#what is data annotation

[hitechdigital]

5 Effective Data Annotation Strategies to accelerate you AI Projects

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[thethingything]

I kind of wish there was some kind of annotation counter/leaderboard on iNat the way there is for observations and identifications. I've been annotating moths and I'd love to know how many I've done besides just estimating based on how many pages I've gone through.

this is the life stage chart for one species when I started vs now

[dhirajmarketresearch]

[imaroyalmess]

Megop/Dpax Love Square AU

part 1? this has been lurking as an outline but i'm just going to post it as is to get it out of my brain 😭

Rated: M (sexual themes/talk)

Wc: 1.6k

D-16 is a big Prime fan boy who works all day and reads poetry in the archives during his free time

In this AU, the OG 13 are alive and well. Recently, they took on another Prime but after Sentinel tried to kill them a while ago, they are very secretive about who this mech is. Think: overprotective older sibling vibes.

Dee’s favorite is still Megatronus. His coworkers kind of mock him for it so he tries to keep it on the down low

So it was a particularly shitty day at work or something but D-16 is already in a horrible mood when he arrives at the archives. but when he gets to a datapad and that mech hasn't wiped the annotations? He snaps.

Not expecting ANYTHING to come of it, he leaves a "stop vandalizing the archives" in the notes below it and shoves it back on the shelf

Jazz comms him and offers to help him cool off, he agrees to go out to a bar(? Or something like it) with Jazz

He gets there. and GREAT that fucker Orion Pax is there. (He’s always there since they run in the same friend circle)

but d-16 is like “Whatever i've had a bad day, I'm trying to unwind, I'll just ignore him”

Unfortunately for him, Orion Pax has a massive crush on him that literally everyone knows about. D-16 kind of knows too, except he doesn’t get it. As in, Orion has the Big Crush and Dee is like "I think he might want me.” He figures that one day, they’ll sleep together, it’ll be mediocre, then Orion will find someone else to flirt with and they can continue being awkward acquaintances. OP is planning the wedding in his free time

Orion keeps trying to hit on Dee and Dee shrugs him off. He doesn’t mind the flirting, he just is not in any kind of mood for it.

Jazz: Dee, I did Not want to be the one to tell you this but please you have to do something about Orion. He likes you

Dee: [brow raised] I know 

Jazz: Oh! ...oh, you're just mean

Dee: It's not that serious.

Jazz: Ah, never mind…so you're stupid—

Flash forward a few days later: Dee realizes he didn't even read the datapad he meant to. So now he has to go back to the archives and get it. And also wipe the annotations he left.

What he doesn’t expect though, is for there to be a response in the datapad. “woops! i realized i hadn’t wiped my notes from the data pad. if you’re seeing this, it should be good to check out now (except this thread ha ha), sorry! A little hypocritical though, don’t you think? Since you also left something in the datapad?”

D-16 doesn’t plan to respond to that. He really doesn’t. But then when he goes to wipe the data, he sees that the original note cross referenced another collection d-16 had been meaning to read and he finds himself searching for the data pad

He finds it, opens it up, sure enough, this one is also still has some annotations in it

D-16 goes back to the OG and responds “you missed some in The Primacy and Caste Systems. Do you treat all your datapads like this?”

Then reads this other data pad. Might as well, since he’s been meaning to anyway

He’s loathe to admit it, but he finds this other mech’s commentary….fascinating

It ranges from “come back to this later” to intense grappling with philosophy to “can you PLEASE shut up already”

Dee finds himself responding to one about how dense the prose is. He can’t help it. And that’s how this Thing starts between these two strangers.

a part of him still Doesn’t Like It because it feels…Forbidden. against some rules (it’s not really but the courtesy!!!) and any time they’re done with one book, he wipes it but not before saving the most interesting bits of their conversations

It's nice. It's fun. D-16 feels like he's sharing a very important part of himself that doesn't quite get the limelight

And his conversation partner....well, he doesn't always get it but they read what D-16 has to say. They follow him from data pad to data pad and value his opinion that isn't tied to what he’s capable of at work.

It’s something special to him. Most of the people he knows are because of his job and to have someone so far removed from that that they don’t even know his designation? He likes it

So he doesn’t tell anyone. Not even Jazz

One day, Dee runs into Orion on his way to the archives.

Dee: what are you doing here?

Orion: ...i work here?

Dee: what? i've never once seen you here, pax.

Orion: aha. it's a, uh. part time gig?

Dee: o...kay

Orion: so are you heading in or?

Dee: yeah, i just had a collection i wanted to grab

Orion: are you busy after?

Dee: Yes.

Orion: Oh. With what?

Dee: reading. that's what i'm here for, pax

Orion: right. but would you want to refuel together or something?

Dee: are you asking me out, pax?

Orion: to refuel, yes.

Dee: ...okay.

So these fuckin sillies go out to dinner

D-16 is like....this is Weird. He's used to interacting with Orion in a group setting. Small group, yes, but Dee is usually the one to kinda slide into the background and let Jazz and Orion and others take the forefront.

It's awkward. at first especially. Orion, who usually cannot shut up, is sitting there. Servos clasped hard and optics right on D-16. It's weird. The staring is unnerving and D-16 is not the one to ask to carry a conversation.

Orion: so, you like reading?

Dee: yes.

Orion: what do you read?

Dee: poetry, mostly. i don't mind philosophy or fiction either.

Orion: oh! i've been reading a bit of poetry lately. i tend to stick to history, politics, and philosophy though.

Dee: really?

Orion: yes? is that surprising?

Dee: very.

Orion: why?

Dee: because you're...you come up with such stupid plans.

Orion: i don't think any of my plans are really stupid. i rely on everything having the best outcome, more than anything.

Dee: which is a stupid thing to do, pax. most things don't work out like that.

Orion: yeah but can't hurt hoping right?

Dee: i can name at least three instances where it did hurt actually

Orion: ....this isn't really going well is it?

Dee: [standing up] no not really but how about we stop talking? 

Orion: yeahhhh okay i get it.

Dee: not sure you do. are you coming back to my habsuite with me?

Orion: but you said...?

Dee: we will not be talking in my habsuite, no.

Orion: oh! oh, yeah, then. lead the way

Orion has never stood up so quickly in his whole existence

The walk doesn’t take long thankfully.

D-16 shuts the door to his habsuite and Orion's little switch Flips. Like he realizes he has to lock the fuck in or this won't happen ever again.

So Orion crowds d-16 against the door, one servo on his waist and the other at his throat cables. Dee is startled by the change up but not quite bothered by it. he'd assumed that he would have to take charge of a nervous bumbling Orion so this was a pleasant surprise of sorts. "How do you want me?" Orion whispers, leaning in so his dermas brush a seam on D-16's shoulder. "I could take you right here if you want it quick. With my intake or with my digits, whichever you prefer." He punctuates this point by flicking his glossa out, dipping into the seam while D-16 jerks at the sensation. "Or we could take our time and you can have them both. Then my valve. Tell me what you want from me, I'll let you have it."

And yeah, d-16 wasn't quite as prepared for Orion Pax as he thought. His core heats at a rapid pace as all sorts of situations race through his processor. The possibilities and Orion, willing to fulfill them...and since this would be the only time, D-16 figured he could go for it.

He reaches up with one servo and grabs Orion by the back of the helm, dragging him up so their optics lock. "All of it," D-16 says with no small amount of greed. Orion tilts his helm as he observes where his thumb presses into D-16's neck. Both of their cooling fans kick on and Orion grins. He says, "You'll be covered in my colors by the time I'm done with you." Then D-16 pushes him to his knees and Orion takes the hint and gets to work.

Interfacing with Orion was a mistake. Because Dee was wrong and it was good and he knows they are definitely going to do this again. 

So D-16 resigns himself to his fate as fuck buddy of Orion Pax. (Dee still isn’t aware that Orion’s feelings are more than just “blowing off charge”—and Orion doesn’t correct him)

At the same time Dee and Orion start sleeping together, things start ramping up with his little archive buddy. Having multiple conversations within a single book

Some of which have NOTHING to do with the book itself. Sometimes even visiting the archive two or three times in a day to see if the other had replied.

Things are going great! Even if he’s developing a little crush on this mech that lives in book annotations. Between that and his thing with Orion, he has two outlets to vent any frustrations from his day (via some great overloads) or any emotions he might not normally get to express (via baring his spark into the comments on a public data pad).

It’s. Nice. Great, even.

What he doesn’t know is that both of those outlets are Optimus Prime.

Similarly, OP doesn’t know that his crush/acquaintance with benefits and his new archive friend, are one and the same.

OKAY i have more but i'm going to leave it here for now lol we'll see when i post a part two!

feel free to ask me more about it in the mean time tho!

[bloodchapell]

honey, come on — senku i. 2: bluebird, rocking chair

brief summary: adjustments in the ishigami household

what to expect: post-canon, domestic bliss, pregnancy, sexual innuendos

your sword's note: this thing plagued my mind so much i am turning it into a series, and guess what this was also inspired by lana's new song, all past and future parts of this series available on my mistresslist

"I had a dream." 

Senku was used to hearing that phrase in the mornings. It had been more than 10 years of listening to it, in the village, in the Perseus, while escaping Stanley, while building the rocket, you would always tell him your dreams during the morning. 

"I was sitting in this beautiful field of flowers, there were so many of them, and it was so sunny, out of nowhere, a bluebird landed in front of me and I fed it some seeds." You narrated, still in bed. 

"Well, that is a very nice dream, compared to others like the hijacking of a plane of mannequins and, of course, the indomitable chainsaw train." Senku said mentioning some of your nightmares. You laughed. 

He let you lay down for a little while longer, and got up to cook breakfast, when you got up to the living room, the food was already on the table. 

"Good morning baby." Senku said while putting a hand on top of your belly as you sat down. "Are you still sleeping? Are you awake and ready to get going?"

You let him ramble as you picked up the fork and ate the breakfast, taking a sip of the juice while thinking of your dream. It was finally the weekend, and Senku had made time to get the baby's nursery ready, so you were going to buy the furniture and some paint so you could put some decorations on the room, plus even more shopping of baby clothing of ambiguous category since not only you both didn't believe in stupid things like pink is for girls and blue for boys, but the baby had refused to reveal its gender in the ultrasounds up to now. 

"Im going to shower, care to come along for my weekly circumference measuring, you weirdo?" You say after a while of resting on the couch after eating. As bizarre as Senku was, he kept a notebook with annotations on your state after you told him you were pregnant, and he would regularly check on you and update the data; oddly enough he had apologized for it several times but you found it endearing, after all it was his own way of showing how much he cared. He followed you to the room and into the bathroom, taking a measuring tape and his notebook. You lifted the top of your pajamas only slightly and he passed the tape around your waist, checking the number and noting it down. 

"Yes, two inches more than the last time, this is exhilarating." He leaned on the sink and wrote down some things until he realized you were getting naked and he closed the notebook and started walking to the door. 

"Spooked at a naked woman, scientist?"

"No, I am actually trying this new thing called self control, where I don't tempt myself by seeing my wife naked."

"Your wife who is pregnant." You remarked. 

"The hell? Is that supposed to mean anything? Yes, my wife who is pregnant and naked and hot, double trouble, genius." He said closing the door, not without taking a peek at your body. 

You were left laughing for a while, and then you got into the shower. As you cleaned yourself, you sang whatever songs came to your mind. 

You wore a white dress with a cardigan. 

"Senku! Look!" You said closing the cardigan, first tucking one side under the opposite arm and then repeating with the other side and crossing your arms over it. "I already became a mom!"

"What does that mean?" He asked confused, never having seen the mom cardigan wrap. You had to explain to him that for some reason all moms would wear cardigans and close them like that. "Well go figure since I didn't have a mom." 

"I'll be your mom." You raised your eyebrows, with a grin on your lips.

"That's how we got here." He pointed at your belly without a care in the world. "Put your shoes on and let's go, I have the list of furniture ready in the car." 

"Pffft." You laughed at what he had referenced and walked behind him to the entrance door, grabbing your shoes. 

"Also, Suika wanted to join in for this, so we will pick her up from Kohaku's." Senku said as he got in the driver's seat of the car. You sat in the back. The drive to Kohaku's place was short, and Suika was already waiting for you. 

"Hi." The girl greeted shyly as she got in the car. 

"Hello my love." You hugged her immediately. "How's my smart girl doing?" 

"Very good." She smiled brightly. "And you? How is the baby?" 

"We are both doing good." You caressed her hair. 

You talked with her on the way, she would narrate the same things Senku talked about the time machine but also talked about things like her own hobbies and past times. Senku watched you two through the rear view mirror, with a small smile. 

The furniture store was a place for new beginnings, that is what you thought at least as a kid and teen whenever you would go to one. It was odd having stores again, after spending more than a decade building your own furniture, and virtually everything else from scratch too, but at that store you and Senku had bought the house furniture and appliances once you started living together on your own. 

"Heavens." The store manager yelled once she saw you three walking in, calling the employees over. "Senku is here..."

"Senku as in the Senku Ishigami!?" One of the new hires asked. 

"Yes, the Senku Ishigami and his wife." The manager nodded. "Let me handle this, if I call you over to help be normal."

They greeted you, and you greeted back, walking idly over the displays, talking with Suika while Senku held your hand; the three of you noticed the gazes, it had become normal to feel stared at wherever you went since you were a prominent figure of the kingdom of science and even more so when you walked around beside the star of the show himself.

"Let's review the list, first of all is the basinet, a changing table, some dressers, a rocking chair." Senku read from the paper.

"What's a rocking chair?" Suika asked and Senku didn't even lift his gaze from the list, he simply pointed at you, sitting already in one of the display chairs and rocking back and forth. "Fun!"

You went from section to section, and while you were fine with whatever seemed pretty and stable, Senku took his time to read the descriptions and discard whichever ones were not literally perfect. 

"Are you sure you don't like this basinet? It is ten billion percent efficient, whoever designed this was aiming for a genius, his genius wife and their genius child, I am satisfied." Senku slapped the box.

"Can we decorate it?" You asked looking at the picture, not entirely convinced.

"I don't see why not." 

After a few hours, you bought the furniture and then moved on to the mall close by, where you bought some baby clothes and plushies. Lunchtime rolled around, so Senku decided to stop by a restaurant. He sat beside you and Suika sat in front, playing with some toy you had bought her, asking questions about the toys you would play with as a child. 

"W-Welcome Mr. and Mrs. Ishigami..." The waiter greeted nervously, passing along the menus. 

You ordered and ate, always with the gazes. 

Once you got home, the furniture was already delivered.

"I am so exhausted." You yawned. 

"You can rest, luckily we have here our star employee, SSR tier card, Suika, who will surely come in handy for the ensembling of all this furniture." Senku grinned with malice, and so, the first box, the rocking chair, at your command. You stood along, eating a peach, while Senku and Suika read the instructions. "Pass me the star screwdriver... hold the flashlight upright Suika I can't see anything."

"Why do we need the flashlight?" Suika asked overwhelmed, passing Senku the wrong screwdriver.

"Amazing, looks like you also became a dad already." You laughed at Senku and he huffed.

The rocking chair was done after a good while, and now you could watch the process sitting on the comfort of the cushions. By that time the peach was long over, and the light bathed the room as the sun started to set —why did Senku even need the flashlight?—, you observed with love as they built now the changing table, it was like seeing them tinker with clay and glass so long ago; you closed your eyes remembering the days of the stone world, and you fell asleep. 

You dreamt again of the bluebird. It was a peaceful dream, and you were eventually brought back to reality by Senku's voice. 

"It's all done, check it out." He announced in a low voice.

"Geez how did I fall asleep like that...? I am getting old." You sighed rubbing your eyes. 

"Pregnancy makes your hormones go crazy, so it is not unusual that you feel tired." Senku noted. 

"Did you sleep okay?" Suika asked with a smile. "I covered you with a blanket so you and the baby wouldn't get cold." 

"Aww, thank you baby." You caressed her blonde hair. 

The room was done now, the basinet with the plushies inside, the drawers already full of the clothes you had bought along the way and before, the window already with curtains, it all came together beautifully even when some things were still missing, making you inevitably emotional. 

"It's perfect." You stood up, visibly touched, and caressed Senku's cheek. 

"I left the wall here open, so you can paint something on it." Senku said holding your waist with care, his other hand pointing at the wall. "Maybe even that bluebird, or if you're feeling bold, the chainsaw train."

"No! Not the chainsaw train!" Suika clung to you covering her eyes. 

"No chainsaw train." You scolded Senku but at seeing his playful smile you placed both your hands at the sides of his face, making a little space to hide away the kiss you gave him.

[milquetoast27]

Sherlock Holmes Canon Content Analysis

My Holmie @cinny13 and I ran a content analysis on the Sherlock Holmes Canon, running through each "suspicious" description Watson gives of Holmes's hands. So this means "Holmes clapped his hands" does not apply, however "long thin hands", absolutely does. After gathering all the relevant passages (thanks to the author's personal annotated edition of the Canon), we have quantified the qualitative data.

That Watson may have an obsession with Holmes's hands is obvious. In future when I run over the Canon again I think it would be relevant to compare all of the hand descriptions, with all the rest concerning Holmes's body (e.g. "sinewy neck" or "gaunt limbs").

Anyway, I advocate for using science on the Sherlock Holmes Canon. Never stop being insane because this is what the world truly needs at the end of the day.

[dancingdonatello]

Okay so like you know that myth that reptiles can't live?well what if the mc reads that somewhere and actually believes it and gets so upset that their turtle s/o don't have the ability to love me.

It can be angst, fluff, whatever you prefer :]

rottmnt x gn reader

You were pretty excited when your biology class had a section on animals and their ecosystems. You were required to do a research paper and a presentation on a specific type of animal.

Of course, you picked reptiles, with a small section dedicated specially to turtles.

But what you had found out during your research stunned you.

Reptiles lack the capacity to love?

Raphael immediately picks up that you’re acting strange around him. He’s hurt, because he’s convinced that you’re going to break up with him.

Why else would you be avoiding him like this? Giving him such strange looks?

He follows you around like a lost puppy, lingering but still trying not to overwhelm you. When you finally admit what you had learned, he’s shocked. You think he doesn’t love you?

He thinks it’s something he’s done. Maybe he hasn’t shown it enough. Or said it enough. He amps his affections up to a 10, smothering you in love every time he so much as sees you.

When Leo has finally pestered you enough to get the truth out of you, he’s flabbergasted. You’ve been worrying over that for a week?

A whole week without spending quality time together or god forbid his daily quota of kisses, because you believed junk you read off the internet.

He drags you to his room and frantically rips a curtain off one of his shelves. It’s almost every single item, at least the small ones that he could fit on a shelf, you’ve ever given him. Including a mint that he had never eaten and kept in the wrapper.

Would a heartless turtle keep all those tokens of your love? He doesn’t think so.

Donatello just confronts you immediately. He can't say he enjoys how you’ve been acting around him recently.

Not long ago, you had been so excited to be around him. It was because of your paper. You asked him all these questions and he would answer you. You also got to inspect every inch of him for your “studies.”

But now you were quiet and upset. Avoiding him. Looking at him sadly. He snatches your paper to read it over when you’re asleep. Yes, he broke into your house. But he had to figure out what was happening.

You had a small paragraph detailing on how reptiles couldn’t love, according to some study done in 2013. He rolls his eyes and grabs a red pen, annotating how this had no data on mutant turtles and also not to use outdated sources on an academic paper.

Mikey lets you fester, knowing that you always crack eventually. He’s learned throughout your relationship that if he presses, it just takes longer for you to admit what’s actually making you upset.

When you finally blurt out what’s been bothering you, he raises an eye ridge. What has really been bothering you? Surely, you don’t actually believe that since he’s a turtle mutant that he doesn’t love you.

He finally gets to the bottom of it. He scribbles out the root of your behavior. Anxiety. Insecurities. Etc. You hadn’t truly believed that he couldn’t love, you were self sabotaging.

Luckily, your turtle boyfriend was very good with reading people. And very patient.

[utopicwork]

When I was in college we were taught to respect the rules of a website regarding scraping which is why tons of universities spent money on labor to annotate and collect training data. What seems to have spurred this "AI" boom is a bunch of people dropping those ethics completely.

[mbari-blog]

MBARI's most loved

From the fish with a transparent head that started it all to a deep-sea angler with a loose tooth that captured the attention of millions and all the amazing animals in between, we’re sharing MBARI’s most loved videos to say thank you for exploring the deep with us.

In 36 years of deep-sea discoveries, MBARI’s remotely operated vehicles have completed more than 7,300 successful dives and recorded more than 28,500 hours of video.

This video archive includes nearly 9 million annotations about what we see on video–these data are invaluable for scientists at MBARI and beyond who are working together to unlock the mysteries of the deep.

These fascinating finds underscore the dazzling diversity of life in the deep. As we continue to study the largest and least known habitat on our planet—the ocean—we promise to share our discoveries with you. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

[campbyler]

hello! im a big acswy fan! this is not a question, i just wanted to thank you guys for making acswy mike wheeler be a one direction stan, a glasses-wearer, a book annotation enthusiast and a pin collector. representation matters and i am being represented!!!!!! he is me!! i am him!! we are one!!!! super excited for what's to come (this isn't pressure in any way shape or form, just thought i'd let y'all know im looking forward to the rest of our camp whiteman journey!!) 💙💛

you know, i was actually just talking to someone about this the other day but i think it’s so interesting that we gave both mike and will glasses in this fic (astigmatism4astigmatism so true to me) but we get so many more comments about people loving mike with glasses than we do will! i do know some aspects of mike’s characterization are more intertwined with the plot/more written in than will’s are (the zeldaisms, annotations, etc) but i can probably count on one hand the comments we’ve gotten about glasses wearer will LOL. maybe i should conduct an official study or something? i feel like that could be interesting data to collect. ANYWAYS, just thinking aloud there for a mo bc it reminded me and i have a hard time shutting up but THANK YOUUU and you are so welcome!! i think we have adequately represented ourselves in our mike and will and pretty equally as well (and also very bravely refrained from projecting when it wouldn’t feel right. even when we Reallyyyyy wanted to 😔) not to delve too much into the details of Everything but book annotator mike specifically is such a real and true hc to me!! i think his copies would just be so well loved and dog eared and scribbled in, except for maybe some special editions or gifts, etc. i just see him as someone who really enjoys and appreciates his things but without feeling the need to keep them perfectly preserved or pristine. and — this is very important, i don’t think it has officially come up here before —the lore behind the 1D part of his characterization is that mike is a happy victim of Guy With An Older Sister Syndrome and was exposed to their full discography when nancy was into them during their peak. i think the combination of the music being catchy and fun and all around good and enjoyable + the nostalgia of rare sibling bonding time would have really made it stick for him! (<- spoken as someone who spent years holding her younger sister hostage in the car and playing music for her. can guarantee it works)

[ruukachoo]

Okay so I need to talk about corru.observer

So I'm just sitting here, minding my own business, poking around on the social media sphere when I see a repost of a post talking about a browser game called corru.observer . "Huh," I say to myself, "a browser game about rummaging through an alien biocomputer? Well, I do like my weird fiction, and a biocomputer sounds intreresting. I'll take a look. It's a browser game, in my experience those are typically pretty short, I can give it a looksee and then get on with my life. How long could it take?"

That, my friends, is what we call hubris.

A week and change later I've binged through everything I possibly can (with the exception of the optional hard archive vein section because I'm terrible at the video games especially when they activate hard mode I still haven't dealt with the hard sections in Deltarune ugh why must they put more plot behind hard sections). I have been left staring at the ceiling muttering about mindcores and thoughtforms and weeping over characters. I've talked Eien's ear off puzzling through the story and my brain is still running several cycles repeatedly trying to suss things out.

What I'm trying to say is this game is GOOD and it's gripped my brain HARD.

Unfortunately I learned that it wasn't finished yet well after I had passed the point of no return (this has been happening to me a lot this year with other media, I can't say I'm fond of this trend--I never did like cliffhangers) so I'm left waiting for the next part to come out and in the meantime I have to get out how amazing this game is and maybe convince some other folks to play it because I need to yell more and theorize and there's only so much I can do on my own.

The non-spoilery review: IT'S GOOD GO PLAY IT.

But seriously, the premise basically boils down to: you're a contractor that's been hired to retrieve info from an alien biocomputer that's been recently salvaged from a wreck at the bottom of the ocean. And then it gets weird.

Actually, to quote a character from much later, this is probably the best tagline for the game: "It will probably only get stranger!"

Aesthetically, the game reminds me a little of Welcome to Night Vale. Writing and humor-wise, it reminds me a little of Undertale. There are some elements that remind me a little of Hatoful Boyfriend shut up it does make sense if you've played through it. It's a game full of nooks and crannies to explore and a whole bushel of questions and mysteries to solve. I realize in hindsight that it pings a lot of the things that also caused me to gravitate towards Steven Universe: compelling and complex characters, tons of mysteries big and small to chew on, and rock solid worldbuilding. I am seriously in love with the worldbuilding here - everything, right down to the reason you hear music and the appearance of the characters, has a reason, and part of the joy of the game for me is just figuring everything out. Media scores major points with me when it becomes apparent that the creators have Thought Through Things.

My only really negative thing to say is that while I love the immersive interface, I would have appreciated a little readme file or an annotation or something to indicate how to save the game. In internet years I'm older than the pyramids and I grew up on point-and-click adventure games where being able to save every five seconds is paramount, and I think I would've had a little less anxiety at the beginning if I knew how to save my progress in case Firefox borked or something (I think the answer is there's import/export file functions under data management I THINK that's what it is).

But yes, overall, really good, loved it, really wanting the next part to come out now.

OKAY NOW SOME OTHER THOUGHTS EXCUSE ME WHILE I DO A BIT OF SCREAMING.

NNNNGH THESE CHARACTERS I LOVE THEM. They are all so good. I love Cavik's eagerness and Tovik's determination, I love how Gakvu and Miltza manage to work together despite their differences, I love Kazki's gentleness and Bozko's protectiveness, I love how Idril is basically the answer to the question "What if Osaka from Azumanga Daioh was a dull engineer?". I think what makes it work so well is that you get a chance to spend some time with them, the Call Team in particular. You see them when times are good and when everything is falling apart. The visual novel format, where a lot of the narration is from Akizet's POV, works super well here. You get not only a chance to see what Akizet thinks of them based on what she knows about them, but you see how her thoughts and opinions of them change over the course of the story, particularly in relation to the collapse arc. It gives them an extra boost of life that I think might not have been possible from a more distant POV. They're allowed to be complex and deep.

And oh Akizet is a multidimensional delight. I love her fondness for orange juice. I love how she is doing her best. I love how she is anxious and overthinks things and it's clear that she is trying to do the right thing, even if there are some pretty clear signs that she isn't always making the best choice. I love how she has regrets and joys and stumbles. I love how she is more competent than she thinks she is. I love how she loves these people. Her scene with Bozko where he's spiraling and she hugs him because it's the only thing she can do is lodged in me, both for how relatable it is when wanting to help someone dealing with trauma and the only thing you can do is be there for them, and because oh Aki, you don't need to be a Tir, you just need to be a friend. You just need to be you.

I feel like the overarching theme of the game is "Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have." Right down to the partial translations of words from the mindspike and the fragmented state of the cyst, everything that happens is coming from a place of working with what you've got. That kinda makes the end of the collapse even more tragic, as it's being made abundantly clear that Akizet did not have all the pieces to deal with Vekoa. All she had was her previous knowledge of what she had seen, and all of that pointed to, in her mind, Vekoa attempting a deception. Although I wonder how much of that is based off of what she saw and what she believed. There's a TON of layers here still to uncover.

And there are SO MANY QUESTIONS. There's the big ones of course ("What happened to Akizet?" "What the heck is the deal with the meteorite anyway?" "What is Velzie hiding?" "Who sent the message to Akizet that set everything in motion?"), although there are some smaller ones that I keep chewing on.

What is Kazki's role in all of this? She was conspicuously absent from the collapse, and it made sense she wouldn't be present based on her role, but I keep wondering if there was more going on with her than is apparent. She had been regularly speaking with a human, but the details of that interaction haven't been made known, so is it possible she has more involvement than we currently know? The fact that Drowning, who holds some of Akizet's memories of Kazki and may look like how Kazki actually looks, is guarding some of the deeper parts of the cyst, suggests a greater role.

What is Velzie anyway? The obvious answer is some sort of thoughtform, but from what? Something I started thinking about recently after looking at some of the transcripts is how Tozik wanted Akizet to share the truth about the meteorite. We assume his message got out at the end, but did it? Is Velzie related to Tozik somehow? On the other hand there's evidence Cavik might have some connection as well. HM.

"OUR" DULL SHIP? WHO IS THIS "OUR"??

How much can Funfriend really be trusted? This one's gotten me into a LOT of knots. Funfriend is trying to repair the cyst and is again, doing the best it can with what it has, but the Council and Jokzi Ozo suggest that maybe it's not what the rest of the cyst wants. Honestly I was starting to get a bit of a Myst vibe, where it feels like we're getting two opposing viewpoints and we're eventually going to have to choose one of them (or perhaps a third as-of-yet-unknown third option). But getting back to Funfriend, it's repairing with what it has to work with and its own memories of Akizet and what happened, so how much of that can be trusted? Are we seeing what actually happened, or are we seeing what Funfriend wants us to see?

What IS that weird dark space in Jokzi Ozo with eyes that look an awful lot like Tovik's?

Will we ever get to have a drink with the orange juice effigy? I'M ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS HERE.

Nngh, in the end all I can do is ponder for right now, but when the next part comes out I will be SO ready. And maybe by then I'll have figured out how to get through the archival vein. PLEASE BSTRD, I NEED MORE PLOT AND LORE. I'M NOT A GAMER, I JUST WANT THE STOOOOOORY!!!

[kendraw]

To Exist is to be Seen Chapter 1: You can lead a horse to therapy but you can’t get it to open up about its parental issues!

Summary: Bill "talks it out" with his therapist in the Theraprism, and by "talk it out" I mean he loses his shit. (Post-canon)

Warnings: talk of death, swearing, talk of mental illness

Rating: Mature

Words: 3257

Fandom: Gravity Falls

Characters: Bill Cipher, unnamed therapist, Original Characters (If ya know ya know.)

Author's Notes: Fic I've been stewing on and cooking for a while, finally found it in myself to post it. Fair warning that it has... ORIGINAL CHARACTERS... OH NO! Happy New Year, everybody!

Chapter 1: You can lead a horse to therapy but you can’t get it to open up about its parental issues!

The mind of Bill Cipher was not one that many could grasp- not in its entirety- and this wasn't due to some imposed deepness or the fact that he was a notorious gaslighting liar. 

No… The reason that his mind was difficult to comprehend was due to his very existence. Bill existed in a state best comparable to the observer effect of physics, but through the myopic lens of fallibilism. He was a being whose experience with reality, physical matter, and relative existence was entirely dependent on observable data- ergo, if he himself could not observe something- it did not exist to him.

Bill Cipher was less of a schrodinger's cat and more of a falling tree in a haunted forest, a forest that people had been warned of and had been long since abandoned. When he was perceived- he existed. And if he could see it- then he could know it. The all seeing eye was- in some ways- accurate. But the title should have come with several annotations and a caveat: he only knew what he could see, he only saw what was shown to him. 

A drawing was not just a peephole for him, but a lifeline. Proof that he existed. Proof that he was REAL.

His relationship with humanity was comparable to a hostage situation.  He depended on them, he still existed because of them, and he knew them more intimately than he was willing to know himself. He couldn't escape them, and with how heavily he tied himself in their history, neither could they escape him. 

To look inward meant he was forced to face his own existence- and he didn't want to do that. He would rather have others look upon him and give him purpose. But he would never admit to that. 

Because his existence was predicated on his perception and the interactions beings had with him, his experience with time followed the same principles. Cipher experienced time based entirely on observable data and his own awareness of events and instances. Billions of years could flash in an instance for him until he was observing the moment. And to observe the moment, he had to be invoked. Right now, however, Bill did not want to be summoned, Bill wanted to disassociate and drift off into the liminal space of the void. It was unfortunate, then, that he found himself being the center of attention, something he never thought he’d dislike or shirk away from. His therapist sat across from him and folded their legs while balancing their laced fingers on their knees. “Hello Bill, How are you feeling today?” They said in an amorphis tone that was unreadable, it was also not something someone would call “relaxing.” 

Bill's eye rolled until he looked upon his therapist. Their form was foreign and unknowable, Bill could neither discern their thoughts, nor could he fully analyze their intent. All Bill could do was speculate, and the conclusion he came to was that therapists were condescending. All their questions, in his mind, were an attempt to get at him, to find his weak spots, to tear him down and then reconstruct him. He didn't like people putting him under a microscope, it made him feel unbelievably small and exposed. There was not just an absence of control, but ask him the right questions and he might reveal too much. Every question they asked him led to them knowing him- and the more they learned the harder it was for him to rewrite the past and twist the truth. 

Bill wasn't great at keeping a level head, he wasn't willing to realize nor change this about himself, but it could be exploited if someone knew what buttons to press. He was quick to anger, and anger led to over-sharing, and oversharing led to more weaknesses being revealed. Emotional fragility was a weakness. And Bill Cipher did not want to show weakness. But push him and poke him the right way, and he'd fold like a house of cards in the form of a screaming tantrum. That in itself was a defense mechanism. The screaming diatribes he'd go off on were a pathetic attempt at getting the last word in. A last ditch effort towards shutting the other person up and making them rethink ever questioning him.

"The answer should be obvious, shouldn't it?" He narrowed his eye "All you "doctors" do is gossip, so you already know full well what I've been dealing with." He imitated the therapist's pose in a mocking manner and smirked with his eye. "How about we switch it up? I could try asking YOU pointless questions!"

The therapist paused but didn't react beyond that- only their calm collected and inhuman voice replied.

"Alright, ask away."

Bill didn't like this, were they messing with him? It felt like a trap. He hesitated for only a second but his therapist took note. 

"Great! So we all know that therapists only go into mental health because they're too messed up to deal with their own problems and need to feel better about themselves by judging others, so! What messed up backstory do you have going on?" 

The therapist shifted in a way that, if looked at closely, could be seen as them thinking of a response. They finally answered. 

"I don't have much of a backstory myself, I just enjoy hearing about the lives of others and seeing beings improve and get better." They paused, "Do you feel judged, Bill?"

He knew this was bait, but he didn't care, he was going to give this crackpot a piece of his mind! 

"Of course I do! You all pretend to have my best interest at heart- but I know the truth! You're just trying to wear me down and reshape me until all that's left is a smooth blanched surface with no character! You're all threatened by what I could do so you need to take out the competition! But your brainwashing won't work on me, Jack! I've run cults before and I know what mental reconstruction looks like!" He tapped a space right above his eye and narrowed it at them "reincarnation? A better self? All lies you make up to get rid of any opposition! You can't fool me, I've been around the block and been in the minds of geniuses far greater than all of you."

"Are you opposed to the concept of reinvention and self forgiveness?" they asked, tilting what might be their head, he still wasn’t sure.

"What's there to forgive?!" Bill replied quickly  “I don't see why me trying to liberate dimensions is such a big deal! Have you seen what they do with their limited lifespans? They're miserable! I was doing them a favor!” He throws his cartoony arms up in the air as if to emphasize a point before he continues. “Everyone talks about how terrible my reign was, but if you took a peak at their political systems you'd agree that what I was doing was merciful, a kindness. At least I made things interesting instead of killing them with THAT mess.” He looked right at the therapist “Did you know most of them don’t even have healthcare? But no, I’m the bad guy apparently, just because I released some madness bubbles and reshaped the foundation!”

Bill huffed, acting like this whole Therapy thing was an inconvenience. He continued to excuse his past actions with an even tone and a confident flair. “They're so desperate for an escape that, to take their minds off their own suffering, they watch others to find entertainment in their suffering instead! Honestly I get it! Pain is hilarious, especially when you're the one causing it, but it's pretty sad that that's all they do for entertainment! Most of the time it's just watching others' problems and judging them vicariously!”

He pauses and his bottom eyelid lifts in a mock “smiling” sort of way. “Hey, kind of like you!” His voice was cheerful, but it was clear that something about the question made him uncomfortable and he was trying desperately to deflect.

"Is that the same reason for your actions in Euclydia?"

Cipher froze but was quick to rebound, his tone was sharper now, more biting. "All I did there was try and change some minds and rescue them from their boring, tenseless existence- so, yeah! Trust me, I did them a favor! They weren't doing anything of note or importance- they were all locked in a perpetual monotonous dance of mind-numbing, soul-sucking servitude to an uncaring universe in a boring story as B-list characters. I helped them see there's so much more! I gave them the opportunity to rewrite their stories- like me!" He folded his arms "it's not my fault that they lacked imagination and couldn't manage what I had- but I guess that's the cold truth of reality! Some people are born special, like me, and some people aren't." 

All Bill was willing to say about his past without rewriting and obfuscating the details therein is that he came from a place called Euclydia in the second dimension. Second dimensional forms, at their core- are ideas, thought experiments meant to give way to a better understanding of the universe. Time in the second dimension is a line drawn between two points- it is tenseless and only accounts for the past and the future, the beginning and the end. It would be more fitting to compare the second dimensions’ experience with time with a book. The entire universe and all of its facets exist within the pages, and when it is closed- it is done. This doesn't mean the death of the 2nd dimension, more so that everything that is and was is tied up neatly with a bow- you could return to it at any time and the inhabitants would be none the wiser.

And Bill had burned his universe's book.

"Do you think that someone being special allows them the right to live or die, then?"

"Of course! Some people get it and others don't- most don't. Special people change the world, after all. That's where all that mumbo-jumbo about "making the world a better place" comes from! That's a message to the specials. And the normies have us to thank for it- but what do we get in return? They try to hold us back! Because they're jealous! The world- the UNIVERSE would be more AMAZING, more FUN if they just gave in and let us do the talking and decision making." His voice was quickening "They instill all this moral jargon in us to hold us back and make us second guess ourselves- but it's all just a plot to control US and keep things 'safe' and 'familiar'. They're cowards. Too afraid to look at the big picture." With how he refused to look at the being in front of him, it was clear that he had someone specific in mind. The therapist noticed the faroff look in his eye. He was thinking about him again.

“You said you’ve been in the minds of geniuses, is there something that draws you to people like that in particular?” Without missing a beat Cipher stood up and waved his tiny little black arms around, there was a playful excitement in his movements as he started to divulge more details.

“Who else could get it?! It’s hard to find someone as intelligent as me, impossible even, but there’s some folks out there that can understand what I’m saying without replying with ‘what?’ every 5 seconds! Do you know how hard it is to have a conversation with someone when they don’t contribute anything to the discussion? They might be a tool for me to use in the grand scheme of things but I’d at least like to be stimulated!” He put his hands on his hips, the crack across his body flickering “It’s like telling a joke and the person not laughing because they’re too dense to get the punchline! Why go on stage for a bunch of idiots who won’t appreciate the performance?” 

“Is that what this all is to you? A performance?” They made a mark on their clipboard. Bill noticed. His eye widened, his expression becoming wild. 

“Oho! I know what this is! You think you’re so slick- but you can’t fool me!” His features became more jagged and uneven, the crack across his body flickering again, bright blue sparks emitting with feverish intensity. 

“What do you mean?” The therapist asked before being cut off by the paranoid polygon

“You think that I’m putting on some act, don’t you? That this is a cover to something deeper about me- that if you keep asking me asinine questions I’ll crack and expose some other level to me!  Well give it up! I’m not faking anything! I might trick humans and tell them what they want to hear, but I’ve got nothing to hide here!” His scream was shrill and distorted now “You think you can trick me by getting me to talk and tell you my weaknesses- just like those Pines’ did- well I’m no chump! I don’t have any weaknesses! They just got lucky- But luck runs out!”

“One day I'll get out of here- and when I do I'll show everyone how wrong they were!” He scowled, and looked at his hands as he spoke. “You all think you can change my mind and rip up those party invites but I've got news for you- you don't get a choice! It'll be a never ending soul siesta Fiesta!” 

He broke out into a manic, building laughter.

“It doesn't sound like you have much respect for what you deem as lower life forms,” The therapist said flatly, looking at the chart as if taking in some of the material with marginal interest. “You made a chair out of humans.”

Bill turned back to the therapist and rolled his singular eye before laying back in the chair lazily.

“Hey! A guy has to have a place to sit, right? And a throne made of people is the perfect centerpiece to command respect! It also serves as a great conversation starter- you try having a compelling conversation about your Chesterfield chair and see how far you get,” He sat himself up straight and closed his eye smugly “meanwhile I get to tell you all the hot Goss about Lazy Susan- and that's saying something since that chick literally disassociates and thinks about PIE all day.”

The therapist set the clipboard back in their lap and looked at him, he could feel their stare on him- he just wasn’t sure WHERE their eyes were...

“That doesn't sound like liberation, that sounds like subjugation.” They said, matter of fact “Are they not worthy of the party?” 

“Sure they are! They're the chair! What about that are you not getting?” 

“Do you enjoy deflecting and making a joke out of everything that has happened?” 

Bill looked at his hand, trying to lessen the discomfort he had with their gaze and tried his best to appear unbothered.

“What can I say, I'm a silly little guy! It's not my fault that most folks lack a sense of humor and can't appreciate my japes. Like most things, people take it all too seriously... life is a joke and you're the punchline, so you better start learning to laugh!”

The therapist leaned forward in interest, at least that’s what Bill thinks it was...

“Does that include yourself?” 

“Well I'm the one making the jokes- aren't I?”

“But are you a punchline?”

“I'm a triangle, Jack. Try to keep up.” 

They were silent, and Bill internally felt this was a win. Take that you pompous know it all! Once again my quick wit reigns supreme!

But just as he had thought the session was over, they looked back at his chart and took out their pen again before continuing their line of questions...  

“Speaking of triangles, I noticed that the majority of your drawings were red and blue triangles... Can you tell me about that?” 

He stiffened but managed to rebound quickly

“Well I'm not one to teach folks their colors and shapes- usually they understand those out the gate but if you need me to walk you through things, I guess I'll relent! So red is a color-”

The therapist, for the first time, was quick to cut him off and keep with their onslaught of inquiries. 

“Are they someone you knew? Maybe your parents?” 

Bill's face grew dark

“Do you draw them because you miss them?” 

The Therapist was met with another raging tantrum, this one more distorted, his crack flickering wildly as he looked pained, angry, embarrassed, and threatening. 

“I DON'T MISS ANYONE!” Why would he? They don’t miss him! Emotional connections were a weakness, and Bill was not WEAK.

“I DON'T NEED ANYONE!” HE didn’t. HE DIDN’T! Everyone has always let him down. Pathetic weak willed and weak minded- he only needed himself.

It was because of these irrefutable facts that he wasn’t all that surprised when his outburst, which was lunging at the therapist and trying to bite any possible limb he could grab, landed him in the Wellness Void. Ah the Wellness Void. 

He hated the Wellness Void. 

The void offered him little else but time to plan, but Bill was less of a “master planner” and more of a “It’ll all work out because I said it will, don’t ask questions.” sort of guy. That confidence got him a following, after all! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! And who was broken? Not him, that’s for sure! That blue crack across his body was just a scar- scars were cool. They made you look tough. It was less of a residual fragment of him being shattered and scattered across existence by Stanley Pines’s fist and more… A statement!

It was unfortunate for Bill that the statement was: “Ow I got punched in the FACE!” 

Bill took a moment to reflect, not on his actions or anything of that nature, (why would he? He was perfect and had never done anything wrong in his entire life.)  But on something far more pressing: why the internal narration and dialogue suddenly took a more biting, cheeky, and critical tone towards him. He was the main character after all, shouldn't the narration and perspective of the writer be more favorable?

"ALRIGHT ASSHOLE SHOW YOURSELF. I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE!"

It was an odd request to pose, after all he was the all seeing eye wasn't he? If there was someone there, surely he could see them. 

"We're in a void, Jackass! What's there to see?!"

The permissive polygon made a fair point. But who's to say he wasn't losing his marbles? 

"Little late for that, buck-o! I'm insane! And if you haven't already noticed: we're in a nut house!"

Ah yes… Insanity. Perhaps that was why Bill had a habit of repeating history and doing the same thing over and over-

"Watch it!"

-But maybe if he had alternative options, different opportunities available, things would change for him...

"Eh? What the-"

Bill was suddenly surrounded by a blinding light, then seated across from a monochrome being, Three bright blue eyes with the hands of clocks held within looked upon him with rapt glee, a large smile stretched across nebulous features. 

"Maybe it’s time someone offered YOU a deal."

[dhirajmarketresearch]

[maxwell-grant]

What are your in-depth thoughts on THE CHIMERA BRIGADE? Would love to know what you make of it, given its handling and assembly of so much pulp material.

@thedeathalchemist asked: With your first initial thoughts on League posted, I have to ask did you ever get around to reading all of the Chimera Brigade and its sequel/spin-offs?

Anonymous asked: Any advice for how to a fictional character mashup story ala chimera brigade, league, etc?

(So first and foremost huge thanks to Ritesh Babu for being the whole reason for me finally picking this up again and finishing it, our conversations with him and @davidmann95 were crucial for putting this together)

(Also SPOILERS for The Chimera Brigade - this comic is impossible to discuss meaningfully without spoiling it down to the last issue, so go read it first)

The French tradition of booklets and serials certainly didn't have the punch or the sociological freedom of the pulps, but certain of its great figures did survive the Second World War: Fantomas, Arsene Lupin, Rouletabille and even, in a way, Maigret. Why those and not the others.

Why doesn't anyone remember the Nyctalope, or Hareton Ironcastle, or Felifax or Michel Ardent? Which cultural black hole of pre-war French science-fiction were they swallowed up by? And why have our bandes dessinées authors neglected these virtual superheroes that a little touch-up here and there could have modernised? - Serge Lehman

I can very confidently say two things - 1: I've read countless works like The Chimera Brigade that set out to do something similar to what The Chimera Brigade does, and 2: I have never seen a work like The Chimera Brigade, and one that achieves what it does the way it does. This being a superb pulp fiction crossover, who makes most of the others seem like they're not even trying, is maybe the smallest of it's achievements.

It's the kind of project that so very often tends to get lost in the weeds of it's source material, of having it's context overtaking the plot, of devolving into simple sentimental reverence or spiteful potshots at the expense of the story it set up, of being able to construct a story and world convincingly but fumbling at the finish line, and it's so very rare to find one of these projects that is ENTIRELY about the finish line of what the narrative has set-up, especially when they have significant messy real-life history and context to bolt in, which The Chimera Brigade has a ton of.

Pulp nerd crossovers tend to be largely about the novelty of it's characters meeting up, or the unresolved tension between it's characters and the historical context they coincidentally inhabit, or setting up a shared verse to be played in, and thus a lot of them are predictably aimless when it's time to wrap up the story and thus define what the story in question was about. This is even an issue that series creator and co-author Serge Lehman even brings up during the annotations, regarding why he asked his friend Fabrice Colin to co-write the script with him, specifically in part to try and prevent this. I want to make note of what he says here, "confusing fanatic nostalgia for creativity". A thing this set out to avoid, and a thing that helps set this apart from so, so, so many pulp hero crossovers / pulp-in-wartime stories / dissertations about publication-meta-fictional history presented as stories, miles and miles of Wold Newton adjacent stuff I've scoured for days and weeks on end and tried very, very, VERY hard to like so much more than I actually do.

This project does demand a lot of data archival, it demands the laborious Jess Nevins annotations and footnotes to keep track of who's whom or who's meant to be what. It's a story about European superheroes that is focused why European superheroes don't actually exist / completely vanished stillborn around the time the American superheroes first appeared and became a dominant force, specifically drawing on reasons like publishing failures and the fascist incorporation of superhumanity that really did cause these things to vanish. But The Chimera Brigade is a very, very focused project: it's about one thing first and foremost, and it's about one moment first and foremost, and thus the thing that it is about, and the historical moment that informs it, completely defines the purpose of it. Crucially, this is one of the many things this has that makes it so good, that makes it so different from so many other modern takes on pulp fiction or crossovers: the clarity of purpose this has, the point it's making and the unflinching vision it achieves to serve it.

It's a historical pulp nerd project initially entirely centered around a real phenomenon only historical pulp nerds are likely to know anything about, and then it gradually reveals itself to be, in fact, about something everyone has always known about all along, and you were only ever deluding yourself for thinking this was heading anywhere else. You want to talk about European superheroes? You want to talk about European pulp history? You want to know about the absence of the European Superman and why the Americans got to really create that instead? Okay, let's talk about that. Let's talk about European fictional history and see where it goes.

Even before the central question of European Superhero History comes into play, the baseline concept of The Chimera Brigade's worldbuilding is already taking such a smart, clear-eyed, versatile approach to the crossover aspect, starting from really strong pitches and compelling hooks regardless of what context you have for it, that enables it to tie it's pulp characters to the superhero history and political turmoil it will dwelve into, by tapping into The Great Unifier of Marvel Origin Stories: radiation. What if the first superheroes were also created by radiation? If superheroes are so inherently tied to World War 2 and the Atomic Bomb, and pulp heroes are so inherently tied to World War 1, what if we went back further to Marie Curie and the discovery of Radium as the connective tissue between them? What if we set about unpacking the radioactive monster elements inherent to the genre, as they creep into the world before the actual superheroes do? What if the existence of superhumans, in itself, inevitably placed humanity into a cold war / arms race, just as the existence of atomic bombs in our reality did (a.k.a what if The Power Fantasy was actually about what it says it's about, or really was about anything at all)? What does it mean for these constructs to exist at the time they do, to come from the nations they come from, in the way they are made to be?

Everyone here may not have a singular common origin at first, but they really are all tied together, and that in itself allows all these wildly different fictions to exist together in a way that feels cohesive and justified, on top of lending itself to fun sequences and reimaginings of classic characters and visuals and ideas to engage with. And that's an important thing to also highlight first, that this is a very well-crafted and fun comic to read. Don't let all the pulp nerd context scare you, this thing is a hoot.

It does a superb job at being a fun, engaging pulp comic, playing with a Mike Mignola/John Paul Leon-esque artstyle that makes a lot of this feel familiar and dynamic, with a lot of collages that play more experimentally and add a lot to the real-world history aspect of it. Gess and Bessonneau's art lives up to the tremendous task of taking all these characters from very different sources or creators, or at least very convincingly made to feel as if they would have if they existed before this, and paying tribute to replicated history both real and imagined as well as making them all feel like they belong in the same world and even share similar rooms and spaces, to the point that you can't tell which characters were made up for this and which existed beforehand without consulting the collected edition notes.

A lot of stories do great work by honing in and highlighting the novelty of clashing wildly different tones and structures and designs against each other, that is actually one of my favorite things to see done well in any kind of fiction, I'm certainly not arguing that visual consistency is a definitive must for any kind of crossover. But I will argue that here, consistency is a must, because this is not a story about the crossover, the crossover is necessary for the sake of what this story is about. You must believe that you are reading about a world that exists, in part because the finale of this is about making you realize that you were, indeed, reading about the world you live in all along.

With the exception of a not-so-disguised figure who makes two small but very crucial appearences (with other characters scattered across a handful of cameos and mentionings), this completely refrains from using any majorly known characters, and it's important that it does so. This has a very tight control over which characters show up in what way, which characters are relevant and which characters are not, in part because this is about real-world history as much as it's about any of the existing characters it's pulling from elsewhere, and so those are chosen more so as representatives of their nations than anything else, picked first and foremost to represent the real historical circumstances driving this war. The cadaverous and inhumanly wealthy Gog to represent fascist Italy, the weaselly and controlling and useless Nyctalope as a condemnation of France's inaction and whose greatest failure was his unwillingness to stop the fascist takeover of Spain, the mechanical men of the Soviet Union, Dr. Mabuse as a living rampant metaphor for Nazi doctrine and dehumanization, and so on.

All these fantasies/metaphors turned literal and on the warpath, constructs that stand for more than just their respective characters or publishers but the imaginations that created them. You have to talk about those to talk meaningfully about these characters, about the history, and about the reasons why there are no European superheroes from that era, about the profound failure of imagination that occurred in Europe at that time. You have to talk about not just the ways Europe's imagination not only failed, but turned for the worst in the worst ways imaginable, for the worst ends possible. This comic is frequently compared to, or pitched as a companion to, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which I've covered here, and that's not a parallel I feel is particularly worth getting into (not in the least because this is, obviously, tremendously better written and more thoughtful and purposeful with a fraction of the page count), but I'll say this: if LOEG touches a lot on the idea of fiction as a dangerous, noxious force, largely in terms of stunted moral development and unhealthy attachments to problematic ideas (a thing it can never fully commit to because Moore and O'Neil themselves do have a lot of attachments to it and because it's trying to extend commentary to ALL of fiction), if it's always dancing around the idea of our fictions being unhealthy and problematic and potentially dangerous, The Chimera Brigade picks a subject it very much cannot dance around. Instead of trying to be about all of fiction, it takes a laser-focused approach on the way fiction informs it's central topic. The Chimera Brigade fires a bullet into your heart by just showing the example of how, when and why fiction was used to enable and justify and even perpetrate the slaughter of millions.

There is so much about this comic's final stretch that feels like it shouldn't work, particularly the literalized cockroach metaphor purposefully evoking anti-semitic fiction, but there is no other way this could possibly end other than showing how fiction very much did get weaponized in the name of slaughter. There is no triumph to be had in the European imagination of 1939. There is no way the European superhero can possibly end in anything other than colossal shame and failure, if it allows this to happen. Even if Superman shows up to help, you can't Hope your way out of the Holocaust, not when you're in this historical playground, not when you're talking about the history of the genre. The finale in particular is something I'd like to see being dissected and discussed from a Jewish creator perspective, because so much of it is specifically about that aspect of the superhero myth, but this finale is the big reason why this comic can't be discussed without spoiling it. It would be like trying to discuss Watchmen or Miracleman without spoiling their endings, and believe me, those comparisons are extremely warranted. This ends on even more of a downer ending than those two, and there is no other way this could possibly end.

This comic doesn't just come from a place of great curiosity and historical interest and research, it doesn't just come from a place of love for the medium and it's possibilities, it doesn't just come from a desire to rectify or correct or live up to an ideal within the genre, but it comes from a place of genuine insight and honesty and focus on what it's about, and what it has to say to truly be about that thing. It's a comic that is willing to turn to you and say, "let's take this all the way to the top, let's take this concept where it was actually always going in a way that can never be walked back, no beating around the bush or happy ending, this is what the European superheroes were, this is why they stopped existing after a point. Maybe we could have had them, maybe we could have had superheroes the way the Americans did, but we drove their creators elsewhere by bulldozing their people into mass graves, we deserve this shame and we must confront it, there is no happy ending here, only a reminder of what has been and what must never be again"

It can't pretend this failure, the failure of the European pulp heroes and superhumans, the failures of European society, were redeemed by a different kind of super imagination, and it becomes apparent how much of this is built on the understanding that you do know how this is going to end for everyone and how much all of these characters must dissappear basically forever, The End of the European Superhumans as it displays on the back of the collections, ending the only way it possibly can and with just as horrible of a gut punch for them as it needs to for everyone.

Everyone except the mysterious smiling American strongman with a spitcurl and a suit whose real name can't be legally said, and who is here to bring his family of fellow constructs home so they can take and create The Superhero Genre elsewhere. "Mr.Steele"? Why, he is gonna do just fine from now on.

I was wildly underprepared for how much this would give me to dissect and think about, on it's own and especially in comparison to the kinds of stories that usually attempt what this one is doing. I do know there are sequels and prequels, the sequel doesn't seem like it's any good (you can feel Colin's absence from the first issue) but I do want to check the Nyctalope prequels, and apparently there's a big fancy animated project coming out and I have NO idea how the fuck is that gonna work. But overall this is just a tremendously impressive achievement in genre archaeology and storytelling by every metric, it's astonishing how much this can do with the space it has.

This has genuinely reinvigorated my entire interest in pulp fiction like nothing has in a really long time and I think from this point onwards, any question I get regarding how to tackle a pulp fiction crossover or genre mashup is gonna be answered or prefaced with "read The Chimera Brigade and try to get on that level".

[sunscreenstudies]

Twenty things I wish I’d known when I started my PhD

- according to Nature.com

Maintain a healthy work–life balance by finding a routine that works for you. It’s better to develop a good balance and work steadily throughout your programme than to work intensively and burn out. Looking after yourself is key to success.

Discuss expectations with your supervisor. Everyone works differently. Make sure you know your needs and communicate them to your supervisor early on, so you can work productively together.

Invest time in literature reviews. These reviews, both before and after data collection, help you to develop your research aims and conclusions.

Decide on your goals early. Look at your departmental guidelines and then establish clear PhD aims or questions on the basis of your thesis requirements. Goals can change later, but a clear plan will help you to maintain focus.

“I don’t need to write that down, I’ll remember it” is the biggest lie you can tell yourself! Write down everything you do — even if it doesn’t work. This includes meeting notes, method details, code annotations, among other things.

Organize your work and workspace. In particular, make sure to use meaningful labels, so you know what and where things are. Organizing early will save you time later on.

It’s never too early to start writing your thesis. Write and show your work to your supervisor as you go — even if you don’t end up using your early work, it’s good practice and a way to get ideas organized in your head.

Break your thesis down into SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely) goals. You will be more productive if your to-do list reads “draft first paragraph of the results” rather than “write chapter 1”. Many small actions lead to one complete thesis.

The best thesis is a finished thesis. No matter how much time you spend perfecting your first draft, your work will come back covered in corrections, and you will go through more drafts before you submit your final version. Send your drafts to your supervisor sooner rather than later.

Be honest with your supervisor. Let them know if you don’t understand something, if you’ve messed up an experiment or if they forgot to give you feedback. The more honest you are, the better your relationship will be. Helping your supervisor to help you is key.

Back up your work! You can avoid many tears by doing this at least weekly.

Socialize with your lab group and other students. It’s a great way to discuss PhD experiences, get advice and help, improve your research and make friends.

Attend departmental seminars and lab-group meetings, even (or especially) when the topic is not your area of expertise. What you learn could change the direction of your research and career. Regular attendance will also be noticed.

Present your research. This can be at lab-group meetings, conferences and so on. Presenting can be scary, but it gets easier as you practise, and it’s a fantastic way to network and get feedback at the same time.

Aim to publish your research. It might not work out, but drafting articles and submitting them to journals is a great way to learn new skills and enhance your CV.

Have a life outside work. Although your lab group is like your work family, it’s great for your mental health to be able to escape work. This could be through sport, clubs, hobbies, holidays or spending time with friends.

Don’t compare yourself with others. Your PhD is an opportunity to conduct original research that reveals new information. As such, all PhD programmes are different. You just need to do what works for you and your project.

The nature of research means that things will not always go according to plan. This does not mean you are a bad student. Keep calm, take a break and then carry on. Experiments that fail can still be written up as part of a successful PhD.

Never struggle on your own. Talk to other students and have frank discussions with your supervisor. There’s no shame in asking for help. You are not alone.

Enjoy your PhD! It can be tough, and there will be days when you wish you had a ‘normal’ job, but PhDs are full of wonderful experiences and give you the opportunity to work on something that fascinates you. Celebrate your successes and enjoy yourself.

This was part of my required readings this week and I have never related to an academic text more so I had to share.

Full article by Lucy Taylor here!

[classicanalyzer]

The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire - Introduction Analysis

"...People so often misunderstand the purpose of historians. They think that we are just here to recount past events. To provide details without analysis. Facts without insight. Data without argument. This is wrong. The role of a historian—my role as a historian—is to try to tell you not just how but why these things happened. To try to make you understand the importance of these past events and what they mean for us today and tomorrow. This study is not just a work of history but of necessity. The galaxy needs to understand exactly what the Galactic Empire was and how it brought us to our latest brush with disaster. I can think of no more important undertaking than this one and no more required moment." (Kin, Beaumont, "Introduction", The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, 35 ABY, page xvii).

The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire is one of the best Star Wars novels I've read. The novel is an in-universe annotated history book written by Beaumont Kin ("Secrets only the Sith knew"), a historian with an interest in the lore of the Jedi and Sith, who reflects on the terrifying origins, reign, and legacy of the Galactic Empire. We also get a brief glimpse of what the post-TROS galaxy looks like but that isn’t the main point.

It is a part of several in-universe reference books being published post-TROS, which is a nice touch.

This study was published on the Holonet a few months post-TROS as Kin is excavating the Sith Temple on Exegol.

Introduction

History is a cycle, we wish to avoid it but it always finds a way to start the wheel again. The cycle certainly reflects the history of Star Wars.

Kin sadly laments that despite the Empire's evils being known and seemingly easy to understand, it seems easy to teach future generations and prevent the cycle from repeating itself, he considers himself a fool for being naive. As history has shown us and Kin, it has a tendency to repeat itself in various forms.

"It seemed to be an easy message to explain something that was now safely behind us. My colleagues and I congratulated ourselves on the ways we'd been able to take the realities of the Empire and convert them into lessons in schools and universities, which would then further ripple across the galaxy. We were so sure that we had created the perfect way of preventing future conflicts and a return to Imperialism. We were fools. I was a fool. As much as we might have wished that the remnants of the Empire could have been left to rot beneath the sands of Jakku, it seems that we could not be free of it so easily." (Kin, Beaumont, "Introduction", The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, 35 ABY, page ix).

One element that is simply merch in real life but in-universe is the source of shock to Kin: Palpatine busts being sold at the Black Spire Outpost, among other Imperial objects. How could the galaxy reach the point that a being who murdered trillions of beings has busts being sold?

Despite the Resistance's and the galaxy's victory at Exegol, Kin can't help but wonder if the celebrations on Endor and Ajan Kloss are very similar. Both generations have celebrated the defeat of the Emperor, won their wars, and are driven to create a better galaxy, in the case of the last generation, including the current one who followed to preserve the hard-won peace, they were not successful.

However, this failure to maintain peace has very understandable origins. The leaders and soldiers of the Rebel Alliance wanted to look towards the sunrise of the New Republic after a brutal and horrifying war against the Galactic Empire. They focused on their desire to move forward with hope and optimism and for this to never happen again, they were not careful in taking the necessary steps to prevent Imperialism from rising. A failure to understand how the Empire operated, ruled over, and why its personnel committed so horrific war crimes over and over. It would be a nice thought to think with the Emperor dead, so would his Empire die with him. And in a way it did, but gave birth to a new form of Empire as the First Order. While the First Order likes to fashion itself differently from the Empire with a new name and outfits, their origins intrinsically tie back to the Empire which the New Republic and the new generation failed to see. They cannot risk another situation like this happening again.

Stories like The Mandalorian and its spin-offs, Bloodlines, Before the Awakening, Resistance, and the Poe Dameron comic show us how the New Republic fails to recognize the threat of the Imperial Remnants and the First Order, even when they're violating New Republic treaties. Complacency and appeasement became the new policy for the New Republic. They think the threat of the Empire is long behind them, and whoever is left is just simply ill-equipped warlords. They fail to understand why Neo-Imperialism grew as it did and why people want the return of a regime that killed so many sentient beings. It was left to those in the New Republic who saw the emerging threat, the Resistance, and those affected by these Remnants and the FO to act.

While discussing the Jedi and the Sith, Kin acknowledges how, despite his attempts to understand it, he still doesn't know everything about the Force, along with the galaxy not being clear on what the Forse is and if it exists. He then talks about how Palpatine managed to seize control of the entire galaxy as a Sith Lord, Kin made it clear Palpatine's desire for power and control was all him and not by anything else. Palpatine was a man. It is the most terrifying aspect of this Sith Lord. Much more terrifying is how Palpatine wasn't the Empire, he may be the linchpin of the Empire but there were plenty of people who believed in his Empire and maintained it.

There are four parts to the Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire:

Part 1: Rise and Consolidation - Palpatine's rise to power and how the Empire consolidated itself.

Part 2: Expansion and Oppression - The methods of the Empire's dominance across the entire galaxy, the Imperial hierarchy, and the many horrific things (such as prejudice and genocide) the Empire did with that domination.

Part 3: The Galactic Civil War - The war and why the Empire collapsed.

Part 4: Fall and Continuation - The last year of the GCW and, with it, the fall of the Empire. But alas, the Empire continues to survive in its remnants and the rise of its most infamous of these remnants, the First Order. There are also the NR's successes and failures.

Kin went for the BBY/ABY (Before/After the Battle of Yavin) calendar system because the Empire's modus operandi significantly shifted after the destruction of the first Death Star with clear distinctions between pre- and post-Battle of Yavin. He also acknowledges how there are some debates over which dating system is the best among them being set after the Empire formed and the "before" and "after" periods at Endor rather than Yavin. In this, he also points out how the Empire was never at peace, and that the GCW greatly showcased and increased its brutality towards its own people.

While this work isn't the first one to study and analyze the Empire, it is perhaps the most relevant to discuss right now. There are beliefs and understandings of the Empire that are built on flawed information and shaky foundations. Some of what they understand is possibly wrong. Therefore, they must reexamine the Empire again and understand and therefore deconstruct the Empire beyond Palpatine.

"Furthermore, the very reasons for its eventual fall and collapse do not appear to have been adequately researched and analyzed at all. We know why the Rebel Alliance believed they won the war. Do we know why the Empire lost it? Because the Galactic Empire was so misunderstood, it is necessary to begin the process again. That is the point of this study. To deconstruct the entirety of the Galactic Empire beyond just notions of Palpatine himself. To see how it actually worked, the ideas and ideology that drove it, the ways it waged war, and the motivations behind its most awful crimes." (Kin, Beaumont, "Introduction", The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, 35 ABY, pages xv-xvi).

Of course, researching the Empire is not easy. The history of the Empire is spread out across the entire galaxy. With the fall of the NR, there is now access to classified material such as interrogations of Imperial officers. It would've been impossible for Kin to find and compile this while excavating on Exegol. We see the galaxy coming together as researchers and other academics from across the galaxy pitch in to provide sources and information for Kin to scour through. Kin thanks all of them for realizing the importance of this analysis and is sure to acknowledge their work throughout his study. There is also lost information. After all, the Empire loves to burn and destroy the various records of their crimes and how they operate. Other sources are just lost during the fighting. With the excavation of Exegol and access to FO ships, new sources of information have allowed Kin to cross-reference and provide new understandings of the Empire.

He does acknowledge and welcomes the risk of his work becoming outdated and replaced with new studies containing new, undiscovered, and decrypted information. New studies can further elaborate on their understandings and help prevent the rise of Imperialism once again if they can at least find one new area they missed or have the chance to further understand. He points historians aren't just about telling the how but the why things in history occur. The galaxy needs examinations of the Galactic Empire and the history of its reign which allows them to better understand how they narrowly avoided the First Order's brief reign and Final Order's apocalyptic plot.

There is a nice nod to the Battle that Changed the Galaxy and Skywalker: A Family at War reference books as Kin notes how other historians like him are also noticing the need to reexamine history after Exegol, with the latter getting its author namedropped with a Star Wars-like name (the author was Kristin Baver, but in the Star Wars universe, her name is Kitrin Braves). Kin thanks Kitrin for sharing her information on the Skywalker family for him to talk about in Rise and Fall and notes it's been a long time coming for people to know the history of the Skywalkers in Kitrin's book.

The Empire's war crimes and cruelty are beyond horrifying and applied to anyone they come across, their cruelty is not equally felt. The Core Worlds often did not suffer as much as those outside of the Core. While some humans, such as the Alderaanians, have indeed lost everything to the Empire, the Empire's inherent prejudice is frequently focused on non-humans (a term admittedly imperfect and problematic in its own ways but much better one in-universe than the term "alien" which the Empire uses to showcase their racism towards non-humans). The Empire has made no attempt to hide their discontent and hatred for non-humans. Kin acknowledges he is a human, and he never felt the experience of the Empire's prejudice by the Empire just for being not human. He has tried his best to highlight those species and voices who have been silenced and suffered under the Empire's prejudice and genocides. He understands and apologizes for the criticisms that might come with any shortcomings that he and his studies may provide. Recognizing and analyzing both the sources and himself within this study are necessary parts of this analysis.

As the introduction concludes, we must ponder how despite the victories throughout the saga, we take a look at the horrifying and monstrous regime that is the Empire and its legacy. Our reality is filled with people who continue to follow Fascism and other far right-wing beliefs despite its clear evils, a look into the Galactic Empire is insight to why.

"The survivors of the Battle of Crait have become fond of saying, in moments of sorrow and loss, that ‘no one's ever really gone.’ It seems to bring them solace and I respect that. But I do not feel it. I have immersed myself in the existing records and writings and sources that relate to the Galactic Empire. And all I feel is the absence of lives that it brought. The multitudes who suffered and died. The further into this dark history I have gone the more horrified and haunted I have become. That is why this study now exists and why it is so important that you read it. Others in the Resistance will now lead and shape the galaxy. I cannot do that. I can only try and explain where we have come from. Why we have ended up here. But I need you to come with me. I cannot do this alone." (Kin, Beaumont, "Introduction", The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, 35 ABY, page xix).