#well��� it’s not slander if it’s true

[syndrossi]

How would Restoration!Daemon react to his future, and that of Rhaenyra/his sons/ect? Once he accepts that he’s in the future, I’m sure he’ll immediately find the nearest history book and find out how things go for his family. Needless to say, I don’t think he’ll be very pleased with the results. I guess this ties in to his reaction to House Targaryen in general, but I feel like it would hit a bit harder than Robert’s Rebellion because he was there. He was alive and he didn’t stop it. He’d be super upset by Rhaenyra’s madness, and would probably insist that it’s just Green slanders. Anyone heard referring to the “Mad Queen” or “Maegor with Teats” in his vicinity would immediately become closely aquatinted with Dark Sister. I think Aegon’s fate would be a more complicated thing to him, since on the one hand he’d be in agony over the fact that his son ends up being afraid of dragons, but on the other he might end up being a bit resentful that the dragons died out under his son. I think he’d be proud of Viserys for holding the realm together. As for his own death, I can’t even begin to sort through all the feelings he’d have about that.

I think what would upset Daemon the most, since they're his world right now (and he's not yet married to Rhaenyra) is this utter absence of his twin sons in the histories. I don't know what he would conclude from that. They were murdered early on and omitted from the histories? But surely the intrigue of hidden princes would merit at least a mention! His marriage with Rhea is described as childless, which is not true, going off their cover story.

I have to think he'd conclude that things didn't happen the same here. He never learned of their existence, they were taken to Blackcrown and killed by Otto or some other horrible fate befell them.

Tangent: the fun thing about the Redfort twins is that the absolutely could have existed in canon! There's nothing to contradict their existence; Daemon just never "discovered" them. I mentioned this in a comment somewhere, but I like to think that they were fostered in Blackcrown and ended up in Dorne together, adventuring. Raymar married into House Dayne (hence the occasional pale-haired child), and perhaps Jon did as well! But it cheers me to think that their lines continued somewhere. Heck, Dyanna Dayne could be one of their granddaughters, perhaps from a cousin marriage between Dayne daughter x Redfort and the Dayne main line! Or there could have been a circumstances where there were no sons at all and it was a matrilineal marriage, so his children were already in the main line.

/tangent

Rhaenyra's (and Viserys's) deaths would hit him hard, as would the loss of their dragons. Learning that he had four more children, and that his sons both suffered (Aegon being a prisoner and forced to watch his mother's execution, Viserys disappearing and being taken to Essos) would also mess with him. What was he doing when all of that happened? How could he have let himself be killed when they needed him?

OTOH, I don't know how easy it will be to read a single history book of his family's reign. It'll probably be scattered accounts, with different biases, and difficult to get a clean/clear view of it. Lots of contradicting things, both because the accounts got it wrong and because he lived in an alternate timeline, might cause him to doubt a good chunk of its accuracy.

He would 100% discard the Rhaenyra stuff as slander, just as he assumes Aerys's reputation is pure slander. (I almost wonder if he thinks Aerys = his reincarnation, given that he's Rhaegar's father, though once he hears enough firsthand accounts he may reconsider.)

[strangebiology]

Actually I’ve seen the opposite Wrong Opinion as well, where certain people are under the impression that the media cannot write bad things about people because that’s “defamation.”

Ah, no, there is no law against unflattering statements on their own; in fact free speech is pretty well-protected here in the USA. The definition of defamation within libel and slander (civil) law do not mean “You are Protected From Anyone Telling People The Bad Things You Did or Opinions You Don’t Like.”

I once asked some fellow science journalists something about an alleged murder and confirmed suicide I was covering. Some writers said I should drop it because I “could get sued” for writing something bad about someone.

I appreciate the free feedback! But, besides the fact that dead men file no lawsuits, and that libel and slander have to be false, and no one can sue for libel or slander on behalf of someone else, and that journalists shouldn’t write false things in general whether they’re good or bad so it’s bizarre to assume that legit journalistic coverage is false by default…

Yes, journalists are allowed to write bad things about people, and in fact it’s one of our most critical rights and responsibilities to do so when needed. True crime is a whole genre. Investigative journalism is all about uncovering problems. Muckraking is kind of a rare in media these days but it’s historically very important!

In short:

The idea that most journalists must remain anonymous and delete all their notes and throw away their phones because they are under 24/7 surveillance with a red dot on their foreheads = delusion based on Hollywood tropes and representative of <1% of journalists.

The idea that journalists generally have to appeal to all their subjects and be loved by them and only write nice, approved things = democracy killer.

journalism advice on the Internet: *takes drag of cigarette* never bring a phone with you to an interview because the government is tracking your every move. Delete all apps and only use end-to-end encryption and ciphers. scrub all your information from the internet (the assassins can use it!) don't join any professional journalism groups; that makes it easier for the assassins to get you. if you let a source see and confirm their quotes for accuracy, they will become enraged and remotely delete your article. Destroy all recordings and notes. everyone you talk to is a hardened war criminal, and you are at constant, extreme risk of being murdered by both your sources and the law enforcement from whom they are on the run my actual job in journalism: "Hello, Dr. Smith, I understand you discovered a new stick bug! Can you tell me why this little guy is special?"

[lgbtlunaverse]

3zun data analysis part 2 electric boogaloo

So in my first post on 3zun data analysis I said I manually excluded all non-3zun ships in the 3zun tag to figure out how many of them were actually centered around 3zun.

So that's... actually not how i first went about that. Instead, I decided to, one after the other, include each 2-out-of-3zun ship, and then manually exclude every relationship not contained in 3zun. (leaving te other 2-out-of-3zun ships alone) Then, I'd figure out how many of these fics were exclusively tagged the ship I included, how many included only one of the other 2 ships, and how many included all 3, which would allow me to calculate how many 3zun fics in total had 2-out-of-3zun ships included but no other side pairings, which, upon being added to the otp:true fics, should give me the total number of 3zun fics exclusively focused on 3zun.

"Wow! That seems really inefficient" yes! But it did give me more information for this post. Because with these numbers, I can somewhat crudely estimate what 2-out-of-3zun pairing tends to get more narrative focus within 3zun fics.

Here are the results, data collected on march 18th 2024:

There are 196 3zun fics tagged with xiyao and no non-3zun relationships. Of these, 151 are also tagged nieyao, and 137 are tagged nielan.

Coincidentally, nieyao has the same number, also 196, 151 of wich are also tagged xiyao, but only 117 are tagged nielan.

Then there are 159 3zun fics tagged nielan with no non-3zun pairings, with 137 of them also being tagged xiyao and 117 nieyao. (I hope you've all noticed those numbers matching up!)

by the way, here are the raw stats in just the plain vanilla 3zun tag, no filters, for how many fics are tagged with the different ot2s.

Also, this has nothing to do with anything, but for nielan and xiyao i mostly had to filter out relatively normal side pairings, a few crossovers with mxtx's other works or different danmei, nothing too weird. But the nieyao tag had THIS

JESUS/JUDAS??? IN MY NIEYAO?? It's more likely than you think!!

Anyway, to the complicated numbers! Selecting for all 3 after excluding everything else gives you 112 fics.

With these numbers you can now calculate some really fun stuff. Taking the fics tagged with both xiyao and nieyao (151) and subtracting the fics tagging all 3 (112) you get the number of 3zun fics that are only tagged as xiyao and nieyao, excluding nielan. In this case: 39

"Couldn't you just exclude nielan on ao3" you have to understand I like doing things the hard way.

Doing this gives:

Fics tagged nieyao and xiyao but not nielan: 39

Fics tagged xiyao and nielan but not nieyao: 25

Fics tagged nieyao and nielan but not xiyao: 5

Generally tagging 2 ot2 pairings in an ot3 signals that either the relationship is a V and the excluded ship are not together, or that- even if they're a triad- the excluded ship doesn't feature in the narrative much. As you can see, xiyao is by far the least likely to be excluded here.

Now doing some more math (or, if you're normal, clicking a few extra times on ao3) will give you the fics exclusively tagged with one ot2 pairing besides 3zun. Generally that means that this relationship is the narrative focus, even if all of 3zun are together.

And these results actually surprised me.

Fics exclusively tagged xiyao: 196 - 112 - 39 - 25 = 20

Fics exclusively tagged nielan: 159 - 112- 25 - 5 = 17

Fics exclusively tagged nieyao: 196 - 112 - 39 - 5 = 40

I checked the answers by actually filtering on ao3 (making all my work redundant) and uh. Yeah. I had expected that, with xiyao being the least likely to be excluded, the most commonly tagged ship in 3zun overall, and simply the most popular ship, they'd be first here too.

And yet, not only does nieyao have more fics, it has more than nielan and xiyao combined. Despite having less fics in total than either of the other 2!

Out of interest, I repeated the experiment without manually excluding all the unrelated ships.

Basically, for each 2-out-of-3zun ship, I only filtered out the two other ships. This data will give us the same insight into narrative focus, just without excluding all other non 3zun rleated side pairings.

This time I just included one ship, and excluded the other 2-out-of-3zun ships. (the hard math comes later)

Doing this gives:

3zun fics only tagged xiyao: 45

3zun fics only tagged nielan: 33

3zun fics only tagged nieyao: 59

It's a less drastic difference, but nieyao still come out on top!!

What this means, I think, is that people with nieyao as their absolute favorite side of the triangle are a lot more likely to write 3zun fics than those for whom the same is true for nielan or xiyao.

That is to say: Someone who likes all 3zun pairings equally is more likely to write 3zun where the pairings all share narrative balance. And if you really really really love xiyao, and think nieyao and nielan are pretty ok but you don't go crazy over them, you're a lot more likely to just write a solo xiyao fic than you are a xiyao-focused 3zun fic. Idem ditto for nielan. But if nieyao is your absolute fave, you wanna put those guys in a throuple anyway.

What I'm saying is I think nieyaoists are the subfandom of triangular desire. Which... *looks at my own mutuals*... is the least surprising thing i've ever said.

Anyway! I didn't stop there! I wanted to see which pairings were more likely to get tagged together again. I also decided to make things even harder for myself!

Instead of filtering one ship at a time and seeing how many of each of the others were tagged alongside it, like i did last time, I only gave myself a few figures to calculate it manually: The overall number of tags each had in the 3zun tag (348, 328, and 284, as pictured above) the afformentioned data about exclusively tagged fics, and the number of fics tagged with all three 2-out-of-3zun ships (175)

Rather than a simple subtraction, I had to... Well i'm just gonna let y'all look at my notes app. I wanna stress that i could have looked all of this up in minutes and in fact did later to check my answers! No time was saved! A lot was wasted!

But I like number so 👉👈

Tldr:

Fics tagged xiyao and nieyao but not nielan: 73

Fics tagged xiyao and nielan but not nieyao: 55

Fics tagged nieyao and nielan but not xiyao: 21

Once again, similar but slightly less drastic results.

With this I can only come to one conclusion: the fandom likes to joke about 3zun being a love triangle with xichen in the middle. But looking at these numbers? The real center is jiggy. Everything revolves around a-yao, baby!.

[seaweedstarshine]

Haters call eleven straight Doctor because he’s attracted to older women, when his type is clearly just morally questionable people who look middle-aged (he calls Churchill “dear,” don’t forget. he never calls Amy or Clara that. Churchill is in the same category as River and the TARDIS).

[tgirl-armand]

iwtv fandom drives me insane sometimes. just enjoying some of the show’s few female characters is always a hate-worthy offense but if you call lestat a wifebeater, something he canonically is, everyone loses their shit

[ahopefulbromantic]

Wait why is side Y incompatible with Catholicism?

I think Wikipedia explains it well:

[masked-disciple]

I just saw another fandom take I want to carpet bomb out of existence ("variety in takes in fandom make for a healthy fandom environment" I mutter over and over again) so I'm just gonna say it, out of the tags, so I can get the haterness out of my system and move tf on with my life.

MvK and Gregory Edgeworth do not have a rivalry. MvK thinks they have a rivalry because there's something wrong with him, but they do not have a rivalry. Gregory himself did not give two shits about who was prosecuting his client, he just wanted to do his Jobbe and be there for his family. He did not care. The rivalry was only ever in MvK's mind, and this is obvious in AAI2-3, and I do not know how it was missed.

[fictionadventurer]

Good news! The channel that plays only old History Channel documentaries had a day entirely devoted to American presidents, so I have a lot more president facts to share with you!

(Important note that I have fact-checked nothing. I am only spouting off trivia the way I would if you were here for me to info-dump at).

Andrew Jackson's wife died soon after he was elected president, and he believed her death was caused by the vicious attacks against her during the election. Because he apparently lived his life as though he were a Shakespeare character, he said something along the lines of, "On the grave of this saint, I forgive all my political and personal enemies, but as for those who slandered her, they must look to God for mercy."

When William Jennings Bryan ran against William McKinley in 1896, he went on an epic nationwide whistle-stop campaign. Though he never drank alcohol, he reeked of liquor throughout his tour--because he was using gin as a deodorant! Instead of stopping to bathe, he would wipe himself down with gin to mask his body odor.

After Harry Truman, it became the practice for both presidential nominees to get security briefings months before the election, so when they came into office they'd be up-to-date on world events--with the understanding that all this info was strictly confidential. When Richard Nixon heard that LBJ's administration was putting together peace talks to end the Vietnam War, he went to the South Vietnamese and told them to refuse to go to the table, because if they waited until he was in office, they'd get a better deal. LBJ found out and told the head of the Republican Party to tell Nixon to stop it, because this was treason. Nixon called LBJ back and said this story was untrue and he had nothing to do with any such actions. LBJ knew he was lying, but only because he'd been secretly recording sessions with the South Vietnamese, so he couldn't do anything without exposing his own actions. Because of this, South Vietnam never came to the bargaining table, and the war dragged on more than five years longer.

When Ronald Reagan was shot by an assassin, Soviet submarine activity increased near US shores, and people thought this might be part of a Soviet attack. George Bush, the vice president, was (I think) in Texas at the time, and immediately started flying back to Washington, but his plane didn't have a secure phone line, so he couldn't be in charge of the country, and people weren't sure who was next in line. Both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense believed that they should be in charge. The press also wanted to know who was in charge, but the press secretary was doing a terrible job at the press briefing, essentially saying that they didn't know who was in command. The Secretary of State then sprinted into the briefing room, took the microphone, and assured everyone that there was a clear chain of command, and he was in charge. The only problem was that he was wrong--he'd completely forgotten that both the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate ranked ahead of him.

At the time this documentary was made (2016), Dick Cheney held the record for the shortest presidency. The president is allowed to temporarily hand over power to the vice president if he's going to be incapacitated. George W. Bush made use of this rule twice when he was going in for colonoscopies, so Dick Cheney served as president for a total of four hours.

[fortrivmph]

"ugh connor is so aggressive he's a killing machine all he does is murder people" actually he's my sweet syrup pie and also haytham is right there putting him in the splash zone.

[bijoumikhawal]

I was listening to someone talking about how much she doesn't like South Korea's privacy laws when it comes to criminals and it abruptly hit me that she doesn't like them because she's a true crime creator (yes I watch garbage sometimes)

[widowshill]

this fb post that my mom sent me ... only the real ones know the secret correct answer (c)

[cartridgeconverter]

STOP PUTTING THE FREAKING ELAGABALUS TRANSGENDER COMIC ON MY DASH.

Do you guys think it was a coincidence that every bad/commonly disliked Roman emperor was considered a sexual or societal deviant, in addition to being paranoid, violent, or insane? Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Commodus, and, of course, Elagabalus all fall under this category. Of course a young emperor, especially those born and raised in luxury, is going to be unusually indulgent as well as bloodthirsty. But considering many Roman historians’ habit of labeling everyone they didn’t like as a pervert, I don’t have too much faith in this claim!

[oyabun-draws]

deep apologies for jumping into your inbox based on a tag you left on my post but the history teacher in my needs to say: the every woman's man and every man's woman thing is from the writings of the Roman historian Suetonius, and he claimed it was something said about Caesar. So it's something that is recorded as having been said, but if it actually was, or if there wan any truth behind it, is a massive tossup because Suetonius is not a source to take at face value, and accusations of sexual passivity were also often used as political slander regardless of if they were true or not. So if Suetonius was telling the truth about it being something that was said, we can't know if the claim itself had any truth behind it. But there could be! We just don't know and have to make sure to be careful because of how ancient histories work and because of how political accusations worked.

So uh, sorry for kicking down your door here dfghjk, but it is indeed real so to speak, is my point. Hopefully this brings some form of enjoyment

thank you so much for leaving this in my inbox! actually it's funny because right after I reblogged the post and tagged it with "is this real" I went and asked my friend about it. ( who is planning on doing something in the history field) and she also confirmed it for me! and she told me some other stuff about Julius Cesar as well and the historical context. I went from knowing nothing about him to knowing a lot of details in one night haha thank you!!

[belovedblabber]

Realized that I should have clarified in the Caesar quiz that the Nicomedes one is implying that Caesar was Nicomedes’ bottom boytoy, it’s another bottom accusation one 

[randum-famdoms]

Fuck Heracles bro

Pretty art tho, and the Hesperides are chill. Ladon is a funky little guy too.

Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides, from The Labors of Hercules for The Treasure Chest of My Bookhouse (1920)