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fandom-monium · 3 years

Note

i finished for the holidays and i just *chefs kiss* beautiful talented amazing sajkgdkj no words i love that romance wasnt even the main point 🥺💘 anyway i love how you write reader and i wondered between her and spencer who gets jealous???

Unrivaled

Summary: In which you seem pretty close with the new intern, and Spencer is not happy about it. (ft. one of my fave white bois) “Have I ever told you how much I value your friendship?"

WC: 3.6k

Tags/Warnings: Spencer Reid x GN!Reader, fluff, cussing, Jealous!Spencer bc id like to see that, established relationships (blegh), Garvez if you squint, the lightest implication of smut ever, points to yall who can guess who the intern is before reading the end or the tags 😉

—

Spencer is not jealous. He’s not.

Why would he be?

He has no reason to be jealous, Spencer chants to himself as he sits at his desk. Even from across the bullpen he still manages to hear your voice, and while normally it’s music to his ears, even better than Mozart, now it just feels like nails against a chalkboard. Grating his eardrums, making him wince.

Because you’re laughing. Not with Spencer though. Not at his obscure references or lame jokes.

With the new intern.

Why did Emily have to put you in charge of him? She could’ve chosen anyone on the team to have him shadow, but it had to be you! Not that you’re incapable or unqualified; you’re experienced, talented, and the best person he knows.

… Okay, he can see why she picked you.

Why do they even have interns? Unnecessary, really, when the BAU has you and him and he guesses the other teams too (it’s weird, he’s never actually interacted with them but whatever). Maybe it’s time to start making budget cuts. He’ll discuss this with Emily when he gets the chance. He’s got some influence, working at the BAU as long as he has.

But he’s not jealous.

Logically, jealousy (like an intern) is unnecessary. The green-eyed monster (like an intern) is ugly and contributes nothing productive, and if Spencer’s being honest, the world (like an intern) would be much better off without it.

At least that’s what he keeps telling himself as he downs his coffee like a shot of whiskey, trying to quell the squirming beast in him. Despite 90% of it being sugar, it still tastes bitter. He sets his mug down with a thud, and it’s loud enough to make Luke, Garcia, and JJ turn their heads, exchanging concerned glances when he slumps back in his chair.

Spencer doesn’t care. The world’s ending; you’re apparently into younger guys, with neat dark hair and forearms that can probably snap someone’s neck, and he can’t do anything about it. What does it matter if his best friends catch him in a sour mood, right?

“Hey, Spence,” JJ's tone is soft as they slink over, Garcia and Luke leaning against the edge of his desk and JJ flanking the other side. “You alright?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Spencer gazes past them, his eyes never leaving you. He deflates; your stance is relaxed, completely open as you nod at whatever Intern is saying, his hands gesturing spastically. It must be interesting, the way you listen with rapt attention and respond just as enthusiastic.

Spencer scoffs. Not like that’s anything special. You do the same for him. And the rest of the team.

...What the hell are you guys talking about?

“Well, you look like you’re about to throw your mug across the room. Or at an intern.”

Spencer blinks, finally breaking away from you long enough to eye the ceramic octopus. “That’s a good idea actually.”

“Don’t,” Garcia and JJ both shoot him a warning and he huffs, resting his chin in his hand. Garcia looks horrified, betrayed even while JJ has that expression on, the one she gives when she scolds Henry and Michael.

Whatever. It’s not like he’d ever sacrifice Mildred. Garcia entrusted her to him, after all.

Unless...?

No, he couldn’t… Maybe.

“You know, Reid, if you’re jealous—”

Spencer snaps his head to Garcia, eyes wide and darting to you like you have super-hearing, “Jealous? Who’s jealous? Not me.” He cringes, his voice octaves higher and cracking like a prepubescent boy.

Garcia snorts, “Okay, sure. But if you are jealous, I was going to say you have no reason to be. You wanna know why?” Spencer raises an eyebrow at her and she continues, “Sure the guy’s smart enough to get a full-ride scholarship at GWU, and he’s top of his class at the academy—”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

"And he’s one of the most good looking guys I've ever met—”

"How is that relevant—"

Luke frowns at her. "And have you met me?"

“My point is,” Garcia’s red lipstick curls into the most reassuring smile, “that you have nothing to worry about because (Your Name) loves you. A lot.”

Spencer perks up. “You really think so?”

“I know so. I see the way they look at you, and if that’s not love I don’t know what is," She shrugs, "And just because they’re talking doesn’t mean they’re into him.”

There's a collective nod of agreement and Spencer sags in relief. Of course they're right. He knows they are.

If you think about it, technically, he's got the advantage. You've known each other longer, bonded and shared experiences together good and bad, and you’re emotionally and even physically intimate with each other (something he's especially proud of, considering how long it takes you both to warm up to others).

And who knows? This is probably temporary! Whatever this is, the connection you seem to instantly make with Intern (faster than when you two had met, he realizes with a needle to his heart) is short-term at best. It'll peter out eventually, like most friendships do.

It’s sad, but a cruel fact of life.

(Is this selfish, wishful thinking? Nah.)

They’re right, there is no need to worry, Spencer thinks as a weight lifts off his chest, finally able to breathe. You love him and he loves you and eventually, everything will go back to normal.

There’s nothing to worry about.

—

The world’s ending.

“It’s really not.”

Yes, it is.

“Doc, come on.”

“Do not ‘Doc’ me,” Spencer grumbles, lifting his head from the comfort of his arms. He grimaces at Luke. “You didn’t see the way they looked at him. The way they talk about him.”

Two weeks. It’s been two weeks since you’ve taken Intern under your wing, and he’s had enough. If Hell is real, this is it. For days, he’s tried to resume some form of normalcy, and he was never one to be bold but desperate times call for desperate measures as he asks you out for lunch or invites you out on dates, even stuff he wouldn’t normally do because they’re more your thing. Something, anything to get you away from Intern. But...

At work: “Hey Spence, I'm teaching Intern (menial task that a 4 year old could do). Would you like to help—”

During break: “I’m taking Intern out for lunch. He’s still new to town, and I thought he could use a tour—”

In bed: “Did you know Intern’s a huge fan of Star Wars—”

Snap, and there went his patience.

Intern this, Intern that.

Spencer could tolerate this at work. At least he’s saving lives, being productive, getting paid. But under his roof? In his bed?

That was the last straw.

Spencer's not one to wish ill on another, he's not like that. But if something happened to the guy, say, get injured in the field, perhaps from a "stray" bullet, he'd be intern-ally grateful. Heh.

"Hey, you good?"

Spencer sighs, swiping a hand over his face and turning back to Luke. "Yeah, why?"

Luke waves a hand at his face, eyebrow raised, "For a second there, you kind of had a scary look on your face."

"Did I? Weird."

"Right," Clearly unconvinced, Luke brushes it off, deciding to get to the root of the matter. "As I was saying, I still think you have nothing to worry about. Although, I do think it's a little weird that (Your Name) is talking about Intern as much as you say they are." He offers Spencer a little smile, his hand falling heavy on his shoulder. It's the most comforting touch he's had in two weeks. "I'm not one to talk, but I suggest you speak to them. I'd also be uncomfortable if my partner were talking up someone else."

Spencer blinks, squints at Luke, before gripping his hand and standing up. "Have I ever told you how much I value your friendship?"

"You can stand to mention it more often," Luke shrugs, eyes crinkling with amusement as Spencer lets go and heads for the door.

"Noted."

—

Spencer nearly goes feral when he finds you.

Of course you're with him.

He searched the floor like a bloodhound, discovering you've been on your feet almost the entire day, running around the office, up and down the elevators, finishing your work and helping around. You must be exhausted. It's because of this he tracks you to your favorite break room, mostly quiet save for the buzzing drip of the old coffeemaker. He knows you need to be alone sometimes, recharge those social batteries.

So when he bursts into the room like he would hunting an unsub, eyes quickly scanning the immediate space, he expects nothing less but you. What he did not anticipate was to find you, just as soft and pretty as ever under the fluorescent lighting, leaning against the counter and sipping daintily at your favorite mug.

With Intern standing a little too close to his liking.

“Hey, Spencer,” You chirp as you lower your coffee mug, lips glossy from your drink. Spencer's quick to shake his stupor―he can’t afford to be distracted, but it’s difficult when you’re beaming at him, clearly excited. You nod at the home-wrecker, “Me and Intern here were just talking about demonology and he’s got this interesting theory on werewolves―" Lycanthropy? Are you fucking kidding him right now?

Just when he thought he couldn't hate the guy any more.

"CanItalktoyou?" It comes out rushed as Spencer gasps between breaths, leaving no room to second guess himself.

"Sure," You blink at his urgent tone.

For a second, you watch him expectantly, and Spencer's gaze darts between you and Intern. "Alone?"

"Oh! Okay. Be gone," You wave Intern off, and when you place a hand on his shoulder, Spencer sees red. Or green in this case.

Intern doesn't resist, but the noise Spencer releases is animalistic because the guy can’t seem to read the room, questioning you as you gently shove him towards the door. "What about the thing―"

"We'll talk about that later."

"But you still need to show me how to―"

"Don't worry, Intern. Just wait for me, I'll show you once the adults are done talking."

"You know at some point you're gonna have to call me by my name."

"Nah. If we get to call Luke a newbie, we get to call you Intern. Also I do not know how to say your first name."

"You could just call me St―"

Enough of this. Spencer closes the last stretch of distance, batting your hand away from Intern’s shoulders as he kicks him out himself, slamming the door in his face. Spencer turns on his heel to face you, caging you both. “You―” He pants, chest heaving for air.

“Me?”

“You-him-we―”

You’re unfazed, simply nodding at him and his odd behavior. If anything, you’re enjoying this as your lips twitch in a poor attempt to withhold your amusement, trying to cover it with a slurp of your cup. Then again, it’s not everyday you get to see Spencer, face flushed from exertion, speechless as he gasps for breath.

(At least not at work… In the break room specifically.)

It takes a minute as Spencer swallows a few times, but his heart’s erratic and it’s not just from running through the entire building. When he’s got enough air, he blurts out, “Did I do something?”

Your brow shoots up. “What?”

“Did I forget something important? Upset you in some way?”

“No? I don’t think so?” You frown at him, your answers more like questions.

It only spurs him on, and though his tone is frantic and his eyes just as wild as his hair, you’re more intrigued than frightened. Definitely confused.

“Okay, but you know I love you, right?”

“Yes and I love you too but Spence, what’s this about?" Setting down your mug, you look at him like he's grown another head.

Spencer sighs, "I just… you…" He frowns, glancing between you, the floor, and the empty space between you.

Spencer Reid is a man of words. Many, many words, according to all his friends and his coworkers. Mainly knowledge―he's never been great with feelings―but as you gaze at him, patiently waiting for him to gather his thoughts, he wants to melt into the floor. There's not a hint of annoyance on your features, your eyes warm and inviting.

He's so in love with you.

Then like scripture the words come, natural without much stuttering or hesitancy. He recounts the last two weeks. The internship so far, the times you've left Spencer behind for him, the times you just talked about him, like the guy (practically a stranger) is your new best friend. Usually, pretty people make him tongue-tied and you do―god, you do―but at the same time only you make it so easy. Talking, expressing without fear of―

"Pfft―"

―Judgement. Pausing mid-sentence, Spencer gawks as your nose twitches and your blink rate increases. You purse your lips, a hand slapped over your mouth as it threatens to break out into a grin.

"Are you-are you laughing right now?" When he just poured his feelings out to you?

That does it. You keel over, peels of laughter coming like a tsunami, crashing into him and Spencer loves your laugh but not when it's at him.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I shouldn't be laughing," you wheeze, gripping your stomach. Spencer pouts. There's even tears in your eyes. "But you're telling me this is all because you're jealous?"

He stutters, "Well-I-no-It’s just…" He wants to say ‘you're mine’, but as your eyes crinkle he knows there’s no need.

"That's kinda hot."

"Wha-really?" Wide-eyed, Spencer squeaks as you step closer to him, backing him into the door. His hands come up to his chest in a kitten-like manner yet at the same time protective―you'd never hurt him and you both know that―but you admit your initial reaction was poor when he laid his feelings bare.

“Ahhhh Babe, you know there’s no one else for me but you.” Spencer blushes and you chuckle, taking his hands in yours. He let's you. “Also, as adorable as Intern is, one, I think I’d be able to tell if he was hitting on me, and two, he’s not really my type.”

Spencer swallows, “And what exactly is your type?”

“Hmm, let’s see,” Looking him up and down, you step closer, enough that your breath puffs against his chin. You smell like cheap coffee. “Tall, handsome doctors with messy, brown hair―” You lightly tug at one of his stray curls and he bites back a smile.

“―and a cute nose―” Your hand moves to cup his cheek, bringing him down to peck the tip of his nose. It scrunches as Spencer breaks out into giggles.

“―Who can recite classic literature. Who can bake like he belongs on The Great British Baking Show but can’t cook for shi―”

“Okay! Thank you, I get it,” Spencer says, almost completely relaxed now.

“Good,” You nod with finality. “And for your information, I wasn’t trying to make you jealous."

He raises an eyebrow. "So you just abandoned me and talked about another guy for the hell of it?"

Spencer's tone is casual, joking even but you know better. There's underlying bitterness and hurt and your heart squeezes because you did that. "No, of course not. There is a reason behind all that.“

“What could possibly excuse you going above and beyond your job as a mentor―”

“I was trying to set you guys up.”

Spencer deadpans. “Set me up? With him?” Oh god, he knows you’re weird, but he’s never considered you to be outright insane (is it weird he still loves you?).

As if reading his thoughts, you roll your eyes, “Spencer, how many friends do you have outside the team?”

“Not a lot.” No hesitation, but he accepted the fact a long time ago.

“Yeah and that’s okay. But if you’d talk to Intern, you’ll find you two have a lot in common. I know he’s younger than us, but he’s a good kid, real smart,” You give him a meaningful look and shrug, “Not like IQ 187 smart but he could definitely hold a conversation with you.”

Spencer murmurs, pulling you in so you're chest to chest, “This entire time, you were really trying to make us friends?”

You nod, your expression a mix of giddiness and hope that makes whatever feelings he felt before, the confusion and―yes, fine―the jealousy, dissolve like sugar in water. Spencer sinks into you, burying his face into the crook of your neck and inhaling your soap. Of course you had good intentions. Of course you wanted to do something nice for him.

Fuck, he loves you.

“So… we good?”

Spencer huffs, “I hope you realize how much I suffered the past few weeks.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Then yes, we’re good,” He mumbles into your shoulder, “I appreciate what you were trying to do.”

“And?”

His brow furrows and he pulls back, meeting your eyes. “And what?”

“Will you try to be friends?” You look at him expectantly.

Spencer opens his mouth to answer, a definitive no on his tongue, but then you’re giving him puppy-dog eyes and before he realizes it, “Okay.”

Wait, no. That is not what he meant to say.

“Yeah!” You throw your arms around him, and Spencer can’t stop you, grunting as you basically swing him around like a rag doll. But he finds he doesn’t care when you set him back down because you’re happy, happy for him, grinning ear to ear as you babble, “I can already tell you two are gonna be the best of friends! You guys have so much to talk about, all that nerdy stuff. Maybe even debate! And we could play chess and―”

There’s a knock and you both turn, a voice muffled by the door, “Hey, guys? I don’t want to interrupt in case you’re boning, but you didn’t exactly tell me where to wait for you? God, I hope you guys aren’t boning. Please tell me you’re not boning right now.”

You groan, “No Intern, we’re not boning! Right-uh-go ahead and meet me back at the office, I’ll be right with you.” You turn back to Spencer, sending him an apologetic look. “I will see you later, okay? And since you’ve been such a patient and understanding partner,” You plant him one last kiss before patting his cheek, and his eyes widen as your voice lowers in the way you know drives him crazy, your eyes glinting with mischief, “I’ll make it up to once we get home. Bye, love you!”

Before Spencer can fully register your words, you're out the door, cackling as you leave him to compose himself, his face beet red from running the possibilities. By the time he emerges from the break room, you’re long gone.

“Hi, Dr. Reid?”

Spencer almost snarls, cursing under his breath. Just when he thought the day was getting better. He turns back.

Intern stands tall, relaxed and shoulders back, black tie loose and cheap white-collar button up slightly wrinkled. No doubt from working hard and following your instructions throughout the day. Spencer respects the work ethic at least. Meanwhile, the younger man eyes him, and he’s certain it’s not from intimidation but with curiosity.

Spencer doesn’t linger on that. He’s used to it, not being intimidating to others.

He continues, “It’s nice to finally talk to you, one on one I mean. I’m a fan of your work. Seven degrees, huh?”

“Yeah,” Spencer says curtly. Recalling the earlier conversation with you, he stamps down his irritation and tries to extend an olive branch. “How did you know?”

“It’s the internet, sir,” Intern raises an eyebrow, offering an innocent smile.

“Right,” Spencer returns it with an awkward one of his own, “Hey, sorry for... literally kicking you out before. That was completely unprofessional.”

Intern waves him off, “No, it’s cool. I totally get it. I’m flattered, by the way.”

Spencer frowns. “Flattered?”

“Well, it’s not everyday you find out your superior’s jealous of you.”

Spencer blinks, and it takes all his experience as a profiler to mask his embarrassment. “You heard that.”

“The FBI’s got thin walls,” Intern shrugs and steps towards him. “Although I have to say, Agent (Your Last Name) is wrong about one thing.” Stopping short in front of him, for the first time Spencer is close enough to note the moles dotting his face. “They can’t tell that I’m flirting with them.”

He starts down the hall after you, and Spencer’s eyes trail after him as his brow furrows, until realization slams into him and his jaw drops. “Wait, you...”

“Oh and since (Your Last Name) wants us to be friends, I think we could be on a first-name basis,” He pauses to look back at Spencer, watching with a crooked smile as the older man sputters.

“So, you can call me Stiles, sir.”

Then once again, Spencer is left behind, frozen in the hallway as he processes what just happened.

And the next time he finds you and Special Agent Stilinski in the same room, whether it’s crowded or not, Spencer does not hesitate to cling to your side, putting as much distance between the intern and you as he can. Spencer’s grateful you don’t question it.

There may not be anyone else for you, but that doesn’t mean no one will try.

―

AN: ahhhhh thanks anon!! There was a similar request then i saw this tiktok (and listened to this tiktok the entire time) and i combined them. Id also like to emphasize that my version of reader is neutral across the board, race, gender, etc.

Yes, i have a type. No, i will not be taking criticism.

Been hella overwhelmed with classes and work so here’s my way of destressing. Also suggest checking those tiktoks if you wanna understand me :))) also you mean to tell me i have to write the threesome myself?? Bs tbh 😔

watched 15x4 and i was so sad when Spencer addressed Luke as his coworker like no bitch hes your new bro stfu

and i have no doubt that stiles and spencer would be one of the best crossover duos given the chance

#spencer reid x reader #mgg x reader #matthew gray gubler x reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x y/n #mgg fanfiction #mgg imagine #mgg x y/n #matthew gray gubler x oc #matthew gray gubler imagine #mgg fic #criminal minds x y/n #criminal minds x oc #criminal minds x reader #stiles stilinksi x reader

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radramblog · 3 years

Text

What happened to Dirk in Homestuck^2?

Why am I doing this to myself.

I memed a little yesterday when I was posting that article around social medias about Homestuck jokes, because once again we are in lockdown and I am therefore Stuck at Home. Canned laughter goes here. But there’s a topic related to the comic- or more specifically, its aborted sequel, Homestuck^2, that I’m interested in delving into a little bit. I’m going to avoid talking about spoilers as much as possible, but considering said comic takes place not only after the events of the massive sprawl that is Homestuck but also the more linear but still messy Epilogues, some amount of sus shit is inevitable.

Anyway. Much maligned is what the Epilogues and 2 did to everyone’s favourite decapitation target, Dirk Strider, and I have a theory as to why it happened this way.

To begin with, let’s summarise what and who Dirk is through the course of the comics. Fair warning from me, though, it’s been a while since I read through this.

Dirk Strider is a teenager who grew up in a post-apocalyptic future Earth, completely devoid of physical contact with other people and only really ever gets to talk to 3 other people, only one of whom is in anything remotely resembling a relatable situation. He struggles with self-identity, having created numerous robots including an artificial intelligence based on his own brain, aka Lil’ Hal. He’s somewhat of a control freak, and a bit of a cold aloof asshole, but means well, and is pretty gay. NBD. The kinda guy to set up a plan meticulously and thoroughly, not informing any of the moving parts even if said parts are his friends, and often involving some form of self-sacrifice.

Throughout the comic he further reckons with self-identity problems and his own self-loathing including entering a relationship with Jake which doesn’t go well and he eventually breaks off since he knows his overbearing and manipulative behaviour is Not Cool and Pretty Toxic but doesn’t know how to shut it off. Eventually he reaches the God Tier as a Prince of Heart, gaining the power to literally annihilate souls, which he never actually uses since he gets yeeted into deep (Paradox) space and then everything goes to shit. Except none of that happens because of the Retcon (aside from the God Tier bit) and we don’t actually see how that shit progressed in the canon timeline. I think. Dirk’s arc, as it were, doesn’t really come full circle- while he does assist in Dave’s character…growth? he really isn’t the focus of that conversation. This immediately precedes the action climax and there isn’t literally any dialogue after that so that’s what we’re left with.

I like Dirk in Homestuck a lot. It’s hard not to, considering the flashes heavily featuring him (Unite/Synchronise and Prince of Heart: Rise Up) are genuinely excellent, along with many of his music themes being absolute bangers. He gets to interact with Caliborn a lot, with a pretty great banter, there, and the whole splintered personality thing is a really interesting hook for a character. I think he’s my favourite of the Alpha kids, a controversial pick considering I know everyone loves Roxy so much. I think, I’m not as in tune with the fandom as that statement implies I am.

And then the Epilogues/Homestuck 2 came.

Now I read the Meat half of the epilogues first, but that’s more interesting, so we’ll tackle Candy first (this is going to get real confusing for those who haven’t read this comic, huh).

In Candy, Dirk almost immediately kills himself, citing the irrelevance of the timeline as cause, an act considered by whatever mechanism governs God Tier deaths to be Just because he hates himself (and also bc of things we’ll get into), so it actually sticks. This isn’t super relevant for the discussion, but that’s just kinda so unbelievably fucked up? Entirely? I’d imagine if you read Candy first you might get entirely turned off by this, which I’m sure a lot of people did.

Meat is where the, well, meat of post-canon Dirk is. You see, a concept very quickly introduced in the tail end of the original comic is the Ultimate Self, an idea where you somehow encompass every different timeline iteration or alternate version of yourself. This was pretty clearly tacked on to make it so characters whose arcs all happened in the retcon timeline could have their not getting an actual arc explained away, but it didn’t land then and it sure doesn’t land for me now. Anyway, in Meat, Dirk becomes his ultimate self, making him near-omniscient and able to control the fabric of the story himself- for much of this story, he is the narrator. And he uses this power to fuck with all his friends really distressingly without their knowledge (or consent), including breaking up a marriage, in order to further his own goals which largely appear to be just keep the story going so to not fade out of relevance. It’s a plot that makes no sense with his previous characterisation, but I guess now that he’s the Ultimate Self he’s a different person? But I liked old Dirk, and I don’t like New Dirk. He’s a villain now, but he made a much better anti-hero.

But this would be fine if he (or the epilogues, or Homestuck^2) were written well. But they aren’t. Dirk’s dialogue is long, painfully drawn out, with tangents that tend to amount to pure wank, misused literary references and pointless metaphors that go on and on, filling the screen with a bright orange screed that hurts to look at as much as it does to comprehend. It’s not fun. And we’ve seen Dirk communicate before, obviously, the story of Homestuck is built around chatlogs, but it wasn’t like this. He was sarcastic, dryly witty, blunt at times. Even when he was literally talking to a different version of himself it didn’t get that masturbatory.

I was so confused about what the hell happened to Dirk, because I had no idea what the hell someone writing this character was thinking when they turned him into this. And then, the 21st page of Homestuck^2 dropped.

And it all came together.

What Ultimate Dirk and Terezi are referring to is Pony Pals: Detective Pony, a children’s book about some girls who hang out with ponies and solve a mystery. It’s a real book, buy it for your 5-year-old.

Except they’re not referring to that, they’re referring to the Homestuck Canon version of Detective Pony- a birthday gift from Dirk to Jane, heavily edited and to be much more obscene and eventually developing into it’s own story, stated to be “tough, emotionally draining, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible”.

Except the quote “Remember Longcat, Jane?” and references to philosophy, dead languages, and ancient earth culture aren’t referring to the three pages of the Dirk-edited Detective Pony we see in the actual comic itself. That quote doesn’t appear there.

That image is from Detective Pony, by Sonnetstuck- the 40,000 word fanfiction from 2014 that serves as a completed version of Jane’s copy of the book. An expansion of what we see in canon. And it’s a tough, emotionally draining read, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible.

It’s a very good fanfiction.

In the later bits of Detective Pony, we can start to see the origins of what would become Ultimate Dirk’s signature style of writing. Long blocks of rambling text, orange dripping down the page, references to philosophy and history and language that go on and on. And it probably does look familiar to those who read the Epilogues and ^2.

But there are a couple of key differences here. First of all, it’s just better written? The way these rambles circle back on themselves is so excellent, the absolute absurdity of this being written on top of a pony book for little girls, the humour (beyond some of the more immature stuff), it’s just a really well-written piece of fiction. Hell, you don’t even need to be familiar with the character of Dirk to enjoy it. It’s a harrowing piece, but it’s also self-aware- because it’s not supposed to be tough, draining, cathartic etc. just for Jane- it’s clearly that for Dirk himself.

The second part is, of course, that this is a fanfiction. It’s not canon, it’s not official, this is by someone who really likes Dirk for people who really like Dirk. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, so if you bounce off it (and I’m sure a lot did), then you don’t have to keep reading it, it’s fine, thanks for playing. As much as Homestuck^2 tried to doll itself up as “dubiously canon” it’s still the official continuation of the story, and that means if it’s as difficult to get into as Detective Pony, that’s going to be a problem for a lot of people.

The other part of it is that Detective Pony’s exploration of Dirk’s character is, well, in character. When the man himself steps in as a character in his own book, the explorations of what he is as an author, who he is as a person, make perfect sense for what we see of him at the start of the comic. He is that manipulative, blunt person, and he is aware of his faults. He’s the kind of person to hide a lamentation on his own failings inside an impenetrable maze of a story layered on top of a book about fucking ponies. Ultimate Dirk does not act like Dirk, outside of the “manipulator” angle, something that Dirk was aware of and trying to improve in the comic. But I guess people don’t have arcs, right?

It’s so interesting to see the seeds of Homestuck^2 laden within Detective Pony- because the meta angle that and the epilogues take is also represented in said fanfiction. While the nature of canon is a facet of the work, the idea of authors and narrators fighting for control of a story, different ideas in mind for the characters, one being more personally connected to them than the other, it’s all there. When I wrote about Fallout 4 in the past, I mentioned being worried that Bethesda took the wrong lessons from Skyrim- seeing something successful and trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle. I think Homestuck^2 is an extreme example of this- the writers of the comic saw Sonnetstuck’s masterwork and thought, yeah that’s great, we can do that. But they just can’t. And with the comic crashed and burning, the probably won’t ever get a chance to. Dirk is forever stuck as this amalgamation of himself that looks nothing like any individual version of him ever did.

At least we will still have Detective Pony, and many other excellent fanworks, for actually good Dirk content. I admittedly haven’t looked into much fanfic written during/post-epilogues, and I’m kind of afraid of what I’ll see- I can only hope the fanbase didn’t take the same wrong lessons as the official team did.

#ramble #honestly more of an essay #homestuck #homestuck 2 #dirk strider #ultimate dirk #just ignore me accidentally posting this to the wrong account and having to reup it

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sleepymarmot · 6 years

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A couple of months ago, after finishing COUNTER/Weight, I spent about a week in a total hangover, relistening to scenes and having feelings. I took some notes, but procrastinated posting them, and then finally got distracted. But, a) I hate leaving things I intended for tumblr unposted, even if they have value only for me, and b) I also hate posting things out of order, and there's a big TM liveblog incoming. So, here's a bunch of really random thoughts about C/w from past me.

The gnosis virus did go nowhere huh. I was hopeful for a minute when one of the finale intros mentioned it, but that was it. What was the purpose of that arc even. [Note from present me: Lol. At least I feel better about this one!]

Oh, and the patch AuDy left never reappeared either. And the idea from the faction game that Aria's images owned by EarthHome/Petrichor transmit Rigour code… That's the flip side of the coin. On the one hand, it's really cool to see the creative process – on the other, it sometimes feels like you're listening to people write a script for the tv show, but only get to see a half of the finished product. It's fascinating to see the universe grow organically and the players to come up with new ideas and get excited about them – but that means numerous retcons, some of them not even presented as such, because the creators forgot what the previous revision was or didn't thought it was important. It's a unique feature of the medium that player choice directs the narrative and it's not bound by railroading – but that means some roads lead nowhere, and some branches dry and fall off.

It's a bit harder to make peace with something that could have easily been developed more within the existing plot of the show. How come there's a player character whose consciousness consists of three different people in various combinations, but nobody seems to be curious how that works? No PC or NPC ever asked “Which one of you is speaking right now?” or something. The final episodes made a lot of things clearer, but it still felt too little, too late. Hard not to be reminded of that gripe about certain two characters sharing one character sheet one of whom was left underdeveloped and half-forgotten… Both are very ambitious concepts that require a double amount of work from the player, so I feel bad complaining they weren't realized to full potential, but…

Speaking of L&D… I still want to know how the hell did that one engineer all by herself design 4 gods, one of which became a basis for technology that was advanced even for the civilizations 80,000 years later? This woman singlehandedly surpassed any technological achievement of humanity before and after. Who Is She

I saw a “Wake me up: before you go go / when september ends / wake me up inside” meme and thought “heh, this sounds relevant, which member of the Chime is which?” and it already made me sad, but then I realized that I'd never actually heard the september song and looked it up and. The lyrics fit so well. What the fuck. It's an old song everyone keeps joking about. Why is it appropriate for a legitimate fanmix. What. I guess the word “September” will never be the same again for me.

I looked up the rules for Firebrands, the game used for the finale. Oh my, challenges for the dance minigame are so overtly romantic when you see them in a list together! Imagine this cast of characters having to answer to “do you place your hand upon my elbow, shoulder, waist, or hip?” lmao. Also I didn't realize “May I?” was part of the rules for “stealing time together”. (And I found out there's a party version of that minigame with bug-themed challenges. I might have dug too deep…) "Tactical skirmish" is a really fascinating concept, I've never seen such a masochistic combat system! Really faces the player with the violence they're inflicting: sure, you can always fight on, but are you ready to live with what you'll have to do? But for it to work fully, you need a lot of non-expendable NPCs on both sides. The one with the most likeable team wins! (Like Mako did.)

I'm relistening to Three Conversations and it's pretty interesting that Ibex has a bunch perfectly lifelike android bodies, right? There is no such technology seen anywhere else. Did Righteousness develop and privatize that? Are they so complex that only a Divine would have enough computing power to successfully mimic organic life? Can Aria convince Righteousness to help her perform on stage without leaving her duties? Also, like with AuDy, I wonder how Ibex & Righteousness' consciousness works. Is it a single mind, spread across every body he has, or even anything Righteousness is running on, having a bunch of different conversations at once if he needs to? Or is the original Ibex just gone, and what's left is a personality imprint hanging on to the connection to his still living body, imitating his former self like the automated recording Cass saw wore his face? In other words, has Ibex completely fused with Righteousness, or assimilated and destroyed by it? Does he not exist anymore as an independent singular being, or does he not exist at all? Most info indicates the former, but there was also “You’re not in there anymore” “No”.

If Orth and Jace are anime fans with their Kingdom Come and Panther, then Ibex is the guy who's way too into dinosaurs or paleontology. It's as if the heads of various confessions were called Triceratops, Stegosaurus etc. and only one of them knows wtf that means, and also he compares his Divine to… Were there scavenging dinosaurs? I'm looking at an article that suggests T. Rex might have been a scavenger, so yeah he would compare Righteousness to a goddamn T. Rex.

Hey what do you think is the most thematically aproppriate part of the Hieron anime for Orth to watch alone at night during the Kingdom game. What's the best thematic parallel for when he turns off the episode and thinks he made a mistake. Do you think that he once, after a long day and a long month and maybe a long year of feeling helpless and doomed, sits down for a distraction but ends up sobbing “How could they let this happen to Mother Glory”

On Joypark, there are definitely statues of Eidolons, ancient and holy, that were repainted and repurposed as Hieron deities. Imagine a giant Greek or Roman style marble statue of Apote – and it’s painted over as Samot, with an anime face and in really bright plain colors like these “reconstructions of original coloring” that actually only use base colors so they look like cheap action figures.

I was reading Austin's top ten games of 2016 list on Waypoint and he gave first place to The Sprawl! Aww!

The Downloads folder in my phone gallery is funny bc it mostly consists of every freely available f@tt map and also that one photo of Tristan Walker (because I tried to redraw it, very unsuccessfully). I go check a map and every time am met by Ibex just. staring at me. It's unsettling

Some of the many options for how Apostolosian gender could have been presented:

Apostolosians prefer to be addressed by the most neutral available human pronoun, represented as "they" in English, because the human languages don't have anything close enough

Apostolosian pronouns are represented in English by a set of real-life common pronouns and neopronouns

There's a list of Apostolosian pronouns and they're just used in English verbatim (Really impractical because the players need a cheat sheet, but the most fair)

Humans apply human genders to Apostolosians. Apostolosians may be offended, may find it convenient, or something else

As Austin said in the post-mortem, the Eidolon system is not gender. It's represented in English by titles/honorifics/etc

Any of the above, and the creators are aware of the difference between personal pronouns, grammatical gender, and social gender

And that’s not even touching the core problem of what the concept of gender in a futuristic, techonologically advanced society would look like. Yes, I'm complaining about this for the third time but I'm just. So tired of native English speakers' takes on gendered language. They could have made Apostolosian gender look like anything and they made it look like that fucking mess... God, I really hope TM is good enough to make me forget and forgive the experience of listening to “he... sorry, they” for 100 hours. [Note from present me: Well… mostly]

Here’s my take on this: eidolons in Apostolosian language are absurdly broad noun classes with associated classifiers (which fits both the idea that they’re gender but not actually, and that each of them is a patron to several unrelated aspects of life) Apostolosian: the word “(Apo)thesa” is used to refer to people who follow the corresponding eidolon, as well as for counting buildings, heavy machinery, military units, specific strategies and tactics, log entries, historical documents and chronicles, history textbooks and monographs, and eras :) Human: what the fuck

Very critical, imaginative worldbuilding in which 80,000+ years into the future humanity somehow has 21st century gender and 21st century capitalism! TBH, I find any sci-fi set in the far future inherently silly – we can’t really imagine the future technogy and its effect on society. But it feels like C/w barely even tried, and to hear it boast about “critical worldbuilding” is kinda strange. I assumed that meant they build the world critically, not that they recreate modern society or some aspect of it and criticize that! It’s just another Star Trek then! And it was already clear right during the setup when they said “We don’t want Star Trek aliens” and immediately created Apostolosians.

I haven't seen a single piece of fanart with Taako and Mako. Come on, does nobody want to see these two next to each other! Especially considering the outfits artists like to put Taako in!

I really don't understand how and why people do fandom activities on Twitter and Discord where the creators also have accounts. It gives me so much secondhand embarrassment. I can barely peek at Twitter posts before running away. Old-fashioned opinion apparently but I strongly believe the main fandom space and the interaction-with-original-creators space should be separate. I need a space where I can voice my opinions, especially negative ones, with complete freedom. I need to be able to say exactly what's on my mind. But I wouldn't want any of the people on the podcast to read something unfiltered like my complaints above. Being in the same space as the source content creators obliges any decent person to be diplomatic and constructive. And the creators, in turn, need a space where they don't come across complete randos yelling at them about something they said in a podcast three years ago. I'm already feeling uncomfortable because hearing to strangers pour their hearts out for hundreds of hours gives me way too much insight on who they are as people. Of course, nothing’s stopping them from lurking on Tumblr or AO3 and even reading this very post, but a platform where they have official accounts is still a different thing! I even feel uncomfortable talking about the podcast creators using their first names so much. To my ear, referring to a total stranger by first name, especially if it's a shortened form, sounds so rude! I'm not their friend, I don't have that right! But, of course, writing something like “Mr Walker” in my liveblogs would have been even weirder, nobody does that...

Is it a common experience to not even think about fanfiction after listening to Hieron, but going straight to AO3 after C/w? I feel like since Hieron is still a work in progress, writing/reading about it is stepping on the GM&players' toes, and C/w is finished so it's like they gave us the keys to the playground, it's the fandom's turn now. This story has so much blanks and they must be filled! In one of the early episodes they joked that something cute they said would encourage people to ship Mako/Cass and I was like "Bold of you to assume they aren't already" and, indeed, I was right and it's the most popular C/w ship on AO3. Too bad I’m so indifferent to it…

It’s a shame we never had a full scene with Ariadne or even learned what they were up to during the finale.

I still don't understand how Ibex went from “evil CEO” to “leader of a proletarian revolution”, these sound like completely opposite concepts to me

I probably have talked about this too much and have pretty much given up on ever getting a clear picture due to all of these reimaginings but… Righteousness and Voice… Ibex takes Righteousness out of Mako but he still has Voice, that was pretty much openly stated, correct? So how does that work? I’m guessing Righteousness is hidden somewhere in Voice’s code. But if so:

Did Maryland know? On the one hand, she’s too competent not to. On the other, why would she ever allow or accept that?

How did Righteousness not get corrupted by Rigour too? Maybe it did, but broke off the connection with the rest of itself to contain the damage? Or maybe, on the contrary, it kept in contact and was sending intel to Ibex the whole time? But in that case he would have provided more help in the finale.

#friends at the table #blah blah blah

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sidncymiller · 6 years

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ayyyyyy friends it’s ya boi back at it again with another caustic, indifferent fuck ( ive got a type sue me ) but this ones like... a little less (ง'̀-'́)ง and a little more ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ya feel ?? anyway this is gonna be quick & dirty cause i dont have the bio done yet but theres some basic stats here if ur freaky like that. also she’s more into like.... people as a whole than mal is so ( as much as i love fighting everyone ) i’d love to make some connections w the charas he doesnt interact with or is a cock to !! lol ok i’ll catch y’all under the cut pce out

she’ll answer to sidney but prefers sid (or miller if you’re one of those)

demigirl, she/her pronouns and “girl” as a descriptor are fine, but for the love of god don’t call her a Woman it makes her skin crawl

pansexual but mostly a big tease who cant Seal the Deal, possibly on the ace spectrum somewhere or maybe she just watches too much porn who knows these days

as you may have inferred from her multitude of maybe-kinda-sorta labels she is a Child Of The Internet

bad case of blue and orange morality, thanks to being born and raised right here in sunny fictumterra!! she values privacy, loyalty and free will pretty high, human life and welfare pretty low, like a good fictumterran (fictumite?)

then again she does get pretty bummed out if someone new comes to town and she Digs them and then they get turned into a lamp or hot dog or whatever,,,, weak,,,,

uh she was into gymnastics as a kid and joined the cheer squad in hs just because it seemed like exactly the thing she Wouldnt do and she’s a big ‘ol contrarian

unfortunately!!! she went partially blind in her right eye when she was sixteen and her parents poisoned her and all that time spent practicing balance and spatial aawreness and shit went right out the fckn window THANKS MOM

ok backtracking a litte

her parents were members of a pro-gun, anti-government cult before she was born and got caught up in a teensy little federal building bombing and had to hightail it to FT when one of their compatriots ( fckn coward ) flipped on the group, under the advisement of their Supreme Leader

lets call him Shmavid Shmoresh

he told them to await further instructions, so they set up shop in FT and waited. since they were natural born sheeple, they acclimated to the way of life pretty quickly, and when sid was born she was brought up under the town’s value system, and now im repeating myself

ANYWAY they didn’t hear from the group until sixteen years later when Shmavid was about to be executed and announced that it was time for everyone to Ascend or whatever

so, good followers they were, they made their evening tea and laced it w rat poison and waited for the sweet chariot to swing low

unfortunately they fucked up on sid’s dosage and she survived, though, as mentioned, the poison did fuck with her cortical vision, as well as giving her an exceptionally sensitive stomach

basically she can’t eat too much or anything too rich or spicy bc her stomach linings all fucked, lots of broths and and rice and stuff, everything else comes back up, ya girl got v skinny and has mixed feelings bout that

uhhhh shes like constantly eating sugar tho, usually bubble gum, sometimes suckers or slushies. shes not supposed to but it doesnt make her puke and if she doesn’t see an immediate consequence she doesnt care ALSO she doesnt appreciate your oral fixation jokes i mean youre probably right but get some new material ok

also she still drives??? she refuses to accept that shes blind (ish, too blind to drive, ever heard of anton-babinski syndrome?) and regularly scratches or dents other peoples cars and leaves a note that says like ‘oops’ on their windshield or whatever, she loves driving you cant take it from her get fucked

her own car is a pinto thats so dinged up its basically round at this point

when her parents died there was some contention as to where she was gonna live when she got out of the hospital (not like anyone was gonna call state-run social services) so she ended up being temporarily placed in a pink flamingo room and is..... still there.....

at this point its her place she brought in her own bedding and taped pictures to the wall and installed like 40 locks on the door ok TRY to get her to leave

she works at food world to pay the (internet) bills, but her REAL job (as far as shes concerned) is running her blog ‘memoirs from murderville’ (she was a teen when she named it ok she KNOWS its dumb but she cant change it now cause fckn #branding. trust her, she hates it more than you do)

its essentially a diary that she writes under the name jim sheldon (an homage to the badass author alice sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym james tiptree jr) about her life and daily experiences in FT with all the names and relevant details and such changed

it started as a stupid joke (and a way for her to disassociate!!! holla) when she was in high school, but then it got a shout-out on some true crime podcast, and then it was in some buzzfeed article, and shit spiraled out from there

everyone assumes its an elaborate piece of fiction and its lauded in certain communities for it’s ‘brutal authenticity’ and ‘delightfully irreverent narrator’ and ‘creative spin on unsolved crime’ and ‘disturbing satire of millennial detachment in the media age’

lol academics are so weird amirite

anyway because of her commitment to the blog she makes it a priority to get to know as many residents and visitors as she can, looking for the best content and recurring characters

shes kind of a dick and definitely a shit head but she really, genuinely does care about people’s stories (even if she doesn’t care much about most people themselves)

is she a killer??? no. well, maybe. she could be persuaded, probably. for the experience. maybe she’d like it who knows not me

does she have a death wish??? no. well, maybe. a little bit. she certainly values a good story more than she does her own dumb mortality. if it comes down to boring or dead, she’d pick dead :)

ok this got a lot longer than i thought !!! soml !!! if you read all this stream of consciousness nonsense ur an angel thank you !!!

as far as connections and such i would LOVE unknowing subjects/recurring characters in her blog, knowing subjects of her blog who love the attention, friends??? (what a concept lol), OH someone who deeply disapproves of the blog and finds it trivializing??? dangerous??? idk whatever theres lots of reasons to hate it??? maybe they wanna take it down???, LONG TIME RESIDENTS WHOVE KNOWN HER SINCE SHE WAS A KID, maybe someone who took up a parental mantle after her parents fucked off to the great gig in the sky??, uh maybe an ex or ex-friend who was disconcerted by her constant need for action and danger and bailed OR the opposite, one who pushed her a little too far and she had to bail??

idk man the possibilities are endless hmu love yall

#crimetown.intro #tw hanging #tw asphyxiation #tw suicide #tw murder #tw bombing #tw poison #i think thats all of it???#damn seth calm tf down

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crossgartered · 4 years

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P5R Liveblog (13/?)

Haru arc

[[MORE]]

Oh...? Are you hung up on Wakaba, too, Doctor?

Oh, Rumi. ...Who's Rumi?

IS IT KASUMI'S SISTER??? bc you know there's weird stuff going on there

Probably not but this is for wild guessing anyway

If we can believe Kasumi then her sister is younger than her

And that'd be pretty weird to talk about in a romantic context

The problem is if kasumi is to be believed

she's dead I know she's dead I don't think she knows she's dead but she's super dead

Or in a coma I guess but let's be real here

I don't trust Shibusawa in the slightest. He's definitely going to try to take that research. I wouldn't be surprised if he was one of those men in black suits, either. He's rich - he goes to the Wilton on a whim, with his "buddies" - he could definitely be one of Shido's men.

OMFNDJD THIS LES MIS KNOCK OFF FILLS ME WITH JOY

Hoo boy. Maruki... I don't think you'll be very pleased with our answer. I do think you have good intentions, now, but you will definitely be an antagonist here.

I'm still really impressed with Chihaya. She really thought that the protag would hate her once she told her story, that her fortune said he was supposed to hate her, and she "never thought [he] would overturn even that fate". And yet, she told him anyway.

A Yusuke & Ann showtime!! : D I wonder what it'll be like?

THATS SO INCREDIBLY ANIME I LOVE IT

Haru idolizing superheroines vs Ann idolizing lady villains fight

I cannot waittt to see what they do with cognitive Haru, if they decided to make her this time around

YUSUKE CAN DUPLICATE IN PALACES?!?!?

A Will Seed with lasers barring the way? Interesting.

FUTABA FINISHING TOUCH FUTABA FINISHING TOUCH!!!!

Huh, it's kinda goofier than I was expecting.

"When a person is continually faced with oppression, they come to welcome its presence." Yusuke : (

"Such psychological trickery is being used here. I... experienced it first-hand for many years." YUSUKE : C

It's kinda nice that those workers are being blocked by lasers instead of us being too intimidated by their number to just go after them. ...Am I remembering this correctly?

Oh, Noir... I'm glad I get the option to ask if she's okay.

The Yumizuki High uniform really does suit Yusuke.

I wonder if there's a way to talk to people about their outfits.

Does Futaba's thing happen in place of Joker's, now? That's kind of a shame

HEY DO YOU THINK IT'S POSSIBLE TO HAVE FUTABA SHOWTIMES?!?????

Airlock time.

Man I want to see robot/cyborg Haru so badly come on Okumura I know she's here

This stuff about being okay for 30 sec as long as you close your eyes and mouth sounds wrong but I don't know enough about the condition of the human body in space enough to dispute it so okay I fuess

Anyway this is run by clap your hands if you believe kinda magic so it doesn't really matter anyway (also, thank god for Futaba saying that it'd work)

It's interesting - space factories/stations aren't a typical heist target (nor are castles, tbh, but museums, banks, pyramids, casinos? Naturally) (space stations in general can be, in the right genre. But this is set up a bit unusually for that). Corporate offices of shady companies, however...

Spaceeeeee ahdskdjs this is SO COOL

what the fuck what the fuck was something else going through the airlock?!?!

Ugh, how aggravating. I had been able to get the Will Seed the entire time until I pulled the lever that allowed me to progress

What is this shadow???? I'm not sure I know it! "Pagan savior", huh?

No, guys, there's another airlock room. Stop saying 'the treasure is just beyond that door!' when there is a whole other area/floor to go through. Especially since you have a map

Futaba gets motion sickness...oh no I'm so sorry ;u;

I...actually remembered the first half of the solution to the transfer line. I got out of there in practically no time. Heck yeah!

"Thou hast to awakened to the ultimate secret of the Sun, granting thee infinite power..." Yoshida...! TAT

I always end up maxing him right around the end of Okumura's Palace. I feel so bad. His newfound popularity is gonna absolutely tank soon. ;-;

Man, who even gets elected after the populace starts caring again? I don't know how Japanese politics works, really, like at all, honestly, but probably he has a subordinate who can take his place. But like, his whole crew's gotta be corrupt, right? Especially someone who'd be his replacement. Though honestly, considering how paranoid he got by the end, he probably chose someone weak-willed in order to prevent

Oh wait hold on I just looked up how this works. Apparently, uh...

Huh. I'm not sure if the cabinet resigns if the prime minister does usually or if that's just if the house passes a vote of no confidence. But, the prime minister appoints the ministers, so if the prime minister changes then there could be an issue there, probably?

But anyway. Looks like the Diet would immediately try to vote for a different person once the prime minister seat is vacant.

Huh, I wonder who gets voted in, then. Well, we only know of 2 candidates other than Shido, and Yoshida doesn't have the funding or even (yet) the popularity to become prime minister, so Matsushida is really the only other choice unless they pick someone we haven't heard about.

Oh my GOD I hate the school. They're being such assholes to Kasumi. She got 3rd place!!! That's amazing!!! This isn't even a school specializing in gymnastics!!!!!! YOU SPECIALIZED IN VOLLEYBALL AND EVEN IF THAT WERENT THE CASE YOURE TERRIBLE

*ahem* Anyway.

You can tell that Maruki is quietly pissed and honestly? Valid. Super valid. Same, Maruki, same.

She's not gonna get that text, with how her phone is.

"we took in those sisters to improve Shujin's standing, but at this rate, we're only going to end up suffering for it." Oh??? Oh??????

"not only have we lost one of them, but the other ones not doing us any good. Talk about a waste of effort..." Hooooly shit you asshole

Wait, hold on, it's October already????!? November's just a month away!! I have less than 3 months for social linking! And I still haven't maxed knowledge or kindness! (Or guts, but whatever) I've only maxed 1 person! Although I'm close to maxing Ryuji & Ann & Yusuke. And some npcs

AHHHHH CUTSCENE CUTSCENE!!!!

So the keywords - lab, stadium, and ... Either Maruki or Kasumi for the person. OH MAN AND EITHER WAY IM ALREADY IN MY PHANTOM THIEF CLOTHES

ONE OF THEM DOESNT TRUST ME

It's probably Maruki, right? Bc of the lab... But also I thought the whole wish fulfillment thing was going to be his cogpsi project... With the help of Jose, maybe...

Speaking of Jose, Jose looks like a toy, especially with that hair and those ears. I wonder what material he's supposed to be? Based on the ears I'd say plastic, maybe, but the hair looks more ceramic to me.

Anyway, back to the relevant FUCKING PALACE WOOHOO

I haven't even sent a calling card for Okumura yet so we're not dealing with this anytime soon

Ooh, this music... <3

Oh man, I totally forgot I had Morgana in the maid costume. I gotta get him into something more serious

Why is dancewear not the p5dsn costume??

This is...really empty...

I am suddenly really scared at what the people are going to look like

There are pigeons here...

But wait, if this is Maruki's Palace, then this is bc of all his grief... He doesn't want anyone to hurt, ever again. The people will be their ideal selves, probably...

...I'd love to see a cognition of myself, tbh. That won't happen, but I'd love it.

This place is really beautiful... With the music it seems like a sad place...

Look at all these wires

That's probably the sister, right?

Unless that's the cognition of Yoshizawa when she was alive and her current self is her ideal self.

The shadow attacked the cognition???!?!

YUP this is definitely Maruki's Palace

Hmm. Interesting.

Oh, Cendrillon really is perfect for her, huh.

SHES DOING A MAGICAL GIRL TRANAFORMATION WHAY

WHAT

WHY????

IM NOT UPSET ITS JUST A LITTLE WHAT????

Does her outfit look like mine a little bit bc she's using me as a role model for her source of confidence - confidence that she is using/interpreting for her inner rebellious spirit?

Wait, lost my train of thought

Aww, I mistimed that. I was hoping to get a Kasumi finishing touch

MORGANA-SENPAI

It is definitely an unfair consequence

Oh, so that's why, narratively, her phone sucks. It's to prevent us from figuring out whose Palace it is.

Yeah, this time it's entirely on you, Morgana.

... it's because of gymnastics? And not because you disagree with us on an ideological level? ...okay. sure. Whatever.

Hoo boy. This is gonna suck when Okumura has his mental shutdown. I wonder how she'll react.

She is of the Faith arcana, whatever that means. Maybe she'll keep faith in me? I did max her half-confidant

It's cool, Kasumi. I really didn't do much. You may have a debt of gratitude or whatever but like you don't actually need to repay it. Just keep being my friend and maybe one day you'll quit keeping score

*sigh*

If only. Too bad you're probably dead.

SHOWTIME WITH HARU? SHOWTIME WITH HARU? PLEASE?

Oh, Mona-chan. I figured as much, but I was still hoping...

Anyway, Haru&Mona showtime still very good!

Man, I would kill to hear their explanations for what they're doing.

...this is incredibly violent, isn't it? I anticipate it with bated breath

Oh man, can you imagine a showtime with Kasumi? Maybe with Akechi, if Atlus isn't going to give me one

Which, fair enough, from a gameplay standpoint

Still. : (

"the Phantom Thief Basic Training"?

Oh, good, we're actually addressing cognitive people with Haru.

Oh, this is either gonna suck if they address the implications, or we're gonna see cognitive Haru. >: 3

Dream world, huh...

THE YUSUKE-HARU FRIENDSHIP IS SO UNDERSTATED AND UNDERRATED I WANT MORE CONTENT

THERE SHE IS!!! THERE SHW IS!!!!

Oh, man, I had a lot of feelings during that fight. That time limit though

I like how they updated this fight

Although I think I'm a little underleveled, potentially. I could not destroy her before she self-destructed, and it took me a while to beat the chief directors and executive director. Oneshotted Okumura himself, though.

OH MAN I SHOULD HAVE READ THIS BILLIARDS BOOK EARLIER

I DIDNT REALIZE I COULD INCREASE MY TECHNICALS????

I already thought that technicals were beefed up from how they were - I guess this is part of that!

Wish I had another book on kindness, ugh.

SO THATS HOW THEY CHANGED POSITION HACK

Ann & Haru have such similar colors. I wish they would have darkened Haru's a little bit more

Wait I never got to see the Haru-Mona showtime

I even had both in my party : (

GOD IWAI YOU'RE SO SHADY

I forgot to start his social link until now whoops

Although I've only had my guts high enough for past ~2ish weeks so there's that at least

Guh, I have to get to Mementos and start up Shinya's...

How many part-time jobs does this have? Like, 5? Maybe 6, if you count him helping out Sojiro? The convenience store, the beef bowl place, the flower shop, Crossroads, and now the gun shop. Anything I'm missing? I feel like I'm missing one.

Desire & Hope is really pretty. The Desire underneath is kinda weirdly desaturated compared to the hope, though. Not sure if it actually works as well as Desire did by itself. Idk. They're both good, but I liked how Desire looked a bit more. I understand that D&H has personal meaning, though. Who knows, maybe in person I would feel differently

I kinda really like that Yusuke tends to go more abstract with his stuff, even if he does try out a bunch of different styles

Maxing Yusuke. And thank god for Affinity Readings. Finally got Ryuji at a point where I can max him.

Oh. I had forgotten how Kamu Susano-o looks. ...

#p5r liveblog #p5r #p5r spoilers #persona 5 royal #long post #this one gets emotional at video games

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lilietsblog · 6 years

Text

some magic worldbuilding stuff we’ve been talking about

@synesthetic-feline

so let's start with the magic system bc its kind of the basis of everything else so first of all, there's a 'weave' of reality which is like elementary particles in physics except in a different 'dismension' (like sideways from those). It has a certain inherent stability to it, like a living system (sorta like a plant I guess? not an animal, much less anything sentient) it 'feeds' on life, positive emotions, constructive 'vibes' (various degrees of abstraction here, people in the world dont necessarily understand it in detail either) it gets more 'worn' from death, strong 'vibes' of despair, fear, hatred like, on a small scale, some negative emotions actually help it thrive, but when they overpower the positives bad shit happens

more specifically about Bad Shit, there's a 'neighbouring' hell-like dismension with demons. the philosophical implications of this do not exist nope it was just something i thought was cool for the plot. The demons feed on negative emotions, misery and death of people - all the same things that the weave gets damaged by. They arent happy in their home dismension, and really want to get some destroy on in the human one.

Human mages can 'move apart' the weave, creating openings demons can pass through (this is not the only thing they can do ofc this is just one example). Demons make deals with them, etc, etc. Demons' magic power varies a lot, and the summoners had better know what exactly they are going for, because there are lots and los of ways this can go wrong.

At one point in the story the protagonist discovers that there are actually demons just living undercover in the human world, not doing anything malicious, just low key feeding on the negative emotions they can pick up from others. Well, obviously some of them also do bad shit deliberately to make others suffer, but the smarter ones realize its not good for their long-term perspectives, and they don't really have to.

Anyway, if there's a lot of bad stuff happening - wars, particularly civil; epidemics; badly handled natural disasters; etc, basically just a lot of misery - the weave can wear thin, and demons can invade the human world, and have to be beaten back

This is relevant to start with because that's how the dynasty in the country the story is in started - the first ruler was someone who was in some way personally credited with defeating the demons (powerful mage and military commander I think). They got a nifty magic trinket - a crown - that gave them a certain power over the land, both symbolizing and providing protection for it. However, over the centuries the crown got corrupted pretty badly, along with the dynasty itself, that went from genuinely good people who happened to be rulers to... yeah.

Magic in this setting is an ability all people have inherent access to, to a greater or lesser degree. Talented folks can try to figure out magic on their own, but overall self-taught ppl can't compare to mages who actually receive a formal education. The standard system is master+student, but in various cultures different variations have sprung up. The main character comes from an entirely different overseas country where she was a daughter of a wealthy merchant who wanted to study magic, so her parents found her a teacher - a strong and learned mage who didn't mind taking on a student, especially when he was getting paid for it. Eventually he went overseas to join the rebellion, and master/student ties in magic tend to end up being close enough that she just followed him without question.

In this country the system was a 'tower' of mages, where they more or less got forcibly locked up and then pampered. Kids who showed talent for magic were scouted, torn away from their families and put into the tower, where they then got no freedom of movement but a lot of freedom of research and of course had all their needs provided for, as long as they carried out what orders their master (the king) decided to give. "No freedom of movement" of course only applied with the asterisk of "unless ordered by the king", with the asterisk being hella broad and allowing them to take on various official, semi-official and unofficial jobs. The king relied heavily on loyal mages as enforcers, which turned the local populace against them and reinforced their loyalty out of desperation. A bad mix of top-down horrible orders you couldn't refuse to carry out, and no consequences for lashing out at anyone who wasn't a government official, led to a lot of atrocities committed in the name of the king that he even didn't necessarily personally order.

Magic works basically by manipulating the 'weave', and requires energy. Some magic energy is generated by the mage themselves, the more they train this ability the more they get; some magic energy 'floats freely' generated by natural sources like life and emotions, and can be 'drawn in' by mages who know how to do that (all formally trained mages know how to do that, the question is duration and area, as ambient magic DOES become depleted). Some magic energy gathers into material stuff like ore or plants or water, which can then be gathered and used. Magic can be done purely with a thought, but the more complex the action you're trying to do, the harder it is to get it right, and words and gestures help a lot with 'fixing' it, like using a ruler while drawing. Objects can be enchanted, which isn't principally different from just generating a one-time effect, and depending on how they are made and what they are for can be single use, rechargeable, automatically recharge from ambient magic or owner, draw from owner's magic directly (bad design but hey people sometimes suck), or just have a permanent effect that doesn't 'use up' magic energy in any outside-visible way. Rituals, especially those involving pre-made magic objects, allow game-changing complexity and scale of spells. A mage who foresees trouble can, given enough time, fortify their personal laboratory/house/tower/keep absolutely out of proportion with their personal power. It's not impossible to break through / unravel such fortifications, but breaking through would require so ridiculously much force, looking for design flaws, inaccuracies and loopholes is a much more productive way of trying to hack it. That, or just trying to lure the mage outside - human factor is the weak point of any security system.

Whenever a magic action is performed, it 'leaks' some energy 'colored' by the effect it was made to do. The more harmless example would be a library that was daily illuminated by 'candle' spells for centuries eventually having faint ambient light even when no-one's there. The less harmless example can be more or less accurately compared with nuclear fallout. The amount of energy leaked depends on the degree of control an individual mage (or a group of mages; it's entirely possible to collaborate when doing magic, much like it's possible to collaborate on any other activity) has over what they're doing. Maybe comparable with how much paint gets on your hands, face, clothes and everything when you're painting. The bigger the spell, the harder it is to make it airtight; on the other hand, the smaller the spell, the less motivation there is to try hard to make it 'tight'. This can depend on an individual mage's style or skill, or on outside circumstances - an unexpected factor can make the process more messy than intended.

The social system of the land was more or less classic feudalism, eventually transitioning into absolute monarchy, as the mage-rulers took more and more power in their hands. Nobles stopped trying to give their children magic education, as it would just mean them getting whisked away to the tower (unless this was the intended result, which was also a thing that happened) (it was a whole Thing with some people, particularly poorer peasants, trying to develop magic so they can attract attention and get taken to the tower, and others desperately hiding their abilities/pursuits to avoid it) (obviously the mage searchers took bribes, though had to be careful to not get caught). Surrounding lands have some forms of feudalism too for the most part, though there's a lot of diversity there (I haven't worked out a lot of that). Neither native nor foreign nobility was particularly happy with how the king treated them; really, nobody was happy about anything he did, with rare exceptions mostly just confirming the rule.

It's hard to say when rebellion first started mounting; it's fair to say the king produced the rebellion himself by cranking down harder and harder on those who dared oppose him even a little bit. Overreactions and power trips of mages who wanted to feel superior to objectively freer people resulted in villages, towns and whole regions being wiped from the face of the earth, survivors banding together into either various rebellious movements or just bandit gangs. Rise of banditry led to more unrest, unrest led to prosecution, and so the wheel turned. Eventually, the very big majority of rebellious movements managed to unite under a single banner, with a group of charismatic leaders who were more or less agreed upon as the new rulers when the rebellion wins. Nobody really had the concept of democracy, the idea was changing dynasties.

Changing dynasties in this case was actually a more complicated thing than just toppling a government, because of the whole magic thing. As the country was a whole and single concept in the minds of the people, so the magic bent to actually make it so, and tie it to the crown/rulers. It's kind of complicated, because it's not purely 'whatever people think is true goes', but it is influenced heavily by people's 'mindscape' and also a dozen other factors that nobody keeps track of except particularly dedicated mage researchers... who in this country could be find exclusively in the tower. Rebel mages kind of had more immediate&important things to worry about, and even when someone thought about it, the thought was dismissed with 'let's take it one step at a time; it can't possibly get worse than it is right now' (see: nuclear fallout)

In the last phase of the war, the army + guard mostly switched over to the rebels' side, the problem being the king had long stopped relying on them. It was him and his mages vs everyone else, more or less, with civilian population just submitting to whoever was present.

The Big Final Confrontation was a big battle between the rebellion forces and the king. All people who were meant to evenatually rule the country were there, leading the troops, this being the only possible way people would actually follow them into what was very likely to be a suicide charge. On the other hand, a big layer of students / aides / next in commands was left out of the battle entirely as backup. This proved a wise decision as the battle did in fact end with a suicide attack - the king managed to set up a spell that would destroy the entire rebellion army, and the best the rebellion mages could do was disrupt it so it would detonate, destroying the king himself and his not-very-big-in-size army, AND a huge chunk of rebellion forces that were closer to them, including the mages themselves.

This left the victorious army basically without leadership, and the factually-kids left behind had to quickly figure out what to do. The reason the protagonist ended up in charge was just because she was the one to start telling disoriented others what to do now. She was just an apprentice mage, she didn't really expect to be looked to as a ruler, but she took on the responsibility more or less by accident and had to stick with it.

So, she was left with a ravaged country still actively in the process of destroying itself (remember, banditry, and non-aligned rebellion movements)... and the king's treasury, which she took a look at and went 'holy shit what'. And then she took a look at financial books and went 'holy shit what' a second time.

There was enough money to literally rebuild the whole country... the question was how to organize it (popular rebellions: not the most disciplined of forces) and how to not end up being a tyrant herself.

The plan she came up was was to organize a big big harvest festival in all more or less big population centers all over the country and invite a lot of foreign traders with a lot of goods to it - as much as she estimated would be needed to, in fact, rebuild the country. (The calculations on that were not done instantly and not on her own obviously). The festival would start with a census, where each person, including kids, would give their name, have their 'unique magic imprint' taken, and be given a pretty large sum of money. This would double as a pardon for any past banditry, assuming they did not get caught doing the same thing again. There are a lot of logistical difficulties with it, starting with 'what about people who can't come' proceeding to 'how many mages do we need to do this' and so on and so forth. Well, the revolution happened in the beginning of April, and she has until mid-September (the traditional harvest festival time) to coordinate the whole thing. And figure out what to do with cleanup of land and so so so many other problems (I spent many hours figuring out those problems I don't remember all of it now and I wouldn't be able to write all of them out anyway) (the long term plan is to do this same thing, festival, census and all, every year, because the crown's income is ridiculous and the structures ensuring it still more or less work, the king wasn't /that/ stupid)

One thing she decided on from the very beginning was take the tower as her own. She did keep them under a sort of 'house arrest' from the beginning, but they were not persecuted in any way. Obviously the populace would have problems with it and want to bring them to justice for what they did, but also if she let them do what they wanted they'd just burn down the whole tower and there were /kids/ there, not to mention mages are never not a significant asset. Given access to the king's personal stuff she wouldn't have problems controlling them, and she did need them. This was its own Whole Big Storyline about how she handled it, with individual approach and a lot of showmanship and focusing on giving people the impression that they were heard and believed rather than actual justice.

(There was also its own Whole Big Storyline with her burning out from trying to personally do everything just so she'd be legitimized in people's eyes)

Also she didn't want to take the crown from the beginning, despite everyone thinking she should, if only to make the situation clear and stable in the eyes of foreign powers. Then some facts came to light, and the sum of it was: the complete and absolute shit happening in the country for the last several years weakened the weave, and there's an impending demon invasion. Theoretically it's not yet too late, and if she manages to keep the peace and make everyone happy and make a lot of good vibes happen, the weave might yet hold... but she definitely shouldn't even touch the crown, as it has a lot of Bad Vibes in it by now, and as it was originally an artifact of the land's /protection/ from demons, 'activating' it again via a coronation ceremony would only make things that much worse for the country, not to mention it'd be pretty bad for the ruler personally. On the other hand, if she beats back a demonic invasion, either by force or by peace, she'll pretty much earn her own right to rule the land regardless of the old crown. Hell, she's /already/ earning it by doing everything she does.

So as far as specific questions go:

1) how did he rize to power? he inherited the throne, I think there was a bit of infighting over the crown among relatives and that had its own separate plot with a 'legitimate heir' popping up, but in the end he won out in the family intrigues

2) what prevented the revolt of hiz kingdom, thoze opprezzed to the point of zuicidal urgez gathering in one place? nothing. they did it. repeatedly and consistently. eventually it worked

3) what finally brought him down? see above: a big fucking climactic battle with his own spell detonating on him in the end

4) why didnt thiz happen before it happened? because he was a powerful ruler with a powerful base of mages who had to support his rule or greet an angry mob. It was a combination of random luck, slowly developing the organization over the years, and deterioration of the king's own support structure (there were renegade tower mages in the rebellion too, to give one example) that eventually overcame that

5) what waz the extent of hiz magic ability? that's a Really Good Question. He inherited a fuckton of ready-made magical power in magical items, including the palace itself (the defense spell system being one aspect of what it did), but he was also powerful enough personally to exploit it to its fullest potential. In the end it came down less to his personal 'power' (the amount of energy he could put in a single spell cast from his mind with no external aid) and more to his cunning, sheer nerdery (there was... a lot of creative demonology behind the scenes, and a huge part of demonology is just extensive research of every aspect of what you're going to try beforehand) and full grasp of resources he had at his disposal. Whether he would or would not win an all-out no-external-aid magic duel with the protagonist, or any other rebellion mage, is literally irrelevant. Nobody was fighting fair.

6) where did the kingdom get food? this is another Very Good Question. The country was fucking d e s t r o y e d. A lot of kingdom... simply didn't, and this is one of the problems the protagonist has to contend with. It's worth noting: - the strong foreign support the rebellion was getting, including some food supplies. Nobody wanted the fucker in charge of that world's equivalent of majority of oil wells; - the simple hedge magic a lot of villagers could do to augment their farming. This had to be kept secret from the government, but then, those mages wouldn't know what to look for, for the most part, as this kind of magic, cooperating with the land rather than forcing your will on it, was an entirely different branch than what was studied in the tower. Sure, some who came from there themselves would know, but they also knew this would mean going after literally everyone, and that particular kind of magic was no threat to anything, it was literally just particularly potent harmony with nature; - the economy of the crown getting rich on selling off magic items was built on exploiting the big magic sources, but in this country there were also a lot of tiny ones, that - see above - permitted the land to be a lot more productive than it should have been. Before the nuclear fallout shit, there was no such thing as a 'lean year' in this country, and hunger was basically unheard-of. This entire thing was a purely political problem. (so, yes, overall the answer is 'farming in villages')

7) what level of zcarcity and poverty waz there? See above: no want for food at least, until civil war started destroying everything. However, the state basically hogged all the magic resources that weren't small enough to escape their notice, so magic items were only marginally more common than in other countries. This wasn't always this way, the situation developed gradually as this specific dynasty deteriorated over the last several generations;

8) waz it a police ztate? "police" sounds to me like a much more modern concept, idk what 'police state' would mean Way Back When. But mages were being sent all over the country 'inspecting' and harshly punishing anything wrong, more and more so, so sort of?

9) waz there brainwazhing? if zo, what are the repercuzzionz that your protagonizt haz to face? not really, no. The king relied on brute force to get across his point. The closest is the tower, but mages there had an overall pretty good idea of the situation they were in, though their coping methods were often not the best;

10) how doez the kingdom deal with hygine? how doez that differ between economic clazzez? iz magic involved, and if zo, how zo? how doez that change with the protag? I'm personally a bit of a filthy pig so congratulations you hit on a question I have never thought of before. I'd have to say that in other countries, the ones where magic is available to anyone with money to pay for access, yes, magic piping and plumbing and deodorants and everything are definitely a thing for rich people, and the protagonist probably grew up seeing this as the norm. On the other hand, in this country, and others where magic is more restricted, 'magic hygiene' would come in the form of rare curiosity items. That is, among the common folk - mage laboratories, particularly old and well-equipped ones like the tower, have magic everything, including teleportation circles instead of elevators. Otherwise it's usual historical stuff... which I have no idea what it would specifically be for that climate and perios ahaha *hides*

11) do you have a ztory to tell on a zmaller and grander zcale then the ztory of economiez, that which iznt life itzelf but a facsimile carried out by it'z people? I'm not sure how to parse this question but most of the meat of the story is the protag figuring out her personal relationship with powre, so, IDK??? There are also other characters I like, like one of the aforementioned demons and a 'mundane prophet' (its a scientific term in-universe) maid and her tower mage war criminal brother and the young mage kid and the guy with a connection to the goddess of luck who ends up being her mentor though he isn't even that much of a mage and the ex-tower mage who ended up being in charge of the tower now that the rebellion won and I D K if this answers your question at all

12) what'z the landzcapez? THIS IS A VERY GOOD IDEA I NEED TO GIVE MORE THOUGHT TO. "Exactly like Ukraine" is a bad lazy answer, given the land is sort of alive and shaped a lot by its natural magic >_> but climate-wise, yeah, mostly like Ukraine. There are forests and plains and hills, mostly, with the southeastern border being mostly uninhabited mountains. There is a sea to east/northeast, with the mountains cutting off most of the coastline from the rest of the country. The capital is to the south. I don't know I'm getting vertigo trying to translate the vague mental image I have in my head into actual geographical directions )=

13) what kind of dancing are there? feztivalz? immigration? muzic? Another thing I never thought of... I'm sorry I'm so uninterested in the specifics of some of these that I can just answer 'regular folk dancing with regular folk music'. I literally have no idea how to tell folk music of my own country from folk music of any other European country and the only reason I know our folk dancing is because gopak is a meme. You don't want me trying to figure out these things anyway >_< Immigration was a thing back before the Bad Times, the country was fairly ethnically diverse and still is I guess, in bigger cities skin color variations are barely more memorable than hair color, and in the rural areas closer to the borders too. Festivals are A Thing that was part of the plotline I was figuring out, with the whole nature magic thing. Definitely a harvest festival, of course.

14) what waz there before he took over? how did hiz rule effect all of theze? Overall, the biggest effect is that people are poorer, and more focused on immediate survival. Nobody wants to stick out, nobody knows when a mage will decide that a festival is not respectful enough to the king and level a village. The bigger cities and the most backwater nobody-even-knows-they-exist villages are the two opposites that managed to keep more of the culture - cities were more integrated with the mages' 'policing' even before the Bad Times and so had less to adjust, and the most backwater villages avoided the worst of it. Tiny towns and big villages, those of it that survived, basically stopped any kinds of public celebrations at all. The protag organizing a big harvest festival will not interfere with anyone's pre-existing plans, there. (That she's foreign is a non-factor here, it's not like she's going to be personally micromanaging it, there's lots of people to delegate this particular part to)

15) doez magic work through the human body? more like through the human mind, but body is if not -the- source of energy, at leasts a very important one

16) iz it languaged bazed? no, any verbal formulas are purely to help spellcasters focus. Although given the whole 'magic affected by human concepts' thing, certain phrasings that are only ever used in magic (antiquated words, dead languages) might take on some power of their own. Basically the language basis is: if the spellcaster knows what they're saying and what they're intending to do by it, it works. If they are trying to blindly repeat a spell in a language they don't know without any idea how it works... maybe don't?

17) what'z the power zource? It can be basically summed up as Life. Life is not caused by magic, instead magic is caused by life. Dead worlds like our moon have no magic at all, other than the kind tied to what people think of these places

18) iz it through zpiritz? It can be! Many different kinds of entities that can be called 'spirits' exist. However, this is not the kind that is 'mainstream' in the tower, nor the kind the protagonist focused on when learning. They would know a little about it, like the basic fact it exists and the common principles that apply to it as well as to other kinds of magic, but overall are profoundly ignorant on this matter

19) through permiating magical energy? magic both uses up and generates ambient magic energy, yeah

20) iz it through perzonal power of zoulz? among other things, yes. If, say, two mages with vastly different abilities swapped bodies, the resulting magical abilities of both of them would be a weird fusion of what each of them separately was good at

21) iz it through perzonal power of zoulz? gods exist! like, pagan gods. none other than the goddess of luck came up so far though

22) unholy power? demons have magical power of their own, that is distinctly different in quality from that humans use, and does not interact with the weave much. It is both stronger and weaker, depending how you look at it. A demon could not learn human magic, and humans can not access demonic powers either, but various pacts are possible that allow cooperation or even merging of powers. Straight up work for hire is the most common form though

23) can it be obtained by zacrifice? how would you define zacrifice? ability to use magic, in itself, no; magical energy, yes, in many different ways. For example, it can be granted by a divine entity that likes having sacrifices made to it; more direct 'natural' transformations are possible, like draining life from something living (though this is horribly inefficient and can be compared to burning down the house to keep warm in winter); or for example, blood holds power and blood magic is A Thing

24) doez an offering of pain count? in this specific setting, this is counterproductive to human magic but makes one possible currency when dealing with demons (who feed on pain)

25) what kind of recreational drugz are there? this question sounds weirdly specific to me, and yet is wholly legitimate. Alcohol probably exists, though I'm not sure if I'd even referenced it once in the story proper; I could easily cut it out and make the recreatinal drug scene much weirder if I wanted to. Overall, I would say recreational drugs aren't widespread in this particular country (though for wealthy people there are no doubt all kinds of imports)

26) where do they come from? how doez pharmiceauticalz work? how doez magic come into play with all of thiz? I absolutely love that you asked this question, because I had not considered this before and yet it falls Within My Sphere Of Interest. First of all, there's alchemy: mixing ingredients and magic spells, producing a very weird and diverse variety of effects, though usually not very strong compared to what casting a spell on a 'solid' object can do. (An enchanted branch can be a thousand times more powerful than an enchanted potion, but an enchanted potion can have a weirdly precise effect that a branch would need to be worked at by generations of masters to achieve) Second of all, there's magic in nature: some plants can heal just because they have healing magic stored in them, regardless of what kind of plant they are (though watching out for poison shit is still, y'know, prudent). And third, there's regular folk knowledge of plants and what they do, extending into apothecaries in cities and private doctors tending the rich. There was no any kind of religion-based persecution of, say, wise women who know how to heal people with herbs (at least not in this country), so this remains a respected skillset transfered from parent to child. There are people (more often, yes, women) who specialize with it, but most people who grow up in the country would know what to brew against cough, what to put on a wound to prevent infection, and a couple of more complex family recipes.

27) how widezpread iz the availability of magic? See above: varies by country. A lot depends on how much 'natural' magic is in a specific place; rest assured this country is not the only magic-rich one in the world (though the only one with quite as many big concentrated sources). A lot depends on politics and availability of formal learning. There is the top-down direction of magic spreading, with wisened mages teaching their students arcane mysteries, and there's the grassroots direction, that includes anything from charlatans with annoyingly real disappearing coin tricks to thieves who manage to figure out how to blend with shadows to soldiers whose weapons seem to be blessed by gods of war to farmers who know how to get on the good side of the land. 'Mundane prophet' is its own category: people who get visions, prophetic dreams and other kinds of comes-out-of-nowhere knowledge without ever trying or even wanting to have it. They are, however, generally a sign of the weave weakening and the demonic invastion being imminent )=

28) can it be uzed pazzively or accidentally? On one hand, I want to say no, but on the other hand, with this system of magic I don't really feel like saying no to anything. In some magic traditions and in some environmental conditions (A LOT depends on natural and ambient magic), it probably can. Maybe you can define "I don't know anything about magic but I'm trying really hard to achieve this result I want and it weirdly seems to be working" as "accidentally" (OK, now that I'm thinking about ambient magic and particularly ambient lingering side effects: a person can 'activate' them with their thoughts if they are particularly strong/concentrated somewhere. This wouldn't technically be the person doing the magic, but then again, if they did it knowingly on purpose it might as well be)

29) are people born with it? People are born with a degree of affinity for interacting with the weave, but just as much depends on natural+ambient magic where they were growing up. A kid in a mage family, in a house where some magic is always happening, would have a stronger magical affinity than this same kid growing up in different circumstances and never encountering magic at all. What affinity influences is basically how easy it is for a person to use magic; however, there are lots of different ways to use magic (see: spirits, for example), and people's affinities can take on very different shapes. Partly this is actually cultural, influenced by a sort of collective subconscious: mages from different countries might find entirely different things easier or harder, with overlappng variations between individuals

30) do zome people not have accezz to magic, and if zo, how many and why? First of all, there are places with very little to no 'natural' magic. While ambient magic will exist anywhere there's anything living, lack of natural magic means lack of people instinctively interacting with it, doing the grassroots sort of casual magic. For children who grow up in this kind of land in a remote area that doesn't have formally educated mages, it's entirely possible to never encounter any kind of magic at all. Second of all, there are simply people who don't have access to formal education. Interacting with natural magic is very limited in terms of what you can do - mostly just what nature wants you to do - and people who can only do that and don't have the passion to stubbornly hone this ability until they can access their own energy as well might as well be cut off from magic. Most people belong to this category. Third, it's not impossible for a person to be born with zero magical affinity at all. Natural+ambient magic and inborn affinity are multiplied, not added, so someone who's a zero could never learn any magic at all. It's very rare, though, and if born to a family with a magic tradition could be regarded as a sort of disability. This person could still do certain kinds of demonology and interaction with spirits and divine magic though; gods don't care about magic affinity in picking who they interact with and gift with power. Those things are obscure in the country the story is taking place in, but in some cultures, or even specific places, it might well be a default thing for any person to learn when growing up, making their 'zero' affinity even less relevant than it is for people with simply no access to magic learning at all.

31) how doez magic effect the flora and fauna of your zetting?? VARIOUSLY. Normal farming looks mostly the same, but deep forests, mountains and swamps can look veeeery differently than in our world :> (This applies mostly to places with a lot of natural magic, of course; and in an entirely different way, to places with strong ambient effects. You maybe want to stay away from those latter ones)

#my ocs #sort of #worldbuilding #magic

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pinkpeccary · 5 years

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tldr: i have a philosophy assignment to work with a partner to lead a discussion on Janet Halley’s “The Move to Affirmative Consent”, a piece that i think is well argued and articulates a lot of things about the movement that i struggle with, as well as going into why radfem influences in this are dangerous and conservative, specifically in the legal context. my partner has opposing opinions to mine which i don’t want to deal with because they feel like they come from a place of emotionally charged kneejerk reaction rather than actually considering the argument. (i might be being harsh here, idk i’m tired and annoyed).

under readmore bc it got long enough i don’t want to make people scroll

in my philosophy class we got paired up at the beginning of the semester to do a seminar presentation, meaning each pair picked one of the readings to research and present on during the day we were discussing it in class. my partner picked Janet Halley’s “The Move to Affirmative Consent” and i didn’t really have a preference so that’s what we ended up with.

i like this piece a lot. the main argument is basically that the push for affirmative consent policies is coming from the radfem desire for social control through punishment by reducing the definition of consent to the subjective concept of “desire” or “unwantedness”, which is pretty much impossible to gauge in a court of law, and that parts of the definition given by the California laws specifically are heading dangerously close to the realm of “guilty until proven innocent.” Halley is a legal scholar, and as such is approaching this issue from a legal standpoint, questioning the desire to make the law the decider of what is consent especially when the definitions given can be interpreted in so many different ways and the concept of unwantedness alone is too subjective to be used as the sole basis for legal proceedings.*

i do get that this is a hot-button issue. parts of her argument really are her saying “these policies make it easier for men* to get convicted of crimes they didn’t commit” which is easy to misinterpret as “we need to protect poor innocent rapists whose lives will be ruined by these accusations”. but really what’s going on is she’s saying it’s not okay to set a legal precedent for putting the burden of persuasion on the defendant, and that the push for it is not out of genuine goodwill but comes from the radfem belief that because of the patriarchy if a woman ever has sex with a man it’s coerced by societal norms and therefore all men who have sex with women are evil rapists. (she does a much better job of arguing this than i am in summarizing it)

anyways. i skimmed this piece a month or two ago to get a sense for it leading up to the presentation and my initial response was “cool, this seems like good thoughts? would have to read more in-depth tho.” then i ignored it for a while. but tuesday is our presentation day, so we decided to meet up to work on it today. so i did a very close reading of it while waiting for my partner to tell me when she was free, and realized that i really do agree with most of what she’s arguing, and that she’s putting into words a lot of things i’ve struggled to express about my feelings towards consent***

so i came out of this thinking, “great! i can talk about this!” but we need to give a critical response, which includes both what we found compelling and what we disagree with (or why we don’t disagree with anything). so i started trying to come up with something to disagree with, but the problem was at that point any potential counterclaims i could come up with were too easy for me to rebut.

then my partner arrived 30 minutes late, and first off: clearly had not read the entire piece. which was annoying. but she had opinions about it. and she found opinions about it on reddit. and her opinions were very counter to mine.

basically, she was upset that Halley was criticizing affirmative consent because it’s such an important thing. we have to have a practical connection to some sort of event or something that we analyze through the lens of the piece, and her suggestion was “maybe we could find an example of a case where affirmative consent was necessary, to show she’s wrong about it”. at one point i brought up the bit about how since consent is defined so loosely and subjectively it often comes down to he-said-she-said, and it’s problematic to put the burden of persuasion on either party, and she said it was better to have the law set up to be manipulated against the accused rather than the victims because “women wouldn’t do that.” and the big one that really bugged me is she said something about “why is this even a conversation we need to be having” because obviously this isn’t relevant in the current social climate because the issue is too much sexual assault going unchecked (when actually that’s precisely why it’s a conversation that’s happening, she’s saying that affirmative consent as a response to that issue is problematic in its current implementation from a legal standpoint and we should maybe talk about that but yknow whatever)

and this is not a fight i want to get into. i don’t like confrontation and i especially don’t like confrontation where i’m on the side that doesn’t have the fun buzzwords that make people side with you regardless. and i have no idea how the rest of my class feels and my school is small enough that i don’t want to rock the boat too hard and it’s just. aaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

like i wish so hard that i had a partner who agreed with me because i would love to talk about this piece i have a lot of feelings about it. but i’m having to compromise my feelings about it with her opposite feelings about it and pretend to be much more neutral than i am which, also, is likely going to lead to the fun unintended side effect of me being more defensive of the piece than i should be. it’s not flawless. but i know that if i have to lead a discussion in which we pick apart all the terrible evil things she says about defendants have rights and how dare we not immediately believe an allegation of sexual assault immediately no questions asked in a court of law, i’m going to start getting a lot less willing to acknowledge those flaws.

* i’m not summarizing it super well but that’s the gist of it

** the piece is responding to the typical narrative of male perpetrator and female victim, so throughout the piece the genders of each party is indicated as such.

*** this is a whole nother post that i might have already talked about but basically the big thing is i’m super uncomfy with the definition of consent at my school specifically including the phrase “enthusiastic yes” because i am neutral towards a lot of things and have a complicated relationship with attracted and if my partner (sexual partner not project partner) wants to do something and i’m fine either way than if i agree unenthusiastically it’s still consent and to claim otherwise is to push me towards performing enthusiasm i don’t have and subsequently questioning whether or not i’m actually consenting bc it feels fake; anyways she doesn’t go into that specifically but it relates a lot to what she’s saying throughout

#assault cw #philosophy #ollie talks #late at night #pp

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jamieloveharris · 7 years

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& i thought changing my relationship status would be hard....

i REALLY didn’t want to have to write this. i’ve gone back & forth because part of me wants to be the bigger person and let karma do it’s just job. and other part - straight savage. as you may (or may not) know, i was supposed to get married in november. if you’re hoping this is the story of that, go ahead and click that X bc it’s not. howeverrrrr....when i got engaged, i moved pretty fast and went ahead and booked whatever i could, one of those being a photographer. this particular photographer i had obsessed over for years. literally my fam got some pics made probably 8 or so years ago and he was fairly new and i remember calling him to get pricing details. so since then, i’ve followed his work on social media etc and he’s crazy talented. so when i reached out and he was available, i was ecstatic. he’s pricey but if you know me, i love pictures and i was willing to splurge on a good photographer. everyone’s advise was always, “its all you’ll have left of the day, splurge.” anyhow, we emailed back and forth about pricing, packages, etc & spoke on the phone once, and he told me that he was doing things a little different now due to taking a full time job and trying to balance work/family life. you see, his wife is a photographer as well and equally as amazing and instead of shooting separately, they started to shoot together (if you choose 2 shooters) so they wouldn’t always be away from each other during the busy season of photography, allowing them to “drop their prices” some (LOL). so, long story short I said lets do it, and sent him the deposit. the schedule is as follows:

25% immediate deposit ($1,050)

25% 60 days before wedding date ($1,050)

50% remainder due 2 weeks before wedding ($2,100)

on january 20, what we agreed to was a total of $4,200 ($4,000 wedding package) + $200 (extra one hour if needed). so, I sent him $1,050 which is 25% of the total amount via paypal. the next payment wasnt “due” until technically september 18 - 60 days prior to the wedding which he stated in an email to me as well. i wanted to go ahead and try to get ahead so on March 17, I emailed him asking if it was okay to go ahead and send him more money (that wasn’t “due” until 9/18) and he was very eager to say “Well sure. You can send me as much as you want as often as you want :) “ Yeah, i bet so.

DISCLAIMER: in his defense, it DOES say in the contract I signed that in the event the client cancels for reasons out of the control of the photographer before completion of services, photographer retains all funds collected to date” I tell you this because I want to be completely transparent with all relevant details since this is basically a story of morality, and not money.

stay with me. SO, unfortunately I called off the wedding at the beginning of april. imaginably so, it’s a very emotionally draining situation and at that point, I knew I had already lost a lot of money (on venue, catering, band, dress, etc) so i was just trying to recoup anything that I could. it’s just money but at the same time, ya girl isn’t rich so being able to get anything back I could would be more than helpful. I had paid extra towards my venue as well and when I reached out to her (s/o to Bonnie - you’re the best), she immediately went out of her way to go to the bank and deposit the money back that wasn’t owed yet, but i had chosen to pay before it was due. my caterer also refunded what he could, minus the required deposit and wrote me truly the sweetest email saying he was praying for me and my situation and would be happy to refund fully if he rebooked the date. ya know, being a good person and doing what’s “right,” in my unprofessional opinion. let’s get to the good stuff...okay so, I had chosen on my own free will to send said photographer (cough cough ROB INGRAM cough cough) an extra $1,000 on March 17 via paypal. keep in mind, it wasn’t due until september and he wasn’t using that money for anything relative to my wedding. afterall, we were only using him for the wedding - no engagement or bridal pictures or anything. that was 2 weeks before I called off the wedding.

April 1, i emailed him asking protocol on if he would refund any payment that was made outside of the non-refundable deposit. I was aware i wouldn’t get the original $1,050 back and that’s fair business. to be honest, i didn’t read the fine print on the contract because who thinks you’ll need to cancel ya know? not me. {{ LESSON LEARNED }}. and this is where sh!t hit the fan. it’s LONG, but if you’re still reading you’ll probably be intrigued to find out the rest of the story right? so for your reading pleasure, i’ll copy and paste the string of emails between Rob and I from that date forward.

i’d like to preface this with some of my thoughts. first, contractually he doesn’t owe me any of the extra $1,000 that i paid him. i get that. morally, in my opinion, he does. afterall - he has to sleep with himself at night and live knowing he essentially stole $1,000 from someone he performed ZERO services for, not even so much as meeting for a cup of coffee. i’d also like to point out the fact that it was less than 2 weeks after I sent him the $1,000 that i asked about him refunding it. my theory is that he had already spent it therefore he didn’t have it to give back.i feel like as a human being, it’s our duty to be kind, and compassionate. maybe i’m crazy but the “right” thing to do would have been to do exactly what Bonnie did - give it back. it’s not yours. you did nothing for me, rob, except make me completely devalue you as a professional and as a person in general. again - I GET IT - by contract, he didnt have to give it back. but as a person, it would have been the right thing to do. it’s hard not for me to go postal up in this blog about it, but i think i’ll let his words speak for themselves. he demoralized woman, condescended me as a person, and said very offensive things about my friends whom he does not know. he didn’t want to add salt to the wound (after he took him over a week to respond btw - inclusive of a text and follow up email from me) but he would be glad to credit at least part of the payment “for when I do get married.” ya know what Rob? F OFF. Do you think that’s what i’m thinking about right now? do you think 1. I would ever use you as a photographer IF i do get married one day? and 2. do you think i’m studying my next wedding right now? NO. BYE. and that’s just the tip of the iceberg my friends. in the end, HE SUGGESTED that he would pay me on the 1st of the month $100/month for 5 months starting in May to prove his integrity (HA HA HA HA) because that’s all he could afford to do regardless of if he rebooked that date or not. Fair enough, and I thanked him for that gesture. I had to follow up with him, which is extremely awkward by the way, asking about the payment. truthfully, it’s not even about the money at this point but about doing what you say you’re going to do. he FINALLY paid my my first payment on May 19th (18 days after promised date). he lied saying it was “set to transfer” on the 15th of May, which i actually don’t think is even a real possibility with paypal after talking to other professional business owners who use Paypal as their method of payment, but that’s neither here nor there at this point. In June, i received $100 on June 16. After that, NADA, ZERO, ZILCH. Let me repeat - it’s not about the money at this point. it’s about doing the right thing. I’ve sent several emails to him asking to simply let me know if he doesn’t plan to fulfill his promise to let me know. again, NO RESPONSE. i swear i’ll quit rambling but my final thought is this....if you want to maintain your integrity that you swore you have, then do what you say you’re gonna do. Simple as that. and if you don’t plan to do said thing, have the decency to at least let that person know. if you plan to keep reading, start at the bottom of the email chain below and read up. PLEASE READ HIS LONG EMAIL CAREFULLY. I cannot stress enough how unprofessional, rude, demeaning, and downright ugly it was. I’ve never been more turned off from something in my life. ENJOY!!! :)

On Sept 18, 2017, at 12:44 PM, Jamie Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Rob, I didn't hear back from you so I'm going to assume at this point I won't be receiving the additional $300 that you offered and agreed upon?

"But beginning in May, I will refund you (thru PayPal) $100/month for 5 months regardless of whether or not we rebook for a total of $500. And, in the event that we do book the date, I will refund the remainder of the $1000. I know a little at a time doesn't have the same effect as a lump sum, but it's the best I can do right now."

Thanks,

Jamie

On Jul 27, 2017, at 8:42 AM, Jamie Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

Hey rob, just wanted to check in with you regarding July payment.

Thanks

Jamie

From: Rob & Wynter <[email protected]> Date: May 18, 2017 at 7:47:03 AM CDT To: Jamie Harris <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Contract

Jamie,

That transfer will be authorized tomorrow morning. I don't typically use the account tied to the PayPal so I had to transfer the money to the funding account yesterday. I wasn't aware that the account didn't have money in it when it was set to transfer. Never intended not to do what I said I would do.

Sent from Rob Ingram's iPhone

On May 18, 2017, at 07:41, Jamie Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

Hey Rob, it's the 18th now and I have not received anything via PayPal. I just kindly ask that if I will not be receiving what you offered to me, please let me know so I am aware.

Thanks,

Jamie Sent from my iPhone

On May 10, 2017, at 5:02 PM, Rob & Wynter <[email protected]> wrote:

It's set to transfer on the 15th Sent from Rob Ingram's iPhone

On May 10, 2017, at 16:54, Jamie Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

Hey Rob,

Just wanted to follow up regarding your last email.

Thanks,

Jamie

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 18, 2017, at 4:11 PM, RobWynter Ingram <[email protected]> wrote:

Jamie,

I’ll start by saying that the fact that you concluded this message with “I don’t expect a response, to be honest…” is confirmation that you don’t know me very well. But, I guess you can only derive your opinion from personal experience. My delay in responding to your cancellation email (as I have already told you) was because I wanted to see if I could fill your date with 2 other inquiries that we had for 11/18 and hopefully be able to refund some of your money. I apologize that, in the middle of life and a busy wedding season, I didn’t respond sooner. I know this is not an easy time for you and adding financial strain only adds insult to injury. It was never my intention for the end-result of all this be one that has left such a bad taste in your mouth.

I’ll also say, before I address your message, that of the 30+ brides that we work with every year, not one would make general comments about my “heart” or my approach consistent with what I just read from you. In fact, “heartless” is so far from who I am and who we are. But, rather than try to convince you of that, I will (try) to remove emotion from it and simply respond with facts. I absolutely HATE the fact that your opinion of me is now so skewed from the reality of who I am that you feel the need to say some of the things you have, but I guess what’s done is done, and all we can do now is continue to do the things that made you want to hire us in the first place, which is be the best wedding photographers we can be and provide brides with beautiful wedding images.

To begin, let me confidently say this. I will refund the $1000 if I book the date. I have more integrity than you might think, and I will be 100% honest with you if we rebook and will refund your money. But so far, I have had zero inquiries since you cancelled. I had 2 others within a week of you booking. And both could not move their dates. You are right, it’s possible we will rebook, but speculating that is a moot point, and as of now, we will make at least $2000 less than expected right before Christmas.

I have been doing this for 10 years, Jamie. Shooting weddings is a volatile thing and a huge risk for anyone who makes this their profession. As weddings are concerned, we basically stake our entire income on the promise of two people who are currently very happy, but have no idea of what lies ahead. In the entire time I have done this, previous to 2016, I have had only ONE wedding cancellation. Then, in 2016, we had 3 cancellations, all of which did not result in rebooking the date, costing our business over $15,000 in income. Now, for 2017, we have had 2 weddings that did not work out after booking, resulting in another $5400 in income loss.

As far as your comment about comparing what $1000 means to us vs. yourself. Let me ask you….and it’s imperative that I be a little more personal here than I typically have to be with clients because perspective might help in our case as well…How many of your "photographer friends” that you felt the need to talk to about this, support 4 kids (not including an additional $1000/month in child support and another $1200 for health insurance) on a one-income budget? You can do the math, but in order for Wynter and I to have anything that resembles a life with our kids on the weekends, we can only feasibly take 30-35 weddings a year. Other than a VERY small amount of other photography income, WEDDING photography is our only source of income. We don’t shoot separately, because our product is now branded by what we both bring to the table on a wedding day. The process of editing hundreds of images/week and making sure that we correctly handle images that can never be replaced, is one that takes a great deal of time and care. So again, since you felt the need to bring it up, I’m betting the comparable value of $1000 to us is a little closer than you might think. Remember, image is our job, so it may be a little misleading when you simply look at our life and business with facebook or Instagram goggles. So please, if these photographer friends of yours (who obviously aren’t talented enough to garner your business) really want to talk to me about their opinion of my approach here, please tell them to call me when their husband gets off work. I’d be happy take any advice from them that will allow me to be both a business man and a bleeding heart. And feel free to forward this email to them too. This business is full of people who will try to undercut and discredit other photographers at every turn. Maybe this email will be ammo they can print, forward and use in their advantage to create an image of me that results in one less person to compete with. It’s why I have never cared much about what everyone else is doing. And frankly, the insecurity of a lot of people in this business is consistent with the ones that would so willingly be agreeable with you in this situation. But, if my guess is right, you either talked to someone who is single or someone who has another source of income in their home. But again, I’m just giving you facts and comments about financial consequence isn’t an area that anyone has ever tried to navigate with me. So, my “condescending” response about applying your payment to a future wedding is justifiably condescended now by your interpretation and the emotions behind a hurt that I ultimately did not cause, and yet currently have a $2100 deficit because of. So to clear that up, I wasn’t trying to be condescending at all, but I am pretty confident any this point that you won’t be “passing on my name” to other people in any way that would ever result in me being portrayed in a positive light. And really, the residual effect of what this has ultimately done to your image of us, is going to cost us a lot more than just the $2100 that we won’t get from you. Consider that we are two people (with financial responsibility to 4 more) getting paid basically one medial income.

Jamie, this situation doesn’t require me to pray about it. I really can’t believe that I’m even discussing money value and prayer in response to this, but you went there, so I will too. My relationship with Jesus is the most important thing in my life and spiritualizing this issue isn’t something I think is necessary. But hypothetically, had your message today said, “Hey Rob, that $1000 means a lot to me and not having it makes a significant difference in my life. As a fellow follower of Christ, I am asking you to consider our kinship in that and pray about a way to refund all or a portion of this money. This is a crappy enough time for me and I realize there may not be an immediate solution, but I would appreciate it if you would reconsider your last email”, then I wouldn’t have spent the better part of my day responding to this, I would have a better perspective on how it effects you, and would have done what was best for both of us regardless of contractual language. And maybe that should have been my first approach, but just because my business deals with people on a more “personal” level doesn’t exempt me from still being a business, so I responded as such. Typically, the clientele that we work with understands that, which is why I’ve never dealt with this. In fact, most of those relationships end extremely well and have been followed up with inquiry on whether or not they owed a cancellation fee, rather than me writing a check back to them based on a circumstance out of my control. The fact that I never uphold my clients to the "additional 25% cancellation fee of entire contract" outlined in their contract may produce a less “heartless” opinion from others who have been in your situation.

This is the exact reason why Wynter and I charge a little more than most photographers. There are plenty of “wedding photographers” who have a camera and can produce a good image for $2500-3000. If I expounded on the reality of their inadvertent devaluing of our industry, I would spend the next half of the day typing, so I will spare you. BUT…our whole approach has always been based on working with an upper-tier bride who typically isn’t greatly affected by the loss of $1000. In fact, in your situation, I was more inclined to think money wasn’t an issue for you at all. You didn’t try to talk me down on price, you were in a hurry to get your deposit to me, and you sent the extra $1000 even after I told you that it wasn’t yet due. And up until you cancelled your wedding, you were very consistent with some of the best brides that we have ever had from a payment and accountability standpoint. So, my response was derived from quantifying and qualifying you with our other brides. I apologize that I responded with an incorrect assumption. You can't expect me to know the reality of your personal situation, and the email you sent to me this morning basically holds me responsible to know that.

My “truly shocking” response, as you called it IS exactly what you described it: a matter of money. I unapologetically agree with you there. And I’m not quite sure why it being a “matter of money” and me “having a heart to do what I can to help someone” can’t coexist. And if really was a ONLY “matter of money” I would be the type of heartless person that would seek all compensation of what was agreed to in the contract, which would be an additional $1000.

So, to be clear, I am not the jerk that my response in this email confirms that I can be. But, when I receive an email that is obviously based on frustration and dehumanizing me, I am not going to read it without at least attempting to establish a little bit of perspective-based defense. You ask how I can sleep at night. My sleep has never been effected because I've always done what I said I would do and I've never received such a hostile email based in response to what someone agreed to.

All of that being said, I will do this…because we live on our received income rather than our completed work income, I can’t cut you a $1000 check today. But beginning in May, I will refund you (thru PayPal) $100/month for 5 months regardless of whether or not we rebook for a total of $500. And, in the event that we do book the date, I will refund the remainder of the $1000. I know a little at a time doesn't have the same effect as a lump sum, but it's the best I can do right now.

I am really sorry our relationship took this turn, Jamie. I enjoyed every moment of our first conversation and I hope one day you can see that I'm not all the things you seem to now believe. What I definitely will pray about for you is continued healing through this difficult process. From my experience, you are a really cool girl and I hate we won't be moving forward from this point on. I'll be in touch the first of May with the first partial reimbursement installment. Thanks for taking time to read this.

Rob

On Apr 18, 2017, at 10:17 AM, Jamie Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

Hey Rob/Wynter, I’ve had some time to think about this situation and it’s just been on my heart to respond. I understand what you said about the contract, but in my personal opinion something like this comes down to a matter of character and just simply doing what’s right and being able to lay your head down at night knowing you’re living the way you’re proud of. I know that I made the choice to send you an extra $1,000 when it was not even due, and in your contract you did state what was paid was to be kept. At the same time, when I look at the big picture it honestly just doesn’t sit right with me that as a successful and respectable business owner, you are okay with keeping $2100 of someone’s money when you truly performed no act of service. We did not even meet in person and get a coffee. We simply exchanged a few emails, several of which took you more than a week to respond. If I canceled a month before my wedding, this would be a different story and completely understandable. But considering it was over 7 months out from the event, you and I both know the chances of you filling that spot are pretty high knowing how wonderful of photographers you and Wynter are, and how desired your services are as well. People plan weddings in just a few months all of the time, and I just can’t help but feel like I was truly taken advantage of, and I hate feeling that way with someone whose work I have followed since the beginning and always dreamed of having them shoot my own wedding. I would never want or expect to get the 25% deposit back. I knew going into it, that no matter what that was nonrefundable and should something happen, that was paid regardless. I just can’t get out of my head that I sent you $1,000 and you’re comfortable with keeping that knowing you didn’t provide any service to me. $1,000 is a lot of money to me, especially considering I am single and live alone and have already lost about 5x that much with all of the other things I had to cancel. Again, that was MY choice and I’m well aware of that but at some point it just comes down to doing the respectable thing. In the grand scheme of things, what is $1000 to you compared to what it is to me? Especially $1,000 that wasn’t even owed to you yet. As far as the taxes thing go, it would just show as you overpaying and would be considered a credit. It's not anything that would cause issues in the long run, so I don't find it fair to use that as an excuse.

I’m not looking for a pity party, or any kind of sympathy as I know I made the choice that I did and had to do what’s best for me and my situation and unfortunately that came at a cost. I’m just simply asking for you to reconsider your decision given the situation and circumstances. I am obviously dealing with a lot emotionally as well as financially and that’s on me and I’m dealing with it the best I can. I have several photographer friends I spoke to about the situation, as well as just everyday humans and the consensus was always the same – shock that someone who works in an industry capturing people’s happiest days could be so heartless. It just seems that you would have a little more sympathetic nature to the situation simply as a human. Someone could get engaged tomorrow, and book that date and come to you this week dying to have you. You have 7 more months for that to happen and the fact that you’re dead set on this being the final decision honestly makes me question the professionalism of your business. And to even condescendingly say that you’d give me a credit “when I get married one day” couldn’t have hurt worse. I understand you were trying to offer a “solution” so to speak, but that was the most humiliating thing that I could have read considering the last thing I’m thinking about at the moment is getting married.

I am truly just asking you to pray about, think about it, whatever your method is of coping with things is, and really consider what happened. I know “contractually” what was said and I get that as anyone would,but sometimes, things go a little deeper and you look at it as a whole and treat as others the way you’d like to be treated. I sent you an email right away, with no response, followed up with a text several days later with no response, and had to email another time before I was even given the respect of a response. At the very least, I would have expected an acknowledgment email when I first emailed you just letting me know you received it and would get back to me. I obviously had to send the same email to several people and the difference in response is truly shocking. It seems to just be a matter of money vs having a heart and doing what you can to help someone.

I don’t expect a response to be honest, but would appreciate if you would at least take the time to read this, and consider what it would mean to me and do for me. I am more than happy to recommend you to anyone I see that may be seeking photographers in the area because I do love your work as you know and would be more than willing to pass on your name, but I just can't let this sit on my hear any longer.

Thanks for your time

Jamie

On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 11:22 AM, Rob & Wynter <[email protected]> wrote:

Hey Jamie,

I'm sorry to just now be getting back to you. And I'm very sorry to hear that you had to call the wedding off.

Unfortunately, this is where business collides with people that I genuinely want to do what's best for, but because of the way our accounting works, it puts me in an awkward position.

In Section 3 of our contract, the agreement states that all funds collected upon cancellation are retained by the photographer and a 25% cancellation penalty is assessed. Obviously, I am not going to charge you another $1050, but the second payment, which in your contract stated that it was due BY (not ON) April 24, 2017 was voluntarily sent and thus falls under the "all funds collected" section. And because we pay taxes quarterly, those have been submitted as well.

Also, we do this because we have other inquiries and in your case (because of the popular date during football season) we turned down two other weddings because of your reservation of the date. That is why it has taken me a while to respond...I was reaching out to those two brides to see if I could salvage their business. (In which case, I could have justified refunding a portion to you). Both have booked elsewhere and quite honestly, November wedding clients are few and far between this late in the year. So, in reality, we have a $2100 deficit on our year as well and will doubtfully recoup the loss of income from Nov 18, which really is the only date anyone has asked about for Nov of this year.

I know this adds salt to an already open wound, but because of the nature of our business, we don't refund due to things out of our control. But, what I can do is give you a credit for when you do get married one day. We can at least apply 50% of the $2100 you have sent ($1050) to a future contract. I know that helps you none right now, but please know I will do what I can to make it as easy on you as possible if you would like to work with us one day.

Again, I hate having these conversations and hate what you are dealing with all of this. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Rob

Sent from Rob Ingram's iPhone

On Apr 7, 2017, at 10:15, Jamie Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

Hey Rob, wanted to follow up with on this since I never heard back. I paid you an extra $1000 towards my balance but I've regretfully decided to call off my wedding so I believe I should receive that back since it was not due or anything until sept 18 per your email below. Please let me know what you need from me to get this refunded.

Thanks for understanding

Jamie Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 1, 2017, at 10:32 PM, Jamie Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

Hey rob, random question but I know if something happens we can't get our deposit back but do you refund any other payments made?

Thanks

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