#I study classics I'm weak

[kkirou]

One day, you'll hear what I'm saying

One day, you might understand

One day, but not today, for after all you're

Just a man

[togglesbloggle]

It's interesting to me how much people struggle to intuit differences of scale. Like, years of geology training thinking about very large subjects, and I'm only barely managing it around the edges.

The classic one is, of course, the mantle- everybody has this image of the mantle as a sort of molten magma lake that the Earth's crust is floating on. Which is a pedagogically useful thing! Because the intuitions about how liquids work- forming internal currents, hot sections rising, cool sections sinking, all that- are all dynamics native to the Earth's mantle. We mostly talk about the mantle in the context of those currents, and how they drive things like continental drift, and so we tend to have this metaphor in mind of the mantle as a big magma lake.

The catch, of course, is that the mantle is a solid, not magma. It's just that at very large scales, the distinction between solids and liquids is... squirrely.

When cornered on this, a geologist will tell you that the mantle is 'ductile'. But that's a lie of omission. Because it's not that the mantle is a metal like gold or iron, what we usually think of when we talk about ductility. You couldn't hammer mantle-matter in to horseshoes or nails on an anvil. It's just a rock, really. Peridotite. Chemically it's got a lot of metal atoms in it, which helps, but if you whack a chunk of it with a hammer you can expect about the same thing to happen as if you whacked a chunk of concrete. Really, it's just that any and every rock is made of tons and tons of microcrystal structures all bound together, and the boundaries between these microcrystals can shift under enormous pressure on very slow timescales; when the scope of your question gets big enough, those bonds become weak in a relative sense, and it becomes more useful to think of a rock as more like a pile of gravel where the pebbles can shift and flow around one another.

The blunt fact is, on very large scales of space and of time, almost everything other than perfect crystals start to act kind of like a liquid- and a lot of those do as well. When I made a study of very old Martian craters, I got used to 'eyeballing' the age based on how much the crater had subsided, almost exactly like the ways that ripples in the surface of water gradually subside over time when you throw a rock in to a lake. Just, you know. Slower.

But at the same time, these things are more fragile than you'd believe, and can shatter like glass. The surface of the Earth is like this, too. Absent the kind of overpressures that make the mantle flow like it does, Earth's crust is still tremendously weak relative to many of the planet-scale forces to which it is subject- I was surprised, once, when a professor offhandedly described the crust as having a tensile strength of 'basically zero;' they really thought of the surface as a delicate filigreed bubble of glass that formed like a thin shell, almost too thin to mention, on the outside of a water droplet. On human scales, liquid is the thing that flows, and solid is the thing that breaks. But once stuff gets big or slow or both, the distinction between a solid and a liquid is more that a liquid is the thing that doesn't shatter when it flows. And it all gets really, really vague, which I suppose you'd expect when you get this far outside the contexts in which our languages were crafted.

[bones4thecats]

What Are They Like With A Rafiki! S/O?

Type of Writing: #7 - Poll Result Characters: Cater Diamond, Leona Kingscholar, and Lilia Vanrouge Name: What Are They Like With A Rafiki! S/O? Original Poll Link: Here

A/N: My hands are currently dying! I'm making the special stuff for the 19th! Also, I will not be posting that much that day, since I'll be out of my home for the day to spend time with my family. Anyways, I do hope you enjoy this!

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✧⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋄✧⋄⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋆⋄✧⋄⋅⋆⋄✧⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋆⋄✧⋄⋅⋆⋄✧⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅

💎 Cater first heard about you from Ace and Deuce, and he had to admit, you sounded quite entertaining

💎 You were noted by many to be quite nutty-sounding, as, whenever someone came to you for advice, you'd offer it in tounges. Words sewn together for the listener to figure out for themselves

💎 Even he'd have to admit, for someone who uses hashtags and quite a bit of social-media related lingoes in his sentences, your words were confusing!

💎 But, once he got past of all of that and he saw how tame you were with maintaining this 'Circle of Life', which he guessed you meant by how things chase others and whatnot, Cater grew to start admiring you

💎 The reason you used those metaphors to drive many insane was because it taught them to think and learn that wisdom is not something you can just grab, but it's something that one must learn, with difficulty, after all, as you say;

" Nothing is easy to obtain when it comes to wisdom. Wisdom is something that pushes and pulls on your struggles and weak spots like children playing tug-of-war in elementary school. "

💎 Cater loves to mess around with people, especially when you come into the mix and make them not only annoyed, but confused beyond belief

💎 It also makes him laugh when you play chess with your old friend, Leona. You're basically the only person that he knows that can beat him in the strategic game

💎 He also adores watching you draw things using some random items, such as fruits and flower's petals/colorings to make one colorful

💎 Your boyfriend loves posting stuff on his Magicam, and ever since he noticed how amazing you were with both magic and hand-to-hand combat, he would take videos of you training in Savanaclaw and post them with a classic Cater-style hashtag

" Oh, my lovely S/O is so talented with that bakora stick! " #caycay'sdarlings/o #caycay'ss/otraining #caycay'saveragedaywiths/o

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🦁 Leona and you grew up together

🦁 While his ego blocked him from doing so, deep down in his heart, he admired how talented you were with magic and your words

🦁 He also found it entertaining watching you speak with your words twisted around to confuse everyone, including his older brother, Falena, and his wife

🦁 Leona first became interested in you when you began to study the darker-parts of magic, the stuff that your family and ancestor had banned from being learned in your home

🦁 Due to your flaw in 'rule-remembering', you were transferred into Night Raven College, just after your first years at Royal Sword Academy and NRC respectively

🦁 People from all different dorms could tell there was some tension between the Savanaclaw housewarden and the vice-housewarden, and Ruggie used this to his advantage a lot

🦁 Or, he attempted too...

🦁 The two of you are very strong apart, but when you come together against something, those you have seen you fight know that that person better just hand in the towel, unless they want to get their asses handed to them

🦁 Leona loves watching you use your wisdom to your advantage, teaching your under-classman about the value of knowledge and acceptance of all types of magic

🦁 He also adores watching you train with a new member of Savanaclaw each year, using your mandrill-beastman abilities to leap into the trees to hide and plan you next attack or use your bakora stick to whoop them into place

🦁 By the way, he plays chess with you whenever he maintains energy, and he gets very grumpy when you win. And by that, I mean he doesn't let you get up from your napping-sessions for two hours

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🦇 You were the mentor of the Kingscholar brothers, so, when you walked up to their group of four Night Raven College students when visiting the beastman's homeland for the Tamashina-Mina Event, he gained an extreme interest in you

🦇 He noticed that Leona was appearing annoyed, but in his eyes he held a glint of adoration and joy at seeing you so joyous at meeting his so-called 'friends'

🦇 When he asked Leona about you after you left, he learned everything

🦇 You and your friend Kifaji were the maintainers of their home and helped raise the boys whenever their parents were busy with their royal duties, and you had been the main caretaker of the younger of the boys

🦇 From teaching him about magic styles to the many ways to fight hand-to-hand, you were the person who Leona was closest to, and Lilia had to admit, he was smitten by your personality from the start

🦇 Despite your age, you were a very well-versed person. You were fairly eccentric and happy-go-lucky, and the way you spoke made everyone who heard you confused

🦇 All except Lilia, who understood exactly what you were saying

🦇 Lilia and you quickly bonded and began spending a lot of time together, and when he went to perform his part of the event, you gave him a big thumbs up, showing your support full-on

🦇 Leona wasn't very happy to see his only parental figure being close to such a 'fae-dickhead', but, he had to admit, seeing you so happy and carefree with the guy made him feel slightly good

🦇 Before he had left to go back to his adoptive son(s), he gave you his number, winking at you and slyly telling you to message him sometime

🦇 He has never felt thing young in years!

[meichenxi]

Hanzi update (+accidental trauma talk)

tw illness, trauma, vomiting, weight loss, recovery. I didn't plan to write about this but because of what happened in the last year I can't really write about how I studied Chinese without talking about it. so. but it's mainly about hanzi lol

I've been learning how to write traditional characters with the vague idea that I'd go and study in Taiwan, and also that if I want to write Classical Chinese or Japanese they're far more useful - but the program I want to go to Taiwan for requires HSK7, which I DO not think I can achieve and have the results of before March. Who knows! Perhaps within me lies untold brilliance and dedication!!

...well, I wouldn't rely on it. (I am also busy with a job, a partner, studying an A-level course to begin tutoring it in September, and writing the second draft of my novel.)

And even if I ended up going to Taiwan with my absolutely fantastic HSK7, there's no way I could handwrite all of those words within a year. If I learn 10 characters a day, that's like 3650 characters in a year, but realistically that will never happen - and you still have to actually remember them.

I also know from my last experience where I learnt a stupid amount of characters very quickly (about 800 in two weeks) that I can technically do it, I have a very large swollen brain, but then the brain, being very large and very swollen, promptly burns out. And leaves me to not do any Chinese again for like two months. So basically - completely pointless, because after those two months of rest I had forgotten most of them anyway. I will not be doing that again.

This time around I have been slowly, very slowly, learning things on Skritter. I have about 400 characters so far. I'm not doing words but doing characters, which is a bit slower, but I figure it'll be more useful in the long run. After I have the first 1000, I'm planning to then systematically go through the HSK and TOCFL lists and check I know how to put characters together and which 'jing' is used in 'yijing' etc.

This approach is only really going to work because I know a lot of vocabulary and can read a lot of stuff already - otherwise I wouldn't recommend to anybody without that backbone of vocabulary to just learn random isolated characters, unless you're masochistic or much harder-core than I am.

As I have said in a lot of posts before, I had a very difficult experience in China last August and have basically taken an entire year off studying because in all honesty I just couldn't bring myself to face the language again. Every time I tried I had this crazy grief and nightmares and stress response. What I went through was so stressful that during those two months in China that I lost seven kilograms, as I couldn't eat much without vomiting it back up due to stress and fear, didn't sleep, and ended up having to leave for Thailand pretty severely malnutritioned - which then made me susceptible to illnesses there and I spent the next two months after with awful health, vomiting and weak and generally sick. Luckily I was with friends and I gained the weight again and my period and digestive system sorted itself out.

And I never expected that a language itself could carry trauma? Like. Nobody died, it wasn't like that, I wasn't abused or assaulted or anything but still...for just under a year, every time I spoke or heard or read Chinese I couldn't help thinking of those two months. Even now it's still hard. I'm finding my way back to it but, to be honest, I didn't expect how hard it would be. I thought I could just - move past it, because I'd already had so many great experiences in China and Taiwan and with Chinese, that they would cancel each other out or at least be aided by the huge amounts of love that the language has shown me. Alas, it was not the case.

Anyway. All of that to say - I have only managed to do about 400 characters in a year, because I essentially gave up studying completely.

Now I've just finished reviewing and re-remembering those 400 characters on Skritter, so I'm ready to start again! I don't know what's changed, I guess just time - I feel more positive, I feel curious and interested about the language again. I don't know. I'm not going to question it too deeply. But for these past two weeks, I've been having a lot of fun :)

I'll update everyone on my progress as I go! Next post - 500.

[honest-moth-of-silver-grove]

Hey, I'd love a matchup for Castlevania, if you're up for it (was not the person who wrote you those ask anons btw, although I appreciate them clearing things up).

I’m a heterosexual cis woman, although I’m starting to suspect I’m on the asexual spectrum. So, I'd prefer a male matchup. Also not super sure I'd be down with polygamy.

I'm a premed student (no time for irl dating unfortunately 😭). I also work as a volunteer EMS on weekends. Outside of my school and work my hobbies are singing (musical theatre and classical mostly), theatre (backstage work as well as performing), skiing (the only sport I’m any good at) and TTRPGs (was this close to getting my group to play a Castlevania campaign 😔).

I’m also a big nerd about history, American comics, and folklore. I’ll rant for hours about my special interests if nobody stops me. I’d describe myself as ambiverted. I'm socially awkward, but also very loud and expressive. I’m a bit oblivious, I’ll admit lol, but I do my best. My MBTI is ESTJ, and while I doubt MBTI's accuracy, I agree I’m very Type A. When it comes to the things I’m good at, I’m a major perfectionist, but I’m proud of how hard I work. I think my greatest weakness is probably thoughtlessness, but my greatest strength is humility.  My giving love language is acts of service, and my receiving love language is quality time. I'm verbally affectionate towards friends but I freeze like a deer in headlights if somebody flirts with me. Also: I know appearance isn’t super important, but I think it’s important to know I’m only around 5’0 tall. As my friends say, "headpat size."

A/N: Okay for you my PreMed Student Anon (that’s amazing, congratulations by the way!)I have two potential matches in mind. You said you’re heterosexual and would prefer male results, so I chose two from that gender because I honestly couldn’t decide which would please you best. For you, I’m thinking either Dracula or Alucard would be your perfect romantic matchups! (It really does just come down to which man you’d like better: father or son, lol.) 

Dracula (Vlad Tepes), as terrifying as he may be when he decides to enact justice on the human population, is a very reserved and intellectual man. He’s introverted and devoted much of his life to learning about anything and everything from medicine to history to poetry. 

In this instance let’s pretend he’s either never met Lisa or he did meet and fall in love with Lisa but she either lived a full life and died of natural causes, or Dracula was able to overcome the anger and blame he held for humanity following her murder.

Dracula is a patient man. Being immortal means he understands that you must dedicate much of your time to your studies and your volunteer work. So long as the few moments you do get to spend with him are uninterrupted and meaningful, I believe he’d be understanding, and even supportive of your academic endeavors. He was more than happy to aid Lisa in her quest to learn more about biology, so I have no doubt he’d do similarly for you. Any questions you have, he’d gladly answer them. Any resource he has in his castle, any book or scroll, any record of any kind is yours to inspect. He has no doubts that you’re going to make a very accomplished professional one day, and he has every intention of doing whatever it takes to help you get there.

Along with that patience comes an understanding that sex is not the end all be all in life. Sure, it has its place for either pleasure or reproduction but it doesn't need to dominate relationships. If sex is something you're hesitant about, or against having, it doesn't make much difference to him. Dracula would be fine without sleeping with you, so long as he can have you in other ways. Holding you close, holding your hand, sitting next to you in front of a warm fire- those things are what make him feel close to your heart. 

Dracula also enjoys how animated you get when you go on rants about your special interests. He’s very versed in history and folklore as well, although not American comics, so he would listen intently as you teach him all you know. 

As an ESTJ, you would be very grounding for him (an INTJ), while still having a great deal in common. The both of you value an intellectual connection in a relationship while your more empathetic, extroverted side would help push him to see the truth of humanity where he may previously have only seen things in shades of black and white. You both strive for the best, and that suits you just fine with your perfectionism, but do be warned, there may be times you don’t see eye to eye. What you hold as most important in an issue or debate may be different than what he holds. Remember to be patient. INTJs are prone to stubbornness, but being a Type A personality, I do not doubt that you’ll be able to handle any contrary moods of his just fine. 

Your thoughtlessness can also be a source of discourse within the relationship, as Dracula is bound to worry about you. You’re human, you're fragile and under so much pressure. He cares deeply for you and does not want to see you hurt. The one advantage you do have, however, is your humility. It keeps you from being both arrogant and thoughtless which is a much more dangerous combination. So long as you are aware enough of your limits, and keep your wits about you the best you can, Dracula promises to trust you enough to let you come and go as you need to, so long as you’re willing to admit when you need help. But with your best trait being your humility, that shouldn't be a problem. 

Dracula is so touched by your acts of service. Being such an ancient and scary vampire no one ever thought to make him tea or ask if he needed help with anything. He feels so fortunate to have a partner who does not see him solely as ‘Dracula’, Lord of Vampires, but as Vlad Tepes, a man at heart. 

Not to mention your size difference is too adorable for words. He’s so tall and you’re so tiny… He always kneels whenever you ask for a kiss, he’ll never ask you to step on a stool or climb a ladder to reach him. He’s more than happy to come to you. He loves you. You are his new light, his new reason to believe in humanity. 

Alucard (Adrian Tepes) could also be a good match for you! He’s an ambivert like you, although he may not admit it. He���s the son of a scholar and a doctor, so he’s very understanding when it comes to your education and career. And his empathetic nature makes him extremely compatible with your considerate one. 

As Alucard is a dhampir and immortal, this matchup could work in either medieval times or modern times. For the sake of this matchup, imagine whatever you might prefer. 

Alucard hasn’t always had the best experience when it comes to sex. Granted, you can’t judge every potential future experience based on one horrible one, but he’s not the kind of guy who jumps into bed easily. He has reservations and feels very insecure about the whole act. Should he ever engage in it, he’d need a partner who’s very understanding, or just as nervous as he is about the whole thing. In hindsight, I don’t think Alucard would mind not having all that much sex: for him, your continued company means more than any sexual endeavor could. 

Alucard is very impressed with your decision to go into pre med. He knows how much work that means you’re going to be undertaking, and he’ll do whatever he can to support you, either in your studies or in your personal life. He’s very well-read and rather educated on biology as his mother was a physician, so feel free to ask him any questions or have him quiz you before exams. He’s also a bit of an obsessive lover. When he decides he likes someone, he makes a point to memorize that person. (Recall the Trevor and Sypha dolls?) He wants to know what you think and why you think it. That way, he can anticipate your thoughts or needs. 

And he does quite enjoy it when you sing to him, especially if you sing him to sleep. Sleep hasn't always come easy to him, but with your presence and your lovely voice, it’s as if an angel is singing him a lullaby. I also believe Alucard would absolutely thrive playing TTRPG: he’s sarcastic, smart and strategic. I really think he’d dominate any campaign he set his mind to. Plus, it’d be great socialization for him besides you. 

As an ESTJ you’re fairly compatible with Alucard’s INFJ. You’re just extroverted enough to pull him out of his idealistic daydreams, but grounded and predictable enough not to shake his confidence or trust in you/your relationship. The only possible issue is that INFJs can sometimes get caught up in the fantastical destiny of it all: it’s about people and purpose. Whereas ESTJs tend to be a bit more practical- you value reality and stability a bit more than potential and daydreams. But I don’t envision this to be a huge problem, so long as you push communication with Alucard. He internalizes a lot. He’ll need to be reminded to share his inner feelings. So long as you do that, I don’t see any major discourse between you two. 

Alucard may be a little disappointed in your moments of thoughtlessness, but at the same time, he finds them endearing. You try so hard: you’re a perfectionist like he is, and even though you’re only human, you strive for the same greatness. It’s rather admirable. He likes that about you. 

Alucard would also be very touched by your acts of service, mainly because he often finds himself doing the service for others. It’s nice to be taken care of for a change. And he is very happy to spend quality time with you. He’d follow you everywhere if you let him. So long as he’s near you, he feels complete. He’s always leaning down to give you soft forehead kisses whenever you’re around. You’re so precious to him. 

[my-own-walker]

dating frat! kyle headcanons please?? ily 💕💕

Dating Kyle Spencer - Campus Fratboy Headcanons

note: i love this! it's a lil quickie i can put out before i post my next story!

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He's really affectionate in public. Especially around his frat brothers. He treats you like his prized possession, but not in a toxic manipulative way. He's just really proud he bagged a babe like you.

And by showing you off, I definitely mean he tries to make his frat bros jealous of what he has with you. He talks you up to them and tells them how cool you are (your achievements, things he likes about you).

In private he's even sweeter. Very vulnerable with his emotions. He comes right out and says what he's feeling no matter what.

He will open up to you about anything. Fights/arguments are typically very productive. He's a good communicator and lays his thoughts out on the table for you.

Not afraid to cry in front of you either. He isn't afraid to curl up into a ball on your lap and sob into the crook of your neck. But he's also very supportive of your emotions too. Will do anything in his power to make you feel better. Total softie.

Frequently buys you flowers/food/trinkets he thinks you'd like whenever he gets the chance. Always thinking of you. He remembers the small things, too.

You said you were out of your moisturizer last night? He shows up with it the next day, correct brand and all, because he knew you had class and would be too busy to get to the store.

Definitely is already planning your wedding. Like who will be there, where it will be, the whole nine. He's a commitment king. He doesn't do flings. When he's dating you he's in it for the long haul.

100% has the worst sex playlist on Earth. Like he made one, which is cute, but it's all 80s yacht rock and classic rock he was raised on.

Fav songs include: Hold The Line by Toto, Goodbye Stranger by Supertramp, Do Ya by Electric Light Orchestra, and I'm Still Standing by Elton John.

Total uncle vibes. He's a 20-year-old uncle. Makes dad jokes and is super corny. If you're in a store together and a song he likes starts playing, he will full-on start singing and dancing to it in an attempt to make you laugh.

Like he will twirl you and everything.

A total people-pleaser. You have to have multiple stern talks with him about doing whatever his frat brothers ask him to do. He just wants to fit in, but you see their tendency to walk all over him and take advantage of his kindness.

That being said, he is totally cool with making a fool of himself in public. He laughs at himself a lot.

He's really book-smart, but not always street-smart. Common sense sometimes evades him. He'll tutor you in biology but then forget to use oven mitts when pulling something hot out of the oven.

Very intimate in more ways than sex. It isn't a top priority for him. He is very touch-oriented. Every part of him wants to be touching you at all times. He would live him your clothes if he could.

He's big on neck kisses. They're his weakness.

Whenever you hold hands he makes a point to stroke the back of your hand with his thumb. When you cuddle, he's playing with your hair. When you're studying together, his arm is around you, or his hand is on your forearm.

Big on eye contact. He likes to look into your eyes during intimate moments. It helps him feel grounded/stay connected to you. Gives him a sense of control.

He is super helpful. Will always carry heavy things for you. Built the Ikea bookshelf in your apartment for you all by himself. When he's around your family, he helps with cooking, cleaning, whatever.

Makes a point to sit next to your grandmother/grandfather. Really respects his elders. Has genuine conversations with them and is super patient. Truly listens to their life stories.

Has a folder in his phone of pictures of you. He's always taking candid shots of you. He likes the non-posed photos just as much as the posed ones.

Don't even get me started on the selfies. He will send you 5 million silly selfies when he's bored. Whenever you hang out he's taking dumb selfies with you. Basically, he figured out his phone had a front camera and has been entertained by it ever since.

+++

I HAVE SO MANY MORE SO LMK IF YOU WANT A PT 2 OR ANOTHER CHARACTER!!! THESE ARE FUN

[bengiyo]

Jazz for Two Eps 1 & 2 Stray Thoughts

Back with another BL that I think the Omega X boys are in. This time it's a music BL in collaboration with a Thai team (I think).

Episode 1: Summer Time

Oh lord we got a sad boy in the rain.

Ah yes. Yoon Se-heon is not a talented pianist in a family of talented pianists, and the dad is a hard ass about it..

Oh ho! It's probably not that he isn't talented. It's that he doesn't like classical music.

Of course the big brother knows about the jazz music. He also avoided the question about whether the study abroad program was going well.

I didn't have time to read this broody boy's shirt, but it looked melancholy.

Suddenly A Shoulder To Cry On cameo.

Oh no, a Korean bully. I'm not ready. At least we learned that our broody boy is named Han Tae-yi. Why the bully needed to touch him suggestively while mentioning his sister I don't want to know.

This boy really put that paper back on the floor. That's not leaving a place cleaner than you found it, sir.

Why is everyone in this school so rude? Let the boy play the piano! Shit!

Ah, Tae-yi is grieving a brother. I'll let him slide for now.

Ah, a classic. They're in the same class.

Episode 2: My Foolish Heart

I respect this kid for being so determined to practice jazz that he snuck into school early to do so.

Darkening the screen when he thought about the piano room being haunted was a neat effect.

Hey! I played trumpet as a kid!

Don't you let me down Do-yoon. I've been let down by blue-haired characters before.

What's the deal with Ju-hee and her crush on Tae-yi? He's clearly not interested, and the brother seems pressed about it.

Tae-yi, you are too much, dude.

Well...you can't fall in love if you ain't clumsy...

This bully dude has the worst sister complex I think we've seen from K-BL.

Se-heon's brother really said, "Don't have friends. They get in the way of practice," like that was entirely normal and acceptable behavior. Goddamn.

Ah, back to the weak dribbling skills in QL.

Do Korean schools not have air conditioning?

Now he wants Se-heon to play? Bro, make up your mind!

Well, that was rude! Lie to God, don't lie to me! You loved his playing.

Ew, the bully is putting hands on Se-heon.

Idk about this one. The vibes are off. Maybe it's me being less keen on bullies, and also not being a huge fan of enemies to lovers.

[springtime-creations]

Longwinded over-explanation as to why I DON'T think these Wanderful PreCure leaks are real or at the very least not be taken as 100% accurate if they are real.

POTENTIAL SPOILER FOR WANDERFUL PRECURE AHEAD!

As someone who's been into PreCure for almost a decade, and has been studying art in an informal setting (self taught artist go brrr) I've noticed some issues with these leaks.

First is obviously the names. Never in the entire history of PreCure have we had a cure whose name lines up with the title. No Cure Smile in Smile, no Cure Suite in Suite, no Cure Fresh in Fresh- you get my point. Cure Wonderful is a highly suspect name, however could still be real as PreCure is always experimenting. Cure Friendy on the other hand is WAY more egregious. Friendy isn't a word, and PreCure isn't known for making mistakes that bad. But it could have either slipped through the cracks OR as these photos look like prototypes that were meant to be destroyed, it's possible Friendy is a typo and she's meant to be Cure Friend, Cure Friendly, or an idea my phone gave me via autocorrect Cure Trendy. Any of which could fit my theorized theme of dog styling or the latter to with a blanket theme of dogs. But they could also be placeholder names. Fake names used to differentiate the characters before they're ready to start publishing their real names.

Secondly is the design. Although I'm not classically trained (see above for self taught artist go brrr) I have a good grasp on art fundamentals via independent study. I was wondering why the designs looked so off to me, and outside of it looking like it was traced off of Aikatsu, I realized that these silhouettes SUCK. Having a strong silhouette is an important aspect of making an identifiable cartoon character. Case and point, a few previous seasons compared with these leaks:

(Pardon the rough nature of the silhouettes, I had to make my own on my phone) without the details, I have no idea what I'm looking at with these designs. With previous seasons, the silhouettes themselves gave us an idea of the vibes or even themes for the upcoming season. Here though? I mean my crappy silhouette of Cure Wonderful made her pigtails look like a cat sitting on her head when I asked my boyfriend for input. These silhouettes are incredibly weak with their long hair basically ruining their design by hiding their dresses. Fun fact! These are the same issues I had with Colgate-chan- oh sorry Alear from Fire Emblem Engage that made me think those were fake too. The minor details were the only thing that separated them from other characters since their silhouette was awful.

Now weak silhouettes aren't always a crime against art, however for a piece of media that is meant to sell toys, is in animation, and for children? Yeah no you need a strong silhouette for the audience to easily identify. The only reason such a weak silhouette would work in PreCure is because no other Cure has one this bland. You can tell which PreCure is Cure Wonderful because "oh that's the least fun looking one". Since her charm comes from the details you can't see when it's just her silhouette, that means that although they're all still cute, they could have been MUCH cuter, which Toei is typically really good at.

So in conclusion, are these definitely fake? I'm not sure. Given these products were probably taken home without permission from the manufacturer, it's possible these leaks are one of three things.

1. An INCREDIBLY well done fake leak, potentially by Toei themselves since they do that sometimes.

2. Real prototypes made with VERY early drafts of the characters and placeholder names that were intended to be destroyed once the designs/names got updated.

3. This is the real deal and this is going to be a fairly weak season in terms of aesthetic.

I'm personally leaning towards 1 or 2 since PreCure usually has higher standards of production. But hey, this is just my theory regarding these leaks. I know one of my girlfriends loves Cure Friendy, and I'm always here for more green rep in PreCure. I'm still excited for this season even if the aesthetic might be a bit weak. If there's anything I've learnt from PreCure, it's that even the most casual of seasons can get real dark real quick and somehow still work. Didn't Cure Grace literally leave someone to die... idk I haven't been able to watch a full PreCure season since like Go! Princess first came out 😭 fuck I'm getting old-

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pinkdrunk Linkdump

Today (November 18) at 1PM, I'll be in Concord, NH at Gibson's Books, presenting my new novel The Lost Cause, a preapocalyptic tale of hope in the climate emergency.

On Monday (November 20), I'm at the Simsbury, CT Public Library at 7PM

Happy Saturday! As is so often the case, I have finished the week with more stray links that I can fit into my blog, so it's time for a linkdump post, in which an assorted assortment is assembled. This is my tenth such linkdump – here are the previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

While nostalgia is a toxic impulse (h/t John Hodgman), there's no denying that there once existed an old, good web, and that it has given way to the enshitternet. I don't want to bring the old, good web back, but I would welcome a new, good web, and by studying the factors that contributed to the old, good web's rise and fall, we can both conjure up that new, good web – and protect it.

Above all, the old, good web was contingent, a series of lucky accidents, like Tim Berners Lee's decision to make the code and ideas and protocols for the original web as open and free as possible:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/13/this-is-for-everyone/#revisiting

This meant that there was no way to use the law to capture the web. Contrast that with, say, AOL or Compuserve. If you were the Compuserve's CEO and one of your rivals started using your servers to deliver a service that your users preferred, which shifted value from you to this new rival, you could just pull the plug on them. If they came back – using reverse-engineering or fake signups or whatever – you could sue them. Compuserve's bosses made the rules, any rules they wanted, and could kick you off if you violated them. If you pressed the issue, they could get the government to come and fine you, or, in extreme situations, arrest you.

But the open web didn't have these enforcement hooks. If you ran an early website and Yahoo deeplinked to it, you could change the link, but you couldn't make Yahoo stop. The open web was competitive, and that prevented anyone from exercising a veto over who could make the web, and how. It meant that the web was always up for grabs, with key chokepoints like browser market share swinging around wildly from one vendor to another (until Microsoft started illegally tying blocking rival browsers in Windows).

That meant that the "governance" of the web was often just a matter of the technical details of its standards. Code may not be law, but it was sure law-like – if something was in, say, a W3C browser standard, then all the browsers would support it, and then anyone trying to do something cool on the internet could rely on every potential user having it.

Naturally, this made standards development organizations into the sites of vicious power-struggles. These SDOs are classic "weak institutions," lacking the robust rules of, say, a competition regulator, to say nothing of the investigative and enforcement powers of the DoJ:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

But in the old, good web days, the SDOs had an important advantage: the corporate fragmentation of the web. Because of TBL's decision not to create IP chokepoints, even the wildly overcapitalized companies of the go-go dotcom bubble days weren't able to control the web. No one company was indispensable to the web.

If Microsoft wanted to tilt a W3C standard to its advantage, it couldn't threaten to leave the consortium if it didn't get its way. For one thing, the consortium had such a diversity of membership that losing any one member's dues wouldn't sink the org's finances.

For another, if Microsoft boycotted the W3C, that would just mean that the web standards that all those other companies were making wouldn't reflect its priorities or desires. By staying in the W3C, Microsoft got to participate in rulemaking – if it left, it would be relegated to rule-taking.

But the DoJ and FTC spent the ensuing decades in something like a coma. After a failed bid to break up Microsoft – killed when GW Bush stole the 2000 election and dropped the case – America's antitrust enforcers snoozed through decades of consolidation, and the transformation of the old, good web into "five giant websites, filled with screenshots of text from the other four":

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

This turned SDOs into increasingly fraught battlegrounds where giants duked it out among each other for control of the web. In the days of the old, good web, the W3C was able to continue TBL's chokepoint-free ethos, creating rules that forced members to surrender their patents at the door:

https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/

But once the enthitternet was fully in force, the largest corporate members became so important to SDOs' ability to operate that even the W3C wasn't able to resist. They started turning out IP-encumbered standards that were so proprietary that even filing bug-reports against browsers could mean jailtime:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

Within a couple years, it became functionally impossible to implement a web-browser without a license from one of a tiny handful of gigantic, monopolistic corporations, who could use the license to exercise a veto over both who could make a browser, and what that browser could do:

https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/

Standards development is one of those esoteric, hugely important activities that almost no one knows anything about. Good standards are key to an open, free internet, and as governments around the world grapple with Big Tech monopolies, their plans often include a block that basically reads "insert good standard here."

As exciting as the EU's Digital Markets Act and US proposals like the ACCESS Act are, the "insert good standard here" stuff is wildly underspecified and undertheorized. Making a good standard – one that is robust, flexible and secure – is hard enough even under competitive competitions where the SDO can play independent referee, more powerful than the participants. But making good standards under monopolistic conditions is really hard.

And yet, it happens! Look at the Fediverse, powered by Mastodon and its adaptation of a W3C standard called ActivityPub. The Fediverse has done more for an interoperable, decentralized web than all the other projects of the past decade combined:

https://fediverse.party/

How did something so useful and capture-resistant emerge from the enshitternet, from the same standards-body that gave us a proprietary "standard" that allowed three giant companies to seize the right to authorize the production of web browsers themselves?

Therein lies quite a tale. In a talk for this year's Association of Internet Researchers conference, Robert Gehl talks about the weird, highly contingent factors that delivered a fit-for-purpose Fediverse standard:

https://fossacademic.tech/2023/10/15/APnonStandard.html

Gehl starts by describing ActivityPub as a "non-standard standard." The technologists who created it at the W3C were largely unpreturbed by the Big Tech members, who viewed ActivityPub as unimportant, a folly. While this meant that the ActivityPub creators were free from Big Tech attempts to corrupt the standard, they were also insulated from the discipline of Big Tech standards people, who are expert at propelling a standard to completion while resolving conflicts to create a single, unified spec.

By contrast, ActivityPub's creators made seven different specs, resolving factional disputes by letting everyone get their way. Critical parts of these standards – including support for federation! – was marked as optional in group's charter.

Then along came Mastodon, implementing the draft spec for ActivityPub. This triggered two extensions to the deadline for ActivityPub's completion. ActivityPub moved to final draft against the backdrop of the real-world experiences of early Mastodon users. Four of the five ActivityPub authors self-identified as queer, and they set out to make Mastodon more harassment-resistant than corporate social media:

https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/053-fediverse-reflections-while-the-bird-burns.html

The early success of Mastodon shifted the focus of ActivityPub authors and implementers. In Gehl's words, "half of ActivityPub" is now ignored. Gehl's essay shows how many needles Mastodon threaded to get to where it is today, and while there's an argument that there was a Fediverse-shaped hole in the internet that something was going to fill, the Mastodon-inflected flavor of ActivityPub we got is pretty great.

Gehl is working on a book about this for Oxford University Press, "Move Slowly and Build Bridges":

https://fossacademic.tech/2023/08/17/OxfordUP.html

One of the more contingent elements of the nascent new, good web is Signal, the secure, robust, easy-to-use encrypted messaging tool that has stepped in to fill the gap that encrypted email tools like PGP struggled to fill for years (though that doesn't mean that secure email is impossible!):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/01/end-to-end-encryption-is-too-important-to-be-proprietary/

Like Mastodon, Signal threaded a bunch of different needles to get to its current status, and it's still threading needles. In a new article, Signal's amazing new president, Meredith Whittaker and Joshua Lund explain what it costs to keep Signal running:

https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/

Bottom line: Signal costs $50m/year. The breakdown is fascinating and weird. Signal pays a fortune to send SMS messages to verify your number when you sign up. Here's an irony: as Signal displaces SMS, telcos are making up for lost revenue by charging Signal ever-higher rates to send those signup codes – Signal's spending $6m/year on SMSes!

Storage costs Signal another $1.3m/year. Servers are $2.9m/year. Bandwidth is $2.8m/year. Signal's storage and compute costs are low because they're privacy-first, so they're collecting, processing and storing as little data as possible. Add a couple more zeros per user to approximate the costs for high-surveillance alternatives to Signal.

Because Signal is end-to-end encrypted, they can use untrusted (and cheap) third parties for bandwidth, relaying and storage. Your phone encrypts the data before it leaves your device, and no one can decrypt it except the person you're talking to. That lets Signal shop around for server infra, saving much more. Even so, voice and video calls consume a lot of bandwidth, and it gets more expensive because they jump the connection through multiple servers to prevent the people you're talking to from capturing your IP address.

Signal's got 50 full-time employees – a "shockingly small" team by industry standards. But still: 50 developers, managers, designers, accountants, etc all add up to $19m/year (the org pays "as close to industry wages as possible within the boundaries of a nonprofit").

As Signal scales up, it is discovering new and exciting bugs and problems. A one-in-a-billion bug that may never crop up in a small service can suddenly start occurring on a daily basis once you hit scale. That means Signal will continue to hire engineers to crush these weird little bugs, and they're going to be the kinds of specialists who can preserve privacy while fixing servers.

Signal is amazing. It's been six years since they figured out how to transmit userids, numbers and photos as fully encrypted blobs. Not one of their competitors – not even the "secure" ones from giant Big Tech companies – have managed this. Even Signal's system for embedding animated GIFs is privacy-preserving – the system doesn't reveal your search terms to the GIF repositories.

Today, Signal is tooling up to create "post-quantum resistance" to the system, anticipating the arrival of functional quantum computers that will (theoretically) make short work of existing encryption techniques.

The article ends – logically enough – with a plea for donations. I'm a Signal donor already:

https://signal.org/donate/

The Signal and ActivityPub stories reveal the important interplay between principled individuals and sustainable institutions. Benevolent dictators – whether that's Tim Berners Lee, or Mastodon's Eugen Rochko – work well, but fail badly. No matter how benevolent a dictator is, they are not infallible or omniscient. A critical juncture in any good project is its transition from a dictatorship to a democracy – an individual to an institution.

Take the Archive of Contemporary Music, the largest archive of popular music in the world. It was founded in 1985 by Bob George, who had amassed a collection of 47,000 LPs in a loft he'd lived in since 1974:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/16/archive-of-contemporary-music-new-york

George and his co-founder, David Wheeler, have since grown the collection to 3m pieces of media with 90m songs. They were the first people to start seriously collecting and preserving music that others viewed as ephemeral and disposable. The collection wandered from place to place before settling in a Hudson Valley facility that it is about to outgrow.

In part that's because they're still one of the only places where others' collections can be reliably consigned. When Keith Richards wanted to turn his blues collection over to a facility for long-term preservation, he chose ARC. Now, ARC is working with the Internet Archive to digitize and make available its vast holdings.

But that's a fraught and contingent business, too. The Internet Archive has been targeted with one of those bowel-loosening record-industry lawsuits last seen during the Napster Wars, with Sony, Universal and others seeking damages that would permanently shutter the Archive and bankrupt its founder, the wonderful Brewster Kahle:

https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/14/internet-archive-responds-to-recording-industry-lawsuit-targeting-obsolete-media/

The suit argues that when a library makes 78RPM recordings available for its patrons to check out over the internet, they cannot avail themselves of the copyright exemptions that have been a feature since copyright's inception. Remember, libraries are an order of magnitude older than copyright! The core of this suit is that libraries cannot move into the digital world.

Rather than doing what libraries have done since (literal) time immemorial – collecting works, preserving them and making them available – digital libraries can only license time- and circulation-limited copies of works that can't be preserved. It's a grim vision of a future without libraries:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/13/they-want-to-kill-libraries/

Giant corporations are an existential threat to human thriving. After 40 years of neoliberalism, there's a growing recognition that the market's invisible hand would like to swat you like a bug. Hence the rise and rise of the labor movement. Though "union density" (the proportion of unionized workers) is still at an historically low ebb, union support among the public is higher than at any time since the New Deal.

That's why UAW president Shawn Fain is planning a general strike in 2028, calling on other unions "to align your contract expirations with our own" so that all the contracts come up for renegotiation at the same time:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/uaw-auto-workers-general-strike-contract-labor-unions

This is a very clever way to overcome America's ban on sympathy strikes, which was introduced in 1947 with the Taft-Hartley Act. Sympathy strikes – where all unionized workers refuse to provide any service to employers who won't bargain fairly with their own workforce – are a hugely powerful tool for labor movements. Look at Sweden, where Tesla has refused to bargain with the technicians who fix its cars.

In response, the entire Swedish workforce has united against Tesla. Dockworkers won't unload its cars at the port. Electricians won't fix its chargers. Cleaners won't clean Tesla showrooms:

https://www.wired.com/story/sweden-tesla-strike-cleaners/

This is how it's done. Musk has made his fortune by crushing worker power in every one of his businesses, joining the ranks of Apple and Amazon as one of the world's leading maimers and killers of his workforce:

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2023-11-18/us-lawmakers-urge-scrutiny-of-spacex-worker-injuries-after-reuters-report

While Musk's latest turn toward open antisemitism is grim, especially in light of his ownership of Twitter, it's perfectly in character for a man whose businesses have always been charnel houses of "crushed limbs, amputations, head injuries and death."

But Musk can't fire or even intimidate the dockworkers who won't unload his cars. Sympathy strikes enlist workers who are beyond the reach of intransigent employers in aid of workers who are subject to retaliation for striking. That's why Taft-Hartley abolished sympathy strikes.

But if all the major unions are negotiating their contracts in 2028 – as Fain has called for – they can all strike without falling afoul of Taft-Hartley. That's some shrewd tactics.

Even if you believe in markets as a force for increasing human thriving, it takes an act of will to miss how corporations who can exploit their customers or workers will. When it comes to exploitable customers, prisoners are the ultimate captive audience. Most of us are familiar with the horrors of private prisons – especially after the acute phase of the covid pandemic, when corporate prison managers simply left America's prisoners to die.

But prison privatization is fractal. You can privatize a prison facility, but you can also privatize the commissary, the library, the mail, even phone calls and visitations. Some of the slimiest prison profiteers are the ones providing telecoms facilities to prisons. These companies lobby to ban in-person visits and mail and then provide "free" phone service to state facilities – service that can cost prisoners and their families $10/minute.

One of the worst of these companies is ViaPath (formerly Global Tel*Link). Not only did they charge prisoners sky-high rates for contact with their families, they ran a wildly insecure service that breached the data of 600,000 users:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/prison-phone-company-leaked-600k-users-data-and-didnt-notify-them-ftc-says/

These prisoners and families had "sensitive personal information" exposed online in unencrypted form, and were not informed of the breach, according to an FTC complaint:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Complaint-GlobalTelLinkCorp.pdf

The company went on to defraud state and local prison systems whose contracts they were bidding on, by claiming to have never have suffered a breach.

The sleaze of the prison-tech system is the worst imaginable – which is about what you'd expect. After all, prison-tech is at the very foot of the shitty technology adoption curve:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The prisoners who are abused by companies like Viapath are test subjects for technology that will work its way up the privilege gradient, moving on to mental patients, asylum seekers, kids, blue collar workers, white collar workers – then, everyone.

This makes prison-tech a great oracle for understanding what's coming for the rest of us in a decade or two. That's why I made prison-tech the McGuffin of The Bezzle, the sequel to my 2023 novel Red Team Blues, which comes out next February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

High-tech forensic accountant Marty Hench is back in The Bezzle for a story of early-2000s internet consolidation, LA Sheriffs Department gangs, prison privatization, collateralized debt obligations, and the absolute depraved sleaze of prison-tech privateers. If you still have a Twitter account, you can enter this sweepstakes to get an early copy:

https://twitter.com/torbooks/status/1725544405879447745

(There will be other ways to get an early peek for non-Twitter users, rest assured!)

Attentive readers will note that The Bezzle will be my fourth book in 14 months. I'm presently touring my third book of 2023, The Lost Cause, a climate emergency book that Rebecca Solnit described as "a future woven from our successes (Green New Deal!), failures (climate chaos anyway), and unresolved conflicts (old MAGA dudes). I loved it":

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

Book tours are exhausting and exhilarating. They have the weirdest social dynamic, where you're bouncing to a new city every day or two, having high-speed social contact with hundreds of people at a go, then hunkering down alone in a hotel room to do press calls and answer publicity emails. I've been doing this since 2006 or so, and one mystery I've pondered all that time is the weirdness of stinky hotel soap:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53339503041/

Go to any Marriott, any Hilton, a Comfort Inn or a Holiday Inn, and you will find yourself in the Kingdom of Beige. The wallpaper, art, carpets and bedspreads are all calculated to be as generic and invisible as possible. But the soap and shampoo stocked by these redoubts of nothingness are wildly perfumed. I'm not a big fan of floral perfume anyway, but the hand-soap in your typical hotel bathroom makes Axe Body Spray seem innocuous. No taxi air-freshener, no urinal puck, not even the most lethal of 1960s-era douches ever aspired to the eye-watering, clinging, scent of hotel soaps, shampoos, conditioners and hand-cream.

It's like hygiene perfume is the mid-priced hotelier's equivalent of 1980s Wall Street traders' suspenders: while everything else must be absolutely uniform and staid, this is the one realm where you can really let your freak flag fly. I'm always up for a unfettered freak-flag, but holy shit does this stuff stink.

I'll get a chance to ponder this anew on the tour for The Bezzle next February, and again for Picks and Shovels, the February 2025 Martin Hench novel that's already pending.

I need to get ready for my bookstore event, but before I sign off, one more bit of science fiction publishing news. An indie filmmaker in Paris is working with the brilliant John Varley on an adaptation of his sf classic Titan, and they're trying to raise $65k on Kickstarter to pay for it. I kicked in – a world with more Varley in it is a better world:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/superstory/themis-the-next-frontier

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/18/collectanea/#bricabrac

Image: Famartin https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2021-01-06_12_15_43_Cranberry_trail_mix_with_cranberries,_peanuts,_raisins,_walnuts,_almonds,_sunflower_seeds,_pepitas_in_the_Franklin_Farm_section_of_Oak_Hill,_Fairfax_County,_Virginia.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[fountainpenguin]

"Picture of your face in an invisible locket... I had a bad feeling. But we were dancin'... swaying as the room burned down." (x)

---

New Dog's Life chapter today! ~ 3rd Life series fan-season

Chapter 32 - “Starve (Etho, Scott)”

❤️ Read on AO3

💛 Start from Chapter 1

💚 More Pixels Imperfect fics

---

I am once again bringing you scenes of Etho cuddling up to SnifferMyFeet while Sniff growls reminders that even though he has Joel's memories and misses being Boat Boys, he wants Etho to treat him as a separate person.

If I had a nickel for every chapter Etho's touched this man and thought of Joel, I would have 8 nickels. I'd have 40 cents. That's as much as 1/4 of our story. And that's terrible.

#smalletho - Etho once again working through his touch starvation and Boat Boys Issues™ Many references to Joel, but he doesn't appear. Large flashbacks of him and Etho in next week's chapter, though! <3

(First 1,000 words under the cut)

---

This preview section jumps into shippy vibes- Proceed at own discretion.

---

Etho - Fox

Status: Holding out a hand

Self-taught programmer, full-time hero

💙  🧡  💚

So, uh. That string tidying, huh? You're setting yourself up for disappointment if you want to do that with an endermite hybrid. They're the best in the business and they'll mock you the whole time you set up. Sniff's smug and giggly about it, too, as Etho pushes him down on the bed and hangs back to study him. He's really tattered the code on the bottoms of his bare feet. I mean, shoe code gets tattered too, but usually those soft parts of a skin design hurt more.

"You gonna use your mouth?" Sniff asks, eyeing him up.

"In a shocking turn of events, the programmer has tools for fixing loose code. They're in the other room." Etho takes Sniff's wrists and pins them above his head for a second, then takes his ankles and stretches them out. Classic textbook pose for the work, even though they'll probably move to the carpet for obvious reasons before they start; he doesn't need weak pixels dropped all over his bed. "Stay," he commands, and Sniff sticks out his tongue and double flips him off without moving his arms. So Etho can't be mad.

But he does lean over, sliding one hand beneath Sniff's cheek, easing it behind his head. He curls it back around and lifts it just enough to scrape his palm across Sniff's brow, beneath his floppy dark brown hair. It's thick and feels like swamp plants in his hands. He still smells like well-treated water. Chlorine. Like one of Gluon's hotel builds with the fancy pools. Or the waterpark server. Never did find out why. Etho breathes against him without pulling back. Despite the wet scents, Sniff's warm soul's like fresh-baked bread against his hand.

"Oh my goodness… You're so pretty. You are so pretty…"

The metaphorical light fades from Sniff's mismatched eyes. Etho pulls back, waiting for a pinch or slap. Sniff turns his face away. Only his Joel side's visible at this angle as he squirms. "Get your eyes checked, Eefo… I saw my reflection when I got my water. I'm stitched together with hand-me-down parts. You don't mean that."

"What if I do, though?" He crouches lower by the bed, bringing a hovering thumb to Sniff's scalp. Sniff glances at him, then away. So Etho breaks that barrier. Slowly, the thick part of his hand eases down to touch Sniff's head. Sniff scrunches up his eyes again, giving the faintest little nod. Etho holds very still a few seconds (Sniff's pixels are so loose on his skin, which was the whole point of this cleaning project anyway) before he speaks again. "I'm sorry you can't see that yet. Body issues are tough; I've got issues too. Sometimes my fox traits get away from me… Been thinking about modding out, but it takes centuries of paperwork." His next stroke of hand (a circle on his head) is firmer, sharper, and Sniff mutters something under his breath as his cheeks freckle up with blue again. Cute. "If it were legal, I'd probably just unthread. I'd miss the bullet paths, but you make vex life look so easy. So good." He draws his hand around in one last loop, then eases it down Sniff's cheek (on his Grian side) to his neck. "Hey, take a closer look next time you're out. There's a lot of interesting people out there. Some wear faces that aren't even humanoid. Have you met MumboDrone or iCam? … And you know, it's just a skin."

Sniff putters his lips, staring towards the ceiling. His fingers lift, dancing across the backs of Etho's knuckles. "You just want me to stay late again. Gods, you're so lonely… Listen, fella- I know my strings are a wreck. I was an endermite before a vex; be pretty messed up if I couldn't tell. I'll let you clean me up, but I'm not playing sleepover. You can't make me."

"Mmhm." Oh man, I want to press my head on yours. He really wants to, noses brushing, hair tufts scraping, but he refrains, you know. He's kneeling, balanced on his heels, and Sniff's saying 'Yes' to the hand but looking unsure. So he won't. "Stay as long as you want to. Just let me clean your code and then you can leave. I promise I won't be mad."

"You smell like bread dough…"

"Yeah? My code wouldn't taste too good right now. Squeaky clean."

"Oh, that's too bad." Absentminded. Distracted. Etho eases back his fingers.

"Are you okay?"

Sniff clicks into focus again and then swishes up, sitting on the bed instead of lying down. "Yeah, thanks. I'm good, actually. The water helped."

"All right. I'll be right back with the cleaning stuff." He leaves without another touch, pausing only to switch off the portal still glowing in the corner. He leaves the desk lantern glowing like it is. It's fun, in the dark. The light's so low, it's like a fox's den in here.

The nice thing about being a programmer? He has no end of scrapers and combs to choose from. He pays the living room a visit to get the tray from the coding desk's drawer and some rolled-up pieces of carpet (ignoring the less than subtle smirks Beef and Pause give him as he strolls by). Etho brings the whole tray to his room and sits on the bed with Sniff, just talking to him and explaining how effective these tools are for different things. Sniff seems to recognize a lot of them, which is no surprise, honestly. Since Joel doesn't do logouts, he has a whole cleaning routine. It takes him forever.

"You know," Sniff says, digging through the tray, "using combs is cheating, actually. I can do the cleaning with my teeth still attached. I bet foxes can too. I mean, it's code work; all the code-eating species can do it." He flicks his gaze to Etho, who kneels across from him, tail waving in the air. Etho doesn't answer, so Sniff goes on. "You know what's fun? 'mite bundles."

"'mite bundles,'" Etho repeats. "Like… Endermites inside a bundle? Is that fun? That's a new one to me." Where is he going with this?

"Yeah, it's when you put endermites in with some of your supplies and go out on adventures. When you want your supplies, you have to dump everything on the ground and try to use your stuff without getting bit. If you get bit, you have to send your coords to server chat. Easy way to get killed, so you'd better not. You can play it in Between, too. Pig has an endermite living in his studio. For every time it bites him, he has to keep his weapons in a chest for an hour when he gets home. It means I can do whatever I want to him, really. Usually he just runs. Sometimes we duke it out bare-fisted. Have you ever seen him with a black eye and a tooth knocked out? Just me, I guess- It probably doesn't carry when he leaves the server. He looks so goofy when he smiles; I'm chuffed to bits with that. Gods, you wouldn't believe the bruise he left on me this one time he pushed me off an end ship. He smirked about it for days, no joke. No, actually. Can't believe his head even fit outside the server."

Etho smirks back, hidden in the mask and hidden by his fingertips. His chin rests against his hand. "What'd you do to him? You didn't let him get away with that, did you?"

"Hell no! I picked up a shulker and I slammed him on the head with it. I bet you didn't even know you can peel 'em off the wall- they're so clingy. What'd he do then? I think he put down a bed and blew himself up trying to get me with it. Oh, he's so lame. I like him so much."

[Full chapter on AO3 - Link at top]

[bimbo-writer]

Does my magic scare you? I

Azul x fem!reader (lilia x reader) [AU]

[Reader has feelings for Azul but gets heartbroken and finds comfort in Lilia]

Contains: porn with plot, oral, cream pies, choking, spanking, degrading, edging, orgasm denial, multiple rounds, mating press, light praise.

Part 2

《♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡》

NRC was your dream school you wanted to prove to everyone that you didn't need to be at some cream puff all girls school. You wanted to show everyone you could be amongst the worlds best Male sorcerers.

You studied your ass off and worked day in and day out to perfect your abilities to use all types of common magic. All the training led you to where you are now being accepted after months of arguing with the principal and three mock battles and tests to prove your worth.

Because you were the first girl to ever get accepted into NRC news of your power spread around school quick. Not only that the magic mirror put you into Diaaomnia the strongest dorm for magic users.

Even with all that it didn't stop guys from teasing you about your uniform or that fact a girl shouldn't be in a man's school. None of the comments got to you expect for one person. Azul Ashengrotto.

For whatever reason this man could just look at you and you felt the need to sucker punch him. The first time the two of you met he introduced himself with such elegance and grace that it left your cheeks with a pink tint and your knees weak.

"We at Octovinelle wish to give you a present for making it into our elite school. Along with a personal welcome from their housewarden me Azul Ashengrotto." he said taking your hand and placing a kiss to it. "Thank but theres really no need for that" you said taking your hand away before your blush grew any bigger.

"We insist after all it's not everyday a girl makes it into our ranks so easily" he teased with a smirk. "I'm not sure what your implying but I'm going to ignore that comment of yours" your lips turned into a frown as your patience's was running thin.

"Forgive me if it came off as rude I merely meant that it's reason to celebrate. With that we hope you come and celebrate with us at the Mostro Lounge." The smile he gave didn't really help him but he didn't really seem like a threat so you let it go.

"Thank you I'll stop by once I've finished my work for the day" you waved bye leaving to your dorm and doing whatever work was assigned that day. You debated going to the lounge since it was a little weird but you did really want to see him again. Against your better judgment you went, dressed to the nines wanting to impress him even just a little.

An elegant black dress with a slit running up your left thigh, gold jewelry glistening against your skin. Everything tied together with black eyeshadow and gold glitter sprinkled on top of it.

As you entered the lounge it grew silent all eyes on you as you waited for someone to seat you. "Um h- hello miss I'll be your waiter for tonight follow me" the shy man stumbled over his sentence as you followed him. The atmosphere of the restaurant was nice and peaceful with light classical music playing.

Azul noticed you had arrived and made his was towards you, "ah hello miss..." his sentence trailing off towards the end realizing he didn't catch your name.

"You dont know my name?" You questioned your curiosity peeked.

"I'm surprised you hadn't heard through all the others at this school Mr.Ashengrotto" you teased while browsing over the menu. His calm demeanor wavering for just a moment before he spoke again, "I dont believe in listening to simple rumors unless they have concrete proof" he mused.

A light laugh escaped your lips to which he raised an eyebrow wondering what was so funny. "Oh forgive me for laughing it's just I've never met a person who didn't indulge in silly rumors, whether real or not". His smirk returned as he slid into the the chair sitting in front of you.

"Does that mean your one to listen to rumors?" He questioned wondering what type of person you are. "Maybe. There where lots of rumours at my high school that I listened to" this conversation seemed to be going somewhere but where?

"Really? What high school did you go to?" He continued to ask you questions throughout the night. You found yourself relaxing for the first time since you got to this school, "I never would have thought that you would be so funny Azul" you said giving him a small smile as you got ready to leave.

"Wait I never did catch your name" he said with a warm smile that made your heart melt. "It's y/n. Y/n l/n" you said timidly before trying to leave again, only to be pulled into his arms making your heart race and face heat up.

"A- Azul what are you-" your sentence was cut off as he dragged you to the V.I.P area closing the door before locking it. "Azul what is the meaning of this-" your sentence being interrupted yet again. "Forgive me but I wanted this conversation to be private" his words made your heart flutter with excitement.

What did he want to say? Was he going to tell you off for the way you dressed? Did he also catch some kind of feelings quickly?

Questions swirled through your head but before they got out of control Azul's voice had brought you back to reality. "Look I know this might be sudden but I wanted to know would you be interested in working at the Mostro Lounge."

Huh?

He wasn't being serious was he. You laughed thinking it was a joke leading to what he was really going to say but no he was serious! "Wait you pulled me into the room to ask me if I wanted a job?" Your repeated wondering if you got things right, "Yes exactly I knew you would understand" he beamed taking your hands in his.

"I'll write up a contract for you as soon as-" you took your hands away from his taking him by surprise. "Are you serious right now!? I've barely been in this school for a month and you're try to get me to work for you? Your no different from the others guys that have been trying to get something from me" you screamed wanting nothing more than for the earth to swallow you whole.

"Don't get me wrong under normal circumstances I would be flattered but considering this is only our second meeting I find it rude as fuck!" You continued walking towards the door ready to leave. Azul wouldn't let you leave so easily though, "my dear l/n I didn't mean you any harm I just figured you'd like to take the opportunity" his voice lowered into a caring tone.

You started to feel a little bad until he pulled you into his arms once again, heart racing at how close you where to him. Face just centimeters away from yours, for a second you thought he would kiss you.

"Just please consider my offer" he whispered in your ear before letting you go causing you to almost fall. You left not wanting to be in the V.I.P room any longer paying for the food then leaving back to your dorm.

The whole way there you grumbled thinking just how much of an ass he was wanting so badly to slap him. When you finally reached your dorm lilia was sitting in the common area reading a book. He noticed your presence asking you how your day was not looking up from his book.

You felt irritated all over again taking a seat next to him beginning to rant about Azul. "I've had a horrible day with Azul trying to get me to work for him at the lounge" you huffed feeling exhausted just thinking about it.

Lilia's eyes grew wide with interest putting his book down to look at you, "really? Well that sounds like it was fun" he teased scooting closer to you. "Don't get me started. He even pulled me into a separate room just to tell me and I felt so used" pouting remembering how much your heart was racing just to be let down.

"You felt used? What where you expecting from him? Something more scandalous" his voice dropped an octave as he moved closer grabbing your chin to face him. Your eyes widened at the sudden change in demeanor as his eyes met yours pulling you into a soft kiss.

You didn't pull away your mind kept yelling at you to stop and tell him this wasn't right but your heart said fuck it. You just wanted to be held something to fill the hole in your heart, and not have to think about what he said any longer.

You pushed forward deeping the kiss throwing your arms around him while his arms snaked their was to your hips holding you still. His tongue dragged across your bottom lips asking for entrance which you didn't hesitate to give.

The feeling of his tongue exploring ever inch of your mouth had your legs rubbing together wanting more. Heat pooling between your legs as you pulled away from lilia, a string of saliva falling apart as you took in his hazed eyes.

Lust clouding your vision as he pulled you into his arms carrying you to his room. He locked the door behind him walking to the bed tossing you before climbing on top. "Such a naughty girl. Going off about some man only to end up in my sheets" he teased pulling your dress off you slowly exposing you inch by inch taking in how beautiful you look.

"This is your fault" voice barely above a whimper out of embarrassment, "I don't exactly see you objecting to this situation". His voice was so teasing while he laid kisses all over your body. Staring from your collar bone moving lower until he reached your clothed pussy.

"You won't be needing these" he mused pulling the material to pool at your ankles and sitting up to take in your helpless state. "Can you not stare" you whispered feeling so exposed even though you still had your bra on. "Oh but you look so nice all spread out for me with nothing but your bra left" his tone was so intoxicating and the way he spoke had you weak.

"Stop teasing" his gaze didn't waver as he closed the distance between you two, "oh my is someone that eager to start?". There it was again that mocking tone that gave you butterflies in your stomach.

"Please..." your body was shaking from excitement ready for him to finally give you what you wanted. "Please what darling? You need to use your words otherwise I won't know what you want" a sly smirk spreading across his face while you pouted not wanting to say it out loud.

"Please fuck me..." your voice trailing off to the end embarrassment flooding your mind as your checks turned red. "Good girl" moving lower until his head was centimeters away from your dripping cunt, he started to rub light circles over your pussy.

Shivers ran up your spin at the light stimulation, his long cool fingers prodding at your entrance trying to gauge your reactions to every touch. He loved seeing how certain touches made you gasp while others made you squirm.

"My dear your body is just so erotic" he teased moving his fingers to circle your clit applying light pressure as you whimpered wanting more. "Please Lilia just fuck me" small huffs left your lips with the demand, he smirked head moving in between your legs diving right into your cunt like a starved man.

You let out a small squeal to his action, "I guess I'll give you what you want since your such a whore" his face showed he was irritated but not angry. "Just relax and I'll take you to the pleasure hell, You'll be so overstimulated by the end you won't even remember your name". His words make your face flush as he pushes your legs farther apart smirking with how your inner thighs glinted from all your arousal.

His head diving back into your cunt lapping at all your juices. "Lilia more- want more" moans and pleas for more fell on deaf ears as he slowled down going so agonizing slow it made tears form in your eyes.

Lilia loved the way you pussy clenched around his tongue but he also wanted to see you lose all sense of yourself just from his tongue. "Lilia please" mewls of pleasure escaped your lips as his tongue made you loose all sense of yourself.

"Oh how I love the sounds you make my dear" his voice muffled between your things continuing his attack on your pussy. Lips moving to suck on your clit sending a jolt of new pleasure up your spine as your hands found their way to his hair pushing him further into your pussy.

"My my such a needy slut" he mused pulling away to see his work before immediately going back to pleasuring you. "Fuck- Lilia" your voice grew louder as he slipped a finger into your cunt while he continued to suck your oversensitive clit.

His finger pumped in and out with ease making him smirk deciding to add another finger stretching you little by little. "Lilia- I'm gonna cum" your voice was shaky as you felt your orgasm approaching quickly only for it to be ripped away at the last second.

"Oh no you don't" as soon as lilia felt your cunt start to clench harder he pulled away leaving you hot and bothered. "Lilia you're so mean" you whined as he pulled you closer by your ankle until you where straddling his hips.

"I want you to come on my cock and feel the pleasure of me filling this little cunt" his breathe was hot on your neck as he whispered dirty promises exciting you more. The thought of him filing your cunt made you want him even more, "please lilia please fill my needy cunt" his heart was beating faster excited to see you so needy and begging for his cock.

"Your wish is my command dear" he purred finally releasing his cock from its confinements. Your jaw gaped at the sheer size of it, how on earth does he intend to fit that in you.

"My dear your staring" his voice brings you back to your senses "first thought let's get rid of this last restriction" hands moving to unclapse your bra tits bouncing lightly as the cool air hit your nipples sending a shiver down your spine.

"Now that that's gone let's have some fun", lilia lines himself with your cunt tip teasing your entrance as it collects arousal as lube. He gives his cock a few strokes before, you feel the tip push it's way inside finally giving you what you wanted, "Oh lilia" your voice going up an octave as he thrusted into you setting a fast pace as your tits bounced with every rock of his hips.

"Who know you where such a needy bitch? Did you come crying to me knowing I would stuff this pretty pussy huh?" His words had you clenching down on him harder as he moved his hand to start choking you. The feeling of his hands restricting your air flow had you light headed and eager for more.

"Please lilia please" your pleas sounded like music to his ears, "please what slut?" his hand tighted around your throat as he asked the question. "Please fill me with your cum" you breathed out on the verge of passing out from pleasure.

"I guess I can since your such a needy slut" his hips began rocking harder reaching deeper inside your cunt. "I'm gonna- cum" your cunt clenched hard as you came, gasping for air.

"Fuck- if you squeeze me like that how can I not resist cumming in your pussy" his hands moved to your hips holding you tight as his thrusts became sloppy and his cock began to twitch. "Now be a good girl and take it" his hips came flush against your ass pushing himself into the deepest part of your cunt before finally cumming painting your insides white.

"Ohh lilia" moans fell from your lips as his grip on your hips was bruising and he began to thrust again. "You didn't think we were finished did you?" The sound of skin against skin drowned out your moans as he started abusing your pussy again, "lilia slow down I'm still sensitive" your pleas fell on death ears as he instead started thrusting faster and harder hitting your g-spot sending you into euphoric pleasure.

"Cumming- I'm gonna cum again" your screams of pleasure filling the room as you clench hard squirting on Lilia's cock, face twisting in pleasurable pain. "Oh fuck love you just squirted on me... do it again" grabbing your legs folding you into a mating press cock kissing your cervix sending wave after wave a pleasure down your spine.

"Fuck love your squeezing me tighter, you like being fucked rough huh?" Moans replaced your words as your tounge lolled out out of breathe from the constant rocking of his hips. "Still sensitive- oh fuck~" words being brought to whimpers as lilia's cock felt like it was getting bigger if that was even possible almost entering your womb.

"Fuck darling I'm gonna cum, take it all like a good girl" his hips snapped to meet yours as his body became flush with yours dumping his seed into your womb. You could feel him painting your insides white, trying to catch your breathe he brought his hand up to your face caressing your cheek.

"You did wonderful my dear" he whispered into your ear before kissing your cheek and pulling out slowly. He watched as his seed spilled out of you loving the sight and how much control he had over you just because of a little heartbreak.

"I'm going to grab a towel and run you a bath just try to relax dear" he hummed leaving you alone with your thoughts. Your not sure if fucking Lilia just because you where mad at Azul was the best decision but you didn't really care much.

As you were about to think things over again Lilia came in with water and a towel, "just lay down and let me clean you up" his smile made your heart melt. Yeah you definitely made the right choice picking him over Azul.

This Definitely won't come back and hurt you later.

[merakiui]

hello its ☕️ anon again!!!

CAN I JUST SAY….that music playlist u shared??? i’ve been listening to that a lot before you mentioned it!!! a lovely coincidence 😭😭😭🥺🥺🥺 i’m so happy that u use it for your writing as inspo like the vibes are so fitting

so beautiful yet so melancholic

it’s also so perfect for slow dancing scenes!!!! i like to imagine slowdancing with azul while it plays in the background, OH AND WHAT IF HE’S DRESSED UP IN HIS GLOMAS OUTFIT 😭😭😭😭😭

havfruens forelskelse sequel….oh it’s going to break my heart again huh? 🥹🥹🥹🥹 im so excited!!!

Hi hiii ☕️ anon!!!! Omg what a wonderful coincidence!!!! I love that playlist. <3 classical music is so magical. orz I love listening to it when I'm writing or studying. That specific playlist has such a pretty vibe to it. Perfect for melancholic writing like butler Jade!!!! :D (I also listened to this playlist a lot while writing the dance scene in tmdg hehe. I recommend it because the songs are all so lovely!!!)

AAAAAAAAA slow dancing!!!!!! AND WITH GLOMAS AZUL. I AM BUT A MAIDEN WITH ONE WEAKNESS (tako weakness). orz orz orz dancing with him under the moonlight. Zuzu becoming human for the masquerade ball so that he can dance with you, the human he's fallen in love with (Little Mermaid reference >:D)!!!!!!!!! I am not immune to pretty octopus in his pretty masquerade outfit. Manifesting an equally pretty and grand card for Jade. Also manifesting Coral Sea event with Jade SSR. PLEASE TWST I NEED HIM. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. OTL

:) I'm excited to break hearts with this sequel (especially Azul's hearts. All three of them.) No one is safe from the sadness in the sequel. >_<

[stormbreaker101]

Music(ology) headcanons! Part 2

My friend @klaraflamez and I have been writing a shared story based upon the wizard101 AUs we made independently. Things go somewhat off the rails, and so these headcanons that we made for Music absolutely do not work for canon, which is part of why I'm making this post separate.

An overview of our AUs:

In both Corrupted Spiral (my AU) and the Cleaved AU (Klara's), the Spiral learned so heavily on its dependency upon its Wizard that it led to the Wizards' demises. In CS, before Arc 4 could properly begin, Nora lashed out in fury, sick of being Nothing but a title and weapon, and abandons the Spiral. In Cleaved, Scarlet was killed in the final fight of Lemuria, a 1v8, abandoned and alone because the Spiral assumed she would have handled it.

The main characters of the next generation after the two Wizards (~0-5 years after Nora's departure and 25 years after Scarlet's death) each realize that even though they're not The Wizard, they still have a duty to serve the good of the Spiral.

Overall there's a major theme of destiny and responsibility not falling on just one person's shoulders. The Wizard is not the only Paradox, and the primordial magics of Light, Shadow, and Music are no longer reserved for the Wizard and the gods. They become proper schools, integrated with the other ten (7 playable schools + 3 Astrals).

I've written and come up with spells for the Music school, as one of the characters I'm writing ends up as the Scion of Music, while Klara's writing the revamped Shadow and Light schools because her OCs become the Scions for those.

More details on Music as its own school in CCSAU (both lorewise and mechanicswise because i am gamerpilled), and all the spells themselves plus their explanations (where I derived inspiration from) are under the cut!

Music is the magic of creation. 'Outgoing' mechanics are the name of the game. It is a major hitter like Fire and Storm, but also has access to heals like the more defensive Life magic that came from the Song of Creation. Music's greatest weakness is that it is a major glass cannon, with no spells in its repertoire able to mitigate incoming damage.

The reason Music is tied to Fire and Storm alongside Life lorewise is because the Scion of Music first studied Fire and Storm magic alongside Musicology, before Music was its own school. Our Scion shaped Music as much as Music shaped him.

Now onto the spells themselves!

MAINLINE (primarily ATTACKING) SPELLS:

1 pip - Lyrebird - 90-130 damage. Based on the lyre instrument, and also a nod to Lyra, the fanon Music school tree in the Cleaved AU.

2 pip - Trombun - 220-260 damage. A pun on trombone and bunny.

3 pip - Earworm - 500 damage over 3 turns. Colloquially, earworms are catchy bits of song that just stay in your head and WON'T GET OUT, which is the inspiration for making this spell a pesky overtime. Also, taken from the Earworm/Brainworm mobs in Empyrea.

4 pip - Melodeer -  465-525, + 20% heal OR damage blade to self. Melody + deer. Here we begin to see some utility and niche poke its way into spells so that they're not plain and pure damage. Also, just to balance Music against the other 'hitter' schools a little bit more, it doesn't get a 4-pip AoE.

5 pip - Volta Bracken - 400 damage AND 400 health to self. A reference to volta brackets (an element in musical notation), with language nodding at Storm and Life magic (volt as in electricity, bracken as in a kind of plant). Yes this spell is an objectively better version of Beary Surprise. I hate Beary Surprise so much why is the bear both anthro and nude. why does he fucking smile like that. why can i see the whites of his eyes. WHY THE HUG?

6 pip - Resonance - 525-610 damage + remove all blades on 1 target. A single-target version of Myth's dreaded Earthquake.

7 pip - Horschestra - 700 damage to all enemies. Your classic 7-pip AOE. Horse + Orchestra, taken from a song in the Homestuck OST because it made me laugh tbh.

8 pip - Revivace - 1200 Heal to all allies. Name derived from Revive (synonym of Rebirth) and Vivace (musical mood). Meant to be a parallel to Life’s Rebirth spell, since Bartleby is the closest thing to a Music school tree in CS. However Rebirth gives an absorb-shield, which counts as temporary HP even if the spell heals someone to full, while Revivace has no extra defense.

9 pip - Crescendo! -  100 damage turn 1, then a DoT for 200, 300, then 400 damage, to all enemies. Crescendo is a musical term for "get gradually louder"

10 pip (Azteca) - Ceramic Drake - 1000 damage to 1 target, then 625 damage to all enemies over 3 rounds. The first of Music's spells that take on aesthetics derived from the world they're learned in. It takes inspiration from the tlapitzalli, an Aztec flute-like instrument made of ceramic.

5 pip + Shadow (Darkmoor) - Rehubution - 810 damage + 25% Music trap to all enemies. The spell's name comes from the word Retribution and the rehu, an instrument made by the Māori of Aotearoa. All of the canon Darkmoor spells are actually Khrysalis themed, and @chrono101 (now deactivated) made a really cool post about how the Hoppers had Aotearoan references that I remembered while coming up with this post. The effect in combat is derived from Fire from Above before it was nerfed and then slaughtered.

6 pip + Shadow (Polaris) - Luphilymn - 1260 damage, +1 turn to Damage over Times (DoTs) on enemy and +1 turn to Heal over Times (HoTs) on self. Luphilim + Hymn.

4 pip + Shadow (Mirage) - Spirit of the Groove - 900 damage, divided between targets (like all other Mirage spells). This spell is less a reference to something Miragian, and more a nod to a character who had a major impact on the Scion of Music's development. Ceramic Drake, Luphilhymn, and the upcoming spells of Ramalong and Jungle Drum Jam also are nods to characters that the Scion of Music was greatly supported by.

X-pip + Shadow (Karamelle) - Ramalong - 220 damage per pip. A blend of sing-along and the candy rams. This spell is an X-pip because there are a handful of songs/lullabies about counting sheep. Count your pips up!

6 pip + Shadow (Lemuria) - Jungle Drum Jam - 850 damage to all enemies, +40% Music blade AND +40% heal blade to self. Taken from this once-off moment in Lemuria where Bantam says that he and the Koolakamba just casually use advanced musicology for the sake of boogieing.

The effect is taken DIRECTLY from the far superior path of the Life Lemuria spell, Lord of the Jungle, before KI nerfed it to bits. I am so fucking mad about the nerf. I fucking liked having a decent shadow AoE on my Life and now it's useless again. <- had to get my gamer rage out sorry.

1 pip + Fire pip + Storm pip (Novus) - Tempo Inferno - 800 damage, gambit 1 blade into a DoT for 500 over 4 turns, gambit 1 trap into a HoT for 500 HP over 4 turns. Tempo refers to the speed of a musical piece, and both pieces of this spell's name are nods to Storm and Fire as well (Temp- for tempest, Storm's most iconic spell, Inferno for fire). This spell would also hold visual reference to that one sidequest about how clocks don't work on Novus.

1 pip + Death pip + Myth pip (Wallaru) - Crab Grave - 575 damage to all enemies. A reference to the extinct Juggernaut crabs of Wallaru, the still living Tasmanian giant crab, and the legendary Crab Rave meme. Given that all of the Wallaru spells' archmastery pips are the ones backwards from the Novus spells' pips, it made sense to make Crab Grave's pips the roshambo opposite to Tempo Inferno's. Myth is the roshambo opposite of Storm, and Death is the roshambo opposite of Fire. Don't believe me on Death and Fire? Look at how Balance's Novus gear has 3 variants that pair Ice-Life, Storm-Myth, and Fire-Death as its archschools. No I don't know why the Balance Wallaru spell is Death-Storm instead of Death-Fire I don't get it <- gamer raging again.

UTILITY SPELLS:

There are some utility spells that every school gets access to, simply changed per school: the basic Blade and Trap and Shield are simply named Music Blade, Music Trap, and Music Shield, because they're standardized for all the schools (Except Ice Shield, which is actually Snow Shield, for whatever reason?). Though, to put a wrinkle into things and keep with Music's theming as hyper-outgoing, Music Trap is the only ward spell (a spell that affects incoming damage rather than outgoing) that Music gets permanent access to. Music Shield would be TC only. Traps get special treatment because of Maulwurf von Trap existing. I like the guy don't @ me.

Then there's the utility spells that are just about the same for each school but with unique names. These include:

the 2 pip damage bubble - Circle of Fifths, after an important element in music theory. +25% damage to all outgoing Music spells AND +25% to all outgoing Music heals (the boost to healing alongside damage is unique to Music. Life gets Circle of Thorns (+25% damage) and Sanctuary (+60% healing) as two different bubbles.)

the 4-pip critical and pierce bubble - Acoustic Arena, +15% Music critical and +20% Music pierce.

the dispel - Mute

the Taunt/Pacify - Soloist, Taunts the enemy for 2 turns, making you the only target they can hit. Yes, having a glass cannon school gain taunt is a bit poor in game design, typically you want your glass cannons to have some form of Pacify so that they're not killed as quickly, but thematically Music becoming a loud center of attention makes more sense to me.

the complementary triad shield - Eclipse Shield, -70% incoming Light and Shadow damage. The parallel to Storm's Thermic Shield (-70% Fire and Ice) or Death's Dream Shield (-70% Life and Myth). Like Music Shield, because this spell is both a staple piece of utility that every school should have access to and a defensive ward that goes against Music's school identity, it would only exist as a treasure card.

The level 75 minion from The Professor - Baronness Webberfeld - 5 pips, summon a minion of Music. She is a reference to Baronness Elberfeld, a minor character from the Sound of Music. Because I had to get a reference to that in. Because I am normal about Maulwurf von Trap and his source media.

And then we get to the unique utility spells, the gimmicks that gives Music its identity in-game or give it thematic support.

Tune Up - 0 pips, +20% accuracy to the next outgoing Music spell. A parallel to Storm's Lightning Strike (which back in my day only gave +10% accuracy, not +25%). Music spells have a base accuracy of 70% like Storm, so the accuracy buff would be greatly needed at lower levels.

Bangsnap! - 2 pips, Confuse or stun each enemy for 1 turn.

Gurdy-hurdy - 3 pips, Confuse or stun each enemy for 2 turns.

Bangsnap and Gurdyhurdy go together, I'm thinking of them being from the Grizzleheim and Wintertusk spell quests at level 35 and 55. Bang snaps are small explosives that only release a loud sound but do no damage. Gurdy-hurdy is a reference to another in-game moment.

(The hurdy-gurdy, un-reversed, is a kind of musical instrument.)

And, yep! Myth is no longer the only school with the Confusion mechanic! Yippee! (I can hear the gamerbro players scream.) This is because before Music became a standalone school in CCSAU, Klara had the idea that, the way some Wizard101 spells are musicological despite not being in the school of Music, some Pirate101 abilities are inherently musicological as well, namely Blast of Discord.

And this is an ability that our Scion of Music was able to learn before Music became an independent school, so rather than take that ability away from him, we decided to incorporate it into Music's entire repertoire.

Leitmotif - 2 pips, 305 HP to 1 target, then 305 more HP 3 turns later. A leitmotif is a snippet of a musical melody that comes back later in a piece or in another piece (Toby Fox, one of my favorite composers, uses leitmotifs to the MAX.)

Sonatyr - 4 pip, 650 Health + 30% Healing Blade to all. Satyr + Sonata. Does less health than Life's Satyr because I don't want to completely upstage Life, but giving an extra blade to everyone is useful. It buffs every healer, and would count for any blade-based gambits/secondary effects.

Adagio - 1 pip, +1 turn to a HoT on an ally or to a DoT on an enemy. Adagio means for a piece of music to slow down.

Allegro - 1 pip, -1 turn to a HoT on an enemy or to a DoT on an ally. Allegro means for a piece of music to speed up.

Adagio and Allegro are spells that go together. If they were to be implemented in-game, I'd have them be learned at the same time. Having a spell that does different things depending on whether it's on an ally or enemy is really interesting to me, though it would be a pain in the ass to code.

Encore - 5 pips, force your target to cast the same spell for the next 2 turns. Encore, of course, means "to play again". Taken directly from Pokemon because why not?

Baton Pass - X pips, give your blades to an ally, universal and at half-value, (1 pip per blade). Also derived from Pokemon because why not? The half-value gimmick comes from Bantam's cheat of "I'll be taking that, thanks!" Where he replaces a blade you cast on someone else with a universal blade of half value. The devs intended that cheat to be annoying and discourage buffing one player to the max, but it's actually a REALLY HANDY mechanic when used correctly. The half-value blade would count as a unique blade that therefore stacks with whatever other blades your ally has.

Perfect Pitch - 1 pip, +20% accuracy to all allies. Perfect pitch is defined as the ability to tell exactly what note(s) a sound is without any reference. This spell would be copy-pasted over from Life, and also derived from the Pirate101 abilities Call to Arms and Esprit de Corps, which both boost your team's accuracy. (Esprit also gives dodge, a stat that I cannot find any way to translate into Wizard101 that wouldn't be a defensive ward, which Music does not do). The animations for those two powers feature musical instruments (a drum and a trumpet), which makes it feel very musicological to me and therefore fitting for Music itself.

Fortissimo! - 2 pips, +15% Critical chance to all allies. Fortissimo is music speak for "BE FUCKING LOUD!" This spell is derived from the Pirate101 abilities Discipline and Enduring Discipline, which (are supposed to) give +5% and +10% critical chance to all allies. (I have heard that the abilities that purely increase critical chance rather than another stat simply don't work because Pirate101's code is made out of silly string, but that's besides the point). There are very few spells that affect critical, so it's a niche that Music could fill in if it wanted to.

This probably isn't even enough utility, Wizard101 has a SURPRISING amount of spells it throws at you. It's such an in-depth game. I love it. I am normal about Wizard101.

Also, Klara was absolutely AMAZING and drew some of the spells!

[ink-flavored]

everything under preferences & emotions for the jumbo ask game? :3

woagh a beeg one

so my heart always wants to talk about Pride and Justice, literally all the time, for any reason. but i also want to shove Harlan and Yvonne in everyone's faces, as the new kids on the block. so to satisfy my extremely indulgent urges, i'm going to split this list in half and answer 5 for each couple.

Pride & Justice

🔥 Give us a list of general likes and dislikes, such as colors, textures, music, weather and other stuff!

Okay for Justice this is easy. He likes books and analyzing books (especially romance, especially in his book club), basically any animal (including humans), bright colors (yellow, light green, soft blues, lotta pastels in his wardrobe), soft textures, fruity scents (like in lotion and shampoo and stuff), his favorite season is spring, he likes overcast skies, and he'll listen to just about any music but has an affinity for classical and Lo-Fi Hip-Hop Beats To Study/Relax To.

On the other hand, Pride is so repressed that he does not allow himself to enjoy things for a hot minute because he's afraid of looking Weak and Vulnerable for Experiencing Joy. He'll admit to enjoying weed, alcohol, shoplifting, and inciting violence, but that's about it. Eventually, he comes to enjoy the punk scenes Ollie frequents and trips and falls into emo stuff (he also listens to pop-y club music when he's not at the club, but won't admit it), he can tortuously admit his favorite color is maroon, he obsesses over telenovelas with Sofia, he loves watching bad movies on purpose to make fun of them, he likes rain and snow, and his favorite texture is "Justice's clothes."

🍊 What is your OC’s favorite meal? Snack? Dessert? Drink? Any reasons behind this besides liking how it tastes? What is your OC’s most hated food? Stuff they can’t stand to eat or drink?

Justice is partial to breakfast food in general, but simply cannot resist the opportunity to eat French toast when it's available. It's the first thing he perfected while learning to cook for the first time, so it's special in that way too.

Pride doesn't cook much (or rather, doesn't cook anything recognizable as human food), so his favorite things are made by other people or store bought. In general, he likes tart, sweet-and-sour flavors because it reminds him what his sin tastes like, and Ollie's weed brownies for exactly the reason you're thinking.

I haven't thought too much about what either of them dislike, so I'm pulling these out of my ass. Pride thinks yogurt is the weirdest, grossest food in the world, and Justice really doesn't understand the appeal of avocados.

🍑 Where is your OC’s favorite place to relax or calm down? Recount a story of their time spent in this place! What makes it so special to them? Is there anywhere your OC hates to go to? Anywhere that stresses them out or have negative memories of?

For a while, Purgatory was Pride's escape. Nobody cares about Purgatory, nobody would ever look for him there, so it's where he went to cool off after another fight with Lust or to escape someone he pissed off. Relatedly, Hell is his least favorite place (shock, gasp).

On Earth, he kinda just goes to his room and curls up in his blanket nest when upset. Sometimes he will accompany this with extremely loud sadboy music. If he's just chilling though, he'll sit in the most space-taking position on the couch possible and watch Epic Fail compilations or something. Bonus points if Justice is there and he can invite himself into his lap.

Justice likes to sit on the balcony and be quiet, either with a book or nothing. It's his Thinking Spot, where he goes to brain it all out. It's important to him because he never really... had a place for that in Heaven. Everything he did was strictly regulated and controlled, so all his "relaxing" had to be done during his designated "relax" time, which he """shockingly"""" didn't get a ton of.

He hasn't been on Earth long enough to have negative associations with any particular place, but his memories of Heaven have been quite tainted by his recent rejection. He both wants to go back desperately, and hates that he wants to at all.

🧡 Who is your OC’s favorite person? Why is this person the top of their list and have they actually met them (an idol or role model or celeb can be someone’s favorite after all!). Who does your OC absolutely hate, the one person who they’d sell to Satan for one corn chip? Why do they loathe this person so?

Pride's favorite person is HIM!

In seriousness, Pride has himself on a pedestal because literally nobody gave a shit about him up until the events of the story happened. It was/is a coping mechanism, a survival technique, a way to rationalize all his actions away as Correct, because if he was ever wrong then that meant that everyone who had ever hurt him was right. As he grows, he begins to unlearn this way of thinking, but he never really lets go of that core idea. Pride is the most important person in the world to Pride, because he has to be. When nobody else is around, he has to truly, genuinely, earnestly love himself, not just to cope, but to like... be happy. But since he's not alone, and does have people who love him, Justice is his favorite non-him person for both character development reasons and extremely gay reasons.

As for his least favorite people, that could honestly fill a book. He is so bitter. God for obvious reasons, Lust for being abusive, Lucifer for lying about being better than God, but his hatred for Envy is I think the most interesting. In real life, the emotions of envy and (unhealthy) pride are very closely linked - people who have an unhealthy relationship with their pride are often envious of other people. Pride hates Envy because she's the concept of everything he can't admit to himself (he's envious of angels and humans who are happy, loved, and have God's affection), and Envy hates him right back for flaunting his confidence/dismissal of her sin as a concept at her and showing what she thinks she needs to be happy (and no longer envious). They're catty as fuck.

Justice loves Pride (for gay reasons and character reasons), but it's an extremely close race, maybe even a tie, for his sister Kindness. She's the reason for a lot of who he is, they intentionally modeled their human bodies so they would look related. Kindness really helped shape his understanding of how God's justice and God's kindness work together to create the Perfect Wholesome World of Heaven and is a big reason he believes what he does. Obviously when Heaven turned out to not be so wonderful and wholesome, he still took those ideals with him to Earth. One of his core philosophies is that justice should be guided by kindness, not the other way around, and she helped teach him that.

His personal antagonist in the book is Honesty, and he loathes her for extremely good reasons. She was his direct superior in Heaven, and made his life very difficult once he started suggesting that maybe Purgatory isn't the best way to do things. He has been under her thumb for ages, and him leaving Heaven was basically the excuse she was looking for to brand him a traitor. Justice does not wish death on anyone, but he's very close saying some very mean words about Honesty.

📙 What kind of subjects (of conversation, of discussion, in school or whatever) does your OC find interesting or engaging or that they can talk for hours about? What kind of stuff do they just find fun? What things bore your OC to tears and they couldn’t care less about? Why?

Justice LOOOOVES Blorbo From His Books. Pick up any book in his collection, he'll have hours of conversation at the ready. Even the trashy pulpy ones - ESPECIALLY the pulpy ones tbh. He's also a rules lawyer by definition of embodying God's justice, so he also enjoys having a friendly argument of semantics and creating the most busted TTRPG characters you've ever seen based on nothing but technicalities.

What Justice does not like talking about is... arguments for the sake of arguing? I guess? He doesn't like getting into fights, he just likes talking about rules, so anyone coming at him with like... real Stakes in the topic at hand with Furious Rebuttals immediately turns him off. He's just playing toys. Why are you so mad.

As previously mentioned, Pride doesn't really allow himself to enjoy things for a while, and even when he does, he doesn't like the idea of talking for hours about stuff. When he gets into art and starts painting, he doesn't really talk about it as much as he just... does it all the time, here's a picture. He'd rather show, not tell, and let the art speak for itself. Even with his bad movies and telenovelas, he doesn't have much to say other than "they're so fuckin hilarious, this one's my favorite, we should watch it Right Now, No Take Backs."

Pride finds SO many things boring actually. Don't talk about sports, don't talk about anything with numbers, don't bring up PROBLEMS in the NEWS??? It better be FUNNY or SEXY or VIOLENT or he is not listening to you.

Harlan & Yvonne

😊 What can make your OC smile even when they’re feeling down? What cheers them up and makes everything feel better for them? Is your OC generally a happy person and do they enjoy making others smile? What about your OC makes others happy?

Harlan is definitely a happy guy by default, especially after starting magic HRT. He lives a very party-heavy college lifestyle around a lot of other party people, so he's very rarely in a situation where thinking about his problems is in the forefront of his mind.

Music pretty reliably makes him happy, and just being in a situation where there are lots of people having a good time also makes him want to have a good time, which is where the parties come in. The infectious energy and the drinking games and whatever party potions everyone is passing around, all that is where he wants to be, with the people he wants to be with.

Harlan is also very good at being your personal hype man? He will simply not let his friends get away with self-depreciation, and give you compliments until you agree that they're true.

Yvonne is a more subdued kind of happy. She's consistently homesick for her herd, but does her best to keep in touch and explore her big city lifestyle in Athendrolyn and make a new "herd" for herself.

When she's particularly homesick, she'll either go on a long walk/trot along the beach or the forest trails, or if the weather's bad, curl up with a warm drink and a blanket and watch nostalgic movies from her foalhood.

Her social battery for people she hasn't integrated into her "new herd" is drained quite quickly, but if she's mentally made you part of that group, you're basically family to her. She'll drop anything for her herd, no matter the situation, and is all around a very compassionate and loyal friend.

⭐ What is your OC afraid of? Any crippling phobias or some such? How do they act when scared and what helps them calm down? Does anyone ever find your OC scary? Why?

Yvonne is a centaur, so she has crippling horse anxiety. Which is to say, she's afraid of most things! When she was living with her herd, it was mitigated by being in a herd and having a community and a leader to follow, but when she moved away for access to magic HRT, it got worse. She's particularly afraid of unexpected loud noises, sudden movements, and can get pretty overwhelmed in flashy environments like parties or concerts. She definitely leans on the "flight" half of fight or flight, and will look for any escape route possible. Depending on what's causing the episode, just being in a quiet room with someone she trusts for a few minutes can be enormously helpful, but the most reliable way for her to not be anxious is for people to announce when they're coming into a room, explain whatever that noise just was, and not go to parties.

As for being scary, Yvonne is a Clydesdale, so I wouldn't put it past people to find her intimidating, but usually once she opens her mouth all that is put to rest. She's very friendly!

Harlan isn't a particularly anxious person, but does avoid the ocean whenever possible. He's terrified of the sea and most deep water in general. He can swim, he just doesn't like doing it, and it's pretty easy for him to be calm by not going near deep water👍ever 👍

He's not scary either, nor would he ever want to seem scary.

🍋 Does your OC act petty and jealous easily? What sort of things make them feel like this and do they experience guilt for getting so worked up? How do they deal with these emotions when they get them? If your OC doesn’t feel like this often, why not?

Harlan is definitely very petty. One thing that happens in the short story is that his friends tease him about making up Yvonne (because they'd never met her/seen a picture of her), and once she shows up he takes EVERY OPPORTUNITY to rub their noses in the fact that HHHIISSS girlfriend is here, and his REALLY AWESOME GIRLFRIEND is right there, and wow did he mention they're DATINGGGGG??????

He really hates being underestimated, or being made a fool of, which is why he reacts so strongly to things like that. He doesn't like feeling like he's second best, so if he feels like that's happening (even if it isn't), he asserts his "authority" basically with any straw he can grasp. Sometimes this is easy, like when Yvonne turns out to be real and not fake, but other times it's just... unrelated or insulting or made up. He's not good at impulse control, so usually he has to be told to knock it off.

Yvonne is not very petty or jealous because in general very calm and not very confrontational. She can be a little insecure, too, so in instances where she is feeling jealous, it's more internal, and she doesn't act on it.

When she does feel it bad enough, she can shut down and be kind of closed off. Usually someone can help talk her back out of it, and Harlan is especially good at this because he likes to hype her up at every opportunity.

📀 How easy is it to shock your OC? To confuse them? To lie to them, to manipulate them? How are they with feelings of trust? Can your OC be trusted?

Yvonne grew up pretty sheltered in a rural area with only other centaurs, so she's pretty out of her depth when she moves to Athendrolyn with its dozens of different creatures and customs and traditions. The culture shock made her pretty susceptible to being tricked, both in non-serious ways and worse ways, but she's definitely more vigilant now. She's very trusting, even after those unfortunate incidents, and will generally give people the benefit of the doubt.

Harlan is much quicker to call bullshit, but also quicker to go "yooooo no wayyyyy," about something that personally piques his interest, whether or not it's true. He tends to trust people unless they have a known history of being untrustworthy, and his fraternity (or whatever I'm calling it in this fictional world) can definitely spread news, true or false, faster than anyone can possibly outrun it, so if he's trusting someone he knows he can trust, but they got their info from someone else who got it from someone else etc... yeah.

On his end, Harlan is a pretty straightforward guy, but he does fib a liiiittle bit on occasion to seem cooler. It's why his friends jumped to "your girlfriend isn't even real" in the first place. It's more dramatic than the things he's done in the past, but it's also not not something he would do.

💛 In general, how in control of their emotions is your OC? Do they have a good hold on them or do their emotions control them, not the other way around? What do you think is the reason behind this and is your OC ever concerned about their lack of or good control?

As previously mentioned, Harlan doesn't have the greatest impulse control, and will act on how he feels before he thinks through what he's actually doing. He really feels the need to prove himself among his peers and seem cool and interesting, and the party lifestyle that encourages impulsive actions ddddoesn't help? much?

He knows he has this problem, and does try to catch himself, but it's a process after acting impulsively for so long. Yvonne being a stable, calm presence in his life has tremendously helped him.

Yvonne isn't impulsive at all, kind of the opposite. She has a lot of anxiety, and that prevents basically any impulsive action, which can cause her feelings to rule her life in a different way. She can be closed off and wary of things that aren't already in her comfort zone, especially growing up so sheltered.

She actually didn't realize how closed off she'd gotten until she met and started hanging out with Harlan, and has been slowly trying to increase her tolerance of out-of-comfort-zone experience since.

[send me something from the jumbo ask game]

[articskele]

You know last night I was up at like 5am and I happened upon these encouraging knight themed posts and it reminded me of Meta Knight.

He was my first ever comfort character I think. I looked up to him so so much, I thought he was the coolest dude ever and I would constantly daydream about living with him and and his crew on the Halberd and Meta Knight training me and all that. He was the dad I never had.

But I dropped it because I couldn't shake the thought of "He's so strict and disciplined and fueled by a drive to constantly improve. There's no way he'd be willing to deal with someone so nervous and sensitive and childish and tired like me, much less be impressed or proud."

But these knight posts made me rethink those old doubts. Meta Knight wouldn't be mad at me for being up so late. I'm an honorable thing trying my best. Tomorrow is a new day. Different people need different things, and needing gentle encouragement isn't pathetic or something to be ashamed of. I have my limits, but that doesn't make me weak.

I may not be the classic knight, with plate armor and broadswords and shields and oaths and fire. I'm a strange thing of winter and blue hour, taking up dual swords. I spin and twirl as I fight. I study and care for dragons. With my sharp teeth and the way my eyes shimmer in the dark, perhaps I'm not quite human.

Yet I am still a knight in my own right. I can join my fellow knights in merriment at the local tavern. We shall have each others backs in battle, our different skills complimenting each other. I am not alone.

And perhaps, as we set up camp and get some much-needed rest, a figure stands atop a broken pillar. Glowing yellow eyes scan the ground, and beneath a metal mask shining in the moonlight, the knight smiles. He always cared. He's always been proud of his daughter. Fabric shifts and morphs into bat wings as he takes off into the night sky.

[macgyvermedical]

How We Found That Gosh Darned Appendix Before We Had Ultrasound Machines and CT Scans

Hi. I'm a nurse and I teach physical diagnosis. You wanna know about the appendix, right? One of the most common intestinal appendages to feature in fanfic*?

What is an Appendix?

The appendix is a hollow little worm-shaped appendage that sticks off the end of the cecum- that area between the small intestine and the large intestine.

Most of the time it's just laying there doing its thing. It's "thing" being holding an excess of gut bacteria. Most of the time that's great- the bacteria in our guts do a lot for us- many of us couldn't comfortably drink milk or get energy from calciferous vegetables without them. And we lose those bacteria all the time with diarrheal illness, antibiotics, and a host of other ways. It's a rough world for gut bacteria.

Fortunately, since the appendix has some in reserve, it can push some back out to re-populate. It's not wholly necessary for life, because those bacteria will probably show back up at some point, but it's a nice little backup system.

But with this nice little backup system full of bacteria, we also sometimes have problems. Since the opening from the appendix into the intestine is so small, it sometimes gets blocked. When that happens, the bacteria keep chugging along, making more bacteria and more waste, which builds up pressure. Eventually, that pressure inside the appendix overwhelms the blood pressure that is carrying nutrients to the appendix, and it begins to die. When the walls of the appendix get sufficiently weak, the appendix perforates, sending bacteria-filled goo into the otherwise sterile sac that holds the abdominal organs. This causes a massive infection called peritonitis that leads to death about 20% of the time (as evidenced by WWII submariner data, as this was before modern antibiotics and surgical intervention was impossible on a submarine, making this population significantly more ethical to study than alternatives).

Thinking About the Appendix:

Since about 8.6% of men and 6.4% of women will get appendicitis in their lifetime (I suppose in a quirk of statistics our non-binary pals do not get appendicitis), a 1-in-5 chance of death is pretty significant. A surgical appendectomy can drop this 20% to less than 1.8% (in adults), which makes it the intervention of choice.

But in order to surgically remove an appendix, we first have to find it. And to find it, we have to suspect it. You may hear of the "classic" symptoms being loss of appetite, pain that starts at the belly button and migrates to the lower right abdomen, nausea, and vomiting. This happens in about 50% of patients.

Everyone else is... weird. They probably have nausea and vomiting, but so does everyone else who comes in with abdominal pain, and there's a lot of things that cause abdominal pain. So it's really something to keep in the back of your head, do a couple physical maneuvers, and if they come up positive, you have like an 80% chance that it's appendicitis.

Medicine is an art, and all that.

NOTE: using a CT scan will bring your correct diagnosis rate up to about 98%, but they're hella expensive. You probably have hands, your patient probably has pain receptors. As I like to tell my students, physical diagnosis is free.

Now on to the finding. These suckers are elusive AF. Are they in front of the cecum? Behind the cecum? On the other side of the abdomen? Hanging out up under the liver? Like a foot long for some reason and causing problems in multiple places? The answer is yours to find out.

What we're looking for in trying to find the appendix is where it's causing inflammation. When the appendix gets inflamed, that inflammation spreads to surrounding structures. Since we know where those structures are, we can generally assume where the appendix is. This is important so we don't have to make a bigger hole than necessary.

What Is McBurney's Point Anyway?

Let's start by talking about McBurney's Point. It's a location that is classically referred to as where the appendix lives. That's true in about 4% of cases, though something like 64% of appendixes live within 5cm of that location, so at lest that pushes us in the right direction.

To find McBurney's Point, find your right iliac crest- that front upper bony part of your pelvis. Then draw a line from your belly button to that location. 2/3 of the way down that line is McBurney's Point.

Around this area is where you're going to be looking for pain and tensed muscles (called "guarding" in medical lingo).

The Physical Diagnosis Part:

Start by pressing very lightly in other areas of the abdomen (don't @ me about auscultating first- I'm assuming you already did that), looking for guarding. If the guarding only occurs around McBurney's point, that should really raise your suspicion for appendicitis. Despite the likelihood of the appendix being more than 5cm away, guarding covers a fair distance (possibly that whole lower right quadrant) and about 96% of people with appendicitis will have guarding on the right side. Guarding might also be everywhere if the appendix has already perforated.

The next thing you're going to do is press your flat hand pretty hard on the other side from where you felt the guarding. This is called a Rovsing Sign. Usually this is the left side you're pressing on. Pressing somewhere far away should still make the guarding-place painful, because it stretches the structures around where the guarding is happening. Since those are inflamed, stretching them should hurt.

A few other ways to do this include tapping on the right heel, having the patient cough (Dunphy Sign), or tapping in various places on the abdomen and seeing where the pain is. A particularly asshole move is having the patient stand on their toes and drop suddenly onto their heels, causing a lot of pain where inflammation in the abdomen is (Markle Sign). Most people aren't that mean, Dr. Markle.

By now you essentially know that something in the right lower quadrant is inflamed. If your history lines up with appendicitis, you can probably presume to keep looking for an inflamed appendix.

Pressing slowly downwards on McBurney's Point (or at least, where most of the pain was when doing the above signs), and then quickly releasing the pressure (causing a lot of pain with release of pressure) can tell you if the front lining of the abdomen is inflamed, and the appendix is probably hanging out in the front.

The Obturator Sign is looking for inflammation in the lower pelvis, one of the places the appendix might be hanging out. To do this, you have the patient bend their knee to 90* while laying on their back. You then pushes the knee away from yourself while pulling the foot towards yourself. This stretches a muscle in the lower pelvis that would be inflamed if the appendix was sitting next to it.

To see if the appendix is behind the cecum, use the Psoas Sign. For this, the patient lays flat on their back, and you push on their thigh while they try to raise their leg. If that causes pain in the back part of their abdomen, the Psoas (tenderloin) is inflamed, and the appendix is probably back there.

Doing all of these and getting a bunch of positives (lots of pain all in the expected area(s)) gives you somewhere between a 60% and 80% chance of having found a case of appendicitis. It might also be other things like an intestinal blockage, perforation of something else, blood or irritating fluid in the abdomen, or something else. You'll probably need to do a lot of this repeatedly. The only way to know for 100% is to surgically remove the appendix and look at it. By physical diagnosis alone about 10-20% of appendectomies are done on healthy appendixes.

Good luck in the hunt!

-Ross

*heavily biased toward whump fanfic. I'm not sure what intestinal appendages feature on other corners of AO3 and nor do I want to