#with explorations on a police state instead

[sepublic]

The core to Belos’ character is that he’s everything wrong with the United States of America. Why else is he a Puritan, a group of racist settlers who helped found the U.S. and contributed to the genocide of the Native Americans? Why else does he dress up like a Founding Father when not in papal robes, with a ponytail resembling a powdered wig?

Luz thinking he’s a great explorer, only to find out Philip is just an entitled asshole who takes credit from others to make himself look better, is a play on people IRL finding out that people like Christopher Columbus and Thomas Edison were assholes who stood on the shoulders of others. It’s a play on white mediocrity and how white guys do the bare minimum and expect to be praised.

Belos is a bigot whose entire motive and goals are based on genocide-level bigotry, and he refuses to unlearn any beliefs; Being a historical Puritan he is 100% racist and misogynistic and unlike Caleb, didn’t take the chance to grow out of it. He wants to believe he’s born special and better than everyone else, and that’s why he buys into white supremacy.

There is an explicit connection between the colonial genocide of Native Americans and Belos’ genocide of witches and demons, down to imposing a Christian misunderstanding of the local religion. He feels entitled to their magic but does none of the work to understand, nor does he cultivate a sustainable relationship with the land the way indigenous people do, hence consuming palismen.

He coined the term Savage Ages, with Savage having racist connotations. His fantasy is the Monster Hunter, the idea that it’s okay to dehumanize anything and even anyone that’s different to kill them. He believes in the Evil Races trope which is of course inherently racist. Belos treats Luz like his White Man’s Burden, a brown child who needs a White Savior to civilize (just as the U.S. kidnapped Native American children to assimilate), and then tries to kill Luz when she doesn’t go along instead of just. Leaving Luz alone or dragging her into the human realm with him anyway.

Belos makes exceptions to his religion when convenient, allowing himself to use magic but then demonizing those who do, just as homophobic Christians and Republicans do. Think of all the anti-gay politicians who are caught being gay; They’re not repressed victims, just hypocrites who think they’re entitled to special treatment. Philip didn’t rat on Caleb for hanging out with a witch for the reasons Pro-Lifers let loved ones have abortions; Caleb was important to him, and he’s not one of the witches Philip planned to murder. And even then he still killed Caleb for ‘crossing a line’!

The Puritans and other groups informed the Alt-Right in the U.S., as well as Evangelicals who rage about how something as innocuous as Pokemon is a Satanic influence (Yes this happened; The Conformatorium doesn’t seem so unrealistic after all, and remember that Dana’s father gave her a copy of Pokémon Red before he died that she latched onto). But like the Televangelist, Belos indulges in material wealth and glory via the glamour of Catholicism, because he’s not even consistent to Puritan values either.

He’s Trump, he’s Elon Musk, he’s Ron DeSantis. He’s the incel/mass shooter who fell down the pipeline, who feels cheated out of the promises of a white supremacist society and takes it out on minorities but not other white guys, because he thinks the system’s idea is fine it just isn’t working as it should, at least he’s better than those guys.

Belos’ reaction to Caleb being with Evelyn was undeniably motivated by racial disgust at his brother for committing miscegenation and making Philip related to a savage in the process. He thinks taming a wilderness and its natives makes him a tough man because he’s insecure. He has a sniveling victim complex that can’t comprehend why minorities would dislike him, except that they’re mean. Belos epitomizes the U.S.’s racial and colonial violence, its white supremacy, and its global police narrative that decides the existence of another, independent world is an inherent threat to his own.

The conflict between Philip and Caleb was over racism, and so it’s black and white because racism is always wrong. Making it ‘nuanced’ would take away from the fact that the motives for real life racism are inherently nonsensical and insincere; Caleb wasn’t selfish for living with another culture on its terms, instead of staying in the racism village (The Gravesfield statues corroborate Philip being an adult when he arrived in the Demon Realm, according to the memory portraits; Caleb waited until Philip was an adult before leaving). Philip was not a weird kid, he was adhering to his social norms with games about how anyone different or actually weird should die, and he wanted to do this.

Even if he was weird, Belos isn’t telling other people they should fit in for their sake, he’s telling them they should just die (Unlike himself, because he’s ‘special’); It’s what he admits to the Collector in the finale about not bothering teaching them anything, just wiping them out. And the choice for the villain to be a genuine Puritan makes sense, because this is a show about weirdoes, so who’s designating them as such and why? Luz has a conflict with the IRL system since the first scene and Belos symbolizes the system, his Puritan ideology marked the foundation for it and the U.S.

Belos killing Caleb is just the cherry on top of his actual motives and what his character was always about, that’s why his death scene isn’t him lamenting about Caleb or how lonely he is, it’s him being racist and demanding special treatment for his race. A racist white man feels no guilt for the witches and demons he murdered, just his white brother and clones; He still keeps killing them too btw.

Deeming someone a lost cause and killing them instead of working to rehabilitate is un-Christian, because Belos is not secretly bound by his religion, he picks and chooses. His guilt is not Catholic, he is the Protestant belief in his own superiority. Belos isn’t just a Nazi, he’s an American racist, he’s the KKK; He’s a condemnation of American Values and Exceptionalism, and lowkey I think that’s part of the reason why Family-Friendly Disney canned TOH, because Belos is a condemnation of a major consumer base. Disney being more progressive than other companies means jackshit because it’s performative and the bar is in hell.

[petew21-blog]

Let me take your sunglasses

Another story form inbox: I love all yours body swap stories! They are so hot! Would you maybe do a story involving an obese businessman swapping bodies with a hunky cop that pulls him over.

Imagine getting pulled over by this cop. Hot right? Yeah, that's who I want to be. I just can't find the right moment for the swap. All I need is to just look into his eyes. Which was a problem the first two times I got intetionally pulled over. He was wearing those stupid sunglassess. A minor mistake in my diabolical plan

Oh, sorry. Forgot to introduce myself to you. My name is Phillip Kingston. I come from a high class family, but as you can't see I am not a very desirable person that would fuck many women. That's why I found a way to swap bodies. i got all I need, the only thing left is to make an eye contact.

Today is the day it will work. I am sure of it. I get into my car. It takes some time with my body as you can imagine. I drive to the highway and speed as much as possible. And just as expected. The same police car's sirens start and the get near me.

We both stop. I open the door of my car.

"Stay where you are sir! Don't move."

"No, please, officer. You have to help me, it's my medication. It(s my heart. I have to take it or I die." I do my best to make the story believable and sound like I am in agony.

He rushes to me and opens the door. "Ok, hold on sir. I'll help you. Where are those pills. Under the seat?"

I nodded and he stretched over me to get a better view. Now or never. My right hand shot out and grabbed his glasses. The shock of the situation only allowed him to look me in my eyes.

I blinked and then looked at myself sitting there, hyperventilating.

"Looks like you should walk home instead of driving you fat fucker!" I said to my ex body and laughed him in the face. I left him there in the state of pure shock. He tried to get me, but he wasn't used to this new obese body and couldn't even get out of the car.

I can't believe it actually worked. I smiled at my new beautiful face in the rearview mirror and put on the sun glasses.

"Well officer. Looks like we got a lot of exploring tonight. How about we visit some old friends of mine?" I couldn't help but keep looking at my new reflection.

I arrived to my favourite gay bar. Why favourite you ask? Well, all the customers there were incredibly fit, sexy and horny as fuck. All of the have already swapped an they were the ones who got me this opportunity for a new life.

I smashed the door open. "Police. Everybody on the ground!!!" I screamed holding my gun aiming into the ceiling.

Nobody moved for a moment and then they all cheered.

"No way, we thoughtyou'd never get him. Come here, let's check you out. Give us some posing action, officer!"

Yeahhh. You can imagine how the evening continued right. And hey. If you wanna join our club, just head straight to the bar. We'll help you pick a new body of your dreams

[theresattrpgforthat]

Any games with a lot of collaborative world building?

THEME: Collaborative Worldbuilding

Hello friend! I have so many games for you. At the end of this recommendation post is a list of other posts I've made that are directly related to this theme!

Data, Nerves + Acquisition, by Ben Newbon

Based on the Beak, Feather & Bone SRD, this game gives you a way to build out your world and develop communities within it organically, all the while creating your own stories and lore to fill in the gaps.

Built on another critically-acclaimed city builder, DNA uses a deck of cards to generate a city and the factions that live within it. Players will generate Data, which corresponds to a person or faction; Nerves, which corresponds to the faction the characters interact with; and Acquisition, which represents what each new faction’s goals are. At the end of the game you should have a city that is criss-crossed with territory, relationships, and threats that give the city a unique feel.

Data, Nerves + Acquisition is designed to create a cyberpunk or futuristic city, although the creator states that the setting is still rather flexible.

In This World, by Ben Robbins

Nations have borders. Police have badges. Dragons breathe fire. You work for money. That's the world we've come to expect. But in this world—the world we create together—we can question those assumptions and imagine alternatives. And instead of just making one world, we'll make a whole string, each exploring a different slice of what could be… all in a few hours.

In This World is a fast game of big creativity, by Ben Robbins, the creator of Microscope and Kingdom. It is designed from the ground up so that anyone can play it, even someone who has never played any kind of story game before, and have no problem just jumping right in.

It overcomes the usual challenge of inventing ideas out of the blue by starting with a framework of real world facts, things we already know, and then inviting players to stand those ideas on their head and imagine how the world could be different.

In This World is designed for making more than one world at once, using a series of speculative questions - a number of what-if’s. What if vacations were much more common? What if everyone in this world travelled by train? What if this world had libraries for more than just books?

In This World is also designed to be no-prep and GM-less, which gives everyone equal control over the creativity of the world, and doesn’t require a lot of work or set-up beforehand.

Gathering Storm: Origins, by David Blandy

This is the time of feeding, A steady glut, Of fruit and labour That has made them drowsy and complacent. The store grows, Of their alien fruit While the others, Hear whispers Of a reckoning. A different time is coming. But how will the Authority fall?

By placing your characters on a faraway planet, Gathering Storm: Origins hopes to tell a story that has parallels to a real series of events that happened in Geneva, Switzerland in ours. It uses a deck of cards and an oracle to create characters as well as events that these characters will have to navigate to determine how the people of your planet will react to the actions of an Authority that demands the production of their Alien fruit, even though that production is to the planet’s detriment. If you want a futuristic metaphor for political actions that have had a very real effect on our world, you might want to check out Gathering Storm.

Planetes, by Cambilla Zamboni

Welcome to Planétes, a language-learning tabletop role-playing game in which you will create cities and communities, and you will become Dwellers and Wanderers. While shaping and exploring your communities, you will discuss and compare your values, and decide whether to stay in your city or explore new ones. Throughout this process, you will use the target language to interact with other communities, enriching your perspective and reflecting on your experience without relying on familiar structures. 

This is not just a roleplaying game - it’s also a language learning exercise meant to be used in a room of language learners, and it’s designed to work with very large groups. Multiple tables create their cities and their characters, and then each city sends one Wanderer to another city to visit and learn about the culture. Wanderers will ask the new cities questions, and the city members will do their best to answer. The Wanderers return to their home cities with the new information, coloured by their character’s worldview and values. At the end of the game, each character will have to decide to either stay in their city of origin, or move to another city - and the migration that happens will change core elements of the city.

Planétes exists on a single brochure, making it easy to print and hand out to a large group of people. If you want a game that works for large groups and can double as a learning exercise, I recommend this game.

The First Epoch, by Tib Winterfield.

Work with your players to build out the pantheons of your world, give them the gift of creation and allow them to put their own mark on the world. 

Completely system agnostic, a light-weight and simple game to help you build a co-operatively build your campaign world. 

The First Epoch is a world-creation game from the perspective of the gods, creating a mythology alongside a series of truths that will exist in the world that you create. Each player embodies a god and chooses specific domains. Every turn, one player will establish truths about how their domains work, and then roll Fate dice (dice with + and - on them instead of numbers) to determine the impact these truths have on the world. At the end of the game, there is a twist that will challenge all of the gods, and leave you with an end-state that you cannot predict.

If you really like mythology and want to re-write physics, magic, or how death works in your game, this is probably the game for you.

City Upon A Hill, by Hunter J Allen

City Upon A Hill is a table top collaborative city building game for any number of players. It requires a full deck of playing cards and note taking tools.

This is a game about building up a city and watching it fall. Work with your friends to populate a city full of life, commerce, legends, traditions, and secrets, and then bring the city to its knees through death, conflict, deficit, and crumbling infrastructure. Bring the city to a peak during its Boom era, and guide the city down to ruin in its Bust era, creating a setting rich in history and tragedy. Draw cards to decide the city's fate, working together to weave a tapestry that tells the story of your City Upon A Hill.

City Upon A Hill is divided into two phases: Boom & Bust. Boom follows events and details that define the city’s success, and reflects a heyday of some kind. Bust marks the decline of the city, through a series of unfortunate events and changes that affect the citizens’ well being. The game is played using a deck of cards, with the first Joker draw sparking the transition to the Bust, and the second Joker draw ending the game. I think this game is a really interesting way to create the history of a once-great city, baking in information about industry, tourism, infrastructure, and economic changes that affect the city and likely also the world around it. If you want a game that has somewhat of a melancholy ending, I recommend City Upon A Hill.

Our New Neighbours, by Whimsy Machine

In this small village, at least a few hours’ drive from any city of note, a small community has grown a bizarre polyp. As spring turns to summer, the roiling heat hatches the eggs of a startling development. New neighbours scuttle and squirm and gallop from the bushes and dirt and into unlocked sheds, messy mudrooms, and stinky attics of the village. Mutants are here, they’re weird, and they’re not sure what to bring to the potluck.

This is a collaborative storytelling, community-building, and map-making game, telling the unraveling tale of a village beset by oddities. The players take on non-specific roles, occasionally dipping into the voice of individuals, to weave something larger together.

Our New Neighours uses both a deck of cards and polyhedral dice to flesh out your map. The dice are first rolled onto a piece of paper to determine where on the map specific locations can be found, and the numbers rolled will determine how various places feel about the new arrival of Mutants. The cards are used to both generate mutations for your characters, as well as their needs. Once you have these defined, the cards will be used to generate events that may help or hinder the mutants - and prompt you as the players to respond.

Other Recommendation Posts To Check Out…

Two-Player Worldbuilders

World-Building & Roleplaying

Town-Builders

Map-Making Games

[saltylandland]

‘Who hasn’t jerked off while their family was fighting downstairs?’

I.E I loved Lisa Frankenstein and while I don’t want to see cole sprouse in a porno (cuz I really don’t lol) this scene would’ve slapped so this post and this poll is what decided this fic. Sorry if this is unreadable I mostly wrote it sleep deprived

Warnings: y’all heard of David being the hidden romantic, but are you prepared for somewhat romantic! Marko? (More like virgin, obsessed with the reader) Vibrator, somewhat voyeuristic? Also Marko can turn into a bat instead of a revamped corpse for the purposes of our story

Also go watch Lisa Frankenstein y’all it’s so good

As you walk through the door you feel your soul escaping you, floating around dizzyingly. Surely it’s finding its way to hell before your body follows it, not that you particularly believed in hell anyway.

Greeting you in the front foyer is your father and step sister, with varied states of worry. Lovingly contrasted by your numbness. You bring her into a hug, comforting her over her missing mother. With a sharp sting you feel the bat in your pocket bite you through your clothes.

With a hiss you jump out of the embrace “ow you little shit” rubbing near the spot where he’d bitten you mutter quietly. Your sister looks at you through her tears, “what?” You subconsciously hit your pocket as nerves rack through you. “I said you must be going through it, hah ha”

Your sister nods with a rueful smile “yeah, I think we’re going to make a police report, would you like to join us?” Your back straightens as you inch up the stairs away from her “oh, you know, I choose to believe that she will be here first thing in the morning, making a police report makes it feel real, ya know?” With a watery smile she pulls you back in for a hug before you bolt, blissfully unaware of her mother’s two killers in front of her. “Yeah, she’ll be home tomorrow, then we can all laugh together about the missing person report”

“Yeah, truely” and with that you leap up the stairs to your room.

Even with the distance between them you could still hear your father’s and panicked step sister talking. Slowly you close your door before leaving it open a crack as Marko jumps out of your pocket, swiftly changing into his human form as soon as he could. Buzzing about, he digs through your closet for pyjamas and you two get ready for bed. It feels oddly… domestic.

Marko gets to bed first, patting the space beside him as you slowly crawl into your place. You heave a tired sigh as the day sets in on you, as you watch Marko grab the ‘massager’, offering to ‘massage’ you for your troubles.

Looking at his eager face you wouldn’t have been able to even conceive the look of utter bloodthirst he had on as he ‘got rid of the evidence’. But looking at his expression now, you don’t feel anything you probably should feel isn’t present. You didn’t want to go to the psyche ward your ‘intuitive’ step mother wanted to send you too, and looking at the person who made that go away…

He’s still fiddling with the vibrator, waiting till you let him massage you. Reaching for it, you stiltedly lean over. “You know… it’s not a massager actually… actually it’s used for…” gesturing wildly a bit, you gently push the wand down to your upper thigh. You see his back straighten as he hesitates for a second on what to do.

Trailing it up your thigh your body does a full body shiver as you giggle from nerves. There were countless times you’ve used the vibratior yourself, but there’s something about the alien feeling of the wand exploring your body in someone else’s hand. Up and over your stomach gently it goes all the way to your neck and back. Just like how he’s done before with his normal massages. This time, his lips trail over the same areas, ghosting over your skin carefully. Devotedly.

Marko watches your reactions with rapid attention, as the wand starts to dip back down to the lower half of your body. It started agonisingly slow, but as your breath hitches, he picks up the pace with an eager grin. He’s so close to your pussy you hold yourself back from grabbing at his hand to pull him closer, until you suddenly hear from beyond the loud thrumming of your wand. Your step sister crying louder as she talks on the phone and- oh fuck

Marko presses the wand right on your mound, so close to your clit, yet still a bit clumsy. But with the prep beforehand to make you all hot and bothered, it feels heavenly. Shaking you go grab his hand to push it away but he holds steady, your voice pitching uncontrollably higher that you worry your family below can hear you. Marko shows no remorse nor any signs of stopping, not that you’d want him too.

Moving the wand around to find the best reaction you can give and once he finds your clit you give him quite a show. Half leaning on his chest your back arches as you moan. One hand on the pillows below you and the other taken captive by Marko’s other hand. Which he holds up to his mouth to kiss. A sweet gentlemanly action as he rubs the sex toy directly over your clit.

You still listen disconnectedly to your family downstairs as they talk on the phone, but that worry only heightens your high. With a final desperate gasp you cum in your pyjamas. The lights in the house flicker from the voltage your vibrator requires.

Basking in the afterglow of your orgasm, you listen to the sounds downstairs, your family have since finished the police report and dispersed to who knows where.

Fiddling with your clothes while you were distracted, Marko pressed the wand onto your bare skin. Looking at him quickly, you start to melt into his embrace once again.

[having-conniptions]

Okay maybe I'm stating the obvious here but of course nothing that Great changes actually changes irl because this is not time travel it's his life flashing before his eyes it's him reliving these events within his own memory but with loads of "what if"s that his brain lets him explore

So no one he saved was actually saved. He's living in a changed memory, but it's not having any real impact on what happened.

Dome is Tonkla's brother, the first body that the police found. His head bashed in with a rock by Title. The second body must be Title who got his head bashed in by a vengeful Tonkla. We never saw this happen from Great's perspective because in Great's changed timeline Dome survives and Tonkla has no reason to kill Title. We're seeing one timeline from Great's perspective, and another one from Tonkla's.

Although we also can't ignore that Tonkla had this little hallucination of his brother coming home, almost as if the timelines were colliding. For now my theory is that this is still not Great's near-death experience impacting reality, but rather the moment Tonkla's story somehow becomes relevant to Great's memories, the moment Tonkla is also included in Great's hallucinated timeline - him seeing/hearing Dome for a moment might signify a switch (in storytelling) between timelines, meaning from now on we might see Tonkla's story in Great's timeline instead of in the real one or maybe we'll even see both

[marcusrobertobaq]

DBH worldbuilding info u're supposed to know

The collection

US is having major issues with sea level rising quickly, making even the wealthy residents deciding not living right on the coast anymore. Polar ice has melted to an extent that rising sea levels have many states struggling to keep the water out of their coastal towns (Magazine)

CyberLife's intention with complex level humanization was to literally make people welcome 'em home like they're family instead of getting creeped about it (Magazine)

VR games are very common by 2038 (Magazine)

The President Cristina Warren is an ex-vlogger with no experience in government that relied on social media and celebrity status to be elected in 2036, originally a republican representative. There's a "rumor" CyberLife helped she getting elected by corrupt means and that's why they're "too close" (Magazine, Gallery, Cut concepts)

Warren got an approval of only 33% due to the sequence of bad decisions (Magazine)

The world's population is 10 billion by 2038 (Magazine)

Obesity is in a record high in Detroit by 2038 (Magazine)

NATO is divided about the Russia vs US conflict in the Arctic, they think everybody can benefit of the region without war but Warren is totally pushing for a conflict (Magazine)

Rare minerals used in synthetizing Thirium got Russia and US biting each other in the North Pole in recent yrs. Android manufacture dominates both the US and Russian economies (Magazine)

Kamski being the one creating Thirium 310 and biocomponents more than a decade ago suggests other areas with these minerals were already explored, the North Pole being the last one (Assumption)

Police is constantly using marketing data to identify criminals (Magazine)

Dating websites usually have less than 5% of women using it (Magazine)

0.4% of world population holds 94% of global wealth by 2038 (Magazine)

By 2038 there's constant propaganda selling Canada as the true land of freedom (Magazine)

No matter how u play as Markus u gonna eventually have event contexts distorted, including fake news. They're called criminal org and terrorists no matter what u do (Observation)

CyberLife developed a nano-android to help combating cancer and diseases that can extend the human life-span even reaching a semi-immortality status - and it's very promising as it was already succesful in doing its task (Magazine)

US life expectancy is 91 by 2038 (Magazine)

By 2038 US got a aging population but not enough young people to support the economy with the unemployment rate at 37.3%, and the "job" area is dominated by androids (Magazine, Observation)

When the rebellion starts the gov consider bringing retirees back to work as the country lack qualified manpower to deal with the withdraw of androids (Cut dialogue)

Only two countries have android industries that rival the United States: Russia and China, they're also in a space race of sorts (Magazine)

Team sports like baseball got at least 1 android per team (Magazine)

An advanced high speed train was completed in 2038, connecting New York and LA in less than 2,5 hrs and there's a high flux of east coast folks going to LA (Magazine)

Suburban prices there have rose 64% and California folks are worried they gonna get pushed out of the region (Magazine)

Detroit is currently in a Red Ice epidemic with it being the easiest route the poor go, either by selling or using it (Magazine)

There was a Red Ice Task Force from 2027 to 2031 that made major arrests and drug seizure during the first epidemic (Gallery, Articles)

Bees are extinct by 2038 and people expect a global famine. CyberLife is already making partnerships to create bee-robots while other groups try finding new alternatives (Magazine)

Environmentalists say the Earth’s environment is beyond repair (Magazine)

Global rainforests have been reduced by 79% since 2000 and coastal corals by 58% (Magazine)

During the events of the game an earthquake kills 10k people in China (Magazine)

CyberLife has partnership with the Department of Defense in the development and supply of military androids, something that started in the early 30s after it was approved to limit human casualties in the battlefield (Magazine, Observation)

In 2031 the US gov ordered 2 million androids for use in the infantry, mostly SQ800 units already being deployed in 2032 replacing human soldiers.

Michigan also announced the purchase of 5k auxiliary androids to assist law enforcement department but following the 2029 Android Act they can't use weapons (PlayStation Blog)

U.S. Army soldiers are equipped with advanced equipment to keep up with their android "subordinates" (Gallery)

Stock exchange falls 10% on fear of Arctic conflict by 2038 (Magazine)

68% of men prefer sex with an android to a human woman and with 52% of men saying they’ve tried the experience at least once (Magazine)

CyberLife currently got around 120 million androids across the globe and some people suspect they're using 'em to spy on people (Magazine)

There are at least 200k military android units already in service across the US military by 2038 and the gov is buying more for the Arctic conflict, an effort to double the infantry size (Magazine)

The US Army is 60~80% android, with humans mainly as commanders and strategists but they tend to use complex AIs to help with assistance (Magazine)

Sales of android intimate partners are very high as lotta men and women prefer living with an android than a human partner (Magazine)

Birthrate is at record low, population decline is said to be irreversible, marriage is in decline as traditional families become “thing of the past” and the divorce rate only increases (Magazine, News, Observation)

US is currently in an "antidepressant epidemic" due to the constant contact with technology, with people even lacking emotional development (Magazine)

The AX400 price is $899 by 2038 (Magazine)

5% of the music market is produced by human musicians. An android boyband Here4U is favorite to win Best Act, Best Video at global music awards - which are human record awards (Magazine, News)

Scientists found "alien" life on Titan: microorganisms living hundreds of kilometers below the surface, in an ocean of salt water protected by a thick layer of ice. The machine-i-forgot-the-name was sent in 2019 (Magazine)

Lute turtles, polar bears, mountain gorillas, african elephants and several species of tiger are extinct by 2038, with CyberLife now making some sorta android zoos (Magazine)

Canada is an android-free zone they don't sell or have any laws about it there as they don't permit androids inside 'em borders (Magazine)

CyberLife has recently released a tech demo of a quaterback android, something that got the Anti-Android Fan Group pissed (Magazine)

There's some sorta quantum magnet being studied that got the potential of cleaning carbon from the air (Magazine)

The Anti-Automation League and CrowneCars representants are in a discussion about ethical decision-making capability of autonomous cars (Magazine)

CyberLife has made a new quantum supercomputer, capable of one billion billion operations per second used to calculate the probability of mass extinction events (Magazine)

Hackers targeting systems like solar panels for ransom seems to be common thing (Magazine)

NASA announced the launch of a five android crew to explore Io (first time it's a full-machine crew). The journey will last three years (Magazine)

CyberLife is a trillionaire company by 2038, they were already billionaires a decade before (Magazine)

The first android ever officially released by CyberLife was the ST200 Chloe, costing 65k in 2024. By 2027 they already had 1mi androids sold (PlayStation Blog)

[continues on the next reblog]

[fandom-geek17]

Why I actively think Tyler will be redeemed and Wyler will be endgame based on actual clues and my knowledge about movie-making (and not just because I am a raging Tyler apologist)

This is a long one so strap yourselves in, hahaha

First of all, Hunter Doohan confirmed that Tyler’s feelings for Wednesday were real because he didn’t know who she was or her significance to Laurel’s plan when they first met at the Weathervane. But I’d go even further and claim that he didn’t know her significance during the entire first episode. If he knew, why would he ever offer her a ride out of Jericho and offer her the police file that inadvertently led to her cracking the case and bringing Laurel down (but the argument could also be made that that’s why he gave her that file, to bring his abuser down).

Wednesday makes it abundantly clear over the entire season that she has no interest in Xavier whatsoever and is constantly turned off/annoyed by his presence and antics. And this might just be me personally, but Xavier reminds me a lot of an ex of mine who was extremely entitled, selfish, immature and giving major incel vibes. I feel like Xavier is the type of guy who is nice to a girl only when he is interested and/or wants something. And the way he treated Bianca at the Rave’N (immediate no-no) and immediately goes into pity party-mode whenever someone rejects him just irks me. But again, that might just be me.

Now compare that with Wednesday’s reaction to Tyler’s antics. Wednesday is not someone who wants closeness in the beginning, in any shape or form. She is honest, direct and blunt, with no interest in pretending she enjoys something to be polite. Yet she doesn’t object when Tyler manhandles her in ep 2 (in the forest), she never denies her interest in him in ep 4, her first reaction to attending the Rave’N with Xavier is ‘a bullet to the head’ whilst her reaction to attending with Tyler is to immediately start looking for a dress in her closet. She often seeks out his company when she doesn’t really have a reason to, like when she went through the trouble of going all the way to the Weathervane to ask Tyler about the meetinghouse instead just asking anyone else working at Pilgrim World. These small details are to me the ‘signals’ Tyler was referring to. And I think he also just felt the energy between them, or maybe when you’re a 16 year old boy, most things can be interpreted as ‘signals’ if there’s an interest on his part. Or it was just straight up manipulation, as Hunter stated on his instragram. Either way, we can’t deny that Wednesday seems to enjoy Tyler’s presence more than Xavier’s.

Speaking of Wednesday, this is WEDNESDAY ADDAMS. People claim Xavier is the “healthier choice”, which might be true for any other character. But I feel like it’s very OOC for Wednesday to choose one above the other for being “healthier”, not that I believe Xavier would be much healthier. Wednesday went as far as canonically confirming that Tyler is her type BECAUSE he’s a serial killing monster.

The Addams’ Family have a long history of embracing all things weird and unconventional. Fester would be over the moon hearing that a Hyde of all outcasts (his young crush) has captured Wednesday’s heart. Gomez and Morticia would be more than happy to give Tyler all the love and security he never got from his own family. Morticia smiles fondly when Pugsley mentions missing being waterboarded by Wednesday, I don’t think she would have any trouble embracing a traumatized outcast submitted to abuse and torture and then forced to do someone else’s bidding against their will. She mama-bear instincts would kick up.

Hunter Doohan also said that one of the things he looks forward to exploring in season 2 (now confirmed, yay!) is Tyler’s relationship with the Hyde, pulling each side. Who is the real Tyler and who is the Hyde? Does he have active control over the Hyde’s actions or are they all controlled by his master? Remember, we technically have no idea what Tyler did of his own free will and what he was forced to say and do (including that last fight in ep 8). I imagine the Hyde being more of a split personality rather just than man vs monster. The question is if only the Hyde-personality had access to his monster form.

We see that Tyler rebelled against Laurel when he could, when he wasn’t actively forced to do something. For example when he slipped Wednesday the police file (if we believe that theory) and when he chose to keep Eugene alive (Laurel said “take care of it”, clearly meaning “kill him” but since she never used the word ‘kill’, I believe he saw his chance). He also keeps pointing Wednesday in the right direction, even when he probably wasn’t supposed to according to his master, like when he helped her find the meeting house, helped her break into Laurel’s home, chased her and Enid into the basement where they could find more clues.

Grooming, abuse, torture, manipulation, and mind control!!! Need I say more? Tyler is a true victim of his circumstances and society. We must admit that it was pretty easy for Laurel to sink her claws into him. Lonely, traumatized boy with one dead parent and one to emotionally constipated to raise him through his trauma, and here comes Laurel and offers him the truth about his mother in exchange for mommy kink sexual advances until she kidnaps him to torture as she pleases in a cave. She basically presented herself as the sexual version of his mother that Freud loved to say young boys were so vulnerable to. Of course this lonely boy would fall for her act. Laurel even described herself as a plant metaphor in episode 4: some carnivorous varieties use sexual trickery or deception. She then made him think this entire nefarious plan was about him getting revenge on the way outcasts treated his mother.

We see Tyler screaming out for help, subtly and literally, when he tells Wednesday that he wants to “get out of this hellhole town” and later when he’s screaming in the bathtub in ep 3.

The writers keep mentioning Wyler’s “primal attraction” and how Wednesday is drawn to Tyler’s dark side even from the start when she didn’t know what he was. And I truly believe he feels the same way, he is so smitten when she states she would dump piranhas in the swimming pool again. They are both attracted to the darker aspects of their personalities, whereas I feel like Xavier has this romanticized view of Wednesday in his head and when she disproves that by being her morbid, honest self, his first instinct is to whine and feel sorry for himself. He doesn’t embrace every part of her character.

Netflix makes Wyler a large part of their promotion of the show, going as far as pinning Wyler-positive comments on Instagram and making Wyler at the dance their thumbnail for the show on Netflix and hyping Hunter Doohan in general.

If you compare Wyler and Wavier scenes, they tend to play very soft music and use soft/warm lighting during the Wyler scenes. Wavier scenes, sometimes have this too, but never as prominent as with Wyler. From what I’ve seen with other media, that is usually foreshadowing of the producers’ larger plan.

I have a Filler Couple Theory! And that is that the couple that becomes canon in the middle of a show’s entire runtime is almost never canon by the time the show ends. There are exceptions, of course. But generally, shows tend to follow a similar format: couple 1 is introduced as an idea in season 1, they may or may not become canon but the tension is there, for whatever reason couple 2 becomes canon in season 2/3 to create drama and more tension before couple one becomes endgame in season 3/3 (example Stancy in ST, Benvi in NHIE). An exception to this rule is if couple one is a blowburn over several seasons without a love triangle (example: Peraltiago in B99). The writers of Wednesday have planned 4 seasons. They end season 1 with Wyler broken up, hint that Wavier might take more precedence in season 2, and yet still keeps hyping Wyler as much as they do. I think Wavier will be a distraction/filler for Wednesday as Tyler regains her trust and they build so much sexual tension.

So, this was long and kind of all over the place. But as Enid, I write in my voice. And I will admit that some of these points may be down to pure manipulation on Tyler’s part, especially the signals thing. But part of what I love about this show is the ambiguity, the moral grey areas, the way they make a point of embracing the dark side of humanity and loving the characters through it. Until the show canonically confirms that there is no hope for Tyler/Wyler, I will continue to ship it. And I want to add that my will to ship Wyler has nothing to do with who I would personally choose for myself. If given the choice, I would date Enid before my mind could form the phrase ‘toxic relationship’, and I’m very much one of those boring straight people. But as a romantic partner for a dark, morbid character like Wednesday Addams, I would choose Tyler any day.

Tagging: @therulerofallpotatos

[mariacallous]

Nearly four years ago, the Department of Homeland Security stated for the first time that domestic violent extremists, rather than foreign terrorists, had become “the most persistent and lethal threat” to the United States. The F.B.I.’s director later told a congressional committee that the primary threat came from adherents to “some kind of white-supremacist-type ideology.” When Joe Biden took office, shortly after the attack on the Capitol, he directed staff to draft the first-ever “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” which promised “a comprehensive approach to addressing the threat while safeguarding bedrock American civil rights and civil liberties.” But, in the intervening time, have we become any safer? In a riveting narrative from this week’s issue, David D. Kirkpatrick explores:

The limits that law-enforcement agencies face in going after potential homegrown terrorists, and how a growing number of amateur investigators and vigilantes—who make use of the latest technology and operate without the “protections, training, or restraints that come with a badge”—have stepped into the void.

How far-right groups often operate as multilevel-marketing schemes, in which members are incentivized to sell branded materials to an ever-growing number of recruits, effectively paying for their operations by amassing new members—even those who aren’t yet “fashed out,” meaning fully fascist.

Why the F.B.I. is reluctant to categorize extremists with terms such as “far right” or “white nationalist,” using instead much broader categories such as “domestic violent extremism,” “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism,” and “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism.”

The story of an operator with the code name Vincent Washington who infiltrated a white-nationalist organization called Patriot Front, and offered the trove of information he obtained to an online publication called Unicorn Riot, rather than to the police.

[spottedsnake]

if i’m being totally honest, i didn’t initially like this part of chapter 39, but it’s really grown on me after some more thought and shrue’s expansion on the idea.

to me it felt like an unnecessary simplification of the complex ethical questions that the podcast asks about the practice of sacrifice and how it fits into the world it’s built. “sacrifice is bad because it doesn’t work” is a less interesting claim to explore than “sacrifice is bad because of the moral implications of having a system that is designed to kill you if you step outside of the preconceived societal boundaries, even though it is significantly beneficial in some aspects of life.”

but looking back on this scene, i don’t really think that’s a fair assessment. what the slag executive is pointing to in this instance is that the practices of sacrifice and sainthood in the silt verses world have created an economic environment based on dangerous and unsustainable shortcuts.

the police force uses the cloak in order to reduce personnel costs without reducing workload. instead of developing more robust energy infrastructure, both the peninsula and the linger straits rely on the saint electric for their energy. even in this same episode there’s a saint of creativity created and used by a university, a place supposed to be where people are taught to think critically for themselves! and there’s a lot more examples of companies and individuals taking shortcuts like this because, well, that’s what they’re incentivized to do.

who is going to spend the time and money to develop better skills and technology when all you have to do is throw a person into the killing machine and you get the same if not better outcome?

if we suppose that the linger straits and the peninsula follow our own world’s pattern of economic and demographic development, they experienced a population boom during a period of technological advancement, decreasing the negative consequences of repeated sacrifices and forced sainthoods. now that their economies have somewhat stabilized, it’s reasonable to assume they had a corresponding drop in birth rate, changing the broad cost-benefit analysis of having an economy that runs on literal flesh and blood.

not to mention that now, the companies are experiencing diminishing and even negative returns. and being that they have tossed out every other tool in the toolbox, they are going to hammer this problem until they force it to be a nail. will a sacrifice for every floor of a building help its stability? maybe not, but it’ll probably be profitable. more sacrifices might help in the short term, but it’s not going to change the fact that capitalism relies on exponential growth, and their society cannot support that. any business that stops their worship to focus on other methods is probably not only angering a now very powerful god, but also severely handicapping themselves in the competitive market. so every corporation keeps throwing more resources and lives into a growing sinkhole, just to try to survive.

“we don’t know how to stop” is a very apt description of the current state of the silt verses economy, and also the problem that shrue and paige are answering. kill your gods; learn what you have lost and what you have abandoned.

[violetlunette]

In reference to Lost in a book with Stitch

So, here’s an odd question: (SPOILERS!)

How did your Yuus react to Floyd and Lilia siding with Stitch over Gantu in the Stitch Event? (Pretend they have zero meta knowledge about Stitch or Lilia’s past.)

To those who need a memory boost:

Yuu and some other students get sucked into a book, which land them on a deserted island.

To the cast, it is unclear if they are in the book or if they were teleported somewhere, or even another world.

Lilia attempts to get a visual and learns that there’s basically a magical barrier around the island that keeps him from flying to get help.

Azul and Floyd attempt to swim for help but can’t due to the fact they are unable to strip.

As everyone debates on what to do, a mysterious ship crashes. Hoping that they may find a clue, everyone goes to the crash sight.

Grim arrives first and claims to see a centipede beast. However, when the others arrive, they see a blue “dog” instead. He is revealed to be called Stitch.

Despite the fact that Stitch instantly attacks everyone, Lilia and Floyd are charmed by him.

However, moments later another alien appears and reveals himself to be Gantu, a police officer.

He informs everyone that Stitch is a criminal and demands that the students hand him over. Floyd and Lilia refuse on the grounds that they think Stitch is fun and cute. This action results in the cast being attacked by Gantu for the rest of the event.

So, to restate the question, how did your Yuus feel about Lilia and Floyd’s choice?

On one hand, Stitch appears to be a cute little critter. He’s mischievous, but overall seems to mean no harm.

Plus, Gantu is obviously militaristic and acts intimidating when he first meets the group.

He claims that Stitch is a criminal, but as Lilia states, there’s no reason to believe that. Stitch doesn’t act like a criminal or even something that’s enough of a threat to warrant being hunted down. Gantu doesn’t even list the crimes, just ordering they surrender the pup. Something seems off here.

On the other hand, while there was no reason to trust Gantu, there was no reason to distrust him either, other than appearance. If anything, Stitch had already shown he’s the suspicious one from Grim’s words and by attacking over half the party without provocation.

Adding to this, everyone was stranded on an island that they themselves saw couldn’t escape on their own. On top of that, at the time they hadn’t a chance to properly explore the island and so had no idea if the area had food, drinkable water, or was safe.

Had they attempted to bargain at least, the party could have gotten an ally with resources to get information and whatever else they needed. Not to mention that antagonizing him endangered all of them, as Gantu is revealed to have a robotic army and could have done worse if he had a laser like Ortho.

Regardless, Lilia and Floyd thoughtlessly took the choice from everyone else that could have placed everyone in danger if the rating and genre had been different. And they did so for no reason other than the fact they thought Stitch was entertaining—or at least that was the only reason they shared.

(Their choice wasn’t wrong in the long run, but my question is focused on the moment Gantu showed up and demanded Stitch.)

I dunno, I just thought too hard about this when I asked myself how my Yuu would react in this scenario and wondered if anyone else did the same. I would love it if people would share how their Yuus reacted at that moment or how you would. (Again, with no meta knowledge of the Stitch movie or that Lilia's a general.)

[gatheringbones]

[“Punishment for perpetrators can certainly, understandably bring satisfaction for both victims and their supporters. But as abolitionist scholar-activist Mariame Kaba has argued, personal anger and vendettas shouldn’t be the driving force behind policymaking. “It’s not wrong to feel what you feel—relief, or even happiness—when the system snaps up the powerful, but the only way to achieve real justice is to build it ourselves, outside of the system,” Kaba has said. “Abolitionism is not a politics mediated by emotional responses.”

State-rendered punishment for abusers also doesn’t improve the material conditions of victims’ lives; it doesn’t provide them with mental health services or other health care, or address the economic ramifications of surviving abuse by compensating them in any way. As the abolitionist writer Micah Herskind has written, “Our response to harm does not need to be either a cage or doing nothing at all, though these are generally the only options on offer from the state.” Further, “punishment, consequences, and accountability are distinct categories.” And while abolitionists oppose policies rooted in punishment—“the infliction of cruelty and suffering on people”—they “firmly believe in consequences (requirements for and demands made of those who have caused harm), which are determined in direct relationship to the harm in question,” Herskind wrote. These processes involve all who were impacted by the harm in question to collectively determine steps toward accountability and call on the perpetrator to “[take] responsibility for harm caused and [work] toward repair and changed behavior.”

Anti-carceral scholars and advocates have put forth frameworks known as transformative justice and restorative justice to address and repair harm without further reproducing harm or relying on processes that retraumatize victims. Restorative justice brings together the victim, perpetrator, and the community without imposing the involvement of state actors or law enforcement. It centers the victim and their needs to heal and determines how the perpetrator can make amends as well as what needs to be done to ensure the community at large feels safe. Transformative justice is broader—it requires us to proactively work to change the social conditions and systemic inequities that cause harm to happen in the first place.

“Transformative justice asks how we can respond to harm without creating more harm and transform the conditions that led to harm. A transformative justice framework rejects the victim-perpetrator binary in recognition that we all experience and cause harm,” Herskind wrote. Restorative justice and transformative justice go hand in hand. They’re rooted in an understanding that the carceral state is fundamentally unequipped to address issues of interpersonal violence and harm; instead it reproduces the conditions that lead to violence—the funding of prisons and policing at the expense of community resources—and disproportionately, deliberately targets people of color and marginalized people. As I’ve explored at length in this book, state violence and interpersonal violence are inseparable from each other—as a result, the state can never be a reliable arbiter to address interpersonal harm and violence.”]

kylie cheung, from survivor injustice: state-sanctioned abuse, domestic violence, and the fight for bodily autonomy, 2023

[threefolddefencespeech]

WorldCon!

So - WorldCon's over. I'm safely back home, very tired, only mildly ill, definitely getting the con drop or at least experiencing far too many post con emotions (what do you mean there won't be another one nearby for five years?). So perfect time to write a bit about it. I'm not going to get everything in here, but let's ramble incoherently about some highlights.

The Hugos

My spouse (and the rest of their team) won a Hugo! I am so proud and happy for them - it is, I say with incredible bias and no objectivity, very very well deserved. How could getting to celebrate that not be a highlight?

So. Let's move on to some book opinions. This year, I managed to read almost all of the best novel finalists (bar Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, which I'm still a few chapters into and ping ponging off. Let's say I'm pretty sure where my opinion was going to lie). So I get to have some more detailed opinions than most years, which is fun/regrettable for anyone who got an earful from me about Starter Villain!

It's always interesting to see what makes the Hugo shortlist. This year, a truly massive gulf emerged between my two favourites, the middle-of-the-roads, and one real "no, really, why was this here?" option.

Out in front were Saint of Bright Doors (Vajra Chandrasekera) and Some Desperate Glory (Emily Tesh). I can already see this post getting enormous, so I'll try and be quick (this is a lie).

Saint of Bright Doors is wonderful - the first chapter introduces us to a clear chosen one narrative, with Fetter raised with a destiny: to kill his cult leader father. The second rejects it utterly. Fetter ignores his destiny and his mother's calls, and immigrates to a city - one that has elements of socialist ideal, but gradually reveals more and more of itself to be a fascist police state, and in every case is wonderfully strange. He joins a group of fellow religious "unchosen ones". He drifts. His father's cult grows in influence, and threatens to pull him once more into orbit - but this is not so conventional a story as to fully let it. And he becomes fascinated with the city's bright doors, which lead nowhere, and are unopenable. In a less talented writer's hands, this would feel disjointed. Instead it's wonderful - a dreamy-but-grounded, mythic-but-real story of aimless reality pitted against religious destiny, of cults and pogroms and the structures that lie beneath the world. I have my problems with the ending. But had I liked it more, I suspect it would have been a worse book.

Some Desperate Glory tells a story of a militarised future human society, living to avenge the Earth. It is also, in many ways, a cult. Where Some Desperate Glory particularly succeeds is that its protagonist isn't an outlier. How many dystopias have you read in which the lead is an outcast, or always felt subtly wrong in the society, never quite fit in? But Kyr is in so many ways this future society's model citizen. Which makes her growth - her experimentation in the wider world - and the ways in which this society still abuses her, and still fails her because she can't live up to its ideals, far more powerful. She's not a comfortable head to make a home in, at least to start with, but it's a far better novel for that. While what the novel's doing is far clearer than Saint, it does go to some interesting places - and explores these cultish power structures on various scales. I have quibbles and gripes. Do I wish more page space had been devoted to developing the novel's visions of alternative versions of Kyr, rather than slamming in character development in fast forward? Yes, and I would have happily sacrificed a few big action setpieces (which is where I suspect that space went) to get there. But it's still a powerful book.

Saint definitely my preference there, but both worthy winners.

Then we had the middle of the pack.

Leckie's Translation State was... fine? I expected more, though. We had some alien weirdness, but it was wrapped around a story which had the exact same plot arc as a typical YA arranged marriage novel, with the characters ending up in exactly the same places you'd expect. Aside from one, who simply gets forgotten about. It was perfectly pleasant, but revolutionising the genre this is not.

Martha Wells' Witch King is a secondary world fantasy, told with a flashback-interweaving-with-present-events structure, in a way that's far more evenly balanced between the two narratives than most, with the past narrative holding most of the explanation of characters and relationships highly relevant to the present. However, it fails to really make it work - it sacrifices a lot of character development and foreshadowing for the actual plot to get this structure working, which means the actual key revelations fall a little flat when they come. It's not a bad book! There's some fun magic system stuff, some mildly interesting possession-of-different-gendered body stuff... but it's not life changing, just a fun attempted structural twist on an otherwise pretty classic secondary world fantasy.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi - well, it's a middle eastern pirate fantasy. The historical inspiration is great here - rich and vibrant. But the prose is clunky - it's doing Historical Feminism but in a really obvious, unsubtle way that's clearly just 2024 views projected backwards, or at least that's how it seems from the "ah, we mens often think x about a powerful lady, don't we?" narrator chapter. I like engaging with these topics, but can I wish for a bit more nuance and some better writing? Mind you, I'm only a few chapters into this one, and keep bouncing off. It might get better when I push through. From what others have said, I doubt it - but I can't really say. I'm maybe being harsh from initial impressions here.

So most of this middle group are small twists or weirdnesses upon otherwise pretty familiar genre novels.

Then there's Starter Villain, which is the only "really, why is this here?" novel of the list. I suspect just because Scalzi's a big name in SFF, and name recognition gets you a long way at the nomination stage. While I might quibble with the middle group - probably there was more interesting SFF published last year? - this was a novel-length shaggy dog story. It's not funny enough to be farce or satire - but it's not doing anything else. The protagonist's main defining traits are "very divorced", "likes cats", and I suppose "vaguely nice". Everyone speaks in the same way. And this goes nowhere - other than a few jokes about dolphins and venture capitalists along the way. Maybe if this hadn't been up for the Hugo, I wouldn't have hated this so much. But I expected something. This was my first Scalzi, and I probably won't choose to repeat the experience.

So, how'd the voting turn out? Some Desperate Glory won, which I vaguely suspected - felt like it had broader appeal as a slightly more traditional novel than Saint of Bright Doors anyway. But Hugo votership, why did you do Saint quite so dirty? It's so far down the list. On the other hand - faith marginally restored by Starter Villain ending up in a clear last place.

Which is to say: probably good job overall, Hugo votership, but you're on some shaky ground. :P

The Panels

Panels! I went to lots of them. I was terribly sabotaged by my very first panel, Revolutions in Speculative Fiction, setting the bar far too high. I was largely picking panels based on people + a vaguely interesting topic, with a few exceptions. Ada Palmer's and Arkady Martine's definitely proved that method of panel picking works well.

...after Dublin, the other thing I learned (alongside picking based on people) was that I really shouldn't plan my con too inflexibly or intensively. So despite wanting to go to 4 things in every slot, I paced myself - I missed out on an interesting panel and went to hang out with people or Do Food occasionally, especially when emotion + tiredness demanded it, and I probably had a better con for it.

There were worse panels too. Several on interestingly nuanced topics had a tendency to regress into more basic topics - particularly into cultural appropriation 101. Cultural Appropriation 101 is not a bad panel topic! It's an incredibly necessary one. But it's also a panel I have been to several times now, and while I think other panels should certainly touch on it where relevant, I wanted a bit more than Different Topic 101 from "Ancient Cultures and Context" and the discussion of religion in fantasy, for instance.

Overall though, I had a good time with the panels - even when frustrating (cough, Scalzi showboating and talking over other panelists in "Systems as Villains" when he didn't actually have anything to say, cough), they were fuel for conversation with interesting people, and there were some truly interesting ideas in there too. Maybe I'll manage to incorporate a few into my own writing. I hope so.

Self-Indulgent Gender Stuff

I'll try not to ramble about this too much, but it was pretty significant to my con experience. This was my first con since coming out as a trans woman (it also coincided with my 1 year anniversary of starting HRT). Honestly, coming up to it, I was pretty stressed - despite knowing on paper that a substantial part of WorldCon is queer nerds, it didn't quite make it through to my brain, or at least I suppose endocrine system (I worry about my appearance anyway, and was just coming off a bit of a doomspiral about my features at the 12 month mark, which may not have helped!).

But everyone was genuinely very nice about it - including everyone I already knew, but who hadn't seen me since pre-transition. And you know, it did feel really good to be able to present the way I actually wanted to at other cons (pre transition, I can't deny a certain - large - amount of envy at fem con + cosplay outfits, and I actually get to do some of that now). I even got some compliments on my outfits, which was very flattering (plus one person inexplicably wanting to draw me at the Hugo afterparty).

Did that stop me from worrying? Silly question. I still spent a lot of the con convinced I looked terrible in so, so many ways, and had to frequently borrow some reassurance from spouse and friend (I'm so sorry). There were a few low points. But I'm so glad I did it. Hopefully the start of many more cons presenting more comfortably.

Plus, I have discovered a great secret. My terrible dancing is drastically improved by the addition of a swooshy skirt. (Well, maybe some other stuff helped too, but I'll go with that)

People

I've talked a lot about official, organised things where I was there as a spectator: panels, the Hugos. But really, so much of WorldCon is just spending time with lovely people.

I got to do lots of the con with spouse and a soon-to-be-ex-Oxford friend, who I have really fond memories of doing other cons with. Lots of silly late night dancing. Lots of in depth discussions, from the deeply absurd to the (maybe) absurdly deep (or maybe just the former all over again). I got to see other Oxford friends in the magic con zone! @frith-in-tombs between track stuff and @vivelabagatelle occasionally too.

I got to catch up with other friends, especially the ex-Oxford folks! It was lovely to spend more time with @howlsmovinglibrary again (who also ran some excellent panels, and has definitely sold me on this villainess book), as well as Entourage, @cardboardmoose, and others (if I haven't named you explicitly it's probably because I thought the only way I've got of naming you might be too identifiable, and I don't know your name on here).

I got to meet new people, which honestly is one of the best things at a con. I spent a lovely night chatting to @canmom about all sorts of diversely interesting things, from opera to game design - completely unexpectedly after inexplicably working up the courage to venture a "hey, you're not [tumblr name] on tumblr, are you?" (at least I didn't comment on anybody's shoelaces, is all I can say in my defence). I met a distant friend from Discord and compared very different con plans - and a truly excellent crocheted Mr Pages. I chatted with a few more in panels. I finally got to hang out with Roseanna more than in passing (typically we've wound up communicating only through a mutual friend, Entourage since we've never really overlapped properly - I remember back when she asked me about reviewing, and look how the tables have tabled!) and had a great time dissecting the Hugos. (Another very well deserved Hugo win btw). I also learned that apparently I was referred to frequently as DAF by her and said friend, and she's completely forgotten what it stood for? I have a pressing need to solve this mystery.

And of course, there are some friends I dearly miss being able to con with too. Perhaps one day we'll be able to do so again.

What Next?

As I mentioned, so many post-con emotions! Five years really is too long between travellable worldcons for my liking.

Which means resolution 1 is: maybe I should do more cons? While flying transatlantic for WorldCon feels like a Lot, I've never made it to an Eastercon before, and I think I'd like to.

I've also reached out to plan a few meetups with nearby-ish worldcon people like Roseanna - I miss the con energy, and I think I'd like to get some more chats about books and such in my life. (Alas, distance remains a barrier for yet others!)

I also want to engage with more SFF writing - I read a fair few novels, but I feel like I miss out on a lot of reviews and criticism these days, and I miss that.

And as always, I come away wanting to put more energy into my own creative work - I've been planning a bigger IF-ish game (than my small silly/gift games I've made) for a long time, and maybe this is the time I'll manage the sustained effort to make it happen (and feel like I have My Own Stuff next WorldCon!). Hehe. Well, I can dream, anyway.

I should probably also catch up on sleep at some point.

It was a wonderful, exhausting, fascinating con - thank you to everyone who made it happen, whether more generally, or for me specifically. :)

[centrally-unplanned]

Richard Hanania is one of my poster child writers for the "he is an complete idiot and also very smart" genre. I disagree with him on virtually everything, particularly core beliefs, but he nonetheless is an actual critical thinker who will come up with and explore interesting ideas, and so he is valuable to follow for exposure to good discussion from a world you are otherwise not gonna touch (and for a good laugh the other half of the time).

This is definitely one of those posts - the US right (not that the left is immune to this by any stretch, this is just about the right) is so infused with an instinct towards perpetual victmization that it becomes easy to buy into their own framing that the Right has been losing front after front in the culture war. This is the foundational premise of The Cathedral, the Moldbug-coined New Right tenet that "Cthulhu Always Swims Left" aka the left's structural advantage in controlling ~institutions~ means that in status-quo modernity culture will shift left over and over, endlessly...and therefore you need to violently overthrow the state and purge the corrupt neoliberal bureaucratic order to realize the will of the silent volke embodied in a CEO-Monarch to turn back the tide. Anyway, Hanania does a good job of pointing out that its really kinda bullshit. Tons of our culture has turned right over the past decades; gun control, education, and economics are the big topics that he mentions, and of course more exist, and its been a result combinations of public opinion shifting and the power of the state implementing agendas, aka normal politics.

Some of this is a bit of an overstatement - victories on like abortion for example haven't shifted minds, but instead exploited the US's ludicrous legal system to back-door legislative reform through the courts, its not a replicable experience in many other contexts or any other country. But the point overall stands, which gestures at the real problem - the only topic where the New Right's analysis 'holds up' is onthe sexual revolution and queer rights, revealing a movement irrationality obsessed with the sex front of the culture war. Here Hanania stumbles into his stupidity on why the right hasn't been successful fighting this, not really grappling with the fact that for example gay marriage is just really popular, this is a bottom-down fundamental sea change in how people view sex and society's role in policing it.

The mistake The Cathedral devotees make in analyzing society is that they take a single sip from a branch of the river of History and assume they have drunk it dry; Society swam left from 1950 to 1980, and the New Right cannot help but obsess endlessly over that transition as The Future. Note how common this is - so many people harken to "the 1950's" as the steady-state idyll of American society, the American economy, identify as 'traditional' everything from holiday songs to food recipes that were all invented around this time and have no older origin than that. Its all myths, and The Cathedral is an extension of that trend - by identifying US society in 1950 as a centuries-old continuity of tradition, it sees the changes of the ensuing decades as a radical discontinuity, and therefore a terrifying new normal.

It is wrong the same way nostalgia-memes are wrong; history never had a steady state, and people's ideas of even the 1950's themselves are primarily myth. Turns out historical conceptions of queer relationships have varied widly across time and space - none have been as progressive as today, but societally sanctioned spaces for queer relationships are legion. There has never been a steady state on sex and society.

But! Modernity *is* different from the past, and certain things have changed irrevocably - there is a verison of The Cathedral that is true. Technology & economic development have radically changed how we lived, from a society of farmers and their rulers to a society of urban professional workers. Cultural norms around sex & society varied all over the place; but (to radically simplify, there are a bunch of other factors) marriage for children to work the farms was near-universal, it was a structural necessity culture was built upon. This was a harsh limiter on sexual norms - said marriage for children needed to undergird it. That limiter is gone, forever, today. To not dive into it because its not the focus, with the limiter gone I don't think the 'sexual revolution', feminism, and queer rights is going to revert in a major way in the future.

Which will permit the right, as long as it stays maniacally obsessed with the idea that people don't have 1950's sexual morality anymore, to claim that they Always Lose. This is why Hanania stumbles, making the opposite mistake - seeing the failure to fight the sexual revolution as just a failed southern offensive in comparison to a successful northern attack on the front of education. The real trap is to not understand that culture is not freely malleable, only some of it is 'up for grabs' from the perspective of activists. Within the new status qup equilibrium of modernity, shifts right and left are not only possible but inevitable - but the rules of game have to be understood. Hanania may have only gotten halfway there, but props to him for opening my eyes to the contradiction.

[sspookyspoonss]

I watched the fnaf film today (Britain moment) and omg I loved it.

Spoiler free review:

The plot is not revolutionary, it’s what you’d expect. Fun rather than scary. Definitely a film for fans (and one they will love, I have never heard a cinema react more than with this film nor have I had such a blast watching one).

Now for spoilers. I just need to collect my thoughts somewhere so this may be a complete mess but I don’t care, I’m just so happy.

Characters:

Mike and Abbey: They had a good dynamic. I was a bit concerned with how annoying Abbey was at the start but she ended up really adorable. The initial bratty behaviour really helps build our relationship with Mike. I also like how she just acts like a kid, she gets excited when she sees cool animatronic animals and reacts as you would expect when she thinks her aunt is gonna take her away. I really liked her which surprised me honestly.

Congratulations to Mike Schmidt for having common sense and communication skills. This man actually accepts what’s going on and rolls with it and this is definitely to the films benefit seeing as we know what’s up with the animatronics. Also, instead of going ‘oh no my sister is drawing stuff I see in my dreams guess I’ll look concerned about it’ he actually sits her down and talks it out which I really appreciated. I genuinely felt awful for Mike, the guy clearly has it rough and still is struggling due to his brothers murder. The scene where he sees what he could have had was genuinely touching and made me really feel for the guy. I think he was a solid protagonist.

Vanessa was cool, a fun character but not explored too extensively. She’s Williams daughter and knows exactly what’s going on at Freddy’s (possessions, bodies in suits and all) and has kept quiet due to William’s abuse. This is stated right at the end of the film and her having some history with Freddy’s is hinted at throughout. My non-fnaf friends missed that William’s abuse is why she never did anything because it was only stated in like at a push two lines and never shown in a flashback. This was a bit of a shame as it would’ve characterised her and William more and added to the sympathy we felt for her because she is still hiding that 5 kids bodies are in the animatronics while on the police force. Other than that I loved her childlike excitement when with Abbey and building the fort but also that she clearly had some deeper trauma related to Freddy’s.

William Afton: That Spring Bonnie entrance HOLY SHIT. The Silver Eyes! Genuinely the best shot in the film, it was creepy and so cool from a fan perspective, the cinema was hyped. From the get go when he’s in Steve Raglan mode and is describing Freddy’s, Matthew Lillard is nailing it. You immediately get that this is a sick man who is getting so much glee out of describing this place and knowing he’s getting another victim out of this whole thing. When he appears again at the end and taunts Vanessa it is again amazing characterisation, really sells that this guy is just an awful abusive plank. The way he shouts and kicks Mike, while a tad goofy because animal costume, was another great character moment, the sick joy he’s clearly getting from torturing Mike is evident from the line delivery. We also get a glimpse of why he does it, degrading the animatronics as they surround him and taunting them that he made them like that to hold on to the feeling of power he gets from his murders. Like I said before, I would’ve liked some content of him and Vanessa when she was younger to flesh that dynamic out more, but overall I loved the portrayal. It is all that I thought William Afton would be, a cruel egomaniac with no remorse and a God complex. The moments we got of him were highlights.

Golden Freddy/vengeful spirit kid: Another great character lifted from the games. From what we know of Cassidy, boy does he live up to vengeful. Very cold and downright manipulative towards Mike in the nightmare scenes where they interact directly. The bit at the end where he stands staring a William dying in the suit was just fantastic and a great nod to UCN.

The aunt: She does her job, you hate her and makes you root for Mike but beyond that nothing noteworthy.

Moments in the film:

Cold Open: It was very exciting. Great to see the animatronics in action. The acknowledgement of the 2nd and 3rd games vent mechanics where also cool. Probably the most downright scary it gets.

Opening credits: An amazingly animated scene which explained the backstory and paid homage to the 8-bit mini games of the series. We also got our purple guy actually purpling. It was very cool to finally see the actual luring in some form in official media. A lovely mini tribute to a core aspect of the games.

The Foxy runs: Yes they did it 3 times. Lazy? Maybe. But did it have me giggling like a schoolgirl each time? Absolutely. The humming ripped from the game made me smile like a child on Christmas the first time I heard it. The second run was fantastically shot. Seeing him at the end of the hall and cutting to a close up shot/jumpscare was great, up there with one of the best moments for me personally.

The break in: WAS THAT THE BITE OF ‘87?!? Freddy bit that woman fully in half and it was incredible, probably the scariest the film gets. There is only so scary you can really make the animatronics outside of the game setting so it wasn’t especially scary outside the previously mentioned bite. I was just smiling the whole time while these people were getting murdered because I have waited for 7 years to see this stuff happen on the big screen. Is the cupcake (which is used multiple times) goofy? Yes. But boy does it do some damage (that poor man’s face) and is a fun Nightmare Chica bedroom jumpscare nod.

Seeing the endo’s: Just wow, it looked so good.

They build a fort: The animatronics just join forces with the main character about half way though and build a fucking den in the middle of the Pizzeria. It was very funny and plain good fun. Bonnie fell over which was very dumb but in the charming way. It’s nice to see the film acknowledge that these are children haunting the suits, of course they’re gonna want to do dumb kiddish stuff like this given the chance. Not what I was expecting at all but Freddy Fazbear held a chair so my life is now somehow complete.

The weird ghost attack: Jeez Mike goes through it from those ghost kids. I’m glad they did it that rather than having him get beaten up by robot suits. But boy does he get it rough, properly gets beaten up.

Golden Freddy in Mike’s house: Pretty cool. Again vengeful spirit does a lot of the lifting on the scary part but God is Golden Freddy’s design cool. Genuinely one of my favourite renditions of the character design wise. It’s unfortunate we never got to see him slumped over.

The explanation to why the ghost are attacking: This wasn’t explained great. Basically, William is somehow manipulating the kids since they don’t remember anything however we only I get an ‘I don’t know how he does it but he does’ from Vanessa which isn’t very satisfying. That said I’m not sure how else the film could’ve explained it. The whole ‘show them what really happened’ hardly made any sense apart from the ‘kids learn through pictures’ stuff given at the beginning.

Saving Abbey: Not scary, but the animatronics are cool and the Freddy snapping over in Mike’s direction was awesome. However, overall the final act wasn’t the strongest aside from the few minutes William showed up.

The Springlocks: It. Happened. Was it overly gory? No. No screaming in agony either. But it was so cool to see it happen. I know others will probably be disappointed with it but I honestly felt it was completed by the later scene where William is still dying in the suit and reaching out for Cassidy to help him. Basically it wasn’t as extreme as what everyone hoped for (basically that amazing fan audio that I don’t know where comes from) but it was still great to see. I also liked how the animatronics dragged him off while he writhed, though the writhing was subtle due to how bulky the suit was.

‘I always come back’: This got cheers and was good to hear. My initial reaction was that it felt forced because he says it as he puts the suit head back on as he dies but my non-FNaF friend had a different perspective which made me kind of like it. He thought it was him saying ‘I’ve always been come back and have been using you to hurt others and you didn’t realise,’ as a final taunt in line with his previous ones. It made me think about it more and I think I get the intention now. I think he was declaring that the ‘yellow rabbit’ that killed them will reappear to hurt them again because even if they kill him, he knows he will come back because he will possess the suit like the children have. In putting the suit on he’s just making sure he can haunt and hurt them longer. So yeah, with some deeper thought, I quite like this moment, it makes the agony of he’s in in the following scene with Cassidy more karmic, he might still be able to come back now but GOD is he suffering for it.

The credits: WE WON. They played The Living Tombstone! First two notes and the cinema erupted, I’ve never heard anything like it when watching a film, not even with Avengers: Endgame way back when, you could tell everyone was elated. The waves of nostalgia! I was smiling and dancing in my chair and my non-FNaF friends will probably never let me live it down. I cannot describe how good it felt to hear that song, felt like my childhood was completed.

References:

These are the ones I noticed on a first viewing-

Right off the bat the book with ‘Dream Theory’ plastered on the front made me chuckle and immediately made me know that I was gonna have a blast watching this.

Chica’s Magic Rainbow as a ice cream shop(?) logo was a fun little nod to fnaf world that I’m glad was put in.

The ‘It’s Me’ in the mirror.

The Foxy kid screamed and had black inky tears out of his eyes which is a double whammy reference for the ghost children designs in games and also remnant (a concept which goes unmentioned).

Rouge blurry Bonnie plush in a shot was fun.

Fnaf 1 poster in the office.

The infamous box in parts and service.

Bad Chica Halloween costume mask.

Abbey hiding in the Ballpit being an ‘Into the Pit’ book reference.

Balloon boy of all characters unironically having the most startling jumpscares in the entire film.

The Springlock suit that they tried putting Abbey in was Baby, her design from the books, more precisely the design off of the 3rd ‘Fazbear Frights’ book which made me slightly giddy. It looked REALLY cool as a suit regardless of if it was a reference.

The ‘Save Them’ at the end of the credits: Holy hell my jaw hit the floor, such a fun treat for staying right the way through them.

Cameos:

CoryxKenshin: We already knew about the first one but he appears mid credits and gets Balloon Boy-ed which was very funny.

MatPat: The cinema went mad, properly shouting with excitement. Apparently he had a ‘that’s just a theory’ reference in the line he said but everyone was cheering too loud so I couldn’t hear it. It made me very happy he was there considering he’d played it like he wasn’t asked.

The fnaf YouTubers on the wall: Don’t think you got a good look at it so you wouldn’t know if you hadn’t already heard it was a thing.

To conclude:

Overall it was a film I really enjoyed, just a blast to watch that, while flawed in places, made me smile, laugh and excited point like an idiot at the screen. Films are allowed to be dumb fun and this is one of them, especially for a fnaf fan. I love this film and I don’t care what anyone says because it is 2 hours of my childhood.

[singularity-and-co]

(@shimmeringtidepools) Palkia@Galaxis: She floats over to the other of her kind, watching as he talks to the others that have entered the realm. “Do you enjoy getting a rise out of your family? It seems rather counterintuitive to me.” She stated eyeing the fellow spacial god. “Why not use this newfound freedom to explore about or use your powers more freely? What do you prefer this space to look like?” She stated eyeing the void.

*The sound of the time god flying through the air, followed by a much larger Giratina makes both of your heads turn. Galaxis turns back to you.*

Galaxis: Wow, there he goes! Home run! And that is a large ‘Tina! Wonder if ‘Larity could get to that size? What were we talking about? Oh right, family. Yeah, tormenting my family is just fun. It’s hilarious to see their reaction! You should try it sometime. The best part is when they try to shout at you. That way you know you��ve won.

*Galaxis hovers in the air, leaning back with his arms behind his head.*

Galaxis: As for exploring, I do it when I can. Which, to be honest, is when big daddio lets me out. Not as often as I would like but I do what I can. Of course, I could explore a bit more now. Maybe. Hmmm. I’ll consider it. I mean, the mortal world does have music, which is the coolest thing to me. It just fills empty space so well. And the range too. Oh man, have you heard music before? It slaps! These mortals can be so inventive sometimes. No wonder Epoch wanted to keep one around. They can also be stupid too. Like, insanely stupid. It’s hilarious seeing how badly they make mistakes sometimes. There was one instance in the mortal world where a couple of mortals, best friend mind you, had a bit of a falling out. Led to some Pokémon being banished and a whole war to break out. Like damn, calm down, am I right? Couldn’t be me.

Galaxis: What would I prefer this space to look like? I’m chill with how it looks. I could always whip up something if I wanted to. Epoch tends to destroy whatever’s made. Mr. Fun Stopping Police over there says we need to focus on the state of the universe instead of fucking around. What he doesn’t know is that I have the coolest trick ever. Just watch.

[leggerefiore]

could you by any chance do a colress x reader where colress is comforting reader about I don't know something (sfw ig)

cw: comfort, light hurt, short

pairing: Colress/Reader

Colress struggled with many things when he broke away from his interest in his research or engineering. He was blessed with a highly analytical mind that demanded nothing but the utmost focus on his beloved research in bringing out the potential in pokemon. His intelligence had given both many opportunities and just as many dangers. His ability to force away his emotions and instead focus solely on whatever related to his current fascination.

He was never the sort to slow down and focus too much on those around him.

It was what made this situation awkward and painful for him. Returning back to his home after having disappeared off to a private caller's request for his talents, he had realised that he had forgotten to tell you far too late. It had only been a week, sure, but without even a message, it was clear that you had assumed the worst.

You sat on the couch in the small living quarters, clutching one of his spare shirts and sobbing into it. Judging by the small mess around the room, you had likely been in that state for a day or two. He swallowed. What could you possibly be thinking? Your gaze weakly met his after sensing that there was someone else in the room. A sob left you at that sight of him. Rubbing your reddened eyes, you dropped his shirt and looked ready to collapse.

Colress walked over slowly, taking a seat beside you and coming to support you awkwardly as your body shook from your cries. He felt strange… A feeling much like the one he had felt at the fall of Team Plasma. He tried not to consider his emotions too much, as he worried they may get in his way. With you, however, it felt cruel. His gloved hand came to your cheek gently, thumb rubbing against it to remove any excess tears.

“… Ah, this is my fault,” he spoke in a quiet tone, his usual confidence and pride subdued, “I'm sorry, my love. My sudden disappearance must have worried you… What with international police still after me.” You leaned against him, smelling his oddly sterile scent. It was calming, a factor that confirmed that he was, without a doubt, himself. He allowed you to bury your face into his chest. His heart felt heavy. “That was entirely my fault. I was far too excited by the job offering that I simply forgot to tell you… I take full responsibility here,” it felt strange to say those words. Your hand came to grip his arm tightly. He hummed.

… This bond he had with you… He truly could not understand it at times. You were deeply important to him. Perhaps, like the bond he explores between pokemon and trainers, there must be something like that between you and him. “I doubt I'll have any on site work for a while,” he told you softly, bringing another hand to rub your back, “Let's spend a few days together.” He did not want to take a break from work, but it would be too cruel to leave you in such a state.

You finally pulled away just enough to look him in the eyes. His ever present smile was on his lips.

“... Please don't leave like that again…” you whispered quietly. He felt the corners of his lips fall.

“I promise that I will tell you the next time I take a far away job,” he reassured you and leaned down to press a kiss to your cheek.

He only felt relieved again when you have him a weak smile.

Colress had a new point of research, it seemed.

Perhaps you could bring out more of his latent potential.