#i care about what is actually presented in the text and visual language of the show

[lovegrowsart]

tui & la, yin & yang, and zuko & katara (+aang)

okay. i'm not interested in shipping slapfights, but i came across a specific pro-k/a argument and my mind simply won't let me rest until i write these thoughts down, so here's some meta about zutara symbolism and how, even if it was bryke's intention or retcon or whatever tf, symbolism related to complementary and interconnected opposites and balance, simply doesn't work with k/a's canon relationship dynamic.

first of all, the argument i saw that tui and la in the show are somehow not meant to be taken as yin and yang (or at the very least a representation of it) is... a very interesting one, considering they're designed to look exactly like the yin yang symbol, and koh literally describes them as such. he isn't just bringing up yin & yang because tui and la are, like, similar to them? but because that's what they are.

koh says tui and la are push and pull (the literal translation of tui and la from chinese) to describe what they are, and then says they are good and evil, life and death, yin and yang, to furthur describe the inherent nature of their relationship. this is a kid's show. the symbolism is meant to be this easy to parse. who is watching the koi fish merge into the literal yin yang symbol, quite possibly one of the most recognisable symbols in the entire world, and thinking "oh, but they're not really meant to be yin & yang!"? some k/a shippers, apparently.

now, you might say, but yin & yang aren't good and evil? isn't that a simplification or misconception of the concept? and yes, actually, i would agree with you, good and evil isn't exactly how i would describe yin & yang to someone (though there are schools of thought that do assign a moral dimension to yin & yang!), but if i was writing, again, a kid's show and wanted to get my point across with simple yet evocative language about the relationship between these two spirits symbolised by an complex and abstract real life spiritual and philosophical concept, i can see how "good and evil" works to explain yin (la) as negative and yang (tui) as positive. the text and visual language of the show intentionally links the ideas inherent to yin & yang to tui and la. you can't just retroactively separate them because you want tui & la to represent k/a, but you know that doesn't work if they're yin & yang because canon k/a just doesn't fit with that kind of symbolism.

the k/a argument that tui & la represent katara and aang just fundamentally doesn't work with how both are presented in the show. tui (the moon) is the white koi fish - the light side, representing yang, which is active, masculine, postive, fire etc. la is the black koi fish (the ocean) - the dark side, representing passivity, feminine, negative, water etc.

katara as the moon and aang as the ocean just doesn't map onto the specific symbolism evoked by how tui & la are presented visually and thematically in the show. tui & la are specifically described to balance each other, which just... isn't how k/a's canon dynamic is written. "aang gets angry like the ocean spirit and katara as the moon spirit pulls him back and calms him down" isn't how i would write or describe a balanced relationship, it's what i would call katara being aang's emotional crutch for three seasons with little support in return to "balance" them. k/a's canon dynamic is notably imbalanced, so if even symbolism pertaining to balance was meant to represent their relationship, bryke and the writers did a pretty piss poor job of making that symbolism present in their actual relationship. it's also a complete mischaracterisation of the yin & yang symbolism that is, again, explicitly tied into tui & la per the text and visual language of the show. not only is "katara and aang balance each other and when they're apart, they act recklessly and have to pull each other back from the brink" a reading of their relationship not particularly supported by the text of the show, that's also just... not how tui & la/yin & yang are actually characterised in the show or in real life.

furthermore, the argument that "good and evil" as it relates to tui & la and yin & yang doesn't work for z/k because "zuko isn't evil in the end" or "katara isn't evil at all" completely misses the forest for the trees in how the symbolism ties into the show's overarching themes and z/k's relationship specifically. the storytelling here is much more metaphorical and psychological than it is literal.

the whole point of yin & yang is that they are interconnected opposites, simultaneous unity and duality - zuko is as capable of bad as he is of good, and in turn, so is katara. this is true of every other person and character, of course, but zuko and katara specifically have important story beats in their respective arcs where they are shown the "light side" (zuko learning from the dragons) and "dark side" (katara learning bloodbending) of their respective elements (and their elements only compound their yin & yang symbolism, since fire and water are regarded as physical/natural manifestions of the yin & yang cosmological cycle). one of the most notable story beats of katara's arc is when she explores her "dark side" by going after yon rha (ymmv on how "dark" that really is, but i'm going with how the show presents this part of katara's journey), which is something the other members of the gaang (besides zuko ofc) don't really go through in their arcs - aang, sokka, and toph aren't written to confront the duality of their nature, their worldview, their moral character, their bending, the way that zuko and katara are.

part of me is struggling to even explain this because it's just, idk, really obvious to me. zuko and katara are fire and water, "evil" and "good" (they literally face off in the b1 and b2 finales! either of their literal and actual morality isn't actually all that relevant to how the symbolism works), of course they're yin & yang? and since tui & la are how yin & yang in the atla universe is presented to the audience, then that means they are tui & la too (symbolically, obviously, not literally).

yin & yang fundamentally transform each other the way zuko and katara do. for every advance, there's a retreat; for every rise, there's a fall. book 1; zuko falls, katara rises. book 2; katara falls, zuko rises. book 3; zuko falls, katara rises. you rise with the moon, i rise with the sun. an eternal dance as the both of them learn and grow and confront their own false dichotimies, learning how a world of seemingly opposing and contrary forces is, in fact, interconnected and interdependent.

like. c'mon.

#zutara #antikataang #i guess lmao i just don't think this argument holds any water re: their relationship #and i frankly don't care whatever bryke have said or retconned i haven't cared abt what those men have said about their own show for years #i care about what is actually presented in the text and visual language of the show #meta* #atla critical #just to be safe again

[rbp-art]

“BOY PARTS is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.”

After reading this book, I was struck with the idea of designing a piece of cover art that captured the essence of the story. A scene that stuck out to me involved Irina, the protagonist, photographing a young man while he wore a rabbit mask to conceal his identity, and taking advantage of him with flimsy excuses for consent (‘he didn't say no, he didn't push me off of him,’ etc.). A consistent theme throughout the novel is Irina refusing to let herself be victimized, insisting on remaining in control regardless of the dire situations she finds herself in, and not caring who she hurts in her journey to power and fame.

The imagery of her victim being a rabbit - a symbol of a weak prey animal, always hiding in burrows and running from predators, unable to defend itself with teeth or claws - just amplifies Irina as a hunter, someone with a predatory nature, and I wanted to utilize that in my design.

My first concept was the rabbit in a vulnerable pose, smaller and rounder and soft-looking, while Irina takes up the foreground and looms over him with sharp edges and triangular shapes. I knew right away that I wanted to use a red and blue palette, both for the colour theory associated with them, and as a play on the ‘blue is for boys, pink is for girls’ idea that's so commonly touted as The Way Things Should Be. The male victim being coloured in baby blue, cowering beneath a sharp, red, female abuser, tells a visual story that's apparent to the viewer and captures the dynamic of their relationship throughout the novel.

The second idea I had was a close up of the rabbit masks’ eye reflecting Irina as she photographs her subject. The fact she cannot see under the mask, can't see his face, and doesn't see his tears, is a large part of her justifying her assault in the story. She sees what she wants to and cares only about herself and the footage she's capturing. I think the victim's face being obscured while Irina is the focal point of the shot is very poignant and highlights her self-centered nature and the dismissal of everyone else around her, so this is the concept I chose to develop.

I wanted to experiment with a more metaphorical depiction of a predator, so I tested out two designs. One shows Irina as she actually appears, and one shows the photographer transformed into a snarling wolf, leering over her prey and wielding her camera - her sword and shield.

I also decided to give some more movement to the rabbit, letting him raise his hand to defend himself from the flash - or possibly to pose for the camera? With his face obscured, there’s no way for the viewer to fully interpret his body language and understand his emotions. All we see is Irina’s point of view and the story she chooses to tell.

Upon painting both versions, I have a preference for the first image, where the photographer is presented as human. The dull, dead look in her eyes is a stark contrast to the bright, reflective ones of the rabbit, and I personally think the shading looks smoother and more appealing to the eye. I’m also happy with the effect of the text and how it creates 3 distinct bands of red against a mostly blue background, drawing the viewer’s eye to the centre of the piece.

Here I’ve created a mockup to see how this design would look as an actual book cover. I usually create simple illustrations or comics just for fun, so working on a piece with the goal of communicating an idea, appealing to a potential audience, and making a product was a fun challenge. I put more thought into the composition and colour, went outside of my usual box (flat colouring, cartoony style), and made something I’m proud of. Overall I’m very pleased with how this turned out. It’s very similar to what I visualized and I especially think the colour choices really help to get across the theme of vulnerability and power dynamics.

If I was to do this project again, I’d spend more time practicing digital painting, study fur patterns for the rabbit head, and research other artists for inspiration before jumping into it, so the end result would be more polished. I’d also like to explore the unused concept of the rabbit and photographer both being in frame, possibly leaning into the cartoon caricature style to create a stylised piece.

#portfolio #boy parts #eliza clark

[amberduan-ual]

Art In Site Launch Presentation (16/2/23)

Notes

 “I hate those lonely, winding corridors–empty of people…”

 bring ppl back into the spaces with photography and color

> also integrated visual language into wayfinding

> includes experiences from actual child patients

colorcoding the floors

“NHS staff experience many cases of aggression”

develop visual language in wayfinding scheme so it can communicate universally

> many ppl who enter the hospital do not speak english as their first language

> simplify wayfinding language as well

testimonials from staff say that artwork helps contribute to reduction of violence and aggression

> patient flow increased, children’s trust in doctors increased, etc

children often don’t know what’s going to happen to them, which can be overwhelming and contribute to long-term phobias

> using storytelling (comics) to show what a hospital experience is like

making sure storytelling is also accessible to ppl with different abilities

“deprived of play, the child is a prisoner”

play can also help staff diagnose what may be wrong with a patient, what areas are in pain

transform a scary experience into something exciting!

glow in the dark designs, art on the ceiling, etc

 “above all what matters is to not lose the joy of living in the fear of dying”

maggie centres, incorporating beautiful interior design into spaces for cancer patients

bringing lighting into underground spaces where there’s no natural light

four categories: mental health, emergency, children’s, general/other

 mental health > space should inspire ppl to get better > enclosed spaces where patients can’t leave should feel homely and welcoming emergency > process things are happening all the time, etc children's general/other

things to consider: applications and art locations where to integrate art and design? > elevator, ceiling, doors? community > who are they, what do they need symbolism and narrative! > how does it tie into the local area, its culture and heritage > wildflowers in the Olympic Stadium area constraints of the environment > fire regulations, robustness, infection control

come up with a concept that pulls everything together in a simple idea

your deliverable: bring your creative concept to life in poster form (A2 size)

include some text, perhaps a couple paragraphs title (try for smth poetic, convincing) quote from someone related to the healthcare sector?

Actionable Items: look at the Art in Site website do some research into statistics and such choose a section to focus on

The launch presentation from Peter Shenai was really inspiring and I could feel how passionate he was about bringing human-centric art/design to hospital places. The brainstorm session afterwards was really helpful for generating ideas and widening my perspective on the possible scope of my direction. This project is definitely closest to my heart in comparison to the Handsome Frank and Chatty Feet briefs because I believe that art should be able to directly impact and benefit people. Using creativity to help others is something I think we as artists should always be thinking about and seeking opportunities for, in addition to our own artistic expression.

Personally, I don’t have much experience of being in hospitals myself (besides the time I was born) but I’ve had loved ones close to me stay in hospitals. In high school, I had a friend who was diagnosed with leukemia, a cancer that affects the bone marrow. When she was hospitalized at our local children’s hospital for long-term chemotherapy, I remember sending her daily drawings to try and cheer her up, to remind her that people outside the hospital were thinking about her and cared for her. She unfortunately passed away my second year of high school but I still think about her often, and this project made me think about how long she was in the hospital and whether or not she was comfortable in her environment there. Recently, my grandfather contracted Covid19 in China and was admitted to urgent care. Since my family lives in the United States, we were unable to visit him in the hospital ourselves. My uncle who was able to be by my grandfather’s side video-called my mother often while in the hospital, and the few glimpses I saw of the hospital environment were sterile and metallic, white and unfeeling. It seems like the area my grandfather was in was a temporary setup because of the overwhelming surge in Covid cases in China in the last few months. My grandfather passed away while in this environment and while I’m glad that my uncle was able to be with him, I wish that he could’ve spent his last moments somewhere with a little touch of humanity and love. If not at home, then at least in a space designed to comfort. If we can improve patients’ lives even a little bit with our art, then we should try to do so as best we can. 

I’m interested in how space and geography can influence our thoughts and behaviors, especially with the goal of comforting and enriching. When we step foot into a room we immediately make a judgment about the atmosphere and vibe of it. A room with “bad vibes” could be lit with harsh white lights or flickering bulbs, the furniture arranged haphazardly, given little to zero decoration or furnishing, furnished with echoey material, or a number of other factors that impact our experience of a space. We should consider the purpose and intention of a space, who and how people will be using/moving through it, and the opportunities it presents while designing. 

I quite like the idea of integrating the environment and community outside the hospital with its interior design, since patients can often feel like they’re being cut off from the external world during their stay. I think it could present opportunities to ground people while they’re going through a difficult time and remind them of their life outside of the experience. I’d like to do more research on the impacts of art in benefiting patients’ moods as well as lowering rates of aggressive behavior. On the flip side, I think medical staff could also stand to greatly benefit from well designed healthcare spaces. Our healthcare workers go through such demanding and often extended work hours, often experiencing high levels of stress as well. Doctors have such a high degree of burnout and rate of depression, so being able to help them as well would be a good factor to consider when approaching my project. 

There’s a lot of directions that I could go into with this project so I think I’ll follow a double-diamond sort of approach to find my solution. I’d like to do a large amount of research and consider my options before really narrowing in on the context and framing of my project so I don’t overlook anything. Also, I’m not a healthcare professional, so it’d be good just to get my bearings and inform myself on this topic instead of assuming anything. The brief that Peter sent seems really informative and has links to a lot of research which will definitely be a good start on where to look.

#art-in-site

[jisungscaramel]

vexation | hyunjin

❀ genre; smut, college au, enemies au  ❀ pairing; hyunjin x reader (fem) ❀ word count; 2.7k 

[warning] strong language, explicit sexual content, dry humping, (mild) begging, hate sex

There it was: Hwang Hyunjin, name beautifully printed right above yours. You shuddered in complete disgust, not believing that you were paired with him of all people for your history presentation. There were 34 students in the class; that meant you had a whopping 97% chance of being paired with literally anyone else, but no. Your professor, Dr. Zhang, just had to pair you with him. 

Overachiever: that was an understatement. He was the type to want all of the glory for the taking, the type to enjoy making others feel like they were dumb, the type who had no issue in forsaking common morals for his own gain. 

You couldn’t fucking stand him. 

Begrudgingly, you stood up from your original seat, trudging your feet to sit next to him - at your professor’s instruction, of course. You planned on at least being polite, and you thought for a second that he might do the same, but he didn’t even bother looking at you, staring through to the front of the room, eyes stoic. If he was trying to provoke you, it was definitely working. 

You dropped your backpack to the ground, unceremoniously, sound drowning in the increasing levels of chatter in the small lecture hall, but clearly loud enough to make his composure teeter; his head jerked back a millimeter, a minuscule gesture but it was painfully obvious to you. And you let out an equally obvious slew of snickers before sitting back in the seat, neck meeting the old frayed fabric as you tilted your head back, arms stacking on one another as you folded them, woman spreading to occupy more real estate than you actually required.

You had to at least try to keep yourself amused. 

Hyunjin began scribbling mindlessly on a blank piece of paper - still acting as if you were not even there. 

He slammed the white sheet down on your knee, sending vibrations straight up your leg rather rudely. 

Asshole. 

Oh, baby, he hadn’t even started yet. 

“Okay. We’re doing our paper on I-Hotel and… I’m gonna write it. All you have to do is find these books for me at the library.” He turned to look at you with a very aggravating smirk… maybe you’d notice the tiniest hint of flirtation if the feeling of overwhelming irritation didn’t encompass you. 

But the chance passed when his countenance morphed into counterfeit concern, tapping his chin in contemplation for added effect, “although, I think the library’s computer system is down… I guess you gotta find them the old-fashioned way.” God, you just wanted to smack that smug grin right off his face. “I’d love to help you with that... but I’m just too busy…” It should’ve been illegal for intolerable people to be that gorgeous.

You blinked in complete confusion. “Ummm… excuse me?” 

“I’m… sorry… do… I… need… to … talk… slower…?”

You gingerly picked up the piece of paper, promptly getting up from your chair, glaring at him. You made sure your backpack was secure on your shoulder before dramatically lifting the note in front of his face to tear what he wrote to shreds, scattering the bits over his laptop’s keyboard. “Stick a motherfucking cactus up your ass.” 

You stormed out of that hall with your head high, not daring to look back despite your innate desire to see his response - you were sure it was priceless. 

‘I’ll just have to do this damn thing on my own.’

Oh, if it could only be that simple. 

The first thing that popped up on your laptop when you opened it from the safety of the library was an unexpected email. 

Since you ripped up my list - rather rudely I might add - I’ve attached the list of the books I require. I will be at the library at four PM sharp. Please plan accordingly. Hyunjin 

“Fuck.” 

‘Plan accordingly,’ your ass, according to you, your plan was to minimize the amount of time you had to spend dealing with Hyunjin, and you had been 100% sure he had the same sentiment… so much for that. 

Speaking of the devil, as soon as you decided to dismiss his outlandish request and settle in to get some of your research started, Hyunjin yanked your attention away from your laptop with merely his presence, almost as if your nerves were hypersensitive to his saccharine dipped aura, and most definitely not to the signature sway of his frame as he walked. 

You didn’t dare grant him the luxury of your direct gaze. Instead, you kept a close eye on him in your peripheral, hoping you’d blend in with the people around you… but there was still at least a 92% chance he’d see you.

“Did you get my sources?” and now he was right in front of you, nothing but a measly table in between. 

Your nostrils flared in an effort to not retort back at Hyunjin, eyes still fixed on your screen in a successful attempt to ignore him. 

Then he pushed your laptop closed, hand planted firmly on the device rather invasively. “Excuse me, I’m talking to you.”

You gritted your teeth, tilting your head up in a menacing stare, eyes narrowing, eyebrows furrowing. “What do you want?” 

God, you didn’t know his smile could get more fake than it already was. “I told you to get my sources for me,” his tone was exaggeratedly slow, “did you get my sources?” 

You shoved his hand away from your laptop. “Get your own sources.” 

Immediately his fake smile turned into a sincere snicker, rolling his eyes off to the side. “Uptight bitch.” 

His words sank in for a moment. “You wanna say that again?” 

He leaned over the table, face a mere six inches from yours. “Uptight,” you could feel your fists involuntarily clenching, digging into your palms what would soon be prominent crescents in a matter of seconds, “bitch.” 

You almost raised your palm to gratuitously slap him across the face but the simmering mellowness in you kept a tight grasp of your boiling anger. You leaned back in your seat in an effort to widen the physical gap (or the lack thereof) between you. “Fuck off.”

<><><><><><> 

“Hyunjin, y/n, can you both come down to the podium,” Dr. Zhang added at the end of his lecture, halting your plans to b-line straight to the library. 

As the aisles began to empty, you made your way down the steps to the front of the room, purposefully standing at the side opposite of Hyunjin, frankly paying no mind to him for all intents and purposes. 

Your professor glanced between you two, clearly noticing the oddity of the image but purposefully choosing to ignore it. 

“I noticed that both of you submitted first drafts for your paper, and at first I thought it was an accident, until I opened both files and realized you’re writing completely separate papers. Care to explain?” 

“Yeah y/n, care to explain?” What a fucking dicktard. 

Your lips pressed into a thin line as you wracked your brain for some feasible excuse. “Well,” but nothing came to mind… oh fuck it, “we’ve had issues working with each other.” 

Dr. Zhang raised an eyebrow cautiously. “Elaborate.”

“We really don’t get along.”

He sighed, crossing his arms. “Well you’re gonna have to try to find some middle ground. I’ll give you two a second chance to put a first draft together. If you can submit a collaborative piece by midnight, I’ll still give you full credit for that part. If not, it stays as a zero. Subsequently, you will keep getting zeroes for the following checkpoints if you submit them separately. Any questions?” 

“No, sir,” much to your surprise, that was the first moment thus far wherein both you and Hyunjin were on the same wavelength. 

“Good, that is all.” 

You felt like two negatively charged magnets as you walked side by side up the aisle to the exit. “I’m not getting a zero for this,” Hyunjin spoke up. 

You rolled your eyes. “At least we can agree on that.”

As the cold, crisp air of the outside refreshed your nerves, he lightly gripped your shoulder, swerving you to face him. “Look, I know we’re like oil and water, but I’m willing to at least try to get along for the grade.” His fingers trembled on your shoulder; his teeth lightly grazed his bottom lip, eyes searching yours for a sign of truce. 

Needless to say, the sentiment from him was unexpected. You exhaled deeply, brushing his hand from you. “Fine.”

<><><><><><><> 

But two hours spent alone in a library study room proved to be more difficult than originally anticipated. Trying to work together felt like pulling teeth - a true collaboration of absolute vexation.  

“What about this passage?” You pointed to some text in a book you were sifting through. 

He swiveled his chair around, only looking at your find for a solid half a second before, turning back around. “Nah, that’s not good enough to use as evidence.” 

“What the fuck, Hyunjin? You didn’t even read it.”

“I didn’t have to. I assumed whatever you found was as subpar as everything else you’ve ‘found.’”

You dropped the book on the table with a loud plonk, partially in shock at what he said and partially due to a natural tendency to want to irritate him. “Well let’s see what you ‘found,’” leaning over the table in a relaxed manner, carrying a dash of nonchalance as you scrolled through his writing. “You call this good evidence?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” You wanted to laugh at his defensive tone. 

“It’s obvious that you’re framing your own narrative by taking shit outta context. Not to mention all the ellipses and brackets are terrifically horrendous, visually. You’re taking literally all the credibility out.” 

“What do you know? I doubt you even read that article,” he dismissed your legitimate critique in a manner you unfortunately predicted. 

“As a matter of fact, I did… two. hours. ago. And you told me the article didn’t seem ‘reliable’ enough for you, but here you are… you must think I’m fucking stupid.” 

The side of his lips curved up in the slightest smirk. “Not true, I think you’re annoyingly absentminded.” 

You rolled your eyes for the umpteenth time in the past minute, whispering, “fucking cockmaggot,” under your breath, diverting your attention back to your screen. 

“What did you just say?” His tone suggested he wasn’t being rhetorical - he really didn’t hear you. There was something cute and innocent about his ignorance, the way his lips formed a subtle pout unintentionally, nose wrinkling in distaste. You mentally shook the image from your head, cursing yourself for thinking he was… ‘cute’ to begin with. 

“Nothing, My Liege, nothing at all,” mocking sarcasm spilled from your lips as you parted them to give them a disapproving smack. “This is complete shit; we can’t submit this.”

Hyunjin slammed his laptop closed, standing up abruptly. The action took you by surprise, making your neck shudder in a startle. “I can’t fucking do this anymore. Why do you have to be so fucking difficult?” Pent up rage was slathered all over his face, eyes twitching, eyebrows tightly knitting together, jaw unhinging from an excess of epinephrine. 

His anger diffused to you, violently charging your nerves. There was no way you were just gonna take his shit sitting down. “Why do you,” you stood up, chair rocking back from the velocity of your limbs, “have to be,” you turned around and gripped his collar with both hands, “such an insufferable asshole?” 

He was dumbfounded, wordless much to your satisfaction, but his eyes were unwavering, devoid of reaction. The time you spent stabbing each other with your unfaltering gazes felt like a goddamn eternity, tension coarse, sinfully tangible on your skin. 

It was fucking stifling. 

Before you even realized what was happening, your lips were latched together in a fervent frenzy, tension thickening for an entirely different reason now. 

There was something so breathtaking about the way his lips tightened against yours - literally. It felt like he was siphoning your soul from your body - any thought that dared to grace your mind oddly dissolved into nothingness as Hyunjin molded your lips into submission, tongue colonizing your oral cavity in an authoritative manner that was so in character for him. 

Not that you gave a fuck. 

His hands aggressively tugged at your waist; the impact of your body crashing onto his sent pangs up your spine, and in seconds, your back thudded against the wall, maintaining the momentum. You had to grip his shoulders purely for support, and definitely not because you were immersing in the moment.

You felt his grip loosen as his hands roamed downward, playfully drawing patterns on your skin with his fingers en route. And then they constricted around your thighs, lifting them up to his hips, and you hooked your ankles around his back as if it was the natural thing to do. 

The fabric of his pants became taut around the building frustration underneath, becoming oh so apparent to you when he started steady grinding against the thin fabric of your underwear - why did you have to wear a skirt today of all days?

You passed a reluctant whimper through his lips, wholly unable to deny the way your pulsing desire radiated heat through your core at the increasing friction. 

You broke away from the kiss, gasping. “Hyunjin…” you whispered almost breathlessly, desperation filling you as he continued his tantalizing test of your patience. 

“Hmmm?” There it was: that signature smug grin, but by this point, your senses were too preoccupied to even register it. 

“I can’t take this anymore.”

“Is that so?” He lifted you off the wall, pushing your laptops to either side so he could lay you on the table, spreading your legs to give him clear sight of your dampening sex. He snickered. “You look much better like this…” While ghosting one hand around your inner thighs, conveniently avoiding the place you needed him the most, he undid the button and zipper of his jeans with the other, sliding them down to his knees. 

You found yourself licking your lips at the silhouette of his bulge, now more prominent with less restricting fabric. Of course, he noticed; “so these are you true colors… I never would’ve thought you were such a dirty girl.” He brushed his fingers over the waistband of your underwear. “Where do you need me?” He pressed his thumb on your clit, “here?” 

Your teeth pressed down on your lips in an effort to stifle a moan. “Yes…” and even though you were successful the first time, there was no stopping the sounds from seeping through your lips when Hyunjin slammed his clothed erection on you once more, picking up exactly where he left off just moments ago. 

“Please, Hyunjin…” he pushed your thighs further apart, keeping them in place. 

“‘Please,’ what?” 

“I need you inside me, please.” 

His sinister laugh filled the small room. “I don’t know if you deserve it.” 

“Fucking asswipe.” 

“Now that doesn’t sound very convincing…” 

You groaned in pleasurable displeasure. “Hyunjin… please, I’m begging you. I really can’t take this.” 

“Don’t you care if someone tries to come in?” He raised an eyebrow, partially in curiosity, mostly in amusement. 

You glared right into his eyes. “No.” 

He shook his head, clicking his tongue as he stood back. “Get up.” Any urge you had to defy him before was long gone; you did as he asked and he harshly turned you around by your waist, pushing you toward one of the windows. 

While pushing you down against the glass with one hand, he reached in his front pocket with the other, grabbing a condom. He ripped the packaging with his teeth, skillfully sliding his boxers down to slip the vinyl over him. 

Not wanting to wait any longer, you aided him by pulling your panty down leaving yourself completely exposed for his taking, and you quickly pushed your hands on the glass, bracing yourself for the next few seconds, but nothing could’ve prepared you for that stretch that came. Your wrist slid down on the window pane to bite back a scream. 

“So tight.” 

 ><><><><><><><

A/N I’mma be honest: I had a fucking field day coming up with all those weird insults

#hyunjin smut #hyunjin college au #hyunjin #hwang hyunjin #hyunjin imagine #hyunjin scenario #hyunjin x reader #hyunjin x you #stray kids #stray kids smut #stray kids college au #stray kids scenario #stray kids imagine #skz scenario #skz smut #skz imagine #skz college au #bangchan smut #lee know smut #changbin smut #han smut #seungmin smut #lee felix smut #jeongin smut

[oflgtfol]

i know the nuclear waste storage thing proliferated throughout tumblr but the conversations around it never really like, properly addressed WHY i personally find it so profound and meaningful lol

it’s just. the reason it’s written like that is because this is for long-term storage. not 100 years. not 200 years. literally tens of thousands of years, to the point where the commonly recognized symbols and languages of modern day will very likely not even exist anymore. we all know what a nuclear warning symbol looks like nowadays, but we have absolutely zero guarantee that the people of the year 20,000 will be able to recognize what it means and the danger it presents. we have no idea the what kind of scientific background they will have, if they will even know what nuclear waste IS - whether that's because science has degraded over time, or because it advanced so much that nuclear waste became obsolete, or whether they know what it is but have an entirely different understanding of it than we do nowadays, etc etc.

the report about this states that the best course of action is to continuously reaffirm our current methods. make sure that our current symbols remain in public conscience, continuously educate about this, continuously update current text warnings with language as it evolves over time. that is the best case scenario.

but science is not science unless you account for all cases - especially the worst case. so how do you communicate with a group of people that you have no shared language, no shared knowledge of warning symbols, no shared scientific knowledge with?

the text warning above is only one part of the general plan to warn away from storage sites. it also includes hostile architecture as a way to physically block people from reaching the storage site, as well as a visual symbol of you're not welcome here as a warning. there are also pictographic depictions of people's faces scrunched up in disgust, fear, anger, under the assumption that emotions and facial expressions will be a unifying factor where all other forms of communication fail. in a way, this text warning is the very last resort for keeping people away.

it's written in this utterly strange way that sounds nothing like the way people actually speak. but it's written like this because it's supposed to be easily translatable, both in the literal words and also in the general concepts, in order to account for linguistic changes over time as well as possible changes in scientific and cultural knowledge.

instead of saying "there is nuclear waste here. leave" it instead calls it some sort of "emanation of energy" and it describes the general geographic area using words like "center" and "below." these are easily translatable phrases. they may not have the words or even the concept of nuclear waste, but "emanation of energy" is probably the easiest description of radiation without getting into the jargony, untranslatable science of it. if this future people is aware of nuclear radiation, then it's enough to extrapolate what exactly we're talking about here, and if they aren't aware of nuclear radiation, then it's still enough to understand that there is something intangible, invisible, and dangerous. and the warning cannot describe where exactly the waste is located using modern terms, but "center" and "below" are pretty universal concepts that have existed long before us, and will presumably persist long after us.

but what i really want to pinpoint is how they focus on the harm it causes. they describe it as an emanation of energy but they don't call it "the energy." they call it the danger, and they say "The danger is to the body, and it can kill." body, kill, danger, these are all concepts that transcend time period. people have always had words for these concepts, and they are intimately understood regardless of when you are. above all else, these words can be translated, and they are the most important words in this entire message because of that.

we have no idea if humanity as a race will even exist on these time scales. every day it feels like we’re inching closer to our own demise. and so often when anyone talks about the future even 50 years from now, you’re met with jokes like “bold of you to assume we’ll still be alive then.” it’s such a bleak outlook on life, the assumption that we’ll be gone so soon, and with it comes this uncaring attitude about future generations. why put in the work and effort to preserve things when we'll be gone in the blink of an eye, and on a more callous level, why try to improve things when i won't be alive then anyway, etc etc.

so to dedicate so much thought towards warning people SO far in the future that we cannot even imagine the state of their language, their knowledge, their culture, is just so profound to me. it’s the ultimate sign of human compassion, of caretaking and helping others in need. thousands of generations will separate us from anyone who can come close to being the intended audience of these warnings, and yet we care so much about them that we’ll go to such lengths to protect them from this danger. we can so easily hand wave it, say oh but that’s in the far future, who cares, just keep using our current language and symbols, but no! we want to reach through time and make sure that people stay away for their own health

it especially hits me because this is the impact of our own poor decisions. nuclear waste is so toxic that even thousands upon thousands of years from now it will still be deadly. and we're literally burying it in the ground and leaving it for future generations to deal with. playing with such powers before we’re ready, before we know how to properly handle it, like we’re playing God with things powerful beyond our control. the sheer hubris of it all. and the nuclear waste and the danger it poses both now and in the future is reaping the consequences of it. but the people in the future did nothing to deserve it, it was not their generation who did this, yet they’re dealing with the consequences of what their ancestors did

and so i feel like, this message is both a warning and an APOLOGY. “This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.” this phrase is there to signal that no, this isn’t buried treasure, this isn’t anything you want to be digging around in, even the people of its time were in danger from it. as always, it’s a warning. but the way it's worded feels like something else, too. this place is not a place of honor. all the scientific advancements and awards and medals of honor going towards the development of nuclear energy and weapons and all things nuclear - and yet, this place is not a place of honor. one of our most shining achievements is also our heaviest burden. because here we are, having to warn our descendants in the far far future of the danger it poses, entirely because we were messing with things before we had the proper capability to handle it safely and responsibly. it’s a warning, yes, but it's also an apology. a way of humbling ourselves. "We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture," and yet, "this place is best left shunned and left uninhabited."

and so taking the time to think these things through, of how to communicate to people tens of thousands of years in the future to keep them safe and healthy, feels like both a show of human compassion for the sake of compassion, and also yet another form of apology. because this isn’t some freak accident. this isn't a naturally occurring danger. this is directly caused by our current actions. if they fall sick or die because of exposure, that is because of us, because of what we did and then buried in the ground to hide and forget about, and so it’s really only right that we take responsibility for our actions and the unintended consequences and ensure that no one else is harmed by them

TL;DR, i love this message so much because it's an admittance of hubris and playing god. it's an apology, it's a show of regret, and it's humbling ourselves in dealing with the consequences. it's communication between generations and reaching through the ages to directly talk to our descendants. it's an extraordinary link over time, between vastly different peoples, and we use it to express basic compassion and humility. it's a message about humanity, with all of our worst, but also all of our best.

#whenever i say ‘we’ i mean that in a very broad sense as in ‘humanity in general during this current time period’ #of course i am not blaming YOU as an individual for nuclear waste and its unfortunate side effects LMFAO #brot posts #this is like my fifth fucking essay about this thing . ive thought and said so much about it help #this is by far my longest one though lol and hopefully my most comprehensive one #still not entirely sure i explained it properly though. DX #it just. it makes me feel things OK !!!

[fatehbaz]

It is story that weaves our experiences into the landscape and ties us to place. The Zuni maps, to this point, hold a question: To what extent do such stories and myths of place have to be deeply specific to place? There is a tendency in a globalized society to assume that knowledge is open and accessible, able to be reached across the world [...]. In many ways, of course, this is greatly valuable. But the Zuni maps suggest that stories of place -- the ones that really and truly connect us to the lands outside our own front doors -- cannot be downloaded [...] or read in a book. They suggest that the stories that are particularly rooted in the land can only be discovered by taking the dedicated time and attention to encounter the land itself -- over long periods of time, through many seasons. Perhaps stories and myths of place need to have been spun from the threads of this landscape. While it seems easy to believe that what is at the core of any relationship to place is and must be universal, perhaps the language and the telling cannot be universal at all. We are far less likely to care for places if we have not bothered to know or understand them.

Jim Enote, a traditional Zuni farmer and director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center, is working with Zuni artists to create maps that bring an indigenous voice and perspective back to the land, countering Western notions of place and geography and challenging the arbitrary borders imposed on the Zuni world. [...] In his map of the reservation lands, Ho’n A:wan Dehwa:we (Our Land), Ronnie painted places and waterways of cultural significance tied to the A:shiwi migration history. His painting features snow-capped plateaus, ancient farming villages, buttes, and lakes [...]. Ho’n A:wan Dehwa:we looks nothing like a typical road atlas. [...] It is full of [...] story [...]. The A:shiwi have been in present-day North America for thousands of years. Twelve thousand members of the tribe live on the Zuni Reservation today. Their sacred lands reach far beyond the reservation boundaries -- trails of prayer snake and meander through the history [...], from the Grand Canyon [...], paths of song ascend the high buttes and tumble with the rain through the arroyo. [...]

Non-Zuni names became canon.  [...] For thousands of years, the names of places were interwoven with experiences and stories of the landscape.

After their lands were colonized by the Spanish in the sixteenth century and later claimed by the United States, Indigenous peoples of the Colorado Plateau were left in a deeply familiar territory of unfamiliar names. “The names are in English or Spanish, and so they completely leave off the meaning of the place, and its essence, too,” says Jim. In the 1862 publication of the Johnson Family Atlas, the aboriginal lands of the A:shiwi and the Dine are stamped as the “Military Department of New Mexico.” Even “Zuni” is a foreign word. [...] [A] red flag marks the location of Fort Wingate in northwestern New Mexico, a few miles north of the Zuni Pueblo -- a site established by the United States government in 1860, in part as an effort to displace the Dine people. “‘Fort Wingate’ just tells us that there used to be a fort there that was built in the 1800s,” says Jim. The Zuni name for the site, however, is Bear Spring. “That says something about the environment and the resources, especially the life-sustaining resources, that are there.” [...]

In March of 1877, less than two weeks after his inauguration as the nineteenth president of the United States, an executive order was issued from the office of Rutherford B. Hayes [...]. Over a billion and a half acres of indigenous lands were seized by the United States government between 1776 and 1887 [...]. Once an order had been issued, government surveyors were dispatched to carve out the territory. The maps that resulted from such orders -- atlases, political maps, topographical maps -- became [...] lasting truths of ownership [...]. Such maps are widely assumed to convey objective and universal knowledge of place. They are intended to orient us, to tell us how to get from here to there, to show us precisely where we are.

During the winter solstice, the prayer that relates the Zuni creation and migration history is told in its entirety. Mallery Quetawki grew up on the Zuni Reservation, hearing the prayer every year in the short days of winter. She did not, for a long time, think of this prayer as much more than a beautiful poem. Of a younger generation, Mallery did not grow up speaking Zuni fluently [...].�� When the prayers were incorporated into the Zuni maps, however, Mallery was able to relate to them in a way she never had before. “It’s a really great learning experience to actually visualize these prayers, to put prayer into art and into a literal map. [...]”  “I was selected to paint our connection between our village and the Grand Canyon area.” [...] Grand Canyon is a map of a traveled landscape, the journey from creation to home. [...]

“It’s place-making power, said by prayer, now that we’ve made it visual,” says Mallery. “It’s an actual map. It made me appreciate where I come from even more.” [...]

The Zuni maps are, first and foremost, for the Zuni people. [...] The maps are in many ways an invitation: How would you map the places that live in your memory? What are the voices of the land that are forgotten, unheard?

-----

Captions, photography, all text published in multimedia project: Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder (writer). Adam Lofoten (director, producer). Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee (director, producer). ‘Counter Mapping.” Emergence Magazine. April 2018.

[lucemferto]

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT TECHNOBLADE (or A Narrative Analysis of the Dream SMP Doomsday Event) - Script

Heyo! Per request I am posting the script to my video of the same name here on tumblr. I must warn you that just reading the script will probably not give you the full experience, so I would encourage you to watch the video (linked above).

There might also still be a lot of grammatical errors in the text, because I don’t proofread.

Okay, so! I don’t want this to turn into a reaction channel OR a Dream SMP channel for that matter! I am planning on doing a big dumb, way too long analysis video on the Dream SMP which will – at my current pace – come out in five years. I am already way too late on this one.

Spoiler Alert for the Doomsday Event that took place on the 6th of January in the Dream SMP. Surely the worst thing to take place on the 6th of January 2021 … I’m sorry, what’s this about the Capitol?

In case you don’t watch the SMP and need context: The Dream SMP is a Minecraft Multiplayer Server, that, throughout the last year, has transformed from a normal Let’s Play to an ongoing new-media series streamed by multiple high-profile streamers such as Dream, TommyInnit or Technoblade. It comes complete with script – by which I mean loose bullet points – and story events. It has attracted a large fanbase specifically invested in the story and less so in the actual gameplay content. Like I said before, I will probably do a big video on the Dream SMP at some point in the future.

The storyline is long and complicated and trying to explain it all would take up the majority of the video and there are other channels who have already done a much better job than I could ever hope to do, so give them a watch. I’ll try to summarize all that is pertinent to what I will talk about in this video.

Okay, let’s speedrun this summary. Cue the music!

Major Players here are TommyInnit, a founder of the independent nation of L’Manburg, Technoblade, an anarchist who was deep in conflict with L’Manburg, Tubbo, Tommy’s best friend and current president of L’Manburg, and Dream, the ruler of the Kingdom of the Dream SMP (even though he is not the king, but we’re not going to get into that right now). Tommy had in the past been exiled by Tubbo for endangering L’Manburg’s shaky peace with the Dream SMP. Tommy had then teamed up with Technoblade, who was hellbent on destroying L’Manberg after some prior altercations – more on that later.

Tommy and Tubbo came into conflict during a festival set-up to celebrate the friendship between L’Manburg and the Dream SMP. After punching out their feelings, Tommy came to the realization that his friendship with Tubbo was more important than his vendetta against Dream and those who exiled him. Techno took that change of heart badly and teamed up with Dream to destroy L’Manburg … and that’s exactly what happened.

Techno and Dream, with little to no opposition, obliterated L’Manburg with no hope for recovery leaving its inhabitants stranded hopeless and alone.

… And that’s what you missed on Dream SMP!

Okay. So, usually I just put whatever thought slime drips out of my mouth hole into your subscription box. But then I asked myself: “Am I not taking this a largely improvised nonsense story from a bunch of 16–24-year-olds a little too seriously?”. And then I remembered. I’m a pretentious bitch. I made an 18-minute video explaining why the popular commentary YouTuber memeulous is secretly the time travelling Anti-Christ, REASON HAS NO SWAY OVER ME!

So, like the English Major drop-out that I am, I will present you with two theses, which I will then combine into one … supratheses! That word doesn’t exist, I just coined it, it’s mine! I am very smart!

[I know words, I have the best words!]

 Thesis #1: The Fandom focuses too much on Character Analysis in Favour of Narrative Analysis

The Dream SMP is truly something special. It is uniquely singular in how it tells a story of this scope through its chosen medium. While there is an overarching script that lays out the plot points of the future, each of the 30+ streamers on the SMP are their own cameraman, director, writer and actor. You cannot watch “the Dream SMP” – if you attempted that, you would be 80 by the time you caught up to the Doomsday Event. You have to choose whom to watch. You have to choose your focal point character.

Because by the way the story is told and consumed – aka in such a compartmentalized fashion; you watch one streamer and get one character’s perspective – it has sort-of unintentionally conditioned fans to look at the SMP and its characters less as one coherent story with messages and themes and more as sports teams they can root for. You’re Team Techno or Team Tubbo or Team Tommy or Team JackManifoldTV (formerly known as Thunder1408) and every other side is in the wrong! It’s like Twilight for a decade old children’s game about virtual Lego!

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but the amount of discourse perpetuated by and revolving around so-called “apologists” – a terrible term that unfortunately has caught on – is really not something that I think is good for how we interact with the story of the Dream SMP.

The Dream SMP is discussed a lot on character-based level, which is, like I said before, hugely advantaged by the way the story is consumed by its audience. With traditional, visual media such as film for example, the audience can be made more aware of what messages the narrative might try to communicate on a narrative level without the need for an explicit narrator to tell you the moral.

As an example, in a movie you could have a smash-cut from the Butcher Army’s discussions about neutralizing the danger Technoblade poses to Techno being nice around villagers or taking care of animals. This would communicate on an extradiegetic level, that the Butcher Army is in the wrong with their assumptions. Alternatively, you could contrast Techno’s declarations that power corrupts and that Tubbo’s administration is cruel with Tubbo choosing not to punish Ranboo for his association with Techno – thus the narrative would communicate that Techno’s view of Tubbo and by extension the government is one-sided and not true to reality.

Stuff like that helps the viewer understanding a story holistically and manages to communicate stuff like themes and morals without having to solely rely on in-character logic and argumentation, which, as Ghostbur put it so eloquently, is comprised of a bunch of unreliable narrators.

Character analysis is great if we want dive deep, if we really want to give a character flavour and understand their motivations. It helps make the universe feel like it is alive, like it’s real. But – and this might be a shocker for you – it’s not real. It’s written. It is construction – and as such, in its construction, it has messages and themes and morals, intentionally or unintentionally.

By being so focused on specific characters and their individual journeys, viewpoints and motivation we really run the risk of not looking at the bigger picture and fail to see what the overarching narrative is actually communicating. And we may also fail to understand how characters might or might not fit into the overarching narrative.

Speaking of which …

 Thesis #2: Technoblade experiences very little Meaningfultm Thematic Conflict

Okay, let’s talk about Technoblade. I’m sure I’m not going to get any hate for this one.

I want to preface by saying that I don’t watch Technoblade’s streams; I catch up though clip channels and summaries. I’m mainly watching Tommy, Tubbo and Quackity – which is honestly already more than I can handle – but I want to be clear that while I’ll try to be as even-handed as possible – like I explained previously – the way I consumed the storylines will undoubtedly leave me with some bias.

Also, needless to say, I’m talking about the character Technoblade, not the actual content creator, unless I specifically say so. That should be obvious.

Now, I’m not doing a Technoblade character analysis, because that would be hypocritical of me – seeing how I just bitched about the overwhelming amounts of character analyses in the fandom – but I’ll try my best to summarize what is necessary.

Technoblade’s interesting in that he is a very static character – at least inwardly – he doesn’t change much. He is very steadfast in his beliefs and ideals and has very little introspection. He doesn’t question himself; he doesn’t waver, he is never in a bind about whether what he’s doing is right or wrong. He is very much a parallel to early TommyInnit – who, of course, famously said “I’m always in the right”.

And I want to emphasize that I mean this in no way as a critique of Techno’s character. A static character provides a nice contrast to more dynamic characters and can balance them out. It can also be utilised by the writing as a character flaw – which is what I hope content creator Techno is going for.

Like Techno doesn’t have a lot of empathy in the sense that he is particularly skilled at or interested in trying to see the viewpoints of others. There is never an attempt to reconcile, for example, the goal of the Pogtopians to reclaim L’Manberg and install another administration with his desire for an anarchist society. This is also compounded with his overreliance on violence as the only tactic for conflict resolution – Techno has a whole thesis statement about violence being the only universal language. I’m sure you’ve heard the quote.

And lastly, what really drives this all over the edge, is his all-or-nothing approach when dealing with the enemy – he is not so much eye for an eye as he is – to use another biblical example – you make fun of me for being bald and I’ll sic two bears on you that maul and kill you and 41 other children.

There’s also the open and completely unacknowledged hypocrisy of a self-described anarchist working together with a man that installs and dethrones Kings with his every whim – someone who – and I cannot stress this enough – hits about every box when it comes to the definition of tyrant.

So, what I’m saying is that Technoblade is the Dream SMP equivalent of Dick Chenney. C’mon you know it’s true! He will bomb that freedom into your country whether you want him to or not. That’s some cogent political commentary in the year 2021.

Okay, so now that I’ve outlined his character, what kind of conflicts does Technoblade face. Well, it’s mostly physical or external. He fights a lot whether it’s against Quackity or Sapnap or bodying Karl Jacobs five times in a row. And – with the exception of maybe Sapnap – none of it is challenging. Technoblade is the best PvP-Player on the server – there really isn’t much tension to be had from a purely physical fight.

So, how are these fights supplemented emotionally. Well, internally there is not a lot going on. As I said before, Technoblade isn’t really an introspective character. Even during his shouting match with Tommy there’s not a sense that Technoblade is wavering or unsure of himself in the way that Tommy is. He exposits that one of the reasons, he acts like he does is that he feels dehumanized; that people only use him like a weapon and then discard or even try to neutralize him once he’s no longer useful.

But that is not something that Technoblade has to grapple with – it’s not conflict for him, it’s more conflict for Tommy. Technoblade is self-assured in that he’s a person and not a weapon – it’s almost like there was a character arc there, where Technoblade self-actualizes and breaks away from the people that want to use him. But we didn’t see any of it. Technoblade unleashes the withers; then he goes into retirement because he wants to be, I suppose, and then he returns to violence as a reaction to the Butcher Army. There is a story of vengeance here, but not any conflict about being used. There is never a point where we see Technoblade come to this realization or comes to assert himself.

In season 1 there’s never a push from Pogtopia where the narrative frames them as exploiting Technoblade. He fights with them of his own volition, he gives them weapons and armour of his own volition. Nobody pressured Techno into procuring their inventory for the fight. And in Season 2, he’s the one to approach Tommy about their potential partnership – he is in the position of power here, explicitly not Tommy.

Like, I’m sorry, if this ruffles some feathers, but I really don’t see this arc where Technoblade is being used. There’s a story of misunderstanding and maybe co-dependency – but not of dehumanization. This entire line of thought seems to solely reference that moment, where Tommy says to Sapnap “I have the blade” during one of their wars – which, to base an entire emotional arc around that without any further set-up, is, and I’m sorry to say that, incredibly flimsy.

Okay, so we covered physical and emotional conflict? But what about conflict on the narrative level? Well, that leads me to my suprathesis …

 Suprathesis: The Narrative is Unclear on how it treats Technoblade … and that’s Not Good.

Here’s a Hot Take: The narrative of Season 1 treats Technoblade way less sympathetically than that of season 2.

Let me explain. The narrative of Season 1 revolves mostly around Wilbur and Tommy. The emotional fulcrum of the overall narrative is Wilbur’s rise and fall from Grace – and Tommy succeeding him as symbol of L’Manberg’s “special”-ness. Now I will talk about all that more in detail, when I talk about Season 1 of the Dream SMP. So, you’ll just have to go with me on this one for now.

Technoblade, by contrast, doesn’t really have much going on thematically in Season 1. He mostly exists as a sort-of utilitarian character – he is an accessory to make story beats happen. Like him executing Tubbo doesn’t open up any sort of thematic conflict involving him – on a character level it sets up antipathy between him and Tommy and it grants us some insight into how he operates with his violence speech – but on a larger-scale narrative level it really just shows how far Wilbur and Tommy have drifted apart in how they react to the event.

His biggest contribution is during the Season 1 finale, but even there he plays second fiddle to Wilbur. Not just because Wilbur does way more destruction with his explosion than Techno does with his Withers, but also because Wilbur had an emotional and thematic climax to his arc and by extension the entire storyline. Like Techno’s is a cool moment and very epic visual but in terms of thematic relevance, his Theseus-speech is really more set-up for Season 2.

And Season 1 is very unambiguous about L’Manberg being good and Tommy’s ideals ultimately being morally justified – I mean, they have a whole speech about it in the end and it was built-up throughout the entire Season – Techno is cast in a … less than sympathetic light. He is, if not a villain, then definitely an antagonist.

But with Season 2 the narrative is either uninterested in or not very clear on exploring Technoblade’s flaws.

Like ask yourselves: is Technoblade’s character ever consciously challenged by the narrative? Are his actions ultimately shown to not be in the right? Are his beliefs about government and power ever called into question? Are the negative consequences that his actions cause ever shown to be larger than the “good” he does?

I think what exemplifies this the most is how the Butcher Army event played out on December 16th. Now, during that event, the Butcher Army, which was comprised of Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy and Ranboo, managed to apprehend Technoblade, who at that point was living the quiet retirement life, and tried to have him publicly executed – without trial.

Now, smarter people than me have pointed out that the Butcher Army had a bevy of in-character reasons that can justify or explain their actions. And that’s definitely interesting, but as I said before, I want to get away from that and look into how the Butcher Army is treated on a narrative level. Because this is one of the few instances where the otherwise grey-loving Season 2 has some very clear narrative intent when it comes to morality.

The Butcher Army is very deliberately framed as almost cartoonishly corrupt and violent. They very forcefully investigate Philza, mock him and then put him under house arrest – and there’s just no remorse in the script even from normally sympathetic characters like Tubbo.

Compare and contrast with the Tommy-exile scene, which is also an act of moral ambiguity and is treated as such. And things get even worse once the Army arrives at Technoblade’s abode and attack him after he softly tells them that he has left that live behind him. They then proceed to take his horse hostage, mock him and execute him without fair trial – and I haven’t seen it but from live commentary I gathered that Techno really played up the whole softie-schtick before the Butcher Army arrived. I mean, before the big Technoblade vs Quackity fight, Quackity had whole villain monologue for Christ’s sake.

And even afterwards, the Butcher Army really plays up the corrupt angle with Tubbo proposing a festival as a guise to publicly execute someone. And again, I know that on an intradiegetic there’s nuances and it’s not really comparable to the Red Festival, but in combination with what the audience has seen up until that point and with how much it feeds into the already established themes of history repeating itself and becoming like your predecessors, it really does not paint a pretty picture of the Tubbo administration.

You can feel the heavy hand of the script on your shoulder, which is a feat seeing how – as discussed before – that’s not something that can be easily accomplished in this medium.

And that is what I mean when I say that Technoblade is not really challenged by the script and is in this case even emboldened by it. Because after this whole ordeal the thought of Technoblade taking revenge by destroying L’Manberg doesn’t seem like such an extreme response to the viewer – even though in my opinion, it is.

As of right now it is too early to say how the narrative will judge Technoblade’s actions in the future. Will they be framed as extreme but ultimately justified or perpetuating a cycle of ever-escalating vengeance? Will we ever see a government that’s not just at best misguided and at worst completely awful?

Ultimately, I believe and hope that Technoblade will be challenged by the narrative, mostly because a character that cannot, believably, be physically challenged, who doesn’t have any meaningful internal conflict about what he’s doing; and who does come out on the other side having everything he always believed in be proven completely in the right by the narrative, would be incredibly boring. Not just to watch but also to play as.

As it stands now, if the destruction Techno, Phil and Dream inflicted upon L’Manburg is framed as ultimately in the right, I would find it personally a distasteful message to send. I would ultimately say that the “correct” way to counter corruption in government is to completely obliterate the entire country. Like we’re not talking simply disbanding the government – that’s not what Doomsday was – we’re talking complete and utter annihilation. And that would be cynical and depressing. Like, call me a big softie, but even bothsidesing this argument would be bad.

Like, I’m not calling for Technoblade to be transformed into or treated a monster like Dream. But I personally feel like the narrative needs to acknowledge that the Doomsday was something that was taken way too far and that it ultimately brought more harm than good. And Technoblade needs to held accountable by someone who is not a cartoonishly corrupt government-official or who is in conflict with him anyway, like Tommy.

I thought Philza or Ranboo could do that but seeing how their storylines are progressing I don’t believe that will be the case. But who knows, maybe Captain Puffy will come through for us. We stan a Queen.

 Conclusion

So, yeah, I made this entire video just to air out my grievances with how one-sided the mode of analysis is in the fandom, because no person actually involved with the production of Dream SMP will ever see this.

But after everything I am cautiously optimistic, that content creator Technoblade knows what he’s doing. He has talked in the past about how his character is a bad guy and he loves his Greek myths. After all what’s more Greek myth than hybris being rewarded with punishment? [Technoblade never dies] That bodes well for him.

Also, this isn’t the video I promised at the end of the last one!

#dream smp #dsmp analysis #dsmpblr #dreamsmp #c!technoblade critical #dream smp analysis #dsmp #dream smp doomsday #dream smp season 2 #l'manberg #l'manburg #lmanberg #lmanburg #tubbo #dsmp tubbo #quackity #dsmp quackity #butcher army #tommyinnit #dsmp tommyinnit #dream #dreamwastaken #dsmp dream #dsmp tommy #lucem ferto scripts

[kyoupann]

Please do more of the writing head canons. It’s really interesting to see other people’s ideas on the topic, so if you can be bothered, I would highly appreciate more, thanks bye <3

Y’all don’t know how happy I am to talk about these headcanons, they are my babies and I love them so much :’) thanks for asking g <3

Handwriting Headcanons

Same dynamic as before, try to guess whose handwriting it is before reading and tell me how many you got right! <3

You can find the first post here (no need to check it tho)

Quick disclaimer: halfway through making my initial notes, I remembered I had one (1) single lesson of graphology in my applied linguistics class, but that was a year ago and some information might be off. I just thought it was neat to include.

Another quick disclaimer: I don’t know much about Hylian, but I like to think it has a similar stroke system to Japanese, so the pressure and accuracy of your strokes play a major role in your handwriting (among other things, ofc.) so there are some parts where I focus more on that

(First Row, from left to right)

Sky

Our first boy is mother hen! Believe it or not, he has the prettiest handwriting out of all of them! Sky: probably has nice, even elegant handwriting because Sun forced him to practice when they were little. In the end, that paid off because his handwriting is the prettiest one. There’s no pressure, but he is confident in what he writes that his lines aren’t thin. Mistakes? what is that? this boy has impeccable grammar and spelling. No mechanic errors to be found in his letters! I’d like to think that many of Hyrule’s classic/staple poems were originally written by the firt king aka sky child. Like, imagine, after a retiring from being a Person of Power (as the first ruler), Sky finds comfort in the arts: revisits his old woodcarvings and starts writing poetry about the world he still doesn’t fully understand. wowie. tldr: sky writes poetry and you can pry it from my cold dead hands.

This is what one of his letters would look like: 

Next one is the one and only, our Hero of Time

2. Time

I’ll die on the “Time didn’t know how to read and write” hill. His handwriting is simple, not pretty but not messy. It has some grammar and spelling mistakes here and there. Can become unreadable if writing in a hurry, he sorts of forgets spaces between words are a thing/letters have different sizes and lowercase letters end up the same size as capital letters. I’m not saying he sometimes forgets to write articles: he just doesn’t want to. Honestly, he just has this dad-neat handwriting. He is a gentle dad and writes like a dad, if he puts too much pressure onto the paper, his handwriting become too sharp/angle-ish and ends up looking ugly. And as much as he would like to not care about it, in the end he does (:

Malon taught him how to write and it was quite the experience. At first he didn’t want to because he was ‘too old’ to learn and it was torture at first, but now look at him devouring his cowboy novels. 

A chunk of his handwriting: 

*sniff* such a dad quote.

3. my mansss, your  4x1 deal at Target: Four

Look, my boy is patient! He could do some nice and fancy lettering if he wanted to. He was taught that handwriting and spelling said a whole lot about him as a person, you know, like a first impression kinda thing; so he always proof reads more than twice before sending ­a letter. Super rare grammar mistakes.

The faster he writes, the more slant his writing becomes. Under stress/ when not sure how to write things down, run-on sentences are everywhere and his handwriting is inconsistent in general (I don’t headcanon each part of him having completely different handwriting because handwriting becomes muscle memory over time. It’s just slightly different variations of the same, like idk  Vio’s handwriting is neater than Green’s and Red writes hearts instead of any dot/circle and no, I do not take constructive criticism on that, jk i do.) Adding on to each of the colours’ handwriting, I’d think Red and Green write with words slanted to the right( inclined), Vio is a mix of the opposite, so reclined and straight, and my mans blue a true neutral writes straight (kinda like Time’s).

The logic behind this is that inclined writing supposedly means honesty and need for giving (and getting) affection; reclined means, as you can probably imagine,  defensiveness and repression of true feelings, but also shows great concentration; straight handwriting means self-control, observation and reflection as well as distrust and indifference. But as complete being (tm), Four just writes as in the image example which is not too straight and not too inclined, and I believe that’s a good middle for him

HOWEVER, if I’m feeling in the mood for crack, I totally accept this boy to have the ugliest, chicken scratches-looking handwriting! :’D It’s just funny to think that someone like him, who has to be precise and careful in his work, can't write neatly to save his life. 

One of his letters would look like this: 

Also I just LOVE how his hero titles look in this font ksksks

and that’s

(Middle row, from left to right)

4.- Mister Bunny Boy - Legend

His uncle taught him how to write. I’d call his handwriting pretty and neat at a first glance, but he presses too hard on the paper, most of the time staining the back or the following page. Sometimes will retrace some words if he doesn’t like how it looks (which only makes it messier). According to my notes, a thick or strong handwriting represents determination/commitment.

As I also headcanon him to know many languages, mechanical errors are more present than grammar ones; that is, weird capitalisation of words. Punctuation is somewhere in between; uses too many commas when he should just cut the sentence. he mixes punctuation from two languages or more in writing when too distracted (or too focused, because, well, pressure.); when he writes for himself, he has almost no problem following said language’s punctuation rules. Also, this is just polyglot culture, and I’m projecting a bit, but when he forgets a word in the language he’s writing, he just replaces it with its equivalent in another language because we don’t care about fluency, but rather functionality. in this household (more on that in my language hc, ksksks).

An example of his writing:

so powerful

4.-  Mr. Wolfman, howl me a song - Twilight

I don’t have much for him because 1) I don’t think he writes a lot and 2) he is a hands-on/visual learner, I’ll die by that. He only learnt how to write because Ulli insisted it was important and he was not about to disrespect his momma; he IS That Guy, but doesn’t really write enough to have neat handwriting.

Many people seem to overlook the fact that his house is filled with books and write him as completely illiterate (which if not explored properly, ends up feeling a bit disrespectful and full of prejudice, but go off I guess; and that’s on my core Headcanons for Twi); however, he sticks to simple sentences. Knowing how to read and understanding a text is different from knowing how to write them. Like, when we would see a semicolon and understand its position in the text, but didn’t understand the nature of it. Is this clear? idk i’m sorry. So yeah, boy reads a lot, writes very little.

As for his Actual Handwriting, as opposed to Legend, his handwriting is thiccc but not because he presses into the paper; he is just that messy, he has no sense of ink-flow-control, he does what he can with what he has. To the untrained eye, his handwriting illegible letters like v, n, u are very similar; when he makes notes for himself he does it in the form of doodles or small ‘icons’. But! He reads a lot, so he rarely makes spelling mistakes (: he is your go-to guy when you don’t know how to write a word.

An example of his writing:

He keeps a journal, sue me.

3. My first born- Warrior

Okay, first off... I accept this is completely biased. I saw the idea and said “That’s True”. If you haven’t, please read Effective Communication; or The Lack of Thereof by htruona, a fic where the boys reflect on the language barriers between them. It’s incredibly funny and probably what made me start making these silly notes. So, if you’ve read that fic, you know where I’m going.

My man, Warrior, can’t fucking write. I mean, he physically can, but it’s very bad. Here’s the reason for it, tho, and it’s not his fault: Technically, he knew how to write alright but he joined the military and whatever note he had to write had to be concise or in the worst case coded. He mixes capital and lowercase letters. If we consider that he joined the military at around 15, his handwriting and grammar had yet to continue developing. Just think about how after summer break, your handwriting was always slightly worse than before because you didn’t write for an entire month. Now think what 2 years can do to that. Hmm, not cool, dude. He makes quick notes, when writing he’s all gotta go fast. he is the lighting mcqueen of writing; good for emergency messages, not ideal for love letters. His punctuation also suffered a lot, he only know full stops and commas and hardly uses them. A sentence for him is either one word or fifty without a single comma, no inbetween.

His hero title and an example of his writing.

(Bottom row, or what I like to call “fuck cursive” row)

7.- Magic man - Hyrule

I’m basic and I do agree with the popular headcanon of he not knowing how to write because well, y’all know his Hyrule. He only knows how to write his name because that’s important, same with numbers. I don’t see why would he write/read except checking the roadsigns. (he can even use this as an excuse for getting lost frequently; he thought it said something different.) But I do think that because his habitual reading consists of roadsigns, his ‘punctuation’ is weird af and places full stops/points/periods at the same level of his words and his commas/question/exclamation marks below them. Yk, creative license. Sadly, I don’t have much about my magic hands man so here’s what his writing would look like if he actually wrote a paragraph:

Man, I love Hyrule.

8.- Man, I don’t understand this boy -  Wild

Cursive? ain’t nobody have the time for that. He woke up and had to save the world in his underwear while not knowing how to read nor write.  He learnt during his journey and was taught by multiple people from different regions, that explains his inconsistent spelling of things and names for them. So Wild knows language variations for many items and uses them interchangeably (even if they aren’t exactly the same). Another headcanon related to writing/language skills that I’ve been thinking about is that if the shrine was able to cause amnesia, I’m sure there were other areas in the brain affected which leads us to language disorders such as agraphia and aphasia. But that’s a story for another day ksksksk

An example of his writing (after relearning)

9.- The best of sons - Wind

I don’t have much for him and that makes me sad. Look, he’s a kid, doing kid things like stabbing dudes on the head. This boy was taught cursive by his grandma, but could never do it and no one needs it anyway. His handwriting is good enough for his pirate life, Tetra is the one to handle Official stuff, he just gotta sign. Spelling and grammar mistakes abound. He is still relatively young and can correct his handwriting if he desires. But same as Wild, with how many times he’s been thrown out and hit his head, I’m starting to consider some language disorder for him as well.

An example of his writing:

aaand that’s it.

Thanks, y’all for showing interest in this silly thing uwu it was fun to finally talk about this. If you ever want to discuss ideas/headcanons(especially if they are related to language and culture), I’m your person (: I’m always happy to hear new headcanons. Feel free to add anything to this post either in a reply or in a reblog, I’d love to hear from y’all <3<3

#linkeduniverse #linked universe #anon #ask #lu headcanons #well that took more than an hour #but tbh i got distracted by the polls #yikes #but anyways here's my essay #ksksksk #I'm sorry for being more detailed in some #sometimes there's not much thought going on other that #than I vibe with it #yk? #anywussy pls let me know what you think #and if you have any headcanons related to writing pls let me know i b e g #echo i'm sorry for slaughtering warriors like that ksksksk he wasn't the one with detailed writing #although i can also imagine him the way you described it #but russian-cursive-writing!warriors held my monkey brain hostage #and there was nothing I could do #aiñ forgot to add the main tag #because tis is the official post ksksksk

[jamesashtonisbae]

You and Me and the Big Blue Sea

Word Count: 6720 (no freaking way this started as 3,000 words and is now this freaking long

Book: The Nanny Affair

Pairing: Aditya Bharad x MC (Alyssa Febrey)

Rating: Mature (ish)

Warnings: Language, allusions to sexual content

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, they belong to Pixelberry studios. 

Author’s Note: This is so stinking long! I don't know how this happened! I haven't wanted to write for a long time, but I just thought Aditya was a cutie and wouldn't it be nice if MC could just date him in TNA. I am not loving Sam Dalton right now, but I did try not to be super cruel to him. I did run through and edit this, but I'm going through an emotional time at work so it's possible that it's bad. The ending was hard for me, because I wanted it to be a happy ending and I thought making it epilogue-ish was how to do that. Maybe I'll explore some of the in-between that I didn't dive into that fully. Thank you to anyone who reads!

Link to Masterlist

Aditya had spent the entire evening watching Alyssa Febrey. She stepped out in a sinful, skintight dress that was more visually appealing than the whole of the Casino de Monte Carlo. He surely lost thousands of dollars that night, but he would never know because he was just looking at her. He watched as she was joined by Sofia, their boss, and Sam Dalton, their boss boss. Sam Dalton clearly noticed what Aditya had, that Alyssa was the most beautiful woman in the entire building. He watched as Sam tried to touch her, discreetly. He also saw Alyssa twist her face from one of annoyance into a kind smile each time he did.

Aditya had admired Alyssa from afar for a while now and he could say with confidence that she was seeing Sam Dalton. He could also say with confidence that she was unhappy with Sam Dalton.

He and Alyssa ate lunch together every day. He would see her get a call from Sam on her watch and lately, she’d been declining it instead of leaving to see Sam as she had at the beginning. Maybe it was because of something Sam had done, or maybe she just wasn’t feeling it anymore. Aditya didn’t know for sure.

After watching them for a long time, he decided it was pathetic to be pining after this young woman, fresh out of grad school, who was immensely talented and capable and undoubtedly the most intelligent person in their division. She had saved the expo today by thinking on her feet and being the most charming person in the room. Even though she was drawing him to her like a magnet, he knew he needed to stop staring at her like a loser.

He noticed that Sam had slipped a room key into her hand and that she was now waiting to go join him. And Aditya didn’t want to be the chump who didn’t get to be with her and watched her with another guy, but he had to talk to her. He gulped down another shot and took his liquid courage over to see the girl he’d been thinking about all day.

“Hello Alyssa,” he said softly to get her to turn towards him.

She turned and her frown lit up into a grin when she saw him, “Addy!” She jumped up and wrapped her arms around him in a hug, “Today was amazing, wasn’t it? I can’t believe how well it went for us!”

“How well it went for you, you mean. You saved us out there, Lyss.”

“I don’t know about that, but thank you. It was exhilarating to talk about our idea with people who can actually make it happen and use it to make the world a better place.”

“It was. You did a great job presenting. I would have been so nervous about having that responsibility on my shoulders. You’re great with people.”

“Aw, Ads, you are too! I know you would have done a great job with it, too.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t have.”

The way she was looking at him had him believing her though. Her eyes were lit up in a way he hadn’t seen the whole time she’d been at the casino. She was leaning in towards him, looking into his eyes, smiling brightly.

“So, you doing anything fun tonight?” she asked.

“I wasn’t planning on much. I thought I might take a walk down to the docks since I haven’t done any working out since I’ve been here. Or sightseeing, we just have been stuck in here dealing with the expo.”

She sat there for a second, contemplating, “Can I come with you?”

. . .

Alyssa had been feeling alone lately. That is until she met Aditya at work. Where all Sam wanted from her was to have sex, Aditya was interested in talking to her and getting to know her. Sure, she liked having sex, but she wanted more from someone she was pursuing a real relationship with. She wanted to feel like she was friends with the person she was with, not just white-hot lust. She didn’t have that with Sam.

Aditya was filling that gap. And sure, the grass wasn’t always greener on the other side. But as she’d been getting to know Aditya, she was realizing that there were romantic feelings there. They hadn’t so much as flirted, but she was crushing on him hard. There were just lunch and work conversations and many long hours of working closely together and somewhere along the way, she realized that she liked him a lot. And she’d given Sam chances to be what she was looking for, she had told him she needed to not feel like a booty call and to be treated like she was a person he actually loved. Still, he only ever called or texted to sext or to set up a time to have sex. He didn’t listen to her. And she was absolutely exhausted trying to make it work.

Alyssa knew she had a lot to offer and she knew what she was worth. Which was why she was done sitting around. She texted Sam that she wouldn’t be joining him, then followed Aditya out of the casino.

“Go slow, because I can’t move that fast in these shoes.”

“Do you need some help?” he asked, offering his arm for her.

“Thank you, Aditya,” she said, hooking her hand in the crook of his arm. Being close to this man was making her stomach flip in a way it hadn’t in years. She wondered if she would work up the courage to say anything to him yet.

“So, I haven’t been able to help but notice that you and Sam Dalton seem closer than former nanny and employer,” he started as they walked slowly down the sidewalk to the docks.

“What an astute scientific observation, Mr. Bharad.”

“And would it be the type of relationship where I would get fired for taking a walk arm in arm with you on a beautiful night in a foreign country?”

Alyssa laughed, “Please, I don’t think Sam cares about me unless I’m in a bedroom.”

Aditya stopped and turned to look at her with a heartbroken gaze, “Well, he’s an idiot.”

Alyssa returned it for a moment, then looked away sheepishly, “Yes, he is.”

“So you’re not going to use that room key in your purse?” he asked, cringing that he asked that question.

“I texted him that I wasn’t coming.”

Aditya was in shock. He couldn’t believe she had decided to hang out with him over billionaire Sam Dalton, “Has he replied?”

“I muted him.”

“Ouch.”

“Well maybe he should’ve thought of that back when I told him I was tired of feeling like a booty call and I wanted to feel valued, and then he kept just trying to have sex with me and not actually do couple things,” she didn’t want to admit how stupid she actually was. She couldn’t believe she had actually thought something serious could happen with Sam.

“So is he your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend in public or in private,” it was the most honest thing she had admitted about Sam. She wasn’t his and he wasn’t hers. She didn’t think she’d ever said anything that brash about Sam.

“Oh.”

“I feel a little stupid about it actually.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“But I do. I let this guy tell me that I’m pretty and smart and then didn’t even stop to think about if the relationship was actually good for me. He didn’t even have to do anything to get me, I just followed after him like a little puppy dog. And I’ve never gotten anything back except for him leaving his fiancee who cheated on him and it was exposed in front of all the guests at his rehearsal dinner.”

“You deserve better than that, Alyssa.”

“I know I do,” she said, knowing she did in her heart, hoping that she was maybe standing in front of her “better” right now.

“You’re so confident, Alyssa. I don’t know what has happened with you and Sam, but I know you to be a confident woman who knows what she wants,” Aditya was hopeful that she would be confident and tell him if she felt something for him because his confidence was dwindling with all of the Sam talk. He thought she’d realize they had good times together and go back to him. His window was dwindling. He wanted her so badly, just to hold her hand and talk to her and buy her lunch and flowers and follow her around while she was shopping and research next to each other on the couch and eventually fall in love and get married and have children. All he wanted was a shot. He had one but he thought it had already passed.

“I think I’m learning what I want,” she said after a few moments of silence. She was standing there with a man she really liked and who had always put her first. He was so kind to her, always helping her when she was still figuring out her way around the lab, eating lunches with her so she wouldn’t have to go on her own, bringing in coffee for everyone but getting her the fancy latte she liked instead of just a regular coffee with sugar and cream. She could not have asked him to be a better guy. He was so sweet.

“What do you want?” he asked. They had reached the docks and were now strolling to the end to look out at the water. It was a beautiful night, maybe a bit chilly. Alyssa shivered and Aditya shifted to wrap his arm around her. At that, Alyssa turned so she was completely in his arms.

She looked up into his eyes and smiled, “I want you,” and with that, decisively pressed her lips to his. He secured her in his arms tightly, pulling her tiny body to his almost aggressively. She smiled into his lips, running her hands up to rest at the nape of his neck. He ran his hands over the silky back of her dress, holding onto her bare skin when his hands moved up her back. She lost herself in the feeling of Aditya’s lips on hers. She’d wanted to be kissed like this for so long. Like the other person was desperate for her. Like she was all he wanted and all he needed. The way his hand gripped her back, gently but intentionally, made her knees weak. And she realized she hadn’t kissed like this for a long time. She was desperate for him. She wanted him and she needed him. He was as necessary as the salty air she was breathing. If not more. The kiss ignited feelings that had been brewing for a long time. All she could think about now was him.

He stopped kissing her to look into her eyes. He looked at her like she hung the moon. She smiled up at him and said, “That was perfect.”

“I wholeheartedly agree,” he said, wrapping her up into another perfect kiss.

They stood at the edge of the dock, holding hands and chatting almost all night. They talked about work, more than just the expo that day, but their hopes and dreams for environmental innovation. She’d never enjoyed conversations like this with a guy before. He didn’t talk down to her or assume she didn’t know what he was saying.

They could have talked about it for hours, but eventually, they moved on to family. He had two loving parents who had emigrated from India to give him and his four brothers and two sisters a life in America. They had expected him to be a doctor, but he had insisted on becoming an environmental engineer. In the end, they were proud of their third child. They lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and hadn’t loved everything about America, but were huge Red Sox fans and bought season tickets every year. Secretly, she hoped she’d be able to join them sometime. When she was at MIT she loved going to Red Sox games and if things went well with Aditya, maybe she would actually get to join them realistically.

She told him about her parents, who loved their only daughter with all their hearts. They lived in a small town in upstate New York and took all of their vacations to visit her, whether she was at MIT or living in the Big Apple. Her parents were German and they loved to cook German cuisine for fun and would invite anyone to join them. Her dad also loved to fish on the quiet lake their house sat on.

They talked about music, and art, and their favorite restaurants and movies and tv shows and what they thought about the books they were reading and how they saw the world and what they thought about politics and taxes and British imperialism and anything and everything until it was well into the early hours of the morning.

Eventually, she could feel her feet growing numb. Sore, she could deal with. Numb was a completely different story. She started shifting her feet a lot, and Aditya noticed.

“You can take those off you know,” he said.

“No, a lady never takes off her shoes until the end of the night,” she joked, drawing a quick laugh from her handsome companion.

“Well then, I’ll carry you,” he offered.

“You’ll carry me?”

He nodded, reaching down under her knees and lifting her up into his arms, “Ads! What are you doing?”

He laughed and kissed her gently on the cheek, “I’m carrying you. Your feet hurt and I’m a gentleman so I’m carrying you back to your room.”

The two of them giggled the entire way back to her room, which was conveniently on the same floor as his. When they arrived, he set her down on her feet, then leaned down and met her in a final kiss.

“I want to spend every moment with you, Alyssa. But I want to prove that I want more than something physical with you,” he whispered against her lips as she started tugging him closer to her. It was obvious what they both wanted, but he was committed to not being Sam. He wanted to show her that he wanted more with her. Because boy did he want more with her. He wanted to visit her parent’s cabin in upstate New York and go fishing with her dad and learn to make schnitzel in the kitchen with her mom. He wanted to sit in front of the warm fireplace with her, reading books and talking and kissing.

“You can come in, I’ll still believe you want more,” she looked up with him, batting her eyelashes flirtatiously. “I promise.”

“If I come in, it will just be for a drink.”

“Oh of course. Just a drink,” she smirked, wrapping a hand behind his neck, curling her fingers into his hair to pull him down into a kiss. He went into the kiss willingly. They were ramping it up to more when there was a shout from the end of the hall.

“What the fuck is this?” Sam exclaimed from the end of the hallway, hands on his hips. Alyssa had never seen him looking so angry. She knew why, she had her hand tangled in another man’s hair and her leg was doing that thing where it was hitching up over his hip. It looked bad. But it didn’t matter if it looked bad, it wasn’t bad. She was single.

“Sam, it’s late. These people in this hotel are trying to sleep! Go to bed,” she hissed loudly.

“I’ll pay for their rooms. Who the fuck is this guy and why the fuck is he kissing my girlfriend?” Sam’s intense features were darkening and she genuinely believed he was going to kill Aditya. Genuinely believed it would happen.

“I’m not your girlfriend, Sam,” she said adamantly.

“Like hell, you’re not.”

“We’re not doing this out here,” she thought if she whispered it, he would get the hint and stop yelling.

He seemed to get the hint as he lowered his voice, “Fine, we’ll do this in your room.”

“No, we’re not doing this in my room either. We’re not doing this at all. Go back to your room, Sam,” as soon as she said it, she was done with him. She knew she couldn’t go back to what they’d had, just sex and kissing and occasionally seeing the boys. She still wanted to see the boys, but that was all. She’d be staying in this just to be the next mother to those boys. And she loved them so much, more than she loved most anyone in the world. But that was not enough of a reason to stay in a relationship that was causing her so much pain.

“No,” Sam crossed his arms adamantly.

“She told you to go, man,” Aditya stepped in front of Alyssa. Alyssa leaned her head against his shoulder, holding onto him gently as he stood up for her. She had to hide her grin as the hot guy she had a crush on stood up for her against the billionaire she had been sleeping with. It was a tense situation and if she smiled like a crazy person it would make Sam even angrier.

“And who are you to tell me what to do?”

“Someone who cares about Alyssa, and you’re upsetting her. You don’t need to talk to her about this now.”

“And are you going to leave? Or are you going to go into my girlfriend’s room?”

“Last I checked, she’s not your girlfriend.”

“She’s not yours either.”

“I do know that. I don’t go around calling women my girlfriend unless we’ve had an explicit conversation about it and we’re both on the same page. Go back to your room.”

Sam growled, turning on his heel and marching over to the elevator. He waited for a few beats, glaring over at the couple that had been on the verge of happy before he stormed down there, then shook his head and went inside and left. Alyssa sighed in relief, wrapping both arms around Aditya and holding him tightly against her.

He turned around in her arms, tilting her chin so she looked up in his eyes, “Are you okay?”

She nodded, “I appreciate you defending me, even if it put your job on the line.”

“I think my job is okay. Sofia doesn’t seem like she takes instructions from Sam Dalton.”

“A valid point,” she replied, leaning up to press a gentle kiss to his lips.

“So, I want to talk to you about this, but I don’t think we should out here. Can I come in, or are you done with people for today?”

“No, you should come in,” she said, a little exhausted at the thought of having to talk about this more. She wanted to talk to Addy about everything, but tonight she just needed to fall asleep with that attractive man next to her. How she would convince him to stay with her, she didn’t know.

He followed her into her room. When she started to take a seat on her bed, he stopped her, “Why don’t you change into something comfortable, and I’ll go back to my room and change too?”

She nodded and he left to change. She changed into a pair of sweatpants and an MIT hoodie. As she waited for him, she curled up on the couch and tugged a blanket over her. She was exhausted by the whole night. It was late and she wanted to sleep but she wanted to assure Aditya that she wasn’t just going to kiss him once and run. A few moments later, Aditya returned and joined her. She sat up a bit and let him take her hands.

“Do you want to talk tonight?” he asked, observing that she was exhausted and didn’t have the capacity to talk about her tumultuous relationship with Sam Dalton that night.

She shook her head, moving over so she was sitting in his lap, “I just want to cuddle up with you.”

“You can cuddle up with me.”

She let him adjust on the couch, moving so they were pressed together completely, holding onto each other tightly. They didn’t say much at all, just enjoying being near each other. She nestled her head into his chest until she couldn’t breathe. It was a delight to be suffocated by being comfortable with this man. And like she could be in his presence and not have to sleep with him for it to be okay for them to be hanging out.

After a long time of cuddling together, Aditya picked her up and took her over to set her down in her bed. She was so happy in his arms. They were so much bigger and stronger than she expected, but they were also cozy and comfortable. So comfortable that the four-second walk to her bed was enough for her to basically fall asleep.

“Good night, Lyssa,” he said, pulling the covers back with one hand, then gently depositing her into the bed.

She snuggled into her covers as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, “Please stay,” she whispered.

“Lyssa . . .”

“Please, Addy?”

He looked down at the beautiful woman snuggled tightly into her covers. She looked so exhausted that she would probably not remember if he left, but there was no way he was going to deny her anything she asked.

He crawled into the bed from the other side. As soon as he was laying down, Alyssa slid over and wrapped her arms around him. For a moment, they just lay together, snuggled up happily. And she was, so happy. It was blissful. She’d spent a while getting to know him, they had built a friendship, they had grown to appreciate and trust each other and then they had developed feelings. It may not have been white-hot at first, but there was a moment when she kissed him before Sam interrupted them. But mostly it was just them being comfortable together. She hadn’t felt this way with a man in years. And after a year of feeling on edge and unsure, it was perfect.

“Goodnight Addy.”

He kissed her forehead gently, “Good night.”

. . .

A few weeks later, Alyssa had ended things with Sam. She had told him it wasn’t working and she knew he had tried, but it still wouldn’t work. She didn’t want to disappoint the boys, so she said she’d be willing to hang out with them if he ever brought them to the office or if they asked he could reach out and plan a time for her to see them. Other than that, she didn’t want to be with him. It broke her heart a tiny bit. In the end, she did believe he loved some part of her.

He was distraught. She had never seen Sam Dalton cry before, but he did when she ended things. It made her cry too. They needed closure, and the conversation gave them closure. It was a little sad, but when she thought of Aditya and being able to pursue a real relationship with him, she suddenly became deliriously happy.

One morning, all those weeks later, she walked into the lab with a smile on her face and an extra scone and coffee in her hand. Aditya always got there early, so she wanted to be there before everyone else. She had a very important question to ask him since they had been seeing each other since Monaco.

They had gone on a few dates here and there but mostly had just seen each other at work. It was clear that they were meaning to get together once she had the official conversation with Sam.

“Hey Ads, sorry to interrupt your early morning,” she strolled over to him and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “But, I come bearing breakfast.”

He grinned, looking around to make sure no one else was there, then kissed her lips softly, “Thank you for breakfast. Want to go eat in your office?”

She nodded, “Yeah let’s go.”

They sat in her office, chatting about work and all of the things they had going on that day. Sam had won the competition and was named CEO, but the environmental division had gotten some incredible grants and investments and was successful. Sam promised not to fire her or Aditya and to let Sofia continue running the division.

When the clock struck 8:00, signaling when everyone else, in every other department, would be in, Alyssa popped her question, “Aditya, would you do me the honor of going to HR and becoming my official boyfriend?”

He laughed, reaching over to pull her into a hug, “I would love to.”

“Yeah?” she asked, burying her face in his chest. This man was finally going to be hers, all hers. And in return, she would be all his. Her whole life, she had been waiting to feel this safe and secure, and giddy and excited, and hot and sexy. She finally felt like she found what she was looking for, what everyone was looking for in their life. And wow, was she happy.

“Yeah,” he replied. He couldn’t believe that he was making Alyssa his girlfriend. She had become his best friend over the course of their time working together, but he had felt that spark when he met her. The spark that made him know that even if this incredible woman was only ever going to be his friend, he was going to have to try to make her his girl. He was grateful for her friendship and appreciated her so deeply, but the minute she kissed him, he knew he would not be able to return.

She gave him a gentle kiss that he ramped up into more, pulling her over into his lap. They started making out more passionately than they had ever before. They had proven their commitment to one another and now were ready to step up other areas of their relationship. She couldn’t have been more excited, but she had no idea how she was going to make it through the workday without having this man.

“Alyssa- oh my god! I’m so sorry, umm,” their coworker Charles walked in. He was clearly embarrassed, but he wasn’t going to leave just yet. He wasn’t the only one embarrassed. Aditya looked away and covered his face with his hands. All Alyssa could think about when he did it was how big that man’s hands were and how badly she wanted them back on her.

“Don’t worry Charles, we’re going to HR this morning,” she said, wishing she could just ravage him there instead of having to go to HR at all.

“Oh. Well, good. Um, as you were,” Charles wanted to leave, clearly, but he didn’t make a move to go just yet.

“It’s okay, we’re going to HR now,” Alyssa said.

“Don’t go on my account.”

“No, we’re going. We already decided on it. That’s what all the kissing was about. Probably should have waited,” she said, slipping off of her boyfriend’s lap.

Aditya kept his eyes on the floor as he took her hand as he led her past Charles to take her to the HR office. That was probably why, when they got into the elevator, they didn’t notice that Sam was in there too.

“Oh, hi Sam,” this was the first time she had seen him since they broke up. He had texted her telling her that the boys missed her, so she arranged a time to see them at the park with Jordan. But she hadn’t seen him. He looked good, but she could tell in his eyes that he was sad. Maybe not before they came in the elevator, but since they came in the elevator it was all she could see, that a man she had loved was sad and missing her. But in that moment she knew, she was fully over him.

“Hello, Alyssa. Aditya.”

Alyssa nodded, not noticing that she was still holding Aditya’s hand. Sam noticed and nodded towards them, “So, you two are together?”

Alyssa nodded again, “Yes. We’re going to HR right now.”

“Well, that’s good. I’m happy for you,” to his credit, he seemed genuine.

“Thank you, Sam,” she said, offering a smile. “And congrats on winning. You deserve this company. And so do the boys.”

He smiled, “They do. I’m glad to have secured their futures from them. If they should want this future of course.”

Alyssa smiled back at him, “Of course. Tell them hello for me.”

“I will.”

They stood awkwardly for a few moments, “Well, this is our floor.”

“Of course. Good luck in there.”

“Thank you,” Alyssa said, leading Aditya out, hand in hand.

After they went to HR and declared their relationship with all the paperwork in the world, there was a bouquet of wildflowers on her desk. Apparently, Aditya had scheduled for them to arrive in the elevator when she was talking to Sam.

“Oh, Addy!” she threw her arms around him and gave him a solid peck on the mouth. “They’re beautiful, thank you!”

“You like them?”

“I love them! They’re perfect!” she said, holding him tightly. It was so nice to be shown affection in public by the person she was dating. The flowers were huge and they were beautiful and they were her favorite kind. She couldn’t remember telling him that she loved wildflower bouquets.

Later that day, he bought her lunch. It was from their favorite bistro that they frequented when they were tired of the cafeteria, but he got her the cookie she always refused to get for herself.

After work, he walked her home, then promised to be back in an hour with a kiss. She got ready for the reservation he had made during the day, at a restaurant she had never told Sam she liked, but that Aditya had figured out without even having to ask. It wasn’t super fancy, but the way this man made her feel made her want to dress up for him. She put on the dress she had worn to the casino in Monaco, the first night they got together.

When he showed up at her apartment, his eyes lit up the way she had hoped they would, “You’re wearing the dress!”

“Is it your favorite dress?” she asked, walking over to him sexily.

“I love everything you wear, but this dress. My god, you look incredible. You look like everything I’ve ever wanted,” he was devouring her with his eyes. She felt so desired.

“Addy,” she whispered, reaching over to cup his face in her hand and guide him into a kiss with her. In that moment, she knew she had never been this blissfully happy in her life. She loved the kinky sex she’d had with Sam, but it was not even close to what she had with Aditya, and she hadn’t had sex with him. He was so committed to proving to her that he wanted her in a way that she hadn’t been wanted before that he held back and didn’t have sex with her. Now that she had a label on it, she was hoping it would happen soon. There were moments where she could hardly stand to keep her hands off the man.

She pulled away and held his hand, “You’re wonderful, you know that, right?”

He laughed, “Just trying to be as good a man as a woman like you deserves.”

“I would be so lucky to deserve how good you are to me,” she reached up and kissed him again. “I’m ready to go, are you?”

He nodded, taking her hand and leading her out to go to dinner. She had a wonderful time, realizing that this was really going to work. They were going to have a really great relationship, she knew it was her happily ever after.

And after dinner, she drew him into her bedroom and had her way with him. He was blown away by her prowess in bed. She knew her way around a man, and she was learning his body at a rapid pace. She adored him and was happy to show it by worshipping his body. While she was the more dominant of the two, he still had a few tricks up his sleeve that had her moaning and writhing beneath him.

He spent the night for the first time. He assumed he would and had brought over a bag so they could go to work together in the morning. As she fell asleep in his arms for the first time since Monaco, she felt truly at peace. Maybe it was the mind blowing sex, maybe it was the kind gestures, maybe it was that cute, kissable face. Whatever it was, she fell asleep comfortably.

That next morning, she made him breakfast in bed. They cuddled and kissed and he wasn’t early for work for the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. Alyssa Febrey could be very persuasive.

A month later, when they were going for a stroll after a date, he had something big to tell her. They had stopped walking to admire the water in Central Park, and while Alyssa was gazing out at the water and smiling, Aditya couldn’t keep it in any longer.

“Alyssa . . .” he whispered breathlessly.

“Yes?” she replied, looking up at him with hearts in her eyes.

“I love you.”

She smiled at him, that big, wide, brilliant smile. As he was pulled into a kiss, she said the words back to him. They held each other tight until she got too cold to stay out there. He took her back and made literal love to her, showing her what he had told her was true.

After the three little words were uttered, it was time to meet the parents. He brought her to Boston to celebrate Diwali with his family. His mom lent her a kurti to wear, which shocked him. His mother would never have let any of his past girlfriends wear any of her clothes. She also let Alyssa help in the kitchen. Aditya wasn’t even allowed to help cook for a holiday like Diwali. And while Alyssa was not a bad cook by any means, she had no experience with traditional Hindu dishes. His mom loved her and told him every single day that she felt that way. His dad liked her a lot, enough that he planned to take her to a Red Sox game in the spring.

Over the winter holidays, she took him home to meet her parents. He fit in with them so well. Her dad asked him to help him with a whole bunch of home improvement projects for the four days they were there. While she was in the kitchen teaching her mom some of the recipes Mrs. Bharad had taught her, Aditya was out in the living room with her dad laughing and joking as they mounted the new flatscreen on the wall. Her mom caught her smiling to herself as she turned on the stovetop.

“What’s that smile for, little miss?” her mom asked.

Alyssa looked up, blushing, “Just that this could be a preview of the rest of my life.”

“So you think he’s the one?”

She nodded, “Yeah mom, I do think he’s the one.”

Her mom looked over at her with a hint of a tear shining in her eyes, “I think he is too.”

After a year of being boyfriend and girlfriend, Aditya booked a trip for them to Monaco. Alyssa talked to Jenny, and Jenny was convinced he was going to propose back in the place where they had first fallen for each other. Jenny loved Aditya, and so did all of Alyssa’s other friends. They raved about how he treated her and told Alyssa every day that he made them believe there were good men in the world. They also insisted that he was going to propose in Monaco where they’d made their first romantic memories together.

Sure enough, they took a walk down to the very same docks where they first revealed their desires to each other. Alyssa knew her man well, and she’d never seen him this nervous. He had presented prototypes in front of the entire company and had watched the Red Sox win a World Series in seven games. Never this nervous.

“Alyssa,” he started, reaching over to take both of her hands in his and make her face him. “From the minute I met you, I knew you were special. You were so clever and such a quick learner and I thought ‘I need to know more about this woman.’ And as I got to know more about you, I found myself falling more and more for you. And here, in Monaco, I finally got to see that you felt a similar way. And from that moment, I couldn’t look back. I would do anything to be with you, Alyssa. You’re the only woman for me.”

“Aditya . . .”

“Alyssa,” he let go of one of her hands, reaching into his pocket. He knelt down and pulled out a beautiful emerald-cut diamond ring. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, dropping to her knees and wrapping her arms around him. “Oh my god, Addy, yes, yes, yes!”

Aditya laughed and hugged her tighter, “I love you, Lyss.”

“I love you, Addy.”

He pulled away to give her a kiss, then put the ring on her finger.

“My God, this ring, Addy. It’s so beautiful.”

She let him carry her back to the same hotel, and this time they went to the same room and spent the night in the heavy throes of passion.

After a year and a half, Alyssa and Aditya were married. It was a traditional Hindu wedding and it was beautiful. She had spent the year learning the traditions from Aditya’s parents and family. Although neither she nor Aditya subscribed to any religion, his parents wanted a traditional wedding, so a traditional wedding they had. There were more people there than she had ever anticipated, but she wore a fabulous red wedding saree and it was the most beautiful wedding she had ever seen, although she was a little biased.

And by the end of their lives, they had three beautiful kids and a love that didn’t die. There were ups and downs, there were moments of heartbreak and heartache. They went through the deaths of their parents together, holding each other tight as they confronted the reality of losing the people that meant the most in their life. But before that, they had two of their beautiful children, who got to meet their grandparents and love them dearly. They lost a baby, and it broke them both to the point that they didn’t know if they could keep going. In the end, they realized they had to hang onto each other to make it through this life. They bought a house in Greenwich, spending their quality time together on the drive into the city. They built their own research laboratory that made innovations in environmental science, and built a life they loved. Their third child was a blessing, a miracle after losing one. They made sure their kids had everything they could possibly want. They took them to Monaco when they were old enough to enjoy it to show them where it all began.

It was a life she could not have imagined in her wildest dreams. Neither of them were perfect, but they were wonderful together. They had brilliant chemistry, at work and at home. Their family was beautiful, their lives were rich and full.

Alyssa got to see her children grow up and lead successful lives, with plenty of grandchildren. She couldn’t have imagined, back at the expo in Monaco, that she was going to build a life with that man who was kind enough to walk her down to the docks so she could see the beautiful sea.

#choices the nanny affair #the nanny affair #choices tna #aditya bharad #aditya x mc #aditya bharad x mc #the nanny affair fanfiction

[random-thought-depository]

The infamously corny Star Trek TOS episode The Omega Glory was on TV last night and I watched it. My ideas for how I’d rewrite it to make it less silly:

---

The Yang ancestral culture wasn’t literally the USA, it was just a society that looked kind-of sort-of like the USA in the same way some pre-Columbian American and ancient Indian societies may have looked kind-of sort-of like ancient Athens. That by itself would make the episode much less stupid, and you could keep most of the same basic ideas.

Since we’re not bound to absurd levels of parallelism anymore, I’d personally be inclined to make the Kohms light-skinned blue-eyed blond(e)s and make the Yangs darker-skinned with darker hair and eyes, and imply that the Kohm ancestral society was fascist instead of communist. Maybe sprinkle some symbols distantly reminiscent of Nazi iconography around the Kohm village. It’s not like there was any meaningful connection between the Kohms and communism anyway, and I feel this resonates better with a lot of the ideas the episode was going for. Admittedly, this is probably influenced by my own biases.

---

Basically swap the roles of Cloud Williams and his mostly silent female companion who doesn’t really do much.

Why? Let’s think about how Yang society might work for a moment. I’m going to say they’re horse-riding big game hunters, like the nineteenth century Great Plains native American cultures on Earth, because 1) that fits with the idea that they’ve been driven into marginal lands and had to become nomads, 2) if you want nomads capable of assembling armies of thousands of people it’s either that or Eurasian-style herders, 3) it fits with the “they’ve become like native Americans” idea. They’re very slow-aging, theoretically capable of living over a thousand years ... but if they’re like their precedent cultures on Earth they probably live fairly rough and dangerous lives and I think would probably tend to live only a few decades or centuries before dying in a hunting accident or battle or something like that. But... going by Earth precedent, it would probably be mostly the men who do the most high-risk activities of hunting and war, which might result in very gender-asymmetrical life expectancy patterns, where men tend to only live a few decades or centuries while women stay relatively safe and have a decent chance of living to be thousand year old ancients. This would be compounded by 1) a lower death rate would mean a lower birth rate for replacement rate reproduction, 2) they’re almost immune to infectious diseases, which would make childbirth in primitive conditions much safer, so that would greatly reduce the probable primary cause of death for women in such a society (childbirth complications). So I think it’s pretty plausible that they’d have a more-or-less matriarchal society where women have a lot of power because they live a lot longer and hence have a lot more time to accumulate experience and become repositories of culture (important for a low-tech nomadic society that will have a mostly oral culture!).

So, I’d gender-swap Cloud Williams; my version of her would a matriarch with a leadership position in her tribe because she’s one of its oldest able-bodied members, she’s got a thousand years of experience and she’s had time to memorize a lot of the oral histories of her tribe and become basically a living library. Why would such a person be anywhere near a battlefield? Well, “the oral histories of her tribe” would include a lot of war stories, with detailed and often basically accurate descriptions of tactics and strategy because that’s how knowledge of how to win wars against Kohms and rival Yang tribes is transmitted in her society. She’s a living tactical manual, so of course she leads her tribe’s warriors in battle.

She could have a companion who’s a big guy who doesn’t talk much and does the brute strength side of what in the episode is Cloud Williams’s role (fighting Kirk in the cell, ripping out the bars). Maybe he’s her grandson, and was captured with her because one of his roles in the tribe is to be her bodyguard in battle.

----

Related to what I just said, have a bit where Captain Tracey says that he expected the primitive and superstitious Yangs to be overawed by phasers, but instead it was almost like they have a recent cultural memory of war with modern weapons and war against technologically superior opponents and they quickly started using effective counter tactics. Given the explanation in the episode for the long lifespans of people on Omega IV (very strong selection pressure for disease resistance), none of the Yangs would actually remember the ancient high-tech Yang civilization and original war against the Kohms, but the generational transmission chains from a lot of presently living Yang matriarchs to that time might be relatively short. For a lot of the presently living Yang matriarchs shooting down Kohm helicopters with surface-to-air missiles and ambushing Kohm armored columns in mountain passes might be something like “my grandma’s time.”

----

The reason the “Eee Plab Neesta” sounds like gibberish is that Cloud Williams is reciting it in its archaic original language, which the living Yang language has evolved into mutual incomprehensibility with. The Yangs might have one lovingly preserved paper copy of their equivalent of the Declaration of Independence, but their culture is mostly oral, and they mostly preserve the “holy words” in the heads of the matriarchs, who memorize it and transmit it from mother to daughter exactly (“by heart”), being careful to get every syllable right so it does not become distorted. The oldest matriarchs can still speak the ancient language, but for most of the Yangs, especially the relatively short-lived men, it’s like me listening to somebody recite Beowulf in its original language.

This is more-or-less my headcanon for what’s going in the actual episode too: the “Eee Plab Neesta” is just the text in its original now archaic form of the Yang language, which the universal translator can’t translate because it doesn’t have a big enough sample to work on. I’d make that much more explicit though.

The way I’d handle the scene is to have Cloud Williams start to recite the Eee Plan Neesta, and then have Kirk ask her what it means and suggest that she try to translate it into the everyday language of the Yangs so all her people could hear it with understanding, and of course it wouldn’t be the actual Declaration of Independence but something different but with a similar spirit, something like this:

“We the people of these five colonies of the nation across the sea and seven nations of the original inhabitants of this land, establish a Union, which we found in and organize according to the following principles: that all people are equally precious, that laws exist by the consent of the people and to serve the people, that leaders serve the people and hold their offices by the consent of the people...”

Then have Kirk give his speech about how these words are meant for everyone and not just for chiefs and should be something shared among all the people and lived by and not something gatekept behind archaic language most people can’t understand. Have him reference the USA founding documents by saying that his world has something very similar and he knows from the history of his own world how world-changing these ideas can be and how precious they are.

----

Obviously you can’t do that “the Yangs try to find out if Kirk recognizes the holy words, and Kirk almost recognizes them but not quite” thing with this version, so the equivalent I propose is:

Kirk recognizes the original functions of Yang “holy relics,” i.e. relics from the ancient Yang civilization: one is part of a machine that once carried people through the air (it’s a snapped-off piece of a helicopter blade), one was a device for seeing far away things as if they’re near (it’s a broken pair of binoculars), one was a machine which people could use to talk to people who were beyond the horizon (it’s a broken-down cell phone), etc.. OK, the last thing is anachronistic for TOS, but if I were writing this as a fanfic it’s what I’d do.

Cloud Williams starts to recite a long epic poem the Yangs have that tells their entire history, to see if Kirk will recognize it. Of course Kirk doesn’t, but while the Yangs don’t have history books they do use visual textile art as an aid to memory and they’ve set up a big story cloth that depicts the narrative in the room and Kirk goes over to it and starts pointing to pictures on it and correctly interpreting them:

“Here, the Yangs were oppressed by kings. The Yangs rebelled and overthrew their kings and made a new nation that had no kings. After this the Yangs became very rich and very powerful, they built great cities. The lords of the Kohms were threatened by this and they used terrible weapons on the Yangs and invaded the Yang land with great armies. Here’s a Yang city being destroyed in an instant by a Kohm weapon. The Kohm lords were so threatened that they tried to destroy the Yangs’ whole way of life. The Yangs retreated to the bad lands and kept fighting. Here are Kohm flying machines attacking a Yang village, and a Yang warrior hiding behind a rock destroying one of those flying machines with a lance of fire. The Kohm lords couldn’t overcome the Yangs until they brought the Death Thirst to the Yang lands in a box and let it out. But that weapon had a life of its own, and turned against the Kohms, and almost destroyed them too. Only a few Yangs survived in the bad lands, and the Kohms claimed the good Yang lands and settled them. But the Yangs survived, they learned the bow and the lance, and eventually their numbers started to increase. The survivors lived longer than people had before; you interpreted this as a gift for the Yangs and curse on the Kohms by the Great Spirit, so that both might live to see you retake what was once yours. And little by little, you did retake what was once yours...”

----

One way to suggest the Enterprise crew making a positive difference on Omega IV at the end of the episode: have Kirk convince the Yangs to spare the Kohm civilians in that village.

The victorious Yangs are all set to give the last Kohms the Numbers 31 treatment, which is what they usually do when they overrun a Kohm community. Of course, Kirk is horrified by this, and he manages to use arguments involving the Yang “holy words” to convince the Yangs to be merciful instead. “Your own holy words say that every person is equally precious! Every person! That includes the Kohms too! If you really mean it, it includes the Kohms too! They’re no threat to you anymore! Did you fight for so long just for a chance to do to them what they tried to do to you? If so, how are you any better than them? Your own holy words claim to be for all people! Your own holy words say that all people are more alike than they are different, and all people are capable of appreciating the gift of freedom! If that’s true, then your holy words are for the Kohms too! That’s why the Kohm lords were so threatened by you, because they were afraid of what would happen if the Kohm people heard those powerful, good words! Tell the Kohms about your holy words!”

So Cloud Williams agrees to make a merciful and peaceful settlement with the “last of the Kohm places,” let it integrate peacefully into Yang society with no further bloodshed and no abuse inflicted or spoils taken. And then Kirk says “If you mean your words of freedom, your work didn’t end today, it’s just starting. Build good seaworthy boats that can cross the ocean, and send people to the Kohms across the sea, so they can hear your words of freedom too! The words of your ancestors are for them too! You’d never be able to conquer them, but they can hear your words!”

#Star Trek #fanfic ideas #cw: Nazis #kinda #cw: genocide #I read/watch something

[cancerbiophd]

15 steps on making a sweet sweet powerpoint presentation*

*for class presentations and seminars, like at conferences or meetings. Lecture notes for teaching are different, though some of these may still apply:

Tell a story. A story always has 3 parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Create a compelling narrative so the audience feels invested in knowing what’s next. 

Know your audience, and adjust accordingly. Presenting to people with our same background (like students in our program) will differ from presenting to a broader audience like the general public, who may not care (or understand) nitty gritty detail. 

Use large readable font. Especially on graphs and figures, and..

Limit text. A busy intimidating slide = a distracted/zoned out audience

Refrain from using pastel colors with a white background, or dark colors with a dark background. Projectors =/= your computer screen, and these colors may not have the same contrast during a presentation. 

Also related, be considerate of the color-blind/visually impaired. Make figures accessible to them by not just relying on color but also patterns, shading, symbols, etc.

Show only what’s necessary. Try not to overwhelm an audience who’s seeing all this for the first time. Always remember: presentations are not data dumps; they’re stories. Simplify figures by remaking them if possible, or block out unimportant areas. 

And walk the audience through complicated slides. We should never assume everyone in the audience knows exactly what we’re talking about. Use animations to show only one point or figure at a time if necessary.

Speaking of figures, use high-quality ones! None of the deep fried-jpegs please. 

Also refrain from putting things that have no meaning. Examples include gratuitous eye candy (which are only acceptable in title and closing slides) or points that won’t be talked about. They’re just distracting.

Show interest when speaking. If the speaker sounds bored talking about their work, then I assume it’s boring and not worth my attention.

Refrain from going wild with that laser pointer. It’s there to bring attention to certain key points, not to continuously circle around the entire slide like we’re playing with cats. (If your hand holding the pointer is shaking, it helps to grab your wrist with your other free hand, or rest that arm on something (like the podium) to “root” it.)

Refrain from going wild with the animations/transitions also. Super cool in 4th grade; slightly nauseating at a national meeting. A simple “appear” animation will do just fine. 

Rehearse rehearse rehearse. Being well-prepared can combat stage-fright, as it takes away the anxiety of “not knowing what to do next” or “mental freezes”. You may also find yourself editing a few things as you rehearse, because something that seemed ok while making the ppt may not flow so well when you actually get to talking about it. Also, pay attention to the usage of filler words (like “um”, “sorta”), and body language: are you leaning on the podium too much? pacing a lot? looking at the screen and not the audience? 

Adopt a “power pose” to instantly feel more confident and relaxed. Stand up straight, chest out, shoulders back, uncross those arms, and smile. Hold yourself up like royalty, baby! Here’s a TedTalk on power poses. 

#i've literally had this in my drafts for YEARS #and have been adding on to it every now and then #college advice #grad advice #presentations

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

A Singular Cog in The Machine Chapter 2

Chapter Title: Circuits and Wires

Summary: "It was pure logic when it came down to it. Why allow harm befall the others if Logan could stop it? Surely, it was much more beneficial for only one to be harmed than for all to undergo excruciating pain and misery. A broken cog is more easily replaced than if the whole machine fell apart."

Logan adheres to the belief that needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the one, the latter being himself. Or in other words, Logan tries to sacrifice himself for the sake of the others. Fortunately for Logan, they won’t let him get away with that.

Chapter Word-Count: 2k

Pairings: platonic lamp

Warnings: Whump, Referenced Torture, Panic Attack, PTSD, Zalgo Text (If you need a version without it let me know!), Nightmare, Blood Mention, Injuries, Strangling, Partial Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending

Prompt For Chapters 2 & 3: Anon asked “When one character doesn’t realize they’ve been accepted into the family/think of themselves as outsides, until they get hurt and everyone takes shifts watching over them and taking care of them. : Logan  or Virgil?”

Chapter 1 | Present | Chapter 3    AO3 LINK

Hey remember when seven months ago I said this would be only be two parts? Well I lied, it’s now three parts. Good news, I’ve already written the next part so you don’t have to wait another seven months for that one :’)

-

ERROR. Systems crashed. Restart? 

Restarting...Restarting...Restarting

W̨̧̻̱͓͐̃̿͂͡Ą͇̦̳̓̂̊͠R̢͎͕͕͙̃̄͘̕͝Ṇ̨͎̮͑̌͘͘Ḭ̲̩̂̂͠N͓̬̺͌̾͐G̛̗̲͚̈́͒͗ͅ ͢͠S͈͓͒̃͜͠Y͈̓Ş͘T͕̖̀̑Ȇ̥M̟̳͐̀ ̀͜f͍̓ä̲́͢͞Í̮L̤̊URe̢̕

--ton! We’re losing him!

            Not….get him stabilized...

What          

                       Is                                 That? 

Logan! 

                          Can you… 

                                                                          hear me?

Activating Protocol L1G8N. All programs unnecessary maintaining system stability have been shut off.  Sequencing….Sequencing complete. Running diagnosis check. System is running at 40% its usual capacity. Initiating hibernation mode to ensure updates and system repairs can be achieved. Initiation Complete.

…..

….

…

..

.

“A cheetah can run up to seventy miles per hour. They are the fastest land animal on the planet Earth. However, this speed can only be maintained for a few seconds. For our cheetah mother, a few seconds is not enough to catch up to her prey. With defeat, she must stop and conserve her energy for a better opportunity to secure a meal for herself and her cubs. If not…”

A voice. Measured and methodical, soothing to the ears. He could not discern where it was coming from. It seemed familiar, something he could recall hearing previously. Yet that memory laid restricted in his memory-banks. He couldn’t access any memories, in fact.

Who was he? Where was he? He tried doing a visual scan of his surroundings but his bio-optics were down. No sight, just a voice within darkness. A tactile scan also failed, this time with a thousand red flashing warnings and pain. Crippling, debilitating pain. Like his hard-drive overheating, whirring with exertion but so much worse.

A different sound joined the voice in the darkness. A croaking, choking cry that belonged to a wounded animal. Not him, certainly not him.

“Logan?” Someone asks, speaking over the voice droning on about savannah wildlife. They grasp his hand and his whole system freezes. Expecting an attack, breach on his firewall and entire code. They simply hold his hand, in a firm, comforting clasp. 

“Hey, it’s alright, Brainiac. You’re here now. You’re safe. You’re never going back there, alright? Never.” The person said, running their thumb over his knuckles. He didn’t know what those words were referring to. He didn’t know who the person was--although they felt as familiar as the first voice. Perhaps even more so. 

However, he found it alleviated many of the warnings flooding his systems. The voice ensured security, protection against viruses and hackers. His own anti-virus program perhaps. 

He could not hold awareness for long. His systems drifted back into hibernation, into a murky nothingness.

….

…

..

.

Running. He was running, lungs pushing for air and legs pulling forward faster than he’d ever gone. Sweat dripped down his brow, the biological coolant to prevent overheating. Like a cheetah, he couldn’t maintain this speed for long. He just hoped it was enough—

‘The probability of achieving success is 0.03%.’

In a very illogical move, he kept running. He supposed it could be blamed for the biological blood in his veins, to quote an idiom. Even if so, he was an android with a biological mainframe. The body he inhabited was not a part of his code. To claim such a thing would be comparable to referring to an automotive vehicle you drive was a part of your composition makeup.

“There you are!”

His thoughts and body slammed to a halt. A thousand eyes glinted with amusement. Tendrils sprayed all around him, cutting off any routes of escape. A smile full of teeth that was anything but friendly.

“Fascinating,” They crooned, a tendril gripping his chin, “You should be temporarily paralyzed right now, unable to move a single muscle.

“Yet here you’ve run fifteen-hundred yards and stand of your own free will. How did you do it? I must know.”

It was then his heart metaphorically sunk. Because he’d never been close to escaping. It’d been all part of an experiment and like a witless lab rat, he fell for it.

Logan didn’t respond, eyebrows narrowed in a gesture that might be seen as defiant.

The amusement drained from their eyes. “Tell me.” They demanded,  the tendril wrapping around his neck, tightening. “Tell me or I’ll hunt down your friends, one-by-one.”

No. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Logan tried opening his mouth but all that came out was a gargled squeak. The tendril was choking him now, cutting off his airways. As android as he was, he panicked. He couldn’t breathe, he was going to die, he was going to die—

“Logan!”

He thrashed and flailed, trying to get the tendril off of him. But it wouldn’t budge. It held him down, pinning him in place. Like a butterfly on a collector’s board.

“Logan, please—”

He growled, baring his teeth in a very primitive gesture. Whatever intimidation he hoped to gain was lost as liquid seeped against his torso. With it, came a stinging sensation worse than the time Roman unwittingly led them into a rancor’s nest.

“Oh fuck, Patton? Roman?! Get in here, he’s reopened something!”

Hibernation Mode Initiated.

What? No, he couldn’t go into hibernation. Not in the face of present danger.

“Override—” He croaked but it was too late, the damage had been dealt. The melatonin kicked in as the clamor above him grew louder.

…

..

.

Scanning systems. Diagnosis complete. Biological tissues are 54% recovered. Estimated full recovery in one-thousand four-hundred sixty gala hours. ERRORrrrr memory files are corrupted. Restore? Warning! Unable to restore due to Protocol L1G8N. Restoring memory files could lead to instability within the systems.

OVERRIDE ALPHA-NINER-NINER

Protocol L1G8N disengaged. Restoring memory files…restoration complete. Cycles 1-10803 restored. Alert! Cycles 10741-10800 are unstable. 

A̛̦̞͖̩̤̣͖̭͈̪̯̞̩̱͖͙̩̟͉͌́̎̃̎̈̍͒̾̽̾́͐̐̓̾͘͢͜͝͡͞ ̨̬͔̺̬͌̔̀̀̃͜͝L̛͖̲̾ ̨̯̼̺̺͑̓̈̊͝Ę̧̡̨̛̩̱͓͉̗̱͇̯͓̪̰̠̠̼͍͓̩̼̻̜̬̜̺͚̟̪̗̜̦̱̬͇̰̖͖̫̆̈͒͂̔̋͛̉͛̈̏̃͆̆̇̅̌̉̀̐̓͂̑̈́̂̄͌͛̇͐̈́͂́͌͋̄̈͑͗͘͜͢͢͝͞ ̡͈̗̹͍̞͚̝͕̜̟͉̹̺̞̱̤̰̋͂̉̀͐̒̓̔͌͗̈̍̎̏̑̚͟͝͝͝Ṙ̨̡͎̤͕̲̞̬̲̯͙̙͙̫̖̺̠̫̲̬͚̩̯̝͋͒͋͑̋̅̐͗̂̍̐̑̽͛́̏̆̅͒͌͋̀̕̚͟͟͝͡ͅ ̧̢̧̢̢͇̲̥̻̝̹̟̱̗͇̦̟͎̥̤̲̭̤̤̟̫̩̱̘͍̥̼̰͎̍̏͐̑̑̎͑̾̃͆̀̌̈̈́̂́̃̓̈͊͌͛̉̀͐̋̎̄͆͑̚̚͘͟͠͠͞ͅT̨̨͇̞̳̞͕̭̪̝̜̼̬͖͓̩̗̩̲͔̦̜͖̭̞͚͎̰̹̦̰͙̣̞̠̥̪̔̑͋̂͂̓̌̐̾͒̓̋̏̔̄́̄͌́͂̈̿͐̎͛̀̄̀͊̋͑̕͘͘̕͝͞

..

.

The first thing he registered was the dull, minimal amounts of data his pain receptors were sending him. Most likely some sort of analgesics reducing the amount of prostaglandins his body would produce. Or in other words, rather than his AI shutting off the pain signals, it was the cause of a painkiller. 

The second thing was the warmth radiating around him. Not from a blanket or the climate but from a warm-blooded body. Warmth could be a dangerous thing for him, both biologically and mechanically. Extreme amounts of it could kill him. This warmth was different. It was nowhere near the dangerous levels. If anything, the other person’s warmth seemed to keep him anchored.

His head rested against the nook of their shoulder, their arms wrapped around him in not a constraining but comforting hold. Objectively comforting, of course. His biological body needed tactile touch to survive. It responded out of its own vocation to it.

The third thing happened to be singing. Low and rumbly, sometimes off-key but not terribly too off-key. Some might argue it captured the song better than a classically-trained opera singer could ever hope to achieve. 

“Takka toya taya

Yul se umting kaiting

Ritka forka eyis

Yul se Arden fayee.”

It wasn’t GCL (Galactic Common Language). It took him a moment to register the words and translate them. It was Titekan. He cracked his eyes open but it found it useless when he was squished against the person’s shirt.

“Patton?” He asked, his throat throbbing in protest. It took more effort than it should to just speak one word.

“Logan! You’re awake?” A question for a question was hardly an actual answer. Still, it was Patton no doubt. He managed to crane his head back to look up at the Titekan.

“I think that is a rather obvious observation.” He grumbled, ignoring the dry, scratchiness of his vocal chords.

Patton laughed. Logan could feel the vibration of it rattling the other’s chest. It sounded...different than his usual bursts of laughter. Logan did not understand why. “Roman! Virgil! Look who’s awake!”

What? Logan hadn’t been aware of the others’ presences. Impossible, he always knew their whereabouts. It helped when one could track heat signals and had a connection to the ship’s circuitry. Perhaps he misheard Patton?

THUMP.

 Logan blinked, jostled by the sudden appearance of a mop of disheveled amber hair and curled horns. Ruby eyes shined up at him with unbridled glee. 

“Logan! My most obdurate, appalling, loquacious fiend of a nerd!”

“Ahh, hello Roman.” Logan managed to say in response. Roman beamed, his reptile-like tail whipping back and forth much like a dog.

“Whoa, careful with that thing, you could take someone out with it.”

Virgil. Logan turned his head to see the human standing there with his arms crossed. His figure slightly slouched, his eyebags significantly darker than usual and a few more grey hairs than when Logan last saw him.

“You are all acting weird,” Logan said, never one for subtlety, “Is something wrong?”

Roman’s tail drooped, as did Patton’s ears. Virgil just looked away, his head turned enough to make his expression indiscernible. 

“Lo, what’s the last thing you remember?” Patton asked, his voice soft and hesitant.

“I…” Logan stiffened, blood draining away from his face. Images flooded his central cortex, pulled from relevant memory files. Logan slipping out of the ship during the others’ sleep cycles. The thousand unblinking pale eyes. The images glitching, corrupted. The stabbing, burning, thrashing, drowning, strangling--the list went on and on. He retreated into his code. The simulations. So real, but never enough.

N̶̗̲̈́̆͊̿̓̕ ̶͍̻̲̉͌̈́̽̑͐͠E̵̠̰͑͊͑̌̔ͅ ̷̰̥̝̘̞̽́̇̌͑̚͝V̵͗̈́͊̚ͅ ̴̛͎̳̺̮͂͌Ę̸͙̫̂͂͌̽͝R̸͚̪̬̾̌ ̸̛̙̣͍̦̮͈̹̽̿͋̆͛͊Ȅ̷̜̮͙̚ͅÑ̴̦̙̭͘Ơ̶̧͖͎̟̽U̷̻̽̈̌̋Ģ̵̖̫͔͕̹̽͐͛̊̽Ḧ̸̲̹́̅́h̶͍̼͔͎̟̟͖̅͛͗h̸̻̘͔͕͖̦͍͒̈́͒̓̑̈́̾h̶̛̟͓̗͉͚̿̔

“LOGAN!”

He jolted, his heart beating wildly out of rhythm. Much like Virgil’s during a panic attack. That wasn’t right. He was a machine, his body no more than a method of transportation. No emotions, only logic. 

He didn’t lash out in anger whenever the others were mistreated (a lie). He didn’t panic when the others’ lives were threatened (another lie). He didn’t love the others enough to sacrifice his continued survival for them (an even bigger lie than the other two combined). 

“Logan, can you breath in for me?” A voice asked, gravelly and rough that it was so undeniably Virgil. He was confused. Virgil’s question indicated his breathing was not fine.

“Y-yyo--” He tried speaking, the syllables lost in shallow gasps of air. He jerked his head side-to-side, frustrated. His airflow was indeed erratic. The automatic breathing program was down, unresponsive to his pings. Unless the body was experiencing a heart attack or stroke of some kind, this shouldn’t be happening. 

“Don’t try speaking, okay?” A hand brushed his bangs away from his face, “Just breathe in with me, alright?”

Logan nodded affirmatively, liquid starting to dribble down his cheeks. Obviously a malfunction with his tear ducts. An internal count-down started as he inhaled with Virgil.

One-thousand, two-thousand--his breath cut short, too shallow and spluttery. There was a sob, shattered and broken.

“Hey it’s okay. Let’s try again, alright?” 

“You can do it, we believe in you.” Roman’s voice joined in. Patton didn’t say anything, but from the rumbling reverb of his chest, Logan knew he was there supporting him.

Logan wanted desperately to speak, to argue with them. Part of him wondered if this was another experiment. A test to see how he’d react to dying by asphyxiation. The others were simply fake, not real. They couldn’t be real--they’d promised--

“One...two...three...four.” The words broke through his internal processing. Logan knew them well. He’d spoken them to Virgil to help fight off panic attacks that snuck past his firewalls. Logan latched onto them akin to a shipwreck survivor holding onto driftwood in a raging ocean.

It was slow-going. Several times the waves knocked him back, almost drowning him. With each setback, came soft words buoying him forward. Eventually, his breathing stabilized, reaching the blissful metaphorical shore at last.

Logan’s eyes flickered between his three crewmates, surveying them carefully. There was so much he wanted to say. No, so much he needed to say. 

For possibly the first time in his existence, he was completely bewildered. If this was one of their experiments, where was the macabre twist? And it couldn’t be a simulation. Logan was always aware inside a simulation. He crafted them himself, after all. That left one option...reality.

Yet, that too didn’t make logical sense. Logan was the ship navigator and engineer; an important cog in the machine but one easily replaced. For them to go through the hassle of retrieving him...it just did not compute. 

He couldn’t express any of this confusion. His limbs became fraught with fatigue, his eyelids growing heavier by the second. He could not fight it for much longer.

“I think....I am falling unconscious.” He said, before doing just that.

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #lamp #kat writes

[arecomicsevengood]

Seeds

Before I read it, I had this idea I could write a review of Ann Nocenti and David Aja’s The Seeds for the Comics Journal, but the book just sucked too much. It had basically nothing going for it, or even decipherable as an advancing plot. One thing wrong with it is there’s this sort of conspiracy element, or this “no one believes the news” anymore element of it, but Nocenti didn’t want it to be about “fake news.” Donald Trump has rewired the narrative, so now entire types of subject matter feed into this propaganda machine simply by being addressed. Nocenti’s best work does not shy from topicality, addressing the currents in the cultural air, but this time the modern world feels too hot to handle.

I ordered the Daredevil: Typhoid’s Kiss trade paperback, reprinting a bunch of Nocenti’s work with the Typhoid Mary character from the nineties. The longest story in there is a miniseries with art by John Van Fleet. It’s partly about post-Tarantino video-store employees turned filmmakers kidnapping Typhoid Mary to use her as the subject of a documentary about serial killers and violent media. It’s also about Typhoid Mary working as a private detective trying to track down a killer of prostitutes, who the police don’t care about, and are maybe the actual killers of themselves. Storywise, it’s a pretty cool attempt to address real-world issues of the day within a pulp context.

Van Fleet’s art is pretty boring and bad in a way that’s distinctly ahead of its time. While the miniseries itself probably wouldn’t exist without the precedent of Elektra: Assassin a decade before, (a spinoff about a female Daredevil villain created by the writer during their run on Daredevil where that character defined their run) all the photoreference that’s probably actually just photo backgrounds run through filters sets a precedent for the Alex Maleev/Matt Hollingsworth Daredevil stuff to come a decade later. And it’s frequently annoying on a page design/panel background level. Like in terms of how the panel borders sort of default to grid shapes so there ends up being things that “read” as panels but that don’t actually do anything for pacing. It’s just fitting the narrative into regimented design choices.

This maybe only happens the once. But the art is also just super-stiff throughout, with a very chunky line that eliminates any real nuance. There’s a bunch of characters, but a lot of them are indistinguishable from one another, and that’s because the linework is about as muddy as the color palette — It kinda seems like he’s working with models and photo reference but also doesn’t have that many models to work with so he’s having them play multiple roles, but also his work basically seems more like photoshop filters than actual drawing? There’s a bunch of stuff that I think sucks, basically. But you can also draw a direct line from what Van Fleet is doing in Typhoid to what Aja does in The Seeds. All these choices that are meant to be classy and dignifed, a move away from the excess of superhero comics. The covers of Typhoid are just portraits of the main character, interchangeable from one issue to the next, which was a move that again, was ahead of its time: This is what so many Marvel covers in the 2000s looked like, the Tim Bradstreet Punisher covers probably being the go-to example. It’s pretty dull but it’s nice they’re not super-sexualized.

While the choices arguably suit the subject matter in Typhoid, which is at least partly about movies, in The Seeds, the story doesn’t really make any sense because the visuals seem so steeped in unreality. The premise is that a tabloid has photographed an alien, proving aliens are real. There is really nothing within the context of the story that explains why the news outlet would have enough gravitas to be convincing and have this be an actual news story. And the book is drawn in Photoshop, which is itself a photo-editing software, so the “reality” of the book is defined by the very medium that people recognize as why images can’t be trusted. This contributes a level of irony that could maybe be worked with if the book itself wasn’t so ugly and dull. The whole thing looks like some Banksy bullshit. Outside of word balloons, text appears in the large all-caps typeface of image macros. I don’t have scans of The Seeds because I gave my copy away on account of there not being any reason to keep it around.

The book is beyond dated at the time of its release. Partly this is due to the speed the cultural conversation has been moving for the past five years.  It’s been a difficult time period to work on a work of fiction about the news, certainly, and not only has the comic been a long time in the making, the writer has also been away from making comics for decades now. If the authors had been able to make this as a serialized monthly comic, it might’ve stumbled into timeliness, or the predictive, but as it is, the reading experience feels like a bunch of different, disparate ideas that do not really cohere into a narrative. Leaving aside how the book seems to emerge from a general cultural gestalt of the the 1990s, when The X-Files and Weekly World News were objects of discussion, every major plot point or news story chosen for thematic resonance is approximately fifteen years old. I believe 2005 was when I started to hear about colony collapse disorder. This bee metaphor has been lapped by a Honey Nut Cheerios campaign at this point. (A few years back, boxes of cereal came with seeds of wildflowers you/children could plant.)

Darin Morgan’s episode of The X-Files revival “The Mengele Effect” ably addresses all the issues with how cynicism and conspiracy theories feel different now, all the issues that Nocenti seems terrified of and hopes the audience doesn’t think of when reading her humorless X-Files throwback comic. That episode’s great.  Much of The Seeds seems like it was better done in the decidedly not-great Transmetropolitian. There’s something so dated and sad about this comic’s idea of a cool journalist protagonist: People barely smoke cigarettes anymore! I know no one wants to draw people vaping, but the imagery this book wishes meant “cool, urban, woman” reads as nostalgic affectation in 2021. That so much of the commercial landscapes of our cities has been replaced by vape shops was one of the biggest clues we were already living in a dystopia three years ago.

Nocenti, when she was working regularly, got to be a pretty effective writer for having a monthly deadline wherein she could speak on the issues of the day as they were happening. In the absence of a regular gig, this rare chance to speak her mind gets hampered by how much there is to talk about, and how complicated it all is. If it’s too complicated to address in an ongoing superhero comic, a one-off graphic novel with vaguely commercial ambitions turns out to be a worse space for it. It’s so much sadder than anything in this dream-of-the-nineties comic that the authors were given the grace to make something only under the conditions that doom it to failure. Real people made this work of fiction, and I don’t know what the fuck they’re even talking about, and that’s a more complicated narrative than the journalists in this comic who… stumble upon a story and then need to take to back because it’s too important or something? I don’t understand what this comic is about. It’s clearly gesturing at being about a bunch of different things, but what they get from being in juxtaposition with one another, I don’t know.

In interviews in advance of the release of The Seeds, Nocenti talked about how this was the first time she got to make a comic that didn’t have to have fight scenes or conflict in it. But reading Typhoid it’s clear how conflict ties the story’s disparate threads together. But also while reading Typhoid I kept on thinking about how visually, the Steve Lightle shit that preceded it is so much cooler! Here he is, bifurcating a page so two narrative threads can be told with different approaches to stoytelling:

People sometimes talk about how crazy it is that Nocenti started her Daredevil run immediately following up the Miller/Mazzucchelli Born Again run with a fill-in drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. But I don’t think anyone has pointed out that, since these Typhoid Mary team-up comics appeared in Marvel Comics Presents, she’s basically following up Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X, and Steve Lightle is totally capable of doing that! Even if these comics are kinda whatever narratively, Nocenti comes up with dense enough narratives to give him shit to do. She’s a good writer within the context of the harsh strictures of early nineties mainstream comics. Which I know seems like a harsh diss! But being a writer that makes work that consistently gives a comics artist something interesting to do is a difficult job that many people are just not interested in doing for various reasons, so it should be recognized when it’s attempted and accomplished.

It’s also interesting that the whole visual approach where both Steve Lightle and Barry Windsor-Smith shine is dependent on flat color. The changes in storytelling made to accommodate the shifts in visual language in full-color mainstream comics didn’t really benefit anyone, and now needs to be outsmarted. In The Seeds, we’ve got this pretty dull reading experience that superficially in its two-color print job and nine-panel grid, looks like it might be influenced by Mazzucchelli’s work in Rubber Blanket and City Of Glass. And we’ve got a black and white Barry Windsor-Smith comic coming out from Fantagraphics in a few weeks that I really hope blows it out of the water.

[ardeawritten]

Writing references:

In university art and illustration classes, a big part of any big project was the reference library for it. We had to present a collection of visual references and inspirations that went into the final piece. Could be anything from sidewalk leaves to museum classics, but we had to have our refs in-hand and acknowledged. For writing, it’s still a large part of the process. None of us writes in a vacuum free of external influence, and the greater your reference base, the richer your writing will be.

Since Physics of the Crowbar is what I have finished, I’m using that one as an example :P here’s what went into it, that I can identify offhand at least!

-Aside from the actual source material itself and the experience of playing it, which is 99% of it naturally

-Gordon R. Dickson’s Danger--Human short story

-Philip K. Dick’s short stories for almost nonchalant treatment of background/fridge horror

-That one Asimov story I can’t find now about the crew who needs 1 self-sacrificial person to do a thing to free them, and the guy who is willing to risk himself is the guy who just really wants to go home

-Star Wars:NJO’s Yuuzhan Vong series with its focus on living/integrated technology and genetic manipulation as technological advancement

-Beautiful Mind & Imitation Game films for socially inept yet brilliant and driven scientists (and a lot of life lived with an equally brilliant and equally socially inept scientist in the house)

-My own experience with sudden wound pain, chronic internal pain, and getting sick from painkillers 

-Firefighting & triage training for “it’s not my job to save them, it’s my job to live” 

-Food services & incident recorder training for “it’s not my job to have an emotion, it’s my job to get this done right”

-Artworks of Joseph Grigely, communication as filtered through handwritten text on paper

-That one comic I mentioned about the body being a pet you didn’t want but now are stuck taking care of (I am still looking for it)

-Observing and participating in taking & butchering animals, lots of experience with fresh blood and dismantling carcasses (Disclaimer: purely for food, as part of controlled take or as part of routine farm life) ((insert obligatory authors / murderers joke))

-Biblical teaching referring to the body as both an amazing machine and a fallible mortal object in contrast to an immortal intellect

And I’m sure that isn’t all of them! And this is just for a fanfic I wrote because I liked the game and wanted the challenge. For my “takes it seriously” writing, there’s a lot more intention behind the references. It’s not derivative to use inspiration and resources; it broadens your literary horizons and enriches your language base and every single author out there does it.

#writing references #writing refs #writers library #read a ton from varied sources and seek things outside your own experience and viewpoint #I am not a published author I'm just a writer who likes to write #but I have seen a lot of authors' libraries and believe me they did not write in absence of other writers #also the similarity between attitude in food services and in emergency incident response is hilarious #they both require equal measure of I don't care about your meltdown I have a job to do #text post #long text post

[moralanxietystudio]

Invisible Milestones - Roadwarden Devlog

(Roadwarden is an illustrated text-based RPG in which you explore and change a hostile, grim realm. It combines game systems of RPGs, adventure games, and Visual Novels, and you can now wishlist it on Steam!)

The last few months have resulted in a multitude of updates and advancements to the game. The content keeps growing, with new places to visit, NPCs to talk to, and quests to take care of. There were also many bug fixes and behind-the-scenes changes that won’t be quickly spotted by most players, but will enhance the overall experience.

A new milestone has been reached, and today we’re going to talk about some of its highlights without getting too deep into the spoilers.

1. The Player Character’s goals have been reworked

In the previous versions of the game, the “goal” was mostly serving as a personal motivation supporting role-playing. The player could decide why their character has hit the road, with the assumption that the overall “success” or “failure” in the game’s main story would be connected to this goal in the game’s epilogue, and maybe in some minor dialogues.

From now on, these goals will bring to the table a new system. They sound similar, but are now something that requires an active involvement from the player during the course of the game. They have a new journal entry, and a unique reward for completing them.

I hope it will help them be something that is actually played with, and not just pushed to the back of one’s imagination.

2. The reworked resting system and the new night scenes

After some redesigning, it’s now easy to introduce additional events happening in the middle of the night. Some of them are specifically focused on portraying the game’s fantasy setting and providing the player with the opportunities to role-play and consider the struggles of being a traveler.

Other scenes involve a bit more stuff to do related to the areas where the player can rest, or quests, or items that the player is carrying in their inventory... All sorts of things. What matters is more things can be now easily added this way. : )

3. The East and the West are now connected

Riding around the entire peninsula is time-consuming, but now the player can take the shortcut connecting two distant spots in the West and the East, saving their time... But also risking some dangerous encounters.

The visuals of this shortcut differ from the rest of the game, but so does its systems and the mood that accompanies it. It’s easy, even very easy to die here, so it’s recommended that only those who are in full strength and have a proper equipment enter this forgotten path. The heart of the forest is a place with some unique interactions and opportunities, sometimes connected to tasks given to you by the NPCs from the peaceful settlements.

4. More information in the journal

The Groups & Places category contains hints related to various points of interest. Just like the People category, it’s meant to both refresh the player’s memory and provide them with clues related to the game’s story and quests.

5. All sorts of updates

It’s hard to make a list even with the more noticeable ones - there's just too many things going on now. Some of them involve visuals, like the changes made to the world map:

It’s hard to spot the them without zooming in, but they fit the style of the rest of other regions. It’s now more detailed and has more colors to it (believe or not ; )). The entire map is already fully drawn, though I don’t want to spoil the rest before the release.

Another visual update fixes the old money bag icon, now presenting the more fitting pixel size of the coin.

Other updates are related to the language used in the game...

...and the writing in general. While the game is far from being finished, it keeps getting tested by new people, one of whom is now helping with editing and proofreading the game’s dialogue and has helped me improve the tutorial a bit. I can’t promise the text is definitely going to stop sounding “foreign,” but the updates are already promising.

There are also new systems, small and large. For example, the crossbow has been weakened, or rather - it now uses quarrels which also have to be purchased. Just a little thing, but adds a lot.

Also, the new alchemy system for the Scholar class is close to being finished. Listing others new systems would get a bit spoiler-y.

Oh, and the “continue” button has been introduced.

The main thing I try to deal with is making the experience more interactive, and not just larger. Writing things for the sake of the pure volume of text wouldn’t serve anyone. Instead, I’ve spent a lot of time adding new things to do in the older areas, filling the gaps and making it feel like the the story is not just presented to the player, but actively changed by them.

---------------------------------

Thank you for taking a look at this devlog, for your support and kindness. I’m once again forced to push the game’s release, hopefully just to the first half of 2021. It’s sad to see how slowly the development goes, but that’s what you get when you try to give it all and result in something way too ambitious for your own sake. Let’s hope it’ll turn out to be worth it for you. : )

You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook, and the game has a Steam page on which you can add it to your wishlist. Have a great day!

#devlog #indiedev #gamedev #pixelart #rpg #fantasy rpg #gaming #pcgaming #video game #Adventure Game #visual novel #screenshotsaturday

[yurimother]

LGBTQ Manga Review – ‘Eve and Eve’

Reviewing an anthology presents unique challenges. Each story must be considered as a standalone piece able to present a cohesive and engaging narrative (or not) by itself. However, being bound together intrinsically adds something greater to the works. They are no longer independent pieces but contribute to the book as a whole. I will admit this is the first time I have had the pleasure of reviewing an anthology but given the current trend of Yuri anthologies in Japan, and with the many English adaptations looming on the horizon, I figured I best get used to the prospect.

Eve and Eve is a mature Yuri manga anthology featuring six stories by Nagashiro Rouge. When I say mature, I mean it! the stories contain explicit (although not pornographic) depictions of intercourse. Two of the stories were originally published in Yuri Ninshin, a hentai publication, all explicit genitalia or nipples were edited out in re-printings in Japan. These edited editions are the ones which appear in Seven Seas’ Eve and Eve. Given these alterations, Eve and Eve is actually one of the few Yuri works in English I classify as an adult piece containing sex that is not pornographic, a classification I rarely make outside of visual novels, such as Kindred Spirits on the Roof. However, as this review does discuss the explicate content in the manga I am warning that you should read the following at your own discretion.

Now that the long-winded introduction is finished, let’s go over the universal aspects of Eve and Eve before I break down each of the six stories. Nagashiro’s artwork is clean and detailed. With each panel being full of detail except in a few circumstances to accentuate a character, object, speech bubble or interaction when white space is used. Their character designs are extremely impressive, with almost every character having a distinctly different hairstyle, face, and body type that mesh properly and make each individual feel distinctive. This is especially important for an anthology, as the short stories leave little room for individual personalities, so a lot of what has to be memorable is the design.

On the note of the characters, none of them are extremely complicated, often only having one distinctive personality trait. However, this lack of sophistication is to be expected and helps cut down on needless fluff. None of the personalities or dynamics between the characters feel overused or played out. Instead, they compliment the story well and allow for engaging short narratives. An example of this is Eko, in the second story, whose timid nature is the main conflict of her romance.

The content of the stories varies but there are shared elements. Half of them are science fiction stories with elements of aliens, robots, artificial intelligence, and the apocalypse. Additionally, unlike many of Yuri titles, those presented here are about adults (save one exception) who have consensual sexual encounters. Many of the pairings in Eve and Eve are women in relationship with each other that have a life together, which is tragically rare in this genre.

As previously mentioned, Eve and Eve has more than a few moments of intercourse. While these are certainly lewd, I did not find them disgusting as I do with so many instances of sex in Yuri. Part of this may be due to the omission of genitalia but mostly it is in the way sex functions in each story and how it is depicted. I will examine the former aspect later, but in the depiction, the intercourse itself, it is universally well done. While it is explicit and salacious, the sex does not contain gross moments of overly exaggerated orgasms or uncomfortably manipulated breasts. It feels mature and thoughtful, at least most of the time, something I greatly appreciate.

Finally, I need to talk about the “Summary of Stories” page that appears at the end of the book. This glorious spread gives me precious information about each of the six stories including when and where they were originally published. Alongside each story is a blurb from Nagashiro Rouge describing each story and their thoughts on it. I subscribe to Barthes’ “Death of the Author,” so I usually care little about the creator or their intent when evaluating a text. This belief is especially useful as an English teacher; that’s right, we know Fitzgerald may not have intended to put that much symbolism into The Great Gatsby, we just do not care! But I am also a hypocrite so I will on occasion use Nagashiro’s summaries to contribute to my thoughts and arguments about each story.

The first story, I Want to Leave Behind a Miraculous Love is about Sayu and Nika, the last two survivors of the apocalypse. They do not speak the same language, with Nika’s limited dialogue being written in Russian (only a few lines, even if you do read Russian it adds almost nothing to the story). Despite this difficulty, the two of them grow incredibly close and eventually become lovers. Through narration and effective visual storytelling, this story actually does an effective job of communicating how close the two are and how they care for each other despite the women's’ inability to talk to each other. This is seen in scenes where the two wander the dilapidated remains of a city and during their sex.

The intercourse here is the best that Eve and Eve has to offer, both in is salaciousness and the deeper meaning. The sex is a physical expression of their love and the way in which the two can communicate their feelings and devotion to each other. It is more than two characters smashing into each other to achieve climax, but an act that physically confirms their love. I applaud this depiction.

I Want to Leave Behind a Miraculous Love, is one of the stories originally published in Yuri Ninshin. To remind you, this is a hentai work and thus contains a lot of sex (although again, this is the edited version). It is also worth mentioning that “Ninshin” translates to pregnancy, Yuri Ninshin is a fetish work about pregnancies occurring between women. I will admit, I LOVE stories about women having and raising kids together, typically not biological kids, although I have done some quack reporting on the real world possibility (something I am in no way qualified to talk about. However, pregnancy fetishizing is absolutely not my things. It is easy for most people to dismiss this story because of its inclusion. I, however, will take a different approach.

Sayu repeatedly mentions her worries about one of them ending up alone if the other were to die. The pregnancy produced by magical science shenanigans produces children to keep them company in the isolation as survivors of the apocalypse. They are physical results of their love which shall endure beyond either of their lifespans, demonstrating the strength of Nika and Sayu’s devotion to each other. Additionally, they are a symbol of life returning after the tragedy of the apocalypse. The final panel of the story depicts life in both their children and returned plant-life surrounding the two female figures, mothers to the new human race, Eve and Eve.

The second story, The Case of Eko and Lisa, is about an artist, Eko, and Lisa, a sexbot that she uses to pose for drawings (but not for her intended purpose). Lisa malfunctions and begins to develop feelings for Eko, who spurs her advances.

The two characters struggle to confess their actual feelings for each other because of Eko’s anxieties about their possible relationship. During the climax of the story she reveals the source of her trepidation in a very human moment, she is scared that if they were to have sex she would be disappointing or that things between the two might change. It is a fear that many people in the real world have and Nagashiro is able to use it so well in this story, complete with some of the best art in this book. Equally as incredible is the response of Lisa, “just be honest with yourself and love me however you like.”

The relationship between Eko and Lisa is easily the best in the volume. Each of them struggles because of Eko’s anxiety around their relationship and trying to figure out how to best express their feelings. The resolution to their conflict is also one of the sweetest and healthiest things I have seen out of a Yuri relationship.

The third story is Top or Bottom? The Showdown! As the title suggests this story is comedic. It begins with a group of female students arguing about which of them is a “top” or a “bottom.” All the girls agree that protagonist Anzu is a bottom because of her small stature, something which she is outraged by. Anzu enters into a contest with the tall but passive Emi to decide who would be the better top. Hilarity and some (non-lewd) service occur.

I am on record as not easily crying but I am an easy laugh and Top or Bottom had me rolling in whatever the homosexual equivalent of “the aisles” is. The premise is ridiculous, as it should be which leads to some great jokes. The side plot of the girls “shipping” their male classmates together also ends up with one of the best twist punchlines I have read in a long time.

While it is easy to enjoy this story given what is presented in the book, it also invites some deeper analysis. Nagashiro plays with the expectation of the assertive and submissive, bottom and top, roles that often define relationships. The comedy comes from the characters struggles to fit into these defined roles, each possessing one of the traits of a “bottom” Anzu’s small size and Emi’s passive nature. Anzu eventually says, “deciding [roles] like that doesn’t feel right.” It becomes evident that deciding who should be the top or bottom is not something that needs deciding before a relationship begins but something more fluid which, if they are formed, are done so during the relationship.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the book that amusement ceases with the fourth story, An Infidelity Revisited. Two women, Azusa and Midori, who are former classmates run into each other on the street and cheat on their girlfriends with each other. When Midori suggests that they break up with their partners Azusa declines saying the only reason the sex between them is so good is because they are cheating. The two women begin to leave but stop walking away at the last second.

I really did not like this story for numerous reasons. First, cheating is such a lazy and problematic way to make sex feel scandalous and exciting. Secondly, because the characters never face any repercussions or consequences as part of their infidelity that we see. This could make for an engaging narrative if done properly and in a longer format. As it is, all the reader sees is their cheating, no fallout, no resolution, and no redemption. Some stories are able to present such a small window into the lives of characters without these aspects but An Infidelity Revisited does not have the literary chops to pull off such a narrative.

Nagashiro wrote that “I hope I was able to convey that way in which logic eludes us even as adults, and the incredible impact that our feelings can have on us.” While the mangaka succeeds with that first point, the total lack of logic, they utterly fail to deliver on the impact. The only effect that this story has on me is leaving me mildly exasperated and bitter. As I previously said, there may be an engaging, albeit unhealthy, narrative here but begins so incomplete robs it of the chance to deliver.

Continuing with the theme of stories I did not like is Heir to the Curse. This is a second Yuri pregnancy story and the third to feature explicit sex following I want to Leave Behind a Miraculous Love and An infidelity Revisited. However, while the first story is a tale of love and eternity between two women this one is far more manipulative and disgusting. The beginning and ending are both fine, a girl is cursed because she is born from two mothers and can only reproduce women and she ends up living happily with another woman.

It is the middle that I take issue with. The cursed girl, Ichika, forces herself onto her childhood friend Yui to implant her child. This is so absurd that I almost threw the book across the room, the only reason I did not was that I had an ebook which I was reading on a very expensive laptop. Moreover, this assault feels so out of place with the rest of the anthology which features (mostly) thoughtful and wholesome depiction of same-sex relationship where women have consensual and mutually pleasurable intercourse.

Sure, eventually Yui realizes that she loves Ichika and wants to be with her but this epiphany coming immediately after an assault is a whole other can of worms that I do not want to eat because they are freaking worms. Ichika displays some remorse and it becomes clear that she is doing what she has been raised and abused to know how to do. In the end, Yui “saves” her and brings her away from the village that labels the woman as cursed. I actually like this part, but I wish the action she had taken against her friend was not assault. Even a pained but consensual sexual encounter would have been preferable. Ultimately what I can say is “cool story, still rape”.

Nagashiro wrote that this as “a story about friendship and love.” I call horse dung on this description. If you only read the beginning and ending sure, but when you include blatant assault in the middle of the story that becomes a central element to the story which again, because of the short nature of the story, was not properly addressed.

The anthology ends with Eternity 1 and 2: Eve and Eve. This is the only work by Nagashiro Rouge I had read before this, having browsed the issue of Comic Yuri Hime it was published in, and it is easily my favorite story in the book.

In this tale, two lovers, Eternity 1 and 2, have their brains put into satellites and to act as the watchdogs of humanity. The artwork and symbolism are stunning! By itself, this chapter would easily earn a nine or ten rating from me in that department. One standout moment is in the opening pages, a display of the two women sitting in wedding dresses about to undergo the operation with a wedding officiant standing behind them. This scene replicates the themes of legacy and eternity in love seen in I Want to Leave Behind a Miraculous Love but furthers them even more.

The women, torn from their flesh live together only as minds and spirits. While this story is devoid of sexual intimacy between the two the emotional connection of having their minds work as one is so strong and transient. I will not spoil the stories climax but the actions of the women to display and finalize their love are so intimate and powerful that I was blown away. Nagashiro also does a great job of tying in the other science fiction stories, chapters one and two, to Eternity 1 and 2: Eve and Eve making these three works feel like one continuous world, an excellent shared world anthology.

Eve and Eve has its ups and downs. While many of the stories are spectacular they are bogged down by a few inferior ones. However, I did not outright hate any of the stories and find myself earning for continuations of the inadequate ones so that their potential could be realized. If you are willing to overlook a few questionable chapters Eve and Eve is a wonderful and salacious Yuri anthology with surprising depth and humanity. I definitely recommend that older readers give it a look.

Ratings: Story – 7 Characters – 5 Art – 9 LGBTQ – 9 Lewd – 8 Final – 7

Purchase Eve and Eve from Amazon - https://amzn.to/2WyC2BY digitally and in print

Support the YuriMother Patreon for more Yuri and LGBTQ news, reviews, and content. patreon [dot]com/yurimother

#yuri #reviews #manga #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq+ #queer #r-16 #gay #lesbian #lesbians #pride #pride month #comic #comic book #eve and eve #literature #review #wlw #gl