#which has been added to the spreadsheet

[estradasphere]

interesting.... setlist.com says esphere were performing A Car Ride in Idealistic Ethiopia live as far back as march 2001!! that song wasnt officially released until october 2003!!! also it always led into Musicawi Silt (cover of an ethiopian funk song)

[barabones]

I forget exactly where I saw the initial post asking for volunteers, but on July 10th, I reached out to the listed email. Jane, the organizer, got back to me right away and within an hour I was added in their discord.

Up until this point, I had been maintaining an average 8 ESims myself, so I already had experience checking in on them on a daily basis. The folks there helped me onboard with the spreadsheets for keeping track, and now it's very easy for me to catalog new ones I buy and record daily data usage. The whole process takes me maybe 20-40 minutes a day depending now on how many ESims actually need to be topped off.

Jane has been very up front with lots of the group's information, with frequent announcements about the groups current funds and amounts of daily ESims sent out. She and the others have been super helpful with getting funds to us when needed, and I've almost never had to actually spend any of my own money for any of this.

In the time that I've been volunteering, they figured out how to run a Business account with the Nomad ESim company. Which means that now and then they can just send 15 or so ESims my way, and I just catalog them and send the QRcodes towards Mirna and the Connecting Gaza folks. No more wasting time with the purchasing process, while getting a bit of a bulk discount on top of that.

We also share updates on whatever brand of ESims are most needed. When folks on the ground tell us that one network doesn't seem reliable, we are able to switch over for a while until either the networking issue is fixed, or we all pressure customer service enough to replace them for us.

There's also lots of complaining about new UI updates an general website bugs. There's surprisingly a lot of them and it's good to know other folks are getting info from customer service when things go wrong.

In August they made a meme channel

Anyways....

Lets get into some stats for myself. In 2 months (July 10- Sept12) I have:

Send off 171 ESims

Maintained around 60 active ones

Topped up these active ESims 139 times

Spend over $6400 donated dollars

I have multiple power users who have burned through close to 100GB. 2 of them have broken 200GB. These are most likely being used as hot spots.

Why am I sharing all of this? Mostly to show how easy it has been to make a marginal difference. I have helped at least 60 people stay connected with the outside world in just 2 months. Probably more if we assume some of the power users becoming hotspots for other folks. This is 20-40 minutes of my time a day, and I honestly regret not signing up to do this sooner.

I was specifically limiting myself to this workload because I wanted to test the waters. Those stats was me specifically not wanting to push myself and see what impact a normal person could make with 20 minutes a day. At this point I think I will be taking more advantage of Nomad's Tuesday discounts to really bulk up my numbers. It's pretty easy to buy 15 or so every Tuesday, and then send em over.

If you would like to join us in this endeavor, please reach out to Jane at cripsforesimsforgaza(at)gmail

We are specifically looking for people in European time zones, since a lot of us are in the Americas and that's quite a difference between us and Gaza. If not, that's no problem!

If you can't participate, that's totally fine, but please donate what you can! Folks like you are the ones who keep us going!

I hope this information has been useful in some way. Like I said, I wish I had heard about this group sooner, with how easy it has been to do. I can track my direct impact of what my daily time is doing for folks, and seeing the data be used up a little bit more day by day gives me hope for everyone in Gaza. Thank you for your time.

[exeggcute]

none of this is new info, but you know I have the "loves to write lists and compile links" disposition, so I thought it might be helpful to share some of the tips I've seen about how to make sure you're sharing legitimate palestinian evacuation fundraisers and bundle all those tips into a single handy reference post.

this is a spreadsheet of legitimate ("vetted") fundraisers on tumblr.

this post explains how the people who maintain this spreadsheet confirm the legitimacy of each fundraiser they add.

this podcast episode ("yousef and the fourth move") explains why evacuation fundraisers are often organized by people who don't live in gaza and/or who may not be immediate relatives of the people trying to evacuate. it's part three of a series about a man named yousef and his family; parts one and two aren't required listening for part three to make sense, but if you have a few hours to spare then I wholeheartedly recommend listening to all of them.

this is the process that I personally have been using to check whether a particular fundraiser has been vetted:

spreadsheet method

open the vetted fundraisers spreadsheet.

inside this spreadsheet, open the "find..." menu. on a windows computer, this shortcut is ctrl+F. on a mac, this shortcut is cmd+F. on a mobile device, click the three dots menu in the upper right corner of your screen, then select Find and replace.

search for the last name of the person or family in the fundraiser. you may get several results because last names obviously aren't unique; keep hitting "next" until you've looked at all the results.

if you find an entry in the spreadsheet that has the exact same name and whose gofundme link leads to the same fundraiser associated with the blog, it's legitimate. if you don't find an entry in the spreadsheet that matches the blog's fundraiser, that does not mean it's a scam. try the next method below!

tumblr search method

copy the username of the tumblr who originally posted the fundraiser and/or sent you a message asking you to boost the fundraiser. (for example, username123)

paste this username into tumblr's search bar.

for best results, click the All types drop-down menu, then select Text. since the search page is often dominated by asks sent by username123 (which people then answer and tag with their username), this helps narrow things down a bit.

look to see if any people who are not username123 have made posts confirming that username123 is legitimate. this includes people who've reblogged fundraisers and added notes, people who've compiled masterlists, and people sharing hyperlinks to other posts confirming a fundraiser's legitimacy. if the message seems to be "yep, looks legit," then it's safe to assume it's legit.

this is not a comprehensive list, but here are some of the usernames I've seen associated with "yep, looks legit"-type posts and who I've come to trust by association. (disclaimers: I am not mutuals with any of the users, and not all of them do the vetting firsthand, but the ones who don't vet posts themselves still seem to be careful about what they share and therefore are a good lead to follow. also, don't bug these people to vet fundraisers for you unless they've specifically indicated that they're open to that.)

90-ghost

el-shab-hussein

nabulsi

appsa

northgazaupdates

retvolution

communistchilchuck

neptunerings

a-shade-of-blue

shimamitsu

neither of these methods yielded anything definitive; what now?

it may just be too early to tell. unless a trusted source has shared overwhelming evidence that a particular fundraiser is a scam (which seems to be a very very rare occurrence), the best thing you can do is ignore it. don't report their blog as spam, because there's a good chance it's a legitimate fundraiser who just hasn't been vetted yet.

[redeemed-wren]

I might regret this but rogue squadron I am challenging you.

For every fifty notes this post makes I will dedicate half an hour to working on a Hobby Thing.

Hobby Things include:

Writing

Reading

Watching a TV show or movie

Knitting/crochet project

Cosplay/sewing projects

Walking/exploring

Baking/cooking

Playing a video game

These are fun things I want to do but struggle to start because I'm bad at letting myself relax, so if y'all hold me accountable it might help.

I may turn notifications off for this post but I will keep a record of how many notes it has and check it often.

You're free and welcome to suggest which of the above Hobby Things I should dedicate that particular half hour to.

Godspeed

💜💙💛

Now with added Spreadsheet so you can see what I've been up to!

[cameoliob]

Masterlist of Palestinian families who need our support!!!

I'll be adding to this list as I find more campaigns! Send some my way if you know of any I havent listed!

@save-ahmed-family1 : €1,203 / 20,000

gofundme link + their post

@hanan-gaza23 : €885 / 50,000

gofundme link + their post

@ashraf-baker : €19,667 / 25,000

gofundme link + their post

@fatma--gaza : €6,064 / 20,000

gofundme link + their post

Hossam Bardaweel : $9,167 / 20,000 CAD

gofundme link

Dina : $10,268 / 20,000 CAD

gofundme link

@majedgaza1 : $1,173 / 70,000

gofundme link

 

@ahmedhellis22 : $180 / 30,000

gofundme link + their post

@shadowyavenuetaco : £3,780 / 50,000

gofundme link + their post

@alaakh99 : €8,639 / 100,000

gofundme link + their post

@zainsami : €210 / 35,000

gofundme link + their post

@karemandohan1999 : $7,202 / 50,000

gofundme link + their post

@fahedshehab051 : €48,959 / 85,000

gofundme link + their post

@fatma-anqer : €7,989 / 20,000

gofundme link + their post

@lina-gaza : €39,335 / 45,000 

gofundme link + their post

@hyamshehab222 : €9,700 / 25,000

gofundme link + their post

If you want to find more families in need (which I implore you do to) check out this spreadsheet, it has links to HUNDREDS of of palestinian families whos campaigns have been vetted!!!

[annadiplosis]

A few months ago I posted a couple photos of my index cards, saying I still didn’t know how and where I’d keep them, and I’ve since developed an Archiving System that combines the cards with a digital spreadsheet and has taken more hours than I will ever admit.

So, since I don’t have a “notebook system” to speak of, I'd like to share the way I archive my journals / sketchbooks / whatever you wanna call them, because I’m very proud of it, and who knows, someone might find it helpful :)

WHY I NEED AN ARCHIVING SYSTEM

The reason I don’t have a notebook system is because I use my books for absolutely everything, from sketches to grocery lists and journaling. It is crucial to me to not have any restrictions or expectations when it comes to my books, and that’s how I’ve managed to fill 43 of them over the years.

But of course, when you’ve been using notebooks without a system for most of your life and you want to read a specific entry, you can easily spend a full hour flipping through a sea of paper until you stumble upon those notes on the Bubonic Plague you took in 2011 or whatever you were trying to find.

SO HERE’S WHAT I DO

When I finish a notebook, I try to determine what its most important contents are: stuff I might want to reference in the future (project ideas, meeting notes) or is very characteristic of a period in my life (friends' drawings, travel logs). Every single page contributes to making the notebook what it is and gives it a unique personality, but not all of them are gonna be keepers, and that's fine (I'd even say fundamental, at least in my case).

These are the extremely generic categories I sort my Chosen Entries into. It's similar to the dot system so many people use, just applied retroactively:

🟣 Study notes 🔵 Work 🟢 Personal 🟡 Projects 🔴 Misc

And here's where the real archiving begins. This info goes into:

1. THE INDEX CARDS

(I always write them in Catalan; this one's a mockup and most of these are not real entries)

A little piece of cardboard with the notebook number, its start and end dates, and most important contents. I keep each index card inside its corresponding notebook, either in its own backpocket or an adhesive one I stick there myself.

This way, whenever I want to take a quick look through the book, I get a general idea of its contents at first glance. Sometimes, just holding it in my hand and reading the index card brings me back to the time when I was keeping it, and that time-travel feeling gives me a rush like no other. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm crazy about my notebooks.

2. THE SPREADSHEET

Same as before, just a couple more pieces of info (number of months, physical description) added to a file with the rest of my notebooks' data. Again, these are not real entries for privacy and language reasons, but they're very similar to the kind of stuff I do keep. The spreadsheet helps me find specific entries with a simple ctrl+f, and it's also a bird's-eye view of my progress through the years as a notebook keeper. I can see when my interests shift, how long some of my most important projects took to come to fruition, and even similar types of entries that repeat every few years which I wasn't even aware of before putting it all together. Absolutely fascinating stuff.

I hope this was useful, or interesting at the very least! If you’re a notebook keeper trying to find their own archiving system, my main advice would be to start early so you don’t have to deal with almost two decades of material like I did :’)

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask.

Good luck 🖤

[visionaryparacosmos]

So, I've been working on this spreadsheet since the start of the year, trying to get a wide breadth of troll words in one place, organized by where they're from, i.e. Homestuck, Hiveswap, Friendsim, Paradox Space, etc.

I and some of my friends have found this really useful for roleplay and fanfiction purposes, so I figured I would finally share it publicly. It's still being worked on, but it has over 400 words/phrases organized on it at this point.

Some of the definitions were supplemented by Spiral's Canon Troll Vocabulary Sheet as found on Homestuck.net, which does have some words and phrases I haven't gotten around to adding to my sheet yet. Definitely worth a look if you haven't gotten sick of troll words after looking at my spreadsheet.

[fernsnailz]

I know this isn't a great topic, but is there a way to verify if the inbox asks for support for gaza are legit and not scams? I'd hate to have money that should go to people that need it go to waste

checking to see if palestinian gofundmes are legit is very easy if you have access to the right resources. a few other people on tumblr have done an incredible job contacting palestinian families and verifying a number of these fundraisers, and i usually cross-reference any gofundme asks i get in my inbox with the resources these other bloggers have provided.

this is usually my process for determining if a fundraiser is legitimate:

check the blog of the person sending the ask. a lot of times these blogs will share who they have been vetted by, updates on their situation, etc. usually legit blogs will share a number of different photos/videos of their family, living situation, and current placement to further prove that their fundraiser is real and their situation is dire. if there's only like one post on their blog with very few photos then that's usually a red flag.

check the Vetted Gaza Evacuation Fundraiser List put together by @/el-shab-hussein and @/nabulsi. this sheet has over 200 fundraisers that have been verified as legitimate. when i receive a fundraiser ask, i usually search the name of their gofundme campaign in this sheet first to see if it's there. you can also search for their name or tumblr username (i use the Ctrl+F search function to make this easier). HOWEVER, i have found that some fundraisers these blogs have previously verified i could not find on this list. which is why step 3 is important:

search the blog's username on tumblr. if it's a scam, sometimes people will post about it to let everyone else know. if it's legitimate, usually you can find posts that @/el-shab-hussein, @/nabulsi, or @/90-ghost have shared and vetted. if i see these blogs sharing a fundraiser, i have good faith to believe it's real.

if i cannot find that a fundraiser has been shared by these blogs or added to this spreadsheet, i do not share it.

it's also important to note that currently @/el-shab-hussein and @/nabulsi have stopped vetting fundraisers for the time being. unfortunately this means that i haven't been able to verify and share what i assume are fundraisers created after they paused their vetting process.

again, i should emphasize that this process is very easy and anyone that knows how to use the tumblr and google doc search functions can do it. please consider donating to the fundraisers these blogs have vetted and shared if you're able - i'll also recommend donating to Watermelon Relief, eSims for Gaza, and UNRWA.

[dnpbeats]

Dan and Phil 2024 Upload Stats: Half a Year in Review

hi everyone! as we are officially halfway through 2024, i thought it would be fun to make a little post about some intersting stats from d&p's uploads this year! especially as things will likely start slowing down (or rather stay slowed down) during the latter part of this year due to the tour! as a reminder, spreadsheet can be found here :)

general stats

there have been 42 uploads so far this year. 13 of those are AP and the other 29 are DAPG, meaning they've uploaded over twice as much on the gaming channel

the average time between uploads across all channels is 3.9 days. looking at the channels individually, the average upload time between AP videos is 11.9 days and for DAPG it's 5.4 days

across both channels, dan and phil have helped edit 81% of the videos. they have only edited one out of the 42 videos on their own, which was on DAPG

100% of AP videos have had spons (capita£ester strikes again) and 79.3% of gaming videos have had spons (looking at both channels together, 85.7% have had spons)

their average upload time is 8:26pm

dan has been in (in some capacity) 46.2% of the AP videos this year

24.1% of the gaming videos have been non-gaming content

phil has been the one to tweet about the gaming videos 86.2% of the time

date/time stats

wednesday is their most popular day to upload, with 11 uploads (the majority of which have been DAPG uploads). sunday and friday are tied for second with 10 uploads each

saturday is the only day that they haven't uploaded on this year (this includes irregular uploads too, like ads and livestreams!)

average upload time for each day of the week:

sponsor stats

nordvpn is their most common sponsor, having sponsored 7 of their videos this year (4 on DAPG, 3 on AP). their second most-common sponsor is dragon city, having sponsored 6 videos (all DAPG)

6 videos have had no sponsors (again, all DAPG)

data for all spons:

editor stats

our queen superseizer had edited/helped edit 12 videos (11 DAPG vids, 1 AP)

seizer has edited 3 vids on her own (3x as many as d&p 🤩)

runtime stats

stats exclude poppy playtime chp. 3 bc it's so long lol

thursday uploads have the longest average runtime at 24:18. friday uploads have the shortest average runtime of 16:56

afk journey is the sponsor with the longest average runtime (29:56). the second-longest average runtime is videos with no sponsors (28:42). the sponsor with the shortest average runtime is headspace (14:54)

seizer on average edits longer videos! the average length of a video she has edited/helped edit is 25:11. for d&p the average length is 20:01

series stats

the sims series has had the most uploads this year, with 7. DvP has had 3 uploads and golf with friends has had 1 upload

on average there are 22 days between sims uploads and 65 days between DvP uploads

seizer is the only one trusted with editing sims vids 🙏🏻

so yeah! there are even more stats in the spreadsheet but i just wanted to include the more intersting stuff here. there's also a calendar if you want to visually see the distribution of days that videos have been uploaded (including irregular uploads!). also there's still the interactive bit where you can calculte the length between two uploads :3

lmk if you have any questions or want to see any other comparisons/charts i don't have!!

[creatorae]

Mob Psycho 100 art for Gaza!

I'm hoping to contribute aid to the current crisis in Gaza, so I will be posting Mob Psycho 100 art for donations to Palestine GoFundMes! Current GoFundMe to Donate to: As of October 16th, 2024, Madleen's family has raised $55,967 out of their $70,000 goal. They are number 3 on the vetted evacuation fundraiser spreadsheet.

The way it works: I will be posting a new artwork every 2 donations or every 10 reblogs of this post, whichever happens first. (I'm hoping for mainly donations, but I wanted to make sure people who couldn't donate can also participate by sharing.) Once one of these conditions has been met, I will upload a new drawing. Finished milestone pieces will be posted in a separate post, and a link to the piece will be provided in a reblog of this post.

(Edit: I'm okay with repeat reblogs between milestones! Anything helps) The Fundraisers: I will select a GoFundMe that hasn't been filled yet to link to this post. I will be choosing fundraisers that are on the fundraiser spreadsheet vetted by Palestinian tumblr users. Once the fundraiser has met its goal, I will select another fundraiser.

The donations: If you are donating, please send a screenshot of the receipt with the date/time through an ask (it can be anonymous if you want).

The Drawings: My art is mainly focused on Mob Psycho 100, but it may be subject to change depending on which drawings are popular and what I decide to draw in the future.

The rules/general post are subject to change in the future, depending on the response to this post (ex: changing milestone conditions, adding extra artwork, opening requests, etc).

Please share and donate!

[into-the-feniverse]

Finished reading Trigun/TriMax a couple days ago and have been feverishly trying to piece together a timeline, so here’s the result of that ✨

EDIT: as of 3/13/24 this has been UPDATED

For a more detailed timeline (with vol/ch marks): google sheet

Full res of the graphic (& other resources): bit.l/trigunresources

Notes & rest of the timeline under the cut!

Edits as of 3/13/24

The detailed spreadsheet is organized and color coded! If you'd like a more concise breakdown of events/see some of my reasoning behind certain time stamps feel free to skim through that

Changed where in the timeline the Maylene and Wolfwood events happened (originally where I had placed them would have made Maylene like 6 when she and Wolfwood reunited which is NOT correct)

moved where in the timeline Knives started collecting the GungHo Guns (at latest he started in 0090 (20 years before 0110) since it's noted that Monev has been training in a cellar for the past 20 years

Moved where Knives initially tracked down Conrad (felt like it needed to happen at least a decade before July)

Changed up some of the months (personally, I don't think the Ark launched in December, since that'd put Milly and Meryl's arrival to the colony in July, which wouldn't make sense. So I placed the ark launch in October which of course offset some of the other month stand ins)

Added an earth year for when Knives and Vash are born. The explanation is I think at minimum there was at least a 2 year period between them and Tesla (since Rem was around for that whole process). I do think it was more than that, but that’s the earliest possible year I think it could have happened. Personally I’m more in the camp of 5-10 years, but def not 50 like in tristamp

Old Notes:

If you see any typos or phrase inconsistencies: no you don’t 💕 (😭)

Blue text can be completely ignored, that’s just kinda my personal preference/wild guesstimating of when “exactly” those events happened

Blue lines can also be ignored, they’re also just rough guesstimates on where exactly in the timeline these could have happened

The distance of the lines from one another doesn’t really mean anything, I started trying to follow a system to notate when things happened really close together but it was//// not consistently done ngl

Fun fact: by the time Wolfwood leaves the orphanage Meryl is 18! And she was 14 at the time of July’s destruction

Additional fun fact: Brad is 17 when he and sensei meet up with Vash in the Factioned city (which I think is absolutely RIDICULOUS), and we know this because he was 4 the one/last time he had met Vash and it’s been 13 years since

It was noted by Karen, one of Meryl’s coworkers, that she and Milly had been on assignment with Vash for about 4 months. (Might be that they were out searching for him during that time as well, but I’m choosing to interpret it as they were actually with him for that amount of time)

I’m also working on a 98 timeline for comparison (but more like just sequence of events cause I don’t think I have the patience to sift through the lore quite as much… mainly making it just to clarify how the anime delineates from the manga)

I am//::: feeling v unhinged after this and feel like it could be improved/i need to do a more thorough read, but I’m calling it quits for now before I actually go insane (but hopefully some people will find it somewhat helpful!)

Also: if anybody has any notes to add or clarifications/corrections I would be more than happy to hear them 👂

[breachverse]

Breach: Chicago War Zone - WIP Update 18 - 26th of August 2023

... This one's actually been brewing for 6 months, so... 1 Million Words folks!

Update 21 has been released! Last public upload was pretty much a year ago so, I'm very sorry for the long silence, a lot of the updates have been mostly in the private testing phase on Patreon, but I am here with a bunch of fixes and hangout updates.

But most importantly... We've passed the 1 Million Words mark... My fingers are tired. ❤

You may play it on the link below.

Breach: Chicago War Zone (Updated)

DEVELOPMENT LOG#21 (15-April-2024)

(B2.1.1.24.4.15)

Alpha - 21

Fixed something here, fixed something there, fixed something everywhere

SideModule: Fixed Justin's hangout background

SideModule: Fixed Hayne's hangout background

SideModule: Added Anna's 1st hangout

SideModule: Added Charlie's 1st hangout

SideModule: Added Kaz's 1st hangout

SideModule: Added Carly's 1st hangout

Stats_Page: Added Archangel crew background notes

UniModule: Added 7 new weapons to the shop

MISC: Added AA-12

MISC: Added FAMAS G2

MISC: Added HK G36C

MISC: Added SIG MPX

MISC: Added PP-19 Vityaz

MISC: Added Ultimax 100

MISC: Added SR-25

COMPLETED: Chapter 3 Part 1 of The ARC branch (100%) (PT only) W.I.P.: AA Hangout Part 1 (86%) W.I.P.: AA Store system (85%) W.I.P.: FBI Hangout Part 1 (46%) W.I.P.: FBI Store system (65%) W.I.P.: Stat screen upgrade (40%) Word Count: 1,007,622 words including codes (Last update was 971,142)

I'll be completely honest, when I started Breach 2 I knew it was going to surpass 1 million words. I just didn't think it would take this long. Through numerous challenges, both in writing and in real life. Through numerous ups and downs, I'm absolutely surprised and grateful to know that there are people out there who still support me. I've had many thoughts, numerous times, to give up and move on to other things in life, but I didn't want to disappoint, so I kept writing.

I bring to you, the 1 million milestone update. It's really not much, but it is one step closer to completion. This update has been in the works for the past 6 months mostly due to the weapons rework and also story changes for the crew members that I apparently couldn't keep track of without a giant excel spreadsheet. This update finalizes the Archangel's Gamma Crew hangouts, which is Kaz and Carly's hangout as well as Anna and Charlie's hangout.

As before, they share the same storyline so they will both share the same hangout. If you choose to go out with one, you cannot go out with the other. Kaz shares it with Carly, and Anna shares it with Charlie. Keep that in mind. Oh, and there's 7 new guns to play with. Have fun, Ian.

This update does not include the new Chapters. Chapter 3 will still be Patreon exclusive until Breach 2 finishes and I can send the demo to the public testing, and to CoG for the full release.

I really cannot reiterate how grateful I am to have an amazing array of readers and supporters who are still here after numerous hiccups and fuck ups. Thank you all, so very much.

Much, much love. - Max ❤

Link to the CoG Forums

I also have a Discord server!

As always feel free to drop however many screenshot feedbacks you'd like, either in the forums or in our Discord channel!

[pulisicsgirl]

silence is deafening - mason mount

summary: after a fight with Mason digs up memories she'd rather forget, Y/N is left to deal with trauma from her past and decide if she will let Mason in

pairing: Mason Mount x reader

word count: 5.1k

warnings/tags: angst, hurt/comfort, couple fight, !! in-depth description of childhood trauma !!, lack of communication, supportive Mase, everything will eventually be okay-- you all know I can't write a sad ending, not proofread (I'm so sorry)

requested: yes!! here

notes: back with another request!!! This one has been sitting in my inbox for a LONG time!! I've had the draft halfway written for SO long, but couldn't decide how to finish it until I was struck with a bit of inspiration earlier this week! I hope you all enjoy it!!

You rested your elbow on the counter, forehead placed in the palm of your hand as you used the other to scroll and click through the numerous emails in your inbox. You had a big deadline coming up for your work, and it seemed that the brunt of the responsibility for it had fallen unexpectedly on your shoulders. As a result, your coworkers were coming to you with all of their questions, new emails popping up in your inbox every hour. So here you were, sitting at the bar in the kitchen, legs tucked under you as you continued to work even after arriving at home from a full day’s work.

Your boss had been on your case for a few weeks now for a reason unknown to you, which put you on edge each day that you went into work, nervous to step a toe out of line and be reprimanded, or worse, fired. You feared that this project could be the breaking point if it didn’t work out, which only added to your nervousness. You had never let a project like this fall apart before, but the anxious thoughts swirling around your mind convinced you that this would be the day that you failed.

You were just closing the browser to open a spreadsheet when you heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. You vaguely heard Mason call out into the house and the sound of his keys dropping into the bowl by the front door, too focused on your work to comprehend what he had actually said.

The nerves seemed to have settled in your chest like a heavy weight, pressing onto your diaphragm as your eyes flicked between the seemingly endless list of numbers and data on your screen. Your head was beginning to ache, and you imagined that this is what drowning would feel like.

You were pulled from your thoughts as two hands slipped around your waist as Mason pulled you tightly into his chest.

“How’s my baby?” Mason mumbled into your neck, pressing kisses to the skin there, and as much as you usually enjoyed being greeted this way, you were feeling overwhelmed by the sudden contact.

“ ’m okay,” you mumbled in reply, wiggling a bit to try to pull from his grasp, but Mason didn’t get the message, keeping your back pressed to his firm chest, continuing to place kisses on your neck and shoulders, his beard tickling your skin. “Mase, please…”

“What are you working on, sweetheart?” he mumbled softly, pressing his nose into your cheek.

“It’s just a thing for work. The deadline’s actually coming up pretty soon.” You tried prying his hands from your waist, beginning to feel suffocated, but Mason didn’t seem to notice. If he did, he ignored it. “So I really need to work on—”

“Come on, just give me five minutes,” he spun your chair toward him so he could see your face. Placing his hands on your cheeks, he began peppering kiss all over—your forehead, nose, cheeks, chin. “Haven’t seen you all day. I just wanna –”

“Mason please!” Something in you snapped and you pushed his hands away from you. “Why can’t you just leave me alone for two seconds! I’m trying to work! Can’t you see that?”

Mason stumbled back a couple of steps, caught off guard by your outburst. You never called him by his full name, and you certainly never shouted at him. A look of hurt washed over his face, the grin that had previously played on his lips falling into a frown, eyebrows drawn together, and you instantly regretted your words. You didn’t mean them, but you were overwhelmed and simply lost your cool.

“Mase, I’m sorry, I-“ You rose from your chair quickly to apologize to him, reaching a hand out toward him, but he was already halfway out of the kitchen by the time you could move in his direction. Your heart sank in your chest as you watched him round the corner, heading down the hallway.

You dropped yourself back into the chair, resting your head in your hands as your eyes began to sting with tears. If you thought you had felt miserable before, you had surely made it worse now. You cursed yourself for letting your stress get the better of you and letting your job come between you and Mason. The despair that you felt sat on your ribcage like a weight as a few tears slipped down your cheeks.

You decided maybe it was best to give Mason a bit of space before you tried to apologize. You knew you had hurt his feelings. He often expressed to you that he feared being too clingy or smothering the other person in his relationships, but you had always reassured him that you loved it, finding solace in his presence and his touch. Until today, when you had snapped at him for doing the very thing you told him brought you peace.

It truly wasn’t that you didn’t want him to touch you. In fact, in this moment, there was nothing you wanted more. You were feeling overwhelmed and had failed to communicate that.

With slightly puffy eyes you wiped the tear streaks from your cheeks, pulling your computer in front of you, determined to finish the work you had laid out for you so that you could spend the rest of your evening making it up to Mason. That proved difficult, though, with anxious thoughts about your relationship swirling around your head, now contributing to the anxiety you felt over your job.

You felt things getting progressively worse—your heart speeding up, the shaking in your hands getting more intense, and you were having trouble concentrating at all.

After about a half an hour, you heard Mason’s soft footsteps as his sock-clad feet padded down the hallway. Your heart skipped a beat, trying to quickly collect your thoughts so you could articulate to him just how sorry you were for what you had said and how you had acted.

But as Mason turned the corner into the kitchen, it was clear he hadn’t come to talk to you, not even sparing you a glance as he walked over to the fridge. Your voice caught on the lump in your throat, surprised by his cold demeanor.

“M-Mase?”

Your call to him was left unanswered as opened the refrigerator door, bending down to grab a bottle of water from the shelf. He uncapped the bottle, taking a drink from it as he walked back out of the room without a word.

Your lower lip wobbled, and you felt the tears welling up in your eyes. You closed your computer, knowing that you were going to get nothing more done, dropping your head to rest on your forearms on the countertop. You tried to muffle the sobs that shook your body, not wanting to guilt Mason into comforting you. You got yourself into this situation and would have to figure out how to deal with it.

It took another half hour for you to calm yourself, your crying finally ceasing. You took a few minutes, trying to make it appear as though you hadn’t spent the last 30 minutes crying in the kitchen before you decided to “pull up your big girl pants” and go find Mason.

You walked slowly and reluctantly down the hallway, first checking in your shared bedroom and finding both it and the ensuite bathroom empty. As you walked back into the hallway, you heard a noise coming from Mason’s gaming room and decided that must be where you’d find him.

You knocked softly on the door to alert him to your presence before you pushed the door open slowly. Mason was facing to your left, looking at the TV where he was playing FIFA, and only the side of his face was visible to you. Once again, he didn’t look toward you, focusing on his game without so much as a glance in your direction.

You took a couple of steps toward him, playing with your fingers in front of you as you moved to a position where you knew he could at least see you out of the corner of his eye.

“M-Mase? Can w-we talk?” Your voice was shaky as you spoke, but you took a deep breath, determined not to cry again. “Please?”

You waited, but there was no response. The clear shakiness of your voice earned a brief glance in your direction, but nothing more.

“Mason?”

Nothing.

All at once, a wave of emotions and painful memories hit you, the silent treatment from Mason taking you back to a time in your life that you had resolved to leave in your past.

Before you could stop it, a sob left your lips, and you clasped a hand over your mouth to silence it, rushing out of the room. You closed the door a little more harshly than you had intended to, soft cries leaving your lips as you raced down the hallway to find somewhere—anywhere—where you could get some fresh air and breathe for a moment.

Before you could even think, you had rushed to the front door, slipping on the trainers you had left there and grabbing your keys. You were out the door quickly, fighting back tears as you turned the keys in the ignition. You weren’t sure where you were even going to go, you just needed to find somewhere to be alone.

*

Almost as soon as you had left him alone in his gaming room, Mason knew something was really off. The two of you had fought before, but you had never reacted to it the way you had when you ran out of the room.

He had resolved to give you the cold shoulder, feeling hurt by the way you had pushed him away so harshly. But his concern for you outweighed his need to get you to apologize. He hadn’t been able to keep himself from glancing in your direction when your voice shook as you spoke. You had never sounded so afraid to address him, and that simple fact was eating away at him. He had soon after turned off the console, wandering out of his gaming room in search of you.

The house was eerily quiet as he moved through the hallway, checking in each room that he passed to see if you were there. When he entered the kitchen, noticing your computer lying closed on the countertop, he furrowed his brows. After not finding you anywhere else in the house, he had been sure you would be back in the kitchen, working on whatever it was that had you so stressed out.

Your shoes and keys missing from the walkway told him you had left, and he felt his heart sink a little. He had been hoping to find you and work this out quickly, hating the way he felt when there was distance between the two of you.

After debating whether to text or call to check on you, Mason settled on a quick text, afraid of suffocating you further. He wandered into the kitchen, aimlessly rummaging through the fridge and the cabinets as he waited for you to reply. He was restless, checking the screen of his phone every few seconds to see if a text from you had popped up, but nothing came through.

It wasn’t long before he threw caution to the wind, dialing your number without caring if you would be frustrated with him. The nerves caused by your brief argument and not knowing where you were was causing his worry to spike and he couldn’t keep himself from calling.

The line rang for several long moments before the automated voice began telling him you were unavailable.

He hung up, blowing air out in frustration and tossing his phone onto the counter before he plopped down in one of the chairs at the countertop. For a few moments, he just stared at the chair you had been sitting in when he had first arrived home—the place you had been sitting when you’d shouted at him.

His heart clenched in his chest at the recent memory. You had never reacted that way to him before, and it bothered him more than he cared to admit. The negative thoughts began to swirl in his mind, feeling like a cloud of despair.

 He felt small. He felt like he was overbearing. He worried that you had grown sick of him and simply didn’t want him around anymore.

As tears sprung to his eyes, Mason’s level-headed side began to prevail.

Yes, you had never reacted that way to him before, so that had to mean that something had triggered it.

Everything had been fine when he’d cuddled up to you in bed that morning, and he was equally as touchy and clingy as the two of you had gotten ready for the day, so something had to have changed between then and when he got home.

As he wracked his brain to remember what you had been saying before you’d snapped at him, he realized he couldn’t really recall what you’d told him. He hadn’t really been paying attention, he realized.

He dropped his head into his hands, elbows resting on the countertop, as the shame washed over him. Perhaps this all could’ve been avoided if he’s just paid attention to what you had been trying to tell him.

With another sigh, Mason picked his phone up from where he had tossed it on the counter, dialing your number again.

And again, he was met with no response.

*

You hadn’t actually gone far on your drive, only making it about 10 minutes before you pulled off into a mostly empty parking lot, parked at the back where it was the most deserted, and broke down into sobs.

You felt silly for crying so much about receiving the cold shoulder from your boyfriend, but it had brought up so many memories and feelings you had done your best to repress.

The environment you had grown up in was… less than inviting. In your house, children were treated as more of a nuisance than a blessing. You were made to feel that unless you were bringing some sort of value to others, you didn’t deserve anything. Love was something that had to be earned, not something unconditional that was shared between a parent and child.

Silent treatment was something that your mother had often used to signal that she was upset with you. From a very young age, longer than you can remember, when she would begin to ignore you when you spoke to her or tugged at the hem of her shirt to get her attention, it meant you had to scramble to find a way to earn her love.

So, seeing Mason doing the very same had taken you right back to that time. You had once again felt like a young child, scrambling to prove that you deserved the love of another.

Of course, you realized that there was no way for Mason to know this would have bothered you the way it did. He knew that your relationship with your parents was now non-existent because of the circumstances of your upbringing, but he didn’t know the full extent of what they had put you through. You hadn’t gathered the strength to tell him all of those details yet.

So you had done the only thing you could think of to do in that moment, and you ran away—something you most certainly regretted now. But you didn’t want Mason to feel guilty for making you cry when you knew you had been in the wrong, so you sat in that empty parking lot for as long as it took you to calm yourself down.

You allowed yourself to sit there and feel miserable on your own for a while, but you knew you’d have to go back to face Mason soon. You knew he was probably worried, but you had turned your phone off after his first call came through. You felt even more guilty as a result, but you had been unable to deal with reassuring him of your safety at that moment.

It was dark outside by the time you walked back in the front door, closing it behind you quietly. You slipped your shoes off, placed your keys in the bowl, and hesitated a moment in the entry.

The soft jingle of your keys had alerted Mason to your presence, and he practically jumped up from his seat at the counter where he had remained the entire time, feeling miserable as he tried to call you nearly every 30 minutes.

Mere seconds passed before Mason darted quickly around the corner to find you standing there, still about 10 feet away from him.

His stomach sank to his feet at the sight of your red-rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks. It was clear you had spent the entire time you were gone crying.

At the sight of him standing carefully at a distance, the feeling of guilt overwhelmed you, and tears sprung to your eyes.

“M-Mase, I’m so sorry, I-“ you stumbled over your words, the first tears spilling down your cheeks. “I shouldn’t have-“

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” Mason was standing in front of you in an instant, cradling your face with his hands. His thumbs swiped over your cheeks, wiping away the tears that had fallen. “It’s okay, don’t worry. You-“

“No,” you asserted, shaking your head as you held onto his forearms to steady yourself. “No, it’s not okay, please let me apologize.”

Mason’s heart squeezed as you gazed up at him with wide eyes, and he could tell you were trying to stop your lower lip from quivering, but to no avail.

You took a deep breath, in through your nose and blowing the air out slowly through your mouth to try to gather yourself, wanting to be sure that you remembered every part of the apology that you had mentally composed on your way home.

“Mase, I’m so sorry for snapping at you,” you looked up at his face as you spoke, watching as he drew his brows together with a sad expression on his face. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did, and I shouldn’t have shouted. Work has been awful these last couple of weeks, and my boss has been giving me absolute hell. I think it all just built up.”

Mason nodded at you, and you could tell from his soft expression that he understood what you were saying.

You continued, “It’s not an excuse, I just want you to know that it wasn’t you that was bothering me. I just unfairly took my bad day out on you. I don’t feel like you’re too much—ever—I just… I needed a bit of space, and I should’ve just told you that.”

You could see his face physically relax as the relief washed over him, and you felt even more guilty knowing he had been sitting with those thoughts of self-doubt ever since you had left.

“I’m really sorry,” you finished with a whisper as Mason brushed his thumb softly over your bottom lip.

Without warning, Mason pulled you into a tight hug, wrapping his arms around your shoulders, making you feel completely enveloped by him—and the feeling was the greatest relief you could ever remember feeling. He buried his face in your neck, and you could feel a couple of warm tears against your skin.

The two of you stood there in the entryway, clinging onto each other like you’d vanish into thin air if you let go. Mason’s hot breath fanned against your neck, and you closed your eyes, drinking in the feeling of being so close to him.

“Thank you,” Mason whispered after a few moments. “Thank you for talking to me.”

You squeezed him in response.

“And I’m sorry for being so childish,” he pulled his face back, still holding you in his arms. “I shouldn’t have just ignored you like that. I should have told you how I was feeling, too.”

You brought your hand up to cradle his cheek, pressing a smile to your lips despite the your eyes still being wet with tears.

“It’s okay, Mase, you couldn’t…” you hesitated for a moment, struggling with the idea of opening that part of yourself up to him. But you knew it was a conversation that was well overdue, so you pushed out of your comfort zone. “You couldn’t have known that it would bother me so much.”

Mason remain quiet, turning his head to place a gentle kiss on the skin of your palm, sensing that you had more to say.

You swallowed the lump in your throat. “Um… so y-you know that my relationship with my parents really fell apart after I was able to move out, and… um…”

You hesitated, feeling frustrated with yourself for struggling to open yourself up. Here Mason stood—the perfect boyfriend, really. He had never judged you for any of your struggles or for anything from your past. He had been nothing but supportive and compassionate since you had first met him. Despite all of this, those nagging thoughts that you weren’t deserving of it all would persist no matter how hard you tried to push them away.

As Mason realized that this was becoming a conversation that would likely require a lot of time, he pulled away from you slightly, taking both of your hands in his as he led you to the living room. He sat down on the couch, opening his arms up to you so you could sit however you felt most comfortable, wanting to put your troubled mind at ease however he could.

Feeling a desperate need to remain close to him, you wound up placing yourself on Mason’s lap, facing him with your knees settled on either side of his hips. Your arm naturally found their place wrapped loosely around his neck, and he placed his hands on your hips, alternating between brushing his thumbs against your waist and rubbing his hands over your thighs.

You took a minute to compose yourself again, staring at the front of Mason’s t-shirt as you didn’t feel confident enough to look him in the eye. Mason remained quiet, continuing his gentle pattern over your legs as he allowed you to have that moment. He could tell that there was a lot weighing on you, even beyond the stress that your job had been causing you.

When you were able to gather your thoughts, you began speaking softly, and you told Mason everything.

You told him about your childhood and the nature of the relationships you’d had with your parents. You told him about the sudden changes in your mother’s disposition and how she would be happy one moment and hateful toward you the next. You explained your long history with the “silent treatment” and how you now realized that was a trigger for you. You were honest with him about the uncertainty that you felt about yourself and about your relationships as a result of this kind of upbringing.

“My mother, she… actually reached out to me last week,” you mumbled. By the time you had finished recounting your life story to Mason, you had cast your eyes down to your lap where you were playing with your fingers, unable to bring yourself to look at his face. “It’s the first time she’s done that since I left home years ago. I don’t really feel like I’m ready to reply to her yet, but I think it’s just dug up a lot of feeling and memories that I tried to bury for so long.”

Mason’s silence as you stopped speaking only made you more nervous. Hesitantly, you looked up to his face, but the pity you expected to find in his eyes was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Mason had a look of pure admiration in his eyes.

“Please say something, Mase.”

He brought his hand up to your cheek, brushing your skin gently as he gave you a tearful smile.

“You’re so incredibly strong, Y/N.”

His reply took you by surprise, as, for seemingly the hundredth time that night, tears spring to your eyes.

“Really?” your voice shook as you spoke.

He nodded. “You went through all of that, and you’re still the kindest soul I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.”

You couldn’t stop the sob that left your lips as you fell forward into Mason, tucking yourself into his chest. His arms immediately were wrapped around your body, your shoulders shaking as you cried into his neck.

You weren’t sure how long the two of you sat there. Your cries eventually diminished into soft sniffles as you remained with your face tucked into Mason’s neck. He slowly trailed his fingers over your back, rubbing soothing shapes and patterns, and after all of the crying and how emotionally drained you felt after reliving the trauma of your past, you felt like you could fall asleep right there.

When you had finally settled a bit more, Mason enveloped you in his arms again, squeezing you gently as he pressed a kiss into your hair.

“Thank you, Y/N,” his voice was no higher than a whisper. “Thank you for telling me all of that.”

Lacking the energy to reply in that moment, you shifted slightly so that you could place a kiss on his collarbone in a silent thanks for listening and understanding you on a level that no one else ever had.

You sat there for a while, allowing yourself to just relax into your boyfriend’s body as he held you. As you rested there, you knew that there was nowhere else in the world that you’d rather be.

Feeling your muscles soften and noticing that your eyes had slipped closed, Mason knew you would soon fall asleep and decided that the two of you should go on up to bed.

He shifted you off of his lap gently, trying to disturb your peace as little as possible. He stood, bending over to pick you up from the couch, and carried you bridal style toward the stairs and up into your shared bedroom.

He took you into the ensuite bathroom and placed you gently on the counter. After grabbing the skincare products he had observed you using over the many nights that you had spent together, he set out, following your nighttime regimen as closely as he could remember. He took a couple of cotton pads, dampening them with your cleanser and swiping them over your cheeks, forehead, and nose. He pumped a bit of the moisturizer on his fingers and gently rubbed it into your skin. Your eyes slipped closed, and his soft touch nearly lulled you back to sleep, sitting there on the countertop.

Mason only left you alone for a moment as you brushed your teeth and he wandered into the bedroom. You could hear him moving around but didn’t have the energy to find out what he was doing. Just as you had finished rinsing out your mouth in the sink, he reappeared behind you, having changed into a loose pair of joggers and discarding his shirt, sliding his arms around your waist as you stood up straight.

You relaxed back into Mason’s touch, pressing your back into his bare chest and letting your head fall back onto his shoulder.

For a moment you stood there, drinking each other in. Mason swayed you gently back and forth as he pressed his cheek to the side of your head, his body radiating warmth from behind you. With your eyes closed, you focused on the feeling of him pressed up against you, arms holding you securely as the gentle pace of his swaying calmed the remainder of the racing thoughts in your mind.

Even with your eyes closed, you could feel the tears springing to them as you thought of how thankful you were to have Mason in your life—how thankful you were that he was your person. You had always known that he was someone special, even from the first moment that you met him. But now, having explained to him the entirety of your childhood and all of the difficulties that came with it, you just felt that much close to him and that much more appreciative if who Mason was.

Kind, forgiving, understanding, gentle—you could have gone on for the rest of the night listing all of the characteristics that made Mason the most perfect man you’d even known.

You twisted in Mason’s hold, tucking your face into his neck so he wouldn’t see the tears spilling over once again. You folded your arms between your bodies as he held you close, allowing him to completely envelop you in his hold.

After another moment, Mason placed a gentle kiss to your temple. “Come on, love. Let’s get to bed.”

You nodded, shivering from the cold as he unwrapped his arms from you.

You followed him back into the bedroom, noticing that the sheets had been pulled back, the pillows arranged just how you liked them, and the shirt that Mason had previously been wearing just before was folded on your side of the bed. Your heart warmed at the small acts of service Mason had done for you.

After you’d undressed yourself, slipping Mason’s t-shirt over your head, you crawled into the bed and placed yourself right next to Mason, who was now clad in only his boxers. He pulled the sheets and the duvet up, tucking them over your bodies before he lay down and pulled you into his arms.

With Mason’s arm wrapped around your body, you lay with your head on his bare chest, listening to the soft and steady beating of his heart. It only took a few seconds of you laying there before Mason had slipped his hand under the hem of your shirt, trailing his fingers over your back and reveling in the feel of  your skin against his. Your legs were tangled under the sheets as the two of you lay in silence, content to be completely wrapped up in one another.

The silence was only broken as you whispered into the night air a few moments later. “Thank you, Mase. For everything.” You pressed a gentle kiss to his chest.

“Anything for you, my love,” he replied softly, squeezing your shoulders. “Anything at all.”

tag list: @landoslover @thoseboysinblue @lovelynikol16 @swimmingismywholelife @masonsrem @bracedes @neverinadream @lizzypotter14 @notsoattractivearenti @chilwellspulisic @mm-vii @10vnderhaze

Feedback is always appreciated!!!

[thisisnotthenerd]

misfits & magic ii stat tracking: episode 1

the spreadsheet, for all to see

it's aabria autumn again, and she's back with with never stop making magic. this series will include both the progressive notes throughout the season as well as my commentary on the mechanics of the system as it's been adapted from KOB and NSBU. the tag is #mismag ii stat tracking, if you want to follow along.

we're just starting out and there's been a ton of fun little details: the pedal pub, tabby (carlos luna), where the characters have been over the last 3 years, the carvings, the orrery, the handles, the new stat trackers with the metal beads, it's all so fun. the art department said yes to carving out the middle of the table this time. i'm waiting for the trackers to do something interactive or have hidden messages or something, like the clipboards did in burrow's end.

this season already feels much more like a traditional fantasy adventure than a school novel. they're traveling, following an esoteric map to the center of a storm, facing old and new foes, human and monster alike. The emphasis is on community and bringing magic to fit the world as it is now, not as it was before the pilot program.

mechanical notes:

all stats have been adapted to have names that start with m:

fight -> melee

brains -> mind

charm -> magnetism

flight -> maneuver

brawn -> matter

grit -> mettle

a secret 7th stat called mark has been added, to cover notice rolls, which no longer fall under mind/brains

magic still exists, and works on a graduated explosion system adapted from nsbu. i'm assuming they get magical artifacts or something of the like when they bounce back down to d4s from d20s.

the common fucking sense die no longer exists, as they are out in the real world instead of whimsical wizard land.

each character has a motive--when they act meaningfully toward or away from that motive, they move along their track. this is adapted from the reputation trackers from acofaf, which came from good society. the progression grants mechanical benefits with significant moves.

the characters start each session with two motes of magic--these replace the adversity tokens. whenever they fail a roll/attempt magic, they add one to the pile, to be used as needed.

each character has a mangle track that tracks the harm to them. death is a possibility, with 6 injury levels that they can take. presumably these come with mechanical penalties as they take injury, i.e. higher costs for magic, higher dcs, etc.

the players got to make some alterations to their stats; they either got more modifiers across the board, or they chose die improvements with fewer modifiers overall. jammer and k lean more towards modifiers while sam and evan changed more of their die values, though the latter two retain their high modifiers in magnetism and melee respectively.

character profiles:

whitney jammer:

teamwork

melee: d10 (+1)

mind: d6 (+1)

magnetism: d6

maneuver: d12 (+2)

matter: d20 (+1)

mettle: d10 (+1)

mark: d4 (+1)

magic: d6

k tanaka:

network

melee: d6 (+1)

mind: d12 (+1)

magnetism: d12 (+1)

maneuver: d10 (+1)

matter: d4 (+2)

mettle: d20 (+2)

mark: d4 (+1)

magic: d4

sam britain:

community

melee: d8 (+1)

mind: d4 (+1)

magnetism: d20 (+3)

maneuver: d20

matter: d6 (+1)

mettle: d12

mark: d6

magic: d4

evan kelmp:

belonging

melee: d20 (+8)

mind: d20 (+2)

magnetism: d4

maneuver: d6

matter: d6 (+1)

mettle: d10

mark: d8

magic: d4

[yumeka-sxf]

I can't believe we've reached the season finale! 😭 First off, the key visual for this episode is too adorable and is only reminding me how much I'm going to miss my favorite (fake) family! ❤️

While the early season episode where Bond and Twilight go on a mission together hints at how much compassion Twilight has for Bond, this episode really highlights what a softie he can be when he's around someone with whom he doesn't have to put on any acts.

Not only does he risk his life to go after Bond in the fire, but when he finds out that Bond went into the burning building to save another dog, he gives that soft, sincere smile that's only reserved for when one of his family members does something that truly touches him.

Rather than be annoyed with Bond for putting both their lives in danger, he's happy that he would risk his life to protect others...because that's what he does all the time! Plus, when he thinks Bond is acting out by "attacking" random people, instead of getting mad, he puts it upon himself to try and understand Bond better, the same as he does with Anya.

It's also really adorable how much Bond wants to please Loid. Is he learning from Anya?

This guy has to be one of the dumbest arsonist to stick around the building he just burned down with a hat that says "Fire" 😂

And of course, wet Bond and "trying not to laugh" Twilight are finally animated! Twilight is lucky that Yor and Anya weren't there to catch him snickering like that...the embarrassment may have killed him.

Then we get the pinnacle of how much Twilight cares for Bond when he tells him that he should think of himself as a family member first and guard dog second, plus how heartbroken "someone" would be if anything happened to him. And that sentiment is really a driving theme in the series, not just in this case with Bond, but for Twilight and Yor too. They're always putting the happiness of others before their own, without either knowing that the other is doing it.

I didn't think they would use this story as the season finale, since it only featured Twilight and Bond, and Franky a bit in the beginning. But they made it feel more like a finale by adding new scenes of the other characters! The scenes with Anya and Yor doing origami was cute - I love how Yor went too hard with the scissors 😅

And the ending where Anya gives both Twilight and Bond stellas was a great addition (though maybe a bit canon-altering since Anya in the manga hasn't seen soaked Bond up to this point).

The montage of all the other characters at the end was nice as well.

I laughed at Fiona's target practice 🤣

And the final scene with the Forgers having dinner was the perfect last shot~

No announcement for season 3 yet, but the episode does hint that there will be more! There's a SxF event in Japan in June 2024 where they could make such an announcement. I'm hoping season 3 won't start until 2025 in order to give the manga time for new content - as of the end of season 2, 67% of the manga has been adapted into the anime (according to my story guide spreadsheet), which is a lot. We'll see! But there will definitely be more SxF anime in the future, perhaps even another movie! So for now, only SxF Sundays twice a month will have to tide us over 😄

[theboombutton]

Bad Fictional Data vs Fictional Bad Data

WARNING: This post will include discussion of a name that might be Alice Dyer's deadname. I won't be calling Alice by this name or using it in the context of that name being a pointer to Alice, but I will be using the name, uncensored, when talking about where and why the name appeared in chdb.xls .

----

You may know that as part of the ARG, the sleuths on Statement Remains uncovered a document called chdb.xls, allegedly a list that has something to do with The Magnus Institute. There's a list of names, ID numbers, first and last names, dates of birth, and information apparently related to each person's "score" in an assortment of psychological/personality tests. Three of the names in particular have stood out in a lot of analyses: Samama Khalid, Gerard Kaey [sic], and Connor Dyer.

You likely don't know that the commonly linked version of the spreadsheet, ported to Google Docs and linked in the TMAGP ARG Masterdoc, is presented out of order. (I'm guessing they didn't lock down editing until it was already all out of order from various people messing with it - totally understandable, this is not a callout post, thank you for making this easily accessible to people.)

But let me tell you about something I discovered by looking at the spreadsheet in its original order, and the almost certainly incorrect rabbit hole of theorizing it has sent me down.

Bad Fictional Data

Until episode 2 I had the same thought about the Dyer listed in the spreadsheet that I think most people did: that it was Alice's deadname, and that she had therefore been one of the Institute's young subjects. But after Alice had absolutely no reaction when Sam mentioned the Magnus Institute to her in episode 2, I now think this is significantly less likely.

Don't get me wrong: it's still reasonable to think that the Dyer listed in chdb.xls is Alice. Maybe she had some kind of supernatural experience that wiped her memory. (It probably wasn't that Alice was too young to remember, as the Dyer on the spreadsheet is listed as being at Piaget Stage 3, which occurs from 7-11 years old; but it's always possible that the Magnus Institute was using the names of legitimate psychological tests to hide their tracks when recording more esoteric data.) The point is, this isn't hard evidence that Alice has no connection to the Magnus Institute; it just made me go looking for more evidence.

I went back to the spreadsheet to look for more clues about whether or not this was Alice's deadname. What I found instead was some extremely sloppy fake data at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

For context, here are first ten names in the spreadsheet:

Note how each ID begins with the name's first and last initial.

Now check out the last ten names:

Not only do these IDs no longer always match their subjects' names, they occur in order: CD, EF, GH, IJ, KL, MN, OP, QR, ST, UV. The first names of each pair match the first letter of each ID, but many, though not all, of the surnames don't match the second letter.

My first thought was that whoever Rusty Quill had contracted to generate these names had gotten sloppy at the end of the list, created the IDs all at once using this alphabetical pattern, and picked names to fill in that roughly matched the IDs. But hey, we could use this to our advantage! Any name that was filled in as part of a series of IDs with an alphabetical pattern like this could be removed from consideration for red string analysis - we'd know they were meaningless fakes added by a lazy contractor, and not clues or characters that might show up again later.

Scrolling back up the spreadsheet, we can see the person generating the data having more care the earlier we go. We find the beginning of the AA/BC/DE/FG/HI pattern at line 136, but at first, the names mostly conform to the initials they've been given. JK09874 "Josie Jordan" at line 154 is the first break from the "first two letters of the ID are their initials" pattern; and breaks occur more often the further you go down the sheet.

Scrolling up to before line 136 (AA09911 - Aaron Atkinson), while the pattern isn't yet at AB/CD/EF/GH levels of obviousness, the first initials are still in alphabetical order. Zoe Hart follows Yara Logan follows Xavier Freeman follows Wyatt Edwards. The data creator skips a few letters - for example Niamh Fenton is followed by Phoebe Emmett, and S and T are together in the same line in Skye Travers.

We can follow this less-obvious version of the alphabetical pattern up to an abrupt break right at line 118, above which the IDs don't follow an alphabetical pattern at all. (They might follow a different pattern, but it's not one that I've found yet.) So that means we can discount all the names in line 118 and below as purely fake, generated lazily by a contractor, and not worthy of our attention for the purposes of red-stringing. Right?

What the fuck?!

(highlight is my own, it is not present in the original document)

My first thought was that the sloppy data generator had done the funniest thing imaginable, sending everyone on a wild goose chase about Alice's deadname just by having the name "Dyer" on the brain while looking for a surname that started with D. This would be Very Funny. No plot relevance, no implications, just the brain fart that launched a thousand theories.

My second thought was that maybe Connor Dyer was the last legit name on the list, and whoever started filling the rest of the sheet in with alphabetical junk data was inspired by the "CD" initials in the first place - whoever it was went on from there.

These are both valid thoughts! But I prefer my third thought:

What if it's on purpose?

Fictional Bad Data

There is a very obvious break between the set of data that doesn't look obviously* fake, and the set of data that is immediately identifiable as such. If we assume that this was intentional - and I want to reiterate that it all being unintentional is still a very real possibility here - why would someone at Rusty Quill want the data to be structured like this?

If the sharp dividing line between reasonable-seeming data and obviously fake data is intentional on RQ's part, it would suggest that we should take the data above row 118 as in-universe real data, and the data below row 118 as in-universe falsified data. It suggests that someone, either at the Institute or after its demise, was adding nonexistent children to the roster of The Magnus Institute. Why would someone want to do that?

There are all kinds of possible reasons, but here are a few off the top of my and my theorizing buddies' heads:

Financial fraud (institutional edition). If the Magnus Institute received funding on a per-child basis, they'd have an incentive to inflate their numbers.

Financial fraud (researcher edition). One or more people on staff were blowing off their child-analysis sessions and recording fake numbers for fake children. This would be ballsy as hell if they could be fired for it, but it was the Magnus Institute, so there's decent odds they couldn't be.

Scientific fraud (faking conclusions edition). The Magnus Institute in the Protocolverse claimed to be doing research on giftedness in children, which is the kind of thing that you'd normally publish in a scientific journal. It's not unheard-of for dickhead academics to falsify data to generate statistically significant results, since statistically insignificant results aren't going to get you published.

Scientific fraud (obscuring paranormal bullshit edition). If the Magnus Institute was using legitimate psychological test names to record Fear-related test results, it's possible their results showed different patterns from what you would expect from the real tests. They could have added the fake children to balance out the dataset as a whole.

Pseudonyms. The children are all real, the Institute just started using fake names for them for privacy purposes. They couldn't go back and change the names they'd already written properly for some reason. Probably something paranormal.

Those are all pretty interesting possibilities, and if we could narrow them down, it might tell us something about what things were like at the Magnus Institute before it burned down!

And the other big question is: why did RQ make the dividing line between the two sections, the first likely-fake entry, Connor Dyer?

One straightforward reason could be as a troll, a red herring to watch fans get in a lather over. And once the community inevitably noticed all the obviously falsified entries, RQ could eat popcorn and watch us lose our minds over whether or not that's even a real entry! (That sounds really fun, I would absolutely do that.)

But let's dig a little deeper, and look at what Connor Dyer being on the border between the real and fake entries would mean in-universe. Because of its position as the border between real and fake, it would be very easy for that entry to be accidentally included in the wrong group - a real research subject discarded as fake, or perhaps more interestingly, a fake research subject accidentally reclassified as real.

Remember, if a name is fake in the context of the Magnus Institute's research, that doesn't mean that the name itself is made up. If I was trying to think of a name that fit the initials CD, and those were the initials of my next door neighbor's kid, I might just write their name in as a lark. Especially if it was my first time trying to get away with falsifying information: this is a kid that verifiably exists and lives in the area.

My theory, supported primarily by my love for The Implications instead of actual evidence

Twenty years on, after all institutional memory of the fraud was long gone, trans icon Alice Dyer applies to work for the OIAR - an institution that (according to this theory) has an unofficial preference for hiring former Magnus Institute kids.

They are very confused when Alice proceeds to act nothing like a former Magnus Institute kid. It doesn't occur to anyone that her entry might have been falsified. What reason would anyone have to do that?

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* Of course people with a background in data analysis or statistics will see immediately that even above line 118 this is a wild-ass dataset that would raise red flags for falsification, but at least it's not "the alphabet over and over" levels of obvious.