#second of all THEY'RE NOT EQUIVALENT PRODUCTS

[theradicalace]

yknow the funny part is i saw that it was eligible for substitutions and thought to myself "surely i don't have to specify that i don't want substitutions on this. surely my coworkers are not dumb enough to try and substitute an apple pencil"

well they are and i did need to specify

they SUBSTITUTED my fucking apple pencil??

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI can’t do your job

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY on Mar 24, and in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2. More tour dates here.

AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman (Elon Musk) can convince your boss (the USA) to fire you and replace you (a federal worker) with a chatbot that can't do your job:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/amid-job-cuts-doge-accelerates-rollout-of-ai-tool-to-automate-government

If you pay attention to the hype, you'd think that all the action on "AI" (an incoherent grab-bag of only marginally related technologies) was in generating text and images. Man, is that ever wrong. The AI hype machine could put every commercial illustrator alive on the breadline and the savings wouldn't pay the kombucha budget for the million-dollar-a-year techies who oversaw Dall-E's training run. The commercial market for automated email summaries is likewise infinitesimal.

The fact that CEOs overestimate the size of this market is easy to understand, since "CEO" is the most laptop job of all laptop jobs. Having a chatbot summarize the boss's email is the 2025 equivalent of the 2000s gag about the boss whose secretary printed out the boss's email and put it in his in-tray so he could go over it with a red pen and then dictate his reply.

The smart AI money is long on "decision support," whereby a statistical inference engine suggests to a human being what decision they should make. There's bots that are supposed to diagnose tumors, bots that are supposed to make neutral bail and parole decisions, bots that are supposed to evaluate student essays, resumes and loan applications.

The narrative around these bots is that they are there to help humans. In this story, the hospital buys a radiology bot that offers a second opinion to the human radiologist. If they disagree, the human radiologist takes another look. In this tale, AI is a way for hospitals to make fewer mistakes by spending more money. An AI assisted radiologist is less productive (because they re-run some x-rays to resolve disagreements with the bot) but more accurate.

In automation theory jargon, this radiologist is a "centaur" – a human head grafted onto the tireless, ever-vigilant body of a robot

Of course, no one who invests in an AI company expects this to happen. Instead, they want reverse-centaurs: a human who acts as an assistant to a robot. The real pitch to hospital is, "Fire all but one of your radiologists and then put that poor bastard to work reviewing the judgments our robot makes at machine scale."

No one seriously thinks that the reverse-centaur radiologist will be able to maintain perfect vigilance over long shifts of supervising automated process that rarely go wrong, but when they do, the error must be caught:

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

The role of this "human in the loop" isn't to prevent errors. That human's is there to be blamed for errors:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/30/a-neck-in-a-noose/#is-also-a-human-in-the-loop

The human is there to be a "moral crumple zone":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

The human is there to be an "accountability sink":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

But they're not there to be radiologists.

This is bad enough when we're talking about radiology, but it's even worse in government contexts, where the bots are deciding who gets Medicare, who gets food stamps, who gets VA benefits, who gets a visa, who gets indicted, who gets bail, and who gets parole.

That's because statistical inference is intrinsically conservative: an AI predicts the future by looking at its data about the past, and when that prediction is also an automated decision, fed to a Chaplinesque reverse-centaur trying to keep pace with a torrent of machine judgments, the prediction becomes a directive, and thus a self-fulfilling prophecy:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

AIs want the future to be like the past, and AIs make the future like the past. If the training data is full of human bias, then the predictions will also be full of human bias, and then the outcomes will be full of human bias, and when those outcomes are copraphagically fed back into the training data, you get new, highly concentrated human/machine bias:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/inhuman-centipede/#enshittibottification

By firing skilled human workers and replacing them with spicy autocomplete, Musk is assuming his final form as both the kind of boss who can be conned into replacing you with a defective chatbot and as the fast-talking sales rep who cons your boss. Musk is transforming key government functions into high-speed error-generating machines whose human minders are only the payroll to take the fall for the coming tsunami of robot fuckups.

This is the equivalent to filling the American government's walls with asbestos, turning agencies into hazmat zones that we can't touch without causing thousands to sicken and die:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/19/failure-cascades/#dirty-data

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/asbestos-in-the-walls/#government-by-spicy-autocomplete

Image: Krd (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DASA_01.jpg

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

--

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

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

[virgobingo]

i wish people didn't try to filter geto's decision through a western lens because they're forgetting a huge part of the puzzle and it's the fact that sorcerers are oppressed by non-sorceres in the world of jujutsu kaisen. geto’s whole thing is "there's so few of us and yet we work ourselves to death for your peace of mind, while you remain ungrateful".

it's all more equivalent to health care workers trying to treat a virus. which also aligns thematically with the subject of labour across the series (jujutsu sorcerers being spread thin to the detriment of inexperienced workers, a job you value vs a job that compensates but drains you of your spirit, the myth of meritocracy) .

which is why controlling the output of cursed energy should be seen as the equivalent of being born with or developing an immunity to a disease. this is why a "culling" sounds possible to geto to begin with— people being pushed to adapt or die in their lifetime to prevent future outbreaks, like one would with a virus. strongly differing to kenjaku, because they essentially yearn for this disease to spread out of morbid curiosity (while geto wants the work to end):

geto is a character you are meant to see yourself in. as, in all likelihood, a laborer yourself or someone that will become one. his story is that of exploitation at the hands of a system that only cares for results. leading to isolation in hopes of achieving high productivity.

tangentially, i think a subject that is often ignored in these discussions is the financial incentive to take on more and more work onto your plate too. mei mei is perhaps the clearest example of this, no explanation needed. nobara, a second, when she explictly tells us sorcerery work is the only way a small town girl like her can make it in the big city. megumi, a third, when we learn the money the school gave him helped keep him and his sister tsumiki afloat.

while gege does not delve into geto's past, we can safely speculate part of the reason geto keeps working day after day, after day— despite his wavering convictions is because there is something that encourages him to do so. financial stability would not be an odd motivater. after all, why do we push ourselves everyday to work jobs that no longer add anything meaningful to our lives? geto is the type of character that forces us to examine such things.

as an aside, when he first dons the robes of a cult leader, money is at the forefront of his concerns. if it wasn't obvious before, gege tells you again— choosing not to be a sorcerer, implies a serious loss of income.

i think, all in all, geto's spiral does not hinge on the fact that he was secretly evil the entire time. it lies in disillusionment of a system that only seeks to preserve itself. note that this is why yuki works outside of it. no doubt her experiences as a former star plasma vessel informed her reasoning. it's also why gojo decides to become a teacher and change the institution from within, wielding his privilege as a shield over others.

[ayeforscotland]

What is Dataflow? Part 2: Diagrams

This is the second part of a couple of posts about Dataflow, particularly why it's important for the world going forward and relating to the Crowd Strike IT disaster.

Read the first part here.

Before I get into this one today, I wanted to address a couple of things.

Firstly, Dataflow is something that nearly every single person can understand. You do NOT:

Need to have a degree in Computing Science

Need to work in IT

Need to be a data analyst / Spreadsheet master

If any of you see the word 'Data' and feel your eyes glazing over, try and snap out of it because, if you're anything like me, Dataflow is much more approachable as a concept.

Secondly, what do I mean by IT?

Traditionally in most of our media the all-encompassing 'IT department' handles everything to do with technology. But every business works differently and there are many job titles with lots of crossover.

For example, you can be an infrastructure engineer where your focus is on building and maintaining the IT infrastructure that connects your organisation internally and externally. This is a completely different role from an Application Portfolio Manager who is tasked with looking after the Applications used in business processes.

Both are technical people and come under the banner of 'IT' - but their roles are focused in different areas. So just bear that in mind!

Now that's out of the way, let's begin! This one will be a little bit deeper, and questions welcome!

An Intro to Diagrams

You probably do not need a history of why pictures are important to the human race but to cover our bases, ever since we put traced our hands on a cave wall we have been using pictures to communicate.

Jump forward in time and you have engineers like Leonardo Da Vinci drafting engineering schematics.

You get the idea, humans have been creating diagrams (Pictures) for thousands of years. Centuries of refinement and we have much more modern variations.

And there's one main reason why diagrams are important: They are a Common Language.

In this context, a Common Language helps bridge a language gap between disciplines as well as a linguistic gap. A Spanish electrician and a German electrician should be able to refer to the same diagram and understand each other, even if they don't know each other's language.

The reason they can do this is because they're are international standards which govern how electrical diagrams are created.

A Common Language for Digital?

Here's an image I've shown to clients from governments and institutions to global organisations.

Everything around us, from the products we use to the bridges we drive over and the buildings we live, work, enjoy and shop in had diagrams backing them.

You would not build a skyscraper without a structural engineering diagram, you would not build an extension on your house if an architect couldn't produce a blueprint.

Why is there not an equivalent for the Digital World and for Dataflow?

Where is the Digital Common Language?

This is the bit where the lightbulb goes on in a lot of people's heads. Because, as I mentioned in Part 1, the flow of data is the flow of information and knowledge. And the common mistake is that people think of dataflow, and only ever think about the technology.

Dataflow is the flow of information between People, Business Processes *and* Technology Assets.

It is not reserved to Technology specialists. When you look at the flow of data, you need to understand the People (Stakeholders) at the top, the processes that they perform (and the processes which use the data) and the technology assets that support that data.

The reason why this is important is because it puts the entire organisation in context.

It is something that modern businesses fail to do. They might have flow charts and network diagrams, and these are 'alright' in specific contexts, but they fall to pieces when they lack the context of the full organisation.

For example, here is a Network Diagram. It is probably of *some* value to technical personnel who work in infrastructure. Worth bearing in mind, some organisations don't even have something like this.

To be absolutely clear, this diagram will hold some value for some people within the organisation. I'm not saying it's completely useless. But for almost everyone else, it is entirely out of context, especially for any non-technical people.

So it doesn't help non-technical people understand why all of these assets are important, and it doesn't help infrastructure teams articulate the importance of any of these assets.

What happens if one of those switches or routers fails? What's the impact on the organisation? Who is affected? The diagram above does not answer those questions.

On the other side of the business we have process diagrams (aka workflow diagrams) which look like this.

Again we run into the same problem - This is maybe useful for some people working up at the process layer, but even then it doesn't provide context for the stakeholders involved (Are there multiple people/departments involved throughout) and it doesn't provide any context for technical personnel who are responsible for maintaining the technology that supports this process.

In short, nobody has the big picture because there is not a common language between Business & IT.

Conclusion

So what do we do? Well we need to have a Common Language between Business & IT. While we need people with cross-functional knowledge, we also need a common language (or common framework) for both sides of the organisation to actually understand each other.

Otherwise you get massively siloed departments completely winging their disaster recovery strategies when things like Crowd Strike goes down.

Senior Management will be asked questions about what needs to be prioritised and they won't have answers because they aren't thinking in terms of Dataflow.

It's not just 'We need to turn on everything again' - It's a question of priorities.

Thing is, there's a relatively simple way to do it, in a way that looking at any engineering diagram feels simple but actually has had decades/centuries of thought behind it. It almost feels like complete common sense.

I'll save it for Part 3 if you're interested in me continuing and I'll make a diagram of my blog.

The important thing is mapping out all the connections and dependencies, and there's not some magic button you press that does it all.

But rigorous engineering work is exactly that, you can't fudge it with a half-arsed attempt. You need to be proactive, instead of reacting whenever disaster strikes.

[toasty-coconut]

I wanted to put together some thoughts that I have regarding the passage of time in Pokemon Horizons. I'm a writer by nature who likes to pick out tiny details and examine them to the fullest. Horizons has thrown hints at us multiple times to suggest that time has been passing within the series. And now with a solidly defined time skip having happened, I thought it would be fun to look back and piece together how much time has passed until now!

Before I do that though, I want to preface with a few things:

All of this is purely speculation based on loose evidence provided to us throughout the series. I'm not claiming anything I say as definitive fact. This is merely for fun. Everything I say could be completely wrong.

The passage of time in the Pokemon anime is a tricky topic. After all, time "passed" in Ash's series without ever really passing; weeks or months would be stated to have gone by, but Ash himself was explicitly stated to be forever-10-years-old and on an eternal summer vacation. Despite that, growth and the passage of time seem to be important themes at the base of Horizons (i.e. the 100-year tale of Lucius, the generational parallels between Amethio and Liko and their ancestors, how time has impacted Gibeon, etc.). These themes weren't relevant in Ash's series (at least, not in the same way), which is why time was never a focus. That's not true of Horizons though, and that's why I think it's at least worth discussing.

I understand that the characters don't seem to grow/mature much physically throughout the series—even after the time skip. Realistically, if a significant amount of time has passed then the characters should be physically aging more than they are. My argument to that is that this is a long-running anime that's ultimately a marketing tool for the most successful multi-media franchise in the world. They likely want to keep character designs consistent for as long as possible so they can market them on products, goods, and in advertising. If their designs gradually changed every 20 episodes or so to signify physical growth, that would be much harder to accomplish.

With those things in mind, let's get to it! Note: This post is very long and contains spoilers for Pokemon Horizons episodes 001 - 089!

I want to start by addressing Liko's age, because that's what we'll be using as a base for this rough timeline. The tera leaks that came out regarding the development of Horizons stated that Liko was meant to be 13-years-old. I take most things in the tera leaks with a grain of salt; however, I'm going to agree that I do think Liko is meant to be 13 at the start of her journey. My reasoning for that is I believe Indigo Academy is meant to be the equivalent of a Japanese middle school (grades 7, 8, and 9). The average Japanese 7th grader is 12 going on 13. The average Japanese 8th grader is 13 going on 14. And the average Japanese 9th grader is 14 going on 15. (While I understand Liko herself is Paldean, it's stated Indigo Academy is within Kanto--a Japan-based region).

If Liko is 13 then she fits squarely within the box of being a first-year middle schooler. This lines up with Liko being a new student at her school and attending an entrance ceremony with the rest of her class.

Note that everyone at the entrance ceremony is wearing a leaf pin on their uniform. This is probably an indicator that they're all in the same graduating class (everyone in Liko's classroom is also wearing a grass pin). We also see students with fire pins walking around the academy, and as a result we can assume there are students wearing water pins around somewhere, too (though we never see them). I'm going to guess the fire pin students are the second-year students, while the water pin students are the third-year students (following the Poke Dex starter pattern of grass = 1, fire = 2, and water = 3) . It's common practice in Japanese schools for uniforms to have class indicators on them, so this makes sense. Typically they'll change with each year; however, Liko still has the grass pin even after the time skip. Because of that, we can assume the pins are cycled out with each graduating class (meaning, when the current third years graduate, the new incoming first-years will become the "water" class, while the "grass" class becomes second-years, and the "fire" class becomes third years, etc.).

Now that we've established Liko is a first year middle schooler, let's get back to the timeline. The traditional Japanese school year begins on April 1st. With that knowledge, we can assume that the start of episode 1 happens on April 1st of Year 1 of Liko's journey. Going forward, I'm going to be referring to sections of this timeline as "Year 1", "Year 2", and "Year 3", with each year spanning from April to March to reflect the Japanese school year (rather than January to December).

In the first episode, we see Liko arrive at her new school, attend an entrance ceremony, go to class, receive Sprigatito, bond/train with Sprigatito, and then ultimately get confronted by Amethio at the end of the episode after Ann leaves for break. Within this episode alone, there is already a notable time jump. I believe episode 1 starts on April 1st of Year 1 and then ends around July 20th of Year 1. Ann going home for break mid-episode is the giveaway for me. The first extended break in the Japanese school year typically starts around July 20th and ends around September 1st (about six weeks).

A quick aside: I want to caveat all of this by saying if Liko is the equivalent of a first-year middle-schooler, then she would have needed to start the school year at the age of 12. We've already established that she's 13 though, and I personally believe she's meant to be 13 at the start of her journey with the Rising Volt Tacklers. That being said, I'm going to say that Liko is 12-years-old at the start of episode 1, but is 13-years-old by the end of episode 1. That would mean she celebrated her 13th birthday at some point between April 1st and July 20th of Year 1. Take that as you will! My personal headcanon is that her birthday is on April 14th (the day Horizons aired for the first time ❤️). That being said, that's just my personal opinion. Liko's age/when exactly she turns 13 doesn't matter too much.

Back to our timeline - something else of note happens around July of Year 1: Hamber reaching out to Diana. While there's no definitive proof that this absolutely happened in July of Year 1, we can assume it most likely did. We know that Diana was immediately suspicious of Hamber and she knew that he wanted her pendant, which was already in possession of Liko at that point. We also know she reached out to Lucca, who then reached out to Friede to bring Liko home. I can't imagine why Diana would wait to tell Lucca that Liko was in danger, nor can I imagine why Lucca would wait to reach out to Friede to protect Liko. That's why I believe Hamber reaching out to Diana couldn't have happened any more than a week or so before Liko's first confrontation with Amethio.

With all of that in mind, we know Amethio showed up at Indigo Academy under Hamber's orders on the same day that Ann left for summer break. Friede came to rescue Liko that same evening, and took her aboard the Brave Olivine. Liko herself even says in HZ074 that this event marked "the start of her adventures". So we can fairly conclusively put this event as happening right around July 20th of Year 1.

After boarding the Brave Olivine for the first time, Liko experiences a small stint with the Explorers before the Rising Volt Tacklers ultimately stop at Roy's island. The black Rayquaza emerges from the Ancient Poke Ball and Roy joins the crew. We don't have anything to indicate how much time has passed again for a while. That being said, I'm going to assume that approximately six weeks pass between the end of HZ001 and HZ008, putting us at around September of Year 1. My only reason for saying that is because HZ008 is the first time where we see Liko taking classes again, which would indicate that her summer break is over.

It is worth noting that we do see Roy taking classes remotely in HZ004. That being said, HZ004 seems to happen relatively close to the start of Liko's summer break, so we could assume Roy's summer break hasn't started yet. Alternatively, we could assume the school he attends doesn't follow the standard schedule that Liko's seems to. It honestly doesn't matter too much considering it's the only time we see Roy actively taking classes. I just thought it was worth noting.

Back to the point - the next time the passage of time is mentioned is in HZ024, when Liko and co. meet up with Diana. During their meet-up, Diana claims that she met up with Hamber "a couple of months back". It's not a very clear indicator of the exact amount of time that's gone by, but we at least know Liko's journey began a couple of months prior. "A couple months" doesn't imply a significant amount of time, though. That's why I think we can assume this episode happens somewhere around the October/November mark of Year 1, meaning approximately 3-4 months have gone by since the start of Liko's journey.

It's going to be a while before we get any super clear mentions of time again, but I like to think we can use context clues to fill in some of the blanks before then and get a rough idea of when things happen. Liko, Roy, and Dot enroll in Naranja Academy and start undergoing tera training in HZ046. While there's no definitive evidence, I'd like to think that they're starting this training at the beginning of the school's winter trimester. I think we can back this theory up with the evidence of Ann, Coral, and Sidian (and seemingly other background characters) all starting the course at the same time, too. So many trainers starting together makes me think it must be the start of a new trimester.

If true, then I think we can say Liko was on her winter break between HZ045 and HZ046. There does seem to be a small gap in time between those two episodes, so I feel like that would make sense. She probably spent that time (about a week or two) at home with her parents. It would also mean that HZ046 (and thus, the start of Arc III) takes place in early January of Year 1. It's also worth noting that Liko's mother states she seems to have gotten taller at the start of HZ046! (Her character model seems the same to me though, tbh lol But it is a cool indicator that she's growing and time has been moving.)

If we follow the logic that Arc III takes up an entire school trimester, then that would mean HZ046 through HZ067 happen from the beginning of January to the end of March of Year 1. The arc itself breaks time up pretty nicely for us, too. I we assume the tag battles against the Elite 4 are the equivalent of a mid-term exam, then we can place HZ054 and HZ055 at around mid-February of Year 1. Likewise, if we consider the trainer battles at the end of the arc to be the equivalent of a final exam, then that means HZ066 and HZ067 happen in late March of Year 1.

With that being said, that means that HZ067 marks the end of Year 1 of Liko's journey. I feel like it's a pretty appropriate end to her first year as a trainer. It goes off with a bang in her battle against Roy and is ultimately an accumulation of everything that she learned in that year. It's poetic in a lot of ways. Plus, as a writer, I like when things bookend nicely like that haha

That brings us into Year 2 at the start of Arc IV (in other words, the start of Liko's second year of middle school). This arc is a little weird because a lot happens in a relatively short span of time. The first mention we get of time passing is in HZ074 when Diana visits the Brave Olivine. During her visit, Diana clearly states that it has been one year since her last meet-up with Hamber. That's noticeably different from the couple of months that she mentioned before!

This means it has now officially been one year since Liko set off on her adventures with the Rising Volt Tacklers. That puts HZ074 at July of Year 2. That also means HZ068 - HZ074 happened over a span of approximately three months. That certainly feels like a lot, though I suppose they did travel a fair amount in that time.

It's a little bit difficult to tell how much time passes between HZ074 and HZ084, but I would imagine at least a month or so. That would put the climax at Laqua around August or September of Year 2. HZ084 through HZ089 happen over a span of approximately 48 hours, with there ultimately being a one-year time skip at the very end.

It's worth noting that the time skip is said to have happened one year after the events at Laqua. So, with that in mind, that puts the beginning of Arc V around August/September of Year 3.

I think that breaks down... pretty much everything haha I don't have any spectacular thoughts to end on, so I'm not sure how to wrap this up. But I do want to add that I find it interesting that when you combine the time Liko spent traveling with the Rising Volt Tacklers along with the time skip, that would mean two years have now passed since the events of HZ001. It's very likely that the remainder of the story will happen over the course of another year, making for a grand total of three years. Also, if you subscribe to the belief that Liko is 13 at the start of her journey, then that means she was 14 during the events at Laqua, is 15 post-time skip, and will probably be 16 at the end of the series.

Not only would Liko's journey lasting for three years align with the viewers watching the series for approximately three years, but it would also be reflective of the three-year middle school experience. So, at the end of her journey, Liko and the viewer will be "graduating" from the series, essentially. I Just Think That's Neat.

[trainsinanime]

I'm preparing a longer new post currently and collecting screenshots, and along the way I noticed some things about Bakerix.

First and foremost, look at the rusted old car in front of Marinette's granddad's house.

That is a classic Citroën 2CV! One of the most classic cars in all of France!

The 2CV is more or less the French equivalent of the VW Beetle. This car, designed before the Second World War and put into production shortly after it ended, was meant to be a cheap reliable workhorse in particular for French farmers. Its design was in a lot of ways more clever than the Beetle, and it ended up being produced until 1990, in the end becoming sort of a lifestyle vehicle. It is pronounced as "Deux Chevaux" (two horses), which refers to the French tax classification system of its time. With originally 9 horsepower, later upgraded all the way to 29, it was never a fast car, but it had a lot of fans. German speakers know it as "Ente" (duck), which was eventually also used by Citroën marketing, but it doesn't seem to have been an international nickname.

Roland Dupain must have bought this one a long time ago, even though it's only rust now. He actually has a picture of it in his home!

I like that detail. (By the way, it's absolutely insane how much better the animation got between season 1 and season 3. Not always, not consistently, but Bakerix is a great example that has some truly beautiful images in it.)

The other note I found is that in Bakerix, they visit the Gare du Nord, and the London-bound platforms are actually closed off with barriers.

The real-life context is that from Paris's Gare du Nord railway station, you have trains to parts of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and also the UK. Because the British are… like that, you cannot just board a train to the UK. You first need to go through passport controls, and then you get let onto special platforms where only UK-bound passengers are allowed. It's annoying and silly, but it doesn't seem like it'll change anytime soon. In some episodes of the show, they omit these glass barriers, they're notably crucial for some of Marinette's last-minute train decisions, but in Bakerix, they exist.

This post has no particular point, I just found these things interesting.

[thewadapan]

Spent today checking out The Amazing Digital Circus and Murder Drones, and god, the kids today have it so good when it comes to this sort of content. When I was a teen, I was obsessed with Red vs. Blue and RWBY, which I think it's fair to say are the equivalents of the time, and the sheer gulf in terms of writing quality and production value is stunning. I hear there were some rumblings of unprofessional conduct from the production company, which would hardly be surprising considering this is yet another guys-working-from-their-basement success story, but much bigger companies with much shittier business practises consistently put out much worse content than this.

The Amazing Digital Circus is definitely the better show of the two, thanks to its slam-dunk premise and some great writing from Gooseworx. The producers have talked about aiming to fill a perceived gap in the market between kids' cartoons (The Boss Baby) and adult animation (Bojack Horseman), and I think they have successfully threaded the needle to create a very unique tone. There's a sense of these works existing totally outside the mainstream media machine; they're not getting BBFC rated, but you just know millions of kids are watching them. It's on YouTube and the fact that it looks like some Frozen Spider-Man kids' slop just means da parents won't question what their kids are watching.

But truth be told, there's nothing objectionable about the content of The Amazing Digital Circus whatsoever. It's unusually metatextual and loosely apes the aesthetics of much darker media, touching on slightly more existential themes than your typical kids' cartoon, but it still has a lot in common with those same cartoons. The zany characters are all fairly one-note, and the emotional arcs of the episodes are honestly quite straightforward. The second episode in particular has an absolutely textbook plot structure to it. It's a far more self-assured and traditional style of writing than you ever see in this kind of independent work—certainly far more so than Murder Drones, which is written by an insane person.

More than anything, I'm reminded of how I felt watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica: that it's a very solid work of fiction, but that the people who'd get the most out of the work are isolated teens struggling to make the transition into adulthood. Certainly if nothing else, the fandoms of these shows must be bringing a lot of kids together around the world. I adore this soundbite from Goose: "Above anything else, I just wanted it to feel kind of lonely." You see Pomni's worldview shatter, she suddenly finds herself in a body that feels completely wrong, and she has to construct a new kind of belonging for herself.

As for Murder Drones, that show's absolutely fucking nuts, yo. The writing is at once painfully basic and utterly incomprehensible. If someone just sat down and explained the plot straightforwardly, it would be fantastically boring. But man, the presentation, the sheer delight the animators seem to approach every scene with...! I'd say it's clearly trying to use "the characters are robots" as an excuse to expose da kids to some absolutely shocking levels of gore, much like the Transformers movies, but midway through the series it starts straightup swapping the oil and wires for blood and bones and you've got to respect that.

The writing itself is so excruciatingly irony-poisoned that it goes beyond cringe and somehow wraps back around again to being sincerely funny. The show kind of wants to have its cake and eat it in terms of constantly lampshading how flat and cliché the emotional plotting is, but also clearly aiming to genuinely tug at the heartstrings and whip fans into a frenzy. And it kind of succeeds, I think! The way it veers between bizarrely high-effort implementations of memes, seriously cool fight scenes and horror visuals, and big emotional moments is very disarming. If The Amazing Digital Circus is an attempt to faithfully rework the American-cartoon formula for a slightly older audience, Murder Drones aims to crib the aesthetics of high-school cartoons while actively rejecting every traditional narrative technique used in those stories. Which means it's kind of bad, which means it's also kind of great.

If it's not already, then within a couple of years it will be deeply cringe to have ever been into Murder Drones in particular or (to a slightly lesser extent) The Amazing Digital Circus, in much the same way that everyone seems embarrassed to admit they were ever a Homestuck fan. But like with Homestuck, I feel like these series are genuinely pushing at the frontiers of storytelling in a way that's commendable and might inspire new kinds of writing once the fans grow up.

ENA is also pretty good, for the record.

[its-the-blob]

when i took math courses in college, we did a lot of proofs. so how proofs work (I am simplifying this extremely because I am not really a 'math person'. i am just a girl who doesn't trust professors and wanted to take a lot of courses with completely objective grading criteria) - if a thing in math is always true, you write out a bunch of logical statements and construct an argument that shows the thing must always be true. but if you can come up with even one mathematically valid example where the thing stated in the proof doesn't have to be true, you can't prove the statement, because it's not always true. those were my favorite proof assignments because they were short. you write something like (hypothetically) 'I found a situation where 2+2 will equal 5 so i'm not socratically examining this thing for you it's fake' and turn it in and get an A. it's great

anyway this post is about fiction writing, because pretty much any time ever that I see someone confidently assert 'stories always have to do x thing!' (the key word is the always, or the never, or similarly absolutist phrasing) I can find a situation where a work didn't do that thing and it was wildly successful in any way you want to measure success. the thing stated in the proof doesn't have to be true. there is no proof.

There is no 'always' in any art form. There are things that are much more or less likely to be successful, but there are no mathematical proof equivalents. When I see people claiming there are, I usually get the impression that they are relatively new to the craft, and just discovered a new trick, and got excited about it, and that's wonderful!!! And whatever technique they're talking about is probably a really handy one, and they're worth listening to- to an extent. But now they're telling everyone to follow this important new rule they've just discovered. for every story. But that may not be the right choice for a myriad of reasons (an author may not want the effect that technique produces, that effect is achievable other ways, etc).

'Ackshully' some of you may say. 'I am a published author and I've been writing twenty years and' well you just told me (as a random example, totally not thinking of save the cat) there's always a big crisis in the second act of every story, all of them. even though an 'act', itself, is usually a wobbly term because if the work didn't put in act division labels- or even if it did in some cases- different people could look at the end product and reasonably divide it up in different ways. So that makes me suspect a) if you really believe that you're a hack b) if you don't really believe that, you're a grifter selling fake knowledge to people trying to get started with the craft, Or, c) you're not good at teaching writing because teaching and writing are different skills and that's ok, but you should stop teaching. 👍or consider recruiting a statler and waldorf style duo to point out whenever you're wrong

[copperbadge]

Immediate Writer's Block

Had a comment on another post where I thought I'd probably need more space than the notes in which to respond, so:

constant-state-of-self-discovery Oh I get the envy I feel it right now how the fuck do you manage to write without impassable writers block after 5-9 sentences because I haven't fucking figured it out lol

I do have some advice on this!

I think most writers get blocked from time to time, it's normal and my general strategy is just to wait it out, but if you're frequently blocked after only writing a very little bit, I think the problem is one of two things: either you don't know what you want to achieve with the scene you're writing, or you don't know what should happen next within the scene to achieve that goal. If you frame "I'm blocked" as "I don't have an answer I need" then often you move from just sitting there, sweating and staring at a blank page, to thinking productively about how you're going to get where you're going. It's the difference between not knowing an answer and not knowing an answer but knowing where to look for it.

An invaluable piece of advice for this, which I think I picked up from someone who got it off a National Novel Writing Month messageboard, is "When in doubt, ninjas attack." It's not meant to be literal, you don't need to have ninjas or fight scenes just because you don't know what to do, but it helps to get the creativity flowing again. If you don't know what should happen next, or you know but you're having trouble actually writing the scene, it can be very helpful to induce a moment of uncertainty or surprise -- to have a metaphorical ninja attack. One time I did this literally -- the POV character was just on the road somewhere and I didn't know how to get them from a pastoral country road to their actual destination in an interesting way, so I had them get attacked by highway bandits and have to fight them off, which also allowed me to demonstrate that the character had significant unarmed combat skills. But it can also just be like, two characters who are having a boring conversation can be interrupted by a third person, even just a stranger asking for directions, or there can be, IDK, an explosion, or something goes missing, or etc.

Sometimes it also helps to leave it alone but keep it in your mind and go do something else -- listen to a podcast, take a walk, read a book, not because those things are distracting but because all our inputs eventually feed into our brain and come out as reactions. If you're thinking about your book while you're wandering around a park, something you see in the park might have an impact on it. If you've got YOUR story in mind while reading someone else's, you might be more inclined to look at what they're saying and see what you think of it, how it might play into your work.

And honestly, sometimes you just gotta go past it. I'm working on the next Shivadh novel right now and it opens basically with Simon the chef getting into a spat with his love-interest-to-be over some cheese. He want the cheese, she won't sell him the cheese, so they get off to a very contentious start. But I suck at writing conflict especially when it's basically "A character I like is being pompous and another character I want people to find likable is being stubborn and somewhat unpleasant". I've been stalled on it for a while. But I know where the scene ends up, like I do know what the goal is, so I just...skipped it and went on to writing a scene I like better, where they meet a second time and actually discover each others' identity and that they're about to be forced into the grownup equivalent of a school project. Once I've gotten dug deeper into the story I'll come back and write it, and by then I'll have the benefit of knowing the love interest a bit better.

So yeah -- I think a lot of breaking a writer's block, especially when you don't need rest but are just stumped about what to do, is to twist and look at it from another angle. It's not that you don't know what to write, or don't want to write what you know you have to -- it's that you don't have the correct answer to a question, or you need to leave that part alone to ferment and come back to it later. At least, for me.

[exeggcute]

in a similar vein to the stuff I was talking about recently with google (unknowingly?) selling invalid ad placements, here's an interesting post I saw on linkedin the other day about advertisers who think they're buying ad space on one domain but are really buying ad space on another:

so, for context: the woman behind this post was one of the creators of the sleeping giants campaign, which was a (pretty successful!) attempt to choke out right-wing "news" websites and other peddlers of misinformation by drying up their advertising revenue. she went on to found the check my ads institute, which does a lot of the same stuff and more; one of the recurring themes of check my ads' messaging is that advertisers often aren't aware that they're running ads on unsavory websites (and are therefore inadvertently funding those websites via their ad budgets, even though they genuinely want to avoid doing so)... in part because advertisers frequently aren't aware of where their ads are running, period.

in this post specifically, she's not talking about individual advertisers but about one of the companies that exists to connect advertisers (brands who want to buy ad space) and publishers (websites who sell ad space)—in this case, an ad platform called unruly, although they recently got absorbed into a bigger company called nexxen.

nexxen is an all-in-one ad platform that's both a DSP (demand-side platform, which helps advertisers buy ad placements) and an SSP (supply-side platform, which helps websites sell ad placements). they make money by taking a cut of each transaction.

what's happening here is that unruly/nexxen worked with a publisher called yorogon.com who was selling inventory (i.e., ad space) through nexxen's platform. so if you're an advertiser who wants to run ads somewhere, you can go to nexxen and buy inventory from their available sellers; in other words, ad space offered by yorogon.com is one of the "products" for sale on nexxen's markplace. (most of these transactions happen in split-second auctions, though... it's not like shopping on ebay.)

the problem is that this seller who nexxen authorized as "yorogon" wasn't actually running ads on yogoron.com or any of yorogon's nonexistent clients' websites... they were running those ads on fucking breitbart lol. basically the equivalent of a supermarket agreeing to sell some new cereal on behalf of the manufacturer, but the boxes are actually full of thumbtacks.

we can pretty safely assume that breitbart did this on purpose because they know that a lot of the big advertisers with fat wallets shy away from publishers like them—for a number of reasons—which means that they have to sell their inventory to smaller, shittier advertisers with less money to spend. otoh there's no reason to believe that nexxen was deliberately taking part in the charade; for one, the information that led to this discovery is public, so anyone who gave half a shit could've figured it out (including nexxen or any of their advertisers lol). not exactly some vast conspiracy when your extremely public records give away the mismatch. and for two, the whole "promising to run an ad in a certain location but actually running it in a different location" is a massive fucking no-no even if the "different location" isn't andew breitbart's personal wank cave. from that last link I just shared, scroll down a bit and you can find this:

note that the warning code isn't "you're buying ads on a shitty website that sucks," the warning is "you're buying ads on a website that isn't what it says it is." but there is a dedicated warning code! because back to the cereal metaphor from earlier, this is like—okay, even if the cereal box is full of actual cereal instead of thumbtacks, it's still a problem if you thought you were getting honey nut cheerios and then opened the box and it was full of apple jacks instead. (and god knows I would never willingly buy apple jacks.)

whatever you're selling, it has to be accurate: if you offer ad space on golflovers.com but you actually run the ad on golfenthusiasts.com, that's still a major issue and the advertisers you work with will rightfully jump on your ass about it... assuming they ever find out, lol.

what's really interesting to me, though, isn't so much that an ad platform was selling misrepresented ad inventory—because as far as I can tell, that happens all the time—but more that we only know about this particular instance because it involves breitbart. check my ads is specifically hellbent on throttling breitbart's ad revenue, which is why someone was even poking around in these seller lists in the first place. anyone else could have; the advertisers who unknowingly bought ad space on breitbart theoretically could have, and nexxen certainly should have.

but for all the ad quality and transparency standards in place, any parties involved in the advertising supply chain still have to take action and check their records to make sure they're following said standards. if they get complacent, bad actors absolutely can and will try to slip through their defenses. and what's especially embarrassing in this case is how many safety partners unruly/nexxen was working with who claim to mitigate this exact scenario... although one of them was doubleverify and they kinda suck lol

[prettypynklemonade]

As someone who lives in California, these fires are fucking with my mental really bad.

I've experienced so much trauma of having to constantly call family that's closer to it than I am, just to make sure they're safe.

Worrying about the air quality getting fucked up again, because I unfortunately have respiratory health issues.

Thinking about the amount of people who have lost their homes and the people who are unhoused who are now suffering even more.

Thinking about the people who survived the previous CA fires who are now in fear for their homes for the second time. Third time. Fourth fucking time.

And don't even get me started on the fucked up infrastructure and climate changes that have contributed to my home state being constantly at risk of burning down or flooding at any given moment.

I've had to make too many posts in the past 10 years on my socials about BEGGING people to mask up, because breathing the air raw is the equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes.

Please donate.

Even if it means buying a product that will give the profits to an organization. Even if it can't be monetary and all you can give is supplies and clothing.

Please reach out to government officials to try to prevent these tragedies from happening again.

Thoughts and prayers are nice, but they won't stop a fire.

[lesmisshippingshowdown]

🌺 SUMMER OF STEAL ACHIEVEMENT STICKERS: GENERAL 🌺

Here comes your second batch of achievement stickers for the Summer of Steal! These are ones that you can tick off regardless of the type of fanwork you're creating!

If you're new to our achievements system, read this post for info on how everything works :)

First Timer: Submit your first ever steal work!

Super First Timer: Submit your first ever publicly posted Les Mis fanwork!

Stealing Veteran: Return to stealing after dabbling in the noble art during a previous iteration of the contest!

Fandom Pioneer: Submit the first steal work for your ship of choice!

Fandom Trailblazer: Submit the first ever fanwork for your ship of choice!

Summer Lovin': post any fanwork that really leans into the "summer" aspect of the Summer of Steal. That could mean the fanfic equivalent of an anime beach episode, a fanmix with impeccable summery vibes, or even a piece of art that incorporates aspects of the Summer of Steal visual branding (think tropical colours, dolphins, flowers, Symphony by Zara Larsson...)

Fandom Necromancer: Complete, or post a continuation to, a WIP that you've not updated/worked on in over a year.

Fandom Archaeologist: Complete, or post a continuation to, a WIP that you've not updated/worked on in over five years.

Multishipper: submit fanworks for at least two different ships over the course of the submission period

Blorbo Has Two Hands: submit fanworks for at least two different ships involving the same character over the course of the submission period

Time Traveller: if you normally create Modern AU fanworks, try creating something set in canon era, or vice versa!

The Eras Tour: Create a fanwork that spans more than one "era" of the plot of Les Misérables (i.e. 1815, 1823, 1832, post barricade, all the way up to 1848 if you so desire!)

Missing E: Submit a fanwork that, in some way, hearkens back to the 2012-14 era of Les Mis fandom. This might be in your choice of ship, faceclaims, tropes, or even the format in which you post your fanwork!

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome: create a fanwork based on an underrepresented (in fandom) version of Les Mis - i.e. no brick, no musical (non replica productions can join in but they're on thin ice...), no 2012 movie...

Anything But Generic: post any fanwork that places your ship in a distinctive new genre (think detective mystery, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, etc...)

Welcome to my World: post any fanwork that places your ship in the universe of another piece of media (think Hunger Games AU, Star Wars AU, Severance AU, etc...)

Fanwork of a Fanwork: Post a fanwork (of any kind) inspired by somebody else's fanwork (of any kind) - be sure to observe good fandom etiquette and credit the work that inspired you!

Participation Trophy: You can claim this by participating in the summer of steal in any capacity whatsoever! Posting steal works counts, but so does sending asks, commenting on or reblogging other participants' steals, proposing ideas for achievements, or anything else you fancy!

Share the Love: earn this achievement by spreading the word about the Summer of Steal - that could be by reblogging our announcement posts, encouraging a friend to get involved, etc!

[tortoisesshells]

for the character meme — (Edmund) Burke Devlin?

How I feel about this character:

He's awful. I adore him. I think he must spend the equivalent of California's GDP on hair product. He's a liar who proudly advertises it, a monster who thinks making the people around him flinch and squirm is fun. Most of Collinsport deserves to kidney-punch him, except Roger, who got off surprisingly easy for sending Burke to prison for five years, marrying his fiance, and bribing one of his oldest and only friends into betraying him. He's Ahab, he's Heathcliff, he's so shameless as to read The Count of Monte Cristo onscreen because, on Dark Shadows, plagiarism is a way of life. Early DS doesn't work without him - he's part of the original sin that created the conditions of the first 210 episodes: a man who was punished for Roger Collins's crime, and whose determination to get even drives much of the plot before the vampire shows up. He's brazenly bad, and says it's because of the way he was treated; everyone who knew him before, though, says he hasn't really changed except in his economic status - he's rotten by circumstance, by his own choices, and doesn't really care too much who or what he destroys to get even with Roger for railroading him, and Collinsport for letting it happen.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Roger and Vicki, chiefly, either together or separately: He and Roger are negative images of each other, and have what the other wants - Roger is a Collins, has generational wealth, Collinwood, good breeding and taste, and the kind of familial respect Burke can't buy even with his ill-gotten fortune; Burke does a note-perfect performance of midcentury American masculinity, and has no trouble going after who and what he wants while Roger finds himself trapped and mired, perpetually the inadequate heir playing second fiddle to his sister, and whose son isn't even his. They're obsessed with screwing each other over and have been even before Burke tried to marry Laura in 1956, and the worst decision the showrunners made about their characters was putting them in a plot-mandated get-along tee shirt after Barn's arrival. Put Malcolm Mamorstein back in charge and give them shotguns again! this is my solemn campaign promise to you all. He's the bad-future version of Vicki, in a way: Vicki's a poor kid employed by the Collins family, like he was a decade ago; the Collinses are very willing to suspect her, berate her, and throw her under the bus to get what they want - not quite as dramatically as Burke was at the manslaughter trial, but the signs are there. They have similar moral systems - Vicki, while she does have a functioning moral compass (unlike Burke, who's certainly lost his along the way), ultimately judges people based on how they treat her - the Collinses have done real evil and she knows it, but she'll continue to be loyal to them because they've been good to her. ("good".) Burke's immensely self-centered - either you're with him or against him - it's the same system, more dramatically stated? He's reflected behind her in the dark train window in the opening! He's a threat, he's what she was, he's what she could be, if she's not careful. Also, I think Vicki temporarily gobstopping him by saying she'll go up to his hotel room with him if he gives her his investigator's report on her past is really funny. Man absolutely thought he'd succeeded in scaring little miss governess off, but alas. I think his relationship with Laura is interesting but it's not good for either of them? He wants her back because he evidently hasn't read The Great Gatsby, and because he wants to make Roger suffer -marrying Laura (and taking his son back) is a great way to do it. Both of them have metaphorically (and literally, in Laura's case) died, and they're incapable of being the people they were ten years ago when they were engaged, and they're okay with using and threatening each other to get what they want now. Also, Burke's crush on Liz is (1) real and (2) hilarious. He's fucked her brother, he's dated her daughter just to get one over the family, but if she told him to bark, I firmly believe he would. As Roger says, Devlin has a tremendous range.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

I don't know that this counts because they're not even friends, but I'm fascinated by his and Bill's relationship: Bill's the only man in Collinsport Burke respects in the slightest - both in Burke's gratitude over Bill giving him his first real job (granted. possibly in contravention of child labor laws.) and treating him fairly while he was working for the Collinses in the 50s, and Burke's sense of Bill's essential fair-handedness endure despite Bill evidently not lodging too strong a protest against Roger railroading Burke in 1956. For Bill's part, he's clear that he thinks Burke is fundamentally untrustworthy (and he's not wrong!) but someone he's obligated to help, both out of a sense that it's the only way to keep Liz and Carolyn clear of Burke's revenge quest, and, dimly, it might be the right thing to do. Also, if I'm allowed to play armchair psychiatrist, Bill was a well-respected man and successful fishing captain who took on a kid with a massive chip on his shoulder about his poor, sickly dad who still managed to beat the hell out of him. There's no way that Bill, Collinsport's patron saint of underparented children and the questionably functional adults they turned into, wasn't some kind of a replacement father figure.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Was it anti-feminist of him to pick a barfight with Willie, a man who repeatedly threatened to sexually assault Vicki, and who faced no legal or social consequences for nakedly telegraphing he'd rape Vicki and Carolyn because of Liz's coerced interference? According to some absolute braintrust takes I've seen, yes.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

He would have been a great werewolf. I mean. Not for anyone in Collinsport, but it would have entertained me immensely: (1) before Barnabas shows up, he's the one with the dog motif; (2) he ended up identical to Jeremiah Collins somehow, and Quentin Collins couldn't keep his pants on to save his life, so why not assume direct descent?; (3) rage issues spilling out of his ears. Perhaps he'd enjoy ripping throats out too much, but alas. There I'd be with my bucket of popcorn, unconvincingly saying stop. no. that's morally reprehensible.

Give me a Character!

[666writingcafe]

Asmo's Greatest Fear

Content Warning: personal headcanon about Asmo's injuries from the Great War, discussion about death

I stand alone in a room surrounded by mirrors, forced to confront my actual appearance. Not the one I've spent many hours perfecting via various beauty products and spells, not the one I assume as a demon, but my true form.

We all have scars from the war. Lucifer obviously has the most, since he was the one directly fighting Father, but after observing the others, I believe I come in a close second. I was the only one among us that had no prior experience in fighting or even self-defense. I mean, I could attack using my words, but even the most scathing insults can't do much against swords and spells.

Needless to say, the "jewel of the heavens" is now a pale imitation of what he once was.

The right side of my face is burned beyond recognition. I lost all the hair there, too, and I doubt it's ever coming back. The other side is littered with scars, and what hair I do have is thin and wispy, on the verge of snapping off. Both the burns and scars move down my body in an uneven criss-cross pattern. There's not a smooth patch of skin to be found anywhere.

It's easy for people to say things like "don't judge a book by its cover" or "it's on the inside that counts" when they're looking at conventional beauty, but when they're presented with someone like me, all that goes out the window. In their eyes, I'm a freak. A monster. At best, something to feel sorry about.

And there lies the problem with this form: I'll never be treated like a person with thoughts and emotions. I'm reduced to a sideshow attraction for others to gawk at. Not even my brothers are exempt from this gut reaction. Oh, they've learned to temper it as they've gotten used to it, but there's still that momentary flash of disgust or pity when they catch me like this.

Perhaps it's fitting that I became the Avatar of Lust. It grants me, among other things, the power of illusion. I can appear however I want, and using that alongside my charm ensures that people like me.

And that I'm not destined to be alone.

"EEEEW! You're UGLY!"

I turn my head in time to catch a round black creature fly across the room, its back hitting a mirror. Rope soon wraps around it as a piece of tape appears to cover its mouth.

"I can't believe that actually worked." Zephyr? "I tell you what, Asmo, your Little D. is a real pain in the ass." What I assume to be No. 5 thrashes in protest. I wish I had it in me to chuckle at the sight, but any time I try to move any part of my face, it ends up looking contorted.

Making me look even more like a monster.

Satisfied with No. 5's condition, Zephyr turns their full attention onto me. Their eyes travel up and down my body so intensely that I wish the ground would swallow me whole. Silence is almost worse than words where this is concerned.

"Tell me, do you wish you were dead?" The question catches me off guard. It doesn't help that they asked it so casually, like they're inquiring about the weather.

"Wh-what?"

"If you had the choice between existing in this form or not existing at all, would you run eagerly into death's arms and let it take you away from all your suffering?"

"I..." Tears threaten to fall down my face. "I mean, I've thought about it."

"How many times?" Did I upset them? Their tone certainly makes it seem that way.

"I don't know! I've--"

"--lost count?" I can only manage to nod my head. Zephyr appears seconds away from biting my head off, and I'm honestly trying to not provoke them any further.

No. 5 raises its hand, and Zephyr magically makes the tape over its mouth disappear.

"3,613,969," it gasps. "At least since my creation, anyway." Zephyr nods their head as they make the tape reappear. After a few moments of contemplation, they quietly mutter,

"41."

"What?"

"3,613,969 seconds is roughly equivalent to 41 days," they explain. "Obviously, we don't have that much time on our hands, because we're expected to wake up sooner rather than later, so I'll just have to do the first one now and give you the other 40 once we've recovered from this experience." What in the actual hell is Zephyr talking about? Give me 40 what? Insults? Beatings?

My confusion seems to amuse Zephyr, for a slight smirk forms on their face.

"I still see you, Asmo. Your scars don't scare me." They step closer to me. "But I know you want proof, so here it is." Before I can fully register their words, they quickly close the gap between us and kiss me.

Hard.

Taglist: @lost-in-time-wanderer, @fuzztacular, @dianedancer18, @sweetbrier2908, @flare-love, @completelyshatteredbrokenmschf, @thunderlightning351, @l3v1chan, @anxious-chick, @5mary5, @expressionless-fr, @tenkobitch, @budbuddnbuddy

[galactic-rhea]

I am totally here for Cars worldbuilding ramblings

THANK YOU, USER FAN OF THE SOAP

I'm glad I'm not scaring all of my audience lmao.

Now, let me talk to you about how nightmarish ableist is Cars 2.

You see, I was subjected to a very special kind of torture called "I have two nephews who were obssesed with Cars 2, not 1 or 3 or Planes, but Cars 2. And they would watch it for three times, every day, for about two months. And I had to be with them".

Which I'm sure did something bad to my brain, my standards of what's annoying in a movie are wrecked and I can still hear dialogue per dialogue on my mind.

Cars 2 got away with a special kind of ableism that I want to believe any other movie wouldn't have been able to get away with on our current era, all because is Cars.

But there's also A LOT OF violence in that movie, we see on screen characters violently exploding, being subjected to torture and also the equivalent of open-heart surgery, black market of organs, and a literal bomb being put into an individual. Because is Cars it just could do so.

The thing about Cars 2 is that all the villains are disabled cars. They're unable to function properly and constantly will be unable to turn on their engines, are called slurs and, in the case of the rich-mafia adjacent ones, literally have hired medical assistance (a tow truck). And all of this because we're told that their parts have been descontinued, which technically gives us the grim implication that they're basically left to die slowly as they can't keep changing their parts. There aren't humans, and this isn't a human-post apocalyptic universe (no matter how much people Insist, i refuse to accept that theory). Which means that the fabrication of these parts and thus, the ones in charge of the literal poblation's development, must be other vehicles, most probably Cars.

Very powerful and rich Cars like it goes beyond a comparison in real world, they aren't the ones in charge of meds or health care, they're literally in charge of the whole production/birth of Cars, and by deciding what parts to make and what parts to descontinue they're slso deciding who gets to live and who gets to die.

And this isn't possibly a "new" problem, is probably something rooted in the Cars' universe culture for thousands of years. If let's say the Wright brothers were, idk, bikes. They created the first plane (which then died in seconds), so they're basically Victors Frankesteins and this is legal, this is absolutely completely normal in this universe because otherwise there's no way for new models to exist.

So every generation of vehicles have this deep, ingrained thought of " we're building the generation that reemplaces us, in every way they're better and as soon as there's a better version, we will cease to exist and cease to be produced".

I remain of the theory that parents in Cars basically buy parts and assembly their own child and then as time passes, they change parts until we get the general "adult" model. But this also means some parents might be unable to buy parts and what not, does this stunt the child development? Probably.

In Cars 3, Lightning McQueen is unable to keep compiting because the new gen is of much better tech, so I assume it's already happening to him what I just explained: At some point, the production of their parts/ maintenance becomes obsolete. So Lightning can keep on living, for a long while, but no matter the reparations or even the modifications, apparently you can't completely modify a car otherwise you would have a Thesseus ship predicament.

In Planes, Dusty is capable to get several modifications, but they aren't extreme. However we see a little car that's able to change into a plane, and we see he apparently has a split personality , which makes me a bit icky because -gestures-, Hollywood also loves to make awful reps about DID. But, this seems to support the idea that extreme changes= basically a different person in the Cars universe. And an awful idea is to face the familiars of a vehicle that got into an accident "we can save them by almost completely rebuilding them, but might as well be a different person".

So back to Cars 2, all these villain Cars are disabled and suffering because someone, literally decided that isn't worth it, these models can't continue their existence when our engineers/doctors already created a new version.

And they must go along with it! They must accept it, because their society has been accepting it for hundreds of years by now! And so the movie decided to make them the literal mafia and a violent murderous group of terrorist and spies, what a move.

The movie tries to make Mater to be some sort of disabled character as well, he keeps being called dumb, ugly and whatever for the whole movie, he's all covered in rust and shamed for an oil leak. And nothing of this is resolved or really addressed, because not only his problems aren't even comparable to those of the villains (is implied he's rusty and all covered in bumbs just because he choses to), his character arc is basically that he's capable of solving a mystery not even the spies figured out at the time, the classic "actually i can be useful" that Hollywood loves.

And we learn the motives for the villains, and like, yeah, that's awful! All those murders and a political fraud to try to get rich by owning oil, but no one gives an ounce of sympathy for a group of characters that literally need medical assistance almost 24/7. The mafia guys can afford to hire tow truck and the big multi-millionarie villain can afford his constant surgeries, to the point of being able to disguise himself and look "normal"

And it drives me crazy that no one mentions this, but I can't blame people, most people weren't subjected to this movie three times per day for 60~ days.

If anyone read this far, you should thank to @soapysudz for fueling me (GET IT?!! FUEL?! -recorded laughs-)

[tyrantisterror]

Wife Goals: Morrigan

February. Intense Loneliness. Must gush about fictional women as poor substitute for an actual relationship. Gushed about Harley Quinn last time. Gush about someone else now. Must fill void in heart.

You know what's a great at temporarily filling the gaping void in your heart? RPGs! Well, RPGs with romance subplots, anyway, not all of them have those I suppose. But a lot of them do, and boy howdy do they scratch the itch for a while! ...a short while. Then it comes back. Dear god it comes back.

But the really good ones scratch that itch real good, and few have scratched it as well for me as Dragon Age Origins. DAO does a great job of hooking you in - depending on your species and class choice, you'll get a different origin story for your main player character that gives you a very personal stake in the conflict to follow. The game makes its early tutorials personalized in this regard, with them doing the dual purpose of teaching you how to use your character's unique abilities while also establishing the life your character has been living till now and how the actions of one of the many villains in the story's overarching plot will completely blow it up to Hell. It's very good, gets you invested in your character really quick, and makes you eager to build something new from the ashes of what came before.

Which you then immediately get a chance to do - you have one last tutorial mission of sorts, a small little exploration and fetch quest with three other new recruits for the organization of monster-slaying international warriors you've joined called the Grey Wardens. Your first companion is one of those fellow recruits - the other two are, well... they're surplus to requirements, narratively speaking. But that's fine, because in that fetch quest you meet the second companion you can recruit.

Specifically, you meet Morrigan, the witch of the wilds. And she is so, SO key to what makes DAOwork.

Regardless of which origin story you picked on character creation, it will show you an important fraction of the setting for the game as a whole. You'll learn about one of the hierarchies of this society - whether it's the caste system of the dwarves, the way elves are either forced to live in an increasingly shrinking wilderness or treated as second-class citizens in the cities, how mages are treated as inherently dangerous time-bombs who have to be institutionalized for the good of "normal" people, and how the human nobility are constantly scheming to take each other out for a power grab. Shit's fucked in a lot of ways, and that's BEFORE you find out about the supernatural monster apocalypse that's brewing underground.

And so it's notable when you meet Morrigan, a witch and, more importantly, a person who lives completely separated from society and all its hierarchies. You, the player, have just been introduced to these systems, and are surrounded at first by people who treat them as immutable truths, and may already be internalizing that This Is Just How It Is Here. But then, at the end of this very final tutorial level, you meet this strange, goth-as-hell witch who immediately starts looking at those systems and saying, "You realize those rules are dumb as hell, right?" Because, like you the player, she didn't grow up in this world, and she, like you the player, can see that Shit's Fucked actually.

This is not to say that Morrigan is some super-enlightened being - she is, in fact, also the product of a horrible abusive hierarchy, just one that's a lot more small and personalize. Morrigan, you find out, is the daughter of Flemeth, who's more or less the setting's equivalent of Baba Yaga, i.e. the archetypal supremely powerful wicked witch in the woods. And like the daughters of the Baba Yaga in Slavic folklore, Morrigan's relationship with her mother is... well, strained in ways that you'd expect for a woman whose mother is an infamous immortal folklore witch.

Flemmeth is a hermit and a misanthrope who views the world as being red in tooth in claw - the strong survive and the weak perish, so you have to be as strong as possible and accept that the weak are meant to die. There is no room in the strong for pity, mercy, or affection - only ruthless self-interest. This is the philosophy Flemmeth believes in, and it's one she's forced into Morrigan as well, and which Morrigan is quick to parrot at all times.

Morrigan has a... mixed reputation in the DAO fandom. A lot of people hate her because, well, she has been taught to believe in a ruthless "might makes right" philosophy, and as such frequently gets pissy when you do, you know, hero shit in your game about saving the world. It was so talked about that Bioware actually sold "Morrigan Disapproves" shirts to play on how, well, Morrigan disapproves of a lot of actions that seem like what you, the player, should OBVIOUSLY do.

And, like, I'm not going to argue that she's right in most of these circumstances. You should help the people of Redcliffe, you should save children from being possessed by demons, you should stick your neck out for people in need. I am a fan of heroes doing hero shit even and especially when it inconveniences them - I am one of those lame players whose wish fulfillment fantasy is "let me be nice and helpful to as many people as possible."

But, like... the conflict between those philosophies is what makes the relationship you develop with Morrigan so damn great. Morrigan is one of four romance options in DAO, and she's one of the quickest to propose you and her begin an affair. She explicitly stipulates that it's a physical thing only, though - stress relief, not a sign of, like, love and affection, because she doesn't believe in love and affection, those are feelings weak people have, and she's definitely not weak! She's strong, her mommy told her so!

So let's say you say yes, because she's a smoking hot goth girl and you're not going to say no to that. Sure, she's a bit ruthless and can be a buzzkill when you're doing Hero Shit, but she's still very polite to you and can be sweet in her own vampy sort of way. And, like, sometimes she makes pretty good points when criticizing the world you live in! Morrigan is one of the only characters who criticizes the inhumane treatment of mages in civilized society - your only other spellcaster companion actually thinks the cruel treatment of mages like herself is necessary, because she's fully internalized the bigotry against herself. Morrigan is cold, but she's not always wrong. There are times when she challenges the world and is correct to do so.

And, well, as you go along and develop your relationship, Morrigan starts to get... attached. She initially claims she's fine with you sleeping around, but backtracks if you actually do - claiming, of course, that she's fine, there's nothing personal, go ahead and sleep with someone else, she's sick of you too actually! (Note: I know this only from youtube clips, I never cheat on my video game wives, not even in alternate playthroughs.) When you get deeper into the relationship, she actually pulls back on affectionate gestures - as if she's scared of what she's feeling about this TOTALLY CASUAL fling you have.

You eventually get to her personal quest, which involves "killing" her immortal mother after you find out that Flemmeth kinda sorta totally plans on stealing Morrigan's body for herself once Morrigan gets strong enough (immortal witches aren't commonplace you know), essentially making Morrigan less a daughter and more, like, livestock to be used in her mother's eyes. When you actually go through with it in one of the toughest optional boss fights of the game, Morrigan's reaction is bafflement. You did all that? For her? Just to keep her around?

She cracks and admits that she only started a relationship to make you her protector - that it was self preservation, nothing more. She's so guilty about what she's done, about how you've suffered on her behalf, and most of all, on how she cares about you now because of it. She doesn't want to say what's obviously true: she loves you, and love is a weakness, and that makes her weak, not strong, and she's terrified of what it means for you and for her.

And you have to tell her the truth that she's really known for a long time but refused to admit: love is not a weakness. Love is a strength. And she tried to argue against it, but she finally concedes. She can't bear not loving you.

The relationship you form with Morrigan is one where you and her challenge each other, constantly. She disapproves, you disapprove, but you need each other, and you both have something to learn from each other. It's not a case of Morrigan becoming good so much as it is her slowly realizing that goodness was in her all along - that as much as she claimed to the contrary, she really is a loving person at heart.

I have a lot of issues with the Dragon Age sequels, but one thing I will say for them is that they allowed Morrigan to retain her growth from Origins. She remains haughty and ruthless, but she also has a kind, compassionate, and selfless streak that was always there in DAO, but had to be brought to the surface kicking and screaming.

Like, I've played a LOT of RPGs where you romance people. Because I'm a sad lonely person who needs to fill the gaping void inside me, you know. But out of all of them, there are few romances where "I love you" hits harder than when Morrigan says it, because you BOTH fought like hell for her to have the courage to say those words, and you know damn well how much she means it.