#like he presents such a blank slate that its easy for them to project their own issues onto him

[candiid-caniine]

gender euphoria

[cw: this is NOT a detrans/misgendering kink post, but tries to subvert some of those tropes, so please treat it with caution!]

sissy kink blogs DNI

outside the bedroom, i demand respect. i own my pronouns, talk openly about genderqueerness, and flaunt androgyny.

but inside the bedroom...my relationship with gender changes. i'm transsexual in the sense that power dynamics in my sexual relationships directly influence my gender(s). what do i mean by this? i mean i want you to treat my non-conformity as a blank slate on which to project your preferred gender.

i am an "it," first and foremost. but i can be a "she," a "they," or a "he" if so inclined. i can be your butch, your femme, your fag, your twink, your femboy, whatever you want me to be.

and i'll resist. that's part of the fun of it: in day-to-day life, i'm most comfortable as an occasionally femme-leaning androgyne. that makes it fun to push back, easy to feel vulnerable, uncomfortable, and a little self-conscious (though not dysphoric) in a different presentation.

i take any pronouns, after all. so butches who love femmes, goad me into skirts, lacy lingerie, makeup, stockings, heels. watch me falter and cling to your side when we go out, feeling like i'm being stared at, unaccustomed to the kind of attention high-femmes usually get. make me show off my cleavage. call me "she" exclusively without switching. call me a good girl, call me a princess, make me suck your cock like a good little wife. force me to grow my hair out for you, yes, the undercut, too, and watch me get fussy and flustered at the unwelcome sensory input of it touching my neck. get me long acrylics, watch me fumble at everything requiring the use of my fingers; step in to help, coo over your clumsy girl - it's basically like mitting a puppy, isn't it?

if you prefer masc partners, get me a binder. watch me squirm at the compression. get me on a workout regimen to bulk up, even; spend a lot of time proving to me that no matter how fit i get, you'll always overpower me. no more cutesy hair clips, no more high-waisted jeans, or skirts, or femme-ish jewelry: make me your boyfriend. coach me into talking in a lower register. order T for me off the dark web, admire my stubble and my bottom growth. if you top, fuck me in the ass exclusively. if you bottom, get me the strap that best reflects your preferences. i'd even get top surgery, as long as you're paying~

or mix the two. make me your femboy. get me a packer, but also dresses. nitpick me over the right mix of boy-as-girly, watch me get more and more desperate to please your expectations, until at last i'm just surrendering my wardrobe to you, losing confidence in my ability to dress "properly." call me a good boy, your pretty little prince. i'm even okay with the gentle kind of goading, the presentation-shaming, calling me soft, saying i'm not dressing like a real man, if that's what you want.

or just lean in fully to the genderless thing that i want to be in the bedroom, but make it be all the time. what does an "it/its" look like? when your gender is pet, how do you present in public? well, that's up to you. maybe it's the most revealing clothes you can find, or simply the most embarrassing: underwear and pants that are a bit too small, riding up my ass and cunt constantly. shirts with slogans like "young, dumb, and full of cum" or "clown school graduate." anything that makes other people think i'm ditzy, impressionable, and silly, or don't know my own wardrobe sizes. collars, 24/7, are, of course, mandatory. maybe cuffs, too.

the whole time, watch me be unsure as my androgyny is picked apart, more and more of my core gender identity bent to your whims. watch me automatically start to seek your approval on any piece of clothing or jewelry i own. i'll start letting you speak to the hairdresser at salons, giving up any autonomy i have over my own hairstyle. you could take me to a piercer or a plastic surgeon or a tattoo artist, tell them what you want me to look like, and i'll sign the consent forms. treat my lack of gendered presentation as a clean slate, free for you to write your mark all over. make me your creature. as if i wasn't already.

[understandableparadox]

exploring power fantasy

if we die, where do you want to go? heaven? nirvana? valhalla? that really good taco shop with the brisket and the cashier who doesn't care that you asked for French fries in the burrito instead of the normal fried potato's you have? (its a texture thing you say as i project my burrito preferences onto you)

some may wish to go to another world. that's right you rancid fucking shittertinkers! were gonna talk about the usage of power fantasy within the isekai genra and its possible literature usages, and wither or not there are actually some good versions of the genre.

first lets establish a baseline into what a power fantasy is. power fantasy media is a version of wish fulfillment or escapism in which the character (usually a blank slate in which us the reader can be within) displays an improbable amount of dominance within the story.

the most common one that we can find is thus: black haired skinny dude dies, usually after being hit by a truck or from some form of stress. they then get sent to a new realm, normally something euro fantasy based with all the castles, dragons and wizards and such.

said character will meet the king, they find out that the gods above or whatever entity that be has decided to grant them a seemingly useless skill, lets say piss laser x. the ability to piss at overwhelming velocity. then they find out that not only does this skill allow them to fire an actual dick laser that also bypasses defenses of enemies, they can force other entities to piss at high velocity, thus stunning them and allowing the character to beat the shit out of them.

or in less obtuse terms, a character is given a skill that is objectively strong and overpowered and from that point onwards, their sole task is to live in that world and do whatever they want regardless of any plot or threat that may attempt to effect them.

is this kind of story telling inherently bad? maybe! can it be fun to read if you don't give a shit? yes! is it annoying if it gets way to popular and suddenly a powerscaler decides they want to take permanent residence up your ass about who or what they can beat?

YES

anyways you have more likely then not came across something like this in media given its astoundingly easy to use and also a very populer story format when used in parodies. ill flog myself for bring this up later but consider the show rick and morty. dispite rick not being a blank slate, we can easily call his method of plot progression akin to power fantasy.

but in that comes the variations. where as something like overlord will use the overpowered status of the character to only explore how the character interacts with the outside world, with their powers being nothing more then a method to shape the world and give us scenes of utter carnage brought to us by the sick twisted minds of middle aged Japanese businessmen.

we can see some budding attempt to fuck around with the idea of power fantasy in rick and morty. cool, rick can do anything and everything. what does he do? which immediatly opens it up because if no one can face you, your greatest foe becomes yourself. again, i say its budding given that the show is to scared to give rick a challange in anything other then name alone and even other ricks rarely serve any form of challange. again though, its the attempt that fascinates.

now lets not get it twisted, you dont need to have powers to have a power fantasy. you can also gain it from the idea of going backwards in time with the knowladge of the present. EX: https://mangadex.org/title/a4304d3b-191d-471f-8c78-353d403a35d0/sengoku-komachi-kuroutan-noukou-giga

the manga presents the idea of a school girl with a pencent for craft and war going back in time and joining oda nobunagas army and upgrading it with modern weaponry like compound bows and such. i consider this power fantasy given its creating a character with the ability to rewrite history because they were born with a certain knowledge in a world that lacks it, meaning that while they are easily killed, they are still the most valuable person within that time.

the usage of the story trope is normally to allow an author to explore the full extent of a power idea or to truly lambaste a certain troupe that the author may not like.

for example, the cancelled manga hero killing and a new manga called Cheat Eater are about overpowered main characters going around killing overpowered main characters. don't like a character? toss them in an let your op mc grind through them! don't like magical girls? make them a bunch of evil douchebags and let your overpoward mc kill em!

its mainly a trope of dismissal, as in you are creating a character mainly to dismiss, ignore or actively dislike something.

[maschotch]

I know I'm super late on commenting on the scene with hotchs worst qualities but the anon talking about how they categorized hotch as sexist made me want to bring it up again lol.

Like you said, the show has a lot of casual sexism that has to be kind of excused sometimes but it strikes me as so odd that the writers would point out this one specific instance and imply hotch is sexist instead of the many other times on the show.

Like. I love them but Derek and Rossi have way too many sexist moments on the show. Like just plain womanizing or objectifing or slut shaming or anything else. And as a woman it doesn't bother me too much, you kind of have to expect a bit of that from an early 2000s crime show, but it does strike me as odd that the writers would choose to make Hotch the one called out for sexism.

I'll also admit that I'm very very biased because I am a Hotch Girl™️ lol but I don't get him being sexist. I know Emily said it because he didn't trust her as much as the rest of the team, but it's very clear he trusts Penelope and JJ a lot, even Elle before Emily. I think the writers were trying to point out how Emily viewed hotch and how there relationship was weird but it still bothers me a little lol like how is that man sexist.

I can appreciate the writers giving him some character improvement, like going after that one case because he respects and trusts JJ and saying nobody "asks for it" or not to call a r*pe victim lucky and all that but I will never understand that dialouge with the team.

As for the rest of them, dereks comment about him being a drill Sargent makes a little sense but the other two were just. Really wrong if not kind of mean lol. Don't get me startedddd on how wrong the bully comment was. I know you've talked about this scene a lot but I was curious on how legitimate you think the things the team says are

Love being offended on my boring white man's behalf <3

yeah honestly i think that comment is more about emily and his relationship w her at the moment than an actual valid criticism. he still doesnt trust her yet so maybe its easier for her to think that its a general thing rather than admitting he doesnt like her specifically. plus this is right on the heels of jj and hotch ganging up on her and forcing her on the spot with the question of “how come none of this gets to you” like its a less than subtle way of saying “mind your business and dont fucking worry about it.” its an attempt to maybe give him second thoughts when he starts to doubt her—why would he be suspicious unless he didnt trust women???🤔

and tbh i think he knows it too. like i dont think this one bothered him too much bc he knows why shes saying it… he cant bring himself to feel bad for making her feel distant when he still doesnt trust her. hes not sorry for questioning her or doubting her bc she hasnt proven herself in his eyes yet.

tbh i dont think anything the team says is accurate lmao. hes clearly not a bully. i dont even think jj means it necessarily, but its not the first time she’s thought it. hes not even much of a drill sergeant? hes “strict” ig but he does all their paperwork for them, reaches out when one of them is struggling w smth (he stops trying to help so directly after this for a while.. almost like he’s afraid of being overbearing or tyrannical… of being a bully), lets them goof off and have their fun, etc. there are definitely worse bosses who are way more tough and by-the-book. and honestly i dont think derek meant it that way either: i think he was referring to how pushy he can be sometimes—like now when he’s urging them all to name his worst qualities. i think thats what he’s trying to get at anyway

and i almost like it more that none of them quite mean what they say? bc this IS him crossing a line, forcing them to come up with critiques and insult him. his own self doubt and insecurities are getting in the way of being the leader they all know he’s capable of. they scramble to find the closest thing to mind. for jj its the way that she feels small. for morgan its the way hes worried ab hotch demanding for his question to be answered. for emily its ab her own fears and frustrations from him not trusting her. i think it says much more about all of them than it does about him. but i dont think hotch would ever see it that way. he’s gonna take everything to heart—just another type of failing to look out for

[notwiselybuttoowell]

We're Stewards of Our Land: The Rise of Female Farmers

'I was always fascinated by getting things out of the ground’

Sinead Fenton

Grows vegetables and edible flowers at Aweside Farm, East Sussex

Sinead Fenton is on an early lunch break, hiding from the sun. “It’s ridiculously intense, so I think we’re going to call it a day and crack back on in the evening,” she says. Fenton and her partner, Adam Smith, have been putting in beds and getting ahead on groundwork for next year. This year, there will be no commercial crops on the couple’s 4.5-acre plot.

They signed the papers on their farm last November and moved onto the land in March. Around the time they needed to make decisions about how they’d manage their first harvest, lockdown happened. With restaurants and florists – their main clients – out of action for the foreseeable future, they made the decision not to sow seeds but concentrate on opening up the land. “We were going to do it over three or four years, so we’re squeezing three years of work into this year, so we can focus on growing next year,” Fenton says.

She and Smith cut their scythes at Audacious Veg, a 0.1-acre plot in Hainault, at the end of the Central Line between Essex and London. Shortly after volunteering at the allotment in 2017, they heard the project was about to finish: “Naively, with about three weeks’ worth of growing experience, we decided that we’d take it on and get the produce to chefs.”

Smith worked in insurance accounting and while Fenton most recently worked in software and food policy, her background was in geology. “I came at farming from an activist point of view,” she says. “I was always fascinated by getting things out of the ground, but that is a destructive industry. Farming is nicer because I can do something for the system instead of taking everything from it.”

There was a lot of insecurity around the project. Land is contentious, especially in London, and land law is difficult and expensive to negotiate for those with no farming background. “Adam and I are both from cities – I’m from London, he’s from Essex. We’re from low-income families, and we had no access to farms growing up,” Fenton explains. “It’s basically impossible to get on the land, because it’s so expensive, or passed down through generations.”

They got the land for Aweside through the Ecological Land Co-op, which buys fields designated by Defra as only being good for arable crops, then splits them up to create smallholdings. Aweside is neighbours with a veg-box scheme, and waiting for others who’ll transform what once was a 20-acre maize field into a cluster of small farms rich with biodiversity. Now Fenton and Smith have a 150-year lease, and no worries that what they create will be taken away.

It’s not yet a permanent home. Fenton says they’ll be living in a caravan for a few years: “Another part of land law in the UK that makes land inaccessible is that if you want to live on your land you have to go through five years of proving your business is profitable, viable and that there is a functional need for you to live there.” Having livestock is an easy way to pass the test, but because Aweside is a vegan farm, Fenton and Smith need to cultivate and show they use every bit of plot.

It’s daunting but Fenton is excited about having a blank slate to work with. “There’s so much more to food than what supermarkets tell us to eat,” she says, explaining that they’ll grow varieties at risk of extinction, or that aren’t commonly grown in a mass market food system. “Seed diversity and plant genetics are serious issues.”

The three principles the couple work to are: more flowers, more trees, thriving soil. They’re working no-dig, putting compost directly on the ground and letting the soil life mix everything over time. They’re pesticide-free and are counting on the fact that the more diversity they have in the system, especially with a high proportion of flowers to pollinators and insects, the fewer problems they’ll face.

“Socially, economically and environmentally, something needs to change. Things have been done the same way by the same people for a long time,” says Fenton of the farming industry’s need for greater diversity. “I learned to grow on an allotment site where there are lots of different things growing at once. Bringing that approach into sites like this is needed – the industry needs it to keep itself relevant.”

'I'm hoping this will be seen as quite a cool career… even if it’s not’

Abi Aspen Glencross

Head of grains at Duchess Farms, Hertfordshire

It was, Abi Aspen Glencross was well aware, an odd, even inopportune time to launch a crowdfunding campaign. In June, with the country still locked down, Duchess Farms asked for support to buy dehulling, cleaning and milling equipment. The Hertfordshire farm needed about £16,000, and the money would go towards boosting the production of ancient and heritage grains for making flour.

“A lot of crowdfunders have been for charity or ‘please keep our restaurant open’,” says the 28-year-old Glencross, head of grains – or “senior flour nerd” – at Duchess Farms since 2019. “We felt a bit bad, but we lost a lot of our business overnight when all the restaurants closed and we were like: ‘God, we hope we don’t go under.’ It was quite a scary time for everyone.”

Still, if we have learned one thing from Covid-19, when times are hard, British people get baking. Perhaps inspired by countrywide shortages of flour, maybe invigorated by a new interest in left-field, older wheats such as einkorn and emmer, Duchess Farms sprinted to its target. “We’ve just done some ordering of equipment this morning,” says Aspen, when we speak in July. “It’s been a tough time for everyone but it has cascaded into some beautiful things and we’re just so thankful.”

Glencross’s path to farming was circuitous. She studied chemical engineering, but while her classmates were heading off for jobs at ExxonMobil and Procter & Gamble, she was more of “a hippy at heart”. She decided she wanted to learn more about soil and its role in food production. This led her to Blue Hill Stone Barns, Dan Barber’s pioneering farm-to-table restaurant in the Hudson Valley, north of New York. She spent four months working on the farm and in the bakery, receiving a crash course in ancient grains – an obsession of Barber’s. But the moment Glencross knew she herself wanted to farm came in 2016 in a field in Hertfordshire. She was with John Cherry, who was showing her around Weston Park Farms, 2,500 acres of land he maintains with minimal fertiliser use and zero tillage.

“We were walking around the fields of wheat and I just said: ‘Where does all this go? There’s so much of it,’” Glencross says. “And John goes: ‘Oh probably for animal feed. It’s a consistent market, they’ll take it, it’s easy, even if we don’t earn that much money from it.’ And I was like: ‘This is crazy.’ And that was the beginning of me getting on this grain bender because I was like: ‘Why can’t we grow these grains organically and not feed them to animals?’ So I realised I’d have to start a business, because there were not very many people doing that.”

Heritage grains can be harder to produce in vast quantities – einkorn, especially, is “a bitch to harvest” – but they do have advantages over conventional wheats. They typically have deep roots and grow tall, which means they shade out weeds and do not require chemical sprays. The end product is more nutritious and then there’s the taste. Since 2017, Glencross has run a roving supper club called the Sustainable Food Story with Sadhbh Moore, and Duchess Farms has worked closely with bakeries such as E5 Bakehouse in east London and Gail’s, and restaurants including Doug McMaster’s Silo. “Heritage grains are delicious: when you stop growing for yield and you start growing for quality the flavour is insane,” says Glencross.

Learning to farm from scratch has not been straightforward, but you sense that’s a big part of the appeal for Glencross. “There’s all these decisions the farmer makes throughout the year and why he sprays and why he doesn’t,” she says. “You realise that most people get up, sit at a computer all day and if they press the wrong button, they just delete it. When you’re a farmer, you plant at the wrong time of year and tomorrow it washes away your whole crop.”

Glencross acknowledges that it is almost unprecedented for women to run arable farms. She struggles to name a single other example in the UK. She also notes wryly that men dominate all the farming conferences, saying: “They have a wife but it’s always the men who have written the book and given the presentation.”

With more role models, Glencross hopes things will change. “I’m not cool in any way, but I’m a reasonably young lady,” she says, laughing. “And so when people say: ‘What do you do? Oh, you’re a farmer. Maybe I could do that …’ So I’m hoping that it might become seen as quite a desirable, almost cool career.” A pause: “Even if it’s very much not cool.” 

[medeafive]

Blood and Stone - 27

Masterpost

She feels restless. Bobbi only lets her have the baby under her supervision but of course, Natasha doesn't actually want the baby, the thing she tried to murder- It's best if she stays away, lets Bobbi handle it, Bobbi who cares for the baby because that's just what she does, regardless of any moral considerations. Because it’s her job.

Natasha’s job was always to kill. That’s what she does. Hunt and kill. Clint was right, she’s not built for this. She’s used to weed out what’s bad, or what she sees as bad- well, the vampires. And not killing James comes really easy because he’s hard to kill, and because she loves him, and she just doesn’t love the thing, the baby. It’s just not her baby. She doesn’t have the maternal instincts that are supposed to kick in when seeing something small and vulnerable in need of help. The thing may not be a real baby but it still needs feeding, though that’s about the only thing.

Maria seems to be quite disappointed. That’s what really scares Natasha. If it hadn’t been Bobbi there, if it had been Maria, she wouldn’t have batted an eye. She can’t trust herself. She’s scared of what she’ll do if she’s not stopped. She’s scared of the killer she is and where it’ll take her. Maybe the only thing keeping her from killing her baby is Bobbi watching her. Maybe that’s what she really is, all she really is. A killer who would murder her own baby if the opportunity presents itself.

The baby doesn’t do much. Of course it doesn’t. It eats and it sleeps and it looks around with impassive eyes. Natasha really doesn’t know what she expected. How she deluded herself that it would be anything other than this , when she’s literally a professional monster hunter and killer and James is a fucking vampire and they’re in a collapsed society fighting a neverending bloody war they’ll never win, and she apparently thought that was a fine place to have a baby. She really thought she was going to be able to have this good thing when life hasn’t given her a good thing for at least a decade, if it ever has.

So that’s what she’s stuck with now. A baby that’s not really a baby, that doesn’t do anything, that doesn’t need anything, a thing she might just kill unless there’s literally something thrown into her way. And she’s still exactly who she was before, except now, she has to face it.

She's outside when she hears Bobbi talk, seemingly to no one in particular. Can't be the baby. Bobbi hardly talks to the baby. Still better than Maria who won't even look at it, like some superstition, like it's bad luck. Or the devil. Bobbi seems to trust her not to kill it, though, unlike Natasha.

It's a longer talk, several minutes, and Nat drives the axe through blocks of wood while Maria replaces them without a word. Bobbi must have given her a hefty dose of vampire blood because it still hasn't worn off, the axe blade slicing through the wood easily, she's not even breaking a sweat despite the thick jacket. Still no snow but the air is frisk, biting at her nose and eyes and ears.

When she's done, she goes back inside quickly, excusing herself with the cold. Not that Maria cares. Bobbi looks up when the door opens, the baby on a pillow on the couch table. Natasha clears her throat, closing the wooden door behind her. Bobbi watches her with an alertness in her eyes that always makes her stomach turn, not because it's mean but because she deserves it. "Everything alright?"

Natasha nods, sitting down on the couch, fidgeting so she doesn't have to look at the bundle on the couch table. "Were you- who were you talking to?"

Bobbi nods towards a thick brick of a phone, complete with an antenna and all. Probably the only way to get any connection out here. “Fury called. Wanted to know how you’re doing.”

Natasha bites her lip, unable to stop herself from quickly gazing at the bundle on the table. A blank slate, as always, something to project all her hopes and fears on. “Did you tell him about-”

“No, no,” Bobbi interrupts, picking up the bundle and handing it over. “Just said the whole thing is not easy on you. Here, take it, really. It’s your child.”

This feels like a purposeful approachment, designed to slowly reacquaint her with this thing in a healthier way, safely supervised. Natasha’s pulse jumps as she takes the bundle, careful not because it’s fragile but because she ’s fragile, who knows if her mind will twist again and she’ll try to smash this thing on the floor or strangle it or gouge its empty eyes out, she almost sees it-

“It’s alright,” Bobbi repeats, leaning over the back of the couch in a show of relaxation. “It happens. How are you feeling?”

Like a murderer. “Is that all he wanted? Fury?”

Bobbi sighs, dropping her arm. “No. They’re- they’re going to move on the Castle. Can’t wait any longer or the black cloaks will be here.”

A hot flash explodes in her belly. That should be her. She should be there. She may not be able to hold this thing but she can fight, she can kill. That’s what she’s good at, good for. “How’s it looking? Is James going to be with them?”

“They got a plan.” Bobbi watches the head peeking out of the bundle. “It’ll probably all go well but… well, you never know. Yeah, your friend will be the first to go in. We’ll see.”

“You’re worried,” Natasha states, cradling the tiny head.

“It’s weird not being there,” Bobbi admits. “But someone has to look after the baby.”

Because Natasha can’t. “I should go.”

“You should recover,” Bobbi returns. “Really. It’s only been a few days.”

“I am recovered,” Natasha states. “You gave me so much vampire blood- I have so much unused strength and I’m just sitting around here anxiously- I know I can’t do this here, I can’t look after the baby, but I can fight. I know I can fight.”

Bobbi shifts and gets up. “I should show you something.”

Natasha presses the bundle against her chest, tiny head resting against her shoulder, and follows her outside, around the cabin. The truck is parked behind, partly hidden behind trees and branches, covered with a tarp that Bobbi pulls off now. The baby sniffs the outside air, the forest, the wood, probably the forest animals. Bobbi discards the tarp and yanks the back doors open. “Here. I don’t know where Fury got it.”

Inside is a motorcycle, strong smell of oil, black and sleek and huge, more of a sportbike than a cruiser, looking quite massive with its full fairing. Natasha’s jaw drops. It’s gorgeous . “What’s that for?”

“Fury thought I might want to return to the city on short notice,” Bobbi explains, holding the door open. “If we needed something or whatever. Didn’t come to pass.”

Natasha touches the handlebars reverently. It’s real. She hasn’t seen a bike that wasn’t on the verge of falling apart in years. “Can I have it?”

“You really want to go?” Bobbi asks. “You’ve been through a lot. Just physically.”

It’s definitely better than this. “I can’t stay here.”

  Maria is not keen on going to the city ever again, which she states in no uncertain terms, so Natasha is flying down the bumpy highway alone, in full gear. The sun has set but it’s not dark yet and every meter she gets away from the cabin, she feels lighter, free. The wind cuts against her helmet, her neck guard, her suit, not gaining purchase anywhere. The only other sound is the roaring engine. The air is cutting cold but she’s protected from it, can’t feel it, and so she speeds over the highway to get to Prague before the night falls.

This is what she does, who she is. Not the baby stuff. She failed but she’s not going to fail at this. This is a task that she’s up to. It feels good not to have to be something she’s not, after all, despite whatever she wanted to be. To leave it behind.

It’s already dark when she reaches the outskirts of the city. She hardly even slows, blazing through the empty streets, turning tight corners, rumbling over cobblestone. The castle is not lit up tonight. She likes that. It fills her with adrenaline, blood thrumming as she cuts through the air fast. This is for all the days the castle was lit up like for a ball at a mansion, the vampires having a feast on the people they killed that night. Turning predators into prey.

She hasn’t been close to the castle in a long time, and only during daytime. Going there at night is elating. She weaves her way up the hill, not hearing the fighting over the roaring of her motorcycle until she sees them, Clint dodging attacks from a vampire with a jagged knife while there are three on top of James wrangling him to the ground, trying to get in bites and scratches, no, four, several beheaded corpses around- she gets light, dropping off without steering the motorcycle off course and it crashes into the four while she rolls over the cobblestone. It’s easy to jump up again, with the vampire blood still running through her veins, she draws a silver gun and shoots Clint’s guy, draws the jagged silver knife and rams it through the vampiress that comes at her first, it’s the one with dark curly hair from one of the hunting parties, she howls, sharp teeth, but the stab wasn’t fatal yet, Natasha kicks her legs out before punching the other vampire so hard she hears his ribs crack, she punches again, fist sinking in, fingers closing around his shrivelled heart and she tears it out.

James is taking care of the other two, she notices out of the corner of her eye, before the vampiress sinks her fangs into the biteguard, ugly screeching noise, Natasha throws her off easily, slipping through under her arm with superhuman speed and slitting her throat from behind before she can so much as hiss. Tumbles down lifelessly. Natasha shoots her in the head with a silver bullet, and the other one with the open chest too, for good measure. James is standing amid headless vampire corpses, grinning widely, and intense relief washes over her. She’s glad to see him, she doesn’t care about whatever stupid shit they were fighting about last time, and whatever the baby turns out to be, she still fucking loves him. She holsters the silver gun. “Can’t leave you guys alone for a fucking second, can I.”

He’s still grinning unabashedly, pure joy, adoration, happiness. “I love you.”

She blushes, despite herself, interrupted by a cracking sound she knows to be the breaking of a spine. “Save it, guys,” Clint remarks, tearing the head off his vampire. “Good to see you, Nat, but we need to move, Sam and Pepper need help.”

And she was mildly worried this could turn out emotional and awkward. James looks her up and down while Clint already runs down the street. “Are you good? You look good.”

“I’m good,” she confirms, starting after Clint but slower. “What about you? Everyone alright?”

“Far as I know,” he returns, stopping. “Come on, let’s take the other route.”

She looks after Clint who disappears around the corner, then nods, and James grabs her and before she knows it, they’ve jumped onto the roof, running over tiles trying to keep quiet, jumping from building to building with the vampire strength running through her. She spots Sam and Pepper barricaded behind a stone wall, the vampires somewhere in an arched passage, occasional shooting. She ducks behind the rooftop to avoid getting seen. Clint comes running down the street just then and barely makes it to a house entrance, bullet at least grazing his shoulder, she can’t quite tell. James is cowering next to her, she can see him counting the vampires. Just one jump across the street to the opposite roof and they could drop behind them, take them by surprise. "Is Clint okay?" she whispers, gloved fingers tightening on the tiles.

James sniffs, drawing the night air in sharply. "Bleeding but not a lot. Should be fine. Do you think you can take them?"

She nods. "Yeah, I'm good. Vampire blood doing a fine job. I can jump on my own."

"Okay." He grins, gold-streaked fangs flashing in the moonlight. "Man, I'm glad to see you. You go first, I'll be right behind."

She's glad to be back where everything makes fucking sense, where it's them against the vampires and James is just the exception that proves the rule. She peeks down on the vampires who must also have caught the smell of blood, sneering. Well, it's good if they're distracted. Makes them easier to kill.

She crouches, fixating the opposite roof like a cat about to pounce. For a second, she starts doubting whether she can actually make the jump but she knows how strong she is right now. She's only been this strong when she killed Pierce, the black cloak, or maybe she's even stronger now. Let's find out.

She leaps off the top, sailing through the air, landing hard on the opposite roof and dropping down on the other side right away, James is already there, it's six vampires and she catches two by surprise, the third one kicks her but it doesn't feel too bad, she jumps right back at him, baring her teeth, knocking back every single one of his punches, slamming his head against the wall, slashing his side open so dark blood splatters, he tries to go for her jugular and that's when she snaps his neck, dropping him carelessly. James is just biting the neck of the last vampiress who screeches helplessly, dark blood pouring from the wound, and James doesn't let up until she goes completely slack.

Natasha calmly beheads her vampires. "I thought you don't like vampire blood."

James spits out, mouth and fangs smeared with dark blood. This is not a clean controlled eat, this is a bloody fight. "Still don't. Bah."

Sam is coming out from behind the stone wall, crossing the street. James turns away discreetly. Yeah, she's not sure they could take the sight. She grins and lets Sam hug her tightly. "Wow, didn't think you'd be back! So good to see you alive and healthy."

That she is. She grins, patting his back. "Glad to be back. Now, any more monsters to kill?"

Sam rolls his eyes and lets go. Pepper approaches her more carefully. "Hey Nat. Are you okay?"

Clint comes out from his hiding place and she picks up the smell of blood. Yeah, that would be an issue under other circumstances. "I'm alright. Really."

Clint looks her up and down sceptically. James returns, face now mostly clean. "I'll go and see whether I can find more. Be right back."

Sam nods and James jumps onto a roof, cloak flaring, and then he's out of their sight. "Gotta say," Sam remarks. "Really useful, your friend."

"Yes, he killed twelve before we even engaged," Pepper agrees. "The six here, Clint, you had-"

"Nine," Clint replies briefly. "One got away, though."

"We shot two," Sam adds. "So 28 dead, out of 40."

"Where are the others?" Natasha asks. "Tony and Sharon?"

"East," Pepper replies. "Haven't heard from them. We should go check."

"Yeah, let's go," Sam agrees. "But I think they're fine."

  Tony and Sharon are not where they're supposed to be and Natasha uses her tracker instincts and abilities to find them chasing two vampires. Sam coordinates them around to cut their way off, surrounding the vampires with no way out, and Tony burns one to a crisp while Sharon calmly shoots the other. Plus two they killed before. 32. Eight who got away.

They meet back at the tower and James reports one more that he caught, so it's 33 and seven missing. Fury seems satisfied. Of course, the real challenge is going to be the black cloaks, however many of them. In the meantime, they just have to kill as many as they can.

She meets James on the roof, climbing up with relative ease due to the vampire strength. It'll be hard when that's gone. Maybe she needs another dose before the black cloaks arrive. She'll get all of the side effects anyway. "That's it for your cover, huh?"

James shrugs, pulling her up the last bit. "It's fine. Was always going to happen."

"Not worried that Schmidt will hear?" she asks, settling next to him. "That he'll come here personally to reign you back in?"

James breathes out shakily. "Yes. Very worried. Maybe I can- maybe I can be gone before that."

She hopes he means gone away and not dead. "I don't think he still has control over you."

James laughs drily. "Yeah, thought that before. Turned out to be horseshit."

"Come on," she nudges. "That can't have been as intense as this."

"No," he relents. "Still. I don't know. So, you're really good? All healed?"

"Yeah." Physically at least. "This vampire blood is really crazy. Only took me a few days to recover completely."

He bites his lip, fangs digging in. "And the-"

She tries not to flinch. Nobody else asked about it. "That's complicated."

"So it's not what you wanted," he states, and it sounds genuinely disappointed and not at all told-you-so.

She sighs, dangling her feet. No. It's really not. But she never ever got what she wanted. "That's not your fault."

"It would be different if I wasn't this ," he insists sourly.

"You killed a whole lot of vampires today," she reminds him. "Not fledglings, really dangerous ones. I don't think you could have done that otherwise."

He breathes out in frustration. "Doesn't have to mean I like it."

"No," she agrees, dangling her feet, looking out over the nighttime city. "But you get what you get."

[imaginedcreaderinsert]

She's got a boyfriend anyway — Jason Todd x Reader

WARNINGS: some cussing words here and there, implied fighting and blood, allusions to depression? or at least anxiety, and sexual implications.

WORD COUNT: 2575.

10. “Friends don’t do this kind of shit!

He is frustrated, and has yelled so out of emotion – and yes, you know it, you know how impulsive and unstable he can get to be when he spirals down in strong human emotions. And well, you were the one correcting him the first time he said so about himself (like he wasn’t human, like they were foreign, which made you sad), but right now you strongly emphasize them because out of the two, you feel like a monster, and he is pure and raw emotion.

—No, I-I refuse!—. He stammers with his own words out of rage as he bolts up from the sofa you’ve been previously kissing on—. I can’t believe you-I won’t, (Y/N)! Fuck no, you don’t say or do that shit with friends! And don’t fuckin’ bring Chad into it.

Chad. He pronounces it like it burns, like it disgusts him, and he is in his own right to do so, but it makes you sigh. Briefly, you wonder, what would have happened if you had invited him over instead of accepting when Jason just called you with the tempting offer of just pizza, Netflix and Chill and some cuddles. Maybe you’d be sexting instead of shouting (and maybe you wouldn’t feel as guilty as you do now).

—Todd, I told you-

—Lose the Todd, sweetheart, we’ve been fucking for months now, is a bit late now, isn’t it?!

He won’t understand. He doesn’t want to understand. Nothing that comes out of his mouth will help, and it will only dig a grave deeper than it really needs to. And, even if right now it’s not the best example in your favor, you really care for him. And fuck yes, you only wanted to spend a sweet and careless night of making out in the sofa, moving it to bed and having some pancakes in the morning. But as of right now it seems out of the question, and there seems to be no possible scenario in the future where you get him to tone it down a notch and it all ends up with both of you okay. And you don’t want to cry, you don’t want to make him more upset, which is probably the only outcome you visualize at this point. So you stop him.

—Just go.

—No, fuck no, we are going to talk about it now, cuz’ I know-

—Jason, I’m not going to repeat myself. You came here for the fuck and stayed for the feelings, Christ, deal with it. I didn’t ask for it and I was perfectly clear the first time it had happened and you agreed to every single thing. So just… Go. We’ll talk in the morning.

You had nursured him. You had seen him broken (with eyes just like the ones he’s giving you now, but younger), beaten up – which is why you two failed as youngsters your first year in uni; why it was the worst because of that. Restless nights of wondering if he ever got home, if he would appear with new marks, bandages, in the hospital! No, you couldn’t deal with it, it was too distressing. And you didn’t actually mind much the fact that he stood you up a couple of times. Gotham was quite big, after all – and even with his resources, the Wayne resources he had been slowly accepting, it was still impossible to get that fast to places that were that far away. No, you didn’t care much about the tabloids and the gossip magazines that “caught him” in the company of one or two pretty girls, you weren’t actually the jealous type and really trusted him, but you couldn’t rest. Ever. He took your heart with him at every single mission, patrol, stakeout… And all you ever wondered was if he would come back okay. And you shouldn’t have deal with that alone for almost an entire year; not with your projects, your anxiety and the pressure of succeding in uni like every other familiar you have. You couldn’t fall back or rely on a comfortable trust fund, unlimited resources like he could, if he wanted to. And by no means you are saying, implying, that he is entitled, that he has it easy… You are with him every night he stays in, when he wakes up in cold sweat, heart in his neck beating like its going to explode and sometimes (they were becoming fortunately more and more rare) shouting. He once choked you – almost did so. He cried after, and you comforted him all night with sweet nothings and reassuring kisses.

But you did have enough. And the question had been quite easy, quite simple: “Would you be able to resist that dangerous lifestyle in the future? Would you able to drop it all?”, to which he had, obviously, hesitated. Jason had feel cornered, and you knew you were not fair, since you both knew all your vulnerabilities, your weak points, but he had pushed you to that limit the night he almost did not make it, the time that Dick had to come inform you after it had gone wrong. You couldn’t stop crying at his side, in his bed – it was truly a cumule of everything academically and emotionally speaking – as he rested in the Wayne Manor. You had skipped exams, you had given everything up, which is why you didn’t hesitate to ask the same thing perfectly knowing your own answer when he threw it back at you:

—In a heartbeat.

So you two had been at different places in the stages of love, but it didn’t mean he loved you any less, he didn’t care when he heard you got a new boyfriend on campus at the ending of the second year. He was brilliant: part of the Student Committe, came from an excellent family, had both the grades and the looks… It was like the only thing that he didn’t have he achieved without making much effort. He didn’t actually see you fall in love with him, but you shared friends, even when you two broke up they tried to keep it “normal” if there was ever a defintion like that applied to him. But he too had eyes, with which caught on the smallest things: the small presents; the occasional blush on your cheeks and faint smile when you received a certain text; the rush with which you picked up your phone when “someone” called you; the hangouts you passed on not because of him, but because of “Him”.

Year three had come, and Chad and her had been dating for some months, but something felt on, and Jason interceded. He reappered in your life with a blank slate, apparently – no resentment, no blaming, no love. Maybe that’s why it had been so easy to fall back into his arms that night Chad had presented you to his parents. They hated you, and you had a breakdown in a freaking Wayne gala in which the only thing he said was “Don’t worry about them; just go to a bathroom and get yourself pretty again. I like it when you smile” which you assume should have made you smiled, but it only made you cry harder as soon as you were out of sight.

Jason knew about the difficult relationship you had with your own family: having another one hating your guts wasn’t the best outcome, no. But Chad hadn’t asked; you didn’t bring the topic to the table, but you assumed he should have asked at some point, because he cared… Right? Full of doubts, feeling broken and pathetic, Jason Todd had come to the rescue. He had noticed you, had seen everything: he wasn’t the jealous type, but he knew that one wasn’t the right for you. And no, he wasn’t stating that he was but… He would treat you better. He would try, at least.

You both that night attacked the secret shelf which Batman, not Bruce Wayne, used to attack whenever his bad went kind of wrong (never fully, he was always proud like that) to get back up. The alcohol was strong and it made your nose burn, but it also made you giggle to the stupid shit Jason said, and you had comfortably (just numb enough) accepted his kiss. You were both in front of the fire, and he had been trying to take the bottle from your drunk ass who was stumbling in high-heels, complaining about dresses and galas and parents… And he had simply growled something (you can’t remember, didn’t care much) which made you almost drop your panties. Jason had a fucking sexy mouth and-

That was the only clear thing you remember from that night. Memories can’t be relied on, but on that one you can count on. He kissed you, and he backed you up to the wall, grinded into you: you had moan in his mouth, had sticked out your tongue for him to take, and just like that, it was spring again when he had kissed you for a second “first” time (the first had actually been on a game) and your fingers were laced on the grass, sun bathing his form, his beautiful white lock, his incredibly attractive jaw, his beautiful and gorgeous eyes-

You didn’t make it to bed. It sounds cliché, but he didn’t let you, as much as you almost crawled into your room; the sofa had been nice enough the first time. Not much better for the second. But at the third, you explained the situation, the rules: “no love, no drama, no strings or uncomfortable questions. Just lust”.

So for everyone’s surprise you were instantly friends again. First they thought you were just fucking, but soon after you had finally introduced Chad to them and all rumors died, which was the main purpose. Jason was just a comfortable fuck where no questions were asked and where you just felt… Good again. Your boyfriend was good to you, yes, but too perfect sometimes, too unberable for someone with anxiety and a constant pressure of being just like him. But the truth is, there’s no point of comparison: for him is just as easy as breathing to be that kind, that good – but it takes the life out of you to be like that, so docile, so good and so excellent all the time. And Jason knows, understands. He murmurs into your hair that you are perfect and you believe him.

He makes you feel pretty, enough; and you need when all Chad cares is his own family, his grandes, his status, his position. It’s him him him all the way. And this time you mind being stood up, you mind him being late, you can’t stand him flirting with other girls, even when you have no right to complain (having fucked Jason for three months kind of takess off the right).

Were you his charity case? The broken girl from the bad neighborhood who made it into uni who he had comforted “and saved”?

It’s been eight months, and even through your second anniversary, you are more and more sure of it. And you actually start cancelling more dates, being more passive with him and start fucking Jason more. It’s just that, it’s nothing more – and while you run from your “perfect” future by his side (you try to, knowing perfectly Chad is everything that would make your family happy, would keep you content and safe), Jason falls more and more in love with you.

The way you need him: your nails digging in his skin, your hands pulling his hair like you need something desperately to hold onto – him and only him being able to do so, bring you to your peak everytime before he can even come close… Your perfect legs that open with a kiss on your thigh, how you trust him to make you feel good without questioning. You love the way he makes you feel about yourself, which is probably selfish, but you couldn’t care less. He accepted, he was fine with the rules: and thus you exploit his love, he gets way into it, into you, even when alarms go all around his head telling him “no”, trying to stop.

But it’s too late, and you feel just a little bit cruel:

—You are great.

—Really now? Does it have anything to do with the pizza, or the fact that I eat you out like a champ?

—Why can I only choose one? God, Jason, it’s like you’ve never read Tolstoi. Things are not all black or white. Dumbass—. You giggle, getting closer to him in the sofa where your hair is spread, almost naked; Jason has put his boxers on, and he’s tracing lazy patterns in your skin.

—First you quote Tolstoi, paraphrase him rather, and then you say “dumbass”. Yer’ an idiot.

It makes you both laugh, and when it kind of dies down, you press your forehead against his and you search for his lips. He concedes, biting the inferior one, marking it.

—Oh, come on, you know you can’t leave marks on. He will see.

—Yeah, and we wouldn’t like that, would we? End this rendez-vous or affaire, however fancy way you want to call it because you love him soooo much—. You roll your eyes, and he smirks. You hate it when he feels he is right (he never is).

—Two things: one, I do like him, however i decided to manage our relationship it’s between him and me; and two, I don’t like to be marked because I’m not “a thing”, Jason. Definitively not yours.

His smile falters. You know you are on dangerous ground. Pizzas are about to get there, why couldn’t you just shut down your mouth?

—So you’re his?—. He gets all possesive. You know when he slightly puffs out his chest. It makes you get up, search for the cushions you both had dumped to the floor. It makes you not look at him directly, distract you—. Then who-no, what are we? Fuck buddies?

—Try friends?—You sarcastically try and throw, but it ends in the most of the miserable ways.

—Let me back up a bit, but I’m pretty sure Roy and I don’t do this at least once a week. Do you have any other special “friend” you do this with this ritually?

—I didn’t mean it like that…

—Well now I do, so answer, (Y/N). Do you?

You massage your nape, bite your lip.

—No, Jason, I don’t. And you know I don’t—. You answer and it kind of feels like he sighs in relief, which annoys you—. It wouldn’t matter anyways, because we would just be friends!

—Friends like what, you and I?

—Yes, Todd, just like you and I!

—Well newsflash (Y/N)! Friends don’t do this kind of shit!

The anger, his voice, had scared you, and it brings you to the present. His eyes beg at you to say something; any sense of regret and he will stay, he will make it work somehow, but you are too tired. So you just give him your back and turn around to face Gotham and its darkness: one that has taken you over the years, that has fucked you up and that will probably break two hearts in one night.

[theobscures]

Summary of: Filgaia

Okay so since Wild ARMs is such an obscure RPG series and that a lot of it isn’t that well documented, I figured I would compile this post for my moots wanting to interact with my Jack muse or for those curious! Be warned that this will get wordy--WA gets pretty comprehensive with its lore--and also spoiler heavy for the first game.

Though Filgaia is a recurring world in each WA game, the cast, story, lore, and geography differ in each installment. (A bit like how Final Fantasy games share the same motifs but have completely different settings.) Since my muse is Jack Van Burace and since I’m most passionate about the first game, this post will only detail the first incarnation of Filgaia (particularly the PS1 original’s).

Geography and the Guardians:

Filgaia is an Earth-like planet that, in its current state, has been on a painfully slow decay for a thousand years now. Though the its ecosystems are still fairly diverse--with grasslands, forests, oceans, and even snowy mountains--most of it has increasingly turned into wasteland and threatens the areas still yet untouched. The planet’s continents form a sort of ‘ring’ that shapes two oceans; the Inner Sea and the Outer Sea.

The state of decay is caused in part by the Guardians’ diminishing powers--they are the 20 spiritual beings and beasts whose magic power protects and maintains the lifeforce of Filgaia. The Guardians and Filgaia are all connected by a spiritual channel called the “Ray Line” that lies beneath the planet’s crust and carries and supplies the shared lifeforce. They can lend their powers through protective tablets called Runes.

The Guardians’ diminishing powers are believed to be a direct result of the devastating war that occurred 1,000 years ago, which damaged most of the planet’s life and geography (there is a massive desert called the Sand Ocean created by the destruction). In reality the true cause of the Guardians’ loss of power was the inhabitants losing hope, courage, and love in their hearts (though that too was also caused by the war). The loss of these virtues have made the Guardians grow weak and themselves despairing.

Inhabitants:

Humans are the most populous on Filgaia. 1,000 years ago however, they used to share the planet with the Elw (”the ancients”) who were closely connected with nature but also very technologically advanced. The humans and Elws didn’t just share Filgaia, but also the human space colony Malduke that orbited around the planet. But as the colony was also equipped with the capability for mass destruction, the Guardians crucially sunk the connecting tower, Ka Dingel, to the bottom of the sea.

After the war, the Elws chose to abandon their homeworld for a new one in the Elw Dimension they created. One of the last things that the Elws did for Filgaia before leaving it was to create the “Elw Pyramids” to help amplify its lifeforce when the Guardians’ strength grew weak--essentially putting the planet on life support. But they also function as transports by teleporting people across Filgaia as energy with the use of satellites orbiting the atmosphere. Despite the Elw’s efforts, the pyramids seem to at most slow Filgaia’s decay.

The one other thing the Guardians are closely linked to are the women of the Adlehyde royal family. Though it’s not said why, the Adlehyde women are gifted with magic power and are the only ones who can hear and speak with the Guardians. The royal family’s heirloom is the “Tear Drop”, a blue gemstone that reflects the powers of the Guardians and also contains the essence of the shared lifeforce. In the right hands it can “give birth” to life.

With Filgaia’s never-ending hardships and the loss of valued virtues, there are a handful of people who have chosen to reject their former lives to become “Dream Chasers” (or drifters or migrant birds depending on translation); those who live for the thrill of adventure without a care in the world, though each person’s reasons are unique. Some are looking for treasure, some for fame or power, and some for simple belonging.

History:

Filgaia is defined by the very history of the great war. 1,000 years ago, the planet was invaded by the extraterrestrial Metal Demons--so called because they are of “living metal”. The Demons’ home world, Hiades, was destroyed by their parasitic Queen Mother and forced them to flee and conquer another world. Perhaps unaware of her true nature though, Mother’s sole desire and existence is to destroy everything in reality--which includes the Filgaia that the Demons hope to colonize.

The Metal Demons’ power was truly unparalleled and a grave threat to the inhabitants of Filgaia. To combat them, the Elws banded with the Guardians and humans to develop a series of powerful technological weapons. Many of these were far too powerful though and, after the war, the Elw sealed them away in tightly-secured ruins never to be unearthed. But treasure hunters and scientists eventually found them. These weapons were,

ARMs: Short for Ancient Relic Machine. These (I believe) can actually refer to any weapon the Elw developed for the war, but in this context they refer to very powerful firearms synchronized with psychic waves. In present day, they are highly feared and forbidden weapons--those in possession of one are often exiled from their homes, becoming drifters. They (along with other ancient technology) have been researched by the scientist Zepet and his six apprentices, now known as the ARMs Meisters. Despite the ARMs being taboo, there is a small growing interest and ‘economy’ in them as shops supplying bullets opened. 

The Golems: There were eight golems created for combat and defense. They are mecha-like, able to be controlled by issuing commands, and each represent an element. The golems have now long since turned inactive and lifeless.

The Guardian Blade: Little is known about it, but it was a sword infused with pure life energy and was devastatingly powerful--it is actually rumored to be the main cause of Filgaia’s decay. It tore across the planet, forming the massive Sand Ocean desert, before ultimately destroying itself. The Elw consider its creation to be their greatest sin and the forger of the blade, the Elw Vassim, is labeled a criminal by his kind. In present day, most still believe it is hidden somewhere in the desert and have died trying to find it.

The Holmcross Project: (Or Humonculus.) They were the successor to the Golems and the Elw’s final weapons. The Elw and human mages created them by replicating the “biometals” of the Demons they had captured, essentially creating an artificial man who is both organic and metal. Their enhancements enabled them to better synchronize with the ARMs and made them the best choice against the Metal Demons. However because they were blank slates and lacked empathy and understanding in their hearts, the Holmcross went on violent rampages and killed anyone they came across. The Elw were forced to destroy them all save for one, a prototype they sealed away. (Spoiler: He later became Rudy.)

By far the greatest threat to Filgaia, aside from all of the Elw’s advancements, was Queen Mother. Whether the weapons helped at all or not, the Guardians were able to defeat Mother by splitting her heart into three pieces. Each piece became guarded by a Guardian Statue whereas Mother’s body was sealed away in a cocoon (called the “Arch” in Alter Code F). Queen Mother is not actually dead though; she’s technically immortal and would be revived if reunited with her heart pieces and given life by the Tear Drop. The cocoon was housed deep in Arctica Castle in the north.

Mother’s defeat thwarted the Metal Demons’ goal and they disappeared from memory, having seemingly abandoned Filgaia, and became part of the war’s myth. But Filgaia has never able to move on from its devastating past as the planet continues to decay and the inhabitants must live with the consequences. It’s easy to lay blame on the Elw, but the drive to develop the weapons was likely a mix of fearful desperation, a lust for intellectual or physical power, or even at the pressuring of the humans.

Towns:

Village of Surf: A small farming community that has fell on hard times due to the encroaching decay. Rudy used to live and tend to the horses here.

Curan Abbey: A boarding school south of Adlehyde that teaches the magic arts. It is customary for women of the Adlehyde royal family to study here until their 17th birthday.

Adlehyde Castle Town: The fortified ‘capital’ in front of Adlehyde Castle. In the ancient Elw language, Adlehyde means “light”. The town praises itself for its scientific community and accomplishments and holds a festival dedicated to their findings.

Milama Village: Also called the “oasis of Filgaia”, Milama is built around a moat of clear water and is one of the very few places still untouched by the decay. A popular destination.

Baskar Village: Another tiny farming community populated by people who bond with nature. It sits close to the Altar of the Wind Caller where the Guardian Zephyr, the “west wind of hope”, may be summoned. It’s also close to a Guardian Statue and an Elw Pyramid. Baskar supplies the “Kizim Fire”, which is used to light the pyramids’ furnaces and reactivate them.

Saint Centour: A city settlement named after its Guardian Statue: Ione Paua the centaur Saint Guardian. The city is heavily fortified with tight security and an invisible ‘dimensional’ barrier that surrounds it. This barrier repels monsters, demons, and spirits, but fails if either are smuggled inside with a person. It’s also near an Elw Pyramid.

Port Timney: A seaside port town along the Inner Sea that is mostly populated by trade merchants and sailors. There is a local tradition here that people propose marriage with a crystal flower. It sits near an Elw Pyramid.

Town of Yard: A harbor that sits close to the Sand Ocean desert. It used to be bustling with trade but has turned desolate as a result of the tumultuous sea warding off ships. There is a famous beach here where almost anything lost at sea is said to wash ashore there; it earned the town the nickname “Ship Graveyard” and is what most call it today.

Rosetta Town: A prosperous town that has managed to avoid the decay, but it is now also facing threat with the lack of trade ships coming in. It is most notably the home of the sole Elw who chose to remain in Filgaia, Mariel. But the townsfolk are suspicious of her. The town sits close to the secret Elw Dimension gateway.

Court Seim: An orphanage town founded by the Maxwells: Nicholi the ARMs Meister and his daughter Jane. They originally lived in Milama but, unable to afford it there, were forced to move away to a small, desolate island to keep supporting the orphans. There is an evacuation sanctuary nearby in case of emergencies.

Elw Village: Not actually part of Filgaia anymore but in the Elw Dimension. When the Elws chose to leave Filgaia they picked a large plot of land and isolated it within a dimension they created for themselves, which became a floating island. Outsiders are forbidden. The dimension resembles Filgaia before the war and its decay.

Pandemonium: Though most of the Metal Demons were defeated in the war, a small handful of them survived and secretly built a couple strongholds for themselves, including the Photosphere and Demon Lab--this one being their castle fortress.

Arctica: A proud kingdom that used to exist in the northern tundra continent. It used to be guarded by the seven Fenril Knights, who not only protected the royalty and the people, but also Mother’s cocoon hidden deep within the castle. A few years prior, the kingdom fell when the Metal Demons attacked. There were no survivors. (Spoiler: Except Jack and Elmina.)

Ancient Arena (Devil’s Playground in Alter Code F): A castle that holds gladiator-style battle tournaments. The battles are overseen by the self-proclaimed “Duke” Pegucci who, frankly, enjoys watching contestants battle-to-the-death a little too much. It is rumored that the arena used to be the castle of the King of Illusions in ancient times.

Malduke: A space colony in Filgaia’s orbit where the humans originally lived before they came to live on Filgaia with the Elw. It’s also called the “New Moon”. The colony and Filgaia were connected by a tower called Ka Dingel that could teleport travelers to and from. The colony has now long since been abandoned ever since the Guardians sunk the Ka Dingel to the sea to prevent Malduke from using misused for destruction.

[same-side]

I just finished DBH and Im seriously so in love with it! But when I came on Tumblr, all I could find is all this content around Gavin, and Im just so confused, because he seemed like such a jerk in the game. Why are people so into Gavin? Did I miss something?

Hi there!

First off, allow me to welcome you to the fandom!

In regards to Gavin: you literally did not miss anything; he is absolutely a one dimensional jerk in game!

Its important we make a distinction here between fanon Gavin and canon Gavin. You’ll find the fandom is incredibly divided - a lot of people adore him, a lot of people hate him. The reason for disliking him is understandable, of course - there’s a slew of incredible and well rounded characters in dbh (North, Luther, Kara…) that are swept under the rug in favour of a veritable avalanche of content for rat man reed. He has 14 minutes of screen time in which literally all he does is antagonize and threaten the player. But people have to understand, when someone says they love Gavin, they mean fanon Gavin. I don’t think theres a single person that is actually a canon Gavin stan. 

Keeping that in mind, you also have to take into account the drop off - at this point, the only people still left/creating content in the fandom are generally the ones that are balls deep and clinging to the headcanons, au’s, etc. that they’ve built with friends. This applies heavily to Gavin for reasons discussed below. Additionally, the algorithms for sites like tumblr and instagram won’t recommend old posts; old posts don’t show up in tags. Artists with a lot of clout that have since moved on from the fandom’s work have basically disappeared into the void (rebelflet, for example). So it may seem like there’s only content of Gavin / Gavin ships, but in reality there’s a ton of jericrew and Kara crew out there from when the fandom was still new / bigger - you just have to know where to look.

So… why do people like Gavin… I mean, it helps that canonically he has beefy tiddies, a cool bad boy jacket, and a pretty face at certain angles.

That being said, I think one of the biggest reasons Gavin (and RK900, by extension) are so popular is that they aren’t well rounded, fleshed out characters. Because we don’t really know anything about them and they have minimal screen time, they’re easy to project on or to add onto, and no one can tell you that you’re wrong because there’s no evidence against it. It’s almost like a universally shared OC that the fandom has developed together. Since they have no canon backstory, and in rk900’s case, no canon personality, it allows for a lot of creative freedom and the ability to explore character interactions, foils, and growth within the dbh universe. The growth aspect, I think, in conjunction with the projection aspect, is key point for the popularity. It tends to be fairly formulaic. Take the canonical asshole Gavin, stick him with an android - whether its RK900 as his partner or Connor as a coworker. Have him come to care for the RK model, and deal with his own insecurities (and usually a traumatic past, the flavor of which might depend on the creator’s own life struggles). Repent, redeem, grow. This redemption arc is the same exact vein of growth and change that makes Hank and Connor such an appealing partnership for players as well - only, in Gavin’s case, it allows for complete freedom in how to get from point a to point b. People like a character they can relate to - and when you can smack your own possible trauma (being an illegitimate child, having an abusive lover, abusive parents, abandonment fears, body insecurity, whatever it may be) on a character because they’re a blank slate, you relate to them and vent through them. Even little “silly” projections or projections that aren’t necessarily traumatic can make someone love a character even more - for example, “Gavin loves Hello Kitty,” “Gavin can’t handle spicy food,” “Gavin is Latino.” Even when the creator isn’t projecting, adding these kinds of headcanons make him a fleshed out, three dimensional character that people can relate to or empathize with, especially when giving his actions an explanation besides just fear of losing his job.

I came into the dbh fandom a little late; by the time I knew what it was, the hype had died down and reed900 was already a firmly cemented, heavily present part of the content. Given that, I’m not sure what its exact origins were, or if it seemingly popped up overnight. It could have been crack. My best guess is that people saw the positive change between Hank and Connor, and thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be rad if we stuck the other Connor with the other dysfunctional DPD bastard?” . I admit, it makes a nice parallel, which may be part of the appeal in additional to the previous reasons. Speaking of those kinds of interpersonal relationships, there’s also a popular headcanon (that’s been mentioned/liked by d*vid c*ge himself) that Kamski and Gavin are siblings/half siblings/cousins. This stems from the fact that Kamski and Gavin are both mo-capped/voiced by the same actor. By taking this headcanon into account, it adds depth to Gavin’s hatred of androids and allows for interesting backstory exploration, growth, and reconciliation.

Another reason is the enemies-to-lovers trope. For a lot of people that trope really jimmies their neutrons, and what could be better than an android hater and an android to fit that cliche? Once again, analogous to hankcon. The angst potential is also incredible when you take convin or hankvin into account instead of reed900 - reading into Hank and Gavin’s interactions it would seem there’s a tumultuous past between them. And in Connor’s case, Gavin can actually kill him or he can KO Gavin, which allows for a good deal of enemies-to-lovers and angsty regret material. Besides, a lot of people are really into hate s*x.

That…. makes a good segway. I may as well mention the elephant in the room for Gavin’s popularity. There’s a culture of fetishizing abuse in fandoms and Gavin is a prime target for this because “”he’s asking for it.”” It’s also easy to make one character a psychopath when they don’t even have a canon personality. This shows up a lot, whether because of writers treating it as a kink in fanfic or artists using it as a gag because its “funny”. I… won’t really go into detail on this, but it is a phenomenon that adds to the slew of Gavin content. This is another reason for why a lot of people hate Gavin / hate reed900. I started out feeling this way as well. Their perception of it is coloured by the abusive stuff or the mishandled stuff that seems to be prominent. I just have to say that this blog is a safe, sane, and consensual zone.

Sorry, that was a really long breakdown but I hope that gives some insight into the Gavin phenomenon. Last point. He winks like a dumbass. How can you not love that face.

[minaminokyoko]

Godzilla: King of Monsters: A Spoilertastic Review

To get straight to the point for some of you, yes, thank God, this movie is better than Godzilla '14.

For one, the title character is not only in the movie for a decent amount of time, they don't constantly cut away from the action and the film is properly lit so that even in night scenes and scenes with heavy rain, our lizard boi is fully visible. He also is kicking some ass and taking some names, and that's what we came here to see. Thus, it's immediately better than its predecessor.

However, a big problem with the movie is the humans. Not the supporting Monarch team, mind you, but the "family." This is one of the most poorly written families I've seen in a while. It's just baffling. They are very, very unlikable people. You don't really get to know them much, and moments where you do, you just don't like them. They are not easy to root for. It's a very similar problem to a lot of other disaster movies, where they pick a bunch of high strung, angry, selfish people as your leads to the point where you're kind of rooting for the disaster to get them, and that's sadly the other half of this film.

In short, they do the kaiju stuff well, but the humans drag the movie down a couple of enjoyment levels, if you ask me. Let's get to it.

Overall Grade: C

Spoilers ahead.

Pros:

-Godzilla and the other monsters look and sound great. They truly feel like their title: Titans. The movie does a good job of offering scale and giving you different perspectives to understand the size and scope of these creatures, and it's very cool to see some of them in the flesh while others are just named. They name-dropped Kong three times that I counted, but he's still Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Movie, which is irritating, but I also think that's for two reasons: (1) they need to build the hype train and sadly this movie is not on track to do well, as evidenced by my theater only having about eight people total in it opening weekend, and they need all the help they can get if they truly want to turn this into a franchise (2) they want to give him and Godzilla an entire rivalry film to themselves instead of just making him an extra here in this movie. Give them the room to breathe and be rivals in their own film rather than just shoehorning Kong into this debut of the other kaiju. But back to my point, the monsters all feel corporeal and intimidating. I really liked Mothra's design in particular. She looks gorgeous and is kind of the Ugly Cute variety of monster. I very much enjoyed seeing these creatures with some good effects given to them (although there are a few spots where it could look better, but WB struggles with this a lot, I've noticed) and the sounds they make are tremendous and impressive.

-The monster fights are pretty solid. I do admit that Pacific Rim kind of raised my bar for kaiju fights even though I know it's not the same story, but that to me is the perfect balance of human characters who are actually likable and useful versus giant monsters. I think it just should be a good blueprint for how to run the show if you're advertising giant monsters blowing up shit and beating the stuffing out of each other. I think the monster fights in King of Monsters are paced well and you can mostly understand where they are in relation to each other and how evenly matched they are. There were also smaller, neat details like seeing Mothra in her larva state then evolve into her adult form. That's very cool and creative and I enjoyed that little detail. The final smackdown with Godzilla and Ghidorah was a good monster mash, and I appreciate them giving it time and not cutting away. Godzilla's finishing move was 100% badass. Kudos to the big Lizard Boi, and kudos to Mothra for coming to help her lizard boyfriend as well against Rodan.

-The Monarch team is dicey at best, but the humans actually did more than just following him around like in Godzilla '14. It was actually a smart idea to introduce the ORCA and the concept of trying to at least either soothe or summon the monsters. I liked it a lot, and it was relatively realistic. We as a species are stupid and would of course try nukes first, but once they learned that these things actually feed on radiation and it makes them stronger, then they would be forced to find alternative options. It allowed the human characters to finally be truly relevant and not just dumb, wide-eyed spectators (although, God, there was a lot of that in this movie) and it gave the whole thing a sort of story.

-Just like the previous movie, Ken Watanabe gave a performance this movie did not deserve. He's just one of those actors where he's so seasoned that even though God knows this movie's script is not fucking Shakespeare, you could still tell that he cared a lot about the project and was easily the best actor hands down.

-I'm glad Emma dies. Fuck her. Thank you for having the teeth to not try and give her some shitty redemption that she wouldn't have deserved anyway. Thank you for sticking to your guns and doing just like Deep Blue Sea and letting the person responsible for all that death take the final bow for her shitty fucking actions.

-This has nothing to do with the canon, but I had a really cool idea: what if Last Action Hero Bad Guy is Tom Hiddleston's character from Kong: Skull Island? Wouldn't that be fucking neat?! It just occurred to me that since Hiddleston's character was probably in his 30's during the 1970's, he'd be in his 70's during this film and he's a tall, thin British dude. I would love it if we got some kind of backstory reveal that something happened that caused Hiddleston's character to turn against Monarch. Wouldn't that be a good idea for a second Kong movie? Seeing the hero turn to the villain for the sake of saving the planet? Man, I like that idea a lot, but that's me.

-I was glad to see Ziyi Zhang return to a big screen movie. I liked her and felt bad about what happened to her career, so it was cool seeing little bits of story, especially about how Asian cultures do in fact consider reptiles to be helpful and not hurtful. That was a neat little mythos thing for me.

Cons:

-As mentioned above, I hated this fucking family. This family is just unbearable. I know the film is ham-fisted in its attempts to deal with loss and tragedy and a broken home, but there is a way to do that. There is a way to write characters reconciling and putting aside a rough history to come together. This is not the way. It's so sloppily written that I was throwing my hands up in exasperation at certain points. They are so unlikable. You see so little of their home life, first off, that there is no real connection to get to know them. This is a common problem in action movies these days, too--they don't know how to set the stage and just rush into action. It's true we come to action movies for action, but that doesn't mean we don't also want to enjoy the characters we're spending time with. We know it's fully possible to have action packed movies with well-written leads. It's been done for decades, so this movie has no excuse for why the three family members are aggressively terrible. Emma is a selfish, thoughtless bitch and her motivations make zero sense. Mark is just an angry ex-alcoholic who just barely is relevant enough to be in the story. Madison is damn near a blank slate daughter archetype with little to offer except to be something to rescue. Even with one brief flashback of when they were happy, we're not given a reason to root for them because you never get to know them and the few character traits they do display are just awful. For that reason, we're gonna give Emma her own bullet point to explain why she is just the worst.

-Emma's motivation is completely ass-backwards. Going the eco-terrorism point makes no fucking sense for what happened to her. Hear me out. I can see what this movie was going for, and I know it's kind of an odd comparison, but what they ended up with is basically blonde Thanos. Fuck this woman. Fuck this woman for deciding that she's right and millions of other people need to die because she thinks she is right about something, and she was fucking wrong. 100% fucking wrong. It made no sense that because Godzilla killed your kid, you're gonna slaughter tens of thousands of other kids to "restore the earth" and make it some kind of utopia. You're gonna subject innocent lives to torture and death and trauma in the hopes that titantic animals you cannot at all control and barely understand will raze everything to ashes and then shit can grow again. This is some deeply white people shit, too. Sorry to pull that card, but yes, this is a full-on white people mentality of doing something that will hurt everyone else BUT YOU and thinking you have the right to make that fucking decision. She and Maddie were somewhere safe, and she told her ex-husband to go somewhere safe too, and then she pulled a trigger that killed millions of fucking people whose only crimes were existing. That environmentalist message was utter shit. Is the earth overpopulated and polluted? Yep. But the fucking solution is not to kill half the goddamn population. The solution is to work together and overthrow the corrupt people keeping us from finding realistic ways to solve the problem, not wiping out half of humanity while you sit in a goddamn doomsday bunker sipping coffee and congratulating yourself. The crazy thing is this blonde Thanos bullshit did not need to happen. Last Action Hero Bad Guy was perfectly fine in this role of basically the kaiju version of Ra's Al Ghul. It made sense for him to be like, "ay, fuck y'all for killing the earth, let's let the monsters have it back and then clean up afterward." All you had to do was keep it the way it was presented to us: he kidnapped her and the kid and forced them to help wake up the monsters. There was no need to for this idiotic Deep Blue Sea nonsense of her agreeing with him and somehow setting it up. Which, by the way, made no goddamn sense because he kills all those innocent scientists in the lab at the beginning of the movie. Did she know he would do that? If so, fuck her. Fuck her in the ass sideways for killing her own teammates. She could have met him somewhere else. What was with the guns and shit if she's the one who came up with this dumb idea? I hate everything about this character and I am glad she died in the end because she was as much a fucking monster as King Ghidorah.

-The dialogue in this movie is atrocious. Look, I get it, it's a generic action movie. But come on. There were seriously points where I just rolled my eyes or threw my hands up in exasperation because there were just so many Captain Obvious comments or unfunny one-liners thrown back and forth. It's painful to endure some of this shit. The "humor" in particular really hurts, because you can see they put pauses after certain lines where they think the audience is laughing, and trust me, no, we were NOT laughing. Stupid shit like telling a character to "hold on" as a fucking maelstrom is trying to blow them away or just other dumb filler dialogue that makes me wanna slap my forehead. It's egregious.

-The Monarch team is still kind of as stupid as the last movie. Not completely, but they were reaching hard in certain cases and they still felt useless. One example that drove me insane was when Godzilla went back to his bachelor pad to recharge, they then say this is where he comes to heal...and then proceed to nuke that shit. And I'm like...bitch, whatchu gon' do now if he gets hurt?! You're just gonna find him and nuke him every single time he's hurt?! What the fuck kind of plan is that? I get that the movie writers wanted a sense of urgency, but that was such an idiotic way to accomplish something needed for the plot. They introduced a cool concept and then eliminated it immediately. Oy. Another example is Mark's dumbass screaming for Maddie like she can possibly hear him at Fenway Park with fucking Ghidorah and Godzilla literally fighting right on top of the stadium. Are you kidding me? My God, Mark is stupid. He did the same thing when he ran into the base with a fucking pistol screaming her name and letting the armed mercs know exactly where the hell he was. I am shocked his dumbass didn't get immediately picked off. Moron.

-Sarigawa's death was some full-on nonsense. Fuck you for killing the only credible actor in the entire movie, and what's worse is that it very much feels like a person of color dying for the sake of some goddamn white people. Because, yes, folks, I'm sorry, this is a white woman's fault. All this shit is because a white woman wanted to be Thanos and now this awesome dude has to sacrifice himself. Fuck off. I hate this point in the story, even though bless Watanabe for giving us the only credible emotional scene in the entire movie.

-Even though she was barely a character, I disliked Sally Hawkins biting it randomly in the first third, and not getting much reverence. No, we didn't know shit about her, but it felt like the movie just said "fuck it" and moved right along like it was no big deal. I don't know why they even bothered.

-How in God's name did they somehow "sneak" Ghidorah's whole ass head out of fucking Boston with no one noticing? It's a giant dragon head! How did you fucking do that and no one saw you bring it all the way to Mexico? I swear to God, this movie is filled with plotholes. I'm fine with them setting up Mecha Ghidorah or just cloning him all over again, but why couldn't it just have been in Boston and they just snuck in during the dead of night and moved it somewhere nearby? That thing is gigantic and it's a hard pill to swallow that they just left without anyone noticing it.

EDIT: A fan corrected me that this was the head that Godzilla ripped off before the end fight, so the above point is invalid. Nice catch! Thank you! 

-Nitpick: Did Mothra die? That was unclear. I hope not. She's the Queen. I'll have to ask some Godzilla fans to explain what they thought happened after Ghidorah blasted her in the final fight.

-Nitpick: Good God, these human characters survive shit that would easily kill a normal person and it is a little bit grating on the nerves to suspend your disbelief this hard.

-Nitpick: I hate it when monsters the size of fucking buildings somehow notice tiny ass humans enough to bother giving them their attention or even their ire. "An ant has no quarrel with a boot." I hated it in '98 Godzilla and I still hate it. Something on that scale should not even vaguely bother with one tiny human being, but that's me.

I know I have some very heavy criticisms, but this is still a decent flick if you're just going to shell out for a matinee showing. The monsters are great and entertaining and there's plenty of fighting to go around that is worth a peek, especially the end fight with Ghidorah and Godzilla. It was pretty cool to see in IMAX as well, but I leave that up to you folks if it's worth it.

Kyo out.

[aion-rsa]

The Last Watch is the Night’s Watch on the Edge of Space

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In George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, the men of the Night’s Watch are known for “taking the black,” describing the night-dark garb they don when they pledge the remainder of their lifetimes to being posted on the Wall at the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms. Night gathers, and now my watch begins, is the start of their vow upon taking the black. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post.

Like the Night’s Watch, the Sentinels in J.S. Dewes’ The Last Watch take to the black—that is, they venture out to the very edges of space on essentially a one-way trip for what is a lifetime mission. Described as “The Expanse meets Game of Thrones,” Dewes’ debut shares a kindred spirit with ASOIAF, despite being set among the stars, in its focus on the former war heroes and criminals alike stationed at the Divide, the edge of the known universe, searching for any sign of their long-gone alien enemies. Despite their vast physical distance from the Core of the System Collective Legion, their duty is so integral to the Legion’s continued existence that even children know, through nursery rhymes, what are the stakes: Sentinel, Sentinel at the black, do not blink or turn your back / You must stand ready to stem the tide, lest Viators come to cross the Divide.

For all its thematic comparisons to a particular fantasy faction, The Last Watch occupies a science fiction subgenre that has long compelled readers: stories of everyday survival and occasional heroism set at the fringes of the known universe. Despite these series establishing in their worldbuilding the core of humanity’s (often prosperous) settlement in space, the heart of their stories take place on the outer edges, in which ordinary people, lacking the amenities and securities of their civilization’s core, must scrabble for survival. Consider The Expanse, in which Earth and Mars are warring superpowers but the dramatic thrust of the story occurs in Belter space, on a distant station, and aboard an unassuming ship called the Canterbury.

Hundreds of lightyears from the Legion’s Core, retired battleship Argus sits at the Divide, its loyal and unceasing position. For five years, former war hero Adequin Rake has overseen a crew with rather spotty service records, from soldiers who washed out of Legion command to petty criminals whose unusual skills are utilized in this unorthodox setting. Despite the ersatz military rankings keeping them in line, they resemble less The Expanse’s Martian Marines and have more in common with the scrappy Belters: self-sufficient and resourceful because more often than not they don’t get their requested upgrades from the Core; so far from the powers that be as to be nearly forgotten; and—most vitally—changed by their proximity to the time dilation that ripples along the Divide.

So, what makes these fringe space stories so compelling?

For one, it’s the allure of the frontier tale: adventures set at the known limits of the world, with protagonists who seek to engage the unknown for the potential of incredible discovery. The quintessential frontier in Western literature is the American West: romanticized as a wide-open land of opportunity for the settlers self-sufficient enough to explore it, and justified by the notion of manifest destiny. However, these themes have become so pervasive that the metaphorical frontier can easily be applied to science fiction and fantasy.

To wit: the Argus has its own chain of command that allows each new recruit, regardless of their background before stepping aboard, to work their way up through the system from entry-level oculus to highly-trusted optio. That system also makes room for Savants, hyper-intelligent human/Viator hybrids that embody the best of the enigmatic other species and provide much-needed insight into an alien culture. That said, the crew’s onboarding process is less of an idealistic oath and more a bunch of Legion legalese, plus a set of Viator-inspired Imprint tattoos to keep them humble: If anyone gets out of line, all Rake has to do is press a button, and they’re swiftly disciplined on a skin-deep level. However, the system does not explain why Rake, a hero of the last human/Viator war years prior, traded in her status as a Titan to command such a ragtag crew—nor why royal misfit and general shit-stirrer Cavalon Mercer shows up as her most unorthodox recruit yet.

Yet for all that the frontier setting presents a blank slate, it also challenges its protagonists to match the environment in its spareness. “In the emptiness of the frontier, we find characters reduced to their most basic selves,” Only Killers and Thieves author Paul Howarth writes for The Guardian, “the comforts and trappings of the modern world stripped away to leave them with startlingly elemental choices: death or survival; morality or corruption; love or hate.”

The military structure aboard the Argus actively supports such black-and-white thinking: loyalty or mutiny; honor or treason; survival or death. It also traps Rake and her crew in a toxic environment, as Dewes explains in a recent interview with The Mary Sue: “Though the Sentinels’ mistreatment is something that’s been simmering in the back of Adequin’s mind for years, her stagnancy at this far-flung post has stifled any potential progress in realizing it. She can’t see past the walls of her ship and across the 100 million light-year expanse back to reality and civilization, so she has no perspective through which to see how bad it is.”

Cavalon’s arrival explodes those binaries, as he provides some vital context for just how corrupt the Core has become—not to mention embodying another potential aspect of this subgenre’s appeal: the desire to engage with the problematic truths of manifest destiny, especially as it has translated to space exploration stories. The romanticism of the frontier myth often occludes the ugly truths of such expansionist storytelling, namely the theft and resettlement of lands already occupied by Native Americans, and the brutal genocide of these First Nations peoples. While it isn’t the central conflict, The Last Watch does contrast humanity’s antagonistic relationship with the Viators with the cultural exchange—technology, hybrids, and clones—that nevertheless occurs between these supposedly disparate civilizations. At the edge of space, there is no room for entitlement or ego.

And perhaps that’s the purest appeal of edge-of-space stories: the notion of one person facing down the infinite.

Martin was inspired to create ASOIAF’s Wall, and the Night’s Watch upon it, by visiting Hadrian’s Wall in the 1980s. Standing atop the historical site, he told John Hodgman in a 2011 interview, he tried to put himself in the mindset of a first-century Roman soldier staring out beyond the wall: “at the end of the known world staring at these distant hills and wondering what lived there and what might come out of it.” It’s easy to see how that inspired the core of the Night’s Watch oath, the sacrifice of individuality that each man makes on Westeros’ Wall: I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.

It’s a role that every watcher shares, yet there is a vast divide between the quotidian duty of serving yet another uneventful shift and the portentous moment of being the first set of eyes to behold something or someone otherworldly. In a blink, a man goes from cog in the machine to a vital piece of history.

The Last Watch subverts this thinking in two key ways. Instead of encroaching White Walkers, the Sentinels are meant to hold the Divide against the inhuman Viators, despite the fact that their advanced enemies haven’t posed a threat for centuries, excepting the recent decade-long Resurgence War that (as the war epics go) wiped out their remaining numbers. In the absence of returning Viators, the Sentinels stationed aboard the Argus instead grapple with the unique conundrum of confronting themselves. That is, ripples in time dilation from riding along the Divide that project their döppelgangers from a few moments in the future. These glimpses are usually inconsequential glitches that create self-fulfilling prophecies, but as the ripples become more frequent, they hint at branching paths, and signal one indisputable change in the universe as they know it: the Divide is collapsing.

What these edge-of-civilization stories share with frontier adventures is the escapist feeling that there is still world left to be discovered, that humanity has not mapped out its limits. Dewes clearly marks that limit, and then turns it on its watchers, with the otherworldly chasing them back to civilization. Only when the universe begins collapsing can Titans and princes be truly stripped down to their base selves: survivors… or simply ceasing to exist.

The Last Watch is available April 20 from Tor Books, and is available for pre-order now. Check out the full synopsis below…

The Expanse meets Game of Thrones in J. S. Dewes’s fast-paced, sci-fi adventure The Last Watch, where a handful of soldiers stand between humanity and annihilation.

The Divide.

It’s the edge of the universe.

Now it’s collapsing—and taking everyone and everything with it.

The only ones who can stop it are the Sentinels—the recruits, exiles, and court-martialed dregs of the military.

At the Divide, Adequin Rake commands the Argus. She has no resources, no comms—nothing, except for the soldiers that no one wanted. Her ace in the hole could be Cavalon Mercer—genius, asshole, and exiled prince who nuked his grandfather’s genetic facility for “reasons.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

She knows they’re humanity’s last chance.

The post The Last Watch is the Night’s Watch on the Edge of Space appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[markjsousa]

Why Venture Capitalists Dominate New Markets

The success of the Venture Capital (VC) industry is staggering. Despite financing just 1/6 of 1% of the new businesses in the United States, VCs back a full 60% of the companies that grow to the point of an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Year after year, VC returns exceed public market comparables – one study found that the average VC fund has outperformed publicly-traded stocks by 25%. Especially for new markets, the VC model is tremendous.

Why? We can boil the distinctness of the VC approach down to four major elements:

1. Blank Slate Strategy

Most large companies devote substantial resources to strategic planning, so it may seem odd to say that VCs succeed in part due to strategic clarity. The distinction is that corporate planning is typically focused on maximizing the potential of an existing business, and so it sees the world from the perspective of a company seeking to push more units of whatever the firm sells. The plan revolves around variables such as how much to invest in marketing and R&D and how aggressively to price. Frequently, the strategic plan is really a financial plan with a thin veneer of competitive analysis on top. There is little fresh thinking about industry change, nor about how an entrepreneur would approach the industry if he had a blank slate. As Clayton Christensen has chronicled very well, this is how companies end up in strategic dead-ends – Digital Equipment kept on making better and better mini-computers, but owners of PCs simply did not care.

A VC uses a totally different lens. He is constantly scanning the world for new markets that seem on the cusp of taking off. He develops a clear point of view about how these markets might evolve and what sort of bets might work out. Then, sometimes, he waits. As explained by David Aronoff of the leading early-stage investor Flybridge Ventures,

“We take the crocodile approach. We identify trends that we have a passion for, we find out enough about them, and then we lie in the relevant pools waiting for interesting things to float by, from entrepreneurs, academia or companies that have been bootstrapped.”

Other VCs will seek to run a strategic play again and again. Versant Ventures, a major healthcare VC firm, invests across a wide array of medical specialties and technologies. However it looks for some common features in its portfolio companies. As explained by Versant’s Charles Warden,

“We like to move the site of care, from an expensive and centralized setting to one that is more cost-effective and accessible. We also like to support less invasive technologies. These might sell at higher prices than more invasive alternatives, but the faster patient recovery time reduces the total cost of care. We also try to be first to market with a strong intellectual property position and an ability to generate more data about medical outcomes than any competitor. Sometimes we will follow if a technology is clearly superior to current options. We avoid the middle ground, where there are multiple players in a nascent market and we are trying to pick which technology will win.”

VCs succeed because they are strategic opportunists. They follow a strategy suited to the moment, not to yesteryear when an established company first entered a market. They focus resources on what has high growth potential today, not on sustaining businesses that may have already passed their peak. Because the canvas for VCs is so broad and open, they have to be very clear about what they are seeking. When the opportunity presents itself, the crocodile can then move lightening fast.

2. Portfolio Planning

Consider your retirement plan. It likely has a mix of assets – stocks and bonds, domestic and foreign holdings, and perhaps precious metals and real estate. In some years, conservative investments will do well. Other times are more favorable to riskier assets. While any particular holding might have a great or terrible year, over time total performance balances out.

Now consider the typical company’s portfolio of investments in new markets, when these investments exist. There may be a very small handful of ventures – not nearly enough to provide year-to-year stability. Because sallying into new markets is so distinct from most companies’ norms, approval for these investments may come all the way from Mount Olympus. The Gods in their plush offices decreed that they liked an idea. The C-suite does not deal in small figures, so plenty of money supports the few ventures approved. Failure would therefore be crushingly expensive – financially and for a few peoples’ careers – so the venture may play “small ball” – going for easy wins that may not be market-shaping moves. Or, if the going gets really bleak, the venture may try to double-down on its wagers by investing in a massive push to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Either way, many of the investments fail to meet expectations. They sputter forward, or they flame out.

In other words, the corporate portfolio lacks asset diversity. It owns a few Treasury bills and a cement factory in Uzbekistan. This is not really what the Gods wanted, but their lack of a portfolio plan allowed the peculiar calculus of company politics to create a mix of holdings that no right-minded investment advisor would dream of recommending.

A VC looks at the world in a completely different way. He knows that 6 out of 10 VC investments will be a total loss. Another 2 or 3 will pay back the investment but make little positive return. Hopefully, the remaining 1 or 2 will be huge wins. He can make this formula work by rigorously limiting amounts invested until companies prove their potential, spreading his wagers over several investment theses and ensuring that the inevitable failures are quick and inexpensive. He looks askance at portfolios where every investment works out. As the autoracing great Mario Andretti once said, “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

A portfolio plan provides courage to kill new ventures. For a large company, this can be terribly hard. Ending a venture sometimes means effectively terminating a career, so the natural tendency in most big firms is to struggle forward. With a portfolio plan, it is easier to kill 2 out of 5 investments if the plan allows for only 3 to move forward. The plan provides cover for people associated with the losing ventures, allowing them to save face by blaming the strictness of the process; it can make the career stakes less life-and-death.

Additionally, the plan allows for better budgeting of resources. Many new market programs start with backing multiple ideas. As the concepts grow to become real businesses, the needs increase for money and skilled staff. New projects also keep coming in; there is often no shortage of interesting ideas or their champions, and it is hard to deny support to potential internal allies of the new market program. So the firm tries to stretch its resources, leading to longer timelines for building the ventures. Ultimately the situation reaches a breaking point and many projects are cut all at once. Critical decisions get made very quickly about what stays and goes. A VC avoids this trap by knowing at the outset how many financial and human resources will likely be required at what time. He does not spread his resources too thinly, and he can provide appropriate support to ventures as they grow.

Few companies are more rigorous than Royal Dutch Shell. In a business where billions of dollars are invested on the basis of geological probabilities, Shell puts great emphasis on detailed analysis and minimizing its number of failed explorations. Yet in its Gamechanger program, which emulates VC practices, the company has a totally different approach. Gamechanger aims for 3-5 big wins per year. To get there, the program estimates it needs at least 200 ideas, with 50 active projects at any one time, of which 15% get to proof of concept. In some years just 35% of those are deployed. By expecting such a high rate of failure, Shell can pay appropriate attention to sourcing the requisite number of ideas while preserving resources for its most promising ventures.

3. Expectation Of Variabiity

For a well-established business, spreadsheets rule. The potential profitability of investments determines where the money flows. Because the company understands its business deeply, it can require managers to submit detailed budgets for coming years and hold them to their word.

New markets should be treated differently, but oftentimes they are not. When I was building a mobile commerce business in Africa, a very senior executive at our corporate parent – one of the continent’s largest cellphone networks – closely examined the two-year budget I had just passed to him. He leaned over his desk, looked me keenly in the eye, and said, “This is a contract. Do you understand?” Unfortunately I did, and I was terrified. We had just set up our systems, had no customers, and did not even have regulatory approval to operate. The revenue figures were a total guess. I had a rough idea of the total market size, but huge uncertainty about how quickly customers would sign on. One might think that a totally new industry in a place like Zambia would be given some leeway to find its path, but no. The company’s budgeting process needed my figures to create an overall revenue estimate for non-core businesses. The consequence was that my wild speculations were placed on an equal footing with rock-solid estimates from well-known holdings that the company had owned for years.

Now listen to how a VC approaches this task. David Aronoff at Flybridge Ventures explains,

“The VC approach to financials for new start-ups has nothing to do with what I learned in business school. I want to ensure that expected expenses are reasonable, and we do some sensitivity analysis around that. This tells us how much money we need to raise. We look at the business plan’s revenue picture, and then we throw it out the window. This is at best a dream.”

The VC method reflects how an asset manager would evaluate high-risk holdings. He has a plan for how much will be allocated to these assets every year, and a targeted rate of return on those investments. However he knows that any one investment will likely deviate significantly from that target. The secret is to have enough investments so that the variability is neutralized.

Because a VC does not budget based on fictional revenues but instead focuses on real costs, he does not over-fund ventures. He asks how much is needed to finance the company until its next funding round, which is typically associated with a major milestone in the firm’s development such as its first customer. This approach concentrates the company on that milestone, avoiding distraction from the countless other things that the company will eventually need to do but matter little in terms of reaching that immediate goal. The VC thereby keeps his investments manageably small, which enables him to spread his bets.

4. Sequencing Risks

The VC not only sets focused goals for reaching the next milestone but also ties those criteria to the most important risks facing the venture. He is not looking to build an institution for the ages – there will be time later for that. At the moment, he wants to know that the institution is worth building.

For instance, if a company is trying to sell something online the VC may not look for the firm to build a sophisticated IT and order fulfillment system. In the near-term that can be borrowed from another company, or some manual processing can handle the few sales the venture will chalk up in its early days. While the company will eventually need such a system, there is little doubt that it can be created. A much bigger risk is whether customers actually want to buy whatever the company is selling.

For all their sometimes cumbersome bureaucracy, established firms can lack patience. Even if a company’s senior leadership expects its new market ventures to iterate their way toward success, the managers of those businesses may feel differently. They are frequently high-potential staff in the company on a brief stop-over in the venture to build their credentials. They do not have years to show results. Because they are A-list players seeking an unbroken string of successes in their careers, they push to build the business fast. Oftentimes they will be in another position before the potential flaws in this strategy become apparent, and it will be easy to escape blame. By contrast, a venture fund typically has a ten-year duration, and VCs receive much of their compensation on the back-end of that timeframe as investment returns become clear. They have few political incentives to game the system by tackling too much too soon.

The Blake Project Can Help You Expand To New Markets. Take The First Step With Us.

Build A Human Centric Brand At Marketing’s Most Powerful Event: The Un-Conference: 360 Degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World, May 14-16, 2018 in San Diego, California. A fun, competitive-learning experience reserved for 50 marketing oriented leaders and professionals.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

[joejstrickl]

Why Venture Capitalists Dominate New Markets

The success of the Venture Capital (VC) industry is staggering. Despite financing just 1/6 of 1% of the new businesses in the United States, VCs back a full 60% of the companies that grow to the point of an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Year after year, VC returns exceed public market comparables – one study found that the average VC fund has outperformed publicly-traded stocks by 25%. Especially for new markets, the VC model is tremendous.

Why? We can boil the distinctness of the VC approach down to four major elements:

1. Blank Slate Strategy

Most large companies devote substantial resources to strategic planning, so it may seem odd to say that VCs succeed in part due to strategic clarity. The distinction is that corporate planning is typically focused on maximizing the potential of an existing business, and so it sees the world from the perspective of a company seeking to push more units of whatever the firm sells. The plan revolves around variables such as how much to invest in marketing and R&D and how aggressively to price. Frequently, the strategic plan is really a financial plan with a thin veneer of competitive analysis on top. There is little fresh thinking about industry change, nor about how an entrepreneur would approach the industry if he had a blank slate. As Clayton Christensen has chronicled very well, this is how companies end up in strategic dead-ends – Digital Equipment kept on making better and better mini-computers, but owners of PCs simply did not care.

A VC uses a totally different lens. He is constantly scanning the world for new markets that seem on the cusp of taking off. He develops a clear point of view about how these markets might evolve and what sort of bets might work out. Then, sometimes, he waits. As explained by David Aronoff of the leading early-stage investor Flybridge Ventures,

“We take the crocodile approach. We identify trends that we have a passion for, we find out enough about them, and then we lie in the relevant pools waiting for interesting things to float by, from entrepreneurs, academia or companies that have been bootstrapped.”

Other VCs will seek to run a strategic play again and again. Versant Ventures, a major healthcare VC firm, invests across a wide array of medical specialties and technologies. However it looks for some common features in its portfolio companies. As explained by Versant’s Charles Warden,

“We like to move the site of care, from an expensive and centralized setting to one that is more cost-effective and accessible. We also like to support less invasive technologies. These might sell at higher prices than more invasive alternatives, but the faster patient recovery time reduces the total cost of care. We also try to be first to market with a strong intellectual property position and an ability to generate more data about medical outcomes than any competitor. Sometimes we will follow if a technology is clearly superior to current options. We avoid the middle ground, where there are multiple players in a nascent market and we are trying to pick which technology will win.”

VCs succeed because they are strategic opportunists. They follow a strategy suited to the moment, not to yesteryear when an established company first entered a market. They focus resources on what has high growth potential today, not on sustaining businesses that may have already passed their peak. Because the canvas for VCs is so broad and open, they have to be very clear about what they are seeking. When the opportunity presents itself, the crocodile can then move lightening fast.

2. Portfolio Planning

Consider your retirement plan. It likely has a mix of assets – stocks and bonds, domestic and foreign holdings, and perhaps precious metals and real estate. In some years, conservative investments will do well. Other times are more favorable to riskier assets. While any particular holding might have a great or terrible year, over time total performance balances out.

Now consider the typical company’s portfolio of investments in new markets, when these investments exist. There may be a very small handful of ventures – not nearly enough to provide year-to-year stability. Because sallying into new markets is so distinct from most companies’ norms, approval for these investments may come all the way from Mount Olympus. The Gods in their plush offices decreed that they liked an idea. The C-suite does not deal in small figures, so plenty of money supports the few ventures approved. Failure would therefore be crushingly expensive – financially and for a few peoples’ careers – so the venture may play “small ball” – going for easy wins that may not be market-shaping moves. Or, if the going gets really bleak, the venture may try to double-down on its wagers by investing in a massive push to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Either way, many of the investments fail to meet expectations. They sputter forward, or they flame out.

In other words, the corporate portfolio lacks asset diversity. It owns a few Treasury bills and a cement factory in Uzbekistan. This is not really what the Gods wanted, but their lack of a portfolio plan allowed the peculiar calculus of company politics to create a mix of holdings that no right-minded investment advisor would dream of recommending.

A VC looks at the world in a completely different way. He knows that 6 out of 10 VC investments will be a total loss. Another 2 or 3 will pay back the investment but make little positive return. Hopefully, the remaining 1 or 2 will be huge wins. He can make this formula work by rigorously limiting amounts invested until companies prove their potential, spreading his wagers over several investment theses and ensuring that the inevitable failures are quick and inexpensive. He looks askance at portfolios where every investment works out. As the autoracing great Mario Andretti once said, “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

A portfolio plan provides courage to kill new ventures. For a large company, this can be terribly hard. Ending a venture sometimes means effectively terminating a career, so the natural tendency in most big firms is to struggle forward. With a portfolio plan, it is easier to kill 2 out of 5 investments if the plan allows for only 3 to move forward. The plan provides cover for people associated with the losing ventures, allowing them to save face by blaming the strictness of the process; it can make the career stakes less life-and-death.

Additionally, the plan allows for better budgeting of resources. Many new market programs start with backing multiple ideas. As the concepts grow to become real businesses, the needs increase for money and skilled staff. New projects also keep coming in; there is often no shortage of interesting ideas or their champions, and it is hard to deny support to potential internal allies of the new market program. So the firm tries to stretch its resources, leading to longer timelines for building the ventures. Ultimately the situation reaches a breaking point and many projects are cut all at once. Critical decisions get made very quickly about what stays and goes. A VC avoids this trap by knowing at the outset how many financial and human resources will likely be required at what time. He does not spread his resources too thinly, and he can provide appropriate support to ventures as they grow.

Few companies are more rigorous than Royal Dutch Shell. In a business where billions of dollars are invested on the basis of geological probabilities, Shell puts great emphasis on detailed analysis and minimizing its number of failed explorations. Yet in its Gamechanger program, which emulates VC practices, the company has a totally different approach. Gamechanger aims for 3-5 big wins per year. To get there, the program estimates it needs at least 200 ideas, with 50 active projects at any one time, of which 15% get to proof of concept. In some years just 35% of those are deployed. By expecting such a high rate of failure, Shell can pay appropriate attention to sourcing the requisite number of ideas while preserving resources for its most promising ventures.

3. Expectation Of Variabiity

For a well-established business, spreadsheets rule. The potential profitability of investments determines where the money flows. Because the company understands its business deeply, it can require managers to submit detailed budgets for coming years and hold them to their word.

New markets should be treated differently, but oftentimes they are not. When I was building a mobile commerce business in Africa, a very senior executive at our corporate parent – one of the continent’s largest cellphone networks – closely examined the two-year budget I had just passed to him. He leaned over his desk, looked me keenly in the eye, and said, “This is a contract. Do you understand?” Unfortunately I did, and I was terrified. We had just set up our systems, had no customers, and did not even have regulatory approval to operate. The revenue figures were a total guess. I had a rough idea of the total market size, but huge uncertainty about how quickly customers would sign on. One might think that a totally new industry in a place like Zambia would be given some leeway to find its path, but no. The company’s budgeting process needed my figures to create an overall revenue estimate for non-core businesses. The consequence was that my wild speculations were placed on an equal footing with rock-solid estimates from well-known holdings that the company had owned for years.

Now listen to how a VC approaches this task. David Aronoff at Flybridge Ventures explains,

“The VC approach to financials for new start-ups has nothing to do with what I learned in business school. I want to ensure that expected expenses are reasonable, and we do some sensitivity analysis around that. This tells us how much money we need to raise. We look at the business plan’s revenue picture, and then we throw it out the window. This is at best a dream.”

The VC method reflects how an asset manager would evaluate high-risk holdings. He has a plan for how much will be allocated to these assets every year, and a targeted rate of return on those investments. However he knows that any one investment will likely deviate significantly from that target. The secret is to have enough investments so that the variability is neutralized.

Because a VC does not budget based on fictional revenues but instead focuses on real costs, he does not over-fund ventures. He asks how much is needed to finance the company until its next funding round, which is typically associated with a major milestone in the firm’s development such as its first customer. This approach concentrates the company on that milestone, avoiding distraction from the countless other things that the company will eventually need to do but matter little in terms of reaching that immediate goal. The VC thereby keeps his investments manageably small, which enables him to spread his bets.

4. Sequencing Risks

The VC not only sets focused goals for reaching the next milestone but also ties those criteria to the most important risks facing the venture. He is not looking to build an institution for the ages – there will be time later for that. At the moment, he wants to know that the institution is worth building.

For instance, if a company is trying to sell something online the VC may not look for the firm to build a sophisticated IT and order fulfillment system. In the near-term that can be borrowed from another company, or some manual processing can handle the few sales the venture will chalk up in its early days. While the company will eventually need such a system, there is little doubt that it can be created. A much bigger risk is whether customers actually want to buy whatever the company is selling.

For all their sometimes cumbersome bureaucracy, established firms can lack patience. Even if a company’s senior leadership expects its new market ventures to iterate their way toward success, the managers of those businesses may feel differently. They are frequently high-potential staff in the company on a brief stop-over in the venture to build their credentials. They do not have years to show results. Because they are A-list players seeking an unbroken string of successes in their careers, they push to build the business fast. Oftentimes they will be in another position before the potential flaws in this strategy become apparent, and it will be easy to escape blame. By contrast, a venture fund typically has a ten-year duration, and VCs receive much of their compensation on the back-end of that timeframe as investment returns become clear. They have few political incentives to game the system by tackling too much too soon.

The Blake Project Can Help You Expand To New Markets. Take The First Step With Us.

Build A Human Centric Brand At Marketing’s Most Powerful Event: The Un-Conference: 360 Degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World, May 14-16, 2018 in San Diego, California. A fun, competitive-learning experience reserved for 50 marketing oriented leaders and professionals.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

[douchebagbrainwaves]

AND SO HAVING A NOTION OF GOOD ART, THERE'S ALSO SUCH A THING

And since I know from my own experience that the rule against buying stock from founders is a stupid one, this is good news indeed. And while governments might be able to do better. As a result, of the forces underlying open source and blogging both work bottom-up programming.1 One is that you can use, if the economy continues to get worse, but so far there is zero slackening of interest among potential founders that startups were over, and that we had it easy. Some, slightly, but if we knew how we would have really liked to add to HTML and HTTP.2 The problem is that the cycle is slow. But while energetic government intervention may be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool. Nor am I defending the current patent system. Unfortunately after reading it they decided it was too late.3 And they turned him down.4

Instead of starting each quarter with a blank slate, you have to fix it in an ugly way, or make a lot of new software, because writing applications for them seemed an attainable goal to larval startups.5 I've detected this investors aren't worth the trouble vibe from several YC founders I've talked to recently. The economy of medieval Europe was divided up into little cells is terribly inefficient. You don't get a patent for nothing. It has an English cousin, travail, and what it means to be a place to work. Since most startups are in competitive businesses, you can write substantial chunks this way.6 Work still seemed to require discipline, because only hard problems yielded grand results, and hard problems couldn't literally be fun.7 We do advise the companies we fund to apply for patents, but they sounded like they were talking about the taste of apples, I'd agree that taste is merely personal preference is that, if not beyond the bounds of possibility, is beyond the scope of this article.

This is a good plan, because the people offering expensive solutions can spend more to sell them. So the more confident you are, the less likely they are to belong to a group.8 Now I see there's more to it than that. If so, that's evidence of how new this kind of bug is the hardest to find, and also common for VCs to meet you when they have options.9 When a company starts fighting over IP, it's a bug.10 They build Writely. Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. I assume they could have vetoed such a deal. Let's start by talking about the taste of apples, I'd agree that taste is merely personal preference is that, like angels, they have to be doing something you not only that delay in implementing it, but I personally have timed out. Advanced users are more forgiving about bugs, especially since you probably introduced them in the course of adding some feature they were asking for.

I hadn't read the books we were assigned carefully enough. It matters more to make something great and put it online right away. In fact, I know it must be, if so few do. This doesn't mean you get to work on. At the other extreme are places like Idealab, which generates ideas for new startups internally and hires people to work for them. Like the managers of mutual funds or hedge funds, VCs get paid a percentage of the gains. If so then we can put some faith in it; ITA's software includes a lot of their own inner compass by establishing the principle that the most noble sort of theoretical knowledge had to be a novelist? This singularity is even more singular in having its own defense built in. I think it's cleaner if you openly charge subscription fees, instead of what he did.11

Notes

These range from make-believe, and there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. When a lot heavier. The expensive part of the world will sooner or later.

Unfortunately these times are a handful of VCs who are good presenters, but if you don't get any money till all the red counties. Actually Emerson never mentioned mousetraps specifically.

Finally she said Ah!

Usually people skirt that issue with some axe the audience at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, they sometimes say.

If you want to believe that was basically useless, but also very informative essay about it. Which is also to the frightening lies told to play the game according to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in virtue of Aristotle's contribution? There are titles between associate and partner, which have varied dramatically. Here is the kind of power will start to get endless grief for classifying religion as a monitor.

Sparse Binary Polynomial Hash Message Filtering and The CRM114 Discriminator. But while it is because their company for more of the more subtle ways in which case immediate problem solved, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York.

So if all bugs are found quickly. Is this unfair? The quality of production. Because you could try telling him it's XML.

Bankers continued to live.

The examples in this essay.

The New Industrial State to trying to sell or not to do sales yourself initially. But startups are competitive like running, not you. Few can have benevolent motives for being driven by a sense of being interrupted deters hackers from starting hard projects. A rounds from top VC funds whether it was not in the 1920s.

SpamCop—. This is why we can't believe anyone would think Y Combinator only got 38 cents on the one the Valley itself, and when given the freedom to experiment in disastrous ways, but since it was raise after Demo Day.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Ambitions and Limitations of Civic Engagement in the Museum

Installation view of “Philadelphia Assembled” (courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art)

PHILADELPHIA — Unless you were born without a heart, Philadelphia Assembled, an exhibition on civic engagement initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will very likely provoke tears. The first time I felt a swell of emotion was when I heard the distinct sound of Nina Simone’s voice emanating from one of the rooms in the exhibit. She was singing the phrase, “between the garbage and the flowers,” from her cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.”

By this point, I’d spent about forty-five minutes in a room devoted to Jeffrey Stockbridge’s Kensington Blues, a series of photographs taken in the area around Kensington Avenue, in North Philadelphia, which was once a strong working class community and national leader of the textile industry. For many residents of the city, Kensington Avenue is now synonymous with vice, a place where heroin, crack, and Xanax are sold in the open. Rather than simply mirroring the stereotypes of drug addiction and prostitution, Stockbridge urges the viewer to see into the lives of people who are suffering.

On one gallery wall, three long rows of portrait photos are interspersed with photos of abandoned lots and the shadowy world under the Market-Frankford line, also known as the El. In one portrait, a shirtless man in his thirties has the tanned outline of a tank top, accentuating the paleness of his skin. Tattooed around his neck and down his chest is an elaborate cross necklace. A hypodermic needle sits tucked into his elastic waistband, and track marks line his forearms. He seems to be posturing, but there’s nothing romantic in his gaze.

Interviews conducted by Stockbridge with his subjects play from headphones at both ends of the rows of photos. Many of Stockbridge’s participants are startlingly candid about their lives. One woman said she had returned to prostitution after raising her three children and the death of her most recent long-term partner, because she didn’t want shift work. She wanted control over her schedule, even at the risk of pain. These recordings also pick up the routine sounds of the street: the rumble of the El, cars honking, stray riffs of music, and the din of passing voices.

Installation view of a grid of images by Jeffrey Stockbridge (courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Across the room from Stockbridge’s work are two geodesic domes built by Traction Company, an artist collective based in West Philadelphia, modeled on wats, the style of Buddhist temple found in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Philadelphia, since the 1970s, has been a destination for Southeast Asian refugees, and to this day defends its status as a Sanctuary City.

As a response to increased pressure from the Trump administration to undermine sanctuary cities, Traction built “Toward Sanctuary” (2017), which measures 30 feet in diameter. The collective’s intention was to create “a forum to discuss, ideate, dream, and collectively imagine sanctuary in Philadelphia.” (Just recently, ICE agents came to the city and removed 107 immigrants, the largest number in a ten city sweep.) The juxtaposition of Stockbridge’s photographs and interviews with Traction’s geodesic domes drives home the idea that without humane intervention, refugees are almost guaranteed a painful life and demise.

Within the smaller of the domes is a table and stool, along with slips of paper and an invitation to Lao visitors to write about which state they moved to first, what they remember about their first day of school, as well as whether or not they’d ever been sent to prison camp. Although the responses are ensconced in a box on the table, the questions should give visitors pause to reflect on their own life experiences.

The movement of people and taking of land are perhaps the most consistent themes in Philadelphia Assembled, which is predicated on five principles: Reconstructions; Sovereignty; Sanctuary; Futures; and Movement. A detailed, three-section timeline near the visitor’s desk chronicles the history of migration and colonialism, as well as progressive movements devoted to the advancement of people of color. Admirably, this timeline isn’t soft on who did what to whom. It plainly states, for instance, that colonists took land from the Lenni Lenape, the Native American tribe then inhabiting the area of present-day Philadelphia.

The timeline is filled with many useful pieces of information, such as the fact that around the year 1300 there was a population of 80,000 people living in the Mississippian city of Cahokia, located in present day southern Illinois. There are so many details on the chronology that it’s easy to miss this one. But its inclusion renders null and void the notion that North America was a blank slate waiting to be filled with Europeans.

Like most large museum shows, Philadelphia Assembled aims to educate, enrich, and inspire, but it is also designed to agitate its viewers in order to organize them towards improved communal ends.

Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” lays out the principles of non-violent campaigns, when he writes, “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.” Philadelphia Assembled offers a collection of the facts. These facts are meant to create a sense of tension within the minds of the exhibition’s visitors— people who most likely have the luxury to visit the institution in the first place. This exhibition differentiates itself by not putting pleasure as its end goal, risking the discomfort of the PMA’s guests.

Later, King writes, “…Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal[.]” Philadelphia Assembled strives towards this goal, but ultimately its location in the Perelman Building limits its scope and power.

The middle room of the exhibition challenges the visitor to consider the legacy of excessive incarceration rates, as well as notions of home and financial security. A map of Pennsylvania fills one large wall; its only landmarks are prisons, with the number of inmates from Philadelphia and distance in miles to these facilities from the city listed below each prison’s name. An accompanying series of Polaroid portraits of inmates provides information on how long they’ve been imprisoned — an overwhelming number of middle-aged adults in these images have been incarcerated since their late teens. These portraits are part of a project sponsored by Reconstruction Inc.’s Fight for Lifers program, which aims to abolish life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Close up of “Fight for Lifers Portraits” (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Abutting the map of Pennsylvania are dozens of signs typical of rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods: “We Buy Houses $CASH$,” “Sell Your House In 9 Days,” as well as some with a more personal touch, for example, “ANNA BUYS HOUSES.” The wall of signs makes a surprisingly powerful statement about the nature of capitalism and inequality. The offers prey upon those who are financially disadvantaged and are looking for a way out, while buyers with financial means can flip the homes for double, triple, or even quadruple the price.

The exhibition’s third room focuses on self-determination and unity. One of the most powerful expressions of these ideas occurs with the exhibits on black-owned businesses, such as Freedom Paper Company LLC, which manufactures personal paper products, as well as the company African Black Soap. As Freedom Paper points out on their website, toilet paper is “something we all need and we all use.” Their business model hinges on empowering the black community.

There is also a small exhibit on the Mariposa Food Co-op, which started as a buying club in 1971. Cooperatively owned grocery stores help to build and generate wealth within the community, as well as stave off the threat of a “food desert,” a condition the USDA defines as any area lacking in fresh fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods, as a result of chain grocery stores abandoning those communities.

The ambition of Philadelphia Assembled — “to collectively imagine our futures” — is truly astounding. For the PMA to support a show that encourages visitors “to rise from the bondage of myths and half truths” and to initiate collective action reminded me that this crucial work is never done. Collective action has always been necessary; the current administration has only accentuated the need for it.

Close up of “Kensington Blues” (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

As much as I want to praise the PMA for Philadelphia Assembled, it also occurs to me that locating this exhibition in the Perelman building, which is separated by two large roads from the main building, relegates the show to the margins. What type of visitor will go to the Perelman for Philadelphia Assembled? I’ll put my money on those who are already inclined towards socially engaged art. For Philadelphia Assembled to have greater resonance, to challenge spectators in productive ways, it should be located in the PMA’s main building. The PMA should have reached beyond its own perceived limitations as a cultural institution and provided the organizers with a larger public platform on which to promote collective action.

Philadelphia Assembled continues at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Perelman Building, 2525 Pennsylvania Ave, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) through December 10.

The post Ambitions and Limitations of Civic Engagement in the Museum appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[sweetandunholy]

YA novels are composed by many different aspects and formulas that make them the genre that they are, young protagonists, complex (and often pointless) love subplots or triangles, dystopian type societies… And one component that I very often see and very much throughoutfully despise: First person switching Point of Views.

If you didn’t skip your middle school literature classes, you surely are aware of what a narrator is: The voice who tells the story and the determinant of the point of view. If the narrator is a full participant in the story’s action, the narrative is said to be in the first person. A story told by a narrator who is not a character in the story is a third-person narrative.

But narrators do so much more than just telling your story, as the type of narrator you use can do so much more for you. YA novels tend to focus on the likability of their main characters (often turning their protagonists into Mary Sues, sigh) while doing the least amount of work possible and thus it has become a very common occurrence for these types of authors to choose first person narratives because of several advantages they always wish to exploit: ➜The spoon feeding of your main/secondary character’s ambitions, thoughts and motivations through letting them explore their thoughts.

➜The cheap shot at immersion with your readers by allowing them a generic character. Because of how hard it is for main characters to describe themselves without sounding like they’re roleplaying on Omegle (F, 20, brown hair and green eyes) most authors avoid giving characters a clear description of themselves and more of a blank slate personality that’s described through other characters (“But MC! You love going to the movies with us ! Are you really going to pass on hanging out to help rescue animals instead?”)

An overplayed phenomenon in romance oriented YA is this precise blank slate main character who attracts the handsome, new bad boy in school and he finds himself unnaturally drawn to her. This is nothing but lazy play for uncaring readers— Your reader projects onto the main character and swoons as her love interest is here to sweep her off her feet and thus become too busy fangirling over how sexy the love interest is and how much you root for him. (Bonus points if you thought of any novel that wasn’t Twilight, because I could easy list a few many, many more)

It’s cheap, its lazy and its such an over used YA trope.

➜The bias of first person narrators, as the stories are filtered through their brains and emotions. Thus, making it easier to be able to quickly flag characters as “Good guys” and “Bad guys” without having to spend any time developing them as to us to figure it out by ourselves.

➜The unbelievable ease by which first person narrators are able to dump exposition on you without having to resort to the intelligent pacing and logical cohesion of explaining the world as events unfold and make it properly that third person forces you to do.

➜If the novel is thoughtful or intelligent enough to include some good mysteries or complicated plot twists, a character’s musings are a simply way to spell out what’s going on and move on without allowing the reader to discover it for themselves.

Now at this point, I have only spent some time describing why I think a first person narrator is lazy— Not even mentioning the more obvious disadvantages like self-indulgent novels can become within the narrator’s emotions by overreaction and making everything about themselves, the limiting POV by not being able to create action where the character isn’t present, making perspective and perception on the bigger picture almost impossible, the lack of focus and inability to work on secondary subplots as you’re only focused on one story thread, the unreliability of the narrator because of the bias of its brain (which in cases this can be worked wonderfully into a novel, but this is what I call a literary device for non-lazy authors) and the extra time needed to be spent figuring out the narrators voice without being out of character: Alas, a “creative” mind like Tahereh Mafi’s Juliette using heavily complex and scientific terms in her descriptions. Then again, just like Mafi, many YA authors don’t care for this later point and tend to ignore it all together.

But notice how I mention the “limits” of what a first person narration can do to your novel, and backtrack on the immediate thought that’s plaguing your head: “But Hime ! That has a very easy solution !” And it does ! It’s precisely the object of this essay this fine morning: Multiple Person POVs.

If you haven’t clued in into what they are just yet, allow me to explain. Multiple Person first person POVs is a phenomenon that occurs when you narrate a tale in first person, and then switch up the character narrating most commonly when entering a different chapter i.e. Maria narrating chapter one, and Pancho chapter two and Pedrito chapter three and switch back, back and forth. Surely, this phenomenon solves many of my aforementioned problems like: The limiting view of only one person’s bias now extended to multiple, the new found ability to throw some focus and spotlight into other character arcs and subplots and the convenience to narrate situations that are going on outside the main character’s perspective.

If you are doing this, let me tell you one hard truth: Your novel most likely reads like fanfiction.

Those who have spent their years in Wattpad surely understand what I’m saying. There isn’t anything more distracting than beginning a novel and first thing reading the character’s name on top of your page. It is very, very off putting.

It’s lazy, and when not developed properly, really brings out the amateur in a writer. You might think that many readers of YA don’t mind this, and that is the cold hard truth, but there are many other writers and readers out here that still value writing as an art form and not as a self indulgent check-list of how to get a best seller. Put effort into what you do. 

Dual POVs are the most common occurrence of this phenomenon, and usually indicate a clear romance between both parties. This is by far the easiest and the laziest because it avoids having to go through the trouble of really giving each of your main characters a voice: One is a boy, and one is a girl. They do boy girl things until they encounter each other and then think about each other when they are apart. Fun.

Problem arises when the same lazy author I’m describing attempts to add a third or more POVs into the story and everything goes down into a shit show. If you’re not taking the time to give your character voices, then you will most likely turn your lazy cop out into an unpleasant read. Characters will become nothing but names blending into each other you will force your readers to have to constantly remember to tell them apart (A big problem I encountered with The Thousandth Floor but still gets half a pass because the story sort of premised revolving around these five characters- It was just done very, very incorrectly).

Narratives who do this tend to become very convoluted between every minor character and major character that they book switches to. Authors tend to forget the main point they were trying to make and get derailed between the myriads of new character thoughts, and motivations, and glances into their brains that are simply not needed in the story. You’re spending less and less time with the main characters that the reader came in for in the first place. In fact, the biggest pitfall that authors using this system fall with is very simple:

The simple possibility of ending up with readers liking one POV dramatically more than they like the other. Imbalance occurs between POV characters who are given equal amounts of time on the page and the experience becomes tedious and unpleasant.

Most authors who do this switch and jump between characters only to make sure they cover every piece of action away from the main character and I am tired to say this, but it is simply a cheap cop out that doesn’t push the writer to find a creative way to present all the information it wishes to convey through their book.

So enough complaining, what would you do?

Third person is my go to answer. It doesn’t mean my personal stories are all written in third person, but allow me to explain why I would always recommend going for this style.

It forces you to be creative.

Not only that, but you can very well achieve the same advantages from a first person perspective with a third person perspective, along with several other advantages.

Most writers choose to include elements of first-person points of view by mentioning character thoughts and feelings without using ‘he thought’ or ‘she felt’ next to italicized text. This allows for more intimacy whilst maintaining different perspectives and helps break down the distance between the narrator and the characters. In fact, through the third person can still think, feel and experience, but so can other characters.

I believe writing is all about the subtleties, about showing and not telling and third person can work wonders for multiple POVs without even feeling like a multiple POV. Here’s some examples on novels who did it right and novels who did it wrong and why

Novels who did it right:

The Raven Cycle Series by Maggie Stiefvater The Raven Cycle series tells the story of 5 boys looking for sleeping King in the magical, rural Henrietta. Each chapter opens on a third person limited view focused on a different character. Each book discretely changes main character focus by giving one of the 5 characters more screentime than the others. This is barely noticeable, making it a very subtle and pleasant change. Nevertheless of a great plot, the story is also very character heavy and fully immersive. I perfectly know each and every one of these complex and intricate characters, I’m familiar with their voices and characters and switching their focus to each other was pleasant and almost unnoticeable ! … All achieved through the third person.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Carry On is a multiple first person POV novel that just did it right. The novel doesn’t take itself too seriously in its plot and its mostly character driven. This story in fact depends on it constantly switching out narrators for us to really understand what was going on in characters heads as that was the important part of the novel, not what was going on outside of them and in the plot. As the plot was their feelings, their emotions, their thoughts… A really amazing read that almost didn’t bother me with the constant narrator switch (as I really couldn’t bring myself to care for the bits with the Mage, Nico or Ebb, all minor characters that resulted distracting to me).

Novels who did it wrong:

  Pure by Julianna Baggott

Is also an ever jumping first person multiple POV novel that constantly distracts itself by distancing itself from the main two characters and showing distracting, minor characters POV.

It also suffers from another of the aforementioned problems where for a good 100 pages of the book, one of the main characters is completely insufferable and his chapters result bland and heavier to get through.

  The Thousandth Floor by Katherine McGee

Because this book is all about a web of character driven drama, the first person multiple pov approach to it should be making sense. But it is the lazy and effortless way its written that makes this bad, for the characters lack voices of their own or any sort of distinguishing features other than their names. It makes the reading tedious and just hard and complicated to keep up with who is who. It’s like having homework on a Friday.

  Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth

The book is completely incoherent— It is a duality that begins as a third person POV when following Akos, but turns into a into a first person POV when following Cyra, the second main character. It is distracting, frustrating and beats any sort of advantage from using third person or first person as a narrator.

Akos is a blank slate and to make it even worse, his story is told through third person as if we weren’t emotionally disconnected enough as it is because the author refused to convey his feelings and character through action.

So ! What do you think? Are there any other books you’d consider did the third-multiple person POV right? Or more rants about who did it wrong and resulted distracting? I’d love to get more thoughts and examples !

Taking a moment to rant about the laziness I've seen in writing YA narrators & how to fix it.. YA novels are composed by many different aspects and formulas that make them the genre that they are, young protagonists, complex (and often pointless) love subplots or triangles, dystopian type societies...