#this was a lot more relevant when i made it years ago

[tanicus-caesareth]

guarana drama, damage control

[knifearo]

I've been enjoying all your posts lately, especially all the community engagement. It makes me think about posting more personal aroace content instead of just reblogging.

I'm full of feelings but not sure what I really have to contribute to the conversation. Aro-identified people skew young and I feel like nobody's going to care what a middle aged aroace has to say but now I'm like hang on, maybe all aro content is good content, I don't know, I'm thinking about it.

i am absolutely of the opinion that all aro content is good content! especially because a lot of us skew young, i think it's so important to have (first of all just aro content in General. there's always a lack of that. but especially) aro content from people who don't usually have their perspectives talked about. if you've got nothing to contribute to the conversation that's fine :) more than half the time i do not either, i just make a silly happy little lah di dah i love aromanticism post and chit chat with all the little aromantic people who live on my laptop. if you're aromantic and you're engaging with the community then everybody should be more than happy to have you there :) just like you said. all aro content is good content. your opinion is valuable and your presence is treasured <2

[anyroads]

How to actually support small businesses on Etsy

With Christmas approaching and people starting to look for gifts, I thought it might be useful to let people know how to best support Etsy sellers, since we get a lot of sales this time of year! Etsy has a lot of policies that affect sellers which they don't really disclose to customers, and often there's a communication gap that can be damaging to sellers without customers intending them to. Hopefully this post helps more people avoid this kind of thing.

A while ago Etsy implemented the Star Seller program. When you go to an Etsy store, you can see badges at the top of the page, denoting if the seller has done well in three main categories:

Speedy replies

On time dispatch with tracking

Good reviews

If you clear the bar for all three as a seller, you're a Star Seller. This is an important badge for sellers, which I'll get to in a bit. Etsy evaluates your stats monthly, and bases them on three months' worth of data:

Each has specific determining factors, which also advantage large operations like dropshippers over small businesses, but we'll get to that too:

As you can see, the criteria is really demanding. You have to respond to 95% of first messages (ie. the first time someone contacts you) within 24 hours or you lose your Star Seller status. This can be really damaging to a small store.

You also have to dispatch 95% of orders on time, ie. within the set timeline you've chosen for an item listed, and you have to give tracking info. This, by the way, is frustrating and disingenuous; I ship my product in envelopes because they're small and thin, but the mail service in my country doesn't offer tracking for envelopes. I'm not going to spend up to 3x as much on shipping just to have a tracking number (shipping would cost half the price of my product if I did), but if I don't include tracking info I don't get a Star Seller badge even if I ship all my orders on time. I get around this by writing "unavailable" in the field where tracking info goes, but this still poses a transparency issue to customers and rightly so. I end up compensating by issuing a lot of replacements for delayed orders, which I can recoup costs of through my mail service which is a lot of extra work and time.

You also must have an average of 4.8 star reviews or higher. There are no adjustments made for small stores, and this is a big one where dropshippers have an advantage.

As you can see in my stats here, I had 11 reviews in 3 months. That means if just one person gives me a 4 or 3 star review, I lose my Star Seller status for 3 months unless I get a ton more reviews quickly. A dropshipper who makes hundreds of sales a week won't be affected by one middling review. And you'd be surprised how often people who leave 3 or 4 star reviews actually meant to leave better ones but clicked the wrong button without noticing, or just don't understand how the system works.

Because Etsy doesn't explain this to customers. So people will leave a damaging review in perfectly good faith. The number of times I've gotten an "excellent product, would buy again!" review with 3 stars is astounding. I always message customers to ask what I could do better and explain the system, and the response is almost always that there was nothing wrong, they just usually don't give anything higher than 3 out of 5 stars unless the product radically improved their lives or was transformative (and to their credit, most customers change their reviews after this exchange but again, it takes time and effort).

3 stars is average, and what customers rate is their experience receiving and using a product. What Etsy uses these ratings to gauge, however, is whether a customer was satisfied dispatch timelines, craftsmanship, and if a product met the expectations set in the listing.

As an added bonus, Etsy hoses money off sellers by offering to advertise for them. The way this works is that if a seller opts in, Etsy will advertise their store in relevant searches on search engines like Google, and in exchange they take a percentage from any sales made from clicks on these links. And then some. Because if a customer clicked an advertising link once, then Etsy will keep taking that cut from any further purchases from that IP address. So if you click a Google link to an Etsy store and then purchase from that store, and then bookmark that store and go back six months later to get another item, Etsy will keep taking their advertising cut with each purchase you make.

Depending on whether or not you opt in to advertising, Etsy can take up to 30% of your earnings in fees alone. That means if I sell, say, bookmarks for $10, I only get to keep $7. Hopefully that covers my operating costs, but if I charge more for an item that takes me a lot of time and work to make, I have to factor in that Etsy offers free shipping on orders over $35 whether or not sellers agree to give it. So if I sell a product that costs $35, not only do I only get to keep $24.50 of what I was paid after Etsy takes fees, I also have to cover the cost of shipping. And if I'm selling a product for that much, it's likely shipping will cost $5-10, so now my profit is down to $15-20 for an item I sold for $35.

Why is the Star Seller status so important? Because it's the main way the average Etsy store gets onto the algorithm and has visibility, and without visibility you don't have sales. Drop shippers can afford to purchase advertising space, so they'll always show up in searches. They can also afford to have a variety of products, high-end professional photos of their products, and because they have a lot of sales, the occasional bad review or delayed shipment won't cause a blip on their rating system. In comparison, the average Etsy store who makes, let's say, 50 sales a month (and that's a small store that's doing well), is going to feel the impact of a handful of 4 star reviews and one day of delayed orders/message replies due to a family emergency. If you contact Etsy customer service to explain your legitimate reason for having a delay, they're unable to intervene. They can't give you back your Star Seller status, which means you're dropped from the algorithm for the three months it takes for those delays to stop counting towards your averages, and you then have to work your way back up into the algorithm once that time passes, which is even harder to do. (And while you can put up an auto-reply, there's a time limit on how long it'll be up, which is usually 24-48 hours. Which may not work if you have a personal emergency that the average small business would understand and give you time off for in ways Etsy refuses to accommodate.)

So what can you do to support Etsy sellers?

- Give good reviews. If you have problems with a product, message the seller and give them the opportunity to fix the problem or send a replacement/refund. Unless you feel the need to leave a scathing 1 star review, don't leave one unless it's a 5 star. Etsy counts anything under 5 stars the same as it does one star. (This goes for Amazon, Uber, Deliveroo, etc. too. Review kindly.)

- Message sellers during the week. It's harder to get to messages during the weekend, and not everyone remembers to put on their auto-reply.

- Don't click advertising links. If someone promos their Etsy store on their own social media account, it's fine. So if you click a link from an instagram profile or a tumblr post, that's fine. But if you see a link on Google or in a dedicated advertising space, even if it's a sponsored spot on Etsy, don't click on it. Instead, search the shop name on Etsy and go to it through that search. This way the seller won't lose more fees to Etsy.

[rivalcobalt]

Okay actually yknow what, I'm just gonna do this on here cause I've been agonizing over this for too long

Firstly to prove I'm not insane, and I guess to his credit, the author has mentioned ONS as an inspiration-slash-thing-with-similar-vibes on twitter (archived):

That said, I feel like this really undersells it. Like, you can argue about how much inspiration you can take from a work, and ONS itself takes insane amounts of shit from Devilman, but even still it feels very much like a different story, and not like... the entire first half of the book being largely what you'd get if you just ported the plot of S1 of ONS over into a YA novel with and then altered who the love interest was.

This is long enough already (talking like nearly 4 pages point form on google docs) so I'm just copying it over as is. I only read the book once, so honestly this may have even missed some things. I'd put more effort into this but honestly idk how many people are gonna see this anyways.

Tl;dr no fucking way did you just "watch this while editing"

The Flood || unnamed apocalypse virus

Man-made virus

Kills most of the human population (ons' explicitly kills off 90%, the Flood has killed near 9 billion (earth's population when it was released)/appears to be a comparable rate)

Intentionally caused by Angels cult/Hyakuya Sect + JIDA (revealed in manga/LNs only)

Angels cult || vampires:

Signaturely wear white robes/uniforms + capes

Ons vampires are associated with (fallen) angels

New Nazareth/Sanguinem (city for cult/vampires that protagonist escapes from)

Don't want any more of their kind made (Angels forcing Angel parents to drown their newborns, vampires noted to be generally opposed to making more vampires for unexplained reasons; iirc only progenitors are able to sire and they're supposed to get permission from the vampire council first)

Angels cult || Hyakuya Sect

Religious cult

Doing human (S)eraph experiments

Benji & Theo/Yuu & Mika are children of cult members who use them as test subjects

Causes virus on purpose (manga/LNs only)

Responsible for creating Graces/Horsemen of John (manga/LNs only)

Benji || Yuu:

Only successful version of the (S)eraph experiments

Not fully in control of powers yet/powers emerge over the course of the story

Child of Angels/Hyakuya Sect cult members

Brought to New Nazareth/Sanguinem under the age of 12 and lives there for 4-5 years before escaping

Grow up in New Nazareth/Sanguinem with Theo/Mika during those years

Important family member dies as they try to escape together

Son of cult members

Posesses (S)eraph abilities from being experimented on by cult

Joins ALC/JIDA in their front-line forces after escaping and being found by Nick/Guren

Seraph || seraphs (humans possessing seraph gene and have ability to turn into them)

Aim to wipe out humanity (but this can be controlled by protagonist with effort)

Very powerful

Created via human experimentation on children by the religious cult that caused the virus

Picture of Yuu in complete seraph form in ons tweet from author

Theo || Mika:

Curly/wavy blond hair and blue eyes

Protagonist's childhood best friend

In love with protagonist, debatably reciprocated

Child of Angels/Hyakuya Sect cult members

Grows up in New Nazareth/Sanguinem with protagonist, but didn't escape with them

Wants to get protagonist away from ALC/JIDA and live with them

Seen in whites of the vampires/Angels for the majority of the story

Remains affiliated with the vampires/Angels (Theo sides with Angels & Mika is turned)

Soldier for the Angels/vampires

Protagonist often recalls memories of being in the cult/vampire city together as children

Protagonist thinks of them as someone they'll never see again after escaping (Theo stayed with cult, Yuu thinks Mika is dead)

Mika is revealed to be the son of the first vampire, a fallen angel, meaning he's also an angel (manga only)

Other (S)eraph besides Benji/Yuu, but not a fully functional one (Theo injects himself with a failed version of Seraph, Mika's seraph gene is dormant)

Theo's angry outbursts may be based on Mika's anger (though who they lash out at is very different)

Theo's character differences from Mika are almost all traits commonly found in other characters also influenced by Ryou Asuka (betrays protagonist, parallel to protagonist due to similarities but on opposing sides of conflict) (not sure if author knew about Mika being heavily from Ryou or just subconsciously knew the archetype via consuming other anime/manga/JRPGs/etc or just a really funny coincidence)

Upon escaping New Nazareth/Sanginem, Benji's dad/Mika is killed

Nothing can be done to save them

Bleeding out as Benji/Yuu tries to save them as a specific similar imagery (plus I guess gaping hole wounds specifically mentioned (from being shot in the head/arm thrust through stomach respectively))

Specific memories of looking at a map together to plan their escape

Yuu/Benji is forced to keep running alone to the only way out (only bridge out of Acheson/only tunnel out of Sanguinem)

Cult is using human experiments to create humans with the seraph gene/martyrs to turn into Seraph

(S)eraphs aim to wipe out the rest of humanity

The name. Are you kidding me

Protagonist is the only fully successful experiment

Main character and childhood best friend are children of parents in cult

(In the end) main character and childhood best friend are both (S)eraph experiments

The way the Flood is killing Benji has similarities to Yuu in his incomplete seraph form

Dripping blood and black fluid (Yuu: from wings and left eye, right sclera filled with blood and left eye may have burst upon transforming, Benji: from wounds from Seraph decomposing him)

Spitting up black fluid

at a later incident, Yuu's seraph form is triggered by multiple organs rupturing. Benji's organs are liquefying inside him and coming up in chunks as part of the Seraph transformation

Theo's death after injecting himself with Dominion-12 focusing on his shot-through left eye looking like a black hole is similar to Yuu's left eye blacked out by anime gore censor circle in incomplete seraph form

Same type of post-apocalyptic setting: 

Plants beginning to cover over a wrecked city (only a few years after the virus broke out, so not super heavily overgrown yet)

Skyscrapers and concrete brutalist architecture specifically shown. Downtown core type of stuff

Graces || Horsemen of John

Created by Angels/Hyakuya Sect (result of Flood virus/called by 6th trumpet (seraph) of seraph experiments)

Beasts that kill humans, just to finish killing off the population

Can be called upon/created/controlled by (S)eraphs

Described as both horselike and spiderlike

Ribs protruding out of chest, fangs, mouths in unusual places, and I think wings (not sure about Graces on that one) are common traits

Picture of a Horseman included in author's tweet about ons

ALC || JIDA

Wear all black

Surviving humans outside of New Nazareth/Sanginem

Fight against Angels/vampires

Rescue Benji/Yuu after they escape New Nazareth/Sanguinem

Secretly aim to use Benji/Yuu's (S)eraph abilities for their own gain

The Watch || Shinoa Squad

ALC/JIDA Moon Demon Company front lines squad

Comprised of teenagers

Protagonist joins them after escaping New Nazareth/Sanguinem to fight back against the Angels/vampires

Cormack is debatably based on Kimizuki (red/pink hair, asshole personality, rare bits of kindness show through exterior (when Cormack prioritizes giving Benji his jacket to block smoke while ALC is on fire, but not nearly as nice of a guy under it all as Kimizuki)

Aisha is like… maybe bastardized Mitsuba if you just take her emotional outburst parts, but I might be reaching on that

Nick || Guren 

Leader of ALC & the Watch/Moon Demon Company (strongest section of front-line soldiers in JIDA)

Black hair & eyes (Guren's eyes are dark purple, but could be interpreted as stylized black)

Finds Benji/Yuu after their escape and brings them into their group

Nick is literally just Guren in personality if you age him down a few years and add autism and make him nicer under the exterior. Like even the way he talks and him being mentioned dramatically stomping his leg up on furniture during speeches 

Heading ALC/JIDA's intentions to use Benji/Yuu for their own gain

Dehumanizes protagonist yet also having a bit of affection towards them (more debatable for Guren, but he has some rare moments of being caring towards Yuu in a more older sibling/fatherly way)

Erin || Shinoa

Another leader within the ALC/JIDA (though Erin isn't a soldier/in the Watch)

Sympathetic towards Benji/Yuu, protests against Nick/Guren directly for how they treats them

Pastel pink/purple feminine aesthetic

Wears hair at least partly in braids

Benji & Theo's reunion in Reformation Faith Evangelical Church || Yuu & Mika's reunion on the battlefield in Shinjuku

Reunite at first major battle protagonist participates in, but not their first (iirc both only have one minor fight between joining ALC/JIDA squad and this one)

One approaches other from behind, other only realizes who they are a moment after turning around

On opposite sides as ALC/JIDA vs Angels/vampires

"[Name]? Is that you?"

Benji holds a knife to Theo's throat || Yuu stabs Mika through the chest

Theo/Mika went along to fight specifically to find Benji/Yuu

"Abandon everything and run away with me" || "I came here to follow you. I couldn't let the city take you alone. If it wants you, it has to take me too."

Theo/Mika wants to separate Benji/Yuu from the ALC/JIDA (but Mika has good reason, while Theo wants Benji to come back to the cult)

Forced to separate again at end of fight

Picture of Yuu stabbing Mika from this scene is also on ons tweet from author

In general, first half follows the escape from Sanguinem/New Nazareth leaving behind a dying family member who tried to escape with the protagonist but died to let them get away -> get found by JIDA/The Watch upon escape and rescued by Guren/Nick with the intention of using Yuu/Benji as a weapon against those he escaped from due to his nature as a human experiment -> join JIDA/The Watch, meet other members and the leader Guren/Nick -> do some missions with them -> reunite with previous friend-slash-love interest they had left behind (Mika/Theo) at first major battle as soldiers for opposing sides and are forced to part again progression, which isn't super unique but still very specific, and given everything else... yeah

This is by far not the first time an English work has copied a Japanese work and was praised for originality, but "gay trans YA novel rips off mediocre gay vampire shounen" has to be conceptually the funniest and yet there still seem to be 0 google results about it

[embracing-the-ineffable]

Beware clickbait accusations

Hi fandom, here's what happened yesterday: A reporter named Rachel Johnson, who is the sister to Boris Johnson and a big terfy supporter of JK Rowling, released a 4-part true crime podcast featuring two women accusing Neil Gaiman of SA. Yesterday. The day before the UK elections. This post explores the possible political links in more detail.

CW: this post is free of graphic details, but if you follow these links, there may be explicit descriptions of sex, kink, and bdsm, plus mentions of mental illness and suicidal thoughts.

I want to believe and support survivors, and I also want to base my thoughts and actions on facts. I thought the xitter livestream commentary from Not Becky for all 4 episodes was very insightful. There's also a first episode transcript without extra commentary. (Edit: released after I wrote this post: the full audio plus transcripts for all four episodes of the podcast are now available to download here, or you can read all four transcripts in your browser.) I have since concluded (pending more time to think and read and learn, or any new information, of course):

This seems like the worst kind of clickbait, an unjustified mess that will hurt everyone involved (except possibly a few politicians who might benefit somehow, we'll see). The evidence the "reporters" present directly contradicts their accusations. They're counting on people reading headlines and not digging any deeper.

They tried to make something sinister where there was apparently consent and a caring relationship. Have they exploited one or both of these women? S, in particular, is described as vulnerable and with a history of unspecified mental illness. They have all of the message history between S and Neil, and her messages make the sexy stuff between the two of them sound enthusiastically consensual. There are even messages (multiple!) where she specifically says everything was consensual. Here's one:

They're playing horror music in the background to try to make us feel horrified, even as S reassures us that things were consensual. It's emotional manipulation by the reporters.

The times S sounds upset during the interview are the times she talks about Neil leaving her behind or not paying attention to her. Not the times she talks about consent violations. Her stories during the interview are inconsistent, and they contradict her messages with Neil and with others. Maybe we'll get better information from a more reputable news source, or maybe not, I don't know. I also don't know why anyone who cares about her would have advised her to do this interview.

Then they tracked down lots of other women who know/have dated Neil and they all had glowing things to say, except one other lover from 20 years ago, K. She described some bad sex, and then pointed to a time in their 2-year relationship when she felt something wasn't consensual and he thought it was. And after their breakup, they continued to text and flirt, for decades.

This podcast "exposé" feels like explosive clickbait with political ramifications. The evidence here doesn't support a pattern of poor conduct so much as establish Neil as a fellow well-meaning human with imperfect judgement. That doesn't mean the accusations are all made up; intimate partner violence is complicated, and the responsibility for checking in and getting regular enthusiastic consent from partners is very real, especially when kink or bdsm are involved.

I don't know what the right balance is here between supporting survivors, thinking critically, assuming good intentions, and waiting for better information, but I feel confident that this podcast alone is not enough to condemn anyone aside from the irresponsible journalists who inflicted it on the rest of us.

PS/edit: I'm tagging my relevant posts (mostly reblogs) with #ineffable grief, and you can see all of them here.

[alikuarso]

To answer your question about Fresh: Fresh is actually a parasite! He dresses in his 90's-themed clothes and speaks in a silly way so that others underestimate him. His main and utmost goal is to Survive, and the way he does that is by infecting other people with his parasites and draining the life from their souls. Being seen as harmless lets him get closer to them and gives him easier access for possession. He hopes to eventually take over the multiverse, spreading his parasites in every corner of it and having absolute control.

He also has no emotions. He is capable of them, but for whatever reason he is unable to feel much, besides the rare instance of anger. He does frequently feel fear, though.

He is a bit sadistic, and he likes seeing others suffer. This is because when he takes over someone he drains their soul of life, which causes them pain. And to him, taking someone's body means safety, it means he can survive a bit longer as long as he's snatched their body. So he's come to associate the pain of others as something good.

And he's also aware of the creators/viewers, thanks to an event called the Loveball, which is canon to his character.

Going to copy and paste my own words for this [I was talking to a friend about Loveball]:

"So, like seven years ago there was a fandom-wide event called the Loveball, where people gathered their OCs and had them all attend an UTMV dancing ball. Fresh went, of course. There, he met a Frisk called Pacifrisk. Even knowing who he really was [90's parasite], they still believed he could be good. Before this, he hadn't ever really felt a connection to anyone, or even positive emotions in general. But Pacifrisk's faith in him made him feel positively towards them. This freaked him out. [No Fr@ns though, don't worry. That wasn't the intention for this plot.]

As a result, not only did he try to kill them, but he also went through with his plans: the Fresh Takeover [I forget what it's actually called]. His true reason for attending the ball. OCs were either possessed by the parasites or tried to fight against them. Apparently, some people used alcohol to ward the virus off, as Fresh hates substances such as that.

Fresh wanted to take over the multiverse, with this Loveball being the first step for his total domination.

But then right in the middle of things, a Sans AU [which I totally forget the name of X,D] grabbed Fresh and basically yeeted him into an alternate state of being. One where he could see the creators, all staring at him. An audience.

The Sans revealed the nature of Fresh's existence: That he was simply a character in a story. And if the creators got bored of him, he could easily be written aside and forgotten. Erased. His conquest didn't matter, in the end.

Predictably, this gave him an existential crisis. I'm not sure what happened after, but he stopped invading and went somewhere to contemplate his existence in a depressed state.

Afterwards, he had a new goal: To entertain. To convince the creators that he was worth keeping around. Similar to his previous goal of survival, but now with more dire stakes."

His creator @loverofpiggies has some posts about the Loveball, tagged under either the 'fresh sans' tag or the 'loveball' tag, which I recommend you check out! ^^

But yeah, to answer your question: The reason Fresh fought Ink was probably 1: because he saw it as a good way to keep himself alive and 2: So that he could be relevant and interesting to the viewers.

Hope this answered any questions you might have about him! ^w^

THANK YOU BECAUSE THERE'S NO WAY I WOULD HAVE FOUND ABOUT ANY OF THIS OTHERWISE😭😭😭 THAT'S A LOT

Now I want to draw fresh existential crisis mood, That's something I never would have imagined existed

Im still a bit confused about fresh not having emotions¿ but I think I got the idea, but still, why does he feel fear?

I think fresh is becoming my favorite now, help, error do something

(Thank you again for your time���️)

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for telling my friends I want to use they/them pronouns for a bad reason?

I (19F) am 100% a cis girl, but never really felt like I was "allowed" to be girly or feminine because of a lot of internal and external sexism and misogyny in my house growing up. No one ever really acknowledged the fact that I was a girl, unless it was in a negative sense. I was also homeschooled, so that made things worse because limited social interaction and stuff.

Now that I'm older and have a lot more connection with people through the internet, I'm a lot more comfortable with my identity and genuinely love being perceived as a girl. I understand the gender euphoria trans people feel when someone uses she/her pronouns for me. I also feel a hint of disappointment when people I don't know use they/them for me online (e.g. "prev knows their stuff").

With context out of the way, what actually happened was a few weeks ago. I went through a depressive episode, which came with the usual feelings of not ever deserving good things in life or happiness of any kind, and that no one cared/should care about me. As part of that, I withdrew from my friends for a couple days, leaving our discord server and blocking all of them (I know I shouldn't have done that, we worked it out). When I finally returned, I told them in vague terms that things were rough, I was a mess, and I wanted to start using they/them. I'm the only cis person in the group of 8 people so no one batted an eye about my request and just went along with it.

Here's where I might be the ah: the only reason I asked that is because I thought I didn't deserve to feel good about myself in any way, including my gender. My friends don't know I was asking them for help in basically punishing myself. I know if they'd known they would never go along with it. I also feel like an ah for using my privilege of being cis and having accepting friends to punish myself when there's real people in the world suffering because people refuse to gender them correctly.

Additional details that might be relevant: my friends are great, we met online about two years ago in a bigger server and grew closer and made our own small server not too long after. They know about my mental health issues and have helped me a lot. Almost everyone I know irl is transphobic and homophobic, so my reference for what is offensive and what isn't is kinda off. I still live with my family and they're by no means bad people. I'm also in the process of finding a therapist.

What are these acronyms?

[anachronistic-falsehood]

i. don’t really know what to think about the whole forever situation. because i have seen people say “he’s addressed this a long time ago so why are we bringing it up” but i haven’t seen WHERE he’s addressed it in the past. nary a tweet or clip of anywhere he may have talked about it, but i would love to see an older clip of him talking about this if possible

I’ve seen people say “his tweets and messages were translated in bad faith to give english speakers a bad perception” which. ok yeah understandable but if that’s the case i still don’t know what exactly the situation is or how serious it is

“she was 13” “she was 15” OK WHICH IS IT!!! both are bad but one is still significantly grosser than the other and i don’t know which is true!! or are there multiple girls!!! i don’t know!!!

“he met a fan for flirtatious/sexual reasons” “he met a fan for normal content creator reasons” WHICH IS IT!!!! I DON’T KNOW!!! i guess only he and the fan would know what the intent was when they met, and even then i don’t know if they met alone or if it was a normal ass fan meetup with multiple other people there

“it’s been 7-8 years, he’s changed” ok. now we are making some sense. he has not exhibited this kind of behaviour in years it seems and he appears to be the kind of person who would not say or do these things now. no one is irredeemable and no one is beyond change. still, it is important for some people to know. many fans would rather know this and make the educated choice on whether to support him or not than continue to support him in blind blissful ignorance. even though it’s stressing me out and i’m still clueless about a lot of it, i’m glad i know anyway.

“what about the past transphobia and the ableism and the and the and the-” That Is Not Relevant To This Conversation. this is a different situation. he has apologized for his past opinions and everyone has had ample time to come to terms with them and make peace with supporting him despite his past beliefs.

“he’s deleting past tweets” i mean if someone was digging around my account for things i’ve said that i no longer stand by, i would delete shit too. sure as hell doesn’t make him look innocent but i would do the same. i HAVE done the same, albeit for much more minor and trivial reasons for posts i made when i was like 15, but still

“he apologized and said he’s getting a lawyer!! no guilty person would do that!!” your content creator is not an angel. guilty people take their accusers to court all the time and get away with it. also, it is up to everyone individually to decide whether to believe him or not. you cannot push others to believe your side but you can give context to some things

there’s nuance to this like there is with everything, and people are jumping to conclusions saying either “he’s an innocent little lamb how dare you!” or “he should be deplatformed and we should never speak of him again!” i will never fault anyone for supporting the alleged victim. if your decision is to stop watching him immediately or even stop supporting the qsmp itself, no one should ever fault you for that. it is ultimately up to you to make that decision. the situation is not clear enough for me to make a decision, so i will withhold judgement for now. i will not doompost about it, and i will not call out people for defending or dropping him.

but for the love of god, just. everybody keep your cool. especially english speakers, we may not have full proper translations for the messages and tweets. take a deep breath. if you want to find more info to form an opinion now and spread information that people don’t already have, go ahead. if you want to step back and not think about it for now, go ahead. there is no shame in taking a step back and thinking about other things. you are not morally obligated to be invested in this situation. you are not morally obligated to drop him immediately and you are also not morally obligated to keep supporting him just because he’s friends with your favs. stick to your gut and do what you feel is right. you will be okay. this is not the end of the world.

[daretolovemyrambling]

the Medarda Clan

(picture above is from the arcane artbook, it's concept art for Mel, Kino, Ambessa and Kino's unnamed father. Mel's father isn't named or shown anywhere yet)

I don't think Arcane necessarily retconned this, so I wanted to talk about the Medarda Clan in the League of Legends Universe.

Mel Medarda, while banished from Noxus, likely still retained a high status because a part of the Medarda family also resides in Piltover.

It makes sense that Medarda family members don't just reside in Noxus. Ambessa says herself that she send Mel to Piltover in order to oversee their family's interests. And would it really be called "Medarda House" by Piltover residents if only Mel is in it? Mel would have also been only about 23 when she enters Piltover and 26 when she was a councelor in season 1 act 1 (here is a timeline I made for arcane: x) it's insane, even for her, to establish a well respected house in such a short time in Piltover.

In Legends of Runeterra (a Riot card game that explores the world of Runeterra in more detail), there is a card named Jae Medarda.

His description reads: "Heir apparent to Piltover's prestigious Clan Medarda, Jae preferred hunting ancient artifacts over managing the family business... much to his father's chagrin."

There also some other Medarda family members that we know of; on the League website you can find a map named "Medarda Heirloom", it shows trading routes the Medarda's use. It's a pretty old map though, I think it's from 2016 so I wouldn't really say this very relevant.

On the map you can find a letter by a Medarda Merchant named Jago writen to his nephew, Salob, who seems at risk of being banished.

I tried my best to make out every word:

Nephew Salob,

As much as I am forced to admire your frankly staggering & baffling level of self-belief in the face of numerous failures, failures that would have punctured the ego of the staunchest Zaunite braggart. I would like to confirm, in writing, that control of the Medarda Clan's commerical portfolio and access to the clan trade map. Which you have long coveted, shall not be granted to you - not now - not in time - nor never.

I suggest you take on a profession more befitting your natural talents - perhaps as a chem-lamp lighter - and be grateful to your aunt, my dear wife, that your ties with the clan are not severed completly.

This will be the end of the matter.

Sincerly,

Jago Medarda

The Medarda family seems to love exiling children that don't fit into the family.

I think Jago is now kind of retconned if Arcane is the new canon, or he's at the very least not the head of the clan and has married into the family. Sun Gates are what made a lot of the families in Piltover rich 200 years ago, it's not mentioned in arcane but we do see them in some arcane maps.

In Arcane Ambessa mentions that she fought battles from the Bloodcliffs to the Dalamor Plains. The Black Rose mentions that she might have had an affair while travelling through Basilich, at least fake-Kino claims that this is the area he heard rumors about Ambessa's affair in. I marked all these places with a red dot on the Runeterra map. Basilich is a Port City, if the affair really did happen here, Mel's father could be from any place in Runeterra.

I'm hoping they will expand on the Medarda family in the future, the Ambessa book will likely have some interesting lore about them in it. It comes out in Feb 2025.

From the Synopsis we already know that there will be a cousin of Ambessa that is named Ta’Fik. I'm guessing he knows that Ambessa had an affair and has bad blood with the Black Rose.

Ambessa Medarda: Warrior, general, mother. She is a woman to be feared, and the Medardas are unrivaled in their pursuit of glory. She has led conquests and armies. She has slain legendary beasts. She has made grave sacrifices in her ascent up the ranks. And for this she was rewarded: She entered the realm of death and was granted a vision of herself upon the throne of the vast Noxian empire. But before she can lead her empire, she must become head of her own clan. Yet the title is contested by her cousin and former confidante, Ta’Fik. He knows the bloody sins of Ambessa’s past. And he knows he cannot allow her to rise. They will fight a war for the very soul of the Medardas. But the war won’t be fought on battlefields alone. Ambessa’s daughter, Mel, can deftly break through the walls around anyone’s heart, and she’ll put her talents to use for her mother. Yet despite Mel’s strength, Ambessa sees only a child who lacks her killer instincts. Mel knows she can be the leader Ambessa wants her to be, if only she gives her time. With her family betraying her, enemies closing in on all sides, and unseen forces moving in the shadows, every day proves more dangerous than the last. But Ambessa will not bow. She will burn the world down to claim her place in it.

[dinsbeskar]

To Have and To Hold; To Corrupt and Defile (Sauron/F!Reader)

After you discover his identity, Sauron's master throws a wrench into your happily ever after; or:

You're living in Gondolin before it falls; Sauron currently has you fooled, but his plans are falling apart, and the end of the First Age draws closer.

Sequel to The Number of the Beast // AO3 Link

Soundtrack: Never Let Me Go by Florence + the Machine, Don't Let Me Go by RAIGN, Say You’ll Haunt Me by Stone Sour

Warnings: Angst! Plot heavy, no smut this time!! I know, who am I??

A/N: so we've messed around with the timelines a little, I've alluded to some of the major events of the War of the Jewels, especially Lúthien's victory over Morgoth, and Eärendil's subsequent taking of the recovered Silmaril to the Valar. There is so much to cover, frankly too much, so I'm keeping the references to my favourite stories; a lot of it frankly isn't relevant to our Reader. If Amazon can mess with the timeline, so can I 😂

Word Count: 3.4k!

When you'd returned to your tiny village, eons ago, hand in hand with your new husband, the resulting impromptu celebrations had gone on all day and night. No-one thought to question the sudden appearance of this beautiful stranger, as your kin were so overjoyed for your new love, and still as yet so innocent to the evils of the world.

The subsequent years of being without him so often were only eased by their rallying around you, keeping you occupied to stave off your loneliness. It didn't ease the yearning late at night when all were abed and you were left alone to crave him, but you were used to it by now; which only made his visits all the sweeter.

You woke up today to find your husband stretched out next to you, a pleasant surprise that he must have instantly regretted as you threw yourself on him with a squeak.

"I didn't know you were coming! I'd have prepared for you," you say, your tone faltering as you survey the mess in your cosy rooms with a crease in your brow.

He shakes his head fondly; sometimes the lack of order would set his teeth on edge, but today he was just content to be by your side once more.

He murmurs sweet nothings into your hair as he nestles you closer, wrapping you up and refusing to allow to leave your bed this morning.

The city was growing prosperous, becoming the heart of Elvendom in Middle Earth, and your small abode was so different to the humble beginnings of your kin. Your people were finding strength in numbers, building great cities to fortify against the Enemy.

He cannot visit as often as either of you would like, busy with the war in the north, and now you understand why. His confessions about Morgoth threw you, made you doubt everything you knew, but your soul sang for him regardless, so you pressed it to the back of your mind, your heart and your mind fighting a losing battle. He promised you it was simply too late for him to change sides, that his master's wrath was better fought within his service than without. How could you refuse him?

You had asked him long ago if you could visit him instead, perhaps even pack up your life and move to be with him. His face grew dark, and he refused to even consider it. Now that you knew in whose service he toiled, you understood, and didn't press the issue again.

So you had become increasingly interested in the martial affairs of Gondolin, always hoping to hear nothing of Sauron, for no news was good news.

Your kin ask after him often; you tell them the truth where you can. That he is fighting the war in the north, that his brief respites are spent with you in private. Sometimes, you wish you could show him off to the world; it gets lonely surrounded by your family and friends, happily coupled and deeply in love, whilst you await your beloved for what feels like a lifetime.

When he visits, he crosses the borders of your kingdom with relative ease. Even entering the Hidden City, after centuries of being married to you, they greet him as one of their own, something which now plagues you with guilt; though not enough to keep you apart.

You are unfortunately not the only one, as many of your friends wait for their husbands too, who are also away fighting. The siege of Angband has taken much out of you all, and the number of half-souls wandering Gondolin grows day by day as more Elves are called away to bolster the beleaguered armies.

It is the knowing he is out there, yearning for you as much as you for him, that makes it a little easier. When the war is over, he says, you will be together, nothing will keep you apart. So you pray for his master's downfall any chance you get.

Unfortunately for you, it's not as if Sauron has to worry about any other's affections stealing you away; perhaps if he did, you might see him more often. Binding yourself to another soul changes the way you are perceived, a glimmer of the unseen world breaking into the everyday, in a way that to any other creature is imperceptible. But Sauron takes great pleasure in the knowledge that you are his, and no-one else's, that no-one would even think of touching you, not that you would let them. That possessive streak is something that you'd have thought would repulse you; instead it is deeply and mutually returned, the pair of you wrapped up in each other, blind to any others who might have tried their luck.

~

He's deep in thought, sketching long black lines on his paper, but every so often his eyes flicker to you watching his every move.

You love to see him hard at work, it lets you see what makes him tick, what gives him his boundless energy. You worry that you annoy him with your incessant questions, but any time you falter, he encourages you to ask, so you figure he must like the attention.

Today he is sat working on something very important, something that cannot be rushed. And you're sat at his side, head in your hand, thinking idly of everything and nothing, as his hand races across the paper.

"You haven't said a word," he looks over at you with a small smile, "something the matter, my love?"

"No, darling," you sigh, stretching your arms above your head and pulling yourself closer into his side. "Don't want to disturb you."

"You could never, I've told you so many times." He reaches out with his left hand and squeezes your knee, strokes the side of your face, then presses on with his task, one-handed as he commits to holding your hand.

You hum in assent, leaning your head on his shoulder. You feel him relax into your touch and you fear that perhaps you've ruined his industrious streak.

He puts down his pencil and pulls you close, chin resting on the crown of your head. You feel his heart flutter in his chest, and yours can't help but mirror it.

You enjoy his embrace a moment before disrupting the peace. "So what are you working on?"

He snorts, a noise you don't hear very often from him, usually so composed, and it makes you giggle, pulling away and looking up at his affectionate gaze.

"Not a moment's peace," he chuckles, rubbing the small of your back whilst reaching for his discarded sketches.

He rolls them out and watches for your reaction; yours is the only opinion he would deign to heed.

The long black strokes, the angular shape of it, it looks nothing like you expect. Twisted and wicked, it doesn't match the man sitting at your side.

"Is that... is it some kind headpiece?" You stutter a little under his intense stare; he wants the truth even if he dislikes what you have to say.

He raises his eyebrows a little and nods at you to continue your line of thought.

"Not a helmet. No, too many holes, frankly it would be useless as a helm, there's a great hole in the centre of it-" he can't help but laugh at your rambling, joking at his expense. If only you knew what happens to anyone else who would dare to.

"-Oh! A crown? Who needs a crown?" You finally get there, and you take the scroll from him, holding it up and scrutinising every detail.

"Who, indeed?" His tone is suddenly solemn; you've reminded him of what awaits him when he leaves you.

Morgoth in his crazed stupor, lusting constantly for the star-bright jewels that he already possesses, jealously guarded with a ferocity he hasn't seen in an age.

Your face drops and you pull him to you.

"I'm sorry, love, I didn't think." You know very well his trials and tribulations at his master's hands, but were somehow foolish enough to allude to him. You thought He already had a crown, and you remark as much in your naivety.

He traces your neck and kisses your palm. "It's quite alright, love, I know how... faraway my troubles must seem."

A cold sweat breaks down your spine.

"No, my darling, your troubles are mine, I would carry your burdens if only you were to share them with me." You plead softly; how could you be so naive, spoiling a sweet moment that is not so easily stolen now that he is so busy with the war.

He doesn't speak for a long time, and tears prick your eyes, almost painful in your efforts to hold them back. It is his pain you should focus on, not your own selfish regret.

You lean your head on his shoulder, hoping perhaps that he will open up to you for once, tell you of his torment in the north at the hands of the enemy, the part he plays as an unwilling accomplice to Morgoth's destruction.

As if he can hear your thoughts, he interrupts them softly.

"It is a crown. A conduit, for a power over flesh." He licks his lips nervously, avoiding your gaze.

"What could He need of such power?" You ask, before realising that of course, such power would ensure His victory.

He doesn't answer that question, preferring not to lie to you; you don't need to know exactly who it is for.

"I'd prefer something smaller, more elegant-" he begins to explain before you interrupt.

"Like a ring." You muse, meeting his eye. He raises his brow and looks past you, seemingly intrigued, and you can't help the pride that wells within you, happy to have pleased him so.

He looks back to you, smile fading quickly as he is reminded of what he came to tell you today.

"Speaking of my master, I-" he swallows thickly, the words refusing to cooperate with his tongue. "I have news. Concerning you and I."

His eyes are suddenly dark, and his expression sombre, and all at once you feel an all-encompassing dread that makes you press your hands to his mouth.

"No. Don't tell me. Not now. Please, love, I cannot bear any tale of Him while I worry for you." That much is true, you are too concerned about your lover to hear anything of the Enemy right now; but a tiny part of you simply never wants to hear about Morgoth, never wants to think about the evil your husband has been forced to wreak upon Middle Earth, so hard you have worked to forgive and forget, and you have had your fill now for one day.

"It is important, sweetness," he cups your chin and turns your face to look at him, the dread in your soul seemingly shared if his expression is anything to go by.

"Tell me." You nod reluctantly, anxiously awaiting whatever horror you will have to face together.

~

The fortress is always so hot, fiercely dry like a blazing desert heat, scorching his skin. It is nothing like his golden days with you, dappled sunshine on your skin, a cool breeze on his face.

He has been summoned by his master, which can only be an ill omen. Ever since the fiasco involving the lost Silmaril, and his defeat at the hands of Lúthien and her hound, Sauron had suffered nothing but wrath every time he returned to Morgoth; blaming him for the loss of a jewel from His crown, since he had not been there to defend his master from Lúthien's sweet song. The jewel was now set in the sky by the Valar, a constant reminder of his failure.

For you, as much as it pained you to see him suffer, it was a blessing; more precious time spent with your beloved as he avoids the fortress entirely.

Had it been a shock, when your husband appeared to you as a wolf, gravely injured and desperate for you? Of course. Was his betrayal forgiven and forgotten? Absolutely not. But he was so sincere, so sweet, that every time he told you his servitude to Morgoth was in service of a greater purpose, you believed him. Of course, he wanted only to heal Middle Earth; of course, he was working to lead all free peoples to a greater future; of course.

He was not forgiven, but you were so desperately, blindly in love with him, the dark half of your soul, that you might take him any which way he comes. And he had promised you that the greater good was all he worked for, that he was the salvation of Middle Earth, and how could you not believe him?

So when he told you he'd be gone a while, gone to see his master in the North, you were hardly beside yourself with joy.

"How long?" You entwine your fingers with his, studying every contour of his face, in case it is a lifetime, not a day.

"He did not say." There is trepidation in his tone, and you squeeze his hand in reassurance.

"You are his most valuable servant. All will be well." You cannot say that for certain, but you try to sound convincing.

He exhales slowly, pressing his face into your neck, his flaming hair tumbling across your skin as you lie folded into one another, unwilling to be parted a moment earlier than necessary.

~~~

His blood runs cold as his master's words ring in his ears.

Bring her to me, and let's see how worthy of my favourite servant she is.

He paces his forge, cursing and railing, his plans to keep you secret now gone so horribly awry.

He had been so careful, slipping from the fortress seemingly unnoticed by all but the wolves, whom he easily placated with just his word, perhaps a bone thrown in their midst for good measure.

In fact it was not his absence at all that gave you away.

It was your light, seeping into his fëa and glimmering like the northern star in a pitch black night. Morgoth had noticed this straight away, of course; but rather than punish him inmediately, he chose to toy with him, leading him to believe his great deception was successful.

If she does not come to me, I will be forced to name her, Mairon.

He could not have that, could not let his master's power touch you in any way. You were his, and his alone, and the idea of Morgoth even setting eyes on you made him seethe.

And so he began to plot; too little, too late.

~

"What do you mean, my love? You're scaring me, what do you mean, named?" Your voice shakes as he grips your fingers so tightly, you fear he might pull them off.

"He gave you a title I cannot take back, it is beyond my power to do so." Now it is his turn to tremor before you; you have never seen your husband in such terror, the sight brings you to your knees and you lean your forehead against his.

"Whatever has happened, darling, we can fix it. You and I, we are one, are we not?" You try to smile reassuringly, but he shakes his head and puts a finger to your lips.

"You know the importance of names, love." Of course you do; your kind receive many names over the course of your long lives, names from your father and mother, names for your great deeds, or traits your loved ones find admirable. You already had two, you hardly need another, let alone from his master. Never mind the power of words woven into spells and songs, the unbreakable kind your husband seems now to fear.

"When a being such as Melkor uses his power to bestow a name-" his voice breaks and he swallows thickly, buying himself time before the dam breaks.

"He bestows a name, and so a fate with it."

You raise your eyebrows quizzically, but as his words sink in, you gasp and pull away. What fate could the Great Enemy possibly have in store for you? You were nothing and no-one; why would he elect to use even a tiny morsel of power on you?

"I don't want to know." Your words surprise you both.

He draws back, regarding you, brow furrowed.

"You must, my love, you know I cannot break his will-"

"I don't care." You draw yourself up, taking a deep breath. "I forgave you your sins when you came to me with the truth. I have kept your secret from everyone I know and love. You promised me Morgoth would never discover us. This is your doing, and I will have no part in it."

His heart sinks, wrenches in pain, as the gravity of your words hits him, as you refuse to allow him to brush away the tears streaming down your face. Do you not understand? He cannot unsing the will of his master, it might as well have been written in stone, if the fabric of the universe were not hardier.

You jump to your feet, anger bubbling in your stomach, and you pace and curse Morgoth and all he stands for, Sauron wincing every time your lips twist to make the ugly sound of the Enemy's name.

"Amarië-" At hearing your name, you round on him, your eyes blazing with a fire he has only ever seen in himself, and though your anger is directed at him, it thrills him, the hair on the nape of his neck standing on end, and he has to fight every instinct to take you and hold you and ravish the wrath from your being.

"Will it help? If I know my fate? I cannot change it even when you tell me, so perhaps I should live in blissful ignorance, as I did before you revealed yourself?" Your tone is so sharp, it cuts him like no sword could; he recoils from the heat of your words, the furnace blast that emanates from your anger, trepidation and admiration combining in a heady mix that makes his heart sing for you.

You feel a pang of guilt; you hate these new emotions, these feelings you'd never experienced before meeting him. Anger, sadness, betrayal; these had all been alien notions before Mairon, no, Sauron, had walked into your forest.

He has worked his expression into something more impassive, but you know he is hurt; sighing softly, you kneel and take his hand, still gripped with rage but mollified a little by your husband’s remorse. He has worked so hard to make it up to you, to show you how he is not the Enemy that your kin believe him to be.

"Will it make you feel better if I know?" You ask, searching his eyes for an answer. Please say no, please say you'll bear this burden alone... Your heart cannot take more sorrow, more betrayal; and to know would be to worry about something you cannot change.

"Eglandis." If your Elf ears were not so sensitive, you might not have heard him, how quietly he admits your doom.

Your blood runs cold, sweat breaks in uncomfortable waves down your back, as you realise the horrible truth, why your husband is so often absent, and why he was so terrified of your reaction.

"Forsaken one." You pause, thinking a moment, your heart beating out of your chest. "No, forsaken bride."

Doomed to live without your husband, this was the fate Morgoth had chosen for you. To punish Sauron for choosing a bride at all, for weakening himself in the pleasures of the flesh, he had also punished you. Had you not suffered enough? Forced to keep your love a secret from your kin, now you feared losing him forever.

"That is a cruel fate." You mutter, nose to nose with him as he seeks to comfort you.

"I am not going anywhere." He takes your hands in his once more, thumbs rubbing small circles in your palms.

"I swear to you, you will never be rid of me, no matter how hard fate pulls us apart, I will always be with you." He presses a kiss to your lips, trying to reassure you that he is here, that nothing will take you from him, but you can't move, can't breathe, as a crushing wave of grief overtakes you.

As you curl into his chest, he sweeps his sketches out of the way; it would be a shame to crumple that which is of the utmost importance to him, your crown to match his.

[genericpuff]

So I watched ChattyMia's Lore Olympus video which was great and everyone should watch it. It seems most people who do series reviews of the Lore Olympus don't like the comic for obvious reasons. Then I was reminded by the end that the comic is expecting a TV series which is in development hell. It made me think that Rachel might be better off not having a Lore Olympus TV show. Most praise for the series died awhile ago as the story became an utter mess. If it did get a TV show, people will see the early red flags like the age gap, the treatment of Minthe, trying to excuse cheating, Hades horrible behavior to workers, nymphs being discriminated with no pushback, etc. If some of them read the comic for spoilers they would later see the other big red flags of the series. Excusing slave labor, Persephone threatening the lower class, Hera getting with Echo a 'trash nypmh' as she once called Minthe, Apollo gets community service, the continued mistreatment of Demeter etc. Which I feel will cause everyone to go 'wtf is this series? 50 Shades of Grey mixed with Keeping Up with the Kardashians?'. Then you have to wonder if some of them will do a deep dive and find the stuff about Rachel's tie to Lolita. It would be especially bad if a bigger content creator talked about it. And we already know Rachel doesn't handle criticism the best (i.e. the struggle street tweet, the Minthe cosplay situation or even the merch). So I could only imagine how much worse it would be for her if Lore Olympus got a TV show and more eyes got drawn to it and her. It would no longer be just confided to the web comics fanbase but the much larger TV one. Unless Rachel seriously considered rewriting the TV script (or rekindling it lol) I don't see how a TV adaptation of her show would be good press for her.

Yess I've seen that video, it's great! She did a great job summarizing a lot of the biggest core issues with LO's story and art without getting too lost in the sauce (though god knows the rabbithole of LO's issues runs INCREDIBLY deep in an equally fascinating and "oh god what the fuck did I just read' kind of way), her video editing was very entertaining and her Persephone cosplay was a great touch 😎

That said, regarding the thought of "most people who do series reviews of LO don't like the comic", there is an amount of bias we have to acknowledge there - there's often a lot more to say in the negative rather than the positive. By extension, people who simply enjoy LO and don't participate much in the online discussion surrounding it or the discourse concerning it are less likely to make 2 hour videos analyzing it. So while the popular opinion of LO has shifted more towards a negative point of view, that doesn't mean that fans of the comic don't exist - it's just that most of those fans are blissfully enjoying the comic and can only sum it up as "it's very pretty and the plot is great", whereas many people who didn't enjoy it are more likely to voice their opinions as to why in far more explicit detail (though on the flipside of that, it also goes to show that there's a lot more to analyze in LO's flaws than its strengths - it's ironic that the fans often don't have much to say beyond "it's cute" or "I relate to Persephone" and anything further than that is relegated to pure headcanon pieced together by assumption and best guesses to make up for Rachel's lack of writing).

All that aside though, regarding the TV adaption, at this point it's less a matter of reception and more a matter of relevancy. The perfect time to release or at least show us proof of the LO TV show was years ago, when the comic was at its peak between 2020-2021. The second best time was at last year's NYCC when Rachel was a headlining guest. The fact they still had nothing to show for it at this year's NYCC, with Rachel nowhere to be seen and instead focusing more on the Freaking Romance adaption with Snailords filling the role as their featured guest (an equally if not even more problematic creator), is astounding, but unsurprising.

To me, LO feels like a real life case of "Tortoise and the Hare". Back at the start of it all, in 2017-2018, it was doing what no other comic on the platform was doing, presenting us a retelling of the Hades and Persephone story - which was very popular on Tumblr at the time - through a modern setting and with art that was incredibly unique for the platform. That, paired with WT's aggressive marketing, propelled it far ahead every other comic on the platform, creating a gap so massive that even the comics in second place on the trending tabs still weren't even close to LO's lead in terms of stats and money.

But then it got complacent. Quality of the comic's writing and art dropped, it was becoming increasingly obvious that LO had become no more than a marketing grift akin to the likes of Harry Potter - easily turned into books, t-shirts, socks, coloring books, figures, etc. - and that gave way to an increase of criticism towards it, criticism that had always somewhat existed even as far back as its days on Tumblr, but was now amplified by the existing ongoing proof that LO was never all it was cracked up to be.

Now, at best they shill $200+ figurine pre-orders, but the show is nowhere to be seen and, with the comic now finished and locked behind Daily Pass, its relevancy is dying out. "Rachel Smythe Presents" still has nothing to show for itself, Rachel's IG and Twitter seem to be purely for merch-pushing by the Inklore team, and Rachel has, at best, two new series that she suddenly announced but, in her words, don't even have anything written or planned for them yet beyond the taglines that were thrown together for her socials.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Greek myth retelling industry is in a renaissance. Hades is still a massively popular game, with its sequel now in early access; Epic: The Musical has been making waves on Spotify and TikTok far exceeding that of LO's in terms of audience reach, and even has more to show for itself in the way of official animations than LO ever has; and now Kaos has recently launched its first season after being in production since 2018 - yes, you read that right, it got commissioned around the exact same time LO became an Originals series which suggests the idea for it was already floating around and being pitched prior to LO - and, frankly, has beaten LO at its own game by achieving everything LO set out to do - weaving a Greek epic-style story in a modern setting, balancing romance with prophecies and world-ending stakes. It took a while, but Kaos made it past the finishing line, while LO has been dragging itself behind it, still making empty promises that a TV show is "still in the works" and "coming soon", with not a single thing to show for itself.

LO may have gotten a head start in being the "sleek, modern, sexy Greek myth retelling" by the virtue of being a weekly webtoon, but slow and steady wins the race - the productions that have taken their time cooking in the oven are now coming out as beautiful and delicious as we, the guests at the table, were told would be, while LO is simply the short-term gratification junk food that bombards us with gimmicks but sits like a rock in our stomachs and leaves us unfulfilled and wishing for a better meal.

Those better meals are here now and they were absolutely worth the wait.

[maxdibert]

Honestly, if Severus had had emotional maturity, he would have realized that Lily always minimized his harassment by the marauders, like "boys will be boys." If I were Snape, I would have cut off the friendship a long time ago. What would you do in Severus' position?

The problem with Severus and Lily's relationship is that it wasn’t built on equal footing. Lily made a friend, possibly like many others in her life, because she came from a structured family with a solid foundation in interpersonal relationships. Despite her issues with Petunia, we know her parents adored her and were thrilled to have a witch for a daughter, so we can assume her emotional role models were quite positive, which helped her build relationships at school and even become somewhat popular. For Severus, though, Lily wasn’t just a friend. Severus came from a poor and dysfunctional family, his father was abusive, and his mother didn’t seem to do much to protect her son from that abuse. His view of relationships and affection was already deeply distorted by the environment he grew up in. For him, being with Lily, playing with her, was a way to escape what was happening at home. It was a moment of peace, of stability, something he wasn’t familiar with. I genuinely believe he developed a very strong emotional dependency on her and her attention, because, from childhood, Lily represented everything good, everything that made him feel safe and important to someone.

Then adolescence hit, and they had very different interests and goals. I don’t hate Lily, but I do think she was a bit shallow. I mean, ending up with a rich, socially successful bully is pretty shallow. And it fits her character, because at the end of the day, she was a lower-middle-class girl in the Muggle world, and a Muggle-born in the magical world—she didn’t belong to any relevant social class in either. So, being pursued and courted by the most popular guy in her year, who was also super rich and from an important family, must have appealed to her. J.K. Rowling said in an interview, when someone mentioned that Lily supposedly hated James, that “Lily never hated James. You, as a woman (to the interviewer), should understand or know that.” She hinted that all the hatred towards James was an act and that she was actually attracted to him, which tells me a lot about Lily as a person and her values. I would never date a bully, whether or not they had attacked my friend. If I saw someone constantly abusing others at school, I wouldn’t date that person, but Lily did. And I don’t think it was because James made her believe he had changed, manipulated her, or any of the nonsense people say. I don’t think Lily was stupid. I think she knew exactly what she was doing by getting involved with someone who could give her social status, a life of comfort, and a position she didn’t have in either the magical or Muggle world.

Severus clearly went in a different direction. He wasn’t doing well at school, and the rich, popular kids decided that picking on him was easier than going after their rich, pure-blood classmates, because those pure-bloods could get them into real trouble, so it was easier, more comfortable, and safer to go after the weakest link—the poor half-blood. They made life unbearable for someone who already felt that life outside of school was equally unbearable. They bullied someone who was already being abused outside of school, and that’s probably what pushed Severus—if he already had an interest in the Dark Arts—closer to more negative influences.

Lily and Severus grew apart as they matured, and this is completely normal. It happens to all of us as kids. We all had those close childhood friends who took different paths during adolescence, and that’s okay. The problem is that, despite everything, Severus still saw Lily as that symbol of his childhood happiness. She was his happy memory (which is why the whole Patronus thing makes a lot of sense), because he probably didn’t have happier moments than the ones he shared with her. And in the midst of all the bullying and questionable influences at Hogwarts, during the early years, Lily was probably also his safe space. But Lily didn’t see Severus in the same way, and I’m not talking about romance, but rather that she didn’t see their friendship as something necessary, something emotionally vital for her. Severus was dependent; she wasn’t.

In a way, I think that, beyond emotional immaturity, Severus also lacked healthy emotional role models, and therefore he didn’t realize that Lily was actually kind of a jerk. Add to that the fact that he was blinded by her, considering her his emotional anchor, and he probably wasn’t able to see her negative traits. That’s also very common.

I believe that if Lily hadn’t died and Severus had had the chance to have a life of his own without sacrificing all his autonomy and independence to serve Dumbledore, over time he would have matured and gained perspective, because despite everything, he was a smart guy. He would have realized that his relationship with Lily was always one-sided, and I think he could have started fresh and become a functional person. But he never got that chance. It’s been proven in psychiatry that abuse victims who don’t process their traumas remain stuck in the time period when the abuse occurred. In Severus’ case, the abuse started in childhood and continued throughout adolescence, so it’s logical and normal that he ended up being a very dysfunctional adult, unable to manage his emotions properly or set limits for himself when situations triggered him too much. In some ways, he acts like a child. The comment about Hermione’s teeth is childish—it sounds like something Draco would say, and Draco is a teenager. The same goes for many of his remarks to Harry or Neville, which are basically sarcastic jabs from a bratty kid being a jerk. I think we see this best (because it happens between equals, interestingly between two people with significant emotional issues) when he has several confrontations with Sirius. Maybe Sirius’ immaturity is more obvious because he’s a loudmouth and pretty extroverted, but Severus also behaves like a brat, which shows that despite not spending 12 years in Azkaban, he hasn’t grown either. If we think about it, Severus had his own Azkaban: Hogwarts. He had to return to the place where he had a terrible time and experienced several of his worst traumas, to teach, even though he didn’t even want to be a teacher, and he had to adopt that jerk persona to mask all the emotions and insecurities he felt being there. You can’t heal in the place where you were hurt. You can’t heal by giving up your life for a greater good. You can’t heal while feeling guilty over the death of someone who was once the most important person in your life. Severus was stuck in adolescence mentally, even though he was an adult. And this happens a lot with victims like him.

Honestly, despite everything, I think Severus was quite level-headed and pretty decent. Or maybe I’m saying this because I’m more of a jerk than he is, but I would have made James Potter and Sirius Black suffer a lot. I would have found out all their secrets and made them public, putting all my efforts into making them wish they were dead and even have suicidal thoughts. And if a friend of mine had acted like Lily, who kind of laughed when Snape was being abused, I would’ve beaten her so badly she’d lose her nose. But well, I have less ethics than Severus and maybe more temper.

[redflagshipwriter]

Nest Swap 9

masterpost

Having a mission changed everything. 

Tim took full advantage of his new knowledge of the holy manuals. The first rule that he took to heart was that he was meant to be armed. Of course! It made sense.

Unfortunately, he was also not meant to take any weapon onto the field that he hadn’t trained with. Tim thought hard for a while whether or not a suburban house counted as ‘in the field’, but it seemed like he should pay lip service to Batman’s rule. So he got some sharp things that seemed interesting and spent some time throwing them at a target. They kind of looked like Batarangs, but… different. 

“I don’t think bats change shape in the next ten years or so,” Tim muttered. He gave another half hearted throw. The thing dinged off the wall below his target. “So this isn’t meant to be a bat shape. Did Batman rebrand to the Birdman and no one fixed his wiki page yet? Is this a parallel universe and not my actual future?”

It occurred to him that it might be a bird because of Robin. But come on, Robins didn’t use sharp things. Robin was a child. It was irresponsible for children to use blades. 

Tim sent another thingy into the wall. It hit with the pointy end first this time and sank an inch into the wall to the right of the target. He held his breath as it wiggled for a moment. Then it went still without falling.

“Yes!” He punched the air. Thank gosh! He was getting bored with that. It was good to be done with training. It was kind of dull.

Steps one and two were finished. He had a weapon and he had trained with it. Tim went back to his list. The next technical skill set was lock picking. That was super easy and fun! Tim enjoyed the clear diagrams and explanations. There wasn’t anything to practice with, but he thought that he had the concept down handily. He grabbed a set of lockpicks for his khaki pockets. 

He needed to do a little more to understand the patterns of the target, as well as their background. Tim considered asking Jason for any information, but he probably didn’t have any. Maybe he wasn’t very good at googling. So he just did it. The Sausage Guy was more commonly known as Benedict Orange, a name that Tim really liked and mentally stored away to use as an alias when he was a superhero. 

Anyway. Tim figured out how old the guy was, where he’d gone to school, and a bunch of other stuff like the record of his marriage ten years ago. 

“Huh,” Tim said, brows furrowed. “I didn’t find a divorce record. But he’s single now?” Mr. Orange had accounts on a lot of dating sites. He was using his engagement photo for the profile photo, with his wife cut out.

That was weird. He tried to find the wife, but there wasn’t anything more recent than 8 years ago, when she’d announced that she was quitting her job on social media. 

…Tim had kind of a bad feeling about that. 

He put a pin in it for now, but he had a small theory at the back of his mind that started with ‘I think this guy killed his wife.’

Maybe that was how the human sausage thing started. Maybe he’d killed her on impulse and then needed a way to get rid of the body. And then maybe he’d gotten a taste for it.

Tim shuddered. Okay, okay, he was for real done thinking about this! Big yucky.

Benny Orange was an office worker with a title that Tim didn’t really understand. It seemed vague to the point of uselessness, but then again, that was office work. The relevant thing was that he got home around 6 pm, and he left at 8 am.

It was 10 in the morning. Tim could get over there and toss Benny’s home before the end of the workweek if he hurried. The manual said that you should never spend more than an hour investigating an unsecured location. It also said that you should file a report or directly inform someone of where you’d be. 

That part made Tim pause for a moment before he remembered that he’d told Jason. Jason would probably check on him when he woke up, or whatever.

Tim found an equipment belt that he could wrap around his waist twice to buckle on. He put his sharp things in it. Then he untucked his shirt, because he had tucked it in out of habit and that would make it harder to access his weapons. He frowned as he did it. It just felt wrong.

He put on his shoes and got out the door. He didn’t have a lot of time to waste if he wanted to be able to take his time, so Tim hailed a taxi to cross most of the distance this time. He was grateful that Mrs. Henderson was gone and there was no chance of seeing her. Last time had been a little bit of a disaster. Needing civilian help to get into the building was not a winning move.

He had bat-approved lockpicks this time. He went to the front door and did his best. 

It turned out that maybe he should have practiced? Tim started to sweat out in the open. It felt like someone was staring at his back. He looked at the houses around. No one was at their windows or walking outside. He started jumping whenever the tall herbs in Mr. Orange's garden swayed in the breeze. He had a lot of plants.

His hands were shaking. The sweat made his shirt stick to his back. He was going to get caught and in so much trouble.

When the door finally opened, Tim offered up a thanks to Bast, because he assumed the cat goddess was more likely to be pro-breaking and entering than other gods. That logic was just based off of what he knew about Catwoman, honestly. 

The first glimpse into Benedict Orange's home was disappointingly normal. He had vinyl flooring (easy to clean!), leather furniture, and a big flat TV high up on the wall. He didn’t have enough knickknacks and there was no art. There was a wood and glass case that was full of identical, unlabeled bottles with something red in it. Hot sauce? Was he a hot sauce guy?

Tim mentally reclassified Mr. Orange further down the list of ‘people I could talk to at a cocktail party.’

The place had the same layout as Mrs. Henderson’s place, just in reverse. Tim beelined to the kitchen because.. Well.

He just did.

The counter space where Mrs. Henderson had a hot water kettle, a big stand mixer, and a toaster was mostly clear here. Mr. Orange only had one piece of cooking machinery. Tim didn’t know it. He squinted at it. It was a big shiny stainless steel thing. It had a metal tray, a wheel, and like… a nozzle. When he climbed on a chair to look down, he could see there was a little tunnel tube thing where you could put stuff inside the body of the machine.

Weird. Moving on!

He checked inside the fridge. He stared for a moment of aghast silence. There was a stack of takeout containers, a bunch of seasonings in the door, and a stack of tupperware with something red in them. 

Cautiously, Tim dug one out and opened it.

“That’s raw meat,” he said, voice high. He put the box back in and then hesitated. Maybe he should be like, taking it? Or taking a sample? To see what animal it came from?

“I’ll think about it.” Tim shut the fridge a little harder than he needed to and beat feet out of the kitchen. He started checking the other rooms. He found the master bedroom. His nose wrinkled. “I don’t think he’s restyled this since Brenda died,” Tim complained. He looked at the curtains with extreme judgment. They were so outdated it wasn’t even funny, but they also weren’t retro yet!

Oh. Wait. Belatedly, Tim remembered that it was ten years into his future. So, maybe they were retro now. Anyways, Brenda had liked the trend for chickens and roosters. There were chickens and roosters everywhere in the decor, including a cute print of what was obviously intended to be a husband and wife pair snuggling on a sofa.

His heart hurt a little. He looked at it a little too long. 

Tim took a deep breath. Then he went back to looking for evidence. There wasn’t much in the bedroom, so clearly Mr. Orange had a personal office elsewhere. There were two more rooms in the apartment.

Tim opened the next door. The room was mostly a guest bedroom, with the notable exception of a huge chest freezer and a weird long wooden bar across the room.

Tim shut the door.

The last room was the office. There was a desk, a file cabinet, and a lockbox full of women’s drivers licenses.

“Yeah, okay,” Tim said under his breath. “He’s a serial killer.” He took photos and sent them to Jason immediately with the subject line “Yeah he’s a killer!!!”

Then he got down to sorting through the papers to see if there was anything else. Jason was a Robin, Tim supposed, so he’d need the evidence to show the police. It would be helpful if he just went and sorted it out now. He found warranties for the TV, the new freezer, and he presumed that ‘Meat Grinder’ meant the thing in the kitchen.

“I appreciate that he’s so organized, actually,” Tim muttered. He was hunched over digging through the bottom drawer now.

A key went into a door. 

Tim froze stock still. He slowly, silently shut the drawer. He stared at the closed door to the living room. On the other side of it, Mr. Orange unlocked and opened the front door. Tim slowly looked up, saw 12:14 on the clock, and vaguely registered that sometimes people come home on their lunch breaks.

The front door shut. There was a quiet metal sound that Tim thought was probably the chain lock. The chain lock that was too high for him to move without a chair to stand on.

Okay. Uh. He looked around for a place to hide. The best option was under the desk. Tim crawled through the legs of the chair, heart beating furiously.

He weighed his options. Wait it out and hope Mr. Orange didn’t come in?

…Seemed risky. But there was no way he was going to run out past the guy to the front door. At least, the odds that he’d get grabbed were just not good, not when he didn’t know where Mr. Orange was. 

Alright. Tim knew reality. He might not be able to get out of this on his own. At the very least, he should let Jason know what was going on so that they could add his murder to the list of charges. And maybe Jason was close by to help? Wayne Manor was awfully far away, so probably not. But it didn’t hurt to try.

He got his phone back out and was silently very glad that he had it. Jason had responded to his message. Tim didn’t take the time to read it, instead typing up a blank email with the subject line “um might need help asap :( he here”. He sent it. Then he huddled down to wait.

Noises came from the kitchen- the suction as the fridge opened. The beep of the microwave. A man’s voice saying, “What the fuck? Did I leave this here?”

His blood turned ice cold.

‘What did I do?’ Tim desperately tried to remember what he’d touched in the kitchen. Had he really moved something around? He didn’t remember anything! His heart rate went up like crazy.

The door opened. Tim flinched. His whole body started shaking uncontrollably.

Oh. No. It wasn’t this door yet. It was the door to the next room, the spare bedroom. He heard the weird squelch of the chest freezer opening. Then the closet door squeaked open. Something heavy moved around. 

“Well, it wasn’t you,” said Mr. Orange. There was a mean satisfaction in his tone. The heavy thing moved again.

Tim’s brain went a bit blank.

Who was he talking to? Was there someone in the apartment? Hidden behind something heavy?

He opened up another email. Jason hadn’t responded, so there was no way to know if he’d seen. Tim hastily typed up, “I think there’s a living hostage in the house” and sent it as the door to the office opened.

He hugged his arms around his knees and squeezed his eyes shut. Oh gosh. Oh heck. Oh no, oh no. He bit his lower lip and broke skin.

‘No. I can’t be a baby about this.’ 

It was really hard with how stiff his fingers felt. But Tim put the phone in his pocket and wrestled the sharp bird weapon out. He held it clumsily. And he watched Mr. Orange’s feet move around the room. They walked around the room. He saw the curtains move as Mr. Orange pulled them to check no one was hiding there. Then he knew that Mr. Orange was coming to his hiding spot.

Tim swallowed. He waited until Mr. Orange’s feet were in sight. He stabbed his sharp thing down through the top of Mr. Orange’s sock.

Mr. Orange bellowed and fell back against his filing cabinet. 

Tim scrambled out and ran.

He went towards the front door on automatic and nearly got there before he looked up and saw that yes, the chain lock was on. He couldn’t reach it. 

“You little shit!” Mr. Orange bellowed. He lunged at Tim. Tim barely dodged. He jabbed at him again without looking and barreled towards the door to Mrs. Henderson’s apartment. It only had a doorknob lock. He unlatched it, praying that she had not changed her ideas about the open door policy. The door handle turned.

He threw himself into the room and slammed the door shut. He clicked the little button lock.

Mr. Orange hit the door, hard. It shook. He wasn’t saying anything anymore. There was something about that which struck Tim as absolutely terrifying. Didn’t people bellow and yell when they were mad? 

He looked towards Mrs. Henderson’s door. The door shook again as Mr. Orange hit it.

Wood splintered.

If he went out Mrs. Henderson’s front door he could sprint for it. What were the odds he could outrun a grown man? If he did, wouldn’t Mr. Orange just get in his car? Potential witnesses had made Mr. Orange back off before, but he was more invested now in silencing Tim. And there was no one around. Tim had checked. 

The door splintered again. He could see Mr. Orange’s shoulder. Then a socked foot.

‘I don’t think I stabbed his foot well enough,’ some distant part of Tim’s brain catalogued. ‘He’s still moving on it. If I live past this, I’m going to commit to the next stabbing with more enthusiasm.’

He bolted for the stand where Mrs. Henderson kept her mace. He was just out of sight from Mr. Orange’s hole in the door. His heart thudded so loud. His shaking had stopped. The mace didn’t  feel heavy. 

‘If I was taller, i’d aim for the face. I can’t pull that off. I’ll aim for center mass. He may block with an arm, but theoretically his arm will be hurt enough that I’ll be able to pull back and make another swing.’

There was a catastrophic smash from inside Mr. Orange’s apartment. 

Then a “What the fuck-” that got cut off a little early. Mr. Orange sounded mad and confused. 

A thud. Two smaller thuds. A clicking. Tim wanted so badly to know what was going on. 

A hand reached through the hole in the door and unlatched the lock. 

Tim swallowed. He readied a swing. 

The door opened.

Tim took a step forward and swung Mrs. Henderson’s antique mace with maximum strength directly into the armored center mass of a guy who was NOT Mr. Orange.

“Oh my gosh,” Tim said, horrified, at the instant he connected. The guy was looking forward. He looked down too late, just as the mace hit.

There was sort of a bounce. The mace bounced back off the tummy armor without digging in or drawing blood. Half of Tim was relieved, and half was terrified that his plan had failed. 

The guy doubled over and made a sound that was a lot like GURK. He clutched at his torso with one arm and pointed a gun at Tim with the other.

Tim put his hands up.

The guy looked at Tim. Presumably. It was hard to tell through his ugly red motorcycle helmet.

“I really should have known.” 

His mechanical voice was scary.

Bad guy! 

Tim took his chances and another swing before the guy could shoot him. He expected to hear a shot as he smashed his mace again. The guy yelped and jerked backwards to avoid getting hit. Then there was a thud.

Tim peered through the door cautiously. The guy had tripped over Mr. Orange. Mr. Orange was laying on the floor facedown, arms zip tied behind his back. 

“Oh, sorry,” Tim apologized. He took a couple steps over to put the mace back away. He gave Mr. Orange a wide berth.

“I never would have guessed that the Red Hood used kids like this,” Mr. Orange said meanly. He narrowed his eyes at Tim. “Small, even for bait.”

The Red Hood guy pointed his gun at Mr. Orange’s head. Tim shrieked.

The Red guy stopped. He seemed to look at Tim again. He had some really bad words. “Alright.” He got back up to his feet and put the gun away.

Right. He’d probably just been joking or something. Tim belatedly registered the control it must have taken to not accidentally shoot while being attacked and falling over. 

Oh. Wait. It was a huge coincidence that a hero came right now, unless-

‘Is this Jason?’ Tim felt his eyebrows go all the way up. He wanted to ask a million questions. His mouth was firmly glued shut, though. Partly it was infosec. But it was also embarrassment.

[writingquestionsanswered]

I'm writing a novel that criticizes the unethical way AI has been used and how newer technology is replacing older methods when they should still be available.

What I'm struggling with is to plan the story while having the tone in mind, because my main characters are goofballs, they're all supposed to bring funny moments and comic relief, but even with the comedic parts I don't want to make the social critic a satire. How do I plan a story with humorous characters doing serious stuff and keep a balance of humurous moments and serious subjects?

Balancing Humor with Serious Themes

Here are some things to keep in mind...

1 - Let the majority of the humor derive from the characters themselves. Since you say the characters are goofballs and bring comic relief, it sounds like you're already doing that. Keeping the characters as the primary source of humor helps to create a buffer between them and the actual (serious) situation.

2 - Time the comedic moments appropriately. When it comes to balancing humor with serious themes, timing is everything. The best time to use comedy in a serious story is when the tension needs to be momentarily relieved. This creates a nice contrast which makes the seriousness of the moment feel that much more serious and deepens the emotional resonance.

3 - When possible, keep the comedy relevant. Let's say you have a dramatic moment where the characters are hunkered down, waiting for something bad to happen (that they know is going to happen), and it's super tense, so one of the characters says something funny. It isn't going to make a lot of sense if they just randomly say, "Have you ever noticed you can never remember the three items you went into the grocery store to buy, but you can recite lines from a movie you saw once nine years ago?" That is a funny observation, but what does it have to do with that particular moment? How is it relevant to what's going on?

A more relevant funny observation would be, "Why is it when I'm waiting my turn to present a book report, the seconds fly by, but when you're waiting for the arrival of a blood-thirsty shapeshifter, suddenly every second takes five minutes?"

Alternatively, if the group happens to be waiting for said blood-thirsty shapeshifter while hunkered down inside a grocery store, that gives the shopping observation relevance.

4 - Work in character development by letting comedic quips reveal quirks, flaws, vulnerabilities, strengths, relationships, personal stakes, and personal journey.

5 - Avoid jarring transitions by using environmental or narrative cues to signal shifts in mood. For example, after the comedic quip is made, maybe the lights flicker and go out, or a huge shadow falls across the floor, signaling the arrival of the bad thing they're waiting for. This helps to transition between the comedic moment (and any comedic reaction) back to the seriousness of the moment at hand.

Happy writing!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[starsstuddedsky]

Blonde Phase

Renjun x gn reader

summary: spontaneous hair decisions always end in regret. that's what you expect to hear when you tell renjun you're bleaching your hair, but instead you find support, and even his help. you should appreciate his wholehearted support but instead it has you wondering: why doesn't he care?

genre: fluff, minimal angst, technically they're in grad school but that's not particularly relevant, non idol au,

warnings: swearing, mentions of drinking, spontaneous hair decisions (i do not endorse), lmk if I missed any

wc: 4.4k

a/n: in the immortal words of charles boyle, the most intimate thing you can do with a lover is wash their hair. yknow i made fun of him for that until i wrote this. i see it. also its been so long since ive finishing anything, pls forgive me if this is bad. renjun i love u. as always I'd love to hear what you think <3

“I’m bleaching my hair.” If you say it fast enough, Renjun won’t be able to talk you out of it. The plastic bag swings around your wrist as you walk across the parking lot. “I’ve already bought the bleach and gloves and stuff, and I’m going to do it, today.”

He’s quiet for so long you check to make sure the call hasn’t dropped. “Okay.”

You almost drop your phone. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, drawing the word out. “Was I supposed to say something else?”

“Um, yeah?” You say. “You have opinions about literally everything. You talked me out of buying those pants two days ago.” You finally get to your car, tossing the bag onto the passenger seat and half-falling behind the wheel.

“That’s because they were made of polyester, and the thrift store was still charging $15,” he says immediately. “That was a scam.”

“Money is temporary, drip is forever.”

“Those pants would have lasted a year max, before they fell apart, and you still haven’t learned how to sew so you wouldn’t even be able to mend them or upcycle them.”

“You know what, I didn’t buy the pants, so this fight is moot,” you say. You set the phone on speaker, turning the engine on to blast the AC.

“Well, not moot. Technically I won,” Renjun says.

“I’d respect you more if you weren’t insufferable.”

“Here I was thinking you appreciated my insight,” he says. “You even asked for it.”

“I did not!”

“You literally asked about bleaching your hair.”

“I said I was surprised you didn’t have an opinion, not that I wanted to hear it,” you say.

“Semantics,” Renjun says. “So what time do you want to come over?”

You frown. “Tonight?”

“The roommates are out of town for the whole weekend, and I have way better ventilation,” he says. “I’d much rather bleach it without passing out.” He pauses. “You do want help, right?”

“Honestly, I was not expecting support. I was fully ready to fight you on this,” you say.

He snorts. “Come over whenever, I'm not doing anything today.”

“See you in twenty minutes.” You hang up, feeling a strange ball of tension roll around in your gut. That was… too easy? Renjun always has something to say about your admittedly impulsive tendencies. But if he’s going to help you’re not going to reject it—knowing Renjun he’s probably already watching Youtube videos and learning more than you will ever know about bleaching hair.

And it’s Renjun. When have you done anything without his help?

.

.

Renjun opens the door wearing a wearied expression. He doesn’t bother to greet you or even smile, just unlocks the door and steps to the side.

“Hi to you, too,” you say, trading your shoes for the spare slippers resting by the doormat. You follow Renjun into the space that serves as kitchen, dining room, living room, and Jaemin’s miniature gym, with weights and mats stacked next to the television.

“Who the hell clogs a toilet and then leaves for the weekend,” Renjun says.

You set down your plastic bag full of hair products and frown. “That’s disgusting.”

Renjun leans against the counter. “And you didn’t have to spend the last forty minutes trying to unclog it.”

“So which of the guys are you going to murder?” You try to guess, running through his roommates: you find it hard to believe Jaemin would do such a thing. Jeno maybe, and Donghyuck would certainly think it’s funny. But, in all honesty, it could have been any of them.

“Don’t know,” Renjun says, “but knowing them, they’ll make a pact to protect each other.”

“Seriously?”

Renjun pauses, gaze sheepish. “It’s what I did when I accidentally killed Jaemin’s little succulent that survived his college dorm.”

You fake a gasp, placing a hand over your chest. “Every day I learn something new about you. That’s devious.”

“I was drunk!” Renjun says, holding up a finger. “And Jeno and Donghyuck pushed me into it, so it was equally their fault.”

“If you say so.” You glance around the apartment. “Where are they all?”

“Jaemin’s visiting family, Jeno has a soccer tournament, and Donghyuck said he’s going camping with Yangyang.” Renjun says, counting off with his fingers.

“Donghyuck and Yangyang are friends?”

“Yeah, according to them they bonded over dealing with me.”

“Those were their exact words?”

“Dealing with my ‘stupid ass,’” Renjun says.

“That’s more on brand.”

Renjun nods.

You think about Yangyang, Renjun’s friend from when he was a kid. You’ve met him a few times now, especially since he’s moved half an hour away from Renjun. He’s fun, always bringing out a chaotic side of Renjun whether it’s dancing on a bar or bringing out angry-Renjun. But Yangyang and Donghyuck?

“That’s a terrible friendship. They’re going to ruin you.”

Renjun nods again, but you see the smile hiding in his eyes. He can rant all he wants, you know he’s excited his friends are getting closer with each other.

You point at the bag. “So where are we doing this?”

You half expect him to lecture you about rash hair decisions but he just gestures to the kitchen. “I figure right here should be fine. The tiles should be pretty easy to clean and probably could use some bleach anyway.”

He drags the chair with a rickety leg from the dining table. You dig through the bag and set everything on the counter. While Renjun cracks a window open, you begin to mix the developer and the bleach, curling your lip at the sharp scent. Renjun joins you, pulling on a pair of gloves.

“Wow that’s strong,” he says, wincing.

“Yeah,” you say. “Definitely a good idea to do it here.”

When the powder is finally combined, you sit on the chair, Renjun following behind you. You section off your hair together, then he grabs the bowl and the brush.

He holds the thick paintbrush brush up against your hair, glancing at you, giving you one last chance to back down. You give him the nod of approval and he shifts back to focusing on your hair, brushing the bleach into it as carefully as he spreads paint on a canvas. He works section by section, carefully drenching your hair with the creamy solution.

“So, are you going to tell me why you decided to do this?”

You can’t resist turning and glancing at him. “I thought you approved.”

“I didn’t try to talk you out of it,” he says, “that doesn’t mean I’m not curious about how you came to this decision.”

You nod until Renjun uses his gloved hand to hold your head straight. “I suppose that’s fair.”

You pause, trying to find the right words. But you find yourself drifting back to Renjun. Why didn’t he ask this before the bleach was in your hair? It’s not like him to keep his opinions to himself. When you first met him, he was yelling at Donghyuck for going to a philosophy seminar just to fight with the notorious bigot of a professor (which Donghyuck did and then got kicked out, and proceeded to get the professor suspended). You only knew Mark back then, a friend from another class who invited you to meet some of his other friends in the dining hall. When Renjun turned to ask what you thought, you said Donghyuck should do what he thinks is right. Renjun didn’t hesitate to call you an idiot then. So why isn’t he calling you an idiot now?

To his credit Renjun doesn’t rush you. He continues to paint the bleach into your hair, content to wait for you to figure out an answer. Except you’re thinking about all the wrong questions. Like, seriously, why do you want him to call you an idiot?

“I want a change,” you finally say. “I’m stuck in a degree that will make me absolutely no money when I graduate, I can’t afford to break my lease, and don’t have any major relationships that need upheaving, so, hair.”

“‘A change?’” Renjun repeats. “Like, you woke up this morning and thought, today I’m going blonde?”

“Like, I have this feeling in my chest, this aching feeling that there’s something I need to do, someone I’m supposed to be, something more than the person I see in the mirror but I’ve made my decisions and I’m happy with my decisions and I genuinely like who I am. So, hair.”

You see Renjun’s hand falter out of the corner of your eye, halfway between the bleach mixture and your hair. He freezes for a heartbeat then continues to move, lifting some hair off your ear, careful not to brush the bleach onto your skin.

“‘So, hair,’” he says.

“Are you really going to repeat everything I say?”

This gets a short laugh from him. “I think the fumes are getting to me already.” He pauses, setting down the brush and stepping in front of you. “For what it’s worth, I like who you are, too. I’m really glad we’re friends.”

You smile at him. “Me too,” you say. “I definitely would have fucked up trying to bleach this on my own.”

.

.

“There’s still some bleach left,” Renjun says after he finishes with your roots. “You’re sure you don’t want your eyebrows to match?”

“Why don’t we do your eyebrows,” you say. “Better yet, why don’t we shave them off?”

Renjun sets down the brush. “Okay, no eyebrows.”

You grin at him. “That’s what I thought.”

He helps you get a plastic bag wrapped securely over your head, then sets the timer.

“What do you want to do for the next half hour?” You ask. “Preferably something that requires little to no movement.” You gesture to your head. “We’re not winning any frisbee tournaments tonight.”

“It was one time,” Renjun mutters, shaking his head and stepping around you plop down onto the couch. “We can watch something.”

You follow him, sitting on the other side, a cushion between you. The space feels strangely empty. Though you’ve spent plenty of time alone with Renjun, even alone with him at his apartment, the silence is usually interrupted by one of the guys getting bored of playing League, or coming back because they can’t go out to a bar without someone forgetting their ID, or in desperate need of Renjun’s expert advice (read: Jeno never remembers to ask Renjun to look over his submissions until 12 minutes before they’re due). The cushion between you never stays empty for long but the moments stretch on, only making the distance feel greater.

You wonder, not for the first time, how long it’s been since you’ve thought of Renjun as just a friend. If he was just a friend, you wouldn’t care so much about what he thinks. And if he was just a friend, you wouldn’t care so much that he suddenly doesn’t think.

You sneak a glance at him, fiddling with the remote for a couple seconds before realizing he grabbed the wrong one. He’s certainly always been handsome—that was undeniable from the moment you met him. But more than just being good looking, it’s Renjun himself. Not just those dark eyes, but the way they burn with passion (even when he’s arguing about the proper number of appetizers to order). It’s his perfectly shaped lips, the way they betray how he feels with a slight curve up or down—and his smile. Always, always his smile, beautiful and breathtaking even though you’ve seen it a thousand times.

He turns, a little furrow in his brow. “What?”

“Hm?”

“You’re looking at me funny,” he says. “Did I get bleach in my hair or something?”

You turn to face the TV, trying to pay attention to the show Renjun chose. “I wasn’t looking at you funny,” you say. “I wasn’t even looking at you.”

“If you say so,” Renjun says, “but if there’s a blonde spot anywhere in my hair, I’m so making you pay for it.”

You shake your head. Where the hell did those thoughts come from? Renjun, more than a friend? Sure, you’re close with him and sure, he’s objectively attractive, but you’ve never had those thoughts before. Well, at least not sober.

“Um, why are we watching Singles Inferno?”

“Because I asked and you were too busy not staring at me to answer, so I put it on,” Renjun says. “And don’t you dare try to tell me you don’t like it. I saw you rant on your Instagram story the other day.”

“Okay, but you don’t get it,” you say. “This bitch really has the audacity to to—”

“I saw your post,” Renjun says. “Believe me, I get it.”

“If you didn’t want to hear about it you should not have turned it on, because now I can’t stop,” you say. Renjun rolls his eyes but even as you delve into a full on essay about the horrible men particularly common in dating shows, you see the corners of his lips tilt up into a smile.

.

.

The timer goes off halfway through an episode.

“Saved by the buzzer,” Renjun says. “I’m putting a ban on anything reality TV related for the next three hours.”

“You’re the one that brought it up,” you mutter without any real annoyance. Despite his banter, Renjun dutifully listened to your rants, and even got mad along with you.

You drag a chair to the sink while Renjun drapes a towel over your shoulders. He puts on gloves and unwraps the bag, letting your hair fall into the empty sink.

“Close your eyes,” Renjun says gently. He tilts your head back, cupping the back of your head for a moment before pulling the head of the sink faucet out. He runs the water, long enough for you to peek your eyes open.

You’ve gotten used to seeing Renjun focused. He gets a little furrow in his brow, always glaring at his work. Before you were friends, you used to think he was actually angry, that his frowns and short tone were real. You’ve learned since then, it’s not his emotions, it’s his passion. The frown only comes out when he’s focused, trying to be perfect. When he cares.

“Unless you want bleach in them, close your eyes,” Renjun mutters, with absolutely no malice behind the words. His eyes shift to meet yours and that’s how you know you’re right. He can glare and bluster all he wants, he can’t hide his eyes, warm and shining. Like when he’s looking at his art, his gaze is a combination of soft and intense, creating something stronger than affection. Except he’s not looking at his art, he’s looking at you.

You squeeze your eyes shut, feeling your heartbeat pick up. Despite every attempt to shut down the thoughts, they race through your head, a stampede grown out of control. Renjun, who you’ve only known a year and a half but who has become one of your closest friends. Renjun, who never fails to share the only opinion you really care about. Renjun, who you can’t imagine life without. Renjun, who you’ve never dared to imagine life with.

He places a hand on your forehead, bringing the faucet closer to rinse your roots while keeping the water from pouring onto your face. You prepare for a cold shock but the water that soaks into your hair is the perfect temperature—not scalding hot, not freezing cold. Some water sprays over his hand, falling onto your eyelids and cheeks.

“Sorry,” Renjun murmurs. He holds the head farther away, running his fingers gently through the roots of your hair. He’s so close you can feel his breath, warm against your temple. You can feel his body, hovering over yours, and maybe it’s just your imagination, but warmth seems to emanate from it.

His friends would laugh at you if you described Renjun as soft to their face, but it’s the only adjective that captures the way he works the water through your hair. Soft and gentle and careful and nothing like the Renjun that has to corral everyone into his car at 3 in the morning. And yet this Renjun doesn’t feel like a stranger to you.

Washing your hair takes a lifetime, but as soon as he steps away and turns off the water, you miss it. You miss him, even though he’s only a couple feet away.

“You can open your eyes now,” he says. As soon as you do, he tosses a towel at you. It hits you in the face before you can get your hands up.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” Renjun says, not sounding sorry at all. He manages to hold back the laugh but still grins at you, unashamed. He steps forward and pats your face dry, with the same gentleness as before, though there’s still a mischievous glint in his eyes. You yank the towel away before he gets any ideas, drying off your face on your down and wrapping it around your hair. You wring it out a couple times before letting go, doing your best to get it to fall evenly around your head.

You raise your eyebrows at Renjun. “Okay, how bad is it?”

“Okay, first of all, I’m insulted that you think there’s any way I’d fuck up you hair,” Renjun says. “And it looks really good. Blonde suits you.”

You take a deep breath and pull out your phone, studying yourself in the mirror and… he’s right. The color is even, somewhere between blonde and orange that is unavoidable when using bleach. Radical hair changes generally end in tears but looking at yourself in the mirror, you don’t feel the usual dissonance. The hair is different but somehow more familiar than the “normal” you that doesn’t feel right anymore.

“I’m right,” Renjun says.

You smile. “Yeah, you are.” You put down your phone, meeting his eyes. “Thank you, Renjun.”

“For what?”

“Doing all of this for me,” you say.

“It’s the least I could do,” he mumbles. “You’re my friend.”

You shake your head. “Thank you anyways.”

Renjun just shrugs and grabs the bowl, rinsing out the bleach in the sink. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he’s avoiding your eyes.

You do your best to clean up the bleach from the floor, busying yourself until Renjun finishes. You wonder if you’re imagining the tiles getting a little bit whiter. Finally, he turns off the water and glances at you.

“You’re really happy with it?” He asks, sounding more like he doubts you rather than changing his opinion.

“Yeah,” you say, standing up. “I think it’s the ‘me’ of right now, you know?”

“Not really.”

“Like, I feel disjointed, and blonde hair is definitely not me, but it's the me that feels kind of all over the place, so even though it doesn’t look like me, it looks like me.” You wring your hands together, fingers tinged red.

“That makes no sense,” Renjun says, “but I think I get what you mean.” He smiles. “And I’m glad. I wouldn’t want you to have any regrets.”

So he did think this was a potential mistake? Why didn’t he say anything?

Renjun turns back to the sink, but before he can turn the water on, your voice calls his name. “Renjun?”

“Hm?” He doesn’t turn around.

“Why didn’t you fight me on this?”

He doesn’t move for a long moment. You wish you could see his face. “I have been told by certain people,” he begins, which is code for Donghyuck and Yangyang certified their position as Renjun’s worst nightmare. He turns to face you, wiping his hands on a towel.

“That I have a tendency to be overly opinionated in a generally negative direction. And I thought about it, and I realized I'm never really fully supportive, whether it’s a big decision, or, like, coffee, and I’ve always been this way, but, apparently, it’s especially… apparent with you.” He frowns. “This is all coming out wrong. I’m trying to say that it’s different when I’m around you. I’m different.”

Your eyes jump between his, trying to decipher what he’s saying. “Different?”

“I care a lot about you,” Renjun says, “more than anyone, actually.”

“Oh.” You blink once, twice. “Wait, you like me?”

Renjun’s eyes shift to the floor. “Yeah.”

You can’t help but let out a short laugh, reeling at the absurdity of it all. Renjun likes you? But he’s Renjun. Even though he’s the most common main character in your daydreams, you never once realistically thought he might be fantasizing about you too. But he likes you.

“I really didn’t want to say anything, I mean, before anything else you’re my friend, and I don’t want to ruin that,” Renjun says rapidly. “We’re good friends, and I really didn’t want to be the guy that pretends to be your friend but just wants to date you the whole time, that’s really not what I was trying to do, it’s just—”

“Renjun.” You put a hand on his shoulder and he freezes mid sentence, mouth still hanging open a little. Before he can move, you lean closer, the type of line you’d only dare to cross in your dreams.

“I’d like to kiss you,” you say softly. He blinks, eyes darting between your eyes and your lips.

“I’d like that,” he finally breathes. So you kiss him.

It starts light, his lips exactly as you imagined—soft and warm. His arm works its way around your waist, pulling you closer. The other works its way into your hair, still wet and sticking to your head. Renjun kisses like he’s been planning this for a long time, and maybe he has. Every movement is slow and careful, until he’s stolen all your air and even then you don’t want to pull away.

Your bravery fades the minute you meet his eyes. You bury your face into his chest, your cheek resting against your own hand. Renjun wraps both of his arms around you, holding you snugly in place.

“I like you, too,” you say into his chest. It’s the cowards route but if you look him in the eyes the words will never come out. “If it wasn’t obvious.”

“It wasn’t actually,” he says softly. “I think I drove all of my friends insane trying to figure out whether I should confess or not.”

“They all know?” You groan. “We’re never going to hear the end of this.”

“Yeah.” When Renjun laughs, it shakes your whole body. You can feel the rumbling, overtaking his heartbeat. “It’s okay though. It’s worth it.”

You turn your head, emerging from the sanctuary of his chest and tucking your head so that you can see his face. He smiles at you with the familiar warmth you’ve come to expect.

“Yeah,” you say, “it really is.”

Renjun grins.

“Your hair on the other hand…” He says.

“I thought you liked it!”

“I like it,” Renjun says, “but when has Donghyuck ever liked a single change to anyone’s hair?”

“Since when do you care what Donghyuck thinks?”

“I’m just saying now that we’re officially dating, my friends are going to be extra annoying,” Renjun says.

“Extra annoying? I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Don’t underestimate them.”

You groan, pressing your face back into his chest. “It’s not too late to get some hair dye.”

“You are not changing your hair because of my dumbass friends,” Renjun says.

“You like it?”

“You like it,” he says. “That’s the only opinion that really matters.” He pauses then adds, “But yeah. I like it.”

You grin, lifting your head to kiss his cheek. “Maybe we should dye your hair too.”

Renjun snorts. “Oh yeah?”

“We could have matching couples hair.”

He laughs out loud this time. “Maybe we should just get some shirts.”

“Three minutes of dating and you already want matching shirts? Huang Renjun, be honest.” You push off of him until you can place your hands on his shoulders and look him in the eyes. “Are you obsessed with me?”

“Yes,” he says, layering his voice in sarcasm that still isn’t enough to hide the truth of the admission. “All day every day, all I think about is you.”

“Well, see, that can’t be true because if you were that obsessed and I’m this close, you would already be kissing me because—” You forget whatever you were going to say, but it doesn’t really matter. Not when Renjun is kissing you like this. Your hands at his shoulders slink around his neck, while his wrap around your waist, leaning so close to you, you feel your back begin to dip.

Huang Renjun is poison, the kind that turns into a heart-shaped puff of pink when the bottle is opened. You melt into his kiss and it’s still not enough. You could die, right this instant, and you don’t think you’d notice. Death itself wouldn’t be able to tear you away from this moment.

“Renjun!” Donghyuck’s voice thunders through the kitchen. “How dare you? You bastard, you’re cheating?”

You jump apart, turning to see him looming in the doorway. His glare settles on you, and you see the exact moment he realizes he recognizes you.

“Jesus Christ, you could have knocked or something,” Renjun says.

“I live here too,” Donghyuck says automatically. He squints, then looks at Renjun, then back at you. “YN? Your hair is blonde.”

For some reason, you raise your hand and wave at him. “Hey!”

“Oh my god!” Donghyuck cries. “Yangyang owes me thirty dollars!” He races back out the door, screaming something that’s lost as the door swings shut.

You glance at Renjun. “Cheating?”

He frowns at the door, still a crack open. “Did he… seriously think you were someone else? That I was cheating on my unrequited crush?”

His eyes shift to yours. A heartbeat passes and you burst into laughter. His friends might be annoying, but they’re still endearing. You press a messy, smile-infested kiss to his lips and wonder if you’ll ever get used to the giddy feeling.

There’s plenty messy in your life, plenty to doubt. But watching Yangyang and Donghyuck drag their backpacks in (apparently Donghyuck forgot his power bank and they decided to give up on camping) as they attempt to interrogate Renjun on every detail, you can’t help but feel like it doesn’t really matter. You don’t doubt Renjun. You don’t doubt blonde suits you. And you don’t doubt the power of a last minute hair decision, not anymore.

thank you for reading!! likes, reblogs, and comments are always appreciated

[yuri-is-online]

Love and Deepspace Timeline: MC, Philos, and the Aether Core

Look I finished Xav's myths card. I don't regret waiting until I was done with it to post his timeline because the last two nodes have more to do with MC than him, but I am in a state so we are making this to cope.

This is all speculation and should not be taken as fact, I have done two other posts, one on Zayne and one on Xavier and I will not be doing one on Rafayel please see this reddit post by u/joonmin for relevant information about his myths card blah blah blah.

This post is less of a timeline and more here to answer questions you very likely have if you: A) decided to browse reddit and saw people saying Xavier feels like the "cannon ro" [this is a gacha game there isn't one] but have never read any of his memories, moments, or dates B) read chapter 8 and went "none of this makes sense I feel like I am missing something" or C) just generally are confused about L&D's world building and what's up with MC. I have answers for you. Wibbly wobbly soupy answers. This post also has a TL;DR in case you don't want to see me break out the string board and just want the relevant bits of information about MC you won't get from the msq.

SPOILERS FOR ALL IN GAME CONTENT UP TO CHAPTER 8, VARIOUS MOMENTS, AND ANECDOTES RELATED TO ALL 3 ROS, PROCEED WITH CARE.

Current Timeline MC (i.e. The one we are playing as)

The game starts with MC's graduation from the Academy and first day as a fully licensed hunter. We learn a few things in this first chapter, namely that MC is combat trained, has a rare heart condition known as Protocore Syndrome that has no known cure, and that her decision to become a hunter has something to do with what she experienced fourteen years ago during the Catastrophe when the Deepspace Tunnel opened and Wanderers started invading earth.

Specifically MC describes something burrowing itself into her heart. She feels helpless, like prey, and has a strong desire to never feel anything like this again. Which is unfortunate because I have a feeling a lot of someones are going to be on her trail sooner rather than later.

In Chapter 5 it is revealed that MC has an Aether core fused to her heart. This sort of human experimentation is highly illegal and it is unknown who did this to MC other than our beloved Grandmother was directly involved. Grandma appears to have taken MC away from wherever this happened after the tests started to threaten MC's life.

This is known to Dr. Zayne and Dr. Noah, though neither seem to know more than what Grandma told them. Neither of them seem to fully understand what an Aether core is or what it is doing to MC's heart. Zayne in particular seems to find this extremely concerning.

Uncovering the mystery of the Aether core seems to be what will be driving the first arc so we will not be discussing it at length here. I do want to note that Xavier absolutely knows what it is, while Zayne does not but does seem to know more of the technical aspects of how it is effecting MC, and Rafayel is at least aware of it being valuable and maybe why exactly the people in the N109 Zone want it.

At some point in the past MC met and made a promise to Rafayel. It is my personal theory that this likely took place on Hat Island during the field trip MC talks about due to some of the comments made in Chapter 7.

MC and Caleb were friends with Zayne in childhood. MC's exact age is a bit fuzzy, but the game does seem to suggest she is younger than Zayne. She does not know why Zayne disappeared from her life or what led him to become a doctor.

Comments in Chapter 4 suggests that Caleb encouraged MC to become a hunter. He seems to be very supportive of her, but Grandma seems more interested in trusting MC's protection to Zayne.

On the surface MC seems pretty normal. Her memories from before the Catastrophe seem to be gone, if she had a mother and father or other blood relatives, she doesn't remember them anymore.

Philos MC (i.e. What is Going on in the Myths)

It is revealed in Xavier's When Shooting Stars Fall anecdote that Philos is Earth in the distant future. This has confused numerous people in the notes of my Xav's timeline so I am going to be insufferable and attempt to assist with a graph:

The MC you play belongs to the game timeline, the MCs (plural each myths card features a different one) in the Myths cards come from the Philos timeline. I have tagged the Game timeline as a "potential tangent" as the events that take place in game are entirely reliant on the existence of the Deepspace Tunnel, which is created in the Philos timeline.

At some point in the Original/Philos Timeline, Earth's core ceases to function. Humanity replaces it with a new, artificial core that causes noticeable weather changes and fuses all of the tectonic plates together, and begins a new calendar counting forward from the years since Earth ceased to be and Philos was born. As a result, we don't know what exact year Earth's core giving out happened in the Original Timeline. The artificial core allows almost all humans to "live eternal." They seem to be like Tolkien's elves in the sense they can live for an eternity but they start to get tired after a while and give up on life. This is why there is a royal family that needs a line of succession. Xavier is the Crown Prince of Philos, he meets MC in school and learns she has a rare disease called Protocore Syndrome which will not allow her to live forever. He attempts to cure this by finding a specific protocore she mentions, but fails to reach her in time and is forced to watch her die. This all happens in the year 214.

At some point MC is reborn and assigned to the same teacher as Xavier. She is to train to become his knight and serve as the leader of the Lightseekers, an order tasked with killing Wanderers. At some point during or before Xavier's coming of age ceremony, he learns the truth about Philos: the planet is dying due to the artificial core never having been meant to sustain the planet this long. The Royal Family's solution for this is to occasionally feed humans to the heart of Philos in Starfall Forest. When they do this, it creates Wanderers. As if that wasn't bad enough, Xavier learns that his father and the royal family have found what they think could be a permanent solution: there is a girl who has achieved true immortality. She is the only person on Philos who can die and be reborn constantly, and while they don't seem to know why she does this, the royal family believes this girl is the life force of the planet itself.

This girl is MC and Xavier does not want this to happen. He has a plan that he does not explain to MC, but it involves traveling back in time. He says they have specific places in time picked out, but we know from Xavier's Passing By anecdote that something went wrong with his team's attempt at time travel and now there is no guarantee that the MC he left on Philos as its Queen is still there.

So now we have two timelines: Original/Philos Timeline and Game/Tangent Timeline. But all of that is just taking Xavier's anecdotes and Myths card into account... so what happens if we try to plug in the other two ROs?

Rafayel

In u/Joonmin's reddit post they mention two very important bits of information: 1) It has been 30,000 years since the sea dried up and 2) MC is a member of the royal family of Philos, not by birth but because "she has a heart that’s been blessed by the gods" and has "awoken from the depths." If all three myths cards take place in the same Philos timeline as the one Xavier leaves, we can reasonably place Raf's myths card after Xavier's backtrack mission.

So the Philos timeline would look like this. I have a note for Zayne's card there as well, but if I had to get picky with it I'm slightly tempted to place his Myths card between MC's first death and her being reborn to meet Xavier again. The other explanation would be that there are three separate Philos timelines created because the MC was successfully scarified to the Heart of Philos. In Xavier's Myths 6 MC briefly takes a dip in the space time anomaly at the center of Starfall Forest which could also explain MC scattering across different timelines, but the in game spacepedia makes a point to say that there is a chance that life still exists on Philos:

So it could simply be that MC over there has been stuck in the exact cycle of death and rebirth that Xavier was trying to prevent. It could also mean that when they add that mystery fourth love interest there is an explanation for a fourth possible myths card. Anyway all this information leaves us with a set of timelines that currently look like this:

This still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. For example, if the Philos timeline is where this all starts, what version of it is? What caused Earth's core to give out in that original timeline? Is Rafayel and Lumeria's existence the consequences of clashing timelines or are mermaids cannon to this universe? What effect on the space time continuum did Xavier's actions have? And how much of this is actually going to be answered in game?

TL;DR

Philos is Earth in the future with an artificial core that started running out of power, and never should have been made in the first place.

The royal family fed some of their long lived humans to the anomaly in Starfall forest to keep the planet running, but then they found out about a girl who could constantly be reborn each time she died and had an idea.

An idea Xavier wasn't very keen on but who cares. They thought that "when the time was right" they would sacrifice her to the rift and leave her there to die and be reborn forever. They also did not think to ask her.

Oh yeah when they fed people to the rift they turned into Wanderers. So wanderers = people as mentioned in Zayne's Still in the Dark anecdote.

Whatever makes MC reincarnate might have something to do with Lumeria, or at the very least the Lumerians in Rafayel's myths card seem to think it does.

In game MC, current timeline MC knows none of this, and has no memories from her lives, past or future. This is consistent across all her incarnations.

Final Thoughts

The only reason why I think this way about timelines is because I watched Donnie Darko in a college theater class. People like to argue about that movie and how it is supposed to be interpreted, but generally speaking they all seem to think that Tangent Timelines and the Tangent Universes they spawn get deleted very quickly, so maybe that's why the game starts by talking about "being able to leave this loop" and why Xavier seems to think something bad will be happening to Linkon City soon.

Chapter 8 ends with Xavier attempting to send a message back through the Deepspace Tunnel to make contact with someone. Interestingly enough he calls this "Traceback II." This sounded familiar to me and sure enough the game starts by mentioning that exact same thing, it is going past a black hole and is what says that line "we are stuck in this loop."

I thought in previous posts that the Aether Core is what could cure MC... but now I think the Aether Core is likely what Philos's artificial core is called... so who created it in the first place? ｢(ﾟﾍﾟ)

The Deepspace Tunnel is a spacetime anomaly likely caused by Philos's existence since it was "never meant to exist." So why was it created? And by who?