#I MADE A LOT OF MISTAKES IN THE PROCESS BUT THE END RESULT IS OKAY. AND THAT'S WHAT COUNTS.

[hawkinasock]

haiii pls spill abt ur chimera yq ideas... i have my own (https://www.tumblr.com/waterfrontcomplex/758520749229277184/dunmeshi-chapter-37ep-17-spoilers-look?source=share)

i also drew my own idea of him (swallow + abundant deer)

Yes ofc!! I'm so happy that someone else has had this idea too, it has so much potential. I want to see all the chimera Yanqings.

Mine looks like this. I actually didn't have a design drawn out for him initially, so I had to whip something up quickly. That's why it took me so long to answer </3

Originally, he had a more swallow-based design.

I still really like it, but I changed the lore a lot, so I made the new one, the current au, which goes something like this:

(CW for blatant body horror, descriptions of digestion, as well as brief details regarding real world animal death)

Here's my idea. Like most aeons, Lan The Hunt has emanators that carry out their will. One of these emanator's is currently unnamed and without a solid design yet. It has an animalistic appearance in my head. Imagine Feixiao's inner beast, or the Mourning Aix from WuWa. That'll give you the best reference.

It travels the cosmos, tracking down and eliminating the Abundance. it does this with the use of extremely powerful olfactory cells. Even with galaxies separating them, the emanator can detect abominations through smell alone, and when it finds one, it will consume it to ensure it cannot possibly regenerate.

Suffice to say, it's very good at its job, and Yanqing, unfortunately, is not an exception to their heightened senses. Surprisingly to no one, Abundance Yanqing coexists with this au, and he is immediately recognized as an abomination when the emanator is in proximity of the Luofu. Yanqing is unaware of his status as an spawn of Yaoshi, so when the devourer of monsters (working title) visits the Luofu, he never would have expected it to turn its eyes onto him.

To say the Luofu is thrown into chaos when one of Lan's emanator's eats a Liuetenant of The Hunt is an understatement. The emanator insists no mistake has been made and it is justified through Lan's divine will. It actually shifts the blame onto Jing Yuan for assigning an abomination as his Lieutenant in the first place, citing incompetence on his part. Kind of a shitty thing to do after eating the man's son but okay...

Not long after, the emanator starts to... change. It begins experiencing sudden and visible signs of mara: bouts of aggression, delirium, and eventually flora and fungus sprouting from its flesh. It's incorrectly concluded that Yanqing's death was a result of early unset mara in the emanator, and Jing Yuan decides the emanator has to be killed via decapitation, such is their duty as followers of The Hunt.

You can probably guess where this is going.

So, you know how bones are capable of fusing together or into other objects during the healing process? Like that deer that was shot by an arrow and the ribcage actually fused itself with the arrow? That's essentially how chimera Yanqing is born.

As an abomination, Yanqing is capable of postmortem regeneration, and as an abomination that is particularly favored by Yaoshi (in my delusional mind) his regeneration capabilities far exceed that of the average denizen, and one this emanator's digestive system was not capable of overriding.

Much like how that deer bone fused with the arrow, Yanqing's body begins the process of fusing back together after partial consumption, and during that process, he inadvertently fuses with the emanator's body, which triggered those mara symptoms. Additionally, because there had also been remains of other denizens in the emanator's stomach, they were unintentionally included in the revitalization process. This, in the end, gave the chimera's body the claws of a Borisin, the wings of a Wingweaver, and the head of a human (his body structure is also the same as the Houyhnhnm, but that's obviously a coincidence on my part lol).

The flowers and mushrooms don't really serve any other purpose besides looking pretty and emphasizing his connection to the abundance - his power is so palpable that life is literally sprouting through his skin. I just think it's kinda neat.

Anyways, in terms of psychological aftereffects, Yanqing himself is still there. However, his sense of self is muddied and most of his memories suppressed. Because he's at the head, he's in control of his own movements and actions. Usually, he's completely docile, but in the face of people currently trying to kill him, he becomes confused and scared, and fights back in self-defense. He's also experiencing prolonged dysmorphia from his new form, which causes him greater confusion and even pain.

For Jing Yuan? I think everyone would agree he wouldn't want to kill Yanqing. He believes there's still a way to reverse Yanqing's affliction, even if the Ten Lords insist otherwise.

Currently I don't have an detailed outline of what happens next. My current ideas are similar to yours actually, where the disciples take an interest in Yanqing for whatever reason, be it desperation to stop the Luofu from killing him and seeing him as blessed by Yaoshi, what have you. It could honestly go a similar route as Dvalin's manipulation by the hands of the Abyss. If I were to give this au a happy ending, I could incorporate the Viscorpus' ability to shapeshift and have Yanqing hone that ability, allowing him to regain his human form.

That's all I have for what was meant to be a short, detailed summary </3 All these asks always end with me yapping, forgive me. I've had this au cooking in my head for so long now, and I'm glad I have an excuse to spurge about it now.

(p.s. pls make more of your chimera au, I would eat it up)

[vro0m]

Can you link me to where you talked about VER vs HAM’s codes??? Idek what that means but I’m intrigued.

It was in the 2015 Abu Dhabi GP review. For context it was the last race in Max's first season and he gave an interview.

Tl;dr : essentially Max was aware but not worried about the mistakes he was making. About the conflicts he ran into with other way more experienced and established drivers, he said he was defending his seat and that was normal. My theory is that Max knew the cultural codes of F1. Hence he felt entitled to the seat, the on track moves, his entire behavior, no matter how criticised he was for it. He was confident and unapologetic about it because he knew how he could be confident and unapologetic in that world and for it to be okay. He knew how it worked because he'd been immersed in that universe from his birth and what he didn't know his father could explain to him. Also something something about nobody holding him accountable.

In comparison, Lewis was fucking stressed the first few years because he's not from this world and neither he nor his family knew how to navigate it. That's also why Anthony would say "do your talking on the track" because that's the only place they could do their talking at all, unlike the likes of the Verstappens. Which is also basically what he's saying in that video from earlier.

Here's the full developed explanation from the review under a cut because it gets a bit long :

He talks about mistakes he’s made and he’s not miffed about them, he says it’s part of the learning process. He talks about his altercation with Massa after his big crash in Monaco when Massa said he should be penalised and Verstappen was like “mind your own business” basically and he says no hard feelings but you have to stand up for yourself especially at the beginning of your career. Also in Singapore when he refused to let his teammate back in front. He says he didn’t want to move because he was enjoying the race and fighting for a position and he’s pretty sure it wouldn’t have made a difference in the end. When asked if he then thought he was in trouble, he says it just drives him to do a better job. He says he thinks in the end a lot of people agreed with him and it’s a validation that he did the right thing. When asked where he can improve now, speed, consistency, technical feedback, he says everywhere. 

Okay so. Why did I mention it? Well it’s all purely my opinion so as always you’re welcome to disagree but I see a very stark contrast in attitude with Lewis at his debut. Simply because Max doesn’t seem to feel like he has anything to prove. He seems to feel like he’s entitled to being here. Which is good on him, btw, I’m not questioning whether it’s based or not. But he’s there, he’s confident, he knows there's learning curve but that’s normal to him, he’s defending his spot and he’s very transparent about that, he’s not worried about his position in this sport. It gives him confidence and self assurance and even cheekiness. That’s the privilege of his position as, first of all of course, a white man, and also as a nepo baby. And, well, there's nothing he can do about being white and a nepo baby so to be clear I’m not holding it against him, he’s using the cards he’s been dealt. It is what it is. But in comparison when you think back to rookie Lewis… That boy was stressed out. He had to make it count. He had to prove himself so bad. There was so much pressure. And that’s the cards HE was dealt. 

In sociology, I once heard about study results highlighting that children from higher socioeconomic classes did better in school not necessarily because they had better abilities but because they understood the specific language used in school. They understood the logic of it, the way it worked, the rules, because the same language and same logic and same structure was used in their homes unlike the homes of families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I feel like it’s the same thing. Max had a good understanding of the F1 codes from the start. He knew the politics of it and how the game was played. And where he might have not known, his dad did, and could tell him. Lewis struggled terribly in the first few years, especially with the PR and politics part, remember? He hated it to the point it made him consider quitting. Because he didn’t have the codes, he wasn’t born in it. And his dad couldn’t help with that, which is why he used to tell him to do his talking on the track. Because they simply didn’t have the status, nor the connections, nor the knowledge, to do it in the offices and dinner parties like the Verstappens.

Also it’s interesting to note that part about Max saying in the end people agreed with him so it validated that he was right. Because that’s a thing I’ve mentioned several times before, not in this rewatch but on my blog, that nobody ever holds him accountable for his mistakes or when he showcases dangerous driving and I find it to be a problem because that means he doesn’t question himself about it and has zero reason to change. First of all, sometimes it’s been actually genuinely dangerous for other people and second of all I worry (yes) that it might hinder his development. Because listen, whether you like Max or not, as far as driving goes, he has the stuff. It’s undeniable. I agree with the journalists this season saying straight away he would definitely win a championship at some point. The way it happened fucking sucked but if that hadn’t happened he’d still have won titles sooner or later. There’s no doubt. But I wonder if he’s living to his full potential not being questioned that way. Although maybe him not being completely complacent with himself is enough, idk. I guess I’ll see where I fall on that by watching his career develop. 

[catboybiologist]

Transition journal and documentation: Jan and Feb of 2024

Measurements for January are up, and February will be soon to follow! Tagging @whalesharkcat and @trans4hire here. If you want to be tagged when I post these, let me know! The advice for injections is in the journal below.

Some quick notes to clarify things:

I'm consolidating qualitative observations into my journal. Oftentimes these haven't been easy to cleanly classify into different categories of observation, so I'm not really gonna bother.

As I'm sure you've realized, the timing of these observations isn't consistent. I have a private document with exact date stamps for everything, and these are mostly right at the end of the month. But my levels checks don't match up to this cleanly, so I group them with the closest set of other measurements. Sometimes I don't have one that cleanly fits.

I can't trust myself to measure height anymore, to be blunt. I want to ask the doctor every time but chicken out about it easily.

But anyways.

And now, as a journal, a brief summary of my thoughts on the past two months:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*deep breathing*

fuuuuuuuucccckkkkkkkkkk

Okay. So. I'm not gonna list off everything that's happened since the year started. So many independent things started happening, one after the other, that I had to start formatting it as a bulleted list to tell people I know irl what's been going on. Each one has been a crisis on its own- massive emotional events, health problems, health problems in people close to me, transphobic drama with former "friends", academic&research problems, and a resulting mental health spiral. And all of this leading up to my qualifying exams at the end of February, for which I barely scraped by and passed.

But. With all of this. There's silver linings.

The biggest one is that the start of this year has been a stress test of my overall emotional state since starting HRT. I'm not gonna lie- if all of this had happened a year ago, I don't think I would be here now. I either would have completely snapped and done something I regret, or... yeah. But as it stands? I cried. A lot. I isolated a bit. I had mood swings and anxiety and anger and excitement and relief and highs and lows beyond my wildest dreams. It was intense. It was not pretty. But it was cathartic, and healthy. Before this, I would've processed all of this as a generic, stressful, anxiety-ridden malaise, that would've weighed down on me until a breaking point. As it stands, however, I made it. Not in a neat way, not even really in an emotionally stable way, but I made it. And there is no fucking way that would be true pre-HRT. I think I can genuinely say at this point that estrogen has been life saving for me.

In the middle of all this, I switched to injections, right at the start of February. A mistake? Maybe, but I'm too fed up with delaying my progress because "the time isn't right", so I stubbornly refused to delay that change any further. It's a goal I worked out with my provider ahead of time and I stuck to it. So how's that been?

It's been an incredible and WILD experience. I'm on estradiol valerate. For those that don't know, estradiol is conjugated with another compound, which is then cleaved over time in your body to release it. For injections, that results in a peak irculating levels about 1-3 days afer injections. Some people feel it more than others- and holy shit, do I feel it. This has given rise to "the Sundays", because on Sundays, I'm going fucking nuts. My senses are heightened, and I start craving and reacting to physical touch in intense ways. It's not always sexual- while arousal comes easier to me the closer I am to peak, mostly I just become a cuddleslut. It is WILD. I'm also more emotional and cry more easily. Some cis female friends I have confirmed that it mirrors the feelings they get at a certain point in their monthly cycle, so essentially the fluctuating levels are giving me the sensory and emotional effects of a period every week.

The flip side of this is that I feel like shit on Thursdays, like I missed a sublingual dose when I was on that. After the first two weeks, I started taking 2mg sublingual on Wednesday night and Thursday mornings to avoid this, which helped a lot. My provider specifically said this was a good idea, so if you're dealing with that yourself, consider trying it out. I might move to a 5-day injection interval instead, but we'll see.

I've only had one problem with injections so far, which I'm dealing with right now- on my fifth self injection ever, I had unsteady hands and hesitation before stabbing myself, causing a not-great needle stick. Currently, I have a nasty looking injection bruise. Not painful, and healing pretty well, but not fantastic to look at. Self injecting has been intimidating and scary, moreso than I thought it would be. But the actual physical pain is much, MUCH less than I thought it would be, its just that the lizard brain refuses to stab yourself.

If you're thinking of switching to injections, here's a bit of my advice:

keep as many oral/sublingual pills on hand as you can anyways. These will be helpful if you feel your injections aren't carrying you emotionally for the entire interval, or if you don't have an environment where you can inject regularly

If you have a provider, they should provide a nurse tutorial and consultation for you to inject properly. If they don't, try to insist on one. They'll give better advice than I can.

think less, do more. Ideally, the actual moment of the stab should be painless. Be quick and steady about it. The fluid entering feels like pressure and slight burning, but nothing more than that.

vary your injection sites. A doctor or nurse should explain this to you, but this reduces risk of doing what I did and bruising yourself.

be extremely sterile about things. All of the wiping down and sterile technique you'll hear? Don't fuck around with it. Infection is no joke, and absolutely can happen.

Purchase spare needles and syringes from a pharmacist or online. Several reasons for this- one, if you make a mistake and a needle is no longer sterile, you don't want to hesitate about throwing it away. And two... well, let's make a second point about this.

If you want to stock up on estradiol for the future (if you're worried about future access to HRT), this can be easier with injections- but you have to be careful, and you'll need extra needles (for the love of fuck, do not reuse needles). Vials will always have excess medication, because it allows standard volumes to fill and distribute, and it also ensures that needle draws will always be able to be fully submerged. Do NOT try to run your vial out. You WILL run into sterility and contamination issues. That said, vial expiration dates are typically measured from time of first puncture. This will vary, but for me, I was told that the vials are good for 4 weeks after the first puncture. This is overcautious, but not egregiously so. My recommendation would be to use each vial for 1-2 extra punctures, and open the next vial a bit later. Still get prescription refills as frequently as you can. That way, you can stock up on unpucntured vials in case anything happens to your supply. THIS SAID- if you notice ANYTHING wrong with the vial- if the seal isn't containing the fluid properly, if bits of the seal are falling into the medication, if you can see a noticable hole in the seal, DO NOT USE THAT VIAL. Look me in the fucking eye. Do. Fucking. NOT. get sepsis. Do not fuck around with this. The flexibility to be cautious about your vials is a great reason to stock up on a bit extra in the first place.

To anyone in the US, if you're comfortable with doing this to stock up, I would highly, HIGHLY recommend starting this now. Slowly start using your vials for 1-2 punctures extra, stock up unbroken vials. Just in case something bad happens after the elections.

Typically, your medication will come with two sizes of needles- a draw needle (puncture the seal and draw medication into the syringe) and an injection needle. You might want to consider going *slightly* smaller on one or both of those needles. Estradiol is dissolved in a viscous oil as medication, and can be difficult to draw and dispense as a result. But, if you're patient, a smaller gauge might help. For the draw needle, it can help do less damage to the seal and preserve it a bit longer. For the injection needle, if you have a bit more sensitive skin, it might be comforting. Don't deviate too much, though, ESPECIALLY without a medical professional involved.

Remember that I'm not a medical professional, please consult one whenever possible.

I'm still on spiro for now, and I'm continuing it until my next levels check comes back clean. I don't want to erase months of progress getting my levels up by dropping it too early.

Measurement-wise, there hasn't been much change. But I'm starting to realize that the measurements aren't really telling the full story. My breasts look so much larger and, for lack of a better word, breast-like than they did even a couple months ago, but that hasn't been coming through in the measurements very well. I think what's happening is that my fat around my sides is shrinking at the same time my breasts are growing. This is reflected a bit in terms of underbust and waist measurements, but it still seems more dramatic than those are letting on.

Face wise, I think I'm really seeing some changes now. It's hard to put into words, but I'm starting to look more and more androgynous or femme by default, especially if I shave. I'm estatic, honestly, and I hope the trend continues. My chin and nose continue to be problems, but as the structure of the face around them changes, that's becoming less and less true.

I've been getting laser, but so far it's done pretty much nothing. There's lag time, and some of my health issues meant that I had to delay a session and get both sessions at a much lower power than I would've like. I was really hoping to have visible hair removal by June or so, but it looks like that's not happening. That kinda stings, and is a huge blow to my ability to pass by the one-year mark, which has been my target.

I think my boymoding has been holding, for the most part, although its been harder. Even with my sports bras, small bumps are visible under a t shirt, and the face changes won't be unnoticable forever. I've def been more loudly bisexual, and I think most people just write it off as me being fruity. Cis people can also be pretty oblivious, especially when changes are gradual. That being said, I've been coming out slowly to people, giving my usual speech of "I'm still presenting as a man for now, but just so you know this is what's going on", which removes a lot of the pressure and anxiety from boymoding. Still, I haven't told everyone (notably, labmates and family), and my timeline of social transition between June and August seems to be holding steady.

So uh, yeah. If you're curious about anything specifically, I'm an open book, although I may move it to DMs if it gets too personal. Hope that my progress updates are helpful to at least someone!

[inkabelledesigns]

I built a shelf?!

Hi, I'm Kat Alyst, your resident fae that has never felt like she should be trusted with power tools, and GUESS WHAT I USED TODAY! So here is my tale of how this came to be:

My grandparents are both incredibly handy people. They've both taken on so many projects to build furniture for as long as I can remember. This summer, Grandpa's big project was building a new dresser for their bedroom, and it is an impressive feat! It's almost done and looking fantastic! But along the way, some mistakes were made, and he ended up with some drawer fronts that didn't quite fit. So instead of getting rid of them, I asked if we could upcycle them into something new. My brother in law has been helping out a lot this summer, he's so eager to learn how to do stuff like this, and Grandpa took both of us into the workshop for this project. The three of us together built this shelf!

I was so nervous. I may customize dolls regularly and work with some scary/dangerous materials, but this is a whole other league from what I do. But with some guidance and teamwork, it turned out great! For anyone curious, this is made of pine, so it's very hard and easy to break your tools on. We only lost one drill bit in the process! I also got to use an orbital sander for the first time! I hate sanding dolls, but this was a lot of fun, and the result is so nice and smooth. I drilled holes, I measured, and I feel more confident than ever about it. It gives me some hope that when I'm ready to do my heavy doll mods that require cutting into plastic, I can handle it better.

But now for the test: can my dolls fit here? I didn't pack any of my customs with me to see how they fit, and suspect it'll be a little tight given the shelves are 11 and 5/8 inches tall. But I'm okay with that, this still works. Not to mention I can put them on the top. I did have Drac here though, since I need a mannequin for a sewing project, so I have a better idea of what I'm looking at than having no doll. I'm still deciding how the display will work, but my thought for now is to have this on top of my desk against the wall. That way, I can display my dolls in it and keep a few materials stored. I could potentially include some plushies here too, and figures, I've got some of those now. X'''D I've got some puck lights and fairy lights I can use to brighten it up too. I don't know what color to paint it yet. My space is a light pink, I could do more pink, or white, or blue, or maybe mint green. I know I want to keep it light, but I'm undecided. Maybe I'll abandon all of that and make it neon pink, who knows? XD My mom suggested I should take my bedspread and match it to that. My grandma thinks it should be striped. We'll see what happens!

I've wanted to have a shelf for my dolls for a long time now, and to say I have one that was built with love like this? That means everything. I forget if I've shared it here, but my current display spot features a lamp made by my great grandfather, and it's so special to me to have my art alongside his. Now I get to say that about another piece, and that means so much. I'll try to remember to update you when I know where it's going. This is so exciting, oh I'm so looking forward to this!

[alittleofsomethingarts]

So, everyone, I got a story about this picture right here. I will include some pics from the process and there's even a moral at the end.

So the client approached me about it, I sketched it out, standard affair. It was supposed to be a gif image and I imagined her moving side to side while her sword glowed.

Mistake number one I did not plan out the side to side movements. This was the only rough I did before I started rendering it.

"Wow this is going to be so cool" I thought.

"This is going to be a piece of cake"

I wanted to animate it on Clip Studio Paint EX that I got this year specifically so I could do animation there.

I ended up drawing all the assets and I was happy with them. Side note, in pixelated animation it is better to use as little colors as possible, and I ended up having a lot more than 256 colors with the colored lineart here n stuff. That was my mistake number two. I really need to work on that.

I warmed my hands as the program was opening, ready to do some animation, only to come across a very unexpected problem.

In the end I have made a reddit post describing it, but you can basically see the results of it in this test animation

I spent an entire freaking day trying to figure out what to do with the blurring. It seems that it functions as intended, but it would be really nice if CSP didn't do this. I had to go back to photoshop to do the actual animation.

... I couldn't quite do the diagonal movement I wanted. Right, so I settled on this.

I drew like 3 movement frames for the white and blue cape and ended up not using it because it looked awful. And the sleeve movement is so wrong.

This is why you test these things, guys! In sketch phase!

So I made these static gifs, thinking this is probably over now and I did a good job.

Nope. Not even close.

My big brain missed one crucial detail in the initial sketching phase...

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A BIG BEEFY GLOWING SWORD!

To be fair the initial glow was cool, the client didn't realize what I've been drawing. So we both missed it. Okay, fine. I decided to just redraw the glow, thankfully it didn't take long at all.

... Right we got another problem. How do I animate a sudden burst of energy coming from the sword?

... Oh no.

My head drew a blank.

I felt... I felt... Like a failure. I failed the client. I thought I could do this but it's not right.

I decided to slap a glowing effect and hide the burst under a white screen.

I couldn't imagine anything better.

Despair, utter despair.

In the end the version that looked the best was this one.

Feeling horrible, I decided to make a free quickie for the client to make up for my failures.

I poured my disappointment with myself and my ability to come up with cool animation into this little tiny owl that did nothing wrong. I gave her the most adorable but angry stare I could muster.

She's angry because she's short

... too short for this picture.

The client assured me that my work was fully acceptable from start to finish and that it's all great. That I shouldn't beat myself up.

But I usually get it all from the very beginning, you see. I typically don't do too much revisions. This kind of situation is not common. I wasn't able to see my clients needs and make the kind of gif that was needed from the beginning.

And I've been tipped extra for this picture too.

It's like the money I got was not quite worth the gif I ended up with.

I suppose it covered the extra useless work I did drawing the assets, but... I feel guilty, like I ripped off the client.

If I just needed to draw the static gif with some glow I could've made it cheaper.

Perhaps I undervalue myself and it costs more than I charged for it.

I don't know.

The moral of the story is DO TEST ANIMATIONS IN SKETCH PHASE. ALWAYS. FOR EVERYTHING.

I swear I got it the first time, why make this mistake so many years later? smh...

[x-neurotoxin-x]

okay my dumb ass has been fixated on the “how dabi can be read as a csa victim” and have my thoughts together and wanna know if this makes sense to you (or if i’m out of it)

We know that Touya was groomed to be an extension of Enji to surpass All Might. He was only useful for his body (his power) and Enji exploited his son until he showed he couldn’t produce the results he wanted fast enough. It made Touya mentally unwell because he knew he was only useful if he could produce results. Which leads me to him exposing Endeavor. He explained to society that he and his family was abused and he was used as a tool by his father—him becoming a villain makes sense because he still sees himself as an extension of Enji so his mistakes and wrongdoings would fall on his father—which they did to an extent. The hero society basically told Dabi that he’s ruining his dad’s career and this could have been resolved quietly. Hawks also doubts Dabi’s story and Deku said basically “your dad is nice to me so there’s no need to ruin his life.” These are often things said to victims of SA when they finally have the courage to stand up to their abuser. Also the fact that Endeavor is a popular hero and in #1. Even if he doesn’t have the same base at All Might, he’s still a well-respected figure. Unlike Shigaraki, this makes Dabi’s trauma “invalid” in the eyes of society because his abuser is “a good person” and “they would never do that” which is also commonly said SA victims. That and the fact that Dabi still has some positive feelings towards Enji despite being abuse and still wants his attention no matter what, which makes people still doubt his trauma because he doesn’t flat out hate Enji like Shigaraki hates AFO. Shigaraki’s trauma is seen as valid because it was by a person everyone collectively hates while the hero society still favors Enji because he’s a hero and “heroes don’t do bad things.”

Youre hitting a lotta great points head on.

Ive got so many thoughts about this topic and I really never see it talked about, or Dabi really talked about as a victim in general. A lotta this I really feel (from the fandom) has been real bad since Touya's backstory and the abuse and trauma he suffered ended up being a lot more complex than other victim characters in the series. Touya was groomed and abused in a very covert way, especially when he was real young, Endeavor went about grooming him to view the training and abuse as love and approval, and set him up with all these pressures in a "positive light." Touya for some reason (probably mental health related) was very vulnerable to Enji's grooming too. It worked almost too well on him, and he really did see the abuse as love and "wanted it" in a warped sense, because he believed being used was the only way he could be loved. That can definitely be looked at as a parallel of sa/csa since a lot of victims, especially in grooming cases, do view the abuse as positive, "love" their abuser, and genuinely don't understand they're being traumatized.

The whole point of how he's treated by the other characters and narrative too is what really gets me, especially when you compare it to how other victims are treated. If it was every victim I'd assume Hori can't write characters sympathizing with victims but comparing how other characters traumas have been handled compared to Touya's is really drastic. But it does feel realistic, honestly. Like you said, his trauma isn't treated as valid just because of who is abuser is and how he (Touya) processed the abuse.

[esoxy]

So let's get into the nitty-gritty technical details behind my latest project, the National Blue Trail round-trip search application available here:

This project has been fun with me learning a lot about plenty of technologies, including QGis, PostGIS, pgRouting, GTFS files, OpenLayers, OpenTripPlanner and Vita.

So let's start!

In most of my previous GIS projects I have always used custom made tools written in ruby or Javascript and never really tried any of the "proper" GIS tools, so it was a good opportunity for me to learn a bit of QGIS. I hoped I could do most of the work there, but soon realized it's not fully up to the job, so I had to extend the bits to other tools at the end. For most purposes I used QGis to import data from various sources, and export the results to PostGIS, then do the calculations in PostGIS, re-import the results from there and save them into GeoJSON. For this workflow QGIS was pretty okay to use. I also managed to use it for some minor editing as well.

I did really hope I could avoid PostGIS, and do all of the calculation inside QGIS, but its routing engine is both slow, and simply not designed for multiple uses. For example after importing the map of Hungary and trying to find a single route between two points it took around 10-15 minutes just to build the routing map, then a couple seconds to calculate the actual route. There is no way to save the routing map (at least I didn't find any that did not involve coding in Python), so if you want to calculate the routes again you had to wait the 10-15 minute of tree building once more. Since I had to calculate around 20.000 of routes at least, I quickly realized this will simply never work out.

I did find the QNEAT3 plugin which did allow one to do a N-M search of routes between two set of points, but it was both too slow and very disk space intense. It also calculated many more routes than needed, as you couldn't add a filter. In the end it took 23 hours for it to calculate the routes AND it created a temporary file of more than 300Gb in the process. After realizing I made a mistake in the input files I quickly realized I won't wait this time again and started looking at PostGIS + pgRouting instead.

Before we move over to them two very important lessons I learned in QGIS:

There is no auto-save. If you forget to save and then 2 hours later QGIS crashes for no reason then you have to restart your work

Any layer that is in editing mode is not getting saved when you press the save button. So even if you don't forget to save by pressing CTRL/CMD+S every 5 seconds like every sane person who used Adobe products ever in their lifetimes does, you will still lose your work two hours later when QGIS finally crashes if you did not exit the editing mode for all of the layers

----

So let's move on to PostGIS.

It's been a while since I last used PostGIS - it was around 11 years ago for a web based object tracking project - but it was fairly easy to get it going. Importing data from QGIS (more specifically pushing data from QGIS to PostGIS) was pretty convenient, so I could fill up the tables with the relevant points and lines quite easily. The only hard part was getting pgRouting working, mostly because there aren't any good tutorials on how to import OpenStreetMap data into it. I did find a blog post that used a freeware (not open source) tool to do this, and another project that seems dead (last update was 2 years ago) but at least it was open source, and actually worked well. You can find the scripts I used on the GitHub page's README.

Using pgRouting was okay - documentation is a bit hard to read as it's more of a specification, but I did find the relevant examples useful. It also supports both A* search (which is much quicker than plain Dijsktra on a 2D map) and searching between N*M points with a filter applied, so I hoped it will be quicker than QGIS, but I never expected how quick it was - it only took 5 seconds to calculate the same results it took QGIS 23 hours and 300GB of disk space! Next time I have a GIS project I'm fairly certain I will not shy away from using PostGIS for calculations.

There were a couple of hard parts though, most notably:

ST_Collect will nicely merge multiple lines into one single large line, but the direction of that line looked a bit random, so I had to add some extra code to fix it later.

ST_Split was similarly quite okay to use (although it took me a while to realize I needed to use ST_Snap with proper settings for it to work), but yet again the ordering of the segments were off a slight bit, but I was too lazy to fix it with code - I just updated the wrong values by hand.

----

The next project I had never used in the past was OpenTripPlanner. I did have a public transport project a couple years ago but back then tools like this and the required public databases were very hard to come by, so I opted into using Google's APIs (with a hard limit to make sure this will never be more expensive than the free tier Google gives you each month), but I have again been blown away how good tooling has become since then. GTFS files are readily available for a lot of sources (although not all - MAV, the Hungarian Railways has it for example behind a registration paywall, and although English bus companies are required to publish this by law - and do it nicely, Scottish ones don't always do it, and even if they do finding them is not always easy. Looks to be something I should push within my party of choice as my foray into politics)

There are a couple of caveats with OpenTripPlanner, the main one being it does require a lot of RAM. Getting the Hungarian map, and the timetables from both Volánbusz (the state operated coach company) and BKK (the public transport company of Budapest) required around 13GB of RAM - and by default docker was only given 8, so it did crash at first with me not realizing why.

The interface of OpenTripPlanner is also a bit too simple, and it was fairly hard for me to stop it from giving me trips that only involve walking - I deliberately wanted it to only search between bus stops involving actual bus travel as the walking part I had already done using PostGIS. I did however check if I could have used OpenTripPlanner for that part as well, and while it did work somewhat it didn't really give optimal results for my use case, so I was relieved the time I spend in QGIS - PostGIS was not in vain.

The API of OpenTripPlanner was pretty neat though, it did mimic Google's route searching API as much as possible which I used in the past so parsing the results was quite easy.

----

Once we had all of the data ready, the final bit was converting it to something I can use in JavaScript. For this I used my trusted scripting language I use for such occasion for almost 20 years now: ruby. The only interesting part here was the use of Encoded Polylines (which is Google's standard of sending LineString information over inside JSON files), but yet again I did find enough tools to handle this pretty obscure format.

----

Final part was the display. While I usually used Leaflet in the past I really wanted to try OpenLayers, I had another project I had not yet finished where Leaflet was simply too slow for the data, and I had a very quick look at OpenLayers and saw it could display it with an acceptable performance, so I believed it might be a good opportunity for me to learn it. It was pretty okay, although I do believe transparent layers seem to be pretty slow under it without WebGL rendering, and I could not get WebGL working as it is still only available as a preview with no documentation (and the interface has changed completely in the last 2 months since I last looked at it). In any case OpenLayers was still a good choice - it had built in support for Encoded Polylines, GPX Export, Feature selection by hovering, and a nice styling API. It also required me to use Vita for building the application, which was a nice addition to my pretty lacking knowledge of JavaScript frameworks.

----

All in all this was a fun project, I definitely learned a lot I can use in the future. Seeing how well OpenTripPlanner is, and not just for public transport but also walking and cycling, did give me a couple new ideas I could not envision in the past because I could only do it with Google's Routing API which would have been prohibitively expensive. Now I just need to start lobbying for the Bus Services Act 2017 or something similar to be implemented in Scotland as well

[mysticstarlightduck]

What emotion is the hardest for your OC to process? How about express?

Thank you so much for the ask, @kaylinalexanderbooks!

I'll go with the cast of Supernova Initiative for this one! Since I wanna do something different/unique and I love using songs to inspire myself when it comes to writing characters, I'll link some of those songs to illustrate my answers! (:

Jack Tithus:

Hardest to process: Betrayal. Jack is an extremely loyal friend, and though he is no stranger to betrayal and people who screw others over, his knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of situations - especially when the betrayal comes from a friend rather than a stranger - is to think "what did I do wrong?". Like, he considers it a failure on his part to not have noticed something like that was about to happen.

Hardest to express: Vulnerability. Jack is a very self-sacrificial guy, who tends to be rather stoic about his true feelings and how much he is suffering, for the sake of keeping his sister happy and his friend's sake. He's very good at pretending everything is okay and maintaining his usual unfazed, charming, and happy self, and feels like a burden whenever he needs to ask for help.

I think that a song that illustrates this aspect of Jack's personality very well is Strong For Somebody Else by Citizen Soldier.

(Strong for Somebody Else) "My personal hell, I'll bury it, bury it Weight of the world, I'll carry it, carry it Pile it all on, I've gotta be strong For somebody, for somebody Put my pain in a pill, I'll swallow it, swallow it Too numb to feel, I'm hollow, I'm hollow I have to hold on, I've gotta be strong For somebody, for somebody Somebody else"

Deimos Soll

Hardest to process: Shame. Deimos has a serious low self-esteem issue, which he masks behind an aura of arrogance. His feelings of low self-worth have haunted him since he was a kid. Due to his past traumas, Deimos is terrified of failure, which also makes him terrified of the feelings of shame that are tied to failure - he is viscerally terrified of humiliation. He is a perfectionist and strives to be the best at every single thing he does, and misguidedly thinks that if he "can't remain the best" then he "isn't worth anything at all".

I think two songs that fit this facet of his very well are Gladiator by Jann and Shame! Shame! Shame! by Reinaeiry

(Gladiator) "I know your addiction's attention, let's start a show Is it everything and more than you were hoping for? Show us something we ain't never seen before Smash your competition, baby Show us some good entertainment Victory's your only payment Gladiator, gladiator"

(Shame! Shame! Shame!) "Where does it end And where do I begin? Is there something to blame? At the end of the day The end result's the same Oh, Shame! Shame! Shame! Keep it to yourself Don't sully the family name"

Hardest to express: Remorse. Partially due to his extreme perfectionism, Deimos has an unfortunate tendency to get defensive whenever he does something wrong - it's an unconscious impulse, practically. He doesn't like to admit something that went wrong is his fault because that would mean he did something imperfectly or that he made a mistake, which then circles back to those feelings of shame he dreads.

Kye Thalax

Hardest to process: Lack of Control/Frustration. Kye doesn't like when things don't go his way, nor does he like when a situation is out of his control. He's been deprived of feelings of agency for so long, that now that he has that agency he doesn't want to lose it ever again. This means he can often be quite frazzled with trying to keep everything within the range of what he can control because chaos - as far as he knows - only means pain. This also makes him incredibly easy to frustrate as he is dealing with too many things at the same time and neglects the management of his own feelings. I think the song Control by Halsey, fits this side of his personality quite a lot.

(Control) "I can't help this awful energy Goddamn right, you should be scared of me Who is in control? I paced around for hours on empty I jumped at the slightest of sounds And I couldn't stand the person inside me I turned all the mirrors around"

Hardest to express: Affection. It's not that he's not a good person. Deep down he is. He has empathy and secretly cares more than he realizes. But he is a bit emotionally stunted and paranoid that everyone who gets close to him is going to hurt him eventually and that it's only a matter of time before he is betrayed. So he has developed a prickly personality that lashes out at the first sign of trouble in order to not risk trusting the wrong person again. This also means that, for most of his interactions, he can be quite superficial, petty, and often selfish - until he realizes he actually does care for the person he is interacting with, which takes a long while. He yearns for affection and attention but does not know how to verbalize that need out of fear of being used or betrayed. Living Hell by Bella Poarch

(Living Hell) "You know I don't believe in ghosts or Letting people close I'm good at letting go You kiss my lips until they're colder Think you're in control, but I should let you know Well, the good guys don't always get the glory Can't you see the warning signs?"

[the1975attheirverybest]

hi! longtime lurker, first time commenter and i need your help with something. i made a tiktok video about a recent 1975 show i went to and someone left a comment saying “he’s a racist but sure” referring to matty and i feel conflicted about their comment because while i don’t believe that’s true, i also don’t know if my love for the band and for matty has made me quick to dismiss some of his more problematic behavior. i know you’ve talked a bit on here about wrestling with this and i was curious if you would mind sharing how that process has been for you and where you’ve landed with it. thanks in advance :)

Hiii 💗 thank you for reaching out.

Yeah, this is something that came up a lot for me last year and earlier this year with the whole podcast drama. I’ve spoken about it in great detail before but since the tags STILL 😡 don’t work on here I can’t find the posts.

I think it’s ultimately a personal choice that you have to make for yourself. I won’t tell you what to think or do, but I can tell you how *I* think about it.

It’s normal to question yourself, I think. I mean, none of us really know Matty on a personal level, right? I think o wondered if, like, my love for his work and attraction to him had blinded me to some bitter truths about who he is. And I tend to pride myself on critical thinking and always talk about nuance on here, so what kind of person would I be if I didn’t practice what I preach, right? I took a step back and examined it all.

I went back through interviews, stage “speeches,” tweets, jokes, etc. saw them IN CONTEXT (cuz we all know how the internet loves to take stuff out of context and twist its meaning), thought about each instance and whether I perceived it to be harmful, bigoted, etc. or not, and kinda decided from there. I went through each and every single accusation, looking at it in context, thought about it, heard the arguments, and made my decision.

The conclusion that I came to after this examination, looking at actual evidence and the actual words that he used and the situations that he’s used them in, is that he’s not racist. Not at all.

A racist person wouldn’t write songs like Loving Someone, LIIWMI, etc. mind you this all happened in 2018, NOT the summer of 2020 when it was suddenly hip and cool and profitable for celebrities to be “woke.” I think he has a career-long record of showing exactly who he is. Whether it was in his best interest to do so or not.

I also found, through this digging and thinking about it, that he has his blind spots (as every human being does). He’s insanely privileged and doesn’t always seem to realize how his privilege has molded his experience of the world. The nepo-baby argument that he always makes is a great example of this. His stance on gender is also another example. So, as a result of his privilege, he will sometimes do or say things and assume that everyone will understand them the way that he does, and that’s not always the case.

To be clear, I’m not saying he’s naive. He’s not. But sometimes he assumes that the things that are common sense to him are common sense to everyone else. Maybe to some people those blind spots of his are too much. That’s fine.

In the end, what matters to me is that he be someone that I can stand behind. I can have faith in. I can believe is a good human being. Even if he does make mistakes sometimes. And I believe that to be true. He’s not bigoted, he’s not racist, he’s not a bad person. He speaks his mind. He stands up for what’s right even when it gets him into trouble. He’s smart, he’s self-reflective, he’s kind. BUT he’s a human being. He’s flawed. He says things too quickly without considering the consequences sometimes, he gets caught up in situations and feelings. He’s not perfect. And that’s okay. To me it is anyway.

It’s possible to disagree with someone and still love and support them. As long as the thing we disagree on isn’t “should black people have rights?” “Are women inherently inferior to men?” “Do queer folks deserve human rights?” Then it’s perfectly okay for him to sometimes do or say things that I wouldn’t. I have no expectation of him to be like 1000% flawless every single moment or every single day. Nor do I expect him to be in complete agreement with me all the time.

To be clear, supporting him doesn’t mean making excuses for him or looking the other way when he does do something “wrong.” I have called him out on stuff before and I will continue to do so. I guess I just don’t think that the occasional mistake makes him a bad person. And maybe that’s not right. But I know I’ve made mistakes before. And if it weren’t for the kindness of others who took the time to show me that I was wrong and to teach me, I wouldn’t have learned to grow.

Maybe that’s not for everyone. That’s okay. There are other artists who strive for that kind of flawless image. Perhaps those are better suited for people who dislike Matty’s way of doing things.

Ultimately it’s really down to what you believe him to be and whether or not you think you can, in good faith, support him. So, above all else, I would say tune out what the world thinks for a bit and find out what YOU think. Everything else will fall into place after that.

[general--winter]

May I please request headcanons for Sae Niijima falling in love with a fellow lawyer who used to be a cop and seeing them defend themselves against a violent client?

author's note: Ooooo this is a good one!! I had a lot of ideas for this one, but the end result is what I ended up running with. Sae's a pretty complex character, so I hope I didn't do anything extremely wrong with her. I just thought about how she would act in this situation based on my memory of her from the game. This is also based around post-P5 Sae. Enjoy everyone!

rating: teen

fandom: persona 5

pairings: sae niijima x gn!reader

word count: 666

warnings: physical assault, explicit language

summary: Sae's struggles with falling for her cop-turned-lawyer coworker.

Sae was currently engrossed in her podcast as she strode out of her office building two hours late, as usual. Work piled up too much and it was essentially expected that she would take unpaid overtime. Rush hour was in full swing, and taking the train home would be an absolute nightmare, so she was steeling herself for the journey, which would consist of standing on her heels for an hour and a half in a rocking train.

Before she could leave, however, a commotion broke out in the lobby. Through her headphones she sensed someone yelling obscenities. “You god-damn, good-for-nothing attorney! Gonna get me fucking life if you keep up this shitshow,” she caught after pulling one bud out. Her head would whip around to see you, standing with your back rod straight, hands behind your back, while the client was detained by their prison security escorts, spitting in your face with their words. They had it handled, so Sae figured she would leave and make sure you were okay later over text, as you two were acquaintances. The next move of the client kept her gaze glued, though.

She saw the client break free from the hold of the security officers and make a run for you as she turned around to depart. Her entire body tensed up, ready to make a run for it if they were in fact dangerous. But before Sae could process anything, you had stepped to the side, grabbed your assailant’s wrists, and pinned them down with your knee to the tile floor face-down. It looked like a move straight out of Makoto’s toolkit.

Sae would be almost awestruck at this. I think she would genuinely believe that someone who can defend themselves in such a calm and collected manner is pretty… cool. Her demeanor would never give this away, though. Maybe just a raise of her eyebrow.

“Can I get a pair of handcuffs?” you would ask in a quiet voice of the guards. “Preferably a pair they won’t break out of.”

At this point, Sae would turn to leave, her heart thumping oddly. Sure, you two were friends. She knew you used to be a cop, so that move you pulled was probably just standard stuff for you. But it made her heart flutter. Why? She figured your effortless protective actions may have awakened some sort of attraction in her. This was a pointless feeling. You two would remain friends. No ifs, ands, or buts. Sae has no time for frivolous pursuits.

Every day after, however, Sae would find herself losing her composure around you. Stumbling over legal jargon that she has studied for years, spilling a cup of coffee on the floor of the office, just… uncharacteristic mistake. You would ask Sae if she was alright after a week of this. Her response would be a curt “I’m fine.” Maybe she would continue the conversation to ask you about open cases that you two were collaborating on.

“Listen,” you would say. “I know that you’ve been acting strange around me since you watched me put that client’s face on the tile. Are you scared of me now?”

Sae would reply: “No, I’m not. If you intend on talking about this, please contact me after work hours.”

And that you would, calling her when you were free. Luckily, she would be as well, and you two would talk. Sae reassures you that she’s not afraid of you or anything, but you would need to really work the truth out of her. In a fit of frustration, she would yell that she was pretty flustered by that move and couldn’t stop thinking about you in a romantic way.

“Oh? That’s what it is. How about we go to an izakaya tomorrow after work then? Just the two of us.” Had you just asked her on a date? She would act reluctant to accept, but deep inside, she was elated to spend time with you alone outside of work.

[anonymousad]

Shelterwood: a follow-up and apology

someone reached out to me after publishing my Shelterwood crowdfunding post with some very valid stuff that I want to address. they mistakenly sent it non-anonymously (something I confirmed with them before just responding to the Ask), so in the spirit of keeping things unidentifiable around here I am going to screenshot the entire message (so you can know I'm not selectively cutting anything out) and then I'll respond to it in chunks:

A Genuine Apology

so let's start with the first chunk of text:

I'm going to be straight with you: while there were absolutely some points you made about the Shelterwood crowdfund that I agreed with, like how unreasonable the goal seemed for a show produced by a novice showrunner, something's really sticking out here. That thing is that Stephen Indrisano and Nigel McKeon are both young, white, non-binary novice showrunners who secured some high-billing talent and picked unreasonably high crowdfunding goals, but you treated one of them with a lot of grace and understanding... and then turned around and not only accused the other of essentially being the problem with the current state of podcasting, but also called them cis in the process despite having acknowledged their pronouns earlier in your write-up. That was... certainly something. It's almost like you had a specific point you wanted to make, so you just sort of conveniently forget that Stephen is non-binary to make it. That or you don't actually think Stephen is non-binary and were engaging in some passive-aggressive gatekeeping, which also sucks, just in a different way.

this is 100% something I fucked up on, I will readily admit that. my accidental erasure of Stephen's identity as a non-binary person is not okay, intentional or not.

I wrote the initial post gradually over the course of just over a week, top to bottom, and then did a quick skim of it at the end to make sure things were still up-to-date in accordance with any updates to the campaign itself. a result of this is that between when I started the post (where I included Stephen's pronouns of "he/they)" and when I was writing some of the later parts I had forgotten this. I think part of the reason is that the campaign is not really about Stephen, so it isn't like there are consistent references to him as an individual. in the few places there are, such as the intro section of the main text and the FAQ, "he" is used exclusively, which I think mistakenly put that in my mind as Stephen having a male gender identity because I hadn't seen a self-identification as being non-binary on their website or Twitter. but someone deciding to use a specific set of pronouns in the text of something like this (to avoid confusion or for any other reason) does NOT invalidate their use of other pronouns elsewhere. similarly you don't have to outwardly proclaim your gender identity for it to be respected and not assumed as cis.

I am genuinely very sorry about this, it was a mistake and I am in the process of editing the original post to reflect Stephen's proper gender identity.

now then.

let's talk about the difference between Nigel (Among the Stacks) and Stephen and the way I approached them, because you're right that there was a difference.

I think a key way that these two projects differ is that one of them was very clearly made by someone who didn't know what they were doing and was in over their head. Among the Stacks was a clear trainwreck from the moment they started revealing how bloated the cast and crew were. I had many conversations with other creators during that early time where we were all wondering how this thing could function with so many cooks in the kitchen, and how you could have a coherent story with that many characters. it was clearly a product of someone new and over-excited who didn't have a real idea of how to do what they were dreaming of.

in contrast, Shelterwood seems to be genuinely well-thought out and approached like it was created by someone who has done their research and been part of the community for a while. it has a full concept with a clearly outlined size and goals and is a very realistic sounding first project. if it weren't for the goal and the rewards we wouldn't be talking about it at all. as a pitch it is perfectly reasonable.

I went a bit easier on Nigel because just from looking a lot of us could tell that Among the Stacks was going to end in disaster. we didn't know when or how, just that there was no way a project like that could actually succeed. I also knew from interactions between Nigel and other people that she was not very good at taking critique or hearing other people out on stuff that they didn't agree with. I went into that post with the intention of being harsh but fair, because I wanted Nigel to hear what I had to say and LISTEN. not just brush it off as "someone is jealous of my amazing idea and so they are being mean". I was still a bit mean in that post at some parts, I will admit that. my tone can swing a bit far on the sarcastic side, especially the longer I spend on a given post digging into things.

Shelterwood is full of people who should know better, something that it makes a point to brag about. it isn't just one person's dream project that they don't know how to wrangle, Stephen is clearly a proficient showrunner to have pulled all of this together (and I do genuinely find the show's concept to be interesting, even if I didn't really communicate that in the post as much as I could have). Stephen has ALSO been around the block a few times in regards to working on audio dramas, whether or not they have helmed their own. this means that from the start my expectations for them were higher.

my goal was not to accuse Stephen of being "the problem", but I think that this campaign is INDICATIVE of a lot of the "the problems" going on right now with audio drama crowdfunding.

I did seriously think about pulling the last section into a completely separate post, but what I wrote applies to the context of this campaign and so I felt it was important to have that connection. if I had been able to fully communicate my thoughts on it before now, say for the Arden campaign, it would have been part of that post. but it took me a lot of time to get those words down in a way that actually communicated what I think the problem is.

I know having it as part of the Shelterwood post has an implication, and the implication is correct that this campaign is PART of the problem, but it isn't the whole problem.

It's also very weird that you lumped Shelterwood, Arden, Among the Stacks and Afflicted in with The Magnus Protocol, which was on an entirely different level. They're not comparable. Not a single one of those first four shows actually made their crowdfund goals. In Afflicted's case, the all or nothing state of the crowdfund means 100% of that money was returned to backers. The Among the Stacks crowdfund was cancelled. Which means that for 50% of your given examples, literally none of that money ended up tied up in those shows rather than being contributed to other, smaller shows. This is not comparable with The Magnus Protocol crowdfund situation, and I think you know that.

it's 100% true that The Magnus Protocol is on a whole other level than these other campaigns, I said as much in my write-up. it is not comparable and I wasn't attempting to compare nearly $1 million USD to $26,000.

what I was attempting (and may have failed) to do was to point out that what Rusty Quill did was change the playing field for the worse. when looking at those two numbers you can much more easily make attempts to justify the high goals being asked for here, because in comparison that's downright reasonable to what they raised.

as a note: TMP had a funding goal of £15,000 (approx. $19,500 USD). so they weren't actually asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to make 3 seasons of a show. in fact, what they asked for is less than the campaigns I'm trying to call out here. that Kickstarter has a lot of things that were suspect about it and felt slimey and exploitative, but the asking price was not really one of them.

however.

just because they didn't ASK for that much money doesn't mean they didn't know it would happen (maybe not to that extent, but still). this still had the same impact, which from what I can tell is making some people think that audio drama crowdfunding is for making a profit.

as for the next point about none of the shows except for TMA 2 hitting their goals:

the amount they are walking away with isn't really the point.

at the end of the day, it's about the fact that the more stuff like this happens, the more it is NORMALIZED. and these kinds of goals getting normalized is harmful.

as an example, in the world of video games there is something called "microtransactions". for anyone who doesn't know, these are additional, small purchases you make in a game that you often have already paid upwards of $60-70 USD for. in the beginning, they were marketed as "just cosmetic" and not going to impact gameplay. and so people didn't fight back too hard when EVERY game started implementing them. but of course, what that did was move the bar. it normalized people paying extra money on top of their purchase for something that used to be included for free with a game. and so the companies started pushing the needle further. and further.

now, this isn't a direct parallel for a lot of reasons, but when greed is being put forward as normal again and again (even when it continues to result in failure) it starts to cement it as something "normal". something to be expected.

the larger problem here is that these are unsustainable amounts of money to be trying to get out of the community.

which connects to this next section:

Speaking of The Magnus Protocol, there's also an assumption being made here that someone deprived of the option of helping one of these shows reach their crowdfund goal is automatically going to donate to another show... and I need you to remember that The Magnus Protocol's final tally was something stupid like 4000% of their original goal. Lower crowdfunding goals don't stop people from contributing once that goal has been reached. People just keep donating to that project. None of those people were donating to make sure the thing got made- they were donating because they liked The Magnus Archives, and the hard to swallow pill here is that that doesn't mean they would've contributed to other crowdfunds otherwise. I have my own issues with The Magnus Protocol thing. But the statement that that crowdfund snatched money out of the pockets of smaller shows by having an unreasonably high goal just straight-up does not hold water. That's nothing. It's 4000% less than nothing. You're allowed to be mad that that campaign got such a ridiculous amount of funding when so many smaller shows are struggling. You don't need to couch it in pseudo-logic to justify feeling that way. We're all mad about it. It's okay.

this is definitely a good call-out, this person is right that someone not donating to one campaign does not mean that money will go to another. in a lot of cases, the only reason someone sees a campaign is because it is being promoted by the things they already like (in The Magnus Protocol's case that obviously being The Magnus Archives), and that means they probably aren't going to be choosing between every campaign that is out there and deciding where their $5 is going to go. they might just as easily pocket it and buy a nice coffee the next day.

and that absolutely sucks, because it would be nice for the love that some people have towards specific shows to be something that extends to the whole medium.

but I do think there's something to be said for feeling like even a small donation is making an impact. I would feel kind of bad to only be able to give $20 towards a $10k+ goal, it isn't even a drop in the bucket towards what is needed and if I care enough to donate to something I do want it to succeed. but that same $20 to a campaign only asking for $3000? that's a lot more tangible of an impact. enough so that I could feel good about splitting that $20 between two projects maybe.

that isn't 100% the point of what you were saying, I know that. the reality is that not everyone in this community has a general investment in the success of others.

I think where that becomes the biggest problem is when some people only seem to have an investment in themselves, and no one else. that's where these things become problems, when the larger needs of the community are ignored for the sake of a few who repeatedly succeed.

I'm kind of bleeding a bit into my response to the next part, so here that chunk is:

And do I agree that we as a community need to start talking about what is and is not realistic when it comes to crowdfunding? Yeah, absolutely. You have a point there. That's a valuable and timely observation and I'm glad somebody said it. Unfortunately, the value of that point was absolutely buried by the extremely obvious fact that this time, in this case, something about this project is personal for you. I don't know what it is specifically, but I do feel the need to ask: You are aware that Tal Minear is involved in the show as a graphic designer and minor actor, right? They have nothing to do with the crowdfund or the rest of production. Their name being attached doesn't mean they're secretly running the show. This is not Tal's show. They'd be credited as a producer if they were that involved. So why do you feel the need to keep bringing them up? Anyway, it's extremely difficult to take your analysis in good faith when it's so transparently motivated by some sort of personal distaste for somebody/the people in the project, and that's a shame, because some of the things you're saying have value.

I certainly didn't shy away from pointing a bit of a finger at Tal Minear for promoting this ideology, among others. their clear involvement in this project makes me immediately more suspicious, because Re: Dracula was a self-admitted cash grab. and that stain on their character is not going to go away for me.

it's less that it's "personal" for me, and more that this is a figure in the community that I have repeatedly seen presented as an expert that MUST be listened to. including by themself. ESPECIALLY when it comes to the matter of crowdfunding.

now, if I were friends with someone like that AND they were involved with my project that was about to have a campaign, would I not lean on that resource? even just for advice on how to put it together and what needs to be included. Tal just wrote a small little article for Descript that has some very generic crowdfunding tips, so they are arguably the most knowledgeable person involved in the campaign to go to for advice and feedback.

I know for a fact that Tal has given crowdfunding advice unsolicited to people running campaigns, usually in the form of asking why crew is not being paid appropriately (a valid question in most cases where actors tend to get a huge portion of the budget). so I can't imagine a world where they didn't give at least a little input to a friend for a show that they are actively involved in.

I don't think they are running anything behind the scenes, no, Tal is not part of some audio drama Illuminati. but I do recognize the high esteem to which they are held by MANY community members.

my goal was to call out the culture that has grown around audio drama crowdfunding, and the ways that I've seen it hurting most people who attempt to do it. I have noticed that Tal is a big part of what has normalized that.

as for the ways in which I brought them up, yeah I like to be a bit snide and I probably laid it on a bit thick. it's easy to get carried away in these things, especially towards someone that I am admittedly not a huge fan of.

that is the extent to which it could be considered "personal" for me, but I understand if you don't believe that or if that still had too much of an impact on taking the rest of what I said seriously. that is your choice and I respect it, it's just very difficult for me to separate out their involvement given what I know outside of this.

You're just completely undercutting that value by surrounding it with so much pointless nitpicking and snideness. What happened to "#but actually my intention is to be thoughtful and not mean"? You claim to be acting in the interest and defense of the community, but as the creator of a small podcast that nets me absolutely zero profit, I'm not feeling it. This feels like it's about you, not the rest of us.

this is absolutely fair.

I am just one person at the end of the day. I've talked to others, discussed the situation surrounding this campaign and others like it with them, but I am the one typing it down and inserting my voice and my take on it.

as such, I am not going to be a perfect mouthpiece for everyone's thoughts about this stuff.

I WANT to be one that is largely beneficial, however.

sometimes I lean a bit heavy into the snideness for the sake of keeping things interesting; these write-ups are LONG and as a writer I recognize you have to do something to keep people engaged so they actually absorb what you are saying.

is that the right approach? probably not for everyone, but it is part of a reflection of my own voice that it comes out like this.

"#but actually my intention is to be thoughtful and not mean" is something I wrote, something that I still want to keep in mind but sometimes I fail at that. in this case, I found it hard to stick to.

repeatedly seeing campaigns like this is disheartening to me, it wears me out. there is an amount of what a lot of people might see as "bitterness", but it's not really about any specific project or person.

I think my massive fucking rant at the end of that post about capitalism ruining audio dramas with the need to make money unsustainably says a lot about how I feel about the current financial state of the world. a lot of that "bitterness" is from this deep rage towards to the system, directed outwards where it can be. maybe the flow of it was a bit strong on this one, but it is still an accurate reflection of the way that I see things.

note, an accurate reflection to ME. it's okay if it isn't accurate to you, that's part of why the conversations need to happen.

part of why I do the math breakdowns for the budget is to help myself try and get a grasp on what those numbers mean. the human brain is not really formatted to understand large quantities of things, especially something that is usually intangible in those high amounts like money. I also do it because I want to give someone the opportunity to say "actually, you're wrong because this does add up. you are just missing part of the picture."

I know the way I approached this might come off as defensive, that's not my intention. I decided to break it down like this so that no one would think I'm trying to skip over feedback or ignore certain points that make me look bad.

everything that this person said to me is a valid response to what I wrote, including the things I pushed back on.

I am very grateful that they reached out to me, and I want to continue the conversation. ESPECIALLY if they feel that I did not hear them here.

my responses are just that. a response. they are not a claim of being right or these reactions being unjustified. we are all only in our own heads, and the conclusions we come to are usually based in rationality. my mind is open to being changed, I want to see as full a picture as possible.

if you disagree with what I've said, that is fine.

if you agree with what I've said, that is fine.

if you aren't sure, that is also fine.

we're talking about something complex and nuanced and just because I'm the one bringing these things up doesn't mean I have the RIGHT opinion or that I am the person who SHOULD be saying it.

there is a reason that I am anonymous here, and it's mostly because the conversation is more important than who is speaking.

as always, my inbox and Asks are open.

feedback welcome, I mean that.

[malewifehenrycooldown]

a small post (read: long) of me rambling about the meta implications (kind of???) of Henry + THAT ret-con/reveal in NMH3 in episode: Flesh and Blood. (NMH3 spoilers!!! read at your own risk!!)

okay one thing about Henry that genuinely give me emotional pain is that fact that as a child (like. VERY YOUNG) he tried to save his siblings (Jeane and Travis) from their father who was a serial killer and decided to go on the run. It's not clear if their father was a serial killer in the literal sense, or that he was also an assassin too (it's not really made clear or elaborated on).

The worst part is that they got caught, and Henry, being the older brother who tried to protect his siblings took the fall for them. He had his memory completely wiped, and was taken in by the Cooldown family in Ireland and was basically raised as their own son. sure that sounds nice, until you realise that there's a high possibility that his serial killer father paid off the Cooldown family to raise Henry as their own and to keep his real heritage a secret. I'm not sure how Henry went down the path of becoming an assassin, but I have a funny feeling the entire Cooldown family are reputable assassins themselves (and have been for generations). Which if that's the case, has a lot of meta implications, that absolutely need to be addressed.

This also goes along with some previous posts I've made about NMH1. That some of the enemy characters have the same purple beam katanas and/or have the same ability as Henry (which is to create spheres of energy and use them to attack your opponent). This could be the result of people modelling their attack/style after Henry who has made a name for himself in the world of assassins OR, that Henry is being put into a position where he has to train other assassins, and thus have used Henry's training as a spring board for them to become legitimate assassins. Whether Henry is doing this willingly or unwillingly, is unknown, although I place my money on the 'Henry is being told to train a league of assassins with (several) guns pointed at his head'

Honestly, knowing that Henry tried to save Jeane and Travis makes the fight with him in NMH3 more heartbreaking, because Travis at this point has Killed Jeane (their sister) - because she was the No. 1 assassin in NMH1. Now, Travis is forced to kill the person that has saved his life before and was punished for trying to protect his siblings. Do you know how deeply fucked up that is??? completely forget Henry's incoherent ramblings, and focus on the fact that the narrative of No More Heroes is about how the cycle of violence, revenge destroys people - and in most cases that cycle is perpetuated not just by the system but also is unfortunately re-enforced by family history and inter-generational trauma.

I'm not saying I want another story of NMH, but I do want a version of NMH where Travis has an epiphany and realises that his entire family is stuck in a cycle of violence and destruction. And decides to tear down the system and end it - He even says in NMH2 that he wants to tear down the United Association of Assassins, tear down the SYSTEM that makes up the organisation that's in the pocket of Jasper Batt Jr.

And as clumsy as NMH2 is with it's ludo-narrative dissonance - that line has stuck with me, especially with the fight with Alice Twilight and Holly Summers in mind (which have HEAVILY impacted Travis as a person). I want a story of Travis Touchdown, that looks back on his fight with his sister Jeane, and laments that he could have spared her (doing so is against UAA rules) - but realises that he can rectify that mistake by saving Henry from a system that is an ouroboros.

Travis made the decision to become an assassin - and he just so happened to become THE crownless king in the process. But Henry did not have that luxury, let alone a choice (assuming the Cooldown family is made of assassin), and so maybe perhaps Travis can repay the favor of saving his only other blood relative from a system that destructive and throws out tools that they think aren't of use anymore.

TL;DR: the Touchdown-Cooldown Siblings deserved better and definitely need LOTS of therapy to heal from the inter-generational trauma they have.

[itsuki-minamy]

"AYAKA – SIDE STORIES 02" (Part 04/04)

"IZAKAYA "KAPPA" PROSPERITY STORY"

TRANSLATION: NARU-KUN

* List of Chapters

"Yes!"

Yukito hurriedly filled out the additional order forms that arrived one after another. Unlike normal business hours, however, there is only one dish. As long as he hadn't made the wrong number, it would have been difficult for him to make a communication mistake.

Anticipating this development, Jingi gave Yukito another role besides serving customers. Is...

"Yukito-kun, thanks again for the highball."

"Yes, I understand!"

There was a scene where he failed, but he was able to learn several things as a beverage manager.

Yukito returned to the kitchen and first told Jingi the amount of extra kakiage. And once again, he would make a drink at the work table.

(I think Jingi-san did it like this.)

While remembering the vivid handiwork of his master, Yukito created an amber-colored cup as if he traced it.

Although not as perfect as expected, it is a satisfying result for Yukito, including the fact that the process was carried out without any deadlocks. But...

"Was there too much whiskey?"

Perhaps it was because he mimicked his dedication that he skipped weighing the sake, so he could have ended up with a strong-feeling whiskey.

"Well, Jingi-san also said, "There is no drinker who gets angry because the alcohol is strong", so it's fine."

"Isn't that a good thing...?"

"Hey."

A muffled cry escaped from Yukito's throat.

Before he knew it, Jingi was behind him like a vengeful ghost in a horror movie.

"The cost is zero because we use ingredients that will be thrown away. The more you sell, the more profit you make. But alcohol doesn't work that way."

"Yes, it hurts, Jingi-san."

As he insisted, Jingi barely dug his ten fingers into Yukito's shoulders.

"I'm going to pretend I broke the whiskey and pay Azuki-chan later. So be careful with the amount. Not a millimeter, no, not a drop, you know?"

"I understand! I understand!"

When Yukito agreed as he writhed in pain, Jingi finally let go of his hand.

"Isn't that completely different from what you just said?"

Yukito blew up his cheeks like a balloon.

In front of his line of sight is the back of Jingi, who returned to cooking kakiage with long strides.

While the only employee accumulated dissatisfaction, the business of the Izakaya "Kappa" went smoothly like the flow of a river.

"It's selling out...! Kakiage with zero material costs is selling like crazy...!"

Jingi looked down and smiled. The tempura pot in front of him is still cooking kakiage.

But he is looking even lower. Coins and bills in a plastic garbage bag under his feet. Those are the profits he has made from his secret business so far.

"I can buy a lot of alcohol with this amount of money."

Jingi raised the corners of his mouth even higher. At the same time, he turned over the kakiage that was swimming in the oil with the chopsticks in his hand. The sunken surface exposes his face, revealing a vivid fox color.

"No, wait."

In the middle of turning over the second kakiage, Jingi suddenly stopped. And he began to think.

He got some money. Even so, if he buys a lot of expensive alcohol, or goes out many times to have fun in bars, he will soon hit rock bottom.

So why doesn't he make more money so he doesn't have to worry about alcohol for a while?

But even if he wants to, there isn't an infinite amount of materials he can use for free. If the current strong sales continue, they probably won't be able to open until closing time.

As a result of continuing to think like this, Jingi came up with a certain plan. However, this is a prohibited business in restaurants.

The seafood, meat and vegetables used in the kakiage are halved and the remaining amount is added to the batter. This saves material while maintaining volume.

"Okay, this will extend the time until the material runs out."

Looking at the kakiage, which had just been taken out of the oil and looked the same as before, Jingi nodded in satisfaction.

Also, continues the "reform" of Jingi. The next thing to do is the one that is the biggest obstacle to sales.

"Yukito."

Jingi called out to Yukito. He thinks that he was about to prepare a whiskey just now and was about to take out a glass.

"Aren't you busy with the crowded seats? I'll also be in charge of the drinks, so focus on serving the customers."

"Eh? If that happens, Jingi-san will be in trouble this time..."

Yukito frowned. Jingi, who continues to make kakiage incessantly, seems worried that he has more work to do.

"Leave it to me. Now, you receive orders from customers like bang bang."

"Haha..."

Yukito left the kitchen and went with the audience as if he was being kicked out.

As soon as he confirmed that, Jingi started working on the concept of a new type of highball. Even if the whiskey is watered down by the interest rate alone, customers will complain. To avoid it...

"I'll use the technique you taught me, Taki-chan."

While he said a name that seems to be a friend's, Jingi continued to make tall glasses according to the same procedure as before. However, the whiskey is definitely less than what Yukito was making. As it is, it's just a fine whiskey.

But this is where the technique really shines.

Finish with a tablespoon of undiluted whiskey.

The surface of the water is amber in color and a faint amber color falls on it like morning dew falling from plants. At first glance nothing has changed in the glass. However, the moment you drink it, the rich aroma of whiskey tickles your nose.

It was originally a technique to make the highball even more delicious, but Jingi used it to cheat the reduced amount of alcohol.

"Hey, I'm waiting for the highball."

From the kitchen, Jingi handed the new whiskey to the customer sitting at the counter. A young man in his early twenties wearing a cap.

"Huh? This whiskey... well, maybe it's just my imagination."

He bowed his head for a moment, but after that, the customer in the cap didn't seem to care and he started playing with his cell phone while he drank a scotch.

"...Okay, success."

Speaking with a voice that could only be heard by his own ears, Jingi clenched his fists in a position invisible to the audience. Apparently, the smell wafting off the surface of the glass fooled him well.

In this way, Jingi, who was blinded by the future price of sake, continued his business by making full use of his abundant technology and his simple tricks.

As a result, he managed to get much better results than originally planned.

He couldn't stop laughing at that. Even Yukito, who worked with him, had Ebisu's face all the time, to the point that he couldn't help but frown and say, "It's disgusting."

However, the wrinkle of the business, which seems to lengthen life time after time, has definitely come from the Izakaya "Kappa" side.

"There are only a few ingredients left. With this I can make some kakiage and there are a few left..."

Jingi clicked his tongue reluctantly.

With the passage of time, the number of clients had been considerably reduced.

There are still customers. The opportunity to earn money is in front of him. So what should he do?

"I can't afford to use tomorrow's ingredients or I'll lose the profit. It's a dough, we have to increase the dough to maintain the appearance of the kakiage!"

Reduce the number of ingredients to the limit and increase the mass to compensate. This is how kakiage was born, a fried food that was almost only battered.

"Jingi-san, I've been getting complaints that there are no ingredients in the kakiage..."

When Yukito came to introduce himself to the kitchen with a worried face...

"Then as an apology, I'll add another dish, no, two kakiage dishes!"

The exaltation was powerful, he presented two dishes with freshly fried "rebosado".

"Also, there are complaints that the whiskey is thin."

"Give the whining boy another drink! We can still make a lot of money!"

"It's already unreasonable."

Yukito let out a long breath.

Izakaya "Kappa" was no longer in a state that could be considered a decent restaurant. No, he doubted that it was decent from the start.

By continuing to serve only thin battered highballs and kakiage, customers disappeared from the store before closing time.

"All the customers went home angry."

"It was too much?"

Yukito and Jingi were standing next to each other in the kitchen, looking at the empty seats. Including the time of "Usagi", the space that was normally lively in "Kappa" has now become a way of just sitting in silence.

"Hey, should we start getting ready to close shop?"

Taking a deep breath, Jingi looked at Yukito.

"I'll clean the kitchen area, so take care of the bathroom."

"I understand."

After receiving instructions, Yukito headed to the bathroom with cleaning tools. He then he hung up the "cleaning" sign and closed the door.

"Do you want me to clean it too?"

Jingi also went to close the job. First, he removed the oil stains that had stuck around the stove. As he was thinking, something touched the tip of his toe.

It was about today's sales at the Izakaya "Kappa", which was packed in a plastic bag that was placed at his feet.

"If you win that much, it's your letter."

Looking at the greatly inflated bag, Jingi nodded in satisfaction.

Although the urge didn't last until the end, she was able to get enough funds not to worry about drinking for a while, that was his goal.

"If I wanted to, I would sell all the kakiage."

Jingi looked at the oil drainer in the sink. There, the kakiage, freshly fried and mostly covered in batter, was smoky white.

(It's a waste to throw it away, so let's feed it to Yukito.)

When she was thinking about such things, she heard the noise of the shop door being opened.

"Last chance...!"

Jingi's eyes widened.

The next moment, he pulled a plate from the shelf and quickly served the kakiage, which had lost its place to go. Force the client with that, no. If he provides it, he will have used up all the materials that were planned to be discarded.

Thanks for selling it. It can be said that it is the most beautiful way to close the curtain of the Izakaya "Kappa".

"Let's decorate it, the one called the beauty of the end."

A fearless smile appeared on Jingi's lips.

At the same time, he seemed to be pouring a whiskey, so he put ice in the glass without wasting anything.

But...

"Huh? There's almost no whiskey left for the highballs."

He shook the whiskey bottle in his hand, but he could only hear the faint sound of water.

Immediately, Jingi reached for a new bottle of whiskey and stopped halfway.

"If I open a new bottle here, in the future I'll drink less alcohol...!"

Why has he been doing this all this time? All of this must have been to avoid the dreary days of drinking mirin to satisfy one's greed for sake.

Remembering his original intentions, Jingi grabbed the whiskey bottle, which was nearly empty. In those eyes dwells the light of an unbreakable will.

(This is my way of life...!)

Weariness barked at his heart.

And, overlooking it, a bowl of infinitely clear, transparent water. Although it was meant to be a highball, it would not be.

If you dare to name it, it is carbonated water with a slight aroma of whiskey.

"Haa... haa... there's no going back."

As expected, there must have been several conflicts, and Jingi wiped his sweaty brow.

And right after that, he heard a rattling noise.

He sat down, the last customer at the counter.

"Wait for the kakiage and highball!"

Without even looking at the customer's face, Jingi put the food and drink on the table.

He had won.

After consuming all the ingredients and alcohol, they used up everything.

Complete victory.

That's what he thought until he heard that voice.

"Oh! It's nice to be served freshly fried food as soon as you sit down!"

"Eh...?"

Standing in front of the stunned Jingi was Momoko, who was in such a good mood that she was almost humming.

"I came here because I wanted to see Jingi-chan and Yukito-kun working. Hmm, it smells good."

Momoko clasped her hands together and curtsied as she inhaled the fragrant oil that rose from the kakiage.

"I will enjoy having this."

"Wait."

Momoko bit into the kakiage before Jingi uttered a voice of restraint.

It was fast.

The sound of freshly fried dough echoed through the quiet shop.

And the silence came.

Momoko didn't move from her stance to take a bite of the kakiage. On the other hand, Jingi was staring at her as he sweated like a waterfall.

Soon after, Momoko put her chopsticks into the plate of kakiage, and picked up a tall glass set next to her with the faintly whiskey-scented carbonated water that Jingi made. Then, she tipped the glass vertically and drank it all in one go, letting out a "yuck" sigh.

"Kakiage with no ingredients, carbonated water in the name of a highball. Did you serve a customer with such insincerity?"

Momoko quietly lowered the glass that only had ice on the table. Her eyes, which are directed at the truth, narrowed like threads. However, it was clear from Jingi's pale and grandly drawn expression that it was not a smile.

"You need to retrain yourself. Cooking and heart."

"Wait a minute, Momoko-san! I'll do it properly from now on! I'll cook sincerely! That's why..."

"Okay. Jingi-chan, you're a kid who can do it if you try."

Momoko got up from her chair without hearing the end of Jingi's persuasion. She then reached out to the other side of the counter.

"Come on, let's start special training now."

"Right now...?"

"Hurry up, my God."

Momoko's eyes narrowed as she answered the question, which caused her cheeks to tremble.

This time it was a genuine and loving smile.

"Fu, it's over."

Yukito, who was cleaning the bathroom, opened the door and went out.

It was a part-time job that started out tricky, but admittedly he had a lot of experience. To express his gratitude, he was working hard to clean every corner, but unexpectedly time passed.

"Jingi-san, what should I do after cleaning the bathroom...? Jingi-san?"

He looked around the kitchen and even the audience, but there was no sign of Jingi. However, there was half eaten kakiage and a glass of whiskey on the counter seat. Apparently, a customer came while Yukito was cleaning.

"Where have you gone?"

Looking worried, Yukito let out a breath.

It was 22:00 hours and the hands of the clock were approaching the closing time of the Izakaya "Usagi".

That night, Jingi never came back to the store.

The next morning.

Yukito woke up in his own bed on the second floor of the Amamiya residence where he was staying.

His body feels terribly heavy. That is probably due to physical and mental fatigue caused by unknown work.

After that, Yukito worked to close the Izakaya "Usagi" in his absence. In addition to having to do a job that could have been shared by two people, Yukito had his first day at a part-time job yesterday. When he finished everything with the manual in hand, it was already close to midnight.

Before Jingi, who overcame the difficulties and returned home, he couldn't be satisfied if he didn't say a single complaint.

Yukito returned to the Amamiya family in a trance, but the house was dark and even Momoko was absent, let alone Jingi. Yukito, who had been hit by a watermark on his shoulder, was tired and forgot to change clothes and take a bath, returned to his room and went to bed early.

"I wonder if Jingi-san and Momoko-san are back?"

Yukito muttered while he was still rubbing his sleepy eyes, then got up from the bed and left his room.

Right after that, the smell of miso soup tickled Yukito's nose. Also, the sound of a kitchen knife hitting a chopping board could be heard faintly from the first floor.

Stimulated by smell and hearing, Yukito headed for the kitchen on the first floor. What he saw there was the back of a young man in a pure white kitchen robe. In a way, Yukito is the person he wanted to meet the most.

"Wait, Jingi-san! Why did you suddenly disappear yesterday...?"

"I'm sorry!"

At the moment when Yukito, who had regained his anger from the previous day, was about to approach him, Jingi turned and bowed his head on the urge to hit his forehead against the ground.

"Yesterday, no, I want to apologize for everything I've done to you. I'm so sorry, Yukito-kun..."

"Umm... Jingi-san?"

Yukito involuntarily sent a puzzled look and said, "Did you pick up and eat something bad?"

"He's not the old Jingi-chan he used to be."

A voice came from behind. When Yukito looked over his shoulder, Momoko was standing with her back against the hallway wall. She is as beautiful as ever, but this morning the dark circles under her eyes stand out.

Did she stay up all night?

"You retrained with me. Right, Jingi-chan?"

"Yes! From now on, I, Sagawa Jingi, intend to do my best in everything I see! I will never do anything to make Momoko-san sad again!"

"I believe you, Jingi-chan."

Momoko nodded and clapped her hands while Jingi cursed with his heels straightened and his spine straight.

Watching the exchange between the two, Yukito realized. At first glance he seems animated, but there is no light in his eyes. To give a familiar example, he had eyes like a dead fish.

"Well, let's continue the story over breakfast. Yukito-kun, go wash your face."

"Oh, yes."

At Momoko's insistence, Yukito slowly walked towards the bathroom. He's a little dizzy, but it's not because he woke up. That's mainly because the shift in responsibilities has been tremendous and the processing of the brain hasn't caught up.

"I wonder if Momoko-san's anger caused you to end up like this, Jingi-san."

Yukito muttered the answer that was derived from the conversation between Jingi and Momoko. After all, he was someone who shouldn't be offended.

Arriving at the bathroom, Yukito turns on the faucet and waits for the hot water to come out. Washing your face with water in early spring is painful. While he was doing it, he heard the voice of Jingi and Momoko from the kitchen.

"After breakfast, let's go apologize to Mitarai-kun and the guests who came to "Usagi"."

"Of course! I'm thinking of doing a free service on "Usagi" as an apology today!"

"Jingi-san, who used to be trash, is making beautiful comments..."

While he admired her, Yukito washed his face with hot water two, three times. And when he lifted his head, he saw himself reflected in the mirror with a smirk dripping from his bangs and his chin.

"The kind Jingi-san, it's feels disgusting when I think about it calmly."

It was Yukito's honest impression that spilled out of his clear thoughts.

In addition, the friendly Jingi came to an end at noon the next day.

The reason is that during the training with Yukito, a stream of water accidentally caught his attention. After regaining his self-esteem, Jingi yelled, "Idiot! Buy me some sake as an apology!"

Yukito smiled for some reason even though it was a very unreasonable request.

[azeriairis]

I'm going to rant a bit about Trinity

Okay so Trinity is one of my favorite Stargate Atlantis Episodes, but I dislike the ending, specifically the apology McKay gives to Sheppard. Sheppard's reaction is fine, though I'm a little annoyed that it didn't carry on to later episodes, so it rings a little hollow. McKay's apology itself is more annoying because it fundamentally feels like he learned the wrong lesson for the mess.

There's a lot below the cut because I essentially just wrote a miniessay on the potential Trinity had for developing Rodney McKay's character that was completely wasted.

"I'm sorry for messing up and I promise to go back to getting everything right again" is a bad apology because him making a mistake was not the problem. The problem demonstrated in Trinity is that McKay, by refusing to consider the concerns of other Scientists and the possibility that he may be wrong effectively opted out of any system that may have prevented his mistakes from spiraling out of control, and this is not a problem McKay is ever shown to acknowledge nor solve. Mistakes aren't really a problem, so long as you learn from them, allowing your ego to get out of hand to the point where you neuter any system that could've helped prevent your mistakes from causing harm because you think that you are so much smarter than everyone else is one.

Doranda was the perfect example of what the consequences of McKay's opting out can be, McKay fucked up, yes, but his mistake would've been caught and prevented beforehand if he was literally anyone else, but because of his position as Head of the Science Department nobody can force him to actually consider the objections and concerns of other scientists*, so even though it was caught by Zelenka, McKay had free reign to completely ignore his advice, resulting in disaster.

Honestly a reasonable consequence to his actions would be McKay getting completely removed from his position. In Trinity he showed that he was completely willing to abuse his position as head of the science department to get out of what is essentially the peer review process by refusing to consider any objections others may have. And someone who will do that, isn't someone who you want in that position. Instead McKay essentially just got a stern talking to, and by the next episode pretty much everything is resolved and back to normal. He never really learned nor grew from this incident, and it didn't really impact his relationships with other characters.

It just feels like such a waste, this could've been used to develop Rodney's character in so many ways, but it just wasn't. He continues to shame and ridicule others for making mistakes, when this could've been used to get him to realize that everyone makes mistakes at some point, so it's more important to have systems in place to mitigate the harm of mistakes when they inevitably do show up. And He continues to discount and ignore other people's concerns even though taking the time to do so would've prevented the Doranda incident from happening altogether.

And even if he doesn't learn anything from this incident it still should've impacted his relationship with others. I mean for one there's Radek who he disrespected pretty openly while he was present, but he's not the only one. John nearly died because Rodney decided to be reckless and ignore the advice of someone he apparently trusts. Or what about the entire rest of the science department? Their boss essentially just made it known that he doesn't give a crap about their opinions when deciding which route to go down, once he's made a decision he's going to do it even if you confront him directly about the potential dangers he'll just lambast you, ignore your input and keep going anyways. That will most definitely impact how someone approaches their work and their interactions with said boss. Elizabeth just saw her Head Scientist completely opt-out of any critique of his idea, something he could only get away with because of his position, that should have an impact. But does any of these relationships change at all? No.

I could go on but I'll just stop here. Maybe I'll do a rewrite at some point, but not right now.

*technically John and Elizabeth could but as neither of them are scientists they lack the scientific knowledge to evaluate this stuff and make an educated decision, leading them to generally just trust Rodney implicitly, which isn't a very solid check.

[dylanlila]

I saw your tags and let me tell you, I got the results and yeah it was as expected three mistakes (I didn't obsess over them the whole weekend btw I'm normal), but I got the highest grade in the class and the teacher said that my essay was impressive so it makes up for it!! Anyway how do you not obsess over your grades again?

BUT I aced my math test because I actually enjoyed studying for it. Thank you for listening to my school rants (this makes me feel like luke throwing his usual morning rants at lorelai [you])

In love with the playlist by the way it HITS:

AAAAAAAAAAAA GOOD NEWS!!!!!! I'M SO PROUD OF YOU, THIS IS ME RIGHT NOW:

Thank you so much for letting me know how it went, I was worried about you!!!!! I absolutely get the sentiment... We should start a club... (Rory) Gilmore Girls Society. Oohh about obsessing over grades, a hopeful thought I can offer is that I got significantly better at managing the issue and I think that progression started as soon as I made "as long as you're certain that you have in fact learned what needed to be learned, most especially the crux of the subject, you're good" my starting point for well... anything school related. Mistakes are okay!!! (AND GIRL YOUR RESULTS ARE IMPRESSIVE, DO NOT WORRY ABOUT THOSE THREE MISTAKES!!!!!) Sometimes it's just not your day, you're human (although. it would also be cool to see a wire under my skin every once in a while... a girl can dream!) And any kind of effort always counts for something, if not immediately then in the long run for sure. + You recognized what you did wrong before receiving the results officially which is good!!! (EXCEPT FOR THE WORRYING PART!!!) That's what I'm talking about, it means you've conquered that topic and that's what's important. Not to mention that academic validation is way better when you don't overwhelm yourself with assumptions regarding how it's all gonna turn out. It also gets you to appreciate the learning process a lot more (even though there's an downside to that as well, I get too immersed in my studies, which I think you can relate to as well chdjdkdkkdkc).

SOOOOOO HAPPY YOU'RE VIBING WITH THE PLAYLIST, sharing music (and knowledge in general) is my favourite activity in the whole world <3 It's also the best medicine I can come up with!!!! And we have a history of doing this, so I thought it would be a good idea to bring back that tradition. I told myself I'd be making one of those for each month and let's hope that idea remains interesting to me until the end of this year at least fjjdkfkdkd.

I missed you IMMENSELY, thanks for being my Luke <333333

[goldenworldsabound]

For Rufus: 👠 and 💪?

Essay Asks thank :D

👠 Describe your ship starting with the phrase " In a way, every romance is a Cinderella story."

In a way, every romance is a Cinderella story. You can spend years shuffled to the side, trying to get through every day while being mistreated by the people around you.

And then suddenly your prince appears and whisks you off your feet, in a way that does read exactly like a bad romance novel.

In my case, I made the mistake of criticizing Scarlet for taking credit for my work, which led to becoming Cinderella in the first place. She was the ugly step mom, and the manager and coworkers I worked with were the stepsisters.

I didn't know it, but my prince was already looking after me then. Rufus transferred me to a new department, so I guess that made my new manager my fairy godmother? ...close enough.

And then...Rufus became President, and that was when I got my happy ending with the Prince. Sure, we went through a lot after that too, but that's just part of love and relationships, probably. Okay, maybe not dealing directly with an impending planet-destroying crisis for most people but, well...every relationship is unique, right?

💪 Describe a theme or other element of the original source material that you feel is strengthened or reinforced by the presence of your ship.

UGH ff7 has so many incredible themes. One that I think is particularly apropos is life, and the inevitability of pain and loss, and the way that we can grow and heal and move forward from it, and more generally how it changes us.

Rufus has gone through a lot, but we don't see most of his journey. I hc that the loss of his mother was a wound he never really succeeded in addressing, as well as the absence of a visible love from his father. And how could he, without a safe space, a safe person, to discuss those things with? Aura provides those things for him. He didn't even know he needed them. He brought Aura into his life out of selfish desire to a large degree. And yet that turned out to be what he needed to be able to begin his own healing. Especially after the end of FF7 main game. Even in canon he does come to his own realizations about the part Shinra played - but I think that comes even easier with Aura there.

I think there's also something to be said for Aura. Aura has loss at many stages in their life - Scarlet takes the credit for their scientific achievements, and as a result through various means they end up shunted to the side doing fairly meaningless work. They lose friends during the sector 7 plate collapse, which is a grief they don't really get to fully process because suddenly so much is happening (Rufus becomes President and promotes them and asks them out fduhafkdsa). Seeing their grief makes Rufus consider things in a different light - a little less selfishly, starting to realize the impact Shinra's actions have.

But all of those Aura handles with a certain level of resignation and acceptance. They are immutable and cannot be changed, even as they are painful.

But then we come to Rufus being kidnapped prior to AC. And that is what has a lasting, obvious change on Aura. They become more than willing to get their hands dirty, to shed all of their morals, in order to rescue Rufus. And once they find him, these things do not revert. Rufus and the Turks can see the change in them, and Rufus finds it does not sit well with him - while he appreciates the love inherent in the actions they took and were willing to take, it isn't what he wanted for them. But for Aura, becoming willing to do dirty their hands and centering Rufus in their life, is how they end up coping with this. And that can't be changed, no matter how much Rufus wants them to go back to letting him (and the Turks) do all the dirty work. Grief leaves a mark, even once time has passed.

Ahhhh I wouldn't mind exploring some of the other themes too but this is probably good for now.