#and honestly I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on them

[backslashdelta]

I like to think that if you're in a fandom space posting AI art, it's because you just aren't aware of why that might be a problem.

So in case you aren't aware: the generative AI you might be using to create "fanart" is trained on a countless number of artworks created by artists whose permission was not asked. Or maybe it was, technically, intentionally buried in a terms of service document somewhere, or in an update which they could either accept or else delete an entire social media account with years of history. This "art" is only possible because of stolen art. When you post images created by generative AI, you are supporting that.

Also, fandom is about creation and community. Individuals and groups creating art of all sorts, and sharing it with each other. When you post AI art... you haven't really created anything. To me at least, that's kind of detracting from what fandom is about. I want to share and raise up works of art that my community has worked hard to create, not something generative AI spit out from a couple key word inputs.

I can't tell anybody here what to do. If you are posting AI art, I'm sure there are some people who will like it, who will share it, who will be happy to do so. But there will also be people who aren't happy about it. There will be people – and especially artists – who will be frustrated to see other people in their community who support this technology that has stolen directly from them. There will be people who will block you, who will refuse to interact with your posts, and it will make your community smaller.

I understand it's tempting, especially if you aren't an artist yourself. But if you want art that fits a specific prompt, there are other ways to get it that actually support the fandom community: submit your prompt to a fanartist who accepts prompts, or commission someone for a piece of art, or even give it a try yourself and start learning to actually make art!

I don't hate AI as a whole. I think there are a lot of really amazing things we can do with AI, if it's used correctly. But posting AI fanart is not one of them.

[medicinemane]

So one day I'm searching how to do something redstone related in minecraft. I probably typed something like "1x2 redstone hipster door" or "wireless redstone" or something like that. I don't know

What I do know is part way down I got something with this as the thumbnail:

I save the thumbnail cause it was funny how much it had messed up to me, but I didn't click the video cause funny enough when I was trying to figure out how to make a project work I wanted that info, not softcore minecraft smut

Anyway, reblogged this twice, once without this story so people who just want the very good points here can have it without this, but... I don't know... I just had to share my experience with this

Pisses me off to no end though how useless youtube searches are

Amendment I thought of while writing the tags: I've noticed if you scroll down far enough it'll start showing you videos it's already shown you during that search... it just gives up and puts the same thing in front of your face again like you didn't skip it for a reason

Second piece of info I remembered while doing tags, I one time looked at the various categories at the top it thinks I'll like, and one of them was just "wood"... yep youtube, you caught me... show me "wood" videos, just a log and I'll be happy

it's crazy that you used to be able to look up specific clips from a tv show on youtube. now regardless of your search terms you get 6 unrelated promo reels from the show's official account, 6 unrelated clips of literally anything else youtube thinks you might click on, 6 unrelated promo reels from the network's official account, 6 more completely arbitrary recommendations, 6 show trailers and publicity videos of the actors by content mills called 'pop glutton' and 'comedy chunk' and finally raw gameplay footage of a mobile freemium slots game and a video essay called Liberals Can't Belive It: 10 Times Hitler Was Shockingly Woke

[allisluv]

JOHANNA GIVING READER SNACKS WHEN HER BLOOD SUGAR IS SLOW WLW

Ok thanks honey 🤭-

whipped.

pairing: johanna mason x fem!reader

content warnings: pre-established relationship, johanna is in fact whipped, alcohol, brief mention of the drinks used in the capitol to make you sick, low blood sugars and diabetes, my limited medical knowledge but i pinky promise i tried my best, teasing, use of pet-names.

authors note: i myself do not have diabetes so please correct me if anything i said is portrayed incorrectly! i did try my best to research and my intentions are never to cause any harm or offence <3 // reblogs and comments are appreciated!

word count: 0.9k

Johanna Mason has been described as many, many things in her very short lifetime; cold-hearted, blunt, manipulative, sneaky, rude--- now that she thinks of it, almost every negative adjective to ever exist has been attributed to her at least once.

And honestly? She wouldn't say they're wrong. It's not that she wants to be any of those things. She just kind of... is. And, well, she figures it is far too late in her life to change her tune now. Besides, there would be no point, not when this lifestyle works for her.

She doesn't mind them thinking badly of her, really. They're Capitol-- they drink alcohol specifically designed to make them sick with the sole purpose of eating more, meanwhile people in the districts have their ribs on display.

Their selfish opinions do not matter in the slightest to her, but at the same time, she doesn't mind playing into it, either. Half of them think she will jam a carving knife into their jugular if they approach her, so they steer clear, which works just fine for her.

Johanna hates these Capitol galas, anyway. She loathes the bright colours and the obnoxious outfits and the food that shouts greed! in everybody's faces.

If it weren't mandatory to attend the galas, she would avoid them. But unfortunately for her, it is mandatory, so she just has to suck it up for another five hours.

Great.

The one thing that makes this awful situation even remotely bearable is you.

When she grips a flask of champagne so tightly that it turns into a very real possibility that it might shatter in her hand, you redirect her attention and it's easier to breathe.

When a drunk Capitol citizen decides to be brave enough to strike up a conversation with the two of you, she's grateful when you swoop in and manage to come up with excuse after excuse on why you have to leave.

Everything is easier with you.

Johanna is in the middle of scowling at two women from the Capitol who keep going on and on about this years upcoming games when she catches sight of a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. She watches as you sway on your feet and grasp the corner of a nearby sofa to steady yourself.

She frowns, stepping closer to you and securing an arm around your waist to keep you from falling. "Are you okay?" You nod and give her a weak smile that she can see right through. "Bullshit."

One of the Capitol women smiles into her glass of wine. "Well, looks like someone can't handle their liquor, huh?" Her friend dissolves into a fit of giggles.

Johanna resists the urge to snap back at them, and instead, focuses in on you. "Babe. You done with the bullshitting?"

You try to brush her hand off and insist, "I'm fine, I'm fine. Just got a bit dizzy is all."

A crease forms between her sharp brows. She doesn't bother saying goodbye as she steers you away from the women and out of the gala, into a secluded hallway. "Have you checked your sugars lately?"

You shake your head and she heaves a sigh, helping you sit down in a leather armchair.

She kneels down by your feet and takes your unsteady hands in hers. "Give me your bag. C'mon."

You unloop your bag from around your body and hand her it. She digs through the contents until she finds your blood glucose meter.

She's done this many a time before. She inserts the test strip into the meter and uses the lancing device to prick your pointer finger. A quiet wince of pain hisses from your lips and she mutters a quiet, "I know, I know. I'm sorry." She squeezes the blood onto the test strip and holds your other hand as she waits for the reading. A number flashes on the screen, far too low for her liking, and she frowns. "You're a little low. We need to get those sugars up, alright?"

Johanna wastes no time in rooting through your bag for the juice box you keep stashed in there for emergencies like this one. She pops the straw through the hole at the top and raises it to your parted lips. Her free hand rests on your knee, and she smooths the pad of her thumb up and over your skin as you take slow sips.

Once she's satisfied, she sits back on her heels and sets the juice box down on the floor beside her. "We're gonna wait a while for that to get into your system, okay, sweetheart? Then we can check again, and if they aren't up, we can try the skittles."

There's a moment of quiet, where the only sounds come from inside the ballroom down the hall.

You lean back in the leather armchair as Johanna continues to hold your hand. "You don't have to do this, you know." You say eventually.

"Do what?" Johanna frowns.

"Take care of me. You don't have to."

"I know that," She nods, and as if she can read your mind, she says, "I am not doing this out of obligation, you know that, right? I'm simply doing this because I love you."

A small, tired smile tugs at the corner of your lips. "Finnick was right."

She cocks her head to one side. "How do you mean?"

"He told me you were whipped. I just didn't believe him."

Rolling her eyes, she scoffs. "I am the furthest thing from whipped, all have you know."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"So, if I asked you to go get me a bottle of water, you would?"

"Why? Do you want water? I can go get some--"

You grin victoriously. "See? Whipped!"

[specialagentartemis]

from a discussion in the comments of this post:

Learning about things is always valuable; learning how to assess what things are reliable is always valuable; not everything needs academic rigor to be valuable! That's part of what's getting lost here.

It's always good to read critically and ask questions, to think about the logical arguments being made and assess whether they are actually answering the question they set out to answer, or if they provide strong enough evidence for their claim. You certainly don't have to be an expert to do that. And it's a great way to learn.

The idea of academic rigor primarily comes into play if you want to 1) do original research, 2) challenge a scientist or expert and say they're wrong, or 3) give advice in a formal capacity or practice the topic in a formal capacity.

Learning a lot of facts about, say, Ancient Rome, is great for writing a fictional story set in Ancient Rome; academic rigor is necessary if you want to write a nonfiction history of Ancient Rome. Collecting lots of information about local ecosystems is awesome for starting your own native pollinator garden or giving plant cuttings to your neighbors; academic rigor is necessary if you want to start a consulting business giving recommendations to local institutions about rewilding their properties.

I, personally, really love learning about dinosaurs and I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about them, but I'm nowhere near an expert, and that's fine: it mostly means I won't be writing any science books or leading any paleontology research projects or being a Jurassic World science consultant. I can still enjoy it, and get a lot of value in learning about it and understanding it, and know enough to go "hmmm there's probably more to the story" when news articles report that some biotech firm has de-enxtinct-ified some prehistoric animal. Those are all valuable things, even if they don't make me an expert!

And then there are topics like woodworking or sewing or rock climbing where "academic rigor" is not a useful framework for expertise at all, because it operates in a completely different space in which expertise comes in a very different way.

Anti-vaxxers are very enthusiastic about "doing their own research" and still very wrong. This is a huge problem because they are also saying the medical experts are liars and making decisions about other people's health because of it. Graham Hancock is very enthusiastic about archaeology, and very wrong. This leads to him getting a Netflix deal to make a popular tv show where he tells you that the academic archaeologists are lying to you to cover up the fact that Atlantis is real.

Conversely, here's a story about an amateur archaeologist who spent a lot of time studying Ice Age cave paintings... and then brought his observations and theories to academic archaeologists, who worked together with him to test those theories!

Getting an academic degree is not the only path to truth and knowledge. But one of the big values of academia is that it teaches you how to research, how to design experiments, how to read critically and assess information, and how to robustly test your ideas. It also has peer review by other experts who are there to assess your work from an outside perspective and give critiques of it, and it teaches you how to accept critique with an open mind. Those are absolutely skills you CAN learn outside academia! For sure! But you have to honestly assess: are you? before you can make a claim to the same standards of original research, challenging other experts, or giving advice from a place of expertise.

If that's not what you're interested in doing with your knowledge, then learning facts is awesome. Learning about the world to broaden your worldview and understand more about the world around you is always good. And I don't know an academic who will ever claim otherwise.

[n0rmal-cat]

Normal, normal, it's me, ✨

I'm here to submit a request bc it's been eating at me, and I know you'll do it justice.

You know VNs (visual novels), right? The basis being, multiple people get their own little versions to play with the same character(s), choosing different choices that line up with them irl, an immersive experience for different people, stay with me, ik I sound crazy,

Okay so imagine this, a VN MC keeps going through the story and understands his life is looping, he also understands that, like, the player character keeps picking different options every so often and he'll make comments on that. Like if the player picks different sweets as like their favorite treat, he'll make little comments on that like "oh this time it strawberry" or "you know last time it was..." "will it be something else time" stuff like that. So he basically sees the player as either someone with amnesia or like a system/DID

Anyways, the true idea is, a player starting up the game for like a 3rd time and getting all confused about how the MC is reacting to them, maybe he goes off course,

Yandere visual novel protagonist x reader

[WHY WOULD YOU INTRUST ME WITH THIS GOOD IDEA IDK WHAT IM DOING HALF THE TIME, SO SORRY ✨ I DONT KNOW IF THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED, BECAUSE I GOT A LITTLE CONFUSED, IF NOT ILL WRITE ANOTHER ONE😭💀]

[also yes his name is #### because most protagonists don’t get names]

It wasn’t like everyday was the same, no god had given him the luxury of letting him live a full life only to restart them over…and over…and over.

“So #### what will it be, you can either study with me or sneak out so you can go to the party or it’s the drop out”

He didn’t know how many times he had been asked that stupid question. If he study with his ‘best friend’ he gains enough knowledge to pass the next test with flying colours and impress them.

But if he went to the party they would gain a reputation with the ‘bad boy’ and impress them instead.

He didn’t want to do either, they honestly just wanted to stay in his dorm and sleep for the night.

“I don’t think-I’m sorry I think I’m going to go out tonight” what was that, that was his voice wasn’t it but he didn’t say that.

“Alright I see how it is, you go have fun”

“Wait hold on i didn’t say that!-“ before he could finish his sentence he were already in a different scene.

“No I didn’t want this!”

“#### I’m so glad you came. I promise this won’t be a waste of time” they swooped their hair.

“God you again?” For the past three times he had been hanging out and living their life with this guy.

“Sorry man I think I’m just going to go home” he didn’t like this guy and never had, but the universe just loved to put them together he guessed.

“Did I choose the wrong option? I don’t remember this dialogue?” They snapped their head to the sky. What was that, ‘who’ was that.

You, they saw you. His chest twisted, his stomach felt like it was clasping on itself. Who were you? And what were you?

God? Was that what you were, were you the one setting him on loop over and over again, but why?

“Maybe I should look up the guide again?…did the game freeze? No no no! My progress!”

Game? That’s what this was wasn’t it you weren’t god and they weren’t a person were they. They felt their world go dark, literally in fact as they stared into the empty void.

They clenched and unclenched their hand a couple of times “haha….hahahAHAHAHA” how could they have been so stupid. Of course it was a game but then if they weren’t alive what were they? And if they felt alive could they die?

The world booted itself up again to the ‘first day’. “Damn we’re gonna have to start over again I guess, fifteen endings to go”

Only fifteen? And then what you’ll just leave them, their world never to be opened again left and forgotten. They couldn’t have that not when your were the only real person they had ever met, they didn’t want to constantly fall in love with the same cardboard cutout anymore.

A prompt pop up, “oh no I wake up late, and for my first day at college to, should I have breakfast and risk being late to class or skip breakfast and risk being hungry the rest of the day”

“I guess we’ll skip breakfast, I want to get Raphael out of the anyway”

Is this what it felt like to be controlled by you, was everything he did up to you? Oh god they were having a crisis.

“I actually would like breakfast, kinda want to think about my life right now I also wouldn’t like to start collage for the third time today”

There was an unsettling silence “huh..”

“Can we talk about my life over breakfast actually” they poured themselves a bowl of cereal.

Their world turned black again but when it came back on they were in the same spot. “Stop I literally just want to talk”

“Oh my god this is not happening to me, I’m in a creepypasta aren’t I?”

“What’s a creepypasta?

They got no response back, “so why do you want to get endings of my life, and also why are all the endings to my life me getting with different people, is there a bad ending can I die, have I died and I just don’t remember?” They ate their cereal.

“I’m just gonna” they shut the game off it seemed, #### turned it back on themselves.

“That’s very rude you know”

“How did you do that?!”

“Don’t really know, I’d like to know a lot of things actually, and it would be a help if you answered them”

“Are you gonna haunt me?”

They look up at the sky looking at the face looking back at them in fear.

“Yea…if you don’t play my game every day and talk to me I will haunt you” that will definitely work.

“You sound unsure?”

“And…?”

Reader eventually caves in continues to play, it’s actually pretty fun he gives them tips on how to answer certain questions so they don’t even have to look up a guide anymore.

He also stopped complaining when they turn off his game console now, oh but don’t worry that’s just because he’s infected your phone with his code your stuck with him forever <3

He just wants to talk please, please talk to him.

[pixel art because he’s a game…it just fits]

[10yrratiolover]

giving my thoughts and ideas on Ratio's character stories

I wouldn't call this much of an analysis but we'll see how it goes

Starting out with his first character story, most of it is Professor Rond's recommendation letter.

I'd like to start by sharing my thoughts about Ratio and Rond first before actually getting into dissecting the letter itself.

So, firstly, I'd like to mention that (to my knowledge) we have never heard of or from Ratio's parents. I find that ironic considering what a big shot he is, I doubt that his parents would ever willingly shut up about their son.

Reading that Rond had a 'significant influence on Ratio's upbringing' particularly stands out to me because, at least at the time of the original letter being written, Ratio was in secondary school (Grade 9-12, though some of the wording in the letter lead me to believe he was likely on the lower end of that range).

Now, a high school teacher having a 'significant influence' on someone's upbringing isn't necessarily uncommon, nor are old teachers proud of their past students becoming extremely successful. However these points, alongside the fact that Ratio's parents are nowhere to be seen in canon, lead me to believe that there was some sort of familial relationship between them, especially seeing Rond's reaction to being asked about Ratio as well as how he had kept the original letter.

Moving on to the actual letter.

Grade skipping is a pretty common practice where I'm from, as it allows learning at the appropriate/needed level (ignoring the fact that the school system is in shambles).

However, the way this is phrased is as if Rond were trying to convince him to be able to skip grades. If he were in grade 11 or 12 I feel like it would not have been phrased this way, which is what leads me to believe he was likely younger, possibly fresh out of middle school.

The highlight on creativity is just because it makes me smile honestly, also it ties into one of my earlier posts about how I think Ratio would adore the subject of art.

I would like to return to my point of Rond being a potential parental figure to Ratio, seeing as he seems to know his daily routine well enough to confidently write about it in his letter of recommendation.

On to his second character story, which is mostly online posts in a thread-like format.

It wasn't until his eighth doctoral degree that he was awarded with First Class Honors, also since he is the first person to receive such in two amber eras it means he was likely the only one on stage at that time.

It also states that at the time he was already a prominent figure in society, which doesn't surprise me given the accomplishments listed by Rond in the letter despite him being in high school at the time it was written. However, he would most likely be an adult by the time he finished his eighth doctorate.

No real comment on this I found it funny that they put etc instead of continuing to list fields.

I also just find these funny and wanted to share them, but the disagreement on the last comment shows how much people admire him. I feel like that's a topic that's rather watered down in the fandom, but people genuinely admire Ratio a lot and there's plenty of reason for them to.

full-time university teachers tend to teach about 5 courses per academic year, meaning Ratio has been teaching for about 10 years.

Moving onto the third story, which is a statement from a former assistant of his about his desire to join the genius society.

I find this to be an interesting point, it seems like joining the Genius Society would be an obvious next step for a man with so many accomplishments but it's stated not once, but twice that he has never spoken about the subject (to the public at least).

I am a believer in the theory that Ratio hasn't been allowed into the Genius Society due to his humanity/compassion and his desire to spread knowledge to everyone, and I feel like this specification that he's never spoken about the topic could add to this theory.

This paragraph never fails to break my heart, but I do want to talk about the mention of an anti-planetary weapon. I feel like this Anti-planetary weapon that he spent years perfecting was a final attempt at proving to Nous that he wasn't too compassionate or too humane to receive their gaze. I remember reading about this idea more in detail elsewhere and if I can find the analyzation then I'll link it here.

Also, I feel like deep down he always knew that he wouldn't be accepted into the Genius Society, but this day, as Margaret states, was the day he finally realized it, or, fully swallowed that pill.

I find these comments to be interesting as well since they specify the narrow-mindedness of the society however, there is this comment from the Data Bank;

This comment I admittedly stumbled across when looking for something else, but I feel like it perfectly encapsulates Ratio's entire dilemma with the Genius Society, maybe not to Ratio himself but it certainly applies to everyone who comments on his achievements being worthy of Nous' approval.

I am also quite curious about who exactly wrote the 'Decoding Dr. Ratio' that we have read from in all of his character stories. They seem to have a lot of connections for someone who would typically be seen as just another paparazzi or media interviewer, I'm surprised the people listed in his stories would agree to an interview.

Onto his final story, which is about his personality and methods of sharing knowledge.

I mentioned this comment in my character notes post but I find it extremely charming that Ratio remains the same and refuses to change himself or his personality to satisfy those around him.

It is also commented in his second character story by a previous professor of his that his honesty and straightforwardness were a 'Breath of fresh air' at the University.

I love the implication that either; nobody in the entire room had any questions (unlikely), or that they were simply too scared to ask them.

I also find the comment that 'Whenever someone agrees with me, I feel like I must be wrong.' Perhaps he's gotten used to being the only one thinking the way he is or the possibility that people only agree with him so they sound intelligent themselves and weren't truly listening or understanding.

I find these comments interesting as well, a majority of the fandom mischaracterizes Ratio as mean or rude although he literally explains his viewpoints where anyone can access it (which does honestly prove his point about how knowledge is not for everyone.)

[musedeluce]

Moths to Flame (Rafayel x Artist!Reader Headcanons)

I am an artist (drawing), so I wanted to explore this scenario! Personally, as an artist I’d be a bit nervous for Rafayel to know about my art, but I believe he’d support our creative endeavors wholeheartedly. In this scenario, MC is someone who does traditional illustrations and paintings, and is an extremely good artist but is somewhat insecure when it comes to Rafayel knowing about their art. [Alt title: Mothlight] XD Basically art is the light and Rafayel and MC are the moths. Artists will always create! Fun fact, the art I mention is something I'm planning to draw!

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

You take great care to keep your skill and art private. You only post your art on SNS, never your face or voice. You don’t even post process videos showing your hands.

You have quite the following, and the mystery surrounding you contributes to that growth. People find your art fascinating and dynamic. It’s so varied. Some pieces are deep, layered and complex, and others are silly. They can be fun or serious. Frankly, as an artist you have the range!

Because of your job as a hunter, you don’t need to take commissions, so you don’t. It also gives you the knowledge to depict wanderers with uncanny accuracy, and you’d best believe some people have noticed, leading to rampant speculation.

Of course you knew Rafayel’s work. He’s one of your biggest inspirations, someone who’s work you admired and loved. Rafayel’s work encouraged your own creativity.

Rafayel loves seeing all different art from everywhere by anyone. Creativity is inspirational and anyone can create!.

Anyone includes you. Little did you know, Rafayel loved your work too. He found it unique and interesting. Your use of motion, and color, the line weight, the composition, all the elements in your art mesmerized him because it was so different from his art. But he didn’t know it was your art, you just happened to be an unknown artist he came across and really admired.

The piece that caught his attention was a charcoal illustration of an artist drawing a statue in a studio with a sea view. Her body was angled away from the camera, her face in profile, the piece on her canvas half finished as she caressed the pristine face of the white marble statue, her hand covered in charcoal smudges. The sea outside was choppy, but the weather wasn’t stormy just windy.

Rafayel followed you immediately from his private, anonymous account.

When you met him, you were chill and calm, admiring his work but keeping it to yourself as you were on the job. Besides, he didn’t seem like the type to want to listen to what others said about his work, unless he cared about their opinion or found what they were saying to be with merit. But you just met him, so your opinion wouldn't be important to him, and you honestly didn’t feel qualified enough to comment, so you said nothing, even as you stated working as his bodyguard. It wasn’t a secret, per se as you never resolved to keep it from him but you also just never actually told him.

Artists ask those close to them about their work, and want their input. It’s one fun and good way for them to include those they care about in their work. Rafayel is no different. It is through those questions that Rafayel discovers your artist’s eye. Everyone has one, but it needs to be used and honed, and Rafayel could tell yours had been honed.

“Which color should I use?” He eagerly awaits your answer. “Hmm, I would choose that one. It’ll add some interesting contrast to the piece and I love how vibrant it is. But, if you think the other one is better, use that one. You’re the professional after all.” Rafayel smiles, and dips his paintbrush into the color you chose. “As a professional, I agree with your assessment, cutie. Perhaps you should paint these pieces instead~” You giggle at this, jokingly protesting. “No Way! One, I love your art and I know you love your art too. Two, Thomas would have a cow.”

“What do you think?” Rafayel presents a page of his sketchbook, the art messy and unpolished, but exquisite nonetheless. “It’s interesting! The composition is very dynamic and clever. Using it to direct the eye and misdirect the viewer from the depths you’ve painted to the surface adds a lot to the piece.” He asks you questions like this frequently.

In those times you draw together, he can tell you have skill. He can also tell you’re a little insecure from your reluctance to draw with him. It makes sense, he supposes, for someone who’s not necessarily an artist, or even someone who was an artist, to be intimidated to draw with him, but he doesn’t care about your skill level. He wants to do something he loves, art, with someone he loves – you. He’s reassuring and playful, and doesn’t pressure you.

During all of this, you keep posting your art online, and he keeps seeking it out. Things start to pile up. Every artist has their own style, and he’s noticing that elements of yours...and elements of one of his favorite artists were matching up.

Line weight, color, motion, technique, all were similar. But in order to know for sure, he’d have to see more art he knew was yours. So far, he just had small sketches and art from when you did art together. Or, of course, if his favorite online artist posted art he knew was yours for sure.

He wants you to feel secure and safe enough with him to share your art or other things with him, so he doesn’t voice his suspicions, especially since they aren’t confirmed. But he’s curious, and does want to confirm. Who wouldn't, in this situation?

Rafayel is devious, crafty. Most of all, he��s patient. If it turns out he’s wrong, no issue. It just means he’ll be able to introduce you to this hobby he loves, sharing it with you at the start, an ideal situation. If he’s right, he’s thrilled. His favorite person is one of his favorite artists? He’ll be one of the only ones to know who they are? Another ideal situation honestly. Your creative process, the thought behind your work, he’s so fascinated.

He gifts you a sketchbook - high quality paper, a design tailored to you, hand-bound and the perfect size to fit in your bag of choice. Then, he waits. He knows that often you post your new sketchbooks when you get them, along with the first page. It’s a little tradition! Though you might not post some of them, if you posted this one, he’d know. It’s the only one of it’s kind in the world, after all.

Coincidentally, you were finishing your previous sketchbook, so his timing was impeccable, giving a new sketchbook to you right as you needed one.

Rafayel is in for a lovely shock, because not only do you post the sketchbook, the first few pieces in it are sketches of him. They’re referenced from photos, because you’ve never sketched him (or anything for that matter), around him unless you were working together.

This man is Elated. He loves your art. He loves you.

But of course, he never pressures you and waits until you share on your own.

“Cutie, should I buy up all your work so only I have it?” He laughs. “No, I know you want to share your work with the world, so I won’t do that. But I demand that you let me see everything you want to share first!”

Before, he was watching your art from afar. He might have asked to collaborate/mentioned/featured your art but you seemed like you wanted to be left alone to do your own thing, and he respected that. Him mentioning you would have put you under increased scrutiny, and, if he was being quite honest he wanted to keep his inspirations secret, of which you were/are one.

Now, though, he wants to collaborate, officially. If you think that you’re not at his level, that you’re work isn’t good enough to be intertwined with his, he disavows you of that notion, thoroughly but gently.

‘Oh please. I’ve wanted to collaborate with you since before I knew it was you. Besides, you know me. Do you really think I’d work with someone who’s art I didn’t love?” So, you start doing collaborations and the art world flips out.

Eventually, you entrust Thomas with the secret, and he proposes your own exhibit. Thomas firmly believes your art is worthy of it, irregardless of your connection to Rafayel. He’s a professional, and, like Rafayel, he only works with artists who’s work he loves.

To be fully transparent, he’d been considering trying to reach out to you before he found out and propose an exhibit anyway, so this is great! Especially since your work is so unique.

Rafayel guards the secret of your identity jealously. If you don’t want anyone to know, no one will.

Any art you give him gets a place of honor somewhere in his house.

The two of you often “talk shop” and go over aspects of your works in progress, giving feedback, critique, and love/appreciation and encouragement.

You’ll go on outings to sketch together. It’s so interesting to see the different things each of you has noticed and focused on about whatever place or things you were sketching!

Whenever either of you gets too absorbed in your work, the other will make sure you eat, drink and rest.

Once/if you gave him permission, one of his favorite things to do would be to flip through your sketchbooks, just looking at your art, committing it to memory.

Art, for you is a shared expression of your creativity, love, and passions, no matter the subject or feeling. He values your input and contributions, recognizes your skill and most of all, loves you as a person and your art, and you do the same for him. Both you and Rafayel inspire and learn from each other.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

P.S: I do plan to do the rest of the money concept, I just had to take a detour lol. I'll also maybe do a part 2 of this? But also will do the other LIs eventually with this as well. ^J^

[strwberri-milk]

Hello! I hope you’re having a great day!

Could I request LADS men with a reader who isn’t exactly ‘accepting’ of their line of work? I mean, I guess besides Sylus and Caleb, all of them have decent jobs that don’t require doing something ‘unethical’, so writing only those two will do. Maybe because of ideals, morale, and worry, they happen to harbor a hidden dislike towards their work. They don’t express this outright— only small hints, such as a frown when the men tell them they’re off on duty or something, which leads them to piece it together themselves. Of course, they still love them despite their jobs, but are still not so accepting of it.

hmm see i was thinking about this as a request but id like it to be more of a discussion!! so this is. more informal but definitely is discussing this request lolol

i totally get where youre coming from - if you were realistically going to date Sylus and Caleb you'd have to be fully aware of the factt hat what he does isn't really ethical and at times, asks him to make the decision of whether or not someone lives

an idealistic part of me wants to say that they'd quite their jobs for you and move to the country side and streoeptypical otome tropes would probably have them do that - true love prevails after all the these games are usually wish fulfillment so you can do literally anything and everything you want to them.

i feel like sylus would be more likely to either quite or somehow make his job more remote? he'd be okay with not killing people and just teaching them a lesson through other means - whether that be through just roughing them up (which you still probably wouldn't like if this is a problem) or through sabotage and blackmail (because i see both sylus and rafayel being intel KINGS they know anything and everything they want to know!)

if youre considering yourself as MC, then caleb would never leave his job. he doesnt care what you think of him - just that you are safe. its heavily implied/outright said that caleb is the only thing thats keeping you safe from the people who want to hurt you. he'll brush off any comments you make but if it gets to a point where he feels annoyed he might be prone to making a passive aggressive comment but he'll apologise wordlessly by buying you something or by saying things like "you know i'm doing this for you right"

(rafayel would honestly do the same since he does a bunch of underhanded work in private. the difference between him and caleb is he keeps that part of his life VERY far removed from you because i think he looks at you as this pure, perfect being and has a habit of idealising you thanks to both the bond + the way the lemurians love. not to say that he has you on like, some madonna whore complex but more so he worries that he could dirty you and he would hate himself if he ever did)

if you dont think of yourself as MC i feel like calebs whole story kinda falls apart/would requiure me to have knowledge of your own personal mc and how the interaction with caleb works. if youre just like, an average joe living your life he wouldn't be anything more than a pilot perhaps? no need to be involved in experiments but he might not even be alive because perhaps he's only here bc of those experiements maybe its a paradox maybe im just making things up BUT if he doesnt need to protect you from EVER (which i think is what hes protecting you on pleaes give me grace i play enough to get a grasp of his characrter/backstory but its been a hot minute since ive looked at it)

[stu-dyingstudent]

Sakura Haruno fanfiction recs: ANBU ROOT

It only feels right to make my ROOT list now since I posted my ANBU fic list! Similarly to the shadow corps, ROOT had so much wasted potential it actually saddens me. Kishimoto had so many great ideas in Naruto that he just never fully fleshed out and it's a shame. One thing in specific is the whole Torune and Shino situation. Two words: wasted potential!!! It could've been so good and really developed on Shino (and the Aburame clan).

Anyway, once again since our knowledge on the stories and workings of ROOT are limited, this allows for some pretty interesting interpretations. Also, I actually saw an interesting comment the other day about how Sakura would've been a good candidate for the program because of her chakra control and lack of family influence in Konoha and I honestly have to agree. I might be a bit biased, but whatever. Enjoy some root!Sakura recs!

Also, try out my ANBU list (some overlap).

Started: 2024.08.13

Last Updated: 2024.12.19

note: feel free to check out my master list which has a bunch of Sakura Haruno fic recs (all organized)!

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The Small Postures - Celenier || ao3 || T || kakasaku || canon divergence || incomplete

Sakura acts as a spy for Tsunade when Danzo takes an interest in her. While earning her place in ANBU Root, she discovers her own path to greatness. She learns grim secrets about how her village operates, makes terrible enemies, and begins to appreciate the extent of her fractured personality.

The Small Postures was oddly disturbing to me... After Shikamaru is approached for ROOT, it's decided by the higher ups that someone more expendable should infiltrate to take the division down. Sakura is the chosen one, but at what cost? With Kakashi acting as her contact and her only confidant on the matter, how will this affect their relationship? Truth be told, I haven't gotten far enough for any sort of romance, so I have no comments there, but this fic is very well written and quite ominous at times.

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Black Bough - Re_Adrienne || ao3 || unrated || kakasakusai || root AU || ongoing

Sakura's parents are civilians.

It does not spare them.

In which Sakura forgets, Sai pretends, and Kakashi can't tell if he's failing the mission.

I really love this fic! Sakura joins ROOT just before her graduation after her parent's death and it's there she meets Sai. Years later the two of them are extracted by Kakashi and she is put under his watch as she readjusts. Part of the struggle is the known fact that she was supposed to be a member of Team 7, which causes some drama (?). There's some super interesting ROOT lore going on and I always have a soft spot for Sai and Sakura friendships!!

Edit: The author has changed the tags and this now seems like it will be a kakasakusai fic.

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Five Kingdoms for the Dead - Evil Is A Relative Term || ffn || M || canon divergence || complete

After the Forest of Death, Sakura comes to realize that being weak is no longer an option. However, she finds that change is sometimes painful and that truth doesn't always come easy. Luckily, she'll have some help along the way.

It's been a hot minute since I've read Five Kingdoms for the Dead, but I'm fairly certain there is some ROOT stuff going on in here! Nonetheless, this is a great fic with some really interesting worldbuilding.

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Trials of Change - Espoiretreves || ao3 || gen || time travel AU || complete

Haruno Sakura made a promise. Looking in the eyes of her Shisou and the reanimated Hokage, she took on the most important mission of her life. Go back in time and try to prevent the 4th Shinobi War. Now, Sakura is back to her 5-year-old body, with all the knowledge and haunting memories of the future. She vows to keep her precious people safe and stop certain events from happening, without altering the timeline too much. The trials her emotions and logic put her through have her questioning her very existence, but for the sake of peace, she has to push forward. No matter what.

Trials of Change is actually apart of a time travel series and I have to say that it is probably one of the best of the genre! This fic is the first of a series and the main focus is ROOT and taking down Danzo. I really adore all of the worldbuilding and backstories going on here in addition to the fact that there are breaks. Yes, the story keeps moving, but there are other things going on, like playdates, and not just Sakura trying to save the world. Also, if you love Shisui then definitely check this out since he has a huge role and his and Sakura's friendship is just so precious.

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cut the head off the snake - itsthechocopuff || ao3 || T || time travel AU || incomplete

when eighteen-year-old, post-war Sakura is thrown back into her tiny, pre-Academy body, she makes a decision. she'd had a childhood once already, and this time, she's more interested in Not Dying when the inevitable shit hits the proverbial fan. so she will work harder, care less, kill more, and smile when she's done.and hey, if she ends up reviving an extinct nature transformation to attract the most corrupt, power-hungry man from her timeline, all the better for her, right?

Such a unique take on a time travel AU and Cut the Head Off the Snake executes it perfectly. Sakura decides that her first order of business is to infiltrate ROOT and that's exactly what she does. Sai, Shin, and Shisui are all great characters and team Ro is present as well. Very good!

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In Another World - eleventheeggo || ao3 || gen || T || orphan Sakura AU || ongoing

What if Sakura was an orphan instead of Naruto and Sasuke?A story about a socially stunted girl who has a thirst for knowledge and is surrounded by softies who love her all the same.

Orphan!Sakura is not something I knew I needed in my life! She is so precious and it's great to watch all of these characters come together for her sake. In Another World also discusses ROOT a bit, which you know I love, so I can't wait for the story to get there.

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Rooted - theRazorofOccam || ffn || T || gen || canon divergence || incomplete

In a universe where Sakura takes a wrong turn, she misses out on the apprenticeship with Tsunade, instead getting recruited by a very different mentor. Life turns out very differently from there on, as she takes the path of a very different kind of ninja. Updates on weekends, unless otherwise stated.

I can't remember too much, but it occurs during the time skip between og and shippuden. At a loss of what to do after her rejection from Tsunade, Sakura decides to join Danzo's program with hopes of becoming a better shinobi.

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parsley seed goes nine times to the devil - Mook_aron || ao3 || M || gen || root AU || one-shot complete

Slow to grow, quick to sprout, parsley seed goes nine times to the devil When she’s six, a man murders her family. The man is tall, and his features are burned into her mind. She won’t forget him- she won’t let herself forget him. Root Sakura au

Sakura is taken into ROOT at a young age and is assigned a mission to infiltrate team 7. Spoilers ig, but Sakura ends up telling Kakashi and what happens from there is sorta open ended. Great story

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I Watched a Change in You - YuffiesNinjaInsanity || ao3 || unrated || narusaku || time travel AU || ongoing

Naruto’s lying across from her, still bleeding out and with his lifeless blue eyes staring at her.

“It’s’kay, Naru.. be joining… you both soon.” She croaks.

Sakura gets sent back in time to a universe where everything is peaceful? She comes from a place where after Danzo's succession to the Hokage title, everyone is ordered to take up ROOT training and so adjusting back to a normal team proves difficult. Pretty good.

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Hang Them Up (To Make Them Bleed) - classical_mess || ao3 || T || gen || root AU || one-shot complete

Sakura always used to think a lot of her career as a ninja, but she never thought she'd up here.

Fairly interesting one-shot where Sakura is recruited by Danzo after getting rejected as Tsunade's student. She spends some time in ROOT and Kiba helps her get out. This is on the moments leading up to Danzo's trial. I also quite liked how Tenten was helping out with the seal.

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Sakura - lilac haze || ffn/ao3 || M || minasaku || time travel AU || complete

AU. Non-Canon. Time Travel. Please see inside for full warnings. Cross posted on Ao3. On his deathbed he was granted eternal peace and place to rest for all of time. Of course that was not appealing to him. Ever unpredictable to the end he had a counter offer. One that the Sage had to consider. In which Sakura's going to have a rough time. A really rough time.

I cannot believe that I forgot to add this fic when I initially published my ROOT list!!! Anyway, really good time travel fic with a doomed romance between Minato and Sakura. You watch them, well, Sakura, grow from a young child to an adult and all of the trouble and tragedy that comes her way. Pretty interesting and dark ROOT stuff going on in here.

Check TWs before hand!!

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Anyway, that's all for now!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the books I reviewed in 2024

I reviewed 26 books this year: 15 novels, 5 nonfiction books, and 6 graphic novels. Even though I feel perennially behind on my reading (and objectively, I do have 10 linear feet of "to be read" books on the shelf), I think this is a pretty good haul.

Books are pretty much the ideal gift, if you ask me. Of course, I'm biased as a former bookseller and library worker, and as an author (of course) – I had three more books come out in 2024 (see the end of this post for details).

I started a lot more than 26 books this year. Long ago, I figured life was too short for books I wasn't enjoying, and I'm pretty ruthless about putting books down partway through if I think they're not going to reward finishing them. I probably start 10 books for every one I finish. However, I do review more than 90% of the books I get through. It's rare for me to keep reading a book all the way to the end if I'm not enjoying it enough to unconditionally recommend it. I rarely review books I don't like – there's not really any point in cataloging the list of books I think you won't enjoy reading, and most books I don't like very much are broken in ways that are too banal to comment upon.

The list below is pretty great, but if you're looking for more, here's the haul from 2023:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/01/bookmaker/#2023-in-review

NOVELS

I. Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

A fucking banger: it's a taut, unguessable whuddunit, painted in ultrablack noir, set in an alternate Jazz Age in a world where indigenous people never ceded most the west to the USA. It's got gorgeously described jazz music, a richly realized modern indigenous society, and a spectacular romance. It's amazing.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/04/cahokia/#the-sun-and-the-moon

II. After World by Debbie Urbanski

An unflinching and relentlessly bleak tale of humanity's mass extinction, shot through with pathos and veined with seams of tragic tenderness and care. Sen Anon – the story's semi-protagonist – is 18 years old when the world learns that every person alive has been sterilized and so the human race is living out its last years.

The news triggers a manic insistence that this is a good thing – long overdue, in fact – and the perfect opportunity to scan every person alive for eventual reincarnation as virtual humans in an Edenic cloud metaverse called Gaia. That way, people can continue to live their lives without the haunting knowledge that everything they do makes the planet worse for every other living thing, and each other. Here, finally, is the resolution to the paradox of humanity: our desire to do good, and our inevitable failure on that score.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/18/storyworker-ad39-393a-7fbc/#digital-human-archive-project

III. Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee

A dreamlike tale of a public-private partnership that hires the terminally endebted to invade the dreams of white-collar professionals and harvest the anxieties that prevent them from being fully productive members of the American corporate workforce.

We meet Jonathan as he is applying for a job that he was recruited for in a dream. As instructed in his dream, he presents himself at a shabby strip-mall office where an acerbic functionary behind scratched plexiglass takes his application and informs him that he is up for a gig run jointly by the US State Department and a consortium of large corporate employers. If he is accepted, all of his student debt repayments will be paused and he will no longer face wage garnishment. What's more, he'll be doing the job in his sleep, which means he'll be able to get a day job and pull a double income – what's not to like?

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/08/capitalist-surrealism/#productivity-hacks

IV. The Book of Love by Kelly Link

If you've read Link's short stories (which honestly, you must read), you know her signature move: a bone-dry witty delivery, used to spin tales of deceptive whimsy and quirkiness, disarming you with daffiness while she sets the hook and yanks. That's the unmistakeable, inimitable texture of a Kelly Link story: deft literary brushstrokes, painting a picture so charming and silly that you don't even notice when she cuts you without mercy.

Turns out that she can quite handily do this for hundreds of pages, and the effect only gets better when it's given space to unfold.

It's a long and twisting mystery about friendship, love, queerness, rock-and-roll, stardom, parenthood, loyalty, lust and duty.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/13/the-kissing-song/#wrack-and-roll

V. Lyorn by Steven Brust

The seventeenth book in Steven Brust's long-running Vlad Taltos series. For complicated reasons, Vlad has to hide out in a theater. Why a theater? They are shielded from sorcery, as proof against magical spying by rival theater companies, and Vlad is on the run from the Left Hand of the Jhereg – the crime syndicate's all-woman sorceress squad – and so he has to hide in the theater.

The theater is mounting a production of a famous play that's about another famous play. The first famous play (the one the play is about – try and follow along, would you?) is about a famous massacre that took place thousands of years before. The play was mounted as a means of drumming up support for the whistleblower who reported on the massacre and was invited to a short-term berth in the Emperor's death row as a consequence.

The plot is a fantastic, fast-handed caper story that has a million moving parts, a beautiful prestige, and a coup de grace that'll have you cheering and punching the air.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/09/so-meta/#delightful-doggerel

VI. Till Human Voices Wake Us by Rebecca Roque

A teen murder mystery told in the most technorealist way. Cia's best friend Alice has been trying to find her missing boyfriend for months, and in her investigation, she's discovered their small town's dark secret – a string of disappearances, deaths and fires that are the hidden backdrop to the town's out-of-control addiction problem.

Alice has something to tell Cia, something about the fire that orphaned her and cost her one leg when she was only five years old, but Cia refuses to hear it. Instead, they have a blazing fight, and part ways. It's the last time Cia and Alice ever see each other: that night, Alice kills herself.

Or does she? Cia is convinced that Alice has been murdered, and that her murder is connected to the drug- and death-epidemic that's ravaging their town. As Cia and her friends seek to discover the town's secret – and the identity of Alice's killer – we're dragged into an intense, gripping murder mystery/conspiracy story that is full of surprises and reversals, each more fiendishly clever than the last.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/16/dead-air/#technorealism

VII. The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein

Randall "XKCD" Munroe pitched me on this over dinner: "All these different people kept recommending them to me, and they kept telling me that I would love them, but they wouldn't tell me what they were about because there's this huge riddle in them that's super fun to figure out for yourself. "The books were published in the eighties by Del Rey, and the cover of the first one had a huge spoiler on it. But the author got the rights back and she's self-published it."

How could I resist a pitch like that? So I ordered a copy. Holy moly is this a good novel! And yeah, there's a super interesting puzzle in it that I won't even hint at, except to say that even the book's genre is a riddle that you'll have enormous great fun solving.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/04/the-wulf/#underground-fave

VIII. Moonbound by Robin Sloan

Moonbound's protagonist is a "chronicler," a symbiotic fungus engineered to nestle in a human's nervous system, where it serves as a kind of recording angel, storing up the memories, experiences and personalities of its host. When we meet the chronicler, it has just made a successful leap from its old host – a 10,000-years-dead warrior who had been preserved in an anaerobic crashpod ever since her ship was shot out of the sky – into the body of Ariel, a 12-year-old boy who had just invaded the long-lost tomb.

This is doing fiction in hard mode, and Sloan nails it. The unraveling strangeness of Ariel's world is counterpointed with the amazing tale of the world the chronicler hails from, even as the chonicler consults with the preserved personalities of the heroes and warriors it had previous resided in and recorded.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/11/penumbraverse/#middle-anth

IX. Fight Me by Austin Grossman

Aging ex-teen superheroes weigh the legacy of Generation X, in a work that enrobes its savage critique with sweet melancholia, all under a coating of delicious snark. The Newcomers – an amped-up ninja warrior, a supergenius whose future self keeps sending him encouragement and technical schematics backwards through time, and an exiled magical princess turned preppie supermodel – have spent more than a decade scattered to the winds. While some have fared better than others, none of them have lived up to their potential or realized the dreams that seemed so inevitable when they were world famous supers with an entourage of fellow powered teens who worshipped them as the planet's greatest heroes.

As they set out to solve the mystery of the wizard who gave the protagonist his powers, they are reunited and must take stock of who they are and how they got there (cue Talking Heads' "Once In a Lifetime").

The publisher's strapline for this book is "The Avengers Meets the Breakfast Club," which is clever, but extremely wrong. The real comp for this book isn't "The Breakfast Club," it's "The Big Chill."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/01/the-big-genx-chill/#im-super-thanks-for-asking

X. Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby

Kristen is the "Chief Emotional Manager" for Wuv, a hot startup that has defined the new field of "affective computing," which is when a computer tells you what everyone else around you is really feeling, based on the irrepressible tells emitted by their bodies, voices and gadgets.

Managing Sumter through Wuv's tumultuous launch is hard work for Kristen, but at last, it's paid off. The company has been acquired, making Kristen – and all her coworkers on the founding core team – into instant millionaires. They're flying to a lavish celebration in an autonomous plane that Sumter chartered when the action begins: the plane has a malfunction and crashes into a desert island, killing all but ten of the Wuvvies.

As the survivors explore the island, they discover only one sign of human habitation: a huge, brutalist, featureless black glass house, which initially rebuffs all their efforts to enter it. But once they gain entry, they discover that the house is even harder to leave.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/13/influencers/#affective-computing

XI. The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy

A queer coming-of-age tale in the mode of epic fantasy. Lorel wants to be a witch, but that's the very last of the adventurous trades to be strictly gender-segregated. Boys and girls alike run away to be knights, brigands and sailors, but only girls can become a witch. Indeed, Lorel's best friend, Lane, is promised to the witches, having been born to a witch herself.

Lorel has signed up for witching just as the land is turning against witches, thanks to a political plot by a scheming duchess who has scapegoated the witches as part of a plan to annex all the surrounding duchies, re-establishing the long-disintegrated kingdom with herself on the throne. To make things worse (for the witches, if not the duchess), there's a plague of monsters on the land, and the forests are blighted with a magical curse that turns trees to unmelting ice. This all softens up the peasantfolk for anti-witch pogroms.

So Lorel has to learn witching, even as her coven is fighting both monsters and the duchess's knights and the vigilante yokels who've been stirred up with anti-witch xenophobia.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/24/daughters-of-the-empty-throne/#witchy

XII. Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson

A story that will make you drunk on language, on worldbuilding, and on its roaring, relentless plot. The action is set on Chynchin, a fantastic Caribbean island (or maybe Caribbeanesque – it's never clear whether this is some magical, imaginary world, or some distant future of our own). Chynchin is a multiracial, creole land with a richly realized gift economy that Hopkinson deftly rounds out with a cuisine, languages, and familial arrangements.

Chynchin was founded through a slave rebellion, in which the press-ganged soldiers of the iron-fisted Ymisen empire were defeated by three witches who caused them to be engulfed in tar that they magicked into a liquid state just long enough to entomb them, then magicked back into solidity. For generations, the Ymisen have tolerated Chynchin's self-rule, but as the story opens, a Ymisen armada sails into Chynchin's port and a "trade envoy" announces that it's time for the Chynchin to "voluntarily" re-establish trade with the Ymisen.

The story that unfolds is a staple of sf and fantasy: the scrappy resistance mounted against the evil empire, and this familiar backdrop is a sturdy scaffold to support Hopkinson's dizzying, phantasmagoric tale of psychedelic magic, possessed children, military intrigue, musicianship and sexual entanglements.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/20/piche/#cynchin

XIII. Julia by Sandra Newman

Julia is the kind of fanfic that I love, in the tradition of both The Wind Done Gone and Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, in which a follow-on author takes on the original author's throwaway world-building with deadly seriousness, elucidating the weird implications and buried subtexts of all the stuff and people moving around in the wings and background of the original.

For Newman, the starting point here is Julia, an enigmatic lover who comes to Winston with all kinds of rebellious secrets – tradecraft for planning and executing dirty little assignations and acquiring black market goods. Julia embodies a common contradiction in the depiction of young women (she is some twenty years younger than Winston): on the one hand, she is a "native" of the world, while Winston is a late arrival, carrying around all his "oldthink" baggage that leaves him perennially baffled, terrified and angry; on the other hand, she's a naive "girl," who "doesn't much care for reading," and lacks the intellectual curiosity that propels Winston through the text.

This contradiction is the cleavage line that Newman drives her chisel into, fracturing Orwell's world in useful, fascinating, engrossing ways. Through Julia's eyes, we experience Oceania as a paranoid autocracy, corrupt and twitchy. We witness the obvious corollary of a culture of denunciation and arrest: the ruling Party of such an institution must be riddled with internecine struggle and backstabbing, to the point of paralyzed dysfunction. The Orwellian trick of switching from being at war with Eastasia to Eurasia and back again is actually driven by real military setbacks – not just faked battles designed to stir up patriotic fervor. The Party doesn't merely claim to be under assault from internal and external enemies – it actually is.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/28/novel-writing-machines/#fanfic

XIV. The Wilding by Ian McDonald

McDonald's first horror novel, and it's fucking terrifying. It's set in a rural Irish peat bog that has been acquired by a conservation authority that is rewilding it after a century of industrial peat mining that stripped it back nearly to the bedrock. This rewilding process has been greatly accelerated by the covid lockdowns, which reduced the human footprint in the conservation area to nearly zero.

Lisa's last duty before she leaves the bog and goes home to Dublin is leading a school group on a wild campout in one of the bog's deep clearings. It's a routine assignment, and while it's not her favorite duty, it's also not a serious hardship.

But as the group hikes out to the campsite, one of her fellow guides is killed, without warning, by a mysterious beast that moves so quickly they can barely make out its monstrous form. Thus begins a tense, mysterious, spooky as hell story of survival in a haunted woods, written in the kind of poesy that has defined McDonald's career, and which – when deployed in service of terror – has the power to raise literal goosebumps.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/25/bogman/#erin-go-aaaaaaargh

XV. Polostan by Neal Stephenson

Not a spy novel, but a science fiction novel about spies in an historical setting. This isn't to say that Stephenson tramples on, or ignores spy tropes: this is absolutely a first-rate spy novel. Nor does Stephenson skimp on the lush, gorgeously realized and painstakingly researched detail you'd want from an historical novel.

Polostan raises the curtain on the story of Dawn Rae Bjornberg, AKA Aurora Maximovna Artemyeva, whose upbringing is split between the American West in the early 20th century and the Leningrad of revolutionary Russia (her parents are an American anarchist and a Ukrainian Communist who meet when her father travels to America as a Communist agitator). Aurora's parents' marriage does not survive their sojourn to the USSR, and eventually Aurora and her father end up back in the States, after her father is tasked with radicalizing the veterans of the Bonus Army that occupied DC, demanding the military benefits they'd been promised.

All of this culminates in her return sojourn to the Soviet Union, where she first falls under suspicion of being an American spy, and then her recruitment as a Soviet spy.

Also: she plays a lot of polo. Like, on a horse.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/04/bomb-light/#nukular

NONFICTION

I. A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

Biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith set out to investigate the governance challenges of the impending space settlements they were told were just over the horizon. Instead, they discovered that humans aren't going to be settling space for a very long time, and so they wrote a book about that instead.

The Weinersmiths make the (convincing) case that every aspect of space settlement is vastly beyond our current or reasonably foreseeable technical capability. What's more, every argument in favor of pursuing space settlement is errant nonsense. And finally: all the energy we are putting into space settlement actually holds back real space science, which offers numerous benefits to our species and planet (and is just darned cool).

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

II. Dark Wire by Joseph Cox

Cox spent years on the crimephone beat, tracking vendors who sold modded phones (first Blackberries, then Android phones) to criminal syndicates with the promise that they couldn't be wiretapped by law-enforcement.

He tells the story of the FBI's plan to build an incredibly secure, best-of-breed crimephone, one with every feature that a criminal would want to truly insulate themselves from law enforcement while still offering everything a criminal could need to plan and execute crimes.

This is really two incredible tales. The first is the story of the FBI and its partners as they scaled up Anom, their best-of-breed crimephone business. This is a (nearly) classic startup tale, full of all-nighters, heroic battles against the odds, and the terror and exhilaration of "hockey-stick" growth.

The other one is the crime startup, the one that the hapless criminal syndicates that sign up to distribute Anom devices find themselves in the middle of. They, too, are experiencing hockey-stick growth. They, too, have a fantastically lucrative tiger by the tail. And they, too, have a unique set of challenges that make this startup different from any other.

Cox has been on this story for a decade, and it shows. He has impeccable sourcing and encyclopedic access to the court records and other public details that allow him to reproduce many of the most dramatic scenes in the Anom caper verbatim.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/04/anom-nom-nom/#the-call-is-coming-from-inside-the-ndrangheta

III. The Hidden History of Walt Disney World by Foxx Nolte

No one writes about Disney theme parks like Foxx Nolte; no one rises above the trivia and goes beyond the mere sleuthing of historical facts, no one nails the essence of what makes these parks work – and fail.

The history of Walt Disney World is also a history of the American narrative from the 1960s to the turn of the millennium, especially once Epcot enters the picture and Disney sets out to market itself as a futuristic mirror to America and the world. There's a doomed plan to lead the nation in the provision of an airport for the largely hypothetical short runway aircraft that never materialized, the Disney company's love-hate affair with Florida's orange growers, and the geopolitics of installing a permanent World's Fair, just as World's Fairs were disappearing from the world stage.

In focusing on the conflicts between different corporate managers, outside suppliers, and the gloriously flamboyant weirdos of Florida, Nolte's history of Disney World transcends amusing anaecdotes and tittle-tattle – rather, it illustrates how the creative sparks thrown off by people smashing into each other sometimes created towering blazes of glory that burn to this day.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/15/disnefried/#dialectics

IV. Network Nation by Richard R John

An extremely important, brilliantly researched, deep history of America's love/hate affair with not just the telephone, but also the telegraph. It is unmistakably as history book, one that aims at a definitive takedown of various neat stories about the history of American telecommunications.

The monopolies that emerged in the telegraph and then the telephone weren't down to grand forces that made them inevitable, but rather, to the errors made by regulators and the successful gambits of the telecoms barons. At many junctures, things could have gone another way.

Most striking about this book were the parallels to contemporary fights over Big Tech trustbusting, in our new Gilded Age. Many of the apologies offered for Western Union or AT&T's monopoly could have been uttered by the Renfields who carry water for Facebook, Apple and Google. John's book is a powerful and engrossing reminder that variations on these fights have occurred in the not-so-distant past, and that there's much we can learn from them.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/18/the-bell-system/#were-the-phone-company-we-dont-have-to-care

V. A Natural History of Empty Lots by Christopher Brown

A frustratingly hard to summarize book, because it requires a lot of backstory and explanation, and one of the things that makes this book so! fucking! great! is how skillfully Brown weaves disparate elements – the unique house he built in Austin, the wildlife he encounters in the city's sacrifice zones, the politics that created them – into his telling.

This series of loosely connected essays that explains how everything fits together: colonial conquest, Brown's failed marriage, his experience as a lawyer learning property law, what he learned by mobilizing that learning to help his neighbors defend the pockets of wildness that refuse to budge.

It's filled with pastoral writing that summons Kim Stanley Robinson by way of Thoreau, and it sometimes frames its philosophical points the way a cyberpunk writer would.

The kind of book that challenges how you feel about the crossroads we're at, the place you live, and the place you want to be.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/17/cyberpunk-pastoralism/#time-to-mow-the-roof

GRAPHIC NOVELS

I. Death Strikes by David Maass and Patrick Lay

"The Emperor of Atlantis," is an opera written by two Nazi concentration camp inmates, the librettist Peter Kien and the composer Viktor Ullmann, while they were interned in Terezin, a show-camp in Czechoslovakia that housed numerous Jewish artists, who were encouraged to make and display their work as a sham to prove to the rest of the world that Nazi camps were humane places.

Death Strikes was adapted by my EFF colleague Dave Maass, an investigator and muckraker and brilliant writer, who teamed up with illustrator Patrick Lay and character designer Ezra Rose (who worked from Kien and Ullmann's original designs, which survived along with the score and libretto).

The Emperor's endless wars have already tried Death's patience. Death brings mercy, not vengeance, and the endless killing has dismayed him. The Emperor's co-option drives him past the brink, and Death declares a strike, breaking his sword and announcing that henceforth, no one will die.

Needless to say, this puts a crimp in the Emperor's all-out war plan. People get shot and stabbed and drowned and poisoned, but they don't die. They just hang around, embarrassingly alive (there's a great comic subplot of the inability of the Emperor's executioners to kill a captured assassin).

While this is clearly an adaptation, Kien and Ullmann's spirit of creativity, courage, and bittersweet creative ferment shines through. It's a beautiful book, snatched from death itself.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/23/peter-kien-viktor-ullmann/#terez

II. My Favorite Things Is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris

The long, long delayed sequel to the tale of Karen Reyes, a 10 year old, monster-obsessed queer girl in 1968 Chicago who lives with her working-class single mother and her older brother, Deeze, in an apartment house full of mysterious, haunted adults. There's the landlord – a gangster and his girlfriend – the one-eyed ventriloquist, and the beautiful Holocaust survivor and her jazz-drummer husband.

Ferris's storytelling style is dazzling, and it's matched and exceeded by her illustration style, which is grounded in the classic horror comics of the 1950s and 1960s. Characters in Karen's life – including Karen herself – are sometimes depicted in the EC horror style, and that same sinister darkness crowds around the edges of her depictions of real-world Chicago.

Book Two picks up from Book One's cliffhanger and then rockets forward. Everything brilliant about One is even better in Two – the illustrations more lush, the fine art analysis more pointed and brilliant, the storytelling more assured and propulsive, the shocks and violence more outrageous, the characters more lovable, complex and grotesque.

Everything about Two is more. The background radiation of the Vietnam War in One takes center stage with Deeze's machinations to beat the draft, and Deeze and Karen being ensnared in the Chicago Police Riots of '68. The allegories, analysis and reproductions of classical art get more pointed, grotesque and lavish. Annika's Nazi concentration camp horrors are more explicit and more explicitly connected to Karen's life. The queerness of the story takes center stage, both through Karen's first love and the introduction of a queer nightclub. The characters are more vivid, as is the racial injustice and the corruption of the adult world.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/01/the-druid/#

III. So Long Sad Love by Mirion Malle

Cleo is a French comics creator who's moved to Montreal, in part to be with Charles, a Quebecois creator who helps her find a place in the city's tight-knit artistic scene. The relationship feels like a good one, with the normal ups and downs, but then Cleo travels to a festival, where she meets Farah, a vivacious and talented fellow artist. They're getting along great…until Farah discovers who Cleo's boyfriend is. Though Farah doesn't say anything, she is visibly flustered and makes her excuses before hurriedly departing.

This kicks off Cleo's hunt for the truth about her boyfriend, a hunt that is complicated by the fact that she's so far from home, that her friends are largely his friends, that he flies off the handle every time she raises the matter, and by her love for him.

Malle handles this all so deftly, showing how Cleo and her friends all play archetypal roles in the recurrent missing stair dynamic. It's a beautifully told story, full of charm and character, but it's also a kind of forensic re-enactment of a disaster, told from an intermediate distance that's close enough to the action that we can see the looming crisis, but also understand why the people in its midst are steering straight into it.

Packed with subtlety and depth, romance and heartbreak, subtext that carries through the dialog (in marvelous translation from the original French by Aleshia Jensen) and the body language in Malle's striking artwork.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/25/missing-step/#the-fog-of-love

IV. Bea Wolf by Zach Wienersmith and Boulet

A ferociously amazingly great illustrated kids' graphic novel adaptation of the Old English epic poem, which inspired Tolkien, who helped bring it to popularity after it had languished in obscurity for centuries.

Weinersmith and Boulet set themselves the task of bringing a Germanic heroic saga from more than a thousand years ago to modern children, while preserving the meter and the linguistic and literary tropes of the original. And they did it!

There are some changes, of course. Grendel – the boss monster that both Beowulf and Bea Wulf must defeat – is no longer obsessed with decapitating his foes and stealing their heads. In Bea Wulf, Grendel is a monstrously grown up and boring adult who watches cable news and flosses twice per day, and when he defeats the kids whose destruction he is bent upon, he does so by turning them into boring adults, too.

The utter brilliance of Bea Wulf is as much due to the things it preserves from the original epic as it is to the updates and changes. Weinersmith has kept the Old English tradition of alliteration, right from the earliest passages, with celebrations of heroes like "Tanya, treat-taker, terror of Halloween, her costume-cache vast, sieging kin and neighbor, draining full candy-bins, fearing not the fate of her teeth. Ten thousand treats she took. That was a fine Tuesday."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/24/awesome-alliteration/#hellion-hallelujah

V. Youth Group by Bowen McCurdy and Jordan Morris

A charming tale of 1990s ennui, cringe Sunday School – and demon hunting.

Kay is a bitter, cynical teenager who's doing her best to help her mother cope with an ugly divorce that has seen her dad check out on his former family. Mom is going back to church, and she talks Kay into coming along with her to attend the church youth group.

But this is no ordinary youth group. Kay's ultra-boring suburban hometown is actually infested with demons who routinely possess the townspeople, and that baseline of demonic activity has suddenly gone critical, with a new wave of possessions. Suddenly, the possessed are everywhere – even Kay's shitty dad ends up with a demon inside of him.

That's when Kay discovers that the youth group and its corny pastor are also demon hunters par excellence. Their rec-rooms sport secret cubbies filled with holy weapons, and the words of exorcism come as readily to them as any embarrassing rewritten devotional pop song. Kay's discovery of this secret world convinces her that the youth group isn't so bad after all, and soon she is initiated into its mysteries, including the existence of rival demon-hunting kids from the local synagogue, Catholic church, and Wiccan coven.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/16/satanic-panic/#the-dream-of-the-nineties

VI. Justice Warriors: Vote Harder by Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson

Vote Harder sees Bubble City facing its first election in living memory, as the mayor – who inherited his position from his "powerful, strapping Papa" – loses a confidence vote by the city's trustees. They're upset with his plan to bankrupt the city in order to buy a laser powerful enough to carve his likeness into the sun as a viral stunt for the launch of his comeback album. The trustees are in no way mollified by the fact that he expects to make a lot of money selling special branded sunglasses that allow Bubble City (and the mutant hordes of the Uninhabited Zone) to safely look into the sun and see what their tax dollars bought.

So it's time for an election, and the two candidates are going hard: there's the incumbent Mayor Prince; there's his half-sister and ex-girlfriend, Stufina Vipix XII, and there's a dark-horse candidate Flauf Tanko, a mutant-tank cyborg that went rogue after a militant Home Owners Association disabled it and its owners abandoned it. Flauf-Tanko is determined to give the masses of the Uninhabited Zone the representation they've been denied for so long, despite the structural impediments to this (UZers need to complete a questionnaire, sub-forms, have three forms of ID, and present a rental contract, drivers license, work permit and breeding license. They also need to get their paperwork signed in person at a VERI-VOTE location, then wait 14 days to get their voter IDs by mail. Also, districts of 2 million or more mutants are allocated the equivalent of only 250,000 votes, but only if 51% of eligible voters show up to the polls; otherwise, their votes are parceled out to other candidates per the terms of the Undervoting and Apathy Allotment Act).

What unfolds is a funny, bitter, superb piece of political satire that could not be better timed.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/11/uninhabited-zone/#eremption-season

As I mentioned in the introduction to this roundup, I had three books out in 2024; a new hardcover, and the paperback editions of two books that came out in hardcover last year. There's more on the horizon – a new hardcover novel (PICKS AND SHOVELS) in Feb 2025, along with the paperback of my novel THE BEZZLE (also Feb 2025). I just turned in the manuscript for my next nonfiction book, ENSHITTIFICATION, which will also be adapted as a graphic novel. I'll also be shortly announcing the publication details for a YA graphic novel, a new essay collection and short story collection.

If you enjoy my work – the newsletter, the talks, the reviews – the best way to support me is to buy my books. I write for grownups, teens, middle-schoolers and little kids, so there's something for everyone!

I. The Lost Cause A solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency. "The first great YIMBY novel" -Bill McKibben. "Completely delightful…Neither utopian nor dystopian…I loved it" -Rebecca Solnit. A national bestseller!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865946/thelostcause/

II. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation A detailed disassembly manual for people who want to dismantle Big Tech. "A passionate case for 'relief from manipulation, high-handed moderation, surveillance, price-gouging, disgusting or misleading algorithmic suggestions. -Akash Kapur, New Yorker. Another national bestseller!

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

III. The Bezzle. A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash. "Righteously satisfying…A fascinating tale of financial skullduggery, long cons, and the delivery of ice-cold revenge." –Booklist. A third national bestseller!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle/

[vasyandii]

Hello! I just wanted to say that I absolutely adore your IHNMAIMS oc. I'm a OC x canon enthusiast and seeing a character so well written and adapted to the story as Vernon is makes me so excited!! Plus your art is literally amazing. I've been curious since you mentioned how Vernon cuts potions of her meal to give them to AM and how the food improved since AM got his body, what food/meals do Vernon and AM like/dislike/have as favourite? -for AM, at least from what he has tasted- Whether if it's because of the taste, flavour, etc.

Howdy Anon! Thank you so much for the kind words, I've been giddy since I got it a few days ago! I'm glad my OC x Canon content gets your stamp of Approval >:D!! 💞💞

VernonAM 🏺🖥️ Food Preferences

I think Vernon is careful in choosing the food she shares with AM because he will eat literally ANYTHING. She would try to eat things to torture herself with, extremely spicy foods, live insects, raw organs, etc. but then remember that she has to "Feed AM". So she opts out for something normal so his taste buds don't get fucked.

Or as normal as it can get, the food kind of has the uncanny valley effect as well. It looks normal and tastes normal, but she feels there's something a bit off about it (kind of like airplane food). So she often leaves criticism to the Chef™ (AM) or asks to cook instead.

Vernon isn't particularly picky when it comes to food, she'll eat it and clean her plate. She likes her food balanced, vegetables/meat with sauce and all that. If it tastes good, she'll eat it, y'know?

AM is more... difficult. Sure, he'll eat anything, but if it tastes really bad, it'll traumatize him and he'll refuse to eat it for a while.

His food has to not be touching, if it's mixed in all together beforehand he'll eat it. If there's sauce it shouldn't be close enough to where it can contaminate the food AM's eating because he WILL taste it, no matter how small the amount is. His utensils need to be a specific size, and the food HAS to be hot/warm. He needs to be able to see or know every ingredient in it.

It's observed that AM likes fried foods/anything crunchy because of how consistent they are in taste, texture, and flavour. So what ends up happening is Vernon will just include those foods into her meal, just to not eat it and have it on a little plate for him.

Vernon asks him why he can't just make food for himself, his response is "I don't need to eat, I eat when when you eat."

But honestly it's a pretty dumb question now that she's looking back on it. AM has all the knowledge in the world about food, everything ever made, everything he's never tasted. So he's basically asking Her, indirectly, "I don't know where to start or what's good. But you do. I trust you. Feed me."

Now here's some of the meals They've had together (+ AM's comments):

Chicken soup ("Too wet", just ate the broth)

Caesar Salad ("Damp, Crunchy water")

Vanilla ice cream (experienced a brain freeze for the first time, thought his body was malfunctioning)

Spaghetti Bolognese ("No I will not be mixing it, you mix it for me")

Western beef stew (He picked out the potatoes and only ate those. Thought the meat was irritating to eat.)

Baby carrots. ("You know they bleach these, right?")

Asparagus (he likes them. Needs to be warm)

Broccoli (same thing)

Cheese Pizza (Ate it, ate too much. Tummy hurted.)

Tempura (Ate too much, tummy hurted)

Fish and chips (Ate too much, tummy hurted)

Coffee, black (spat it out)

Macaroni and cheese (Ate too much, tummy hurted)

Grilled chicken hearts skewers (He liked it, but kept poking the roof of his mouth with the skewer.)

Half a Hamburger (picked out the vegetables because he didn't like them, still tasted it and gave the rest to Vernon)

Half a cheeseburger (ate it with no fuss.)

Aaand that'll be all for now :) if you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you need any clarifications, feel free to tell me!

[olderthannetfic]

https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/787862379583111168/i-get-that-people-like-the-animal-comparisons-for#notes

The reason I didn't call out the immediate historical context of rat and lizard faced is because I wanted to keep it "neutral" since many of the actors and singers called don't have a Jewish background. Though one actor called rat faced was Timothée Chalamet, who is Jewish. (If you look him up, interestingly enough, his mother is labelled as being of Russian and Australian Jewish descent on both sides. But neither he nor his mother get called Jewish. Which like... ok... I think the comments here understand the problem.) It wasn't my intent to remove it from the original context either, but just pointing out how gross the subject itself was on its own, and letting people use critical thinking and their own knowledge to start a discussion about the deeper context in the comments. (Which worked, so there. People even pulled out info on fox and horse faced I'd never heard before.)

B4 is a pretty common abbreviation meaning "before" and a pretty common one at that. 1337 speech has entered the chat.

Yes these aren't new. Especially the racist, sexist and xenophobic roots. But people online are using them like they're positive or as funny ways to describe people's faces. You'll see a lot of it in either communities around certain public facing figures, or on beauty influencers pages who do those "What's your face type?" where they'll put pics of random people and assign them certain face-labels.

Honestly, I'm just glad people used it to get a discussion started, and maybe more people will be aware of the absolute level of backhanded bullshit this trend rides on. Anyway, I sent this to keep the discussion going a bit more, because this is racism, xenophobia and sexism that often flies under the radar, especially since it trends with younger people.

--

There's an unfortunate pattern of people glomming onto phrenology and the like and then not noticing any of the roots or associations.

[kinardsevan]

I think a big part of why Ryan feels comfortable enough to say the things that he does is that he knows he won't be punished for him. He won't be fired by Tim, a certain group of fans will always defend him. or ignore the things he says. Like if people aren't ignoring that he said slurs, they're defending it, saying it was years ago and he was sticking up for his wife. And just seem to outright ignore the comments about women.

and this is the issue that allows the discourse to grow. Look, I know that at the end of the day, the same way we all love the colloquialism "far above my paygrade" that these fuckers probably figure the discourse caused is probably too far below their paygrade on it's on them to figure out how to create any kind of solution or speak up in any way to help quell it because, at the end of the day, they're "just working". it's "just a show".

except htat it's not. because we have people on one side doing SO MUCH to try and create a good footprint (for the most part. I will acknowledge that there have been fans called out--rightfully so, too--for choosing to take the low road and use slurs just as the other side has... while that ~spoken for~ other side continue to spew vitriol, hate, and honestly straight-up abuse and slander in some cases. I'm not really one to get on tumblr often and engage in the discourse of "Tommy's viewed as this while Eddie does that"...

EXCEPT. Lou shot the character of Tommy in season 2 with VERY little knowledge. By that logic, he went into season 7 with the same mindset. Tommy, in both of those situations, was not intended to become what he has (at least initially, in terms of s7). He showed up, hit his marks, made his money. Good on him for it, too. And to that end, you have fucking TM & Co. stating the fact that while we don't have Tommy Begins, we also kind-of do because we get to see his growth over time. Further, if we ultimately end up getting him into season 9, 10, etc., I'd like to think that at SOME point, they're going to have to give us more backstory on his life. What drove him to be as clammed up around Gerrard as he was. Did he genuinely not like Hen and Chimney (I doubt that) or was fear a driving factor? Had they actually lost a probie before Chimney? What was it like, going into the army and seeing all of that death, and then being a firefighter? (my headcanon on that, btw, is that Tommy did LAFD at 18, enlisted after losing someone sometime after Chimney Begins, but was out and back with the LAFD by the time Hen Begins airs in 2011.) Especially having to do it under Gerrard? And then, we get Tommy back, five years on from those episodes (and chronologically, roughly 20 years out from the first problematic behavior, and fifteen from the second). We also know that for Bobby Begins Again in 2017, he's GOOD with Chimney and Hen. They built a strong bond with him and Sal, and life was good for all of them together. So we're going to sit back and hold hate against a character for choices he made in his early 20s? This is the same issue with those who want to call Lou out for stuff he posted on Insta 10/15+ years ago. I am not at all sitting here and dismissing the behavior, but I apply Gabriel Iglasias' logic to it: it's not acceptable now, but it was viewed as acceptable at the time.

Here's the difference: Ryan's behavior was not and IS NOT viewed as acceptable now. His slurs in the late 2010's were ALREADY problematic. As someone who was around for the aughts, 2010s and beyond, using that vernacular outside of that particular culture has not being viewed as acceptable for quite some time. I don't care WHO he was defending. If he really needs to sink as low as using the N word, it's pathetic. There are plenty of other curse words you can use in a fit of anger that isn't going to invoke an entire race of people in a poor way. the misogyny issues aren't any better, and if anything, they continue to build on the issues happening in the US government at this very moment. I've had a number of conversations with my bestie about the fact that we haven't seen anyone from the 9-1-1 cast speak out about the protests happening at the moment and it's like...

Ok. >Oliver probably can't. We assume he's here on a visa, there are likely contractual issues to speaking up, etc. Also, while he makes a decent amount of money on the show, with the cost of living in LA and everything/one else he has to pay, I don't imagine he's living the high life. (also cameras and film are expensive AF). >This doesn't necessarily impact anyone else as much. I'm okay with letting Lou off the hook, because he's not a main cast member and there's definitely a small to moderately sized impression in the fandom that he's among the alphabet mafia. Not wanting to draw that attention back to himself is understandable. Referring back to how expensive it is to live in LA, and him not being a main on 911, let me remind yall of something.

in 2024, I did a post about how people were complaining about him with his cameos and their cost, etc. I mentioned that during the strike an actress (whose name evades me atm, but I can see her face in my head and I want to say that it's Michelle Hurd, but I could be wrong.) Whoever it was though that was in the video (which was from SAG), talked about your average working actor and explained THIS: >the average working actor that is NOT a main on a primetime show average somewhere between like 6-7k per episode (roughly, my memory isn't super clear on the number, but I'll explain why that doesn't matter in a second). To that end, most working actors that we think of who do guest spots usually do 2-4 spots a season, but usually around 3. Now, they don't get to TAKE HOME that money. Out of that money comes their dues, the cost to their agent, the cost to their publicist, living expenses, and so forth. Further, just to QUALIFY for SAGs health insurance, you needed to clear more than 24k+ a year as a working actor (again, I don't have the specific number). So... 7x3=21. Then you take out taxes, and then you start nickel and diming that shit. While we can assume Lou was/is definitely making more than he was, and that he probably was doing better after being bumped from guest to recurring along with his spot as Rocker, homeboy probably isn't clearing anywhere near what his costars are who are mains on their respective shows.

Beyond that, we have others who I can still give the benefit of the doubt. Aisha, if I remember correctly, has immigrants in her family. I imagine Kenny does too. But why am I willing to give them a pass and not Ryan? (Because they're not out here touting conservative barefoot and pregnant culture bullshit into the ether).

The people I severely struggle to give a pass on this TRULY, is Peter and Angela. Based on my google search THIS WEEK, in 2023, Angela was making 450k per episode. Assuming she clears 500k now.... homegirl doesn't need to listen to any contractual obligations on what she can/cannot speak about. she's doing just fine with or without 911. I'd even make that argument for JLH, who has spent YEARS being a main on one show or another. Her last two shows, she was top billing. THESE are the people who need to be speaking up/out. It's utterly baffling that a show with a cast that is black/white/asian/hispanic/italian hasn't said ONE WORD about what's happening at the moment.

I realize this completely devolved from my original point, but it's also stuff that needs to be said, because at the end of the day, if someone would pick up the reigns and speak on THOSE things, then maybe someone would open their mouths about the things Ryan is putting out into the ether. I truly cannot fathom how this man has put his rhetoric out into the world more and more increasingly in the past few years, and continues to go unchecked.

anyway.

[sillygoosewrites]

‘ A few inches too short, but we make it work. ’

Pairing ;; Logan Howlett x AMAB Reader

Contains ;; X-Men Evolution Logan addition, Headcanons, my personal opinion, PDA mentioned, Fluff, possession (Kinda), Comic accurate height, OOC (slightly), not proofread. Ω

A/n ;; just to clarify I have NOT read any of the X-Men comics, only the animated series/movies 😓 sorry if this isn't accurate enough,,

` ༺ ༽ ♪ ༼ ༻ `

When in public, or, just around a large group of people, preferably, strangers/non mutants, Logan prefers to walk a little ways behind you, but not too far. Like a guard dog, is the best way I can describe it.

He doesn't really want people to know that he's with you ��� not that he's ashamed of anything, he just doesn't think it's any of their business, and he doesn't want you to have to deal with rude comments that may come your way being seen with a short, gruff man like him.

And the rare times he's walking right up beside you, like a guard dog, he'll have his hand – one that isn't tucked into his jean pocket – around your waist, keeping you close. Due to being five-foot-three, he likes to bury his face into your ribs, and or chest when given the chance.

Breathing in your cologne makes his head dizzy, but he's honestly too addicted to pull away for real air. He just wants you, and your tall glory around him at all time.

–

He's a clothes thief, fight me. Sweaters, sweatshirts, boxers, shirts, etc ;; anything he can get his grubby hands on, honestly.

Your favorite shirt? It's his now, don't expect to get it back. Sweatshirt? Maybe check the pile of clothes he keeps in the closet. Like a hoarder, especially the clothes you worked/sweated in.

He's shameless about it too, wearing nothing but your clothes around like all of his were in the wash, or in the trash. And by the slim chance you do get your clothes back, they're stretched out and covered in hair.

–

You're his stool, or leader for reaching things on higher shelves. Sometimes..

He's a prideful, stubborn man, who doesn't need anybody for anything! But,, Could you be a doll and get the coffee from the second shelf?

You've caught him climbing up shelves before, almost tipping them over in the process – having you scold him like a cat who just clawed up the couch as you get whatever he was after, while he sulked and mumbled about not needing 'help'.

"Stop tryna' baby me, I'm a grown ass man, bub, more than capable of taking care of myself," He'd growl, arms crossed and lips jutted out slightly in annoyance, and embarrassment.

He does appreciate it, but he won't ever express it, maybe,, But not with words. Maybe with, slapping your ass, or complimenting you.

–

He burrows. Specifically in bed. When the room gets too cold, or if he wants to be more warm, he'll dig himself underneath the covers, nuzzling up against your body.

I feel like while doing this he unknowingly pushes you all the way to the edge of the bed while trying to get comfortable, also he steals the covers. He's an asshole.

Despite being shorter, be enjoys being the big spoon when you two cuddle, his face buried in your neck, sometimes leaving kisses when motivated, arms and legs anchoring you to him.

When sleeping, he'd let out a few growls and twitches, mumbling something unintelligible as he's face scrunches up – by chance you'd get to record him and show the rest of the X-Men, without his knowledge, of course; but there will be signs,,

𝝑𝝔 — 𝝑𝝔

` ༺ ༽ ♪ ༼ ༻ `

[leclercsbunny]

maybe if you loved me ♡ c. sainz

part five ♡ masterlist

anasainzvdec posted a story 12m ago

blanca watches you convene with ana animatedly, nodding and laughing along with the both of you as per usual, though she held an air of reservation and restraint, being deep in thought.

"sorry, i have an urge to use the restroom again." you sheepishly cut through her story.

"again? your bladder's gotten small or something?" ana comments amusedly.

"let me go with you." blanca stands up from her seat, making a face. "i think the oj got to me aswell." you gestured towards her smugly, as if to tell ana; look, i'm not alone in my struggles.

"fine, but hurry back." she playfully rolls her eyes.

blanca hooks her arm around yours, and you both depart to the restroom. you made small talk on the way, and went to do your business separately.

when you left the stall to wash your hands, blanca was already there. she looked as if she was... waiting for you. she looked serious, and somehow, bothered.

"is everything alright?" you ask her, feeling your heart drop.

"i say this out of the love i have for you and carlos." blanca utters slowly, watching your expression change. "but does he know?"

"i don't know what you're talking about, blanca." you wave her off, suddenly turning defensive.

"i'm sorry if i'm overstepping... but i cannot help but notice all these, very subtle tells." she says softly, not wanting you to get agitated. "you're suddenly queasy when it comes to certain foods, and you're drawn to sweets. like, crazy partial to them. you use the bathroom often, your waist is just.." she measures it with her hand. "and i think we've cultivated a friendship comfortable enough for a brazen comment about the evident size of your... nether regions."

"blanca," you hiss, feeling your cheeks warm with both embarassment and indignance, as you cover your body from her all knowing gaze. "i don't like what you're implying."

"and you didn't drink coffee. you need your coffee, you're like a.." she sniffles, suddenly finding it difficult to maintain her own composure, "fish when you drink those latte's."

"why are you crying?" you push her shoulders, feeling your own nose itch from the buildup of emotions threatening to just spill and topple the both of you. "this is your own freaking fault that we're having this conversation. be woman enough to finish it."

"you're pregnant." she said it with certainty, eyes welling up with tears, she didn't know wether from happiness or sadness. maybe both. it was supposed to be a joyful moment, one which had been your dream for such a long time. but instead your eyes were both red from the complexities of your current emotions, the information tainted with the knowledge of your current realities. "how far long?" she asks.

"still not sure." you rectify with a broken voice, wiping your tears away. "i took some pt, but i've been delaying the blood tests."

"makes sense," blanca reaches out to grasp your shaky hands, "what do you plan to do?"

"i don't know." you reply honestly. "i can only ever think about matteo, and.. and..." you shake your head resolutely, "i don't want anything to change with him."

"things are going to change, but it doesn't always mean a bad one." she tells you, "i know you're at odds with carlos, but— will you tell him?"

you shake your head, "he doesn't need to know." yet even you found it hard to believe.

"he's the father, y/n." blanca reminds you softly, "i know he's done something horrible, and there's no reason to his actions.... but it will crush him."

"he has a very fickle sense of loyalty, and i'm tired of waiting for him to change." you reply. "i don't need his wavering devotion in my baby's life. please understand me, blanca." you tell her pleadingly.

f1chai the carlos-yn-daniel drama bubbles over with more controversy as yn is embroiled in a shocking pregnancy scandal. spanish news outlets broke the news over the weekend, claiming the spaniard's long time, now ex girlfriend, has secretly been seeing one of the best child-rearing physician in madrid— neither carlos, nor daniel have been accompanying her, but one of the sainz' sister was discreetly pictured on one of her visits. this led many to speculate that yn is indeed with child, and have been for some time. the question of wether it is sainz's or ricciardo's have yet to be answered. the parties involved had declined to comment on this matter.

username what the fuck

username IS CARLOS A SHARP HITTER OR SOMETHING ?!?

username am not believing this until further notice

username LIES !! character defaming ones !! SUE EVERYONE !!

username LAWSUIT LAWSUIT LAWSUIT

username seriously why the fuck are people following her anyways...

username right !! she's a normal citizen and these people are all up in her business 🙄

username seriously. let the girl breathe fs

username wrong on so many levels

username this is better than any telenovalas 😭😭

username who's the daddy ? 🤨

username MAMMA MIA ??

username are we even doubting carlos... that man has a whole ass son

username just why? yn already had it good 😭😭😭

username she was running then tripped

username on sainz's lap...

username have to give it to him. well done !!

username get the bag i guess !!

username yeah 😭😭 atleast her baby daddy isn't some brokie 😭😭

username he's a cheater though

username **serial cheater

username 😭😭😭😭

[murder-cookie-dust393]

Hello! I am a fellow affogato (simp ahem) FAN-fan yes-fan

and I would like to request a yandere!affogato(with hypnotic abilities ofc) with a warrior reader who slowly falls for him and well

what happened next is up to you

(also Pookie bear may I be 🪻anon?)

Advisor in Distress

I'm just gonna be making apologies to my requesters from December so prepare yourself for a bunch of repetitive comments- Also, I think I did add you to my anon list, but I'll check just in case.

Disclaimer: I did not edit this, at all.

Tw: basically drugging but in small amounts, hypnosis

You knew who Affogato was. Everybody knew who he was. The grand royal advisor for his majesty. From your knowledge, he could be quite the snarky one. He would come to your comrades to comment that they haven't trained properly or guarded the citadel's walls.

You hated it when he insulted your friends and higher-ups. You knew they were doing their job as best as they could and were doing anything but slacking off. But it seemed Affogato wanted to do everything but be appreciative of them.

That was until a few weeks ago.

He started to hang around where the warriors were more frequently. Often going up to you and praising how hard you were working or how strong you were. It was weird and quite creepy. You were the only one getting this barrage of praises, so you felt like your comrades weren't getting enough.

So most days you ignored him or just answered with a nod.

But today he had more to give. All the warriors within your group had gotten incense sticks from Affogato as a present. Yours looked slightly more purple, but you didn't pay much mind to it. When you lit the sticks in honour of your dead comrades, there was a certain smell.

The scent had a heavy espresso smell along with a hint of cream. It was a pleasant one to be around. As you kneeled before the incense pot, you felt a sudden dizziness come over you. You steady yourself with a hand to the ground, but some thoughts start rushing through your mind.

The royal advisor did look extremely pretty last Tuesday. Was it his eyes? Or was it his elegant walk? You aren't sure. You brush it off and go back to your post.

——————————————————

The night is evident by the darkened sky and the glowing stars. The citadel is asleep, except for a few guards ensuring the safety of the kingdom. Through the shadows and dim spaces, a cookie in black robes swiftly passes by the silent halls.

They slide the door open to one of the many rooms for the warriors. The cookie steps inside without a sound, shutting the door with careful movement. They take off their hood, revealing none other than Affogato himself.

He kneels by the sleeping mat, watching the warrior sleep; the warrior being MC Cookie, his dear beloved. He smiles a wicked and loving grin. "Oh, how long will it take for you to fall in love with me? I need someone to protect me once I'm ruler, you know~" He whispers to them, expecting no response.

He leans closer, so close to touching their blanket-covered body now. "I've waited far too long. Everything will be in my grasp: the kingdom, the people, and you. My sweet knight." The advisor pressed a light kiss onto their cheek before leaving the room. No trace was left except for a small incense burning on top of a dresser; hidden from plain view.

——————————————————

(Jealous twink needs his protector- honestly goals)

(This was pretty fun to write! Honestly, requests aren't that bad once you start writing them. It's the effort to start them that's hard).

- Celina