#capitalism is a huge factor here

[aadmelioraa]

when it comes to the defense of fanfiction, i dislike remarks along the lines of "the divine comedy is just fanfic!!" not because i look down on fanfic, but because i want to acknowledge the unique merits of fanfic, because i love fanfic and fanfic authors and transformative fandom. every story is in conversation with other stories, but every story is not fanfic. there is always going to be overlap of course, there are similarities between why people create and enjoy fanfic and why they create and enjoy other forms of literature, as well as similarities in content and style, but this type of flippant response is SO common now and has done way more harm than good. you don't need to justify your love of fanfic by erasing what's special about modern transformative fandom, the solution is not to broaden the category. instead, stop letting people use the term fanfic as a pejorative. it's their loss, not yours.

[bowtiepastabitch]

Historical Analysis: class and injustice in 'The Ressurrectionists' minisode

Alternate title: why we're tempted to be upset with Aziraphale and why that's only halfway fair

Okay so first off huge thanks to @makewayforbigcrossducks for asking the question (and follow-up questions lol) that brought me to put these thoughts all together into a little history nerd ramble. That question being, Why is Aziraphale so clueless? Obviously, from a plot perspective, we know we need to learn some lessons about human moral dilemmas and injustices. But from a character perspective? A lot of this minisode is about Aziraphale being forced to confront the flaws of heavenly logic. This whole idea that "poverty is ineffable" basically boils down to 'yeah some people are poor, but their souls can be saved just as if not more easily that way, so it's not our problem and they probably deserve it anyway for not working hard enough,' a perspective that persists in many modern religious circles. Aziraphale isn't looking at the human factor here, he's pretty much purely concerned about the dichotomy of good and wicked human behavior and the spiritual consequences thereof, because that's what he's been told to believe. His whole goal is to "show her the error of her ways." He believes, quite wholeheartedly, that he's helping her in the long run.

"the lower you start, the more opportunities you have"

So here's what we're asking ourselves: Why did it take him so bloody long to realize how stupid that is? Sure, he's willing to excuse all kinds of things in the name of ineffability, but if someone in the year of our lord 2023 told me he was just now realizing that homelessness was bad after experiencing the past two centuries, I'd be resisting the urge to get violent even if he WAS played by Michael Sheen.

Historical context: a new type of poverty

Prior to the 19th century (1800s), poverty was a very different animal from what we deal with now. The lowest classes went through a dynamic change leading up to the industrial revolution, with proto-industrialization already moving people into more manufacture-focused tasks and rapid urbanization as a result of increasingly unlivable conditions for rural peasantry. The enclosure of common lands and tennancies by wealthy landowners for the more profitable sheep raising displaced lots of families, and in combination with poor harvests and rising rents, many people were driven to cities to seek out new ways of eeking out a living.

Before this, your ability to eat largely would have depended on the harvest in your local area. This can, for our purposes, be read as: you're really only a miracle away from being able to survive the winter. Juxtapose this, then, with the relatively new conundrum of an unhoused urban poor population. Now if you want to eat, you need money itself, no exceptions, unless you want to steal food. Charity at the time was often just as much harm as good, nearly always tied deeply up in religious attitudes and a stronger desire to proselytize than improve quality of lie. As a young woman, finding work in a city is going to be incredibly difficult, especially if you're not clean and proper enough to present as a housemaid or other service laborer. As such, Elspeth turns to body snatching to try to make a better life for herself and Wee Morag. She's out of options and she knows it.

You know who doesn't know that? Aziraphale.

The rise of capitalism

The biggest piece of the puzzle which Aziraphale is missing here is that he hasn't quite caught onto the concept of capitalism yet. To him, human professions are just silly little tasks, and she should be able to support herself if she just tried. Bookselling, weaving, farming, these are all just things humans do, in his mind. He suggests these things as options because it hasn't occurred to him yet that Elspeth is doing this out of desperation, but he also just doesn't grasp the concept of capital. Crowley does, he thinks it's hilarious, but Aziraphale is just confused as to why these occupations aren't genuine options. Farming in particular, as briefly touched on above, was formerly carried out largely on common land, tennancies, or on family plots, and land-as-capital is an emerging concept in this period of time (previously, landowners acted more like local lords than modern landlords). Aziraphale just isn't picking up on the fact that money itself is the root issue.

Even when he realizes that he fucked up by soup-ifying the corpse, he doesn't offer to give them money but rather to help dig up another body. He still isn't processing the systemic issues at play (poverty) merely what's been immediately presented to him (corpses), and this is, from my perspective, half a result of his tunnel-vision on morality and half of his inability to process this new mode of human suffering.

Half a conclusion and other thoughts

So we bring ourselves back around to the question of Aziraphale's cluelessness. Aziraphale is, as an individual, consistently behind on the times. He likes doing things a certain way and rarely changes his methodology unless someone forces his hand. Even with the best intentions, his ability to help in this minisode is hindered by two points: 1)his continued adherance to heavenly dogma 2)his inability to process the changing nature of human society. His strongest desire at any point is to ensure that good is carried out, an objective good as defined by heavenly values, and while I think it's one of his biggest character hangups, I also can't totally blame him for clinging to the only identity given to him or for worrying about something that is, as an ethereal being, a very real concern. Unfortunately, he also lacks an understanding of the actual human needs that present themselves. Where Elspeth knows that what she needs is money, Aziraphale doesn't seem to process that money is the only solution to the immediate problem. This is in part probably because a century prior the needs of the poor were much simpler, and thus miraculous assistance would never have interfered with 'the virtues of poverty'. (You can make someone's crops grow, and they'll eat well, but giving someone money actually changes their economic status.) Thus, his actions in this episode illustrate the intersection of heavenly guidelines with a weak understanding of modern structures.

This especially makes sense with his response to being told to give her money. Our angel is many things, but I would never peg him as having any attachment to his money. He's not hesitant because he doesn't want to part with it, he's hesitant because he's still scared it's the wrong thing to do in this scenario. He really is trying to be good and helpful. So yes, we're justifiably pretty miffed to see him so blatantly unaware and damaging. He definitely holds a lot of responsibility for the genuine tragedy of this minisode, and I think Crowley pointing out that it's 'different when you knew them' is an extremely important moment for Aziraphale's relationship with humanity. Up until now, he's done a pretty good job insulating himself from the capacity of humans for nastiness, his seeming naivity at the Bastille being case in point.

In the end, I think Aziraphale's role in this minisode is incredibly complex, especially within its historical context. He's obstinate and clueless but also deeply concerned with spiritual wellbeing (which is, to Aziraphale, simply wellbeing) and doing the right thing to be helpful. While it's easy to allow tiny Crowley (my beloved) to eclipse the tragic nature and moral complexity of this minisode, I think in the end it's just as important to long-term character development as 'A Companion to Owls'. We saw him make the right choice with Job's children, and now we see him make the wrong choice. And that's a thing people do sometimes, a thing humans do.

~~~

also tagging @ineffabildaddy, @kimberellaroo, and @raining-stars-somewhere-else whose comments on the original post were invaluable in helping me organize my thoughts and feelings about this topic. They also provided great insight that, in my opinion, is worth going and reading for yourself, even if it didn't factor into my final analysis/judgement.

If I missed anything or you have additional thoughts, please please share!!! <3

[nartml]

To Pimp a Butterfly and 1989: a rant

Listen here, three things about me are that I'm a) white as snow, b) Greek, c) still a minor.

What does this mean? It means that I obviously wasn't raised with hip-hop, and I got into Kendrick Lamar's music pretty late.

As in, early this year.

I've known of him for some time, and the moment I found out he had a Pulitzer prize at some point in late-ish 2023, I decided I had to sit my ass down and pull out Spotify.

Now, as an avid reader of both fanfiction (ao3 raised me) and books [I feel the immense need to clarify that I don't associate myself with mainstream booktok. Capitalism's consumerism has overrun that shit and all I see are the same 20 books being recycled and recommended (a substantial amount of those are Colleen Hoover and her variants). Tropes and spice* are officially the defining factors of whether a book is worth it (*your porn addiction ain't cute) and quantity is heavily prioritized at the expense of quality. Also, diversity who?], I was, for a lack of a better word, hyped.

A Pulitzer prize is nothing to scoff at in general, more so in music, more so in hip-hop.

(Edit: Upon quick reflection, I realize that putting emphasis on hip-hop can come across as coded.

I am in no way, shape, or form trying to undermine hip-hop or say that it's somehow less 'sophisticated' than, for example, classical music. I'm very aware of the amount of skill and technique one needs to write a masterful hip-hop album, and I'm not doubting that there are hip-hop artists out there who are also incredibly deserving of such a prize. I meant it in the sense that I've unfortunately never heard of another hip-hop artist who won a Pulitzer before, which is quite telling.)

That's some huge shit, and I'd be a fool not to be intrigued.

Admittedly, I didn't get on that immediately. For a while I procrastinated, because I wasn't in the mood to hyper-fixate on anything new just yet.

Which of course meant I ended up forgetting about it for a few months, because of course I did.

But then I came across a TikTok that talked about how it was insane that '1989' won the Grammy when To Pimp a Butterfly was right there.

Now, a fourth thing about me is that I don't fuck with Taylor Swift.

And a fifth thing about me is that I'm not baseless in anything that I do, say or feel, and that includes annoyance.

Her immature understanding of activism and feminism leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The way she built up her fan base around this portrayal of her as a relatable girl's girl, her refusal to accept criticism, and always making a victim out of herself (even now when she's in her thirties and is a fucking billionaire) while never using her position of power and privilege for good are all reasons that serve to fuel my dispassionate dislike.

And before any Swifties get on my ass, no, I don't think that "But she's a singer! Why are you expecting so much out of her, she isn't even qualified to speak on XYZ—" is a good enough excuse.

She has always been rich, and now she's a billionaire. There are no ethical billionaires, and that includes her.

Fame is influence is power. Uncle Ben said it all: With great power comes great responsibility.

And let me tell you, I don't see her owning up to that responsibility, especially after all that talk about how she supports women, supports the LGBTQ community, and supports the BLM movement. Has she ever actually put her abundant money where her mouth is?

I've never seen her speak about anything that doesn't immediately concern her.

Don't get me wrong. She's not the only celebrity like this out there. I'm sure there are worse cases. I know it for a fact.

To wrap this segment up before I get even more sidetracked, I'll outright state that I don't hate her, because hating her would by definition mean that I, in some way, actually care about her, and that just sounds exhausting.

Best way to describe me is indifferent, leaning towards distasteful.

She's annoying.

And that's how I feel about both her as a person and her as an artist.

I'm not denying her talent, nor her impact on the industry, nor the fact that she does have good songs that even I like.

A select few, of course, but still.

Apart from those...what? Ten songs? I have never, ever been able to listen to any other song of her's all the way through.

I get bored. They do nothing for me. They sound empty. Hollow. Plastic. Repetitive.

Her lyrics, that are praised by fans for being deep and complex, sound pretty surface level to me.

Not all of them. But I'm a sucker for analysis. A literature nerd. Greek is my native language. I can tell when something's deep and when something wants to be deep.

(Not necessarily including Folklore and Evermore in that category. Her storytelling ability is actually great.)

Her music largely sounds like it wants to be deep.

Most recent example being her latest release, The Tortured Poets Department.

Anyway, back to Kendrick.

My initial plan was to listen to 'DAMN.' first, because that's what he won the Pulitzer for in the first place.

There was a change of plans after that TikTok.

I decided to compare the opening tacks.

I put on Welcome to New York, and predictably, I felt nothing.

The rhythm is dance-y, I suppose. But there's nothing substantial about it. There's nothing exciting about it.

The lyrics are juvenile, and I get it, it's a pop song and she was in her twenties.

Nobody is expecting Shakespeare (no matter how much you scream or kick your feet, the only reason Shakespeare couldn't write Taylor Swift is because he's in another league entirely) or Odysseus Elytis. Nobody is expecting mind-blowing lyricism.

But it's the opening track to an apparently Grammy-worthy album. The very least I'd expect from it would be some additional levels of artistry.

Am I being harsh? Probably. Do I care? No.

Disappointed but unsurprised, I put on Wesley's Theory.

I ascended within the first minute.

Don't get it twisted, I barely understood shit.

Not only am I white, I am also entirely removed from America and its culture as a whole. I don't know what's going on there in y'all's daily lives.

And this was baby's first proper introduction to hip-hop as a whole.

My untrained, white-ass ear barely caught two references. I got what the gist of the song was about, and that's about it.

I had to look up analyses of the track to fully grasp what Kendrick was on about, and even then, there was obviously still a disconnect.

And I expected all of that.

I didn't expect to get hooked on that song within the first listen.

I swear to fuck, the beat is addictive. I swear to fuck, even when I was fighting to understand what the lyrics were referencing, I was having the time of my life.

Even I, an amateur in every sense of the word, could tell that there was depth and there was quality and there was intentional meaning in every line of that song.

It didn't matter that I couldn't understand it. It mattered that I knew it was there. Not because someone told me that was the case. But because it was audible.

I listened to the next track. And the one after that. And the one after that. I had listened to all of the tracks, before I knew it.

And the evident permeance of quality, of substance, carried on throughout the whole album.

It had exactly the type of lyricism I'd expect a Grammy-worthy album to have. It had exactly the amount of artistry I expected a Grammy-worthy album to have.

Even better, it had all the ingredients I expected a timeless album to have.

The poetry Taylor Swift fans insist hides in her discography, I found in plain sight within Kendrick Lamar's.

After meticulously reading the lyrics, I watched video essay after video essay, searched for analysis after analysis on this album, each time understanding the meanings behind it a little better.

Needless to say that the Grammy's are rigged and I love Kendrick Lamar.

Hip-hop is gorgeous.

[headspace-hotel]

I think a critical flaw in the vegan’s user’s argument was that they clearly buckled down on how capitalist exploitation and overproduction factors into milk and meat markets… and then seemed to assume that vegan diets avoid capitalist pitfalls completely.

But you’ve already posted on your blog before about how crop production under capitalism has created huge environmental issues in terms of biodiversity, depletion of topsoil, and sustainability. Meaning even a non-animal diet can (especially on the scale necessary for every human being currently in existence) still create large-scale issues if that diet demands having specific foods in abundance to avoid eating meat.

Like, I’m sympathetic to what vegans want to do, it just feels like they’re ignoring a MASSIVE number of pressing logistical and environmental issues to push that agenda. There’s several intersecting problems here, and claiming humanity as a whole is poised to chuck eating animals completely seems to be jumping the gun.

This is basically exactly what I hope to convey to people. I feel like extremely pressing issues such as topsoil loss, pesticide and herbicide use, and pollution caused by nitrogen fertilizers, not to mention the severe biodiversity impacts of monoculture, are being disregarded in favor of a very simplistic "Meat is killing the Earth" argument.

And I think the "veganism to save the earth" idea is just...distracting, as a movement. I'm glad people are motivated to do it. I don't think it's bad. But we need people to take action beyond just Buy Product. Anyone telling you that the most important action you can take is Buy Different Product does not have your best interest, or the planet's best interest, in mind.

If you're eating a plant based diet, but your only relationship with your food is Buy Product, you are still alienated from the source of your food. You still don't know, and can't respect or care for, the ecosystem or the labor that gives it to you.

My agenda is far more along the lines of "society needs to be organized so more people are directly involved in growing food that feeds their community" than anything to do with animals, but it's clear to everyone who has studied it for 2 seconds that farming needs to change hugely and it's so, so much more complicated than "farming animals is bad, farming plants is good."

Also the fact is that veganism cuts you off from sources of nutrients that have been part of virtually every human society ever, a LOT of people have disabilities, allergies or nutrient absorption issues that mean going vegan isn't possible for them, and people who try to argue with me about this simply Stop knowing how to read when this is brought up. "Some people need animal protein to live" is a reality of the world but people who don't like this straight up refuse to consider it.

I have no food allergies or sensitivities, and I still struggle to eat enough food to live. I lost thirty fucking pounds in college because of stress, the dining hall being shit, and my roommate trying to control my eating habits (long story). Thats like...well over 1/5 of my body weight. Sometimes people Cannot restrict their diet safely.

Like, sure, I 85% agree with the vegans who like to comment on my posts, but the remaining 15% of things they say is completely insane.

And some of them are so out of touch with reality that they will swear up and down that it's impossible for humans to drink milk without someone having to murder a baby animal. They seem to think farming is exclusively some kind of horror show that happens in a warehouse somewhere, and don't understand the concept that "some people live in rural areas" or "it's not uncommon in some places to just keep a few dairy goats that provide milk for your family."

And if they admit this exists, it's like "well, that's not where your dairy comes from, because the INDUSTRY—" thats. that's my point, you can get milk from a farmer who keeps a small herd that is well treated, we should start doing this actually, you can even keep your OWN goat

my ideal world involves "backyard chickens and goats are legal in suburban areas where there's space" because there's literally nothing innately unethical about keeping a couple dairy goats or healthy heritage breed chickens and you can quote me on that and you can even fight me.

That one person (the one who kept bringing up eating poop) (Lord what a sentence to have to write) eventually turned to "Well those sources are wrong because governmental organizations want you to keep eating animal products" which is already well into "conspiracy theory" territory. No thanks.

[charles-leclerc-official]

Hello, um so maybe, this question is stupid, but how do we know which is the fastest car (as in constructor, not driver) for each race? Like, I've seen a lot of people say: "Oh, X won here when Z had the fastest car" and they show a win by a big margin. So.. isn't the car that wins the fastest, especially when the margin is big? Like, I get that the driver is the one making the difference, but a driver cannot singlehandedly build a huge gap between P1 and 2 just based on skill. So how so we know which constructor is fastest each weekend? For example McLaren didn't qualify amazingly here, but people are still saying they are the fastest car.

This is a trickier topic than it seems. It does seem logical that the fastest car would always win. And yes, it is common for the fastest car to win. However races are won by cars that are the 2nd, 3rd and even 4th fastest. Championships have been won by cars that were not strictly the fastest. The human element does play a role there at the front. As well as other circumstances(luck car setup etc)

We know the fastest car from looking at the data. This comes from free practice and also the broad data set gathered from a race. It's been pretty clear each weekend looking at the qualifying data, mini sectors and free practice data that Mclaren are fastest. Commentary and analysts are going off of what the data show the best outcome might be. A team and driver can and do fall short of that. But looking at the data we can estimate which car is likely able to put together the best lap.

A race result is different just because there are a lot of factors that can lead to a wide gap to the leader. And not all have to do with the car being the fastest (sometimes yes it's because the car is the fastest) We've seen a lot of them this year.

There are a lot of reasons a driver might have a big gap to the rest and it's not always because of the speed of the car or even the skill of the driver. A big offset on tyres is sometimes a factor. We've seen wins by a big margin simply because the car in front was on much newer tyres. That of course comes down to team strategy etc with that(as well as luck again, safety car timing etc)

We also saw this in Canada where Lando did have a pretty good gap he built, and I think that was due to conditions more than anything, for whatever reason the early conditions in Canada really suited Lando in that car. Later on in the race he was not able to pull the same pace. So things can change during a race based on conditions as well. (in Canada Mclaren might not have been fastest arguably, but my point is more how conditions impacted pace there for him)

We have seen the fastest car this year stuck in the middle of the pack because the driver couldn't overtake. So a fast car is only one part of the equation.

It's hard to judge sometimes the fastest car each weekend. The Mclaren does seem to be the fastest car across most tracks. A lackluster qualifying can come down to car setup, conditions and of course driver error/skill. Sometimes they just don't put together a good lap.

Overall we know that right now the Mclaren is the fastest car. It may not seem that way as the team and drivers have been struggling to actually capitalize on that.

Tyre management also plays a role. You can have the fastest car but if you eat your tyres you will lose to a driver that has been managing their tyres better and is capable of building a gap at the end because of that.

Another example would be Monaco. Looking at the data Mclaren were looking like they had the ability to put together a much faster lap than Ferrari. Monaco is a heavily skill based track so they lost out to better laps set by Charles. And then in the race Charles won by that margin at the end because he had managed his tyres significantly better than Oscar. Now he also had the benefit of clean air. But again, you can see that a faster car can get stuck behind a slightly slower car after a less than perfect qualifying, and then if the car ahead manages tyres better and reaps the benefits of clean air they can win by a pretty big gap.

You don't need the fastest car to win. There are skills and strategy that play a pretty significant role in that as well. Good pit timing can really create a good gap, as well as tyre management.

Another thing is that a team can have what is broadly the fastest car, and just have a bad weekend, or one race doesn't suit them in their strategy or car. That doesn't mean they don't overall have the fastest car, but it might not have been that weekend. Which is why sometimes you will see people talking like that. For example. Red Bull had the fastest car in 2023 no question. Did they have the fastest car in Singapore? No. But that doesn't mean they weren't consistently in the fastest car, it was just that one weekend.

There are a lot more situational factors that can go into a car that isn't the fastest winning by a good margin. These are just some brief examples. And yes we could dig into the data and context for every single one I listed above, but in the interest of time I think this serves as a pretty good overview, hopefully.

[perenial]

gene im so glad you said this cause I haven't seen anyone else comparing it to the book as source material for like character and tone but i am So sure that if terry was alive the season would not be like this but i fear good omens fans dont realise how big a factor the lack of terry's influence is?? or like they forget that good omens was never just neilman???

ok before i go any further: i rly don't want to detract from anyone's enjoyment of the season and everything im going to say comes from a place of love for a) the original novel (& season 1 to a certain extent bc it got me back into it lol) and b) tv as a medium so like peace and love on planet let people enjoy things etc etc

but

like u said, terry's influence on the book was enormous – what makes gomens gomens is the balance of his genuine warmth and precise understanding of humanity tempered with neilman's sardonic voice and general like.....savvy approach to storytelling? i guess u could call it? anyway what rly helps the book is that it took them years to write it, passing ideas back and forth and rewriting each other's work until their voices blended seamlessly and a well structured capital-s Story was created. when i praise the book for being self-contained i think a huge part of that comes from the circumstances in which it emerged: two authors with complementary styles writing in a v particular time period where they had both the space to play with their ideas and the constraints of the novel as a storytelling format from which to craft something extremely specific.

adaptations are a tricky business and a tv version of gomens produced literal decades after the book was always going to have some unique challenges, but i don't think that's a bad thing bc the challenges could prove to be creative opportunities to take both the established audience and those new to the story by surprise. my biggest hot take here is that i don't think translating a story into a different medium means it has to follow the original narrative exactly, bc each medium has its own ways of communicating information and these structures, rules and traditions in turn inform what that story is. what matters more than following a story beat-by-beat is capturing what that story is about at its core, what themes and messages and ideas it works through and how.

all this is to say i never expected tv gomens to be a perfect reproduction of the book and if it had it been, it probably would have been worse off for it. that being said, there are parts of the book – like u said, its tone and character – that needed to have some fidelity in order to pull it off, and for the most part s1 did that bc it was still working predominantly within the bounds of the novel & its core ideas. while i did have some issues w how neilman & amazon adapted some details and characterisations, i generally rly liked s1 – it reminded me of why i loved the book and it was just generally fun to watch.

s2 was. not that fun to watch

a few positives before i go ham w the critiques:

the hair & makeup + costumes were fantastic (although i feel like s1 was slightly better re: makeup?)

the sound design & score made some of the more awkward scenes bearable and thats no mean feat imo

david & michael gave incredible performances w what they were given – michael especially managed to salvage aziraphale enough that his complete 180 didnt feel completely tonally dissonant (more on this later)

the detail of the sets is NUTS and i genuinely want to see more of hell bc of how intricate and fun the props look

i actually like gabriel/beelzebub!! their getting together montage worked for me, although they could have spent sliiiightly more time establishing what it is they like abt each other so much + why gabriel wanted to stop armageddon 2.0 so suddenly

the opening scene, although not on par w the novel's & s1's, was visually gorgeous and thematically resonant (although neilman owes me royalties for ripping it off from this shitty fic i wrote back when raphael!crowley was all the rage lol)

now w THAT being said:

like i said yesterday, the pacing was fucking awful. flashbacks are hard to work w at the best of times and the way they were used in this season felt so needless, especially the 40s one in ep 4 that takes up like 90% of the episode. in both flashbacks + present day there were scenes that dragged for no real reason, dialogue that looped back around on itself to stretch out the runtime, and weirdly enough places where there should have been character & plot work where there just,, wasn't any?? for example, maggie & nina's night locked in the café – some parts of the dialogue in later episodes made out that they'd had some rly deep conversation abt how they feel about each other or even that they'd had an affair, but that isn't clear from those scenes in the café. i'm not saying we had to see that conversation in its entirety but that there needed to be more connective details – either in dialogue or direction – that gave that part of the story coherence.

(there were pacing issues w the editing too but i don't want to jump down the editor's throats on this one bc im more focused on writing & direction issues)

the second major problem that i mentioned in my tags yesterday is the protagonist shift, which is an issue that started in s1. aziraphale & crowley are side characters in book gomens – significant ones, yeah, but still somewhat peripheral to adam (& anathema who counts as a deuteragonist imo). this works incredibly well w who they are as characters: they're Just Some Guys who happen to be involved in this epic biblical-level bureaucratic nightmare and importantly, they don't want to be in the spotlight. the arrangement was created so that they could explore what it meant to be themselves away from the Big Narrative; literally any time they get involved in larger affairs is bc the plot is alive and caught them unionising on company time. the last fucking chapter is adam (& god) being like haha u guys are alright keep it sleezy and letting them go. like. hello. neil u let them go.

but then!! tv gomens s1 does something interesting at the end w the body swapping addition that i dont totally hate – it gives aziraphale & crowley the extra bit of character work that brings them slightly more adjacent to their book selves. see i kinda view tv a/c as the younger, less settled versions of book a/c; they're still caught up in the immediacy of being key players and haven't fully realised that earth is their home. i haven't watched s1 in a while but one scene i remember rly clearly is crowley throwing all those astronomy texts in the air and angsting abt when he was an angel; i remember it bc his anguish in that scene feels a lot newer and rawer than book crowley's feelings about falling. when tv a/c do their bodyswap, it gives them the chance to land a blow against heaven/hell in a way that solidifies their allegiance to earth in a way that more closely resembles what book a/c have been abt the entire time (still adjacent, though. not parallel).

the reason why this works is that it does one final pivot to orient aziraphale and crowley as almost-main characters in a manner that makes sense in relation to a) their book selves and b) the position the tv show has placed them in. a combination of factors made tv a/c feel a lot less mature than their book counterparts but at the end of s1 they're sort of facing the same direction the book ended in, albeit through their own flashy late 2010s means.

when s2 was announced i was.......apprehensive bc to me, that felt like a satisfactory ending. i get the impression that amazon saw how wildly successful the adaptation was and was like oh shit we could make way more money out of this and neilman, having all those undead darlings that he and terry killed in the process of whittling the book into a workable novel, jumped at the chance to resurrect all those half-realised ideas. but not only were those ideas probably discarded for a reason, they've either been laying in wait for years unworked or they're new inventions, which means they weren't molded in the way that the book had been. like i said before, book gomens underwent years of rewrites and creative collaboration, and i think that process was what made it so good; s2 didn't have that. even if some of terry's ideas made it into s2, his influence is still missing bc he and neilman weren't in dialogue the same way they were in the book (and in some ways s1 bc i know terry was involved in the process of adapting gomens to screen before his death).

i don't think it's a case of newer fans forgetting terry so much as it is the context of terry's involvement being so removed from the current circumstances that certain aspects & discourses (i.e. is the s2 finale queerbaiting (no), does binge watching change the viewership experience (yes), etc etc) about the show overshadow other discussions that would usually be taking place. and before anyone says it's a case of neilman forgetting terry, i definitely don't think it's that either bc thats. yknow. wildly disrespectful. but also there are larger systems and structures at play than one writer no matter how much beef i have w him and his decisions, bc ultimately he's just one guy (a powerful and wealthy guy, but just a guy) and there's a wider cultural shift happening rn towards rehashing old stories without understanding what made them successful in the first place, and that same culture just doesn't allow for much, if any, constructive discourse analysis

so yeah

[tomorrowusa]

Some people in the West believe Putin's propaganda about Russia's overwhelming strength. Though if you do a simple reality check, you'll notice that Russia's "3-day special operation" in Ukraine is now in Day 870.

Yekaterina Shulman used to work as a consultant to the Russian government. She left Russia soon after Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Here are some excerpts from an interview she gave to RFE/RL.

I’ve called Russia a “bureaucratic autocracy.” It’s a personalist autocracy in strict political science classification. We don't have a ruling party like party autocracies. Russia is not run by a military junta like military autocracies. We don't have an established succession mechanism that monarchies have. So we’re a personalist autocracy: Power is concentrated in the hands of the leader and his immediate surrounding. However, we’re a big country that can't be run by a president and his five friends [alone]. [ ... ] The Russian state has never paid that much money to its people for anything -- for their work, for their life, for their death, for whatever. The idea that Russia is a country of limitless resources is a propaganda picture. But the strange thing, and it is so strange that we can't realize it, is this: It has always been the case in Russia's history that people are abundant but money is scarce. Hard currency, gold, or foreign currency have value; people have no value whatsoever. “We have as much [human capital] as we need.” Now it's the other way around. I can't adequately explain to you, I can’t even explain to myself what a gamechanger it is. They don't understand it themselves, because they've never seen anything like this. [ ... ] [W]e don't have enough Russians. We have more money than we know what to do with, but we don't have the people -- either on the front lines or back home. We have a huge labor deficit, and very slowly there comes a realization that you can't pay 1.25 million rubles to a person who in two weeks’ time will be killed in a senseless “meat grinder,” as the expression goes. The army management doesn't understand this yet. The political leadership doesn't understand it yet but is slowly beginning to realize it. I don't know what the implications will be; I can only tell you as a social scientist that it's a huge change. [ ... ] Whatever factor we take -- be it the labor crisis that I mentioned, the demographic situation, the economic imbalances, the aging of personalist rule, the infighting of the clans, where now everyone has a little private army of their own -- each and every one of these factors and all of them in combination are factors of long-term decline. As a Russian citizen, as a Russian educator, I get no pleasure at all in saying this. The question that I get is whether this or that event or occurrence or tendency will, in stark terms, upset Putin or defeat Russia; and the answer is no, not immediately. But none of them will go away. It will be a country with an aging society, with a disbalanced economy, with an incompetent leadership, and these are the factors of inevitable decline. It’s very bad. It's bad for the country; it's bad for the continent.

Russian rulers dating back to the tsars have regarded their large populations of poor people as cannon fodder to be used in wars when needed. This has sometimes compensated for corrupt and incompetent military leadership. But Russia is running out of troops to send on "meat wave" attacks in Ukraine. And hundreds of thousands of tech savvy young people have already left the country since the war began. Russia is experiencing a self-inflicted demographic wound.

Putin has to rely on technology from China and arms manufacturers in North Korea to keep his war going. Out of frustration he's bombing children's hospitals and apartment buildings in Ukraine. Terrorism is his only response to a deteriorating situation.

Russia may look real big on maps but in economic terms, it has a GDP similar to that of Italy.

Narcissism is a common trait among dictators. This war is driven by Putin's nostalgic desire to bring back the USSR of his youth in all but name. He wishes to be the Peter the Great of the 21st century. This is essentially the War of Putin's Ego. But all the bluster of Putin, his propaganda machine, and his Western lickspittles can't indefinitely mask the precarious nature of contemporary Russia.

[redpenship]

How do you think the Restoration operates? Or rather, what kind of society you think the mobians live in?

For example, do you think they’re anarcho-capitalist (the Restoration works like an insurance company)? Anarcho-communist (the Restoration works by people just volunteering to work together for the common good)? Both? Or something else?

How do mayors factor into all of this? Do you think the mobian territories are just a collection of democratic city states?

I think the anarcho-communist label works better, mostly because I really like the idea of Mobians living in a moneyless society. Admittedly, this HC was based on a misunderstanding of the "no money" rule mandated by Sonic Team to comic/game writers, but I think it's more fun to imagine them as just not having any money period. Although, this only works by ignoring huge sections of canon, such as the Chaotix and the fact that the islands appear to have major urban areas, which tend to only exist when a surplus of capital has accumulated in a specific region. Anyways, I hate monetary theory and it has consistently been the least interesting political subject to read/write about, so I'm going to end that here.

Without money, how do you motivate a society to function? How do you end up with an organization like the Restoration? The answer is SOCIAL PRESSURE. Pretty much all values are learned, including the "every man for himself" variety of individualism that makes it hard to convince people to help others for nothing in return. Which means the opposite is possible, too. A functional anarcho-communist society, assuming they are collectivist, would be very good at making its people feel obligated towards helping the community as long as it is within their means. If we assume Mobians live in this type of society, then it would make sense that the Restoration would mostly be run by volunteers, especially if they felt an imperative to help victims of Eggman's schemes. So, in this case, your second explanation fits a bit better.

You can probably consider the islands to have a government/civil organization SIMILAR to democratic city states, although I tend to think they don't have a state at all. Hence where the "social pressure" part of the compulsion to contribute to society comes in.

As for the mayors, I'm not suuuuuper sure. Jewel being the "head" of the Restoration tells me that Mobians aren't entirely allergic to hierarchy, but whether or not Jewel can unilaterally impose her will over others due to her position is yet to be seen (I think). So that one is still up in the air a little for me. A mayor could exist to handle disputes, or more specifically have a specialized role where their job is moreso to see the big picture of the town and make sure everyone is being taken care of.

ty for the question!! sorry if this was a bit rambly, and i hope its a decent enough answer haha

[captainjonnitkessler]

There's a certain segment of leftists that believe that, without capitalism, everyone would be naturally motivated to build things safely and to code. They believe this because the only reason they can think of for having code officers and regulatory enforcement is to stop evil capitalists from cutting corners to make more money. And while that is a contributing factor some of the time, we don't actually live in an episode of Captain Planet and what actually happens is that the people designing the space go "ooh, this would be so much pretty if we designed it like this instead!" and it turns out that their prettier option is not ADA compliant, not NFPA compliant, and a energy-sucking ventilation nightmare.

I was actually just about to make a post along these lines. Like yes, corporations cutting corners to save money and foremen forcing people to work unsafely to be more productive are huge issues and the primary reason for labor laws. But also . . . have you ever tried getting a construction worker to wear a hard hat if safety isn't right there watching him?

Like, pretty much everyone will cut corners or ignore safety guidelines here and there, and not out of greed or maliciousness. It's just because it's faster and easier and it's really, really easy to think "oh I'll just do it real quick, it'll be fine". Or for over-confident people to think "I don't need to look up how to do this, I know how it works", or for someone to just plain be wrong about how they interpreted something. Or to use the wrong part for something because there's a 99% chance it'll be fine and getting the right part will cost a thousand dollars and won't be here for eight weeks.

Basically any system that just relies on humans always doing everything perfectly by the book just because that's the right way to do it is doomed to failure. THAT'S why we have regulatory agencies and require things like permits and inspections - to disincentivize people from taking those shortcuts. It's my biggest problem with a lot of leftist visions of the perfect society - they rely on people not acting like people anymore, and that's just never going to happen.

[softpine]

can you explain what happened like i'm 5? i may be stupid

noooo you're not, i feel like you're just the only person brave enough to ask fjksjds there's a LOT going on here so i don't mind explaining at all!!

first i'll explain what happened from griffin's point of view on february 3rd, 1982…. he's been saving money up without his parents knowing, because he plans to run away in the next few months. on this day, his mom finds the money and realizes that griffin wants to leave. she becomes inconsolable and tells richard about the money. he thinks griffin stole the money from him (which is ridiculous because we know griffin JUST bailed him out of jail with money richard didn't have; he could've just left him there), and a large argument ensues. his dad hits him, his mom is throwing things around and falling to the floor crying, it's just a huge mess. lucy throws a plate and it shatters on griffin's face. this is the last straw for him. he just can't take it anymore. he grabs the gun they keep in the pantry, knowing his parents always keep it loaded for home security (more on that later). he points it at his dad and warns him to step back, but richard outright laughs at him and keeps approaching him. griffin THINKS he racks the gun, but, being a kid in an insanely stressful situation, he didn't apply enough force to pull it all the way back, meaning there's no round in the chamber, so when he pulls the trigger (and he does actually pull the trigger) the gun does not go off. at that point, richard yanks it out of his hands and threatens to kill him if he ever tries something like that again, but griffin wouldn't have tried again – he was horrified at his own behavior. this is the major turning point in griffin's life and it's one of the biggest factors in causing his death.

(side note, in the universe where we saw griffin as an inmate, that was the incident that first landed him in jail -- in that universe, he pulled the slide just a little more forcefully, and he killed his dad. but he was only 12, and the abuse he suffered was an additional consideration, so he spent most of his time in a psychiatric hospital until he aged out. he committed more crimes later on though.)

(side SIDE note, this is why in the 90s verse griffin was warned to never touch his dad's shotgun again, which he did not listen to, meaning this event still took place for him.)

okay, so now here's what happened from finn's point of view (as in ghost finn, our finn, asa's finn, you know the one): this is one of the worst moments of finn's entire life, and just thinking about it makes him feel furious. anytime he needs to draw strength from his emotions, he revisits this memory to make himself angry. he successfully used this incident to save asa's life many years ago, and it's implied that he did the same thing to get himself out of the nowhere many years before that. so, naturally, when finn got separated from asa, his first idea was to revisit this memory to fuel his anger. only, it didn't work this time. this time, he doesn't feel angry, he feels sad and ashamed because this isn't who he is anymore. he finds himself trapped in an endless loop, forced to watch it happen over and over again. he starts thinking that this is Hell with a capital H, an eternal punishment for what he's done. when he sees asa, he's horrified because he thinks it means asa has died and gone to Hell -- something finn can't even fathom.

okay, now from ASA'S perspective…. we find out that he knew about this incident all along. he heard and saw everything that finn begged him not to. all this time, he's been reassuring finn that he's a good person, deserving of love, that he was just a kid and he's allowed to find happiness, etc. all along, he knew that finn had pulled the trigger intending to kill his father. yet he still believed every word he said. he still believes finn is inherently good. asa would have taken this to the grave if he could; he thought it would only cause finn more pain to know that asa knows.

asa truly believes that this incident is just a memory, so he tries to prove it by attempting to interact with the memory, but he's caught off guard when richard, lucy, and griffin actually see him. they're all so shocked by this supposed home intruder that they fall silent, something finn knows is not normal for this memory, so he gets up to find asa. richard has the gun now because he'd ripped it out of griffin's hands. asa thinks the gun is empty because he knows griffin pulled the trigger and it didn't go off, but finn obviously knows the truth: it would only take a few seconds to fire. he also knows that this is the exact reason his dad bought the gun in the first place, for home defense in the event of a break in (to be fair, this is not that implausible considering the company their family kept at this point) so richard is 100% prepared to use deadly force against asa, who he thinks just broke into his house.

bonus: finn's reaction makes me really sad. we've SEEN the lengths he'll go to to protect asa in the past... but when it comes to his father, he mostly freezes up. he's even physically hiding behind asa :(

[avelera]

Andor brings the importance of money and economic systems back to mainstream sci-fi/fantasy

So fun fact, one reason I love "Andor" so much is that they have money in it.

Right off the bat, in episode 1, they start establishing that things cost money in this sci-fi industrial town where we find ourselves. People have jobs. There are things people can't do because they have money. There's things that even people with money, like Mon Mothma, can't afford because money isn't infinite and it requires logistics to move around. There are haves and have-nots in this society and the Rebellion will sink or swim based on if it can pay its people and purchase equipment. One of the first major arcs is a bank heist.

Ok, so why is this so huge? Shouldn't it be obvious that money makes the world go 'round, even in a sci-fi setting like Star Wars?

Well, here's the thing. Think about all the Disney-owned movies you've seen. How many of them talk about money in any kind of concrete terms? It does happen, but it's quite rare and it's almost never to the extent that money matters in "Andor". A character might have "rich" or "poor" as a character trait, but economic systems are rarely discussed, why certain people do or don't have money isn't discussed.

This is for a very good reason. Back in the mid 20th c., entertainment companies like Disney made a conscious choice not to talk about economic systems in their stories. Why? Because to do so forced the story to take a stance in the existential battle between Capitalism vs. Communism. Even seemingly innocuous story choices like the injustices a poor kid might face in a story could be seen as taking a stance, not something you wanted to invite with things like the Red Scare going on.

But it's really a shame that this choice, which was in response to the political conflicts of the time, has been so perpetuated and that companies like Disney still avoid the concretes of money in most of their works. And that warps the conversation within those works and within society at large as a result. More often in mainstream genre fiction stories as a result, stories must play to fantastical elements and undefined Good vs. Evil to explain why a conflict is taking place between two sides. Certain "So what?" factors and plot elements don't quite line up. Money and resources are at the heart of most real world major conflicts, but by focusing on "good" and "evil" instead you obfuscate the interests involved, the motivations involved, what everyone is getting out of a conflict when they choose to help or not to help. You can't feed yourself on idealism alone.

By leaning into the existence of money, resources, and the haves-and-have-nots of a society, Andor is able to couch its story of revolution in real world limitations for the characters and real world obstacles. It makes everything deeper, more satisfying, more understandable as to why anyone is doing anything. It's hard to talk about fighting a fascist state like the Empire if you don't talk about complicit corporations, or forced labor (because even the Empire can't afford to pay for the sheer amount of labor it needs otherwise) or how everyone on the Rebellion side can afford these fancy X-Wings.

I hope shows like Andor will be taken to heart, not just by more mainstream works of genre fiction using the inherent conflicts that arise from a defined economic system, but also by younger creators who may have grown up on a steady genre fiction diet of "money only sort of exists when it's needed for the plot, if at all". So much worldbuilding is impossible if you don't understand who has resources and what economic systems are being employed. So much character conflict is shallow if you can't define who has money, who has resources, and who has obstacles from not having a limitless supply of those things, and what are those obstacles?

It's super refreshing to see and I will reiterate, Andor is perhaps the best show out there right now from a writer perspective and everyone should watch it.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Biotechnology and the future of humanity

Animals Are Commodities Too

Under slavery human individuals are owned, are property. Under capitalism workers aren’t owned but they have to sell their labour/time/creativity because capitalists own everything (land, the means of production, transport and communication etc) that would enable people to live outside of wage labour and the market place. Now, instead of individuals owning non-human animals as part of their subsistence, corporations are claiming the right to ‘own’ whole species of animals. This process of patenting life can be traced back to the 1980 US Supreme Court ruling, which stated that a GM bacterium (modified to digest oil) could be patented. Not just that one bacterium of course but the whole, created species. In 1985 the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled that GM plants, seeds and plant tissues could be patented. Now the corporations can demand royalties and licence payments every time farmers use those plants or seeds. Monsanto holds a patent on (i.e. owns and rents out) all GM cotton and soya. Patents have been granted on biological characteristics of plants as well. For example, a patent has been issued to Sungene for a variety of sunflower that has a high oleic acid content. But the patent covers the characteristic as well as the genes that code for it, so any plant breeder who achieves the same result by traditional methods could be sued.

In 1987 animals joined the biotech market place when a Harvard biologist patented ‘oncomouse’, a GM organism (mouse) predisposed to develop cancer for use in medical ‘research’. By 1997 40 GM ‘species’ of animal had been patented, including turkey, nematodes, mice and rabbits. Hundreds of other patents are pending on pigs, cows, fish, sheep and monkeys among others. In 1976 a leukaemia patient named John Moore had his cancerous spleen removed under surgery at the University of California. Without his knowledge or consent some of the cells from his spleen were cultured and found to produce a protein which could be used in the manufacture of anti-cancer drugs. The estimated value of this cell-line to the pharmaceutical industry is $3 billion. In 1984 the California Supreme Court ruled that he was not entitled to any of these profits.

A US company called Biocyte holds a patent on (owns) all umbilical cord cells. Systemix Inc has a patent on (owns) all human bone marrow stem cells, these being the progenitors of all cells in the blood. The worldwide market for cell lines and tissue cultures was estimated to be worth $426.7 million to the corporations in 1996. Not only cells but also fragments of DNA can be patented (owned) in this way. Incyte, for example, has applied for patents on 1.2 million fragments of human DNA. The logic of this is that ‘genes for’ particular diseases such as cystic fibrosis, diabetes, various cancers etc could become the property of pharmaceutical companies who could then make huge profits on tests for such genes and genebased therapies. There is no space here to get into a lengthy criticism of the reductionist idea that individual genes simply map onto well-defined physical traits underlying the whole theory and practice of GM. It’s enough to say that research into patenting (owning), for example, a supposed’ breast cancer gene’ is of little benefit to humanity if it is true, as some scientists have estimated, that 90% of breast cancers are unrelated to genetics but are triggered by environmental pollution, diet and lifestyle factors. So what’s new? Capitalism, indeed class-society in general, always seizes the living and turns it into profit and power, declares ownership where previously there was only life: from the enclosure of the commons to the seizing of millions of human beings from Africa to be slaves to the current looting of tropical biodiversity for use in the biotech labs.

[devsgames]

Hey! Was just wondering, what are (in your opinion) the reasons for making games as a solo dev or small indie team in today's game industry / climate?

I read so much about how difficult it is and why you shouldn't (which is fair, to set expectations) -- but rarely hear the other side.

Hi! Thanks for the ask! 🙂

Prefacing with the obvious: the reason you hear so much about how difficult it is is usually because it's very difficult, and the redeeming parts don't often outweigh the hard parts. You'll usually have all the work on your plate that a regular dev would and then some. It also depends a lot on what exactly your team, context and personal work preferences are.

To your question: Maybe this is a hot take, but on the whole I'd argue there's not a huge difference between working with a smaller team and a big one because most of the problems in the game industry aren't a factor of team/studio/project size but rather the way the game industry works itself (and obligatory mention: capitalism). Those systems don't change much no matter how small the studio/team gets, so generally all the same pros and cons will exist independent of team size because they're all trying to work in the same patterns of constraints. Plus, small studios typically emulate industry-standard practices established by larger studios (tight turnaround times, hierarchical team structures, publisher deals etc), and that means they're usually subject to all the same issues even if they're a smaller team.

A tiny indie studio team can be a toxic cishet, white male dominated studio as easily a AAA studio (I'd argue this is often more likely to be the case), mismanagement is just as likely at a small scale, a worker can have to put in as much crunch work as a massive studio pushing for deadlines does, teams might be chronically undervalued and underpaid in both environments, small studios might operate off of exploiting the labour of outsourcing studio in the Global South, etc.

I think team/studio size most directly effects a person's relative workload to a project's scope, and isn't much of an indicator for stuff like team health, working practices, and the like - this makes a question of 'how are small teams better' hard to answer because...they're not better or worse. At least not implicitly.

I think also lots of little indies conflate "my team is like [x]" as "every indie team is like [x]", which is never true because it changes a lot depending on a lot of factors surrounding the team, studio, project and so on. You can have a AAA studio that meets many people's needs and is generally a healthy place to work, just as you can have a tiny studio rampantly full of horrible people who constantly want to kill each other. Point being, I think it's less dependent on size as it is patterns of operation. While small size might helps identify issues more readily, it doesn't guarantee improvement.

Anyway, just so I'm not saying "it depends", here is what I perceive as some pros you might encounter at smaller teams (others might not see all these as pros):

The reasons for making games is always the same - we like games/art and wanna make them. I think that's a good reason for creating any art at any scale!

Smaller team size often means less people to work on specific tasks, so your day to day will involve doing a wider array of things than it would while working in a huge studio where your role is hyper-specialized. As an LD on a small team I might be scripting, doing layouts, coding level systems, lighting passes, etc, where as on a large team I'd be working on the same level layout for 8 hours every day. Smaller teams give more opportunity to build cross-disciplinary skills like this.

You'll likely have more opportunities for creative input or for your voice to be heard as an individual in a small team as you'll be working more directly with directors and people in charge. Whether or not they are open to that input is a different story.

You'll get to know more people outside your own discipline, as opposed to just people you directly work with. You'll also know the people around you much more intimately than you would with a larger team.

Your lead (providing your team is large enough to have one) will (usually) have less people under them, which means more time to dedicate to your needs.

From my experience that's all the bigger stuff I can think of!

To speak to 'today's industry and climate' - I'm not sure of many advantages small teams hold there honestly. Unless you're entirely self-funded (most studios aren't) you're just as likely to get laid off or suddenly shut down by funding cuts on a small team as you would on a large team, so there's not much exceptionalism there. I think small teams struggle with marketing and fighting oversaturation even more, so they don't hold much ground on that front either.

For myself working solo, I hated feeling like a cog in a machine and just doing the same thing day after day. I like variety and being challenged, but hate work processes that are inefficient. I also have developed a lot of trauma from the industry (can you tell 😅) and over time have often found myself growing absolutely miserable working at every studio I've worked at in the past. I've found working alone has given me a happy medium that allows me to prioritize what I want to prioritize as well as make the things that I want to put out into the world, without being mismanaged or exploited into oblivion. That being said I still don't make rent, so I wouldn't say it's preferable to working at a studio for most people without a safety net or Plan B.

I do however think there are tangible and notable advantages to stability in structures which fundamentally challenge how the industry works, such as worker-owned structures (like co-ops) and the like. However, that's less a question of team size and more about how a studio operates foundationally in opposition to the way the industry pressures expect things to work.

Anyway, sorry this is a bit of a rant! I think small studios are good for more interpersonal relations between folks, but unfortunately I wouldn't say there's much that team size implicitly impacts outside of that.

[fenmere]

Kepekape, the home world of the Ktletaccete

(this was originally posted in a world building facebook group, but we think you might love reading about it here, too - and have feedback) OK, so. We're working on some world building that's a bit of a challenge for us.

It needs to fit some history we've already written into a series of nine novels. And it needs to serve the story we think we want to write.

We're going to ramble at you here and see if anyone likes our ideas, or has any suggestions or brainstorming to add. But also, we just want a place to write some of this down where someone can read it.

What we've got:

A fairly Earth-like world with life based on two kinds of XNA (it's not compatible with DNA, but works similarly to it). At some point in its past, there was alien contact with life that eventually evolved to be reasonably compatible with the indigenous life. So there are some surprising mixes of lifeforms.

There's been a lot of parallel evolution, so if humans were to visit, they'd see some understandable fundamentals, like vertebrates, arthropods, fish, etc.

The people are evolved from an amphibian-like ambush predator turned omnivorous. They still lay eggs and have a larval form (that looks a lot like a tadpole while still in the egg), and nymph form and adult forms after they hatch. When they reach adolescence, they go through a metamorphosis that is highly adaptable for their environment. To the point where they often look like multiple completely different species as adults.

Now that they've developed a civilization capable of creating a generational starship, their adolescent metamorphosis has become something they can sort of personally control, and neighboring children may grow up to be very different from each other. Personal special interests, economic status, gender roles, family dynamics, and all sorts of other factors of modern stress go into shaping their bodies. And medicine has reached a point where those that can afford it can purposefully induce desired traits.

Also, they're what we think of as hermaphroditic. They can change their functional sex at will, or sometimes the change is induced by stress. Occasionally, someone will end up with one set of dominant sex traits at adolescence and never change after that, even if they want to, but it's rare.

Their family structures are really different from humans, too. But we haven't quite nailed down HOW, yet. We just know that they're not what we think of as nuclear families. Child rearing is very different and fairly hands off. Adults make sure children are fed, but teaching and learning happens much more organically and communally. At least, for most of the countries on the planet. There are, of course, some outlying cultures that have different structures.

Something we want is no capitalism, in the strictest sense of the term, if we can get away with it. Basically, nothing like a stock market.

There are still big social and economic divides, including forms of exploitation. There is, after all, a global government at this point that has the power to focus a great deal of the planet's resources into making a truly huge spaceship for SOME reason. And not everyone is going to agree to that.

So, first big set of questions:

Do we go with some form of communism for the dominant economic structure?

Or is it really a dichotomy like that?

Could there be other forms of major economy besides these two axes that humans have been struggling with for the past couple hundred years?

There are fascism and dictatorship, of course, both of which can use either communism or capitalism for their economic structures. And certainly, there have been that kind of government on this planet, and likely still are. But we kind of want the dominant government to at least SEEM more egalitarian.

These people tend to highly value personal expression and the exploration of skills and arts, almost above all else. It's sort of an instinctual level drive. So whatever social structures they create, they'll at least cater to that drive, if not outright exploit it.

Cooperation and community are obviously important. Partly because we're limited enough that we can't imagine a starship building civilization without it. But also because we LIKE those traits.

One idea that comes to mind is to have an economy that is built on gifting. Where the person who gives the most away gets the most social power. This is not an original thought, though, and is based on what we learned about Pacific Northwest Indigenous cultures in college, so we're feeling a little cautious about that (both because we learned it from anthropologists not the people who've practiced it and because it's not our own culture).

Our goal is to show something that is different and alien SEEMING to most people who've grown up under capitalism or communism, to show that other models can be viable. But we're also very definitely showing that even when you're talking about aliens and other models of social structures, there can be major flaws such as exploitation and oppression.

But, we don't want to say, "See this idea here? This is worse than what we've got now."

We do think the rest of the series of novels does put it into a context that avoids that. But we're hesitant to use a model that's too close to something that's been oppressed here on Earth.

Anyway.

Maybe we could personalize it a bit more? Not gifts, so much as discoveries? The more that someone discovers, the more political, social, and economic power they're awarded?

So, you end up with a whole civilization of people who are trying to one up each other in their respective fields of study and craft.

Now.

Does this society need money?

It could certainly work by using something that is basically money. A note of genius, so to speak. But could it work without it?

Because money does seem to lend itself to stock markets, after all. And if we avoid money, then we avoid the stock market. Maybe we can lampshade it and just say there's no money, that's the way it is, and make it work regardless.

Though, we could just as easily say that there's money but no stock market.

Maybe the idea of a stock market is absolutely repugnant to these people. Basically, "You can't gamble with SCIENCE! And investing introduces bias!"

Hailing Scales. This implies their global government resembles the editorial review board of a scientific journal.

What think you?

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2023: #14 & #13

14. ESTONIA Alika - "Bridges" 8th place

Decade ranking: 40/116 [Above Circus Mircus, below TBA]

Tweak some bangs, Alika's Shart.

It is amazing how a few on-point tweaks can make a song significantly more appealing. I went up and down on Alika throughout the months, but a year after I've put her low on the pre-show ranking I am ready to lock in my final verdict: Bridges is kind of really good.

Ofc there were huge problems down the road cuz you know, vocal masturbation ballad in a BorisBubbles ranking, and also, clear jury carry the year after Marius Bear and Nadir Whatshisgjon, but Estonia ironed out their most glaring flaws, so what else can I ask for? I got what I wanted.

Estonia's problem for me, as I've come to realize once I started liking Alika again, was always one of aesthetics, and specifically visual aesthetics (keep that in mind when I rank Europapa low for the lack of bags-over-head (lol if I rank ESC2024 to begin with (I mean, I probably will (I am not readly to enter that discourse yet tho (regardless, that haircut is a capital offence))))). A big inherent flaw of vocal flex ballads like "Bridges" is the lack of dynamism and emotional gravitas (as the vocal technique goes against these principles - "loud" is a pitch, not an emotion) - it's a flaw that comes with the genre and that's something only charisma can fix. Pre-show Alika looked like she'd been dragged out of a river and then SHOUTED into a mic without moving, so yeah, that's where I bail. Slimane your way into someone else's simple and easily-impressed heart please, I Am Not The Demograph. (-- Alesia Michelle).

The version in Liverpool though was - by textbook definition almost - a glow-up. Alongside her Jenevelle hair, Estonia actually put Alika in a beautiful gown and made her move around. Observe:

NOW I SEE MAHSEEL BEELDING UP A WOALD OF BREEECHEEEEEEEEEES

Apparently a lot of people were mesmerized by the self-playing piano but for me the biggest factor in selling "Bridges" was just Alika herself. Props are nice embellishments but the true art of live performance is when score and vocal come together via the power of Personality. Which she finally showed in Liverpool after what felt like an eternity.

By allowing Alika to just do... idk, Alika things with her body lang, face and hands, Estonia broke the monotony of "three minutes of loudness" and made it fun, camp and digestible. If theres anything The Gays (me) like, it's a neat lady doing silly things with fierce confidence. Yasss Go Slay Queen.

Ultimately, a lot of people think Alika's top 10 is nonsense and a strike against juries and here I disagree. That a strong glow up and performance such as Alika's went unappreciated by the televote is a huge strike against the televote, not the other way around. I am happy she got her spot in the limelight, and 8th place is a good, if somewhat generous representation of what she brought. I'll never be a huge fan of the song "Bridges", but at the end of the day Alika really ate that live, and that's something worth rewarding.

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

13. POLAND Blanka - "Solo" 19nd place

Decade Ranking: 39/116 [Above Alika, below Stefan]

"ARIANA GRANDE IF ARIANA HAD NO TALENT" -- my immediate instinct when i first heard "Solo"

Were my instincts wrong, though? Her lack of performance skill and talent, the online response, the severed heads of Jann and Iru she keeps mounted on a pedestal in her boudoire. Blanka was the Mery Bass of 2023. She has no business being this good.

btw yes, lmao so hard that THIS ENTRY was somehow one of the more controversial ones in recent ESC. Honestly, the 13th place I'm giving here is at least half thanks to the controversy which made "Solo" feel iconic - it is exceedingly funny to me that it caused so much outrage for... existing? What did Blanka ever do? Certainly not rob better acts - Listen to Jann and listen to Iru and tell me straight-faced they were better.

BEJBA! IS KINDA KRAJZA!

As a song, "Solo" was always fun femmetrash. Ever since Eleni the majority of the Eurovision girlbops have been attempting to recreate Fuegos with varying successes - Competently staged with intricate choreographies to commemorate our inner faggotry. "Solo" represents a style of girlbop that's gone out of fashion - the "Aphrodisiac"-like basic bop by useless bitches for useless cigs. (Fuego is what gays see themselves as, Solo is what they actually are). Aphrodisiacs have become nearly extinct at Eurovision because they nearly always lose the NF nowadays. So thank you Jann for performing 'Gladiator' in Scooby-Doo vocals so that we could witness Bejba fullfill her beautiful destiny in Liverpool.

And what a destiny it was. In a way, most of the things I wrote about Alika also apply to Blanka. A few small tweaks to the performance can make the whole a lot better. Unlike Alika though, who ampted up the sophistication, Blanka went a route I respect more: She listened to fan feedback.

Slight paraphrasing:

Fans: "EWW BLANKA HAS NO TALENT, CAN'T DANCE, CAN'T SING, WON BASED ON MONEY!!!" Blanka: "... so? 🙂"

I don't know WHEN Blanka decided to be everything the fans accused her of (talentless, washed-up, plastic), amped up to comical levels, but thank fuck she did because it made her instantly epic. It is rare for a Eurovision artist to address her online haters by Now I Betta Troll'em, Troll'em, and Blanka as it turns out is masterfully skilled at trollery. She elevated it into an art.

The Cheap VFX <3

The badly performed wooden choreos <3

The Dutch angles <3

Doing the Eleftheria thing of having your backing vocalist sing over you, while you mug the camera with semi-fierce faces and placeholder hairflips.

Accused to having no performance skill or talent? Add in a cheap dance break anyway, and enjoy every second of it, live your dream while they fume on Twitter, angry that Poland qualified over Georgia.

Guess where I am, honey? 💋 I'm in the final. 💋 And I'm here to stay 💋 :dramatic cymball:

"Solo" was incompetent, plastic and a huge mess, and that was great because it was all deliberate. That made it epic. Poland really took all the negative criticism they received and yanked it up to 11 and it made the entry better. If that isn't a taunting flex in the face of toxicity, I don't know what is. Given how venomous the fandom has been since the pandemic, that is an approach to life I can totally get behind.

THE RANKING

AND WITH THAT WE MADE IT OUT OF THE MILD LIKE ZONE, HOO-fucking-RAY. Now bear in mind that the next few eliminees are very LOW lush greens and there's quite a few of those before we get to the really good stuff, but eh. Soon I'll be able to talk about the songs I loved, and that's always a treat.

[yellowocaballero]

Jake Stays Up Past His Bedtime, Meets His Contemporaries, and Wants a Dog So Fucking Bad

There was a stray dog in the all-night diner.

Jake had been in the bathroom during its dynamic entry, gone unnoticed except for the loud clangs and yells from the kitchen and weirdly wet mystery noises. Diners at three am could be surprisingly noisy places, especially in the City, so Jake hadn’t registered anything until he walked into the dining area in the secluded back of the diner to see an unamused Gena standing in the doorway and a ratty, slobbering dog crouched underneath a table.

“Just what I need,” Gena condemned. “More pests.”

So the 1970s saw a huge explosion in the popularity of horror movies, especially slashers and sci-fi horror. They were big swerves from 1960s B-movie and Atomic Age/Cold War sci-fi horror, and for probably the first time horror hit huge commercial success. Although the slasher/sci-fi horror movie genres would really take off in the 1980s, they were pretty damn popular in the 1970s among the 13-18yo teen boy demographic.

As it always does, Marvel sought to capitalize on this, and it quickly churned out a small batch of spooky sci-fi horror anti-heroes who were sooo cool, man. Over the top cool. Stupid cool. It was all very Hammer Horror - werewolves, demons, vampires, oh my. Yes, this includes Mobius. Now you know why Mobius exists. It also includes Moon Knight, who first appeared in Werewolf By Night as a werewolf hunter decked in silver - the werewolf component of this Hammer Horror lineup.

Yes. The superheroes in this cheap line up of overly cool and hip anti-heroes for teenage boys were all incredibly lame. I've been meaning to do a story with all of them for ages lol. Finally found a good excuse. Here it is.

That's some history for you. This is the second installment in my half-joke teen/mid alter Jake AU. Yes, only Jake is 15. Marc's life is awful. First part linked here. Very short 7k story under the cut. Hopefully it fucking works on dark mode...?!

There was a stray dog in the all-night diner.

Jake had been in the bathroom during its dynamic entry, gone unnoticed except for the loud clangs and yells from the kitchen and weirdly wet mystery noises. Diners at three am could be surprisingly noisy places, especially in the City, so Jake hadn’t registered anything until he walked into the dining area in the secluded back of the diner to see an unamused Gena standing in the doorway and a ratty, slobbering dog crouched underneath a table.

“Just what I need,” Gena condemned. “More pests.”

Jake craned his neck to peer over her head before realizing that the waitress was pretty short and he could see cleanly over the top of her headscarf. If he looked around the dining area he could see the usual suspects - cracked vinyl booths, faded sports team pennants tacked to the wall, a clock perpetually broken, that one creepy dude always conked out in the corner with an empty pot of coffee in front of him. And the dog. “Whoah. I ain’t never seen a dog like that.”

“New York City breeds them different,” Gena said grimly. Jake nodded, equally solemn. “I’ll call animal control. We don’t need fleas in the gyros.”

The dog did look like the dog equivalent of a New York subway rat. Its coat was dark and bushy, the tight curls smeared by mud and grime. Its proportions were spindly like a jackal’s or African wild dog’s (Jake had watched a documentary), but it was thick and muscular like the pittiest pit bull to ever pit bull. It looked like it bullied other pit bulls for their lunch money. It looked like it went on bodybuilding forums, for pit bulls. It was pretty ginormous too - easily the size of a Great Dane, maybe bigger.

It was the coolest dog Jake had ever seen. He needed to be friends with it. A dog like that upped the coolness factor of his human friends by ten.

“That dog is badass,” Jake announced. “Don’t call animal control, Ms. Gena. I’m gonna talk to ‘im.”

Gena whirled on him, cell already in her hand. “You will not. Look at it, it’s obviously rabid. You stay away from that dog.”

“He’s just scared!” The dog bared its teeth, growling like a revving chainsaw. “He just needs a kindred spirit. I can totally -”

“Nope. No way.” Gena lightly put her hand on the small of his back, pushing him away from the back dining area into the front.  “You sit down, I’ll bring you a fresh plate.”

“What about my Switch -”

“I’ll get it for you later. Come on, honey, let’s sit down.”

Jake sat down, somewhat mulishly. He always caved when Gena got all nice like that. It was mostly because she wasn’t nice to anybody else like that, so he had to respect the effort. And if you didn’t respect the effort then she busted out her unimpressed voice, which was how Jake discovered he was physically capable of feeling shame. 

Gena was most of the reason why Jake felt good about coming here without Marc or Steven or Layla, even at three in the morning. The others were always nagging Jake about fronting in a public ‘controlled environment’. If there was some sort of Mid parenting manual then Layla definitely read it. Working up to ‘hanging out with Layla in the house for more than an hour at a time in a non-emergency situation’ had taken months. They had picked the diner as Jake’s Outside Place, and Layla had come and sat with him a few times until he felt confident enough to do it on his own.

Nowadays Jake even told Marc and Steven to scram, ‘cause the diner was his place. It had Gena. She always sat Jake in the emptiest part of the diner, and she always had a question about his Animal Crossing island or Minecraft base. She was nice. She could also be super mean. And if you fucked around in her diner you always found out. She was gonna scare off that stray dog by her unimpressed voice alone.

Jake felt his dog friend dreams shatter like porcelain on cement. Gena would get super mad at him if he went back in there. She’d be even madder if he got himself mauled by the coolest dog ever. The dog was cool and Jake was immortal, so he wouldn’t mind a little mauling, but he just knew it would get Gina and her diner in trouble. Steven was always preaching about being considerate, so maybe this counted. Ugh. Jake hoped Steven never found out about this. He’d get so insufferable. His idea of a pet was a goldfish, what the fuck did he know.

Snarling sounds echoed from the back room. There were only three other patrons in the front - one drunk guy in his thirties with bright blonde hair and two very old men - and neither of them seemed concerned, so at least they wouldn’t have to worry about panicky civilians with no appreciation for dope animals. 

A howl broke through the diner, cracking the air. Somebody from the kitchen cursed loudly and passionately. Jake could hear the faint strains of Gena’s voice through the back rooms, arguing passionately with animal control. He caught some vague sounds of ‘of course it’s a dog -’ before a howl split the air again. The drunk guy looked around, checking if he should give a shit about this or not. Jake poked at his Wordle game. The drunk guy went back to his chili and the infinite ruminations of his drunk-ass soul.

Just a little too late, Jake realized that they were missing a civilian. 

Gena had totally ditched the creepy guy in the corner! The man was a regular! He and Jake always took up Most Secluded Spots #1 and #2. Unlike Jake, all he did was drink coffee and mooch off Gena’s space. She always ignored him, and sometimes yelled at him to get out of there. Jake had never heard him say a word. He wore a sick-ass trench coat and sunglasses everywhere too, like he was Neo or something. New York City sure had the subway rats of people sometimes. He could get mauled if he wanted, Jake didn’t care. 

But it might get Gena in trouble. Totally unacceptable.

She’d thank him in the long run. Jake bolted up from his seat, casually speed walking to the locked doors. The drunk guy squinted at him before shrugging and returning to his drink. Jake dug in his pocket for his lockpicks (Frenchie taught a lot of very useful life skills) and opened the door in seconds, cracking it open just enough so he could stick his head inside.

The dog was looking even unhappier. Jake noticed for the first time that patches of fur were singed off, and one of its ears was nicked. It was holding one of its legs strangely, and Jake wondered if the dog had gotten into a fight before fleeing and taking shelter in the diner.

That was worrying. Jake would really hate to meet whatever won against that thing in a fight. Maybe a human was bullying it? Jake would kill them. Nothing he hated more than animal abusers. Even that Harrow jerk had helped Jake out by murdering Marc and Steven so they could spring him from that stupid sarcophagus. And he had tried to cause the apocalypse.

The dog’s teeth were bared, slobber dripping from canines as long as Jake’s hand. Its eyes rolled to the back of its head, showing almost only red-streaked white, and its body was vibrating like a chainsaw. It could have been on the cover of a heavy metal album. So cool.

Less cool. The Neo Wannabe was, somehow, still asleep in his corner booth. Jake had no idea how that was even possible. Between the howling, growling, and Jake’s earnest overtures for friendship, something had to rouse him. Man slept like the dead. 

Nothing to do. Jake carefully slipped inside the room, keeping his eyes on the dog. Its ears were perked, and it carefully tracked Jake’s movements as he slid the door shut behind him with an almost inaudible click. 

“You don’t know we’re friends yet,” Jake whispered, “but we’re totally friends.” The dog was unimpressed, and Jake turned his attention to the zombie dude in the corner. “Hermano! Wake up! Rabid dog on the loose!”

The man did not move. The dog wriggled out from underneath the table - perhaps anxious for friendship, perhaps anxious to spread rabies. 

“Hermano!” Jake hissed. “Come on!” No response. What was he expecting from the dude who slept through that howling. He gave up on the stage whispers, settling instead for gesturing furiously at the door. “Dude, will you get out of here -”

The dog prowled forward, chest heaving with shuddering gasps. Jake froze, watching it limp forwards. Injured back leg. It was walking directly towards him. 

“Uh,” Jake said. 

“Don’t move,” the sleeping man in the corner said. 

Jake turned around, stepping closer to the sleeping man. “What was that -”

A snarl echoed in Jake’s ears, and the dog pounced. It leapt straight for Jake - or maybe to Jake’s left, at the slowly swinging doors. 

It never made it. Jake barely had a second to register the movement. Something metal flashed through the air, slicing through the apex of the dog’s jump and sending it tumbling towards the ground. It skidded across the floor, hitting the leg of a table and yelping, and Jake saw that the metal projectile had been a small sword. It was buried in the dog’s side, sliding slowly out of the wound as the dog wriggled and whined. 

The man walked forward towards Jake, a katana withdrawn from who the fuck knows where in one hand and his dumb jacket slung over the other. Jake hadn’t even seen him stand up, much less throw the sword.

“I said not to move.”

“Looks like you didn’t need the rescue,” Jake said blankly. The man tilted his chin in serene acceptance of the fact that he was, actually, a complete badass. “What are you, some mall ninja?”

“I vanquish prowlers of the night,” the man intoned. He looked towards the whining dog, adjusting his grip on the katana. It wasn’t sick. Katanas were for weebs. Jake was not a weeb. Liking Sailor Moon didn’t make you a weeb. “Such as that animal.”

“You hunt animals?” Jake asked, outraged. “Like that Kraven the Hunter asshole on TV?”

The man might have blinked. It was hard to tell behind the sunglasses. “I hunt monsters.”

“Monster? That’s a dog. You totally stabbed that poor dog. He wasn’t doing anything to you!”

“It was about to maul you,” the man said, tone finally bent in incredulity. “I was doing my job.”

“What’s that job, killing dogs!”

“Monster -”

The doors slammed open, and Jake jumped as the man blinked. Gena stormed inside, absolutely unsurprised to see either of them, and stopped short only at the very stabbed dog bleeding sluggishly on her tile floor. She surveyed the scene in grim appraisal, leaving Jake to anxiously fix his hat. 

“I was tryin’a rescue him,” Jake piped up. “You totally locked him in with the dog, Ms. Gina!”

“Guess I did, didn’t I.” Gena didn’t seem very bothered by this. Jake didn’t know why he was more worried about the reputation of her establishment than she was. She seemed more focused on the man instead, who was beginning to look uncomfortable. “And why didn’t you do anything ten minutes ago?”

“I was monitoring the situation,” the man said blandly. Gena looked like she wanted to kill him a little bit. More than customer levels, less than supply truck driver levels. Woman had enemies. “It is best practice to avoid aggravating them as much as possible.”

Gena crossed her arms, ‘impressed’ levels plummeting like a rocket on its way home. “So you figured you would just chill out.”

“I was avoiding aggravating it.” The man turned an eye on Jake. His expression and tone of voice didn’t change, but he seemed faintly disapproving. “You did not. You could have died.”

“It’s a dog,” Jake said, baffled and feeling a little condescended to. “Total beast mode dog but I think I can outrun a dog.” Never mind the Green Beret stuff. He was embarrassed to mention that most of the time. And Gena would really think he was lying. Oh, and never mind the fist of justice stuff too. 

“Is it not a dog?” Gena asked, equally baffled and slightly reproachful. “If you brought more of your crazy shit into my diner, Blade -”

“I had nothing to do with this.”

“Really? This isn’t a vampire dog?”

“You know those don’t exist.”

“I knew the vampire mafia didn’t exist until you told me that you needed to sleep on my couch for a week.”

“Can I hold your sword?” Jake asked hopefully. Katanas were totally cringe, but…katana.

“No.” Blade turned back to Gena, completely oblivious to how close to death he tread. “Do you have any silver on you? A blessed blade isn’t going to keep it down for long.”

Jake pointed at the much longer Western sword strapped across his back. How did the guy even sit. “Can I hold that -”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a blessed blade.”

“Are you some kind of Catholic or something?” Jake asked. “I don’t fuck with Catholics. Like, no offense.”

“Considering how you stole all of Nanny’s silver necklaces, I do not own any silver.” Gena shot a glance at the twitching dog on the floor. Sure enough, it was stirring. The sword - sorry, ‘blessed blade’ - was lying on the ground next to it in a small puddle of thick black ichor. Jake wondered if he could snatch it in the confusion. “It did survive you waving around one of your little swords. Maybe it is an evil dog. So can you make yourself useful for once and -”

“The dog’s evil?” Jake asked, crushed. “Ms. Gena, dogs can’t be evil. There’s no such thing as a bad dog, just a bad owner. Are you really gonna let your friend kill an innocent animal?”

“Not my friend,” Gena said. “I barely know him.” Jake stared at her blankly, and she sighed. “Blade’s a paranoid freak who only spends time in establishments where he knows the proprietor won’t sell out his location to the ‘vampire mafia’ or whatever.” The air quotes were palpable. “I still don’t think the vampire mafia’s real so I let him crash here when he’s recovering from his long path of justice or whatever.” Jake’s blank stare did not abate. “He’s my half-brother.”

Blade shifted uncomfortably. “You should not spread that around. I can’t afford for the Society to know my weak points.”

“Oh, I’m the weak link here?”

“An animal society?” Zoological Association of America, perhaps?  “What kind of messed up life are you living, hermano?”

“I’m a vampire hunter,” Blade stressed. “I cleanse the world of the night stalkers.”

“It’s still not a real job.”

“Why?” Jake asked, baffled. 

“Daddy issues,” Gena said. 

“Fuck you,” Blade said. 

A growl split the increasingly inane conversation, and Jake turned to see the dog stumbling to its feet. Its wound was half-closed, seeping blood, but as the dog growled and hissed the wound continued to seal itself shut. Blade drew up his sword, tightening his grip on the hilt, and he glanced backwards at the alert Gena and vaguely worried Jake. 

“I will take care of this,” he intoned. “You two get out of here.”

“You mean kill it?” Jake asked, voice accidentally pitching higher. “You can’t kill it! You can’t kill animals, that’s a rule.”

“Seeing as it is trying to kill us, I’ll rule it self defense,” Blade said dryly. He stepped in front of them, watching the dog stumble to its feet and snarl at them. “I recognize that look in its eyes. It won’t stop until we’re all dead.”

But Jake could only shake his head, strangely crushed, and Gena gently pulled both of them back towards the double doors.  “It’s not the dog’s fault it’s violent,” Jake said weakly. “Somebody else probably made it that way, you know…?”

Gena’s expression softened, and she reached up to squeeze Jake’s shoulder. He tried not to lean into the gesture. “I know, honey. It’s not fair. We’re going to do everything we can for the dog, alright? I won’t let Blade kill it.”

“I can’t.” Blade moved around the slowly rousing dog, silent footsteps brushing the tile. “With no silver I can’t kill it. We have to lock it back inside and evacuate the establishment.”

Gena cursed under her breath, squeezing Jake’s shoulder again before lightly pushing him back behind Blade. “Glad I got that Inexplicable Acts of God insurance now. Blade, you have to help me get Jake out.”

“Little busy,” Blade gritted out. The dog was fully upright now, eyes fixed back on Blade. It was panting even heavier, and Jake watched in fascination as the wound on its stomach completely finished sealing - leaving no memory of the mark but a patch of shaved skin. “Your friend’s a grown man, he can take care of himself.  I am more concerned about the darkness of -”

The dog sprinted forward, dodging Blade and making straight for the doors. Blade had clearly been expecting another aerial pounce, and he had to shift his balance and wrap another hand around the hilt, moving to stab it. His hesitation cost him - the dog dodged the strike and moved past him, jumping straight for Jake and Gena.

Jake wasn’t as fast as Blade, but he didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Gena and threw them both out of the way, taking the fall on the hard tile as the doors burst open. Blade cursed loudly, immediately running after it.

Thanks for checking up on them, Blade. They were doing fine, thank you so much. Jake let go of Gena, rolling his impacted shoulder with a slight grunt. Gena scrambled outwards, reaching out a hand and helping pull Jake to his feet. 

“That was not the first time you’d done that,” Gena said. Jake grunted, massaging his shoulder. Tingly. “Why didn’t you mention you were ripped?”

“It never came up?” Jake liked bulky clothing with a lot of layers. It was cozy. “Only assholes brag about that kind of stuff. Guys who carry katanas, you know. Cringelords.”

“I thought all you did was play video games,” Gena said frankly. God, he wished. Beating up on guys was fun and all, but beating up guys virtually was funner. You could stop for snack breaks. Or you could just put on Animal Crossing if you felt like it. “You’re okay too?” 

Jake nodded fastidiously, pointing at the doors. “Just fine, ma’am. Should I go help out Blade? He looks like he might need it.”

“He’ll be fine,” Gina said blithely. She eyed the double doors speculatively, already digging in her pocket for the key again. "We better stay away from all that nonsense and stay in here. I don’t want to walk into the middle of an exorcism or something.”

Jake couldn’t help but falter. “Uh, Ms. Gena. I don’t talk about this much with you, ‘cause it’s never that important or anything, but I could…you know, take care of that dog for you. Quick and easy too. If you let me, I can just -”

“No. There’s no need for that.” Gena’s expression was set firm and immovable, but Jake opened his mouth to protest anyway. “No. I’m certain you could help if necessary, Jake. But that’s what people like my shitty half-brother are here for. It was his choice to swear on the tomb of his vampire dad or whatever to protect people, so let him do his job.”

“But it’s my job too,” Jake said weakly.

But Gena just shook her head. “Whatever that job was, Jake, it’s messed you up enough for a lifetime. I won’t let it happen here too. Not in my diner.” She grabbed his hand, and Jake was shocked enough that he let her. “Now come on, I’m getting you out of here.”

Jake, of course, could get himself out of there just fine. But Gena didn’t seem to care about that.

He had suspected for a while that Gena knew something was off about him. She never said as much and he never made it obvious, and it continued to be something they both politely didn’t talk about. But Gena always treated him like the person he truly was instead of the person he appeared to be, and that was reason enough to think she was great.

A familiar sound burst from the main room. A soft thump, as if something heavy had landed on a down comforter, followed by a harsh roar. No explosion, but something had definitely just been set on fire. 

Gena pulled him towards the exit, bursting out of the doors in hot pursuit of an exit out of the building. She stopped short, eyes widening, and it took Jake a second to register what had stopped her. 

There was a line of fire in front of the two main doors out of the diner. Just fire. Hanging out. The fire floated a few inches off the ground, blazing away merrily and perfectly controlled, but Jake could feel their oppressive heat from several yards away. The fire didn’t even seem to be scorching anything. 

Magic. Had to be. Jake tore his eyes away from the fire, scanning the emptied main room and searching for the magician dog. He found the dog easily enough - it was cornered against the far wall, howling in rage but unable to move either direction without leaving a clean opening for Blade. Blade couldn’t kill it, and the dog was clearly about to take its chances soon. Or it would, if it wasn’t for the man standing next to Blade.

It was the drunk man. Apparently not that drunk. He was dressed in some cool all-leather getup, with a black jacket flap zipped up against his chest and actual leather pants. There was a chain looped around his waist and fire crawling up his arms, reaching all the way towards his head. Tongues of flame licked at the man’s jaw, creeping around his eyes before receding. 

It was unbelievably cool. But it was too cool. Like, try-hard cool. Just like Blade. A guy cool enough to pull off a leather jacket didn’t need a leather jacket to be cool. All of that leather had to be compensating for something. Real cool was effortless and casual. Like Layla and Gena. Frenchie was pretty cool too, but he worked too hard to be cool to actually be cool. Frenchie wore leather, but it was only ever sick-ass bomber jackets and leather boots. It was tasteful. This was not tasteful.

“Excuse me!” Gena yelled, startling both uncool guys. “Why is the exit blocked off in an emergency!”

“So our furry friend here doesn’t get away and resume his reign of terror across Harlem,” the blonde guy said. He gave the dog a mean smile, teeth bone white and shining. “I’m sorry about that, I didn’t know there were still people in here. We’ll be out of your hair in a second.”

At least Blade looked vaguely unhappy. “Drop the fire, Johnny. If you’re going to kill it I want them both out of here.”

“Kill it?” Johnny asked, as if Blade had accused him of something distasteful instead of just murdering perfectly nice dogs. “I wouldn’t kill him! I told you, I’m dragging him to Hell. We’ll be out once he settles down. Think of it like Doggie Day Care.”

“Hard pass.”

Gena leaned in close to Jake, letting go of his hand. “See? It’s all fine. Mr. Zippo over here’s just sending the dog to Hell. That’s all.”

“That is not where I heard dogs go when they die,” Jake said dubiously.

“It’s where they go when they disrupt my business, that’s for fucking certain.”

The dog howled again, and for the first time Jake registered that something about the howl wasn’t quite natural. It rang like an unearthly bell, as if the sound was echoing someplace far away. If you really stopped and listened for that strange sound then you could hear something beautiful. Jake wondered if the leather jacket squad could hear it. 

Or maybe it was only Jake, finding the beauty in the deadly. He wondered if the leather jacket squad could find that too. Somehow he knew that they couldn’t. A sense in the back of Jake’s head - a sense probably born from Khonshu - told Jake that the men had a significantly lower body count than he did. And that was why Jake didn’t wear a leather jacket.

 Johnny (dumber name than Blade: discuss?) turned back to the probably-not-a-dog, flashing his bone white teeth in what could only charitably be called a smile. “Look at what Mephistophiles dragged in. Are you ready to come quietly this time?”

The dog snarled, hackles raised and neck arched in challenge. Jake wondered what kind of person had beef with a dog. Depends on the dog, maybe. 

“I knew where your nose was leading you. I just got there first.” The man reached for his belt, grabbing one end of the chain wrapped around his hips and pulling it out. The chain snapped out, flying into the air and reaching far beyond its ordinary length. “Beats me why you’ve chased the moon’s trail into an all-night diner, but I guess werewolves just follow their noses.”

Under his breath, so quietly Jake almost missed it, Blade muttered, “The monologuing…”

The dog howled - the dog that might not actually be a dog - but the man just wrapped his chains around his wrist.

“Jack, you owe me dinner after this.”

The chain snapped into the air, a snake leaping for the kill. The air cracked as the chain lashed out, striking the wolf and eliciting a howl of pain.

Jake didn’t even register it. The noise and sight skipped straight past his brain and into his brainstem. It would have been fine if he had been remotely cognizant of it. But Jake felt a lot of things he didn’t quite understand, and he did a lot of things first and only understood why he did them later. 

This wasn’t so mysterious. Like a hand jolting away from a hot stove, Jake squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears. The snap hit his ears again, and he pressed harder. 

Something roared - like the dog, but not. Something far bigger and far more dangerous. Something toppled over and something else crashed, and waves of heat washed over Jake. Something tugged at his arms, trying to pull him away, but Jake shook them off.

Somebody grunted in pain - a highly familiar sound - as another crash rattled the diner. The werewolf howled in pain too, sending a spike of pain shooting through Jake’s own skull, and a second afterwards Blade cursed as something else went flying.

“Jake! Jake, come on, move!”

Jake opened his eyes. 

The first thing he saw was Gena, looking a little frantic and a lot like she wished she could chuck Jake like a football behind the counter. The second thing he saw was Johnny punching a giant werewolf. The third thing he saw was the giant werewolf. 

It was hard at work trying to maul Johnny, but Jake could still see it clearly. It was four times taller than the dog and standing on its hind legs - somehow turned bipedal and vicious. Its body was almost human-like, save for its strange knees and arching ankles, and its torso was nothing but bulging muscle and coarse fur. It had a purely wolf’s head, eyes crazed and wild, and when it reared back its ears brushed Gena’s hanging lamp fixtures. Tables and chairs were overturned across the diner, napkin holders and plates smashed on the ground, and Blade was picking himself up from the ruins of a shattered table. 

Johnny’s arms were practically in the werewolf’s mouth. Two thin human arms were the only things propping the gaping maw open, the teeth scraping against leather, and the werewolf didn’t seem to notice the hellfire scraping his nose. Blinded by rage. 

Rage. Was it rage?

“Gena, move -”

“Not without Jake!”

“What’s wrong with him!”

“Something, fuck if I know - just help!”

The werewolf reared back and swiped at Johnny, who caught the motion with another chain and pulled. The werewolf roared again, pulling hard at the chain and yanking Johnny off his feet. Johnny yelped, chain flying out of his hands, and it lashed backwards through a light fixture, shattering the bulb with a thick crash.

“This is wrecking the place,” Gena said miserably. “Shit.”

That snapped Jake out of it. The world came rushing back in, returning sensation to his fingers and toes, and Jake slowly shook himself. 

The werewolf was only attacking Johnny. Jake saw that it had batted Blade away, but it was trying to maul Johnny. Its eyes were rolling in his head, slobbering and growling. Johnny’s head was slowly catching fire, a worrying development that he didn’t seem to care about, and he groaned with effort as he fended off the wolf’s attempts to snap him in half. 

The wolf hadn’t even looked at Gena. But it was ruining her diner anyway. Wasn’t that the way of it. 

Jake realized, with a strange combination of wonder and slight embarrassment, that there were no bad animals. Just bad owners. 

“Everything’s fine, Ms. Gena,” Jake said, lightly shaking her off. “It’s just trying to help.”

This didn’t reassure Gena much. “Help who?”

Jake ignored her. He looked to his right, squinting at one of the intact booths. He pressed his lips shut and thought loudly: Khonshu, how do I make it stop? 

Khonshu reclined in the booth, sipping black coffee from a pure white mug. A logo on the mug read ‘MOONLIGHT ALL NITE DINER’. I had no hand in this one. You reached for my magic directly. You’ll have to cease the power yourself. He took a sip of the coffee, careful not to stain his all white suit. Somehow. We ought to fetch Marc. 

Marc would make this so much worse. 

True. What are you going to do? 

Jake didn’t have to think about it. 

He reached into the pool of Khonshu’s magic - obvious now that he knew it was there, so bright and hot it was a miracle he hadn’t noticed before now - and exhaled slowly. The magic had been boiling hot and heavy, and as Jake took a few more deep breaths he felt the choppy seas abate into subtle calm. He looked at Gena, wearing her worry like an iron shield, standing in the middle of danger just to be sure that he got to safety, and the seas turned peaceful and placid. 

The werewolf reared back - cognizant, now, that Johnny wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. The chains drooped and fell from its bulging arm, cut and rubbed raw by the metal. Its heaving chest calmed with Jake’s own deep breaths, and Johnny quickly scrambled upwards. 

“Leave him alone,” Jake said sharply. “He’s not hurting you.”

“Not hurting me?” Johnny cried. “He was going straight for the skull!”

“He’s not doing it anymore,” Jake said condescendingly. He gently shook Gena off again, walking forward and picking through the battleground of upturned chairs and split tables. “He felt cornered. He was just trying to get out. Then we started attacking him and he freaked. He only tried to hurt you ‘cause he was scared.”

“Uh huh,” Blade said. 

“It’s true.” Jake stopped in front of the werewolf. It had subsided completely, jaw hanging and spit rolling from its teeth. It fell down on all fours, crouched like a weird monkey wolf. Man, werewolves were super weird looking. “You alright?”

The werewolf snarled at him. Alright, Jake would be rude too. He normally was.

Jake bent down in front of it. It put him below the werewolf’s line of sight - the thing was giant - but maybe that made it feel better. “Thanks for helping. You did a really good job. And you were super cool. Do you have any idea how big your teeth are? They’re huge, man!” The werewolf growled. But, like, in a friendly way. “You got all super cool like that to help me out. But I know you don’t really like being this way. Everything’s all good now. You can relax. You’re safe.”

The werewolf howled. It was a new sound - different from its angry and scared howls. There was something mournful about it, as if it was calling for something far away. Jake wondered if it felt the moon, and if the moon always reminded it of that loneliness. What memory did the moon spark? Why did the moon always bring loneliness?

Was it the werewolf’s feelings? Or was it the feeling of that person inside the werewolf - the person who always turned into a monster alone, and who was left shivering in an all-night diner in Harlem surrounded by enemies and strangers?

“It’s a new moon,” Jake whispered, and - if only for the werewolf - he made it so. “It’s a new moon, and you’re safe at home…”

The werewolf subsided slowly - crumpling into itself from the monster into the dog, and reaching back outwards again to take the form of a man. Jake watched in fascination as a human slowly emerged from the monster - as the light changed, as the sun changed position, and the monster showed its other face as the man. 

The world didn’t stop turning, and the sun didn’t stop shining on somebody else’s patch of Earth. The human would show his monstrous face again, and there would be nothing he could do about it. No matter how much he hated it. Somebody put that monster inside of him, and the monster demanded to exist - for its pain to be heard, for its pain to be inflicted upon another. 

The man stirred, groaning with a werewolf’s bassy growl before it subsided into a regular human moan. He cracked his eyes open, and Jake would recognize that look anywhere. 

“I’ll get you some Advil.”

***

The sun rose over Harlem. 

Werewolf Dude - whose name was Jack Russel, hilariously - watched it with an exhausted fascination as he gulped his coffee. Jake had the sense that watching the sunrise after a full moon was a novel sight. Gena looked as if the entire situation was a novel sight, but she made them food anyway.

They squeezed into a booth, two pots of coffee standing sentinel over plates of cold pie and hastily assembled burgers. Jack’s plate was just a heaping of raw meat, which smelled weird but offered tantalizing possibilities. Jake tried to sneak a strand before Gena slapped his hand away. 

Johnny Blaze was telling some highly dramatized story to Blade, who was both pretending he didn’t care and correcting every second sentence. Jake got the sense that Johnny was the type of person to speak entirely in flowery metaphor and Blade was the overly literal type. They were friends, although Jake didn’t know how. Johnny and Jack Russel were also friends, equally mysteriously. For a guy who talked a lot about how he was a lone rider of the night, he sure had a lot of friends. Guess that was what happened when you took enough road trips. 

“You’re a bit of a legend, man,” Blade told Jack. He had surrendered his leather coat with easy grace, complimenting the scavenged pair of jeans Gena found in the chef’s locker. They smelled like mystery meat, but so did Jack. “So is the Man-Thing -”

“Real? No comment.” Jack stuffed another handful of meat in his mouth, eyes fixed on the window. “Johnny, that was the shittiest capture job I’ve ever seen.”

“Do you rate your captures?” Johnny asked, scandalized. 

“Wouldn’t the worst ones be the guys you ate?” Blade asked, always focused on the important questions.

Jack tilted his head in a concession of the point. “Worst that didn’t involve kebab. Why didn’t you even go full flame out? I hate fire.”

“I did,” Johnny said, “it just pissed you off more. And I don’t like walking into diners with a flaming skull, thanks -”

Blade sipped his coffee pointedly. “Vanity’s a sin, you know.”

Jake ignored them. He had finally rescued his Switch from quarantine, and he was happily settled with Animal Crossing and pecan pie. He liked watching the sunrise in Animal Crossing too. Watching the world slowly wake up and start another peaceful day was nice. You should take peace where you got it. 

The people around him seemed to agree. They could shrug off a rampaging werewolf attack as another day with Jack, and easily invite him to the table in the diner they ruined. Gena on the phone with the insurance people. Judging from the various and assorted noises, she was yelling at them.

“Hey. Uh…what’re you playing?”

Jake grunted, caught in the epic highs and lows of early morning fishing. “Animal Crossing.”

“That’s cool. Is it…like…a horse simulator?” Jack grimaced, fully aware how completely uncool he was being. Way cooler as a dog. Jake didn’t play favorites, but he totally played favorites. “Sorry. I still don’t know what’s up with those things. Last I checked people went on walks for entertainment.”

“Okay, Boomer,” Jake said, without looking up from his console.

“...right. Listen, uh…I don’t really remember what happened, but Johnny filled me in.” Jack eyed Jake carefully, soft brown eyes glinting yellow. “What did you do back there?”

“Dunno what you’re talking about,” Jake said blithely.

“Johnny said that you calmed me down.” Jack glanced around before leaning in, folding his arms on the table. “He also said that I freaked out when you freaked out.”

“Sounds like everyone was freaking out.” Jake jammed the buttons, successfully landing a…sea bass. Damn. “I was just mindin’ my own business.”

“But you did something,” Jack insisted. “There’s something about you. You smell different. Like light and ozone. Who are you?”

“Somebody who doesn’t need an interrogation.” Gena materialized at Jake’s elbow, making Jack jump a foot in the air. “Leave him be. He’s had a long day.”

“Uh, Gena?” Johnny looked at Gena, then at Jake, then back at Gena. “Is your friend…” He made a little jabbing motion at his temple, somewhat abashed. “You know?”

“I don’t know,” Gena said pointedly, “are you an emissary from hell with a flaming skull for a head?” Blade snickered. “Don’t you fucking start with me, Eric.” Jack snickered at Blade. Blade flipped Gena off. “He’s a paying customer and never causes me any trouble. Unlike you three. He can be off if he wants, he ain’t hurting anyone.”

 Everybody looked away and mumbled vague assurances that they totally loved people who were off, nothing wrong with a good off, my cousin’s off, etc. Jake watched in satisfaction as ‘pulled some Sailor Moon bullshit in a Harlem diner’ was filed under the ‘off’ category, which was now untouchable. Smooth moves, Gena. 

“Your diner gets some real weirdos, Ms. Gena,” Jake said wisely.

“This is nothing,” Gena said, pained. “Daredevil landed in my dumpster last week.”

“Whoah, no shit!”

“Yup. Hit him with a broom ‘til he left. I don’t need men loitering in my dumpsters.”

“It’s, like, unhygienic.” Jake wondered if this was a statistically improbable number of weirdos, or a normal number of weirdos if you live in NYC. “Did you let him clean up at least?”

Gena abruptly looked a little shifty. “DD and I have an understanding.” Jake now somehow had the sense that the concentration of weirdos in this diner was not entirely random. “If you see any more weirdos walk in here, Jake, tell ‘em that I charge ten percent more if they’re seen.”

“Is this why Crawly keeps calling you a business partner?” Jake asked skeptically. Gena adopted a very innocent face, which did not suit her. “ ‘Cause you said not to let Crawly in either.”

“That is just because he’s nasty. Come on, Jake, I called your sister-in-law. She’s waiting for you outside.”

“I knew you two were friends,” Jake hissed. “I knew it.”

“All women know each other,” Gena said, straight faced. She looked back over the table. “You three are cleaning up my damn diner. Only time I’ve seen the place this bad was when Jessica Jones watched the Giants lose the play-offs. All of you up, up, up.”

Jake slid out first, leaving the other men to follow grumbling after him. “Who’s Jessica Jones?”

“The worst decision I ever made,” Gena said darkly. 

“Wow. Bad breakup.”

“Let’s get going.”

Layla was waiting for him outside. She looked mostly asleep, but also slightly wigged. Jake silently passed her a giant cardboard cup of coffee, which she began chugging without a second thought. The neon signs in the shops across the street were lighting piece-meal, lending Layla’s frizzy hair a glow that slowly grew until it framed a halo around her face. 

Layla finally surfaced for air, gasping. “Have you been here all night? I freaked out when I woke up and saw that you weren’t home!”

“Sorry,” Jake said, somewhat abashed. “We had a situation.”

“A werewolf situation?” Layla asked flatly. She glanced at Gena, who only looked exhausted. “A werewolf situation for real? In real life?”

“Shit’s weird in New York,” Gena said, pained.

Layla sighed, holding out an arm, and Jake embraced her. She squeezed him tightly before separating and squeezing his hand. Carefully, she said, “Apparently some arsonist biker took care of it. Before it…calmed down. On its own.”

“I didn’t do a thing,” Jake said happily. 

And Layla couldn’t help but smile too. “Not a thing?”

“C’mon, man,” Jake said, “I leave the demon hunting to the experts. Did you know there are demon hunting experts?”

“It’s good to remember my life could be worse.”

It could be worse. Way worse. Jake was pretty happy to be himself sometimes. 

He could probably have been a demon hunter if he wanted. Maybe Marc did some light demon hunting here and there. But Jake liked being Jake better - Jake, who could calm down a monster, and who didn’t have to hurt it. 

Gena flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED, shutting the all-night diner for repairs, and Jake happily retold the entire sordid story to Layla as they disappeared into the rising horizon.