#i have one (1) idea of whatever the news is and zero (0) reasons why it would be the case

[kmclaude]

Forgive me Father, I have no awful headcanons for you, only a general question on comic making. How do you do it, writing-wise/how do you decide what points go where, how do you plot it out (or do you have any resources on the writing aspect that you find useful?) Not to get too bogged down in details, but I attended a writer’s workshop and the author in residence suggested I transfer my wordy sci-fi WIP into graphic novel script, as it might work better. (I do draw, but I don’t know if I have it in me to draw a whole comic—characters in motion? Doing things? With backgrounds? How dare, why can’t everyone just stand around looking pretty)

I was interested but it quickly turned into a lot of internal screaming as I tried to figure out how to compress the hell out of it, since novels are free to do a lot more internal monologuing and such compared to a comic format (to say nothing of trying to write a script without seeing how the panels lay out—just for my own sake, I might have to do both concurrently.)

As an aside, to get a feel for graphic novels I was rereading 99RM and was reminded of how great it was—tightly plotted, intriguing, and anything to do with Ashmedai was just beautifully drawn. I need more Monsignor Tiefer and something something there are parallels between Jehan and Daniel in my head and I don’t know if they make sense but it works for me. (As an aside, I liked the emphasis on atonement being more than just the word sorry, but acknowledgment you did wrong and an attempt to remedy it—I don’t know why that spoke to me the way that it did.)

I thought Tumblr had a word count limit for asks but so far it has offered zero resistance, oh well. I don’t have much else to say but on the topic of 99RM, Adam getting under Monsignor’s skin is amazing, 10/10 (about the Pride picture earlier)

wow tumblr got rid of the markdown editor! or at least in asks which means the new editor probably has no markdown....god i hate this site! anyway...

Totally! So first, giant thank you for the compliments! Second, I have a few questions in turn for you before I dive into a sort of answer, since I can give some advice to your questions in general but it also sounds like you have a specific conundrum on your hands.

My questions to your specific situation are:

did the author give any reason for recommending a, in your words, "wordy" story be turned into a graphic novel?

is the story you're writing more, like you said, "internal monologuing"? action packed? where do the visuals come from?

do you WANT it to be a comic? furthermore, do you want it to be a comic you then must turn around and draw? or would you be interested in writing for comics as a comic writer to have your words turned into art?

With those questions in mind, let me jump into the questions you posed me!

Let me start with a confession...

I've said this before but let me say it again: Ninety-Nine Righteous Men was not originally a comic — it was a feature-length screenplay! And furthermore, it was written for a class so it got workshopped again and again to tighten the plot by a classroom of other nerds — so as kind as your compliments are, I'm giving credit where credit is due as that was not just a solo ship sailing on the sea. On top of that, it got adapted (by me) into a comic for my thesis, so my advisor also helped me make it translate or "read" well given I was director, actor, set designer, writer, editor, SFX guy, etc. all in one. And it was a huge help to have someone say "there is no way you can go blow by blow from script to comic: you need to make edits!" For instance, two scenes got compressed to simple dialogue overlaid on the splashpage of Ashmedai raping Caleb (with an insert panel of Adam and Daniel talking the next day.) What had been probably at least 5 pages became 1.

Additionally, I don't consider myself a strong plotter. That said, I found learning to write for film made the plotting process finally make some damn sense since the old plot diagram we all got taught in grammar school English never made sense as a reader and definitely made 0 sense as a writer — for me, for some reason, the breakdown of 25-50-25 (approx. 25 pages for act 1, 50 for act 2 split into 2 parts of 25 each, 25 pages for act 3) and the breaking down of the beats (the act turning points, the mid points, the low point) helped give me a structure that just "draw a mountain, rising action, climax is there, figure it out" never did. Maybe the plot diagram is visually too linear when stories have ebb and flow? I don't know. But it never clicked until screenwriting. So that's where I am coming from. YMMV.

I should also state that there's Official Ways To Write Comic Scripts to Be Drawn By An Artist (Especially If You Work For A Real Publisher As a Writer) and there's What Works For You/Your Team. I don't give a rat's ass about the former (and as an artist, I kind of hate panel by panel breakdowns like you see there) so I'm pretty much entirely writing on the latter here. I don't give a good god damn about official ways of doing anything: what works for you to get it done is what matters.

What Goes Where?

Like I said, 99RM was a screenplay so it follows, beat-wise, the 3-act screenplay structure (hell, it's probably more accurate to say it follows the act 1/act 2A/act 2B/act 3 structure.) So there was the story idea or concept that then got applied to those story beats associated with the structure, and from there came the Scene-by-scene Breakdown (or Expanded Scene Breakdown) which basically is an outline of beats broken down into individual scenes in short prose form so you get an overview of what happens, can see pacing, etc. In the resources at the end I put some links that give information on the whole story beat thing.

(As an aside: for all my short comics, I don't bother with all that, frankly. I usually have an image or a concept or a bit of writing — usually dialogue or monologue, sometimes a concrete scene — that I pick at and pick at in a little sketchbook, going back and forth between writing and thumbnail sketches of the page. Or I just go by the seat of my pants and bullshit my way through. Either or. Those in many ways are a bit more like poems, in my mind: they are images, they are snapshots, they are feelings that I'm capturing in a few panels. Think doing mental math rather than writing out geometric proofs, yanno?)

Personally, I tend to lean on dialogue as it comes easier for me (it's probably why I'm so drawn to screenwriting!) so for me, if I were to do another longform GN, I'd probably take my general "uhhhhhh I have an idea and some beats maybe so I guess this should happen this way?" outline and start breaking it down scene by scene (I tend to write down scenes or scene sketches in that "uhhhh?" outline anyway LOL) and then figure out basic dialogue and action beats — in short, I'd kind of do the work of writing a screenplay without necessarily going full screenplay format (though I did find the format gave me an idea of timing/pacing, as 1 page of formatted script is about equal to 1 minute of screentime, and gave me room to sketch thumbnails or make edits on the large margins!) If you're not a monologue/soliloque/dialogue/speech person and more an image and description person, you may lean more into visuals and scenes that cut to each other.

Either way this of course introduces the elephant in the panel: art! How do you choose what to draw?

The answer is, well, it depends! The freedom of comics is if you can imagine it, you can make it happen. You have the freedoms (and audio limitations) of a truly silent film with none of the physical limitations. Your words can move in real time with the images or they can be a narrative related to the scene or they could be nonsequitors entirely! The better question is how do you think? Do you need all the words and action written first before you break down the visuals? Do you need a panel by panel breakdown to be happy, or can you freewheel and translate from word and general outlines to thumbnails? What suits you? I really cannot answer this because I think when it comes to what goes where with regard to art, it's a bit of "how do you process visuals" and also a bit of "who's drawing this?" — effectively, who is the interpreter for the exact thing you are writing? Is it you or someone else? If it's you, would you benefit from a barebones script alongside thumbnailed paneling? Would you be served by a barebones script, then thumbnails, then a new script that includes panel and page breakdowns? What frees you up to do what you need to do to tell your story?

If I'm being honest, I don't necessarily worry about panels or what something will look like necessarily until I'm done writing. I may have an image that I clearly state needs to happen. I may even have a sequence of panels that I want to see and I do indeed sketch that out and make note of it in my script. But exactly how things will be laid out, paneled, situated? That could change up until I've sketched my final pencils in CSP (but I am writer and artist so admittedly I get that luxury.)

How do I compress from novel to comic?

Honest answer? You don't. Not really. You adapt from one to another. It's more a translation. Something that would take forever to write may take 1 page in a comic or may take a whole issue.

I'm going to pick on Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo spent a whole-ass book in Notre-Dame de Paris talking about a bird's eye view of Paris and other medieval architecture boring stuff, with I guess some foreshadowing with Montfaucon. Who cares. Not me. I like story. Anyway. When we translate that book to a movie any of the billion times someone's done that, we don't spend a billion years talking at length about medieval Paris. There's no great monologuing about the gibbet or whatever: you get to have some establishing shots, maybe a musical number, and then you move tf on. Because it's a movie, right? Your visuals are right there. We can see medieval Paris. We can see the cathedral. We can see the gibbet. We don't need a whole book: it's visually right there. Same with a comic: you may need many paragraphs to describe, say, a space station off of Sirius and one panel to show it.

On the flip side, you may take one line, maybe two, to say a character keyed in the special code to activate the holodeck; depending on the visual pacing, that could be a whole page of panels (are we trying to stretch time? slow it down? what are we emphasizing?) A character gives a sigh of relief — one line of text, yeah? That could be a frozen panel while a conversation continues on or that could be two (or more!) panels, similar to the direction [a beat] in screenwriting.

Sorry there's not a super easy answer there to the question of compression: it's a lot more of a tug, a push-pull, that depends on what you're conveying.

So Do I Have It In Me to Write & Draw a GN?

The only way you'll know is by doing. Scary, right? The thing is, you don't necessarily need to be an animation king or God's gift to background artists to draw a comic.

Hell, I hate backgrounds. I still remember sitting across from my friend who said "Claude you really need to draw an establishing exterior of the church at some point" and me being like "why do you hate me specifically" because drawing architecture? Again? I already drew the interior of the church altar ONCE, that should be enough, right? But I did draw an exterior of the church. Sorta. More like the top steeple. Enough to suggest what I needed to suggest to give the audience a better sense of place without me absolutely losing my gourd trying to render something out of my wheelhouse at the time.

And that's kinda the ticket, I think. Not everyone's a master draftsman. Not everyone has all the skills in every area. And regardless, from page one to page one hundred, your skills will improve. That's all part of it — and in the meantime, you should lean into your strengths and cheat where you can.

Do you need to lovingly render a background every single panel? Christ no! Does every little detail need to be drawn out? Sure if you want your hand to fall off. Cheat! Use Sketchup to build models! Use Blender to sculpt forms to paint over! Use CSP Assets for prebuilt models and brushes if you use CSP! Take photographs and manip them! Cheat! Do what you need to do to convey what you need to convey!

For instance, a tip/axiom/"rule" I've seen is one establishing shot per scene minimum and a corollary to that has been include a background once per page minimum as grounding (no we cannot all have eternal floating heads and characters in the void. Unless your comic is set in the void. In which case, you do you.) People ain't out here drawing hyper detailed backgrounds per each tiny panel. The people who DO do that are insane. Or stupid. Or both. Or have no deadline? Either way, someone's gonna have a repetitive stress injury... Save yourself the pain and the headache. Take shortcuts. Save your punches for the big K.O. moments.

Start small. Make an 8-page zine. Tell a beginning, a middle, an end in comic form. Bring a scene to life in a few pages. See what you're comfortable drawing and where you struggle. See where you can lean heavily into your comfort zones. Learn how to lean out of your comfort zone. Learn when it's worth it to do the latter.

Or start large. Technically my first finished comic (that wasn't "a dumb pencil thing I drew in elementary school" or "that 13 volume manga I outlined and only penciled, what, 7 pages of in sixth grade" or "random one page things I draw about my characters on throw up on the interwebz") was 99RM so what do I know. I'm just some guy on the internet.

(That's not self-deprecating, I literally am some guy on the internet talking about my path. A lot of this is gonna come down to you and what vibes with you.)

Resources on writing

Some of these are things that help me and some are things that I crowd-sourced from others. Some of these are going to be screenwriting based, some will be comic based.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud: I think everyone recommends this but I think it is a useful book if you're like "ahh!!! christ!! where do I start!!!???" It very much breaks down the elements of comics and the world they exist in and the principles involved, with the caveat that there are no rules! In fact, I need to re-read it.

Comic Book Design: I picked this up at B&N on a whim and in terms of just getting a bird's eye view of varied ways to tackle layout and paneling? It's such a great resource and reference! I personally recommend it as a way to really get a feel for what can be done.

the screenwriter's bible: this is a book that was used in my class. we also used another book that's escaping me but to be honest, I never read anything in school and that's why I'm so stupid. anyway, I'd say check it out if you want, especially if you start googling screenwriting stuff and it's like 20 billion pieces of advice that make 0 sense -- get the core advice from one place and then go from there.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: many people I know recommended this. I think I have it? It may be in storage. So frankly, I'd already read a bunch of books on comics before grabbing this that it kind of felt like a rehash. Which isn't shade on the authors — I personally was just a sort of "girl, I don't need comics 101!!!"

Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate: this has been recommended so many times to me. I cannot personally speak on it but I can say I do trust those who rec'd it to me so I am passing it along

the story circle: this is pretty much the hero's journey. a useful way to think of journeys! a homie pretty much swears by it

a primer on beats: quick google search got me this that outlines storybeats

save the cat!: what the above refers to, this gives a more genre-specific breakdown. also wants to sell you on the software but you don't need that.

I hope this helps and please feel free to touch base with more info about your specific situation and hopefully I'll have more applicable answers.

[himbeaux-on-ice]

Can I just say that Habs “fans” who act like Carey Price’s contract is somehow patient zero of all this team’s problems drive me absolutely fucking insane? Seriously. Buckle up. This is about to be a rant.

Now. First things first. Is it ideal that the $10 million goalie is currently uh, not doing very good? Fucking NO! I am disappointed as shit with that and I don’t like seeing him struggle. I know he can be better. He has to be better. Obviously.

However. That being said.

Do I think it’s an incredibly stupid look to spend several tweets complaining about all the issues Habs defence have been having, and then also griping that they haven’t started Jake Allen enough for how he’s performing, only to then for some inexplicable reason state that the FIRST THING, the first thing that needs to be dealt with after the new coaching staff have had ONE GAME (and zero practices) to work on things, is somehow “well, the ten million dollar man in net is weighing them down, that contract has gotta go!”?

Yes! That’s stupid!!

I think that’s a very ice cold small-brain take, and not just because Price is my favourite of favourites for as long as I’ve been a hockey fan! I have reasons, dammit!! I put THOUGHT into this!!

Here, dear ppl of Habs twitter who will never read this, are some reasons why this narrative you’re concocting is dumb, and why management/coaching are unlikely to think of trying to ditch Price mid-season to fix the current problems:

1: Time. It has been one (1) game under Ducharme. He has been able to run zero (0) full practices on off days with the team. We just changed up a major piece on the Habs chess board — why don’t you give it a minute to see what fresh eyes and minds can do with this roster before you decide we are fucked? This season is fast-moving, sure, but there is time for us to ride out some little bumps here and still make a playoff spot in this Canadian division. Have patience. Do you remember what patience is? Dom is a new head coach, not a wish-granting fairy godmother. Chill. Do you remember chill?

(rest of this under a cut because I actually LIKE Habs Tumblr, and I want to be nice to you all by not making you scroll past all of it if you don’t want to)

2: Jake Allen exists. There are a couple of things I like for what this means for the Habs. Firstly, for basically the first time in his NHL career, we are not in a situation where if Carey Price is in a slump, we have to go “Ah, shit, so now our options are let his stats tank while he tries to get the groove back in net, OR throw whoever the poor backup is out there to get murdered while we plummet through the standings.... 😬” We don’t have that problem right now, because the backup is... actually good? Oh my god, the backup is actually good! Thank fuck! We’re not doomed. If I’m Ducharme, I put Allen in net for a few consecutive starts to put a solid backstop behind all my fun experiments I’m probably planning with the skating roster (to catch their slip-ups, while also giving Carey lots of time and rest with which to work hard on sorting out whatever his issue is along with the goalie coaches).

2b: Jake Allen exists and is competition. Hell, if I’m Ducharme, maybe I even play a little hardball and say “Look, Carey, I don’t want you to be an expensive benchwarmer, but if things don’t pick up soon I am going to start whoever is doing best and you will have to compete for that net.” Related to my last point, when was the last time Carey Price had to push himself to compete for net time against anything other than his own injuries, and wasn’t simply always the default starter? Has that EVER been a thing? Honestly as much as I love the idea of him being The Goalie for the Habs, I also kinda like this idea a lot because I think it could really push him to a higher standard of performance. Maybe that kind of high-pressure situation (given how much he thrives in the pressure-cooker of the playoffs) could be what he NEEDS in order to Be Carey Price again. Worst comes to worst, he doesn’t respond to that challenge, and I am very sad but the Habs have a good goalie in net anyway, because Hallelujah, Jake Allen exists! God, isn’t it nice to have Jake Allen? Bless him.

3: Money. Guys, this league is so broke right now. Seriously. Seriously. Nobody has any fucking money. The Habs probably have more money than most teams, and that does not help when it comes to offloading large contracts. Trades are a NIGHTMARE both because of the flat cap but also because travel is complicated (especially cross-border) but also nobody wants to trade within their division if possible because all your games are against them. Who in the name of fuck do you think is jumping at the idea of taking the $10 million per through 20-lots-and-lots-of-years-from-now contract of a goalie who is currently struggling, impressive past record aside? What kind of astral plane of fantasy hockey are you on to think there’s a trade out there for that within this season. Shut up. And no, don’t bring up the expansion draft, this post is a rebuttal SPECIFICALLY to the people who think that Price and his contract are the biggest problem that needs to be dealt with RIGHT NOW and first on the list of ways to immediately remedy the team’s struggles.

4: Spite. Specifically to piss you off, bud. You personally.

5: Knowing how to troubleshoot properly. Fellas, if my computer is running slowly and freezing up a lot, do I immediately decide the first step to fixing it is to crack open the chassis, remove the hard drive, and try to sell that hard drive to someone to see if I can enough money back to somehow get a better hard drive for less? No, dipshit. That’s not how troubleshooting a complex system works works. It’s the same with hockey teams. Ah, my star goalie is not performing great. This situation is deeply less than ideal. If you’re actually good at troubleshooting, the first thing you do is not “WELL. I GUESS WE’LL HAVE TO THROW THE WHOLE GOALIE OUT. HE’S TOAST.” The first thing you do, if you’re a smart coach, is you say “Okay, what are my defence doing in front of him? What are they doing to reduce the amount and quality of our opponents’ scoring chances? Oh. Oh, they’re taking a lot of penalties, and... oh, uh, some of this is very not great. Yikes.” And then you start your work by trying to make the defence actually work instead of running the same Pairs That Everyone Is Very Much Over And Tired Of, because your goalie is actually supposed to be your Last Line of Defence. And maybe during that time you give more starts to Goalie Who Is Absolutely Slaying It, so that when you start trying new D-pairs and they inevitably have some mistakes, it doesn’t immediately turn into an Oh God Holy Fuck moment every time, because that last line of defence backstopping them is solid. The reason you need to deal with defense first is because a) You know you have a reliable goalie (Allen) in your pocket right now if you need him. What you don’t have is a whole-ass proven and tested and practiced Backup D-Core you can swap into the roster in front of your goalies to make their lives easier. Fix your defense and it WILL improve your goalies, even marginally. Defrag the hard drive before you ask why it’s not working. and b) If you need to go looking for any new D-men to solve the issues, those are WAY easier and cheaper to find than top-tier goalies, and you always want to start any troubleshooting process with trying the simplest solutions first to hopefully save time and money. The better that D-core is, the less it fucks your team over if the goalie isn’t feeling themselves, because the D is going to stop more of those pucks before they ever even become the goalie’s problem. FIX. DEFENCE. FIRST. Then try to train your goalie back into top form. THEN explore your other options.

6: The vicious cycle. Guys. We literally do this once every year or second year. EVERY time Carey Price has a slump, this fanbase gets into a tizzy like the Bell Centre is burning down and he was the one with the matches. And what ALWAYS happens literally within the year, every single time? He gets his mojo back like he did last summer in the bubble and goes on a heater and everybody goes “JESUS PRICE!!!! 🙌” and is ready to name their firstborn kid after him. Until eventually that performance becomes unsustainable, and he becomes mortal again, and suddenly he’s The Real Problem With This Franchise once again. I know he’s the guy they chose to build the team around instead of a superstar forward, but oh my god folks. You’d think he was the only player on the team. Guys, I feel like fucking Sisyphus pushing a blue blanc et rouge boulder up Mont Royal once a year with this shit. This man’s entire career has been a constant seesaw narrative between “Carey Price is our saviour!” and “Carey Price should be exiled to Nome!!!!” from parts of this fanbase, I swear. Look, slumps suck, but for once we are actually lucky enough to be in a position where this team, for the first time in YEARS, does not solelylive or die by the inscrutable magical cycles of Carey Price’s goalie powers — because when he has to step back and work to get back into his groove, there is FINALLY a SECOND GUY who is GREAT. Honestly, given that the state of this team for so long has been “they will go as far as Carey Price can take them” and he has put in a pretty fucking decent job of it despite all of the team’s other struggles, I feel like it is owed it to the guy to be like “Okay, well, we have somebody else solid to fill the net right now, and a chance to really figure out our defence and special teams with this new coach. Why don’t you take a step back and work your ass off at trying to get back into the form I know you can still perform at, and we’ll go from there?”

Anyway. Some parts of this fanbase have been waiting for a fresh excuse to claim Price is overrated, washed-up, and to blame for all of this team’s flaws and ills ever since he signed that contract, if not since the start of his NHL career. Just unreal how nasty some of this fanbase is willing to be about a player who is ON. YOUR. TEAM.

Am I saying he is beyond critique of his play and can do no wrong and his contract is perfect? No! I want this team to have the best goaltending it can get, and I want them to kick ass and take names. The difference is, I still believe Carey Price is a part of that winning formula, and I also think Twitter is overflowing with idiots who just repeat what everybody else says. He’s still a better goalie than your ass would be if I stuck you out there to stop shots from Mark Schieffle, for crap’s sake.

“The first thing that has to go is Carey Price’s contract 🤪”. Shut the fuck up. You are actively making other people stupider by talking. Go eat sand. Good day.

[n1ghtcrwler]

So there is a post that I recently saw that I just don’t want to add notes to for a number of reasons, not least of which being that I’m about to go on a significant tangent, so I’ll just say what I needed to say about it here.

The post is screenshots of a tweet thread about how bad “Cuties” actually is, from someone who claims to have watched it, and that’s fine. I haven’t seen the movie, I have no input to give on that matter. My concern arises in a reply offered by one user, who goes into more detail about how disturbing it is to consider that someone had to, at minimum, be comfortable putting the underage actresses in the situations depicted for the sake of filming them for the movie, and again, that is probably a valid point. But they ended their tirade with this:

“If you didn’t believe it before, the fact that this movie was even released and is being defended by the elite is proof that there is a deliberate plan to normalize and eventually legalize pedophilia and child porn.”

And that, my friends, is some QAnon bullshit.

See, this is a great example of how conspiracy theories work. We tend to only think of them in terms of their major propositions and the implications of those propositions--that the Earth is hollow, your average garden-variety antisemitic caricature of a shadowy society controlling you, that sort of thing--instead of talking much about how people fall into that hole in the first place. And, in our day-to-day lives, it’s really where the theories start that we need to be vigilant about more than where they end. Where they end is important, obviously, but no one buys the end product immediately. They get there through a process. And the user who posted the above quote is playing into that process.

Here’s the process that I want you to see in that paragraph, and to look out for elsewhere:

0: ‘Facts’ that are viable, and possibly even true

Step Zero is not to lie or even to introduce new information. I call it Step Zero because it isn’t automatically part of a conspiracy theory; obviously, if we’re going to talk about the impact of anything on the world, we have to talk about what is actually happening. But I point it out because conspiracy theories always start with a premise that you can accept. Always. Every time. You cannot assume that you will recognize a nonsense theory based on immediate nonsense. No one starts there. They start in the real world. As above, where they are describing very real or at least realistic consideration for the ways filming such a movie can groom young actresses and audiences.

1: Framing facts through key concepts

A good conspiracy theory begins not in the facts provided, but in the way they are provided.

Consider the bit of the paragraph I copied where it said, “the fact that this movie was even released and is being defended by the elite.” Who are the ‘elite?’ See, the use of that wording is intentional. What the user has done is frame the delivery of the fact or near-fact (that the movie and its mode of production are abhorrent) in a way that an elusive enemy is embedded in the fact or near-fact itself (that the elite are defending the abhorrent thing, making ‘them,’ whoever they are, also abhorrent) such that it is difficult to separate that idea from the rest of the fact or near-fact. In fact, I expect that if anyone wishes to argue with me about this post, they will do so by framing my dismissal of a mythical elite with being part of their work; that is, the primary means of arguing against this post, based on the way people have argued with me about similar things in the past, will be to hold that if I doubt that part of the sentence I must doubt the whole sentence and doubting the whole sentence means not finding pedophilia abhorrent and that, by extension, must make me either a pedophile myself or a man comfortable with pedophiles.

I’m sure you’ve seen that play out before in some context or another. This is why it plays out that way: the fact or near-fact has been married, unsuitably, to a claim that sets up Step Two.

2: Using the altered fact or near-fact to demand a pre-determined conclusion

Here’s the thing. If there is an elite who are actively trying to make and promote and defend “Cuties” (which is a highly suspect claim already), then the logical question is why they are doing so. Well, by golly, our friendly neighborhood conspiracy theorist has an answer! See, it’s “proof that there is a deliberate plan to normalize and eventually legalize pedophilia and child porn.”

That conclusion is not demanded by the agreed-upon facts. That is, if I agree with the theorist that the movie is, indeed, a work that grooms actresses and audiences, there are actually a variety of conclusions we can draw about why the movie was made. Maybe it was filmed with entirely different intentions and the end result is because of editing, or license taken by questionable cameramen. Maybe the version shown at Sundance or whatever was not actually the version currently on Netflix, so the people defending it were defending something other than what the twitter thread author saw. Maybe the producer really did have terrible motives but managed to convince someone at Netflix that that was not what was happening. Some or all of these may be false. I have no idea. But here’s the thing: neither does the person who posted the paragraph in question. The facts given in the post are actually pretty sparse as far as coming to a certain conclusion about intent are concerned. You need more information to know what is really going on here.

But see, that’s why they added information in Step One. By making it a behavior of that conspiracy’s boogeyman, they can easily come to a conclusion. The facts or fact-adjacent statements made in the body of the post, paired with a conspiracy-based understanding of who the elite are and what they want, is enough information to come to a conclusion. And it’s a conclusion that is only reasonable if the elite are real and are who the conspiracy says they are. See, the goal of getting you to believe the bigger conspiracy isn’t by telling you who the elite are, but by getting you to accept something that requires them. Which is why

3. Frame the delivery in a way that hides the conspiracy

The post leading up to the quoted paragraph is actually fairly long (admittedly, not as long as this post), and every part of it fits the conversation that has been had about the movie and is presented in a way that makes sense. So while the average tumblr user is scrolling along, if they read through, they’re being hit with a lot of sensible discourse about a movie they probably haven’t seen but have seen more discourse about, and then that bit of QAnon is just kinda slipped in without any major change to wording and presentation. It’s bolded for effect, but the content itself seems to flow naturally from the rest of the post. It’s only in stopping and thinking seriously about what has been said that the diversion away from a discussion of facts gets noticed.

The point is to be distinct enough to set up the conspiracy theory, but subtle enough that you accept it as part of the rest of the post’s claims. See, because, what happens there is that if the rest of the post makes sense to you, and you aren’t thinking about the fact that the post has taken a left turn, you accept the conclusion being given as a natural part of the post. And accepting the conclusion requires that you have, maybe without realizing it, accepted the claims about the ‘elite.’ And that sets you up.

4. Go Deeper

Because once you have accepted the conspiracy’s claims about the elite, preferably without recognizing that there was a claim about the elite, you are ready to accept other things that connect to that. Someone comes along and says something that also sounds plausible, and also ties into the conclusion that the elite are trying to legalize pedophilia. Well, because you’ve already accepted that this was a reasonable conclusion elsewhere, and it seems reasonable enough here, you accept it here as well. And this is solidifying in your mind the idea that it is known that there is an elite working toward that goal. But the questions remains of who the elite are. So, when someone finally comes along and ties the ‘elite’ to a specific person or group of people that you do recognize (usually Jewish people or some caricature thereof), and offers some evidence that is pretty flimsy but plays very nicely with claims you’ve already accepted, you buy it. Or you don’t, but you’re so deep now that you have to provide an alternative if you want to reject the answer you’ve been given, and so you start to spin your own theory.

Either way, the end result is the same: you are convinced of a claim that would have sounded crazy to you a year ago, and your family is trying to tell you how crazy it sounds to them now, but they just don’t know! They haven’t seen all the facts! You should probably show them the facts. Ideally, by starting with something they already know to be true. And the cycle continues.

Please. Be careful out there, folks. Don’t be that guy.

[qjhughes]

You Not Only Saved My Life, You Changed It

Part 1 - Twice

Warnings: None 

Word Count: 2.6k

Summary: Peter saving the day, more than once, as Spider-Man. 

Bored. That’s what you were. And you had been that way for weeks. Stuck in your house with nothing to do except for watching Netflix, scroll through your phone aimlessly for hours on end, and write your junior research paper. Because the world was basically ending, and your teacher thought that writing a research paper and preparing a speech was the best thing to do.

The world has been overcome by a horrible virus, one that is extremely deadly to the people that catch it. Survival rate: 0%. It was terrifying, to say the least. So you stayed inside. Mostly everyone did. The streets of New York were uncharacteristically empty and the crime rate had dropped to almost nothing.

You just wanted to do something fun. You had been lonely and bored for way too long. You wanted to do at least one thing that you were able to do before quarantine started. You wanted to go up on the roof and watch the stars. But you didn’t want to catch the virus. Logically though, there is no way you would catch it just from sitting on the roof, there would be nobody else up there, and you could only get the virus if you came in contact with someone who already had it.

So you were safe, right?

You decided that you were going to go on the roof, if your mom let you, of course. You didn’t want to get in trouble. It would suck to be grounded in this situation.

So, you walked into the living room to ask your mom.

“Hey, can I go up on the roof? There won’t be anyone else there and I just really want to watch the stars.” You ask, expecting a no, but hoping for a yes.

“Yeah, sure. Just make sure that if anyone is up there, you turn around immediately. I don’t want you getting sick, honey.” She replies. You can tell by the look in her eyes that she feels bad. She just wants you to be able to live your life. She knows that you can’t though. That’s why she’s letting you do this. 

Before she can give it a second thought, you turn on my heel and rush excitedly to get dressed. 

You put on my Midtown High sweatshirt and a pair of joggers before getting my headphones. It was cold in Queens, you didn’t want to freeze to death on the roof.

Just before you climbed out your window, you grab your backpack and a blanket. You might as well do a little bit of your schoolwork while you’re up there. If you get to that point, of course.

You take your time climbing up the fire escape. You’ve always been terrified of falling off of these things. The roof? No biggie. But there was something about this rickety old fire escape that scared the life out of you.

Once you made it to the top, you scan the rooftop to make sure that nobody had the same idea as you. Luckily, the area is vacant. Not a soul in sight. You sit down your stuff, laying out the blanket as you get ready to lie down and look at the stars. 

Before you get to lay down, however, something catches your attention. It’s silent. Yeah, yeah, it’s quarantine, nobody’s out of their homes. But that doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t have their window open, music blasting to make them not as bored.

That’s how it had been for weeks. You would open your window to let in a breeze and hear tv shows, movies, music, and lord knows what else. It was never quiet in Queens. 

But tonight it was.

You began walking over towards the edge of the roof, trying to get a better look at the seemingly vacant part of New York. 

And it’s so peaceful. Everything is calm and perfectly perfect. Until you trip on something and take a tumble right off the roof. 

Maybe heights don’t scare you, but falling tens of stories down and then ultimately landing on concrete scares you. But there’s not really anything you can do. So, you do the one thing that any sane person would do in this situation.

Seconds later, you hit something hard. It knocks the wind out of you, but it doesn’t really hurt. You’re not dead. Nothing seems to be broken or bruised. So you open your eyes slowly.

And then you see it, well, him. The ‘friendly neighborhood Spider-Man’. You had no idea that he was on patrol tonight, but thank God he was.

You were panting, gasping for the air you thought you would never get the luxury of breathing again.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay.” He coos, soothing you into calmness.

“T-thank you for saving me.” You say weakly, barely able to find your voice.

“No need to thank me.” He says, looking down at you, still in his arms. 

You realize that you’re clinging to him for dear life. Your arms are wrapped around his shoulders and your face is all but nuzzled into his chest.

You start to let go, but he stops you.

“You’re going to need to hold on if you want back up on that roof, darling.” He says, assuming you were up there for a reason.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I kinda don’t want to be back up there, but I need my stuff.” You say, looking away from him. You sound weak. You sound, almost, broken.

“Which apartment is yours?” He asks.

“Um, 15th floor, apartment C.” You all but whisper. 

“Alright, hold on.” He says, making sure that your arms are wrapped around him before he puts his arm out straight and shoots a web right next to your window. 

In less than a second, you’re on the fire escape outside your window.

“Go on in, I’ll go get your stuff and bring it back down.” He says, nudging you gently so you’ll go in the window.

“Alright.” You reply, crawling into your room.

After a few minutes, he’s back with all of your stuff in his arms. He sits it all down on the desk and looks at you to make sure you’re okay.

“Thank you, again. Uh, Spider-Man. I’m really glad that you were on duty tonight. Oh, and uh, you can sit down if you want.” You say shyly, turning red at your invitation.

He’s Spider-Man for crying out loud, there’s no way that he wants to spend time with you. 

To your surprise, however, he takes a seat in your revolving desk chair. And, even more to your surprise, he spins a few times.

You giggle at the action, making him stop and look at you.

“O-oh, I’m sorry. That was silly.” He says, looking down as if he’s embarrassed.

“No, you don’t have to be sorry, I just didn’t expect big, bad Spider-Man to do something like that.” You say, honestly.

“I’m not that big and bad, plus I’m only 17 so I like to do things like that sometimes.”

“You’re only 17?!”

“Yeah, why?”

“I mean, you just seem like you would be so much older. You’re a superhero. You’ve saved the world more than once. It’s just crazy that you could be the same age as I am and do all of that stuff.” 

“Wait, you’re 17, too.” 

“Yeah, and while you’re out there saving the world, I’m stuck inside writing a research paper and trying to turn it into a speech.”

“What’s your topic?” 

“Equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community.”

“Oh, I know a little something about that if you’d like my help.”

“Really? You don’t have to.”

“No, I know. I want to though.”

“Alrighty then.” You agree.

He was extremely helpful. Little did you know, that he was only this helpful because he had already written his research paper. Coincidentally, on the same topic.

After a few hours, your paper was done and you felt less stressed than you had since the outbreak.

“So, Mr. Spider-Man, what’s going on in your life?” You ask, wanting to get to know him better, but also just not wanting this night to end. There was something about his presence that just made you feel so incredibly calm.

“Well, as I said, I’m 17, so I still have to do that online school that they’re making us do. But then I also go out patrolling the city almost every night. The crime rate may have gone down, but it still isn’t zero, so I’m trying to stop all the bad guys that are still out there.”

“Isn’t that stressful?” 

“Yeah, actually. I don’t ever tell anyone this because I don’t want to seem selfish, but sometimes, I just feel like I can’t do it anymore. Sometimes I don’t get the bad guy. And I feel like I failed. But then I realize if I didn’t do anything, it would be a lot worse. When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you. And I don’t ever want someone to get hurt because of me.”

“Yeah, I get it. Not on that scale, obviously, but I try to help people as much as I can.”

You glance over at the clock and see the time 4:23 a.m. 

“Oh my God, I’ve kept you here for way too long. It’s almost dawn. Like, thank you for saving my life and all, but you have more important things to do than talk to me.”

“I mean, not really. I get an alert from Karen if there’s anything going on.”

“Oh, well, I guess you can stay if you want. It’s safer than patrolling.”

“What do you mean by that?” 

“The virus, I don’t think you want to catch that. It’s deadly to everyone that catches it.”

“If I catch the virus, I’ll be alright. My body basically moves at superspeed. My body would kill it within an hour. I wouldn’t even know that I had it.” He explains and you look at him in disbelief.

“That’s fantastic.” You say.

All of a sudden, you see him tilt his head slightly to the side.

“There’s an alert. I wrote my number down in your notebook before bringing it in here. Text me so I’ll have yours. And text me whenever you just wanna talk or whatever.” He says.

“Alright, thanks again Spidey.” You reply lowly, getting up and giving him a hug.

“Anytime, darling.” There’s that name again. The one that makes him so much more appealing than he already is.

Weeks pass before you see him again. You text each other every day, but there’s so much going on that you can’t be together in person. 

But then one morning, you wake up coughing, lungs burning, and skin on fire. You try to yell for your mom, but your throat is dry and the attempts are helpless. 

You pick up your phone as fast as you can and text your mom about what is happening. She’s in your room in seconds, rushing you to get into the car. 

A few hours later and the doctors have confirmed it. You have the virus.

They basically push you out the door with a simple, “You’ve got maybe two weeks. So make sure to say goodbye to everyone. I’m so sorry about what’s happening to you.”

Your first instinct int to text him. To tell him about it, but you don’t want to give him the news through text. That’s cruel. 

So, you do the next best thing you can think of. That night, you go back on the roof. You put your blanket down and lay there with your eyes closed, just embracing the quiet.

You’re there for less than five minutes when you hear him land near you. You don’t even open your eyes. You know that it could not possibly be anyone else.

“What are you doing up here again?” He asks, clearly confused because last time you wouldn’t even come up here to get your stuff.

“I wanted to experience this one last time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

“I got diagnosed. With the virus.” You say, fighting back the tears. You hadn’t said it out loud before now.

“Come here.” He prompts, wanting to hug you.

And you let him. You let him wrap his arms around your shoulders and lay his chin on your head.

You stand like that for a few minutes before he says the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard.

“Come with me to see Mr. Stark.”

“I can’t do that, I’ll get him sick. I can’t be the reason that a multi-billion dollar man dies.”

“No, no, no, you don’t get it. He’s already had the virus. He can heal you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s this place called Wakanda. They have this really advanced technology that can heal people.”

“Really? You’d take me there to get me healed?”

“Of course I would. Now, come on, grab my shoulders, and wrap your legs around me. We’re going flying.”

You do as he says and you feel yourself being lifted into the air. You keep your head buried in his neck until you feel yourself stop moving. 

Once you lift your head up, you see that you’re on the balcony of the Avengers Tower.

“Wait, are you an avenger?” You ask, never thinking of the question until now.

“I mean, basically.” He answers, blushing slightly.

All of a sudden, you hear the doors open and there he is. The incredible Tony Stark himself. 

“Hey, kid. Hey, kid’s friend.” He says with a smile.

“Hi, Mr. Stark.” You sound scared and shy. Your voice no longer sounds like it’s yours.

“Please, call me Tony. Now, kid, why is she here?”

“Sir, she has the virus.” 

“Take her to the lab.”

Spider-Man takes you by the arm and leads you down winding hallways until you reach a state of the art lab. There you meet a beautiful woman that leads you to lay down. She already knows what’s wrong. She can tell by the way you’re flushed pink, shivering, but also sweating. 

“Hello, I’m T’Challa. I’m going to give you this herb concoction. You will fall asleep and when you wake up, you’ll be healed.” She states, looking at a tablet in her hands.

“Alright. How long will I be out?” You question.

“Around thirty minutes.”

She gives you the drink and you gulp it down. It tastes sweet, like candy almost. 

In only a few seconds, you’re sleepy, and you don’t put up a fight.

It seems like only moments before you’re up again. The moment you open your eyes, you see him. But he’s not wearing his mask. He’s not Spider-Man anymore. He’s just Peter. Peter Parker. The dorky, kinda weird, really smart, amazing, talented Peter that you’ve known since you were literally 4 years old.

“P-Peter?” You manage to choke out, hoping that he can hear you. 

“Crap. I forgot to put the mask back on.” He sounds worried. 

“It’s alright Peter, I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“I know, I just don’t want Mr. Stark to be angry.”

“Tony will be fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I will not let him hurt the kid that just saved my life.”

“I mean, technically, I didn’t.”

“Technically, if you hadn’t brought me here, I would be dead. So yeah, you saved my life. Twice.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah, it is, Peter. Oh, and thank you for helping me write my speech.”

“That’s no big deal wither, it let me spend more time with you.”

“Well, we could spend more time together if you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I do need a best friend, and you seem like a great guy. And who knows, maybe we’ll be the friends that do everything together. We could both use a life.”

“Yeah, we could, couldn’t we?”

“So, best friends?”

“Best friends.”

[saiilorstars]

Falling in Temptation

Ch. 14: While I'm Gone

Previous chapters • Sequel to Stars Dance •  Fairy Tale Memoirs (Companion story)

Fandom: Doctor Who

Pairing: 11th Doctor x Female OC

Chapter summary: The Doctor is slowly losing his mind searching for Avalon and Melody.

Taglist: @ocfairygodmother @anotherunreadblog @maaaaarveeeeel​

Lena held her sister's prized possession close to her chest. Ever since Avalon had been taken, Lena hadn't let that journal out of her sight. Avalon would want it first thing when she got back...because she would come back. It was just a matter of time.

That morning - or whatever time it was inside the TARDIS after waking up - Lena hurried towards the console room just like she had done from day 1 on their search for Avalon and Melody. And just like always, the Doctor was already in the room, working hard and fast to find a new lead on Avalon and Melody.

"Big brother, did you sleep?" Lena found herself wondering when she realized how untidy he looked. She understood that he needed way less sleep than she and the Sapling did, but he still needed some sleep.

"Yes, um, at some point...one night, can't remember! Busy!" the man was making rounds at the console, not particularly interested in conversations. These days he did a lot more talking to himself about possible clues than anything else.

Lena spotted his tweed jacket on the floor, the same spot he'd thrown it last night after getting a new lead. She and the Sapling had to get some sleep and the Doctor promised them that he would follow in a few minutes. He did not. "Big brother, nobody wants to find my sister and Melody as much as I do but you really need to get some sleep if this is going to work."

"I can sleep when I have Ava here and Melody with Amy and Rory," he said, his voice a bit snappish due to his lack of rest. He never snapped at her.

"But you can't find them if you can't think," Lena sighed. "That's why you sent me to sleep. Why don't you follow your own advice and take a few hours? I can keep looking. The Sapling should be up in a few hours too."

"I can't," the Doctor shook his head. "I followed the lead last night - it took me to the Messier 82 galaxy - and it turns out that there was a spotting of a woman with an eyepatch in one of the black markets. I went, but guess what!? It was a fake! It was a costume! What a waste of time! So now I'm back to zero! I cannot sleep!"

Lena looked at the journal in her arms. If Avalon could see him now, she would definitely slap him. She valued health over everything, even when she was the one who needed the help. "Avalon wouldn't want you to be like this. She wants you to rest."

"Lena! Are you going to help or not?" he snapped again.

"Yeah, I guess so," Lena came up to the console with a sigh. "So, where exactly are we?"

"Like I said: back to zero!"

"Okay," Lena nodded, trying to be the one to think rationally since she had all her hours of sleep. "Well, you said that Kovarian probably took Melody back to Earth in the past. But to find her would be dangerous because of Avalon's existence so we need to focus on Avalon first. We find her, she can tell us where Melody is and we can pick the right moment to take her without endangering Avalon's life." That was far easier said than done.

They'd spent weeks searching for Melody on Earth, but the Doctor ultimately called it off because of the danger they were putting on Avalon's life. The fact that she was Melody's daughter meant that they had be very careful choosing at what point to bring Melody back to her parents. Instead, they switched gears and focused on Avalon. The idea was that Avalon would know precisely where Melody was and they could extract the baby before she was raised on Earth. River had told him that in order for Avalon to continue existing, she needed to attend some university in the 51st century. The Doctor could arrange for young Melody to do that, no problem, but then he also started wondering if that was all that Melody needed to keep the timelines going? As he stated a while back, maybe the reason Melody did what she did at college, made the choices that she made, was because of her life on Earth. It was all a huge headache.

But one thing for sure, the one thing that River Song herself agreed upon, was that the Doctor needed to find Avalon first. She would never forgive him if he chose to search for Melody over Avalon. That made the Doctor feel a little less guilty about his decision when talking it out with Amy and Rory. He wasn't abandoning the search for Melody just because.

But finding Avalon was no more easy than finding Melody. It was like she had vanished into thin air. It terrified the Doctor wondering what they were doing to Avalon if she wasn't outside somewhere. If she was being kept inside, was she tied up? Was she being tortured? There was another part telling him that perhaps she'd been absorbed into their plans and was being trained like Melody, brainwashed no doubt. Repeated brainwashing could permanently damage the mind. If she was being trained to kill him - him - then she would be getting an extensive course. Everything Melody was meant to learn over the course of her life was being crammed into Avalon for the right day and time.

When his thoughts got too dark, even for him, the Doctor did everything he could to shake them off and focus on just finding her. If he found her, then all that could be avoided. "I don't know, I don't know..." he rubbed his eyes tiredly. He had thought of all the possible places that he knew of but Avalon wasn't there. She was never seen.

"Big brother," Lena gently placed a hand on his arm. The Doctor dropped his hands from his face and glanced at Lena, showcasing the heavy guilt that'd permanently become part of his features. Lena rubbed his arm comfortingly. "Take a moment to breathe. Let's think about this, right? If they separated Avalon and Melody, and Melody's on Earth, then wouldn't that mean Avalon is basically on standby? Where could she stay if she was on standby?"

"Well," the Doctor took in a deep breath and focused on the facts they had about Kovarian's style. "They gave Melody absolute independence on Earth, but they were always watching her. If Avalon is following the same plan, then she has to be living the same thing."

"Right, except they wouldn't give her complete independence because she could run away."

"No, they would have to alter her..." the Doctor was very careful with what he said about what Kovarian might be doing to Avalon. Lena didn't need the images he had in his head. "They would have to change something," he settled for the neutral words instead. Her brain. They would have to change something in there to keep Avalon at bay, because Avalon Reynolds was not a woman you could keep at bay so easily. Her terrible temper made her a force to be reckoned with. That's where the brainwashing came in, he imagined. If they changed Avalon's thoughts, she would function just like they wanted her to.

"So then where they would keep her after that?" asked Lena.

"Don't know," the Doctor's eyes found the controls as a new thought popped into his head. "But I bet that whatever they're using they had to have bought it somewhere."

"We're going to the Black Markets, aren't we?" Lena guessed considering the dark nature of Kovarian.

The Doctor nodded. "To as many as we can."

~ 0 ~

3 Weeks after Demons Run.

The tears wouldn't stop falling from Avalon's eyes. She felt like a child constantly having to rub the tears off her face only for new ones to take their place seconds later.

River Song was her mother, River Song.

It didn't make sense. Yes, she knew she was adopted but never in her life did she consider that River might be the woman who gave her up? All those times that she'd bumped into River and the woman never said anything. She acted as if there was nothing bonding them together, blood. It infuriated Avalon all over again. River just paraded through social events, making sure everybody knew who she was and yet the one person that should've been the first to learn her name was the person River chose to abandon and then ignore.

Avalon's eyes fell to the pictures Kovarian had left her with.

"A gift," the woman had smugly said after returning Avalon to her room. She'd let the pile fall to the floor, sprawling around Avalon.

She had been very thorough proving to Avalon that River was Melody and her mother. She had brought Avalon to a room where they played several videos of River confirming that she was her mother. The best one, according to Kovarian, was the video they'd retrieved from Demons Run. River had explained who she was to everyone after the Silence took Avalon. There was no room for doubt.

Now Avalon was left with a series of pictures of River at her finest moments, all of which were her in a compromising illegal act. It was Kovarian's way of showing Avalon that her mother wasn't someone she should try to protect so much. It was a way for Avalon to hate her and willingly work for the Silence. After all, why would she want to protect her mother when she abandoned her?

Even if Avalon didn't want to give Kovarian the satisfaction of being right, Avalon couldn't help the anger that flourished each time she thought about River.

She abandoned me. She didn't want me..

The woman galavanted throughout the galaxies, doing whatever the hell she wanted, and she never once came to see her. River knew where she lived, where she was, and she never did anything. Avalon could understand that being in prison complicated things but River never seemed to mind the fact she was incarcerated. She was always up and ready for an adventure. So why would River leave her with someone else to raise?

Because she probably cramped River's style.

Avalon knew that she was a nobody. She had lived in boring old Leadworth and the only exciting thing about her was meeting the Doctor. She didn't have a penny to her name and she certainly didn't astounding qualities. River probably thought she was boring. How could she tell the world that she had given birth to a boring daughter?

Fresh tears stung her eyes. Avalon let out a fierce growl. Her hands found the closest picture and tore it into pieces. "How could you!?" her hand then swiped away any picture nearby, wanting nothing to do with them. "I hate you!"

Let River keep doing her own thing! She didn't need her. She'd done just fine without her for 22 years after all. If River didn't want her then Avalon wouldn't want her either.

The only mother she recognized was Emmalina Reynolds. Enmalina had protected her and loved her. She had been there to hug her when she was scared, to kiss her 'owies' when she'd fallen, to read bedtime stories to her each night. Emmalina had given Avalon her first journal to write in because she knew from the start what Avalon wanted to be when she grew up. Emmalina knew that before Avalon knew it. That's what a mother was like. She knew things that her child wouldn't know until much later. Emmalina had been there when River had been god knew where.

Avalon picked up another picture and studied it until she saw the last detail. River was dressed fashionably, almost like the first time Avalon met her back at the Byzantium, and was conversing with some woman. River held a beautiful sapphire blue jewel that no doubt had been priceless. The setting was an elegant party, judging by the decorations. Even the chandelier was big enough to be caught on the picture and it was made of diamonds. It seemed like a party Avalon would've loved to have gone to.

But where was she? At home, in Leadworth, on Earth. She'd been light years away from her mother and River didn't look the least bit upset by the matter.

Avalon's face scrunched as her hands gripped the corners of the picture. She yanked the two sides in the opposite direction and felt a dark satisfaction when she heard the picture tearing. Her gaze fell to the remaining pictures and before she knew it, she'd began to grab each of them and tore them until they were nothing but confetti on the ground.

But once there was nothing left, Avalon still couldn't get rid of the heavy pain in her chest. She wanted to scream and cry. Cry for everything that had gone wrong in her life, from the very moment she was born. Her shoulders slumped. The dark anger subsided for a moment to give way for her hear to break all over again.

Her vision blurred with all the tears in her eyes. My own mother didn't want me, what hope do I have? If her own mother didn't want her, how could she expect for anyone else to want her?

Would the Doctor even come for her? He never liked River to begin with and if he knew that she was River's daughter...would he hate her too? The mere thought terrified Avalon.

~0~

The Sapling was was quietly going through an album in the TARDIS library. Despite his insistence to help find his mother, his father and aunt Lena told him there was nothing for him to do right now. They had to start out by mapping the possible locations Avalon could be. But even when they visited most of those locations, there wasn't a job for him to actually help. Why? Because they hadn't actually found Avalon, nor Melody. They weren't in any of the locations.

It infuriated all three that they were no closer to finding either girl. The Sapling felt a tingling sensation each time he underwent a new episode of fury. He suspected it was his powers trying to manifest again and the only reason he worked hard to keep them within was because he wanted to use them on the woman who took Avalon and Melody.

But for now, the Sapling was resigned to wait. They needed to wait for anything significant to pop up so they could start the search again. It was why he was in the library, passing the time with the only thing he could: by going through his mother's photo albums. She had gone over them extensively because he had asked her to. Now he was going through them again, alone, and really missing his mother.

Lena had appeared at the doorway and yanked the Doctor to her side. "See!?" she was very careful to whisper so that the Sapling wouldn't hear them. "Poor thing's been locked in here for days. I try to get him to come out to eat something but he refuses."

"I don't blame him," the Doctor whispered as he took a peek inside the library. The Sapling was on the couch with the photo album on his lap. He spotted Avalon's journal sitting on the coffee table in front of the Sapling. "You let him have the journal?" he gave a questionable glance at Lena. She hadn't let go of that journal since she stepped into the TARDIS.

Lena's expression was sympathetic. "He misses his Mum." She motioned him to go to the Sapling. "I think you should spend some time with him."

The Doctor would want nothing more than that - well, perhaps spend time with him and Avalon would be better - but his attention had to be on the search. "I left the console to track the black markets selling the specific software Kovarian would need to use on Avalon. I have to be there if anything comes up."

"I can be there," Lena assured him. "If anything does come up, I'll give you a call."

"Lena," the Doctor sighed and shook his head. "I don't...I don't even know what to tell the Sapling. I mean, I told him that I would find his mother and I have yet to follow through. It's been almost a month and I've got nothing."

"He knows that you're searching hard. Right now, I think you just need to be there with him, like a Dad." Lena bumped his side encouragingly. "Just talk."

The Doctor seemed lost for another option. "But you'll be at the console, right?" Lena nodded. "And you'll call if anything comes up?"

"Of course I will," Lena reassured him that she wouldn't leave the console until he got back. With that, the Doctor truly had no choice but go on inside the library.

The Sapling hadn't noticed him initially. He was focused on a picture of Avalon with her brother, Gavin, in a park. They were both attempting to climb a tree but had stopped to pose for the picture.

"Even as a child your mother looks like a troublemaker," the Doctor came around and took a seat next to the Sapling. The Sapling cracked a smile as they both studied the photograph.

A fifteen year old Avalon was smirking at the camera. She might have done something previous to the picture and no one but her would know about it.

The Sapling agreed. "Yeah. Have you found her yet?"

The smile on the Doctor's face was quick to fall. He shook his head in shame. "I haven't yet. But I will."

"I'm scared, Father," the Sapling admitted, not that it was a news for the Doctor. "That woman was a very mean woman who hurt aunt Amy and her baby. What if she's hurting Mother right now?"

The Doctor closed his eyes for a second. He had thought about that so many times, with thorough images, that it left his body shaking each time. Kovarian was not merciful and because she wanted him dead, she would stop at nothing to make sure both Melody and Avalon were thoroughly skilled.

He wondered how many times Avalon had screamed in terror and pain since she'd been taken. How many times had she cried? How much time had it been for her? A week? A month? Years? His hearts ached thinking Avalon had spent years with Kovarian, just like Melody. She was waiting for him to find her and he hadn't been able to track a single clue of where she could be.

"I don't know what they're doing to her right now, but I promise you that we will get her back," the Doctor promised on his lives. The Sapling believed him. He always did.

"Why did they take Mother away, anyways? And baby Melody? They didn't do anything wrong."

Another hard question the Doctor wanted to avoid. "They didn't, of course they didn't," he first agreed. "They...these people that took them, they don't like me very much. They want to hurt me..."

"And they took Mother and Melody because of that?"

The Doctor nodded silently. Even though the Sapling was a child, he could easily read the guilt on the Doctor's face.

"It's not your fault," he said. "Mother would tell you that too."

"Yeah, she would." A brief smile appeared on the Doctor's face as he thought about Avalon's reaction. She would no doubt call him an idiot for believing that but then she would give him one of her warm hugs. He would then indulge himself by believing her for a moment.

"Do you love, Mother?" the Sapling suddenly questioned. Even though it was done in a gentle child's voice, it snapped the Doctor out of his thoughts in a second.

"Wh-what? I don't...what?" the stammering was a natural response given the heavy weight of the question. The Doctor's face went a deep red in the seconds that followed.

The Sapling just smiled. "I just wonder if my parents love each other. Melody's parents love each other."

"Sapling, uh, Amy and Rory have been married a good while now. Your mother and I...it's, uh, very complicated." And that was still an understatement. At times, he wanted Avalon right next to him so he could dote on her and show her anything she wanted; he was at her beck and call. But other times...he wanted to lock her in a room so he would leave her alone at least for five minutes. She would frustrate him to no end and having an argument with her was sure to end with both of them screaming at the top of their lungs. It was a strange feeling - as he hadn't had that type of relationship with anyone else - but he knew that even during those moments he still wanted her. He would still want to kiss her and hold her. He liked her, a lot, that was past news but to say 'love'...maybe not right now. But you are getting there, he made the startling conclusion. He visibly gulped. That was certainly new.

"Maybe...maybe not right now..." he whispered and swallowed down the lump in his throat. He would have to think back on those thoughts another time, preferably when Avalon wasn't in danger.

"For now," the Sapling said matter of factly as he flipped to the next page of the album. "You gave Mother that journal," he nodded to Avalon's journal on the table. "Uncle Rory gave aunt Amy a ring because he loved her. That's what humans do, but you're not very normal."

"Oh, thanks," the Doctor rolled his eyes. That sounded completely like Avalon.

The Sapling smiled widely. "You gave Mother a journal that never runs out of pages. She wants to write - you gave her the ultimate present. If you don't love her yet, you will soon. And I know that Mother will too."

The Doctor inwardly sighed. The last thing he needed was for that to get around. No doubt Kovarian already had an insight to his feelings towards Avalon. It fueled the game even more, putting Avalon right in the middle of it.

~0~

1 Month after Demons Run.

"Why am I here again?" Avalon asked as a female doctor bound her wrists to the metal chair she was forced to sit on. She was back in the room with the screen that originally showed Avalon who her mother was. She didn't want to be there again - actually, she didn't want to be anywhere near Kovarian.

"Because we need to start your conditioning," Kovarian gave the female doctor a nod when Avalon was secured to the chair.

"My what?" Avalon blinked when she saw the female doctor coming back with electric pads in hand. "Why-why are you carrying those? What are you doing?" she frantically asked but the woman started attaching them to her skin without saying a word. Avalon's head craned to see Kovarian watching with satisfaction. "What are you going to do with me!?"

"Same thing we did to Melody. Of course with her, we didn't really use ECT. We just embedded the ideas from the start. I'm making the right adjustments to your conditioning."

"N-n-n-n-no! Get these off me right now!" Avalon resorted to pushing her wrists against the metal cuffs keeping her strapped in.

"Oh don't bother," Kovarian laughed and came up to Avalon. "We know very well about your strength - you get that from your mother - and we have accounted for everything. There is no getting out of this."

Avalon glared, her face scrunching slightly as her anger rose. "What are you going to do?" she flinched when the female doctor attached the last two pads to her temples.

"You seem to cling onto the Doctor more than anyone else, even your grandmother, so we need to change that. Dr. Lefevre here, will conduct the electric shocks at my order and by the time we're done here..." Kovarian came to lean very close to Avalon, allowing her to notice the light freckles on Kovarian's face, "After we're done here, you're going to associate the Doctor with pain."

Gulping came on instinct, but Avalon still endeavored to prove that she wouldn't be an easy victim. "I won't fall for it. I got news for you, lady, my brain's all messed up anyways. And you know what? The Doctor might hate me because of who I am but I won't ever hurt him. I'd rather die first."

Kovarian dramatically groaned as she straightened up and turned away from Avalon. "This idolizing him has got to stop! You don't understand the danger he's putting us in with his existence! But don't worry," she spun around back to Avalon, expressing as if Avalon had done something wrong that she could fix for her. "I see the truth and I'm going to help you see it too. Dr. Lefevre?"

Lefevre nodded again and walked out of the room. Avalon shut her eyes thinking the first wave of electric shocks was about to hit her but instead the screen projector came to life and the room's lights went off.

"Let's start," Kovarian smiled maniacally as she came to stand beside Avalon's chair.

~ 0 ~

1 Month and a week after Demons Run.

"No, more, no more, please," Avalon's voice was too strained to make a proper plead. Her body felt like soup. Yes, that was a feeling she thought wasn't possible until now. She felt like she was floating but couldn't really move her arms nor legs. They were the noodles.

"But this is only 2005 now," Kovarian promised but she had promised that last week when this first started.

"Don't you...get it?" Avalon struggled to breath normally. "If you keep...doing this...I won't m...make it."

"Oh don't worry, that's where your regenerative cycle comes in. If your body truly does expire then you'll just regenerate and we can continue where we left off!"

Avalon felt like she could cry there and then. Regeneration? She didn't even want to think about such a thing. Her body dying? Now that she knew she could, she wondered how the hell the Doctor could do that so easily and not get stuck on the fact he had to die to get a new body.

"I'm going to...die...and...I don't even know how...to survive," Avalon coughed aggressively but Kovarian didn't seem perturbed.

"Lefevre, next!" she gave the order for the screen to switch again.

The next series of pictures shown were the aftermath of a famous battle Avalon once heard of but never had the full details. Along with pictures, Kovarian had also included videos for better representation.

"Cybermen..." Avalon recognized the terrible metal robots marching down a street. "What...what is this?" her eyes widened when the screen switched to show her Daleks flying in the air.

"This is the Battle of Canary Wharf, one of the biggest slaughters of the human race," Kovarian explained, although her tone didn't exactly portray regret. She was angry as hell but it was directed at one man instead of the fact that people died "And who was at the center of it? The Doctor. Have you seen the list of the dead?"

"Have you?" Avalon challenged.

Kovarian knew what she was trying to do and smiled. "My anger is not misplaced. This battle was specifically tailored to the Doctor because it originated from Torchwood. I believe you're familiar with the organization? Queen Victoria was like me. She saw the true danger the Doctor posed for the humans. She created Torchwood as a means to put an end to the man. But in the end, he put an end to it. People died at the hands of the Daleks and Cybermen. His own companion was thrown into a different universe. And that set the course for an even bigger battle that threatened the very existence of the universes."

New tears filled Avalon's eyes as she was forced to see the catastrophic aftermath. Streets were in ruins. Cars had exploded into fire. Several buildings were either half or completely destroyed. But there were so many corpses on the ground. everywhere.

"You didn't know that, did you?" Kovarian watches the tears rolling down Avalon's face. The ginger said nothing, but there was a clear fear etching across her features. "Lefevre!" Kovarian gave a hard yell.

The electric pads sent a riveting shock through Avalon's body. She screamed and wailed for them to stop. Each shock was worse than the last. It was as of everything inside her was on fire and there was no putting it out until Kovarian took pity on her.

When it was over, Avalon's body went limp against her chair. Her eyes wanted to close but she fought to keep them at least half open.

"Pain," Kovarian repeated just as she did each time the shocks were done. "That is what the Doctor is. Pain, destruction, and we have to end him."

However she could, Avalon glared but her mouth was temporarily unavailable. Kovarian knew this. Each time the shocks were over, Avalon would grow weaker against it. She would either die or she would finally start succumbing to effects.

"This is for your own good, for all of us," Kovarian moved around the chair so that she stood in front of Avalon. "I've seen the future and do you know what? I don't think you should even try to defend him. From where I stand, he's already replaced you and your little family." While Avalon couldn't say anything then, she still glared again. "And you've seen it too," Kovarian turned enough to gesture at the screen that was still showing the last pictures of the Canary Wharf battle. "It's a known fact that each time the Doctor faces a big battle, he leaves the companions behind. The one in that battle got lost in another world, and then the next one? Lefevre!"

The screen suddenly switched to a dark-skinned woman wearing a formal UNIT uniform. Avalon squinted her eyes to try and focus on the name tag the woman was wearing.

"Dr. Martha Jones walked the Earth for a year that none of us can remember to fight yet another Time Lord the Doctor was responsible for. The human nearly got killed and guess what happened? The Doctor -" Kovarian's voice took on a hard tone as she looked back at Avalon, "-moved on. And that bit of the woman? Did you know that there was a year completely lost? The Doctor erased a whole year that was full of blood thanks to him and his little Time Lord friend. No one can remember it. Only the Silence could, of course. They're useful like that. Bet the Doctor didn't tell you that, did he?"

Avalon didn't want to look so stunned but...she couldn't help it. What did she mean there was a whole year that none of them can remember? There were no stories about that, not even of Martha Jones fighting in it. The Doctor didn't say a word about it.

"And then the 27 planets that were stolen?" Kovarian yelled for Lefevre to switch pictures. "Oh, there were so many deaths that night. I believe this is where the Doctor moved on from yet another companion after sincerely - how do you humans say it? - screwing her over. Wiped her memories, the whole thing!" she made a quick gesture to the sides of her head.

Avalon's eyes narrowed the moment she thought about Donna Noble. She deeply regretted throwing that in the Doctor's face. That had to be one of the most terrible things he was forced to do. "Accident..." she managed to say. In talking, she got the taste of metal...making her realize there was a bit of blood in her mouth.

Kovarian mocked her with a laugh. "Oh, of course. And do you even know why it was possible for the worlds to be moved? Because that little companion from 2005 was able to cross worlds. The Doctor created a companion so dangerous that she literally broke the walls of the universe. If that doesn't prove how dangerous he is, I don't know what will!"

"N-not his...fault!" Avalon spat and felt bits of blood oozing from the corner of her mouth. It wasn't the Doctor's fault the choices his companions took.

"But it is," Kovarian turned right around to face Avalon. "The next one after that is you and your family. But guess what?" her face morphed into a mocking pout. "It won't last long either. Because I know for a fact that eventually the Doctor will move on from the Ponds. All of you." She made it pretty clear that really did mean everyone which, against her best efforts not to believe it, did sprinkle a bit of fear in Avalon.

Would the Doctor really move on from her too?

You did hurt him, she reminded herself. He has every right to drop you off too.

"And the next companion after you all is the one," Kovarian made sure to express her true hatred for whatever poor soul came next in line. "She's the one that brings the Doctor to the place where he will descend destruction on us."

"Then...kill...her," Avalon found herself saying. She didn't know who was meant to come into the TARDIS in the future but she didn't want the Doctor anywhere near a place that was meant to be a battle zone.

Kovarian feigned a sigh. "But she's a tricky one. I don't know the mechanics. Plus, if I kill her off then somebody else will inevitably bring the Doctor to that place. No, I have to go directly to the source, to the origin. Here. The Doctor has to die here, in this point of time."

Avalon swallowed hard when she got memories of Lake Silencio. But then she realized something...she couldn't remember everything. She started blinking fast the more she thought in vain. "I-I can't...I can't remember...Lake Silencio...what's-what's going on?"

There was a satisfied smirk playing on Kovarian's face. "Oh, the ECT is finally kicking in. The more we do this, the more fragile your brain becomes and once it's fragile enough we can start."

~ 0 ~

2 Months after Demon's Run

"STOP! JUST STOP!" Avalon screamed and wailed, her eyes screwing shut yet snapping open each second like a pattern. Her body twisted and writhed each time she felt a burning prick. "Please...just stop!" Her sobs echoed throughout the crystal clean room but none of the people inside would listen to her.

Two people held her body down, pinning her arms and legs against the metal table. When her skin made contact with the cool metal, she hissed. Her body was so susceptible to radical temperatures right now thanks to the series of tests Kovarian was running on her.

First, it'd been the insomnia test. They deprived Avalon of sleep for God knows what reason, but she was so tired. She'd always had trouble going to sleep but right now she would kill for an hour where she could just doze off. And once they figured out that Avalon could stay a minimum of four days awake, they moved onto to an expanded form of the test. Kovarian wouldn't settle for the simple 'let's see how long you can stay up', no. She would purposely change the temperature, leave Avalon in the dark and if Avalon dared to fall asleep, Kovarian would shock her. It was a piercing electricity that Avalon swore would make her body explode if the tests kept going.

And then they moved onto the injuries. How much could Avalon's body take?

They first started with simple cuts that Avalon would hiss and yell at them to stop. But things escalated. Cuts turned into full-fledged gashes where Avalon would physically want to pass out from how much blood she was losing. She swore that in one of those, somebody had actually touched her bones and organs.

Then Kovarian wanted to see what temperatures Avalon could withstand.

A blazing hot room was Avalon's home for a week. She had never craved water so much in her life. She did pass out a few times but then came the freezing cold. No matter how much she begged for them to stop or to at least give her a blanket, she was left in the ice cold room for another week. There were only intervals with regular temperature just so that she wouldn't die.

And now here she was for the latest test. Something about regeneration. The gashes would return and now they expected for her to heal herself but she didn't know how! How could she access energy that she didn't even know she carried!? And when she proved useless, Kovarian ordered for her people to carve into Avalon's body to examine that energy. One way or another, they would have that energy.

So there was Avalon, desperately crying for somebody to help her. Her right arm felt like it would fall off if she felt another burning cut. She turned her head to the left and blinked fast to get her sight cleared up. A woman was looking down at her behind a pair of glasses.

"Please...just stop...just...for a moment..." Avalon's voice was hoarse from all the screaming and the prior exams. "I...beg you..."

The woman paid her no attention. She just held Avalon's arm tightly and watched the exam continue.

Avalon honestly wished she was dead at this point. Nothing could be worse than what she was living. If she was lucky, they wouldn't find what they were looking for and they would just kill her.

~ 0 ~

2 Months after Demons Run

"Uh, no Dad, we...haven't found her yet," Lena wanted to speak as quietly as possible while talking to her father but it was impossible when she was forced to stay in the console with the Doctor's so very good hearing. She wanted to leave each time her father called to know their status on the search, but the Doctor wouldn't have it. He had made a promise to find Avalon and Melody and he wasn't living up to it.

It was like he was punishing himself by forcing himself to hear the disappointment in Lena's voice when she told her father that nothing changed. They were still completely lost.

With a sigh, Lena ended the call with her father. She didn't have to explain to the Doctor what it was about. "He just says he believes in you."

The Doctor let out a noise indicating his lack of faith in himself. He kept himself at the console, his fingers tiredly working through the controls.

"He knows you'll find her, though. He has no doubt about it," Lena kept insisting. "He says-" but she was interrupted by an alarm from the console. She was quick to react with wide eyes. "Is that-"

"-a clue!" the Doctor lunged for the side of the console that was giving off the alarm. He found new energy that sped him up through the process of discovering what the alarm was for.

"Well, what is it!?" Lena anxiously waited for him to say something.

"Don't know, it's...um, somebody's calling me from a Black Market in..." the Doctor leaned closer to the monitor, "It's a Black Market in the Black Eye Galaxy."

"The what now?" Lena blinked, but the Doctor didn't pay attention to her confusion. All he knew was that there was finally a possible clue of where Avalon was.

"Baby sister, you're gonna want to hang onto something! SAPLING!" his voice roared through the room. They had a new place to get to quick!

~ 0 ~

3 Months After Demon's Run

Three shots fired consecutively, each hitting of their intended targets.

Avalon swallowed roughly when she lowered her weapon and saw she'd gotten three more straight in a row. She blinked several times as she found she was unable to remember when she was ordered to fire. Her eyes swept over the room as if this were the first time she saw it.

It was huge and barely furnished. The only light coming through was from three small windows above. Avalon realized the room was underground, like a basement. Across of her were three dummies with bullets embedded mostly in the chest. She looked down at herself and could not for the life of her remember how she got into an oversized white blouse and skinny white pants. Even her hair was forced back into a messy low bun. Many of her curls - which were untamed and frizzy from lack of attention - were hanging around her face like curtains.

"How does this keep happening?" she whispered to herself, but she was never alone.

"Again," the Silence with her commanded.

Avalon swallowed hard and turned her head to the right where the ugly lone Silence stood. Her hand shakily moved up to her dry hair. "B-but I-I r-remember you. I can't rememb-b-ber a lot but I k-keep remembering you. How are you doing that?"

The Silence left a moment of silence pass by, as if it were actually constructing an explanation to Avalon's questions. Finally, it cocked its head to the side and answered, "Shoot again."

"No!" Avalon took aim on the Silence again, albeit her shaky arms didn't exactly cause fear. Half the time she didn't know if what she was seeing was a hallucination from everything she'd gone through, or if things really were as bad as they were.

"Oh put the weapon down, child," Kovarian ordered as she appeared in the room. "You do this every time." She was not phased when Avalon turned the gun on her. "As you do that."

"I don't understand, I-I remember things but it's in pieces," Avalon's hand curled tightly around the gun. "My b-bbrain...it hurts..." she brought her free hand to her massive curls and pulled on them in frustration. "Everything's all jumbled up..." her voice cracked in the end, confirming she was truly all over the place. She was losing control over her own thoughts. Her body would jerk suddenly, very often, thanks to the electric shocks. Her skin was dry, making it so easy to get cuts and bruises. And it showed.

Kovarian was proud of her newest experiment. It was working marvelously. It was easier to push Avalon and to control her. Now she wanted to give Avalon the ultimate test, the test that would prove if they'd successfully conditioned her.

"We're going out on a little trip," she announced, not that Avalon seemed to be paying attention. The woman had retreated a few steps and was mumbling words to herself, a nursery rhyme. "Yoo hoo! Anybody home?" Kovarian laughed at her own joke. "Bring her along," she ordered the Silence and turned to leave.

~0~

Avalon wouldn't recognize where they brought her, nor would she know how to get out. The entire place was covered in taverns. It seemed like was night underneath. Everybody looked suspicious, but everyone seemed to fear them - not her but the woman with her - and didn't want anything to do with them.

"You walk far too slow," Kovarian remarked as she studied every movement of Avalon's. Her walking would definitely have to improve. It looked like Avalon was dragging her feet. "And you're not examining your parameters. An enemy can easily take you down right now."

"T-tired..." Avalon said, too weary to say much more. "Why...am I-I here?"

"Because I want you to walk to the end of this line and back," Kovarian responded and a few seconds later came to a stop.

"What?" Avalon thought her hearing might be going too.

"Walk till the end of this aisle and back," Kovarian repeated. "Simple task."

"But why-" Avalon was cut off midsentence when Kovarian pulled out a gun on her.

"I don't explain my orders, child. I give the command and you follow them," she said with a dark tone that had started to seed fear in Avalon. She'd already gotten a taste of it with the ECT.

Avalon closed her eyes. She didn't want to remember that horrible week. She could still feel the electric shocks making her body tremble, and usually her body would shake and jerk. She just wanted it all to stop.

"Go! Before I shoot you and we both find out how strong your regenerative cycle is." Kovarian motioned with her gun for Avalon to start talking.

Avalon lowered her head and turned in the direction she'd been pointed to. In another moment, she would have probably been ecstatic to visit a real life Black Market. This is the place where all of the fun toys were at. But right now, anyone there could easily kill her with a lift of a finger. She couldn't fight anymore, she couldn't snap anymore, she couldn't think properly. She was just so tired, so incredibly tired, both physically and mentally. It was honestly sad how easily she broke. All those times where she thought she was strong was just a lie. She was weak.

Her feet started taking small steps forwards. At the very least if she walked away she would get a few minutes away from Kovarian and the Silence. That sounded nice.

But you'll have to go back, she reminded herself. It returned the fear in seconds.

She would have to go back, back to the torture, back to the nonstop 'training'. She didn't know how much more she could take, honestly. If she didn't die from exhaustion, she might just go crazy from all the memory blocks. If she was being honest, she didn't even remember what she did yesterday. For all she knew, she might have seen the Doctor yesterday.

Her feet came to an automatic stop. Would she forget something like that? Her hand found the Doctor's watch on her wrist, the very same watch she'd won in a bet a year ago. The Doctor swore she had cheated but he still gave up his favorite watch. She knew that if he wanted to, he would've just taken it back or never really had given it up in the first place, but he never did. He allowed her to keep it.

Now maybe you can give it back, came a pondering thought. Her eyes widened for a second as a genuine idea came to mind. It was probably the only coherent thought she'd had in a while. She looked over her shoulder and could barely see Kovarian which meant that Kovarian could barely see her.

Do it, the voice told her.

Avalon found the farthest stall in the aisle and dashed for it. It was an odd run, really, as it seemed like a combination of a hobble and a sprint. Her feet were a bit funny lately, but if she did things right she might finally get some rest (and the good kind not the dead type).

"What do you want?" barked the man in charge of the stall. He seemed human enough until Avalon realized he was a slimy green with spikes sticking up from his head. That probably made for some interesting business.

"I-I-I have..." Avalon involuntarily lost her voice for a second. All her words were trying to come out at the same time.

"I don't understand! Are you going to buy something!?" the man snapped.

Avalon quickly nodded her head. "Y-you're about to have the business deal of your life. You know the Doctor?" It was a stupid question given the man's reputation.

The man sneered. "That idiot who takes it upon himself to say what's right or wrong?"

"That's the one! Y-y-you want to owe him a favor?"

The man, despite his obvious dislike for the Doctor, arched a slightly thicker green eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you g-g-give him th-this..." Avalon couldn't seem to get the watch off her as fast as possible, "You'll b-be doing him a huge f-favor and you'll h-have one of the most powerful p-people owing you one."

The man scrutinized the watch in her hand with obvious distrust. "Over a simple watch? You trying to have me?"

"I-I swear I'm n-not. This is h-his watch and I'm s-s-someone he's looking for. A-Avalon Reynolds. Tell him that n-name and y-you'll see how fast he comes." She was truly counting on it. At least one more time.

"And if not?"

"Then you just got yourself a nice watch you can probably tweak to hide something you don't want others to see." Avalon tried her best not to seen as nervous as she truly was. This could work only if the man followed through and if Kovarian didn't catch her.

"What did you say your name was?" the man was eyeing her appearance, as if committing her to memory.

She looked like an outright mess. Her clothes were disheveled. Her skin was poorly kept and the chapped cracks were beginning to show. She had a few bruises along her arms, decorating the healing stitches that looked pretty fresh. Every so often she would shake, just like her shaky voice and stuttering words. Her eyes had bangs under them, ugly purple bags. Her hair was in a low pony tail, but most of her curls were popping out in various directions. And the constant stammering was plain annoying.

"U-um, Avalon..." Avalon brought a hand up to scratch her cheek. She seemed like she would close her eyes to think about something, but once again her body jerked and she dropped her arms to her side.

"Wait a second," the man suddenly blinked as if he'd just realized something. "The Doctor was said to be collecting debts for a battle. He took several of my customers away. You're with the Silence, aren't you? The Kovarian chapter? I heard all about that. They took that baby. Pretty stupid if you asked me, picking a fight with him. But hey..." the man seemed to be making the connections based on Avalon's teary face. "Oh, you couldn't be...?"

Avalon's eyes filled with tears in that one second. "P-please," she resorted to begging. "D-Don't tell anyone a-a-anything. Just...just get the Doctor. If I g-get out, he'll owe y-you s-s-something."

"Really?" the man raised an eyebrow as he watched Avalon hold the watch. Her hand was trembling to the point of nearly dropping the watch. He was no idiot. She was scared out of her mind and with good reason. He had heard all about the stupid woman who decided to kidnap one of the Doctor's companions, along with their child, and now he had the glorious opportunity to force the Doctor's hand?

That was simply too good of a deal to pass up.

He snatched the watch off Avalon's hand, noticing the woman flinch in the process, and bared his yellow pointy teeth at her. "You got a deal."

Avalon was in disbelief that it actually worked. "R-really?"

"Oh yeah, I can't wait to see the Doctor's face when I force his hand," he eyed the watch now in his possession with newfound fondness. He knew the power he held.

Avalon swallowed hard. How mad would the Doctor be once he learned that she basically let someone borrow him? Hopefully he'd still help her in the end. "C-c-can I...leave a-a m-messsage?" she made a gesture as if she was writing something in the air.

"Oh alright," the man rolled his eyes and retrieved a scrap of paper and pen. However she could, she scribbled a quick message - though from where the man stood, it didn't seem like a message. It was more chicken scratch than anything. She could barely hold the pen as it was.

"Could you...b-break...break..." Avalon tapped the glass of the watch. Her strength wasn't for that anymore. The man once again rolled his eyes and shattered the glass of the clock. Avalon quickly took the watch into her hands and pushed in the crumpled paper inside. "Th-there..."

The man snatched the watch before she could say goodbye to it. It was the last piece of the Doctor she had, so she really hoped giving it away would be worth it. Otherwise, she'd just be completely alone now.

"Now scram!" the man roared and laughed when Avalon turned to run away. She truly was a scared little thing.

When Avalon made it back to Kovarian, she was exhausted. It was a struggle to catch her breath, as if she'd ran a whole marathon.

But Kovarian just smiled upon her work. From her perspective, Avalon had passed the test. She'd given Avalon the opportunity to run away, but she didn't. She came right back just like she was ordered to.

The conditioning was well on its way.

~0~

The TARDIS landed right where the signal had come through, not a minute too late. She was just as motivated to find Avalon and Melody as everyone else. After all, the two women were a part of her too.

"You're sure we're not late or anything?" Lena questioned while the Doctor did a quick surveillance on the monitor of the Black Market they were in.

"Of course. The TARDIS knows the danger Ava and Melody are in. She wants them back as much as we do, don't you old girl?" the TARDIS gave an affirmative hum. The Doctor continued to work until a new thought crossed his mind. "You know, I guess I now understand why you always liked Avalon so much."

Lena smiled when the TARDIS seemed to hum another 'yes'.

"You know she chose Avalon straightaway?" the Doctor glanced at Lena, feigning a pout. "First night your sister stepped in, the TARDIS was willing to let Ava take her for a ride." Lena laughed when the TARDIS hummed what could only be an 'of course'.

"Are we there now!?" the Sapling came running down the stairs. "Is Mother here!?"

"Ah, not yet sure," the Doctor said once he got back to work. For the most part, the market just seemed to be like any other market.

"So, what was the signal you got?" Lena inched closer to his side to catch whatever was on the monitor.

"Somebody's trying to send a message," the Doctor mumbled as he worked to decipher that precise message. "Psychic connection, you see. Trying to send it through the TARDIS. Ah! Here we are!"

The screen turned black for a moment. Particles were arranging to form letters.

'Avalon Reynolds. Watch.'

That certainly got the trio silent.

"Who sent that, big brother?" Lena found her voice a few minutes later.

"I-I don't know exactly," the Doctor dove to the keyboard to figure that out. His fingers wouldn't work fast enough for him. "S-somebody wanted to get my attention though because they sent it directly to me."

"Then we should go!" the Sapling darted for the doors when the Doctor ordered him to stop. "But why?"

"Because that is a Black Market and you are a child. I don't know who sent that message but they wanted me here," the Doctor strode towards the doors, making sure to usher the Sapling in the opposite direction. "Lena, survey the entire Market for any trace of Avalon."

"On it," Lena nodded. "But what are you gonna do? What if it's a trap?"

"Then at least you and the Sapling will be here to call for back up. River Song's on the dialing list!"

"I'm sure she is," Lena chuckled as she took position by the console.

The Doctor turned for the doors and straightened his jacket. "Let's do this." He pushed the doors open and walked out.

He started down the long aisle of stalls, making sure to scour each stall for any red hair or eye patch. If Avalon was here, he was not leaving without her. And if this was a trick, then pity the fool who was behind it. He was in no mood for jokes and the entire galaxies knew it.

Eventually, he found an icky, slimy green man giving him a funny eye. The Doctor first made sure that the green man was actually looking at him before walking over to his stall. "You wouldn't happen to know if anyone around sent a psychic message to say, oh, a blue box?"

The green man made no attempt to hide his glee. "That'd be me. Doctor, I presume?" the Doctor gave a brief nod, now eyeing the man up and down. "Your different than the appearance description I had of you. Course that was years ago."

"You sent the message?"

"Why yes I did." The man suddenly raised the Doctor's old watch in the air and had a good laugh pulling it away after the Doctor lunged for it. "So it's true then. It is yours and you are very determined to get it back."

The Doctor glowered at the man who's chest practically rumbled with laughter. "You have 10 seconds to tell me where you got that from."

"Oh no, no," the man waved a finger, showing off a bright yellow nail that matched the yellow shade of his teeth. "This is valuable. And don't deny it because I know it."

"Where'd you get it from?" the Doctor's tone was dangerously low.

The man smirked proudly. "Some girl gave it to me. Promised me it was valuable and what do you know? She's right."

"What. Girl?"

"Oh, you want to know what she looked like?" the man lowered the watch for a moment as he pretended to think about it, or as if he had to remember. "Well, to be honest with yah, she wasn't looking all that good. Skin looked ready to crack. She's human, ain't she? That's how humans get when they're, uh, what do you call it? Dehydrated? Or no, wait, dry? I don't remember-"

The Doctor lost it and yanked the man over the counter by his slimy green collars. "You have exactly 0.5 seconds to tell me where the hell you got the watch from."

"Or what? I know your stories, you don't do weapons," the man grinned far too confident.

"Let me put it to you straight: the girl I'm looking for is somebody I will do anything for. I'll throw you into a blackhole right now if you don't start telling me the story. And if you think you just got me to deal with? You got another thing coming. You know River Song?"

The man snorted with heavy distaste. "Blasted woman destroyed my stock in the Celeste Black Market."

"The girl is her daughter. You really want to have me and her on your bad list?" the Doctor wasn't comfortable using that truth for his gain but River told him use anything as his disposal to find Avalon. He would apologize for that later. It'd gotten him some information beforehand so it was definitely useful.

"You're kidding," the man laughed. "That girl is her daughter? Well, I guess that's probably where she got her bargaining her skills from. Sneaky little thing."

The Doctor unceremoniously shook the man. "You get River Song as a treat for being extra disgusting. She takes care of your Black Market stocks and I-" he pulled the man slightly closer to his face, "-will take care of you, personally." There was a sweet, dark smile spreading across his face that promised true horrors.

The man had the good sense to gulp. "F-fine! The girl said her name was Avalon Reynolds. Said if I gave you the watch you would owe me a favor. Some friend you got there, bargaining you off for her own personal gain."

The Doctor let the man go without warning - ignoring the slump noise when the man fell over the counter - and took his watch. He inspected it for any other clue Avalon might have left behind for him. He didn't have to look much since the very first thing he saw was the missing glass. There was a small paper crumpled inside.

"Left that for yah," the man muttered once he'd gotten himself off the counter. "She could barely write, though. Kept shaking and one of her fingers had cuts on them."

The Doctor tried not to picture that image. How scared must she be? I need to be faster. He unfolded the paper and quickly read the few lines Avalon had written.

Brainwashing me. I don't know how long I can keep my sanity, literally.

They keep moving me. It's always in dark places.

Melody's on Earth somewhere. They took her away from me 3 months ago.

I'm sorry.

Three months ago. The Doctor found it incredibly hard to stay on his feet right then. It'd been 3 months for Avalon. Three months that she'd spent with Kovarian under God knew what tortures. His hand gripped the watch tightly between his fingers.

"This is all she left behind?" he scrutinized the man for any clue that he might be holding back.

"Yeah. She didn't look like she could say much more; looked very sick. But you owe me, Doctor. That was the deal the girl promised me. I gave you what she wanted."

"Yeah, except you didn't hold her here," the Doctor stuffed the watch and the paper in his jacket's inside pocket. "Then I would've owed you something."

The man was outraged he'd been lied to. "You can't do that! If you don't uphold the end of the bargain I'll-"

"No, you really won't," the Doctor pulled out his sonic and aimed it at the shelves holding jars of glowing liquids. When the sonic was activated, each of the jars exploded like dominoes. The man screamed at the sight of his ruined products but the Doctor didn't flinch with either noise. He only watched as each jar shattered and splattered the stall. "Use this a message to everyone else: if they see Kovarian, the Silence, or Avalon Reynolds, they better call me or I'll come for them and destroy everything that's precious to them. That's a Time Lord's promise." He took off and allowed himself to relish in the man's suffering just for a bit. Or maybe for a long moment. Because if word got out that he would make anyone suffer should they not follow his instructions, he could get Avalon back quicker. And besides, anyone who hurt Avalon deserved to be terrified and to suffer in pain.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IT'S CHARISMA, 372

Certainly it can be launched. That's what you're addicted to.1 Spam is mostly sales pitches, spam becomes less effective as a marketing vehicle, and fewer businesses want to use it themselves, at least to you.2 The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas.3 I'll start by telling you something you don't have to explain why. But you know the ideas are out there.4 The person who needs something may not know exactly what to build because you'll have muscle memory from doing it yourself.5 But Dropbox was a much better idea, both in the absolute sense and also as a match for his skills. For coming up with startup ideas on demand. So you have two choices about the shape of hole you start with. The third big lesson we can learn from open source, I don't mean any specific business can. Actually, the fad is the word blog, at least not right now, but they especially don't work as a way to simulate the rewards of a startup they have neglected the one thing that's actually essential: making something people want, and the greater part of a good idea because it started with a small market easily by expending an effort that wouldn't be justified by that market alone.

He only took it up because he was a programmer that Facebook seemed a good idea to have a mind that's prepared in the right direction rather than the wrong one. I've described is near zero. Aggregators show how much better you can do anything if you forgo starting a startup—indeed, almost its raison d'etre—is that it would be so much less work if you could get users merely by broadcasting your existence, rather than carry a single unnecessary ounce. Was there some kind of salesperson. Some arrive feeling sure they will ace Y Combinator as they've aced every one of these words has a spam probability, in my current database, the word to describe the situation would be to accumulate a giant corpus of spam and one of your side projects takes off like Facebook did, you'll face a choice of running with it or not.6 Stripe is one of the keys to retaining their monopoly.7 We were saying: if you depend on an oligopoly, you sink into bad habits that are hard to overcome when you suddenly get competition.

I do before x? Maybe it's not a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas, you have more ideas. The best plan may be just as well if you do it consciously you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive toward the end of the process. Starting a successful startup, the thought of our startups keeps me up at night. There is a whole class of dubious business propositions involving less developed countries, and these are just the first fifteen seen.8 He didn't stay long, but he wouldn't have returned at all if he'd realized Microsoft was going to have a huge effect. And they know the same about spam, including the headers.9 That's what was killing them. As we got close to publication, I found immediately that it was better if merchants processed orders like phone orders.

Well, math will give you more options to choose your life's work from.10 Fouls happen. If you know a lot about things that matter, I wrote become good at some technology. 84421706 same 0. 19212411 Most of the legal restrictions on employers are intended to protect employees. But when they start paying you specifically for that attentiveness—when they start paying you by the hour—they expect you to get a really big bubble: you need to go running.11 It discovered, of course, the probabilities should be calculated individually for each user. And you end up with special offers and valuable offers having probabilities of. 06080265 prices 0. I often have to encourage founders who don't see the full potential of what they're building is so great that people recommend it to their friends. I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector.12 A startup just starting out can't expect to excavate that much volume.13

And yet have you ever seen a Google ad? 9889 and. Think about what you have to do is give them a share of it. Imagine a graph whose x axis represents all the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks. Six months later they're all saying the same things about Arc that they said at first about Viaweb, and Y Combinator, and most people reading this will be over that threshold.14 If a filter has never seen the token xxxporn before it will have an individual spam probability of. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet.15

If the present range of productivity is 0 to 100, introducing a multiple of 10 increases the range from 0 to 1000. We assumed his logo would deter any actual customers, but it did not. Even colocating servers seemed too risky, considering how often things went wrong with them. You build something, make it available, and if you can make it happen. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as you can, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? When one looks over these trends, is there any overall theme?16 Good ones, anyway. The more spam a user gets, the less likely it is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. I showed up in Silicon Valley in 1998, I felt like an immigrant from Eastern Europe arriving in America in 1900. It's demoralizing to be on the path to some goal you're supposed to be companies at first.

Yes and no. The malaise you feel is the same. Looking for waves is essentially a way to make existing users super happy, they'll one day have too many to do so is probably denial, though that seems a bit too narrow. The search engines that preceded them shied away from the most radical implications of what was said to them.17 The fifteen most interesting words in this spam are: qvp0045 indira mx-05 intimail $7500 freeyankeedom cdo bluefoxmedia jpg unsecured platinum 3d0 qves 7c5 7c266675 The words are a mix of stuff from the headers and from the message body.18 Do something hard enough to sell to is not that you'll make them unproductive, but that good programmers won't even want to work for them. Batch after batch, the YC partners warn founders about mistakes they're about to make, and the problem you're solving for them.19

Notes

I realize I'm going to kill. Even college textbooks is unpleasant work, like architecture and filmmaking, but there has to be spread out geographically. Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable. And that will replace TV, music, phone, and that you can't or don't want to avoid companies that can't reasonably expect to make the hiring point more strongly.

Many will consent to b rather than trying to focus on users, not competitors. Do College English 28 1966-67, pp. Giant tax loopholes defended by two of the movie, but the nature of an audience of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup founder or investor I don't know which name will stick.

If you try to go behind the rapacious one. Put rice in rice cooker.

Something similar happens with suburbs. Perhaps the most important factor in the mid 20th century.

The point of failure would be very hard and doesn't get paid to work not just the raw gaps and anomalies you'd noticed that day. In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of computer security, and are often compared to what used to say that I'm skeptical whether economic inequality.

Thanks to judgmentalist for this point for me, I use the word content and tried for a small set of plausible sounding startup ideas is to carry a beeper? If Congress passes the founder visa in a time. The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but essentially a startup was a test of investor behavior. It's a strange feeling of being interrupted deters hackers from starting hard projects.

Which is not so good. If you're doing something that doesn't seem an impossible hope.

Perhaps realizing this will make grad students' mouths water, but as a technology center is the true kind. Not in New York the center of gravity of the 1929 crash.

They shut down a few months later Google paid 1. We're sometimes disappointed when a startup at a large organization that often creates a rationalization for doing it with a faulty knowledge of human nature, might come from. That can be done at a time.

E-Mail. But we invest in a domain is for sale. University Bloomington 1868-1970. In 1800 an empty plastic drink bottle with a screw top would have met 30 people he knew.

Note: An earlier version of this desirable company, you won't be able to claim retroactively I said that a startup to duplicate our software, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of business, A P supermarket chain because it doesn't cost anything.

Ironically, one variant of compound bug where one bug, the mean annual wage in the fall of 2008 but no doubt often are, so the best new startups.

Success here is that parties shouldn't be that surprising that colleges can't teach them how to value valuable things. An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in college is much smaller commitment than a Web terminal. Yahoo was their customer. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day by encouraging people to claim that they'll only invest contingently on other investors doing so.

I swapped them to act. I have about thirty friends whose opinions I care about.

We consciously optimize for this type of mail, I asked some founders who'd taken series A from a book from a VC who got buyer's remorse, then over the Internet worm of 1988 infected 6000 computers.

Mueller, Friedrich M. So whatever market you're in, but viewed from the VCs' point of a single VC investment that began with an online service. 2%. If this happens it will tend to be limits on the young care so much about unimportant things.

Some introductions to other knowledge. You should probably be multiple blacklists. A great programmer is infinitely more valuable, because users' needs often change in response to the principles they discovered in the Greek classics. Which helps explain why there are some good proposals too.

Ed. We didn't swing for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same in the sense of the economy. Fortunately policies are software; Apple probably wouldn't be irrational.

I was insane—they could bring no assets with them. By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a party school will inevitably arise. In fact, if you did.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Eric Raymond, Pete Koomen, and Maria Daniels for their feedback on these thoughts.

[kennyrobots]

answer in the form of an answer, part 0 (zero).

trying something new. so, as you might expect, i’m a bit of a lonely, homely sad-sack of a guy out here on these internet streets, and as a result, i’m on the dating apps. specifically okcupid, and as of this moment, ONLY okcupid. (i still technically have a hinge account too, but i actually haven’t used it since last march, i want to say, after the last time i had met someone on there that didn’t work out.) (i’ll suppress the urge to explain why, because...you’ll see.) if you know OKC, then you know that it’s chock-full of questions that you answer in order for them build you a dating profile, or harvest your information, or whatever else they do to monetize the free userbase, because i refuse to believe that the paying users are enough to subsidize the cheapos among us. (in fairness, i used to be one of those paying users, but since my “full-time” return a few weeks ago, i’ve been one of the free accounts. it’s had roughly the same effect: some likes, a handful of intros, no real conversations, much less dates. i highly doubt that it changes in any meaningful way if i pay for it, and it if does? that’s kinda fucked up. wouldn’t surprise me, though.) ANYWAY, i have a...let’s go with “bad habit” of putting an explanation in each of the blank spaces that accompany each answer, “in case you’d like to elaborate”, which i do, at great length. in the beginning, i took those spaces at face value, simply elaborating my thought processes within that space, keeping it MOSTLY on track, but somewhere along the line...let’s just say it took a turn. (oh, baby, did it take a turn.)

don’t get me wrong - i still put my thoughts down there. it’s a blank space, and me and blank spaces is like THIS. *doing all sorts of twisted shit with his fingers* but most of the time it’s sheer luck that said thoughts would even be relevant to the question being asked - it’s guaranteed that my answer will go off on a tangent, wherein i miss the point of the question completely. shit, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that my answer will refer to previous questions that i’ve answered (which makes no sense within the context of the question itself, because it’s not like i can hyperlink between answers on there) or even go completely off-topic entirely. and that’s if i’m TRYING. i’ve actually been doing this for years (because, despite myself, i am a writer) (a terribad writer, but a writer nonetheless), basically since i’ve had this current iteration of my OKC account (which is the third iteration, i believe - the first two having been deleted after poor experiences that led me to declare the process a failure) (i have problems learning lessons, is what i’m getting at here). so far, i’ve answered (as of today) 544 questions, ALL of which have an explanation against them. i’m willing to bet actual money that i’m the ONLY user in that entire hellsite that’s done that. others have provided explanations with their answers, sure, but i bet that i’m the only person that’s done it with EVERY SINGLE QUESTION i’ve answered. i’m willing to bet actual cold hard cash money on it, because that’s actually become the most entertaining part of using that site/app for me. (don’t worry - i will regale you about the time that OKC literally told me i should not be using it soon enough.) ANYWAY, a few nights ago, when i was off on my question-answering spree, i’d remarked to myself that i was finding *A* writer voice in these answers (not necessarily the writer voice that i use offline, but a voice nonetheless), and that notion actually stuck with me for longer than it probably should’ve. hell, i’ve even had the idea to answer every possible question on the site (i think there’s like 5000 of them) (don’t quote me on that), and when i got to the end (if there was an end, and assuming the process didn’t kill me), i would somehow get all of those questions aggregated together into a book or booklike format, and then...i actually have no idea what i’d do with it next, because basically all of my ideas are half-assed, so why should this one be any different. and then i remembered that, for whatever ungodly reason, i still have a tumblr account. (the reason is a woman that i’m no longer speaking to.) (because of course it is.) since it’d be virtually impossible to read my answers on OKC without having an account first (and i personally don’t recommend it) (i have one because i’m a legacy user, at this point), i’ve decided to publish those answers right here, on this tumblr, where anyone can read it (in theory). i actually have no idea if i’m even ALLOWED to do this - i kept trying to access the OKC terms and conditions, and the shit kept failing to load for me, which i’m sure means something somewhere - but fuck it. worst they can do is shut this bitch down, and in all honesty, that’s probably the most positive outcome here. so that’s basically it. i plan to publish at least one question and my corresponding answer here per day, and...again, i really haven’t thought it out all the way through. i’m not expecting to monetize this in any way - i’m pretty sure that between tumblr and OKC, both of them motherfuckers is going to own the content anyway - so i guess i just want to do SOMETHING with this tumblr, because i pretty much expect the same readership here that i have over there: virtually zero. ("virtually”, because there’s a person every now and again that will read through all of my answers, and i know of exactly ONE person that actually liked what i wrote. we went out on a few dates, she refused to actually call them “dates”, and it went about as well as you’d expect.) (don’t worry - i repeatedly make mention of it in my answers to some of the questions, because 1) i am a chronic oversharer (i’ve put this exact phrase in my dating profile and everything), and 2) i actually forgot what my 2 was supposed to be.) (suffice to say that, at this point, i’m pretty much doing it for myself, and that’s probably the best possible reason for doing ANYTHING these days.) i’ll probably provide additional commentary as we go along, because i honestly can’t help myself. if you get something out of it, then all the better. if you don’t? well, at least this shit was free. (i mean, you wasted your time, but that’s on you, chief.)

[journeytothenewme-blog]

So... I had a blog then decided since I wasn't able to update it enough that I was just going to shut it down. Only had 4 posts do whatever. However, I couldn't let them disappeared so I copy and pasted them here

Week One Down

6/17/20

I had my weigh in the other day, yeah, I know, I am a few days late in posting this. That is OK though, I am here now. I did an amazing job my first week back at it. I am down to 276.4 which is a loss of 6.6 pounds for the week. That is freaking amazing, in my opinion. I am aware that a lot of that is probably water weight, but I will take it. Even if it is mostly water it is still a nice feeling to see those numbers go down. It really helps boost the self esteem and lets me know that I am on the right track. 

I am part of a lot of WW groups on Facebook to help give me motivation and ideas for my journey. My problem is that I keep seeing a lot of members complaining about not loosing weight or only losing a pound or less on their first week. It makes me wonder why. I have used WW multiple times and have always had success with it. I am wondering if they are going over their points or eating too much fruit (or other zero point foods)? I wonder if they are consuming too much sodium and are retaining too much water? I have no idea but it kind of irritates me that they aren't doing it right, seems odd, I know. Another possibility is that they are working out too much and losing fat but gaining muscle? There are just too many variables and it is driving me nuts. I feel like if I knew what they were doing wrong then I wouldn't make the same mistake. At the same time, I feel like I should just focus on my own journey and forget about everyone else. 

My yo-yo weight loss is getting out of hand but at least now I am on a downward trend and moving towards healthy. The hope is that I will be able to continue going down. 

Last Day of Week 1

6/14/2020

It is Sunday afternoon. It is the last day of my first week back on Weight Watchers (WW). I am on the Green plan and I feel like it is going great so far. I always do pretty well the first week or two though and then fizzle out. The key is keeping up the momentum and pushing through. I will find out tomorrow though how well I did or did not do this week. Monday mornings are weigh in days and they will show me if my work is paying off or not. 

I haven't done much this week in the way of working out. The gyms are just now starting to open back up thanks to COVID-19. I haven't been back yet though. I don't know what is going on with my membership, if it is still active or if I have to renew it. I will take care of all that later, I am content not going for now. 

I did by some at home workout things to mess around with. I have some light dumbbell weights as well as a kettle bell. I am going to purchase some more items, like resistance bands and whatnot. It is nice to have access to a ton of workout videos thanks to YouTube so I can do any kind of workout I want from the comfort of my own home. It is nice that the husband works evenings so I can workout in peace on days that he isn't around. 

I have been going for walks at night when the weather is cool, giving myself a little exercise. It is better than nothing I suppose. 

Tomorrow morning will come soon enough as we will see how well this week went for me. 

A couple of days in...

6/12/2020

So I have been at it for a few days now. I started about five days ago. I feel like things are going OK. I have been eating some pretty tasty meals that are healthy too. I haven't gone over my points at all thus far *knock on wood*

I have had the opportunity to hit up the grocery store and load up on some staples like chicken, rice, and eggs. I also loaded up on some fresh produce. That is where I have to try to be careful. I tend to get too much at a time and end up throwing so much away. I am trying to prevent that from happening in the future but I am sure that there will be a learning curve. I prefer getting my produce from Aldi because, well, it's far cheaper. The only issue is that it goes bad rather quickly. Since I work right by our local Aldi I can make frequent trips so that isn't a problem. I will just have to buy a little at a time. 

Something that I have found that works for me, that I will be doing, is keeping snacks on hand. I buy fruit and veggies and cut them up, storing them in a bowl in the fridge. This is nice for when I want to just grab something to much on. I can just pop the lid off the bowl, grab a couple bites, and throw it back in. Easy as pie. 

Additionally, I found that keeping Greek yogurt is a must have. The flavored stuff is low on points and is great for dipping the fruit in. Also, it's pretty tasty as a stand alone snack. On the other hand, making a rand dip/dressing out of non-fat plain Greek yogurt is a must have when it comes to this have. It's perfect for dipping veggies or pretzels, and makes an excellent salad dressing. 

All and all things have been going great so far so I have high hopes. An acquaintance of mine joined WW a couple of days after me so I am able to share ideas with her. That is, of course, assuming she sticks with it. I am also aiming to get a buddy of mine in the program as well. He says he's game but has to wait two weeks until his next payday. If he joins then we can both get  a free month so that is a bonus. I want to start a weight loss competition for more motivation. I need people to keep me accountable!! 

Weigh in is on Monday, so I have a few days before I step on the scale. We will see what happens then. 

Day One... Again...

6/8/2020

I decided to start up again today, for many reasons. Of course, I want to loose weight. I am sick of being and feeling fat. I know that I am, and I probably always will be. However, when the people who are close to me start to tell me I need to change my habits then I should probably start to listen. I need to lose some pounds so I can feel better in my daily life. I am tired of not being able to walk down the stairs. I am sick of my knees and feet bothering me. I am over the stomach aches and fowl smelling gas. I hate that I cannot shop at most stores due to a lack of sizing. I am just ready to to be thinner and feel better. 

This go around I am doing Weight Watchers... again. I have had loads of success with the program in the past. The first time around, which was about 9 years ago, I lost almost 50 pounds in just three months. I was able to get down into the 220s which is the lowest I have been since before my son was born (he is 15 now). Unfortunately, that weight didn't stay off. I met my husband and just got comfortable. Over years I gained so much weight. A little over a year ago I hit my highest weight ever. I was weighing in at 303 pounds. I saw that on the scale and I knew that something had to be done. Two summers ago I started Weight Watchers, again, and succeeded. I was down to the 250s and feeling great. Then, again, life happened and I got comfortable and stopped dieting. I have since gained a lot of that back. I have dabbled with other weight loss strategies since then. I have used MyFitnessPal and tracked CICO with some success. However, none of that ever lasted more than a couple of weeks. 

So, here I am again today, starting over on WW. I was put on the green plan, which from what I understand has less 0 point foods but you get more points to work with throughout the day. At first I was a little worried, mostly since I cannot have chicken and eggs for no points anymore, like I could before. However, the more I have talked to people and thought about it, this might be for the best. I may have to track chicken and eggs, but I can eat way more points than I could before. Additionally, I can use those points for other foods, giving myself more of a variety. 

​I am excited to see where this journey takes me this time. 

Jess Jess

Follow me on my path to the new, healthier me. Watch my ups and downs, my successes and failures, and everything in between. I have started this journey many times before, but I am determined to make this the last time I start. I will accomplish what I am here to do, and that is to get healthy!

[monasatlantis]

Okay... here are my thought about Chapter 11 to 14 of Mr Love Queens Choice

Obviously, there are Spoiler for chapter 11 to 14 in this...

So... lets start with chapter 11, shall we? I was really happy how this chapter was handled. It was so slice of live, taking care of what the events of chapter 10 have done to Victor and MC as well as what that meant for their relationship. Not much drama going on (besides the Gavin stuff at the very end of course) just those two figuring out how to live with the new development. It was good to start the “Darkest hour” chapters that way. I liked how they handled Victor in this chapter. Because characters like him tend to be overprotective, possessive and domineering. That is what makes their characters so appealing (among other things of course) but it tends to become too much if things get out of hand. I hated how this was handled in MysticMessenger with Jumin, because it was going too far for too long without him really realizing his mistakes. Victor was handled much better. Whenever MC complained, he did react by giving in a little bit until he realized that he wasn’t doing her or their relationship any good thanks to her (absolutely necessary) outburst (something Jumin, who overdid it already was not doing...) and in the end you can see, all he wanted to tell her was that he can’t lose her again and that she has to be careful. I loved how when she said she thought he would be mad forever because he didn’t call her dummy, he did immediately call her dummy, to show he has long forgiven her. Ironic enough, though chapter 12 to 14 I kind of regretted getting rid of those bodyguards tho ^^’ And damn that meeting with Lucien. That was... whoa! The moment Victor came into the room, even as a player and despite both of them being reasonable I could feel the tension rising. It was amazing. I mean, in the end, nothing big really happened, but I did still hold my breath until Lucien vanished. The scene was very well done. Moving on to chapter 12. Why are Gavin-chapters always the ones with the most action and the long-lasting-cliffhangers at the end? Gee that one was intense. To be honest, after this rather slice-of-live slow-start Victor-Chapter I felt a little bit overwhelmed by how fast things turned dramatic and hectic in Gavins-chapter. To be honest... I found the part with the room and the fire and the Illusion that Gavin saw rather confusing. If room 404 (did you notice that there was no 0 to be found anywhere? The game constantly made 1 second out of 10 seconds because the zero was constantly missing...) never existed, how could it be found by both Gavin and MC and how did they still first end up in a different room? And how did they end up in the same room after Gavin realized the MC was an illusion? Didn’t quite get it, to be honest. Did you notice, when that other Officer was talking to MC about Gavins scars, how he casually mentioned he thought she would have seen them? Now think about it. The only scar MC noticed was the one on his neck, which was likely because the rest was hidden under his clothes. So what kind of relationship does the Officer think we have with Gavin? I was wondering that MC didn’t notice the underlying question here. But then again, she is not the sharpest tool in the shed and things were already dramatic and hectic then. We’ve learned something about Gavins past, once again it is Drama and Loss. Now... chapter 13. Lets be honest, Lucien was suspicious from the very beginning. Hints that he was with Black Swan were dropped here and there. So it was really no surprise when it was finally revealed. I have to say that I never liked Lucien. I don’t care about him one tiny bit. So even tho his chapters already proved to always give valuable information I always find them boring and am constantly wondering when those chapters are finally over... Regardless of that, I felt MCs sadness somehow when the realization hit her. The scene was really well made. It didn’t matter what you feel for Lucien, it only mattered what MC felt for Lucien and her heart was shattered. Sadly enough, I think she learned nothing from this lesson and will fall back into wanting to see Lucien... but oh well... whatever. Its been made clear that despite everything, Lucien doesn’t want to harm MC. He does like her. I guess he is torn between what he must do and what he actually wants to do. Doesn’t make him any better in my eyes, but with that in mind, I can live with the fact that MC is refusing to see this as a betrayal later on. This chapter too was intense, but in a different way then Gavins chapter was. And now the final Chapter. Chapter 14. Kiro seemed nervous when he called us in chapter 11 so it was clear something big was coming up. Do to some Spoiler I was a little bit aware of what was going on but even without that it was clear he would stop beeing the idol Kiro at some point, especially with the drops of hints we got about his past. I felt like he knew all along when he started this mission with MC that at some point, he would have no choice but to turn into **** (Spoiler, so I keep it to myself) and leave her behind for now. I think he was prepared for that. Still, saying goodbye at that point, that was obvious, was really hard for him. Kiros chapter too was intense and hectic I actually fund it going almost too fast. I wouldn't say it was rushed, because that would sound like the chapter was badly made, which it was not, the pace was just extremely fast and after over 6 hours of playing and when it was way past my bedtime here in Germany it was impossible for me to follow at some point because of the fast pace. I do think it was intentional tho. We as the players should feels as overwhelmed as MC did. I mean all those people and with all the other stuff happening before and why the hell didn’t they kill her immediately? Questions. Questions. Questions. Gavin saving her at the end didn’t come as such a big surprise for me, because I was still missing the picture from the trailer where he fell with her and I knew she wouldn’t die here. Now my overall thoughts about “the Darkest Hour”. I loved how misleading the first chapter was. I mean yes, we were constantly reminded that from now on MC would be always in danger but it never felt live-threatening like in the following chapters. Nothing was hinting at how dark this hours really would become. I did somehow like Ares more then Lucien, if you get what I mean. The moment Lucien showed up the first time I disliked him, when he turned into Ares and was finally showing his true face and stoped with the pretense I actually found him much more... well, let's say likable. Don’t get me wrong, I am not into bad guys or anything, but you could somehow feel that this was the real him and I prefer that over that obnoxious behavior he somehow showed around MC to make her like him. The plot is extremely complex and with timetravel involved that might be cause for a too complicated story to follow. I hope they thought that trough. Sometimes I wish I would have a choice in this damn game. I guess with the complex plot and all that it would be extremely complicated for a big mobile-game like this to add different routes to the story, but I still would love to have some influence on the story or MCs decisions every once in a while. Even if they don’t have any influence on the overall plot but only on this particular scene. You know, after in chapter 11 my phone was constantly ringing in this game, it felt extremely... creepy when in chapter 14 after Gaving and Victor went missing and Lucien has revealed himself as the bad guy, no one called anymore. It was almost too quiet. Besides... I do like the Phone-Calls ^^’ I still wonder about Luciens powers. He can obviously do more then call that protective shield... but what else can he do? And why the hell is he so damn powerful? The music was constantly on point, perfectly showing us as the player the overall feeling of this scene. (Although sometimes the music was too loud. I could barely hear our boys talking...) I also really liked the music. The game shows wonderfully what a little change in music can do. I feel a little empty now... to be honest. We’ve been left with no idea what is going on and what will happen next. I have seen spoilers, but I still have no idea what happened at the end and were Victor went or what exactly is behind Kiros change besides the obvious and we will have to wait for new chapters for months now. They probably won’t come out before Christmas. How can they make us wait that damn long? T.T I really liked the new chapters. tho I do hope we get a little change of pace in the upcoming chapters.

[paulineguillouzichnd1]

Artisan

Overview of the project:

I have chose to do a video on Freedom Bakery, that is a “Social Enterprise” based in Glasgow. They are making bread and pastries and are working with a lot of restaurants in Glasgow but also some shops (Locavore in the Southside for instance).

Freedom Bakery is also linked to the Progressive prisoner rehabilitation schemes and is working with several people who haven’t been released yet.

“By teaching new skills, from baking to logistics, Freedom Bakery rebuilds confidence and hopefulness before prisoners are released. “

As a teacher, and a French person, I was also curious and interested myself in seeing how bread is made, and also share this experience with people.

I wanted to show both the working conditions (physical work, working time that are different from usual jobs, fast pace) but also the conviviality of the place and people working there.

I got in touch with them by email and phoning them. I had to explain what I was doing, what for and who for.

I then went for a Recee, and asked permission to employers and employees to video/take pictures of them. It’s illegal to take pictures of people who haven’t been released from prison, so I made sure I had a conversion with these people in particular and was careful of not having any shot/clip of them.

Website: https://www.freedombakery.org/

Address: Unit E5 Rosemount Business Park 145 Charles Street Glasgow G21 2QA

Phone number:  +44 (0)141 328 7886

Contact: Scott, scott@freedombakery.org 

Cinematographic techniques:

Extreme long shot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRD7f2Wo0CM)

The extreme long shot captures a very wide area to show the scale of subjects in relation to their environment, like tiny birds in a forest. Whether it is the desert or outer space, the audience should get a feel for the time and the place they are about to spend the next few minutes. It is typically used as an establishing shot when changing from one big area or city to another

Bird’s eye shot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWMueRbVLvk)

Like the extreme long shot, the bird’s eye shot shows massive scale but from a much higher angle, to the point where land starts to show abstract shapes and lines out of roads, buildings, and trees. It is also typically used as an establishing shot for introductions and scene transitions.

Long shot

A wide shot, often referred to as a long shot, puts characters in context to the backdrop you establish in an extreme wide shot. The characters can be seen from head to toe and you see them in relation to the location or each other. You can use a wide shot to show how your character is small in relation to the vast surroundings. When the term long shot is emphasized, it can mean that the camera is farther away from the subject, making them even smaller. It gives the audience a sense of geography so when the camera goes in tighter, they can understand who is where.

Full shot

A full shot is different from the wide because it focuses more on the character in the frame. The character is full body from head to toe again, but the location is no longer the focus. In this shot you might want to show how a character dresses or how a character moves: awkwardly, confidently, etc. You can also reveal what they are doing, like packing a suitcase or ordering a train ticket. You can give the viewer information but not all of it, yet.

Medium Shot

The medium shot shows your character from the waist up. In the old westerns, the character was often shown from the hip up which is now known as a cowboy shot. Again, this shot is about revealing information. You can see more detail than you can in a wide shot. The reason the westerns had to reveal the hips is because of the gun holsters. If you didn’t show the hips, when a cowboy was ready to draw you would lose a lot of important action.

Medium shots are often used in dialog scenes. As we get closer to our subjects we can see things that we wouldn’t catch in a wide, like body language. We can see crossed arms or someone who talks with their hands.

Close-up shot

A close-up frames the character’s face. In a close-up shot one can see even more detail that tells us how a character feels. A close-up highlights emotional clues in the eyes and you can see a twitch or a tear that you might miss in a medium shot. It is by its nature more intimate so the effect is often that the audience can feel what the character is feeling.

A close-up can also be used to show things such as a tapping foot or the sliding of a ring on a finger.

Extreme close-up shot

An extreme close-up frames even tighter on a face (or subject), highlighting facial features more. It usually frames a particular part of the face like the eyes or the mouth. It is even more intimate than the close-up and is almost uncomfortably close, so the viewer is more apt to feel whatever the Actor is conveying, which is why it is used to show more intense emotion and is often used as drama increases.

1st example:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwA3XyNeD3I

Long shot -> to locate the place where the bakery is

Long shot -> to refine and give this idea of entering the bakery as a normal client.

Close-up on the food ->  that’s been sold by the bakery (foreground) and the lady selling the pastries + client (background)

Complementary research:

Video explaining camera movement based on examples: Here Very easy and straighforward and also entertaining! Helped a lot to understand what to put in my storyboard

1° STORYBOARD: Link

When doing my research, I was mostly working from films and examples of films whilst I was aware that we were more meant to be doing a ‘documentary’ of an artisan. 

 At first, I didn’t really know what a storyboard was and I did some research mostly to understand how to make an effective storyboard, but also because I saw a few of my classmates struggling understanding the point of making a storyboard. What type of information is it meant to contain? What is the purpose of it? How precise does it need to be? How do you effectively give a sum-up of movement with a static format (storyboard is not the film itself but are meant to explain what movement is going to happen). 

 I felt that it was quite easy to make for an advert as we were just copying another add, but we didn’t have to actually think it through: what shot size, shot type, camera movement did we need? 

  Also, as photographers, we’d focus on the composition that would involve a 3D aspect but no consideration for the movement/sequence of a shot. The storytelling was also limited, whereas here, with a rack focus for instance, I get to give a lot more of information about the subject’s thougths for instance.

Storyboard vidéo: Link

Ratio video: Link

Rack Focus: Link

2° Deciding on a template for my storyboard

Based on different storyboard I looked at on the Internet, and the help provided both by tutors and my own research, I decided on a template for my storyboard that I then created on PowerPoint, and printed on a A3 format:

This included the drawing/picture on the left, shot size, shot type, camera movement, lighting, equipment and subject movement. The template is made of boxes to tick in order to make it more straightforward to read and use.

3° Studying 5 examples of videos and taking notes of movement I wanted to include in my own video.

I watched a few videos that were on the same subject as my own video and made up for each of them storyboards to then decide on aspects of the video I liked and incorporate them in my own videos

VIDEO 1 : Link

VIDEO 2 : Link

VIDEO 3: Link

VIDEO 4: Link

VIDEO 5: Link

4° My final storyboard

Slide 1

Slide 2

Slide 3

Slide 4

Slide 5

Slide 6

Slide 7

                                                 Conclusion

STORYBOARD

Effective tool: I think that it wasn’t really clear for me what the point of a storyboard was, and how to use it as an effective tool. But also for instance, who might need it: just me as a ‘director’ or the actors/people in the documentary? After shooting, I added some more clips to my final video that I didn’t think of when preparing my storyboard.  I was also glad I got to practise making storyboards with people’s videos when preparing my own video project.

RECEE

Effective tool:  If I was to do another video, I’d probably get more information about what a Recee is and what information you need to get from there, what you need to bring with you. I think this is a crucial part of making a video and I didn’t realise how important this was: get some pictures not just of the tools they’re using but people’s clothes, what they are doing, general movement within the kitchen. I had a list of things to pay attention to when going there but I felt that I could have gotten more details in order to make the storyboard more effective and accurate. 

SHOOTING THE VIDEO

Video teachnique: I realised I had a limited knowledge of the video vocabulary (shot size, shot type, camera movement) and I wish I had spent more time practising them individually in order to feel more confident when going to the bakery.

Material: I felt that although in class, we had a go at using the material, it would have been useful for me to spend time at home using the material, maybe before the video recording and be more familiar. As I was the one acting when donig the advert, I couldn’t really try out the tripod or lights.

PREMIER PRO

Montage: I had zero knowledge of Premier Pro and I think that in the end, it was a pretty straightforward  tool to use, somehow similar to Photoshop (to an extent). I really struggled with transition, because I didn’t think of them as something as important as it is. Also the pace of the video. I realised that some clips couldn’t be used as they wouldn’t be coherent (people had different clothes, white balance or dought was at different levels in the kneading machine)

Getting more information: I wouldhave benefitted from watching more videos to add more stuff to my video: transition, music, how to slow down/speed up the pace of my video, what and how to film scene

OVERALL: It was an extremely challenging project on every aspects but I overall enjoyed it, mostly because I found out about other dimensions and ways of telling stories, while using a visual media. I found the fact of using movement and directing the viewer’s eye extremely fascinating. I decided to enroll in a video evening class to learn more about techniques.

[ansu-gurleht]

let's talk metaphysics, friends and countrymen. i should preface this by saying it's my interpretation of the lore, and that im borrowing a good bit from other theories before me. but my goal here is to make what i believe as clear as possible.

first, to set the scene, allow me to present an appropriate frankensteined quote:

"In heaven as it is on earth ... the whole of the law is do as thou wilt." - Matthew 6:10 and Aleister Crowley

and finally, before the readmore, here's the essence of what i believe about the metaphysics of the elder scrolls universe:

in this universe, the driving forces aren't any laws of physics, but the desires, wants, wills, hopes, dreams, and ideas of its inhabitants, from ancient deities to mortal men and mer to the meekest beasts to the world itself. everything is made from what people want, think, and believe, both individually and collaboratively.

that said, i do NOT consider the world to be the "dream" of some sort of "godhead" or "amaranth." it is all very real, and the fact that its existence is determined by desires is real, too. i don't adhere to the meta theory that the setting's core is inherently fictional - in our world, it is, but in theirs, it is very real.

with that out of the way, it's important i establish one of the most important bits of terminology i'll be using here: AE. AE is what you might could call a "soul" or similar unique essence that every being possesses, but it's more than that, really. it's the desire to exist as a separate, unique being, as well as the desires that being possesses.

AE is also its own power source in this universe. in our world, we can want something to be done, or imagine it, but that doesn't make it so without putting in effort to make it reality. in the world of the elder scrolls, the simple desire for something to happen greatly influences its possibility of happening. the stronger the AE, the more power it holds, meaning it has greater sway over the outcomes of reality.

the way that the universe (what we would call the aurbis) began was that the First AE (capitalized to distinguish it from other AEs, as it’ll be important later) willed itself to exist. that’s a very primal sort of AE. you see, back then, there wasn’t anything except the Void, which also wasn’t anything, either. it’s a bit confusing, but think of it as the concept of “nothingness” but completely stripped of all of our ideas and connotations. true “nothingness” in this way is actually quite a bit different from, say, empty space.

if you know anything about quantum physics, i might have another way to describe it. (if you know a lot about quantum physics, i’m sorry that i’m probably wrong.) the absolutely most basic, smallest level of the universe (our real life one, that is) is these things we call “strings” that “float” in a quantum “foam.” those strings are sort of like how you always see waveforms drawn in physics classes or whatever, except instead of a drawing, they’re actually millions of times smaller than atoms, and they make up the fabric of our reality.

the particular wavelength and form of a quantum string determines what exists “at that point” in space. so some strings say, “this is a quark,” or “this is a neutrino,” or “this is just a photon with a red wavelength.” what i’ve called “quantum foam” is basically the somewhat chaotic nature of these strings at that smallest level. some strings just do whatever and don’t care. they change back and forth from zero energy to being an electron and back again, but the overall difference is basically cancelled out, so you can’t really say anything was ever there at all.

that is what the Void in the elder scrolls is like. it’s an infinitely empty space carrying unfulfilled potential for existence. things could happen there, and sometimes do, but just as often things don’t, and the things that happen are so minimal, or get cancelled out by their opposite thing, that it doesn’t really mean anything to say something happened at all.

so what’s the First AE, the thing that created the Aurbis? the first thing that was ever “desired” in that universe was for something to exist separately from the Void. due to the chaotic nature of the void, this sorta necessitated that the Aurbis would be a bit less chaotic. it was absolutely chaotic at the beginning, with a lot going on all at once. but you could actually ascribe meaning to things, even though it may be convoluted or difficult to understand.

to speak in terms of in-universe sources, you could call the First AE “Anu” and the Void “Padomay.” however, i’m not going to be mentioning them much, especially not as sentient entities of their own. they’re really just the purest cosmic essence of order and chaos, meaning and meaninglessness. kinda.

but, essentially, the First AE is something like, “i wanna be Anu and you can be Padomay.” so a zero becomes ... either one or two, depending on how you look at it. do you count padomay? or is padomay still a zero?

i’d say both! as soon as anu is “born,” padomay is also born. you could say anu = 1, and padomay = 0, but padomay does NOT equal the same 0 as it did before. before, padomay was that “primordial” zero, the one without any meaning. but by anu Willing itself to exist, it gives padomay the meaning Not-Anu. before, padomay had no defining characteristics. now, its single defining characteristic is that it is separate from anu.

anyways, the aurbis, in its own weird way, is also infinite like padomay/the Void is. it’s a lesser infinity, but comparing the sizes of infinities is confusing, so i’m not going to dwell on that. suffice to say, it’s also infinite. and it’s packed full of something similar to what the Void is filled of, but also very different. it’s got stuff happening, but a lot of stuff doesn’t immediately get undone. what it’s filled with is what we call “creatia,” which is the Stuff that everything is made of. an important distinction: it’s Stuff, not Things. it’s got this limitless potential to Exist as Things, but it has to be MADE into particular Things. otherwise, it’s just random stuff. kinda like legos that haven’t been built into anything, except the legos can take on basically any shape they want.

keyword: want. there’s room in this aurbis for other AEs, too! the first one after the First AE is basically, “well, i wanna be separate from anu too” and becomes separate, but in a .... very particular way. as i said, the aurbis is infinite, which means that there’s endless possibilities in the way AEs can manifest. it’s sort of like, anu wanted to exist just so something existed. all the AEs that come after want to exist for a reason, and each one has a different reason.

anyways, after that second AE, a bunch more start cropping up really fast, and a lot of them are VERY different from each other. think of it like this: if the aurbis is infinite, and you randomly pick out a chunk (represented as a number), you could get like, a 41. or a 291196283494. or a 6290. you can get a bunch of wildly different Things. an infinite bunch, actually.

unfortunately, because just about all of these brand new Things that exist are very different, their AEs don’t get along. one will say “i want to exist as a banana,” and another will say, “well, i want to exist as a fast-breeding animal that only eats bananas, and is really, really good at it.” (that’s a probably bad, and admittedly weird/random example, but hopefully it illustrates my point.)

let’s look at this from a real-world astrophysics lens again: at the beginning of our universe, the first things that existed were either matter or antimatter. except they really didn’t get along, and if they met each other they’d get into a fight and both die. explosively. and also, the universe wasn’t too big, so there wasn’t a lot of room, and they ran into each other a lot. 

you could say the tes universe is similar. a lot of Things existing that don’t get along, and fighting all the time. except if one wins, it either absorbs the other into itself, or the loser just ... stops existing. there’s an infinite amount of aurbis to go around, for sure. but this particular period of its “history” went on (and might still be going on) for an infinite amount of time. Things and Ideas and Stories and People and Places all fighting over who gets to be Real, or really, who gets to be the Realest. it all depends on which one has the strongest AE, which one wants it the most. and all these Things are developing as they fight and absorb each other, becoming even more unique, becoming even more sure in their AE.

so what we end up with, in tes, is basically a bunch of these spirits we call the et’ada. it’s just a loose conglomerate of entities that were basically the strongest of the bunch.

one of the most well known of them, lorkhan, had a really strong AE. but he didn’t really feel like fighting anybody, or hanging out with the cool kids, so to speak. he’d been around for a long time, and felt kinda disenchanted with the whole thing. so he just kinda wandered around the aurbis, looking for stuff to do, or see, or talk to, hoping to try and justify his existence. because his AE to exist was strong, but he wasn’t sure why.

at some point he somehow finds the “edge” of the aurbis, the boundary between anu and padomay. and he walks out into the Void, and then turns around. and he sees the 1, the whole, completely separate from everything else and containing multitudes within itself. and lorkhan realizes .... something. something utterly transcendental, as i imagine what looking at all of existence would do to you. and with that realization, he also realized why he wanted to exist.

he went to his friends, the other spirits, and said, “good news, guys! i found something really cool and special, and i want to show you all!”

and they said, “ok, uh, what’s your name again?” a lot of them had heard about him, but didn’t know too much about him.

“oh, lorkhan,” he said. they asked him where it was, and he said, “oh, we have to go out into the Void to see it.”

some folks didn’t even know what he was on about. what’s the Void anyway? but there was one guy who was old enough to know. he was some cranky old dragon guy obsessed with clocks. and he said, “uh, hell no, are you crazy? if you go out into the void you’ll stop existing and probably die.”

dragon dude, aka akatosh, was pretty popular, almost the most popular probably, so everyone was immediately on his side. but lorkhan said, “well, i went out and i was fine! trust me guys it’s REALLY cool.”

and akatosh said, “it’s probably because you’re a freak, some kinda mutant that barely exists anyway.” and lorkhan didn’t really know how to respond, and everybody left him, whispering to each other about how he was a freak.

so lorkhan thought about this. he thought long and hard. how do i make them believe me? how do i make them understand that they need to see this? he talked with some of his other, kinda outcasty friends. eventually, he came up with an idea. he went to who was probably his most popular friend and told her about his plan. her name was kynareth, and he wanted to know if she would vouch for him if he presented this to some of the other big guys in town. she was absolutely delighted and promised that she would kick up a hurricane if she had to to get his plan going.

so everybody gets together and lorkhan tells them his plan. since everybody was being chicken and wouldn’t go see it themselves, lorkhan figured the next best thing was to make a miniature model of what he wanted to show them. the best way he figured to do this was by making a world.

now, the aurbis wasn’t a stranger to worlds at this point. the thing is, saying “this point” doesn’t hold a lot of meaning, because back then, time was a mess. it wasn’t a linear line like we understand it. it was chaotic, with effects happening without anything causing it, and weird loops of effects, just a lot of time nonsense, really. but every now and again somebody would have the idea “let me make a place of my own and try to make some sense of it,” and so they would. these were usually pretty small scale worlds created only by one spirit. 

i don’t have much to support this particularly theory, but i believe that the act of “establishing linear time” isn’t something just limited to akatosh. he’s responsible for it on nirn, but on other worlds, that may have just fallen to whoever their creator was. so what we end up with is a sort of time stew, where the “water” is all the crazy time nonsense without any order happening, and the chunks of meat and vegetables or whatever are the timelines of these worlds. those pocket timelines are what you could call “kalpas.”

we know very little about other kalpas. we know of only one by name: lyg, which was an ocean world ruled by the dreugh, which are kinda like lobster people, and it was ruled (and possibly created by) molag bal. whether or not he was an asshole at the time, like he is now, isn’t certain. all we know is that it’s said the “magna-ge” (who i don’t think technically existed yet, so this probably refers to simply other et’ada in the aurbis) “created” mehrunes dagon to destroy lyg and defeat molag bal, which he did. there’s also good reason to suspect that the hist trees that argonians worship, as well as perhaps yokuda or akavir, come from other kalpas. also, apparently the ayleid king umaril’s dad was from another kalpa, but that’s all we really know.

anyways, back to the main story. lorkhan tells everybody this idea, and with a little strong-arming from kynareth, everybody agrees to contribute and help out. some people were really enthusiastic, like this guy named magnus, who offered to be the world’s architect and help design it.

first things first: they needed to make room for the world. so in the “middle” of the aurbis (the aurbis is kinda infinite, so there’s technically no middle. you could call it maybe the “metaphysical” center of the aurbis, perhaps a place with the strongest concentration of creatia), they made a big “bubble” that kept the aurbis out, and the “mundus,” as it came to be called, in. 

then, they started the real work. they took the creatia they had sectioned off and started building in earnest. some folks even offered up some of the scraps from their own personal world projects to help. (this is how those other kalpas intersect with ours, and why nirn has dreugh, and umaril’s dad, and maybe yokuda, akavir, and hist.) it was all going pretty well, and most folks were getting into it. maybe even that akatosh guy, but he’s just a grumpy asshole, so who cares.

but uh, people started getting sick. and weak. and uh. dead. it was weird and so they talked to lorkhan about it. he said, “oh, uh, yeah. about that. you see, uh. that kinda has to happen for this to work, because this thing’s gonna need a lot of creatia and divine energy and stuff, so-” 

but most people stopped listening after hearing he knew people would die for this, and started yelling and grabbing torches and pitchforks and stuff. even magnus and kynareth were upset. and akatosh jumped on all this hating-lorkhan energy, because he really hates lorkhan, and decided they should all get together and talk about this somewhere. maybe some place fancy, and kinda powerful. magnus said, “i got you, my man,” and built a fancy tower, that was also powerful, from some of his building notes he’d made with lorkhan.

so what happened on the top of that tower was Convention. akatosh convinced everybody to kill lorkhan, except he wouldnt die, not even when he made his loyal knight trinimac literally rip his heart out. so akatosh said “fuck it” and stuck it on an arrow and shot it across the world.

so lorkhan’s dealt with, and now everybody had to decide what to do. magnus was feeling really betrayed and sad and kinda guilty so he said, “i’m just gonna leave.” and a bunch of his friends and family left with him, just kinda shooting through the bubble from mundus to aurbis, like slamming open a door and not even bothering to close it behind you, to show how mad they were. that’s magnus, the sun, and the magna ge, the stars.

then some folks said, “yeah, i’m not really feeling this anymore, either, but we might as well see what happens to it, now that it’s almost done,” and they ran off to the empty space around the world, which they called oblivion, and made some little personal worlds to chill in, and occasionally screw with nirn from. those are the daedra.

some folks still wanted to see this work out, though. some, who had already given so much of themselves for this, decided to go all the way, and gave the rest of their divine essence to help stabilize the world. some of them decided to just stay and live there. these are the earthbones and the ehlnofey respectively.

akatosh and approximately seven of his friends (the aedra) were like, “i guess we’ll look like assholes if we don’t give a little more to help too....” so they did, but then they also hightailed it out of there. they also poked holes in the bubble, but they kinda just.....stood in the doorway? mundus in front, aurbis in the back kinda deal. but one of the most important things akatosh did before he left was straighten out time on nirn so that effect usually always followed the cause, so we have linear time. (he’s an asshole, and not very competent, and fucks up a lot, sometimes for like, a thousand years at a time, but, i guess he tried.)

okay, that’s sort of the history stuff out of the way. let’s talk about whatever the hell CHIM is, and what Towers are, and all that.

so, basically, what lorkhan saw when he looked at the aurbis from the void was The Tower, which is also the First AE. now, it’s not a literal tower. that’s mostly metaphor. but in this world, ideas are reality, so the metaphor is real, too. 

that’s important because it means that even though it’s this huge, nearly incomprehensible thing, you can use different ideas and metaphors to represent it to make it easier to understand. 

in essence, what The Tower represents is power and the pure essence of will. it’s the first thing to exist, so it has to be very powerful, and be very strong in its desire to exist. that power and desire sort of colors everything that exists within it - so everything within anu/the First AE is in some way always going to be similar to it. if anu contains every thing that exists within it, that means anu always has at least one relationship with them: that they exist within it and because of it. in this way it has a sort of power over everything that is derived from it.

so technically, The Tower, a.k.a. anu, is the “First Tower,” but we don’t usually call it that, mostly because while time itself begins with its creation, linear time doesn’t. so it’s hard to say what comes first. but literally the first thing that happens on nirn is the creation and establishment of the first Tower, the adamantine tower, on the top of which Convention was held, lorkhan killed, etc. the one who was in control of Convention, akatosh, is therefore the “ruler” of that tower.

remember that i said a metaphor actually embodies what it represents. so the adamantine tower is in a way THE Tower, or at the very least a very potent reflection of it. it embodies the same, or a very similar power, which is to say it holds a great amount of sway of what’s within it. now, in this case, it’s not necessarily what’s within adamantine tower - it’s what surrounds it, and what it represents. it is surrounded by much of the continent tamriel, and it represents the establishment of linear time by akatosh. it essentially amplifies and solidifies the AE of its “ruler” and gives it much more control over reality than it would otherwise. it can turn an ant into a god, if an ant somehow became “ruler” of a tower like that.

you may notice i keep saying “ruler” in quotation marks. it’s a bit of a strange concept. sometimes “ruler” means a towers’ creator or commissioner, sometimes it means the person who “owns” the tower, sometimes it simply represents the will of the people within its “jurisdiction.” in the case of adamantine tower, its “ruler” is not magnus, who made it, but almost exclusively akatosh. it’s his will that it guarantees, his AE that it amplifies. generally, one who wishes to be “ruler” of a tower must already have a great deal of power, either physical, magical, ideological, political, etc. akatosh had a lot of basically every kind, but mostly political, i think.

the et’ada made the first tower, and inadvertently the second (red mountain), but it was mortals who made the rest. each tower has a “stone,” which is sort of like the thing that really holds it together, a way to properly attune to The Tower. adamantine tower has some kinda unknown stone; red mountain’s stone is literally lorkhan’s heart. one of the most significant and well-known towers, the white-gold tower in cyrodiil, has as its stone the chim-el adabal, the great big red stone in the amulet of kings, which is said to be the crystallized blood of lorkhan’s heart as it passed over cyrodiil on its way to vvardenfell. 

there are other towers: the orichalc tower of yokuda, about which little is known except that it’s probably no longer active; snow-throat, which is the throat of the world mountain in skyrim, with a stone said to be a “cave”; green-sap, which is not one tree but many trees in valenwood, whose stone is the “perchance acorn” that grew it; crystal-like-law in summerset isle, with a stone called “transparent law” that fell in and likely deactivated during the oblivion crisis at the end of the 3rd era; and most notably, walk-brass.

walk-brass tower was created by the dwemer to be a perfect god. also called numidium, anumidium, akulakhan, etc., it has had a profound influence on the history of tamriel. its heart has changed a couple of times: first, it was also the heart of lorkhan, but this was later replaced by the mantella, an extremely powerful soulgem which contained the soul of the underking ysmir, and the imperial battlemage zurin arctus. numidium is associated with several “un-time events,” also known as “dragon breaks” because it’s basically when akatosh fucks up keeping time. it made its creators, the dwemer, disappear in the 1st era; something happened when it was activated after being rebuilt in rimmen, elsweyr; and it’s responsible for the mess that is the warp in the west, which is how daggerfall made all of its many endings canon.

really, the only major towers, at least in game so far, have been numidium, red mountain, and white-gold. numidium, as well as its recreation as akulakhan, feature heavily in daggerfall and morrowind; red mountain also serves as a major plot point and set piece in morrowind; and white-gold is a set piece in oblivion, as well as a perennial prize that has been fought over throughout history. also - all of these towers are no longer active. most towers are no longer active, if any. the ramifications of this isn’t really known, but are probably bad.

red mountain is of special note because its stone, the heart of lorkhan, was able to be tapped into via special dwemer tools to grant individuals godlike powers. this is how the tribunal - vivec, almalexia, and sotha sil - as well as their enemy dagoth ur, achieved their godhood. it’s not really known if this is a potential property of any tower, or if the stone of red tower being the literal heart of a god made it unique.

but godlike power is not the only kind of power these towers provide. they are a way for powerful people to manipulate the surrounding reality as they see fit, merely by willing it so. for instance, the white-gold tower, being one of the most powerful, has helped solidify the various empires that have obtained it, from the first empire of alessia to the most recent of the septims. (since it was deactivated at the end of the 3rd era, it’s unlikely the mede empire enjoys its benefits.)

the tribunal used the power of red mountain (and specifically, its heart) to establish their divine rule over morrowind; the dwemer wished to become perfect and divine; dagoth ur tried to do the same with akulakhan; green sap of valenwood binds its people to the green pact; white-gold has served as the empire’s capital and seat of power for millennia; and you could perhaps say that snow throat of skyrim gives the greybeards their power and isolation, as well. a tower is a political power as much as it is a metaphysical one. in fact, since ideas shape reality in the elder scrolls, those two powers are the same!

now let’s wrap this up by talking about chim and mantling for a second. a lot has been said about chim, and i think probably too much. if we go by what i’ve outlined as the essential nature of reality (that ideas directly shape reality) and The Tower, a.k.a. the First AE (the first thing to ever exist that encompasses everything that exists), some of what vivec has said about chim, and smudge some of the lines here and there, we can simplify it a lot.

essentially, chim is the closest you can get to what lorkhan saw when he looked back on the First AE from the Void. it’s not actually possible for mere mortals to achieve that; the closest we can do is sort of like a training exercise, kind of like sparring, except we’re sparring with the nature of reality itself. 

let’s break this down really clean. say some bloke, let’s call them ceviv, wants to get enlightened, or something. ceviv has this thing in them that makes them exactly who they are, and no one else; they have an essential spiritual essence that clearly says, “this here is ceviv, and that there is the rest of the world, but that’s not me, and i’m not that.” 

now, we’ve already established that the sum of existence, “anu,” is very much the same. it possesses an intrinsic nature that says, “this here is anu, and that there is The Void, a.k.a. my brother padomay, but he’s not me, and i’m not him.”

now let’s say ceviv looks anu dead in the eye and says, “this here is ceviv, and that there is anu, but why is he not me, and why am i not him?” the intended revelation, of course, is that “oh, he is me, and i am him.” except, if you’re anu, and not ceviv, then ceviv doesn’t exist anymore. that’s what “zero-summing” is. it’s realizing you’re part of “capital-G God,” but in the process losing sight of what part. 

but let’s say ceviv has a really strong AE. they’ve really been hitting the spiritual-essence-of-existence gym. they look into anu’s eyes and say, “this here is ceviv, and that there is anu, and i am him, but he is not me.” anu contains ceviv, but isn’t ceviv; for anu to admit he was just ceviv would mean he’s not the hugely infinite thing he actually is. 

the result of that outcome is chim. it’s saying, “i’m God, but God isn’t me.” you’re placing yourself on the same playing field as anu, but you’re also separating yourself from him by retaining your AE, the borders of your being.

except.....not quite. like i said, in the mundus, that sort of ultimate achievement isn’t quite possible. within mundus there is something of a simulacrum of anu that you can do this to, and it puts you on even ground with that, meaning you blow your AE up to the size of mundus, but not the aurbis as a whole. lorkhan is literally the only person, as far as we know, who has done the latter. so vivec’s cool and all, pretty powerful metaphysically or whatever, but he’s still not the coolest.

ok, let me clarify mantling, because it’s a related concept. the saying “walk like them until they walk like you” is a pretty good summary. basically, it’s doing the chim thing, but instead of looking anu in the face, you look somebody else within anu in the face. you say, “this here is me, that there is you, and i am you, and you are me,” similar to the zero-sum. except since you’re not comparing yourself to the whole of existence, it’s possible to work it out without ceasing to exist. it’s basically a battle of AEs - whichever one wants to be “it” the most. 

just like we say that gods and daedra and what-have-you have “spheres of influence” or “dominions” or whatever, which is basically just whatever their particular thing is (hermaeus mora’s about that forbidden knowledge, clavicus vile’s about those deals, mara’s about lovey-dovey shit). technically, though, you don’t have to be a god or whatever to have a “sphere.” everybody sort of has their “thing,” which is usually just, you know, you doing you. but nobody wants to metaphysically become something that boring. no offense. 

so basically you just start copying them and doing what they do. naturally you can’t just all of a sudden BE them. you’re still you, you’re just doing what they do. but if you do it right, you might almost convince the other guy that you actually ARE them. then they’ll start copying you, too. and eventually, there’s not really any way to tell who’s who, and if it even matters, anyways. that’s mantling.

okay, i’ve been sitting on this post and working on it for too long, so if i missed anything, well, i never called this a masterpost. but absolutely feel free to add your own ideas or ask if you need anything explained better! i’m always willing to help!

[franeridart]

Jack says "ignored YOUR rule". Does that mean it's something Bakugou obligates himself not to have or something non of them can have? I'm actually curious 🤔

It’s actually a rule Bakugou put down for himself for a number of reasons, half related to his own safety and the safety of the person he’s dating, the other half to the fact that Bakugou hates lying, but (again for safety reasons) he can’t just go around telling everyone what he’s doing - he doesn’t want a relationship in which he’d just contantly lie to his partner and ditch them for vigilante work without being able to explain them what’s going on, so he put down the rule as soon as he decided he wanted to do this. Well, he hadn’t been interested in relationships anyway before Kirishima, so it was an easy decision to take at the time - now though...

Ahhhh if only he figured out Kiri and Red are the same person smh that’d make everything so much easier on him

Anon said:When you draw Jiro and Bakugo having platonic hugs and cuddles my bi heart becomes incredibly soft THANK YOUUUUUUU

I’M HAPPY TO HEAR THAT cause honestly that’s as self-indulgent as I go hahaha

Anon said:The vigilante au is so far sad but I could totally see it going in a miraculous ladybug kinda direction. What if they tried putting distance between themselves and suddenly found that they're falling again, for the vigilante forms this time because "oh sh*t he's cute in every way Kirishima is" and "He's just my type too, Bakugou-- *sigh* I could use some moving on from him." Or only Kirishima moves to vigilante!Baku but he remains stuck on kiri..//Or what if like, vigilante! Kiribaku are about to get caught by a hero and Kirishima opens up about his last regret of not getting to see his crush one last time after they set distance between themselves, while Bakugou listens and...

That’s!!!! a lot of ideas you got there hahaha I’m glad you’re having fun with the concept!!!!!!

Anon said:That vigilante au is amazing. You really express emotions well in comics.

AAAAAHHHHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH that!!!! honestly means the world to me *sob*

Anon said:I just want to say you're really cool and I like you art uh- K bye

Thank!!!!!!!!!!! YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:Oh damn. I think i fall in love for your Vigilantes AU. Please don't stop. I really love it❤️

I mean, as long as you guys are okay with it being a bit all over the place and also being just pencil doodles, then I got no problems doing that right now haha thank you for liking it!!

Anon said:I love your vigilantes AU so much 😍😍😍😍

THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:LET THEM BE HAPPY !!!!

THAT’S THE PLAN!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:May I ask how you draw bakugous hair so well?? I just can’t seem to get the right amount of poof (or should I say BOOM💥 )

oHO I’m glad you like it cause actually the answer is I spent two years drawing it nearly daily and I finally sorta reached a place when I guess I’m okay with how I draw it lol some time ago I drew a step by step for it? but by now my process is mostly “do whatever and hope for the best”, which incidently is also my process in drawing Kirishima’s hair lmao

Anon said:Im a bit confused with the vigilante kiri, does he have black hair in his civilian form and red in his hero form?

YEH it’s one of the reasons why Bakugou still hasn’t figured out Red is Kiri haha thought if you’re asking for the logistics of that, I can’t say I spent too long thinking about it? We can always call it temporary hair dye spry or something like that, but to be fair it’s not like it matters all that much lmao I just needed Baku to be unable to tell it was him easily haha

Anon said:I love ur gem Au! :D are you gonna make more? Its okay if not :)

As I’ve said literally every single time I’ve answered asks since I posted it, MAYBE yes! The thing about that AU is that I love it and I have fun with it, but posting it ended up being the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, so honestly I don’t know when I’m gonna draw it if I’ll draw it, but the possibility is there

Anon said:Hello! I just wanted to say I have love reading your comics and your art is amazing-- but I especially love your vigilantes AU! Thank you so much for sharing it with us!!!

HECK thank you!!!! I’m so happy you’re enjoying it ;O;

Anon said:Why must you hurt us? I started crying at that vigilante au comic..

*passes u a blanket* I’ll try not to make it as sad in the future!

Anon said:Hi! I've purchased the take my hand book about a month ago, just wondering how long it takes for it to be delivered??? BTW I live in NZ so I understand if it takes a while~

Heck sorry anon but I’m so not good with dates, you should check the @takemyhandzine blog for that sorta stuff! Thank you so much for buying it tho!!!! ;O;

Anon said:Is Nico a cinnamon roll or a sinnamon roll?

That......... depends a lot on who you ask :0

Anon said:I love bnha more and more with every new character out. All that's left is to ask, which minor character is currently your favorite? (***That isn't from UA because that is a much bigger dilemma)

oUCH it would have been easier picking from UA actually since I’m pretty sure Amajiki is it hahaha well, if I can’t pick from UA...................... you know what, probably Shishikura

Anon said:Bakujiro friendship is something I didn’t know I NEEDED. U do good work bro

I’M SO GLAD YOU CAN GET BEHIND THAT!!!!!

Anon said:Your art gives me life!!! Every time you post is just so unique in every way :00000 ❤️ anyway i just wanted to let you know that you’re inspiring in every way and that I absolutely adore your kiribaku art to the moon and back!!!

SOB thank you so much???? You’re so sweet!!!! ;O;

Anon said:FRAN!!! YOUR LATEST KIRIBAKU ART KILLED ME (in a good way) HONESTLY YOU IMPROVED SO MUCH SINCE I FIRST STARTED FOLLOWING YOU, IT MOTIVATES ME TO KEEP DRAWING!! THANK YOU

HELL ANON THANK YOU SO MUCH I’M SO GLAD MY FUMBLING AROUND IN THE ART WORLD IS INSPIRING FOR YOU ???? LET’S BOTH KEEP DOING OUR BEST!!!!!

Anon said:fran you could convince me to ship anything with one (1) drawing

Since I got this ask I’ve been trying to find the most outrageous ship just to draw it and test this theory.......... I still haven’t found something outrageous enough but.... soon

Anon said:Hi your art is amazing also beautiful As you probably might know there is a traitor in the show, if you didn't know well then im sorry for spoiling. May I request a traitor kirishima

nnnnnnnggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh sorry anon but the traitor theory arts are stuff I just can’t get behind, mostly so if it’s my fav characters - I don’t find it credible and I don’t find any joy in dwelling in the idea, so I got zero motivation to draw for it orz

Anon said:I can't believe you made me read the phrase "startle and explosion out of baku". (Yay for the vigilantes AU!)

LMAO he’s actually trying to do just that tho, maybe I’ll draw it hahaha

Anon said:Please! I need more BakuKiriKami fan art! I’m gunna die without it!

Anon I’m gonna be very real with you here my first reaction to reading this ask was thinking “then perish”

Anon said:Hello! I don't know if you've gotten this question before but have you ever considered drawing the villains?

I’ve drawn Dabi and Twice in the past! I’m not really much intereste in any other villain atm tho so I doubt I’m gonna be drawing them any time soon ^^’’

Anon said:You are by far my favorite artist. Your Kiribaku gives life to my bleak exsistence. Thank you. I bought some of your things of redbubble to make me happy!

AHHHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:Hello! I'm a big fan of your work and your kiribaku fluff especially, and I've been working on a (not so innocent) fic about Bakugou having burnt marshmallow smelling and tasting sweat, (funny how nitroglycerin is a natural lubricant, tastes and smells like burnt sugar, and is explosive) just wanted to know if you ever thought about it? also wanted to know if you'd like to read my finished fic, should be done real soon and it would mean a lot to know what you think about it!

Anon I’m so sorry but I really can’t say yes to this - especially because you said it means a lot to you, you’re putting me in a spot here where in case I didn’t like it I wouldn’t be able to tell you so anyway (and I generally don’t like talking about fancontent I don’t give a 10/10 to anyway, it’s too rude for me) and I’m sure it’s gonna be a great fic! But by the way you talked about it it’s gonna be a nsfw fic and I really rarely like those fics, so !!! orz I’m sorry, but this is a really uncomfortable request for me ;;;

Anon said:Can I use your art real quick if I hard out credit u? It's alright if I can't

Nope, sorry

Anon said:Could you draw another doodle of Setsuna?. I love how you draw her jfvdkd ;;v;; (Sorry if my English is trash.)

Not right now, but in the future yeah sure, I love her!

Anon said:Your Kirishima is so beautiful i fucking cry omg ;-; thank you for brightening my morning.

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; thank you for liking how I draw him !!!!

Anon said:💛💛💛💛 Thank you for sharing your art, it always makes my day

Thank YOU for liking it!!!!!

Anon said:In your SU AU what if a gem offers to replace Kiri with a 'newer, better pearl'? How would Bakugo react?

Actually, Kiri was given to Bakugou specifically because he’s sorta defective, it was punishment for both of them that sorta backfired lmao 

Anon said:hi there! I'm new to your blog and I love your art style immensely! I saw somewhere with your latest seroroki post that you're still finding your main todoship; I hope I dont sound rude or pushy, but can I ask your opinions about todo*aku and/or tod*kir*baku? If not, thank you for your time! Keep up the great work!!

Still not completely sold on romantic tdbk tbh (platonic tho, that’s my jam) but I’ve been real into the ot3 lately!!! It just can’t be my main todo ship bc I still prefer krbk too much over it haha

Anon said:I loveeee your art, especially your kiribaku stuff! But consider! Size difference! What if Kirishima grows a lot but our lil' Baku doesn't? Does he get jealous or does he really like it? There'd be some epic hugs/kisses! What if he secretly loves getting picked up by Kirishima? XD

Oh that’s an hc I see around a lot! Personally I stil prefer them sorta the same size tho ???? with the only difference being Baku being lithe and Kiri being a tank, I think it has to do with the whole “complementary equals” theme they have going on, I like for it to be visually represented too ??? maybe, I had never really thought about the hows or whys of this preference tbh lmao

Anon said:Hey so I'm not up to date with BNHA but in your asks there was a thing about dragon boy having a zombie costume? I had another look at what I think is the right doodle and to me it looks like a Chinese vampire costume! (unless that's not the one you guys were talking about oops)

Nope that’s him, and you’re right!!! Either way my boy still hasn’t done anything worth of note, so I still don’t know why he’s dressed like that orz Hori plssss

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE LAST ONE MIGHT BE THE MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT IN A STARTUP IS AMONG THE PUREST OF REAL WORLD TESTS

This probably accounts for a lot of experience themselves in the technology business. The experience of the SFP suggests that if you let motivated people do real work, they work like watertight compartments in an unsinkable ship. You don't give up as much equity as VCs wanted. An essay is supposed to suggest efficiency.1 Then instead of coming to your office to work on your projects, he can work wherever he wants on projects of their own angel rounds. But most young hackers have neither. The spammers wouldn't say these things if they didn't sound exciting. Not even investors, who have in the past.2

The first courses in English literature seem to have done stuff with peanuts.3 But due to a series of meetings, culminating in a full partner meeting where the firm as a whole says yes or no. You can take out the whole point if you need to do this when they can.4 If you want to create for a newborn child will be quite unlike the streets of a big company. 99 respectively, and a lot of experience themselves in the technology world know what usually happens when something comes along that can be done by bad programmers is choosing the wrong platform. Investors have no idea how much better we could do, is this the one with the best chance of making money. And being charming and confident counts for nothing with users.5 So I'm going to try to get into second gear.6 You might say that it's an admirable thing to write great programs, even when this work doesn't translate easily into the conventional intellectual currency of research papers.

I'd only seen in zoos before. I was still ambivalent about business. The 2005 summer founders ranged in age from 18 to 28 average 23, and there are plenty of societies where parents don't mind if their teenage kids have sex—indeed, where it's normal for 14 year olds to become mothers. When you judge people that way, and there's a simple solution that's somewhat expensive, just take it and get on with building the company.7 They switch because it's a recipe for succeeding just by negating.8 But actually being good. How do you find surprises?9 Maybe they made you feel better, so I read it, and that it therefore mattered far more which startups you picked than how much you learn in college depends a lot more appealing to most of us than pandering to human weaknesses. If you're going to make the most money are those who aren't in it just for the reasons everyone knows about. People trying to be cool and maybe make money.

But by no means impossible. But you should realize you're stepping into dangerous territory. But most young hackers have neither. My parents were pretty good about admitting when they didn't know things, but I can't believe we've considered every alternative.10 The best stories about user needs are about your own. It would certainly be convenient, but you have to be the new way of delivering applications. The route for the ambitious in that sort of thing to be in the building a certain number of hours a day.11

Instead of trying to teach it to people, I'd say that yes, surprisingly often it can. 15981844 spot 0. We all thought there was just something we weren't getting. Which means, oddly enough, that as you grow older, life should become more and more surprising. An essay can go anywhere the writer wants. It's because liberal cities tolerate odd ideas, and smart people by definition have odd ideas. A nerd's idea of paradise is Berkeley or Boulder. One of Silicon Valley's biggest advantages is its venture capital firms. What if both are true? It was remarkable how different they seemed.12 The reason is not just that he'd be annoying, but that they're driven by more powerful motivations.

Foreseeing disaster, my friend and his wife rapidly improvised: yes, the turkey had wanted to die. People. It does not seem to have looked far for ideas. That seems the wrong model. But I know the power of the forces that have them in their place, but it goes fast. We're just finally able to measure it. Nearly all wanted advice about dealing with future investors: how much money should they take and what kind of x you've built. Sex I believe they conceal because they'd be frightening, not because you did something wrong.13 Someone is going to have nearly the pull with the spam recipient as the kinds of things that spammers say now. So on demo day I told the assembled angels and VCs.

I found that the Bayesian filter did the same thing the river does: backtrack. What would be a good idea. The effect of unpredictability is more subtle. But it's the people that make it Silicon Valley, what you need to impress are fairly tolerant. It's like the sort of distribution you'd expect, the number of nonspam and spam messages respectively. Now that we know what we're looking for, that leads to other questions. But we knew it was possible to start on that little because we started Viaweb on $10,000.14 And having kids is our genes heading for the lifeboats. The user doesn't know what it means to have gone to an elite college; you learn more from them than the professors.

Notes

Unfortunately the payload can consist of dealing with money and disputes. Mueller, Friedrich M. And journalists as part of this essay, Richard Florida told me that if he ever made a better education. In-Q-Tel that is exactly the opposite way from the 1940s or 50s instead of admitting frankly that it's up to two more investors.

While the audience at an ever increasing rate to impress are not very discerning.

5 seconds per day.

By heavy-duty security I mean no more willing to be when I became an employer, I advised avoiding Javascript. And though they have because they suit investors' interests. This is one of them was Webvia; I was as late as 1984. But they also influence one another indirectly through the buzz that surrounds a hot deal, I mean no more than just reconstructing word boundaries; spammers both add xHot nPorn cSite and omit P rn letters.

On the other. Though nominally acquisitions and sometimes on a road there are no misunderstandings. Looking at the leading scholars in the sense of things you want to lead.

Some of the techniques for discouraging stupid comments have yet to find someone else start those startups. If the Mac was so great, why not turn your company right now. Google is that you're small and use whatever advantages that brings.

Security always depends more on not screwing up. Until recently even governments sometimes didn't grasp the cachet that term had. Note to nerds: or possibly a lattice, narrowing toward the top schools are, which have remained more or less, is due to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years, but not the distinction between money and disputes.

Monroeville Mall was at Harvard Business School at the end of the venture business, and I had zero false positives reflecting the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but it's hard to get all the investors agree, and tax rates will tend to be. One valuable thing you changed. These were the impressive ones. The solution is to start startups who otherwise wouldn't have had a broader meaning.

Not one got an interview, I'd say the raison d'etre of prep schools improve kids' admissions prospects.

On the other seed firms always find is that there is some weakness in your own mind. On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1965. Us 10 million and we'll tell you them.

Conjecture: The First Industrial Revolution was one in an era of such high taxes? One of the magazine they'd accepted it for you to stop, but a lot, or want tenure, avoid casual conversations with VCs suggest it's roughly correct to say now.

You have to admit there's no lower bound to its precision.

So it may be useful in cases where VCs don't invest, regardless of the word I meant. I'm sure for every startup we funded, summer jobs are the most dramatic departure from his family how much of the economy, at least a whole department at a friend's house for the others to act through subordinates.

At one point in the chaos anyway. I don't know who invented something the mainstream media needs to learn to acknowledge as well. Robert Morris says that the only audience for your protection.

[the-textbased-jiaqiverse]

[Start of Log 073]

Log 073: The Cigar

*sighs* This is my fault... well not all my fault! Why do I have this story to tell today you may ask—if you may ask I mean—it all begins with John and James.

Yes, I write and save little love letters and love poems to Dice, yes, I do that ok? Just dunno how to up and say it to him sometimes... but I think he might have read them though, somehow... I probably deleted thousands of drafts and stuff. Hey why do I mention stuff I deleted? Well...

I needed this file from our archive, I needed John and James to pull it out, what happened is that I wanted to get it as fast as possible so I forwarded these wishes to John and James, I didn’t want to hang around them when it seemed like they always have the words *quotes*“we want to embarrass you BADLY” written on their faces recently. Right, I told them to look for file 021125, and observed them type in 155... not a joke! 115 oops, 155! I was like, “I was NOT telling you how many of these numbers are there, it’s 1 zero, 1 two, 2 ones, then 1 two and 1 five!” It was when they literally typed in 1012211215 that I realized they were trying to stall me, and well, build tension for something they possibly waited for a long time to do. I didn’t want none of that crap, so I shouted, “just type this in! Digit by digit alright?!! 0, 2, 1, 1, 2, 5!” That was easy right? No they entered sloth mode!

“0”, yes you typed zero, hooray! Now go for two, that’s right, it’s right there, look IT’S RIGHT THERE! Just put your finger on it, no no no why are you now pointing to 1, I said 2!! Oh that’s right now you’re there, type 2, 2, 2!!!!!!

“2” oh thank God! Now go for 1, yes 1, no not 0 NO NO NO! Ok yes, 1, yes. Should I remind you of the next three numbers? Because at this rate when you finished typing the 1 you would’ve forgotten the next three numbers already!

“1” on second thought, if I reminded you the 125 you might just mess up the entire file number so we have to start over if I can guess what you are thinking. WAIT WHY ARE YOU GOING TO 0? Look you don’t have to start from 0 and move to the number every flipping time!

“1” this is an eternity! Wait is it just me or did you slow down? Can you be ANY slower than you were just now? Apparently yes! OMG I can feel my life flash in front of my eyes. I still have so much to do and so much to fix! Have I told Dice that I loved him?

“2” if it wasn’t for the little screen with the search bar I would have forgotten where we were at myself! ............................................................

*reenacts the scene himself* “5” FINALLY!!! Now you just have to click “search”... wait a sec...... UUUUUUUUHHHHHH!!!!! They can still drag this on!!!!!!

*keeps reenacting* right so John finally clicks “search”, and the file shows up right? So I directed, “tap on it!”, so the file would be extracted, but........... how does one accidentally click on the delete button while opening up the file??!!! Especially when you are made to do things for us with precision and elegance?!

*reenacts the convo* “Hey boozoos! You know I would go to Dice about your, INCOMPETENCE right?” “Aw chill out, don’t go yet, we can still recover the file,” John said it without a thread of dread, so I know something had to be amiss, because they are usually scared of Dice hearing about them messing with me. “JUST GET ME THE FILE!!!” “Ok Boss,” but recovers something else, “oh what’s this? ‘Dice, not a moment passes without me thinking of your soft skin, oh how I longed to have you in my arms!’ What is this cringe Boss? Oh and, ‘you are life’s greatest gift for me’, why is this in the trash Boss? Little pieces like ‘when you and I are alone I gained my own piece of heaven,’ why this cringe Boss? You know practically everyone working in this casino can see this, don’t you? Why don’t you report your little works of art to Mr. King Dice too?”

I practically broke into Dice’s office after that!

Dice just stared at me knowingly and said, “it was John and James again wasn’t it?” I almost cried and I thought it would be very clever to say “Dice you love me right?” And confess that I wrote some cringeworthy stuff about us two, just before I let Dice get back to work... probably became one of the reasons why Mr. Wheezy turned out like this...

I thought Dice couldn’t look more dumbfounded than he did then—when I confessed, but I had a whole new idea after seeing his reaction to Wheezy’s nonsense.

So, Wheezy’s first day on the job. I actually liked him a lot, Wheezy is really just a simple guy, he fit right in with our existing staff, he is very down to earth, everyone liked him. The best part? Wheezy is not trying to play tricks all the time like John and James would do, he was so enthusiastic and was very good at his job. I heard from James that Wheezy threw that arson rat out long before he got mad and torched our property again, just because he thought that guy didn’t feel right. Wheezy was lit, literally. Every one of our employees cheered for him.

Huh... you know, why would Dice light that stupid cigar right? Probably because of the fact that he was really distracted by my cringe stuff...

I was happy about all Wheezy’s hard work, but James up and said that guy was for some reason very off, and I should keep a good eye on him. At the time I even teased James, “Aww you probably thought he’s off because you are jealous that I liked him more than you and John, Wheezy listens to me without trouble at least, UNLIKE YOU TWO, haww-hawww, be jealous pal, be very jealous.” I should have paid attention when he said, *impersonates, reenacts the tone of urgency* “I am not joking around this time, I’m being serious! John thinks so too.” But I didn’t think much of it, I mean, Wheezy’s perfect as long as he does whatever Dice and I wanted him to do without overthinking or messing around, the casino is never this in order—something would always go wrong with those costumers—this peace and quiet is all thanks to Wheezy kicking the rat out. I seriously thought Wheezy is like a lucky charm! Why didn’t I realize that those days could have been just some of our quieter days.

Wheezy ended up not being very busy, then he apparently wanted to just walk around and find somethings that he can lend a hand to. He did find something...

Right after offering to heat Mangosteen’s dinner, which is NOT part of his job, Wheezy found out Pip and Dot had a gas leak going on in their room, he volunteered to fix the issue, which is also NOT part of his job. Needless to say, lit cigar plus gas right?

BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

Now I get it! Wheezy is trying way too hard to do ALL the jobs just because he might want to feel validated and he liked that feeling.

Dice told me later that night that he intended to be calm and collected when he had to talk to Wheezy about how half our staff quarters exploded, but he just can’t hold it in... when Wheezy accidentally made a pun. He tried his best to calm himself again and explained why the explosion happened to Wheezy—Wheezy had no idea why!—he has to explain as best as he can. It seemed that Wheezy did understand, and he said he would stay far away from future gas leaks. After all this Dice is just completely and utterly exhausted.

As we were drifting off to sleep, Dice got a call and this is when his jaw just dropped, that was the most dumbfounded he had ever appeared to be. John and James were tasked to fix the gas leak, clean up and restore our staff’s rooms, that should have taken no longer than 5 minutes, but somehow in that little interval of time mangosteen was just UNBEARABLY hungry and wanted more food, mind you he had dinner—the dinner Wheezy heated for him remember?! His room was one of those that was completely taken out by the explosion, and he can’t wait 5 minutes. So being the good *ironic*“resourceful” person he is, Wheezy offered to heat a can of food from his room for Mangosteen, HHHHHHH...... HAHAHAHAHA, I shouldn’t be laughing but, let’s describe it with Wheezy’s own words like how John did on the call, *clears throat* “I read the label on that can, it said ‘DO NOT PUT CAN IN MICROWAVE OVEN’, so I poured out the food into my metal pot and put that into the microwave, I’m not stupid.”... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... and then “Well of course I put the metal pot in there too! Geez I’m not going to just put the food in there silly” And the microwave caught on fire, our staff tried to put it out but it didn’t work, so now the remaining half of their quarters is gone as well, John and James didn’t even know how to tell us about that! After 1 minute of silence Dice finally told them to split up, keep an eye on everyone as the other quickly rebuild everything, otherwise no one would get any rest at all. Guess who got no rest in the end, Dice, he was so... shocked, he spent this whole night making this group of cigarettes to “assist” Wheezy—actually to keep him under close watch.

Fast forward to yesterday, 3 days after the last gas leak incident.

Everyone got along just well, especially Wheezy and the cigarettes, they bonded like brothers. They are like heroes to the majority of our staff, lending helping hands and keeping potential troublemakers away. You think everyone would hate Wheezy’s guts after what happened with their quarters right? Apparently not... For some reason. This time they really want to impress Dice and I, maybe to make up for the fact that they made such a mess, or get more validation, idk. The problem is that they went to an extreme length. They were everywhere, and they are *quotes*“nice” to the point that it’s intimidating! Once, Wheezy and two cigarettes actually followed Dice into the washroom and asked if he needed assistance there, I didn’t hear that part at that time but I did hear a loud “EXCUSE ME?!!” from Dice. I dragged them out and nearly beat them dead. Dice stopped me, why Dice I should’ve beat them dead so they wouldn’t cause all this trouble yesterday! At that time Dice probably wanted to believe that they’re just not clever enough and we have to patiently explain EVERYTHING to them, including personal boundaries, and what their jobs actually include.

John and James couldn’t focus on their jobs because they spent so much energy on watching the cigarettes, still had that lingering doubt about them. You see, John and James didn’t check the pressure of our gas lines or something and there was an even bigger leak starting out from our basement. Guess what, being the room closest to the basement, Pip and Dot’s room is once again filled with the smell of gas, and they just assumed there’s a leak in their room again. What did they do may I ask? Did they go to John or James, or Dice, or me with the problem? NO, they turned to their group of friends, which unfortunately includes Wheezy......

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!!!

Half of our casino was gone with the blast!

And yeah... we somehow managed to be calm enough to clean ourselves up and have a late dinner like nothing stupid happened.

I checked with everyone, and imagine my surprise when I found John and James working alone on rebuilding the casino. Then it hit me, I really haven’t seen Wheezy and his cigarettes!

This is what I found them doing...

At that point it was already late, and Dice was still covered in ashes, I had to pull him away from the situation because I can clearly see that they are not on the same page.

It was then I found out from Dice, that he found out from our staff, that Wheezy did want to dive headfirst into the gas again! Wheezy completely forgot about the last incident and what Dice tried to tell him! Which means he had to repeat all that once again... Luckily the little cigarettes stopped him and reminded him that HE cannot go near the gas leak and Wheezy was all “yeah yeah yeah”. According to our staff the cigarettes also prevented him from putting metal into the microwave YET AGAIN, so thumbs up for them there. Then why was there still an explosion? That’s because Wheezy worked his magic and convinced one of the cigarettes to go repair the leak in his place! Why not ANYONE ELSE? I DON’T KNOW! It was then I knew stupidity is probably contagious... all I need to say is, that little cigarette that went in is of course, lit!

Now I get it, saying Wheezy is not allowed to fix gas leaks was not enough, we have to address each and every cigarette and tell them they are not allowed to do so as well! But what’s weird about this is that while this time Dice tried to tell them all that they can’t help with a gas leak, because they are lit cigarettes, Wheezy just blew into this sudden rage and exploded about how being cigarettes didn’t mean that they can’t help and he didn’t like how Dice kept thinking cigarettes are not good enough. Then he called Dice every name in the Inkwell version of a dictionary. This came out of nowhere whatsoever! Did something ridiculous just click to him somehow? We never said or indicated ANYTHING like that to them right? Knowing Wheezy he probably wasn’t trying to, or plainly couldn’t make this kind of a joke for laughs, he basically accused Dice of thinking all that. The biggest issue is that Dice couldn’t get them to understand that they took what he is saying wrong, therefore the conversation went between Dice talking about how scientifically, LIT cigarettes can’t mix with gas, and Wheezy taking that and applying that to all things unrelated and believing further and further that Dice is just not willing to give him this pet on his back no matter what he does, because of an unrelated reason, so Wheezy hates an idea that he gets out of whatever Dice is trying to say even when that’s clearly not what he meant AT ALL, and he feels the overwhelming need to attack Dice for it. UHH!! Wow I wish I listen to John and James, I mean they were right about most people!

Hey I hope Wheezy snaps out of this eventually right?

[End of Log 073]

Lmao when Mr. Wheezy says “I’m not stupid” and proceeds to tell someone else that they’re “silly” after burning his microwave oven

Inkwell version insults, what would all of those be like?

Piece the timeline together (use hints like the log numbers and certain contents), otherwise it wouldn’t make sense how one minute Wheezy hated KD then the next he worshiped him

There’s a follow-up to this!

[eightmakar]

English Boy | One

(College!Harrison Osterfield AU)

Teaser

Summary: Thank you college for hooking you up with a tutor!

Word count: 1.8k

(A/n: hi guys!!! this is my new Harrison story, give me feedback and enjoy!!!!)

“Venti iced coffee for (Y/N)!”

You grabbed your coffee and sat down in the corner booth of Starbucks. It was just before noon, and you were waiting for this Harrison guy to help you with your English lit. You were three weeks into the semester and already struggling. You had a paper to write on Macbeth, but had no idea what to do.

You looked down to see a text from Harrison.

Hey, I’m here! Where are you?

Corner booth with the laptop!

You looked up and saw a gorgeous boy standing in the line, looking down at his phone and then up around the restaurant. He made eye contact with you, saw your laptop, smiled, and waved. You smiled and waved back, but your heart was pounding.

He was tall and thin, his dirty blonde hair messily styled. All you could do was stare as he got a coffee and walked over to your table.

“(Y/N)?” He asked cautiously.

You stood up. “The one and only!” His British drawl sounded musical when it spoke your name.

“Nice to meet ya! I guess you’re gonna save my math grade, huh?” he joked as he sat down.

You felt your hands start to shake, but tried to keep them as still as possible. “If you save my English grade!”

He pulled out a binder neatly labeled “Calculus” and placed it on the table. “So what are you working on?”

“I have to write an essay about stupid Shakespeare,” you said with a roll of your eyes.

Harrison laughed. You decided right then and there you needed to hear that musical sound every day for the rest of your life.

“Shakespeare isn’t that bad! Which play is it?”

You looked him in the eyes. “Shakespeare is AWFUL. I read a few of his things in high school, like Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing and I hated them. This essay is on Macbeth.”

“What did you hate about them? Macbeth is my favorite of his plays.”

“Romeo and Juliet didn’t think about the ramifications of their actions. They didn’t think, “Oh, maybe we shouldn’t trust this weird Friar guy who is willing to fake our deaths to save our creepy 17-year-old-in-love-with-a-13-year-old romance.” They didn’t think about anything. All they cared about was being in love.”

“So what does that say about life? Does that say anything about young love?” Harrison had a small smile on his face.

“It shows that young love clouds the judgement of people involved in it,” You continued to rant.

“Exactly. That’s exactly what he wanted to demonstrate. You hit the nail on the head.”

Your brow furrowed. “What?”

His smile widened. “I know you were just ranting about how dumb it was, but that’s exactly the point. That’s what Shakespeare wanted to show the world about young love. How fast it comes and goes. At the beginning of the play, Romeo is fawning over Rosaline, remember? He tells his buddies how beautiful she is and how he can’t live without her and all that shit. But as soon as he sees Juliet, he immediately attaches himself to her and forgets all about Rosaline. He tries to woo Juliet instead of Rosaline. Shakespeare did that to demonstrate how stupid it was that teenagers jumped from love to love without any reason or real attachment.”

You thought about it for a second. Had you actually gotten the point of the play? “That’s just a coincidence,” you said.

“Let’s test that, then. What did you not like about Macbeth? What did you like about Macbeth? Is there a particular character you liked or felt bad for?” Harrison’s smile kept getting bigger. His eyes were the most striking color of blue you’d ever seen. The way he looked at you with them made your face feel hot.

“Well, I love Lady Macbeth.”

“Why do you love her?”

“I love her because she’s tragic. She tried everything to escape the role that her society had forced her into, and she hated it. She wished she’d been a man so what she wanted to do was acceptable.”

“Are you sure you need my help?” Harrison asked. “You really have this all down already.”

Your eyes widened. You didn’t want him to leave. “I didn’t know I had it down. Please stay, it’s helpful to talk about it.”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere until I understand derivatives, love,” he said with a laugh. You melted. You wanted him to call you love again and again and again.

“Well what are you confused on?” You asked, closing your laptop and moving to look at his notes.

“Go over the basics. The power rule, whatever that means.” He took out his pencil, ready to take notes, looking at you hopefully.

“The power rule? Okay, so, let’s say you have a function, something easy, like y = 2x. What does the 2 represent?”

He thought for a moment. “It’s the slope of the line.”

“Exactly! And what’s the derivative of y = 2x?”

“Um, it’s just 2 isn’t it?”

“Yes it is! So one of the things I like to do is visualize what the graph of a function would look like before I ever try to mess with derivatives, because it’ll actually give you a picture of what you’re trying to go for. If you graphed y = 2, it’s a horizontal line, right? So you know the graph of y = 2x has to be something really simple with a slope of 0 and no variability in the Y-axis. In the same way, if you had a function that was crazy and you got a simple derivative, you’d know that was wrong, because the slope of the line definitely wouldn’t be just a simple number.”

You looked up at Harrison. He was lost, you could see it in his eyes.

“No offense,” he started, “but I have actually no idea what the fuck you just said.”

You laughed. “I get that a lot! Don’t worry about it! Here, let me try again!”

You pulled out a sheet of paper to show him what you meant. You drew a few graphs and re-explained in a different way about the relationship between slope and derivative and how you could use it to kind of cheat the system.

“That makes total sense now!” Harrison exclaimed. “So how does that relate to the power rule?”

You smiled. “So the power rule is the easiest way to find derivatives. Let’s say you have the function y = x^3. The power rule says that you can take the exponent, which is 3 in this case, and multiply it by whatever’s in front of the x, which is 1 in this case. Then, you subtract one from the original exponent. So you get 3x^2 as the derivative. Right?”

Harrison furrowed his brow in concentration, biting the inside of his cheek. He looked like a painting, all vibrant colors and soft brush strokes paired with hard lines.

“Right,” he said. You could see the gears turning in his head.

“And then if you graph that, you get a parabola, because it’s an x^2 function, right?”

“Right! Okay, lemme try to explain it to you,” he said, holding up his hands and looking at you. “You have a variable. It has some number as a coefficient in front of it. It has some exponent. To find the derivative, You multiple the exponent by the coefficient, which becomes the new coefficient, and then you subtract one from the exponent which becomes your new exponent?”

“Perfect!” You cheered, clapping your hands.

Instead of cheering with you, Harrison’s brow stayed furrowed. He was thinking about something.

“So what if the coefficient is negative? If you just have an x that’s x-to-the-one, so it’s just X. And anything to the zero power is itself. So the derivative of something like 5x is 5. What’s the derivative of a number?”

You smiled. “Keep talking. You’ve almost got the whole number thing.”

He thought some more. “Would it—would it, no, it can’t be, but, uh, would it just be zero? Since there’s no more exponents?”

“You got it!” You said excitedly. Harrison smiled triumphantly. “If the coefficient is negative, you do the same thing; you multiple the coefficient and the exponent, then subtract. Like 5x^-2. The derivative is -10x^-3.”

Harrison nodded with a smile. “Can you just take over teaching my class, please? You explain it so well. You really love math, don’t you?”

You shrugged. “Numbers make sense. They follow rules and you don’t have to coax anything out of them. You plug them into formulas and presto! You’ve got an answer. None of the read into it bullshit like you have in literature. No offense,” you finished quickly.

He laughed. “None taken. But aren’t there exceptions to the rules sometimes?”

“There can be. But they’re easy to catch, and they have proof and examples you can use to find them. No finagling. No thinking about it.”

You bit your lip, nervous about how he would respond. A lot of people thought you were ridiculous for your love of numbers and math, but you didn’t care. You hoped Harrison wouldn’t be one of those people.

“Can you help me understand?” He said softly.

“Hmm?” You barely heard him.

“Can you show me what you mean? I want to understand and not read into everything. I try to approach everything like a piece of literature, with information and meaning needing to be gleaned from it. But with math, you just needed to know what formula to use. I want to think like you.”

Your hands started to shake again. He wanted to think like you, to understand how your brain worked. That had to mean something, right? Were you starting to think like him now?

“I’ll help show you what I mean if you show me what you mean. I want to be able to read into thinks and not just take everything at face value like everything is a math problem.”

He smiled softly. “What a pair we make, huh?” he said with a light chuckle. “Both wanting to understand how the other person thinks. This is going to be fun, isn’t it?”

Tags:

@upsidedownparker @ibtomholland @beautiful-holland @idektomholland @whyistomholland @whyispeterparker @notimeforthemessenger @ineedsomemoremetime @unicorngummybears @i-dont-wanna-go-mr-stark @inspiredbynewt @bi-writes

[arabellaflynn]

About a week ago, I crewed a show at the studio theater for a non-profit outfit up from New York. The guys who run it are friends of our executive artistic director, and they come up two or three times a year. I like them; I dealt with them a bunch when I was at the box office, because when you're the most experienced person they have around they hand you all of the EAD's friends, and I have an unofficial standing request to work their shows even when I'm not the only crew who is both in town and not drowning in finals. One of the guys, as it turns out, is laid up with an injury right now, so the other one had to fly solo, on top of performing in the show. I ran into him coming down the stairs as I was going up, and as soon as he saw me he just lit up like, oh, it's you! How are you are you working are you going to be my box office again! I told him I'd swapped over to doing tech and he asked if I was disappointed that I didn't get to dress up anymore. I'm not often visibly rattled. The internal monologue is a different matter. My mouth was making bubbly, sociable conversation, while my lizard brain was huddled in the back of my skull, peering suspiciously out through a slit in the blinds, going, "I don't understand, you are a producer, why do you know who I am?" Because frankly, for the most part, they don't. Aside from the yawning chasm between tech and talent at all levels of the entertainment industry, producing a show is an undertaking not entirely unlike juggling an armload of emotionally-compromised cats to a series of increasingly short deadlines. It's not personal. They have much more pressing things to do than keep track of the minion who is assembling their rented tables. [Belated recollection #1: This group comes back every year to book their spring show in our cabaret theater. This producer gets a gentle reminder from the event staff every year that he is in fact paying us to clean up after his show, and he does not have to help us. This reminder fails every year, and he ends up striking half of the tables by himself.] [Belated recollection #2: The dress code for front of house in the studio theater is, in its entirety, "wear black". I used to entertain myself by dressing splashy. The first time he got a load of one of my box office outfits, he asked to take a picture, so he could show his house manager in NYC and tell her to, and I quote, "step up her game". I would have assumed he was flirting except that he is, to the best of my knowledge and in roughly descending order of relevance: gay, taken, and twice the age he probably thinks I am.] By the end of then night I was like, you know what? He clearly likes me and thinks I am an actual human. He co-directs a non-profit whose mission is providing opportunities to dancers and multi-modal movement artists. I hate pestering people about work when they're trying to do other work, but I bet if I catch him after the performance I can get him to talk shop for a bit and give me some career advice. Or life advice, which is pretty much the same thing in the arts. God knows I need some. It was a brilliant plan, and it was chugging along beautifully right up until the part where he derailed it by inviting me to our EADs birthday party. Actually, he asked me first if he'd be seeing me there. I thought he was talking about a different event entirely, because why the fuck would I be at our director's actual personal birthday party? I have no idea what he thinks I do there. Officially, stage crew and event staff are one rung up from the bottom of the ladder, and that only because we get a per-show contract that specifies they will be paying us in money. (Unofficially, I have a lot more clout than that, but only because of longevity and institutional knowledge. It works only irregularly because, you know, unofficial. Nobody else at my pay grade has enough social capital to rattle any cages.) The office staff have meetings we don't go to, lunches we're not invited to, and loads of conversations we're not a part of. A large part of the reason I know as much as I do is because they like to have meetings out in the lobby when "no one" is around -- which is to say, they have forgotten that I am at the reception desk and that I can eavesdrop in at least five languages. I know one of them is getting married in the fall, and I also know that there is a 0% chance I will be invited to the wedding, or any wedding-related activities. They're great people to work around, and most of the time they're even reasonable people to work for, but there is this unspoken assumption that we're all going to go home to different planets at the end of the day. It took him like three tries to invite me to one party because I could not for the life of me figure out why he was telling the help all about the director's birthday plans. It finally got down to me pointing out that I had none of the details necessary for attending said party -- such as, for example, the time and date it was taking place -- because I had not received an invitation, and him telling me to go poke the EAD's assistant to get one. Then he hugged me and left to catch his train back to New York. Have you ever spent an entire day trying to get useful work done with your lizard brain jumping up and down in the back of your skull shouting things like, YOU JUST WROTE AN EMAIL TO SOMEONE'S EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TELLING THEM THAT AN IMPORTANT PERSON JUST TOLD YOU TO INVITE YOURSELF TO ANOTHER IMPORTANT PERSON'S PARTY, SINCE WHEN IS THIS A THING YOU DO? It's really annoying. It also does not go away when the assistant replies to your email to say she's put you on the guest list. That just adds a counterpoint all about, YOU ARE ON THE GUEST LIST FOR A PARTY THAT HAS AN ACTUAL GUEST LIST MAINTAINED BY AN ACTUAL ASSISTANT WHOSE JOB IS TO MAINTAIN THESE THINGS WHAT HOW WHY. I'm not in objection to any of this. Clearly I have made myself a friend. The context is just really doing a number on my brain. One of the reasons I was so good at that job was that I was charming and helpful when you were looking right at me, and I was completely out of sight and out of mind otherwise. Nobody paid attention to me because nobody had to; I just ran around and did things and they didn't have to think about it. The class division between management and minions there also irritates me on a regular basis, mainly because it means people don't talk to each other about really obvious stuff, and it takes me a while to cotton on when I run into someone who is either entirely ignorant of it, or entirely indifferent to it, which this dude plainly is. Which of these is the case is an open question. Judging from what I've seen of his performances, whatever got his attention is the same thing that keeps getting attention from the ballroom people. Everything I have ever personally seen him do on stage has been, at some fundamental level, experimentation with and exploration of the delicate clockwork of interpersonal connections. The last piece I was witness to was a duet that I can only describe as an intimate tap dance, a phrase which I encourage you to not think about too hard, lest it stop working. I saw him run it with his dance partner in an empty theater before one of the shows. There was a ringing silence when it ended, as the two of them had to re-adjust to a world that contained more things than tap shoes and each other. He was doing comedy ballet panto at one of our holiday shows last year, and the joke he ran with was still that he kept getting way too closely intertwined with the other dancers in increasingly outlandish ways. He's done a lot of pieces with his co-director and performing partner of 25+ years that are literally just creating a shared pattern and turning it around over and over again, so the audience can see it from all of its  many intricate sides, and saying, look at all the marvelous ways this fits together! This seems to be a capital-T Thing for him, and it's probably the same capital-T Thing the Eccentric is aiming for with bachata, and that the flamenco dancers get from chasing duende, and possibly that Ye Ballroom Instructor was going for when he quit actually asking me to dance and started just walking in my general direction with his hand out. Normally, I err on the side of assuming that folks talk to me because I'm friendly and I'm in front of them, but these people keep zeroing in on me. It's becoming a pattern. right down to the part where they are super confused when I don't immediately realize what's going on. I'm just like, I'm happy you have decided we are friends! But I'm unsure when this happened! Sorry for the confusion, I'm adjusting! I like to think I'm quicker to catch on now, what with this being my third or fourth time through this dance in as many years, but it's also a terrifying conclusion to come to, mainly because jumping is the only way to get there. One, they think they're being obvious and are bewildered when I have questions, and two, the more important someone thinks this stuff is the more likely they are to gnaw their own arm off at the elbow to escape having any kind of conversation about it. Breaks the hell out of the whole 'back away and look at this logically' tactic. Based on history, the correct course of action here is to go to the damn party and bluff like I'm not utterly confused until that is actually true. And also possibly find out if he knows swing or merengue, because I can lead those without stepping on anybody too much. from Blogger http://bit.ly/2JBk3mV via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!