#the tumblr immigrant has now become the twitter immigrant

[kenobihater]

javert is WRONG: the thesis of les mis is that legality and morality aren't synonymous!

i just found the internet's most unbelieveably dogshit hottake that makes anything woobifying javert written by Die Girlies Auf Tumblr Und Twitter galaxy brained in comparison. rest is below a cut because i got Wordy in my goal of ripping this motherfucker a new one.

The point about “fault” is very important here. Following Rousseau, Hugo believes that the poor become criminals out of necessity. They “fall” (i.e., become poor) and then become morally “degraded.” Therefore, our response to crime should be “charity,” not punishment. This is a classic Romantic view that became the basis for modern liberalism. According to Rousseau, people are basically good and are corrupted by society, committing crime only out of ignorance and desperation; the solution to crime, then, is education and welfare. Christians obviously worry that this view has no place for the doctrine of original sin, and conservatives object to this view because it leaves out personal responsibility for crime.

i know this is a christian publication but the concept of original sin even factoring into criminality and criminal justice genuinely pisses me off. stop forcing your shitty worldview that everyone is popped outta the womb an evil sinner, i beg. the seperation of church and state is a vital part of democracy. also, you can believe people are shaped by society and driven to crime through desperation without taking away personal agency. those two things are not contradictory.

If I am right about the Rousseau subtext, then Javert is not necessarily a villain; he’s just a conservative, albeit a liberal caricature of a conservative. There are two good examples of a liberal bias in Les Mis. First, notice that Valjean’s position in his society is roughly analogous to an illegal immigrant in our society. When he leaves the prison, Valjean can’t get work because he doesn’t have the right papers. He’s an undocumented worker. In a scene from the musical cut from the film, a farmer allows Valjean to work for him, but then only pays him half as much as the other laborers. The farmer reasons, “You broke the law….Why should you get the same as honest men?”

i've never seen anyone, even javert fans, try and argue he isn't a villain. this is breaking new ground here, folks. it's a hell of an assertion, but it's demonstrably false. jean valjean is the main character. we root for him and wish to see him succeed. javert is hunting him for the entire narrative. thus, he is the antagonist. there may be some moral ambiguity on both their parts, but he structurally is the villain and that is a narrative fact.

next, as an american i am fucking BEGGING on my HANDS and KNEES for other americans to learn about the differing political terms for different countries and times if they are speaking about them with any supposed credibility. i'm not asking you to memorize every country's parties and political intricacies, but at least acknowledge that even if there is some overlap between 21st century american conservatism and 19th century french politics, that there is no one-to-one analogy!! modern american christian conservatism is a consequence of hundreds of years of unique geopolitics and religion stewing together, and you can say similar things about french politics of the time! you CANNOT just say shit like "javert is a liberal caricature of a conservative" without sounding like an utter clown because hugo was not an american liberal and javert is not an american conservative. now, if you were to alter your language a bit and say something like "javert is a leftist caricature of an arch-conservative," you'd sound less foolish (hugo's politics are hard to pin down but leftist is i believe the best label for him at the time of LM's publication. and to my understanding javert isn't really a fervent arch-conservative but it is at least a plausible reading bc he's a traditionalist, deeply religious cop and 19th century french arch-conservativism actually existed in 19th century france (shocker, i know!)). but that change in language would require actual intellect and effort to learn about other times, places, and worldviews on the part of the author, and judging by his ignorant politics, something tells me he's lacking that!

then there's the bit about illegal immigration. hoo BOY is this fucking stupid. jean valjean is a white, culturally catholic, working class french male citizen. he's an everyman of the time, his name and story of class struggle couldn't be more generic unless he was named john doe or jean dupont (the french equivalent) from nowheresville, france. hugo had a point here, and that is that as a member of the wretched poor, les misérables, valjean, representing a large swath of the french populace, is so removed from education and self reflection and truly living life that he's more akin to an animal or an object, that he's so beat down by the daily grind that he verges on inhuman. this is only magnified by his time in toulon. i'll stop there, but it is very important in jean valjean's story that he's impoverished, yes, but a french citizen. he is as french as the king, but treated like dirt because of his social status and criminal record. this sets up a dichotomy in the france of 1832 between the wretched poor and those with privilege, which is an important part of the novel.

the issue of "illegal immigration" both in france and america is a modern one. there was still bigotry and xenophobia, obviously, but the discourse around the intersections of border control, the nation state, and citizenship is a very modern one. to say "valjean's position in his society is roughly analogous to an illegal immigrant in our society" is ignorant. yes, both jean valjean and many undocumented immigrants are faced with similar abuses, but that does not mean it's intended by hugo to be a reading of the text or political commentary because let me restate this: 21ST CENTURY AMERICAN POLITICS DIDN'T EXIST IN 19TH CENTURY FRANCE!

also, valjean is the opposite of undocumented. he has his yellow papers, which are quite literally documents that are the root cause of the daily discrimination he faces, hence why him ripping them up is a radical act of freeing himself from the control of an unjust state. i don't even know how you miss this, it's stressed in the movie musical multiple times.

“Men like you can never change,” he tells Valjean. But Javert is not simply being prejudiced here. He knows from his own experience that it is possible for the poor to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Javert, too, was born in poverty. He is “from the gutter,” as he puts it, but he embraced law and made something of himself.

oh, of course the bootstraps ideology rears its ugly head. not even gonna waste my breath on this one other than to call it stupid and wrong. all javert made himself was a class traitor and a bootlicker, and that's honestly tragic.

Consider a second example of liberal bias. The character of Fantine is designed to elicit the viewer’s sympathy for “welfare mothers.” Fantine, a young, unwed mother in Valjean’s factory, faces persecution from her coworkers. The factory foreman expresses a conservative attitude toward charity: “At the end of the day, you get nothing for nothing.”

this part. this part was so unbelievably cruel and so far removed from the empathy that this narrative bleeds that i had to step back from writing this and take a smoke break. firstly, fantine is NOT a stand in for "welfare mothers", which is, once again, a modern conservative strawman! the welfare state did not exist in 19th century france. there was little to no support for mothers in fantine's position, and to my knowledge, none stemming from the state. hugo was writing her character to bring to light the unfairness of her position. she had a lover who left her flat out, with a child to care for and no financial support. she was ostracized, eventually fired, and resorted to survival sex work.

Fantine shouldn’t expect special treatment, but rather should take responsibility for the consequences of her own sexual license.

fuck you, john. where in the text did she ask for "special treatment". where in the text did she do ANYTHING but take responsibility for her child. she sold her hair. she sold her teeth. she sold her body. she got sick because of her living conditions. she died. all out of love for her child. also, framing children as "a consequence" is disgusting, and you should be ashamed of yourself and reflect on why you think that's an alright way to view a living, breathing, human being. if you don't wanna take my word for it, psalm 127:3 clearly states "children are a gift from the lord; they are a reward from him," so your stance is decidedly unbiblical. children aren't punishment.

Likewise, when Fantine turns to prostitution to feed her child, Javert is unmoved by excuses. Valjean’s family was starving, and Fantine’s daughter was sick, but these facts don’t excuse them for breaking the law. Theft and prostitution are wrong, and it is Javert’s duty as police officer to arrest them.

how is theft to feed a starving child immoral. how is sex work to ensure your child lives immoral. give me ONE reason aside from your and javert's religious worldviews that either of those things is wrong. "but the bread didn't belong to valjean!" and would inaction, watching his nephew die simply because a windowpane and empty pockets separated him from a piece of bread be more moral? is watching a child die when you believe you can save them the better option? the whole point of this damn book is that legality is NOT synonymous with morality. javert may have the legal high ground, but he does NOT have the moral high ground, and when he realizes this, the thesis of the book, he fucking kills himself! for an example outside the text to perhaps get it through your thick skull: slavery was legal. biblical, even! does that mean it's morally right? no!

Thus Les Mis is designed to get us to see Javert’s conservatism as cruel and to elicit sympathy for Hugo’s liberal social policies. It should be noted, however, that Les Mis is a caricature of the conservative position. Conservatives agree that we ought to treat the poor with dignity and compassion. They think that compassion programs, however, should be administered by the church instead of the state, and they think true dignity requires personal responsibility and submission to the law.

how can javert both be an exaggerated, cruel conservative caricature and be right? i'd argue he's both an accurate portrayal of the inherent cruelty and misanthropy present in the politics of the political right, and that he's decidedly wrong as proven in the text. jean valjean is a good man, despite it all, but javert couldn't see that because of his worldview and chose to relentlessly hound him until he finally realized his mistake, a realization that overcame him so strongly that his only solution in his mind was to kill himself!

and do conservatives actually agree they should treat the poor with dignity and respect? it's in the bible, sure, which christian conservatives hold as the absolute truth, but in this very article you, a christian conservative, have expressed nothing but contempt and cruelty for undocumented immigrants, for unwed mothers, for thieves and sex workers. for les misérables - the wretched poor. and why shouldn't the state handle "compassion programs" as you call them? the gov't is electable and manageable (in theory), unlike the beast of untraceable wealth and power that is the church. we don't live in a theocracy, so the only reliable way to ensure people get the help they deserve is through the state, which can actually be held accountable for these expectations (again, in theory). that's more than you can say for the church.

The fact that Les Mis contradicts evangelical theology does not mean apologists shouldn’t use it—on the contrary. We can help non-Christian fans of the musical see how the vision that draws them toward the story can only be fulfilled in Christ.

his conculsion is LAUGHABLE. personally, the "vision that drew me to the story" at age twelve was my attraction to men. i'm a flaming homosexual, you see, and a transgender one at that. the overwhelming majority of musical theater fans i've encountered are some variety of queer. at age 22, ten years later, i'm drawn to the story still partially because i find these characters attractive and magnetic, but much more so for the literary and socialist political value i find in the narrative. i'm an unrepentant leftist as well, as are literally every other les mis fan i've ever met (besides yourself, of course). i've found more fulfillment through reading les misérables than i have in my exploration of the new testament, and i'm not even done with the book yet!

i don't really know how to conclude this other to point and laugh at john and his publictaion, because somehow i stumbled upon a conservative fan of les mis and the lack of self awareness is more baffling than i could have ever imagined it being

[beardedmrbean]

Now a game im interested in is assassin creed title that will take players to feudal Japan. Here the announcement video they did for the franchise 15th anniversary https://youtu.be/gD_DemeUuy8?si=oFcOY8AW_uHmo4N9

Now leaks revealed we are going to play as two characters, a female Shinobi who in the trailer named Naoi/Noae Fujibayashi, a daughter of a famous ninja. And African samurai who will slowly join the order that Naoi is part of the assassin brotherhood.

As you probably guess the African “Samurai” is very likely to be or based of the famous Oda Nobunaga retainer Yasuke https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke

In the story leaks in reveals that Naoi and Yasuke will start out as fierce rivals/enemies as historically Nobunaga constantly tried to wipe out the ninja clans. But will later become close allies in their desires to unify Japan

Now I did my research on yasuke, he never joined the samurai class and such. I have theory when Japanese were reviewing their samurai ancestors. They made Yasuke a “honorary” samurai but Afro centrists twisted it

Now for the game they changed Yasuke backstory where he was a slave on a slave ship that was attacked and he was the only survivor. And he eventually end up under Nobunaga learning the way of the samurai

Now some people think Yasuke is as just Nobunaga pet…though it stated he was 6’2 and I can’t really believe didn’t trained him in at least the bushido code.

Now in assassin creed settings, human history was influence by mainly two secret orders and their incarnations. The assassin brotherhood (Free Will) and the Templar order (social order)

Now as I theorize about how ac red could use Yasuke, I realize that they could do a story where Yasuke joined the assassins and goes into the shadows and protect and unify japan so they don’t suffer the same hardships as him. Basically an immigrant protecting his new home.

Now it caused a shitshow on twitter when the leaks came out as they thought it was form of Afro centrism after you know the Netflix cleopatra thing. Mainly because the headlines forgot to mention he was one of the two playable characters

Now for me, Yasuke help inspired one of the first seinen anime’s my father introduced me to being Afro Samurai which the titular character was voiced by Samual Jackson.

Now we probably won’t get a proper reveal of the game until April or May as that when the company Ubisoft like to do such a big reveal. But I know he going to very likely be in the announcement trailer. So prepare for the shitshow

Sorry for these long anons, yes people pointed out ac could done a game set in Africa

But I think Yasuke fine, as 1. The Japanese has references him several times and been used as inspiration. 2. Help this feudal era game stand out from the many ones

And of course the Europeans will play important roles in red. Can I please get a historical black project that isn’t “Fuck white people!”?

I’m so starving I’m taking a video game with a huge Illuminati war and I’m leaving out the crazy scifi part

Sorry for ranting these past days. I feel like you’re one of the few tumblr people I can truly talk to

Still remember how incredibly blown away I was when I saw the first videos of the first AC game. I could never play them I knew that way the camera moves gives me vertigo and a splitting headache if I try and play games that do that for more than a couple min, never could play DooM for the same reason whole 3D thing caused actual physical pain.

Still these are beautiful looking games, *personal tangent over*

Not at all sure how accurate the stories about Yasuke are, guy absolutely existed and as thing go this is still a work of fiction so that'll be less important imho.

I'm sure we'll get people saying that if he's not chosen to lead the shogunate it's racist but those people we point and laugh at.

Now it caused a shitshow on twitter when the leaks came out as they thought it was form of Afro centrism after you know the Netflix cleopatra thing. Mainly because the headlines forgot to mention he was one of the two playable characters

Nothing like incomplete information to start a fight, you just reminded me I haven't seen anything about the Hannibal thing they're doing in a while, gets all kinds of free advertisement when the angry mob starts up and the people with the full information start responding. Do they do that on purpose as a form of viral marketing that they don't need to pay for, probably.

I know I've played a few Ubisoft games, can't remember what they were, looked at their list and it's too long so I'm letting it be.

And of course the Europeans will play important roles in red. Can I please get a historical black project that isn’t “Fuck white people!”?

Probably not, maybe they could do something where the British fleet is enforcing their blockade they set up in order to stop the ocean going transport of slaves to the Americas, or maybe French or British army going in and going to war with the various kingdoms and such in Africa that were still trying to keep the slave trade going after they were told to knock it off and stop selling their fellow Africans.

But that probably wouldn't go over too well in certain communities. The discourse would be delicious though.

Sorry for ranting these past days. I feel like you’re one of the few tumblr people I can truly talk to

you're good, it's why I leave anon on even when I'm getting attacked I like to be available for people that need a place to vent or anything really, other than the weak ass threats some of them send, if they could actually do what they say they'd do it instead of whining in my inbox

[somenerdfromwhatever]

The Reason Why I am making this video about Wednesday, Autism, and me somehow wanting to be a part of it

Or: Why I'm Somehow Willing to Go Above and Beyond to Work on the Show Because of the Surprising Parallels Between Wednesday's Outcasts and Minorities in society coming from Me, an Autistic Outcast (yes, I know that's a long ass subtitle).

Ok. Now that we got THAT title out of the way, I would like to address this elephant in the room. Wednesday. I couldn't get enough of it. Seven months later and I am still invested in the show. If you saw my many cosplays of Enid and Wednesday and the various Wenclair fanart and posts on my Tumblr and Twitter, then you know what I'm going to say about the show. I could go over every last nook and cranny in this creepy and cooky show, but take it from me when I say this, if you have a person that wants to see this show, please recommend it to them! Wednesday has quickly become a part of my identity. The characters, the thrilling mystery, the ever growing development of Wednesday and the charm of it all is what makes me go back to the show and the fandom so much!

I love this so much, I want to work on it. So, why this post? Why do I want to work on it?

After my first watch, it was love at first sight, followed all the actors and looked at BTS pictures. Then, days later... I read this article:

This made me reflect on my Autism, how I grew up with it, and my experiences so I decided to rewatch it again, and I felt more connected to it. After rewatching this many times with that article in mind, and learning more about Jerricho's world... I gained more insight on why the normies always scapegoat the outcasts for the "killings", why Nevermore has the outreach day program, and the dynamic and tensions between the two. Compare it to what I witnessed with my autism and how many people I connected with that are neurodivergent that share the same issues I face and that is why my love for the show grew to the point where I want to become a part of it. Then I saw more articles:

The parallels and comparisons to real life minorities are very scarily accurate but it doesn't end there. Apparently through algorithms (in part to these articles that I searched on Google, tech is weird man), I saw videos, articles, and even TikToks about autistics being treated like dirt, with one you all know recently as autistics being rejected from immigrating into new countries!

Then you know the drill:

Growing up in the Middle School days, it sucked for me, being pushed around all because I outed my autism. People pushed me aside and manipulated me because I was "emotionless" which I wasn't and above all with my verbal development thanks to it, I learnt to stand up for myself. As an adult now and seeing this, and possibly had experience with it this year, I gained further understanding of what us neurodivergents and minorities face in this world. Especially where we need to get a job to survive, when we disclose who we are even when we showcase our worth we get pushed aside. I don't want to play the masking game where we just don't disclose it on applications anymore, I want them to MAKE US KNOWN TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT WILL FINALLY MAKE THEM HEAR US OUT. That dream still holds true, but as this video comes to fruition... My passion for the show goes beyond just creating that video. 

My passion for the show goes beyond asking to work on it by making THAT video. 

My passion for this entire thing is to get my story out there that us autistics and neurodivergents face on a day by day basis.

Yes, I want to work on the show.  I want to use my talents in video editing and entertainment to help create a more inclusive and accepting world. I sent a fan letter to Tim Burton himself expressing my admiration for the show and my desire to work on it. Will I get a response? Who knows, but at least I put myself out there.

But I want to help make this story continue to help show that there's more to us than meets the eye. I want to use this opportunity to bring attention to the struggles that us minorities in this world face. 

That's why I'm making this video and why I'm so passionate about wanting to work on "Wednesday". The show highlights the struggles of outcasts. The dynamic of this development of outcasts vs normies highlights the very real parallels minorities like myself face. By sharing my story and my experiences, I hope to inspire others to embrace their differences and to create a more inclusive society. And if that means I have to go above and beyond and embrace a long ass subtitle for this post, then so be it. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make my dream a reality and to help make a difference in the world.

I want to be heard so I can help create inclusion in this industry, and if it means helping out the story through this, then this is a good first step to proving that we are worth it in this world and to be more welcome to humanities differences.

[legaleaseus]

FAQ: I did not get an entry stamp on my passport, should I be worried? What is Simplified Entry?

I did not get an entry stamp on my passport. Should I be worried?

Beginning April 2022, CBP implemented “Simplified Arrival” at all 238 arriving airports, at 34 seaports, and at all southern pedestrian and most northern secondary land ports and as of June 2022, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has confirmed the complete integration at all international airpots in the United States. As of March 2022, all current I-94s and history for land entries are now entered into the I-94 online system, and CBP has stopped issuing paper I-94s altogether. This means that if you arrived in the United States after that date, you may not have received a stamp on your passport.

What is CBP’s Simplified Arrival Pilot Program?

Simplified Arrival is an enhanced international arrival process that uses facial biometrics to automate the manual document checks that are already required for admission into the United States. It provides travelers a touchless process that further secures and streamlines international arrivals while fulfilling a longstanding Congressional mandate to biometrically record the entry and exit of non-U.S. citizens. This process is expected to save time during the inspection process.

Without an entry stamp, how can I prove that I legally arrived in the United States?

This new program has posed some issues with clients who need documentation to show their proof of legal entry. Many immigration applications (including green card applications) continue to require submission of documentation showing that applicants have entered legally and have been inspected and admitted by an CBP officer at a port of entry. Traditionally, the entry stamp in the foreign national’s passport (and previously, the paper copy of the I-94) has been used to document a valid entry.

It also poses a significant challenge for Lawful Permanent Residents (LPR), commonly referred to as “Green Card Holders.” LPR entries are not tracked in the CBP I-94 online system, which can become an issue at the naturalization stage where LPRs have the burden of proof for documenting absences.

With this new development, we recommend to our clients the following:

Ask the CBP Officer if they can stamp your passport upon entry and explain that you need this stamp as proof of your legal entry. However, not all officers are complying with such requests.

It should be regular practice to download your I-94 and check the accuracy of your Travel History each time you enter the United States. You can obtain your I-94 and Travel History here. If there are any errors or issues with your I-94 and Travel History, you should immediately seek to get it corrected.

We especially recommend that LPRs request an ink stamp upon each admission to the United States. Attorneys should be recommending that clients keep contemporaneous evidence of international travel such as itineraries, flight status emails, hotel, and other travel receipts.

If you are affected by this development and have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us to set up an in-depth consultation with one of our experienced attorneys. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr, for up-to-date immigration news.

RELATED CONTENT:

When does my E-2 Status Expire in the U.S.-- the I-94 Date or the Visa Expiration?

5 Tips for Correcting Errors on your I-94

News Alert: USCIS Extends Green Card Validity for Conditional Permanent Residents with a Pending Form I-751 or Form I-829

Rasoulpour Torregoza is the law firm for immigrants, by immigrants. We are founded on the motto of LegalEase: we do away with the legal jargon and make law easy to understand, so you can focus on what’s important to you – going for your American Dream. Contact us at (888) 445-7066 or info@legalease.us. We are also on social media and on Skype: @LegalEaseUS. || www.LegalEase.us This website and blog constitute attorney advertising. Do not consider anything on this website or blog legal advice as the law is dynamic, particularly in the immigration field and nothing in this website constitutes an attorney-client relationship being formed. Set up a one-hour consultation with us before acting on anything you read here. Past results are no guarantee of future results and prior results do not imply or predict future results. Each case is different and must be judged on its own merits.

[homunculus-argument]

I'm fascinated by pidgin and creole languages. If you put together a bunch of people who don't have a fluent mutual language, they'll come up with pidgin languages, learning enough of each others' words to come up with a mashup of them to communicate. Their children won't just learn pidgin, they develop a grammar to it, and the mixture their parents used to get by on becomes a creole language, that following generations speak as a first language.

Hell, even some dialects of already-formed languages can take up traits of pidgin and creole. Consider Stadin slangi, which wikipedia translates as "Helsinki slang", dialect of finnish that was born among swedish-speakers in central Helsinki. Being born and largely raised a 30 minute drive from the city, I grew up referring to Helsinki as such, "stad" is simply the swedish word for "city". In my understanding, no other city than Helsinki is referred to as Stadi.

Finnish doesn't particularly vibe with ending words in consonants like d, so loanwords often end with with an a or an i in the end, and a good chunk of Stadin slangi consists of loan words that adapted to easier pronunciation and more flexible conjugation in the context of finnish grammar rules.

While it's a relatively young dialect, the original Stadi slangi was born somewhere in the 1890s consisting largely of swedish loan words, and a handful of russian ones, and remained like this until roughly the 1940s. The classic novel Unknown Soldier masterfully uses different finnish dialects as a way to illustrate how men from completely different regions of Finland come together - besides having different viewpoints of the world that often lead to hilarious conversations, the characters speak finnish with different dialects. To a person unfamiliar with the dialect and its history, the character who speaks Stadi feels downright jarring in a historical setting, because it sounds so "modern" compared to the more traditional and old-fashioned way the rest of the characters speak.

(Imagine reading/watching something that's set in the 40s, and for no apparent reason one of the characters regularly and fluently uses vocabulary you haven't heard outside of twitter.)

While I find the idea of language snobs and purists being a thing when it comes to such an urban dialect as petty and comical, they do exist and there are people who feel like the "old style" of Stadi slangi is the only "true" one, living languages are in a constant state of change. With modern world becoming smaller, slowly english loan words started to appear in it as well - more due to the increased influence of media than actual english-speaking immigrants. After the 2000s and migration from these areas, the modern Stadi slang also now has loan words from Somali and Arabic.

Speaking as a native finnish speaker who speaks fluent english, has a vague grasp of swedish and a very small understanding of russian, Stadi slang is somewhat understandable with enough context clues (in the "hmm, yes, I know some of these words" sort of way). I have no idea whether a person who has learned any of the aforementioned as a second language would find it easier or harder to understand it than "pure" traditional finnish.

I also have no idea whether letting myself take breaks for writing spontaneous tumblr essays of random subjects "to get it out of my system" actually helps me focus on my work, or if I should try to fight it and force myself to ignore the urge and work through it. Either way, back to work I go.

[mariaiscrafting]

Reblogs vs. Likes: A Basic Rundown

Welcome back, Twitter refugees, to my series on how to use this hellsite and assimilate into mcytblr as smoothly as possible. Today we’re talking reblogging versus liking, both on mobile and a computer.

For reference, Total Notes = Likes + Reblogs + Replies on a single post.

Reblogs

Reblogs are the best way to get a Tumblr post out to your followers. For more in-depth information on how reblogs work within the Tumblr algorithm, as opposed to any other social media site, please refer to this.

Longevity: Reblogs stay on your blog for the rest of eternity, unless you delete it. However, even if you delete an original post, if someone has reblogged it, it will stay on this site forever as a reblog on that person’s blog.

Adding to a post: You can reblog a post blank, add your thoughts in the tags, or add an actual addition to the reblog. Lately, I’ve noticed a reluctance to add to anyone’s posts, which makes me sad because one of the most iconic things about Tumblr has always been its reblog chains, where the initial meaning of a post can become something totally warped and hilarious. Still, most people on mcytblr reblog with their thoughts in the tags; you can do whatever you want really since there’s no wrong way to rb.

Hashtags on reblogs: Tags on a reblog do not make that reblog show up in search results, because only original posts show up in search results. If people are tagging a reblog, it’s basically just to add their own thoughts or to organize their blog. 

Notifications: The OP of a post will get a notification for you reblogging their post, and the person you reblogged from will get a notification. In addition, Tumblr added a feature this year where we can now see the tags on a reblog from our activity bar.

Reblogging can seem cumbersome because it opens a whole window if you choose to reblog a post, and then Tumblr will update your dash once you finish reblogging. This is where Quick Reblogging comes in:

On mobile, you can hold down the reblog icon to reblog a post to whichever blog you choose, without opening up a new page or refreshing your dash. This is called a Quick Reblog. If you go to your mobile settings, you can turn on “Beta” features to enable the Quick Queue feature, which works in the same way.

On a computer, there is a lovely extension called XKit that many veteran users have downloaded. Many of its features unfortunately no longer work because of changes to Tumblr’s code in 2019/2020, but one that still does is One-Click Postage. This feature lets you add text to a reblog or tags (unlike the mobile option), and then quickly reblog or queue it to your blog, all without opening a new window. I’d highly recommend XKit, if only for this feature.

Likes

On Tumblr, likes serve only as a bookmarks feature for each user, to add to a post’s total number of notes, and/or to let someone know you literally “liked” what they posted/reblogged. The total number of notes on a post might help it get into other users’ “Recommended posts,” or show up higher in the Search function (when sorted by Top Posts), but otherwise, likes don’t play a direct role in sharing a post with other users. 

On mobile, you can double-tap a post to like it, a-la-Instagram.

To this end:

This site was made to mostly consist of reblogs. Unlike on Twitter, lacking original content on your own blog is not condemnable or a bad thing. Tumblr culture has shifted significantly because of the porn ban, subsequent Twitter emigration, Twitter immigration during the pandemic, and several mcyttwt exodues; however, since its inception, Tumblr has always been about building your blog (unless you’re a creator) primarily through reblogging. It’s no  coincidence that your post will seemingly blow up if someone with a lot of followers reblogs, rathern than likes, your posts. For this reason, please reblog things you think are worthy of sharing- PSAs, urgent political info, art, writing, etc. Your blog quality is not lowered for being made up primarily of reblogs; on the contrary, it increases.

[duckprintspress]

"And Seek (Not) to Alter Me" Story Teasers: Era J. M. Couts and Aria L. Deair

Author Spotlight: Era J. M. Couts

Biography: I’ve been a writer for over 20 years. Well, if I actually think about it carefully, it has probably been longer than that. I do remember writing a story on MS Paint when my age was still single digits. I could have used Word, but Paint was funnier, it let me draw my scenes there too.

So maybe I should rephrase it: I have been a fanfic writer for over 20 years. There, that looks a bit better. I wrote a few originals, too, but those never saw the light of day. They will, eventually.

I like to write about characters and their development. I like to write about feelings and struggles and how complicated life can be even when it looks so simple. I like to write epic love stories that don’t always have a happy ending. But most often they do.

I will, one day, write a dystopian series that I’ve been plotting for over a decade. One day, certainly one day.

Aside from being a writer, I’m a reader, an opinionated mind, an Aries, an immigrant, a coffee lover, and a night owl that has been forced to conform to the social norm of waking up early only to become a “Morgenmuffel.”

I am passionate, energetic, lazy, and sarcastic. I’m a CrazyCatLady in the making, a food lover that cannot cook, the Man™ my grandma wanted me to marry, and a happy soul in my own shoes.

And, above all, I am weird. I am queer. And so damn proud of it.

Links: Archive of Our Own | Tumblr (@erajakira)

Story Title: Ruckus, Drama, and 2 Metre Tall Penguins

Tags: genderqueer character, modern setting, setting: berlin

Teaser:

“I bet you a lokum cube they will stay at this for a good ten minutes.” Brigit nudged Jinji gently, moving around on the old bench to make herself more comfortable. Her teasing smile made Jinji sigh.

Sitting next to Brigit, Hatice giggled, “Ten minutes? I say we will not have any more rehearsing to do tonight!” she said, stretching her legs in front of her. “I bet you two lokum cubes they will not even notice if we leave now.”

“Am I the only one worried we won’t be ready in time for the premiere?” Jinji eyed the ladies, with their light moods and high spirits, and tried not to frown. He was certainly the youngest in their theatre group; he was also, alongside the always warm/stunning/Jinji’s-”problem number one” Pascoal, the latest to join. He didn’t have much experience with theatre—or any stage art for that matter—but his nature demanded he succeed. Shouldn’t they be able to run the play from start to end when they were mere 14 days away from the big night?

“You worry too much, pumpkin,” Hatice said, and Jinji sighed again. She’d been saying that since the day he’d joined the group, three months before. “Your generation seems to be built to worry! Our grandkids are the same. Always worrying about one thing or another.”

“You will have worry wrinkles by the age of twenty-five if you keep frowning like that,” Brigit warned, nudging him again. Carlo’s cursing onstage grew so loud it nearly drowned her out. “And then, when you get to our age, you will look like our rescued sphynx cat!”

*

Author Spotlight: Aria L. Deair

Biography: Aria L. Deair is an author who has been writing and (while cursing her excessive comma usage) publishing fanfiction online for more than sixteen years. Freelance writer by day and author every other hour that she isn’t sleeping, she spends her days courting carpal tunnel and “forgetting” to wear her wrist brace.

As a proud member of more fandoms than she can count, Aria can be found blogging about some of the writing that she is avoiding doing at @arialerendeair.

Like a dragon with her hoard, she can be found in her New Hampshire apartment, surrounded by notebooks (most of which are empty), half-filled mugs of tea, and some of the comfiest blankets that have ever existed. Disturb her at your own risk, especially during NaNo Season.

Links: Discord: ✨Dragon✨#5555 | Tumblr | Twitter

Story Title: An Office Ado

Tags: fluff, friends to lovers, getting together, modern setting, mutual pining

Teaser:

“Don’t be like that.” Hero bumped his shoulder with her own. When he still said nothing, she turned to look at him then took his arm to stop them on the landing between floors. “We’re friends, aren’t we, Beau?”

Beau blinked in surprise, turning his full attention to her. “What makes you ask a question like that, Hero?”

She shifted on the balls of her feet, brushing a fleck of imaginary dust off her slacks. “I wondered if you talk with me the same way I do with you.”

“I do,” Beau tilted his head. It was clear she had more to say. “In fact, you often bemoan how much I talk about—”

“I’m not talking about work or office things, Beauregard,” Hero said, her lips pressing together to make a thin line. “I’m talking about you.’

Beau frowned, his shoulders hunching. “What about me?”

Hero waved a hand at him. “Things like whether you’re a cat or a dog person, why you only own six collared shirts—”

Beau stiffened indignantly. “It’s efficient—”

“—and how long you’ve been in love with Benedict Dickson.”

***

Want to read more? Check out our Kickstarter!

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

Rachel Maclean is Minister For Safeguarding. No, really. Not making this up. Do you know what ‘safeguarding’ is? No, neither do I. This actually sounds like a fun game. Creating cabinet jobs that make no sense. How about Minister For Muckraking? Or Minister For Freethinking? Or Minister For Eyeballing? Not sure what this women guards, whatever it is: I definitely don’t feel safe! She seems to be something to do with jobs or money. Yesterday, this clueless woman said, “People should work more hours or move to a better job to protect themselves from cost of living surge.” Got that? So, if you’re struggling to pay your energy bills or struggling to feed your family, you should work more hours and/or get a better-paying job. See? Simple!

As we now know, the Buffalo shooter was a believer in ‘replacement theory’, the unbelievable and frankly ridiculous notion that white Americans are being ‘replaced’ by immigrants. (Forgetting that white Americans were originally European immigrants.) The best tweet on my Twitter feed yesterday came from someone called Santiago Mayer, and it read, “Why are white people so afraid of becoming a minority? Does America treat minorities poorly or something?”

As far as my Instagram profile goes, I am getting no response from Instagram, my image has disappeared from the account, and I must assume that they have shut down the account. I sincerely hope some rancid low life is not still pestering you with cryptocurrency offers. If I can get Instagram to DELETE my account from its servers, I will create a new account and start all over again. Some people don’t use Facebook and my only way of communicating with them is through the gram!

My favourite Twitter feed Fesshole gave me this last week and it makes you wonder how many women are thinking the same way, “Things with my husband are fine enough but I secretly hope that he splits up with me so that he can have the kids every other weekend and a couple of nights in the week so I can have time to myself again.”

The best message on my Tumblr feed yesterday simply read, “So many people love you. Don’t focus on the people that don’t.” Really resonated with me.

This is not really your normal Facebook status. Most people just use social media to promote what they do. They view you as a ‘punter’ or a ‘customer’. This daily status is merely a “Good Morning!” to my family and to my community. Look at us! Some of us are as different as chalk and cheese but we do share the bond of music. It’s a pretty powerful bond that unites us all. It lets you know who I am. If I talk about Leroy Hutson or Leroy Burgess, you know what I am and where I’ve come from.

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom of my status. Many people don’t like reading. It’s too much hard work. So, I thank you for giving me five minutes of your day. Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday! I love you all.

[hinaypod]

Meet the Cast of Hi Nay!

Hi Nay revolves around the adventures of Filipino immigrant Mari Datuin but she isn’t the only star of the show. The upcoming podcast also features a rainbow (and I don’t say ‘rainbow’ carelessly ;>) of loveable characters who help Mari along the way. Here’s everything you need to know about the main cast of Hi Nay!

Leon

Leon plays the gruff [redacted] Donner, a Jamaican-Canadian cop who seems to know more about the supernatural than he lets on. Leon is building a career in animation and voice acting, and the podcast is his first professional project. Growing up in Southern Ontario, Leon has always been interested in exploring different cultures and works of those cultures, which has led to his involvement with Hi Nay. 

[Image description: A black and white photograph of a Black Canadian man from the chest up. Behind him is a white wall with what looks like a glittery or shiny curtain held up by tape. He has black, close-cropped hair and a big smile and is looking almost shyly at the camera. His left hand is on the back of his head while his right hand is off-camera. He is wearing a black high-collar sweater and a chain necklace.]

Abigayle Rhodes

Abigayle plays the sweet and energetic Laura Nichols, Mari’s neighbor turned best friend. Abigayle is a Hamilton-based artist, designer and creative. You can usually find them spending their days yelling at their sewing machine and watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with their beloved cat Ninja, or going on adventures with their partner Shayne. The best way to get into Abigayle’s good graces is with a nice bottle of Canadian Rye and anything buffalo checked. You can find them on the inter webs at abigaylerhodes.com (please don’t give me hate for using a .com and not a .ca! - Abigail) or on Instagram as @abigayle_rhodes .

[Image description: A color portrait headshot of a White Canadian AFAB person with a close-lipped smile and bright eyes. They are wearing a trendy pair of glasses with thick black frames around the lens and gold coloring on the bridge and ear stems. They are sporting a septum nose ring, winged eyeliner, and a diagonal eyebrow slit on their left eyebrow. Their pastel green hair is swept to their right to show off their undercut hairstyle where their naturally dark hair color has grown out a bit. They are wearing a black top.]

Edward Boxler

Edward plays Richard Murphy, Donner’s charismatic partner whose loyalty knows no bounds. Edward is a filmmaker, writer, and content creator. Born and raised in Toronto, he loves coffee (any time of day), reading, writing, travelling, cars, the gym, and most of all, movie marathons. Two of his biggest “one day” goals are to drive across Canada while visiting every province, as well as to carve a pumpkin for Halloween. You can see what Edward is up to by following his Instagram at @edwardboxler.

[Image description: A black-and-white photograph of a man from the mid-torso up. He is standing against a wall with damask seamless floral wallpaper pattern. He is wearing a suit with a pocket square and a boutonnière. He is looking off-camera to his right. His right hand is resting along lower part of his suit jacket’s lapel. His left arm is off-camera.]

Adil R.

Adil plays Ashvin Beeharee, a conman who gets swept up in the supernatural and becomes one of Mari’s closest allies   —  albeit unwittingly. Adil moved to Toronto 10 years ago, from the island of Mauritius. A classically trained actor, he has multiple stage credits to his resume. He is also a writer and filmmaker, and is currently developing a documentary called As One People, about the multiculturalism of Mauritian people. You can see what he’s up to at his Instagram at @adil_filmmaker.

[Image Description: A color portrait headshot of an Indian-Mauritian man from the chest up. His body is angled away from the camera but he is looking at the camera with a confident smirk. He has close-cropped black hair and some light facial hair. He is wearing a maroon t-shirt.]

----

I don’t know about you but I’m pretty hyped to hear these dorks in action! Now you might be wondering where the protagonist is. Don’t worry you’ll meet her soon! Watch out for a Meet the Creators post some time in the future 👀 In the meantime, follow us here on Tumblr, and at our Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at @hinaypod​ for more news and updates! -Reg

[moonsubinpr]

[Lee Soo Hyuk — 35 — he/him] Introducing MOON SUBIN. Word on the street is they are a PRESS SECRETARY FOR THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY affiliated with the DEMOCRATIC PARTY. Though they are RESERVED and INTIMIDATING, they can also be DEPENDABLE and HARDWORKING. In the chaos of New York City, they’re sure to fit right in.

Biography. Ask. Wanted Connections. 

I. WRITER’S INTRODUCTION

First of all, I want to introduce myself. You all can call me Jackie, and I am a twenty-one year old graduate student residing within the Eastern Standard Timezone (EST). I have been roleplaying for about 10 years now, however, I took a hiatus from writing on Tumblr due to migrating to other platforms that are more mobile friendly in terms of writing. Now that I have a greater availability, as well as not fond of the newfound style of roleplay on platforms such as Twitter or MeWe, I have returned in hopes to better develop characters and build better connections with other writers. Aside from writing, I enjoy spending quality time with my cat, going out to explore newfound areas, thrifting, reading, and watching random reality television shows. I look forward to getting to know everyone! Feel free to message me for plotting, headcanoning, or for a casual conversation. 

II. BASICS

NAME: MOON SUBIN

AGE: THIRTY-FIVE 

DATE OF BIRTH: 1986 MAY 31

GENDER: CISMALE

PRONOUNS: HE / HIM

SEXUALITY: PANSEXUAL 

HOMETOWN: IOWA CITY, IOWA

AFFILIATION: THE GOVERNMENT

JOB POSITION: DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S PRESS SECRETARY 

EDUCATION: BA IN JOURNALISM FROM NYU

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: SINGLE

CHILDREN: NONE

POSITIVE TRAITS: ELOQUENT, INDEPENDENT, INTELLIGENT, RESPONSIBLE, MATURE, REASONABLE

NEGATIVE TRAITS: RESERVED, BLUNT, INTIMIDATING, DEMANDING, SARCASTIC

FACECLAIM: LEE SOO HYUK 

III. POINTS ABOUT THE MUSE

Moon Subin was born into a rather average household in Heukseok-dong, Seoul, South Korea. His mother, a down-to-earth woman with a contagious smile, worked alongside her mother as a food vendor in one of the city’s largest market. The two were acutely known for their blood sausages as well as jangeo-gui (grilled eel). In fact, this is how the young woman met the young businessman. Running from a class with only a few cash in hand, he stopped at mother’s spot, asking for anything he could get with the amount of money available. She laughed at his lack of time management, and he only stated that he’ll make time to see her better next time. The following day, he returned and sat to chat with the woman. 

Subin was unplanned. The two were not yet wedded when discovering that the woman fell pregnant. However, never did the young couple refer to the baby as a mistake. Rather, they saw Subin’s life as a blessing to better plan for their fast approaching future. During the time in which the woman was pregnant, the man was offered an opportunity to continue his university studies abroad. Sent to Iowa City, Iowa, the young couple packed their belongings and settled within the United States. It’s in this city where Subin would be born, granting him American citizenship despite his parents yet to become naturalized citizens. 

Falling in love with the environment, the mother and father went through various means in order to further extend their stay within the country. From a student visa to a work visa, the father was granted more time to better prepare for the examination of becoming U.S. citizens. While his father began to work in a local company specializing in medical prosthetics, his mother worked at a local Chinese restaurant where she befriended Chinese immigrants who helped her with assimilating into the culture. 

Subin grew up in an environment where he witnessed the benefits of hard work. His parents worked many hours in order to provide for him as well as to their community. He found this to be admirable, and this encouraged the young boy to succeed in his academics so that he could provide for his parents in the future. 

He became interested in the field of communications due to constantly acting as the translator for his parents when making doctor appointments or trying to pitch the best deal at a cars dealership. Words were fascinating, and he especially thought this was the case after reading a number of novels written by authors such as H.G. Wells and Amy Tan. His interest in communications got him involved with the morning news at his middle school and high school. During his four years at high school, he also participated in Model UN and the Debate team. These involvements were the result of his great achievements in social studies courses, and his teachers encouraged him to get involved with these extracurricular activities. 

Due to awards achieved in high school, he was granted a scholarship to attend New York University in New York City. Although his parents did not want him to leave their home, they eventually came to terms that this would be good for his future successes. Thus, he went to attend NYU for a Bachelors in Journalism with a minor in Politics. Thanks to amazing professors and establishing connections through networking events, the young man was able to maintain a number of internships---such as volunteering for the current Governor’s former campaign in the creative team for marketing. He later volunteered alongside CNN professionals, and he gained an internship experience with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as Press Office Intern. By the time he graduated from university, he’s already met a number of influential, powerful people of the big city. 

 Upon graduation, he was able to get a job at the Manhattan District Attorney Office as Press Officer due to his wonderful performance during his internship with the office. He held this position for two years before being promoted as Deputy Press Secretary for the office. However, in less than 2 years, he was able to maintain the Press Secretary position due to the former Press Secretary’s leave to another office. In another year, he was granted the position of Deputy Director of Communications for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Subin held this position up until he was given the opportunity to work as the city’s District Attorney’s main Press Secretary. 

During his years working for the city and learning about the mishaps behind the scenes, Subin has been able to learn a lot about the dirty truth. He is aware that some of the crimes dealt with in the office are a result to the existing gangs within the city. Although his DA remains slightly oblivious to the people surrounding them, Subin maintains awareness due to the connections he’s established during interviews as well as conferences. They threaten Subin to keep quiet. They ask Subin to twist the truth. He does what keeps him safe, but he holds the knowledge close to his heart. The quiet man knows a lot----perhaps more than what the gangs wish for him to know, and this can be dangerous. One never knows what he can do with all of this knowledge. He could expose them to the public whenever he dares to do so. If he really wanted to, of course.

But, for now, he keeps quiet. He does his job and remains cordial with those he establishes some sorts of connection with. If someone he cares about, though, ever gets hurt, he’s not sure what he’ll do. No one knows.  

IV. WANTED CONNECTIONS

Any and all possible connections within the Government. I would love to further develop and establish connections within the affiliation in order to better understand Subin’s position in the government as well as with Law Enforcement, for he works within the District Attorney Office; therefore, he has connections with lawyers as well as officers. This can be good or bad, I am open to all possibilities. 

For those in Media, Subin is responsible for addressing those in Media in order to report information given by the DA. Those in media could have interviewed Subin, have gone to a number of his press hearings, as well as questioned his intentions or morales within this position. Anyone who does not trust him is very much wanted. A person who trusts him a lot is also wanted. 

To those in any gang, people who has paid him or threatened him to withhold information from the public is very much wanted. Give me some angst in regard to perhaps threatening his family. Perhaps people question how Subin can offerd such a luxurious home or car, and this could be due to payments accepted from those within these organizations. I am open to anything.

I am also interested in a secret relationship that should not be a relationship, however, the two continue to pursue one another in sexual and romantic rendezvous. Subin is not entirely the most relationship-orientated person, however, due to a lot of stress within his career, some fun would be favorable. 

[a-method-in-it]

Before Despair

I see a lot of online lefty people -- especially young people -- fall into a kind of common pattern: 

1. They learn about a systemic issue in our society in detail for the first time, and they are, being good people, appalled; they start talking about it, online and probably off. 

2. This brings them into contact with other lefty ideas -- the fact that sexism still exists leads them to discover systemic racism leads to the realization that capitalism is bad actually, and so forth. They become more vocal, more insistent something must be done now. 

3. As time passes and sweeping change doesn’t come and progress is tempered by setbacks, their tone grows more alarmed, and then slowly begins to turn defeatist. Soon they do not believe that it is possible to make change through activism and elections and instead there must be a revolution. And so they post angrily about the revolution and the need for it and the lack of it and they take our their fear and anger and frustration on other people online who believe something not quite the same as what they believe.

This is, for the record, bad. It’s a trap. And if you’ve fallen in you need to get out.

In some ways, the idea of “revolution” has become a kind of talisman for leftists locked into this pattern. The idea of all this going on indefinitely is unbearable, but the problems are so enormous that actually changing them seems impossible. 

But “revolution” is a concept that seems like it could potentially be a match for the horrible injustices in our world. And so they cling to revolution. Because what else can you do. 

And...look, if revolution is your coping mechanism, I don’t want to rip it away from you, but to most of us, the idea of revolution is rather plainly laughable. To briefly outline why:

1. The billionaires of the world are never going to let you take their money without force, so there will absolutely be a war. 

2. The other side will have most of the guns, training, money, resources, and people on their side (because I hate to break it to you, but most people are not communists or socialists).

3. Even if by the magical properties of wish fulfillment you win, it will only come after years of bloodshed that has collectively traumatized an entire nation and left the country wildly unstable. You will also be ruling over a civilian population that does not support your regime, because again: most people, not communists.

So revolution is off the table. It’s done, it’s not happening. The end. I’m sorry to have stolen the political nightlight you use to bash other users over the head, but it was necessary. Because while the idea of revolution was making you feel better, it was getting in the way of you making the world better.

So before you give into despair, I want you to pull up a new tab, right now, and type the name of your city or county into Google, followed by one of the following: “Democratic Socialists of America”; “conservation groups”; “Big Brothers Big Sisters”; “public library volunteers”; “court watchers”; “clinic escorts”; “homeless shelter volunteers”; “Black Lives Matter group”; “Redneck Revolt” and/or “Huey P. Newton Gun Club”; “mutual aid”; “immigration court support”; “community garden”;

-- and if nothing else comes up or you don’t like any of that, figure out who runs your local Democratic party and ask for the date and time of their next meeting. It is extremely easy to take over most town or county-level Democratic party organizations by simply being someone who regularly shows up to meetings. 

First and most importantly for anyone who cares about the rest of the world, this stuff will make an actual difference for real people in the real world. The world will be better after your volunteer shift than it was before it in a way that it never will be after an equivalent amount of time spent on Twitter posting funny memes and/or yelling at strangers. 

But second, this will also make you feel better. Because doing good makes you feel better. For those of us whose sanity is largely dependent on the knowledge that things are okay out in the world, regardless of our personal circumstance, the past few years have been rough. This will help, I promise. 

And third, doing stuff like this will make you more integrated into the community. Which means that if shit ever does hit the fan, you will be in a position to help a real revolution or a real resistance. 

No one is going to ask an anonymous tumblr user who posts about revolution to hide undocumented children in their basement, but they might ask the lady who does immigration court support every month like clockwork. No one is going to DM a faceless Twitter account asking them if they can help track national guard patrols in the city, but they might ask the kid with the BLM pin who does shifts at the community garden. 

You get the gist. 

Revolution is not coming, and if it does, it will not look like a utopian pipe dream. It will look like blood and war crimes and dead children and dead comrades and things not going according to plan because that’s how real life works. 

But change can happen. Because the world might be too big for you to fix -- and if you have not internalized that truth, please do so now -- but it is not too distant for you to change.

So do not withdraw to wrap yourself in delusion. Engage, and make things better in whatever ways are possible for you.  

[nasa]

5 of Your Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Questions Answered

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a satellite in low-Earth orbit that detects gamma rays from exotic objects like black holes, neutron stars and fast-moving jets of hot gas. For 11 years Fermi has seen some of the highest-energy bursts of light in the universe and is helping scientists understand where gamma rays come from.

Confused? Don’t be! We get a ton of questions about Fermi and figured we'd take a moment to answer a few of them here.

1. Who was this Fermi guy?

The Fermi telescope was named after Enrico Fermi in recognition of his work on how the tiny particles in space become accelerated by cosmic objects, which is crucial to understanding many of the objects that his namesake satellite studies.

Enrico Fermi was an Italian physicist and Nobel Prize winner (in 1938) who immigrated to the United States to be a professor of physics at Columbia University, later moving to the University of Chicago.

Original image courtesy Argonne National Laboratory

Over the course of his career, Fermi was involved in many scientific endeavors, including the Manhattan Project, quantum theory and nuclear and particle physics. He even engineered the first-ever atomic reactor in an abandoned squash court (squash is the older, English kind of racquetball) at the University of Chicago.

There are a number of other things named after Fermi, too: Fermilab, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, the Enrico Fermi Institute and more. (He’s kind of a big deal in the physics world.)

Fermi even had something to say about aliens! One day at lunch with his buddies, he wondered if extraterrestrial life existed outside our solar system, and if it did, why haven't we seen it yet? His short conversation with friends sparked decades of research into this idea and has become known as the Fermi Paradox — given the vastness of the universe, there is a high probability that alien civilizations exist out there, so they should have visited us by now.  

2. So, does the Fermi telescope look for extraterrestrial life?

No. Although both are named after Enrico Fermi, the Fermi telescope and the Fermi Paradox have nothing to do with one another.

Fermi does not look for aliens, extraterrestrial life or anything of the sort! If aliens were to come our way, Fermi would be no help in identifying them, and they might just slip right under Fermi’s nose. Unless, of course, those alien spacecraft were powered by processes that left behind traces of gamma rays.

Fermi detects gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, which are often produced by events so far away the light can take billions of years to reach Earth. The satellite sees pulsars, active galaxies powered by supermassive black holes and the remnants of exploding stars. These are not your everyday stars, but the heavyweights of the universe. 

3. Does the telescope shoot gamma rays?

No. Fermi DETECTS gamma rays using its two instruments, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM).

The LAT sees about one-fifth of the sky at a time and records gamma rays that are millions of times more energetic than visible light. The GBM detects lower-energy emissions, which has helped it identify more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts – energetic explosions in galaxies extremely far away.

The highest-energy gamma ray from a gamma-ray burst was detected by Fermi’s LAT, and traveled 3.8 billion light-years to reach us from the constellation Leo.

4. Will gamma rays turn me into a superhero?

Nope. In movies and comic books, the hero has a tragic backstory and a brush with death, only to rise out of some radioactive accident stronger and more powerful than before. In reality, that much radiation would be lethal.

In fact, as a form of radiation, gamma rays are dangerous for living cells. If you were hit with a huge amount of gamma radiation, it could be deadly — it certainly wouldn’t be the beginning of your superhero career.

5. That sounds bad…does that mean if a gamma-ray burst hit Earth, it would wipe out the planet and destroy us all?

Thankfully, our lovely planet has an amazing protector from gamma radiation: an atmosphere. That is why the Fermi telescope is in orbit; it’s easier to detect gamma rays in space!

Gamma-ray bursts are so far away that they pose no threat to Earth. Fermi sees gamma-ray bursts because the flash of gamma rays they release briefly outshines their entire home galaxies, and can sometimes outshine everything in the gamma-ray sky.

If a habitable planet were too close to one of these explosions, it is possible that the jet emerging from the explosion could wipe out all life on that planet. However, the probability is extremely low that a gamma-ray burst would happen close enough to Earth to cause harm. These events tend to occur in very distant galaxies, so we’re well out of reach.

We hope that this has helped to clear up a few misconceptions about the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. It’s a fantastic satellite, studying the craziest extragalactic events and looking for clues to unravel the mysteries of our universe!

Now that you know the basics, you probably want to learn more! Follow the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on Twitter (@NASAFermi) or Facebook (@nasafermi), and check out more awesome stuff on our Fermi webpage.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

[joshler]

regarding my last post

tw// topics relate to suicide/suicide prevention, racism, and bullying

before i get put on blast for “being white” or whatever the replies have accused me of: no, i’m actually a queer asian poc! my dad is a chinese immigrant from hong kong and my mom is cambodian who immigrated to america from vietnam during the vietnam war. i support blm 1000% bc i feel that as a fellow minority, we are on the same team. we’ve felt oppression, in different degrees, yes, but oppression nonetheless. i wanted to clear the air in regards to myself personally because the things aimed at me in the replies of my last post were insensitive and ignorant when you do not personally know me.

i would like to say i’m more of an update page at this point for TWENTY ONE PILOTS. i’m not here to get political, but i do want to say some things in regard to yesterday’s twitter incident with tyler joseph. first of all, YIKES. the joke was distasteful and the entire “thread” on everything he made yesterday had the worse timing in the history of ever. the platform “joke” was in regards to everybody pressuring for him to say something on current events such as blm, lebanon, etc. those things are very important and i have already done many things on my part to support blm and lebanon including donations, signing petitions, and posting on my main social media accounts (i’ve really ghosted tumblr) with ways others can help. i put links to resources, petitions, and places to donate among other helpful sites. the way tyler handled things yesterday was really idiotic on his part. with that dumb joke, he could have immediately linked blm and apologized right afterwards which is what should have been done. instead, he moved on into a tangent regarding mental health and suicide awareness. i understand what he was trying to say, but in the heat of the political movement RIGHT NOW, shifting the conversation to mental health while it should have been about blm was a terrible choice on his part. even if he connected how mental health and blm tied in together, it would have been great for what he was trying to say.

WHAT HE MEANT for all of the sjws jumping on this bc “a white man is being racist and using his privilege”: september is suicide prevention month. tyler’s intensions with the platform tweet was to make fun of everyone mass tweeting him for the past few months (you cannot make people do things). he was NOT mocking blm or any political movement. that platform joke was supposed to lead into talking about mental health. for anyone who doesn’t know, tyler is a very meticulous person. there’s no doubt he’s planned talking about this stuff for a long time. the fucking band’s moto is “stay alive” so of course mental health is a huge part of twenty one pilots culture, and tyler would want to talk about it. at the same time, that doesn’t mean i’m at all excusing him for not immediately speaking on behalf of blm in yesterday’s tweets. once he saw that what he was saying was not received as he thought it would be, tyler apologized for hurting anyone and sent out the links.

this is not the first time he has talked about blm either (as seen above). his band mate (josh) and wife (jenna) have spoken on behalf of blm as well. debby ryan (josh’s wife) has been the most vocal in regards to everything going on right now. for you strangers out there to jump on here and to call him this and that is doing nothing but spreading negativity. you are wasting your own time. instead of badgering people, how about taking your business elsewhere or at least trying to educate others. do not come onto my replies just to make trouble. as fans, you can’t just say “we don’t personally know them” while you know even less than we do since you just popped in when shit hit the fan for them and they turned “problematic.” tyler did what was right at the end of the day. i am not praising him at all, but he has at least apologized and learned his lesson.

in regards to them being rich and not donating: nobody knows what they’ve done behind the scenes. i personally donated to many blm funds and to the red cross in lebanon, and nobody knows that until now! just because you donate does not mean you are obligated to publicly blast that for everybody to know. your money is going to a cause that you support, and that should only really matter to you. celebrities are no exception to that idea.

fun fact: tyler has a niece named mercy on his wife’s side! she is black and tyler and his wife are extremely close to her and her family. to come out of no where just to call him racist and all that when you in fact don’t know a thing about him besides some surface tweets is uncalled for. in regards to being silent on the crisis in lebanon, tyler is part lebanese! without a doubt, he’s donated to some sort of lebanon aid fund. but again, we will never know.

for those of you upset about the platforms: dollskill isn’t the only site that sells those boots! dollskill is certainly the most popular brand the shoes are on, but if you look them up, the platforms pop up else where as well. to blatantly say “oh he supports dollskill so he’s racist/homophobic/supports the police/all the shit that company stands for” is just as ignorant as you think he is!  dollskill as a company is complete shit. i don’t support them at all. many people think they’re from dollskill mainly because of this one instagram page that’s all about finding the exact/similar clothing to what tyler/josh/jenna/debby have worn, but we cannot be 100% sure that they were purchased from dollskill. that shit company steals from other smaller artists/designers, remember? (that same instagram account reuploaded a link to a different store who is selling them, as found here)

if you still have beef with tyler and what he said, there’s really no point in bickering just to call complete strangers “stupid” or “clowns” or just really hurtful names! you are screaming into an abyss and hurting others at the same time. there is a fine line between straight up bullying and educating others on bettering their understanding with what is currently going on. my intensions behind the post was to show that he had become active again. we are a fandom, and i like to update my page when they post new pictures. that is simply what i did. i made THIS post to clear the air on what people were saying about ME. i deleted tumblr off my phone because what was being said was just belittling and i didn’t want to see that when this whole situation with what tyler did already made me upset. feel free to dm me if you would like to talk about anything. i would be happy to discuss any points that i’ve mentioned. i would much rather have a civil conversation than be picked on through replies and anonymous messages.

at the end of the day, not everyone can always have satisfied and that’s okay. if anything, this entire situation truly opened my eyes to that. hopefully you read through this whole thing before you put anything on blast again.

here’s this, too. they do care.

summary: sorry on behalf of tyler joseph. he needs to work on reading the room better.

[tonyglowheart]

.

I wish there were more fandom meta (meta and not salt vents, which is often what my posts get tinged with by the time I post here 8') rip) about the intersection of fandom competing needs and cultural/racial sensitivity or like intersectionality-fueled competing needs here on tumblr. Bc there's a LOT of discussion I'll see on twt, and some of it is borne of discourse sure, but then some good discourse comes out of it on how to treat interfandom issues more intersectionally, and how to be/to try to be more consideration of a source culture especially when you're not a part of either the source culture or the source target audience.

I do still think there's a good chunk of EN audience that is quite Western-centric/Western-gaze/Americentric in their views, and acts like & treats moral values or aesthetic judgments as universal. Yes, even some ppl who aren't espousing purity wank.

Sometimes it's as simple as the way they call names, or some person making a joke about a trope within the media like the spitting blood, or the names. But here's the thing: it does discomfort me to see this kind of casual behavior sometimes bc I do think, as far as cultural sensitivity goes, it's out of place bc they're not your jokes to make. Like in Mean Girls where it was only okay for Janis to make the too gay to function joke. Or how like I can make Asian parent jokes with my fellow diaspora, but if a white person tries to participate I get very uncomfortable. Or okay, I can and will ask other Asians where they're from or what flavor of Asian they are, often with that kind of joking self aware tone of how yes this is how the wypipo Other us, and it's fine, but if some other rando (usually white) off the street asks me where I'm *from*, I'm now born in the good ol USA and I play dumb until they drop it lmfao.

I just... wish there's more convos on intersectional issues and cultural sensitivity and cultural competence and how intl audiences can be polite guests in media-not-their-own here, bc... part of the reason I'm not as much on here now except sometimes when I have a salt-vent too long for twt, is that I feel stiffled and silenced here. I feel like I have to shut up to be considerate to white feelings, because they're prioritizing "traditional fandom etiquette" but to the exclusion of considering issues and competing needs intersectionally. I feel like sometimes I *can't* have certain conversations or feelings without it being offputting to people who are "just here to have fun bc it's fandom" so it becomes "you're policing people/ you're gatekeeping", instead of "hey maybe can we pause and consider an alternate perspective to competing needs, and like maybe some intersectionality." And I think that's part of what's been triggering for me here, the like marginalized identity feeling of "you better shut up or we'll shut you out" triggering that like helpless rage I feel when it comes to the fractures in trying to reconcile my diaspora/"immigrant" identity.

Some of this is like, my own brewing cognitive dissonance on tumblr side-fandom of this burgeoning cmedia fandom sector here, but some of these thoughts came out of the recent growing discussions surrounding fandom and race(racism) too, as well as posts I've seen that had me thinking abt things from different perspectives.

But anyway, I mean it's not all fandom-driven. Tumb itself has made changes that make it harder for me to navigate too and more work to navigate. So I'm not "blaming" tumblr fandom or anything. But just... I get this feeling of having to manage (white) feelings here that I don't tend to get on tumblr, and I feel like from what I've seen of tumblr fandom has been very homogeneous, but towards a "traditional Tumblr-based English-language fandom way," vs Twitter where I feel like I've been able to find a more diverse-feeling base.

And like this is by no means definitive or exhaustive, and I may in fact have missed segments of fandom where there ARE more danmei fans, and I do know several ppl who're tumblr ppl who ARE very publicly making efforts to get to learn the culture more and who are publicly demonstrating how they're trying to be respectful vs just being there to "have fun" and not apparently to really stretch themselves about it. Like I'm very aware this could just be a "me" thing and what part of the tumblr fandom I'm seeing & am generally in.

And I'm also aware that a more "productive" way of handling this would be to turn that frustration into action and work to educate ppl more and engage with ppl to encourage positive explorations into language and culture.

But like... the world is like actively depressing me and has been for months, and I run on like 3.5 energies on a good day and much of that goes to getting thru the work day, and the rest is usually for me to channel out so I can decompress as much as I can to try to get ready for the next day, and like.. I DO have a lot of anger and resentment in me from feeling marginalized and silenced thru my life, as an Asian American, as well as relentlessly pushed to assimilate even though I had to also reconcile that I will likely always be Othered because there'll always be some new random white person who meets me and the first thing they ask is if I speak English. And like on a good day, I maybe don't always have the energy to perform emotional labor to placate white feelings in addition to the emptional labor of educating them. Let alone now when the world has been having consecutive crises for literal years now at this point and all of this has had additional adverse effects on my mental health.

And like at least on twitter, even though the wank cycles are so short and the wank there feels so explosive, at least there ARE people having discussions on, if not necessarily intersectionality per se, then discussions on decolonizing as far as EN fandom towards Asians/Chinese ppl in cmedia fandoms go. Like at least there, I don't feel like I'm drowned in a sea of Anglocentric fandom priorities, and like a good segment of ppl push back against colonizing tendencies from Anglocentric fandom, & I can find my ppl and feel seen and heard without feeling like people are seeing me more as a nuisance intruding on THEIR fun, as if I'M the interloper/outrageous one here.

[destiny-smasher]

(Music by Samantha Pena, soudncloud user spena1989) Not gonna lie, I'm at a point with All Wounds where I'm like...oof, I wasn't able to envision everything I wanted to a few years back (by a long shot) but I'm kinda...wanting to be done with it. Even though I don't want to be done with it. 😅All Wounds was created from the get-go to be a visual novel - that's why the initial demo released so early into the project's life. My original intent was to go back and forth between fic and VN. But my original intent was also to end the story during the Portland road trip (Chapter 7). And while you could certainly make a case that the story is technically stronger up until that point, and becomes less potent and more dragged out for it's post-time-skip stuff, the latter stuff was also just...a lot more fun to write. And when I look back, if I had committed to the visual novel as intended, we'd not have gotten, like, ANY of that post-time-skip stuff, which includes Other Max being as fully fleshed out as she became. She'd have been stuck being a ghost in Max's head, pretty much. At this point, though, it's been so long, the fic I made INSTEAD of working on the visual novel is SO long, interest in the project peaked back while it was being written, working on this by myself is DAMN exhausting in terms of time spent, emotion and mentality drained, etc. Whenever I go back and listen to all of the amazing music made by people in the LiS it reinspires me to keep working on All Wounds but that's had diminishing returns as my life has changed drastically this past year. I love Max and Chloe. But, tbh, I just moved to a new country and got married, and I love my wife more than Max and Chloe? ^_^;; I’m not depressed and stuck in retail hell anymore, relying on staying up late working on a LiS fan project to channel that depression. I don't wanna completely shut the door on the visual novel and there's a chance I may still try to keep pushing to at least get to that road trip and maybe fudge it a bit. After all, a LOT of work has been done to the project that isn’t apparently or accessible in the public version; and I was able to add pretty well presented versions of Chapters 3 and 4 recently. So it’s entirely possible I could at least push it a little bit further if I end up inspired to do so. Either way, regardless, I still want to try some kind of epilogue, end-cap, etc, maybe even in VN form (Jenny and I had envisioned an epilogue where the characters play DnD). Max and Chloe mean the world to me, and exploring a version of events where both endings of the original game are expanded and tied together felt very cathartic. I'd rather that exist in SOME form (fic) than none at all; I think I'd still have done things this way a second time. But All Wounds inherently was a story about processing pain and grief and trauma and figuring out how to cope with it and heal and move on. And when I was at such low points, that made sense to write and steep myself in. But now? It just kinda doesn't. More than anything, though, is the fact that it's still a fan project - one that has had a lot of its interest evaporated for multiple reasons. The game’s ending is over four years old now; a prequel AND a sequel have both come out, further fragmenting the fandom; people have moved on. And it’s easy for outsiders to not realize how emotionally exhausting and sometimes painful All Wounds was, has been, and can still be for me to work on. Even things like pieces of music or art made by people who hurt me, who I hurt, that shit isn’t easy to work with. I could be spending all of this effort and energy on something less emotionally painful that isn't complete in ANY form AND is original. It feels bad to seriously consider dropping it when I'm sure there are still SOME people out there waiting for it, but I have other stories that I really need to work on. I can't keep myself locked in this cage forever when the work is such an unreasonable mountain to surpass. What I HAVE created is a fleshed out and substantial story and a chunk of it imagined in VN format which all kind of acts as a love letter to PriceField as well as an ultimately cathartic way to leave that original game to rest, I hope. Going forward I really think I'd like for Arcadian Rhythms to function as my one sole fanfic project I do inbetween original works, with one-shots or other bits (like the Butterfly Soup fic) just being other, far less intensive ways of working out those kinds of inspiration. It would probably do me better to also not talk about what I'm working on (aside from AR I suppose) in much depth or detail until I have something finished to really show for it. 😓 So if you want to see what I’ve been able to make of the visual novel so far, you can find that here.If you want to read the prose fic version of the story, which was finished quite some time ago (and which is where I want to update with an epilogue eventually), you can find that here. My newer fandom project, Arcadian Rhythms, which actually does feature Life is Strange characters, can be checked out here. You can follow our Patreon over here - we’ve been on hiatus as we deal with immigration but that should be all sorted soon. Regardless, any major updates to projects will be getting posted there once we’re back up and running. And you can follow me on Twitter over here; or just check back on my personal Tumblr here as I’m sure any meaningful thing I complete, fanfic or otherwise, will get posted here. So to clarify, current creative plans for the future on my own time: - original fiction projects (I’ve actually started work on an original VN for ex.) - Arcadian Rhythms for fun - some kind of epilogue for All Wounds - some kind of conclusion to Runners at the Corners (Butterfly Soup)

Interest in AW severely declined after the fic was done, no one else seems interested in working on it, either, it'd be SO MUCH work still. Sunken cost fallacy is a thing and tbh that’s part of why I even pushed myself to finish the update I did a few weeks ago. I am sorry to anyone who’s been waiting all this time for it - what I managed to produce is still a multi-hour visual novel, and I am still contemplating trying to at least get it to the end of the pre-time-skip. At the very least, there is still a complete story that can be read in fic form, the project just floated up and away from a reasonable grasp for one person, mainly because I just...wrote way more than I originally intended to. When I started work on this prokect, I also didn’t expect to fall in love, struggle to make ends meet, move across an ocean, and get married. And as important as All Wounds has been to me, I did at least finish telling the story I started, and the story it became, but I’ve learned all I can from it at this point and am so tired of trying to drag it out on my own. In the same way All Wounds sees Max and Chloe needing to accept their losses and let themselves move forward despite not everything going how they wanted, I guess I have to do the same with this project. Max and Chloe start a new future together, and it’s that time in my life where I probably should start doing the same. I need to start focusing on telling my own stories with my own characters more than I have been, as well as making more space for this new future with my new wife. And to All Wounds, the most difficult project I’ve worked on to date, as someone I once knew once sang, "I know, I know I made so many promises I know I left you such a mess; Gotta let go, gotta let go, and move on Been walking in a circle for too long"

And as another musician put it,

“Come and see the light of day out in the open It’s like I’m waking from a dream, oh Many days since I have seen the end unfolded Many times that I’ve looked back on all the times that we have had”

[sixth-light]

Chekhov’s Garden Shed

For the last four or five years, the RoL fandom has had a masterpost of Chekhov’s guns/unanswered questions from the series – the last version, with links to the original, can be found here. Past contributors include @deviantaccumulation, @the-high-meggas, @maple-clef, @uncommonsockeater​, and @flannelgiraffe, as well as others who I have doubtless forgotten. [If that’s you or someone you know, please speak up!]

Ben Aaronovitch has indicated that he views the various open questions of the series as less of a set of ‘guns on the mantelpiece’ (which must be taken down and fired before the series is finished) and more a ‘garden shed’ of things he thinks might be useful one day but could also end up rusting in the back after getting buried under other things. The fun is finding out which is which. (Thanks to @ilikesallydonovan for originally reporting this and chasing down the link!)

So, without further ado, here is the renamed Chekhov’s Garden Shed Of Stuff That Might Come Back Later. It’s separated into Answered Questions, Partially-Answered Questions, and Things Still Buried At The Back Of The Shed. I enthusiastically welcome comments, corrections, and missing items. Contains spoilers for all published RoL-related material including the novellas, comics, online snippets, and interviews with the author. A mirror of this version can be found at Dreamwidth – I will try and keep it updated as I update this one.

ANSWERED QUESTIONS:

·        What the fox said to Abigail in WuG It was warning her about Chorley’s involvement with/interest in Skygarden. 

·        Peter’s father needs a few thousand for dental work; his mum is very keen to get the money so that he might re-launch his career. They’ve already done a gig (beaucoup money) for Ty. Will this be a vulnerability for Peter at some point? Apparently not; his dad’s band do regular gigs for the demi-monde, his dad has his new teeth, and Ty doesn’t seem to have been involved at all. Peter just has to live with his parents being better-informed about his work and new world than he might like! 

·        Will we see Awa Shambir again? Her of the suspiciously expensive hijab to be cleaning the offices (of a front organisation for an evil wizard) in… Goodbye Awa Shambir the Somali cleaning lady, hello Lady Caroline Elizabeth Louise Linden-Limmer, surreptitiously aerial scion of nobility. 

·        What was Molly doing in the tech cave? Is she on facebook/twitter/tumblr/a cooking forum? Looking up recipes? Has she discovered online shopping? Molly is active on Twitter gossiping and swapping recipes; it’s not a secret from either Peter or Nightingale, they just pretend not to know. 

·        Is that watch Nightingale gave Peter going to have any future relevance? Peter and Caroline had a watch-off in The Hanging Tree which Peter won, and the practitioner habit of wearing mechanical (and hideously expensive) watches enabled Peter to identify Chorley as the Faceless Man. 

·        Who is Mr. Nolfi’s mother? Where did she learn magic? and Have any other Newtonian wizards continued to practice in secret and/or trained apprentices in other parts of the country, without telling Nightingale? (Broader: was Nightingale mostly wrong about being the last wizard in Britain or really, totally, 100% wrong?) and What about the “female affiliates” of the Little Crocodiles? and How many wizards did Wheatcroft actually train and where are they now? Most of an answer to all of these: there’s a long-standing tradition of women practicing and teaching each other Newtonian magic dating back to before the founding of the official Folly. Mr Nolfi’s mother and the ‘female affiliates’ of the Little Crocodiles could well have come from this tradition. And Nightingale was totally utterly wrong about being the last wizard in Britain. Practitioners exist trained by ‘hedge’ wizards and witches, trained by Little Crocodiles, immigrated and bringing other traditions with them…that cat is not only out of the bag, it was never even in it. C.f. Patrick Gale and co. in Detective Stories and Lies Sleeping. However, many Little Crocodiles never really learned magic at all, or managed to brush it off after university as unimportant – unfortunately for them, Martin Chorley targeted them as tools and bait.

PARTIALLY-ANSWERED QUESTIONS:

·        What happened at Ettersberg that caused magic to disappear? Answered in various interviews: magic didn’t disappear at Ettersberg as an objective thing, but a lot of practitioners were wiped out by the war and the Nazis, as well as a lot of genii locorum and other fae and magical people. Nightingale over-indexed on this because he was depressed and traumatised, and the magic ‘coming back’ is a combination of a new generation of gods, fae, and practitioners growing up, and Nightingale noticing the ones who were there all along.

·        Where are the notes Peter was promised? Peter has a deal with Nightingale about getting questions answered in return for magical progress; we haven’t seen him look at any old wizard’s notes specifically but he doesn’t seem to be waiting on them. 

·        What was Nightingale doing in the 70s that he managed to miss the original FM’s adventure in Soho? Working with the Met, apparently - he was called in when Woodville-Gentle got his at Lady Helena’s hands, but too late to determine whether it was magic. Seems like he just wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on around him!

·        What was Peter doing after he left school and while he was a PCSO? Why did he have problems during his A levels? Why did he join the police? Peter flatted and worked retail for a while after he left school (possibly while he was at school, too). We still don’t know what happened with his A-levels or what led him to join the police. 

·        Outwith the Met, does the Folly answer to the Home Office (or higher)? There are hints at that (cf. Walid in RoL), but nothing more and Who is Nightingale’s boss/who does Postmartin send his files to?  No direct answer to who they answer to beyond what we already knew, but we learn in THT that they have their own source of funding and aren’t an official part of the Met. Nightingale does not appear to have any direct supervisor beyond the Commissioner (or presumably they would have been informed/called when he was kidnapped in Night Witch). 

·        How do “Hedge Witches” practise magic; how does it differ from formal Newtonian magic and will we get to meet any? Are “Hedge Wizards” simply rusticated Newtonian wizards, or do they also have informally-developed skillz? Per the one we meet in Black Mould: hedge witches and wizards have informally-developed skills rather than just being rusticated Folly wizards, but how close their magic is to the style Peter is learning, it’s hard to say (because it was a comic.) Others are probably from the female tradition, ex-Newtonian wizards, etc – it’s a mixed group.

·        How old is Postmartin, exactly (Peter thinks he looks older and frailer than his Dad, who’s in his 70s, but that’s just his guess)? How did he get that job, and is he ‘just’ a civilian affiliate, like Walid, or something else? Who does he answer to, and what happens if/when he needs replacing? What’s his twitter handle?! Postmartin served during the Korean War, so must have been born between 1928 and 1936 (per @sparrow-wings) - he’s currently in his 80s, as it’s late 2015 in current book time. His Twitter handle might be “dyingforafag” (who Molly is chatting to in Body Work). 

·        What sort of experiments were the Nazis doing with vampires? (Do we want to know? Proooooooooooobably not.) and Can the Rivers be killed, if they’re badly injured enough far enough away from their river? What happens then? We found out in Lies Sleeping you can use ‘tinned vampires’ to kill and hurt genii locorum and discomfit practitioners, so that’s…you know…fine. Rivers can definitely be killed in general, c.f. the former Lugg whom the Methodists got to. It’s only functional immortality.

·        What’s the deal with Mr. Punch when Peter’s leaving London at the beginning of Foxglove Summer? Is he coming back? Is it only Peter who senses him? If so, why? and How are Lesley and Punch connected? And What powers does Lesley have now aside from face-changing, if any? Martin Chorley was trying to murder Punch, who was a god of chaos and vengeance, in order to 1) gain magical power 2) ????? 3) glorious white supremacy. Lesley agreed to help Chorley to get back at Punch, but may still have some connection to him, having survived possession by him; she certainly has magical powers of her own now, being able to change her face at will. They wanted Punch powered up so he’d be a better source of magic when taken down. Punch was still pinned to London Bridge, but was freed by Peter. He can be talked down by his daughter Walbrook, but for better or worse, he’s out and a player in London’s magical ecosystem. Let’s hope Peter’s right and he plays an important role in it.  

·        How and why did Isis become immortal, since just marrying a River doesn’t appear to do the trick? Kelly tells Tobi Winter in The October Man that sometimes the partners/spouses/better halves of Rivers do just pick up immortality, although even she as an elder River doesn’t know exactly how or why that happens. Probably it’s what happened to Isis. Why it hasn’t happened to George McAlister is an open question.

·        What does it mean that Michael Cheung is ‘the new guy in Chinatown’? and Is there something going on with Guleed (PLEASE NO) or is she just picking up things about the demi-monde via her friendship with Bev (…and others)? Michael Cheung is the latest of a long line of people who have responsibility for any magical shenanigans in London’s Chinatown, so 1) the Folly/Nightingale don’t have to worry about it and 2) Chinatown doesn’t have to be offended by their attempts to worry about it. He’s dating Guleed and teaching her cool martial arts magic. Whether she has other demi-monde contacts is not yet clear.

·        Who is Chorley’s mole within the Met?  Probably not Seawoll, Stephanopoulos, Richard Folsom, Guleed, or Carey, due to the security practices put in place during Operation Jennifer. But if not any of them….then who?

·        How/why the fox knows about [Skygarden and Chorley], (and why it would tell Abigail) According to Abigail, the talking foxes view themselves as secret agents, and someone like Chorley would naturally draw their attention. Why they do so and who they think they should be reporting to is still unclear (but may be elucidated in the Abigail novella).

STILL BURIED IN THE SHED SOMEWHERE:

·        What about the paintings of Molly and a blue-eyed elderly man who looks like Nightingale that Peter found in the coach house?

·        Are there really werewolves or just creepy magic trackers called werewolves? (I’m waiting for them to turn up.)

·        Why does Fleet have a captain of dogs? What do her dogs do? (Is this related to the werewolves? Were-dogs?)

·        What’s the actual connection between Wheatcroft, FM1 (Woodville-Gentle, if that’s him) and FM2? Did he train them both, or did W-G train FM2? NB: Unlikely to be directly answered now Chorley is dead.

·        What’s up with Abigail’s apparently useless protection charm?

·        Is there a special reason that Nightingale is called The Nightingale? (+ is he strong/good at magic because of hard work or something else.)

·        People I’d like to know more about: Nightingale’s uncle, David Mellenby, Nightingale’s family.

·        How much do senior officers in the Met really know about the Folly/Nightingale/magic? Is it well-known that Nightingale has been running the Folly since the 1940s?

·        How did Nightingale learn the language Father Thames speaks?

·        How much does Nightingale and/or Walid know/suspect about the deaging thing? How much of this aren’t he/they telling Peter?

·        How did Walid and Nightingale meet?

·        Are there aliens?

·        Was the 1911 decrease of odd magical activity in Herefordshire linked to Molly?

·        Why does Seawoll dislike Nightingale so viscerally?

·        Did Peter really drop architecture because of his draughtsmanship or was it something else? Is it related to why his chemistry teacher wrote that letter to the newspaper?

·        How active is the ex-wizard grapevine, really? Is the FM connected to it at all?

·        What was the Faceless Man actually planning on doing with his Crossrail lair? Why build it so close to the Folly?

·        What happens if one river tries to userp, unseat or in any way properly fight another? Are the results ‘mythic’?

·        Was Emma Wall really a waste of space? As a character she is a bit of a smoking gun - red herring, or something else? She was living next door to our two, and *in* one of the flats where… stuff was being put. Any happily waltzed out on d-day. Peter never really got a chance to speak to her - but Lesley did, and was the one to dismiss her from suspicion. Which is suspicious (to me)!

·        Although we found out after that he’s been around for much longer, Nightingale said that Father Thames was definitely the same person in 1914. So presumably they met then… In what circumstances?

·        Are fae genetically different to other humans? Are they human? What about changelings (like Zoe in FS) - and will she get in contact with Dr Walid? NB: Dr Vaughan is getting some genomes sequenced, so answers to this question may be forthcoming....

·        What did Lesley say to her family about what happened to her face? Do they know about magic?

·        Just how much of an age gap is there between Peter’s parents?

·        Why did the Virtuous Men blame the British for Ettersberg? What was the agreement between them that Nightingale was referring to?

·        Postmartin made a show of wanting to get Peter alone to have a ”big” talk with him. Yet, the discussion we, the readers have witnessed was relatively small. Nightingale only arrived to The Eagle and the Child an hour later. What was said between Postmartin and Peter in the meantime?

·        Peter’s narration at certain points (like Chapter 14 in Moon Over Soho) waivers between past and present tense, and he is occasionally referring to events in (presumably) later books. Just what point in the future is Peter actually narrating these books?

·        When Nightingale got an infection in MoS, how did Walid know? Did Molly phone him and do her Nightingale’s being an idiot silence, or was he just visiting anyway?

·        What does Molly do on her days off?

·        When Nightingale doesn’t go to Peter’s parents’ for Christmas, did his not wanting to leave Molly excuse have any truth to it, or did he just say that so Peter didn’t realise that Nightingale planned to work (and so Peter didn’t feel he should be missing his own Christmas to help)/ he had a reasonable excuse to not go to Peter’s family’s Christmas celebrations?

·        (tongue-in-cheek) What would have happened if Peter and Lesley had given Molly a Heston Blumenthal cookbook?

·        What’s the deal with Lady Helena (and Caroline) - are they connected to Chorley and/or Lesley’s face being healed?

·        What does Caroline want to escape from? What was she doing posing as a cleaning lady at the County Gard offices? 

·        What do the Virginian Gentlemen want, and how connected are they with the American government?

·        What’s their specific definition of a ‘shade’? 

·        When and how did MI5 learn about magic, and do they have any practitioners of their own?

·        Was Christina Chorley a practitioner, possessed, or something else? 

·        Who sold and bought Molly, Foxglove, 'Charlotte' (the Pale Nanny), and 'Alice' (the Pale Lady)? Where were Foxglove, Charlotte, and Alice before they were put in the oubliette and rescued by Woodville-Gentle and then Chorley? Where is the fifth girl who was with them before they were split up?

·        Is it important that Walbrook is also Isis of London? Are there any other Isis-figures in the UK and Europe (aside from Isis who is married to Oxley, and is probably an Isis of Oxford?)

·        Are there any other non-Mama-Thames tidal Rivers? What exactly is Lea’s relationship with Mama Thames, as they see it?

·        What WAS Chorley's master plan, aside from ‘become Merlin, Profit!’?

·        How is the Difference Engine linked to magic, and why? NB: May be answered in ‘False Value’, which is about computing to some degree

·        Who or what is killing talking foxes (as Peter discovers in The Furthest Station)? Why?