#sidebar this is such a cool thing to think about because you could go with what I've been doing

[turtlecleric]

I'll have you know your little rise by daylight au blurb already has me writing and I feel this is gonna be a TASTY one

- 🎭

Writing, you say? 👀

[anim-ttrpgs]

Question about deathbed: i havent seen much about it yet but what ive seen doesnt make it sound very...fun to be alive in that world and that its like influenced by practices of the christian church during the middle ages and stuff like that, so im wondering how that would affect being able to even really play a woman being badass in that game?

Is it basically hardmode difficulty if you wanna play a woman?

I have two answers to this.

First is that in Death Bed, a woman can be badass. I’ll demonstrate by making Herr Rike, an old literary and AD&D character of mine, in Death Bed. @thepleasuregoblin @ashweather and @umbraldame can attest that she is just about the most believably badass person there is. (Despite the title of “Herr,” she is a woman and always has been. Well she’s female, technically she isn’t human and in her setting “woman” is a human-specific term while other sapient species have their own terms for genders but you get the point.)

(art by @chaospyromancy)

I’m not gonna go through this very granularly because in Death Bed most stats are rolled, start out very low, and then are upgraded one at a time by level-ups. But over the course of building her stats up to where they should be to represent her I would focus on Agility, Scripture, Dexterity, Vigor, Strength, Endurance, Arcane, and Attunement from highest to lowest in that order.

For Traits, I would get her

(this is a men-only Trait, and also one I will probably nerf before final release, but a female character can still take it, at a price.)

(she isn't actually humble, but the effect of this Trait fits her personality.)

(note the sidebars in this one)

(in no particular order)

I might also consider giving her Gentleman (Men only.) but at the moment in the game’s unfinished state that Trait has an unclear interaction with Lady.

Yes, she does have both men-only and women-only Traits, that’s allowed, it just reduces her Social Status. I rolled it and at the end of all those Traits she still has a Social Status of 27, which is fairly high.

Social Status is a stat representing how respectable the character is by the standards of 1400s society. It determines who gets to talk down to and degrade who. What the higher Social Status character says goes, and if this pecking order is challenged, that tends to distress people.

Characters who have Traits which fall outside their perceived gender suffer a debuff to Social Status, because that’s just how it was back then. Hell, that’s how it is today.

So she could kill monsters and shit with a sword just fine, the worst she would get is maybe the occasional weird look, especially since, in the Middle Ages, it was irregular but not strictly forbidden for women to practice martial arts. The super strict sex-segregation of martial arts was way more of a Renaissance and onward thing.

Now for the second answer.

A lot of what our cultural idea of what is “cool” and “badass” is extremely masculine-favoring. And while yes, swords and armor and violence are cool and badass, (I’m not immune to thinking that the things knights do is cooler than the things their wives do.) a lot of “feminist” or “egalitarian” or otherwise “pro-women” media that is historically set ends up having the message “This woman is badass and cool because she’s.. like a man, unlike those other lameass women who are like women.”

It ends up being the medieval version of that action movie trope that goes like

Male Lead: (pleasantly surprised) “You know how to fight and be badass?”

Female Lead: *racks shotgun* “I grew up with 7 brothers and so I had to learn how to play rough and played army instead of Barbie dolls and I didn’t have a mother and my ex-special-forces dad taught me how to fight starting at a young age. All that masculinity helped me grow up to be cool and tough woman instead of a boring helpless stupid woman.”

instead of, like, celebrating the other 99% of women in that time period who just did woman stuff.

Death Bed allows you to make a character that is a woman but effectively fills the social roles of a man such as killing stuff with a sword*(which is something just about every other TTRPG on the planet also allows), and it allows you to make a character that is a woman and fills all the more normal social roles of a woman while still being a very valuable asset to the party both in and out of combat (and Death Bed has a lot of “out of combat” stuff going on. It’s a classic dungeon crawler, which involves a good amount of combat, but is not purely combat and a party needs plenty of characters who are focused on other things if they want to survive.)

*and again, this wasn’t even something women were strictly barred from doing at the time.

Fencing Master: (Men only. +1 Social Status.) This struggler has +1 Scripture, +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, and +1 Agility. Additionally, upon gaining this Trait, give him any three Weapon Special Attribute Masteries, selected at random from those he does not already have. Additionally, reduce his Hollowness by 1 each time he gains a new Special Weapon Attribute Mastery. However, this struggler must make a Despair roll any time his martial technique is called into question or disrespected, unless he proves himself. If he attempts to prove himself and fails, he must take an added instance of disadvantage to this Despair roll. He must also make a Despair roll each time his weapon is reduced in Maintenance Rating as a result of a failed attack roll. 

Additionally, this struggler gains 2x the EXP from engagements in which he fights alone without allies. 

Frightening Demeanor: (+1 Social Status.) So long as this struggler is not a non-combatant, apply a -1 to this struggler’s Attention each time their Attention is increased. However, apply an added instance of disadvantage to their reaction rolls. 

Humble: (+0 Social Status.) This struggler’s good nature is a bulwark to disrespect. They gain an added instance of Advantage to any despair rolls related to disrespect. They gain an additional added instance of advantage to any despair roll related to disrespect from characters of lower Social Status. 

Lady: (Women only. +3 Social Status.) This struggler has an added +3 to Scripture,[1] and an instance of advantage on reaction rolls. However, she must take an added instance of disadvantage to any Despair roll resulting from being disrespected by a man or woman of lower social standing, and must make a Despair roll up to once per Scene in which she is not wearing fine women’s clothing.[2][3]

[1. Sidebar] Literacy was considered the domain of noblewomen, clergy, and scribes.

[2. Sidebar] This Trait does not require the struggler to be a non-combatant. Though it was unorthodox for them to participate directly in battle, women of noble standing were not barred from martial training. In fact, a nobleman’s wife was expected to command his levies in battle should their home be attacked while he is away.

[3. Sidebar] Wearing fine women’s clothing does not preclude the wearing of most armor, so long as the visibly feminine elements are preserved.

Additionally, up to once per Scene, this struggler gains 100 EXP if she goes the entire Scene without getting her shoes or dress muddy, wet, or otherwise dirty. [gains EXP from reading literature or eating fine food and drinking fine wine? Figure this out.]

Paranoid: (-1 Social Status.) This struggler has an added instance of advantage to Agility rolls to avoid triggered traps, and, once per Hourglass, the player of this struggler can ask that the Narrator reveal to their struggler any and all traps in a room or general surrounding area and the Narrator will do so. However, they must make a Despair roll if they ever accidentally trigger a trap, or if anyone ever startles them such as by walking up behind them or waking them from their sleep.

Also, when the Narrator makes a wandering monster roll, the player of this struggler may ask that the result be revealed to them, but if they do so, this struggler makes a Despair roll.

Up to once per Scene, this struggler gains 10 EXP for being right about the dangers that lurk nearby.

Sharp Tongue: (+0 Social Status.) This struggler’s quick tongue and quicker wit allow them to wind around any social slight with the agility of a skilled fencer. At this struggler’s choice, they can cause the object of their ridicule either an added instance of advantage or an added instance of disadvantage to any Despair rolls related to disrespect from this struggler. Either advantage or disadvantage is doubled if their words are actually said in dialogue or at least summarized and the Narrator deems their remark sufficiently clever.

Tactician: (+1 Social Status.) Once per engagement, this struggler can bark out a specific order to an ally with a Social Status up to 3 degrees higher than their own, or any degree lower.[1] If the ally they are ordering complies, that ally gains an instance of Advantage to the next 3 rolls that carrying out that order may entail. However, if the ally refuses or fails to carry out this order, then this struggler must make a Despair roll. If the ally dies as a result of attempting to carry out this order, then this struggler must make a Despair roll with an instance of Disadvantage.

[1. Sidebar] This can be done even if this struggler is a non-combatant.

Additionally, this struggler gains 5 EXP for each successful roll on the aforementioned next 3 rolls made by their ally complying with their orders. 

[bebewrites]

I promise I searched your blog, but how do you (specifically) zero draft? The post that showed up in a search of your blog was like, bullet point writing whatever is in your head for the.wip, which I think is v cool and would help me finish lofm! So I'm curious how you do it!

Oh yes, okay! I don't think I've actually explained it anywhere, but I love talking about this.

what is a zero draft?

The great thing about a zero draft is that you can pretty much make it whatever you need it to be. For me, I was having a hard time with the middle of my story. I've started and stopped this wip so many times, always getting hung up at the same part as I approach the middle. I've always had a very clear picture of the beginning and the end, but never how to get all the way through from point A to point B. My original outline had things in brackets like [character growth] and [plot stuff], but what does that mean!?

My goal was to get all the way through. So I opened a blank document, started at the beginning, and literally rambled and talked my way through the entire story. I didn't write real prose. It was all stream of consciousness. It was me describing what happens in the story as if I was telling it to a friend. The zero draft was my rubber duck. This was my brainstorming document. I used common vernacular and slang and abbreviations. There are bullet points, numbered lists, sidebars where I rambled about a scene I completely forgot to mention in a previous section. Lots of comments about things I need to include in the next draft. Literally anything and everything I thought of went into the zero draft.

A zero draft can be as long or short as you need it to be. Mine ended up being around 40k words. But I've seen other people say a zero draft is 10k to 20k words. It's really up to you! And when you feel like you've covered enough of the story to move on to the next draft.

And you don't have to go about a zero draft the way I did! Recently, an author I love and follow on instagram (Casey McQuiston) shared in their stories that when they were writing their most recent book, they zero drafted each chapter before they wrote it out. Casey said that because of this, it was first time they didn't have major edits and rewrites afterwards. So if you find yourself needing a little more structure and sense of where you're going, I think a zero draft could be super helpful!

Of course you don't have to have a zero draft, and if you've got a good sense of the plot and character arcs, you might not need one. But it can be a great way to brainstorm and figure out those things if you need to!

[maverick-werewolf]

Daily Werewolf Thoughts - Days 10-16

More not super prettily formatting werewolf thought posts that I've been doing daily!

Day 10- You don't really love werewolves if you don't enjoy terrible werewolf movies. Which the vast and overwhelming majority of them are terrible, at least if you ask me. But I just love werewolves so much I am driven to watch them (I also love movies with all my heart and soul), and even if the film is beyond terrible - again, as most of them are, even the ones people say are good - there's going to be a few moments that make it worth it, because werewolves are so badass, and I absolutely love studying how they created the werewolf for any film. Here's a bit of a rant for today...

One such film and series is Underworld. I hate the Underworld movies. Yes, stone me. They're terrible. The only one I enjoyed in its own right at all was Rise of the Lycans, since it had a far more compelling story than Selene's tight black leather (I understand why men enjoy this, in their defense) and absurd motivations that only extend as far as what the director wants for the next action sequence - and it was set in the Middle Ages, which is way better as a werewolf story, imo. Anyway, regardless of how I feel about the movies, I LOVE how they handled the practical effects on the werewolves.

The Underworld werewolves are unmatched. I'm not crazy about the design of the main "lie-kans" - I will never forgive the movie for the "lycans" thing btw - because they were specifically designed to be more "cat-like" or even more like a pitbull. For some reason people like to use things like cats, bears, etc to design something called a "werewolf." So I think those initial ones, like in the first film, frankly look pretty stupid. But the "feral" lycan "breed" or whatever they're called that have the more wolfish heads are a very cool design, and ultimately what I'm talking about here is how they were created and put to film. Sidebar: I'm not one of those people who thinks that the instant a movie uses any CGI, it should be condemned; CGI is a tool like any other filmmaking tool, and it can be used to achieve things we otherwise could never film and that are artistically beautiful and creative; but yes, I do prefer practical effects where they can be used.

The werewolves in Underworld were created using bodysuits, animatronics, and creature actors. They wore leg extensions, got big guys in the first place, and had extensive work for muscle, hair, and especially the faces and facial animations. The entire face is created using servos that respond to controllers held by workers off-camera to animate the werewolf costume in real time, while it's being worn by a person. The entire face, eyes, mouth, lips, etc were fully animated using a complex system of animatronics, and a comm system so the actor can be given instructions from the lead puppeteer so everyone can properly sync their work - and the final effect is such a step beyond anything we've seen from werewolf designs of this size in film before - or since.

There are better videos of the later films that had more advanced technology, like Underworld: Evolution (terrible movie but great werewolf effects), but here's one on youtube that has a lot of what was involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jWIF8lSlxg&ab_channel=IsaacKoo

*: "feral" by definition most often specifically refers to domesticated animals that have gone wild again and sounds very odd when used to refer to something like a wolf (but it always happens anyway because people don't care about the English language; ask any video game about their "feral wolves")

**: "breed" specifically refers to controlling the birthing of animals to produce a desired outcome, as in domesticated animals, such as dogs, cats, sheep, etc., and it makes me want to become a hermit living alone atop the Himalayas when I see people use it for werewolves

Day 11- I've often wondered what exactly set me down this path of being completely and hopelessly obsessed with werewolves. I've never really had an answer. I've speculated it was just Halloween itself, seeing the very rare and occasional werewolf around, since that's always been my favorite "kind" of werewolf. I have distinct memories of a little werewolf statue in a Hallmark; I really loved looking at that thing (never got it, though, sadly). I've occasionally wondered if it was watching Scooby Doo at my grandma's house - but in retrospect, the werewolves in Scooby Doo of that era weren't much to write home about, so that probably wasn't it. I do know for a fact I've been obsessed with them for as long as I can remember, certainly by age 6, so whatever it was, it started early. I was reading Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Werewolves when I was 8, searching for werewolves in video games forever, and I'll never forget the first werewolf figure I got to decorate my desk.

If you ask one of my favorite professors, who sat on the committee that passed ultimate judgment upon what became my book The Werewolf: Past and Future, she would tell you I was led to love werewolves because of "dream visions" (she is a professor and lifelong student of Old Norse, Old English, and the cultures, many sagas, and histories thereof). I told her about how my earliest memories of werewolves and the start of my obsession with them were actually long series of dreams and nightmares I had - a white werewolf would always crop up in them, sooner or later. Sometimes he was on my side, sometimes not. My dreams and nightmares are... very detached from reality in the first place, but the white werewolf became consistent for a long time. What put the idea of a werewolf into my head in the first place? I'm really not sure.

Some of my favorite experiences with werewolves come from playing as them in classic RPGs, including ones where you aren't technically supposed to be one. I loved playing a werewolf in Neverwinter Nights using character editors, cheat codes, and scripts on the big roleplaying server I played on. Now THAT was fun, but that's a whole separate story.

Anyway, I really don't even know. All I know is, I've loved werewolves for as long as I can remember, and I always will, no matter how silly that might seem.

Day 12- Remember when video games called RPGs had actual roleplaying elements in them? Some of the only games that have ever let you play as a proper werewolf are the Elder Scrolls series, specifically Daggerfall and Morrowind: Bloodmoon, the latter being my absolute favorite werewolf game ever. Why? Because you actually played as a werewolf - and all that came with it - instead of lycanthropy being a cool thing and/or awesome button.

In Bloodmoon, if you are a werewolf (having either become one from surviving a werewolf attack - werewolves spawn with INSANE rarity, trust me I found one naturally and it took me weeks, in the wild of Solstheim or you can become one through the main Bloodmoon questline), you will transform each night. You must devour 1 humanoid (playable race) NPC or suffer from hunger and exhaustion the following day, lowering your stats. The transformation will break any armor you have equipped. If someone witnesses the transformation, word of your true nature will spread, and you will be hunted. You are also attacked on sight - but NPCs will often run away rather than dare attack you. Your stats are insanely boosted, you run like the wind and leap to the point of almost flying, and you can destroy nearly anything in your path. It is one of the single coolest things in all of gaming and nothing like it has ever been recreated (I have biases).

Being a werewolf became part of your character and changed your entire gameplay experience rather than just being an "ability" or "race."

Many of these systems were also in place in Daggerfall, Morrowind's predecessor. But Morrowind was the last game of the ES series to incorporate proper werewolf mechanics. In Oblivion, we got exactly nothing, which left me crushingly disappointed as a child. In Skyrim, you have an awesome button werewolf mode wherein you must continually devour enemies in order to maintain the werewolf form. It's cool and it's fun, and I'm very glad Skyrim had werewolves playable at launch, but it doesn't have anything approaching the same feel as "being" a werewolf in Bloodmoon, where it is a curse. It can be an inconvenience, it can be an advantage, and it's something you have to plan your gameplay around - and something you must hide from everyone around you. That is what playing as a werewolf should be. I'm likely to make another post soon talking about that some more, because it's a favorite subject.

Anyway, therefore, Morrowind's expansion pack Bloodmoon is easily one of my favorite games ever made. It is really the only game where you can really play as a werewolf instead of a reasonably cool and fun but ultimately far less interesting alternative.

I also recently wrote a big ol' article about the best video games that let you play as a werewolf: https://maverickwerewolf.com/werewolf-facts/werewolf-articles/werewolf-article-play-as-a-werewolf-video-games/

Day 13- A werewolf's transformation sequence is one of the single most important things in any werewolf story. It might even be -the- most important. After all, the crux of werewolves is that even a man who is pure at heart (etc) can become a monster - and back again - and the sequence undergoing such a traumatic change is quite a thing to tackle.

I've seen it approached many ways. Painfully (obviously), painlessly, slow, fast, as something undesirable and as something desirable, as something controllable and uncontrollable - I swear this isn't innuendo. Anyway, personally, my favorite will always very easily be the most classic concept of the werewolf transformation: painful, traumatic, and very, very bad. I am not here for cuddly or happy werewolves. I'm also a fan of the werewolf not remembering what happened, but I'll ramble about that one later.

This also actually has basis in legend, as well. Even in antiquity, witnessing a werewolf transformation would potentially bring one to madness. This is mentioned in several stories, including but not necessarily limited to Niceros's story, in which witnessing the werewolf transformation freaks him out beyond reason. When he realizes the soldier he'd traveled with was a werewolf, he swears never to go near him again: "I couldn’t have eaten a crumb of bread with him, no, not if you had killed me!"

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, oft hailed as one of the "first werewolf legends" (that we have recorded, anyway), we also get our first proper werewolf transformation ever in the form of the legend of Lycaon...

"[Lycaon] howled his heart out, trying in vain to speak.

With rabid mouth he turned his lust for slaughter

Against the flocks, delighting still in blood.

His clothes changed to coarse hair, his arms to legs—

He was a wolf, yet kept some human trace,

the same grey hair, the same fierce face, the same

Wild eyes, the same image of savagery."

I've always found it interesting to note that his clothes became coarse hair, rather than him tearing his clothes off. Just a little difference there between this and many other legends.

Lots more on the ancient Greek tale of King Lycaon here: https://maverickwerewolf.com/werewolf-fact-66-the-legend-of-king-lycaon-of-arcadia/

There are a few legends, of course, that don't make it quite this dramatic. But popular culture carried over the painful transformation sequence for those with the werewolf curse, by and large, and it's incredibly effective. Everyone remembers seeing the first transformation in An American Werewolf in London (as much as I think the movie itself frankly just sucks), and likewise no one was exactly taken by a guy jumping really high and painlessly CGI'ing into a wolf in like .3 seconds.

I obviously have a lot of opinions on werewolf transformations, just like every other werewolf thing. The best and most memorable werewolf transformations are painful, dramatic, and traumatizing - because, after all, being a werewolf is neither a fun thing nor a good time... not for anyone involved.

Day 14- There's something I deeply hate in media, and it's when someone says "a werewolf scratch can turn you!" What on earth?

I have a lot of thoughts about all of this, obviously, and I'll get more into the whole werewolf bite thing later, but let's entertain if you will this notion that becoming a werewolf is like rabies. This is an extremely Early Modern concept, following the rise of scientific thought and the dismissal of all things mystical, religious, magical, mysterious, and allegorical, but even then, a werewolf spreading lycanthropy (in itself an Early Modern concept, as it was viewed as a disease, not a curse) via bite has no basis in folklore already. Does that make it bad? Nonsense, a werewolf bite is a classic storytelling element - that, once again, almost certainly comes from The Wolf Man (1941). It's so classic that for some reason zombies later completely lifted it and now everyone acts like it's a zombie thing, which is completely unfair.

But a werewolf scratch? Really? Even if we're equating it with rabies, that still doesn't work. And how stupid is it for someone to be like "oh no! the werewolf SCRATCHED you!" When I hear "scratch," I think "my cat got a little too excited about the tummy button," not "I've been mauled by a giant twisted man-beast and now I will inherit its curse." How does a werewolf even "scratch" someone without taking an entire limb off or raking red rivers through your torso? Are we sure it was a werewolf, or is it a chihuahua*?

I really wish this "werewolf scratch" thing would stop. It's just bad all over. Bring back werewolf bites exclusively.

*: what pains me is that some people would find this hilarious and make this their exclusive takeaway, because werewolves have just become jokes

Day 15- I love a wide variety of werewolf designs. If the werewolf is presented well, the design doesn't always matter that massively, as long as it doesn't look incredibly dumb and/or doesn't even resemble a man or a wolf. Unfortunately, it's amazing how often this happens.

Many monster design classes do actually say, when designing a werewolf, absolutely don't use a wolf as a reference. Artists are told by everyone under the sun, including filmmakers: use dogs, cats, bears, mandrills, hyenas - I've even seen mules, foxes, bats, badgers... and above all, they are told explicitly: whatever you do, don't use a wolf as inspiration. That'd be like, expected or cliche or bad or corny or something, because it's a WOLF monster. And we can't do anything "expected."

Werewolves are two things: human and wolf. If you're drawing the majority of your inspiration from a bear or a cat or a fox or hyena or whatever else, why even call it a werewolf? Why not make a different creature entirely, like the Beast of Gevaudan?

(more on that remark here: https://maverickwerewolf.com/werewolf-facts/the-beast-of-gevaudan/ )

I can understand the desire of some to have some particularly "memorable" or "unique" design (although I have never been taken by any of these attempts, nor do I remember them fondly), but ultimately, it baffles me that someone would choose to draw more directly from animals that aren't wolves for a werewolf design. Then again, you can also go too far in the opposite direction and just end up with fluffy wolf-people, and those can look far too cuddly (at least to... modern audiences; no one thought the werewolves in Dog Soldiers were cute even just a few years ago).

It's a careful balance to walk. When I was very young and innocent, I hated that many designs removed the tail from a werewolf (which they have in legend and I think it looks cooler), but I completely understand now. I also understand wanting to change the head shape, ear shape, etc, but all of this can be achieved without making the werewolf look like some other animal or like nothing in particular. There's a reason the Underworld werewolf design that became ubiquitous for so many werewolves afterward - Skyrim, for example, and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, just to name two - was the one with the wolfish muzzle and head shape, not the "cat pitbull" design from the first film.

Call me old-fashioned (I am), but I want a werewolf to look like what it's called. Note: I'm also not knocking the quadrupedal but still part-man looking designs, although those are far from my favorite, but it should still have wolf features. At least a few.

Day 16- Another werewolf folklore lesson! How about "curing" lycanthropy? What was that like in folklore - lifting the werewolf curse?

As per usual for my discussions, I have to mention that being a werewolf was not considered a "disease" until relatively recently; it was a magical curse, not an illness that could be "contracted" or "cured," and individuals were not "infected." Likewise, there weren't exactly a lot of examples of a werewolf curse - as per traditional "transforming between man and beast on a regular basis" definition of "werewolf" - being lifted in folklore.

There are some examples of more unusual variations of the curse being lifted, however, namely with those who end up stuck in a more seemingly permanent wolf form. Removing a magic item that cursed you to become a werewolf is fairly common, such as the magic skins donned by Sigmund and Sinfjotli in the Volsunga Saga; when they wore them, they were wolves, and only returned to human form when they managed to get the skins back off again. Another example is Melion (titular character of a British lai), who was trapped in the form of a wolf when he put on a cursed ring.

And in at least one story, that of Guillame de Palerne, the werewolf returns to his human shape when the one who cursed him is killed. This is a special case in that the werewolf never actually returned to a human form and was in fact stuck as a wolf, so it's not quite your typical werewolf example, but it is still from a French story whose title was translated as William and the Werewolf - and it's a good story.

However, in the vast majority of cases, especially with the werewolves that are more in line with what we think of as proper werewolves (transforming back and forth, instead of stuck in a wolf form), either the werewolf stayed a werewolf and it wasn't really that big of a deal (such as in several ancient Greek tales and some medieval tales, for example)...

Or else the werewolf was killed. Popular culture sometimes insists the only cure for lycanthropy is death, and that also often held true in many legends. It's also quite fun and dramatic, of course, although I do get tired of the werewolf predictably getting wasted.

There is, of course, a Werewolf Fact for this: https://maverickwerewolf.com/werewolf-facts/how-to-cure-lycanthropy/

[jessaerys]

sorry this got long and i didn't want to be annoying to op by adding to their post like a psycho NOR leave it in the tags because it's not conductive to mutual interaction. lets Discuss. mine were:

a dog called grk by joshua doder (which is kidlit about the modern mundane horrors of war in some ambiguously balkanized country dfgjgjkdg. but it made 10-11 year old me go like oh we are no longer in safe kid land. this is Real Shit. This is about The WAR. i somehow didn't encounter lemony snickett but i am led to believe he is to a number of millennials what this was to me fdklgflfdgldfgdf and animorphs to a freakier group of peers. vis a vis fiction that was very clearly/explicitly for You is for actually Talking To You About These Adult Horrors

saving francesa by melina marchetta which is this very sober slice of life YA about a girl whose mom becomes devastatingly depressed. it's probably both bougie and still manages to have a kernel of emotional truth about it, kind of like big little lies dfgkjdfkjgdkjdg. anyway it'd had a core group of girls shoved together in an "unlikely group of friends" trope and like one or two boys. like if derry girl was less funny more YA but ultimately similar emotional experiences. MY bootleg john green. john green if he was good. and a woman. and also australian

the age of miracles by karen thompson walker which is this beautifully written similar slice of life sober YA about a girl and her family and how they deal with the earth's spin one day beginning to slow. first experience with realistic fiction that could incorporate sci fi elements in that extremely specific indie "soft sci-fi" contemplative kind of way. you know what i'm talking about. like anything brit marling has ever been in. (sidebar up until age like 14 i only read hard ass sci fi like arthur c clarke and robert silverberg dfgkjfdkjgfjkgd. because my non-jw grandpa had the paperbacks <3333)

twilight at 13ish sorrryyyy, first time i realized books could be fandoms (like real ass anime/tv fandoms not just me and the 3 other people writing arthur c. clarke yaoi)

and finally daughter of the forest by melissa mariller circa age 15, which is this incredibly skilled, gorgeous, once again very realistic grounded historical romance with only the smallest touch of fantasy. first time i realized books could be in between fandom (care about characters) and also, like, have a clever plot like the hard sci fi fgkgfdkjg. there was a tiny but respectable couple dozen fics on fanfiction.net, but basically they were all about the main romantic triangle (WHICH IS REALLY SINCERELY GOOD #MyCompellingHets) and i showed up like hi does anyone like twincest of these secondary characters

oh interesting i think to some degree all of these were me realizing the enjoyment of reading could be derived from the connections between characters and how that related to my own human experience rather than other cool things like space and fucked up adult things i knew i did not yet understand. which all kids LOVE to be exposed to. ok so what i have realized is that perhaps i read more hard-sci fi than the average 10 year old

[percheduphere]

How do you think Mobius will live his life in the timeline? Many theorize that something happens to Don and Mobius takes his identity so his sons live with a father. I prefer that Mobius reflects on his old life, realizes he can’t live it, and creates his own life.

Oh, boy, Anon. I have a lot of fanfic ideas for this, but let's get into the meta-analysis side of this before we get into the rabbit hole that is my washer-dryer machine of an imagination.

Mobius is not doing well. He is going through the stages of grief. I've written an extensive meta here regarding the darker aspects of his character and how he's at risk by the end of the series. I also wrote a brief meta here regarding how his grief might manifest.

With this in mind, I actively HATE the idea of Mobius spiraling to the point he becomes "corrupted". I don't what Michael Waldron did to Wanda. I guess you could make the argument that it would be interesting to see a man emotionally unravel in such a way, but I hold Mobius's unshakable kindness dear in my heart. I don't ever want him to lose it because it is essentially his superpower.

[Sidebar: comics canon House of M notwithstanding; Marvel and DC comics canon are consistently horrible in their characterization of exceptionally powerful women: Wanda Maximoff Jean Grey/Phoenix; Carol Danvers/then Ms. Marvel; Rogue; on and on; I'll throw Sylvie in here, too, because why not, it's true.]

I see Mobius mourning Loki for two years. Two years because, statistically, that is how long it takes for most people who've lost an intimate loved one to get out of clinical depression. During this period, I see him losing weight, wandering aimlessly between timelines, trying and failing to copy Don's life by taking a job that involves jet skis or aquatics more generally. B-15 would make a point to check-in on him and know he's not doing well, but Mobius, because he does not want anyone to worry about him, because he is used to being the person who keeps people together, insists he's fine.

MY FANFIC IDEA

I see Mobius eventually recognizing he needs a therapist, which he will find ironic and deeply troubling, but he's not about to give up on trying to live for Loki's sake.

And in his conversations with his therapist and B-15, Mobius will come to realize that he can still use his key strengths outside of the TVA: analyzing people, deconstructing what makes them tick, using that knowledge to help the other person, similar to a therapist but more active in support. Mobius is very well-suited to become a social worker of troubled and at-risk youth. I think he should pursue this and ...

Mobius will choose a branched timeline in the late 90s/early 2000s. There, he will meet a war-orphaned, thirteen year-old Wanda Maximoff, who is friendless and struggling to understand the nature of her powers (magic). Mobius is drawn to her right away. It takes time, but he eventually gains Wanda's trust.

Red. Red is Wanda's color. It's in her hair, her cheeks, her magic. Now that red reaches Wanda's eyes, filled with tears her anger stoppers. "You saw what I can do. What I did. The other kids call me a 'witch' 'cause that's what I am. A witch. A monster."

Mobius sits next to the young girl on the stoop. The sun winks at them through the green tree boughs, and he wonders, for a moment, what Loki might think of him now, finding solace in a child who needs solace.

"That's not true. You're not a monster, but I tell you what: witches are pretty cool." Mobius grins, knocking his knee against hers. The fabric of his slacks shakes, still too loose. "Y'know, my best friend has magic just like yours, except it's green instead of red."

Wanda peers at him, hopeful and dubious. "Really?"

"Yup. He had a tough time, too, being different." He leans closer to her, sharing a secret. "But things got better. You should've seen him. He was--is-- magnificent. You're magnificent."

Her lips purse into an embarrassed smile. She drops her head, thoughtful, and tucks her hands beneath the fold of her knees. "Where is he now? Do you still see him?"

The question is innocent, as all things are with a soul of thirteen. She doesn't mean to hurt him. Mobius knows this. So he takes the thorn of her words and presses it against his ribcage. His throat works. The ache comes and goes but never fully abates.

"Well," Mobius sighs. "He had to move on. Life is like that sometimes. People come and go. Things happen and ... there's not much you can do except hope they're okay. That they're happy and safe."

He can't look up. Not at the tree or the sun. He worries if he does, he'll start to cry, and that won't do when this girl who reminds him so much of his wily god has finally cracked a smile.

"C'mon," he says, rising to his feet. "Let's get you something to eat."

"McDonald's?" Wanda brightens.

Another thorn. He takes that one too and thinks of pretty roses.

"Whatever you want, kiddo."

[dude1818]

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

Last week I read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini. Full disclaimer, I had no idea that was the same author as the Eragon series until I got to the acknowledgements at the end. This was a thousand pages of hard sf space opera, and the whole time I was thinking "I should check out this guy's other stuff too!"

Imagine The Thing, but more futuristic and set on a potential colony planet. You're halfway through that story, and the alien has started attacking your research crew, when suddenly another race of aliens shows up and now you have to team up with it to fight the new aliens. That's the first hundred pages of this book. So many things happen in this story

The overarching background of the story is the war between humanity and these aliens, the Wranaui. It takes place in the 23rd century, and humanity has settled a handful of stellar systems so far and has found relics of sapient aliens, but not met any yet. The main character, Kira, is a xenobiologist who discovers the alien (more of a symbiotic exosuit) that kicks off the war. The story follows her and the spaceship crew that picked her up as they travel from system to system trying to figure out what the suit is, why the aliens attacked, and how to stop them

Sidebar: there's a really cool FTL system in this world, which makes it possible to travel between stars in realtime months. That's still long enough that crews are in cryo for the trip, and FTL communication can't go faster than that, so you get to have your cake of a multi-stellar civilization and eat the isolated worlds where things can change drastically during your travel time too. (One of the appendices is the introductory chapter to a textbook on FTL and UFT; it's so cool)

I feel like this book could easily have been broken up into two or three, there's so much happening. Around the halfway point, the (non-suit) aliens go from being a symbol of death that appears randomly in the sky into multiple defined kinds of aliens, with their own fleshed out motives and sub-factions that can be reasoned about. It all connects, but that seemed like a change in focus that would've been a reasonable pause point. (The last 10% is a much harder diversion from either of sections, but I'll put my thoughts for that under the cut because it's spoilery)

Overall I really enjoyed it. There are more works in the series that I'll definitely be checking out. The xenobiology and especially the physics were incredibly well thought out, and I haven't seen someone play with travel times in such an interesting way before. There were some weaker aspects, especially on the politics side (if Kira goes "surely we can tell the military what we've discovered and they'll apply that information in a way that's beneficial to humanity and humane to the aliens" one more time I will lose it), but at least that mostly seems to be an in-universe character flaw (spoiler alert: the military does not). It is kinda funny how Kira makes a big deal about trying not to see the soldiers who get in their way, but narratively we need a bunch of alien mooks to kill, so they have to come up with a contrived reason (alien brain backup tech) to make that not count as murder

Spoilers for the ending:

Context: the final bad guys are a different group of aliens called the Corrupted that are a sapient gray goo, and are derived from the same tech as the suit symbiote. Kira merges with their central body and takes it over, self-destructing their army and converting them towards positive life-preserving ends. That felt a little shark-jumpy, but is fine

How that played out was super cringey though. First an uncomfortable sex scene before the final battle in which she wonders if she can still get pregnant while the symbiote is attached; then she learns that the suit was supposed to be a self-directed terraforming tool called the Seed; then as part of the positive gray goo, she positions herself as the Mother, a weird archdruid-in-space. It all just gave me the ick and didn't feel like it matched the tone of the rest of the book at all

[mermaidsirennikita]

Wouldn't be surprise if the dremaione tv/movie adaptations start to pop up

I think it could go either way with the amount of preemptive backlash the big 3 Dramione-adjacent books dropping soon are getting. I think they'll probably be successful, because as much as a lot of people who do think about these things and do have influence are critiquing the marketing surrounding them... Will that translate to the sales being impacted? I don't know. A lot of people a) don't know that b) don't care c) actively support JKR.

(Sidebar: Anyone remember that BookToker who was called out for being gross toward hockey players, blew up at the wife of the hockey player who called her out, and then pivoted to sobbing over HP on BookTok because she'd "never read it before" and it was just *so good* to her. Yeah. Lots of people just were cool with that! I wasn't! For multiple reasons!)

I have conflicted feelings on those books myself, because I do actually like one of the authors publishing a Dramione book! And one of the others seems cool, and they participate in pro-trans charitable fundraising, and there's the death of the authors arguments surrounding fic, but... I personally find Harry Potter very hard to stomach at this point, and the marketing for these books has been very Dramione-heavy, at least in terms of what you can see on bookfluencing platforms. I honestly don't know that I felt quite as negatively before I saw that.

Not looking to cancel people over it (though Alchemized, which is Manacled, I personally find.......... especially hard to stomach, as it's Dramione in a Handmaid's Tale AU, which......... look, I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed! to write that fic! but wow, I just can't see myself being able to get past the gross factor there, and I have a pretty high grossness tolerance) but it's just really thorny for me and I really wish these books were not connected to Dramione.

But yeah, wouldn't be surprised if they pop up. I really wish Ali Hazelwood's books were getting more actively adapted, besides passive greenlighting. I have zero qualms about Reylo AUs being adapted. Can we go back to Reylo AUs? I would like to do that. Not because they're Reylo, but because for all that SW and that fandom have their issues, boy! Are those issues! Different!

[unhinged-comics-screaming]

*crawling out of my migraine floor nest to open my drafts and post this before the next EP drops*

Because the joy in weekly shows is theorizing like mad and (壊せよセオリー I guess) Bravern hopes and dreams as we approach the end!

It's really long so uh tl;dr 8th potential death drive theory, seagulls and then some other odds and ends included

I'm living for Bravern as Gluttony somehow theories. Went down a random path and gluttony isn't necessarily just about eating too much but basically doing anything fun with food. From an article:

The glutton uses food for something other than its proper intention. 

Apparently one of the worst versions is straight up enjoying too much. Which like, every death drive treats their pilots/organic lifeforms as just food while Bravern is obsessed with how his "food" fuels him... And everything else about his "food". Ignoring whether he's actually using Isami the way a death drive uses Lulus and will eventually drain him, he's putting a lot more emotional investment into Isami than any of the Deathdrives into Lulus.

But also! As you dig into this there are also writings about how Gluttony isn't actually a sin so maybe Bravern is Gluttony but also he gets a pass.

Ugh no this could be a cool sidebar into what Bravern as Gluttony's "ideal death" would be. Like, truly overindulging in his "food" aka his pilot aka Isami aka gay sex. AND THEN. This gets rid of the Deathdrive/mecha form. Leaving Smith. And then gay sex with Smith.

With all of the Deathdrives being driven to have the ideal death, and Bravern being born of the desire to live*. I wonder if he can convince Superbia to live. That would be sick. Live a prideful life or something.

*it can be argued that Lewis Smiths resurrection is because he didn't have his ideal death so it's less of a counter force to the Deathdrive and more of his own version of being just like them but that feels less like the main energy of the story.

Moving on from that, I love the seagulls being a big part of the episode 10 preview and then the episode 11 preview having bravern surfing on the newly added fusion part just like them.

I think I read somewhere about seagulls going back to where they met to mate so. Yeah. Back to Hawai'i! With Brave being the one signalling I hope this is like, Isami really expressing his trust in Bravern and making it a matched relationship. My ideal scene is Isami seeing how Lulu's determination to pilot Superbia means he needs to commit to trusting Bravern. Which should totally include knowing who he is.

Which, adjacently, I think the reveal phrase should've been Bravern saying some phrase with "cool" in English. Like "the finishing move was ⟨super cool⟩> right?". It just feels more Smith imo. I really love how little they gave us with this though. Who were they fighting? How did they achieve this? Why did they get beat up instead of blasted/disintegrated? who knows. We can infer that they did save the day at the end but at what cost.

I think at this point it would be funny if they somehow slipped in another time loop. Hell give us a montage of time loops. Also I am a tiny bit smug about mentioning that Bravern not having time travel abilities yet like 1500 words ago. Will this be touched on more? Probably as some dramatic last episode if anything.

Considering the really fast pace of the show making everything feel important I hope we get references to some other things like Isami's built in airbags (maybe he gets ejected out of Bravern?). Isami's Senshi-bility in "we need to eat to save people". Whatever the heck Lulu's Heat Beam kick is. What was that. What's going on with the blood drop, does it mean something.

My only other hope and dreams is probably just some good old fashioned mech fights. It's been a lot of endure barrage of attacks -> get motivated -> super attack. I need substance!

[megnificent-reads]

A Court of Wings and Ruin - Christ alive/5 ☆

Warning - this review is 1.2k words, and 98% negative. If you love SJM and the ACOTAR series, love that for you /gen. However, for your own mental health, I genuinely would not recommend you read this. For everyone else, and those who hate-read, Let's begin!

~~~

Okay, so I actually rated this 2 stars on Goodreads because I didn’t hate it the whole time but, I’m mad about it so it gets a special rating. ♡

I honestly lament when I was excited to read this book. Being what I refer to as a Lucien Lover (nuanced), I enjoyed a good bit of the beginning of this book. That’s not to say I wholeheartedly enjoyed every word of the first 100 pages of this book. 

So we start with Feyre in the throes of rage, becoming a master manipulator. Now, before I put just a minute or two of thought into it, I loved it. I love a girl tearing shit apart and using intellegence as a form of strength. However… 

Anybody think she was doing a little too much…?

Like, okay, Tamlin fucked up. Big time. I will admit justice is needed! Love when women take back power! But not only dismantling his entire country but turning everyone against him for things that he actually did not do? Crazy! He sucks! But people still live in that country. We still need order! His life is ruined now and I don’t necessarily think all that was necessary. 

Tamlin sidebar: “my father and my father’s father did the Tithe, so I’m going to do it.” Didn’t you acknowledge two books ago that your father sucks absolute ass? What fucking sense does that make? How in the first book was he the Perfect Moral Man that now can’t see the very evident immorality in the shit you’re doing. Anywhoozers. 

So, Feyre has her cool girl moments and returns to the Night Court. In book one, I was bored out of my mind until we arrived in Rhys-land. (Good one). This time, it was like the moment we arrived here the magic was lost. I was no longer excited to read. And honestly, I think the big issue was actually our beloved bat-boy, Rhysand.

I don’t know her personally, so this is not an attack on her character, but I’m starting to feel like SJM writes Rhysand based off of her fantasy version of what a man is like. Dominating, but soft and loving. Perfectly moral. Capable of evil, deplorable things, but too loving of people and their dreams to be that way. I’m going to be referring to it as PMS (Perfect Man Syndrome). 

Many of her men (sorry, males) are unfortunate PMS victims, but Rhysand is by far the worst. I wish I had underlined it when I was reading so I could cite it, but there’s just something about his actions. He is PMSing so hard that he doesn’t develop at all. He was old enough to be grown during the faerie-UK version of the Amercian Civil War where of course he was anti-slavery the entire time despite being raised by people who appeared to be violent racists. Good for our educated king. He also, of course, runs a sanctuary for abused women. 

Of course, I’m not saying that being anti-slavery and supporting abused women is bad. I love it. But like… be real with me here. I know that this is fictional. It’s not real. We can be happy here. But can I have some dimension, please? This man is the personality version of Flat Stanley. We had two conflicts between them since they got together and both were resolved by Rhys nearly getting on his knees and saying everything is his fault and he’s so sorry. The first conflict was just her thinking she stepped out of her Womenly Line and him not even knowing there was an issue. 

He’s just so. Fucking. Boring. 

Moving on. ♡.

Let’s talk about what makes me so goddamn angry about this book. I’ve seen complaints about SJM where other people are saying that other people call her books feminist literature. I personally have never heard anybody say that, but if I did, I don’t know if I would be able to control the rant that would ensue.  

I’m willing to have a civilized conversation, but I don’t remember Feyre actually doing anything. Yes, SJM puts her women in positions of power. Do they use said power? Maybe once or twice. 

Amren is an ex-god with powers above any character we’ve met so far. We see it used I think once. The rest of the time is spent talking about her power and her holding down the fort at Velaris while everyone else is off to war. 

Morrigan - also very powerful (described only). I remember her power being “truth” and never elaborating on that. She is a known soldier, that doesn’t fight. 

During the two huge battles, Feyre, Nesta, and Morrigan are on the ground while Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel are in the air fighting. After the first battle, Feyre is seen tending to her beloved mate’s wounds, Nesta is fetching water for Cassian, and Morrigan is getting mad at Nesta for wanting to fuck Cassian. So strong of all of them. 

Azriel is there doing… nothing. Which he has a habit of doing. Speaking of habits, SJM will create characters that I like because I’m excited to see how they will grow and develop. 

She then proceeds to do nothing with them.

I know more books are coming, as they will with SJM until the end of time, but it’s starting to drag. I love Elain. Well, I love what Elain could be. She’s a seemingly fragile, docile character. With her Seer powers, I was excited to see her notice the world around her sucks and develop into somone capable of holding their own. Instead, she uses her powers to relay some cryptic messages that no one heeds or even tries to, then she “snaps out of it” and can’t really do anything else. 

Azriel has a tragic backstory and seemingly a big story to tell. God, I wish I could ever fucking hear it. 

This is getting exceptionally long, but I remembered I had a list of things I wanted from ACOWAR and didn’t receive, so I’ll pick one more thing off. 

The Ouroboros. Out of all symbols, the Ouroboros is my favorite. Cycles and inevitability and all that. We spend a good chunk of this book leading up to Feyre retrieving this. It drives everyone mad. Only the strongest can look in it and survive. I was so excited to see what she saw! What the battle with herself would be like! How does she overcome it?

I guess we’ll never know.

She ended up seeing… herself? I guess she wasn’t previously aware of her flaws and then simply accepted them. Would love to have seen it!

And to finally end this review, I think the Ouroboros is a good symbol of every issue I have with this book. There’s so much build up and excitement that ultimately leads nearly no explanation. It’s like there’s ideas and concepts but then no idea how to execute them.

I won’t be reading ACOFAS or ACOSF or anything else. I already didn’t want to, then I found out about the pregnancy thing and. Yeah. I think I’m good off that.

[survivingsusac]

Andi Boudoir

Alright guys, come and buckle up because I'm going to start today off going full ADHD style, where I have 85,000,000 topics to cover and not enough focus to do it in a coherent fashion. Sorry, not sorry.

I have two things I have been considering blogging about and so I did something I don't usually do and I asked my ultra selective group of Facebook friends, “Which of these two topics do you guys want to read about?” And, of course, in typical Facebook fashion they said we want to hear it all. Extremely unhelpful right?

Side bar 1: Surviving Susac now is on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/survivingsusac/

So, this blog entry you guys get Boudoir Part I, next time you get work update, and the next next time you get Boudoir Part II, when I will likely have the final pictures.

Boudoir Part I story starts like this:

I hate my physical body.

I used to be cool with it up until like 2016, but then Susac came into the picture and the body is totally different now than I was used to it being. It is uncooperative. It is not flexible anymore. I can't even freaking jump or run. Don't count on me in an emergency, sorry. Just run away, save yourself; and if I live, I live.

Plus add on top of that a very complex and transactional relationship with my sexual self. I have no trust in my body that it's going to do what I need it to do. I don't trust that it functions in the way it's supposed to function. I mean it tried to unalive itself so that’s a whole *thing*. Then it stopped its regular functions, and they all became irregular functions. Some of them stopped altogether.

If we were to pull apart my mental self, from my emotional self from my physical self the three of us would have a very complicated love triangle. There'd probably be some triangulation, as well as some condescension and a very large dose of irritation.

Back to Boudoir topic

So I’m doom scrolling on Facebook a couple weeks ago, as per my usual habit.

DON’T SCROLL FACEBOOK WHEN YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE GOING TO BED.

I came across an open casting call for Andi's boudoir in Roseville. So essentially, you pay about 600 bucks, and you get the full boudoir experience and then that payment goes toward whatever product you choose to purchase from your experience. You just pay the difference toward the total cost of the product you chose, and all the digitals of the photos become property of Andi for use in her publicity and marketing for her company. Cool man, I dig it!

My half asleep self goes, “Hey Aurora, you would totally never come up with this to do for yourself. Maybe Jesus is all up in your Facebook algorithm telling you to give it a shot or something.” My very sciencey, logical brain was thinking that the Boudoir experience could help me get over the fact that I hate my body and maybe learn to accept it a little bit.

Also, it might not hurt to feel a little feminine, right? I mean one of my personal goals for myself is to find a male life partner in the coming years. And I guess ought to realize my femininity as part of opening myself up to finding a partner. *shrugs*

Sidebar 2: Mental note to write a blog later about all the psychological crap I’ve been learning and unlearning to stop attracting and maintaining toxic relationships.

Getting to the point, I complete and submit an application to Andi to ask to participate in the open casting call. I finally expected all the slots to be filled already. But my application is submitted and then in about an hour—because yes I'm still up doom scrolling—I get an e-mail response from Andi telling me that she's really interested in what I say in my application and that she wants to help me with my goals because they're aligned with her visions for her business. I did my happy wiggle hearing that she was going to save space in her schedule for me.

https://www.andiboudoir.com/

I got a call about four days later from her scheduler and she says can you come to the studio in two days? “Heck yeah, let's do it!”

I then get a call from Andi and we talk about my comfort levels and personal vision for the shoot. I'm like, “Girl this is my first time ever embracing my femininity in this way. I’m doing this on whim and in an effort to get myself out of my comfort zone and fall back in love with my own body. I'll be your clay you be my sculptor; I will just follow your direction.” Being an artist she of course was so down for that level of artistic freedom and control.

I got to the studio and the whole experience was phenomenal. The three ladies worked so collaboratively as a team that there was absolutely no reason for me to not trust their process. It felt fantastic to get fawned over, to get my hair and makeup done, and play dress up in their wardrobe closet. Andi even got me a mocha, so she was definitely speaking my food love language. The process of taking the pictures was at times a bit awkward because the positions they put me in were strange. However, they ended up creating some really gorgeous photographs.

Of the over 100 photos we took together, I chose my 10 favorite photographs and got an extra of what they called an “After Glow” shot. The 10 photographs will become an album which I chose the binding to coordinate with the lingerie they put me in for the photographs. Any of you guys who know me personally know that I love a theme, so of course the outside wrapping of the album had to match the inside photos of the album! I get a few prints of two other photos and the After Glow shot. They’re totally going up in the apartment!

The whole experience with Andi and her team was so delightful that I want to go back again. The expense is astronomical compared to my income, so I need to find a way to become independently wealthy. That way I can support my new boudoir habit. That, and you know, pay medical bills for myself and my kid and buy food. All the critical things.

Financial independence is in the works, career growth is in the works, finding and maintaining healthy real love is in the works. I just never stop moving you know?

Surviving Susac,

Aurora

[lovequinn]

i cannot break my tradition so here is the annual mushy new years eve post

(first a quick sidebar: i started doing these end of year posts in 2018 i think? i tried to go back today and find all the ones i'd written previously and it just really sank in how different everything is, both internally and externally. obviously i was very aware of that to a degree already, but actually reading the way i spoke about myself and my life is so out-of-body. i was 20 when i wrote one of these for the first time; i'd just dropped out of college, i was grasping on to anything and anyone that made me feel like i belonged or gave me any sort of direction. it's bittersweet to see, because i was trying so hard to be happy when i wasn't, and i wish i could go back and tell that person that it's gonna be fine. i like making these posts because i like to think it's a way of writing to that version of myself and saying hey...here's how we're doing now.)

2023 was, personally, the best year of my life.

this was the year i woke up one morning and said fuck it, i'm tired of not doing what i need to do to make myself happy. i'm tired of being scared to make the decisions i want to make. i'm tired of using "i'm still growing up and figuring out what i'm doing" (i wrote about this a lot in january here) as an excuse to not take the leap and figure it out on my terms.

this was the year that i embraced myself and my identity fully for the first time, even if it's something still ever-changing. it took me until 2022 to acknowledge and accept that i wasn't a cis woman, but i still clung to making myself okay with she/her pronouns in addition to my preferred they/them and avoiding using the word "trans" at all costs. 2023 is the year i started to wear the trans label with pride and i slowly, surely, shook away the parts of me that were afraid of change. i'm still working on that daunting concept of letting other people have insight into the most vulnerable parts of who you are, and i feel like i always will be, but i am millions of miles ahead of where i was twelve months ago when it comes to being confident about what i want and what i need in that respect.

a lot of that is due to the people i surrounded myself with this year. i have had the immense privilege of forming friendships with some of my heroes, and conversely, of watching some longtime friends become heroes. the people that i hold closest to me at the end of 2023 are people who i got to watch advocate for themselves and for others all year long, be that through picket lines, through strength in their personal life, through layoffs, through championing for marginalized people in media, etc. i am so lucky to have the chance to learn from these people and how they live their lives every day. and i find myself lately waking up grateful that i feel cared for and loved by the people i've chosen, in ways i didn't know i could be.

2023 was the year that i connected with the things i love more than i've ever gotten to before. entirely gone is any lingering shame i had about enjoying media, fandoms, stories. getting excited about stuff is cool, actually, and life is short. i had a conversation with an actor i admire and adore so much who said that it's incredibly stupid to pretend to be inhuman and above having things that bring us joy, and i took that to heart. i got to do things like attend premieres and work on promotion for things i'm obsessed with, and i was unabashed about my love for what i choose to consume. this fall, one of the first people i saw after making a terrifying cross-country move was my idol growing up, who i'd crossed paths with a bunch already earlier in the year. that person told me how proud they were of me (and followed up later with a message repeating that) and in a way, that made my teenage self feel so, so proud of me too.

in that vein...this was the year that "i know i would be happy moving to LA, but that's a pipe dream for someday" quickly became closing my eyes, taking a breath, and making the leap. most of the process still feels like it was a blackout, honestly. out of nowhere i had suddenly packed my entire life into a car, left the only place i've been my entire life, and drove 41 hours on my own to an apartment i'd rented without seeing and a roommate i'd never met in person. it was the best decision i've ever made. something that had always felt out of place finally clicked into where it was supposed to be. i adopted a cat on impulse two weeks after moving and with that as the cherry on top...i just truly have spent the last several months finally feeling that wholehearted fulfillment other people talk about and that i never totally understood.

there's so, so much more i could write about, from trips to disneyland, to parties, to relationships. but this is getting so long already, so i'll just add some pictures below and leave it at: i am so thankful for 2023. i am so excited for 2024. let's see what it brings, good or bad.

[wizard-of-interesting-failure]

No you know what I'm gonna take a second here. [Highly unhinged rant at the fundamental injustice, inefficiency, and sheer bloody-minded stupidity of current social technology below the cut]

Absolute horse piss. God, even setting aside how she deserved better from everyone around her and had the same right to a fully accepted authentic life as everyone else, imagine what she could have done if she was supported instead of being treated like this. If she wasn't fired from her job, ejected from her support network, and didn't have to constantly advocate for herself and people like her to be treated like human beings (which was brave and good work worthy of being honored but should never have been necessary in the first place, like rescuing people from a building that collapsed because it was built like shit)

Like okay I don't talk about this that often but I'm a kidney transplant recipient and I think a lot about how the field (like every other avenue of human endeavour) has been crippled by short-sighted bigotry. STEM fields are still hugely male-dominated (sidebar STEM is not the be all and end all creatives y'all super valid and important and your work is foundational to the functioning of STEM and human endeavour and quality of life as a whole; this is just the example that highlights the point for me personally) and it's like. If we didn't push literally everyone except cishet white guys well off enough to afford tertiary education away from everything in the area, would I just have an artificial kidney by now? Who knows?? I'm probably never fucking going to because stupid nonsense.

It's the same shit. And don't get me wrong, the individual human tragedy of unnecessary hardships on the part of this (and every) trans woman (and so many other groups besides) is morally horrible and an indictment of culture as a whole. But we'd probably have fucking blade runner robots or quantum computers or working fusion reactors or Actual Cool AI Instead Of The Current Horseshit by this point! Or a real Mars colony instead of some blowhard yammering on about it while he inflicts suffering on untold millions! Or God knows what else!

And don't even get me started on lack of opportunity for almost everybody in the world. It's like that quote about all the potential einsteins who were born and died impoverished without ever even touching a science textbook.

Like you wanna know why we're struggling so much? Population increase is supposed to mean more hands and minds on every problem but it doesn't because...ugh! Imagine if we cared about global poverty. Imagine how many more lives free of hunger. Imagine how many more people thinking about how to solve everything that needs solving.

I just. The morality is bad enough. It's a great evil by itself. But the sheer fucking gall of dressing it up behind progress and hard decisions. Do you have any idea how much "progress" this costs us? What a good investment humanity would be if we pulled our heads out of our asses for two seconds? What you, personally, have lost because the person who would have given it to you lived and died in preventable despair?

Again, I have to emphasise. People are worthy without contributing huge individual achievements to the arc of history. Society is a collective and everything everyone does adds to the weave and adds up to what we as a whole achieve, there's no real separating out of "this person did this thing" when they were supported by the entire collective of humanity past and present, and even if there was achievement is not the sole benchmark by which life is measured. A better life for everyone is the point, and the idea of "if I don't think you're contributing then you don't deserve anything" is a big part of how we got here in the first place.

There is no culling of the "unproductive". They are the ones who need this most of all. Every life matters, every life (yes, even that one) is a roll of the dice for a miracle of insight (not just in STEM; it all fucking matters and it always has), every life is its own purpose, every life is worthy, to save one life is to save all of mankind, to enrich one life is to enrich all of mankind, to be a life that is enriched is to be enriched on behalf of all of mankind, and none of these facts depend upon any others. There's a mind in there! A self-perceiving miracle of reality! Of course it's precious beyond measure regardless of context, you dipshit!

We can celebrate great advances and exceptional performances without ignoring that we, as a whole, made these things possible too. And we can recognise that these things are valuable because of what they do for everyone, and that the more everyone there is the more valuable they are, and that in order for making life better for the worse off to matter the worse off themselves must matter, and that every life is worthy and every soul is sacred and the people using Lynn's technology to help with their disabilities or live hidden from those who wish them harm or resist the forces I'm talking about here are why the technology is a force for good in the first place.

But I weep for the fact that we have squandered almost all human potential across all of history in short-sighted power-seeking and arbitrary outgroup punishments, and everyone everywhere has suffered for it. Yes, even the stupid billionaires; they'd probably live longer if they hadn't stepped on the people who would have discovered the cure for whatever ends up killing them. Today's average well-off human knows riches that would be the envy of the kings of old, and the average human if none of this was a problem would know riches that would be the envy of the oligarchs of today.

Lives being lived in ways that diminish other lives are ideally changed minimally so that they no longer do (this is the maximisation of collective freedom) and consigned to any other fate only with great sorrow. Even if it is right to do so, I do not believe it is ever righteous. Even if it is not regrettable that it was done in the present, it is regrettable that the past produced a present that required it, and a future that does better should ever be sought.

Just...fucking stupid. That we're so willing impoverish ourselves so that some other people we don't like for no reason can be impoverished more. That the only thing keeping us from Star Trek (not just the spaceships but everything else too) is petty fucking spite (and physics but who knows what backdoor bullshit we could find to work around that).

That Lynn Conway's life, extraordinary and laudable as it was, was made smaller by this rank fucking idiocy. I do not aim to diminish her work by considering what it could have been. I aim to diminish the age she was forced to live in.

Rest in peace, Lynn. You deserved unfathomably, infinitely fucking better, and we are all richer for what you managed to pull off in spite of it all.

[butevensomharewrite]

WIP Wednesday - Retooling OFA

So, one of things I've mentioned a few times in passing but never really made a post about is that for this rewrite, I want to retool OFA into mostly being one quirk. As I've mentioned, a lot of my rewrites focus on the world around Midoriya, because he himself is pretty good, I think, it's just the world around him that feels like it should be tweaked to support him better and OFA is one of those places, I think. This sort of comes from a few places. Firstly, I feel like it's more interesting to me the way I'm going to do it, and secondly, I feel like one of my major issues with the later half of MHA is how the more control Midoriya has, the more fights turn into a punching fest, which does kinda tie into it being more interesting. Midoriya as a one man army is kinda boring to me, and he's not even using his quirks in really interesting combos, so I'd like to keep that down to force him into more combos with others. I don't think him getting all of the quirks of OFA is bad, and I think it's better over three years, but I'm doing it this way anyway. So let's get into some details:

So, most of the early stuff would be the same. The basics of Midoriya meeting All Might, the Sludge Villain is mildly tweaked to involve Shouto and Bakugou, and then Stain, Dabi and Shigaraki making their early appearances, but the core of All Might being inspired by Midoriya and agreeing to train him, the only real difference there being Bakugou gets some training from All Might too, but see the notes on Bakugou's character for that.

Onto the more noticeable changes. To start, we change the workings of OFA ever so slightly. It sort of seems in canon that OFA just gives you a massive boost, and so All Might and Midoriya being quirkless just get the strength boost, but, the way I'm using it, would just boost your quirk and give you the strength boost, but for a quirkless person it gives you one of the quirks from the box. The first time you use the OFA, it manifests the quirk you need most in that moment. All Might doesn't really notice this, because he picked up Danger Sense. Which means Midoriya gets one of them from the start. I don't hate him getting them all, and I think it makes more sense for him to

I went through a few places trying to pick out Midoriya's base quirk:

Gear Shift would be ridiculously cool, and one of the most underrated quirks in the series, especially in combos with some of the others, but the kickback of not being able to breath is even more debilitating than early canon OFA breaking his bones, especially because there's no sign of being able to temper it. I'd have to reset it to its base form rather than OFA form, which I could, but I don't want to change things that much.

Fa Jin would also be really awesome, and fits well with the idea that OFA stockpiles energy. It stockpiles energy and then Fa Jin stockpiles in the moment. Cool synergy, and could be a way around the control issues early on, but does kinda go back to my issues on the lack of combos and punching harder issues I have.

Danger Sense, very cool quirk, but again, doesn't really solve my issues.

The first of the major contenders, Blackwhip. There's a lot of interesting potential here, especially if we're playing down Sero more, It's really versitile, and some creative thinking can quickly turn it even more offensive than Sero or Tsu. It's also great for more combo moves.

Smokescreen is a really interesting consideration. Despite canon saying it couldn't reach ultimate move level, with a bit of tweaking how much Midoriya can control it, it could be more like Mina's acid or Shirakumo's Cloud, it could be some really interesting potential for combat, especially in combo with people like Uraraka. It also has the bonus of plausibly being a mutation of his father's firebreathing, so less suspcious. And the more I think about it, the more I think this might be where I'm going.

(Sidebar: I have no idea if Horikoshi didn't think about it or Midoriya didn't think about it, or but how anyone thought Bakugou wouldn't ask questions about the quirkless kid suddenly getting a quirk that has nothing to do with his parents quirks. Like we laugh at Shouto asking if he's All Might's love child, but Bakugou overhearing that should have been connecting those dots a lot faster than he did. Because the way quirks work in the MHA world, a child not having a quirk that somehow relates to one of their parents could well be seen as proof of an affair. If your only options are your mother's quirk, your father's quirk, or some mix of the two, not even allowing for quirks being recessive and passed from a grandparent, then Midoriya having a quirk that is nothing to do with fire breathing or telekenisis in any twisting logic way should be seen as a sign of Inko having an affair and Midoriya being someone else's, something that is a huge deal in Japan and grounds for a divorce without consent of both parties, like if Endeavor had an affair it would have been the end of his career rather than the abuse just being welp these things happen.)

And Float. If you've seen my old draft of the cavalry battle, you notice Midoriya has Float, because this is my first instinct. It can conceivably be passed off as an evolved form of Inko's telekenisis. It's works well with the Shigaraki and Midoriya parallels, her grandson and her quirk successor, and extra angst for both All Might and Gran Torino. The only problem here is that it can overlap a bit too much with Uraraka's role.

[fire-dwelling]

Reading a friend's reblog regarding fundamentalist Christianity in the United States acting as a death cult: why did I not think of that before?

Man, Ohkubo whiffed on that ending. A manga that I thought was supposed to be an extended critique on organized religion, and for years I never thought, "Oh, a religion based on death and rebirth, that requires someone literally dying for the religion to get created, and in some understanding requires a literal apocalypse and rapture for a new world to exist--are we talking about Christianity or Fire Force?"

And that's the thing: Ohkubo gets close--and then doesn't even try. At least when nuns show up in unexpected places, there is either some made-up religion that is analogous but not quite a real-world substitute (Haganai--yes, I am referencing of all things Haganai), or so exaggerated (Blue Exorcist, A Certain Magical Index) that any resemblance to an actual religion is tangential and just there for visual motif or, especially in Blue Exorcist, to mine for folklore.

Either would have worked for Fire Force--before the reveal that it was our real world all the time. At that point, it just becomes offensive: no response to actual Christianity or actual Judaism or actual Buddhism or actual Shinto or actual Islam--just picking off the meat from the bone of actual religions, divorced from real-world implications, all to have the whiniest of atheist tirades against organized religion before, oops, going to horseshoe that and decide a fundamentalist religious argument is actually totes cool.

As an allegory, Fire Force could have worked: make the Sol Church closely resemble but not be quite any real religion, so that you can talk about those real religions but get enough wrong about them because you aren't literally talking about those religions, you're talking about your fictional one. But nope, turns out the Evangelist was pulling the strings all along, that is why the Sol Church resembles so many major world religions, not only because she was behind the scenes influencing humanity all along but also because humans, not remembering the pre-apocalyptic world, took what little they could remember and just mashed it together.

Sidebar: Christ, that is even more offensive--"People barely remember their own religion, but they mash it with other ones, and this is the result--cool, right?!" No. This is not Greece borrowing from other religions, then later religions borrowing the Greek gods, or disparate regions starting to adopt each other's gods--this is Fire Force, presumably a post-2000s setting where those religions at that time are firmly established and remembered enough that, even with the world burning down, they would not forget that much. This is about as bad as that awful BC comic having the Star of David get extinguished and replaced with the cross.

Like, my fault for not noticing all of that earlier, but also, Ohkubo just whiffs on it because he comes across as saying, "It's a good thing the Rapture happened and that this death-obsessed religion turned out to be correct." What started as, "Maybe organized religion has flaws that we should address in order to improve as a species," instead turns into, "Nah, let's get closer to death so we can reduce this story to a fucking prequel" (yes, I am still on that shit).

Page Sigmund Freud, we need to talk about the death drive mentality in fundamentalist religions and how Ohkubo had next to nothing engaging or appropriate to say on the matter. (Hell, did Freud even come up in Fire Force at all? Or even some Dante references?)

[belgianfry]

FAVE CREATORS ART CHALLENGE: @abigaillazaar edition

i'm on a roll, here's n°3 michelle!!!!! happy belated birthday btw, you magical being. love your toxic vibes (affectionate) and everything you choose to be.

you made 39 gifsets this year, you go productive queen!!! 😎 making my life more complicated cause now i have to choose but it's ok i still love you lmao.

so let's start with this set. the soft coloring is gorgeous and the minty tones are such a nice combo. your blending is incredible and torn paper my beloved. that last gif with the slow ink splatter is so beautiful!! and like i don't watch hotd so i only know alicent from my dash but i'm really feeling her loneliness through this set. you captured it so well??

we need to talk about this set of course. another example of your high-level blending skills. i looooove a good rainbow coloring. i must admit the first gif is my fave. we all know red is your color and you master it like nobody else. i'm in love with the black and the patches of red you added. this is another thing i always try to do on gifs myself too and it always looks like shit so i bow to everyone who manages to make it look good 😂

another gorgeous rhaenicent set is this one!! it's more simple (idk if it's the right word but you get me) but i think this simplicity adds to its tragedy. the scenes you picked speak for themselves. the coloring is stunning and i love that font, and i love how small it is to again not take away from the scenes themselves. gorgeous blending, you never miss.

this set omg THE GREEN????? wowwwww. so vibrant and beautiful and the b&w adds to its richness. the layout is insane, how you use the card thing so cleverly?? like in the first gif, with each of them on one side. genius! and then mirroring it again in the last gif. your brain is so big 🤯

special mention to this red set because it's stunning. but i'm SO impressed by your quadruple blending in the 3rd and last gifs. it's done in such a clever way and it could feel too filled but it doesn't!! because you're that good. the little b&w squares as a final touch?? phew. if i had a hat on i'd take it off. well done.

i want to mention this one as well because it's hilarious. the scenes you picked are perfect for showcasing your point. and bonus stunning coloring and i love those little waves you used, so original. and the font for the numbers is really fucking cool.

and if i had to pick a fave it would be this one. i am OBSESSED with that 3rd gif. that soft orange. the blending, once more. the fonts. everything feels just right, making one damn beautiful set.

i feel like i don't tell you enough but you're honestly one of my fave gifmakers. your stuff is always so sharp and clean and neat and original and creative. i hope they treat you well in the hotd fandom cause damn girl you delivered!!! 👏👏

ps: i'm in love with your sidebar gif