#and for Lovelace to some extent

[hephaestuscrew]

I'm always emotional about the fact that, when Minkowski tries to justify her choice to send Eiffel back to Earth on the Sol in the finale, she never directly expresses a reason for her decision that's specific to him. 

She tells Hera, Lovelace and Jacobi "If - if - we don't make it through this... if we don't stop this... people need to know what's coming. They need to know what's happened." She gives them a reason which is logical, practical, and impersonal. It's a 'big picture' reason, focused on humanity as a whole. Minkowski's own emotions don't really enter into this justification at all. That's the kind of decision-making she wants her crew to think she's using. If this was Minkowski's main motivation, it wouldn't matter who was sent back, so long as they could explain Cutter and Pryce's plan. I don't think Hera, Lovelace, or Jacobi believe that this was the main reason why Minkowski sent Eiffel back, and I'm not sure whether Minkowski expected to actually convince them. 

Jacobi asks "did you tell him that before or after you sent him on his merry?" But in fact, Minkowski didn't tell Eiffel at any point that he needed to tell the world about events on the Hephaestus. If her primary motivation had been about having someone to deliver a message back to Earth, she would have given Eiffel suitable instructions - she wouldn't have just trusted him to figure it out. 

Instead, the most direct reason she gives to Eiffel himself for why she's sending him back to Earth is "I need to know that at least one of us makes it back. That I got someone through this." This is a more personal reason, where Minkowski's emotions are relevant, but it's still not explicitly about Eiffel himself. It's about saving "at least one of us", as if it doesn't matter who that "somebody" is. I think this justification is closer to the core of Minkowski's motivations than what she tells the others afterwards. Her responsibilities to her crew as a Commander have always been important to her, and she doesn't want to have failed in keeping them safe. And Eiffel is the only member of her original crew who she's able to save in this way. Hilbert is dead, and transferring Hera over to the Sol to be sent back to Earth on her own would come with a whole host of problems. 

But I don't believe for a moment that the reasons she sends Eiffel back are purely practical and abstract. I don't believe for a moment there's no personal significance to her decision to save him specifically. I don't believe for a moment that it was all about her practical plan for the wellbeing of humanity, or her desire to have fulfilled her duty to at least one non-specific member of her crew. She doesn't just need to save "someone". She doesn't just need to save "at least one of us". She needs to save Eiffel. She needs to save her friend.

The closest she gets to saying aloud that her motivation is about her care for Eiffel in particular is when she says "Go home, Eiffel. Hug your daughter. [...] Goodbye, Doug." She was prepared for those to be the last words she might ever say to him. And there's at least something in these lines that implies she wants Eiffel specifically to return to Earth. I don't think it's that she saves him because he has a daughter. I think when she tells him to go home and hug his daughter, it represents more than that. It's about how she wants him to be able to move forward and live his life. It's her saying that he deserves the interpersonal connections that are valuable to him. It's about her not wanting his story to end there on the Hephaestus. 

It kind of breaks my heart that even in that situation, she can't fully say aloud that the reason she wants Eiffel to survive is because she cares about him specifically. She has to give the justifications that are about her as a Commander and not about Eiffel as her friend. She doesn't tell him that she's saving him for his own sake, because he matters to her so deeply, because his safety is so important to her. 

And I really wish I could believe that Eiffel didn't need her to say it, that he could just understand just from her actions how much she cares about him. But as the Sol flies away from the Hephaestus, he tells himself that he's there because he "never had quite as much chest hair as Lieutenant Commander Renée [Minkowski]" and because he "could never get it right". So I don't think Eiffel ever really appreciates that Minkowski sends him back not because of what he can't do, but because of who he is: her friend, one of the most important people to her, someone who has brought so much value to her life, and someone whose death she refuses to contemplate.

[sanctuarymoonfan397]

Okay so, I'll let it slip that im thinking about writing a crossover fic with Murderbot Diaries and A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet solely because of how AI autonomy or really, lack thereof, is treated (also because I think it would be funny to see MB freak the fuck out about encountering sapient aliens who are nothing like what it's serials and knowledge of alien remnant tell it they're like. Also because it would compare Corbin to Gurathin (Corbin is worse) and call him an asshole)

I want to give ART a body, a bodykit like Lovey was supposed to get, until the Lovelace program became Sidra. But that begs the question: would ART want a body?

Yes. I, personally think it would. It would love to be able to physically interact with it's crew; to hug Iris, Seth and Martyn, and everyone else. ART would love to be able to interact and tease and harass MB as well ("I wish incould punch you in the face," . "I wish you could try,").

But, would MB want that for ART? Not that it would have a choice in what ART wanted, but in the sense that it itself is a construct; in the Corporation Rim, and to some extent even outside of it: constructs are treated like shit, they are owned and lack autonomy (Governor Modules) and aren't seen as people with minds and personalitiesof their own.

While the bodykit would likely pass as an Augmented Human, even a highly kitted out ComfortUnit, in my head I see ART gaining a body that is more Human-form bot adjacent, and after Miki... well, I'm sure MB's feels towards them have changed significantly from what it originally thought of them. But all the same, human-form bots (let's exclude Miki here and assume MB is right, that people consider them 'pets' rather than a thinking being) could be exposed to some of the same treatment MB goes through. And, i doubt it would want ART to go through that

Idk, while I think ART would enjoy having a body, even if it just uses it as a proxy for special occasions/emergencies, MB would be hesitant if not a bit wary

[joswriting]

•❅───✧❅ joswriting ❅✧

: ̗̀➛ writeblr intro

Hello there! My name is Jo (shocker!), I am in my 20s and I write stories and poems in my free time. I used to have a writing account on here many moons ago and I really miss the community, friendship and support of talking with other writers about our projects, so I am trying to rebuild what I've lost.

: ̗̀➛ about me

very interaction friendly. we're all just people on here (also please tag me in games forever)

science fiction! science fiction is my everything. it's whatever. I'm normal about it

themes I write about a lot include: death anxiety, internalized bigotry, general dissatisfaction and the complex and confusing nature of existence

scifi flavour wise i like doing weird time or multiverse stuff

I'm also queer (lesbian, aromantic, whatever), if that matters. This comes up a lot in my writing be it explicit or not.

I write in German and English

: ̗̀➛ my wips/projects

⸻ On the end of everything 🌠

An "essay" on how the multiverse died, those who noticed, and how they learned to live with their fates

[reblog tag] [posts tag] [wip intro]

⸻ Poetry 🗒️

I don't post my poetry on tumblr, instead I self host it here. I love writing poems I get such a kick out of it!

My favourite poem of mine atm is this one: Lines Out Of Context

⸻ Starship Lovelace 🚀

The Starship Lovelace is an Earth vessel far from home. The human crew mysteriously disappeared decades ago - now a small group of aliens has claimed the ship.

[posts + reblog tag]

A collection of half-assed short trips, I'm trying to build my own kind of space ship show here. It mostly serves as a way for me to keep writing and get ideas out of my head without much drafting or anything. I've got a pretty good vague plot for it in my head and I'm trying to do it justice with my newer, more thought out chapters. You can see all entries: here.

The stories are hosted on the space story collection pubnix/website Cosmic.Voyage, which i just know some of you would get a kick out of.

: ̗̀➛ inspiration

on the comedy side: the two Dirk Gently books, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the Red Dwarf novels and Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen in particular (British people are grim, I like it)

on the more serious side: Frankenstein (my favourite book everr), many Doctor Who hiatus novels but especially Dead Romance by Lawrence Miles, the works of H.G. Wells (love that guys scifi that just completely misses the mark but was properly scientifically researched for its own time) and, to an extent, Der Tod und andere Höhepunkte meines Lebens by Sebastian Niedlich, which is a book I remember liking a lot as a young-ish teen

generally I'm a huge fan of Doctor Who and Star Trek

I sometimes reblog posts about media i really like on here too so for more check out the tag: good media

So. The first thing I’d better do is invent my audience. I'll pretend there are thousands of you out there, and I'll pretend you're all just like me; young, smart, pretty, and sarcastic (NB I’m probably being ironic here, although I’m not really sure any more). Just so we’ve got some common ground, I'll pretend you were born sometime in the late 1940s… No, sod that. I'll pretend you were born on 15 August 1948. All of you.

Well, why not? If you’re going to invent an audience, why not invent one in your own image?

-- Dead Romance, First Notebook

[grandcovenant]

reading about the history of computer science is very fun for having thoughts about the technology of the game's setting (which i assume must exist in the same level to one extent or another outside of krat, even if puppets are a monopoly of krat's. i mean, geppetto is not even from krat and he's been established to be a genius inventor even before he came there and invented puppets)

do you think puppets are programmed through some form of punched card on a real version of the analytical engine. do you think ada lovelace existed in this world or that she at least had an equivalent.

[t4tjonmartin]

loving the fact that "anti establishment morally righteous queer spaceship family" is quickly becoming a trope in podcasts

[mongeese]

Morality in Wolf 359

A month ago, I made this post about how Wolf 359 doesn’t have any good or bad characters, just people making choices. I also said I’d write a full-length essay about this topic. Well, here’s the essay! Be warned, it’s a hefty 2400 words, because I wanted to be thorough. If you don’t want to read all that, here’s a TL,DR.

People who were interested in reading this: @commsroom, @a-side-character, @firstofficerrose, @afrogsmoraldilemma

Now without further ado, the essay, below the read more.

Wolf 359 is fantastic for many, many reasons, one of the most prominent being its amazing cast of characters. The podcast is practically a masterclass in interesting and nuanced character development, and a huge contributing factor to this is the continual subversion of the hero and villain labels. As Wolf 359 continues into the later seasons, it becomes obvious that while these roles exist in the narrative to an extent, they are not nearly as black and white as we would expect. There simply aren’t “good” or “bad” people of Wolf 359; there’s just people, making decisions, and those decisions can either hurt people or help people.

Wolf 359 is an utterly unpredictable and insane story, with constant (and might I add, incredible) plot twists. There is, however, at least one predictable cycle, which I like to call the “villain escalation”. Basically, the previous “bad guy” gets replaced by another, even bigger threat, which demotes the old villain to “morally grey supporting character”. The new threat forces our main protagonists to cooperate with the old threat, leaving room for the old “bad guy” to change their behavior and develop more complex relationships with both the other characters and the audience. Now, this isn’t the only way Wolf 359 removes the hero/villain labels from the equation, but it’s one of the most prominent. By my count, it happens 3 times over the course of the podcast, though that could be extended to 4 or even 5 depending on how you classify a “new threat”.

The first subject of villain escalation is Dr. Alexander Hilbert/Elias Selberg/Dmitri Volodin, caused by Captain Isabel Lovelace. Hilbert starts as such a stereotypical villain it’s almost comical. I mean, the evil Russian scientist is manipulating our heroes and performing unethical experiments on them; it can’t get much more stereotypical than that. Then Lovelace comes aboard, and suddenly he’s an ally against her. It’s a very uneasy alliance to be sure, but an alliance nonetheless. (Note that Eiffel and Minkowski do accept help from Hilbert before Lovelace arrives, but it’s mostly done by force, and the real turning point in the perception of his character occurs after she comes to the station.) Through this alliance, we learn more about Hilbert: his past, his motivations, his personality. He’s brutal sometimes, yes, and cruel, and externally callous. But he is also motivated by a genuine desire to save people. He had a family, a sister, who fell victim to radiation poisoning, which inspired him to pursue science and push further. When Eiffel is sick, he does everything he can to save him. He repeats over and over again that he did the things he did out of a sincere desire to make the world a better place. Dmitri Volodin is not just an evil monster, and for most of the podcast, he’s on the side of the “heroes”. This pushes the audience and even some of the main characters to start genuinely caring for him, to some extent.

Crucially, though, this does not absolve him. Hilbert may not have been causing pain and death just for the fun of it, but still he did cause pain and death. And it’s all for nothing, anyway, because the Decima experiment is a failure, but even if we ignore that fact, what he did was unjustifiable. (We shouldn’t ignore that failure, btw, but that’s a topic for another essay.) It doesn’t matter what “greater good” he was working toward – he committed atrocities, and there’s no justifying that. And none of the people he has wronged ever forgive him. They work with him, they talk to him, even protect him if necessary, but forgiveness is never considered. Alexander Hilbert, while maybe not a bad person, is certainly not a good person. Even after his death, he doesn’t get to be redeemed.

I said before that this development comes as a result of the villain escalation, from Hilbert to Lovelace. That’s true, considering how I defined villain escalation, but it’s important to clarify that Lovelace was never an outright villain, instead existing as a morally grey character from her first introduction. She absolutely and seriously threatens all the main characters, making it very obvious that she will hurt them if she needs to in order to reach her goal. But at the same time, she’s their best shot at making it off the Hephaestus alive. It’s also clear that that Lovelace’s aggression, paranoia, and callousness comes from a place of trauma, and that despite her harsh exterior and frequent threats, she does want to get everyone out of this situation alive. She cares about them, in her own way. Really, I think her character in season 2 can be summed up by two occurrences. In episode 26, she saves Doug Eiffel’s life, on purpose, with her blood donation, but in episode 28, she very nearly kills him, on accident, with her explosive rig. She wants to save people, but her paranoia and rage makes it so that she hurts people instead. And just as it was with Hilbert, her trauma is not an excuse. What matters most is whether she helps the people around her or harms them, and in season 2, she does both in equal measure.

We also see an interesting dimension of morality in the interactions between Hilbert/Selbert. The worst of Lovelace comes out when she’s with him. He’s the one who killed most of her crew, so she wants revenge on him personally almost as much as she wants revenge on Goddard Futuristics. In seeking revenge, she becomes her worst self. She gets violent, self-centered, becoming willing to hurt any number of people to reach her goal, in a way that is explicitly portrayed as a foil for Hilbert’s obsession with the Decima virus. It’s interesting, because when you compare them, the more “villainous” character, Hilbert, has significantly more noble intentions. Potentially saving lives with a revolutionary medical treatment is a lot more moral than tearing down the people who hurt you. And yet Hilbert is not more moral than Lovelace. This shows that intention is not as important as the effect you have on the people around you. It also shows how goodness is not innate, because Lovelace and Hilbert are quite similar in a lot of ways; they’re both consistently down with murder, for one, but there’s more subtle similarities as well. Thus the reason Lovelace is placed closer to the “good” end of the spectrum by the narrative can’t be because of some inherent morality. Instead, it must be because over the course of her life she has helped people more often than she has hurt them. Hilbert, on the other hand, has hurt much more often than he’s helped. Their day to day actions and decisions are what give them their moral statuses and roles in the narrative, not some designated classification of being a good or a bad person – both of them aren’t either.

The 2nd instance of villain escalation comes when the SI-5 board the station. At this point, we’ve been somewhat primed to view characters in moral shades of grey, but it’s still pretty obvious that they’re “bad guys”. There are repeated references to atrocities the SI-5 have committed, and they never let the main characters forget that they are in charge and that they would do terrible things to them if the situation calls for it. They’re opposite Lovelace, in a way, in that they are externally friendly, pleasant, and helpful, while being internally willing to harm any number of people. But still they’re human. Still they don’t deserve to be murdered, as Eiffel repeatedly reminds everyone.

The SI-5 members claim, as Hilbert did, to be working on behalf of a greater good that’s worth plenty of immoral actions (though to be honest, I’m doubtful how much they really believed that and how much they convinced themselves of it just because they liked being a part of something. But that’s a topic for another day). And as with Hilbert, this is not a justification. It’s more of the same, really. Maxwell cares for and helps Hera, but she still violates her autonomy in a pretty brutal way. Jacobi breaks after the mutiny, and in his brokenness becomes sympathetic, but still is not a completely good person. Then the 3rd and final villain escalation, the arrival of Cutter and Pryce, push both Jacobi and Kepler to make the decision to do the right thing and help the people around them. It’s not that any of them become good or become bad as things progress, or even that they were good or bad in the first place. They always had the capacity to do good things, we just didn’t see much of that side until the stakes got high enough. Their character shows in the decisions they make and the sides they choose to stand on.

Villain escalation is not the only way Wolf 359 flips the script on “hero” and “villain” roles. It also shows us that the protagonists, the “good guys”, can do bad things, and those bad things aren’t justified just because the people are good. Minkowski and Hera are lesser examples of this. Both of them hurt people: Hera tries to kill crew members multiple times and often lets her anger get the better of her, while Minkowski occasionally advocates for murder and actually does kill Maxwell. Minkowski also can hurt the people she cares about in a misguided attempt at leadership, such as when she sends Eiffel away in the finale. But again, these examples are relatively minor, though they are a further illustration of the fact that even seemingly good people can cause harm. The biggest subversion comes from Doug Eiffel.

For the first half of the podcast, Eiffel is portrayed as a semi-irresponsible goofball, who can be a bit of an ass but who is at worst harmless, and at best a resourceful and honorable man. This character assessment doesn’t stop being true, exactly. However, after about 40 episodes, we learn that he is also a man who ruined lives, for completely selfish and destructive reasons. That’s not something you can just overlook, or forgive. Once again, there’s no justification or absolution, even though Eiffel was at rock bottom and struggling with addiction. He did something awful, full stop, and our previous perception of him as a good person is flipped completely on its head.

Eiffel’s also shown to be a bit of a shithead even in the present day, on the Hephaestus. He commits microaggressions frequently as discussed in episode 51, “Shut Up and Listen”, and when confronted with this, he goes sullen and withdrawn. The harm there was unintentional, but it’s treated as just as real and damaging as all the other crazy threats the crew faces. This is a unique case, because Eiffel is actually forgiven by the people he’s wronged (Minkowski, Hera, and Lovelace), but that forgiveness comes because he made a tangible effort to do better, not because “he’s a good guy at heart” or some similar BS. All this is to say, Doug Eiffel isn’t necessarily a good person. He does good things and he does awful things, but because he makes the decision over and over to be helpful, and moral, and better, he is someone that the audience can root for.

I hope by now I’ve fully convinced you that Wolf 359 does not have any heroes or villains, merely people who are working with what circumstances they have, making decisions to either help those around them or harm them. This is a fairly radical position for a piece of media to have, with clear implications for the justice system and punishment. Wolf 359 doesn’t hesitate to explore those implications, either. It is extremely obvious that killing people, even if those people pose a threat to you, even if those people are seemingly reprehensible, is always immoral. The “villains” are kept alive whenever possible, and in those moments where they are killed, it is never a victory, always a tragedy. Mr. Cutter might be an exception, though I imagine Minkowski will still struggle post-canon with the fact that she took his life. That has interesting implications in the anti-capitalist part of the show’s messaging, as it implies that once someone causes a certain level of harm (as billionaires do), killing them becomes the lesser of two evils despite not being a moral act in and of itself. But honestly, I don’t feel equipped to unpack that right now. I will just say, that Wolf 359 wholeheartedly condemns capital punishment, which is of course a necessary consequence of the idea that people are not fully good or bad. You cannot kill only the bad people, because there are no bad people. Therefore capital punishment is just murder, and it cannot be justified.

I also really appreciate this position because it’s distinctly different from a redemption arc. No one is redeemed for their past. Hell, most of them don’t even apologize for their past behavior. They just start doing better. That’s a level of nuance I’ve almost never seen, and it offers fascinating commentary on the ideas of restorative justice. Wolf 359 tells us that even people who do awful, unforgiveable things can do better. No one is in a fixed moral position, and everyone is shaped by their circumstances. But importantly, this does not mean that you have to forgive anyone! You can rehabilitate, work with, and respect people while still recognizing the atrocities in their past, and while still withholding forgiveness. It’s a remarkable endorsement for restorative justice and a really important viewpoint to consider.

In conclusion: Wolf 359 is a fucking amazing podcast, guys. The writing is masterful, and it is incredibly fun and emotional, while also providing a cutting criticism of the current capitalist global system. In regards to morality and justice, it refutes the idea that people are internally “good” or “bad”, instead recognizing that everyone is just a person who does good and bad things, and the balance of these actions can change over a person’s life. This leads to a subtextual endorsement for restorative justice that is very radical (both in the leftist sense and in the cool sense). Overall, it’s a fascinating analysis of human nature and an excellent commentary on how we treat others. I love it so so so much.

[star-wanderer]

The end of the Universe.

Not a book review, more an essay on what the books brought to me. Warning for longposting.

So recently I finished a book by one of my favourite authors, Becky Chambers. "The galaxy, and the ground within" was the final book in her Wayfarers series, more a set of loosely connected stories told in one collective universe than the typical linked series of books detailing one main story. Compared to some of the other stories in the series that I read years earlier, I cannot say that this felt as impactful or momentous when I finished it, but that isn’t to say it lacked meaning to me either.

Chambers writes stories that, in my opinion, grasp beautifully the intricacy of living in a society and being alive. To a greater extent, I would argue that her writing is about what it means to be human. The first book of hers that I read was actually not the first in the series. I will come back to "the galaxy and the ground within" later, but I want to talk about one of her earlier books first, the one that really hit home for me and changed the way I saw the world. I first picked up “A closed and common orbit”, a story about an AI designed to assist with living on a ship being transplanted into a human-shaped body. She isn’t recognised by most as a real person with rights or her own autonomy, and she doesn’t identify with, or feel comfortable with the body she now inhabits. She has no legal papers that can easily apply to her or her body, limited capacity to travel because of a lack of documents, and generally no systemic support from the government. And underlying all that, she feels adrift in life now that she is no longer able to fulfil the task she was originally programmed for and is trying to seek meaning in her existence.

To me, the trans metaphor was very clear from both the language used in the book, and the shape of the concept it was presented in. I thought it was both a beautiful way of shedding light on the issue, while also changing the perspective just enough to possibly circumvent the cognitive dissonance that comes with our pre-established notions with modern language involving the trans community and transgender people. Something that most people aren’t consciously aware of is how much phrasing, word choice, and packaging can affect or sway judgement based on established ideals. By simply changing how an idea is presented or phrased, two completely different reactions can be obtained from the same people. I felt that this was cleverly used in the series to present the issue and the struggle of just trying to fit into life like everyone else in a relatable and understandable fashion. I don't think that it should be a struggle that needs to be explained, but there it is.

We follow Lovelace, the AI, in choosing a new name for herself, through her struggles in trying to figure out her place in the world without simply taking orders from others, and her struggles with feeling comfortable with her body. Lovelace, or Sidra, as she renames herself, repeatedly expresses a disconnect from the body she inhabits and her mind. The language used would be very familiar to people with similar struggles, but still coherent and easily parseable to a reader without that knowledge. The wording highlighted the clear disconnect between Sidra, the identity we were following, and the body she lived in to mimic a human. She didn’t feel comfortable or at home in the body she used, and made adjustments where she could to her environment instead to help her feel more comfortable. She couldn’t change the circumstances of her creation, but she could learn to unwire her old programming and form new habits of her choice, accepting as well the consequences of those choices. At one point in the story, it takes giving up control of the body to return to controlling a ship, Sidra’s original purpose and a goal she strives towards for most of the book before Sidra comes to appreciate what having a physical human body allows her to do. It is the first moment in the book that Sidra identifies the body she had been using as her own, and not just a form made for her, signifying an shift in thinking. Additionally, as a mass produced AI on the market, Lovelace, now Sidra, was being exposed to things and experiences beyond the imagining of a shipboard computer. Through the text, I sensed a certain connection as well to people who at some point in their lives are made to step out of their small corner of the world and are shown a whole new life that they never imagined possible and now have to readjust their way of thinking about the world. Our world has certain trends, cultures, and expectations of us for whatever roles we were born into. Almost everything is set up for us to slide into these roles and not change, but not everyone can fit in neatly into the boxes society has laid out for us. Sometimes by choice, sometimes by circumstance.

The book doesn’t just tell Sidra’s story of learning about herself beyond her core programming, but there are other quieter stories in the background. But they all weave together to become one tapestry of lives and experiences that constitutes living on a society with other people and making the space around them more comfortable and better for people. Pepper goes to great lengths to help Sidra adjust to being human, and Sidra makes a friend named Tak who introduces her to tattooing, to parties, and helps her discover herself. Pepper’s fix-it job doesn’t work strictly by money, she also trades in simple favours such as food discounts and medical checkups in return for helping them out. There’s a general air in the stories of how although there are always people with less pleasant intentions or with less common sense than is good for them, most people are kind and making their way through life by making the space around them better, and helping others in the process.

Which brings me back to "the galaxy, and the ground within". In this book, Chambers writes us a simple story on the surface about a group of weary travelers who get stuck at what was meant to be a pitstop on their travels when a tech failure shuts down all planetary travel. Three travelers and their two hosts are stuck together in what is basically a small hotel with nothing to do other than twiddle their thumbs and wait for the authorities to do their thing.

That brings me to the diversity in the series. Chambers uses the canvas of a galaxy-wide community to introduce diversity of cultures and race/species to us, but even within species there is diversity based on their origins, their parents, and their personal life choices. There is a great deal of emphasis throughout the series placed on the importance and impact of the choices one person makes about how they want to live their life. I wouldn't say it is more emphasised in this story than others, but I think you cannot talk about a Chambers book in her Wayfarers universe without praising the racial and cultural diversity.

When we talk about diversity and representation in our current media, it is still a frustrating conversation with people at times about why they should see different faces and identities there. But something that I've heard across a range of ages and generations from people about science fiction is "Where are all the aliens?" or "Why aren't there more aliens?" The cognitive dissonance I mentioned earlier really comes to bear here, and Chambers makes full use of it with her cast. Even for culturally savvy and well-travelled people as our main cast in this story, we still see that the world they live in is so big that they still don't fully and completely understand everything. These are people who are well travelled, well informed, and people who even make a point to go out of their way to know more about other places, cultures, and people, and they still acknowledge the massive gap in their knowledge of each other's races when they meet.

Some characters lean heavier into their culture of birth, some mix fluidly wherever they go without a particular distinct culture that they call their own, some pick up things from all the places they travel, some change their minds as they grow and see new things and decide to leave some things of their past behind them. But ultimately people decide how they want to live and who they want to be, and others make the choice to respect that. People understand, in this universe, that you cannot live without encountering people very different from yourself and that accommodations must be made for them. Some amount of thoughtfulness is expressed by everyone to at least take into consideration that different people need different things, and that even within a race, no two people are the same. Not everyone is going to agree or like some differences, but ultimately a conflict also isn’t going to resolve anything and non-confrontational methods are just preferable, so people make spaces for different things or make spaces as accommodating as possible. It’s a philosophy I firmly believe we could do well to adopt and remember today.

One last thing that I came to realise after some thought is perhaps a final click of why I like reading Chamber’s books so much. In her works, her characters communicate with each other in a way I feel we should all do. Sometimes there are gaps intentionally written in the conversation where the wrong things are said, or not said, sometimes things still don’t work out even after all the words have been said with careful thought, or sometimes people still don’t agree at the end, but her characters still talk to each other when they have a problem and do their best to clearly communicate things and clear up differences and clarify to reduce misunderstandings. Even if they are of different opinions, the characters understand that at least effort was put in to consider the thoughts of the others. In a universe as diverse and far ranging as theirs, they need to do their best to be clear and precise in what they mean, while accounting for differences in language and culture and levels of understanding; not to simply expect or demand everyone else rise up to their level of comprehension, but to raise others up together with them. They vocalise their problems, because acknowledging an issue openly is the first step to getting the problem resolved between them. They ask for clarification and ask for forgiveness when there is a mistake, because mistakes happen and that is understandable and easily forgivable. But to commit a misdeed intentionally when it could have been cleared up or done with more thoughtfulness is a much harsher mark against you. As someone who spends so much time listening to others, this is something I wish we did more often. Kindness and thoughtfulness aren’t a high expectation, and they shouldn’t be in a society so diverse. We shouldn't need to touch the stars and populate the galaxy to realise that we need to be kind to ourselves and our fellow neighbours, whoever they may be and wherever they may come from.

If I've omitted mentioning stuff from the books or avoided specifics, please understand that this has been largely just a rambling loose connection of thoughts from me that I spent a few minutes making graphics for because I love the colour purple and the graphics make me happy. I had a lot of thoughts rattling around after finishing the final book in a universe I loved existing in so much. I feel happier for having written this all our and put it out there, so yeah.

[late-to-the-party-81]

Sweet-Cheeks

AN: Hi folks, this is a bit different to my normal fics. Firstly, it was written as a gift for a dear friend, who isn’t on Tumblr, and has already received their copy. Secondly, whilst I have written WLW fics before (and will again), in this story our reader is specifically a Trans!Woman. If this is something you don’t want to read, please walk on by now. If this is something you are against, please unfollow this blog.

Are you still here? Thanks! In this story our reader was AMAB but has only recently come to the realisation that she’s a woman, so she’s still at the relative beginning of her journey, both emotionally and physically. Every trans person’s experience is unique to them. Some are comfortable involving their birth genitalia in intimate situations, some are not, and both choices are valid. In this story our reader is comfortable, to a certain extent. That may be different at another time, but suffice to say her partner is accepting of her choices. I hope that you enjoy this story. I believe that every person has the right to representation in all forms of media.

Thank you to @midnightf and @mobbucky for beta-ing this fic, and a non Tumblr friend for performing a sensitivity check. Divider by the wonderful @firefly-graphics

Pairing: Nebula x Trans!Fem reader

Wordcount: approx 3k

Explicit content, minors DNI

CW: Mentions of dysphoria, mentions of torture (carried out on Nebula in the past), self-confidence issues, friends to lovers, breast worship cunnilingus and fingering, pussy job, one mention of the phrase ‘girl cock’, cuddles.

Find my master list here

Sweet-Cheeks

“Sonofa…piece of crappy…aaggghhhh…cheap hunk o’ junk!!!”

You smiled to yourself as you sauntered through to the engine room of the Benatar, which also doubled up as Rocket’s tinkering area.

“I am Groot?”

You heard the questioning note in the young tree being’s voice.

“Nooooo, you cannot help. What do you know about the intricacies of these sorts of things?”

“I am Groot!”

You heard Rocket sigh.

“Yeah, you’re right. Sorry, it was nice of you to offer and I am being a grump.”

You rounded the corner and found your small furry friend crouched in the middle of a pile of machine parts and wires that, to the untrained eye, looked like a pile of rubbish. To be honest, to your trained eye, it still looked like a pile of rubbish. Groot sat to the side, on top of a crate, earbuds pressed into divots in his bark covered head, tapping a long root covered foot against the metal, in time to some music he was listening to.

Rocket sifted through the pile in front of him until he lifted up a spanner with a triumphant shout.

“Ah-ha!”

It was then that he noticed you, smiling at him

“Here’s the help I need! Lovelace, get your butt over here and hold this.”

He pointed to two pieces and when you took hold of them he started to tighten a nut and bolt.

“So, R, what you doin’?”

“Aah, you know, nuthin’ special. A small bot for Quill’s birthday that can carry stuff around for him, shift things to and fro. Was wunderin’ if you’d help with the coding? Live up to your nickname?”

Letting go of the now secured pieces, you tossed your hair over your shoulder. It was really growing out now and it made you happy, the way the lush waves framed your face. You looked down at your nails, neat and tidy, despite all of the various physical work you were involved in, and picked a small speck of dirt out from under one.

“Tell you what, R, I’ll supervise Groot doing the coding, he needs the practice.”

You turned to the sentient tree.

“How’s that sound buddy? Wanna up your coding game?”

“I am Groot!”

The reply was full of excitement, an unusual thing for him, given the depths of teenaged moody-ness he seemed to be in most of the time.

“Alright, fine…he can help you Lovelace, but I tell ya’ if it’s not ready, and working properly, there’ll be hell to pay.”

You rolled your eyes at him, and moved over to one of the side tables, rummaging through the items on it until you found your diagnostic pad, the reason for your foray down here in the first place. Turning back around you teased your friend.

“Don’t give me all that. We all know your bark is worse than your bite.”

You reached out and gave him a scratch behind his right ear, making him sag against you briefly, before you skipped out, hearing him shout from behind you.

“That’s cheating, Lovelace! Cheating!!!!”

Your chuckle echoed down the metal hallway as you made your way back to your quarters.

“Neb? Nebbbbbbb! You here?”

As you walked through the door you shouted out to your bunk mate. Whilst you got on well with all the rest of the crew, it was with Nebula you felt most comfortable. She’d accepted you exactly as you were, understanding that a person’s exterior was never a true reflection of their inner self. You both had days where you disliked how you looked, but when that happened, you buoyed each other up with encouraging words and silly jokes. You could honestly say she was your best friend, and you were glad that you had each other.

However, despite all the strides she had taken in accepting herself, she couldn’t get away from the fact that the Mad Titan had altered her, disfiguring her with mechanical parts to make her stronger, turned her into a sentient weapon, sometimes as a ‘reward’ and sometimes as a ‘punishment’. This unfortunately meant she needed regular diagnostics of those parts. Initially, it had been Rocket who’d carried them out, but after Thor and Drax had rescued you from a backwater planet, where you’d been forced into using your skills to support an intergalactic mobster, you’d taken over the job.

“I’m here, Sweet-cheeks.”

You laughed at the nickname that only she used, given to you after a disastrous attempt with make-up, that she said left you looking like you had two gumba sweets stuck to your face. She sashayed across the small space from your shared bathroom, flopped down onto her bed, pulled up her skin tight purple top and opened the access panel on her abdomen.

You perched next to her legs, connecting up the diagnostic pad and running through the programme you had designed.

“Any strange feelings in the last month?”

You were intent on watching the read-outs, so you didn’t see the strange look that briefly passed over her face.

“Erm, no. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

You nodded and disconnected the wires before you motioned her to sit up. You rose up onto your knees and shuffled closer so you could take readings from her optical implant.

“No dizziness or blurred vision?”

Nebula sucked in a breath before answering.

“No, none at all…”

“Perfect then, as usual.”

She gave you a weak smile as you stowed the pad on top of the small bedside table. You brushed a lock of her blonde hair out of her eyes (a new addition she allowed herself, as part of her route to reclaiming her autonomy), before drawing her into a hug.

“What is it, Neb? You can talk to me, you know that.”

She lay down, pulling you with her, arms around each other, with you pulled in tight to the side of her tall, slim frame. You sighed lightly into her shoulder as she absent-mindedly stroked your hair.

“We’re friends, aren’t we Sweet-cheeks?”

“Of course we are! Why would you question it?”

“It…it’s just that…I’ve never had a friend before. Every time Gamora and I got close Thanos would find some way of driving a wedge between us again. And then, just as she and I were really connecting Voromir happened. And I know I sort of still have her, but it’s not the ‘her’ that I started to feel a connection with.”

You hugged her tighter.

“Oh no, Nebs, it could still come. I’m sure you will get your sister back.”

“I hope so. But, you’re still, really, my only friend, the only person I’m close to.”

She pulled in a few deep breaths.

“…And…that’s why I’m scared…”

You moved slightly, to lie on your side and prop yourself up on your elbow, so you could look at her.

“Why are you scared? You can tell me…honestly.”

Suddenly, she pushed up from the bed, away from you, and started pacing.

“All these stupid feelings. Make me pathetic, make me weak.”

Reaching out, from where you were knelt watching her inner turmoil, you grabbed her hand as she neared you, halting her progress.

“Neb, we’ve talked about this, feelings don’t make you weak and pathetic. That’s your trauma lying to you.”

“But what if I’m wrong? What if I ruin everything?”

You were sure you had missed something, you were so confused.

“What are you going to ruin? You’ve lost me.”

She rushed you then, caging you in with her arms against the wall and her knees on the bed in front of you.

“No, I can’t lose you, but I…fuck!”

Nebula took you by surprise as she pressed her lips to yours, in a quick, and nervous, kiss. Realisation hit you. This beautiful woman, your friend, this tortured soul. You loved her.

Fuck! You loved her!

You already did your utmost to make her smile every day. Told her how beautiful, how worthy she was. You loved the way she did the same to you. There was no one else you’d rather spend your time with.

You looked back at her, searching her face, and the expression that met you was one of worry.

“Fuck… I shouldn’t have done that, I…”

You pressed your finger to her lips to quiet her.

“Shhhhh. You absolutely should have.”

Before you could overthink it, you wound your arms around her neck and pulled her back in, kissing her this time. In return, her arms wrapped around your back and bore you to the mattress, her tongue demanding entrance to your mouth, her legs straddling yours.

You were no shy and retiring virgin, by any stretch of the imagination, but this was your first time of any meaningful intimacy since you had opened up to yourself and began living your life as the true you, so you took time to just experience what was currently happening. The soft urgent-ness of her lips, the firm grip of her arms, the weight of her body atop your hips. The smell of her soap and her own unique scent, the sound of her soft moans and sighs amongst the wet smacking of your lips against each other.

Her hair tickled your cheek and you could feel her heart beating against yours where your rib cages touched. Her breasts were pressed to yours and you were thankful that she wasn’t wearing her leather top today, so you could feel them better as they brushed back and forth. The movement made your nipples peak within your own top, frissons of pleasure darting down between your legs.

More moans sounded in the relative quiet of the room, and you realised they were your own. How long had you wanted this? This yearning buried deep within yourself. You had been worried, the same as her, unwilling to make the first move in case it spoiled what you already had. But, now in this moment, if you never had anything more than kissing her like this you would be happy. The way she was making you feel was better than any fantasy you’d ever allowed yourself.

When she pulled back from your lips, you chased hers, needy and whining at the loss. She chuckled in response before kissing her way down your jaw and onto your neck, sucking lightly at your pulse point, which caused you to gasp and arch up towards her. Your arms moved of their own accord to skim down her body, slim and womanly, to settle briefly on her hips, before sliding up under her top, to press your hands to the warm skin of her back. You wanted, no needed, to feel more of her.

“Neb…..”

Your spiralling feelings pulled her name from your lips with a reedy cry.

“I’ve got you, Sweet-cheeks. I’ve got you…..”

She moved to sit up, still straddling you, and you helped each other remove your tops. She was bare under hers and the glow from the lamp highlighted the contours of her bared body; her perfectly formed breasts, her toned abs, as well as the implants forced upon her by her ‘father’. She was beautiful, and you felt ugly compared to her. You didn’t even realise you had wrapped your arms around yourself, protecting yourself from her gaze, until she tutted, took hold of your wrists and gently pulled them away.

You risked looking up at her face and had difficulty comprehending the emotions you saw there.

Hunger. Desire. Lust.

Your breath hitched, causing your chest to jerk up and drawing attention to your small breasts, encased within a black bralette.

“Don’t hide yourself, princess. Not from me. Never from me.”

She pressed a gentle kiss to your collarbone, trailing across the top of your chest until she reached the other side, before pulling at the lace over your shoulder with her teeth and letting it snap back. Her fingers skimmed up under the fabric, pushing it up and off over your head. Her warm lips made a path down the centre of your chest, over your sternum and her hands rested on the mattress either side of you.

“Please, can I kiss you? Can I make you feel good?”

Unable to speak, all you could do was nod at her, and in a flash she had captured your right nipple in her mouth and was gently rolling the left between her fingers. You arched your back into her touch and a cry of pleasure left your lips as your fingers sought her hair of their own volition, holding her to you. Your nipples were so much more sensitive now, although you had always enjoyed them being played with. You could feel her smile around your soft flesh before she pulled off with an obscene ‘pop’ and swapped her attention to the other side.

When she pulled off again you dragged her slightly up your body so you could latch on to one of her breasts. Her skin was delicious, her scent intoxicating. Your hands roamed her skin, feeling every bare inch, but it still wasn’t enough. Taking her by surprise you flipped the pair of you, pulling down her tight trousers and underwear, baring her to your gaze. She was as exotic and alluring as you’d imagined and you couldn’t hide the excitement in your eyes as you carefully pulled her apart with your thumbs and dipped in with the tip of your tongue to taste her.

The way she shuddered and whined under your touch made your own arousal that much stronger. You licked again, a broad stripe from her hole to her clit and she cried out loudly.

“Fuck, ‘so good, princess!”

Emboldened by her praise you hooked her legs over your shoulders and moved in closer. You lavished attention to her pussy, licked and sucked on every fold, before you latched onto her clit. Her hips bucked up, pushing her core against your face, so you placed your hands on her to hold her steady. You cast your eyes up, observing her reactions, the way her body, glistening with a sheen of sweat, writhed under your touch. Her hair was a messy halo on the pillow, as she palmed one of her own breasts with one hand and gripped the sheet with the other.

She was glorious, even more so when you pressed your first two fingers inside her. You twisted and turned them, learning the feel of her, which movements made her moan in pleasure. Then you found it. Your crooked fingers pressed against that spongy spot, making her wail incoherently. You doubled-down then, losing yourself in her softness, her wetness, her smell. You licked and sucked at her, stroked her insides until her thighs tightened against your head and you tasted her cum on your tongue. You slowly withdrew your fingers and lapped gently at her, as she came down from her high. As she relaxed into the mattress she tugged at you, pulling you off her pussy and dragging you up her body.

She kissed you deeply, moaning as she tasted herself on your tongue.

“I’ve got to touch you some more, Sweet-cheeks. Is that okay?”

“Very okay, Neb.”

You let her turn the pair of you back over, and she pulled down your trousers and underwear. It took all of your self-control not to try and cover yourself, to push all your insecurities to the back of your mind. You were hard and throbbing between your legs, so aroused by her that you wanted her to see. When you looked up at her face you were met with her coy smile. She brushed a thumb over your tip, smearing the sticky fluid she found there across your sensitive flesh, making you shiver.

She straddled your body again, sitting over your hips so her warm, wet core covered you, pressed down onto you. It felt so unbelievably good. She took hold of your hands and placed them onto her hips.

“So, I’m going to sit up here and rub off on your girl-cock. I’m going to make you cum and that’s going to make me cum. Okay?”

You responded with a whimper as she ground her hips down on you and began to rock back and forth. Your fingers tightened their grip as you helped to guide her, her slick mixing with yours to ease the glide. You were so on edge and she felt amazing, sat as she was on top of you. Her hands came to rest upon your chest, playing with your nipples again.

“You going to use me to get yourself off, lover?”

“Yes…” The confirmation was pulled from you, your eyes fluttering closed as you revelled in the sensations, her pussy leaking over you, the delicious friction her movements caused, all heightened by pinched pleasure darting from your chest. She was so completely wonderful. You turned yourself over to the pleasure, just letting yourself feel, just…experience.

“That’s it… that’s it! Take what you want Sweet-cheeks… such a good girl for me… making me feel so good, baby… you going to cum?...Going to make me cum?...Fuck… I’m close, so close, princess…”

She shuddered and whimpered above you as her second orgasm wracked her body, the bucking of her hips sending you over the edge and you came with a dizzying shout.

You were aware of Nebula collapsing down onto you, her weight pleasant and reassuring, her breasts pressed to yours and her head buried in your neck. Her fingers found your hair and stroked through the strands. You floated for a while in the post-orgasmic haze, just enjoying being with her like this. When she finally disentangled herself and made her way to the bathroom you shivered from both the loss of her closeness as well as the warmth her body had provided. She returned quickly though, damp washcloth in hand, wiping you down.

When she didn’t immediately get back into the bed you were concerned, but it only lasted a moment as she took hold of the edge of your bed and pulled it across the room towards hers where you lay. You laughed, jumping up to help her and moving the small side table out of the way, so she could push both your beds together. You grabbed a couple of spare towels and shoved them into the space between the two mattresses. You could both sort out something better at the next stop at a major space port, but it would do for now.

You both flopped down onto your new, combined bed and smiled at each other. She drew you into the circle of her arms, her forehead pressed to yours, gazing into your eyes.

“I love you Sweet-Cheeks.”

“Love you too, Neb.”

[chalkrevelations]

Moving on to Episode 4 of Word of Honor, and y’all.

Wait, first: If you’re new or just visiting, this is a re-watch, so there are SPOILERS not just for this ep but for the ENTIRE SHOW. Maybe a lot of them. Scroll away and come back later if you haven’t seen all 36.5 eps and want to watch it unspoiled. (They’re all gonna be tagged “word of honor episode reax”)

A couple of big things, first:

So, right up front, I don’t know for sure that this is the first time we’ve heard the word, but it’s the first time I’ve twigged to it in this re-watch. As Zhou Zishu and Chengling are leaving the inn in the morning, at the very beginning of the ep, Wen Kexing asks why ZZS continues to call him gongzi and wants to know if he’s still too much of an outsider for a less formal form of address. He uses the word 外人 (wairen) (at 2:30) for “outsider,” which is how the subs translate it here. Anybody who’s been around for these flailing reactions since the first time I watched the show might remember that I made a deal about this somewhere around in the late 20s of the episodes, based on a post from someone that I scrolled quickly past while avoiding spoilers and that I have NEVER FOUND AGAIN and am STILL LOOKING FOR, that alerted me to the use of this word and its nuances in ep 25. There’s a conversation there about WKX possibly taking over some of Chengling’s training at Siji Manor, and WKX demurs, calling himself “外人.” Youku translated it there as “someone else,” as in having “someone else” train your disciple, and ZZS responds with “And you’re 外人?” again translated as “someone else.” This actually seems to mean “stranger,” or “outsider,” as they do actually translate it here in Ep 4 - presumably someone who’s from outside your sect, at least in the Ep 25 instance, in which WKX is labeling himself that while he’s in the midst of his upcoming crisis, trying to keep his emotional distance from ZZS and Siji Manor. It’s used again in Ep 26, when ZZS finds WKX giving training advice to Chengling, and it’s one of the ways they have WKX and A-Xiang reflect each other, when she uses it in Ep 29, and rejects it as a description of herself, in order to claim a place in Cao Weining’s sect/family (which, now, knowing … GOD. My HEART). Anyway, I found it super-interesting that WKX is using this word here in Ep 4 to push against ZZS’s boundaries, in contrast to the way he’ll use it later, to try to fortify his own walls against ZZS and Siji Manor. I begin to suspect that he doesn’t want to tell ZZS who he actually is because, maybe, just a little bit, he wants ZZS to figure it out, to recognize him, to truly know him (zhiji) without him having to spell it out. We kind of travel back around to this idea near the end of the ep, when WKX is questioning ZZS about the Baiyi sword, and ZZS tells him that their relationship is like the fish that ZZS unsuccessfully tried to cook and threw on the ground – raw (i.e., unacquainted) – to explain why he keeps shutting out and shutting down WKX. Only we know now that isn’t entirely true, and WKX certainly suspects it isn’t entirely true. (Also, just an observation, ZZS says in that later scene that he’s not interested in who WKX is. DON’T TELL HIM THAT, my dude, now it’s going to be 3,246 episodes before he’ll give you any personal info.)

Also, just a note – I think we make the switch from Zhou-xiong to A-Xu in this ep. (ETA: No! I have been reliably informed by @janedrewfinally that this switch happened back at the end of Ep 3 (at 41:18), and it seems to be part of what precipitates the Completely Reasonable, Not At All Flirtatious, Utterly Heterosexual No Really, Like Bros way that ZZS takes WKX's wine jar. You know the incident we mean.)

The second thing that I really started turning over in my head here is the developing relationship between WKX and Chengling, and this is one of the things that took me so long on this one, because I wanted to go back and look at those two, specifically, in the previous eps again, and revisit their interactions both with and without the mediating factor of ZZS. The first time WXK sees Chengling is in the marketplace at the end of Ep 1 when Chengling ends up giving his token to ZZS. But I think the first time WKX sees Chengling is maybe when WKX’s sitting in the cutout window with his drinkie during the massacre of Mirror Lake and ZZS draws the Baiyi sword to protect Boatman Li and Chengling, just before they make it to the boat and float away back to the mainland. I don’t know how much of the beginning of the fight in the abandoned temple WKX then sees before A-Xiang makes her entrance, but there’s a lot of Chengling flinging himself in front of Boatman Li and ZZS in a way that’s not entirely dissimilar to the way Zhen Yan will fling himself at his parents’ bodies in flashback in a later episode, and then WKX definitely sees dying Boatman Li charge ZZS with Chengling’s care, then make Chengling bow, in a parallel to the scene we’ll get later when Qin Huaizhang accepts Zhen Yan as a Siji Manor shidi. In Ep 3, there’s a lot of weird sympathetic looks from WKX as A-Xiang berates Chengling over dinner (she doesn’t quite have this jiejie thing down yet, and she’s probably never had someone younger than her to take care of) for not taking care of himself so he can be strong and get his revenge for his family’s deaths. This time out, Ep 4, we start with the beggar gangs coming after Chengling, which has some resonance with the former Ghost Valley Master and his Ten Devils standing around the bodies of Zhen Yan’s parents and debating what they’re going to do with this kid before they steal him away. You can see WKX’s eyes start to narrow as the lead beggar dude talks, and he eventually even asks them, “What are you going to do if he doesn’t want to go, take him away by force?” We get a LOT of cutting to WKX in this conversation, even though he ostensibly has nothing to do with this, it’s really a convo between Beggar Guy, ZZS and Chengling. WKX pulls focus, and he eventually provokes that fight, and sure, he wants to see ZZS fighting and hopefully get a look at the Baiyi sword, and he even may think that’s the extent of his ulterior motives, but I’m not sure that actually is the full extent of his motives, there. This episode is also when we really see WKX start to encourage Chengling to continue to press at ZZS about taking him as a disciple, including the first use of the infamous “Tough women can’t resist clingy men” saying. Chengling comments that he was just supposed to be Son #3 who stayed home and took care of the old people, and WKX comes back with the Extremely Significant Comment that “When the children want to fulfill their filial piety, the parents have died,” which is not only Extremely Significant, but also sounds like it may be a quote from a poem or other literature? Anyway, a lot of this is just to say, KINDLY AU ANON WHO WAS THINKING ABOUT WRITING THE STORY IN WHICH WKX GETS CUSTODY OF CHENGLING BECAUSE ZZS IS NOT AT MIRROR LAKE, ARE YOU STILL OUT THERE? Hopefully you are hard at work, writing, because I have been having thoughts about this relationship.

What else? Kind of chronologically:

First of all, it continues to physically pain me to have to look at that horrifying facial hair, ZZS. I cannot WAIT to hit Ep 6.

We open this ep on WKX rolling walnuts in his hand in a way that is reminiscent of SOMEONE who we’ve seen do that before – multiple times, given they put that shot of Ghost Valley Master in the opening credits. Nevertheless, I didn’t catch this right away on my first time through. It took me a few episodes, and then I FINALLY noticed the opening credits shot right in front of my face. Point to you, show. Once you know, this ep practically shoves it in your face, recreating not only the walnut rolling, but a dude getting held up in the air and choked out (which we’ve seen before, in Ep 1 (and will see again)) before being slammed down on the ground with WKX crouched over him (which we’ve seen before, in Ep 1). Later, WKX is concerned about his manicure (which we’ve seen before, in Ep 1). It’s actually a little bit funny that both he and ZZS - a master assassin and a guy who literally skinned another dude (and maybe ate him?) to take his throne – are both so prissy about actual, literal blood. Anyway, is it significant or a coincidence that WKX waits until ZZS and Chengling are out of sight before actually going wild-eyed? You know the look I mean.

OH MY GOD, it’s Lovelace. I had blocked this dude from my mind. Eurgh. Nevertheless, there are a number of things I love about his scene, and all of them are related to A-Xiang, my feral beloved - from the way she clomps into the room, completely unworried about stepping the least bit gracefully while making her presence known and stomping (lit. and fig.) all over his dramatic little bit, to the way she berates him, threatens him with “Aunt Luo,” bares her teeth at him, and makes the eye-gouging motion at him. She is the best, and I adore her. I also love how she literally laughs in WKX’s face at his comment that maybe he just wants to be friends with ZZS, OK, is that alright?

The fight with the beggar gangs in this ep may be the first time we see something similar to the cage of spears maneuver in Prince Jin’s throne room all the way up in Ep … what? 30? … although it won’t be the last time we see it, and each time we see ZZS is perfectly capable of avoiding it or escaping it, making me suspect that Tian Chuang only “trapped” him in it because he let them, just like he only got taken back to Prince Jin in chains, in the first place, because he let it happen. We see it at 5:30 with the beggar gang’s staffs, when ZZS breaks it up by literally flinging another dude into the middle of it. We see it at 5:41, when he kicks his way out of the formation. And we see it at 8:15, when the sheaths have come off the swords, and he feints under them to break his way out. Just noticing.

When WKX is talking about the Baiyi sword as they all sit around ZZS’ sad little raw fish in the dirt by the lakeside, he mentions that Rong Changqing created three master works – the White Cloth sword, the Dragonback, and the “Great Wild Land,” per Youku’s translation. ZZS has the Baiyi sword, I assume the Dragonback is Ye Baiyi’s sword. Is the Great Wild Land actually the Ghost Valley? Given what we learn from Ye Baiyi in the back nine about Rong Changqing and his plans for Ghost Valley? Anyway, then we get some magic pipa playing, and ZZS (trying to, apparently) play WKX’s xiao in musical self-defense, and even though he leaves his opponent bleeding, WKX takes the opportunity to make suggestive comments about teaching him how to blow properly, just in case WKX’s been slacking on his act as a cheesy pick-up artist and anyone’s beginning to see through him. ZZS yells at Chengling for his lack of martial skill, then yells at him for crying, because that always works, particularly with traumatized teenagers who have had their entire family and sect massacred like, two nights ago. As a shifu, I’m not sure how you manage to inspire such devotion, my dude. WKX plays the indulgent parent, but also reassures Chengling that ZZS has good reasons for yelling at a traumatized, newly orphaned kid. I suppose he is getting him ready for all the yelling that’s going to go down once they get to Five Lakes Alliance and Chengling has to deal with Gao Chong and Shenshen. Chengling’s response, with WKX’s encouragement, is to ask to be ZZS’s disciple again. Was Han Ying (who I guess we’ve yet to actually meet at this point (EDIT TO ADD: NO WAIT, he was in Ep 1)) this much of a little dumbass to 24-year-old ZZS when Han Ying was 14? (EDIT 2 TO ADD: And who is writing this story, omg.) Although, ugh, that makes me realize that part of ZZS’s bad mood is that Chengling asking to be a disciple must be bringing up a shit-ton of bad stuff for ZZS about how he got all the other Siji Manor disciples killed. (Wen Kexing sees himself in Chengling, making his bow to Qin Huaizhang, one of the few good things that ever happened in his life, while ZZS sees all those red flowers on the mural back in his rooms in Prince Jin’s palace.) A final lakeside observation – A-Xiang pokes at ZZS’s uselessness as a cook here, and WKX will later ask him why he’s so utilitarian about food and drink, when they’re the greatest pleasures of life. (Really, WKX? THE greatest pleasures? Although that’s certainly an interesting comment given where we end up, in the end.) And it makes me begin to wonder – is ZZS so bad at cooking, and does he continue to avoid it, at least partially because he’s already losing his senses enough so that it interferes with preparing a tasty meal?

Also, we meet the Four Scorpion Assassins, and Pretty Arhat and Evil Bodhisattva have some pretty bold names, but now I’m back on my thing about the women in this show, and wondering what kind of enlightenment or release these two feel like they’ve had, and how it may or may not resemble the mindset of the women of the Department of the Unfaithful in Ghost Valley. I’m not well-versed in Buddhism, though, and am maybe not the person to take on how that religious symbolism is or is not used as a metaphor for female freedom in this show.

This is getting kind of long, so one last observation for now, and I think I may have mentioned this before: WKX has color-coded ZZS and Chengling as a unit in the robes he bought for them when he also rented out the entire inn. He’s not in the same color, but he is in a complementary shade and tone, which I find interesting. Also, his sash is sort of salmon, not the red of his Ghost Valley getup, but not completely divorced from it, either.

[alicxnte]

ooc:// Hey there!

My name is Ellie, and I've recently returned to the world of Tumblr RP after taking some time off. I've RP'd on and off since 2010, on both Tumblr and Discord (feel free to send a request for my user name if you'd like to connect).

I am currently working on making my page presentable, finalising my muse list, and getting back to a hobby that I love.

My main focus is getting back into the swing of things, so please feel free to send memes and write cold starters or shoot me an ask - just let me know what muse you want to write against!

Edited to add: My activity may be a little sporadic as I work full-time, and have some weekend commitments. I am also from Australia, so my time zone doesn't match up with many people. I will try to reply to all active threads at least once a week, and will likely be more active over discord.

Rules and Muses under the cut:

Rules:

This is a multi-muse, multi-verse blog.

I am open to canon and original characters - I am willing to give everyone a chance, and will only deny a thread idea if there are personal issues between myself and the writer, if our writing styles do not match at all, or if I find that I have taken on too much.

I generally do not believe in ship exclusivity. There may be some ships that I don't expect and that come about due to chemistry with a particular mun's portrayal and won't work outside of certain contexts, but that's the extent - if I find a Jesse or Matthew for my Lucie, I'm not going to refuse to write with another Jesse or Matthew. (Actually, the more the merrier, in my opinion...)

As much as it feels nice to receive asks from posted memes, I don't mind if you reblog and don't send me something from it. 

My OOC tag is not a shadowhunter || ooc if you want to filter out my OOC posts.

Personals can follow and reblog my posts, but please don't reblog my threads. Likes are okay, because that gives the warm and fuzzies, but please no reblogs of threads.

I generally don't format my posts outside of paragraphs and some italics for emphasis, but if you and I are writing a thread and it'll make it easier for you, please let me know what I can do to accommodate.

I personally prefer not to use icons, but it doesn't bother me if your replies have them - so long as you don't require me to do it, we're all Gucci.

I don't unfollow for inactivity. I generally unfollow if I've realised we don't really mesh, if I realised that I followed by accident, or if there is a personal issue between them and myself.

Plotting is great, but I also love flying by the seat of my pants (insert "What was the original plot of this movie?" audio)

Content Specific Rules:

While I am open to NSFW content (including, but not limited to, violence, gore, and intimate relationships) I am aware that many people aren't. I will put all my NSFW content under a Read More, and it will be tagged.

I have no triggers, but please tell me if you'd like me to tag anything that you may find triggering so I can tag them.

If you want to write really dark threads, I would suggest we consider moving those ones in particular to Discord.

Mobile Muse List:

The Infernal Devices

Tessa Gray

Jessamine Lovelace

Will Herondale

The Last Hours

Lucie Herondale

Cordelia Carstairs

The Mortal Instruments

Clary Fairchild

Jace Herondale

Simon Lewis

Jocelyn Fairchild

Jonathan Morgenstern

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Nesta Archeron

Azriel Shadowsinger

Harry Potter

Lucien Vanserra

Cassian

Pansy Parkinson

[hephaestuscrew]

I think one of the things that I find so compelling about Minkowski & Eiffel is that I believe that who they each are as people means they have the inherent potential to have immensely positive impacts on each other, but I do not believe they would have even been friends in most possible scenarios in which they could have met. I believe they are uniquely attuned to help each other grow and develop and become better versions of themselves, but for the first year and a half of them living and working together, the prevailing emotion between them was irritation. I believe that they are able to support each other through hardship in a way no one else could, but without the specific kind of hardship they went through, they might never have known this.

And even as I acknowledge that they might never have bonded without the trauma, it's important to me that it's not that they are bonded purely by trauma, in a way that might imply Minkowski or Eiffel could have built the same bond with anyone who'd been up there with them.

They are bonded by the ways in which they care for each other, by the ways in which their contrasting personalities make them uniquely well suited to support each other, by the way Eiffel makes Minkowski laugh when she really needs to, by the way Minkowski would do anything to keep Eiffel safe, by the way Eiffel reminds Minkowski of her moral compass in her darkest moments, by the way Minkowski helps Eiffel understand that some things are worth taking seriously.

But without what they went through together, they might never have seen beyond their surface-level understandings of each other in order to form this incredibly valuable friendship. It's not that their traumatic experiences are all that bond them. It's that the traumatic experiences forced them to break past the initial barriers that prevented them from connecting with each other properly and from trying to understand each other, in order to realise the potential for connection that had always been there.

[pascalls]

Gazebo of Horrors

Charlie enjoys a Halloween night with the regulars from the bar, solidifying the holiday as his favorite for a number of reasons.

Feat. Lisa, Lenny, Carl, Moe, Barney, Sam, and Larry

Author’s Note: This one’s gay.

---------------

Charlie couldn’t remember the last time he had a decent night’s sleep. Twisting and turning in his sleeping spot, he was uncomfortably warm. Trapped in the middle of a nightmare, Charlie felt sweat bead at his forehead and the sound of someone giving chase. He ran, unable to outpace whatever it was that was at his heels, sharp, pointed ends of something metallic scraping the concrete as it jabbed at his tail. Only when he turned did he realize that whatever it was looked a lot like Ned Flanders…

He awoke with a start as a clang on the metal outside of his impromptu napping place broke him from his fitful slumber. He sat up, only just pausing before hitting his head on the plastic ‘roof’. Reaching up, he pushed it up and away, peering out and ready to shoot a glare at whoever happened to interrupt his rest when he noticed that it was already evening. Blinking away the remainder of his sleep, he weighed his options. Go back to sleep until morning? Slink out and back to Lovejoy’s before his absence was noticed? 

“Nurse Walker?”

The voice startled him slightly as he turned, spying the familiar face of Lisa Simpson who seemed to be staring at him quizzically. As if he’d grown another head. 

“Were you… sleeping in there?” She asked, pointing at the metal dumpster that Charlie had  emerged from. Astute as ever, he thought. 

“...I might’ve been,” he replied, about to come up with some sort of excuse for why he’d chosen such a place to hide away and nap, but she provided a fantastic distraction as he took in what she was wearing. Definitely not her usual outfit. “...What are you wearing?” 

“Oh!” Lisa grinned with enthusiasm, spreading her arms out and doing a little twirl to show off her clothes; a purple dress with yellow flowers in her hair and a small veil-like addition trailing behind her. “I’m Ada Lovelace! The first ever computer programmer. She was an English mathematician who totally blew Charles Babbage away by utilizing his Analytical Engine in ways he never even thought of.” 

The information sailed right over Charlie’s head, but as he leaned out of his dumpster bed, he watched her with a little smile. Ah, she would go places. Hopefully not into a dumpster like him. But as she spoke, his brain began to putter back to life. Wait. Costume? He glanced down to her hands which held a bag that had to have been half full by then. Full of candy?

His attention drifted to the nearby street as he noted that Lisa was not the only one in unusual garb. Nearby, he heard the telltale voices of Bart, Milhouse, and yes, even Nelson as they presumably trailed along ahead of Lisa. And it was about then that he realized - Oh. 

“...It’s Halloween,” he said, interrupting Lisa’s drawn out explanation of said ‘analytical engine’ and how tragic it was that Lovelace had died at such a young age. Though she was a little frustrated at having been cut off, she responded with a nod. 

“Yeah. Are you gonna dress up as anything?”

Charlie blinked down at her once or twice. Thinking that over. Well. No. Because he hadn’t even remembered that Halloween was a thing. Until just now. But thinking that through even further, Charlie recognized that he dressed up like it was Halloween every damn day. Which meant that… Maybe… Just maybe…

“...No!” He proclaimed, taking a moment to get his legs under him to spring himself out of the dumpster, landing with a rather pleased expression on his face next to Lisa. “For once, I am not dressing up as a damn thing!” 

“Huh. I guess you don’t have to!” Lisa said as she looked him over with a little smile. “It’s like you have a built in costume.” 

“For once, being a terrible, horrible abomination to society is going to pay off, my intelligent little friend.” Reaching down, he gave her a gentle pat on the head and then nudged her in the direction of her brother’s fading voice. “Go on! I’m gonna find some trouble to get up to while I have the damn chance, for once.” 

Lisa didn’t argue. And she made a mental note to herself to not tell anyone that she’d found the normally downtrodden nurse holed up in the trash. He… probably didn’t need that floating around about him. So she gave him a little wave before running after the others, calling for them to wait for her.

Charlie, meanwhile, was rooted to the spot as his mind raced with possibilities. He could do… SO MUCH now. He could go to the store. He could see a movie. He could just WALK AROUND. And nobody would give a second thought about it! For the briefest of moments, he felt… powerful. He could do anything he wanted-

A nearby screech of tires nearly made him jump back and away from the street as the ugly pink sedan that Charlie instantly recognized as Homer’s came to a stop in front of him. The man himself leaned out from the driver’s seat, grinning widely at Charlie as he called out. 

“Hey NURSE! Nice rabbit costume!” Homer yelled. It was clear he’d already had a drink or two, but so had the other six men that were crammed both inside and on the roof of the car. The bar must have been closed, as Charlie noted that the regulars were accompanying Homer on his Halloween joy ride. Lenny, Carl, and Moe sat on the car’s roof, hastily hanging on - presumably, for dear life whenever Homer started driving again - while Barney, Sam, and Larry were crammed inside. Each of them had their own drink in hand and Charlie could hear the clatter of more cans along the car’s floor. They had gotten an early start on the drinking, apparently. 

“Hey Charlie! We’re drivin’ down to Flanders’ to egg his house and knock over his mailbox,” Moe called down to the hybrid. 

“Remind me why we’re doin’ that?” Carl asked, shaking the can in its hand to check its content level. He would need another one soon.

“Be-CAUSE, it’s FLANDERS,” Homer grunted from the front seat. “What more reason do you need???”

“Can’t argue with that!” Lenny had no objections, apparently. And neither did anyone else. Least of all, Charlie.

“Hell yes, I do. Open one of those things for me, will you?” Charlie said with delight as he hopped over, pleased that none of the men seemed to give two shits as to what he looked like as he clambered up and onto the roof of the sedan. In fact, he wasn’t the only one in the festive mood. Homer had made an attempt at being some kind of vampire, but had apparently given up halfway, tying a black shirt around his neck as a cape and smearing what looked like red jelly around his mouth. Lenny and Carl had swapped outfits, Moe would later on describe his usual attire as being ‘the scariest thing you could see in 2020’, and Barney had simply taken a shower and put on a different shirt. A frightening prospect. Larry did not seem to get the costume memo and Sam had mostly his usual attire, except his overshirt shirt was a red checkered plaid pattern instead in a relatively lazy impromptu lumberjack look. 

Charlie felt as though he fit right in, tipping back his head as he downed his first beer and digging his claws into the roof of the car as Homer drove off towards Ned’s. 

As the night went on and Homer’s merry gang of troublemakers stirred up more than enough chaos to fill several Halloween nights with, Charlie found himself laughing, yelling, and being raucous right along with them. There was no shortage of eggs thrown, toilet paper left in the branches of overhanging trees, nor did he turn down the candy they’d nabbed from some of the neighborhood bullies. Charlie considered it teaching them a lesson. They’d live. And while he didn’t normally imagine that he’d pal around with Moe’s regulars to this extent, he had a hard time convincing himself that he wasn’t having more fun than he’d had in ages. At one point, he could have sworn that they passed both the reverend and his wife. What he wouldn’t give to see if Tim had noticed that he was not interested in coming home on time that night...

By the time they’d finished their route around Springfield - and Homer was too drunk to keep driving and not smash into something along the way - the men abandoned the pink carriage in favor of staggering into the nearest park gazebo to lounge around, finish as many of their remaining cans of beer as they could, and generally be a public nuisance. Luckily, they weren’t the only ones out and about, which meant that Chief Wiggum was not likely to break up their after party. Which was just as well. Charlie didn’t need any reason for him to have to return to Lovejoy’s tonight. Nah. He was having way too much fun, even in the sleepy drunken haze that threatened to overtake him as the clock neared midnight. 

“I didn’t expect you to actually loosen up like that.” 

Charlie glanced up from his tenth - or eleventh? - beer, locking eyes with Sam who had staggered over to sit on the steps of the gazebo next to Charlie. Inhibitions gone, Charlie didn’t mind the company. Lenny and Carl were not far away, but seemed to be discussing whether or not a uranium rod would float if placed delicately in a vat of beer. Homer had passed out about ten minutes prior, and Moe, Barney, and Larry were arguing over who had rights to the last few beers in the cooler. 

“I’d forgotten about Halloween,” Charlie replied with a little smile. “The one night where I don’t have to dress up like some kinda… freak.” He sipped at his beer, not bothered by the terminology at the moment. Might be if he were at all sober. But with his head floating pleasantly, he didn’t mind being a little brazen and honest.

“I bet if you just decided t’say screw it one day, nobody would even notice,” Sam continued, pointing at Charlie with the hand that still held his own beer which was nearing empty. 

“Uh-huh. Then I get thrown into the zoo with the crocodiles and you gotta visit me and bring me booze before I go fuckin’ crazy, right?” Charlie shook his head, but he was amused at the thought. 

“I got plenty to spare.” Sam smirked, shaking his can a little and listening to the liquid slosh back and forth. 

“Aw. You’re sweet.” Charlie brought a hand up to his chest in a fake swoon. “Didn’t know you liked me that much.”

Sam laughed, a low, somewhat gravely sound that made Charlie’s ears twitch with interest. They were one step ahead of his brain which was only just registering that… they might have been flirting. And, now that he recalled… it probably wasn’t the first time. The hybrid had been coming to Moe’s on several nights of the week now, staying out late and risking the reverend’s ire while keeping company with the regulars. And more often than not, Sam was included. While he was moderately amused by Homer, Lenny, and Carl’s general conversations that they had, the three jokers hardly caught his attention. Larry still didn’t speak much, and he wasn’t even going to pretend that Barney was ever good for more than a belch or two before he was sufficiently out for the count. 

But on more than one occasion, Charlie lingered behind with Sam. Sometimes not saying much. Just staring absently at the television above the bar. Maybe swapping stories here and there about Sam’s time on the road or Charlie’s general complaints about both Skinner and Chalmers or the Wiggum boy’s predisposition to sticking sharp objects where he shouldn’t. 

On any other night, Charlie might not have given it much thought. It was dangerous to get too wrapped up in a person. Like he had with Lovejoy. Like he’d stumbled into with Chalmers. Neither of which seemed to give him the feedback he was looking for. And on any other night, that fear might have kept him from going down that same path. But as he listened to Sam’s laugh which made his own mouth tilt upwards into a smile… Well… he couldn’t help it. They were already sitting so close and… Charlie’s head was already spinning and he swore he probably smelled like beer, cigarettes, and maybe eggs, but…

The liquid courage was not one to be ignored. He held his breath and leaned forward, catching Sam’s lips with his own in a soft, but purposeful kiss. He willed himself to not pay attention to anything - except maybe the faint sound of blaring music somewhere off in the distance - hoping against hope that he was not going to be pushed away. 

And he wasn’t.

But he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing either. 

He broke the kiss after a moment or two, pulling back as his ears pinned themselves against his hair and he let out a little nervous laugh. Sam’s expression was unreadable. Clearly, he’d been caught off guard, staring at Charlie in surprise and… the hybrid didn’t know what else. But even in his drunken state, his heart pounded with fear and he glanced away.

“Sorry. Uh. Forget that happened. I have had… woof. One too many… hah…” 

His feet wanted him to run, but with so much alcohol in his system, he doubted he would get very far before tripping over his own tail. So there he sat, pointedly looking away and off into the distance, rubbing at his face in exasperation at his own stupid, desperate antics. His chest felt like it was about to burst with anxiety and embarrassment. Christ. He could only hope that Sam was drunk enough to write it off as a figment of his imagination in the morning when they both woke up in their respective beds and pretended that nothing ever happened.

“WELL! I should… go,” Charlie began, finishing off his beer and crushing the can in his claws before tossing it aside. About to get to his feet when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Freezing, he felt the color drain from his face. Oh no. This was the part, wasn’t it. Where his other secret was going to be touted in front of the other men like some kind of hard-won prize. Where he realized that Sam was just another moron in Springfield deadset on making him feel like an absolute freak. Where he was reminded that his decision-making was so incredibly poor that only he could have made the wrong choice three times in a row.

Anger bubbled up somewhere in the back of his throat, but before he could bristle and snap in defense, he was spun back to face Sam, caught by surprise as the man’s mouth met his own once again, this time of his own volition. Confusion replaced the anger that threatened to rise, a little sound of alarm only just being squelched by his steady realization that… He had been wrong.

They were both drunk, but Charlie shoved the thought to the side as he closed his eyes, suddenly drifting along a sea of contentment as he allowed himself to be pulled into that second kiss. He forgot that Lenny and Carl were sitting just on the other side of the gazebo. He forgot that Moe and the others were not far either. He forgot that he was kissing another man. He forgot… everything. Everything but the feeling of Sam’s lips on his own. They were warm and tasted like Duff, but so did his own. Charlie almost laughed as their glasses clacked gently against each other, but he didn’t care about that either. It was Halloween night and he felt like a giddy teenager, his claws brushing along the steps of the gazebo until they found Sam’s fingers, intertwining their pinkies together as they’d done to seal their promise to not dampen Moe’s spirits. 

Sam didn’t seem to mind, too wrapped up in the kiss just the same. Until they parted and Charlie let himself breath. He was red in the face, he was sure. But he would try to play it off like it was just the beer. Yeah. That’s all it was.

“...You don’t gotta go if you don’t want to,” Sam finally said, his own beer all but forgotten to the side. He was a bit flushed himself, but he seemed to manage it a lot better than Charlie did.

“...You don’t think we’ve gotten up to enough troublemaking tonight, huh?” The hybrid replied in kind, unable to disguise the little grin on his face. 

“Nah. It ain’t even that late yet.”

Sam got to his feet, offering his hand to pull Charlie up along with him. His tail helped him maintain his balance, even as the world tilted and shifted beneath his feet. Wow. He really was drunk. Or… maybe it had just been the kiss. Either way, he was feeling ridiculously topsy turvy just then. And the welcoming smile on Sam’s face certainly didn’t help. Wow. 

Maybe he hadn’t really been fake swooning after all.

“Lead the way,” Charlie prompted, keep himself at the other man’s side with a delighted little rumble of a purr that he did his best to keep to himself. It was difficult. And as they drifted away from the park and back into the street, he absently wished that Halloween was not a once-a-year deal.

When they’d left, Lenny and Carl found themselves staring after the two, still nursing their own beers and watching in a bit of a drunken stupor.

“Did we really just see that?” Carl asked, glancing up at his companion, baffled.

“I think so. Why don’t you ever do that with me?” Lenny replied as he sat atop the railing of the gazebo, his words slurred in his mild outrage.

“Aw shut up,” Carl said, focusing back on his beer. 

He made a mental note to shove Lenny off of the railing before the night was over with.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

it’s kinda funny how i have more concrete ideas about famous folktales/literature of the various locations of my OCs’ setting as opposed to how the society, y’know, actually works

The Dancing Marionette/Dancing Doll: a famous Wasseiran tale, in which an intricate and beautiful Artifact dancer gifted to the Queen gains sapience and falls in love with her. The titular marionette self-immolates at the climax to shed her artificial body, and becomes a real human to be with her lover. Being one of the most well known Wasseiran tales, it has a ton of adaptation and spin-offs, including the infamous Puppet Princess written by known dissident Enrico Cavaldi.

Puppet Princess: in this version of the tale, the Queen is the Artimage who created the marionette to be her companion. The plot focuses on the Queen’s emotional dependency on her creation, as well as her need for control. She becomes increasingly paranoid after the marionette gains self-awareness, and orders her creation to self-destruct at the climax of the tale with no happy ‘rebirth’ for the marionette. Some speculate that it is a veiled critique of the Wasseiran government’s treatment of Helvacia and, to a lesser extent, Renor.

Spingtide: The Quintessential Wasseiran Romance, Springtide is an epistolary narrative penned by Franco Aristos, the performancer prince of the Aristonian dynasty, during the courtship of his wife Princess Emilie (a Helvacian). It is famous for its vivid descriptions of tasteful romantic yearning, and popularized the epistolary tale in Wasseira. (Springtide, along with his other work To Roads Unending, had earned Prince Franco the title of Many-Talents.) 

To Roads Unending: Prince Franco’s love song to Wasseira, his homeland, in the form of a series of poems praising the country’s beauty. Excerpts have been used as patriotic propaganda throughout the ages.

Summerwell: A bawdy riff on Springtide, written by Sophia Cotti. It details the romantic exploits of Lord Flavio, who (by all accounts) is a bit of a cad. It parodies or subverts tropes popularized by Springtide, such as honor duels and love triangles, by having Flavio and his rival Lord Enrique team up to seduce their targets together on multiple occasions, and rejects the notion that restrained longing is the height of romance.

The Elanndia: Set in the mythic past of Renor, the Elanndia details the exploits of the Knight-Princess Elaine of House Hallewell, and her campaign to drive out the tyrant Morrik. The early versions place less emphasis on Elaine’s birthright and has a limited cast mostly consisting of Elaine, Morrik, Elaine’s faithful steed Talien, and Master Performancer Maxwell, Elaine’s eventual husband; later versions expanded the cast, such as Adair the Wolf-Lord (who often supplants Maxwell as Elaine’s primary love interest) and Morwen Ironglaive, Morrik’s estranged sister. The Elanndia is Hilary’s favorite story (and the Lovelace children’s main source of entertainment).

The Star Maiden: a Songal fairytale about a Talentless girl who comes across a fallen star-child, and their journey across the heavens. after many trials and tribulations (including one where a wizard promises to give the girl a Talent in exchange for the star), the girl reunites the star with its family and is offered a seat on heaven to reward her for her selfless deeds. it is said that she guides wayward souls with her gentle light to this day, and those who find themselves lost take solace in her favor

[warninggraphiccontent]

29 January 2021

Tragedy and statistics

The UK marked a grim milestone this week, recording more than 100,000 Covid deaths by every measure.

Various versions of the famous quote have it that one death is a tragedy, many merely a statistic. Newspapers tried to avoid that and humanise the sombre statistic in different ways. The front pages of The Times and the i focused on the individual tragedies, photographs highlighting the human beings behind the numbers.

Beyond their front pages, both tried to visualise the impact. The i used its paper form to give a double page spread to 100,000 dots, each representing a death. Online, The Times combined the human stories with a different use of dots and a 'narrative scroll', the act of having to move down the page helping illustrate the extent of the tragedy. It put me in mind of Ampp3d's story from 2014 (no longer online, analysis here and here) visualising migrant worker deaths in Qatar. The New York Times took a different approach to scrolling , using the density of dots to show how the pandemic unfolded in the US.

The FT, meanwhile, kept things simple, using a line chart to show the different measures of deaths all exceeding 100,000, and a simple bar chart to compare the UK's mortality rate to others.

Different approaches, but all important attempts to communicate the human cost of Covid and examples of how data visualisation can help make sense of tragedy on such a large scale, when words might fail us.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In other news:

It's Data Bites this Wednesday at 6pm. Come!

Congratulations to my erstwhile IfG colleagues on the latest (terrific) edition of Whitehall Monitor. Read it here (some more links below), sign up for next week's launch event here.

I had a great time at this year's (virtual) UKGovCamp last week - thanks to the campmakers for making it work so well online. I made it to sessions on public trust; the state of (open) data; every move you make, every word you type...; data in regulation; silos beyond government; data service design; and digital exclusion. I ran a session on whether some sort of annual report on the state of government data could work and if so, what it should include - the notes are here, Jamboard here, and rest assured it's a subject I'll be returning to... Full grid of events and notes here.

The Atlantic had a rather good piece on narratives about the pandemic this week, and how a successful vaccination programme could dispel memories of 'a catastrophic failure of governance': 'The pandemic disaster that might not happen'. I wonder if focusing on how politicians can drive their own narrative overshadows the role of society's storytellers - the media - in shaping and questioning narratives, and absolves them of agency to hold the government to account. Not dissimilar to some narratives around data and technology that seem to forget the decisions around them are made by humans.  

Have views on vaccine passports? Tony does. A reminder that the project I'm working with the Ada Lovelace Institute on is taking evidence until 19 February.

And I forgot to post this last week... President Biden's inaugural address grappled with some of the same tensions between unity and dissent in a democracy that some of the founding fathers did in The Federalist. I'm a particular fan of Alexander Hamilton's fourth and fifth paragraphs here, the fourth eloquent on the need to respect our opponents, and the fifth eloquent on the exact opposite ('no, not these opponents').

Have a good weekend

Gavin

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Today's links:

Graphic content

Macabre milestones

Boris Johnson ‘deeply sorry’ as UK’s Covid death toll passes 100,000* (FT)

How the UK reached 100,000 Covid deaths* (The Times)

100,162 lives (The i, via Matt Butler)

UK official Covid death toll has always undercounted fatalities, analysis shows (The Guardian)

How the world reached 100 million coronavirus cases* (New Statesman)

Covid-19 cases pass 100m* (The Economist)

How 425,000 Coronavirus Deaths Added Up* (New York Times)

Vax populi

Covid-19 vaccine tracker: the global race to vaccinate* (FT)

Vaccine nationalism means that poor countries will be left behind* (The Economist)

Vaccination rates in England are lower for older non-white people, study shows* (FT)

Viral content

UK Covid lockdown starting to work, say scientists* (FT)

Home page for an experimental website displaying COVID-19 statistics

New UK and South Africa Covid variants may spread more easily, so what does this mean for the fight against coronavirus? (The Guardian)

The Amazonian city that hatched the Brazil variant has been crushed by it* (Washington Post)

The march of the coronavirus across America* (The Economist)

See Covid-19 Risk in Your County and a Guide for Daily Life Near You* (New York Times)

We are now sharing previously hidden weekly COVID-19 state profile reports with the public (Cyrus Shahpar, White House COVID-19 Data Director)

Covid-19 Pandemic Could Be Source of Global Crises for Years: WEF* (Bloomberg)

US

Putting Kamala Harris as VP into perspective (Melissa Shusterman)

How popular is Joe Biden? (FiveThirtyEight)

Joe Biden is taking executive action at a record pace* (The Economist)

Full List: Where Every Senator Stands on Convicting Trump* (New York Times)

How The Frost Belt And Sun Belt Illustrate The Complexity Of America’s Urban-Rural Divide (FiveThirtyEight)

Our Radicalized Republic (FiveThirtyEight)

This is one of the most harrowing pictures I have seen about how we lost an entire generation (@marcusjdl)

UK

Whitehall Monitor 2021 (IfG)

Launch event next week (IfG)

Three ways that the coronavirus crisis has changed government (Alice for IfG)

Ministers overrode official advice more than ever in last year’s crisis* (Tim for Times Red Box)

We’ve calculated ward level EU Referendum estimates in England/Wales (James Kanagasooriam)

In data: the benefits squeeze* (Prospect)

Who's furloughed? (Resolution Foundation)

Cities Outlook 2021 (Centre for Cities)

Global

The uncounted: How many women die at the hands of their partners? We simply don’t know – and that needs to change* (Tortoise)

La Niña Roars, Unleashing Fire, Drought and Floods Worldwide* (Bloomberg)

How the Arab spring engulfed the Middle East – and changed the world (The Guardian)

Pessimism and Distrust Could Sway Elections Around the World* (Bloomberg)

Poland’s coal-fired home heating creates widespread pollution* (The Economist)

#dataviz

How to work with Facebook population density data (Alasdair Rae)

Check out this interesting cartography decision! (Gretchen Peterson)

Sport

How green are Premier League clubs? Tottenham top sustainability table (not entirely convinced by this graphic, BBC Sport - and not just because Spurs are top)

When GOATs meet: Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, by the numbers* (Washington Post)

Everything else

The frenzied rise of GameStop* (The Economist)

Data Archeogram: mapping the datafication of work (Autonomy)

VIEW THE ARMADA MAPS (National Museum of the Royal Navy)

Spanish Armada maps 'saved for the nation' (BBC News)

Meta data

ICO baby

Our session with Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham (Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee)

Tory party illegally collected data on ethnicity of 10m voters, MPs told (The Guardian)

Covid contracts: Extend FoI act to cover private companies making millions says Information Commissioner (Evening Standard)

Adtech investigation resumes (ICO)

Information commissioner’s term extended to allow successor recruitment (Public Technology)

Shaking that pass

Exclusive: Tony Blair calls on Boris Johnson to lead drive for global vaccine passport* (Telegraph)

Vaccine passports and ID Cards (Phil Booth)

Tech companies are racing to build smart vaccine passports. But technology isn't the only problem (ZDNet)

Viral content

What Covid revealed about government’s legacy IT, and what to do next (Civil Service World)

What can wastewater tell us about COVID-19? (COG-UK)

Digital government

Our Syllabus: Here to help you teach Digital Era Government (Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age)

Respecting users’ privacy on GOV.UK accounts (Inside GOV.UK)

Two GDS projects to watch : GOV.UK Accounts and “Forms discovery” (David Durant)

Government Gateway at 20 – looking back at the UK’s most successful digital identity system (Computer Weekly)

No digital postal vote application service before May elections (Public Technology)

"Find your NHS number" (Tom Read and others)

Open government

The Path to the Future (Audrey Tang for CommonWealth)

We are thrilled to announce that #OpenGovWeek will take place May 17-21, 2021! (Open Government Partnership)

RECOMMENDATIONS TO STRENGTHEN CANADA’S RESPONSE TO NEW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND REDUCE THE HARM CAUSED BY THEIR MISUSE (Public Policy Forum)

FOI* (Peter Geoghegan for the LRB)

AI got 'rithm

Government by Algorithm: The Myths, Challenges and Opportunities (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)

What's your go-to document or paper that defines different types of algorithmic bias? (Rumman Chowdhury)

AI review: Transforming our world with AI (UKRI)

New – Amazon SageMaker Clarify Detects Bias and Increases the Transparency of Machine Learning Models (AWS)

Who Is Winning the AI Race: China, the EU, or the United States? — 2021 Update (Center for Data Innovation)

The City of New York has released an inventory of algorithms in use (Rumman Chowdhury)

A New AI Lexicon: Responses and Challenges to the Critical AI discourse- Call for Contributors (AI Now Institute)

Independent auditors are struggling to hold AI companies accountable (Fast Company)

Media

Fix information failures or risk lives: the Full Fact Report 2021 (Full Fact)

Facebook News feature launches in UK (BBC News)

How Participatory Media Promote Coverage of Social Movements (Nieman Reports)

‘It’s a reality’: Google threatens to stop search in Australia due to media code (Sydney Morning Herald)

Privacy

Exploring Design and Governance Challenges in the Development of Privacy-Preserving Computation (Nitin Agrawal, Reuben Binns, Max Van Kleek, Kim Laine, Nigel Shadbolt)

How Europe’s privacy laws are failing victims of sexual abuse (Politico)

Inside India’s booming dark data economy (Rest of World)

We're exploring the role of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) in enabling secure and trustworthy use of data (CDEI)

#DataProtectionDay

#DataPrivacyDay

Everything else

Microsoft is one of the largest contributors to the members of Congress who tried to subvert the Democratic process (Judd Legum)

Why does Big Tech want us to feel nostalgic?* (New Statesman)

Census 2021 will be taking place March 21 (ONS)

Opportunities

EVENT: Data Bites #16 (IfG)

JOB: Chair of Geospatial Commission (Cabinet Office)

JOB: Head of Open and Innovative Government Division (OECD)

JOB: Head of the Evaluation Task Force (Cabinet Office)

JOB: Product Manager (360Giving)

And finally...

Lady Gaga as diagrams about AI systems (thread). (Miles Brundage)

Infosec sea shanties (Rachel Tobac)

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Mahakala omnogovae

By Ripley Cook

Etymology: Named for Mahakala, one of the eight protector deities of Tibetan Buddhism

First Described By: Turner et al., 2007

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoromorpha, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Dromaeosauridae, Halszkaraptorinae

Status: Extinct

Time and Place: 80 million years ago, in the Campanian of the Late Cretaceous

Mahakala is known from the Tögrögiin Shiree of the Djadokhta Formation in Ömnögovi, Mongolia 

Physical Description: Mahakala was a small raptor, about 70 centimeters in length, and it was very similar to the earliest members of the Eumaniraptoran group in general, sharing characteristics with other Eumaniraptorans like Troodontids and Avialans. Mahakala was also a Halszkaraptorine, a group of weird little raptors with a semiaquatic lifestyle. It is uncertain if Mahakala was semiaquatic, but it seems at least possible at this time. Like other raptors, it had a sickle claw on its second toe, and like Troodontids and Avialans, it had an extended third foot bone. It also had very short forelimbs compared to other raptors, but similar in size to those of Halszkaraptor. In Halszkaraptor, the forelimbs are adapted to form flippers, like that of a cormorant. While the wings of Mahakala aren’t quite to that extent, it’s possible that it was a transitional form, or had partly aquatically adapted forelimbs. As a raptor, Mahakala would have been covered in feathers, with wings on its arms and a tail fan on its tail.

By Ashley Patch

Diet: If Mahakala was like its close relative Halszkaraptor and associated with the water found in its environment, it would have most likely been a piscivore.

Behavior: Mahakala probably spent most of its time in or near sources of water, which were a tad hard to come by in its very arid environment. As such, it probably didn’t move about much, but spent its time at the oases and temporary rivers to find food in the water. It probably also swam about in the water, using its wings and legs to help propel it forward. It would have been a secretive sort of animal, being surrounded by many kinds of predators and threats, and wouldn’t have strayed far from its home. Given its rarity, and the uncommon nature of its probable preferred habitat, Mahakala would have probably not lived in social groups. However, it most likely took care of its young in some form.

Ecosystem: The Djadochta Formation was an arid desert environment, with red sand and dirt for miles and very little water for Mahakala to associate with. That being said, there were a decent number of oases in the environment, and temporary rivers called arroyos that would pop up during the wet season. Thus, Mahakala would have been mostly associated with the oases. Because of the red coloration of the ground (giving this area today the name of the Flaming Cliffs), most of the animals in the area would have actually been quite red or reddish, in order to blend in. In the oasis areas where Mahakala would have been found, there were probably horsetails and other water plants, rather than the dry shrubs and arid foliage found elsewhere in the environment. The Tögrögiin environment was not as diverse as the later Ukhaa Tolgod, but was still filled with a variety of animals. Here there were mammals such as Zalambdalestes, Kryptobaatar, and Barunlestes; lizards like Cherminotus, Adamisaurus, Temujinia, Zapsosaurus, Mimeosaurus, Flaviagama, Gurvansaurus, Dzhadochtosaurus, and Isodontosaurus; and other small animals. As for other dinosaurs, there was the Ankylosaur Pinacosaurus, the ceratopsian Protoceratops, the alvarezsaur Parvicursor (and possibly Shuvuuia), the ornithomimosaur Aepyornithomimus, and the raptor Velociraptor. In short, this was an exceptionally fluffy land indeed!

By Scott Reid

Other: It is interesting to note that Mahakala and Halszkaraptor not only are shown as closely related in phylogenetic analyses since the latter was described, but that Mahakala actually comes from the same, but earlier environment, as Halszkaraptor. It is entirely possible, therefore, that Mahakala is actually the ancestor of Halszkaraptor, with other members of this weird raptor group splitting off at around the same time as Mahakala began that transition. This is not directly found in studies yet, however, so take that hypothesis with a grain of salt. Regardless, Mahakala was a very basal raptor, and even though it lived late in the fossil record in the group - at a time when many later-derived forms were very common - it still had many similarities to the Troodontids and the Avialans in addition to the raptors.

~ By Meig Dickson

Sources under the Cut 

Cau, A., V. Beyrand, D. F. A. E. Voeten, V. Fernandez, P. Tafforeau, K. Stein, R. Barsbold, K. Tsogtbaatar, P. J. Currie, P. Godefroit. 2017. Synchrotron scanning reveals amphibious ecomorphology in a new clade of bird-like dinosaurs. Nature 552: 395 - 399.

Cau, A., and D. Madzia. 2018. Redescription and affinities of Hulsanpes perlei (Dinosauria, Theropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of Mongolia. PeerJ 6:e4868:1-19

Chinzorig Tsogtbaatar; Yoshitsugu Kobayashi; Tsogtbaatar Khishigjav; Philip J. Currie; Mahito Watabe; Barsbold Rinchen (2017). “First Ornithomimid (Theropoda, Ornithomimosauria) from the Upper Cretaceous Djadokhta Formation of Tögrögiin Shiree, Mongolia”. Scientific Reports. 7: Article number 5835.

Clarke, Julia A., Norell, Mark A. (2002). “The morphology and phylogenetic position of Apsaravis ukhaana from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia”. American Museum Novitates, No. 3387, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY.

Delcourt, R., and O. N. Grillo. 2014. On maniraptoran material (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from Vale do Rio do Peixe Formation, Bauru Group, Brazil. Revista Brasileira de Paleontologia 17(3):307-316

Gianechini, F. A., P. J. Makovicky, and S. Apesteguía. 2017. The cranial osteology of Buitreraptor gonzalezorum Makovicky, ApesteguÍa, and AgnolÍn, 2005 (Theropoda, Dromaeosauridae), from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia, Argentina. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27(1):e1255639:1-19

Godefroit, Pascal; Currie, Philip J.; Li, Hong; Shang, Chang Yong; Dong, Zhi-ming (2008). “A new species of Velociraptor (Dinosauria: Dromaeosauridae) from the Upper Cretaceous of northern China”. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 28 (2): 432–438.

Hartman, S., M. Mortimer, W. R. Wahl, D. R. Lomax, J. Lippincott, D. M. Lovelace. 2019. A new paravian dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of North America supports a late acquisition of avian flight. PeerJ: e7247.

Jerzykiewicz, Tom (1997). "Djadokhta Formation". In Currie, Phillip J.; Padian, Kevin (eds.). Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. San Diego: Academic Press. pp. 188–191.

Junchang Lü; Li Xu; Yongqing Liu; Xingliao Zhang; Songhai Jia & Qiang Ji (2010). “A new troodontid (Theropoda: Troodontidae) from the Late Cretaceous of central China, and the radiation of Asian troodontids”. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. 55 (3): 381–388.

Ksepka, Daniel T.; Norell, Mark A. (2004). “Ornithomimosauria cranial material from Ukhaa Tolgod (Omnogov, Mongolia)”. American Museum Novitates. 3448: 1–4.  

Longrich, N. R., and P. J. Currie. 2009. A microraptorine (Dinosauria–Dromaeosauridae) from the Late Cretaceous of North America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (13): 5002 - 5007.

Longrich, N. R., P. J. Currie, and Z.-M. Dong. 2010. A new oviraptorid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of Bayan Mandahu, Inner Mongolia. Palaeontology 53(5):945-960

Montague, R. (2006). “Estimates of body size and geological time of origin for 612 dinosaur genera (Saurischia, Ornithischia)”. Florida Scientist. 69 (4): 243–257.

Nesbitt, S. J., J. A. Clarke, A. H. Turner and M. A. Norell. 2011. A small alvarezsaurid from the Eastern Gobi Desert offers insight into evolutionary patterns in the Alvarezsauroidea. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31(1):144-153

Norell, Mark A.; Clark, James M.; Dashzeveg, Demberelyin; Barsbold, Rhinchen; Chiappe, Luis M.; Davidson, Amy R.; McKenna, Malcolm C.; Perle, Altangerel; Novacek, Michael J. (November 4, 1994). “A theropod dinosaur embryo and the affinities of the Flaming Cliffs dinosaur eggs”. Science. 266 (5186): 779–782.

Norell, M.A.; Clark, J.M.; Turner, A.H.; Makovicky, P.J.; Barsbold, R.; Rowe, T. (2006). “A new dromaeosaurid theropod from Ukhaa Tolgod (Omnogov, Mongolia)”. American Museum Novitates. 3545: 1–51.

Norell, M.A., Makovicky, P.J. & Clark, J.M., 2000, “A new troodontid theropod from Ukhaa Tolgod, Mongolia”, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 20(1): 7-11

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[jasontoddiefor]

Hello, Mr. Eli! I was just wondering whether you had any book or poetry recommendations that you turn to for writing inspiration and if you could share some of those with us, please? I love your writing, an thank you for sharing your work!!

Thank you!!!! So happy to read that ☺️

And yes, I do have a couple!

I like the World’s Wife written by Carol Ann Duffy. Then I also like the works from Emily Dickson (on tumblr I believe she’s the most famous for her “Because I could not stop for death / He kindly stopped for me” poem.

The “Woman are some kind of magic” series by Amanda Lovelace is beautiful as well. I’ve got her “the witch doesn’t burn in this one” volume at home.

Otherwise, poetry by @rmeisel here on tumblr!

Actual novels I happened to like A song of Achilles for emotional writing and the Skulduggery Pleasant series as well as the Percy Jackson universe for witty and sarcastic descriptions.

I also enjoy the Temeraire series! So far I’ve only actually read book one (bc I have too many books still to read at home) but it’s super neat and the mix of fantasy and history is incredible. The Ressurrectionist is another book presenting fantasy as reality, being a fake biography of a man who tries to prove that fantasy beings existed, and while it’s downright creepy and gross to some extent in descriptions, it’s still neat for some realistic take on magical biology.

Otherwise, if it‘s not really writing style but just inspiration in general, I like doing Pinterest aesthetic boards. It sounds strange but for a lot of my fanfics, and even more for my original stories, I use Pinterest to collect images that picture the characters how I see them, their surroundings, style, etc.

That being said, Pinterest is still a terrible website and I wish it would make proper sourcing mandatory.

Ufff those are the works I could think off from the top of my head. I’m currently not at home so envisioning my book case is a little hard.

I hope this could help you anon!