#power query case

[ibarrau]

[PowerQuery] Múltiples reemplazos estilo switch o case

Hace tiempo no escribíamos un tip en M. Recientemente, me comentaron que querían hacer varios reemplazos de texto por nro para generar una columna de ID y mejorar la relación para que sea más liviana. Un buen ejercicio para alivianar el modelo.

Recorde que había escrito un post al inicio del blog con múltiples reemplazos, pero quise probar una técnica que aprendí hace unos años y hoy voy a compartir aqui.

Este artículo mostrará lo más parecido que tenemos en power query para generar algo estilo case o switch.

Para poder generar un case en Power Query vamos a realizar algo similar a un archivo de formato json. Veamos el caso simplificado.

Contamos con una tabla de hechos que traía el estado de una operación en texto y tenemos una dimension de estados. Sin embargo para reducir el tamaño de la relación y buena práctica, sería mejor que la relación este dada por un entero y no texto.

Vamos a asumir que la operación no puede desarrollarse en base de datos, porque recordemos que "mientras más temprano o atrás podamos resolver data modeling mejor será". Este escenario esta a modo de ejemplo.

Conociendo los estados y sus ID podríamos crear una función que reemplace el texto por el número esperado bajo una condición.

El primer paso será generar una variable que tenga las opciones de reemplazo

El primer valor será el que queremos encontrar y el segundo el que reemplazaremos. Podríamos definir que es una lista de listas, puesto que los {} en Power Query representan listas.

Para pode ejecutar el reemplazo sobre un texto seguiremos con la siguiente indicación:

De ese modo selecciona una lista devolviendo el primer resultado {0} quiere el segundo item {1}. Para filtrar ese item haremos un contains de texto de "rawText" validando contra cada fila (haciendo un each validamos fila por fila) donde _ representa una lista de las recorridas y {0} el primer item de la fila al cual lo compara.

Para mejor desarrollo esto podemos englobarlo en una función que recibe el texto por parametro y llamaremos "ChageStatus"

Para ejecutarlo en nuestra tabla de operación podemos llamarlo de dos maneras. Por un lado con "Agregar columna personalizada". La nueva columna simplemente haría ChangeStatus([Estado]).

Si queremos reemplazar la columna existente con sus múltiples reemplazos, entonces agregaremos un paso personalizado con el botón fx.

Nos nutriremos de TransformColumns y generaremos un código de este estilo:

= Table.TransformColumns( #"Paso anterior", { { "Estado", each ChangeStatus(_) } } )

El método permite ejecutar varias funciones recorriendo fila a fila sobre una columna. De nuevo una lista de listas. En nuestro caso es una sola operación de lista en la listas. Para ello, definimos la columna Estado como la involucrada al reemplazo y llamamos la función con each. Each nos permite ir fila a fila capturando el record de la columna con "_". Por esta razón, lo colocamos como parámetro.

De esa forma reemplazaremos nuestros textos por números de texto. Solo restará cambiar el tipo de la columna a entero para reducir el tamaño de la relación cuando esta generado el modelo.

Espero que este pequeño tip les haya servido y despligue nuevas ideas sobre Power Query y su manejo de listas.

[echoekhi]

I’m Declaring War Against “What If” Videos: Project Copy-Knight

What Are “What If” Videos?

These videos follow a common recipe: A narrator, given a fandom (usually anime ones like My Hero Academia and Naruto), explores an alternative timeline where something is different. Maybe the main character has extra powers, maybe a key plot point goes differently. They then go on and make up a whole new story, detailing the conflicts and romance between characters, much like an ordinary fanfic.

Except, they are fanfics. Actual fanfics, pulled off AO3, FFN and Wattpad, given a different title, with random thumbnail and background images added to them, narrated by computer text-to-speech synthesizers.

They are very easy to make: pick a fanfic, copy all the text into a text-to-speech generator, mix the resulting audio file with some generic art from the fandom as the background, give it a snappy title like “What if Deku had the Power of Ten Rings”, photoshop an attention-grabbing thumbnail, dump it onto YouTube and get thousands of views.

In fact, the process is so straightforward and requires so little effort, it’s pretty clear some of these channels have automated pipelines to pump these out en-masse. They don’t bother with asking the fic authors for permission. Sometimes they don’t even bother with putting the fic’s link in the description or crediting the author. These content-farms then monetise these videos, so they get a cut from YouTube’s ads.

In short, an industry has emerged from the systematic copyright theft of fanfiction, for profit.

Project Copy-Knight

Since the adversaries almost certainly have automated systems set up for this, the only realistic countermeasure is with another automated system. Identifying fanfics manually by listening to the videos and searching them up with tags is just too slow and impractical.

And so, I came up with a simple automated pipeline to identify the original authors of “What If” videos.

It would go download these videos, run speech recognition on it, search the text through a database full of AO3 fics, and identify which work it came from. After manual confirmation, the original authors will be notified that their works have been subject to copyright theft, and instructions provided on how to DMCA-strike the channel out of existence.

I built a prototype over the weekend, and it works surprisingly well:

On a randomly-selected YouTube channel (in this case Infinite Paradox Fanfic), the toolchain was able to identify the origin of half of the content. The raw output, after manual verification, turned out to be extremely accurate. The time taken to identify the source of a video was about 5 minutes, most of those were spent running Whisper, and the actual full-text-search query and Levenshtein analysis was less than 5 seconds.

The other videos probably came from fanfiction websites other than AO3, like fanfiction.net or Wattpad. As I do not have access to archives of those websites, I cannot identify the other ones, but they are almost certainly not original.

Armed with this fantastic proof-of-concept, I’m officially declaring war against “What If” videos. The mission statement of Project Copy-Knight will be the elimination of “What If” videos based on the theft of AO3 content on YouTube.

I Need Your Help

I am acutely aware that I cannot accomplish this on my own. There are many moving parts in this system that simply cannot be completely automated – like the selection of YouTube channels to feed into the toolchain, the manual verification step to prevent false-positives being sent to authors, the reaching-out to authors who have comments disabled, etc, etc.

So, if you are interested in helping to defend fanworks, or just want to have a chat or ask about the technical details of the toolchain, please consider joining my Discord server. I could really use your help.

------

See full blog article and acknowledgements here: https://echoekhi.com/2023/11/25/project-copy-knight/

[reignpage]

Moon's light

Summary: in which alien!reader gets hurt and Gojo's left with more questions than answers about who you are Word Count: 3k Warnings: angsty, cursing, fem alien!readersome sexual language and references, not proofread and highkey made in a rush >_< Previous Parts: Finders Keepers + Lights Show + Movie Night + Bubble Bubble

Day 32

“Oh no.” He surges forward, falling to his knees. “No no no, E. What happened?”

Satoru had just finished a mission. Excited, he teleported back into his apartment, hoping to see you all cute, sweet and offering some cuddles so he can relax after a long five minutes of serious adulting. What he wasn’t hoping to see, however, was you holding a large knife and bleeding on the kitchen floor.

Wrapping a tea towel around your hand, he cradles your body to his. You’re not crying. You’re not even wincing. Instead, you’re just looking at the blue, gloopy liquid oozing out of the deep wound on your palm. Do aliens of your kind not feel pain? 

No, that can’t be the case; you winced when he scissors his fingers inside your pussy. Forcing a calm voice, he queries, “What happened, E? What did you do?”

You reply, “I hold wrong.”

His head slumps back against the cabinet. This is his fault. He should have taught you better, shouldn’t have shielded you from the kitchen. He should have been here. At home. With you.

When you fell from the night sky, there wasn’t a single scratch on your body, not even a bruise. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, he assumed you were invincible, but now, as his hands shake and he gulps down the tight knot of guilt and shame building in his throat, he thinks, maybe it was just wishful thinking. 

It’s been a month since he met you and you’ve progressed so much. You shower on your own, understand plots of movies without much assistance, you read books, albeit children’s and with pictures but soon you’ll be getting up his level, he’s sure, and even help him clean the house. No longer does he worry about his things having teeth marks from your oral exploration or being randomly flashed because you don’t understand the concept of modesty. The routine has been great.

Maybe it’s this bliss in the routine that led him to a foolish sense of complacency.

“E, you don’t have special healing powers, do you? Like me? With my reverse curse technique.” Satoru’s been slowly trying to teach you about his abilities and the reality of his world but it hasn’t been his priority, what with him being distracted by your hips grinding down on his cock almost 24/7. So, when you shake your head, a little confused, he isn’t surprised. “But you do heal, right?”

You shrug.

The blue blood continues to drip from you, steadily. Inspecting the wound, he wonders what to do. He can’t take you to the hospital; they’ll question your blue blood. And there’s no alien expert to turn to – you don’t even seem to know much about yourself. He chews on the inside of his cheek.

Well, there is one person he could take you to, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be of any help. Maybe they’ll even call the authorities on you. 

This could go very wrong. 

But what choice does he have?

He can’t leave you like this. He can’t just hope your wound will fix itself. And what if you get an infection? Can aliens get infected? Fuck. What if you’re already infected? 

If you are, then he’ll, like, suck the infection out of you so you two can die together. Alright. Don’t get too ahead of yourself, he tells himself. Death is not on the cards. Not for you. Never. Not while he can help it. 

Satoru has no idea what he’s doing. Truthfully, he’s just relieved your blood isn’t acidic and burning a hole through his skin and the floor.

There’s nothing to do but to hope for the best with the only choice he has. Pressing a kiss to your head, he whispers, “I’ve got you, baby. Just trust Toru, alright?”

And in a flash, he’s in a dimly lit room, which smells of alcohol and death. He never wanted to bring you here – it’s a dark side to what he does and if he could have helped it, you would have never seen this. Being a place he doesn’t frequent often, the white-haired man inspects the place reflexively; no danger, no change, and just one unimpressed looking woman. 

“So, the moron’s finally decided to grace my workspace,” she drawls. “How flattering.”

Usually, he’d grin and try to go in for a hug, only to be lovingly punched in the gut and thrown across the room, but at the moment, he doesn’t have it in him to smile and he already feels like he’s been punched in the gut. “Hey, Shoko. I need your help.”

Her dull eyes fall on the figure cuddled up to his side, dripping blue onto her floor. She places her pen down and leans back in her swivel chair, not at all put off to see him here.

Sleeve tugged, he looks down. “Say hi, E. She’s a friend. She’s going to take care of you.”

“Help fix my hand?” When Satoru nods, you frown, mulling something over for a second before your eyes meet Shoko’s. “Hi. Fix my hand now.”

He clears his throat. “Sorry, Sho. I haven’t really taught her about please and thank yous.”

“I’m sure you haven’t, since, y’know, you’re not the biggest advocator of those words yourself.” The man can’t rebut that. “So, are you going to explain what you’re doing here or are you just going to let her stain my floors blue?”

Right. Where to begin?

Moments later, once he’s run through a long spiel, explaining the last month of his life, he presents you to the doctor. Confused, though happy to be here, you just smile at the stranger. Said stranger tilts her head and looks at Satoru. 

“An alien. Really?” She drawls.

“Yeah, I know. It’s weird and unbelievable but true! And she’s not dangerous, I promise. Please, Shoko. When I first met her, she was durable. Like, not even a single scratch. How many people do you know who can fall from space, land on a van and not have a bruise? And now? She’s cut herself and she’s bleeding but it’s blue and I’m totally freaking out, okay?”

Shoko sighs. She does that a lot these days. For a second, he thinks she might wave them away or reach for her phone. None can blame her, he supposes. Harbouring an extraterritorial is a crime, he assumes at least. And it’s not as if she’s doing nothing in her time – she’s even more busy than he is. Shouldering the repairs of jujutsu society can’t be an easy job and there’s probably something to be said about the direction their friendship has taken over the years, though there’s not enough time to get into it. He couldn’t and wouldn’t fault her if she wanted nothing to do with his most recent shenanigans. 

But, if she had decided to make a stand, to get the authorities involved, to dare snatch you away, then Satoru will not hesitate to snuff her where she stands. 

Thankfully it doesn’t get to that because Shoko, the amazing, wonderful friend that she is, beckons you over. 

“I’ll see what I can do. Just don’t get your hopes up; I was never taught about alien anatomy.”

You sit on a stool, being examined professionally like you didn’t come from the stars, like you don’t have blue blood, and a bioluminescent body. Pride blooming in his chest, he smiles. There was a fear tickling the back of his neck that maybe you wouldn’t be so…receptive to strangers. Yet, you’re following instructions well and not chomping at his friend’s fingers for going near your wound. Oh, he’s going to smother you in kisses later.

No step is overlooked. Your blood pressure is taken. So is a blood sample. She tests your reflexes, temperature and dental hygiene. Shoko asks questions — some you can answer with no trouble and others, Satoru has to step in and provide a response.

Leaning against a cold, metal slab, he says, “Her body’s pretty similar to ours, I think. Apart from a few surprises like glowing lights and the blue blood, things seem normal. She does run a little hot inside but I think that’s not too weird.”

Slowly, Shoko turns her head and cocks an extremely judgemental eyebrow. “You’ve slept with her, haven’t you?”

Satoru’s ears heat up. “No! No, we haven’t…done that.”

“Right. So, you’ve gone through the trouble of inspecting her insides for me, is that it?”

“Don’t say it like that, Sho.” He groans. “I wasn’t perving on her or anything. We have a connection.”

Dragging the word out, she clarifies, “A connection.”

“Yeah! A connection. We get along well.”

“That’s so very inte–woah!”

You’ve bitten Shoko’s arm through her lab coat. She shakes you off. You don’t latch off. Satoru lunges forward and urges your jaw to loosen. Guess you’ve been feeling left out or jealous. He can’t say he’s not slightly happy about the possessiveness. It’s quite nice, actually. Wait. No. He should be discouraging this, reassuring you, and defending his friend. Right. Yep. “Okay, okay. It’s alright, E. She’s a friend, remember, baby? Just a friend. Don’t hurt her please. Toru’ll be really upset with you.”

An apologetic look is sent to the woman. Complemented with a nuzzle at Satoru’s comforting palm.

Painfully, he can smell the judgement oozing from Shoko’s pores. Even when she steps back and rubs her sore arm, the doctor eyes the two of them, watching as he brushes your cheek and whispers something soothing against your lips.

There’s no telling what’s running through her head and he doesn’t have it in him to ask. So, he keeps an arm around your body and queries instead, “Got any idea what’s happening?”

A moment passes. 

One could quite literally cut the tension in half, or however the saying goes. 

Then, she sighs. Why does she keep sighing? 

“I only have a theory.” Leaning against the wall, she crosses her arm and drawls out, completely bored, like whatever scathing thought she had about Satoru has washed away, along with all the many scathing thoughts she’s had about the sorcerer, “Her skin is hardened at parts and soft in others. I had trouble penetrating her skin to get to her veins, which aren’t placed where they are in the human body, with the needle. She’s cold in certain patches of her skin and her pulse is irregular.”

Taking note as best as he can, he lets you play with his fingers absentmindedly. You’re not at all interested in anything anyone other than him has to say.

“I believe there’s been an inconsistent spread of something she’s missing in her day-to-day or diet. You hiding her away so you can grope her hasn’t done her any good.” Satoru automatically tries to argue but a sharp glare has him shutting it up just as soon as it opens. “If my theory is correct, then she needs something like moonlight — let it be known that this theory of mine only comes from the movies we used to watch as teens so don’t hold me to that — the longer she goes without this missing thing, the more her body will weaken until her entire skin is soft and susceptible to more cuts.”

He sighs. Oh, great, it’s contagious. “Moonlight? That’s it? She’s a nocturnal plant? Okay, great. That’s easy.”

“Yeah, well it’s only a theory, like I said. If I’m wrong, there’s not really anything else I can do. She didn’t know what the healthy bpm is for her kind or how she got here to begin with; there’s only so much I can do with what you’ve provided me. Normally, I’d run more tests but it’s unclear, and risky, to make her undergo any kind of testing before we know her compatibility with our immune system so try the moonlight thing first and let me know if it works.”

Satoru nods, already tuning her out and excited to begin your healing journey. There’s a new movie he promised to watch with you and he can’t wait for much longer. “Yeah, yeah. Of course.”

“She seems to have memory loss. I don’t see any signs of trauma to her head, but there must be something to explain her lack of understanding and knowledge of her own existence and essence. I’m not sure how communicative she is, but if I were you, I’d start asking questions about where she’s from, why she’s here, and when she’s going.”

Satoru frowns. 

“Thanks for your help. I got it from here.”

And, as quick as he arrived, he leaves.

“Not home, Toru?” 

He shakes his head.

Taking the doctor’s advice, he teleported straight to the rooftop terrace and not into your shared home. If more moonlight is what you need, then more moonlight is what you’ll get. In fact, if he could, he’d give you all the moonlight in the world. He sits down onto a lawn chair and pulls you into his lap. You’re wearing jogging pants and a big shirt – his shirt. Both are pulled off your body, leaving you in just your underwear; maximising the surface area would lead to optimal moonlight absorption and the more you absorb, the faster you’ll heal, right?

It’s a good thing, he supposes, that the moon is full and the sky is clear tonight. He wonders how often he’d need to do this with you. Best to do it frequently probably. Just in case.

In silence, you two sit there, alone and feeling like things are going right once more. You’re nuzzled into his hold whilst Satoru ponders about the last bits of advice Shoko gave. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. Who was she to assume he hadn’t been asking questions? 

Because, of course, he has!

Duh.

His curiosity about you is never ending but he can’t rush you. You’re learning so much so fast and overloading you would be the last thing he’d want.

And how dare she talk about you like that?

Like you’re a stray he picked up. You’re a person. His person. It’s not as if you’re an idiot or a child – you’ve got so much emotional maturity and you can take apart his microwave and put it back together. How many people can do that?

And ‘when you’re going’, seriously?

That’s an insane thought. 

You’re not going anywhere. This is your home now. Sure, he’d love to know more about your home planet and its customs, but that’s as much of that as he cares to know about. There’s no return date on you. You’re not a toy on loan. You haven’t been left in his care for babysitting. How silly to suggest otherwise.

“Toru, you okay?” 

Snapping out of his torrential thoughts, he gazes down at you through his blindfold. Gentle fingers pull it off his face and when his dazzling eyes meet yours, bare and direct, he smiles tenderly. “Yeah, E. I’m okay. Can I see your hand?”

The cut is healing. That was quick. Shoko was right.  Already, it’s closing up. The blood has stopped dripping and soon it’ll be gone, hopefully without a scar to remind either of you two how he’s failed you. 

Kissing the top of your head, he whispers against your hair, “You didn’t know about this moonlight thing?”

You shake your head.

“Do you remember anything from your past? From out there?” The great beyond, of which he’s gesturing to, seems so much bigger now. Very rarely did he ever look up there, but these days, it seems like that’s all he does. 

“Not much. Only little. Home looks like Earth too. People look like me. And you. But no monsters.”

He chuckles. “Lucky you.”

“You worry about what your friend say? When I’m leaving?”

Satoru’s chest tightens. Tense and treading carefully, he asks, “Are you leaving? Is anyone waiting for you?”

“I don’t know.” That wasn’t the answer he wanted. He’d been hoping you’d deny it, say there’s no one else, that you’re not going anywhere and you two can be together forever. Is that too naive? Too hopeful? Too selfish? “I don’t remember. Very blur-ree.”

He can’t push. Won’t. Whether for your good or his, who’s to say?

Squeezing parts of your bare body for comfort, he thanks the heavens, and Shoko (he’ll have to send her a fruit basket or a new corpse to experiment with or something), that you’re healing and he’s learnt a little more about you.

Moonlight and food and a proper education on how to handle sharp objects. The list of things you need is growing and so must his ability to provide all those things for you.

He’ll do anything and everything he can to keep you safe and satisfied. Then there’ll be no reason for you to go anywhere or for anyone to take you. You’re staying here. With him. He’ll kill to make that happen. 

Satoru pinches your chin. Your lips part to receive his. The taste of you, the softness, the warmth – it’s all you and all his. 

Nothing could take this away. 

This is your home.

And you are his. 

[dduane]

Dear DD, I'm wondering if you could show examples (from your own work or otherwise) of what really, *really* rough drafts of fiction writing look like. I'm talking the earliest stages of the process that normally most people don't show to the public; whenever I look around online, what folks seem to post as "WIP" samples are usually more like 80-90% polished excerpts.

While my brain logically knows these are the late-stage stuff, it has an ill-advised habit of trying to draft to that 80-90 level of quality from the get-go--I think it might help to see what the equivalent of "thumbnails" or "sketches/doodles" look like in writing, especially from someone who's been At The Work for a long time. Hopefully it's an alright request! I understand if for various reasons you can't.

I'm more than willing to show people my stuff in process, every now and then. ...But in my case, your initial query poses an unusual challenge. And it's this:

After pushing fifty years of doing this work (or indeed, you had it right, this Work) for money, everything comes out looking fairly polished.

And this can't be helped. Once you've been doing this work for long enough—once doing it well starts being the thing responsible for keeping you and your family fed—you will inevitably (eventually) evolve the ability to exude smooth-looking prose at minutes' notice. Over the years your internal prose filters will get trained into being increasingly fine-meshed... and the longer this goes on, the more flatly they'll refuse to let clunky stuff out onto the page any more. You don't really even think about it. You just keep refining a given phrase/sentence/paragraph in your head until it feels acceptable.

After a couple/few decades, this ability becomes an ever more finely-honed survival characteristic. You can no sooner emit actively coarse prose (without trying purposefully to do so, which is another story...) than you can stop breathing for minutes at a time without suffering the consequences. (shrug) It's just the way your life experience has taught your Drafting Brain to conduct itself, going forward.

Now... this doesn't mean at all that the drafted material, be it ever so polished-looking, is necessarily what you intended (or needed!) to write. Oh no. I could this very day show you some prose that by my standards is still really rough, because I wrote it five minutes ago... and you'd look at it and be very unlikely to be able to see what my problem was with it.* Whereas I'm sitting staring at it and muttering "Dammit, something's missing here. No idea what. I'll come back to it tomorrow."

And indeed I wrote something about three hours ago that (as I got it onto the page in its earliest form) left me literally gasping about how obtuse I'd been about the situation and emotions described in it, as recently as early this afternoon before I had lunch. It was a scene that had been missing from something I'm completing at the moment—indeed not merely missing but completely uncontemplated—and as it spooled itself out on the page all I could do was shake my head at my own idiocy at having missed the opportunity earlier, while I was nailing down the plot.

And I would love to show you that piece of prose right this minute, so that you could see what minutes-old prose from me looks like. Except it's seriously spoilery, and I refuse to sabotage a larger work by allowing out any material that's so loaded... and which viewed out of context would deprive it of most of its power. So, as we say around here, 'Sorry not sorry.'" Though I promise I'll come back to this and talk about it "in the clear" later, when that work's published.

...Anyway. The best advice I have for you just now is that trying to make your filters-in-training less effective is—to put it as gently as Captain Amelia might—a mistake.

That urge to have the first draft—or the "zero draft" as some are calling it these days: I use this myself—be as good as possible is frankly a lifesaver. Indulging it, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, will only leave you with less frustration, less editing and re-editing, and way less Flat Forehead Syndrome over time. You are going in the right direction, even if it makes you feel like you're losing valuable time.

Your brain's attempts to draft to the highest possible level are not ill-advised. Indulge the urge to get your drafting more right, even if it makes you suffer a bit. No one ever said this writing lark was going to be all fun. (And if they did, they lied to you.) Also: hunting through other people's WIP excerpts, be they rougher than yours or more polished, in a search for something that your excerpts or drafting style should or could theoretically look like, will do you no good in the long term... and may do you harm. All you're likely to be left with, after you haven't found anything useful in the wake of the shoulder-peering, is a sense—almost certainly an inaccurate one—that you're somehow doing it wrong.**

You're not. You're finding your own way, at your own speed. This is the Writer's Journey. (As opposed to the Hero's, which I have characters shouting at me about at the moment.) (eyeroll) As you continue going your own way, your drafting will gradually pick up speed without losing quality. ...And don't neglect your outside reading. You need to be reading outside your own genre and your own century to pick up, as it were, new (or old) plugins for your filters.

Anyway. If (as it seems) you're in this for the long term: get right down here with the rest of us and suffer your way (briefly) through it. We all agonize unnecessarily over the effectiveness of our process from time to time. The only cure is to say "fuck that noise" to the back of your Writer's Mind, and get back to the actual writing, where these problems are worked out in the only way that counts.

So: go do your thing, and let the chips fall where they may. And I hope this has helped! Let me know, over time, how things go.

*This situation is also, BTW, a bit of a problem for a writer in a career stage like mine. In an inversion of the usual rule—where "the Perfect becomes the enemy of the (Merely) Good"—the "Really Not Bad At All" becomes the enemy of the "Could Have Been Way Better If You'd Given It A 'Should I Maybe Sweat Over This A Little More?' Pass". Because the Not Bad At All genuinely isn't... but if you're not careful, you stop seeing where to kick it into the next stage when you're distracted by all the other junk going on in life.

**...But this is one of the downsides of the community, and communality, of the writing life online. We wind up endlessly looking over each others' shoulders to try to find answers that—in many cases—were already sitting between us and the screen, on the keyboard.

(And now a suggestion for those who find these occasional excursions into the Advice Barrel useful: at various folks' request, I have a Ko-Fi now. If you find the advice useful and you feel so inclined, send me a sign.) :)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Humans in the loop” must detect the hardest-to-spot errors, at superhuman speed

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

If AI has a future (a big if), it will have to be economically viable. An industry can't spend 1,700% more on Nvidia chips than it earns indefinitely – not even with Nvidia being a principle investor in its largest customers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39883571

A company that pays 0.36-1 cents/query for electricity and (scarce, fresh) water can't indefinitely give those queries away by the millions to people who are expected to revise those queries dozens of times before eliciting the perfect botshit rendition of "instructions for removing a grilled cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible":

https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-inference-cost-of-search-disruption

Eventually, the industry will have to uncover some mix of applications that will cover its operating costs, if only to keep the lights on in the face of investor disillusionment (this isn't optional – investor disillusionment is an inevitable part of every bubble).

Now, there are lots of low-stakes applications for AI that can run just fine on the current AI technology, despite its many – and seemingly inescapable - errors ("hallucinations"). People who use AI to generate illustrations of their D&D characters engaged in epic adventures from their previous gaming session don't care about the odd extra finger. If the chatbot powering a tourist's automatic text-to-translation-to-speech phone tool gets a few words wrong, it's still much better than the alternative of speaking slowly and loudly in your own language while making emphatic hand-gestures.

There are lots of these applications, and many of the people who benefit from them would doubtless pay something for them. The problem – from an AI company's perspective – is that these aren't just low-stakes, they're also low-value. Their users would pay something for them, but not very much.

For AI to keep its servers on through the coming trough of disillusionment, it will have to locate high-value applications, too. Economically speaking, the function of low-value applications is to soak up excess capacity and produce value at the margins after the high-value applications pay the bills. Low-value applications are a side-dish, like the coach seats on an airplane whose total operating expenses are paid by the business class passengers up front. Without the principle income from high-value applications, the servers shut down, and the low-value applications disappear:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Now, there are lots of high-value applications the AI industry has identified for its products. Broadly speaking, these high-value applications share the same problem: they are all high-stakes, which means they are very sensitive to errors. Mistakes made by apps that produce code, drive cars, or identify cancerous masses on chest X-rays are extremely consequential.

Some businesses may be insensitive to those consequences. Air Canada replaced its human customer service staff with chatbots that just lied to passengers, stealing hundreds of dollars from them in the process. But the process for getting your money back after you are defrauded by Air Canada's chatbot is so onerous that only one passenger has bothered to go through it, spending ten weeks exhausting all of Air Canada's internal review mechanisms before fighting his case for weeks more at the regulator:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/air-canada-s-chatbot-gave-a-b-c-man-the-wrong-information-now-the-airline-has-to-pay-for-the-mistake-1.6769454

There's never just one ant. If this guy was defrauded by an AC chatbot, so were hundreds or thousands of other fliers. Air Canada doesn't have to pay them back. Air Canada is tacitly asserting that, as the country's flagship carrier and near-monopolist, it is too big to fail and too big to jail, which means it's too big to care.

Air Canada shows that for some business customers, AI doesn't need to be able to do a worker's job in order to be a smart purchase: a chatbot can replace a worker, fail to their worker's job, and still save the company money on balance.

I can't predict whether the world's sociopathic monopolists are numerous and powerful enough to keep the lights on for AI companies through leases for automation systems that let them commit consequence-free free fraud by replacing workers with chatbots that serve as moral crumple-zones for furious customers:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563219304029

But even stipulating that this is sufficient, it's intrinsically unstable. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, and the mass replacement of humans with high-speed fraud software seems likely to stoke the already blazing furnace of modern antitrust:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Of course, the AI companies have their own answer to this conundrum. A high-stakes/high-value customer can still fire workers and replace them with AI – they just need to hire fewer, cheaper workers to supervise the AI and monitor it for "hallucinations." This is called the "human in the loop" solution.

The human in the loop story has some glaring holes. From a worker's perspective, serving as the human in the loop in a scheme that cuts wage bills through AI is a nightmare – the worst possible kind of automation.

Let's pause for a little detour through automation theory here. Automation can augment a worker. We can call this a "centaur" – the worker offloads a repetitive task, or one that requires a high degree of vigilance, or (worst of all) both. They're a human head on a robot body (hence "centaur"). Think of the sensor/vision system in your car that beeps if you activate your turn-signal while a car is in your blind spot. You're in charge, but you're getting a second opinion from the robot.

Likewise, consider an AI tool that double-checks a radiologist's diagnosis of your chest X-ray and suggests a second look when its assessment doesn't match the radiologist's. Again, the human is in charge, but the robot is serving as a backstop and helpmeet, using its inexhaustible robotic vigilance to augment human skill.

That's centaurs. They're the good automation. Then there's the bad automation: the reverse-centaur, when the human is used to augment the robot.

Amazon warehouse pickers stand in one place while robotic shelving units trundle up to them at speed; then, the haptic bracelets shackled around their wrists buzz at them, directing them pick up specific items and move them to a basket, while a third automation system penalizes them for taking toilet breaks or even just walking around and shaking out their limbs to avoid a repetitive strain injury. This is a robotic head using a human body – and destroying it in the process.

An AI-assisted radiologist processes fewer chest X-rays every day, costing their employer more, on top of the cost of the AI. That's not what AI companies are selling. They're offering hospitals the power to create reverse centaurs: radiologist-assisted AIs. That's what "human in the loop" means.

This is a problem for workers, but it's also a problem for their bosses (assuming those bosses actually care about correcting AI hallucinations, rather than providing a figleaf that lets them commit fraud or kill people and shift the blame to an unpunishable AI).

Humans are good at a lot of things, but they're not good at eternal, perfect vigilance. Writing code is hard, but performing code-review (where you check someone else's code for errors) is much harder – and it gets even harder if the code you're reviewing is usually fine, because this requires that you maintain your vigilance for something that only occurs at rare and unpredictable intervals:

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773779967521780169

But for a coding shop to make the cost of an AI pencil out, the human in the loop needs to be able to process a lot of AI-generated code. Replacing a human with an AI doesn't produce any savings if you need to hire two more humans to take turns doing close reads of the AI's code.

This is the fatal flaw in robo-taxi schemes. The "human in the loop" who is supposed to keep the murderbot from smashing into other cars, steering into oncoming traffic, or running down pedestrians isn't a driver, they're a driving instructor. This is a much harder job than being a driver, even when the student driver you're monitoring is a human, making human mistakes at human speed. It's even harder when the student driver is a robot, making errors at computer speed:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

This is why the doomed robo-taxi company Cruise had to deploy 1.5 skilled, high-paid human monitors to oversee each of its murderbots, while traditional taxis operate at a fraction of the cost with a single, precaratized, low-paid human driver:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The vigilance problem is pretty fatal for the human-in-the-loop gambit, but there's another problem that is, if anything, even more fatal: the kinds of errors that AIs make.

Foundationally, AI is applied statistics. An AI company trains its AI by feeding it a lot of data about the real world. The program processes this data, looking for statistical correlations in that data, and makes a model of the world based on those correlations. A chatbot is a next-word-guessing program, and an AI "art" generator is a next-pixel-guessing program. They're drawing on billions of documents to find the most statistically likely way of finishing a sentence or a line of pixels in a bitmap:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

This means that AI doesn't just make errors – it makes subtle errors, the kinds of errors that are the hardest for a human in the loop to spot, because they are the most statistically probable ways of being wrong. Sure, we notice the gross errors in AI output, like confidently claiming that a living human is dead:

https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/according-to-chatgpt-im-dead

But the most common errors that AIs make are the ones we don't notice, because they're perfectly camouflaged as the truth. Think of the recurring AI programming error that inserts a call to a nonexistent library called "huggingface-cli," which is what the library would be called if developers reliably followed naming conventions. But due to a human inconsistency, the real library has a slightly different name. The fact that AIs repeatedly inserted references to the nonexistent library opened up a vulnerability – a security researcher created a (inert) malicious library with that name and tricked numerous companies into compiling it into their code because their human reviewers missed the chatbot's (statistically indistinguishable from the the truth) lie:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

For a driving instructor or a code reviewer overseeing a human subject, the majority of errors are comparatively easy to spot, because they're the kinds of errors that lead to inconsistent library naming – places where a human behaved erratically or irregularly. But when reality is irregular or erratic, the AI will make errors by presuming that things are statistically normal.

These are the hardest kinds of errors to spot. They couldn't be harder for a human to detect if they were specifically designed to go undetected. The human in the loop isn't just being asked to spot mistakes – they're being actively deceived. The AI isn't merely wrong, it's constructing a subtle "what's wrong with this picture"-style puzzle. Not just one such puzzle, either: millions of them, at speed, which must be solved by the human in the loop, who must remain perfectly vigilant for things that are, by definition, almost totally unnoticeable.

This is a special new torment for reverse centaurs – and a significant problem for AI companies hoping to accumulate and keep enough high-value, high-stakes customers on their books to weather the coming trough of disillusionment.

This is pretty grim, but it gets grimmer. AI companies have argued that they have a third line of business, a way to make money for their customers beyond automation's gifts to their payrolls: they claim that they can perform difficult scientific tasks at superhuman speed, producing billion-dollar insights (new materials, new drugs, new proteins) at unimaginable speed.

However, these claims – credulously amplified by the non-technical press – keep on shattering when they are tested by experts who understand the esoteric domains in which AI is said to have an unbeatable advantage. For example, Google claimed that its Deepmind AI had discovered "millions of new materials," "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge," constituting "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity":

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

It was a hoax. When independent material scientists reviewed representative samples of these "new materials," they concluded that "no new materials have been discovered" and that not one of these materials was "credible, useful and novel":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

As Brian Merchant writes, AI claims are eerily similar to "smoke and mirrors" – the dazzling reality-distortion field thrown up by 17th century magic lantern technology, which millions of people ascribed wild capabilities to, thanks to the outlandish claims of the technology's promoters:

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-really-is-smoke-and-mirrors

The fact that we have a four-hundred-year-old name for this phenomenon, and yet we're still falling prey to it is frankly a little depressing. And, unlucky for us, it turns out that AI therapybots can't help us with this – rather, they're apt to literally convince us to kill ourselves:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkadgm/man-dies-by-suicide-after-talking-with-ai-chatbot-widow-says

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[back2bluesidex]

The Conclusion - MYG (18+)

Pairing: Idol!Yoongi X Manager!Reader.

Theme: PWP, SMUT

Word count: 1.5k+

Summary: After a break-up Yoongi comes to you and you give in to the temptation just to put a conclusion later on.

Warnings: SMUT, grinding, oral (female receiving)

A part of Patreon Membership special series Words That Are Unsaid. But you can read this as a standalone.

Series Masterlist

Read the full series on Patreon now.

There should be a ton of questions in your mind, you should detach yourself from Yoongi’s body and create some respectful distance between you two. But you can’t think of anything other than the way Yoongi is devouring your lips. 

As if he has been deprived of physical contact for all these times (which definitely is not the case). 

Yoongi licks the seam of your lips, asking for entrance. Even though your body and hormones scream at you for giving up. You don’t. 

“Why did you break up?” you ask against his lips. 

He parts for a moment to answer your query, “I told you, it was an act and now the show is over.”  

You take heavy, long breaths and continue, “but still, this is not right.” 

Yoongi doesn’t respond to that, he smirks as he leans down to kiss you again. This time the kiss is more hungry, rough and invasive with demand. 

His hands find their way to your waist and he digs his finger nails on your flesh. You yelp, he takes the chance to enter in your mouth, swirling his tongue to every possible corner he can reach. 

He tastes like bourbon - he tastes delicious. 

Your hands move on their own accord and wind themselves around Yoongi’s slender neck. You have always loved his long dark hair, so your fingers get lost in his locks, tugging, pulling and scratching his scalp to elicit a whiney moan. 

“You sure you don’t want this?” Yoongi asks in between the kisses. 

The question is vile because you want this. You have been wanting this for a long time now but no matter what - having sex with Min Yoongi at this moment is not right. Not when you are still bound by the contract. 

But desire, lust, need and want - these are more powerful than morality at times. And now is one of those times when you can’t seem to tame your racing heart, wild thoughts. All you want is Yoongi. 

So you give in. 

You answer his question by pushing your own tongue in his parted mouth. You moan in his mouth, making him shudder under your touch. 

Yoongi places one of his hands under your thighs and another around your back. He hoists you up in bridal style. 

“Bedroom?” he asks briefly. His brown orbs are already dark with lust. 

You point towards your bedroom. 

He throws you on the bed not-so-gently as he climbs on top of you, kissing you again. His hands are everywhere. On your chest, on your sides, under your tshirt. He cresses every part of your body so gently as if you are made of porcelain. 

The warmth of his body seeps through the layer of clothing and thaws every frozen part of yours. 

This is finally happening. Yoongi is in your arms. He is desperate for you. He wants you just as much you want him and most definitely doesn’t hate you as you have always believed. 

Even if you are morally (or legally) wrong right now, you can still go to sleep peacefully. Finally - finally everything has started falling in their right places. 

Yoongi’s mouth cleverly leaves your lips and marks their way down the path of your throat. He doesn’t shy away from painting all kinds of bruises on your skin. He sucks on the juncture of your shoulder and neck extra hard, making your toes curl. You exhale a breath in the form of his name. 

Yoongi grabs the hem of your tshirt and pulls his mouth away from your body only for a moment. He looks deeply into your eyes as if to ask for permission. When you give him a silent nod, he pulls the piece of clothing away from your body. 

“Fuck. no bra?” He groans. If you weren’t wet before then you are definitely dripping now. 

You still manage to chuckle quietly, “who wears bras at home, Yoongi?” 

“Umm” he makes an approving noise before ducking his head and taking a nipple inside his mouth. He sucks on your bud slowly, building the heat just the way you like. You start squirming under his hold. 

Your mind has already started getting hazy. There is nothing you can focus on properly. 

Evading your sensory system, Yoongi slips his right hand past the waistband of your shorts. You only register what he is up to when his fingers brush through your clothed folds. 

“Yoongi-” you whine. 

“You’re soaking, baby. Always so ready for me.” he says with a mouthful of your tits. His unoccupied hand tugs at your other nipple, making you groan in pain and pleasure at the same time. 

“I’m getting rid of these.” Yoongi stands on the bed, reaches for the remainder of your clothes and undresses you with one swift go. 

His efficiency shocks you but then you remind yourself that he has been sleeping around with more people than you can count on your fingers (toes included). 

“I have missed you so much.” Yoongi’s eyes are trained on your cunt - as if he is talking to it. 

His middle finger juts out and he places that flatly on your clit and he drags his digit down through your folds. 

A shiver runs down the path of your spine. 

It’s been so long since you have had a man touching you like this. The last one to touch you was Yoongi himself. 

So having your private parts exposed before his hungry eyes, as he invades your space in the dirtiest possible way - shuts down your system. 

“I have missed this so much.” he whispers again, all while his fingers circle on your clit, making a pool of arousal gush out of your entrance. 

“Oh re-really? Then what about the parade of girls that exited your bedroom ever-so-often? You- tau-taught them rap or somethi-ahh” you bite back but your sentence comes to an abrupt stop when Yoongi probes his finger inside you. 

“You talk too much, baby. Fuck- so tight. Gotta stretch you out.” he mumbles. His finger assaults your hole for a while before he adds another one to make things worse for you. 

All of your coherent thoughts have shut down by now. You can only think of how much you have missed this - Yoongi, his body pressed on you, his smart mouth, his long slender fingers and everything else. 

Your eyes close as pleasure clouds your mind. The coil in your stomach gets tighter and tighter. But when you feel Yoongi’s tongue licking stripes off of your folds, it threatens to rip off. 

“Yoongi” you moan his name and you know it strokes his ego. 

“Umm..sph gooph” Yoongi talks in your cunt. His long dark hair tickles your inner thighs. 

Your eyes roll back with the continuous abuse of Yoongi’s tongue on your clit. He makes it tough for you to keep your eyes open. 

“Yoongi” you say again. 

His fingers seizures in your hole as his tongue draws rough circles on your clit. 

“Gonna c-cum” you warn before a strong orgasm washes over you. 

When Yoongi detaches himself and looks at you, you find his chin and jaw drenched with your arousal. There is a maddening look in his eyes. 

“You came so much, huh?” Yoongi asks in a smug tone. He undresses himself little by little, you don’t shy away from drinking him in. 

“You have a condom?” you question all of a sudden, kind of ruining the mood. 

“Oh. no?” Yoongi’s bad boy aura drains and now who you see is just a confused kitten. 

“Then you know, I don’t think it will be safe for us to…” Yoongi nods at that. He doesn’t take off his underwear. 

“Then can I just..” his words trail off as he lowers himself on your freshly fucked cunt. His prominent bulge presses against your clit. 

You hiss. 

“Fuck, Yoongi!” you whine. 

He increases the pressure and starts rocking his hip. His bulge rubs against your cunt deliciously, you can help but moan his name more and more. 

“You feel so fucking good.” Yoongi says at one point. Your forehead is now heavy with droplets of sweat but his hips don’t cease for a moment. 

All while you feel yourself getting closer to your edge again. 

However, you take the chance to reach out to Yoongi’s body and place sweet kisses all over his slender throat, clavicle and upper chest. 

Yoongi’s mouth hangs open with the torture, his rhythym breaks and you know he is getting close to his high. 

With a few more grinds and the assault of your lips, Yoongi cums in his underwear. The expensive underwear takes up a darker shade with the impact. 

“Shit, fuck!” he curses rapidly. 

His heavy, sweaty body falls on the top of your body. He doesn’t show a tiny bit of uncomfort even when his wet-with-semen underwear presses on to your naked core. He tugs his nose on the crook of your neck. 

“Yoongi..” you call softly. He hums as an answer. 

“I have something to tell you.. It’s serious.” you let the bedroom air get tensed with your proposition. 

“I thought we were already done with the serious shit?” he groans. Your skin vibrates with his voice. 

“I- I am not renewing my contract. I’m quitting.” Your statement sits like a burning flame.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The flotsam and jetsam of our digital queries and transactions, the flurry of electrons flitting about, warm the medium of air. Heat is the waste product of computation, and if left unchecked, it becomes a foil to the workings of digital civilization. Heat must therefore be relentlessly abated to keep the engine of the digital thrumming in a constant state, 24 hours a day, every day. To quell this thermodynamic threat, data centers overwhelmingly rely on air conditioning, a mechanical process that refrigerates the gaseous medium of air, so that it can displace or lift perilous heat away from computers. Today, power-hungry computer room air conditioners (CRACs) or computer room air handlers (CRAHs) are staples of even the most advanced data centers. In North America, most data centers draw power from “dirty” electricity grids, especially in Virginia’s “data center alley,” the site of 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic in 2019. To cool, the Cloud burns carbon, what Jeffrey Moro calls an “elemental irony.” In most data centers today, cooling accounts for greater than 40 percent of electricity usage.

[...]

The Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes. At 200 terawatt hours (TWh) annually, data centers collectively devour more energy than some nation-states. Today, the electricity utilized by data centers accounts for 0.3 percent of overall carbon emissions, and if we extend our accounting to include networked devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets, the total shifts to 2 percent of global carbon emissions. Why so much energy? Beyond cooling, the energy requirements of data centers are vast. To meet the pledge to customers that their data and cloud services will be available anytime, anywhere, data centers are designed to be hyper-redundant: If one system fails, another is ready to take its place at a moment’s notice, to prevent a disruption in user experiences. Like Tom’s air conditioners idling in a low-power state, ready to rev up when things get too hot, the data center is a Russian doll of redundancies: redundant power systems like diesel generators, redundant servers ready to take over computational processes should others become unexpectedly unavailable, and so forth. In some cases, only 6 to 12 percent of energy consumed is devoted to active computational processes. The remainder is allocated to cooling and maintaining chains upon chains of redundant fail-safes to prevent costly downtime.

[rottenpumpkin13]

Challenge: Country Boy Life Habits That Can’t Be Shaken

Featuring: Angeal, Genesis

Statement: Thank you for answering my last ask.

Initial Query: Do you think Genesis plays guitar?

Absolutely Genesis plays guitar. But not better than Angeal, who learned from his dad (Genesis' primary instrument is the flute). But that doesn't stop them from dueting like it's second nature. Like two aging cowboys out in the wild west. Which brings us to:

• Campfire songs at SOLDIER when it rains. You think Commander Rhapsodos is all elegance and poetic mystique, until the power cuts out during a thunderstorm and you catch him and Angeal in a circle with acoustic guitars hollering " 🎶 Back in Banora where the apples grow fat an' the mako runs thin—"

• Angeal still says "she'll hold" when strapping down equipment with whatever string he finds. Genesis once used a belt to hold together his sword sheath mid-mission and said "This is how real men do it." (the belt was red leather and sparkly).

• Calls everything by Banoran nicknames nobody understands. Once Genesis said a malfunctioning SOLDIER comm was "hissin' like a shinderbug on a fencepost." Sephiroth asked what that meant. Genesis said "You know, it's when somethings a real cracklebox." Zack once tried to log their phrases in a field report and Tseng redacted the entire document.

• Genesis has old-man gripes despite being in his 20s. His back allegedly hurts every time it rains. He stands up from chairs when he's alone like he's got seventy years of bone trauma in his knees. He once refused to jump off a platform because "I'm not eighteen anymore, Angeal."

• Banoran weather lore. Angeal taps his knee and says "Storm's comin'. Felt it in my scar." Zack asked what scar. Angeal just squinted off into the distance like a seasoned rancher watching a twister roll in.

• Knife guy behavior. Angeal has at least three knives on him at all times: one for rope, one for fruit, one "just in case." Genesis carries one, but it's absurdly fancy, has his name etched into the hilt, and he's used it to stir soup like it's a ladle.

• Hyper-specific survival hacks that don't help anyone else. Angeal can fashion a fish trap out of broken rations and shirt thread. Genesis swears rubbing apple peel on your boots "makes 'em waterproof" (it doesn't).

[dchuntress]

reposting from a reddit post i made

Hi everybody!

One thing I see happening commonly is that people are often confused about the two Helenas/Huntresses of DC, often confusing them both for each other or preferring one over another or stating the same person. I am no expert, but I do love these two characters deeply and I have read extensively of their comics, so I thought to share a polished version of a summary that I originally wrote for my friends! I hope this helps, and I am open to civil feedback as well as further queries.

// I am not citing any specific sources here, but I can back up what I'm saying if you ask about anything specifically. I am referring to comics, wiki summaries, and various blogs dedicated.

// This is a summary, there is obviously more to what I describe.

// I am using Earth 0 as a shorthand for whatever the main earth is.

// I am using the terms Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, New 52, and Current to describe the continuities. I am aware these have other names, but for the sake of understanding both Helenas, I think these terms would be apt to follow.

// English is not my first language, apologies in advance for any errors.

The name itself, Huntress:

The first person to hold this name was Paula Brooks, actually. She was originally written as a Golden Age villain by this name, before she later on got renamed Tigress.

Pre-crisis: (featuring: Helena Wayne)

In Earth 2, an alternate world parallel to the main timeline, Batman and Catwoman settle down, semi-retire, get married, and have a kid named Helena Wayne. Helena Wayne grows up to be the Huntress, a morally grey crossbow-wielding vigilante. (Fun fact: There is the implication that she was originally created in lieu of an Earth 2 Batgirl).

Helena Wayne originally led a relatively stable life and grew up to become a lawyer. However, Selina is killed in a series of tragic events where she was blackmailed and framed, and Helena became the Huntress, wanting to bring justice to whoever was responsible for her mom's demise, clear up her mom's name, and dedicate the rest of her life fighting for what's right and just, to helping the people of Gotham.

Helena Wayne initially kept her Huntress alias a secret from everybody, including Batman himself. she did not use her father's name, rather she proved herself a determined detective and hero to the Justice Society of America, and became a member there. For Helena Wayne, being a member of the JSA is very integral to her story. she was also a member of the Infinity, Inc. Despite her big name, she still continued to fight street-level crime in her hometown.

Helena Wayne was a prominent lawyer, but she was constantly in doubt about it, feeling that she was doing more as a vigilante than a lawyer. Still, she kept that job, using her advantages as a lawyer to gain evidence and whatnot for the cases she'd handle as Huntress.

Helena Wayne had also met various people from earth 0! This was usually a result of attending JSA/JLA collaborations.

Then a crisis event, Crisis on Infinite Earths, happens, ending the multiverse and Helena Wayne is killed off.

Post-Crisis: (Featuring Helena Bertinelli)

Enter Helena Bertinelli.

The Huntress was reimagined completely, she no longer was the daughter of BatCat. Rather, she was now born into a Mafia family — the most powerful one in Gotham.

Helena Bertinelli, despite being born into excessive wealth, led a capricious life in a dark and unforgiving world. One tragic day, her entire family is killed off brutally in front of her, while she ends up being the lone survivor. The reason for this varies depending on the origin story, but none of it brings her closure.

A young helena bertinelli trains day and night, to be ruthless, to turn her fury and grief into a weapon she can wield to fight back, to avenge her family's deaths and kill their killers, to kill the men who stole her childhood innocence.

She's scared, constantly. She fights despite the fears. She doesn't ever want to be a prey again. She wants to hunt down predators who destroy innocent lives and protect the people of Gotham from these horrors.

Another thing to take note is that Helena Bertinelli is devoutly Catholic*, having a complicated relationship with God, faith, and the institution of religion. This is especially prominent in this time of her comics.

*(In Last Rites, it is indicated that Helena Wayne was raised Catholic, having gone through confirmation. However, so far, I have yet to see Helena Wayne being religious, really, one exception being her wearing a cross when she was impersonating Helena Bertinelli in Crossbow At The Crossroads).

And also, Helena Bertinelli is a schoolteacher. The details of this change; often she's an English highschool teacher. Regardless, she cares deeply about her students and has a soft spot for children.

In this time, Helena Bertinelli prominently has been a member of the Birds Of Prey; she was also briefly a part of the Justice League and the Outsiders.

Initially, Helena Bertinelli wanted to try and be a part of the Bat clan. However, time and again, she and chiefly Batman clashed the most, mostly over their ideologies, despite also teaming up often.

No Man's Land is also another important arc for Helena Bertinelli; after a devastating earthquake, Gotham is basically disowned by the country, there's no law and order, and Bruce Wayne has disappeared. In his absence, Helena Bertinelli stood up as The Bat*, hoping to give people the hope they had with B around as well as keep rogues in line. However, despite Helena's great works for keeping Gotham safe and helping its people during this time, this ultimately does not end well for her: She does not get credited properly for her contributions, she does not get to keep the Batsuit she designed, and she goes back to being Huntress mainly.

*[Not Batgirl as people commonly say. She called herself The Bat, she told people that Batman was a woman. Batman called her Batgirl after he arrived.]

New 52: (Featuring Helena Wayne & Helena Bertinelli)

Earth 2 is back again, one of the 52 alternate realities of the new Multiverse, the focus is on Helena Wayne Again; Helena Bertinelli is originally presumed to be dead during this time.

Helena Wayne, here, was Robin from a young age under the training of Batman and Catwoman.

Her childhood best friend is earth 2's Supergirl, Kara. (Karen was also Helena Wayne's best friend in Pre Crisis).

After a battle with Darkseid's lackeys, Helena and Kara are displaced to Earth 2 at a very young age.

They both continue to survive, usually by cleverness, various crimes — identity fraud, deception, wiring money from this world's billionaire Bruce Wayne, and so on. on this world, they became Huntress and Power Girl, as other mantles were already taken. Power Girl was now called Karen Starr herein.

While Helena Wayne wanted to focus on settling down and fighting crime in this new world and moving on from the past, Karen was deeply passionate to return home. and ultimately, that happens.

At around the same time, after Helena Wayne has left, Helena Bertinelli resurfaces, this time, being revealed as a member of Spyral. It's also revealed that she had actually faked her death to join the spy organisation.

Currently: (Featuring Helena Bertinelli & Helena Wayne)

Both Helenae are Huntresses again, although they're pretty much collecting dust, not having been used much in comics as of now.

Helena Bertinelli is a solo vigilante in gotham, with a vague past of Spyral involvement. Mind controlling parasites had attacked Gotham, and she was affected; although she was entirely cured of the parasites, she gained a power as a side effect — Crime Vision; aka, if someone in a certain nearby is assaulting or harming of killing someone, Helena can see the assault happening through the eyes of the monster. Although it gave her a headstart on tracking down those predators and saving their victims, this ability understandably has had a huge impact on Helena Bertinelli's mental health, wanting the visions to stop, being constantly reminded of her bloodied past, and the blood in her veins crying for more blood.

Helena Wayne is currently said to be retconned from one of the possible future timelines of the main world, not a different planet. She's a member of the JSA; this is her New Golden Age verse.

[ If it's not clear, I don't like Spyral stuff for Helena Bertinelli and New Golden Age stuff for Helena Wayne at all LOL it makes no sense ]

Other:

Helena Wayne has been Batman and Batwoman respectively in Earth 2 Society and Elseworlds/last Rites comics. she was also Famine, under the control of Apokolips.

Helena Bertinelli was briefly a panther in Beast World Tour!

Personality wise, I don't know how to succinctly describe them, but here's what I'd say: in terms of philosophy, they're quite similar — they're both morally grey, strongly feminist, and often follow the "the ends justify the means" mindset. they're both very stubborn, resilient, intense, and determined. they're both very skilled, multitalented vigilantes. One difference I'd note is Helena Wayne presents as more emotionally stable, while Helena Bertinelli openly expressed her emotions more, not one to be cold or tame her intensity for other people. They're both strong and ardent personalities and they care so much about making the world a better place for other people.

More ways to differentiate them:

Helena Wayne has only collaborated with the Birds of Prey one time, in a Batgirl! Barbara Gordon comic. Other than that, it is Helena Bertinelli who's usually a Bird of Prey.

Karen Starr and Helena Bertinelli have interacted once; Karen was mourning Helena Wayne and so, she sought to find something within Helena Bertinelli. Helena Bertinelli was naturally confused why Karen was seeking her out, and ultimately, Karen realises that both Helenii are irreplaceable. Ultimately, Helena Wayne's best friend is Karen Starr.

Both Heleneese have variety in their arsenal and suits. However, in my opinion, Helena Wayne's stuff tends to lean more towards fancy tech sophistication, while Helena Bertinelli's style leans towards more old school.

Helena Bertinelli tends to wear crosses and have touches of gold on her suit; Helena Wayne does not on the other hand.

Helena Wayne's suit in Pre-Crisis has the same design for the most part, meant to symbolise a combination of the suits of Batman and Catwoman.

Helena Bertinelli was a victim of CSA (Huntress 1989 & Huntress: Year One), so her motivation for fighting for women and children are very personal.

For Helena Wayne, fighting for victims of domestic violence, trafficking, and so on is also personal in its own way, usually being motivated by her mother Catwoman's works.

Both Helenaes were born into wealth, yes, but ultimately, their privileges did not blind them from fighting for the safety of Gotham at a raw, deep level. While Helena Bertinelli chose not to accept her inheritance (Huntress 1989) and sold her childhood house (Batman: Family), Helena Wayne lost everything in the New 52 storyline. Even in Pre-Crisis, she worked for these causes.

Crossbow At The Crossroads is actually a Helena Wayne comic. She uses Helena Bertinelli's identity to dismantle a human trafficking ring in Italy.

Speaking of, it is absolutely crucial that Helena Bertinelli is Italian; her Sicilian heritage is integral to her characterisation.

Why I consider them different:

These two women are not replaceable or interchangeable. They are very distinct and different characters past the surface level similarities.

Helena Bertinelli has conflict with Batman; Helena Bertinelli is often criticised for her morally grey actions and use of lethal violence, while Helena Wayne usually isn't. However, that doesn't mean Helena Wayne is any less violent than her, she has a more nonchalant attitude to murder in my opinion.

Their parentages are very deliberate and important for them. Helena Wayne is the definite daughter of Batman and Catwoman in a different reality, representing a life where these two people can finally be happy and choose each other and slow down. Which is why I don't think it makes sense that Helena Wayne could be born in the mainverse, considering Batman and Catwoman have more tumultuous lives and personalities and relationships there. Earth 2's Gotham is shown to be less dangerous than Earth 0's.

It is ABSOLUTELY imperative that Helena Bertinelli is a fourth generation Italian and born into a crime family. Whether her mom fakes her death or not, whether her biological father is the very man who placed the hit or not, whether her father is loving or abusive, whether Sal is her cousin or bodyguard, it does not matter. Helena Bertinelli is tragically doomed from her birth and by blood, destined to be hurt and lose her family, to overcome the shadows and the cages of her survivor's guilt and desperately hold onto something called faith to rise and emerge as the Huntress.

BOTH of them are worthy of the Huntress mantle, in their own ways. BOTH of them deserve to tell their stories. Neither Helena is better or worse. The world won't end if there's two Huntresses, they don't need to compete and they don't need to replace each other. We can have MORE stories of promising young women.

Thank you for reading thus far. I have been working on bettering my understanding of them and writing this for a long, long time.

Love you, have a good day, take care. 🩵

[chaaistained]

☕️ hold on ! let it simmer as it should ≈≈

here are my assortment of teas !!

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🗝️ you’ve now unlocked my brewery—would you like to sample the different flavours of chaai?

+ also !! make sure to check out my cuppa queries for extra goodies aka advice + ask game responses !!

— PINNED :

≈ hazy fairy lights and the thought of schedules ; a five second shift || kpop dr

≈ maybe you’re gonna be the one that saves me ; a sleepy shift || arrowverse dr

≈ what’s in my bag || kpop dr

≈ somewhere between lumos and leviosa; wand breakdown || marauders dr

≈ the breath that passed from you to me; amortentia breakdown || marauders dr

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

— MULTI MIX : ideas/posts that include multiple drs

≈ linked at the wrist

≈ signature concept

≈ adding flowers to my hair

≈ my pets

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

•*. comfort brews +°.

tea leaf garden

waiting room

☕︎ my solitary paradise, a modest manor with hardwood planks and jali carved furniture, with varnished floors and warm oak tones, the casually elegant atmosphere conceals my ingenuity if i may say so myself as i’ve imbued this reality with just enough advancement to make my life easier — this is my go-to vacation, my number one choice to spend anywhere from five minutes to five months, it is an island just for me and mother nature, where the presence of another is entirely dependant on whether or not i open a green sparkly door (to be explained unless you’ve seen the good place then you know what i mean)

— my waiting room; intro•°

.. house tour ..

.. island princess ..

.. toe beaned friends — an introduction to my animal companions ..

.. this is the bad place! . it’s not ..

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

steeped to perfection

better cr

☕︎ after hiccuping cries and nights drowned in tear stained pillow cases, i decided to make a life for myself where i can actually feel alive, where i can breathe a little lighter, plant my feet a little softer, take my steps a little slower and admire the beauty of dappling sunlight through curtain branches, without feeling the twist of a knife to my chest that is the fear of existing, in this life i’ve found happiness, success, family, friendship, love, so much so that it overflows the stone barricades of sadness and pain that will always be there but will never be in power again, this is it for me—i may rave about my other lives and take pride in the work i’ve put into them, but above them all, this is the one

— my better cr; intro•°

.. what's in my bag ..

.. room tour ..

.. this is so ! — what others associate with me ..

.. ℳ and 𝒜 belong together — red strings i've scripted with my s/o ..

.. my hobbies [[ moodboard + desc ]] ..

.. girls trip to sicily [pt 1] ..

.. my internship : page turners ..

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

laced with firewhiskey

hogwarts » marauders era

☕︎ born of sunlight and moss water — i take a different name in this reality — as james potter’s younger sister, the mischief runs in my blood and the adrenaline bursts through the balls of my feet; with every bounding step i take, the heels of my boots clack against the cold stone floor of hogwarts castle, and i smile with blackberry sheened lips, knowing that i will leave a mark on this world, regardless of whether it’s by virtue of self or status . i mean, being gryffindor’s seeker does have its perks, but so does being a prefect hihi

— my marauders dr; intro•°

.. subjecting you to my opinions on subjects ..

.. patronus vs animagus + what i've scripted ..

.. somewhere between lumos and leviosa; wand breakdown ..

.. the breath that passed from you to me; amortentia breakdown ..

.. visual brew; julia potter [[ moodboard + desc + playlist ]] ..

.. tea for two; julia x regulus [[ moodboard + desc + playlist ]] ..

.. potter family [[ moodboard + desc ]] ..

.. hogsmeade renewed ..

.. desired reality vs fan fiction — how my marauders dr is different to my fic (based off of it) ..

.. changes made from canon ..

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

cc jitters

dc » the flash / arrowverse

☕︎ amber crackling firelight burns in the depths of my throat, itching to let out a guttural scream, my path is one that’s forged on survival — with a new identity (aka i’ve got another name in this reality too . to really embrace the lore i guess?) i don the tigers skin and camouflage into the concrete jungle of central city until lightning strikes and my world shatters into a kaleidoscope colour storm of new feelings, new people, new purpose, a new life.. one that can replace the old and heal the wounded cub inside

— my arrowverse dr; intro•°

.. maybe you’re gonna be the one that saves me ; a sleepy shift ..

.. lady sher — the legend of the ambush ..

.. my wardrobe ..

.. visual brew; gwendolyn thomara [[ moodboard + desc + playlist ]] ..

.. tea for two; gwen x barry [[ moodboard + desc + playlist ]] ..

.. a chemical imbalance causes a combustion of the lovesick heart; falling in love with barry allen ..

.. desired reality vs fan fiction — how my arrowverse dr is different to my fic (based off of it) ..

.. changes from canon ..

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

claritea

kpop » own girl group

☕︎ pattering footsteps adorned with paayal, glittering down hallways at the mere age of three, dancing to the melody of rain falling against glass windows, or singing to the tune of wind whistling through the metal wind chimes, i was born to perform and everyone knows it, the stage lights up with i arrive — the firecracker of clarity, the siren voice of the 4th gen, the diamond maknae (this is such a self indulgent dr . zero shame though also,, new name pt3) i’m living my best life in one of the most successful girl groups in the world, i get to do what i love for a living (pt 1) — clari brings the clear view of success~~

— my kpop girl group dr; intro•°

.. hazy fairy lights and the thought of schedules ; a five second shift ..

.. anecdotal thoughts / ideas ..

.. clear view ! clarity (+ an explanation for my secrecy) ..

.. lore unlocked — a work in progress ..

.. i came here to have a good time (rewriting the code of the world) ..

.. house tour ..

.. clarity friendship intro [[ moodboard + desc ]] ..

.. what jungwon and i find beautiful about each other ..

.. cute couple things ..

.. mina and jungwon pre-relationship (brief) ..

.. what’s in my bag ..

•*. occasional brews +°.

pumpkin spiced

hogwarts » modern era

☕︎ desc

— my modern hogwarts dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

bat bakery homebrew

dc » gotham academy

☕︎ desc

— my gotham academy dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

kansas apple cider

dc » smallville

☕︎ desc

— my smallville dr: intro•°

.. the city i protect (brief summary) ..

.. insignia , suit , amulet (details) ..

.. public perception of me ..

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

vogue's bonus recipe

fame

☕︎ desc

— my fame dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

sponsored by sweet tea

youtuber/author

☕︎ desc

— my youtuber dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

eywa's elixir

avatar » pandora

☕︎ desc

— my pandora dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

yak dung tea, very aromatic

httyd

☕︎ desc

— my dragon rider dr; intro•°

•*. delicacy brews +°.

pandora express

avatar » modern era

☕︎ desc

— my modern avatar dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

steeped in rose petals

barbie (modern era/barbie roberts ver.)

☕︎ desc

— my barbie dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

web-slinging special

spiderverse

☕︎ desc

— my spiderverse dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

paradise in a cup

outer banks

☕︎ desc

— my outer banks dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

hot leaf juice

avatar: the last airbender

☕︎ desc

— my atla dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

mid-wilsher paper cups

the rookie

☕︎ desc

— my rookie dr; intro•°

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

eden college tea time

spy x family

☕︎ desc

— my spy x family dr; intro•°

don’t swallow the tea leaves ! for they leave you a message 🍂

(although unfinished) this is my aromatic archive of the various realities that i call home !! i'm very excited to keep updating the post with the many ideas that i wish to explore »∻*

i have more dr's that i haven't mentioned on here, niche ones, underdeveloped ones, abandoned ones—i'd be happy to add them at some point~

i will also be taking requests on different topics for posts !! (simply come have a cup of tea with yours truly . aka: send an ask ☕≈≈)

the setup of this masterlist is inspired by the lovely @hrrtshape and her formatting , i found it really easy to navigate and i like the idea of adding a little blurb before the list of posts !! anyway, ib; emma xx

i hope you found something here to your liking <3

spilled chaai; ingredient list — explore the recipe for chaai

cuppa queries; order in — ask responses

chaai ponders; ring stained pages — on loa/shifting/manifestion/creativity

2024 © chaaistained

[artbyblastweave]

Hey man, love your content, and it seems you have the subject matter expertise to address a recent query of mine (spoilers ahead for some Iron Man comics just in case):

Iron Man comics aren't my favourite but I have kept up with some of the more recent runs, and alongside the way Tony Stark has been depicted outside of his own running series, the impression that I've gotten is that Marvel . . . doesn't really know what to do with him??

Far as I can tell, Stark's characterisation seems to be suffering perpetually from a sort of arrested character growth. Every comic run starring him seems to blatantly recycle story beats that revolve around his resources and especially his proprietary tech being seized by malicious actors and turned against him and assorted innocents. In the 2022 run it was Feilong's corporate takeover, in the current run it's Roxxon and AIM iirc, don't remember any other specific examples but I'm certain this and other such story beats have repeatedly reared their heads with minimal changes between runs.

Stark himself seems to perpetually be reacting to all of this with an attitude of "oh no, my tech has once again been stolen for nefarious ends, this is all on me, I must be better" only for the cycle to repeat again. He also can't seem to shake the habit of acting unilaterally without consulting anyone (except sometimes Rhodey and Pepper and even then only sometimes). The most recent run of West Coast Avengers where he attempts to rehabilitate Ultron, his attempt to arm a questionably framed Latverian rebellion in the One World Under Doom tie-in, there's a run where he acquires the Power Cosmic and gets very power-trippy all within the same issue, even the AXE stuff where they resurrect (?) a whole ass Celestial seems to cast him in a particularly unkind light as though he didn't act alone, the blueprint for the Celestial's equivalent of a nervous system (I think) was explicitly based on Stark's own biology; the Celestial itself narrates: "If I have a father, it is Tony Stark."

I get that any given character will always be fundamentally attached to certain themes that they can't ever stray too far from, because if they do then there's no point using that particular character, but it frustrates me that the way Marvel chooses to engage with Iron Man's particular themes is to have him just not learn his lessons over and over again. He's certainly not the only one suffering from this; off the top of my head whichever Hulk run came directly after Immortal Hulk seems to have barely followed up on or paid off anything that Al Ewing and co. set up. But for whatever reason out of all of them it's Iron Man who sticks out like a sore thumb to me specifically.

Any thoughts on all this? Is my analysis even critically sound? I hope it is but my knowledge of Iron Man and Marvel comics in general only extends so far; my observations are primarily from the last 2-3 years so I can't speak to what preceded that.

Your perception is absolutely correct. Iron Man flying too close to the sun and fucking up is basically the default beat, the thing that'll always be recognizably Iron Man to comic readers and moviegoers alike now that you can't spin him as an anticommunist playboy anymore; this was the backbone of the Civil War and Secret invasion arc, Johnathan Hickman's Avengers run leading into Secret Wars, and a whole bunch of stuff you just listed that I haven't been paying particularly close attention to. They've given him amnesia at least once in order to keep this cycle going. Maybe more than once.

Iron Man specifically has a couple unique storytelling problems that feed this cycle and contribute to the specific beats you've observed. First of which is that he's unique among superheroes in that a plurality of their audience are ideologically opposed to the existence of people like Tony Stark ; he's even more tightly tied to the playboy tech billionaire archetype than even Batman. This primes a lot of his contemporary storytelling to adopt an apologetic tone, and for a lot of his stories to sic him on even worse billionaires and magnates so the authors don't look like they've forgot about the negative effects of capitalism as commonly practiced.

I also think there's an argument to be made that the films specifically raised the saliency of the idea that Iron Man's Thing is getting caught in this cycle. It's not totally native to the films and the post-2007 comics seeking synergy with the films- see Demon in a Bottle and Armor Wars- but, in line with the realization that you can't make a weapons manufacturer an uncomplicated good guy in a post-GWOT post-cold war cultural context, the movies went really hard on the idea that he keeps fucking up and then overcompensating for previous fuckups in a way that generates new fuckups. The first movie is him trying to unfuck the damage he's done to the world as an arms dealer, Age of Ultron sees him produce Ultron directly and the Twins indirectly, Civil War has him back the Sokovia accords because he's projecting his own desire to be punished for the lack of oversight onto everyone else, Homecoming and Far from Home both have Spider-Man cleaning up villains generated by his business practices, and so on. They grafted on one of Hank Pym's big science-sins in order to reinforce this cycle, that's how committed they were to it.

In the movies this actually all mostly worked because there was an end to it. Not the most cohesive end, but he did die, and then there was a whole epilogue Spider-Man film wrestling with the idea that he was a complicated guy and that Peter shouldn't repeat his mistakes. Comic books don't have the luxury of a termination point; the arc can't conclude even in an unsatisfying way. They have to tread water. And if they have to tread water, best to do it in charted territory, with a type of story beat that'll be immediately recognizable to anyone just getting into the comics from the movies. Accessibility to the fabled "new reader" is an additional concern that contributes to this, with Iron Man and every other character; see also the TvTropes page on the Fleeting Demographic Rule, the gamble that they can get away with this kind of self-plagarism because the odds are good that the first time a casual reader encounters this kind of beat will be the only time they do so.

An additional element at play here, and one where I'm unsure of the long-term effects, is RDJ's departure from the movies. He's now been gone long enough that MCU Iron Man, even as late as Endgame, can be plausibly constructed as a nostalgia property. There is currently a wave of tweens who've plausibly never seen Iron Man headline in anything. This takes the pressure off of the comics to synergize with the movies, which is good on a level because some really dogshit stories happened as a result of that pressure, like Civil War 2. The flip side of that pressure is that there's nothing they specifically need the character to be doing, no A-list Hickman-headed Uberplot he has to play a key role in- I mean, he'll be there, but that'll be down to inertia. I think that lack of pressure will free up space for a new angle, but until someone comes up with that angle it might also encourage that same return to the mean.

What's going to pull him out of this is what pulls every character who ends up in this position out of it; someone genuinely invested will come along with a genuinely novel angle or approach, and their run will sell like hotcakes, become seminal, and eventually become another of the default beats that they constantly retread. After all, the first time they did a corporate takeover plot it probably hit really hard.

[thegoldengoddd]

hi Tumblr nation I'm here to share how normal I am about this scum of the earth!!

Disclaimers:

This is MY analysis, nothing I'm saying is confirmed exactly by RCG, but a lot is implied

this post contains spoilers, in case you haven't watched it all (this was posted before s17)

I'm not a Dennis defender, if I met this dude irl I'd make sure he suffers

I'm not a psychologist, I'm 15, keep that in mind

Okay so I'm gonna base this little yap around Dennis' mommy and daddy issues because I believe they form a VERY crucial part of his personality in the show... I believe his parent problems had two very contradicting effects on Dennis—

the need to prove himself as powerful

the internal desire to be held and adored

And these two so deeply contradicting points drive the man absolutely crazy.

We all know Dennis' character by now— selfish, dominating, power-hungry, just a straight up evil asshole all around — but, and very obviously, that's an exterior to cover up his true feelings and I can almost guarantee this because we HAVE seen him crack before! Here are some examples, and why they relate to the context of his issues

1 — God Hole

" I know that what's important to you is money and power, but I don't want real power! Because with real power comes real responsibility and I don't want any of that shit! I just want the money. The illusion of power"

So it's established that there's more than his commonly known exterior, that's surface level. I mainly want to go into the idea of his defensive nature. Dennis seems to determine his worth by how much power he feels. He wants something to make him SEEM powerful without the responsibility that comes with power, which brings me to my query that Dennis built up an unhealthy defense mechanism to protect himself from rejection and disapproval from others as he is a very sensitive person with "big feelings". Frank was TERRIBLE to Dennis and Dee. I believe Dennis' defense mechanism was picked up from incidents like Christmas days where Frank would get their hopes up just for them to find out they got nothing for Christmas. His daddy issues probably caused this and the fact that in this scene Dennis is talking TO FRANK makes me quite frankly very upset

“I need somethin’. I mean I got this giant gaping hole inside me. And I’m always tryin’ to fill it with somethin’. I like to call it my God Hole. And I think a lot of people in this world, they fill it with religion. But I don’t believe in God.”

In relation to his mommy issues, frank did state that Dennis and Dee were raised by "a series of mexican women", referring to nannies, presumably. So it's safe to assume that Dennis never had a prominent mother figure in his life. That "gaping hole" inside him probably formed from childhood. (considering by the second grade he was logging Dee's behaviour...) Anyways, without a consistent mother figure in your life, you may end up feeling the need to impress every single woman you meet in later life because picking up on childhood habits in later life is ever so common! This could explain a lot about Dennis' God hole, and his need for the illusion of approval (or what he describes as power) from women. It's also prominent in EVERYTHING Dennis does. He seems to only get on with the gang because they're all dumber than him so he stays because in that case he can feel superior and as though he's worth it — as he determines his worth by how much power he has. He manipulates every woman he finds (The D.E.N.N.I.S system), and he's SO SURE of himself. these are all general characteristics that could be blamed on his lack of a single mother figure in his life growing up.

2— Valentines Day (big feelings)

Probably the most prominent scene for ALL Dennis fans...

"I hate Valentine's Day because you assholes never got me anything! Okay, and I have feelings! Of course I have feelings! I have big feelings, okay? And it hurts."

Moments of vulnerability like this do infer that he's CONSTANTLY hiding, gaslighting himself to the point of delusion on a usual basis because he is absolutely convinced that vulnerability is weakness and what's one of the main points of this analysis? he needs to prove himself as powerful. Beyond surface level delusion, though, he feels deeply about how much the gang, those closest to him, like him. He wants the approval of the gang and this scene does make that abundantly clear. Point? This probably began whilst chasing his parents' affection, especially considering Frank is IN THE GANG

Now, the factor of Valentine's day in itself. His romance issues are absolutely devastating and he's a horrible person because of it. He developed a habit of one night stands that may have stemmed from his childhood, all the different women that raised him distorted his view of what a woman in his life should be, turning him extremely misogynistic and dominating over them. Frank and Barbara themselves didn't help this case, Dennis never saw a loving couple growing up, just women working for the man (Frank). It's a possibility he hates Valentine's day too because he knows about his refusal to accept love when handed to him on a silver platter. All Mac seems to do is prove his care for Dennis— Dennis simply cannot fathom it. He hates Valentine's day because of his defense mechanism that HE put up, but he'd rather simply suffer than drop the barrier. He feels his avoidant nature is safer than showing vulnerability, though. So he's in a constant battle with himself over what he truly wants.

3— Brian Jr

"I can't do any of this shit anymore. Okay, I'm leaving. I'm gonna go be a dad."

Dennis' desire for normalcy is something that's prominent in most episodes actually, he always seems to be the one telling the gang to stop acting weird and crazy and whatnot. It's even more evident in this scene. Considering the context, he couldn't see the abandonment of his son as a "successful mission". I feel like he's been atta connection ched to the gang because they're the only ones that can even remotely tolerate him, but as people, he's unlike anyone else in the gang, except for maybe Dee, but they're siblings so they'd probably stay in contact regardless of the gang's existence. Not sure if I'm rambling bullshit here but if you get it, you get it... Anyway this links AGAIN to Dennis' craving for connection, something to fill that "god hole".

"Because I don't want my kid to grow up like I did. With some asshole dad who was never even around."

He's well aware he's not right in the head (God hole for further proof), yet usually he'll reject confrontation in relation to it (defense mechanism). Now this is a slight off topic but there's always the common misconception that Dennis is a psychopath — this isn't true... and it's annoying whenever someone characterizes him like this. he's a sociopath. He feels STRONGLY, and if he didn't feel strongly, he wouldn't have given a shit about the outcome of his son. Okay now that's cleared up, back to the main point. He still has a resentment towards Frank. Dennis CLEARLY noticed his behaviours of selfish rejection towards his son and saw himself in Brian Jr. "Dennis' Double Life" is one of the best examples of Dennis' insecurity and resentment in terms of his childhood and that grudge is obviously still prominent in his adult life.

4— "The Gang Saves The Day"

No quote for this, Dennis' whole fantasy was absolutely insane material for me to work with. So, I'll break down the scenario for anyone that either has no clue what I'm on about, or simply just forgot.

the gang gets caught up in an armed robbery and the viewer gets to see each character's fantasy on what they'd do to a) stop the robbery and b) what they'd do after. Now, keep in mind this is what they WANT. Dennis wants the following:

to be shot in the head, but not kill him

wake up in hospital absolutely dumb as fuck because of brain damage

Jackie Denardo to BABY him, and nurse him back to health. I'm talking spoon feeding and praise and shit

now, Jackie Denardo was previously mentioned in the episode "The Storm Of The Century". Dennis was absolutely INFATUATED by Jackie.

Do I even have to explain the all so clear mommy issues there? He wants a woman he's attracted to to absolutely baby the fuck out of him and tell him how well he's doing. Dennis would never outwardly admit that's what he wants. It certainly wasn't his attitude towards her in "The Storm Of The Century" This is simply his internal telling him that he wants this. Anyway if it's so clear in that scene that he's looking to be nurtured by women that could explain his behaviours with any woman he's met. Mama didn't give him that love and he NEVER grew up, he's immature. I don't think I need to explain this one further

5— The S.I.N.N.E.D system

The S.I.N.N.E.D system is Dennis' foolproof plan to attract a man— the reverse of the D.E.N.N.I.S system. And now, I'm a bi Dennis truther however I'd like to bring up another point — projection.

The system goes as followed:

S— Suppress your instincts

I— Inflate his ego

N—Need his power

N— Negate his power

E— Engage physically

D— Do you need a tissue?

And oh boy, do I have some things to say about the projection involved here. More evidence before my main point to prove this is a projection and I'm not delusional — "need his power" what's his favourite thing to have? the illusion of power. "engage physically", well, he loves that shit! Just 2 examples, anyway—

"Do you need a tissue?" refers to the act of asking a man this in relation to, say, dropping a piece of food on himself, or if he has mucus visible on his nose. Dennis explains this will embarrass him, and make him feel inclined to let you help him... Combine his secret desire to be nurtured and spoon fed (as in point 4), Dennis CLEARLY. CLEARLYYYY wants that. He wants to be taken care of, but now leading back to my original point— His. Defense. Mechanism. Drives. Him. Crazy.

CONCLUSION!!!!

This asshole is soooo pathetic and a bitch and I hate him and I want to deep fry him actually what an asshole ugh he disgusts me jhhhdhjdjsjskakAAAAAA

All of this is just for fun, again, I'm not a professional and I'm just making theories!

oh and sorry if I said anything that didn't make sense... never done an analysis like this and also sorry if all of this was obvious and surface level I just needed an excuse to yap haha...

[j-eryewrites]

Stressed Out

MAIN MASTER LIST

Word Count: 1.k <

Warnings: Not really any, kind of ooc Sherlock (but who cares)

Author's Note: Finally feeling like I have time to write and that the writing gods have been in my favor. This was a fun little one-shot to write. While I'm still trying to get back into my writing groove, this one shot definitely helped get some of the dust off my creative writing brain. So, thank you @my-dear-sweet-melody for requesting this one. I hope you enjoy it!

You weren’t sure how you’d been doing it: managing the day-to-day lives of two people who also happened to be good friends of yours, assisting Sherlock with cases, seeing things you’d never thought you’d see in your lifetime (both good and bad), juggling relationships, your own well-being and health, and time to relax. Although it seemed like you had less and less time to do the things concerning yourself. You knew it wasn’t healthy, but when you were thrust into the world of Sherlock Holmes, more important things came into play.

Sherlock was the first to notice how the stress was weighing on you. It was a total shock when he casually announced your current state to John. The moment the words of concern were uttered from Sherlock’s lips, the puzzle in John’s mind had been completed. With the help of Mrs. Hudson, the two men began to conspire to make life easier for their dear friend.

At first, Sherlock’s conscious decision to wash his dishes and put them away in the correct cabinets struck you as odd. Sherlock’s mind was usually too busy for such arbitrary tasks, and such magnificent brain power couldn’t be wasted on such a thing. Then came the tidiness of his experiments. You could swear you hadn’t seen a stray finger or eyeball dissolving in vinegar for quite some time.

When you had asked Sherlock about his new behavior, he shrugged it off with some wildly strange research idea he had come up with. You tried to follow along, but your brain began to hurt after a moment, so you opted to believe him instead.

Meanwhile, John took extra care to charge his and Sherlock’s devices. He knew no matter how brilliant Sherlock was, the man seemingly ceased to forget that computers, phones, and the lot needed to be charged via a charging cord and port. On the other hand, Mrs. Hudson made the note to prepare extra tea and biscuits to save yourself the trouble of doing that for Sherlock and John.

Now, you felt no need to question John and Mrs.Hudson’s new behavior. It was in character for them to do small things like that. However, you continued to question Sherlock; he grew tired of it. Why couldn’t you see that he cared for you, too? That maybe he cared a bit more for you than he should. He was growing weary of the excuses he made to your insistent questions when all he wanted to do was throw them up and tell you the truth. Truthfully, the truth was something he insisted upon. Sherlock always found it one way or another. Yet, he could only fib when you had a new query about his altered behavior. Was it hard for you to understand that Sherlock could care? That he, too, could be human?

“Sherlock,” you called as you sat on the couch, pouring over the current case. It was usually your job to organize each thing into its Sherlockian category to save Sherlock his brain power. However, when you opened the file, it had already been done. “Did I happen to organize this in my sleep?” You raised the file and peered at him. Sherlock felt his mind conjure up the latest lie. Just before it left his mouth, he paused. He got up and marched to the window, where he began to gaze out onto the street below. He couldn’t lie anymore. He had to tell you the truth.

“I organized it,” Sherlock said.

You froze. Something was seriously wrong with the man if he was now organizing his own cases. “Sherlock, you never orga–”

“Why can’t I?” Sherlock’s voice grew tense. His eyes clenched shut, all while his back was still towards you. He wouldn’t dare look at you. He knew if he saw your eyes, he’d crumble and tell you everything, but everything was what you needed to hear. Everything was what he needed to say.

“I never said you couldn’t. It’s just,” you faltered, “…strange.”

Within a moment, Sherlock whirled around. His icy blue eyes began to thaw under your gaze. “I observed you have stressed: Your trousers falling to your hips instead of hanging snuggly on your waist, the dark circles under your eyes that only grew prominent by the day, the growing urge to sleep instead of join Mrs. Hudson for the weekly watch party of the latest soap opera,” Sherlock shut his mouth. He had said too much already; he shouldn’t say more, but his lips moved again. “I wasn’t the only one who noticed, John and Mrs. Hudson, too. We devised a plan to lessen the blow of our–my constant mess.”

As Sherlock spoke, you realized his words were only the truth. You had noticed you suddenly had more time to eat a meal, spend time with your favorite landlady, who was more like a mother, go on walks in the park with John, listen to Sherlock compose his latest piece, sleep, and live life as it should be lived. Amidst Sherlock’s rambling, you whispered, “Why?”

“Because we–because I care you for,” Sherlock choked.

Slowly, you remove yourself from the comfort of the couch cushions and find a place in front of Sherlock. You watch as Sherlock shudders from the touch of your hand on his cheek. “Thank you,” you said as a smile grew. “Thank you for caring when I forgot to take care of myself. Although…”

Sherlock frowned.

“…while I appreciate the sentiment of you organizing your own cases, John charging the computers, and Mrs. Hudson always preparing tea, I’d still like to be able to do my job. After all, the great Sherlock Holmes still needs to use his brain power to solve cases and save the day.”

Sherlock could only smile at that response for he'd give you anything you'd ask. "Of course. Of course, Y/N."

____

Comment below if you would like to be added to the tag list! Please comment or reblog if you can; I want to hear from you.

Tag list:

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_____

[randomuser678]

I love how most Batman villains have a genderbend version of them, specially bc as a trans woman I want to read into them being trans

Like, the Ventriloquist's design is of a mild mannered boring looking man who contrasts with his puppet Scarface who's much more rude and greedy, it feels like Scarface is a way for his ventriloquist to express his more rude side while distancing himself from them.

Now on my read where she's a trans woman there would be two layers of repression here, Ventriloquist personified her "masculine" side into the puppet who acts like a stereotypical tough guy, a rude bossy mafia leader, and she became a sexy trophy wife for him, this way she separates herself from the undesirable masculine traits, as well as becoming a love interest to a man who makes all the decisions for her, she only exists to support him, she finally made it to cisnormative and heteronormative ideals of femininity! It comes off as a tragic clinging to idealized femininity and male approval on a way I really relate to.

Clayface also has a really good portrayal of Dysphoria since in the versions I've seen they're an actor who hates their own face and got into a drug that would make their face easy to remold, then it went horribly wrong and now their entire body is moldable, Lady Clayface didn't have to change that general backstory for it to work at all, and the theme of beauty is common on female villains, but tbh I love this one specifically because of the trans read being more obvious, and this is the one case where a character didn't have to change backstories at all for the female version, she can still be a former actor with dysphoria that later gains shapeshifting powers, it's almost a happy ending for her now that she can change her shapes even if it's still tragic.

Calendar girl has a similar theme (Although she's both a version of Calendar man but also The Manikin) where she's a former celebrity who's horrified by her appearance under the mask and is "aging out" of her career, her attacking themed on holidays is both a mockery of her job as a model and needing to keep up with trends and also to show her resentment towards the passage of time, it's a really fun mix of characters and my trans read of her would be similar to Clayface. Also how youth and beauty is valued in society as a whole and older trans people in general are ignored on the mainstream.

And because the comic book world is really hostile towards genderbends (see Oswald from the newest Batman cartoon) a lot of them have instead characters who co-exist with their male counterparts, that was the case for the Ventriolquist since she just took the role from the previous one, but sometimes they do what they did here:

Madame Crow is part of the Victim Syndicate, a group of people who were victims of different villains and now resent Batman for not saving them, their powers are now ironic mirrors to the characters they were victimized by, and on Madame Crow's case, where she was a victim of the fear toxins from the Scarecrow, she made toxins that completely rid a person of any fear or self-preservation. And idk the fact that she wants to create something that gets rid of fears and repression just comes off as queer to me even though it was obviously not intentional, it's just that on a version where she IS the Scarecrow I would love how thematically fitting it all is.

I've seen pieces about how Batman is inherently queer bc super heroes and villains as a whole empower themselves through creating an alternative persona on an over the top camp way that's basically drag.

Some male villains have female sidekicks, Sugar and Spice, Query and Echo, and I guess those are harder to read as female personas of the same character like how I've been doing, but idk, you can rewrite the stories however you like to make these work, maybe twoface is bigender and flips a coin to decide which gender they're going with, that would be on theme. You can do anything ever with these characters.

Also I never understood why ppl were mad about Oswalda, every version of Batman changes backstories around, why is changing a character's gender or whatever completely out of line with that they've already been doing for decades? Anyways I'm trans and this is all.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Forcing Google to spin off Chrome (and Android?)

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/19/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/#shiny-and-chrome

Last August, a federal judge convicted Google of being "a monopolist" and acting "as one to maintain its monopoly." The judge concluded that key to Google's monopoly was the vast troves of data it collects and analyzes and asked the parties to come up with remedies to address this.

Many trustbusters and Google competitors read this and concluded that Google should be forced to share its click and quer y data. The technical term for this is "apocalyptically stupid." Releasing Google's click and query data into the wild is a privacy Chernobyl in the waiting. The secrets that we whisper to search engines have the power to destroy us a thousand times over.

Largely theoretical answers like "differential privacy" are promising, but remain theoretical at scale. The first large-scale live-fire exercise for these should not be something as high-stakes as Google's click and query data. If anything, we should delete that data:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

The last thing we want to do is use antitrust to democratize surveillance so that everyone can spy as efficiently as Google does. In theory, we could sanitize the click and query data by limiting sharing to queries that were made by multiple, independent users (say, only sharing queries that at least 30 users have made), but it's unlikely that this will do much to improve the performance of rival firms' search engines.

Google only retains 18 months' worth of click and query data, thus once we cut off its capacity to collect more data, whatever advantage it has from surveillance will begin to decay immediately and fall to zero in 18 months.

(However: the 18 months figure is deceptive, and deliberately so. Google may only retain your queries for 18 months, but it is silent on how long it retains the inferences from those queries. It may discard your "how do I get an abortion in my red state" query after a year and a half, but indefinitely retain the "sought an illegal abortion" label it added to your profile. The US desperately needs a federal consumer privacy law!)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

And just to be clear, there's other Google data that would be very useful to rival search engines, like Google's search index – the trove of pages from the internet. Google already licenses this out, and search engines like Kagi use it to produce substantially superior search results:

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

The DOJ has just filed its proposal for a remedy, and it's a doozy: forcing Google to sell off Chrome, on the basis that both of these are the source of much of Google's data, and no rival search engine is likely to also have a widely used browser:

https://9to5google.com/2024/11/18/us-doj-google-sell-chrome/

This represents something of a compromise position: the DOJ had initially signalled that it would also demand a selloff of Android, and that's been dropped. I think there's a good case for forcing the sale of Android as a source of data, too.

In competition theory, these selloffs are referred to as "structural separation" – when a company that provides infrastructure to other firms is prohibited from competing with those firms:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

For example, it used to be that banks were prohibited from competing with the companies they loaned money to. After all, if you borrow money from Chase to open a pizzeria, and then Chase opens a pizzeria of its own across the street, you can see how your business would be doomed. You have to make interest payments to Chase, and your rival doesn't, and if Chase wants to, it can subsidize that rival so it can sell pizzas below cost until you're out of business.

Likewise, rail companies were banned from owning freight companies, because otherwise they would destroy the businesses of every freight company that shipped on the railroad.

In theory, you could create fair play rules that required the bank or the railroad to play nice with the business customers that used their platforms, but in practice, there are so many ways of cheating that this would be unenforceable.

This principle is well established in all other areas of business, and we recoil in horror when it is violated. You wouldn't hire a lawyer who was also representing the person who's suing you. Judges (with the abominable exception of Supreme Court justices!) are required to recuse themselves when they have a personal connection with either of the parties in a case they preside over.

One of the weirdest sights of the new Gilded Age is when lawyers for monopoly companies argue that they can play fair with their customers despite their conflicts of interest. Think of Google or Meta, with their ad-tech duopoly. These are companies that purport to represent sellers of ads and buyers of ads in marketplaces they own and control, and where they compete with sellers and/or buyers. These companies suck up 51% of the revenue generated by advertising, while historically, the share taken by ad intermediaries was more like 15%!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act

Imagine if you and your partner discovered that the same lawyer was representing both of you in the divorce, while also serving as the judge, and trying to match with both of you on Tinder. Now imagine that when the divorce terms were finalized, lawyer got your family home.

No Google lawyer would agree to argue on the company's behalf in a case where the judge was employed by the party that's suing them, but they will blithely argue that the reason they're getting 51% of the ad-rake is that they're providing 51% of the value.

Structural separation – like judicial recusal – comprehensively and unarguably resolves all the perceptions and realities of conflict between parties. The fact that platform owners compete with platform users is the source of bottomless corruption, from Google to Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

In other words, I think the DOJ is onto something here. That said, the devil is – as always – in the details. If Google is forced to sell off Chrome, rather than standing it up as its own competing business, things could go very wrong indeed.

Any company that buys Chrome will know that it only has a certain number of years before Google will be permitted to spin up a new browser, and will be incentivized to extract as much value from Chrome over that short period. So a selloff could make Chrome exponentially worse than Google, which, whatever other failings it has, is oriented towards long-term dominance, not a quick buck.

But if Google is forced to spin Chrome out as a standalone business, the incentives change. Anyone who buys Chrome will have to run it as a functional business that is designed to survive a future Google competitor – they won't have another business they can fall back on if Google bounces back in five years.

There's a good history of this in antitrust breakups: both Standard Oil and AT&T were forced to spin out, rather than sell off, parts of their empire, and those businesses stood alone and provided competitive pressure. That is, until we stopped enforcing antitrust law and allowed them to start merging again – womp womp.

This raises another question: does any of this matter, given this month's election results? Will Trump's DoJ follow through on whatever priorities the current DoJ sets? That's an open question, but – unlike so many other questions about the coming Trump regime – the answer here isn't necessarily a nightmare.

After all, the Google antitrust case started under Trump, and Trump's pick for Attorney General, the credibly accused sexual predator Matt Gaetz, is a "Khanservative" who breaks with his fellow Trumpians in professing great admiration for Biden's FTC chief Lina Khan, and her project of breaking up corporate monopolies:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/trump-nominates-khanservative-matt

What's more, Trump is a landing strip for a stroke or coronary, which would make JD Vance president – and Vance has also expressed his approval of Khan's work.

Google bosses seem to be betting on Trump's "transactional" (that is, corrupt) style of governance, and his willingness to overrule his own appointees to protect the interests of anyone who flatters or bribes him sufficiently, or convinces the hosts of Fox and Friends to speak on their behalf:

https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/comprehensive-review-revolving-door-between-fox-and-second-trump-administration

That would explain why Google capo Sundar Pichai ordered his employees not to speak out against Trump:

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-memes-poke-fun-company-rules-political-discussion-2024-11

And why he followed up by publicly osculating Trump's sphincter:

https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1854207788290850888

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[elumish]

I talk about what writers should do a lot, so now I'm going to take a break and talk about some reforms that I think agents should make.

A caveat: I am not an agent! Unlike when I talk about writing, I am just talking about this as an author who happens to be in the midst of querying. If I have an followers who are agents who think I'm getting something wrong, please let me know!

That said, here I go:

Trad publishing is, fundamentally, about getting past a whole bunch of layers of gatekeepers, and agents are the first gatekeepers. With some very limited exceptions, you can't be trad published without having an agent. From what I can tell, being an agent is a bit of a thankless job--it's based on commission, so an agent only gets money if they are selling their clients' books. (Remember: the money flows towards the writer. If someone claiming to be an agent is telling you that you need to pay them to represent you, run.)

Because of this structure, agents have a massive amount of power over unagented authors, particularly because unagented authors simply do not have another option if they want to trad publish. It is my opinion that that power dynamic is part of the reason why querying actually sucks so unbelievably much for authors.

Now, part of why querying sucks is that it's a numbers game, which means that most of us will lose. Every writer is competing against a gazillion other writers, some of whom are better or writing things that are seen as more sellable or happen to be eariler or whatever. You are going to get a bunch of rejections, and that's not the fault of agents.

But here's the other problem:

There are, from what I can tell, no true industry standards and somewhat limited professional expectations for agents when it comes to how to deal with querying. Again, this is what it looks like from the outside--agents, if I'm getting this wrong, please let me know.

For example, many agencies and many agents will have different rules about what you can submit to them and how, and in many cases those rules are in somewhat arbitrary places, which means that querying authors have to hunt for them, and it's easy to run afoul of them even when you're trying. It's common for some agencies to say that you can't query two agents from the same agency at the same time, but some say that you can't query two agents from them ever--a rejection from one is a rejection from all.

But most agents' Twitter bios/MSWL pages/personal pages/etc. don't say that--which means that authors need to hunt through every individual agency's webpage and then cross-reference against every agent that they have ever queried previously, which can be arduous when many people are querying dozens or hundreds of agents. It also means needing to keep track of things like when agents switch agencies.

There are also no standard expectations for agents to actually respond to queries in any sort of time span, or at all, which complicates the above issue even more. But it also is just (imho) kind of unprofessional to ghost people who are seeking a professional relationship with you, when you have explicitly asked them to reach out to you seeking that professional relationship.

And to make that worse, many agents don't say whether or not they respond to all queries, meaning that authors are often left wondering if a 6-month or longer wait is a "no" or an "I haven't gotten to this yet but will definitely respond to you."

There are more issues that I could cite, but my overall point in this is that authors have no recourse here. There's not authors' union, no way to go on strike until agents change what they're doing.

And some agents are really awesome about this! But enough are not, and authors don't really know what they're going to get when they query someone.

So all of this is to say that, if you are an agent, here are some fairly easy changes I would love for you to make to your own behavior to make querying a little bit less of a nightmarish hellscape for authors (and thank you so much if you already do some or all of these):

Respond to every query that you receive

Tell people your general response times and be communicative if that changes. It's okay if it regularly takes you six months! Just tell us it regularly takes you six months, so we're not left wondering if we've been ghosted at four months

Outline all submission guidelines on Query Manager or where you accept queries, including things like a) rules about whether a rejection from one is a rejection from all, b) length expectations for things like synopses (I've seen a range), and c) any other expectations you have (e.g., you require trigger warnings). Don't make people hunt through 2-4 websites to find what you want

Stop asking or at least strongly rethink how you ask about Own Voices or why an author feels like they are qualified to write about a marginalized identity--I understand the impulse, but nobody should be expected to disclose medical or other personal information like that in a professional setting

Also, just to say (other than please don't reject my query because of this post), agents: authors really do appreciate the work you all do. I want someone to work with to get published, because I am very well aware that I am not the expert in this situation.

And again, please tell me if I got anything wrong or misrepresented anything.