#i mean i did some googling but not an EXTENSIVE amount

[thetarttfuldickhead]

what if, one match while jamie's being a prick, winding up the opposing team like only he can, one of the guys on the opposite team takes their frustrations with him too far and takes a swing at him, making contact with his face before anyone can stop him. jamie goes down, and some of the richmond boys are pulling the other guy away while some stay behind to check on him. I'd imagine jamie would get taken off the pitch to get checked out, since it's a hit to the head. what do you think roy's and keeley's reactions would be?

When it happens, it happens quickly.

It's the third game of the season, and Jamie’s in rare form. Has been ever since training resumed after the summer break, really, somehow bringing his very best great teammate game and his prince prick of all pricks game to every match. Once he’d needed a signal; these days he just knows when it’s time to pass the ball and when it’s time to bear down on the goal like fucking Nemesis.

Like something’s settled in him, slid into place.

It’s fucking gorgerous to watch, Roy thinks, nodding approvingly as Jamie slides the ball back to Sam with a deft twist of his ankle.

Unsurprisingly, today’s opponents do not agree. It’s an even game, 2-2 with only ten minutes left to go, and when United takes the ball off of Bumbercatch and initiates their own attack (fortunately ending in the ball going over the sidelines and a thrown-in for Richmond) that’s when Jamie decides it’s time to kick things up a notch and go full prick. Roy watches him jog up to United’s Westerly (whom he has been more or less been running circles around the entire match) and mutter something to him, grinning in that way that used to drive Roy up the fucking wall (still does on occasion), and Westerly—

—fucking swings at him, and before Roy can fully process what is happening Jamie’s down on the grass and players from all over the pitch is running over to hold Westerly back and hold Isaac back as he charges at Westerly and the sound of the whistle is shrill over the roars from the stands and there’s the red card and Sam and Dani are both kneeling by Jamie’s side as the rest of the two teams are either getting all up in each others faces or trying to pull each other away and Jamie is not getting up and—

Roy doesn’t realize that he’s moving before a firm hand on his arm holds him back. “Can’t go on the pitch, Coach,” Beard cautions. “Medic will check on him.”

Truthfully, Roy isn’t fully sure if he was moving to check on Jamie or to punch Westerly in the balls, but Beard’s calm voice cut through the red mist somewhat. He takes a deep breath, calling on the exercises Dr. Fieldstone has had him practising for the better part of the summer. They don’t help much, perhaps, but they do help.

The medical staff is already making their way over to Jamie and thank fucking God he’s rolling over on his back and seems to try to sit up only Sam’s holding him down. Looks like there’s blood on his face but if he’s moving then he’s not fucking dead, is he, or paralyzed and Roy doesn’t need to throw his career away to run over there and break Westerly’s fucking neck even though he can already imagine how fucking satisfying the sound of it snapping would be and—

Roy closes his eyes. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Hold.

Football is a contact sport. Getting knocked down is all part of the game. Emotions run high during a match, all that adrenaline, and fuck knows Roy’s been fouled more times than he can count. He knows, too, that Jamie can take a hit as well as anyone – but that wasn’t just rough play gone a little too far, that was a deliberate fucking punch to the face and this isn’t fucking ice hockey, is it, that shit is not fucking on.

Even so, Roy’s surprised to realize how angry he is. After all, he’s punched Jamie in the face himself, and that wasn’t even half a year ago.

That was different, somehow. For one, Jamie didn’t need to be led of the pitch and sat down on the grass just a couple of meters away from Roy as Nate tells Roberts to get warm and is it really déjà vu if you know for a fact just what the situation reminds you off?

His phone buzzes. He pulls it out, mostly for a distraction while the medical staff try to stop the nosebleed and check Jamie for concussion.

A text from Keeley. Is he okay???

Before he has time to even begin typing an answer, she’s calling him, and he can’t not answer, can he? Not when he understands how worried she must be, stuck far above it all in the VIP box.

“Hey.”

“Is he all right?” She sounds breathless, tense.

He wonders if that ought to make him jealous. It doesn’t; if anything, it feels good that they’re in this together, just like it had back in Manchester when they conspired (badly) to bring Jamie out of his funk.

“I don’t know. I mean, he’s not fucking dead.” It comes out harsh, but he trusts that Keeley knows him well enough to know why.

“Are they not telling you what’s going on? You’re the fucking coach!” Harsh, but he knows Keeley well enough to know why.

“Have to let the medical staff do their job first. They’re still checking him out, can’t fucking crowd them.”

Jamie’s still sitting up, at least, and while he looks a little dazed he seems responsive enough to the medics’ questions. One of them glances over their shoulder at Roy, which Roy takes as an invitation to move over.

“Hang on,” he mutters into the phone before turning to the medic. “Well?”

“The nose isn’t broken,” she tells him. “We can’t rule out concussion yet, though, so he’s not going back out there. Besides, he’s still bleeding.”

Jamie looks like he maybe wants to argue but thinks better of it. Roy doesn’t know if that has anything to do with the quelling look he gives the younger man. I’m fine with him playing hurt, he’d told Ted not long ago, but Beard had had a point then, hadn’t he? And Dr. Fieldstone, too, when she’s gently but persistenly questioned how well pushing himself to just keep going through any and all pain had actually worked out for him.

“Yeah, okay,” Roy says, acknowledging the medic’s verdict with a jerk of his head. He glances over at Nate, who nods and motions for Roberts to go on.

Then Roy turns back to Jamie, only to find Jamie looking up at him, his face and shirt a mess of blood and dirty smudges.

“How are you feeling?” Roy asks. “Keeley wants to know too,” he adds, holding up his phone to demonstrate.

Jamie smiles a little at that, and Roy feels something in his chest loosen. “I’ll be fine, Coach, Keeley,” Jamie assures him – them. His voice is almost completely steady.

Roy nods sharply. “Yeah, you will.” He reaches down to squeeze Jamie’s shoulder, once. “Great playing out there today. It’s no wonder that fucking arsehole punched you, because there’s no other way he could ever have put a fucking stop to you, yeah?”

He’s rewarded with another smile, slightly bigger this time, and then the medical staff move to take Jamie away and Roy is walking back to the other coaches, speaking into his phone: “He’ll be all right. Might have a concussion, though.”

Keeley lets out a long sigh, almost like a sob. Roy can hear her tell Rebecca that Jamie’s going to be fine, and then she’s back in his ear, fear giving way to both fury and relief: “I’m still taking my stiletto heel to that fucking wanker Westerly if I ever get the chance. Do you think we should go to his place after the game, or should we bring him to mine? Jamie, I mean, not the wanker.” When Roy doesn’t immediately answer, she adds, “We have to watch over him, right? Make sure he doesn’t fall asleep or play video games or something?”

“Don’t think you actually have to do that,” Roy says, but before she can protest, he adds: “But yeah, of course we’ll fucking watch over him.”

Of course they fucking would.

[ryo-maybe]

can u explain why AI art is bad without fearmongering, moralizing or bootlicking lol

I'm going to answer in good faith, even though the tone you're using sounds like you're harboring anything but. The issue with AI art isn't specifically inherent to the tools used to produce it, because, ultimately, a tool is merely that: something devoid of will which, in the hands of a human, can produce a specific outcome. It's the human element that taints what we could otherwise enjoy for the unquestioningly fascinating topic that is AI art and, by extension, AI software as a whole.

Now, the problem isn't people, period, but the kind of people that are responsible for giving AI the bad rep it's been getting, along with the intent that goes into both the development of AI tools and the things produced by dint of said tools. I'm talking about the tech bros happily rubbing their hands, waiting to provide business moguls with a brand new means to commodify and mass-produce what artists stake their entire livelihoods upon, because when you have enough zeroes lined up in your bank account, your eyes are utterly blinded to the soul and personality that human beings put into their handiwork, and which a machine won't ever be able to reproduce no matter how much stolen art you feed it. Oh yeah, by the way, that's how AI art tools have been making the rounds: by chewing on thousands upon thousands of stolen pictures made by actual people so that they may learn how to ape someone's style and spit out absolutely soulless derivatives, while the original authors don't see a lick of recognition or monetary retribution for any of it. Do I need to tell you why stealing and parading someone else's art as your own is a terrible, vile thing to do?

But sure, you did ask me to refrain from "fearmongering, moralizing or bootlicking", which I guess I've already done. So since you'd rather I skipped straight to the point in a concise manner, lemme offer some quick examples of why the culture surrounding AI art has already developed into one of the most abysmally disappointing displays of how greed and an utter lack of human decency can ruin something objectively brimming with possibilities:

Less than a week after the sudden death of Korean artist Kim Jung-gi, someone trained an AI model to mimic his artstyle, having the audacity of asking for credits if anyone wished to use it. I sincerely hope I don't have to explain to you why this is a ghoulish example of the kind of tone-deafness sported by tech bros who buy wholesale into the AI art craze.

A piece of AI art was submitted to an art contest and won. The "artist"'s work amounted to little more than picking a series of prompts and letting the machine do the work. It's as much art as googling a smattering of terms and making a collage of pictures taken from Pinterest (and even then, you would have put more work into it than this person did). That they won at all says a whole damn lot about how abysmal the respect given to artists - real artists - nowadays is.

There are a multitude of people out there already selling prints of AI-generated art. I could link some of them here, but honestly, type "ai art prints" on a search engine and you'll get inundated by them. I've seen and personally know artists who have had to undersell their works because commissions were the only thin, frayed string they could hang on in hopes of making it through the week without fucking starving themselves, but here we are: any random asshole can now yell "MASSIVE BREASTS, THIN WAIST, COCKTAIL DRESS, HUGE BADONGAS" at a computer, let it mash together a trillion of other people's hard work, and print it for easy bucks that the actual authors of the basic ingredients of their insipid soup will never, ever see a dime of.

It really bothers me that you mentioned "no bootlicking". Whose fucking boots is this side of the debate supposedly tasting? That of the artists who post every day about how angry, sad and terrified they are by the prospects of what the development of AI art will entail for their livelihood and passion? What kind of gall did your mother birth you with that you have the spiteful spunk to type that word, when you've got shit like an artist who had their sketch stolen while they were drawing it on stream, then fed to an AI and posted by someone passing it off as their own art? How does that not ignite your indignation? "Bootlicking". Like anyone's tongues have been tasting leather but those of the same tech bro chodes who kept trying oh so hard to convince us NFTs were the future while ruining the environment to make the absolute stupidest point ever made in the history of humanity.

[vaspider]

My question about the AIDS crisis, I'm mostly asking you because like I said, I don't think I was googling the right things, so even if you could just suggest some things to google that would be more likely to get me answers, that would be really helpful.

I guess it's mostly how did AIDS (and to some extent, any STD) become so widespread? I know that it spread through sexual contact and shared blood, but can you really "six degrees of separation" (god, that sounds so flippant, but i genuinely can't think how else to describe it) a chain of sexual partners and shared needles through any two people with HIV in the entire world? Maybe it's just because I'm a bit of a hermit, but while I can understand how it was so devastating once it was already widespread, I guess I'm having trouble understanding how it got such a foothold in the first place. If the first person with HIV had happened to not have a lot of sex would the AIDS crisis never have happened?

I swear I have absolutely no judgement for people that like to have a lot of sex, maybe I just have an underestimate of the amount of sex the average person has because frankly I don't have any? So I hope this doesn't sound disrespectful or anything, it's just kind of hard for me to believe those "six degrees of separation" kind of things in general when it's not like, famous people, so the realization that theoretically any two people with the same STD, on different parts of the globe, would have this string of sexual partners connecting them almost feels like there has to be something I'm missing... But when I'm googling things like "how did HIV become so widespread" and "how do STDs spread" I'm just getting things about how you should use protection and histories of *where* HIV spread rather than answering this more specific question (probably didn't help I was trying to do this research at 1am)

I mean this as kindly as possible:

What is your proposed alternate theory as to the spread of a disease which is transmitted through contact with blood, semen (and pre-seminal fluid), rectal and vaginal fluids, and breast milk? The disease does not spread through saliva or through touch which does not involve those fluids.

There are relatively rare cases of HIV spread through accidental needle sticks - according to WebMD, there are approximately 385k accidental needle sticks among health care workers per year in the US. WHO says that .7% of the global population has HIV, so for some back-of-the-napkin math, at most, you'll have about 2,700 of those needle sticks involving someone with HIV. Since (again, according to that WebMD article on accidental needle sticks), in cases of an accidental needle stick where the patient has HIV, the health care worker only has about a 1 in 300 chance of catching it (as opposed to 1 in 3 for an unvaccinated person catching hepatitis B via accidental needle stick from an infected patient). So - nationwide - you have approximately 9 people per year catching HIV from a needle stick.

And, to be clear, that fucking sucks. However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2022 there were approximately 14.7 million health care workers in the US. Not all of these people have equal risk for accidental needle sticks, but there's only so much research I'm gonna do for rough math to answer an ask on Tumblr.

The average US health care worker has approximately - again, based on my back-of-the-napkin math - 0.00000544% chance of contracting HIV from an accidental needle stick. It's astronomically more likely that a random health care worker will die from tripping over an extension cord or breathing in a caustic chemical than that they will catch HIV.

The chances of getting HIV via blood transfusion before we started routinely testing for it were all but assured if you got blood from someone with HIV. Testing now is so stringent that you have about a one in two million chance of getting HIV from a transfusion. The last recorded case I could find was in 2010, and before that, it was 2002, and the 2010 case happened in part because the donor lied about his risk profile and often participated in anonymous and unprotected sex with partners of multiple genders. He really shouldn't have been accepted as a donor at all. Approximately 4.5 million Americans receive blood transfusions per year, so, like, nowadays, it is excessively unlikely, but even in the 80s, it was an edge case means of infection, not a main source of pandemic spread.

A breastfeeding parent with a detectable viral load has about a 15% chance of transmitting HIV through breast milk. Likewise, HIV can be - and was - transmitted to babies during birth because of contact with vaginal fluid or blood, but, again, these relative edge cases are not the things pandemics are made of.

I want to stress that I am not in any way minimizing the absolute tragedy of the AIDS crisis, and I am not dismissing the fact that these methods of transmission are possible and did cause significant disruption to blood banks, stress for pregnant people with HIV, and so on. They just simply are not major methods of transmission, and never were.

With all of that said... what is your proposed alternate method of transmission, with these facts in hand? What do you think happened? Genuinely, this question is so baffling to me.

I think it's important to understand that before the emergence of HIV, most of the STIs we had were at that point either considered an annoyance (warts, HPV) or were extremely easy to treat and cure (syphilis, once a death sentence, became basically a non-issue for most people in the US as long as they were getting tested relatively frequently, and most other common STIs even today can be cured with a single course or even a single dose of antibiotics).

With that in mind, a lot of people, including a lot of queer people, were having a lot of unprotected sex. For people who could become pregnant, the advent of the pill and access to legal abortion meant that they didn't have to become or stay pregnant if they didn't want to, and for cis gay men, the prevalence of antibiotics meant that the vast majority of STIs were a brief inconvenience at worst.

So allo people did one of the things that allo people (and some ace people!) love to do:

They fucked. A lot. They fucked without fear of much consequence in terms of infection, and because it was much riskier to bring someone home where you could be seen, a lot of gay men cruised, fucking in parks or in literal back alleys or the bathrooms of clubs. They worried about getting arrested or getting caught and having their names in the newspaper much more than they worried about STIs. Sex workers, including trans sex workers, fucked in cars or hotels or... wherever the money was, because survival sec work is ... survival.

So... yeah. What is your proposed alternate theory, here? I am truly baffled at what you think otherwise happened, given a disease with a very narrow route of infection.

[glitterock]

Femme Dyke zine submissions are due in 10 days so I thought i’d answer some FAQs incase anyone has any questions or are finishing up their submissions!

“If I’m not a femme, can I still submit?”: Yes 100%! I’d prefer if you did! I chose the title because it’s a label that means a lot to me personally and is the title of a personal essay i’m including in the zine. It definitely doesn’t mean I only want femme voices present! I have pieces written by butches and unlabeled lesbians i’ve chosen and am already planning on including!

“I’m under 18, can I submit?”: Unfortunately since there will be sexually explicit content in the zine, I cannot include writers under 18. Please respect this!

“If I have an art piece can I submit it?”: Yes! As long as you’re alright with it being printed in black and white then artwork is absolutely encouraged!

“I’m not a lesbian, but i’m a sapphic/queer person. Can I submit?”: This zine focuses specifically on the voices of lesbians and people who Identify as such. All lgbt/queer voices are important but for this specific project I am going to ask that only lesbians submit. If you identify as such, you’re welcome to!

“Will there be hard copies for sale?”: Yes! Depending on printing costs I’m hoping to have copies available for around $15/$20 USD as well as a free pdf version online available!

“When is the deadline?”: January 21st! Message me if you think you’re going to need an extension (no longer than a week)

“What can I write about?”: On the submission form I have a whole list of writing prompts i’d love to hear! Some of these include but are certainly not limited to your place in the lesbian community and how you relate to it, a guide to eating pussy for beginners, a funny life story or anecdote that relates to lesbianism, your identity (butch, femme, etc.) and what that means to you, a sexual experience/advice/ stories or how you relate to sex as a lesbian, or write a love letter! to lesbianism, your partner, a lover, a hook up, to butches, to femmes, to trans lesbians, to POC lesbians, to your friends, to yourself, to your vibrator! If it’s about being a lesbian it fits the theme!

I’m super excited to receive and read/see the remaining submissions! I’m thrilled by the amount of interest and submissions i’ve gotten the past month and a half and can’t wait to have a finished product for everyone :) Please do not hesitate to message me with further questions.

link to submit:

[autistic-autumn]

Interesting medieval Latin poems

Okay so I've been reading a lot of medieval Latin poems recently and some of them are pretty cool. My latin is unfortunately very limited so I've most been relying on translations. I am no expert in the field at all. A lot of these poems are quite long so I'm not going to post all of them. Some of them are just stuff I have written up part of in a google doc too so they aren't great.

Most of the translations I'm using are by Helen Waddell because she did an enormous amount of translation and her stuff tends to try preserve a lot of the meaning and poetic form over direct translations. Her translations are sometimes not all that direct but still poetic and neat.

This here is the Dies Irae, known as the day of wrath:

I've just stolen this straight from wikipedia because it's so famous. It is a 13th century poem of unknown origin got turned into a Gregorian chant and later became part of the traditional requiem texts as the Dies Irae sequence. As such there is a large number of music works for the text, the most famous being in Mozart's and Verdi's requiem. The text is often split into a large number of verses and makes up the full requiem sequence. The original Gregorian chant melody was picked up into general music works and being reused in a number of works (I believe the first instance of this is Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique mvt 5). Overall just a very cool poem with some musical adaptations.

On a similar note a lesser known poem titled Dies Irea exists.

This poem here is by St Columba, a 6th century poet. Hellen Waddell suggests with her translations that it may be a precursor to the more well known Dies Irae above. This appears to just be a small snippet of the full poem by St Columba. It was set to music in 1962 by Benjamin Britten.

Another very famous poem is the O Fortuna:

This too is just take from wikipedia and has many translations out there (Helen Waddell's isn't all that great I don't think and I don't want to type it out). The poem is of unknown authorship and taken from a 13th century manuscript known as the Carmina Burana. This manuscript is full of goliardic poetry. The goliards who wrote this poetry often spoke on topics such as love, fate, drinking. ect. A lot of this stuff was somewhat sacrilegious by 13th century standards and much of the poetry remains anonymous. Carl Orff famously took 24 of these poems and created the Carmina Burana, with the O Fortuna as the opening work.

One of the poets who we do (kind of) know the name of in the Carmina Burana is The Archpoet. The Archpoet had 10 poems, with all of his 10th and part of his 6th appearing in the Carmina Burana manuscript. Here is the Confession by the Archpoet:

This poem is a personal favourite of mine. I've mostly seen the original poem laid out in four line stanzas with slightly different spellings in the Latin. Waddell's own translation spells the first line as "Estuans inrinsecus" but splits the original into eight line stanzas. I have no idea why this is but I just quickly found a latin one online that matched up with the translations by Waddell. I find this poem very powerful and the translation very well encapsulates both the poetic form and rhythm while keeping the original meaning intact. I have set this text to music myself and have most extensively studied the latin translations of any poem on this list.

Another Goliardic poem that appears in the Carmina Burana Manuscript is the Portrait Of Despair:

This translation is actually by George Whicher in his book "The Goliardic Poets; Medieval Latin Songs and Satires". The full piece is three stanzas long (at least in the book) but this one here is just the one stanza I wrote up. I think this verse is the most interesting anyways.

Another poem from the Carmina Burana Manuscript in George Whichers book is Iste Mundus, This Dizzy World:

I don't really have a lot to say about this one. It just think it's neat

There are a bunch of other interesting ones I have that I might update this post with but that's a little collection of some of the interesting stuff.

[so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site]

Signs of Life:

 Season of Mists, “Augustus,” and a Hopeful Interpretation of The Sandman

In my previous essay, “I tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, it didn’t even matter”: The Awkward Meta-Tragedy of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, I discussed the issues with the common fandom interpretation of The Sandman’s ending as both a tragedy and a suicide.  I highly recommend you read that before this, if you haven’t already, as this is mostly an extension of that essay. 

Near the end of that work, I mentioned how, in searching for an interpretation of the ending that could be construed as hopeful rather than incredibly pessimistic, I came across a significant amount of evidence in the volume Season of Mists.  Quite a bit of this “evidence” I’ve usually seen used by fans to construe Morpheus’ actions as an intentional elaborate suicide, claiming that he was in fact orchestrating his own demise as far back as at least this volume.  However, I believe that it is also entirely possible to construe these same events as showing that he was NOT planning a suicide.

In this essay, I will go over each piece of evidence I collected, and how I believe it can be interpreted in alternate ways.

[Continued under the cut; Google Drive link provided for clearer formatting, but the rest of the text, in tumblr's awkward block form, is also posted after]

[Read properly formatted version on google drive HERE]

It is in Season of Mists that Morpheus first goes back to check on Daniel Hall, for the first time after warning Daniel’s mother Lyta that he will return one day to collect the child for unspecified purposes.  What purposes those are remain a mystery at that point; those who support the suicide interpretation insist that he planned for Daniel to be his successor upon his suicide.  I think this visit makes clear that Morpheus did intend for Daniel to be his successor, but not necessarily specifically for a suicide attempt.  In Season of Mists, Morpheus goes to visit Daniel after explaining to his subjects that he fears he may not survive his attempt to rescue Nada from Hell. 

Since it is repeatedly emphasized just how dangerous he believes the rescue mission to be, especially after pissing off Lucifer the last time they met, it seems just as clear to me that Morpheus might want to have a successor lined up in general.  He saw how horrible things got when he was captured and there was nobody in charge of the Dreaming; having a second in line is just the responsible thing to do.  It doesn’t mean he was specifically planning his death, he could just have been planning what could happen in case of his death.  There is a difference.  Likewise, Morpheus also briefly visits Hob to potentially say goodbye before the trip to Hell.  Once again, this emphasizes how dangerous he believes the mission to be, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s planning on dying. 

Some especially pessimistic fans try to paint the Nada mission in general as Morpheus’ first suicide attempt, before the Kindly Ones plot succeeded, but I don’t think the Nada mission is quite as easy to construe as suicide.  The Kindly Ones plot had a certain intentional air about it; Morpheus knew that finally granting death to his son would provoke the deities in charge of blood debts and in the depths of his depression did little to avert what effects he knew would happen.  By contrast, he actually prepared to battle into Hell to save Nada, righting a wrong from long ago.  Though he expected to have to fight Lucifer, he actually made preparations to do so with clear intent for a successful mission, and made the point of preparing his subjects beforehand.  This is in contrast to the sudden slaughter from The Kindly Ones where he didn’t do anything to avert the furies’ rampage through the Dreaming until the only thing that could stop them was his own apparent death.

Likewise, Lucifer and his arc are important to how one might interpret Morpheus’ fate.  Alongside Destruction, Lucifer is the other example Morpheus has seen of a major universal figure deciding to finally quit the job that wears them down.  In their conversation, which Lucifer explicitly refers to during The Wake, he compares his situation to Dream’s.  Lucifer notes he was also fated to be stuck with his crappy job forever, assigned by a force greater than him that he couldn’t defy.  But then, he realized, he could quit after all.  He just kicked everyone out, closed up shop, and walked away. 

His choice to quit, and especially driving everyone out of Hell before doing so, causes a TON of issues, to put it mildly; Dream’s responsibility of solving them is one of the two main storylines of the arc, with the other being the Nada plot.  The fact that Lucifer’s sudden quit creates such problems, however, does not go unnoticed by Dream.  In a pessimistic interpretation, Morpheus takes this as a sign that he indeed can never quit, because doing so would create far too many problems for reality.  His sense of responsibility to the universe is arguably the “higher power” he believes forces him to do the job.  In an optimistic interpretation, though, it might simply convince Morpheus that he needs to be smarter about his retirement. 

After all, it was Lucifer’s lack of a clear successor that led to the whole ordeal of Dream having to assign someone new the key to Hell, and it was the fact that Lucifer kicked everyone out that caused chaos across the dimensions.  Perhaps Morpheus realized that the best way to quit might be to make sure there was somebody to take over for him, so that operation of the Dreaming could continue without interruption and without having to unleash any residents upon other dimensions.  He’d conveniently already prepared a successor in case anything should happen to him when confronting Lucifer!  Likewise, choosing a successor who is eager to actually do the job averts the frustration and angst he witnesses in the angels who end up having to take the key—God basically forces them to stay there; they aren’t fallen so much as shoved.

While we’re on the subject of other entities successfully quitting, Morpheus also took note of Destruction’s path.  At first glance, it seems he is as blind to Destruction’s successes as he is to Lucifer’s, only seeing him as behaving irresponsibly.  However, as I mentioned in my initial essay on the subject, it’s possible that, after his own quest to find his brother in Brief Lives, Morpheus simply realizes he needs to quit smarter.  If he can go pester his wayward brother, other entities could pester him.

Lucifer says that Morpheus has changed from when they met before.  Whether or not that means “changed enough to realize that he can change his lot in life” or “changed to feel so guilty and depressed over his condition that he now wants to die” is up in the air—or perhaps up to reader interpretation.

At the end of Season of Mists, Nada finally gets to confront Morpheus after being freed from her multiple-millennia-long imprisonment, and the reader finally gets to learn part of why Morpheus was so incredibly harsh in her punishment.  She not only refused Morpheus’ offer to become his immortal queen, but she’d counter-offered that he should become a mortal man to be her king.  Not only had she, a human, refused a request from an Endless, but in asking him to abandon his responsibilities she’d unknowingly asked what he’d probably considered the most insulting thing possible.  Now, having been freed, Nada points out that it’s been 10,000 years; he can still change his mind and leave the job that’s clearly wearing him down.  Morpheus insists he hasn’t changed—possibly even refuses to believe it’s possible—despite the very obvious evidence standing in front of him.  If he hadn’t changed, hadn’t realized his wrongdoings and taken action to correct them, Nada would still be rotting away in that cell!  Instead, he risked his life to free her!

Notably, right after this is when Morpheus cuts some sort of ambiguous deal with the illusion-god Loki.  Did he decide to die, contracting Loki then and there for the plot that would eventually incite Lyta to send The Kindly Ones after Morpheus?  Or, instead, did Morpheus employ a master of shape-changing and illusion to help facilitate an equally elaborate plot that would allow him to change while only appearing completely dead?

There also seems thematic significance to the new “redemptive” approach to Hell the angels take.  The sinners find the redemption more painful, difficult, and overall worse than just the punishment.  Perhaps it is because redemption is a change, it requires effort, while punishment requires no change.  Regarding Morpheus’ tendency to blame himself for so many problems in the universe (only a small percentage of which he’s caused), one is left to wonder if the finale is Morpheus punishing himself with death—or, if instead, he endures redemption and changes.  Does he take the easy way out—the coward’s way out, as suicide is sometimes (somewhat insensitively, depending on the circumstances) called—or take the challenge? 

The rewarding happy ending for the rest of the universe takes on a very different sheen depending on which view you choose.  Either it rewards the protagonist giving up, choosing suicide, and choosing mere punishment, or it rewards a change, however hidden from the rest of the characters, and choosing redemption.

Now, the following point I have to make is not from Season of Mists but instead the collection of short stories after it, Distant Mirrors/Fables and Reflections.  However, I was unsure where else to put this point, so I may as well include it here.

Much like the point I made about “Façade” in my previous essay, I believe “Augustus” is another odd, seemingly unconnected story that may have deeper meaning to the overall plot.  At first glance, the only connection to the greater lore seems to be confirming that Dream is sometimes confused for the Greco-Roman god Apollo, in a reference to Orpheus’ parentage in the original Greek myths.  However, at its core, “Augustus” is about a powerful, duty bound king (well, emperor) who suffers from hidden emotional pain, who has to plan an unorthodox way out of his situation without any divine figures finding out.  Sound like anyone else?  This could either be symbolic of Morpheus trying to plan his suicide before any of his loved ones could intervene, or it could be symbolic of his plan to fake his death (or, possibly, kill off only the part of him that is bound to his duties), thus leaving him free with nobody else to try and drag him back!

“Augustus” also includes the idea of two contradictory prophecy books that are both equally true until Augustus decides which book to act upon.  This theme actually reappears in the main plot near the end of The Sandman, with there being multiple Destinies—eventually narrowed down to two—who only whittle down to one once Morpheus’ fate is sealed.  This reinforces my suspicion that this short story is thematically significant.  The fact that Augustus succeeds in his own plot, asserting his own agency and defying the unjust divine will of his abusive uncle, suggests that Morpheus also succeeds in his plan.  What Morpheus’ plan is, of course, is once again up to the reader’s interpretation and optimism level.

There is one last potentially-overlooked point I would like to address.  Season of Mists concludes with what appears to be a quote from author G. K. Chesterton, upon whom Fiddler’s Green’s human form is based.  However, the book quoted does not actually exist; the notation states that it exists in the Library of Dreams, which holds every book both written and, in this case, unwritten.  This adds layers of meaning to the quote.  Neil Gaiman is not deciding to end the arc on a specific passage he found meaningful and relevant; rather, he specifically wrote the passage and the attribution in question.  It’s very carefully crafted.  The quote is as follows:

October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale.

Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: “It is simply a matter,” he explained to April, “of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft, somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.”

         --G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was October

Hmm, what’s that about the ending of a book not necessarily being the ending of a tale?  Also, happy endings not being hard to find if you know where and how to look?

Of course the part about a sunny garden with soft grass is a reference to Fiddler’s Green’s landscape form too, but that’s going off-topic.

As I mentioned, the book “quoted” does not actually exist.  Upon searching, it seems that the title is a parody of the actual Chesterton work The Man Who was Thursday: a Nightmare (hey, look at that subtitle!).  Now, unfortunately, I am not currently familiar with Chesterton’s work and have not read this book.  A quick glance at the Wikipedia page, however, reveals some interesting, potentially relevant details.  It is very symbolic and dense…and there is apparently a debate over how pessimistic the book is supposed to be!  Apparently Chesterton himself attributed the work’s dark tone to the bout of depression he was suffering in college and later tried to explain a more positive spin on it, while at least one other analyst continued to insist it followed a pessimistic philosophy regardless of Chesterton’s later statements.  Gee, does that sound like any other literary works we know?  Like, perhaps, the very one this essay is interpreting?

That allusion may have ended up far more relevant than Gaiman ever intended.

Tagging those who might be interested: @serenityspiral @duckland @roguelov @ambercoloredfox @notallsandmen @lizajane2 @onehundredandeleventropicalfish

[sapphyreopal5]

Did you hear about Danneel working on a project for a TV show based on the book? I want to know what is your opinion about this. I still remember what the psychic guy said about bad things (her karma) will gonna happened to Danneel during May or June. Maybe her project ends up didn't work out. I am guessing.🤔

Hello Anon thank you for the ask. So the psychic guy, as was implied in past posts said this disaster is not career related but it is instead health related. I also anticipate some financial hiccups coming up as well and it is 100% related to The Winchesters lawsuit (whether it's the catalyst of disastrous changes or it IS the disastrous event is yet to be discovered). I think that the consequences of her using black magic are health related problems and even financial from The Winchesters lawsut, as I will talk about below 'cause of this great concept called synchronicities. I will first elaborate on the book optioning tidbit to show even my haters that hey, I talk about things from a LOGICAL perspective as well as a spiritual perspective, balance and all that ha ha... With this being said, for reference to everyone else this is what Anon is referring to about a book option. I picked this clip, as it includes subtitles and therefore is easier to understand for people, including myself.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 🇬🇧Dean Winchester & Jensen Ackles Fan Page (@spn.stardust)

So, according to the very first Google search result from a site called katemckean.substack.com, "an option is an agreement where an author gives a producer/production company/screenwriter/someone the rights to try and get the movie "set up". There's a time period involved, usually a year with provisions for another year extension, and an amount paid to the author for each of those years. That's it. That's all it is". In other words from the New York Film Academy, what it means is "acquiring an exclusive agreement for the potential to buy the film rights". The keyword here people being potential.

This isn't me raining on anyone's parade here. "Oh no, another Danneel hater saying its just a potential project, quit bashing on her you just want her to fail" along with everything else she has ever said bad about Danneel. Ha ha no but seriously, I would hardly call it a disaster if this were to fall through. MANY projects fail and don't come to fruition, this is the nature of the industry as a whole. Danneel and Jensen are well aware of how unpredictable the entertainment industry as a whole is, so there is no real reason to call this a fail. I'm not trying to be mean by saying this Anon, I am just pointing out from a factual standpoint why this book option falling through cannot be the said disaster the psychic guy speaks of that's said to be upcoming within months. If the above information is correct with it being a year or so, I do not believe that it could be that this particular project falling through could be the said disaster also based on the timeline of events going on with this book option going on, which from what Jensen described was a pretty recent thing.

Now, I am going to talk about why I agree with him that Danneel is possibly in fact having some health problems. I recall a post from January 26, 2024 where Danneel's face looked kind of puffy in a photo taken at Al Biernat's North in Dallas. Look at her hands as well, they look slightly swollen along with her face. Now, also look at some of these photos from around November 7, 2023. Here are some more posts per this post from a friend of mine here :) I'm not sure if Danneel had a procedure done here or what but I've seen photos here and there in recent times where her face and hands looked noticeably puffy, a medical condition called edema that can cause swelling legs, ankles, face, hands, feet, and even wrists unrelated to an injury. Some of the causes of edema include:

Gravity pulling fluid down into your legs and feet.

Sitting or standing still for too long, especially in hot weather.

Eating food with too much salt.

Taking certain medicines, such as ibuprofen and naproxen.

Some health problems, such as congestive heart failure, liver disease, and kidney disease.

Lightning, lightning everywhere!

Now, looking at the photos from my friend's post and as my friend pointed out, there are lightning bolt shaped neon lights behind the former One Tree Hill cast mates as is seen in the photo below as an example. As a lot of people know, Danneel and Jensen were named in a lawsuit by a cameraman named Bryan DeLorenzo who worked on the set of The Winchesters as he was struck by lightning. It has been said that Robbie Thompson the director made the call to film the episode in question during bad weather. Osha laws state that when there is lightning spotted on radar within a 10 mile radius, all outdoor activities such as filming and even sports are to be paused and continued when no lightning has been spotted within an 8 mile radius for at least 30 minutes.

It's been assumed by many Bryan will settle with Warner Bros and Chaos Machine Productions. However, based on my research from the case status per the county court documents Bryan did in fact post/pay the jury duty fees back in January with the next meeting taking place in July. Also, it was specifically Danneel and Jensen that were named in the lawsuit NOT CMP (and yes you can in fact sue owners of a company instead of the company itself, or in other words "piercing the corporate veil").

I also made this post back on November 28, 2023 talking about how Bevin Prince's husband (the woman who also was part of One Tree Hill) did in fact pass away exactly 80 days after the Walker episode Jensen directed "No Such Thing as Fair Play" aired, which was on April 14, 2022 (funny, this being posted 8 days after the 14th this year what do you know). In that post of mine, I also did a fun attempt interpreting the tarot reading with reference to the show (and also analyzed with reference to Jensen and Danneel) featured in that episode Ranger Perez and Trey attempted to interpret themselves. Yes one of the cards in this tarot reading is The Tower which is depicted as a tower being struck by a lightning bolt. I also notated how some of the cards were touching Aquarius and looking again, the card that happens to be touching the Pisces symbol is the Death.

Curiously in the episode after the one Jensen filmed, part of the lyrics for the song "Together" by Michigander that played while Cordell and Twyla were talking about the past while sitting on a bench were as follows: "Well, oh my god, the world is ending Do you still want to meet me for dinner? I feel the thunder, see the lightning And these darker days keep getting dimmer"

Also on a funny note, the FBBC page did end up deleting this post below I saved the screenshot of with relation to a Riptide society which in FBBC's words "is an amazing charity that we will be working closely with in the future". Look at the imagery, which includes a lightning bolt under the words "Madam Radar" and the background image being of clear blue waters and what looks like an ocean with a large boat in the distance. Hmmm....

Synchronicities!

Oh what is the point of all of this you ask? As a psychic or seer or whatever you want to call me that's interested in writing about things like divine blueprints, divine plans/akashic records, etc. I am heavily interested in the "hints" we all have missed in our daily lives of future events to come. I 100% believe that many hints were missed by Danneel and even Jensen with regards to the lightning strike related lawsuit that they are currently facing, including the death of their friend Bevin Prince's husband who was struck by lightning and the other things I've mentioned in this post and others.

Common symbols and elements that keep appearing if you will, or in other words synchronicities. According to this site Lonerwolf.com with regards to what repeating elements are:

"For the lone wolf and spiritual wanderer, the awakening journey can often feel confusing and, at times, lonely. This is where synchronicity can be like a light shining in the darkness for us, guiding the way and affirming that we’re on the right path. Do you keep seeing the same repeated numbers, colors, words, or images all the time? Do you wonder what on earth is happening? Don’t worry, you’re not going crazy. You’re just experiencing synchronicity! In this guide, I’ll share with you types of synchronicity, how to welcome more synchronicity into your life, how to interpret it, and more."

Now also according to this same Lonerwolf site you can start to interpret synchronicities in the following ways (note I had to take out some of the text due to Tumblr character limitations, so please check the cited website for more info):

1. Meditate and go inwards Ask yourself, “What does this synchronicity mean?” Wait for images, feelings, or words to enter your mind. If you still feel doubtful, repeat the same practice three times and see what answer you get. 2. Tune into your body Your body is a repository of wisdom, and it will tell you the truth no matter what your mind tries to make you believe. When you think you know what the synchronicity means, tune into your body. Do you get any goosebumps, shivers, or feelings of expansion as though an inner lightbulb has gone off? If this is the case, you’ve likely found the right explanation. If, on the other hand, your body doesn’t experience any notable changes, you probably haven’t found the right answer. Keep persisting. 3. Use a pendulum (ah ha one of my favorite ones obviously ^_^ ) Pendulum dowsing is a powerful way of getting a direct answer from your unconscious mind. Simply get a pendulum (or a make-shift one) and ask it a question that demands a “yes/no” answer. 4. Find patterns One easy way to interpret the synchronicity in your life is to find patterns in your behavior. What issues or questions have been emerging a lot in your life at the moment? What has been the biggest source of anxiety/frustration you’ve been dealing with? Synchronicity often arises when we need answers and solutions. Find the patterns and relate them back to your synchronicity. 5. Explore the hidden symbolism Synchronicity is symbolic in nature. For instance, you might see a black dog all the time in your dreams and waking life, which symbolizes negativity/bad choices. Or you might keep seeing the repetitive number “111,” which symbolizes “being number one,” or the repeated number 222, which symbolizes “duality.” Reflect on what symbolism is present in your synchronicity. What does that symbolism mean to you? 6. Use oracle and tarot cards Renowned psychologist Carl Jung once commented on the Chinese divination method of I Ching: “For more than thirty years I have interested myself in this oracle technique, or method of exploring the unconscious, for it has seemed to me of uncommon significance.” Thanks to the I Ching, Jung developed his theory which he coined synchronicity. 7. Listen to your dreams  Your dreams reveal a lot about the synchronicity occurring in your life – they are, after all, the language of the unconscious mind. You can either try to passively analyze your dreams or actively try to “incubate” (or create) dreams that help to answer your question. To practice dream incubation, think about the synchronicity that has been happening in your life lately about half an hour before bed. Write down your question or draw a picture that symbolizes your synchronicity and put it under your pillow. This practice will help to prime your unconscious mind and prepare it to give you answers during your dreams. When first waking in the morning, record your dreams in a dream journal. Do this for one week and see what patterns emerge. (Bonus) 8. Ask for guidance When you’re still feeling stuck and confused by the synchronicity bombarding you or mysteriously poking you all the time, this is where others can be our mirrors and reflect back to the wisdom deep within us. Asking for guidance from a trusted friend or spiritual guide can be tremendously helpful as they may be able to see your situation more objectively.

Thanks for the ask Anon. I hope you find this insightful!

[theresa-of-liechtenstein]

tagged by @malcolm-f-tucker, thank you most esteemed ant!

Nickname: em is already a nickname, hehe

Sign: gemini

Height: 5 ft/about 152 cm

Last thing I googled: nothing glamorous, just fuel price for the station near my uni

Amount of sleep: about 8, but i function best with 9

Dream job: professor of teaching in engineering and/or test pilot/flight test engineer

Wearing: i've changed into pambahay lol but for most of the day i was wearing full length jeans (lab day wahey) and a royal blue half-sleeve cropped t-shirt with white sneakers. plus a hat with an extension to cover the neck when i was out for lunch.

Media that summarises me: cabin pressure, hands down. and bach's two-part inventions

Favourite songs: tapestry by carole king, i can't go for that (no can do) by hall & oates, annie's song by john denver...

Instruments: piano and violin but violin's become my primary. also voice, if i decided to actually Do Something With It

Aesthetic: modest but full of personal meaning. pale wood and light colors but not pastel. a lot of blue in my wardrobe and scattered throughout my life.

Favourite author: Rizal, followed by Austen. C.S. Lewis gets a shoutout because the chapter about Friendship in The Four Loves makes me want to bite things

Random fun fact: i make a lot of ferrofluid. it just looks like regular muck until you hold a magnet up to it and then you can move it all around. it's so cool

Some favourite mutuals to tag: trying not to spam tag people since i did quite a few tag games the past few days, but here goes! @dreamofpeppermints, @containsmoss, @metastablephysicist, @starnewt, @cjflint

[bloodboonfic]

Analyst(hopeful) asked:

World building questions time mostly as an excuse for me to work on my own stuff. sorry for this submit you’re currently my temporary accountability partner. this does not mean you have to respond or put effort in it just means that I have to write something. Even if its only a little bit. Intent is to copy the headcanons into my story world building file although altered to an extent. Need to write the headcanons down before I lose them. 

So what does the geography for the Antarctic empire look like? ie which map of the Antarctic do you chose to use? i like this one just because I think it is cool looking (this is not a request for you to use in bloodboon just sharing my thoughts.) https://scitechdaily.com/high-precision-map-shows-what-the-land-looks-like-under-antarcticas-ice-sheet/ There are some older more inaccurate scans of the land beneath that look cool too. (watch out that google search is a rabbit hole)

Compliment: don’t think I haven’t noticed on how some important things are in Technoblade’s perspective more recently. good job. It feels like your switching gears in the story. It makes it more difficult to see what Philza is thinking.   

Questions:

How long ago did the Nether have multiple kings before they dueled each other to death? From the sounds of it there was a war in Mightyedge’s time considering he took a total of 3 bloodboons. 

Why are avian’s so few? 

personal headcanons of Bloodboon:

1. Avains are so few because of a plague (which unfortunately they were the primary spreaders of before they caught on) a lot easier to be a vector when you can fly. And then after that plenty of avians died because governments blamed them for the spread of the plague. (only partly true plenty of people were responsible its just hard to have proper pandemic measures in place when the world can’t get along)

2. The Nether kingdom raids according to and follows the Overworld seasons. They also prefer to raid warm areas it was a famine in warmer Overworld areas that drove Technoblade to chose to raid the Empire. He wasn’t going to drive more people to death because of his raids.  

3. joke headcanon avians have carbon fiber bones. 

Joke scene in my head. After everything is over and Philza just strongarms his council into not executing Technoblade and then strong arms hypixel (which is an Antarctic empire land but only sort of like Puerto Rico to the US) into giving him land. what follows is A. the potato war and B. a realization from Technoblade

T: interrupts a Antarctic empire council meeting. “Did you get me land in Hypixel to disrupt the potato monopoly that you couldn’t interfere with because Hypixel isn’t actually the Empire?

P: only mildly irritated at the interruption. He thinks its funny.

“Yes. What of it?" 

T: "Phil! My sanity!" 

And lastly. Its been a while life treating you two okay?

~~~

Wow, that sure is a lot! Glad you’re so interested in our works, but also don’t be afraid to make your own content for whatever spin off you may or may not write ^-^

The Antarctic Empire is based off of SMP Earth, although neither me nor Anchestor were involved with mcyt at the time. As it isn’t really a setting except for a short amount of time, we’ve put little thought and no research into it. Things that are said about the overworld (and by extension the empire) are pulled from either vanilla minecraft or irl logic. It’s a bundle of references and a plot devise more than anything else.

–Pink

The only thing pinned down from the Antarctic empire for Bloodboon is that the capital is a port city. That map looks cool though!

About that POV thing, my general system is to write from the perspective of the one who knows the least about what’s going on. It’s more interesting to have Techno going “Why is Philza grumpy? Is it something I did? What can I do about it?” instead of Philza going “I’m molting and mad about it and Techno doesn’t Get It grrr”. Techno himself isn’t a dangerous mystery anymore like he was in the beginning of the story, so its a lower bar to hop into his head.

I think the piglins coming together under just one king was a process spanning centuries, kinda like how the Roman Empire expanded and collapsed over time. But yes, bloodboons are specifically subjugated enemy rulers. Bonus, with how dishonourable piglins see surrendering as bloodboons is, Mightyedge having as many as three means he killed a lot of people who wouldn’t be subjugated. Ashthorn was also very keen on war, meaning there was someone to fight with.

Avians being rare. I don’t think it was one big thing that wiped most of them out, as much as just a series of small things. The wings make childbirth dangerous, hollow bones are prone to injury, injury leads to infections and death. More importantly, as shown with Wilbur, it's a recessive gene. I imagine avians used to live in small, remote communities, maybe on mountains and such, but as the world expanded, they began to mingle with non-avians, resulting in non-avian babies. A remote community coming in contact with the world at large would also expose them to fun new diseases to which they’d have not developed immunity. It’s a death of a thousand cuts.

Disrupting a foreign potato monopoly by weaponising Techno’s obsessive tendencies is 100% something Philza would do.

Life is decent, I’m gonna be on vacation soon, that’s dope. I wrote a chapter, then we agreed that it’d be better if A Thing happened before that chapter, so another chapter needed to be written before that one could be published. And then I played Tears of the Kingdom for a few weeks ^^ But! Next chapter is gonna come out this week I think, it's in the last bits of editing. Lads are going on a road trip~

-Anchestor

[merymoonbeam]

With all due respect, I’m not the one who needs to get a life. There is a large amount of gwynriel fan art - especially of that scene where Azriel rescues Gwyn. However, there has only been one creator who has depicted Azriel as shirtless. And, of all the countless (!) gwynriel shippers, only a select few people have made comments calling the scene ‘passionate’ (keeping in mind that for many, English isn’t their first language…)

And, even if you do have an issue with how this particular scene is being portrayed by some people in the fandom - why can’t we simply have a conversation about it? Especially given that the people elriels are ganging up on (who are real life people - not fictional!), could very well be SA survivors themselves. But instead, and as always, the default mode for elriels is aggression and hostility. I actually used to ship elriel myself, but couldn’t stomach being part of a community that is full of so much hatred.

You are also incorrect in saying that the comparison I made is like “apples and pears.” Literally just google search ‘Feyre and Rhys Under the Mountain’ to see COUNTLESS art pieces of Feyre dancing over Rhys’s body, or any other scene from the first book (which was incredibly traumatic for Feyre, and something that Rhys himself acknowledges was awful) but is instead made to look like this super sexy scene between the two of them. I’ve seen art of Rhys twisting Feyre’s broken arm as he winks, or art of Rhys drugging Feyre, and kissing her as tears fall down her face in disgust. Yet, I don’t hear the same outcry. As far as I can tell, gwynriels aren’t producing art of Gwyn being assaulted… yet there’s a myriad of art pieces of Feyre being assaulted (which is then also romanticised! By other elriels too!)

As for your point about Gwyn (potentially) being a morally gray character - sure, no one’s denying that. Anything is possible in SJM books. But, the lightsinger theory, by extension, suggests that Gwyn is lying about her past. It’s also in poor taste to suggest that the character who has endured extreme sexual violence is ‘luring’ Azriel as a means to get between him and another girl. If elriels care so much about how Gwyn’s SA is portrayed (to the extent that they’ll go after gwynriels who don’t paint it in a way they deem appropriate), then why doesn’t that apply to your theories as well? Or even how you all talk about Gwyn online…?

Do you care (or even listen) when gwynriels and other people in the fandom have spoken out about how so much of the discourse elriels engage in is actively harmful to SA survivors (and spreads a really gross and incorrect rhetoric?) Or, is it just another chance to dog pile on, and demean people in the fandom who just so happen to have a different shipping preference to you…?

let's go bit by bit again shall we...

TW: SA

With all due respect, I’m not the one who needs to get a life.

you are the one who is sending me anon defending the romanticizing of Gwyn's SA...so yeah. get a life.

There is a large amount of gwynriel fan art - especially of that scene where Azriel rescues Gwyn. However, there has only been one creator who has depicted Azriel as shirtless. And, of all the countless (!) gwynriel shippers, only a select few people have made comments calling the scene ‘passionate’ (keeping in mind that for many, English isn’t their first language…)

so you accept that you guys use that scene to show "gwynriel"? the scene that didn't happen in the book but you are altering the scene to show gwynriel? Did I get that right?

there is so many of that scene where azriel is naked. I see them daily. Like come on... don't lie. He is shirtless in nearly 90% of them.

and english being their or any ones second language doesn't give them the right to be careless about their language. English is my second language and I use Google translate when I don't know a meaning of the word or to check if I'm correct about the meaning and use it correctly. So get out of here with that mindset. they can use Google translate like me or any other translator. that is not an excuse to use that word or doesn't give them any right to be so careless. and passionate is not a hard word to know like...it is a word I learned early on when I started learning english so...

Especially given that the people elriels are ganging up on (who are real life people - not fictional!), could very well be SA survivors themselves. But instead, and as always, the default mode for elriels is aggression and hostility. I actually used to ship elriel myself, but couldn’t stomach being part of a community that is full of so much hatred.

the fact that when elriels speak up about a fanart being triggering for SA survivors beeing seen as ganging up on a real person is...just weird.

And there is this stigma that when a person is from a country or from an ethnicity or have some type of trauma that doesn't mean whatever they do or say about that situation is right. When other people who is from that country or ethnicity or have that trauma as well say that thing is wrong or triggering it should be listened not get their comments deleted or get blocked. and this case that artist is deleting comments and blocking people who is spoken about that art being triggering or any other situation closer to this.

and I don't see elriels as hostile sure there is bad apples in every fandom but where is your standart against gwynriels who bullied artists out of the fandom or bullied people to closing their accounts or people who got ban from gwynriels reporting their fanarts? Why are we not talking about that? if there is 3 elriel bad apples there is 100 of gwynriels bullying elriels left and right. but bc of their numbers they are more heard bc they are louder. when we raise our voice about something, we are shown as "ganging up on the artist or whatever".

You are also incorrect in saying that the comparison I made is like “apples and pears.” Literally just google search ‘Feyre and Rhys Under the Mountain’ to see COUNTLESS art pieces of Feyre dancing over Rhys’s body, or any other scene from the first book (which was incredibly traumatic for Feyre, and something that Rhys himself acknowledges was awful) but is instead made to look like this super sexy scene between the two of them.

I googled. only saw one. other fanarts are with either the twins nuala and cerridwen or Feyre as alone. and those other fanarts with feyre sitting on rhys' lab is from acomaf lol. Get that right.

and if there is anything else I have never seen them.

I’ve seen art of Rhys twisting Feyre’s broken arm as he winks, or art of Rhys drugging Feyre, and kissing her as tears fall down her face in disgust. Yet, I don’t hear the same outcry.As far as I can tell, gwynriels aren’t producing art of Gwyn being assaulted… yet there’s a myriad of art pieces of Feyre being assaulted (which is then also romanticised! By other elriels too!)

I didn't see it. and if you did why are you not talking about it in your blog? coming to me using this to defend romanticizing gwyn's sa...LIKE ???????

I only saw one fanart of Rhys' holding Feyre's arm and it was done way before I joined the fandom. What do you want me to do about that? Go talk about a fanart that was done years ago when I didn't have any clue who sjm was?

and the issue is not about gwyn's assult being show...it is Gwyn's trauma is being used as a way to get a point for gwynriel. Literally this is what I'm trying to explain but you don't get it and trying to justify it to me by using Feysand fanarts that I can't seem to find.

As for your point about Gwyn (potentially) being a morally gray character - sure, no one’s denying that. Anything is possible in SJM books. But, the lightsinger theory, by extension, suggests that Gwyn is lying about her past. It’s also in poor taste to suggest that the character who has endured extreme sexual violence is ‘luring’ Azriel as a means to get between him and another girl. If elriels care so much about how Gwyn’s SA is portrayed (to the extent that they’ll go after gwynriels who don’t paint it in a way they deem appropriate), then why doesn’t that apply to your theories as well? Or even how you all talk about Gwyn online…?

lying about her past? lmfao. Lightsinger theory doesn't say or show that. I don't get it. WHAT? I'm confused. It is a theory to explain why she is glowing when she sings or shadows singing in answer to her breath like nesta's power did. that's all about it. where did you get that for real?

maybe it isn't to get between the girl and the guy but there is an another reason. literally you guys made yourselves believe that gwyn is a love interest for azriel and when we theorise she could be a lightsinger you are saying we are making gwyn be in between azriel and elain. lol no. That's not it at all. it is just that we are theorising why this girl glows when she signs and all those singing reference in the bonus. I can literally give two shits about gwyn coming in between azriel and elain.

Do you care (or even listen) when gwynriels and other people in the fandom have spoken out about how so much of the discourse elriels engage in is actively harmful to SA survivors (and spreads a really gross and incorrect rhetoric?) Or, is it just another chance to dog pile on, and demean people in the fandom who just so happen to have a different shipping preference to you…?

do you mean when we said Gwyn might not be ready bc she hasn't shown anything about being ready and at the end of the book went back to library which is the place she went in the first place bc of her trauma and Gwynriels started assuming about her being ready and drew her in extreme sexual positions(I'm talking bdsm and all) and other SA survivors also talked about how we shouldn't assume she is ready and then we were made villains bc gwynriels twisted our words to "elriels say gwyn can't have sex bc she is SA" if you are talking about that...READ THIS AGAIN. I explained. you are not the one who is dog pile on for shipping another "couple"...we are.

Okay. Bye now.

[xmcu-fietro]

Peter Maximoff fandom activity ideas

a follow-up for this post

Typing a decent amount of this after my brain is fried from moving so if this doesn’t make any sense please tell me xD I’m sorry this post is so long, but I’m too tired to properly go through and condense it any more.

Here’s some ideas for things the Peter Maximoff corner of tumblr can do for fun :) none of this is set in stone, so if you have any ideas to add please reblog with them! And feedback is needed to know what ideas should actually be used, so if you have a preference for/against any of these ideas please say something!

Ideas:

Some kind of fanfic writing accountability network where those of us that write fics can set deadlines or word count goals and help each other stay on track with consistent writing (can also work for other types of fanworks)

Watching xmen movies (or other Evan projects) together

collecting/posting recommendations for fan works (fics, art, etc)

Different days for specific topics (like a Fix-It Friday where we talk/write about how we’d change things that happened in canon, whether it’s adding Peter to an established story (like seeing how he’d fit into MoM) or fixing plot points that did happen–most common example is ralph, obviously, but there can be other things too)

2x a month (every other week) challenges or exchanges

The main idea right now in terms of boosting fanwork creation is to use Pacemaker to create fanworks every other week (with those weeks being for specific fanwork categories). What I mean by “categories” is that there would be one week for writing (headcanons, fics, analysis, essays, etc), the second week as a break (or to work on things for the third week), the third week for art (any kind), and the fourth week the same as the second (just leading into the writing week, starting the cycle over again for the next month). People could do any week(s) that they want and would post their content on the Saturday of the week designated for their type of fanwork. The weeks could also have prompts so that everyone is creating something based around a certain theme/genre/dialogue prompt. Of course, you aren’t required to participate, and this “schedule” is more for the sake of having some kind of general routine to help people create more consistently if they would like.

For example—If I wanted to do the writing week, I could spend the other three weeks of the month working on my writing. I would track it by using Pacemaker’s challenge feature, which everyone writing can use (if they would like) so we’re able to see where we’re at and can encourage each other to create. Then at the very end of the writing-themed week, I (as well as anyone else participating) would post what I’ve made (probably on ao3 with a tumblr post linking to it). 

Also important to note: @fouralignments and I came up with the fanwork schedule because we both like to have a certain level of structure/routine, but we don’t want this to feel strict or stressful! If this sounds more like homework than fun, or if you have suggestions for how this can feel more enjoyable to participate in, please tell us!

Beyond that idea for fanworks, there’s a few options for some of the other ideas I listed, like streaming. Some options include:

Scener

google chrome extension for apps like Netflix/Amazon Prime/Disney+ etc

Chat feature

Cons: limited to ten people

Twoseven

Website for watch parties (through chrome or Firefox extension)

unlimited amount of people allowed

Cons: doesn’t allow Disney+/Hulu unless you upgrade to premium

Watch2gether

Works on any browser

One person creates a room and anyone can copy/paste content links for everyone to watch in-sync

Cons: everyone watching has to rent/purchase movie for it to work since it’s not one person streaming

All of that to say—if you’ve got more ideas to add, or if there’s anything here you’d like to do, please say something! I think this has potential to be a fun way for fans to connect and keep the fandom alive with more content :)

[tmblrvision]

It's Time for Tmblrvision 2022!

It's July, which means it's time for the annual fan contest event of the summer: Tmblrvision Song Contest!

In this post, important details about the contest will be revealed, such as the calendar of events, host city, and visual identity. As a reminder: Sign-ups are in ONE WEEK, on Saturday, 9 July 2022, at 9pm CEST! So if you're interested in participating, be sure to note that down on your calendars! Saving a country gets very competitive; just take a look at how close those timestamps are from last year:

Discord Server

The Tmblrvision Discord Server has a rather active community, not to mention an extensive collection of song suggestions for each eligible country. Many things are also first announced on that server (apart from the sign-up form), so do #JoinUs to stay on top of the latest Tmblrvision news!

Tmblrvision Song Contest 2022 Rules

This year's rules have been published on a Google Doc. I suggest briefly going through them if you're interested in joining the contest. If you've participated before, the most notable rule changes are: (1) the participation of Independent Belarusian Artists and Independent Russian Artists, (2) the dates of eligibility (only songs released from July 2020 onwards are eligible), and (3) the audience vote (aka televote) procedure, which now allocates a flat amount of ten votes per audience voter.

Read the rules!

2022 Event Calendar

Here's a detailed calendar of events for this year's contest:

9 July (Sa), 9pm CEST: Sign-ups open 11 July (Mo), 9pm CEST: Sign-ups close 17 July (Su), 10pm CEST: Song submission deadline 18 July (Mo), 8pm CEST: Live running order allocation draw 25 July (Mo), 8pm CEST: Live song reveal show 5 August (Fr), 8pm CEST: Voting deadline 15 August (Mo), 8pm CEST: Live results show

Note that the dates and times of some of these events may be subject to change depending on IRL events, but you will be notified with plenty of time about these changes. (To stay on top of things, I suggest joining the Discord server.)

Host City, Venue, and Presenters

As mentioned previously, we have made the decision to have this year's contest in Ukraine but in Spain. The focus will very much remain on Ukraine, but of course Spain's contributions will be visible and acknowledged.

The partnership of Ukraine and Spain has definitely informed the planning of the contest, particularly in the selection of the host city and the presenters. The presenters for the contest will be two iconic performers, one from each country: Jamala and Chanel.

As for the selection of the host city, we looked into which cities in Spain were partnered or twinned with cities in Ukraine. Between the two cities, we selected the one twinned with Kamianets-Podilskyi, which is Teruel. As Teruel did not have a suitable venue, we looked at the autonomous community it belonged to, Aragon, and ended up with its capital city.

We're pleased to welcome you all to this year's host city, Zaragoza!

The venue will be the Pabellón Principe Felipe, an indoor arena which opened in 1990 and is home to basketball's Basket Zaragoza and handball's Caja3 Aragón, but is definitely no stranger to hosting major concerts.

Visual Identity

That's your first look at the visual identity of Tmblrvision 2022!

The emblem is, of course, the sunflower, which is a symbol of hope and peace in Ukraine.

The slogan is Hope Dawning, as we recognize the power of music as well as the power of people and artists coming together to spark hope in uncertain times.

The slogan matches up with the background colors of the visual identity. The gradient uses the colors of the flag of Ukraine and the flag of Aragon and it is meant to evoke the imagery of dawn breaking. The proportions are also significant in that while Ukraine plays a dominant role, the support from Spain and Aragon is still a visible and vital presence.

Even the choice of font used for the slogan is deliberate. The font is Kyiv Type Titling, coming from a font superfamily designed by Dmytro Rastvortsev used for Kyiv city identification.

These design elements will be used for all official graphics for this year's contest.

I hope you've enjoyed this look into the details of this year's contest! I hope to see you next week on 9 July 2022 at 9pm CEST for the sign-ups of this year's contest!

[daydreaming-sunflower]

hiiii daydayie hiiiiiiii 💖💖💖💖💖

you said you wanted asks so here I am. you better appreciate this.

also I guess I'll send some emojis for the ask thing: 🧐 🎃✅💋

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

i actually don't. well i do sometimes, but those are mostly just details most of the time. i googled a little bit about roadtrips across the us when i was writing the canyon moon fic. one time i did an extensive research about the salem witch trials for a fic that hasn't seen the light of day yet and most likely won't for at least a very long time and that was fun. but most of the time i just wing it honestly aksjdhksa

🎃 Do you write fics for certain holidays? Which is your favorite holiday inspired fic?

not really! when it comes to reading, for example, i actually make sure not to read holiday fics during the holiday that is happening which leads to me reading christmas fics during summer or like. valentine's day fics during fall. one of the last fics i posted was a little bit valentine's day themed? if that counts?

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

oh man what a question. well for one, a bit of angst, like i mentioned in the previous ask askdsk. a weird amount of dissociation and thoughts about feeling real and like a person? a lot of 'darling's, although that might be on purpose. also a lot of peculiar boys and thoughts about how interesting it is to know them. as a self proclaimed founder of the sad artist cinematic universe, there is also a lot of sad artists having breakdowns (althought that might be more obvious once i finish a few of my wips that for once i am actually working on and not leaving to die lol). also the influence of lana del rey, maybe?

💋 First kiss fics. Love em or hate em?

hm i don't really have these strong opinions on first kiss fics but i won't turn down a good first kiss if someone's offering!

send me an ask!

[fuzzyblizzardkitty]

I have successfully managed to run macos 10.15 under VMware on windows 11. it was painful and hardly worth it in any practical sense, but it was also really fun. apple please stop fighting with Nvidia so I can just dualboot macos and not have it run at 20fps in VMware with visual glitches. I couldn't even get the edit feature in Photos to work, but from a quick glance at it, it looks really promising.

I always thought that macs were for artists but upon actually tinkering in macos for a few hours, they're actually just. for school. there's literally great (at first impression at least) tools for maths and graph plotting. basically a built in desmos. and then there's the dictionary which is a small thing but seems really nice to have. built in dictionary in all your languages. offline and quickly accessible. much more convenient then googling. and even then, in many apps you can just Google selected text by pressing the very top button in the context menu. neat

another really obvious positive is UI design. it's great. apple is still the best at UI design, and also consistency, which again, is pretty neat

what I found to be not as good is that apparently there is no way to set up my printer (no drivers that run on 10.15, which isn't even a new version at all. everything's outdated) and support for my Wacom tablet was worse than in windows. additionally, I couldn't get my mic to work, but I think it's purely because of me using a vm or otherwise not an actual Mac.

annoyingly the dynamic wallpapers are way off the actual lighting behind my window so that's disappointing lmao

and also there are problems with my apple id but I cannot say for sure whether they are caused by using a vm, or it's just apple being stupid.

also I couldn't connect my phone for some reason, I really don't see why that didn't work at all and I didn't look into it for the lack of need

I did manage to sign into app store and man. there's so much junk there ohmygod lmao. sadly darkroom, which is an app I really wanted to try for a while now, is macos 11+ only. which I find really confusing since I thought . we were. still on 10? idunno

the color calibration tool felt like a truck hitting me straight in the face. I consider myself really resistant to math jargon and stuff but that. was. brutal. I walked away not having a tiniest idea of what I just witnessed, which doesn't happen to me usually. mayhaps something to look into for fun. good thing about this is, people who know what that is all about, are probably happy with the sheer amount of detail they provide on color profiles. it is immense

I find it funny that they include a shitty lookin chess game with the installation lol

quicklook is priceless

why can't I create text files with right click.. that's dumb. I suppose I have Notes. which is a cool app. oh, apparently you can't create .txt files at all?? like I mean, it's not a saving format option in the text editor. why? why is .rtf the default one? why does it have .doc?????? really weird stuff

I like the tagging system in finder.app I wish they brought it to explorer.exe (extensions added for clarification of what os I'm talking about)

I think I will try updating the system next. I think I used a distro to install it (it looks vanilla but I will advise strongly against using anything that's not 100% official. I just could never figure it out)

windows task manager >>>>> (w11 update sucks tho. used to be the most stable and lightweight app, and now it has visual glitches even)

[smokeybrandcompositions]

Brand Recognition

I heard somewhere yesterday that people don't vote for individuals who change their lives, they vote for brands. Like, you don't vote for the policies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but you do vote for AOC because she plays Mario Kart over stream. Now, for me, i don't function that way. I need to know things. I need to make informed opinions. It's a facet of my hyper-vigilance. I know AOC's politics. I know what she stands for. I am assured in my decision to support her agenda. It's the same with why i do not support Trump and, by extension, the Republican party and Conservative ideals as a whole. Conservatives are in the business of now-thinly-veiled Fascism and the vast majority of their supporters are eating that sh*t up. Why? What happened to the Republican Party? I mean, Trump happened but why continue following this man who has been indicted four goddamn times? Who has the Feds all in his sh*t? Who has a RICO case going on in Georgia, built on the fact he's on tape bargaining for voter fraud? Then it hits me: They're not voting for Trump the man, they're voting for Trump the brand. If you do any amount of Google-fu, that cursory search will reveal how goddamn bad Trump is at business. From being a straight up slum lord in the Eighties, to failing upward again and again at real estate during the Nineties, to becoming a master at marketing during the Aughts. You can't tell me that a man who suggests dropping an atomic bomb in the heart of a hurricane to counter its spin, should have his finger on that button. You can't seriously say to me that someone who believes they "fell in love" with the brutal dictator of North Korea, should ever sit in the big chair of the US ever again. This motherf*cker printed off two trillion dollars in two months, trying to "fix" the economy, inflation be damned! Just print more money was his solution to the country not having enough money, basic economic theory need not apply. Never mind the rapes. Never mind the abortions. Never mind the adultery. Never mind the hypocrisy. The things i cited above are things he actually DID and you still vote for this man? Because you're not voting for the man, you're voting for the brand. Donald trump is a master of PR. He's been on TV. Dude was a celebrity long before he was anything political. The money he actually made in an honest days work, not by shorting the Feds on taxes for thirty years or making borderline illegal deals with the Saudis, was his time on The Apprentice. People ate that sh*t up. Why do you think 45 is so obsessed with ratings? Because The Apprentice is where the Trump Brand took root. The vast majority of the Tens, Trump licensed his name to everything he could and collected a check on it. He wasn't some miraculous businessman who was outside the sphere of Washington influence. He was a scuzzy slime lord who had reality TV clout and a weirdly bulletproof confidence that he could get away with anything. Dumb people flock to that. Dumb people think that's strength. Dumb people buy into that brand. Republicans are a cult of personality. They vote for an in image. They vote for a Brand. They vote for Trump, not Trump, and when you look at it from that perspective, of course they do.

[smokeybrand]

Brand Recognition

I heard somewhere yesterday that people don't vote for individuals who change their lives, they vote for brands. Like, you don't vote for the policies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but you do vote for AOC because she plays Mario Kart over stream. Now, for me, i don't function that way. I need to know things. I need to make informed opinions. It's a facet of my hyper-vigilance. I know AOC's politics. I know what she stands for. I am assured in my decision to support her agenda. It's the same with why i do not support Trump and, by extension, the Republican party and Conservative ideals as a whole. Conservatives are in the business of now-thinly-veiled Fascism and the vast majority of their supporters are eating that sh*t up. Why? What happened to the Republican Party? I mean, Trump happened but why continue following this man who has been indicted four goddamn times? Who has the Feds all in his sh*t? Who has a RICO case going on in Georgia, built on the fact he's on tape bargaining for voter fraud? Then it hits me: They're not voting for Trump the man, they're voting for Trump the brand. If you do any amount of Google-fu, that cursory search will reveal how goddamn bad Trump is at business. From being a straight up slum lord in the Eighties, to failing upward again and again at real estate during the Nineties, to becoming a master at marketing during the Aughts. You can't tell me that a man who suggests dropping an atomic bomb in the heart of a hurricane to counter its spin, should have his finger on that button. You can't seriously say to me that someone who believes they "fell in love" with the brutal dictator of North Korea, should ever sit in the big chair of the US ever again. This motherf*cker printed off two trillion dollars in two months, trying to "fix" the economy, inflation be damned! Just print more money was his solution to the country not having enough money, basic economic theory need not apply. Never mind the rapes. Never mind the abortions. Never mind the adultery. Never mind the hypocrisy. The things i cited above are things he actually DID and you still vote for this man? Because you're not voting for the man, you're voting for the brand. Donald trump is a master of PR. He's been on TV. Dude was a celebrity long before he was anything political. The money he actually made in an honest days work, not by shorting the Feds on taxes for thirty years or making borderline illegal deals with the Saudis, was his time on The Apprentice. People ate that sh*t up. Why do you think 45 is so obsessed with ratings? Because The Apprentice is where the Trump Brand took root. The vast majority of the Tens, Trump licensed his name to everything he could and collected a check on it. He wasn't some miraculous businessman who was outside the sphere of Washington influence. He was a scuzzy slime lord who had reality TV clout and a weirdly bulletproof confidence that he could get away with anything. Dumb people flock to that. Dumb people think that's strength. Dumb people buy into that brand. Republicans are a cult of personality. They vote for an in image. They vote for a Brand. They vote for Trump, not Trump, and when you look at it from that perspective, of course they do.