#engineering is nuanced and complicated

[vagueconfusion]

You're getting a bass this weekend? Sick. What kind if you don't mind me asking?

It's pretty dependent on what ones are available at the store, I'd like to try to get one secondhand (some people say you feel closer to instruments you buy new? But for years I learned and played on a secondhand saxophone and loved the instrument dearly) so it depends on what's there and the price. Hopefully there's something in my price range because I'll need an amp too. I also, uh, have no clue how to play a bass, so I figure I'll start on an inexpensive-but-decent one and see how it goes from there?

I read up a bit and saw good things about some Squier Classic Vibe and Ibanez SR300 for beginners, Yamaha in general too. I'm not picky about the brand right now, I figure I'll get a more nuanced opinion as I learn and figure out what sound I want? One reason I want to go to the store is so I can try to get my hands on some to hear the sound of them, and choose from there.

[dresshistorynerd]

The Morrisian case against fast fashion

Today I discovered that H&M made a William Morris collection some years ago. The heath death of the universe can't come quickly enough. We can stop now. Satire is dead and we killed her.

It's not just the whole concept of H&M using William Morris' designs for their fast fashion which is insanity inducing, but also the critical response it garnered. Like sure, people did realize this is insane and there was a lot of think pieces about it at the time, but I read several of them and they all seem to still miss the point in spectacular way.

The basic premise of these think pieces go along the lines of: "Would William Morris spin in his grave with a speed of light because of the H&M collection of his designs? A difficult question indeed. William Morris was a complicated man. He wanted art to be affordable to everyone. Isn't H&M affordable? That kinda fits. Though probably he would have some concerns about H&M's practices."

On the surface - yes - but like in reality - fuck no. There's no nuance in this particular issue. He talked about many times what he though of the H&Ms of his time, the retailers selling poor quality industrially produced "fashionable" bullshit. We know exactly what he would have thought of H&M. Here's couple of quotes from his 1884 lecture "Art and Socialism", which makes it very clear.

"It would be an instructive day's work for any one of us who is strong enough to walk through two or three of the principal streets of London on a week-day, and take accurate note of everything in the shop windows which is embarrassing or superfluous to the daily life of a serious man. Nay, the most of these things no one, serious or unserious, wants at all; only a foolish habit makes even the lightest-minded of us suppose that he wants them, and to many people even of those who buy them they are obvious encumbrances to real work, thought and pleasure. But I beg you to think of the enormous mass of men who are occupied with this miserable trumpery, from the engineers who have had to make the machines for making them, down to the hapless clerks who sit day-long year after year in the horrible dens wherein the wholesale exchange of them is transacted, and the shopmen, who not daring to call their souls their own, retail them amidst numberless insults which they must not resent, to the idle public which doesn't want them but buys them to be bored by them and sick to death of them."

He is describing the birth of consumerism, which was taking form during his lifetime in the late Victorian Era, which fast fashion is the extreme logical conclusion of, and he fucking hated it. He specifically railed against endless consumerist products, which H&M is the perfect representation of. It was definitely not the art and beauty he believed everyone required and deserved. He makes the distinction often.

"Now if we are to have popular Art, or indeed Art of any kind, we must at once and for all be done with this luxury; it is the supplanter, the changeling of Art; so much so that by those who know of nothing better it has even been taken for Art, the divine solace of human labour, the romance of each day's hard practice of the difficult art of living."

"And here furthermore is at least a little sign whereby to distinguish between a rag of fashion and a work of Art: whereas the toys of fashion when the first gloss is worn off them do become obviously worthless even to the frivolous—a work of Art, be it ever so humble, is long lived; we never tire of it; as long as a scrap hangs together it is valuable and instructive to each new generation. All works of Art in short have the property of becoming venerable amidst decay: and reason good, for from the first there was a soul in them, the thought of man, which will be visible in them so long as the body exists in which they were implanted."

When he thought of popular Art he thought of the craftsmanship of the common people. The art people have made from useful everyday objects with skillful handicrafts. This is what he means by "divine solace of human labour". It's not reverence of Puritanical work ethic, on the contrary, it's the reverence of creation, of the earnest joy people feel when they get to express themselves through their creative pursuits. He certainly didn't believe in work for work's sake, work needed to be worthwhile and enjoyable. He summarized his own position on what labour should be thusly:

"It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should he done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious."

He urged his middle class audience to reject consumerism (the lecture was for a very much middle class atheist society):

"For I say again that in buying these things: 'Tis the lives of men you buy! Will you from mere folly and thoughtlessness make yourselves partakers of the guilt of those who compel their fellow men to labour uselessly?"

I think it's glaringly obvious H&M and fast fashion in general is what he would consider luxury. Rags of fashion that are just churned out and discarded without thought and produced by compelling people to labour uselessly. It's not popular art that's made by workers and craftsmen, who are able to express themselves through it. There's no agency for the abused workers in H&M's sweatshops, they are not expressing their joy of creation, they are simply labouring uselessly.

Morris didn't shame workers for buying affortable things even if they weren't Art with big A, because that's the problem he despised the whole economic system for, for taking away the popular Art from people, making it inaccessible, and selling back mass produced products with very little practical or aesthetic value. So I don't think he would have problem with people who can only afford fast fashion today. They are the victims of capitalism too, because Art has been taken away from them. But the idea that some of these think pieces had that perhaps the H&M's Morris collection can be good actually if you squint, that H&M has the capacity to bring the art and beauty Morris advocated for for the people, is level of stupidity that's hard to express in words.

Morris didn't believe anything made with exploited labour could be truly beautiful, truly art. In his 1879 lecture "The Art of the People" he put it like this:

"That thing which I understand by real art is the expression by man of his pleasure in labour."

The way I understand this, is that art is communication. Through it we communicate feelings, ideas and thoughts, that is it's purpose. So for that communication to work, for it to be imbued with message, the person making it needs to feel passion and love for it's creation. How can there be love and passion if the hands making the garment belong to a tired exploited worker who has no agency what so ever in their work and can only think about survival to the next day?

Beyond the fundamental exploitativeness of H&M and fast fashion, this collection would still get zero points on aesthetic values from Morris even with his own designs. Because the work itself was such an important part of art for Morris, good design was nothing without good craftsmanship. Good design in his mind was always relative and dependent on it's purpose.

"For everything made by man’s hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent." (The Lesser Arts, 1877)

Here when he says nature, he means the nature of the thing that is made - basically it's purpose and function - and the nature of the materials it's made from. Basically, the design must always be made to bring out the function of the art and the qualities of the material it's made from, not fight against them. This is because he believed handicrafts were uniquely suitable for expressing the love of creation, therefore superior labour, and to really bring out the qualities of the craftsmanship and enjoy the creative process, the design should be suitable for that craft. The other side, which was the joy of using and experiencing art, required the craft to be selected for the suitable purpose. Using poorly functioning furniture for example is not very enjoyable, nor is using clothing that's made from materials that are not suitable for the climactic conditions it's supposed to be used in.

H&M of course utterly fails in this. They use Morris' designs in fully unsuitable ways. They print patterns made for example for wall papers on poor quality fabrics with synthetics dyes they weren't made for. This line from one blog post I came across really got me: "Therefore, without cheapening the artistic value of Morris’ designs, H&M’s collection offers an unparalleled potential for accessibility to them." No. Fuck no. They do in fact cheapen Morris' designs in every single way possible. Literally this is atrocious.

Despite the popular depiction, Morris wasn't in fact against industrial machinery or industrial art even, or at least he wasn't once his views on art and politics matured. He did think technology was useful, but he thought the people should use industrial methods for the benefit of all, not be enslaved by the industrial machine.

"I have spoken of machinery being used freely for releasing people from the more mechanical and repulsive part of necessary labour; and I know that to some cultivated people, people of the artistic turn of mind, machinery is particularly distasteful, and they will be apt to say you will never get your surroundings pleasant so long as you are surrounded by machinery. I don't quite admit that; it is the allowing machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays. In other words, it is the token of the terrible crime we have fallen into of using our control of the powers of Nature for the purpose of enslaving people, we care less meantime of how much happiness we rob their lives of." ("How we live and how we might live", 1887)

However, he thought that the designer should approach it the way they approached any craft, by designing for the strengths of the machine work.

"But if you have to design for machine-work, at least let your design show clearly what it is. Make it mechanical with a vengeance, at the same time as simple at possible. Don't try, for instance, to make a printed plate look like a hand-painted one: make it something which no one would try to do if he were painting by hand..." ("Art and the Beauty of the Earth", 1881)

He did use some machinery for fabric and wall paper printing, but he was very intentional about their use. Still his designs weren't made for the type of methods these modern H&M machinery uses and he did for example use natural dyes. Particularly insulting is that some of the H&M clothes are made from viscose, rayon made with viscose method. Viscose method is extremely toxic and is known to cause long term health consequences for the workers and the people in surrounding areas. This has been well proven knowledge for ages. William Morris' wall paper factory in the beginning used the typical method used at the time which involved arsenic, but once he learned this could pose risks for the workers, he changed the method. Many of the new synthetic dyes were toxic at the time, which is the major reason he so favoured natural dyes, known to not cause health issues for workers or pollute the environment.

The question many of these think pieces about the H&M Morris collection posed was, would Morris disapprove and should we care? The first part of that is very easy to answer. Yes. Of course Morris would disapprove. He is currently powering the whole of British Isles with purely the kinetic energy his grave-spinning produces. Should we care though? If you care about Morris' art, if you want to see more of that kind of art in this world, you should care. Morris' art is not about the superficial qualities. Copying his designs and aesthetics and styles, will only lead to hollow imitations, that are exactly what he described the rags of fashion to be; as the shininess of novelty wears off they will reveal themselves to be soulless, useless and utterly empty. This collection is just that. To see more of the kind of art that makes you feel like his art makes you feel, not just something that reminds you of that feeling, you should focus more on the way the art is made and less on the specific aesthetics. If his vision of labour and art was realised, all art produced of course wouldn't be loved by every person, but all of it would be loved by someone, even if that someone was just the maker. And that would be more worthwhile than every single rag of fast fashion.

I will stop William-Morris-posting now and return to my thesis.

The full texts I quoted here:

Art and Socialism The Art of the People The Lesser Arts How We Live and How We Might Live Art and the Beauty of the Earth

[reasonsforhope]

"As a Deaf man, Adam Munder has long been advocating for communication rights in a world that chiefly caters to hearing people. 

The Intel software engineer and his wife — who is also Deaf — are often unable to use American Sign Language in daily interactions, instead defaulting to texting on a smartphone or passing a pen and paper back and forth with service workers, teachers, and lawyers. 

It can make simple tasks, like ordering coffee, more complicated than it should be. 

But there are life events that hold greater weight than a cup of coffee. 

Recently, Munder and his wife took their daughter in for a doctor’s appointment — and no interpreter was available. 

To their surprise, their doctor said: “It’s alright, we’ll just have your daughter interpret for you!” ...

That day at the doctor’s office came at the heels of a thousand frustrating interactions and miscommunications — and Munder is not isolated in his experience.

“Where I live in Arizona, there are more than 1.1 million individuals with a hearing loss,” Munder said, “and only about 400 licensed interpreters.”

In addition to being hard to find, interpreters are expensive. And texting and writing aren’t always practical options — they leave out the emotion, detail, and nuance of a spoken conversation. 

ASL is a rich, complex language with its own grammar and culture; a subtle change in speed, direction, facial expression, or gesture can completely change the meaning and tone of a sign. 

“Writing back and forth on paper and pen or using a smartphone to text is not equivalent to American Sign Language,” Munder emphasized. “The details and nuance that make us human are lost in both our personal and business conversations.”

His solution? An AI-powered platform called Omnibridge. 

“My team has established this bridge between the Deaf world and the hearing world, bringing these worlds together without forcing one to adapt to the other,” Munder said. 

Trained on thousands of signs, Omnibridge is engineered to transcribe spoken English and interpret sign language on screen in seconds...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” ...

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. "

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024. More info below the cut!

To test an alpha version of his invention, Munder welcomed TED associate Hasiba Haq on stage. 

“I want to show you how this could have changed my interaction at the doctor appointment, had this been available,” Munder said. 

He went on to explain that the software would generate a bi-directional conversation, in which Munder’s signs would appear as blue text and spoken word would appear in gray. 

At first, there was a brief hiccup on the TED stage. Haq, who was standing in as the doctor’s office receptionist, spoke — but the screen remained blank. 

“I don’t believe this; this is the first time that AI has ever failed,” Munder joked, getting a big laugh from the crowd. “Thanks for your patience.”

After a quick reboot, they rolled with the punches and tried again.

Haq asked: “Hi, how’s it going?” 

Her words popped up in blue. 

Munder signed in reply: “I am good.” 

His response popped up in gray. 

Back and forth, they recreated the scene from the doctor’s office. But this time Munder retained his autonomy, and no one suggested a 7-year-old should play interpreter. 

Munder’s TED debut and tech demonstration didn’t happen overnight — the engineer has been working on Omnibridge for over a decade. 

“It takes a lot to build something like this,” Munder told Good Good Good in an exclusive interview, communicating with our team in ASL. “It couldn't just be one or two people. It takes a large team, a lot of resources, millions and millions of dollars to work on a project like this.” 

After five years of pitching and research, Intel handpicked Munder’s team for a specialty training program. It was through that backing that Omnibridge began to truly take shape...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” 

In order to achieve that dream — of transposing their technology to a smartphone — Munder and his team have to play a bit of a waiting game. Today, their platform necessitates building the technology on a PC, with an AI engine. 

“A lot of things don't have those AI PC types of chips,” Munder explained. “But as the technology evolves, we expect that smartphones will start to include AI engines. They'll start to include the capability in processing within smartphones. It will take time for the technology to catch up to it, and it probably won't need the power that we're requiring right now on a PC.” 

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. 

But it is more than a transcription service — it allows people to have face-to-face conversations with each other. There’s a world of difference between passing around a phone or pen and paper and looking someone in the eyes when you speak to them. 

It also allows Deaf people to speak ASL directly, without doing the mental gymnastics of translating their words into English.

“For me, English is my second language,” Munder told Good Good Good. “So when I write in English, I have to think: How am I going to adjust the words? How am I going to write it just right so somebody can understand me? It takes me some time and effort, and it's hard for me to express myself actually in doing that. This technology allows someone to be able to express themselves in their native language.” 

Ultimately, Munder said that Omnibridge is about “bringing humanity back” to these conversations. 

“We’re changing the world through the power of AI, not just revolutionizing technology, but enhancing that human connection,” Munder said at the end of his TED Talk. 

“It’s two languages,” he concluded, “signed and spoken, in one seamless conversation.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024

[crssvjb]

Moments -Sebastian Vettel

Sebastian Vettel x Senna!reader

Summary: Moments of your relationship with the pilot Sebastian.

Warnings: Mentions of Ayrton Senna here (not many). A little long.

The Encounter - 2008

The year was 2008, and the Formula 1 tracks were both a place of excitement and nostalgia for you. As the daughter of Ayrton Senna, the racing legend, the world of F1 has always been part of her life. Now, as a mechanical engineering student, you landed an internship at Toro Rosso, an opportunity that blended your passion for engineering with deep memories of your father.

One afternoon, in the Toro Rosso pits, while analyzing the car's data, the voice of Sebastian Vettel, a young German driver, interrupted his thoughts. – "These numbers always seem very complicated." – He said with a relaxed smile.

You turned around, surprised to see the pilot next to you. – "Well, to me, they tell fascinating stories." – You replied, smiling. The connection has been made. Sebastian, curious and respectful, began to ask questions about his father and the time when Senna dominated the tracks.

– "Ayrton Senna is a legend. What is most incredible about him that people don't know?"

You smiled, appreciating the sincerity of the question. – "In addition to his incredible driving skills, my father was driven by an intense passion for competition, but also by a deep respect for other competitors. He sought excellence, not just for himself, but to elevate the entire sport."

Sebastian, his eyes shining with interest, replied: – "It's incredible how he influenced Formula 1 and all of us. I'd love to hear more about him."

Between conversations about cars, racing and engines, you got closer and became friends. Sebastian, being a promising driver at the time, showed genuine interest in his passion for mechanical engineering. The bond between you grew, even when he left for the Red Bull team the following year.

The Invitation - 2009

In 2009, Red Bull Racing became the new stage for the emotions of Formula 1. Sebastian Vettel, now the team's driver, was conquering the world with his skill on the track. Still, you remained a constant part of his life, the connection growing with each run.

The day after the exciting race in Singapore, Sebastian invites you to a quiet dinner. The atmosphere is cozy, an elegant restaurant in the city. As you browse the menus, Sebastian smiles, looking straight into your eyes.

– “These moments on the track have been even better with you around.” - He says. – "And I was wondering if you'd like to hang out with me. Not as teammates, but as... something more."

Sebastian holds his hand, demonstrating the sincerity of his words. – "I really wish this was something beyond the track. What do you think?"

The sincerity in Sebastian's words is moving. You smile, feeling a rush of emotion. – "I would love to, Sebastian. It would be a pleasure."

The Instructor - 2010

The year was 2010 and the Formula 1 season was about to start. Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel had a bigger challenge ahead of him. And you? Well, you were about to embark on the journey of a lifetime. Red Bull Racing decided that you would be Sebastian's instructor for the season.

The days leading up to the start of the season were intense. You and Sebastian spent hours on the simulators, discussing strategies, adjusting technical details and analyzing each curve of the circuit. It was a perfect elaboration, where the pilot and the engineer shared ideas and experiences.

On a rainy afternoon at the Red Bull office, Sebastian looks at you with a smile. – "You really know what you're doing. It's amazing how everything makes more sense when explained by you."

You laugh, sharing your knowledge with passion. – "It's all about understanding the nuances, the details that can make a difference. And when you drive, these details become even more crucial."

The season begins and the races bring challenges and triumphs. In a memorable race, Sebastian achieves another podium at home. The atmosphere in the pits is electric, and after the team celebrates, they turn to you.

– “This is for us, for our partnership.” – says Sebastian, and before you know it, your lips meet in a passionate kiss, revealing to the world the connection that developed behind the scenes.

The news about you two spreads quickly through the media, but you face everything head on. At a press conference, Sebastian smiles for the cameras. – “Finding someone who shares the passion for the sport and understands the madness that is Formula 1 is rare. And I’m grateful to have her by my side.”

The coming months will be one of continued celebration. Wins on the track create a unique dynamic. The world championship is an achievement for both of them, and on the podium, after the last race of the season, Sebastian surprises everyone again by holding the trophy, looking at himself and saying: “This victory is ours.

Commitments - 2012

After an intense and exciting race, you and Sebastian return to the hotel tired, but radiant from the victories achieved on the track. The atmosphere is relaxed and intimate when you find yourself in the hotel suite, with the city lit up in the distance.

Already dressed casually, you snuggle into bed, sharing laughs and memories of the day. The city lights mix with the twinkle of the stars, creating a magical scene.

Sebastian, looking at you tenderly, comments: – "You know, today was a special day. Not just for the races, but for being together. I have something for you." – He gets up and takes something from the table next to the bed.

Upon returning, Sebastian holds a small box. His eyes light up as he opens the box, revealing the dazzling ring. – “From the moment we met on the slopes, my life changed, darling. It’s not just about running for me, it’s about the journey we’re building together.”

He looked into her eyes tenderly. – "I don't just want the races, I want all the twists and turns of life by your side. So, Y/N, will you agree to be mine forever?"

The moment for Y/N is as if she were participating in a romantic movie. Your romantic movie. The city lights, the few stars in the sky and Sebastian's request create an unforgettable scene.

You, excited, respond with a smile lighting up your face. – "Yes, Sebastian. I accept with all my heart."

He gently places the ring on your finger, a tangible symbol of your commitment. The cold ring is bright and contrasts with the warm exchange of glances between you. An enveloping hug follows, as if it were a seal that transcends words. The racing heart is the echo of the emotion shared in that intimate moment. Amid the silence of the hotel suite, the kiss that follows is soft but full of meaning.

Weddings and Achievements - 2013

In 2013, on July 13th, the wedding of Sebastian Vettel and S/N Senna was a great spectacle. The lush garden was adorned with a profusion of flowers, while the mountains in the background provided a picturesque backdrop. The golden early afternoon sun cast a magical light on the ceremony, where Sebastian anxiously awaited the arrival of his bride.

The bride, radiant in her wedding dress, walked towards the altar. Sebastian looked at her in awe, and when she finally reached his side, he whispered, "You look amazing." The words were soft, but they carried with them all the depth of the love they had built since that first conversation.

The ceremony was filled with personal vows, each word echoing the unique journey that brought them here. When it was time for the vows, Sebastian held Y/N's hands gently.

– "Y/N, since the moment you came into my life, everything has changed. You are not only my partner, but my light at all times. I promise to be your constant support, to love you on good days and bad, always ."

With tears in her eyes, Y/N replied: – “Sebastian, you are my passion and my calm. I promise to support your dreams, laugh with you in the joys and face the challenges together. ."

The kiss after the vows wasn't just a symbolic gesture; it was the confirmation of an eternal promise. Under the warm applause of the guests, the celebration continued in an atmosphere of joy and happiness.

The reception was a festival of colors, twinkling lights and carefully planned details. The party continued with dancing, laughter and unforgettable moments. Each reflected the couple's unique personality and the love that permeated their union.

In the privacy of Sebastian's three-time world champion's room, the trophies and photos that told the story of his victorious career were proof of his achievements not only on the track, but now also in his personal life. The wedding photo occupied a prominent place, symbolizing the harmony between professional and personal victories.

Life continued with travel, intimate moments and the making of memories that would become fundamental pillars of the journey together.

At the end of 2013 the Brazilian Grand Prix arrived and emotions were running high. Sebastian, determined and focused, aimed for his fourth world championship. The Interlagos tracks witnessed a spectacular performance, culminating in the victory of Sebastian Vettel, who became four-time world champion.

In the pits, the team celebrated and Y/N was there, proud and excited. Y/N, with a smile lighting up her face, approached him. – "You deserve it, love." – She said, and pulled him in for a kiss.

Thus, under the vibrant colors of Brazil, the couple celebrated not just a victory on the tracks, but the victory of a love that withstood all the curves and straights of life. Sebastian Vettel's fourth championship marked not only racing glory, but also the consolidation of an extraordinary journey, where love and success were intertwined in a unique and unforgettable narrative.

Family and New Challenges - 2015-2022

The years that followed marked an extraordinary journey for Sebastian Vettel and S/N Senna-Vettel, a path full of challenges. In 2015, Sebastian embraced Scuderia Ferrari, diving into a chapter full of promises and achievements.

The space dedicated to Sebastian achievements, where his shiny trophies are kept, but now also for children's laughter and colorful toys. Elias, the firstborn, was born in January 2016, filling the house with the sweet melody of a baby's cry and transforming the world bedroom into a haven of joy and life.

Antonella's arrival in May 2019 further expanded the Vettel family's horizons. The days were filled with laughter, games and the innocent wonder of children discovering the world. The pantry room, where all the trophies are kept, now decorated with drawings and children's toys, has become a microcosm of family love.

At the end of the 2021 season, where Sebastian was at the Aston Martin team, he decided to retire and had Y/N's full support.

On a calm day, Sebastian and Y/N found a moment for a serious conversation about the future, sitting in the world room. Looking at the trophies that told the story of his victories, Sebastian began, "I think it's time for a change, Y/N. I've decided to retire at the end of this season."

Y/N looked at him surprised and, at the same time, understanding. – "Sebastian, this is serious. Are you sure this is the right time?"

Sebastian held her hand tenderly. – "Yes, I'm sure. I want to be more present for you, for Elias and Antonella. Every time I get home it seems like they grow another 5 centimeters. Life is more than tracks and races."

Y/N, despite her surprise, smiled, feeling the warmth of her decision. – "I understand. We will be by your side no matter what."

The last Grand Prix - 2022

The final Grand Prix of the 2022 season was a bittersweet spectacle. In the Aston Martin pits, the atmosphere was charged with emotion as the Vettel family gathered to support Sebastian in his final race. Watching the race, Y/N got emotional.

Six-year-old Elias watched beside her, with a mixture of curiosity and understanding beyond his years. 3-year-old Antonella was excited, fascinated by the colorful cars on the screen.

When the race ended and Sebastian crossed the finish line for the last time, Y/N was emotional and proud. As they approached the pits, he affectionately joked: – “You are sadder than me, because I am retiring”.

Y/N laughed, wiping away a furtive tear. – “It’s hard not to get emotional, Sebastian. There were so many achievements, so many laps together.”

Sebastian hugged her, looking at Elias and Antonella. – "You saw daddy run, didn't you?"

Elias, his eyes shining, nodded. – “It was incredible, daddy!”

Antonella, in her enthusiastic way, exclaimed: – “I want to run too!”

Sebastian laughed, taking her in his arms. – "Who knows, little one. Life is full of surprises."

⎊𝙘𝙧𝙨𝙨𝙫𝙟𝙗 - ²⁰²⁴

[conceptionsofconciousness]

Krittika Nakshatra "The Star of Insight"

Krittika Nakshatra, often called "The star of insight," is well-known for the unique abilities of its natives. These individuals possess a remarkable talent for breaking down complex ideas into simpler, more understandable components. This skill not only showcases their intellectual capabilities but also reflects their deep understanding of various subjects. Their innate ability to clarify intricate topics allows them to communicate effectively with others, ensuring that even the most complicated information can be grasped by a wider audience. This makes Krittika natives invaluable in academic and professional settings where clarity and comprehension are crucial.

One of the most distinctive traits of Krittika natives is their attention to detail. They have a keen eye for observing nuances that others might miss. This meticulous approach enables them to analyze problems from multiple perspectives and uncover elements that contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the issue at hand. By applying their analytical skills, these individuals can distinguish essential components from irrelevant information, streamlining complex processes. Their ability to break down tasks into manageable steps allows them to tackle challenging projects and enhances their overall productivity.

Furthermore, Krittika natives thrive in environments that require a systematic and organized approach. Their precise and methodical nature helps them navigate intricate systems with heightened efficiency. This characteristic is particularly beneficial in fields such as research, engineering, and data analysis, where complex information is commonplace. By leveraging their skill in subdividing tasks, they can create strategic plans that lead to successful outcomes. Ultimately, the capabilities of Krittika Nakshatra individuals make them stand out in their fields, where their insights and clarity significantly contribute to collective knowledge and problem-solving efforts.

Return to Basic Stories of the 27 Nakshatras Masterpost

[pericardium-and-glass]

would you pleaaaase drop the lore for those re ocs. looks at you with big pleading eyes

YIPPEE! Thank you for asking about my RE OCs 🥺 As with all of my fandom OCs, I am playing with canon like clay (There's a lot of head canons + making things up as I go) so please view this as an AU :)

Here’s Handler Dayus (he/him) and NE-a H-01 (it/its). They commit atrocities together on behalf of Umbrella :) I've made a tag for these two: Photo of a Stranger AU || RE OCs

Just a heads up, it’s not a happy story. Long post below!

NE-a H-01 [Nemesis Alpha Parasite, Human-Host Second Unit], code name Deerstalker(<- Might change that). Competent in any stealth based missions and capable of being adaptive on the field. It cannot vocalise (not completely true 😉) but it knows three sign-languages (American, French, British). It’s technically not a Tyrant because it’s not infected with the T-virus.

NE-a H-01 used to be a human, who was a scientist at Europe Lab 6 (aka, the Nemesis Project, Luis Serra etc). Deerstalker was not a project approved by Dr Herman Frankl, but instead, was a put together to cover up a Lab 6 scientist's misuse of the NE-a parasite as an extreme case of professional-turned-personal rivalry. H-01 survived, so they put it to use. The scientist who caused this incident, along with the Deerstalker project, have been removed from EL6 and transferred to the American Labs. 

Dayus had a background in biochemical engineering. But unfortunate circumstances in life eventually had him joining the UBCS instead. Excellent performance and an outwardly remorseless personality saw him handpicked to work as a Tyrant field handler, where he was assigned NE-a H-01 as a BOW to work with. 

He did not know about the details of its creation, thinking it was just another lab grown BOW. That was until he was given a photograph, and everything spiralled from there <- I might make a comic for this. The photograph in question.

So Yay! Both of these poor meow meows are constantly going through The Horror. Lore is subjected to change, I’m always adjusting stuff. And there’s a lot of complicated emotional nuances + detailed lore that I can’t fit in this post, but hopefully I will sprinkle it into any doodles I make of these two. 

(Tbh... I made these OCs cause I wanna make my own human x Tyrant ship so yeah 😳 👉👈)

Thank you for reading this long post! Have a nice day :) 

[corviiids]

i loved your answer to the ooc question... penny for your thoughts on the Core of ren and goro? 👉👈🥺

rubbing my little bug hands together i dunno that i can capture all my whole... mental Akeshu Bible... in one post... but here are some notes on what i'd consider one of the most key points for each.

basically the way this works for me is ill have like a central piece of understanding sitting at the core of how i work with a character, and then let instinct guide their dialogue/behaviour from there.

i wrote a thesis again. two in fact. jesus christ

goro - sincerity is mystifying, dangerous, and impossible, but alluring.

can i talk about light yagami for a second. are we all going to be okay with it if i do that. that's going to make this easier for me to explain

i think light yagami and goro akechi have almost nothing in common once we get past the most obvious similarities - the cynicism borne of shattered once-upon-a-time idealism, the willingness to turn to radical action, the bad hair. anyway the difference i want to point out arises from another key similarity which i think only exists on the surface - the "evil underside true self" counterpart to the "pleasant preppy perfect boy" persona. looks the same. but the difference is that light never struggles with that falsehood, and akechi clearly does.

what i mean by that is i think to light, his perfect persona is nothing more than a simple disguise, albeit one he's been wearing a while without knowing why. he doesn't really have a fractured sense of self, because it's clear that the light yagami who is kira is the True self. the light yagami who is just a nice young man is mostly a falsehood to the point light sees him as a character to be played. (ok this is also an oversimplification but go with me for now. okay. that's the basic of it. just accept this for the sake of argument. this aint about him)

goro is very different. i think in the lead-up to the interrogation room, goro understands himself in a similar way, but after the interrogation room that perception is called into question. okay, i think about the interrogation room scene a lot, because i really didn't like goro's behaviour in that scene when i first played it, i thought it was a very cheap and superficial way to reveal his identity as the traitor by making him act as cartoonishly villainous as possible. and tbh i dont want to give atlus too much credit for creating a super nuanced scene there so what im about to propose is probably unintentional. but anyway, i eventually came around to it because i decided that that cartoonish villanousness must be a choice to goro. at that point in time, goro's perception of himself is akin to light's understanding of kira: black mask/shido's assassin/evil motherfucker is "the true goro", and pleasant boy detective prince is nothing but a mask.

and here i would like to bring up a complicating factor which makes light and goro very, very different. light wants to live. he refuses the shinigami eyes because he wants to exist in his new world to rule over it indefinitely. goro's plan on the other hand has a fixed timeline. goro is aware, and tells us in the engine room, that once his public reputation is shattered, he has nothing. goro's plan involves outing shido by outing himself. ergo, goro's plan is to take shido to the top and then torpedo them together, leaving them both with nothing.

what does this mean? light yagami's mask protects kira - light's true self and a man who wants to live. goro akechi's mask serves the black-masked assassin, but the black-masked assassin serves shido, a role which is just as deceptive as the detective prince. which means goro akechi's disguise protects a self that isn't real, either. it feels disingenuous to say that the version of akechi who exists to be shido's attack dog is his true self. so that goofy villainous smile in the interrogation room is, to me, goro convincing himself that that evil face is who he really is, not realising it's another facade he's playing up - but while the prince's audience is the public, the assassin's audience is goro himself. after that whole thing goes down, i think it becomes clearer that that evil face was goro pretending to himself that he's just a straight up villain who doesn't care about anything because that's easier than conceding that you might feel some complicated way about the self-loathing and bitterness you've been nurturing since childhood.

but wait, there's definitely also truth to the black mask. there's no way to deny that the akechi who attacks them in the engine room had a ton of truth to him that the detective prince lacked. but, wait. goro doesn't perfectly keep up the facade with the detective prince, either, because there are definitely times where he's being honest even when he's being the pleasant boy.

okay, where does that leave us? light has one layer of falsehood (light protects kira), but goro has at least two (detective prince protects black mask protects ???) so what the hell is goro hiding? where's the true self? is the version of akechi who showed up in the interrogation room the black mask, or is it shido's assassin? are those two different guys who overlap? does this mean everything the detective prince said is suspect? we don't know which one is true, but we know they're both lying.

okay. why? what's wrong with him? i should get to my actual fucking point maybe?

this is the central thesis of his shadows in palacefic btw. rather than being divided into a relatively clean true/false like light, goro's true self is split between his personae. every time you talk to any version of goro akechi, you're getting some lies but you're also getting some sincerity. i think goro doesnt know who he is because he doesn't see any particular use for having a real self at the end of the day, only masks he can use to achieve his ends.

except you can't actually kill your true self. it sticks around. so the most he can do is fragment it. but the consequence is the shards get stuck in his masks. every time he tries to put on a mask, a shred of truth peeks out. i think goro wants to not exist and not be known, but inside every mask he wears is a true part of him that desperately DOES want to be known, but can't allow it, but wants it, but is scared of it, but wants it, but hates it, but will die if it happens, but wants it.

what you end up with is a really self-contradictory guy where every time he talks, the things he's saying are simultaneously true and false. it's the worst with ren, because he's really interested in ren, but allowing ren to know him is suicide. light's really good at playing the part because he has no investment in the part, it's purely fake, and all his investment is in his true self. but goro is invested in each of his masks, because each of his masks contains part of him for real and there's no unified self to return to at the end of the day. so he struggles way more with the act than light does, because there's a part of him, however small, that really wants to drop the mask. but he can't, because there's nothing behind it, so there's nothing he can do

anyway when i write goro's dialogue and behaviour, it's not just writing a guy lying and playing a part because he needs the cover, it's goro injecting himself into mould after mould after mould and trying to keep a balance of how much he can reveal vs how much he needs to keep close to his chest. this is why he talks so fucking much, it's why his speech mannerisms aren't always perfectly polished, it's why the mask slips so often, it's why he's so cartoonishly evil at times, and it's why while light yagami is a popular guy who has everyone around him perfectly fooled, goro akechi is really only able to appeal to the subset of fans who are keen on his particular celebrity style while other people find him kind of annoying and disingenuous. when im writing akechi in xyz situation, it's a process of working out which mask he's wearing, what he wants to achieve, what he's hiding, how much he can or would slip, and what that slip might look like. i think this is heightened because of his circumstances, but i also think goro would be incredibly guarded and paranoid no matter what his circumstances were (although the murder might decrease a little).

tl;dr: goro akechi tries to do away with his sense of self but only succeeds in splitting it into a hundred million pieces covered in lies, each of which is desperate to be known but shies away with equal desperation

ren - in a distant relationship with the sense of self

idk that thats the right word but basically i think in true persona protag fashion, and as alluded to by beneath the mask / the power of the wild card / etc the relationship between ren's personae and his 'true self' is more complicated and detached than most of the other characters. i dont agree that the protags are true "blank slate" protagonists in the meta sense but i do think ren is a "blank slate" person in-text in that simultaneously he has extremely strong core values and beliefs which are absolutely immovable, and traits which shine through even in his limited speech, but the manifestation of his personality is a lot more malleable than say ryuji's is. ren is very flexible and wears a different mask depending on who he's talking to. i think that requires a level of detachment which manifests as basically centering his companion's character + needs in a given interaction over his own. this doesnt just come through in his dialogue but also in the way he internally reflects on what's happening.

the way this manifests most obviously in how i write him is that my ren (in texts especially but also in dialogue) has a tendency to omit his personal pronoun (in subject position).

that gives him kind of a laid-back vibe. he has a habit of omitting the first part of a sentence entirely.

he adds it back in when he's talking about something more serious, very alert, feeling uncomfortable, etc. it happens a lot when he talks to akechi because he needs to be very switched on during those conversations to keep up.

idk i know that for some people the joy of having a protagonist character is being able to make them into whoever you want them to be - so your ren might be extra flirty for example which i think is a really popular characterisation of him because it's fun and it has some basis in his dialogue, and it's a choice i went with for a while before i started shifting away from it. recently i've been way more interested in trying to reconcile this really strong-willed guy with a clearly rich and rebellious inner life with the quiet slouched character who says like 3 words every conversation and who really never reveals anything about himself. like, imagine he's a real person and not just a blank slate protagonist i can push and pull - how do i make his little mousy 8< self work with the fact that he's an international criminal without adding something on top that isn't already there in him? i think there's a way to do it and i think the way to do that is to have him internalise as much as possible. for everything he says, there are a billion things he doesn't say. that makes it really fucking difficult to actually portray him sometimes because his rich inner life can really only come through if we have access to his inner monologue, and if he's not the pov character we don't, but you know, i love a stupid fucking self imposed challenge. ren amamiya is like laying breadcrumb clues in his dumb ass 3 word dialogue options that im crawling over like weevils with a magnifying glass

but he DOES leave clues! so many of his dialogue options are sarcastic and dry or straight up goofy. so he's funny, he's deadpan, he can be impatient. but if you take that too far in dialogue, it gets overplayed, and he loses his taciturn charm, so you have to pull it back, because he's restrained, not overt. he's quippy, he's not wordy. he's a show-off, but in a self-assured way. he will never indicate in any way that he wants you to look at him. he'll just make sure he's so impressive that you can't look away. if he winks, it's like he's keeping a secret between you, not like he's putting on a show. he delivers one-liners only, not full jokes, and the setup and knockdown has to be in the same breath. if his thoughts can't be condensed into one sentence, two or three max, he doesn't say them, he keeps it to himself. whether his emotions show on his face depend on how well you can read him, and it depends who he's with, it depends how recently he's been joker, it depends if there's some extenuating factor in there that's going to make him crack. ren's more likely to crack if he's standing up for someone else.

his inner monologue is just as interesting to grapple with because my ren is pretty repressed. the more upset he is, the more he distances himself from how he's actually feeling. he's very good at deflecting people and he's also very good at deflecting himself - focus on someone else, focus on the environment around him, focus on some physical sensation, don't get too far into his own head, or else

tl;dr: ren handles himself with a mix of internalising and externalising by swallowing down everything he might want to say out loud but outsourcing and distancing from his sense of self to keep himself steady

[thebroccolination]

A 4AM REFLECTION ON GL VS. BL

My enjoyment of a GL series is directly connected to how women are socialized in reality and then portrayed in media.

I have a very limited number of cis men in my life due to the prevalence of cis men who strike me as either outright dangerous or else red-pilled into idealizing the kind of society in which straight cis men are catered and capitulated to even to the detriment of everyone else. I grew up around some very intelligent straight cis men who would explain in very reasonable voices why anything else would be silly. I know a broad spectrum of what to look for, so it’s been relatively easy for me to avoid men like that in adulthood.

I’m bored and obliquely revolted by traditionally masculine male characters unless the narrative presents me with a nuanced portrayal of how the emotional rigidity and detachment of male-dominated societies affect cis men and their relationships with people of other genders. (“Mad Men” does this for me in spades.)

That’s why SOTUS works so well. In the series’ narrative, the hazing system is presented as a flawed way of enabling closer bonds between older and younger students who wouldn’t otherwise have a reason to talk to each other due to cultural hierarchies structured by age. (Arthit’s actor Krist—who was a hazer himself—has said that, since the abolishment of the SOTUS system, his juniors have told him that they mostly stick to their own age groups in school. So he said that while he understands the reasons it was abolished, his own experiences and closeness to his seniors complicates his feelings about losing the system entirely.) In SOTUS and SOTUS S, every head hazer we see is a man trying to make his era a little better than those of his predecessors. Arthit is improving on Tum, and Kongphob is improving on Arthit.

Outside the hazing, Kongphob and Arthit’s relationship is a slowburn between 1) a shy, sweet boy literally nicknamed “Warmth” (Oon) who’s masquerading as a brusque authority figure and 2) an assertive, confident boy whose relentless determination to see and care for Arthit eventually results in a mutually devoted, long-term relationship.

[This man helped that man study economics in the evenings after his full-time engineering job—that’s the purest love there is.]

But SOTUS only works for me if it’s about two boys. A heterosexual series in which Kongphob is a girl and Arthit is a boy would just be another heavily promoted ideal that a woman should be a man’s peace—the sweet lie behind a metric ton of violence against women throughout history. Instead, Kongphob is a boy who uses attributes commonly considered masculine (assertiveness, confidence, leadership) to protect and care for another boy.

And Arthit, who’s shown in flashbacks to initially be quite gentle in his first year, goes through a full arc throughout all three iterations of the story struggling with what kind of man he thinks he needs to be to avoid societal judgment and the potential ostracization of the man he loves.

Even down to the academics, engineering was deliberately chosen as their faculty to subvert stereotypes of “masculine” majors and play with audience expectations. SOTUS works because it presented a tender queer love story in the contexts of aggressively masculine settings: an engineering student and his hazer who goes on to work in STEM. That’s why it was the BL series that set the standard and changed everything.

(Every one of my posts could be a Trojan horse to SOTUS.)

All of the BL couples I love most challenge toxic masculinity. From soft-spoken Thame who relentlessly talks through all of his issues and Po who refuses to take advantage of him, to “don’t you dare disrespect my boyfriend with crass innuendo” Win and “I would rather give you up than be another person who uses your kindness” Team, to loyal-beyond-all-reasonable-expectations Pisaeng and “I’ll change time itself if it means making you happy” Kawi—they all challenge some standard set by society that makes the world demonstrably worse for everyone.

So that’s why I like BL.

GL, though.

That’s where things get complex.

Where BL is a genre that deconstructs the Other, GL is my backyard. The vast majority of my wider and inner circle are female-presenting queer folk, so I’m automatically going to side-eye anything that hits me as inauthentic or male-gazey.

I spend my life surrounded by the complexity and immensity of women’s interiority and potential, so I viscerally despise societal and cultural limitations set on them as well as misrepresentation done to them. Basically, I’m immediately bored by any GL that gives me Kind Girl Falls in Love with Other Kind Girl and Everyone Is Kind Because Girls Are Kind.

Those aren’t the sapphic relationships I know and love.

First of all, we’re not all kind.

Second, where’s the grit?

Most of the queer women I’ve ever met have been made nuanced by the hostility of the world. Even when they aren’t well-read or politically active, they’re still savvy in some way because they’ve learned from experience to be on guard against potential threats from multiple angles. A lot of queer women are extremely funny as a coping or defense mechanism, too.

Queer women are so much more interesting and complicated than many of the characters I’ve seen in GL (so far).

That’s why I love Anin from “The Loyal Pin” so much. She’s a royal whose privilege gives her a leg up in society and the perceived freedom to have whatever she wants in any form she chooses. The narrative does eventually give her what she wants (happy endings are a requirement in romance this isn’t a spoiler) but it makes her work for it, and she has her worldview challenged multiple times beforehand.

Also, she’s funny.

Let women in GL be goddamn funny.

A lot of queer men have my issue with GL when they watch BL—not seeing their lived experiences onscreen. The lack of femme men, the underrepresentation of trans men, the application of heterosexual roles onto their dynamics, etc. I think we’re all innately harder on stories that present anything we have direct knowledge of, and I think these conversations are important to have so we understand what these stories need more of in the future.

Unfortunately, GL series that subvert societal norms for women are harder to get from an industry largely controlled by conservative men who want girls to be ladies and women to be quiet. But it’s not impossible. SOTUS wasn’t expected to do anything or go anywhere when it aired. The impact it had was an enormous shock. Tha thought it was weird until it made him money.

I think the GL series we have are improving dramatically as we get more of them and the audience for GL becomes a more and more reliable platform for future financial success. I think influential industry supporters like Saint are driving the change I want to see, and I already know of several GL series airing this year that seem intent on providing a lot of what I’ve been missing in others.

I’m looking forward to the day when my top ten list is an equal split between BL and GL, and when I can finally write the BL/GL crossover fic to surpass MUSE. \o/

[lazuliquetzal]

I keep on telling people you're the only one who knows how to plot. Can you teach all of us how to plot, please? I love you.

I AM SUMMONED? PLOT BRAIN SUMMONED?

I love plotting. It's my favorite part of the writing process. Plot is "things that happen" and the best part of writing is imagining things that happen. I'm going to assume that whoever may be reading this knows how to imagine The Happenings, so I'm gonna be talking more about structure, but in like, a kinda abstract sense.

A good plot is a little bit more than a string of events. Plot is like music: there's variation in rhythm and sound and melody, but ultimately there's cohesion, because it's all one song. You can have a bunch of wild things happening, but no matter how strange, there should be something that links them all together, because you're telling one story.

Plot structures are patterns in stories. I'm pretty sure most of them were developed as analysis tools (as in, story already exists > look! it follows this pattern) rather than as writing tools, but people use them as writing tools because it's a neat little way to organize the chaos that is "shit happens." Stories follow patterns for the same reasons music follows patterns: we enjoy the certainty of hitting certain beats. But we also like being surprised. A good pop song doesn't sound like a random collection of sounds, but it also doesn't sound like the middle slider of other songs.

There is this shared concept in both music and writing: the idea of tension and release. Basically, you're playing with reader expectation: there's an imbalance in the experience (tension), and we want to see that imbalance resolved (release). All the common plot structures deal with this basic pattern:

You set an expectation

There are complications to the expectation

You meet the expectation

And this rhythm is happening on multiple levels in writing. Scenes follow this structure (we're gonna get past that door, we're gonna find the murder weapon, we're gonna collaborate and come up with a plan) and all those scenes feed into the overarching expectation (we're gonna solve this murder!). I usually think of chapters as their own mini-story, part of the larger whole. And I think of scenes as their own mini-story, part of the larger chapter. I have engineer brain. I see the gears spinning in the clock. That's why all my chapters have at least One Important Thing happening, because that's that particular chapter's Step #3.

And One Last Important Thing:

In music, a delayed resolution is almost always more interesting than the standard resolution. In writing, that means you wanna drag out Step #2 for as long as you can. That's where the bulk of the story is happening, that's how you build tension, that's how you get people to turn the page.

So when you write a fake dating fic, those bitches better not get together until the very end. I came here for fake dating, not for real dating, damn it. If you resolve that expectation early on, you better replace it with a different expectation that's just as engaging.

But also don't drag it out for too long. Sorry. The hard part of writing is learning the difference between too short and too long. Writing is unfortunately a nuanced skill which is why my advice is like "do this but not too much teehee." But tension and resolution is just rhythm, you can build a sense for it if you engage with enough stories.

[lagunaseca2013]

Marc should get Val pregnant

hello dearest anon I’m a little drunk in my uber home from my terrible work dinner event and this is. the greatest ask I’ve ever received. I had um. too many thoughts about this so everything under the cut lol

okay I have so many questions are we still talking about omegaverse?? reverse omegaverse au where vale is the omega and STILL traps marc in a one sided bond hell yeah I say omega rights! unleashing so many new implications plot-wise and vale and marc’s specific crazy trauma-wise. that’s not even getting to the mpreg of it all………orrrr are we talking normal life but mpreg is real? bc I have to confess I am NOT shy about mpreg however I usually default to omegaverse/pussyverse bc ass babies just don’t have that je ne sais quoi. to me personally. we all have our preferences okay….for you I will allow ass babies for the sake of uhhhh diversity

anyway um yes normal life marc getting vale mpregnant would be. an impressive accomplishment for him personally in the sense that we would have to manipulate the facts of this universe so that either 1) vale regularly lets marc fuck him, or 2) vale is really fertile and the one random time marc was both topping and not wearing a condom he got knocked up. both deliciously complicated scenarios. let’s go w number two and throw in that he’s post retirement bc it’s funny to me and bc realistically 2015 vale would mabort that thang and kill marc about it.

my beloved present day old man vale hanging around the ducati garage doing whatever the equivalent of pulling marc’s pigtails would be, breaking the ice by reinstating the sexual tension (pecco is so miserable he starts spam texting luca his complaining until luca gets annoyed enough to respond and tell him to just come to his motorhome if it’s really that bad). they’re in a weird place of not apologizing or forgiving each other for everything but like. finding the humor in the absolute fucking ridiculousness of the situation. start fucking again but it’s different now. it’s nuanced sex. they do it in missionary and look into each others eyes on occasion, marc SOMETIMES tops.

thennnn marc gets the ninth and instead of the open-ended fury vale just kind of assumed was still there he’s HAPPY for him he shows up at the podium and shakes his hand!!!! the media is going wild pulling all kinds of narratives. he’s refusing to answer questions about marc for a welcome change but when they interview him about pecco’s loss he’s like quietly benevolent about it!! progress I say!! after the gala ducati is having the championship party to end all champion parties and marc and vale are ALL over over each other all night, their whatever it is that they have has always been an open secret among the grid but now it’s soooo obvious to everyone that the rumors were true! some incredibly scandalous blurry background pics of them circulate after a ducati engineer accidentally posts a few w them like dry humping each other in the back of the club lol.

marc is having all of his dreams come true, he’s soooo drunk, he and vale are TRUE EQUALS in the eyes of the motogp gods, vale LIKES HIM again this is the best night ever. vale is also wasted and so pleasantly surprised by how happy and proud he is for marc. and also marc is. soooo hot in my wildest dreams he keeps the haircut he has rn for the whole season so it’s curly at his nape and vale wants to pull on it and fuck his face and—you get it.

they go back to marc’s motorhome, they get nasty, vale gets like the craziest urge he’s had in a while and is like you should fuck me mr. world champion now that we’re equals blah blah blah. marc doesn’t have any condoms….bc vale always fucks him raw….(we’ll talk about that later) and vale is so horny and also a billion years ago his doctor told him he has like a hostile womb or something so he’s kind of always thought that even tho he’s a carrier he probably couldn’t have kids. marc is like are u sure (coochie eyes) vale is like if you don’t do something rn I’m gonna do something drastic. they both talk a big game and then it’s slow and sensual and deeply emotionally fraught. vale cums first untouched and then flips over and begs marc to finish inside him. they pass out and then marc stumbles out of bed at whatever in the morning and somewhat makes it to testing on time. pecco is eating his not eating disorder girl core breakfast all moody and judgmental (sore loser) like wow marc I did not think you would be walking around today.

cue people making sly little comments or teasing marc about getting dicked down by vale allll day lol. even bez (who has spent the entire season resenting the reconciliation) is like chilling w vale who has sunglasses on bc old men get hangovers and ribbing him like you should’ve fucked him harder last night, how is he still on top of the timing board after the show you guys put on at the club? vale is like sinking lower and lower into his chair barely comprehending what’s going on around him, fucked out and sore and getting sense memories about how stretched out he was on marc’s giant cock. ahem.

in this fantasy scenario it’s all fine but they still don’t talk about it for a while and also vale thinks he’s like contracted a mystery illness bc he can’t keep any food down but he’s horny as fuck all the time?? his nipples are sore, he’s randomly getting PIMPLES at age 47, etc. marc is doing his excessive offseason travel and like sending him yacht nudes from jamaica or whatever the fuck. vale looks like death and is also maybe becoming the first man to die from jacking off so much so he keeps avoiding sending pics back by calling marc and like talking him through getting off. they miss each other SO BAD and won’t acknowledge it at all until vale who is isolating from the academy and miserable alone bc he doesn’t want to get anyone sick and also vulnerability makes his skin crawl just kind of crumbles and is like….when you’re done with your vacations….you should come to the ranch….they’re both equally horrified and attached to the idea. they both know it’s probably going to make or break their fragile little truce!

except the day before marc is set to come luca forces him to see a doctor, the doctor runs a full panel of bloodwork bc he thinks vale has like a fungal infection or something. surprise! it’s a parasite! due in seven months! vale immediately panics and like is so close to saying something horrible to marc to stop him from coming but luca, longtime witness to vale’s self destruction, takes his phone and talks him down. I’m imagining an awesome speech where he basically tells vale he has to stop destroying his relationships just bc his parents didn’t work out. and then he leaves him alone in his house to tell marc the news……..they live happily ever after the end.

okay now let’s do it omegaverse style! uccio voice someone claiming to be your [alpha] would never [knot you] like that

moment of silence for omega vale au of omegaverse au where vale somehow manages to one-sided mate marc AND get knocked up all in the same heat. IN THE YEAR 2015! they would be soooo messed up about that forever. the only way vale is keeping it is if he has like a semi-cryptic pregnancy and finds out when it’s way too late. which ofc triggers him so bad bc he’s been RACING this whole time which he views as morally wrong thank you graziano and also punishing marc for uhhhh letting himself get bitten by vale. okay sure.

so he’s pregnant he HAS to keep it and his baby daddy is……..let’s be realistic marc is going INSANE here he can FEEL how bad vale wants and needs him and also this umm vague presence (baby) that he maybe is dumb enough to think is like the literal hand wavey omegaverse spiritual manifestation of their love or whatever. I’m losing the plot. so. I’m gonna be crazy and say a baby could fix this. no wait let me explain.

let’s say vale finds out during sepang! he just dragged marc’s name through the dirt and also for the first time in his life sort of pulled the omega card (it’s 2015, alpha shaming could be a little in! think white woman feminism around that time) which is crazy bc vale has mostly slid under the radar as an undefined androgynous charismatic freak who has never answered a single question about his secondary gender. he doesn’t actually say he’s an omega ofc he just makes allusions to marc’s toxic alphalinity in a way that separates himself from it and subtly implies that he’s at a biological disadvantage. okay girl let’s weaponize gender essentialism bc we’re having a mating crisis! so.

he does and says that. then he gets on the bike and pulls a move that could seriously harm himself AND marc. ik he didn’t actually get hurt but let’s say motogp cares about safety a little bit and forces him to go to medical anyway. he’s fuming, he gives his phone to uccio bc it’s blowing up, he’s getting an ultrasound bc my background is f1 and that’s what they do to them when they absorb too much gforce or whatever, and the doctor like drops the wand in shock and they’re both staring at each other like. why the fuck does that sound like a heartbeat and look like an embryo. and now all the FUN can begin :)

[greens-spilled-tea]

Doing some thinking on parts and people language and just. Honestly I hate that it's framed as dichotomy of one or the other. Some systems have members that prefer one over the other, some systems will use both interchangeably, some systems have a more complicated and/or nuanced relationship with parts and people language.

Me, though? I'm realizing I don't really view any singular alter in my system as either of them. It's why my preferred language of choice is *version* of me. A part implies I'm part of a greater whole, and while that felt true for me when I was more dissociated and thus only had access to specific emotions and memories and stuff, nowadays I'm so integrated I don't really feel like a part of Reimei anymore. I just... am Reimei.

On the other hand, I'm also not all of Reimei. If you only know Green, you're not getting the entire Reimei experience. I am Reimei, but I'm not the only Reimei, yknow?

And that's why I use version, which really encompasses how I feel about myself these days. Sometimes when you're talking to me, the version you're getting is argumentative and blunt and kawaii as fuck, and that's the version of me that calls himself Green. But sometimes you may get a different version of me: someone who's more of a know-it-all, or who's peppy, or who's obsessed with audio engineering, or whatever. And those are all as real as this "me" that's talking and typing.

I don't like part because it doesn't feel accurate for my current experiences anymore- but I also don't like person because I'm only one facet of the complex person that is Reimei. So I'm a version of me.

[buginacup]

I've said it once and I'll say it a million more times but the concept of "Asset Flipping" is sorely insuffecient for talking about games and betrays a very antiquated rhetoric. I think people should recognize when the disgust they're experiencing is because something "feels cheap", and that feeling cheap is not some grand moral failing that is degrading our industry.

There are a lot of reasons to object to something being buggy/unfinished/etc - but people (at least online) seem more drawn to a sort of categorical dismissal that disposes of all ugly/complicated/dubious art in one fell swoop. The assumption that true art must emerge wholecloth without anything pre-made requires a complete dismissal of how game engines (and hell, computers themselves) even work, not to mention perpetuates the expectation that indie developers become martyrs of self sacrifice for the sake of their project.

Considering that even games from big developers are coming out unfinished and broken I think we're all due for a more nuanced toolset. Surely there are more insightful (both outward and inward) ways to discuss why we find a piece of media low-quality or objectionable besides a projection of apathy.

[ame-wa-ame-2]

rhythm games are so awesome i really want to know more abt them /gen. do you by any chance know what makes some charts more "fun" than others bc ive always felt that some are just more fun but idk what makes them that way. would you happen to know by any chance /np

Hsjrjskdkdk

major yap session under the cut... im also way more qualified (aka knowledgable) to talk abt UI and engines, idk much abt charting so take all this with a grain of salt!!!

ty for asking.....

okay this is a very complicated topic (ill use pjsk as an example but these basic ideas extend to any rhythm game)

difficulty plays a big part in it!! people who chart tend to aim for certain difficulties to balance games out.

on one end of the spectrum, an easy chart is characterized by a chart that would be easy for any person at a certain level, let's say, expert to complete and full combo. these are typically looked down upon, because chart that are intended for a certain skill level but are too easy will be boring. lvl 29 plays like a lvl 26? thats a kind of low quality no game would want.

on the other end, a hard chart is characterized by a chart that would be frustratingly difficult for any person at a certain level. a lvl 29 that plays like a lvl 32? thats fucked up, and will end up frustrating people.

this is the first balance official charters have to strike, they can't let it be boring but they dont want it to be frustrating either!

that's a big part of it, but not the full story. a good chart will be fun, so a fun chart has to be good.

a bad chart tends to be slightly off beat (this is way less prevalent in games with official charters, but in games with only fancharts, there's a lot of this), using a gimmick poorly, or just not understanding when something isnt fun to play (i.e. sometimes trills are fun, but when overuse or used in the wrong spots they can become incredibly frustrating to the average player)

a good chart doesn't have these issues, and a great chart is so good you can feel the passion and personality the charter put into it!! monitoring master29 on pjsk for example is a chart with a lot of personality! its not my favorite (doesn't suit my personal tastes that well) but i cant help but like it because of how much you can tell the charters had fun with it!!!

being able to negate the issues and have a silly fun time takes a lot of skill and experience with a certain engine!! this is why i like it when charters get acknowledged, i dont even know how they do it!

overall this is a super nuanced topic that I'm sadly not qualified enough to talk about in detail </3 (← doesnt know how to chart things well)

if youre interested in learning more I'd recommend asking someone who charts rhythm games officially!! they'll typically know the procedure and details.

if you want to chart for pjsk, you can download mikumikuworld!!! its a free charting program made specifically for pjsk. I don't know much about its capabilities but itll at least work to get you started, lmk if you want more details regarding how to use it and testing the charts!!!

[seraphtrevs]

for the ask game…brbabcs? (either the combined universe or whichever of the shows individually) 💕

I'm just going to do a mishmash of whatever happens to come to my mind lol - STREAM OF CONSCIOUS POSTING INCOMING

my favorite female character - over the whole brbabcs, obviously it's Kim. She was a great character from episode one, but they really cemented her as the Character of All Time with her fall from grace in season 6. She's so complicated and layered, achingly human and relatable, but also extraordinary, which makes her compelling to watch.

She's a hard character to sum up because she's so nuanced, but I think what draws me to her the most is her deep rage at injustice. Her fall is ironic because it was that desire to make the world "right" that led her to betray her core values - but honestly, who can blame her? Haven't we all wished that the Howard Hamlins of the world would suffer consequences too, instead of consequences being only reserved for people who were born in the "wrong" race/gender/class? But at the same time, embarrassing one Howard Hamlin is not actually the same thing as making systemic changes, and her desire to punish him was a personal vendetta, not actual justice. I totally get how the two got mixed up in her head, though.

I'm also a big Skyler fan - more on her later

my favorite male character - For BCS, it's Lalo lol. I don't think he's the BEST character, but sometimes it feels like Peter Gould got the gang together and was like, "Listen, tumblr user seraphtrevs has been having a hard time - why don't we write a character that is specifically tailored to all of her deepest, darkest, and horniest desires?" And lo, they did. He's so charming and cheerful and evil and funny and so so SO hot - I was doomed from the very first paca paca paca 😭

Side note, I think i'm such a villain girlie because I'm so anxious. Characters who don't worry about anything except doing what they want are very fun for me to watch. Imagine the bliss of not caring! *_*

For brba, the character I have the most affection for is Jesse, but Jesse is made to be loved. So instead...I'm going to pick Walt. He is the worst man who has ever lived and I completely get why people can't stomach him. My own husband tapped out of brba because he found Walt unbearable IN SEASON ONE.

So as a person, yes, Walt is the worst. But as a character? He's unparalleled. He makes things happen, which I think a very underrated character trait (and one that a lot of writers overlook). Walt is an infernal engine, a perpetual motion machine, a catalyst of catalysts. Things HAPPEN when he's around, which makes him a really fantastic character.

The other thing I really appreciate about Walt is that Vince Gilligan really stuck to his guns. He said he wanted to tell a story about Mr. Chips becoming Scarface, and by god that's what he did. A big problem with a lot of "antihero" shows is that they are often way too sympathetic to their protagonists and fall for their bullshit. And while a lot of the audience for brba fell for walt's bullshit, the writers were always very clear-eyed about what they were doing.

my favorite book/season/etc - an impossible question for bcs. all seasons are tied for best except season 2, which was a little tiny bit less good but only because it was necessary to set up the rest of the show's run, so actually it is also tied for best. I guess if you put a gun to my head, I'd say season 5 because it's the Lalo season

brba is an easier call - it's for sure season 4.

my favorite episode (if its a tv show) - for brba, I'll say The Fly, not necessarily because it's my favorite (too many favorites to choose from) but because I love character work, and that ep is all character work. Also, it's a good illustration of what I was talking about in my walt answer - it's an episode where "nothing" happens (or so claim Fly detractors!)...but making things happen doesn't have to mean making BIG things happen. Walt's monomania and willingness to do whatever it takes to "win" over something as stupid as a little fly shows what makes him such a great character

my favorite cast member - for brba, i think it's pretty widely known that bryan cranston and aaron paul have merged into one being, so I choose bryaaron.

for bcs, it's bob odenkirk. the entire show - or even the entire brbabcs universe, actually - rests on jimmy. like i know i just said that was walt, and it is for brba. but i think that now that bcs is done, you can make the argument that jimmy is actually the character that it was "about" (actually I'd put Kim in there too). Walt was always morally black, but Jimmy was genuinely morally gray for much of the series, and he maintained a human core that Walt lost. I think Jimmy and Kim are more relatable. (Not to leave Jesse out, bc out of the four of them Jesse is the most sympathetic in a lot of ways. But I feel like his story was more of a survival story, like Skyler's, and not so much a story about moral failure. Like yeah for sure jesse had tons of moral failures, but that never seemed to be the POINT of jesse, like it was the point of walt, jimmy, and kim.)

my favorite ship - for bcs, it's a tie between lacho and mcwexler. for brba, it's waltjesse.

i haven't talked about nacho at all so far which seems weird because I have a LOT of nacho thoughts (see my tag #nacho christ superstar). i feel like the cartel plot is like, the heightened version of the lawyer plot. or that's not right exactly - not heightened as in better, but heightened as more dramatic, more extreme, more literal. so lacho to me is like, what if you really were in bed with the devil? (i mean, maybe literal is the wrong word because he's not LITERALLY the devil, but lalo is a much more straightforward, morally UNambiguous character who is the personification of the evils of the cartel. so like. more literal. you know what i mean.) (plus i'm so horny for both of them. 😭😭😭😭😭)

mcwexler is the best on screen, canon romance i've ever seen. period.

as i've said before, waltjesse is the six-in-one shampoo/bodywash/conditioner of toxic relationships. jesse is walt's student/business partner/best friend/worst enemy/mistress/wife/son/dog. how can you NOT love something that twisted?

a character I’d die defending - SKYLER. Fortunately tumblr has the right attitude, but it still blows my mind that anyone could judge her for what she went through. walt destroyed her life - every action she took was her trying to protect herself and her children. what she went through was pure nightmare fuel, and it astonishes me that anyone could think she was ever unsympathetic

a character I just can’t sympathize with/a character I grew to love - someone sent me an ask just about these, so i'll save these for later! this is already so long lmao

my anti otp - I don't really have any for the brbabcs verse! in general, i'm openminded about even off-the-wall ships because fandom is for fun, and no one in this fandom has ever annoyed me with some of the shipping behavior you get from bigger, more annoying fandoms

[rayclubs]

Since you guys promised to be normal, here's everything I hated about Comic 7, in no particular order and not particularly seriously:

Engie is completely mischaracterized. I hate that he becomes a "voice of reason" for Pauling to destroy the australium. I hate that he never goes into that room because "his grandfather and father never went there" even though he was eager to use and improve on Radigan's tech before without any issue.

Speaking of, who built that room? Radigan literally invented australium-based resurrection for the Mann brothers. Who made that machine if no Conagher ever went there?

"Well, some other engineer could have done it" ah get fucked. Way to strip the Conagher family of every semblance of authority and unique skill they were implied to have before. Comic 7 ruined Engie for me and I hate that.

RED team accomplishes nothing of value over the course of the story. The australium they "found" is destroyed, Mann Co. is returned to Saxton mostly without their help and later given away, nobody does anything of value and then they have the gall to say "we couldn't have done it without you". Couldn't have done what? Finished the goddamn comic? You STARTED it! That's on YOU!

Scout gets over his feelings for Pauling in a completely anti-climactic way without any prior internal conflict or realization. Yes, his experience in Heaven could have influenced his decision. No, they weren't shown to have done that. I don't buy his character growth. It wasn't earned.

Spy and Scout's complicated nuanced relationship is stabilized off screen via unknown means, once again being unearned.

Admin's bullshit motivation ruins the previous six comics by de-valuing the stakes. The australium doesn't matter. Mann Co. doesn't matter. None of what anyone did was necessary. Zhanna lost a hand for mothing.

"Quick, the TF2 fan base has aged 10 years since last comic, what do we think they're all up to now?" - "Settling down in suburban houses and popping out kids like march rabbits?" - "Yeah that'll do"

Pyro is not a character, Demo is not a character, Sniper is not a character, Medic is not a character

Heavy's beard looks bad and doesn't suit him. He's literally got brown hair in flashack do you think he fucking dyes it??? Goth Heavy??? Dumbbb

Why is Sniper. Like. Fine? My man lost his FEAR OF DEATH last time I saw him.

It's not funny? I know it's weird and gratuitous to say about a series monumental for its shit piss poopoo kaka humor, but Comic 7 is the least funny comic. From "What do you see? - Not a damn thing, let's switch places." to "Make love to me. - Okay." to "So your dad's dead, huh?" to "Zhanna! Quickly, be racist!" and many more, the original comics are infinitely hilarious, while Comic 7... Well, it has little chuckle moments, but it's not a comedy. Okay, I'll explain.

Comics 1-6 are fast-paced dramedy (10% drama 90% comedy) in both intent and execution. Comic 7 is comedy in execution but a sentimental send-off in intent. It feels like waving a handkerchief at a train station, with poop jokes slapped onto the finished product. It's very jarring in tone.

Basically I think comic 7 shouldn't have happened. What should've happened was either 6 more comics to write the authors out of the corner they wrote themselves into, or like. A shrug and a "cancelled" stamp. Cheers.

[whirligig-girl]

To Eaurp - infodump anything you want about the railways on your homeworld? Everything I've seen about Mellanoid (I think that's the demonym?) trains seems really cool so I wanna know whatever you think is interesting about them :))

Lt. J.G. Guz here. I was just reading some old Xindi model railroad catalogues that Lt. Boimler picked up planetside (we're in the former Delphic Expanse doing infrastructure work, and next we've got to deliver our decadal reparations package to the Illyrian homeworld). And it reminded me of how the way model railroading standards work for other species is really different to how it works on Mellanus.

Historically, Xindi had standard gauge, but multiple of them--every single Insectoid Railway was built to 1,332mm, every single Arboreal Railway was built to 1,090mm, etc. And because that era in their history was marked by interspecies war, there were very few interchanges. And since most Xindi colonies were single-species, the industrial railways they built on other planets just kept the same gauge. So more modern Xindi model railroaders essentially have a small handful of gauges to choose from, with the engines accurately scale for the gauge. So for instance, in this old catalogue from the 2140s, you could get D gauge (30mm), O gauge (12mm), or K gauge (7mm) models, but if you tried to put an Avian engine next to a Reptilian one, they'd be totally out of scale.

I promise I'll talk about mellanoid trains in a bit, just bear with me.

Human model railroad gauges are like, a little bit of a mess, which is funny to me, because they have a standard gauge which was a proper standard for a large part of the world. Standard gauge is actually a United Earth standard these days and gets used on most Earth colonies. And, uh, new build electric railways on Mellanus. Hmm. Ok I know how that sounds, but to the Mellanoids reading at home, I promise Mellanus isn't a Federation colony it's more nuanced than that.

So the main Earth model railroading standards are in decreasing order, F scale (1:20), Gross/garden scale (1:32), 0 scale (1:48), Sixty-fourth scale (1:64), Half-0 scale (1:87), TableTop Scale (1:120), Nine millimeter scale (1:160), Z scale (1:220), Three millimeter scale (1:450). At one point, O, HO, and N were by far the most popular, in addition to regional variants like British 00 scale which were not accurate, but died out during WWIII to be replaced by S scale and H0 scale.

Of course things get more complicated when it comes to modelling narrow gauge equipment. It used to be that manufacturers would fudge things a little to mix and match scale and gauges (HOn3 for HO scale models running on N gauge track... which doesn't quite work out for most of the narrow gauges but it's close enough), but since replicators have become household appliances on Earth, narrow gauge (or broad gauge) modelling has largely become fine-scale, so you have constant scale but any gauge you want. Some modellers have given up on gauge scales altogether. If you're replicating your own equipment anyway, why not? But I'm told this is a railway modelling faux pas.

Larger scales than 1:20 are usually specified by Gauge, not scale, since those are almost always outdoor club-owned railways hauling non-prototypical passenger benches, like the model railway club I got to visit in Sauce-o-lito, Earth.

So, what I've learned is, for the most part aliens have either a specified gauge (track width) or a specified scale (size factor compared to the prototype) in their model railroading standards.

Mellanoids do it better.

At least, in my opinion. See, we specify both, separately. Every single piece of rolling stock you could buy on the market is going to have a specified scale and a specified gauge. We have to do it this way because there is no standard gauge on Mellanus. Narrow gauge and broad gauge and even mixed gauge modelling can not be an afterthought!

The reason is that mellanoid slime model railroading was never all that highly commercialized. Most things were either kit-built, with the ability to change the gauge when building, or scratch-built. The economy in my country at least never really supported large scale hobby model production. A model train was an heirloom that somebody had hand-made, not something you got off the shelf. Manufacturing has taken off during my lifetime, so now you can mail-order ready-to-run models. The cheapest ones are built to a common gauge regardless of scale, but that gauge varies per manufacturer. So the cheap models are usually a common gauge, but the expensive ones are usually a common scale (sometimes requiring hand-laid track and kit-built turnouts).

Ok, I know this is seeming a little bit like we just. Don't have any standards. But this is way better, because you get more information about the product you're getting. You know at a glance if what you get is going to work on your layout, and if it's going to fit in size-wise. For some people, who just want to set up a loop of track and watch a train go around it, the gauge is what you care about. For serious modellers it's the scale that matters, and it just means you'll have to do a conversion kit to change the gauge as needed.