#Character Study: Power Erodes Personality

[acoldsovereign]

IN SITUATIONS WHERE

--Maiz developed a crush on someone on whom she had an antagonistic relationship with, the combat sadism gradually becomes sexual. Unlike other Saiyans, the parts of her brain that control societal conditioning (including recognition of 'family'/'friends', etc) and aggression/violent impulses and urges, etc remain active no matter what. The latter is supposed to flip or switch off if a Saiyan has chosen to bond with someone/with others.

In Maiz's case, they overlap. On top of that, they criss-cross. In other words-- in all of her romantic relationships, she's either hurting her partner consensually, or nonconsensually, hurting others nonconsensually and her partner, hurting others nonconsensually or her partner, or hurting others nonconsensually and her partner consensually (meaning together, they commit acts of violence/aggression/antagonism upon others and the partner consents to a certain type of pain).

Her urge to hurt the person she's with/having feelings for (or other people) doesn't stop just because someone chose her-- if they did. She can exercise self restraint but when and where is her choice. Depending on the person/target/obsession in question, it is either an easy task or a Herculean one.

[nomercifulpercival]

taking my tags from a different post and posting them because i do be having A Lot To Say

the thing about current discussions about censorship on ao3, and antis willfully or uncritically claiming that people who dont want censorship are just ‘pedophiles’, is that they are missing the whole goddamn point.

whatever you personally choose to read, if we allow censorship to take hold on ao3 eventually your preferred fic will be eroded. 

to demonstrate i present,

Things Antis Have Claimed Are Problematic and Should Be Banned:

the omegaverse - either for fetishising trans people or introducing hetero dynamics into queer relationships

chidhood friends to lovers - for sexualising children's friendships or shipping 'sibling coded' characters

age gaps between adults - from age gaps of like 40 years to age gaps of like six years (looks hard at anti-sheiths)

furries/anthro - because ‘bestiality’

enemies to lovers - for 'romanticising abuse'

any exploration of unhealthy dynamics done in a way that isnt simply 'one person is the victim and escapes their abuser'. 

mutually unhealthy relationships. power dynamics such as teacher/student or boss/employee that would be unhealthy or immoral irl. 

vent fiction that explicitly describes the writer's trauma - they claim people should just go to therapy instead of processing their trauma through fiction and sharing it online. (The Reality of This: i go to therapy - my therapist encourages vent fiction - i post vent fiction - i get told to die - rinse and repeat)

noncon fics that are written as erotica - i really need to impress upon antis that some people have noncon kinks! it’s not even that rare, according to one study, 62% of women admitted to fantasizing about being forced to have sex. IRL they probably explore this via consensual non consent or simply by fantasizing, and in fiction you can read about eroticised non con, get your jollies and it hurts no one in real life. 

The thing about banning ANY of these things is that everyone will have different opinions of what is 'moral' or 'ok to write about'. Everyone will have different boundaries and triggers and squicks. AO3 allows you to ACTIVELY AVOID things that squick you 

(and before anyone says ‘I’ve seen these things untagged’ - the AO3 rules require works to either be tagged with the relevant warning (Underage/NonCon/Graphic Violence) or ‘Author chose not to use archive warnings’. you can report improperly tagged works; they are literally against AO3s rules)

so truly the best option to keep works you like protected on AO3 is to accept that people will be writing weird shit on the internet, but you actively do not have to see it. Because otherwise they WILL ban YOUR weird shit.

*points aggressively at FFNet*

[septembersghost]

Why do you like the character of Jimmy Mcgill so much, what makes him such a good interesting protagonist to follow? Do you love Walter White as much as Jimmy ?

By the way, I love your blog, your analyses! Long live Kim Wexler and Mcwexler! ❤

if anything suggests i have any love whatsoever for walter white, i have been doing my job here entirely incorrectly adljkgfkjhgh

walt is a great character - monstrously compelling, brilliantly acted (bryan was lauded for a reason!), and while i definitely have discussed his evolution (or devolution, as it were) and the fact that at times i still find tattered remnants of sympathy for him and tragic fallibility from him, i'd also push him off a cliff without hesitation. i posted a tweet a while back that said something like, "breaking bad is full of characters i love to watch, better call saul is full of characters i love," and that (with the exclusion of jesse) sums it up fairly succinctly for me, and is why - as a character person first and foremost - i'm far more emotionally attached to bcs. i think breaking bad is ultimately narratively stronger (i didn't expect to say this), but better call saul made me love and care about its players so deeply that it's the best at character study. (obviously these are completely subjective opinions, and in many ways the shows are quite different and difficult to compare because their strengths and highlights play for varying reasons!)

jimmy, on the other hand...there are things that maybe should've turned me on jimmy (scamming, lying), but they just. didn't. part of me wonders if it's my affinity and empathy for kim coming through since kim loves him, and because of how i feel regarding their story and aching romance together, but even beyond that, in jimmy's better qualities, in his relationship with his brother, in the way he does try, but is so doomed in his story before it even begins...his character and shifting identity and place in his narrative universe is gripping and sympathetic to me. such a huge part of it is bob's performance - someone else probably would've played him sleazier or more arrogant, but bob managed to take him from the garish comic relief in brba to a man struggling inwardly with his sense of self, with his worth, with his darker impulses vs. his innate affability, someone who has such heart and pathos that it's devastating and horrible watching him erode. the fact that he's capable not only of humor but also of kindness and vulnerability, and yet opposite that weaponizes his likability and his intelligence and his trauma to harmful effect, the way the narrative convinced us to root for him and want better for him even though we knew where he was headed, it works in such a powerful way. a very human way. i feel like we got to know jimmy in a much more intimate sense - there's a wall between us and walt from the beginning, often a violent one, but jimmy in his crummy little nail salon office feels accessible. jimmy pining for love and acceptance feels more tangible than power hunger. jimmy lashing out and curling into himself hurts, jimmy making decisions to reclaim his name and find some piece of himself (or peace in himself) and a delicate reconnection with the woman he loves, his one person in the world, infused with such loss and melancholy, is bittersweet and haunting.

walt is always on a collision course with death, but it's as though jimmy is always on a collision course with life, with choosing how, even after harm and self-loathing and tragedy, one continues to seek to live. there's an irrepressible spirit in jimmy somehow. in kim too. a flickering flame in darkness. it isn't much, but it's something eternal in spite of the odds.

i'm not explaining this well, but idk! i just feel such an enormous amount of love and sorrow for him. and he's my pathetic bestie

thank you so much, lovely, i am very happy you're here. 💗 kim wexler for life!!! mcwexler in love forever and ever!!!!!!

[xaracosmia]

ꕥ — WELCOME TO EXO COSMIA, KEN AMADA. 🌑

ꕥ  — OOC INFORMATION;

name / alias: elu. age: nineteen. pronouns: any. ooc contact: tumblr @ winifreya. other characters in xc: elidibus.

ꕥ  — IC INFORMATION;

name: ken amada age: fifteen. pronouns: she/he/they. series: persona (3). canon point: two years after persona 4: arena ultimax. (peep “extra” for timeline and media specifics 💛) app triggers: heavy persona 3 spoilers, maternal death, several more instances of general death, child neglect, depression and suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, apocalyptic scenarios, gun violence, car accident mention, danger to a minor (unspeakable horrors occurring to an elementary school kid)

personality:

on the surface, this first-year student is a quiet youth who keeps to himself unless asked. the shell he crafts for others is built via careful manners and a calm disposition. and, for the most part, he crafts it in earnest. ken amada is a textbook example of someone made to grow up too fast. his level-headedness was built out of necessity and a desire to be taken seriously in the absence of others’ belief. he excels in his studies and towards the interests that matter to him most; few others’ determination can rival his own. he can handle solitude and quiet and finds a home in it in prayer. he is perceptive of both other people and animals alike. with all this, he can give off the impression of being a separate person entirely, and of someone far older than in truth.

but the most defining facet of ken amada’s character is that he is a child through and through, even if he would never admit it. he adores tokusatsu, tropey detectives, and vigilantes from comic books. his first pet and his dearest is named impulsively after fast food, and black coffee makes him sick. but ken is no more than nine years and some when his traumas compound, and a lack of belief from others towards what is perceived as childish delusions of grief distances him and forces him to mold into someone new simply to desire to survive. he has been starved of love through years of being on his own in early childhood and starved as purpose for just as long. history mars ken’s life by an irreparable tragedy of adolescence and the inability to act his age. he pushes down what he loves most in the name of others’ respect, hiding it until it bursts out of his chest, starry-eyed and passionate, and apologizing when he buries it in the earth. he undercuts his own determination by a morality built on the monologues of showstopper heroes and the mortal holders of death notes. even then, he despises being called a child and treated as lesser when he still has the face, voice, demeanor, and mind of one. he hates being pitied by those around him in the way that all “unfortunate children” are: as someone with nothing left for him and as someone with no one left to love him. and, more than any other belief, he hates the shared irresponsibility and immaturity of adults who have more power than him.

no matter what he does, ken amada is the youngest member of the persona 3 protagonist’s team, the most naïve, and the one to fall into the pitfalls of childish limits. but is that not what the rest of his life is for? indeed, four years have eroded the lining of a black-and-white morality, though they have hardly touched his flights of heroism. they have not fixed all his flaws nor let him forget and flee to a childhood innocence long lost, but they have given him a second chance to see life for what it is, and to accept what made it worth living so many years before. amada can only hope in that childish, starry-eyed view of the world that that outlook is the kind that would make past ghosts proud.

something your muse struggles with: being useful, being wanted, and being seen as one’s own. belonging, and feeling worth it to be kept around. though told to live his life for himself, ken veers elsewhere, compelled by a strong sense of justice and a vie to avoid old days of purposelessness. with regard to himself, ken hates being looked down on and scrutinized as a burden, and he will do all that he can to project himself as anything but.

your muse’s greatest strength: to persevere, whatever the obstacle; to rise from the ashes and move forward, and to never be trapped looking back. although someone who has lived his formative years in the fading shadows of others’ memories, he’s since learned to carry them with him over drown by his remembrance. the losses he’s suffered will never necessarily leave him because they do not need to, and his life is an example of that which continues in spite of their weight.

history / background:

it’s late at night. you’re a child, and you and your mom are laughing. there’s a little cage in a cardboard box that’s large in your arms, and there’s a hamster chittering inside. you race your mom to the front door and reach it first, taking the brunt of the impact for running side-first. but you’re laughing, and your mom is, too, and it all drifts away. you cook hamburgers over the countertop with her, and you end the day happy. it could be the two of you and your newfound friend forever, and you would never mind. this is a memory you’ll never forget.

it’s late at night. your name is ken amada, and you are alone in the remnants of the living room. the full face of the moon leers overhead and drips a sickly glow. the torn-out page of the calendar reads: the 4th of october, 2007. your mother’s blood is on the corner. a twice-made shadow looms over her, dissipates into the light, and the screams of strangers fade in the flight of a murderer. you’re the only one left in the rubble. your mother is dead. you remember the date and the hour and the picture. the shadows of the clouds engulf you. this is a memory you can never forget.

in the morning, they tell you she died in a car accident. but you know better. stretches of the world shrink between your fingertips. you go to school in the same breath, and the world there weeps for you. then the world buries the memory of your mom and carries on, leaving her to rot and you to sink in the smell of it. you keep going to school. someone reaches out for you and hamburger and gives you a place they call home. people pay for you. people pray for you. people cry. and you dry your tears in your fists and thank them for their kindness, and you hide away your memories.

you and hamburger are alone for two years. you pray at the local shrine every day for two years, and you think of your mom there with you. breaks go by, and you return to the dorms all alone. in the middle of the afternoon, you’re moved to another dorm because the adults need to fix your loneliness for you. he has “potential”, you overhear, but it’s not as though you’ll use it anyways. you’ll only spend your life in her memory.

in the middle of the afternoon, it turns out that this potential is in your favor. it’s a hot day at the end of summer vacation, and you’re at the mall strip to buy groceries and cool off. you hear a famed student from your new living quarters talk to a stranger, and that’s when you hear something strange. your heart catches in your breath. you’re trapped under the heat and the blood left by your bones as they talk of a memory from two years ago. the stranger wants to forget. the stranger knows your dormmate. the stranger has…

in the evening, you force your way into the dorm’s operations. they can’t keep you away by the limits of sleep and information anymore. and the stranger follows you back. you tail him sometimes, and you learn who he is. you train and you train and you train. you remember her memory until it’s all that you have left, until it’s her memory and your mission in your hands, and there’s nothing for you after that.

it’s the dark hour, on the 25th hour of another full moon. the page of the dorm calendar reads: the 4th of october, 2009. you tell shinjiro aragaki to meet you on the other side of the island, and he follows. you pray to your mom, and you find her watching over you. you point your longspear at him, and you tell him you’ll kill him. your mission for revenge is at an end. your mom’s memory won’t be forgotten.

it’s the 4th of october, 2009. aragaki dies because of you, but not by your hand. he dies in his friend’s arms, surrounded by people who cry for him when he’s gone. you’re held back from his body in a hug, and you end up crying, too. your mission for revenge is at an end because there’s no one left to fulfill it. you live on anyway, and the memory of this night does, too.

this is all i’ve been living for. what was even the point?

you never get an answer. or your memory says otherwise. he tells you to live for yourself. you spend the next years trying to live up to his words. you pray, and you train, and you remember. you help save the world while you’re at it. you stay with hamburger, with koromaru, and with everyone else. you keep your memories close. and, in spite of everything, you live on.

powers / abilities:

kala-nemi. ken’s persona, an avatar representative of his heart and soul. it is most commonly drawn out through the use of an evoker. it negates attacks with an affinity to light, but is weak to attacks with an affinity to darkness. it works best as a healer and as support, using both high-healing and high-damaging skills and reinforcing them with a passive ability to restore some of its depleted resources. kala-nemi has access to the following abilities and groups of abilities:

ziodyne. part of a line of spells. deals heavy electricity-aspected damage to a single target. additionally has a chance of electrocuting, or shocking, the target.

vile assault. deals incredible physical damage to a single target, and will further damage a target that has already been knocked down. causes recoil damage upon use.

kouha spells: kougaon and makougaon. a line of spells dealing heavy light-aspected damage. kougaon affects a single target, and makougaon affects multiple.

mahamaon. coin flip (50% chance) to decide whether a target is killed. we will basically never be using this in group.

samarecarm and mediarahan. healing spells. samarecarm revives a single target from unconsciousness or the brink of death and heals them in full. mediarahan heals ken’s entire party in full.

various supportive buffs.

makarakarn and tetrakarn. creates a small barrier around a single target that negates a single magical or physical attack respectively.

heat riser. temporarily enhances the strength, defense, accuracy, and agility of a single target.

dekaja. negates all enhancements towards multiple targets.

spirit restore. a passive selfish buff. continuously restores mana while ken is engaged in battle.

theurgies. two powerful abilities that harness spirit and emotions accumulated in battle. (like… limit breaks for persona 3.) ken’s abilities accumulate faster in times of desperation, after being exhausted by using multiple persona abilities without recovering.

divine retribution. deals heavy light-aspected damage to one enemy, ignoring any resistances.

divine intervention. recovers multiple allies from the brink of death, heals them in full, and creates a small barrier around each that negates a single attack

inherent abilities:

he’s good at soccer. he’s also agile for a kid.

he’s also really good at taking care of animals.

he can brew coffee.

nerd.

items / weapons: 

evoker. a model gun with no bullets inside. non-functional as a real weapon, but is instead used symbolically to amplify a stress response and draw out one’s persona. it’s collecting dust bunnies.

cross-shaped spear. a long spear. a larger straight blade and two side blades which curve upwards are attached at the anterior end. this is collecting dust, too.

hamburger. a pet hamster who has been by ken’s side for six years. according to my twitter followers and my wife, he is immortal.

koromaru. an old albino shiba inu. like, old old. wears an old orange jacket that ken used to wear and is now too small for him. he could summon a persona if he wanted to, too. he’s so cool.

phoenix ranger featherman r action figure. a years-long possession surely obtained by chance and lucky raffle tickets. it’s not prized, but it’s certainly well-kept. surely that’s all.

silver key. an old house key for the former amada household. briefly given to the persona 3 protagonist and returned following their passing.

starting ability: no ^_^. starting item: hamburger.

would you like this character to be housed upon arrival?: yes.

extra:

important note one/two: for this portrayal, i strictly run with the events of “the journey” from persona 3 reload (male protagonist specification because i’m still on female protagonist copium); “the answer” from persona 3 fes (likely with plans to update to reload’s dlc adaptation when it releases); and “episode p4” through the true ending from persona 4 arena ultimax, with some inferences about ken’s fate in the story drawn from “episode p3”!

that being said, while i appreciated ken being in p4au in a pretty interesting way, i (angry coughing) do have gripes with some character portrayals, including his, and i respect it if other castmates do as well… i’m running a lot more fast and loose with that aspect, and while i plan to retain ken’s characterization as depicted specifically in the games i listed, p4au included, i’m more than happy to retcon how any castmates were portrayed in p4au

important note three: i know the p5 aus are neat, but i just play ken here as going to gekkoukan high school following middle school graduation. sorry!

important note four: i base this portrayal’s abilities with his persona, kala-nemi, off of persona 3 reload because 1.) you cannot catch me using several RNG elements in roleplay and jack-of-all-trade mediocre abilities when there are better options. i already did that in 2018 i will not do it again. and 2.) ken’s theurgies fucking cooked me, dude

rip ken amada, 11 year old you would’ve loved 2015 theatreblr

i’ve listened to dead mom beetlejuice so much in the past 96 hours

koromaru is the emissary and he will never die

my wife adds “the hamster is also the emissary and he will never die”

nonbiney

he is actually a death note fan this is canon but we literally cannot EVER give him the death note i’m so so serious

had a growth spurt in 2011 and has not grown since. short king forever. don’t let his p4au cover art fool you he is 5’1”

lactose intolerant and drinks it anyways. also loves omurice.

i’m literally this kid’s biggest fan. if ken amada has a million fans, then i am one of them. if ken amada has ten fans, then i am one of them. if ken amada has only one fan then that is me. if ken amada has no fans, then that means i am no longer on earth. if the world is against ken amada (and i have seen it I WAS THERE) then i am against the WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

discord id: aeschylean

[unnatilivesinthemoment]

Statement of Purpose

In the pursuit of understanding happiness and living presently, the movie "Little Miss Sunshine" offers poignant insights into the diversity of human experiences and the quest for meaning in a world fraught with challenges. Through the journey of the dysfunctional yet endearing Hoover family, the film explores themes of resilience, acceptance, and the pursuit of happiness in the face of adversity.

Each member of the Hoover family grapples with their own struggles and insecurities, seeking fulfillment in different ways. From Olive's unwavering determination to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant to Frank's pursuit of academic success and Dwayne's silent rebellion against society's expectations, the characters embody a spectrum of aspirations and desires. Their journey culminates in a road trip filled with mishaps and unexpected revelations, ultimately leading them to confront their fears and rediscover the true meaning of happiness.

The film's portrayal of happiness and living presently underscores the subjective nature of human experience. What brings joy and fulfillment to one person may not resonate with another, highlighting the importance of honoring individual values and aspirations. Olive's radiant smile as she performs her quirky talent routine, Frank's moment of catharsis as he embraces his imperfections, and Dwayne's silent realization of the power of family solidarity all speak to the diverse pathways to happiness.

In the context of social media and digital technology, the lessons from "Little Miss Sunshine" take on added significance. The pressure to conform to societal standards of success and happiness often manifests in curated online personas and the relentless pursuit of validation through likes and followers. However, true happiness cannot be measured by external metrics or fleeting moments of online acclaim. Instead, it is found in the authenticity of human connection, the richness of lived experiences, and the acceptance of life's imperfections.

Drawing on the themes of "Little Miss Sunshine" and insights from Sarah Ahmed's work, we are reminded that happiness is not a one-size-fits-all concept but rather a deeply personal and subjective experience. It is shaped by our relationships, our values, and our ability to be present in the moment. In a world where the allure of digital distractions often pulls us away from meaningful connections and authentic experiences, reclaiming presence and embracing the diversity of human experiences are essential steps towards true fulfillment.

Research by Twenge et al. (2018) provides valuable insights into the relationship between social media use and adolescent well-being, highlighting the negative effects of excessive screen time on mental health and self-esteem. Similarly, studies by Primack et al. (2017) shed light on the prevalence of social media addiction among young adults and its detrimental impact on real-world relationships.

By contextualizing these findings within the broader narrative of youth development and happiness, we gain a deeper understanding of the challenges facing today's digital natives. The pressure to present an idealized version of oneself online, coupled with the addictive nature of social media platforms, can erode the quality of real-world interactions and diminish the pursuit of authentic happiness. However, as Sarah Ahmed suggests, happiness is not merely a product of external validation or material success but rather a multifaceted and deeply personal experience shaped by our relationships and lived experiences.

Ultimately, the purpose of exploring themes of social media, youth development, and human connection is not only to understand their impact but also to cultivate a deeper appreciation for the complexities of happiness and living presently. By drawing on insights from scholarly research, the work of Sarah Ahmed, and the rich tapestry of human experiences depicted in "Little Miss Sunshine," we can navigate the challenges of the digital age with empathy, resilience, and a renewed sense of purpose. It is in embracing our differences, nurturing authentic connections, and embracing the beauty of the present moment that we can find true happiness and fulfillment.

[wagmi-mga2024mi5014]

Character Bios: Katya Novikov

The grip of fear had become a constant companion for Katya Novikov, youngest daughter of the infamous lawmaker Novikov, whose name was synonymous with pride and ego. In stark contrast to his daughter, Novikov’s twisted political agenda, fueled by arrogance and a delusional sense of superiority had disadvantaged over hundreds of thousands, leaving some homeless, hungry, and helpless. Though she condemned and spoke against her father's actions and the laws he'd enacted, his influence clung to her like a wound.  

Katya's world had been meticulously engineered by her father to favour the Russian faith, all to get the coveted Exalted status, however, the recent genetic test had shattered their carefully constructed facade. The revelation – a bitter pill of truth – exposed them as impostors; their privileged existence was built on a lie. Now, haunted by the guilt she feels for her father’s crimes, Katya woke to the chilling sight of armed men tearing through her home. The screams of her family echoed in the chaos as she fled, the terror gnawing at her soul. Though she was not to blame, this was her new reality, a chilling consequence of the sins of her family.

Research: Real-world Inspiration.

After searching many resources for a compelling backstory for Katya, I had come to a dead end since most of my story is original, it doesn't have much to go on in terms of "research". However, I did want to have some sort of real-life inspiration for her as this would give her life more depth and essence.

As I kept researching more on Russian Law and its history, I came across Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev fell from power and his life turned upside down in a matter of months. This real-world figure spoke to me and gave me the inspiration to base Katya's dad loosely on him.

This fictional retelling of a person, affected greatly by the actions of her father, whose life somewhat resembled that of Khrushchev. It would also make sense, that Novikov (Katya's father) would look up to these figures and try to emulate them as Khrushchev was born and raised in Soviet Russia. Katya's life is plunged into disarray as her dad's mistakes take a toll on her life.

"By the early 1960s however, Khrushchev's popularity was eroded by flaws in his policies, as well as his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This emboldened his potential opponents, who quietly rose in strength and deposed him in October 1964."

Nikita Khrushchev - Wikipedia

By using my Northumbra Access to JSTOR, I also read excerpts from the book "The Fall of Nikita Khrushchev by William J. Tompson" which highlighted the state that Khrushchev was in at the time of his dismissal.

Tompson, William J. “The Fall of Nikita Khrushchev.” Soviet Studies, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1101–21. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/152407. Accessed 11 Feb. 2024.

[brandguypulkit]

Need support for customer support

One of the biggest areas of friction with AI is with customer service chatbots.

There are many studies (like this) showing the dissatisfaction and frustration users face with customer service chatbots, essentially eroding the benefits of self-service. Instead of making it easy, they make customers work on their issues themselves, fail and then contact traditional support channels anyway.

Self-service only works well if it takes less customer effort than solving the problem the traditional way. Chatbots are not perfect (like all other AI models in operation). When they misdiagnose the true problem and give you the same broken answers on a loop, they introduce a lot of friction in the customer journey. This not only frustrates the customer but also makes it less likely for the customer to try a self-service option again.

Merely deploying AI chatbots to serve the customers is not enough; it is imperative for businesses to evaluate how well these AI-powered support solutions are working. This doesn’t require very intensive analysis by data scientists; a Product Manager can analyze the customer feedback and other data like length of the chat, % of times chatbot gives the same response to differently worded questions, % of times when customer requests in-person support, etc.

AI can also be used here. Natural language processing software and AI-powered sentiment analysis can pinpoint the most frustrating chatbot responses.

An example of good friction in chatbot responses, which many companies have already incorporated, is showing "...." when the chatbot is processing the input and preparing to respond - to make it look more human-like. Instead of the response being "instantaneous and mechanical" lacking any human-like character, it appears to be more human-like and thoughtful response, even if wrong.

Companies need to ensure that their self-service tools, such as chatbots, are actually removing the bad friction while solving their customers' problems, and adding good friction that makes the interaction more human-like and thoughtful.

[daisyachain]

Holden has a case of what I’ll call ‘Jim Syndrome’ or ‘Jimdrome’ (for short) that he shares with James Gordon of Gotham.

Say a story wants to deal in moral grey zones but also is legally required to have a generic white cishet middle class male lead. The moral greyscale of whatever series they’re in involves the protagonists committing questionable acts for a noble goal. However, because these protagonists come from such a place of privilege it is difficult to credit their actions with any such need. A Jim’s sketchy conduct will not read as the calculated lashings of a character in desperation, it will come across as the careless fuckups of a guy who has never had to ever consider his impact on others.

Consider the case studies. Jim Holden certainly defends a just cause, the control of the protomolecule and the safety of the Belt. Jim Gordon is always trying to uphold the law for the people against the powerful. Yet, Holden’s interventions into Belt politics even for good reasons backfire constantly. Logging the distress call kills his crew. Sending the video inflames war tensions and results in the destruction of a moon and 16 deaths. Killing the Marasmus has no impact. Trying to put his clout behind Johnson ends up sabotaging his efforts and splitting the OPA. And as of 2x09, the audience no longer has the patience to tolerate his opening fire on impulse.

Holden’s actions may come across as raw impulse from Amos, panicked miscalculation from Kamal, or cold pragmatism from Nagata, but from Holden it just comes across as cruelty. There’s nothing in his character to explain or forgive the mistakes he makes, while the narrative wants the audience to keep believing he’s a naïve hero learning about what he needs to do. All the other characters experience some kind of social pressure clear to the audience that would alter their judgment in favour of more extreme action: Amos’ lower-class status and neurodivergence, Kamal’s fear, Nagata’s social precarity as an Earther-passing Belter. The Expanse tries to push this on Holden as well, it talks about his upbringing on an ecocommune etc etc. However the tone of this is off. Holden’s family live in a comfortable chalet on a tract of land they own in a world where the idea of land ownership barely exists. Rather than a disappointed idealist crushed by his own failure, he reads like a rich kid who didn’t want to inherit daddy’s company and ran off to space to slum it.

Similarly, Gordon’s constant slaughter after s1 are just dumb. In a series full of cartoon crazies or outright serial killers, his body count seems to come from sheer idiocy. It’s forgivable when Oz, Babs, etc kill people because those characters are evil characters who kill people for fun and profit. It’s expected for Bullock to kill people because he’s a corrupt coward. But Gordon? The character is supposed to be both sensible and good and he just can’t stop bumbling into murders.

A character suffers from Jimdrome where they’re saddled with a generic whiteguy personality that cannot provide any compelling explanation for their worse actions, while also conferring heroism because of the way the television industry works. They are the whiteguy because they are the hero because they are the whiteguy, but their actions are neither heroic nor justified by their privileged background, eroding the believability of the character and of the series.

[homestuckhomestuckhomestuck]

Fine, I’ll just draft as I go. Re: that weird internet thing

There’s been some insidious community behavior on the internet that looks preventable if ppl are aware this is a tactic with grim political history- a kind of behavior replicated in small scale sometimes rn with the misleading claim this is all a part of “activism.” But anything coming from under this behavior is very unlikely to ever result in long term positive change. Here’s a quick and dirty list to recognizing when someone is not giving you information, but is instead trying to control you.

If someone wants “control” over you, they will first need to destabilize you. Like any sales tactic taking advantage of basic human reactions, you need to be made insecure to be properly distracted and pressured- when someone is calm, or able to think, they could feel free to disagree, leave, and be in a mental and physical condition in which to make their own decisions. It’s a necessity to destabilize someone to make them ignore their own opinions. Just jolting someone out of complete self assuredness on it’s own is nothing bad on a social level, (on anything too specific that you aren’t studied in, you’re going to be wrong more often than right for one example) but it’s noticeable, and is related to the next thing.

Creating an environment of constant stress, victimization, and strife is the only realistic way to maintain this style of control over a period of say, months. Someone can get you to accept a statement that doesn’t make any sense by constantly putting you in the back foot. The community in question will create situations where you must prove your loyalty, read their mind, fight for their favor, be constantly insecure in your own moral character and their opinion, and be ready to reject others at any time in a way where you stop caring about legitimacy or reality of the opinion but just conforming to the others OR ELSE you’ll be shunned or punished in some way if you do not. You can’t be allowed to get to stable, you have to be kept on your toes. There’s also an aspect where you have to be constantly angry and ready to fight the other (to avoid inconvenient questions you are told its a time of crisis! Forever!) They will not accept being wrong, and not accept questions. It doesn’t matter if you understand.

There’s a way to maintain a panicy atmosphere effectively on a large scale, which works by messing with your self-identity, and then telling you these immutable traits of yours are under attack. Anything is justifiable and moral as long as it’s a pre-emptive strike. (To defend your immutable identity or to protect children.) There’s an emphasis on creating a conflict based on previously unnotable inherent traits especially insidiously. I see ppl literally fishing through gender sexuality ethnicity until they hit something the person reacts to and then dig in regardless of reality. This is actually a big tactic maybe out of scope to explain here. But this is a powerful call to arms that has been literally used via media manipulation to engineer civil war. (Explicate later. Based on formerly unnotable ethnic divides.)

This leads to identifiable ways of catching this behavior. How can you convince someone that they are under attack if there is no genuine attack?

First, you destabilize people constantly so they don’t feel like they can refuse you even if they can’t place with a coherent logical argument why they are doing what you say.(Stress them out, deprive them of sleep, immersing them in an atmosphere where reality doesn’t matter more than safety, pressuring a person with time limits, ultimatums, moral judgement, emotional tear downs are ways to throw someone just going about their day off-guard and on the back foot to agree without confirming reality and making them afraid of asking questions. Constantly forcing them to engage in things that make them uncomfortable and eroding their agency and boundaries, all their ‘friends’ will turn on them on a second regardless of fairness. Us vs them, the irredeemable evil you must not be associated with.) The method I’ve seen most often on tumblr and twitter in service of so-far seemingly minor things has been inducing moral panic, even if the instigators aren’t super aware of what they are doing or what they’ve been trained into. You rattle people’s ability to think.

Second, you control information about reality- you discourage sourcing or id-ing verification or logical fallacies, bc you’d be busy using them yourself. “How dare people question your sources as someone who has suffered and defend the killers of your children and attack you and sound like the enemy and the subhuman scum you dare defend who would kill you” to any question. On a national scale it could be called propaganda, but even not so self aware and pettier maintaining some black and white environment it’s necessary to promote misinformation. (This isn’t as simple as i just wrote, it’s kind of long to break down how different failures of sourcing work here)

So- historically, human rights movements come from righting the cruelties that result from being unfairly discriminated against. This is often tied to an inherent, immutable trait. But- all solutions are based in reality, as in verifiably true, and made with reason. You can research and explain it. There’s an understandable basis in fact!

So if the language used to panic you is centered around the core tenant “idiot youre under attack forever kill them/if you listen to me, you’ll become a good person/brave/smart/in the know/special/loved” which is not actually how activism works or how the history of those movements actually trot out, (if you understand the solutions to systematic problems, you literally understand exactly what worked) it’s actually planting a fallacious logic like magical thinking- already, “it doesn’t matter if you understand,” or it doesn’t matter if there’s reality to whatever you are being asked to do, you just have to do exactly what you’re told (or else) and somehow this alone makes you “good” inherently, with no further thought to your actions (ideally) forever. If you harass this trans man, if you give one person your income, if you mob this artist, you’re a “good/well-regarded person.” This relies on exploiting insecurity and fear.

Information-based movements will be more successful than imitating fear-based movements. Not only has history proved movements that share information is a base necessity, even though of course there’s the less arduous business of the anger around the events- it’s far from a fear based movement which will always center around control, which prioritizes manipulation over truer conversation, which is married to no accountability- and any movement that only uses the above tactics as apparently its whole concept will always have to find a convenient enemy to tear apart regardless of reality and become hypocritical, even if there’s lip service to a greater cause.

Or its just a youtube cult your grandpa gets algorithmed unknowingly into.

Sometimes adults make rules for children and don’t bother to explain the reason for it, even though the rules are said for a reason, but the above behavior is not in that context. Because this is not kindergarten. Obsession with control results in efforts to take away people’s agency and choice. It is unnecessary. This also often leads to literal abuse. (Huh maybe explain reasons for rules to ur children when possible so they don’t get trained to revert to something uncomfortably similar as an adult.)

Quick list on how to prevent from a nonconfrontational internet level that I genuinely think would be helpful: the above tactics are not a secret, so to not keep them secret but leak them like common knowledge when someone unfamiliar with it gets bamboozled the first time. Allowing people to ask questions, or at least not tearing people apart for asking even if you’re not of a mind to answer. Related: learning how to defer questions.

If you see someone circulating bad information, the easiest thing i can think of is to start circulating good information. It wouldn’t even require direct interaction, no one owns information, seems to work surprisingly well the times I’ve seen it. And from personal perspective experience, literally anyone can easily pick up on an argument with good grounds instinctively, dunno how to explain. People can tell the difference even if they aren’t used to sourcing or verification just yet. People by default have a sense of reason/can consistently with nearly no prompting “get” verification. I’ll phrase this better later.

[rosebush-hollow]

What We Do In the Shadows

MINOR SPOILERS FOR WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS SEASONS 1-4! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

So! I’m going through my second watch through of What We do In the Shadows because I’m not emotionally ready to move on, and I was thinking - again because I’m not emotionally ready to move on - each line of the theme song corresponds to the portrait of the character that the shot focuses on. 

So, I thought, why not go through how I think each line connects to each character instead finding something else to do with myself. 

“Don’t sing if you want to live long” - Nandor - Al Quolanudar does not exist, nor can he immigrate to the US due to his inability to say God and his lack of impetus to study for what is required of him to even get that far in the interview anyway. In a way, his song, or his value, is not useful in the world that he lives in - he doesn’t have his wives (yet), Madeline is dead because of the heart attack he gave her, and he isn’t useful on the Vampiric Council - that’s what Nadja’s for. His song, or his purpose, isn’t really relevant anymore; he has lost what life he had. Alternatively, you could think of Nandor’s ‘song’ as the wishes he gets from Djinn (author’s note: is it the Djinn, or just Djinn because I’m still a little unclear on it) and think of the line above as a reference to how quickly Nandor is using them up in a frivolous pursuit of happiness that he has no real sense of - he couldn’t even remember which of his wives that he really loved, and even when he finds Marwa, he changes her without her knowledge to just be a presence - not even really a partner. He’s using all of his wishes on something that I ultimately think won’t bring him any happiness, because a) he won’t have that power at his fingertips and will miss it greatly and b) all of his wishes were sort of meaningless because they all built to hollowing out Marwa, making her too perfect or too much of a blank space for Nandor to project the feeling of companionship onto. 

“They have no use for your song” - Nadja and Laszlo - both musically inclined, but their musical talent will go unrecognized in the industry. They won’t be known for their singing, or indeed at all by a wider populous. They may be immortal, but it’s only in a literal sense, neither of them will be remembered by humans (not that it really matters considering they all die anyway). No one has use for their music because other people have already popularized it and it was, quite literally, ahead of its time. When Nadja is on the worldwide Vampiric Council, her idea for a vampire nightclub is immediately shot down, and she herself talks about she didn’t really speak up and express herself. In contrast, Laszlo’s influence on young Colin’s life is almost all consuming. Laszlo imposes a strict curriculum of ‘not being boring’ on young Colin, even though it’s shown that it’s not really working for young Colin. In short: Nadja’s song is dismissed and kept silent, Laszlo’s song flourishes over young Colin but is ultimately harmful, especially with regards to his rehearsal schedule and isolation from his peers. ‘They’ (whoever you decide ‘they’ may be for Nadja and Laszlo respectively) don’t have a use for what Nadja and Laszlo have to say. 

“You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead; you’re dead and out of this world” - Very literal, they all died and became vampires, something that isn’t widely believed in, a supernatural underworld. I can personally totally hear Sean saying ‘that’s out of this world’ if he ever found out that Nadja, Laszlo, Nandor and Colin were vampires, no matter how unrealistic that reaction would be. 

“Now your hope and compassion is gone” - Guillermo - it’s more indicative of his journey throughout the series, how hopeful he is to become a vampire and how dedicated he is as a familiar, but over the course of the series this hopefulness erodes and he started to go after what he wants for himself - he doesn’t feel particular compassion towards Nandor and the others in the same way that he used to. He doesn’t have any realistic hope that he’ll ever become a vampire, and he doesn’t feel for Nandor in the way he did in Season 1. Even is Guillermo is still a very compassionate person, especially towards his family and other familiars, he is embezzling to provide for his family and give them everything they could ever want, something that I don’t think he would have done in Season 1 because it was stealing from Nandor and the others, it was stealing from his master, and that was both not kind and detrimental to his desire to become a vampire. Now, he realizes that he doesn’t have to be so concerned, because they are immortal, he is not, and he can actually benefit from this whole arrangement. He is smart and way too cool to keep putting up  with them without any sort of compensation. 

“You’ve sold out your dream to the world” - Colin Robinson - He literally feeds off of people’s energy and emotion. He works a mid-range job, a place where people go to let their dreams die so he can feed. Colin doesn’t really have any aspirations beyond feeding, he specifically goes to places where he finds all of the despair that he can - like the City Council meeting, “a smorgasbord of banality and despair.” If he were not an energy vampire, it would be a no-brainer to say that he was an office drone, he’d sold out his ambition and hope and joy for a cubicle. It’s the exact impression that he likes to give (or at least liked to before he died and was reborn-ish). And when he becomes a theater kid, he is sort of sold out by Laszlo and Nadja to save the club (admittedly what pays for their lifestyle, but it’s still being paraded around for his interests - and sold out in a way that Colin doesn’t like, as shown by his annoyance with Laszlo about his rehearsal schedule and his forced isolation). The connection between Colin and this line is very shaky, but I think there’s something there. 

“Stay dead, stay dead, stay dead; you’re dead and out of this world” - Again, pretty literal, they depend on not being alive to continue living, if they go into the sunlight or eat human food or participate in a lot of human activities they could die, so they really have to stay dead or they’ll really just die forever. And even if there was a way for them to reverse their vampirism, the world would have moved on without them, they wouldn’t have any way to cope with just being regular people. They’re safer as vampires, they are safer in shadows. 

So that was my analysis - I doubt that it’s meant to line up that way, and even if it was intentional I’m sure I’m not the first person to talk about this. I just thought I’d share how I thought each line corresponded with each member of the main cast. 

Have a lovely day/night!

[acoldsovereign]

To continue from here/clarify some more:

Maiz works better with those who allow her to exist as is.

Interrupting the ripple of chaos, or otherwise trying to get her to change will prove challenging and unnecessarily stressful. She'll go out of her way to spite, inconvenience and torment someone for trying. If she wants to change, she'll do it. If there's no benefit to be gained from it, she won't bother. Sure, you can explain to her that practically speaking, it's typically frowned upon in many societies to always (or constantly try to) stress out, freak out, provoke and emotionally/verbally harass (read: 'flirt with') someone, much less her own intimate partner. She doesn't have to listen or take what's said to heart. She probably won't. Societal norms mean nothing to her until it does. If the partner in question hasn't left, that's all that matters. She wouldn't go for someone who wouldn't be able to handle her. Paradoxically, if given space and time (assuming the romantic partner is still sane by this point), she WILL mellow out and become softer. Not stereotypically softer, just her brand of it. She'll be: less overtly (but still) malicious, more thoughtful and considerate of her actions (not necessarily for good, but it can have that effect), playful, teasing, able to exist without picking on or bullying them (or doing it in a less harmful manner), able to genuinely laugh or have deeper conversations without being dismissive or condescending about it, so on. She'll still be a pain in the ass but a more enjoyable one.

You just have to survive her thorns first.

[oswald-privileges]

ALL RIGHT BUT YOU ASKED FOR IT

Power of Three as a series is just. full of weaknesses, most of which come down to poor continuity and structure. I'm not gonna try and fix ALL of those, bc that'd be laborious as hell, but I will pick out things that I feel are the most egregious as case studies.

What Po3 does have, tho, is an absolutely shining strength in the concept of its three main characters. After twelve books of Blandly Heroic Protagonist Syndrome, Jayfeather is an absolute godsend. He's angry! He's rude! He's unhappy! He's not nice. I Love Him And He's My Son. Lionblaze has his invincible pride (hah) and emergent bloodlust, and Hollyleaf has her moral absolutism and certainty. These are good starting points for characters. Sadly, the lack of continuity undermines what could have been three really good character arcs.

So! I present to you:

HOW TO MAKE "WARRIORS: THE POWER OF THREE" NOT COMPLETELY SUCK ACCORDING TO MY PERSONAL TASTE; A NON-EXHAUSTIVE, NON-CONSECUTIVE LIST BY ME

ONE

- Have there be a persistant, overarching series threat. Sol is a character with amazing villain potential who does literally nothing except hang around, and do exactly 2 Bad Things completely off-screen. This Is Not Good.

- Instead, have him be present from the second book onwards- initially introduced as a friendly but enigmatic outsider who is slowly revealed across the series to be a complete black hole of a personality, a social parasite quietly rearranging whatever community he's a part of to just-so-happen to benefit him as much as humanly possible. His "preach individualism not starclan" methods are not so much values as one strategy out of many. (to those who know me- yes i have a type. no i will not apologise.)

- Maybe his ultimate goal is to dissolve and centralise the clans or something so that he can live out his life as a political puppetmaster in all the cat-luxury he likes. idk it's hard to imagine overall stakes for this rewrite BECAUSE THE ORIGINAL DOESN'T HAVE ANY

TWO

- For gods sake you don't have a series based on the premise of "the main characters develop super powers" and then only have the second power confirmed by the end of the fourth book. I understand the first book mostly focusing on Jayfeather- his powers are obvious from the start, he's got the strongest personality of the three, he gets access to most of the prophecy plot stuff because of them. But you NEED to have the other two show an interest in something concrete happening to them beyond that, and you need to at least hint towards the other two having something unique to them even if nobody clocks it yet.

- Have Jayfeather tell his siblings about the prophecy by the end of book two at the latest. The amount of time he spends noodling around not sharing it with them is inexcusable. It's not that it's out of character for him to hang onto a secret for a bit, it's just that there's no point and it slows everything down. It would be equally in character for him to go to his siblings and be like "look, i'm SPECIAL. well you as well but ALSO ME". Boy starts off as desperate for recognition, what can I say

THREE

- Have Jayfeather discover that StarClan don't withhold signs or information on purpose for the sake of "building courage and faith" or whatever nonsense. Seeing and communicating the future is metaphysically very difficult, so interpreting signs and messages is a genuine skill, or even an art. The cats of StarClan, however, really are just ghosts, much more similar to living cats than the currently living believe. This is the impotus for Jayfeather's discarding of his reverence for StarClan, which remains consistent throughout the series.

- Have Hollyleaf and Jayfeather both still change their cat careers in the first book, but put place more attention on the fact that they basically switched jobs. Have a scene where they end up yelling at each other, because can't the other see how lucky they have it? The tension breaks when they realise they've both lost something important to them- Jayfeather his chance to prove he's as capable as a sighted cat, and Hollyleaf her path to helping her clan in the way she thinks is best. They commiserate together, and reluctantly promise to do the best they can with their lots, so they don't waste the path the other wishes they'd taken. This closeness is eroded over the series as they disagree more and more on the subject of StarClan and its role in their moral choices and obligations.

FOUR

- Speaking of Hollyleaf! I nearly threw my phone across the room when the first Omen of the Stars book claimed that Hollyleaf "worked so hard to discover her power to help her clan". Where, Ms Erins??? I would have LOVED to have seen that!! Hollyleaf expresses absolutely no concern over the details of what power she has/will develop, and only has a couple of scenes even touching on her ambitions to help her clan. She has some vague ideas about becoming leader and like one scene where she gets to do some leadery things, but that never gets followed up on. What does happen is that the whole "warrior code" thing becomes more and more a part of her personality (for no clear reason) until she snaps.

- Hollyleaf going off the deep end is something I wanted so badly to get into and be moved by, because I could see where it comes from! Her moral certainty is fascinating, especially since it's based in something as abstract as the warrior code- which, when you think about it, isn't really... anything. There's no concrete set of rules that make it up, no traditional wording or cat philosophers, not even any fables. It's a handful of agreed-upon, common sense rules- don't cross boundaries, don't take prey that isn't yours, respect your ancestors, and don't murder. That's it!

- So, combining the above points, I think Hollyleaf not being one of the Three should stay, but both the audience and the characters are given good reason to believe she is. By around the third volume, make it so that Hollyleaf has found that her power is to get cats to "Do The Right Thing"- i.e. what she wants them to do. She sneaks off often to see Sol, who teachs her how to use this power. Her siblings are concerned about this new power, having already gotten a glimpse at what Sol can do, but she's confident that she can only use this power for good. Volume-specific plot happens, Sol manipulates her into causing him to win, she is shocked and horrified, and vows to stick ridgedly to what she knows is right i.e. The Warrior Code

- However, the more fervently she tries to stick to this abstract idea, the less it gives her results, the more her power seems to be failing. Believing that StarClan is taking her power away from her, she becomes caught up in a faith-guilt spiral that puts her in the position to snap at the end of the series. By that point it's clear to her siblings that Hollyleaf has no power- she was just very, very good at persuading people to do what she wanted.

FIVE

- Lionblaze is a girl now because I Said So. This Cat Is Trans And There's Nothing You Can Do About It.

- Her relationship with Heathertail stays the same- childhood sweethearts who are torn apart as they begin to understand the nature of the societal divides that exist between them.

- This can be used to contextualise the whole "half clan/outsider blood" thing as a cultural contradiction. In reality, inter- and outer- clan relationships aren't at all rare. They can't be, otherwise the whole society would be inbred out of existence in like five generations. But if at least one society of humans can spend a good 200 years pretending Sex Is Bad And Sinful Actually then cats can have persistant cat-racism in the face of all logic. Heathertail clocks this contradiction, Lionblaze doesn't.

- Her relationship-to-power arc doesn't need changing all that much either, other than starting much sooner and being more consistent. At first, she's completely overjoyed by her power, since unlike her siblings, it lines up so well with her ambition- become the finest warrior any of the clans have to offer. As the berserker rage aspect becomes more prevelent, she becomes more and more disturbed by the fact that she isn't disturbed by what she can do, and that she doesn't want the escalation of her power to stop.

- Tigerstar still does his thing, but Brambleclaw knows about it. He recognises the signs from when his father used to visit him, and tries to train Lionblaze in his own way. She ends up caught between wanting to be a good warrior, and testing the limits of her power.

SIX

- Jayfeather can stay basically the same because he's my perfect little angy boy and nothing needs to change. His arcs can be strengthened by having a more robust relationship with Yellowfang where they try to out-bitch each other, and coming to terms with his internalised ablism. Maybe he has a chat with Mothwing about faith a couple of times. Him furiously lashing out at being offered help transitions into an acceptence and understanding of his abilities more naturally. He never stops being A Grumpy Old Man.

- All fucking past-lives unexplained time travel goes in the BIN. Doesn't fucking happen. You can have that lore dump sprinkled across the books, or come from going deep into the tunnels and having a surreal meeting. Make it properly eldritch-level scary, shake Jayfeather's confidence in the idea of them being just a bunch of ghosts.

SEVEN

- Have the way Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight present very clearly as parents to the Three be explicitly, textually unusual. One of the things I liked so much about the first series was an almost total lack of emphasis on who was mated with who, and who was related or not. It felt very real to how feral cat colonies form, where raising kittens is a communal job. This gets completely dropped the moment series 2 starts and now the cats have monogamy.

- This emphasis on the family unit and fostering close relationships between parents and kittens is deliberate on the part of both Leafpool and Squirrelflight. Their aim is to cover for Leafpool so she doesn't lose her role as medicine cat- something she already gave up Crowfeather for before she was pregnant.

- In that little bit of backstory, have a robust reason for both Leafpool and Squirrelflight to leave the camp while Leafpool is pregnant and giving birth, possibly one that ties into the present day story in some minor way. I don't know how, it would just make that element of the story a lot more ground than "we left, the kits were born, then we came back and everyone was cool with it"

- When it comes to the "I am Not your mother" reveal, Jayfeather and Lionblaze are confused and hurt that they were lied to, but come to the reasonable conclusion that well, since they were raised mostly by Squirrelflight, saw Leafpool often, and are loved by both, they don't hate her. Lionblaze has something of a crisis over being half-clan, possibly initiating an attempted reunion with Heathertail. Jayfeather is more concerned with how other cats will think it makes him lesser, something he's still sensitive too.

- Hollyleaf, meanwhile, completely fucking snaps at the way her mother Violated Part Of The Code. It's a completely irrational reaction, but expected because she's been growing more and more reliant on The Code for the whole series, and less and less stable in her attempts to aid her clan and train to be its new leader.

- Squirrelflight is the one to murder Ashfur. This is easy to work out while reading- she's literally the only one of the four with a motive who isn't a perspective character. The mystery is less around finding out who did it, and more about why she did it (it's very ambiguous as to whether it was an accident or not). The main tension comes from who finds out when.

- Lionblaze is shocked, awed by how far she'd go to protect the three of them, and reassures her she did the right thing (as a way to salve her own uncertainty over her own longing for violence). Jayfeather makes it all about himself because he's Jayfeather- upset that he didn't know immediately, instead of, you know, figuring it out in a few hours because he can basically read minds. They try their best to hide it from Hollyleaf, who is already rattling around the final volume as a full-on antagonist, but are unsuccessful. This almost costs them something incredibly important- possibly Squirrelflight's life.

EIGHT

- the whole plot with the Tribe Of Rushing Water is a MASSIVE can of worms that could be removed from the series without issue. As it is:

- Characterize the Tribe as uncertain of how to fight other cats, because yes, they haven't had to do this before. DON'T characterise them as pathetic, doing whatever their leader says without thinking, and with ancestors who have Given Up

- Have some of the Tribe be really good at the violence. Worryingly good. Have others be sickened by what they're being asked to do.

- Have some of the clan cats reflect on what they've done. Hollyleaf would be all for introducing this society to jesus The Code, but even she might be horrified at being thanked by a tribe cat who can't wait to get out there and win themselves glory, only to be killed a few hours later

- The Tribe begin a new tradition of marking the walls in the mud they use as camoflage in order to commemorate their battles, and memorialise the fallen. One of the characters reflects on the fact that in a generation or two, the Tribe will feel like it's always been this way. How many of their own traditions- those that feel almost like natural law- started out the same way?

- Have Sol as the leader of the invaders, or maybe having insinuated himself into the tribe as a "mediator" and doing his charismatic cult leader thing.

NINE

- Cinderheart isn't a reincarnation of Cinderpelt. She's just named after her bc Cinderpelt saved her mother from a badger. this is because I think the reincanation thing is stupid and I can't think of a way to make it good.

TEN

- No more using tails as hand gestures like covering people's mouths. Never. None of it. It's expunged from existence.

Disclaimer: I haven't read Omen of the Stars yet, so I can't account for anything that might happen in that series that's grounded in Po3. I'm like... two thirds of the way through the first volume. I'm Not Impressed.

[famouskittychild]

Cheeky Mandos - ...and we're off

(Sorry I had a terrible writer’s block in the past 6-ish weeks - I went from reading fanfiction and being inspired by other’s visions to “I’ll never be able to write anything like these and I’m useless” in a single day :( I’m getting back into the groove finally, so I’m hoping to post more soon.)

There will be 18+ content (in the coming chapters soon) so if you are a minor, please don't read further.

Also the characters will be quite open and relaxed about things like gender, attraction, sexual activities, relationships etc, so if you prefer your Din (and their partner) possessive and/or monogamous , this won’t be a good read for you!

***

This pairing is  Din Djarin x gn reader / tall reader.  I’m short (and cis and woman). There’s so many short (and female) reader stuff out there, I wanted to write for people on the other end of the “why is your height not normal” / "definitely female" spectrum. If I make mistakes or you have advice, or ideas you'd like to see, please tell me!

Word count: 4267

Summary: You’re an armourer and some shiny guy just showed up.

First full piece/chapter/course! In which people seem to catch things. Thoughts? Viruses? Dropped facts? Who knows!?? Also contains a dilettante’s attempt at space electronics and some barely-canon-reminiscent Mando world-building. Still no spiciness sorry, marinating is a long process :P

Rating: T for some mentions of heavier topics.

CW: Mentions of mandalorian history, playing somewhat loose with canon lore (as in, my SW knowledge is patchy. sorry.)

Author’s note: I tried to find more info but it seems like the mandalorian alphabet doesn’t have names for the individual letters so I used aurebesh (also I liked the little Dorn(e) meta in there). And sorry for the bad puns. They’ll keep coming.

Prologue

One - ...and we're off

***

You aren’t worried about taking a stranger on board, you’ve done that plenty of times before. You hope he’s willing to put in the effort himself, too, just as he promised at the assembly.

The stranger leaves behind his ship, saying a friend will come to pick it up together with whoever might want to join the cause. You spot him from the cockpit as he walks over with a repulsor pallet in tow. He stops for a moment when your droids surge past him, busy at their pre-flight tasks, before moving on towards the ramp.

All his baggage is a satchel at his hip and a small bag on his shoulder, and two large crates of weaponry. You put him up in the spare cabin, the one that had been Sal’ee’s, your former apprentice, before she went on to be a journeyman. He stands in the middle of the room, staring at the two cots on opposite sides of the room, the lockers, the fresher in the corner.

“All mine? Where will you sleep?”

You don’t understand the surprise in his voice.

“Over there” you show him, pointing at the cabin opposite from his. It’s much more lived in, some of the blankets and trinkets and pillows visible through it’s open door. “There’s a third cabin that I mostly use for storage but has more fold-up bunks in case I need to transport more people. That’s rare though.”

“Ohh.” He nods, then turns to look around his room again. “Okay. I thought all of these rooms were cargo space.”

You smile, and quickly think through your to-do list. You’ll have to rearrange your schedule somewhat but it’s not that big of a bother.

“Come on, I’ll show you around the ship.” Before he gets lost in its cavernous interiors, you might add - but you don’t. If his reaction to a separate cabin and his current ship - an old ARC170 - is any indication, he must be used to very cramped quarters.

***

Your trusty Brick, a beat-up YV 929, is armed to the teeth and ugly, just as you like it. The ship is a scavenged one, gutted from most of its original factory issue armaments, engines, and even wiring. It was perfect for your former master when she found it at a scrap heap: she wanted to rebuild it herself, deliberately piecemeal; panels sourced form here, engines from there, concealments added. She modified the inner workings of the engines so that the power lines could be redirected to a concealed forge.

That forge is your pride and the main reason you haven’t settled at a permanent place yourself. When your master retired from travelling, the ship passed to you, and you continued her mission of offering your knowledge and expertise to those of your people who otherwise had no access to an armourer.

…

The next standard month is spent with adjusting, both for yourself after getting used travelling alone again since Sal’ee left, and for the stranger who found himself a passenger on someone else’s ship. Apparently he used to live a very similar life to yours, with the exception that he was a hunter not a craftsman.

You travel together, share meals, research the places you are directed to. He joins in the effort that is maintaining the ship. Still - he is very taciturn at the beginning, keeping his words to the bare minimum. The first few days it feels as if you are still on your own aside of your droids. By the middle of the month, he progresses from short answers, through sharing information, to willingly starting to tell stories; but you know that chatting will never be his defining feature.

His armour seems to fill the spaces of the Brick’s corridors. You feel as if it’s not him who has the presence, but that set of glinting, perfectly made handwork of an armourer you already admire. Some of the pieces were sourced elsewhere, you can tell by the different shapes and designs; they seem haphazard and mismatched compared to the rest. Most of the set is the work of a single person. On those, there’s not a single uneven line, a broken curve, an edge at the wrong place. The angle of the panes of the metal, the ridges, the simplicity and elegance of them all - you have to hold yourself back from touching them, to admire them. You would give a lot to hold those pieces in your hand, to study them, to analyse them with your eyes and hands and with your tools.

You’re a master, yes. But so much knowledge was lost. So many masters gone, with their knowledge and their workshops. Apprentices became heads of Forges in the absence of the more skilled. The survivors still to this day have to piece together half-remembered lessons and forgotten details, experiment with techniques that were known before but the methods got lost as decades of civil war and occupation and murder kept eroding your heritage.

Sometimes a set of armour comes along that is just made in a way you never had an opportunity to learn. Often the person who forged them is long gone. Not the stranger’s armourer though. As far you can tell, she’s alive. Or at least was, when he last saw her. Not too long ago; though your usual method for guessing forging dates is mostly useless as it is based on the condition of the suit’s paintwork. Which he doesn’t have, so you can only guess from the small amount of scratches. You try to ask once, but whilst he’s forthcoming with general stories, he doesn’t go into details.

It’s a common theme with him. He talks about people and planets and events, and leaves out a lot - and you don’t even notice it first. Only when you try to glean information about his armour do you realize how well he fuzzes over those facts and nuances. It’s only up to the peculiarities of Basic and its use of gendered pronouns that you know his Armourer is a woman, or at least he considers them so. He doesn’t even tells you his own name, and when you ask your Elder in one of your communications, she tells you he didn’t gave it to them either. You keep introducing him as a friend, and that is the end of it for a while.

***

The visits to this first few coverts with him are… interesting. You can see him fidgeting from the corner of your eye. He always follows half a step behind and off to a side, as if not wanting to be in your way. He keeps quiet and doesn’t mix much, and around small children and droids, he is positively withdrawn. He only comes alive when he talks about his mission.

You had learned early on during your apprenticeship that keeping the helmet on is a safe bet when meeting with unfamiliar mandalorians. That led to later getting in contact with his type of believers too, despite their notorious secrecy even from the rest of the People. When you tell the stranger about that, he immediately showers you with questions, but you can’t give an answer to most of them. You never met with anyone from his particular covert, or heard of it. No name, no description seems familiar. It’s painful to watch his shoulders slump after daring to hope.

During the course of the month spent travelling, he gradually comes to be more social. He starts to stand and walk beside you. He doesn’t withdraw to the background anymore; he can actually be quite chatty if approached the right way. Droids still make him stop, though he warms up to kids in his own way. He’s good with them, at least in your opinion, though you know some would still call him aloof and distant. He isn’t a cuddler, nor does he crouch down to ask cutesy questions. He juts sits nearby them, and in that way of children having a good sense about adults, they know he’s trustworthy. They go up to him to chatter, to hand him a toy to hold, to ask him to fix a latch on their boots; than they go back to play.

He teaches you too, inadvertently at first during everyday conversations and later by his own volition, about his Way. About his Creed. It keeps throwing you off how much it differs from most that you had met before. Not even meeting briefly with people who followed the same Way as him could prepare you for the details that he does share. The degree of strictness, the loyalty, the barest bones Old Tradition beliefs and their willingness to follow them is very rare amongst the People as far as you can tell. Their devotion earns your respect.

At other times, your jaw hangs open and you can’t believe you are talking to an adult roughly around the same age as yourself, who by his own admission had spent three decades living as a follower of the Creed - not knowing about things children are thought through plays and songtime. His ignorance is so staggering, your admiration towards his unknown Armourer wavers. How could she keep so many things hidden from them? Why not talk about your own history? Your greats? Your artefacts?

About the many other who would call them vod’e, siblings?

You are an armourer, a craftsman, a person who makes a living by making things with your hand. You’re not a leader, or a scholar, or someone who decides what to tell your people. You do have a status within the community, but that is a status of service. From what the stranger says, their Armourer was a leader in every aspect: elder and lorekeeper and moral guide and more. All in one. It is something you can see developing from the old songs and histories amongst groups who take tradition more literally.

You are good at observing people, even at copying their habits to make them feel more comfortable with you, but less good at determining their underlying motives. The reason you think of him as “the stranger” even after travelling with him is because it’s so hard to figure out what drives him. There’s a melancholy to him that overrides the more typical mandalorian fight-readiness or aggression. You see how he gazes off to the distance sometimes, turning his head to the side and freezing. How he keeps to himself when he can. But you can’t tell why. Grief? Regrets? Determination to change? Planning something greater and being preoccupied with that?

He doesn’t pick fights to test you. He spars with you when you invite him to, he helps when you ask, and often even without it. He’s polite and considerate; he keeps conversation to practicalities and interesting stories, and doesn’t bother you with anecdotes or insistent questions about trivialities or your private life. He even does the dishes.

He’s deadly boring in his reliableness.

You are used to being on your toes around people all the time. When you meet a new group, it’s all unknown people. With ones you had already visited, the problem is having to remember them. They remember you of course, the ‘wandering armourer’; and surely you remember them too.

What is worse, when people stay the same but you don’t remember them, or when they change and you just can’t place them?

He becomes a good excuse after you’ve been to several coverts together. It’s interesting to notice how your dynamics change even further once you two get into a comfortable routine. You start to retreat to your forge and tools, and let him take all the attention. And he doesn’t just talk about his mission anymore, or lets little ones play around him whilst he’s quiet. He converses with people about news, about their children, about weaponry. You have more time to focus on your work.

Sometimes, people ask you what do you think of his mission. You tell them that you will follow what your clan decides, and that’s mostly true. It is something people don’t often debate, at least.

He quickly becomes a part of your everyday life. You are content with your usually solitary travels. You know that your family, your clan and your friends wait for you at home. They message you and you can find the time that suits you to message back. You don’t miss the constant hubbub of the covert most of the time. But now that you have someone that is not a droid, someone who is your equal in every aspect, on board again, it’s not even lonely anymore.

***

“So what’s up with you and droids?” you ask one day, after you got back from a covert and are safely in hyperspace to the next destination. You tinker with your astromech’s navigational systems. Poor 2-T keeps bumping into walls and crates. Again.

The stranger looks at you and your droid, than over at Mouse who for a change isn’t zooming around at foot level.

“Bad memories.”

“Gunk sat on you?” You tease. You hope it’s just something silly and not him having some sort of snobbish organics-are-better philosophy. He is quiet, and you focus on your work. He’ll talk if he wants to, that much you know already about him.

Inside the body of your astromech, a rivet from stars knows where is stuck between two circuit boards and blocks the access to a short-circuited piece of wire.

“Kriff. Toots, this will take a while, sweetie. Can’t access that kriffing panel.” He chirps back something and you read the translation on the small display. “No, it’s not that. My hand can’t fit in that small space. Let me find those pliers… should be in that other drawer somewhere.”

You search in the chest of tools, and despite your usually good organization, you can’t find them amongst the droids’ tools where their place is.

“Let me help.” The stranger’s voice beside you makes you jump. He can be awfully quiet. “Sorry. I think I might’ve put them back into the wrong drawer. I used them the other day when I fine-tuned that scope.”

He points at another drawer, where you keep your fine electronics stuff. No wonder he mixed them up. He stands beside Tootee a bit awkwardly until you find the tool.

“Here! No problem by the way. “ You turn back to him and to the droid, than have an idea. “Do you mind a bit more help? You can say no if you don’t want to work with the droid, I’ll understand.”

He doesn’t object yet, so you go back to 2-T and show the stranger the area you’re working on. You see him lean closer in your peripheral vision.

“That’s where I need to get that burned piece of wire out and install a new one, but first, I need to get that rivet out of the way.” You point at the root of the problem, than explain your plan, pointing out each part in turn. ”If you could hold those using this, than I could get here, remove this, with that tool, than have to get those bundles out of the way too, so than that wire there could come out. Easy.”

You look up at him, and his helmet is way closer than you expected. You can almost see your reflection in that black visor as it stares back at you for a second, and you almost apologize again, when the stranger starts to speak.

“Just have to hold the wires to the casing, or pull them like…” he moves his hand in the air, showing what he means.

“Hold them to that panel, there, with the pliers, so I have room to access the rest.”

He thinks for a moment, than he starts to tug one of his gloves off.

“You don’t need to take that off, just hold the pliers” you tell him, but he shakes his head.

“No, I can fit my hand in there, I’m pretty sure. If not we can try it with the tool.”

You realize that this is the first time you see his skin. Than it occurs to you that he might very well misunderstand this whole situation. You just asked him to hang his hand inches from yours in an enclosed space; inside a droid nonetheless, just after you basically told him you noticed he has a problem with them. It would be so easy to get caught up in there, to touch his hand, and hush it up as coincidence. Especially now that he took his glove off as well. He might even think that it was a careful plan of yours: have an area to work with were your slightly larger hands don’t fit but his might.

Your fingertips already tingle from knowing you can’t make mistakes. Which means you’ll probably do. He reaches between the panels and gets to the part where you got stuck. He wiggles his fingers a bit and scrapes around.

“Ha, found some wires. Are these the ones you need out of the way?”

You peer down into the quagmire of electronics, trying to find the best angle to see everything.

“Yes, those are the ones. Just hold them like that.” You try to focus on what you are doing, but after those earlier thoughts, your hands are jittery. You somehow manage to remove the obstructing rivet, than find the burned out part and replace it without accident, the stranger patiently holding things out of your way. You direct him here and there, occasionally stumbling as it’s a lot of instructions, or at least a lot of “could you please” and “thank you”. It gets particularly awkward when you stumble over the lack of name spectacularly.

“Could you pull those the other way, so they aren't that taut, please? Thank you, you. I mean thank you.”

“Din. Din Djarin.” Your head snaps up while the rest of your body freezes. “I should have told you my name sooner, but I’m so used to not telling it… and it just became more awkward to bring it up as time passed. I apologize.”

You close your mouth that of course was hanging open in surprise, than shake your head.

“I thought at first that I missed it when you said it so I was ashamed that I didn’t remember.” That did happen before, and it was one of your greatest worries about meeting new people. “I actually asked my elder. Sent her a comm. So when she told me you went nameless, I didn’t wanted to demand it.”

He doesn't answer right away. His voice is softer when he speaks a bit later.

“Thank you. For being considerate.”

You smile and try to wave it off. Which results in your hand slipping and pawing at his, still motionless and stuck in the inside of the astromech.

“Oh shucks, I’m sorry… didn’t meant to.” You withdraw your hand quickly, and start to look for your tools to cover your mistake.

He doesn’t seem bothered, luckily. You calm down, reminding yourself not to behave like you drank one too many glasses of your cousin Ree’s home-made tihaar, and finish the repair.

“You can let those go now, I’ll finish from here. Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome, any time.”

He sits back on a nearby crate and watches you work for a while, ignoring Mouse zooming around the room. You’re surprised a bit: you didn't expected him to stick around. And than he starts to ask about 2-T. How long you had him, is he temperamental, can you install a vocoder on astromechs, and why not. His tone is somewhat cautious, his voice stiff, like someone asking about a dangerous predator. You remember how you asked him about his distance with droids, but don’t want to push that question. He already told you his name today.

…

By the time you finish with the rest of the repairs, clean Tootee up and tidy around your workplace, interrupted by having to leave hyperspace and land at a spaceport, it’s the middle of the night in local time. You planned to have a nap and search out the local covert just before dawn.

You go to the galley to have a bite before turning in, and the stranger - Din, you remember, although his last name is less clear - is cleaning up some dishes. There’s another bowl in the middle of the small table, covered by a plate.

“That’s for you, if you’d like to have it. Used up the last of that spice mix we got” he tells you as you enter. You sit down and stretch your legs out one side. As you take the plate off from the steaming bowl, you think about how nice it is to find warm food on the table and not having to cook your own all the time.

“Thank you.” You pull the bowl close and take the spoon that he put beside it. You swirl the soup - it looks very good: clear broth with lots of veggies and other fillers in it - and gather your thoughts. “So ummm… I want to ask something before it gets awkward again.“

He finishes piling the bowls and cups and sits down on the seat opposite. You blurt the question out before you might change your mind.

“What was your name again? Din, that was clear, but the rest… sorry but it sounded something like “jarring”?”

He chuckles, and it’s a clear sound even with a vocoder, no snort or sigh to distort it.

“It’s Djarin. Dorn-jenth-aurek-resh-isk-nern. Djarin.” You nod, a bit embarrassed, and he continues. “Don’t worry, you aren't the first to ask. Probably not the last either.”

“Thanks for being patient. I’m not the best with names, to be honest.”

He tilts his head.

“Is that why you are always so focused when someone introduces themselves? I can ask them to repeat their names for me too if you want to, than both of us can try to remember them.”

You blink at him.

“That’d be…” Unnecessary, and don’t bother, and it’s not your job, you think - but stop yourself. That would actually help. No shame in accepting it. ”That would be nice. Thanks.” You are good at a few things, like making things with your own two hands. Not gaping when something surprises you, or remembering faces or names, any names, not just people? Nah.

You tuck into your soup, and the two of you sit in companionable silence. You wander if Djarin sits there because he wants to, or if he’s waiting for more questions from you. You asked a lot from him during the last few hours, and he was really kind with all his help and telling you his name and not being bothered when you misremembered it.

You are halfway done with your meal when he stirs. He leans forward with his lower arms on the table, and takes a deep breath. You wonder what his question will be - you commit to answer whatever it might be. He deserves that after today.

“So you asked earlier about me and… droids, right?”

Your hand with the spoon stops in the air. You weren’t expecting this question, at all.

“Yes…” You want to say he didn’t have to answer. But you already told him that. You’re sure he remembers that too - since he brought the topic up again. “Yes, I did.”

He shuffles on his seat a bit, and looks out to the side like he sometimes does. You lower your spoon and eat, letting him gather his thoughts.

“When I was a kid… I don’t know how old you were then, but during the war. The Clone wars.” You nod, understanding what he’s getting at, and he continues. “We were… the place I lived came under attack. Some separatist battle droids. Mandalorians saved me.”

You swallow your soup. That was the shortest possible description of someone having their entire life and probably everyone they knew ripped away from them and finding a new way of life for the decades to come.

“I’m sorry” you say, because really, what else is there to say. He nods, and gazes off again. Than he shrugs his shoulders, as if he wants to shake the weight of the past from them.

He gets up, and walks around the table on his way out. He stops beside you for a moment and hesitates, and you almost turn towards him to ask what he needs when you feel him squeeze your shoulder. Than he straightens and steps away.

It’s warm where he squeezed it, and you remember how long ago it was that someone touched you.

You need to talk to your friends asap, and hug at least some of them. He turns back from the door.

“Get some sleep before dawn, all right? Have to be sharp to remember all those new names.” You don’t see him wink but you’d bet he does behind his visor. You scrunch your nose at him and pout before smiling, and he dips out of the galley.

Your hand is still hovering in the air, holding the spoon, while you listen to his footsteps getting more distant as he walks down the corridor to his cabin.

It’s just your luck that you don’t need your wits the next place. It’s only two people with the same, simple name and you met both of them before.

[wildwoodmage]

CROSSROADS

@boundforfreedomsonsal SonSal Week Year 3 Day 3

Second day in a row I'm cheating by repurposing fic I already had mostly written, but actually it's sonsal mod's fault for making prompts that suited my pre-existing drafts! This one is a continuation of Starlight Symphony, an AU featuring Sally as the Goddess of Order and Sonic as... well, why don't you read it for yourself? ;3 High fantasy with a touch of philosophy. Does it count as major character death if the scene takes place in the afterlife? Anyway...

Despite what humans and lesser gods might believe, Sally, Queen of the Gods, was not omniscient. Her knowledge was vast, unmatched by any who had not personally woven shapeless matter into planets and stars. She heard the song of every newborn soul, and remembered all who had come before. Human history was a tome she returned to time and time again, spending centuries pondering the stories of the strange creatures she and her husband had created. The future, however, remained behind a veil. Scourge had a unique talent for bucking her predictions, bending fate to his ever-shifting whims. Every once in a while, a human was born with a similar talent. These humans drew power from their defiance, their ability to stare fate in the eye and not blink. Sally soon realized that humans with this ability often became heroes, healers, leaders, or destroyers. They changed fate and the fate of all who followed in their wake. When Sally peered into a human’s future and realized that it was shrouded in chaos, she knew that they were one to pay close attention to.

When the triplets were born, fate ceased to be predictable. Infinite possibilities clouded Sally’s vision, and as much as the mystery vexed her, she found that she could not tear her eyes away. A lesser mind, studying them, would find them unremarkable; three children without wealth or protection, likely to die in obscurity. But they survived, and as they reached adulthood, Sally began to see the signs of three uniquely powerful souls, shining with defiance and infinite potential. Sonic, the eldest, was courageous and kind. He was a shield between his family and the myriad of dangers that threatened them. Sonia was a firebrand, with ambition that would never be satisfied with a life of poverty and fear. Manic was clever, and although his wit was often used for petty tricks, he could not fully conceal a profound love of justice. All three were dishonest, as humans often were; they pretended not to care about a world that did not care for them, but Sally could see that they ached for any innocent who suffered, and they yearned for a kinder future.

For two decades, a blink in the lifespan of a god, Sally watched them from afar. And when one reached the Isle of Souls, she approached him. Sonic lay on his back, cushioned by ivory sand, while rhythmic waves lapped at his feet. He stared up at a blue-gray sky, eyes tracing subtle shifts in the clouds. In all the years Sally had watched him, she had never seen him lie so still. On Earth, he had been eternally restless, his body overflowing with more energy than a single human could possibly contain. Here, however, he enjoyed a moment of perfect peace, untroubled by want or memory or anything that was not the rolling waves. He deserved it. Sally felt a twinge of pity that it may not last.

The Queen didn’t speak as she approached, not wishing to disturb him until he was ready. Her preferred form when speaking to humans was a lady, small and unassuming at a glance, with sensibly cropped hair and clothes of sturdy, deep blue linen. Unlike her husband, she cared little for striking awe and fear into the hearts of men. She found it was far more satisfying to reveal her true nature piece by piece, beguiling her followers not with power, but mystery. Her blessing was reserved for those who sought the truth beneath the surface. When she sat beside Sonic, legs folded demurely beneath her, only the vivid color of her eyes and clothes indicated that she was anything more than another ghost.

With uncharacteristic slowness, Sonic turned blank white eyes on her. He smiled, friendly but not familiar. “Howdy, stranger,” he said. “I didn’t know there was anyone here but me.”

“It’s best to give new arrivals space to adjust,” Sally said. “I hope I didn’t interrupt.”

“Nah, it’s alright. I was just enjoyin’ the atmosphere.” Sonic looked back up at the sky. His face was smooth and slack, untouched by worry. Although he had worn a carefree mask on Earth, there had always been fury and tension seeping through the cracks. Now, he couldn’t even remember what had troubled him so. Sally was almost jealous. Almost.

“I love to come here,” she said. “There’s not a place in the universe that’s more peaceful.”

“I believe it,” Sonic said. “But I haven’t seen much beyond earth and the night sky. How much of the universe have you seen?”

“All of it and more,” Sally said. Sonic snorted as if she had cracked a joke, although her tone was entirely sincere.

“All of it, huh? And here I thought I was well traveled. What’s your name, stranger?”

Sally introduced herself, and was momentarily taken aback when Sonic extended a hand for her to shake. His smile was effortless, and Sally had seen shades of it in the years before. To Sonic, everyone was a friend until they proved otherwise, even someone like her. She gave his hand a polite shake.

“I’m Sonic,” he said.

“I know.”

“Of course you do.” Sonic’s tone was mirthful, unafraid. Perhaps it was the soothing balm of his surroundings that kept him from worrying, but Sally suspected that she would not intimidate him even if they were still on Earth. Even if any sensible human would be afraid of her. “You know everything, right? Can you tell me where we are?”

“This is the Isle of Souls, a waypoint between Earth and infinity. Ghosts rest here until they are ready to move on.”

Sonic was quiet for a moment, his smile softening into something more subdued. “I’m dead.”

It wasn’t a question, so Sally didn’t answer. “What do you remember?”

“Not much,” Sonic said. “Faces. Family. I’m missing a lot of details, and the actual dying part is a big ol’ blank.”

“That’s normal. Those who die tragically rarely remember right away. The memories will return as you make peace with your fate.”

“And my family?”

“Grieving, but safe. I cannot predict their futures, but I suspect that they will not join you here anytime soon.”

“Good.” A pang of sadness crossed Sonic’s expression, the first since his arrival on the Island. “Sort of. I guess it’s normal to miss them. I want them to be safe, but I think they’d like it here.”

“Most souls wait here until their loved ones arrive. You are welcome to do so. However…” Sally chose her next words carefully. It was exhilarating, speaking with someone whose actions she could not predict, but the uncertainty was unfamiliar and vexing. “I would like to make you an offer.”

At that, Sonic propped himself up, turning away from the blue-gray waves to look Sally in the eye. “Do you always sound this spooky, or do you crank it up a notch for the recently-dead?”

“Words have consequences, especially when they are misunderstood. Especially words from a goddess to a human. I want to be sure you understand the gravity of your decision.”

Sonic breathed out a sigh, casting a longing glance back at the endless ocean. But he sat up, facing Sally, as tension crept back into his posture. “Alright, Your Majesty. I’m listening.”

“You have two paths forward,” Sally said. “You may remain on the Isle of Souls like multitudes before you, and those that will come after. Ghosts are welcome to stay as long as they like. When you are ready for eternal rest, you will sail across the ocean. The horizon is beyond the reach of even the gods, and on the other side you will be truly at peace. No matter what path you choose now, that horizon is your final destination.

“You died sooner than I expected. You are not the first human to do so, and you will not be the last. But I believe that you still have a story left to write. If you accept my offer, I will grant you a portion of my power, and you will be my agent in the realm of the gods. The reaper who brought you to the Isle is one such agent, though you would have different responsibilities. You would be not unlike an angel from human stories, a messenger and a warrior, defying those who would disrupt the balance between the gods.”

Sally couldn’t predict the future, but she knew with complete certainty what Sonic’s first question would be. “Would I be able to go back to Earth?”

“No,” she said. “If I were to bend the laws of life and death, even for my own champion, my own power—and every universal law I uphold—would erode. Any time you cross into the mortal plane, your power and ability to communicate with the living will be severely restricted. You are dead, and you will remain dead. Should you accept, your service will be temporary, and when it ends you will return to the Isle of Souls.”

A wiser man would ask for time to think. Sonic merely looked at the starless sky, then the horizon. The energy that flowed through him in life and death alike had him fidgeting, sweeping his fingers through the soft sand. Sally couldn’t predict him, couldn’t see into his racing thoughts, but she had crafted his beating heart and recognized her husband’s gift, the restless defiant that flowed through his veins.

She was not surprised by his answer. She couldn’t wait to be surprised by what was to come.

[bigskydreaming]

Say, what's your thoughts on Dick's Harem of Morally Ambiguous Older Men (TM)?

Not a fan. Tbh, I just hate the trend of ‘surround Dick with uneven power dynamics and never ever let him interact with someone on an even playing field, and requiring every relationship in his life to be heavily loaded with advantages the other holds over him, or obligations he feels towards them.’

But even more than that, I hate the fact that said harem exists not because of canon, but because of fandom’s absolute INSISTENCE that Dick’s ‘suitors’ all be predatory and so much his better in terms of fighting, experience, strategy, that they’re usually written as more toying with him as much as they are....engaging in an actual relationship. Because, idk, that makes the relationships ‘dangerous’ and that’s sexy? Meh.

But the reason why that bothers me so much in particular, is because like.......the vast fields of difference in skill and expertise that we so commonly see in S/ladin fics and the like.....

LITERALLY DON’T EXIST IN CANON.

This dynamic where Slade is wholly Dick’s superior who has so much to teach him if only he would deign to learn from him.....like, the ONLY place that actually exists is the one Teen Titans cartoon from like twenty years ago, and its fine if people want to go with that for whatever reason, but when everything else about the fic screams “this is very much a comic-based story except for that one element”....that’s when it gets frustrating. 

Because you can do what you want of course, but I’m always gonna wonder WHY it was deemed so necessary, that Dick always be at a sizable disadvantage to Slade instead of an enemy he respects as being equal in threat to the threat he poses himself.

Because as I’ve said many times....Slade does NOT consider Dick a relative novice, still years away from being an actual threat to him in combat or capable of interfering with his plans.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.

The entire REASON Slade started out as a Titans villain, a nemesis for the whole team, and eventually just became Nightwing’s enemy and occasional ally, but with all of Slade’s attention usually focused on him and ignoring the other Titans entirely most of the time....

Is because Slade views Dick as being personally responsible for the times the Titans defeated him or foiled his plans. He chalks it entirely up to Dick’s strategic mind and leadership abilities, as well as his effectiveness in combat when the two of them engage hand to hand.

Slade focuses on Dick not because he thinks he has so much to teach him or Dick still has so much to learn or ‘could truly be a threat someday’.....but rather, because Slade ALREADY VIEWS DICK AS THAT THREAT AND HAS FOR YEARS.

He’s compelling and frustrating to Slade in equal measure because of all the Titans, Dick is the one Slade views as an actual threat, the one he has to either get out of the picture or else get on board with him if he wants to proceed with his agenda of the moment without it being thwarted by someone aka Dick Grayson.

Like yeah, Slade’s decades older than Dick with the experiences to match that, but the Titans and Dick himself have always defeated him or driven him off ON THEIR OWN, without having to call in ‘the adults’ to back them up or be the cavalry or whatever......so how do you figure they can manage that, if their leader and strategist and the one most directly/immediately targeted by Slade each encounter.....is like.....at the same time, significantly lesser than Slade in skill, expertise and ingenuity?

IT DOESN’T WORK, LOL.

What, like Slade just ‘lets them win’ all the time out of the goodness of his heart? This is the same guy who nuked Dick’s whole city just to spite him personally!

But anyway, my point is, using Slade as my primary example here though it applies in some form or another to all of the members of the Harem of Morally Ambiguous Older Men.......

Dick doesn’t need to ‘level up’ ten or twenty years into the future before he’s finally on Slade’s level. Slade doesn’t view him like a college recruiter scouting for talent and going ‘hmm, that one could have potential after putting a certain amount of work into getting him to a higher level.’

Slade ALREADY views Dick as his primary threat and personal antagonist, and that’s 100% the reason why he focuses on just Dick off on his own doing the solo hero thing just as often (if not more) than he takes on the whole Titans. Because for all the Titans’ vast powers, Slade has a way to beat each of them. He’s studied them, he knows their strengths and weaknesses, how being dependent on a superpower rather than acquiring a broad arsenal of skillsets can make them particularly vulnerable if their power is countered or negated in some way.

Dick is the wildcard. Always has been. Right back to their very first encounter in the Judas Contract, where Slade decided the fact that Dick alone had escaped being captured was a negligible problem, because he figured Dick presented the least threat out of all of them. And was proven very definitively wrong, lol.

Because Dick’s ultimate strength is in his adaptability. In how his life has shaped him to be a fucking paramount grandmaster of thinking on the fly, reacting to changes in his situation, environment, and anything else that disrupts his own plans, and requires he adjust to a new status quo and make new plans based on that.

Dick has been doing this to EXTREME degrees since before he was even ten years old, and he is fucking GOOD at it by now.

And the ultimate threat to a meticulous planner and strategist like Slade.....is always going to be a genius strategist whose specific strength lies in thinking on his feet. Someone capable of upending the whole chess board and rendering all pre-planned moves irrelevant, and then already being ten steps into a new plan before his opponent has wrapped their mind around the fact that most of the preparation that went into this encounter is useless and irrelevant now. 

A lesson Dick taught Slade in their very first encounter, in the Judas Contract, when he was the only Titan who slipped free of being captured by Slade....and when Slade made the mistake of thinking this was no big deal, as he viewed Dick as posing the least threat, especially on his own without the rest of his team.

And its  a lesson Slade has never forgotten. 

And see what I mean, just from my phrasing there? How often in S/ladin fics is it framed as though there’s even the CHANCE of Dick having anything to teach Slade instead of just being taught? Or even just surprised and having his ego checked by the fact that this decades younger hero has just defeated or outwitted him AGAIN?

They don’t do that, in my experience. Because they’re written to DELIBERATELY be imbalanced, like the uneven playing field is basically the POINT of the relationship, given that......the authors have to reshape Slade from the archnemesis of equivalent standing to Dick, into this vastly more skilled and experienced figure who Dick has no prayer of defeating on his own, unless Slade like, decides to stop toying with him on his own, or Dick’s saved by the intervention of family and/or teammates.

And to me, that defeats the entire point of Dick Grayson. The guy who saves himself time and time again, the survivor who doesn’t NEED anyone to save him or for those with more power than him to take pity on him and stop rubbing it in his face while not changing the power dynamic in the slightest.

I mean, that’s LITERALLY the basis of my being so invested in his character, lol, so even though I’m not a fan of sizable age gaps in romantic relationships in general, in this case, SPECIFICALLY - there was never a chance in hell that any of those relationships were ever going to interest me.

Especially since, as I said with Slade.....the entire actual dynamic Dick has with the other character has to be altered specifically so that Dick is in a more vulnerable position than they occupy, in any relationship they form.

Sorry not sorry, but I will never understand why a fandom that talks such a good game about Dick’s status as a survivor, seems at the same time to be constantly fixated on finding new ways to stack the deck against him....all while continually eroding his ability to fend for himself - thus REDUCING him from a self-saving survivor who picks himself up and dusts himself off each time he’s knocked down, to a victim who is measurably less powerful/skilled/capable than the threat he faces, and thus doomed to fail if he’s on his own, meaning he inevitably needs to be saved by others.

[nightcannotlastforever]

My Opinion on the J.K Rowling Essay

Harry Potter is a good book and while it is a safe place for a lot of Queer folk, the writer has a lot to work on.

J.K Rowling created a fictional universe about a boy who lives in the closet under the stairs and escapes his veil aunt and uncle to go to a magical school known as Hogwarts where he learns spells and potions to become a wizard. So many people project onto Harry because like Harry, a lot of lgbtq+ people are in the closet for many years. Some don’t get that chance to come out. For LGBTQ+, their Hogwarts often gets new friends, get out of that house, and finding a career for themselves. Pride. To simply put it, Harry is a gay icon and we all know it.

Where Rowling went wrong was when she made Dumbledore gay

Rowling made a harmful representation by making Dumbledore gay after the fact. She could have left it alone and never stated sexuality but only after the franchise was over did she risk making him gay. I think it would be okay if she hadn’t made remarks and just left it alone or stated in a line or two he was gay in the books. By leaving it alone and NEVER saying anything, she kind of just slapped the word gay on his character after it was over to be more relatable and “woke”. She didn’t want him to be gay to mess with the story, so she probably wrote it without having in mind that he was gay. That was an afterthought.

On June Sixth of 2020, Rowling tweeted:

“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure they’re used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate”

If you wanna know what she said, honestly I think you should just read her essay. It's hard to say exactly what she wrote.

People saw she liked a post from this transphobic bitch and went crazy on Twitter.

J.K Rowling's Essay

Here is copy and paste from her essay:

“Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species”

“It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.”

She is worried trans activism and healthy representation is messing with causes she supports such as MS research. MS is a disease that affects AFAB and AMAB differently.

“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.”

Scared people being trans will affect children, Rowling?

I won’t get into her third reason because honestly, I don’t give a fuck about it.

Her fourth reason is being scared of lesbians detransitioning and changing their minds.

While that is a valid fear, first of all, the percentage of same-sex people attracted who transition and then regret it is so incredibly low compared to those who did and were happier with other genitalia and chest surgery. And yes, I will link resources and where I got my statistics, unlike J.K... Second, that's none of her business and doesn’t concern her. Third, I’m sure those people would hope that actual trans people get the T and surgeries they deserve and need.

Worried because friend groups all become trans because of one trans person in that group.

If one person in that friend group comes out and like three others come out, it's not because that one person “turned them trans”, it's because seeing someone else out and being proud, may have given them the courage and support they needed to come out. It was quite similar in my case of coming out. I saw friends and other folks online coming out and that gave me the support and courage I needed to tell my dad.

“I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.” Where are these statistics? I don’t recall her in this article stating where she found any of these percentages or anything. She only quotes two to three TERF’s from Twitter.

In an NBC news feature, Lui Asquith states, “The actual numbers around them are significantly low,” Asquith said.

“A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.” That male you speak of J.K? That is no male. That is a woman who may not have dysphoria caused by genitalia or the lack of chest. The women you speak of may not mentally or physically be able to handle transitioning. Maybe they cant transition medically because of health issues. You wouldn’t know.

In the end, she states she doesn’t mean this in a hateful way and she only wants to call out trans folk and those who support trans activism who push women to the side because women go through a lot of threats and abuse and that is why she is writing this transphobic essay. If you want to promote women's rights and spread awareness, maybe don’t do that in a lengthy essay about why being trans is bad…

That’s all. This is kind of just a shitpost. I know that her essay was posted almost a full year ago, but it has been on my mind quite often recently and I wanted somewhere to post it. I don’t want to write this in a way to send hate to any of the people I mentioned, I honestly just wanted to write this to get out anger towards the anti-trans tweets and discussion J.K Rowling has started. She is not detransitioned and in my opinion, as a trans person, doesn’t have a say in what we do to our bodies and the pronouns we identify with. Her writing could perhaps be quite harmful to young trans youth. We, as a community, get a lot of hate and misconceptions.

RESOURCES

https://www.hrc.org/resources/understanding-the-transgender-community

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/2019/02/22/research-brief-data-on-transgender-youth/

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/media-s-detransition-narrative-fueling-misconceptions-trans-advocates-say-n1102686