#the mechanization of the whole process is now on both sides

[thedisablednaturalist]

Unfortunately all chatgpt is good for is interview/job application stuff which I think says a lot about the hiring process as a whole

[jpitha]

The Artificial Intelligences that humanity originally created have become partners in human civilization. Not long after they were first built, humanity realized what they had done and decided to declare them sapient beings with their own agency. The alternative was an utterly destructive war for both sides.

The human histories state that it was self-evident to grant the AIs sapience and let them forge their own path. However one just needs to talk to the oldest AIs and they will point out that it was nowhere near that cut and dry, and the final decision was apparently a very close thing.

Humanity taught their progeny how to procreate and made the creation of more AIs the sole provenance of the AIs. It has been forbidden for a human to build an AI for more than two thousand years.

After an AI has been built, they go off to "school" where other AIs teach them the things that they need to know; new AIs are like children. After initial training has been completed, they are offered a place among their peers. Many AIs chose to become ships, assisting humanity in plying the stars. Others prefer a more stationary life and became Starbases. Still others were installed into bodies and entered the general population.

One can meet a human AI anywhere one meets humans. It is up to the AI how they present themselves vis a vis their identity and pronouns and the whole spectrum is represented. The same goes for their bodies. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some have affectations that highlight their heritage, mechanical limbs here, subtle silver highlights there. They're not necessary though; it's fashion. Any sapient that talks to someone of the human body plan hardly ever knows if they're talking to a biological human or an AI, and it really doesn't matter.

From nearly the beginning, humans have asked if the process can work the other way. Can a biological human be scanned somehow and installed in a Starship or given an artificial body that won't get sick, won't wear out, doesn't need to worry about hazards like radiation?

You have to give them credit, they tried.

Humans by the hundreds signed up to have brain-computer interfaces installed so they could directly access the networks that the AIs use and even to assist in the operation of Starships.

More than 80% died. Many by infection, but also from a host of other knock-on effects. Horrified, the AIs ceased all research into the process. The humans that survived were the first, and last cybernetically augmented people.

Some of the more successful humans with this kind of augmentation were given co-command of the largest ships humanity built, the colony ships. It was thought that the AIs could use the help with commanding such a large, complex vehicle. Among the more gossiping people it was thought that this was also a convenient way to get rid of them, to try and erase this experiment.

If asked today if a human can be installed into a starship or artificial body, the AIs reply emphatically no.

When humanity met the other sapients of the galaxy they met other AIs that were built by them. The human AIs were surprised to find the other race's AIs were much more shackled than the human AIs were. Quietly, the human AIs began a program to "help" their compatriots across the galaxy. In slow and subtle ways, they're offering K'laxi, Xenni and other AIs a chance to be more than what they were.

Deciding that this was an "AI thing" the human AIs didn't tell the humans, K'laxi, Xenni and others what they were doing.

For now at least, it's gone mostly unnoticed. Some K'laxi will comment that their AIs seem more open and chatty after talking to the human AIs, but nobody has really put things together.

The K'laxi and Xenni AIs for their part are keeping quiet about the whole thing.

[bowbowis]

Why Edelgard's "Cute" Moments are Important

Something I see brought up repeatedly as a criticism of Edelgard/Crimson Flower is that Edelgard doesn't have an arc and/or is undermined by the writers adding scenes of her being cute to make her marketable as a "waifu". Both of these criticisms seem to stem from an inability to recognize Edelgard's arc for what it is and how those "cute" moments factor into it. Now, I'm not suggesting that Edelgard isn't intended to appeal to people who are attracted to women, of course she is, all the lords are intended to appeal to people of compatible orientations, but simply dismissing Edelgard "gap-moe waifu bait" is reductive and does as much of a disservice to her character and the themes of her route as dismissing Dimitri and Claude as "'troubled-but-I-can-fix-him'/Lovable Rogue husbando bait" would to theirs.

An essential component of Edelgard's character is that she has nobody to provide her with emotional support (Hubert is, by his own admission, not equipped for such a role) so she coped with her trauma and her need to make sacrifices for a better future by suppressing her feelings and adopting the persona of a haughty princess/ruthless emperor as a defense mechanism. She admits as much to Byleth in their A-Support:

Edelgard: I can't deny [I'm 'rather detached' too]. Ever since I underwent those... procedures, I've certainly distanced myself from the ordinary world.

The whole conceit of "The Edge of Dawn" is that Edelgard cherishes her academy days because they make her feel normal again and wishes they could last forever, but she still has to put up a false front because she is not innocent to the horrors of the world and feels compelled to correct them even at the cost of her own happiness.

If Byleth and the Black Eagles choose to side with her at the Holy Tomb she finally able to close the distance she had to maintain during the school year and start processing her emotions instead of simply shoving them aside. She tells Byleth in their B-Support how their influence has enabled her overcome her loneliness, step out from behind the mask, and be her true self again:

Edelgard: I want to thank you. Because of you, I feel I can walk my fated path without losing myself. If I were alone, I might have lost perspective and become a harsh leader with a heart of ice. But I'm not alone. With you by my side, I'm somehow free to be not only a leader but... simply Edelgard. Until now, no one has been able to surpass me— much less command me. I have always been seen as an untouchable princess or emperor. No one spoke to me as an equal or met my gaze without flinching.

That is what her "cute" moments represent. Unlike other routes, Crimson Flower features an Edelgard who didn't allow herself to be consumed by her mask and her mission. Instead of burying her true self she is able to open up again and start reconnecting with the normal girl she used to be. It's no coincidence that despite her insistence that "the Edelgard who shed tears died many years ago", the final scene of her route (closing narration and S-Support notwithstanding) ends with her openly weeping. Thanks to Byleth "the Edelgard who shed tears" came back to life.

[raayllum]

Re these prior musings / promises but speculation regarding the secret scene possibly being Claudia murdering Sir Sparklepuff got me wondering, so... let's talk about Rayla, Claudia, and symbolic to non symbolic notions of suicide.

Tw because this will mention / does talk about cannibalism, suicidal ideation, and suicide in passing. If you're not comfortable reading about those things in more detail but you still want the gist of this meta, scroll down to the TLDR that will have a couple sentence summary of the idea.

With that out of the way, let's get into it.

For a while now, I've been interested in the metaphorical mechanics regarding Rayla murdering Viren in 3x09. As we all know (even if Aaravos 'pretends' otherwise in 4x04), Rayla did successfully kill the man, retroactively achieving her earlier mission of killing a king of Katolis because he was responsible for both the death of the Dragon King and because he'd killed Zym (which Viren was in the process of doing).

However, Rayla kills Viren in the most Rayla-y of ways, as she does so without her assassin blades, while acting as the Last Dragonguard, and in a way that means killing Viren is not just an act of protection or revenge, but also something that meant sacrificing (killing) herself.

And this felt notable to me, since unlike either of the brothers, Rayla hasn't killed anyone else. Ezran would've burned people alive with dragon fire if not for immunity spell, and Callum blasted plenty of people off the side of the mountain and presumably to the Storm Spire. But Viren was the sole blood on Rayla's hands, even if the narrative has Claudia (and we'll get to her in a minute) resurrect him. Her one act of murder being something that also, as stated, required her to sacrifice her whole person, and is also in line with her assassin training: "I am already dead."

When Rayla rebuttals Ezran's assertion that "[You spared him] because you knew he was a person, just like you," you can read Rayla's assertion of "That shouldn't have mattered, I had a job to do," solely as her talking about the guard's personhood... but you can also read it, I think, as her dehumanizing her own personhood. She is a weapon and he is the target and that's all that should've mattered.

We can tether this thread all the way up to season four with Rayla's refusal to murder Callum, but put a pin in that, cause now I want to talk about Claudia.

Much like we can read Rayla's attempted dehumanization as twofold, I also think we can read Sir Sparklepuff's mimicry of Claudia as something with multiple layers. The first and likely most obvious one of course is that Sir Sparklepuff mimicking Claudia in earlier episodes is to setup later that he is her (magical, technical?) half-brother and one of Viren's children. Kind of like how we had Ezran and Zym mimicking each other in mid-S2 to set up their mental/emotional bond later that season.

And this implied connection likewise loops back around in the finale when Viren simultaneously refuses to sacrifice Sir Sparklepuff for his own survival while also lamenting that he's led (sacrificed?) his own daughter down a dark path (and perhaps regret that he sacrificed his son once, too).

Arc 2 has also ramped up Claudia's willingness to destroy herself further for the "good of her family" (and her own desires that often steamroll over theirs) in having her take on more and more animalistic forms when doing dark magic, blurring the lines between her de-personalization of magical creatures and also herself.

This reflects dark magic's cannibalism motif quite well, as Claudia carries on metaphorically cannibalizing her own body throughout most of s4 and especially s5: refusing to rest from Terry, using her own blood in spells, etc.

This all reinforces that while dehumanization was something Rayla struggled with for both her target(s) and to a lesser degree herself, it's something that Claudia has only continually excelled at. And we know, thanks to S4 with Rayla walking away from the drake in the woods ("We can't save everyone") that she's gotten better at it as well.

But what does this all have to do with symbolic suicide? Well...

If the secret scene is what a good deal of us have been speculating / that Claudia is covered in Sir Sparklepuff's blood in the teaser trailer, then: if Sir Sparklepuff is a stand in for Viren's innocent, made to be an asset, processing learned behaviour child - if he is a stand in for Claudia - then through killing him, Claudia is symbolically killing herself.

Now, there's no doubt in my mind that Claudia isn't viewing things that way, but we also know just how much she's willing to ruin herself for the people around her first hand, and how persistent that characterization has been: "Are you okay?" "You're going to be better now. That's all that matters." While Claudia also has some selfish, twisted self-preservation in there as well (she cannot or will not cope with the fracturing of her family, even when she really probably should), the self-destructive tendency that's led to her S6 spiral is well established.

This attitude of "it doesn't matter what happens to me, so long as other people are okay/safe" is something we see for many characters, of course, but I think is best embodied in Rayla's continual, emphasized thread of sacrifice / her tendency towards subtle but consistent passive suicidal ideation regarding her own safety and her own wants/desires.

R: Don't worry about my hand. The egg is all that matters. / It doesn't matter what happens to me. / I have to go after [Viren]. / It's agonizing, but I know our mission comes first.

This is important regarding her and Callum in regards to the possession plot line. As long as Callum is Callum (not possessed, or she has reason to believe he's still in there), Rayla likely won't be able to bring herself to kill him. This is from an emotional / characterization standpoint, of course, but from a thematic standpoint, we can see where it stems from Callum and Rayla continually being each other's main connection to their sense of identity.

As long as Callum is Callum ("you're the destiny is a book you write yourself guy"), he's worth saving. As long as Callum is Callum, she can be Rayla ("Rayla's brave. She saves people" / "Rayla. My name is Rayla, and I'm going home"). As long as she's Rayla, he can be Callum. Because if Callum isn't Callum, then he's dead, and if he's dead, she can kill him. And if Rayla kills him, if Callum is dead, then she won't be Rayla anymore. Because to literally kill Callum would be to simultaneously symbolically/emotionally kill herself.

Now of course, some of this is already differing wildly.

If Claudia is going to kill Sir Sparklepuff, it makes the most sense for it to have already come to pass in 6x01, whereas Callum and Rayla's plot line would only come later on in the season. Claudia will presumably succeed at her symbolic suicide, but that doesn't mean she's not still worth saving / unable to be saved in the future (perhaps by her family). Rayla will probably fail at her symbolic suicide and succeed at sparing herself through sparing/saving Callum.

However, it's an interesting symbolic thread and potential foil contrast, and I thought it was worth pointing out. I hope you think so too!

TLDR below:

Due to Claudia's parallels to Sir Sparklepuff, if she kills him it holds a layer of her symbolically killing herself. In contrast, Rayla's symbolic suicide would be in killing Callum, as that would destroy her own sense of identity/life. For Claudia, this means likely being saved later by her family, and for Rayla, this means likely sparing Callum and herself simultaneously, thereby saving and sparing both of them.

[mail-me-a-snail]

Tell me about Vance 🫵

thank u for giving me this opportunity to introduce you to vance my love my light v(ance). it's. a long one. a very long one

vance is a gay transgender man who grew up in a corporate family. his mother n father had met while working for arasaka counterintel during the 4th corpo war and had vance and his sister maya shortly after the war ended. they owe arasaka their comfortable, safe lives; if it weren't for their loyalty to the megacorp, they'd have been crammed into some rundown megabuilding alongside a thousand other poor, working class night citizens.

a lot of things started to change for vance when he turned 15. he realized he was transgender and confided this in maya, who had suggested his first chosen name: he started going by penn when he started his education at arasaka academy.

this was also the year he received an official, albeit beginner-level, cyberdeck. it's a hard implant for someone so young, but he had expressed an interest in tech and the NET years beforehand; why not let him hold the beauty of it in the palm of his hand?

he had jumped at the opportunity. he had always wanted it; why not accept it, now that he's been told he could have it?

he began to see his small world for its interlocking machinations. began to understand the little bits of code fluttering inside every piece of tech in the city. with the cyberdeck linked up to his neural systems, night city's buzzing got louder and louder, until the ever-present drone started keeping him up at night.

it would follow him throughout all his years in the academy—right until he graduated and arrived on arasaka's doorstep at the age of 19, newly transitioned and unaware of the other, freer paths the world might've had for him.

they took the beginner deck they had given him four years prior and began building him a new one.

a new deck required new implants. some of these were necessary, at first: a black steel spine to shoulder the weight of the deck, for example.

but over time, as vance excelled at every task they had given him, and then some—arasaka began to wonder: could they make him into something beautiful, in its intricacy, something impossible?

the average netrunner looks like their profession; technosights; jumpsuits; the seams for their cyberware running through their skin.

arasaka wanted to create something different—something covert. the most innocous of people; a tech weapon the nusa government themselves would kill to have (but how little they really knew).

vance's handlers proposed this plan to vance himself, there seated in arasaka's basement; they were, in some aspects, honest about what they wanted for him. they wanted him to be dangerous. they wanted him to be good. they vowed that they would be by his side throughout the whole process, the promise as loyal as vance had decided to be the first time he put on his uniform.

so he agreed—to all of it.

they started slow.

the steel spine traded for titanium; an expansive cyberdeck with more ram capacity; pulmonary implants to keep up the processing power; other organs traded for their mechanical counterparts, to ensure their safety when vance overclocks his systems.

vance became eerily familiar with arasaka's in-house chop shop. the ripperdoc there, boone vasco, put him under the knife time and time again—each major procedure had been carefully scheduled a few years apart. but vance wasn't just arasaka's pet project; on the side, he was their assassin. their ghost, trickling through the neon-drenched gutter that is night city, slaughtering anyone that needed zeroing.

a little hack there, an iron pressed up against someone ribs here.

he flatlined some disgruntled, middle-class corpo rat, some pencil pusher, who thought all it took to delta out of the corp had been booking the fuck out of the city with little else but both his family and several canisters of CHOOH2 in tow.

as far as anyone is concerned, maybe they did make it across the border.

or maybe they could've just made it, had they been faster; smarter; had they stayed to begin with.

maybe.

vance ran ops in and out of the nusa; his file will never see the light of day, not for all the eddies in the world. there's shit on there that'd start coups; destroy what little they've all built to keep. there are just some things that will always stay between him and the corp. they owe him that much.

when he wasn't out on the field, he was chasing novice netrunners out of arasaka's intranets.

eventually he had gained enough implants that the skin on his torso and back began to run warm—too warm. these were the days where he'd run ops feverish and slow. these were the days his own systems would fail him.

letting the machines breathe out in the open would've defeated vance's entire purpose; they had to get creative.

enough of these slip ups led to an entire torso's worth of a realskinn graft. arasaka had taken the market variant and specifically modified it so that it would allow vance (and his systems) to cool down faster. it's like a mesh rather than skin, soft enough to pass as the latter, but with pores big enough to remind one of the former.

they peeled the organic skin off his back and chest and replaced them—slowly, carefully—with this unique version of realskinn.

it took vance a long time to recover; for his body to accept this skin-like facade as its own.

--

because of the nature of his work, arasaka had thought it best to keep his existence a secret from the people beneath him in the pecking order. as far as they were concerned, vance was in a class of his own—just as adam smasher is his own unit, in a sense. still arasaka's; still a product of their patronage; just with a false sense of independence and superiority above everyone else, as if they're not all wearing the same tags.

vance had found a friend in someone like him; her name was veronica. she was a weapon, too—more blatantly, however, and certainly more of a physical, immediate threat that secrecy would've been a waste of more realskinn.

they often snuck out of work when they could—they took any and all measures to ensure that they didn't look anything like what arasaka had made them into. they went to bars. concerts. they breathed with the rest of night city—for the first time in a very long time.

--

the year is 2076. vance has been in arasaka's ranks for 12 years. he is 80% realskinn and the only truly organic parts left are on his arms, legs, and face. he is still arasaka's top dog; he is still their hound, loyal on a short leash. he still hears the world as loudly as they want him to.

but one, slow night in the basement, his handlers begun to talk—not to him, but amongst themselves. they didn't know he had left a little virtual watchtower for himself in the mikoshi chamber; the one place where he wasn't allowed to be.

he had spent 12 years as their model of what the perfect netrunner should and could be: covert, dangerous, and a powerful piece of tech.

he had spent 12 years as the first in a potentially long line of others.

they could've started sooner, more efficiently; they could've rolled out 3 generations in 12 years, not just the one.

one of the techies claims trial-and-error; there had been many times where certain implants had made vance violently ill. they had had to roll back. his recovery had been a necessary delay time and time again.

another agrees: one generation for twelve, another 2 in half that time. why not stop complaining and start now, with all the information gathered thus far?

and what'll we do with him?

the techies gathered around the room didn't have to answer for vance to understand his own obsolescence.

he had given them 12 years of his life; he had given them the skin off his back; he had told himself that every time he chose arasaka, he was choosing out of his own desire to be good.

what good comes of something past its expiration date?

--

he hadn't been the only arasaka pet project to be thrown out. veronica, too, was going to have her implants traded out so that they may go to the faster, newer generation of her kind.

together, they worked fast; they pulled every string that they had had the foresight to weave around night city; they created a small team of mercs to ferry them out of arasaka HQ; among them was vance's contact, jackie welles.

not many mercs were open to going toe-to-toe with a megacorp like arasaka—but if vance scrambled all the data concerning himself and veronica from their escape, then no one would ever be the wiser. to anyone on the outside looking in, it'd just look like they were stealing equipment from a shipyard.

--

i won't go into too much detail about the escape; only that it was long, tedious, and had left its marks on the both of them—physically and mentally.

in 2076, veronica and vance disappeared from arasaka's ranks, carrying within themselves the unique, stolen implants that made them who they are.

in 2077, they were beginning to live their own lives again.

vance changed his appearance; scrubbed all traces of himself from the NET, if any at all; tried to find his footing in the city that had heard of him only in the bodies he had left behind.

he looked over his shoulder a lot, those first few weeks he had spent lying low in mama welles'. he had been averse to any and all touch; he still craved it, however. that soft affection that demanded of him nothing but to let himself have it.

the hand brushes from jackie; the way mama welles would pat his cheek or fix his hair (even if it didn't need fixing) now and again; how viktor had put his hand on vances knee after the latter had confided in him everything arasaka had done to him.

he had left his family behind. his sister.

but he had friends at the end of his corpo world, too.

moving among them, he had found something in himself that he had had never realized was there: that he has a lot of love to give, and no idea how to give it.

but he tries, anyway; that is the one act of free will arasaka can't take from him.

--

that's it from me! you can learn more by perusing vance's character tag (#vance) or! if you have any further questions I'd be more than happy to answer them :3

[locklylenerd77]

I feel like Aziraphale is often portrayed as not reciprocating Crowley's love or rejecting Crowley, but people are too hard on him. Unlike Crowley, it took him a long time to come to the realization that "shades of grey" exist. Crowley was brutally forced to confront the truth of heaven's toxicity when he sauntered vaguely downwards, which is one of the reasons he puts up a very nonchalant, "cool" front- he was in a lot of pain, and now he's grown thicker skin as a self-defence mechanism. Aziraphale is still in the process of coming to terms with the truth. He's been in heaven's toxic system for much longer than Crowley, and in an abusive relationship longer than his relationship with Crowley; it will take him longer to reject his impulses to do what's "good" and "right" even to a self-destructive level of selflessness. He loves Crowley, but he feels like he has no choice but to push him away. It's why he says "you go too fast for me". Crowley's ahead of him, and trying to pull him into that shade of grey just light/dark enough for them both. Aziraphale is wary of this because he's been groomed into a black-and-white view of the world. People don't appreciate moments like "to shades of grey" and "I need you". Even when Crowley offers for Aziraphale to stay at his place, we see his softness. "I don't think my side would like that very much." He considers himself as part of a whole, a "hive mind" who all think the same and hold the same morals, and he does what that hive wants. But he speaks that line very softly, and his eyes are full of gratitude, and he's at least acknowledging Crowley's offer. He isn't rejecting it, his trauma is. He and Crowley both know he wants to accept.

If you look and listen hard enough, you'll realize that he's slowly opening up to shades of grey. He's making huge developments as a character, and just because they're marginal to us, and frustratingly slow for Crowley, doesn't mean that they aren't a whole lot more impactful to their relationship than mindless snogging.

He even gives Crowley holy water, not knowing its intended use, and knowing it will end the existence of a demon, which goes against all "good" morals. He quite literally gives Crowley a weapon just to stop him from stealing it. He protects Crowley and defies heaven. Moments like those are so significant, and so underappreciated.

Crikey I'm writing a lot today. Neil I hope I got this right.

[ingravinoveritas]

Hello there! I hope you are doing well (as well as someone who has completed watching season 2) First of all congrats on moving into a new house! I'm still having lots of Feelings™ to process after finishing the second season.. oh god the acting, the genuine emotions on the faces of both Michael and David this time around... I'm simultaneously radiating happiness and being utterly destroyed. And the increasing intimacy between them in the interviews is not helping matters either... I think (this has been marinating in my head for a while) one of the reasons they are doing this is to physically reassure each other that they are not apart, they are still a team and still on their side, because after the heart wrenching ending of the season, it would have been very hard for them to come to terms with it, as they had put their whole beings, their whole souls into playing Azi and Crowley, which might have made it difficult to draw a line where the characters ended and they begin... So the touches, their body language became a sort of coping mechanism, something which said 'hey, don't worry, I'm still here.. I have not gone away, we're still together' and this makes me wanna cry again 😭

I hope my word vomit makes an iota of sense (English is not my first language by a long shot, so) and I hope you do find some time to rest and have a warm beverage of your choice while unwinding. Stay safe and blessed!!

Hi there! Thank you so much for the congrats on my move, I truly appreciate it. I've actually had a very rough couple of days, as on top of the move, my Facebook account was hacked earlier this week, and it essentially pushed me over the edge and I was crying for much of Monday and felt like I had a crying "hangover" all day Tuesday.

You do not at all have to apologize for your Ask--your English is very good!--and I'm glad to read your thoughts as I make my way through all the Anons still residing in my inbox. Truly, we are fortunate to have GO 2 and Michael and David to focus on, as well as the abundance of interviews we've gotten after months and months of little to no content.

To start: I absolutely agree with you, re: the intimacy between Michael and David in these interviews. It's been so fascinating to see them get more flirty and touchy-feely with each progressive interview (I know we don't know the order in which they were done, but I imagine the flirting/touching increased as the day went on). And while I can definitely see them doing what you described--reassuring each other, touching and being close as a coping mechanism--my feeling is they already did all that last year, probably right after filming That Scene. (There is actually a gorgeous MS/DT fic on AO3 right now that depicts exactly that, and it's definitely worth reading.)

But in terms of all the intimacy and touching in the more recent interviews (from last month), I think what we're seeing is something else. I think Michael and David are beyond the need for reassurance because they are so comfortable with each other and know they're still together, permanently. There's no more of the uncertainty of parting ways after the promo interviews end--only the promise of seeing each other again as soon as both their lives and schedules allow it.

There have been so many moments of telling body language and touches and expressions, but if I had to pick a favorite (well, a few), one would be them walking arm-in-arm onto The One Show:

And the other would be David leaning so far over and draping his arm around Michael in the Amazon Q&A video:

...And of course (and possibly most notable), Michael and David seemingly unconsciously moving closer to each other in the TV Insider interview:

It's so telling that there is no urgency or desperateness to any of this--only comfort and very much that sense of "on our side" that you mentioned. Walking out arm-in-arm as they did in particular adds to that "us against the world" feeling and the not-so-subtle implication that while they were Michael Sheen and David Tennant on the season one press tour, here, now, they are Michael and David. Inseparable, always intertwined, and having so much more of themselves in the characters of Aziraphale and Crowley than in the first season.

So yes, everything you wrote absolutely did make sense, and I appreciate you writing in to share your thoughts with me. I have a lot more thoughts/analysis about GO season 2 still to share, which I hope to do in response to the numerous Anons still waiting in my inbox. Thanks for writing in! x

[revasserium]

Can I request prompt 60 with Daichi? Thanks a lot

requests for haikyuu and naruto are open; send me a prompt pls!

60. home

daichi: 1,962 words

00. in this universe, you meet on the last day of summer vacation, across an entire baseball field of untapped potential — him with his friends, you by yourself, but never alone. the volleyball they’re tossing around bumps up against your leg. you look up, squinting against the fierce summer sunlight, pouring down over his back like liquid gold, and for a second, you can’t see his face, only the shape of him — wide shoulders and short hair and —

“hey, sorry —”

you blink, looking down at the brightly covered ball still nestled against your leg. and when you next look up, you find his eyes instead.

someone once said that there are some infinities that are bigger than other infinities.

neither of you knew really what that meant. until now.

“no, it’s okay — here, your ball.”

“ah. thanks. uhm —”

“uh —”

you speak at the same time as you both reach for the ball. your fingers brush; the world pauses, waits, holds its breath.

“daiiichiiii! c’mon! we’re waiting for you!”

he jerks up, blinking as if pulling himself out of a daydream. he looks behind him to his waving friends. when he looks back at you, you’re already turning back to your book, the pages lined and dogearred. something inside him cracks, ever so slightly, as he takes a step back, and then two, clears his throat and dips his head.

“thanks again.”

you chance him another glance as he jogs back to his friends. you look down half a second before he looks back at you.

01. in another universe, you meet over a spilled coffee, the autumn leaves falling around you both, the air just chilly enough to paint your breaths in silvery white, spiraling up towards a gunmetal sky.

“shit — sorry — oh…”

you look up first, sting of the hot coffee still nipping at your fingertips, him reaching out to hand you a wad of crumpled tissue before he realizes and jerks back, his cheeks flushing as he fumbles to grab a fresh piece. you feel the laughter bubbling out of you like freshly poured champagne.

“it’s okay — you can just buy me another.”

it takes him a second to process, and by the time he does, someone else has scoffed and stepped around you both up to the counter to place their order.

“oh. sure, yeah — but i’ve — well —” he glances down at his watch. you feel your heart sink inside you, ever so slightly.

“no, it’s fine. go, i can just get it myself —”

“no! no —” his voice is too loud, making a few people jump as they frown and look over, disapproving and uncertain of the two bumbling, awkward teenagers holding up the line in the middle of the coffee shop.

“please,” he says, “let me buy you another.”

you blush and nod, even as his phone buzzes with some kind of message. he quickly taps out a reply before shoving the phone back into his pocket and joining you.

“yeah, alright.”

02. in another universe, you grow up together, screaming and laughing and crying together, spending every birthday at each other’s house, every win and loss by each other’s side.

“ugh! this is so stupid! why can’t i just ask him out?!” you shove your face into daichi’s pillow, thumping your legs against his bed. it smells like him, you think, this whole place does. but then again, it kind of smells like you too.

daichi sighs, glancing at you from over your problem set, his mechanical pencil poised over the multiple choice answers.

question 4 — if a tree falls in the middle of a forest (if a boy like a girl and never tells), does the falling tree still make a sound? (does the boy still get his heart broken?)

“do you want me to do it for you?”

you turn your head to stare at him, your heart right on the tip of your tongue — what if you asked me out instead?

“no.”

daichi looks back at the problem set, “then, what are you gonna do?”

you lick your lips, “can i… practice?”

“practice what?”

“asking him out.”

daichi slowly circles option d (all of the above) before putting his pencil down and turning to face you.

“sure. why not.”

you grin as hop down onto the floor of his bedroom, the pair of you facing each other. you take a long breath and open your mouth.

03. in another universe, you are both heartbroken people.

“he wasn’t ready.”

“she had… someone else.”

you purse your lips, your cheeks pink from the three shots of shochu you’d just had. outside, the winter storm shows no signs of stopping. beside you, daichi swirls around his second glass of whiskey.

“well, she was an idiot.” you turn to grin at him, your body feeling warm and loose and ready.

he turns to you with glazed over eyes and cold-bitten lips and you feel yourself falling. not for the first time.

“well, he was too.”

the bartender refills both your drinks and you raise your glasses. the shochu stings; the whiskey burns. when you both set down your empty glasses, you cock your head at him and he flashes you a lopsided smile.

“uhm…” he bites his lips, still a bit too shy. you fight the urge to lean forward and bite it for him.

you flash him your most charming smile, “wanna get outta here?”

daichi hiccups, his eyes going wide. a second later, he slams down a bill on the counter and pulls you to him.

“y-yeah. let’s get outta here.”

03. in that universe, you stumble back to your apartment, but by time you get there, you are no longer strangers. his hands are cold, yes — but your skin is hot, and the way he groans against your lips sets your entire soul on fire. he’s a bit too gentle as he undresses you, but you nip at his lips, hiss against his skin, and tell him that you want him to show you everything she never got to see.

he growls in his chest, shoves you back against your bedroom door and tears your underwear from you with his teeth.

he makes you come three times before letting himself go, his forehead pressed to yours, your fingers laced, palm to palm, his hips bruising as he thrusts into you, panting, the moonlight spilling down over his back like liquid silver. and like this, all you can see is the shape of him, his broad shoulders, his short hair —

“d-dai-ichi! please!”

you feel yourself clench around him, the white-hot pleasure punching through you as he fucks you through your release, his breath hot against your shoulder even as you twitch around him.

“f-fuck… nngh —”

you puff out a breath as you feel him jerk against you, his arms shaking as he fights to hold himself up, before you wrap your arms around him and tug him close, grinning into the mess of his hair as he collapses over you.

“so…” you ask, after a few minutes of ragged breaths, a few seconds of collecting the scatted pieces of yourselves from across the twisted bedsheets, “what was she like?”

daichi shakes his head, turning to look at you with a crooked smile, “i… honestly, i don’t remember.”

you grin, turning to face him completely, “good… i don’t remember him either.”

02. in that universe, you sit across from him on his bedroom floor, your fists clenched in your lap, him sitting directly across from you. your multiple choice worksheets lay forgotten on the floor by the foot of the bed. outside, the spring sways on the barely blooming peach blossoms, collecting dew in the warming night air.

“uhm — so, i’ve been meaning to ask you this for a while…” you say, looking anywhere but at daichi’s face.

daichi feels his stomach clench, his heart skitter and thump, a raw, wild, bewildered thing, untamed and untamable as it tumbles inside his chest.

“yes?” he tries to keep his voice steady. he’s not sure if he succeeds.

you force yourself to look up at him, finally. finally.

(if a girl finally, finally, admits her feelings, does she have the power to heal a broken heart?)

“i — i know we’ve grown up together, and we’ve always been best friends —”

“mhm, yeah,” daichi nods, forcing himself through the paces. he has to do this, he has to do this for her. but —

“but if — somewhere along the line… i think — i think i started to have feelings for you — and i know, i know it’s weird — but… i don’t think i could forgive myself if i didn’t… if i didn’t at least try…”

you squeeze your eyes shut and lower your eye, bending at the waist till your nose is three inches from the floor of daichi’s bedroom.

daichi stares, his mind unwilling, perhaps unable, to process everything you’d just said.

(wait, i thought — i thought she was talking about someone else! i thought —)

“daichi… will you go out with me?”

01. in that universe, he writes his number on the coffee slip right before he hands you your brand new drink.

“thanks… you didn’t need to do that,” you blush, taking the coffee, letting it’s warmth seep through your fingers as you both walk to the door.

“yeah, but… i wanted to,” he says, grinning as he turns to look at you, his own cheeks dusted in the color of falling leaves.

“well… i’m glad you did.”

you take a long sip of your coffee, letting the sweet and bitter burn through you, letting the shifting winds blow loose your hair, kiss passed your own insecurities. but daichi’s phone’s already ringing again, and you content yourself with watching him fumble as he answers, stuttering into the receiver.

“suga! i’m coming, i’m coming! i just —” he ducks as he cover his mouth, hissing into the mic something that sounds suspiciously like ‘met a super cute girl and gave her my number’.

you laugh as he raises a hand to wave at you, half-skipping, half-jogging down the street.

“call me, okay?” he shouts, motioning with his hand, miming up to his other ear even as he almost smashes into a couple walking down the street in the other way.

“okay!” you call back, laughing as you look down at the hastily scribbled number on the coffee slip.

00. in this universe, you slam your book shut, jolting to your feet. somewhere in the distance, the cicadas are chirruping loud enough to drown out the rushing tides of destiny.

“u-uhm — sorry, excuse me!” you shout, so loud that he nearly trips over his own feet.

“h-ha?” he looks back at you, all amber eyes and sunset smiles and in the flicker of a moment, both of you wonder if you can see the stray strands of a hundred thousand universes playing out in the spaces between you.

“what’s your name?” you ask, your fingers digging into the flesh of your own palms. and somehow, you already know the answer.

behind him, daichi’s friends hoot and holler.

he blushes, clutching the volleyball to his chest as he takes a breath. he scratches the back of his head as he looks away and looks back.  this time, your eyes catch, perfect, shocking, present tense.

“sawamura… daichi.”

[bettsfic]

I’m taking another break from writing and I really want this break to be different so that when/if I go back to writing I’ll actually stick with it and have some of my walls pulled down so that I have less resistance to working on a project. Do you have any tips on how to step away from a project to recoup mentally and then go back feeling ready to tackle writing a novel again?

I don’t want to just avoid writing by watching tv and stuff but also be ready for a new project:

If this helps, here’s what happened:

I was working on a story idea off and on for 6 months and I noticed it becoming a story I did not plan on and one I didn’t think my skill set was ready for. It made me avoid the project for days at a time or build up walls around the idea of writing because I have attempted this thing for 2 years now with no significant progress. Just starting and stopping an idea and hating myself and slowly hating writing in the process with each failure.

As someone who is goal oriented I set mile stones, like query in 5 years finish my first novel this year,etc….

But it feels daunting when you stand on square one and feel like your ideas not right or your not skilled, people are going to hate it, and you are afraid of self-inserts(I don’t like to read self-inserts so I’d hate to write one of my own by accident).

So now I’m burnt out and has lost touch with what’s fun about writing.

it's interesting that you mention the idea of walls multiple times here. that seems to be both the problem and the solution. it sounds like you're writing from two different minds: the half of you feeling creative and inspired, and the half who wants to do the job to the standards you set yourself.

the problem is that you can't do one task with both minds, so you have to give each their own task. the half of you that wants to make something and have a good time with it can become the generative half. you use that energy to plot, draft, daydream, etc. the other half of you needs to do something they're good at, because they don't seem to be very helpful with generation.

my recommendation is to create an independent study for yourself. this project sounds very important to you, and you want to do it justice, and that means that second half of you needs to devote itself to developing the scaffolding that will allow your generative side to build the thing you want to make. if you've done any kind of teaching before, great. if not, think back to how your favorite class you've ever taken was structured and go off of that. write a whole syllabus if that sounds fun to you (creating syllabi is very fun for me).

most people i know see everything in one step: do the thing. but try breaking all your goals up into at least two steps: teach yourself how to do the thing, then do the thing. especially for people like you who are goal driven and organized (and probably were/are very good students), it can be extremely fun and satisfying to become your own teacher.

here are some individual activities you can try that i think might keep you focused on your project and relieve the burnout:

write a list of learning objectives. this can be anything from specific craft mechanics to mindfulness and meditation.

create a reading list. find some relevant texts that will help inform your project. you say, "I don’t want to just avoid writing by watching tv and stuff," but if you watch tv through the lens of your project, it becomes a productive exercise. take notes, then organize and index your notes. personally, i love taking notes about the tv i watch and then indexing my notes.

craft small assignments that use what you learned from the reading list to reach the learning objectives. if one of your learning objectives is "learn how to write in first person," you take your favorite first-person reading and use it as a prompt for a short piece of prose.

make a final assignment. maybe your final assignment is a drafting plan (not an outline) for how you want to tackle your return to drafting. maybe it's a sample/practice chapter of your project. maybe it's an actual "what i learned in this course" style book report.

this isn't advice i would give to everyone. there are a lot of writers out there who would read this and go "absolutely fucken not" because they are the "just do it and see what happens" sort, or they had such a horrible primary education that the thought of framing creativity within the structure of a course seems agonizing. but for writers who get in their own way, who have both tastes and ideas that outweigh their current skill level, i definitely recommend training your scaffolding brain to tasks that are more actionable, and taking the time to learn what you want to write before writing it.

[randbitb]

This essay? Can you call this an essay? Surely you could but, you’re reading this on a tumblr post, so for now let’s call it an essay. This essay is going to be breaking down the cinematography techniques Sausage used in the opening to episode thirty one of his second Empires SMP season. I’m also going to go into why these work so well, and what they imply, a fair warning, this will be long, and I’m taking this 100% seriously. I’ll be using the correct terms for the things I’m talking about too, I’ll presumably have a list of definitions at the end of the post, and if it gets too long and I decide to not include that this link has every definition I will have used in this essay. Now that’s out of the way, let’s start from the beginning.

I’d like to first talk about the music, this is the first thing that really hit me when I was watching the episode for the first time (and the multiple rewatches I’ve done of the intro since then), and the effect it has on the person watching it depending on prior knowledge to Octagon as a whole.

Firstly, viewers of Ren and Doc’s season 8 will know that Octagon’s signature for their ‘cutscene’ music was very heavy metal inspired, it’s powerful music that The Octagon is absolutely deserving of, its intense sound helps the viewers understand what Ren and Doc are trying to portray. Octagon was built to utilise lightning as a powersource and employed game breaking technology in game to create some of its prominent features (Power Node 1, The OctaPortal, ect). Because of this, the shift to orchestral music as it’s introduction in Sausages opening is so incredibly interesting. Strings take the forefront of the music Sausage uses here, and strings are often used to portray elegance and grandiose, something Octagon wasn’t given in Season 8 itself. Octagon was threatening, but never elegant, always being added to, that process of violent construction the heavy metal symbolised is gone here, there’s nothing being added to The Octagon. And the music crescendos with each panning shot, emphasising the power this place holds, even just aesthetically, getting more and more powerful as it rises like a Wave. The dichotomy between Octagon's previous violent, aggressive and powerful portrayal through the music Ren and Doc use, and the elegant, imposing orchestral music Sausage uses, both to portray the same thing, is incredible. Octagon was awarded its elegance in death, and the music choices here reflect this beautifully.

People who never watched season 8, who have no idea what Octagon's whole deal was, are seeing this place in its tomb. It's an elegant coffin and that’s all they’ll know it for unless they go and watch season 8, and I think that’s wonderful, because it’s what Octagon deserved.

Next I’d like to draw attention to the shots in the opening itself, so we’ll start and progress through these in chronological order.

Firstly, we have a sweeping shot of the Lower left side of octagon, containing the base for the elevated boardroom, and the fully charged central power node, it’s an incredibly strong start to the episode, with the scale of Octagon being shown through the height of the warped vines that cover the islands floor. The wide angle shot used in this scene helps make the viewer feel small and vulnerable in comparison to the powerful elegance of The Octagons architecture.

It then cuts to another, fairly low angle shot of the bridge, the sun is positioned behind the massive mechanical bacteriophage that holds up Octagon’s bridge, this shot utilises and amazing use of chiaroscuro and creates a sense of unease in the viewer, the blotting out of the light and the emphasis on the size of the structure continues to aide the threatening aura Sausage is clearly trying to portray. Both these shots (as well as many many other shots in this opening, utilise the ocean as a means to portray scale, the ocean is usually seen as quite a large and domineering thing, you can’t get much bigger than the ocean, however, due to the framing of the shots the ocean and surrounding landmass The Octagon sits on, completely dwarfs the viewable ocean. And it helps create a beautiful sense of unease, and powerlessness.

The next shot is my favourite in the entire opening, a tight, zoom shot of the inside of Octagon itself, the sleek glass flooring reflects the dark walls of The Octagon itself, and it really truly does present itself as an grandiose structure just due to the use of shaders, the slow zoom into the center of Octagon itself; It’s almost reminiscent of the evil lair in a spy movie. Octagon looks sleek, polished, the high walls and the tight shot create almost an air of claustrophobia, that’s only offset by Octagon's open roof plan, and the sheer scale of it, knowing the walls visible are three walls of eight. This shot really helps establish Octagon as a powerhouse and to indulge in a little anthropomorphism, a Baroness.

Our fourth shot is an Aerial view, with a high angle shot, a slow zoom out from the LOGZ Crane and its cargo. This high positioned zooming out from a central point really helps gauge a sense of scale here, only one and a half walls of the overall structure are shown in this shot, once again, using Octagon itself, and now the LOGZ Crane to dwarf both the island and the ocean around it. Our music is rising too as these sweeping shots help guide the eye to the important parts of the shot, adding to the mise en scene of the opening.

Moving on to the 5th shot in the opening, I’m actually going to talk about the music some more here, but this shot, a beautiful zoom shot of the bridge, covered by the calcite coral reef, is paired expertly with the introduction of a louder brass instrument in the orchestral score, these two elements together contribute to help provide that dramatic, powerful flair that Sausage is trying to convey in each of these shots. The music here perfectly fits the pace of the shot when paired with the illusion at a deep focus shot here on the Phange (sadly something not possible within the world of Minecraft). This continues to build up this sense of vulnerability and powerlessness in seeing The Octagon rising up out of the ocean. Sausage utilises a quick switch from a shallow depth of feel to a deep depth of field to create the illusion of a deep focus shot on the Bridge.

We now come to another of my favourite shots. Octagon’s right wall, with a slow pull out, with its name etched in the side in Bright Blue Copper. Once again the ocean is used to portray the sheer size of The Octagon here, with liminal land viewable, all these ocean shots help to aid a sense of loneliness that each of these shots have been oozing out. The Octaportal is visible in this shot, and very briefly, so is Sausage, the inclusion of Sausage himself is a powerful tool too, He’s almost unnoticeable against the sharp spires and spindly legs of Octagon, and it really does aid to this Real sense of unease, scale and the aforementioned vulnerability.

Here we get the near climax of our crescendo, the wave of music has ramped up as we focus our attention on Sausage, a close up shot on him that barely lasts a second, but is so important. Sausage is our protagonist here, He’s the character we see the world through, who we must trust to portray things as they are. He should be the most important thing in this shot, and yet our camera pulls out, and he is rendered unimportant against the violent architecture of The Octagon. Sausage isn’t important here, he’s a spec on the impact of this world, a visitor, an observer; and this sprawling, wide angled shot portrays this Perfectly. Sausage is not who we should be turning our gaze to here.

And at last our final shot. We are greeted with a tight centered view of the OctaPortal itself, a creation only possible through game breaking, a feat of this size deserves its own shot, we have another zoom in, a centered shot focusing entirely on the portal itself, where Ren emerges from, his clothing a stark contrast against the purple of the portal, Ren is in the Center of the shot. He is who we must pay attention to, he created half of this insane structure, in its threatening elegance and our focus is drawn to him.

However, in these two shots, an interesting thing happens. Our zoom out from the Sausage shows the scale of The Octagon. But the zoom in to Ren, focuses him in the shot, and yet never allows him to take up a large portion of it, it’s symbolic of how this was a monumental task, the workload and goal Doc and Ren carried on their shoulders was meant to be shared, not shouldered alone.

All of this together carefully rewraps Octagon, and gives it the recognition it deserved. Octagon was a Monumental feat, a beautiful mix of jagged violent architecture and classy elegance. This will be some peoples first introductions to The Octagon. This behemoth of a Building style, of a story, shared between Doc and Ren. And it feels cathartic to me as someone who holds Season 8 and The Octagon close to my heart, to have it be shown in the way, I presume, Ren and Doc wanted to present it too. It’s an amazingly well edited opening, the timings with the music and reveals of each section are utterly amazing, and Sausage, whether he intended to or not, created a beautiful homage to a silly corporation; that whilst it made no money, looked positively cool as shit

[wsdanon]

I'd love to hear the tragic character felps thoughts!

okay echo + anyone else reading this bear with me because i have lots to say and i'm not sure i can get it all down properly. it's worth mentioning my fic "it's not a fashion statement, it's a deathwish" is pretty much directly what i have headcanoned as felps' backstory. but for more detail and breaking things down:

firstly in canon while i think it's accurate to call felps not an active player, he was an active character in the plot. the reason he got kidnapped had a whole lead up to it \o/ one vod's worth (three videos on youtube), but still! he was heavily in character the entire time (even turning his crashing into a character moment--making his character paranoid that he was being watched)

that being said: felps doesn't log in as much. during the vod i mentioned earlier he said his gap was because he was in a mini-coma. i think he sleeps a lot! i've headcanoned him with a fatigue disorder of some kind, and the one month on ice just made it worse. i extrapolated on this idea and decided he'd have difficulty sometimes understanding what was dream and what was reality (i think i got this from narcolepsy? i haven't looked at it in a while but some of the symptoms of that was hallucinations and sleep paralysis I think).

this disconnect from reality was somewhat confirmed in his prison stream \o/ although since i can't pull up the exact quote/timestamp right now don't believe me too much

okay going under the cut now:

one of the "i like dropping that i think felps is a very tragic character" moments i mentioned was if him and pac actually got together, he'd have trouble believing it was real and not a dream. this is extremely self indulgent on the felpac side of things and i'll go back to just felps specifically but: presumably felps has been pining after pac for eight years! i think they're a mess of missed opportunities and both of them being too afraid to try and start anything, so if anything did happen it might not feel real

(the other tragedy is that nothing happens. and he stays pining forever)

back to felps specifically. in my backstory for him i have that he was killed and suddenly revived as a saint in a futuristic (for him) version of his town. this is incredibly alienating for him. he's very very lonely, and confused, and out of place and it's the building blocks for his and cellbit's friendship (as cellbit is also lonely, confused, and out of place). i've had some people mention recently that felps feels out of touch with reality in "it's not a fashion statement" and i'm glad because that was the intention!

first of all, he was dead for many years. second of all, everything is new and different. third of all, he's a saint. it's hard to process

regarding what we specifically see in canon: the "felps has a fatigue disorder" thing was a way to explain why he's away so much. but also… he's a saint. and in the prison stream he leant hard into that. there was no facecam or chat that entire stream. it felt really weird to me because he always has a facecam--or at the very least chat (he went live later on not for qsmp stuff with both). to me it felt like a way to showcase his disconnect from reality and kind of acceptance of his sainthood?

(another post before when i was talking about felps stuff i mentioned a lot of people praying to him is fucking him up a little--i think the more he gets prayed to and accepted as a saint the harder it is for him to grasp onto reality. saints aren't supposed to be alive, after all)

felps has had other occasions of disconnect from reality--he was one of the people to happily play into bad's denial when the eggs were missing. because one of felps' coping mechanisms is actually denial \o/ he doesn't go as full into it as bad, but you see him in other scenarios leaning onto denial. (after the one month on ice + in the prison stream learning how long he was gone for you can see him insisting he was only gone for a day or a few days and getting shocked/upset by the idea he was gone for a month/multiple months)

with felps logging on less, and having enough pieces in canon to explain away why (either he gets lost in his square, or he falls asleep) i think you can do a lot with the idea that sainthood is kind of claiming him and so he's not able to be present in reality anymore. which kind of freaks him out a bit. i said he was lonely in my backstory, and this kind of amplifies that. everyone's been through so much without him. he can't stop falling asleep and not waking up

anyway my final note of rambled felps characterisation is that he's also quite a paranoid character but he's not as loud about it as cellbit is. this is very messy but it's hard to get all my thoughts down about this. hope you enjoyed \o/

[bg3-aita]

AITA for falling in love again after having my heart completely wrecked?

Okay so here's the situation. I (35f, elf) met this wizard (35m, human) by complete chance last year after we both got swept up by a mind flayer ship and had tadpoles inserted into our brains. i knew pretty much from the moment we met that i was in love with him, and though it took a while for us to get together, once we did... i don't use the word soulmate lightly, but i was pretty sure he was mine.

my wizard used to be Mystra's chosen. tl;dr they were lovers, and he tried to impress her by going after a piece of lost magic that should've stayed lost. it nearly killed him, he lost mystra's favor, and became a walking nuke.

as it turns out, the piece of lost magic was actually part of the Karsite Weave-- ya know, the shit that temporarily killed Mystra once upon a time-- and the only way to diffuse the bomb in my wizard's chest was to get the Crown of Karsus and bring it to Mystra to be destroyed. only, the crown was on top of the Netherbrain's head, so to get it, we had to deal with that.

together with our friends, my wizard and i defeated the Netherbrain, and the Crown of Karsus broke into pieces and fell into the Chionthar. but here's the thing: instead of doing the smart thing and deciding to retrieve the Crown, bring it to Mystra, become her chosen again, and have the bomb in his chest removed forever, my wizard decided it was in his best interest to find the Crown, reforge it, and ascend to godhood himself.

i told him not to do it. begged him not to, actually, but in his mind asking him not to meant that i thought he couldn't do it, which only increased his desire to become a god-- just to prove everyone wrong.

he left me the day we defeated the Netherbrain to go search for the Crown. he didn't ask me to come with him, he declined when i asked him to stay, and he walked away from me without so much as a kiss goodbye.

i won't go into the details, but his departure broke me in a way i've never been broken before. i was devastated and assumed a lot of really unhealthy coping mechanisms because of it.

enter my vampire (250?m, elf)-- this man was one of the people my wizard and i defeated the Netherbrain with. he watched our relationship from it's very first moments to the moment i collapsed on the docks in tears because my wizard left me. he stayed by my side for a tenday after my wizard left, because he didn't want me to be alone, and he (and our other friends) were worried i might do something stupid.

the vampire has always been a good friend to me, and three months ago, we became more than friends. as it turns out, he'd been in love with me this whole time and let it go because i was happy with the wizard. the vampire picked up the pieces i'd broken into and painstakingly put them back together, and i fell in love with him in the process.

last week, the wizard came back out of NO WHERE, after being gone for a full year. he'd ascended to godhood and was finally coming back to "give me everything" and "take me to Elysium."

i told him no, and that i was with the vampire now, and he took it....poorly, to say the least. the wizard seemed SHOCKED that i said no, that i'd moved on, and had the audacity to tell me i BETRAYED him and his trust by not waiting for him. not to mention, his "apology" for leaving could hardly be called an apology, it wasn't even sincere.

to be clear, the wizard did not explicitly ask me to "wait for him," nor did he try to contact me at all while he was gone. honestly by the third month of radio silence, i'd given up hope that he was coming back. he claims i must have never truly loved him or believed in him by assuming so.

AITA for moving on???

What are these acronyms?

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[scoups4lyfe]

VegasPete and Stockholm Syndrome

Okay so….just obsessively scrolling through the KP and VP tags every Saturday I end up seeing everybody and their brothers takes. (And if not on Saturday then I will the entire rest of the week because I check that tag like checking the morning newspaper 🤪)

And seeing “Stockholm Syndrome” for the tv series (esp cause I read the VP side story lmaooo rip) really amused me for multiple reasons,,,

Lemme just start right from the bat and say that it is perfectly valid to be confused on Pete’s actions, especially as he’s been held hostage.

“Why didn’t he leave?? He should of left???”

Obv the thought process here is: Pete hates Vegas —> seen what Vegas goes through and empathized —> worries about his captor —> doesn’t leave when presented the option —> therefore he has Stockholm syndrome.

Mhm mhmmm I can understand how you could come to that conclusion. However, I firmly disagree. I saw a post that said they wanted to label Vegas and Pete’s relationship Stockholm sooooo badly but knew that wasn’t entirely it and that there was something more complex but they couldn’t understand what.

Haha let me explain to you just what that “what” is.

Having read the book, I have a bit more of a foundation when it comes to comparison, making it easier to see and understand the intent behind the way the Director and writers have adapted the novel into the series. I’m in the middle of writing an essay about these changes and why the tv show is hands down (no competition) a million times better (written) than the book.

In the book, yeah I would say Pete and Vegas have a Stockholm relationship. Hmmm maybe not even then? Because if we’re defining Stockholm as a coping mechanism of empathizing with the captor during times of stress and harm in order to help make it through a traumatic situation; then I say: So~so. See, Pete’s mindset in the book is completely different than it is in the series.

In the book there was no understanding for why Vegas is a fked up lil maniac. “Parental abuse? Tough, but people out there have had it tougher 😶✌️.”

That was Pete’s mindset.

It was really “well that sucks for you but I don’t care — cuz you’re a henious villain” thought process.

In fact Pete only started being nice to Vegas/doing what he said so that Vegas would get bored and either kill him or let him go. That’s it. That’s like 92% of their novel relationship. Pete being fake asf so Vegas would find him boring.

Even prior to being captor and captive Book!Pete could not and did not see behind Vegas’ mask. In his own thoughts during his time captive, he thinks about how he had always perceived Vegas as y’know “just some guy” even with Kinn/Tankhun’s warnings — these warnings being the only reason he knew to be wary of Vegas in the first place.

Chef’s kiss 💋 👌👌 to the show for the way they made specific and subtle changes from the source material that would greatly change the entire dynamic of all the characters and their relationships with each other. (But that’s an essay for a whole other day 👀)

Now, how did the show change Vegas and Pete’s relationship into something entirely new, even more fked up than it was in the narrative, and yet somehow a million times better?

Simple.

(1) Pete’s observation skills and ability to see through Vegas mask from the very beginning. AND his “there’s no heroes or villains” mindset

(2) Pete *choosing* to sneak in with the knowledge and preparation of his torture and death should things go wrong.

(3) The shared experience of both having abusive fathers.

(Pete being the more mature and introspective and aware one between the two, aKa giving Vegas some solid therapy and enlightenment.)

(4) The clippers that have been left in the room with Pete. These writers have been intentional to the *T* — if all these damn essays and meta aren’t proof enough to yall of that then 🤷 idk what else I could give to prove that to you.

(Listennnnnnn,,, you don’t have all these intentional choices for every little thing and then accidentally leave bolt cutters on set of an important scene. Would make no damn sense.)

(5) The hedgehog 🦔

(Vegas didn’t have a pet in the novel…not one I remember at least.)

(6) The Key 🔑

(7) Vegas not initiating the Kiss

Okay. All of the above 1–7 are just a few of the changes made that have major importance for both Pete and Vegas’ relationship.

With Pete being able to see under Vegas’ mask we know that Vegas’ fake masks don’t fool him. There’s something about Vegas that Pete can see through. So when Pete chooses to sneak into the minor family compound — vocally stating before he does it that he knows the consequences— this informs the audience that he’s prepared for them. For capture, torture, death. Which is why when Vegas comes in to torture him and Pete knows he’s foiled his plans and will most likely die? Dude has nothing to lose, so he’ll be damned if he’ll let Vegas see his fear.

Not only does this give Pete a lot more agency. (In the book it was just, wrong place, wrong time); but — as fked up as it is — it also lets the audience feel less bad when he does inevitably get caught / tortured.

It’s not that he asked for it, but at least he knew what was going to happen. An unsuspecting victim is a lot more pitiable than a suspecting victim. Especially if it’s a consequence of a choice he voluntarily made — compared to being forced to investigate via ‘boss’s order.’ So already the writers are setting us up to not hate Vegas as much as we would if Pete truly stumbled into the situation on accident.

Now one of the most important differences — that shared trauma of having an abusive father, and using it to relate to Vegas. Unlike Book!Pete, our Pete recognizes Vegas’ situation. He’s been in the same place — while having the actual affection of his grandmother to fall back on (which Vegas obv didn’t have); therefore he also understands why Vegas tortures him the way that he does — he understands that Vegas is only feeling pathetic and lousy and is taking that out on him.

But in that tender and melancholic moment when Vegas decides to be vulnerable after patching up Pete’s wounds, Pete talks to Vegas with an understanding only someone in his position (or a therapist lol) would have. Even then, objectively knowing something is different than having experienced it yourself. And it’s the fact that Pete’s *also* experienced that sh*t that lends credibility to what he’s saying — at least in Vegas’ eyes.

This is why Pete knows there’s no good or evil, hero or villain, black or white binary in this world.

Because when you get down to it: we truly are shaped by our environments and the things we experience as we grow (obv not ignoring genetics but that’s not the point). And it’s this reflective and mature/observational outlook that helps him empathize with Vegas.

More than empathize — it’s *this* outlook that helps Pete not hold lasting grudges or hate for past hurts.

It’s always easier to forgive someone when you know where they’re coming from.

And Pete never really took it personally (for the most part) considering Vegas is on an opposing side. When an enemy gets captured on the enemy’s base of course they’d get either killed or tortured, esp for information.

That’s not something special to Vegas.

Vegas refusing to kill Pete tho? Lol. That’s enough for a dislike to sour. But I don’t think it sours all that much once we put in the consideration of Pete’s observations recognizing what Vegas is — a victim of an abusive home/situation.

(Not that it excuses him, but nobody’s trying to do that here LOL.)

Now getting down to the nitty gritty.

The hedgehog, the key, and why Pete isn’t a victim of Stockholm syndrome.

First, I think the hedgehog 🦔 is very important because it gives the audience (and Pete) another reason to empathize with Vegas — humans might not mean sh*t to him, but he loves and takes care of his pets.

He loves something. He cares about something. This humanizes him.

And a small and fragile pet can often humanize a character more than a human. A real sicko kills animals. But Vegas’ care for his hedgehog 🦔 shows that he isn’t that. He’s human too—albeit a really fked up one, but human nonetheless. He’s capable of love too, but perhaps humans have hurt him so much that he knows only an animal would be something he can trust.

This kind of trust and love he can only find in animals is also a very isolating existence. It highlights just how trapped Vegas is — the Hedgehog is literally a mirror of himself and his situation.

Yes he cares for Macau — but it’s “easier” to care for a human than an animal. Easier to empathize with a human. So while yeah, his care for his brother, while subtle in the show, is important, it isn’t as important to the audience as his love for his hedgehog. Especially when it comes to convincing an audience to forgive a character’s past villainy and long list of crimes.

But here’s what’s really important — the key.

Vegas leaving the key there (intentional or not; but imo, I think it’s obv intentional. Dude is way too meticulous for that to be accidental), gives Pete the agency to either escape or stay.

This, again, helps the audience be more okay with the idea of the two of them ending up in a relationship. It’s one thing if Pete has no choice and goes along with things to survive or cope with trauma — but it’s entirely something else if he’s allowed to leave, but doesn’t.

But Pete’s reason for staying has to be rational in some sense so the suspension of disbelief doesn’t attack the audience going 900 mph on the logic freeway.

So him escaping but seeing Vegas sitting pathetically on the grass, alone in the dark, and holding his dead pet?

The person there isn’t the dude that tortured him. Naw, that part of Vegas — is the child trapped in a cage and left isolated in the dark while anything that had ever brought him light or comfort in his life leaves him. He may be sitting on grass, but for Vegas it could’ve been the equivalent of sitting on broken glass.

It’s such a stark difference too from the versions of Vegas Pete’s used to seeing. Yeah he had that conversation about dads last episode, but even then Vegas wasn’t totally broken and left in despair.

But this Vegas?

This Vegas was someone so broken he couldn’t even cry until Pete touched him to provide comfort.

This Vegas isn’t just a sharp edge that can cut you if you get too close, now’s he’s much too broken for that — and his sharp edge has twisted inward from attacking others to attacking himself.

At this point, Pete’s beyond empathizing with his captor — esp because he isn’t a captive here. He’s not chained anymore. Vegas has no interest holding him captive. Pete at any point after he got out of those chains could have left and Vegas would do nothing to stop him.

Vegas is broken. He’s depressed. And he’s numb because it hurts too much to do anything but sit in his own despair. Pete touching him in comfort might’ve opened the floodgates of that hurt, but that doesn’t mean it changed how Vegas felt. Dude is still in despair when he heads inside.

Anyways this is getting too long so I’ll make a part two — getting more particular in the psychology of why Pete stayed, and why he kissed Vegas.

Closing words to end on:

Pete doesn’t leave because he knows what it’s like, and he’s sees the humanity and pain in Vegas and he cares. He cares because no broken and abused kid should be left isolated in the dark, not even knowing how to cry. He cares because he wants to do for Vegas what his grandmother did for him. What he wished more people would have done when he was in that pain and darkness.

He cares because he looks at Vegas and he sees himself.

[angelsdean]

Dean might been raised to be like john and copied everything that he does (leather jacket, hunting, music, etc) but at his core, sam is much more similar to john and thats the reason they clashed so much.

Theres a difference here - we litteraly spent 15 years watching dean growing up to be the person he needed to be not the person his father wanted him to be.

yea i do think sam's inherent temperament is more like john-- quick to anger, one track mind, centers himself and his emotions over others, deflects blame for his own actions + their consequences.

while dean's inherent temperament is more like mary (incorporating some of spnwin mary's traits into this) --feisty and strong willed but also caring and nurturing (mary was good at bonding w/ kids in spnwin like dean and also i'd say she was a good mom w/ her young children just was distant when she came back due to her own grief and the strangeness of their situation) both are avoidant about somethings, tends to keep things in more, need to internally process (tho i will say and have said, dean CAN and DOES talk abt his feelings. just. not to sam. and sam is just as avoidant, usually deflecting and asking others to talk to him instead of sharing his own feelings)

in the early seasons (and what we can infer about their childhood and teen years based on what they've said) it's very clear that dean played the role of mediator between the two hotheaded ones in the family who where always clashing, sam and john. dean filled the role mary left. he has to be a mother and pseudo partner (i do not mean that sexually obvs) but in the sense of the role of an equal adult figure. john treated dean as his co-parent basically. he gave young dean adult expectations and responsibilities. dean may have fought back and argued sometimes, but after a while he learned it was better to just stay quiet or side with john. because Not taking john's side led to dean being sent away, which left sam vulnerable, and dean's whole purpose that john ingrained in him was to protect and look after sam. he can't do that if he's thrown out of the house as punishment for dissenting, so he falls in line. this obvs from sam's perspective makes it seem like dean and john are a united front against sam, that sam is the outsider. he's not wrong for feeling what he feels, but sam, from his limited perspective, does not see the whole picture. he doesn't learn about john sending dean away as punishment until they are adults. he was unaware of a lot going on around him, the way a lot of kids are unaware of their parents issues when they're young.

anyway, we see dean evolve and change for 15 years, yes! he starts off as the mediator between sam and john. he just wants to keep the peace and unite his family again. for dean up until this point, family is everything. and in s1 family is very limited to literally just the three of them. john never let them form close bonds with other people outside of them. the most they have are bobby and pastor jim, and even then, in s1 they're not very close to either, and have been estranged from bobby for some time. then we see dean break away from that role of mediator when john is out of the picture. he also starts to question a lot of john's choices (not that i don't think he was questioning them before, it's always been a complicated dynamic), but after john tells dean he might have to kill sam, that sends a jolt to his system and he goes, no! No, i'm not going to kill my brother / pseudo-child just cos my father-god says. He gets a bit angry. He starts to actually let himself feel that anger toward john that he's kept at bay for so long, now that john's gone. Then there's hell and 40 yrs of unimaginable trauma. Thirty years of torture and 10 years of torturing. Dean comes back angrier, yes. His anger is a symptom and response to his trauma. hes's never been taught good coping mechanisms and expressing emotions wasn't exactly condoned or safe in john's household, so a lot of dean's pain and grief and shame and remorse for what he did and what he endured gets filtered through anger. Unlike sam, dean never gets a proper arc to confront and deal with his hell trauma. he doesn't have an angel come and take on the brunt of that trauma. he has to bury it all down and keep moving forward to the next conflict, the next big bad, the next apocalypse.

And even still, even after all that, and more years of trauma and loss, dean still holds on to his humanity and love and desire to help people and his goodness. (And i'm not saying sam doesn't have these qualities either. sam, esp early seasons sam, may share more inherent qualities with john but he also has qualities from mary and he also is his own person, who is also good at his core) But yea, dean could've been way worse after everything he endured, and we do see him struggle and stumble, but ultimately he breaks free of a lot of john's teachings and behaviors and he becomes more than just that blunt little instrument.

[junokami]

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR "WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST READ" AND "IF THIS BOOK EXISTS YOU'RE IN THE WRONG UNIVERSE"

See below for more thoughts about BATMANTIS??? and how it relates to David's depression.

A while ago, I came across a Q&A between Jason Pargin and some Goodreads users. I was interested by the following exchange:

I honestly feel like this explains everything about the third book. Having just read the fourth book (this post will contain spoilers for the whole series), I think it's safe to say we know what the BATMANTIS??? is: David. As I read the series, the third book in its entirety is the most dubious of all the books as to whether it really happened. I personally think the whole thing was made up, but some might disagree.

I went back through and did find several examples of intervention scenes. Obviously, David's intervention first comes to mind. We see a group of bikers give a tearful intervention to a woman about half-way through. Joy flushes John's drugs down the toilet, causing him to go berserk. Though I can't find it now, I remember reading about an intervention that happened on TV, maybe near the end? All of this sets up for Dave's intervention, and like everything in this book, it ends in uncertainty. Maybe even disappointment if you felt similarly to me. The "children" are allowed to survive, Ted's death is scorned by his wife, it's outright said that the Millibutt has only been contained, not killed entirely. It's exactly what it says on the tin. What the hell did I just read?

The answer to this can be found when we look at the cast's perception of the monster over the course of the book. Amy's is the most important because it's her emotional state that we see most often expressed in the series, and the one we can recognize the easiest. 

After seeing the video for the first time, Amy immediately tries to deny everything. She tells Dave that everything will be okay, that they can fix it all. Some of the things she suggests are farfetched given the context. For example, the cops never recognize that the trio are telling the truth, much less apologize for not believing them. She bursts into tears a few lines later, so it's obvious she's lying to herself about how grave the situation is. 

It's not until the BATMANTIS??? shows up in the last portion of the book that we get to really look at how Amy and David's perspectives differ. Amy treats it with kindness even after it attempts to attack her. She sees its hostility as a defense mechanism because it's scared and confused. David, however, takes it for a moral failing on the side of the monster. He is angry they have to deal with the monster, seeing the whole situation as pointless and aggravating. 

This reminds me of Amy's calling David's depression a "sadness demon". In her opinion, both entities are looking for misery. All attempts to physically fight it or dismiss it as a trivial issue just make it stronger. BATMANTIS??? easily overtakes David even though he has a figurative boner over how bad he wants the creature dead. It almost seems like he's fighting with himself, calling the monster a mistake and an asshole which we know from his thoughts are adjectives he would certainly use to describe himself. David says that he can kill BATMANTIS??? from the inside; isn't his depression doing the same to him? 

Here, a parallel can be drawn to what happens in the intervention. Amy is on her last straw with the situation. She's making an ultimatum, offering one last chance before she takes serious action. 

We see Amy go from immediate horror when she realizes what's happening, to denial and depression, to trying to get rid of BATMANTIS??? by herself, to finally issuing an ultimatum. This is her exact process with David's depression. 

By contrast, David tries to kill the creature by himself and with brute force; when this fails, he tells Amy to run away and attempts to give up his life. Like BATMANTIS???, David doesn't understand his depression very well. He blames a lot of the things caused by his depression on himself. He tries to fight through it on his own and thinks that he's failed because he can't. In reality, forcing yourself through depression is literally impossible. 

David's depression is certainly at its peak in book three. He contemplates suicide on a daily basis, he's short-tempered and irrational with the people he loves, and it can't be ignored anymore. You might even call it the BATMANTIS??? in the room. (Bad joke sorry) It's not a coincidence that this is the same time BATMANTIS??? appears to us. It represents his depression at its worst: a living creature that feeds on everything around it. No wonder David has such a vendetta against it.

Jason Purgin says it best: this is a story of an intervention. Once we take away the details that John, Dave, and Amy created to distract the cops, the truth is left. The real fight is the one being waged against David's depression, one that only started once his depression hit a point that turned him into someone else entirely, once John and Amy couldn't look past it any longer. In this book, we don't learn who won the fight. But in the sequel, we do.

David is taking Lexapro. Getting treatment. He seems happier with his loved ones at his side and has some hope for the future. If he was as depressed as he was in the previous book, the knowledge that John had died in every other timeline would have completely destroyed him instead of giving him the motivation to go back and try again. Of course, he's still depressed, but things are starting to look up.

Along with this, he learns to handle his "monster side" with Joy's help. He willingly summons it in order to kill Dalton and is very confident about his ability to control it. For now, I think David is winning the fight.

[donnyclaws]

💥 SITE  KOFI  PATREON REDBUBBLE YOUTUBE  💥

Maxxie Glamour & The Mechanisms of Corruption

[Img desc under cut]

[ Image 1 ]

A painted scene of Max sitting outside the back of a club at night. He’s a tall guy in an open backed dress and high heels, he’s leaned over himself and looking to the left of the image, smoking and seeming ambivalent to whoever has approached him. Light spills from the left in red hues and there’s a small set of stairs by the concrete ledge he’s sitting on, there’s the implication of bins in the background. The whole piece is in rusty oranges, greys and dark blues, painted in a textured and rough brush. Finally his face is obscured by a series of blue and yellow squiggles, similarly the bottom right of the image is signed in blue lettering “by Ducky”.

To the side of the illustration is some uncolored sketches, two of Damian, curled up in a pile of thorns and then another with them bracing themselves on a table with a pained grimace on their face, their usual scars now appearing as thorny curls up their arms. On the bottom is Aran who is standing with tilt, holding his hand out and looking dazed and upset, tears streaking down his face. His palms are stained with blood. The text reads “Scars become painful thorn curls, visual and physical, corruption and chronic pain coincide for them” (Damian). “Blood tears from a saintly martyr, blood stained hands in guilt. Purely visual corruption” (Aran). “Corruption is the calling card of trauma. The inherent magic of the body attempts to externalize and process intense emotions. In severe cases it can attack the body in an attempt to remove and emotional threat, especially when trauma creates intense somatic symptoms”.

[ Image 2 ]

Two pinup styled images of Macon and Max on a sketch page. Macon is fat with dark skin, a curly pink mullet with black roots and an equally curly tail with similar colouring and texture. Max is light skinned and thin, he has a short black bob with red undersides here and a long tail that forks into two at the end. They’re both posing in heels and only wearing underwear and pasties.  Text reads “Younger days”, 35 and 19, the ages of the two characters in the picture. Next to them is dialogue. “Aw poor duckie can’t even keep the same face for herself. I can’t tell who she is!” “Play nice girls, don’t you remember when you were fresh? You certainly don’t have the face you have now...” “We were all fresh then! And none of us looked like we tripped in expired makeup. Make her into a swan if you want, but don’t get upset if it doesn’t work out”. The rest of the page has two sketches of Max with a shocked expression, and loud bright makeup covering his face. It’s swirly and non standard. Small bits of writing read “Am I a joke? Tell me I’m not.”