#Ah - also - there was a tumblr user a while back who had mentioned wanting to see the bg3 cast helping each other put their armor on

[a2zillustration]

The final day

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[votederpycausemufins]

Chapter three for Surprisingly Familiar. It’s time to get to the real plot of this thing!

@petrichormeraki is the maker of the hermit Tommy au, @helleborusangel likes to read these and give me their rambles which are my beloved, and then check my tumblr for my masterpost of things I’ve made.

“Hey Paul, you’re done talking with X, right?” Bdubs asked as he noticed Paul walking by.

“Uh, yeah. He said he could let a guest in for a little bit because he needs to talk with Phil and Phil’d rather stay here instead of coming to the castle.”

“Yeah yeah, sounds great.” Bdubs sad, waving it off. “Hey, new question. Paul what the heck was that back there?!” He shouted, making a number of hermits look over.

“Hey, calm down, keep things off tap.” Paul tried to calm the hermit down, but it didn’t work that much.

“Oh this is Hermitcraft. We don’t do things on tap. Except Tommy but that’s different. Now, what were you doing back there?” And Bdubs pointed towards the room Paul and Phil had talked in. From the crowd, Jrum felt a little nervous, wondering if it was something he did, but the answer calmed the bot.

“Calm down. It was something Hoodie taught me. I’m sure Zedaph can back me up.”

Behind Bdubs, Zed stopped slurping from a coffee cup that was actually filled with a slushie. “Yeah, don’t worry he’s fine. No necromancy.”

“See? I just wanted a private conversation.” Paul replied, though Bdubs still looked grumpy.

“Alright, don’t make me call in Genny.” And Bdubs signalled that he was watching Paul before walking off. As he left, Scar took his place, seeming pretty confused.

“So, what’s with him?”

Paul sighed. “He’s not a fan of certain types of magic. I did a bit of necromancy for a time and there was someone else in the world who essentially became a dark lord, so Bdubs and some others became witch hunters.”

“Huh, That’s not something I would have guessed.” Scar said. “I mean, I’m a wizard and he’s been fine with me.”

Paul looked a little stunned. “Oh really? Didn’t realize. What style are you? My friend Hoodie is coming in for a quick visit. He’s ars based.”

Scar laughed a little. “Is that so? Haven’t seen many of those. I’ve got a mix. Vex magic and crystalline. Cub’s also a user of vex magic.”

Paul nodded. “That’s nice. How many magic users you got around here?”

The hermit mayor started to count on his fingers. “So there’s me and Cub. Pretty sure Stress has some. Cleo’s definitely got some magic. Grian of course. Uh, not sure if Joe does or not. I think Xisuma’s just-”

“Xel- er, Grian’s got some magic?”

“Yeah. And I guess the kids probably do too. Not sure right now.” Scar said, before looking Paul in the eye. “You're not going to freak out about Grian having magic, right? You’ve already got him upset which gets us upset.”

“Yeah, I know.” Paul sighed. “Just been through a lot. I get overly worried sometimes, and to me, I suddenly hear that ‘kid involved in murders is now causing wars in the world my friends are in.’ So yeah, sort of thought the worst.”

Scar inhaled sharply. “Okay, yeah. I can see what made you freak out. But Grian’s fine. He’s been through a lot and while technically he’s caused chaos, it’s never something we hate and normally we’re all in on it somehow.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, you should hear about the sewer cats.”

“Can’t wait to hear about it. Haven’t seen any letters about it.”

Scar nodded, before being just a little confused. “So, is there a reason you’re always using letters instead of other stuff? I’m sure some of the others could make you something that would work.”

Paul nodded. “I don’t doubt that they could for the most part. I just deal with a lot of factors and have always preferred the tried and true method. I’m all over the place and sometimes I can only really bring along paper.”

“What do you do?” Scar asked, interest piqued.

“Let’s see. Not sure if Phil’s told you, but he used to be king.” Scar nodded. It wasn’t Phil, but Grian had mentioned it. “Well, I’m one as well. Hoodie’s my right hand man and royal mage.”

“Ah, and you said he’s the one visiting?”

“Yeah. So I end up busy there a lot. I also spend a lot of my time visiting my kids so I’m going from world to world. Then, there’s also my wife and she’s in the world we raised the kids in which is essentially my main home.”

“And that’s what?”

“Uh, the same one I found Xe- sorry, Grian in ages ago.” Paul answered. “And I’ve got a job there that doesn’t really work with comms sometimes, but paper is easy enough to have on hand, especially enchanted paper.” And Paul took out a sheet of paper, handing it to Scar.

Scar took the paper and looked it over. As he moved it, he could see how the light caught the slightly physical aspect of the magic, much like how enchantments could be seen. “This looks good. You can hardly see the magic but I can tell it’s there. What all is on here?”

“Mostly stuff to get it to the right recipient and make it illegible if you’re trying to read it and it’s not for you.”

“Ah. That’s a commonly known one for ars mages, right?” Scar asked. “I haven’t heard much about them.”

Paul nodded. “Yeah. That’s due to the mage wars. They happened a number of years back before Hoodie was alive. He’s the main reason things are sort of getting back to normal for those guys.” Paull pulled out an old communicator which looked like it was being held together with duct tape and prayers. “He should be here pretty soon. He said he was only going to get a few books and amulets. And your admin said he would be able to get in.”

Almost as soon as Paul had said something, a message went out that someone new had joined the world. Xisuma sent a message that he would go to help the guest to Aque Town and from there Paul and Scar just waited for the two others to arrive. Xisuma was the first to arrive, gliding down on his elytra. The other person wore a royal purple hooded robe and seemed to arrive with the use of an ender pearl, but Scar didn’t see them use one.

Paul was the first to move, going over to the other person. “Hoodie! You made it!”

With the confirmation that this was the mage coming in, Scar followed along, a bit excited to meet someone new with magic. “Of course Sir. You did ask for my presence.”

Scar watched as Paul put an arm around Hoodie’s shoulder. “You don’t need to be so formal here. In fact, here. This is Scar. He’s the mayor, and based on the kind of place this is, I’d say he’s the local hedgewizard.”

“Ah, I see. It is nice to meet you. My name is Hoodie. I am King Soares’ right hand man and royal mage.”

Scar shook Hoodie’s hand, getting a slight shock. “It’s nice to meet you too. Paul already said I’m Scar. I’m guessing you’re a lightning mage or something?”

Hoodie took his hand back. “Ah, sorry about that. Yes I am. Or at least I specialize in it. Same as my father lest he’s recently changed his affinity.”

“Well I don’t know enough about your kind of magic to know what that really means.”

Paul walked away as the two magic users started to discuss their various forms of magic and wizardry. He needed to find Phil again since the main reason Hoodie was even there was so that Phil could get more of the enchanted paper. Not wanting to drag the mage away, Paul was instead going after his brother since he was the one insisting he wouldn’t take any of it without knowing for sure it was enchanted by Hoodie. After that, Hoodie would help out a bit around the world as repayment for Xisuma letting him on, then the two of them would head back home. At least, that was the plan.

. .

.

Drawing him away from the nest was almost laughably easy. Grian and Mumbo were both asleep and the chicken was theoretically trapped. At least trapped enough it wasn’t going to escape into the room itself. And then it could only see out the window and not into the room which was a big plus. Because of that, it was simple enough to have viridian magic surround the prison and really ensure the chicken wouldn’t be getting out.

“You know.” The person spoke in a whisper, making Grian twitch ever so slightly in his sleep, but not wake up. “You’re really making this far too easy. I thought it would be difficult with those guests of yours here, but it turns out everyone’s distracted by them. And they put you in such a perfect position. Let’s just move you to somewhere a bit more private, hmm?”

Grian of course didn’t wake up, but as the person left, a bit more magic appeared around Grian, and then a few moments later, he woke up with a start. Grian looked around, glad to see there was only Mumbo and a box in the corner. For a moment he was confused about it, but faint clucking from inside helped him figure out what it was. But something still felt off.

Grian went to shake Mumbo awake, but he hesitated a moment before actually waking him up. “Mumbo. Mumbo!” And Mumbo woke up from his name being shouted, looking around to see what was going on. “Mumbo, I think we’ve been up here too long. Something feels wrong.”

Mumbo pulled out his communicator to look at the time. “Oh dear! It does look like we have been here a while. It also looks like someone else has shown up.”

“Really?” Grian asked, pulling his own comm out to look at the message. “There’s no way this person would just happen to show up today of all days for no reason. What if they’re someone else with… I want to check on the kids.”

Mumbo stood up and then helped Grian to his feet. “Don’t worry. I’m sure if anything happened, the other hermits would be taking care of the boys. We can of course check on them, but you don’t want your panic to make them panic.”

Grian nodded and from there the two of them went back down to the ground floor, leaving Kokatori behind. Finding the new person was rather easy as he and Scar were both standing on the street of Aque Town facing each other. Scar was currently donning his wizard robe over his Aque Town outfit. In his hands, he held a number of crystals that Grian thought he was never going to see again.

The other person was wearing a purple robe and held a wand in one hand and a book with a yellow cover in the other. His hood had fallen back slightly, so Grian was able to see as the other person glanced over at him when he got closer. Normally the avian would assume it was just because he was getting close and was noticed, but there was some sort of emotion in the eyes that made Grian worry.

Both of them had their attention pulled away from each other as Scar moved, a yellow glow around him as he moved like he had a speed effect. When he reached the other person, Grian watched as the Scar’s netherite sword struck them, and then a ring of white magic appeared around them, acting as a shield against further attacks.

Realizing at this point that the two were fighting, Grian moved to try and stop them, but then out of nowhere, lightning struck the ground in front of him, making him stop. When Grian looked back up, both mages were looking over to him and then Scar called out. “Hey, don’t worry! We’re just doing some sparring! It was my idea!”

“Are you sure? Who even is this?”

“His name’s Hoodie. Royal mage of Paul it looks like.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Grian asked, concerned.

“Yeah, it just sounds like he was jumping to conclusions when he saw you. I’m sure it’s going to be fine if you talk to him again.”

Grian wasn’t completely convinced, but pretended enough for Scar to look back at Hoodie and then continue their sparring. Slowly, the avian started moving to where everyone else probably was, still in the party building. Mumbo followed him along, but eventually he passed Grian when the builder decided to actually watch the magic battle.

Scar seemed to mainly be using regular combat, but enhanced by his crystals which actually seemed to be doing something. Hoodie, on the other hand, was using his wand and casting a number of spells from his book. At one point, Grian watched the mage fumble a little bit to pull out a book with a green cover before casting a new spell that he hadn’t used yet.

Grian didn’t realize he was just standing there alone, and the magicians weren’t really paying much attention to him, but in the span of a few seconds, that all changed. To anyone watching, it would seem like it happened all at once, but really it was just one thing after the other.

Grian was barely aware of the space around him getting the slightest tint of green to it. As soon as that had happened, Hoodie turned away from Scar and instead faced Grian, pulling out a new red spell book. Scar was the next to react, still under the effects of his yellow crystal. He started to pull out a red crystal, accidentally pulling a pink one out at the same time. He threw them towards Grian just as Hoodie began to cast some magic aimed at Grian, but also in the direction of what would be in the path of the crystals.

Seeing multiple things coming his way, Grian started to panic, wings moving to act as a shield since he currently wasn’t holding one. As they moved, the tips of his wings started to change from red to purple, the shift in color working its way to the base of the wings. He couldn’t react fast enough to block everything, but the magic hit both of the crystals, making them shatter into dust. The pink and red dust didn’t completely stay their original colors, some of them charred by the magic attack that hit them, but each tiny piece seemed to glow with its own energy, and even with the, being broken so small, when the cluster hit Grian, there was enough force to make him crash to the ground.

For everyone not watching at that moment in time, they simply heard a large crack of thunder at the same time there was shattering glass, followed by screaming from Grian. Within a matter of seconds, people were racing out of the nearby building, there to see what had happened.

When people got out onto the street, Scar was yelling at Hoodie. “What was that?! Grian wasn’t involved! I thought I could actually- I can’t see why Bdubs actually trusted- I’m guessing he’s changed a lot since-”

“Please, I was just trying to defend myself. He was about to attack me. Didn’t you see it?”

“He was just watching us!”

“No. Your back was turned so you maybe didn’t see it.”

“I should have used a brown crystal too. What kind of spell was that?!” As they yelled, Xisuma was the first to get over to the pair to try and figure out what was going on, getting an answer from Scar. “That Paul guy’s mage just attacked Grian! If I hadn’t done something, it might have killed him!”

“What?” Paul asked, coming over. “Hoodie what just happened?”

The mage looked over to Paul, ignoring Scar and X. “Sir, the hedgewizard and I were simply having a duel to see each other's magic skills. As we battled, this avian mage came by and tried to stop us once. Of course Scar was able to prevent that the first time, but then the mage tried to cast a spell of attack. I was already using a spell to help my reaction time, as was the wizard here, so I began to cast a counterspell. At first I thought Scar was also about to assist me, but instead he seemed to try and stop my spell, causing our magic to collide. It seems to have still-” Hoodie tried to continue, but Paul held up a hand to stop him.

Paul then tried to speak himself, but then his shoulder was ground and he was whirled around by Phil. “Paul, what the fuck? Did you just have your wizard attack Grian?”

“What? No, of course I wouldn’t! It sounds like Grian was trying to attack Hoodie and he defended himself.”

“Yeah sure. Mate, just tell me the truth.”

“I’m just telling you what Hoodie told me. I know just as much as you do at this point other than what he told me.”

Again, the conversation was cut off by Mumbo speaking up, having joined the group. “Grian’s really hurt. His breathing is off and it looks like his wings were hurt enough for them to shift away. There’s also something else, but I can’t place it. Xisuma, can you look at him?”

Everyone moved out of the way for the admin to head towards Grian, but as soon as he took a step, everyone had their comms buzz with two messages. Xisuma peeked over the crowd to look where Grian had been a minute ago. He wasn’t currently lying there, but neither were any items that signified him having died and respawned. That could have been because he had nothing on him at the point, which was unlikely, but could have been what happened.

That being said, the shocked gasps from people who were looking at their comms didn’t assure Xisuma, so the admin pulled up the chat logs on his helmet. Instead of there being a death message for Grian, there were two messages of people leaving the world.

The_Grifter left the world Xelqua left the world.

[bemtevis]

different anon but I can 1000% confirm that cc has what i, as a person critical of cc, an uncomfortably close relationship with several of her fans. (warning for mentions of old discourse and a pretty long rant ahead)

I don't remember when i followed you/how long you''ve been in the fandom, but for context back sometime in the latter half of 2020 there was a huge fandom implosion because of the way cc (and half the fandom) bullied and spread hate about a reader who leaked the arc of lbotw, which resulted in a new wave of discussions about the issues with cc and her books. Some people left the fandom completely, some changed urls away from tsc related ones, and some people deleted sideblogs entirely.

It was at this time that I was blocked by two specific users who I was mutuals with because I had reblogged some anti cc posts. Their position was that because cc's books had helped them through a rough time and figure things out for themselves that there could be nothing wrong with her or any content she produced. During these few days of discourse they defended characters whenever they were criticized for offensive or harmful canon behaviors, made multiple posts shading poc fans, and victimized themselves when people pointed out that they could like an author's works and characters while acknowledging their problems and separating the content from the creator. After this discourse kinda started to die down they were constantly posting about how awesome cc was and sending cc asks that as an outsider reminded me of when a kid in class always tried to compliment teachers for better grades/more attention/to seem better than the other students. I mean they were sharing some seriously personal information. (its also worth noting that they were all adults and insulted/directly went after minors in the fandom.)

(I really hope this is ok, I don't want to bring discourse up or bring problems for you, my only goal was to confirm what the other anon was saying and maybe warn you to stay away from these guys I guess?? I'm not really in the fandom anymore, you're actually one of the only tsc blogs I follow, but I really appreciate your blog and think you're really cool! please don't post this if it's going to bring you any issues on your blog)))))

Hm. Of course she does

I have been on the fandom for almost two years, though I only got on Tumblr about a year and a half ago. I remember that happening but I didn't know it was so bad, what the hell?

I hate those kinds of people, like. If her books helped you, that's great and I'm happy for you, I don't think there's anything inherently bad about that! Now, when they use that to deny the harm she's caused, that's so frustrating JFC. And not only to deny it, but to actively ignore and shade people's (very valid) opinions? Ugh, that must have been awful

THEY WERE ADULTS GOING AFTER MINORS OMG WHAT

I got an anon ask a while ago that I never answered (sorry ah) and from what I remember, that person had been blocked by CC for being critical of her. If that's true, or even if not actually, she's actively ignoring people's concerns and criticism. It makes sense for her to favoritize people who do the same lol

Don't worry, I don't think it'll bring me any issues! Ty for the ask and ty 💖💖

[queenlua]

The Good Game Critics TM (a giant post o’ links)

yesterday i was complaining:

damn, how come the only people who are writing The Good Video Game Criticism TM are exclusively relegated to… abandoned Blogspots and Tumblrs that haven’t been updated in five years…?

and someone asked:

addadashofpepper: can you like, post links to some of these? cause the thing about these is that they are really hard to find!

oh boy, tumblr user @addadashofpepper, i would be DELIGHTED to share.  i dug through my RSS reader / bookmarks, and here’s what leapt out at me:

[under a cut because this got LONG and i got EXCITED]

ella guro: indie dev and creator of Problem Attic, which made a splash back in the day (a somewhat Braid-inspired platformer iirc).  she’s mostly removed herself from the game scene these days, but she still blogs about artsy-culture issues from time to time, and if you dig through the archives, some of her old posts on games (probably circa 2012-2015?) are so so good

prophet goddess / blood church: i discovered them literally two days ago, but i’m digging what i see (their ladykiller in a bind review was the first post i stumbled on)

dead genre chronicles: a group of three friends did a monthly JRPG podcast, where they’d play a JRPG in its entirety and talk about it.  see, they found mainstream discussions around JRPGs annoyingly stilted, including the term JRPG itself—like, we’re still using the term “JRPG” to mean “turn-based combat with funky anime aesthetics,” but that airbrushes over so many weird and fun and distinctive mechanics that developers inside-and-outside of Japan have been experimenting with, right?

they had a blog attached to the podcast, and the blog was ALSO excellent

unfortunately, they took their main website down a while back :( however:

you can get some of the old blog posts by fiddling with the wayback machine

becky backed up a bunch of her contributions to the site (i particularly liked her ffxv post & this sort-of ffxiii post that punched me in the face in a good way)

leeroy, one of the other contributors, blags here, though i don’t think he backed up his stuff from the original site

the entirety of the podcast is archived on libsyn and is very good if you’re into podcasts!

no don’t die: okay, this blog/interview series is AMAZING.  and still active!!!  ahh!!!

the whole concept is, this dude finds people who work in games.  or used to work in games.  or who ran a weird fansite for video games back in the early 00′s.  or curate some video-game-shaped things as part of a museum exhibit.  and so on, and so forth.

the dude has a knack for finding really interesting people with all kinds of windows/perspectives on games, and manages to get them to talk about really interesting things.  two of my fave interviews: rebecca heinman, who ported Doom to 3DO in ten weeks on her own in utterly batshit conditions, and mustin, because i’ve got that overclocked remix nostalgia

my friend pokey: so, they’re on tumblr, they write in all lowercase, and their writing style tends to be on the dense and referential side, which ordinarily has all the warning signs of “all pretentiousness, no substance,” right?  (i am not exempt from this, by the way; look at me typing in all lowercase like a scrub.)  but, i’ve reliably gotten interesting insights out of their posts & have been surprised how often i mention their blog to a Friend Whose Aesthetic Tastes I Respect and they’re like “ah! i LOVE that blog!”  also i liked their notes on chrono cross at the end of this post because i literally want to talk about chrono cross every waking moment of my life, come talk to me about chrono cross friends, etc

em reed’s blog is excellent.  i really liked this post about what the phone/gacha game experience is like

auntie pixelante: anna anthropy’s old blog; still not sure why she didn’t archive it somewhere?  but whatever, the wayback machine has your back.  this early review of Gone Home is reasonably representative

tim rogers: i have kind of mixed opinions on him, but i do find something in his work compelling enough that i keep coming back to him, so.

the dude made his initial splash with his extremely long mgs2 review back in the day; there’s a slightly more recent archive too; he also does a lot of sadposting on medium that ranges from “guy in my MFA” to “fuck i can’t believe this dude’s making me feel feelings” in quality, ymmv.  (he also apparently does video reviews now? that are like many hours long? and i am just not the youtube generation so i tapped out on that one bud)

tevis thompson: another critic i have mixed feelings about, but if you’re the kind of dork that enjoys reading stuff that Made A Splash At The Time, and like, nerd subculture histories, you'll have to read his “on videogame reviews” for that reason alone.  i also really dug his 100-word video game reviews series

ludus novus: i haven’t read this dude’s blog in ages, but i liked it a lot when i read it in 2012ish and there’s TONS in the archives

emily short: an IF writer who goes way back.  i haven’t read her blog lately, but the archives / older posts definiely have cool thoughts on the structure of interactive fiction

jonas kyratzes: indie game dev, creator of The Sea Will Claim Everything.  he tends to blog about lefty politics and general arts stuff more frequently than he blogs about games, but he does blog games from time to time.  i liked [1] and [2], for starters.

adam cadre: this guy goes waaay back in the IF scene and has made a bunch of Inform stuff.  i’ve never actually played his games!  but i like his blog a lot (convenient tumblr mirror here).  he almost exclusively blags about books and movies and such these days, but if you dig you can find him talking about games sometimes.  (also, Masterchef Australia, which he loved so much he wrote over fifteen thousand words about it and it’s one of my favorite bizarre blog posts on the internet)

the fool reversed: this blog is focused on LARP game design & issues around that, but i’d say it’s relevant to anyone interested in game-y topics.  as a mostly-outsider to that scene, i thought this was a fun find!

annnd a few last ones:

i haven’t kept up with critical distance in ages, but it used to be a great way to find new game writers, and quite possibly still is, i dunno

while i’ve personally bounced off timber owls a few times, i know some folks who like their writing a lot

hope this helps!!!  happy digging through internet archives and such

[imanativeofswlondondahling]

Hidden in Plain Sight (3)- Tom Holland X Reader

A/N: This story is fun to write, but school is taking over little by little so sorry if this gets delayed more than I mean for it to be! Enjoy Chapter Three!

Word Count: 2165

Warnings: Swearing? Maybe? To be honest I can’t remember if I swore or not but knowing me I probably did. But there is mention of a killer moth so if that’s as trigger as it was when it was flying around my room then I’ll mention it here.

You had the absolute worst day. You were hoping it was going to be a good day since you had put on one of your favorite outfits to wear to work. But as soon as you got to work, everything turned into a shit show. A project you thought was finished didn’t save the last days edits, your boss got on you for something that was your coworker’s responsibility, and someone ate your lunch, which you’re not entirely sure how that happened, but it did. Add to it you have the start of what you think is a migraine, the last thing you want to do is anything work related, but because you’re behind on the project that is due tomorrow, you’ll probably be up all night working on it before going in tomorrow to continue working on it at the office. So heating up some soup to eat while you work, you decide to scroll through Tumblr while you wait for it to heat up. 

The news of Spider-Man, and therefore Tom Holland, staying in the MCU still hasn’t died down, which let’s be honest why should it? It’s fantastic news. Out of all the Spider-Mans, Tom’s portrayal of it is your favorite and you would be so sad to see him taken from Marvel just because Sony, Marvel and Disney couldn’t come to an agreement on things. It’s only been a couple days since it was announced, but you wouldn’t be surprised if this was talked about for weeks at least. You reblog a couple of photos, adding some of your usual hashtags. Honestly, you want to be distracted by asks, but you know that the likelihood that people will respond is low, plus you shouldn’t let yourself be distracted by Tumblr when you have the project due tomorrow. 

Hating seeing notifications, you click on the second icon from the right on the bottom of your screen. You clear off the notifications from reblogs and likes but notices your app is still showing a notification, on the messages side. It’s probably just from one of your friends. You flip over to the other screen and see a message from none other than Tomholland2013, who you’ve been messaging on and off over the past couple of days, ever since you sent him that edit.

You haven’t been super active on tumblr lately. Everything ok?x

Been super busy at work lol. Big deadlines coming up.

You don’t expect to get a message back since you figured from your messages where he mentioned he was in the early hours of the day while you were only in the late afternoon, that he was probably asleep since you got home later from work than you had planned. So you set your phone aside as you pull the broccoli cheddar soup from the microwave. However, you’re pleasantly surprised to see a message waiting for you when you pick your phone back up to head back to your computer to keep working.

Ah, big deadlines. What kind of work do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?x

Hm, this new tumblr friend of yours is awake even though it’s probably the middle of the night for him?

I don’t mind. I work in graphic design. Isn’t it the middle of the night for you? 

It would be if I was at home. I travel a lot for work. I’m currently in New York, so it’s only 9pm.x

But it definitely feels like I should be asleep. I’ve only been in New York for a few days and my mind is still on London time.x

What kind of work do you do? 

You set your phone down and boot your computer back up. You know you have shadows to deal with and layers to add back before even getting to the stuff you were meaning to get on today. This project was going to be the death of you. 

Tom stares at the message. How does he respond to that? He can’t very well tell you he’s an actor. That blows all of this. He likes being able to be open with you and the moment that it comes out that he is actually Tom Holland, well you might not be open with him. Could he tell you he works in the movie field without having to admit who he is? Could he play it off that he’s still a fanboy, because he will be a marvel fanboy until the day he dies, without blowing this whole thing up? There’s just something about you and being able to connect with someone who has no idea who he is that is different. 

Even on your blog today, you shared things from months ago and still reacted like it was your first time seeing them. Your whole blog just radiated positivity, even though your messages sounded like you had a lot on your plate outside of the internet world. He wants to be able to know you without the pressure of having to be, well, him. But you’re not asking him to spill everything about who he is. Just a snip-it. 

Film production. Getting ready to head off to a new project actually.x

Must be fun to travel for it. Anywhere fun?

Cleveland actually. Haven’t been there before, so maybe I’ll find something fun to do outside of the project while I’m there.x

Maybe you’ll run into Tom. He’s supposed to be there shooting a project I think. Especially if you’re also in the film industry, you’d already have more of a way into things than say I would lol 

I don’t know if I’ll have that much time off to look for him.x

Well if you happen to run into him in said little time off, tell him there’s probably half a million if not more tumblr users willing to marry him, should he be in need of a wife, husband, or nonbianary pal.

Would you happen to be one of those said half a million?x

He shouldn’t have sent it. You have been pretty good about responding, but after sending that message, he hasn’t heard from you in over twenty-four hours and he’s beside himself. You also haven’t posted on your blog. Which makes him think you’re avoiding him on the site all together, which is even worse. The flight to Cleveland, wouldn’t have been half bad if he wasn’t worried the whole time about what you might have been sending while his phone was on airplane mode. And of course the one time he would have paid any amount for on flight wi-fi, it was down and no one could use it.

As soon as the plane lands, he’s flipping the switch to connect his phone again. He needs to see if you’ve messaged back. He’s ignoring all the other notifications that pop up, looking for only on apps notifications. And while you haven’t posted again, you have messaged back. Which makes him suddenly feel like he can breathe again. 

I’m not the one who took Tom’s name on here. I feel like you might propose to Tom before I even have a chance to meet him IRL.

I don’t think I’m Tom’s type.X

And what do you think Tom’s type is? 

And it takes everything to not just describe you. It wouldn’t be hard. He had spent a lot of time deep diving through your blog. He had looked through your #me tab on your blog. It was filled with everything from selfies to posts about things you had done. And you were the kind of person that he was into. It wasn’t an only physical attraction thing. It was the things that you found important enough to post about. The little things about your day that you shared about. But instead of typing back you, Tom decides to type something different.

I think he would be into someone down to earth. Someone who is into sharing time with friends and family equally and someone who has a great sense of humor. Oh and they would HAVE to love Tessa. That would be a must.x

Wow you’ve thought a lot about this.

Do you disagree?x

Surprisingly no. But I thought you’d say something more… I don’t know physical I guess.

Why’s that?x

I don’t know. I just did.

What do you think he’d be into?x

He can’t help but ask. He wants to know what you think he’s like. There’s enough speculation out there about what he’s like, but for some reason, knowing what you think about him, it means something to him.

I would say, similar to you- family, friends and Tessa would definitely be at the top. Sense of humor would be important. I also feel like with there being so much he can’t talk about to the public, having someone he can trust with stuff would be important. I also think trust would be important so that he has a space he can just be himself too. 🤷‍♀️

Pretty spot on. All of those are important to him. He wants to ask if those things are all important to you, but asking that would come off weird, so he takes a different approach.

Honestly if I wasn’t such a div when I was making accounts I would have just made a Tessa fan blog. I’m a bigger fan of her than of Tom. x

SO TRUE. How can you not be?! She’s the purest thing in this world (sorry to Tom) and every time he shares more of her with us I melt a little.

Paddy had sent him that picture of Tessa this morning, maybe sharing it would brighten everyone’s days. Especially knowing that you were such a fan of her too. Adding the picture to his Instagram story, with a quick caption of missing this sweet girl, he quickly uploads it.

APPARENTLY TOM CAN READ OUR THOUGHTS?!

What do you mean?x

Cute Tessa content just uploaded to his Insta story. Apparently he’s away from her and missing her 😭

She’s just too pure for this world x

I needed that right now.

Something wrong?x

Work project might kill me. 

It’s due by the end of the day, but photoshop keeps crashing and I might scream. 

I’m sorry love x

I’m restarting my computer for the third time today and it’s not even noon yet. 

You know he’s English so the love thing shouldn’t throw you. Plus he’s a boy on the internet. But for some reason, it feels like something more. So instead of saying anything about it, you just keep messaging like nothing happened. A small part of you is hoping that by not mentioning it though, it might happen again.

Tom spends the rest of the day messaging you when he can. He knows you’re working on a project that has a deadline, so he doesn’t expect you to be at his beck and call. But when he gets a notification at almost eleven o’clock at night his time from your blog, he hopes it’s one of your personal posts to make him laugh. He isn’t let down.

THERE WAS A MOTH FLYING AROUND MY ROOM AND NOW I CAN’T FIND IT IM GOING TO DIE. IF IT EATS ME YOU ALL KNOW WHO THE MURDER IS

#me #killer moth #save me #if i die i leave everything to tom

He can’t help but send you an ask about it.

Tomholland2013 asked: You know moths don’t eat people right?x

Y/T/B: You didn’t see how big this one was. This one was definitely of the people eating variety with how big it was. And now it’s hiding in my room waiting for me to close my eyes and then it will sneak up on me, kill me, and devour me whole. 🖕

Tom laughs at your reply before sending another ask. Sure he could do this in your message thread, but he’s betting the asks are helping distract you from the moth.

Tomholland2013 asked: That’s a quiet defensive response from someone who is going to be eaten. If you want me to come save you from a killer moth, maybe be a bit nicer.x

Y/T/B: If you will race over here, find this moth, and release it into the wild so that it can’t kill me in my sleep I will make you as many Tom edits as it takes in gratitude. 👏😘Just come save me please. I swear I can hear him laughing in the distance. 

Tomholland2013 asked: If he’s laughing in the distance, I’ll be over to take care of him. No one gets to disrespect my favorite blog and get away with it.x

Y/T/B: Thanks darling. I really, really appreciate it. Now I must be off to hunt this moth, before he hunts me.

Tags: @serendipitous-amor​ @im-still-tryin-to-find-it​ @tomfiction4​ @im-deeply-shallow

[throwingideasatthewall]

Clone Wars     Shadow      Warriors

            Seas 4

Oh    this-   just    screams      edgy        ...   Whelp

So is Jar      Jar an     adult,       now,?            (Asking because before his    characteri         zation was force of nature to child

Now he    seems to have his own    personality.

Which is fine   if you want to change some details for the sake of a    better story,      (Or to simply      explore         a new       angle,).    Aesthetic

     Just.            need to make sure I’m holding them to the right standard,

    Okay,

   That-         was    relatively     adult,

  Mm

   Um.

   I

 Aight        .           .       Well-

   Wait 

    Did they just call Jar Jar     away from      Cou-ncil-

    .         I mean they are clearly    trying       which          is   some thing       I do       give credit   for-

   Though                The             Tone              Is            Robot-                 Ic-

       (Though that might be int-         entional since it seems to be hinting that this lady is practicing some kind of         mind tricks on him

   (Aka, he’s doing it         under           tox, because we don’t do suspension of choice in     dra-         mat         ic       Me-     -dia,

 S’up

 What?

  I-

  -

   H-elp

Screw my own   accou-   -ntability     -      See that was the correct   -amount of   emotion-

.        Okay        -         Right-

  Sus-       (pic)

    No one noticed the obvious people right there?

  Like not even      Mr. sus         there?

[or are they just so    kind that it’s like   oh yeah we were just talking hate speech     but go right ahead?

Logic?

 There

  Yeah    some shit is definitely going on,

   For sake of argument*     sake, i’m just going to assume that his reaction to      toxic    behavior

*Account     ability-

 Any way

  I-

  I’m still      going to try,

  Despite  you clearly saying you want understood

   Because assumed authority        - and assuming you know better than a person about themselves

     Is totally ok-

     - In this         society

-[Cries        in       sad    “accountability,”     -of-      war,        ]

  Whelp,

  In-    flue-     n      -c      e

 Still an  adult-

  Okay-

 Imagine    it was just a normal necklace     and he pulled that shit-

[Ok for the sake of argument I’m going to assume the necklace is symbolism for toxic influence,

  Being around it         enabling]

  It-         -       His voice voice dropped like         - 6 octaves

     Also I swear if they try to   excuse him      for his actions-

     No

    Mind over matter     -Okay, so they’re not excusing him for his   -actions,

   Me-          an         -       OK so it’s not naturally evil it    just comes down to the users      so that dude was still totally responsible,

  Didn’t    change    - much

    -     Ha-Ha

  Actual     gas     -lighting”

    Also     persuade,            -             Okay,     good not excusing him       from his actions,      -      Thing

The   gaslighting goes deep      -      Also isn’t the Darkside supposed to be      negative over involvement?      -       Aight-         -       -           A-lone

  Oh yeah that’s a great idea let’s just let the  dude that just got gaslighted and completely fell forward go back into the person who did it,

 👍

     Genius     

    (This Jedi Council is fucking                  brilliant)

     Gas-       Light-         Ing

(Note;      Confronting the gas lighter is never the way       to do it       (Inter-             Gen-)          (Excluding accountability of the abuser     (Gen-break           Venting Pro-      Ced- u        re)

 [as you’re usually too angry     to let them get a word in edgewise        And remain;           in control)

  With inter- gen productivity,         They are possibly given       five warnings before         Being          Kick        ed-]

   For the sake of argu-       ment as well       as simplicity-

    We’re stick       -ing with        bas-         ic-

    If someone’s acting toxic        with you, you         reflect and you don’t have to         hang out with anyone         you don’t want to,

    Logic

   This dude      is very clearly making it obvious that    he’s willing to listen to this person,

 And, enabling

“Cl-”

See he’s gaslighting him again      because   he thinks he can get away with it,

With no   accoun-       tability-

 (Or the small bit      this society      believes      in     which is    jail,”

Wr-

Oh!

 Is he a     Gungan      Jedi?

  Also,

  You Don’t  

    SAY!

(The repeated Gaslighter      who has shown multiple times to be     toxic,       Was toxic,    (And prepared to use any means to      subvert the         will? 

Prize  for the  most   in  competent      Je      di

 Like,        Serious-         (Really had to put those two    accoun  t-      ability- cells      to good -    use-”

(For   matting       issue-)

  The writer just saving us the effort of him coming downstairs -all feckin- weird, and the   obvious    “should’ve seen that coming,     “

   ?             ha-ha

    What?

Oh yeah       no the creepy magical stuff wasn’t enough of a      fecking clue in-

  Appar-

   Whelp-

  He   snapped out of that quick-

  Like didn’t even need a      reverse- mind trick

   Good for      him-

   And - actual-     nar-    rative-        -

   Whelp,

   Wreck-ing      -house

       Okay, but how do you think this is going to look to the general public like two Jedi,( very good at persuasion -    mind tricks’ -just showed up, now they’re leader and said Jedi are wreck-ing one of their minster’s houses-  

     One who could’ve     feign-           ed lack of support for the        war

     Like if this is a     set up-  

 the chips-      are about to fall,

 Da-

Okay, seriously how obviously evil,    was this person?

Like we have a weird creepy room,     The robots apparently hanging from the    chandelier    (eck)         And      the knife

   Like if this person      ever-       went-   through a checkpoint

   Also,        Oh-

    That-

   (That     really        does not      look good,)

    Bo-ss

   Yeah,       she clearly has    medical experience,

 (Also yeah    that’s really going to make it    better-”

 Oh yeah the    senator was      seen trying to clean up the      evidence-

    Well the Jedi ran out     full sword’s- a blazing

    (Instead of you know the       Senator chasing after him,         While the peacekeeper stayed behind and tried to        tend to the person,]

   Great     -        -       Or    Not-

Well- tensions    just got raised,

  Of,

 Ai.     Ght, 

 Whelp,

(Okay, no way he’s totally not dead      but sure-)

 A-i-

  -

 Whe-

   That-       sucks-          -         Un-     Con-cious

    That-   doesn’t tell me anything else-

   Like;        Critical      condition?

   D-usk

   Li-terally       no one else?

    (Like don’t get me wrong I’ve been a pretty big Jar-jar fan ever since the change-)

   But really, the Senator, the person that spends the most time away from your - planet

   That’s the person,     they trust the most?

  Ai-

  Hm-

Oh yeah just put on the deadly leaders hat-

   The rese-mblance-

   Not really?

   I mean all humans technically    look the same-

  But-

 Pretty sure Jar jar is a lot      scrawn-         thin        -er

    Also if they’re not going to listen to him as him       they’re not going to listen to him      as he pretends to be their (dead) leader

Also, please don’t go with the      liar revealed plot,

    Yeah no, they have completely different kind of light.   tones,

     The face structure-

    Co-mpletely         different-

     -

   Nope

 -Dead

 Di-ssent

  Agree

   I-

   OK yeah I’m just gonna go over the fact, that as previously state,  I am not a huge fan of the liar revealed plot-

    -or lying

  (No because it’s- unrealistic-    - or there’s anything wrong with it

  -people do lie

     -maybe because of how overdone and             poorly done it’s been,

             -With the liar getting off Scott free without any                  weight

               But I really don’t like this               plot-

-And    the   skip    button    maybe   used     ad-     nausuem-   -

       [Well- shit       [for reference; I was using the skip button ad nausuem when I randomly stopped at the part      with    Greivous

        Things just got a whole lot worse]

         [Tumblr             Refresh]       -

   Any        Way,

   Aww,     That’s kind of nice the    friendship and reliance       the dude has on      Other-        Half            -         Yes        ‘Boss       Leoni’        when someone gets         tox         you leave-        - In a      - relation          ship-  

      Also yeah he’s definitely not       ‘Boss         Leoni’            -            He would’ve stayed and tried to take the    tox

 (Aka Jar-jar is less ena-     bling, les-        tox-     And     Doesn’t       Take        It        For          Much        More.            Than            He            Has               To,

        (He’s   les   -s

      Dyfun.  -c)

      Okay

       Good            Job     -     Also - yeah   how’d you manage that         -         That-

Didn’t get   car   ried up the chain of   com-     mand-        -            Then again Gri-   evous has shown to be a pretty   shit boss.     -      So I can’t blame these guys    for being like yeah compl-      ete stranger     I will totally      take a nap       -right    ,now-         -      You        kinda      have      sticks-        -    [The rain is   really    nice,]

[is this the first time we’ve seen them use active     particle effects      for the camera?

  Either way       it’s really        nice            -

Oh,

They’re    

electric     sticks,

That makes   sense

[- bet     ter      for      Figh     t-      In-       g-

Stop one     1v1     -ing-        It

    I

  W-h

   Again this is what happens when you 1v1 it    and    don’t assume accountability-     - -   

 [Don’t fight a metal cyborg with metal sticks when you’re not prepared to take it, full way,)

   I-

  [I feel like this is supposed to be some    big build up but they only shared like one scene where dude was completely silent,]

  Like,

   Sacr-ifice

    Die to take someone out with you

[Great

  Now

   Ouch]

   Are   they actually going to kill off      grievous because this isn’t look-ing    too    - good      -         Shit-

 Dude-      is still not dead-       -       How?        -          Whelp-           -          Oh,    hey      where the fuck    did you come      from,

 I-           Ack.      Br-u-      Tal

W-el

 -       Un         -         M           -              Plan-

“ damn it        he messed up the       script-,           -Pal   - patine

     Cap-

    Prison   break-

   Also yeah     that’s probably like        a vacation    for him-

 Given     how toxic these assholes     are           -            Ex- change           -           Damn             Ship      per-

      Also screw the 150 or how many other                 sena   -tors        -       Only     Amidala           -      matters          -          A-       ight-     -      Also, dude knows where everyone’s      lair,      Is,

 Like he pissed off Grievous with    -his

 Now he’s just chilling in this      dude’s    sipping earl gray       Or-      Some        Shit-

  Him

  Okay

 Getting a little    ahead of yourself     episode-       -       O k

    I

   Hearing this,  Skywalker doesn’t immediately run back      shout        -ing      nope-        - -       Because, to my knowledge the speaking at      room volume,

  Not    whispering        and the distance        isn’t enough to      -explain it             -            Ai          -   -           Wel-             -      There goes one        min-ion-             -             Droids are apparently    expensive enough to      chastise    Grievous          over-

  But sen-tient - beings are        a dime’     a ‘dozen-

    (Also    gaslighter’s.     don’t give a shit about        you     dear,       God,

  The Painful     dramatic-        irony-

 *tra-      gic-      Wh-      -Oa

 Ai     -     Ri-

  An

  Wh-     -elp,

   You know if it wasn’t for the exposure     earl-        ier   

I would assume they would think that the Jedi was just killing all their Im-por-        tant- elected officials

     Why?

     Wh-at

    He’s right.    -         But dude- that’s pretty      ham fisted-

   I mean-

  How many episodes          (and       possibly        seasons-)      do we have to            go-            - -     Anakin-       is a dick    to lanterns-       -        Also the random theme of the     bots-      coming out of nowhere-    continues-       -     St     -op-          -        Wh-       elp-

    .

    ?         (He          live?)

      I-

      ?

  Good           Play-

     Ah-

    To-

       Oh, yeah,       He’s alive we’re not going to bring that up in any      mention-able way?

      Ike

    Wh     e     l-      p

     Oh           -     That was   -nice-

   You deceived everyone and lied to all          our people,  you’ll make a great      leader,

   Or a great council/    committee leader considering that they do have an open position          ,            Best

I like that they had one bad ass fall and had it replace-d by Dooku being particularly bad-ass       -          In his      place-

In the trade off near the end really speaks to the     frag-ility of war

   I thought-

   It was pretty al-right    Though it really did seem like     - they were trying to build up to something but the structure unfortunately        just didn’t support it,

   Which is unfortunate because they do seem like      bits- that could’ve been nice

   Like Jar-jar being a constant       peacekeeper-

   The underwater        nations-

     Wars be-           tween          - Those               Dude’s

   And that    general guy      -        Who seems to be like he was supposed to be this     - really big deal

 [probably intended to do something      massive in the previous       arcs,]

    But, here,    all he did was that one scene,

    [Would’ve worked better if he was like this Re-       Public Gen-       Er          Al-

    To the      shark guy-

     And Akbar,

     Was just like the resident         enforcer-

     Or something to do with the       prince

    I think it would’ve really worked better with the concept of        ‘being taken’        under,               As well that possibly being a good contrast between     Jar Jar         binks          And        Char-        If Jar- jar got promoted-        With Char being eager at first but then realizing he just         can’t-          And Jar- Jar being reluctant at first but realizing he      can-

   [Note; assumed authority is bad,         Just- some people are better at using it for venting         than others)

   Nope boomers vs throw-         it-back, boom-

       I-

     And it really did feel like this episode       -should’ve been the split one 

   Nearing the end- it started to feel like the 1st-       part of a second ep-

    Which is fine

    Just cut-        of-

   Episode all around being al-right, with just several parts that didn’t make quite sense including the emphasis on the general for that one scene,

[reader-fics]

Ward (Part Two)

Find Part One here!

Warnings: suicide/assassination mention

A/N: So, it has been a while--three years or so. This story has been sitting in my drafts since April 11, 2017. Tumblr has changed so much. The Purge came and went. I have no idea how this editor works anymore. I have no idea what’s going on, to be quite frank. Anyway. This is for you all, who have stayed on through these years. Enjoy -B

"It's a good thing she's getting rest." A voice somewhere above the clouds stated optimistically.

"Yes, a good thing indeed." Another echoed, floating near another cloud.

Your head ached as if you harbored a nest of mice chewing and nibbling at your brain. You cringed just thinking of it. The voices above you were so irritating; you wanted nothing more than for them to stop. You groaned and were pleased to find that they did. Silence, comforting silence, surrounded you.

Slowly the aching in your head ebbed away like the tide going out and you were able to think clearly. You knew you were in Camelot, and what your name (and title) was, so you figured you couldn't have hit your head too hard. Before even opening your eyes you came to the conclusion that you were in the physician's chambers, or perhaps your own, and the voices you heard had to belong to the physician and perhaps his assistant. You opened your eyes. Yes, these chambers were your own.

There was no point in trying to feign sleep, you decided, so you shifted slightly to let the physician know you were awake.

"How is my aunt?" You demanded to know. Deep in your gut, you simply knew that she had to be dead, but a little voice inside desperately clung to the hope that she was not, that she was being treated the same as you and would be okay. The look on the physician's wrinkled face told you far more than words.

"I'm very sorry, your highness." He told you sincerely. "How are you feeling?"

You managed a shrug. In your present state of mind you did not notice how you were addressed as "your highness," rather than "lady," as befitting a ward. A commotion seemed to burst in through the door. You only managed to twist your body slightly to see the King coming towards you. Ah, a commotion indeed.

"Your highness, I'm glad to see you awake and well. We are very lucky you were not harmed." Arthur breezed, taking your hand and giving it a comforting squeeze.

"Yes, I-I suppose so." You stuttered. How lucky could you be really? Your aunt, your only family in the world, was dead, and now she had left you in charge of a kingdom you didn't know was yours until only very recently!

"Tell me," your voice was stronger now, "what became of the perpetrator?"

You wanted to know the fate of the person who ripped your aunt away from you. Yes, it was magic that killed her, but you blamed the person, not the weapon. Arthur shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"He was immediately arrested and placed in a cell."

"Good," you nodded, "I should like to speak with him."

What you wanted to know was why. Why would he do this? Your aunt's kingdom was friendly to those with magic, so why target a friend rather than a foe. The handsome blond king in front of you was nothing but kind, but, if you were given a choice between his life and your aunt's, there would be no choice. Why her?

"The guards found him hanging there this morning." Arthur told you in a low voice. "His arms were bound and he was gagged. We don't think it was a suicide attempt; someone chose to kill him."

You didn't know how to respond. On one hand, you were glad in a twisted way that your aunt's murderer was dead. However, on the other you now had proof that the citizens of Camelot were not kind to magic. The whole ordeal made you feel sick. Arthur did not push the matter further, and you suspected it had a lot to do with the queasy look on your face.

He didn't protest when you asked both him and Gaius to leave the room.

The guard Arthur insisted stay near you nodded politely as he closed the door behind your leaving guests. You never really knew the proper decorum for dealing with a guard, so you just bowed your head in thanks and watched him take up his post on the other side as it swung shut. Once the door closed behind him, you allowed yourself to drop the semblance of tranquility and calm you were holding.

The full force of your aunt's death hit you like falling off a horse and hitting the ground. The air seemed to be pulled from your lungs and you were floating between right and wrong, day and night. Nothing seemed real, not except for the deep ache in your chest.

If she were still alive, she'd be here now at your bedside. You remembered a time, when you were younger, when you were dreadfully ill and she, even while ruling as queen, kept a constant vigil at your bedside. She soothed your fears and was a comforting presence during those dark times.

Though she never let you call her mother--"I'm not your mother, my love. She was a much better woman than I am"--some times you simply couldn't help but think it. And now she was gone. Oh gods. Your throat tightened up and you struggled to breath again.

Your eyes slammed shut and hot tears forced their way down your face. You buried your face in your hands, wishing that everything could just go back to normal. Wrenching sobs wracked your chest, but a noise outside the door alerted you to attention.

"Your highness? Are you alright?" You heard someone ask, knocking softly on the door. You assumed that it was one of Arthur's servants he'd sent to look after you; if you sent him back Arthur would only send more. You didn't want him to worry about you. As you were just now discovering, crown rulers had numerous things to think about at all times. You wiped your eyes quickly and turned your back to the door, pulling the blankets up over your shoulders. Maybe you could pretend to be sleeping and send him away quickly.

"Yes, I'm fine, but you may as well come in." You sighed. As royalty, Aunt Lysa had warned you that you'd never have privacy when you wanted it. Apparently that also extended to mourning.

The serving boy opened the door and stuck his head in halfway, almost apologetically. When you didn't protest, he stepped all the way through the door and closed it behind him. Now that you could see him entirely, you recognized him from the feast. He had been bickering with the king over whether or not it was proper for him to wear his hat--a monstrosity of feathers and velvet, really. In the end, Merlin won and the hat lay discarded for the evening. The memory made you smile slightly, a small ray of sunshine in the otherwise desolate world. As the firelight glinted in his eyes you remembered one more thing--he was also the one to pull you away from the danger.

You may have owed him your life.

"Arthur sent me to check up on you." He explained. "He knows what it's like to lose someone you love. He had a sister..."

Morgana. You knew. She had been missing for nearly a year now. Word had spread quickly throughout the kingdoms to look for her, but everyone feared the worst. Either she didn't want to be found or she was dead. You nodded understandingly. Poor Arthur.

"You may tell Arthur that I'm fine." You sighed. "If that's all..."

"Forgive me for being bold, my lady--your highness," Merlin cringed at his blunder, "but you're very clearly not fine."

You laughed hoarsely, tossing him a look over your shoulder.

"Your powers of observation are in-credible. How much does Arthur pay you?"

"Not nearly enough." He confessed, shrugging his lanky shoulders awkwardly.

You laughed at this, but immediately felt guilty. Still, it felt good to laugh. Talking with Merlin distracted you. Maybe that was Arthur's intention of sending him in the first place.

Over the next few days, Merlin was a frequent visitor at your bedside. Your head had sustained a bit of a massive injury, and Gaius didn't want to risk you hurting yourself any more, so you were restricted to bed rest. Merlin always seemed to bring the outside in with him, with stories of the Knights and whatever stupid trouble Arthur had gotten himself into recently, and those visits soon became the best part of your day.

One evening, Merlin stayed later than usual, not leaving to serve Arthur his dinner as he usually did.

"The prat actually gave me a night off, can you believe it?" He grinned, pulling up his favorite chair. You gently smiled in response.

"Merlin, if this is your only night off, by all means don't feel like you have to spend it here with me."

"Why? I like spending time with you. Besides, Gaius would like me to improve my patient management skills. How do you feel, patient?"

"Managed." You joked.

As the two of you sat and talked, the sun set and soon your room was rather dark, save for the fire in the fireplace and the few candles on the desk. You had a candle on your night table, and that seemed like the obvious solution.

It was an accident, really. You weren't thinking. That was your problem--Lysa would always tell you; you never thought before you acted. Before you could even think of the consequences, you'd used a little bit of magic to created a flame on the candle on the table for light. You heard Merlin gasp.

"Y-you have magic?"

You stared at him quizzically for a moment, thinking. If he betrayed you to the guards, what were the odds of you surviving? You really weren't sure, but, considering that Lysa was already dead there wasn't a terrible amount left for you to live for. Even if it would get you killed, why not tell the servant about magic? A fine idea, really.

"I know a little magic. Well, it's not much at all. Every bit I've got I had to fight for. Lysa believed that a good ruler had to know about all of her subjects. The magic users were simply the more marginalized ones."

"Oh." Was all that Merlin could say.

"I supposed you'll want to run off to Arthur and have me arrested." You sighed, wishing you'd heeded Lysa's advice and been more careful. You blew out the candle, watching the smoke rise and dissipate as if it were erasing all evidence.

"No! Well, actually, it'd be very silly for me to run off to Arthur. I'd be the biggest hypocrite."

"Oh?" You pursed your lips, parroting his word back at him.

Merlin merely raised his hand and the flame grew back where it had been. He used magic, just as you had done.

"That's vexing." You commented. "How could one of Arthur's closest friends keep such a big secret?"

Merlin reddened.

"I do it so he won't have to make that choice, to let me live or break the law. I wouldn't want to put him in that situation."

"I see." Such a thing would never happen in Lysa's kingdom. Perhaps Arthur had as much to learn from you as you did from him.

"Do you really protect magic users in your kingdom?" Merlin burst out asking, as if the question had been bothering him all day.

"Of course. They're people too, and have every right to be." You told him firmly. Aunt Lysa told you the same thing when you were young, frightened of the unknown.

"I've been told magic has no place in Camelot. D'you think that's true?"

"Well, you're here and I'm here and we both have magic, so I'd say that there is a place here."

The next few days quickly turned into weeks and then months while you were amidst a whirl of funerary preparations and beyond. There was no way you could successfully take Lysa's body back to be burned in her home kingdom, so Arthur graciously built her a pyre worthy of a queen. You were the one to light the torch, making a big show of doing it with flint and stone when you really just used your magic. It felt better that way, more elemental and natural.

As you watched the flames lick at the sky, you couldn't help but feel more alone than you ever had, even with Arthur on one side and Merlin at the other. Lysa, your last living family member, was gone and she left you enough responsibility for a lifetime. Too much, even.

How on earth could you rule without her?

Arthur had graciously advocated for your coronation ceremony to be held in Camelot, rather than returning all the way home to be legally allowed to rule and then coming back to finally get on with the peace treaties. You didn't want any more delays.

You requested that the ceremony be brief and austere. Out of respect for Lysa, it was done. No banquet was arranged, no orchestra merrily playing. Arthur, being the highest power in the kingdom, was the one to formally crown you. There was no one from Lysa's kingdom of a reputable stature to do it, so it had to be him. As you knelt before him, listening to the bland words of politics and formal sanctions, he lowered the crown onto your head.

The weight of it startled you.

It was cold, and heavy, and so unlike anything you'd expected. You remained kneeling, staring at the floor and simply allowing yourself to feel. Gods, you felt this gnawing emptiness inside. The floor hurt your knees, the crown hurt your head, the circumstances hurt... everything.

"Y/N?" Arthur gently prompted. There were no spectators, no one but Merlin, there to gasp at the breach of decorum. It was just the three of you.

"Are you alright?" Camelot's king asked the new queen.

"I don't know." You replied in a halting voice, straightening up. Arthur's hand was immediately there offering assistance and you gladly took it.

"Is your crown this uncomfortable too?" You asked. Arthur laughed heartily, nodding.

"It's unbearable." He agreed.

Following dinner that evening, you cornered Merlin in your chambers when he visited, more by habit now than anything else. You were seated staring out the window and Merlin was puttering around with the fireplace, adjusting the decorative objects on the mantle out of boredom.

"Merlin, I need your help." You lowered your voice, looking out into the courtyard below.

"Yeah?" He replied casually. Even to a Queen his manners were still the same. You wouldn't have it any other way. Turning to face him, you twisted your fingers together in your lap.

"I need a distraction." You said.

"Oh?" He replied, brushing his hands on his trousers and crossing the room to the window in a few long strides. "How can I help?"

"Make me stop thinking." You looked up at him helplessly.

As if the words were a gods-given command, Merlin snapped into action and his lips were on yours in an instant, a hand wound possessively in your hair. For a moment, it was everything. It was the press of his body against yours, it was the smell of his skin, it was the taste of his lips. After that moment it all cleared away and it was a blissful nothingness that took its place.

The steadfast, proper queen you had become was able to rest, to walk away, leaving behind the person with desires and needs. You grabbed and you took what you needed, decorum be damned.

Skin sweaty and bare, you tangled in each other's arms and let the candles burn themselves out. In the quietest hours of the night was your mind the most active. Fears and anxieties about the future crept in.

"Merlin," you whispered into the darkness, "I don't know how to rule a kingdom."

"If it's any consolation," came his response, "I don't either."

You grinned sheepishly, staring up in the general direction of the cieling. Merlin rolled over so that he could kiss the bare skin on your shoulder, lips warm on cool flesh. You absentmindedly combed your fingers through his hair, and he rested his head next to yours on the pillow.

"But you're not a queen. You don't have to rule." You continued, pursuing your lips. Surely by now news had already traveled home that Lysa was dead. How on earth will they react when you return? Alone?

"True," he considered, feeling the weight of the word on his tongue. What did it mean to rule? Arthur certainly wouldn't be sitting on the throne if it weren't for Merlin, so did that make him a ruler, too? Merlin wrinkled his nose. God, he hoped not.

"The success of a king--or queen--is as much dependent on their subjects as their prowess in ruling." He said thoughtfully.

"How philosophical of you." You rolled your eyes.

"I suppose you'll just have to take it one day at a time. Start with these peace treaties. No. Start with just one. One treaty. One doctrine. Then the next." Merlin kissed your forehead.

"I suppose so." You replied, feeling at peace for the first time since before you left Lysa's kingdom.

[daisy--sorbet]

heyyy, hope you’re having a good night!! if you have the energy and feel okay answering, what’s up w taz graduation? i haven’t checked it out yet but i was thinking ab it. just asking bc you’re the first person i saw talk ab the show having serious issues, but also feel free to not answer this!! hope you have a good week!

i took a nice hot bath, had a strawberry kiwi capri-sun, and did a nice face mask and i’m feeling pretty good - so, y’know what anon? let’s talk about it. 

for anyone who likes taz grad who sees this post: it’ll be tagged with “taz grad hate” (although i feel hate is definitely a very strong word - it’s for the simplicity of tagging it) - so please block the tag if you don’t want to see this post (especially because i put a readmore on a post before and it didn’t show up on mobile and instead gave the full post). mobile tumblr has a tag blocking system, so please feel free to use it! i don’t mind haha

anyway, so this is... probably going to be a lost post, and i wanna go ahead and preface it: this absolutely isn’t any hate on the mcelroys themselves. i love the brothers and their dad a lot, and while i doubt any of them would ever see this (or have it sent to them, or shown to them, because im pretty sure they try to distance themselves from this sort of thing), i just want to make it clear that criticizing a product is different than bashing a person. which brings me to the point of if i do end up sounding as if im bashing someone - please call me out on it! it’s not my intention to target anyone.

with that said, let’s talk about this campaign.

so my problems are as thus: the railroading, the shipping (a fandom problem, but it’s present in the podcast), the NPCs, and some misc problems others have addressed better than i have.

which. i know. that’s basically the entire podcast. (i promise i’ll bring up some positive points to balance it all out). keep in mind i’ve only personally listened to... what, six episodes? and it was enough for me to drop it. some people dropped it first ep, some dropped it ep four, and others are still forcing themselves to listen.

the railroading

there was a time i could handle travis and his railroading [making sure the story goes exactly the way he has planned], because it was the very beginning of the podcast and that’s what you can kind of expect from a plot-heavy podcast. hell, i wouldn’t mind it if the interactions and goofs weren’t a huge part of why i listen to TAZ in particular (which, by the way, is why amnesty still stuck out to me - even if there was a direction griffin wanted to push them towards, the interactions between the players (or players and npcs) made up for any railroading). it’s kind of hard to not railroad a little when it’s story-heavy and you’re trying to built up a world that you’ve put a lot of thought into. however, a huge part of d&d is the spontaneity. 

it’s kind of why i think balance was so popular. while there was railroading towards the end, there was the presence of improv that made it all good. most mcelroy content is enjoyed because of the goofs. the magic brian moment is memorable. the jenkin’s fight still stands out because it was funny (albeit a result of some bad rolls). the boys teasing angus sticks out because the four would play well off of each other. even without that - griffin had talked about how he had to roll with things (the fact he had planned for a fight atop the train, but ditched the idea for what his family members came up with instead). even in amnesty, a couple moments that stick out to me still are ned with the jetpack taking out a pizza hut sign, and the scene with the water where jake was trapped inside. they aren’t as fun, but they still stand out as “things i didnt expect to really end the way they did.”

with grad, it’s just. one after another. the thundermen want to subpoena a xorn? cool, let’s run with that until actually the xorn gets fed rocks and goes home and who cares about the subpoena now. fitzroy wants to keep his cloak? lets talk about it for a while and you also get no rolls to even try to keep it. fitzroy goes to meet higglemas in his office? oh, why are you here fitzroy? im going to keep asking you until you answer fitzroy? you arent getting out of this scene until you answer me, fitzroy, so just tell me why you’re here already, alright, fitzroy? 

and even later in a episode i read a transcript of: hey argo, remember how you have this whole secret motivation? fuck you, im gonna talk about it here in your dream and reveal it to listeners and remove any tension you had building up, and you dont get a choice to talk about it because this all-knowing villain knows all about it :)

and even NOW in the latest episode, there’s a comment that “we should cap argo’s skills here” instead of just... making the checks higher. rogues are good at certain things and usually arent the best in battles. better hope argo never makes it to level 11, because who knows how people are gonna handle the fact that he gets a skill that’ll make it so certain skills can’t have a roll below 10 (reliable talent). 

(griffin, thankfully, calls travis out for that, but still - travis, why would you even imply that, considering you should be aware of how rogues work considering magnus multiclassed into rogue and you played one on tiny heist?)

and in the newest episode, their Big Bad chaos (which, god, i personally hate that name) straight-out says “dont do this” to the thundermen. travis tries to say, on twitter, “a character saying “dont do this” is different than me saying it” but i need to point out that it’s one thing if you’ve said “no” in character but worked with the PCs doing otherwise, but the railroading says differently.

the shipping

ill try to make this quick, because it’s nothing to do with the fandom (ship however you want, man) - but i really feel the need to draw attention to this.

fitzroy, as confirmed by griffin in a ttazz episode, is asexual. not aroace, but ace nonetheless. and i find it... troublesome that the idea of rainer and fitzroy having a relationship is still pushed nonetheless, despite the fact that fitzroy (to my knowledge) was never once shown to reciprocate any feelings. not to be that person, but i really hope that grad doesnt have any sort of romantic relationships in it (at least - not between NPCs and PCs unless they’re actually like... warranted?). 

i dont know, man. one of my closest friends is ace, and i know she wants a relationship, but i think it would reassure her a lot to see an ace character who isn’t pushed into one in case she ever changes her mind. someone once mentioned that they hope fi/tz/ra/in doesnt happen because theres relationships that have that “oh, you can just date” and it goes upwards there to “oh, you can have sex just to please them <3″  (which, to be honest, is kind of a gross mindset - if someone isnt interested, they arent interested).

also, uh, the TTAZZ where griffin states this, there’s kind of the mention tht the whole sexuality question was posed in relation to the episode “creative thinking” (the dream one i mentioned earlier) - which. uh. i don’t know if anyone caught this, but... rainer straight-up wrote fitzroy a letter in the dream like “are you going to accept my proposal? a girl doesn’t like to be left waiting” which. leaves me with some gross feelings because uh.

if... if the whole thing about fitzroys sexual orientation was addressed here, then why would you push your ship anyway? feels kinda iffy, man.

to which i want to say: fitzroy can date. he’s allowed to date. griffins allowed to do whatever he wants with his character. but when a lot of the flirting is met with nothing, i’m not gonna see the chemistry there. just because travis ships it doesn’t mean it’s canon.

the npcs

ah yes. lets talk about the npcs.

there’s... a lot. a lot a lot. i think travis trimmed down how many were present in a scene, but uh. there’s still a lot. and... uh... i kinda wish there wasn’t?

look, i know im going back to balance/amnesty, but just. hang in there for a moment. chill with me. vibe. 

balance didnt have too many NPCs present at all times in each mini-arc. gerblins had some big names like barry, klarg, gundren, killian, yeemick, and magic brian. rockport limited had angus, jess, graham the juicy wizard jenkins, and all of the tom bodetts mentioned. 

amnestys first arc had mama, barclay, jake, dani, pigeon, kirby, minerva, and that was about it for like. big names? and not all of them were present in each scene. 

in the first episode of grad alone: gary, hernandez, jimson, rolandus, zana, rhodes, buckminster eden, rainer, leon, tomas, hieronymous, higglemas, stuart, jackle, bartholomeus, mulligan, groundsy, germaine/victoria/rattles (the skeleton crew). and those are the ones i wrote down (minus groundsy, who i just. ignores. idk him).

like holy shit, my english prof got onto me for having too many characters in my first chapter and i didnt even have half the amount listed there! 

it’s just a huge cast. does this take place in a school? yes! theres bound to be a lot of students present - but you don’t have to name every single one of them, at least not in the first episode!

the miscellaneous

i don’t know if travis ever actually addressed it, but wheelchair users have actually like... said that rainer’s introduction bothered them, because she was like “please ask me abt my wheelchair :)” when travis saying she was in an ornate chair would have sufficed. 

uh. the colonization vibes people have discussed within the centaur arc. mentioned here, the replies here, and this post (and its replies) here as well.

the overall lack of d&d when the campaign was kind of advertised as a return to d&d if i remember correctly

also no one seems to be taking literally any criticism at all which like. ignoring the petty shit, sure, but people have stopped donating to taz and their listener-ship must have dropped some during this entire time - you’d think that maybe someone could say “we need to find out why people dont like the thing and fix the thing” consider this is. yknow. their livelihood.

anyway uhhh 

tl;dr: travis railroads way too much (even now), the shipping in-game has become pushy and gross (especially bc its shoving a relationship onto an asexual character), theres too many npcs that dont stand out well enough, and no ones taking any criticism about the major issues with grad. 

[captainrandomstranger18]

My dearest Captain,

The story of Thaddeoso is much less exciting than one might think. Basically my grandpa told a story of this huge frog that hung around when my mom was young and they called him Thaddeus. Then then my cousins and I found this huge frog by the spring and my sibling suggested we call him Thaddeoso, so we did.

1. Could you maybe stop judging others and let them enjoy things in peace please?

2. All the ones I’ve seen so far (tos, aos, tng, and voyager)

3. That’s a hard one. I like all of them Janeway and Q and Geordi a lot though

4. I don’t know, I actually haven’t thought about it

5. Yep! I like most musicals, but I think my current favorites are Sweeney Todd, Singin in the Rain, and Cats (not the newer movie though)

6. Maybe maple cus we used to make maple syrup back at the first place I lived

7. You know what should be a thing? Space mythology. Like dragons who live in black holes and hoard light and sirens that mimic distress signals to lure spaceships into asteroid fields and vampires that steal the oxygen from your lungs (I have been thinking about this a lot today)

8. It’s currently tied between a black pair with neon kinda flowery/geometric shapes and a white pair with jellyfish

9. I haven’t been in public lately and I tend to tune out most of the other people in school so I don’t really have anything for this one. I hit my creative writing word count goal though! (8,000 words (everyone set their goals at 8,000 except this one kid who set his at 8,001))

I have never had a brookie, but it sounds amazing.

Yours,

L

Dearest L,

To continue the pattern of answering my own questions:

1. I would probably do 1 of 2 things (depending on my mood). Either I would tell everybody to treat all people with respect or kindness, or I would just rick roll everyone on the planet.

2. My favorites are also all the ones I’ve seen so far (I swear it is so hard to pick a favorite Trek! They are all so beautiful and wonderful and unique in their own ways, and its hard to compare them to each other.) These include TOS, TAOS, DS9, and TNG.

3. Data would probably be my #1 favorite, and my second favorite would be everyone else because I can’t choose.

4. I relate to Data’s curiosity and not understanding humans all the time, and I relate to Julian Bashir’s awkwardness. But the character I probably relate to the most is Reginald Barclay. Like every time he comes on screen and so much as breathes I’m like “MOOD. THAT’S ME RIGHT THERE.” I also relate to Riker because I like to put my leg up on random things.

5. I like a lot of musicals. My favorites would probably be Hamilton, The Fiddler on the Roof, and Bye Bye Birdie (I was in that one for my high school’s theater program. I was a background character.) Singin’ in the Rain is also really good, although I haven’t watched it in a while. I do remember my first time watching it, though. I was a little kid and I was at my grandma’s house and she got out an umbrella so we could dance along to it. :D

6. My favorite tree would have to be the Rainbow Eucalyptus: 

I’m sending pictures of the most amazing trees, you’ll be obsessed with all my forest expertise! (Sorry that was a Dear Evan Hansen reference) (I’m not even that big of a fan of the musical, that line just popped into my head right now) (Although Sincerely Me is sincerely a bop in my opinion.) (Dang that was off topic, where was I?) 

AH, yes. TREES!

I just-look at its colors. Asfshdjkds. I kinda want one tbh. Ok, fine, I really want one. The only issue is that they live in tropical climates and I DON’T live in a tropical climate so it probably wouldn’t do too well if I were to plant one here. Oh well. At least the internet exists so I can admire them from afar.

Here’s the wikipedia article on them if you want to learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_deglupta

7. First of all, can I just say that I LOVE THE IDEA OF SPACE MYTHOLOGY. That’s brilliant. And you’re absolutely correct. Why isn’t that a thing? THAT SHOULD BE A THING!!!! (Side question: do you mind if I use your space dragon idea in that Existential Crisis: The Musical that I’m sort of on a hiatus of writing? Like that,,,, is such a cool idea. The musical mostly takes place in outer space btw. Also if I do use it I’ll be sure to credit you! Even though I’m not actually planning on getting the musical published anywhere any time soon. Side-side question: should I credit you as “Mysterious Anonymous Tumblr User L” or something else? Side-side-side question: I actually forgot what I was going to type here but “side-side-side” is fun to say. OK I JUST REMEMBERED. Actually I just forgot again. Goshdarn adhd. OH I REMEMBERED AGAIN. Would you like to hear what my musical is about in a future letter? That is all.)

Dang i just went off on a tangent there (This is what it’s like when my adhd medication has worn off). What was question #7 even supposed to be?

*checks previous letter* Oh, to go on a rant of any sort. I think I just kind of did that on accident. Whoops. (Sorry you had to read my stream-of-consciousness ramblings about whatever the heck that was.)

ANYWAYS, I liked your space dragon idea so much that i drew this picture based on it, here you go:

sorry the camera quality is really bad lol. I tried (and failed) to make the dragon look galaxy-printed if that makes any sense. 

But dude- space mythology is my new favorite thing now.

8. My current favorite pair of socks are a pair I have that are fluffy with unicorns on them.

9. I haven’t been in public lately either lol. But congratulations on your writing goal! That’s a lot of words! :D

Brookies are, in fact, amazing.

Now for some new questions!

1. Since you mentioned previously that you liked Unnus Annus, and since I basically missed out on most of it, what happened in some of your favorite episodes?

2. Do you think reality is a simulation?

3. Do you have any cool random facts about anything? (it can be about LITERALLY anything. I like any and all cool random facts.)

4. Do you know what your hogwarts house is?

5. Do you have a motto of any sort?

6. Am I allowed to guess who you are, or should I wait for you to tell me? (I’m fine waiting, it’s just that I have a few guesses already)

7. Would you like to read my horrible Star Trek crack fanfiction.

8. Semi-Philosophical Question Time: How would you define freedom?

That is all! Thank you for continuing to write/read these letters. I look forward to them every day! To quote another musical, “Now my life gets better every letter that you write me!” (Sorry if that was dumb lol, im bad at this)

Yours Truly,

Captain

[iamjjmmma]

Sans’ Death in Handplates: WHO (I mean what) DUNNIT? (Featuring a Little Bit of Orthopedics

(Handplates is by @zarla-s)

Note: I am not trying to be morbid. I am not trying to be creepy. I’ve been studying medicine lately, and I've been reading up on diagnosing other people. I just thought it would be a fun thing to do and a great opportunity to teach others a little about medicine. Note that just like "Misery" itself, this does contain serious themes that may bring up trauma for some people, so if you do not feel comfortable with this, please hit the back arrow now. Thank you.)

In Tumblr user and artist zarla-s' comic "Misery", Sans dies of an unknown illness and Papyrus attempts to move on. Zarla has also mentioned that this comic was a "barely disguised vent [series] about death", making it a series entailing high personal expression. It's all beautifully sad, but there's just one problem...the illness is unknown.

So I, DETECTIVE PIKACHU, ask you to join me on the hunt to find this illness.

The good news is that Sans is a skeleton. This rules out all illnesses with other body systems, narrowing it down to a nice few hundred or so. (Don't worry! We'll only go through the more well-known ones.)

I’ve chosen to lay out six culprits here:

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Because most of “Misery” happened ex post facto,  we don't have the time or the interest to dive into much information about Sans' illness  However, we do know a few things. This illness is:

 -Fatal (uh, yeah) 

-Chronic. Chronic illnesses are illnesses that last for months or years. This isn't a very sudden (acute)  illness. If it was acute, it would likely result in Sans very quickly falling down and Papyrus having to take him to the hospital. 

-Progressive, meaning it gets worse over time instead of better. No, it does not mean the average Tumblr user, although medical terminology can be very confusing (that was a joke hardy har har).

-Very hard to treat. Alphys said there was nothing she could do for him, at least at the stage the illness was detected. If the current most brilliant mind in the Underground cannot do anything for him, I doubt anyone can. (https://zarla-s.tumblr.com/post/143139923780/i-dont-have-a-caption-for-this-sorry)

-Very unnoticeable, or at least noticeable enough to hide from at least one person until the final stages. 

In addition, we have to analyze Sans' demographics: Sans is male and approximately in his 20s.

So let's examine our first culprit: ARTHRITIS.

By far the most famous skeletal illness, arthritis involves the joints becoming inflamed. This results in them becoming reddened, painful, and swollen. 

Arthritis is chronic, which fits one of the requirements. In addition, it is also particularly difficult to treat, with most treatments being attempts to increase quality of life without treating the overall condition. 

Whether or not it can be hidden from others depends on pain tolerance and how severe the arthritis is. And while *some* cases of arthritis can be progressive, it differs from person to person.

But while arthritis can decrease quality of life tremendously, it is not fatal in the least. And while arthritis affects both men and women, it affects women more often than men. In addition, it famously affects older people, specifically those 60 and older. So Sans obviously does not fit in this demographic.

We can clearly see Sans does not have arthritis.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/arthritis/symptoms-causes/syc-20350772

https://www.emedicinehealth.com/ask_rheumatoid_arthritis_life_expectancy/article_em.htm

https://www.rheumatoidarthritis.org/ra/symptoms/progression/

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

The second culprit is osteogenesis imperfecta. 

Osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease, is very straightforward. The individual is born with brittle bones that can break easily, and sometimes for no apparent reason. is very rare, but is still relatively well-known. (And what's very interesting is that individuals who have this tend to have blue sclera from the defective connective tissue that comes with osteogenesis imperfecta. But we all know Sans' eyes are blue for a different reason...)

Osteogenesis imperfecta is definitely chronic, so we can knock it off that list. It is also almost impossible to completely treat, with most treatments aiming at boosting bone strength rather than reversing the condition. And all ages and both genders seem to be affected by the disease equally 

As with arthritis, whether or not the disease.is progressive differs from person to person.

But the only ways you can die from the disease are either respiratory complications in infancy and childhood or if complications arise from one of the factures, which both we'd definitely notice in the comic rather than Sans falling over on a hill (https://zarla-s.tumblr.com/post/141061451866/its-always-too-soon). In fact, the disease would be so noticeable that if Sans had this condition, we'd know from the first few pages.

So we can safely say Sans does not have this condition.

http://www.kjophthal.com/article.asp?issn=0976-6677;year=2017;volume=29;issue=3;spage=240;epage=243;aulast=Das

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15807-osteogenesis-imperfecta

http://www.oif.org/site/PageNavigator/AOI_Facts.html

http://www.oif.org/site/PageServer?pagename=RES_Glossary

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Ah, yes. The third culprit. Osteoporosis.

Also relatively well-known and a meme (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3NUIrVivPhso). Osteoporosis mainly involves bones greatly reducing in density. This causes pain, stiffness, a remarkedly changed stature, and most importantly, a higher chance of fractures. (I have lots of relatives and their neighbors who have this, and most of the time, even my hugs are little more than glorified pats.) Things like playful punches, bumps into the corner of the table, and tripping and falling turn from annoying to dangerous and fatal, especially for a 20-something-year-old. In fact, there are theories that the reason why Sans has 1 HP is because he has osteoporosis (https://www.google.com/amp/s/aminoapps.com/c/undertale/amp/blog/why-sans-has-1-hp-can-bleed/YWjI_bu1GjaVaNqa0pQ61oLaD4GozkE), but this is only for the regular Undertale timeline. In Handplates, we all know that Sans has 1 HP because of the nature of Gaster's experiment. 

Osteoporosis is definitely chronic and progressive. 

As with osteogenesis imperfecta, the only way you can die from osteoporosis is from complications with a fracture. And while it is difficult to treat, it is not so impossible that the most brilliant mind in the Underground wouldn't be able to do anything about it. It would be easy to hide in the early stages, but as it advances, it would become harder and harder to hide, which is something Papyrus would notice for months.

So we can see that Sans does not have osteoporosis. Sorry, meme world!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151108084919.htm

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Osteosarcoma, the third "osteo-" on this list, is more commonly known as bone cancer.

Osteosarcoma is, without a doubt, chronic. And while survival rates continue to go up due to advancing technologies, it still sits at 30 to 80 percent (the chances are probably worse for Sans because of his HP), depending on how early the cancer is caught. And as a society, we all know that any cancer under a 100 percent survival rate is a cancer that needs, that asks to be beaten.

Is it noticeable? Can it be treated? Those can be answered with a big fat IT DEPENDS. If the cancer has affected an arm or a leg, it would be very noticeable, but a bone like the ribs, the clavicle (collarbone), or the scapula (shoulder blade), could be relatively easily hidden by, say, a few layers of clothing or a hood. And treatment depends on the cancer's stage, available technology, and the patients' needs and desires.

Since there is nothing about this that gives any indication that "no, Sans definitely does not have this", this looks like the most likely culprit so far. But just to make sure nothing else is a likely candidate, let's continue down the list.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/osteosarcoma/symptoms-causes/syc-20351052

https://www.stjude.org/disease/osteosarcoma.html

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Osteomyelitis is when a bone becomes infected. Symptoms include a fever, chills, nausea, and swelling and pain at the infection site. (It's something I use in my stories whenever I want Sans or Papyrus to be sick, wink wink.)

When untreated, it is progressive, but it is pretty difficult to ignore simply because of how painful and weakening it is.

It can be hidden from others at its earliest stages depending on where it is, but eventually Papyrus would definitely notice Sans' pernicious fever and chills, and would most likely carry him all the way to the hospital. Is it fatal? It can be, but not in most cases. 

Treatments such as removal of the infected bone, antibiotics, and even draining the bone of the bacteria are available, making this the most treatable of all the conditions we have. In addition, osteomyelitis is definitely acute. It is possible to go home and look at your foot and go "oh crap, my bone's infected, guess I'll head over to the doctors, get treatment, and go back home and move on from this". Okay, maybe not like that. But you get the picture. 

Yeah...Sans DEFINITELY doesn't have this.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/178819.php

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/osteomyelitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20375913

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Paget's disease of bone is a disease that interferes with bone destruction and regrowth. Your bones don't normally just add on. Osteoblasts add new, stronger bone, while osteoclasts take away bone that is usually old and weak. However, in Paget's disease of bone, the osteoblasts are unusually active, which causes bones to become fragile and misshapen. 

It is chronic, and slowly but surely progressive.

However, there is no way you can possibly die from Paget's disease of bone or even suffer ill health effects that spread beyond the affected bone. And while not easily treatable, it can most certainly be helped by medicine that helps to regulate bone growth. In addition, there is no way it can be not easily noticeable, as a hallmark of this disease is unusual changes in bone structure. Also, it normally affects men in their 40's or older, and we know for a fact that Sans is not forty.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pagets-disease-of-bone/symptoms-causes/syc-20350811?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=abstract&utm_content=Pagets-disease-of-bone&utm_campaign=Knowledge-panel

https://www.medicinenet.com/pagets_disease/article.htm

So the culprit must be bone cancer. After further research, I discovered a likely offshoot of bone cancer called Ewing’s sarcoma.

Ewing’s sarcoma is a type of bone cancer that is almost eerily specific. It is almost exclusive to males around the age of 20, which is a good bet of what Sans is throughout “Misery”. Ewing’s sarcoma also has a grim life prognosis compared to other types of bone cancers. Normally, the survival rate is 80 percent if caught early, but for someone Sans' age, the life expectancy for Ewing’s sarcoma is a tragic 30 percent. And with someone with Sans’ condition, that percentage would most likely be much lower.

Again, it would be progressive, but easy for Sans to hide from Papyrus, at least in the early stages. 

Now, there is one iffy part of Ewing's sarcoma; treatment. Despite it being a life-threatening disease, there are multiple effective treatments. This would include surgery, which is impossible if we're assuming Sans would have it where he could hide it, like his ribs or his clavicle.

For radiation therapy and chemotherapy, they are both effective treatments.

But put yourself in Sans' shoes for a moment. Think about it. Both chemotherapy and radiation therapy can and will give you side effects that will greatly decrease your quality of life. But most importantly, they would put Papyrus- the most important person in your life-through watching you go through them. 

Alphys would then have to make the heartbreaking decision to send Sans home to die.

And that, my friends, is the crux of "Misery".

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ewing-sarcoma/symptoms-causes/syc-20351071

[princessmans]

About that “Return to Murder House” twist... (SPOILERS)

My first reaction to the revelation that Tate had been used by the Murder House as a vessel to create Michael was a mixture of disappointment and relief. On one hand, I loved being able to enjoy Tate running down the stairs to Violet like a little kid at Christmas, but I also felt like one of the greatest villains ever portrayed on screen had been cheapened by what felt a tad like fan fiction. 

To be honest, I always felt like Tate being manipulated by the house was a possibility based on some of the direction, dialogue and acting choices. It was what I WANTED to be true, but not knowing if this was the case, or if he really was just a psychopath, was what made him so scary to me and I felt like that fear had been taken away by a definitive explanation. 

However, the more I have thought about it and reflected on the events of Murder House and early episodes of Apocalypse, the more I think it works and is actually kinda brilliant. It makes Michael an absolutely terrifying villain and makes Murder House disturbing in a whole new way. I have compiled just a few examples here. Obviously, since this is Tate and AHS we are talking about, some topics may be triggering. 

Tate’s First Therapy Session

Most of what Tate says in his first session with Ben appears to be symptoms of some sort of mental illness - cutting and violent fantasies specifically. But analyzing his dialogue with “Return to Murder House” in mind makes what he says even more chilling. 

“I prepare for the noble war. I'm calm, I know the secret. I know whats coming and I know no one can stop me not even myself.” 

His mention of a noble war echoes Michael’s dialogue in Apocalypse whenever he talks about fulfilling his purpose and even the way he believes he is purifying/re-building the world through nuclear war. Additionally, Tate saying that even he cannot stop himself could be interpreted as pointing toward some form of possession where he truly is not in control of his actions. 

“The Indians believed that blood hold all the bad spirits, they would cut themselves once a month in ceremonies, let the spirits go free. There’s something smart about that. I like that.”

Again, this line - and the way that Tate does admit to self harm- can be interpreted as another symptom of the emotional pain he is obviously in. But now I can’t help but be freaked out by the idea that he subconsciously knew he was being possessed or at least manipulated by some sort of evil spirit. Tate even sees a vision of himself covered in blood - which he ignores and is never explained but introduces the idea of dual personas. 

The Rubber Man Reveal Scene

I have always found the Rubber Man reveal scene to be particularly strange in the way it seems to cut between two separate takes with two completely different choices on Evan Peters’ part - especially since we see him lower the mask twice. At first he looks horrified at what he just did, then it cuts to a more determined, villainous expression before cutting back to horror. 

In retrospect, the editing choice could be interpreted as revealing not just Tate’s inner conflict, but dual spirits in one body or at least a visualization of how Tate is being manipulated. If he was fully possessed in the way Mary Eunice was in Asylum then there is a whole other horrifying option to consider. If he was completely controlled by a demonic force, than Vivien is not the only victim of rape in the scenario - Tate is as well. However, I tend to lean towards more of a demonic influence and manipulation over full-on possession for reasons I will explain later. 

Inability to Kill Gabriel Ramos

Everything Tate does - apart from murdering his peers, but more on that later - is for a specific purpose. He either wants to appease or avenge ghosts in the house (Nora or Larry’s family who immolated themselves), help create and protect the Anti-Christ, or protect Violet from physical and emotional harm. His desire to kill Gabriel in order to give Violet a new boyfriend appears strong but he is ultimately unable to kill him. 

This final violent act occurs after Michael has left the house and is in the care of Constance - supporting Madison’s theory that the evil inside Tate did leave with Michael. Without it, Tate is unable to go through with the murder, despite how much he may want to in order to “help” Violet.

Not Remembering the Westfield Massacre

Tate’s claims to not remember killing 15 of his peers can easily be interpreted as denial or straight up lying in order to not lose Violet - though Evan Peters’ raw emotional vulnerability in some scenes has always made it difficult for me to not believe him. Re-watching these scenes now puts a whole different spin on his claims. 

Could he not remember what he did because he was not fully in control? I have always found the skull makeup in his visions to be an interesting choice, seeing as he did not wear it during the actual shooting. Another Tumblr user suggested that the skull makeup was his subconscious’ way of representing the devil that was influencing him and I agree that it comes across that way. 

Even if he does remember the murders on some level, he is unable to say why he did it- apart from his first claim that he did it to save his victims from the pain of the world. The scene where Violet finally confronts him about this shows him at his most vulnerable as he repeats “Why would I do that?” Again, this could be further denial or lying, but maybe he really doesn’t know. 

In what I always believed to be the most harrowing and disturbing scene of the season, Tate is shot to death by a SWAT team in his bedroom before one of the officers asks him why he did it. His death before he can answer has always been profoundly moving to me, not just because the audience is not given an answer as to why Tate did it, but because it reflects how the motivation behind school shootings is often left unknown. 

Now I just find this scene really depressing. In order for Michael to be born, Tate needed to die in the house in order to become a ghost. It is possible that the house/the darkness/the devil manipulated him to commit a mass shooting and return to the house and pull out a gun so he would be killed. 

Warning: The rest of this section enters the realm of even wilder speculation and theorizing less supported by facts. Skip if you want.

Of course, Tate could have just killed himself in the house, but it is my personal theory that in order for the Anti-Christ to be born, the spirit who fathered him would have to have committed horrible acts. In my mind it is sort of like Voldemort having to kill people in order to split his soul in order to make Horcruxes. I actually theorized this before “Return to Murder House” aired but I really don’t have anything to support this. Moving on. 

Michael Langdon is Hella Scary

I started to wonder if Tate’s actions were going to be explored while watching the first episodes of Apocalypse, especially after Michael delivered the following (amazing) line:

“I’ve never been a fan of getting my hands dirty. Learned that from my father. Always more fun to entice men and women to dirty deeds. Confirms what I’ve always believed...That all people, if given the right pressures or stimulus, are evil motherfuckers.”

Michael, according to Cody Fern, is the human form of Satan - which makes sense as a further perversion of the Holy Trinity. This means Satan, Michael and the Darkness that influenced Tate are one and the same. Even in the bunker we see Michael’s power over people to do awful things - Venable wipes out the Outpost with the apples and snakes Michael sent, and Mr. Gallant is tricked into brutally murdering his grandmother. 

This is what makes Michael the new most terrifying villain in AHS for me. Yes, he can make people’s heads explode, killed a great many small animals, and can literally wipe souls from existence. But what really scares me is his ability to “see into the dark places” of people’s souls and use that knowledge to manipulate people’s actions. 

This is why I personally find the explanation of Tate being full on possessed less interesting than him being manipulated. It seems to me that Satan/the darkness/the house/Michael whatever you want to call it, knew exactly what would drive Tate to murder and rape. So maybe Tate’s life would have been different if he had lived in a different house. Instead he was used by the Devil to create the Anti-Christ - completely ruining the lives of Tate, the Harmons, Chad, Patrick, 15 innocent students, and Constance in the process. There is even the possibility that the human side of Michael - the side that wanted to be good and grieved his grandmother - is also being destroyed by the demon inside him. That is pretty evil if you ask me. 

This leaves Tate’s character and morality in a weird place. He is certainly not a hero as he succumbed to the influence of the Darkness - even if he was possessed, he is merely a victim. But he isn’t a villain either. Redemption may be too strong a word, but I personally believe he deserves a little happiness with Violet. He even seems to have forgiven his abusive mother (why is no one talking about if she deserved to be with her children?) and has worked out a lot of his issues with Ben. I hope we see more of him.

So while I may be a little disappointed that Tate is no longer the greatest villain on AHS, his story builds up a villain who is shaping up to be really something special. 

Of course, there are still 4 episodes left. We may find out that Madison was lying, the magic dust was cocaine, Tate is actually evil and everything I just said is completely pointless. 

[loopy777]

I was browsing old threads in ASN (because I honestly have nothing better to do with my time atm) and I found out that, apparently, there was an ATLA book that was published before the series had ended and that pretty much spoiled all the events from the finale. Um... what the actual fuck? Whose stupid idea was it to publish a book like that before ATLA had even ended its run? Were you spoiled? Were the forums thrown in complete chaos? Thank god I didn't have internet connection back then.

Oh, wow, old ASN threads? I shudder to think what posts of mine you’re stumbling across. XD

But yeah, the Great Spoiler Season. Ah, those were wild times. Well, you know, as “wild” as online fandom gets for a kid cartoon. Lives were lost, heroes were forged, and Nickelodeon had its second stupidest moment in the history of the franchise.

Before I go into details, I just want to say that I think the ASN staff handled the whole thing very well. There were no good choices, but they made a choice, were decisive about it, and they all worked hard to make it the best choice. I’m about to describe a crazy situation, not try to throw shade at the people who had to deal with it.

So.

The craziest part of this is that the novelization of the finale was only PART of the situation. Just after I caught up and joined the fandom (right after DoBS aired), Nickelodeon stopped airing new episodes in the United States. But a Canadian affiliate went on to show two more episodes, The Western Air Temple and The Firebending Masters. And then Nick US proceeded to not show any new AtLA for SEVEN MONTHS. Of course, fans outside of Canada went ahead watching those episodes and wanted to discuss them. But then you had people who, for whatever reason, didn’t.

To protect the unspoiled, ASN created a separate Spoiler Board. So, for example, there were two shipping threads, one with spoilers and one without. The spoiler board was flooded with discussion, while the ‘outer’ board languished. People posted in both, but in the ‘clean’ one had to be careful to feign ignorance or just not talk about certain things. The mods edited posts as necessary, gave warnings, etc. It even got all grassroots, with a Spoiler Defense Force of spoiled users who would warn the others when spoilers slipped through and notify the mods as necessary.

This went on for FOUR MONTHS.

In April, a new DVD was going to be released that would contain the episodes aired in Canada, as well as additional episodes that hadn’t aired anywhere: The Boiling Rock, parts 1 & 2. We figured that Nick USA would HAVE to air the episodes before the DVD hit, right? Not helping was the discovery of a “press sheet” (scanned here) that claimed the finale would be airing in May.

(And also claimed that we would get 3 one-hour animated movies that would air on TV! The Mike and the Bryan have mentioned in interviews that they pitched a Finding Ursa special and were denied, so what were those movies supposed to be? Were they ever really approved?)

April rolled around with no aired episodes. New York Comic Con had a panel with the Mike and the Bryan, and news came out that the finale wouldn’t air until July. JULY?! What happened to the May release date?! The DVD came out. An employee in a Blockbuster Video store watched it before its official release and put spoilers about TBR online. We all struggled to accept that Zuko actually says, “That’s rough, buddy.” We all rushed to either buy the DVD or watch pirated rips. I watched a rip, and wondered if the sound was weird because Mai sounded a bit off.

An now the spoiled people were even FURTHER ahead of the unspoiled. The Spoiler Board was on fire. We knew about Mai’s betrayal of Azula and sacrifice! And we couldn’t say anything about it outside! It’s a good thing there was nothing like Tumblr, back then. Can you imagine if this chaos weren’t confined to message boards and Livejournal?

Then May came around, and we got... THE BOOK.

The novelization of the finale.

The ending of the story was released to the world in the form of a poorly-written kiddie book that simplified a lot and made some leaps of logic. (It claimed that Aang thinks of Katara at the crucial moment in the fight against Ozai.) So we had the normal discussion forum, the Spoiler forum where we could discuss the unaired episodes, and the ultimate spoiler THREAD where the novelization could be discussed- and only in that one thread.

Unlike the unaired episodes, a lot of people avoided the novelization. Again, I have to express gratitude that Tumblr didn’t exist, and also praise the ASN staff. I was among the ones who didn’t want to get any details from the book, and I managed to stay unspoiled for two months until the finale (and the last of the regular episodes) hit TV. I might have seen a few small details (I think maybe I knew about Zuko telling the gAang about the war meeting and Ozai’s plan, and an appearance by the White Lotus), but I definitely recall being surprised by most of the finale, so I couldn’t have been spoiled about much if anything.

And then, finally, the fandom was reunited once again. We all watched the finale, freaked out, and gushed for a solid three months.

The Why of it all goes back to that press flyer I linked above. Note how the finale is listed as airing in May, the same month the novelization came out, just a month after the New York Comic Con panel meant to hype it all. I believe that the original intention was for episodes to air in March and April, so that The Boiling Rock would have aired just before the DVD came out, and then the finale would have aired before (or at the same time as) the book coming out.

When the episodes were pushed back, nothing could done about the book release because it was already in the pipeline with the publisher and stores, so it came out as originally planned despite the weirdness. The publisher was probably thrilled; spoiler-junkies who wouldn’t have normally cared were buying the book. I think scans also went up online fairly quick, but I might be wrong.

But why were the episodes pushed back? It couldn’t be that they all weren’t finished, because TBR was on the DVD. Was the finale itself not finished, and so TBR was held back so that there wouldn’t be a big gap after the lead-up? That’s my best guess, but it’s also possible that some Nick executive looked at the schedule and decided, after things were already in motion, that July looked like a better environment.

And that is the story of the Seven Month Schism.

And it still isn’t the dumbest thing Nickelodeon has done with this franchise. XD

[delulusuga]

Skittles Ballerina Sherlock

I had a dream. And Sherlock was in it.

[Be patient, if you may. I PROMISE it has all the relevance to the title]

So apparently, Irene Adler was dead, and somehow, it was my fault. Apparently I’d involved her in some case in which I’d been receiving death threats or something [Irrelevant point: Irene and I made out once upon a time in return for a favour that she provided me with (A number of someone involved in the said case)]. 

Anyway, so Sherlock and I came back to 221B after a dinner or something..and I mentioned something that caught him off-guard and kind of angered him. And he as soon as we entered the flat, he started screaming about something. And I’m going to try to make the conversation argument as accurate as possible. [Okay I’m a new tumblr user and I don’t know how this shit works].

ME:  I’M NOT YOUR PROPERTY, SHERLOCK. YOU DON’T OWN ME...AND YOU DEFINITELY CANNOT TOY WITH ME... IT WAS MEANT TO BE A JOKE -

SHERLOCK: A JOKE? YOU DIDN’T REALIZE WHAT YOU WERE SAYING, DID YOU? NO, YOU DON’T THINK TWICE, DO YOU? *STEPS CLOSER* [#sexualtension] *WHISPERS* Everything you said....everything you did... you never really liked him. You hated the very sight of him. Couldn’t bear his touch. Ever. Yet, you led him on. YOUR FILTHY CASE WASTED ALL OF OUR TIMES -

ME: SHUT UP! YOU’RE LETTING OUT YOUR FRUSTRATION OUT ON ME, AREN’T YOU? WHAT ARE YOU? GUILTY? THAT YOU COULDN’T SAVE YOUR “FRIEND”? LISTEN, IRENE IS DEAD. AND YOU NEED TO ACCEPT THAT. *SEES EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE* OH DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT! I KNOW WHAT WENT AROUND BETWEEN THE TWO OF YOU! OF COURSE I DO! *STEPPING CLOSER* Listen, I don’t care what happened between the two of you. It doesn’t matter anymore. She is dead, and it wasn’t your fault. But I also want you to know, it wasn’t MY fault either. She was involved in th -

SHERLOCK: YOU GOT HER INTO TROUBLE.

ME: *SLAMMING MY HAND ON A TABLE* I DIDN’T, FOR GOD’S SAKE! SHE WAS A GODDAMN PROSTITUTE, PLAYING GAMES AND TOYING AROUND! OF COURSE SHE WAS IN TROU -”

SHERLOCK: GET OUT.

ME: WHAT?

SHERLOCK: GET OUT. NOW.

ME: OKAY. GOOD. BYE, SHERLOCK.

And so, I proceed to pack my bag and call my Mycroft to arrange a taxi [I had a bike that Sherlock had gifted to me, but I obviously couldn’t use it....DUH]. And while packing I slammed things and created an awful lot of noise and also got myself bruised on my left palm. However, I ignored it and walked out of the building.

I went over to my sister’s house... who was an assassin, apparently, and I slept on the couch and cried a teeny bit and fiddled with the promise ring that Sherlock had given to me on that very night, a few hours before the fight.

Anyway, I woke up to the sound of John screaming my name [I forgot what it was, but it was very fancy (DAMMIT)] And then, ah well, conversation:

JOHN: Congratulations.

ME: What?

JOHN: What the HELL happened last night?

ME: Shut up, John. Let me live for once.

JOHN: LIVE! OH - OKAY... FINE THEN. I’ll leave. *STANDING UP*, but let me just tell you, you’ve done a GREAT job. Congratulations. He fucking cried.

ME: *FREEZES* Wh - what? He cried?

JOHN: Yes, of course. Look, I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but I want you to go resolve it RIGHT NOW. And change your clothes. You are to look presentable.

ME: This is presentable!

JOHN: No, it isn’t. Shut up and do as I say. I swear I’m going to kill the both of you.

So, I reluctantly change, freshen up, etc etc. And I enter 221B. Sherlock is playing a sad, forlorn tune on his violin, facing the window. I got lost in the tune, standing by the door. After a few minutes, I took a step towards him, AND THE VIOLIN JUST WENT SHARPER. But I ignored that, and continued to slowly and precariously step towards him.......and while the violin went sharper and the pace of the tune [I’m sorry, I have NO knowledge about music and its terms] got faster, something that I had expected, at the same time, something else happened.

SHERLOCK STARTED TRANSFORMING INTO SKITTLES. LIKE A MAN MADE OUT OF SKITTLES. FIRST, HIS LEGS, AND SLOWLY, THE EFFECT SLOWLY MADE WAY TO THE REST OF HIS BODY. I CONTINUED, TO STEP CLOSER, HOWEVER, AND BY THE TIME I WAS JUST ONE STEP AWAY FROM HIM, HE’D  TRANSFORMED FULLY INTO SKITTLES, AND SOMEHOW, HE WAS STILL HOLDING THE VIOLIN, THOUGH HE WASN’T PLAYING IT. AND THEN, I RAISED MY HAND AND PLACED IT ON HIS SHOULDER, AND THE VIOLIN FUCKING FALLS TO THE FLOOR.... AND UP GOES HIS LEG... AND HE BASICALLY DOES THIS SPLIT [STANDING] AND TWIRLS AROUND LIKE A BALLERINA AND STARTS DOING OTHER BALLERINA STUNTS AND THAT IS BASICALLY HOW HE KEPT ME FROM COMING CLOSER TO HIM. HE HAD TRANSFORMED INTO AN ANGRY SKITTLE BALLERINA AND IT WAS THE MOST TERRIFYING THING I’VE EVER SEEN.

TLDR; I HAD A DREAM AND I WAS HIGH. I NEED NEW SHERLOCK EPISODES BECAUSE I JUST KEEP CREATING NEW REALMS OF INSANITY WITH EACH PASSING SECOND. I’LL KEEP YOU UPDATED ON ANY MORE SUCH PSYCHOTIC DREAMS IF I HAVE ANY. THANKS.

PS: I just re watched a Sherlock episode yesterday, and it’s been less than 24 hours and here I am.

[chariot313]

Western social media has no respect for Japanese online artists - and it’s killing online art

The visual arts have evolved to suit the most popular medium of each era. In nowadays’ case, the internet is the go-to method of sharing the fruits of one’s labour). However, as stated in that tweet thread of mine you can see if you scroll down a bit (assuming you’re viewing this post on chariot313.tumblr.com) different cultures have different attitudes towards how their customers react to their products. This include you know what fuck the formalities, I’ll just say it: The exclusively western concept of someone seeing something they like online and hitting the share button to stimulate the “Haha, upvotes go ‘brrr’!” dopamine in their smooth-ass lizard brain will be the death of online Japanese artists. Or rather, it has been already, and you would know that if you’ve ever seen an artist’s Twitter bio be in mostly Japanese save for one sentence in English; “Reprint is prohibited.”.

If you want to hear me rationalize the absurd claim I just made, feel free to click the “Keep reading” button. Otherwise, turn back now and save yourself from me possibly wasting your time.

Alright, you’ve chosen to stick with me. Just remember, you asked for this.

Introduction

Social media as a whole is based around sharing (posting, uploading, submitting, tweeting, blogging, streaming etc.) and other’s reactions to what one has shared (views, likes, subscribers, favorites, followers, upvotes, retweets, reblogs, crossposts, etc.).

However, miscommunication and culture shock due to language barriers and cultural differences is one of the many factors that can negatively affect one’s experience on social media. For example, the Japanese artist community, active on sites such as Twitter, Pixiv, NicoNico Seiga, FC2 blogs, etc.. Twitter is mostly inhabited by English-speaking users. Here in the west, our main motive for sharing something on social media (such as art) is for fame and recognition. However, over in the East, most online artists only upload their works to the internet for personal use. I’m not saying one cultural attitude towards sharing art is better than one another, but when these two worldviews collide, the culture shock can negatively affect the careers of artists who are unaware of the other culture’s differing views on sharing art.

So, I’ve listed numerous social media platforms below and I’m going to elaborate on how each of them contributes to the alienation and discouragement of Japanese artists.

DO NOT WITCH-HUNT OR HARASS THE CULPRITS I’VE LISTED AS EXAMPLES; THEY ONLY SERVE TO BACK UP MY ARGUMENT

Twitter

Go into the twitter search bar and type in the name of an anime character (usually female). What do you find? Most likely an account named after said character that does nothing but post unsourced fan art of said character with cheesy “in-character” captions on them.

Exhibit A [NSFW]

Exhibit B [NSFW]

Exhibit C [very NSFW]

Aside from that, Twitter isn’t that bad in this regard, as a lot of the art that gets stolen is originally uploaded to Twitter anyway. But I’m just getting started. 

Wattpad

Ah yes, Wattpad. One of the “trinity” of fan fiction communities (the others being fanfiction.net and AO³), featuring many different stories with varying degrees of readability. The problem is the option to add a picture to adorn your fanfiction, at which point most of the authors google “<fanfic subject> fan art” and use something from there without considering the repercussions. This causes Wattpad to be one of the top results when reverse image searching to find the source of some fan art, aside from another site I’ll mention later on...

Reddit

There’s a subreddit I often browse called r/ChurchOfJirou, a community for sharing anything relating to the character Kyouka from My Hero Academia (I mean come on, she’s like the cutest thing ever). A lot of the posts on that sub are sharing fan art of the aforementioned character. One of the rules in the sidebar is “always include the source in the title or the comments”. And most of the submissions make good on that rule. However, a lot of the posts are from Japanese artists on Twitter or Pixiv, and following the source link leads you to find the artist’s bio, which usually has something along the lines of “don’t repost my work”. And what’s more, the biggest offenders (of submitting art to the sub without OP’s permission) were the moderators of the subreddit. You know, the ones who are supposed to be enforcing the rules? I even got so fed up that I called it out, to which one of the mods replied,

“It doesn’t really make a difference, does it?”

Luckily, not all subreddits are like this. For example, other MHA-related subs like r/BokuNoShipAcademia or r/ChurchOfMinaAshido have moderators that are more considerate of artists’ wishes. Overall, Reddit is usually a hit-or-miss when it comes to this kind of thing. At best, you’ve got subs like the two I just mentioned which make sure to respect artists, and at worst you’ve got people trying (and failing) to edit out watermarks. Also, not to self-promote, but this tweet of mine represents this situation pretty well:

Imgur

Imgur isn’t that bad compared to the rest of these, but it’s a common one that people link to when asked for the source of whatever they’ve shared on Twitter or Reddit or whatever.

Amino Apps

Amino Apps is a strange case. I don’t know much about it since I’ve never used it, but from what I do know it seems similar to Reddit in that there are numerous communities for different niches. That said, judging from the way it clogs up Google image search results, I doubt OC art is posted there often.

YouTube

Now, you may be thinking, “How does a video site rip off others’ art?”. The answer is uploads of soundtracks. Look for any OST from a video game or anime on YouTube and the picture used for the video will likely be some fan art by a Japanese Pixiv artist, usually one that forbids reposts of their work. Not only that, but if the uploader did bother to add the source in the description, it’s usually not even a link to the actual source, more likely a link to Zerochan or Pinterest or something. Now take into account that some of these videos get millions of views. Imagine working hard on something, and some numbnuts takes it, slaps some music onto it, uploads it to YouTube, and gets millions of views while you get next to nothing in comparison.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B (re-upload; original had nearly 40 million views before it was copyright claimed)

Exhibit C

and many many others

Pinterest

Alright, this is the big one. When Pinterest isn’t giving recipes or wardrobe ideas to suburban white moms, it’s clogging up Google reverse image search, punishing anyone who just wanted to find the source of some cute fan art. I feel like this meme by ZebitasMartinexSi on Facebook sums it up:

For example, this piece of Legend of Zelda art by Twitter artist @_nomeri_ (I’ll just link to it, since it would be hypocritical of me to embed the image even though @_nomeri_’s bio warns people not to repost their art). Good art, right? Well, if you right-click and hit “Search Google for image”...

...yeah. Pinterest is a plague. It thrives on theft. Even worse is when someone will post fan art on Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit/etc. and have the nerve to say “IDK the source I found it on Pinterest ^_^”. Or worse yet, they link to Pinterest saying it’s the source.

Instagram

While many other sites rag on Instagram for its reposting of memes, it’s no better when it comes to reposting fan art, especially from Pixiv. I’ve seen lots of stolen pieces with fan fictions written in the description. Personally, if I were an artist, I’d rethink my career choice if I saw my art reposted on Instagram with a half-assed fanfic under it, so I don’t blame Japanese artists who close their Pixiv accounts after seeing that. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to prevent it from happening in the first place.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is more “renowned” across the web for its niche circles of bizarre fetish art, but in its defence, there are some legitimately good pieces on there. If you do find a good one though, try checking to see if all of the uploader’s pieces have a similar overall art style, because if not, that’s a sure sign of someone passing off some Pixiv user’s art as their own, which is unfortunately fairly common on DeviantArt.

9Gag

Not a whole lot to say about 9Gag. I mean, it does contribute to reposting of art, but nothing really separates it from the others on this list, aside from its watermarks. At least the watermark gives away the fact that something was reposted.

Know Your Meme

You know that Zelda pic by @_nomeri_ I was talking about earlier? Well, to add insult to injury, it became an object-labelling meme.

Imagine putting hours into something and politely asking others not to repost it, only to find that some nincompoops on r/DankMemes made it into an object-labelling meme.

But this isn’t KYM’s fault, per se. Know Your Meme only documents memes; they do not create them. However, as someone who regularly browses the Know Your Meme image galleries, I can say that the image gallery has essentially become Know Your Fan Art (unlawfully reposted fan art, that is).

Redbubble

There’s an NSFW artist I follow on Twitter by the name of Nico-Mo. A while ago, his Pixiv account was suspended, and there were numerous pictures on there that he had not uploaded to his Twitter or DeviantArt, so I found a mirror of one of those pieces on Gelbooru and reverse-image searched in hopes of finding it on his Twitter. No such luck. What came up instead was a .png of the piece made into a sticker being sold on Redbubble. In fact, that’s one of the major reasons why artists disapprove of their art being reposted, as it may find its way onto a sticker or a T-shirt being sold as merch without the original artist giving consent nor the artist receiving so much as a single nickel.

Facebook

Surprisingly, I think Facebook is one of the least offending sites on this list. Still worth mentioning, though.

Funnyjunk

Like Imgur, Funnyjunk isn’t that bad compared to some of the rest of these, but this exchange in the comments of a repost of an MHA artist that deleted their account (not hard to see why considering people straight-up ignored the big-ass watermark at the bottom) is proof enough of western social media’s flippant attitude towards ruining online artists’ careers.

Aggregator imageboards such as Yande.re, Konachan, Danbooru, Gelbooru, Rule34, SankakuComplex, Zerochan, etc.

I don’t think I need to explain these. But like Imgur, these are what most people link to when asked for source instead of bothering to find the original post.

We Heart It

I don’t know much about “We Heart It”, but it seems to be a “Pinterest Lite” considering it clogs up image search almost as much as Pinterest does.

iFunny

Basically the same as 9Gag, in the sense that its watermarks are a dead giveaway.

4chan

I’m not sure if 4chan really “counts” among these, as it’s a chat board where nearly everything is impermanent anyway. However, I was once on an NSFW subreddit where one submitter used a 4chan thread to get Patreon-exclusive material from an artist to upload to the sub (even though one of the rules of the sub was “no paywall content”), so that alone earns 4chan its spot on this list.

Tumblr

Yes, not even Tumblr is innocent. Although I’m sure you knew that. Similar to what I said about Twitter, look up any blog named after a fictional character and it’ll likely be chock-full of unsourced fan art.

“Why is this even important?”

Because if an artist sees that their work is being reposted, depending on the artist, they may delete the original post when they wouldn’t have to if people had just respected their wishes. Now, if an artist wants their works gone from the internet for other personal reasons, that’s up to them and we should respect them for it. But artists taking down their works due to mass reposting is 100% preventable, which is why it’s sad. If you don’t respect an artist, they won’t create art. Simple as that.

“Why do you care so much?”

Eh, I’m just weird like that. It just ticks me off when anything online, whether it be art, or a video, or whatever, is lost. In my opinion, nothing hurts more than clicking a Pixiv link on an imageboard and being greeted with “The work was deleted or the ID does not exist.”.

“But lots of western artists forbid reposting of their art too!”

Indeed, that is correct. But while many artists of every nationality and culture frown upon reproduction of their work, it seems only western social media is responsible for reposting art in the first place. I mean, why else do you think Japanese artists are saying “Reprint is prohibited” in English when the rest of their bio is in Japanese? Because English-speakers are the ones reposting.

“But exposure can help an artist!”

Yeah, that’s true...

...but “exposure” doesn’t mean much if those “exposed” to one’s work don’t know or care who it came from.

And if you need even more reasons, look no further than these posts about the same topic by other blogs:

https://cranberrywitch.tumblr.com/post/143456002228/stop-reposting-art-from-japanese-artists

https://thegospelofnagisa.tumblr.com/post/143308182398

https://edendaphne.tumblr.com/post/163117317030/ive-been-wanting-to-make-this-educational-cheat

https://marklightgreatsword.tumblr.com/post/190056977650/discourage-art-theft-in-fandom-in-2020-dont

https://letusrespectpixivartistconsent.tumblr.com/post/92189994896/why-is-this-important

also, not to self-promote but I made a thread on Twitter on this topic about a month ago that you can check out here.

That’s all.

posted Jun 14; last edit Jun 21

[tanadrin]

Utopia: A How-To Guide

So, I picked up "Utopia For Realists" by Rutger Bregman at Dussman yesterday, somewhat intrigued by its title; based on the blurbs inside the cover and the summary on the back, I was expecting something, well, a lot more utopian: a look at crazy pie in the sky ideas which sound terribly interesting but also are ridiculously impractical. In reality, the book is much more modest. It's basically a 250-page, meticulously footnoted argument for a modest progressive political program, written in an informal and approachable style, which has some (fairly restrained) rebukes in it toward leftism that's more about shoring up the identities of activists, or aiming at poorly defined abstract goals than actually improving people's lives. I don't think many people reading this will substantially disagree with the ideas Bregman presents, but he condenses a lot of persuasive arguments in favor of them into a single place, and in a form which I think is likelier to appeal to the average person interested in politics as opposed to the average rationalist-adjacent Tumblr user.

Notes I made and passages I highlighted:

The opening chapter is basically about how much *better* the modern world is than the world of the recent past; this is probably obvious to anybody who's at all sympathetic to Whig history or interested in technological progress/transhumanism, but Bregman is making a larger point here: a lot of the things that were hilariously impossible Utopian dreams in the past we have achieved, and we've achieved them precisely because people were capable of imagining absurd Utopias, and refused to give up on them until they achieved them. In contrast, Bregman contends, most contemporary politics is patching minor deficiencies in the current system--important, to be sure, but this work doesn't provide a structure for forward progress, and we're in danger of stalling out, and letting runaway income inequality and other issues derail our forward momentum as a civilization--and cause a lot of unnecessary pain in the process. I really like the chart on p. 3, which charts life expectancy and per capita income across the world in 1800 versus today; even the most wretched country in the 21st century is doing better than the most prosperous country in 1800. The Netherlands (Bregman's home) and the U.S. had life expectancies of about 40 and per capita incomes of about $3,000 or less in 1800; even Sierra Leone and the Congo are doing better in terms of life expectancy now, and a large but still developing country like India is trouncing U.S. per capita income in 1800. The world has gotten a *lot* better, in other words, even if it still has a long way to go.

p. 7-8: Bregman cites a figure saying that vaccines against measles, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, and polio, which are notable for all being "dirt cheap", have saved more lives than would peace would have in the 20th century. That's a frankly astonishing figure, if true. His source: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-identifies-the-areas-in-which-increased-development-spending-can-do-the-most-good

p.9: For people concerned about IQ, Bregman points out that IQ has gone up an average of 3-5 points every ten years due to improved nutrition and education. This reinforces my belief that any attempt to work out whether IQ actually varies significantly among different human populations due to genetic factors is basically doomed from the get-go, since that information is hopelessly confounded by other factors (and because an evolutionary biologist once told me strongly selected-for traits like intelligence is in humans should be expected to vary by very little in any species; if IQ did vary strongly among between populations for genetic reasons, it would be *very unusual* in that regard).

p. 12-15: Bregman wants to distinguish between two kinds of Utopia: "blueprint" utopias, as he calls them, where you decide what the Utopia looks like ahead of time and how to get there, and then spend all your time and energy forcing society to fit that mold--via revolution, dictatorship, terror, etc., whatever means will achieve your ends--verses a more ideal (idealistic?) kind of utopia that's about broadening possibilities of the future. This is more just about not saying "no" reflexively to weird ideas: instead of saying "Ah, UBI is nice but it's a crazy idea," you look at what it *would* take to achieve it. This also entails being able to criticize your own ideas--and to adapt them when they prove not to be working. Honestly, I don't think this is necessarily utopianism at all: I think this is ordinary progressive politics, seeing a critical flaw in society and demanding we work our utmost to change it rather than saying "good enough." If this feels utopian then it's because our standards for what is achievable have fallen sharply in the last thirty or forty years (more on that later).

p. 17-19: Even Bregman is not immune from the occasional tiresome moral panic. Angst about narcissism in a pampered generation; none of this is central to his thesis, though, just shallow culture criticism.

p. 34: Discussion of the Mincome experiment in Canada, which was started by a lefty government in Manitoba, shut down by a righty government that came to power after them, and whose results remained unanalyzed in for decades in the National Archives. The researcher who dug up these files after they sat gathering dust for years and years? Evelyn Forget. You cannot make this stuff up. (@slatestarscratchpad, I know he appreciates this kind of thing).

p. 37-8: I knew about Mincome; I read an article about it a while back, when UBI was just getting into the news. I did not know there were four other UBI experiments in North America around the same time, all in the U.S. The U.S., in fact, for a tantalizing moment in the Nixon administration, was relatively close to implementing something like UBI, as a way of eradicating poverty. For various reasons, including a century-and-a-half old British government report (more on that later), the bill failed; but America came very close to implementing a safety net that by the standards of our present political moment is *very* Utopian. And, I can't stress this enough, this was under Richard Nixon.

p. 55-62: A section entitled "Why Poor People Do Dumb Things," which basically takes various scientific studies and uses them to argue that poverty 1) makes idiots of us all; 2) is self-perpetuating, and as a result 3) is really, really hard to escape unless the immediate cause of the psychological stress it produces--i.e., an acute lack of money--is removed. Also probably a good answer for why poor *societies* continue to be poor; I can't imagine these cognitive limitations Bregman is talking about go away just because more of your society is experiencing them.

p. 58: "So in concrete terms, just how much dumber does poverty make you? 'Our effects correspond to between 13 and 14 IQ points,' Shafir says. 'That's comparable to losing a night's sleep or the effects of alcoholism.'" I don't know much about IQ, but I feel like 13-14 IQ points is *a lot of IQ points.* And again: the fact that this effect is so large makes me think any attempt to search out a genetic source for IQ variation is futile.

p. 59 mentions an interesting experiment to control for individual variation in IQ by comparing the performance on cognitive tests of farmers in India who make almost all their income right at harvest. Just before and just after harvest gives an opportunity to compare differences in performance  when cash is tight versus when cash isn't night in the same group of people (the effect found in other experiments, including ones in the developed world, seeemd to hold).

p. 68: Arguments with lefty types like my family often result in somebody bringing up the fact that capitalism necessitates the creation of a poor underclass, to which everyone promptly agrees as if this is the most obvious or well-studied fact in human history. This drives me *nuts*, because it's one of those wild overreaching statements that makes an *empirical assertion* about a facet of economics and society that, being empirical, should be verifiable or falsifiable (or which at least some form of evidence for or against could be acquired). But I've never seen a single study cited in support of this notion; never seen even a lazy historical analogy drawn between societies experiencing similar conditions but with different economic systems to support this argument. It's Aristotle-level laziness about the empirical universe: Capitalism is bad, poverty is bad, therefore capitalism causes poverty. I know I'm the world's worst leftist, but things like this are why: we would rather repeatedly assert a statement which comforts us that we are on the right side of history than critically investigate the assertion (repeated by a legion of leftist political philosophers) that might require us to confront the fact that the leftist understanding of economics is... deficient. To say the least. And that if you are going to make empirical assertions about the structure of society and about its economic organization, you had better know what you're talking about, or you run the risk of creating a leftist empire built on ideology that collapses when it is forced to confront reality. *coughtheentirewarsawpactcough* On p. 68, Bregman cites an *actual* example of an economic system that necessitates the existence of an underclass. It's mercantilism, the system capitalism replaced (and which has been lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty ever since).

Dryly observing the fact that capitalism has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty, of course, gets you tarred and feathered as a neoliberal or even (inexplicably) a fascist in some leftist circles (like my family). It doesn't matter if you still think capitalism has grievous shortcomings; you must participate in the Ritual of Blaming Everything on Capitalism in order to qualify as a real leftist, apparently, which makes me feel like one of those Dutch atheists in the 17th century who had to say "well of *course* God exists" before being able to make my argument as to why burning bushes aren't real and basing your society on a Bronze age ethnic mythology from the Middle East is a terrible idea.

p. 70-71: It's weird to lump Utah and the Netherlands into the same category, but the two polities in the 21st century who seem to have first discovered how to eliminate homelessness are... Utah and the Netherlands. Spoiler alert: giving people homes is relatively cheap.

p. 79: Speenhamland, which sounds like a budget brand of meat spread you occasionally see in the grocery store but never have the courage to try, is really the source of a lot of our problems around just giving poor people money. We can, strange as it sounds, probably blame an obscure, 170-year-old English experiment in basic income, and the inquiry that followed it, for the failure of the idea during the Nixon administration--and, subsequently, the U.S.'s rightward shift toward welfare 'reform,' a revival of the notion that there is deserving and undeserving poverty, and that if you're poor, it's because you're lazy.

Martin Anderson, one of Nixon's advisors, used excerpts from Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation"--specifically, the bits about the Speenhamland system--to turn Nixon off his plan for the Family Security System in 1969. Polanyi presented a damning indictment of the Speenhamland system based on the parliamentary inquiry used to justify dismantling it, and indeed the original report was harshly critical of the system. Trouble is, the report was mostly written before the results of the inquiry were gathered; and the numerous surveys and interviews conducted during the inquiry were almost entirely aimed, not at the people who actually benefitted from the Speenhamland system, but clergy and landowners who were critical of it from the beginning. The comissioner responsible for the report had written the draconian Poor Laws he wanted to implement before the report was even begun; even the leftist criticisms (from Marx and Engels) of government assistance were based on the lies of Speenhamland, alienating the left from its natural ally when it came to alleviating the condition of the poor, i.e., the only institution in society powerful enough to solve massive coordination issues like wealth redistribution. Lucky for us, modern leftists don't regard Marx and Engels as writers of scripture whom we dare not criticize for their imperfect knowlede of economics that is 200 years out of--wait, shit.

p.88 spells out for the first time in anything I've read what the demographic transition actually entails; I've always been slightly muddled as to why people want to have less kids when they get richer; if nothing else, if people like having kids and they have more money to support them, why wouldn't they have more? I always figured I was just missing something. And I was! People don't have lots of kids pre-demographic transition because they like having kids; they have lots of kids because that's the only insurance they have that when they're old there will be someone to care for them. More children provide more economic stability; so when society is more prosperous, when you can save money to retire on, and when the government implements a safety net, the birth rate drops--down to a level which more closely resembles how much people *actually like* having children. Having birth control available helps; but sometimes it just means people marrying later, or (probably) having different kinds of sex. This implies 1) modernity isn't 'destroying families,' it's just that people don't like having big families nearly as much as either the traditionalists or the evolutionary psychologists would assume, and 2) the demographic transition is probably permanent, i.e., we're not going to see the birth rate mysteriously start creeping upward in a hundred years in rich societies once we've adapted to our current levels of affluence. (Most) people just don't like having kids as much as we might naively assume.

A lot of bonus stuff in this part from people like Malthus who woefully misunderstood the psychology of poverty. And, sadly, their ideas are actually not all that out of date.

p. 91-2: "Now and then politicians are accused of taking too little interest in the past. In this case, however, Nixon was perhaps taking too much. Even a century and a half after the fatal report, the Speenhamland myth was still alive and kicking. When Nixon's bill foundered in the Senate, conservative thinkers began lambasing the welfare state, using the very same misguided argumetns applied back in 1834.

These arguments echoed in 'Wealth and Poverty,' the 1981 mega-bestseller by George Gilder that would make him Reagan's most cited author and that characterized poverty as a moral problem rooted in laziness and vice. And they appeared again a few years later in 'Loosing Ground,' an influential book in which the conservative sociologist Charles Murray recycled the Speenhamland myth. Government support, he wrote, would only undermine the sexual morals and work ethic of the poor.

It was like Townsend and Malthus all over again, but as one historian rightly notes, 'Anywhere you find poor people, you also find non-poor people theorizing their cultural inferiority and dysfunction.' Even former Nixon adviser Daniel Moynihan stopped believing in a basic income when divorce rates were initially thought to have spiked during the Seattle pilot program, a conclusion later debunked as a mathematical error."

p. 95: "Lately, developed nations have been doubling down on this sort of 'activating' policy for the jobless, which runs the gamut from job-application workshops to stints picking up trash, and from talk therapy to LinkedIn training. No matter if there are ten applicants for every job, the problem is consistently attributed not to demand, but to supply. That is to say, the unemployed who haven't developed their 'employment skills' or simply haven't given it their best shot."

Related: every time I see somebody say something about how all we need to do is train West Virginia coal miners to code, I want to bang my head on a wall. Look, I've never met any West Virginian coal miners, but I have known middle aged people from the South who use a computer maybe for an hour a week, and maybe from within your bubble computer skills are something anybody can easily acquire, because everyone you know is comfortable in that environment and easily navigates the metaphors of, say, object-oriented programming and smartphone interfaces, but I *promise* you the problem is so much harder than you understand. It's a proposal that is at once condescending and infuriatingly naive, and unfortunately it's a general pattern that applies to a lot of the bandaid solutions people have for the growing American precariat. Just give them money. Let them decide what they need. Just give them money!

p. 104: Bergman is frustrated by the shortfalls of GDP as a measure of a country's prosperity--and don't worry, he's not impressed by Bhutan's "Gross National Happiness" either. "Bhutan rocks the chart in its own index, which conveniently leaves out the Dragon King's dictatorship and the ethnic cleansing of the Lhotshampa." (p.118)

He makes some good points--GDP is a more subjective measure than people like to admit; it's hard to measure the produce of certain kinds of work, like Wikipedia which provides tons of practical value to society but is free; in GDP terms the ideal citizen is a compulsive gambler with cancer going through a drawn-out divorce he copes with using massive amounts of antidepressants.

p. 106: "Mental illness, obesity, pollution, crime - in terms of GDP, the more the better [because fixing these problems generates economic activity]. That's why the country with the planet's highest per capita GDP, the United States, also leads in social problems. 'By the standards of the GDP,' says the writer Jonathan Rowe, 'the worst families in America are those that actually function as families - that cook their own meals, take walks after dinner, and talk together instead of just farming the kids out to the commercial culture." OK, there's a little bit of moral panic here, but the broader point is that if your policy goal is maximizing GDP, you're not necessarily maximizing the things people want in their day to day lives; and if the GDP is growing, people aren't necessarily seeing consistent improvement in their lives. The real issue here is careful and nuanced construction of policy, which is probably doable, but kinda tough; Bergman isn't advocating a single alternative to the GDP, and admits even the GDP has its uses (though it most useful moment was probably during World War 2, when measuring the material amount of stuff the country could produce was most urgent).

This chapter also touches nicely on another annoying rhetorical reflex I find among lefties, the whole "resources are finite, the GDP can't grow forever." The GDP isn't a measure of the consumption of finite resources; it's a measure of money moving around in the economy (and hopefully of wealth being created). Non-tangible goods with no or very high limit on the resources they consume, like video games or hours of representation by a lawyer or sex work, all contribute to the GDP, and in an increasingly service-oriented economy the GDP can indeed continue to grow without necessarily substantially increasing resource consumption--especially if we're also making better use of the resources we harvest through, e.g., recycling and renewable energy. You know, things we've been pursuing eagerly for the last half-century. Seriously; do you even *care a little bit* about actually understanding what terms like 'GDP' mean?

p. 107: "The CEO who recklessly hawks mortgages and derivatives to lap up millions in bonuses currently contributes more to the GDP than a school packed with teachers or a factory full of char mechanics." Though I'm not sure how to correct something like this.

p. 108: More on the shortcomings of the GDP, and how in rich countries it's a poor correlate to actual prosperity. In developing countries, though, GDP is still mostly pretty good.

p. 117-119: Some alternatives to GDP, like Genuine Progress Indicator and Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, which incorporate measures of pollution/crime/inequality. "In Western Europe, GPI has advanced a good deal slower than GDP, and in the U.S. it has even receded since the 1970s." Might explain why America feels so crummy compared to Europe whenever I go back there. Like, I don't deny that some parts are fantastically prosperous, but I don't see how anyone who isn't upper middle class can begin to afford to live in most of the U.S.

p. 120: On the absolute limits of economic efficiency. "Unlike the manufacture of a fridge or a car, history lessons and doctor's checkups can't simply be made 'more efficient.'" Well, maybe; there definitely are things in society that can't be, though I think those two are weak examples. He also talks about Baumol's Cost Disease, though in a way different from how I understood it when @slatestarscratchpad was discussing it; if I am understanding him correctly, Bregman says the phenomenon of prices increasing in labor intensive sectors doesn't reflect those sectors actually getting more expensive so much as society choosing to spend more money there, because we have more money to spend as a result of other sectors becoming more efficient.

"Shouldn't we be calling this a blessing, rather than a disease? After all the more efficient our factories and our computers, the less efficient our healthcare and education need to be; that is, the more time we have left to attend to the old and inform and to organize education on a more personal scale. Which is great, right? According to Baumol, the main impediment to allocating our resources toward such noble ends is 'the illusion that we cannot afford them.'

As illusions go, this one is pretty stubborn. When you're obsessed with efficiency and productivity, it's difficult to see the real value of education and care. Which is why so many politicians and taxpayers alike see only costs. They don't realize that the richer a country becomes the more it should be spending on teachers and doctors. Instead of regarding these increases as a blessing, they're viewed as a disease.

Yet unless we prefer to run our schools and hospitals as if they were  factories, we can be certain that, in the race against the machine, the costs of healthcare and education will only go up. At the same time, products like refrigerators and cars have become "too cheap". To look solely at the price of a product is to ignore a large share of its costs. In fact, a British think tank estimated that for every pound earned by advertising executives, they destroyed an equivalent of seven pounds in the form of stress, overconsumption, pollution, and debt; conversely, each pound paid to a trash collector creates an equivalent of twelve pounds in terms of health and sustainability."

p. 122: "Governing by numbers is the last resort of a country that no longer knows what it wants, a country with no vision of utopia." I actually disagree here: I think governing by numbers is in principle a fine idea. What's a terrible idea is governing by bad, ambiguous, or useless numbers. A bad measure of national well-being is no better than *no* measure; but you have to have some kind of yardstick or you're just guessing. Responsive policy has to have *something* to respond to.

p. 123-4: On the disillusionment of the inventor of GDP, Simon Kuznets, with the GDP.

p. 134: "But the most disappointing fail? The rise of leisure." I do believe that's the first time I've ever seen "fail" as a simple noun in print. Language marches on, lol.

p. 135-136: On the failure of the workweek to continue getting shorter, even once the size of the labor force increased upon women entering it. I admit that when it comes to a shorter workweek, I have Questions. In principle, yes, a more productive economy means more resources to spread around which means people having to work less; in practice, short of a basic income funded by big taxes on productivity, people working less means less taxable income for the government and less personal income. Nonetheless, the work week getting shorter from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the 70s or 80s or so was accompanied by an *increase* in people's incomes as wages rose. In other words, I'm saying I don't have a good understanding of the economic issues at play here, and I wish I understood them more clearly.

p. 139-140: On the shorter workweek increasing productivity. Henry Ford saw big productivity gains by decreasing his employees' work week from 60 to 40 hours, due to his workers being better-rested and happier. W.K. Kellogg, of cornflakes and masturbation fame, decreased the work day to six hours in 1930 at his factory in Battle Creek; productivity increased so much he hired 300 more people and reduced the accident rate by 41%. "The unit cost of production is so lowered that we can afford to pay as much for six hours as we formerly paid for eight." Nonetheless, there has to be a limit on the gains achievable by this sort of thing? Like, you wouldn't expect a half-hour workday to be commensurately more productive (or even productive at all).

Also the example is given of Edward Heath shortening the workweek to 3 days in 1973 in the U.K. in response to government expenditures rising, inflation, and mining strikes. "On January 1, 1974, he imposed a three-day workweek. Employers were not permitted to use more than three days' electricity until energy reserves had recovered. Steel magnates predicted that industrial production would plunge 50%. Government ministers feared a catastrophe. When the five day workweek was reinstated in March 1974, officials set about calculating the total extent of production losses. They had trouble believing their eyes: The grand total was 6%."

So there is a limit; but it's much lower than I expected. But if you gradually reduced working hours even to the point where productivity began to stagnate a little, this could have positive environmental benefits: one reason we have to worry about global warming is that our fossil fuel consumption is so high. So I dunno, even a really short work week like 3 days might not be such a bad idea, if it was approached gradually.

p. 143-144: Social benefits of less work. Apparently men who take paternity leave not only do more laundry and more housework as a result, but the effect is permanent even after they return to work. An unusual solution to a gender imbalance in unpaid labor, perhaps.

p. 150: For people who worry that lots of leisure time will make people lazy, there's a good Bertrand Russel quote here about how one reason people seem lazy these days when they're not working is because work takes up all their energy: i.e., if you work eight hours a day at a stressful job, maybe all you have the energy to do when you get home is play video games or watch TV. If you want people to do more and more interesting things with their lives, have them work less.

p. 154-155: Another way of looking at Graeber's "bullshit jobs" is as jobs which don't create wealth, but merely move it around.

p. 158-159: Fascinating historical case of a bank strike in Ireland in 1970. "Overnight, 85% of the country's reserves were locked down. ... businesses across Ireland began to hoard cash. ... At the outset, pundits predicted that life in Ireland would come to a standstill."

Spoiler alert: not much happened. The economy continued to grow; the expected paralysis from lack of available money did not appear. Contrast this against the strike by a group more useful to society (garbagemen in NYC) which paralyzes the city in less than a week, this strike lasted six months, and was entirely uneventful.

"After the bank closures, they continued writing checks to one another as usual, the only difference being they could no longer be cashed at a bank. Instead, that other dealer in liquid assets - the Irish pub - stepped in to fill the void. ... 'The managers of these retail outlets and public houses had a high degree of information about their customers,' explains the economist Antoin Murphy. 'One does not after all serve drink to someone for years without discovering something of his liquid resources.'"

Basically, a new, decentralized monetary system appeared overnight, built on the country's 11,000 pubs. The thing that served to help create paper money in Europe in the first place--personal promissory notes and informal networks of trust--served well enough during the strike to maintain the essential institution of paper money, and while it limited the availability of large loans for things like construction projects, it did rather undercut the claim that the financial sector performs some kind of utterly indespensible service the economy can't do without.

p. 161-162: In other words, just because something is difficult and concentrates wealth as a result (finance, say), doesn't mean it's necessarily valuable to the economy as a whole, or that it's creating wealth itself.

p. 165-6: Explicit invocation of Graeber's bullshit jobs. Look, I'm not entirely satisfied with Graeber's notion of the bullshit job; I'd like a more formal examination of how the economy could produce whole industries which are somehow superfluous to its operation. But it's striking how consistently people are willing to declare that, yeah, their own job is essentially bullshit, and thinking about how much genius and skill and knowledge is being soaked up by sections of the economy we could probably do without, and which could be applied to more important problems of human flourishing (like eradicating disease or ending poverty) is kinda terrifying.

p. 169: Bregman's contention is that badly-constructed policy seems to drive the creation of bullshit jobs, like taxing the wrong thing. "A study conducted at Harvard found that Reagan-era tax cuts sparked a mass career switch among the country's brightest minds, from teachers and engineers to bankers and accountants. Whereas in 1970 twice as many male Harvard grads were still opting for a live devoted to research over banking, twenty years later the balance had flipped.... The upshot is that we've all gotten poorer. For every dollar a bank earns, an estimated equivalent of 60 cents is destroyed elswhere in the economic chain." A financial transaction tax, Bregman argues, would get people doing work that's more useful (would create more wealth).

p. 169-171: Bregman touches briefly on one of my pet peeves, in education. The trend of education being tailored to what jobs are in demand (banking, accounting, middle management) and in general treating education like job training, either in the tulip bulbs sense or in a more direct practical sense like the editorial pages of the Economist tend to do, have the tail wagging the dog: education is a means to shape society in positive ways, and we shouldn't necessarily be training people to be accountants unless we think our society is poorer for having fewer accountants. The rule of law, Bregman notes, is not seventeen times more effective in the U.S. than it is in Japan, even though the U.S. has seventeen times the number of lawyers Japan does per capita.

p. 173: Nice coda to his NYC garbage collector strike story: people *really* want to be garbage collectors in NYC these days, because it pays well, even though the hours are long and the work is hard.

p. 195: "Of course, the laborer William Leadbeater may have been exaggerating slightly when he predicted that machines would be 'the destruction of the universe,' but the Luddites' concerns were far from unfounded. Their wages were plummeting and their jobs were disappearing like dust in the wind. 'How are those men, thus thrown out of employ to provide for their families?' wondered the late eighteenth century clothworkers of Leeds. 'Some say, Begin and learn some other business. Suppose we do; who will maintain our families, whilst we undertake the arduous task; and when we have learned it, how do we know we shall be any better for all our pains; for... another machine may arise, which may take away that business also.'" But teach coal miners Java!

p. 200: Bregman doesn't say it, but the impression I get from this book is that we solve a lot of these problems *now*, when maybe--just maybe--they're tractable, or we suffer a lot as things get worse for the next 50 years and end up having a much more chaotic and terrible time trying to fix things once they've broken down beyond our ability to maintain the status quo.

p. 210: On whether it's better to give away mosquito nets or sell them cheaply. Seems to be better to give them away; people used the nets regardless, and even people given nets for free would later buy them if they had the opportunity, i.e., people get used to having nets, not to getting handouts.

p. 215: On the historical recentness of closed borders. Before World War 1, borders seem poised to disappear; border controls were rare, passports seen as a tool of backward countries like Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and people predicted railroads would erase national distinctions. The war, and the closing of borders to prevent spies crossing them, seems to have put the kibosh on that.

p. 216: Let's say you lifted all trade barriers in the world; the productive gains from doing so would be approximately one thousandth that of general open borders. That is a hard number to argue against.

p. 221 ff.: A list of pro-open-borders arguments. Standard fare here: notable stuff includes a discussion of criminality among migrants. It's been noted in some countries, like the Netherlands, immigrants have higher crime rates than the native population, in contrast to countries like the U.S. and the U.K, where the crime rates are lower. "For a long time, research into this question was put off by the dictates of political correctness. But in 2004, the first extended study exploring the connection between ethnicity and youth crime got underway in Rotterdam. Ten years later, the results were in. The correlation between ethnic background and crime, it turns out, is precisely zero. ... Youth crime, the report stated, had its origins in the neighborhood where the kids grow up. In poor communities, kids from Dutch backgrounds are every bit as likely to engage in criminal activity as those from ethnic minorities."

Bregman also argues that, contra Robert Putnam, immigrants don't undermine social cohesion. "Putnam's findings were debunked... . A later retrospective analysis of ninety studies found no correlation whatsoever between diversity and social cohesion." Putnam apparently didn't take into account that African Americans and Latinos report less social cohesion no matter where they live, and controlling for this undermines Putnam's results. Poor communities have less social cohesion, yes, but it's not attributable to the presence of minorities or immigrants.

Another good points is that more open borers promote immigrants' return: when the U.S. patrolled its southern border less strictly, ca. 85% of illegal immigrants who crossed it eventually went back. Seems kind of obvious in retrospect: if you want illegal immigrants to leave... just let them?

I have this prediction that the first developed country that tries open borders is going to get a massive competitive economic advantage against the rest of the world, but I think it'll be a long time before this actually gets tested. Personally, I'm betting on the Canadians.

p. 237: Bregman is willing to discuss some of the doubts he has about his own positions, which is much more than I was expecting from a book of this type. I really, really wish more authors would do this.

p. 240: Bonus Asch Conformity discussion.

Bregman wants to know, can people actually be convinced? And how? His answer's not especially encouraging: it takes a crisis, like 2008. The problem with 2008, though, was that there wasn't a strong counter-narrative in place: there was no alternative to try. Movements like Occupy were nebulous and didn't have a clear set of goals. What was needed was a preexisting political movement or position that was placed to take advantage of people's openness to new solutions. This book is, I suppose, his attempt to spread some of these "utopian" ideas, so when the next crisis hits, they're available as solutions for people to advance. That's a modest goal for a book allegedly about utopian politics, but I don't think he's wrong; opinions change only slowly, and having a realistic view of how to go about changing opinions is important.

p. 254-255: Discussion of the Overton Window, and the left's role in nudging it around. Plus, a slogan I like: "Be realistic! Demand the impossible!"

p. 256: Discussion of leftist parties that seek to quell "radical" sentiment inside their own ranks in order to try to (so they think) remain electable. This is a pattern I see happening repeatedly: in the SPD in Germany, in Labour in the U.K., in the Democrats in the U.S., leaders like Pelosi and the bigwigs of New Labour who think that they have to go as middle-of-the-road as possible and avoid upsetting the status quo, ignoring that the strength of the left is often in expanding peoples' understanding of what society can achieve. It's depressing as hell, and it's not surprising that people are turning toward formerly obscure politicians like Corbyn and Sanders who are willing to actually try new ideas. Trouble is, Corbyn and Sanders have been minor politicians for a long time for a reason: they're charismatic as a couple of day-old fish, and they're not actually that good at uniting their parties.

p. 257-8: "'There's a kind of activism,' Rebecca Solnit remarks in her book "Hope in the Dark," 'that's more about bolstering identity than achieving results.' One thing Donald Trump understands very well is that most people prefer to be on the winning side. ... Most people resent the pity and paternalism of the Good Samaritan. Sadly, the underdog socialist has forgotten that the story of the left ought to be a narrative of hope and progress. By that I don't mean a narrative that only excites a few hisptes who get their kicks philosophizing about 'post-capitalism' or 'intersectionality' after reading some long-winded tome. ... What we need is a narrative that speaks to millions of ordinary people."

And he's not wrong. Bregman argues for reclaiming 'the language of progress,' i.e., meeting the current (neoliberal?) worldview on its own terms and explaining how these goals fulfill its aims, rather than contest them. I'd add to that that I'd like to see a left that actually cares about asking what constitutes effective activism, what actually changes people's minds, and what actually wins election and helps shapes policy, rather than just feeling good and laughing when Richard Spencer gets punched. That second vision of the left isn't just shortsighted; it's depressing, it's small-minded, and it's vicious. It's also selfish: it's about being secure in your own identity rather than *helping people,* and the fact it claims the moral high ground in a lot of debates is just repulsive to me.

All in all, the program Bregman seems to advocate for is startlingly modest, and delightfully specific: he wants UBI, a 15-hour workweek, a financial transaction tax, and open borders; and he's willing to be as incrementialist as possible on all these points. There are some other goals around the edges--a clearer and more purposeful vision of education's role in society, for instance, and a new approach to politics--but these too don't seem to require moving heaven and earth to accomplish them. In some ways, this book disappointed me: there's nothing here that fundamentally upends social or economic relations in the developed world, and it's all pretty consistent with a vision of historical trends in progress just extrapolated a little further into the future. But Bregman writes lucidly and engagingly on these subjects, and he condenses a lot of sources into a single volume. What this book is probably ideal for is giving to your centrist or left-leaning cousin or friend, who might be sympathetic to UBI or a financial transaction tax, or someone you know who is just curious about interesting new policy proposals in general.

Bregman's program would be suitable for a center-left political party in Europe, or a movement within the Democratic Party in the U.S., especially if it was helmed by someone who could talk cannily about these ideas in the public sphere. This book is proof these ideas *aren't* actually that utopian, and *can* be talked about in a way that makes them seem plausible--we just need more people doing that.

[honeyedmilks]

the longest gtk me tag to ever exist 🍰

i was tagged by the lovely @meanyoongis (thank YOU!! <3) for this extravagant tag! she is so long, even without my rambling, that under a cut she must rest!

the last…

drink: water! please stay hydrated this summer my friends!  time you cried: literally at 5 am at some point early in the week

phone call: my mum

text message: it’s literally me messaging rezka this: “did u just tell me to find a sugar daddy?” we were discussing my shitty laptop and a peach phone cover i wanted to buy- don’t ask anymore questions about this please lmfao.

song you listened to: don’t stop by shinee :’( (i’m going to report choi minho for his rap in this as well as my love jonghyun for his vocals that nearly killed me)

 have you…

dated someone twice: but… i’ve not.. even dated someone.. once… 

kissed someone and regretted it: nope! 

been cheated on: nope!

lost someone special: not in terms of them passing away but i have lost many friends and relationships i still remember; i feel their loss sometimes

been depressed: dfhhdjd i be livin’ that mental illness life right now hskjxk

gotten drunk and thrown up: no, but during my very bad times, i thought about doing just that, a lot. 

list three favourite colours…

omg okay: browns, pinks, blues 

in the last year have you…

made new friends: yes! i love them!! shout out to my cute tumblr friends :’))) 

fallen out of love: hmm… i would say so… THANK GOD 

laughed until you cried: i wish lmfao but rezka and allie have made me laugh loads :’)) 

found out someone was talking about you: hmm yes, but it’s ok :(( 

met someone who changed you: i know some people now who have given me sound advice that i try to remember, but other than that i don’t think so

found out who your friends are: yes :(( though i would like to think the ones who didn’t check up on me had their reasons 

kissed someone on your facebook list: i’m literally the most un-sensual person ever?? can u tell?? no action up in dis bitch y’all!

general…

how many of your facebook friends do you know in real life: i should’ve mentioned before that i’m not even on that… place… imagine having all my asian family members tryna peep me on ‘the facebooks’ as my dad calls it… a living nightmare… also it just looks far too complicated to use and not worth the energy getting used to it, i love the memes that i see from facebook here though lmfaoo they’re lit

do you have any pets: no! :(( i used to have a bunny called bubbles but he is no longer with us :(( rest in peace bubbles :(( but our family wants a new pet! hopefully we’ll get a cat or another rabbit when my littlest brother is a bit older! i’m so lonely… i want a dog.. my family is so incomplete… so cold…so devoid… I JUST WANT AN ANIMAL FRIEND!!! but i would also have to get over my weird fear of all living things, and the pain that comes with having them such as scratches etc 

do you want to change your name: actually no, i’m okay with my name right now :’) though i feel like i have two depending on how people pronounce it! its more commonly pronounced as sof-ee-a but it’s actually soft, like sof-ya! also here’s a fact! my name’s already been changed :D when i was younger i was actually named bariah (pronounced br-ee-ya) but it was changed because my parents and stuff thought it was causing me lots of bad luck… i also somehow got picked on in primary school for having my name changed?? people eventually ended up saying i had changed my name like three times (the real case is that white people fucked up how to pronounce bariah and when my mum corrected them, they all flipped shit lmfao ah my head hurts thinking about this- it got worse after it went from bariah to sofia)                               

what did you do for your last birthday: it was so miserable this was the worst year to ask me this question, lmfao i’ll try not to give you any miserable details but i ended up buying myself cake and trying not to make it my departing date too

what time did you wake up: near 1pm i think! 

what were you doing at midnight last night: i think i was either watching the princess’ man or making my posters for it! 

name something you can’t wait for: honestly don’t know lmfao i want to go to the beach though so here’s hoping i finally do that, or go swimming 

when was the last time you saw your mom: like an hour ago, she’s making dinner i think… i can smell it… all the way from my depression hole (bedroom)

what is one thing you wish you could change in your life: so much? but mostly i would like my dad to get better and my mum to not have to do everything :(( and then go on more holidays and live life more :(( also mental illness be gone!!

what are you listening right now: fuckin artificial love by exo dropped on ma shuffle, i’m getting terrible flashbacks to the cane dance  

have you ever talked to a person named tom: aye i know a guy called tom, he got a part of his tooth chipped (It was a whole big wild thing and i don’t know the details but that’s all i remember of the dude) and he was in my english class once, but like, we don’t talk no more… i don’t even know if i’ve seen him around school when i used to go… 

something that is getting on your nerves: lots of things… my potato laptop… myself… no one in my gotdang family listening to me!!! the fact that it’s been two weeks and i still don’t have delicious cake… also the fact i end up hating everything i make on here- thank you guys for being so lovely in your tags tho :’(( 

most visited website: tbh tumblr, pinterest, pixlr and dramanice

about me…

mole/s: i don’t think i have any? maybe some small dark dots here and there on my legs and neck

mark/s: i have some burn scars and a bit of a scar thing on my elbow where i scraped it really badly as a kid, i also have stretch marks on my waist/hips etc and a blotchy mark in my inner left thigh

childhood dream: i think i was set on being an interior designer at one point? lmfao or a celebrity chef (i watched a lot of food network as a kid) 

hair colour: black

long or short hair: very very long, but i want to get it cut soon so it’s a bit shorter. 

do you have a crush on someone: i mean there’s this one boy in real life… but i don’t see him that much right now :(( i don’t think it’s full on infatuation though… but y’all also know i love jonghyun and changkyun 

what do you like about yourself: AKDNSKJDKJADDJ i broke out the caps for this!!! lemme think… i guess my eyebrows can be rather nice! and i can be funny sometimes i guess lmao… i like how i can be empathetic with people, though it’s not at all always fun being so sensitive

piercings: i have my ears pierced! just one in each lobe :) 

blood type: you trippin if you thought i would know this LMFAO 

nickname: binch i gots so many oh my god… my family, such as my aunt, call me brian (derived from my old name bariah- thank god i told you guys about that otherwise none of you would know why my nickname was fucking BRIAN), some people call me sofie/ sophie, and my mum calls my sofie pofie sometimes- my dad calls me sofar (so-fur) in the most desi way possible- he once accidentally called me sofa and it just stuck, it also explains my instagram user name (sofarsoogood) lmfao its a cute pun and i don’t know if this is a nickname but i get adressed as baji/baj by my younger brothers and sisters and cousins- its like the desi term for older sister 

relationship status: your local potato head (that’s me) is on her lonesome… she single as hell bitch!

zodiac: aquarius (i’m sure i spelt that wrong, rezka once dragged me for spelling it as some other dumb shit before BUT OH WELL) 

pronouns: she/her!

favourite tv show (s): i don’t even know, parks and recreation is a good one though :’)) oooh and I LOVE CRIMINAL MINDS though i’ve not seen much of the new season :(( oh and an idiot abroad is fucking funny bye i need to rewatch that ooh also lots of cooking shows and the jane eyre bbc (2006) mini series 

tattoos: no, but i would like to get some more henna done this year :’D

right or left hand: right!

surgery: i don’t think so? but i did get some teeth taken out when i was younger so i don’t know if that counts lmfao 

hair dyed in different colour: no, but it would be nice to get it done one day!! i’ve been thinking about it… but i don’t know what colour would suit me and my mum doesn’t want me to lmfao 

sport: i like cycling (its been ages tho) and i like badminton, yoga and i really want to go swimming :(( but i don’t do any of that anymore. the most i do is long walking 

vacation: i’ve been to pakistan, england, stopped in dubai for a while, italy, france, turkey and egypt! it was all so long ago though! and i would like to go to so many more places!

pair of trainers: i have converse! though i much prefer sandals over converse

more general…

eating: these days i’m very into chips and cheese plus donner (don’t knock it till ya try it!) and my mum’s roti salan lmfao 

drinking: hmm water! or icy drinks! iced tea is fabulous but i also gotta start drinking green tea again! i miss her 

i’m about to: pass out from trying to answer all of these LMFAO JOKES i might get something to eat.. such as ice cream… or actual dinner… and then maybe watch more of the princess’ man or make some stuff! but who knows i might just fall asleep lmfao 

waiting for: a new laptop, my mental health TO GET BETTER SDHKSHKSDH and for just… i dunno what the heck i’m doing, i’m just winging my life right now and for my dad to get better so he can go on trains and buses with me so i can get used to them  

want: new bath bombs and clothes, my writing passion back, hugs, affection, allie to reunite with her chicken hat one day

get married: i most likely will when i’m older! though i’ve been told i’m already in a relationship with jp and bevy maco 

career: HONESTLY DON’T KNOW!!!!!! but if i filter all my shit out then i can say, i want to get into film, defos want to be a published writer, maybe go into graphic design… who knows tbh maybe counselling? 

which is better…

hugs or kisses: it depends on what kind of kiss/ where it is, but i often get in moods where i just need to be held :’(( so both i guess!

lips or eyes: both :’) but eyes over lips i guess unless we’re talking smiles :’) 

short or tall: i guess tall but if i’m in love it might not really matter              

older or younger: hmm, i would say the same age as me or a little older, but it really depends on the mentality of the person :) 

nice arms or nice stomach: arms are nice :’) 

sensitive or loud: hmm i don’t know… probably loud, just not obnoxious or annoying

hook up or relationship: relationship :’) 

troublemaker or hesitant: hmm i don’t know! the boys i’ve liked have ended up being some troublemakers, but i guess it depends on what kind of trouble! 

have you ever…

kissed a stranger: nope!

drank hard liquor: never 

lost glasses/contact lenses: i don’t wear glasses or contact lenses but i have lost some sunglasses on holiday lmfao, it doesn’t even have to be a day before i lose something on holiday, or leave it behind

turned someone down: hmm i don’t think so! though one boy did try give me a valentine on valentine’s day but i was really having a terrible day and i didn’t take it from him, the encounter was a mess and i don’t know why he was tryna give it to me in the first place? i think he was just tryna get rid of it?? i don’t trust boys if they do stuff like that/ try ask me out tbh lmfao for many reasons

sex on the first date: oh no not my shy ass lmfao

broken someone’s heart: i don’t know :( most likely not! though there was one person i think i did hurt and let down  

had your heart broken: i’m not sure in the romantic sense, but i know it’s felt a lot 

been arrested: nope! i’m an angel ;)) LMFAO 

cried when someone died: hmm i can’t remember, i think i cried seeing my mum so upset when her mother passed away, i also have shed tears over michael jackson (i used to be a very heavy mj blog back in the day lmfao shout out to my mj mutuals who stuck around) 

fallen for a friend: i don’t think it was genuine, so i’m going to say no 

do you believe in…

yourself: pfff depends really, there are times when i don’t feel an overwhelming sense of insecurity and there are times i do                    

miracles: i guess so :)

love at first sight: i think you can be attracted to someone when you first see them or have a liking to them but real love is such a complex thing that i don’t really believe one can fall in love at first sight

santa claus: kjdcnjdcnjd who dat i only know dat cool guy in narnia who gave dem kids of old their death devices

kiss on the first date: hmm… depends… but in reality… probably no

angels: yes  

other…

current best friends name: rezka, allie, mhairi, (a mix of tumbly friends and irl) im such a loser bye but i love y’all, i honestly don’t talk to a lot of people these days :(( 

eye colour: so dark they look black and you can’t see my pupils sometimes

favourite movie(s): hmm… sabrina (1954), the mummy one and two, peter pan (2003), pride and prejudice (2005) and spy! i have lots more i’m so fond of!  

phew! time to tag some lovely people! : @youngjei , @allonsy-allie , @dansphil , @seokjinings , @junyeol-s , @bovrilcat , @alcenos , @astraelogy , @mahnoorjahan , @timrggins and @bonqhee! 💗