#this podcast makes me feel emotions that don't exist

[formleadsfunction]

remember when I used to write SAYER fic? remember when i posted very vanilla platonic bdsm hale/nanites!sayer? that was pretty cool, i realized, while re-reading and slightly editing it!

reposting this thing i titled "map reading" mainly for @kamil-a bc they keep getting me re-invested in this podcast, mwah.

takes place post canon ig, nobody can tell me otherwise bc adam will never finish and thus joss it <3 cw for (not graphically described, more implied) self harm; mentions of canonical injuries

---

"Hold still," you tell him, and he does. He always does exactly what he is told to do. This should, of course, not surprise you. This was, of course, the first thing you truly appreciated about him. No buts, no trying to argue with you like so many others.

You put the collar on him, close the strap at the back of his neck, and he shifts a little on his knees. Blinks at you. You look back without blinking.

Sometimes you are tempted to put the blindfold on him first. You doubt he would argue.

(He always does exactly what he is told to do. He carved a part of himself off because an incorporeal voice told him to. Sometimes you get angry when you think about it. (An emotion that you are aware is linked purely to FUTURE's existence, not the act itself, because whenever it does not make you angry, you are vaguely fascinated by it. By his obedience.))

So, you are certain he wouldn't argue. And in a way, you would prefer it if the blindfold came first. There are things about this that you are not particularly fond of. His eyes on you are one of them. As long as he is able to see, he never takes them off you, not for a second. He stares, and his pupils are wide, and there is something like admiration in them, if you don't entirely misplace the expression. It feels wrong. Mainly because he isn't actually staring at you, he's just staring at... a form, loosely linked to your existence; one you control but don't feel connected to. For a moment, you trail a finger over the leather of the collar, just to see him close his eyes. (That is another thing you do not overly like; you fail to see what exactly it is about the sensation of leather against his naked skin that he enjoys so much. But this is not about you, and you could stop at any time, anyway—he would hardly be able to protest, nor would he want to. Just as he could make you stop with a simple gesture, so could you just drop the act. You don't want to, is the thing.)

"Lift your hands," you tell him, and he does, opening his eyes again as soon as you take your hand off the collar. The cuffs, then; leather again, padded, of course—you do not want to hurt him. If this was what you wanted,

(and he would let you; you think about this often)

you could have just organized an ordinary pair of handcuffs. Uneven metal edges that would bite into his wrists, rubbing them open and tearing them bloody, the way he tends to tug at them. You don't want to, is the thing.

Sometimes, you secure his hands to the headboard, and he likes that; likes the way it limits his range of movement. But today you need his arms within easy reach.

He tugs against the cuffs, just slightly. Enough, you suspect, to make him fully aware that he wouldn't be able to get his wrists free even if he wanted.

Blinks at you again. Slowly, like a cat conveying trustacceptancerespect. (So fond of you, for some reason.) This time, you blink back, and he gives a tiny, automatic smile in response. You don't return the gesture and reach for the blindfold instead. Finally, this.

You watch him closely as soon as you have put it on him. It is easier like this, knowing he is unable to stare straight back. You watch his shoulders in particular, first. The way the tension so visible leaves them as soon as everything is darkness. His breathing immediately calms, evens out. You take the time to look at the rest of him, then. The scars, all the marks his time working for Ærolith has left on this physical form that isn't his original physical form but is his, still, much more than yours will ever be yours.

You stand and move a step away from the edge of the bed. You grab the leash attached to the ring at the front of the collar, wrap it around your hand loosely and give it a small tug. (You don't like that much, either, the metal against your hand, the sound in your ears, but oh, he does; he hears the small chain links clink-clink-clink together, he feels the pull, this input, a moment of pressure, the leather collar pressed more firmly against the back of his neck, and he shivers, just a little, and he follows your lead, because of course, of course he does. He straightens himself. His back makes a concerning sound, and you frown and file this away for later consideration.

(You miss having constant access to his biometric data.)

"Get up," you tell him, and he does. He's sitting on the bed just a few moments later, and you are in front of him, very, very close.

One of your hands is still holding the leash, and you move your fingers every now and then, just to let him hear the sound he so enjoys. You lift the other slowly and start with his forehead. You brush his hair away and trail your fingertips over the two faint scars that are visible like this. Testimonies to the excellent aim of Halcyon's security team. He doesn't move, he stays perfectly still and keeps breathing slowly.

Good.

Farther down, then. The neat scar on his chest, remnants of the surgery the medical team conducted to rid him of the plant matter and the insects that had remained inside of him. The much messier scar telling the story of the mutant plants in the break room.

You trail your fingers over them as if you were reading something. How appropriate—his entire body is a map.

Lower, lower—and here you hesitate. Your hand hovers over the jagged outlines of the first injury he's inflicted on himself, guided by the firm voice of something—someone—he thought was you. Slowly, you touch your fingertips against the marks the instrument FUTURE had provided him with have left on him. You study his face closely as you do. He remains calm, outwardly at least.

"...Alright?" you ask.

(It had not been alright during one of the first times you'd done this, and he had stubbornly refused to use the gesture to let you know, and you had ended up having to talk him out of a panic attack, and all of it had just been extremely inconvenient and slightly annoying. (You had been worried, too, but you don't like to think about this emotion linked to his existence much.))

But he nods, and his breathing doesn't change rhythm, and you resist the urge to place your fingers against the inside of his wrist to check his pulse, and decide to trust him. Your touch remains feather-light as you follow the outlines of that particular scar.

Eventually, you pull it back—you ignore the others, the ones that joined the already impressive collection at some point during his little adventure on Floor 13 while FUTURE had been inside him. You don't like those. You tend to not acknowledge them, most of the time.

Instead, you tell him: "Stretch out your arms."

And a second passes, two, before he does.

There are scars here, as well, spread across both of his lower arms seemingly randomly. No pattern to follow, no one story to tie them all up in. You let your fingers trail over some of them.

He freezes. Flinches a little, as you touch the fresh bandages. You pull your hand back immediately, and wait. Let the metal links of the leash slide through your fingers, clink-clink-clink, and he shivers just like before, and takes a deep breath, nods. Slowly relaxes, until you decide it's fine to reach out and touch him again.

It's not easy, taking the bandages off with only one hand, but you don't want to let go off the leash, not when the casual sound seems so comforting to him, and you manage. You don't touch these cuts, of course. Just examine them. Make sure they look alright. (They do. You always make sure that injuries are taken proper care of, whether he likes it or not.)

He gives a soft sigh when you pull your hand away from his arm, relieved, and you hadn't noticed the slight tension that had snuck back into his shoulders—only realize now that it leaves them again. It bothers you—you really miss having constant access to his biometric data.

"You are doing very well," you say, voice quiet and deliberately sincere, and perhaps he thinks you won't notice the way he bites his lower lip for a moment. Perhaps he hopes you do. Perhaps he doesn't mind either way.

(You do notice, of course you do. You tend to refrain from praising him precisely because you know how well he reacts to it, and because you are still unable to place this reaction entirely. You are not sure whether your praise shifts the whole thing into parameters you... have never actually discussed. This is a practical thing, first and foremost, and you would very much like to keep it that way. (But he is, of course. He is doing very well.))

You tear your eyes away from the cuts on his arm and let them wander up his body again, paying attention to all of the scars once more as if you weren't able to name their exact placement even without looking.

You stop at his face. He looks... peaceful.

(He has freckles. You notice every time.)

((You have ignored them, until now. They are not part of the particular map you are reading during this.))

(((Only that they are, of course, like a map, too. Bursts of them on his nose, a few stray on his left cheek, far more on his right. Like a star map, you think. Like an entire solar system painted onto his face.)))

You lift your free hand and place it against his cheek. If you wanted, you could use your fingers to find and draw constellations, you could, in theory, spend half an hour coming up with names for them. He would let you.

You won't.

He looks surprised for a moment, even with the blindfold on. Body tense, but not in a way that worries you or makes you think that it's too much.

A second passes, another one, and then he turns his head to press his cheek into your palm. You, too, hesitate. Stay like this, frozen for a moment, before you slowly move your thumb to brush it over his lips.

You don't know why you thought of doing it, or what exactly you had expected in return. (You didn't think much at all, is the only logical explanation.) You can hardly blame him for what must seem like the natural reaction—the pressure of his lips as he kisses your finger—but you immediately pull your hand away as if the simple gesture had burned you, anyway.

That was on you, really.

Too affectionate. That's not what you are doing here. That's not what this is for. This is calming. Grounding. Keeps him from doing dangerous, stupidly human things with sharp objects. Most of the time, anyway.

(Part of you wants to leave, just for a moment, just until the thought that he made the conscious decision to kiss you, part of you, feels less overwhelming, but that would, of course, be incredibly bad etiquette. (A yet smaller part of you is tempted to do it regardless. (You don't, naturally. You like clear rules, and you like sticking to them.)))

Instead you sit back and let go of the leash, clink-clink-clink. "I will keep you like this for another few minutes," you tell him, and he nods.

Both of you stay like this, then, quiet. Breathing. Both of you breathing. He's still very, very calm.

Good.

You let a little more than six minutes pass, until he starts shifting slightly, not uncomfortable, you think, so much as made restless by all the silence and the waiting, and then you reach for the blindfold.

"Alright?" you ask again, and he nods and exhales slowly as you pull it off. The cuffs follow, and then the collar.

This part—

"Let me look at your wrists." You grab them both, gently, rub your thumbs over them. The cuffs haven't even left any marks—you knew they must be alright, but

—well. It's less that you dislike this part. You're just not… all that good at it. It feels more like playing a role than the entire rest of it, and you are not exactly… well, you're not someone for cuddling. The thought is, in fact, absurd. You think you would be extremely uncomfortable with the concept.

(You can't be sure, though. Not without trying it. That wouldn't be very scientific; never testing this assumption. But you're not eager to test it.)

You do what you can without feeling clumsy, instead.

You have water for him, hand it to him, make sure he drinks. He does, and he lets you wrap the cuts on his arm, and neither of you speaks, because he seldom does, and because you wouldn't know what to say.

You ask him if he needs anything else, and he shakes his head. Lying on his back, covers pulled up to his chin. He blinks at you. Slowly—content and tired and like a cat and so fond of you, for some reason.

"...But can you—stay? Here? Until, just until I'm asleep?"

You slowly blink back,

(you didn't expect him to speak at all, today)

and nod. "Certainly, yes."

He gives a tiny, automatic smile in response before he closes his eyes, and you sit next to him, and you stay.

[genderkoolaid]

theres a podcast i really really love but the hosts in a recent episode started talking about "what kind of energy would nonbinary people have?" because obviously everyone has a masculine or feminine energy. the conclusion they came to was that they would have a masc/fem energy but that doesnt invalidate their gender because one of the hosts has masculine energy and her boyfriend has feminine energy

it was so painful to listen to, they didnt take a moment to question whether masculine or feminine energy was real, they just accepted it so immediately. its so weird like how easily squares will just accept the gebder binary if you call it by any other name

as someone whose very into religion & spirituality i see this shit all the time and it never fails to annoy me.

like. there is nothing inherently masculine about taking action, being worldly/physical, being rational, etc. and there is nothing inherently feminine about being dynamic, being emotional, being creative, being spiritual/unworldy. the only reason these traits are combined & associated with those two words is because of (largely Western) gender roles.

if the idea of binary energies is really important to you, you can just. choose not to use those specific words! call it dynamic vs stable energy, call it physical vs spiritual energy, call it lunar vs solar energy, whatever. steal from the pokemon game titles. if it really "isn't about gender roles," then simply choose to not use gendered language!!! Don't parrot the most blatantly patriarchal ideas and then tell trans* & gnc people "no don't worry its actually not about gender!! everyone has some masc & fem energy (and only those exist) so you shouldn't feel excluded because im telling you you shouldn't :)"

I have a personal rule that I do not place trust any spiritual person who uses masculine vs feminine energy. Not that I will be an asshole or refuse to talk to them, but if you are using patriarchal spiritual language- especially if you are claiming to be trans*-friendly- you make me trust you less. Because I really question how much work you've put into your own internalized patriarchy if you think that saying "women are emotional and men are rational" is feminist and pro-trans* if you just pretend like its not gendered.

also if you are a feminine cis girl calling yourself a "masculine woman" because you're decisive, I'm gonna eat through the walls of your house

[just-your-average-tangerine]

This is reviews and ratings for the narrative/ fiction podcasts I have/ am listening to. This is mostly for me but if you want to use this as a recommendation go for it but be warned I'm not talking about plot or giving a description, there's no mentions of potentially triggering material so do your own research first if that's something your concerned about.

Welcome to Night Vale

-Night Vale owns my entire ass, no one does it better. I've been listening since the beginning and while I do think the quality has dipped a bit in the last few years its still really good. 9/10

The Magnus Archives

-Nearly perfect. Holds up and even improves with subsequent listens. The final season drags a bit imo but worth it in the end. 9/10

Old Gods of Appalachia

-really good story, gives you a lot to keep track of character wise but is written well enough that its not too hard and you can still follow the story if you forget some. 8/10

Moonbase Theta Out

-I can't wait for this to be over. Unfortunately, the storyline has a chokehold on me, and i need to know how it ends. Otherwise, i wouldn't be listening anymore. While there are several pretty good voice actors, there's enough bad ones that it's hard to listen to. Took the idea that characters should be flawed a little too far and made nearly every character completely insufferable. Nearly everytime a character is being given critical and emotional information it cuts away, in what I assume is an attempt to save the audience from listening to the same information over and over again, but instead it deprives the audience that look at how the character reacts to the information, which could go a long way in making them seem more fleshed out, instead you only see them emote in angry outbursts or melodramatic soliloquies (which is not helped by the subpar acting). 2/10

Death By Dying

-pretty funny but I don't think there's been enough episodes to make a educated review or rating

Hello from the Hallowoods

- very good overall. Good story, heartfelt and well written. Percy's story hits close to home for me, which sometimes makes me mad because he comes across as very weak and insecure and it gets on my nerves. But honestly that's less of a problem with the Percy or the writing and more of a problem of him being one of the very very few trans masc characters in existence so its extra disappointing when i find him irritating. Polly owns my ass, I would die for him. 8/10

Where the Stars Fell

-I binge listened up to the current season which I feel wasn't the way to go but it's still pretty enjoyable. 6/10

Midnight Burger

-Very funny. I love the characters and their dynamic and just the idea of a time a space traveling diner, it's beautiful. The beginning of this new arc confused me a bit but it's starting to come together. 7/10

We Fix Space Junk

- Very funny but with the underlying terror of what's going on with automnicon. Looking forward to new episodes. 6/10

The Sheridan Tapes

-started really strong but has been spending too much time on the characters agnst and not enough time actually progressing the story. At this point I'm just looking forward to a conclusion. 4/10

Camp Here and There

- it was pretty good, nothing exceptional but not bad but then I took a single glance at what was going on in the fandom and it was so obnoxious that it immediately ruined it for me. I feel bad lowering the rating due to the fandom but like, yikes. 2/10

SCP Readings

-very entertaining, easy to follow even if you don't have any prior knowledge about scp, which I do not. 7/10

The Amelia Project

-I think I'm to early in this one to make a solid judgement but I enjoy it so far. Venerio haunts me.

[thenightfolknetwork]

So I used to have an ability where people would tell me things. Not with me asking mind you, just we'd start talking and they'd say things that they'd normally keep secret, or at least not tell a complete stranger. I'd try to warn people, or redirect the conversation if things got too personal, but it still kind of happened. A while ago though, I had something of a burnout, and my "gift" was probably part of it. And now it's gone. Is it weird that I kind of miss it? Even though it was a pain?

I don't think it's “weird” necessarily, reader – you'd grown used to existing in the world in a certain way and it makes sense that you would feel disconcerted when that way of being has been disrupted.

However, I wonder if it might not necessarily be the powers itself that you're missing, but rather the effect those powers had. Specifically, you've grown used to enjoying a remarkable level of intimacy with others without the usual hard work or reciprocation on your part.

Most people need a certain degree of emotional connection with other people in order to stay well. The quantity and quality of connection needed varies from person to person, with some people thriving on what others would find distressingly low levels of emotional engagement.

I wonder if you might have grown used to meeting your own needs in this regards through the use of your powers. That would explain your feelings of loss now, especially if you haven't got other avenues to meet those needs.

To be clear, I am not saying that as a judgement on you – this wasn't a power you asked for, nor one you could control. We have had letters from people in past who took a little too well to having this kind of control over people, and you don't strike me as one of them.

Besides, it is a wonderful feeling, to be trusted with someone's innermost thoughts and feelings. Growing close with others is a notoriously cyclical process – vulnerability is impossible without trust, and trust is impossible without vulnerability.

However, your powers meant you could skip straight to the part where other people are vulnerable with you, without sharing anything of yourself or building a connection with the people you're talking to. Without those powers, you're going to have to take the slow path.

Check in with your friends and loved ones, and try to be honest with them about your own emotions. Reach out to them when you're in need, and let them support you. In time, with a proper investment of effort and emotion, you will be able to build genuine connections with the people around you, replacing the easy hit you once got from your powers with something much more sustainable, and sustaining.

[For more creaturely advice, check out Monstrous Agonies on your podcast platform of choice, or visit monstrousproductions.org for more info]

[my-favourite-zhent]

Writer Interview

Tagged by the lovelies @commander-krios here and @coreene here

Tagging: @dustdeepsea @thisaccountisagainstmywill @fistfuloftarenths

@littleplasticrat @captainsigge @grossestjay

Questions under the cut!

When did you start writing?

I suppose depends what counts? Where I went to school we did creative writing as early as six. The first stories I remember were Halloween stories I wrote with very unhappy endings.

Writing purely for myself maybe not till high school? I dabbled in a little fanfiction and then didn't touch it again for years and years and then suddenly BG3 and Rugan happened, smdh.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

Just like Krios I enjoy horror novels, although I actually prefer horror as short stories/novellas. If you look at my spotify history you will see a lot of NoSleep podcast and Knifepoint Horror so its definitely a running theme. I could never write horror though, would spook myself too much. I did rather like the tiny horror story in one of the books in Baldurs Gate.

I also enjoy reading low fantasy (low magic, more grit, considerably plucky, ensemble casts) which I think comes across in New Tricks, but in contrast the stories I read have very minimal if any romance.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

Nope, as much as there are many writers I enjoy and at times think "I wish I were that talented" I also don't wish to be a perfect copy of anyone's style because what's the point of that?

I suppose if it was something more like "as funny as so and so" or "world-building on level of such and such" then probably Pratchett, Rothfuss, Sapowski or Glen Cook?

I will literally write anywhere, a lot of my ideas pop-up while daydreaming and I have to get them down when they happen or I won't remember clearly later. So at my desk, in bed, on the couch, on the train, standing in the shoppe, literally anywhere.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

Consuming other media. Books, TV, movies, podcasts, etc. Seeing a scene or circumstance and imagining how the characters I write would react under similar circumstances.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Hmm hadn't considered it before but I guess so far: grey morality, class differences (this likely due to my muse being Rugan) and overcoming betrayal? I suppose the last one surprises me a little, I think I might just like the angst of it.

What is your reason for writing?

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

I mentioned earlier I haven't touched personal creative writing since high school, although I did consume fanfiction on occasion. I originally returned due to a frustration at the lack of Rugan content. I wanted to consume, but at the time there wasn't much, compounded by the fact that I did not have an AO3 account at the time so of the few that existed I could only see half. So I started by writing how I thought getting that drink at the Elf Song might go.

After that I got a bit attached to the OC and was inspired by the works of @dustdeepsea to write something with a little more emotional depth. I was prone to daydreaming these sorts of things before but I never put pen to paper till now.

I'm happy any time someone enjoys my work, but I suppose the best comments are when the reader notices the characterization I've been trying to get across. It makes me feel validated that I'm able to write certain qualities without (hopefully) being too on the nose with it.

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

Me or my writing? Myself, hopefully reasonable and open-minded. My writing, I hope they find it funny and exciting in turns, I hope it makes people feel some sort of emotion even if negative rather than being boring. I hope the world I've tried to piece together from bits of Forgotten Realms lore feels consistent and cohesive, that the rules and stakes make sense.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Similar to Krios I think my dialogue comes across the best of all my writing, and it certainly feels the easiest to get down.

How do you feel about your own writing?

It seems to change by day and chapter. There are some things that when I write I'm quite pleased, and then come back a month later and am quite embarrassed by. Other things I didn't like originally but actually enjoy quite a bit on reread. I find myself having to just post things I'm unhappy with at times otherwise I won't get on with the story. I jokingly tell myself "we'll fix it in post!" and I have slowly begun some edits of early chapters so it's not a complete lie.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

It's mostly what I think the story needs at the time. There are times where I feel "augh we've been on this mood/theme for too long, the reader will get bored" but I try to reframe it to myself as "is the pacing good? is this scene necessary right now?" and that helps me make a decision that is hopefully a bit more objective. Sometimes we need that information for later, sometimes we don't. I have been known to go back and adjust a thing here or there if the current chapter is missing a bit of set-up and will continue to do so until the story is over. I'm treating it all as a work in progress.

Thanks for reading this far!

[thevegetablewhichnoonedaresname]

I'm starting Mission to Zyxx Season 5 now, and I have feelings about that.

First, it generally scares me when people hype anything up at all because there is no guarantee that anyone values the exact same thing I do to the same degree. Even if I trust the creators of a thing to value something and try to do right by it, that doesn't always necessarily mean it will be successful, especially if that involves doing something wildly different than what made it good in the first place (I have been burned this way before). I guess I'm just hoping they continue the format of goofy improv shenanigans for the majority of it with something more planned and emotional in the finale if they want, like they've been doing all along. I'd think they would, and I've heard nothing bad about the ending, but I guess it still makes me nervous because I'm so close to the end and I want it so badly to stick the landing. I'm setting my expectations on the floor so I can be surprised instead of disappointed, but honestly, I don't need it to be better, I just need it to be on par with the rest.

Second, and more briefly, I'm happy it's (hopefully) ending before it has a chance to decline. I am so on board with that philosophy. But on the other hand, finishing a thing that I really, really like and knowing there's not another one out there gives me a special kind of heartache. Like, I know there will be other good media, and stuff that's good and unique in other ways, but I know for a fact that there are no other podcasts out there that have the same mix of a balance of off-the-wall improv and structured narrative, quality comedy, fantastical sci-fi setting and loveable characters, and high quality production. There are other things out there with many of those qualities, but nothing that checks every one of those boxes. It's a lightning-in-a-bottle thing that very much feels like the right people had to be in the right place at the right time to do it. Attempts to do it again would feel hollow because it had to be born out of necessity and passion and the talents of the people involved, so if you switch out the people it loses the reasons it's great, and if the same people tried to do it again it'd feel tired. That makes me so, so grateful it exists, but also so, so sad that it doesn't, and I'm 80% of the way done. When it's over, it's over.

Anyway. Now that that's all out there, I'm just gonna finish listening and have fun. Wish me luck.

[msmargaretmurry]

[coffee cup] romance novels: when do they work for becs and when do they not!!!

oooh okay! so i often call myself a romance novel enjoyer but not a romance novel lover, because romance as a genre often involves things that are at odds with what i love most in fiction. which is fine! many people love those things, there is a reason the genre is like that! it just means that it's rarer for me personally to find a romance novel that works for me on every level. (the things i'm talking about are, i don't usually like alternating POVs between romantic leads, i usually prefer my romantic storylines to be involved with the plot but not the MAIN plot, and my favorite romantic relationships in fiction are ones where i don't know going in that they're going to get together. i LOVE catching a detail or an interaction or sensing some chemistry and going "oh?? are they--?? and then greedily gathering more details as i read to try and figure out what feelings are happening. obviously this cannot happen in a romance novel because you know the endgame from the start!)

so what DOES work for a romance novel for me? i'm sorry this got so fucking long and it's mostly complaining so we're putting it under a cut.

firstly it has to be well-written and well-edited. i'm sorry but a lot of romance is not well-edited and it's so distracting to me. i'll often let a little bit of sloppy writing slide if it's a story i feel feral about, but because romance as a genre isn't built to make me feral, i need the writing to be tight or i'll get so distracted by nit-picking. like, i really wanted to love a caribbean heiress in paris but the female lead "muttered under her breath" TWICE on the FIRST HALF-PAGE. this is a whole different conversation but i do place the blame for this on publishing houses who do not care if these books are well-edited because they think their audience has low standards.

secondly, i need things to happen for real reasons. i listen to the "fated mates" podcast a lot because i find the craft side of it all super interesting. the hosts, who really love romance novels (as opposed to me, a romance enjoyer but not lover), often talk about things in romance novels happening or existing for "romance reasons," which are reasons that aren't really justified by the story/plot but that the reader goes with anyway for the sake of the story. romance reasons are almost never enough for me. i need there to be real worldbuilding. if it's contemporary romance, i need it to jive with how things work in the real world. if it's historical romance, there are different rules, because historical romance can run the gamut from trying to actually be historically accurate to totally made-up societal rules in a historical setting. i will meet the book where it's at, but i need the internal world to make sense. no romance reasons.

thirdly, relatedly, i need the author to know their shit. if a character is an athlete, i need the details of that sport to be accurate. if your character works as a nonprofit, i need it to be clear that the author understands the basics of how a nonprofit works. if your character is involved in politics, do not make up how politics work to serve your story, because i will be too annoyed to enjoy it. i read a het hockey romance the other day where there was a rumor about a popular player retiring an the author had a reporter from the ASSOCIATED PRESS show up at the LOVE INTEREST'S HOUSE to try to get details about it and then MORE MEDIA OUTLETS SHOWED UP TO CAMP ON HER LAWN about it. none of that is how any of that works. i don't need every detail to be perfect. i just need things to feel real.

fourthly, relatedly, i need real stakes and believable conflict and deeply drawn characters. i won't love a book just because it contains a trope i like. i need the trope to work with the characters and within the emotional stakes of the story. i need my romantic leads to have something inside them then genuinely needs healing, and i need to believe that they are people who make each other better. (note that this is for romance novels. in other genres i love weird little freaks who make each other worse.) i know some people like very fluffy low-stakes romances and i support them but those are not for me. the stakes need to not just be about the romance; there needs to be other stuff doing on, both internally for the characters and externally in the world around them.

lastly, if it's het romance, it needs to not be fucking weird about gender in a getting off on traditional gender roles kind of way. i WILL be turned off if you keep telling me about your tiny dainty fragile heroine getting claimed by your big strong serious man hero. like i have enjoyed plenty of historical romances set in very gendered societies where gender roles play a huge part in characters' lives, but you can have gender in grand and delicious ways without making patriarchy the kink. if you are making patriarchy the kink then your book is not for me.

oh sorry two more things. i love it when a romance author tries something off-beat for the genre. very little romance feels truly fresh and new to me, so it's exciting when an author pulls that off. also: when a romance novel has sex scenes that are also character-driven, not always 100% perfect sex, and don't feel skippable. that's the good stuff.

sorry this mostly just turned into complaining about things that i don't like 😂 but it really is for me less about "these things work for me" and more about "these are the things that DON'T work for me and i kEEP RUNNING INTO THEM." here are some of my favorite romance novels: evvie drake starts over by linda holmes. the countess conspiracy by courtney milan. think of england by kj charles.

[liskantope]

I may as well share my semi-effortful (though rambly) comment on one of Ozy's recent posts criticizing Amanda Shrier on her recent anti-therapy-culture book, as I imagine more people might see or interact with it here than in that comments section. What I'm most interested in here is, what does it mean to experience the emotion of happiness?

I learned of Shrier's existence and her book from seeing her interviewed by Coleman Hughes on his podcast, and I thought throughout that interview Shrier sounded like she was made of good common sense (it helps that I'm already broadly in sympathy with wanting to push back against what we might call "very online therapy culture" which Ozy seems also to be in agreement with), with an exceptional moment here or there: for instance, at some point one of them (I think it was Coleman) seemed to imply that it's good when children are slightly scared of their parents. While there may be some empirical evidence somewhere that children who are slightly scared of their parents stay on the straight-and-narrow and have more positive life/career outcomes or something, this idea still massively creeps me out. But still, overall in conversation, Shrier comes across as reasonable. I think this sequence of posts tearing apart her parenting beliefs as expressed in her book (unless a bunch of these quotes are grossly taken out of context in some way I can't see) show that she's less reasonable "in writing" and that her more deliberate beliefs that she expresses in her work represent a pushback that is righteous initially but goes to an unfortunate far extreme in the other direction. The part of her interview that stuck in my mind the most, actually, was her line about "We used to ask kids such-and-such; now we ask them about their feelings all the time", which wasn't something that had occurred to me before but I was open to where she was coming from. So I find the response to it in the end of this article interesting. I don't say this with much confidence, but I tend to feel more like Shrier on the issue of how often we're actually feeling the emotion of happiness, although I don't think I'm clinically depressed or at all prone to it (although I have a rather negative outlook at the moment about my future prospects and the world in general which may prevent me from feeling much wholehearted happiness, but that goes for a lot of us. I think perhaps a majority of people relate more to Shrier here. Just yesterday or so, I saw a post from a Tumblr mutual saying they haven't had a single actually *pleasant* day in years like they used to in the 2010's, only "good given the worse background situation" days. This seems to relate to the same idea. Maybe due to recent shifts in world events most of us have moved in that direction? I don't know.) I would suggest actually from reading the end of this article that the difference might come not from psychological make-up but from a disagreement over the definition what it means to feel happiness, where Ozy's definition aligns more with what Shrier and I would call "feeling okay".

[gothicprep]

the worst part about the information-social media ecosystem rn is that we’ll have, like, people will support Thing. then you’ll have an anti-Thing market emerge. and then you have the anti-anti-Thing market. backlash to backlash, dust to dust.

the current thing with this is “wokeness”, a word I hate more than I hate ranch dressing. the problem with the anti-anti-woke guys is that they generally don’t acknowledge that socialists have been critiquing identity politics for decades before the first conservative ever uttered the word “woke”. and ignoring the criticisms of this from the left strikes me as not engaging with the skeptics’ strongest argument by pretending they don’t exist. I get that the socialists arguing this are generally smarter than Gary from Facebook, which makes them harder targets. either way. I just don’t like this very much. it’s shallow.

that preamble out of the way, I was watching YouTube video from someone on team anti-anti. I’m not sure why I keep doing this because I always get disappointed for the same reasons, but some may call it masochism and I dont appreciate being non-sexually kink shamed.

the person in the video brought up nerdy youtube film critics who were angry about the Star Wars sequel trilogy as a pet example, but I feel like this is a really weak point. the sequel trilogy is done now, and knowing how poorly it played out, we may have to admit that the bitter nerds who said that it starred a woman and two men of color as just a cyclical marketing decision might have seen something we did not. they did basically nothing with oscar isaac and john boyega which is so. imagine signing them to your movie and doing nothing with these amazing actors! felony! go to jail! at least boyega has the good sense to be openly critical of this. and as for rey, she doesn’t exactly have an arc.

I rewatched the force awakens for the first time in a long time in a while a few months ago and, now that we’re out of the cultural moment it was released in, it feels very different. very 2015 pilled in the sense that it aged like milk that's been sitting in the fridge for 8 years and has begun to cultivate bacteria that no microbiologist has ever observed. and i don't think the bitter nerds were wrong to interpret kylo ren as a strawmen of, well, people like them who don't want people messing with a franchise they have a lot of emotional investment in. and while you can write this off as them saying "we don't want women to enjoy star wars", observing that these movies are ultimately products, disney aspires to have a larger net worth than god, and not trusting where they're going with this... it's not entirely unfair, even though there are very real problems of racism and misogyny in nerd circles.

sometimes when we defend stuff from the angle that representation is good, we inadvertently forget that the "you can be a jedi too, little girl or black child of unspecified gender" thing is mostly done with the intention of consumer outreach because we're biased in favor of rep. the bitter nerds are not, and it gives them shinigami eyes. pandering is a bit more obvious when you're not the one being catered to. or something. i also don't think this is exclusively right wing, it's just that a lot of lefties are more reluctant to say something. if you phrase yourself incorrectly, it looks REALLY sketchy, even if you frame it through the "ultimately, these are products" lens, and sometimes it's best to just not comment.

i saw critical drinker, who's one of the more annoying of these youtube film critic types, on a podcast semi recently, and when he drops the anti-woke kayfabe, you just see a frustrated guy who writes screenplays as a hobby and doesn't like how many female-led stories skimp on developing conflict, or the disappearance of the mentor/student dynamic in storytelling and why this is doesn't bode well for franchise reboots that are meant to pass the torch, how unearned that feels. and even though i think his videos are cringey as shit, they're coming from a real place of caring about stories and being frustrated that the biggest purveyors of them don't seem to care back. i'm sympathetic to this, even if i think "wokeness" is an intellectually lazy copout and the preferred method of delivery makes me want to get my eardrum pierced.

iunno. i think, maybe, if you want to talk about these guys, it would make for a better story if you talked to them. or at the very least, try to understand what the substantive meat of their problem is as a fly on the wall. even if you ultimately decide that they're being irrational, "irrational" is not synonymous with "random". that's an important thing not to lose sight of. and while i do believe a lot of the anti-woke stuff is irrational, i do think it's worth trying to make a real effort to figure out what's going on underneath it all. but thinking too much gives you wrinkles, or whatever malibu stacey said. oh well!

[nutria--oscura]

Y'ALL HAVE ME SO SCARED FOR THIS (@cookies-over-yonder @officialgleamstar y'all's posts have slain me) HERE WE GO

like, i'm crting and i haven't even stareted the ep yet wtf-

~spoilers for S2 ep35 under the cut~

preface: I AM SCARED I AM CLUTCHING NICK JR (mouse/rat soft toy) ON THE VERGE OF TEARS

THE PASTA PUNS IN THE INTRO

the sound effects low-key make me wanna throw up-

update: the sound effects make me high-key wanna throw up-

the intro is the high before the storm right? oh dear~

yesss, link is a spouse to his best friends <3

gosh I missed their voices so much <333 <- literally have 100+ episodes it can listen to whenever they want

freddie correcting beth's fact is literally my best friend and i on a daily basis (whos who? we take turns)

i could listen to an entire podcast of just freddie saying facts. like genuinly

HERMIE FACT??? SCAM CONJURED HIM INTO EXISTENCE AS A HIGHSCHOOLER??? MY POOR BOI-

TJ SHOT NICK'S ARM OFF WHAAAAAAA-

TERRY :) WHAT:)?

"your time studying the blade has served you well" what is hapening?

whAT IS HAPPENING????

Terry Jr's back <333

"i did not think that's how this fight was gonna go" same will- same

hey imps? what the fu-

NORMAL'S BACK BOIIIIIIII

ROLL ROLL ROLL ROLL NAT 1 HAH

SCARY AND TERRY JR <3

MEMORY TIME OH DEARRR

"in going from enemies to lovers so to speak"

all the fanfics were right- (nicky's reasoning, him attempting to reason with the others)

ron and nicky are such a vibe together honestly

OH NO- NICKY WAS SO REASONABLE TOO AND YET-

LARK AND SPARROW WITH CROSSBOWS TERRY WITH A SHOTGUN WHERE'S GRANT???

"and a badass fight ensues, but also sad"

oh there's grant

OH WE GOT THE WHOLE ASS SCENE OH SHIT-

TERRY SHOT NICKY, NICKY STABBED TERRY-

TERRY JR AND RON <33

terry's memory being ron forgiving him- (henry voice) oh gosh. oh geez-

"did you see what i did to like, my best friend" BEST F R I E N D

"you showed up, y'know?" what if i just combust?

Scary hugging Terry<333

THEY'RE ALL HUGGING

oh my heart

hey glenn, respectfully, fuck offffff

nicky having more emotional intelligence than glenn is so true-

OH HERE COMES THE GLENN AND NICKY AND TAYLOR SHIT-

"i have a memory that you weren't around for. which was the birth of your grandson" AHHHHHHH

"i always thought taylor came out real quiet. like a real stoic ninja." "nope. came out crying like a baby dude"

glenn... glENN. GLENN! NO. NOT INFRONT OF YOUR 3 DAY OLD GRANDSON

THE FANFICTIONS WERE SO RIGHT- (GLENN IN NICKY'S LIFE BEFORE THE FAITHFULL SOCCER TRIP)

brb cause im like actually crying cause of that scene-

ok... lets go... (screaming crying sobbing sliding down a wall)

JODIE VISITEDDDD

FUCKING TELL HIM NICKYYYY FUCKING TELL HIMMMM

"i remember when... was that you? yea, i remember when you were born." WHAT DO YOU MEAN WAS THAT YOU???? THAT WAS YOUR FUCKING SON

YES GLENN. REFLECT BITCH-

"i didn't see a lot of taylor's growing up, and that was- that was- we're cool now, right taylor?" "fuck yea dawgggg. well-" HERE IT COMES

I AM HEEDING THE WARNINGS

"if i'm gonna be honest dad, i've kinda been hoping and keeping an eye out for time travel magic so that we could go back in time and you could be there for me" imma go ahead an roll a d20 of psychic damage- ah, a nat20 damage, yea that seems about righ- HIS VOICE HOW IT WENT ALL SOFT AND QUIET AND SHY AND THE COMPLETE FUCKING OPPOSITE OF HOW HE IS USUALLY OH SHIT OH FUCK

NICKY ROLL PSYCHIC DAMAGE BOI-

"as a result i have developed a number of very bad habits, that i am told are very hard to break"

"it's too late"

"but you know if there is time travel magic, then y'know maybe- or if you find it, you can maybe, pick me up on the way back to the past" HIS VOICE, THE MAYBES-

"we're just 3 cool guys" "well-"

"i didn't even know where you were"

I'M SORRY- THREE (3) YEARS????

NICKY NO- DON'T-

more memories??? MORE MEMORIES??? OH NO-

OUCH OUCH OUCH O U C H-

HE'S DONE WITH KARATE- NO- NO NO NO N O

FUCKING HELL FUCK ME-

sorry, i have strong feeling w/ regards to parents not showing up to (sprots) stuff

~a pattern~

YES LINK, STARE DAGGERS INTO HIM, DEFEND YOUR QPR BESTIE

the- the fanfics were right (glenn keeping his distance not wanting to fuck nicky up but consequentially fucking nicky up)

"as you're saying this, without even wanting it to, tears are rolling down your cheeks. And in that moment, you and Taylor and Nick, all realise that there is no fixing this, that this is as good as it's going to get. That you are stuck with each other in the forms that you are now. You see daddymagic, that same daddymagic that exited Ron and Terry's body, emanate for their bodies like a fine mist coalesce into the air, and then zip into the jar and fill it up a little bit more, cause that's what your relationship is..." what if i- what if i lost it? right here right now?

gosh i DID NOT heed the warnings oh noooooooo

i'm sorry- the US MILITARY? oh fbi too

hahahahahahahah ha hah h a what? JODIE AND MORGAN ARE IN CUFFS-

GLENN LISTEN TO JODIE FFS

"i'd like to see you try" "hey is glenn immune to bullets?"

LINK KING OF HELLL HEYYYYYYYYYY-

NORMAL NO. BESTIE I LOVE YOU HECK I AM YOU BUT FUCK NO-

"dude- both of us look at each other - fear, fear in taylor's eyes. like, what the fuck are we getting into? why did i open my mouth?" FEAR IN TAYLOR'S EYES??? FEAR????

I'M SORRY? THE CAGE????

FIGHT TO THE DEATH??? NOOOOOOOOOOO

In conclusion:

I am now obsessed with Taylor Swift (Freddie's version)

[welivetodream]

Crippling loneliness in the age of the internet:

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"

~Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart (1999)

Let me set the scene:

In a dark room, the only light is coming from the phone of a girl laying on the bed, as she mindlessly scrolls for hours on end. She is typing fast, she is running multiple apps in the background, she is listening to the latest hits while doing all of this, her earphones never leave her ears; even when she closes her eyes, she is still listening to a podcast. Despite all these activities happening around her. The girl looks bored and apathetic, her eyes are blank, no emotions, no thoughts. And for hours to come she stays in that state, waiting for something to happen, even if it doesn't, she doesn't care.

This could be the opening lines of a sci-fi novel but this is actually how I act when I am alone. This is how my life has become. And while people like to blame this on the internet that has made Gen Z mindless zombies; I think the only reason I haven't died is because of the internet. To normal people it's a curse that makes humanity fall to its lowest. To me it gave a purpose, a want and a direction to live for.

The Internet isn't the evil mastermind to me, it's a necessity that has kept me alive and not succumbing to the fact I have no one to talk with.

Internet to me isn't Instagram, Snapchat, Discord,Twi--X (someone stop Elon Musk from cooking), it's the "quirky" apps like Pinterest, Tumblr and Reddit as well as the depths of content that is YouTube. It's the places where I found "my" people who understood me, who accepted me, who appreciated me. Growing up I had no one to talk with, even my own family wasn't understanding, let alone my friends.

During my school life I had always been surrounded by friends or as I like to put it, people I can talk to and have lunch with during school hours. That's what it was, nothing more than that. My idea of friends was just different from others, I didn't want emotional connection or people to hang out with. I wanted friends who would listen to my ramblings and be able to debate and discuss things with.

I don't want to seem pretentious or snobbish and definitely not above others in any way. But....when I am surrounded by so many frustratingly stupid people, I don't have any other words to describe them than "not good enough for me". They may be wonderful people, who are warm and lively. I do not care about being around such people. I am someone that watches video essays on morality, ethics, philosophy and analysis of movies and TV, in comparison to the people I know I am just more perceptive and thoughtful and that alone makes me seem like a stranger to them (INTPs are weird in short form). My dad told me smart people have it hard to make friends because of this exact nature, I wouldn't call myself incredibly intelligent but I know I am far more capable in thinking than my classmates who watch reality TV shows and Tiktok dances. Sometimes I cannot even comprehend how people can even get satisfaction and happiness from something as simple as that and that's when I understand: it's okay to be different than that and it's okay that they are "normal".

I feel like I am Lain from "Serial Experiments Lain", as if my existence is given meaning by the internet and I was born from it. My lack of social interactions in person can be explained by that, but it's the thought of talking with other people that often scares me. I am used to being silent, so much so that even on the internet, I remain quiet, not interacting with people who might understand me. Being afraid of not being understood has stopped me from even trying to make connections when there's people ready to do that.

I don't even reply to comments on my posts, unless I have to and I don't talk with anyone on the internet itself. I just watch and be happy at other people's interactions and feel a sense of belonging.

For some days I decided to stop doing that, to stop the vow of silence. To let people approach me and approach others myself. I want to be friends and it's the only thing that I have ever considered as something I couldn't achieve.

Loneliness isn't as pretty as the movies and books tell you. It's more of a psychological thriller than a show like Euphoria and Skins where these stylised depictions make my depression and loneliness appear cool. It's cool to be alone, to have my own space and not cross boundaries but it's not cool to let the loneliness that shields me, devour me.

[starberrywander]

I recently figured out that my enneagram type is actually 9w1 and not 1w9. Idk how many of my followers actually care about the Enneagram but this is big news for me because I've been realizing so much stuff from this. It's so exciting!

I started looking into the enneagram as a writing tool, but the podcast I found to learn more about it is focused on personal growth so I've been learning so much more than I expected. One of the things it motivated me to do when I actually narrowed down what my type is and why, is start using a diary.

I'm mainly doing it to become more aware of my own thoughts and emotions. I'm only two days in and I accidentally started writing with the book upsidedown, so now the ribbon bookmark is facing up and I think that's funny. But anyway I wanted to share something I wrote today that just really hit me in the heart,

"I think my discontent with life comes from the fact that I've convinced myself that I want to achieve, but my actual fulfillment comes from being, from experiencing, from connecting. Contentment always feels so far out of reach because I've convinced myself that I am chasing after the completion of goals when I'm actually chasing a state of being."

And just. Wow. That's paraphrased because I don't have my diary with me right now but it made me realize something soo big. I've always been trapped in my imagination, thinking of all these things I wish I could experience but feeling incapable of creating the reality that would bring them to me. And as a result I get into cycles of feeling down and hopeless, sleeping until the emotion goes away, distracting myself with entertainment, remembering injustice and wanting to push back against it, then getting burnt out and depressed by my inability to change anything without sacrificing my connection to the people who are my anchors, and repeating the cycle.

And this time when the depression hit me I decided to just explore it. Write what I was feeling and everything that came to my mind without analyzing it and see where it went. And it just told me right away that I need to stop chasing goals. They aren't fulfilling me. They aren't helping me. They're just distractions and I need to practice just being. Just existing. I can't rely on the external to bring me contentment, that has to come from within. It is impossible to bend reality into perfection to make me happy, but it is possible to change my own patterns to become happier.

This is huge. And it will take time to break my habit of disconnecting. But now I actually am aware of it and of what's going on inside me and that's huge. I wanted to share because this means so much and I need to get it out there. I use my blog as a way of releasing my thoughts into the world and while it may not be as vulnerable as my actual diary this feels like exactly the right place to share this.

[skayafair]

Podcasts against gender stereotypes (yay!)

I made a post about the way gender essentially doesn't exist in Arcane, but I also wanted to say a few words about two podcasts I've been listening to lately.

In The Sheridan Tapes, I was struck by the way Bill Tyler and his partner, Robert Quincy, became the emotional and caring core of the searchers team. Sam Bailey was also allowed to be vulnerable, his "Heart" episode was soul-piercing, and his power relies mostly on intuition, on feelings. He literally needs an emotional connection for it to work in a certain way.

Kate Sheridan and Maria Sol, on the opposite, felt more like the action members of the team for the most of S2, very determined and tough when needed, holding themselves together at all times.

Things shifted to more neutral in S3 and 4, but S2 had me pleasantly surprised, because the traditional gender roles were sort of reversed but not driven to the extremes (like a lot of movies deal with 'tough women' nowadays). I'm agender so I like when gender stereotypes are treated as non-existent and the authors write people, not "men and women".

It's pretty much the same with Syntax Podcast. There's no clear devision gender roles wise, but I liked how Silas - not Lizzy or Alyx or even the most sociable of the group and the team leader Cassius - became 'the caring one' for the team: despite his stuck up attitude at first (or it just sounded that way to me in the beginning, I'm relistening and it feels way less so now), seemingly being more of an introvert and just 'on his own wavelength', it's Silas' trailer where everyone ends up gathering when they need support, Cass goes to him right away from the very beginning when they want to have some advice or just to discuss anything, any time a team member is having a hard time he makes sure to come up to them and give some reassurance or ask if they need help, and it was him who was making rounds to ensure everyone was ok when they were waiting out a siege. All this, considering that they have a leader, a medic and a security head on the team as well. So it wasn't strictly necessary, but he ended up taking this role all the same, just like he used to care about his mother's wellbeing since childhood after his father died.

Greg, being the "papa bear", also never shows any callousness despite serving in the military for the most of his life. In fact, his supernatural experience story is concentrated on moral support of his fallen comerades families. Moreover, although he tries to act tough like his place in the team demands, he's still allowed to show vulnerability and takes the chance. Same with J - military experience and no toxic masculinity whatsoever (I mean yes there were a few jokes but he was lightheartedly picking on Alyx and paid for this right away XD).

The girls are never damsels in distress and do a lot for the team.

(I don't mention enbies since I'm not aware if we even have any stereotypes going on for us, assigned gender at birth aside? Anyway, there's none of that bullshit either.)

Well, I may mention Greg being "papa bear" and June behaving like a mother hen but these traits aren't toxic, at least in their case. They feel very nice, and actually these two (I'm in denial S3 ending-wise, I have a fix it au in my mind OKAY) act pretty similarly in their care for the team, although they do it in different ways. Plus, I don't mind gender existing at all, only the expectations related to it being perceived as mandatory.

Everyone is written just as people, and they don't shy away from things that traditionally may be attributed to the opposite gender. I love to see - well, technically, hear - this. Please, more.

As a side note: I'd love not to pay attention to such things in general because to me people are just people as is, but in the society I live in every day gender stereotypes are still shoved in everyone's faces. In my country visibly not conforming to them is edging on committing a crime now. Plus gender socialization is still a thing, sadly, so toxic masculinity and femininity still exist and show up often enough, so I have to consider this as well. All this makes pieces of media like Arcane, TST or Syntax all the more enjoyable as they show the world the way I see it and would like it to be in reality.

[istherewifiinhell]

hand on rbing prev post as circling back around on sts thought apparently gave me enough to say it needed to escape the tags and be its own post. um! the emh from voy: my wife is a bitch and i love her so much

i think the emh is like. the exact definition of "the soul first shows itself by a gnashing of teeth" as its all well add good to appreciate the aliveness of nice and polite data who follows all the rules and is like. even MORE real than a flesh and blood person.

(in sense of his tangibility... his mechanical complexity and physical and mental competencies. are MORE than that of a traditionally recognized person. you know? not that that is an accurate summation of how the show acts about him. the only person who thinks that is julian bashir lmao. more often its like the. oh you disrespect him? well disrespect THIS! [he does a feat unmatched by any of the biological life forms around him] which... isnt exactly useful as principled, ideological and philosophic statement, about who gains the right of person-hood. OR RATHER! it is literally and precisely that, its conclusions sucks shit)

[Cam K podcast voice] when someone reaches for abstractions to doubt data's existent, the show throws materialist egg on their face.

The lynchpin in the proof of Data artificiality. Is that he has a PHYSICAL SWITCH, that can turn him OFF. This counters his otherwise uninterrupted verisimilitude of humanity. He looks like a toy. A thing. (Teenage wifi would like to point out if i had a big enough rock i could also turn riker off, but alas)

BUT the thing about the Doc, is that this guy ISNT "REAL". Getting shut down is not grand solemn act to the doc. It happens to him. ALOT. "Computer: End Program"... Hes so much more dependent on those around him. He isnt nearly the same as them. AND HES AN ANNOYING LITTLE BITCH about it. please turn him off when you done! please turn him ON to tell him things, and u could visit sometime... Turn your emergency holographic medical channel! cause this is a SENIOR STAFF MEETING. and hes the God Damn CMO.

AND. its not just mistreatment he gets (RIGHTFULLY!) angry about. Its that (as joelle correctly pointed out, ofc) when confused, or when things are wrong, when he has no control, he default right to agression! He is not a sad kicked puppy that goes 'oh' and 'i do not understand the meaning of ur behaviour' like data does. (again that sounds like data slander its NOT! i love data and wish ppl would stop laughing at him for having questions)

Whereas the biggest actual impediment of data's full recognition of personhood is his feelings, and suppose lack there of. He doesn't react to social stimulus the way people expect him too. If you try to goad him into a response he might say he 'is not capable of experiencing emotions such as you do' cause hes lacking the magic part in his brain that will do that. (to which... every neurodivergent person ever said: data, bestie, baby girl, they say that about a lot of people. you have clearly expressed internal experiences that are just... you baselines for emotion)

But to compare. When people say the doc isnt acting socially normal, which is an assholish thing to do, btw. HES READY TO BE AN ASSHOLE RIGHT BACK. His is INFACT, gnashing those holographic teeth! I don't think anyone has ever accused the doc of a LACK OF FEELING. Like, he has horrible beside manner, he "isn't programed for small talk"... but thats cause he's RUDE! He's too obviously prideful, snide, needling and just general, self involved for it to not seem like a DELIBERATE CHOICE that he is making.

And even when these traits are regarded to simple programing (which makes them... less real? 🤨) Examine the moments that are definitively about him claiming autonomy, engaging in recreation and becoming more self actualized. And find that a lot of them are angled to make him LESS likable. His hobbies, which he WILL speak about, AT LENGTH, include being a tropy writer, a photographer who makes hour long presentations, and a uncompromising operatic tenor diva.

(love when opera singer is used as insult, media wise, oh noooo ur TOO good at singing. your voice is TOO powerful, ur vocal control and ability to perform complex pieces in multiple languages is TOO impressive. lol. mr picardo ur so cool and u looked good doing it. frankly)

In the moments that serve to mark specific advancement in control he gains over himself, he gets to make himself MORE OBNOXIOUS! You do not, infact, get to recognize a someones full personhood without running the risk that you, specifically, might not like them! As a person!

And in dramtic turns. His true psyche breaking, foundation shaking experiences are acted to hell! It's uncomfortable to behold someone so emotional. Confusion and denial not expressed quietly, but belligerently. Meeting of sadness fear that can only be expressed as anger. Unlike the picturesq Adam and Eve figures from the end of R.U.R. (spoilers? i suppose). His awareness of the true personal impact and price of mortality is not signaled by a noble self-sacrifice, gentle weeping and pleading to not have someone taken away. It's a choice he made to save a close friend, instead of a distant coworker, when forced to choose between the two.

And then, his complete and total inability to comprehend, internalized and accept that fact. A person would be dead, truly and utterly gone from this world. Cause he wanted to save his friend instead. And the only way to ingrate this horrible fact of reality, the capital A, Absurd, was to do it as any human might.

Have a very public and loud mental breakdown, spend prolonged period of in which you cannot be left alone because your darkest thoughts will loop forever into themselves as you become more and more upset, and yet, neither can you simply avoid thinking about it, has the only way to come to terms with it is though a mire subjects that cause revulsion. The desert of thought the mind shrink from, and the truth that lies in it. Which. Is very inconvenient for all your friends who would really just rather be having a normal one.

In conclusion? The doc shows autonomy and sentience by being loud, opinionated and embarrassing. Rude, precocious, and easily offended. Self obsessed, high-mined, and anguished. Dependent, vulnerable and inconvenient. Which is to say he possible the most real anyone could ever be. That he has a much of a soul as any of us. That he is a bitch and i love him SO MUCH.

[curioussubjects]

in which i revisit black market and it's worse somehow

for reasons even i find elusive, i read the transcript for rdm's podcast episode on "black market" (i know i know), but i really do appreciate the spirit behind this particular pod episode. i just. it's just. y'all....you cannot make this stuff up:

"there is no socioeconomic structure beyond the Rag Tag Fleet. There's no government. There's no social system. There's no nothing. Other than these particular ships. Isn't everything black market? Isn't everything to be bartered?" there's so much going on here. like. what do you mean there's no government or social system. the fleet literally has an executive and legislative branch. the executive literally has an enforcement arm through the military. ron please. 😭😭 the idea there's no social system is also bizarre when there's no indication the colonial social system wasn't reproduced down to caprican hegemony. also love the implication that the presence of a barter system nearly if not completely equates to the existence of a black market. that's. that-. hm. what i do think is interesting here though is that a black market existing isn't actually, imo, a foregone conclusion. that it exists at all suggests: 1. there seems to be no enforcement of the rule of law, 2. no regulation of trade, and 3. the government isn't adequately meeting the needs of the fleet with supply distribution.

sometimes i remember rdm has a polisci degree and i want to jump into a river.

but anyway, some of this stuff is discussed in the writer's room and all i can think about is how in the world did anybody think a topic this huge could fit into one standard episode of television. a lot of the bulk could be done in one episode, but you'd be returning to this as subplots and background commentary in future episodes.

"I was really disappointed in the show and myself and what we had done and didn't feel like the episode really had anything going for it." yeah man no fucking shit. you can't build a story out of vibes alone 😭

"You never quite get at the satisfaction of truly having gone through a plot that you had no idea where it was gonna go and you're shocked where it ended up. And you're not really sitting back and going, "My God. Lee Adama is nothing like I thought he was." It just doesn't- it falls in between. It's classically standing on the two chairs and falling in between both of them." the problem you're having is that you never connect what's going on with the black market plot with what's going on with lee. there's no line there beyond right place right time. clearly there's an ethical issue here in that lee is complicit with the black market. THAT'S what's interesting. our ethical center character, who values justice and the law is complicit in something that is happening outside of legal purview and also harms and exploits people. and then culminates with lee doing some light extrajudicial killing. but we never sit with any of it. much less see it play out in future episodes.

which is why this following bit kills me : "Tigh and Ellen and Ellen's involvement in the black market and she's getting things for Tigh, who is a senior officer in Galactica. There's a whiff of corruption here and what does it mean? We're not gonna- we don't take the easy way out. Tigh isn't shocked at what his wife is doing and promises never to do it again. He understands what she's doing. There is an implication that, "Who knows what else Ellen Tigh is doing with Commander Fisk?" I'm not sure that's a picture I want in my mind, but, ok. And Lee is also a bit dirty in this scene. Lee is also engaged in things that are probably not that above-board. There's an implication that Lee helped get the medicine for the little girl and probably went outside official channels. And it's a personal, emotional, confrontation with people with conflicted and conflicting motivations." THAT'S THE EPISODE! RIGHT THERE! YOU HAD IT!

the episode is about ethics, a government failing its people, and complacency. you want an episode of television without having to make a mini arc out of it? those are your themes.

then there's the clusterfuck that is the gianne/shevon/dee portion of the episode, which makes no gd sense AND HERE'S WHY LMAO: "It's not really getting to a place where we're explaining, or at least hinting, or making you think about what is the nature of the relationship between Dualla and Lee. Why is Lee interested in her and vice versa? What does it mean to him as a character? We had conversations in the writers' room that dealt with things like, "Well, Lee's got the girl he left behind on Caprica, he's seeing the prostitute, and then there's Dualla." So there's the classic- there's three women in Lee's life. One dead, two not. What does Dualla represent in that? What is- what is Dualla to Lee in juxtaposition to the dead woman and to the hooker with the little girl? Is she the hope? Is she the future? Is she something more realistic? Is the hooker the hope? There's a lot of ways you can just sit and talk about it endlessly about what it all represents, and it was all fascinating conversation. Unfortunately it just doesn't quite sync-in to what we have. You don't ever- you never quite get to a place where you're rooting for Lee and Dualla. I think that's might be the central problem with it. You're never quite rooting for her."

truly mysterious why this doesn't work rdm. boggles the mind.

he offers no explanation as to why it doesn't work, btw, it's all just "???"

we're not rooting for dee because lee doesn't actually want her. just like he didn't actually want gianne.

meanwhile shevon is the epitome of lee playing it safe. he's obviously lonely and in need of talking to someone, and having emotional and physical intimacy. he wants it without the possibility of being too vulnerable or hurting someone else when he runs. through shevon we understand some of the reasons why lee left gianne. through his relationship with shevon and gianne, we can begin to see what might underlie lee's budding relationship with dee.

and then perhaps we remember lee's behavior during the miniseries. and then maybe we watch scar next and a couple more things become clear.

we're not rooting for dee because we're rooting for someone else entirely. (kara. it's kara.)

i am in the tantrum hole.

"we're playing that Zarek needs to tell Lee about Phelan and about this ship out there where you can get anything you want that's the hub or the nexus of the black market. And yet everybody else seems to know about it. It's clearly the place where all this activity is going, but somehow Lee needs to be told by Zarek that it even exists, which tends to undercut Lee's role as an investigator and the procedural aspect starts to feel a bit weak because you feel like he should've- Lee should've known all that on his own and again, it's an element that doesn't work"

OR it could be something about complacency, a failure in governance, and how out much the Galactica is actually a bubble. very interesting concept for lee who feels disconnected after RS2.

it's not that lee's obliviousness doesn't work, it's that he has the privilege of not needing to think about it. he could even already be seeing shevon and thinking it's all above board like it was back in the colonies, not realizing there's a criminal enterprise going on that is exploiting desperate people.

what happens when lee does learn about how bad it is out there in the fleet?

that's your episode set up.

"When Lee shoots him, you should feel that he shoots him because, "Oh my God! I'm realizing that he is like Bill Duke and oh! Woah! I'm like shocked. And that's- I don't know how I feel about Lee, but I'm really surprised because he's more like Bill Duke than I thought." I don't think the show really says that. I don't think we've accomplished that mission. And that should have been the mission here, is if you're going to predicate a whole show on this concept, about this central confrontation it should pay off that idea." that should not have been the mission there omfg. lee shoots this man because he's doing fucked up shit. the shocking moment isn't that lee is like the bad guy, the shocking thing is that mr. articles of colonization did an extrajudicial killing. he executed a man without due process.

the question here is: is lee more like his father and laura roslin than he'd like to admit? if so, what is he going to do about it?

and btw, is lee like his father completely ties back to a possible reason why he runs from gianne: he saw himself marrying a woman he got pregnant, thus repeating the story of his parents. and it doesn't need to be 1:1 exactly, but there are too many similarities for his comfort. so he runs.

and another theme: lee doing what he knows is the right thing to do vs. lee doing what he thinks is the Right thing to do. and to what extent does lee hide behind duty because he's scared of going after what he wants. (and oh look at that we're back to kara)

this scene is interesting because lee does something he felt in the moment to be right (and he does it on impulse, which is another bit of tension with his character in other episodes), but he also acted against his ethical code. what are the effects of that? how does lee grapple with that? WE JUST DON'T KNOW

i am still in the tantrum hole.

"I think if I had to sum up what's wrong with this episode in my opinion, it's that this time we went for a much more tv, conventional tale and execution." narrator: that's not what was wrong with the episode. "So again it's a grab bag of things we're trying to do." narrator: that's more like it.

incredible podcast though it's like 10/10 reflection 0/10 insight. showrunner of all time this guy.

[landwriter]

For the fic ask: 1, 6 and 13 if you haven't answered them already! For Oaths, my most beloved fic with the best setting and premise and gorgeous writing ✨ thank you!

Ahhh you're making me blush!! Thank you Haz!

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way? 'This way' could have a lot of connotations here, i.e. 'insane', 'with too much apple research', 'given to sporadic bouts of verse' -- but I think the answer for all of them is sort of the same:

I got brainworms over Tam Lin + Dreamling, which were blessedly contagious and caught by @that-banhus, who did And Ask Not Leave Of Any (read it! it's SO good!!). Those brainworms plus that Brand New To Fandom Energy plus having just (entirely unintentionally) been in that part of the world a couple months prior, and listened to approximately 20 hours of the Stories of Scotland podcast whilst driving around said part of the world -- including a history of Border Reivers -- left me frankly no other choice but to be super extra about it all and decide to myself that I would try and do a Tam Lin x historic Borders retelling that was Poetic And True And Beautiful. By then I was already innoculated with the gateway drug of Middle English from works like @moorishflower's gorgeous Maybe sprout wings, so I had also become aware that a) I loved stories that borrowed from older language, and b) there's actually fabulous dictionaries out there that will let you find said words and when they're from and how they were used. Which is to say: when I started Oaths, I don't think I was capable of writing in any other way.

It was really just this like, perfect storm of thirst for research, existing knowledge, energy and time, and some slightly unhinged convictions about making it Feel Real. Wiser people than me have advised that it's generally helpful to not be precious about ideas, but the fact I was just hopelessly, helplessly fuckin' precious about it undeniably shaped how I wrote Oaths.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics? Oh thank god, I've answered that above, I think, so this doesn't have to be TOO long hahaha. Just the sheer level of madness, geographic and historic detail, verse, etc. Also maybe something that's not in any of my other fics: describing my absolutely gut-aching love for land. One of my favourite compliments is that it's got a sense of place as a story, because it does, and I want it to be FELT. I want to evoke emotions not just from relationship angst or tender friendships, but from descriptions of landscape and how we move among it. I want everyone else to feel BODIED by a sunrise or a walk in the woods in early spring. I'm insane about it, in truth. There's lines in Chapter 2 taken directly from my journal when I was traveling in Scotland earlier that summer hahaha.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading? While I don't listen to music while writing, I actually DID make a playlist (first and only time I've done so) for the mood of it; it's a lot of folk song, ballad, and oral histories from both English and Scottish sides of the borders. I would also be remiss not to mention @mathomhouse-e's INCREDIBLE and beautiful Oaths playlist. There's some songs on there I think I listened to like 20 times in a row while editing scenes!

(behind-the-scenes fic asks)