#describing all of their thoughts. what made them think that way. what effect this has on them. its just so fun

[toxifoxx]

writing a lil thing from Henry's point of view >:3c... going to get so deep inside that old man's head... putting him under my microscope right now...

[fangswbenefits]

For Science

𓂅 𓄹 Summary: There has been a rumour circulating in regards to Miguel’s venom. It has to be too far-fetched, right?

𓂅 𓄹 Pairing: Miguel O’Hara x spider-woman!reader

𓂅 𓄹 Warnings: 18+. Fangs. Biting. Venom!play (is that a thing?).

You eyed Jessica Drew with utmost interest as she worked her way around Miguel’s surveillance station, easily dragging files in and out of the multiple screens.

“Why do you get access to his stuff and I don’t?” you asked as sudden jealousy crept in.

“We go way back,” she started, pulling some information to her watch. “You’ll get there in time…”

Your ego soared.

“… if you don’t keep annoying him.”

It immediately plummeted.

“He’s easy to piss off,” you beamed. “And I’m easily entertained. What can I say? Match made in heaven.”

She chuckled at your antics. “Just don’t get yourself expelled.”

You nodded and waved your hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah. So have you heard that rumour about him?”

Jessica finished setting up her watch and mission logs and threw you a suspicious look.

“Well… the one that says his venom does more than causing paralysis,” you wiggled your eyebrows, letting the not so subtle implication dangle.

“You know what? One day Miguel is going to kick you out and I won’t do anything about it.”

“What? I didn’t come up with this!”

It was absolutely true. You hard heard it from some spiders one night while strolling throught the lobby. Rumours came and went. No one thought much of them and these were just harmless fun.

“Well, I’m not commenting on this.”

“Fine! But it’s fascinating.”

Jessica sighed, rotated on her feet and went down the stairs. “You can go ask Miguel, then.”

“Ask Miguel what?”

You froze in place as spider-man 2099 entered the dark room, eying both of you.

“Oh, I’m out,” Jessica snorted, heading towards the exit. “You two have fun.”

Miguel kept his gaze on your and you waved a hand at him.

He frowned.

“Lyla, reroute all the main sectors to earth-1610,” he said, pressing on his dimensional travel watch. “Any possibility of a canon event being disrupted must be reported to Jessica.”

The AI appeared next to him and adjusted her heart-shaped glassed up the bridge of her nose. “Is she tagging along, too?” she pointed at you.

He shook his head. “Not a chance. She’s more useful here.”

“Hey!” you were about to protest, but decided against it.

You knew there was a compliment in there somewhere. Your past missions had not gone without some minor bumps, which was why it had been decided the previous day that you’d tag along Miguel for a couple of weeks to hone your off-field abilities.

“Anything major must be reported to me.”

Jessica nodded but Lyla was not so easily dismissed. “I didn’t hear you say iiit.”

Miguel rolled his eyes. “Thank you for your services as always, Lyla.”

She took a dramatic bow and vanished.

He took large steps towards the platform, greeting you with a curt nod.

How would you describe your relationship with Miguel O’Hara? Tense? On the verse of collapse each time you teased him? Friendly? But only when you didn’t have to spend more than one hour together.

“Morning to you, too, boss,” you saluted.

He let out an exasperated sigh as he checked the screens in front of him.

Maybe you should go easy on him. You were already on thin ice, but just adored pushing him. There was something about teasing him that just did wonders to you.

“Did you sleep well? Did you get some food?”

“Don’t start getting on my nerves.”

You raised both hands, feigning a look of innocence. “I did nothing. You’re paranoid.”

His head turned to you.

“You do have an issue obeying the chain of command. Your last mission was a disaster, because you got into an argument with Peter instead of focusing on the anomaly — don’t interrupt me!” he said pinching the bridge of his nose as you were about to defend yourself. “You have much to offer, but you’re also all over the place and lack discipline. I don’t think you—”

You gave him a jaw-popping yawn which effectively cut him off.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I boring you?” he asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. “You do know that I was pressured by others to let go of you.”

A long pause stretched out.

“Then why didn’t you?”

In your mind, you had hoped your growing friendship with him had played a part, but…

“You have potential,” he said with a sigh. “One day you might even be better than me.”

Well, that was a high praise and your spine snapped straight instantly. “Really?”

“Maybe… probably not,” he concluded. “But if you keep your focus and work hard, you will be a very skilled spider.”

You rolled your eyes. “Woah, thanks a bunch!”

In truth, you knew Miguel was trying his best to smooth over your bruised ego, but your pride got the best of you.

“Any questions you have, just let me know,” he said reassuringly while glancing at the screens in front of him.

“I can ask anything?”

“Yes.”

“Sooo… have you heard that rumour about your venom?”

It was too early in the day to be so serious, so you genuinely saw no harm in lightening the mood.

He threw you a side glance. “Be specific.”

“Well… that it can cause extreme pleasure,” you blurted out. “Oh, besides the paralysis thingy,” you quickly added.

Miguel turned to fully face you. “I don’t even want to know where that came from.”

Deep down, you felt a pang of disappointment. It would be such an interesting finding.

“Ah, so it’s not true.”

“Probably not.”

That piqued your interest. “Probably? So there’s a chance? It’s just so fascinating, because you’re already so different from the rest of us,” you started rambling not able to hold back your enthusiasm. “Now this is just an added layer!”

You were a scientist at heart and Miguel was pretty much an outlier when it came to being a spider-man. For months you had been trying to let him agree to you running some tests, but to no avail.

In all honesty, Miguel knew his way around science and the inner workings of biology better than you could ever, so he had no reason to indulge your curiosity.

“How do you do it? Is it the same venom or a different one?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Science, remember?”

It was a half truth, though. Yes, this would be mind-blowing science-wise, but this was also about Miguel O’Hara. The very man who had been guiding you through spider society for months. The same men who whose genius and dedication had built the foundations of the spider society.

He now had both hands on his hips and you figured you were already pushing it too far, but enjoyed doing it too much to stop now.

“Can you just tell me how it works? Please?” You clasped your hands together into a beg, hoping it would be enough to bait him for information.

But Miguel remained unfazed.

“No.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” you offered expectantly.

He didn’t budge.

“Please, pretty please?” you tried once again.

Nothing.

“I’ll bring you empanadas every single day from now on,” you enthused. “On demand! Whenever you have those cravings. Two in the morning? Check! Canon event disrupted and universes imploding? Check!”

Miguel quirked an eyebrow. “Do you ever shut up?”

“Is that a yes?”

“No.”

“Just show me how it works,” you sounded desperate by now. Arguing with Miguel ranked high up with the likes of trying to move a boulder with a wooden fork. “How did you get it to work?”

His eyes to widened slightly. “Show you?” he started out. “Are you asking me to pleasure you?”

Now that was probably on your top three of ‘Things you never expect Miguel O’Hara to say’.

“Oh — I mean… well… what?” you stammered, caught by surprise. “I didn’t — you know… huh…”

He only glared at your babbling self.

“Are you… offering?”

Miguel extended his arm to you. “Give me your hand.”

You panicked. “What? Now?”

“For science, right?”

Point taken.

You hesitated momentarily. “You’re not going to paralyse me, right?”

“Do you want me to?”

You offered your hand for him to grip, flipping it palm up. “No.”

“Then I won’t.”

Miguel’s voice was so flat he could just be reading items off a grocery list.

His gloved fingers traced the heel of your palm and his eyes darted down. You held your breath at the sight of him lowering his head. “This might sting.”

And just like that, you watched in complete awe as Miguel O’hara bared his fangs, slowly raking them across your skin before digging into the flesh.

“Ouch!”

Your stomach turned and your heart fluttered as his warm lips grazed the spot he had just bitten. Two circular and symmetrical openings pooled with a tiny amount if blood.

“So? Do you feel a wave of intense carnal bliss?” Miguel asked, straightening up and brushing the droplets away with his thumb.

You merely stood there, waiting for something — anything — to kick in. But as tense seconds ticked by, it was evident nothing was happening.

“No…”

He shrugged, letting go of your hand to tap his watch. “Ah, well. My pleasuring abilities must be below par this morning.”

You scowled at him and considered smashing his arm with a fist. “You could have just said it was all a lie!” you grunted in sheer annoyance, feeling like an idiot. “Now I’m bleeding to death.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“You’re annoying,” you huffed as you checked the bite marks.

“It’s not a lie. I can indeed inject an innocuous version of my venom that can be quite pleasurable,” he said.

“Then do it!” you said, your temper flaring.

Miguel wasn’t one to take orders. He was much more into being the one to call the shots, but your curiosity was eating you alive now that he had revealed that this rumour had some truth to it.

He was now looming over you, his impressive height adding to the tension. “It depends on where I inject the venom. Certain places are more effective,” his voice was uncharacteristicly low as his eyes landed on your neck. “This is just scientific curiosity, right?”

Your mouth had gone too dry to reply, so you just shrugged. Miguel had you taking a few steps back until your lower back hit the railing that lined the platform, causing your hands to clasp around it reflexively.

“Tilt your head.”

You did as you were told and felt his fingers tracing along your jaw, angling you just the way he wanted.

“Hold on tight,” he said, breath now fanning the prickling skin of your neck. “Tell me to stop if it’s too much.”

Feeling your face heat up from the sudden close proximity, you closed your eyes as if embracing for impact. He pressed his lips to your pulse point before digging his fangs slowly into you.

Your mouth dropped open, aghast, and you finally felt it. His venom poured from the fangs and into your bloodstream, spreading through your veins like wildfire. At first, it was just merely a pleasant sensation, like the one you’d get as you finally drank water after a hot day in the sun.

But it soon turned into something else, and unlike water, the new overwhelming feeling was leaving you thirstier with each thump of your racing heart.

Miguel had his hand on the back of your neck, keeping you in place. He moaned first — no, he grunted —, and you felt a jolt of almost painful pleasure shot down your spine and spread between your thighs.

Your grip on the metal surface wavered momentarily and you feared you might fall, but were firmly grounded by his other hand on your waist. It didn’t take long until your clit started throbbing in unison with your heartbeat.

“Miguel… this… this…”

Suddenly, your suit felt too tight and in the way, especially once he pressed lightly into you.

The venom was no longer being injected, but the remnants of it were enough to wreak havoc throughout your body.

“It’s just for science…” he growled, pulling his fangs away from you. “Does it feel good?”

You didn’t dare open your eyes and could only gasp when you felt him push his erection into you.

“Yeah… science… or whatever…” you gasped, feeling yourself being pushed over the edge with each second that passed.

Just when you thought your orgasm would hit you slowly, Miguel tilted your head to the side, exposing the intact skin.

You gripped his wrist as if holding on for dear life, fearing you’d explode. “Again?”

“Your body is neutralising my venom too fast,” he rumbled, lips hovering a sensitive spot. “I need to inject more.”

“Miguel…” you nearly cried out at the thought of your heart no being able to handle the intense pleasure.

“Look at me.”

Your breathing evened briefly as you did as commanded, his red eyes fixed on yours, pupils fully blown.

“Think you can do this?”

You blinked.

“I know you can take more.”

Your clit was now throbbing at an alarming rate at the promise of more of him.

Miguel flashed you his blood-tipped fangs before sinking them into you once again.

The liquid traveled through your body so fast, you felt like someone had punched the air out of your lungs. You vaguely wondered if you would die from this, and concluded that there were worse ways to go.

Being on the receiving end of Miguel’ dry humps would be enough to make anyone tip over the edge, let alone with the added layer of venom engulfing you into an explosive orgasm.

Your vision blurred in an instant as spams and contractions swept through your body. The friction of his clothed cock rubbing against your clit had you arch your back into him, feeling the bittersweet realisation that you were clamping around nothing. You weren’t sure if this was his venom’s doing, but you felt an overwhelming part of you wishing he had been inside you.

It hurt.

It hurt so good and lasted for so long, you like crying from the overwhelming tide of pleasure.

Miguel gave you time to ride out your orgasm, pressing a bloodied kiss to your lips, swallowing your cries.

Metallic taste filled your mouth and you broke away from him, gasping for air.

Your eyes landed on his crotch.

He was hard. Painfully hard. A faint stain of precum seeping through the material of his suit.

“You okay?”

You bent over, hands on your knees and laboured breaths.

“Are you?” you managed in between gasps.

Miguel crouched to eye-level with you. “I think you owe me one.”

“Yeah…” you nodded, swallowing hard. “Thanks for the… scientific… huh… demonstration.”

Masterlist

[grunckle]

Qualia and Ascension in Rain World

(To clarify I'm mostly talking about base-game lore and not including Downpour, but honestly most of these things can transfer over)

Qualia

One thing that’s relatively hidden in Rain World’s text and subtext is the concept of qualia. Qualia is described as being, “sensory experiences that have distinctive subjective qualities but lack any meaning or external reference to the objects or events that cause them.” It’s a personal sensory experience that cannot be comprehended by another person other than the individual themself, and are often hard to convey via language.

Qualia is a reoccurring motif in Rain World, but what’s more important is the way in which it’s conveyed to the player. The picture that’s painted is that of a world or civilization that placed a great importance on the individuals’ experience, and it’s shown through pearls or environmental details.

Here are some examples of qualia appearing in the text through pearls.

“It's qualia, or a moment - a very short one. Someone is holding a black stone, and twisting it slightly as they drag their finger across the rough surface. The entire sequence is shorter than a heartbeat, but the resolution is extraordinary.”

“A memory... but not really visual, or even concrete, in its character. It reminds of the feeling of a warm wind, but not the physical feeling but the... inner feeling. I don't think it has much utility unless you are doing some very fringe Regeneraist research.”

“This one... is authored by Five Pebbles, when he was young. There has been an attempt to scramble the data, but it's sloppily done, and most is still somewhat legible. It's written in internal language, or thoughts, so it is hard for me to translate so you would understand.”

But the most prominent examples of qualia and it’s importance in this world are the Memory Crypts and possibly ancient naming conventions. The deep purple pearl (shortened) found in Shaded Citadel states,

“In this vessel is the living memories of Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel, of the House of Braids (…) Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel nobly decided to ascend in the beginning of 1514.008, after graciously donating all (ALL!) earthly possessions to the local Iterator project (Unparalleled Innocence), and left these memories to be cherished by the carnal plane. The assorted memories and qualia include:”

Ancients likely mutated their own neural tissue into the cabinet beasts we see in Shaded, which were used to store their memories and qualia before ascension. Even james said once "how 5 pebs got the rot is a good hint here" in response to someone asking how cabinet beasts work, and how they're made.

Adding on to this, ancient (and iterator) naming conventions seem to be built off of the concept of qualia, with them focusing on individual images or experiences.

Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections

Droplets upon Five Large Droplets

Two Sprouts, Twelve Brackets

Looks to the Moon

Generally, this all points to a world focused on the expression and preservation of the individual experience. You could even consider some of the echo dialogue as more evidence for this running motif, but I already have too many quotes lol.

Ascension

So now time to talk about my interpretation of ascension. In short, you turn into a worm, but I should probably explain more than that.

So its been surfacing on rw-tumblr that the light in the end of the game is called the egg in files. Although file names shouldn't be taken as fact or canon, it is pretty obvious given the birth imagery.

But something a little lesser known is what happens to the worm that takes us down to the void-sea depths. Void worms normally have a bright glowing effect, on their body, which is present for ours as well. But after it unhooks us, it swims down, and when it passes us on it's way back that glowing effect is gone.

To be honest, I don't really think this can be interpreted in many ways, but the most obvious one and the one I personally subscribe to is that the worm laid the egg. Biology and spirituality really aren't that different in Rain World, it's implied that karma is stored in the brain through Five Pebbles's slideshow. Adding on to that, we see voidspawn after eating an iterator neuron. One's spiritual state is innately tied to their mental state, and that dictates what and what they can't perceive.

And for that reason I decide to take a more biology leaning approach to what happens in the ending. At face value, we are fertilizing the egg of a void worm to be reborn into a voidspawn.

Not only do void spawn and void worms have multiple characteristics in common, (worm like bodies, tendrils/tentacles, glowing heads, void spawn look microbial and void worms are likely some of the oldest "life" in game)

but voidspawn are seen inside egg-like coverings and share the same egg light seen in the end of the game, confirmed to be the same thing by Videocult in a livestream they did.

I believe that all this points to ascension being re-birth into a voidspawn, which eventually undergoes metamorphose into a worm. Higher-dimensional beings, who manifest and give birth to a new world.

So how does this tie in with qualia? Another thing you might know is that the area in which void spawn are most plentiful is Shaded Citadel and areas in Shoreline near Shaded. And shaded is absolutely packed with Cabinet Beasts, even outside Memory Crypts. I believe these qualia-storing creatures are what manifest voidspawn.

From what we see in ascension, it still looks physical and largely based around the real world. Hunter still has his scars and see's an iterator, survivor sees the slug tree in a more mystical and formless state, and monk sees survivor frankly just looking like a normal slugcat. I think that ascension is a product of qualia. We transcend our earthly knowledge via the egg, and our own qualia is used to give birth to a new world. This is why voidspawn appear most in Shaded Citadel.

Now I won't be getting into Void-Worm theories too much here, I'm mostly focused on ascension but I can't ignore the Gnosticism parallels. For those who don't know, Void Worms heavily resemble the Yaldaboath from Gnosticism, along with sharing some similar celestial motifs.

and running with that some people theorize that, like the Yaldabaoth, void worms are responsible for manifesting the material world. Ascension seems to be a mix of the concepts of Gnosis and Nirvana, but I believe it might lean more on Gnosis.

From my limited knowledge, Gnosis is a few things, some of which being a state achieved from experiences or intuitions, and an essential part to salvation is personal knowledge. While researching a bit, I came across this text by Peter Wilberg called "From NEW AGE to NEW GNOSIS" which brings up some comparisons between Gnosticism and qualia as well.

"Gnosis is subjective knowledge of an inner universe made up not of matter, energy, space or time but of countless qualitative spheres or ‘planes’ of awareness – a knowledge obtained directly through inter- subjective resonance. It is the subjective science of this inner universe."

One thing though that has been brought up when discussing this is how this can be consolidated with the tone of the ending. It is pretty un-ambiguously happy, but if we're going with the Void worm Yaldaboath theory then that would put a bit of a sour twist on it right?

I agreed with these for some time, but now I actually think it ties in perfectly with Rain World's core themes as stated by the devs, "overcoming differences and finding empathy." I don't think the void worms are "evil" or malevolent, but I think they (and subsequently us after ascending) play a key role in demonstrating this theme.

By manifesting the physical world, we allow these souls to experience life and develop their own qualia so one day they can ascend themselves. We are shown compassion, and pass it forward.

[universalitgirlsblog2]

👛🖤SELF-CONCEPT👛🖤

CONTENTS OF THE POST

- MEANING OF SELF CONCEPT

- IS IT NECESSARY TO MANIFEST ?

- HOW TO IMPROVE IT ?

- SELF CONCEPT AFFIRMATIONS

- QUOTES ON SELF CONCEPT BY NEVILLE GODDARD

👛MEANING OF SELF CONCEPT

The way we perceive ourselves and the ideas we hold about our competencies and attributes is called self-concept. ( This definition is from my psychology textbook but it described self concept really well )

🖤IS IT NECESSARY TO MANIFEST ?

Self concept is not necessary when it comes to manifesting but it is very helpful and it does make manifesting more simple and easy.

👛HOW TO IMPROVE IT ?

💞Affirm !! Affirm and saturate your mind with those affirmations. The best way to reprogram your subconscious is through REPETITION. The more you repeat a thought / affirmation , the more dominant it will become.

👡Never underestimate the power of music. If you go on a spotify , just search self concept or confidence or that girl playlist & you will find so many songs which are filled with powerful and positive affirmations. Artists like Nicki Minaj , Le sserafim , Ariana Grande always include powerful affirmations in their songs. Listening to their songs enhanced my self concept.

💞Find a role model! Refer to my post on self concept icons , there are three parts in total . Click here - 1, 2 , 3. Suppose you want a self concept like Blair Waldorf , you can use her effect affirmations and a playlist dedicated to Blair and her vibes. Or maybe your self concept icon is Song Jia ? Then use affirmations based on her and listen to playlists dedicated to her. I have made affirmations for Jia too !! Your self concept icon can be anyone !!!! If you go on spotify and just search Blair , Regina, Song Jia or Thewizardliz etc you will find alot of playlists dedicated to them.

👡Create an alter ego and start acting like her . YOU ARE HER NOW !!! STOP IDENTIFYING WITH YOUR OLD SELF WHO HAD POOR SELFCONCEPT. THAT VERSION DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE.

💞Already assume that you have a perfect self concept . Don't give the old story any attention or don't waste your energy on your old self. Stop affirming how you have a " bad " self concept and need to work on it. Just assume that you have a perfect self concept already.

👡Mental diet can do wonders. Whenever you have a thought that doesn't align with your perfect self concept. Ask yourself , "Does this thought align with my perfect self concept?" . If the answer is no , then reject it. Become aware of your thoughts and only entertain productive and useful thoughts. Have a positive SELF TALK

💞Realize how powerful you are. You control your reality. You tell your reality/ 3D what to do. Your circumstances , 3D or reality doesn't control you, you control them. Your inner world creates the outer world. Stop victimizing yourself. You are the main character and director of your life. Start acting like it.

Self concept work is supposed to be easy and fun . Don't complicate it.

🖤SELF CONCEPT AFFIRMATIONS

I have a strong and empowering self concept .

I am the creator of my reality

I control how my life unfolds

Everything always works out to my advantage

Circumstances and things are always rigged in my favor

I deserve the best in every area of my life

I am the girl who has it all

I am the It girl of my reality

Nothing is impossible in my world

I am good at everything

I am a master manifestor

I am the best

I am loved and valued

I am wanted by everyone

I am the prize

The world is my oyster

I am successful at everything I do

I have Lucky girl/ boy syndrome

I am the universe’s favorite child, so all my needs and wants are always met, instantaneously

I am powerful beyond limits

I am fearless, unstoppable , invincible and antifragile

I am the one with all the health, wealth, and happiness in the world.

I have a perfect self concept

I can maintain a good mental diet easily.

I am aware of my thoughts

I only think useful and productive thoughts

I am completely in love with myself

I always get what I want

I don't chase , i attract

I am a priority , queen / king , and chosen.

👛QUOTES ON SELF CONCEPT BY NEVILLE GODDARD

"Your opinion of yourself is your most important viewpoint. You are infinitely greater than you think you are.”

“Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live. Do not try to change people; they are only messengers telling you who you are. Revalue yourself and they will confirm the change.”

“Stop trying to change the world since it is only the mirror. Man’s attempt to change the world by force is as fruitless as breaking a mirror in the hope of changing his face. Leave the mirror and change your face. Leave the world alone and change your conceptions of yourself. The reflection then will be satisfactory.”

“To reach a higher level of being, you must assume a higher concept of yourself."

“I AM wealthy, poor, healthy, sick, free, confined were first of all impressions or conditions felt before they became visible expressions. Your world is your consciousness objectified. Waste no time trying to change the outside; change the within or the impression; and the without or expression will take care of itself. When the truth of this statement dawns upon you, you will know that you have found the lost word or the key to every door. I AM (your consciousness) is the magical lost word which was made flesh in the likeness of that which you are conscious of being.”

"Everything depends upon our attitude towards ourselves. That which we will not affirm as true of ourselves cannot develop in our life.”

"Our present mental conversations do not recede into the past, they advance into the future to confront us as wasted or invested words.”

"The individual’s inner speech and actions attract the conditions of his life.”

“Nothing is impossible to you.”

“Live your life in a sublime spirit of confidence and determination.”

“The world cannot change until you change your conception of it. 'As within so without'.”

"" The part you play on the world's stage is determined by your conception of yourself ."

[whomst-the-hell]

The babysitters’ club, as the older members of the upside down crew have dubbed themselves, meet at least once a week. Sometimes it’s only a few hours, just long enough to watch a movie together, to confirm that everyone is still alive and coping. Sometimes it’s all night, and Argyle plies them all with good California weed while they attempt to work through their collective truckloads of trauma.

Sometimes, like tonight, they spend it goofing off and having fun like the dumb kids many of them couldn’t afford to be.

They’re gathered in a circle at the Harrington mansion, deserted as always, playing truth or dare. Nancy has just admitted to smoking weed in her freshman year, in the drama room with Barbara Holland, and she has set her know it all, meddling, journalist eyes on Eddie.

“Truth or dare,” she asks, a challenge clear on her face.

Eddie knows that, with most people, picking truth may be seen as the cowardly option. With Nancy, that couldn’t be more wrong. If he picks dare, he will be safe, but he will be mocked relentlessly by every single person in the room.

…

“Truth,” he sighs reluctantly.

“Who-” she pauses dramatically for effect, a theatrical detail that Eddie honestly respects, even if it fills him with dread, “-was your most embarrassing crush! And it has to be a person we know, no celebrities allowed!”

Shit.

He feels his eyes dart to Steve. Nancy smirks. Bitch. He can’t even lie about it then.

Time to face the music, he supposes mournfully.

“I would like to say, for the record, that I was in junior year, ok. And, in retrospect, with the knowledge I have now, it’s not even that bad, but at the time-“

“Spit it out, Munson,” says Robin, the fucking traitor.

“IhadacrushonSteve,” he says, all in one breath.

“What was that, dude, I didn’t catch it?” Argyle says, voice mellow. Eddie honestly doesn’t know if he’s in on this or not, but he glowers all the same.

Face red, he repeats, “I had a crush on Steve.” He resolutely does not look at Steve.

“No you didn’t!” Steve responds, immediately, aghast.

Eddie can feel his heart tearing in two.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Harrington, this was years ag-“

“You literally rejected me!”

Fucking what.

He knows he must look ridiculous right now, mouth hanging open, cheeks still red with embarrassment, but he does not have the capacity to care.

“Wh- what do you- huh?” he finally manages.

“When you were in junior year, and I was a sophomore? We were lab partners-“

And ohhh, hadn’t that just been sweet, sweet torture. Pretty, perfect Harrington had had to sit next to him all semester, where Eddie could see his freckles and smell his cologne, but-

“You spent the whole semester making fun of me!”

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?” says Steve, eyebrows furrowed in that way he does that makes Eddie want to kiss his forehead and- Fucking focus, Munson.

“You always used to make passive aggressive comments about my clothes, or my hair, or my books or whatever!”

Steve buries his face in his hands and groans.

“I wasn’t being passive aggressive.”

“You- what the fuck do you mean, you weren’t being passive aggressive! Why else would you have said any of that shit?”

“Because I meant it?”

Because he- what? Eddie played back as many of their interactions from that year as he could remember. I like your jacket, Steve had said when Eddie had started putting patches on his denim vest. Your hair looks nice today, he had said when Eddie had tied it back to beat the heat. Oh, that sounds interesting, when Eddie described the plot of the book he was reading.

“Oh my god, you were flirting with me.”

“No shit! I once told you you had really pretty eyes!“

“I thought you were bullying me!”

“How on Earth could ‘I think you have really pretty eyes’ be bullying?”

“I don’t know! It made more sense than it being flirting!”

“I asked you to go to the drive in with me! That is the most classic first date in the book!”

Holy shit, Steve Harrington had asked him out. Steve Harrington had asked him out and he’d said no. This was the worst day of Eddie’s life.

His face must have looked some kind of way, because Steve just groaned again. He sat there for a second before peeking up from behind his hands, a move that should not have been as cute as it was, what the fuck.

“If I tried again now, would you still think I was bullying you.”

Holy shit did Steve Harrington want to date him? This had to be a trick or a prank or something, right?

Except that he’d thought that in junior year as well, and apparently it had cost him a boyfriend, so.

“No- nope, I would definitely pick up on it, uh huh. Definitely,” he said in a rush. God, he was normally so good with words, fuck.

Steve emerged fully from his hands, face pink but expression determined.

“Eddie Munson, would you like to go to the drive in with me? They’re playing Jaws next saturday and I’d love to watch it with you.”

“Absolutely, Stevie. It’s a date.”

There are groans from the rest of their friends as they rifle through their pockets, each passing money to a very smug looking Nancy.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

IT'S THE LAST DAY for the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there's a video that'll be posted soon, they couldn't get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you'll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I'd post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you.

I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event. And now, on to the talk!

Last year, I coined the term 'enshittification,' to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I'm definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.

We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.

It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für Englisch Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

But in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical way, let's examine how enshittification works.

It's a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Let's do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that.

When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that God sends.

“Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by those who choose to follow them.”

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB. FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But FB didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to get drinks after tonight's lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and where to go?

So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers.

To the advertisers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.'

To the publishers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.' And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.

The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.

Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialing down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.

For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen by a person.

For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion feeds.

And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service.

When any of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learned in the Darth Vader MBA: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.'

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders.

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call 'pivoting.'

Which is how we get pivots like, 'In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called "metaverse," that we ripped off from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.'

That's the procession of enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we'd call that enshittification's "natural history." But that doesn't tell you how the enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now, and without those details, we can't know what to do about it.

What led to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above.

The period of free fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google's enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company's AI panic (excuse me, 'AI pivot').

And it can't be Mercury in retrograde, because I'm a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don't believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that's a sign that the environment has changed, and that's what happened to tech.

Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses.

First: competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Second: regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Third: self-help. Computers are extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company's shareholders. Think of a board-room table where someone says, 'I've calculated that making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.'

In a digital world, someone else might well say 'Yes, but if we do that, 20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, forever.'

This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt their users to google, 'How do I disenshittify this?'

Fourth and finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn't mean that tech workers don't have labor power. The historical "talent shortage" of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better job.

They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures of the tech mission.

That's why mottoes like Google's 'don't be evil' and Facebook's 'make the world more open and connected' mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It's what Fobazi Ettarh calls 'vocational awe, 'or Elon Musk calls being 'extremely hardcore.'

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn't flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines.

So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical 'campuses,' with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules.

But for bosses, there's a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage, and threaten to quit.

Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification,

The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power.

So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan.

But starting in the neoliberal era, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called 'consumer welfare,' which held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that anyone was cheating.

And so all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with 'predatory pricing' that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold.

When Diapers.com refused Amazon's acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down.

Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into 'five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,' so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T telephone operator who'd do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying 'We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.'

Today's giants are not constrained by competition.

They don't care. They don't have to. They're Google.

That's the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint – regulation – was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can't agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can't even agree on how to cater a meeting where they'd discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel.

Five companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without "wasteful competition" eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between 'European Cyberspace' and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tech's regulatory capture allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors. They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is fine, because they violate them with an app.

This is why competition matters: it's not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers, it's because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there's plenty of things we don't want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that's fine.

They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. After all, they had less to lose. We don't want competition in commercial surveillance. We don't want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook – who pretend they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European privacy law. That's not because they don't violate the GDPR (they do!). It's because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU's most notorious corporate crime-havens.

And Ireland competes with the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws.

Which is how you get an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major cases per year, while Germany's data commissioner handles more than 500 major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent.

So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it doesn't count because they do it with an app.

Uber's labor-pricing algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job, something Veena Dubal calls 'algorithmic wage discrimination.' If you're more selective about which jobs you'll take, Uber will pay you more for every ride.

But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot, and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone.

Then there's Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it doesn't matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year from its 'advertising' system. 'Advertising' in quotes because they're not selling ads, they're selling placements in search results.

The companies that spend the most on 'ads' go to the top, even if they're offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to find the best deal on Amazon.

Any merchant that did this to you in a physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, "it doesn't count, we did it with an app"

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don't want your privacy violated, you don't need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad-blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others' throats, unable to capture their regulators.

Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn't just the ability to flout regulation, it's also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today's tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, 'Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here'

It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple's market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing away their designers' Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs didn't beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office.

He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read and write Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: 'Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?'

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD.

Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced.

Try to scrape all of Google and they'll nuke you until you glowed.

Tech's regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001

It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations

Here's how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon's "digital rights management," which locks it to Amazon's apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the market.

If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon's encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense.

That's a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it's also harsher than the punishment you'd get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It's harsher than the sentence you'd get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

So think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that's a felony (Jay Freeman calls this 'felony contempt of business-model').

So when someone in a board-room says, 'let's make our ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,' no one objects that this might prompt users to google, 'how do I block ads?' After all, the answer is, 'you can't.'

Indeed, it's more likely that someone in that board room will say, 'let's make our ads 100% more obnoxious and get a 10% revenue increase' (this is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website).

There's no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn't install a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold.

No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other words: 'IP law.'

'IP' is just a euphemism for 'a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers.' And 'app' is just a euphemism for 'a web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.'

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

But what about that fourth constraint: workers?

For decades, tech workers' high degrees of bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights. Even after they created 'felony contempt of business model' and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers' sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses' worst impulses

Today, the response to 'I refuse to make this product worse' is, 'turn in your badge and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'

I get that this is all a little depressing

OK, really depressing.

But hear me out! We've identified the disease. We've traced its natural history. We've identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it's actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They're blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics.

Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era.

I've been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I've never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren't taking this laying down. The business press can't stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They call people like me 'hipster antitrust,' and they hate any regulator who actually does their job.

Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has run more than 80 editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she's an ineffectual ideologue who can't get anything done.

Sure, Rupert, that's why you ran 80 editorials about her.

Because she can't get anything done.

Even Canada is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire! From Ted Rogers, who owns the country's telecoms; to Galen Weston, who owns the country's grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the entire province of New Brunswick.

Even Canada is doing something about this. Last autumn, Trudeau's government promised to update Canada's creaking competition law to finally ban 'abuse of dominance.'

I mean, wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime imaginable – it finally got someone's attention, eh?

Competition has a long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it's awake, it's back, and it's pissed.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding 'with an app' to their crimes and escaping enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they're starting to figure it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in Europe's notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland.

In America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988.

The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren't even all that embarrassing!

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn't confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon's Solicitor General.

But Congress got the idea that their video records might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA.

That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight.

It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There's a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That's a lot farther away, alas.

The EU's DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You'll be able to use Whatsapp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind.

But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU's got nothing for you.

This is an area ripe for improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.

It's certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies' abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works.

My big hope here is that Stein's Law will take hold: 'Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop'

Letting companies decide how their customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping lists.

It's offensive. The only people who don't agree are the people running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.

Finally, there's labor. Here in Europe, there's much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable).

But even in the USA, there's a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren't founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn't understand are coming to an end.

In Seattle, Amazon's tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon's warehouse workers, because they're all workers.

The only reason the tech workers aren't monitored by AI that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos really hates our kidneys).

We're seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up the rear. It's not a moment too soon, because the bad news is, enshittification is coming to every industry.

If it's got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying 'It's OK, we did it with an app.'

From Mercedes renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is metastasizing into every corner of our lives.

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.

Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it's unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn't "enshittification" the same as "capitalism"?

Well, no.

Look, I'm not going to cape for capitalism here. I'm hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism's total failure to grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it.

But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize.

The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality.

But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device.

We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said 'It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.'

And it may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

And I think that's pretty important.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel/a>

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

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

 -   

cdessums (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monsoon_Season_Flagstaff_AZ_clouds_storm.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[ariaste]

I made a post a few days ago about how dire the hits-to-comments ratio is in this fandom and since then I have tried an experiment, got great results, and I am back to explain how we solve this problem as a community.

Several people made disheartened comments on the previous post about how consumer culture has finally made it to fandom (that is, people don't comment on fics as much any more because they're passive consumers of content rather than equal participants in fandom) but... I kind of think that part of this might be our responsibility as fic authors as well, and something that we as can do something about and take agency over. Because yeah, it's correct that commenting has gone down, but you know what I also don't see very much anymore??? People adding a note at the end of the fic saying "Comments give me life!" or "If you liked this fic, please let me know, a nice comment makes me smile all day" or "Comments keep me energized to write more, please let me know if you enjoyed this!" or "I would love to hear what you thought of this! :)"

The culture of a community is not something that people just know instinctively. It's something that has to be taught, just like manners and etiquette in any other context (you don't know the fish fork from the entree fork from the dessert fork until someone shows you, for example). The venn diagram of "the good old days of fandom when lots of people were in the habit of leaving comments" and "the bad old days when we had to humbly ask people to please comment if they liked it at the end of fics" is probably almost a circle. Yes, it's true that we are living in a society where we are being encouraged to be passive consumers of content and that this is probably leaking into fandom spaces. But the way that we start course-correct is to simply communicate clearly in public about what your needs and preferences are. Not in posts like this, because not everyone is going to see it and it will eventually disappear into the ether, and because one big essay isn't going to affect much change. Just... in small spaces where people will see it immediately when it's relevant, like in the end notes of your fic, or in the caption/description under your fanart post. It is not a bad thing to tell people that you like comments. You are not vain or arrogant for wanting engagement and appreciation for something you made out of love and enthusiasm, you are HUMAN. It is not a bad thing to communicate your needs. And oftentimes it is way more effective than you realize until you have actual data to back it up, like the data I'm looking at right now for this fic.

I made one change on the most recent chapter, and that was to put this at the end:

LISTEN TO ME REAL QUICK HERE, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING. This fandom has the worst comments-to-hits ratios on fics that I've ever seen. That sucks. Comments are part of a healthy fandom ecosystem, and I can't tell you how many unexpected friends I've made just by telling them I liked their fic. If you don't feel like leaving a comment on this fic, that's okay with me. But you have to PROMISE that you'll leave one on the next three IWTV fics you read, ok? Give our authors some love so they'll keep writing. It'd be a really, really long hiatus until s3 without them.

Since posting this, I can only describe the state of my inbox as, "Oh, THAT'S more like it, there we go, much better!" So... try it out? Tell people that their thoughts and comments are welcome? Remind them that this is a good thing to be doing? It's not going to make everyone comment, but I bet it'll make at least a little bit of a positive difference, and the more people start doing it, the faster we'll inch ourselves back to a thriving and healthy fandom ecology. :)

Rome wasn't built in a day, and culture has to be taught, and the best and happiest kinds of communities grow when the participants are aware and intentional about it.

[astropookie]

intrusive thoughts astro version

mamoru yamamoto

I’ve noticed earth mars in signs or degrees gets aroused when their sexual partner it’s having a good time, adding that’s because of them.

if asteroid rhiannon (16912) it’s about running away, what would happen if it’s on 12H. ik what about it but 😭 I can’t help it but point it out.

rhiannon (16912) conjunct mercury means escape from situations thanks to their persuasiveness

return venus conjunct natal venus -in venus return chart-: you’re finding your aesthetic/style you feel more comfortable and that vibes with your vibe 😝. also the energy of your sign/house and degree is PRESENT, that’s why during all that period of time you could feel too prideful without hesitation. mine was sag venus 11H 6° (virgo degree), i was feeling a little too optimistic or enthusiastic and cut out people. you’re being kind of truth to yourself?

natal jupiter square return pluto -in venus return chart-: you’re in a period of rebirth and thanks to your lucky nature -natal jupiter- you’re deciding not to end it. wanting it or not, you have this feeling of overcoming things.

when I used placidus system, my moon was in 1H, then I used whole sign system and my moon changed to 2H. for a while I preferred placidus bc I didn’t feel seen by the 2H moon chart. then I realized the 2H characteristics where in front of me the whole time. I wanted to feel understood, 1H moon was comforting the idea that I’m sensitive and feel emotions insanely deep. besides, 2H moon it’s about craving for comfort and security. I was only focused on the financial part, the stereotypical and superficial part. it’s a good thing to compare both charts to analyze how they can guide you.

uranus 12h in Eros persona chart shows u crave for intimacy 😭

idk why every time I end up getting stressed and bored about a friend is when I have mercury square their neptune. -reading note: she’s still my friend, we just have different point of views or forms to process information. the mercury part doubts constantly about others opinions and arguments and they see neptune as impulsive and kind of ignorant, bc their way of believing in things.

referring to the solar eclipse -April 8, 2024- my 3H has been affected -aquarius ascendant-, days after, out of nowhere -I havent had connection with them- I’ve received a voice message from the lilith person I was talking about on my posts, someone I used to be friends and distanced myself away from them. I decided to listened to it on the day of solar eclipse without thinking thinking about this coincidence -solar eclipse, 3H is affected-.

natal neptune sextile transiting venus: i felt like I was high even though I took my adhd pills 😭 I was so in peace? I felt emphatic? transits with your dominant planet have a huge effect on your mood. mine’s neptune and was sextile transiting venus.

I’ve noticed people with saturn 8H are kind of like a libra venus, in a way they’re afraid their love experience won’t be as they dreamed. saturn 8H creates restrictions on sexual attitudes and matters. imo 8H mix love and sexual desires, they need something that would drag them out of their secure space, they’re afraid. they’re late bloomers when’s about their first kiss or etc.

3H stellium at a distant, it’s giving introvert or distant vibes, they try to process things logically and could be a little slow to catch a joke?

I have a friend I thought was mean and in her energy💅, could be described as intimidated. she’s the opposite. when I saw her birth chart it made total sense, coming from an aquarius ascendant -saturn ruled like capricorn-, I had no clue she was a saturn ruled. it always surprises me how defined some rising’s energies can be presented.

sun 4H brings a sense of familiarity, even more when your mars is 4H, you feel more comfortable with them -sun 4H-, they remind you of your family or the vibes.

pisces 7H in solar return chart could tell you’re expecting a lover, doesn’t mean you’re having one 😭 i swear this solar return was like that, I meet a person and then proceed to imagine a relationship with them.

(*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ૮꒰ྀི⸝⸝> . <⸝⸝꒱ྀིა ∗ ࣪ ˖༺ ♡ ༻˖ ࣪ ∗ */ᐠ - ˕ -マ✩ (˶˃ᆺ˂˶)∗ ࣪

♡ Based on personal experience and I’ve analyzed in my surroundings.

♡ English is not my first language.

♡ I’m not a profesional astrologer.

Thank youu. baibaiii🫣🫶🏼💋

[exa-reblogs]

Some identifiers for AI generated fashion images that I've noticed

So, recently and not unexpectedly, I've seen a major uptick in AI generated images showing up in my searches for fashion photos, specifically. I've seen people make posts like this for specific art styles, and for 2D art in general, but I wanted to share some observations I made regarding clothing, fashion, and runways. I've seen a lot of people getting fooled by these, but it seems like for every one person thinking it's real there's about three people informing them that it's AI, fortunately. I'll admit, a lot of them look somewhat believable at first, but once you look closer it becomes apparent that they're off somehow.

To clarify: this is about common inconsistencies I've personally noticed in AI fashion images, so that you can learn where to look for these and similar inconsistencies and avoid sharing AI content by accident.

There's this one "collection" specifically that seems to come up a lot (also, click on all these images in this post to see the details more clearly):

There's more images like this and yes, despite the "houseofai" watermark I still see people asking who the designer is, or saying that they genuinely thought it was real at first. First and foremost: these are all clearly meant to be from the same runway show, right? Then why does each image look like it was taken on a different runway? The lighting and coloring are different in each one, and the middle one has vague red stairs in the background while the other two look like just a plain light-colored runway. This is something you'll obviously only be able to notice in groups of images and not singular ones, but it's a pretty dead giveaway if you see it.

Secondly: AI generated images, as a whole, tend to have this specific kind of super dramatic lighting with very bright, white lights and soft grey shadows. I'm not very knowledgeable about photography, so I can't explain it exactly, but I know it when I see it (and if someone reading this can properly explain it , please do.)

Thirdly: AI generated fashion tends to attempt perfect symmetry, but always fails somehow.

As for the actual outfits: the best that I can describe it is that a lot of the shapes and patterns just don't look like intentional human choices.

What in the hell is that monogram on the upper right supposed to be? It's clearly mimicking a logo of some kind, but it's messy and indecipherable, not actual branding.

The heart motif is clearly the running theme here, but the hearts don't really make sense. Like the main one in two halves across the chest here: why does it have those two notches missing at the bottom that prevent it from coming to a point at the bottom like a heart is supposed to?

The bottom hem is way longer on the left than on the right.

The little shoulder hearts are like, bleeding into the shoulder seams; those lines in the hair look like they're supposed to be headbands, but they disappear at the part with the rest of the hair; the embroidery on the pants isn't in a clear or intentional pattern.

Again, compare the lighting on this one's neck with the lighting on the last one's neck, totally different.

Those pink things on the chest look like they're trying to be hearts, but they're so clearly not actually hearts. If your collection is heart themed, why aren't you using actual hearts?

The quilting effect is uneven and the individual lines don't follow through and finish in the places they should. Look at the upper right sleeve, where the diamonds are misshapen and the diagonal lines are clearly disconnected. On the lower right chest, the lines just disappear. This can't actually with quilted garments IRL because the top layer is literally stitched to the bottom one along those lines with material in between. It can't fuck up like that, especially not a designer garment that costs your monthly rent.

Smooth zipper. Zippers seem to be a common fuck up.

You can't read the text on the hearts. It's nonsense. Nonsense, unreadable text and fucked up hands are the absolutely surefire ways to identify AI art like this. Conveniently, there are no hands in these photos.

What are those embossed shapes on the sleeves? They're not identifiable as anything in particular.

That is not how zippers work.

I suppose that weird folding beneath the hearts is something technically physically possible. But it's much, much more likely that they would create smoother, less ugly seams with less excess fabric.

These generative AI programs don't actually comprehend what they're trying to depict. Thus, they make mistakes like these. Physical inconsistencies that are often totally impossible, but even the possible things are just... stupid choices that an actual designer isn't going to do. Yeah, sure, designs can be weird, asymmetrical, and imperfect on purpose. But it's way, way more likely that this is just an AI.

Experiment: look at these two images of retro-futuristic headpieces/eyewear and determine whether they're real or AI.

Right one is easy, mostly because of the wonky bitch in the back. But some other inconsistencies I specifically wanna note: if the blue goggles color the "model"'s skin, hair, helmet, and the background behind the lenses blue, why doesn't it do the same for the eyes? And also, I've noticed that a lot of these images have trouble properly rendering the corners of the mouth, which is a weird detail but one you won't be able to unsee once you know to look out for it. Yes, there's a dark line where actual human lips meet, often with some subtle divots at the corners, but in the image on the right, it's rendered as a harsh, gaping hole more like something sculpted out of plastic than actual flesh. On the note of imperfect symmetry again: the left lens isn't perfectly round. And finally, this is a really good example of that giveaway lighting I mentioned. I don't know how you would actually achieve that lighting IRL, but it's so, so common in AI images.

The left photo is an actual model in 1967 wearing pieces designed by Pierre Cardin, a designer that the right image is definitely trying to emulate. The model has a look on her face that isn't super duper expressive, but it's still far beyond any of the AI images I've seen. Every AI fashion image I've seen thus far has totally blank-faced, expressionless "models". They might pout slightly, but I haven't seen any with visible teeth. Something tells me the AI would render teeth the same way it renders fingers. The emblem on the hat is actually perfectly symmetrical, and the glasses are clearly asymmetrical as an intentional design choice, not like the shapes are supposed to be the same but got messed up somehow. And she has ten fingers total, five on each hand.

Two more:

These are both AI generated. I'm not gonna lie, i fell for the one on the left at first. The right is easy:

distorted faces

woman in back is being absorbed by the train(?) seat

those middle buttons on the jacket are totally useless

AI Lighting (TM)

But the "models" on the left look very, very convincing, and the lighting doesn't immediately register to me as AI lighting. The only really wonky thing on the faces is the mouth on the left "model". However, there's one dead giveaway: the headphone wires. Why are they different thicknesses? Why does the rightmost wire disappear into the jacket sleeve? Where the fuck does the leftmost wire even go? AI, I've noticed, struggles with thin lines, strings, and strands of things. Like with the quilted jacket above, you can often try and trace a single line, only to find that it drops off, distorts, or disappears. And sure enough, as soon as I noticed something was weird with those wires, I went to the Pinterest profile that posted it and found that they exclusively posted AI content. Speaking of the actual headphones, the leftmost ear cushion is sitting on an angle that doesn't make sense, and the one to the direct right of it is significantly thinner than the other three. Again, subtle failed symmetry.

This is by no means a comprehensive guide, and I encourage anyone seeing this to point out ways they've found to identify AI images like this. These are things I've just been on the lookout for lately. And when in doubt: conduct reverse image searches and try your best to identify solid sources for your images. AI images won't list designers, model names, photographers, stylists, makeup artists, etc., while actual runway and photoshoot images will, because there are human creatives behind them.

[missmarj]

When Gojo opened his eyes, everything was too bright.

His body aches, his head hurts, but at least he feels more like himself since he got out of that damn prison realm.

You jumped in your seat beside his bed and rushed to him when you finally see him stir awake. You quickly dialed in Shoko and alerted her. You see Gojo watch you with glassy eyes as you go check on him.

Your heart is beating hard and fast, you can feel your breathing shallow which you try your hardest to control as you push yourself into autopilot. Doing what you are supposed to as the resident doctor with Shoko busy tending to the other injured sorcerers, desperately trying to separate your sentiments from your duty.

"Y/n," He murmurs, cerulean eyes watching you curiously as you continue to tend to him. "I'm sorry-" He can see how you're holding back tears as you flashed your penlight across his eyes.

"Can you take a deep breath for me?" You try to keep your tone monotonous as you place the diaphragm of your stethoscope across his chest, effectively shutting him up. Gojo only complies because he didn't want to cause you any trouble. But his gaze never leaves your face. He sees your brows furrow and he thought you were starting to get annoyed but the truth is, you were trying to keep yourself from fully breaking down in front of him. No words can describe how happy you are to hear him breathing, hear his heart beating. And have him back here. Alive.

Once you start putting away your stet, Gojo tries again. His rough hand circling your wrist as he asks, "How have you been?"

It took you a second to think of a response. Should you tell him you have been crying yourself to sleep? Or not have been able to sleep at all thinking about him? With a sigh, you settle with, "I don't know. Same old, I guess." You shrug, avoiding his eyes. "Your vitals look good. I'm going to go get Ieiri-san." You mumble, pulling away from him. He didn't let you though, his grip tightening. "Can you hold on a second? Please?"

You swallow hard and try to pull away again with a shake of your head. "I was instructed to let them know when you finally wake. I got to go-"

Gojo clenches his jaw in frustration. He finally got to see you, no way in damn hell is he going to waste another fucking second away from you when you're right there. So he tugs you closer and pulls you into a hug.

"Satoru," you want to sound mad but the tremor in your voice reveals how you're truly feeling. "I have to inform the elders that you're okay-"

"They can wait." He grumbles, burying his face in your hair.

Gojo sighs in relief when you finally melt against his embrace. But he frowns when you start silently sobbing, face pressing against the crook of his neck.

"You were gone." You croak. "You were gone for so long."

"1,095 days."

He murmurs against your shoulder, staring at nothing in particular as he holds you tighter. "I counted the days until I can see you again. Until I can hold you again just like this."

He pulls away just enough so he could hold your face and wipe your tear streaked cheeks. "I'm sorry. I know you must have been scared."

How your eyes filled with more tears even though he had just wiped the ones that had fallen from your lids told him that he was right. His heart broke seeing how miserable he has made you and he swore he'd do anything to make you happy again.

"Shhh, I'm here now." He crooned, leaning in to kiss your forehead and promising, "I won't ever leave you again."

[katelynnwrites]

who's afraid of little old me? | lea schüller

warnings: slight homophobia and angst but with a happy ending

word count: 791

summary: you're far from perfect but lea loves you for it

a/n: the fifth installation of my 'the anthology' blurbs series

feral was the word your teachers used to describe you as, all untidiness and chaos.

you know your parents would describe you similarly, if you spoke to them anymore.

your girlfriend, lea, is the complete opposite. always neat and polite.

she is patient too, one of the many reasons she is such a brilliant striker. she can be counted on to wait for the precise moment to do what she is so well known for.

but her patience is also for you.

your parents hate you for being gay, hers accepted her wholeheartedly.

accepted you too, once the blonde introduced you as her partner.

it had scared you terribly at first, given you so much anxiety that this would be the second family you lose but lea soothes it all easily with sweet, gentle words of reassurance and love.

the german woman always knows the right words to say to you. how to calm you down is practically her special talent, given that she is the only person in the world who can do so.

she’s level headed and cool under pressure. once again the complete opposite of you, off the pitch.

you have your father’s temper and on occasion, your mother’s mean streak. both of their characteristics had greatly shaped your childhood.

it was an angry household that you grew up in, one that you have done everything to escape.

but the effects, despite your best efforts, linger.

you yell when you are scared and cornered. you’d rather deal with everything on your own, no matter how much you are struggling, than ask for help.

it took lea a while to figure you out.

to learn that you don’t intend on hurting her but rather, don’t know how else to react.

so it’s with patience that she teaches you to talk to her, to let her help you instead of shutting her out.

to let you know that she doesn’t expect anything in return because she loves you.

you and all your imperfections.

the way your parents raised you made you think that you owed someone every time they did something for you but your lea shows you otherwise.

she never asks for anything in return. only hopes that you let her love you and be there for you.

so you do. even if it means relearning things you have done your entire life.

you will let down your guard for lea because you love her too.

the bayern munich player has never caged you, never hurt you and never called you crazy, like a lot of people did when you were growing up.

you’re by no means an easy person to like. you’ve never made friends easily.

it had taken a few months for you to become at home, with the rest of your teammates.

you’re cold and clinical on the pitch and that’s the only side of you the fans see so you understand why you’re not a favourite like the blonde.

you can be mean and you can be petty. lea doesn’t have a selfish bone in her body.

in fact, you’re actually quite sure that a resentful thought has never once crossed her mind.

for you, showing kindness had to be learnt. it is innate in the german forward and with every day that she is by your side, she shows you that you can learn it.

it’s because of her influence that you snap less at people and instead, laugh a lot more with them.

you will never understand why lea with her beautiful blue eyes and bright smile that lights up anyone’s day fell for you like she did and chooses over and over again to love you.

it makes you the luckiest person in the world.

you know that most people who don’t know you, think of you as intimidating. with opponents, it’s in your favour so you are okay with it.

but lea’s never thought so.

‘who’s afraid of little old me?’ you used to think to yourself as you grew up in your loud and angry house.

you kept the peace there at the expense of your own, pushing down your emotions just so you didn’t upset others.

lea’s shown you that you don’t need to do that anymore.

she won’t leave you. not when you are happy or content and certainly not when you are mad or anxious.

so ‘who’s afraid of little old me?’

it’s not lea. your lea’s never been and never will be.

instead, she sees the best in you.

with soft kisses and steady affection, nights spent safely in her arms and dates where your love for her only grows, the striker brings it out, so that the rest of the world can see it too.

[juliasgoodusername]

Sometimes a girl has to go a little crazy. Sometimes a girl has to make a book-accurate floorplan for 300 Fox Way. These things just happen, sometimes.

Obsessive annotations under the cut ✨ but be warned, there's a LOT

Exterior

Okay first of all, I'm no architect, and my only knowledge comes from work experience in the real estate industry + a lot of Sims. The style is sort of neo-rural French colonial. I didn't set out to adhere to that standard so much as I made an amalgamation of homes in Blue Ridge Mountains-adjacent towns in Virginia. Specifically, my headcanon Henrietta template is Orange, VA (I'll save that explanation for another post) so I took inspiration from real estate listings from there.

Alright alright I know there is supposed to be one bathroom, but I simply can't tolerate that in a house with 6+ residents. I can't. There was a possible contradiction in the descriptions of "the single shared bathroom" that I used as an excuse to add a 3/4 bath, and I threw in a powder room for free. Because technically there is still only one full bathroom! But seriously with that many women over 30 most of them probably have IBS or chronic constipation and I'm not making them all share a toilet.

Officially we only have 4 bedrooms listed in text: Blue's, Persephone's, Maura's, and Calla and Jimi's shared one. Everyone else gets rooms that don't qualify as bedrooms via Virginia residential building codes (such as the attic, obviously, which falls below the combined ceiling height and square footage requirements). That really just leaves Orla unaccounted for but I'll get to that later. Other aunts and friends seem to visit during the day and live somewhere else, because in The Raven King only Jimi and Orla were described as needing to move out of the house during the demon stuff.

I designed the entire interior floorplan before I even touched the exterior, so there's a few issues, like how I'm totally missing shutters on the windows that functionally need them most. 🫶 I didn't feel like making the windows smaller to fit them, and I could have added faux-shutters but I think those are stupid. 😘

First floor

"This house is lovely. So many walls. So, so many walls," Malory said as Blue entered the living room a little later.

- Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Chapter 30

Right off the bat, we have an insane number of doors and walls. Old colonial houses are pretty much the opposite of open concept. Functionally I believe that's because it's easier to control heat with closed off rooms, but Virginia is not particularly cold so idk. As for the number of doors, I mean....😤😤😤 I prefer archways/doorless frames in small high-traffic spaces, but every time I thought I could get away with it Maggie would specifically describe doors opening and closing (For example BL,LB Ch 41 gives the reading room double doors, and even the living room gets one in Ch 11. What kind of living room needs a door???). I'm actually missing one of the doorways described in canon, but if you know which one I'm talking about I DARE you to find a place to put that thing!! But I digress.

“Mom," she said as she jumped down the crooked stairs.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

I'm liberally using "crooked" to establish the corner turn stairs. Blue steadies herself on the stair railing when she identifies Gansey for the first time (TRB Ch 15), so I wanted the stairs to have good visual access to visitors. It also sort of has a feng shui-ish effect of separating the public and private energy zones in the house. If that statement made zero sense, I think one of us doesn't know enough about feng shui 👀 and it might be me.

I'm also using that quote to establish Maura's room downstairs, if Blue generally expects to find her mother there, but mostly because everything else was upstairs and it was getting hard to fit. Granted, at one point Blue leads the boys "up the stairs to Maura's bedroom" (TDT Epilogue) but since they were just arriving at 300 Fox Way those stairs could easily be the outdoor ones. There's a handful of little things to support me here, such as Adam grabbing a scrying bowl from Maura's room to use in the reading room (BL,LB Ch 41) implying that her room was the closest place to find one. And speaking of Maura's room-

Calla was overwhelmed by how much shit Maura had in her room at 300 Fox Way, and she told Blue this.

... The mess was taking years from her life. ... Maura liked chaos.

... The psychic hotline rang in the room next door. Calla's concentration fluttered away.

- Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Prologue

Maura is my favorite hypocrite. She claims to detest clutter (TRB Ch 34) and yet her room is literally described as chaos. She probably treats her room like a college student and moves the furniture every time she gets bored/stressed. Thus, I gave her the most insane furniture configuration I could think of while still matching all the contents described.

The phone ringing next door might imply that she neighbors the phone/sewing/cat room, but that area is pretty well described and Maura's room is never mentioned there in any other instance. That leaves us with the kitchen phone (TRB Ch 27) which I put in the hallway with kitchen access as a compromise so it would technically still be in a room next to Maura's.

In the reading room, the man looked around with clinical interest. His gaze passed over the candles, the potted plants, the incense burners, the elaborate dining room chandelier, the rustic table that dominated the room, the lace curtains, and finally landed on a framed photograph of Steve Martin.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 13

There are so many quotes about the reading room that I just don't feel like citing them, but other details include the mismatched chairs, the shelves, doors etc. It's also described specifically as Maura's "front room" (TRB Prologue) so it's one of the cornerstones that I designed the rest of the layout around. Because of the plants, it makes sense that this room would be south-facing too. (Although idk how much light they get with the wraparound porch awning in the way. Oops lol!)

The outside suddenly seemed vivid in comparison to the dim kitchen. The April-bright trees pressed against the windows of the breakfast area, ...

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

Blue Stormed into 300 Fox Way's kitchen and began a one-sided interrogation with Artemus, who was still hidden behind the closed storage closet door.

- The Raven King, Chapter 9

Likewise, I'm using the particularly dim kitchen to place it on the north side, where we also know there's trees in the backyard.

I'll say the kitchen layout is weirder than it strictly needed to be because in the Virginia homes I referenced I adored all the strange kitchens, especially with old timey 'servants area' vibes where laundry kitchen and pantry are all connected. Instead of a kitchen island, they get one of those rolling kitchen carts which I doubled as a bar cart for the drinks they have in the living room.

The kitchen has a doorway to the hall (TRB Ch 13) and the living room is within view when Blue's on the kitchen phone (Ch 27).

Speaking of chapter 27, that's when we get the description "The morning light through the windows turned the drinks a brilliant, translucent yellow." So I put the living room on the east side of the house, where the rising sun would cast really strong light like that.

Second Floor

When she woke up, her normally morning-bright room had the breath-held dimness of afternoon. In the next room over, Orla was talking to either her boyfriend or to one of the psychic hotline callers.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

Blue headed toward the red-painted door at the end of the hall. On her way, she had to pass the frenzy of activity in the Phone/Sewing/Cat Room and the furious battle for the bathroom. The room behind the red door belonged to Persephone, ...

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 11

Blue's room and the Phone/Sewing/Cat room are our cornerstones for this floor. In several examples we know that the Phone/Sewing/Cat room faces the street and has a window (TRB Ch 15, BL,LB Ch 4). While Blue's room is "morning-bright," we also get descriptions of guests at the front door "backlit by the evening sun," (TRB Ch 15) so once again we're probably talking about south windows if it's sunlit at both times of day.

Adam sat awkwardly on the edge of Blue's bed. It felt strange to have so easily gained access to a girl's bed- room. If you knew Blue at all, the room was unsurprising - canvas silhouettes of trees stuck to the walls, leaves hanging in chains from the ceiling fan, a bird with a talk bubble reading WORMS FOR ALL painted above a shelf cluttered with buttons and about nine different pairs of scissors. Against the wall, Blue self-consciously taped up the drooping branch on one of the trees.

- The Dream Thieves, Chapter 49

We get some great descriptions of Blue's room (especially TRB Ch 43), although the above one is my favorite (#wormsforall). Every piece of furniture is accounted for exactly as described except the desk which I added because it seemed practical, and Blue is nothing if not practical™.

Persephone's room is also very well-described, all the way down to the furniture and lighting placement (BL,LB Ch 4 and TRB Ch 11) and it's surprisingly similar to Blue's room, if not a bit smaller. Her room gets strong afternoon sunlight, so I put it on the south too (BL,LB Ch 43).

Calla and Jimi share a room that's also upstairs (TRK Ch 16). Because they are the only two who have to share a room, I have justified that it must be the "master bedroom" (sorry for using that term) and is far bigger than the other bedrooms. I managed to fit two queen beds in there, but some scholars [me] would argue that Jimi and Calla might also share a bed because they are in love. Can you prove me wrong? No, you can't.

As for the bathroom, remember when I mentioned a possible contradiction? Famously, Maura draws the ley line symbol in the steamed up shower door (TRB Ch 1). However, much later we get Maura, Orla, Calla and Jimi all sitting in the bathtub for some kind of ritual (TRK Ch 9). No matter how I picture it, I can't put 4 full grown women in a bathtub together without someone partially sitting on/spilling over the side. But that would be impossible in a combo bath/shower enclosed by glass doors!! Thus, I gave The Bathroom a nice tub and put a small shower in the en suite of Jimi and Calla's room. I know this is a stretch but I don't really care.

Attic

Blue had never been a big fan of the attic, even before Neeve moved in. Numerous slanting roof lines provided dozens of opportunities to hit your head on a sloping ceiling. Unfinished wood floorboards and areas patched with prickly plywood were unfriendly to bare feet. Summer turned the attic into an inferno.

... In one of the narrow dormers, two full-length, footed mirrors faced each other, reflecting mirrored images back and forth at each other in perpetuum.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 34

Trying to fit the attic access in after everything in the second floor was my biggest challenge, because stairs normally take up a lot of space and you have to be careful about head room. I'm the end, I decided it was one of those fold out attic doors that you have to reach from the ceiling of the hallway. We might get a lot of instances of the attic door being opened (😤 seriously, Maggie... 😤) but technically a trap door in the ceiling is still a door!

Dormers pretty much cemented the French colonial style for me. And you know the drill by now: a hot room probably means a lot of sun, which means I give it a south facing window!

Mud Room/Cellar/Basement

This cellar has absolutely zero mention in the text, but my justification is based in the architecture. So far we've got a funky old colonial house, built without a garage, lots of walls etc. Especially in a low-income/semi-rural area, it's not crazy to assume that 300 Fox Way was built before most residents had refrigerators (1930s-40s). Besides iceboxes, a major way to keep food fresh was root cellars. Modern renovations for old homes convert these to concrete basements, but that's why the basement is so small and connects to the kitchen.

My headcanon is that Orla originally shared a room. Pick whoever you want: Maura, Blue or Persephone, any of them would easily be such a chaotic roommate that Orla snapped and in a fit of teen girl rage moved herself down to the crummy dark basement. Over time, she made efforts to glamorize it, such as a vintage dressing screen to hide the flood drainage pump. The privacy also allows her to bring boyfriends over, even sneaking them through the mud room.

This is really just my artistic license, but I swear it makes a surprising amount of sense in context. There's cases of Orla sneaking into the kitchen (easier if she has a back entrance) and she's almost always using the phone upstairs or in the kitchen (because a basement would get bad reception) even though her calls get kinda ~intimate.

Aaaaaand I think that's everything. Sorry it doesn't look like the photo from the wiki at all, but I couldn't find a source for it and Victorian style wasn't super common in the areas I researched. Let me know if I missed anything major! I'll probably cry myself to sleep if so.

[matchboxartist]

[SPOILERS FOR LIGHT NOVELS] i don't think Kunikida was ever okay

so i was rereading the light novels and... yeah i don't think Kunikida's okay. bear in mind that these were either set before the start of the anime or were set before the end of season 1, so things such as walking alone, cannibalism arc and decay of angels arc had NOT happened yet (stressing this point as much as possible). i've also included roughly when in the BSD timeline the light novels were set and which pages i found the information on.

LN1 (s1e6 and s1e7 - azure messenger arc)

is absolutely terrified of the dark - i'm specifying the dark here instead of ghosts, which he specifically mentions in the anime, because he says he doesn't believe in them. but all the same, he's definitely not (keep telling yourself that, honey) shaking and crying (pages 24 and 25)

even at age twenty is willing to let himself die to save the other hostages - it says in the light novel that he is in fact suffering the effects of the poison gas, and still tries to save them despite Dazai and Sasaki stopping him (page 29)

made sure he still wouldn't have been able to kill Dazai - despite holding Fukuzawa's orders in high regard they would go against his ideals, which is why he never brought the real gun with him (pages 76-78)

the entire ending, pretty much - he had to watch both Sasaki, who he cared about, and Rokuzou, who he raised like his own son, die. he couldn't understand that there was no other way to do things, but since we don't know how his ideal came to be (seriously, Asagiri? nothing at all besides a couple vague suggestions?) we can't exactly push this point much (pages 95-101)

LN3 (set between s1e1 and s1e2 - where the Agency are planning Atsushi's entrance exam)

has what can only be described as a panic attack at the mention of a bomb threat (pages 4 and 5)

starts describing increasingly dark and oddly specific methods of torture to use on Dazai, whilst panicking and trying to attack something that isn't there (pages 16 and 17)

Kunikida and Katai's Brilliant Days (set around s1e6 - first part of azure messenger arc, but by this point Kunikida had not watched Sasaki and Rokuzou die)

sounds terrified at the thought of being called useless (page 5)

anyway that's all i got for now, will update if i think of anything else

[giddlygoat]

as much as i want to see fiddleford recover and enter his much-deserved era of good mental and physical health, i also want to see the effects of his head trauma follow him forever. it’s important to me that while he heal and find a level of normalcy and peace, he never return to his old self.

kind of a side bar, but it’s relevant so: i also think there’s something to be said about old man mcgucket’s confidence. boldness? idk how to describe it. i wouldn’t say his paranoid tendencies have vanished, but for the most part he’s. breezier. part of it is the brain damage, and maybe part of it is genuine self-evolution in the right direction. but i think the obsessive mind-wiping just… broke that part of his brain. it’s like he’s no longer affected by fear in the same way. and i hope we see strong traces of that damage until the day he dies.

it’s important to me that fiddleford heal and emerge into self-awareness once more. it’s important to me that ford still look at him as very much the same person, despite all of the damage. but he’s also changed severely and irreversibly. i think of old man mcgucket as a much rawer version of fiddleford in that he holds less reservations and has no filter. he’s healing but he’s also broken, and those scars will forever be visible. and that’s important to me because it also changes ford and fiddleford’s dynamic a lot.

ok one last sidebar, then i’m done. when i say it changes their dynamic i mean it in the way that because fiddleford now wears his heart on his sleeve and ford himself is a bit wiser about relationships, there is less self-sabotaging going on between them. romance or friendship wise. and if nothing else, they both feel they’re getting too old for biting their tongues, so i imagine the discussions of certain difficult topics comes a bit easier now.

like, given that they’ve both made many catastrophically terrible decisions over their lives, they have a better perspective on life in general and have had time to reorient their previously fucked priorities. ford lives with a lot of shame for how he treated stan, dealing with the devil, and bringing about the end times. fiddleford lives with a lot of shame for how he treated emma-may and tate, starting a cult that ruined lives [especially his own], and not to mention the multiple death robot incidents. even though they both had good intentions or else thought their actions were justified at the time [mostly], it all collapsed on their heads because these actions were ridiculously stupid.

i think all of this is part of why the rekindling of their friendship happened so easily. fiddleford is eager to forgive ford and embrace him because he’s learned first-hand what grief and paranoia can drive a person to do, and so he feels the best thing he can do is accept his old friend back into his life, no questions asked. maybe ford will forever think he doesn’t deserve it, but he learns to accept mcgucket’s kindness and tries to learn from it. they’re both healing even if it’ll never be Backupsmore again. it’s still them, despite it all.

[itsmepage]

One Less Lonesome Bride

Delores x Dead Bride! Reader || Okay so- I know I said I’ll make something for BJ after the movie but his ex wife was looking a little TOO FINE😩 I couldn’t keep my eyes away y’all you have to watch it for yourself SHE IS GORGEOUS. I sprinkled a little backstory for her because she’s deserves it

Summary: After being left to die by your ex and play the piano by yourself for so long, you meet Delores

Romantic Fluff

Warnings: Talk of death, murder, cult, hints that reader grew up in the victorian age, and just descriptions on being dead.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR “BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE!!!”

_✍︎︎

One lonesome Bride that’s what you are. Wandering in the afterlife by yourself still in your white grown isn’t you imagine for your dead life to be nor wanted it to be; on your ceremony, you imagine a long filling life, where you and your lover grew old together, have children, things that were normal to want in your day in age but for one second you’re at a wedding and the next your were here: at the Netherworld, dead. You spent some time finding your groom-to-be, thinking he met the same unfortunate fate and he just got lost from you, however after maybe like… 178 years still no sign. It’s funny that’s how long you’ve been dead for but you couldn’t tell. They don’t keep track down here.

You silence your thoughts to a piano, something you did often in your life: letting the gentle music playing from your fingertips relax the nerves within yourself and despite being dead it still had its effect. A crowd never did show up to come to watch you, which has never been a problem to you, well that was kinda of a lie. Before your death you’ve dreamed of being a musician, which was silly for women from when and where you were from regardless it was still a big dream; you’ve longed to be a part of those concerts you would read on the paper or see on paintings and how magical it looked. It was a big promise your partner made before you passed on your wedding. A shame you never got to see it, alive but you were content playing your emotions away. Occasionally some do pass by to view your playing, but, most of the time, it was always newcomers. You didn’t blame them either: the piano was so out of tune almost completely broken but you kept playing anyway, only listening to the song in your head. Swaying along to its beat.

As you press the keys of a broken instrument a gust of wind flew past you, way too fast for you to think it was just the wind. You paused your playing for a quick second, checking if a ghost came into the room to hear you play, but there was nothing. You brushed it off quickly and turned back to your notes, after all, it was the Netherworld. The music blinded your senses, deafening you from the threat echoing around your music room. You spammed your notes when you glazed up feeling your dead heart beat for a second at the woman in front of you.

She was dressed in all black in a gown that looked like a wedding dress- in a completely different style than yours. Her black curly hair matched the dress and her lips were the only color to pop from her complexion. She was stitched up just as you’ve imagined the face of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, the only difference being that you wouldn’t describe her as horrid and monstrous.

But as memorizing and beautiful.

You patted your eyelashes feeling like you were staring much longer than you should the silence being overwhelming and the absolute dominance she had over you sent a pleasant shiver down your dead spine. She looks down at your hands-glued to the piano keys- then back at you, her dead black eyes staring into you. “Who are you married you?” She asked her accent echoing in the room. “Hmmm..” you hesitated, understanding her question, but found it difficult to find the words. You told your lover’s name: giving her an open book on your backstory, even though that’s not what she asked but you ramble on anyway like a nervous young man trying to talk to a lady. The mysterious dead bride made a satisfying ‘hum’ tilting her head as her eyes roam on you again, making you gulp. Her eyebrows narrowed when she fully observed the instrument in front of you. She looked.. confused? “What’s this?” She asked and you couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. “Why, it’s a piano.” Her lost expression didn’t change she just looked back at you. “Piano?” So she was serious, she generally didn’t know what a piano was.

You spent the rest of your time educating the enticing woman- now next to you sitting on a stool- what a piano was and what it did. The lesson shifted into a conversation of your story another thing she didn’t ask for but when you turned to look at her: she was smiling. Her eyelids resting on her black eyes, her soft warm glaze turning you into mush. Your breath hitched as you felt your cheeks warm up despite no blood pumping through your system. You cleared your voice, tracing back to the previous lesson before you got distracted. You moved your fingers to the previous song before she interrupted, your nervousness melting away as you broke into a song without even realizing it. Delores glued her eyes and mind to you feeling that spark of life she hadn’t felt in a long, long, long, long, time. In her human life, she only knew the supernatural, the folklore, the mythology, a cult she vowed to say loyalty to. When you live on nothing by power, survival, or vengefulness, you don’t live. She hasn’t lived in a long time and she thinks she realizes that now.

From then on, it became a tradition. Whenever you were not alone in your music room, she was right, there; listening to you sing and play becoming one of your most, and only, honorable guests. Because of this little hangout, the two of you grew to know each other more even enjoying each other’s company outside of the music room where you really got to clamps of who she was and why the dead screamed and scurried away from you when she was close by, eventually, the two of you locking your arms together. Delores had everything in her power to end your life twice and you knew that now, -she probably would’ve ended up doing that at your first meeting if she wasn’t so curious about your piano- however, she treated you like an angel she saw you as; her cold nail rubbing gently on your dead skin locking arms and holding hands to make you feel safe, her eyes being on your when you perform earning all of her attention, even going as far as to dance together at the soul train stop. Where the two of you shared your first kiss. She pulls you in mid-spin, slamming her cold lips on yours at a similar temperature sending warmth to your body.

Time seemed to pause at the moment and it felt you were alone with her, regardless of the dancing dead around you. She held your cheeks as you stared into her space-like eyes, feeling your dead heartbeat and you didn’t feel like you’re lonesome bride anymore, because of her.

[cerastes]

Do you think at some point early on in Arknights the intent was to be a buildup to a more critical look at Rhodes as more morally grey than it first appears? Because when I started the game I was so sure that's where it was going. Popukar probably being one of the first characters you get, the idea of SWEEP, the understanding I had at the time of darknights doctor and y'know, the villains being who they are. I just thought it would be more of a thing.

I don't think necessarily, I think the intent was always to posit Rhodes Island as "as good as you can get while still being a relatively major power but not quite as big or resourceful as a state". I do think it bears mentioning that child soldiers/children and teenagers with a job as a concept don't seem to really carry a stigma as they do in the real world: The only real times in which these are painted in negative lights are when the conditions or results of these decisions end up in something negative:

Popukar was clearly indentured labor at the lumberyard. The part that's condemned is that she was miserable and practically a slave, not really that she was working per se, and she's given a job by RI later after Kal'tsit personally gets her out of there.

Frostleaf's being a child soldier even before Rhodes Island isn't really all that condemned, the effects it had on her psyche is.

Absinthe, just orphaned, is made a Rhodes Island Operator. This notion isn't rejected or truly contested, no more than "maybe we can send her somewhere proper for care". Hell, all the Ursus kids also get made into Operators.

Even outside of this, we hire children frequently: Bubble, Suzuran, Shamare, you name it. Sure, each has a context, especially Shamare who is Fucking Haunted, but the matter of the fact is that Rhodes Island isn't just housing them, it's also showing no real qualms with them taking the Operator Testing Battery and, if they succeed, hiring them. It's mentioned several times that Rhodes Island has many non-combat roles -- Angelina used to be a Messenger for Rhodes Island before taking the Operator test, Orchid was offered a desk job at Rhodes Island initially, and Weedy was a Rhodes Island researcher who explicitly worked out and trained so she could pass the physical components of the test -- but there's no real turn of eyes when a child says mmmm yeah I'll do the Battlefield Supporter Battery please, thank you.

Amiya is, you know, the CEO of Rhodes Island, and that IS pointed out in a "damn, fucked up" way, but what's being lamented is not her having a job, it's her having a BIG difficult job. I think no one would bat an eye if Amiya was a regular Operator under Theresa instead (granted, because she's the owner's daughter, but even without that link).

These are some examples of in-universe logic regarding the whole child soldier and kid with a job. I'd wager it's because life expectancy in Terra is pretty damn low from what we've gathered: Armed conflict, crime, Catastrophes, Oripathy, there's plenty of ways to kick the bucket in Terra, much like it was in Ye Olde Ages in real life, which is coincidentally an era in which by 16 you already were an adult and were expected to start having adult responsibilities.

Pre-Amnesia Doctor was definitely not a stellar person but it's always understood that they weren't bad as much as broken: Scout put it best that it broke his heart to have seen this kind educator and fun, loving individual become a heartless tactician. Even when described this way, though, it wasn't like Doc became this Brooding Evil Mass, it's still mentioned plenty that they were pretty beloved by most people and a person they liked being friends with -- Ace, Scout, and Amiya all corroborate this, and in flashbacks, you have Theresa being pretty warm with Doc -- but if you were a footsoldier, Doctor was probably your worst nightmare because you were disposable -- W, Ines, Hoederer and Flamebringer can tell you as much -- so we had less a villain or a vile individual and more a broken individual who was remolded into someone that could withstand the immense psychological pressure that came with having their role. That's not to sanitize pre-amn Doctor, it's to echo the game's own words on them as per the characters in the setting that knew them from back then, and who held both positive and negative opinions on them.

Looking at all of these from an in-universe lens, they all have coherent in-universe explanations. I also think they would have foreshadowed any sort of Rhodes Island Insiduous Vileness with characters or actions by now: Less than stellar, antagonistic high command, dubious orders to do some vile stuff, other such things. The closest we get to this is Kal'tsit hating Doctor's guts, but also Kal'tsit is a really good person and her hatred of Doctor stems from her knowing them pre-amnesia, seeing how that happened, and what Doc did in those times, particularly one big event that's pretty lore relevant.

You may have noticed the elephant in the room [SPOILERS FOR PEOPLE NOT DONE WITH THE REUNION ARC YET]: I didn't address the enemy part yet. That's because that's the part that I still have some conflicted feelings over: The real enemy, in the end, isn't Reunion's ideals -- which are shared with Rhodes Island -- but rather it's what Reunion has become, a false flag operation for the Ursus Empire to justify a war. On one hand, I like that, on the other, I do think it's something that should've been more graciously hinted at in the very early chapters, because in those very early chapters, you REALLY are rent-a-cops in essence, putting down the people you set out to help. Of course, it's not that simple and there's a nuance as to why and the business dealings and all that, but given the relative simplicity and pace of the early chapters, it really is easy to see it come across that way.

It does, however, ring consistent with what we were previously talking about, though: The essence of, more than the act or thing in itself. Or, in other words, in Terra, the onus of things seem to be placed on the result or context surrounding something more than that something in itself: Child soldiers are fine, unhappy and in-risk child soldiers are not. Teenagers with jobs are fine, teenagers with huge stressful jobs way out of their league are not. Revolutionary movements are fine, revolutionary movements with civilian casualties are not. And so on. There is DEFINITELY commentary that can be had about this, mind you, but that can be for another post in another blog.

With this in mind, I go back to what was first said in this post, I think the idea was always to posit Rhodes Island as "as good as you can get while still being a relatively major power but not quite as big or resourceful as a state".