#(and thus save money which is important)

[disdaidal]

I reinstalled Windows on my laptop and it feels good to start anew.

Just so I can again fill it up with unnecessary junk again and then cry myself to sleep every night lol.

I also removed lots of bloatware and I actually have a sufficient amount of space on my OS (C: drive), which is fucking great because I now can finally play the Sims 4 again. 😭

[csanflower]

are you my soulmate?

pairing: idol/model! jungkook x part time staff! reader

genre: fluff, sfw

wc: 2.7k

synopsis: You offered to do some part time work for a Calvin Klein shoot to earn some quick cash. The job was simple. Do whatever the higher ranked people told you to do. You expected a simple job like making coffee or ordering lunch for the staff. You definitely did not expect the biggest star in the world following you around like a puppy, thinking you’re his soulmate just because a bell rang when you crossed paths with him…

*inspired by jungkooks comment abt hearing bells ring when he meets his soulmate ^^ BUT NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT SOULMATE AU

“y/n, thank you so much for helping us out! Our shoot today is extremely important for the company and we needed all the help we could get! You are aware of who the model is, right?” Sejin, your overall manager for the shoot today approached you as you entered the shooting area.

You immediately noticed how large scale this shoot was, compared to the other shoots you’ve been to before. As a college student interested in the modelling sector, you had always tried to find opportunities to get yourself familiarised with the industry, and at the same time earn some money to pay off your school fees. Thus you’ve dabbled in helping out with basic chores for shoots, such as buying coffee for the staff, organising the mess on the tables, or the occasional touch up of the model’s makeup. However, all of the shoots you’ve been to so far have been small scale, quick shoots, unlike this shoot which seemed to have about 100 staff members in a rush to get ready. Whoever the model was must have been a huge figure.

“Sorry, this job was kind of last minute so I didn’t have time to read up on the information. Who is the model?” You replied Sejin with slight embarrassment.

“It’s fine, no need to be sorry. The model is Jeon Jungkook of BTS! Do you know how many fans this guy has? This shoot is going to make our company stocks rise to the max!” Sejin laughed out loud at the mere thought of company stocks rising.

Jeon Jungkook? Wow. Who didn’t know Jeon Jungkook? He was the most famous and desired man in the whole South Korea — in fact maybe the whole world. Your jaw hung open. You were going to see Jeon Jungkook? Sure, you were probably not going to reach within a 10 meter radius of him as a small staff, but you were gonna be in the same room as him. You weren’t a big fan of him but you had heard of how famous he was. Jeon Jungkook was a household name. You’ve personally heard your mother and siblings fangirling over him. Who would have known that y/n l/n, the only one in the l/n family who did not fangirl over Jeon Jungkook would be meeting him first. You laughed to yourself, imagining your family’s reaction when you tell them about it.

“Ah, y/n, the shoot is about to start, i’m about to get busy. Could you do me a favour and help me get my file for todays shoot? It’s in my office, you should know where it is.”

“Sure! I’ll go now!” You immediately replied, hoping to do good job so you could get on his good side. You bowed at him quickly, before rushing to his office.

When you reached his office, you immediately found the file, with big, bolded letters written on it. “For Jungkook shoot! Extremely important!” You were about to grab it and leave, when you notice a golden bell beside it, with a post it note written on it. “Bring to the shoot! In case I need to get everyone’s attention since nobody ever listens to me anymore!” You laugh at the note, grabbing both the bell and the notes as you head out of the office.

As you walked in the hallway, you suddenly got a text message from sejin. You placed the bell on top of the file and barely balanced it with your left hand, as your right hand held your phone to read the message.

Help me take the bell too please! Thank you!! - Sejin

You inwardly praise yourself saving a trip back, trying to type a response to sejin with your right thumb.

Just as you were about to hit send, you suddenly felt a hard chest in front of you, harshly colliding into it, sending you to the ground.

Ding! The loud sound of the bell resonated in the empty hallway as it hit the ground.

“What the hell…” You rub at your painful head as you lay on the floor, rushing to get up to grab the file before its contents fly around.

Dischevelled, you grab the file and bell, hugging it close to your chest as you glared up at the person who caused the mess.

You definitely did not expect to see a pair of doe eyes looking at you curiously, with a glint of excitement in them. His mouth was open slightly in awe, as if he just saw an angel. But your jaw hung wider than his when you realised you just bumped into THE JEON JUNGKOOK?

“Oh…OH MY GOD! I’m so so so sorry!” You quickly sobered up, standing up and bowing at him multiple times. You avoided eye contact as you walked past him and tried running away in embarrassment.

But before you could leave, you felt strong, large hands grabbing your wrist.

“W-wait! Don’t go… who are you? Are you my soulmate?”

When you heard what he said, you almost burst into laughter. What? Soulmate? What was this famous star on? Was the most famous guys in the world really asking you if you were his soulmate? You let out a muffled laugh, trying your best to hold it in as you say, “Excuse me?”

“T-the bell. It rang when we bumped into each other. It’s fate.”

You finally let out your laughter at that, laughing uncontrollably at what you thought was a joke, until you noticed his hardened stare and realised maybe he was not joking.

“Um the bell rang because it fell on the floor… I don’t think we are ‘soulmates’, sorry man.” You said awkwardly.

The both of you stood in silence, staring at each other. After 30 seconds, the awkward tension started getting to you and you slightly bowed before walking away back to the shoot.

If you thought that would be the the end of the very weird experience, you were very wrong. As you walked, you could feel a presence behind you. Using your peripheral vision, you were 100% sure Jeon Jungkook, the world’s most desired bachelor was following you around like a puppy. You were starting to get annoyed, the other staff were starting to notice and the attention was definitely not what you needed. You whipped around, face to face with Jungkook.

“Why are you following me?” You ask infuriatingly.

At your annoyed tone, he lets out a small smirk, suddenly having some newfound confidence.

“I’m not following you, I’m going the same way as you.”

You let out a frustrated sigh, turning around and stomping at a quicker pace to the shoot area. Of course, he was still following you closely.

When you reached the shoot, you felt an instant relief with the amount of people bustling around.

“Jungkook is here!”

“What! Where?”

“Jungkook!”

The moment Jungkook entered the room behind you, people immediately took notice of him, running to be by his side and crowding around him. You took the opportunity to blend with the crowd and get away from him.

As you turned back to look at him, you noticed he was looking around for you, after losing you in the crowd. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed as he carried a small frown on his face, eyes glancing around the room trying to find you.

For a guy who could get any girl he want, he seemed weirdly obsessed with you. Did he really think you were his soulmate because of the bell? Maybe he was just playing with you like with other girls. You were just a nobody to him after all. You place the thoughts at the back of your head as you get back to work, finding Sejin.

“Thanks y/n, you can go take a lunch break. I’ll text you if I need you!” Sejin seemed satisfied at your swift pace as he released you for a break.

You give him a small smile as you walk out to the cafeteria with a sigh of relief. Taking one last glance at Jungkook, he still seemed to be trying to find you, with a small cute pout on his face as he seemed slightly frustrated at his futile attempts.

You sat down on an empty bench as you chewed on your sandwich, glad that you could take a short break before the real demands start coming in when the shoot gets busy.

Emergency: Contact some models to see if they’re available ASAP. Part time models OK. Get a variety. Jungkook being picky. He doesn’t want to work with Nari. - Sejin

You furrowed your eyebrows at the message. Jungkook didn’t want to work with Nari? Nari was the biggest female model in Korea. Why didn’t he want to work with her? She was ‘the most beautiful girl in Korea’ and every man loved her. Why did he have to be so uncooperative and make my job so hard? You quickly messaged your model contacts, asking them to come as soon as they could.

Of course, all of them immediately accepted. Who wouldn’t be dying to get an opportunity to model with Jungkook? You led the 4 models to the shoot, noticing the grim and dark mood as soon as you entered. You could tell there was tension due to Jungkook’s lack of cooperation.

When sejin noticed saw the models, his face immediately lighted up.

“Jungkook! The models are here! You can choose any of them to be your partner! These girls are all highly esteemed models and they are all experienced! Any of them would be a great partner!”

You could feel the girls beside you fixing their posture and making a juice pose as they awaited in anticipation for Jungkook to see them.

Jungkook looked up from his phone in disinterest, quickly skimming over the models until his eyes landed on you. Immediately, you noticed a glint of sparkle in his eyes, a child like smile on his face as he pointed at you.

“I want her.”

You instantly tensed up, staring at sejin in shock. You could feel the rest of the staff’s shock as well. You wanted to climb into a hole and die from the tension. Why did he have to cause so much problems for you?

“A-are you sure jungkook? Y/n is a beautiful girl but she’s a staff, not a model…”

You looked at Sejin in desperation, slightly shaking your head and telling him with your eyes that it was a no. However, Jungkook was relentless.

“If it’s not her, i’m not doing this shoot.” He said nonchalantly.

You wanted to smack his handsome little face so bad. You should have just stayed home today. Sejin walked over to you, pulling you aside apologetically.

“I’m so sorry y/n, but you know how important this shoot is to us. Could you please help us out this once? It’s just for today. We will pay extra and it’ll be a great experience! You want to work in the modelling industry in the future right? You could hear desperation in his tone.

You thought about it. Of course this would be a great experience for you, but you were so unprepared. What if you didn’t do well? Or worse what if his fans hated on you? You couldn’t handle that. But with Sejin staring at you so desperately, you felt that the guilt of rejecting him would kill you on the inside. You knew how excited he was for this shoot.

“Fine.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much y/n! Here take this file and read up on the looks for the shoot. I’ll bring you a makeup and stylist team ASAP. The shoot will start immediately when you’re ready!” He handed you a file with immense gratitude written on his face.

You reluctantly grabbed it from him, making your way to the makeup room as you tried to avoid the heated jealous stares of the girls around you. You glared at Jungkook as you walked past him, receiving a smirk in return.

When you reached the makeup room and sat on the model’s chair for the first time, you flipped through the file, reading the contents, your eyes widening and jaws dropping when you read it.

“Underwear shoot???!!”

You stared at yourself in the mirror after you had gotten your makeup and styling done. You were only wearing Calvin Klein underwear and a Calvin Klein jean jacket. Were you really about to do this? Of course, you looked hot. This was probably the hottest you have been in your whole 21 years of your life. But you were so nervous. You sucked in a deep breath, telling yourself: You have to do this well. This will give you many opportunities. Just suck it up.

You walked out awkwardly, feeling the heat of everyone’s stares. You could especially feel Jungkook’s heated stare.

“y/n! You look great! Come here! Let’s start the shoot!” Sejin commented in excitement when you came out.

You awkwardly walked over to in front of the camera where Jungkook was already waiting.

“Ok, y/n, I need you to sit on Jungkook’s lap and grab his neck while looking up innocently at the camera.”

You looked at Jungkook who had a smug look on his face as he waited for you to approach him. You tried not to stare down at Jungkook’s sudden exposed abs. Sucking up your embarrassment, you did as Sejin said.

Unexpectedly, the shoot went smoother than you expected. You managed to do many of the poses Sejin told you to do, even the intimate ones. Sejin even commented that you were a natural. Looking at the pictures taken, you also noticed that you somehow had a natural chemistry with Jungkook, with all your pictures with him seeming natural, like a real couple. In one of the pictures, you were straddling Jungkook as you both stared into each other’s eyes as if you both loved each other. You felt yourself blush as you stared at the picture. Despite the slight embarrassment, you couldn’t help but feel a new sense of pride when you were praised by everybody there, even staff members who previously did not even acknowledge your presence.

“And that’s a wrap! Thank you to everyone!” Sejin shouted.

You felt a flush of relief feel your body, a sense of tiredness taking over your body as you could finally relax.

You slowly got up from Jungkook’s shirtless body, looking away from him. You could still sense him staring at you as you walked away to change out of the uncomfortable undergarments.

After removing the extravagant makeup and changing into comfortable clothes, you walked out of the shoot feeling much more relaxed. You looked at the time on your phone, noticing it was already 11pm. Everybody must have already left by now.

You let out a content sigh, thinking back on the stressful day.

“y/n, wait! Dont go yet!”

Just as you were about to step out of the building, you heard a panicked voice behind you.

You turn around, seeing Jungkook who was panting hard as he bent down to catch his breath. He had changed into more comfortable clothing, with a hoodie and sweats, without any makeup on his face. Yet with such a natural look, he seemed so much more attractive to you. He must have ran after you if he was panting so much.

You crossed your arms, playfully smiling at him as you asked him why he stopped you. You felt a newfound sense of comfort with him after the shoot with him, maybe because you had been in such intimate positions with him.

“I-I need to tell you something. T-there’s something wrong with your phone. It doesn’t have your number in it…” Jungkook seemed nervous.

You looked at him in confusion, not understanding.

“W-wait! I mean there’s something wrong with my phone! It doesn’t have your number!” Jungkook hit his head in frustration, seeming actually annoyed at himself for not pulling off his pickup line correctly.

“So what do you want me to do about it?” You ask with a playful smirk on your face.

“You can fix it by giving me your number.” He said with a shy smile, still slightly embarrassed from his failed pickup line, as he reached out his phone to you.

You laughed out loud at his shyness and relentless determination. Jungkook laughed along with you shyly as you both shared a moment in the sweet darkness of the night.

You grabbed his phone from his hand, typing out your phone number.

*HII IM NEW TO TUMBLR i may make a part two depending on how wrecked i am after seven comes out :’)

[phoenixyfriend]

A lot has been happening today that rep calls could affect. UN vetoes, KOSA, Julian Assange, UNRWA's funding crisis and Israel's demands that it be completely dismantled, the large number of bills we just learned are on the docket for the coming week, and even the good news that is recent successes by the BDS movement.

And like... I care about this stuff. I want to talk about it. But it takes an emotional and mental toll to do it, and it takes time, and... there are two reasons to write up reference, update, information posts:

Compensation. I'm not a journalist, but if I were, I would in theory be getting paid for the information I collect and share to my audience. However, I am not, and am doing this for free. I have gotten maybe $5 in donations since I started this project, and while I recognize that this is probably because people are (quite rightly) donating instead to Palestinian charities or local campaigns or something, it's a basic fact that I am not actually being compensated for this work.

Promoting change and activism. This is in fact my main goal: to have a positive impact on current events by giving people a guide on the news and politics because there's so much happening that's hard to keep track of, and if I'm already doom-listening to half a dozen political podcasts, I might as well save other people the trouble, right?

The thing is, like... most of the reblogs on my guidelines and helpful posts are from me, to me. I am the one reblogging. I am desperately trying to get these things to circulate so I can make a difference, but... no dice. Some of the posts are admittedly pretty long (my 'how to call your reps, here's some verbiage' post is 3.4k words), and I can imagine some people are saving it for later, and then maybe forget, or they don't want to share something controversial, and like... I do get that. I do.

But it does mean the posts aren't circulating, and thus they're having less of an impact, and I can't help but feel like there are other things I could be doing to help that would be more effective. More bang for my buck, except it's my time and effort instead of my money. Like, maybe it would have more an effect if I hunted down a wider variety of elected officials I could bother instead of instructing other people on how to bother theirs? Maybe going to protests (which would be a huge commitment due to distance) would be more effective than trying to help ensure that the effectiveness of "I actually have a vote and you are losing it" of calls has the weight of numbers behind it.

Especially since I did try to blaze it, and tumblr mods rejected the post. I don't know why. It's not against ToS, since none of it was disinformation or election interference, which is the only reason given on the FAQ for why things might not be approved for blazing, but who knows.

Maybe tumblr just decided the possible blowback on them for blazing a pro-ceasefire post would be too much.

I don't know. I just... it's just really disheartening to try to help and it gets stymied because, as much effort as it might be, it doesn't reach more than a (comparatively) tiny audience, especially when my relatively low-effort polls and shitposts get easily ten times as many notes with way less energy put in.

EDIT: This is not a post that I need to have reblogged. this is just me bitching. This a vent post. What I am asking people to reblog is my activism posts that I spend hours on to try and help nudge things in a better direction. Please reblog THOSE. This one doesn't need reblogging unless you have an actual comment. Reblogging this post just to reblog, with neither useful comment nor encouragement, is not helping me with my issue of 'not paid, not making an impact' or helping with any important causes.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Algorithmic feeds are a twiddler’s playground

Next TUESDAY (May 14), I'm on a livecast about AI AND ENSHITTIFICATION with TIM O'REILLY; on WEDNESDAY (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD with HARRY SHEARER for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

Like Oscar Wilde, "I can resist anything except temptation," and my slow and halting journey to adulthood is really just me grappling with this fact, getting temptation out of my way before I can yield to it.

Behavioral economists have a name for the steps we take to guard against temptation: a "Ulysses pact." That's when you take some possibility off the table during a moment of strength in recognition of some coming moment of weakness:

https://archive.org/details/decentralizedwebsummit2016-corydoctorow

Famously, Ulysses did this before he sailed into the Sea of Sirens. Rather than stopping his ears with wax to prevent his hearing the sirens' song, which would lure him to his drowning, Ulysses has his sailors tie him to the mast, leaving his ears unplugged. Ulysses became the first person to hear the sirens' song and live to tell the tale.

Ulysses was strong enough to know that he would someday be weak. He expressed his strength by guarding against his weakness. Our modern lives are filled with less epic versions of the Ulysses pact: the day you go on a diet, it's a good idea to throw away all your Oreos. That way, when your blood sugar sings its siren song at 2AM, it will be drowned out by the rest of your body's unwillingness to get dressed, find your keys and drive half an hour to the all-night grocery store.

Note that this Ulysses pact isn't perfect. You might drive to the grocery store. It's rare that a Ulysses pact is unbreakable – we bind ourselves to the mast, but we don't chain ourselves to it and slap on a pair of handcuffs for good measure.

People who run institutions can – and should – create Ulysses pacts, too. A company that holds the kind of sensitive data that might be subjected to "sneak-and-peek" warrants by cops or spies can set up a "warrant canary":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

This isn't perfect. A company that stops publishing regular transparency reports might have been compromised by the NSA, but it's also possible that they've had a change in management and the new boss just doesn't give a shit about his users' privacy:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90853794/twitters-transparency-reporting-has-tanked-under-elon-musk

Likewise, a company making software it wants users to trust can release that code under an irrevocable free/open software license, thus guaranteeing that each release under that license will be free and open forever. This is good, but not perfect: the new boss can take that free/open code down a proprietary fork and try to orphan the free version:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39772562

A company can structure itself as a public benefit corporation and make a binding promise to elevate its stakeholders' interests over its shareholders' – but the CEO can still take a secret $100m bribe from cryptocurrency creeps and try to lure those stakeholders into a shitcoin Ponzi scheme:

https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/11/kickstarter-blockchain-a16z-crypto-secret-investment-chris-dixon/

A key resource can be entrusted to a nonprofit with a board of directors who are charged with stewarding it for the benefit of a broad community, but when a private equity fund dangles billions before that board, they can talk themselves into a belief that selling out is the right thing to do:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/how-we-saved-org-2020-review

Ulysses pacts aren't perfect, but they are very important. At the very least, creating a Ulysses pact starts with acknowledging that you are fallible. That you can be tempted, and rationalize your way into taking bad action, even when you know better. Becoming an adult is a process of learning that your strength comes from seeing your weaknesses and protecting yourself and the people who trust you from them.

Which brings me to enshittification. Enshittification is the process by which platforms betray their users and their customers by siphoning value away from each until the platform is a pile of shit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Enshittification is a spectrum that can be applied to many companies' decay, but in its purest form, enshittification requires:

a) A platform: a two-sided market with business customers and end users who can be played off against each other; b) A digital back-end: a market that can be easily, rapidly and undetectably manipulated by its owners, who can alter search-rankings, prices and costs on a per-user, per-query basis; and c) A lack of constraint: the platform's owners must not fear a consequence for this cheating, be it from competitors, regulators, workforce resignations or rival technologists who use mods, alternative clients, blockers or other "adversarial interoperability" tools to disenshittify your product and sever your relationship with your users.

he founders of tech platforms don't generally set out to enshittify them. Rather, they are constantly seeking some equilibrium between delivering value to their shareholders and turning value over to end users, business customers, and their own workers. Founders are consummate rationalizers; like parenting, founding a company requires continuous, low-grade self-deception about the amount of work involved and the chances of success. A founder, confronted with the likelihood of failure, is absolutely capable of talking themselves into believing that nearly any compromise is superior to shuttering the business: "I'm one of the good guys, so the most important thing is for me to live to fight another day. Thus I can do any number of immoral things to my users, business customers or workers, because I can make it up to them when we survive this crisis. It's for their own good, even if they don't know it. Indeed, I'm doubly moral here, because I'm volunteering to look like the bad guy, just so I can save this business, which will make the world over for the better":

https://locusmag.com/2024/05/cory-doctorow-no-one-is-the-enshittifier-of-their-own-story/

(En)shit(tification) flows downhill, so tech workers grapple with their own version of this dilemma. Faced with constant pressure to increase the value flowing from their division to the company, they have to balance different, conflicting tactics, like "increasing the number of users or business customers, possibly by shifting value from the company to these stakeholders in the hopes of making it up in volume"; or "locking in my existing stakeholders and squeezing them harder, safe in the knowledge that they can't easily leave the service provided the abuse is subtle enough." The bigger a company gets, the harder it is for it to grow, so the biggest companies realize their gains by locking in and squeezing their users, not by improving their service::

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

That's where "twiddling" comes in. Digital platforms are extremely flexible, which comes with the territory: computers are the most flexible tools we have. This means that companies can automate high-speed, deceptive changes to the "business logic" of their platforms – what end users pay, how much of that goes to business customers, and how offers are presented to both:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

This kind of fraud isn't particularly sophisticated, but it doesn't have to be – it just has to be fast. In any shell-game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

Under normal circumstances, this twiddling would be constrained by counterforces in society. Changing the business rules like this is fraud, so you'd hope that a regulator would step in and extinguish the conduct, fining the company that engaged in it so hard that they saw a net loss from the conduct. But when a sector gets very concentrated, its mega-firms capture their regulators, becoming "too big to jail":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Thus the tendency among the giant tech companies to practice the one lesson of the Darth Vader MBA: dismissing your stakeholders' outrage by saying, "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Where regulators fail, technology can step in. The flexibility of digital platforms cuts both ways: when the company enshittifies its products, you can disenshittify it with your own countertwiddling: third-party ink-cartridges, alternative app stores and clients, scrapers, browser automation and other forms of high-tech guerrilla warfare:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

But tech giants' regulatory capture have allowed them to expand "IP rights" to prevent this self-help. By carefully layering overlapping IP rights around their products, they can criminalize the technology that lets you wrestle back the value they've claimed for themselves, creating a new offense of "felony contempt of business model":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

A world where users must defer to platforms' moment-to-moment decisions about how the service operates, without the protection of rival technology or regulatory oversight is a world where companies face a powerful temptation to enshittify.

That's why we've seen so much enshittification in platforms that algorithmically rank their feeds, from Google and Amazon search to Facebook and Twitter feeds. A search engine is always going to be making a judgment call about what the best result for your search should be. If a search engine is generally good at predicting which results will please you best, you'll return to it, automatically clicking the first result ("I'm feeling lucky").

This means that if a search engine slips in the odd paid result at the top of the results, they can exploit your trusting habits to shift value from you to their investors. The congifurability of a digital service means that they can sprinkle these frauds into their services on a random schedule, making them hard to detect and easy to dismiss as lapses. Gradually, this acquires its own momentum, and the platform becomes addicted to lowering its own quality to raise its profits, and you get modern Google, which cynically lowered search quality to increase search volume:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

And you get Amazon, which makes $38 billion every year, accepting bribes to replace its best search results with paid results for products that cost more and are of lower quality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Social media's enshittification followed a different path. In the beginning, social media presented a deterministic feed: after you told the platform who you wanted to follow, the platform simply gathered up the posts those users made and presented them to you, in reverse-chronological order.

This presented few opportunities for enshittification, but it wasn't perfect. For users who were well-established on a platform, a reverse-chrono feed was an ungovernable torrent, where high-frequency trivialities drowned out the important posts from people whose missives were buried ten screens down in the updates since your last login.

For new users who didn't yet follow many people, this presented the opposite problem: an empty feed, and the sense that you were all alone while everyone else was having a rollicking conversation down the hall, in a room you could never find.

The answer was the algorithmic feed: a feed of recommendations drawn from both the accounts you followed and strangers alike. Theoretically, this could solve both problems, by surfacing the most important materials from your friends while keeping you abreast of the most important and interesting activity beyond your filter bubble. For many of us, this promise was realized, and algorithmic feeds became a source of novelty and relevance.

But these feeds are a profoundly tempting enshittification target. The critique of these algorithms has largely focused on "addictiveness" and the idea that platforms would twiddle the knobs to increase the relevance of material in your feed to "hack your engagement":

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/has-dopamine-got-us-hooked-on-tech-facebook-apps-addiction

Less noticed – and more important – was how platforms did the opposite: twiddling the knobs to remove things from your feed that you'd asked to see or that the algorithm predicted you'd enjoy, to make room for "boosted" content and advertisements:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/z9j7uy/what_happened_to_instagram_only_ads_and_accounts/

Users were helpless before this kind of twiddling. On the one hand, they were locked into the platform – not because their dopamine had been hacked by evil tech-bro wizards – but because they loved the friends they had there more than they hated the way the service was run:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

On the other hand, the platforms had such an iron grip on their technology, and had deployed IP so cleverly, that any countertwiddling technology was instantaneously incinerated by legal death-rays:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/10/google-removes-the-og-app-from-the-play-store-as-founders-think-about-next-steps/

Newer social media platforms, notably Tiktok, dispensed entirely with deterministic feeds, defaulting every user into a feed that consisted entirely of algorithmic picks; the people you follow on these platforms are treated as mere suggestions by their algorithms. This is a perfect breeding-ground for enshittification: different parts of the business can twiddle the knobs to override the algorithm for their own parochial purposes, shifting the quality:shit ratio by unnoticeable increments, temporarily toggling the quality knob when your engagement drops off:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/

All social platforms want to be Tiktok: nominally, that's because Tiktok's algorithmic feed is so good at hooking new users and keeping established users hooked. But tech bosses also understand that a purely algorithmic feed is the kind of black box that can be plausibly and subtly enshittified without sparking user revolts:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Back in 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg was coming to grips with Facebook's success, he boasted to a friend that he was sitting on a trove of emails, pictures and Social Security numbers for his fellow Harvard students, offering this up for his friend's idle snooping. The friend, surprised, asked "What? How'd you manage that one?"

Infamously, Zuck replied, "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me.' Dumb fucks."

https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/

This was a remarkable (and uncharacteristic) self-aware moment from the then-nineteen-year-old Zuck. Of course Zuck couldn't be trusted with that data. Whatever Jiminy Cricket voice told him to safeguard that trust was drowned out by his need to boast to pals, or participate in the creepy nonconsensual rating of the fuckability of their female classmates. Over and over again, Zuckerberg would promise to use his power wisely, then break that promise as soon as he could do so without consequence:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

Zuckerberg is a cautionary tale. Aware from the earliest moments that he was amassing power that he couldn't be trusted with, he nevertheless operated with only the weakest of Ulysses pacts, like a nonbinding promise never to spy on his users:

https://web.archive.org/web/20050107221705/http://www.thefacebook.com/policy.php

But the platforms have learned the wrong lesson from Zuckerberg. Rather than treating Facebook's enshittification as a cautionary tale, they've turned it into a roadmap. The Darth Vader MBA rules high-tech boardrooms.

Algorithmic feeds and other forms of "paternalistic" content presentation are necessary and even desirable in an information-rich environment. In many instances, decisions about what you see must be largely controlled by a third party whom you trust. The audience in a comedy club doesn't get to insist on knowing the punchline before the joke is told, just as RPG players don't get to order the Dungeon Master to present their preferred challenges during a campaign.

But this power is balanced against the ease of the players replacing the Dungeon Master or the audience walking out on the comic. When you've got more than a hundred dollars sunk into a video game and an online-only friend-group you raid with, the games company can do a lot of enshittification without losing your business, and they know it:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/10/24153809/ea-in-game-ads-redux

Even if they sometimes overreach and have to retreat:

https://www.eurogamer.net/sony-overturns-helldivers-2-psn-requirement-following-backlash

A tech company that seeks your trust for an algorithmic feed needs Ulysses pacts, or it will inevitably yield to the temptation to enshittify. From strongest to weakest, these are:

Not showing you an algorithmic feed at all;

https://joinmastodon.org/

"Composable moderation" that lets multiple parties provide feeds:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation

Offering an algorithmic "For You" feed alongside of a reverse-chrono "Friends" feed, defaulting to friends;

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

As above, but defaulting to "For You"

Maturity lies in being strong enough to know your weaknesses. Never trust someone who tells you that they will never yield to temptation! Instead, seek out people – and service providers – with the maturity and honesty to know how tempting temptation is, and who act before temptation strikes to make it easier to resist.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

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

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

--

djhughman https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Modular_synthesizer_-_%22Control_Voltage%22_electronic_music_shop_in_Portland_OR_-_School_Photos_PCC_%282015-05-23_12.43.01_by_djhughman%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[touchoffleece]

Why Ao3 is the way works and runs is so important to fandom

We got ourselves a new fanfiction purge in fanfiction website going on. Wattpad (which unlike Ao3) makes it's money via selling fanfiction via Ads and thus have to work (and to an extent were already working under before this) under Capitalism ideals of what is "profitable" and "unproblematic" introduced an AI flagging system and has flagged, shadow banned, and deleted some works over there the last few days. In other words increased moderation tools has caused a purge on fanfictions over on Wattpad due to being labeled "problematic". Masterpost on the summary of things from the r/Wattpad subreddit

If there's anything people take away from this is 1.) This is why and Ao3 was made. To preserve fanfictions no matter if they are labeled "problematic". 2.) Ao3 Donation Drives aren't the evil certain people make them out to be and help sites run free from a worry of money and censorship letting writers and readers focus on the art of writing. 3.) AI tools as they are now are too unrefined to use en masse, and come off more as lazy and cutting corners for corporations, business owners, and individuals who want to save money.

[efangamez]

Only 10 days left to snag this AWESOME TTRPG bundle!! 💛💛

Hey y'all! All of the help you've given me thus far has been truly amazing, and I really wanted to thank you for that 💛 I have used the money this far as a safety net for emergencies and to just enjoy life, whether that means going to the movies once a month or buying an Arizona each day with my walk as I build my strength back up.

We are, however, falling a bit short of our goal. I really want to be able to afford therapy more than anything right now, and visits cost about 100 per visit out of pocket with my insurance. So, if I'm looking to get expensive therapy and psychiatric appointments and official diagnosis, it will cost upward of 2,000+ dollars.

Also, I would really like to have some money to pay off my taxes I owe from 2022. I owe, still, about 3,500+ taxes, which I pay off each month. I pay the absolute minimum so I don't have to dig too deep in monthly costs. If I could pay off a chunk of it in one fell swoop, I could save nearly $500 a year and could nip interest accrued from my taxes in the bud.

Finally, and not as important, I need a new desktop computer. My current one is slowly dying, and the fans are giving out. My power supply is also a bit wonky, and my graphics card is and CPU is outdated, meaning I can't stream games well, nor can I play some games that give me solace. It's not imperative right now, but to have this as an option would be wonderful.

So please, if you would, could you purchase a game bundle? It's countless hours of entertainment with your friends for only $25, almost a FOURTH the cost of a AAA video game with HUNDREDS of hours of content. Not only are you snagging games, but you're also helping out a person in need. It's a win win!!!

Snag the games below, and if you can't purchase anything right now, please kindly reblog!

[triviallytrue]

Watching something as iconic as NGE is kinda funny because every now and then something happens and you're like "oh! that guy! from tumblr!"

General thoughts:

Poor Shinji. Dude keeps getting put in situations.

The Ender's Game comparison keeps coming up for me - child soldiers utterly essential to the cause. The big difference is that they are just completely flubbing their psychological management in NGE - in Ender's Game they had eyes on the kids 24/7 and maintained in-depth psychological profiles on all of them, whereas in NGE they have loads of money and manpower focused on maintaining the EVAs but their equally-essential pilots are just... going to school. Shinji got punched and they didn't know!

And what is Misato's deal, anyway? She's in her 20s and has a crazy amount of authority (she just requisitioned all of Japan's power) and they're just kinda... letting her manage Shinji? It's not her job, but she's just doing it? She's his commanding officer but also his mom/sister, which is a really bad combo. Also I don't think I'm imagining the grooming undertones, those seem intentional.

The real motivator for someone like Shinji is (of course) his social connections - the two schoolkids and Rei, and then maybe to some degree Misato, and then even more distantly his father. Kids don't put themselves through severe distress just for the abstract concept of "saving the world," especially a world that has thus far been very unkind to them. To bring back the Ender's Game comparison, this feels like a very deliberate point that Graff and friends were aware of (the way they used Valentine as a strategic resource) but in NGE it seems to be mostly happenstance that Shinji made some human connections before completely shutting down.

Rei thus far is an interesting foil to Shinji. Normally I get kind of put off by scenes like the one where he walks in on her, but it gives you a lot of important information about both of them. Shinji, underneath all the abandonment issues and repression, is still a pretty normal kid - awkward, horny in that embarrassing adolescent way, deeply self-conscious. Rei is alien (or perhaps just very autistic). She just doesn't clock 90% of the tension at all. She pilots the EVA without complaint (though perhaps with equal psychological distress, just heavily repressed). She also gets along very well with his shitass dad, which is revealing in its own way.

I'm told there is another child, a red haired one, named Asuka(?), the thus-far only implied Second Child. Wonder why she isn't here yet?

I heard that it was some kind of twist that the EVAs were alive in some sense, but doesn't that naturally follow from the first couple episodes? Unit 01 moves to save Rei without a pilot and then goes berserk to kill the angel. Maybe there's more to the twist that I don't know yet.

What's up with the angels? Why are they here, what do they want, what are they exactly? Who cares. They are a plot device in purest form - they enable the rest of the show, but the show is not meaningfully "about" them. They didn't half-ass it though - the designs are absolutely phenomenal.

Oh, and there's some second project NERV is working on, a human transformation thing that got mentioned once and never again. That will probably be important eventually.

[mediocrevideopodcast]

Nicodeme Savoy/Reader (Pining, Drabble) -- In which you fall asleep in the back of the car, and Nico thinks about how much you mean to him.

Content Warnings: Brief, nonspecific comic spoilers (iykyk), and 1 paragraph on scarification. Not detailed, but it's there.

Names get around easy in the underground — it’s important to know the key players of every operation, lest you get mixed up in the wrong business. But some names are more infamous than others. First for their proficiency, then for their brutality. And some names, such as that of one Nicodeme Savoy, carry a weight that few would care to invoke by speaking it outloud. But that doesn’t mean people don’t make their own assumptions, or gossip in the dark.

“He’s some sort of sadist,” they say, “Brawling type, wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of his wrath.”

And for most points, Nico isn’t too keen on refuting them. There’s a part of him that enjoys the aire of mystery, of fear, that surrounds him. Plus, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the adrenaline of a good fight, or the rewarding catharsis of blood on his knuckles when he inevitably wins. But that isn’t the only thing that he likes.

They never talk about his love of spicy food, or a well-made Old Fashioned. They certainly never talk about how he likes to dance, or watch the fireflies flicker over the water at night. And nobody would ever be caught dead talking about how much he likes you.

The slow rise and fall of your shoulders is subtle, hardly even visible in the rear view mirror with the dim moonlight that filters through the windows, and yet it’s nothing if not captivating. Your parted lips and relaxed form burn themselves into his memory as his eyes bounce back and forth between your reflection and the road ahead.

You were exhausted, to say the least. All three of you were, really — your last target had necessitated a chase by foot, and while the three of you normally wouldn’t mind such a thing, the man had given you a, quite literal, run for your money.

His last minute backup hadn’t been expected, either.

And thus, what should have been an hour long joyride soon turned into a day long hunt — he’s sure that if Mordecai had been here he would have called off the operation, or suggested some new angle of attack. He scoffs to himself internally — sure, it would have saved them some time if it worked out, but where’s the fun in that? All work and no play, he is. Hard to imagine he's survived this long without blurring the lines, but hey, who is he to judge?

Nico glances at you again, nestled into the side of the car. Your arms twist around yourself comfortingly as you curl into the plush of your jacket, and you’d somehow managed to twist yourself to outstretch your legs across the bench. (Which would have never happened either, if Mordecai had been here. So again, he counts his absence tonight as a win.Leblanc will have to forgive him, for that.)

You seem peaceful — peaceful in a way that, with your gun now long discarded and forgotten — that it’s easy to forget how your hands were stained with blood just hours ago. How easily you danced through his deadly game, laughter ringing out in the abandoned warehouse you’d all ended up in. How easily you meshed with the two of them — the infamous Savoy twins — like you had always belonged.

His lips turn upward ever so slightly, and looks back at the road again. He’d never forget any of that, though.

“When are you going to tell them, hm?” Seraphine murmurs lowly in their home language, French Creole rolling smoothly off her tongue.

“What, about the chicken?” He responds, “Believe me, they already know. Been hounding me about it ever since it went missing, that one.”

She grins, “Mmm, poor thing. All the work they do, and they still find it in them to care for the little ones.” She looks over at him, this time more pointedly. “They’ve got a real big heart. Might even have space for you.”

He hums, mulling her words over as the trees pass them by. Somewhere along the way he slows down, taking care to steer clear of the potholes in the corners of the road. He doesn’t think about how he’d usually take them head-on, or how he’d ordinarily be speeding down the dusty roads. What he does think about, is you. How you had woven yourself into their lives so wholly, and with such ease.

He remembers how warm your hand felt in his as he taught you to dance, and the radiance of your smile as you finally found your rhythm. The plushness of your lips tempted him deeply that night, as they have every night since. It would be so easy to just bend down and close that gap, but for the first time in his life, he can’t seem to take that final step. Never before has a moment of temptation transformed into months of longing, but he isn’t complaining — far from it, actually. The newness of it all doesn’t scare him, and he’s proud to say that he doesn’t seem to scare you in the midst of it all, either.

Flashes of your official welcome into the congregation bless him for a moment at the thought; how you requested that he be the one to do it; how you smiled at him all the while; how you fisted his shirt in your hand during the worst of it… he’s proud to say that he doesn’t scare you. He’s proud to say that you trust him so deeply. And at the end of it all, when knife met table and bandage met skin, you pressed your forehead to his, thanking him. He thought he had known temptation before, but then your tongue darted between your lips as you pulled him to his feet to resume the night’s festivities, and oh, Maitre Carrefour give him strength-

Serafine’s voice brings him from his thoughts.

“They’re one of us, Nicodeme.”

He chuckles to himself, lips perking up once again. “Yeah, yeah they are.”

And when the sunlight filters through the curtains of the Maribel, you realize you don’t remember clambering out of the car, or pulling the your blankets over yourself — all you’re left with is the faint memory of floating and the fading, but familiar, scent of the lakeside.

A/N: I love him. so much. This was originally gonna be a request fill for some mutual pining, but I really liked where this ended up, so... expect more Nico in the future! Let me know if you want me to write the reader's POV on this, or the in-between of getting carried to your room -- I have many, MANY thoughts about being carried by this man <3

[yarpharp]

Hi yes welcome again to my weird thoughts on Solas at inappropriate times past midnight. The newest one that hit me at this lovely time of 1:30ish am?

I bet you real, hard-earned American dollars that Solas has no idea what a werewolf is. Why do I say this? Because based on the lore of Dragon Age: Origins and other related works pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, werewolves in Thedas are made only three possible ways: doing a ritual that binds a spirit to wolf and compel it to bite humans (they subsequently get the curse), a wolf is possessed by a rage demon, or a human is possessed by a hunger demon. Solas is from an ancient era where demons didn't really actually happen (no Veil to cause problems). And what few indicators we have of the ancient elves dealing with demons only really happened LATE in the empire's existence. And specifically with the Forgotten Ones. And while Solas might have had some relations with them (Fen'Harel and his interesting alliances with both Evanuri and Forgotten Ones), I'm not quite sure he actually would never have any interest in learning such magic in the first place.

So thus, with these facts, I personally suspect werewolves are a modern monster phenomenon. And Solas? If you snoop around his desk and also snoop around some spots in Skyhold with some acquisition requests lying about, you'll find a book list written by Solas requesting all sorts of books, for all sorts of topics. The elf is scrambling to catch up with history and shit he missed. He also has a very low opinion of humans. I bet you he never even HEARD about the famous folklore in Ferelden about Dane and the Werewolf.

In a fantasy scenario, I would love to be there when he learns werewolves are A Thing. Like, clearly wolves were an Important creature among the Elvhen even before Solas took on the title of Dread Wolf. The Emerald Knights had wolf companions! And they emulated ancient Elvhen warriors! There are references to "people wolves" and shit in ancient tombs. Solas has very strong feelings about saving those wolves from a terror demon in the Hinterlands! (I say strong because you get Solas Approves instead of the painful blip of Solas Slightly Approves) And knowing his guilt-ridden ass, I bet you even more money that he would internally panic over it. "Is this yet another side effect of my failures? Had my magic which created the Veil warped the very creatures I once emulated?"

Idk y'all I'd delight in hearing him scramble to say something constructive and intelligent about werewolves while knowing absolutely nothing about werewolves.

[dragonagecompanions]

Why do you think Varric made the Inquisitor a Comte? Wouldn’t that make them outrank him? Dumar seemed pretty powerless and I always thought that Varric got shoved in the rule to make him in charge of the recovery of Kirkwall but not actually of Kirkwall?

Sweet gentle anon, I know it was not your intention but you have stumbled into one of my favorite conversational topics and I hope you are ready for the fall out.

Welcome, children, to Fereldone talks about Thedas' Geo/Theopolitical bullshit!

(tl:dr at the bottom)

So, very important things to know going in: Kirkwall's political history is weird. Founded by the Tevinter Imperium in -620 Ancient (which is DA equivalent of BC/BCE, or the time before the ages ascribed to history by the chantry), it was a mining city. After a slave tried to kill the Archon the Magisterium decided they needed to start importing- and presumably breaking the will of- slaves farther from the heart of the imperium and thus the City of Chains gained purpose.

I could throw a lot of facts and names at you, but here's the basics-- it housed millions of slaves over hundreds of years, at the end of the ancient age they rebelled and overthrew it. Kirk means black in Alamarri, the stone they mined there was jet black, and so Kirkwall (black walls) becomes a Free city. It suffered during the fourth blight in the Exalted Age (fifth age, for those keeping score at home), was conquered by the Qunari in the Storm Age (seventh age) and was then conquered by the Orlesians. Orlais was on a roll with the whole 'we own everything whoops killed your ancestral leaders', but in the Blessed age (eighth age) the people retaliate and overthrow the empire to regain independence.

For reasons I can only assume are laziness and a desire not to change all the paperwork, the leader of Kirkwall is still referred to by the Orlesian word Viscount/Viscomte. Bear with me, this is important later.

We are now in the early dragon age (9th age, and when Inquisition happens). The first two rulers of free Kirkwall sucked. Basically they blockaded their own port and made people pay a fortune to get in and trade. This didn't sit well with the Chantry, who would much rather do that themselves, and in 9:14 Divine Beatrix II (later saved by Cassandra!) tells the Templars to strong arm him into submission talk some sense into the viscount.

The knight commander is killed in the exchange, and so his second command Meredith Stannard steps up to try her hand at negotiations. It goes poorly, so she arrests and jails the Viscount and essentially takes control of the city with full Chantry approval. Now the Templars are essentially in control of the city, and so they appoint a puppet leader (Dumar) to play act in control. But Meredith is actually in charge, and everyone knows it.

Including Elthina, who named her Knight Commander. This is why the Chantry never actually does anything about templar abuses.

So! If you are still with me, this is where Viscount becomes important. There are some wibbly bits about how you treat Sebastian Vael in DA2, but essentially Kirkwall decides that it's time to be an actual city state and not a poorly run Theocracy. As the only man with a plan (and the money and influence to do it), Varric steps in to help his home town. Ecstatic at not being responsible for that, the nobles (comtes) band together and put him in charge.

So while yes, in Orlais Viscount be beneath comte, Kirkwall has been so broken up and conquered and messed with over the years that names and titles are meaningless. In my personal opinion, Varric ennobles the inquisitor so that they will always have a staunch ally amongst the backbiting Kirkwaller nobles. It's also a nice and generous a decent thing to do, of course, but Varric is very good at making something do a lot of things for him all at once.

(Also, Varric knows exactly what that key does. He just ensured that someone smart enough and invested enough in peace will always be able to either open or close the harbor--making sure that the people who depend on him will be safe no matter what.)

Personally, the Trespasser epilouge is useless. It's the result of not having a head writer to review things, and the sweet but misguided attempt to give us closure if DA4 never happened. Hawke doesn't come back to Kirkwall. They are in Weisshaupt (if not in the Fade), and that plotIine will likely be in the final game. The Inquisition in whatever form it still has will be heading north, possibly with Kirkwall as an operating base, and this way the Inquisitor (who is confirmed to not be playabe in DA4) will have a reason to be there and not in Tevinter.

That's my read, anyway.

tl;dr Kirkwall has weird history that led to odd ways of organizing their nobility, Varric wants friends in places almost as high as him, shit's going down in the north and I think the inquisitor will be in Kirkwall so the writers needed a reason to put them there.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Mod Fereldone

[williamafton2030]

Fazbear Entertainment and their role as a villain

When we talk about Fnaf villains we usually think of William, Eleanor or Mimic because of how important they are to the franchise. On the one hand, William was the one who started the tragedies with the objective of being immortal, experimenting and killing children in the process. While on the other Eleanor killed in cold blood, enjoying such a heinous act and causing the souls of her victims to be trapped in an agonizing loop, wanting them to be like this so he could feed on her suffering. Finally there is Mimic, who is ironically the most "human" of all since at the beginning he was not bad but Edwin's bad learning and mistreatment of him made him become a being that kills in horrible ways but at the same time remembers. from his past and wants to start a family.

But we rarely stop to reflect that this company is also a villain and that its actions are just as bad as the others. That's why I decided to make this post to rate all this and give theories about this company.

From the first moment the foundation was laid for us that it was a company that did not take care of its employees in the mythical call of Fnaf 1. In addition to establishing its second peculiarity: its love for money conquers everything. From underpaying his employees to reopening after children disappeared in his restaurant. Apart from wanting to cover up everything by saying that nothing happens when it really does.

In the next games we would see more examples of these traits but the strong part comes after Fnaf 6. Regardless of whether people like it or thought it was nonsense (this is said now that it is known that Henry's plan did not work), We cannot deny the great weight that this game has. Henry wanted to put an end to all the suffering that William had generated and, although he did not succeed, he did set the pieces for William to end up dead in the Fazbear Frights. Everything was already over, there would be no more deaths but those from Fazbear Entertainment arrived and they did not want to leave everything like this, causing the plan to fail.

Help Wanted is without a doubt one of the worst things they did and they literally laughed at all the misfortunes of the past. They tried to hire Steve to design the games, and when he refused, they forced him into an illusion, which is completely unethical. The next thing they did was "report" him for defamation so that people would believe that what he says in his games is false and thus be able to clean up his image and finally they created Help Wanted itself. This virtual reality game was the cause of the death of one of the workers and the mental control of another.

First, it should be said that Fazbear really wanted to release the game, so they put pressure on the first development team who had to work tirelessly to get it done in a very short time. To speed up the process, Fazbear would give them circuit boards to scan, one of which was from Mimic. The first team was totally unaware of how dangerous it was, but Fazbear was very knowledgeable about this and gave them absolutely the same. We know that they know this because it is not the first time they have done something like this with this program since they had previously used it to create a version of Mimic 1 called Mimic 2 that would save them a lot of work since by imitating the behavior of the other animatronics They wouldn't have to program them. This project was a failure but that didn't stop them from using it a second time.

This program was implemented bringing back a dangerous villain again, Mimic who now had the appearance of a rabbit and would be called Glitchtrap. Jeremy, who was the game's beta teaser at the time, would be the one who encountered it and began to suffer the consequences of being exposed to this virus. Leaving aside how bad he had it during all his test sessions, we have that Fazbear Entertainment was the cause of his death. Well, not exactly. It wasn't them who killed him but Glitchtrap but there is a possibility that Jeremy would have become another follower of Mimic if it hadn't been for Fazbear's threat of dismissal. Mimic was smart and instead of letting him go and alert his companions, he finished him off in a horrible way.

A curious fact is the fact that tape girl said that she was not going to fire him because of his poor performance or anything like that but because he saw something. This totally confirms that Fazbear was aware of Glitchtrap's existence (I highlight this because it is never mentioned that Fazbear knows that this is Mimic's appearance, or well, maybe they knew and it was even worse since he had created an independent entity to the that the programmers used to make the models and on top of that it now seemed to be able to move and act in a dangerous way, so much so that it was considered a virus)

Who knows. What we can say is that they knew perfectly well about this and did nothing and on top of that they tried to fire Jeremy to silence him in some way.

After Jeremy's death and Tape Girl's failure to put an end to the virus, Vanessa would arrive, who this time would be controlled by it. It is also worth noting that in the terms of conditions that they barely let you read it says that they are not responsible for any accidental transfer of digital consciousness, again pointing out that they knew how dangerous it was and that they wanted to clean their hands of this.

Already at the Pizzaplex you can highlight several things they did. One of the most serious was once again the cover-up of all the deaths that occurred during the years that the shopping center was open. Or there is also the fact that in the story Pressure Fazbear creates an attraction that recreates Fnaf 3, which is a complete spit on the anguish that Hudson felt in What we found. Or well, the fact that in Security Breach there are no human workers but Staff bots that replace them when there were before. The latter was done to save all the salaries that had to be paid to the employees. This did not happen overnight and the first indication of this was seen in The Storyteller when Burrows wants to use that attraction to save the salary of those who invented the stories that were then told to the public. Which was a big mistake because Mimic would end up taking complete control of the Pizzaplex.

But what I think is the most serious thing they did for me is build the Pizzaplex on top of Fnaf 6 and try to make a museum of that place. As I have said before Fnaf 6, whether you like it or not, has a great weight and feeling and that they used that as a museum signifying what the place means is simply despicable.

Finally, mention something that is more of a theory and that is that it is believed that Fazbear Entertainment has taken over William's research and uses it for its own benefit. This may be backed up by the scooper that we see in Ruin and that has the company logo or simply the fact that the story Dittophoboia is in the Tales from The Pizzaplex when it has nothing to do with this place. His reason for being in this saga is to give a clue that Fazbear is using what was seen in this story in the story Help Wanted to cause those hallucinations in Steve.

That's it for this post pointing out everything that Fazbear Entertainment has done and why that makes them another villain. Before I leave, I say that what has been said here is my opinion and that if you don't share it, nothing happens, we each have our own opinion and that's okay. In addition to saying that I did not include stories of the Fazbear Frights since I do not believe that the deaths in these are the fault of the company but rather Eleanor's.

[realspacejunk]

Motivated by this Tweet by @delta86-art I decided to share a Character description for Lito, the Quilava character from the cast of Pokémon I include in my drawings, which I wrote some time ago. I have not worked out the details for all the others, but I have solid ideas for what they are like.

I also have it as a PDF but Tumblr does not allow me to upload those, so here is the Google doc.

Here is the raw text without pictures:

Lito Ayrura, the Little Flame (or Flame Choker)

Race: Quilava

Gender: Male

Age: 14

Height: 0,87m / 2’10’’

Hobbies: Trying to learn high-skill magic, Hanging out with friends, causing mischief

Likes: Adventure Stories, Treasures, Strong drink called ‘Golden Elerin Brew’

Dislikes: Busy work, Foreigners, Fire, Hypocrites, Being broke, Medicine

Personality and Character:

As a young and energetic Pokémon and apprentice of an adventure guild, Lito values loyalty, honour and the desire to help those in need. He deeply admires the ideals and traditions of the guilds, but more in spirit than in letter. He presents himself as a carefree and laid-back individual, but he feels like he is constantly living in the shadow of the legacy of his older brother, who was an admired and almost legendary adventurer in the land and a reminder of Lito's weaknesses.

         Being very ambitious but impatient, he often loses sight of the small but important things. He often falls behind in combat training and class, which he believes are boring. He tries to hide his shortcomings under a mask of brashness and overconfidence and often boasts to his friends. In many situations, Lito wants to take the initiative, even if it jeopardises his personal goals or even a mission, causing him to be seen as an annoyance and a liability by others. As a result, he often gets relegated to busy work. Lito does not like to ask others for help and reacts antagonistically to those who offer it to him, preferring to solve his problems on his own. 

         Unusual for a fire Pokémon, he has a deep fear of flames, which causes him to be greatly insecure about himself. It greatly stifled his potential as an adventurer and earned him the nickname ‘Flame Choker’ from his rivals, which he strongly dislikes. Because his abilities are either useless or weak, he relies on magical items during combat. He is knowledgeable and skilled in their usage, but they are expensive merchandise, resulting in constant money problems for Lito. Thus he often finds himself forced to choose between money and guild ideals. He always wears a golden bracer and talisman, but would never sell them for anything in the world because they are invaluable heirlooms to him.

Backstory: 

Lito was born into the small Ayrura clan which ruled an unimportant island in the eastern Azure Sea near the Land of Winds. At a young age, his home town was ravaged and scorched to cinders by an enraged Groudon earth god which was set loose by an unknown foreign power. Lito lost most of his family and friends to the fires. Only a few Pokémon escaped this carnage, two of them being Lito and his older brother Lian. Only the bracer and talisman were left to them as proof of their lineage, and they became valuable artefacts to them. The brutal attack on his home and his utter inability to save his loved ones planted a deep fear of fire in his psyche.

After their escape, they began a long journey westward, on which they had to avoid pursuing bandits, bounty hunters and mysterious agents hellbent on capturing the remains of the Ayrura clan. It is only thanks to his brother that Lito survived this trip, even if barely. They ended up in the peaceful land named ‘The Golden Leaf’ where the two orphans were found and taken care of by a local adventurers guild. They adapted quickly to life in this new home. The guild master, who has had dealings with the Ayruras before, took them in as novices. Lian quickly climbed the guild ranks and became Lito's close mentor and somewhat of a second father figure. It became Lito's dream to get strong so he and his brother could go on great adventures together and save Pokémon who could not help themselves, something Lian promised him, despite Lito's struggle to learn fire abilities and techniques.

Powers and Abilities:

As a Pokémon of the Fire Nature, he has the same resistances and weaknesses against other magic forms as any other fire Pokémon. For instance, he is resistant to Grass techniques, but he is weak against techniques of Ground, Rock and Water.

Naturally, he can use four combat abilities consistently. His specific skill set consists of the techniques commonly known as ‘Quick Attack’, a quick physical strike, ‘Smoke Screen’, a cloud of thick smoke that blinds enemies, and his strongest moves, Fire Wheel and Swift, two powerful attacks which cause large amounts of damage. His fear of fire prevents Lito from using ‘Fire Wheel’ unless he is under dire stress. If he uses it, he passes out from mental overload, leaving him vulnerable for some time. ‘Swift’ is a high-level ability and thus often fails, resulting in an explosion which can cause Lito to take heavy damage.

To compensate for his flaws, Lito mainly fights using his good knowledge of magical combat items, which he carries around in his bag or a bundle on his back. Combined with his ‘Smoke Screen’ ability, he uses those items mainly for crowd control. Thus he can quickly either stun, slow, confuse, or make his targets fall asleep. But for the really strong foes, these effects might only last a short amount of time, so Lito often relies on the assistance of others. These items can also only be used a couple of times before they lose their power, so Lito has to use them sparingly.

[hanzajesthanza]

the "origin" of the witcher

this year, i set forth for myself a very important goal. i began to seek the original publication of the first, original witcher story.

this was a personal goal as much as it was a "fan" goal, and at first, it originated as an amusing pipe dream, a hopeful "what if," a "if i should be so lucky".

i had become interested in the origins of the witcher through reading interviews with sapkowski, translated and published on r/wiedzmin by gracious fans. these interviews are often from the 1990s or early 2000s (the good ones, anyways), and thus, often reference the very beginning of the witcher. there was one particular interview which struck me, in which sapkowski said this:

"My book witcher is real and original. All adaptations are only more or less successful and have all the corresponding disadvantages of adaptations. There is only one original "Witcher". He is mine and no one will take him away from me." — Interview with Sapkowski in the Polish magazine Polityka

this one original "witcher". yes, of course he is referring to his geralt, the geralt that lives in my heart, but i also thought to myself, the witcher as he as a concept was originally conceived - the first publication. i need to see it. i need to see this publication, in person. if not for me as a fan, for me as a writer, an artist. i need proof that this ever existed." later in the year, i realized this was not only a dream, but a real possibility...

but first, let me introduce the witcher, for those that do not know the story. not the short story "the witcher," but the story of "the witcher"—of its creation.

sapkowski's story

36 years ago, andrzej sapkowski's short story, "witcher", was first published in the december 1986 edition of polish sci-fi and fantasy magazine fantastyka (later renamed nowa fantastyka). sapkowski, at the time, had been working as a tradesman selling leather, fur, and textiles… though he was a fan of fantasy since boyhood, in which he obsessed over arthurian legend, and throughout his life had been an avid reader. during the 1980s, sapkowski lost his job as the national company went bankrupt, and he turned more to his writing, as he had previously written some short stories and had them published in magazines.

at the time, he did not subscribe to fantastyka, and the edition in which the short story contest was announced indeed belonged to his son—his only son, his now late son, krzysztof, who asked him to write and enter the contest. the senior sapkowski's reply? "no problem, i'll write."

fantastyka magazine, as mentioned, encompassed works of both science fiction and fantasy genres. sapkowski wrote "witcher" in hopes of being a standout competitor - assuming that most applicants would write "hard science fiction," he chose to write fantasy. unexpectedly to him, it turned out that the fantasy genre was written by the majority of those who submitted stories!

the witcher, though, was indeed a standout entry. because it dealt with the familiar, but through inverting, changing, subverting, and being original, exciting the reader:

"Geralt of Rivia is the character of my first story, of my literary debut. In my first encounter with the Fantasy and SF readers, my proposition was to do something atypical, completely new. I had to rethink the fairy tales, where some problem with a dragon in a kingdom was solved, the king was disposed to offer to the first one which passed his daughter and half the kingdom for solving it. My vision of Fantasy is almost real. You have to believe that which occurs in the stories, because they are not a fairy tale. No one comes to believe that a king can be so stupid as to give half the kingdom and his daughter (...) I re-wrote the story, since it is not a poor shoemaker who kills the dragon and saves the kingdom, but instead a professional, who works for money. I have turned to construct the fantasy story: it is almost real, you have to feel it, to believe all. It is not the typical fairy tale, all is fucking real." — Interview with Sapkowski at the Feria del Libro (Spain, 2008)

the "lore" of the witcher

this is why a new reader does not need to know anything prior about the witcher in order to grasp the books, because "the witcher" was originally a collection of short stories boasting little world or "lore" to speak of:

for instance, elder speech is not a conlang, it is a deliberate crafting of various european languages together.

"No, I didn't [create a new language for my books, like Tolkien]. (...) I limited myself to only creating a couple sentences, whose entire point was for me to avoid putting a footnote there, because it annoys me beyond belief, when someone writes ''drapatuluk papatuluk'' and underneath the translation says ''close the doors or we'll get flies''. My point was for this made up language to be acceptible for a Pole, who's well read and can see through foreign languages; so it'd be clear without a footnote. Henceforth I decided to construct the language based on languages that Polish people know well: French, English, Latin and German, and just for funsies I threw in some Celtic, so no one cared for specific words, but everybody understood more or less what it meant. I created it as a cocktail language." — Sapkowski on anime, manga, D&D, adaptations, the origins of the Witcher and Elder Speech (2001)

sapkowski never drew a map for publishing—though a map was drawn by czech translator stanislav komárek (and husband of illustrator jana komárková, what a power couple!).

"That's where the biggest problem lies, stemming from the simple fact that I've never had the ambition to create worlds. Never! The world of the Witcher was always an allegory to me. I've never done what's supposed to be a Commandment of every fantasy writer, especially one that writes a longer story or a novel. He starts with the heavy duty of… cartography, meaning he has to draw a MAP. (...) I've never bothered with that and it was on purpose. It came from the fact that my world was supposed to be an allegory and from the fact that I was doing a different take on fairy tales! Themes and problems were more important, these two words, from which I usually built the title and that often appeared in the dialogue, was more important. — Andrzej Sapkowski about accusations of sexism, postmodernism, adaptations and why there is no map - part 2

and as we all know from francesca's wonderful demonstration via apples and a pomegranate, explanations of bloodlines only enter into the fray in the fifth book.

for all intents and purposes, the motto of the witcher's "lore" should be: "the story comes first!"

"And write so that it would be interesting to read. Questions? Answers? Who the fuck needs them! This is a novel, not an instruction to a DVD player. As a writer, as a prose writer, I do not read any sermons to anyone in the church, I do not push speeches in Hyde Park. I'm a storyteller. I tell stories to give readers pleasure, create heroes to arouse sympathy / dislike, situations, to amuse, to laugh, upset, frighten - and, of course, to make them move their brains, to think. But this is a story, it's a farce, not a conversion, not a vocation, not faith." — Interview with Sapkowski "The work of my life is yet to come."

back to getting published

"witcher" placed third in the contest, but its publication was soon followed by fan demand for more stories of the "witcher" variety and universe. it was shortly followed by "road with no return" in 1988, "a grain of truth" in 1989, and "the lesser evil” and "a question of price" in 1990 (and more in the first half of the decade, as well).

soon, sapkowski's name was featured on the very cover of fantastyka to excite readers:

note that there is not one, but THREE exclamation marks on the cover of this edition from september 1990, the one with "a question of price". [unlike the other pictures in this post, this is not my photo]

soon afterwards, sapkowski was able to secure publishing with supernowa—a distinct challenge, because nearly no publisher would "risk" publishing a polish author:

“Finally, in Poland, the moment for a fantasy was absolutely crucial: "SuperNova" published my "Sword of Destiny". This was a real event, because until then there was hardly anyone among the Polish publishers who would have risked doing something like this. Polish fantasy was published by some amateurs, losing money on every edition.” (...) in Western countries, (...) the average fan always chooses a book of the familiar Anglo-Saxon in the bookstore - the exotic name of the author will force him to refrain from buying. Unfortunately, publishers also know about this, therefore, picking up a book from "some Poland" or "some Moldavia" - even a good one - he will think ten times before publishing.” — Andrzej Sapkowski and Stanisław Bereś "History and fantasy" part 2

as that is a whole other loooong story... let's get back to the short story.

the story as it is today

this is all a very abridged version of the story, and i've cut out a lot of the historical context and cultural context surrounding the subject for brevity. i may have mentioned that this came about for me throughout the entire year of 2022 - and it really has been a product of the year. i actually received the copy of fantastyka in september, now four months ago, but for various reasons i decided to keep it between me and friends (if you're a part of the books discord server, you may have seen this already!)

the largest reason is that i want to pay as much respect to this as i possibly can. since september, i've been working on a video to feature the magazine and through its presence, explain the context and history surrounding the witcher as i have done in this post, just with... more history and context. i want to do my research and have more conversations before i record and publish a video like that. and not just some, but more. this isn't something i feel comfortable reading a wikipedia article about and saying, "cool, i think i know the whole story now." especially as an american fan—especially knowing and feeling how the witcher has been treated over these past couple of years. so, expect it, but maybe not soon. though there will likely be other things along the way on my youtube channel :)

my story

for me, this year marks 5 years since i got into the witcher. it was the fall of 2017 when i got interested, and the winter of 2017 when i got serious about it.

the witcher came to me at a really difficult time in my life. my parents separated in the march of 2018. it was not a peaceful separation. the last spring break i had in high school ended with a restraining order and the changing of the locks on our door.

so imagine the solace i felt being able to point to an actually healthy father-daughter relationship with a middle-aged father and a teenage girl. one such as this:

‘Where to now?’ asked Geralt, looking at the column of smoke, a smudged streak discolouring the sky glowing pink in the dawn. ‘Who do you still have to pay back, Ciri?’ She glanced at him and he immediately regretted his question. He suddenly desired to hug her, dreamed of embracing her, cuddling her, stroking her hair. Protecting her. Never allowing her to be alone again. To encounter evil. To encounter anything that would make her desire revenge. — Lady of the Lake, Ch. 11

or of an alcoholic, acknowledging and owning up to his past of violence:

‘Each time I became more savage,’ the vampire continued. ‘And as time went on I was getting worse. (...) Disappointment and grief, as you know, is a great alibi. I was looking for justification for my behavior, and it was the perfect excuse. Everyone seemed to understand. Even I thought I understood. And I matched the theory to practice.’ — Baptism of Fire, Ch. 7

and intentionally pursuing sobreity in the present:

‘I beg your forgiveness, gentlemen,’ the alchemist said. ‘I do not drink. My health is no longer what is was, so I had to give up… many pleasures.’ ‘Not even a sip?’ ‘It is a matter of principle.’ Regis said quietly. ‘I never violate the principles I set for myself.’ — Baptism of Fire, Ch. 3

‘I do not touch blood. Not at all and never.’ — Baptism of Fire, Ch. 7

later, when i had begun to recover my senses from shock, i felt rage. i felt a need for revenge, a sick hatred and vile indignation for what had happened. i thought there must be something wrong with me, to have such a reaction. but i then realized how natural, though dangerous, it was:

‘(...) I know what I have to do. I’m a witcher!’ ‘You're an unstable young person!’ he exploded. ‘You're a child who's been through traumatic experiences; a damaged child, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And more than that, you're sick with a craving for revenge! Blinded by a lust for retribution! Do you not understand that?’ ‘I understand it better then you!’ she yelled. ‘Because you have no idea what it means to be hurt! You have no idea of revenge, for no one has ever truly wronged you!’ — Tower of the Swallow, Ch. 10

but lastly, i learned that the tragedies of my past do not bind me to a tragic fate:

They rode straight into the setting sun. Leaving behind them the darkening valley. Behind them was the lake, the enchanted lake, the blue lake as smooth as a polished sapphire. They left behind them the boulders on the lakeside. Thepines on the hillsides. That was all behind them. And before them was everything. — Lady of the Lake, Ch. 12

to be clear, i'm not sharing my story for pity. like as triss says when recounting the battle of sodden, "And then I saw what they had done to me, and I started to howl, howl like a beaten dog, like a battered child—Leave me alone! Don’t worry, I’m not going to cry. I’m not a little girl from a tiny tower in Maribor anymore," (Blood of Elves, Ch. 3) ...

i'm sharing this story because i think it's relevant to understanding the witcher. the witcher is about a realistic view of fairytales and the fantasy genre, a view that is often dark and showcases all the sorrow and violence in the world, but a view that really centers the people of the world, their relationships, their motivations, and what makes them fight to keep living. it's about family, friendship, laughter at the end of the world... and one doesn't need to experience a personal trauma to understand these very human, very instrinsic experiences. one also does not need extensive research to be able to jump into the witcher.

fantastyka and me

even if i'm not prepared at the moment to publish an extensive historical research and analysis on this subject, i just wanted to make this post today to remind all witcher fans what the witcher really is, where it really came from, what it all really means.

reading through this copy of fantastyka, what really struck me is the community of it—there is an entire personals section for finding copies of fantasy books, there are opinion polls, critical essays, and an entire novel published in three installments across monthly editions. this must not have been just a magazine, but a lifeline for sci-fi and fantasy fans at that time. i see so many parallels between the sci-fi and fantasy fans of these pages and my experience as a witcher fan in the community. this is a piece of history, "the witcher" is a piece of history, and i am honored to not only know of it, but to have seen it, touched it, and proven to myself that yes, this is all real. "all is fucking real."

now, for my favorite picture of myself:

and as expressed by the editors of the december 1986 edition of fantastyka...

i wish you a fantastic christmas and new year... this time, new year 2023 ;)

[this post has also been posted on reddit]

[mytragedyperson]

Thoughts I had while reading TCF chapter 13

Cale: gets chills because Ron drinks the lemon tea without complaining

Also Cale: ignores that he does the same thing.

Looking at the two butlers around Cale is entertaining because you have Hans who is just constantly confused about what’s going on, and then you have Ron who is just amused by everything and notices the things Cale doesn’t. also Choi Han being polite because Cale’s there is amusing because chances are Cale wouldn’t care if he wasn’t.

Choi Han has this subtle sassiness to him, especially early on that I don’t think was fully intended because when he says ‘I will not fight against someone who is trying to cut someone else with a cooking knife,’ I don’t think he means to be sassy or anything (I don’t think I mean sassy but can’t figure out what i mean, maybe shady in the way of throwing shade, idk), like, that’s genuinely what’s happening but I hear it in such like a shady tone in my head. Again, I don’t think this was intended, I think Choi Han is a very genuine, earnest person, who means what he says in the way he says it, but my brain chooses to hear it as shady.

Ok yes Choi Han choosing to be someone who protects people, purely because Cale said he could do it is really cute and precious. And the “even” before I makes it just the slightest bit sad, but also Cale manages to cause confusion even when he’s not present, and I think that the impact Cale has on these characters, even when he’s not there to say or do anything, is a wonderful way to show how important he is to them.

Also, yes, I do find Choi Han saying this and having this revelation and Beacrox being like wth? What rubbish are you spewing? I just wanna fight funny. Because my humour is broken and I find a lot of things funny when they aren’t.

I feel like Ron just thinks everything his son and Cale does is cute and precious, and he’s right.

Ok but I love the idea of Ron, glaring at Choi Han accidentally while lost in thought, meanwhile Cale is just sat there with a small smile, but the tiny Cale living in his head is secretly clapping very quietly and letting out a cute little yay.

Yes, Cale, you’re right, the novel shouldn’t dictate your life, which is a good thing because you’ve already changed so much, even if you don’t realise it yet.

Once again, Cale proves he’s kinder than he allows himself to believe, because his second priority, after survival, is that everyone in their territory lives peacefully, and actually, considering how often he puts his life on the line, I’m pretty sure that’s actually his first priority.

I’m sorry but Cale saying sweet teas are the best after purposefully giving Ron the lemon tea, thus rubbing his face in it while also subtly guilting him, is such little shit behaviour.

Billos: lowkey disappointed he won’t see Cale until the capital

Cale: no, I’m going to be here everyday until I leave, and meet you at the capital

Billos: significantly happier than before

Cale: and I’m going to give you money and opportunities for profit

Billos: super shocked and super happy

Ron, stood to the side watching,  suspiciously sharpening a knife: I thought he said they weren’t close

Billos gets a message at 3 in the morning that someone is in the tea shop and goes to investigate, only to see Cale helping himself to some tea. His only explanation is a shrug and “you said it was open any time.” Billos ends up giving him a key to get in so he stops tripping whatever alarm or security he has. Cut to bonding sessions when Billos gets there in the morning before it officially opens. It’s rarely just Cale, usually it’s the kids, sometimes one of the others joins, one time he arrives to the entire Cale fam just casually sat, drinking tea. It ends up becoming their hangout spot on the rare occasions they get a month or two of not saving someone or somewhere. Just cute, fluffy moments in the tea shop

Oh Ron I thought being in denial was Cale’s thing. It’s ok, you can admit you care about your puppy young master, we won’t judge you.

Choi Han misunderstanding what Ron is talking about and being like I don’t want to like you. Oh Choi Han, you’re too good for this world.

I find it really funny that Cale couldn’t even get rid of the person who was planning to leave of his own accord. Like Ron was planning to leave, he did leave briefly, and Cale still couldn’t completely get rid of him. A dragon was dying, of old age, and Cale was like I think the fuck not, someone needs to raise my child when I can’t and not only found a way to keep him alive but also possibly made him age down so he was younger, he uno reversed death by old age. Cale, this is not how you reduce the number of people around you. Like, he thought he was done, and then Cale agreed to take care of his son while he was gone, cured what was killing him, and just didn’t care that he’d been an assassin.

Ron pretending not to care about Cale while Cale pretends not to care about Ron is actually clown behaviour.

Ron and Cale’s relationship is so precious to me, like you don’t understand.

Him thinking about the good things about Cale only to immediately go but he’s still trash is the same energy as KRS Cale asking about Ron’s injury and going but I don’t care it’s just annoying to look at. This is why KRS Cale and Ron have such a cute relationship. They’re actually more similar than either of them realise, and if they did realise it, they’d be horrified.

Cale: asking Choi Han who he’s going to protect

Choi Han’s thoughts: don’t tell him it’s him yet, you can’t

Choi Han: I’ll tell you when I’m stronger

Cale: nearly has a heart attack at the thought of him getting stronger

The only person Cale needs protection against at the minute is Choi Han, and himself of course.

Hans is such a breath of fresh air in this book. Every time he’s in a scene it makes me smile.

Ok so I’m not wrong for thinking some of the admiration in this scene is aimed at Cale right? Because they say the expression isn’t related to the kittens’ cuteness so that’s how I always took its, that the admiration is aimed at Cale, and possibly wants praise. Oh my God, he kind of reminds me of Ranpo from Bungou Stray Dogs, wants praise but when you do praise him just goes of course I’m (insert praise here).

Also, I’m pretty sure the reason Cale kind of stumbles over his answer is because he finds them cute but can’t admit that and also feels embarrassed for thinking it.

Still love Hans respecting the kittens more than Cale, I would too. Honestly I feel like the reason I love Hans so much is because I relate to him so much. I too am constantly confused, never truly know what’s going on and respect cats more than people.

Cale is so mean, ignoring the cats like that, not one pat. They should file an official complaint.

Ron thinking Cale isn’t aware the cats are beast people only for him to not only know that, but also know how he wants to use them.

Btw in case you hadn’t noticed this is also a highlights of the chapter thing only everything is a highlight because this story is a delight.

So, Ron planned to teach the Cat Tribe children, he also planned to leave, I’m pretty sure that takes more than a few days. Ron in denial again?

Ron planning to train the cat tribe children as a present is like you buying something for yourself only for your friend to mess around with it and then give it back to you, claiming it’s a present. Also he doesn’t question why these cat tribe siblings cam looking for Cale, just accepts that they did and moves on, doesn’t even think for a second that just maybe they’re already assassins. Who would be trying to assassinate Cale and why? Idk but the fact Ron didn’t even question it, suspicious possibly paranoid assassin Ron, is the strangest thing about this situation.

On and Hong are my favourite little sassy children, and On is usually the sole holder of the group’s collective brain cell.

Good job On and Hong, you refuse to become assassins

Them looking at Cale was actually a cry for help but you didn’t hear that from me

And the cry for help worked, kind of, maybe.

The kittens being cute instead of answering the question. After all, the answer should be obvious.

The difference between what they want to eat though. On wantin meat, protein, which provides more energy and is more filling while Hong wants cake which is sweeter and still gives energy but is less filling. It could be an age thing or preference, but it could also subtly show their personalities/dynamic with On being the more practical one of the two.

Cale continues to be one of the first people to believe in them by being one of the first to believe they can be useful/helpful.

[dolphin1812]

I love how this visitor confuses the Thénardiers so much in relation to his social class that we see the full scale of how they treat people. We know that they’re dishonest overall, but we also know that they’re trying to be hospitable here, so the distinctions in their address are all technically polite, but they’re the different levels of politeness expected for different classes. We see this in the distinction between, for instance, “good man” and “monsieur,” but we also see it in how he’s denied a room. It would be rude to cast him out (and being rude is bad for business), but saying “there’s no room” is a perfectly acceptable excuse. Charging him extra to see if that drives him away serves the same purpose; it’s immoral, but the Thénardiers’ ultimate concern is avoiding having a guest who both can’t pay them and makes their inn look less fancy because he looks poor. Of course, we know that there is space, and the comparative luxury they end up offering this guest in case he’s secretly of a higher class demonstrates their interest in flattering wealthy guests. The speech about the decorations may be made-up, but that kind of attention is part of being a good host, which is important to the job in general but is even more of a priority for someone with money. It makes the Thénardiers seem invested in their guest and as if they are more “elevated” class-wise themselves (from, for example, owning fine bonnets). The fact that they need this man’s money again emphasizes that this is normal treatment and isn’t something specific to their moral failings (even if the dramatic contrasts may stem from that). Class was just that big a factor in how people were treated, down to the address used for them.

We learn more about the contrast between Cosette and the Thénardier girls here as well. Everything about Cosette radiates “fear” and suffering; she’s visibly malnourished and abused, poorly dressed, and melancholy. The other girls are warmly clothed and cheerful, likely because they’re well-fed and loved. They’re not wealthy, either; even they don’t have a very nice doll and have to play with an old and broken one. But they do have a doll, and they also are clothed properly for the weather. It’s a quick way of indicating that yes, the Thénardiers seem wealthy because they’re in a relatively poor village and have the contrast of Cosette right there, but they still can’t afford to spend that much on luxuries like dolls. It reminds me of the difference between how Fantine and Cosette were dressed when she left her in the Thénardiers’ care. Fantine had sold all of her nice clothes and was thus dressed very plainly, but her love for Cosette led her to save all her beautiful things for her daughter. Similarly, the Thénardiers prioritize their daughters’ appearance by buying them nice “bourgeois” clothes, but they don’t actually have the money to cover all the characteristics of that lifestyle.

I love watching the children play with the dolls (and the cat). Éponine and Azelma felt realistically young (and like an older and younger sibling) in how they approached the cat (which I hope got away from them quickly!), and watching Cosette stare at Catherine was both heartbreaking and cute (although seeing her rock the toy she made and tell it that her mother died was so sad). I want to be upset about Hugo’s Thoughts on Women, but in this case, I actually find them ironic in the context of the rest of the novel? The very first woman we were introduced to was Mlle Baptistine, who never married or had children. Hugo points out that this limits the amount of respect she’s given in society, but doesn’t add much more aside from some notes on her devotion to her brother. After that, we continue to meet women who are unmarried and/or childless, and while many of the most notable ones are nuns (like Sister Simplice) and may be gendered by different standards as a consequence of that, it’s so bizarre for Hugo to now say that a woman without children is “impossible.” I think Hugo does see a difference between “womanhood” and “woman who never marries or has kids, but it’s OK because she’s holy in some way,” so perhaps the irony stems merely from the overlap in terms? The whole thing is infuriating, but it’s also just strange.

[horuhosu]

so, why IS introduction hol horse such an asshole in comparison to his further characterization? : a theory

so, hello 👋 welcome to a theory i have and have had for a bit. i apologize for it being so long, but there's a LOT to be said!

as someone who prides themselves on overanalyzing hol horse, i have used all my brain power to come up with a theory that accurately describes just WHY intro hol feels so ... out of place.

hol horse is a man who, while a coward, is true to his heart & true to his core. he is a gentleman to the ladies, so much so that it becomes a cardinal trait within most of his appearances - hol horse is ALWAYS gonna love women & respect the ladies. this is in both SDC and CDDH (which we will be using as evidence despite its non-canon status as it is a prominent characterization & builds upon what is already in canon.)

but if we look back at the Emperor and Hanged Man arc, where hol horse is first introduced, we get a different picture. he

works directly with a man known to be a predator towards women & girls

says he talks up women so they'll die for him

yet, in comparison, aside from the obvious and easily joked about "i respect all women" rant in the hol & boingo arc, CDDH shows hol as someone who has a strong moral code when it comes to women.

in fact, there is an extremely important SDC hol horse flashback that reveals he saves multiple women who were victims after his attempt to kill DIO.

it's just... it's just odd. if he truly is a secretly gold hearted man who cares, why would he treat women like garbage and use them as bait to save his own life? why would be more threatening and full of himself if every further appearance just erases it & never mentions it again... 🤔

well, let's begin our theory with the fact that it seems DIO, all this time, never really trusted hol horse, calling him pathetic and wondering when "he'll do something on his own for him" even after he had "killed" avdol.

so DIO does what DIO does when he wants someone to work for them BUT doesn't trust them as easily. Hol's just in it for the money & the riches, right? he's a valuable ally, but not as committed to the cause as DIO feels he should be... but I digress...

let's note that in Hol Horse's first appearances in Emperor & Hanged Man, we never get a peek at his forehead - his hat masks it.

this is in comparison to getting to see it in the Justice & Hol and Boingo arcs.

so we're left with DIO not trusting a minion, a deliberate covering of the forehead, and a personality that contradicts further & more consistent characterization later on in SDC and — wait.

haven't we .... seen this before?

and wasn't hol horse supposed to be a crusader at some point, much like Polnareff and Kakyoin?

and haven't we learned that DIO implants the buds to keep those he doesn't trust in line? if hol horse did something that brought back DIO'S trust in him (say, killing a member of the Joestar Party), DIO would KNOW he was committed and loyal to him, proving himself...and thus, no more need to control him.

no more need for a fleshbud, even if he disappoints him afterward.

and no more need for hol horse to act more evil, more manipulative, and more forgiving of disgusting crimes against women he'd never forgive otherwise.