#the ONLY reason i don't is because i don't like the thought of permanently erasing a part of my art journey

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

*for the followers*

Dear Yuri's fans, if you're bored and doom scrolling is not enough

you may be interested in going through the archive of 2022 and 2021

miss if I see you even glance towards the delete button of your vintage posts, I will eat your fingers

the sweet temptation.....

[sophiamcdougall]

You're a reasonably informed person on the internet. You've experienced things like no longer being able to get files off an old storage device, media you've downloaded suddenly going poof, sites and forums with troves full of people's thoughts and ideas vanishing forever. You've heard of cybercrime. You've read articles about lost media. You have at least a basic understanding that digital data is vulnerable, is what I'm saying. I'm guessing that you're also aware that history is, you know... important? And that it's an ongoing study, requiring ... data about how people live? And that it's not just about stanning celebrities that happen to be dead? Congratulations, you are significantly better-informed than the British government! So they're currently like "Oh hai can we destroy all these historical documents pls? To save money? Because we'll digitise them first so it's fine! That'll be easy, cheap and reliable -- right? These wills from the 1850s will totally be fine for another 170 years as a PNG or whatever, yeah? We didn't need to do an impact assesment about this because it's clearly win-win! We'd keep the physical wills of Famous People™ though because Famous People™ actually matter, unlike you plebs. We don't think there are any equalities implications about this, either! Also the only examples of Famous People™ we can think of are all white and rich, only one is a woman and she got famous because of the guy she married. Kisses!"

Yes, this is the same Government that's like "Oh no removing a statue of slave trader is erasing history :(" You have, however, until 23 February 2024 to politely inquire of them what the fuck they are smoking. And they will have to publish a summary of the responses they receive. And it will look kind of bad if the feedback is well-argued, informative and overwhelmingly negative and they go ahead and do it anyway. I currently edit documents including responses to consultations like (but significantly less insane) than this one. Responses do actually matter. I would particularly encourage British people/people based in the UK to do this, but as far as I can see it doesn't say you have to be either. If you are, say, a historian or an archivist, or someone who specialises in digital data do say so and draw on your expertise in your answers. This isn't a question of filling out a form. You have to manually compose an email answering the 12 questions in the consultation paper at the link above. I'll put my own answers under the fold. Note -- I never know if I'm being too rude in these sorts of things. You probably shouldn't be ruder than I have been.

Please do not copy and paste any of this: that would defeat the purpose. This isn't a petition, they need to see a range of individual responses. But it may give you a jumping-off point.

Question 1: Should the current law providing for the inspection of wills be preserved?

Yes. Our ability to understand our shared past is a fundamental aspect of our heritage. It is not possible for any authority to know in advance what future insights they are supporting or impeding by their treatment of material evidence. Safeguarding the historical record for future generations should be considered an extremely important duty.

Question 2: Are there any reforms you would suggest to the current law enabling wills to be inspected?

No.

Question 3: Are there any reasons why the High Court should store original paper will documents on a permanent basis, as opposed to just retaining a digitised copy of that material?

Yes. I am amazed that the recent cyber attack on the British Library, which has effectively paralysed it completely, not been sufficient to answer this question for you.  I also refer you to the fate of the Domesday Project. Digital storage is useful and can help more people access information; however, it is also inherently fragile. Malice, accident, or eventual inevitable obsolescence not merely might occur, but absolutely should be expected. It is ludicrously naive and reflects a truly unpardonable ignorance to assume that information preserved only in digital form is somehow inviolable and safe, or that a physical document once digitised, never need be digitised again..At absolute minimum, it should be understood as certain that at least some of any digital-only archive will eventually be permanently lost. It is not remotely implausible that all of it would be. Preserving the physical documents provides a crucial failsafe. It also allows any errors in reproduction -- also inevitable-- to be, eventually, seen and corrected. Note that maintaining, upgrading and replacing digital infrastructure is not free, easy or reliable. Over the long term, risks to the data concerned can only accumulate.

"Unlike the methods for preserving analog documents that have been honed over millennia, there is no deep precedence to look to regarding the management of digital records. As such, the processing, long-term storage, and distribution potential of archival digital data are highly unresolved issues. [..] the more digital data is migrated, translated, and re-compressed into new formats, the more room there is for information to be lost, be it at the microbit-level of preservation. Any failure to contend with the instability of digital storage mediums, hardware obsolescence, and software obsolescence thus meets a terminal end—the definitive loss of information. The common belief that digital data is safe so long as it is backed up according to the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies on 2 different formats with 1 copy saved off site) belies the fact that it is fundamentally unclear how long digital information can or will remain intact. What is certain is that its unique vulnerabilities do become more pertinent with age."  -- James Boyda, On Loss in the 21st Century: Digital Decay and the Archive, Introduction.

Question 4: Do you agree that after a certain time original paper documents (from 1858 onwards) may be destroyed (other than for famous individuals)? Are there any alternatives, involving the public or private sector, you can suggest to their being destroyed?

Absolutely not. And I would have hoped we were past the "great man" theory of history. Firstly, you do not know which figures will still be considered "famous" in the future and which currently obscure individuals may deserve and eventually receive greater attention. I note that of the three figures you mention here as notable enough to have their wills preserved, all are white, the majority are male (the one woman having achieved fame through marriage) and all were wealthy at the time of their death. Any such approach will certainly cull evidence of the lives of women, people of colour and the poor from the historical record, and send a clear message about whose lives you consider worth remembering.

Secondly, the famous and successsful are only a small part of our history. Understanding the realities that shaped our past and continue to mould our present requires evidence of the lives of so-called "ordinary people"!

Did you even speak to any historians before coming up with this idea?

Entrusting the documents to the private sector would be similarly disastrous. What happens when a private company goes bust or decides that preserving this material is no longer profitable? What reasonable person, confronted with our crumbling privatised water infrastructure, would willingly consign any part of our heritage to a similar fate?

Question 5: Do you agree that there is equivalence between paper and digital copies of wills so that the ECA 2000 can be used?

No. And it raises serious questions about the skill and knowledge base within HMCTS and the government that the very basic concepts of data loss and the digital dark age appear to be unknown to you. I also refer you to the Domesday Project.

Question 6: Are there any other matters directly related to the retention of digital or paper wills that are not covered by the proposed exercise of the powers in the ECA 2000 that you consider are necessary?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 7: If the Government pursues preserving permanently only a digital copy of a will document, should it seek to reform the primary legislation by introducing a Bill or do so under the ECA 2000?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 8: If the Government moves to digital only copies of original will documents, what do you think the retention period for the original paper wills should be? Please give reasons and state what you believe the minimum retention period should be and whether you consider the Government’s suggestion of 25 years to be reasonable.

There is no good version of this plan. The physical documents should be preserved.

Question 9: Do you agree with the principle that wills of famous people should be preserved in the original paper form for historic interest?

This question betrays deep ignorance of what "historic interest" actually is. The study of history is not simply glorified celebrity gossip. If anything, the physical wills of currently famous people could be considered more expendable as it is likely that their contents are so widely diffused as to be relatively "safe", whereas the wills of so-called "ordinary people" will, especially in aggregate, provide insights that have not yet been explored.

Question 10: Do you have any initial suggestions on the criteria which should be adopted for identifying famous/historic figures whose original paper will document should be preserved permanently?

Abandon this entire lamentable plan. As previously discussed, you do not and cannot know who will be considered "famous" in the future, and fame is a profoundly flawed criterion of historical significance.

Question 11: Do you agree that the Probate Registries should only permanently retain wills and codicils from the documents submitted in support of a probate application? Please explain, if setting out the case for retention of any other documents.

No, all the documents should be preserved indefinitely.

Question 12: Do you agree that we have correctly identified the range and extent of the equalities impacts under each of these proposals set out in this consultation? Please give reasons and supply evidence of further equalities impacts as appropriate.

No. You appear to have neglected equalities impacts entirely. As discussed, in your drive to prioritise "famous people", your plan will certainly prioritise the white, wealthy and mostly the male, as your "Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin and Princess Diana" examples amply indicate. This plan will create a two-tier system where evidence of the lives of the privileged is carefully preserved while information regarding people of colour, women, the working class and other disadvantaged groups is disproportionately abandoned to digital decay and eventual loss. Current and future historians from, or specialising in the history of minority groups will be especially impoverished by this.  

[ekat-fandom-blog]

Personal canons are the canon everyone has created based on the canon and fanon content they've consumed.

Expansion not necessary. I just wanted to add my thoughts.

1. Examples range from wanting to wrap his drinks in a web before drinking them to wanting to fall asleep curled up in the back corner of his closet. No, it doesn't matter which Spider-Man.

2. This one is just my perception of the two. There's nothing I can actually tell you about this other than the vibes seem to match.

3. The headcanon of Poison Ivy eating mostly meat is fun. (Not fully carnivore because I think she'd also eat plants because it's necessary to eat both to be a healthy human and can be healthy for the environment if done in moderation). I decided to combine it with Danny Phantom for this because I haven't seen anyone do it before. So, Ivy being mostly carnivorous and Sam being ultra-recyclo-vegetarian would be appalled at each others diets.

4. Cyborg's connected to a supercomputer created by a more scientifically advanced society, while Barbara is a human (I specified her because she's the best Bat at hacking.) Her being the best hacker in the universe is a stretch at best. There's gotta be computer languages she's unable to decipher because it's so different to any on earth. (I don't think anyone from earth should be able to hack cyborg or the mother/father boxes.) If your supercomputer can be hacked by the equivalent of a preteen with a 2010 samsung who doesn't even recognise the coding language you used, then you didn't create a supercomputer. (Mother/father boxes are sentient, autonomous computers btw.)

5. Young Justice was good. Great. It just seemed to stop caring as much about having the new audience learn about the characters after season 2. I wouldn't know who Razer is if I didn't watch Green Lantern: The Animated Series. I stopped having emotional connections with the characters by season 4 and they stopped wrapping up storylines in an emotionally fulfilling manor after season 2. As someone who never read any comic books except for Spider-man/Deadpool and a few green lantern ones and one batman and spider-man crossover, I don't care about the characters they shove into the show and expect everyone to care about.

6. I get it. The "he won't stop if he does it once" was only in one comic (apparently) and the comic was written by someone that (apparently) most of the fandom doesn't like. I don't care. Every reason he has for not killing is valid and coexists. He collects reasons to not kill like it's gold and he's a dragon. The only reason that is invalid and can't coexist is that he doesn't care enough about the people that could get hurt or killed to permanently stop people like Joker, Bane, or Scarecrow.

7. It makes sense if they were the two to get touch starved easily. Dick grew up in a circus where everyone was presumably pretty tight knit and Tim grew up in a home where appearance mattered more than feelings. But also they happen to be the characters I like to torture.

8. Strange is petty and I 100% believe that Tony started it. (Stephen is finishing it though.)

9. Freddy Freeman can't walk without crutches and flies in the comics. (I haven't read them, tho) I feel like it's erasing disabled peoples' struggles when they just give him the ability to walk in his hero form. Let him be a little flying guy who never touches the ground.

10. It's a comic thing again. I just think it's more interesting. (I found pages of captain marvel comics in google images and tumblr.)

[mike-haters-dni]

Scalding, unnecessary take that I'm going to use as an excuse to yap about my hyperfixation characters more than anything, but El's character is actually impossible to stick into coffee shop fanfiction No Supernatural Shit AUs. That's Jane you're writing about. Jane and El are not the same person. At all. And like, Jane is interesting to think about, don't get me wrong. I have thought about Jane. I love Jane. She's adorable and vaguely autistic. But Jane != Eleven.

Eleven is the way she is almost entirely because of her experience/trauma of growing up in the lab and having supernatural murder powers. Her main characters traits are being a self-sacrificing hero and not being sure who she is due to the fact she grew up in an isolated sterile inhuman environment. Unless you're directly translating those things into something unsupernatural (like growing up in a fucked up cult or something and like fighting her way out and now she'll fight to protect other people from similar experiences or something idk) you're writing about Jane the normal gorl who got to grow up with a normal personality in a normal world. And like, you can do that. It's fine it's fandom do whatever u want. But personally, the first thing I come up with when I birth an AU is what crazy powers and fucked up backstory we give Eleven here. Also how do we make her and everyone else really fucking cool but that...might be beside the point idk.

The powers have to basically ruin or have had ruined her life at one point. They have to be a curse that she either reclaims or gets rid of at the end. If she isn't tortured she isn't Eleven Stranger Things lmao

And then yeah yeah my next step is to figure out how Mike AND THE OTHERS OK but mostly Mike get involved in this. Which brings me to my next point: Jane and Mike have no real reason to talk to each other. Mike x Jane is just Normal Gorl x Normal Boy which is like, fine sure if that's what you want, but also you kinda just erased everything interesting about their dynamic. You wanna know what makes El and Mike's relationship so compelling? Objectively? I'm objectively right about everything I'm about to say here? Ok their dynamic is this: Eleven is the most important person in the world, and Mike is the only boy who will ever love her. And yeah that second one sounds really sad but 1. yeah it kinda is :) 2. its not really true that's just what El thinks which is like a major theme for her character TO ME, her underestimating how 'normal' she is esp in her later years 3. it also is kinda true because he's the only boy romantically interested in her who actually understands and experienced all the supernatural/lab trauma bullshit and is actively fighting beside her through the plot of the show, and 4. he's literally perfect and also the only boy she'll ever love and need so it all works out.

And to explain the first one, I mean, you know she's saved the world twice right? She kinda literally is the most important person in the world considering its up to her to stop the apocalypse probably in the end? But its not the being important exactly that makes Mike love her ok, that's more of a meta character thing. Like she doesn't have to literally be the key to saving the world and the most powerful being in the universe. Its more that she has to have something really special about her that draws Mike specifically to her and binds him to her permanently and inseparably and he belongs to her forever and ever and they die in each other's arms. Like she deserves. In canon I imagine objectively and correctly that it went like this: Mike is a natural outcast collector and protector due to his pervasive unconscious need to be needed and his fear of losing the few people who like him, who meets the ultimate outcast girl who literally has nothing and needs him in a very real way, and this gives him an excuse to just pour his entire self into her, fulfilling one of his deepest interpersonal needs. The best part is that she's super selfless and amazing and she loves him the same right back so its actually a beautiful thing they get going. Basically the idea of being anything less than perfect for her is so sad and horrible due to how fucked her life was that it drives the already caretaking Mike into overdrive to make her happy. Not at the cost of him still being an individual person, mind you. But that's the vibe. Also let me just say, all the self-sacrificing vibes and obsession and desperation can become toxic under certain circumstances and that is absolutely a feature not a bug. Sorry you don't like watching your faves yell at each other but we are not the same.

Anyway what the fuck was I talking about? AUs? Yeah ok so when translating Mike (AND THE OTHERS...and the others) into other stories there's more flexibility u kno because he's mostly just Some Guy. He really just needs (TO ME) an excuse to be fighting with Eleven (she has to be fighting something with the powers I know you gave her). He shouldn't be directly involved with whatever gave her the powers but he should generally know of and be somewhat affected by it. Or become aware of it/involved with it over time. Like in the show. You get it. Honestly his only real consistent character traits are being kinda moody and being the leader of the party in whatever vague or not way. And being intelligent. Like he has to be leader for a reason. I guess that's a decent base for a character right there.

oh right side note: you have to do something fun with her name. like she was basically branded Eleven by the freak that gave her the powers so u gotta take that energy and translate it into another branded name that has el in it because she needs to get the nickname ofc. unless its a cyberpunk au in which case Eleven is a pretty normal name and she can just go by that lmao.

So the point ig is Jane and Mike break up when they go away to different colleges and don't talk to each other again until their next high school reunion, while Mike and Eleven are...well you should know by now.

[sync24]

It was always the Doctor who would have to forget Clara. "Look how far I went for fear of losing you" describes not only the end of the universe, caused by the twelveclara timelordhuman hybrid, but the entirety of season 9.

In the preceding Christmas special, Clara lives a long and happy life. Though she still looks exactly the same to the Doctor, she is barely strong enough to pull on a Christmas cracker, both of them know they can't travel together like this. This is where the Doctor sees Clara's life without him in it for the first time, laid out. Of course, Clara and the Doctor had been lying to each other, pretending to have found their own piece of happiness and leaving each other to it — Gallifrey and Danny Pink alive and well, though even if that were true, the Doctor and Clara would not be able to find happiness and contentment in Gallifrey or with Danny Pink: they've tried before and it did not work. But, even though they're left to their own devices, the Doctor knows very well he could swoop back in to take her away at any second; it's a test of his will, not a permanent end, not if he doesn't want it to be.

A "Christmas miracle" allows him to find her again at the age she was when they lost track of each other, and he pleads with her (I'm begging you, please, don't even argue) to join him again, all of time and space is sitting outside in a blue box... I would argue that this is when Clara officially starts living on borrowed time, when her death becomes absolutely inevitable. Because there was an opportunity to let her live a full life away from the Doctor and he wouldn't let her, couldn't bear to, begged her not to, and perhaps most crucially: Clara would never choose a normal life, if presented with the choice, for the same reason the Doctor would never go back to Gallifrey and "live like a king" even if he could, even if things were peaceful and just. (Moffat: When I first wrote Clara, I thought, “Oh, this is fun. If the Doctor were a young woman living in contemporary Britain, it’d be a bit like her.”)

In season 9, nearly every two-parter episode puts Clara (and, to a lesser extent, the Doctor) in unprecedented danger. We see several demonstrations of what the Doctor might be capable of, should he actually lose Clara, but he manages to find a way, or Clara manages to find a way, Missy manages to find a way — like any member of team TARDIS always does, because they get themselves out of every shenanigan imaginable — until they don't. He doesn't care if he has to break the rules he has so carefully constructed for himself (I'm changing history to save Clara and The Doctor isn't here anymore: you are stuck here with me).

When the Doctor finds himself under the threat of death, Clara is there to demand him to find a solution, because he always does, this can't be the end, you owe me, die with the next person but you will not die with me. She finds a solution or demands he does, and they work it out. Because they always do, until they don't. Clara is a lot like the Doctor after all, and becomes more like him with every adventure they go on, but she does not have access to the same things the Doctor does: a TARDIS, a sonic, theoretical immortality. This is part of why the Doctor blames himself for what happens. (Clara, there's nothing special about me. I am nothing, but I'm less breakable than you. I should have taken care of you.) Had the Doctor succeeded in erasing Clara's memory as planned, he could look out for her, visit her, come back for her — and he would have. For the same reason he stole her away on Christmas day, taking her away from the love of her life (or so he believes) and a happy, fulfilled human lifetime (according to old!Clara). Even without his memories, of her, misshapen and riddled with holes, he is actively searching for her, despite knowing the dangers, remembering to some extent what happened and still, he searches. The only reason his memories get to return at the end with no consequences is because 1) he believes that she has returned to Gallifrey to face her death once again and 2) his regenerating body is about to force him to move on, to enter his next phase of life, become a new person, leave previous attachments to his previous iterations (literally and metaphorically). Look how far he went for fear of losing her. He had to be the one to forget.

[shuttershocky]

You know, something funky has just occurred to me.

Fate introduces us to multiple effects that reverse causality or rewrite the flow of time to achieve their desired effect, i.e. Gae Bolg and Fragarach. These effects are rightfully treated as a Big Deal, but that's predominantly due to how dangerous they are in the context of the HGW. They are not, to my knowledge, ever explicitly called out as being phenomena adjacent to True Magic. But when Aoko alters the flow of time to the point of rewriting events retroactively, it's very distinctly Magic.

It's really odd considering that Stay Night and Hollow Ataraxia have the context and vocabulary to talk about Magic, and Mahoyo in its early form did already exist at that point, just not in a form that we could read. So time fuckery surely must have already been established as Magic at least internally. I wonder what the deal is there. Like are we supposed to just accept that of course Noble Phantasms can just casually do things like that by nature of what they are or what

Look, don't think too hard about the hows.

It's the inverse of Fate/Stay Night (and indirectly, Tsukihime) establishing that encapsulating the soul and moving it between bodies without decay is an act of True Magic (it's Heaven's Feel) while Touko's been casually doing it way beforehand and it's not True Magic: don't think too hard about it. Zouken can't live forever without becoming a mass of terrible worms, Roa grows weaker and weaker as he reincarnates in different bodies as a soul parasite, but Touko can just die and revive without issue because she was written before that was well established. In this case, Gae Bolg reversing Cause and Effect is magecraft and not really an act of True Magic even if it sounds like it should, because Nasu was working on an entirely different train of thought by then: Gae Bolg's unavoidable kill success by reversing cause and effect is reliant on the enemy's Luck stat, whatever the hell that actually means (it's only seen on servants and inside Fate).

It should also be said that Aoko's 5th Magic isn't messing with time itself, but the method by which she does it. In Mahoyo, Touko takes the chance to analyze Aoko displaying the 5th Magic and reasons that the 5th Magic could not be Time, as time manipulation could be achieved with the 2nd as well. Since Nasu stated that Goetia's plan was a hint at the 5th Magic's true nature, we can guess that what was actually True Magic is Aoko able to emit energy powerful enough to burn through the fabric of time and manipulate it herself, as that was exactly what Goetia tried to do by incinerating panhuman history.

______

While we're here, do you know what else was established as a hard rule in Mahoyo? Death's permanence. While there are those who cheat death by moving bodies, once someone dies in a permanent way, they're fucking dead and not even True Magic can truly fix it. Aoko uses clever manipulation to get around that problem so it doesn't actually matter, but she can't erase death itself even with her power, only nullify it by messing with time so that it's not a problem for today.

The concept of Servants isn't truly defying death either. A servant is not /the/ soul of the individual who died, but a copy from the soul inside the throne of heroes then generated into the world. The holy grail can't bring back the dead, only allow a shadow (still a person, still them yet not them!) to continue on.

But someone does cheat that. Akiha can keep Shiki alive even as Shiki is so close to dead that the Root's power is manifesting in his eyes without the origin of emptiness that the other Shiki has, and we still don't know exactly how after 23 years of Tsukihime. No other oni has displayed such power, and we've never seen magecraft that allowed someone to develop the true Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, not even Roa (though he thinks he did).

The "how the hell is she keeping someone on the literal border between life and death alive for years" and the implications it has on Type-Moon lore isn't important to Tsukihime, what IS important is how that is just one of the many ways Shiki is trapped inside the Tohno family, and is symbolic of Akiha's own relationship to the Tohno family.

It's about how Akiha upholds the Tohno's name and societal status, but bears their sins and despises them and herself for it. She uses her very life to keep Shiki alive and gaslights him into believing he's her brother, while she murders her actual flesh and blood brother without a care, because that's what it means to bear the cursed name of the Tohno and the sins of her family.

When it comes to Type-Moon lore, you shouldn't think too hard about the hows, because more often than not Nasu's writing to answer the whys instead.

[pascaloverx]

Hit The Road

Chapter Four

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Summary: You are a hunter of supernatural beings who is forced to experience a new reality: being a vampire. The only thing stronger than your thirst for blood is your thirst for revenge.

Author's note: the characters mentioned here were created by Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec, based on the book series of the same name by author L. J. Smith. They don't belong to me. That said, this fanfic will be short. This fanfic may address scenes of violence, inappropriate language and adult content. Minors should not interact with this story.

Waking up dizzy in an unfamiliar room wasn't something you expected. Yet, there was a strange sense of déjà vu lingering in the air, as if you've been in this room before. Something felt oddly familiar, whether it was the irresistibly soft bed tempting you to make it your permanent residence or the piercing gaze of a Salvatore with captivating blue eyes watching your every move.

"What am I doing in your room, Damon?" You inquire, curiosity evident as you struggle to recall how you ended up here.

"Recharging, considering you probably haven't had a good blood meal in a long while. If you're going to expend energy remembering things erased from your memory, Y/N, you need to be strong." Damon remarks, seemingly aware of what's happening to you before you even mention anything.

"You don't need to lecture me; it's not my fault I'm a vampire in denial. I've spent my whole life trying to kill creatures like me." You assert.

"I don't recall you trying to kill me when we were together, but if you say so. Need help changing or taking a shower?" Damon offers with a mischievous grin, prompting you to throw a pillow at him.

"I want help with answers, Damon. I want to know what's been wiped from my memory, who did it, and why I've been having these flashbacks since I got here." You express, a determined look in your eyes.

"I'd rather help you with the shower..." Damon says, and you sense he's trying to change the subject. What the hell could he be hiding?

"Do you want to change the subject so desperately that you're willing to betray your girlfriend?" You say, tossing in a half-truth. Though you can't quite remember, you have a hunch that reasonable Elena is dating one of the Salvatores.

"Who told you about Elena?" He seems somewhat uneasy about the topic. You stand up, facing Damon, who is seated in the chair.

"No one in particular, but a human mentioned that she has a positive influence on you. Seems like I made a good guess." You say, feeling clever for piecing that together. Damon stands up, looking at you as if he thought you'd take longer to question him.

"Currently, Elena is my ex-girlfriend. Satisfied?" Damon says as he approaches you. You quickly take a step back for each step he takes forward.

"Not at all. I'm sorry for your troubles, but I need a lot more than that to be satisfied. Don't want to help me remember because you killed me? No problem. I'll kill you as soon as I can, nothing personal." You say, staring him down. He smiles so genuinely, it's as if you just told a joke.

"I didn't kill you. I'm not even sure I could. I did turn you, that's true. But you're right, I won't tell you what you want or need to know. You'll remember on your own when you're ready." Damon admits. You see him with such a soft face as he says this that it irritates you. You want to understand who you are completely and the only idiot who can help you seems to have fun watching you not understand anything.

"I'll kill you." You almost scream this before throwing Damon into the nearest wall. You hold him by the neck tightly, but he seems to find it amusing.

"You want to kill me? Great, do it right." He says taking my hand and placing it under her chest. Right above the heart.

"Do you think I don't have the courage?" You say, still pressing him tightly. You know you could rip out Damon's heart or break his neck. But I couldn't imagine a world without him. Something inside you screams that you wouldn't survive without him. What a shitty emotional memory.

"I know you love me, you just don't remember it but your body like that your mind, still remember me." You let him go, trying to demonstrate in some way your rejection of what he had just said.

"You can't rely on my memories. I won't hurt you only because, somehow, you might be useful. But as far as I'm concerned, you'll never have that love you remember back, if it's up to me." You assert. He watches you, wearing a sly smile – the kind that says, "Just you wait."

Confused, you look at him. You're not sure how to react to Damon's charm and confidence – it throws you off balance. He seems to sense your insecurity, so he approaches slowly. As if to forewarn you of what's to come, he gently cradles your face in his hands. It feels strange, and you might even find yourself furrowing your brow in response. His lips slowly question you, “Do you want me to stop?”

You wonder if you want him to stop, after all, a lot happens with you. But you shake your head, denying that you want him to stop. Damon's lips are soft. The kiss however is not soft at all. It's as if he's thirsty for you, for your lips and for your closeness. You can feel a little love in this kiss, not from your part of course but from his. The heat inside you can't be love, you refuse to think that you miss Damon. Yet you find yourself holding Damon's head tighter against you. He suddenly picks you up and you feel like you're doing something so good but so wrong. I mean, not long ago you were having sex with his brother. Now it's here, being held by him. He has his hands firmly on your ass. But at some point he sits on the couch and puts you on his lap. You then slowly break the kiss, kissing his lips slowly and down to his neck. Then you go up and give a little peck lingering on Damon's lips. Slowing down the pace is necessary, if not you'll be in Damon's bed with no clothes on in a few minutes.

"Damon, we need to slow down this thing between us. If we keep going... we might regret it." You say between brief kisses, trying to ease the tension between you and Damon.

"You're still the same, always thinking about the future. But I think it's fair to think that you might regret that..." He speaks as if deep down he is hurt.

"I'm not just talking about me, you yourself may regret that I'm not the person you love." You say thinking that his heart has an owner and it's not you.

"Are you going to keep bringing Elena into our every moment?" Damon questions a little impatiently. When you are about to say something, you hear a noise. You and Damon look at each other and you can smell the sweet scent of a feminine perfume coming from you. down there. And something tells me I'm about to meet the famous Elena.

[peachesofteal]

I LOVE that new addition of the Dead Disco AU where the guys left UGH

My mind is running at 300 kph and OH GOD the thought of Darling getting a new partner is making me want to cry 😭😭😭

But also I've been thinking about Darling and her new partner for this AU

I don't know if it's self projection because (again) Darling is very relatable to me, and because of that, she gives off the vibe that despite all the sadness, when she's in a better mental space she's so gentle and kind to people, always wants to look the good in the world and believes there's always deeper motivations behind everyone else's actions... Which has lead her to multiple shitty situations, where people often abused her kind nature and her vulnerability. A few shitty friends who criticized her every action and that she found out way too late, partners who constantly crossed boundaries and never knew how to keep their shitty opinions to themselves.

And she thought she finally found the loves of her life, who made her feel loved and wanted and tried to be as healthy as they all could. Up until the day Simon and Johnny broke up with her

And then when they come back and try to be in Bee's life, she decides that she's the one deciding who's getting into her heart and who's not.

Except that with her new partner, she's once again ignoring warning signs and, the new partner is not violent per se, but they're negligent. They don't really know Darling all that well and sure, they want to try to get to know her to some extent, but they also don't care that much for Darling's interests that much tbh

So let's say. Bee is a year and a half old, and Darling's been with her new partner for a little over eight months now, and for any reason, Simon and Johnny came to her apartment while they were having a date night to leave Bee after spending the day with her.

What greets them at the door is their beautiful, lovely Darling that they still love very much, but have now accepted that you're not coming back to them and they'll try to support you and be in your life in any way you let them. But your eyes are puffy and red, your voice sounds broken, like you've been crying your eyes out.

No one mentions it. But you still let them into your home to maybe discuss Bee's new tendencies to bite into people. The glimpse of the dynamic of you and your partner is not good. Johnny and Simon can't believe that while you're ranting about whatever you love (be it gaming or art or literature or possums), your partner not only is on their phone completely ignoring you, giving noncommittal replies, but also they're fucking liking pics of models on whatever social media they have (they don't know that, but that is feeding onto your insecurities SO MUCH). They notice the way your eyes look glossy once more, how your lip trembles and how you try not to let your voice show that you're about to cry.

Simon feels more sad than anything, wanting to erase that sadness out of you and treat you the way he knows you deserve to be treated. Wanting to hold you between him and Johnny and never let go. But Johnny? He on the other hand is livid. His anger turned into acceptance over your permanent departure out of his life, but what he CANNOT accept is the way you're being treated, as if you were less than furniture and your feelings were something on the way of whatever comfort your partner wanted out of you. He gathered all of his willpower to stay put and not knock some sense into your new partner, choosing to find a few minutes later a quiet moment with you on the kitchen.

"Is he really treating you good?"

You hesitate to answer, but reply a quiet, solitary "Yes."

"And are you really happy?"

Your silence says more.

And they're both determined. If they can't have you back at least they can have your back, in whatever way they can without crossing the boundaries you put in place, advice from Laswell still echoing on their minds ("You should give that girl some space and help from the sidelines," it's what she basically stated).

And it works its objective, at least. They remember a fleeing conversation here and there and bring you details about your interest in question (be it a new gaming controller, new art supplies, a book you've been wanting to buy). And they're somewhat making peace with the fact that this is all they're going to be in YOUR life, besides Bee's dads.

That is, until Bee's a few months over two years old and they bring Bee back to you, not a sight of your new partner inside your home.

"What happened to him?" And they try not to sound hopeful, just a little bit.

"We broke up," you say. "We broke up, and I think we three need to have a conversation once Bee is asleep."

OH GOD I'M SORRY FOR THIS MESS. I JUST. YEAH. THIS FIC IS CHANGING THE CHEMISTRY OF MY BRAIN. My boyfriend is aware of the emotional roller coaster that Dead Disco and its AUs is bringing to me 😂 I'M SORRY I DON'T MEAN TO BE ANNOYING I JUST LIKE YOUR FIC WAY TOO MUCH, and your brain that comes up with these ideas ❤️ I hope you know that your writing is one of the most beautiful styles I have ever read, and also I want to let you know that it's very friendly towards non-native English speakers :3 again I'm sorry for this long ask but I really just want to share these thoughts ❤️ I hope you magically find pocket money in one of your jeans!!!

You’re never annoying, I love hearing from you! I’m a little flabbergasted that your boyfriend knows about these AUs but also like… that’s cool! I love and appreciate your kind words 🥲 Reading feedback like this is always so sweet, and I’m blown away by your support. 🩵🩵🩵

You’re totally right. It’s canon in my mind that Darling (you) is kind hearted. Not naive but sweet, somewhat gentle, and sees the better side of others. It does leave you in precarious situations (or has in the past at least) but you’re adaptable, and when you and the guys were good, they built a fortress around you, to protect you. However, it can leave you open, and vulnerable.

And like, it’s not like Darling has the highest self esteem, right? You’re constantly down on yourself, berating yourself in your own mind about how you should be better, be better at taking care of yourself, be better at being a mum, be better at being a partner. Maybe… if you were better, the guys would have never left in the first place. Maybe, if you were better, this one won’t leave either.

And that kind of thinking, allows you to settle for someone who doesn’t really see you. Who doesn’t really care to know you all that well. Who doesn’t really get you, or want to.

But maybe you can’t see that. Maybe, you just see someone who you like, who likes you. Who makes you feel better than you’ve been feeling.

So you can’t see through it.

But the guys certainly can.

[itsclydebitches]

IM SCREAMING, THEY SAW RUBY COMMIT MAGICAL SUICIDE AND JUST WENT ON THEIR MERRY WAY. WHAT IS WITH THIS SHOW AND REFUSING TO SHOW CHARACTERS EXPERIENCING EMOTIONAL REACTIONS TO THINGS HELP. The only emotions we get are Ruby's little fit and Jaune's paper thin depiction of PTSD. I'm gonna scream!

I think I'm in shock about it? I cannot stress enough that while I was prepared for the mess of Ruby's suicide attempt getting framed by the narrative in a positive light (this leads them to the way out, she gets some new ability, etc.) I still thought the GROUP would react appropriately. They just watched Ruby have a complete meltdown, she's already fainted once this Volume due to grief over Penny, they now understand the "hints" of depression Ruby has been displaying the last 24 hours (like her avoiding Crescent Rose), she runs away from them, is caught by Neo, gets the shit kicked out of her, and then looks them in the eye while drinking the Permanently Changes You And Erases Your Memories Tea while a fake Roman waxes on about how the world would be better off without her.

...and they're all just okay with that?

I was fully expecting Yang to go on a Super Saiyan rampage. I was prepared to write about how it's too little, too late now that Yang has revealed her supposedly-always-there love for Ruby after ignoring herfor most of the Volume. Regardless of how badly she's treated her little sister this season, it was oh-so-obvious to me that Yang was going to break, be inconsolable, go feral in an attempt to hunt down the Cat/Neo for revenge. I was expecting to see a frantic Blake and a near catatonic Weiss, horrified that she just lost someone else after her entire Kingdom was destroyed. I was waiting for Jaune's furious and annoyingly justified "I told you so!" after the Cat revealed their true colors and the tree - which he's said was evil this whole time - dragged Ruby away after she rolls over, 'dead' from its leaves that Neo gave her in an attempt to kill her.

Side note: for anyone who is seriously trying to argue that this wasn't a suicide attempt, if you consider nothing else, consider Neo. She does not want Ruby to be cured of her depression, or get a power-up, or take the supposedly magical medicine that will help her work through her problems. Why in the world would Neo give Ruby something harmless, let alone beneficial? Neo wants her dead. She gave her the tea to destroy Ruby once and for all and, when Ruby drank it, Neo believed she'd succeeded, becoming hollow as a result. She would not have been capable of being possessed if she believed that Ruby would survive and her revenge was incomplete. The whole reason the Cat was able to get to her was because Neo thought Ruby was gone for good and even the Cat themselves is surprised to find Ruby in the cocoon. Ruby, meanwhile, is drinking to escape the horrors of her own life that she can no longer face. That was a murder attempt turned suicide attempt.

So we've got [gestures] all of this and instead of reacting with anything like human emotions Blake is smiling as she tells Yang that this is a great thing for Ruby and Weiss is pulling a Volume 8 Yang by announcing that their mistakes don't matter because they were brave about it and Jaune is staring at these gem strangers that don't know him anymore right after watching the Cat horrifically possess Neo and announces that they were right about the tree? Seriously why is the surprise villain of the Volume positioned as the morally trustworthy source? Even Ironwood wasn't granted that.

Forget Ever After, I feel like I've fallen into a parallel universe. Not to be ~dramatic~ about it, but am I being pranked? Did someone sneak a RWBY parody onto Crunchyroll? Is RT pulling a Rebecca Welton and trying to tank their own show due to some personal grudge? I am legitimately trying to understand how we went from this

to this?

(Also, friendly reminder that the screenshot of Ruby is right after Little was murdered. I mean, I don't care about them and clearly Ruby herself should be the concern, but I just want to point out that no one acknowledges Little either. An ally has just been killed, brutally crushed during Ruby's torture session, so how do the characters react to this? They don't. They leave Little's body there and don't even mention them. Look at Yang's massive grin, Blake's satisfied smile, Weiss' (possibly romantic?) hug. Their leader just attempted suicide and a coded-as-a-child friend was just murdered... and this is how they're acting in the immediate aftermath.)

(Second friendly reminder that the group was already not reacting to the entirety of the Atlas fiasco and in the wake of the last three episodes I find myself frequently forgetting that. Yang thinking she'd died, Blake thinking she'd died, Weiss losing her entire Kingdom, not knowing which of her family members made it out, Salem getting two Relics, Jaune and Weiss still not revealing that he killed Penny... none of it is being dealt with and that was before we threw 'The group ignores Ruby trying to die' into the mix.')

[msviolacea]

There's a post I've seen a couple of times on my dash that I agree with in general principle, but is too mean-spirited in its execution for me to reblog. But it's making me feel the dreaded so-called fandom elder thoughts, so.

To paraphrase Men in Black, a fan is smart. A fandom is a herd of dumb animals. The larger the fandom gets, the dumber it gets as a collective. Which is true of pretty much any group of human beings, but this is the Fandom Place, so fandom is the topic. And it takes time and usually bad experiences to teach most people that your fandom experience is always going to be better the more you limit your circle. Which doesn't mean you have to only ever interact with three people, but it does mean you should be wary when the community starts to swell at a rapid pace.

There's euphoria in feeling like your love of a thing is validated. No one is immune to that euphoria, no matter how long they've been in fandom. The euphoria is half the reason we stay here for years, tbh. The problems always come when that (always temporary) euphoria is mistaken for a permanent state of being, or worse, a moral high ground.

Learn to curate your experience. And learn to look back on previous fandom experiences with nostalgia that doesn't rely on rose-colored glasses. It was fun while you were there. It gave you what you needed for a time. And if there are still people there who are making their own lives (and others') miserable because they don't know how to be a reasonable human being, well, that's sad for them, but it doesn't erase what you got out of it.

[tallerthantale]

What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 2: The Veil

This is a series of my takes on what Aziraphale believes through the timeline of the show. It is all my personal interpretation, and I am happy to hear others. You don’t need to read them all in order, but know that I am coming from a perspective on Aziraphale’s machinations that may be difficult for people without a psychology background to follow without the first post as a primer. The quick version is that Aziraphale has a set of beliefs that exist in some form or another within his mind. However, at any given moment, only some of them exist ‘with awareness.’ The context of the moment will determine what lives on the surface and what stays invisible to him.

This post still has a bit of psychology set up to it, but I’m getting a lot more into the details of how everything relates to Aziraphale specifically, and talking about how I apply that understanding to the motivated reasoning Aziraphale demonstrates in Before the Beginning. About 2.6k words. 

In the spicy meta I mentioned how some of Aziraphale's behaviour reminds me of a pattern IRL, where some people want to bottom CNC (consensual non-consent) roleplay, while entertaining a fairly permanent pretense that they don't actually have any desires or want anything in particular. That pretense is about keeping those desires outside of conscious awareness because they conflict with the sense of self. I am repurposing some of my word choices from that discussion and dubbing the walls separating the conscious!Aziraphale from the rest of his mind ‘the veil,’ the area stuff lives when it isn’t in his conscious awareness ‘behind the veil’, and the cognitive mechanisms that operate in that space veil!Aziraphale. 

Immortal Memory

There are two main complications to making sense of what Aziraphale believes. The first complication is that what conscious!Aziraphale believes is heavily changeable within a set of options due to being regularly reconstructed based on what will preserve his sense of self in that context, as described in the first post. The second complication is that the set of Aziraphale’s potential beliefs evolves and adapts over time as his relationships to the world and to the institution of heaven change.

When we think of a person’s beliefs changing over time, we often like to think of it as a draft that gets overwritten as it is updated. The new version is up, the old version is gone. New update, this is what it is now. Replace that line with this line, done. 

Minds don’t actually work like that. We essentially have muscle memory for our thoughts and opinions. While we can collect an expanding set of potential opinions, and we can neglect to load an inconvenient one into awareness, the old ones don't tend to leave the set of options even when we intend to reject them. If you interpreted something wrong the first time you saw it, you form the memory of the misinterpretation, and you reinforce the wrong memory every time you recall it. This is called an encoding error. Then one day you find out you got it wrong, and you are trying to fight years of ingrained conditioned memory with one data point. It doesn’t matter how unambiguously true that new data point is, years of conditioned memory doesn’t just go away. It’s like trying to forget how to ride a bike. Consider the Mandala Effect. 

Aziraphale has millennia of lived experience. He may decide he is changing his mind about something, even with extreme conviction, but that won’t erase thousands if not millions of years of habitually thinking something else. We have ourselves an angel who has a capacity to swap out what he believes depending on the situation in front of him, and who has thousands of years of evolving belief systems conditioned into his mind’s ‘muscle memory.’ So not only is he normalised to switching his opinions around, he’s got a lot of options for what his opinions can be.

You Play the Hand You’re Dealt

The metaphor I’m going to go with is like a deck of cards. Anything Aziraphale has ever believed is somewhere in that deck. When a major event happens that forces him to think about things in a new way, he gets a new card, but the old cards don’t leave, the deck just gets bigger. The hand of cards he draws is what shows up in Aziraphale’s perceptible mind. That makes up what he believes in that moment. All the other cards functionally don’t exist to conscious!Aziraphale unless and until they get drawn, and they stop existing to conscious!Aziraphale when returned to the deck. 

Cards are not drawn to the hand at random, they are placed there by veil!Aziraphale. That part of Aziraphale makes the calls on what cards from the deck end up in conscious!Aziraphale’s hand. Veil!Aziraphale also has control over when cards leave conscious!Aziraphale’s hand. Conscious!Aziraphale doesn’t know that veil!Aziraphale exists, and assumes everything in the deck is consistent with his current hand. The result is a split Aziraphale, one part that will passively reshape his own opinions and judgements on autopilot to what is useful in the short term at that particular time, and one part blissfully naive to all of that, living as if he is the only part of Aziraphale that could exist, treating the hand he was most recently dealt as the only reality that could exist. The next day it's a different hand, a different reality, and a different conscious!Aziraphale.

Veil!Aziraphale functions like a computer program with a very basic code targeted to reducing specific kinds of imminent stress. It will keep things that are abrasive to Aziraphale’s sense of self out of his hand, keep things that conflict with whatever action he's about to take out of his hand, and not let contradictory things exist in his hand at the same time. It has no sense of long term strategy and cannot be reasoned with. 

The deck doesn’t contain all things. It contains the set of things Aziraphale can believe, and while that is a highly self contradictory set, it is not an infinite set. Veil!Aziraphale will run into situations where there is no arrangement of cards that keeps things happy and easy. There will be situations where there is something someone could believe that could be useful, like Gabriel and Michael thinking it is a great idea to kill Sitis’s kids and have her give birth 7 more times, but that is going too far for Aziraphale to believe. He has a sense of what feels right, at least by Eden, and he can't make cards that conflict with that. He will try to play the best hand that he can out of what isn’t going too far, and make new cards that stay within what can feel right. Making new cards doesn’t get rid of the old ones, it will always be an option to bring them back.

A Case Study in Motivated Reasoning

In Before the Beginning, we see an Aziraphale who is already terrified of heaven's wrath, while the Star Queen is still naive.  (Why I like to use the name Star Queen) This difference matters on a few levels. First, it shows that the seeds of Aziraphale’s ideological separation from the other angels predates Crowley’s involvement. While we will see Aziraphale convince himself to experience believing things out of fear, that isn't quite the same thing as being a true believer the way the other angels are. I would speculate that Aziraphale has already been having disciplinary issues with the institution. Whatever Aziraphale is ideologically speaking, it is not the result of Crowley’s temptations.

Second, it fits in with the manner of trauma response they develop. Aziraphale looks to have been traumatised from a very young start. The Star Queen was having a blast until suddenly they weren’t. This isn’t trauma olympics, this is just to point out that the age of onset correlates with different patterns of likely reactions, and Aziraphale and Crowley’s behaviour as we progress through the story fits those patterns. 

Aziraphale comes along with an attitude about what it is or is not their place to do or question as angels. It is not their role to give feedback. He feels positively about the universe being set up to be fancy wallpaper, and is surprised that the Star Queen is upset about it.

Why does Aziraphale seem to actively like the fancy wallpaper plan? Because he is supposed to. He is terrified of heaven, why would he believe something just because heaven says so? Because he is terrified of heaven. Literally that is why. Which experience is the more threatening to the sense of self, the universe where what you believe gets you on heaven’s shit list if anyone finds out, or the universe where what you believe organically happens to be what keeps you safe? Veil!Aziraphale's mind generates conscious!Aziraphale’s beliefs on the spot as a defense mechanism in a way that feels organic. Believing what dangerous people want him to believe is safer. Veil!Aziraphale is incentivised to form that hand of cards, which is a fully automatic process, and conscious!Aziraphale only has access to the hand he was given. The other cards functionally do not exist to him.

For those for whom this is hard to follow, you may be imagining it as being a person who knows they believe Y, being told under threat to believe X, trying to convince yourself to adopt a belief you know you don’t agree with. That doesn't tend to work. Belief follows action, but when there is a readily available belief of ‘I was forced to go along with it,’ there is no need to alter your worldview to explain your behaviour to yourself. So you likely end up pretending to believe X while getting extremely resentful.* That lines up with how the Star Queen sees being asked to like the wallpaper plan, but that is not what Aziraphale's mind is doing.

To the extent that there is a pre-existing Y belief, his mind will not let it out of the veil into his conscious awareness, because that would be dangerous. He is on the verge of existential crisis from even hearing that someone else might believe Y, because it is safest for him to not even have the hypothetical to consider. Veil!Aziraphale decided that he believes X because that is safer and decided Y is contraband, conscious!Aziraphale only knows he believes X.

I Can't Make Bricks Without Clay

This is how motivated reasoning works, and that’s why calling the people susceptible to it stupid and / or irrational isn’t helpful. There are no logical tools someone can use to think themselves out of the problem if the problem is that the relevant facts wont load into awareness. The reason I stick to the term 'motivated reasoning' rather than the more common ‘wishful thinking’ is that it is very common for motivated reasoning to get us to believe things that are highly unpleasant.

For example, people don’t experience survivor's guilt because ‘they want to.’ They experience survivor's guilt because the alternative is experiencing the awareness that any of your loved ones could die at any time and you can’t do anything about it. You can only believe it's your fault people died if you tacitly believe you had the power to stop it. You can frame survivor's guilt as wishing to have the power to be able to protect those you love, but people experience it as guilt and suffering, not as a power trip, because that component doesn't get loaded into awareness. When Aziraphale convinces himself to believe what he is told, he doesn't 'want' to be a bootlicker any more than a school shooting survivor 'wants' to believe it’s their fault their friends are dead. 

While susceptibility to motivated reasoning does vary across individuals, we are all vulnerable to it. The basic cognitive mechanisms that allow these patterns are present for everyone. I could just as easily talk about conscious!Star Queen and veil!Star Queen. So why do they have opposite reactions to heaven's imposing authority? The age of onset. (IRL these are differences of average, not categorical rules.) Aziraphale’s conditioned fear is baked into his development in a way that gives it more power than usual to keep things out of his awareness (we will see a demonstration of that at Eden) and Aziraphale has 'authority should be feared' and 'authority shouldn't be questioned' cards, because he added them to the deck when he was too young for them to feel wrong. Because Aziraphale has those cards and a particularly aggressive veil, he can pull off the 'have the experience of believing what you are told to believe' survival strategy. 

The Star Queen hadn't previously encountered a use for having 'authority should be feared' and 'authority shouldn't be questioned' cards, and they are developed enough now to respond to those concepts with an appropriate 'fuck that.' The Star Queen doesn't have extreme early onset fear baked into their development, so instead of veil!Star Queen keeping their disagreeable opinions behind the veil, it is keeping the reasons to be cautious behind the veil. We might like to think that the young Aziraphale who made those cards was wrong to do so, but I would encourage you to stay your judgment. In the IRL parallels having those cards is often what keeps those children alive. 

After the Star Queen expresses the intention to offer suggestions, Aziraphale is concerned for their (singular) wellbeing. He is terrified of how heaven will react, and he is right to be. Aziraphale doesn't want them to get into trouble. And that is very interesting. If Aziraphale was a proper true believer in operation 'shut everything back down again' he would want the Star Queen to get in trouble. He would see their attitude and like them less for it. That doesn't happen. It's not a genuine endorsement of authoritarian hierarchy, or he wouldn't be encouraging the Star Queen to play it safe. It is not a coherent belief system, or he'd have an argument in favour of the shut down plan, not an argument that 'it's not our place to question it'. It's also not an acted position, or he wouldn't be that excited about the fancy wallpaper. Aziraphale's belief in God and the ideal of heaven exists as a defense mechanism against his fear, to preserve his sanity. Ironically, it spends the next 6000+ years making him act fucking insane. 

Post 2/10

Post Note: When forced to do things under threat, ‘belief follows action’ can (not always) reverse and cause a backlash effect in the form of ‘I believe I am being oppressed’ making you reject beliefs that would support the behaviour (Fair.) However, when we are paid to do things, we don’t tend to blame the money, we experience that as we were intrinsically motivated to do the thing. (Tisk.) This is a big part of why political bribery is such an issue.

The money alters what the autopilot parts of our mind allow into our conscious experience, slanting us toward the incentive, blocking any awareness of the influence of the money on our decisions, and then construct a belief system consistent with the decision.  People believe the money isn’t affecting their judgment, they totally would have had that position anyway, that's just what they believe. They are incorrect.

On the plus side, we have a pretty reliable method for changing people’s opinions if we decide to use it. If you want to make someone believe something, pay them to do something consistent with that belief. (Vaccines…cough… cough… vaccines…)

[yan-lorkai]

Who would you say is the most dangerous and hardcore yandere you write for? 🤔

This is actually a really good question.

But Alucard is the most dangerous. I tend to write him being more on the softer side, well, as soft as he can get without bordering the mischaracterization. But If i were to write him as he is? My man wouldn't even have a darling. He likes to think that humans are the only one capable of killing a vampire, the only one worthy to slay a monster, his thoughts are quite philosophical on this matter. So sometimes I like to think how he would train his darling, conditioning them to be the best of the best vampire hunters, teasing them restlessly, don't even caring if they cry, pushing them to their limit without offering any comfort. That's my thoughts on him, anyway

Another one could be Sebastian. This man has been living in my head since I was 14, help---. Anyways, he is a demon, a being who has some many facets and power at his hands. He thrive upon any and all sort of positive attention he receive, always wanting more without being satisfied. He wants his darling, he wants all. And in my head he always putting them into all sorts of situations, even if it make them uncomfortable, because he wants to be their hero or their villain, he doens't care which one

Barbatos is also a very interesting option. He is so soft, so calm, charming his darling slowly till he has them under his fingertips. I love him. Plus he can literally create timelines??? And erase them??? What if he can also mold them like he wants??? Solmare I need answers ✍, can he mold them to suit his tastes??? AND he canonically has a torture chamber, I almost forgot this btw. Like Barb, why do you need this chamber, you too have to answer some questions! Oya, Barb teaching his darling a lesson in his chamber? Now I want to write this

Honorable mentions: Rook bcs he can literally see his prey in real time with his unique magic, his darling wouldn't never know peace, always feeling his invisible eyes on them. Jamil for the same reason, though can he maintain his hypnosis to make them permanent? 🤔🤔

[dreamspiked]

under a cut because spoilers if you haven't finished. but...general thoughts regarding my gallagher's future portrayal/whereabouts

i don't much like the theory that gallagher just...ceases to exist outside the dreamscape (for obvious reasons) but i do realize that the gal we met is a virtual character created by "a fictionologist." it's not specified who, as far as i know. so i am, for now, going with the general theory he is still essentially gallagher, but perhaps that wasn't the name he started out with. the gallagher we saw in game, in golden hour, was just a projection. a 'meme' if you will, like how the watchmaker did with misha. a certain memory/projection of himself to insert into the plot without putting his own self in the dreamscape.

i also believe, with black swan's bit at the end sussing out clues for us to determine the "error" in our sweet ending, gallagher was truthful for the most part regarding his relationship with the watchmaker/the rise of the original penacony. i even toss around the theory he too was once on the express, maybe not a permanent tb, but there nonetheless - if only because he has a relationship with misha. and no one else could see him but the crew. but that's something to think about later.

i like to think he's older than he looks, thanks to something like long life species (highly leaning toward werewolf thanks to a tidbit from this movie event), but i also like to think he's not as attached to penacony as a whole, but rather his relationship with legwork, and this promise he made about bringing the express to penacony.

i'm still a little...confused? i guess. on how to approach the true philosophy of a fictionologist, but i get a vibe that gallagher keeps to his word about certain things; otherwise, his connections and ties are spread out, and ever-changing. ie; if the dreamscape collapses, it doesn't concern him. he did what he promised he would do, and now his "part" in that dream is over. in fact, i believe he's encouraged by the idea of it changing; "dedicated to fabricating, obfuscating, destroying, and erasing the histories of the cosmos."

tl;dr gallagher is still out there, but whatever he does next is up in the air.

i also have this fucking thought that he's related to hanunue, but i can't explain properly why. i just do.

anyway. he's tired.

[vidavalor]

I feel like they showed us what The Metatron is up to...

How can we tell? Ok, imagine for a moment that The Metatron hadn't shown up in the final scenes in S2 because that's ultimately the point of why he did. What was happening when he arrived at the bookshop? Michael was about to erase Aziraphale from The Book of Life, right? We know that Michael's been after this end goal here since 2.01. Given another couple of minutes, Michael likely would have tried but why hadn't they *already* tried this? The answer is one word: Crowley.

Crowley is the real Resurrectionist of S2. The miracle he and Aziraphale performed with minimal effort registered in Heaven on a scale that Crowley said would bring 25 people back to life but that's not even the terrifying bit... he's powerful on his own, in his own right. What do we see happen while The Metatron is in line waiting for coffee? What does he see Crowley do? He sees him bring back Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets, right? The human that the demons had apparently killed during the attack on the bookshop. The Metatron already knows Crowley can do this but this scene-- putting Mr. Brown's return here, with The Metatron secretly watching-- serves to show *us* what The Metatron is afraid of and foreshadow the plot for Aziraphale and Crowley. In this scene, Crowley *barely blinked*. He just snapped and Mr. Brown was back, alive, with no memory of what had happened to him. Just-- boom-- back into existence. So, knowing that, what would happen if Heaven erased Aziraphale from the Book of Life in front of Crowley in the middle of the bookshop, like what Michael was about to do? *Crowley would just bring him back*, right?

It wouldn't work and it's the only way they know to kill him. Crowley and Aziraphale would be aware of them trying to do it and the one attempt Heaven would have would fail. Make no mistake, though-- that's their end goal for Aziraphale.

In S1, thanks to Agnes, Crowley and Aziraphale were able to fool Heaven and Hell but in S2, Heaven gets the upper hand. Heaven realizes is they actually can't permanently kill Crowley or Aziraphale. Crowley and Aziraphale don't know it yet but they're more powerful-- especially together-- than Heaven or Hell is. Heaven's goal is still absolutely to Book of Life Aziraphale. The Metatron kicked out Gabriel without a second thought the second Gabriel said no to Armageddon and you think he's going to make *Aziraphale* the new archangel? You think they're going to take the angel that halted Armageddon, housed and aided the disgraced former archangel, has spent 6 milennia running around with a demon, etc. and give him the big job? That's never going to happen. We already know they plan on the destruction of earth and the Second Coming. They don't need Aziraphale to oversee that-- they need Aziraphale *out of the damn way* so they can make Arma-bloody-geddon actually happen this time. And they know that the only way to get to Book of Life Aziraphale and get rid of him for that is to make sure that Crowley's not around to stop it.

They need Crowley to think Aziraphale's left him for Heaven so that he won't follow him-- won't try to protect him because it's Aziraphale's choice-- and that buys Heaven enough time to extreme sanctions Aziraphale.

The Metatron's actions are directly against Crowley. It's why the music goes all dun-dun-DUN when The Metatron looks at Crowley with loathing in the bookshop and leaves with Aziraphale. The Metatron basically tries to be a kind of Crowley-- let's get a drink, let's go for a walk in the park and sit at a restaurant and talk-- as a way to earn Aziraphale's trust and that's about as evil as they come. He lures Aziraphale away from Crowley up to Heaven because he knows that Crowley won't follow Aziraphale there and he's trying to get them to actively break up so that they can Book of Life Aziraphale basically the moment he gets into Heaven.

The reason The Metatron sends the other angels away is not because he disagrees with Michael's plan to extreme sanction Aziraphale but because he's trying to make sure it'll actually work by first getting Aziraphale physically away from the safety of Crowley.

The Metatron is betting that Crowley will be so heartbroken and angry with Aziraphale that even if he were to find out what happened when Aziraphale went up to Heaven, that he won't care enough to do anything about it. The Metatron thinks he's killing Crowley, too, effectively, by killing Aziraphale.

The Metatron is, um, very, very wrong about that last bit and that's S3, imo.

[ask-the-clergy-bc]

HAVE YOU EVER WRITTEN PAPA III WITH AN S/O WHO ALSO HAS ADHD (I'LL GIVE YOU THREE GUESSES AS TO WHO THIS IS AND THE FIRST TWO DON'T COUNT <3)

I HAVEN'T BUT I CAN TOTALLY DO IT NOW!! <3

Papa III and S/O Who ALSO Has ADHD

Just a note: No two people with ADHD are exactly the same, so I'm not going to cover EVERY experience or set of symptoms. However, I view Papa as having combined ADHD, so I will also make the reader has combined! Please enjoy!

Also throwing in a small Content Warning, because it does go into Sensory Overload and possibly uncomfortable symptoms. Thanks!

~Papa only recently received the diagnosis of having combined ADHD. When he was growing up there was wasn't really anyone who COULD give one. There wasn't the research and knowledge we have today! However, he learned to manage his symptoms by himself as he got older. He doesn't even notice anymore, and hasn't for decades!

~That being said, he's over joyed he has a partner who knows EXACTLY what he goes through! Despite having all the love and support, he CAN get really frustrated at himself! Plus, it's nice to have someone who understands and experiences similar, if not the same exact, struggles he faces. It's nice for him to be able to vent to someone when he has sensory overload, or days he just CANNOT sit still even when he wants to. In kind, he also is there on days you need to vent.

~You both are the perfect audio processing feedback loop of mishearing. Sometimes you both just go back and forth with "what?" "What? "what?" until your brains catch up. It ends up making you both laugh to tears EVERY time!

~Unfortunately, neither of you have object permanence. So you BOTH will lose the same thing all of time! Both of you invested in giant, gaudy keychains for your keys. That way you both can find them for yourselves and each other. You also lost count of how many cups of espresso Papa will make himself because he forgot he set down a cup he already made. One time you both went on a shopping trip for a giant dry erase calendar for your shared office... and then ended up losing the bag that neither of you can remember where you sat it down. You still haven't found it!

~For whatever reason the two of you never hyperfocus at the same time. Usually one of you will be absolutely engrossed in a project, and the other will come in to give the other a break. It's actually quite useful. There have been many times you had to pull Papa away from his desk because he thought of a new song. Or he ABSOLUTELY had to stay up for a few hours in the middle of the night reorganizing his closest. Papa is very good at sending food to you when he can't leave his office. KNOWING you forgot to eat while you were working again!

~Papa is so happy he has someone who can keep up with his dolphin brain when he skips subjects in conversations. You two have a flawless way of keeping your conversation flowing. He's very happy, because he doesn't have to go back and explain how he came to switch subjects so quickly.

~He doesn't say it often, but the fact you both can pick up when the other is having bad sensory days is something he cherishes. As the head of a church, it can be embarrassing for him to explain when he has sensory issues. Papa never makes you feel ashamed for it, but for him he often feels like he's pressured to not let these type of issues effect him. He's Papa! How is he supposed to say, 'No i can't give a sermon today because noise makes my brain want to explode!' He's grateful you understand, even if he wishes you didn't have to experience what he does. Papa is normally a very vibrant and social person, so he HATES having days where he can't have any more stimuli.

[theunmappedstar]

Thoughts on keefe’s new abilities? I don’t know what to think with him starting to become numb, and with your theory that elysium can get rid of an elf’s ability I’m not sure that it’s something that can be fixed

part of me wonders if keefe going numb -- whether temporary or permanent -- is part of gisela's plan.

if you need a refresher. the term "numb" was first mentioned in nightfall. "going numb" refers to losing the ability as an empath to both feel and determine what emotions other's are experiencing. up until stellarlune, numb was only used in relation to vespera. being numb, vespera is further enabled to commit many of the horrendous acts that we've seen throughout the series. her ability does not prevent her from doing so because she neither feels her victim's pain, nor remorse for her own actions. guilt -- the sole elvin weakness -- is essentially erased.

this could come in handy with keefe for a multitude of reasons. as i just explained, it would ensure keefe wouldn't feel guilt as a weapon. he would likely be unable to rationalize what was wrong and right. another reason: if keefe is unable to feel, his connections no longer matter. they don't hold purpose in his life. both good and bad would be erased. keefe wouldn't loom in the negativity of his mother or his father. keefe wouldn't feel the warmth of love from his friends trying to save him.

so... if this was purposeful, we're not in for a fun ride.

as for elysian, i don't believe she can entirely take away an elf's ability. i'm not sure if this is what you meant, but i want to clarify i'm almost certain that it's temporary. like hitting mute on a call or pause on the tv. i don't think she'd have it in her to entirely erase a biological component of them. but, then again... perhaps she can, when paired with something else. maybe it's an equation! because those rocks at the elysian field are capable of something, as well, given the extents the council took to shroud the place in illusions.

a part of me also wonders what would happen if elysian were enhanced by sophie...

bored? send me a "thoughts on" ask!