#i'm only posting for documentation purposes

[ourceliumnetwork]

oh i really thought i was going to get that shit done first thing today huh.

well the forms are downloaded and just need to be filled out and sent so... one step closer to the goal.

[fiercynn]

on ao3's current fundraiser

apparently it’s time for ao3’s biannual donation drive, which means it’s time for me to remind you all, that regardless of how much you love ao3, you shouldn’t donate to them because they HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY AND NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH IT.

we’ve known for years that ao3 – or, more specifically, the organization for transformative works (@transformativeworks on tumblr), or otw, who runs ao3 and other fandom projects – has a lot of money in their “reserves” that they had no plans for. but in 2023, @manogirl and i did some research on this, and now, after looking at their more recent financial statements, i’ve determined that at the beginning of 2024, they had almost $2.8 MILLION US DOLLARS IN SURPLUS.

our full post last year goes over the principles of how we determined this, even though the numbers are for 2023, but the key points still stand (with the updated numbers):

when we say “surplus”, we are not including money that they estimate they need to spend in 2024 for their regular expenses. just the extra that they have no plan for

yes, nonprofits do need to keep some money in reserves for emergencies; typically, nonprofits registered in the u.s. tend to keep enough to cover between six months and two years of their regular operating expenses (meaning, the rough amount they need each month to keep their services going). $2.8 million USD is enough to keep otw running for almost FIVE YEARS WITHOUT NEW DONATIONS

they always overshoot their fundraisers: as i’m posting this, they’ve already raised $104,751.62 USD from their current donation drive, which is over double what they’ve asked for! on day two of the fundraiser!!

no, we are not trying to claim they are embezzling this money or that it is a scam. we believe they are just super incompetent with their money. case in point: that surplus that they have? only earned them $146 USD in interest in 2022, because only about $10,000 USD of their money invested in an interest-bearing account. that’s the interest they earn off of MILLIONS. at the very least they should be using this extra money to generate new revenue – which would also help with their long-term financial security – but they can’t even do that

no, they do not need this money to use if they are sued. you can read more about this in the full post, but essentially, they get most of their legal services donated, and they have not, themselves, said this money is for that purpose

i'm not going to go through my process for determining the updated 2024 numbers because i want to get this post out quickly, and otw actually had not updated the sources i needed to get these numbers until the last couple days (seriously, i've been checking), but you can easily recreate the process that @manogirl and i outlined last year with these documents:

otw’s 2022 audited financial statement, to determine how much money they had at the end of 2022

otw’s 2024 budget spreadsheet, to determine their net income in 2023 and how much they transferred to and from reserves at the beginning of 2024

otw’s 2022 form 990 (also available on propublica), which is a tax document, and shows how much interest they earned in 2022 (search “interest” and you’ll find it in several places)  

also, otw has not been accountable to answering questions about their surplus. typically, they hold a public meeting with their finance committee every year in september or october so people can ask questions directly to their treasurer and other committee members; as you can imagine, after doing this deep dive last summer, i was looking forward to getting some answers at that meeting!

but they cancelled that meeting in 2023, and instead asked people to write to the finance committee through their contact us form online. fun fact: i wrote a one-line message to the finance committee on may 11, 2023 through that form, when @manogirl and i were doing this research, asking them for clarification on how much they have in their reserves. i have still not received a response.

so yeah. please spend your money on people who actually need it, like on mutual aid requests! anyone who wants to share their mutual aid requests, please do so in the replies and i’ll share them out – i didn’t want to link directly to individual requests without permission in case this leads to anyone getting harassed, but i would love to share your requests. to start with, here's operation olive branch and their ongoing spreadsheet sharing palestinian folks who need money to escape genocide.

oh, and if you want to write to otw and tell them why you are not donating, i'm not sure it’ll get any results, but it can’t hurt lol. here's their contact us form – just don’t expect a response! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[bamsara]

Why did you start writing? From what I can tell you put a lot of passion into the works you make, where did it all start for the lovely stories you make now?

Wayyyy earlier when I was 9-10ish, and even at that age I was writing a lot, with just pencil and notebook paper. I know I have written earlier than that, but I have no evidence of it.

I filled up an entire 3inch binder with an entirely hand written story about a girl who lives who her grandma and has a dog named Trout, almost dies in tornado at school and finds out the tornado as a sentient being that was trying to kill her because she has some connection to a random dude that can control the weather, and a elegant queen lady who controls ice that basically adopts her and turns her into a scout to find other people who have elemental powers. She doesn't have any herself, but for some reason she can tell who does, and then can steal it. I still have that binder in my closet. Would not recommend reading it though lmao

I started publishing my writing online, fanfiction specifically, when I was 11ish and totally not supposed to be online yet. My first fanfic I wrote and published was for Soul Eater, and that account and those stories are still up to this day. (cringe warning for the exact kind of thing you would expect an 10-11 year old to write) I actually had two fanfic.net accounts, this one where I wrote L4D stuff too.

I switched from fanfic.net to Wattpad after I got into FNAF and wrote a bunch of Fnaf stuff from an AU I had in 2015, and that AU is what led me to making a tumblr account that year, mainly to post my art for my stories. (I had always been drawing, too, but I didn't start posting that until wattpad)

And then I switched to AO3 around 2018 and my stories have been there since. I have, quite literally, been writing for nearly 15 years, with pretty much all of my work well-documented online since I started.

I hate my older works from when I was a teen/kid, and even work from just a few years back, and even removed them at some point, but decided to keep them up for archival purposes. Especially since you can kinda see how my writing style has changed, my standards in writing like the wordcount going from 80k at 11yrs old to 200k something for my long fics, my viewpoints and beliefs, etc etc. I am also very...picky about the stories I read, so if I cannot find what I want, I will make it myself.

Writing is absolutely the best and most practiced coping mechanism I've had since forever. I will write even if I do not have any readers. I still write things that I do not post online, so overtime what was something I deeply enjoyed as a hobby and an outlet to process difficult and low parts of my life becoming something enjoyable to other people is kind of wild to me, still.

And I'll continue to do it even if one day this account explodes or something. When I said 'Writing and creating art is the only thing keeping me sane' I was not trying to be quirky /lighthearted. I'll dedicate entire days to writing chapters in a row.

But yeah I've been writing for a long while, I'm glad you guys really like it! Look at my cats

[chameliyun]

ok so my main wip is called Varian is not a Wizard. Varian from Tangled the Series gets yoinked through a portal into another world while trying to stop Zhan Tiri. diverges from the S3 finale right there - that's the inciting incident. he ends up in the D&D-adjacent fantasy world where Meltyre, a young wizard (from the podcast Inn Between), goes to school. I have an idea of where I want it to end up and several plot points in the middle but no idea what order to arrange the plot points in. and tbh I might end up changing the ending bc it's been like four years since I started publishing it so my writing style and ideas have changed. but I've got three chapters out and have been "working" on the fourth one for like a year and it's still only like 60% done. I have not had any of it beta read and even though my word choice/style makes me cringe now, I feel like I have to continue it for consistency's sake. maybe I'll go back and do a mass edit when it's done, but lbr, that's got like a 2% chance of happening. anyway I think what I mainly need to do is develop a couple of specific ocs more so that they have more solid motivations, figure out what I want to drive the plot (and cut out or minimize the less important stuff), and let myself thoroughly outline everything so that I know how I want things to play out. I usually start fics with an end goal in mind, which is much easier in oneshots than multichapters, which is why I have so far in my 5 years of publishing fanfic finished exactly one (1) multichapter fic (and even that took me two and a half years for uh. 11k lmao)

maybe I just need someone to brainstorm with, but I don't really have anyone bc I've almost completely stepped away from the TTS fandom and haven't really gotten to know anyone of the Inn Between community. but if anyone fandom blind (or not) wants to listen to me ramble about plot and frustration and things just shoot me a dm I guess

I should probably post about my fics tho. maybe then I'll actually work on them

interact with this post if you want me to ig

[meraki-sunset]

so your crow strider au gave me inspiration for my own au, but i've built up the idea in my brain so much that now im scared to try to put it to paper (oops) did you ever deal with this while making crow strider? (and if you did, how you got over it would be much appreciated thanks fhdjks) also your art is cool :]

Hi, sure, i encountered a few blocks when writing CSAU and other projects. I think my method comes down to a couple rules

You need to know how the story ends from the start, so everything in the story leads to the end. Things can change about the contents of the story as you write it and you change your mind about the events that will transpire in it, but you need an end goal you can build your story towards. Most importantly, this is what allows you to add foreshadowing for said ending and structure the narrative in a clear direction. Otherwise, you might come up with a cool ending too late and regret some choices from past chapters that now don’t help this new ending you want

On that same note (and i’ll proceed to copy and paste from an old post) You need to have a Word document with a rough timeline of the events from start to finish. You need to know how it ends from the beginning and how they get there. It can be really, really vague, but it has to be there. It can go like

. They start the game, the trolls bother them.

.both games go to hell

.scratch

.trip, develop relationships

.new set of kids/teen drama

.old kids they get there

.to hell again

.John retcons everything

.new timeline

.they win

And that's homestuck simplified, Those are your Acts. With them, you will know where you're going and if you need to change something earlier. Everything will be constantly up to change of course, but you will be going from point A to point Z more easily.

From there, you go to every point in that list and create a Word document for all of them. I have them in different folders to have every act separated and in order.

A folder for each Doc for every Act, Numbered, and in each one make more lists like that one telling what happens, for example

WordDoc1 - ACT 1 "They start the game, the trolls bother them"=

.John needs to get his game

.introduce Rose

.introduce the trolls on pester chats

. John gets the game

.introduce Dave

.etc

And those are your chapters. Now you can know the extent of what you want to do and if it makes any sense.

I addition to that, every Folder can contain not only the Word document for the Act but also relevant texts and art that are connected to the Act, so evey folder is all about that specific act and any inspiration for it.

Another piece of advice I can give you is to hint at anything important. That's a rule of comedy; actually, the comedian usually closes the show with something related to the first things they said.

That works for everything, and makes people go, "Oh the thing! The meaningless thing they said earlier, it was a clue all along!"

Interconnect it like a web, and that web will stop the story from falling

Homestuck is so ridiculously interconnected that you lose track of the stuff and objects that repeat that have no way to be where they got to be, songs and people and events that are too similar to not be connected but nobody addresses, things like that make it feel like you're dealing with a universe and not just a line of events.

3. Yet another thing, it's something I'm still trying to assimilate, and is that less is more, sometimes things don't need to be said, specialy not bluntly, and an expression, a gesture, a flinch can summarize them. Backgrounds can be reduced, and ideas can be conveyed.

one example is, In homestuck, it's never said that Dave was raised with lack of food. He never sais it, but it's shown in how happy he was to find a warm bottle of juice in his closet, how there is only weapons on the kitchen and no sign of food, how he later sais he never learned what the purpose of a fridge was until he saw it on tv. If someone is lacking something, don't have them say, "i grew up without X thing" show what filled that space in the absence of X thing.

Instead of some character saying, "My dad was never there for christmas" have them say how they thrited for presents at the local goodwill, payed with their lawn mowing money and put the presents under the tree themselves for their siblings and mom.

4. Something that I always have in mind when writing the dialogs and sketching the scenes, is

"I have an idea; what's the easiest way for someone to get the idea, to get the feelings i want to transmit from the idea?" I made the art something I could handle drawing hundreds of times, simplified the coloring, the aspect symbols, the way I draw backgrounds, the way I write dialogs, etc.

That will save you time and work and could prevent you from getting stuck with a project too big to handle

5. This is the most important one: The first draft’s only purpose is to exist.

Writing is like playing darts sometimes; you only get closer to hitting the center by missing it and learning what not to do. That’s an actual rule on animation and a motto on the Disney office. “Get it wrong as quick as you can,” because when you learn what you’re doing wrong is when you start learnign what doing it right means.

If it helps, title your first draft “the dumb version,” because that’s what it is—the version to get the idea out of your head, and then you built over it.

On the same note, once you write "the dumb version" don’t correct it. Rewrite it. It’s annoying, I know, i know, but fixing and fixing a text only carries the mistakes from the first draft, and everything looks kind of disconnected, because it ends up being a Frankenstein text of all the versions of the story mixed together.

This also applies to art; that’s how I handle both writing and drawing; if it’s not working, hold onto the core idea, new page, restart.

Rewriting it puts it in perspective; it feels like a text of its own, with a clear intent in mind.

I think that’s all I have. Making a story is mostly about managing your strengths and weaknesses, organizing and not being scared of it not being perfect.

Hope this helps.

[bratbarzal]

https://kawhh.tumblr.com/post/784202736767057920/im-sorry-to-any-anons-on-here-who-will-only-feel

I know you're most likely sick of talking about this by now but this rubs me the wrong way.

Its like she's trying to downplay it all as 'drama' all the time and its getting so tiring. I'm pretty sure i've been blocked as anon even though i was never mean and she won't actually say what is going on or let anyone try and discuss it even though she says she doesn't mind asking for her side on things?

I think it's really hard for me to speak on this element of the situation and not come across as a bitch, or that I'm unnecessarily targeting someone and deflecting blame from the person who is at fault - but I've skipped out on answering a lot of anons who have either sent me links to things (I've said before, this person has me blocked and I can't view them, so I haven't responded) or had something to say about how it's being handled on this end, but ultimately I do think this user is a part of the overall conversation - and I can't really ignore the impact their actions have had on everything that has happened since this all started last month

a point I really want to make by speaking on this is that it's important for everybody that these things are spoken about publicly, and spoken about honestly, regardless of personal bias, because Brynn's actions genuinely hurt people and caused genuine harm to the writing and reading community on here. ignoring it or sugarcoating it does not take away from the pain caused or the damage done, and it's important to look at multiple perspectives to form an opinion

** I never have and I never will condone hateful messages sent to anyone - that is not the purpose of me speaking on this - and I urge people who want to have any conversation with anybody about this to be respectful, constructive, and not to shout over what is a serious point to be made, because it gets us all nowhere **

under a read more because it's long:

will preface by saying, this is not me trying to stand here on my soap box and point fingers and say that anyone is to blame for brynn's blatant and persistent content theft but herself. that isn't why I'm responding to this. and like I said above, this user has me blocked, I have her blocked, there's no other way for me to speak on it but to do so publicly (as much as she might hold the opinion I have no need to do so) and I sort of just want to show how all of this has had a wider impact on others in this space

I'll also preface by saying kawhh has said throughout that she doesn't agree with Brynn's actions, but as I'll explain below - actions speak louder than words, and the words she's said just aren't enough.

for anyone blocked, this is the post in question:

*most screenshots throughout this post are going to look different bc some of them come from others that have sent these to me - oftentimes by people trying to make me aware as it’s assumed they are about me, I don't know if that's the case, and nor do I actually care, this isn’t me trying to insert myself - the general consensus seems to be that anyone who speaks on this situation is a mean girl, a bully, or a bitch, and I think whoever she's trying to apply that to, it's a problematic take to have. I’m including pictures for context because I can’t link to posts.

my first point from this, is that she does have a responsibility to speak on this situation, and the reason I'm so insistent on responsibility and accountability, is because this user has a documented pattern of choosing to ignore and sensor the facts in favour of platforming, enabling and excusing her friend, despite her repeated abhorrent actions

when announcing brynn's return to the platform in a post that was encouraging forgiveness and giving second chances (no mention of all the other chances given for her to do the right thing), there was also no mention of the specific things she did that caused her to delete in the first place. there were several mentions of "brynn's actions" with no specific detail of what those were, and when she was explicitly asked, she then linked to a post which was an apology from brynn (again, not detailing the full extent of these actions, with repeated references to "what she did" or "her actions" and not a single one explaining in clear, direct terms what that was) and an ask she answered that said "she was taking other people's work from other websites and posting it here, at least some of it" - it's a watered down version of the truth used as a manipulation tactic to people who aren't getting the full story to be able to make an informed decision. she keeps adding that "nobody is saying that stops the hurt" but her repeated disregard of the severity of everything does take away from it

the point I'm making here, is that in situations like this - where she was encouraging people to forgive and forget - there needs to be a clear, unbiased reference for what they are supposed to be forgiving and forgetting, and the repeated cover up, in my opinion, was deceptive and manipulative

there were several available, unbiased posts that she never reblogged to her audience - one including a statement from brynn herself, made with the utmost respect on that user's part, and including screenshotted proof and a clear intention for transparency - that she could have linked to, but she repeatedly disregarded these, and even belittled, shamed and blocked the people who posted them on multiple occasions - stating that people were "stirring the pot for drama", "cashing in on drama and poking around" "being rude or bullying" and engaging in "drama book clubs"

several points then stem from things being handled this way

one being the repeated disregard for how many times people did address this privately - there were screenshots in the aforementioned posts circulating at the time that showed this was addressed privately to brynn dating back to 2023, with her continuing to steal and lie - handling it privately was no longer an option

and the second being the way these statements then trickled down into vicious messages spread across to the people who had the integrity to speak on it, and were shamed and ~virtually spat on for doing so

*these are asks that were posted publicly, and I have no doubt don't reflect the extent of how many people this sort of stuff was sent to, I haven't said who they were sent to but if you read this and want me to, I'll happily do so - not including the vitriol that has been sent to me over the last month, because like I said above, I'm trying to make a point of how far and wide this stuff spreads when handled poorly, however (obviously as someone who had to witness some of the things sent my way, it is clear where the source of the hatred came from, and that is not me saying she herself sent any hate, but that her posts inspired such a reaction - including specific verbiage used within her posts/responses)

tying into the above, and going back to my point about responsibility, throughout the time brynn was then gone, this user was encouraging people to send anons to forward to brynn, actively engaging her in a toxic environment that she, herself, said was the cause of her stealing in the first place, didn't give her a chance to distance herself from it or reflect on why she, for so long and without regard for anybody's feelings, let herself be consumed by engagement on this site, and played a big part in her returning to the platform when a lot of her other friends (who have made public posts that I won't link, because this isn't about them) were actively encouraging her to stay away, grow and learn - friends who then faced the same level of backlash and anon hate when brynn returned despite them trying to help in private

*I am basing this off of the excuses that brynn herself gave for her actions, not any assumption or opinion.

*I'll follow on from this by saying, I understand wanting to try and lighten the load of what was happening for her friend, and wanting her to know that there were people that were worried or cared, but if you're putting out statements saying this whole thing was brought on by an obsession with attention, you should not then be weaponising said attention when the girl clearly needed to remove herself entirely for a chunk of time and reflect on her actions - and all of that while continuing to cover up the actual thing she did

**an anon has since pointed out to me that you cannot send an ask, even on anon, if you don't already have an account, meaning brynn was active when she claimed to be offline, had full access to any content kawhh was forwarding to her without the need to encourage anons to get involved, and in my opinion, anon messages were being utilised to garner sympathy and again, manipulate kawhh's audience - this is my opinion, you can make your own mind up on whether or not you believe in those intentions, I don't want to force it on you but I think it's important to include she had a presence when she claimed not to, and at a time when a lot of other people were dealing with the aftermath of her actions unfairly, and I can't speak on whether kawhh would have been aware of this, but regardless, the whole anon thing should never have been encouraged

and encouraging these sorts of asks obviously then led to a premature return (which again, from public posts and private conversations, I know others were actively encouraging brynn not to do), to an audience kawhh had built of people who did not know what brynn did entirely, and were led to believe others being "bitches" was the problem - there is a public response to one of kawhh's posts that I won't sc, bc the user who commented was doing so based off of a lack of information, but this post was basically saying "SHAME ON EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT BRYNN AND BEING MEAN ABOUT BRYNN, YOU WOULDN'T LIKE THE SAME THINGS BEING SAID ABOUT YOU", proving that there was a false narrative that had been created around the whole situation

obviously it caused another wave of hurt and upset when brynn did come back, at which point kawhh repeatedly platformed her, again, never mentioning the specifics or the extent of her previous actions, despite several "explanation posts" from both of them, trying to enforce her own bias on her audience, and reblogging posts from brynn to her audience who she thus far has withheld the complete truth from (which are still on her page at this moment in time, with, again, no acknowledgement of anything that came to light yesterday)

and this is the point I'm trying to make - and why I have a problem with "it's between me, brynn and her friends" - kawhh herself utilised her own following to create a platform for brynn to come back, and to do the exact same thing over again, therefore perpetuating the same hurt to more people than will ever come forward - people came to her for updates on brynn, with messages to send to brynn, and for an explanation of what she did because they trusted her

and while she has said in vague and non-committal phrases, that she doesn't agree with what brynn did, she has never once publicly held her to account to the following she then manipulated into engaging once more

labelling this entire thing as "drama" and acting like she is above it belittles what brynn did, which includes but is not limited to

stealing multiple fics from other platforms

stealing multiple fics from this platform

stealing multiple fics from her FRIENDS

stealing multiple IDEAS from her friends, posted in private forums, and claiming them as her own

using conversations with her friends or posts by her friends to suit her own content, and pretending like they were her own

*also important to use the correct wording - she didn't "copy writing for some of her posts" - she STOLE writing, oftentimes full fic, changing names only, and at this point with all the evidence shown and everyone who has come forward, it was not some of her posts. It spanned asks, blurbs, fics, mood boards etc, and is presumably most of what she posted, including even random things said in a text post and down to random meme reaction pictures used. Her entire presence and most of her interactions with others were based on plagiarism and theft.

all across multiple years, having been confronted multiple times, and all while refusing to actually, explicitly, say what she did whenever she apologised, and who she did it to - and I'll assume (having spoken to double digits at this point worth of people) it's because the depths at which this whole situation spreads would absolutely disgust people. she blocked people who called her out - people who ended up being bullied back into deleting any post calling her out after receiving anon hate and nasty comments - and she played innocent to anyone who approached her (there are multiple screenshots of messages calling her out, and she gives the same watered down excuses in each one)

assuming 2023 is as far as it does go back, people have been bullied into silence, and the point I'm making here, and the pattern I'm trying to show - is that you can see how something as seemingly innocent as not wanting to condemn a friend's actions to others, contributes to them continuing to purposely hurt others for their own gain

too many people have tried to handle this privately, and have ~unintentionally enabled her over time

all of the things said above have directly contributed to a toxic environment for others on this app, where anyone who speaks on it is sent hate, people who were privately trying to support their friend were sent hate, and someone who repeatedly hurt and stole from others was given a platform to do so

like I said in the beginning, I have no delusions that I can say all this without seeming like a bitch, or like I'm deflecting blame from who is truly responsible - and I have no expectations that kawhh will respond well to this, but something needs to be said when she's constantly undermining the situation while lying to her audience, making endless indirects, and all in the name of "staying out of drama land" and pointing the finger at "mean girls"

she is the one who consistently makes an effort to cover up what brynn did, and so when she continues to do it, she should own up to the fact she can't shirk responsibility for her part in it happening again

AGAIN, I don't condone hate sent to anyone - I'm trying to bring awareness to the multitude of ways in which dealing with this situation with such little regard for anyone but brynn, has caused a ripple effect throughout the community, and I'm hoping it opens some eyes who might have been convinced by the deceptive posts made by kawhh throughout this mess that there's more than one side to a story

I also understand this seems like a vast overreaction to this particular ask, but I had a lot of asks yesterday that I didn't respond to until I could gather my thoughts, and am using this as one singular response

[qqueenofhades]

What do you think of the movement to vote "uncommitted" in the primary? Personally I think it's a good idea as a protest vote, while not "allowing Trump to win" since it's, ya know, the primary. You're voting for "the Democrat you want to be the candidate for president" not who you actually want to be president. Most of the arguments I've seen against it seem to forget primaries exist...

Well, since you came to me and presumably do want my honest opinion on this topic, I'll share it with you. However, this will also be very blunt and candid, including some things which I haven't yet said in the 4+ months since the whole Israel/Hamas situation kicked off, and therefore also frustrated. This frustration should not be read as/taken as being directed at you personally, but since you're the conduit for this question, that's just something I want to highlight.

So. Why should you vote for Biden in the primary, and not "uncommitted" or whatever else?

First of all, what I desperately want to ask all these self-righteous VOTE UNCOMMITTED IN THE PRIMARY TO SEND BIDEN A MESSAGE types is: what exactly the fuck do you want this message to be, and what action do you expect Biden will take as a result? Is this actually based on an expectation of what he can/and or will actually do, or is it just a froth of misguided Online Leftist "rah rah this Bad Thing Happening Is All Biden's Fault," as we also notably went through when Roe was overturned by the Trump-stacked SCOTUS selected precisely for the purpose of overturning Roe? My god, the amount of bad "THIS IS BIDEN/THE DEMOCRATS' FAULT" posts that appeared, and are still circulating on the particularly idiotic corners of this site. Nothing could ever be Trump/the Republicans' fault in that case; it was the same old same old "DEMOCRATS DON'T CARE ENOUGH TO STOP THIS!!!" puerile fantasy. That's what we are getting now with Israel/Hamas. This isn't Hamas's fault for attacking Israel on October 7 (god forbid; the online left loves Hamas) and it isn't even the state of Israel and Netanyahu's fault for responding with full-scale genocide on Gaza. Or it is, somehow, but not so much that Biden personally couldn't magically reach in and stop it "if he really wanted to." I'm sick and fucking tired of this bullshit sixth-grade bad-faith disingenuous approach to playing Super Moral Social Justice Yahtzee and refusing to acknowledge the thousands of complex factors at play, especially when it involves blaming literally anyone other than Biden, personally (just like the Trump cultists, for whom "IT'S BIDEN'Z FAULT" is the beginning and end of their political theory, just like the Online Leftists). I'm sure this will get me called a genocide apologist by the Very Smart Moral Twitter Thinker types, but I don't think "Biden has failed to magically single-handedly solve this crisis, which stems from one of the most major and long-running issues in post-WWII and indeed pre-WWII world history, in four months" is actually a good reason to vote against him.

Likewise: withholding your vote might make more sense as a strategy if Biden was still only blindly supporting Israel and refusing to do anything to pressure them, which is demonstrably untrue. I know it's hard for some of these people to actually read the news and/or anything outside their ultra-curated Twitter feed, but it's been well-reported and well-documented that he is. If the US was directly involved in the bombing campaign on Gaza, sure, tell Biden that you will vote uncommitted to increase pressure on him to pull out. None of that is actually true, and the "information" about Biden's action in re: Gaza on both Twitter and Tumblr is basically just entirely malicious lies. So again: what message are you sending when you decide to be all precious and announce you're not voting for him? You don't want him to pressure Israel? You're willing to blow this up entirely and increase the media nonsense about BIDEN WEAK DEMOCRATS DIVIDED and give Trump an opening to exploit? You really want to announce to the Trump/Putin/Netanyahu axis of evil that their anti-Biden propaganda is working (since all three of them are working as hard as they fucking can to get Biden out of office, and as someone who opposes all three of them, I think this is a good idea to vote for Biden!) and they need to hammer harder on this wedge issue? Because that's all your oh-so-moral Uncommitted vote is doing. It's not a protest. It's not leverage. It is the withdrawing of leverage. If you want Biden in office so he can be pressured to listen to you and take action that you agree with, you will vote for him. Yes, in the primary. Yes, when it's not directly against Trump.

You want a ceasefire, you say? GREAT! WE ALL WANT A CEASEFIRE AND/OR ACTUAL PEACE AND RECOGNITION OF A PALESTINIAN STATE! That's in fact why you should be busting your fucking ass to make sure Biden gets re-elected, and to give him a strong show of support in the primary. Biden is the only candidate with a credible long-term (and like, baseline functional sane adult) plan for Gaza. Biden is the one who has been pressuring Netanyahu in every single contact to tone it down and stop acting like an insane murderous maniac and therefore torching any remains of sympathy for the attack Israel suffered in October. Biden is the one who has his entire diplomatic team working on high-level contacts with the Israeli government and the Hamas representatives via Qatar, while sufficiently threatening Iran to back down from frothing at the mouth to destroy Israel (once again, just like the rest of the antisemitic western left). Biden is the one who is pushing for this not to be World War III, and yet we get Baby's First Social Justice Activist screaming at him for being GENOCIDE JOE and blaming him personally for not, as I keep putting it, shapeshifting into Netanyahu's body and making this stop. "He should publicly call for a ceasefire!" Or, and this is just a suggestion, he should DO HIS FUCKING JOB and continue to work on serious problems that don't have instant socially media marketable catchphrases and won't come with instant gratification. Also, please tell me how you plan to get both Hamas and Israel to accept the same terms for a ceasefire, abide by it, and do exactly what Big Daddy Biden told them, because you, the dedicated anti-western anti-imperialist, think that's the best course of action?

Like. I mean. As vice president and now as president, Biden is actually one of the least foreign-intervention-happy leaders the US has ever had. He was originally against the Abbottabad raid to take out Osama bin Laden in 2011; he wound down the overseas drone assassination program (at which the Online Leftists screamed bloody murder at Obama, ignored in Trump, and then refused to give Biden any credit for ending) to almost nothing, he pulled the US out of Afghanistan, and even though he's been supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, he's also been extremely slow and cautious (in my opinion, too slow and cautious) at giving them all the military hardware they need, even before this latest blockade of aid in the House by Putin's favorite little bitch Mike Johnson. He has already presided over a historic shift in US policy toward Israel, in terms of conditioning the use of lethal aid, imposing reporting requirements, starting to criticize them publicly, and calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state and more humanitarian aid to get into Gaza. Yet in the Online Leftists' mind, because he is not personally out there Captain America-ing away the Israeli bombs and/or calling for Israel to be totally destroyed "from the river to the sea" as the Tumblr activists are fond of using no matter how often Jews ask them to stop, there is nothing he's actually doing! GENOCIDE JOE!!!!! Like, I thought the anti-western anti-American crowd thought all overseas American influence was evil (but all overseas Russian and/or Chinese influence is fine). When Biden actually doesn't recklessly intervene in foreign conflicts like Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon/Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2/pretty much every American president in the latter half of the twentieth century, you'd think that would get him plaudits? NAH.

"Biden should stop selling Israel weapons without Congressional approval!" Okay, sure, he should. Which he did one time, and he also repeatedly promised to veto and/or not pass any only-Israel aid package that didn't also help Ukraine and Taiwan. He's also not beholden to the frothing antisemitic Online Leftists position that Israel should just lie down and let all of its citizens be killed and its state wiped from existence. Like. We also remember that Jewish voters exist in America, right? And that Jewish lives are something which are repeatedly and demonstrably under threat in the rest of the world, including from Hamas and the Houthis (who are genuinely terrible people and the western left's warm embrace of them as principled anti-Israel actors is all we need to know about their inherent brainrot and moral vacancy). We know that maybe going full masks-off antisemite (which Biden isn't going to do anyway, for any number of reasons) isn't the greatest plan and nothing to which you should be conditioning your vote? Likewise, please tell me how you plan to make Congress (especially the GOP-led clown car House) "do what Biden wants," since you're still beholden to that being the be-all-and-end-all of moral action? Or how you account for Congress at all, and not just think The President is An Almighty King?

Aside from all this, I am sick to my fucking back teeth of the Precious Moral Princesses (gender neutral) who have spent four years lying about everything Biden has done. We had the personally blaming him for Roe ending (he could unilaterally overturn SCOTUS if he really wanted!) We had the endless bashing about student debt, only to ignore him actually making the most major effort to forgive student debt in all the post-Reagan years. We have had a complete ignoring and/or distortion of his domestic policy accomplishments, which are some of the most momentous since FDR and LBJ. We have had an utter ignoring, revision, and downplaying of the damage Trump did in one term and how very much worse his second would be. We have had to endure "WELL YOU CAN'T ASK ME TO VOTE FOR BIDEN" at every single second for every single thing, because this is such a terrible onerous thing to ask them to lift one single fucking finger to give us some more time to come up with a better solution. And yet, as astutely pointed out by one of my anons yesterday, they utterly don't care whether the obvious outcome of this action is to help Trump get back into power. Apparently that's not a moral reach too far, but straining their delicate tender moral sensibilities to fucking do the goddamn bare minimum to help us out -- both in America and around the world -- no, no. We can't have that.

Like. These people allegedly want a ceasefire, and they want it to come about by asking literally nothing more of them then posting snide anti-Biden diatribes on social media. That's the extent of the effort they're willing to put in. They can't even trouble themselves to take the first step of voting for people who want to address this crisis in a constructive way. So yeah, I have a hard time believing this is anything deeply felt in regard to opposing genocide, and just wants what makes them look morally superior. Also: I don't care if your feelings are genuinely pure and strong and you obviously oppose what's happening in Gaza (we all do!) and want it to end. In that case, why the fuck aren't you throwing your support (yes! Even in the primary!) behind the one guy who's actually working to fix it and not just posting empty platitudes on Twitter? It likewise does not excuse you from the harmful consequences of your rhetoric and actions, if you decide that the best way to act on your deep-seated and genuine desire to stop the genocide is just to blindly bash Biden all day every day. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not excuse the fact that this election is against Trump and everything horrible that he represents, and that we are in this situation largely because the online left has learned literally fucking nothing from 2016 and is eager to do it all over again. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not give you a special Gold Star Moral Activist sticker announcing that you were too virtuous to engage in the process now, but if you're sufficiently placated, you maybe will do it in November. Miss me with that bullshit. I've spent eight years pleading with people to help us fix this mess, by -- yes! engaging with the flawed process that makes partial changes!!! -- and all I hear is that same fucking nonsense. That is a large part of why this response is so steamed.

Anyway. In short, I don't think voting "uncommitted" is a good idea, I think it only helps Trump in the short and long term, I think it protests nothing, I think it represents the same old tired anti-voting schlock that I have had more than fucking enough of, and I don't endorse it by any means. However, you will see that while I can strongly and unequivocally give you my opinion that it is a bad idea, I cannot actually reach through the screen, take control of your body, and force you to obey me one way or the other. So maybe, just maybe, Biden can't do the same with Netanyahu. Weird.

[visualnoteslibrary]

What is this blog?

@visualnoteslibrary a.k.a. the illustrator's library is a project wherein I attempt to collect, organize and share all the physical/visual descriptions of characters in classic lit to provide reference to illustrate from! It started as a personal project, as I had been annotating my copy of The Count of Monte Cristo to save all of the quotations referencing characters' appearances to draw them and decided to digitize and share the notes and decided it would be fun to make it an ongoing project. The folder can be found here!

Current Titles

The Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

Little Women

War and Peace

Les Misérables (work in progress, see this post for more information)

Les Misérables [Version Française] (see above; this version will be updated concurrently)

How is the information arranged/presented?

By character, then by chapter so you can easily find the quotes in context. I also sometimes add a column to easily track characters' ages where relevant/possible. Check out some titles above for examples!

Can you add this book?

For copy-pasting purposes I prefer to do books in the public domain, and I'd only do a book I'd already read, since it would otherwise be pretty spoiler-heavy. I also prioritize books written in English since it's my native language and I'm extremely opinionated about translations and can be skeptical of their accuracy (I hand-typed all the quotes from my favorite translation of War and Peace) but I definitely make exceptions. But please do request titles and if they fit the bill I'll try to get to them!

Do I need to credit you?

Not at all! I'm just pulling quotes from books I didn't write, so I could hardly demand credit. If you'd like to credit me in order to inform people about the project, it would be appreciated! I also love to be tagged (@visualnoteslibrary, #visualnoteslibrary or #visual notes library) so I can reblog your awesome art!!

You missed the part in [book] where it says that [character] is [description]!

Pleeeease tell me these things so I can fix them! I'll even add your URL, name, or whatever moniker you prefer to the bottom of the document and say how you helped.

[tallerthantale]

Neil and Amanda's Fake Therapist

I originally gathered information relating to Neil's fake therapist in a bit of a messy hyperfocus flurry that included some initial errors, followed by various erratic updates, so I wanted to put the main points together into one coherent place. Some of what I'm putting together here was found by others on the subreddit post.

I once again find myself skirting the edges of my typical rules for myself about analyzing public figures, so disclaimer: this is personal opinion, I'm not scientifically or clinically evaluating anyone based off public appearances / statements, I am commenting on what personal impression I am getting off things, and leaving most speculation about internal states out.

Man does this guy make it hard to stick to that though.

The person I'm talking about here is the supposed 'therapist' that Scarlett interacted with while Neil was (allegedly) pressuring her to say the allegations weren't true. His behavior there (with a paper trail according to Tortoise), and what I was able to gather from Amanda Palmer's podcast made it clear to me that he was not operating within the acceptable behaviour of a therapist, so I decided to see if I could prompt a review of his license. All indications at this time are that he does not have one. But it gets worse.

He claims to be a minister, but like the therapist claim cites no qualifications or organizations in his website's bio. This combination of therapist who isn't a therapist and minister who isn't a minister potentially creates a legal nightmare scenario. I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, but I'm going to give you my best estimate of the situation, which has involved looking up the law and reading some cases.

As long as he isn't claiming to be a mental health professional, he may be protected in calling himself a nonspecific 'therapist.' He can probably argue it as some kind of spiritual therapy. But because he isn't actually a mental health care provider, he is not subject to mandatory reporting. Generally therapists have a legal obligation to proactively report when someone is a danger to themselves or others. He does not have that requirement. He isn't bound by professional ethics, since he is not a member of any organizations and has no licenses. Moreover, it seems to be the case in New Mexico that if a person reasonably believes you to be a minister, that kicks in clergy-penitent privilege whether or not you actually are a minister.

The origin concept of clergy-penitent privilege is that the law cannot force a priest to reveal what was said to them in confession. The First Amendment means all religions get it equally and it doesn't have to be part of a specific Catholic ritual. In New Mexico, it covers anything that was not said publicly or intended to be passed on regardless of the surrounding context. That means anything said to or by this guy that is not said in public or explicitly intended to be forwarded cannot be used by the legal system for any purpose, no matter how documented or incriminating it is to the client or to him personally. There is no mechanism to remove that privilege form him for being misused because it is derived from his representation of himself as a minister, not his actual status.

According to his linkdin he received a Bachelors degree in creative writing from the University of Rochester, in New York. He then got a Masters degree in Divinity in Organizations from Harvard Divinity School, 1982-1985. These are the only points of education claimed anywhere we have seen. He lists no psychology or mental health qualification anywhere, and is most known as an author. His bookselling success might be due to a claimed promotional appearance on Oprah.

His personal webpage has a long 'client list' or list of 'collaborators' who have hosted speaking engagements. This list was last updated in 2012. The events on his calendar page have no year. I think I recall seeing a section of his website that was only accessible to those who were 'fully committed,' or something like that, but it doesn't seem to be there now. It's possible I'm misremembering, it's possible it got taken down when the reddit thread got popular, I don't have the right skillset to check. He won an award from the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which looks to be engaging in pseudo scientific spirituality in a manner similar to Scientology.

From what I can gather from the video's I've watched, the advice he 'preaches' is a mish mash of bits and pieces of metaphors and perspectives from a variety of religions and philosophies that he probably didn't fully understand. (My speculation.) There are pieces of genuine insight that are lifted from others and that can give the impression he knows what he is talking about to vulnerable people even if he doesn't really understand them himself. He doesn't seem to have any genuine religious beliefs or connections to any religious congregation or organizations. It is unclear if he is or is not technically ordained, but that is something anyone can just do online, and he doesn't even claim it.

Particularly noticeable in his talks are traces of Jungian psychoanalysis (which is the nonsense Jordan Peterson seems to have got caught up in, and it has antisemitic and fascist origins) some Buddhist resilience concepts that have been misused by westerners a lot, and Christian (I think) concepts about universal love and togetherness. They end up mashed together into a message that I believe will influence most victims who hear it to blame themselves and remain in toxic situations, while making perpetrators feel better about continuing to perpetrate. Not saying that was the goal, but if a person had that goal, this patchwork philosophy is what you would put together to achieve it. I'm not going to be specific because I don't want to be like, putting out a guide for people on how to do this.

Amanda says she met the guy before she had a child, but after she was married. That is somewhere between 2011 and 2015. Amanda says she met him at something resembling a TED conference, where all sorts of people got together to do various (rich people nonsense.) She had a mental breakdown in a horse paddock, and the fake therapist was the guy with the horse, teaching about horse whispering.

"And since then, he’s been my therapist, and he’s also become a true friend, to me, and to my family, and to many other people in my life that he’s taken on, and helped out, in some of their darkest hours of need, and he is my emergency phone call. And in a way, he sort of picked up where Anthony, my old mentor, left off, and I don’t find it a coincidence that Wayne walked into my life right around the time Anthony walked out. "

This is not what a therapist does, this is cult leader behaviour. This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if Neil might have known him first and orchestrated their meeting. He is an author with connections to an organization similar to Scientology. It might actually not be a coincidence. Again, pure speculation.

Amanda describes seeking advice from him whenever she was having trouble with Neil, and that talking to him would make her feel like everything was fine again. "Even just to have someone to talk to, to remind me what I’m struggling with, what’s going on, what is home, why does this feel so disorienting, what am I doing? And I can say right now, when I shifted my internal feeling within myself, within my relationship with Neil, around where I was, my feeling in my own house transformed. Because I went, oh, right, none of this fucking matters."

In June 2019 Amanda Palmer has the Portland, OR incident where she tells her fans they need to forgive their r@#ists.

In 2019 the fake therapist did a series of webcasts with The Santa Fe Center for Spiritual Healing over a few months. At times he is titled "Rvrd", and at times he is titled "Dr." there is no reason to believe he is either. In the first one, the host reads a bio she found online, that she says he asked her not to read (she appears to think he was being humble.) This version of the bio claims that he was a Senior Scholar at the Fetzer Institute. When he comes on after she read it, he makes odd comments about whoever might be watching the video online and appears very shaken. The Fetzer Institute has no mention of him on their website. That connection is not listed in his current bio.

In his last video for the Santa Fe Center he claims to be working on an upcoming project in D.C. with a co-facilitator who was famous for brokering a truce between the crips and bloods. He also comes across like he has been asked to stop working with the center and is being super passive aggressive about it. (My speculation.)

His appearance on Amanda Palmer's podcast is recorded in July 2019, about a month after the last Santa Fe Center webcast, in upstate New York. In the descriptor she says it was recorded after a week long retreat with him she set up for 60 of her Patrion supporters. There is a nearly two year gap between the recording and posting, which is not explained. She describes him as a minister, therapist, leadership mentor, and her personal therapist. In the episode itself, she also describes him as her and Neil's relationship therapist. In the description she promotes his books and his website, and says he is still readily contactable there, but to be patient right now because he is mid move. (The description was posted when the podcast was posted, in 2021. As mentioned earlier, there are features of his website that have not been updated since 2012.)

The fake therapist tweeted about Neil being a 'dear friend' in late 2020. He has under 100 followers, not really what you would expect for a best selling author / therapist / minister / community leader / mentor / horse whisper. While I make references to cult leader behaviour, a genuine cult leader would probably have a larger following. But somehow I don't think he lacks for money. I expect there is a market for pseudo-therapists you can freely talk to about the crimes you are actively committing. You can even involve him in the crime, and it still privileged.

The events of Scarlett's allegations date to 2022, about a year after Amanda posted the podcast episode. Sometime in March is when Neil manipulates Scarlett into saying the allegations are false with what is essentially a su!c!de threat, then asks her to repeat her assurances that it was consensual to the fake therapist. Amanda had recently received a scorching message from one of Scarlett's friends about what was done to her. It seems like Neil is doing this to win a fight with Amanda in their "relationship therapy." Scarlett gets a message from the fake therapist.

Tortoise describes it as him "saying he'd be happy to speak to her in complete confidence because he had heard that she found herself in his words 'in the midst of relationships, stories and narratives, not alas necessarily of your own making. Sadly, this is not a surprise. Two creative dynamic people can easily draw others into their orbit unaware of how powerfully the magnetic pull of their influences can have on others.'"

My perception of this message is that it plants the suggestion to Scarlett that her friends are brainwashing her to think she was r@ped by pulling her into 'narratives not of her own making.' I could see how people might interpret the later lines regarding magnetic pull as being about accidental power dynamics abuse, but I read it more as him saying Scarlett's friends are opportunistic manipulators looking to make a name for themselves by taking down a famous person.

Either way, there are a considerable number of things happening there that an actual therapist would not ever do, for a variety of very good reasons. Tortoise's attempt to call him to ask for comment was thwarted by the fact that his phone has been specifically programed not to accept voicemails. Not like, the voicemail box was full or something, he went out of his way to do that. Which means Tortoise can't quite claim that he didn't respond to requests to comment, because they couldn't leave a message. Other organizations probably run into similar difficulties establishing evidence that they have contacted him. It's not a smoking gun, but I don't like it.

A year later Amanda Palmer makes her post on the Russel Brand allegations, where she argues the solution to serial predatory behaviour is to try to get them to stop doing "stupid shit" by trying to heal their lacking and fear with love and compassion and forgiveness, because that the ONLY cause / motivation for abusive behavior. And some unarticulated hope for non-specific accountability vibes.

This post looks to me like the perspective of a person who has been continuously exploited, and manipulated into thinking it is their personal responsibility to heal people who have no interest in being healed. It reads to me like a person who has been justifying staying in a toxic situation to themself so long it has warped their entire worldview. It reads to me like the inevitable end result of this fake therapists preaching.

I don't think that absolves her of what ever her role has been in facilitating access to victims, or actively promoting these views to her audience, but it is something to keep in mind.

There is a broad rage of possibilities for what is going on with this guy. The spectrum runs from deeply misguided fool to deliberately exploitative criminal. Either way it looks like he is charging people money for the service of turning them into the "this is fine" dog. This is not fine. This is not ok. Unfortunately it probably is legal.

[tetsuswaifu]

Happy Birthday Rinnie

Suna celebrates his birthday reluctantly with his friends and you, but the night ends with heartfelt confessions and an unspoken shift in your relationship.

word count: 2230

a/n: rinnies bday was the perfect motivation to get back into writing, i have a lot of stuff in the works plus a masterlist that'll be coming up soon, hope you enjoy :) i posted this a day late by accident, oh well 🫶🏼

likes, reblogs, replies, and requests are always appreciated, thank you for taking the time to read my work :)

Suna didn’t want a big celebration. Birthdays, in his opinion, were just another day. But you and his friends thought otherwise, insisting on taking him out for his special day. The venue—a karaoke room—was the last place he expected to be celebrating. You and the boys had promised it would be a 'chill night,' filled with drinks and the usual good vibes, just like any other hangout. Yet here he was, slouched in a booth, arms crossed, and wearing an unimpressed expression as Atsumu butchered yet another song.

At least you had been thoughtful enough to kick things off earlier with a quieter gesture—showing up at his place earlier in the day with a bag of his favorite candy, chupets, and a birthday card with a cute note written inside.

"You didn't have to," he said as he took the bag, glancing down at the card in your handwriting.

"I know," you'd replied with a shrug, your tone casual but warm. "But it's your birthday. I figured someone should spoil you a little," a soft smile on your face as you made eye contact.

"Thank you." he gave you a small nod and tucked the bag into his hoodie pocket—but you caught the faintest hint of a smile as he read the card.

Now, as Atsumu's voice cracked in the worst way possible, Suna popped one of the chupets into his mouth, enjoying the fruity flavor. He didn't even try to hide his smirk as the rest of the table burst into laughter at Atusmu's expense.

"Are you tone-deaf, or are you doing this on purpose?" Suna deadpanned, taking a sip of his drink.

"Oi, I sound fantastic!" Atsumu barked back, gripping the mic like his life depended on it. "Y/N's probably swoonin' right now!"

You snorted in response, unable to hold back your laughter. "If by 'swooning' you mean trying not to cry from secondhand embarrassment, then yeah, sure."

Osamu nearly spat out his drink, doubling over with laughter, while Suna let out a quiet chuckle beside you. "Sounds about right," Suna muttered in agreement, smirking.

"I will give it to you, you at least have some what of a stage presence," you teased Atsumu.

Suna tilted his head slightly toward you, "Stage presence doesn't save him from being terrible, though."

You chuckled, nudging his arm. "You're one to talk, Mr. 'I'll Just Sit in the Corner and Judge Everyone'. When's your turn?"

He didn't reply right away. Instead, he casually pulled out his phone and aimed it at Atsumu, who was currently belting out a high note so off-key that even the karaoke machine seemed to struggle keeping up.

"What are you doing?" you asked, leaning closer to peek at his screen.

"Documenting this," he said flatly, his thumb tapping the screen to record. "For posterity. Or blackmail."

You burst out laughing, trying to keep quiet so Atsumu wouldn't notice. "He's gonna kill you when he finds out." You paused, "Also, send me that, would you?"

"He won't, and you bet," he replied, completely unfazed. "I've got a whole folder of these. He's never caught on."

Your laughter only grew, and you had to stifle it with your hand. Meanwhile, Atsumu threw his whole body into the final note, eyes closed like he was performing for an audience of thousands.

"Perfect," Suna muttered under his breath as he ended the recording, tucking his phone back into his pocket with the faintest smirk of satisfaction.

Suna raised an eyebrow at your previous comment, his tone dripping with mock disbelief. "Also, do you really think I'm gonna get up there and make a fool of myself? On my birthday?" holding his hand up to his chest with slight sass. "Yeah, no thanks."

"Who said you had to be good?" you said with a grin. "Just sing something. It's your birthday, Suna. Live a little." you softly nudged his arm again.

Before he could respond, Atsumu's voice cracked in the worst way possible, all of you erupting in laughter. Even Suna couldn't hold back the chuckle that escaped him.

"Okay, okay, that's enough of you," Osamu said, pulling the mic out of his twin's hands. "I'll save the night. Lemme show you how it's done."

"Good luck followin' that act of brilliance," Atsumu slurred, flopping into the seat beside you.

Osamu rolled his eyes as he chose a vocally demanding song. His smooth, steady voice filling the room as the group quieted to listen. You leaned closer to Suna, your shoulder brushing his. "See? Not so bad when someone who can actually sing is up there," you whispered.

Suna hummed in agreement, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye. "You're next," he said suddenly.

Your eyes widened. "Wait, what? No, I—"

"Yup. It's settled," Suna said, cutting you off as he leaned back in his seat. "You made me come here. Least you can do is sing something. Fair trade."

"But I wasn't the one complaining," you protested, your voice hushed as Osamu continued his song.

Suna's lips curved back into a smirk, his tone teasing. "You don't wanna leave me hanging on my birthday, do you?" He challenged you with his eye contact.

You groaned, burying your face in your hands. "I hate you."

"No, you don't," he said, clearly enjoying himself.

When Osamu's song ended, you all clapped, and Atsumu immediately began scrolling through the song list for his next pick. Before he could choose, Suna casually pointed at you.

"Your turn," he announced, his voice calm but loud of enough to catch the twins attention.

They turned to you, and you shot Suna a glare. He looked completely unbothered, a lazy grin on his face as he leaned on the table.

"Do it!" Atsumu cheered, slapping the table. "C'mon Y/N, let's hear that beautiful voice!"

"Don't worry, it's just us, Y/N," Osamu said, far less obnoxious but still encouraging.

With no escape from this scenario, you sighed dramatically and grabbed the mic. "Fine, but if I'm embarrassing myself, I'm blaming you," jutting your chin in Suna's direction.

"You'll be great," he said, his smirk softening into something almost fond.

You scrolled through the long song list, your nerves easing a bit when you found one you liked. As the music started, you took a deep breath, trying to ignore the way Suna's eyes stayed on you.

The guy's cheered you on as you sang, Atsumu waving his arms like you were performing in an arena. Even Suna, who usually masked his emotions, looked quietly impressed, his lips twitching into a smile when you hit the chorus. When you finished, they erupted into applause and yells of praise. You put the mic back in the stand and returned to your seat with a flushed face.

"See?" Suna said as you sat back down, slightly breathless from your performance. "Not bad."

"Not bad?" Atsumu repeated, still waving his arms around. "That was amazing! Ya totally showed me up!"

"Not a hard thing to do," Osamu deadpanned, but his tone was warm as he gave you an approving nod. "Good job. Saved the night after 'Tsumu nearly burst everyone's eardrums."

"Hey!" Atsumu shot back, attempting to glare at his twin but slumping further into his seat, his head lolling against the backrest.

You stifled a laugh, leaning closer to Suna. "I think he's officially tapped out for the night," you murmured.

Suna glanced at Atsumu, then Osamu, his expressiuon unreadable but his eyes sharp. "Yeah, he can barely keep his head up. Let's wrap it up before someone has to carry him out."

"Yeah, you read my mind, pal," Osamu was already standing to gather their things. "C'mon, 'Tsumu. Time to go."

"Guy's, I'm fine!" Atsumu protested, throwing an arm around his brothers shoulders. "Let's do another round!"

"Yeah, no." Osamu replied flatly, struggling to hold his twin upright with a grunt. "Y/N, thanks for tonight. Suna, happy birthday and make sure you get home in one piece, yeah?"

"Always do," Suna said with a shrug, standing and stuffing his hands into his pockets.

"Thanks for coming, guys," you said, waving at the twins as they stumbled toward the door together. Osamu shot you a grateful look, while Atsumu was too busy humming a tune to notice much of anything.

When the door closed behind them, the karaoke room felt quieter, more intimate. Suna was leaning against the wall now, his eyes fixed on you.

"So," you said, grabbing your belongings. "Guess it's just us now."

"Guess so," he replied, pushing his shoulders off the wall and falling into step beside you as you walked out of the bar. The night air was cooler than you expected, making you wrap your jacket tighter around yourself.

The two of you walked in companionable silence for a while, the muffled sounds of the city filling the gaps between your words. You could feel his presence beside you—calm, steady, but something in his silence felt... different tonight.

"You know," you said breaking the quiet, "I didn't think you'd actually enjoy tonight."

Suna's hands were stuffed into his hoodie pocket, his gaze focused ahead, but there was a flicker of something soft in his expression. "I didn't think I would either."

You gave him a sideways glance, your lips twitching into a smile. "But you did, right?"

He let out a soft chuckle, his hooded eyes meeting your gaze. "Yeah. Especially now that I have those embarrassing videos of Atsumu drunk." He paused, "But yeah, you got me. It wasn't as bad as I thought.

You laughed, "Wow, high praise," you teased, your voice light. "Maybe I should've gotten you a cake too."

Suna stopped walking suddenly, and you turned to look at him in surprise. His gaze was uncharacteristically serious.

"Y/N," he said quietly, taking his hands out of his pocket. “Thanks. For tonight. For dragging me out, for putting up with all of it… for just… being there.” He reached a hand out to grab one of yours, giving it a squeeze.

Your cheeks warmed under his gaze, squeezing his hand back. Smiling up at him, “I told you—you deserve to be celebrated, even if you don’t think so.”

He stared at you a moment longer, taking in all your beautiful features. He sighed, shaking his head as he looked down at your entertwined hands, “You’re too good to me,” he muttered.

Before you could respond, Suna pulled you closer with the hand he was holding. You barely had a moment to register the shift before your back met the cool surface of the wall of the nearby building. His eyes, usually so calm and unreadable, were now searching yours, filled with something you couldn't quite place—but it made your heart race.

"Do you have any idea," his voice low, careful, "how much I... how much tonight meant to me?"

You opened your mouth to respond, but the words didn't come. Before you could find them, Suna leaned in, brushing his lips against yours, testing, waiting. The hesitation melted away as you leaned into him, your fingers gripping the front of his hoodie to pull him closer.

The kiss deepened, slow but fervent, like he was pouring everything he couldn't say into it. His hand slid up to cup your face, his thumb brushing your cheek in a way that sent a warm shiver down your spine. He kissed you as if the world had narrowed down to just the two of you, the city noise fading into a distant hum.

When he pulled back, it was only for a moment—just enough to catch his breath, his forehead pressing against yours. His hand lingered on your cheek, his touch grounding and soft.

"You make everything better. You're the best thing that's happened to me in a long time," he whispered, his voice soft but carrying a weight that made your chest tighten in the best way.

You smiled, your fingers still gripping the front of his hoodie. "You're such a sap tonight," you teased lightly, your voice slightly breathless but warm.

"Don't tell anyone," he replied, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a smirk. "Gotta keep my reputation intact."

You laughed softly, the sound easing the intensity of the moment. "Your secret's safe with me."

Suna pulled back just enough to see your eyes, something unspoken passing between you. Then, without a word, he reached for your hand, lacing his fingers with yours as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

The two of you started walking again, the quiet city streets stretching ahead. The chill in the air seemed to fade, the warmth of his hand grounding you as you walked side by side.

"So," you began, glancing at him out of the corner of your eye. "Does this mean you owe me now for dragging you out tonight? Maybe next time you're the one planning something fun."

"Don't push your luck," he said, though the squeeze of his hand against yours betrayed his dry tone.

"Noted," you replied with a grin.

The conversation shifted easily, flowing into a casual back-and-forth as if nothing monumental had just happened between you. But as you glanced at your intertwined hands, a warm sense of certainty settled over you.

Whatever this was between you and Suna, it didn't need to be said aloud. It was already understood.

[fandomtrash25]

So I've been going back through and rereading GSGW after having read chapter 208

Spoilers ahead!

I'm back at chapter 151 where Jay is exploring the Joy Lab with Soleum and Jay is talking about discarded and over-explored darknesses, and it's just really made me think about Soleum's character and the purpose behind his creation.

Most of the ghost stories that we saw Soleum get dropped into were very well-documented stories or stories that were known for only creating low-grade essence. But Soleum would get dropped in and he performed amazing feats, consistently finding new ways to clear the stories, or affecting the story in some way and coming out with essence levels that were previously unheard of! I really think that Daydream made Soleum with the intention of him revamping new life into all of these stories, allowing for more effective collection of essence.

(I also think that this is why Soleum has such a "scaredy-cat" personality; him being so afraid and thus much more impacted by these stories creates better results. Not to mention, much more easily affected by corruption).

I'm also having big thoughts about what the "merch box" and all it's goodies are after the big reveal and how it probably ties into Ireum-nim, but that iss a whole separate post for later!

[queer-omens-in-the-archives]

It's closer to "beta reading for each other"! (At least for our editing process, which is fairly linear. The writing process is much less so and can look a lot like "multiple cursors in the same document", especially if multiple of our guys are actively participating at the same time and not just making comments from the back to whoever is actually doing the writing, because we've only got the one pair of hands. XD Compensating for that with very thorough outlines, and the complete willingness to "write shittily first edit later" in the initial stages of a project -- where our priority is to get our ideas sorted out and jotted down, we know we'll smooth out any issues later, so it really doesn't matter if we move back and forth between sections a lot.)

With the difference that, where a beta-reader would only make suggestions because it ultimately isn't their work -- in our WIPs, regardless of the specifics of who wrote what, the final version will be our text, so we're truly merciless in the editing. Especially with WIPs that are >10k (so we have to go over the text a lot not just for editing, but because we need to refresh our memory of events to keep things coherent and consistent), our diverging preferences can show up like... the same word/clause/sentence keeps getting edited back and forth between the same 2-3 things, until/unless there's a clear winner in terms of how it flows with the rest of the text (and if there isn't, whoever is around for polishing the work immediately pre-publishing gets to pick what goes in the final version).

Have you noticed your style change over time?

Hi!! Thank you for the ask. <3

We haven't really noticed that, no -- we're aware our older fics don't read quite the same as our more recent ones, but we don't tend to notice the changes happening in real time and would struggle to pinpoint exactly what changed.

Part of that is plurality-related. We don't all write the same to begin with -- actually part of our editing process now, especially for longer projects, consists of getting as many of us rereading the text as possible (separately over a period of time and/or together at the same time), so we can smooth out differences where needed or (more rarely) exaggerate them when warranted (e.g. for added character flavour in subjective narration). In the past we didn't go through that Collaborative Smoothening step, and we did a lot less editing to begin with (we same-day wrote-and-published a lot), so many of our older works are more clearly One Guy's Writing. We can usually tell who based on the way they're written, but this isn't style evolution so much as like... us writing differently at baseline.

Part of that is that we have two types of approach to writing: either we write so rarely that too much time passes in-between for us to remember our previous writings clearly, or we write so often that any overall changes are too gradual for us to notice. Nowadays it's more the latter -- with the MelloNears, we've been writing/editing at least a few words every single day since November 1st, in mostly the same two AUs/series, so we're not really seeing the style evolution that is probably taking place because we're standing too close to see the big picture.

[fanfic/author ask game]

[creature-wizard]

What the Project Monarch alter programming conspiracy theory is (and what it's not)

When I talk about alter programming conspiracy theories, people often get confused as to what I mean, so I figured I'd write a post to clear things up.

First of all, I am not saying that DID systems can't be indoctrinated or conditioned the same way literally any other human being can be, or that abusive people would never try and manipulate or exploit specific alters. That's not what I'm saying at all.

What I am talking about is a set of alleged practices first described by a number of far right conspiracy theorists, who claimed that the CIA was operating a program called Project Monarch, which was allegedly part of Project MK-Ultra.

Now, the existence of Project MK-Ultra is very well-known. The CIA did in fact conduct unethical human experiments in an effort to actually practice mind control. However, it didn't work out because drugs and the human brain don't actually work the way they thought they did. It's worth noting that these experiments were in part fueled by a fear that Russians were already masters of mind control, because as far as they were concerned, communism had to be more than just a political ideology that was at odds with America's own capitalist system; it had to be something so evil that it could only be forced on people using the most diabolical of methods. They were terrified that American POWs were being turned into Manchurian agents, and they figured that if this a thing the Russians were doing, then they should try and take advantage of this, too. Again, Project MK-Ultra was horrible, but it didn't produce the results they wanted, because Manchurian agents are nothing more than the fever dream of a terrified western capitalist.

Meanwhile, there is no evidence that Project Monarch ever existed. None. Nada. Not a shred. Despite allegedly being practiced by thousands of people in all levels of society since at least the mid-20th century, not a single piece of primary literature or documentation has ever turned up. Keep this in mind going forward.

If you've never heard of Project Monarch before, here's the gist of this conspiracy theory: Supposedly, Nazi scientist Dr. Josef Mengele wasn't actually performing eugenics experiments, and the Holocaust wasn't actually about genocide at all. It was actually a cover for mind control experiments. After the war, Dr. Joseph Mengele was brought over to the US in Operation Paperclip, where he taught the CIA everything he knew. Project Monarch was established by the CIA in order to plant programmers and programmed slaves everywhere in society for the purpose of establishing the rule of the New World Order, which had supposedly controlled Nazi Germany and had now infiltrated the US government. Supposedly, one of the New World Order's big goals was to destroy American conservative Christianity, especially Protestantism. Literally anything that a white American Protestant hyperconservative would find objectionable was supposedly the work of the NWO.

The alleged practices conducted under Project Monarch were broadly labeled "trauma-based mind control," or TBMC. While some people today use this term to refer to any form of punitive conditioning, the term originally had a very specific meaning. Let's talk about how TBMC in its original context allegedly worked. The basic concept goes like this: a very young child (sometimes even a baby) will be put under brutal torture in order to force them into dissociation. If the procedure is successful, the victim's mind will split and form a number of completely blank alters. Somehow, the programmers know which blank alters are potentially useful for programming, and which aren't. Each usable alter will be programmed with a code or trigger that will allow programmers to access the alter (force it to front) later. Supposedly, the host alter will have no memory of any of this.

During each programming session, the victim will be tortured into a dissociative trance, and the desired alter will be accessed. At this point the alter will be taught (typically as traumatically as possible) whatever they're supposed to learn, like how to assassinate someone, how to do complex mathematics at superhuman levels, or how to pose as the perfect Christian housewife.

So theoretically, someone who's basically your regular churchgoing mom could be sent a greeting card with a picture of something like a cute little Scottish terrier, have her assassin alter triggered, and go kill some local politician with some futuristic piece of technology that makes it look like he just died of natural heart attack.

Allegedly, millions of people have been programmed like this, and the average Monarch slave has an average of 1000 alters. Meanwhile, the supposed symptoms of alter programming are so broad that just about anyone with any kind of trauma or mental health issue could be diagnosed with it, and there is nothing they could do to falsify it.

Again, there is literally no evidence that Monarch programming is real. Josef Mengele was not brought to the US in Operation Paperclip; he fled to South America and died in Brazil. The Nazis (including Mengele) were very much all about those eugenics, and claiming otherwise is laughable. Not a single group, institution, or individual has ever been found in possession of programmers' manuals, nor in possession of the codebooks and books of programming records that supposedly (and would have to, if this was really happening) exist out there. Not a single person claiming to be a deprogrammed slave has ever demonstrated any of the numerous skills they were supposedly trained to be hypercompentent in.

Additionally, once you start digging into the actual sources of this conspiracy theory, you start seeing the exact same tropes that feature in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and early modern witch hunt manuals. They've been given some updates to resonate with the fears of post-WWII American WASPs, but it's ultimately the same scapegoating and fearmongering that sent millions of people to their deaths.

It's obvious that most of the people who believe that Monarch programming exists haven't actually read works like Trance-Formation of America (1995) by Mark Philips and Cathy O'Brien, and They Know Not What They Do: Illustrated Guide To Monarch Mind Control (1995), The Illuminati Formula Used To Create A Total Undetectable Mind-Controlled Slave (1996), and Deeper Insights Into The Illuminati Formula (1997) by Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler. If they did, they'd be pretty hard-pressed to deny that these books are some of the most hateful garbage ever written. These books are chock full of xenophobia, racism, and a general hatred of anyone who isn't a hyperconservative Protestant. Pseudoscience and pseudohistory are rampant throughout, as are now-failed predictions about the alleged future plans of the New World Order.

Some people out there have asked me, "well, what about this other person talking about it?" I promise you, the stuff they are talking about ultimately comes from these books, which were published throughout the 1990's. This includes Unwelcome Ozian, whose books Chainless Slaves and Rules of Programming contain text that's straight-up copied from some of these books. People like Dr. Alison Miller and Dr. Ellen Lacter cite Svali, and Svali's own work describes the exact same NWO conspiracy theory as the works of Springmeier and Wheeler.

I encourage anyone who isn't likely to get triggered by talk of extreme violence (including sexual) to actually read these books so you can see for yourself just how bad they are. A huge part of the reason this conspiracy theory has so much traction is because few people actually know where it comes from, and just how completely ridiculous the whole damn thing is. Just about everything QAnon was on about is packed into these books.

And finally, while dissociative amnesia does indeed exist, we also have evidence that people can confabulate memories of events that never actually happened. Rock-solid evidence, in fact. This is literally what happens every time someone goes under hypnosis to try and remember a past life, and "remembers" a past life in the medieval period filled with anachronisms and historical misconceptions. If you'd like to see some extremely obvious examples of memory confabulation for yourself (some of which don't even involve hypnosis), you can click here and here.

(By the way, the terms "RAMCOA" and "OEA" were created by the ISSTD, for the purpose of making these types of conspiracy theories sound respectable within legitimate psychiatry.)

[dawnfelagund]

Back in 2019, I wrote a blog post called The Inequality Prototype. As part of it, I counted a bunch of stuff related to the Valar and looked at how those metrics differed based on gender. At the time, I thought it would be interesting to extend this work over the entire Silmarillion, namely looking at who speaks in the text and who doesn't. For Tolkien Meta Week, I began this work and am collecting my analyses related to it here. It is very much still a work in progress and will likely take me years to complete, but I'm going to post interesting data as I discover it.

This project, like all of my data projects, is available to use under a CC license for others who want to play with the data: View the data | Copy the data | Methodology, progress, etc.

---

Dialogue does not occur evenly across The Silmarillion. While a little over 5% of the words in The Silmarillion as a whole are used in dialogue, this is very unevenly distributed across the chapters, with some chapters about half dialogue and six chapters containing no dialogue at all.

There is a lot more work to be done to tease out trends and patterns that might have some meaning, but just glancing at the graph above, some of those patterns do begin to emerge. First, dialogue increases as The Silmarillion progresses. In the second half of the book (calculated by chapter, not page or word count), only two chapters have no dialogue and only four chapters (inclusive of those two without dialogue) fall below the median of 5.3% dialogue. Put another way:

In the first half of chapters, 71% of chapters are below the median.

In the second half of chapters, 29% of chapters are below the median.

Why is this? My tentative theory is that we see the book moving from the realm of the mythic—from events that are passed down through the oral tradition and ancient written traditions—and into the historical, where the narrator has a greater array of sources, including eyewitness testimony, and begins to write with greater immediacy rather than the arm's-length style of myth and ancient history.

What I am curious about: As I dig deeper into these data, will I see this theory bear out in which episodes or characters/groups are granted actual dialogue? In other words, will characters and peoples lost to the mists of time speak less, as I would expect? Or will the type of dialogue (e.g., a formal speech that may have been preserved vs. an extempore conversation that would not) vary based on narrative distance? I have documented in the past that the narrator of The Silmarillion uses the "it is said/told/sung" construction more with characters who are less accessible, so there is evidence that Tolkien manipulated writing style based on what his narrators' access to various sources. Does he use dialogue similarly to communicate that "mythic distance"?

There are also chapters that are more expository in purpose (Valaquenta, "Of Beleriand and Its Realms") that do not contain dialogue. Without digging deeper into the chapters themselves, most of those without dialogue that aren't similarly expository are chapters where the material would be less accessible to Pengolodh as a narrator. Whether this bears added scrutiny remains to be seen!

Finally, in discussing these data on the SWG's Discord, polutropos noticed something interesting, which is that the chapter with the most dialogue—"Of Aulë and Yavanna," where almost 57% of the words of the chapter are given over to dialogue—was not in fact written by Tolkien. As document by Douglas Charles Kane in his book Arda Reconstructed, "This chapter is completely manufactured by Christopher, though using his father's own writings" (page 54). Where Kane usually includes a chart pointing to the source for each bit of The Silmarillion, his chapter on "Of Aulë and Yavanna" contains no such chart because, while he is able to document where ideas came from, Christopher actually wrote the chapter.

Interestingly, "Of the Noldor in Beleriand" is the chapter with the second most dialogue and, according to Kane, "The changes made in this chapter are among the smallest anywhere in the published text" (page 154). So Tolkien does sometimes write dialogue-heavy chapters—though without data to back me up (yet! it's coming!), most of that dialogue appears to come in the form of lengthier speeches, not necessarily the debate/conversation format of Of Aulë and Yavanna."

The biggest impact of the dialogue-heavy "Of Aulë and Yavanna," I suspect, will emerge as I dig more into the data on gender and who speak in The Silmarillion. Yavanna is one of the women who speaks the most in The Silmarillion, but almost all of her dialogue occurs in this chapter. If this chapter is constructed by Christopher, how does that impact the amount of speech women are permitted by Tolkien? Polutropos' observation spurred me to plan to document the source of the various dialogue sections: Are they original to Tolkien's writings or added? Kane, interestingly, is critical of Christopher Tolkien in Arda Reconstructed for what he perceives as Christopher removing women characters from the text. In this instance, we see a significant example of the opposite: a woman's role is not only expanded, but she is given an opportunity to speak.

[rqnvindr]

fountain of tears

pairing: neuvilette x fem!reader

genre: angst, fluff/comfort

word count: 1.8k

synopsis: neuvilette finds you standing by the fountain, alone the rain after an argument. his hidden turmoil can only be solved by hearing your voice again, tender, and unfiltered.

warnings: archon quest spoilers, arguments

a/n: I HAVEN'T POSTED ANY WRITING IN AGES BUT I HAD TO WRITE SOMETHING FOR MY OTTER HUBBY! enjoy!!

--

"this is pointless. i'm out."

your words wound neuvilette, the pain shooting deep into his bones. they ring over and over again in his conscious, louder than any vibration that had ever emanated from his cane to resume order during a trial. he sits in his office trying to work, but his thoughts don't subside, not one bit.

he ponders, staring at the stacks of papers in front of him, documents regarding cases that needed to be reviewed in due time. but not today. the amount of time he had in between today's working hours and the next trial reassured him that he could hyper-fixate on the last thing you said to him before storming out the door.

it's strange that he isn't worried for your safety as much as he is over the feelings rooted in your actions. the chief justice knows that humans are more fragile than those who have lived for eons. those who have experienced centuries of change were capable of adapting to different and unexpected circumstances through changing forms, and bestowing ancient powers of the past that contained the wisdoms and strength needed to guide them. he should be more concerned for where you could've possibly have gone within the last day. but he knows that you are also acquainted with a certain traveler that had recently arrived in fontaine and caused an uproar with the hydro archon in court already, everyone was. there's no way they could've left now, taking you with them on their travels. they still had unanswered questions left for lady furina. it is still a possibility though that you're at least staying with them, since you two were in good graces.

you weren't from fontaine though, and the image of you packing your bags and going home by yourself made him shiver. you did say you were heading "out" after all. he had to consider all of the possibilities.

neuvilette was new to human relationships. how long did it take for humans to draw the line? it varies for everyone, since they are given the freedom to dictate their personal connections to others to a certain degree. but how much was too much for you? when it came to you, he not only wanted to understand humans more, but also just you. he wanted to delve into all of your laughter, all of your worries, all of the sighs that escaped your pretty lips. to grasp it and memorize it all, was his greatest desire.

without you, he would basically lose his purpose for inserting himself into the realm of mortality. you already got him this far, and on top of that, he concluded that you were causing him to feel foreign emotions from removing yourself from his sight. even if it hurt, this was a test included in his journey that he had to endure.

but neuvilette does not want to face the predicament without a resolution. instead of wallowing, he decides to leave his office. he was already working overtime anyway, hoping to just drown in reading the same pages over and over again to keep himself grounded. was he always this sensitive? in his mind, he imagined the beings of the past looking down on him.

it's pouring rain when neuvilette steps outside. ah right. he doesn't need another reminder that his sorrows inconvenience the ordinary citizens of fontaine, who are just trying to make it to work on time, rush their loved ones to the doctor, and just go about their lives without the weather impeding on them. people barely carry umbrellas though, they're all accustomed to this and it's too unpredictable (at least for them it is).

he decides to start backwards, far away from the court of fontaine. he heads to the opera house first, and he finds you on the first try. how could he ever mistake you for someone else? you're the only person he has eyes for. especially when you're standing by the fountain of lucine, and carrying a distinct umbrella in a small crowd of people, most of whom appear to be flocked around the opera house's entrance, probably catching magic shows and other performances.

neuvilette is uneasy when he notices how close you're standing to the fountain. you're inevitably drawn to the grand structure that welcomes audiences from within the borders of the land and beyond to the renowned location. the spectacle that delivers the arts and the law all the same. but beneath its beauty lies danger that erases those who get too close. many fontainians had lost their lives from seeking the wonders of what lay beneath the waters that decorate and surround the hydro region itself. by wanting to delve deeper into it, they subsequently drowned, their lifeforce dissipating into the shackles of the streams. both the knowns and the unknowns of the primordial sea were sufficient reasons to express caution towards the lands waters, even if one was not a native who was subject to becoming one with their origins.

if you were to become the next victim, the rain would proceed to crash down and become one with the fountain in a continuous flow of precipitation. and then fontaine would be known as "the land of storms" rather than "the land of justice".

as he approaches the fountain, neuvilette's desire to pull you away and drag you back to him with no hesitation stirs. yet, it immediately dissipates when you turn your head, and give him what he guesses is a contemplative look. the white-haired man chooses his words carefully. giving you a lecture about the rumored dangers of the fountain's ability to dissolve human beings would only alarm you. he should use the rain as an excuse to find somewhere safer, if you still weren't ready to return to your shared residence.

"it-"

"i know. you're going to ask why i'm standing out here as if it isn't pouring rain." neuvilette barely gets a syllable out before you take the words right out of his mouth. you guys always had a habit of finishing each other's sentences, and even in a moment as anxiety-inducing as trying to make amends when you were mad at him, his heart melts. goodness, why did you have to be so lovely?

"if i were to let the rain impede everything, i guess i'd be a shut-in." you shrug. "it's been raining non-stop for the past couple of days. and no one seems to question it, so i just go along with it as if it's completely normal for it to be bright and sunny one day, and then cloudy and rainy the next day."

when you finish your thoughts, neuvilette still waits for you to continue. he was somewhat relieved that you were able to talk to him normally, but knew that there had to be more you had to say. were you going to officially end things between you two? say that you needed more time to think about the state of your relationship? he wasn't going to talk you out of anything, or start a debate. he respected your decision no matter what, even if it were to sting, he had to hear it. and the conversation had to go somewhere if he also wanted to deliver his side as well.

"i have heard some of the locals say though, that whenever it rains in fontaine, it is because the hydro dragon is crying." you say, as you gaze up at the sky. "i don't know if you have ever heard of it, but if such a tale were to be true, then i wonder what he could be going through for it to be pouring rain every other day."

neuvilette hopes he hid how quickly he blinked. normally he was good at hiding his reactions to hearing this "legend". although he never wanted to hide anything from you, the truth behind the mysterious precipitation was something he hadn't had the best opportunity to tell you about.

"yes, this is an old legend indeed. i often hear parents and caretakers telling this to children, whenever it's too wet to play outside." this was as much as the chief justice could water it down. he really did not want to lie before approaching a sensitive topic.

"as much as i would love to continue hearing the knowledge you have extracted from your time here, i have come here with another objective." neuvilette says. "i wanted to apologize for upsetting you. i have also been worried about you for the past few days. you do not have to disclose your whereabouts from the period in which we were apart, but i am happy that you're safe."

"it's alright, really." you reply calmly. "i was also in the wrong for storming out like that and not communicating with you. i was pretty upset, yeah, but i should've just told you that. i'm sorry for being immature and leaving you in the dark."

neuvilette notices tears streaming down your eyes. as your head tilts downward, they drop to the ground and blend in with the rain droplets. instead of offering you his handkerchief, he gently caresses both sides of your face with his gloved hands. you lean into his touch more, until you're wrapping your arms around him in a tight embrace, letting your umbrella drop to the ground. he reciprocates, stiffly at first, but then holds you with no intentions of letting you go.

you're no longer choking back sobs, and then the sky clears up as the rain comes to a stop. you pull away from the hug to observe the sky, staying connected with your hands intertwined this time.

"wow...the hydro dragon must have been distraught watching us as if we were his new favorite play or something." you laugh.

neuvilette chuckles, knowing that you would of course find the occurrence to be a mere coincidence. "it seems that he must be quite fond of you, my dear."

"well, i'm already taken so i guess he will have to stick to me being his favorite character." you shrug obliviously with a smile.

as your lover, neuvilette has adjusted to being more vulnerable with you. you had seen the good and the bad sides of him, the latter especially during the latest argument that the two of you had now cleared up. and even then, you still let him back in. he doesn't have to worry about baring his entire soul to you now, and will slowly navigate you through his past and identity as the hydro dragon, who entered human society as the iudex. the vulnerable figure whose emotions affect the weather, and struggles to connect with others. you're the one worthy of knowing the truth though, and he makes a promise to himself to never hide anything from you from here on out.

[axrynic]

Hey internet neighbors, a loong note from me the artist, that I would prefer be a journal entry, but I think it will be helpful for me to post if I am to move forward in any online capacity.

I've been divesting from social media and the internet in general the past couple months, and my mental health and general sense of direction and purpose and connectedness has improved so much that I want to keep removing myself from the internet more and more. I don't want to be thinking I'm self important enough that random people are wondering about when I'm going to make new art, but I also feel a sense of apology or need for explanation.

Going through health issues and having surgeries and ER visits and not making art for months helped me realize the extent that I got burned out from making mostly caitvi fandom smut and now I'm just gonna paint landscapes like Bob Ross on physical canvas. Literally. Or maybe paint food. i don't know. But no more fictional characters. No more digital art for a while. I need something tangible. And I need it to be my own.

It's the consumerism and social media trends and fandom policing and attention economy and puritanical conservative ideologies and lack of media literacy and rejection of expertise and prescription over description and limited imaginations and neoliberalist stories masquerading as revolutionary and finding your niche and overidentifying with characters and lack of useful critique and knowing your audience and posting schedules like who the fuck is able to feel truly artistic and creative under these circumstances?? Even the motivation for developing my technical skill I felt withering because in the context of AI's antagonism toward the meaningful labor of creation, there's no fucking point.

The only way I will survive creatively is a rejection of this reality. Of industry and productivity. I want to create what feels new and inspiring. True escapism into a world we could have. A world without limiting beauty standards, or celebrity, the thousands of personal preferences projected onto an artist's personal expression. The only way is not to post. Not to document. Reduce the self and public surveillance on the art. I want to hierarchy my intimacy and vulnerability away from parasocial relationships and public yet anonymous personas.

I'm tired of trying to document the intangible. I need to focus on my purpose- how am I making the world around me better and easier to live in? Who and how does this help? What does my art contribute to? Positively and negatively? Representation matters and is not enough for me. I've chosen to work as a therapist because animation was not enough for me. I need my art to support my efforts to help people with healing. Painting an ecosystem without capitalism and colonization seems much more revolutionary than muscular light skinned cop characters having kinky sex. Who is going to feed the revolution? What am I fighting towards? Why even are words of effort framed within violence?

What do I want to grow towards?