#exercise your franchise

[sprintingowl]

Deadball

Deadball Second Edition is a platinum bestseller on DrivethruRPG. This means it's in the top 2% of all products on the site. Its back cover has an endorsement from Sports Illustrated Kids.

It's also not an rpg I'd heard about until I discovered all of these facts one after another.

I was raised in a profoundly anti-sports household. My father would say stuff like "sports is for people who can't think" and "there's no point in exercising, everything in your body goes away eventually." So I didn't learn really any of the rules of the more popular American sports until I was in my mid twenties, and I've been to two ballgames in my life. I appreciate the enthusiasm that people have for sports, but it's in the same way that I appreciate anyone talking about their specific fandom.

One of the things that struck me reading Deadball was its sense of reverence for the sport. Its language isn't flowery. It's plain and technical and smart. But its love for baseball radiates off of the pages. Not like a blind adoration. But like when a dog sits with you on the porch.

For folks familiar with indie rpgs, there's a tone throughout the book that feels OSR. Deadball doesn't claim to be a precise simulation or a baseball wargame or anything like that---instead it lays out a bunch of rules and then encourages you to treat them like a recipe, adjusting to your taste. And it does this *while* being a detailed simulation that skirts the line of wargaming, which is an extremely OSR thing to do.

For folks not familiar with baseball, Deadball starts off assuming you know nothing and it explains the core rules of the sport before trying to pin dice and mechanics onto anything. It also explains baseball notation (which I was not able to decipher) and it uses this notation to track a play-by-play report of each game. Following this is an example of play and---in a move I think more rpgs should steal from---it has you play out a few rounds of this example of play. Again, this is all before it's really had a section explaining its rules.

In terms of characters and stats, Deadball is a detailed game. You can play modern or early 1900s baseball, and players can be of any gender on the same team, so there's a sort of alt history flavor to the whole experience, but there's also an intricate dice roll for every at bat and a full list of complex baseball feats that any character can have alongside their normal baseball stats. Plus there's a full table for oddities (things not normally covered by the rules of baseball, such as a raccoon straying onto the field and attacking a pitcher,) and a whole fatigue system for pitchers that contributes a strong sense of momentum to the game.

Deadball is also as much about franchises as it is about individual games, and you can also scout players, trade players, track injuries, track aging, appoint managers of different temperaments, rest pitchers in between games, etc.

For fans of specific athletes, Deadball includes rules for creating players, for playing in different eras, for adapting historical greats into one massively achronological superteam, and for playing through two different campaigns---one in a 2020s that wasn't and one in the 1910s.

There's also thankfully a simplified single roll you can use to abstract an entire game, allowing you to speed through seasons and potentially take a franchise far into the future. Finances and concession sales and things like that aren't tracked, but Deadball has already had a few expansions and a second edition, so this might be its next frontier.

Overall, my takeaway from Deadball is that it's a heck of a game. It's a remarkably detailed single or multiplayer simulation that I think might work really well for play-by-post (you could get a few friends to form a league and have a whole discord about it,) and it could certainly be used to generate some Blaseball if you start tweaking the rules as you play and never stop.

It's also an interesting read from a purely rpg design perspective. Deadball recognizes that its rules have the potential to be a little overbearing and so it puts in lots of little checks against that. It also keeps its more complex systems from sprawling out of control by trying to pack as much information as possible into a single dice roll.

For someone like me who has zero background in baseball, I don't think I'd properly play Deadball unless I had a bunch of friends who were into it and I could ride along with that enthusiasm. However as a designer I like the book a lot, and I'm putting it on my shelf of rpgs that have been formative for me, alongside Into The Odd, Monsterhearts, Mausritter, and Transit.

[csuitebitches]

Takeaways from my mentor 

I meet with my mentor as and when he’s available. He manages my family’s money and he’s very good at what he does - his firm manages about $5 billion, and I have great conversations with him. 

I don’t want to talk too much about him, but he came from a lower middle class background and today is wealthy beyond comprehension. He could buy a plane or two in the middle of the night if he wanted. 

Today we focused a lot of personal growth in my career. 

He gave me two books - The Inheritors by Sonu Bhasin and Fortune’s Children by Arthur Vanderbilt.

 

Here are some brief takeaways: 

Work backwards from the outcome you want. 

Define the outcome of where you want to be and plan it backwards to your current position. 

2. Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. 

Life is all about elimination. Don’t focus  on your weaknesses, focus on your strengths. Eliminate all the things you know you’re not good at, you have no interest in and that make you depressed. 

3. Intellectual honesty. 

Be honest with yourself about things you are good at and are not.  The easiest person to fool is yourself. 

4. Read one business biography a week. 

Everything you’re going in life, there’s a 99% chance someone else has gone through it and come out of it victorious. He also mentioned this article.

5. Outline 3 strengths and 3 weaknesses.

 

6. (In business/ corporate careers) You’re either primarily an investor (you’d rather fund companies and start ups than start them), an operator (you’d rather build something hands on), or a manager (you’d rather periodically manage something hands off. Like for instance you could have your own franchise bakery chain where you don’t need to exercise minute control over every franchise but you still ensure that there’s some managing done from your part). 

7. Do not have extreme ideologies at this age. 

Not when it comes to religion, politics, etc. 

8. Emotions, money and your time are something you need to be ruthless about. Absolutely ruthless. 

Be careful about the friends you have and the influence they have on you. 

[gatitties]

War & crack

─Task Force 141 x young!reader

─Summary: some headcanons about your life working with TF141

─Warnings: cliché¿, reader is a gen z

Part two / Halloween special

so... I've been consuming some content about CoD and I know the least about the franchise but the few things I've read have been so good that I couldn't resist writing something too 🫢, sorry if something is out of character since I don't know many things

— You are a threat to society.

— Your parents sent you to the military in the hope that your bad behaviors would disappear, realistically, they were not prepared to be parents either.

— Parental neglect, what a surprise.

— You had many bad influences in your adolescence and free access to the Internet without parental control was like throwing gasoline on the fire.

— Theft, extortion, assault, harassment, banditry, disobedience to authority, fraud, driving without a license, breaking and entering, kidnapping, arson, arms trafficking...

— You had a good record of minor criminal records, the vast majority due to bad friends, but you were already an accomplice.

— Which led you to the fact that when you reached the age of majority, you were enlisted directly into the army without being able to have a choice.

— It wasn't as bad as you thought except for the amount of physical exercise you were subjected to, but you knew how to put up with it.

— Despite being young, in the three years that you served as a cadet, you were sent to many missions, perhaps with the hope of dying since the generals sent you to the front lines of the battle.

— You didn't care, you were feral, careless enough and craving adrenaline, you liked to dance with death in every fight.

— You were the first to run whenever you could to start the attack, after all, all you liked to do was hit, stab or use close-range weapons.

— You lost an arm because of that, you didn't care much because now you have a prosthesis with decorations to your liking.

— Then you were sent to Task Force 141.

— None of the boys expected someone like you, they definitely had a bit of a hard time adjusting to your personality.

— You were a strange combination between Ghost and Soap, going from being a grave to being an explosion of emotions at any moment.

— The first time you saw Ghost you thought he was giving you a side eye and you gave it back to him.

— Later you learned that it's his normal look but you give him the dead look every once in a while.

— Soap and you are not a good combination when you know each other better, he will just give you approval to all the stupid things you see on the internet.

— Gaz might join, but most of the time he just warns you that Price won't be amused.

— Price will look at you like a parent disgusted (but not surprised) by some of your nonsense.

— Confidence sucks, and when you're spouting darkly humorous jokes or about the ways you want to kill yourself because something goes wrong, Price isn't in that boat.

— It's not worth it if you justify it with 'my traumas, my jokes'.

— Honestly, everyone is worried about the number of times you've said you were going to kill yourself for the slightest inconvenience.

— They don't understand most of your current meme references, maybe Gaz, being the second youngest, will pick up on something.

— They were so confused with your attack tactics, because you had practically none, you just jumped in with luck to hit everything you could, which worked every time.

— You will train with Ghost because you are not aware of your surroundings when it comes to fighting.

— The first time they saw your prosthesis they thought a bullet had hit you in the arm, but when you laughed and removed the metal arm shouting 'everything is possible when you're physically disabled' they swallowed their concern.

— You show affection with punches, you punch Soap's shoulder, Gaz's back or Price's side, Ghost... you prefer to communicate with your eyes because the last time you punched him in a friendly way you almost ended up with your shoulder out of its place.

— They can't take you seriously, they really do try but it's impossible, you look like an impulsive teenager who they are babysitting even if you're in your twenties.

— At least it's like that outside the battlefield, you get more serious or focused on the missions.

— Gaz saves your ass whenever you get distracted, which is most of the time, you tell him that he has won heaven but if death wanted to kiss you you weren't going to refuse the offer.

— Seriously, stop with the jokes about your death or depression, Price will get you a psychologist.

— It seems like a joke but Ghost and you end up getting along quite well, it's a quiet and pleasant dynamic, without pressure.

— As with Soap, you know how to adapt a lot to everyone's personalities, as if you were a sponge that absorbs all the likes and disappointments of the boys to get along better.

— You don't give a shit about your own life but you're fighting tooth and nail to protect others.

— Which leads you to almost die once, on top of that, Price scolded you for jumping to try to save them, you didn't care, you'll do it again.

— Squeaks or bangs in the wee hours of the morning? It's you moving the few pieces of furniture in what you can call your own room.

— Someday you'll give the boys a heart attack (Ghost maybe not) because you walk in the dark at night since you tend to stay up late.

— Price will scold you for not sleeping well and drinking so many energy drinks or coffee.

— You will leave random objects in the boys' rooms, like, last time you bought little ducks of different colors and hid them.

— Price denies with a small smile when he sees a yellow duck with a cowboy hat as a paperweight.

— Gaz laughs when he sees a blue duck with an aviator hat in the drawer where he kept his records.

— Soap finds a yellow duck with an umbrella hat next to his bath stuff and fiddles with it when he has time for a long bath.

— Ghost narrows his eyes at the sight of a black duck with sunglasses and gold chains under a pile of clothes in his room, he sighs leaving it in the small window of his room as decoration.

— You are strictly prohibited from bringing any type of animal into the base of operations as a pet, once you wanted to have a raccoon, a tarantula, a snake, you even named a cockroach you saw in the kitchen.

—Just- no.

— So you chose to have a carnivorous plant as a pet, it was acceptable at least.

— You are also prohibited from cooking without supervision.

— You're like a new world for them, but honestly, they wouldn't know what they would do if something happened to you now that you've earned their love.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Hot-Hot Rock Debut: Super Mario Bros. Wonder

You know something I love about the Mario series? Its tendency to use reduplication to put emphasis on certain words. You thought your average everyday mountain was tall? Well this is a Tall Tall Mountain. You've never seen docks quite this dire before! And it's not even just adjectives that get in on the fun! Rock Rock Mountain, Ice Ice Outpost, I love that something can be more "rock" or "ice" than something else. Sometimes a word is so nice, you just wanna say it twice twice.

Hot-Hot Rocks are one of the latest additions to this long-running Mario trend, and also one of our latest Cubic Companions! You know, Blocks are very important to the Mario franchise, but how many enemies can you think of that are blocks...? The answer should be a lot. This was a Mod Hooligon Trick and you may or may not have fallen for it. I can't tell unless you tell me, alright?

Hot-Hot Rocks first appear in the level Hot-Hot Hot! (this is an example of a linguistic phenomenon known as "threeduplication"), where they serve as one of the primary obstacles. As long as Hot-Hot Rocks are Not-Hot, you can stand on them like any other platform. But when they start glowing red, you better get out of the kitchen, because Mario and friends can't stand the heat!

Of course, a little water is all it takes to turn Hot-Hot Rocks into Not-Hot Rocks for good, so spray them with Elephant Mario's trunk or a precariously placed pot of water, and they won't be able to hurt you anymore!

Hot-Hot Rocks have a symbiotic relationship with another new enemy called Kerpop, which will probably get its own post someday, likely courtesy of Mod Chikako. These guys act like Goombas most of the time, but when they touch a hot Hot-Hot Rock, they will pop and begin jumping around! How cute! This attention to detail is what makes Super Mario Bros. Wonder truly special.

That's about all there is to Hot-Hot Rocks, but we're not quite done yet, because this post is about to get all philisolophical(sic)! Because as Weird Mario Enemies, an important part of that title-we-love-to-defy-and-love-bringing-up-how-much-we-love-to-defy-it is knowing what an "enemy" is to begin with. And so we must ask ourselves: what is an enemy? What separates an enemy from an obstacle? And is there even a meaningful difference...?

I can't say I can give you an answer. But I can give you a bunch of thought exercises under the cut! You like those, right?

You do like those! Thanks for looking under the cut, I really appreciate it.

So if we want to have a discussion of what counts as an "enemy" in the context of a video game, we should probably have a rough definition of what we think an "enemy" is in the first place. It's tough to look for edge cases of something that doesn't have any edges.

I personally think a good starting definition is along the lines of "a character designed with the intent of hurting the player," or something roughly like that. And now that we have a definition, we can scrutinize the hell out of it!

On the left we have Thwomp. Thwomp is a classic Mario Enemy. The kind you'd see featured on @regularmarioenemies. We invite Thwomp over for dinner every Sunday, and Thwomp always smashes the dinner table because that's just what Thwomp does. On the right we have Karamenbo. Karamenbo does the exact same thing that Thwomp does, but it doesn't have a face! And despite the fact they act the exact same way, this simple design difference leads to most people considering Thwomp an "enemy" and Karamenbo an "obstacle"!

Is the difference between an enemy and an obstacle really something so simple as having a face? And if so...

What do we make of Lava Bubble, another Classic Mario Enemy that only sometimes has a face? Are they only an enemy when they have a face? Or are they allowed to always be enemies in spite of their occasional facelessness? Or alternatively, are they prohibited from being enemies despite their occasional befacedness? I don't know, and my "the fact I am writing for this blog" tells me I should probably be an expert in this field!

And what about Moonsnake? What could easily be dismissed as a simple obstacle like a Spike Bar is revealed by in-game text to be a living creature! Does this allow it to be classified as an enemy instead? Does something become an enemy just because there's text saying it's alive? Do ghosts and robots count as alive? Is a thorny flower an enemy instead of an obstacle, or does the specific choice of the word "creature" make a meaningful distinction here?

What if I told you there's official text calling Karamenbo a type of Thwomp, does that change your perception of it?

And we haven't even started touching on the idea of whether or not enemies need to hurt you. Let me ask you an important question...

Are Hoppos enemies? They can not hurt you. Whenever you touch them, you just bounce off, and sure, you might be bounced into something that can hurt you, but Hoppo is just an animal. Is it really Hoppo's fault? Could Hoppo be charged with manslaughter for bouncing Mario into a bottomless pit? Are bottomless pits a type of enemy?

Flomps, Bomps, these can not hurt you directly, but they can cause you to get hurt! And they're relatives of Thwomp, too! Do these factors matter in defining them as an enemy? Bomps act basically the same as the Push-Blocks from Super Mario Odyssey, and the wiki classifies those as mere platforms!

Is mayonnaise an enemy? I don't even know anymore!

Basically, enemies are a subclass of obstacle but there's not really a meaningful distinction that separates them. Literally the only thing that separates an enemy from an obstacle is the Vibes. Nothing else matters! Sorry! But what does that mean for our blog...?

Absolutely nothing! As I've said multiple times, we stopped caring about that distinction ages ago. We're hardly even a Mario blog anymore! I just wanted to subject you to my ramblings because I've had this in the back of my mind for a while now and well I had to say it somewhere.

And since I subjected you to several paragraphs of ramblings that amount to basically nothing... am I an enemy...?

[ohnoitstbskyen]

I know you made shorts for Sora, Riku, and Kairi, but do you have any other thoughts about Kingdom Hearts?

Ik this is kinda vauge and you get these kind of asks all the goddamn time, but I hyperfixated on those games for most of elementary and middle school and its always cool to see your favorite Youtuber talk about stuff you really like. Not to guilt trip you into answering this one or anything, just. . . I'm very tired and it would be very cool lol.

Again, saving my character design thoughts for some more shorts, but I adore Kingdom Hearts. Like, the first game really ISN'T much more than a cross-promotional branding exercise for Disney and Square, same as any of a dozen other similar crossover centric franchises; it's a Saturday morning cartoon show that wants to get you invested (or keep you invested) in a bunch of fancy IPs to buy toys of, but it's a really good one of those.

And it's a game that understands that the central thing that's going to hook people IN to that kind of thing is characters that are willing to believe in what they've got going on with one thousand percent sincerity. Which I think is the thing they nailed more than anything. Sora cares SO MUCH, and he wants to find his friend and his love interest (Kairi and Riku, respectively) SO BADLY, you can't help but root for the poor kid and want to believe in it.

Then, with the first game successfully managing to hook a solid fanbase, the creative team went "hey what if we had even MORE extremely earnest cool anime people getting deep in their feelings?" and now we're off to the races with Organizations and Oblivion Castles and fractions of 358 days.

And the thing that makes all the hyper-convoluted wheels-within-wheels plot machination nonsense WORK is that down, deep down, right at the core of what the franchise is always trying to say, is that love will save us. Yeah yeah hearts and darkness and unversed and nobodies and keyblades and blah blah blah (to be clear: I adore all that nonsense), but all of it is top-to-bottom in service of that singular central thematic clarion call.

Love will save us.

What holds Ventus together after Xehanort tears his heart apart? The love of Sora. What keeps Roxas the nobody from fading into Sora? The love of Xion and Axel, and Hayner, Pence and Olette. What brings Xion back? The love of Axel and Roxas. Hearts ring together and resonate and bind themselves to each other and there is no darkness so deep, no tragedy so absolute, no villain so foul that the cry of a loving heart cannot defeat it.

Roxas is a nobody doomed to darkness? Fuck you, Kingdom Hearts is love, no he isn't. Xion is a mere replica puppet, a failed experiment that nobody will remember? >>EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER<< get seasalt icecream'd on top of a clock tower at sunset, IDIOT.

Over and over again characters sink into despair and loneliness, they fear that their connections are fake or fading, they fear being forgotten or left behind (Riku in the first game, the breaking of Ventus, Aqua and Terra, Roxas thinking nobody would miss him, Aqua in the Realm of Darkness), and over and over again they are proven beautifully wrong. There is always a hand reaching out, there is always someone who will miss you. Love will save us.

And this absolutely gets hokey, of course it does, it's a saturday morning children's cartoon. It's a bit simplistic, maybe a bit naïve, but honestly in a world where you can't walk two steps without bleak-minded doomer cynicism forcing the assumption that nothing truly good is possible and that the worst will always happen, Kingdom Hearts is a story so absolutely drenched in hope, sincerely held, that it feels like a fucking balm.

Also, LITERALLY where the fuck else are you going to get Woody from Toy Story reading an edgy anime villain for absolute filth? Nowhere, that's where. ONLY Kingdom Hearts.

None of this is to suggest I don't have criticisms of the franchise or that it's faultless. I could talk for several hours unbroken about all my gripes and problems, chief among which is LET KAIRI DO THINGS OH MY FUCKING GOD the franchise is low key misogynistic towards its female characters sometimes but I am talking about the things I love here let me just be happy for a second.

[elbiotipo]

Worldbuilding: Galactic Empires

My only complaint about the Prequels is that they needed MORE politics

If you've watched Dune recently, you must have noticed the whole Emperor and space noble families thing. And yes, it's likely you heard that in WH40k too… and I HOPE you know that's where the God Emperor came from, since WH40k took "inspiration" from everywhere from Dune to Star Wars. Which also has a Galactic Empire. Like so many other science fiction franchises.

In fact, if you're a science fiction fan, it's very likely that you're familiar with space or galactic empires, they seem to be common as dragons in fantasy. Despite the fact that an empire doesn't sound very futuristic, does it?

Where did all these Galactic Empires come from? Are they just a narrative tool or are they an actual possibility? How would states and societies work in space? Let's find out, and maybe I can give you some ideas on how to write fun galactic "empires" from both a narrative and plausibility perspective.

This is going be a long post. Perhaps my longest yet. But I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Click down to continue.

First of all, where did these space emperors come from? In another post, I've talked about the influence of the idea of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in English-language fiction. However, in science fiction, I would say the influence is more direct. The Foundation trilogy of Isaac Asimov, one of the foundational (lol) works of science fiction, was intended by the author, very explicitly, as a retelling of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon in a science fiction setting. He probably wasn't the first to think about a space empire, I'm very sure the term is older, but he certainly popularized it as a staple of science fiction. Now, if your contact with science fiction comes from movies, when you hear Galactic Empire you're of course thinking about Star Wars. But yes, Star Wars is also the same retelling, because Lucas was inspired in both Asimov AND Gibbon, even though I think we should appreciate Lucas' ability to bring it to life in the screen. Certainly, Isaac Asimov wasn't the first or the last to take inspiration in history to tell stories about the future.

The most influential science fiction work of all time.

At this point you're probably telling me (or not, I don't know you) about all other sorts of science fiction works that DON'T have galactic empires, or better yet, those that don't just transpose historical societies into the far future and imagine something entirely new (my personal recommendations on this area are Banks and LeGuin). And you'd be right. But the concept of a space empire seems popular and long-lived, much like feudalism in the fantasy genre, everyone has a picture of a sorts when a videogame or a book talks about a "galactic empire" or "galactic republic" or a "federation", an "empire" much like a shorthand name for "a country In Space", regardless of the presence of an actual Emperor or not. And so, it's worth exploring how this trope could, or not, work, so we can see the possible alternatives or more fun ways to approach it.

Besides, that's the title of the post. Galactic Empires.

So, let's approach this from the perspectives of Space, Time (or to keep with the theme, Spacetime) and Technology, and lastly, the most fun part, we'll explore some fun variations on this idea of galactic empires and societies.

Space:

Space is big, and I won't quote the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy here, it would be groanworthy at this point. Let's do a quick exercise instead. Let's image a "modest" space empire, not even galactic, 2000 light-years across. Sounds quite big, it encompasses most of the visible stars we can see from Earth… however, if you project it into a galactic map, it's actually a very small piece of sky, actually 2% of the entire galaxy which is about 100.000 ly across. Now, according to the Atlas of the Universe, there are 600 million stars in a 5000 ly radius from the Sun. Jesus Christ. This is actually hard to estimate accurately as the true number of red dwarfs and brown dwarfs, the dimmest stars, are hard to count, but we already know those have planetary systems as complex as our own Solar System, even planets that could bear life. Let's scale back to our 2000 ly across space empire, again, just a small cozy corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, something that would look like a small, even tiny, nation in any setting of a galactic scale. This gives us 240 million stars (from the estimated 200 billion stars of the galaxy) in this space, which is still completely insane but let's work with that.

From Atlas of the Universe, so you can compare and contrast, the stars 2000 ly from the sun (ONLY the brightest ones), and the entire Milky Way. Notice how small 2000 light years truly are at that scale.

Even if I just told you that all of those systems might be as complex and rich as the Solar System, let's rather arbitrarily say only 5% of those 240 million are worth of note. Not necessarily having life (no way I'm getting into that yet), just worth visiting or living in for the resources or the views or the cantinas… whatever. That's 12 million star systems. Okay, let's refine this further. Let's say of those 12 million, most of them are the equivalent of gas stations or farmsteads, a couple thousand people at most. The REAL places where the action happens are the systems or worlds where millions of people live, and those are few and far between (this makes both common and narrative sense, as people tend to cluster in population centers where trade, resources, etc. are). Let's say, and let's refine this further so I don't get outrageous numbers, the average population of those systems is 100 million (about the size of Mexico, Vietnam or Japan. Many sci-fi works throw worlds of billions like Earth like nothing). And those systems are… uh, like 2% of THOSE 5% 'systems of note' (a flimsly concept already but play along). That's 2% of 12 million. We got 240.000 systems or worlds the population size of entire countries, with all that implies (economy, culture, politics). Of course, 240.000 multiplied 100 million gives this speculative fictional empire a total population of… (Jesus Christ, not the scientific notations), 2.4e+13, or TWENTY FOUR TRILLION PEOPLE.

Let's wind back and remember I tried my best to make a "small" empire for a galactic-sized setting, 2000 light-years across, that's just from here to Orion's Nebula for Gagarin's sake! A trillion people is just outside the realm of my imagination, or pretty much anyone's. Can you imagine any kind of goverment system that would be enough to provide any kind of meaningful governance to 24 trillion people? In the case of a space empire, can you imagine a single space emperor, a single person, deciding over them? Keep in mind that emperors don't rule on their own (we'll talk about that), they need bureacrats to make their will done, and vassals to govern their territories in their stead. This would apply even in democratic systems, you need representatives and civil servants and more.

Let's scale back a bit before I go insane. Instead of assuming territory, let's go with population. Assume a spherical cow space empire of… 40 billion people, that's reasonable right? You can picture that in your head? Five times the population of current Earth, no biggie, we can work with that, it's all cool. Now, how big would a goverment for such a population would have to be? We actually have reasonable answers. China has about 10 million civil servants for a population of 1.4 billion people, but that's only the administrators, not including all the teachers, healthcare workers, security forces, laborers, etc. employed by the state. India has 6.4 million for about the same population. Okay, so easy math, let's say that this space empire has 6 million bureacrats for 1 billion people, for our empire of 40 billion people, that gives us a total of 240 million… just bureacrats, nothing else. Yes, you could reduce that with technology by say, half. It still means an entire Mexico-sized country of bureacrats. Imagine.

Entire worlds of this.

NOW I WILL STOP THROWING NUMBERS AT YOU, and let's just think about what this means. If we assume a space empire like the ones common in science fiction, or just any kind of… goverment at all, we're talking about, at the lowest estimates, entire countries worth of state employees, if not whole EARTHS of bureacrats. You can guess how things can get really weird fast. Current goverments as we know them just won't work at all it even if technology gets more powerful. Leaving aside, for now, things like god-like AI adminstration (yeah, have you seen what they are like now?)… to exhert ANY kind of control, FTL or not (more on that below) you would need a very, very autonomous empire, to the point it might as well not exist at all. Why take orders from A Guy who is not only far away but also has no hope at all of actually enforcing them in any meaningful sense? Why call yourself part of his "empire" that not only cannot enforce anything upon you, but also cannot benefit you in any way? Big question, of course, the benefit of a galactic or even smaller empire, but we'll discuss that later.

What could work, however, is that instead of a centralized state like we concieve it today, or even a loose confederation, even loose alliances, even pretty much anything… 'empires' (as in 'countries') In Space could be "united" by common ideas and culture instead of any institution. Perhaps not even a written delcration or constitution, but shared ideas: a culture, a religion, an ideology. Lots of different strong mini-states (that might mean billions of people…) that all claim to be part of the same "civilization", but share no goverment at all at all, just the same 'idea', in a looser way that even the most decentralized goverments you can think of. You can say "well all countries are made up" but these would barely qualify as even that. Not even the Holy Roman Empire was this fake.

Perhaps even a single person as a symbolic focus point of unity? Which would be actually a score for the proponents of galactic empires in the most literal sense. But at the same time, such an Emperor would be completely powerless to interact with the entire galaxy. His plans for, I don't fucking know, education reform or tax breaks, would have to be filtered by literal millions of bureaucrats and vassals that at that point might do whatever the hell on his name. Military-wise, his armies would count as nations of their own. However, the overall guidance of a single person (or constitution…) as a symbol might make otherwise disparate worlds to collaborate on the same causes, being part of the same greater whole no matter the distance. So maybe, instead of a Galactic Emperor, a Space Pope?

OH MY GOD-EMPEROR WAS THE IMPERIUM REALISTIC ALL ALONG? Probably not, but also yes, let's keep talking.

By the way, I'm sure you're tired of big numbers now, but I did one possible calculation for the whole galaxy, a true Galactic Empire. Asuming just 0.2% (400 million) of the 200 billion stars are populated, with an average population of one million, the size of the smallest countries that aren't micronations. The total galactic population would be 40 trillion, or 40,000,000,000,000. Five thousand Earth populations.

Time:

Or rather, space-time. We'll talk about both, because what concern us is the speed of information and trade, and that also limits the size of our empires.

I'm sure you know by now faster-than-light travel is impossible. Most of space based science fiction has it, of course, for narrative purposes. We don't want Our Heroes to spend two thousand years to get to the lair of the Evil Space Tyrant, I don't either, and I'll discuss FTL soon. But let's start with no-FTL here, just like in real life, and a smaller "empire", much, much smaller than my previous examples. A mere 250 light years across. Let's not even calculate population now.

This, quite logically, means that the fastest your communications would flow is at light speed. So if your emperor issues orders to a nearby world, say, 5 ly away, you will get an answer 5 years later. For a more reasonable distance of 60 ly, you would know the results 60 years from the descendants of those who recieved the order (now, assume however they keep in constant conversation, just with a 60 year delay), and by then, things there would have changed 60 years from the capital. You get the idea, Einstein sucks, don't need to elaborate more. At first glance, this might be another point for old-style feudal star empires, though. What better way to guarantee your empire is working well over centuries than by having an hereditary class of nobles loyal to you, no matter how much time passes (results may vary). Of course, how would you even enforce that? Rebels might overthrow them and you'll learn about it a century later, and you'll have to send ships to quash the rebellion… or would you?

Is there a point to send ships to conquer other worlds in such a situation? What kind of resources (ah, the lifeblood of empires) could you control with such an empire where transport takes decades and industry is so developed you could, theoretically, make manufactured goods yourself? I'm assuming you can, because you can build spaceships to get there in the first place (not unreasonable), but what would justify creating an interstellar goverment controlling people, trade, resources, over light-decades? Normally, it's at this point where sci-fi authors make up Something (what Atomic Rockets calls "McGuffinite") to justify interstellar trade. In Dune, for example, it's Spice, which is kind of like, to steal a joke, petroleum mixed with cocaine. But otherwise, in a no-FTL setting (so, real life as far as we know) there isn't really the incentive to conquer or even form a goverment of any but the looser kind with other worlds. Trade, maybe, but those are long-term investments, it's difficult to think what kind of good or service would be so in demand would justify it. Especially when you consider that light-speed is your upper limit, and ships might be actually way slower than that. And I'm not even gonna begin to touch relativistic effects.

I was going to make a joke about blowing a quarter of your GDP in Star Destroyers, but have you heard of the South American Dreadnought Race? One of our dumbest moments down here, surely.

Add FTL, and things change, of course. Even very slow ships, that would take months to transverse a dozen light years, would be able to justify trade in luxury goods and passengers, for instance. This is not too far from real-life either, after all, European colonial empires had travel times in the months, and they had to install local administrations such as viceroys because of this, yet rhose places they were considered part of the same empire (most European empires could be rather considered a collection of "countries" and colonies, look at all the divisions of the Spanish Empire for instance). Faster and cheaper ships would of course, mean even more trade (here, I'm using 'trade' as 'communication between worlds', not necessarily implying capitalism, it could be mercantilism or even a command economy) between worlds, even perhaps the classic trope of agrarian and mining worlds feeding the rich core worlds. The Open Veins of Latin America In Space. Fun.

The speed of your ships and communications not only determines trade, but the power projection of your state (we can discuss 'stateless' societies too, there's plenty of fun to be had). If, again, your Galactic Emperor makes a Galactic Proclamation from the Galactic Palace near the Galactic Core (let's roll with that) and he has no FTL communications of any kind, it means that his commanding voice would reach the outer edges of the galaxy 100.000 years after, that is, almost ten times the history of agriculture on Earth. If he, however, has access to ships that can cross the galaxy in say, months, yes, perhaps he can have a series of vassals all over the stars (perhaps, we'll see…), and the faster things are, the closer they resemble our current fast-paced society, but not quite, given the available resources and space in… SPACE and the possible population, as we discussed above. As you can see, the speed of your FTL or lack of it determines everything.

There is another, more *realistic* option. Instead of individual FTL ships, you could have wormhole portals connecting worlds. This is more realistic in the sense that it's theoretically possible (though we have no idea on how to make one), but it also has some interesting implications. First of all, there is an implication that such a wormhole network would be expensive to build and maintain, requiring highly complex technology, material (I'm not sure what the hell exotic matter really is) and production methods, well, more high than what you'd expect from the usual. Second, it would be something preferably fixed, with hubs, planned routes and regular transit (and for writers, it easily allows you to map your universe). Such networks would be vital pieces of infrastructure, built and maintained by central authorities, drawing routes and transport hubs in space. Yes, indeed, almost like… space railroads.

OH MY ASTRAL EXPRESS WAS HONKAI STAR RAIL REALISTIC ALL ALONG? (last joke I promise)

There is also a very strange effect about wormhole networks. Time is relative, as you know, and this is not a metaphor, it literally "flows" differently on how fast you're moving. The "universal" "speed" of "time" "seems" to be the speed at which matter moves in an expanding universe (red-shift and blue shift) as I understand it, but as you approach light-speed, time flows differently in your frame of reference. Wormholes are strange in the sense that they connect space AND time, the observable time in both sides of a wormhole would be the same, and as such, places connected by a wormhole network will "be" at the same "time". This has been talked about by some authors who have considered about wormholes in the context of space civilizations, and it's called (STOP!) Empire Time. So a space empire might not only imply a state ruling over a population and a territory, but also over a time. I have no idea how this works and it frankly makes my head hurt, but here is an analysis of transversable wormholes if you want to indulge or hit your head against a wall.

Technology:

As an extension from the previous section: Of course there is no working FTL method known in real life, as far as we know, light-speed is the upper limit for everything. Instead of constraining you as a writer, this can be one of your biggest assets.

Because if you're doing a space setting, the existence of faster-than-light travel and its speed is the most important decision you can take about it.

Got that? Did I emphasize that enough? You don't need to actually explain HOW your FTL system works, you can do some research and invent something, but you need to be clear, in your head, what it can DO: How far and how fast it can take you. A FTL system that takes months to go from star to star will be very different to one that takes hours to span the Galaxy like the hyperdrive of the Millenium Falcon. A FTL system that is cheap and can be installed in any tiny ship like in the Elite videogame would be different from the ones in Dune where interstellar travel requires enormous motherships and lots of drugs, or a wormhole network that needs massive infrastructure maintainment and probably a railway starway worker's union, or the case of no FTL at all. This is, again, the most important decision you could make for your setting, bar none. Got that? Let's continue.

FTL is perhaps the only place in science fiction where I don't care about how it works, only about how fast it goes

Now, technology. Space empires, are of course, not possible without space travel being cheap enough (not talking about FTL, just regular space travel): shipping stuff to space should be about the same as shipping stuff by airliner or, well, ships. This is not unreasonable. Efforts are being made right now to lower the cost to access space, and while space agencies like NASA might look expensive, they are not NEARLY as expensive as the money wasted in say, stealth jet fighters or fucking advertising (people who say 'why spend so much money in space when we could fix our problems on Earth' seem to forget about that all the time. But I digress.). A technologically advanced, wealthy (as in production, not literal dollars) society could easily afford as much space exploration as they wish with no real effect at all in their quality of life, indeed, it would improve it. Space isn't as expensive as it seems. At its very, very core, a spaceship is just steel and propellant.

And steel and propellant are very, very easy (once you got the technical research to do it) to get in space. Asteroids are MADE of iron and metals, a single asteroid is richer than all of Earth's mines combined. Hydrogen is literally the most abundant element in the universe, and water is on plentiful supply (no need to steal planets for water) on comets and icy asteroids and moons. Carbon is apparently widely available in carbonaceous asteroids, and in our own Solar System, Titan, the moon of Saturn, is basically covered in hydrocarbons (yes, OIL IN SPACE). All those resources could be very much in demand for manufacturing on a planet like for example, a future Earth that has taken its industry up to space. What's more, it's only bringing stuff up from Earth/an Earth-like or more massive planet (fun sci-fi term for you: "down the gravity well") that's really expensive. Once you get there, you can get anywhere with enough acceleration and propellant. Once there is space infrastructure and industry (and I get a feeling that it might get up fast, given that space technology would need to be very autonomous and reliable), it can sustain itself without a mother planet. In fact, if there's something I imagine would be considered a luxury in spacer life, it would be truly organic things; plants, wood, meat, wool, and so much more.

i am average astronaut man i work 15 hours in the asteroid mines to buy one burger

Which brings us to the big question; what kind of life would be out there? After all, I gave you numbers of millions and millions of worlds, it's hard to imagine at least a few of those don't have alien life. This is the biggest outstanding question in astrobiology currently and so I won't pretend to even try to answer it (my personal opinion, if you must, is that complex Earth life is extremely rare, but by sheer number of planets, it might exist by hundreds of thousands in our galaxy alone). Instead, let's try to see how science fiction looks at it.

Heinlein, another of the foundational writers of science fiction as a genre, saw alien worlds as just another frontier to be settled. Rich alien fruit, fertile arable lands, and huntable or tameable creatures just waiting to be exploited, and alien species to trade exotic goods with (or conquer). While Heinlein was not the only and probably not the first to write this subgenre, he certainly got it popular, and lots of works on his same vein follow this "frontier spirit" kind of writing, where space is seen as the last frontier to be tamed by hardy colonists in a very yeehaw cowboy western setting, and you can actually see this replicated in many modern science fiction like Firefly and the more cowboy-ish parts of Star Wars. And yes, this is balantly an expression of the 'manifest destiny' Usamerican imperialist worldview.

lots of Politics all over this Science Fiction Adventure

And yes, this idea of 'habitable' planets ready to be colonized like in a 4X videogame is also not very realistic either. We haven't found any alien ecosystems yet, but as a biologist I can tell you they would be very different from us in ways you probably won't expect. We can discuss how convergent evolution could be, a world with oceans would probably have equivalents of 'fish', 'algae' and 'worms' (I can GUARANTEE there will be A LOT of worms), we could even find very, very similar life to our own down to the body plan. However, we most probably could not eat them at all (which might sound silly at first glance but is needed to have you know. agriculture.), or perhaps even live in the same planet as them. We live in a society planet where most of the plants and animals which evolved with us can't be eaten, and many of them are toxic. It's possible, entirely likely, that the alien equivalents of carbohydrates (ever heard of L- and D-Glucose?), proteins and other substances would be indigestible to us, allergenics, or outright toxic, probably in ways we can't even think off. It's likely we won't catch alien diseases, but that's because our cells (if they even have cells) are completely incompatible with their diseases, just look at how different animal, plant and fungi cells are, now imagine whatever the fuck might evolve in a completely different biochemistry from us. There would be no farmsteads and cowboys like Heinlein wrote, living in Mars would probably be more pleasant that living in a world where everything might be toxic, not because life evolved to be toxic, just because it didn't evolve with you. If anything, these' habitable' worlds would be treated like giant nature preserves instead, you can look but don't touch.

(In one of my own settings, I sidestep this by proposing panspermia, that is, the idea that life spreads across the universe by means such as comets (or aliens) and thus shares similaritites and can eat the same stuff. A bit of a cop-out, but it does allow one to get with similar kinds of life.)

NOOO ANAKIN DON'T EAT THAT PEAR IT EVOLVED HIGHLY TOXIC ALKALOIDS IN A DIFFERENT EVOLUTIONARY CONTEXT NOOOO

But humans, if the biophilia hypothesis is right, will need nature in their lives. This is where orbital habitats come in. You know, like the ones in Gundam? Orbitals such as O'Neill Cylinders, Standford Torii (yeah, that's the plural for Torus) as well as bigger and more complex thingmajings I will write their own post about someday, have been proposed since the 1970s with technology available then, and there is no reason why a civilization with an advanced space infrastructure wouldn't try building them and even be better at it. What's very nifty about orbitals is that you can really make them your own personal custom miniworlds. Designs like the O'Neill cylinder are big, able to house hundreds of thousands, even millions of people if build to the top, but why do that? Mess with the lightining, the rotation, or the interior to make them a winter wonderland or a tropical paradise. I expect that they would be built to feed space communities at first with food that isn't imported from Earth or grown in hydroponics, and later as places to live and customize however you wish; perhaps a community would pool resources together and say, hey, we want to make an habitat that looks like a Colombian cloud forest, or the Okinawan Islands. Once they get cheap enough, and given how abundant resources are in space they might be not even as expensive as most engineering projects here on Earth, I expect actually many, many people would want to live in them, and it could be probably be very affordable, and just natural for the people who are born and raised and live and die in them. Another thing about habitats is that they are mobile. Like I said, as long as you got enough propellant and propulsion, you can move anything anywhere in space. Even whole habitats could move and cluster together depending on the local politics. Perhaps, much like city-states were the basic building block for countries in antiquity, in the future, the basic organization bloc would be the Orbital. You could have alliances of orbitals forming complex political intrigue inside a single solar system (yes, like in Gundam).

OH MY PLASTIC MODELS WAS GUNDAM REALISTIC ALL ALONG? (I lied)

This all might make space empires pretty much an unnecessary anachronism. Habitats can grow their own food and resources are plentiful once you have the right technology. They can also be mobile, so they could act like migrating cities at will, choosing to stay with like-minded "constellations" or strike out on their own without the dictates of a central state. It almost looks like an ideal anarchist society.

Or does it?

There is something very important to keep in mind about life in space. The technology, that is, habitats needed for life in space will require lots of maintainance and resource management, which implies there must be strong coordinating bodies with very, very strict rules so that shit doesn't blow up and you lose all your air into space, or the resources of an habitat are mismanaged and you end up with a food or water or even oxygen crisis. There is a reason why space exploration is done by state agencies or corporations with huge state backing. Another of Heinleins's favorite tropes, Libertarians in Space, would be impossible in such a situation. Actually, in ANY space situation, and this is why this section is in technology. Living in space requires you to be able to maintain complex technology and manage resources. None of this can be done ad-hoc or be left to individualism, you have to have Rules and follow them to the letter. And also, the effect of living in your 'own little world' would probably mean people have a strong indentity sense towards their home habitat. This will mean a more communitarian attitude. But before you think I'm waxing poetic about utopian habitat cultures, keep in mind that this also can mean an authoritarian mindset. After all, cults and authoritarian regimes do have "strong communities" too. An habitat could be everything from a well-managed place with responsible citizens who look for the welfare of all, to a closed society where everybody does as they're told as long as the tech works. On the other hand, I doubt habitats in a single star system would stay isolated. They'll probably trade and communicate with other habitats, forming constellations and power groups, that would prevent this 'closed system'. However, I doubt they would be too amenable to interstellar authority. Who the hell do those people from another freaking star think they are to tell us what to do in our habitat?

To be serious for a moment, habitats can be really cool places in science fiction. Especially if you imagine they could host all sorts of enviroments, from the tropical to the polar.

As an addenum… what if you really want to live in a planet? In places such as Mars or the Moon, things would be… pretty similar to orbitals actually. Habitats separated by vast expanses of barren nothingness, only now a planet instead of space (better for maps, at least). But that isn't what you're thinking, right? What if you wanted to feel the open wind and sky instead of a canned world? Well, this is where terraforming comes in. Transforming whole planets is something theoretically possible, but that would require massive investments of resources, more massive than anything we can imagine, and time, centuries at the very, very least. So stupid ideas like "terraform Mars to escape Earth", which as far as I know is only held by dumbasses like Musk, just don't make sense. It doesn't mean that terraforming itself is a worthless idea, it is a very appealing one. No matter how cool you can make your habitat, it won't ever be Earth. It won't ever be a self-sustaining biosphere with its own ecosystem that could last millions of years. For that reason, terraforming is attractive, it's something way more than an artificial "can" orbital, it's a new living world. There is a certain mystique into bringing lifeless worlds to life, but I expect that instead of the dumb Musk "ESCAPE EARTH" idea, the motivation for terraforming would be to recreate Earth, perhaps for conservation reasons (you could have whole planets as natural reserves), perhaps for tourist reasons, perhaps for spiritual reasons or even artistic reasons. On the other hand, the methods you can use to terraform a lifeless planet can also be used to 'terraform' living planets, as we've long seen in our own world… this could be done with hostile purposes. I would expect us to be better than that, but we simply don't know.

To close this section and give this post an conclusion, I think that, since there are no real borders in space, then empires, countries, polities, whatever you wish to call them, will be formed by stacking building blocs in loose alliances or confederations. The most basic would be habitats, then constellations of habitats, then inhabited planets (though I doubt any but the most populated ones would qualify), and then star systems, but little above that, and I expect up to a certain, difficult to calculate limit of population and area (though way, way below even a fraction of a speculated galaxy), things would be just impossible to manage. The effort in bureacracy, infrastructure and state control needed to project power out of a star system and the sheer scale of space probably won't ever justify empires, much less galactic empires, but you could have very interesting variations on the theme.

Fun Stuff!

So, let's play a little with what I've told you. I'm going to write a few short scenarios that might be fun takes on the "Galactic Empire" or "Space Empires" you might be familiar with already:

The Poleis Model

When the Greeks established their colonies around the Mediterranean, they didn't do it with the expectation they would be part of the same state or empire. They founded new poleis, new city-states, based on the constitution of the mother city (hence metropolis) but fully independent. The Phoenicians were much the same, with some of the daughter cities (Carthage means literally "new city") eventually becoming new cultures far from their home cities. Similarily, why should interstellar exploration mean the spread of a united state with a capital and all? Imagine that when interstellar ships depart, they do with the idea that they are going to create a completely new home, a new poleis, not an extension of the nations or organizations that sponsored them but rather more of a 'child' culture light years away from their motherland. As they develop in mostly isolation from each other, they will become new cultures on their own, while retaining ties to the ones most similar to them. This is, in my opinion, the most realistic scenario without FTL. With FTL, however, things get more interesting, as of course, Greek and Phoenician and other poleis didn't remain isolated light-years from each other, they had permanent contact. With FTL they could organize in leagues, perhaps even alliances for the ocassional military campaigns, trade and exchange of ideas, tourism and industry, and of course the Olympics.

The Wormholes Always Run In Time Model

As I've said, wormholes are pretty much like space railroads. Railroads, like other big infrastructure projects, need a centralized authority to be built and maintained. And once you are the central authority that does so, you're already in charge of the biggest arteries of trade and communication. Which makes you basically an empire, officially or not. In fact, this is the closest I imagine a space society would resemble the states we're familiar with here on Earth. If you have control over transport and the hubs of trade and politics, and that transport and communication network allows you to implent your policies, your rule might go very far indeed, and indeed, your main hub might be a great capital, the main station of known space. Now, perhaps you might be imagining a literal space empire with nobles and all that. Why not instead something else? The Socialist Interstellar, connecting the many worlds of the galaxy through a five hundred year plan of railroad wormhole construction in the path to communism... However, this would mean that people outside of the wormhole network might develop in different ways, perhaps the equivalent of nomads to the great settled empires of antiquity. And given what I've briefly touched on Empire Time (*breakdances*), the expression "the portals always run in time" might imply even more than just an aphorism.

The Civilization Cluster Model

I'll admit this is taken from Poul Anderson, as quoted in Atomic Rockets, to which I owe an inmense debt for this post and so much more. The idea is this; space is big, as is well established. Even with FTL to shorten the distances, even if you could cross the galaxy in a few weeks, the sheer number of stars is still insanely massive. Why should any civilization 'colonize' those stars dot by dot, what value is there in invading or colonizing planets with incompatible biochemistries? And how could even begin to think how to administer a thousand different worlds, each one as complex as Earth itself, let alone an entire galaxy? In this case, civilizations, instead of spreading across the galaxy, would mostly remain in their own 'civilization clusters'; even with FTL, there are so many issues closer to home that the idea of projecting power outside is ridiculous. There would be trade, exchange of ideas, and so much more between these clusters, but never constant enough and never with the authority necessary to create a "Galactic Empire"… the worlds are too many, too diverse, too populated and too far away for that. An interstellar traveller could roam the Galaxy for years exploring these clusters spread away from each other, with their own unique idiosyncracies and civilizations inside, and then a vast expanse of mostly nothing outside them. Basically, space is too big. I like to see them as constellations among the dark sky, hence the artwork.

The No Man's Sky Model

To live in space, you need complex technology, but also resilient and durable technology ready for any kind of situation, easy to repair and replace. So eventually, I believe designs would be standarized so much that every astronaut will carry or own a collection of standarized tools (somehow this reminds me of prehistoric tool cultures). Now, even with FTL, there's perhaps little material incentive for people to leave their comfortable homeworld or habitat to live in cold space. But some will, perhaps because of the sheer thrill of it, perhaps very small bands of families or friends. With a standarized tool kit for any ocassion, these small bands would spread across space, much like ancient humans spread across the world. But instead of creating space empires, without a fixed industrial base, they would be nomads. Which doesn't mean they would roam aimlessly, they would be seeking new biospheres, new resources and new cultures, and gathering in temporary or permanent market places, festivals and pilgrimages. Perhaps they could even be the majority of humans in space, while most others stay cozy on Earth.

...

This was a very long post and it took a lot work to make, so I hope you had as much fun reading it as it was for me to write it. If you did, and if you would like to see more, I would be very, very grateful if you donated to my Ko-Fi below. Anything helps a lot especially since my country is not doing great at this time governed by a libertarian idiot (not even the fun space kind), and even a little tip encourages me to post more, I'm always working on your suggestions! You can also contact me by DM or asks if you need any help with your worldbuilding or just want to rant with me a bit! See you next time, and thanks for reading.

[hunn1e-bunn1e]

Hello! I know that your asks are closed right now, but this idea just popped into my mind and I needed to get it to you before it disappeared. Please feel free to ignore this until your asks reopen or just ignore it in general. I don't want you to feel forced to do anything, especially when I'm breaking your blog rules!

Jack Howl × Gorou M! Reader

I just noticed that you didn't have anything for Jack where he's by himself; so I wanted to give you a bit of inspiration! Have a wonderful day, Mr. Benny.

Jack Howl - With Gorou-Like Male Reader

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

Originally I was going to do all of the asks from franchises that I hadn't written for before first, but then I saw this and remembered that Jack didn't have any stand-alone content on my blog yet, so I just had to right this injustice. —Benny🐰

                                                                                                   

🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺

🍐  Jack first met you at the orientation ceremony. He sort of already felt comfortable around you because of your canine traits and the way you carried yourself with such seriousness and determination. The white-haired boy also thought you smelled kind of nice; like the ocean and water-logged wood, but there was also a bit of sweetness in there that he couldn't quite identify. As orientation ended and all the Savanaclaw students made their way to the mirror chamber, Jack's curious eyes stayed glued to your cloaked form.

🍐 Coincidentally, you and Jack ended up sharing a dorm room, how nice for him. He was a bit shocked when you told him right off the bat that if he needed help or just someone to talk to you would readily lend an ear. The fact that he was bunked with such a supportive person was incredibly relieving for the wolf-eared boy. While it would take him a little while to open up to you more, considering you just met, Jack would be sure to act on your offer in the future.

🍐  Jack loves exercising with you! After learning about your previous status as a general before your enrollment in the NRC, he requested to know your exercise routine during that time, to which you happily agreed. You both have a habit of waking up at the crack of dawn and going for a run which made you decide to ask him to accompany you instead of heading out separately. Your skills with a bow and arrow also caught Jack's attention, often watching you practice and occasionally catching glimpses of a certain weird Pomefiore third-year hiding in the bushes.

🍐 During one particularly hot day, you and Jack ended up staying in your shared dorm room after class instead of going outside or to the dorm's indoor gym to exercise; far too hot to will yourselves to move. This is when the wolf beast-man learned of your shared habit of your extra appendages giving away your emotions, your orange-brown, and white ears drooping with exhaustion from the heat. When Jack suggested going to the dorm kitchen and making smoothies, he had to hold back a chuckle at how your ears perked up and how your tail began to sway. Although, when you saw where his gaze was directed you grew embarrassed and covered your butt with a pillow.

🍐 Speaking of sweet things, Jack discovered that his dorm mate had a fondness for sweets, he remembered you mentioning that you didn't get them very often while you were a general. He actually whipped up some pear jam on toast for you once to see what you thought about the taste and was happy that he found a fellow pear enjoyer in you. You did tell him that your favorite fruit was something called lavender melon, a tree fruit that was native to the cluster of islands that you grew up on. The fruit was on his mind for a while after that, Jack may or may not have made plans to eat it with you in the future.

🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺•♡•🐺

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

Wanna see similar content? Check out my Masterlist!

[justpoliteconversations]

Soft Morning [Husband!Four x Reader]

Domestic bliss is quiet. And soft.

Been a rough week. So I'm taking it easy coming back into the writing scene and just basking quietly in some self indulgent nonsense. Also, I have fallen deeper into Four Simp Hell. Send help.

Masterlist

TW: None.

Disclaimer: Don't own The Legend of Zelda franchise. Linked Universe is the fan creation of jojo56830.

---

You come to the brink of awareness when you feel the movement of your favored pillow trying to escape from under you. Of course your sleepy self refuses this distasteful notion, tightening your sleep weakened fingers into the soft give of your traitorous pillow's sides. For your efforts, you get the soft vibrations of fond chuckles and rough, calloused fingers soothing over your exposed cheek and over your fluttering eyelids.

The feeling of dry, tacky lips pressing into the curve of your hairline eases your disgruntled mumbles, pulling a smile to your own dry lips. You tiredly turn your grimy face just enough to press a sleepy kiss into your (pillow's. traitor's. abandoner's) husband's collarbone, dozing off right after. Your forehead pressing ever harder into the firm muscles and softened flesh of his robust chest as you lose the battle to stay conscious.

You were unaware of when Link finally managed to escape from under you, readjusting you into a proper sleeping position with practiced ease. Tucking the blankets in around you to keep out the crisp morning chill threatening to nip at your exposed, sleep-warmed skin. And forcing his abandoned pillow into your lax arms, smiling as you curled yourself around it slowly (seeking comfort).

A soft, lingering kiss was placed right between your brows. A roughened finger gently wiping away the build-up at the corner of your eyes and the dryness at the corners of your mouth. Pulling a slightly pinched expression to your face as he worked out a stubborn layer of it with a nail.

Eventually, Link ran out of reasons to procrastinate the inevitable and he sighed (soul deep and aching). Tired from the early morning (so early the rooster hadn't even awaken yet. the sun had yet to peek over the horizon) and reluctant to leave the comfort of this tiny haven. But he gritted his teeth and straightened himself out. Pulled his smooth, blonde hair into a ponytail, and forced the cobwebs of sleep from his bones with a few long stretches.

He arched his back (ignoring the bite of early morning- nearly night- air on his goosebumped skin), cracked his shoulders, his hips, his elbows and knees. He loosened his joints and eased his tired muscles into his pre-morning morning routine by the power of his will alone. Occasionally looking over at your sleeping face, hidden partially in his pillow, your lashes fluttering gently as you reentered a shallow dream.

The sight of you (soft and safe and his forever more. his to hold. his to keep. his to provide for and to cherish and to love), gave Link the strength he needed to finish off his exercises and begin another day.

You awoke nearly 3 hours later, just as the first streams of sunlight peeked through the curtains of your bedroom window. Slow and aching, with your eyes still glued shut.

You almost dozed off again as the drag of sleep called to you, strong as a siren's call. But you reminded yourself that your husband would be in the workshop already. Working hard and laboring over the heat of the forge, hair pulled back from his sweat-slicked face and undoubtedly hungry (because he refused to eat without you. and as much as you loathed him going hungry, your heart fluttered at the notion that he was waiting for you).

That knowledge, more than anything, gave you the strength to pull yourself out of bed (graceless though the effort was) and begin another day.

The air was stinging cold this early in the morning, prickling your skin and nearly painful to the touch. But you pushed passed the discomfort, entering the hallway and making your way to the workshop at the other end of the house.

(Link had moved the bedroom there after you finally agreed to move in with him. Because he was loathed to disturb your slumber when the urge to craft and give shape became too strong and he inevitably started in on his newest fixation. No matter the time of day or night.)

Halfway down the hall, you heard the first rings of metal being struck. It was a familiar sound by now, and it never failed to put a pip in your steps (the thought of seeing your husband, your Link, always did. even now, when you saw him so often the shape and expressions of his face was more familiar than your own). And you smiled tiredly as you got closer.

Sunlight was streaming through the open windows of the workshop, bathing the place in the soft shine of morning's first light. Honestly, it was damned annoying (gleaming far too brightly off metal scraps. the intensity of it hurting your still sleep strained eyes).

But the way it touched the beautiful (scarred. discolored. perfect) curve of your husband's skin and labor-hardened physique made you forget all that. Because sitting before you (with stray hairs framing his concentrated face. salty sweat and grime coating every inch of his skin), was the most stunning (most divine) creature you had ever had the pleasure to set your eyes upon (and always would be, no matter how many years passed).

Fine, blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail, unruly bangs escaping their confines to stick wetly to his forehead and jawline. Eyes a collage of glossy red and bright green and cool violet and steel blue, shifting and gleaming from one strike to the next. Thin lips pulled down in intense focus, reddened and dry from the heat of the forge. As were his cheeks, ears and forehead.

His work apron tied and pinched at the slim clench of his waist, straining at the width of his wide chest and broad shoulders. His work shirt's oil stained sleeves rolled up to the elbow, tight at the curved muscles of his upper arms. And his Minish tail earring, a delicate contrast to it all shimmering in the dim light of the forge's red glow.

Absolutely stunning. Like poetry in motion. Art at it's finest.

Another strike of metal, and you catch a glimpse of movement as Link's multi-colored eyes took you in for a brief moment before returning to his work. Another strike. And another.

And you waited it out patiently. Knowing that once he finished up whatever he needed to to find a good stopping point, he would properly address you.

Knowing that he would put the half-finished pieces his current project down. That he'd pull off his thick forging gloves and push the sweat-soaked hairs from his face, sighing deeply (as though coming up for breath after a long, hard dive into cold, mountain waters). He'd stretch his back in a chest bearing arch (shoulders pulled back, hands curled into fists at his shoulders). Then, put his hands on his thighs and leverage himself up like a crumpled old man (but he wasn't. you knew better than anyone just how spry and lively he could be when properly enticed).

With one last look around the shop, he'll turn to you and smile. Soft and warm and a little lopsided at the corner of his lips. Eyes beloved, soft blue, shimmering with the promise of others.

For sometimes his eyes would be heart-seeping red. Or sometimes it would be heart-fluttering green.

Or he'll kick his stool under the table and you'll be met with intense, unwavering blue taking you in from the tips of your toes to your cold-reddened ears. All with a grin bearing far too many teeth and maybe a little flex. Just enough to draw heat to your cheeks.

Or sometimes, when the clouds are heavy in the sky or the promise of rain is dark on the horizon. You'll find the calm, smooth gleam of lavender-blue set upon you with the faintest of smirks resting on his lips. The soft sigh of relief as he works the tightness out of his hands.

And then (no matter the color that sometimes seeps into his eyes. no matter the shift and turn and quirk of his lips) Link will come to you, take your hands into his and press his lips to your own. Brief and chaste, but for the gentle inhale as he pulls away and bids you good morning. Open and sincere, always. No matter his mood, no matter his temperament.

And you'll lean back in and give him a kiss of your own. You'll lift your joined hands and kiss his work worn (battle worn) knuckles, before looking back up to meet his tender, love-struck gaze.

Just like every morning before. And every morning that will come after.

But for now, you lean against the doorway of the workroom and let your eyes linger tiredly (dreamily) upon your husband. Letting a smile slip wider across your lips as you thank whatever deity will listen for bringing you to this man. And for bringing him to you.

And you promise yourself that no matter what may come. That no matter what the future may hold. That this moment. This place. This life. Will never slip away from you. And that you will fight for it, with every ounce of strength you possess.

Bathed in the heat of forge fire and the sweat of his labors, Link had made a promise to himself too (many years ago, before the ring he would one day put upon your finger had even blessed his hands). That he would never let this go. Not until death itself came to reap his soul. This life he had built for himself, and for you, with his own two hands.

That he would fight for it. With every drop of blood in his body, and every thread of courage woven into his spirit.

That he would win. As he always has.

And as he always will.

---

Back to the shadows to rest.

[absolutebl]

TOP 10 BL Trends of 2023

This is just me with my analysis hat on. 

1. 2023 = the year EVERYONE went outside their lanes

Everything went topsy-turvy this year in BL. 

For example, Korea gave us agonized yearning and outright queerness (The 8th Sense, The New Employee) while Japan served up soft office workers and tender family (Our Dining Table). 

The BL world went askew for a while, especially in the spring of 2023. 

Not that we still didn’t still get Korea’s soft angsty bubbles or Japan’s “what are you doing and why does it hurt?” kink-fests. But there were quite a few BLs that made us chronic watchers sit up in confusion and wonder if Korea was dabbling in Taiwan’s territory or Japan in Thailand’s. Then they fudged the kisses and we were like... okay, back in familiar territory. 

In contrast, Thailand stayed course-correcting for the damage they’ve done in the past with tropes (2022) and self referential meta criticism (2021), but also almost aggressively returned to their BL roots after last year’s series of shockers. Certainly, they are reexamining those roots, transplanting some, aerating others. But they really went back to classic Thai university and high school BL and pulps in a big way in 2023. 

Taiwan is always difficult to gage because they produce so few but they seem to have stuck with what they do best with no deviation while producing more this year than they have in ages. I’m happy for that, why change a good thing? But there is a tiny part of me that really wants them to hit it out of the part with a quality piece soon. For me, We Best Love still reigns supreme, but I would really like the HIStory franchise to give us that level but longer - like a happy version of Your Name Engraved Herein. I think Taiwan has the chops to give us something as good as The 8th Sense or Old Fashion Cupcake but in their style, and I would like to see them exercise their talent for good rather than just profit. 

I know, what a very odd thing for me to say. But if any BL is going to break into the mainstream American market, I genuinely think it’s most likely come from Taiwan. 

Vietnam and the Philippines are falling behind, in general. They just didn’t bring out very many shows in 2023, and what the brought out tended to fub the endings. This is forgivable in Japan (because of their style and quality) but not what watchers want in the lower production value propositions. In other words, if you do a pulp, you can’t mess up the ending (by romance standards). that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon. 

2. The Office Romance Dominated

After years of Thailand serving us an endless (and slightly bland) buffet of university (and a few high school) BLs, this year Korea was basically like...

Ofiice. We like the Office. It’s cheap to film we can use grown up actors, acting (mostly) their actual age. 

And yeah... it totally worked. 

To be fair, Japan has always given us office live action yaoi from the beginning (they had the source material) but this year everyone else, including Thailand, seriously started playing in this setting. 

3. Boys Danced with Boys

The darling @heretherebedork​ was a big fan of this one, and I rather like it myself. Prior to this boys dancing together was very very rare in BL, but this year we got way more than our fair share. It was lovely. 

Never Let me Go

My School President 

Bed Friend 

The Day I Loved You 

Step by Step

Be Mine Superstar

Tie the Not 

Dangerous Romance

I think there were a few more. These are the ones I remembered to write down. 

4. Getting (even more) Meta With Tropes 

BL has been getting more and more meta over the past few years but this year they really focused in on tropes specifically. Calling out their own biggest and most favorite tropes in a massive way, especially Thailand and especially GMMTV. 

Like they tunneled in on damaging tropes with Bad Buddy and the like over the past 2 years, and now they are just having fun with us. 

I mean they just started the dancing trope and already they are calling it out? That’s like rapid-fire regurgitated meta there, GMMTV. 

5. Cameos are the norm now 

Taiwan has always loved cameos but in the past the other countries have been show and steady with only one or two a year. (Unless Japan does a parody.) 

This year Korea got in on the game.

Korea rarely starts trends but they do adopt smaller and lesser known existing ones and make them super popular. 

This year they did that with cameo couple appearances, even borrowing a few of Thailand’s pairs (TutorYim and MaxNat traveled north). They did it so much I stopped tracking. Love Class 2, Why R U?, and Jun & Jun were the heaviest hitters. 

Taiwan, of course, came back swinging. Kiseki was the gum-ball machine of pair cameos. (In Taiwan mafia = gay.) 

6. We are entering the cross pollination age

The number of remakes picked up or started this year was startling, not just countries revisiting their own content (Thailand, Japan) but countries revisiting OTHER countries stuff.

Lemme explain...

Korea has started remaking Thai content (Why R U?) alongside cameo'ing Thai pairs.

Thailand is doing Korean IP (My Dear Gagster Oppa) and has 2 Chinese ones slated for next year. 

GMMTV acquired a lot of Japanese IP (Cherry Magic, Ossen, and My Love Mix Up) - and then had problems distributing it. 

This is probably the most surprising trend for me. Especially the Japanese stuff. I would have thought these properties well outside of Thailand's price range (even GMMTV's) not to mention Japan’s legendary IP issues (I swear I typed this pout before the pulled TayNew’s excellent Cherry Magic). 

Also why not option some of the older popular manga instead? Bet that's much cheeper. (I did see a NEW Thai translation of Finder into Thai, which is 90s yaoi, so I have my fingers crossed on that front.)

I shouldn't be too surprised. 

Thailand is running out of y-novel content. Their publication industry is just not robust enough (I was just talking to a friend about this at length recently). But I didn't think they had the funds to option, especially from Japan. 

Perhaps the option deals are for peanuts?

7. Korea got cheeky

I’m not sure quite how else to put this. 

After finally figuring out boys can kiss, Korea started to do not just higher heat but playful higher heat, with more aggressive word play and linguistic innuendo, like they are entering their racy rom-com teenage years (Why R U? Love Class 2 and Jun & Jun in particular.) 

I guess: Welcome to your BL teens, Korea? 

It’s cute of them. I am very much enjoying it. 

And now that comedy is warming them up, we get to see them play with actual queer burgeoning physicality in shows like The 8th Sense. 

It’s nice. I like seeing Korea stretch its wings. They still stick to their bubble, but that bubble seems to be expanding. 

8. The Amnesia Trope is back

And I, for one, would prefer to forget about it. 

9. BL got trendy 

I’m not quite sure how to articulate this category but basically we started seeing a lot of “modern” romance trends out of the west (like a/b/o) show up in our BL. Not a ton and sometimes quite small, but there has a been a steady rise of things like: no seme/uke, femme gay, out gay, condom use, messy gay. 

We also got an increasing range of sub genre frameworks (like mafia, office setting) that’s moved BL pretty firmly (even in Thailand) out of school and into the workplace, whether actual working is involved or not. 

It’s not to the point where it feels like we get more non-school BL than school BL (if I include all countries in this assessment).

Japan, in classic Japanese fashion, quietly started moving in the opposite direction. It’s what they do. 

10. The Vampires are coming 

This is an announcement trend, which I don’t usually report on but it’s so CLEAR. 

So last year we had a spate of announcements of possible Omegaverse (2 from China, 1 from Japan, 1 from Thailand - the only one that’s happened). 

This year we got 5 Vampire (or vampire-esk) Thai BLs announced including one from GMMTV. 

Whether all 5 will actually get made is unlikely, but having had (basically) none prior to this (Kissable Lips), I’m pretty confident that we will get at least 2 of them. And I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one other country made one as well. (Side eyes Taiwan with interest.) 

Final thoughts

It feels like we are also seeing a decline in BL (both by quantity and quality) from Vietnam and the Philippines. As you all know, I don’t track or really watch either of these two very closely. But it feels like, now, no one else is either. 

I think we have likely seen the BL heyday already in both places and their industries are now on the decline. 

We might be witnessing a thinning in the players in the BL field. 

FYI we had approximately 

136 BLs in 2023

Previous Years

2022: 117

2021: 95

2020: 62

2019: 40

2018: 30 

2017: 44 (China’s last gasp)

2016: 27

2015: 17 (50% micro)

2014: 17 (50% micro)

And that’s it! Let me know in the comments if you’ve spotted any additional trends you want to call out.

Last year, 2022′s trend report

2021′s Trend report

Last Year’s Stats & Predictions

(source) 

[cloudberriesforaqueen]

Elsa shortening her hair? 💇‍♀️

Frozen is pretty big on its hair symbolism, especially with Elsa. We know the story all too well:

Elsa's hair tied in a clean and tight bun symbolizes the "strictness" of her royal life, her having to "keep everything in," and the "perfect girl" facade she feels she needs to keep up. Her powers are tight and restricted.

Elsa letting that bun down in what will be her signature braid and pushing her hair back, of course, signifies her "letting it go." Her hair is now loose, she has freedom to exercise her powers. But her hair is still tied up, so she's not exactly at her "fullest potential" yet.

I think even Elsa tying it in a low ponytail in the Dark Sea scene could also mean that she was just about ready to "be her truest self" but has one more stage (one more thing tying her down, get it? 😅) she needs to undergo before...

...she completely lets all of her hair fall down— no ties whatsoever. She has "transformed" into the true Queen of the Ice and Snow, she's found "who she's been waiting for all her life!"

You would think that last hairstyle is reasonably the final stage to represent her personal journey, but I'm curious if the franchise will continue to expand on Elsa's hair symbolism.

If the future installments continue her progressing further into self discovery, and assuming that her hair would also be affected story-wise, then... a possible new hairdo would be Elsa cutting or shortening her hair— a common trope in film meaning transformation, growth, and change!

We know it would be somewhat risky for Disney to significantly change Elsa's iconic look and silhouette in such a way. The art book, movie special, and documentaries revealed that they are quite strict on the colors that Elsa can and cannot wear, as well as the "language" of her fashion. So, we know that they handle her appearance with great caution. But if there's one thing I've learned from the Frozen franchise, it's that it always exceeds our expectations 🫢

I, for one, never expected to see Elsa letting her hair down ever, and yet she did! Oh, and remember when Elsa wearing pants was trending? Yup... 😂

If Elsa does cut her hair, I imagine Kristoff repeating his question, "Did you cut your hair or something?" and Elsa finally replying that she did instead of "or something." 😆

But, hey, that's just a theory. A Frozen theory! ❄️

[qqueenofhades]

As someone whose country went through a brutal dictatorship, we still see the bleeding wounds it's left- even 50 years later. The idea of not exercising the right to vote is absolutely unthinkable to most citizens. Granted, voting is obligatory, but everyone I know does it voluntarily and enthusiastically. The discourse I hear around it in the US evidences a narrow perspective, which is so upsetting to see, especially within leftist spaces.

The right to vote is something every citizen must, sadly, defend. Most Latin American countries know all too well what happens when fascism and treason disguised as conservatism take centre stage. I hope it won't be too late when the people peddling anti voting crap to younger generations realise the harm it causes.

All around the world, the reason fascist authoritarian dictatorships of whatever ideology stay in power is precisely either because citizens aren't allowed to vote, the vote is outrageously rigged (think of the 99% margins routinely racked up in places like Russia and Venezuela) or they rely on repressing the vote through intentionally disheartening liberal, left-wing, progressive, or other similarly oriented voters, who often do much of the work themselves with constant internal attacks and purity tests and adopting the rhetoric of anti-voting propaganda in the name of purity. Despite all their populist claims to enact a monolithic Will of the People, all these anti-democratic authoritarian movements are terrified of a genuinely representative popular vote and will do anything to stop it, because it turns out that if you give them the choice, people anywhere in the world don't super like being repressed, extorted, and terrorized in the name of Ideology, and will give your tiresome fascist ass Das Boot.

In the American context, the Republicans have gone full masks-off illiberal authoritarianism and they desperately hate the idea of people voting, which is why they have filed endless lawsuits, passed endless restrictive laws, disenfranchised even their own voters, shrieked election fraud, and everything else to try to jerry-rig their position as extremist minority oligarchic rulers for life. Which is why it is befuddling, to say the least, to see people insist that voting doesn't work, it doesn't matter that much, it isn't an effective tool against fascism, it's Morally Wrong, or all the other idiot "justifications" they come up with. All you have to do is look at how fucking terrified the bad guys are of a minimally equitable electoral system (such as getting rid of the Electoral College, which would pretty much ensure a Republican never won the presidency again if it had to be selected by -- gasp! -- an actual nationwide popular vote). That's why I don't even buy into the "voting sucks and is the bare minimum" rhetoric that gets peddled as a sort of tempting carrot to get the recalcitrants to do it -- don't worry, you can still post your mean tweets about Biden and that totally is more effective! Voting is A BIG DEAL. Voting works. Americans don't realize this because they are lucky enough to never have lived in a country where it wasn't available to be taken for granted and therefore scoffed off.

Voting, having the right to vote, and the large-scale ability that it confers to change the structures of society, is a MASSIVELY powerful tool that has largely not been available to most people throughout history (and is still unavailable to a large chunk of the world today). That's why there were bitter and protracted battles to get women and African Americans the right to vote in America. That is why the GOP still particularly targets those voters today, because the simple act of exercising your civic franchise in your best interests (and therefore not in the MAGA TrumpCult's interests) is so terrifying to them. If it was meaningless, none of this would matter. But it does.

Here, Imma make it real easy for you. If you have any reason to think your voter registration is lapsed, inactive, or nonexistent, if you have recently moved and don't know your status or your polling place or whether you get a mail ballot or whether your evil DeSantis governor has recently taken you off the rolls, or if you have never done it before, or if you want to do one basic thing to oppose fascism today, click this simple link. Do it.

[t-top-apologist]

At the end of the day the average civilian wishes to be catered to like an old money steel baron or perhaps one of those chaps from Downton Abbey. The entirety of modern society has come together to enable this, mass-producing cheap facsimiles of fortunes that should rightly either be built on child labor or perhaps serfdom.

Their lawns, taking up what could otherwise be used to grow crops or serve as "outdoor garage space," exist to ape the wide ranging estates meant for the nobility to chase down a fox while adorned in silly jackets. Their houses sport columns and stupid windows meant to imitate three different classical artforms at the same time because of something called "economies of scale." They even have male-centric social clubs meant for parlour games, discussing sports, and dining with friends, in this case franchised out under such names as "Buffalo Wild Wings."

This aping of the upper class continues to the hire of "artisans" to do relatively simple work deemed too complicated to warrant the time of the average citizen. It's not that the jobs are too taxing for your average person, but rather that the market has crystallized around the desire to live like budget royalty. Therefore they take their wafer-thin computers to artisans (now more commonly called "experts" or "Apple geniuses") for repair and have democratized the position of carriagemen to 22 year old dealership lube techs named Ryan who will turn a 15 minute job into a 30 minute endeavor thanks to frequent vape breaks and a brief brush with what the industry refers to as "a misplaced drain bolt."

The mid-40s project manager and mother of 3 is no less competent when changing oil than her grandfather before her who knew what "Valve Lash" is, but what separates the two is a series of wars in the 1900s that required an entire generation of men to become very familiar with operating and repairing machines better than the Germans and Japanese (an exercise that Chrysler would later abandon in favor of the phrase "if you can't beat em, join em").

This conflict ended with a surge of able-bodied men finding themselves returning to their project management jobs (like their granddaughters after them) but armed with captured German weapons and a comprehensive understanding of tubochargers. Just as a line can be drawn from troop drawdowns to political violence, there's a distinct correlations between GIs returning home and the violence with which Ford Flathead V8s were torn apart by inventive supercharging methods paired with landspeed record attempts.

Give a man a racecar and he'll crash it on the salt flats in a day. Teach a man to repair a racecar and it will sit in the garage of his suburban house for a few years in between complete engine rebuilds required by what can only be described as "vaporized piston rods."

Of course this hotrodder generation created the circumstances we live in today, as the market saw their fast cars cobbled together from old prewar hulks and simply stamped out new ones from factory, faster and more convenient for the next generation than building one from scratch. Now the project manager mother of 3 drives a 4wd barge with climate controlled seats boasting more computing power than the moon mission and an emissions-controlled powertrain with more horsepower than her grandfather's jalopy and her fathers factory muscle car combined. And she doesn't care at all.

Yet Amongst the average civilians there walks a rare breed: people who know how to change their own oil. We the chosen move among you silently, bucking the system, operating outside the cultural helplessness and trading in forbidden knowledge in almost-abandoned forum threads (flame wars over conventional vs synthetic).

While we do have a marked air of superiority about this, I can't say I haven't stooped to imitating the rich myself. I've been known to wear a silly jacket from time to time.

[unforth]

Prefacing this TGCF post with: people can draw and write however they want forever and I support them and this is about my personal view of these characters.

Anyway.

I saw a post today that had Xie Lian singing "when will my life begin" from Tangled and it drove home what really bugs me about a lot of fan casts of Hualian onto popular media (see also my Howl's Moving Castle take). It's this idea that Xie Lian is, well, waiting for his life to begin, and Hua Cheng swoops in and makes it exciting, when this is imo so utterly antithetical, and in fact opposite, to canon.

Xie Lian has lived and lived and lived. He was a prince, he fought in wars, even during his 800 years fallen the whole book is an exercise in showing that he WASN'T just waiting around, he kept doing things the whole time - Fang Xin Guoshi and General Hua and and and. AND he also cultivated to the point of ascending again. Xie Lian is a fucking bad ass idealistic martyr who doesn't know when to quit and at least to me that's the whole point of his character and I love that about and for him so to see him inserted into existing franchise AUs as the wilting flower waiting for a moment to shine is utter character erasure and it makes me insane enough that I'm writing this post about it even though I think I shouldn't and even though I genuinely don't want to rain on anyone's fandom parade. But like. That's not him!

You know who it is?

It's Hua Cheng!

Hong Hong'er lives in Xianle, a kingdom where all this stuff is happening, and he just watches from the sidelines. He's an observer at the parade. He's just some kid. And then he falls (or jumps, or is pushed, you pick your interpretation) and he's caught by literally the coolest guy in the entire kingdom. He's the nobody who gets swept off his feet! And it changes his whole life! Like I think it wouldn't irk me so much to see Xie Lian get typecast that way if Hua Cheng wasn't right there literally living his "I met God and it changed my whole life for the better" fantasy. He seriously deserves to get recognized for this. I get that he's the loud flamboyant one so that makes it seem like he should get cast as a Howl or a Flynn or whoever, but like. He was waiting for his life to begin, and it does, when he meets Xie Lian.

And like. I get that these are kinda competing interpretations that depend on when you look at canon - I'm looking at the original 800 years ago events, others are looking at Hua Cheng coming in 800 years later - but still the "present" in TGCF isn't imo about Xie Lian having waited to be saved, he hasn't been in a hat shop for his whole life boredly making hats, he's never stopped moving and never stopped adventuring and never stopped striving to change the world. Hua Cheng is living out his "you saved me now I save you" fantasies but fundamentally they save each other over and over and over again and that's beautiful and I hate seeing it erased to make Xie Lian into the wilting flower. Like. The one who basically hasn't done anything that whole 800 years is ALSO Hua Cheng. We don't hear about him going off and having idealistic adventures. Everything we know of that he's done was directly related to Xie Lian (ie burning the temples). Other than that he seems to sit around in Ghost City chilling with his ghoulies. So again, finding Xie Lian is what pulls him out of his funk and prompts him to start acting for good, whereas Xie Lian has been acting for good the whole time.

Ugh. I should shut up now, just, I've been in this fandom for four years and this has become such a pet peeve of mine because it reflects such a huge disconnect between how I perceive these characters and how much of the rest of fandom does. And that frustrates me, cause I wish there was more content in line with my perception.

[sxnniiwrites]

So, you want to write fanfics.

Here are my top fanfic writing tips!

You don't have to waste time on physical descriptions of characters, since your target audience already knows them, UNLESS: - their appearance is different in your fic in some way (timeskip, different verse, etc) - OR it's genuinely significant, like character A being struck by character B's beauty at first sight and having to swoon over their gorgeous features. Other than this, if it's not plot significant nor important to the readers' perception of the story, then don't worry about it if you aren't confident with physical descriptions!

Pay attention to character voice. What's that, you ask? Well, everyone's inner thoughts sound different, right? It matches your own personality and speech patterns. This is the same with characters. This is much easier if the franchise you're writing for is a book series, of course; you already have somewhere to go to reference the style this character's thoughts are written in. With shows and movies, it's a bit harder to find each character's voice, but important nonetheless. If you don't have distinct voices for each character's POV, the writing and characterization can fall flat. A good way to find character voice is to write a few diary entries for each character (even if your story isn't going to be in first person POV, do it for this exercise). This will help establish individual voices, and then your characters will really start feeling like their canon selves.

Cater to your audience. This is the nature of fanfic. But seriously, don't be afraid of cliches! If your fandom loves hurt/comfort for a certain pairing, write that in! If your fandom is obsessed with tooth rotting wholesome fluff for a pairing, try that too! You don't have to, of course, but this can help keep your target audience interested and attract more readers through tags.

USE BETA READERS. Oh my gosh I used to not use betas and would just "edit" my fics all on my own, which of course meant scanning it briefly for bad typos because my brain was so fried from writing it that I didn't want to thoroughly read the whole thing and look for in-depth edits. I know it's scary to have someone else pick through your work but trust me, they LOVE what you wrote, regardless of how many edit suggestions they leave. They'll also help you see things from a reader's perspective that you may not have caught before. Remember, critique is just opportunity for improvement.

Please don't stop because you're embarrassed. Trust me, I've been there. For a while I didn't write fic because I felt "cringey" and was scared of my irls finding my fandom works. But honestly? Screw that. Write for yourself. Write because you love it. Cringe culture is dead, so write the stories you want to tell, and to hell with anyone who thinks it's weird. Besides, there are probably more fandom "weirdos" around you than you think.

Don't be afraid of creation. Happy writing!

[xviiper-rents-houses]

Yandere Clone Commandos!!

General analysis and headcanons. Inspiration from: Republic Commandos, Star Wars film franchise and comics.

Is this requested? No, no it's not. :') I'm taking a short break from writing for yandere Sonic fics to write some self-indulgence, which is why the whole thing here is so long 😭

Also! I wanted an excuse to introduce my yandere Republic Commando squad, consisting of: Trickshot, Shaft, ZZ and Heyday. Headcanons, suggestions, ideas, (anything really) is welcome for these obsessive boys!

Thank you so much to @yanknowalready for the book suggestion, I started reading the first one and I absolutely love it! I'm so interested to see what happens to Etain and Darman next, (they have such good chemistry!!) and I can't wait to read more of the series as I go on. Never thought I'd get so invested but my lack of activity is a testament to how invested I am into this book 😂

Anyhoo, I suppose I should share my thoughts about the commandos being yandere, based on what I've read in the book, what I've watched and what I know so far about the commandos.

Romantic/platonic. More romantic leaning.

TW: Frank talk of death, killing and typical yandere shenanigans. Shenanigans include: stalking, possessiveness, obsessiveness, murder, forced affection (have to squint a lil) and delusions. This writing also has some suggestiveness at the bottom, for my yandere Republic Commando OC, you might have to squint at two of his quotes for that.

Analysis:

Republic Commandos from the book are treated like cattle for the most part. Well, cattle that act like dogs. Give them an order and they usually obey. Usually. They are also meant to be independent thinkers, working in squads of four. Republic Commandos are mainly used for infiltration, performing covert operations, as well as sabotage, demolition and assassination being the standard expectation.

They are kept in isolation, separate from their regular brothers and designated captains. This is so they can remain on task and focus on their rigorous training. As said before, they work in squads of four, so they do not get much time to socialize. While reading the first few interactions the commando characters had in the book with their Jedi superiors, I have noticed the amount of genuine intrigue and interest in picking apart who these lightsaber users of the Force are.

It's no surprise that a Republic Commando would feel a strong pull to learn more about who he works for. A life of loneliness, apart from your squad, tempts the human mind to want to seek more. He doesn't need to know why his Jedi General is, as they are mainly given missions to complete and an explanation is usually added to the equation, he wants to know whom. Identity. Republic Commandos do want to have some sort of connection with their Jedi, leaning more towards professionals. They are told stories of just how powerful Jedi are and look up to them.

In some cases, like the Republic Commando series, (I've delved into some spoilers because I really like Darman and Etain) this pressure can turn romantic.

The Republic Commandos trained so hard on Kamino just to get to this point, surviving multiple exercises off world—most commandos don't make it back—just so they can see a Jedi for one chance. Commandos are usually trained by hired mercenaries, just like their brothers but, often under more deadly circumstances. Commandos who don't have a firing and killshot above 95% are marked for dead by the Kaminoins, including their whole original squad batch, executed in favor of a better batch. The Republic Commandos don't all get the luck in the world, often dying before meeting the Jedi. Which is why I'd think they'd be real desperate sons of a gun. So, it's an honor to serve with one, to protect a Jedi.

Republic Commandos are well-disciplined to a fault. With their lives in constant threat, they want to make sure they survive long enough until they slow down and die on the battlefield, rather than die to their rapid aging, because they want to see as much as they can before it's their time to pass. Republic Commandos become observant, skilled, patient and most importantly, intelligent in their training and exercises. Combining all of these skills together with their strength, Commandos are a four team force to be reckoned with. Even when on their own, a Republic Commando is a dangerous foe to enemies.

Republic Commandos are rugged from their training, as said before, regularly facing death. Other clones look up to these individuals, just as they do their Jedi. The Republic Commandos are a symbol of pure, unadulterated power. No average clone nor Arc trooper picks a fight with a Commando because of this. In addition to being strict and tacticionary killing machines, Republic Commandos are known to have a bit of a temper when their patience is tested. Taunt them and you walk away with an ugly assortment of bruises, deece pointed at your head moments before, (threatening to fry your brain with a lazer) and perhaps a cut or two. You're lucky to walk away unscathed.

The reason why I believe that Commandos have a bit of a temper is because, when reading Hard Contact, in the first few pages of the book: one man questions why the commando waits so long, only to be threatened with concealed viroblade hidden within the commando's wrist guard, right under his chin and dangerously close to his throat and general lifeline. And even further down the line, one commando named Niner, is physically and mentally fighting with himself to not insult the Jedi padawan, Etain out loud. She tested his patience plenty of times and he has gotten mad at her, even though he never verbally expressed it as much.

Republic Commandos are also fiercely protective. If they can help it, they do not leave their brothers and general people in charge, behind. They are loyal and most thoughtful men, not cattle, men. Even if they don't believe they are men, they are constantly reminded by their gentle natured Jedi who now have to direct a war by using violence, the opposite of what an actual peace keeper would do. If push came to shove, just like any clone, a Republic Commando would gladly lay down his life as a final sacrifice. They care for their loved ones. And try as they might to not form personal connections, they still do and it heavily affects them.

So, bringing yandere into the forefront, I'd say that once a Republic Commando gets hooked on their Jedi/person, there's no going back. Their connection would be hard to break, even in death. Their obsession could even kill them and they wouldn't be too upset because, in the end, they were meant to be expendable, only living up to 20 years or so. With such little time that they have, if they can help it, Republic Commandos try to spend as much time as they can with their loved ones. I can see a common theme being that they work together to get to their connection.

Headcanons:

As said before in my "brief" analysis, regular clones don't pick fights with commandos. Which leads me to believe that if a squad of commandos or just a singular one was obsessed with you, you would have a powerful guarding force of smothering clones, scaring off most competition. Not all. The Republic Commandos face many a challenging foe, in the form of daunting tasks and assigned missions. Oftentimes, their enemy is much more powerful than they are. However, that won't stop them from trying to "protect" you. Regardless if it's just one commando obsessed, I like to imagine that the whole squad would work and support their brother.

A drawback, (to them and probably not to you, depending on your situation) is that they are in a constant threat of being killed on deployment, as well as training sessions on Kamino so often that they cannot spend as much time as they want with you. If given the chance, the Republic Commandos would stop at nothing just to be with you, securely watch over your hobbies and interests and memorize everything that you do. Unfortunately for these lovesick boys, they don't get in contact with their darling because the commandos are separated from the regs and the real world to fortify their integrity. So, the time they spend with you is precious.

Republic Commandos are meticulous with keeping their gear clean, compact, safe and functional. They pay very close attention and if there are any outliers, the commandos do what they can to perfect or improve the situation. I believe that the commandos would be obsessive, possessive, definitely stalkers and very desperate for attention and love once you give it to them. It's unwise to form a connection. They do NOT let go. Especially if you are Jedi. Maybe you met your forever squad as a padawan in training, leading the squad as commander. Or maybe a civvi who helped out one too many times to be forgotten. If you were a Jedi, the commandos would look up to you, supporting your decisions and challenging your wit all for the effort of making a smart plan.

They are loyal to the end, ready to lay down their lives. The Jedi are like a deity to these troubled men, cursed with accelerated growth, giving them so little time to live. However, not all seek that life of religion as a Jedi or are gifted with the ability. Let's say you're what they call a "civvi," a civilian for clarification. It's gonna be damn near impossible to see you again then. A commando, (or a group of commandos) would have to do a grand old break the rules policy just so they can get to you. The commandos would stand as close as they physically can, without directly violating your personal space but, still staying in close contact. They will likely ask to hold your hand, or to be kissed by you because, well, they don't know if they're going to die the next day. Just give it to them once, please? Very repetitive in asking you because they're that touch starved.

In addition to their want for physical touch, (or some commandos who don't like physical touch OR the ones who sorta listen to you when you say you don't want to hold their hand or any of that) when in close proximity to the commandos, rarely do their eyes ever leave you. You're just too important to them and so, you have to stay in their eyesight to ensure your safety. For the commandos that are denied physical affection and the privilege of watching you up close, they resort to watching from afar, hiding where you cannot see them, staring at you through their DC-17's scope. If you don't want to be watched all the time...why don't you try asking to wear their helmets? I believe the commandos would be absolutely ecstatic that you asked to wear their calling card. It would be very difficult to get them to shut up after that.

Due to the nature of the Clone Wars, even if the commandos wanted to, they cannot take you back to their barracks or anywhere locked up. The best that a commando or group of commandos can do is take a photo of you to display on their holocron each time before they go on a covert mission. They might be dead the next time they try to come home, leaving you to be stuck in an uncomfortable situation where another squad might try to take you in as their darling or the worse, being stuck in a building deep on an unknown planet, with no means of escape. For some commandos, you dying isolated rather than in their living arms is a better option of seeing you again in the after life.

Speaking of death, not all commandos die on deployment. Many are left behind. In that case, if the commando is desperate enough and willing, he will desert the Grand Army of the Republic, (commonly referred to as the GAR) and devise a plan to take you with him. If his brothers are alive, you bet that the commando would find a way to convince his brothers to join him, leave behind that awful life they had known before in favor of a bright new future with you in it. They wouldn't have to wear such heavy gear anymore, be in constant threat of a battlefield death, (though the rapid aging would steal their chance of a full life) and best of all, you are there to enjoy every single day. Maybe the commandos might go and search Kamino for a cure to try and reverse their rapid aging before they get to you? Sure sounds like an interesting fic!

OCS!

But wait, there's more! I wanted to share with you guys some of my yandere Republic Commando OCS that I came up with in the process of writing this self-indulgence blurb. Still figuring out who will be what but, I can give you their squad name and personal names. Only one guy has actual stuff written about him in the image below.

May I introduce you folks to the Champ Squad, led by RC-1237, known as Trickshot. He works with his brothers Shaft, ZZ and Heyday, being a very successful yet, controversial squad. Wherever they go, there are rarely any survivors. They might like killing a little too much. I still need to draw the other three, as well as give them their RC numbers.

Trickshot

Meet Trickshot, my lovelies! Everything on that paper is gonna be written down from top to bottom so you can make sense of my goofy writing. I said I was only going to write a little bit about a yandere oc. A little.... WELP

Trickshot, RC-1237— The “Boss” of Champ Squad.

• He has a grim sense of humor, being the squad's designated demolitions man. Trickshot's name is deceiving because many expect him to be the sniper, (which he is a very good shot at that) but he is a phenomenal explosion's master.

• Trickshot's serious, keen, cunning and silent for the most part. He has the highest kill count out of his squad, taking genuine pleasure in killing Separatist scum. He especially takes joy in killing anyone he deems getting too close/hurting/potentially hurting his cyar'ika (sweetheart).

• The “Boss” is brutal, straightforward and overall, a hard man to be around. The Champ Squad has its high success rate thanks to Trickshot's harsh methods.

(author's note: next bullet point might change but I wanna know y'all's opinion!!)

• Trickshot's DNA was mixed with another diner, (alongside his bros) giving him sharper features. Unfortunately, he's aggressive.

ARMOUR:

• Bears distinctive purple painted armor. Symbolizes the dark feelings and bad dreams he has, though others assume it must be ego talking.

• You compliment him on it? He wants you to add something to it. Can't paint or any of that? Here, let him take your hand and help you.

• Promise you'd hold his hand? Just once? He might die on his next mission, please. Trickshot loves you.

FUN FACTS:

• Trickshot “accidently” killed a Jedi padawan, (shame the kid got on his nerves). His brothers covered for him, saying the child died to battle droids. Yeah, they (meaning Shaft, ZZ and Heyday) were also fed up with the padawan.

• Claimed the lightsaber fell down the heavy waterfall rapids, (Trickshot lied) keeping the sacred weapon for personal use.

QUOTES:

• “ Look, cyar'ika, (or sweetheart) I ain't itchin' to make you blaze up just yet. ” (He laughs).

• “ Relaaax, I'm not gon' hurt ya. I'm gon' hurt 'em. ” (Guns and bombs ready).

• “ Just 'lax up, will ya? I don't bite! Unless you want or I really wanna. ” (You're sitting on his lap).

And that's everything! Lemme know whatcha guys think! Yes, Trickshot's quotes were suggestive but, I feel like that would blend in with his personality? Idk, maybe it's just my opinion.

Fanart, ideas, suggestions, (anything really lol!?) is appreciated for Trickshot and his brothers in the Champ Squad! Thanks for reading!

[callipraxia]

I was just asked to share a favorite writing tip, and as I wrote, it sort of organically expanded from the realm of writing tips I have received and into the realm of writing tips I’ve worked out for myself. I cut most of that from the original response because it wasn’t really what was being asked, but for anyone who might find it helpful - here are six notes on writing from someone who’s been doing it for twenty-something years and has no Agenda, financial or academic, to steer me much astray from confession of my actual practices:

Tip #1: my favorite writing tip I ever got from an outside source is (paraphrasing) “if you want to write like Tolkien, the key isn’t to stick a bunch of dwarves and elves in a low-medieval setting. The key is to write about subjects that you love as much as Professor Tolkien loved Northern European languages and mythology and the pre-Industrial English countryside and Catholic theology and etc.” It isn’t the details of what creatures you have in there that gives something that particular engaging quality that will carry it through and overrule a lot of its inevitable flaws - it is, instead, a subtle, difficult-to-define sort of energy the work will have that, as far as I can tell (and I’ve tried, many times, with concepts and projects that just didn’t work out), cannot be faked.

Tip #2: Based on my own experience as it applies to Tip #1, start trying to figure out what your interests are as early as possible and never stop looking even once you think you’ve found them. There’s a plethora of low-to-no-cost, low-to-no-commitment ways to pick up at least the basics of topics you know nothing about***, so give something a try every now and then, you might surprise yourself. For another personal anecdote, I grew up with the firm belief that physics was something I would a) find really boring and b) not be smart enough to get even the vaguest grasp on no matter how hard I worked, and that even trying was therefore probably a waste of time. I still can’t do the math and would probably flunk any real exams, but physics writing, obtained from the public library’s New Arrivals section, has ended up being one of the richest sources for my writing that I’ve ever encountered.

Tip #3: if you truly can’t find a subject in the world you find yourself especially interested in, that’s probably either the depression or the after effects of bad educational experiences talking. Or both - both is always an option. Start addressing that stuff and the world will most likely become a much more interesting place and you will most likely become a much more interesting writer.

Tip #4: if you find yourself with a sort of author crush, with someone (including other fan authors!) whose work you really, really admire, and you desperately want to be like them when you grow up - find out what they read and read it, too. This doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it is often a productive exercise; the reason I tend to include so many footnotes in my fics is because I’ve benefited so much from other people who left footnotes with reading recommendations or trivia explanations on their fics.

Tip #5, the Big One: Combine multiple things you are geeking out about into one story. The best writing I probably ever did began with how certain characters were represented in three different fanfics in two different fandoms. The presentation of Character A from Franchise 1 in two fics reminded me, in ways she normally wouldn’t, of the presentation of Character B from one fic from Franchise 2. I also just really liked Character C and thought it might be fun to introduce some elements of Character D to him and then see what happened, so I isolated some of the things I liked about those characterizations and combined a character trait or two from each in order to form two ‘new’ basic characters who would form the ‘center’ of the story. I then ran them both through additional filters: the first filter was some specific other interests (ornithology and tea culture) I happened to have, and then the second was the general impressions I’d gotten of family lives and dynamics from reading a couple of blogs for several years****. And then I topped this concoction off by dusting it lightly with references to and elements from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and an old Cage the Elephant song. Yeah. Other sources of musical inspiration have included, but are far, far from limited to, songs from Breaking Benjamin, Foster the People, Hozier, Lana del Rey, The Mountain Goats, The Offspring, and The Smashing Pumpkins. Even I kind of roll my eyes at that list, but hey, if it works, it works.

Tip #6: Don’t get the wrong idea from Tip #5 - I don’t recommend approaching stories or subjects with the aim of finding something to combine with something else in mind. The example I gave coalesced in my head over the course of several years before I ever put any of it into writing. The ideas will form in their own time, and I think the best thing to do is to just absorb as much enjoyable media and neat information as you can and then let your brain gradually do its own thing in its own time. It’s frustrating, but trying to think of things to jam together for a story or character idea on purpose doesn’t work nearly as well in my experience - maybe it can be pulled off for a one-off, preferably one that is a direct homage to or parody of the original, but when it comes to longer-term and more nuanced stuff, it’s rare for a deliberately sought out mash-up to ever quite get that Certain Something that I talked about back in Tip #1.

*** I can only really speak for the U.S. here, but with that caveat - I cannot overstate the utility of public library resources like inter-library loan and Friends of the Library bag sales, along with the contents of the library itself and particularly the New Arrivals sections if one is fortunate enough to be within reasonable driving distance of an even moderately well-stocked public library. If they’ve got a subscription to something like JSTOR or another academic database, so much the better, though you can find a surprising amount of information just through free articles and excerpts on JSTOR at least. The website and app Coursera also has a modest but useful collection of free courses, some of which are designed to be completed in as little as two days, and the similar website/app edX has quite a few classes where you can access the materials freely enough and just won’t get credit toward any professional certificates unless you pay them. I’ve done some studies also through Modern States, which is completely free as far as I remember and aimed at preparing people for exams that could, in theory, allow someone to test out of their freshman year of college or university. I have the very vague impression that Khan Academy sometimes gets mixed reviews, but I’ve found it a useful resource before. I’m sure this list also only just scratches the surface of what’s out there, too, since these are just resources I’ve personally used.

**** One of these was a LiveJournal, to give you some idea of how long ago this was…The other, in the category of “less obvious places to look,” was a collection of tea-tasting logs from a website called steepster; some users use/at least used to use their logs as a sort of journal/social media as well as a place to review teas, and some of those people are really good writers. Haven’t been to steepster in a while, though, should probably peek in sometime to see if it and/or any of my favorite loggers are still around….