation.

People who know the full context of the situation: Constantine, Vertin, Madam Z, Mesmer Jr and likely Lilya. As Horrorpedia mentioned in Greenlake lids who asked about the Incident were thrown in the Guardhouse. Additionally Vertin is already guarded emotionally as a person so most of the suitcase fam would not know (if Vila knew she deffo would start second guessing letting the Raysshki kids go to SPDM but I speculate once Madam Z became Vice Committee member she reformed the SPDM a bit).

All Sonetto thinks is that Vertin afterwards graduated early and became the Timekeeper until the events of the Prologue when they meet again. While their relationship is healing, it would be a while until Sonetto likely finds out the truth and I think this may be the tipping point for her loyalty. The only way would be either Vertin or Constantine (or even Mesmer Jr) directly bringing up the Incident at some point.

Again maybe this is already common knowledge but in general Sonetto is interesting as a representing the good of the Foundation, of what it should be, and the many ways it is not.

[clockwayswrites]

Specter of Starlight- Snippet

“How are you still alive?”

A sound tore from Danny. It was a horrible sound: rough and jagged and choking.

Danny was laughing.

He sunk back into the bed, seemingly exhausted just from the effort of making the half sound. A wry smile pulled at his lips, twisted the holes in his cheeks left by the muzzle in a way that made it look inhuman. “I died and died and died and died and…,” he signed. His hands trembled. “Death does not stay, I guess.”

“Is that why you were there?” Batman asked.

Danny nodded and finger spelled out ‘experiment’ and signed ‘rat’ after pointing to himself.

“They were experimenting on you.”

Danny nodded again.

“Not just experimenting, they were—” Tim had to pause to swallow back his anger. His eyes darted to the sloppily stitched Y shaped incision on Danny’s chest. “They dissected you.”

“I am fine,” Danny signed. His small, exhausted smile wasn’t very convincing. Not when it caused a new trail of blood to slide down his neck.

“Like fuck you are!”

“Red Robin,” Batman admonished.

Tim cut himself off, and dropped his gaze to the ground. The leather of his gloves creaked as he clenched his hands. He hated losing his temper, he was supposed to be the even tempered one. How could he though, looking at his friend abused and bleeding. Batman’s hand landed on his shoulder— a heavy, comforting weight.

“We’ll remove the rest of your bindings. Do I have your word you won’t hurt anyone here?” Batman asked. Tim hated that he had to, but he understood why. As much as he trusted Danny, the other was an unknown. A powerful unknown.

A moment later, Batman continued, obviously responding to something. “Yes, you are.”

The sound of metal on metal made Tim look up again. Danny was tapping his manacles against each other. He caught Tim’s eyes and very purposefully signed. “Am I safe?”

“Yes,” Tim answered without hesitation. “You’re safe, I promise. I’ll keep you safe.”

Danny nodded and signed, “I will not hurt anyone. Promise.”

-----

AN: Having a very, very bad pain day and struggling to focus on one project so have a little angst from one of my ideas as I keep jumping around wips. This supposedly a short fic- 2 chapters. This would be early the second. This will probably be a lie.

I’m sorry for being in the dp x dc tag like, every single day with either fic or art. Hopefully no one minds my clutter too much.

(If there are any glaring errors with writing the sign language let me know. I’ve done some research and looked into certain signs as I can, but my knowledge is still growing. My own period of being deaf didn’t last long enough to get into signing as a bitty kid.)

Itty bitty tag committee: @michealawithana 

[itsclydebitches]

Any tips for new grad students? I'm about to start in the fall and I'm curious how it'll be different/hopefully better than undergrad!

Congratulations, anon!!!

Let's see... some alphabetical tips based on my own experience:

Ask for help. You'll likely have a million questions and, unfortunately, the designated people who can answer them are often crazy busy and may take a while to get back to you, or forget entirely. So don't be afraid to ask for help from whoever might even feasibly know the answer -- including tumblr blogs! You're off to a great start lol

Be on the lookout for advisors early. Whether you're just in need of a singular advisory for a thesis, or if you'll be putting a whole committee together, approach every new instructor with the question, "Would I want them to mentor me through my research?" in the back of your mind. Pay attention to not just their specialties and teaching methods, but who they are as a person. Do you like them? Are you comfortable with them? Do they treat you respectfully? Do they seem to have everything well in hand? I loved my advisor dearly as a person, but he was often waaaaaay behind on his work. Looking back, I would have at least considered choosing someone with better organization/time management skills.

Get good at writing emails. Can you write a succinct, professional sounding email? Great! Get comfortable doing that throughout the whole day. Feeling a little iffy? Practice over the summer. There are a lot of templates online that can help, but you'll want to ensure you're not going into grad school still writing "k thx" from your iPhone at 3:00am. (For the record, your professors may do this, the students should not lol).

Have designated, scheduled downtime. Literally if you don't plan to take a break... you won't be taking a break. Not until your body decides to take one for you, anyway. Friday nights were always my couch potato time. Absolutely no work allowed and no strenuous activity unless it was something I was legitimately excited about (so no getting pressured into outings I didn't actually want to attend). Friday nights were sacred, a time for takeout and only whatever else I felt like doing, usually TV, video games, and vegging out with my cat.

Imposter Syndrome is a BITCH. Luckily, pretty much everyone's got it to a greater or lesser extent, we all just need to acknowledge it more. You know those boards some schools have celebrating places where students have gotten in and other achievements? Yeah, we put one up for failures in our department. Literally a giant, glittery, "CONGRATS YOU DIDN'T GET IT!" board where we hung proposal rejections, grant rejections, school rejections, scholarship rejections, job rejections, and on one memorable occasion a date rejection. I highly recommend it. Nothing lessens the sting quite as much as seeing that you're a part of a sea of similar disappointments and remembering that you're all in the same, often luck-based boat.

Pick a non-academic hobby. Your mental health will thank you, trust me. Like the designated downtime, you need to be doing something that's not reading/writing/researching 24/7. Pick a hobby that in no way relates to academics or your chosen field, preferably something hands-on and creative. Grad school is when I picked up crocheting alongside knitting.

Prepare to hold down two jobs. This really only applies if you're going to be teaching while you get your degree (or if you have an outside job for the paycheck), but I was pretty blindsided by what it took to be a full-time student and a half-time instructor. I don't really have good advice beyond "Figure out your time management skills now" and "Don't pour all your energy into one or the other because the one you've neglected WILL come back to bite you in the ass," but even just being aware of how difficult it is going to be would have staved off the initial shock.

Read strategically. Perhaps this is different for someone not in the Humanities, but you will be reading a LOT in grad school. Like, an absolutely stupid amount. There simply will not be time to cover everything from title to footnotes (I know, it hurts), so get comfortable with reading abstracts, chapter summaries, skimming, and otherwise summarizing lengthy works to figure out what you should prioritize. Unless a whole article is assigned for class, figure out what you need from any given text -- or what you think you may need -- and hone in on that. You can always return to read more if you have the time.

SAVE EVERYTHING. Do not delete emails. Get copies of everything even remotely official. Print everything out. Buy yourself a couple of cheap file boxes, stick them under your bed, and keep it all just in case. What kind of things have I unexpectedly needed to dredge up weeks, months, or even years later? The printed paper with hand-written comments to justify a grade I gave. An ancient email from a committee member proving that they did in fact sign off on a certain chapter choice. A copy of the publication forms I signed for a book collection after those got lost on their end (somehow). Seriously, save everything. You'll never know when you may need proof of some communication you've had.

Take naps. That's it. That's the advice. Someone gives you shit for being "lazy" or tries to make you feel bad for "wasting" a sunny afternoon? Make them step on a Lego and then both of you take your nap outside. Naps are beautiful and sacred and life-saving. Just set a good alarm for whenever your next class/meeting is.

Work at making friends. Unlike high school or even college where you'll be spending the day with a core group of people, in graduate school (unless your school is really small) the students are a lot more spread out and there aren't as many built-in opportunities to socialize. So plan to put in more effort at connecting with others because you will want that camaraderie, both for practical help and your sanity. I didn't realize how much more I needed to do to get to know my peers until I was nearly finished my Master's. Luckily, my PhD threw me into an office with seven other grads, so I didn't have a choice about getting to know them lol

You're responsible for your own learning. You've gotten a taste of this in college, but grad school cranks it up to 11. You're an adult (not an "adult" adult like a college student) and you've committed to putting forth 2-7 additional years towards your education. The expectation is that you want to be here and will showcase the necessary effort without outside influence (unless you require accommodations, of course). Be prepared for your instructors to treat you like a peer, both when it comes to the fun stuff - intense debates about your field! - and the responsibilities they expect you to follow through on. In some ways grad school is nothing like college because you are now focused on one subject, you are working collaboratively with people who were once solely authority figures, and 95% of the work will occur outside the classroom via self-teaching. You're a professional now. Still being mentored, but well on your way to that equal standing. The sooner you realize that you are responsible for your own education and future career -- not your teachers, your parents, your BFF, your roommate, etc. -- the better.

Most importantly:

[skelebellie]

FIRST MEETINGS

million knives [stampede] x plant?reader drabble

synopsis: you meet knives for the first time. he thinks your someone else.

content warning: mentions of sharp weapons, blood, and physical altercations

this an equal household. i pine after all siblings equally. [aka i think knives is a goofy dude and his characterization in stampede is kiss kiss].

—————

it was a particularly normal day as you spent your time around town, discovering odd patterned geological formations that helped adhere the homes to the sand below it.

was it the smartest idea to go into a dark alley alone. no. did you think anything would happen to you in the middle day. also no.

you were lost in the sauce. failing to notice the screams of town folk as you observed the calcified rock. one moment you were holding it and then boom, it was dark.

when you woke up, you were shocked to be in a white room. it sent shivers up your spine, as the environment caused old memories to rise to the surface. questions could wait until later, for now you’d try to get out of here. hopefully the town was still there when you got back.

the door was unlocked, odd considering you were kidnapped.

you also didn’t have shoes on, thankfully that old socks separated the floor and your feet. you could sense your bag somewhere within the building, your body able to feel the shawl of plant material that you had been born with, always tucked into your bag.

it was like you were an assassin, peering around every corner and ears on high alert.

the closer you got to your objective, the quieter it seemed to get. an odd sense of loneliness filling the room.

you had found your bag and shawl, even your shoes (thank god, you didn’t have the money for new ones). the only downside being that some blondie covered in a robe was holding it, allowing light to shine through the transparent shawl.

you became defensive knowing he was touching something as important as your shawl, so you started making fast paces towards him. “Hey! You shouldn’t touch things that don’t belong-“. The sense of danger came first, luckily stopping you from making too much contact with the tail of sharp objects that wrapped around you. it certainly didn’t save your overalls, as a large rip formed across the front panel. damnit, now you’d have to sew it back again.

“anything plant belongs to me. im its rightful owner, a god” blondie chided at you, only causing more anger to bubble up to your throat. “J.J Doe, right? Elusive scientist who has published series of plant based experiments. No committee or board to shift through your work, your research seems to pop up in small town libraries. Never the same one.” The man stepped down from his pedestal, inching closer to you. You backed up, only for a reactive spindle of metal(?) to wrap around your neck. it swiped, leaving a sliver of blood and for the stop part of your turtleneck to fall to the ground. the more he keeps going the more work you’ll have to do to fix whatever clothes you have.

“i detest humans, a species of parasitic worms who use plants as tools for their selfish survival. however, I hate those who knowingly use their will to torture my brotheren even more.” he was too close for comfort now. a string of knives swiping close to your forehead, which you barely dodged by shifting backwards. the shift in weight caused you to fall backwards, rows of spindles wrapping around your legs, keeping you from getting up from the floor.

“should i take a finger for each sin you have committed. maybe slowly sever you limb from limb, so you may know the suffering of the plants who you experimented on. maybe-“ You were too focused on the rows of knives wrapped around your legs to notice that he now stood atop of you. crouching to straddle you as his eyes sent daggers into your mind, like a searing hot flash of static. “i should do it with my own hands. as disgusting as you vile creatures are.” his hand slowly began to approach your neck. his weapons should have instilled enough fear into you, but now you seemed petrified, tears threatening to pour at the very thought of him touching you.

“disgusting.” he muttered, looking down as you. his hand wrapped around your neck, and immediately began to squirm, your leg receiving shallow cuts as it brushed against the sharp cage around it. the contact sent an immediate blossom of heat from your neck. you wish it was another gang of badland raiders, anything but an independent plant. you covered yourself up to avoid making contact with anyone, trying to prevent the surge of information that you would receive and give which writhed out of your control.

behind closed eyes, you could see the blossom of blue, geometric shapes spreading from your chest to your neck, reaching out to the man who’s hand was around your neck. the closer it got the more erratic you reacted. It seemed like the man above you no longer intended to kill you, for now. Instead he fixated his eyes to the spread of patterns slowly approaching his hand, his own body reacting in a similair manner. the contact left your mind heavy with shocks of malice, anger, and pain? The scorching sensation caused a moan of pain to spill from your lips as fat tears fell from your eyes.

The man above you felt the fear over the connection, a dark pit of misunderstanding and embarrassment overflowing with an ebb and flow of confusion. flashes of images of syringes and scalpels as you held the blade towards yourself, harvesting your flash to run under analysis. you hadn’t been experimenting on other plants, you had been experimenting on parts of yourself.

the cage around your legs unwinded, as did the hand around your neck. you quickly moved your arms to cover your eyes, still unable to cope with the wave of information that was forced into your head. however, your action failed as another hand wrapped around your wrists to move your arms from your face, revealing puffy eyes and still falling tears. another hand came up to caress underneath your lashes, gathering the salty tears before they could run onto the floor.

“interesting. not entirely human, not entirely plant.” the contact caused a shocking sensation underneath your skin, flinching as his thumb made lazy circles on your cheek. you relaxed, feeling as if the threat of danger was finally over with. until the blunt end of a knife slammed into the already bruised skin at the base of your neck. knocking you out once more.

[p5x-theories]

What We Know About P5X

(updated 11/9/24)

Persona 5: The Phantom X (P5X) has previously had three beta tests, the first of which ran from March 29th to 31st 2023, the second of which ran from August 18th to 25th 2023, and the third of which ran from January 16th to 31st 2024. The open beta, essentially the game's official launch, began on April 12th 2024. A global launch has been confirmed, though we don't yet know when it will happen. Here’s a summary of what we know about the game itself so far. Hopefully this’ll be useful, whether you're new around here or not!

I also keep updated posts about the game's story, playable characters, and other useful information, which can be found in this blog's pinned post (along with this post!).

Keeping this as succinct as I can, but it's still a little long, so under the cut it goes.

Overview

P5X is a turn-based RPG mobile game with gacha elements, developed by Black Wings Game Studio and published by Perfect World Games. While not directly creating it, it is officially licensed by Atlus and Sega. Atlus has apparently been very involved in its production, including Shigenori Soejima designing the protagonist and his Persona, and Atlus writing the story and collab's plots. This is discussed in more detail in the interviews here if you're curious.

The game's setting has been confirmed to be an alternate/"parallel" world to Persona 5's, though translated promotional information also confirms the plot has something to do with these two worlds interacting through "time and space".

As Perfect World Games and Black Wings Game Studio are Chinese game companies, and Atlus and Sega are Japanese game companies, P5X is produced in Chinese and Japanese, with no current official English translations, though the third beta had files that possibly indicate future plans to translate the game into English, and Spanish, among other languages. The dialogue in-game is voiced in both Japanese and Chinese, with Japanese and Chinese voice actors for the characters. Presumably, the global release will fill in the other languages.

Right now, we know the game is available on both mobile (iOS and Android) and PC (Google Play Games and Steam), and it's been officially stated that a console version is planned for after the game releases globally. The first three of the beta tests were closed betas, available only in China, Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong, where players could sign up for a chance to get in, and actual beta accounts were given out via lottery. The open beta requires only a Chinese phone number to sign up, although the Taiwan/Macau/Hong Kong version also allows players to log in with a Google account.

Note that there was some confusion about whether the open beta was the game's official launch at first, due to the language barrier. Posts on this blog prior to 5/15/2024 often refer to it as the "fourth beta" instead, and may erroneously suggest it was just another beta test.

As of 9/24/24, the game has been officially announced for a Japan release, though there will be at least one Japanese beta test prior to the official release.

There are specifically two main gachas in the game- a character gacha for gaining teammates, and a weapons gacha for gaining better weapons for those teammates. While the game is extremely similar to Persona 5 overall, there are many aspects, obviously including the gacha, that differ from it, which are summarized below and detailed further in another post.

The Characters

So far, there are 23 new Persona users. These characters can be divided into story teammates and "Phantom Idol" (gacha-only) teammates.

The story teammates so far are the protagonist (codename Wonder), an owl named Ruferu in Japanese which has sometimes been translated as "Luffy" by fans (codename Cattle), an athletic classmate of the protagonist's named Motoha Arai (codename Closer), a boy from another class with an interest in cooking named Shun Kanou (codename Soy), and disciplinary committee member Riko Tanemura (codename Wind). These teammates have all joined as part of the plot of the game.

The "Phantom Idol" teammates ("Kaidoru" in Japanese) are described as being cognitive beings created by Wonder's Velvet Room attendant, Merope, to assist him in the Metaverse, based on people Wonder meets, though they are only copies.

So far, they include Motoha's best friend Tomoko Noge (codename Moko), imaginative first year student Kiyoshi Kurotani (codename Key), Wonder's family friend Kayo Tomiyama (codename Okyann), college freshman from China Yaoling Li (codename Rin), aspiring actor Reo Kamiyama (codename Leon), Yaoling's traditionally-dressed neighbor Yukimi Fujikawa (codename Yuki), fencing high school student Seiji Shiratori (codename Fleuret), injured ice skater Kotone Montagne (codename Mont), an online friend of Wonder's who goes by the name YUI (codename Bui), 10 year-old math prodigy Haruna Nishimori (codename Riddle), unemployed fisherman Toshiya Sumi (codename Sepia), and aspiring puppeteer Miyu Sahara (codename Puppet).

Later Phantom Idols added after the initial release of the game include student working for her family's store Minami Miyashita (codename Marian), 75 year-old alcoholic woman Chizuko Nagao (codename Vino), flairtender Yuumi Shiina (codename Phoebe), aspiring musician Ayaka Sakai (codename Chord), medical intern Kira Kitazato (codename Messa), and flower-loving third year Masaki Ashiya (codename Cherish). Alternate, summer versions of some characters have also be added as part of a summer event.

The original Phantom Thieves from Persona 5 also appear as Phantom Idols: Joker, Mona, Skull, Panther, Fox, Queen, Oracle, Noir, and Crow. Datamining also found some of Wolf’s battle voice lines from P5S at least in the first beta, and an icon from P5S with Sophie in every beta and the official release, suggesting they may later be added as well. No sign of Violet has been found yet, other than the Faith Arcana card in the files. Joker, at the very least, seems to have some larger role in the plot, as Wonder has a dream about them fighting at the start of the game, and later what seems to be a Phantom Idol Joker comes out of nowhere to rescue Wonder and Cattle in Mementos. Wonder is also able to use his universe's Leblanc to visit the Leblanc of Joker's universe, and spend time with the P5 Thieves there.

There is also a multi-chapter Persona 5 Collab event, which involves the P5X and P5 Phantom Thieves meeting in strange Metaverse locations that mix aspects of both P5 and P5X's Palaces. Similar to the PQ games, the teams cannot leave these areas until they defeat the ruler of each area, and afterward, none of them seem to retain their memories of the events, though they regain these memories when they enter the next location to appear.

Munehisa Iwai, Tae Takemi, and Chihaya Mifune also return in P5X. Iwai runs the weapon gacha, Takemi sells medicine like in P5, and Chihaya tells fortunes. The other original P5 confidants’ portraits and 3D models have been found in every betas' data, and the Councillor Arcana card was with the other cards in the second, third, and fourth betas' data specifically, but it’s currently unknown whether they’ll actually return in any capacity.

The developers have also repeatedly expressed interest in having collabs with Royal and the other numbered Persona series games in the future.

Music

Several new songs have been heard in P5X, five of which feature vocals by Lyn: the opening song "Ambitions and Visions", "Last Strike", "Wake Up Your Hero", "Shadow", and "Fatal Desire". The new instrumental tracks so far include background music for the first two Palaces, background music for special fights, a new music track for Mementos and some other areas affiliated with Mementos, and some music for P5X's rhythm minigame/side quest, where Wonder plays music as a member of his school's music club.

When Ayaka Sakai (Chord) was added, two songs sung by her were also added to the game.

Locations

The majority of P5 and P5R’s locations have been confirmed for P5X, including Yongen-Jaya, Kichijoji, Shibuya, and Shinjuku, but the protagonist lives in a new location called Zoshigaya, and goes to a new school called Kokatsu Academy located in Shimokitazawa. Another school named Kiga High School has also been mentioned.

(Note that not every store is exactly identical to the P5 version; the Big Bang Burger in Shibuya is now called Boom Bang Burger, with no apparent traces of the space theming, and the Crossroads bar in Shinjuku has also been rebranded. Leblanc was also rebranded to a generic coffee shop in previous betas, but in the open beta has been turned back into Leblanc.)

Mementos and the concept of Palaces also return in P5X, though there are some differences. Mementos' floors are no longer randomly generated, and now have set layouts. Related to this, Mementos also now operates as a sort of hub, with characters entering Palaces through Mementos, from the entrance to each Palace located within the massive floors of Mementos. Mementos also has special battle locations apparently similar to “domains” in other gacha games, where completing the fight gives special items to strengthen characters and weapons, generally themed after P5′s Palaces (so far Kamoshida, Madarame, Kaneshiro, and Okumura's Palace-themed "domains" have been found, as well as one that doesn't seem to match any known Palace).

Basic Game Mechanics

For the most part, P5X operates extremely similarly to P5, both in and out of the Metaverse. One notable difference is that there is no calendar- days can pass due to the story, but they're not numbered, instead listed as simply "Yesterday", "Today", and "Tomorrow". There are also more time slots to perform other activities, as Wonder can do two after school activities, two activities even later in the day, and then a final one at night. Performing activities also costs hourglasses, which refill at a rate of 5 per real-world day.

One interesting and more significant change made in this category is that Confidants have a total of 20 ranks, instead of the series-standard 10, though there are still only 10 ranks that actually progress their story. They also haven't been associated with any Arcana, though the P5R Arcana cards have all been found in the second beta's data.

The UI elements of combat look a little different (as well as all the skill animations), appearing to be more optimized for mobile play, but otherwise it seems largely the same to P5, though one notable difference is that Navigator skills can be called in at will (and then have a cooldown), rather than occurring randomly. There is a new kind of special ability called a Highlight, which is similar to P5S’s Showtime attacks where the character executes a special move with their Persona, though not all Highlights are attacks, and some heal or have alternative effects instead.

The protagonist can gain Personas in combat (or from the gacha), though it no longer requires talking to them, and instead appears to have a random chance of occurring. Challenge battles in the Velvet Room, like in P5R, are available to attempt. Palace exploration also seems relatively standard, even if the Palace itself and the method of entering it is different. One major change is that several shadow/Persona designs have been censored in the mainland China version of the game; this includes Incubus and many others being given shorts, Bugs' stomach being repaired with the blood removed, Mara being given a large hat, Hell Biker and other skeletal Personas having a helmet/mask that obscures the skull, and several female Personas like Lamia being given shirts. However, these changes are purely cosmetic, and also seem to be reverted in the Taiwan/Macau/Hong Kong version (and possibly the Korean version as well).

Miscellaneous

It’s worth noting that because the game has yet to be officially translated to English in any capacity (outside of a single file confirming its English title as "Persona 5: The Phantom X"), character names can only be absolutely confirmed when they’re either written in Japanese kana (as opposed to the Japanese kanji characters that names are typically written in) or spoken aloud in official material, to confirm which reading of the Japanese name is the intended one for this specific character.

The characters do also have Chinese names, of course, but as the voice acting defaults to Japanese (including in Chinese promotional material), and the game is set in Japan, the names that would most likely be used by the global release are their Japanese ones. As such, the Japanese names are the ones presented in the Characters section earlier in this post, and are the main ones that this blog uses.

All the codenames, however, are written in English, and thus the most easily confirmed as official.

[transthadymacdermot]

Tagged by @fortunatetragedy for this wip questionnaire tag game! answering for my histfic wip the nobler grave

What’s the first part of your WIP that you created?

The characters! Many of them are carried over from earlier things I've written so of course

If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

Oughhh probably a version of either arthur mcbride or the unquiet grave! both thematically appropriate (imo) folk songs so either works

What are your favorite characters that you made? Why?

Of the characters who feature in this story, it's a tie between my bestfriend Eoin O'Donnell and my daughter who has every disease Sarah Connolly... mostly because I find them both rlly interesting characters who deal with the horrible things which have happened to them in really interesting and simultaneously deeply unhealthy and also deeply understandable ways. I also really like Charles, Lord Drenning for his insane imperialist hubris which is deplorable but fun as hell to write

What other pieces of media do you think your fanbase would share?

Probably things like black sails + the terror + sharpe for similar time period and vaguely similar themes. Also there are a bunch of lesser known pieces of irish historical fiction which heavily influenced NG in many ways which I think people who like NG would probably like, and also like. Real Irish History. I write for the people who also have 6000000 crusty pdfs even god doesn't know about on the topic of nineteenth century irish governance in their google drives and those people ONLY

What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP?

I would say the historical stuff but honestly it's probably specifically language related... there's plenty out there on how people in the early 19thc spoke and plenty out there on hiberno-english but comparatively little on how peasants in mid-ulster in 1810 would have been talking to each other. it's not nonexistent I'm just having to do a lot of very dedicated research lmao

Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

The only really significant animals are charles' 'wolfdogs,' his pack of hunting dogs which are like... mostly irish wolfhound wrt their breeding (☝️historical note: wolfhounds were mostly if not totally extinct in ireland by the time the story takes place, only a few people still had them and mostly as status symbols. so the fact that charles is using them to actually hunt is significant!). There are six of them and their names are Gaineamh, Méar, Sicín, Ciarsúr, Arán, and James. for reasons which I will leave currently only known to ppl who speak irish the man who named them (charles' kennelmaster) is viciously mocked for what he called them

How do your characters travel/get around?

Largely on foot, sometimes on horseback and sometimes in carts. The wealthier characters ride more often, and some take carriages. Trains and cars haven't been invented yet 😔

What part of your WIP are you working on right now?

Working out the details of the government committee charles is on -- fleshing out the members, figuring out What The Hell It Actually Does, who it answers to, etc. lots of reading and rereading accounts of how the government worked in late georgian britain and ireland yayyy

What aspects (tropes, maybe?) will you think draw your audience in?

Historical fiction with (hopefully) a high amount of attention to detail

People who are allowed to be very 'bad' victims because people often become deeply unpalatable and lash out after trauma and that is literally that

The bizarre psychosexual obsession between like. all of the characters

Commentary on perception of history

The unavoidable tragedy of it all

Let's Hate The British Government Together 🫴

What are your hopes for your WIP?

I'm just having fun writing it, man. don't rlly have any specific goals atp other than entertaining myself and my best friends who reply with fire emojis every time I tell them about it

Tagging @ettawritesnstudies @orphanheirs @fenatics @macabremoons @scorpiothesaint @poethill + anyone else who wants to take part :3

[ricflairdrip20]

Karen Filippelli x Reader

————————————————————————

The office workers are celebrating the luau at the warehouse upon Michael’s return from Jamaica. It was his idea to have a luau today, although Angela, who is the head of the party planning committee, wasn’t happy about it because she didn’t have time to get some of the things Michael wanted.

You sat back quietly and observed your surroundings: Michael giving an older guy, Stanley, you believe, an alleged bonus that the salesman demanded, Dwight and Andy having a competition, Karen and the receptionist talking to each about God knows what. You were never really the social type, only when someone approaches you and strikes up a conversation. But lately, the majority of time a particular person initiating a conversation with you has been Karen. At first, it was a casual short talk, but recently you both became closer. You and Karen ate lunch together every day, whether it’s at your or her car, or at a restaurant nearby. You talked to each other every single day about anything and everything.

As time went on, your infatuation grew to a crush. You and Karen had been working together at the Stamford branch in Connecticut. You were happy when you and Karen were transferred to Scranton; you get to continue seeing her, and you can explore the new state. Even better if you and Karen do so together.

One problem.

She is dating the somewhat still new guy Jim Halpert.

You have to admit, you can understand why she chose him, because he is nice and very handsome, although terrible at Call of Duty. But even so, you were less than thrilled that she is with someone else, and possibly for the rest of her life. When you moved to Scranton, you noticed a chemistry between Jim and the receptionist, which made Karen a little suspicious. Even though you don’t really approve of Karen and Jim’s relationship, you were still concerned because she does deserve a best relationship with undivided attention. Hopefully one with the same gender. You, if we’re being really specific.

You were deep in thought and didn’t realize that Karen sat next to you on the couch until she spoke up.

“Hey, you okay?” You were snapped out of your thoughts by a familiar voice that you enjoyed hearing. You smiled as you looked up and saw that it was Karen.

“Yeah, I’m fine, how about yourself?”

“I’m alright. Well, actually, not really. Um, can we talk privately?” You nodded.

You walked together to a staircase, far away from where anyone might walk to, as they were occupied with the party and doing inventory for the warehouse. You sat together on the little bench and Karen took a deep breath.

“I don’t know if I really love Jim enough to be in the relationship much longer.” Your eyes widened as she spoke. You weren’t expecting to hear her doubting the relationship with your fellow coworker. You were beginning to accept the fact that she’ll end up with him.

“Seriously? He’s not mean to you, is he?”

Karen shook her head furiously. “No no no no, he’s not at all. On the contrary, actually, he’s a gentleman. But I don’t think he’s right for me. And plus, maybe I’m being paranoid, but I think he’s a little too close with that receptionist girl.”

You can’t disagree. They appear to have a lot of chemistry together. Unless you’re wrong and it could be a sibling type relationship. But a closeness at this caliber? There’s no denying it. But you can’t really hate the girl. She seems nice enough, but you don’t know her well enough, only through hi’s and good morning’s.

“Yeah, I can see that,” you nodded. Karen looked at you, then at a spot on the wall for a few seconds before looking back at you.

“Hey, um, (Y/N), would you, um… Would you… like to go out with me this weekend?” You swore you can see a hint of blush on her cheeks.

Without thinking, you nodded, a smile spreading on your face.

“I’d love to.”

[tigirl-and-co]

Space Monkeys

Hey everybody, here's a rough draft of the first chapter of Space Monkeys, what will (hopefully!) be a sci-fi novel featuring Saiyans, from Dragon Ball!

Even if you aren't familiar with Dragon Ball, I urge you to check it out, especially if you have an interest in sci-fi! I've put more effort into this bit of writing than I have anything in years, so while it's still a bit rough I am very proud of it! Please give it a chance, it's a labour of love.

Those of you familiar with the sci-fi novels of yesteryear should feel right at home, and I'm hoping those that aren't may find themselves interested!

~~~

Space Monkeys, Ch. 1

"You humans are up to something."

Witloof pushed his own head into the collection of human ones, and it wasn't hard for him either with his comparative strength. The small gaggle who were gathered around a computer screen hushed into a nervous silence- not the fear of being hurt, as they all knew what repercussions the Empire Regulatory Committee would enact under such a circumstance- but rather the schoolchild silence of an unwelcomed outsider sticking his nose where it didn't belong and not heeding the rebuffment.

The Saiyan made eye contact with the human he assumed was the leader of this troupe. "You humans are up to something," Witloof reiterated, "And I want in."

After many fewer moments of pondering than should typically be utilized when determining trustworthiness, the human Derebak grinned conspiratorially. "Good. We can use a strongman."

It is well-known throughout the universe that if you want to come home with an interesting story, you find a group of humans. Well known only to spacefaring humans, however, is that if you want to get up to any real sort of trouble, you'd best find a Saiyan and earn his respect. Dependable as anything once they like you, but therein lies the issue.

When the two empires met on the edge of space, there was a near-immediate understanding that they were like each other. This was unfortunate, considering just how much humans like to squabble amongst themselves. The superior Saiyan strength very nearly had to test itself against humanity's advanced tactics and brains, but eventually the issues were sorted out and the two fell into an uneasy peace, as far as the heads of each civilization was concerned.

For anybody who spent any time at all on a station where the two species collided, they understood the peace wasn't uneasy in the slightest.

Sure, for Saiyan tastes humans were a bit yappy, and they were all soft in the face and in the heart. And humans thought the Saiyan appearance and temperament a bit beastly, sticking closer to the apes from which he had sprung up than man did. But really, it usually took very little time for them to look past this and start swapping stories of home over drinks paid for by whoever lost that day's bet.

And so while Derebak didn't know Witloof from Adam, it knew he was sincere. Saiyans made for awful liars and for great troublemakers. Both species hated being yanked around by the chain, and Derebak was confident that if it could rope Witloof in on smaller stuff, he'd follow this thing all the way to the top.

And taking care of an earnest idiot is merely human nature, not that a human would ever let a Saiyan cotton on to that fact.

Derebak 'Rabies' Johnson, not-quite-rogue astrogator of the tourist jump-ship Tyger, Tyger, stuck out a hand. "Call me Rabies, all the people I like do."

It looked the musclehead up and down, but there's not much to be gleaned from a Saiyan at first glance. They're a longer-lived race, averaging about 150 earth-years and don't age like humans besides. And as for uniform, there's certain standards, but each piece of armor seemed unique. You couldn't even tell the tourists apart from the warriors by anything except their stance and their tails, as finding a Saiyan in anything but armor was about as likely as finding a shaved grizzly out in the woods and made them about as uncomfortable.

A fanged mouth and solid grip returned the gestures. "Good to know you, Rabies." He snorted, hoping the name was indicative of things to come. He could tell by the human's uniform he was outranked, but he had heard human society was a bit less stringent with formalities than home was, so he made the conscious choice not to bow or salute. Witloof was hoping to enter this troupe as a member, not a tagalong. "I'm Witloof, stationed here 'just in case.' Exactly what threats to the Vegetan Autocracy are expected from a tourist station on the human side of the boundary, I don't know."

One of the other humans spoke up, a blonde man who could easily have been the face of a boyband if his voice didn't bring to mind rusty nails in a blender. "Maybe you're here to save us against some awful threat like a meteor or invading monster, earning our government's trust and establishing yourselves as a race of altruists!" He guffawed, "A real protection racket!"

Witloof wasn't sure he understood the joke, but all the humans burst out laughing at that, and he decided not to take offense.

"Cuss," Rabies managed to squawk out between breaths, "you gotta warn a freak before you go and say something like that! You're gonna kill us!" It managed to hold its breath long enough to calm down before turning back to Witloof with tears still in its eyes. "That's Jack, although he's got a few less pleasant nicknames too. Don't pay him any mind, that's just how he is. He's an engineer here on the E.S.S. Poetry, and you know how engineers are."

It wiped its face a bit. "Right now we're just looking at the supply chain for this place, but come meet me in my quarters at, say, nine o'clock station time. I eat a late dinner but I aughtta be finished by then. I'll tell you a bit about what, as you put it, we're up to."

Derebak reached into a pocket and pulled out a small pad of paper and pen, writing down its bunk's location. Crew area, of course. Hopefully it wouldn't be too hard to find, Witloof still had a bit of trouble with the way humans organized big spaces and the crew area was doubtless less well-marked than the area meant for the easily-lost masses.

Witloof took the paper and tucked it into the breast of his armor. "You can count on me," he acknowledged. He tried to study the computer screen, but this sort of stuff was never his expertise and it was in a language he barely knew, to boot. He was mid-class, sure, but his parents were low-class so the traditional Saiyan warrior was really all that was open to him.

As the humans yammered on quietly about resources, Witloof took the time to observe them. Saiyans usually came with one hair colour, one eye colour, and a very small range of skin tones. Halfbreeds weren't all that rare in the lower classes, so it wasn't like he'd never seen a blonde or a redhead before, but moving through groups of humans he was always astonished by their differences.

And their physiques! He had heard that back in ancient history, humans had been a hunter race. But he doubted it. How could any species so soft in the body bring down prey? Humans didn't eat nearly as much as Saiyans did, but surely they had to eat something, and, in his opinion, there was no way they could kill enough to fill their bellies with such meagre strength.

Although, as the small group disbanded to go about their tasks for the day, Witloof had to wonder if it had something to do with their reputation for trouble and penchant for surviving it. Was it possible to turn that into a hunting strategy? Did ancient humans cause so much chaos that the beasts around them simply died of it, leaving the humans unharmed?

He was a bit torn- on one hand he wasn't paid to ask big questions. On the other hand, he had already decided to join them- he'd even given his word and partaken of the human hand shake gesture. To his understanding from the cultural training, such an act was not only a statement of friendliness and companionship, it was also how they sealed unbreakable deals.

Maybe they already considered him part of their troupe? Humans formed close bonds incredibly easily, that much he was certain of. He had heard stories of them bonding to things that weren't even alive, but he wasn't sure how that would even work.

As Witloof wandered off to Poetry's dining strip, he started thinking about just who or what he was entrusting his strength to. He hoped Rabies was a good leader.

Well, at least humans knew how to make good food. That counted for something in his books.

[candied-cae]

Support For Palestine - No $$$ Needed!

Firstly, I highly recommend This Site, That Will Donate With One Click! (Seriously, no signing up, no inputing information, no costs, just press the button, I used it myself and you can revisit it every 24 hrs! So try to bookmark it or keep the tab open!)

And secondly, I recommend contacting your representatives in government and advocating for the millions of innocents currently facing danger in the Gaza Strip.

Joseph Biden, in a recent address, acknowledged that the "overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas". I believe this time, right now, is our chance to try and break through our decades long, wrongfully given, support of the Ethnic Cleansing of the Gaza Strip. So I urge you, anyone with even just the time to spare, to try. Plead. Demand. At the worst, you tried and lost a little bit of time. At the best... maybe some people don't die.

So, I wrote a twt thread with instructions/advice for American Residents to reach out to their local representatives as simply, easily, and quickly as possible, and I wanted to share that same info here. I promise I only wants a few minutes of your time.

You can use this White House Contact Page to send one message to Biden and another to Harris. Just fill in your info and you can either write your own message, or feel free to copy and paste mine (it'll be at the bottom of this post)! The focus is first demanding that the US withdraws its support of the Israeli State.

Next, you can use this Common Cause page and instantly get all the information to reach out to your local representatives, it even tells you which committees they sit on! Just put in your address and it'll use that to find which jurisdictions you're in and provide links to all their contact pages. Again, fill in your info, some of mine also required a Topic, so I selected either "Foreign Relations/Affairs" or "Civil Rights and Humanities" and put in my message.

I clicked through all of mine, sent in my messages, used the exact same ones for all of them, only adding an additional note for my most direct representative as I grew up in the same town and wanted to express that to hopefully assist in drawing on his humanity, and it only took me about 30 minutes to get through.

Personally, I wanted to scream and rage and throw my whole beating angry heart at them and their gross, racist bigotry that allowed them to not only neglect the issue of the Israeli Occupation, but fund it. The US has been aiding Israel in their ceaselessly cruel genocide against the Palestinian people, and I'm sure it lights a white-hot fury in many of us. But, I wrote this plea with as much restraint and grace as I could bring myself to allow, if only for the sake of them possibly listening instead of tuning it out.

My statement -

Subject : We Cannot Support a Genocidal Ethnic Cleansing

To the Office of  _________ - 

I am pleading with the governing powers in place to help the people of Palestine. The government in Israel has said not only with their actions, by committing multitudes of War Crimes and breaking the Geneva Convention repeatedly, but even in their own words that they intend to entirely decimate and wipe out the citizens of Gaza. They have already killed and injured thousands in only these last few days - to say nothing of the past 7 decades they have spent doing the very same - and this devastation is a human rights violation like something we have never seen to this degree being supported and under-reported. Especially by the American Government, which has always held its citizens to the belief that they are a good and just organization that stands for humanity wherever it can. 

We have already lost so many innocents in Palestine, but there are still so many that can be spared and saved if our government can withdraw its support of the Israeli Occupation. If they can inform their citizens of the truth that has been happening for so, so very long.

The U.S. has been wrong in its history of supporting and ignoring the cruelty that has been taking place for so long. But only by righting ourselves, by admitting and accepting that the financial aid we've sent has, at this point, become a sunken investment without the extermination of the Palestinian people. It hurts to lose so much money, it hurts to admit we've been on the wrong side of history, but the only way to stop the damage from growing exponentially worse, is to address it honestly now. 

This is not about Judaism. This is not about Jewish people by ethnicity or religious affiliation. This is not about Nazism or Antisemitism.

This is about the colonizing power of the IDF that has been ignored and allowed for almost a century.

Please. Try to save some of them before it's too late.

This comes from a concerned citizen who is feeling extremely devastated by the state of things currently. 

As a human being, who I hope cares for the lives of fellow human beings, we cannot allow this to happen. Least of all with our seal of approval. 

-[Your Name and any Salutations]

[dughck]

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Hello and good morning/afternoon/evening :]!!!! I've been working hard on a SCP Foundation Site/City roleplay for the past few months now, and I just wanted to share some stuff about it here :}! Its also just kind of a hang out, but i love narrative based stuff so :p Main stuff: -18+ Only (No explicit NSFW content allowed (rules explain it better)) -Accessibility is a priority (Resource and Accommodation rq channels) -LGBTQ+ (goes with out saying i think) There is a vague plot which I'll summarize here for you all: The year is 1975 and the world-- as always --is changing, moral alignments, rates in violence, and myriads upon myriads of other things. The skies are getting darker. The SCP Foundation has been under strict policies for the past few decades. Most effecting low ranking staff (D-Class, JrResearchers/Agents/Guards) While with the newly reformed 'Ethics Committee' is working hard to fix up a lot of this, there's one area seemingly no one in the foundation is touching. The contained/housed anomalously afflicted.

Staff that through whatever means, have been effected by an anomaly in such a way, that they've since either been suspended or demoted. There is no science to aid any of them right now, so people aren't really batting eyes in their direction. Though just because they can't be treated and cured doesn't mean they can't work. A recently promoted Site Director Clinton Smith {He/Him} wants to fix this. Good hands and brains are still good hands and brains, after all. So, he's proposed a site to the council, to act in two parts to aid the foundation. The first part will focus on the treatments of these afflicted individuals And The second part will be both directly and indirectly using these members of staff, to better understand/test the hazards they came into contact with. As far as main plot oriented things, nothing has really gotten rolling yet. But hopefully we can fix that soon! (you join and roleplay?) Anyhow!! I'm done yapping If you're interested or have any questions, come to the server! (REMEMBER 18+!!!!)

[lex1nat0r]

The Danse Mechabre: White Elephant

AAR #01

Ran the first session in what is hopefully going to be a full Lancer campaign over the weekend. Gonna be posting these after-action reports from the GM perspective in case it's useful to anyone (and it turns out there are a couple of things I need to make sure I remember). No spoilers because at least half of the players are on the tumbles (eye see you).

Characters (LL 0):

Raiju (Hacker/Ace/Centimane) - GMS Everest - Delta

Sunshine (Grease Monkey/Technophile/Leader) - GMS Everest - Exchange of Affection

Rook (Walking Armory/Stormbringer/Brutal) - GMS Everest - Not Fun By Myself

Daylight (Technophile/Crack Shot/Infiltrator) - GMS Everest - Hits Different

Magpie (Hacker/Technophile/Centimane) - GMS Everest - General Protection Fault

You will notice right away that there are three - count 'em, three -characters with the Technophile talent. That means there are three bonus NHPs in the party. And the first thing I neglected to do is prompt for more interactions with the bonus NHPs. The only one that got characterization in this session was Molotov, Sunshine's little buddy.The reason I didn't prompt for more interaction is mostly because this group is used to 2.5-3 hour sessions and I am trying to hit one combat per session, which does not leave a lot of time for roleplay outside of combat. The schedule will need to be adjusted somewhat.

So in the year 4570u the PCs depart as crewmembers (and one stowaway) from the secret KRAKEN facility on the highly experimental blinkship Eye of the Tiger. The crew of the Eye of the Tiger had secretly been replaced with revolutionaries, planning to use its blink carver to quickly head towards the core worlds and help overthrow Union's Second Committee. They go into stasis, trigger the ship's blink carver and wake up to a variety of alarms blaring. It eventually turns out the year is now 5016u and the blink carver may have moved them in space as well as time. Or something. They fix up the ship a little and realize that they're near a planet that is putting out a distress call. When they also get the opposing force's broadcast about returning the planet to 'traditional Cradle values' they decide the situation requires mechanized intervention. Important note: I'm very happy with my players for not immediately deciding they need to intervene on the side of the people putting out the distress call and that maybe they need more information before getting stuck in. Keep hold of that instinct, just because you didn't need it this time doesn't mean you won't in the future.

So while the Eye of the Tiger engages the enemy fleet in orbit, the lancers drop right in to protect an urban area.

Combat 1.1: We get to be the Cavalry for Once

Sitrep: Control

OPFOR:

Pyro x2

Priest Vehicle x2

Hive x2

Grunt Breacher Vehicle x6

Outcome: PC victory, 11 - 8

No PC structure or stress damage, though Hits Different and Not Fun By Myself both used a Repair. The only mech to not get hit was Delta, which secured the lower left control zone and blasted away with its howitzer (whoever put the howitzer on the default Hacker loadout in COMP/CON is a real joker).

Here's the aftermath of the battle after I invoked the mercy rule when it became clear the NPCs couldn't take enough control zones some time around the middle of the last round (not pictured: the Hives' Razor Swarms that were still in 3/4 control zones).

(Tokens by Retrograde Minis (on the basic blank 1-hex tokens that come with Lancer so they show up well), map by Interpoint Station's pixel art assets, they released their new mapmaking tool like the day before we played. VTT is Roll20)

Most of the civilians had already been evacuated from the area with two exceptions: the blue building just above the lower left control zone (some kind of cultural building maybe, there were a lot of civilians around it), and the orange building to the left of the lower right control zone (an IPS-N showroom/liaison office). Those were both intact at the end of the combat, which will be relevant next session.

The enemy comp is very short-ranged which ended up working because the PCs had to get at them to get into their control zones. It also features a lot of burn which I ended up not using correctly (see below). I maybe went a bit hard on Strikers with that many Breachers, but I knew it would be fine because Breachers can only hit something once in a blue moon (Hits Different was the only one to get tagged by a Breacher shotgun). A lot of vehicles because I like combined arms in my mecha (I think I get this from my exposure to Battletech). No optionals on any of the enemies to reduce cognitive load on me, and even then there was plenty I forgot (see below).

I was worried about cover and LoS going into this because it doesn't feel like the Lancer rules have enough detail on that but it was easy enough to adjudicate in practice. Also shout out to one of the best rules in Lancer: the PC that went last nominates the PC to go next. That helped speed things up a lot.

Overall for a first combat with 5 PCs, getting through it in ~2.5 hours is pretty impressive! HOWEVER:

Things I Definitely Forgot About:

Tech attacks ignore cover!

Engagement gives +1 diff on ranged attacks!

Pyros deal double burn to anyone who already has burn!

Pyros can put out their FIREBREAK shield at the end of each of their turns!

Breacher's shotguns have a threat of 3!

All the PC talents!

Thankfully this can kind of be written off in fiction as the OPFOR being kind of bozos and the PCs not being fully familiar with their mechs (maybe some residual grogginess from stasis and the fact that mech warfare was still pretty new to them).

So definitely some things to keep in mind for next time - I'll have to come up with a format of NPC stat blocks that works for me because just using their stats in the core book clearly means some things get overlooked.

Next Time: Straight into the Wall?

INDULGE ME:

Campaign notebook is a Maruman Mnemosyne N195A, 7mm lined. A month ago I swore I would only use binders for campaigns going forward but Lancer seems constrained enough (note I did not say 'on rails') that I can get away with not doing that (as opposed to, say, a hexcrawling sandbox) that I can get away with it. Plus this notebook was only holding a half-done campaign idea that is unlikely to see the light of day so I figured I'd use the rest of the pages up. I've found the paper is very good at taking fountain pen ink, though I'm not using a fountain pen for these notes. I've settled on a Zebra Sarasa Clip 0.5mm gel pen as working best, and I do like that pen (it's what I used to finish out my #Dungeon23 notes).