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[asirensrambles]

Ticking Like A

For @hatboyexchange 2023, I got to write for the amazing @vesperfloyd about Vega, Joker, and PTSD. Trigger warnings for PTSD, flashbacks, and sucky childhoods, but it’s okay in the end, thanks to our favorite hatboy. Read the whole thing on Ao3.

——

The silence chafes.

The Presidium itself isn’t silent. Their table overlooks the Relay Monument, a popular spot for tourists, diplomats, traders, refugees. He can hear the edges of hushed conversations and shouts of laughter and thundering footsteps. Even with his back to the mezzanine, he can feel the volume of the crowds that pass by on their way to some distraction or other. The constant thrum of noise behind them makes the silence at the table even more stark.

James shifts uncomfortably in his chair, arms folded.

The artificial sunlight glitters off of the reflecting pool in a way that almost reminds him of home. It’s been years since he’s been on a real beach, at least not without a hardsuit and an ammo block. He thought about going home once while he was stationed in Vancouver, but he never made the time. Too late now.

Instead, he tries to calm himself using the refracted light of the pool, imagining sand under his toes, surf filling his ears, water as far as he can see. He could almost believe he’s there, if not for the cacophony around him. Or the sideways-queasy feeling that builds in his stomach the longer he looks at the water. He wants to lose himself in the shapes made by the gentle lapping of the waves around the base of the monument. But he can’t.

He just can’t.

Joker, meanwhile, takes a sip of his drink, looking out over the view, cool as a goddamn cucumber.

James shifts again, his own drink untouched. “Do you, uh, want me to talk about it?” he says, voice low.

Joker shrugs, taking another sip of his drink, not looking his way. “Up to you, Vega. Don’t need to if you don’t want to.”

James scowls into the middle distance. By all rights, Joker should be furious. Yelling. Confining him to the Normandy. Bare minimum, he should be lecturing James the way his abuela used to when he’d disappointed her. But he’s not. He’s just…sitting there.

So James just sits there, too.

Uncomfortably.

The breeze from the recirculated air feels cool on his skin. Not like home, but there’s no tinge of the smoke he smelled in the days after the Cerberus attack, either. Just pure, clean air, stinging the exposed cuts on his knuckles like antiseptic.

He looks down to see his hands curled into tight fists on the tabletop. He makes a conscious, concerted effort to relax them.

He looks up at Joker again, who hasn’t moved since the last time he looked at him. Thirty seconds ago.

James sighs roughly, rubbing his closely-shaved scalp with one hand, wincing a bit in pain. “Look, man, I don’t know what to say.”

Joker sips his drink calmly. “I didn’t ask you to say anything.”

“Come on, comodín, you can’t—“

“Vega.” Joker cuts him off, finally looking over at him for the first time since they sat down. “You don’t have to talk to me.” He takes a sip of his drink, cocking his head slightly, thinking. “But—“

“No, man, don’t—“

“—but you should talk to someone. Probably.”

James blows his breath out in frustration. “I know.”

“Want me to call Cortez?”

“No,” James says quickly, firmly. “Esteban would just, you know…” He gestures inarticulately. “He’d blow it out of proportion.”

Joker raises an eyebrow over his half-empty glass. “You trashed a club.”

“Well, I mean…you know what I mean,” James says lamely.

Joker just cocks his head slightly to the side and goes back to looking out over the Presidium.

They sit like that for another moment, James shifting uncomfortably every few seconds, Joker lounging with preternatural serenity.

“You don’t have to sit with me,” James says when he finally can’t take it anymore. “I’m fine. I’ll…be fine.”

“I do, actually,” Joker responds calmly. “Terms of your release per Bailey. Someone in an ‘official role’ has to watch you for the rest of our leave. And with Shepard off doing who the hell knows what with Aria T’Loak, you’re stuck with me.”

James looks back down at his hands, tips of his ears burning with shame. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Don’t be,” Joker says lightly. “You got me out of doing paperwork.”

James ducks his head further down, hunching in on himself.

“Vega.” James looks back up to see Joker frowning at him. “It was a joke.”

James tries to smile. Really, he does. But whatever happens on his face only makes Joker frown harder. Which makes James feel even worse.

“We should, uh…we should probably just go back the the ship, huh,” James says, defeat thick in his voice.

“Is that what you want to do?”

James wipes his hands on his pants, trying to dry off the sweat. He avoids Joker’s calm gaze. Truth is, he doesn’t want to go back. He’ll have to talk to Steve if he goes back, and that’s…he’s not ready to talk. About what happened. Not yet. But it doesn’t seem right to take up Joker’s time just to avoid—

“How ‘bout a walk?”

James blinks, jerking his head back over to Joker at the interruption. The pilot just looks at him, head slightly cocked again.

“C’mon, let’s go for a walk,” Joker says easily, finishing his drink and standing up.

James looks up at the pilot. “Uh, sure, if you want.”

Joker grabs his crutches from where they rest on the railing and nods over the side. “Down along the reflecting pool?”

James looks over the mezzanine railing, the queasy feeling returning as he looks over the water.

Joker continues, “Or down through the wards?”

“The wards,” James says quickly.

Joker just nods and starts crutching off, James following closely behind.

Read the rest on Ao3.

[asirensrambles]

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

Since apparently I can somewhat write but can't read, got mixed up and did an extra treat for the @hatboyexchange for @ginbiscuit

I absolutely love the Vega/Joker pairing so this one was really self indulgent.

Read the whole thing on AO3

~~

Jeff Moreau could never bring himself to like guys like James Vega. Admittedly, not that he liked many people in general, but that kind of empty headed guy, only talking about muscles and guns, was very high on his personal chart of dislikes. The fact that most of the ones he had crossed paths with were also the same people that would chant him “creaky legs” or take particular satisfaction in mockingly calling him “Joker”, asking him to crack a smile every time he had to pass them in the mess hall, didn’t help either.

If that wasn’t enough, Vega had that unbearable everybody should be friends attitude.

Okay, he was attractive, no point in denying that, but since Shepard had brought him aboard the Normandy, he had tried his best to avoid him. He just knew there was absolutely nothing they could share apart from the mission briefs and the weekly game of poker, and he was okay with that.

[asirensrambles]

i am begging you all to stop treating this site like instagram if you dont want it to be content free by next year

[asirensrambles]

i said it was my favorite piece of media that i’ve hyperfixated on since the tender age of 12 and have not let go of since. i didnt say it was a Good piece of media

[asirensrambles]

“Is it okay if I draw fanart of your fanfic?👉🏼👈🏼”

My brother in Christ we shall have a spring wedding

[asirensrambles]

"Kill them with kindness" WRONG. drop the opera house chandelier on them.

[asirensrambles]

Reblog if you write fic and people can inbox you random-ass questions about your stories, itemized number lists be damned.

[asirensrambles]

which oc would you say was your ‘oc of the year’? (because you made them this year, they had the most development this year, or you just feel like it)

[asirensrambles]

Reparations

I was thinking about this story yesterday and decided to repost it, because even though I’m quite fond of it for some reason it’s like the redheaded stepchild of my fic. Just felt like giving the poor thing another shot. 

This is a standalone fic in the Exordium-verse, though you don’t need one to read the other. It’s 3k, so have a readmore, and if you’re a mobile user you can totally shaketh your fist at me. 

Ao3 link if you prefer.

Reparations

Ashley Williams tightened her grip on her rifle, narrowed eyes sliding from Shepard to the biotic terrorist who had a pistol planted against the chairman’s head. There was a quake in the pistol that Ashley knew was a bad sign, and a tenor in Shepard’s voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Beside her, Alenko held his breath.

“You don’t want to do this,” Shepard said, his own pistol locked on target. Ashley hadn’t seen him switch from the assault rifle before they entered the MSV Ontario’s tiny lounge, but it meant he was currently in a much better position than she was to take out the terrorist without losing the chairman. Her Tsunami wasn’t exactly a precise weapon.

“Force is the only thing people will understand,” the terrorist replied, the same quiver she saw in the pistol creeping in to his voice. The three biotics standing behind them had faces made of stone, their hands gloved with blue gauntlets of energy. Well. Looks like everyone here is all in, she thought. Isn’t that just fucking fantastic.

“You pull that trigger and I’m dropping you to the floor,” Shepard said, “Along with everyone else in this room. There’s nothing to gain here. Let him go.”

The cackle that ripped from the terrorist’s throat made Ashley’s teeth itch. Sporadic blue flickers snapped and flared around his body like static. She had never seen Alenko’s biotics do that. Then again, she had never seen Alenko lose his mind.

Keep reading

[asirensrambles]

Coffee

When Ashley stumbles into the mess, surly and grumbling and checking her chronometer to confirm that ass o’clock in the morning is in fact an honest to God real time of day, Alenko is already there, sipping a cup of coffee and scrolling through a datapad. Not a hair out of place nor a wrinkle to be found in his uniform, and unlike Ashley he kind of looks like he’s enjoying the world he lives in. Even his aftershave smells alert.

She drops into the chair across from him, acutely aware that her own uniform is wrinkled, and long, dark strands of still-wet hair have already pulled loose from her bun. Her legs haven’t seen a razor blade in a week, and she doesn’t even care.

“I hate you,” she says, and swears she means it.

He slides a second cup of coffee across the table, hot and steaming like he knew exactly what time she’d come staggering in, half amused and half pitying her sorry state.

She takes the cup without thanking him, the strong aroma filling her nostrils with the first semblance of peace since she rolled out her sleeper pod. One cream and an ice cube – the bastard even knows exactly how she likes it, and not because she’s told him. Alenko’s too observant for his own good.

“I still hate you,” she says, taking a sip.

“You’re welcome,” he replies, still skimming his datapad, a smile threatening the corners of his lips. She drinks in silence, each sip encouraging a few more neurons to start firing in sync. Halfway through the cup she notices Alenko is watching her, smirking. He has no idea how lucky he is she hasn’t decked him.

“Grenado came through here complaining you used up all the hot water again,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “Grenado doesn’t have long hair.”

“Ashley Williams. Slayer of geth. Vanquisher of rachni. Ms. Makeup is for People with Something to Hide and There’s No Place to Carry a Gun on a Dress. Requires the most prep time of anyone on the Normandy.” He shakes his head and chuckles. She weighs the pros and cons of tossing what’s left in her cup on his spotless shirt.  

“Hey, you grow a mop on your head and see how long it takes you to get ready in the morning.”

“Why don’t you just cut it?” Now there’s genuine curiosity in his voice, and she almost spits out a mouthful of coffee to keep from laughing, because leave it to Alenko to start a conversation about hair.

“Because,” she replies, which is less embarrassing than the truth, which is that she grows it long secretly because she likes her hair, thinks it’s her best feature, and even though she twists it up in a pile on the back of her head like a turtle shell every day, she can’t bear to cut it off.

Alenko shrugs. “Just seems like a lot of upkeep to me. You’re not all that big on, uh. Upkeep.” It’s a dig at her wrinkled clothes, and she will deck him for that one. Later.

“So it takes a little work to keep shiny and lice free,” she says, tugging at the rebel strands and forcing them back into place. “I dunno. Maybe I should hack it off. Don’t get much chance to wear it down, and it’s not I turn anyone’s head with it yanked back in a military style bun.”

Alenko slides his chair back and gets to his feet, a closed, thoughtful look coming over his face. It’s an odd expression that she doesn’t recognize, which is odd because for someone who wins so goddamned much at poker he usually walks around with his emotions stapled to his forehead. In blinking neon lights.

He catches her eye, lowers his chin and smiles, like he’s figured something out that she hasn’t.

“Yeah…you do.”

He’s halfway to the CIC stairwell before it dawns on her what he’s said. She stares confused into her coffee cup, then up at his retreating back in time to see the corner of his eye as he casts a furtive glance over his shoulder, most definitively looking at her, wrinkled shirt, unruly hair and all.

Oh.

Maybe, just maybe, he has figured out something she hasn’t.  

*Author’s note: I have no idea what this is. It happened after a night of insomnia and a grueling day of writing that left me so exhausted I ended up arguing with dictionary.com that “unexpecting” was, in fact, a word. So, um. I got nothing. Don’t consider this part of my Exordium-verse.

[asirensrambles]

shots fired

@omegastation told me there was a trilogy week going on but I don’t have much thought for it so here’s a quick Kaidan/Ash drabble because they deserved to get banter in the citadel dlc elevator too:

~~

“Remember when Wrex asked us if either of us could kill Shepard?” Ashley asked idly as Shepard grumbled about her hamster and the disrespect of it all in front of them.

“Is this the point where we find out?” Kaidan retorted as he flexed his fingers, ready to throw up a biotic barrier as needed.

“Well. Yes.” Ashley paused and glanced over at Kaidan with a grin. “But also bet I can do it before you.”

“You’re on Williams.”

“Wait what are you two talking about?” Shepard asked, turning around.

“Eyes at the front Commander, doors about to open.” Ashley said instead of answering him and then charged forward as they did, knowing that Kaidan would have the shield up for her. She shot down one mercenary and took aim at another yelling back, “Guess you’re playing defense Alenko!”

“Just warming up.” Kaidan yelled nearby and two mercenaries were struck down by his reave. “Looks like you’re just slowing down though.”

“As if.” Ashley shot back and fired at yet another mercenary who couldn’t get their shield up in time. The clone ran past her and Ashley fired at her but the bullets bounced off the clones biotic shields.

“You just trying to scratch them or what?” Kaidan threw an overload at the clone, disrupting their shields long enough for Ashley to get a shot in.

“Thanks for the help, Spectre Alenko.” Ashley called out and continued forward. From the corner of her eye she caught a mercenary sneaking up on Kaidan and whirled around to fire at them.

“Guess I can’t cash in a favour for that then.” Kaidan looked down at the dead body and then back up, throwing a cryo blast at the clone who dodged it.

Shepard let out a guttural yell and tackled her clone suddenly, knocking them to the back of the storage compartment.

“You know I think we should just let Shepard have this. She needs it.” Kaidan walked up to Ashley and peered down the storage compartment.

“Yeah…you might be right there. But I still got a hit in.”

“Only because I broke the shielding.”

“Semantics.” Ashley clocked more mercs heading their way and raised her assault rifle.

“Oh now you want to argue that.” Kaidan dodged a blast and threw a barrier up over the both of them.

“Only over dinner.”

“Tin foil mini skirt included?”

“You know it.” Ashley leaned over so she could press the quickest kiss to Kaidan’s scruffy cheek. “Now drop this barrier and let’s show them what the Normandy crew is made of.”

“Aye aye, Spectre Williams.”

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spectre

Ashley groaned at the alarm that blared through the starboard lounge. Shepard probably put EDI up to it knowing that Ashley had been drinking last night like the terrible commander she was.

Someone moved next to her and Ashley cracked one eye open to see Kaidan yawning as he sat up and ran a hand through his hair. He’d stopped by at some point last night, that much she could remember, and clearly hadn’t left and they must have ended up on the couch together instead of back at their quarter.

“Come on Spectre Williams.” He teased, resting a hand on her shoulder to shake her lightly. “Duty calls.”

“That’s second human Spectre out of the whole human race to you, third human Spectre Alenko. Show some respect.” She shot back, sitting up and wincing as her head ached.

“Uh as I recall the Council said my name first.” Kaidan scoffed but there was a tilt in his lips that Ashley could tell was the beginning of a smile. Technically they’d been called to the Council at the same time and received their promotion to Spectre in the same sentence.

“Only because they were going alphabetically. They clearly meant me for it. Best for last and all that.”

Keep reading

[asirensrambles]

@brideshead

[asirensrambles]

Celebrate (Good Times, C'mon) (pt. 1/2)

After seeing the success of the Little Woods field test, Selene, Mi-an, Trudy, and Zeke go to the Blue Moon to celebrate. Trudy and Mi-an call it an early night, while Zeke learns how Selene gained her distrust of people following through from Nia.

Part 2

The first few weeks Selene was in Sandrock, finding people waiting for her at the door first thing in the mornings was unsettling and startling. At this point however, it had happened enough that seeing Mi-an waiting by the gate to Every Little Thing's yard was just another Thursday morning. Catching sight of Selene stepping out, the younger builder waved enthusiastically.

"Hey! Zeke asked me to come get you. Let's go to the field test area right now! I asked him for details but he just said 'You'll see.'"

A cocktail of emotions swirled throughout Selene at the moisture farmer's cryptic words. Swallowing them all down, she forced herself to nod. "Sure, let's go!"

Selene beckoned Mi-an into the yard while she saddled Patches hastily. Mi-an regarded the horse with trepidation, but let Selene help her into the saddle. Once her friend was settled, Selene hauled herself up and urged Patches as fast as she dared with a more inexperienced rider along. The ride wasn't long, and thankfully making sure the two of them stayed seated and safe took most of Selene's concentration, rather than letting her mind wander.

When they got to the field test area, Selene almost couldn't believe her eyes. The Black Saxoul trees towered over Zeke and Trudy, looking healthy as ever. As they drew up closer, she could see Trudy wiping tears from her eyes, with a smile wide enough to split her face. Zeke was staring at the trees with a mixture of awe and disbelief, like he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

"They're surviving! We've never seen them grow so big before! It's really working!" The wonderment and joy in his voice made Selene's heart soar. After everything he'd fought for and through, the man deserved for something to go right. Her own eyes were growing suspiciously moist as Selene dismounted Patches before helping Mi-an down. The two builders walked over to Trudy and Zeke.

Mi-an asked, "So...what's next?"

Trudy turned to look at them, eyes brimming with tears and joy. "I don't even know what to think... Do we dare to hope...?" She looked at Zeke, who barely managed to tear himself away from the sight of the trees. When he didn't add anything, Trudy shrugged and gave a little laugh. "I... I'll think of something once I have calmed down!"

"And I'm gonna go tell my Pa, he's gonna be ecstatic!" Zeke added.

Mi-an let out a victorious whoop. "We're doing, we're gonna make Sandrock green again!"

Selene couldn't help but grin at the infectious energy. Looking over at Zeke, she felt her heart stutter. There was such unbridled joy and hope in his expression, the likes of which she'd never seen before. She would go through all of Miguel's disparagement, and the Sandrocker's skepticism again in a heartbeat if it meant Zeke could have this moment. To Selene's horror, he looked over at her in that moment. Frantically, she scrambled to come up with something to say and explain why she'd been staring, but before she could utter a word, the builder found herself swept off her feet. Literally.

Zeke's strong arms wrapped around her, pulling Selene into a tight hug, lifting the builder off the ground like as though she weighed no more than a small child, and spun them both around. She couldn't help but laugh at the sensation and pure joy Zeke exuded. Finally, he let her feet touch the ground once more, but didn't let go of the embrace. Looking up, Selene was overwhelmed by the warmth and affection in his rich brown eyes.

"Thank you. This wouldn't have happened without your help."

"And none of it would have happened without you." Selene was shocked to see his cheeks darken at her words. Zeke gave her a final squeeze, before letting go. Heat soared into her own cheeks, realizing just how long he'd been holding her, and how much she hadn't noticed. Selene looked around to see if anyone else had witnessed their small exchange. Whatever conversation Mi-an and Trudy were having had their full attention. A surge of affection for the two women came over her. In the shipwreck, they'd been instrumental in finding the algae and getting the scrap out for study. They deserved a celebration, all of them. With that thought, Selene came to a decision.

"Tonight, we're celebrating! Dinner at the Blue Moon tonight, my treat."

[asirensrambles]

-slides you my and @deagh's Pen/Builder AU that incorporates a lot of this- https://archiveofourown.org/series/3824131

Hiii, it's me. The writing anon. Come to ramble about more Pen. Heeho.

SO-

As one can guess based on my self-imposed title, I like to write and in turn means I like to very normally (okay not really) delve into characters and how they tick. So Pen has been a fun case of reading his dialogue and not knowing if I wanna punch him or like the fact there are cracks of being genuine. That said, I wanna like discuses two of Pen's piece of dialogue that make me scream at pathea for not doing more with this.

Dining, asked about his favorite things: "We're supposed to use teachings of the Light to solve issues, not weapons, so I prefer not to own anything that could hurt anyone. Although, not everyone in the local Church agrees with my stance..."

Rejected, but the player is married: "You are teasing me, no? Do you not already have a family? Protect your loved ones, do not dare break that trust!"

I'm screaming internally because something about these just adds so much to Pen? The fact that Pen, the guy who claims he has many lovers, who gets giddy when the player divorces their spouse and asks how good it felt and more, point blank goes "Do not break your family's trust". Something about that just gets the gears a whirling. It makes me wonder if Pen comes from a broken family and or something similar. I know people have given their own headcanons, saying Pen is the emperor of Duvos's son for example. So that just gets the gears turning but also that dining dialogue. Pen, tthe man who CANONICALL OWNS A RELIC OF DESCTRUCTION SAYS HE PREFERS NOT TO OWN ANYTHING THAT COULD HURT HIM-I???

It honestly makes me wonder if Pen, prior to the player coming to Sandrock, was already cracking. Maybe playing the role of enforcer for the church and seeing what the church taught made him start questioning stuff or he being outside of Duvos's toxic mindset and more started making him question everything, only shoved deeper into what he was taught as a child in Duvos by Matilda.

Anyway! Food for thought.

Sidenote: Love how Pen offers to just deck Yan for the player, that's sweet of him fhdjkf

I've never heard the 'son of Duvos Emperor' headcanon, that seems a bit...well, it ain't for me. Personally I think he was purely a genetic experiment/test-tube baby and was treated as such; lacking in a lot of love growing up and essentially told to 'fight for Duvos or be left to rot' (I'm not entirely privy to Duvos' setting/lifestyle, but I'd imagine it's p close to the Garlean Empire of FFXIV, so that's kinda what I'm basing a lot of this on lmao).

Everything abt his life up to Sandrock has been fighting, learning a very skewed history of the world, being trained in deception, etc etc. But then coming to Sandrock and having a lot of those preconceptions shattered slowly but surely and making him second-guess some things. To me, it feels like there's no love lost between Pen and the Empire as a whole; but he doesn't know anything but being loyal to it. All it takes is someone treating him genuinely and not being put-off by his loud persona for those cracks in belief to quicken. But he can't take back what he's done, ofc. So there's the main crisis, for him it'd be 'What's the point? I may want this but I can't escape Duvos' but snap him out of that and you're gonna have The Most Loyal Man Ever cuz now you're his entire world, oops!

[asirensrambles]

#in a way i think part of what makes plagiarism so prevelent in academics is that the way many modern school systems are set uo#end up mimicking the same fast content crunch conditions that foster plagiarism in online content creators#it can be hard to take the microphone and form your own opinion when you've got seven microphones shoved in your face#you might not care about learning to participate in an academic discussion when you're crunching to finish your degree#before you're flat broke#not to mention not all professors actually want to foster that learning in their students sadly#i like to hope my professors in college did appreciate my essays though#because i tended to disagree with a lot of the material#which meant i had to do independent research to support my stance#i also embraced some of the weird topics that interested me as essay ideas#because i knew i wouldn't half ass the research if it was something i would research outside a classroom#like translation challenges for fantasy novels#or issues of racial representation in video games through non-human species

fascinating tags via @theambivalentagender

I teach a lot of undergrads these days. About 3 years ago, I started dedicating a full two hours early every semester to a lecture and discussion about the history of the concept of plagiarism, because I was so annoyed that my students were walking into my classroom with the ironclad belief that they weren't plagiarizing when they were. Sure, the university had some official plagiarism guidelines that they could hypothetically read in a code of conduct somewhere, but they didn't. All they had was a vague memory of some teacher in Grade 8 telling them 'don't copy and paste from wikipedia' and a little learning from experience afterwards.

My hypothesis (which I was delighted to find is shared by Brian Deer, the journalist who broke the Wakefield story and who was the source Illuminaughti plagiarized in the hbomberguy video) is that the rise of automatic plagiarism checkers meant that, in the minds of many students, the formerly more abstract concept of plagiarism ('passing someone else's work off as your own') became a more concrete concept operationalized by the plagiarism checker. Under this concept, a text is plagiarized if (and, implicitly, only if) it is detected as plagiarism by the plagiarism checker. I have spent many hours with students sobbing in my office after I told them that their essays were plagiarized, and they all say that they thought changing the words around was sufficient to make it not plagiarized. Maybe some of them were lying for sympathy, maybe they all were, but I see no reason to not take them at their word. They think that what they're doing is dubious (hence the shame) but they don't think it falls under what they take to be the definition of plagiarism - the thing they can face sanction from the university for. They need to have it pointed out to them that there has been plagiarism for a lot longer than there have been automatic 'plagiarism checkers' and that as their professor, I'm the only plagiarism checker they really need to be concerned about.

It's really easy for me to get frustrated about this. It's frustrating to me that the American public high school system (the source of the majority of my students) has failed to prepare them to think about information, facts, and where they come from. It's frustrating that students can't be arsed to read the university's code of conduct and that the only way I know they have is if I read it straight to their faces. It's very frustrating to see the written scholarly word, a medium to which I have dedicated no small part of my life, treated like it's not worth anything. I'm frustrated to know that most students are not in my class, or in the class of someone else prepared to teach this lesson, so they'll go through their whole lives thinking that an uncited light paraphrase is enough to be worthy of credit. I'm frustrated that people with such a lax attitude towards information are my fellow voters. I once read a real fucking academic essay that was submitted for grades that cited a long quote from Arthur Conan Doyle that, when I traced it, was actually a quote from a fucking TJLC blog. That one isn't frustrating, I guess, that's just funny. It's not all bad.

I'm glad for the hbomberguy video. I hope it will make it easier to convince my students in future. It's too bad he didn't go into the academic context, but it's not like he was short on things to talk about already.

But this is a more general problem than just the video essay context shows. If we're not careful, the very concept of plagiarism can get eroded. I'm not a linguistic prescriptivist, either! If enough people start taking this new concept as plagiarism, that will be what it becomes. I think a world in which that notion of plagiarism is the relevant one would be a worse world. Don't let people erode the idea of credit. You're going to want it later.

[asirensrambles]

Pen/Builder Princess Mononoke Redraw

HOKAY, so back in the beginning of October, I did a fluff-tober prompt for Pen/Builder (Delaney) that was......anything but fluffy and it spiraled into a whole AU that has been started here: https://archiveofourown.org/series/3824131.

@deagh took Pen out for a smutty spin, and we've both been dragged down this rabbit hole by him and Delaney. The other day, I saw this scene from Princess Mononoke on tumblr, and knew I HAD to draw this version of Delaney and Pen in the scene. This moment probably never ACTUALLY happens between them, but I couldn't resist.