#it involves basically set in same universe but also not.

[imagination-confusion]

So... Murder Cat with soon to be Murder Dog and Murder Bird Drones.

Murder Cat has the depression and trauma.

[drizzledrawings]

Do you have a full master post of like your cowgirls lore, how they met, their backgrounds and situations they got in ect. I absolutely am obsessed with them.

Why thank you so so much

I’ve talked so much about them on here, but it’s scattered, and quite a lot of it has evolved lore wise

So let’s make this that master post:

Basic lore for this universe:

Set in a non specific time of the Wild West (implied to be the tail end of the era)

But with a magical twist. The folklore of things that are not quite human living alongside humanity is real, and they are hunted for their skin. It is a known fact that shapeshifters exist, and they are illegal. Though some peoples “magic blood” don’t always show itself as Shapeshifting, it can also appear as accelerated healing or acute senses. These people are generally referred to as beasts or animals

These transformations are hard on “beasts,” they take up a lot of strength to preform them, and if you’re injured in one form, it can take time before you’re able to switch. If you’re injured enough it can be permanent.

Brunette: Flora Guerra

She was born to an Italian immigrant family with strict parents, as well as the youngest daughter to five other children. When she was 16, her parents arranged a courtship with a much older man. Flora was furious, this rage culminated in her first transformation, unfortunately this happened in front of the man as well as the rest of her family. They immediately turned their backs on her, disgusted with what she was. Terrified, she fled. She hopped on trains and resorted to petty theft to make her way west, to a land she hoped would be freer than the life she left behind!

Her first big brush with the law was when she stole her horse Bandit from a man who was treating him poorly. She fled the scene but only after shooting one officer. (Thus her first ever bounty was for murder)

Her main way of making money was seducing men and robbing them blind while they were distracted by her beauty, unfortunately she picked up the wrong trick one day, a notorious gang leader, who instead of shooting her outright, brought a then 17 year old Flora back to his gang. She became “his girl” and used her looks to help him get what he wanted.

In the gang however there was one man who was like her! He could turn into a wolf, like how she could turn into a jackalope, they formed a bond, and when the gang fell apart, he was the one to get her out safely.

Ginger: Mattie (Matilda) Hayes

Mattie is the eldest daughter of her odd family. Her father and mother immigrated from Ireland, her mother dying during childbirth of her youngest child, Ben. Because of this, Mattie became the sole caretaker of him, very much raising him herself. The entire family were beasts of some sort.

Mattie could turn into a fox from a young age, her brother as well started to transform around the same time. (Though he was a cougar)

Their father, was also odd, in more ways than just beastly. He was a sour old man with a mean streak, drink had a mighty hold on him. After an incident that broke the camels back, involving hateful words and a smashed beer bottle, Mattie had enough. In a fit of rage she set fire to her father’s barn, in the aftermath She packed her bags and set to leave. She tried to get Ben to come, but he refused and told her to never come back. So she listened.

At 18, her and her horse June travelled the desert, finding odd jobs, pulling off some robberies, and failing at pickpocketing, this left her with quite a price on her head.

After a couple years of travelling by herself, the way she preferred, she ran into Flora for the first time.

First meeting:

They met as their animals first, Mattie was trying to hunt Flora but got startled by her horns.

Later on, she was trying to rob a man on the side of the road. Only for Flora to swoop in at the last moment and get the trick instead. (By “saving” the man, but picking his wallet a moment later)

That night, Mattie was nursing her hurt ego by drinking her weight at a saloon, but alas she couldn’t even enjoy her whiskey in peace, when the woman who stole her prize sat down at the bar with her.

Pissed off Mattie tried to storm away but bumped into an angry drunk, this turned into a full on bar fight. Which Flora dragged her away from and offered to patch up her wounds

They stuck together after that. But didn’t become lovers till much later

Flora fell first, but Mattie fell harder.

JESUS this is long I’m sorry

Anyways main plot:

Word gets to Mattie that her father is dead, and her younger brother has resorted to a life crime. He is being set to hang once he’s caught. She sets out to find him.

Flora’s old gang has picked up on her location, and they are hunting her down. Scared for Mattie’s safety she works with her old friend to figure out how to keep them off their trail.

The two of them have also been found out to be beasts by the law, so on top of being wanted because of their crimes, they are also being stalked by beast hunters.

Everything seems to be going okay, Mattie finds Ben, and together her and Flora help him get away from the noose, they look after him and bring them to their camp. They thought they were evading the hunters as well as the gang.

What they didn’t know was that Ben still held a grudge for Mattie leaving. He blames her for their father’s ultimate death.

He rats them out, not only to the hunters, but to Flora’s old gang. He figured that if he gave them their location, the law would let him go. They took the bargain.

The hunters and the gang ambush them, Ben leading the way.

Flora gets injured during the fight in her human form. Ben nearly kills her.

The siblings go head to head in their beastly forms, and against all odds, the fox beats the lion, killing the last remaining member of her family.

Flora, incredibly injured, cannot transform, and for reasons unknown to Mattie, she cannot switch back.

Years pass, Flora has a limp that doesn’t go away. She is never able to be her animal again. And Mattie, well, she didn’t get too injured that day, though it seems like something broke inside because she lost her human form.

They move north together, and live a peaceful life, even though it’s not quite normal. What with Mattie being a fox and all that.

A decade or so after everything, they’ve been out of the life for a long time, is when Mattie finally finds herself again. Though she’s very different to what she used to be, her human form had changed, more fox like and more wild, though still her. She can only take that form for bits at a time, but it’s something. They’re happy

If you read all of this… damn thank you!!

[thydungeongal]

Fantasy Adventure Games part 1

I've mentioned this in passing but like there's a genre of TTRPGs that I call the "fantasy adventure game" that is nebulously defined and that is ultimately what a lot of people look for when they look for TTRPGs. They're basically games in the same broad genre as D&D, characterized by the following:

Cooperative. Player characters are expected to form an adventuring party of some type that cooperates to overcome adversity.

Challenge-based. Ultimately the action in these games revolves around overcoming obstacles in the pursuit of some goal. These obstacles often include combat but can also be different types of adversity, such as environmental obstacles or other complex situations that must be maneuvered.

Fantasy. These games take place in fantasy settings, whatever that means. More often than not this means a medieval or early modern level of technology and aesthetics heavily informed by medieval Europe and classical antiquity.

Anyway I sometimes get asks from people who want to stay within the fantasy genre and roughly the same genre of play as D&D but who chafe at some of the expectations of D&D, so I'm compiling this list of games in order to give you a starting point. This list is not meant to be exhaustive and it will reflect my own biases when it comes to what games on the market I am aware of.

This first part will cover the Trad, or Traditional, side of the Fantasy Adventure Game genre. Trad is another nebulously defined term but ultimately what I mean by it is the sort of mainstream RPG design with a pedigree that goes all the way back to the seventies. Yes, even though games have changed a lot since 1974, I think there is a clear design lineage that can be traced from the early days of the hobby to most modern fantasy RPGs. I will keep games like Pathfinder and OSR games offa the list for now.

RuneQuest by Chaosium. The original RuneQuest was one of the first non-D&D fantasy RPGs that entered the hobby and it still remains around. Since its inception, RuneQuest has contrasted with D&D mostly in terms of its more modest character power scaling, more deadly combat, universal magic, and lack of classes and levels. Where D&D (every edition) is ultimately a game where characters will quickly grow to superheroic levels of power, RuneQuest characters are much more grounded, growing in skill and capability but always staying at a level of power where a single attack can end a would-be hero's adventuring career very quickly. RuneQuest is also heavily tied to the fantasy setting of Glorantha, a mythic bronze age fantasy setting with extremely intricate metaphysics and mythology. The current edition of RuneQuest is once again tied explicitly to Glorantha after years of the game having been detached from the Glorantha license, and in addition to adventuring in the world of Glorantha the game places a heavy emphasis on characters becoming characters of importance in the tribes and cults they belong to, and the game turns downtime between adventures into a major part of its gameplay.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay by Cubicle 7. Unbeknownst to many, the first edition of Warhammer, the miniatures wargame, actually featured full rules of playing the game as a roleplaying game instead of an army scale wargame. These rules would later act as the foundation for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, now in its fourth edition. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or WFRP for short, is characterized by being a more ground level look at the Old World of the Warhammer fantasy wargame, and it gives a much grimmer and grittier view of the world than sometimes portrayed in the miniatures game. WFRP is not a game of larger than life heroes going to battle against the forces of Chaos: it's a game about peasants, bandits, rat catchers, and apprentice wizards taking part in small-scale skirmishes that might sometimes involve the forces of Chaos but are ultimately just drops in the ocean compared to the great tsunami of Chaos rolling towards the world. Much like RuneQuest, it is characterized by a more grounded power level, with characters starting in ultimately mundane professions and not rising meteorically in power, but compared to RuneQuest its setting is much more grimy and gritty, and far from being universally available, magic is both rare and dangerous.

Rolemaster by Iron Crown Enterprises. Another classic fantasy RPG from the eighties, Rolemaster has experienced a recent resurgence, with many dubbing 2024 "the year of Rolemaster." Rolemaster was originally born out of the developers' frustrations in trying to run a D&D campaign set in Middle-earth and the game constantly struggling to produce fiction that would befit the late and great J.R.R. Tolkien's work. For some reason they decided to make Rolemaster. But to be serious for a moment, despite its failure to model the sort of action present in Tolkien's work, Rolemaster is on its own terms a crunchy and detailed fantasy RPG that is a good fit for those who chafe against the abstract nature of most other fantasy RPG systems. Rolemaster as a system is heavily characterized by the use of "open-ended" 1d100 rolls (rolls which explode both on high and low rolls), extremely gruesomely detailed critical hit, fumble, and spell failure tables, and gameplay that largely revolves around table lookup. It also has its own, very unique set of metaphysics that make it stand out from most fantasy RPGs.

Fantasy AGE by Green Ronin Publishing. Originally the system that powered their officially licensed Dragon Age RPG, the Fantasy AGE system is a 3d6-based system that while clearly owing heavily to D&D (in addition to obvious influences from the Dragon Age CRPG, the game is in many ways a successor to Green Ronin's earlier d20-based True20 system) aims for a more cinematic approach to play. A lot of what the game has to offer will be instantly familiar to D&D players: characters are defined via their species and class; while there are only four classes (Warrior, Rogue, Mage, and Envoy in the second edition), players get to further choose specializations for their character that will give them access to more unique abilities; characters advance in levels which unlock new abilities according to their class. Fantasy AGE tries to go for a more cinematic style, with each 3d6 roll having the possibility of producing a "stunt," where players get to spend stunt points on additional effects depending on the action in question. It thus promises to be a game where the situation is constantly changing and the action is exciting and high-flying.

Break!! by Madriñan & Tartaglia. The recent winner of the Gold Ennie Award for Best Family Game 2024, Break!! is a science fantasy adventure game firmly grounded in classic TTRPG design (with old-school D&D as one of the clearest of its many influences) but with inspirations taken from anime and classic video games. Break!! doesn't exactly bring a lot of new and exciting design to the table, but it comes with such fantastic presentation and clarity of purpose that it makes one excited at the sheer prospect of playing it. Like, just look at how nicely their website is presented! The game itself has similar presentation.

Warrior, Rogue & Mage by Stargazer Games. A rules light traditional fantasy RPG, WRM boils down character abilities to three abilities: Warrior, Rogue, and Mage. WRM is a very simple and easy to digest fantasy RPG that while far from crunchy still has a bit of bite to it. Character creation is simple and largely consist of assigning points to the three stats, choosing skills, buying equipment, and choosing spells (for characters with a Mage attribute of 1 or higher). The game is entirely free and there is a wealth of free supplements for it as well.

Next time I'll be talking about either the OSR, the "Alt" school of design, tactical combat games (basically, successors to 4e that warrant a separate look), 3e successors, or idk, who knows.

[avelera]

A few random thoughts about the comic issue of "Men of Good Fortune" in The Sandman and how they pertain to Dreamling as a ship based on the show.

I get the sense when reading MoGF that it's a... shall we say, "young" story? It's the sort of story that has its seeds in your high school creative writing class. You're learning about English history and you're also writing short stories and you think, "Wouldn't it be cool if two guys met every 100 years to talk about these events I'm learning about and it's the same guys because they're immortal?"

I say this in part because I wrote a similar story in high school without having read MoGF, but also because it's a very simple story with no actual plot arc, nothing actually changes by the end in the original comic. The addition of Dream "missing" the meeting adds a lot of weight and consequence that isn't there in the comic. The closest it gets is, "Dream says he's not going to come to the next 1989 meeting but then a bunch of stuff happens off screen and he shows up anyway, thus confirming they are indeed friends." That is barely a plot beat of any kind, nothing really changes, it just clarifies that they are friends, which we could have suspected the whole time.

Anyway, on that note, I've got a deep-seated suspicion that in the very earliest drafts of this story, Dream was Death. Because it makes sense. Death spares a commoner on the condition that he report back every century to tell about how his life is going. Also, Death is certain that this mortal will want to die at some point because of all the horrible things he's living through, but in the end he doesn't and they become friends.

Again, this is a very simple story, basically a fable. Then this story is lifted into a new setting, the Sandman universe, and the antagonist of Death is turned into Dream but Death is still there, because Death as a figure makes much more sense than Dream as the basis for this wager.

I've commented many times before that Hob has less than nothing to go on as far as guessing Dream's identity but that one very natural conclusion he could come to is that Dream is Death because Death is much easier and thematically consistent with what happens in the story than Dream. Dream even remarks in the show (paraphrased) that, "[He] is far more terrible than Death," which objectively makes very little sense other than in their personal mannerisms.

But Dream's curiosity as to Hob's will to live isn't all that consistent with his function as Lord of Dreams, can you really tell me that the Lord of Dreams can't conceive of a mortal that would want to live forever, who wouldn't dream of living forever? IMO this is one more piece of evidence that the story was lifted from an earlier draft where there is no Dream and Death, there is only Death and Hob, with Death left in as sort of a homage to the original premise and to explain why Dream would get involved at all in such a wager.

It also kind of explains why the implications of this centuries-long friendship get largely ignored until quite late in the Sandman comics. Dream would be Hob's only constant, at least that he can speak to and isn't like the Sun and the Moon or something, and yet our only nod to this is very very late in the comics.

Again, I think this is because in a fable about Death and A Normal Guy meeting over and over as a commentary on English history, it makes perfect sense that you wouldn't really explore the interpersonal implications of how Hob feels about this guy, if Hob cares about this guy, because it's Death, clearly this is just a fable.

But once it's not Death, once it's someone else, once Dream's interactions with this guy actually don't align with his function, actually rather glaringly doesn't align with his function such that his relationship with Hob actually becomes Dream's biggest singular point of individuality, the biggest piece of proof that he is an individual person and not just his function because watching this guy live has nothing to do with his function because he's not Death, then we also begin to wonder how important are these guys to one another, as individuals, because it's not a simple, streamlined fable anymore about Death and Just A Guy meeting.

Basically, I think that as is often the case, the inconsistencies are what give some of Gaiman's juvenilia works the charm that they have. They raise more questions than they answer, because they're not rigorously plotted and the implications of certain story decisions aren't explored, for example even how magic like immortality works in this world doesn't really make consistent sense (ex. Orpheus and Hob have very different immortalities within the same story despite both being gifted by Death, one can't choose to die whenever he wants and there's no explanation as to why this is other than The Story Demands It, which is rather clumsy but does lend to a sense of myth).

It's not until much later in the author's career in the comic and (retconned with) the show that the narratives begins to inquire into things like, "What do these two individuals mean to each other as people. Does Hob mourn Dream, or think of him when he's not there? Does the singularity of Hob in Dream's life matter to him, or give him pause?" all questions that would be absurd in a simplistic fable about Death and Just A Dude but once lifted from that original context, create fascinating inconsistencies that begin to matter and become fodder for deeper explorations as seen in fanfiction and shipping these two characters.

[yarrayora]

Idk how to explain properly, but I’m a really big fan of the dynamic you portray between Marcille and Falin. I’ve always loved . idk how to say.. divorce? trouble-in-paradise? arcs/portrayals that look at problems in otp, and yours is super interesting. Sorry if this is weird just wanted to say :)

not weird at all! im flattered, thanks!

i wasnt really into farcille at first, mostly i was just impressed an f/f ship managed to be the fandom's no1, basically proving that when two female characters in a mostly male dominated cast are allowed to bond with each others and be their own characters people will latch on to them

mostly though aro touden siblings is still my no1 and even back then i didnt care about shipping because any type of romantic relationship in dunmeshi is less interesting than the potential of political intrigue the worldbuilding set up (yes, even chilchuck's failing marriage is less interesting to me than how living in the dungeon was safer for the orcs than being neighbors to human civilization) (shocking, i know)

but it all changed when i saw the daydream hour about marcille thinking falin looks cute in feminine clothing while falin herself is obviously uncomfortable with it

i can't sleep. i have to think about this. i have to think about how it's their first love and their first relationship and one is going in blind while the other set up her expectations based on a harlequin romance novel. they are NOT in the same wavelength at all and neither of them are particularly good at communicating their intention, with falin who grew up a convenient kid because she thought it was the least she could do for her family and marcille who frankly speaking was used to being treated as someone superior back at the magic school

thank god kabru exists because who else is going to give them a real advice for their very real relationship? chilchuck will be like "okay just break up" while not seeing the mirror to his own relationship with his runaway wife. senshi, wise as he is, is never in a romantic relationship. laios would be like :((( you guys are fighting? and gets stressed out on his own which makes it even more stressful to the girls. namari is like. "i, uh, please talk to kabru."

anyway theres also the bonus comic about falin inviting marcille to watch daltian clan's opera adaptation and while there is something to say about marcille thinking the humans playing elves doesn't fit her aesthetic (and the difference of societal expectations of dressing up as a different race in dunmeshi universe compared to in ours) all i can think of is that in modern day au where daltian clan has a movie adaptation marcille has a tumblr blog where she posts Hate on the daltian clan movie tag and calling it criticism which it is but also not the place, girl, go to rotten tomatoes for that

falin also has a tumblr and she and marcille had no idea the other is a tumblr user. falin made a post like "just watched daltian clan with my gf i get why shes really obsessed with it now" and marcille, against her better judgement replies to the post like "really sorry that you were misled by your girlfriend like that, you should read the novels instead, it's way better."

laios who sees falin looking shocked at her phone asks whats up and then after receiving the answer says "wow sounds like a real jerk! just block them"

anyway thats my modern day farcille when there's no high fantasy problems involved

[theoraclej]

well, that was bitterly disappointing to the depths of my soul.

yes, I'm talking about Tech.

he deserved better. the BATCH deserved better. OMEGA deserved better.

I don't like the way they basically just erased any and all grief for Tech except for a couple of fucking off-hand mentions that barely whetted the appetite for more of the only character I really identified with

because I'm the info dumping autistic guy in my irl groups

and to see him shuffled off in the manner they used was a fucking insult

and to be teased about it by the show creators

or worse, harassed by the bad lot of Star Wars fans

and to kill off their autistic guy who DEFINITELY had chemistry and the first hints of flirty bonding with a Black woman is a bad look, v bad look

imo they botched the whole finale, not just the Tech thing because like look:

I guess this zillo beast is just gonna live on that planet now, instead of getting involved in the story they had it fuck off to the jungle - what

CX-2? who was he? too bad we'll never know because he was dropped before he was identified

it was shot so dark, everything was hard to see, and mind you my television set is especially tuned for it to NOT be dark because I hate that shit, I am going to be forced to watch it again despite not wanting to so I can listen to the audio descriptions and better understand the fights

they totally dropped Omega's force sensitivity stuff, like I wanted to know more about that, and about the other kids, will they even be safe? cause we know the empire keeps stealing force sensitive kids

speaking of those kids, what even was the point? the research was destroyed yet we know project necromancer is eventually successful or maybe they're retconning that too, who knows, all the rules are off the table and nothing matters

writing was inconsistent for an episode meant to be important

Crosshair did not deserve to have his hand cut off. I know prosthetics are "easier" and "more accessible" in this universe but also I don't give a fuck, just insult to injury and more, this man has suffered enough from the moment they jacked his chip up to 11

back to Tech: they spent so much time being cute little shits about him that his return seemed inevitable, as I watched the season I kept counting down time left for him to show up, and I had hopes all the way through until the first fade to black, only to be bitterly reminded of his death with the goggles in Omega's ship

--

two highlights I did enjoy - Omega and Hunter at the end, making me wonder if there will be a show about Omega set during the rebellion or if she'll show up in The Mandalorian or Ahsoka

Nala Se killing the shit out of rampart as she herself died, thank you Nala Se

but overall UGH, I will be tender from this one for awhile, I almost want to cancel Disney+ until I feel able to watch Star Wars stuff again

might write some fix-it fic, I'm too hurt right now tho

I'm commiserating with the rest of you who seem to have much the same reaction to this disaster of a finale

so yeah, we all deserved better, fictional folks and real folks and zillo beasts alike

[phoenixyfriend]

Making this its own post instead of an ask.

I divide crossovers into categories or types, and here the most basic ones.

Intrusive:

A character from one setting ends up in another, completely unrelated setting. They do not share a universe, do not share a planet, nada. This is "falls through a portal" type of crossover. EXAMPLE: A Witch's Favor, where Wanda Maximoff and Maria Rambeau (Marvel) end up in the Star Wars universe due to an unexplained spell malfunction.

Shared Verse:

The settings could theoretically, in some manner, exist in the same universe without ever intersecting. EXAMPLE: I usually use Naruto for this example, e.g. the Hidden Continent exists in the Pacific but has had minimal influence/interaction with the rest of the setting up to this point because it's magically cut off from the rest of the planet. For Star Wars, this is usually pretty easy by just putting whatever the second canon is as just. A planet in Wild Space. They exist in the same universe! They just haven't found each other yet! A great example is the fic A Star to Steer By, by @norcumii and @dogmatix. A subset of this is fics where one is the distant past of the other, like Muse on This or Red-Eyed Black Widow.

Mixed Verse:

The setting is one that involves both canons influencing each other to a degree, or being in the same verse without being a fusion AU or shared-verse. The settings exist together, both having strong worldbuilding elements of the original, but are not fully themselves and show obvious elements of the other. EXAMPLE: Unfortunately my most recent example is an HP crossover so. Please keep in mind that this is from four years ago, before R*wling outed herself as a massive bigot: Professor Storm.

Fusion:

More or less 1:1 "this character from fandom A would be this character from fandom B" or otherwise "characters from fandom A reimagined in fandom B with none of the original setting." For a long time, HP was the biggest and most constant example, but uhhh that's clearly been falling out of favor like raw eggs. I've seen a lot of good ones for Hunger Games, though, and even wrote my own, but I know some other common ones are Steven Universe (which gem are they?), AtLA (which bender type are they?), or Pokemon (what trainer type are they). Also, arguably, generic AUs that don't take place in canon-verse, like modern or historical or zombie or Generic Cyberdystopia. EXAMPLE: After Me Comes the Flood.

Element Overlay:

A world-building element from Fandom B is applied to the setting and characters of Fandom A. Common examples are Daemon AUs or Sentinel/Guide AUs. I think a fun thing to point out is that, while they don't technically have a source fandom of origin since they were developed communally by fandom, soulmate AUs and omegaverse count as well.

There are other types, like infusing the plot of one narrative into the setting and characters of the other, which is a really fun kind of fusion (I always come back to thinking about Age of Marvels by justplainrii, which only ever got three chapters but still eats at my brain sometimes), buuuuut I'd say most crossovers are some variant of the above.

[coochiequeens]

Women's history just got richer

By Mindy Weisberger, CNN

More than 1,000 years ago, carvers in what is now Denmark set their chisels to rock to etch runestones — monuments to Viking leaders naming their deeds and achievements. Two groups of runestones mention a woman named Thyra, and new analysis of the carvings suggests that the runes on both sets of stones were inscribed by the same artisan and refer to the same woman: a Viking queen of considerable power.

Researchers from Denmark and Sweden used 3D scans to analyze carvings on the runestones, finding telltale clues that marked the individual style of the person who carved them. That carver’s repeated mention of Thyra’s name — a rare occurrence for Viking-era women — suggested that Thyra was a powerful sovereign who likely played a pivotal role in the birth of the Danish realm, the scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Antiquity.

“To learn more about the rune-carver and those named on the stone is fascinating,” said Dr. Katherine Cross, a lecturer at York St. John University in the UK who researches and teaches the history of early medieval northern Europe. She was not involved in the study.

“We can only understand early medieval sources once we can think about who made them and why,” Cross told CNN in an email.

One set of runes came from a pair of monuments known as the Jelling stones, erected in the town of Jelling around 965. The larger Jelling stone is often referred to as “Denmark’s birth certificate,” as it’s the first monument to name the land as its people pivoted to Christianity, according to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.

Both Jelling runestones also named a royal figure: Queen Thyra, mother of then-reigning King Harald Bluetooth. The smaller stone was raised in her honor by her husband (and Harald’s father) King Gorm, calling her “Denmark’s strength/salvation” (or “Denmark’s adornment,” depending on the translation, the researchers noted in the study). Harald commissioned the larger stone, to honor both of his royal parents.

In another set of four Viking-era monuments, known collectively as the Bække-Læborg group, two runestones mention a woman named Thyra. Those stones are associated with a carver named Ravnunge-Tue, but experts disagreed on whether that Thyra was Harald’s mother, said lead study author Dr. Lisbeth Imer, a curator and senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark specializing in the study of runes and ancient inscriptions.

Before the new investigation, it was unknown who had carved the Jelling stones. Confirming that their carver was Ravnunge-Tue would strengthen the connection between the Jelling and Bække-Læborg runestones, Imer told CNN in an email.

“Then it is much more reasonable to suggest that it was in fact the same Thyra,” she said.

A question of style

Some details in ancient runestones that indicate a carver’s individual style are visible to a trained expert’s eye, such as the language or the basic shape of the runes. Other details are harder to detect, Imer said.

“What you cannot see with the naked eye is the carving technique,” she said.

To get a closer look at the carvings, the researchers took scans of the stones and created 3D digital models, then measured the runes’ grooves with a software tool that weighed variables such as angle, depth and cutting rhythm. Together, these variables can create a unique profile for a carver.

“Every rune carver develops his own motor skill and holds the tools in a certain angle, strikes with a certain strength,” Imer said. “The motor skill is individual and other individuals cannot copy that.”

When the researchers compared runes from Jelling 2 (the larger of the two Jelling stones) and the Læborg stone from the Bække-Læborg group, they found striking similarities, such as height of the runes, straightness of the main staves and length and placement of rune branches.

“In the Læborg and Jelling inscriptions you can follow the cutting rhythm of Ravnunge-Tue as one deep stroke of the chisel followed by two not so deep ones: DAK, dak-dak, DAK, dak-dak,” Imer said via email. “It is ALMOST like hearing the heartbeat of a person that lived so long ago.”

Jelling 1 was more eroded, so its markings were harder to analyze. But if the Læborg runestone was Ravnunge-Tue’s handiwork, Jelling 2 was likely his as well, Imer said. It would mean that the Queen Thyra mentioned twice in the Bække-Læborg group — on Læborg and on the stone Bække 1 — was the same person commemorated on the Jelling stones, the study authors concluded.

In recent years, archaeologists have revised prior interpretations of Viking warrior burials as exclusively male, finding that Viking women were fighters, too. The new findings add to the picture of influential Viking women holding prominent roles in statecraft as well as on the battlefield.

“This research highlights how Viking-Age women wielded power through political authority and patronage, not just violence,” Cross said.

What’s more, the fact that Thyra is mentioned on four runestones offers strong evidence of her importance, Imer added. Fewer than 10 runestones in Denmark from the pre-Christian era mention women at all — and four of those are of Queen Thyra.

“Runestones in Denmark were mostly erected in honour of men, but Thyra is commemorated on more runestones than any other person in Viking Age Denmark,” Imer said. “She must have held extreme power and social position.”

Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine.

[thundercrack]

Study of Elite College Admissions Data Suggests Being Very Rich Is Its Own Qualification

By Aatish Bhatia, Claire Cain Miller and Josh Katz July 24, 2023 (full text under the cut)

Elite colleges have long been filled with the children of the richest families: At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent.

A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things. For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.

The study — by Opportunity Insights, a group of economists based at Harvard who study inequality — quantifies for the first time the extent to which being very rich is its own qualification in selective college admissions.

The analysis is based on federal records of college attendance and parental income taxes for nearly all college students from 1999 to 2015, and standardized test scores from 2001 to 2015. It focuses on the eight Ivy League universities, as well as Stanford, Duke, M.I.T. and the University of Chicago. It adds an extraordinary new data set: the detailed, anonymized internal admissions assessments of at least three of the 12 colleges, covering half a million applicants. (The researchers did not name the colleges that shared data or specify how many did because they promised them anonymity.)

The new data shows that among students with the same test scores, the colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings. The result is the clearest picture yet of how America’s elite colleges perpetuate the intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity.

“What I conclude from this study is the Ivy League doesn’t have low-income students because it doesn’t want low-income students,” said Susan Dynarski, an economist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who has reviewed the data and was not involved in the study.

In effect, the study shows, these policies amounted to affirmative action for the children of the 1 percent, whose parents earn more than $611,000 a year. It comes as colleges are being forced to rethink their admissions processes after the Supreme Court ruling that race-based affirmative action is unconstitutional.

“Are these highly selective private colleges in America taking kids from very high-income, influential families and basically channeling them to remain at the top in the next generation?” said Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard who directs Opportunity Insights, and an author of the paper with John N. Friedman of Brown and David J. Deming of Harvard. “Flipping that question on its head, could we potentially diversify who’s in a position of leadership in our society by changing who is admitted?”

Representatives from several of the colleges said that income diversity was an urgent priority, and that they had taken significant steps since 2015, when the data in the study ends, to admit lower-income and first-generation students. These include making tuition free for families earning under a certain amount; giving only grants, not loans, in financial aid; and actively recruiting students from disadvantaged high schools.

“We believe that talent exists in every sector of the American income distribution,” said Christopher L. Eisgruber, the president of Princeton. “I am proud of what we have done to increase socioeconomic diversity at Princeton, but I also believe that we need to do more — and we will do more.”

Affirmative action for the rich

In a concurring opinion in the affirmative action case, Justice Neil Gorsuch addressed the practice of favoring the children of alumni and donors, which is also the subject of a new case. “While race-neutral on their face, too, these preferences undoubtedly benefit white and wealthy applicants the most,” he wrote.

The new paper did not include admissions rates by race because previous research had done so, the researchers said. They found that racial differences were not driving the results. When looking only at applicants of one race, for example, those from the highest-income families still had an advantage. Yet the top 1 percent is overwhelmingly white. Some analysts have proposed diversifying by class as a way to achieve more racial diversity without affirmative action.

The new data showed that other selective private colleges, like Northwestern, N.Y.U. and Notre Dame, had a similarly disproportionate share of children from rich families. Public flagship universities were much more equitable. At places like the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia, applicants with high-income parents were no more likely to be admitted than lower-income applicants with comparable scores.

Less than 1 percent of American college students attend the 12 elite colleges. But the group plays an outsize role in American society: 12 percent of Fortune 500 chief executives and a quarter of U.S. senators attended. So did 13 percent of the top 0.1 percent of earners. The focus on these colleges is warranted, the researchers say, because they provide paths to power and influence — and diversifying who attends has the potential to change who makes decisions in America.

The researchers did a novel analysis to measure whether attending one of these colleges causes success later in life. They compared students who were wait-listed and got in, with those who didn’t and attended another college instead. Consistent with previous research, they found that attending an Ivy instead of one of the top nine public flagships did not meaningfully increase graduates’ income, on average. However, it did increase a student’s predicted chance of earning in the top 1 percent to 19 percent, from 12 percent.

For outcomes other than earnings, the effect was even larger — it nearly doubled the estimated chance of attending a top graduate school, and tripled the estimated chance of working at firms that are considered prestigious, like national news organizations and research hospitals.

“Sure, it’s a tiny slice of schools,” said Professor Dynarski, who has studied college admissions and worked with the University of Michigan on increasing the attendance of low-income students, and has occasionally contributed to The New York Times. “But having representation is important, and this shows how much of a difference the Ivies make: The political elite, the economic elite, the intellectual elite are coming out of these schools.”

The missing middle class

The advantage to rich applicants varied by college, the study found: At Dartmouth, students from the top 0.1 percent were five times as likely to attend as the average applicant with the same test score, while at M.I.T. they were no more likely to attend. (The fact that children from higher-income families tend to have higher standardized test scores and are likelier to receive private coaching suggests that the study may actually underestimate their admissions advantage.)

An applicant with a high test score from a family earning less than $68,000 a year was also likelier than the average applicant to get in, though there were fewer applicants like this.

Children from middle- and upper-middle-class families — including those at public high schools in high-income neighborhoods — applied in large numbers. But they were, on an individual basis, less likely to be admitted than the richest or, to a lesser extent, poorest students with the same test scores. In that sense, the data confirms the feeling among many merely affluent parents that getting their children into elite colleges is increasingly difficult.

“We had these very skewed distributions of a whole lot of Pell kids and a whole lot of no-need kids, and the middle went missing,” said an Ivy League dean of admissions, who has seen the new data and spoke anonymously in order to talk openly about the process. “You’re not going to win a P.R. battle by saying you have X number of families making over $200,000 that qualify for financial aid.”

The researchers could see, for nearly all college students in the United States from 1999 to 2015, where they applied and attended, their SAT or ACT scores and whether they received a Pell grant for low-income students. They could also see their parents’ income tax records, which enabled them to analyze attendance by earnings in more detail than any previous research. They conducted the analysis using anonymized data.

For the several elite colleges that also shared internal admissions data, they could see other aspects of students’ applications between 2001 and 2015, including how admissions offices rated them. They focused their analysis on the most recent years, 2011 to 2015.

Though they had this data for a minority of the dozen top colleges, the researchers said they thought it was representative of the other colleges in the group (with the exception of M.I.T.). The other colleges admitted more students from high-income families, showed preferences for legacies and recruited athletes, and described similar admissions practices in conversations with the researchers, they said.

“Nobody has this kind of data; it’s completely unheard-of,” said Michael Bastedo, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Education, who has done prominent research on college admissions. “I think it’s really important to good faith efforts for reforming the system to start by being able to look honestly and candidly at the data.”

How the richest students benefit

Before this study, it was clear that colleges enrolled more rich students, but it was not known whether it was just because more applied. The new study showed that’s part of it: One-third of the difference in attendance rates was because middle-class students were somewhat less likely to apply or matriculate. But the bigger factor was that these colleges were more likely to accept the richest applicants.

Legacy admissions

The largest advantage for the 1 percent was the preference for legacies. The study showed — for the first time at this scale — that legacies were more qualified overall than the average applicant. But even when comparing applicants who were similar in every other way, legacies still had an advantage.

When high-income applicants applied to the college their parents attended, they were accepted at much higher rates than other applicants with similar qualifications — but at the other top-dozen colleges, they were no more likely to get in.

“This is not a sideshow, not just a symbolic issue,” Professor Bastedo said of the finding.

Athletes

One in eight admitted students from the top 1 percent was a recruited athlete. For the bottom 60 percent, that figure was one in 20. That’s largely because children from rich families are more likely to play sports, especially more exclusive sports played at certain colleges, like rowing and fencing. The study estimated that athletes were admitted at four times the rate of nonathletes with the same qualifications.

“There’s a common misperception that it’s about basketball and football and low-income kids making their way into selective colleges,” Professor Bastedo said. “But the enrollment leaders know athletes tend to be wealthier, so it’s a win-win.”

Nonacademic ratings

There was a third factor driving the preference for the richest applicants. The colleges in the study generally give applicants numerical scores for academic achievement and for more subjective nonacademic virtues, like extracurricular activities, volunteering and personality traits. Students from the top 1 percent with the same test scores did not have higher academic ratings. But they had significantly higher nonacademic ratings.

At one of the colleges that shared admissions data, students from the top 0.1 percent were 1.5 times as likely to have high nonacademic ratings as those from the middle class. The researchers said that, accounting for differences in the way each school assesses nonacademic credentials, they found similar patterns at the other colleges that shared data.

The biggest contributor was that admissions committees gave higher scores to students from private, nonreligious high schools. They were twice as likely to be admitted as similar students — those with the same SAT scores, race, gender and parental income — from public schools in high-income neighborhoods. A major factor was recommendations from guidance counselors and teachers at private high schools.

“Parents rattle off that a kid got in because he was first chair in the orchestra, ran track,” said John Morganelli Jr., a former director of admissions at Cornell and founder of Ivy League Admissions, where he advises high school students on applying to college. “They never say what really happens: Did the guidance counselor advocate on that kid’s behalf?”

Recommendation letters from private school counselors are notoriously flowery, he said, and the counselors call admissions officers about certain students.

“This is how the feeder schools get created,” he said. “Nobody’s calling on behalf of a middle- or lower-income student. Most of the public school counselors don’t even know these calls exist.”

The end of need-blind admissions?

Overall, the study suggests, if elite colleges had done away with the preferences for legacies, athletes and private school students, the children of the top 1 percent would have made up 10 percent of a class, down from 16 percent in the years of the study.

Legacy students, athletes and private school students do no better after college, in terms of earnings or reaching a top graduate school or firm, it found. In fact, they generally do somewhat worse.

The dean of admissions who spoke anonymously said change was easier said than done: “I would say there’s much more commitment to this than may be obvious. It’s just the solution is really complicated, and if we could have done it, we would have.”

For example, it’s not feasible to choose athletes from across the income spectrum if many college sports are played almost entirely by children from high-earning families. Legacies are perhaps the most complicated, the admissions dean said, because they tend to be highly qualified and their admission is important for maintaining strong ties with alumni.

Ending that preference, the person said, “is not an easy decision to make, given the alumni response, especially if you’re not in immediate concurrence with the rest of the Ivies.” (Though children of very large donors also get special consideration by admissions offices, they were not included in the analysis because there are relatively few of them.)

People involved in admissions say that achieving more economic diversity would be difficult without doing something else: ending need-blind admissions, the practice that prevents admissions officers from seeing families’ financial information so their ability to pay is not a factor. Some colleges are already doing what they call “need-affirmative admissions,” for the purpose of selecting more students from the low end of the income spectrum, though they often don’t publicly acknowledge it for fear of blowback.

There is a tool, Landscape from the College Board, to help determine if an applicant grew up in a neighborhood with significant privilege or adversity. But these colleges have no knowledge of parents’ income if students don’t apply for financial aid.

Ivy League colleges and their peers have recently made significant efforts to recruit more low-income students and subsidize tuition. Several now make attendance entirely free for families below a certain income — $100,000 at Stanford and Princeton, $85,000 at Harvard, and $60,000 at Brown.

At Princeton, one-fifth of students are now from low-income families, and one-fourth receive a full ride. It has recently reinstated a transfer program to recruit low-income and community college students. At Harvard, one-fourth of this fall’s freshman class is from families with incomes less than $85,000, who will pay nothing. The majority of freshmen will receive some amount of aid.

Dartmouth just raised $500 million to expand financial aid: “While we respect the work of Harvard’s Opportunity Insights, we believe our commitment to these investments and our admissions policies since 2015 tells an important story about the socioeconomic diversity among Dartmouth students,” said Jana Barnello, a spokeswoman.

Public flagships do admissions differently, in a way that ends up benefiting rich students less. The University of California schools forbid giving preference to legacies or donors, and some, like U.C.L.A., do not consider letters of recommendation. The application asks for family income, and colleges get detailed information about California high schools. Application readers are trained to consider students’ circumstances, like whether they worked to support their families in high school, as “evidence of maturity, determination and insight.”

The University of California system also partners with schools in the state, from pre-K through community college, to support students who face barriers. There’s a robust program for transfer students from California community colleges; at U.C.L.A., half are from low-income backgrounds.

M.I.T., which stands out among elite private schools as displaying almost no preference for rich students, has never given a preference to legacy applicants, said its dean of admissions, Stuart Schmill. It does recruit athletes, but they do not receive any preference or go through a separate admissions process (as much as it may frustrate coaches, he said).

“I think the most important thing here is talent is distributed equally but opportunity is not, and our admissions process is designed to account for the different opportunities students have based on their income,” he said. “It’s really incumbent upon our process to tease out the difference between talent and privilege.”

Source: Raj Chetty, David J. Deming and John N. Friedman, “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges”

[brightest-stars-if]

Related to that marriage ask you answered.

You said if MC and Lux are both men/women, Lux didn't have a fiance(e) before. But I'm wondering why? What I mean is that since it takes some time for the marriage with MC to actually happen, wouldn't it make sense for Lux's parents to have found them someone? After all, the bethrothal with opposite sex MC happens when they are both very young, so even if with same sex MC-Lux pairs the idea was for the MC to be a friend to Lux, this wouldn't have replaced an "appropriate match" for marriage, right?

I don't have any problem with that though! I'm just curious about the logic behind! At least from Lux's parents - less so from MC's.

The out-of-universe answer for this is that I have soooo many variables already and I thought that including a betrothed for Lux if they're the same sex as the MC was biting off more than I could chew. With that being said, I deliberately fashioned the in-universe explanation around that so it would make sense.

In the game world, the possible marriage options for Lux are either a) taken, b) too old to reasonably marry them, or c) too young to reasonably marry them. All the age-appropriate children of important houses are the same gender as them, so marriage options are limited. Caius also has the support of many powerful houses locked up, so he's not in much of a rush to set up a match for Lux if that match doesn't involve a child of his bestie Alaric.

Caius is content to wait for the young girls of powerful houses -- who are too young to really be considered suitable matches for m!Lux now -- to grow older before betrothal talks. And by the time those talks come around, m!Lux has enough influence over his father to wriggle out of a betrothal. Things are largely the same for f!Lux, except this time Caius is much more protective of her. He's a total hypocrite because he would absolutely go nuclear if his daughter's husband treated her the same way he treats *checks notes* basically every woman to have ever been in his life. So in this case it's a mixture of him being politically comfortable and also suspicious of the Tarasi male population lol.

TL;DR: Lux not getting betrothed in a same-sex route with the MC is a result of political stability and overall lack of availability.

[aristocratic-otter]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers (except me because obvs I have done it). Spread the self-love ❤

Thank you, @artsyunderstudy, @skee3000, and @roomwithanopenfire for the ask.

  Hmmm, Ok. I guess I’ll choose based on which of my own fics I actually reread the most. That means my favorites are: 

A Real Doll

My first explicit fic, written for the Monster Under the Bed fest, this was where I really started to feel like I could be up there writing with the fanfic gods I’d looked up to. @captain-aralias liked it, that was an achievement! This was actually very very loosely based on a CSI fanfic I read forever ago (really, the only similarity was a lifelike sex doll), but in it Baz decides to try to wank his feelings for Simon away in a much more involved fashion by basically fucking a sex doll he makes that looks like Simon. But then Simon walks in on this happening and, well...you’ll have to read it to find out. 

A Fucked-Up Cinderella Story

This was my first EGF fic, and, more importantly, my first collaboration. Working with @frjsti was eye-opening in so many ways. I found out how wonderful it can be when a writer and artist work together, and how much greater the result is than either could accomplish alone. 

Plus, I’m still amused by the titular joke. 

In this fic, Baz was kept home by Malcolm after the vampire attack, for fear both of what other mages might do to him, and out of worry that Baz himself wouldn’t be able to control his vampire urges. 

In a misguided attempt to convince Baz that he can like women, Malcolm offers to hire him a male escort, with the twisted idea that if Baz doesn’t like having sex with a male, he might swing back to females. 

Enter Simon, who’s offered a shit-ton of money by a very discreet agency to provide one night of unimaginable pleasure to a mysterious client...

Careful What You Wish For

Another collaboration with an artist, this time for my first COBB, I worked with the imitable @ivelovedhimthroughworse (Apricot). Apricot was a fun and generous partner, and this being a collaboration is one reason it’s a favorite. 

The other reasons have to do with me being a massive science nerd and getting to nerd out about multiple universe theories, and with this being my first fully original plotty work (previous ones either weren’t plotty, or were based on existing movies/stories/history).

In Careful, Simon, in a fit of rage, accidentally wishes that Baz had never been born. This catapults him into a universe that never had a Baz Pitch and Simon has to learn how much he actually cares about Baz (and don’t worry, Baz himself enters the story before too long).

Gates of Ivory and Horn

This was a gift fic for @prettylightsbigcity, and what I like so much about it is how it gave me a chance to play with mythology, with the boundary between life and death, and with the ripple effects of one choice on future timelines. Plus, some very hot scenes and plenty of angst, it’s exactly the type of fic I choose to read when others write it. 

When the Oneiroi, Greek gods of dreams in the form of ravens, attack Watford, Simon is one of the first to fall. He’s trapped in a dream where he’s offered the choice of two gates. The catch is, one gate shows only truth, one shows only falsehoods. If he chooses the wrong gate, he’ll be trapped in the dream forever. 

But how could a future where he ends up with Baz be the true one?

For the last, I’m torn between three or four other fics, but I think I’ll go with The Naked Next.  It was a gift fic for @raenestee, and one of several fics set in the same universe.  I’m choosing this because it gave me a chance to be fun and silly, but also nerd out on some of my favorite science topics. And it let me write SnowBaz into one of my favorite (silly) Star Trek episodes. And most off all, I got to work with a lovely bunch of people, including @facewithoutheart, @you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @cutestkilla, @mostlymaudlin, @thewholelemon, and @artsyunderstudy (and others who may yet be revealed. The expansiveness of the universe we’ve built together is endlessly thrilling for me, and I’m grateful to @facewithoutheart for inviting me to be involved. 

In this story, Simon is the Bajoran rebel turned Starfleet security chief on the Redemption. Baz is his half-Cardassian former roommate/ nemesis and constant obsession. When the Redemption answers a distress call to a vessel where people are acting like the whole world is a party, some of the away team unfortunately bring a contagion back to the Redemption with them. 

In the timeless words of Porky Pig, Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!

[erikiara80]

March 22nd and all the birthday references in ST

Will's birthday has always been important.

A birthday mug in episode 1

Same mug in Mike's basement. We see it in scenes with El in S1 and Will in S2. Yeah, I think birthdaygate could be about her, too. Will is the only character whose birthday was used to literally save him and the whole town. And we've seen El's birth and birth certificate, but we still don't know when she was born? Strange

The I forgot your birthday card in Will's room in S1

But in S2 we only see it when Joyce looks at the Will the Wise drawing. In all the other shots the card is not there, and the drawing is on another wall. This could be a hint at different timelines (of a timeloop?) More screenshots here

Basically, I have two theories about Will's birthday: either people really forgot it in S4, or the Will who was born on March 22 is the brown-eyed Will in the Missing poster, in the timeline we see in the shed scene, and not the hazel-eyed Will we see in the rest of the show. Maybe they hid the truth in plain sight, they let people believe that his eyes were different because he was possessed. But then in S3 they show that Billy's eye color never changes (here) Can't wait to see what this means

No birthday card in these shots

Lesbianmindflayer found a video posted on the official IG account in August 2017. At the time, they had already filmed S2, they knew there was an important scene about Will's birthday, so why posting the wrong date? Is it actually a mistake, or that's really his birthday in another timeline? We'll see!

The amazing shed scene. One of my favorite! Joyce talks about Will's 8th birthday. That was in 1979, the year of the massacre. She also mentions his rainbowship, a hint at his queerness, but also a reference to the lab. And I think there's a connection to the "rainbow rocket" near Creel House, and the ship of Brenner's father, who was involved with Project Rainbow, and the first man to wind up in Dimension X. This scene is so important!

Will drawing a spaceship could also be a parallel to Olivia Dunham (Fringe), who drew what she saw in another universe. A Zeppelin

Olivia's drawing (Byler-Polivia parallel and Subject 13)

3x03. Happy Birthday and '76 on the poster. The lifeguard is talking to El and Max here. My theory about what this could mean and what might have happened in 1976 here and here

The original title of episode 3x06 was The Birthday. There is no birthday in that episode, but after the intro, the song that plays is Stand up and Meet your brother, and then El meets the Mind Flayer/Vecna (as a lab kid, Henry is kinda her brother), who is possessing a boy named William. A surfer boy.

Episode 3x08, posters of Firestarter and Sixteen Candles. Will is associated with fire, and in Sixteen Candles a girl hopeful thar her 16th birthday is the beginning of a great year, is shocked when her family forgets it because her sister is getting married the next day.

Sixteen Candles and a boy's 16th birthday are also mentioned in S4, and it is likely that S5 is set in 1987, after the time-jump, when Will is 16.

S4. There are so many mentions of birthdays in this season, it's crazy to think that the writers forgot Will's birthday.

Mentions of birthday and stolen thoughts in the opening scene.

Birthday party at Rink-o-mania. I could be wrong, but it looks like a party for two people, to me. And there's a hidden reference to the massacre. The game Asteroids was released in 1979 (here)

The scene that made many people believe that the writers forgot Will's birthday.

March 22. The Rink-o-mania scene is a parallel to the lab scenes, Asteroids was released in 1979, and the day of the massacre El remembered her birth. Maybe a hint that her birthday is also on March 22?

They call her little baby, and two of the bullies are twins.

Murray says that a one-year-old won't remember their birthday

Also, the wallpaper reminds me of these birds we see in his house, when Alexei explains how the two keys open a gate

Murray says that his "son" is almost 16

Mention of Sixteen Candles

Mike's Happy Birthday mug

At Suzie's, Will mentions Dustin's birthday

Yeah, I think something will happen to Will in 1987, when he's 16. And it won't be funny, lol. But he'll get his happy ending.

Happy birthday, Will!

[rius-cave]

How do you think Adam and Lucifer started sleeping around?

You mean in like, a canon compliant universe? I'll assume you did mean it that way lol

Honestly?? There are infinite possibilities, the beauty of it is that depending on what kind of story you want to tell, there are a lot of ways for them to start a relationship and they can all be in character!

That being said, I do have some "basic beats" I usually like to see, they've become kind of cliche for me almost. Not in a bad way, but just like they're starting to become tropes for this ship that I really love seeing even if it's the same, you know what I mean?

So my "classic" flavor of adamsapple is this: Adam falls, and after much denial and failed bargaining, he finally makes a deal with Lucifer to protect his soul. I mentioned in some of my first asks that I think Adam would go through something similar to the five stages of grief after realizing he's a sinner now. Anyway, his and Lucifer's relationship is sour, obviously, Adam hates the situation he's in and actively makes everything harder for everyone, including himself. Lucifer is the one tasked to deal with him on a regular basis, and he's not as kind as his daughter lol so there are a lot of "lessons" and "punishments" and the like. Thanks to that, and because they're in hell, obviously a lot of jokes are made about them having a master/pet thing, about completing the set, etc etc. Lucifer finds this amusing even if he's never really been interested in Adam in that way, but it seems to piss him off, so he plays along and even teases him every once in a while as well.

It makes Adam furious and that's what makes Lucifer keep making jokes and teasing him, etc etc. Until eventually, Lucifer keeps escalating the jabs, and not even he realizes when it went from "I'm doing it to make him angry" to "you know? Given the chance? Sure I'd tap that". At one point the idea was seeded in his head so much, that subconsciously he started... NOT being opposed to the idea. There was the aspect of putting Adam in his place and taming the brat, which was particularly appealing to Lucifer whether he realized it or not.

Meanwhile Adam absolutely despises the teasing, and everything involving Lucifer in general, but it can't be denied the sheer amount of sexual tension between them (by that point other Hazbin members will have noticed lol especially Angel), and some of the things start getting to him, until he absolutely can't deny that he's THOUGHT about it.

All this tension and pining and will they won't they goes on for a while. It takes some time, but not really that long until something happens that makes the sexual tension finally snap. There's probably some coercion from Lucifer's part, and Adam acts like he doesn't want it and hates it but he also..... Doesn't make any REAL attempt to stop him, you know? Lol Lucifer was definitely pushing him but if Adam had really shown he didn't want it, he would've stopped. Obviously, that didn't happen, and they end up having sex that Adam obviously freaks out about right after it. To Lucifer it's not really that big of a deal (he doesn't hate Adam as much as Adam hates him) but Adam is absolutely freaking out. He yells and says it can't ever happen again and there's tension for a bit before... Well, it happens again lol, and despite Adam swearing it's the last time,,, they keep doing it over and over and yada yada.

Soooo yeah. A bit long lmao. Honestly the details and stuff can change, hop around and/or expand here and there, this is just like the basic storyline and dynamic I tend to imagine when I think "regular adamsapple"

[electronickingdomfox]

"Killing Time" review

Novel from 1985, by Della Van Hise. Published right after Ishmael, it involves again time-tampering. Only this time, the villains (here Romulans) are successful in their attempts to rewrite history, so most of the novel is set in an alternate universe. The basic difference is that, in this new universe, the Federation was founded by Vulcans instead of humans, so Spock is the starship captain, while Kirk is a mere Ensign with a troubled past.

The story presents some interesting concepts, like the flow of time and history being somehow ingrained in the very fabric of the universe, so no matter the alterations, it tends to revert to its original course, or rip itself apart (a concept which, in some shape or another, was also present in The Entropy Effect and the previous novel). There's also much discussion about "alternate selves", paths not taken in life, and whether these versions of ourselves still exist somewhere and can be reached through dreams. Sometimes, the "mechanics" of time-alteration are a bit iffy, or poorly explained. For example, it seems very unlikely that people like Uhura or Scotty would have the same exact post in the alternate universe (shouldn't they be replaced by Vulcans?). And since it's explained that travelling at warp drive makes one immune to the time alterations, why aren't more starships (the Enterprise included) spared from the effects? Anyway, this is just to be nitpicky; after all, the story doesn't require much more suspension of disbelief than other TOS novels.

Other than a bit of purple prose here and there, I didn't find the writing bad. And characterization is pretty fine. The portrait of Kirk as a rebellious Ensign is a curious precedent for the 2009 movie Kirk, and his grief is quite moving. Spock and McCoy's interactions are spot-on. And so far, this novel has the best, most complex portrayal of the Romulan Commander (from "The Enterprise Incident"), as a cunning, powerful woman, and yet vulnerable in her love/hate for Spock. It's perhaps the latter who comes off most out-of-character; at times Spock seems a bit too emotional and soft, though not to the point of being unrecognizable.

On the other hand, the structure is a bit clumsy. A good chunk of the book keeps going over and over the effects that history alteration has on the mind, turning people crazy, or inducing dreams about the original reality. Since the Romulan scheme is fully revealed quite early on, these chapters don't have all that much interest: we already know what's happening, we already know why people are having those dreams... (So no, I'm not interested in the content of Ensign Kirk's dreams, since I already know what's there; stop trying to put him in that vid-scan thing, McCoy). However, the plot takes off once the characters finally decide to do something about all this mess, and get involved in further Romulan schemes. The later chapters, thus, are more interesting, and there are some pretty emotive scenes towards the ending.

In conclusion, this isn't one of the best novels, though it has its high points. It would have been rather unremarkable among the long string of TOS novels, were it not for the controversies surrounding its publication. For those, see the "Spirk Meter" at the end.

Spoilers under the cut:

The Enterprise is patrolling the Romulan Neutral Zone, when several crewmembers start experiencing disturbing dreams. A common theme in those, is seeing Spock as the Captain, in a somehow changed Enterprise. While Kirk sees himself as a mere Ensign. There are also some rumors about an experiment going on in the Romulan Empire...

After an abrupt change, the next chapter presents a totally different reality. Kirk is now an Ensign recently assigned to the "VSS ShiKahr", commanded by Spock. Having been in prison for the murder of an Academy teacher (of which he has no recollection), Kirk was subjected to the Talos Device, which left him having frequent nightmares and addicted to drugs. He was given the choice between a rehabilitation colony, or forceful draft into the Fleet. Anyway, he has little interest in serving in a starship, or life in general, since he knows he'll never get his own command due to his past. His life is made even more miserable by his bully roomate Donner. Soon thereafter, strange phenomena are experienced by some crewmembers. Spock gets fleeting glimpses of another reality, that leave him dizzy. And one crewman succumbs to madness, and tries to blow up the entire ship, after sabotaging the matter/antimatter valves. After performing some scans on the insane man, McCoy discovers that his brain has two separate sets of brain waves, as if they belonged to two different persons altogether. Further cases of insanity throughout the galaxy are suspected, when a Vulcan Admiral orders the ShiKahr to invade the Romulan Empire in a suicidal mission. Spock, of course, stalls the order as long as he can.

The narrative changes focus then, to present what's going on in the Romulan ship "Ravon", where Commander Tazol remembers his recent confrontation with her wife Sarela. She was strongly opposed to the Praetor's plans to interfere in Earth's past, and assassinate three key figures in the founding of the Federation, so it never comes to be. Sarela is afraid the plan will be a total failure, like all the other plans of the Praetor to tamper with timelines. Nonetheless, Tazol is a complete blockhead, and proceeds with the plan. The idea is receiving the Praetor aboard (a mysterious, hooded figure that only his close advisors have ever seen face to face), and then enter warp drive to avoid the history-altering effects. That way, everyone aboard the Ravon will keep intact their memories of the so-called First History, along with its records, to later compare them with the situation in the Second History (the altered timeline). It turns out that, as Sarela expected, Second History isn't all it's cracked up to be... The Federation wasn't founded on Earth, true, but in its place, a similar Alliance of planets was started in Vulcan. The Romulan Empire has hardly benefitted from this, and now its enemies are mostly the tough Vulcans, instead of humans. The Praetor orders Sarela to his quarters, for a private discussion of the situation, much to Tazol's chagrin.

Meanwhile in the ShiKahr, McCoy has been performing vid-scans (a kind of visual recording of people's dreams) on several persons. Some of them show dreams of a "golden-haired Captain". While others show disturbing "negative scans". McCoy is a complete genius, because from this flimsy evidence he concludes, correctly, that reality has been shifted. And those that have ended in different positions in life, will become maladjusted to the changes, and eventually turn mad. Also, those showing negative scans now, are persons who are already dead in the original timeline (and this opens up an interesting ethical dilemma when reverting the changes, since it will mean instant death for those persons; sadly, this isn't further explored). For his part, crazy Admiral is still doing his crazy thing, and now orders the ShiKahr on a diplomatic mission, on a planet of savages that weren't expecting diplomats at all. The landing party is attacked, Donner is killed (good for him) and Spock is injured.

Cutting back to the Ravon, Sarela discovers that the Praetor is actually... a woman! Something that's not allowed in the Romulan Empire, thus the need for the permanent hood in public (and it also explains why all the Praetor slaves are now pretty boys...). Automatically, Sarela's respect for the Praetor goes up tenfold (huh, wasn't the Praetor a complete idiot a second ago, with all those stupid plans? The fact she's a woman should change nothing!). Well, as it turns out, the stupid plans weren't hers, but came from her father. She just went ahead with them because it was too late to back out, and also because she still expects some good to come out of it. Thea (the Praetor) explains that she's going to use Spock to sign a peace treaty with the Alliance, and introduce Surak's teachings among Romulans, to further the cause of peace (doesn't sound like a very evil plan, if you ask me). By kidnapping Kirk, she'll blackmail Spock into doing all this, while disguised with the hood as if he were the real Praetor. She still holds a grudge towards Kirk and Spock, since in First History, those two stole a cloaking device from her, revealing thus that she's the Romulan Commander from the series. Thea suspects that the Vulcans will, sooner or later, discover the time tampering and revert it, but some effects of Second History (like the peace treaty) will be indelibly embedded in the universe, anyway. Sarela agrees to help her, specially after she receives her own pretty boy slave.

For his part, Spock instructs Christopher Pike (here still a happy captain of a ship) to stop the crazy Admiral, before he causes all-out war. After this, the ShiKahr intercepts a Romulan shuttle, apparently crippled and adrift, and takes it aboard. The only passengers, apparently, are Thea and Sarela, and they're taken into custody. However, hibernating inside the shuttle, and thus not detected as life forms, were Thea's slaves. They wake up a while later, disguise themselves as Vulcan guards, and order Kirk to the briefing room. Sensing a trap, Kirk attacks them, but the Romulans subdue and kidnap both Kirk and his new roomate: Richardson. They depart in the Ravon, and leave the two hostages stranded in a desolate planet, with just basic survival gear. Spock learns about this too late, so he has no alternative but cooperating with Thea. Secretly, though, he plans to infiltrate the Romulan Empire to get the secret of time travel (unknown to the Alliance), and the details to revert the timeline.

Spock, dressed as the Praetor, McCoy, half-dressed as his...slave, and S'Parva, some kind of dog-girl with telepathic powers, accompany Thea back to the Ravon. Spock, as many other people, is also succumbing to madness, which in his case manifests as pon farr. He covers it up as a simple infection, and requests the medical assistance of slave-McCoy to create a distraction. The moment is seized by S'Parva to get inside the computer system. Later, Spock reviews the data, learning about the slingshot effect to travel through time. Both Spock and S'Parva receive also telepathic transmissions from Kirk and Richardson, respectively (S'Parva having formed previously a mind link with Richardson through an experiment). This way, they learn the location of the hostages. Nonetheless, Spock ends up losing consciousness due to the worsening of his symptons. Thea, who still loves Spock in some way, forms a temporary bond with him, and helps him out of pon farr (that is, they fuck).

Once in the Praetor's palace in Romulus, Thea learns about all the incidents of madness happening in the Empire. And finally, after a lengthy conversation, Spock manages to convince her of the necessity of reversing the changes. If this goes on, soon half the galaxy will be destroyed by madness. Spock regrets that he can't stay with her, as his present persona will disappear along Second History. Nonetheless, he will bring Kirk along to the past, to restore the timeline; that way, both of them will keep some remembrance of this alternate history, and will later use their influence to realize Thea's plans for peace. Thea relents, and after rescuing Kirk and Richardson, they make a slingshot maneuver in the shuttle, arriving in Earth's past. However, Thea leaves them to their own devices from now onwards.

Having arrived in San Francisco a while before the assassination, Kirk, Spock and Richardson enter the conference room, where the three politicians are due to make a speech. Kirk creates a distraction by revealing Spock's alien features to the surprised humans, and this prompts the assassins to reveal themselves. In the commotion, everyone escapes to safety (including the politicians), while Kirk and Spock confront the assassins. These are actually human-looking androids, and after a difficult fight, they destroy them, though Richardson is killed in the process. Then Spock takes out a disruptor to destroy the android remains (his excuse for not using the disruptor earlier being that Kirk needed to reassert himself as Captain by getting into a fist-fight, which is... a bullshit excuse, really). After this, Kirk and Spock (also mortally wounded in the fight) go to the rooftop. And there's a pretty sad scene, where both wait for their current selves to disappear in the reality shift, thus dying in a sense.

Everything is back to normal, though Kirk, Spock and Richardson keep having dreams about their alternate lives. Kirk also finds a ring that belonged to his other self, and reflects with melancholy about the fate of "Ensign Kirk". After a mind-meld with Spock, both of them get a clearer view about the events of Second History, and decide to cooperate with Thea to achieve peace. In the end, Kirk leaves the ring behind, knowing it will disappear and return to its real owner, somewhere.

Spirk Meter: 10/10*. Now, this novel is generally regarded as the K/S novel par excellence. Is it very slashy? Yes. But is it something completely in a different league? Well, no. Most of the Marshak & Culbreath novels are as slashy as this one (and The Price of the Phoenix definitely more). Hell, a good deal of this stuff is just taken from TOS episodes, and while in "Amok Time" Spock got out of pon farr by rolling around with Kirk, here he uses the more conservative approach of sex with a woman (and Kirk is totally okay with that, not showing the slightest jealousy). I suspect that most of this fame is simply due to the novel's publication history, and not to the actual content. I've encountered two versions of this incident. The most popular one tells of readers being so scandalized by the novel's first edition, that some higher-up (even Roddenberry himself) had to intervene, and censor the novel for subsequent printings. Della Van Hise's version (presented in several fanzine articles, that you can read in sites like Fanlore) tells a much less exciting story: Basically, the editor made some cuts here and there, she approved of the changes, and then sent the novel for printing. There was an error, and the unedited version was printed instead. When the publishing house noticed it, they corrected the mistake in the second edition, which was the one supposed to see the light from the beginning. In my opinion, Van Hise's version sounds more realistic. I have difficulty believing that the same public who received Triangle a couple years before without batting an eyelid, would start a riot for this. Let alone that Gene-t'hy'la-means-lover-Roddenberry would give two shits about it (was he even that involved in the franchise by 1985?). Apart from this, the edits seem very cursorily: a slight toning-down of some affectionate scenes, cutting curse words here and there, removal of partial nudity (even in medical settings that have absolutely nothing to do with K/S), etc. They really don't look like the kind of heavy censorship of someone set against K/S after a scandal.

Now, for the slash elements (I read the first edition, so this is based on that version): Kirk and Spock are quite affectionate, often reassuring each other with a touch on the shoulder or the hand, or confiding things that they wouldn't trust to anybody else. The mental link between them (which is a staple in many novels and comics, and thus not that remarkable) is given, however, a special relevance, with them often using it to transmit warm feelings, and even communicating over great distances. The link is so strong, that some effects of Spock's pon farr start affecting Kirk. And when the reality first shifts into the alternate universe, Kirk experiences great anguish, upon feeling the link broken. It's also noteworthy that other characters that share this kind of link (Spock and Thea; Richardson and S'Parva) are in romantic relationships of sorts. Apart from the permanent link, Spock performs several mind-melds with Kirk. The first time, when he finds the Ensign sleeping in the garden and suffering nightmares, he attempts a meld to soothe his mind (similar to "Requiem for Methuselah") but Kirk rejects it. Spock, who's already starting to go crazy, attacks Jim then, and forces a mind-meld with him. The fight and Kirk's submission are vaguely homoerotic, and this was by far the most censored passage in the book. The second meld happens when they're both waiting for "death", Spock resting his head on Kirk's shoulder, and the Vulcan uses it to bring Kirk to the other reality along him. The third meld was already covered in the plot summary. Apart from this, when Spock receives glimpses of his previous life, he misses a companion by his side, once wondering if the man he sees there is his t'hy'la. And when Kirk visits his quarters at night to get his medication, Spock interviews him while still shirtless, and understands that he can't keep secrets from him. But perhaps the most blatant examples aren't what Kirk and Spock actually do, but what other characters think about them. Thea is unreasonably jealous of Kirk, and kidnaps him with the belief that Spock will do anything to rescue him, since he's his treasured human and dearest to him in all the combined universes. Actually, this isn't the real reason why Spock complies with Thea, but he agrees with her assessment that "James Kirk is even deeper in your blood than Vulcan". Richardson, as well, has the impression that Kirk and Spock belong together in any universe.

Although this is definitely a K/S novel, there's also a bit of Spones, and it's kind of hilarious that it went totally unnoticed by censors, considering the sexual element is more blatant, compared with the rather spiritual relationship of Kirk and Spock. For starters, when Kirk is first having dreams about Spock as a Captain, McCoy dismisses it as just a typical fantasy of wanting to be under Spock's authority (which totally seems like McCoy projecting there, since that's not the real cause at all). Once Spock gets the first symptoms of pon farr, McCoy is very stubborn about going with him to Romulus to treat his illness, even if he has to be his slave to do so (and as previously seen, those slaves are also the Praetor's lovers). And when Spock gets worse, McCoy confronts him about being so proud and rejecting something that should be pleasurable, pointing out that many people would want to sleep with him... while blushing himself. Finally, McCoy refuses to leave Thea alone with Spock to do her thing, and has to be brought out basically by force (like, what was his alternate plan?). It doesn't help either that McCoy is said to care for Spock more than professional ethics should have permitted.

Also incredibly explicit is Kirk's relationship with Richardson. Kirk comes out from the shower totally naked in front of him. And later they both swim naked in a pond, while Kirk experiences the heat of pon farr through his link. Not enough? Well, Richardson often calls Jim "Juliet", while Kirk calls him "Romeo". Yup.

*A 10 in this scale is the most obvious spirk moments in TOS. Think of the back massage, "You make me believe in miracles", or "Amok Time" for example.

[kanerallels]

bestie!! Can you tell me about your book, Land of Tales? I may have just stalked the tag for a solid forty minutes and I’m dying to know more (I LOVE me some good fairytale retellings)

BESTIE I LOVE YOU FOR SENDING ME THIS ASK I'm so so honored?? Thank you so much!! (also same we love fairy tale retellings they're amazing)

OKAY SO! I'm gonna give you a brief overview of the book in case you didn't see what it's about, then I'll do some fun facts because I deserve it as a treat and I'm hyperfixating on my own book series right now (and also Valiant. Minor detail. LET'S MOVE ON)

The main plot: My girl Rebecca Wood lives on Earth, but never knew her parents. She discovers at the beginning of the book that she, and the family she never knew, is from the fairy tale world, and so she goes there with the help of this socially awkward cinnamon roll, Liam. We love Liam, and we feel bad about the amount of Horrors I put him through, including but not limited to social interactions and torture

The rest of the book is basically Rebecca and Liam's travels through Avena (fairy tale world) meeting fairy tale characters and evading the evil Empress Goldilocks (who has magic plants and fairy tale princesses for assassins). And there are more books. Or there will be. Four overall in the main series, two prequels, umm... *pauses to count* okay yeah there are a lot of stories post canon. And I've already written a handful of short stories for fun and profit!

And now it's fun facts about some of the characters time:

Cinderella is, as mentioned, an assassin! She has fabulous fashion taste, glass shoes that can morph into any shoe type she wants, and is incredibly sadistic. Her husband Gavin is what would happen if Jean-Ralphio Saperstein, Schimdt from New Girl, and Oscar from The Rookie were fused into one incredibly vain, lazy person who wore a lot of capes

Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk is a pirate (occasionally of the sky). He's married to a future seer who basically tricked him into taking her hostage the first time they met, and has two kids. They are utter gremlins and we love them

Alec and Risha, who I've been talking about lately, are from Camelot. Risha's dad is Sir Gareth, aka Gawain's cool brother. In my series, the people of Camelot have Australian accents because why not?

OH MY GOSH I JUST THOUGHT OF A CHARACTER I HAVEN'T TALKED ABOUT ON HERE okay his name is Bob. It's short for uhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm gonna be straight with y'all I don't remember his full name. It's really long. But he's the Magic Mirror from Snow White! He's a cursed prince who likes shipping his best friend with her love interest, and boba tea (if it exists in this universe. I shall ponder this) and he's just a little chaos gremlin and I would die for him

Somehow, every single ship in this series is enemies to lovers (except Alec and Risha, slow burn friends to idiots in love my beloved) and it's really funny to me. They're all different flavors of enemies to lovers, too. We've got "coworkers who annoy the crap out of each other to lovers", "I tried to kill your friends that one time and am involved in the organization that killed your brother but now we're working together and technically I'm engaged but it's a engagement of convenience and we're connecting to lovers", and one of my personal favorites, "you forced me to take you hostage that one time and now I'm stuck with you which is really annoying to lovers". There are, believe it or not, others

One more fun fact for the road: I have a book planned that's set after the series, and it's a combination of no less than three fairy tales at once. Possibly more, for all I know

Oh, and actually last of all! The first book in the series, which I shall not reveal the title of just yet because DRAMA, is finished! All polished up and shiny, and I'm currently looking into publishing options and cover artists! (also my girl a.spice is doing illustrations I can't wait for you guys to see them they're incredible)

[transmutationisms]

i am the world's biggest wikipedia defender (especially against people who say that it's unreliable) because, while i know it's not infallible (is anything, though?), it is peer-reviewed. once, my friend edited the othello page to include a joke we had made and she got her account banned. how do you reckon with wikipedia as a source of knowledge? my understanding of it is that it can serve as a good base for things, but learning never stops and one should read as many sources as possible to gain a fuller understanding of whatever they want to know about. this is a very long-winded way of asking your opinions on wikipedia. my apologies, and i hope today is alright for you :~)

wikipedia obviously gets a lot of flak for the fact that anyone can edit it, which means that people certainly can and do check each other's work, but also that anybody with an axe to grind or just a poor understanding of a subject can potentially really distort the presentation of that topic. there have been some high-profile cases of bad and even dangerous editorialising, like the woman who basically single-handedly is trying to correct a whole bunch of pages for former nazis that really whitewashed their legacies and cited various antisemitic and white supremacist sources to do so. i think it would be foolish to claim that crowdsourced knowledge is inherently accurate, fair, nuanced, &c. wikipedia replicates the biases people put into it, and just having more people edit it doesn't instantly 'average them out' because yknow, we're often talking about widely held positions or prejudices that have also caused distortions in many of the cited sources. also, wikipedia has many more gaps than most people realise, partly because an encyclopedia is necessarily a massive undertaking and also because, by design, it excludes eg oral traditions, non-literate people, &c.

however i do find a lot of wikipedia criticism annoying because it will usually involve trying to counterpose wikipedia to approved academic channels of knowledge production, specifically in a way that sets academic institutions and publishing as an intellectual gold standard that crowd knowledge simply can't compete with. academia is not some kind of magical solution to problems of distortion and bias; academics have their own ways of perpetuating and rationalising prejudices, and reinforcing rather than challenging each other's epistemological authority and laziest, most harmful assumptions. not to mention that many shitty wikipedia articles do actually cite approved academic sources published by university presses! because these characteristics do not actually guarantee that a source is good, only that it passed quality control at a reactionary institution lol.

ultimately i approach wikipedia basically the same way i approach any academic text, which is to say i have to read both with attention to how the arguments are being developed, what evidence they rely on, what ideological assumptions are being made or defended, and so forth. i can't really think of a source or genre of source that i would endorse just reading and uncritically believing; in that sense i certainly agree with people who point out the major potential for inaccuracy in wikipedia articles, only i think this line of criticism is totally useless and blatantly elitist if it simply exempts 'respectable' academic sources or presumes institutional channels of knowledge to be epistemologically infallible.

anyway i use wikipedia to check dates of major events and it's sometimes useful or intriguing simply to see what about a topic interested people enough to write an entry about it. but i don't automatically trust any arguments or analyses in wikipedia articles, any more than i would the thesis of any nonfiction book i pick up.