#and it's explicitly not a static end point in that way

[anghraine]

Darcy's role in P&P would work for me anyway, but tbh it works for me 10x better because he halfway reverts back to form towards the end of the book.

[villainsoftheweek]

no disintegrations.

explicit. 18+ only. - 3.5k+ - Din Djarin x f!reader

content: power imbalance, forbidden, mask kink, glove kink, smut, brat taming, spanking, degradation, praise, dirty talk, name kink, secret affair, dom!Din

a gilded girl plays with fire, and the Mandalorian burns through every vow to touch her.

It’s almost impressive — how little your father trusts anyone.

Except him, supposedly.

Not his advisors. Not his guards. Not even the blood-soaked mercenaries he sends out into the undercity to collect debts and leave warnings. Only the man in beskar. That’s what he calls him. Never by name.

Just the Mandalorian.

A silent blade. A shadow bound in steel. Hired to protect the only thing the old bastard actually gives a damn about: you.

You’re not supposed to know that, of course. You’re just the daughter. A pretty trinket to display, a bargaining chip wrapped in silk and guarded like cargo. But you heard the deal. Overheard it echoing through the comm wall late one night, static humming like breath between the words.

Your father’s voice, clipped and cruel:

“If she’s touched, she’s dead. If she’s killed, you’re dead. Do your job.”

And then the Mandalorian’s, low and composed beneath the modulator:

“No disintegrations. I know.”

That was weeks ago.

Now he lingers in the palace halls like a specter — never speaking unless necessary, never eating with the staff, never straying far from your side. He guards your door like death itself, stands motionless at the end of corridors, follows your steps with that slow, predatory grace that makes your skin burn under your robes.

He’s not friendly.

But you try anyway.

It doesn’t stop you from testing the limits eventually. You begin to leave your bedroom door cracked at night, knowing exactly where he’ll be standing. Bathe with the curtains flung wide, steam rising into the open air, the curve of your wet shoulder catching the moonlight. You saunter past him in barely-there silks, your perfume sweet and pointed, pretending not to notice how his visor tracks your every movement like a targeting system.

Sometimes you talk to him — just to fill the silence. Or because you like the way he doesn’t answer.

You’ve at least learned his true name, though you refuse to use it.

“You don’t blink,” you tease one night, sipping from a crystal glass as you lean against your doorway. “Do you even have eyes under there?”

Nothing.

“Maybe you’re a droid,” you hum, drawing closer, barefoot and bare-legged. “Or maybe you just don’t want me to see the way you look at me.”

Still nothing.

But he shifts — barely. A subtle shift in stance. A tightening across his shoulders, like a wolf scenting blood.

You smile — too sweet to be innocent.

“Scared you’d want me if you took the helmet off?”

That gets him.

He turns — sharp, sudden.

You see it, then. The snap of his restraint. The hint of heat beneath the armor. The danger.

And your heart skips.

Good.

You want him to break. You want to watch the man beneath the steel crawl out, teeth bared, control snapped. You want to be the one who makes him fall.

It almost happens three nights before you run.

You’ve just stepped in from the balcony, rain-slick and flushed. The silk of your robe clings damp to your thighs, hair dripping onto your bare collarbone. You’d gone out to clear your head, forgotten your datapad in the rush. When you turn back to retrieve it, the room is dark.

And he’s there.

Not outside your door.

Inside.

Where he’s explicitly not supposed to be.

He doesn’t move when you enter. Just stands there in the shadow, visor reflecting the faint city glow from the window.

“You left this,” Din says, holding out your datapad like it offends him.

But his voice is off. Rougher. Lower. The kind of sound someone makes when they’ve been trying very hard not to feel something.

Your breath hitches.

Because he’s not acting like a bodyguard now. Not standing with arms crossed and stance wide. He’s waiting.

He watched you on that balcony. You know it.

And the way the visor dips — not to your face, but to the damp silk plastered to your chest — tells you everything.

That isn’t protocol.

That’s hunger.

“Were you watching me again?” you ask softly.

Silence.

You let the robe fall from one shoulder. A bare slip of skin.

“You can come closer if you want.”

“I shouldn’t be here,” he rasps.

“But you are.”

You step toward him — careful, slow, as if approaching something wild. “I’ve seen the way you look at me. Behind that bucket. All those long silences. All that breathing.”

He flinches.

You smile.

“And you know what?” you whisper, so close now you can smell the heat of metal and leather and man beneath the beskar. “I think you like the way I act. I think you want to be the one who finally shuts me up.”

A crack in the air between you. Not sound. Not movement. Just tension — pulled taut.

His hand twitches at his side.

You don’t know if he’s going to shove you away or slam you into the nearest surface and fuck you breathless.

But then he speaks. Low. Gravel-sharp.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

You tilt your head.

“Try me.”

He steps back. Just one step.

Enough to remind you he still has control.

Barely.

And that’s the night you decide to run.

Because if he’s that close to snapping, then the only thing left is to make him chase.

You wait for a moonless night.

The kind that eats shadows and silences even the stars. The palace rests in its false peace, marbled corridors hushed beneath layers of silk and secrets. But beneath that stillness — power coils. Waiting.

The guards are useless. One slumps against the wall, already drifting into spice-dreams. The other hums along to music no one else hears, a crooked smile playing on his lips as he watches lights shift across the marble. Neither of them notices you pass.

But he will.

You’re not fleeing — not really. You’re summoning.

No comm. No shoes. Just bare skin beneath your robe — thin, translucent, tied loosely at your waist. The silk breathes with every step you take, cool air teasing your body, nipples peaking beneath the fabric. You left your door open just enough. You wore the perfume he lingers near when you pass. You knew he’d watch you leave.

You wanted him to.

You slip through a half-forgotten servant’s tunnel that smells of dust and age and things once hidden. Your breath fogs in the chill. The floor bites at your feet, and still you walk — faster, pulse rising, until you’re through the last gate and into the city’s night.

Below you, the city burns violet — neon slashing through fog, music trembling in the air like a held breath. You move through it like a ghost, drawn higher and higher until you reach a narrow skybridge suspended over nothing. No lights. No witnesses. Just wind, steel, and the hush before the storm.

You wait.

And he comes within minutes.

You don’t hear him. You never do.

But you feel the instant he arrives.

The air shifts. Pressure builds. Electricity gathers like heat behind your skin. Then — he's on you.

A gloved hand snatches your arm and spins you. Your back slams against the wall, the impact stealing your breath. His hand pins your wrist high above your head. The other curls around your throat — not tight, just there. Anchoring you. Claiming you. Feeling your pulse beneath his gloved hand.

The night pulses around you. His armor gleams like a beast's hide in the dark.

His visor lowers to your face.

“What the kriff are you doing out here?” he growls, voice low and dangerous through the modulator.

You smile, lips parted, chest rising fast.

“Mando,” you whisper, sweet and sacrilegious. “Did you miss me that quickly?”

His fingers tighten. Just a little.

He goes still.

Utterly still.

The kind of stillness that lives right before impact.

His grip on your throat flexes. You feel the beat of your own blood thrum against his palm.

“Do you think this is a game?” he snarls.

You tilt your head, lips grazing the edge of his glove. “I think you’re the one playing. All that armor. All that control. Always watching. Never touching. What are you afraid of?”

His silence is a loaded weapon.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he rasps.

You look up at him. Daring. Trembling beneath his touch.

“Then show me.”

He breaks.

A sound rips out of him — half snarl, half groan — and then you're spun, face pressed to cold duracrete, silk robe torn up around your hips. The breeze licks at your thighs. You brace yourself against the wall, breath caught, heart hammering.

He’s behind you in a heartbeat, crowding into your space. Heat radiates off his armor. The press of him is overwhelming, chest to your back, knees spreading your legs with deliberate force.

“This what you wanted?” he growls, grinding against you. You wonder if he’s hard, straining behind the tight beskar he always wears. “To tempt me? To run just far enough I’d have to chase you?”

“I’m not helpless,” you pant.

“No. You’re reckless.”

His hand falls across your ass with a sharp slap, and you jolt forward, gasping — a pitiful sound that breaks off into an even more pitiful moan.

Another follows. Then another — measured, rhythmic, sending heat coursing through your spine.

Your knees buckle. Your thighs tremble.

“Wanted my attention so badly?” he mutters, voice fraying at the edges. “You have it — you should say thank you.”

“Than —”

You’re cut off by his next movement. He shifts, and his hand slides between your thighs — testing, parting, finding.

You're soaked.

A low curse crackles through his modulator.

“Didn’t think you’d actually take the bait,” you gasp, hips tilting into his touch.

“Oh, I saw you. The robe. The scent. Leaving your door cracked — like an invitation.” His fingers thrust inside you, still gloved, slow and devastating. You cry out, eyes fluttering shut. “You’ve been aching for this.”

Your body answers him — grinding, needy, beyond pride. You ride his hand shamelessly.

“You act like you’re above it,�� you breathe. “But you want me.”

His breath catches.

Then — armor shifts. Belt unclasps. The thick sound of fabric and gear moving.

And then — he thrusts into you.

One long, brutal motion.

You cry out, voice caught between shock and ecstasy.

He presses deeper, until you’re full — stretched, trembling, your body gripping him like a vice.

“Stars,” he hisses, voice wrecked.

He sets a rhythm — hard, driving, relentless. Every thrust slams you into the wall, his grip bruising your hip, his chest pressed flush to your back. There’s no gentleness here, only raw need, only him.

“Say it,” he growls against your ear. “Say my name.”

You moan, already close. “What?”

“Not ‘Mando.’ My name. You know it for a reason.”

Your voice cracks. “Din —”

“Again,” he orders, subtle desperation of his own behind his words.

“Din — fuck — Din, please —”

He groans like it guts him. One hand fists in your hair, pulling your head back, the mouth of his helmet hovering near your ear. His rhythm breaks — grows erratic, wild.

“Been watching you for weeks,” he pants. “Knowing I shouldn’t. Couldn’t. But you just kept pushing.”

Your walls flutter around him, tight and pulsing, and his grip tightens on your waist.

“Wanted you like this,” he groans. “Just like this.”

You’re nearly there — clenching, unraveling, eyes wet and mouth slack.

Then — you shatter.

Your orgasm rips through you like plasma, hot and bright. Your body convulses, hips jerking, moans punched from your lungs as you squeeze down hard around him.

That’s all it takes.

Din curses — shouts your name — and buries himself deep, grinding into you with a desperate, final thrust. His entire body locks. You feel him pulse inside you, release hitting him so hard he trembles. He clutches your hips, muscles trembling with the force of it, groaning into the crook of your neck through the mask he always wears.

It’s not quiet.

It’s not clean.

It’s messy, and loud, and real. And it’s everything.

He stays inside you for a moment after he finishes, his hand still clamped over your mouth, your body limp against the wall — breathing ragged, heart thunderous, your pulse echoing in the shell of your ears like the tail end of a battle drum.

You both exist in the aftermath like it’s the eye of a storm—still, suspended, unbearably charged.

Then slowly, he exhales. A sound barely audible through the modulator, but weighted. He withdraws from you with care, as though afraid the separation might break something delicate. And maybe it does. You sway, boneless, and he catches you before gravity can take you, easing you back into his arms. One hand cups your hip. The other steadies your chin, tilting your face up to him. The robe slinks down over your thighs again, hiding the bruised heat he left behind.

You expect reprimand. Expect that familiar clipped edge to return to his voice.

But he says nothing.

Instead, he just steps closer and lifts you effortlessly into his arms.

You let him.

One arm under your knees, the other beneath your shoulders. His chest is a broad, immovable wall of beskar against your side — but you press your cheek to it anyway and listen. Not to the city’s chaos, thrumming far below in its neon haze and filth, but to him. To that impossible stillness he wears like a second skin. A silence not empty, but watching. Weighing. Holy, in its way.

He carries you like you’re something worth protecting. Like he didn’t just ruin you against a wall. Like you’re fragile. Precious.

You shouldn’t like it.

But maker, you do.

By the time he reaches your quarters, the palace is a memory behind you. The door hisses open. The lock chimes. He crosses the threshold without a word and takes you straight to your bed. He lays you down gently, and you lie there — legs still weak, chest still fluttering — as he disappears across the room.

The moment he’s gone you want him to take a place by your side again. Fortunately, his absence isn’t for long.

He returns with a cloth, steam still curling faintly from it.

You want to say something sharp. Something clever. But the words tangle in your throat when he kneels beside you and touches your skin with that cloth — warm, damp, careful.

He starts at your inner thighs. Cleans away what’s left of both of you. You watch him work, hands gloved but reverent. Not clinical. Not cold.

Tender.

You shift. The robe parts again. Your knees open a little, baring yourself.

He stills.

“You’re not going to punish me again?” you murmur, voice low and silk-soft. “For making you chase?”

His helmet tilts slightly up toward you — you can feel his eyes burning into you.

“You’re lucky I did,” he says.

You hum. “It didn’t feel like luck when your fingers were around my throat.”

A pause.

His breath hitches. The cloth trembles. Then he sets it aside.

You let your knees fall fully open.

“I liked it,” you whisper. “But I liked when you held me more.”

Something in him breaks then. Silently. Irrevocably.

He moves — slow, deliberate. His hands slide under the hem of your robe, pushing it higher. His touch lingers on your hips, your waist, up your ribs. And then he speaks — low, quiet:

“Let me take it off.”

You blink. “What?”

He shifts back on his knees. Reaches up to his own armor.

“The plating. Not the helmet,” he clarifies. “Just…I want to feel you.”

You don’t answer. Just nod. A breathless little thing. Because yes. Yes, you want that too.

You watch, rapt, as he unfastens each piece. The chest plate first, then the pauldrons. His gauntlets. His gloves. His fingers are deft but not rushed. And each piece, once removed, makes him more real.

Not just a myth wrapped in beskar.

A man.

By the time his torso is bare, you’re aching.

He kneels over you again, bare skin against your thighs now, heat meeting heat. You reach up and trace along his ribs, feel the lines of old scars beneath your fingers. He shudders at your touch.

“You don’t have to be careful,” you whisper.

He lowers himself. His bare chest brushes your breasts — cool skin to flushed heat — as he enters you again.

Slow.

Deep.

You gasp. He groans.

The world narrows to the way his body molds to yours, the way his hips roll forward with perfect, devastating precision. Every thrust is deliberate. Devotional.

He doesn’t fuck you like he did against the wall.

He makes love to you like he’s never done it before. Like he’s terrified of doing it wrong. Like he’s trying to memorize you — every twitch, every breath, every helpless sound you give him. Every flutter and squeeze of your wet heat around him.

You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him in deeper.

Arms looped around his neck, your mouth presses to the edge of his helmet.

“Harder,” you plead, soft and aching. “Please.”

He obliges.

Not with brute force. With intensity.

He thrusts into you like he’s anchoring something — like his whole self might unravel if he stops. Your name breaks from his mouth in pieces. Ragged. Holy.

When you come, it’s with a full-body cry. A shattering bloom behind your ribs. You clamp around him, arms trembling, gasping out his name.

He curses — a low, broken thing — and follows you over the edge, hips jerking, spilling inside you with a groan torn from the very center of him. His body bows over yours, twitching, spent.

But he stays inside you.

Buried deep. As if leaving you empty would kill him.

Eventually, he shifts — but only to pull you into him, his bare skin warm and damp against yours, one arm around your waist, the other braced under your shoulders. Your leg remains hooked over his hip.

You touch his helmet again, trailing your fingers along its curve. The only armor he keeps between you.

“You should stay,” you murmur eventually, afraid of the answer you’re certain will come.

It doesn’t.

He doesn’t speak. But he doesn’t leave either.

You wake slowly in the golden light of the morning, tangled in the silk sheets, one leg draped over his hip still.

It’s quiet. Peaceful.

For a moment, you forget where you are. Who he is.

Only the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your palm anchors you.

Then the cold kiss of beskar reminds you.

He never took off the helmet.

Even in sleep, he doesn’t let his guard down completely. His arm is heavy around your waist, fingers curled possessively against your spine. You shift slightly, hips brushing his.

He’s already hard again.

You smile, drowsy and wicked.

“You’re insatiable,” you whisper. “Or is that just for me?”

He doesn’t answer. But his hand tightens, just slightly. As if your voice dragged him from the edge of sleep.

You lean closer, your breath brushing the edge of his helmet.

“I wouldn’t mind a morning fuck, you know,” you whisper, lips grazing beskar. “Could pretend last night was just a dream. Do it all over again.”

He groans — low and warning.

But he still doesn’t move.

Not until —

A sound.

Footsteps. Just outside your door.

Both of you freeze.

The hand on your back shifts instantly to your mouth — firm, silencing. His entire body goes still, coiled like a spring.

You hear voices.

Too muffled to make out — two guards. Routine patrol.

One of them laughs. Something about a locked room and “spoiled princesses who sleeps through anything.”

The other’s steps pause — too close.

Din’s head tilts toward the door, every instinct bristling. He’s already calculating: escape routes, shadows to vanish into, how to grab you and disappear before the door opens.

You know that stillness.

The one that means he’ll kill if he has to.

But the footsteps move on.

Fading.

The moment passes.

Still, he doesn’t relax.

His hand slips from your mouth — slowly, with just enough pressure to remind you who’s in control.

You exhale.

And grin.

“You were going to kill them,” you whisper against his visor. “For almost catching you in my bed.”

He growls — quiet but unmistakable. “You’re too loud.”

“You’re the one who made me scream last night.”

Silence.

Then —

He rolls you onto your back with a single, fluid motion. His knee between your thighs, body above yours, his weight pressing you down.

His helmet dips close. You can’t see his eyes. But you feel them.

“I should leave,” he mutters.

“You won’t.”

You press your hips up against him, slow and teasing.

And even though the danger’s passed, he still doesn’t move.

That same tension lingers.

Not fear.

Not exactly.

Something closer to inevitability.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” he says.

You reach up. Run a fingertip along the edge of his helmet.

“And you’re still here.”

His breath shudders.

Then he slips from the bed, fast and silent, collecting each piece of his armor like a ghost retreating into shadow.

He doesn't speak again.

Not as he fastens his vambraces.

Not as he returns his gloves to his hands, despite the desperation to feel your skin beneath his fingertips again.

Not even when you say, softly:

“Come back tonight.”

He pauses in the doorway. Doesn’t turn.

Just says: “Lock the door.”

And vanishes.

MASTERLIST.

[cipheramnesia]

I would not expect a huge amount from a reality/found footage horror movie about a possessed pregnancy, called "Delivery: The Beast Within" to necessarily offer much, but I figured the concept was just interesting enough that it would at least be, at a bare minimum, interesting to watch. And well, I don't know what to say except this is why I watch random horror, because Delivery: The Beast Within is a really good fake documentary horror.

So the strengths of this style of movie usually revolve around actors delivering more improvised or natural performances, needing relatively few budget intensive effects, and generally using the appearance of lower quality filmmaking to their advantage for suspense or realism. However, the majority of these types of movies generally treat the capacity to use these techniques gives them complete freedom from the need for direction, cinematography, or consistent writing. Plus, of course, the perennial nagging question of "why are they still filming this?" The Paranormal Activity series is probably the best example of lazy found footage horror, where the actors replace naturalistic improvisation with simply being very rude and generally angry at one another, and long, static shots for the sake of a single minor detail pad out the runtime. Poorly made films of this type can feel like they drag on for hours waiting for anything to happen.

Delivery effectively managing to dodge all of the major issues, provide a solid and tense work of horror, along side a bit of subtext plus a genuinely disturbing ending makes the whole affair rather brilliant. I'm not sure what decision helped the most. Having realistic story beats helped a lot - no one in the movie suddenly turns their life over to an imaginary exorcist, everyone acknowledges the protag is going through it, the supernatural parts are just this side of questionable that there's no reason to jump ship. It plays heavily into terrible, family friendly reality TV tropes up front, and there's a good chemistry between the leads where they seem to genuinely care for each other, which makes the gradual decline more distressful. It's just a lot of little details like the way the video artifacting is isolated to the pregnant woman (and switches immediately to the baby after it is born). The husband's reaction to what seems like miscarriage (it felt very nuanced, as someone who gets pretty quiet with strong emotions), and the one major event that makes the couple sever their connection with the documentary crew for several months. It's all a series of clever details that develop into a relatively well thought out plot, good pacing, and respectable camerawork.

On top of all that solid technical foundation, Delivery is also prodding at the USAmerican concept of pregnancy - how it's idealized, how little the physical and mental wear on women is discussed, the stress on relationships, really most of the ways it can impact on people physically, mentally, and socially. This isn't new territory per se, but Delivery makes these topics feel more a piece of the film text, rather than something overtly pointed out to the audience. No one person is explicitly gaslighting or deliberately misleading the pregnant woman, but the social pressures on her both as an expectant mother and also as a woman in crisis surrounded by support for her pregnancy specifically is tangible. It's the kind of subtext you don't necessarily need to recognize to enjoy Delivery as a solid horror film, but it adds layers and emotional resonance to the story.

As a film, it's what you might call a high B; a solid 8/10 performance from something that looks like it's working with 1/10 resources. They tapped into something and everyone involved very clearly committed. There are of course multiple trigger warnings around babies, pregnancy, and animals. But the ending. That was something.

[syndromestatic]

Something I’ve been thinking about… because of recent moominous events & also the classes I’m taking:

Queer artistry is so so special. & when a queer artist creates something, it resonates with other queer people. The art becomes inherently queer. I think it could probably be debated if all art made by a queer person is, necessarily, queer- separation of art and artist and all that- but at least I think that’s the case.

The question is: does this remain the case after the artist is gone and their art is altered? You probably see where I’m going with this. We think of these characters as inherently queer because of their long and storied history, but at the same time, we know that Moominvalley has changed these characters, too. I’m not going to definitively state that they’re made… not queer, because I don’t believe that to be fully true, but if fundamental aspects of their character and how we perceive it can be changed, can their queerness be so as well? And if the queerness is not erased, then what is it? tamped down? undermined? mishandled?

& Maybe this is the point where you go “okay static it’s not that deep” but I really do think it is! Moominvalley 2019 mishandles a lot of things, i daresay even skirts around the queerness of itself without fully leaving it out. Here is my main case: If they were going to be more explicit with Moomin and Snufkin’s queercoding, that very much should have been followed through with. & let’s speak on how much Moominvalley played around with and constantly changed the nature of Snorkmaiden and Moomin’s romantic relationship with little to no actual explanation or context? Guys I don’t know. It’s odd, it’s weird, and it certainly doesn’t sit right with me.

To me, Season 3 left off in a place where Snufkin and Moomin’s relationship was at it’s tipping point between romantic and platonic- the season literally ends with them arm and arm- And that’s why season 4 falls flat in the demonstration of their relationship. I never expected season 4 to deliver on that front in the first place- by season 2 I felt that the Moomin/Snufkin moments were heavy handed and a bit too forced to be completely natural, and I knew it wasn’t about to become explicitly canon in the first place because Moomin and Snufkin never have been- but to me it’s about follow through and writing, and the fact they were dropping such obnoxious hints only for that tension to be dropped last season feels like both a cop-out, and perhaps even intentional.

The contemporary Moomin boom occurred in 2019, in the wake of the series. Shippers went wild. absolutely nuts. If Moomin has no fans, the world is dead, but this definitely contributed to a spike in viewership. and listen. Season 1 had its flaws but if every season onwards was of the same quality, and each season included the snufmin subtext only as much as season 1, I would not be upset right now. I do, in fact, believe, that the queer fanbase of this show was teased and strung along with the Moomin/Snufkin relationship. And I think the way it was handled in season 4 was due to the fact that they wouldn’t need that part of the show to, excuse my terminology, bait viewers along because it was the last season. Obviously this is all speculation, but I really don’t think it’s all that unlikely. And I’m not even saying that it’s strictly the writers’ fault, but I think there was someone in power who let the queer shit- the shit was was just obvious enough to give young queer viewers fuel- pass by for as long as it was useful, but by no means could the show surpass a certain limit.

Ahem anyways I love Moomins and I dislike Moominvalley 2019… for many reasons but also for this… sorry for incoherencies, typos, the like.

[mdzs-fanon-examine]

MDZS Fanon VS Canon: 12/?

Lan Wangji waited for Wei Wuxian to resurrect

Rating: FANON – NEUTRAL

It seems plausible that Lan Wangji hoped for – or even specifically waited for – Wei Wuxian to resurrect. However, there is no canon confirmation either way. This concept often goes hand-in-hand with the idea that Lan Wangji played Inquiry every day, which – per a post on this blog – is fanon.

There are some specific moments that I'd like to analyze with regards to this idea:

First, the fact that Lan Wangji keeps Emperor's Smile in his room, under his floorboards (Seven Seas Ch. 4). When Wei Wuxian asks if Lan Wangji drank any, he answers:

Lan Wangji fixed his sleeves and said quietly, "I did not touch a single jug of Emperor’s Smile." Wei Wuxian teased, "Why are you hiding the jugs, then? Keeping them for me? Fine, fine. You didn’t touch them.” (Seven Seas Ch. 7)

Wei Wuxian explicitly brings up the idea that Lan Wangji was saving them for him, although he doesn't seem to mean this seriously and Lan Wangji never addresses that comment.

It's possible that the jars of Emperor's Smile were simply meant as a memento – we know Lan Wangji kept a peony from Wei Wuxian as a bookmark, for example. In the absence of many other possible mementos, Lan Wangji may have latched onto an item he knew for a fact Wei Wuxian liked.

It's also possible that Wei Wuxian accidentally hit on the truth – Lan Wangji doesn't drink the Emperor's Smile, and unlike other, more static objects that he could have collected, alcohol is a consumable and seems more like a gift one would give to a live person.

Another point in the books that seems to indicate Lan Wangji didn't believe Wei Wuxian was dead is after the Yi City arc, when the juniors burn joss money for Xiao Xingchen and A-Qing:

He turned his head to Lan Wangji and whispered, “Hanguang-jun, did you burn any paper money for me? At least you did, right?” Lan Wangji cast a glance at him, then lowered his head and brushed off the bit of ash staining the end of his sleeve. He gazed quietly into the distance, not providing a single comment. Wei Wuxian watched his serene profile and thought, No way? He really didn’t?! (Seven Seas Ch. 8)

Lan Wangji did not burn joss money for Wei Wuxian, which might seem to indicate that he did not believe Wei Wuxian would need it, in cases such as "he comes back to life" or "he was never fully dead." However, there is a simpler explanation for this: Lan Wangji did not believe the joss money would do anything.

In Mo Dao Zu Shi, joss money is explicitly a practice for non-cultivators. In cultivation society, it's common knowledge that paper money does not work:

He turned to Lan Wangji. “Hanguang-jun, look at what the children have gotten up to, right on other people’s doorsteps. Why didn’t you stop them?” Lan Wangji replied blandly, “Why didn’t you stop them?” “Fine. I’ll help you manage them,” Wei Wuxian said. And so he went. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Each and every one of you is a junior of a cultivation clan—did your daddies, mommies, shushus, or bobos never teach you that the dead can’t receive paper money? What do the dead need money for? They won’t get any of it. Besides, burning the paper money here, in front of other people’s homes…” (Seven Seas Ch. 8)

The juniors only attempt this because they are so overcome with emotion. Despite the points they bring up later about how they can't truly know if it works – and Wei Wuxian realizes he can't prove it because nobody burnt him any – Lan Wangji, having been brought up in cultivation society and thus knowing that paper money is a rudimentary and ineffective practice, would not have burnt any regardless of his feelings about Wei Wuxian's death.

Despite this analysis, there is nothing that really indicates Lan Wangji's feelings on the matter one way or another. My personal opinion regarding Lan Wangji's personality is that he would not have waited for the hypothetical situation in which Wei Wuxian resurrected, but instead he moved on with his life, raising Lan Sizhui and going where the chaos is – remembering Wei Wuxian, of course, but not wallowing in his grief (and he had three years to wallow, anyways). However, I feel unequipped to provide tangible proof about these aspects of Lan Wangji's personality with the limits I've given myself for this blog, so take this paragraph with a grain of salt.

So, in the end: given this is not supported by the text, but also not explicitly unsupported, I'm rating this as FANON – NEUTRAL.

As always, if you want to contribute with more meta, correct me on any points, or challenge my rating, please do so.

[codiecoda]

[Hiccup] Fic Exercise: Fic Based Off A Random Word

Summary: Hawks makes a small hiccup when it comes to minding Endeavor's flames now he must choose whether to try and hide the outcome or come right out with it and accept the consequences given

Hawks knew just how many times Endeavor had explicitly told him to keep his distance when he was actively using his quirk. He knew his wings couldn't stand the heat yet despite all this he still didn't listen to him and now he had a very apparent patch of missing feathers. It wasn't like he wanted this to happen but there was certainly no denying how warm Endeavor felt of how he was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. He just kept getting burned and he just knew what Endeavor would say when he saw them or rather the lack there of.

Initially Hawks thought he could just avoid Endeavor for a few days giving his wings plenty of time to replace the feathers but with how often he spent chasing after Endeavor his absence was quickly taken notice of not only by Endeavor himself but his sidekicks too. Most of the texts and calls he could simply ignore or blow off with a half assed response but Endeavor's weren't that easy and as the days passed by it was clear he was getting impatient. 

“Endeavor baby, what's up?” Hawks asked cheerfully as he finally picked up on the last ring, knowing that if he kept ignoring them that it'd probably be reason enough for him to come looking. “Miss me already? Well I certainly miss you—”

“Where are you?” Endeavor asked bluntly, getting straight to the point. “You haven't been by my Agency in almost a week, you haven't been answering my calls, and whenever my sidekicks try to contact you they either can't get through to you either or they get blown off.”

“Well I am a busy man, Endeavor, being the number two hero and all.” Hawks mused, unable to hide his smile. “It is sweet to see you worry so much.”

“You're avoiding the question.” Endeavor acknowledged, growingly increasingly annoyed. “I want to know your location. If you insist on ignoring me then I really must assume that something is wrong. Forget if I'm tracing your location.”

This really had Hawks panicking. He knew if Endeavor came here there would be no way to hide his missing feathers so he resorted to the only thing he could think of at that moment. It was stupid but it was the only thing he had.

“Shhh… shhh.. I— I think we're breaking up!” Hawks called out, faking radio static. “Shhh— Bye Endeavor!”

With that Hawks promptly ended the call, tossing his phone to the side, seeming just confident enough that this trick worked that he didn't bother to lock up his apartment or pretend not to be home. That ended up being his ultimate downfall as soon after the call ended Endeavor showed up at his door. Any other time he would be leaping at the opportunity but this wasn't one of those times.

“Hawks!” Endeavor called, giving him just enough time to hide his wings. “If you're not going to answer I'm coming in!”

“Endeavor, baby, what a wonderful surprise!” Hawks greeted cheerfully, quickly opening the door. “Come in— come in—”

“Are you feeling alright?” Endeavor questioned, seeming suspicious by how the bird was acting. “You seem different.. hm.. you're covering your wings.”

“They’re cold Endeavor.” Hawks lied, seeming very blunt with his response. “Not all of us can be a raging ball of heat like you.”

This seemed to shut Endeavor up for at least a moment. Unfortunately for Hawks his absence seemed to have ignited some sort of kindness within Endeavor as the mere mention of him being cold had Endeavor pulling him into his arms. For a moment Hawks completely forgot about his missing feathers. Certainly a mistake Endeavor was not very forgiving of. 

“What happened to your feathers?” Endeavor asked, recognizing the guilty expression on his bird's face. “Is this why you've been avoiding me? Hawks—”

“If you're going to lecture me about being more comfortable we both know you're wasting your breath.” Hawks cut in, snuggling into the warmth. “It's in my nature. You can't blame me, Endeavor.”

There was no keeping Hawks away from his flames. This Endeavor knew but after this week he realized something. When worse came to worse the last thing he wanted was Hawks hiding this from him. He missed him and even more so he missed knowing he was okay. 

“Perhaps not but I would like to remind you that fire and wings don't mix.. neither does scaring me.” Endeavor stated clearly, loosening his grip on the bird ever so slightly. “Accidents happen but don't let that keep you from me.”

“Never realized you were such a softie Endeavor.” Hawks jested, retracting his wings before his flames lit. “So warm..”

One little hiccup was certainly nothing to stop a moth from a flame or Hawks from Endeavor. 

[mllemaenad]

Tim provided his statement to Martin and not the Archivist and used the same grammar and tone that people typically use when speaking to John. Maybe it's a tiny plot hole, like why Georgie is able to be compelled by John even though she's incapable of feeling fear, but maybe you have a point

I ... don't feel like that's a plot hole, though? At least, it's not inconsistent with the way I think it works.

For one thing, the process of drawing out a story is more about presence and intent than it is about the Archivist looming over someone and turning on the static. For another, as you say, Tim's talking to Martin and the Martin situation is complicated.

For a not insignificant portion of Gertrude's tenure, people mostly sat in a room by themselves and wrote out the statements. They even reference it, sometimes.

John/"Antonio Blake" But I recognise you. As I write these words I can see you in the other room, eyes locked on whatever book you’re diverting yourself with; I recognise you from my dreams. They said at the front desk that you review all the written statements, so I can only hope that you take the time to read through this one fully. – The Magnus Archives: Dreamer

But that works too: it produces the same fluid, descriptive style that you get from the spoken statements. Everyone who walks into The Magnus Institute immediately transforms into a capable writer of late 19th to early 20th century style ghost stories.

The Doylist explanation for that is that the creator enjoys that style. The Watsonian explanation is that the presence of the Archivist produces it.

While I Guess You Had to Be There is mostly played for humour, there are more serious examples of how this works.

Martin/Adelard Dekker I do envy you your gifts sometimes, Gertrude. His account of their pursuit through the mirror-maze was honestly so disjoint that I was unable to follow it. Even after he tried to take me through it two, or even three times. Without the Eye’s clarifying influence, panic can make details… difficult to remember. – The Magnus Archives: Reflection

Dekker is intelligent and knowledgeable, and dealing with a willing interview subject. But none of that allows him to draw a coherent description from a guy who is just too terrified to be a reliable witness. Get Gertrude to stand next to him while he does this and the problem goes away.

The Archivist doesn't actually have to take the statement, but something about their presence or influence greases the wheels.

Sneak Preview takes place during one of those rare moments in season three when they actually know where John is. He's in China, sure, but he's in contact and not kidnapped right this second. Things go off the rails for the assistants specifically when he has been taken, and is under the power of other avatars.

And yeah – it's Martin. Martin spends a lot of the story inhabiting a weird grey area between Archivist and not-Archivist. The question of whether someone is an avatar or not is clearly more than a simple binary. There's a process here. John is "the Archivist" from day one, but he can't do most of the stuff he can by season four at that point.

Everyone who reads statements does that thing where they lapse into a kind of trance and take on the persona of the storyteller. It happens with Melanie and Basira too. But only Martin consistently reads the statements, and reads them explicitly with the intent of "filling in" for John. He takes other statements in person too, intentionally and otherwise – the unnamed woman in Scrutiny, Simon Fairchild in Big Picture, and Simon calls out the fact that Martin has the same ability to draw out a tale.

Simon No wonder I’m so sympathetic to the Lonely! You know, this really is a place for self-discovery, isn’t it? (chuckles) Statement ends, I suppose. Martin Er – I’m sorry? Simon Oh, nothing, just my own hubris. I should have known. When I came here, I said to myself, “Simon,” I said, “You’re going to answer this young man’s questions, but you’re not going to give the Watcher a statement. You’re better than that.” But it’s a hard one to resist, isn’t it? You get in the flow of talking about yourself, and it all just… tumbles out! – The Magnus Archives: Big Picture

Obviously the path Martin walks is not the same as John's, but one of the prerequisites of that path was that he be a little bit Archivist.

And in Sneak Preview, Martin is very much encouraging Tim to tell his story to John.

Martin Please, Tim. Tim No. Martin He needs to hear it. Tim I don’t care. Martin He can’t help if he doesn’t know. Tim I don’t want his help, Martin. – The Magnus Archives: Sneak Preview

So yeah – Tim is very much telling his story to the Archivist. It's just that it's better if he doesn't do that when said Archivist is physically present, in order to avoid unnecessary bouts of fisticuffs in the break room. And Martin is deliberately acting as John's proxy here, a role that he also grows into over time.

There's a lot of stuff going on with the tech in The Magnus Protocol, to the point where I'm reasonably convinced that "network protocols" is an important interpretation of the name.

The Magnus Archives dealt largely with stories that had been written down with pen and paper, and it was a significant plot point that they actually couldn't use anything more advanced than a tape recorder. The laptop failed to produce useful recordings.

In The Magnus Protocol everything is online, either because it was created as such originally, or because Freddy has packaged it up and delivered it to the OIAR. It's the tech that produces the stories and thus I would contend that it is also the tech that produces the style of those stories.

The characters talk like that because their apps, their phones, that bloody tape recorder, produce the same effect as the presence of the Archivist.

[mettamorph]

on the nature of her behaviors, her outlook, and where it comes from.

cws, grooming, sa topics, manipulation, parental/guardian abuse, ect...

Carla has a lot going on internally, and has for a long time.

She never had a strong start to her existence. She was in foster care for her early childhood, and was adopted out by her parental guardian, Derek. From that point on, she was put on a track for the explicit purpose of being his pet scientist. Derek is the kind of person that views people as assets and resources to have possession of.

He changed her surname when she was formally adopted to reflect his muse, "Ada", making reference an opera "Aida" with the surname "Radames". He thought he was very clever for this. This becomes a clearer act of violence later.

Of course she acquired this point of view from him. He is literally the only static social contact she has from age 6-21, and even then it's not that much. There's absolutely no way she had her autonomy reinforced or even suggested during this time period, because again, she's a possession, and he is powerful.

She had a very, very short view of her own life, expecting to die in custody because she had some kind of degenerative genetic condition that was eating her alive, thus, very little in her life had rich meaning or mattered. It's a miserable state to be in. Derek expected a specific kind of perfection from her as well that was unforgiving. His obscenely high expectations were also meant for an adult, not a child.

It kickstarts her psychosis episodes, symptomatic of something that will come back to haunt her throughout her life.

Derek's turn towards grossly investing in his obsession with Ada started when Carla was twelve. Again, Carla's a possession, not a person. Derek can do whatever he wants to her, or with her. He is currently her parent/guardian. He owns her. He tracked her into her programs to fully invest in his cloning hairbrained scheme. It's a madness for Derek, who is obsessed with control.

Derek turned on Carla after over a decade of knowing her, watching her grow up as her adopted parent. And he turned her into a fetish slave explicitly for sexual purposes. He trained her again to be a completely different person through his typical perfectionist manner. He trained her to be controlled and manipulated into sexual situations, and manipulated into his personal soldier.

Carla is obsessed with chaos in stark contrast to Derek's commitment to control and order. She reveres chaos as much more honest than order could ever be. Derek saw himself as a "little god", a term used by the prosperity gospel cult, and something he sincerely believed in as more of an "earthly" and "logic driven individual".

This excuses Nothing she did abominable while under his care. She was responsible for excessive deaths of test subjects. It explains her complete madness later at this violation.

By the end of her subjugation to Derek, human life (including her own), had virtually no meaning to it, to her, but to be catalysts for the "honest" truth: The World Is Rotted. The Systems Are Rotted. No One Will Come For Me.

It's a generalization made out of a lot of pain. She's spent most of her life as property of Derek Simmons. She's obsessed with hurting him, hurting his order, destroying the sanctity and reverence of it.

She's also in a lot of pain. Two things can be true at one: You can be a deeply cruel and vile individual, and you can be in a lot of pain.

I think it's no coincidence she intentionally puts herself in the role of the Archetypal Devil so often. Her self-perception is that she absolutely is a Demon.

[luxury-nightmare]

Security breach theory time!

ok so in the mimic ending of the game, Gregory says his “friend” has access to the building maps. It would be assumed he’s talking about Freddy, but why would the developers choose to static out his name ifs he’s just talking about Freddy? Also, Cassie herself is a very interesting character. How does she know Gregory? Why does she know Gregory? her name, Cassie, also seems very similar to another, certain vengeful spirit we know.

If you brighten Cassie’s photo from the ruin poster, you can see she’s in black and white, similar to the spirits we saw in fnaf three. Also, due to the lightening she appears to be lighter haired. Now take a look at the vengeful spirt from ucn.

Lighter hair. Also, due to the survival logbook we know that the vengeful spirits name is most likely Cassidy

Cassie. Cassidy. Many have also pointed out the similarities between the crying child and Gregory. If not believing them to be the same person, it is implied that Gregory is at least a metaphorical stand in for the crying child. So here’s my theory; the two kids from sb and the ruin dlc are either explicitly or metaphorically the two souls of golden Freddy, Gregory as the crying child and Cassie as the vengeful spirit. And if you are to believe that Cassidy was the spirit inside the Pq arcade games, then her use of vanny’s mask make more sense as her and vanny are connected in some way. So I don’t believe the Gregory was referring to Freddy in that call

I believe he was talking about the crying child

But hey that just a theory. A tumblr theory!

edit: a quick note. When Gregory’s giving the instructions to Cassie on how to escape, his voice seems a little more echoey and timid, a little less like Gregory’s and a little more like the crying child’s

[driverpicksthepodcast]

First up, some camouflaged praise: I feel so spoiled this week from all the bonus episodes you have released. It was a LOT of fun!

I am listening to the Destiel edition episode now, and I just got to the point where you mentioned the Then and now podcast. I am listening to it. I started because I was curious and I stayed for the humour. Also Rob is the cutest middle-aged man I know of, haha.

They haven't brought up Destiel specifically, and the way they cover the actual story in the episodes is far from as detailed as you and the other Pod Squad people's method. So if they mention lines it is because it caught their attention. They also personally know the main cast, so I assume that they will see an actor/friend acting instead of being immersed in the story. After all it is a job for them -- though they claim to be on their way to become fans.

While they haven't explicitly discussed Destiel, sometimes they make some mistakes which are very interesting to me (who has a moderate to severe case of spn/destiel brainrot). Rob did refer to Castiel as Castiel Winchester at one point, for example. It was during their usual credits listing at the end of the episode (they included the blooper at the end of the episode).

There are probably other stuff they talk about which is interesting in terms of how much the fandom has influenced their perspectives. But the "Castiel Winchester" one is something I will not forget about. I'll follow up with an episode link (spotify) and a timestamp if I find the will and time to listen through the tail ends of the 11 possible episodes...

cont.

I found the episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6kXmoqgZstbCdQyDrQBySq?si=de6b8989c40b438a

The credits listing is at 52:31 and you can hear that they cut right after Rob says "Castiel". In the blooper starting at 53:53 he reminds himself that "It's just Castiel. He doesn't have the last name Winchester. Castiel Johnson." I remembered wrong though: Rob doesn't actually say Castiel Winchester, but Rich does (after the static thing which separates bloopers)

*********

Ok so first up, hello! thank you SO much for your message! super glad to know you enjoyed the bonus content, we've been beyond excited to release it :)

Good to know the Then & Now pod is a fun time! I was going to say I was surprised that they don't go into as much depth as the fan run casts but honestly I think that makes a lot of sense when you think about it, at the end of the day we're out to create a different product than they are (I assume their focus probably falls more in the camp of behind the scenes and production discussion rather than more of an analysis on the characters, themes, and plots?). Plus, I think you make a great point about them seeing their friends and co-workers rather than characters, they have an entirely different perspective on the entire process than we do (which is the appeal of getting their thoughts on things like podcasts and panels I guess haha).

When it comes to Destiel, I suppose it's really a waiting game to see if / how they'll address it, lucky we've got plenty of fic & fan run casts to get us through regardless! Tbh I always thought the CW missed out on some really obvious marketing opportunities by not cashing in on Castiel Winchester (CW) being a thing haha

Thank you for taking the time to go back through and find the right episodes and time stamps! you've really put in the hard yards on that one! <3

[splashink-games]

Climbing a Mountain (again)

Bread & Fred is a co-op platformer by Sandcastles Studios! Jump, swing, and climb up to the peak with a good pal!

I'm planning to play the game solo soon-ish but I've beaten the game with a friend! Great experience. 10/10. Checkpoints are a feature.

Actually, let's start with that. Checkpoints are a mechanic that you actually turn on in the game, though it did take us a hot minute to do so. The fact that there aren't static checkpoints is kinda wacky if you ask me. Especially since you can kind of abuse the checkpoints by placing them on any immovable, unbreaking platform.

My friend compared the no-checkpoint experience to Getting Over It, with way better controls.

But the game was super solid. Movement was always satisfying, even when you're falling 50+ metres down the mountain. Absolutely hilarious watching the penguins spin and circle and slam every platform on the way down.

Swinging around a platform in a full circle (which we called "power swinging") was super cool and I liked that the game does mention it explicitly in the manual. Mixing it with the wind really does send the penguins flying.

I actually find it really interesting in hindsight that the control of the timing always relies on the anchor. They decide the take off on a power swing. They decide when to let go of a wall to swing to a platform. Everything except jumping relies on the anchor and I find that really awesome.

One of the best features of the game was the in-game countdown. Due to latency, it was immensely useful (and would have otherwise been impossible) to time our jumping. Using voice chat would always be a count off, surprisingly. But the countdown was on-point, even when we weren't.

Other than that, we found a couple of ways to break the rope-pulling mechanic to make the last two sections a bit easier on our minds. Well, whether it's a feature or a glitch, we don't know, so we'll assume the former. The first was pulling together so the wind didn't push us (as opposed to anchoring). The second was pulling together so as to not slide on the ice (where anchoring/walking didn't help at all)! Super helpful for the last two sections of the mountain.

The mechanics combined with the graphics definitely remind me of another mountain climbing platformer. *cough* Celeste *cough*

Oh, but the graphics! One of the reasons I really like this game is its visual resemblance to Celeste (aka one of my favourite games of all time). The cool tones, the cute pixel art. Fantastic winter vibes. Kind of a waste to have played it in the summer, but that's alright.

As another game that's light on story, I do wish there was more. For the main story, I don't get much of anything? Old Man Penguin wants us to climb the mountain for whatever reason and there are photographs he wants us to collect on the way. I don't know why we climb the mountain. We simply climb. And I didn't really even understand the ending.

One thing I'd want to explore more is the side missions. I didn't get to look into them because the game is actually kind of mentally taxing when you're "bad" at it. But also, how do you bring items to places while also needing to platform?? I'll only wonder.

But these side missions do look like they'd hold some fun stories. There's only 3 or 4 of them so maybe I'll get to that some day.

Surprisingly, the music went over my head. Probably because I was too busy dealing with plummeting after face-planting on a wall and sliding off some perfectly placed ice slopes.

However, the sound effects were top tier. Very awesome falling sounds. Jumping and swinging feels a lot more satisfying, along with the countdown, with the sounds. Especially when your partner jumps at the same exact time and the sound just overlaps.

Overall, I think my friend and I had an amazing time with this game.

So grab a friend, friends, because Bread & Fred is a great game to lose your minds to!

As always,

Enjoy Gaming!

[ethan-h-2025]

Some drafts of continued iterations I am exploring of my formative hand in version poster.

I wanted to explore more with circles to see how I could push forth the concept of taking the cytoplasm and merging it with typography.

So I drew some circles (inspired by my previous poster annotation) to use as a kind of orbit for circles. This was also partly inspired by my lecturer commenting on my after effects exploration saying it was like an orbit, so it’s thought provoking to analyse how motion can influence static, rather than reverse.

and so these are the iterations i produced. in the first of the three i used OCR A Extended which is a type face with very few options (actually, none) so I wouldn't use it "officially" but it felt as though it would fit so i tried it out anyway. and fit it does, but the lack of variation is problematic in evoking any kind of harmony or balance for me. I'm glad I tested this out to learn from it.

however, the hand drawn shapes are very playful and energetic and informal, so I am eager to try out a more thoughtful iteration with this style.

The obvious inspiration here is concrete poetry, which is a form I wouldve used in the past not knowing what it actually was, so learning about the historical context of it is so useful. However, I actually discovered this in research for my other class, and we were explicitly told not to self-plagiarise and so I think for the purposes of consistency I should avoid this use of form. That said, earlier in my blog, I layered type in such a way that could be considered a kind of concrete poetry-esque layering. It's interesting to reflect on the way our forms of playful iterative development unintentionally resembles styles we arent aware exist.

for this draft, it ended up resembling flower, which is fine.. if it was intentional. I really want to find a way to make a gathering of the circles work in an harmonious way. So far, including the draft below, I havent been able to do it to my taste. I wanted the white stroke here to add depth and detail to highlight the 'bunchiness' cytoplasmic qualities of the shape, but it feels imbalanced in terms of weight. I will check in with my lecturer next lesson for feedback to find the right terminology. Overall, I dont really feel anything positive about this.

using type here in a similar to how i used the circles prior feels a little closer to where I want to be going. I am trying to be very aware of my type usage and priority in terms of communication. so this where I would like to be heading. While I am not happy with this, I feel good about using this as a reference point for where I need to go to better connect with the philosophical and metaphysical theory behind my site of connection!

[novanhistorian]

Terms of Reference and Novan Historiography

1.7k words.

Happy February, everyone. I survived the last month. I have also been reading The Scarlet Letter, a fact which is largely responsible for the current peculiarity of my narrative voice; please enjoy, if possible, and if not, please bear with me.

I don't have a particularly good summary for this one; it's essentially an answer to "how does novan society handle it when someone comes out as trans and changes how they're to be referred to?", with notes on other circumstances in which one might change one's name.

I ought, first, to begin with the notion of terms of reference. This is the over-category for three things: name, pronouns, and grammatical and titular gender. The former two are straightforward to explain, as most human societies also had concepts of them; the latter is more difficult, though not by much.

Titular gender is, for English-speakers, the more familiar of these concepts. It is, as the name implies, the gender of the titles used to refer to a person—it is the difference between Mr., Mrs., and Mx., in reference to a married person. In novan Esperanto, most titles have a genderless default form and three gendered forms, the latter of which a person must explicitly specify that they wish to use.

Grammatical gender is a concept for which I am going to link you a Wikipedia article because my layperson’s summary here may not do it justice. In some languages, nouns are divided into categories called genders, and each category behaves slightly differently grammatically. Out of these languages I am most familiar with Spanish, so I shall take it as my example here. Its nouns and adjectives are divided into masculine and feminine, fairly arbitrarily; masculine nouns and adjectives usually end in -o, and feminine nouns and adjectives usually end in -a.* If one is describing a noun, one must use the version of the adjective that aligns with the noun’s gender—to do otherwise is ungrammatical. Hence gata roja (“red cat, specifically female”) as opposed to *gata rojo. The reverse is also true—no *gatos rojas. Some languages are known to change outright the way verbs conjugate, but that is very complicated and I have yet to make a study of it, so we shall stick to nouns and adjectives here.

Neither English nor Esperanto* does that, but Parrus’ and Latin, the most widespread minority languages, do. Their grammatical gendering as applied to people is split masculine/feminine/sendua, reflecting the gender trinary typical of novan and late human society. In Latin’s case it absorbed the old neuter/inanimate gender, to the consternation of philosophers everywhere; the early speakers of Parrus’, by contrast, simply decided to have another grammatical gender, and the resultant system differentiates m/f/s/inanimate.

* The closest thing Esperanto shows to this is gender variants of occupational nouns—kuiristo, “cook,” for instance—using the gendering suffix/infixes -iĉ-, -in-, -is-. This is very uncommon, and it is considered an aspect of titular gender when it does occur. This is why I did not provide actor/actress and fiancé/fiancée as English approximates of grammatical gender.

So, to recap, name, pronouns, and grammatical/titular gender are the things called, collectively, the terms of reference.

Terms of reference, once established, are often static; novan society shows little propensity to have its members’ nicknames exceed the sphere of their immediate friends, and for most people gender is more or less consistent over time. Still, they do change, and that poses a problem for historiographers.

The general tendency in post-human historiography is to call the person whatever they were publicly known as at a given time; as an example, a biography of this fellow would call him (Louis) Chevreux up until the point he became better known by the alias (Louis de) Beaufront, and from then on he would be Beaufront in a more informal biography and M. de Beaufront in a more reverent or earlier one. (Novan titles are complicated. Someday I’ll make a post about them.)

This is the rule in most every case, but there are three broad categories of special case, which I shall dispatch with here. The first two are the complete suppression of a previous name, as the result of a socially-accepted “complete hush;” the third is a special case of the second.

Our first case is the early novan Moreau, the first line header of the third gento ever created. To quote a bit of the Sketch of History I have yet to publish: “At this early stage every novan was expected to be a public figure, very open and with nothing to hide; and, unlike humans, novans were essentially only referred to by their personal names. Everywhere Evo Darwin went, she was Evo, no matter if she had never met anyone there. The news called her Evo, strangers on the street (in the tunnels?) called her Evo. Her spouse actually started calling her Darwin for a bit because it felt more intimate. The first three accepted and tolerated it, but it disgusted Anahita Moreau and thereby was one part of the cause of a major political event a few decades down the line.”

As stated, Moreau hated this. She was the first novan to sully her hands (and more importantly her species’s reputation) with politics, and a major aim of the movement that coalesced around her was correcting the name gap. The movement was internally nameless because of the Human Tenure ban on political parties, but when reference to them was made it was as “Anahita’s people” or “the Anahitists.” Partially at Moreau’s goading—she loved how it made the press and the public start calling her by her surname, like she was an equal, human member of society—they eventually simplified that to “the Anahita.” It was well underway by the time Moreau turned forty, and—expert drama-stoker that she was—she used that seminal birthday to officially donate her given name to the movement. Henceforth she herself was to be known as Moreau, no more and no less.

Moreau, as a revered figure in novan culture, pretty much universally has that wish heeded. Many early Imperial biographies omitted entirely any connection of the name “Anahita” to her as opposed to the movement, taking it as a given that everyone would simply know. This is not always the case, and often a political renouncing only lasts two or three generations before the biographers stop caring.

Our second exemplar is Henryk T. I. Telkes (Ĉl*), a minor senator and secret occultist from shortly before the First Civil War. Assumed female at birth, he realized quite early that he was in fact male, and as a result he petitioned his parents to rename him. (This is typical of West-Northern riĉula culture, but atypical of the wider Imperium; it remains expected behavior to choose one’s own name if one discovers that one’s assumed or “infantile” gender is inaccurate.) They decided on Henryk, after a recently-deceased relative, he liked the name, and thenceforth no mention was made of his infantile name; deadnames, as they were called in human parlance, are the most common cause of complete hushes. Thus, in biographies of Telkes—or, more commonly, of Pseudo-Paimon, the nom de plume under which he published his books on the occult—he is throughout his whole life referred to by the corrected terms of reference, H. T. I. Telkes, Ĉl; if his infantile name appears, it is as an incidental bit of trivia.

* The absence of a /ĉ, /n, or /s after the gender and pronoun indicators simply means one is assumed to use the default neutral titles and the grammatical gender that corresponds to one’s actual gender, but does not have an especial opinion.

I do not have much more to write about this case, except to note that novan society is quite used to trans people and as a result does not see it as worth a fuss when one of its members corrects their publicly-known gender. (If only humanity were so polite.) Unlike a term-of-reference change undertaken for political reasons, gender-related hushes persist for the rest of time.

My third example is an exception to the rule described above, wherein no hush descends because of the preferences of the trans individual. Johan- Zanabazar (…we’ll get to this) was the emperor whose stepping-down led to the First Civil War; I end his name with a hyphen because throughout his life he went, at various times, by Johano, Johana, and Johann. He was a cadet, during which time he went by Johano; for most of her military career, including her time as an imperator, she alternated between Johana and Johann; he marked his retirement from imperatorship with a term-of-reference change, so we see him as emperor under Johano once again; re was assassinated a few years later under the pseudonym Bhagyam, with which re appears to have actually identified.*

* After Bhagyam Linnaeus (Ĉl/ĉ), first Presiding Imperator; quite a common name.

He made no public or private statements about what his gender was—and believe me, historians have looked—nor did he spend much time explaining why he undertook so many changes in his terms of reference. The only official assertions he made were that he should be referred to “over the whole of time” (that is, when no specific period was in question, but rather the person as a whole) with masculine pronouns and neutral terms wherever possible, and that he did not want a complete hush placed over his past terms of reference. Even that had to come out in response to a news article.

That, dear reader, ends both our third special case and our description of the historiographical handling of terms of reference.

[genderjourneyjournal]

Gender Journal Day #114

Date 12/14/24

This is a personal journal about my gender journey my therapist recommended I make. Mostly about gender stuff but also anything else. Feel free to keep reading but keep in mind it’s going to be my unfiltered, personal thoughts.

It’s been a while. I’ve just been deep in the trenches with end of semester work. So I’ve been very tired and haven’t had much time to focus on myself.

I had a talk with a friend last night. I wanted to open up about how scary it is being trans right now. We got into a fight over how they talked about men. They have very valid reasons to hate and be afraid of men. Pretty much all women do. I just didn’t like the way she spoke about it. I know how it sounds but I just wanted to point out that she needs to recognize not all men are like that. The way she speaks can be very “I hate men, they’re terrible” and I was trying to explain how shitty men have already demonized women who talk like that as nothing but “whiny feminists who will complain about anything and just want to hate on men”. And this is bad because it teaches guys not to take women seriously. So if you want men to change you can’t blanketly demonize masculinity.

I understand why she feels like she can’t trust any man she meets or is even in the vicinity of a man. I feel bad because I really don’t want to invalidate some of the very hard things she’s had to live with. She’s one of my best friends. I think it just struck a nerve because she said something that rang bells in my head as sounding kind of TERF-y and I guess I got defensive. But I also didn’t want to lose a friend to those kinds of insidious ideas that prey on people’s vulnerabilities and fears. A trans masc friend of mine also told me she said that when she’s talking about men she wasn’t referring to him, which made me feel defensive of my friend even though he didn’t ask me too.

I just hope I didn’t hurt her feelings. Even if I didn’t get my point across.

Anyway, my point. Last night we were texting, and I wanted to open up to her about how scary it’s been. I try to be strong for her because she gets really anxious and is really upset with the political climate in the USA right now. I want to try to be a pillar for her and seem strong so she has someone to rely on as a friend. But last night I wanted to let her understand how it’s actually been for me. I wanted to let her know that it’s been scary and frustrating for me.

If I were to try and go out and experiment with my gender presentation like I want to, then I have to kind of be afraid of everyone. I wanted her to understand that the way she feels about men is how I’d have to approach literally every other person because trans people are kind of political enemy no 1 in the USA right now. And it sucks because my therapist is kind of right in that I’m going to need to actually try something in order to figure out my gender at this point. Like, even if I end up physically fine, how long will it be before I can feel safe trying for a different gender presentation? Because it’s going to be a long time before I get it perfect, not that I’m even sure how I want to present yet. Like, am I going to have to explain to my kids that I can’t pick them up from school because I needed to use a public bathroom once and got listed as a sex offender? I can’t afford to fail at gender presentation but that also means I can’t experiment. At least not in places that aren’t explicitly queer.

What hurts even more about it is that I’ve just started to get a taste of what I could have, too. I’ve dipped my toe in enough that I’ve seen what it could be. For so long it’s felt like I was living with like, a layer of tv static between me and the rest of the world. Just, it rarely felt like anything was real. But when I have a chance to experiment with feminine stuff, it feels like that veil of static is lifted for a little bit. I get to actually feel alive again. But before I can even figure out my gender identity and how I might want to pursue transition, trans people become the biggest political scapegoat. So now, I have to choose between putting myself in danger every time I leave the house, or continue feeling like I’m not alive for the next 4 years and hope that things aren’t too bad by then. But at the same time, by then I’ll be almost 30. I’d like to enjoy at least a bit of my youth. I’d like to not spend only the last 60% of my life actually feeling like I’m alive. I want to start now.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure my friend understood how I felt. It was late. And I didn’t explain it as passionately as I did here. But maybe that’s what I deserve for being so insensitive to her feelings.

It’s just frustrating. I finally know that I can feel like I’m alive again but can’t pursue that for years. Like, I don’t even have the comfort of denial anymore. Now I am VERY aware of how not okay I’ve been feeling because I felt how much better it’s possible to feel just by wearing a dress!

On the upside at least my new anxiety meds are finally kicking in I think. Despite how busy and behind I am with school stuff I’m not stressing out as bad as I normally do. I thought originally I just passed the point of being so tired and busy that I don’t even have the spare energy to worry or get upset at setbacks anymore, but I do think I generally feel calmer. Do kinda feel tired though. Not sure if that’s the meds or a lack of sleep.

[trenstrenats]

i’ve begun my relisten of the show and in part 8 (18:25) there’s another instance where the static appears.

they’re on the island with the lighthouse, in the cave system under the widow’s shack. there’s a book they find there that seems to have information they need. they’re reading the annotations the widow had made in life. underlined reads ‘the king in yellow’.

when john says it his voice drops and the static sounds. right after that you can hear the beginning of a melody (it doesn’t sound like it’s any of the show’s themes) and it soon cuts back to john’s weird breathing/trance coming back through the static. his mumbling mixed with the static continues for quite a remarcable amount of time and only ends when they’re alerted to a presence in the room.

this static appearance fits into your interpretation of what the static means. the king’s power reaches to the characters not inside the narrative they’ve been placed on but in a ‘non-scripted’ action. john wasn’t supposed to read the king’s name, wasn’t supposed to connect with him. in a way, to remember who he was and where he’s come from. which were the goals they had in the first season. it was what they were looking for.

i think it’s also interesting (i’m winging this i’m just yapping) how bc this time the static appears at a time that involves more than arthur and john, the ‘reaching out’ into the radio world, if you will, is stronger.

the king’s power makes the deviation from the ‘malevolent station’ where the show is broadcasted greater. it’s not only a tweaking signal that makes the static appear on the station we’re listening to. the tweaking in our radio is so great we changed stations (there’s music playing) while also somehow being on the ‘malevolent station’ (john’s breathing and mumbling during the whole static and music occurrence)

ALSO

i don’t remember it happening on the later seasons but up until episode 8 at least (and probably for the rest of the first season at least) the patreon choices are on the audio. every time there’s a choice being made there’s a sound of dice rolling.

i just think it’s a nice illustration of your point of john and arthur’s choices not being their own. at least during the first episodes, we’re explicitly reminded as an audience that these characters are leaded by strings.

i think later on harlan maybe stopped putting them there for immersion? there might be a story there, i don’t follow any of harlan’s presence anywhere i wouldn’t know

my radio malevolent theory

this is my masterpost for my malevolent radio theory which includes heavy spoilers for the series featured below the cut.

so as you may have guessed by the name of this post I have this working theory that malevolent, and what we hear of malevolent, is all, a radio show.

now before i go further explaining my theory I wanted to say that I do not want this to be the case and I don't want my theory to be right. I'm not a fan of narratives that end with a twist of, everything you just witnessed, this entire world, these characters, all of it was fantasy or a dream. i don't want malevolent to share that same narrative. but given things with the dream world and just cosmic horror in general it wouldn't be entirely out of the realm of possibility for either the entire narrative of pieces of it to not be real. (also just clarifying I know malevolent is a work of fiction when I talk about things not being real its in reference to canon events in the show not having actually taken place within the world of malevolent)

with that out of the way, let me share my woes with you all.

so this theory started to take root for me after listening to part 43 the witch, and then following that immediately after with my listen of part 44 the deliverance.

the way that arthur is brought back to life, screaming after his brief time in the waylay, and his screams are immediately cut off by a lyric-depraved tune of "come easy, go easy love" by hoagy carmichael just haunted me for weeks and I couldn't stop thinking about it and out of that this theory was born.

i think music in malevolent is incredibly important. both diagetic and non diagetic music has an extensive impact on the way listeners perceive the events of the show.

malevolent literally begins with radio, the static shifting between stations until we land on "you call it madness" setting the tone for the narrative we are about to embark upon. this paired with the way that every episode fades out with radio static really cemented this idea of mine that what we are listening to had the potential to be a radio show. perhaps we stumbled across the broadcast, we are sitting by a radio, shifting through channels and come across this story that's unlike any we've ever heard before.

circling back to part 43 the witch, I think its incredibly interesting that the episode ends being cut off by that song, "come easy, go easy love" specifically, cause if you listen to part 34 the butcher one of the songs playing on a radio during the butcher's hunt after arthur is "come easy, go easy love". to me the ending of part 43 felt like such an interruption, it wasn't just arthur screaming and cut off or the sound fading away with static like most episodes but his screams being cut short by a song that in canon has been shown only explicitly playing on the radio. almost as if the 'broadcast' was being cut out and overlayed with a pleasant tune, to mask the horror and shock of hearing the screams of our beloved protagonist.

another big part of my theory is kayne and his overall narrative awareness. when it think about my radio theory I remember his line about fate in part 20. "it's not your choice, or his choice... it's fate, it's alllll predestined, everything you believe in and you desire you feel its allllll true." to me this reads as arthur and johns journey as something that has already been constructed, they are puppets on a string. they, very much so in their world and the world they perceive as true and real and their own feel that they have choice and control over their fate but the way kayne frames this, hell, even the way the show itself operates shows this isn't true. it isn't arthur or john's choice in the end, it's the listeners. we are the ones who are the masters of arthur and john's fate, the captains of their souls. weekly patreon members vote upon what choice arthur and john will make and of course in the narrative arthur and john will feel as if those choices are their own. they don't see that everything is scripted for them.

it reminds me almost of benevolent in the way that they are operating in a narrative that has already been prepared for them.

also benevolent is a small part of this theory cause it's fairly common for shows and radio shows to have a Christmas special and I think benevolent was a great example of that. the entire episode reads like a weird radio radio play you tuned into, it even features a musical guest who performs an entire song, very much like something you'd hear on the radio.

another big part of my theory is when we hear radio static/sounds. there are three cases where I have notated that we hear these sounds, the first being at the beginning and end of every episode, the second being whenever john touches a dead person/being, and the third being whenever the hand of malevolence is used.

all of these are instances in the show that deviate from the reality of what john and arthur are experiencing. all of these instances are reaching beyond the narrative of what's actually happening. i find this really interesting especially when looking at the ladder two cases. both when john touches someone dead, as well as when the hand of malevolence is used, both of these are instances where john and arthur are striving to look or 'be' beyond the current world they're in. they are trying to witness or experience a narrative that is not the one they are currently experiencing, hence this static sound, hence this 'interference'. they are challenging the very structure of what they are trapped within. it's in these moments that I feel arthur and john are the closest to being masters of their own fate.

there's more i could add to this theory that has to do with patreon experiences of the show but the only thing I'll add here which I find fascinating and that isn't a spoiler for anything in the show is that he's called 'booth john'. something about that title just screams host/recording booth. again this figure with narrative awareness.

this is a very clunky collection of my current thoughts about my radio theory. i know in the future I want to make a more organized post and I will definitely add to this post with more ideas of mine as they develop.

if you read all this thank you so much, I adore you.

I hope you enjoyed the chaos of this post and if you have any thoughts or a similar theory i'd love to hear them!

[transmutationisms]

thots on astrology? related, thoughts on mbti?

k i like that you guys just pop in my inbox from time to time and invite me to run my mouth about topics and concepts. like truly what else is this website for.

anyway astrology (& sorry, most of what i know here pertains specifically to europe in the middle ages onward) is genuinely such a bizarro historical case of a science whose core epistemological presupposition (a geocentrist and specifically anthropocentrist cosmology) has completely fallen out of favour in both popular and professional discourse, and i don't think most people appreciate how weird it is for astrology to continue existing with this degree of popular and mainstream participation lol. like most fringe science actually bothers to have some semblence of its own reactionary epistemology to fall back on; astrology just doesn't seem to care. it would be like if the medical guilds fully endorsed the position that blood is circulated in the human body by the heart, but then also recommended as treatments for clotting disorders medical practices that only make sense on the supposition that the liver is the origin of all blood and is continuously creating more of it. like no other science that i can think of tries to have it both ways to the extent astrology does. like, one reason phrenology and eugenics are bad comparison points here is because they're very much copacetic with post-enlightenment naturalism and evolutionary transpositions in the social sciences. astrology, like, intellectually is not and yet here it is anyway. ideology innit.

anyhow i assume the reason you asked about this in conjunction with mbti is because today's astrology is largely purporting to provide psychological analysis and is therefore more similar to a system like mbti than to the historical use of star-reading as a predictive science. obviously both astrology and mbti are deeply reactionary in this respect and belong to a larger trend toward attempting to categorise, measure, and taxonomise the psyche, tho an important difference here is that mbti has hereditarian elements, which no form of astrology that i know of does. i think astrology's shift in the personal-psychological direction has to do with a few different factors, including medical astrological practice (orthodox in the european middle ages, then varying degrees of heterodox from the early modern period onward) and self-help movements in the 20th century.

but in any case it, mbti, and similar attempts at psychometry are, like, staggeringly essentialist in conception and practice, and i do think their current popularity reflects some deeply reactionary tendencies amongst people who often (not always) consider themselves otherwise progressive or leftist. it's honestly kind of worrisome how many people will jump on a project that explicitly aims to define static and immutable human 'types' as long as it's dressed in quasi-spiritual or psy-scientific terminology. like i do think we all need to pause and think about the ideological ends and consequences of how we talk about each other and our bodies, minds, and birth circumstances 😵‍💫