#wheres the source so I can avoid it all costs

[p0tat0-g0ddess]

I've been thinking a lot about fear off and on over the last week and. Hmm.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Anxious Attachment Style

Common Anxious Thoughts, Emotions, and Reactions

THOUGHTS

Mind reading: "That’s it, I know s/he’s leaving me."

All-or-nothing thinking: "I’ve ruined everything, there’s nothing I can do to mend the situation."

"I’ll never find anyone else."

"I knew this was too good to last."

"I have to talk to or see him/her right now."

"S/he can’t treat me this way! I’ll show him/her!"

"S/he is so amazing, why would s/he want to be with me anyway?"

"I knew something would go wrong; nothing ever works out right for me."

"S/he’d better come crawling back to beg my forgiveness, otherwise s/he can forget about me forever."

"Maybe if I look drop-dead gorgeous or act seductive, things will work out."

Remembering all the good things your partner ever did and said after calming down from a fight.

Recalling only the bad things your partner has ever done when you’re fighting.

EMOTIONS

Sad ⚜ Angry ⚜ Fearful ⚜ Resentful ⚜ Frustrated

Hopeless ⚜ Despairing ⚜ Jealous ⚜ Hostile ⚜ Vengeful

Guilty ⚜ Self-loathing ⚜ Restless ⚜ Uneasy ⚜ Humiliated

Hate-filled ⚜ Uncertain ⚜ Agitated ⚜ Rejected ⚜ Depressed

Unloved ⚜ Lonely ⚜ Misunderstood ⚜ Unappreciated

ACTIONS

Act out. ⚜ Attempt to reestablish contact at any cost.

Pick a fight. ⚜ Threaten to leave.

Wait for them to make the first reconciliation move.

Act hostile—roll eyes, look disdainful.

Try to make him/her feel jealous.

Act busy or unapproachable. ⚜ Act manipulatively.

Withdraw—stop talking to their partner or turn away from him/her physically.

Attachment classifications come from watching babies’ behavior.

Below is a short description of how anxious attachment style is defined in children. Some of their responses can also be detected in adults who share the same attachment style.

This baby becomes extremely distressed when mommy leaves the room.

When her mother returns, she reacts ambivalently—she is happy to see her but angry at the same time.

She takes longer to calm down, and even when she does, it is only temporary.

A few seconds later, she’ll angrily push mommy away, wriggle down, and burst into tears again.

Where Do Attachments Styles Come From?

Initially it was assumed that adult attachment styles were primarily a product of your upbringing.

Thus, it was hypothesized that your current attachment style is determined by the way in which you were cared for as a baby:

If your parents were sensitive, available, and responsive, you should have a secure attachment style; if they were inconsistently responsive, you should develop an anxious attachment style; and if they were distant, rigid, and unresponsive, you should develop an avoidant attachment style.

Today, however, we know that attachment styles in adulthood are influenced by a variety of factors, one of which is the way our parents cared for us, but other factors also come into play, including our genes and life experiences.

Source ⚜ More: On Attachment ⚜ Writing Notes & References Writing Resources PDFs ⚜ Avoidant ⚜ Secure ⚜ Disorganized

[bearflinn]

Writing Advice: Worldbuilding as Tension

One of the most common pieces of advice/points of critique I see for writers of all skill levels, is avoiding exposition dumps, often accompanied by the age old 'show don't tell'.

When writing fiction in general, but especially sci-fi and fantasy, it's important that the reader understands how your world differs from our own. And worldbuilding is one of the few places where you're less likely to get hit by the proverbial SHOW hammer, since some things, like the rules of your magic system, are difficult to show. So telling becomes more permissible.

However, it can be incredibly tempting to just infodump at every opportunity. Especially for those of us who have a wiki with more words than the finished project will have. But as I'm sure you've heard before, doing this can break immersion and destroy the pacing of your narrative.

While there are multiple ways to make exposition engaging, I'm going to focus on the approach I use most commonly: The Drip Feed.

Filling an Ocean One Droplet at a Time

Before we get into the actual methodology, I want to take a moment to dissect how and why exposition dumps can be problematic.

The Problem: Context, Relevancy, and Retention

Context is both the thing we're trying to communicate, and the source of excessive exposition. It starts simple, like maybe the reader needs to know that the main character is poor. And I guess I should explain why they're poor. Next thing you know you've spent 4 pages describing the socioeconomics of your world.

That's what I call 'context chaining'. Since everything in fleshed out worlds is interconnected, it can be very easy to just keep on filling in the gaps. Preemptively answering any questions the reader might have. The problem?

Relevancy. When you introduce a ton of worldbuilding in one fell swoop, the vast majority of it won't be relevant to the current place in the narrative, even if it will eventually be relevant for the story overall. Which, you guessed it, hurts:

Retention. Without immediate relevant context for the worldbuilding you introduce. Readers won't have anything to anchor the information too. Calling back to the example I used earlier, readers will remember that the character is poor, and they will likely remember why. Anything beyond that is unlikely to be retained.

The solution?

Restraint and Trust

For many of us, the world we've built is a large draw of the narrative we're crafting. However, one of the best ways to draw people into your world is to talk about it as little as possible. But how will they know about x?? They won't, until it matters.

Now I'm not talking about soft worldbuilding. This will work for both hard and soft worldbuilding (honestly it's even better for hard worldbuilding).

Instead of straight up telling the reader about the world and all of its intricacies. Introduce the most complex aspects as questions that you answer bit by bit throughout the narrative. As an example, maybe our poor character is struggling to buy food because they went into debt casting spells.

Suddenly, the reader is wondering: Why do spells cost money? Who controls the supply of magic and/or components? Is spellcasting something everyone can do? What kinds of magic are more valuable than eating? and so many more.

But here's the key: don't answer them. At least, not until absolutely necessary or there's an organic place to do so. Wait until the perspective character is directly interacting with one of those questions. Maybe they walk past a trickling fountain, revealing that the mana wells are running dry. And later debt collectors come for the main character, revealing who controls the mana.

Unanswered questions are a huge source of tension, and worldbuilding can provide a subtle sustained undercurrent that you can leverage to propel the narrative in slow points and/or make your payoffs hit even harder. All you have to do is answer the right question at the right time.

The best part of this method is that by waiting until your perspective character is engaging with a part of your world. It allows you to convey exposition and character at the same time. But what about worldbuilding that the characters don't interact with directly? It doesn't matter.

Well it does, to you as the author. But in general, if something doesn't matter to at least one of your characters, it won't matter to your readers. If your character isn't a politician, they aren't going to care about the intricacies of your political system. So why would the reader?

In short, keep any worldbuilding closely tied to your characters' experience, and let the reader wonder. The end result is a smoother and more engaging learning curve that pulls the reader in. Giving them the satisfaction of putting the pieces together themselves.

If you have any questions or additional thoughts let me know!

[fernslivers]

Teahouse Jealousy

"He was honest about his desires. That is a swordsman who knows the shape of his soul."

~

Things have been building for a while. Mizu is happy to avoid the topic, in favor of focusing on her mission. Finding yourself exasperated, you accept some help from an unexpected source.

~~

A/N: ITS DONE, FINALLY. Fucking 7600 WORDS of slow-burn mutual pining, bad communication, and jealousy. But hey, I did manage to fit in some spice at the end, hey?

Anyway, this is my first actual fic on here, so lmk what you guys think? Should I stick to lists? :,)

WARNING: this is REALLY LONG. I'm very sorry.

TW: jealousy, mentions of murder, mentions of sex work, SPICE

For this outing, Mizu insists on the boy disguise, your least favorite. You greatly prefer it when you can pretend to be her wife (of course), or even possible meat for the flesh market–because then she plays it up, a hand on your lower back, her voice dropped to an extra raspy register. But that last one is rare; you know the cost that playing that role seems to take on her, and you don't encourage it, despite the tingles it sends up your spine.

And you certainly don't complain about the freedom the boy disguise gives you for movement. But it does limit your ability to speak, as well as blocking your ability to get close to her side…you would never admit the reason you don't like it, but your reproachful expression says enough. She huffs out a sigh.

“Nobody brings a maiden to a brothel. You'll make us look odd,” she tells you, in the tone of voice that brooks no argument.

You wilt further the second she mentions a brothel, zoning out Ringo’s anxious questions; it was bad enough clenching your fists and staying silent while those two women ran their hands over her in Kyoto; now she's actually seeking such a place out? Your stomach squirms. Kyoto, and every moment of that visit, are burned into your brain. You share a trepidatious look with Ringo. You vow not to leave her side for even a second.

~~

Your explicit instructions were to “just look flustered and don't say anything”. That's not hard. You avoid eye contact with the working girls, and stare down at the table while you all wait for Kaji. The atmosphere of sexuality is stifling; it mingles strangely in your stomach with your feelings for Mizu, leaving you feeling on-edge, paranoid about being caught out. You could almost believe that these women, of anyone, will be able to smell the desire on you at a single glance. You've got Mizu’s fingerprints denting the very clay of your soul.

Madam Kaji, when she appears, does nothing to set those fears at rest. Her voice may be melodic, but you can feel her eyes scrape over you like a razor, as if they could peel back your skin and see underneath. You do your best to mimic Mizu's flat stare; after this long traveling together, you usually manage rather well. You've even managed to shoo off a few bothersome pests of your own in the past. This time, though, there's a hard edge to her smile that makes you wonder how much slipped through.

~

For all Ringo says about an apprentice should stay with his master, you somehow seem to lose sight of him in the walk from the corner where you were sitting to the hallway Madam Kaji pauses in. You remain by Mizu’s side. You don't feel any scorn towards Ringo for this. Nobody could say he isn't as loyal as they come, but desire is a powerful force.

Desire. Need. It's why Ringo disappears, and why you don't. He has his own desires to attend to, and you can respect that. But there's nothing in this brothel that you desire more than what you're already standing next to.

Madam Kaji motions to a small pocket of light at the base of one of the hallway panels. There’s a pause. When Mizu doesn't move to look through the peephole, Madam Kaji motions in your direction. “Perhaps the gentleman's apprentice would like to show him that desire is nothing to shy away from?”

You freeze like a cornered deer, meeting her taunting gaze with wide eyes. Her expression says it all; there's a test in this somewhere, a challenge.

Where the hell is Ringo. Trust him to be gone when there's something he would actually want to do. Nevermind on that whole no-scorn thing! You're going to kick him next time you see him.

Your pleading glance at Mizu produces no reaction; she doesn't even look your way. She's simply glaring at Madam Kaji. Challenges have never bothered her; if she doesn't want to do something, she just doesn't. Ugh. Someone needs to do something.

You look through the hole.

…Hm.

Honestly…it's not that bad.

Strange, certainly. The men in ropes, the writing, but you find yourself privately siding with Madam Kaji; it's nothing shameful. Just more of what you had observed while waiting in the main teahouse room. They're not bothering anybody. You consider that there have been worse atrocities you've seen in your travels with Mizu, all the way back to your first meeting.

You shrug up at Mizu. It’s nothing she'll be interested in, nor that she needs to see. She just looks even more impatient at the delay, fingers tapping on her crossed arms. The expression she shoots at Kaji is her classic get on with it glare.

Smirking, Madam Kaji motions to the final peephole. By now, you've lost your hesitation. If you feel anything, you're relieved that this is the last one. This shuffling around on your knees is not only making them sore, it's embarrassing to do with two people standing silently over you, eyeing each other warily.

You peer in.

At first glance, it seems to be just a man and a woman–nothing so strange as the other ones. The man is dressed in dark blue, his hair tied up in a knot like Mizu’s. But then the girl turns to the man, pushing his yukata off his shoulders; it's not a man, but another girl, bared to the touch of the first woman. They kiss, bodies molding together with no hesitation.

You tumble back abruptly, eyes wide, feeling your face flush so fast that the skin on your neck is prickling.

“What? What?” Momentarily distracted from glaring, Mizu looks startled by your reaction. When you shake your head in silence, worried that explaining would give your secret away, she glares suspiciously at Madam Kaji. She's clearly bristling at your apparent distress, assuming you've had a trick played on you. She reaches down to haul you to your feet with a rough tug to your arm, shoving herself half in front of you. “What did you show-...him?”

Kaji’s eyes narrow a fraction at Mizu’s brief stumble on your pronouns, and she smiles, sharp as a knife. With a little click, she slides the peephole shut. “Desire. A complicated thing,” she murmurs in that teasing, seductive tone. “We are not always ready to face it when it first finds us.”

She slides open another full panel, revealing a pleasantly decorated little room. A couple of the girls are in there, already, setting up a table with ink and paper. They look up and giggle when they see you both, their eyes lingering on your flushed cheeks. You can feel them darken again under the scrutiny, and drop your eyes to the mat until the girls leave. When you hear the panel slide shut, you look up to see Madam Kaji’s eyes on you. As soon as you make eye contact, her gaze slide away, to Mizu.

She doesn't look at you again until the moment of Mizu’s proposal.

You both can see the moment that the refusal in Kaji’s eyes wavers, but something else flickers in their depths when she glances between you, and you know what's coming. She wants to talk to Mizu alone.

With Mizu's husky name your desire still bouncing around in your head, obliterating your every other thought but how much you want her, Kaji's desire to exclude you makes you want to bite the woman like a territorial dog. You take a half-step closer to Mizu as Kaji suggests that she take a walk with the gentleman “one-on-one”.

“Perhaps the gentleman’s apprentice would like to enjoy some of the pleasures of my teahouse while…he waits?” She asks sweetly, her smile warm and her eyes hard as gemstones.

Mizu looks at you expectantly, seemingly unbothered by this; she'd probably agree to making you wait on the roof if it got her the information she wanted. You shake your head instead, giving her a look of incredulity in return. Obviously no. When is she going to start trusting you to stay at her side? What do you have to do to prove yourself?

“I haven't got any money,” you reply cleverly, keeping your voice as hushed as you can to disguise it, your eyes flicking up to meet blue orbs like a challenge. You can't really refuse, given that you're playing at master-and-apprentice, but you can make it hard. She can't keep shutting you out. Not this time; now you have an excuse. What prostitute will keep you busy for no money?

A brief light of pure, gremlin devilment comes into her eyes–it doesn't happen often that her rare sense of play is roused, but from what you've seen, that never means good things for the recipient. You should have known better; Mizu never tolerates being maneuvered into allowing something she doesn't want.

She holds the money bag out to you with a little shake to jangle it, and you deflate visibly.

For a moment, there's an unspoken moment of confusion and communication both ways; at first, Mizu holds the money bag out with an almost teasing smirk, clearly indicating let’s see how you manage this one. She doesn't see any danger in it. You can always just sit in the room alone. She's only interested in making a point; this is about negating your excuse.

But when you slump with such an obvious air of rejection, the playfulness drops from her gaze, replaced with a bemused concern. She'll be back in a handful of minutes, why is it such a big deal? This isn’t your fight, you don't need to be here to begin with, much less be stuck with her every moment of the day. So… why does she feel such a pang at your hurt face? You in turn see the momentary flash of confused guilt in her eyes, before she drops the money bag in your hands.

It startles you. You didn't expect that she would care.

Madam Kaji, watching all this and not missing a single beat, says nothing. She claps sharply. Two girls pop out of what seems to be nowhere, taking your hand with an air of false promise in their eyes.

“Ooh. you’re a pretty one,” one purrs, tilting her head with carefully practiced flirtation.

“We almost never see any young and pretty boys,” the other concurs. It’s like being slowly engulfed by the coils of a very nicely perfumed snake. At Madam Kaji’s nod, you’re tugged away, looking over your shoulder at Mizu with a distinct air of betrayal. You fully expect her to turn away, but she keeps staring as the girls lead you back into the room, her expression unreadable.

Even after the door slides shut, she doesn’t move, listening to the giggling emanating from inside, her hand clenching unconsciously on the hilt of her sword. It takes a prompt from Madam Kaji to get her moving again. Face snapping into its usual scowl, she turns and stalks away, leaving Kaji to try and match Mizu’s longer stride in the confines of her kimono.

~

“So, pretty apprentice, what can we do?” Asks the one in green, her dark eyes sparkling as they flick to the money bag still clutched in your hand. “How can we serve your pleasure?”

As attached to Mizu as you are, you’ve never been flirted with by a woman before, and you can’t help the blush. But even that isn’t enough to distract you from the melancholy of being left behind like a pet yet again. Waiting in the cold for hours on the bridge to Shindo Dojo, left in town with Ringo in Mihonoseki, watching her leave with Taigen down that narrow chasm… You shake your head, mouth twisting in tandem with your guts. What if Mizu never comes back? You know the trick she played on Ringo; you giggled about it at the time, you recall guiltily. But you can’t track like he can, even if you’re faster than him. And if she leaves you alone for something like this, what is she planning for the actual attack on Fowler? Maybe you really are just a burden she can't figure out how to shake…

“Why so sad?” The one in gold asks, her sympathy syrupy-sweet. She puts a hand on your arm, but you shift away.

“I'm sorry,” You say, distractedly. You aren't watching your tone as well as you should be. “I would rather be alone. Thank you.”

Silence. They don't move to leave, nor do they try to further convince you. You look up from your despair after a moment, becoming aware of their lack of response.

They're both staring. Studying you. Then they look at each other.

Before you can parse why, the gold-clad girl suddenly lunges forward, catching you by the chin and jerking your chin up, staring at your neck. Your smooth, Adam's-apple-less throat.

“Hey!” You yelp, knocking her hand away; she lets you go readily, already smiling with a distinctly cat-got-the-cream air.

“So that's it,” she says, smugly. “I suspected as much.”

��Is it…?” The other asks fascinatedly. Your eyes dart between them, confused, forboding building in your gut.

“Definitely,” says the first. They both turn to you, looking amused and intrigued.

“Playing dress-up, girl?” Asks Green, smiling archly.

Oh….oh no.

You go cold. “I…I don't know what you…”

“Re-lax. You think you're the first to put on men’s clothing in here? Didn't you see the little show we put on for you?” Gold waves a hand dismissively, talking out over top of you.

“It happens all the time. So, what does your man want? To pretend you're a boy? A new flavor to try? Or some training for you?” Green cuts in, raking her eyes over you. “Is he selling you?”

“He’s–…not–...my man,” you stumble. How to even explain that tangle? Clearly they believe Mizu's disguise, if not yours. You're not about to spill any of those beans, more than you need to. “And I would never stay here.” You pause, suddenly hearing yourself, and bow apologetically. An aching heart is no reason to be rude. “Not that I mean to degrade your work. I'm sorry.”

Both women look at each other, then start to laugh. Clearly they've heard worse.

“Then why do you look so sad?” Asks Gold once her laughter has passed, and this time she sounds almost genuinely interested. She pets your hair, gentle, like an older sibling. “Come on, girl, you can tell us.”

You should just tell them to go. But the room is quiet, and warm, and clean, after months of shacks and forest camping and inns full of leering men. And gods… you're so tired. To unburden yourself to someone would be such a relief. You haven't ever been able to talk about these confusing feelings; the only confidant that you have is Ringo, and you do not trust him with that kind of conversational grenade.

Discretion is the whole point of this place right? There are far worse secrets that they must keep.

Green leans against your shoulder, and this time it feels less sensual, and more like a friendly touch. You're surprised by how it loosens a knot in your chest that you hadn't recognized until now. When was the last time you were hugged?

You sigh. “It’s a long story…”

~

As it turns out, it's a long enough story to require two pots of tea–and then a relocation, as the girls drag you back to the dressing room to re-tell all the juicy details to the rest of the girls.

It's…therapeutic, to bare your heart to a group of open-minded, half-drunk women. They’re clearly connoisseurs of gossip, and they make extremely good listeners; gasping in all the right parts. You can't help but enjoy it a little, finally just venting it all out, lounging with the ever-shifting number of girls as sake replaces the tea. Girls come and go from the room as they head to various clients, but except for one they call “new girl”, who keeps her face turned away from you, they all come over to listen for a while.

(As you're surrounded by girls, slowly explaining the tangled story of your time with Mizu, Mizu returns from her walk with Kaji to find the room empty of you.

She pauses, surprised by her own disappointment. She can't admit it to herself, but she had expected you to have shaken off the girls and be waiting for her. You're always there when she comes back. Something burns in the pit of her stomach to find you gone; after the heavy deal she just made, she has need of the comfort you bring her–not that she'd admit that to herself, either. The images of you, somewhere in the brothel at this moment, half-dressed and flustered, makes her stomach flip. But then she imagines you under some faceless nude woman and her throat tightens. She sits down with a thump in front of the mirror and removes her glasses, studying her own face critically. It must be nice for you to be seeing pretty women for once, instead of her…)

“But why him?” One finally asks, wrinkling her nose, as you pause for breath. She's in a pink kimono–you think the others might have called her Ise. “You're a pretty girl, even in disguise. You could do better. He's hardly a looker.”

Your head snaps up, frowning in offense. The girls giggle at your suddenly icy glare, all warning Ise to duck, and Ise dramatically throws her hands up in front of her defensively. “Alright, alright, don't get your sword in a knot. I'm just saying…”

A couple girls nod in agreement. “Those eyes…” one murmurs. The white-haired girl in the corner turns to glare at her as a few others titter.

“Like a demon,” another says with a shudder.

Your fingers clench against your thighs, brow darkening. “I think they're beautiful.” Your voice is quiet, but hard as stone; the girls all fall silent, looking at each other uncertainly. There's a world of emotion in your heavy tone; a sincerity that they know, better than most, is rare and precious.

It’s Ise that smiles, slowly, with a dark, wicked gleam in her eye. “Do you want an answer?” She asks you bluntly, making you forget your anger in confusion.

“To whether he wants you,” she clarifies with a sigh.

You hesitate. Do you? If the answer is no… gods, that will hurt. And you know in your heart that you won't stop holding out hope, even then. You'll stay. You'll keep loving her. So does it matter?

But what if the answer is yes?

Slowly, wordlessly, you nod, stomach clenching. Ise smiles wider, and reaches for your topknot. “I know a method that never fails.”

~

Mizu looks up when you slide the panel open a crack, brow plunged in a deep scowl.

“I said I didn't–...Oh.”

You duck your head, wordlessly apologizing, even though you’re not even sure why. She only looks marginally less annoyed, watching you come in and sit down against the wall. Ringo is there, too, and he greets you brightly, looking rather pleased with himself. His kimono is slightly askew.

“Where have you been?” Her tone is sharp, her eyes sharper, as she takes in the tousled hair and haphazardly tied clothing on you. The girls had agonized over exactly how much to tousle you. That had honestly taken up the most time.

You shrug a little sulkily, keeping your eyes down. Part of you wants to abandon the idea, now that you've gotten snapped at–is it worth the risk of antagonizing her?--while part of you is still upset at getting left behind again. But the thought of Mizu picturing you doing… that…is making you blush yet again. Ise had explained what they were going to imply you did, which gave you a mind full of images that you know will probably haunt you worse than they haunt their intended target. What if Ise was messing with you? This is never going to work, you're already botching it by getting flustered.

In your mind, your avoidance is a dead giveaway that you're being shady…but to Mizu, the tousled appearance and shamefaced blush give exactly the impression Ise planned, and her fingers clench again, until the knuckles crack. Her lips tighten and thin, but she says nothing further, turning back to the mirror with a faint huff. Silence descends, but there’s a strange tension to the air that even Ringo notices. He glances between you two, gaining the worried expression that always makes you want to immediately reassure him.

“So, how much of my money did you spend?” Mizu abruptly spits at you, as though she's finally thought of an excuse to be angry. There's an unusual amount of venom behind her tone, harsh enough that Ringo’s eyes widen and he sits up a bit straighter, while you shrink in on yourself a bit. Wordlessly, still avoiding eye contact, you reach into your haori and pull out of the money pouch, tossing it to her.

She can tell as soon as she catches it that you haven't spent a single coin. “...Hm,” she says again, heat immediately bleeding out of her voice as her expression lightens. She surveys your disheveled appearance again, quirking an eyebrow.

“So why are you–” she starts, before there's another knock at the door. The panel slides open a crack as Mizu heaves a loud sigh of exasperation, her eyes rolling.

But before she can reiterate yet again to leave her alone, two girls’ heads poke in, and they aren't looking in her direction. They're whispering and giggling, completely unprofessionally, nudging each other, and staring at you.

“That's him,” one points.

“No! Is it really…?” The other gasps.

Both Mizu and Ringo turn to look at you, mirrored looks of confusion on their faces. Your expression is that of a dog facing down a speeding horse cart, unable to move, wide eyed. You regret agreeing to this; you want to sink into the tatami.

Their next whispers turn all three of you into statues.

“Ise says she finished three times…”

“Didn't even charge him…”

“He never even undressed–”

Ringo’s eyes and mouth all drop wide open, looking avidly between you and the door. Mizu is… frozen. Her face has taken on that blank expression that you've learned has all the safety of a rumbling mountainside. You don't dare shift an inch, but you can't help but stare at her. Your eyes slide from her stricken face to her hands; they're slowly curling into fists. Is it… working?

More giggling from the hallway, and something thumps the panel. It sounds like there are more girls gathering in the hallway. Another head pokes in, gets pushed back, and more sounds of muffled tussling leaks into the room. It sounds like most of the girls in the teahouse are having a little too much fun with this; they're probably thrilled to get to act out a little.

“Don’t shove–”

“Let me see! I want a turn–”

“... haven't had an orgasm like that in forever–”

“I can't wait to have a good scream–”

Oh gods above. Your face is crimson. You should have expected that they would go straight to vulgarity. Ringo chuckles with surprised and impressed delight, thumping you on the shoulder with one wrist like a comrade. This is so embarrassing.

One of the girls, braver than the rest, managing to wrestle the others back, calls out, “Mr. Samurai, can we borrow your apprentice?” This produces an absolute cascade of giggles and more heads poke into the door again.

“Yeah, me next!”

“Only after me!”

“You don't need him tonight, right, Mr. Samurai?”

“We promise not to break him–”

Mizu finally moves, moving towards the door with a speed that actually makes your heart clench with fear for the prostitutes. They all fall back, a chorus of shrieks and yelps echoing in the hallway as she almost seems to abruptly materialize in front of them.

“We're busy.”

Oh.

Her voice is so frozen with fury that it's a miracle she doesn't breathe out icy smoke. It’s a tone you've only heard a handful of times, always followed by blood spattering across snow. You can feel that familiar twisting ache of mingled fear and arousal in your core that you've grown to associate with Mizu at her most deadly. But this time it's complicated by a second layer of blending; uncertainty–is she just irritated by these twittering women?--and hope, delicate, frail, slowly blossoming.

Is she…jealous?

She slams the panel closed hard enough that there's an ominous wood crunching noise.

Silence falls. You watch Mizu, warily, as she stands at the door, her fingers still white-knuckling the edge of the panel.

“Wow, what did you do?” Ringo demands. You turn to look at him, startled. You were so focused on Mizu's reactions that you almost forgot he was a second witness. “How does that even work?”

“U-uh…I…” Oh gods, what do you say? You didn't actually do anything! Your idea of arousing is Mizu standing over you after a spar, the tip of her sheathed sword digging into your throat, an icy, smug satisfaction in her eyes. What do normal women find titillating?

“Come on, you gotta tell me. I wanna get with prostitutes for free, too!” Ringo gives you puppy eyes. “How'd you do it without them finding out… you know.” He gestures at your clothing. “Was it your hands? Is that the secret?” He asks, holding up his wrists and looking at them worriedly, as though hoping that that isn't the answer. “Wait–” he squints at you. “Where did you even learn to do anything like that anyway–”

“No more questions.” Comes the snarl from the door.

You glance away from Ringo to Mizu.

She's still got her back to the room. Her shoulders are drawing up in a hard hunch, free hand clenching tight again. The rumbling from the mountain is getting louder. You're not sure whether you should be exulting that she actually seems bothered, or be worried about the upcoming danger if she pops. She's not usually the type to explode, but when she does…

You both fall silent, watching as her shoulders heave in one deep, steadying sigh, before she finally turns around. Her face is composed, back to its usual resting glare, and you feel a bit let down. Maybe she just found it all annoying. All that, for no real answers…

Ringo stays quiet long enough for Mizu to return to her seated position by the mirror, but you can see him fidgeting. Before long, he leans over closer to you. His voice is hushed, trying to be discreet. For Ringo.

“So was it a tongue thing, or–”

THUNK. Mizu’s fist strikes the lap table hard, hard enough to upset the elegant centerpiece. You both jump and turn to look at her, freezing in place.

“If you want to know so badly, go ask them yourself.” Every syllable burns, blue eyes blazing.

Ringo, undeterred as ever, leaps to his feet. “I will!” He chirps, padding quickly over to the door. There, he pauses, bowing to Mizu. “Thank you for the permission, Master.”

Mizu watches him leave, her glare never wavering. After the door shuts, she snaps her gaze back to you. Your heart beats a little faster, as ever, feeling that little tingle that comes with getting her focused attention.

“You.” She jabs a finger at you; you flinch. “You. Don't. Leave this room again tonight. And nobody but Ringo comes in. Got it?”

Oh gods, she's jealous, she has to be, she's actually–

Now probably isn't the time to be cheeky and point out that she didn't put herself on that list. You nod. You've never been so happy to be glared at before. She wants me here. With her.

“Of course,” you say. “That's fine.”

Her glare softens at your voice.

You can see the way her eyes flick to your mouth as you form the words, and your heart flutters again. It's real, it must be, oh gods above– no way that this is happening, no way– You open your mouth again, unsure what else to say, but wanting to reassure her, to tell her that here is the only place you want to be. But before you can do that, there's a knock at the door again.

Mizu’s eyes blaze. She actually growls this time, turning towards the door with the feral speed of the truly enraged.

“I said we're busy,” she snarls, whipping the door panel open hard enough that it rattles the entire wall.

You see her freeze, as a soft, delicate voice rings through the room. “May I serve you?”

A pit suddenly opens in your stomach at the absolute stillness in Mizu’s posture. Even from behind you can tell she's staring at the girl’s face. The voice is so pure, so sweetly feminine that you can picture the kind of face it must belong to; a perfect doll, sparkling eyes, symmetrical features, neat teeth behind full, petal-soft lips. No blemishes, no scars, no days of sweat and greasy hair after too long on the road. Your heart twists; finally, finally Kaji has found someone perfect enough to take even Mizu’s breath away, and your chance with her is gone.

Is this how your little trick made her feel? This pain in your chest must be karma come knocking. The second you're away from this brothel, you’re coming clean; you can always say they just wanted to prank her. But you won't leave her believing it truly happened. No more of this back-and-forth of jealousy–if it ever was that on her end.

But then maybe she won't care by then. And I would deserve that. This pain is wrong, it was wrong to bait her because you were too cowardly to be honest about your feelings. She may have given you moments of jealousy before but they were never intentional. And now–

Mizu takes a step away, turning away from the girl towards you as she walks back to her previous seat. Her expression makes you pause on your internal journey of self-pity. It isn't lovestruck, or lustful. Not a flicker of a blush; she's all business. Her eyes seek yours out, a split-second look that you know all too well. The look that comes with a new, unexpected layer of trouble.

Your eyes flick towards the girl, now revealed as she steps into the room. She's as lovely as her voice would have suggested, tiny, exquisitely made up. But it's not your accurate prediction of her perfection that makes you freeze just as Mizu had. It's that you know her, from that bridge in Kyoto. As before, your every memory of that trip is seared in.

You don't dare try to catch Mizu’s eye again; this might be a problem, but for the moment, the girl clearly doesn't realize her hand has been revealed.

Just like that, the jealousy and pining take a backseat, as they so often have on this shared journey. Once again, you and Mizu are a united front, dealing with a new threat.

And through the chaos that quickly devolves around you, clarity comes to you. You didn't need to play this charade. All this time, all the worrying about who feels what, when that look Mizu shot you a moment ago says it all. In the moment where things got serious, upset with you or not, she trusted you to understand immediately. In the moment of trouble, she looked towards you.

–

When she comes back from her mysterious task, you're waiting in the hallway, too restless to stand Ringo’s chatter and Akemi’s sniping. Akemi had heard it all, of course, in the women’s dressing room, and she wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to needle you, since she couldn't seem to needle Mizu effectively. You don't doubt she'll blurt the whole sorry tale out to Mizu at her first opportunity, and standing in the dark in the hall leaves you with little to do but fret about that.

It hasn't been as long as you would have expected, when she comes back.

You look up at the quiet footfall, and pause, heart clenching at the sight of her face in the shadowy hall. Mizu pauses, too, stopping a little distance away from you, as if afraid to get too close. She's carrying her hat under her arm, and her face looks…gods. You've seen her furious, cold, exhausted, conflicted, even amused.

This is something else, something worse than anything you've ever seen. She looks bereft, hollowed out, her eyes staring ahead as though looking at some horror no one else can see.

In that moment, you move without thought of rejection. Something in her face just calls to you, more deeply than words, drawing you together like magnets.

You push off the wall and step up to meet her.

“Mizu…?” You keep your voice as soft as you can. She doesn't raise her eyes. Instead, you can see the lids lower until they fall shut.

Slowly, you reach up to cup her face; you expect her to push your hand away, but you would have tried anyway. It’s your heart reaching out to touch hers in the only way you can, and it cannot be suppressed. In this moment, even though it's the closest you've ever been, you're not thinking about wanting her, only wanting to soothe her. Strange that your first moment of deeper intimacy should come from this clear pain, surrounded by the trappings of lust itself.

She doesn't fight you. When you bring your hands to the sides of her head, slowly pulling the glasses away, she lets you guide her face down to you, until her head is resting heavily against your shoulder. Her arms remain at her sides, hanging limp. When your hands cradle her head, her hair, she shudders violently for a second with a little choke, remembering the way she cradled another head, and then subsides.

You stand that way for a long time, in utter silence, utter stillness. The only movement is a very faint shivering that suffuses her frame. She's breathing slowly, with an exaggerated evenness as though deliberately forcing herself to do so. Your mind is racing; what on earth could have produced such a response?

Mizu… what did you do.

You already know you aren't going to ask, and make her relive it. Maybe someday, if she wants to unburden herself… but it doesn't matter now. It doesn't really matter at all; you know there's very little you wouldn't forgive her for. And you could see the regret in her eyes, that no matter what heinousness produced this, she feels no peace in the aftermath.

“It was a girl.” You can barely hear her.

“What?”

“I killed a girl tonight.”

Your heart constricts at her quiet voice. She says it tonelessly, unemotional, but you can feel her shoulders tensing under your hands. To her, this is the moment; you, seeing the monster that she is, pulling away, refusing further comfort.

“A girl?”

A faint shift of her head against your shoulder that might be a nod. A chill runs through you; she feels your shudder and braces for the shove, the exclamation of horror.

“Was it…necessary?” You ask slowly, instead, trying to understand. You've never known Mizu to kill an innocent before. There must have been a reason.

You can feel the way the question strikes her, unexpected. When was the last time anyone asked her about why she does what she does?

“...I don't know,” she says bleakly, her voice cracking.

Another long silence; the shoulders grow even more tense. She almost seems to stop breathing. You turn your face to her hair, silently, and feel her body go loose again. There's nothing you can say to fix this; only offer your steady presence.

“... Thank you.” This time the voice has a hoarse, shaky edge. You make a questioning noise, your fingers stilling. You hadn’t realized you'd been stroking her hair.

“For not…pulling away.” Her voice is growing quieter and quieter with each word; she turns her face harder into your shoulder, as though she can hide her vulnerability along with her face. “For not… thinking ill of me.”

“Never.” Your whisper is vehement, your fingers tightening against the back of her head.

“You should.”

You pause; the contrast of her gratitude and disapproval flummoxes you for a moment. You have no recourse but to be honest.

“I knew what this path would be when I chose to follow. I will not reject you for following your ember.”

You're shocked to hear a faint sniffle before she straightens, and even more shocked to feel wetness cooling on your shoulder. She hadn’t made a single sound of weeping; not a sob, not a hitch of breath. You saw no tear slide down her face.

Her expression is a different story; as stoic as ever but for those red-rimmed, haunted eyes. She’s still staring into the middle distance, unfocused. At the sight of her, your resolve snaps; you blurt it out. You can't fix this pain killing her inside now; you can only right the wrong you had done earlier.

“It didn't happen.”

“Mm…?” she looks at you, finally, but it's as if she is seeing someone else.

“The… the girls,” you stumble on your words for a moment. You want to be honest about what happened, but now doesn’t feel like the time to confess love, not when she's so wreathed in this empty sadness. You settle on, “I didn't do anything with them.”

She blinks, starts to focus a tiny bit. “Then they-…and you never…”

You shake your head.

She blinks, then blinks again. She doesn't look immediately relieved, at least not straightforwardly, but she looks strangely more alert. It's as if the weight on her shoulders was heavier, but it was a weight she was more willing to tolerate. Her brow pinches as she seems to think of something.

“I'm…sorry you had to look through those holes,” she says finally, staring down at your feet. Her voice is soft, barely above a breath. “You're… not meant to see all of this.”

“It wasn't so bad,” you reassure her. “I can handle it.”

She shakes her head impatiently.

“This isn't how you should be seeing…I'm…supposed to–…” She stops, looking confused by her own words. You stare at her in surprise. Supposed to what? Protect me? That would be a departure indeed from her constant insistence that you are here of your own free will, that she isn't responsible for you, that she isn't your protector… and so on.

You laugh a little, warmly. It's not funny, any of this, but there's a tiny bubble of something warm glowing in your chest, something that feels as though it's solidified between you, and the icy wall of uncertainty that plagues your every step has begun to trickle away.

“I can protect myself now, thanks to you,” you murmur, ducking your head a little to try to meet her gaze as she hangs her head. The next words are hard to say, but you want her to hear them. “And, truly…I don't think there's a better place in all of Japan than next to you.”

She looks up at you, eyebrows quirking up in surprise; it's the last sentiment she would expect to hear from anyone right now. The eye contact in this moment is lightning-sharp; a myriad of emotions run through her gaze, her face twitching through what looks like guilt, shame… and then a deeper, aching longing. The potency is as intense as every other emotion in her, and it arrests your very breathing.

You know. In that moment, you know; the trickle becomes a meltwater flood, soaking warmth through your ribcage. You’re pulled into the undertow of ocean eyes that glow in the cocooning darkness.

Her lips press together tightly as her eyes flick to your mouth as they did once, hours so. She looks suddenly lost; too emotionally overwhelmed by the events of the night to keep her walls up any longer. Distraction, validation, reassurance… human weaknesses she normally scoffs at. Tonight, her last rest before Fowler, before possible death, she'll let herself be human. She will seek comfort from someone that will touch her like she isn't a monster, confirm to herself that she can be capable of love, softness. That after her revenge, a happy life could be possible for her.

“I'm glad–...” her voice hitches as she leans closer to you, then sways back again, uncertainly. In the dark, her blush doesn't show, but the flustered expression is enough to make your heart suddenly race. “I'm glad that… you didn't. With them.”

You can't breathe. Your heart is in your throat; its rabbiting beat is making you shake so strongly with adrenaline that you have to force your teeth not to chatter. You've been waiting for so long, with never the slightest inkling of hope…

“...I am, too.” In the intimate darkness surrounding you, your whisper feels loud. Her gaze focuses in like a beam of burning light; your own expression says everything.

This time she steps closer again without flinching, and you feel like you might pass out. The hesitant look flickers across her again for a moment, before her brow suddenly furrows. You have a half second to recognize the familiar look of determination that precedes every risky move before there's a long fingered hand curling around your nape, and a pair of thin, sculpted lips on yours.

Oh.

It's as though every muscle in your body melts away in an instant. The second you lean into it with enthusiasm, you’re enveloped; her arms are like iron, clutching you tight. It's every bit as mind-numbing as you had fantasized; the taste of her lips is tea and copper, blood-hot as her tongue slips against yours. Mizu does nothing halfway. She kisses like she fights; overpowering, ruthless, clever and swift. Every twitch of reaction is caught and dragged free of you again and again as that famous adaptability is turned on you and achieving your pleasure. Her hands roam restlessly, mapping over the lines of your body, prompting a squeak when they suddenly squeeze tight, nails dimpling your flesh, before sliding on. You hope that every time her fingers sink in, there's a mark you'll see tomorrow, until she's littered every inch of your skin.

Your mingled breaths are loud in the silence of the hall. Your own hands are in her hair, slipping down her neck, reveling in the shift of the muscles in her shoulders; you can touch her now, you can touch her, she's kissing you, she wants you, gods above–

“Mizu…” You can't stop the soft whine, muffled by her lips; it thrills you to feel her shudder in response to it, her arms tightening around you with a hushed groan. The hand at the back of your neck grasps a hank of your hair like a handle, tugging your head to the side with accidental roughness. The pain sparks like flint against the heat building between your thighs, flaring it to a roar. Your little hiss is choked off by a gasp as she buries her face in your neck and inhales you, deep and greedy, indulging herself, before biting down hard on the soft skin below your ear.

Your grip on her shoulders tightens with a bitten-back cry, lust shooting through you like a grassfire. It runs molten between your thighs, softening your legs until your knees buckle–swift as an arrow, your world spins.

Your spine thumps into the support beam, her front molded to yours as she pins you against it; you can feel her heartbeat pattering against her bindings, the sharpness of her hipbones against your belly. Everything in your body pulses with one hard beat of desire; it thuds from your throat to your fingertips every time you hear that harsh inhale of her panting through her nose between kisses, the soft grunts of response to each slide of tongue and teeth. You don't notice your haori part until cool fingers slip along your ribcage. You flinch with a gasp, your back arching wanton and shameless into the touch. The husky chuckle at your ear makes your core throb so hard it hurts.

Your thighs tangle together without a care to your surroundings. “Ngh–” Another desperate, muffled groan vibrates against the side of your throat when you press your leg up between hers. Her hips spasm and buck, her groan fracturing into something soft and needy–“ah-...ahh”--breath puffing faster over your skin; there's a searing softness pressing against your thigh, already damp through the thick fabric of her pants. In response, the lean muscle of her own leg presses up between yours, hiking you higher against the wall until you’re spread across it, your own weight bearing you down against it with a cruel pressure to the very source of your ache. As you’re yanking her hair free with a high-pitched moan of her name–

The soft sssh-thnk of a door panel makes you both freeze.

“Master? Are you out here? I heard–...oh.”

Mizu slowly raises her head from your neck as you turn your head. Is this how you die? Of embarrassment?

Ringo’s eyes are like saucers; behind him, the faint sound of Akemi protesting spills out into the hallway as the three of you stare at each other in silence. “What? What is it? Ringo? Hey! Untie me! Let me see!”

Ringo opens his mouth, then closes it again. A wide, delighted grin slowly spreads over his face. Without another word, he slowly leans back into the room, shutting the panel behind him.

You both stare at the door for a minute. Akemi's complaints can still be heard from inside. Then you look at each other.

You giggle first, trying to stifle it, horrified at yourself as it bubbles free. “Sorry, s-sorry–” you hiss, more giggles escaping you, edged almost hysterical. It's not funny, at all, but you can't seem to stop.

Mizu watches you, perplexed at first, her mouth twitching as though she's not sure whether she should be laughing with you, or not. Finally she just sighs, too exhausted to give a damn, leaning her head on your shoulder again. This time you don't hesitate to wrap your arms around her, nuzzling into her hair as her own arms curl around you tightly.

It's not okay, nothing is okay, but, this… this is good.

Into the silence, a woman screams.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Skinnamarinkstump Linkdump

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me TODAY (Feb 15) for a virtual event with YANIS VAROUFAKIS, and on MONDAY (Feb 17) for an event at KEPLER'S in MENLO PARK with CHARLIE JANE ANDERS. More tour dates here.

It's Saturday and I'm on a book tour, and the world is in chaos, and there are more links to write about than I could fit in to this week's newsletter, so time for a cubic linkdump, the 27th such:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Let's start with the best thing I saw all week: a 3D-printed, spring-loaded, clockwork chess pawn that uses a magnet to sense when it has reached the end of the board and SPROING! turns into a queen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSOnnle3zbA

The whole video is a fascinating account of the design process, from idea to prototype to finished item, but if you're impatient and want to skip right to the eyeball kick, it's at 12:27-12:35. And if you want to print your own, the files are $12 (cheap!):

https://www.patreon.com/WorksByDesign/shop/queen-pawn-3d-printing-files-614491?source=storefront

Regrettably, not every tech project is a good one. This week, Google abandoned its AI ethics pledge. Unlike most AI ethics pledge, which are full of nonsense about not accidentally creating a vengeful god that turns the human race into paperclips, Google's AI pledge was actually very important, in that the company promised not to make AI that violates human rights, international law, or privacy. There comes a point where harping on Google's abandoned "don't be evil" motto can feel a little hacky, but in this case, I'll make an exception. My EFF colleague Matthew Guariglia tears Google a much-deserved new AIhole over this latest heel turn:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/google-wrong-side-history

Not all bad technology is evil. Some of it is merely very, very stupid. How stupid? Check out Thom Dunn's Wirecutter review of The Heatbit Trio, a space-heater that uses Bitcoin-mining GPUs to generate some of its heat, very slightly offsetting the cost of warming your room – but at a rate that would take decades to recoup the $700 price-tag. Thom got some spicy quotes from Molly White for this one – possibly the first time she's been cited in a home appliance review:

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/heatbit-space-heater-review/

Staying with crypto freaks for a moment here, Adam Levitin dissects the cryptocurrency "industry"'s latest chorus of aggrieved whining over "debanking":

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2025/02/debanked-by-the-market.html

As Levitin writes, banks aren't kicking cryptocurrency "companies" off their books because the government wants to punish them. Banks have a very good reason to want to avoid doing business with high-dollar scams that have highly correlated implosions, which is to say, times when everyone wants their money back from the cryptocurrency "company" the bank is handling charges for. For a longer explanation that gets into the nitty gritty of bank supervision, check out Patio11's excellent, detailed explainer:

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunking/

As all the real heads know, "crypto means cryptography," and cryptographers continue to contrive privacy marvels. This week, Kagi – the best search engine, a million times better than Google – released a Privacy Pass authentication plugin, which lets you login to Kagi and run searches without Kagi being able to connect any of the searches you make with your account:

https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass

As an sf/crime writer who sometimes (often) searches for information on committing ghastly crimes and 'orrible murders, the fact that my favorite search engine will be technically incapable of tying those searches to my identity is quite a relief. Read my review of Kagi here:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you're one of those marvel-contriving hackers, cryptographers, security researchers or tinkerers, you should really consider attending this summer's Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE), 2600 Magazine's (now) annual (formerly biennial) hacker con. They've just posted their CFP – get those submission in!

https://www.hope.net/cfp-talks.html

Well, I have to post this and get ready for this morning's virtual book tour event with Yanis Varoufakis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

But before I go, one more link: Kevin Steele's 2005 essay on Hypercard, "When Multimedia Was Black & White," an absolute classic, and a beautiful meditation on the art and promise of early hypertext:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240213190609/http://www.kevinsteele.com/smackerel/black_white_00.html

I've known Kevin for most of my life, long before he helped found Mackerel, the pioneering Toronto multimedia company. Long after Mackerel, Kevin went on making wonderful things. In 2023, he published a monumental act of portraiture – a "sequential art" time-series of panoramas of Toronto's hip, ever-changing Queen Street West strip:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/13/spadina-to-bathurst/#dukes-cycle

Comparing Kevin's more recent work with that lovely old essay reveals deep correspondences and the progress of a unique and creative soul.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/15/intermixture/#debunking-debanking

[creatingblackcharacters]

hi! this might be a complicated ask. i'm writing a Black-coded (nonhuman) ex-soldier with PTSD and was wondering if there is anything else i should consider with this character's relationship to violence. since im white, i dont have a nuanced perspective on how growing up Black(coded) might affect his behavior in this area.

my character is Black-coded in his character design, but more importantly, in-universe, he is part of a phenotype of his species that is treated like they are less intelligent and more violent than the other phenotypes. in canon material for this universe, other characters who are subject to these stereotypes have been interpreted as Black, so there is precedent for this analogy. a huge part of the source material is the struggle for equality, freedom, and liberation for all phenotypes. (not that its always done well)

the way im writing him now, he's a very calm and avoidant pacifist when possible, wanting to distance himself from the battlefield. but when he feels his new friends are in danger, he will fight again to protect them and himself. thing is, he has PTSD, and what he registers as a life-or-death threat might not register as a threat to his friends. as a result, they might find his actions overly aggressive… they don't understand what the war was like & how not being proactive enough cost him a friend. he's terrified to lose someone again, and this is the root of his behavior. that fear drives him more than the fear of returning to the battlefield. i dont want him to be an "angry aggressive Black man" or anything, i want it to be clear that he's acting from a place of fear, trauma, and protectiveness. i also want to note that he is not the only Black-coded character. one of the three never-seen-battle, carefree characters is also Black-coded. hopefully i've written him with enough nuance to avoid falling into stereotypes about aggression, but if not, i'd want to hear where i can improve.

now, the part where i really need advice is on how growing up as a part of this stereotyped phenotype might affect how he does (or does not) express things like anger, hostility, or fear. might he try to keep his emotions under wraps to avoid appearing angry or aggressive? or uncritically embrace it as a part of his identity? might he be afraid that expressing his emotions honestly will invite discrimination from his friends who do not have this phenotype? im afraid i just dont know where to begin with this one, but i feel it must be addressed as an important part of his character. oppression is a big topic in the source material and i feel i'd be remiss to avoid it in my OCs.

i know this is a long ask, but if you do choose to answer, thank you very much! if you'd like elaboration on anything, just ask. he's my favorite OC in this story and the most well-developed, and i want to do him justice

Hi, sorry for taking so long to get back to you, but I've been thinking about how to answer this question daily. In my honest opinion, I think you should pause on this character and do some further research. You have an incredibly intriguing concept that would be really cool to explore... But I don't think that, right now, you as an author necessarily understand what you need to in order to depict the complexity of this character's experience.

My suggestion would be finding and reading books written by Black men about their experiences as Black men. They will include their stories of how they had to deal with their emotions, their traumas, and their relationships. I'm sure there are even stories of Black vets, if you really want to get that specific, but just in general life experience will hold patterns worth understanding for characterization. Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, or Monster by Walter Dean Myers, stuff like that.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Who is Yvette and may I please know more about their streaming career? 🙏

Comtesse Yvette Preux is, for lack of a better word, one of the ‘iconic’ investigators/PCs in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. She appears in a lot of art in the rulebook, as do many of the PCs of the A.N.I.M. team and our friends.

(both by team artist @chaospyromancy)

She’s also the first ever monster PC to ever be played in Eureka, back before Eureka even had official monster PC rules. The incredible success of that campaign is what set the precedent for what monster PC gameplay would come to be in Eureka.

You can read a bit of an origin story for her in this post

In the 2010s and 2020s, she has a fairly successful twitch streaming/influencer career, with her gimmick being that she claims to be a real 800+-year-old vampire, and allegedly never breaks character. Her twitch and YouTube channels cover competitive gaming, challenge runs, advanced math, firearms, and urban exploring.

In-person she is.. a little harder to get along with. She’s.. old-fashioned, and her values are very distinctly those of someone who grew up rich and Catholic in the 1200s, which ironically means she has little in common with a modern “tradcath.”

The contrast between the modern world, the modern world’s pop culture idea of the Middle Ages, and the actual Middle Ages is a major theme in the parts of her story where she’s actually integrating into the society of the 1990s and 21st century.

Many would expect her to be virulently and openly hateful, but that’s the pop culture Middle Ages. The actual Middle Ages were oppressive in different and more interesting ways.

I’ll give a few interesting examples

In the Middle Ages, women were considered the more “lustful” and “sexually aggressive” sex, a bit like men are thought of today. It’s women who were considered basically responsible for lust in the first place, to the point that it was considered a public health issue. Lust with no outlet was thought to be detrimental to one’s overall physical health. Sex or even masturbation was sometimes prescribed by doctors to combat this.

This is a comedic exaggeration/oversimplification but in the medieval world being around women would gradually fill up a Dark Souls-style Lust meter and if you didn’t do anything to reduce it it would take a chunk out of your health, making you sickly and prone to other health problems. Women were more resistant to this because they’re the source of lust in the first place. Medieval women covered their legs and their hair in particular for everyone’s protection.

This manifests in Yvette as her not caring at all about being naked in front of female friends, but being careful not to look too sexy around male friends. And then awkwardly telling them to masturbate later if they need to because it’s better to sin and live than to avoid sin to the detriment of one’s health. (In fact, knowingly damaging one’s health is a sin.)

In the art, you can see her not only wearing pants, but even wearing pants that show her ankles and legs, and wearing her hair down. It took her a long time to get comfortable wearing anything but full-length skirts around men, but these risqué (to her) outfits are symbolizing her character growth from someone who is accommodating to others to a fault, to prioritizing her own comfort, even at cost to others.

In the Middle Ages, they did not conceptualize homosexuality like we do now. No one was gay, and neither was anyone straight. Attraction wasn’t a trait of an individual, it was a fact. Homosexuality wasn’t really considered a thing that you were, it was a thing you do. It’s really hard to explain so I’m just going to hope y’all get it along with the example. Sodomy was sodomy, and that was considered to cover basically any irregular form of sex. Irregular sex between a man and woman was as much sodomy as sex between a man and another man. This also means that there was no presumption of homosexuality in the Middle Ages. You didn’t have to say “no homo” before you touched your same sex friend’s hand. Close friends would kiss each other on the mouth and stuff, and that was considered normal. (Though something you would want to avoid was spending more than a few minutes alone with an opposite-sex friend, because that could be used to call the woman’s virginity into question, which could hurt her eligibility for marriage.)

As Yvette understands it, in the 21st century, people have constructed entire communities around their enjoyment of sodomy, like how she’s a member of the gun club. She has complex feelings about that but it isn’t like she’s never engaged in sodomy before either. (She brought this to confession and did her penance so it’s fine.)

What really aggravates her is how she can’t touch or kiss any of her friends in the 21st century without it being considered sexual.

She argues it’s not “gay” for her to feel attracted to women either, it’s normal. Women are naturally attractive to everyone.

Where it really gets abrasive though is probably the classism. She’s from the noble class and still considers that to really matter, it makes her a little bit better than everyone else, and more qualified to be making decisions for people.

She does love commoners, though. All her friends are commoners, and she’s very protective of them. She’s too autistic to get that noblesse obligé wasn’t supposed to be a real principal she lives by and even back when she was for-real managing a fiefdom she was an advocate for the comfort of the peasantry.

I'm gonna have to stop listing all her quirks here because if I don’t stop then it’ll go on forever. If you want to read some short stories that feature her, subscribe to our Patreon.

I’ll segway by saying that two more major aspects of her are generosity and power. She revels in power in all forms, including the power to solve the problems of people who are helpless to solve them themselves. Like I said, she takes noblesse obligé very seriously. Jesus Christ had the power to multiply the fish and bread for the hungry, so he did. She can help, so she will(whether you like it or not). She hardly even considers it a “duty,” it’s more like why would she ever do anything else? Sometimes this means giving away staggering amounts of money, other (more exciting) times it means getting involved in a Eureka adventure/investigation, the more challenging and dangerous the better, because it makes her even cooler. This is what gets her into Eureka adventures. She’s going to help the helpless, what does it matter if it also fuels her ego?

I also just realized I’ve said very little about her actual twitch streaming career. Like I said, her gimmick is that she’s a real vampire. In the 2010s and 2020s, she is more or less “out” as a vampire, openly identifying herself as such and doing almost nothing to hide any aspect of her vampirism(except the part where she sneaks up on people in the night and drinks their blood, but she doesn’t hide that because it’s a vampire thing, she hides that because it’s an assault charge). Most people just think she’s weird, or really really dedicated to the persona. And if somebody does actually see her not reflecting in a mirror, or some other unexplainable proof of vampirism, what are they going to do? Go online and say “hey everyone I think that this popular e-celebrity whose gimmick is that she says she’s a vampire actually is a real vampire!”? Vampires aren’t real, idiot.

If you want to read short stories about her, you can get them with a $5 subscription to our Patreon,

and she and her exploits in Eureka campaigns are also talked about a lot in the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club.

The Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook will also have a section that will probably be called “the making of a vampire” that will detail some of her actual living life and shine a little more light on how a vampire actually comes to be in Eureka’s world.

[todayisdeadinside]

Nick Grimshaw is GRIMEY: The Infamous Stripper Party (Harry's 19th Birthday)

I've been digging into this party since March and it's now June and I still feel like I'm missing so much, but this is everything I could find and all of the conclusions I've been able to draw. Sorry this post took so damn long, I literally kept uncovering more details and it just kept spiralling like a russian nesting doll of conflicting info.

Because of tumblr's image limit, I've posted my extensive photo findings from this party onto a sideblog @1d-hq, and linked those posts throughout. Strap in, Nick haters and Harry lovers alike. And yes, I made a whole sideblog for this post.

Table of Contents;

Source Breakdowns

Timeline

Contradictions

Guestlist

Unidentified

Details on Guests

The Stripper

DMs with Luis Govela

Niall

Unknowns/Questions

Final Notes

Source Breakdowns

This is so conflicting it's not even funny, but I did my best. To make this easier on myself, here's every article/source in chronological posted order, with what it claimed about the party. Major publication articles I didn't include just said the same shit earlier ones had said, so I cut them to cut repetitiveness.

For article timestamps, based on either common sense (ie: the hour is more reasonable in British time than my time) or context clues (ie: one article had the "3am" tag) I determined if they were already set to British time or not. I genuinely couldn't find a foolproof method to deduce this, though, so I could be wrong on a few of these (I even tried setting my laptop to British time).

I also screenshotted and posted all of the articles on my sideblog, so you can read them without giving clicks to the publications if that's something you'd like to avoid.

DailyMail #1 posted February 1st at 9:32am (post version)

About the day prior to Harry's birthday, Thursday January 31st 2013.

Early in the evening Harry (18), Louis (21), and 5SOS played football.

Harry (18) then went to La Bodega Negra with Nick Grimshaw (28) and James Corden (34) for food.

Harry (18) then went to Groucho Club, still with Nick (28) and James (34), where Caroline Flack (33) was also partying. (Allegedly Cara Delevingne was also there).

Harry (18) left Groucho at some point (unknown if with or without Nick and James) and went to Base Nightclub. He left Base at 3:20am, ending the night.

DailyMail #2 posted February 2nd at 9:16am (post version)

About Harry's birthday, Friday February 1st 2013.

Guest list claimed to be 39 people.

Stripper info: Claimed she cost £100, was dressed as a cop, stripped down to underwear for 10 minutes, forced Harry to bury his face in her chest, and she slapped Harry (19) with her truncheon (police stick).

Claimed location was initially the Alibi Club in Dalston, London, before moving to a "friend's" nearby house party at 3:00am, going home at 4:30am. Implied Harry (19) went to dinner with (at least) Theo Hutchcraft (26) before going to Alibi.

Claimed none of Harry's bandmates were present. Claimed Harry didn't invite them.

Metro posted February 2nd at 11:20am (post version)

Claimed location was that Harry (19) and his "cronies" went for dinner before heading to the Alibi, then later the "friend's" house, ending the night at 4:30am.

Claimed Niall (20) was present.

Deleted Sun Article #1 posted February 2nd at 1:51pm (post version)

Stripper info: Claimed she gave Harry (19) a lap dance, that she was dressed as a cop.

Claimed location was that Harry (19), Niall (20), and Nick (28) started at Rita's Bar & Grill, before heading to Alibi until 4:30am, no mention of the friend's house party.

Claimed Niall (20) was present, quoting, "Niall told a fan in a message on Twitter that he was "so shocked" and he had "never seen him so scared before."

Deleted Sun Article #2 posted February 2nd at 2:14pm (post version)

Stripper info: Her presence and the lap dance are mentioned. It's implied that the stripper portion and cake portion of the party happened at Rita's.

Claimed location was Rita's Bar & Grill for dinner and cake, then the Alibi club for the party. Claimed Harry (19) left Alibi at 4:30am, again no mention of the friend's house party.

Claimed Niall (20) was present.

Deleted Sun Article #3 posted February 3rd at 12:25am (post version)

This is a Sun exclusive where they claim to have interviewed Harry (19) at 1D's tour rehearsals the morning of Feb. 2nd. There are multiple alleged direct quotes, but I'm always skeptical of written interviews.

Stripper info: Mentioned the lap dance again, added that she forgot her truncheon (police stick) so she brought nunchucks instead. Claimed she put him under "arrest." Claimed a guest at the party recognized the stripper as someone he'd gone to college with.

Claimed the stripper set happened at the Alibi, which clashes with the prior article claiming the cake occurred at Rita's, and both insinuating the cake and stripper parts were one in the same. Claimed Harry left at 3:00am for the friend's house party, ending the night at 4:30am.

Mirror posted February 3rd at 3:00am (post version)

Guest list is claimed to be 70 people.

Stripper info: Mentioned the £100 cost of the stripper again, the lap dance of course, claims her performance was only 3 minutes. Claimed Nick hired the stripper because he "didn't know what else" to buy Harry.

Claimed location is initially an unnamed location until midnight, then the Alibi, before Harry leaves at 3:00am with "Eve Lee" for a friend's house party.

Claimed Niall was present, and that he flirted with the stripper. Mentions his tweet the following morning. "A friend" direct quote, “The irony of it was that apparently it was Niall who got close to the stripper, Harry wasn’t remotely interested.” Claimed Harry invited the rest of the band but only Niall showed.

“Zayn is keeping his head down at the moment, he thought better of going to a party where there was a going to be a stripper.”

This article claimed 1D had tour rehearsals at 9:00am the next morning on the 2nd.

DailyNews posted February 4th at 11:01am (post version)

Stripper info: Much of the same, but this one claims her first name is Millie, citing the Sun as having stated that originally. Claims 'Millie' owns a fashion photography business in London.

Timeline

From everything above and the images linked later, this is the most accurate timeline I've been able to put together.

January 31st 2013

Harry, Louis, and 5SOS played football.

Harry went to dinner at La Bodega Negra with Nick Grimshaw and James Corden.

Harry went to Groucho with Nick and James, where Caroline Flack also was.

Harry went to Base Nightclub (unknown if still with Nick and James) until 3:20am.

February 1st 2013

Harry and the 40-70 guests started the night at Rita's Bar & Grill for dinner, where the striptease and cake cutting happened. They left at midnight.

Harry and the 40-70 guests went to Alibi club until 3:00am.

Harry and a "small group of friends" moved to a "friend's house party" before calling it a night at 4:30am.

February 2nd 2013

One Direction tour rehearsals started at 9:00am.

At some point, The Sun interviewed Harry for their exclusive.

Proving Locations

Contradictions

The Sun contradicted itself by saying Harry stayed at the Alibi until 4:30am in their first 2 articles, but then in their 3rd saying he went to the house party at 3:00am until 4:30am.

The guest list was said to be 39 by the DailyMail, 70 by the Mirror.

The quote saying Zayn chose not to attend Harry's birthday because of the stripper is impossible. Zayn couldn't have possibly known about the stripper, considering Nick didn't even tell Harry ahead of time since it was meant to be a surprise. How would Zayn have known in advance?

Earlier articles claimed the stripper had a truncheon (police stick) but later ones claimed she'd forgotten it and had nunchucks instead.

The stripper's set was claimed to be 10 minutes long by the DailyMail, but 3 minutes by the Mirror.

The first Feb. 2nd DailyMail article claimed none of Harry's bandmates were present, but then Metro claimed Niall was there and other publications adopted that narrative aswell. Could chalk it up to shitty research, but DailyMail is the most reputable out of all of these (in my experience), so I don't know.

Guestlist

The names and ages (at the time) of everyone I think was at this party anytime from Rita's to the Alibi to the house party. I did my best to account for birthdays, but I'm bad at math so please let me know if any of these are off.

Big thanks to @voxina for helping me identify some of these people from the photos.

Harry Styles (19)

Nick Grimshaw (28)

Gemma Styles (23)

Niall Horan (20)

Theo Hutchcraft (26)

Miquita Oliver (28)

Pixie Geldof (22)

Luis Ortega Govela (25)

Eve Lee (Age Unknown)

Aimee Phillips (31)

Marco Gastel (27)

Danielle & Nicole Kahlani (30)

Preston Mahon (~60s)

George & Jake Barnett (25)

Sophie Sleigh-Johnson (25)

McKenzi Sager (28)

Unidentified:

Notable people I really wish were identified:

The non-1D bodyguard

These photographers

Link to ALL of the photos (question marks denote who is unidentified if anyone would like to take a crack at it)

Details on Guests:

Nick organized this party, and presumably invited everyone since the guest list is mainly comprised of his friends, lower-tier celebs, and groupies. Although it's fair to assume Harry had at least some invite power, with Gemma being there.

Speaking of Gemma, she isn't mentioned in any of the articles I found. Despite being Harry's literal sister, she isn't brought up once. I found out she was there because there's a selfie with Harry at Rita's Bar & Grill. She isn't seen in any other photos from the rest of the night, so I think it's safe to assume she left before they hit Alibi club.

Theo Hutchcraft is a name I see around a lot. He seems to be musically involved in Harry's solo career, if I'm not mistaken? I don't know much about his involvement with 1D in the band days, but I know this isn't the first time I've seen him at an event with 1D.

Miquita Oliver, Pixie Geldof, Luis Govela, and Aimee Phillips are all friends of Nick's. Everyone bar Luis I've seen at other Nick-centric hangouts where Harry was involved, but that's a timeline post for another day.

Eve Lee is identified in one of the articles, but I can't find anything about her online. I reckon she's a groupie? Or if she was a celebrity, she hasn't stood the test of time for her own name on google search results. I don't even know how old she is, which is always fun.

Marco Gastel is an interesting one. He's a Modest! Management employee, and was at the time, too. From a quick google search, I found photos of him with members of 1D and other Modest employees from back in the band days. He could certainly be the 'manager' Harry is alleged quoting 'ran to turn off CCTV,' but since I don't have enough specifics, I can't say for sure. Finding this guy's age was a hot mess, I had to reverse-engineer it off his LinkedIn based on when he started school as a kid, so it may be off by a year up or down.

Danielle and Nicole Kahlani are twins, they do hairstyling and makeup artistry respectively, and I believe they're linked with Lou Teasdale as well as being in Nick's friend group.

Preston Mahon was a 1D bodyguard, so his presence makes perfect sense. His birthday isn't listed online, but my amazing friend @summer-lovin-09 found a post from his ex wife who said in 2016 that he was in his 50s. Since it's been a decade, that puts him in his 60s.

George and Jake Barnett are also twins. George is Pixie Geldof's husband, although in 2013 they weren't yet married. Jake I can't 100% confirm was present, since the photo he's meant to be in doesn't fully show his face, so it could just be George again, who knows. George and Jake are in a band called 'These New Puritans.'

Sophie Sleigh-Johnson is also a bit hard to identify, but I feel confident about her face matching the photo. I don't know jack shit about her, but google says she's an author, so that's something.

McKenzi Sager is some sort of fitness guy, again I must thank @summer-lovin-09 for tracking him down just from a photo. I don't know much about him, but I linked his Instagram.

The Stripper

This is a compilation of all the info I could find on specifically the stripper. I found this article quite literally at the last minute in my research- I spent MONTHS trying to identify this woman.

Her name is Camilla Robson, which is where "Millie" came from. It's her nickname.

She's 30 years old.

Nick hired her, she's one of his friends, she is a pole dance photographer normally, and she did the job as a "favour to a friend."

Nick paid her the £100 to do the striptease.

According to Camilla's mother, she greatly regrets taking the job.

She's fucking loaded and definitely didn't need the money from the strip gig.

She was asked for a comment and declined, hiding her face.

This article was posted on February 4th 2013, only days after the party.

DailyMail source

All Camilla Photos

Can I be so real? This reeks of blackmail. She didn't need the money, but she took the job anyway despite not usually doing that sort of thing, and she immediately regretted it only days later. Also the whole phrasing of "favour for a friend" implies she owed her "friend" (Nick) something, and this was how she paid that debt.

All in all, it's concerning that she took the job at all given how young Harry was, and even more concerning overall that she regretted it so heavily right after. What happened here?

DMs with Luis Ortega Govela

Back in March, I dmed this guy. This was long before I'd considered making a post about this date, so I didn't go in with much of a plan, but it's still notable to mention the dms.

When I was hunting down photos of this party, I found one that was posted by Instagram user luisortegag, aka Luis Govela. It was this photo;

From inspecting the date element, I can see it was posted on Feb. 2nd, 2013 at 3:16am which I believe is British time since the actual post shows as being posted on the 1st for me, in American time, 5 hours back.

This means it was taken either right before Harry left the Alibi (unlikely because what club has what looks to be a bed lying around?), or shortly after he arrived at the "friend's house party." Personally, I suspect the friend was Luis, but that's pure speculation on my end. My main reasoning is that the friend is not named, despite the house party being mentioned by multiple articles, and Luis is one of the more niche people involved in this party, for being a friend of Nick's.

This photo raises so many questions for me. Why did Luis take it? Why did he post it? Where is Harry at this point- Alibi or the house party? Why is the photo so close to him? Since this was taken at 3am with him clearly unconscious, why did Harry allegedly keep partying until 4:30am?

Well, I tried to dm him in search of more info. I didn't expect anything to come of it, since none of my other attempts to dm people have ever gotten a reply. But this one did. (Oh, and these dms are from my anonymous burner, I don't have a main instagram at the moment)

Fair warning, because of my lack of a plan, I came on quite accusatory for no reason lmao. No wonder he blocked my ass.

He replied to my first message, then stopped replying after I mentioned Nick. He kept reading my messages for weeks, though- sometimes a few hours later, sometimes the second I sent them, which means he must have been regularly checking the chat if not leaving it open on one of his devices. He finally blocked me after that last message (which is why his name says "Instagram User" in some screenshots that were taken after he blocked me).

I don't know what to make of these dms, it's just weird. His behavior- replying once, then reading my messages but refusing to say anything more, before finally blocking me after WEEKS makes me wonder even more why he took and posted that photo of Harry. It's just such a strange bought of confusion, everything surrounding this man.

Niall

Okay, I have a crazy theory, but stick with me here. I don't think Niall was actually at the party. Papped outside the venue? Yes. In attendance for the festivities? No. This is by-far the most speculative part of this entire post, but allow me to break down my reasonings:

I have dozens of photos collected of this party, including many non-professional candids taken by guests. None of the photos from inside the venue actually feature Niall except one that I'll get into. The only other photos featuring him are pap photos outside one of the venues, and photos in a car.

Niall wasn't anywhere to be seen for the cake part, which you'd think Harry's bandmate-who's-like-a-brother would be there for. He also wasn't around for the striptease, despite articles claiming he was there, making comments, flirting with the stripper, even. Nowhere to be seen.

Niall wasn't mentioned in the first article to come out early on the 2nd. It came out 8 minutes before Niall tweeted about having had a "right laugh" at the party, which I think was the first 'confirmation' of his attendance. That first article actually claimed none of 1D had been present at Harry's party, saying he hadn't invited them.

Niall's tweet came out at 9:40am, and what started at 9:00am that morning? Tour rehearsals. Was he told to tweet that? And then, when the Sun came by later for their exclusive interview, were they fed the narrative that Niall was there? Was Metro fed the same narrative, and then other publications followed suit?

There's the supposed tweet at a fan where he said he was "so shocked" and had "never seen [Harry] so scared before" about the stripper that simply does not exist.

I did find a photo that looked to be of Harry and Niall together at the party, in the correct outfits and everything, but... it's a manip. A manip I could find no original source for, mind you. I have no idea who made it, or how old it is. It was on Pinterest with no credits.

Here's the manip vs. the original photos:

(Oh, and quiet credit to my friend who wishes to remain anonymous for figuring out that this was a manip and hunting down the original photos back in ~March or ~April)

I wanna focus on the original Niall photo (far right), for a second. This is the only photo I have of Niall actually inside a venue, which I'm pretty sure from the backdrop is from Rita's Bar & Grill. Things I noticed about this pic;

The woman he's with isn't in any other photos from across this party. None of them. Does this lean towards my working theory that Niall was photographed partying on a different night entirely with the plan in mind to say he was at Harry's party?

Why would the only photo of Niall with anyone from the party be with some random woman, and not Harry, or any of the prominent guests like Nick, Miquita, Pixie, ect? You're telling me he didn't take any selfies all night except with this random woman?

All Niall Photos

I also want to discuss the pap pics outside/in the car. I will admit, he was photographed with the same bodyguard (Preston Mahon) Harry was seen with that night. Niall was actually on the right street in the pap pics, too. I matched the brick on the buildings and the style of the sidewalk to the street Alibi was on.

Things I noticed about the pap pics outside the venue;

In the background of the pics with Niall, I didn't see any of the existing party guests from the copious photos with Harry. Photos with Harry outside almost always had someone recognizable in the background, but the same can't be said for Niall. Except, of course, for the one bodyguard.

Niall is papped getting into a silver car, which at first glance looks like the same silver car Harry is papped near in several photos. Except, the wheels aren't the same. So they definitely are different cars. Not much on it's own, but within wider context I think it's notable.

With the pics of Niall inside the car, again I see nobody recognizable from the copious Harry photos. We saw dozens of people walking the street, and dozens of people inside the venues, and yet none of them were caught in any of the Niall photos? They were all just missing? Or were the Niall pics taken on a different night?

Even one pic of Niall in the car shows part of a man with a poor hairline and a blue sleeve, who is once again not anyone from the party that got snapped with Harry. I thought maybe he was that dodgy photographer in the blue fit, but nope, the photographer's got a fringe.

And lastly, there's this photo of Niall and another random woman outside of some sort of hedge. For the life of me I can't figure out where outside the photo was taken, but I do have a damning theory that the woman is the same woman as in the Harry selfie that was used in the manip.

Notice her hairline? Nose shape? Smile? If you try to look past the eye makeup being different and see her eye shape, its the same aswell. I know it's hard to see because her hair is tied up in the first one, but doesn't the texture look similar?

This would prove that Niall's pics were taken on a different day to Harry's birthday. But it could be a reach, I'll admit that.

Unknowns/Questions I Still Have

Whether or not Niall ever tweeted at a fan talking about how scared Harry was of the stripper. I lean towards it being bullshit, but who knows. I've been surprised before. I scoured Niall's twitter from Feb. 1st-5th 2013, but no such tweet exists.

Why the Sun deleted their 3 articles on this party.

Why the DailyNews cited the Sun as naming the stripper as Millie when it was the DailyMail that named her.

I need to address it or I'll scream- what the hell did Nick mean when he said he hired a stripper for Harry because he "didn't know what else" to get him? That's an insane decision. Yeah, I'm really struggling to buy a gift for my teenage friend's birthday, oh, I know! I'll hire a 30 year old stripper and not tell him!

How the hell Zayn allegedly knew about the stripper ahead of time but Harry didn't. I reckon Zayn had no idea and that article was lying out of it's ass, but again, I've been surprised before.

Final Notes

Those are my thoughts, but I'd love to hear yours. I like to encourage discussion in the notes of my posts, because I am just one person who likes to research and yap; I don't know everything and the fact that I wasn't in the fandom in 2013 means I could have missed things with my retroactive research on this party.

If anyone can identify the people I couldn't, please let me know so I can edit this post. If you feel uncomfortable reblogging/commenting, you can always send an ask or dm. If you send me asks off anon (to include photos for example) and you ask me not to post your name, I won't.

Sign Katie Waissel's petition to help her publish her book exposing her time under Syco/TXF

UPDATE 1 UPDATE 2 UPDATE 3 (REBLOG) UPDATE 4 UPDATE 5

[vikkirosko]

I saw that your request box is open and I've been wanting to ask

can I request platonic! Charlie, Vaggie, Angel Dust, Alastor and Lucifer coming across a child fem! reader after she bumped into them and falling onto the sidewalk and start profusely apologizing for accidentally into them while looking incredibly scared and frightened just then they realized that the child had black wings and seeing that they are wearing a white dress that only angels would wear and fairly realized the reader was a fallen angel soon when taken to the hotel and ask how did she ended up in hell, the reader first looked very hesitant to explain but slowly open up about how they were casted out of heaven for not following the strict rules properly and that the higher upside expected angels to be perfect and flawless that no mistakes should be made even minor ones and child fem! reader felt incredibly pressured and anxious about the needs to be perfect that when she accidentally fall out of line for making a minor mistake, she was unfairly casted out into hell and why her once white wings turned black no longer able to fly to heaven's gates and aimlessly wondering the streets of pentagram city lost and scared not knowing what to do or where to go now as well as avoiding sinners and overlords alike

Platonic headcanons Not perfect

🌈 Charlie Morningstar x child fem!Reader 🎶

After Charlie visited Heaven, she began to look at angels differently. She understood that not all of them were sinless and just. That's why she was surprised when she came across a child, a girl dressed in a white dress similar to those worn on Heaven and you had wings, but the feathers were not white but black. You immediately started apologizing to her, but Charlie hastened to calm you down. You looked tired, so she suggested that you go with her to her hotel, where you could relax and where you would be safe

At the hotel, you were able to eat properly and calm down. It was only after that that Charlie asked you about how you ended up in Hell. At first you didn't dare to start the story, but Charlie gently took your hands and told you that you had nothing to fear and that she just wanted to help you. You got a little bolder and told her that, despite the external ideality and happiness, there were many strict rules and requirements for angels like you in Heaven. You all had to follow these rules implicitly, as if you had no will of your own. For you, such a life has been one huge source of stress and anxiety

In the end, you made a mistake. One minor mistake cost you everything. You were banished from Heaven and your wings turned black and you couldn't come back. All this time you've been wandering the streets aimlessly, trying not to attract attention to yourself. Charlie couldn't believe that you could be treated so cruelly, but she remembered her father's story. She understood that your story was the real truth

Since you had nowhere to go, Charlie suggested that you stay at the hotel. You were an angel and now you could help sinners atone for their sins. Charlie hoped that then Emily could bring you back to Heaven, because you were sent to Hell unfairly. In the meantime, Charlie could give you a new home and a life where you didn't have to try your best to make no mistakes every day

❌ Vaggie x child fem!Reader 🎀

Vaggie didn't feel happy when she lived on Heaven. A huge number of rules, many of which were far from morally fair, and, as it turned out, severe punishments for what was considered a misdemeanor. She didn't know any other angels besides Lucifer and her who ended up in Hell until she ran into you on the street. You were a little girl in a white dress, with a scared expression on your face and black wings that clearly used to be white. You were an angel, a fallen angel

You started to apologize for bumping into her, but Vaggie tried to calm you down, saying that everything was fine. She asked how you got here, but you didn't say anything, just looked down. Your embarrassment only got worse when your stomach rumbled. Vaggie suggested that you go to the hotel where she lived, telling you that you could eat and relax there. She assured me that it would be safe there, so you went to the hotel with her

It was only back at the hotel, after you were able to eat properly, that you told her that you had been expelled from Heaven for a minor mistake. Vaggie remembered what the rules were there. She saw the sadness in your eyes, and told you that she, too, was, in a sense, banished. The fact that she was an angel made you happy, because now there was a chance that you wouldn't be alone anymore

You stayed at the hotel, under the care of Vaggie. She and Charlie took care of you and helped you start a new life. For you, Vaggie has become a living example of the fact that life does not end after exile. She was sure that you would be able to find your happiness, even though you were in Hell, and she would be there to keep you safe

🕷 Angel Dust x child fem!Reader 💖

Angel did not often see children in Hell, which is why when he ran into you on the street, he was surprised. You were a girl in a white dress and, strangely, with wings. The feathers of your wings were black, although according to Charlie, the angels had white wings, and there was a scared expression on your face. You immediately started apologizing to him. You were obviously afraid, and Angel hastened to calm you down. He wasn't mad at you and didn't know how to calm you down, so he offered to treat you to something delicious. It was so that you could eat that you went to the hotel

At the hotel, you were able to calm down and eat, after which Angel asked you how you ended up in Hell. He said that you didn't look like a sinner, but rather like an angel who happened to be in Hell. When you lowered your head, he realized that he was right. At first you were silent, but then quietly, uncertainly told him that you really were an angel, but life was hard for you in Heaven. The angels had to follow a huge number of rules. You were required to be perfect and set an example for souls to strive for the light. However, it has become a huge stress for you. Your whole life was full of worries, and in the end you made a small, insignificant mistake, for which you were severely punished

You were banished from Heaven, sent to Hell. Your wings turned black, and no matter how hard you tried to get back in, you couldn't do it. You just fell painfully, unable to return home. Angel listened to your story, feeling how sorry he was for you. You were just a child who was unfairly punished, especially so severely. He also understood that it would be difficult for you to survive in Hell, so he suggested that you stay at the hotel, telling you what kind of place it was and that he himself lived here

Angel has taken on the role of someone who will look out for you. Charlie was glad that Angel was getting better, and even more so she didn't mind you staying at the hotel. Angel may not have been the perfect person, but he was real, alive, and ready to help you stop trying to adjust to the ideal that was imposed on you, too. He wanted to help you start living freely

📻 Alastor x child fem!Reader 🎙

Alastor periodically strolled through the streets of the city. Many people were afraid of him and tried not to approach him, and so when a child crashed into him, Alastor was surprised by this. That child was you. You, dressed in a white dress and with black wings on your back, started hurriedly apologizing to him without raising your head. Alastor was in no hurry to say anything. He saw what was obvious. You were an angel, maybe a fallen angel, and it could have done him some good, so he asked if you were hungry, and then took you to the hotel

You were able to eat at the hotel, and only after that Alastor, who was looking at you carefully, asked how you ended up in Hell. At that moment, you froze, lowering your head and slowly starting to speak. It was only after a few minutes that you finally told me what happened. You told me that Heaven had a huge number of rules for angels. You were required to be perfect, but it was hard for you emotionally and eventually you made a mistake. A mistake that you paid very seriously for

You were banished to Hell and your wings turned black. You couldn't go back no matter how hard you tried. All you have to do is wander the streets of the city, hiding from sinners and demons. Alastor listened to you carefully and realized that it could benefit him. He did not voice his thoughts and offered to stay with you at the hotel. He introduced you to Charlie and soon you really became one of those who lived in the hotel

Alastor saw how pleased you were to meet Charlie and find yourself in a comfortable environment. The princess helped you and learned from you about what Heaven really was. Alastor understood that when you get stronger, your strength can help him gain freedom

🍎 Lucifer Morningstar x child fem!Reader 🐍

Lucifer rarely walked around the city, but after he started living in his daughter's hotel, he began to go out into the world more. It was during one of these walks that he met you. You were the kid who bumped into him. You immediately started apologizing and Lucifer tried to calm you down at first, but then realized that you weren't a sinner or a demon. He would have recognized the white dress and wings anywhere. You were an angel, but the feathers of your wings were black, which made it clear to him that you were a fallen angel, just like him. It caused him a lot of emotions. He couldn't leave you, knowing full well how you were feeling right now

He brought you to the hotel, realizing that you had nowhere to go. So that you wouldn't worry even more, he took you away from the others to his room and already there told you who he was. Lucifer saw how surprised you were, but it seemed to really calm you down. When he asked how you ended up in Hell, you briefly fell silent, lowering your head, but then hesitantly told him that after he was thrown into Hell, the requirements for angels became very strict. You, like other angels, were required to be perfect and follow what the seraphims said. It was hard for you to be perfect. Every day, within strict limits, almost drove you crazy

Due to severe stress, it was difficult for you to follow strict rules, and eventually you made a minor mistake, for which you were so severely punished by being banished to Hell. Your wings turned black and you couldn't fly to Heaven. It seemed that if you tried to do this, at some point your wings could burst into flames, causing you unbearable pain. You didn't have a home anymore. You didn't have anyone to help you. All you could do was wander aimlessly through the streets, doing your best to hide from sinners and demons

Lucifer listened attentively to your story and by the time it ended, he was sure that you had been unfairly sent to Hell. You didn't have the power that he had, and therefore you could easily get hurt. Lucifer didn't want you, a child who was so cruelly abandoned, to get hurt. He decided to take you under his care. He knew that you could become stronger and wanted to help you. Maybe in Hell, you can be happier than you were in Heaven

[delicateperspective]

https://www.tumblr.com/delicateperspective/783819826239078400/httpswwwtumblrcomdelicateperspective78376202?source=share

You know? I used to think that Harry really gained freedom over the years and that his situation has gotten better, BUT now that I have done some research and understand some things...I guess he did win some freedom in expressing himself, but that has come with a price. There are a lot of ppl within the community that accuse him of queerbaiting and believe the womaniser image. And I don't blame them, but why do you expect from someone who is the closet to be explicit in the way he feels? Harry always tries to choose his words carefully without outing himself and giving too much away.

And the saddest part of all this is that you can literally see that he really struggles with that. He struggles with the fact that he can't be completely open ("he's hoping I'm hoping someday I could be open") and I think that's why he loves performing. The atmosphere of acceptance that is created in his shows impacts him emotionally.

i usually try not to dive into this too deeply because people have strong opinions on both sides—but here’s where i stand:

yes, H has gained some freedom over the years. he’s expressing himself more boldly through fashion, lyrics, collaborators, and stage design. but that freedom isn’t total—it’s conditional. it came at a cost, and it’s still heavily managed. from the very first x-factor audition contract (which - according to former x-factor contestants - included clauses about obeying every instruction and never speaking out about the company or its people, even after the contract ended), to the syco and columbia contracts that followed, we have no idea what restrictions are still in place. but if you pay attention, you can see him walking that tightrope every time he speaks about his identity.

like in 2019, when an interviewer asked him directly about his sexuality:

“It’s not like I’m sitting on an answer, and protecting it, and holding it back. It’s not a case of: I’m not telling you cos I don’t want to tell you. It’s not: ooh this is mine and it’s not yours.”

that sounds like someone trying to avoid lying and trying not to get himself in trouble. someone who doesn’t want to fake it, but can’t actually say the truth. then just a few years later in 2022, he said this:

“I’ve been really open with it with my friends, but that’s my personal experience; it’s mine.”

the shift there is subtle but real—he’s more direct about the fact that he has an experience to protect. that’s not someone playing games. that’s someone locked in a long, complicated situation who’s doing his best to carve out space for himself without breaking the rules he’s still bound by.

so yes, it’s true that he expresses himself more freely now—but it’s also true that he often can’t say what he wants. and when he does speak through lyrics, visuals, or even a lyric change like “hoping someday i could be open” (at coachella, with his stunt girlfriend in the audience), people call it fake. but what do we expect from someone who can’t be explicit? when honesty is dangerous, subtlety becomes survival.

[pm-my-beloved]

Ryoshu - Thoracalgia

And further down, Sleeping Bag of a Bygone Day speculation.

I am done with exams, and thus, I can write about one of my fav's EGO.

First, we need to gather some starting point data.

I'd like to point out that the abnormality itself is primarily skeletal, literally spine, skull and ribs, housing within a shadowy figure (or the sinner)

Moving onto the name itself, Thoracalgia is a medical term for chest pain and discomfort. While usually it is due to heart related problems, there is a significant amount of cases where the source of the pain is skeletal.

And now third aspect of the abnormality before I can start making conclusions, association with breathing. Nebulizer is a type of medical equipment used for application of oxygen and or medicine in form of a liquid mist to be absorbed within lungs. Oftentimes it is to reduce pain of breathing in patients with chest-pains

Here, is the first conclusion/assumption I want to make. I believe that Thorocalgia and Sleeping Bag overall, represent treatment of symptoms without fixing underlying issues. The heavily skeletal design of the abnormality makes me believe that it's supposed to imply that the source of pain is deepest possible, down to ones bones, and because of that, tools such as nebulizers simply minimize the pain.

Now, how does that apply to Ryoshu? While it is not explicitly stated by the game, I believe Ryoshu's personality, and strong avoidance of "Gloom" in her kit, is characterised primarily by thrill seeking behaviour to avoid confronting and processing one's hurt. That to me, feels like the exact type of behaviour I described for Sleeping Bag.

Now let's move onto EGO lines for further delve into that. With that in mind, I also want to highlight that generally Ryoshu seems to be the least affected/Least revealing with her EGO lines out of any sinners in my opinion, which makes her lines here all the more interesting.

First thing to look at, or rather hear, is that unlike her usual EGO lines, they are unusually low, somber, serious. Then, the text itself. "I was only reaching out to grasp onto something, anything." That is, the most open and introspective thing we have ever heard from Ryoshu, and I believe, shows that she is aware, that what she does is not a cure for her pain, simply a band-aid on the gaping wound. As they say, a drowning man will grab even a razor.

I honestly think this is simply further admission, that despite all her thrill seeking behaviour, all the bravado and appearances of confidence and pleasure from art, she is in pain over her past.

Next point of interest, is her appearance while using the EGO.

The two points of interest for me are : How her left side blades/ribs are burnt/dissolved, and how her outfit is quite literally, a straight-jacket, including having covered her left eye. I think both of them point towards Ryoshu's behavior ruining her body, almost in a death wish attempt to make her physical self be as scarred as her soul. An interesting note on that that someone pointed out to me while writing this, is that there is a simmilar relation in her sinner Icon, with her left side being more directly broken/shattered.

Next thing to point out is the EGO cost

1 Lust - I think lust in this case represents the pursuit of momentary pleasures 1 Wrath - This imho stands for the other side of the coin, as her awakening line says, among things she held onto resentment, as one of the things to keep her afloat. 5 Pride - As many times I have said, Pride stands for Conviction and Certainty. With Ryoshu having Pride s3, and this EGO being so pride-centric in general, I think this stands for Ryoshu's complete stubborness about the path she has taken, refusal to change her path, even if she is aware it is a flawed one. Now, Resistances

Starting with fatalities, Gluttony fatality in combination with sloth fatality reinforces my previous points, with her constantly seeking stimulation (Gluttony), in order to avoid dealing with her pain (Sloth). Pride ineffective reinforces my point from Pride cost, and wrath endurance imho signifies that while she is avoidant of the feelings, she does not actively repress them, rather, simply avoids thinking about them.

Now onto the, in my opinion, more difficult task.

Sleeping Bag of a Bygone Day

Operating with information we got through the EGO, I'd like to make additional exploration into the abnormality itself.

Starting with appearance, it still is skeletal, but the appearance is more akin to a cocoon or, as the name says, sleeping bag. On top of that, it is placed between floating medical equipment. Funnily enough, it seems to be on the ceiling, as the "floor" it stands on has ceiling lights characteristic of hospitals or research spaces.

Lets move onto the MD event, rather than the abnormality name, as the latter will be easier to read into with all information gathered

One thing I want to preface with is that, with abnormalities, sometimes the choices that reward us are not the choices that are "right" or "Correct", but rather, those that feed into the confirmation bias of an abnormality or directly harm it.

With that in mind, first thing to note that when doing this check, we are not interacting with the shadow, rather only the skeleton. The check itself is gloom/pride favoring, which in my opinion reflects the abnormalities confirmation bias, certainty that alleviation of symptom will be what brings relief. The check passed variant speaks nothing of the abnormality being cured of its ailment, rather, it only gave it a temporary relief, a singular breath without pain. Check failed on the other hand shows the futility of the treatment, as it did not touch upon the underlying cause.

This check is in my opinion more difficult to analyse, but my theory as of now is such.

Option one, is that the shadow is the source of pain, that it's us keeping and dragging and clinging onto past events, refusing to move on from them that is the reason for hurt, but it became such strong part of us that we are incapable of getting rid of it, for without it we remain only a hollow shell.

Option two, is that the shadow IS the self inhabiting the body, experiencing the pain, but upon belief that everything we do to cover the wound is futile, it simply fades away, because non-existence is better than suffering. This one has additional backing because of check failed result from the other option saying "Perhaps the liberation is nigh", implying death as a desirable state. The option two is additionally interesting for me in context of Ryoshu being inspired by Buddhist based texts, with Nirvana, aka non-existence, being seen as the ultimate pursuit of a human. Now, lets finally move onto the name, Sleeping Bag of a Bygone Day. If we go with interpretation number one, it suggests that it's about refusal to wake up from a dream, or rather a nightmare of ones past. Interpretation two is more like it becoming a place of final rest, a sleeping bag to fall into oblivion, leaving the days of the past behind.

I will not lie, half of this stuff I came up with WHILE writing this, so there might be some internal inconsistencies, so feel absolutely free to disagree and show your own interpretation, or add something I missed.

[the-artist-grimm]

out of curiosity, what else is on the "contraband list" in the cult? (presumably at least lilies, considering they're fatally toxic to cats)

The 'Contraband List' is mostly things Anthea's marked off as either A. potentially dangerous for heath reasons. Or B. potentially dangerous for order reasons. Usually after someone did a thing and Anthea realized 'ok not doing that one again'. At the moment:

Ambrosia (Can kill a mortal with one glass due to the potency, and can make gods/former gods very very DRUNK. The Bishops somehow found a bottle once and all 5 including Narinder managed to get drunk as HECK off it. Kallamar broke out into musical soliloquies and tried forcing people to join him. Leshy started at least three small fires. Heket started a brawl. Shamura completly forgot what century it was and thought they were in a battle from 2000 years ago. Narinder broke down gross sobbing while crying to what he thought was the Lamb (it was a scarecrow). The lamb leaves the compound for barely a day and returns to their husband and in-laws wrecking havoc, then has to deal with the headache of 5 godly hangovers)

Catnip (Too broad a range of side-effects and too wide a range of effect for Anthea's comfort. Exposure can happen even at a decent distance/side effects begin after only seconds, so it's a better be safe than sorry measure. Someone likely tried having some once and accidentally got all the cats in the compound high, effects ranging from mellow to aggressive to hallucinating)

Menticide Mushroom (They are in stock at the medial tent for extreme pain treatments ONLY, and are dosed out in very small amounts to avoid addiction/overdosing. Too high a dose can cause hallucinations, violent behavior as a result of said hallucinations, sickness, or death. Anthea has them locked in a cabinet only the head healer can open)

Follower Meat (Cannibalism is EXTREMELY prohibited, however in rare cases where new converts came from a faction heavily dependent on it Anthea will stock it on a case by case basis as they try to wean them off it. They usually will source it from heretics, though typically former disciples of Heket (as they were accustomed to it) are tasked with the hunt as Anthea can't stomach it. Goal is to ease them back into a normal diet.)

Fireworks/Sparklers (They are allowed on holidays to an extent but everyone can say thank you to the Chaos Disciples for deciding to pull a prank and nearly burn down the barn. Now Anthea has to lock them in their room just so people can still use them for holidays)

Unsealed Drink Barrels or Potion Vials from Smuggler's Sanctuary Nightmarket (namely due to the risk of poison or contaminants. Alcohol/Potions are permitted and typically purchased from there, but unless it's been stamped and sealed by Plimbo's personal sources it cannot be trusted, and if brought in Anthea will dump it out just to be safe. While most sellers in the market are honest stamp or not, some mix different unknown elements into their goods to either bulk up their amount or lower their production cost)

As for Lilies I'm not 100% sure, mostly because all animals have a handful of flowers/plants that can and will EASILY kill them, like ivy is toxic to a lot of animals, citrus, tomatoes, ect. Like really common plants, so outside of catnip I'm mostly just ignoring if X flower can kill X animal cause knowing me I WILL go on a research rabbit hole trip ^^;

[mangobabygirl]

https://www.tumblr.com/mangobabygirl/786700446784995328/key-takeaways-1-luigi-avoids-direct-eye-contact?source=share

no way luigi is getting hate because of this lol leave my autistic man alone

Okay so I have a lot of thoughts about this as a neurodivergent Luigi supporter who works with autistic individuals in a professional capacity:

Autism is gravely underdiagnosed. Most people with an autism diagnosis are diagnosed as a child and are usually only diagnosed because they display behaviors or symptoms that require some type of support and/or accommodations. Many autistic people grow into adulthood without a diagnosis because they were “high achievers” as children or didn’t require accommodations like a 504 plan or special education classes for instance. This is because autism, like most disorders, is understood largely from the perspective of the inconvenienced neurotypical. Every autism screening is scored based on if the individual meets the criteria of demonstrating enough outward social “defects” and repetitive behavior patterns. This focus on outward-presenting behavior patterns alienates people who “mask” and face mainly inward difficulties and struggles related to their neurodivergence (this is also why more men and boys are diagnosed with autism over women and girls statistically).

There’s also institutional barriers that come with obtaining a diagnosis, especially for adults. Autism can only be properly diagnosed by specialists, and the screening itself costs thousands of dollars out of pocket without insurance. Furthermore, many people live in places (especially more remote areas) where these specialists aren’t readily accessible or face difficulties related to long waitlists.

Lastly, autism shows comorbid symptoms with other disorders such as ADHD, anxiety disorders, etc. Misdiagnosis is prevalent and one can have traits that align with autistic symptoms but ultimately fail to meet the criteria for ASD. This is called Broad Autism Phenotype and is not an official diagnosis or in the DSM-5 but it describes a large range of autistic traits that anyone can have regardless of the status of their diagnosis.

All this to say we are ultimately unsure if Luigi has an official ASD diagnosis. It’s possible he was diagnosed as a child or adult, but it’s equally possible he was never properly diagnosed because he was perceived as a social, “self-sufficient” individual with no immediate need for support. From what little we know of him and Mike’s testimony he definitely displays BAP traits like restricted interests, difficulties with social communication, demand avoidance, etc. I personally feel uncomfortable officially armchair diagnosing anyone but I understand people who claim he’s autistic and I do joke occasionally about him having autism. We also know that Luigi showed broad support for autistic individuals like retweeting a video about autism as a source of ingenuity and subscribing to Substack articles about neurodivergent actualization. While it’s not officially confirmed if he’s autistic, assuming he’s neurotypical by default is harmful and perpetuates the notion one must have an official diagnosis in order to be considered a “legitimate” neurodivergent, which is problematic for all the reasons I listed above.

Neurotypical individuals unfortunately have a warped perception of autism and automatically associate any autistic traits with what mainstream psychology associates autistic individuals with- defects. Luigi can’t be a perfect, idealized individual and display issues with social communication, that’s reserved for the imperfect “other”, the outsider whom they don’t understand therefore shame through stigmatization. It’s easier for the (narrow minded) neurotypical to make fun of him and call him “weird” or “quirky” than to face the reality he’s probably apart of the same group of people they’re inconvenienced by and systemically belittle or exclude on a daily basis. It’s ableism at its finest driven by forces of parasocialism.

Luigi’s BAP traits should not affect your support of him in the slightest. If anything you should be advocating for him further because neurodivergent individuals are statistically incarcerated at higher rates than neurotypicals and are more likely to be placed in solitary confinement. If his perceived neurodivergence is off-putting to you, maybe you need to confront your own internal biases and realize neurodivergent individuals are just as deserving of love and support as neurotypical ones.

[goddessinnerglow]

Become Your Best Version Before 2025 - Day 13

Financial Planning and Budgeting

Hello Goddesses! I know that talking about money, can feel scary or boring, but after working on our stress management tools yesterday, it's perfect timing to address something that's often a huge source of stress for many of us: finances.

First things first: if thinking about money makes you want to hide under your blanket, you're not alone. But taking control of your finances isn't about becoming a math genius or never buying another coffee again. It's about making friends with your money so it can help you live your best life.

Let's break this down into bite-sized pieces that won't give you a headache:

Start Where You Are

Remember when you first learned to ride a bike? You didn't start by doing tricks, you started with training wheels. Money management is the same way! First step: just look at your current situation. Open those banking apps you've been avoiding. Take a deep breath and look at your statements. Knowledge is power, even if it's a bit scary at first.

The Money Map Exercise

Grab a piece of paper (or open your notes app) and let's do something simple:

Write down all your income sources

List your regular monthly expenses (yes, including those sneaky subscriptions!)

Don't forget those irregular expenses like annual fees or seasonal costs

Look at what's left (or what's missing)

Congratulations! You've just created your first basic budget outline.

The 50/30/20 Guideline

Here's a popular way to think about your money:

50% for needs (rent, groceries, utilities)

30% for wants (fun stuff, shopping, entertainment)

20% for future you (savings, debt payment, investments)

These numbers might not work for everyone, especially depending on where you live. The important thing is to have some kind of plan that works for YOU.

Smart Money Habits You Can Start Today

The 24-Hour Rule: For non-essential purchases over a certain amount (you decide the number!), wait 24 hours before buying. You'd be surprised how many "must-haves" become "maybe nots" overnight!

Bill Calendar: Set up a simple calendar with all your bill due dates. Future you will be so grateful!

Automate Your Savings: Even if it's just $5 a week, set up automatic transfers to a savings account. It's like hiding money from yourself!

Track Your Spending: For just one week, write down every single purchase. No judging, just observing. You might find some surprising patterns!

The Emergency Fund Challenge

Let's start building that safety net! Even $500 in savings can make a huge difference in an emergency. Start with a goal of saving just $25 this week. Too much? Start with $10. Too little? Make it $50. The amount isn't as important as getting started.

Money Goals That Make Sense

Instead of vague goals like "save more," try specific ones like:

Save enough for three months of basic expenses by December 2025

Pay off one credit card by summer

Create a "fun fund" for that hobby you've been wanting to try

Your financial journey is exactly that, YOURS. You don't need to compare yourself to anyone else. The person on Instagram showing off their investment portfolio might still be paying off massive debt. Focus on your own path!

Your mission for today:

Look at your bank statement (I know, scary, but you can do it!)

Pick ONE money habit from this post to try this week

Set ONE specific financial goal for 2025

See you tomorrow for Day 14! Remember, every financial decision you make today is a gift to your future self.

[housemdork]

house md rewatch: 2x03, "humpty dumpty"

house & cuddy - same but different! united in their workplace misery, divided by the reasons why.

top of my notes reads, in all caps: MY CUDDY PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED!

cuddy really is a remarkably consistent character, isn't she? (i'll hold off on my season 7 qualms for now...for a long time, actually). seeing her finally get spotlit in an episode was like coming home to the house md i've grown familiar with over time. i appreciate, too, how this episode isn't relegated to the latter half of the season; we waste no time in establishing that she is vital to the show moving forward.

2x03 is working, primarily, with guilt, sort of the flipside of 2x02's bravery, another thing that house rejects (to a point). in 2x02, bravery was a farce to be deconstructed in house's mind; in 2x03, guilt is an inhibitor to success/the Right Answer, also to be deconstructed. in both instances, house doesn't see the merit in the emotions until one of his resident Angels On His Shoulder(s) points it out to him.

2x03 is simple, as far as house md goes: cuddy feels guilty because the patient fell off her roof after she asked him to keep working when he was feeling ill; house thinks this is stupid because the underlying issue had nothing to do with cuddy at all. visually, he's already irritated with how he knows she'll proceed with the case - too personally invested:

operating from her guilt, cuddy makes a lot of poor decisions (WALK WITH ME HERE, I HAVE NUANCE). she leaps to 2 conclusions that harm the patient's, alfredo, organ systems, nearly killing him. she jumps to bold treatment options, thinks outside the box, and pays for it. it takes a huge toll on her. they have to amputate alfredo's hand, costing him and his family their sole source of income.

here's my nuance: she's just being house. she's following his playbook exactly - being bold, causing problems, foregoing immediate consequences to arrive at the life-saving conclusion at the end. this is increasingly obvious to viewers as the episode progresses, but stacy is the one who has to point it out directly to cuddy:

despite their polar opposite ways in the world, cuddy and house are united in their patient-first mentality. through this peculiar dynamic, house can reject guilt in exchange for intellectual expediency (and avoid emotional attachment because Ooo, Scary!), while cuddy wallows in her guilt as a means of self-motivation, always pushing forward. in this way, they are doomed to succeed.

but get this - these different methods and mentalities also unite them in a different, even more narratively prophetic way, as house articulates in a rare moment of kindness:

"you see the world as it is, and you see the world as it could be. but what you don't see is what everybody else sees: the giant, gaping chasm in between...you're not happy, unless things are just right, which means 2 things: that you're a good boss and you'll never be happy."

this mfer says things that could be so introspective if he wasn't Like That ^

in house's eyes, cuddy is always striving forward, always pushing people, and herself, to be the best they can be, which is why she is so successful and why house can exist in PPTH. it's so, so refreshing to hear him say this (even if it's majorly prompted by stacy). but what's also so interesting is that, in a sense, the very same applies to him.

house is always seeing the What Could Be's and What Could Have Been's, especially when we get to episodes like 2x17 that highlight his past failures. but since the present story arc is so fixated on the history of his infarction, that's where the clearest parallel lies. he sees what cold have been for himself, personally. house can see beyond what most people do, even his most brilliant fellows, and he outright refuses to be happy unless things are correct. these character traits basically doom him to misery.

EXCEPT! ANOTHER PRO-CUDDY CAVEAT: cuddy's misery is not so self-involved. because the hospital really is her baby, she carries the emotional weight of it. when things fall apart, her guilt is that much heavier, because her responsibilities are that much heavier. house, time and time again, will never understand this (5x23 comes to mind when she rightfully flies off the handle with him). the scope of cuddy - in her job, her aspirations, her very character - is so markedly different from house; it's one of the most strenuous parts of their relationship that surely won't amount to any tragedies between them down the line :)

a sidenote that i think is worth mentioning within this scene - stacy functions as house's REAL conscience. she explicates how cuddy is feeling, why she's feeling that way, what house can do to make it better, and why it's worth doing so to house with remarkable clarity. that's why this exchange unfolds in the first place:

this is a subtle way at highlighting how fucking useless wilson is (and will continue to be) in this role. as we know, stacy will come to make many mistakes, but she doesn't enable house nor thrive off his "neediness." like i said in an earlier post, this is why the greg house universe rejects her in the end.

i guess i'm really just taking 2 major scenes from this episode, but i just found them so exciting and important! the argument that house and cuddy have over whether to amputate the arm (where the idiocy of guilt really comes into play) does a lot more work in characterizing house than it does cuddy, much to his (metatextual) chagrin.

house is so, so angry with cuddy for letting her guilt cloud her medical judgment, so angry that it borderlines being out of character.

cuddy: "you are being pretty aggressive about destroying a man's livelihood."

house: "i don't give a damn about his livelihood."

cuddy: "he loses that hand, he loses his job."

house: "can't work as a cripple?...not one medical fact in the whole pathetic tale. you've lost perspective, cuddy. you've stopped looking at this as a doctor."

oh, so who's the one being accused of over-personalizing the case?

presumably without realizing (because the episode doesn't emphasize his leg/refer to his infarction), house has completely flipped the script from his own decision about his leg. cuddy is resistant to amputating alfredo's hand because it will cost him so much of his livelihood; house thinks this is illogical because life, not quality, should be the only concerning factor. house is a walking emblem of what happens when a decision like the one cuddy advocates for is made, but he refuses/cannot realize the irony here.

this isn't black and white, of course - house making a personal decision, actively enduring the pain, is not the same as cuddy making the choice about another individual from a distance. but this also factors into the differing scope of these characters. cuddy can embody the hearts of her patients; she subsumes the hospital. house is still so emotionally narrowminded (defense mechanism!!)

so, no, to answer's cuddy's iconic question: i don't think house is being intentionally dense in the long run. i think this knife-twist of irony, privy to everyone but house, is the episode's greatest strength.

all of this being underscored by the universal curiosity over their history is So Brilliant. everyone is dying to know, superficially, if they've had sex but, sincerely, how/why they know each other. why they put up with each other. why house is still employed. what cuddy sees in him. the millions of questions viewers have had since we started watching 1x01.

and i won't recap the details we get in 2x03 about them. i like how sparse they are, and i like that the fellows are the ones to prod. it adds a layer of mystique to wilson and stacy, who are in the know, and who are both pretty absent from this episode. but what i will mention is this look right here:

whatever nastiness they throw each other's way, something profound lurks beneath the surface between house and cuddy in 2x03. characters don't look at each other like that for no reason. surely nothing bad will ever come of the unfolding house and cuddy storyline...

lastly, my 3 wilson comments are:

hypocrite. stop telling stacy to stop being curious about house and cuddy when your marriage is about to fall apart (for at least the 2nd time atp).

why are you having a beer with house in the office, watching him juggle one-handed. go do some oncology.

why are you lovingly watching house watch the rain while he ruminates on cuddy (let the games begin...)

i hate his ass (lovingly).

[comicaurora]

From a writing standpoint, do you think it's *possible* for a character to have a seemingly "story-breaking" power and still be well-written and interesting and fit into the plot without, well, story-breaking?

Sure. Story-breaking powers are entirely relative to the story they're in, because by their nature they can only break certain kinds of stories, and beyond that, the power is conditional to the character and personality of the person using it, who may be entirely unwilling to use it in certain ways.

An example: teleportation is one of the most notorious story-breaking powers. It breaks any story where the character conflict is influenced by the characters needing to get to a specific location. Writers usually mitigate this effect by limiting it in one of a few ways-

The teleporter can't go anywhere they haven't already been (only breaks the story if they aren't trying to go somewhere new)

The teleporter can only go somewhere they can see (only breaks the story if they need to go somewhere close)

The teleporter has a certain amount of juice that they can burn through by bamfing too many times in a row or with too many passengers (only breaks the story if they only need to make a small number of easy jumps to succeed at their task)

The teleporter can't take anyone with them (only breaks the story if they're navigating alone)

The teleporter maintains momentum when they jump (can be rendered unusable if they're moving dangerously fast)

There's plenty of other ways to do it. This approach limits the feasibility of the power, so while it's still storybreaking, it only breaks the story under specific circumstances that are easy for a writer to avoid. Any power will have a set of problems it can solve effortlessly just by its nature, and thus any story whose primary conflict is one of those problems will find the power story-breaking - but every power also has problems it can't solve, so the writer just needs to present the character with challenges that their story-breaking power has no impact on.

There's also the character personality approach. A power can be as OP as the writer wants and it still won't break the story if the wielder has no interest in using it to do so. There's lots of ways to do this, too.

The super OP character literally doesn't care about the protagonist's struggles and will not participate unless somehow forced

The super OP character is a mentor more interested in the protagonist's personal growth than they are in solving their problems for them, and will only intervene if it's life or death

The super OP character's power is capable of incredible destructive violence, but their compassionate and/or pacifistic leanings cause them to dramatically limit their use of it to avoid hurting people

The super OP character doesn't understand the full nature of their abilities and can't use a lot of them on purpose, and the potential consequences of messing up and unleashing something devastating make them reluctant to experiment

The super OP character's power goes from 0 to 100 with no in-between and cannot be used to solve anything that requires any finesse

The super OP character deals with an antagonist who is super OP in the exact same way

The super OP character is deeply unlikable and the protagonists just really can't stand getting their help

The super OP character doesn't like their powerset (gross side effects, doesn't fit their aesthetic, hurts to use, innately evil or drawn from an evil source, reminds them of bad times, etc) and refuses to use it unless they have to

There's a lot of flexibility here, too. The only power that can truly break any story is "the writer says I win now," and it's the writer's job to avoid using that one at all costs.