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bambi-kinos · 2 months

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I just came across your analysis of However Absurd and thought it was lovely. I'm curious, as someone who thinks John and Paul had some kind of romantic or sexual relationship, what is your take on The Lovers That Never Were? Is he using the word "lovers" to mean "partners"? I have always interpreted it to mean that Paul knows there was something there but it never happened. Every time I start to be convinced that they were together in some way I think of this song and the devastating way Paul sings it in the demo and the heartbreaking fact that he still felt it that intensely 13 years after John's death.

Oh wow thank you! The server had a lot of fun discussing that, if it's good it's because I had a little help from my friends heheh (─‿‿─) ♡

I ended up writing a massive novel in response to all this so I hope you enjoy reading it heheh. For server members, I've pulled some quotes from my previous Discord essays on this topic so you'll see some stuff that you've read.

tl;dr - I don't think "The Lovers That Never Were" contradicts the secret relationship theory at all! I think it compliments it very well actually.

In order to get into All That, I will outline how I perceive what their relationship was built on and how they reacted to it. I should note that I don't consider this definitive. It's important to remember that we all have unique interpretations of John and Paul because of our experiences and our personal POVs. There is no single answer until Paul decides to tell us what happened and/or Sean publishes John's diaries (written and audio). Until that happens, we are all forced to look at the same material and draw our own conclusions which will naturally be shaped through our personal perceptions. Some of us are older and are much closer to the original culture that John and Paul were raised in; some of us are younger and grew up in a much more LGBT+ positive environment. This naturally has an impact on how we interpret John and Paul's relationship.

I say this because I know my POV on John and Paul is a bit different from everyone else's. I'm a historian by training but part of being a historian is the understanding that you will never fully understand the events as they happened because your personal viewpoint and inherent bias is simply too strong. But that's okay because this is a part of humanity that we all share, yeah? With that understanding LET'S GO!

Paul My view on Paul is that he's always understood that he's different from other men. I doubt he could put a name to it until very recently. Paul has synesthesia, he's bisexual, he connects to music in a savant-like way, he's neurodivergent which is why he takes criticism so hard, and all of that would still be true even if he didn't have left over emotional issues from his mother dying the way she did + his fraught relationship with his father.

Keep in mind that circumstantial evidence points to the idea that Paul orchestrated the meeting at the fête! He realized he had a mutual friend with John in Ivan (who is to say that he did not meet Ivan at a QM performance and had that mental realization there?) He went through Hot Girl Summer before and after the fête, wanting to be fucking fit so that he wasn't embarrassed to meet John! I did the same thing when I had a crush as a teenager!

So with all that in mind, imagine this: you're Paul McCartney. You met John Lennon barely a year after Mary died. You turned 15 on June 18th, 1957 and met John at the fête on July 6, 1957. At some undetermined point before this garden party you saw a beautiful boy on the bus and began riding it obsessively hoping the Teddie boy would get on it. You followed him to the chippie and stood in line behind him…allegedly because you thought "oh wow he looks so cool." Marky Mark thinks (and I agree) that you may have even followed John to at least one Quarry Man show before the fête. Is this 'normal' behavior? Or is this the unhinged behavior of a teenager with a massive crush? The kind that comes about when you see a cute boy with red hair, and red is the color you associate with happiness, and then you find out that he plays guitar just like you and you follow him around until you see one of his performances and he's so good he knocks you back and then someone says "hi Paul, I didn't know you liked music!" behind you. And you realize that it's your friend and that you can meet the boy you have a crush on through this friend. You just need to lose weight and grow your hair out first.

When did Paul first see John, anyway? Before he turned 15 I'd wager.

I submit the idea that Paul has been in love John Lennon for his entire life. It will be 67 years of love when this July 6th rolls around. John was making a name for himself, he was known around town as "that Lennon." A minor celebrity like we’ve all had in our hometowns. Paul loved music. Before the internet you would go to the town square to hear a band.

Paul did that. Saw John. Pursued him with intent. When John went to Gambier Terrace to be with Stuart, Paul made a nuisance of himself showing up at their parties and playing the proto-version of "Michelle" in front of the girls…and John.

I love you, I love you, I love you That's all I want to say Until I find a way I will say the only words I know that You'll understand

I don't think that a 15 year old Paul McCartney would explicitly label his feelings for John as 'love' or a 'crush' but I do think that's what happened. When you're a teenager, a crush can express itself in many different ways. I used to have a big crush on a girl who was a volleyball player at my junior high school…that expressed itself as intense admiration. I even told one of my friends that I thought she was 'really cool.' It wasn't until later that I realized that I had a crush on her.

But I think that Paul has always known that he's 'different' and that he wasn't like other boys while growing up. Part of his touchiness about his looks comes from being bullied but I also think that he's a lot more self aware than he pretends to be. I think he realized relatively fast how he felt about John (maybe once John picked up with Stuart and Cynthia at art college.) I think he carried that with him for years hence his anguished response to being jilted in Hamburg and how furious he was at John for running off to Spain with Brian. He didn't realize it immediately but once it sticks to you then it fucking sticks. I think that Paul has done a lot internal wrestling with being a bisexual man and what that means for him and that he has been wrestling with it for decades. I think he was fully in the grip of that wrestling as he and John's friendship began growing and Paul realized what was happening to him. He does enjoy women but I also think that he felt it was necessary to pursue them heavily as a young man to camouflage himself.

I don't think a day has gone by since 1957 where Paul has not known what he was. What exactly that means for him…is up for interpretation. That's where the gray area is. But IMO Paul has almost always known that he's sexually attracted to other men and that John woke this in him. The big question for Paul is what he should do about it.

John There's been a lot written about John and his sexuality that I won't rehash here but truthfully I think John was in a similar place to Paul in knowing that he's always had a sexual preference for other men. John was a lot less comfortable about it though. Having unprotected sex with his girlfriends was, IMO, John trying to subconsciously engineer a situation that would "fix" him via an accidental pregnancy necessitating a marriage.

Of course that didn't do anything because it never does. John still felt chemistry with Paul when they met at the fête, with that quote about them "circling each other like cats." IMO John felt something immediately -- it's not entirely clear what -- though I don't think it "love at first sight" like with Paul. IMO their friendship, while still rooted in that chemistry, developed very naturally for John and he got to enjoy a platonic relationship with Paul before he put it all together. I say this because John saw Paul as a kid, not a peer, and that this endured for their lives in Liverpool pre-Hamburg. I struggle to imagine John or Paul deliberately inciting sexual or romantic contact during that time period aside from the group wank sessions (which were really trolling sessions from John.) Like, when Julia died, John went out and sought peers at art college like Cynthia and Stuart, other students his age. John and Paul bonded over losing their mothers and Paul has that quote about pranking people with the "oh yeah…my mum's dead thanks <3" bit but it also seems like John didn't want to be around that all the time. He lost his Uncle George and then his mother, he was starting to think that he was a death-curse on men in his family and that he brought suffering with him. He wanted to be away from that so he took a vacation from music to get a chance of scenery. Which meant putting Paul in a place of competition with Stuart and Cyn but I don't think John was thinking of that initially (though he exploited the situation later.)

Then Hamburg happens and they run wild. I have an entire meta about this that you can read here but I genuinely think John did not see Paul as a full fledged adult and potential sexual partner until they were in Hamburg in the red light district. I think that something happened there that we don't know about, that it's tied up in Stuart deciding to be with Astrid, John jilting Paul, Paul saying "fuck you I'm done" and getting a job at the coil winding factory in Liverpool after being deported, John tracking Paul down and spending weeks (probably) groveling and then giving Paul an ultimatum to come back to the Beatles. All of that screams 'I just realized I'm in love with my best friend and I'm freaking the fuck out' to me lmao.

John and Paul Of course something else changed after that too and John and Paul ended up becoming so close that even the Liverpool squares around them noticed. I think that whatever was going in their relationship, it started here. In the place where John and Paul were equally distraught with each other, the future of the band was uncertain, and Paul wanted a sign of commitment from John so that he didn't feel like he wasted years of his life. And of course John always felt compelled to be the man Paul wanted him to be so he treated Paul to a vacation in Paris which was so life affirming for them that it stayed with them for the rest of their lives. IMO the Paris vacation was explicitly romantic for them.

I think a switch flipped in 1961 and they went from "messing around" to "there's something there." It erupted in Paris and they showed each other more understanding and care then they expected from each other. John did sexy pin up poses for Paul in a bed that they shared; John remembers how the French held each other in their arms and just kissed each other, lovingly; Paul felt that he discovered the answer and that all those big name philosophers had nothing on the self realization he came to inside himself. Paul even took a photo of John that high lighted his package! Thanks to @louiselux for pointing this one out:

The thing was all the kissing and the holding that was going on in Paris. And it was so romantic, just to be there and see them, even though I was twenty-one and sort of not romantic. But I really loved it, the way the people would just stand under a tree kissing; and they weren’t mauling at each other, they were just kissing. — John Lennon, Playboy interview 1980

“We were like Paris existentialists. Jean-Paul Sartre had nothing on us. Sod ‘em all - I could write a novel… It was all inside me. I could do anything now.”

Paul McCartney, Anthology

Something happened in Paris and it wasn't just them getting haircuts and John buying Paul milkshakes. There was commitment there. And then the spell comes over them again when they return in January 1964:

The first night, John and Paul stayed in their suite, listening to records and reading fan mail. George, who had been signed for 100 pounds a day by the Daily Express to write of his experiences in Paris, went to a nightclub in the Place Pigalle.

Back in the City of Light, John and Paul slept till three o'clock in the afternoon. That much everybody agreed on.

Quote by Vincent Mulchrone from Daily Mail: George Harrison was astir early, but John Lennon and Paul McCartney slumbered on until frantic photographers forced them at lens point into the Champs-Élysées.

Derek Taylor (a British journalist) wanted to know why the Beatles slept so much. "My office wants to know what they're doing in Paris, so they'd better be doing something."

Love Me Do by Michael Braun

But I know what you're thinking. "What the hell does this all have to do with these two songs?"

And my reply is to keep a few things in mind:

Paul takes criticism and slights incredibly hard, possibly overreacting in some places and letting them overwhelm him mentally.

He never got over Barcelona, he never stopped resenting Stuart and Brian, he never got over John pulling the rug out from under him regarding the order of their names in the song credits. He contemplated committing suicide by smothering himself while he was in Scotland recovering from John leaving him.

John Lennon had a baby with a woman in the middle of all this. Julian Lennon was born April 8, 1963, conceived in July 1962, less than a year after Paris.

However Absurd & The Lovers That Never Were I listened to "However Absurd" and "The Lovers That Never Were" in that order. My immediate reaction is that these are both the same kind of song: they are both expressing sadness and frustration with John. This is a common theme with Paul's post-1980 John songs. What I find interesting is that they depict different though related gripes regarding John. In "However Absurd" Paul is expressing his longing for a cottagecore fantasy romance with John and then expressing frustration at John mocking him for it:

Ears twitch, like a dog Breaking eggs in a dish Do not mock me when I say This is not a lie

But in "The Lovers That Never Were" Paul expresses a different gripe: frustration that John won't commit to him and "anticipating" the break up that he secretly knew was coming ever since 1963 when John abandoned him and his own son to play patty-cake with Brian in Spain:

I hang patiently on every word you send Will we ever be much more than just friends? As for you, you sit there playing this game You keep me waiting

When all of the clocks have run down All over the world We'll be the lovers that never were

For as long as the sun shines in somebody's eyes I believe in you baby, so don't tell me lies For as long as the trees throw down blossoms and leaves I know there will be a parade of unpainted dreams

And I know dear, how much it's going to hurt If you still refuse to get your hands dirty So you, you must tell me something… I love you Say goodbye or anything

All of the clocks have run down Time's at an end If we can't be lovers we'll never be friends

John's penchant for disregarding Paul's feelings and even weaponizing them against Paul; the dashing of Paul's cottagecore dreams that were made and solidified in Paris; the fact that John, no matter what his intentions, could not get his shit together and commit to Paul no matter what he may have felt. These two songs are not contradictory to one another. Paul's idea of "commitment" looks very much like what he had with Linda and John in 1967: sharing a home, sharing a bed, being together every day, preferably somewhere green and remote. Exclusivity. Remember that Paul deliberately sabotaged his relationship with Jane Asher by nailing a woman in their bed when Jane came home, knowing perfectly well that he was breaking their exclusivity agreement.

That IMO, is what makes someone a lover and not just a friend you have sex with and secretly pine for. No cheating, or at least your agreed version of it. No disrespecting the relationship. Continuously being together. What did John do instead of this?

I think that Paul started out his "relationship" with John carrying high hopes and then watched them crumble to dust, over and over, because John simply did not take him seriously. He got Cynthia pregnant, he ran around on Paul with Brian, he had the nerve to flip out on Jane Asher when Paul brought her around when he was the one who couldn't stay faithful to Cynthia.

My hot take is that these songs demonstrate that Paul simply could not imagine John ever truly committing to him and treating him as a true partner. The homophobia and yes ~society~ is in there too but Paul was happy to flout this when it came to just about anyone else, traipsing all over France with Fraser and Mal. The difference is that he flat out didn't trust John. Being jilted for Stuart in Hamburg loomed too big in his head. Cynthia and Julian loomed too big in his head. Brian and Barcelona, realizing that John would happily betray whatever agreements or understandings he had with Paul simply to screw Paul out of a deal, loomed too big in his head. I think in particular its Barcelona that made Paul think John didn't value any of their professed ideals. John broke Paul's heart years before Yoko came along.

He didn't trust John. Fatalism is easier than taking control of your own life sometimes, and in Paul's mind there was no reason to believe John was genuine. Like, Paul knew John very well! He had very good reason to think that John was simply not serious about him. And John, no matter what his intentions were, proved that correct over and over and over and over.

So ultimately, I think that's what these songs are about. The melodies don't necessarily reflect this when I listened to them but I think that "The Lovers That Never Were" in particular is juxtaposing bitter wink-and-nod lyrics with an oddly perky tune. It's Paul laughing at himself for ever thinking John was willing to commit. He's mocking himself because while he allowed himself to get swept up in the dream of a possible genuine relationship with John, he knew deep down that it would go the way it did. That John would find a reason to get tired of him and abandon him. And then when Yoko came along, that's exactly what John did. Paul fatalistically accepted that the time had come and John met Paul's low expectations of him.

The Weight I don't think John and Paul necessarily planned to have a secret relationship. It seems more like they bundled the sexual/romantic stuff into their "thing" where it was just part and parcel of who they were and what they did. "It's only gay if the balls touch" etc. At some point that changed but Paul became convinced early on that it wouldn't work out so he didn't acknowledge his own secret desires and dreams. There was no roadmap between him and John about where they were taking this exactly and how they were going to make it work. He had sex with John and even engaged with romantic actions with John, hoping against hope that something would change and he would be proven wrong, but then John would be careless and Paul would collapse into hurt.

And oh yeah: Paul never, ever discussed any of this with John Lennon. He never told John how hurt he was because he didn't want to put up with John's derision. He felt devalued and lost and in typical Paul fashion he chose to ignore this for years and never bring it up, forcing it to come out in bizarre nonsensical actions when he inevitably boiled over. Why would he choose to confront it? He made sure to set up several safety nets to catch him! Jane and the Ashers, striking out on his own with "The Family Way" score, rubbing John's face in his escapades with other males as a way to go 'see, I don't need you just like you don't need me. How about THAT?'

I don't think John ever intended to hurt Paul as badly as he did. He thought that if Paul was upset about something then he would know via their ~telepathic connection.~ I think that he deliberately overlooked warning signs because he felt intensely guilty about certain actions he took (God only knows which ones) and that he helped himself not see Paul's hurt. I do think if he had the slightest idea of what was going on in Paul's head then he would have changed tactics immediately out of fear of losing Paul forever. But at heart John was a coward and if he didn't want to see something was wrong then he wouldn't see it unless something forced his hand. Like say, having his former best friend/ex-lover look him in the eye and go "I can write new songs" and kill The Beatles in a court of law. (And of course once he realized what he had done, years after the fact, it was too little too late. He couldn't take it back. How do you make up for inflicting that much hurt on someone that you supposedly care for? This paralyzed John for years.)

This was obviously a huge mistake and I think it was one of the landmines that blew their relationship up. Paul allowed his distrust and bitterness to overwhelm him. He should have been honest with John about his feelings; maybe not immediately but when they were able to look back with some perspective. Paul should have realized that their relationship could take heat. He should have trusted John more and if he had then John could have risen to the occasion. Everything could have been different. No more "I believe in you baby, so don't tell me lies." No more "Do not mock me when I say/This is not a lie."

He even expresses this in a third song, one that IMO puts this entire thing into perspective and ties these three songs together with a neat bow. "This One":

youtube

Did I ever take you in my arms, look you in the eye Tell you that 'I do?' Did I ever open up my heart And let you look inside?…

Did I ever touch you on the cheek Say that you were mine, thank you for the smile? Did I ever knock upon your door Try to get inside?…

Please take note of the bolded "Tell you that 'I do'!" Paul's deepest regret with regards to John is not trusting him more. He wishes that he had opened up to John about his hurt and how he angry he was that John was devaluing their relationship. That he wanted to commit to John but that he was scared John wouldn't say 'I do' back.

From John's POV he's just being John; he's looking out for the band. God knows he tried to be what Paul needed him to be but he got mixed signals and inconsistent behavior and Paul's ice queen behavior frustrated him to no end. This resulted in an endless circle of "fuck you/no no no, fuck YOU/well fuck you then!/fuck you" that ended up killing what they had.

But John is guilty in this too. He never made himself accountable to Paul. He didn't explain his actions. He acted rashly and selfishly and then was shocked when it blew up in his face. He didn't consistently act like he loved Paul. He took Paul for granted and told himself that he was doing the right thing, because changing your behavior is very very hard. He didn't let Paul in when it mattered.

Did you ever take me in your arms Look me in the eye, tell me that 'you do?'

As Paul grew up and he started to come to grips with the "What happened" of it all, maybe he realized that he had procrastinated. That he put off what mattered most because he couldn't bear to make himself vulnerable as a young man. Maybe he was waiting for a perfect moment to open himself up to John knowing perfectly well it would never arrive, a common delaying tactic for insecure and avoidant people. Not admitting that the perfect moment would never come and that he had to extend trust to receive it in return.

If I never did it, I was only waiting For a better moment that didn't come There never could be a better moment Than this one, this one

I think he's still angry at John for multiple betrayals, slaps to the face, and devaluing the specialness of their relationship and their affection for each other. But I also think that Paul is angry at himself for not trusting John, for not working harder at their relationship. He also delivered multiple betrayals and slaps to the face to John, feeding John's insecurity and fears of abandonment. Making a mockery of their relationship and how special it was. Paul has been doing public penance for this ever since John died, which snapped everything into perspective and he finally realized the full scope of his own screw ups.

Because it took two to destroy a relationship this intense and this special. If Paul did not know that before...

Well. He does now.

#the beatles #mclennon #john lennon #paul mccartney #mclennon meta #my meta #mclennon server #this was a really fun ask anon thank you!

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autisticlancemcclain · 1 year

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Jackie supports the lion swap? How dare you!

Okay SO. This is not the first time I’ve gotten an ask or a comment like this, and I’m fully aware it’s a joke (or at least I think), but I also know that it is kind of a controversial topic on here! And I’ve already written an essay in the topic, but I have some more thoughts I’d like to dive into.

I used to be team Blue Paladin Lance, and hardcore on that team, too. If you look at some of my old fics, you’ll see that. However since I am a contrary person by nature, I started to notice that Red Paladin Lance was way less liked, and so I started to like it more. I really grew fond of the dynamic Keith and Lance got to have as co-leaders, both because it was homoerotic as hell and because the symbolism was fun to explore, but klance is not the main reason I started to care so deeply for the lion change — it was actually Shiro and Allura.

I’m going to start with Shiro, because he’s one of the most fascinating characters in VLD, if not underdeveloped. Part of that fascination for me is that he probably has the most arcs and opportunities for character growth and development in the show, and yet somehow he’s the flattest. He’s portrayed as very one-dimensional in a lot of fic — he tends to be less of a character and more of a role. He’s the Space Dad, or the older brother, or the cool teacher, or the kind and wise friend, or even the stoic Black Paladin. He is loved, I think, but the role he plays is loved, not quite the person he is. And that makes sense, because that is exactly how he’s portrayed in canon.

To Keith, Shiro is “like a brother to [him]”, but what do we see of that dynamic? The show has a clear sense of how a brother acts, that’s a good chunk of Pidge’s character. We barely even know Matt, but Pidge carries herself in such a way that it’s clear when her brother shines through her. And yet even though Shiro also goes missing, twice even, Shiro does not shine through his brother. Keith’s impulses are his own, developed from general abandonment issues rather than Shiro’s specific absence. Shiro’s absence becomes less of Shiro’s absence and more of an absence of a beloved leader figure, kind of a martyr, a “Shiro would have wanted you to carry on”. It is really hard for us as a fandom to use Shiro’s disappearance as anything but a plot device, because that’s all it felt like! We have occasional moments with Shiro, enough to care about him in some way, but as a figure, not as a person. Someone pointed it out on one of my fics and I agree wholeheartedly — Shiro is not shown with any flaws, and that makes it really hard to love him, because you don’t really get the pleasure of defending him, of seeing his motivations, his reasons. Not until the very end, at least.

This is, in all honesty, likely just poor writing. Shiro’s character was honestly just sidelined to a role, because he is really not that present in the show. But I am going to work with the benefit of the doubt, and see if I can use the lion change to explain why we all kind of love Shiro anyway, despite the fact that he’s flat as hell.

Shiro isn’t the Black Paladin. He never was. He flew the Black Lion, yes, and he flew her well — but he was never her Chosen. He couldn’t have been. From the very beginning, the Black Lion was in mourning; she was in no space to choose a new paladin. She accepted Shiro, and she loved him, but he did not fall into her as much as he fell into the role she provided for him. He piloted the Black Lion, but he was not her Paladin. This is made obvious in two ways: in that he never got her bayard, and that from the very beginning, he set up a replacement for himself.

Doesn’t that strike anyone else as odd? I haven’t seen the show in five years, and I don’t plan on rewatching, but I do remember that every moment with Shiro almost had this underlying tension. The closest thing I have to canon off the top of my head is the Handbook (which I had to stop reading because they did everyone SO dirty there, even though some of it was honestly pretty funny), which was released in S2, and even that incredibly early canon talked about Keith replacing Shiro!

From the very beginning, Shiro was planning an out to his role. He knew it was not meant for him. He did the role well, but it was not his to do.

Aside from those two reasons, Shiro also…can’t be the Black Paladin. He can’t be that and himself, I mean. This part is a little more complicated, so I’m going to borrow some of my own tags from some awesome fanart I saw:

I really do think Shiro is defined by his humanity (as is heavily implied by his illness — this is a character who is completely and totally bound to his mortality. Of all the other characters, he is the one most familiar with death, so he is the one who is most intimate with the raw fear of being human. But more on that later), but it’s my last comment that I want to focus on — “he is DEFINED by his his humanity…even as his greatest asset is the part of him that is not human”.

Every second that Shiro is leader of Voltron, he is the Champion. That can literally be his only goal — he is the head of the fight against Zarkon and the Empire. Either Shiro comes out the Champion, or Zarkon does. Either Shiro has to grit his teeth and fight off the flashbacks and the fear and the pain and use the one thing that forces him to reconcile with the fact that he had his entire personhood stripped away (his arm, his Galra arm, one of their biggest advantages as a team; his connection to Zarkon through Black, something that can only help the war effort at a direct cost to him; everything he does in this war is shoving him right back into that Arena again and again and again), or Zarkon wins. Every second Shiro pilots Black, every time he plays her paladin, he has to be who the Empire made him to be. He has to be the Champion. Once again he is not Takashi Shirogane, the person, the astronaut, the man, he is the Role. He is the Space Dad he is the Pilot of the Black Lion he is the Champion. For every second he is in that lion he is stripping away himself.

Obviously, that is something that was never sustainable. On this argument alone, Shiro was going to waste away eventually. There was always going to be a point where Shiro was not going to be able to be the Champion anymore. There was always, from the very way the dynamic was set up, going to have to be a lion switch. Now, interestingly enough, there could have been a really easy fix to this: Black Paladin Allura. She’s already a born and raised leader, already shown her immense competence, already someone the rest of the paladins follow. With her at the helm, nothing else would have to change, right?

Well, maybe. We’ll never know. One part of that is absolutely true — Allura should have been a paladin from the very beginning. Her quintessence is canonically closest to the entirety of Voltron (something that bears its own essay,; the relationship between all six of the paladins and Voltron is wrought with heavy symbolism), she is the most highly trained, she is smart, and she actually wants to be out on the field. She should have been in that armour from day one.

But Allura cannot be the Black Paladin. Allura cannot handle other’s sacrifice.

Of course this is a complicated subject. Should a leader sit back and let her crew sacrifice themselves instead of her? Must she hold herself in higher regard, convince herself she’s more important? Of course not! Teams, especially Voltron, are built with assets. While not everyone might be ‘equal’ in the traditional sense, they are all integral, and expecting sacrifices is not the stance I am trying to take here. But the point of a team, especially a team so small and vital as Voltron, is that everyone is willing to be the sacrifice, as they have to be, and Allura simply can’t handle that. She shows us this from the beginning, when she disguises herself as Galra and is taken in place of anyone on the team she barely knows, and again in Oriande with the White Lion, and finally in the piece of shit canon ending. Allura has to be the sacrifice. Every time.

And how could she not be? The last time she spared herself of sacrifice, she lost her entire people. The last time she let others sacrifice themselves for her, she was left alone, to shoulder a war bigger and greater than she could ever handle. Allura is painfully familiar with the agony of being the survivor, and she cannot do that again. She cannot and will not put herself through that again. As the Black Paladin, she would have to let her team make sacrifices — she would have to let them have their own agency, their own decisions; she would have to let them choose to get hurt and choose to do risky things and analyse and react and act. As leader she would have to trust her team to put themselves in harm’s way, and not only that, but she would have to authorize them to do so.

Like Shiro cannot last as the Champion, Allura cannot last as the Survivor. Shiro cannot even last in Voltron, and it is foolish to keep Allura out of it. A lion change is absolutely necessary for the show to move forward, for the war to move forward. The initial team was doomed to fail.

How would it change, then? What would fit? I know I’ve said my piece. I know who I think would fit where. But since I’ve been comparing character arcs to their roles as paladins, I’d like to keep doing that — what about Keith makes me so sure that he’s the true Black Paladin?

I’ll show you with process of elimination. I know Black Paladin Lance is a favourite, and I can see why. Lance has many leadership qualities, is a good tactician, and cares deeply. However, aside from his desire for power making him less suitable for the role, Lance functions best as support, despite how much he hates it. He is the one who knows how to pick up the pieces of a broken situation. He is an excellent guide, which makes him an unbelievably valuable second. He is adaptable, so he can fill in for many different roles. He can step in for leader when necessary, but putting him in Black would encourage a more active role for him; would force him to anticipate and plan for specific outcomes rather than his strength as one who analyses any outcome as it arises and works within it then. Lance could be the Black Paladin, yes, but taking him from the body and placing him in the head would be a fool’s choice. It would be crippling to Voltron, to put the jack of all trades as a master of one. Lance’s arc is all about learning to love and trust himself as he is, as the seventh wheel. Not to put him in charge of the vehicle.

Well, what about Hunk? Hunk is incredibly intelligent and analytical. He probably could lead Voltron, and did in several occasions. But Hunk’s arc is interesting because it was handled so early in the show. Unlike the rest of the team, Hunk’s arcs were solved largely in the first season. His biggest flaws were his distrust of people and, literally, his inability to fly. He could not take his feet off the ground. He was so untrusting that he could not manage to take a step forward. However his bonding with Yellow and trust with the team and their subsequent and returned trust resolved these issues, more or less, which is probably why Hunk was treated more and more like a side character the longer VLD went on. Hunk didn’t need the role of Black Paladin because he had settled into the Yellow Paladin in a way that was sustainable.

Pidge is in a similar boat. Her arc, primarily, has been about finding her family. Voltron was almost second priority for her, or at least not her only first priority. And understandably so! As the youngest she was afforded with that lenience. Her growth was about growing into her own pain, about becoming her own person alongside what she had become in the absence of her brother. As the Black Paladin, she would no longer have the space to prioritize her search for her family alongside Voltron, so her position as Black Paladin would be unstable. She is best suited in Green, where she can focus on several things at once.

That really only leaves Keith. In many ways it comes full circle — the Black Lion healing from her grief by choosing the man who ran from his Galran heritage and his power as a leader, rather than the man who chose nationalism and power over anything else. Keith is Zarkon’s direct opposite, and as such is the other side of the same coin, the one who is truly Black’s Chosen. We know this because Keith is the one who wields the Black Bayard, and Keith is, from the very beginning, the one the rest of the team chooses to follow — I ask you whether it was for Shiro that the three other humans ran off to chase in the desert, or Keith? Who was it that Lance could not leave alone? Who was it that piqued Hunk’s curiousity? Who was it that challenged Pidge to choose Voltron, rather than the search for her family?

That covers Black Paladin Keith. But what about Red Paladin Lance? I’ve established already why he cannot be the Black Paladin, but why did he have to move from Blue? For that, I bring you another few slices from early, S2 and previous canon:

“I thought what we had was special!” “Seventh wheel, if you count the Alteans.” More than once, Lance laments over being forgotten. He struggles with feeling like anything but the extra, the unnecessary. Whether or not Blue Chose him is irrelevant — he does not feel Chosen by her. The Pilot of the Blue Lion position for Lance is as unsustainable as the Pilot of the Black Lion position for Shiro — Lance does not trust it. He doesn’t trust himself in the role, and doesn’t trust Blue in having chosen it for him. Obviously, this is not the role for him.

But Red? Keith’s Red Paladin, at least? Yes, he struggles with feeling like Keith’s second, but that is literally his arc. Lance’s development is about becoming his own person despite his own misgivings about being second-best. His role as the Red Paladin is the fulfilling of his arc, and is thus the best Lion for him, the Chosen. And Red did Choose him, mind you. There was an adjustment period, of course there was, but Red did more than let Lance pilot her. She opened up new possibilities for Lance — think the broadsword — that he could not see. Red saw his potential and revelled in it. She Chose him.

Lastly — and this turned out to be less relevant to the essay than I expected, but I do want to go over it a tad — is Shiro’s tie to humanity. I mentioned two important points: Shiro’s connection to mortality makes him the most intimate with his humanity out of all the characters, and he is undoubtedly the flattest character of them all. That is, if you don’t consider his clone to be part of his character.

But I’m begging you to reconsider. Reconsider, perhaps, who the clone is — Haggar had pure access to Shiro for a year, you remember. His thoughts, his dreams, his mannerisms, his priorities, his body. Even him at his most human, his most deranged, his most scared. She had Shiro then. She had Shiro when he had nothing to look forward to. She had Shiro when he hurt his crew to make sure they would live, at direct cost to himself.

She stripped him of his humanity — his connection to his own mortality. She took his illness from him. And who, then, did she return to the team? Who was clone? Shiro, mostly. The clone was happy to play with the team. The clone was clever. The clone believed, fully, that he was Shiro, only he was angrier and meaner, a little, and less capable of shoving down his own pain. Shiro, stripped of his tie to humanity and mortality, stripped of his compulsive need to be strained and stressed and the one everyone else can rely on, the Role rather than the Person, is emotional. He has flaws and outbursts. He can’t manage his own pain. He is is cruelest to the one person on the team — Lance — who canonically reminds him closest of himself.

Shiro, in the purest form that Haggar can make him, is flawed and self-hating. That is where our love for him comes. Not the man who pushes himself down at the same time as he sacrifices his personality to be someone for others, but the man who is struggling and can’t keep it locked down. That’s where it comes from.

Anyways. Like with my other essay, I’ll admit that this analysis is probably reading into this. The writing of VLD was flawed, at best, but regardless, I think the lion change is a rich amalgamation of the characters and who they really are.

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tavyliasin · 4 months

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Raphael - Archduke of Asexuals

Welcome to another essay from Tavylia! We need some words about the handsome devil himself now, darlings, do we not? Because there's something very Ace about him - and I don't just mean "what a nifty guy", strap in (but not on) because we're going on a deep dive on...

Why Is Raphael the King of Asexuals and What Is It About Him That Draws So Many Of Us To Him Like He Is Made Of Garlic Bread: Another "Short" Essay by TavyliaSin (Who Frankly Rebels Against The Idea Of A Concise Title) ((Because This Is More Fun)) (((I Might Have Some Volo In My Family Tree)))

((Side Note - Ended up discussing more of Asexuality in fandom in general, but that's cool, right?...Right, well, the sections are marked, read as you so wish~)) Alright, this time we're not going to go too heavy into any darker topics, but there will be a deep examination of character, lore, asexuality, and a large heap of headcanons. There will also be a lot of microlabels, so I'll pop a short glossary at the end and some resources.

Also, please remember that no headcanon of mine is ever intended to override canon, or anyone else's HC - each HC is true and valid to the head it lives within~ that's the beauty of them, they are ours, and even when shared they remain our own to enjoy too.

What in the Hells is Asexuality Anyway? Aka, is Lia really trying to say the man she writes so much smut for is not sexual at all? (A brief overview of Asexuality)

Asexuality, in the most basic definition, means quite simply: "Experiencing limited or no sexual attraction." Now, look very closely. Some Asexuals, or Aces as we are sometimes called (and will be in this essay) experience absolute 0 sexual attraction. Some experience a very limited amount, or only under specific circumstances. It's also about Sexual Attraction and does not necessarily include feelings towards Action. I find this is best explained by the Split Attraction Model: Sexual Attraction - Attraction with a sexual component. Romantic Attraction - Attraction with a romantic component. Libido - Arousal, physical desire to act on arousal whether alone or partnered. Sex Drive - The desire to engage in partnered sexual activity, with or without arousal. A lot of people might look at those criteria and think "but those are the same thing", and for many that would be a fair assumption if they tend to be experienced simultaneously. But many among us only experience some parts, or they're not connected. The key is that whilst some Asexuals may experience little or none of any of those four, the only one relevant is the first, and an asexual with high libido or sex drive is no less asexual than any other, there's just no person attached to that libido or drive. So there are asexuals who enjoy sex, who have sexual relationships, and there are also asexuals who have no interest in any of that - the best part is, we're all valid!

Alright, But What Does This Have To Do With Raphael? The Devil Who Seduces In Every Other Sentence?

Right, see, here's the thing. He does flirt, but it never goes further. Seduction is just another tool that he uses, the same way he uses intimidation, promises, and bargains. It would be foolish of him to ignore the potential to bend someone to his schemes when he notices the colour rise to their cheeks when he talks, his goals need a lot of pieces to fall into place. None of it feels genuine. Raphael simply needs people to agree to his terms, and if the promise of sex secures a signature then so be it - besides, he has a hungry incubus at home who can fulfil that side of the deal without him ever having to lift a finger~ It isn't uncommon either for asexual people to make innuendo, lewd jokes, or to flirt without intention - some may even find that it's very easy to do this when there's no attraction or expectation. So for that... He reads as very Ace to me, it's all a part of the manipulation and the grand scheme. There's no actual attraction there. Interest? Certainly, the player character can be a very useful tool in his needs.

What About Haarlep? How Do They Fit In If Raphael Is Asexual?

Haarlep is an extremely sexual being, by their very nature they feed on sex and sexual energy, and we know by what they say that Raphael does indeed sleep with them. The canon would lead one to a logical microlabel when looking at Raphael and Haarlep together: Autosexual - This means experiencing more sexual attraction to yourself than to anyone else. This is a rarer microlabel, but still under the Ace umbrella as "limited sexual attraction" which can mean "attraction is very infrequent" and/or "attraction is only experienced under specific circumstances". And, of course, the HC territory can veer into Haarlep feeling like a safe enough option to deal with Libido and Sex Drive without having to find another partner or worry about attraction. You can also, if you really want to, bring in the canon that so many Anti-Raphael people love to scream about, "Haarlep says Raphael is bad in bed". Perhaps he is, perhaps he's just not into it beyond the simple release of tension and need. I'm not judging him for that, even if my HC is wildly different.

Why Is It Asexuals Like Him So Much? Is It Just Because He's Ace Too?

Well here come the deeper theories, based more on my own personal angle than anyone else's, so please do not assume this is the "only correct interpretation" nor the only way an ace may adore him. Plenty of aces don't feel any sexual or romantic attraction to Raphael, they're simply very fond of him as a character. He's interesting, oddly non-threatening because that flirtation is never pushed too far, never acted on, it's just there, a part of his clear interest in the player character (and he is obsessed, in his way, those diaries read like self-insert fan-fiction Raphael, my love, I see you). There's depth, intrigue, and the same things I've talked about before with villain fandom. So we can look deeper. Flirtation can be nice for anyone to feel, and oddly enough as an Ace I have often preferred characters who are open and overt in their attempts to seduce. This isn't necessarily true in life, real people and fiction are very different (hello, fellow FictoSexuals, good to have you here darlings~) but there is something appealing in the casual manner and clear tone. We also might have more of a draw to villains in general, but I've covered some of that in my last little ramble~ Reciprosexuals may also feel more for Raphael as he's initiating the flirtation, expressing potential attraction. Demisexuals are also likely to find that getting to know him is what draws them in. There's an element of "Forbidden Fruit" at play here too, in the way there isn't a romance for him (Haarlep does not count, they are their own being, a different personality). Then, of course we have kink.

Aces In Kinky Spaces

Here's the controversial one, loves, but I do ask that you approach this with understanding and compassion~ Not all aces are kinky. But there are a good portion who are. Kink is not always sexual, although it very much can be there are some people who enjoy, for example, "subspace" in BDSM - this is where a submissive reaches a kind of blissful inner peace as a result of being made to submit, their senses brought to focus on bondage, pain, or following orders. It varies from person to person, but it often described as a floaty feeling, freeing, relaxing, deeply satisfying without necessarily including anything sexual at all. Of course, kink can be sexual too, which you will find in a whole lot of my writing, don't think about it too hard darling let me have this one~ This can be helpful for someone not experiencing sexual attraction, but instead finding sex drive and libido from kink instead, allowing them to engage in sexual relationships and activity in a manner they are comfortable with and enjoy. There is also the safety of trust and rules with kink play. So the obvious reminder goes here: Consent is key Safe words and signals are binding and must be instantly respected when used Nobody should be shamed for safe word/signal use Aftercare is important and not optional Negotiation needs to happen before a scenario, not during/after When I write with Raphael, there's almost always the kink angle because he so naturally falls into D/s and Power Play tropes. On the surface you have a very Dominant personality, so it's easy to see him continuing that role in the bedroom. But then there's the other side, Raphael as a sub, not only because of what Haarlep says (and do remember "sub" and "bottom" are not the same thing), but because people who are often in control and making decisions in their daily life find freedom and enjoyment in giving over that control to someone else, not having to worry about anything but enjoying the situation while another takes on all those decisions. So he fits very well with plenty of kinky ace themes, and I quite like that feeling of "he's not just going to get into bed with someone who is pretty, there's going to be a genuine interest and desire there that's beyond the surface, a deeper need and longing for who they are". That's rather nice, honestly.

Aces and Spicy FanWorks

Alright going to draw this in to a close now loves we are running long with this one! FictoSexuals will be more aware of this than most, but fictional characters and works often have more draw because there's a layer of disconnection to it. There's no actual partner with expectations or needs, you can step away from fiction at any moment. You can close the app/browser, scroll past the art, stop reading, save and exit the game - there is complete control in how and when you engage with the content, whether consuming it or making it. So there are a fair few of us, playing around with those fantasies in art and writing, things that are fun and comfortable in our own ways, and I'm grateful that we have this space to do so~ I've met more than one fellow ace in the creative side of fandom and I'm simply never surprised by it. We aren't defined by our attractions, and we are collectively rather talented at this little hobby of ours~ The fun theory there is that when we don't experience much (or any) sexual attraction, we are looking that much closer when writing about it. We don't tend to skip it, we analyse what is attractive, where it comes from, how it might feel, why it feels that way, and that can present itself as deeper and more detailed fictional works. Whether that's in the posing and expressions of visual arts, or in the narration and dialogue of writing, we are paying attention to trying to get it right, whether it's an experience we can ever relate to personally or not.

Alright, Is This Thing Ever Ending?

It really should, you're so right~ Raphael Fandom, and other more niche characters, do have a fair amount of Asexuals for all the reasons above and likely a whole lot more too. I love that for us, and I love talking about it because there is so little Asexual visibility sometimes that people take many many years to even know they're ace because it's simply not an option they're aware of. So hello to all of you who slid down the OverCompensating Bisexual/Pansexual -> Asexual pipeline because you thought "feeling the same way towards any gender" was all that meant and didn't realise "feeling nothing towards any gender" is actually different and its own thing, oops. We're here now, and that's just fine~ Take care, beloved Aces, regardless where you are under the Asexual Umbrella, or what microlabels you wear.

You are valid, seen, heard, and loved.

^ Raphael realising he's not Bi/Pan, he's Ace and owning it, like the king he is. Or perhaps not king... Archduke of Asexuality~

---------------------------------- ---------------------------------- ASEXUAL RESOURCES AND MICROLABEL DEFINITIONS ---------------------------------- ----------------------------------

Asexual - Experiences little to no sexual attraction Greysexual/Grey Asexual - Experiences limited sexual attraction Demisexual - Only experiences attraction after an emotional bond has formed or knowing the individual well on a personal level Fraysexual - Sexual attraction is brief and does not last once an emotional bond is formed Fictosexual - Experiences sexual attraction towards fictional characters (art, writing, film, games, other media, but not real people) Autosexual - Attraction is towards the self more than to other people Reciprosexual - Only experiences attraction after attraction towards them has been clearly expressed --- This is not a full or comprehensive list of microlabels! Nor should people feel a need to use them. They are there to help us understand ourselves and to relate to others in the community. None have to be strict, and it is perfectly valid for your sexuality to shift during your lifetime for any reason. --- For more information and resources on Asexuality, I strongly recommend seeking out Ace communities, even on places like Reddit, and this website:

Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) Website

#baldurs gate 3 #fanfic #bg3 raphael #haarlep #asexuality #asexuality in fiction #asexuality in fanfiction #raphael the archduke of asexuality #aces in kink spaces #asexuality and kink #asexual #acespec #bg3 #bg3 fanfiction #let's talk about asexuality because it's damn near invisible sometimes #asexual microlabels #aven #please feel free to discuss this in comments etc #we are all valid

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esther-dot · 4 months

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Hi Esther!

Would you have a tag (or tags) that I can follow for asoiaf theories and metas on your blog? I feel like I am far behind in terms of fandom speculation/theories that have come out and would really like to catch up.

Thank you <3

Sadly, I was not good about tagging when I first joined the fandom, and I’m still not consistent. 🫣 But I looked around and have found some stuff you might enjoy.

I like these posts about Dany's relationships with her nephews as being foreshadowed by her interactions with Rhaegal (Jon) and Viserion (Aegon). This post about potential foreshadowing for Dany to kill Aegon. This spec about Dany v Aegon and Jon betraying her. This one, about how killing Aegon will not be the victory she expects, and some parallels between him and Robb .

I have a tag for Dance of Dragons 2.0, but the better one to peruse is prolly sayruq's on that topic. Also, just so you know, the fandom at large seems to think "mummer's dragon" means Aegon is fake, but we tend to believe he's Elia's son and that that's about Jon. I'd recommend reading Aegor's tag for more general Aegon content.

I can't find any specific book meta about how the Starks will defeat the Others at the moment, although I linked to a meta about it happening at Winterfell in this post. If anyone has a post they like or wrote on it, please send it catofoldstone's way!

Let's see...I haven't been doing a good job keeping up with meta for the past year, but I think there's good stuff in the Stark v Tag tag which has foreshadowing for conflict between wolf and dragon and spec about Arya and/or Jon assassinating Dany. Oh, here's the tag talking about foreshadowing for Dany to face-off with Euron which I find interesting spec. I do have a few tags I’ve tried to remember to use more, Book Jonsa, R+L=J, King Bran, The Girl in Grey. This post about the Ashford Tourney Theory has links for meta on that (it's a beloved Jonsa theory), and I have a few additional things tagged for it. I also have this post with some favorite Jonsa metas. The Sansa and Lyanna tag has been fun due to @please-dot's eye for parallels.

theusurpersdog doesn't seem to be active any longer, but their posts on Dark Dany are very good. This one has links to the previous ones in their series on her. I like this one about book Jon as well.

I enjoyed howlandreads writing (also inactive), especially this post, Feminine Rebellion in ASOIAF.

Reading trinuviel's post about Dany being Azor Ahai (but that being a bad thing!) was formative for me, so even though I feel like I link that a lot, I shall again! This is the final post in the series and has links to the previous entries.

Fedonciadale is someone I thought of as our very own ASOIAF expert. She passed away a year ago, but I’d encourage you to look through her masterlist. She was a fan of LOTR and Martin is a huge fan (he said he regularly rereads it), so I was very interested in the parallels she found between the two series.

I’m not sure if you were around for this, but Istumpy did a reread project and you can find links to each of those posts in this master post. You may want to look at the summaries for each book in that post to find where the foreshadowing for a specific topic is and approach it that way.

The one meta by someone beyond our corner of the fandom that I think about often is that famous series of essays on Dany because Martin endorsed them. It was written years and years ago, and after reading Martin's words on it, it's hard to understand how Dark Dany is treated as a fringe theory or rejected as part of shipping wars.

I hope you find something you enjoy somewhere in all of that!

#dot chat

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anarcho-physicist · 10 months

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My favorite weird phase of matter (and also some intro-y stuff that you can skip if you want to look at the pretty pictures)

[Fig. 1 (a) from Mur, M., Kos, Ž., Ravnik, M. et al. Continuous generation of topological defects in a passively driven nematic liquid crystal. Nat Commun 13, 6855 (2022).]

Hi again! In my previous posts, I described what the term soft matter means to a physicist, and how physicists really understand phases of matter mostly in terms of symmetries. In the future, I'm similarly planning to write more long form, in-depth explanations of specific concepts/topics in soft matter physics.

I'd really like to be able to dive into the math behind everything, but I also want to keep things as understandable and enjoyable as possible to those with little to no math background. So I'll try my best to explain every bit of every equation I show, and I think forcing myself to do so will help me understand them better.

I might also post some things other than long-form essays. One idea I've been thinking of doing is to post a daily/weekly/whateverly arXiv update, where I pick one or a few soft matter physics preprints that have been uploaded recently, and write short, informal summaries of their findings. I think that might be a good way to keep myself and anyone who's interested informed on the state of the field. I also intend to do shorter posts on specific papers or results I think are really cool. My research and academic responsibilities keep me very busy, so I'll likely make shorter posts when I don't have the time or energy to write longer, deeper explanations.

Another idea I've been toying around with is potentially using this account as something like a radically open research notebook/journal, where I immediately write up and publicly post each little research milestone I've made for the day/week/whatever. My paycheck comes mostly from government grants, the research I do is publicly funded. I think the public ought to be aware of exactly what they're funding, and particularly, I think the members of the public who are interested in what we do should be able to engage with researchers, to learn about the current state of the field. I also think this ability to engage with current research should be accessible to all members of the public, not just those wealthy enough to be able to spend a lot of time around universities. On the other hand, there are some ethical and logistical considerations when it comes to sharing unpublished research, and I'd at the very least need to get approval from all of my collaborators, so if I end up doing something like this, it wouldn't be for a while.

Anyways, for now, I'd just like to show you some really cool experimental realizations of a gorgeously weird phase of matter that is very dear to my heart (and my CV):

Active Nematic Liquid Crystals

[Video taken by the Dogic Lab]

These two-dimensional, spontaneously flowing "line fluids" host topological defects (the little comet-shaped and triangle-shaped dark spots). These are quasiparticles with fascinating dynamics, and some really beautiful mathematics behind their structure. To quote my PI who was quoting some other physicist I can't remember:

Materials are like people; it's the defects that make them interesting.

The term liquid crystal refers to a general class of materials with symmetries and properties in-between those of a crystal and those of a simple liquid. Nematics are a particular type of liquid crystal, one with full translational symmetry, but S^1 / Z_2 -broken rotational symmetry. Active nematics are nematics that also break time-reversal symmetry, and thus energy conservation (I'll explain how this is possible in an energy-conserving universe sometime soon; the short answer is "coarse-graining").

Here's what happens if you put an active nematic on a sphere:

[Dogic Lab again -- they're great they do a lot of really cool stuff]

Fun fact: These defects attract and repel each other just like charged particles (via Gauss's law), except they aren't electrically charged, they're topologically charged. Rather than electromagnetic fields, the medium of interaction here is the elastic free energy associated with curves in the line field. The comet-shaped defects have a +1/2 topological charge, while the triangular ones have a -1/2 charge. If you bring two defects close enough together, they'll effectively "add" their charges up. This means oppositely-charged defects can annihilate each other into the uniform/vacuum state, and that a sufficiently perturbed vacuum can pair-produce oppositely charged defects. That eye-catching picture at the top of this post is a cross-polarized image of that pair-production process in an externally-driven passive nematic. The two arrows point to two individual defects.

In an active nematic, things get even more interesting; the +1/2 defects become effectively self-propelled, while the -1/2 defects do not. At least, not if the activity is spatiotemporally constant (this is a hint to a really cool upcoming paper I'll hopefully be publishing before the end of this summer). This results in all sorts of weird nonequilibrium behavior, like the chaotic state displayed in the first animation, or the oscillatory swirling of the four +1/2 defects on the vesicle depicted in the second.

Why do we only see four +1/2 defects, and no -1/2s on the sphere? For two reasons: 1) The sphere is fairly small relative to the active length scale, which is roughly the average separation distance between defects. This is governed by the balance of active and elastic stresses. And 2) The hairy ball theorem necessitates a net topological charge on the sphere of +2 = 4 x +1/2.

All of the nematics I've shown you so far have been synthetic, but nematics (and even active nematics) show up in nature too. One really good example: look at your hands. I mean, really look at them. Do you see any familiar little triangle shapes? Maybe some little whorly comets? Fingerprints are a frozen nematic texture! But the defects in your fingerprints aren't very interesting, because they don't move (I hope). What else is there?

This brings us to my favorite experimental discovery ever made. Hydra are microscopic freshwater creatures that regrow their limbs. It turns out, the hydra's supracellular actin fibres, which play a major role in this morphogenesis, order like an active nematic. They have topological defects, which appear to correlate with sites of new organ growth. You can see them in the hydra itself:

[Fig. 1 (a-f) from Maroudas-Sacks, Y., Garion, L., Shani-Zerbib, L. et al. Topological defects in the nematic order of actin fibres as organization centres of Hydra morphogenesis. Nat. Phys. 17, 251–259 (2021).]

It's literally algebraic topology come to life.

#soft matter #physics #science #196 #mathematics #biology #topology #academia

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nonhumanresources · 5 months

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A List Of Books/Stories About Transformation

You ever seen those titles of extremely specific essays? If this was one of those I'd call it "A List Of Books That Contain In Whole Or In Part Some Amount Of Transformation, Or The Changing Of Oneself To Another That Has In Some Manner Been Fundamentally Altered From The Self You Used To Be." That was the original title but I didn't want to be mean.

I was rambling far too long about post TF on one of warmer-hotcakes's posts and they mentioned not being able to find stories with a positive relationship to transformation (as well as transformations that are permanent) so I wanted to put a few down in a list!

Granted, these are incredibly inconsistent in pretty much every way other than being SFF but hey, we take what we can get here. Plus they weren't wrong it is VERY hard to find these kinds of stories, half of the list at this point is self published novels on Amazon written by people I've met by chance in TF circles, to give you an idea. So, to pad it out I will add more tangentially related TF stories.

If anyone happens to have more stories feel free to comment them and I'll add them on! I will also add to the list sporadically if I feel like it.

Anyway, without further ado:

Wolven by Di Toft is about a kid finding a werewolf out in the woods. It's been years since I read it but it's got a fun dichotomy between a villain and a protagonist both suffering from partial werewolfication and the ways they deal with it.

Thousand Tales by Kris Schnee is a self published series of books set in the near future where an AI runs a video game that allows people to be "uploaded" into it. There's a lot of books that don't need to be read in any specific order focusing on different characters and is generally a more lighthearted approach to the topic than most, and also it has furries in it. There are books about people who upload immediately, people who do eventually, and people who never do. Not quite the same as adjusting to changes IRL but this is my list and I get to shill whatever I want. Also, it's some of the highest quality writing/editing I have seen in a self-published novel (especially TF novel).

How To Be A Hero: (And Part Time Dragon) by S. Blakeway is a book about a hero who gets defeated and turned into a wyvern by the Dark Lord. Her eternal torment is interrupted, though, by said Dark Lord sending her out on a quest, during which she has to navigate turning back into a wyvern every few days. It's fun and silly and has lots of TF and the author is a very nice and cool person. Go buy this one and the sequel and help me bother her into finishing the trilogy please.

Perspective Flip also by Kris Schnee and Shifting Tails by Paul Lotor are a pair of short story collections. These are more of a soft recommend; both include cases of protags adapting to transformations, and generally involve positive stories, but not all of them are great. Perspective Flip is generally good but Shifting Tails especially has stories that lean very far into the horny side of things as well as topics I was very much not into, but some of them were admittedly very enjoyable. Being horny isn't bad, of course; it's moreso that there is less "story" and more "hey wouldn't this TF be hot." To be fair, sometimes they are, but sometimes they stray far away from my interests, so take that how you will.

Wereworld by Curtis Jobling is something I read as a kid but I'm gonna be honest I remember almost nothing about it. However it is about therianthropes of all types and I like that so it's going on here. They even have sharks!

The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson. Full disclosure, I have not finished reading this one, and I do not believe it has permanent TF, but it does feature a dude who astral projects into a dragon and is generally a fine book.

The Dangers Of Wearable Technology by Serathin Sabertooth (gods I hope that isn't a pen name, that would be so cool). This is one that I don't really recommend? Which is odd, you might say, for a list of recommendations. Correct! I just have a complex relationship with it, which I will include in a post here so that I don't flood this list with unnecessary words.

That's all I can think of at the moment, but like I said, feel free to send suggestions my way and I'd be happy to read em/add em to the list! Obviously it's pretty short right now and I'd love to bulk it up as much as possible for all us COOL NERDS

#writing wyrms #dawdling dragons #transformation #book recommendations #book list #my stuff

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souryogurt64 · 3 months

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the essay!!!! i read that shit instead of studying for my exam so if i fail it is your fault miss yogurt (kidding). i am continuously amazed at your abilities and your perfectly dry-but-witty journalistic style that i am ohsoinlove with. reading the sentence “(Also unsurprisingly, Gray is about gaslighting a girl until she dies.)” took me out lma. ! i love all of ur writing, tho i am obviously biased since it’s on topics that interest me - however, the amount of work and dedication that you are able to designate not only to a complex split of a band, but also personal relationships, biographies, lyrical and prose analysis is astounding! anyway,,,, i guess i just want to thank u !

thank you this message is really genuine and sweet <333 i re-used that joke from the gray dissertation lol

Tbh i was not happy with a lot of parts of this one. Sorry to rant about this appended to your ask specifically <3

mainly I think i shot myself in the foot with the way i structured the last one where i covered the moment panic got signed in excruciating detail and then rushed through 10-15 years really fast. at the time i did not think these were that serious or were going to reach as far as they ended up reaching and it was just like for my tumblr followers so i knew it was like a bad idea but i was just like "whatever!!!!"

anyway that made the beginning really rough because i didnt really have a set place to start. the first like 5 pages were also completely different too which didnt help

Also about 70% of the way through i realized it was really weird that i didnt give brendon any kind of dramatic introduction. I had so much fun writing the dramatic introductions they got a lot longer than when i outlined the essay which made that even more noticeable

But honestly, writing this and watching so many presplit panic interviews i actually started liking brendon a lot more and remembered why people used to love him and i knew whatever i wouldve said would have been things people didnt really want to read, so instead he just got his villain monologue at the end

It was also kind of weird that i didnt introduce spencer or jon at all but i figure anyone reading a 50 page essay about panic at the disco already knows who these people are anyway so i just had 2 move on

Also i was not very happy with the verlaine section, i felt like it was a lot of very dense information to synthesize and like also I didn't want to over explain it and be accused of being like a gay truther but like im sorry. its not even gay truthing its just gay by virtue of existing so i feel like i under explained it

Other parts too. However my research capabilities are absolutely unmatched and i do think im funny. im not sure if most other people think im funny but i sure think i am <3

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meg-megbanom-ezt · 6 months

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"A fairy story" indeed

LITERALLY 1984 ANIMAL FARM!!!

Aaaaand Orson got traumatised. He didn't deserve this, but the idea was too good to let it go HAH!

Back then, we (=my family) frequently bought the Hungarian Garfield magazine which also featured US Acres (and some non-Jim Davis comics as well but let's stay on topic) and there was a time when I kinda liked US Acres better then Garfield. I guess I started to feel Garfield getting stale as it was - and is, clear in retrospect - THE cash-cow franchise where strips were churn out en masse while US Acres remained the small side fun project for Jim Davis. OK, it might be a stretch and I'm biased as I also grew up on the land sooo... yeah.

And yes, he totally had eyelashes in the earlier strips and I remember the chickens calling him "mom" so I thought for a while that he was a girl (Hungarian has no gendered pronouns and I just didn't know that Orson is a male name). And with his superhero persona AND book fairy persona, he's kinda a gender role defying character, isn't he? Of course, you can argue that some of these things can be explained that he was the runt of the litter so he remained childlike, but...

oh wait. Did I just write an essay about a cartoon pig instead of the paper I'm supposed to? OH SHIIIIII-

(ps.: I know the characters are not perfect, but I drew this when the internet was down, so without reference; and with these conditions, I pretty much think I nailed it. We do NOT talk about the lettering, tho)

(pps.: why is the book so thick for such a short novel? It could be a big font print for the elderly / visually impaired OR maybe I just messed up. Heh)

#us acres #drawings #animal farm #english content #george orwell #jim davis #saját rajz #moly extra #krita

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dialovers-translations · 1 year

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I posted 1,315 times in 2022

1,231 posts created (94%)

84 posts reblogged (6%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@strawberry--bride

@dialovers-translations

@apples-of-eden

@raburabusama

@carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich

I tagged 1,204 of my posts in 2022

Only 8% of my posts had no tags

#diabolik lovers - 693 posts

#dialovers - 693 posts

#diabolik lovers translation - 667 posts

#answered ask - 362 posts

#lost eden - 224 posts

#dark fate - 199 posts

#diabolik lovers drama cd - 125 posts

#drama cd - 116 posts

#lunatic parade - 104 posts

#shin tsukinami - 100 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#y'all better believe i'm writing an essay on why i think ayato's le vampire ending makes perfect sense and is not deus ex machine imo

My Top Posts in 2022:

DIABOLIK LOVERS Do-S Kyuuketsu VERSUS Ⅲ Tower Records Tokuten Drama CD ”Ryoutei Academy’s ★ Nocturnal Mystery-Solving Exploration Team”

Original title:「夜の★嶺帝学院の謎解き探検隊」

Source: Diabolik Lovers VERSUS III Tower Records Tokuten Drama CD

Audio: Here

Seiyuu: Toriumi Kousuke, Midorikawa Hikaru, Kaji Yuki, Takahiro Sakurai, Kimura Ryouhei & Morikubo Shoutaro

Translator’s note: This is probably the most enjoyable tokuten CD I’ve listened to in a while! I really liked the vibe the boys had going on and the whole ‘school mysteries’ is a very popular topic in Japanese media so I’m not surprised that DL decided to cover it as well. My favorite part is the end though. I absolutely love how the whole North Pole thing continues to be a running gag ever since the early years of the franchise

See the full post

269 notes - Posted August 21, 2022

DIABOLIK LOVERS CHAOS LINEAGE Sofmap Tokuten Drama CD: “The Vampire’s Every Day: Board Game Edition ~ Ayato VS Kanato VS Laito ~”

Original title: ヴァンパイア達の日常ボードゲーム編～アヤトVSカナトVSライト～

Source: Diabolik Lovers Chaos Lineage Animate Tokuten Drama CD [CD not owned by me]

Audio: Here

Seiyuu: Midorikawa Hikaru, Kaji Yuki, Hirakawa Daisuke

Translator’s note: Back when I translated the silent squad version of this CD, I remember thinking to myself that it had to be the funniest drama CD I ever had the pleasure of listening to. While I still think the Shuu/Reiji/Subaru one is just a little better, this CD definitely delivers as well. I’m just not that crazy about the triplets, but if you’re a triplet stan, you’ll be sure to have a blast with this one!

See the full post

271 notes - Posted June 5, 2022

DIABOLIK LOVERS MORE CHARACTER SONG Animate Tokuten Drama CD ”Mr. Vampire’s Gloomy Working Lifestyle”

Original title: ミスターヴァンパイアの憂鬱なるバイト生活

Source: DIABOLIK LOVERS MORE CHARACTER SONG Animate Tokuten Drama CD ”Mr. Vampire’s Gloomy Working Lifestyle” [CD not owned by me]

Audio: Here

Seiyuu: Toriumi Kousuke, Kaji Yuki, Takahiro Sakurai, Kimura Ryouhei, Kishio Daisuke

Translator’s note: This CD has been mentioned so many times to me as the elusive ‘Shuu works as a cashier’ CD and finally I got the chance to translate it! Up till now, only a short sample clip was circling the internet, but one of my wonderful followers purchased the CD and shared the audio with me. uwu Even though this CD doesn’t have a lot of my favorite (aside from Shuu), I still enjoyed it a lot! It was so much fun to imagine the absolute chaos breaking loose as these 5 Vampires try to run a convenience store.

ーー NOW FOR THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Am I tripping or does Azusa sound totally different in this track??? His voice sounds a lot softer? Or like more high-pitched??? Azusa stans back me up here.

See the full post

284 notes - Posted March 6, 2022

DIABOLIK LOVERS BLOODY BOUQUET Animate Tokuten Drama CD “The Secret Behind a Demon World’s Wedding Reception ~Vampires’ Hospitality~”

Original title: 「魔界的披露宴の極意～ヴァンパイアのおもてなし～」

Source: Diabolik Lovers Bloody Bouquet Animate Tokuten Drama CD

Audio: Here

Seiyuu: Toriumi Kousuke, Kaji Yuki, Hirakawa Daisuke, Kimura Ryohei, Suzuki Tatsuhisa, Morikawa Toshiyuki

Translator’s note: I found this CD to be incredibly informative and interesting because it really does teach us more about the Demon World and its traditions. I genuinely had a lot of fun hearing them talk about the three different household’s various customs when it comes to parties and ceremonies. :3 Rejet should definitely make more drama CDs like these which combine light-hearted comedy with lore.

See the full post

285 notes - Posted July 31, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

DIABOLIK LOVERS CHARACTER DRAMA CDS [ENG MASTERLIST]

-> All translations on this list were done by me over the course of the past 2 years. Please do not claim any of them as your own, re-upload them on other websites (even if you give credit!) or translate them to another language.

-> This masterlist features all ‘character CDs’, which means they focus on one (or two in case of the VERSUS series) characters and they are usually about 50 minutes to an hour long in length. If you also want to check out all mini dramas and tokuten CDs I’ve translated, please check out my main masterlist over here!

[SAKAMAKI SHUU ・逆巻シュウ]

DIABOLIK LOVERS Do-S Kyuuketsu CD Vol. 6 Sakamaki Shuu

DIABOLIK LOVERS Do-S Kyuuketsu VERSUS I Vol. 1 Ayato VS Shuu

DIABOLIK LOVERS MORE,BLOOD Vol.09 Sakamaki Shuu

DIABOLIK LOVERS Do-S Kyuuketsu VERSUS Ⅱ Vol.2 Shuu VS Reiji

DIABOLIK LOVERS BLOODY BOUQUET Vol.4 Sakamaki Shuu

DIABOLIK LOVERS Do-S Kyuuketsu VERSUS Ⅲ Vol.5 Shuu VS Yuma

DIABOLIK LOVERS Para-Selene Vol.13 Sakamaki Shuu

DIABOLIK LOVERS ZERO Floor.10 Sakamaki Shuu - Thomason -

DIABOLIK LOVERS Do-S Kyuuketsu VERSUS Ⅳ Vol.2 Shuu VS Ruki

DIABOLIK LOVERS MORE, MORE BLOOD Vol.3 Sakamaki Shuu

DIABOLIK LOVERS DAYLIGHT Vol.2 Sakamaki Shuu

See the full post

406 notes - Posted August 12, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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oranberrie · 10 months

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At least I know my cat will be okay if I get bad again

#idk been taking care of myself differently #i don’t necessarily want to live but I don’t necessarily want to die. at the same time though I do want both of those things.#it’s contradictory and weird and I’m constantly in a state of limbo #but I drink strawberry kefir with flax chia and hemp seeds and blueberries and maple syrup and granola first thing in the morning #and I take ashwaganda to help my cortisol levels and anxiety #and I go to parks as often as I can #and I pet my cat #and I’m learning Spanish and ever so slowly writing two essays #and doing tattoos both on myself and others #and I brush my teeth every other day now instead of once every two weeks when I remember to #and I’m using a new face wash that I really really like #and I have athletes foot which isn’t fun or good but forces a routine on me to take care of it #and I drink peppermint tea with a pinch of salt and lots of honey before I go to bed #and also do word searches #idk things are. life is. uh #can’t say I don’t want to die but can’t say I don’t enjoy living atm #oh but yeah my friend and I had an awk convo about our mutual friends mental health and staging an intervention and the topic came up of #my mental health in - not comparison but in regards to it? idk offhand comment that turned into a whole side convo #but yeah basically she promised to take care of my cat and keep him safe should I ever try and succeed before he dies #so like that’ll fuck with me once I’m in a bad headspace again which is inevitable #seeing as my cat is literally my only reason for living during those times #but oh well

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crooked-wasteland · 5 months

Note

Hello, I've only known about your blog for the past two hours or so, but I want to thank you for providing us with some of the most detailed and fluent critical analyses of media I've ever read. Your posts are not only a joy to read, but have really made me rethink about some of my own perceptions and intentions with my art and just art in general. Thank you for that as well, I will absolutely be sticking around for more essays. Not only because they are fun to read and thought provoking, but unlike Medrano, I actually want to learn how to make my art meaningful, interesting, and communicative of myself. I might feel like I'll never get to that point, but at least I can confidently say I'll never be as repulsive as Vivenne Medrano when it comes to my art, and as a person.

Thank you so much Simply. I sometimes feel like I fail to explain myself adequately, which is inevitable when posts are so long. The Anti-Bojack post came out to 9 pages and I still feel I could have written more or been more thorough in my points at places.

I think, as long as you are willing to learn, you have already made so much progress. The one thing that has always helped me find meaning in my work has been giving myself a scenario and then asking "Why".

I am a fan of Media Video Essayists and may one day take these posts and actually turn them into a script and do all the editing and such to make a video about these topics, since videos go so much farther than blog posts, but I have a few I highly recommend in terms of writing and storytelling dissections:

Folding Ideas

Lindsay Ellis

Schnee

Savage Books

Hello Future Me

And for Musical Things

Sideways

How these people explain storytelling, art, psychology, and even history is so compelling and clear. Far better than anything I have done. Honestly probably going to go back to old posts to make sure I didn't accidentally plagiarize them and give appropriate links. I remember things from these videos while writing that are so well articulated that there just isn't any other way to say them.

Obviously they deserve proper credit.

#send asks #i highly recommend it #these creators are awesome #you'll do great #keep learning

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ilottthepilot · 7 months

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unpopular opinion about screaming meals?

idk how much longer that podcast will last... I feel like the disconnect between what the boys want it to be and what the fans want is becoming more and more evident over time.

It was great in the beginning when it was just f2 drivers talking candidly about racing and sharing juicy stories. I think it became clear very quickly though why a format like that was not really around before and why all f1 drivers are media trained to hell and back. At the end of the day these guys are rich men in one of the most male dominated sports there is. When I first bacame an F1 fan, I accepted from day one that I probably don't want to know the drivers' thoughts on a lot of different topics.

Now to bring it back to screaming meals, we now have a podcast with a fanbase thag skews female (as they never cease to remind us), young, and dare I say "chronically online" in the sense that you have to be pretty deep into the motosports fandom to find this podcast in the first place. I think a lot of these fans cling to an idea of these drivers that is "better" than they actually are.

While the screaming meals boys just want to "be themselves" in their podcast, I think a lot of the fans aren't ready for that. And this is in no means shade to those fans, I am just cynical and didn't really hold them to any standards from the beginning. I think the first time this was clear was when they were planning to film a Juri Vips episode and got so much backlash that it was never uploaded. What surprised me about that situation was a) people being surprised that they are friends with a guy that said the n-word (i'd think most people who grew up around white guys would have no illusions about that) and b) screaming meals not being able to predict that backlash. Again, in the Lissie Mackintosh episode, I watched them ask Lissie who the hottest f1 driver is and instantly saw the discourse coming. I think it's such a steriotypical disrespectful question to ask a woman that Rory, who has so much experience making PR material, should have caught it immediately and edited it out. (I am not saying that I, as a woman don't love discussing hot f1 drivers, but it's just such a sexist cliché that it was not worth it leaving it in from a PR standpoint)

I can't be bothered to write my one thinkpiece about the Pitstop boys drama do i will skip over that. All in all I think they had enough minor PR blunders that they can't get more drivers on, which has dramatically stunted the channel's growth. I think this has also lead to them losing interest a bit, especially with marcus being busy actually making progress in his racing career for once. (That sounded mean).

Sorry for writing a whole essay. if it's not coherent, remember that i have a fever🤪

TLDR: The screaming meals guys need to figure out what their fans want otherwise the podcast won't last luch longer. With the original format, as fun as it is, it was bound to fail sooner rather than later.

#i hope you get what i mean #asks

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biomorphic-beast · 14 days

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Hey!

I am currently doing research into mechanophilia in an attempt to understand and explain the phenomenon to other people. As someone who experiences forms of objectum and mechanophilia, I wanted to write an essay to further explain the topic.

I was wondering if you could answer a couple questions for me related to the topic? Just some things to do with your definitions of mechanophilia, the ways it manifests for you, etc.

Any answers given could be anonymous if requested.

I always find it hard to reach out without it sounding like I'm a bot, but I thought I'd give it a shot after looking through your page!

Thank you, and I hope to speak with you!

Hello,

I am sorry to dispoint but I am afraid I cannot be of help in your research .

You are actually the second person to contact me for an interview on the topic since I started doing polls so I think its for the best I make things clear.

I am not actually a mechanophile, nor am I objectum. My attraction is robots is purely in the realm of fiction and I have had very little experience of being sexually attracted to real life machines.

Though that isn't to say I have no experinces with object anthropomorphization; I certainly remember the days when young teenage me turned to technology like Cleverbot for comfort.

The Sexy Robot Tier list is really just one big inside joke between me and my friends. I admitted that I had developed feelings for the character X-5 from Atomic Betty when I was younger on the friend groups discord channel and that somehow spiralled into this whole mess.

As to why I used tags like #robophilia, #technophilia and #mechanophilia on my Sexy Robot Tier List post. Well like I said on my pinned comment:

"With the combined efforts of the robotfuckers and machine smoochers of tumblr, I hope to create the most accurate ranking of Sexy Fictional Robots via democratic vote"

I wanted to get the opinions of people who actually were a part of these communities as well as just wanting to do something fun for the month of April before going back of my usual reblogs.

I am sorry I couldn't be of much help.

All the best,

Bio-Beast

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whomst-the-hell · 1 year

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How To Write An Essay

from someone who did pretty well in school. and i don’t mean the structure of an essay, because someone probably taught you that in class, i mean the actual process of sitting down to write an essay, which for some reason no teacher has ever addressed (at least to me)

(for the sake of this, I’m going to pretend i’ve been assigned an essay about shakespeare’s depiction of love in Romeo and Juliet, because I feel like thats a relatable point of reference idk)

1: scaffold. go into your document and create an outline in dotpoints of all your arguments. this is also where you put your quotes. (some people might find it helpful to also create some kind of mindmap pre- scaffold, but i tend to just use the scaffold as a mindmap, it depends on your preferred brainstorming techniques) for example, my scaffold might look like this:

intro

point 1: the relationship between love and violence

-friar and the plants

-romeo and juliet eventually die for love

-“starcrossed lovers take their lives” (act 1, scene 1)

-romeo and juliets love is arguably the cause for mercutio’s and tybalt’s death

-“i died under your arm”-mercutio (act, scene)

point 2: etc

this is much less effort than sitting down and actually writing out that paragraph.

the number of dotpoints needed per paragraph varies but as a rule of thumb i’d say 3-5. if you know a lot of information about a topic, only a couple points with lots of depth will do. if not, briefly talk about lots of things.

if you find yourself struggling with motivation, try to make scaffolding a bit fun. meme the fuck out of it. talk abt how romeo was a lil bitch who got the infinitely cooler mercutio killed like a moron. talk abt how much you hate shakespeare. no one is going to see it. IMPORTANT: make sure that you make it easy to find and remove the scaffold later. i do it by writing all my scaffolds *like this* so that i can go through at the end with ctrl+f and find all the **s, which i don’t generally use in the actual essay. you could do something else (maybe pick a number, or some other character) if ** wont work for whatever reason. you could also colour your scaffold so that you can visually see which bits to get rid of.

further things to note: DO NOT WORRY ABOUT PLAGIARISM. if you found a really good paragraph online where someone dissected the language used in the balcony scene, copy and paste that shit directly into the scaffold (remember to include the URL to make citation easy later). that way when it does come time to write this fucking thing, all of your information is in one place and you really just have to decorate it, which is honestly the less important part anyway. you will get more points for a badly written essay with good information than a well written essay with bad information.

another thing i like to do here is calculate roughly how many words i should write per paragraph. for example, if my essay is 1500 words and i’ll have three points, my breakdown may look like this

intro (100)

p1 (433)

p2(433)

p3(433)

concl(100)

i might even break it down further eg

p1: love and violence

-romeo and juliets death (108)

-tybalts death (108)

-mercutio’s death (108)

-friar’s plants monologue (108)

i get these numbers by literally putting them into a calculator. it may seem useless but it’s actually really quick, and it will be infinitely easier to convince yourself to write 108 words about romeo and juliets death than it will be to write 1500 words about the concept of love throughout the play.

(heres the formula for breaking it down btw: intro + conclusion = about the same each, generally smaller than a body paragraph. pick whatever number you think is appropriate for the total word count, minimum 50 words. my rule of thumb is <1000=50, 1000=100, 2000=200, etc. next, [total word count] - [intro+concl] = [body paragraphs]. next, [body paragraphs] / [no. of body paragraphs] = [wordcount per paragraph], next [wordcount per paragraph] / [no. of points]. written out this seems long, but it takes 5 seconds with a calculator- i just use google)

2: actually writing the essay. tragically i cannot give you the magic words to write a perfect essay, but one really good tip that i can give you is this: don’t stop scaffolding when you start writing. personally, i tend to get tripped up on details, and get stuck in one spot. for example: i know what all my arguments should be in my paragraph about love and violence, but i cannot for the life of me think of an introductory sentence. my paragraph might look like this for a while:

*epic guitar intro like in smells like teen spirit* This concept is demonstrated in the eventual deaths of the titular characters, Romeo and Juliet, as foreshadowed in the line “starcrossed lovers take their lives” (act 1 scene 1).

its sort of like skipping a question on a test then coming back to it later. there is no point in struggling over one sentence for hours — often, writing the rest of the paragraph will actually fill in your mental blanks and make it easier to write whatever you were struggling with.

other places ive found this method helpful: quotes. for example:

Romeo and Juliet’s love also caused violence to those around them. This is evident in the death of Mercutio, Romeo’s best friend. **find quote, and include analysis*** This demonstrates Shakespeare’s connection between love and violence.

in my experience, actually searching for a particular quote can throw off my momentum and fuck up the whole process. its been much better to just mark where i want that quote to go and come back later.

you can do this for single sentences or even whole paragraphs. i often write introductions last, because i never know what to say the first go round. you do not need to write your essay chronologically. go through one pass without losing momentum, hit ctrl+f, or find your coloured bits, to locate the problem areas. has writing the rest of it managed to fix the problem? no? try the next highlighted section! go back and forth like that until theres no more highlighted bits.

other assorted tips for writing an essay: don’t worry about repetition. for a lot of people (including me), writing is something that is supposed to sound good. we try to avoid repeating words/phrases too much because it can read as annoying or boring. as anyone who has read an academic paper knows, that actually means you’re on the right track. if your thesis statement is “shakespeare depicted love as a destructive and negative force” the words “destructive” or “negative” should probably be used 2-3 times a paragraph. you really want to hammer your audience over the head with your opinion.

also, as much as possible, try to make whatever the prompt is fun for yourself. this isn’t always possible of course, but it can really make the process easier. i know this wasnt my longstanding example, but as an actual real world example of this, i had to write an essay about the movie gattaca and how it incorporated its political themes into the narrative, and i argued that actually it had done a terrible job at that and that the movie as a whole sucked ass. i got 95%. if you have any kind of strong feelings about the topic, make them fit the question. its much less mind numbing than writing 2000 words you dont actually agree with for the sake of your grade.

if you need to take a break, maybe try working on homework for a different subject. this’ll shake things up so your brain is doing something new, but you won’t exit school mode and lose momentum entirely.

3: editing. dont worry too much. read through it so theres no glaring issues. try reading it out loud — you’re more likely to pick up on clunky sentences or grammar errors out loud. if you really want to do well, have someone else look over it (a classmate/teacher would be best bc they know what info was available to you but anyone will do)

final tips: its better to hand in something unfinished/badly written than nothing at all.

it is 100% better to sit down for five minutes and add 20 words to your essay than not to do anything. you dont have to dedicate your evening to it. progress is progress. a good way to do this is to get word/docs on your phone.

high school isnt life or death - failing this essay will not destroy you.

for essays on an exam, my best tip is don’t worry abt making it pretty. use the first page to make a mindmap. write more info later and use an arrow to show where it should be. it doesnt matter.

this might not work for you, but i hope it can act as a jumping off point to find what does work for you! go forth and conquer!

#study tips #school tips #how to write an essay

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