#i have NO idea what's going on there except for general population stuff so it's always cool to hear

[thinkin-bout-milgram]

Hello! I wanted to talk about Shidou's new music video with someone, and it seems like you have a bit of interest in the series haha.

I also wanted to say your analysis for his new video is very very good! I just wanted to come at it as someone from the health industry.

I am currently in medical school, which probably informs a lot of my opinions on Shidou. Initially, when I thought he was a literal organ stealer, I was adamant he should be voted guilty. However, after this video I am less sure.

So I agree 100% with the idea that his family was in an accident with him the only survivor, but I think that his child was the one to survive, and he was getting organs for his child from dying patients. I also have a feeling that his wife's dying wish was to keep their child alive in some sense, which would lead to his fervor in getting organs for him. I'm inclined to think that it was specifically a heart problem, which would force him to take another patient's life to use that organ.

My reasons for this:

Pomegranates (and fruits in general) are a pretty obvious symbol in this MV for an organ, and I think a heart specifically because of:

The way the pomegranate is demarcated is very much like a heart in a diagram:

You can see the demarcations of the chambers, with the stem of the pomegranate even resembling an aorta, and the seeds remind me of red blood cells. This could be a reach, but I thought it was too specific to not point out. Of course, there are more fruits in the shot, so there were probably other organs that his son needed, but a heart is a tricky one to get, let alone replace.

Finally, the reason I think the son is getting the organs is this portion of the video:

He's giving the tag from the fruits to his son, which, I think is pretty indicative of giving the organs to his son. The appearance of so many tags later in the video indicate that he has used a lot of people for their organs. The same sort of imagery appeared in his first video with the toe tags raining around him.

I also think that he was ultimately unsuccessful in saving his son, with the dying flowers imagery and all around, and the most indicative portion of the video being:

This image at the end, when the phone is once again having dial tones. This is a QRS complex:

Which is what you see on heart monitors in hospitals. In the end, the dial tone sounds out a long tone, showing that the person who's heart that was representing, is now stopped for good.

Overall, I think that this, and the previous video, indicate Shidou desperately trying to save his family (specifically his son(s)) by taking other people's organs, whether it was on purpose by botching a surgery or forcing his family up on the transplant list, which would mean other people who need organs would end up dying. It was ultimately unsuccessful, which means he would have used those people for nothing (I feel the latter is more likely, but only because it's more interesting to me).

I also think that he knew it would most likely wouldn't work. I don't have a direct reason for this, but if a person needs so many organ transplants, specifically with the heart...

He obviously feels incredibly guilty about this, I would too. I would think I should be guilty if this happened to me. That doesn't make it right, and if there were no other implications to it, I would vote him guilty. (This may have to do with being in healthcare and not being put in his position, though...)

There is the problem with him being necessary for the other prisoners, however. He is needed, no matter what he feels, so he must be voted innocent to continue his work. Towards the end of the video, he is coming to terms with that no matter how much he deserves a guilty verdict, he has to be innocent in order to keep helping the others, which is what a doctor is supposed to do. He did wrong in the past, he knows that, but he has a chance to make up for it here and now.

Anyways! I think Shidou is much more morally grey than I first anticipated. He did what he did to try to save his family, which was very immoral and he knows that. He feels guilty (which he should!), but he has a chance for redemption. I believe he is on the path to learning from his mistakes, but that does not absolve him for what he's done.

Hi! This is some great analysis, thanks so much for sending it in!

I definitely think it's possible that it's one of his sons and not his wife, which is why I added the note in my initial. I was commenting on the drop on YouTube and someone said that the receipt from Throwdown was marked for XX and not XY.

That's what it looks like to me? Though I don't know how these get filled out, it's definitely possible that the fact that there's writing on the XY at all indicates that it is XY.

In either case, I don't personally believe that Shidou was in the accident as well. I think that he probably just heard about it after the fact.

Update, though: the "phone call" is actually Shidou's voicemail, indicating he didn't pick up. That, combined with the shot in Triage at 1:57, indicates to me that he might've had a chance to say goodbye or something, but that he didn't take it. That's what the guilt feels like to me here, with him collapsed at what seems like it may be an empty bed?

Either way, he for sure has a lot of survivor's guilt. The line "in that case, I should have been the one" basically flat out says that.

Heart problems definitely seem viable. At the very least, I suspect that you're right that it was a problem (it's possible whoever was dying had a lot going on medically, and that might help account for how many organs he needed to take).

I want to challenge the idea that he thought it wouldn't work. I don't think he thought it through logically and necessarily thought, logically, that he could do it. I think that he was in pretty strong denial over losing his entire family, so he convinced himself he could still save them.

There's a lot of god references/imagery in Shidou's stuff. Both his audio dramas are named after gods, and the pomegranate and flower imagery links him pretty heavily to the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone.

Additionally, a lot of lyrics in Throwdown seem to indicate that he believes he's going to succeed.

"I will finally be saved once it becomes true"

"I don't feel scared because I don't know"

These, and especially the second one, indicate to me that he might have been lying to himself and convincing himself that it was still possible. He couldn't feel scared about it because he didn't allow himself to know the possible outcome.

There's also his cover. I know that the Milgram devs have said that the covers are just for fun, but I mean, come on. It's called Delusion Tax. As in, the people he killed trying to save his loved one are the tax he had to pay for being delusional and believing he actually had a chance to save them. That's why I think he believed, at least in the moment, that he could save them. Not logically, but because if he didn't believe that, he would have nothing left.

And yeah, I definitely agree that Shidou is very morally gray. I've been assuming this from the beginning, basically. I always thought that characters' crimes would trend more morally gray over time to complicate the verdict decision. Shidou's seemed too horrifying in terms of how many people he killed, so I figured they'd ease it up. Between it being seemingly confirmed that he only took organs from braindead patients and the fact that he is so willing to make amends and accepts responsibility, it seems like Shidou is in a point where people could definitely at least consider redeeming him.

And I totally respect if people don't! He broke a lot of rules and he did a lot of awful things. But no matter what you believe about his end verdict, I maintain that innocent is the right move right now. He's needed to save the lives of others, and calling him guilty now would just ruin any progress we've made with him. The final verdict comes later. For now, we need Shidou alive and capable.

[sunderwight]

had a thought of what if Airplane had leaned a little more into the self-insert idea for Luo Binghe when he was still at the early stages of writing, with an end result that Luo Binghe actually Looks Like That because he basically looks like Airplane but with long flowing hair and a more idealized figure

SQQ going "why the fuck did you make his face so pretty???" and Airplane bullshitting about plausibility while trying really hard not to blush. twisting his fingers and scuffing his toe like jeez bro he's not that good-looking...

which of course sets SQQ off because how DARE!?! not 'that' good-looking?!?! just look at him! he's xianxia Helen of Troy with a face that launched a thousand harems! like okay sure with looks like that it does make sense that half the female population was willing to timeshare a marriage with him, but it's also totally unfair to SQQ, who has no recourse against those looks either! and who could? that is the most beautiful face ever!

Airplane's getting flustered. tries valiantly to make the case that objectively speaking Luo Binghe isn't that good-looking, it's just that SQQ is biased, but boy does that not go over well. SQQ has hitched the tattered remnants of his self-perception as a straight man onto the idea that Luo Binghe is just so devastatingly attractive anyone would want to hop into bed with him, and he is not letting go of it, so Airplane is just gonna get wrecked with inadvertent compliments

bonus if the Shang Qinghua look is actually the result of several illusions because when Airplane first transmigrated in, he got the same face too, and foresaw potential problems if the half-demon protagonist turned up looking like him. so he used illusions. he doesn't actually look all that different, in fact! the illusions just make it so that when people see him, they get a strong impression that he's unremarkable, so they don't really register what his face actually looks like and their brains fill in the assumption that he must just be kinda plain

oooh ooh double bonus if the system inserted a behind-the-scenes explanation for it too, which is that Shang Qinghua is actually unwittingly related to Su Xiyan!

and the whole thing comes to light post-epilogue when Shang Qinghua's illusions get stripped away by some monster-of-the-week, while everyone except Mobei Jun has a freak out about why do you look just like Luo Binghe?! (Mobei Jun isn't freaking out because he already figured out how to see past the illusions and just assumed everyone else wasn't mentioning it for some human cultural reason or something) and then Yue Qingyuan calmly explains that Luo Binghe's mom is Shang Qinghua's matrilineal cousin. Shang Qinghua's mother and Luo Binghe's human grandmother were half-sisters.

what? how does Yue Qingyuan know? you think that Cang Qiong doesn't check up on the candidates for the peak lord positions before handing off power, doesn't make sure there are no conflicts of interest or divided loyalties to other sects? what sorts of things do people imagine Qiong Ding's diplomats do? (I don't know either but, for the purpose of this scenario at least some of it is tracking down this stuff -- YQY handled most of it personally for his generation's ascension because he didn't want anyone else digging into his and Xiao Jiu's pasts) anyways, the connection could have been troublesome for its ties to Huan Hua Palace, but by the time it came to light Su Xiyan was deceased and there was no evidence that Shang Qinghua had ever even met her. so it wasn't deemed significant enough to matter, was just made note of and then mostly forgotten

so Shang Qinghua is like "oh THAT is why you kept bringing her up to me back then?!" because at the time he'd just been fully in "haha how would I know anything about the impending plot and the tragedies I am both partly responsible for and powerless to prevent haha that's so funny shixiong I KNOW NOTHING" mode, which luckily at the time was easily read as him just not wanting a dead cousin he never met to tank his chances of securing a promotion

SQQ is floored. he is having issues about this. Shang Qinghua is related to Binghe? Shang Qinghua looks exactly like him?! wait. Binghe has human family? still alive? like grandparents and stuff out there, who might want to meet him...?

Luo Binghe decides to step in at that point because he does not want to meet any more relatives! no more surprise relatives! no!

luckily this distracts Shen Qingqiu from thinking about all of the things he's said to Airplane about Binghe's looks for long enough for Shang Qinghua to flee the scene

[avelera]

"Nice is Different than Good" Character Interpretation: Hob Gadling as Kind of a Bastard

Ok, slightly controversial take on Hob Gadling Is Kind of a Bastard that I've been toying with. It runs counter to some wonderful let me be clear, amazing fanon I've seen in some fics, so this is much more me going, "Hey, here's a way to do it different that might work better in different stories fan writers might want to tell," and not to invalidate other takes or even to put forth that I think this is necessarily true of Hob in a meta sense, it's just shining a light on the text from a different direction, y'know?

Hob as Neutral Evil (credit to Winter on the big dreamling server for this concept!)

I'm obsessed with the idea that Hob is neutral evil on ye olde D&D alignment chart because it makes so much sense if the axis for evil is primarily based on selfishness.

Primary evidence? How casually he talks in 1489 about having done a bit of soldiering and banditry. Those jobs are about killing people. Maybe not all the time as a bandit, ideally, but even then it's about taking their stuff. There is absolutely zero remorse in Hob's tone about being a soldier and a bandit just because he's at his most wide-eyed innocent and has since picked up a trade.

Hob as Politically Conservative until at least 1789 but possibly until 1989

Hob as far as I can tell is a model of the white male middle class existence in England throughout what we define as more or less the "modern era". As far as I can tell, there's no indication at any point prior to 1789 that Hob rocked the boat or was at all out of step with the Powers That Be.

In general, I kind of see Hob as always just this side of the "wrong side of history" and I personally find it more interesting when that's where we find him. And not in a grand sense but in a "middle of the road" sense of just going along with the day to day accepted levels of harm and evil caused by societal momentum. Generally speaking, only a very small percentage of the population takes active part in moving the needle towards good at any given time on a variety causes, and I tend to see Hob is generally speaking outside of all those minorities of do-gooders, except when it comes to taking care of his immediate friends and family. Which is a pretty average place to be.

Indeed, when it comes to the Wat Tyler rebellion, it's my personal headcanon that Hob was more likely on the side of the soldiers putting DOWN the rebellion on behalf of the local lords, and unlikely to have been interested in or part of the cause of greater equality in England. The fact he's a soldier drinking with his mates openly in a tavern when people around him are talking about Wat Tyler and he's blithely ignoring the discussion is where I get that sense.

Indeed, I believe (though I don't know where to cite it, even in the English Civil Wars, Hob was canonically on the side of the monarchy. So jot that down as Hob being pro-monarchy.

While, yes, I believe post 1789 he learned to be less of a piece of shit about taking active part if horrific industrial-level cruelty, I don't see evidence he became a superhero after that. The one bit of "on the page"altruism we see from him is him flipping a coin to Lushing Lou and telling an obvious alcoholic to go get a drink so she stops pestering his friend by offering herself to him as a prostitute, something Hob seems entirely comfortable with.

In 1989 when Hob gets out of his sleek convertible, dressed like a stock trader, he uses the Financial Times to shield himself from the rain, a periodical that apparently was just lying around in his car. As tempting as it would be to say it's to somehow show off to Dream, he has no reason to believe Dream would come back to his car so more likely, it's just something for himself.

All of these put together show me on the page that Hob stayed pretty fixated on making money even after deciding and coming to regret being part of the "shipping business".

And to be clear, we don't actually know when Hob quit the shipping business. Personally, I like to think he did it right after Dream asked, but that's a romantic take and deliberately so. Hob having the opinion by 1889 that slavery is wrong is not necessarily a progressive take by then. Regardless, even if in 1789 he learned it was wrong, that still puts him just slightly ahead of the curve, philosophically speaking.

If we pull in comic canon we do know Hob was ahead of the curve on feminism by 1912 in Hob's Leviathan but again, women would get the right to vote by 1918/1928 in England after the issue had been discussed for at least a century (keep in mind, male Catholics couldn't vote in England until the early 1800s) so again this puts him as palatable to modern readers but not necessary terribly ahead of the curve.

Now, let me also be clear, where Hob is at in 2022 is anyone's guess. Personally I think Dream not showing up in 1989 was a second wakeup call for Hob. If he'd drifted back towards selfish hedonism by 1989, as his whole vibe suggests, he might very well have looked in the mirror and thought, "What if this is why my stranger stayed away?"

We know he becomes a teacher. That probably would go a long way towards changing his politics. We know he's a history teacher, so now he's got the long view. He's spending time in academia, which tends to lean left. My point is, Hob in 2022 is anyone guess and I think there's a lot of evidence and word of god evidence that he's become a Good Person by then, but I also think it's the 1989 meeting that jumpstarted him being Good and not just Nice. Because I do think Hob throughout all these periods of being morally a bastard was always good to the people close to him in his life. I think he was a good friend and a good husband and would have been a good friend to Dream had he allowed it. And that's what I enjoy most, that he could be both of those things, Nice and Not Good.

Hob as non-religious

I admit, this one is very near and dear to my heart for personal reasons of identifying as an atheist when it comes to Christianity and being a lifelong skeptic of Catholicism for the brief time I was technically a member of that organization (all of which while I was a minor). To be clear there is just as much evidence to say Hob is any number of religious alignments as there is that he has none. It's a totally personal choice by any author, I'm just outlining my evidence for why I write him as effectively an atheist.

The Black Death is considered the period that broke the spine of the Catholic church as a monolith in Europe. All the good priests who did their duty taking care of people and giving last rites died leaving only the ones who fled or were young, with tons of money given to the church because of all the rampant death.

Hob would have been born into an era that was particularly rife with both fanaticism and anti-church sentiment. There was a lot of evidence abounding that being a good Christian just got you killed.

Given Hob is a soldier drinking with his mates 1389, I don't see much evidence of him being particularly devout there. No less so in 1489, by the way. Not saying there's evidence against it, just that there's no evidence for it and indeed, societally there's justification for him to not be devout given the century he was born.

1589 I'd say we've got some evidence Hob isn't devout: he seems unperturbed by King Henry's ransacking of the monasteries. Politically speaking, if Hob is a New Man, he might have even benefited from that ransacking personally. In my personal view, Hob is an opportunist and most likely converted to Church of England at the earliest possible opportunity to curry favor with the Powers that Be. I don't personally see him as someone who would bother pretending to be Protestant while continuing to practice Catholicism, because:

Why would Hob bother to be faithful at all? He can't die. The #1 reason to be devout is to avoid Hell or get into Heaven. Hob has clearly chosen the secular world as the only Heaven he cares about. He says that his current life is what, "He once thought Heaven would be like" and it's a very secular vision of good food and safe streets. He does not appear to be pining at all for any spiritual version of Heaven and indeed, speaks of Heaven as a dream only in the past tense.

Personally, by 1689, I think Hob has plenty of reasons to hate God after what he's suffered and the fact he's still not interested in dying to me seems a pretty strong indication that he does not hold romantic views of the afterlife.

Finally, for 1789 to the present, there was absolutely a class of gentleman who were progress minded, obsessed with technology and the Age of Reason. Many American Founding Fathers were self-proclaimed deists, basically a safe form of atheism that said eh, yes God exists and is out there and we owe him some deference, but he doesn't impact day to day life and we can safely ignore him most of the time. Personally, and this is pure headcanon, I put Hob in that group cheerfully ignoring religion and never looking back because he's more interested in the new technologies of the day and not the crusty old church.

We also know, canonically, that at least in 1789, Hob does not consider himself Jewish.

And of course, we can't forget: Hob has evidence that the Christian cosmology is wrong, somehow, given his stranger and his own immortality.

Frankly, given that Hob appears on the page to be a hedonist with no fear of dying, it's interesting to speculate on what his moral boundaries would be at all coming from a world where Heaven and Hell were the primary means of moral social control. It is possible to speculate that Hob could have gone completely off the rails as far as worrying about his soul for a bit there, other than thinking he's already sold it, which could go either way as far as trying to redeem himself but again, he speaks casually of being a soldier and a bandit, so it doesn't sound like if he worried about his soul being sold already, he thought there was anything that could be done to redeem it.

[i-heart-mgg]

Puppy Love - Ch.2

Pairings: Spencer Reid x Female Reader

Summary: The team wraps up their case and is dying to head home after many sleepless nights, however Spencer and reader end up have quite the eventful flight back home.

Warnings: light swearing, tension, compromising positions 😏, mentions of murder, child abduction.

Word count: 4019

Previous Chapter - Next chapter

————————————————————————

After getting back to your unkempt motel room and passing out, you were rudely awoken by your body with an undying thirst for some cold, crisp water (those who get it, get it). You, however, were deprived of that. In replacement, was an exceedingly discombobulated Spencer Reid. It was safe to say he was true to his word last night, you didn’t think his eye bags could get any darker.

You strode across the shabby oak floorboards of the police station, going in a B-line straight for the Doctor. Not entirely sure why if you were being honest, but it didn’t matter either way, Hotch called out your name before another encounter could ensue. “Yes, coming!”

You hurried over to the man waiting with the sheriff of the small country town of Kildaresh, Alabama. “(Last Name), This is Sheriff Gill, She’ll get you accustomed to the general layout of the town. Hopefully, it’ll give you a fighting chance of keeping up with Reid when working on the geographical profile.”

The woman was of average height, with brown eyes and hair that flicked upwards at the ends. You flashed her a small smile and light handshake before she gave you a rundown of where the family's houses were located, spots they frequented, places they had in common, and so on. Quickly thanking her, you finally made your way over to Spencer, engrossed in the red lines scattered along the large map. “So… would it be uhm, okay if you could get me up to speed here, please?” You asked.

He didn’t pay you any mind, out of annoyance or obliviousness you weren’t sure. “Dr. Reid..?” He gripped the marker tighter as he made one final stroke connecting a popular Diner and laundromat. His stance shifted to meet your gaze, well-worn Converse squeaking against the floor. “Yes, sorry what did you say?”

“Oh uh I just wanted to know if you could explain what’s going on..” you gestured your hands in the direction of the map, luckily he got the idea from your extremely vague explanation. “Of course, so this is the most popular massage parlour in town, famous amongst the male population for their expertise, and this-“ You giggled, causing Spencer to knit his eyebrows together in bewilderment. “Spencer, you know that’s more than just a massage parlour right?” You teased. His face tightened further, even more lost than before. “You know… happy endings and stuff?”

He stared a while longer before realising what you meant, a vibrant pink dusting the tips of his cheeks. “You are- uh right, about that.” He chuckled, for the most part out of embarrassment. His Adam’s apple bopped in his throat after the laughter had subsided, leaving you with an intense game of trying not to blink, which Spencer inevitably lost. He involuntarily ripped his eyes away from yours. In favour, they traced down every slight curve and outline of your body, before continuing his not-so-little information dump.

— x —

You could hear the deafening sound of the jet flying down into the barren airport, ready to take you home. “God, I am beat!” Exclaimed Morgan as he threw his arms out in an exaggerated yawn. You had caught the unsub, a bastard murdering families consisting of mostly women and recording it to sell online to sickos much like himself.

You and Spencer worked surprisingly well together, tracking down the location of his next target, the Andersons. You quickly picked up on how these things worked, thankfully not being too much of a nuisance- except for maybe teasing Spencer, but that was all in good fun.

Morgan collapsed down on the first seat his drooping eyes lay upon. The man was not lying when he said he was “beat” after that big chase he had with the unsub. Everyone was left on the edge of their seat as Morgan, our last hope of catching the guy, ended the wild goose chase by tackling him to the ground.

The rest of the team poured into the jet and followed suit. You claimed a comfortable spot on the couch next to Spencer, the opposite end as Morgan and the team. He glanced over at you, sporting his straight-lipped smile in acknowledgment of your presence.

You didn’t speak, long night after long night taking its toll on your ability to have any kind of conversational prowess. Reid extended his arm back to reach for something, you couldn’t quite make out what it was until he was laying it over the top of himself. A warm, fluffy blanket. The things you would do to have that wrapped around you right now. Fortunately, Spencer had the foresight- or more like simple observational skills to lift it towards you with a questioning look. For which you gladly took the unspoken offer.

He draped it around you both, making sure it was evenly distributed between the two of you, before lying back to watch the clouds passing by. The radio silence and warm climate lulled you into a slumber within minutes. You had your blanket and something else inescapably had to become your pillow, your subconscious mind's choice? Spencer’s shoulder.

At first, he didn’t realise, attributing it to a peculiar way the blanket had fallen. That theory was soon debunked when whatever the weight resting against him was, moved. He carefully shifted his body to look at his left shoulder, to find that you were sleeping soundly against it. His whole body tensed, stirring you slightly in the process. He tried his best to not make that same mistake again, although it proved tremendously difficult when this was the closest he’d ever come to a woman, apart from his mother and that one time with the Lila Archer, ever.

The combination of you and the blanket was making him seriously start to overheat. Yet he sat impossibly still, terrified of waking you up by accident. Spencer studied and committed each of your features up close to memory, the way your reddish-hued lips were somewhat parted as shallow breaths escaped them, how your eyelashes were so long yet dainty, or the way your face scrunched up in discomfort if he readjusted a centimetre too far. He was borderline panting when you would then bury your face further, cuddling up against him. Causing him to bite down on his lip hard enough for small traces of blood to escape.

In an endeavour to soothe his nerves, he reached into his go-bag for a copy of The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe. The retrieval of the book went swimmingly, your breathing pattern only faltering when he was required to use his left hand to open the hefty book. You started mumbling incoherent noises, squirming about on his side.

“Shhhh, it’s ok. Go back to sleep,” he whispered in your ear as he tucked a strand of hair behind it. Which soon evolved into gently stroking your silky hair until he was one hundred per cent certain you were asleep. He may have done it a touch more than completely necessary, but would he ever admit it? Hell no.

He lifted the blanket higher in areas it had shimmied its way down, before turning the pages of his book. Reading ten times slower than he normally would, one because he didn’t go to all this effort for you to wake up, and two because he physically couldn’t. The dense, recently purchased pages caused his hand to strain uncomfortably when turning a page.

Words began to blur into one, as his eyelids were being forced shut by the powerful forces of exhaustion. His body went limp, leaving the book to topple onto the floor of the jet and his head to fall against your own. His previous stiffness had assumed him at a very upright position, that too, was now gone.

Spencer slouched back into the chair, your head now falling against his chest. You stretched out in your slumber to wrap your arm around him like that of a childhood teddy bear. He soon mirrored your movements, his sizeable hands enveloping the circumference of your waist.

— x —

“Flight passengers please be seated for your arrival.” You peeled your eyes open, your knuckles carelessly rubbing the sleep out of them while squinting from the harsh jet lights. The unfamiliar feeling of waking up in a jet left you in a seriously disoriented state, attempting to gain back some awareness, you began by trying to figure out where you were- but more importantly what was preventing you from getting up. The rise and fall of somebody’s chest underneath you may have been a teeny-weeny clue.

“shit.” You had made Spencer your personal lounge and you were now engulfed by his arms. Could you ever not get yourself into such compromising situations? The only option here was to escape, not desiring an onslaught of teasing over a simple misunderstanding, if someone were to discover whatever this was. You pressed your right palm onto the table, gaining some elevation above him while you placed the parallel foot down. Effectively caging him in the tight space. Spencer stirred slightly in response, but for the most part, so far so good.

Your fingers interlaced with his own, meticulously trying to pry them off of you. The faint noises of people who were waking up on the other side of the jet allowed terror to run rampant in your mind. When you attempted to stand up, Spencer’s brow furrowed in disconcertment, unexpectedly strong hands forcing your body to tumble back into his grasp, double the security of the previous hold.

There was no choice but to resort to plan B, you made your next break for it by raising your legs into a kneeling position, praying that you would be able to slip out backwards. You arched your back while you cautiously manoeuvred out of his iron grip, almost far enough to duck your head under his hands. Soft murmurs could now be heard from the other end of the aircraft, and you could practically taste freedom.

Plan C was the last thing on your mind when Spencer suddenly groped your upper thighs, hazardously close to your ass, and pulled you down to straddle his thigh. Your face was scorching hot, about to burst into flames when you let out an involuntary whimper. All oxygen drained from your lungs when you paused to see if anyone had heard. As much as you hated yourself for it, you couldn’t deny how the situation was kinda hot and maybe you didn’t mind being in this position with Spencer under different circumstances.

After waiting a short time you had figured all was well, and by some grace of god, Spencer had seemed to regain some consciousness. You surveyed his features, once tranquil, now shifting to a look of panic when he saw you against him, cheeks flushing as he promptly loosened his grasp on your thigh. He didn’t quite get full-blown freaked out before he collected himself and his thoughts, peering over to check if you were still asleep.

You pretended you were to save him the mortification, yet truthfully, you mostly did it for yourself. His slender fingertips ran up the expanse of your back, before tenderly lifting you by the armpits to rest on the other side of the leather seating arrangement. Placing the blanket back on top of you.

You listened intently to the sound of him shuffling with his go-bag while muttering something you couldn’t quite hear, picking the perfect time to pretend to wake up. 

Grumbling, you began to slowly open your eyes, making sure Reid took notice. “(Name), are you awake?” You outstretched your body before responding, “I am now.” Spencer looked at you apologetically, “Sorry if I woke you, we’re landing soon.” “S’ ok, thanks for letting me know, is this your blanket?” Your hand held up the piece of fleece while you made eye contact. “Oh, no, it’s not mine. But thank you anyway.” He said flatly while retrieving the item from your toasty hands.

“Sleep well?” Spencer startled you from your daze. “Ah, yes I did, extremely well in fact.” You said with a slight smirk, not big enough for the Doctor to read into though. “I’m uh, very g-glad. For you, of course.” He stated as he made a plethora of unnecessary hand gestures, clearly recalling the prior events of the trip.

“Did you sleep well too?” You questioned. “I did.. but how’d you know I slept?” The error was already made, there wasn’t any going back on this one. “Oh well, you know..” you trailed off meeting his unfaltering gaze. “I just assumed everyone was, especially you. I know you at least didn’t get any rest that first night, god knows how many others you missed.”

Spencer stared awhile longer, that’s it, your resolve was on its last legs. “Fair enough.” He said, still a bit unconvinced but willing to settle with your answer. “Reid, (last name)! How’s the weather up here, I sure hope you got your beauty sleep and didn’t chat the whole way here.”Emily joked. It was both your turn to get pink in the face. “No, actually, we barely said a word.” Spencer gave a quick smile while he saved you from that awkward interaction, in which you were eternally grateful for.

“Damn (name) you got lucky, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Spencer stop talking.” You giggled for a moment before responding, “Guess he was just too tired to stay awake, I probably kept him up these past few nights. Not that I would mind him talking my ear off the whole way, I actually find his statistics quite intriguing.”

Spencer was dumbfounded, not knowing which part made the butterflies in his stomach go wilder. Was it the insinuation that he was thinking of you each night, which rationally he knew was a harmless joke, yet was the furthest thing from a lie. Or was it you saying you didn’t mind him talking, no, you in fact liked it. Or was it the wink you gave him that made his heart skip a beat? Time wasn’t sufficient enough to have an internal debate with himself, he didn’t need anyone knowing your statement was laden with a tinge of truth.

“What! That is an outrageous accusation, the case was keeping me up. You know, the innocent families murdered? I’m disappointed that you’d think your pretty little face took priority over them.” Emily and you froze in shock, not expecting such a defensive reaction to your joke, and much less the compliment threw in at the end. “Sorry.. uh, that was definitely overkill, not that you aren’t pretty, I’m also not disappointed either… I was trying to joke back…” Spencer trailed off, realising the delivery was completely off after the fact. Shifting from foot to foot, desperately waiting for someone to say anything.

“You think I’m pretty?” Your lips curled into a smile, and Spencer sighed in relief that he hadn’t made you hate his guts. “Well if we’re relatively speaking, you are indeed conventionally attractive,” he blurted out, making you blush from head to toe. “I feel like I’m interrupting something here,” Emily murmured under her breath while she crossed her arms, ready to alight from the jet.

“Interrupting what?” Morgan butted in as he leaned against the couch Spencer and I were previously lying on. “It’s nothing, let’s get out of here so we can enjoy our own homes for a change,” Emily exclaimed while she proceeded to drag Morgan over to the now-open jet door. “Calm down mamas just asking a question here.” He chuckled, placing a hand on his heart in false offence.

Spencer stood nearby in confusion, watching our colleagues stumble down the steep stairs, clearly none the wiser as to why she made such a comment. “Emily’s right, my house does sound rather appealing after being confined to a space the size of my bathroom the past week. I’m gonna head out, you coming?” Spencer perked his head up, not missing a beat before nodding his head in agreement.

— x —

The chirping of birds, as you strolled down the scenic route to the new coffee shop you were trying before work, rang through your ears. It had been a whole two weeks since you started the job, which doesn’t sound like a lot but the amount of work done in that time was astonishing. Thankfully, all cases went well, as well as they could be for serial killers and child abductions, and you seemed to be getting by alright. Great willow trees hung over the pathway, reminding you of how people find them symbolic of humans' capability to withstand hardship, loss, and difficult emotions. A random fact you picked up from Spencer’s rambling spiels.

Speaking of which, you and the doctor had become increasingly close after the past two weeks, paired together on almost every case, eating lunch with each other on the days you actually had the time to, or chatting a bit too much while you were supposed to be writing your reports. Not that you hadn’t grown closer to the other members, it was natural that you would after starting a new job, but with Spencer it was different. When you talked to him or just spent time around him you felt excited, kicking your feet like you were a 13-year-old girl experiencing her first real crush. Not that you had a crush on Spencer, you had literally just met the man. Yet the way conversation flowed so easily made it feel like you had known him your entire life.

You turned the final rustic corner of your picturesque route, effectively ending the refreshing walk as you reached your destination, an ancient-looking building with brick walls, gigantic stained-glass windows, and an abundance of greenery coating the surrounding area. The bell chimed as you stepped through the threshold of the cafe, bookshelves packed from top to bottom lined almost every wall. Yet it didn’t feel cramped, it was rather cozy and you had always preferred older architecture than blocky modern.

“Hello miss! What can I get you today love?” A full-figured elderly lady said welcomingly. “I’ll take a cappuccino please,” you smiled graciously at the woman, you figured you’d stay since work didn't start for about an hour, the warm atmosphere was irresistible on a chilly winter's day like this. “That’ll be four fifty, but I’ll make it four for a sweet girl like you. Name, dear?” She complimented as she mischievously raised her eyebrows up and down. “Ah thank you! It’s just (name).”

You tapped your card against the EFTPOS machine before looking over the wide array of books encased by enormous shelves. The sunlight peaking through the stained glass, casting a halo over a particular section of books, drew your attention. You waltzed your way over the creaky floorboards covered in various scuff marks from what you were sure was a glorious heyday, fingers gracefully skimming over the hard leather backing of the books, they were clearly vintage and of a high quality. A particular one caught your eye, it wasn’t as dusty as the others yet it was obviously cherished by the way the corners and folds were tatty and worn. You pulled the book out to observe the cover, the kind lady spoke up slightly startling you. “You know, I have a regular about your age who loves that book, Ray Bradbury’s work in general I’m certain.”

“I’ll have to meet him I suppose, if the rest of his taste in books is similar then I don’t think we’d ever run out of things to talk about.” You chuckled. Her round cheeks grew wide as she grinned at you, placing your drink down on the homely little booth table you had situated yourself at. “You may be in luck, the young man comes here quite a bit, usually at this time of day too.” Your hand reached out to take a sip of your cappuccino, savouring the bitter yet comforting flavours swirling about your mouth. “That sounds lovely, I can’t wait”.

The bell hanging above the door chimed, alerting the two of you to the presence of another customer, you paid it no mind wanting to know more about this mystery man who seemed to be just your type, however, business was calling to the older woman. Unfortunately interrupting your very intriguing topic. “Hello! What can I get for you today? Or do you just want your usual with extra, extra, sugar?” The woman perked up.

“I’ll just have my usual, thank you”. The man said as the woman excitedly tapped your arm, just when you were about to take a second sip. You placed your cup down, eyebrow rising in curiosity, could this be the mystery man? You glanced up at the beaming old lady scurrying over to a tall, slender figure, one that seemingly resembled a coworker of yours, maybe a bit too well.

“(Name)! I’d like you to meet-“ “SPENCER?!” You exclaimed in utter shock, accidentally interrupting the poor woman. “Hey (name), I didn’t know you went here, um- how’d you know Dilicia?” Spencer questioned his fidgety body language and stuttering signalling he was just as surprised as you were, or maybe that was just his regular self, you weren’t entirely sure. “Uh, well no. It’s my first time trying the place actually, I thought since it was near work it’d be most convenient”. You said, eyes darting side to side as you nervously chuckled.

“Oh gosh! Do the two of you know each other already? Isn’t that splendid!” Dilicia exclaimed, wide-eyed and hands clamped tightly together. “W-we do, yes-“ “Yes we know each other, we’re colleagues”. Spencer and you managed to blurt out at the same time. She smirked at both of your guys’ awkwardness before heading behind the polished front counter towards the coffee machine.

The air settled as the initial shock wore off, Reid and Dilicia strolling their way over deep in a conversation you couldn’t quite make out, but knew you were a part of judging by the woman’s giddy expression constantly meeting your slightly less enthusiastic one. “Spencer dear, I must tell you, just before you came me and Miss (name) were talking about you!” Your face flushed at the unwanted confession, sounding more like you were talking shit about him than raving about how great you’d be together. Neither option was appealing if you were being honest.

“Oh- really? Why were you talking about me, if you don’t mind me asking? Also, how did you know that we knew each other? Oh and what exactly did you say about me, for how long…?” Spencer rambled, definitely now overthinking the whole encounter. You stared down at your hands, picking at your long fingernails probably in need of a well-earned file. “We didn’t know it was you… we were just- well, you know, talking about… stuff”. “Sugar plum honey bum no need to be shy! I was telling (name) about how good a match you two would be. And obviously, I was right, seeing that you’re already ‘friends’.” She winked while saying friends in air quotations.

“D-Dilicia, I can assure you that our relationship is purely professional, we only met very recently, about 14 days, 1 hour and 17 minutes to be exact. Which in fact reminds me that we should both get going, my stay has been longer than I anticipated, and we’re going to be late if we stay a moment longer. I already left money by the cash register, thank you for the coffee.” The woman just smiled as she walked to the back, waving goodbye and telling you both to come by next time- and by both, she meant the two of you, at the same time, at the same table, and all the rest of it. She really needed to become a matchmaker on the side of the cafe business.

The doorbell chimed once again, Spencer held the door open and let you through first, exiting the premises and waving goodbye back to the jolly old lady.

I wrote most of this like a month ago but I didn’t finish it until now because of going back to school and stuff 😭😭 thank you so much for all the notes on the first chapter I really do appreciate it!! The comments are so sweet but for some reason I can’t reply 🙄 Anyways expect more chapters and I hope you enjoyed this one! Oh yeah and happy birthday to my husband 😘😘

[laundrybiscuits]

Found myself reading some old Inception fic and felt the urge to poke at an AU idea—I know ST fandom skews a little young, so I genuinely don’t know how many people will even get this. If there are Inception primers out there, I haven’t bothered to find them, so…you’re on your own, kids. 

“Absolutely not. I do my own forges.” Eddie sweeps the file off the table and directly into the trashcan; admittedly, it’s not the most mature thing he’s ever done, but Henderson’s getting on his last goddamned nerve. 

The little twerp has the fucking audacity to roll his eyes and groan, like Eddie’s the one being unreasonable. “I know this guy, don’t be a dick. He can do it. Don’t you wanna focus on your super special architect stuff?”

“What you and every other dumbass dilettante drowser don’t seem to grasp is that my architecture is alive, and I breathe life into it via my meticulously crafted characters. I create richly textured worlds, Henderson, and I populate them myself. That’s why I’m the best in the fucking business: because I understand that the people and the setting are one and the same, and I can handle both.”

“Eddie.” Henderson crouches to grab the file out of the trash, and smacks it back down on the table. “I’m running this team, and I’m saying I don’t want anything like what happened in Munich to ever happen again. Okay?”

“Low blow, kid,” snaps Eddie. “Munich wasn’t on me.” 

“I know, jeez. I just…” Henderson takes a second to tap the loose sheets in the file back into place, then stands there with his lips pressed together like he’s keeping something in. After a moment, he just says, “This isn’t going to be Munich. Because Steve’s going to be here.”

———

It’s not Munich. It’s not Munich at all. It is the furthest fucking thing from Munich possible. 

Eddie’s never had a job go that smoothly—and it’s not down to Henderson’s obsessive prep, because it should’ve been a slippery one. The kind of job that twisted partway through into something frustratingly unexpected, forcing them to improvise and take whatever half-win they could squeeze out of the mark’s subconscious while dodging completely unexpected security. 

Instead, it’s so incredibly not-Munich that the client gives them a fucking bonus, and when was the last time that happened? The bonus is generous enough that Eddie’s share can cover a whole new safehouse in Melbourne, which should have been great news, something to celebrate, except for the absolutely unholy amount of smugness now radiating from Henderson.

Eddie avoids the I-told-you-so conversation as long as he can, but he can’t run forever.

“I told you so,” says Henderson, flopping unceremoniously into the dark wooden chair next to Eddie.

“This is a library, dude. Keep your fuckin’ voice down,” says Eddie, without much hope. He’d heard Henderson was supposed to be meeting up with Sinclair in Lima this week; so much for that intel.

Henderson waves a dismissive hand, gesturing vaguely at the domed skylight high overhead. “It’s not like a library library. It’s basically a museum.”

“The goddamn State Library of Victoria is absolutely one hundred percent a library library, genius. See all the books? But also, do you think people go around yelling in museums?”

“Maybe they should! What we should be focusing on now, though, is that I was right about Steve, and I think it’s important for our working relationship that you acknowledge I was right.”

“I don’t have to acknowledge shit,” says Eddie, slumping down and ignoring the glares they’re starting to get from everyone in the atrium. “Anyone ever tell you you’re an egomaniac, kid? I don’t even get why you’re so hot on the guy, anyway. He’s like—the least imaginative forger I’ve ever met.”

It comes out a little harsher than he’d meant it. It’s just that forgers, as a people, tend to be easily swept into flights of fancy.

Eddie’s always sort of thought it was a requirement of the profession: when he’s inhabiting a character, part of his mind is always working to generate the little details that make them feel like a whole person. Their secret fears and even more secret hopes. How they deal with boredom or anger, what their gut reactions are. The small gaps between how they see themselves and how others see them. That’s where Eddie thrives, and he thinks that if he were less hooked on the magic of spinning up entire worlds for marks to wander through, he might forge full-time, just for the thrill of riding that uncertainty. It’s how he was taught, but clearly, Steve learned something different.

What Steve does isn’t really classical forging—not in the way Eddie thinks about it, usually. Steve just…walks into a situation, says some stuff, maybe gives the mark a smile all warm and private like a whispered secret. And then the mark folds. It’s maddening how easy Steve makes it look. Oh, he’ll pull on the right costumes and tweak his physicality a little, but it’s always still just Steve underneath. 

Maybe that’s the trick. Eddie’s forges work because he crafts lavishly detailed lies; Steve’s forges work because there’s some kind of real, solid honesty at the core. 

“I’m going to ignore the hurtful thing you just said because I know you hate to admit it when I’m right and you’re wrong,” Henderson informs him. “You really gotta work on that. More importantly, I’ve got a lead on a new job, and Steve already said yes.”

It’s not like Eddie needs the money. Henderson’s a nightmare to work with. And there’s the, y’know. The Steve Harrington of it all. Eddie has a million reasons to say no.

“Yeah, whatever,” he says instead. “When do we start?”

[gandalfsbignaturals]

for all that i resent the christian right, and to a greater extent christianity in general, i dont really envy them. they live in a terrifying world! they live in a world where literally everything in the world wants to drag you down into hell for all of eternity except for this One Singular Guy and his followers. not only do they have to constantly worry about whether theyre doing the Right Thing or else risk Damnation, they also have to watch their loved ones risk Damnation too.

its no wonder they become paranoid, controlling, jaded, and cruel in the face of that fear. i think if you sincerely buy into all the heaven and hell stuff, theres no way to really exist in the world without developing some really strange ideas about what "good" means.

uh, yeah, obviously locking criminals up is good for them, because it means they cant do anymore crimes, so they wont go to hell. obviously the best way to protect kids is by making sure they never hear about sex at all except that they shouldnt have it, so that they cant have impure thoughts and go to hell. and the best way to care about poor people is to motivate them to get better by shooing them out of public spaces and making life generally terrible for them, so they dont become indolent and idle and go to hell!!!!!

once you understand how much of the christian population is living in abject fear of the world around them, you start to understand why they act so obscenely evil.

[wulvert]

this post is abt my ocs so they have up to date context on this blog. i genuinely dont remember if ive made this post before, i could have, my memory is bad & i want to talk abt them so i dont mind repeating myself

selkie

& wolf

those r placeholder names but they dont get real ones

selkie is a selkie with no coat & wolf is not a werewolf but they were a werewolf like 5 mins before the start of the story.

setting is pretty generic grimish fantasy world where magic just got fuckign zapped out of existence causing all curses to break, thts probs been done 1000 times before but idc vampires have too let me live.

wolf is the first werewolf ever & theyve just been a giant wolf wreaking havoc full time for a good 1000 yrs or so, all other werewolves have a weaker version of their curse. it only affects them on the full moon bc thats the moon phase wolf (the person) was cursed on wweuueh wolf did stop wreaking havoc once a year on the day they were cursed, this became a holiday where locals vent their frustrations to the giant wolf that usually tries eating them every other day of the year, giving it to god kinda idea but for giant wolves.

now that everyone evers curse has been broken as a byproduct of magic being obliterated, wolf is a person. why doesnt magic being gone make them stuck as a wolf fuck off shut up. magic is what makes them a wolf thats how it works thats how magic works go to magic school idiot,

wolf is a person again, but god** forgot what they looked like before being a giant wolf so theyre kinda just whatever wolf felt like at the time now. despite it being their actual genuine fucking heart and soul and spirit in physical form, they arent super happy with it bc now they have to see their muther (who isnt dead) (despite 1000 yrs passing) who will probably be judgy abt their actual ficking hesrt and soul ajd spirit in physical form & that feels bad. so wolf wants to be a giant wolf again asap to avoid tht mother child reunion.

** there r two gods but one is dead but thats fine so like the world they live in is one massive dead gods head & the other one is like cultivating a mould population on it but the mould is the creation of man. the rest of the body is there too but ppl usually fall off & die trying to get to the neck & shoulders. they dont know its a head they live on though like its massive theyd never know, they just think some landmarks look weirdly like an ear & eye socket & stuff. the god tht is alive is like hes not a guy who glows god hes an unknowable being god but also i imagine the universe is in a shed & they are humanoid shaped so i dont rly . i do think dying and growing tiny teeny versions of your shape on you is cool

selkie lost her coat like ages ago and has been looking for it for years, but now that magic fucked off selkies cant even be seals anymore. so even if she got her coat back it wouldnt work. selkie is pretty bummed abt this, still wants it back but also feels like she wasted years of her life at the same time & wants to move on. relates to wolf on these things.

theres also a vampire who isnt a vampire anymoere but also sort of is but not really & he wants his ex wife back who dumped him for being miserable.

also probs an elf (the elves here are plant based not meat based & very magic based except not anymore)

all the fairies died bc i dont like faries. and i dont kniw how to spell fairies. theyre the only crestures that died with no magic only bc i dont like them.

so i guess the goal is wolf wants to shout at god. its like horton hears a who. watch horton hears a who thats this comic one to one.

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 17 of Nona the Ninth

So I notice now that the image for Chapter 16 appears to be a tower, possibly to go with the "Tower Princes" and the tower that is mentioned in the numbers on the John chapters? And this chapter has a stem and a leaf, which I do not know the significance of

So Palamedes thinks that Pyrrha has gone to report to the barracks and claim amnesty? You know, I'm honestly not sure what the best course of action for her at this point - she is not on good terms with BOE and has no reason to be loyal to them other than to help Camilla and Palamedes and the Sixth House, and it seems likely that the Sixth House is going to wind up back with the Nine Houses at some point, whether that's because John makes some kind of deal with BOE, or because he figures out where they are independently. I can't imagine that BOE would like, kill the Sixth House if Camilla or Pyrrha defect or anything like that, because it's their bargaining chip, isn't it? But who knows what Ianthe and John would think about Pyrrha being alone in G1deon's body, and she can't exactly pretend to be a necromancer

Also, I'm not sure why Corona would have known about the broadcast, it doesn't sound like BOE knew anything about it, and it doesn't seem like she would be talking to anyone from the Nine Houses

I don't know what this means. Pyrrha didn't really seem interested in the shuttle earlier

Is he saying that they want Harrow specifically so that she can open the Tomb for them?

Camilla and Palamedes' recorded conversation continues to be terrible. So I guess this is how they "talk" to each other, they record themselves on the tape recorder and play it back. Something I note here is that in the past Nona has claimed that it's difficult to understand recorded speech because she can't see the mouth of the person who said it, but she doesn't seem to have any trouble understanding this recording, possibly because she actually knows House and isn't relying on telepathy to understand it

British slang:

Did Palamedes not have the decency to warn Camilla about this? Haha

So I gather that Lemuria was a planet that got flipped over time. The Angel says that the Houses "said they'd prep us for an early move", so they were already planning to relocate the population, or they were expecting the planet to flip, but it happened sooner than they expected? In Harrow the Ninth, Harrow says that it takes "generations" for a planet to flip, but like, that's not actually that much time, that could be as little as like 50 or 60 years, so I can see why people are being constantly resettled, and I can't imagine how many planets they've killed over the course of 10,000 years. And then I guess the Houses can still still use the planet for some stuff even after it's no longer habitable, so it's not like they only get 50-60 years use out of it, since I gather they don't care about the native inhabitants much

But I think Palamedes should know this already, right? It sounds like BOE had been telling a lot of it to Corona at least during As Yet Unsent

It's funny, because she is right... but I'm still curious why Palamedes and Ianthe-in-Naberius's body are unaffected by the resurrection beast if, as stated in the first book, there's nothing physically different about a necromancer's body compared to a non-necromancer's except relative exposure to thanergy

I gather at some point we are going to wind up in Hot Sauce's hideout

How is she marking them if she can't read or write?

I have no idea what a "yeast berry" might be and I'm not able to find anything about any such thing

I looked back at what Nona drew during the last day at school, but it just says that she drew what she thought animals should look like. Actually, what animals would Harrow or Gideon actually have seen? Are there any animals on the Ninth? I'm really not sure there are. Gideon knows what mayonnaise is so presumably they get eggs from somewhere, but I'm just not seeing them actually raising chickens on Pluto. She also does know what meat is, just not fish. But I don't think we've seen any animals in this story at all except for that one time when Harrow went to kill that one planet. I don't know what animals Nona could draw that would get this reaction from the Angel

[mists-reading-nook]

Please tell us about how Teyvat and Earth leak into one another over time.

From what I understand, Teyvat is dying and crumbling into nothingness but what about everyone else? The Abyss? How does Earth fare with this new Abyss and supernatural BS?

What troubles are being faced by Earth?

How do the authorities deal with it at first, when the issue is small, and then over time as things ramp up?

Reactions of general populations to fantasy becoming reality? Do people realize this is all stuff from the video game Genshin impact landing HoYoVerse in hot waters and by extension, the Reader since they have a body remarkably like Kaeya's? Also Kaeya since he claimed reader was his cousin who lost his papers to fire (Convenient).

Uh oh, that's not gonna be good, better but some contacts and hair dye bestie and hope you didn't post Kaeya's real face. If so you gotta wipe off that info from the net asap or claim your really great at cosplay.

I have no idea how to explain this,but the inspiration for the abyss pathway Is the tunnel from coraline,except its like a hole in a wall,but covered up by a lot of plants. I might genuinely have to draw what it looks like because I don't know how to best explain it 😭

Basically,when Tevyat crumbles,the pathway closes up,becoming more of a cave.

The authorities are more or less clueless,and hoyoverse avoids the hot water by pretending that they have 0 idea what's going on.

It's a pretty niche topic in the media,with only people who know genshin suspecting anything. However,reader is under scrutiny for Keayas hair and eyes,and eventually gets hair dye once they realize how suspicious they look,walking around in "cosplay" 24/7.

Honestly,they barely escape getting studied or interrogated

[otakween]

8-Man vs. Cyborg 009

Who's this schmuck? Just kidding, I did some background research and apparently 8-Man is one of the OG cyborg heroes to come out of Japan, predating Cyborg 009 by a year. He's called 8-Man because the scientist who turned him into a cyborg failed this experiment 7 times before getting to him. Yikes.

Crappy name aside (apparently the mangaka also had a manga called "Wolf Guy," which I find hilarious), it's a neat idea to put two OGs against each other. I'm sure the boomers are excited lol. (Come to think of it, Japan's population skews older, so it would make sense that this sort of thing would be published now).

Ch. 1

Coming from the BGOO Parts manga, the art feels a little clunkier and dated here. Backgrounds are very simple and there's less detail in how the characters are drawn. It's still faithful to the original series though and that's good enough for me.

Just like with BGOO Parts, they're rehashing Black Ghost stuff again, with some retconning along the way. Series that resurrect the same villain over and over are so dull. Please do something else writers!! :(

Why did the skull-masked guy (Cyborg #22) look kinda kawaii tho? They drew his eyes all shiny and cutesy.

They flashback to the end of volume 10 AGAIN. I guess that really is the most iconic moment of the franchise, but with every flashback it's losing its charm.

There was a diagram explaining 8-Man in the front of the manga and I guess he uses cigarettes as a power source? First of all...huh? Second, that's the most 1960s thing I've ever heard.

Also in the front of the manga is an image of Joe carrying a beat up looking 8-Man. Way to spoil it! I wonder what the vs. in the title is implying? Are they going to be rivals and then team up or are they straight up pitted against each other?

Did they pair these two together because they were like "8? 9? You get it? Eh? Eh?" What if it was 8-Man vs. 008 lol. It would have to be underwater randomly I suppose.

Ch. 2

Okay I stand corrected, I guess 8-Man isn't a cyborg...he's closer to an android, but he has a human consciousness so...he's not really an android either.

This was like, the exposition chapter. They wrote this assuming the reader was new to 8-Man and maybe Cyborg 009 too so they gotta hastily give little wikipedia summaries of what the reader missed lol. Not enough exposition for me to know who the robot bossing 8-Man around is supposed to be though! Maybe that'll come later.

I see the obvious parallels with the stories here, both cyborgs/androids/whatever were created as weapons but their creators wanted more for them. 8-Man has a little more of a film noir vibe tho with the detective aspect.

How the heck is a cigarette a "cooling" tool? My brain does not compute.

So 8-Man is being ordered to attack Joe, I guess. I wonder if he's been misled about Joe's background? He kinda helped him out back there with the cigarette, so I guess he's showing hesitation.

Ch. 3

So I guess Black Ghost's motive is to "resurrect/summon the God of war Ares by sacrificing one of the heroes..." Not Greek mythology again...please. I can't take it anymore!

8-Man's hands kinda look like Mickey Mouse gloves teehee

Dr. Tani and Dr. Daemon look so identical to me that I had to swipe back a few pages and compare them. I finally excepted they weren't the same person when Dr. Daemon referred to Dr. Tani in the third person lol.

We get more revelations about how 8-Man's machine brain works. He retains every memory (either OP or awful) and Ivan can't read his mind. I forgot Ivan could read minds in the first place? I feel like he doesn't do that much.

This manga has a lot of two page spreads, which I appreciate. They make the reading experience more cinematic, it moves things along quicker in general (no dialogue), and it looks great on my giant tablet :D

Ch. 4

The villains from the respective series place their bets on which hero will come out victorious. It gave me Squid Game vibes (but obviously less gruesome).

It's kind of funny how the villains are low key rooting their corresponding hero on, wanting to show off their nemesis to their new friend.

Kinda awkward how the other numbers cyborgs are just tagging along waiting for 8-Man and 009 to be done. I guess there's not much they can contribute, which is probably why BGOO Parts gave everyone accelerator mode...

Obvious fake out death is obvious

I enjoyed the shot of Joe and 8-Man outrunning the shinkansen. That was fun.

Ch. 5

After the battle between 009 and 8-Man, Black Ghost and Dr. Daemon attack and kidnap Joe, Francoise and Azuma. Black Ghost reveals their master plan to harvest memories from the cyborg so that they can resurrect the 3 brains that make up the "true" Black Ghost and put them in a giant robot body.

I'm not fully clear on what Dr. Daemon gets out of all this? I guess he gets to help rule the world or something?

The way they depict Francoise's ability makes her seem hilariously useless. She's supposed to be able to detect things from very far distances but every time she senses something it's like 2 feet away from everyone lol. Like she'll be like "something's coming...from the ocean!" and the gang turns around and it's right next to them. Thanks for nothing lol.

The demon God statue (taken from the original manga) looks kinda silly. It's bird beak makes it look like it's from Darkwing Duck or something haha.

Ch. 6

Okay 8-Man and Francoise getting all flustered once Francoise implied that her and Joe are in love was really cute. I wanna see more scenes of them getting to know each other and becoming friends :D (not likely)

The concept of world domination via a giant space satellite/demon God statue is pretty badass, not gonna lie. Very classic evil guy plan.

Seems we can now drop the pretenses that this is going to be a "versus" situation and everyone will just team up in volume 2. Pretty predictable.

[lotus-mirage]

Trigun Stampede episode 8 liveblog!

I've been told that this likely has Vash backstory, so. Expecting trauma and probably explosions. :))

Yep flashback time

... a year since what, exactly? Like. Since they've been in her care, or are they like a year old at this point.

Wait why would Vash need to eat if Knives doesn't? That's interesting.

That was a little unnerving how fast Knives went from a monotone disinterest to outright giggles. (To be fair I also have a tendency for monotone and laughing at the drop of a hat, but going from emotion to emotion so fast caught me off guard).

It is really interesting that Knives does seem genuinely attached to Rem to some capacity. If memory serves me, he was the one to ask her to get into the escape pod with them, but also he turned around and started denying affection for her like the next scene? I wonder what's happening there, like if he's being honest in that last scene or justifying things to himself.

Huh. That escape pod doesn't really look like the reused spaceship parts we saw on the ship. Different time periods, assumedly? I guess it is a possibility that Vash has been on the planet since the initial colonization, but that seems unlikely.

Actually what is with the meteor-shower-looking happenings here? It doesn't look like they're all from the same destroyed spaceship, so maybe it's just a natural event coinciding.

Huh. The people in the pods had different hair colors, I think. Maybe regular humans rather than Plants, then? That would make more sense as to why Knives is letting them burn.

Actually now that we're seeing this scene again, Knives kind of just sidesteps the accusation that he killed Rem, rather than saying anything about it. Oops.

Gate? Dream sequence? ...Imaginings?

Oh people! Okay that means that the planet had already been colonized. Did they not see his markings or...?

Oop, no they do. Wait, huh, they're wearing very similar clothing. Okay maybe further back in the timeline than I thought.

And they have lost tech just on hand.

asdhfkl the ">>TOP SECRET<<" banner on the display

On topic, though. Plants giving birth. Okay that's new information I didn't know about. We haven't really seen plants having much mobility when they're... mostly in ball form and isolated. Do they reproduce asexually? I guess that's different from cloning process-wise, but wouldn't it still give the same results on a genetic level (epigenetics aside)? Also if they're 'independents', is that referring to them being created without cloning, or something further, I wonder?

Oh they're also referring to people as Sinners! ...that's weird. Prison colony, or more weird religious stuff?

"molecular plant studies" okay but like. Why do they need experts on a molecular level? Wouldn't like doctor, vet, or even like biologist (botanist?) level be more helpful?

Oh these people still have access to ships! Alright. That they're in contact with both them and the "Sinners" is interesting. I'd assumed the "Sinners" were the stranded population, but maybe not?

I think it's really entertaining that everything else is so high-tech except this guy is holding a normal-looking wrench. I guess they've been refined to peak performance already lol.

"he's just a kid" - weird that she's not trying to like. dehumanize him. I'd assume they'd really want to discourage the idea that plants are sapient, given the conditions that we've seen them kept under.

"activated their gravity plant" okay there's a lot being implied here lore wise but I don't think I really can say anything about that so just. moving on.

They have different generator specialties? That's interesting. ...It didn't seem to be the case for the other plants we've seen in present-day, though? It looked like they're doing at least water purification and energy production.

I assume the Gate is what Vash produces? I mean we don't really know how it functions, but it seemed to be implied that it was exclusive to him.

They found the black box! Uh oh.

Wait! Okay Brad(?) has got a nameplate on that says "Seeds." Related to Plant stuff, or planet colonization, I wonder?

Are the tally marks meant to look like crosses? With this show I honestly can't tell lmao.

Oh man that's a lot of plants. Do they each have their own thing? They keep mentioning their functions as singular (ex. the gravity plant, the electricity plant).

Are the red/previously assumed to be dying/damaged plants just in the process of... whatever this is? Hatching? Blooming?

Okay frankly I'm a little confused as why this Brad(?) keeps denying Luida so much? I thought she was his commanding officer??

In the middle of one of the sand seas, huh? I guess that might be why they haven't seen any outside people? <- still not sure about the timeline

...why is Brad(?) looking around and gasping. did he not notice the tally marks before somehow?

So like. What is the deal with the way plants are viewed? I'd assume they'd be thought of more as tools/animals/actual plants, but reactions appear to be ranged from nothing to distrust to fear/hatred?

With the time jump to teen(?) Vash, I'm starting to think maybe this is the point where humans came to the planet first.

Yeah this is not gonna end well. This entire sequence is just flag after flag omg

Man, I thought the last episode had a late title display.

So like what was Vash communicating with the plants? It doesn't really seem like their situations are improving, other than the fact that they have a conversation partner/outlet?

Oh, he left the jacket. ...well there goes any hope of them getting off the planet or out of this situation alive, frankly.

oh! the flashback is cut short. I was fully expecting to see the whole story, but I guess it is getting to the end of the episode. Trauma delayed! Possibly just until the next episode, though.

Or wait no nevermind this is still a flashback. I think.

Given the background music and silhouettes, I assume the plants are all dead?

Hmm. I don't think I recognize any of the people standing near Knives?

End notes:

Well that's a bit of a cliffhanger! And we still don't find out what the rest of the group has to say about Vash's newly revealed plant status.

I'm still very confused about the timeline here, but that's probably intentional, haha. But I feel like if Vash really had been around since humans first came to the planet he'd be a bit more well-established. Like historically and community-wise, outside of the bounty, I mean. Even with limited travel or communication, people still talk and word still carries.

On a personal and somewhat negative note, I feel a little put off by some of the character dynamics present in the whole Brad-Luida-Vash situation, particularly as Luida's case. It's just kinda... leaning too much into gendered roles. I mean in this case I guess they might be trying more for a 'new set of parental figures' thing with the dynamic to match, but... eh. Nothing's perfect I guess.

I will say I overall enjoyed the episode though! The mystery of the timeline is kind of fun, and there was some important worldbuilding and character exposition.

[sningo-prompts]

What if someone went to ingo about reviving hisuian sneasels. Like in this scenario it was revealed in court that sningo is ingo so none of the normal endangered pokemon preservation techniques could be used.

everyone has been going to Emmet and completely ignoring ingos autonomy. But a small independent lab gos to ingo and is like "can we take a blood sample and clone you so we can get some actual hisuian sneasels?" Would ingo say yes?

Ingo likes hisuan sneasels and no one has asked HIM before. (I'm sure Emmet has but it's always been about groups that didn't see ingo as a person so he always said no) would ingo be ok with a group that is totally chill and looks at him like he's an equal and give them some blood to Jumpstart a hisuan sneasel population.

Maybe he says no at first and they just except the answer and leave but after a few months he gets in contact with them (via email?) Because they actually listened to him?? No one has done that before

Ingo does want hisuan sneasels to exist he spent a good few years caring for them and he was sad they were gone. Everyone was being weird about him and hisuan sneasels so he hadn't considered that they could actually be revived but these guys were being normal about it so he figures he might as well see if it's possible. It's just one vile of blood after all.

I think maybe he would. Though he will want to be very hands on because he knows a lot about raising them too! Like if they could take a hit of his sneasel DNA and implant it into several eggs. Like Emmet prolly takes an extended vacation so he can go with Ingo because there is no way that lab is gonna be close. Ingos gonna have to figure out how to communicate the habitat the sneasels are gonna need too.

All i can think about is momma Sningo with his like 8 or so sneaselets. Its a controlled environment and they can see what how Ingo is treating them so the sneasels know what to do with their own young. I dont know if normal sneasels climb and stuff like the Hisuian sneasels do?? Maybe once the first little is grown one steps up and he lets them evolve to raise the future generations?

Though someone else pointed out its gonna be hard to isolate the hisui sneasel DNA from his human DNA. But i like the idea of Sningo having his sneaslets back. And Emmet gets to see Ingo go full parent and its so soft and cute.

This could also go very very wrong! Like Ingo agrees and its just a trap lmao xD

[times-eclipse]

Thought Debris on Nonhumanness in Media

Earlier on Twitter I retweeted the following pieces of art of Digimon characters wearing various adventuring garbs, and it reminded me of my feelings of wanting more non-human protagonists and characters in media.

I then saw Samael's post about similar thoughts:

Give me games where I am *not* a human outsider in alien societies but I am the alien and either part of those societies or else the outside amongst humanity. Let me be unusual and aberrant. Let my perspective be different. Let me be inhuman and embrace it.

And ultimately it all reminds me, if I want more non-humans to play as in video games and such things, I should be the change I want to see in the world. I should make more stuff with non-human characters and settings!

But I don't.

Despite what certain terminally online people on Twitter will insist, fictional characters are not real people. Fictional characters are extensions of the wider narrative. For me, my characters are finger-puppets as part of a wider story I'm trying to tell.

(By that same token, it's why I'm defensive about my own characters. Please don't bite my fingers off.)

I can't personally create such things unless they have narrative meaning. Creatures can't "just be furries", because I end up thinking about the technical aspects of a setting with various species. I've seen a lot of comics or kemono visual novels or the like where the furriness of the characters appears merely window-dressing - the characters are ultimately human in narrative meaning, because the varied species hold no weight on the world-building.

At the same time, sticking with humans avoids being "distracting".

I bet that Watashi no RPG!! would be popular if everyone in it was cute animal people. I would like it too if they were! But I'd worry that having the people be various creatures would have people thinking about what the various species might mean, what differences that would lead to, how it relates to the relationship between Creators and NPCs, and so on. And for me, that's not presently relevant to that story.

There's also that using existing assets allowed me to get work going much faster than I would've otherwise, but still.

Humans are unfortunately, "neutral". The basis on which other meaning is placed. More unfortunately, race and gender outside white-cis-male can be considered stand-out elements too. But generally what this means is me sticking with humans in some of my ideas keeps themes from being obscured behind other details.

That said, in Witness to Unity's earliest drafts there were like 5-6 party members, and only one of them were human. This was done to highlight the meaning of being human compared to the rest, to create a sense of "normalcy" amongst the various aliens.

Which is kind of funny nowadays, when I'm relating more to the non-humans instead.

There's only three party members (as of writing) now in WTU, and while Ivan is still the only human, his humanness isn't entirely chosen for that audience-surrogate feeling, but simply as contrast to the other two.

While there's no planned meaning to the various designs of the pooltoys in Squeak Adventure, there is meaning to the world being populated by pooltoys itself.

Not to mention Twelve Thousand, the visual novel project with various non-human creatures, the non-human culture itself is absolutely affected by the various shapes and species. The ability of the ferals-vs-bipeds is considered, and travel between regions of their world is basically non-existent except by those with flight.

Human or furry creature, the species or race or whatever is going to have some wider effect on the world or the narrative. I can't make a character some non-human "just because".

[the-firebird69]

State Trooper Catches Motorcycle | Footage Credit: @used.rubber on IG

He lost his license so he took a picture of it you can't really do that but the guy pulled them over for splitting Lanes and it's legal in the state he was in and it's Florida so the kid was going to argue it and he couldn't and the cop gave him a ticket and had him till the bike I know they impounded it and brought him in for riding with a fake license or something and they said you went through all this expense when his license is validity just took a picture of it and the other cops are mad and said you keep doing this wasting our time and getting us fired and getting yourself fired and you don't know what you're doing you say you know what you're doing and you don't we have to have lives and we have to have a presents and then they said you want to do something everybody and take off and ships and they know about it and you keep saying it and getting killed and they're getting rid of us because of you they got really mad and they said and the person is licensing was was really Trump and he said give us the license and they ripped it up and said you shouldn't have any and you're both fired and I'm going to fire you from everywhere else where we are and they start doing it and it said why and someone said you have the same plan cuz your imbeciles and he started going after them. Now this was today and it made a blood bath and they start getting rid of each other and really bad all over the state and they're not welcome here and there's an evacuation on now and it's getting big except the 1% and maybe going down from 19 yes to 18 and just a couple hours they'll be gone and we sent another 1% will be up and yeah they're leaving they heard that the buses are going to be up and the ships and there's a place for you to sell your car and they give them decent money if it runs and it's not damage for the storm and they resell them here people come in and buy them and spend money so we are going through this with these idiots and they want to move our son again and we're not going to and then they're going to try and move them by getting the money was the first I could try for us for who knows how long and of course the ships have to move and that's part of the process and they paid dearly and he loses his torso most of it at the starkiller which is after conquered when you see the scoutings that the skeleton scene that's when they're gone and people need to stop talking but they're arguing and they can say it there's nothing in it you're gone and he left the skull he's skeleton behind because the rest of it was gone and the question stuff is CGI but really he gets hit pretty good as general grievous and he gets incinerated as osterman and it's not much further off all this other stuff happens real quick yeah his brain is toast in that movie his brain is toast in the as general grievous she's starting to get the idea he's not really around and what happens first is the circular it's pretty much toast after the starkiller incident because his brain is cooked and he lost most of it and then it's gone then he goes to his John osterman with nothing and yeah you're less than just bones and the bones go to Massachusetts and Tommy f is threatening our son and bja is threatening Jason because he hit a bunch of his kids and somewhere shrunk and badly most of them were and Jason kills him on the rooftop and he cut it out of the scene and he isn't obscene jerk but he dies and his incinerated shortly.

So you keep doing this dumb crap and won't leave each other alone and open a can of worms and get fired try and do stuff and get beat up and they go after them their own family too and they're disgusting they are actually lowering the population here on top of the evacuation and I'm trying to infiltrate and can't and there is an action plan for tonight at 3:00 a.m. it's a very big one the two states are filling up in a couple States behind it in the south and they're coming from the north it's going to be a large number we left off with about 23.5% warlock population but we added the pseudo empire in and it became now it becomes a 31% plus this latest past 33%. That Force coming down in the ocean Force and several waves after is about 1.5% of the general population the and of morlock. But most of it would be the Mac morlock that would be in that for us and they are down to about 9%. This would bring them to roughly 8.6 or so 8.7% and there's a lot of other stuff happening with them they're going to attack the pseudo empire in the west really badly tonight I might lose 0.5% and they're planning on attacking the east with at least 1.5% and they usually lose them all that would be 2% more 6.7% so we'll update the numbers tomorrow but that's very bad they're going to get small in their islands are under siege and the blockade is on it's only the two big Islands no it's growing on the other Islands and they keep taking shifts from all over the place and they can't evacuate that well and they're trying to and they're doing short trips now and falling back it's a hell for them and they developed a healthier for our son and just don't have any reasonable behavior

Olympus

[bugjizmsquawk]

I don't understand this world nor do I understand the beings that populate it and insist on calling it home. It has never been home to me or my kind if they exist which they might not. Of course it makes sense in a cosmic sort of way or should I say a cosmic joke that I am not in on and have never been. I don't get on with people as a general rule although I do like to look at them when they are running amok or posing for some god-awful reason or other. We should let the beautiful ones stand there forever and never give them respite or a reason to sit down or even an opportunity to do so. They are our statues and we deserve the chance to make them as uncomfortable as possible. Taylor Swift on the red carpet just as we expect and insist; the personification of The Moment, a true Girl in Amber who we are finally allowing to grow up and have perhaps her first Adult relationship. Did she thank her man either time she won because I didn't hear it. I heard her plugging her new album which I thought was entirely too cheap and beneath her. I never thought I would see something like this but such is the time we live in. I so much more prefer Billie Eilish's seeming inability to accept the fact that we love her and we all want her to win every award every single time she's nominated. I have recently tried to start listening to Taylor Swift because I imagine it's important to have an idea what she's on about. We will see how ubiquitous a human celebrity can be next weekend during the super bowl when she will be everywhere after being everywhere this weekend as well. So many people are sick of the whole thing but I am glad because romance is something that needs to be celebrated on a grand scale. I can only hope that they're little connection is strong enough to withstand the intense glare of 100 million eyes just waiting for an excuse to utterly despise them. So we can get back to normal where everything is just slightly out of reach and our back hurts and all we want to do is sleep with somebody who's not going to give us a disease and maybe, just maybe, not complain about the dumb things we do that pile up over time and become utterly impossible for them to look past

So, there were a lot of women dancing on stage at the Grammys and it was quite refreshing from my perspective. In fact I think the entire Grammys was so female-centric that it should have been sponsored by a tampon company. What a time to be a woman either born that way or made in a savvy laboratory by men and women of science. It does not matter how you got that way, darling. It only matters that you own it once you've got it and we all know what that is. It's the one thing men don't have but desperately crave and in fact live their entire lives hoping to find as cheaply as possible. But so many fail to find what they really, truly desire. So they go out roaming and do not return until they've satisfied that particular longing. These men are adventurous and willing to put themselves at risk. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. But, very few of our artists risk anything anymore. Everything is prosaic, pedestrian, predetermined. Except for all the new stuff that we have not been able to process yet. It's right there for us and all we have to do is let our subs be open to it by playing it when we're not paying attention. That is the only way new music reaches us. We have to be caught off guard and it is my humble opinion that a tremendous wealth of important music is out there ready to be absorbed and ready to change our lives considerably if only we give it a chance to haunt us, to become part of our soundtrack, the leg up that pushes us through the day into some kind of relaxed state.

[hellofeanor]

Fëanorian Quenya

Hey friends! Do you like elves? Do you like the Silmarillion? Do you like Fëanor and co? And most of all, do you like spending hours thinking about minor details pertaining to made-up languages??? If so, boy do I have a treat for you! Let’s delve into the weird world of Fëanorian Quenya and explore some history and mechanics of why they talk Like That.

I’ve seen a lot of posts joking about the Fëanorian lisp, which is about as funny as a joke about a speech impediment can be. 👍 It’s important to understand, though, that this IS a joke. No, they didn’t really speak with a lisp. Yes, they did pronounce some S sounds as TH. That’s the critical disclaimer here: SOME. It’s not a blanket pronunciation. There’s a lot of background research that goes into determining which words would be pronounced with S and which would be TH, and that’s what we’re going to look at.

So if this is something you’ve come across in fandom and you’re not totally sure on the details, or if you ARE sure and just want some more in-depth info, read on.

The stuff probably everybody knows already

For anyone who’s been hanging around the Fëanorian corner of the Silm fandom for more than three minutes, there’s about a 100% chance you’ve heard of Fëanor’s penchant for retaining an archaic TH pronunciation after the majority of the Noldor went ahead and started pronouncing this sound as S instead. You may also know that this sound is represented by the letter thorn (Þ) in HoME, but since thorn doesn’t exist in modern English orthography and it’s a pain to keep typing the ALT code, I’m sticking to TH here. Anyway, all this was due to the fact that Fëanor was a huge mama’s boy, and his mom Míriel Therindë (later called Serindë, which made Fëanor want to punch walls and possibly also fellow elves) was an outlier who retained the TH after it fell out of use. Her son Fëanor, in turn, kept this up to honor her. Now, whether or not he would have bothered if this sound hadn’t literally been a critical part of her name is debatable, but that debate is outside the scope of this essay.

Fëanor continued to use the TH pronunciation until his death, and required his sons to use it as well. Finwë, however, switched over to S after the death of Míriel and before his marriage to Indis. Fëanor, reasonable and level-headed as he was, took this as a personal insult and decided that anybody who rejected TH likewise rejected him. So presumably, his loyal followers would have obeyed his totally reasonable demands not to give in to the seductive S-shift.

Why tho

Why did the Noldor decide to alter their pronunciation from TH to S? Great question. Nobody really knows. For the hell of it? IDK. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But the important thing to understand is that elves, and especially Noldor, were really committed to making sure their language sounds cool. This is why it changed so much and so comparatively quickly for an immortal population: they were actively invested in changing it. They liked inventing new words and exploring new sounds and messing around with grammar.

So at some point some influential Noldo might have been like, hey y’all, let’s stop saying TH and say S instead! And everyone (except Míriel I guess, who was known for her elegant manner of speech and didn’t want to muck that up by changing pronunciation of a whole letter) was like, whoa, capital idea my good egg. And they went with it. Previous ideas along these lines included ‘hey y’all, let’s stop saying KH and say H instead’ and ‘hey y’all, let’s stop saying Z and say R instead’, and those went over swimmingly. Nobody could have foreseen the problem this TH to S business would cause.

Now here’s a fun fact. There was another change to Noldorin pronunciation that happened AFTER Fëanor’s birth, that he himself was involved in. This one was all about bilabial to labiodental F. And those sure are some words, so if you don’t know what I’m talking about (I don’t blame you), BILABIAL is a more whispery sound that happens when you say F using only air passing through your pursed lips, and LABIODENTAL is when you say F with your top teeth touching your bottom lip. Going forward I’m going to use PH to represent the bilabial sound, and F for the labiodental.

So F got on the radar of the Noldor via the Teleri, who used this sound in their language. And ol’ Fëanor figured it would be awesome to incorporate it into Quenya because he thought the PH sounded too close to HW, and the two were getting confused by lazy speakers. Why did he care? Because of his dad’s name and his own, of course. If people started to get lazy in their pronunciation, we’d end up with Hwinwë and Hwëanáro, which would be terrible and stupid and unacceptable. He accused the Vanyar of leaning down that road, and he wanted to stop that kind of shift before it happened to the Noldor. How to do that? Why, by instigating a different shift from traditional Noldorin PH to Telerin F!

“Hey y’all, let’s stop saying PH and say F instead!”

“Whoa, capital idea my good egg.”

Moral of the story: Fëanor is only concerned with Quenya pronunciation insofar as it affects his own name and the names of family members he likes. He does not care whether it’s staying the same or moving to a new sound so long as it personally makes him feel good and his name sound cool. Therefore the true way to piss him off would be to call him Curuhwinwë Hwëanáro, son of Serindë.

Okay so here’s how it works

Now that history is out of the way, let’s get back to how TH was used by the Fëanorians. As I mentioned earlier, TH wasn’t a blanket pronunciation. It all depended on the original form of the word, and whether the root had a TH or an S. And some very similar-sounding words come from different roots, so this can get tricky. A great resource that’ll give you this information is Eldamo: Quenya words where the S was originally TH are marked out with the Þ (thorn) symbol in the wordlist.

Some examples:

Súlë (spirit, breath) comes from the root THŪ, which means it would be pronounced with a TH. Silma (white crystal) comes from the root SIL, so it and related words like Silmaril would be pronounced with an S. No Fëanorian would say Thilmaril. Isil (moon), however, is a similar-sounding word that comes from a different root: THIL. Olos (mass of flowers) comes from the word LOTH, but: Olos (dream) comes from the root LOS. Fëanorian pronunciation would immediately differentiate between these two words.

While Fëanorians may have retained the distinct pronunciation of TH vs S, other Noldor can still differentiate between original S and S-that-used-to-be-TH in their writing. There are specific tengwar to use depending on the word’s original form. Silmë (the one that looks like a 6) is used for original S, while súlë (or thúlë, the one that looks like an h) is used for original TH.

Which other elves used this sound in their speech?

Fandom has really latched on to this TH as a Fëanorian thing, but it wasn’t that exclusively. The TH sound was actually ubiquitous in other elven languages, and in Valinor, only the Noldor dropped it. It was still used in Telerin and in Vanyarin Quendya. The Vanyar retained the TH not because of anything to do with Míriel, but just because they were a little more conservative and their language didn’t pick up on all the changes that the Noldor made. They also noped out of the Z to R shift the Noldor initiated, opting to keep the Z around.

When Indis married Finwë, she stopped using the normal Vanyarin TH and switched over to S as a gesture of loyalty to him and his people. Finarfin, however, out of love for the Vanyar and Teleri, switched BACK to TH. I like to think about how much it would have annoyed Fëanor that his snot-nosed kid brother was speaking correctly, but for the wrong reason. Go down one more generation, and Galadriel very specifically did not use TH. But this time it was absolutely a choice made as a glaring middle finger to Fëanor.

What this means for your fanfic or whatever

The big takeaway here: you can’t just have Fëanorians replace every S with TH and call it a day.

If you’re inventing names for your Fëanorian OCs or coming up with phrases for them to say, it’s important to look into the history of all Quenya S-words you end up using to determine if they should be S or TH. If Fëanor got mad about somebody saying Serindë instead of Therindë, he’d get equally mad about somebody saying Thilmaril instead of Silmaril and assume they were mocking him. Remember: this is a dude with no chill. (On the other hand, if you WANT somebody to be mocking Fëanor, Galadriel would 100% do this because she has an equally negligible amount of chill.)

It’s also important to note that the TH isn’t a true shibboleth, since pretty much all elves EXCEPT the non-Fëanorian Noldor use it. And even the S-preferring Noldor would still be able to pronounce the TH. Those who went into exile would go on to use it commonly in Sindarin, and those who remained in Valinor would still encounter it among the Vanyar and Teleri. So if you’re writing a scene where somebody has to pronounce a TH word to prove their loyalty… yeah, everyone can pass this test. And in the opposite direction, you can’t use TH to prove somebody’s an evil Fëanorian, either. They might just be Vanyarin or something. Or, like. Really Old.

Would the sons (and followers) of Fëanor keep using TH after his death? Oh hell yeah. This is an entire family unfamiliar with the concept of not dying on hills. They will keep using it unto the ending of the world. Actually, with Sindarin becoming the common language of Middle-earth from the First Age, probably not a lot of change happened in exilic Quenya. It became a lore language: a piece of living history. It would have been preserved as it was when the original speakers left Valinor.

(And then, thousands of years later, Galadriel finally returns home to Tirion like, Long have mine eyes awaited this most blissful of sights, and ne’er hath my sprit soared with such grace, for I am returned! And all the Amanyar Noldor stare at her like, whatchu bangin on bout, eh? Because they had nothing better to do in the peace of Valinor than push Quenya to brave and frankly questionable new horizons.)

Anyway, there you go: a somewhat brief history of Fëanorian Quenya. I hope you found this informative and useful, or at the very least not boring. Obvs this is super condensed and, uh, not particularly scholarly, but I promise I know what I’m talking about. I have a university degree! (Not in anything even remotely related to what’s written above, but I hardly see how that’s relevant. It’s still a DEGREE.)

Questions? Need clarification or want more info? My asks are always open!