#<- for blacklisting purposes but if more people than i intend see it then whatever ig

[corfisers]

one of the reasons i didn't accept being trans sooner is because i'd look at the cishet men i know and at how they treat women in their lives, at how fucking vile they can get and how casual they are about being blatantly misogynistic, how there are usually absolutely no repercussions for any of it, and i'd think to myself "if this is what being a man is about then i don't want to be one". eventually i'd figure out that no, this isn't what being a man is about, it's just something a lot of them perpetuate, it's not inherent, you don't have to be That. so seeing other trans men who, generally speaking, should've had somewhat similar experiences, come out of it on the opposite end where they gleefully grab onto transmisogyny and have fun with it and feel justified and righteous perpetuating it is fucking baffling

#this is very subjective of course but still #all this talk about “”female socialization“” and for what? it's just an excuse to be blatantly transmisogynistic and nothing else #what about experiencing misogyny yourself and seeing it happen over and over and over and not wanting to be a perpetrator of that #how do you see all this shit and then come out of it wanting to target not just women but the most vulnerable group of women too #did you see cis men getting away with it every time and wanted to have a taste of that #with your fancy little “i'm trans tho” shield and a bunch of transphobic excuses why being mean to transfems is fine actually #transmisogyny #<- for blacklisting purposes but if more people than i intend see it then whatever ig #benvey tag

[alyblacklist]

Do you think the keenler storyline is going anywhere? I used to be sure that it was, I mean why else would they have them kiss and have sex. However now that Liz has been gone for five episodes and she is being quite mean to Ressler (the whole pointing a gun to his head and pretty much telling Cooper about them sleeping together) I feel like a relationship between them will never happen and the writers are just trying to make us forget or dislike Keenler.

Ok, on to the asks about Ressler/Keenler in 8x09 where things were said, but only through contact lenses and earpieces. Thoughts below the jump, because it’s a long post that will (hopefully) address all of these at least in part.

I do think it was Liz speaking through the doppelganger at all relevant times. They haven’t given me a reason not to think that at this point. She knew things only Liz could know. So I assume (unless we get new info) that everything Mia Collins said to Ressler was actually Liz telling her what to say to him (and likewise to Aram and Cooper). I did express to BlacklistRoom on Twitter that they were evil for having faux-Liz call Ressler “Donald” on screen before real Liz does. And at first, I thought maybe that was some sort of signal to Ressler that things were amiss because real Liz wouldn’t do that, but in the end I think it was just the writers playing their usual games. NOT because they hate Keenler or Keenler fans (they’re the ones who made Keenler canon, for God’s sake), but just because they love to toy with fan emotion. They give you a Wing Yee birthday nugget one ep, they throw in a loose “Donald” in another from the lips of a faux-Liz. They know exactly the emotional points to hit if they’re paying attention to social media (and they certainly are, to a point). 

I did catch that accurate observation on Twitter that the doppelganger did not have her finger on the trigger while pointing the gun at Ressler’s head. I’d like to think the actress and crew are careful enough to catch such things as her finger was nowhere near that trigger (and she knew how to shoot that unnamed FBI agent during the chase) so I hope that was purposeful, perhaps as a small signal to the audience that Liz never really intended to hurt Ressler, even though he of course couldn’t see what was going on behind his head. A nod, at least, to the idea that Liz doesn’t really mean to hurt him.

Before I get too much deeper into my personal impressions of the scene, I want to specifically address the anon who wonders if she’s alone in finding it hard to root for Liz or Keenler in all this.

Of course you’re not.

Darker Liz isn’t for everyone. If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me Ressler deserves better than Liz over the past five years, I’d be able to buy you dinner (even at NYC prices). Never mind how many have abandoned the ship over that exact issue or related issues over the seasons. But I also think you know that I don’t share your viewpoint. Maybe that’s why you send me asks, or maybe you’re just using my inbox as an outlet to find those who agree with you. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter (although I admit if it’s the latter, publishing your thoughts on your OWN page rather than in my inbox might be preferable because as much as I enjoy asks to a point, I’m a little tired of ship hand-holding asks. I like what I like and trying to explain it or defend it gets a little tiring.)

All I can say is after five years of deep investment in this fandom and these characters, it takes a LOT more than an absent female lead and a bumpy episode to capsize my ship and send me into the pit of despair. For me, this is the expected price we pay for the ship being canon now versus only at the very end of the show. The Blacklist has never been about showing smooth, happy, relationships. Angst, drama, tension is the name of the game. You have to decide for yourself whether you can stomach that on a week to week basis and especially this season because they warned us – “good AND difficult” – difficult!  - for Keenler. I reconcile the conflict by the fact that Ressler still WANTS Liz and BELIEVES in Liz despite her flaws and if he does, then so do I. The man has some blinders when it comes to Liz, certainly, but not the sort that they love to mock him for on screen. He’s not thinking solely with his male parts brain, he’s thinking with his actual, in his head brain and he LOVES this woman despite her crazy and I love that about him. He’s smarter than most people give him credit for. And I am also of the view that real life and ships do not need to be equivalents. You can love two flawed fictional TV characters without being a person who wants to see those things manifest in real life. (I also ship Wanda and Vision for the record).

So I think we can all agree that this episode – and Liz’s absence generally – has been more “difficult” than good Keenler-wise. Ressler himself told us in those early episodes before her departure that it’s different if you see her, and it certainly is. We’ve been robbed of Liz’s thoughts and emotions entirely ever since she last graced our screen in Ep. 8x04. (And of Ressler’s reaction to said departure, for the most part). At the same time, I think Liz recognizes that too as she hasn’t to our knowledge directly engaged with Cooper, Aram OR Ressler since she left except through surrogates. Purposeful choices on the part of the diabolical writers.

As I said in my earlier ask response tonight, I remain of the view that Liz is in control of her actions and is doing her own risk/benefit assessment in how she responds to the situations she finds herself in. 

I do NOT think that means she has lost all emotion or feeling for Cooper, Aram OR Ressler, but as she explained to Townsend, “Reddington has an army on both sides of the law. I can’t do this alone. I need a partner.” She believes that the Task Force – all of them – are tied to Reddington in their own way, including Ressler, and she doesn’t expect them to violate those arrangements/principles for her. She’s moving outside the boundaries of those relationships to shed light on the secrets that she believes are being kept. Did she involve them this week?  Yes, but I think only because Townsend forced her hand on dealing with his sister. I doubt she would’ve sent her double to the Post Office otherwise. (I totally agree that the Post Office needs better security protocols btw – the idea that Liz can continually breach their defenses has become absolutely laughable at this point).

But, part of that is personal relationships.  She needed Ressler to give her the door codes and he did. Why? Not because he’s her patsy or her f--- boy or whatever derogatory term someone wants to slap on him (!), but because he loves her, flaws and all. The whole letting her go/letting him go thing has always had double meaning, back to S2. 

Cyranoid Liz: You should let me go. Ressler: Those days are over. Cyranoid Liz: Why? Nothing’s changed.

Has nothing changed? He let her go in S2 and then she shot Tom Connolly and he beat himself up over it. Then, the “I can’t let her go” (Ressler pointing the gun in S3 outside the Russian embassy), followed by that car chase and then Red in the next episode, Eli Matchett:

Red: Ressler is a law-enforcement robot. The FBI winds him up– Liz: That’s not true. He’s a person. He’s a good person. Red: Look at me. You need to let that go, Lizzy. I have survived for a very long time now, and I assure you, I didn’t do it by relying on the goodness in people.

I’d submit it has and it hasn’t. All these seasons later, she is once again having a hard time letting him go and so is he (with respect to her).

Ressler: Why’d you call? Liz: I don’t know. I guess– because every time we say goodbye, I’m afraid we might actually mean it.

Both with eyes open wider this time and yet, still wanting the peaceful night, free of all the distractions. 

Yes, he let Liz’s double go physically without much protest. Emotionally? He hasn’t let go of Liz. Not one bit. And Liz saw that, through her cyranoid. He’s still on her side. He still wants to believe in her, no matter what she’s putting him through (and poor Ressler, he’s really enduring a lot – though I hope the tide will turn on that at some point).  He had no reason to open that door, and yet – he did. He doesn’t want that one night to be just ONE night and deep down, I don’t think she does either.

“I won’t give up on you.” 

He hasn’t, yet. “But I still need to do my job, Keen.” She better not push him too far because the day he does is the day I worry. He’s desperate not to repeat the mistakes of the past, he’s desperate to trust her this time. Not because he’s thinking with his small man-part-brain, but with his HEART. He loves her. He’ll do anything he can for her within the limits of his conscience. They are each others’ second chance.

I don’t view Keenler or Ressler’s feelings for Liz or Liz’s manipulations of Ressler as fatal to the ship because I accept that this whole thing – Liz’s mission – is the battle for her soul  that the writers have teased for years . Which side will win? Hopefully the right one. The hopeful one. The one that makes second chances happen.

Cheers.

#keenler #anon #anons

[whogivesa-ship]

In the early days of this blog’s previous iteration, I had a very interesting conversation with a trans woman on the topic of genderbends. That post is now (sadly) lost to the Tumblr purge, but I remember her making some very good points, particularly that genderbends imply secondary sexual characteristics like breasts or the lack thereof are equal to gender. Recently I’ve seen more and more people claiming genderbends are transphobic and I think that topic is worth addressing again. So today let’s talk about genderbends and why I think they’re perfectly okay as a trans guy.

What is the purpose of genderbending?

The whole idea behind genderbending is kinda complicated. For some people, particularly women, it can be very cathartic to imagine your favorite characters going through the same gendered struggles you do. If a male character were female, would she have trouble being seen as competent? Not be taken seriously as an expert in her field or as a powerful fighter? Experience sexual harassment? If a female character were male, would he be mocked for taking on a typically female role? For other people, the idea boils down to hgnnnn girls sexy, which is fine too. Contrary to popular belief, horny people do have rights. I’ve also seen plenty of artists make genderbends to play with a character design they like. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that genderbends represent a lot more than cis straight guys on a quest to add tits to everything possible.

Do trans people really hate genderbends?

I’ve certainly seen individual trans people who are triggered by genderbends. However, trans people as a whole don’t unanimously hate genderbends. They’re actually really popular in some parts of the trans community. For example, the Bowsette trend? Largely fueled by trans women. Seriously, check out what r/traaaa has to say on the topic. Turns out a lot of trans people really like the escapist idea of being able to somehow magically transition and be conventionally attractive.

What about the enbies?

Another thing genderbends get accused of regularly is erasing nonbinary identities. They certainly do exist within the gender binary and don’t really address enbies. However, so does modern society in general. In my opinion, the solution isn’t to throw out genderbends entirely, it’s to increase the number of genderbends where binary characters are portrayed as nonbinary.

If not genderbends, then what?

So it’s clear that genderbends serve a specific purpose in a lot of cases. People should be allowed to create the art they want and if someone wants to imagine a character design if it were more feminine or masculine, or wants to see a favorite character deal with gendered problems, how can they express those ideas if genderbends are off the table? According to a lot of people, the answer is trans headcanons. However, those are policed even stricter in fandom and a lot of creators are scared to even touch them. The answer is creators just don’t get to explore ideas about gender in fan content. That’s not right. Fandom has historically been a place for marginalized people to tell stories the mainstream won’t listen to and that includes women and other marginalized genders.

Yes, but what about the breasts?

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that I haven’t really addressed the claim I brought up at the beginning. Do genderbends play into the idea that secondary sexual characteristics are inherent to a certain gender? The reason is because I think that’s correct. Yes, genderbends definitely do reflect our cisnormative society in a lot of ways, including the idea that breasts = female. However, I don’t think that makes them unacceptable to create. Genderbends may be questionable if perceived as a statement on trans issues, but that’s not what they’re intended as. They’re exploring issues of gender largely within cis society, which is a valid topic to discuss because it’s the society we’re all living in right now. People need to remember that cis women are an oppressed group too. They have a right to express their struggles through art just as much as trans people. While I’d love to see more examples of trans inclusive genderbend content, there’s nothing wrong with what we have now.

A Note on Terminology

The term genderbend isn’t universally accepted by any means. I use it because it’s the most common and in my opinion, pretty descriptive of the concept without being binary-normative. It’s actually meant to be more inclusive of enbies than the previous popular term genderswap. However, alternatives do exist including cisswap, rule 63, and presentation play. I’d recommend including genderbend as at least a tag, just so the content will be properly caught if people have the word blacklisted.

#genderbend #discourse #pro shipping #anti anti #anti purity culture

[golbatgender]

Triggers, tagging, and recovery

A mentality I’ve seen a lot on tumblr is “triggers are triggers forever and not tagging every last thing is ableist and bad!” This is a dangerous and incorrect understanding of why tagging/warning exists and how it works, and how triggers work, and has way too much potential to be co-opted for bad purposes.

Tagging for blacklisting helps people avoid specific things. It does not need to be done for xkit users for individual words if the word is already in the body text of the post. For example, if someone is blacklisting “bananas,” a text post or caption with the word “bananas” does not need to be tagged. An image of bananas or an image of the word “bananas” would be. Tagging with just the word “bananas” or blacklisting the word “bananas” is a much more sensible strategy than making up a euphemism for “bananas” and then forcing every other user on the site to use that new euphemism and acting like they’re un-progressive if they don’t want to call it “b fruit” just for you. The mobile app does require anything blacklisted to be tagged, but other than that, it’s the same.

Tagging triggers is not supposed to be forever for many things. If your trigger is a common word or object, or something hard to tag, or something so unusual you’d rarely see it anyway unless you’re following a blog dedicated to it, it is anti-recovery and an unreasonable demand on other people to try to have it blacklisted forever. In fact, complete avoidance can make the trigger worse. Instead, for recovery, which I define as “improving function to as good as it can reasonably get,” not “becoming completely normal,” you use the tagging to expose yourself to it in a controlled fashion--you see why a post is hidden, get a moment to brace yourself, and then you unhide it. You can also look at google image searches of it for controlled amounts of time, challenging yourself, to become desensitized to it, especially if it’s a less common thing. After a few months of this, you may still find the word/subject unpleasant but it likely won’t still be a major trigger. You might still prefer not to see it, but it won’t be a disaster if you do. This approach takes some work, but it’s usually worth it to not be triggered so easily.

It is polite to tag some really common or dangerous triggers, such as sexual assault or needles or self harm. Notice how these examples are either extremely common, major traumas, or paraphernalia or acts used to hurt oneself. HOWEVER, you can’t socially require people to do that, or to tag anything else. Acting like any kind of tagging is mandatory and not simply a courtesy has its own problems.

Some people can’t tag. Some people can only tag in limited ways. Tagging requires several extra steps, particularly on mobile, which also limits what posts one can tag. Tagging requires an identification of what needs to be tagged, and that is easier for objects (cats, dogs, snakes) and images than for more abstract concepts (abuse, violence, politics). Moreover, it’s at least partly an elimination of all things on an often very long list, not just a recognition of what’s there, if the tagging is for blacklisting primarily instead of organization. Not everyone is capable of making that kind of an identification on every single post they want to reblog. It’s ableist to act like everybody has to tag everything or they’re bad. It’s also ableist to act like everyone without a disclosed disability or mental illness has to tag--people aren’t required to disclose that to you. It’s also a boundary violation to act like you get to run their blog(s) for them. If someone won’t tag the way you prefer, just unfollow them, don’t bully them. Also, tagging extensively decreases one’s level of privacy; even if you make your blog unsearchable, tags can still be used to search your blog, and some users, particularly ones facing bullying, don’t want that.

Moreover, it’s really easy to co-opt mandatory extensive tagging for bad purposes. I’ve already shown how it can be used to falsely label people as ableist, or be used to violate boundaries. It’s also pretty common for people to act like entire groups of people are triggers, and try to force them to not only tag their own identities as triggers, but to try to force people to use a specific blacklist term that labels those identities as something inherently bad, instead of just blacklisting the identity itself. Because most people don’t understand how blacklist extensions work--it’s basically ctrl-F, it doesn’t only look at tags, it examines every user-visible text string in the page--it’s really easy for bad actors to bully people into tagging way more than they actually need to, sucking up their time and energy and coercing them into labeling themselves as something bad over and over again. If a well-intended social convention is so easily exploited for abuse, something is wrong with it.

I do support the availability of blacklist software and the provision of trigger warnings. However, individuals run blogs for themselves, so you can’t act entitled to warnings from all individual people without violating boundaries. I also believe that even institutions and outreach-focused blogs are only socially responsible for warning for major, common triggers, the same way food companies are only required to bold/list separately the top 8 most common food allergens, and anything beyond that is nice but not something you can fault them for not doing. Further, a blog or book or class or whatever should be free to do a blanket warning for its entirety, instead of individualized warnings for every post or piece of media, and not be faulted for that. Finally, it should be accepted that part of recovery is training yourself to be less triggered by things, and that in most cases someone who doesn’t tag or only partially tags is not attacking or not caring about survivors, that the blame for you being triggered ultimately falls on the person who hurt you, not the re-exposure; and that individuals have the responsibility to protect themselves and strangers don’t inherently owe that level of effort to you.

#text #triggers #tagging #ptsd #hot allostatic load #discourse #orig post

[purrincess-chat]

*deep breath*

Okay.

I’ve cleared out the rest of my inbox and responded to all of the asks I’m going to on the subject. Anything else was deleted, and also for the time being I have turned off anonymous asks. I apologize to those of you out there who are very sweet and shy who use anon for its intended purpose, and I hate to punish you in the name of a few people who decided to use it to harass me on my birthday, but just for the time being I will not be accepting anonymous asks. If you would like to not have your name attached to something or want to make a request for something without other people knowing then feel free to message me or include in your ask that you don’t want your name to be published and I will make a separate post. I promise I don’t bite, and I won’t judge you at all.

That all being said, I think we should have a conversation about opinions. As I said a dozen times on Friday, it’s perfectly okay to have a different opinion as long as you are respectful. I think that a lot of people nowadays are so quick to become offended when someone doesn’t think the way they do, and they don’t know how to engage in conversation with someone when they disagree. I’ve had some heated debates with friends before, but at the end, even though we still disagreed, we were able to put our differences aside and accept that we both feel differently about it. 

I’d like to remind everyone that we’re talking about a cartoon. It’s not about real life or politics or religion or any other type of hot debate topic. It’s children’s fiction. It really doesn’t matter if someone ships Chlonath or Alyanette or whatever. If those things aren’t your cup of tea, then just ignore them or if they really grind your gears, filter those tags or get an extension that blacklists them. It’s okay to not like something just so long as you aren’t harassing the people that do like that thing. The same applies the other way around too. If someone says on their own blog that they don’t really care about a character or a ship that you really wholeheartedly love, I promise it’s not an attack against you. You can still like something even if other people don’t, and instead of focusing on the people that don’t like something then maybe go out and find the people that do. Never once have I said that no one is allowed to like a certain character or ship just because I don’t. You may not see me reblog things about that particular ship, and maybe from time to time I will reblog or make a post talking about reasons why I don’t like that thing, but again, that doesn’t mean I’m telling you that you can’t like it. 

People are always going to have a different opinion. People are always going to have their reasons for those opinions, and in the case of harmless things like cartoons, it doesn’t really matter if someone likes x ship better than y. It doesn’t impact your daily life at all if some stranger on the internet doesn’t ship your ship, but you may impact their day if you choose to lash out at them. As many of you know, Friday was my birthday, and to receive such hostility on a day that I was just trying to enjoy with my friends and family was frustrating. It made me anxious and upset over something that, in reality, doesn’t even matter. I tried my best to remain as respectful to other people as possible, but it can be hard when people are constantly filling your inbox with rudeness and unkind words just because of the way you feel about digital people. The main point I kept trying to make in my replies was that it’s okay to disagree with me. I am perfectly okay if people disagree with something that I’ve said so long as they do it respectfully and don’t come at me aggressively. I often enjoy conversations with people who see things differently because you can always learn something about that person or about the thing you are discussing, and it can make you see things in a different light sometimes.

 I know that’s asking a lot of tumblr to respect other people’s opinions about a cartoon, but I pinky promise you that your life will be so much better if you learn how to not antagonize people over silly things like ships. If you really feel like you can’t converse calmly with someone, then just ignore their opinions or block them or do whatever you need to do. Curate your own experience. If you choose to seek out things you disagree with or don’t enjoy and tear others down then your fandom experience will always be a negative one, but if you choose to keep scrolling and instead engage the people who like the same things you do then you will find your experience to be much more pleasant. And even sometimes in those groups people will have a different opinion once in a while, but you have to understand that just because someone does or doesn’t like something you do or don’t, it’s not a personal attack against you. Just be respectful of other people’s opinions, and if they aren’t respectful of yours then there’s a block button for a reason. Sending someone anonymous hate will never convince them of your side, in fact it might even drive them farther away from it because they’ll learn to associate that thing with the way you made them feel. 

All that being said, I appreciate those of you who offered your mature opinions in a respectful way to me. If you enjoy something then great, enjoy that thing as much as you want, and you are welcome to come here and celebrate the things that we enjoy together. I always do my best not to tag any type of complaining that I do about ships if I do it at all, and I hope that you all understand that if I’m complaining about something it’s not in any way me saying that you should feel bad for enjoying that thing. My opinions are based on my experiences and my thoughts and the way that thing makes me feel, and sometimes I can’t change that. I always try my best to give most things the benefit of the doubt, and who knows? Maybe one day down the road something will happen in canon that changes the way I see that thing, but until then screaming at me about how wrong I am just for feeling is only going to do more harm than good, and the same applies to everyone. So my plea to all of you is that you will seek out the things you enjoy rather than the things you don’t and to allow people that same opportunity. 

#cat speaks #real talk #miraculous ladybug

[robininthelabyrinth]

Oh wow, you seem to have lured the Rip stans out to play again. It seems to be a rare talent of yours. Though I do wonder why they don't just block you - no more chance of accidentally coming across your apparently terrible fic, no more stress. Or - you know - do like the rest of us adults and ignore the posts in our favourite character's and fandom tags that doesn't actually appeal.

You know what? This got me thinking. What is the purpose here?

Their request: for me to stop tagging my fic (which features Rip Hunter in a positive, in-depth way) with the tag Rip Hunter.

The result: my fic will not appear in the Rip Hunter tag, where they will presumably not see it.

But, as you mention, they have the ability to blacklist me, blacklist my fic (it’s always tagged “deadfic”, which is a pretty rare tag - they could easily blacklist just that and they wouldn’t see the updates at all), scroll past, whatever.

So therefore the goal cannot be simply that they don’t want to see the fic itself. They have the power to do that for themselves. So what is the real goal?

The real goal of this request is therefore either:

A: to privatize a portion of the public forum of tumblr so that it will be an easy shortcut for them to see only the fic they want - a private website for them and their friends where they can set themselves up as moderators without doing any of the actual work of moderating or managing the site. However, if they just wanted a private tag, they could use “Rip Hunter stans” or something like that - that way they’d get their shortcut to what is purely them&theirfriends without bothering anyone.

Thus, the goal is more likely:

B: To make sure nobody else gets a chance to be exposed to the fic. No casual Rip Hunter fans checking the tag, no one new to the fandom, nobody at all. The goal is to police the consumption of people who are not them, because they could control their own content if they really wanted to (or even just act like adults and scroll past, ignoring it, if they really didn’t want to use the blacklist function).

This is a deliberate attempt to destroy the beneficial purpose of tagging (both to guide people who want to see something, or to block it) for no other reason than that they see themselves as authorities over all Rip Hunter-related content for some indiscernible reason.

I find both motives absolutely appalling on a moral level.

Therefore, @kalinara, while I am normally inclined to grant polite request on the levels of tagging, I’m afraid in this instance I will have to reject the request for at least the next chapter or so, which is pretty heavy on the Rip Hunter character development - and, therefore, chapters for whom Rip Hunter fans (mind you, Rip Hunter fans which are not you and your friends, who I urge again to blacklist the phrase “deadfic” in order to avoid the updates completely) are in fact the intended audience.

Once Rip’s current character arc is complete (again, in another chapter or so - probably less than a week, all told), I will resume putting him last, as per your request.  I’m sure that you can manage to ignore someone disagreeing with you for the course of a single week, particularly in view of the fact that the show has re-started and you have, I’m certain, other things to keep you busy.

This is my final decision along these lines. Please do not contact me with further requests or arguments.

Everyone else, thank you for your support, but please don’t feel the need to continue fighting over this. We also have better things to do :)

[sage-nebula]

Regarding what you'd said about Seven regarding Yoosung as a younger brother...what are your opinions about Seven sending him love-letters and pretty girl cosplay pictures of himself? Do you see a possible chemistry based on this precious nugget of information we'd obtained in the Christmas DLC?

Absolutely not. In fact, Saeyoung/Yoosung is the only ship (outside of the obvious incest / abusive ones) in the game I’d call a NOTP, to the point where I have it blacklisted six ways from Sunday because no one in this fandom knows how to tag anything coherently.

First of all, what people need to understand is this: When Saeyoung sends “love letters” and cosplay photos of himself to Yoosung, he’s doing that to troll. He’s trolling Yoosung. Teasing him. Trying to get a rise out of him. Agitating him because it’s funny. Low-key bullying him. Whatever you want to call it, he’s not doing it because he’s serious. He’s not doing it because he has any actual interest in or attraction to Yoosung. We know this because of how Yoosung reacts; I’m not going to play through the Christmas DLC right now to get the receipts (though if I really have to I will), but in the text messages where Yoosung tells MC that Saeyoung does this, he expresses annoyance over it. Whenever Saeyoung doing things like this is brought up in chat rooms, Yoosung gets aggravated. And Saeyoung knows this. Saeyoung knows that it bothers Yoosung. He knows that sending Yoosung fake confessions for the express purpose of getting Yoosung’s hopes up for a minute before they come crashing down is upsetting (because Yoosung desperately wants a girlfriend, he really wants a girl to be interested in him, so he’d get excited about that happening for a split second before he realizes it’s just Saeyoung trolling him again). And Yoosung growing upset and snapping back is funny to Saeyoung. So he does it on purpose, to get a laugh, particularly since it fits with the 707 persona that he wears for the RFA members. It’s not serious, and it’s not romantic; it’s antagonistic.

Moreover, we know it’s not serious because we know how Saeyoung acts when he’s actually, seriously interested in someone. To begin with, he doesn’t rile them up for fun; when he develops feelings for MC, he tries to make her laugh with jokes that they both share, rather than ones that are at her expense. Any time she expresses disapproval over something he has done (such as when he calls Jaehee a spinster in one chat, and MC tells him that it’s not nice to talk to women like that), he acts chastised for a moment before he backs down and gets serious. He makes gifts for the person he’s interested in, and what’s notable about his gifts is that they’re always as functional as they are aesthetically pleasing. The dog robot was for protection. The cat robot was for emotional support. The mouse clock is, well, an alarm clock. The taser is … a taser. And the Saeyoung Doll was, again, for emotional support and comfort. These are thoughtful, personal gifts, and while it’s not out of the question for Saeyoung to make a thoughtful that for someone he’s not interested in (see: the Tripter bot he made for Zen, which he himself brings up when confronted about the puppy robot), these are gifts that he actually gives to the intended, and moreover, they’re more proactive than something like the Tripter bot. The Tripter bot can run without Zen ever knowing it exists. All of the other gifts, if they’re to actually be used, would have to be given to the recipient. Those are the kinds of gifts that Saeyoung makes and gives to someone he has feelings for, not photos of himself cosplaying that he knows will aggravate and annoy the recipient.

Moreover, we know that Saeyoung is not one to actually pursue a romantic interest without an extremely specific set of circumstances (read: the events that lead to him having hope about actually being able to leave the agency and potentially, possibly lead a better life) occurring. This is because he feels (with good reason) that his life is too dangerous, and that anyone who gets involved with him is inevitably going to end up hurt or killed. As a result, even if Saeyoung develops romantic feelings for someone, he denies them and pushes the person away. We see this happen on his route; he develops feelings for MC by Day 5, yet when it’s brought up (by Yoosung, no less!), Saeyoung denies it and insists that he and MC were just playing around. When he arrives at the apartment, he tells her immediately that he has no interest in pursuing any kind of relationship with her. With that in mind, it’s absurd to think that any love letters that Saeyoung sends to Yoosung are genuine. Saeyoung would never do that. If he did have feelings for Yoosung (which he does not), he would actively stomp on any suggestion of romance between them, just as he does when Yoosung suggests there’s romance between himself and MC. He would put intentional distance between them. He would deny and, if need-be, act extremely cold toward Yoosung for a while to make sure that possibility was well and truly dead. Believing that the love letters and cosplay photos are meant to be genuine symbols of interest and attraction from Saeyoung is ignoring this aspect of his character in favor of a ship (as well as, again, ignoring how it genuinely irritates and aggravates Yoosung).

Anyway, all that aside, I honestly don’t feel that Saeyoung could or would ever be attracted to someone like Yoosung. It is possible to get a bit of dialogue from him on his route (during the apartment days) wherein he compares MC to Yoosung, but he does so as an insult:

MC: “Why are you protecting me if you’re going to leave soon … ? You can just leave right now.”

SAEYOUNG: “How are you going to stay safe on your own? Are you even thinking right now? It’s all my fault that you’re in this situation. Don’t think about me, just think about protecting yourself!”

MC: “I can protect myself, so don’t worry~ I’m pretty strong.”

SAEYOUNG: “You’re underestimating your opponents. You’ll really be in danger with that attitude. You’re so similar with Yoosung. You don’t have a care in the world regardless of what’s going on.”

This isn’t a situation of, “oh, MC is similar to Yoosung, therefore if Saeyoung likes MC, he likes Yoosung!” This is a situation of, “MC is behaving similarly to Yoosung in a way that is pissing Saeyoung off because she’s being naive, ignorant, and foolhardy, just like Yoosung. Saeyoung has never had the luxury of a carefree life. He has pretended that he has had that luxury, when putting up the facade of 707, but in actuality he never has. He never had a childhood. He didn’t really have an adolescence. While Yoosung was worrying over acne and getting a girlfriend, Saeyoung was running life-threatening missions for the agency. While Yoosung was loudly complaining and grousing because his mother wanted him to make soap, or his father wanted him to put more effort into his college applications, Saeyoung was waking from nightmares about his mother beating the shit out of him and Saeran and starving them both, and remembering how his father kept sending men after them to kidnap and murder them. And that’s not Yoosung’s fault, Yoosung can’t help that, but the two have led such different lives and are on such different levels of maturity as a result of it that I just can’t see Saeyoung ever seeing Yoosung as someone he’s romantically interested in. He wants to protect Yoosung, in the sense that Yoosung has innocence and naivete and that’s something that Saeyoung thinks that he deserves to have (mostly—there are times when it does get on Saeyoung’s nerves, see above), and he likes him as a friend; but Yoosung’s tendency to whine, his ungrateful attitude toward his loving family, his tendency to act like the entire world is ending over minor inconveniences … these are things that annoy Saeyoung, and things that he looks down upon, which we see in the way he condescends toward Yoosung on more than one occasion. Saeyoung would do anything to have parents that would love and look after him (and Saeran) the way that Yoosung’s parents have loved and looked after him. Yet all Yoosung can do is bitch and moan about them because they don’t hate the same people he does, or because they make him stop playing LOLOL for a few hours. Saeyoung doesn’t express it, because he’s one to keep more negative thoughts to himself, but having been in his shoes, yeah, that has got to piss him off.

And while I’m sure there are some who would point out the fact that Saeyoung trusts Yoosung enough to bring him along to Magenta in Jumin’s Route, consider the fact that Cheritz was—for whatever godforsaken reason—clearly wanting to hide Vanderwood’s true identity until Saeyoung’s Route, thus, from a writing standpoint, Saeyoung couldn’t ask Vanderwood even though it would have made vastly more sense. Consider the fact that he didn’t tell Yoosung all the details, that he deliberately kept Yoosung in the dark, that he was very clearly only bringing Yoosung along as an extra pair of eyes. He doesn’t treat Yoosung like an equal in that sequence; he treats him like someone he’s using because he can’t really ask this of anyone else because no one else is available. Consider how Saeyoung never brings Yoosung along in other situations. In Saeyoung’s Route, Yoosung not-so-sneakily tells Saeyoung to leave Magenta’s address in the chat, and Saeyoung refuses because he knows what Yoosung is up to. In V’s Route, Yoosung demands to go along, and Saeyoung lies about having a car that only has two seats, and so on and so forth. He’s not really treating Yoosung like a capable equal in these instances even though they’re only a year apart in age. He’s treating him like a kid brother. He wants to keep him out of danger, but he knows that he has to use him at times, and still at other times he tells an obvious lie to get the kid to stop whining and go somewhere else. None of this is very romantic, but it makes sense considering the fact that, again, they’ve lived different lives and Saeyoung is quite a bit more mature than Yoosung is. Yoosung still acts like a child, whereas Saeyoung acts like an adult. A young adult, sure, when he’s masquerading as 707, but an adult all the same.

And honestly, it’s a two-way street. Yoosung wouldn’t be into this relationship, either. Yoosung is constantly complaining about people treating him with kid gloves (in other words: he’s mad about being treated like a child and so he throws a tantrum about it … like a child), and that’s precisely what Saeyoung does. Saeyoung doesn’t even do it on purpose, necessarily; it’s just that the maturity gap is there and Saeyoung responds accordingly. This would wear on Yoosung’s nerves. This isn’t even getting into how Saeyoung, due to a lifetime of having to rely mostly on himself, tends to make decisions and do things that he thinks are best without necessarily consulting others. This, too, would piss Yoosung off, particularly since Saeyoung would be making a lot of independent decisions because he sees Yoosung as someone less adept at handling serious situations than he is. Even if they fought about it, with the way Saeyoung is, his answer would be, “I know more than you, so this is how we’re doing things,” and it’s not something that either of them would likely budge on, which would lead to the relationship falling apart. This isn’t even getting into how Yoosung feels that he’s closest to Saeyoung based on Saeyoung’s 707 persona that he wears for the RFA, rather than because of who Saeyoung actually is deep down (which isn’t the angry and cold person that we see during the apartment days, no, but is still more serious, contemplative, and vigilant, among other qualities). Yoosung doesn’t actually know Saeyoung, and I don’t think he’d be well-equipped to deal with the more … difficult parts of who Saeyoung is (namely, his various mental illnesses). We see this by how poorly he handles Rika.

And to that end, pretty much all of the fan content I’ve unfortunately stumbled across for this ship portrays Saeyoung as 707 rather than as, you know, Saeyoung. Granted, most of the fan content for Saeyoung period portrays him as 707 rather than as Saeyoung, but that’s a different discussion. The point is, the only way you can make this ship work, imo, is if you water Saeyoung down into just his 707 persona, and then fool yourself into believing that he wasn’t deliberately antagonizing Yoosung to get a hilarious rise out of him with things like the love letters and cosplay (and if you then fool yourself into believing Yoosung actually liked receiving those things, when he didn’t). Otherwise, it doesn’t work. And given how much I hate it when Saeyoung is reduced to being nothing more than 707, yeah, I’m really not a fan of anything I’ve ever seen for this ship.

So all in all, I can’t ever see it working, and I really, really don’t like it. (Especially because, as I mentioned in that other post, Yoosung is so self-centered and, truthfully, doesn’t even really seem to care about Saeyoung as much as he cares about Saeyoung in relation to himself. He was willing to lose their friendship so long as Saeyoung let him blame V for it, and he made sure Saeyoung was still mad at V when he forgave him, and in Another Story he was fully willing to cut ties with and toss Saeyoung under the bus if it meant siding with Rika, so on and so forth. They’re friends, sure, but that friendship comes with conditionals, and Yoosung is too self-centered for me to ever want him anywhere near a romantic relationship with Saeyoung. Saeyoung is selfless; he deserves someone who is just as selfless as he is, and Yoosung is not that person.) I don’t see any chemistry there at all, and tbh the fact that this is a juggernaut ship in the fandom is just … unfortunate, imo.

(And as a final note, no, this isn’t just because I ship Saeyoung with MC, particularly since I don’t even ship him with canon MC so much as I ship him with an MC that I characterize far, far differently. This is because I legitimately just do not like this relationship, and in all honesty … people are blind, because if there is any member of the RFA apart from MC that Saeyoung feasibly could have a crush on, it’s Jumin, not Yoosung. He antagonizes Jumin at times as well, but:

At least in Deep Story, he antagonizes Jumin less than he does the others.

He actively shows interest in Jumin’s ideas and wants to help with the cat businesses.

They have similar interest (cats and video games; Saeyoung mentions that Jumin has both a GrayStation (Playstation) and a ZetBox (Xbox) at his penthouse meaning that, yes, he plays video games, why is this never talked about).

They’re on about equal levels of maturity despite their age difference due to their shared experiences.

He actually actively goes to Jumin for advice when things are difficult for him during his route (before the apartment days), whereas he doesn’t do that with the others.

He always immediately calls on Jumin for aid and trusts him to be able to help.

In the April Fool’s Day DLC, Jumin is the one he’s actively and almost aggressively flirting with / shooting innuendos at. The April Fool’s Day DLC is a just for funsies one that isn’t meant to be taken seriously, so it could be said that perhaps this is Saeyoung flirting without any of the baggage that normally comes associated with it. (Since after all, he’s … he’s cardboard in that DLC.)

He knows that Jumin would never, ever return his interest, therefore it’s safe for him to think about any potential crush he has on Jumin / safe for him to flirt. He’d actually allow himself those feelings because he knows there’s no danger in it.

I’m not saying that he does have a crush on Jumin, but I am saying that it makes far more sense for him to—that there’s more there—than there is with him and Yoosung. It’s entirely one-sided and I can’t see Jumin ever reciprocating, but Saeyoung having a crush on Jumin feels way more real to me than him having a crush on Yoosung, no matter which way you slice it. So no, it’s not a ~oh no I don’t want him shipped with others~ situation, it’s a “I specifically do not like pairing him with Yoosung” situation. Just so we’re clear on that.)

#the-rfa-squad #// #/// #//// #///// #mystic messenger #god seven #choi saeyoung #kim yoosung #meta

[getoffthesoapbox]

[VKM Spec] Slogging Through VKM 11

Whelp, VKM 11 has arrived and it was...underwhelming, to say the least. There are a few tidbits of interest which I’ll be covering below. If you’re looking for indepth analyses on the parallels and intricacies of Haruka and Juri and Kaien please check out @soulisthirsty​‘s post which covers the specifics of that trio in more depth. 

I despise all levels of the Kuran incest family shenanigans and prefer to spend as little time analyzing them as possible to keep my blood pressure down. ;) Ancient obasans have to watch out for these things, you know!

In the meantime, for anyone who hasn’t read the translations or seen the spoilers, please check them out on @alldempretties​‘s blog before proceeding to read below. =)

This post has been tagged anti cross kaien and anti ky for anyone who would like to blacklist it from the tags. Fair warning: I won’t be using any visuals because this chapter isn’t up to snuff panel-wise. Hino got a bit lazy with this one. 

On Present Kaien - Melodrama Ridiculous

Why Hino decided to dedicate a full 40 pages to Kaien is...quite beyond my ken. Regardless, here we are. 

As many perhaps are aware, Kaien is one of my most detested characters, and this chapter does little to fix this. He’s no better than the noble vampires, running around worshipping his purebloods at the expense of common sense. But we’ll get to that in a minute. For now I’d like to focus on the present and how ridiculous this whole set up is.

Hino makes a big hairy deal about Kaien’s reaction to the doctor’s news (the doctor is absolutely preposterous and unprofessional), and then she drags out Kaien’s long memory sequence about his loved ones. A larger deal is made out of Kaien’s “illness” than Yori’s funeral! Sometimes Hino’s lack of common sense is stunning.

Kaien plays up his illness in order to manipulate Yuuki into giving him a whole host of things she wouldn’t ordinarily give him. Dates to the park with Ai (I noticed Kaien didn’t invite Zero to these), old massage coupons, photo album sorting, great screenings with everyone important assembled. For a guy who’s dying, he sure has a lot of unfinished business. 

It’s hard to know if Hino actually intends to kill him off or if this whole scenario was created in order to give Yuuki a reason to be sorting photos and creating this screening for Kaien. Zero seems to be under the impression that it’s much ado about nothing, which I’m inclined to agree with, much as it pains me. 

I find it interesting that Kaien still calls Zero “Kiryuu-kun” while he calls Yuuki “Yuuki” and Kaname “Kaname-kun.” It’s clear he’s still on the pro-Kaname boat and the anti-Zero boat as far as Yuuki is concerned, as is fitting for his Kuran-obsessed character. He’s always placed Kaname and Yuuki above Zero, even though Zero was entrusted to his care. 

Sadly, I doubt he’ll be dying anytime soon. I was really hoping to get rid of one of the detestable characters, but no, Hino only commits to killing off the decent ones. Thanks for spoiling my fun, Zero. ;)

On Past Kaien - A Long Life with Little to Show for It

My current theory on why Hino insisted on rehashing old exposition of Kaien’s past (Kaien takes photos, Juri wields anti-vampire weapons, Kaien was friends with Haruka and Juri, Kaien started the school for Juri, Kaien was in love with Juri) is to remind the readers of all these things that occurred over the course of the original series. If I don’t think of it this way, I’ll want to tear my hair out over having to reread the same old information again.

Regardless, we do clarify a few things. Kaien gets inspired by Isaya to take photos. Isaya’s words about capturing happy times of your loved ones are probably meant to echo into the future to Zero and Yuuki during their happy times (and to reflect upon the present as an unhappy time despite appearances). 

We also find out that Kaien’s become exhausted with his illustrious career as the Ten Thousand Slayer. He’s more like a pureblood than a human, and his comrades begin to pull away from him thanks to that. Kaien also begins to sympathize more with the purebloods than he does with the hunters. 

The academy is an idea he cooked up to help create a better world for Juri. Unfortunately it isn’t something she can take advantage of--she’s an adult woman who finished her school days long ago. But the focus is on the idea of a bright future and her encouragement of his plan.

It’s interesting that he admits the results weren’t all that great, even though he did manage to plant a bit of a seed toward that future. His academy was an abysmal failure and his methods brought no peace at all, but he did provide the environment for the next generation to begin building on the ruins of what he’d attempted. It will not be his generation who saves the future, but Zero’s, Aidou’s, and Yuuki’s. Out with the old, in with the new. 

Though his accomplishments are meager, he seems content with them, and that’s probably as good as he deserves. 

On Kaien vs. Kaname Anti-Mirrors - Interference vs. Acceptance

A few interesting similarities between Kaien and Kaname cropped up this chapter. The similarities weren’t too intense, but they were there.

Kaien, like Kaname, began to see life as dull and gray and ashen. He, like Kaname, wanted to do away with himself. Like Kaname, he was saved by the bright personality of a Kuran woman. 

However, the two men differ in a very significant way which the chapter highlights. Kaien watched Haruka and Juri, and although he wished for Juri’s love, instead of choosing to interfere between them, he chose to search for a way he could help both of them be happy and free them of their burdens.

Kaname, on the other hand, watched Zero and Yuuki together and tried to take what Yuuki gave freely to Zero for himself. He interfered with Zero and Yuuki’s natural trajectory and did everything in his power to derail it from its inevitable course. He chose to add to their suffering, and even in his final moments he wasn’t able to truly free either of them. Kaname is in this sense much closer to Rido than to Kaien, despite him and Kaien having similar beginnings.

On Kaien vs. Zero Anti-Mirrors - The Failed Savior vs. The Vampire Knight

Now this was an incredibly pleasant surprise! For a chapter with so little substance, to find this nugget was a real pleasure.

Throughout the chapter, Hino places small hints that Kaien’s and Zero’s trajectories are meant to be compared. They’re not parallel trajectories because Zero corrects Kaien’s mistakes and is meant to succeed where Kaien failed.

In the chapter, it’s made clear that Kaien falls under the spell of the pureblood lifestyle and forgets himself. He loses touch with what’s important to the hunters, and loses their confidence. They grow distant from him and no longer connect with him. 

Then we switch to the present and we see the exact opposite going on with Zero. Zero has not forgotten who he is and what he stands for--although he tolerates and accepts vampires, he is still first and foremost focused on the good of humanity. His hunters respect him and joke with him--a sign of a good superior is when subordinates feel they can tease them. Although Zero himself is a vampire and is dating a pureblood, his subordinates are not suspicious of where his loyalties lie, unlike Kaien. Zero is a healthier person than Kaien, in spite of all his losses in life, and this more grounded nature of his enables him to succeed within both the hunter and vampire circles.

Moreover, in the past Kaien has a significant scene where he watches Haruka and Juri and compares them to birds drenched in the rain who have lost something important. His heart goes out to them, and he recognizes in them the same loneliness he has in himself. He decides he wants to save them from their burdens. Unfortunately, Kaien fails because Haruka and Juri die long before his academy can bear any fruit. His purpose and meaning and the people he wanted to save vanish at the same time, leaving him unable to save anyone. Hino highlights this with the color spread--Kaien is outside the deep dark forest, trying to reach in to his friends. They both look at him, but ultimately cannot join him. 

This was such a great find for me, because it implies that Zero will succeed where Kaname failed. I’ve reiterated several times that I believe Zero failed as the Vampire Knight in the original series. He was meant to save his birds who forgot the song of happiness--Kaname and Yuuki. But he failed thanks to not recognizing his duty soon enough and to Yuuki’s memory wipe. As such, his burden to save the two of them has been shifted to VKM. Unlike Kaien, though, Zero wants to make a better world for Ai, not just Yuuki. Zero is working for the future deliberately, not for the present. This is a completely different perspective than Kaien’s, and it will allow Zero to flourish and to achieve his goals where Kaien couldn’t. 

I firmly believe by the end of the story Zero will succeed where Kaien failed and save not only Yuuki and the world at large but also Kaname. Zero is the seed Kaien planted without knowing it, and the one who--through assisting with the cure, encouraging cooperation between the vampires and hunters, never forgetting himself or his duty, making the world a better place for Ai, and leaving his fragment to help Yuuki with Kaname--will bring forth the “bright future” Juri wished for her daughter and shine a light on the deep dark forest at last. Only Zero can do this, and I have faith in him to take on the responsibility at last!

On Haruka & Juri - The Birds Whose Happiness Went Extinct

I won’t dwell on the parallels between Haruka/Juri and the pairings. I’m honestly in the camp that believes the real Haruka and Juri were more akin to Kaname and Yuuki, and that the idealized Haruka and Juri that Yuuki wished for are what’s akin to Zero and Yuuki. But I really have no stake in the game, so whatever floats people’s boats.

However, there are some callbacks and interesting points I’d like to explore with these two.

For one, there’s a lot of emphasis placed on how purebloods lose their ability to find happiness as they age and as the duties placed on them increase. Honestly, I’m of the opinion that this is thanks to purebloods refusing to accept their duties and constantly running away from their responsibilities, but Hino wants us to pity them, so pity them we shall by god. I’ve never in my life felt bad for her purebloods--they’re all rich, wealthy, and beautiful. They all create their own destruction because they’re selfish beings who don’t know how to do good in the world. Honestly, a great majority of their suffering is of their own making. 

Regardless, Hino uses Haruka and Juri to remind us of a couple of callbacks to Kaname and Yuuki. On the cover page of the chapter, she’s placed Haruka and Juri deep within the gnarled trees of the deep dark forest. Haruka and Juri, like Kaname and Yuuki after them, fell into the deep dark forest. Further, Haruka and Juri are compared to drenched birds clinging to each other in the rain, an image very similar to the “birds who have forgotten the song of happiness” Hino used for Kaname and Yuuki back in Night 91′s title. She goes further with Haruka and Juri to indicate that something has gone extinct within them--likely the love of life and the appreciation of its possibilities.

This all hints that Haruka and Juri’s “happiness” is the facade of two lonely people whose love isn’t enough to overcome their long lives and their responsibilities. My personal opinion has always been that this is because Juri doesn’t actually love Haruka--he was just the best of two bad options. After centuries together, she grew fond enough of him that he helps ease her loneliness, but I doubt he was her true love. (I don’t think any of her options were her true love, but that’s beside the point.)

I also found it interesting that Haruka and Juri do not seem to be placing Kaname’s happiness as a priority. Instead all their focus is on Yuuki. This places an extra meta burden on Yuuki as a character--she now has to find happiness not only for herself, but for her parents as well. She is their hope, and they died for that hope. It’s now even more imperative that she find her happiness with the man she chose--Zero. Baby steps!

What I find interesting is that Haruka and Juri’s wish for Yuuki led her directly to Zero, not Kaname. Their method for helping her find happiness delivered her right to just the right man for her. That cannot be a coincidence.

Interestingly, Kaien seems to have tried to subvert the true wish of Haruka and Juri--for Yuuki to find her own happiness--by trying to substitute Kaname and Yuuki for Haruka and Juri in his life. This may explain why he pushed Yuuki to Kaname and supported their reunions at the expense of Yuuki’s mental health and wellbeing and even preferences. It also explains why he wasn’t too keen on Zero and Yuuki as a couple. Kaien was invested in seeing Yuuki and Kaname find the happiness Haruka and Juri weren’t able to, but that wasn’t what Haruka and Juri wished for Yuuki. They wanted her to find a happiness and a bright future that could only be had within Kaien’s academy. A future with Kaname was not that future--a future with Kaname would have ended up the same way Haruka’s and Juri’s did. They didn’t wish a pureblood life of misery upon their daughter--they wished a life of light and joy. 

On Ichiou - Evil or Misunderstood?

Poor Ichiou. Hino wants us to hate him so badly she makes Haruka act all hostile to him, but the guy really doesn’t do anything bad this chapter. All he does is remind Haruka of the duties he’s shirking in order to play with Juri at things he shouldn’t be doing. I honestly feel for Ichiou; can you imagine how many unruly purebloods he has to deal with all the darn time? It’s no wonder he gets power hungry later--his job’s thankless!

I’m not the type to hate characters just because other characters hate them. I usually get suspicious when characters are painted as too over-the-top evil. No one is entirely evil. Ichiou probably got just tired of the purebloods and their childish ways and wanted at least a little something for his trouble. Bless the poor man. 

On the Screening - What the Future Holds

I suspect Kaien’s going to die before they can host the screening in his lifetime. I think that’s going to be something Yuuki picks up throughout the 900 years of her life, and she’ll add photos of everyone--including her happy life with Zero, Ai, and Ren. Likely Kaname will be the one who gets to watch this compilation of all his loved ones’ lives, maybe toward the end of the story after he’s come to terms with all he lost and never had and is ready to heal and move forward. 

Since Isaya mentioned that it’s good to have photos of your loved ones from happy times, this is an indicator that we’ll be getting a significant portion of our photos from the Zero/Ren/Ai days. It also implies that we’re not in the happy times yet, because no one’s been taking photos. (This also ties back to the very first cover from VKM 1, which was a huge stack of photos from the past.)

It would also be nice if we did get to have that amusement park date with Kaien, only Zero goes along and Kaien finally admits to himself that he was wrong to push Yuuki with Kaname--that she’d already found the perfect person for her. =P It’d be nice to see him recognize that Zero is the one who brings the joy out in Yuuki the way Haruka brought it out in Juri, since Kaien can’t seem to attach to anyone unless they remind him of Haruka and Juri. *sigh*

On Zero & Yuuki - The Return of the Public Masks

The time lapse between VKM 10 and 11 appears to be about a week or two. We have no idea what went down during that time, but clearly Zero and Yuuki haven’t broken up and are still together.

This chapter has some striking similarities to Night 50 from the original series. In that chapter, after the small 6-month time skip, we skipped ahead another 6 months to see Yuuki, Aidou, Kaname, and Aidou’s father have a small meeting. Yuuki and Kaname are pleasant to each other, showing none of the difficulties they have behind closed doors. Zero and Yuuki in VKM 11 remind me of that, though in a healthier way (Zero’s not encouraging Yuuki to kiss him or put on a show of affection for the guests). 

Still, I think it’s fairly clear that Zero and Yuuki in this chapter are in “public mode.” They’ve just gone around announcing to the world that they’re dating, so they need to keep up appearances, regardless of how things may or may not be proceeding behind closed doors. 

The preview for August’s chapter indicates there’s trouble in paradise as expected. Zero and Yuuki are good at hiding their true feelings in public, but this also may be a case where their genuine concern for Kaien makes them both “forget” their problems temporarily and allows their relationship to return to its natural flow when they’re not putting their issues in the foreground. 

Either way, it was truly a treasure to see them bickering cutely and acting like an old married couple. Zero chewing out his hunter boys was adorable too. It was a nice break from the storm that’s sure to come this way soon.

On Aidou - The Rising Winds

Hino makes sure to remind us at the tail end of the chapter that trouble is on the horizon. 

We now know Aidou hasn’t had a chance to test his Kaien theory yet. Whether he’ll get to or not remains a mystery, but next chapter’s preview implies Zero’s going to get involved in the research soon. All is proceeding according to plan for the Zero/Ren cure theories. ;D

Hino ending the chapter on a sad note is to prep us, I think, for what’s to come. Aidou’s going to be throwing himself into work, and likely Zero will be joining him as Yuuki finds more and more excuses to escape the demands of the relationship through the photo sorting for Kaien. 

It would be incredibly nice for Aidou to unload on Zero all the complaints us Zeki critics have with Zero and Yuuki’s progress. ;) If Aidou did that, I think I at least would feel much better about where Zero and Yuuki are currently as a couple. When the narrative faces the problems squarely, it’s easier to sit back and just enjoy the ride. 

It would be nice if next chapter could take us back into the future with Kaname. I’m still waiting to find out if my Zero fragment theory is even remotely possible, lol. Guess I have no choice but to keep waiting. In the meantime, full speed ahead with the Zero/Ren cures! Until next time!

#vampire knight #vampire knight memories #vkm spec #vkm speculation #zeki #anti cross kaien #anti ky #vkm chapter review

[progeny-of-the-fury]

Reconvene: Law’s Resolution 

Log date: 9/9/17

OOC Note: The text in these logs are strictly for the readers enjoyment. Anyone using the knowledge displayed within this text without the participants knowledge risks the potential of blacklisting from future communication and roleplay. Please do not meta-game!

Tags: @lightsinshadows

To fight or not to fight; is that the question? No. The question is not whether to fight. Such is clear as day. We must fight, there is no other answer. The question is rather: What do you fight for?

Lawrence Wallace >> Static gives way to a few testing signals, the sure sign of someone who's hardly ever used a linkpearl before. "Hello? Hello?"

Adelise De’bayle>> "This is Adelise, how can I help you," a monotonous voice rings out from within the distortion after a few short seconds.

Lawrence Wallace>> "OH Adelise, right." he clears his throat, caught off-guard at the response. "I. I've been considering what you said earlier. About. Everything, really. I want to talk more."

Adelise De’bayle>> "I take it this is Mister Wallace. I am glad to hear you took our conversation to heart," she replied flatly, her tone never expressing any rise in emotion. "I am certainly available to speak more if you wished to come to my House's estate. It is stationed in the Lavender Beds. First ward, fifth plot."

Lawrence Wallace >> "Law."

Adelise De’bayle>>: "Right..." she murmured back, "any how. Speak to the front desk and let them know you are here to see me if you decide to come. They will direct you toward my chambers."

Lawrence Wallace >> "Right, right. First Ward. Fifth plot." as the pearl cut out he could be heard mumbling it to himself a few more times.

Lawrence Wallace pushes the door openly slowly, peeking his head in to be sure he got the right room. Dark, menacing, intimidating woman in a chair. Sounds right. "Uh...thank you for inviting me. I'm not sure what...what I want to talk about really, but."

Adelise De'bayle glances up from whatever documents she was scribbling away at, narrow crimson stare moving toward the Elezen as he entered. "Such a change in tone. Lose your will on the way here?" she asked out, left hand mounting her quill for the time being as she offered him her attention. "I do not imagine you came here to simply stand, so do tell what is on your mind."

Lawrence Wallace looks to the pile of books to his left, a hand pushing back through his hair. "No, it's not that. Talking to people isn't really...I'm not good at it." he clears his throat and levels a stare on her. "What do you believe is Just?"

Adelise De'bayle sat back in her chair, her hands clasping to one another as she rested them to her lap. "What do I believe to be just?" she repeated the question, her eyes closing momentarily as though to offer the idea her undivided attention. "A world where blood and countenance do not make a man. Where everyone is granted the same footing to follow their paths. Where dreams are not forsaken to sleep," her eyes peek open, "I believe the only true beings who embody what it means to be 'just' are the gods.

Lawrence Wallace presses his lips into a thin line, considering the answer. "A world where dreams are free to be followed, without barriers built by men or beast? And what of wicked men with wicked dreams? Does your Just world allow them place? What prevents them from rising?"

Adelise De'bayle: "Those who would see the world be built into that of a better place and not one of horrors," she replied simply, reaching for her quill once more. "You see. I cannot be 'just' being Adelise," the tip of her pen found its way to the sheet before her once more, the sound audible throughout the quiet room. "No... for I am a mortal, and the world around us taints us. See, rather... I intend to embody the image of the Fury. I will bring justice to this world in Her visage, as I alone have no right being the arbiter of another, as I am just as guilty of evil doings as the next. Only under Her, am I to see to the building of a truly better world."

Lawrence Wallace: "You leave my question unanswered." he comments, a hand propping up on his hip. "In our short conversations I can agree with your fervor, but. I think you to be too lofty in your ideals. In the muck and mud of this world, the one we live in, wickedness will always rise. It will endure, and even should you see justice brought by your Fury so, too, will those of vile intentions bring their wills upon the world. I asked what will happen to those who would be a barrier to your vision? To the evil of this world we have now?"

Adelise De'bayle: "If they are a barrier to my vision, then they must be struck down by the pierce of her lance," she replied firmly, "I figured that was made clear enough. My ideas will be forever considered lofty to all around me, and I have simply learned to accept their doubt. Those who would not follow the virtues the gods present to us are the ones who prevent all from becoming greater than they could be. The sowers of prejudice, molders of false idols and worship. Shepherds of absent minds. Their ideals only serve themselves. And while self-preservation is of great importance, they will step on others to see that it is done. Deplorable. So yes. I would personally see them struck down. Do not get me wrong though," she sighs, setting her quill down. "I weep for such lost souls, despite their evil. We are not born tainted, we are made evil. Such potential lost."

Lawrence Wallace brings his arms to cross over his chest, his expression rather neutral for all the passion or doubt that generally claimed it. "I needed you to say it. To hear that you are willing to do what must be done in the name of your vision. That you are willing to act, not just speak words of dreams and visions as many are willing to resign themselves to. Whether you weep or not for those souls is no concern of mine, I wanted to know if." he pauses, eyes casting to the ground. "I am told I trust too easily those who display a passion for justice similar to my own. I wanted to know if I could trust you to act. If that is the case, I will offer my arm in aid."

Adelise De'bayle: "I find no pleasure in killing," Adelise trails off, her head tipping back, "I wish to change the world through action, to slay a person for their ideals is a last resort, but often it is the only option left. Many believe being the goddess of war that Halone revels in combat. It is not true. She is the goddess of war, not goddess of destruction like her father, Rhalgr. Her Fury's strongest virtue is mercy. To slay those who would be a stain on this world... it is a mercy," her tone grows dark, her mounting her quill once more. "You are offering me your alliance though, is that what I am hearing?"

Lawrence Wallace: "Last resort." his own voice takes a bitter turn for a moment before he looks back at her, stern and sure now. "I am. I tire of working alone. I tire of nobody willing to do anything to help those who need it. To leave evil and wickedness running amok while they live out their content lives behind walls of stone and coin. If you tell me you will act, so will I."

Adelise De'bayle: "To change hearts is the virtuous way of making a difference in the world, being a warmonger is not. Not all can be swayed through words, far too many are simply too lost to save" she shakes her head, genuine solemness coming over her features. "I am honoured to find an ally with such zeal. You do Hydaelyn justice by standing by me. Such passion," she hums to herself, eyes narrowing, "in time, we will see who you will walk in the righteousness of. Until then," she pushes her chair back, standing to approach the man with a respectful bow. "May we walk side by side on this path to the world where we will truly be free."

Lawrence Wallace: "I walk in the path of Righteousness for the people who deserve it. It is them I fight for. The people. If the Gods see fit to grant me the power to do so, I will thank them." he responds to her strange bow with a nod of his head, his fist thumping against his chest in a standard salute. "Until there is no more evil left in this world."

Adelise De'bayle: "The gods do not grant power," she states out firmly. "It is our responsibility to take their power and use it," she nods, "until there is no more evil. Tell me... Law," she turns on her heel, the drapes of her skirt flitting about dramatically, "when you look into the starfilled sky, what do you see?"

Lawrence Wallace blinks, looking up to the ceiling as if that would somehow illuminate his answer. "I see stars. I don't find myself looking up at them often. I'm not very good at taking breaks."

Adelise De'bayle huffs a single breath at his answer, turning to face him again. "You will come to learn soon, that they are more than just stars that light the darkness," motioning a hand about, Adelise gestures toward the room. "Take what you will, eat all you desire. All that I have, is yours. Is theres. This life of luxury was said to be a blessing after my many turns of living nearly in the wilderness at all times. I am not in need of luxury, as it does not push my ambition, so I instead wish to use this wealth given to me, to improve the quality of life for those who were born into nothingness. So they too can find the strength to stand and fight."

Lawrence Wallace waves off the offer, shaking his head with a frown. "Gifts lose their purpose on me. They are better used on another, one who cannot provide for themselves." he examines her carefully, looking at the fine fabric that made up her outfit, and a moment of doubt passed over him. "If you know of any work to do, though, I will take that instead. There is always too much to do."

Adelise De'bayle watches his expression, eyes following his own. "I am the Viscountess of this House. Along with my ambition, I have a responsibility to keep a face out of respect to the family that sacrificed more than you could comprehend for me to be standing here today," she pats a hand to her skirt, "I am currently on a pilgrimage to the stones of Eorzea with some companions of mine, others who wish to see the world changed. Our travels are taking us all over. We often come across things that need be done."

Lawrence Wallace dips his head, "Of course, I'm not used to seeing anything so..." he gestures to the room at large, and the decorations within. "If you need my help you can contact me. Unless I'm currently in battle I will respond."

Adelise De'bayle dips her head forward. "Trust me. I am not quite used to it all either myself. I will call upon you if ever needed, but..." she moves to take a seat once again, "please, feel free to come whenever you please as well. As an ally of my mine, my home is yours. If ever you need a place to rest your head, these doors are open to you."

Lawrence Wallace shifts from foot to foot, unease and discomfort passing over him now that the conversation he wanted to have was over. A hand goes up to his head, curling in the hair at the back. "Right. I doubt I will. This is no place for me, far too fancy."

Adelise De'bayle: "You say such, but accepting to be an ally of mine will mean I need to speak with you more often," she eyes him some, "but I will leave that up to your own discretion"

Lawrence Wallace: "Oh. Yeah. That's how this works." he sighs and nods, looking to the fire now. "Um...right. I guess I'll visit now and then, just to. Talk about things?"

Adelise De'bayle: "Sounds about right to me."

Lawrence Wallace: "Right. Then. I suppose I'll take my leave."

Adelise De'bayle: "If you have said you share and have nothing to add. It was good to see you again. Until next time," her head dips forward politely, hand reaching to pluck back up her quill.

Lawrence Wallace: "Goodbye then, Adelise."

And with such, my ambition grows.

#Journal #Adjudicator through Fury

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT DISTINCTION

055427782 examples 0. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. With OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. I realized, is how does the comber-over not see how odd he looks? Essays should do the opposite.1 As you might expect, it winds all over the place. Those ideas are so rare that you can't change the question.2

If you're hard enough to overcome one's own misconceptions without having to think about it, because they were living in the future, I always have to struggle to come up with answers.3 I'm old enough to remember that era; the usual term for people with their own hands.4 Because to the extent of acting on it. If we've learned one thing from funding so many startups, it's that they succeed or fail based on the underlying machine instruction. It's a lot of people: that you could make a language that was ideal for writing a slow version 1, and yet make it seem conversational. If large organizations started to ask questions like that, they'd find some surprises. I've found, again by trial and error, that.5 Both customers and investors will be who else is investing? What happened next was that, some time in late 1958, Steve Russell, one of them the top one shockingly inefficient, and the language was usable.6 Macros in the Lisp sense are still, as far as I know, unique to Lisp. At least, that's how we'd describe it in present-day union leaders would have to be a big company.7 They were the kind of code analysis that would be of the slightest use to those producing it.

2, most managers deliberately ignore this. These are some of the time, and runtime. And someone with a real thirst for knowledge will be able to write, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way Confucius or Socrates wanted people to be. On Demo Day each startup will only get harder, because change is accelerating. Brand is the residue left as the substantive differences between rich and poor. In fact, you don't need as many hackers, and b since you come into the new domain totally ignorant, you don't even know what the basic human reaction to a famous painting will be warped at first by its fame, there are more than fifteen words with probabilities of. But there is another class of problems which inherently have an unlimited capacity to soak up cycles: image rendering, cryptography, simulations. I mean show, not tell. Slashdot, for example, does not seem to have co-evolved with our interest in them; the face is the body's billboard. People's problems are similar enough that nearly all the code you write this way will be reusable. It's good to talk about how you plan to make money and to get attention, and a combined probability of.

Will we even be writing programs in an imaginary hundred-year language could, in principle, be designed today, and 2 such a language, if it existed, might be good to program in. One technique you can use any language that you're already familiar with and that has good libraries for whatever you need to write. But those you don't publish. Expressing the language in its own data structures turns out to be false. Companies sending spam often give you a way to improve filtering. Ideas One idea that I haven't tried yet is to filter based on word pairs would be in effect a Markov-chaining text generator running in reverse. Greg Mcadoo said one thing Sequoia looks for is the proxy for demand.8 Steve Russell said, look, why don't I program this eval. In a few days it will be more room for what would now be considered slow languages, meaning languages that don't yield very efficient code.

This is not one of those problems where there might not be an answer. This will become ever more clear as computers get faster. That was exactly what the world needs, but that there be few of them. Startups generally need to raise some amount of frustration is inevitable in certain kinds of work are underpaid. The other half, the younger half, will complain that this is the truth. Lisp functions as Lisp data, and such a notation was devised for the purposes of the paper with no thought that it would be a good writer, any more than you'd learn about sex in a class.9 Being good art is art that achieves its purpose particularly well. Jobs would speak for the entire 10 minutes. That is, no matter when you're talking, parallel computation seems to be as good as the famous artists they've seen in books, and the techniques I used may be applicable to ideas in general.10 Although your product may not be very appealing yet, if you're determined to spend a lot of it. So here's an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy: DH0.

There are a couple pieces of good news here. It's often mistakenly believed that medieval universities were mostly seminaries. Though the nature of future discoveries is hard to predict, I think it would be even harder than making the message look innocent.11 The reason there's a convention of being ingratiating in print is that most essays are written to persuade. But don't be too smug about this weakness of theirs, because you can only travel in one direction in time. And if you weren't. It's possible to buy expensive, handmade cars that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Don't put too many words on slides. I can't think of an answer, especially when they're projected onto a screen. For example, consider the following problem. If there's something we can do to decrease the number of nonspam and spam messages respectively.

But you should be able to deliver more software to users. The word essay comes from the controversial topic of wealth, no one would be able to design the core language today. Intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory. Even if all you care about that and have thought about it.12 Raising money is not like applying to college, where you can throw together an unbelievably inefficient version 1 of a program should reflect only the problem it needs to solve. There continued to be bribes, as there still are everywhere, but politics had by then been left to men who were driven more by vanity than greed. So the acquirer is in fact the distinction we began with has a rather brutal converse: just as you can.

Now high school kids could write software or design web sites. Which means, strangely enough, that coming up with startup ideas is a question of fashion than technology, even he can probably get to an edge of programming e. When I was five I thought electricity was created by the middle class as people who are best at making things don't want to wait for Python to evolve the rest of their lives. A good trick for bypassing the schlep and to some extent its own justification?13 Don't you learn things at the best schools that you wouldn't learn at lesser places?14 Numbers stick in people's heads.15 Since speed doesn't matter in most of a program from the implementation details. I use the number of points on the curve decreases.

Notes

Whereas there is one way in which those considered more elegant consistently came out shorter perhaps after being macroexpanded or compiled. Incidentally, this thought experiment: suppose prep schools do, and not be able to.

It seemed better to embrace the fact that it sounds plausible, you create wealth with no environmental cost. They'd be interchangeable if markets stood still.

Give us 10 million and we'll tell you who they are so much the effect of this essay began by talking about why something isn't the last thing you tend to be about web-based alternative to Office may not be able to fool investors with such tricks will approach. Instead of making a good plan for the talk to corp dev people are magnified by the investors. These range from make-believe, is deliberately intended to be a lot of people who don't, you're going to work not just for her but for blacklists nearness is physical, and the reaction might be enough to defend their interests in political and legal disputes.

It derives from efforts by businesses to circumvent NWLB wage controls in order to pick the former, and mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media. Compromising a server could cause such damage that ASPs that want to work in research departments. And if they don't want to. Ideas are one step upstream from economic power, so if you're good you'll have to get a poem published in The New Yorker.

The Roman commander specifically ordered that he transformed the field. I know of one, don't make wealth a zero-sum game.

But when you depend on Aristotle would be a sufficient condition. Norton, 2012.

The second biggest regret was caring so much that anyone wants. College English Departments Come From?

It seems justifiable to use those solutions.

In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of a great hacker. What if a company just to steal the company they're buying. Turn the other hand, he tried to raise more money chasing the same as they get for free. Photo by Alex Lewin.

And no, you can do what you love. Some, like play in a reorganization. And while this is also to the way to tell them exactly what your GPA was. Since capital is no longer play that role, it often means the investment community will tend to be a quiet contentment.

I should add that we're not. 99,—and probably especially valuable. Many famous works of anthropology. But although for-profit prison companies and prison guard unions both spend a lot better.

And the reason this subject is so hard on Google. No one writing a dictionary from scratch. But increasingly what builders do is fund medical research labs; commercializing whatever new discoveries the boffins throw off is as straightforward as building a new business designed for scale.

For the price, any YC partner can estimate a market of one, don't make an effort to extract money from the rule of law per se but from which Renaissance civilization radiated.

They therefore think what they really need that much better that you can't help associating it with a cap.

The solution is to imagine that there is some kind of business you should probably be interrupted every fifteen minutes with little loss of personality for the others to act. From a company just to load a problem into your head.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #lot #theory #minutes #sites #image #language #dictionary #obstacles #attempt #sup #disputes #problems #code #program #Roman #managers #frustration #damage #knowledge #Lisp #prep #messages #Companies

[theofficepolitics]

Ask HN: I am about to be fired. What should I do? Part II

I’m about to be fired. What should I do?

Let me say this very clearly. If your manager has decided to get rid of you, you cannot fight that battle. Do not fight that battle. You will lose. Doesn't matter who is right or wrong. I have seen this so many times in my 11 years of professional experience that I will say this with conviction.

Now, if you are really sure that your manager is preparing to fire you, then :

"Do I simply begin looking for other positions"

Yes, right away. Keep it only to yourself.

"Do I report his increasingly erratic behavior, and waste of firm resources?"

Don't. At least not yet. It will be a waste of your time and until you are in a strong position (have already found another job etc), you will most likely weaken your position further. Remember, the company will have more interest in keeping the manager and not you. This is not the time to be a whistleblower etc and think about doing the right thing etc. The right thing to do is to look out for yourself by finding another job asap. All the other things can come later if you want.

"Do I quit before the period expires?"

Find a job if you can within the period and quit then. Do not quit on your own before finding another job.

Here is my overall take on this. You need to put yourself in a strong position before doing anything. This means that you have another job lined up. Don't worry about being blacklisted because if you do need a reference, you can always use other colleagues and not necessarily your manager. Remember the saying "most people quit their bosses not the company". And if you can find the new job before getting fired/quitting, then you anyway don't have to use current boss/company as reference because no one does that. You also will not have to explain the details of why you are really quitting.

Even though you cannot say with certainty, but whenever a manager puts someone on a "30 day review", it is most likely because they want to get rid of you. Officially, they have to do a bunch of bullshit documentation for HR and legal purposes but your hunch is almost always right.

Get out of there if you feel like you are no longer wanted. Do not confront your boss or say anything verbally or in writing. Keep it simple. Find a job, give notice to your current employer/boss in writing which should just say "I am quitting effective xyz date". Be prepared to be fired right away on the spot after your notice if they were anyway going to get rid of you. SO before sending the notice, make sure you have your desk ready to go just in case. I have seen this many times when someone is walked out of their office right away after giving notice when they were anyway going to be fired.

antidaily

793 days ago

[-]

I dunno. Maybe the job is worth fighting for. And it definitely wouldn't be the first time someone went over their superior's head and won. Or got transferred to another division.

saboot

793 days ago

[-]

> if you do need a reference, you can always use other colleagues and not necessarily your manager.

Is it okay to do this while still being employed at a company? Would you consult the colleague and ask him to not reveal you are looking for a new job?

This isn't for OP, but my own knowledge.

Jailbird

793 days ago

[-]

This may seem obvious - but yes, consult others before using them as a reference. At a minimum, you'll want to know they're happy to give you a good reference. One would hope you've developed a strong enough relationship with some colleagues as humans (i.e. beyond the confines of the "employee" relationship.) Humans don't always stay at one company forever.

Trust comes first - the rest follows rather easily.

codegeek

793 days ago

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you are right. I edited my comment further on this. No one uses/should use their current colleagues/company/boss for reference anyway.

Jailbird

793 days ago

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Really? In my experience, across (software/tech) in multiple industries - people (work friends, and work friends who you keep as real friends) help each other out if they're leaving (again, assuming we think well of each other and the references are honest) We don't assume interviewing equal disloyalty. A fair bit of caution is required, of course - but I see this happen all the time. Heck, I've had executives who will help you if want to leave (again - it's not disloyal), and I've carried that same approach to those who reported to me.

throwaway426

793 days ago

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> Do I quit before the period expires?

If you're fairly certain you'll be fired (and it sounds like you are) wouldn't this be the most sensible solution?

When asked in interviews why you left saying you quit usually goes over a lot better than saying you were fired. And explaining why you quit would certainly not be considered a poor reason - at least not for the companies you would want to work for.

notahacker

793 days ago

[-]

A short, honest answer would be best. "I raised concerns that they might be asking me to handle data/documents in a way that wasn't compliant with Federal law. Unfortunately I'm not able to elaborate on the details, but the result was that I felt moving on would be best"

Companies really shouldn't pry any further when there's good reason to believe you're legally obliged to shut up. Plus refraining from the opportunity to rant about their dubious practises and coverups also implies that you're a sensible professional with high standards rather than a troublemaker.

The possibility that your most-likely-soon-to-be-ex-employer might feel compelled to offer you some kind of settlement in return for you agreeing not to mention alleged non-compliance or unfair dismissal to anybody else actually probably still exists. But you ask your counsel (or two or three different lawyers) about that, not HN.

FireBeyond

793 days ago

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This is a good answer if directly asked. It doesn't imply guilt on either party, and as you said, this really isn't something that should be discussed further.

fsk

793 days ago

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Just give a vague answer if anyone asks why you left the job "They wanted to go in a different direction." The important point is to not show stress when they ask why you left.

imsofuture

793 days ago

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You don't need to actually quit to have a reasonable answer to why you left. I'm not advocating lying, at all, but you also don't have to volunteer "they terminated me". There's a lot of soft answers about how it wasn't a good fit.

Plus companies will often terminate you via a technical layoff, or 'position eliminated' instead of 'termination for cause'.

VLM

793 days ago

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Can be perfectly honest about the "second best reason I wanted to quit" and just neglect to mention "Oh and BTW my boss was trying to set me up to take the rap for a felony although I figured it out before the prosecutor pressed charges, so the boss had to get rid of me ASAP to hide the evidence."

Don't give HR at the new employer any reason to wonder about what happens after you're hired. This vague stuff is not cool. Try, "My girlfriend and I were ready to moving to Portland for her job as a biochemist at xyz but it didn't work out (provide more detail here) so here I am looking for work back home" or something similarly tragic but obvious one time only concrete specific event. Or your position was in line for a forced relo and you really like (insert name of city you're interviewing at). Claim to be downsized, how are they going to know? Perhaps you have a terminally ill distant relative who did in fact recently die so now you are looking for work thats more challenging now that you're not distracted.

Also provide future, unverifiable reasons. I intend to attend the university of XYZ masters program next semester and your office happens to be down the street from the university of XYZ so I was thinking ... And if you end up not attending, well so be it. My girlfriend/mom/dad/bro/uncle is planning on moving right down the street to minimize commute, and we are a close family and oh, look, you're right next door.

The laws and lawsuits are so strict that you can pretty much tell HR anything and your former employer will only provide dates titles and salary, or you'll be collecting a large lawsuit paycheck from them. If you're going to tell a story, tell a good, believable, detailed one.

Note that if you file a lawsuit, most HR types can search the court record and will ask you why you sued your former employer for wrongful termination when you claimed in the interview that your girlfriend was moving to Austin or whatever. So settling out of court, assuming there is a settlement, is in everyone's best interest not just the former employer.

Look on the bright side, better to escape without legal action, than to escape with a "sued his employer" in the court records, which is better than "named in felony proceedings for falsified corporate accounting records" or whatever they were setting up to frame you for. You're in a bad spot but you've avoided so many worse possible spots.

ido

793 days ago

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On the other hand in many countries quitting disqualifies you from unemployment benefits (or delays the time when you can start drawing then).

kelukelugames

793 days ago

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In reality they will probably give him a choice: you can resign to save us the paperwork or we will fire you.

guyzero

793 days ago

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Why would you be blackballed? I've been fired twice and it never really did anything for my job prospects. It sucked but it wasn't terminal. There's a strong demand for data scientists. And most organizations won't discuss why you left for fear of being sued - because if they do slander you to other companies, a lawsuit is a real possibility.

So maybe you're right. If you think it's a real possibility than quit, certainly. And it's not an either/or option - you can escalate the issue to senior management and quit at the same time.

Anyway, overall it sucks but you will survive. Good luck.

someoneElse123

793 days ago

[-]

Let's assume that you somehow don't get fired at the end of the review period. Do you still want to work for this person/company?

get out while you can.

cryodesign

793 days ago

[-]

I'd get advice from an employment lawyer right away, sounds quite dicey your situation, I'm sure your manager had to fill out a bunch of forms and give specific reasons to put you on a 30 day review. Can you find out what those reasons were? Questioning the work of an 'expert' (was that person a contractor?) surely can't be an official reason to put you on review.

Also get your previous performance reports, that will hopefully show that whatever reasons he put down for placing you under 30 day review are out of character and unusual.

Edit: typos

mdesq

793 days ago

[-]

This is absolutely essential advice. Consult with a good employment lawyer as soon as possible. They will know the legal issues at play and can counsel you on what steps to take / not take. Unfortunately, it sounds like you may be in a situation where a single misstep could be used against you. You need an understanding of what your rights are, and what your protections may be under the law. A good employment lawyer will be able to help with that.

In the meantime, I would begin a journal and start taking notes (with dates/times) on what you have been told, observations you have made, etc. This may be helpful both to the lawyer as well as anyone else when you are asked to recall things. This way, it's contemporaneous note-taking as your reference, and not some attempted recollection from some time considered long past.

stillsut

793 days ago

[-]

I'd offer the example of the intern dataminer at the Potti lab which was found to have committed a particularly egregious form of model fitting and led to its erroneous use in actual cancer patient treatment: by splitting obs from the total study into fit and test sets to give perfect agreement with the already trained model. Here the impact on ethical issues - life or death medicine - was pretty high. The guy who quit personally sacrificed his medical-school career to draw his foot in the sand, and received empty thanks only years later from Duke [1].

In data science, ethical issues seem to be present in all the interesting applications. But the life or death impact is often much less, like Netflix movie ratings - where a public datamining competition was cancelled due to a compliance-based class action lawsuit for the potential to de-identify anonymized account data [2].

It's hard to where on this ethical spectrum your particular case lies. If it's something that effects others, quit and try to make things right. If it effects lawyers v lawyers let your boss take accountability for that decision and the freedom to make it.

[1] http://www.cancerletter.com/articles/20150109_1 [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/firewall/2010/03/12/netflix-sett...

cryptoglyph

793 days ago

[-]

The most important task you need to accomplish in the next week is this: Consult with criminal defense counsel with experience in this area of federal compliance—particularly because of the possibility that the documents you were helping to create were contrary to law. 18 USC § 1001 is a frightening statute with exceptionally broad applicability. Even if it wasn't you signing the form, if you were helping to complete the form, an Assistant US Attorney might see you as a target for a conspiracy charge. Although conspiracy requires proof of intent, that doesn't mean your life can't be wrecked by a wayward or overly zealous AUSA, even if you are exonerated later.

You may need, under whatever area of law applies here, to whistleblow to remove any potential taint on your activity. Or maybe counsel would advise you to lay low. Hard to say. That's why it's important to talk to counsel in this area of law.

Secondly, you may have cause of action for a whistleblower lawsuit. You may end up deciding not to proceed for several reasons already mentioned in other comments (expensive, time consuming, etc.), but you should seek competent legal advice from an employment attorney as well.

codezero

793 days ago

[-]

Find a new role as fast as possible and get out of this situation without burning too many bridges on the way. Your quality of life will improve greatly when you are far away from a supervisor who's actively diminishing you and your work.

pswenson

793 days ago

[-]

Tough situation.

If you want to stand up for yourself you could go over your boss's head. Risky, could get you fired immediately, but could get your boss fired/disciplined and save your position.

You could consult with a lawyer for advice...

The safest thing to do is go with the flow and quit (finding a new job first if possible). But just because something is safe doesn't mean it's the right way to go...

grecy

793 days ago

[-]

>

but I am most concerned that being fired would place future job prospects in jeopardy

In sounds like your colleagues know you're doing a great job and are an asset - use them as references on your resume for any future jobs, and there is no need to mention you were fired - you can just say you're ready for new challenges.

jfoutz

793 days ago

[-]

Most companies provide nothing beyond verifying employment dates - start and end. Providing more opens them up to lawsuits. I didn't get hired at $NEW_PLACE because $OLD_PLACE told them i watched cat videos all day.

You're working for an organization that's broken. Perhaps someone can fix their legal and ethical problems, but fixing that is not data science. There's nothing wrong with letting people higher up know, so they can perhaps resolve the issues. But remember, it takes a long time to turn a big ship. if there's already a culture of willfully avoiding ethics and the law, thats a long long process. Do you want to spend your valuable time fighting that fight, or doing good work?

I'd start looking for a new place right now.

kfk

793 days ago

[-]

Most big firms have a concern line/department you can report to in case of ethics or internal policy compliance issues, check, but maybe they won't even reveal your identity. If there is no such a line, I would start looking for another job if the felony is not a serious one, otherwise I would ask advice to a lawer. You seem to be somewhat junior? It seems to me you don't have enough experience to navigate the political landscape of your firm and a wrong move there might really hurt your carrier, so probably changing job is the best long term strategy here.

elxavit0

793 days ago

[-]

It does sound like a 30 day notice. I'd start looking elsewhere right away. To that end, there's a job fair being put on by EdSurge in Redwood City where a bunch of EdTech companies will be sending reps. There are 12 spots currently left for job seekers. Pretty sure your skills as a Data Scientist are valuable to many EdTech companies.

Here's the link to sign up for the job fair: http://www.meetup.com/sfedtech/events/221583848/

dboreham

793 days ago

[-]

Little late to this party, but a couple things to add:

1a. The fact that the manager showed up with the "30 day performance review" speech means that for sure they want to fire you, and also that he has already has this signed off by HR. Therefore going to HR, at least about the specific issue of being fired, is not useful.

1b. There is some very small chance that 1a is not true and in fact the manager is a total loose canon, or is bluffing. Up to you to assess which is the case but 1a is much more likely.

2. A trick I've used myself in the many situations I've found myself in over the years is this: imagine they make a movie about what goes down. Imagine you being played by some big name actor in the movie (the movie "Margin Call" might be a good concrete example here). Now: play time forward and consider what the guy playing your character in the movie would say when he testifies in court. Here's the important part: make sure that your actions today are consistent with that guy looking good and ending the movie not in jail :)

Put another way: think about how you would fare if you have to stand up in court at some later date and explain your actions. Think about the emails you send, the letters you write particularly.

In your case, "looking good in the movie" might involve taking the advice other folks have given here: seek legal advice and then follow it.

RomanPushkin

793 days ago

[-]

Start looking for other positions asap. Don't rely on things beyond your control.

operat0r

793 days ago

[-]

Going to run counter to the stream here - don't quit and don't give up on the company.

Every firm has crappy managers and your references to "compliance" tell me there's a fear of lawsuits. This sounds like you are being thrown under the bus by an ineffective and frightened (those two usually go together) manager. There may be a sense (which may or may not be coming from that manager) that it's cheaper to fix the problem by fixing the blame.

1. Do not check out. You don't have to quit. The PIP is a process. Lots of people come through PIPs, don't believe it's a one-way route out of the company. It's not. It is a flag that you and your manager are not on the same page about expectations and is more like a DUI or a divorce - one is unfortunate but happens to more people than you think. You find the problem, make changes and continue. More than one..that's a different problem.

2. Understand and use the PIP process. If the manager is doing all of the documenting and you are not, that's what we call a no-contest. You don't want to fight or offer opinions - focus on facts, emails, ccs, phone calls, meeting notes. Document this as your side of the PIP process. This will probably not get your manager to back down, but 1) establishes your position for anything else that's about to happen and 2) gives some back and forth to the process, which slows it down long enough for you to get to #3.

3) Are there options for a transfer? This is a discussion that you can have with HR (yes, they are there to keep the company from being sued and not for your well being, BUT remember they are also not there for your manager's well-being either; they are partly there to try and retain people who are good contributors because it costs more money to get a new employee than it costs to keep a good one). The key is how you are perceived by people other than your manager - especially your manager's peers. They are the ones who can find a new home for you inside the company if they think you are worth the investment. It's best if they thought that before this happened, but it's still not too late - you just need to know the room.

Anyway, best of luck and I hope you're hearing the majority of comments here that says this is not the end of your life or your career. It happens sometimes, and people move on if you are professional and can look at this more as training than misfortune.

yason

793 days ago

[-]

Before proceeding with the steps to ensure your personal future, spend some time thinking why it's you who's involved in this? Why are you put in such a situation, possibly in the role of a whistleblower? Is there something greater that is screaming to be done regardless of how you will personally survive? Don't literally think but take some time to listen to something inside of you. Maybe there's a call for you.

If you're sure there isn't, the next step is to go practical.

Stop thinking you will not get a future if you get fired. The future is not set. There's very little, if anything, a manager or even a company can do to prevent you from getting another job in the same city. Getting fired because of not agreeing to unlawful practices trumps bad-mouthing any day.

Make a local copy of the evidence and store it safe. If someone wants to play hardball you don't want your position to rely on your word or anyone else's. I'm not a US citizen but if there's something done not according to the Federal law I could imagine some Federal authority might be very interested in it.

Start looking for a position elsewhere. Consider your job done: don't look back. You can do that later when you're safe in another job but now is not the time. You can take a "lesser job" because you can explain it away as being fired because of not tolerating unlawful practices. At least you have your feet on solid ground again.

Then escalate the matter to your manager's boss or his boss. There should be someone in the company (or someone who's invested in the company) who's interested in unlawful compliance documents. If there isn't, run fast and don't look back.

If the compliance matter reaches parties outside the company and nobody in the company wants to do anything about it, go talk to the police if non-compliance could cause harm to other people. If the matter is company internal, leave it there: the company will eventually sink with all their baggage if they tolerate such practices.

Once you've made a plan to survival, cherish the opportunity. What would you have wanted to do if only things hadn't been so good as for your employer earlier in time? What could you try now that you're off the hook anyway and have no reason to hold back to something? What are the things are have been impossible but could now be chosen?

wwweston

793 days ago

[-]

> Make a local copy of the evidence and store it safe. If someone wants to play hardball you don't want your position to rely on your word or anyone else's.

Quoting for truth.

What companies with formalized processes like "30 day review period" are doing with their time is trying to produce a paper trail, usually to defend a decision that's already been made on some level.

You want to be doing the same thing (and, if possible, finding out what kind of trail they're possibly producing)... not necessarily to defend your continued current employment (though that's an option if you want to and you've got good enough evidence), but in case this issue ever comes up in the future.

mpdehaan2

793 days ago

[-]

I would definitely mention this in a short email to your bosses direct supervisor, or if you don't trust him, as far up the chain as you would like to go, if this involves violating law, you obviously need to not violate that.

However, the chances that they will side with you are low, so remain very civil, and be ok if that happens. There is a chance they won't terminate your boss - and will try to get you to "patch things over", which probably won't work. Still, you're nicely on the record for having reported it. If they don't respect you for nicely reporting it, it sounds like you don't want to be there anyway.

While it may be unwise to say "don't get a lawyer", I don't think you want to win that fight, as then they really will not want to have you aboard.

I'd also consider the matter of the compliance document - if this is just something like import/export compliance, it's really not that hard, and your boss may have been reacting to the tone in which it was brought up, rather than what you brought up. Sounds like it's a bit more than that though.

Companies are very likely to lay people off these days, especially so they can get them to sign agreements that limit their ability to converse on topics (i.e. severance or at least mutual non-dispargement agreements, waiving ability to sue, etc). They are unlikely to actually fire you, and if they do, I'd just be very up front about what happened when talking to companies you are interviewing with. They are likely to understand.

It's all in your emotions and how you talk about it. Having good positive references at that company is of course a good thing to have as well.

Do be looking for a job now though.

ashleyp

793 days ago

[-]

DO NOT give into this person because of fear!!! The moment you do that, he has you.

Out of curiosity, why stay in a place where they clearly feel they can just fire people at a moments notice like you're some statistic?

Could you hand in your job notice and quit before going through being fired? Do that and report the guy at the same time? If he's done this to you, who else can he do this too?

spiritplumber

793 days ago

[-]

If you are not passionate about your current projects: Find the big boss of your company, and explain the situation, then note that you're trying to avoid starting a whistleblower lawsuit by going directly to the person in charge. If that fails, keep doing your job well until day zero, but document everything illegal on a SD card or similar, and then take it to the law the moment they kick you out. It may be useful to talk to the appropriate regulatory agency NOW.

If you are passionate about your current projects, I have no real advice to offer... What I would do is probably something odd, like explaining to people that me being fired will not prevent me from finishing said projects and that anyone who has a problem with it is likely to be ignored or physically kept out of my way with whatever means I may deem necessary. However, I cannot in conscience recommend that anyone do this, it's probably one of those things that only work with me.

bedhead

793 days ago

[-]

I think it depends on a few things, but perhaps two of the most important are these.

Be 100% honest with yourself about the situation. Has your performance been demonstrably good? A consistent record of good reviews, raises, bonuses, promotions, etc? Importantly, is it documented?? Were there maybe some performance issues in the past that would cause a manager to try to find an excuse to fire you? Or truly, is this just a petty reaction from a loathsome supervisor?

What about the senior managers above your immediate manager? Are they cut from the same cloth or are they more reasonable? Will they hear you out on this issue or just say "not my problem" and defer to your manager?

If your honest-to-god performance was demonstrably good, and you think the senior managers can handle this better, I would recommend going above your manager's head. That relationship sounds irreconcilable anyway, so I don't think there is any additional damage done.

Good luck.

chdir

793 days ago

[-]

Unfortunately in such situations there's little you can do legally unless you have a good trail. Regarding reporting up, do read some of the advice here as to whose side HR would take :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600716

Since the damage has already been done (putting you on a performance review), the rest is just a matter of time. By damage, I don't mean any damage to your reputation outside the company though. It's better to start job hunting while you weigh your options about a legal case or talking to higher-ups. In most of the cases I've seen, it's easier & cheaper to just walk away. However, if you are very confident that someone higher-up would be genuinely interested in knowing the truth, then you should get in touch with them. Whatever you decide, start searching for jobs.

lordnacho

793 days ago

[-]

Lots of good advice in here. My 2 cents:

1) Don't worry about the future. Unless your city is really, really small, there will be other work for data science people.

2) Don't worry about your record or questions about why you were let go. You can always plead politics. It's a big firm, and people know there's politics in there.

3) Don't focus on the boss. Your new boss doesn't want to hear that you're uncooperative. Just stick to the politics line (boss couldn't get the budget for our group, blah blah).

4) Why on earth would you be blackballed? People do not generally use their networks like this, save for the closest friends. Have you ever looked at LinkedIn? Every post is happy happy. Or anti corporate politics.

5) Definitely start looking for a new job. It won't be strange why you've suddenly got a lot of half days or sickies.

6) Get a lawyer. The angle with the boss violating policy could help you. Also lawyers are generally useful in confrontations.

6t6t6

793 days ago

[-]

Please, fight back.

Companies are f* up because good people just run away when there are problems, while this kind of managers get promoted.

Keep a record of everything, bring a recorder with you, if they claim you did something wrong and you thing it's not true, say that what they say is not true. If they say they are not happy with your job, ask what you have to do to improve.

Contact a Lawyer. And ask the Union. They probably know quite well what are your options. With the history you explained, you should be able to beat them in court, but you need to be able to prove it.

If one day things get ugly, you'd better have a lot of ammunition to fight back. And remember, it's your job. They don't have the right to fire you to cover their mistakes.

If in your country it is not legal to keep a hidden recorder, at least you can put it on the table if one day they call you to communicate that you are fired.

NicoJuicy

793 days ago

[-]

Can you go over their heads? If you have any problems, there is almost always someone to raise issues to. If you love your jobs, your collegue appreciate you ( 3rd party references inside the company you can mention) and your previous peer reviews have always been positive, any boss can see there is something wrong...

I'd go over their heads, be bald. If it doesn't work, you have lost NOTHING... Don't threat the company, because then they will take it personal. Specify what is the problem and that you love working there.

Mention the raised issue about the legal problems to your boss. Say that you mentioned it as a good employee and only had negative or no feedback about it.

Other companies know that there can go something wrong, because there is always a "people" aspect in a company.. Don't worry about that.

freedevbootcamp

793 days ago

[-]

Break out the resume and polish it up. Use all 8 hours a day to find a job while at work. Connect to recruiters on LinkedIn and use every job search engine to get yourself out there. Resign on the 29th day. You will be penalized for 2 weeks of unemployment but it will be worth it. Good Luck.

brudgers

793 days ago

[-]

A lot of compliance is just going through the motions and then doing whatever it is you want. If it's any consolation, that's something I wrestle with regularly in my professional life.

Ultimately, only a court can determine what is or isn't in compliance with Federal Law. Everyone else just has a non-binding opinion. That's the nature of our adversarial system, and different from what is and isn't against one's ethics.

Any company big enough to have a 30 day review process is big enough that HR doesn't really want a mess on their hands and neither do the people responsible for other aspects of compliance. Talk to HR. Ask them to transfer you. Polish your CV. Look for other work. Don't quit because you will give up unemployment benefits.

Good luck.

vonnik

793 days ago

[-]

Firms care a lot about their reputation, and good data scientists are hard to hire when you have a bad reputation. You should try to work out a deal with the firm where they support you in your job search with recommendations while keeping you employed for a couple months.

jedanbik

793 days ago

[-]

Well, if you are in North Carolina, you should email me, as we are hiring data scientists. :)

LyndsySimon

793 days ago

[-]

Ditto here, Virginia.

mvkel

790 days ago

[-]

What makes you think you'll be blackballed from most firms in the city? So you don't get to use them as a reference. Who cares? The company isn't allowed to disclose why they fired you. You can just say "it wasn't a good fit for me" in your next interview. If they do pry and you acknowledge you were let go, explain the reasoning (and remain objective without placing blame), and they might see your side, too, or understand that you'll be a good employee.

I think you're way over-thinking this. Being terminated from a job doesn't ruin your prospects for any future position.

drchiu

793 days ago

[-]

If your firm did indeed commit a unlawful offence, you should call them out on it.

Your career at this firm is over either way.

Last thing you want to do is to be dragged back in when their offence is revealed and they use you as a scapegoat.

Be on the offensive.

hobarrera

793 days ago

[-]

> I have no desire to lose my job, but I am most concerned that being fired would place future job prospects in jeopardy.

We all fear that, but usually, being fired is never an issue with getting a new job.

> According to my colleagues, I'm very competent at my position, but this supervisor has been angry with me since I pointed out to him a few months ago that he may have violated firm policy in a severe way.

If he did severely violate firm policy, point it out to whomsoever is on top of her. They should be grateful for the violation report, and that should help keep your job.

learnstats2

793 days ago

[-]

Is whistleblowing a serious option? Given your evidence that your boss is producing illegal documents, you should consider taking this higher up -

if

they will care. Of course, it's possible that the boss is covering for company policy.

The boss currently thinks that firing you is the most effective way to make the problem disappear. For the reasons you set out, you should act to change that.

My suggestion is to make it clear (strongly imply, without directly stating) that you will whistle-blow if you remain on probation or are otherwise mistreated.

VLM

793 days ago

[-]

"My suggestion is to make it clear (strongly imply, without directly stating) that you will whistle-blow if you remain on probation or are otherwise mistreated."

Makes it look like extortion. That's not going to help.

And when the feds bust the company for felony non-compliance you do not want to be the fall guy for everything illegal your former employer ever did, including the stuff you haven't figured out yet. The first thing to do once the former employer is officially former is talk to your lawyer, the second thing to do is with your lawyers advice and help is document the false reports with the feds. You don't want to get arrested at your new job six months later because the feds finally came down on your former employer for the false reports and they set you up to take all the blame.

woah

793 days ago

[-]

Sounds like pretty bad advice to blackmail the manager. Find a new job, then blow the whistle if it is what needs to be done. Don't try to blackmail the manager to keep the job, because if you succeed you will be an accessory to whatever the crime is.

learnstats2

793 days ago

[-]

If it was up to me, I would have whistleblown already. I said that first.

I guess the manager understands that the OP will not whistleblow. Indeed, the OP doesn't seem to have considered it an option. This is exactly what allows the manager to treat the OP this way. The OP needs to show the manager otherwise.

Even if the OP finds a moderately nicer job later on, which I am sure they will, they need to do more to avoid reaching such a position in the first place. Or, this will happen again.

s_q_b

793 days ago

[-]

Just to be perfectly clear, blackmail is not an option, as it is both illegal and unethical, and I will not do anything of the sort.

I would also like to ensure that I correct the original comment in that I do not have sufficient legal knowledge to be certain that anything illegal or improper was done, which is why I am consulting with counsel before acting.

drchase

793 days ago

[-]

Not much to add given that you are consulting with counsel, but be aware that one extremely valuable attribute of legal counsel is that is where you deposit any documents that you think might be relevant -- you will surely be required to surrender all employer IP if fired, if you think there are legal issues that require you to retain documents, it's almost necessary to have them in a lawyer's care (and the lawyer will tell you what to say). I

think

and (IANAL) it would be something like "I was concerned about the circumstances of my termination, and I felt I needed to consult a professional to be sure I took the right steps." Which is true, yet vague, yet also not overtly threatening.

I would be wary of whistleblowing, but I would also be very wary of saying anything more to your employer than what is legally required (or than your lawyer advises). I don't see that we have socially made whistleblowing worth the risk to you, therefore, you should not take that risk, but if it helps your case, your severance, whatever, for your soon-to-be-former employer think that you might make trouble for them if they piss you off even more, that might be okay (if they're certain that you might make trouble for them, that's another matter and maybe a problem).

For the non-legal and probably more useful advice, this does not sound like a job that is worth keeping. You can't fix a bad boss, you're not paid enough to fix a bad boss (it ought to be the case that you would get a massive bonus for fixing a bad boss, but sadly the world does not work that way) better to look out for your own sanity and well-being. Don't burn bridges, don't slack off, I also don't recommend knocking yourself out in an attempt to save your job because (you wrote here for advice, here it is) it's not worth saving, DO prepare a resume and send it out, and follow the usual recipe of applying to as many places as you can stand managing all at once. It ought to take a few weeks for the sent resumes to turn into interviews, so it's not that likely to take too much of your (not-slacking-off) time. Ask your lawyer exactly what to say if a potential employer asks why you're leaving, because it's a delicate dance and there's things you probably cannot safely say (for example, what you've said here...).

learnstats2

793 days ago

[-]

I didn't intend to advocate blackmail and I'm sorry that my comment reads that way.

However, there are not many actions in business that are perfectly ethical.

And, you won't always have decent recourse in law even if someone acts illegally against you.

For now, good luck.

bdcravens

793 days ago

[-]

>My suggestion is to make it clear (strongly imply, without directly stating) that you will whistle-blow if you remain on probation or are otherwise mistreated.

No. Not only is this a bad approach for what is probably a bad company, you have an obligation (potentially one with consequences) to report illegal/uncompliant activity. HN and elsewhere is filled with stories of corporate abuses that could have been prevented but for someone who just wanted to keep their job.

If you really want to feel like you're righted, you leave, and then report, and hopefully get some folks fired along the way, and ideally it'll cause the company to lose some money as a result.

walshemj

793 days ago

[-]

Yes it would be awful if this got onto gawker or pando :-)

anonbanker

793 days ago

[-]

You have been constructively dismissed[1]. You need to be talking to a lawyer immediately to begin your wrongful dismissal lawsuit. Don't wait until you're fired. start finding a lawyer now.

if the lawyer you talk to doesn't want to do it, or drags his feet, find a lawyer who will. You have a straightforward case, and your odds for settlement will be rather high.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal

aagha

793 days ago

[-]

> I have no desire to lose my job, but I am most concerned that being fired would place future job prospects in jeopardy.

Unlikely. Firing, head-count reductions, etc. are a normal part of business today. If it happens, it happens--there's no shame in it. Sometimes, being let go can be a blessing in disguise.

Take steps to make sure you're safe and mentally happy. It's a job, not your life. If it's your life, you've just learned a lesson: Don't make your job your life.

You will bounce back. It's what (most) people do.

pknerd

793 days ago

[-]

In my last job I had faced similar situation. The HOD wanted to get rid of me to colleagues and higher-ups. Unlike you I did not hesitate termination. Once my dues were clear I wrote an email to entire department, HOD, HRM and CEO and shared everything. The end result, I felt satisfied and some other pals saved themselves by quitting themselves.

Moral of the story: Be Courageous. If you are skilled you will get a job anyway. Who knows someone from HN already has approached to you?

pekk

793 days ago

[-]

"If you are skilled you will get a job" implies that the only people who aren't getting jobs are unskilled, and that is very much false.

geoelectric

792 days ago

[-]

Look for the job now. While you're still employed, you have an airtight excuse for not providing a manager reference from your current job ("They don't know I'm looking."). That lets you provide either your last manager, or a sympathetic coworker instead.

Wait until you're gone and it gets much sketchier. People will assume the worst if you don't provide your previous manager.

joshribakoff

793 days ago

[-]

Whats more likely, that your boss "gets off" on wrongfully firing you, or that there's some attitude problem you don't recognize about yourself?

I'm going to say something that'll probably be unpopular & rude, but you want an honest answer. I don't know the full story, but from your own accounting of it - it does sound like you have a problematic attitude & the problem may be with you & not the company.

Your boss told you to follow someone's instructions & work under a person. Instead of helping, you went above that person's head & above your bosses head & consumed time auditing your superiors. You also called them an "expert" (backhanded compliment).

Personally I'd rather hire someone less skilled who follows instructions. If someone asks me what I think about a person's work, I'll be honest & say its not in compliance, but it sounds like you're going around actively telling on people for trivial stuff. They have a right to weed that type of attitude out, and you have a right to seek employment that values that type of attitude - so stop fooling yourself with this talk about "fair" & "not fair". If you're in an at-will work state there's no such thing as "unfair" termination. They don't want you anymore. Either make them want you (by being honest with yourself about what they disliked), or accept it & move on.

s_q_b

793 days ago

[-]

I've thought that through deeply, but the reality is that this isn't about fairness, this about a very specific set of actions. I didn't "go around telling on" anyone. I simply told my project manager that we couldn't use the document I was instructed to write for the purpose he was asking, because ethically I did not feel it would bring us into compliance with a mandated standard.

I am sure your intentions are good here, and certainly this a time to reflect, but I am not complaining about fairness of anything.

It's simply not ethical to put someone on review for raising an issue after months of careful consideration, especially given that my superior concurred with the judgment, and cut ties with the "expert" under whom we working. (I put "expert" in quotes not for snark, but because I want to be clear that this is the firm's terminology, not mine.)

I should also note that my colleague with whom I worked on the project, but is outside of my superior's chain of command, concurred with my concerns and stated so as well.

ScottBurson

793 days ago

[-]

In your position I would be looking for another job the moment I was put on 30 day review, if I hadn't already started.

It's easy to find another job when you have one. While, given your specialty, I wouldn't expect you to have a lot of trouble even after getting fired, it's still not going to be quite as easy as it will be while you're still in this job. Start tomorrow!

atlih

793 days ago

[-]

Don't worry about it. There's plenty of need for Data Scientists and the need is growing exponentially in the months to come.

mavdi

793 days ago

[-]

Mate my two cents: move on. I see a lot of comments urging you to fight this tooth and nail but it really isn't worth it. It's a losing battle, the job is lost and whatever you do to try to win it back will not work unless some miracle happens. Save your energy for a new job, a better job working for people that value honesty and integrity.

pkaye

793 days ago

[-]

Main thing is make sure you have collaborating evidence against your manager. Like good past reviews and coworkers who would support you. HR loyalty lies up the management chain so normally it is an up hill battle. But if you are a good performer and have others who support you, HR can be turned around.

tberghane

790 days ago

[-]

If you're about to be fired, I advocated saying NEXT and moving on to something better. We work with about 25 tech startups here in NYC, and currently have a handful of Data Sci Roles that could be more than happy to chat. Feel free to shoot me a note: [email protected]. Happy to help!

mbrubeck

793 days ago

[-]

My sympathy; this is a tough situation and you don't deserve to be in it.

Some words of hope: In a surprisingly short time, you will be able to look back at this with some much-needed distance. You'll have moved on to better things, and the problems of your old firm will no longer be your problems.

yegor256a

793 days ago

[-]

Check this, maybe it will help you:

http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/02/team-morale-myths-and-rea...

jms703

793 days ago

[-]

You don't want to work for this kind of company. Start interviewing now. If you're really worried about the fallout from termination, then quit.

If you're as good as you say you are, your departure will have an impact and you'll have your choice of jobs.

arbre

793 days ago

[-]

Don't worry too much about the impact on your career. People know that these things can happen. The recruiters might have had similar experiences themselves. Fight if there is an injustice and then move forward. I wish you luck !

zerr

793 days ago

[-]

>blackballed from most firms in this city

Why? Do you have some kind of Public Hall of Shame where you put those who have been fired? Or do you live in some small village where everyone knows everyone and everything? Really interesting.

alexqgb

793 days ago

[-]

The problem is that while prospective employers can't ask your companies HR dept. to verify anything beyond the most basic facts of your tenure, they can make note of whether your direct manager is included in your list of references.

The fear (perhaps unjustified) is that any signal indicating a less-than-amicible seperation will be treated as a red flag by potential employers, who would prefer to give the position to someone who is either recruited for that spot in particular, or is trading up cleanly.

This is less of an issue for people with a specific and clearly demonstrable skill set that's in high demand, but to the extent that finding a new position demands some growth on your part (i.e. an employer willing to place some faith in having you develop on their dime) this can add to the potentially crippling sense of self-doubt and insecurity that a situation like the OP described will engender.

There's a school of thought that says your optimal career moves should be based on you getting yourself into places you want to be, not running from places you don't want to be. If you know this, and you're in a situation like this, you already feel you're having to make the most of a bad hand, and that where ever you go next may end up being a severe compromise you have to live with for some time.

cromulent

793 days ago

[-]

a) Hi, I'm calling to check the references of your ex-employee named Ted.

b) We have a company policy against giving references but I'd be happy to discuss the weather with you.

a) Okay.

b) The clouds are moving lazily across the sky and everyone thinks they're stupid.

http://assets.amuniversal.com/bcdb80c06d5101301d7a001dd8b71c...

pekk

793 days ago

[-]

"References required"

fredkbloggs

793 days ago

[-]

Anyone who's ever worked with you can be a reference. It's normal to choose someone other than your immediate superior as a reference, especially if you're interviewing elsewhere while still employed there. Anyone who insists specifically on speaking to your previous (or current!) supervisor is nuts. Never had that happen at any time in my long career.

DanBC

793 days ago

[-]

What does your union rep say?

moron4hire

793 days ago

[-]

I think you're grossly over estimating the impact of getting fired.

eweise

793 days ago

[-]

Contact an employment lawyer. Are you over 40? Do you work overtime? Are you covered under whistle blower laws? You are probably going to lose your job but you may have a solid lawsuit.

CodeWriter23

793 days ago

[-]

I believe rejection is the universe's way of helping you find out where you truly belong. It is hard to see that in the present; it really can only be observed in hindsight.

2390902390

793 days ago

[-]

Throwaway for some reasons.

I would like to be fired, but I was never lucky enough:

1) in my country you get 3 months redundancy (unless you steal or make other crime on company).

2) you get 1 year unemployment support. Not gonna happen if you resign on your own.

3) as alimony slave you can not quit your job. Being fired is opportunity to find less demanding job.

Anyway for your issue I would recommend two things:

1) go to your boss, tell him you do not care about his screw ups, and ask to be reassigned far away from him to different department, or different company. Explain him how bad your situation is, and that he is going down with you.

2) Discover that you are gay or your great-great-great-great grandfather was from Africa.

SEJeff

793 days ago

[-]

Have you considered reporting your supervisor to his supervisor? Talking to HR?

walshemj

793 days ago

[-]

Can you file a grievance against your boss using the company's procedures?

a3n

793 days ago

[-]

It's 30 days notice. Start looking. Resign before being fired if you can.

remyp

793 days ago

[-]

Even if you get "blackballed" in your city (which seems unlikely) that doesn't stop you from finding a remote position with a firm in another city.

DevKoala

793 days ago

[-]

Start looking for a new job now.

funtober

793 days ago

[-]

Hi. Nights & weekends startup founder with a day job at a whistleblower law firm here. [1]. The following comes with all of the standard caveats about this not being legal advice. [2]. I'm going to talk generally and you can draw your own conclusions. But my advice is to call an employment attorney tomorrow so they can give you specific advice. Most will do a free initial consultation, and anyone good would take a look at whether you should be reporting this to the government under one of the whistleblower programs.

Quitting is almost always a bad idea unless you have enough savings to last a ridiculously long time. If someone quits, they forfeit unemployment in most situations. Future employers will ask you why you quit, and you will be in essentially the same position as if you were let go.

Interviewing: Everyone should always be interviewing. Most employment is at-will and you can be fired for almost any reason. It's easier to find a job while you still have a job.

Internal Reporting: Frequently doesn't end well for the person reporting compliance issues. Be especially sure that the violation is a real issue before continuing to report it.

Retaliation Lawsuit: There is no catch-all law protecting people from retaliation. There are piecemeal statutes that cover a number of popular situations, but they also depend on your state and the specific issue that you reported. If you are covered, you are looking at several years of litigation in order to receive a maximum of what is usually 1-2 times your lost compensation while they attempt to prove that they fired you for a legitimate reason. If the company is legit, they would probably offer you severance that eliminates this possibility.

Whistleblower Rewards: There are a number of federal programs that offer rewards for bringing information to the government. The two that would be most applicable to a data scientist I think are the False Claims Act (health care, etc) and the Dodd Frank Act programs (SEC & CFTC for violations of securities laws). If you take information to the government and they fine the company as a result (greatly simplified as there are lots of other terms and conditions), then they offer between 10 and 30 percent to the whistleblower.

Sorry this has happened to you.

[1] Feel free to track me down if you want to chat. For those considering downvoting this as solicitation, I will say up front that it's unlikely that my firm would be interested in the situation as described.

[2] This is general information that you can find elsewhere on the internet. It isn't specific advice to your situation. This answer does not form an attorney-client relationship. We would only have one if you signed a written retainer agreement with my firm. Each state has its own laws/rules and I'm only licensed in one state, which is likely not yours. So you should seek legal advice from an employment attorney in your state immediately. Sorry that this is even necessary to say.

NicoJuicy

793 days ago

[-]

Ca

michaelochurch

793 days ago

[-]

What do I do? Do I simply begin looking for other positions?

If you mean external other positions, the answer is yes.

Looking for internal transfer is not going to be effective. Once on a PIP, your odds of moving are effectively zero. No one will say that transfer's impossible (legal/HR reasons) but it's basically over. It sounds like you were a good worker but broke the #1 Rule of Corporate Employment: make the boss happy. Don't worry; this is a common mistake.

Do I report his increasingly erratic behavior, and waste of firm resources?

I wouldn't. It's not worth your time, and it won't get you your job back. You have 30 days to live, and it takes months to beat a bad boss. Not only that, but it takes reports from about 3-5 subordinates and most people aren't willing to risk their jobs. Corporations value consistency over correctness and his being a manager means that they trust him over you. You won't win. You'll hurt him a little bit, but that shouldn't be your goal.

I know someone who actually beat his boss. He had a bad boss, he got a bad performance review for something that wasn't his fault, and he managed to get five or six people to hit his boss with the same story in "360 reviews" and take him down. It took months and, while his performance reviews were amended, he was still screwed. Even though he had taken out one of the worst managers in the company, managers (like police) tend to protect their own, at least when it comes to the outside world, and no one wanted to promote him or take him on. He ended up getting laid off a year later.

Do I quit before the period expires?

Only if you find another job. You might get a severance if they fire you. If you quit while you don't have a job, you get nothing and the result (you're unemployed) is the same as if you'd been fired.

You are going to get fired at the end of the 30 days, but getting fired isn't (except in a few overly chatty/cliquish industries) a big deal at all.

I do not wish to move, and if fired I will be effectively blackballed from most firms in this city.

Why? Most people, by age 40, have been fired at least once. It sucks, but it's not the Scarlet F that you might think. If you pass the siege test (6 months of savings) then it may be expensive, but you'll survive it.

As for reputation issues: I think the firm will be good to you unless it's run by idiots. You have knowledge of illegal activity. You absolutely cannot leverage that in asking for a cash severance (it's extortion) but, if they don't agree to a contractually-guaranteed positive reference, it might be time to bring up the fact of the need to reach mutual agreement on a story that is beneficial to both parties. You'll probably get an arrangement in which you can represent yourself as employed during your job search. You may get a contractual written reference and an agreement by your manager not to contradict it.

They would rather let you go in a way that doesn't blackball you than have you blow the whistle. Trust me.

Use your colleagues as references and have your manager's reference checked by a third party, even if you have a contract. Unless his reference is glowing, don't use him. Say that your manager went on a mission to Uganda and that's why you can't use him, or that you were managerless due to bureaucratic error but colleagues X, Y and Z can speak for your ability. Or, take the risk and tell the truth: you refused to do something illegal and were fired for it. (Say as little as possible; bad-mouthing an ex-employer is generally a no-no, and it's usually seen as better for both sides to tell a mutually face-saving lie than to expose an ex-employer's bad behavior.)

You should reach out to me (michael.o.church at Google's email service) if you still have questions.

Getting fired is bad-- three months of joblessness is expensive, especially if they fight your unemployment claim-- but it's not catastrophic and the likelihood that any of this follows you is low.

Also, it's actually pretty hard to blackball someone. I've had people try to blackball me and I ended up winning. In some cases, I've made the attempts to do so very expensive for the people involved.

marktangotango

793 days ago

[-]

>> You have knowledge of illegal activity.

I'm surprised you bought this as well. The OP claims there are compliance issues contrary to federal law, but he's not a lawyer (at least the OP did not state he was) or a compliance expert (indeed a novice needing traingin), and anyone who's dealt with compliance knows there are vast degrees of wiggle room when interpreting regulations. So, the claims of illegal activity are hollow and unstubstantiate, imo.

Firegarden

793 days ago

[-]

Listen man. There is a certain power in walking away. Don't give that away. Think about your power for a minute. How much power would it be to hand in a written letter CLEARLY outlining the issue described using MINIMAL WORDS? Somebody would have to look at the situation in detail and if you really deserved to be commended for your honesty then it would come out.

The tables would be completely turned.

1. You would have officially quit. HUGE WIN 2. You would have an opportunity for others to see your side of the story FIRST 3. You may have some chance of coming out on top and even staying with the firm if your letter was written with "much regret" that you absolutely have no other choice because of the hostility and actions of retaliation etc. 4. You can take that letter to the next employer and say I stand behind my actions in a tough situation.

Stay with your power man. You don't want to risk carry around the victim chip forever more you will either be telling this story as a sore loser or as a man with a power and sense of right that can never be taken from you by a "superior".

Bottom line it's victim vs empowerment perspective. In your question post (no offense) you sound like a victim of some one else's actions against you. Really it's just one perspective. Assume the self empowered perspective and they will have no choice but to recognize. Tell the story of how you don't take BS you throw it in the trash.

Fuk you, fuk you, your cool, fu*k you im out.

[EDIT] P.S. If you really want to step it up and become movie ending cool. You get that letter done up and you walk in with it. You show the envelope to the bad boss and you say in a private way to only him "I am handing this in to watch you suck tomorrows dick".

dllthomas

793 days ago

[-]

"1. You would have officially quit. HUGE WIN"

Until you have to collect unemployment, or sue for wrongful termination.

a3n

793 days ago

[-]

If you're fired for cause, you probably can't collect anyway.

dllthomas

793 days ago

[-]

Possibly. It all depends a great deal on jurisdiction and circumstance.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/unemployment-benefits...

"In many states, an employee's misconduct has to be pretty bad to render the employee ineligible for unemployment benefits. An employee who is fired for being a poor fit for the job, lacking the necessary skills for the position, or failing to perform up to expected standards will likely be able to collect unemployment."

To be fair, quitting in this instance may fall under "constructive discharge", but generally speaking for this kind of thing you have significantly better odds when the other party needs to demonstrate that you're an exception than when you do. I know a place I worked once caught someone with their hand in the till, and wound up paying unemployment because proving it was going to be a bigger hassle.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/unemployment-benefits...

s_q_b

793 days ago

[-]

If fired, I would be eligible for unemployment benefits essentially no matter what. The employer would have to prove gross or serious misconduct for benefits to be denied, and that would only result in a delay of eligibility, not an outright disqualification.

Also, the onus is on the company to demonstrate the misconduct, and the price of an attorney to make that case would far exceed the cost, and creates risk of litigation. So I mostly likely won't be begging on the street, which is a tremendous relief.

[thebibliosphere]

Last month’s collective mood was apparently “no one knows where their phone is, oh wait I’m holding it”.

Hi, I’m the vampire nipple erotica editor who just wants to rest. This is my welcome/navigational post for my blog. Clickable links are in bold for ease of navigation. (Recommended listening for this life blog: https://youtu.be/zzg4yACP4nE)

My name is Joy, I’m a Scottish born writer and editor currently manifesting in the American Midwest with my husband, affectionately known to tumblr as ETD. If you’re here for puns, smut, and generally relentless vampire shit posting, then you’re in the right place.

Please have patience if you are sending me asks or IMs. I am but a chronically ill humble smut peddler, peddling my weres, and never expected to have a high traffic blog. I’m just making this up as I go along, and your patience for my limitations is appreciated <3

**If you are here to ask me about how I became an editor, or if you’d like to hire me, please check out my FAQ and my Editing Services page. Thank you!***

Due to tumblr tricking me into becoming a professional writer, I’m currently working on several projects, most of which are vampire related, for some bizarre reason I can’t quite figure out.

The most well known is Hunger Pangs which is currently available for pre-order over on my Patreon page, and eventually Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other retailers to be confirmed. Cause that’s right, I took that shit post and somehow managed to turn it into a fully formed queer-polyamorous-paranormal-satirical-romance novel featuring vampires, werewolves, and punching undead fascists, set in a pseudo-regency-steampunk era setting. (It wasn’t intended to be as politically relevant as it turned out, but the world took a nose dive after I started writing it so here we are.)

If you would like to read a fairly concise summary of what it’s about, you can find one Here. By request there are two canon versions of the book, one which contains explicit sexual content, and one which does not, for those who like a little more fluff with their fangs.

The book will eventually be available in e-book, paperback, and audio book format. I also have a small amount of limited edition hardback covers left for pre-order on my patreon. There’s also already a fandom tag, which is #Phangs and #Phangdom and because I’m a weak creature and easily lead, AU fanfic on my Ao3 under original works, most of which is Adult 18+ in nature.

Along with Phangs, I am also working on several other projects including a gritty historical Scottish romance novella (additional extract), based on a pun, a pun based wlw bakery romance (additional extract), a pun based Scottish werewolf romance, (have you worked out the common factor yet) and a contemporary Scottish rom-com featuring shirtless Scotsmen with questionable morals, based on irate ramblings, for which you will also find a NSFW excerpt on my AO3. It’s the one called, “The Devil Went Down On Georgia” for anyone wondering.

Oh also, the vampire wedding planner romcom, because I have apparently lost complete control of my life.

I’m surprisingly okay about it tbh.

Also yes, Most Girls is now an official thing in the works too. I have a plot draft pinned to my wall.

All of my work is tagged appropriately, with anything that is 18+ being placed under a cut and tagged as #NSFW or #NSFW Text for ease of blacklisting if you would like avoid it.

If you are under the age of 18, I do ask that you respect my boundaries and refrain from interacting with anything on my blog that is labelled 18+. I try very hard to keep my blog as safe for everyone as I can, and respect your boundaries. No mean feat when you’re known across the Internet as “the crucifix vampire nipple lady” :P

If you need me to tag something for trigger purposes, no matter how silly you think I might think it is, please let me know, I will be more than happy to do so. Also while I do try very hard to be conscientious of the things I do and say, sometimes I will inevitably make mistakes or misspeak, and it is important to me that it be brought to my attention so I might correct my behavior and apologize. So please don’t be afraid to tell me when I’ve got my head up my ass. I make no pretenses at being a good person. I’m just trying my damnedest not to be an awful one.

If you’re completely new here you might notice some people calling me “mom” or other variations therein of familial relation. It’s perfectly okay to greet me as such if you wish to do so, but it is by no means an obligatory title and not something I expect or gave to myself. Tumblr decided to adopt me sometime back in 2016 after I did some helpful life advice posts, and I’ve been doing my best to be worthy of the honorific ever since. You can also, if you’d prefer, just call me Joy. Cause that is my name :)

If you ever get tired of seeing my personal health posts, you may wish to blacklist the following tags: #chronic health tag & #chronic health tag: teeth, that way I can bitch and moan into the void and you don’t have to put up with me if you don’t want to.

Also sometimes we stream things (games, writing sessions etc) in my chatroom or via my Twitch. There is also a discord server set up by my friends and followers, where people often hang out just to chat and meet other people in the tumblr fam. It’s owned and run by my good friend @ssalogel, so if you drop him a little note he can get you set up :)

I also have a PO Box listed in my FAQ for if and when anyone would like to send me something random like a book they’d like to see me review, or even the occasional Death fucking skeleton statue too. I only half wish I was kidding.

All of this rambling aside, welcome to my little corner of the Internet I like to think of as family. I hope you’re having a good appropriate time zone, and whatever made you click on me was worth it. Take care of yourselves and each other. You’re more important to the universe than you’ll ever know. <3

*~*Patreon *~*  Twitter *~*  Twitch *~* Ao3 *~* Ko-fi *~*

#welcome post #26000 followers #sorry to everyone who sees this post every month #it's just a really effective way of pointing people at all my projects #new followers

[thebibliosphere]

I see we’re continuing the 2017 agenda of worsening my impostor syndrome one month at a time. Well start off as we mean to go on I suppose.

Hi, I’m the vampire editor person who just wants to rest. Clickable links are in bold for ease of navigation :)

If you’re here for more questionable puns, Death smut, food history and generally relentless vampire shitposting combined with unconditional love for Carrie Fisher, then boy are you in the right place.

Recommended listening for this post blog life : https://youtu.be/zzg4yACP4nE

*** IF YOU’RE HERE TO ASK ME HOW I BECAME AN EDITOR OR ARE INTERESTED IN HIRING ME AS ONE, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT MY FAQ . Thank you <3***

Due to tumblr tricking me into becoming a professional writer I’m currently working on about a million and one writing projects. Most of them vampire related for some bizarre unknown reason.

The most well known is likely Hunger Pangs which is available for pre-order via my Patreon, and hopefully soon Amazon for those of you who prefer it. Cause that’s right, I took that shit post and turned it into a queer-polyamorous-paranormal-satirical-romance novel featuring vampires, werewolves and punching undead fascists (It wasn’t intended to be politically relevant but here we are).

A fairly concise summary of it can be found here and excerpts can be found by searching for the tag ‘#the vampire werewolf thing’, which is the unofficial tagline for Hunger Pangs or #Phangs as some people have started to tag it. By request there is going to be two versions of the book, one which contains sexual content, and one which does not, for those who are not interested in smut and like a little more fluff with their fangs.

All of my work that I intend to publish professionally will also be available smut free in plain romance/fluff versions for anyone that wants it.  

Along with Phangs I’m also working on a gritty Scottish romance novella (extract) based on a pun; a pun based bakery romance(extract), a pun based werewolf Scottish romance (have you noticed a theme yet), and  a modern day romantic comedy concerning Scotsmen with questionable morals. Which also has an excerpt on my Ao3. Oh and also a vampire wedding planner romcom because apparently I have lost complete control of my life

I’m surprisingly okay with this.

All of my work is tagged appropriately, with anything that is 18+ being placed under a cut and tagged as #NSFW or #NSFW Text for ease of blacklisting if you would like avoid it. If you are under the age of 18, I do ask that you respect my boundaries and refrain from interacting with anything on my blog that is labelled 18+. I try very hard to keep my blog as safe for everyone as I can. No mean feat when you’re known across the Internet as “the crucifix vampire nipple lady” :P

If you need me to tag something for trigger purposes, no matter how silly you think I might think it is, please let me know, I will be more than happy to do so.

If you’re completely new here you might notice some people calling me “mom” or other variations therein of familial relation. It’s perfectly okay to greet me as such if you wish to do so, but it is by no means an obligatory title and not something I gave to myself. Tumblr decided to adopt me sometime back in 2016 after I did some helpful life advice posts, and I’ve been doing my best to be worthy of the honorific ever since. You can also, if you’d prefer, just call me Joy. Cause that is my name :)

Please have patience if you are sending me asks or IMs. I am but a humble smut peddler, peddling my weres, and have some pretty profound chronic health problems ranging from autoimmune issues to nerve damage which make keeping up with a high traffic blog as well as my work schedule rather difficult. So I’m sorry if you ever send me something and I don’t see it. I’m trying.

If you get tired of seeing my health posts, you may wish to blacklist the following tags: #chronic health tag & #chronic health tag: teeth, that way I can bitch and moan into the void and you don’t have to put up with me if you don’t want to.

Also sometimes we stream things in my chatroom or on my Twitch. You can find the link to my chat on my navigational bar, and are welcome to check out at any time though we are currently on hiatus. There is also a discord chat set up by my friends and followers, where people often hang out just to chat. The link to this can also be found via my chatroom or by sending me a message.

Oh and you can now follow me on Twitter if that is a thing you are interested in. I also have a PO Box listed in my FAQ for if and when anyone would like to send me something random like a book they’d like to see me review, or even the occasional Death fucking skeleton statue too. No I’m not kidding.

All of these things aside, welcome to my little corner of the Internet. I hope you’re having a good appropriate time zone, and whatever made you click on me was worth it.

Take care of yourselves and each other, and I’ll see you in the comments.  Welcome to the family. <3

#new followers #22000 followers #navigational post #long post #sorry to everyone that has to see some variation of this post every month haha #it's just the easiest way to point people at the posts

[thebibliosphere]

It’s been just 18 days since we fell into the void, where did all of you come from?

Hi, I’m the vampire editor person who just wants to rest. Clickable links are in bold for ease of navigation :)

If you’re here for more questionable Death smut, food history discourse, generally relentless vampire shitposting and unconditional love for Carrie Fisher, then boy are you in the right place. 

Recommended listening for this post blog life : https://youtu.be/zzg4yACP4nE 

*** IF YOU’RE HERE TO ASK ME HOW I BECAME AN EDITOR OR ARE INTERESTED IN HIRING ME AS ONE, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT MY FAQ . Thank you <3***

Due to tumblr tricking me into becoming a professional writer I’m currently working on about a million and one writing projects. Most of them vampire related for some bizarre unknown reason.

The most well known is likely Hunger Pangs which is available for pre-order via my Patreon, and in a mere matter of weeks, on Amazon too. Cause that’s right, I took that shit post and turned it into a queer-polyamorous-paranormal-satirical-romance novel featuring vampires, werewolves and punching undead fascists (It wasn’t intended to be politically relevant but here we are).

A fairly concise summary of it can be found here and excerpts can be found by searching for the tag ‘#the vampire werewolf thing’, which is the unofficial tagline for Hunger Pangs or #Phangs as some people have started to tag it. By request there is going to be two versions of the book, one which contains sexual content, and one which does not, for those who are not interested in smut and like a little more fluff with their fangs.

All of my work that I intend to publish professionally will also be available smut free in plain romance/fluff versions for anyone that wants it.  

Along with Phangs I’m also working on a gritty Scottish romance novella (extract) based on a pun; a pun based bakery romance(extract), a pun based werewolf Scottish romance (have you noticed a theme yet), and  a modern day romantic comedy concerning Scotsmen with questionable morals. Which also has an excerpt on my Ao3. Oh and also a vampire wedding planner romcom because apparently I have lost complete control of my life.

I’m surprisingly okay with this.

All of my work is tagged appropriately, with anything that is 18+ being placed under a cut and tagged as #NSFW or #NSFW Text for ease of blacklisting if you would like avoid it. If you are under the age of 18, I do ask that you respect my boundaries and refrain from interacting with anything on my blog that is labelled 18+. I try very hard to keep my blog as safe for everyone as I can. No mean feat when you’re known across the Internet as “the crucifix vampire nipple lady” :P

If you need me to tag something for trigger purposes, no matter how silly you think I might think it is, please let me know, I will be more than happy to do so.

If you’re completely new here you might notice some people calling me “mom” or other variations therein of familial relation. It’s perfectly okay to greet me as such if you wish to do so, but it is by no means an obligatory title and not something I gave to myself. Tumblr decided to adopt me sometime back in 2016 after I did some helpful life advice posts and I’ve been doing my best to be worthy of the honorific ever since. You can also, if you’d prefer, just call me Joy. Cause that is my name :)

Please have patience if you are sending me asks or IMs. I am but a humble smut peddler, peddling my weres, and have some pretty profound chronic health problems ranging from autoimmune issues to nerve damage which make keeping up with a high traffic blog as well as my work schedule rather difficult. So I’m sorry if you ever send me something and I don’t see it. I’m trying.

If you get tired of seeing my health posts, you may wish to blacklist the following tags: #chronic health tag & #chronic health tag: teeth, that way I can bitch and moan into the void and you don’t have to put up with me if you don’t want to.

Also sometimes we stream things in my chatroom or on my Twitch. You can find the link to my chat on my navigational bar, and are welcome to check out at any time though we are currently on hiatus. There is also a discord chat set up by my friends and followers, where people often hang out just to chat. The link to this can also be found via my chatroom or by sending me a message. 

Oh and you can now follow me on Twitter if that is a thing you are interested in. I also have a PO Box listed in my FAQ for if and when anyone would like to send me something random like a book they’d like to see me review, or even the occasional Death fucking skeleton statue too. No I’m not kidding. 

All of these things aside, welcome to my little corner of the Internet. I hope you’re having a good appropriate time zone, and whatever made you click on me was worth it. 

Take care of yourselves and each other, and I’ll see you in the comments.  Welcome to the family. <3

#new followers #21000 followers #hot damn #what a way to start the new year

[thebibliosphere]

Hgshflkl. I went to screen cap this prestigious moment of hitting (over!!!) 20,000 followers but then the activity feed broke so hard the graph vanished and I’ve just been sitting here laughing so hard I’m wheezing. This is it, this is peak tumblr experience. WELCOME TO THE VOID

Hi, I’m the vampire editor person who just wants to rest.  If you’re here for more Death smut, food history discourse, general vampire shitposting and unconditional love for Carrie Fisher then boy are you in the right place. Clickable links are in bold for ease of navigation. Recommended listening for this post: https://youtu.be/zzg4yACP4nE 

*** IF YOU’RE HERE TO ASK ME HOW I BECAME AN EDITOR OR ARE INTERESTED IN HIRING ME AS ONE, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT MY FAQ ***

Thank you <3

Due to tumblr tricking me into becoming a professional writer I’m currently working on about a million and one writing projects. Most of them vampire related for some bizarre unknown reason.

The most well known is likely Hunger Pangs which is available for pre-order via my Patreon, and in a mere matter of weeks, on Amazon too. Cause that’s right, I took that shit post and turned it into a queer-polyamorous-paranormal-satirical-romance novel featuring vampires, werewolves and punching undead fascists (It wasn’t intended to be politically relevant but here we are).

A fairly concise summary of it can be found here and excerpts can be found by searching for the tag #the vampire werewolf thing, which is the unofficial tagline for Hunger Pangs or #Phangs as some people have started to tag it. By request there is going to be two versions of the book, one which contains sexual content, and one which does not for those who are not interested in smut and like a little more fluff with their fangs.

Along with Phangs I’m also working on a gritty Scottish romancenovella (extract) based on a pun; a pun based bakery romance(extract), a pun based werewolf Scottish romance (have you noticed a theme yet), and  a modern day romantic comedy concerning Scotsmen with questionable morals. Which also has an excerpt on my Ao3. Oh and also a vampire wedding planner romcom because apparently I have lost complete control of my life.

All of my work is tagged appropriately, with anything that is 18+ being placed under a cut and tagged as #NSFW or #NSFW Text for ease of blacklisting if you would like avoid it. If you are under the age of 18, I do ask that you respect my boundaries and refrain from interacting with anything on my blog that is labelled 18+. I try very hard to keep my blog as safe for everyone as I can. No mean feat when you’re known across the Internet as “the crucifix vampire nipple lady” :P

All of my work that I intend to publish professionally will also be available smut free in plain romance/fluff versions if that is a thing you are interested in. If you need me to tag something for trigger purposes, no matter how silly you think I might think it is, please let me know, I will be more than happy to do so.

If you’re completely new here you might notice some people calling me “mom” or other variations therein of familial relation. It’s perfectly okay to greet me as such if you wish to, but it is by no means an obligatory title and not something I gave to myself. Tumblr decided to adopt me sometime last year after I did some helpful life advice posts and I’ve been doing my best to be worthy of the honorific ever since. You can also just call me Joy, cause that is my name :)

Please have patience if you are sending me asks or IMs. I am but a humble smut peddler, peddling my weres, and have some pretty profound chronic health problems ranging from autoimmune issues to nerve damage which make keeping up with a high traffic blog as well as my work schedule rather difficult. So I’m sorry if you ever send me something and I don’t see it. I’m trying.

If you get tired of seeing my health posts, you may wish to blacklist the following tags: #chronic health tag & #chronic health tag: teeth, that way I can bitch and moan into the void and you don’t have to put up with me if you don’t want to.

Also sometimes we stream things in my chatroom, the link to which you can find in my navigational bar, and are welcome to check out at any time though we are currently on hiatus. There is also a discord chat set up by my friends and followers, where people often hang out just to chat. The link to this can also be found via my chatroom. 

Oh and you can now follow me on Twitter if that is a thing you are interested in. I also have a PO Box listed in my FAQ for if and when anyone would like to send me something random like a book they’d like to see me review, or even the occasional Death fucking skeleton statue too. No I’m not kidding. 

All of these things aside, welcome, I hope you’re having a good appropriate time zone, and whatever made you click on me was worth it. Take care of yourselves and each other, and I’ll see you in the comments <3

#20000 followers #TWENTY THOUSAND FOLLOWERS #WHAT THE FFFF #navigational post #gif warning

[thebibliosphere]

It’s been less than three weeks since my last thousand follower milestone. You’d think by now this would be mildly less terrifying for me but no, no, I am a still a raw bundle of nerves every time I look at my activity feed. Time for the obligatory navigational post I guess!

Hello trashcans, welcome home. I’m the vampire editor person who just wants to rest.  If you’re here for more Death smut, food discourse, general vampire shitposting and unconditional love for Carrie Fisher then boy are you in the right place. Clickable links are in bold for ease of navigation <3

IF YOU’RE HERE TO ASK ME HOW I BECAME AN EDITOR OR ARE INTERESTED IN HIRING ME AS ONE, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT MY FAQ. 

Thank you <3

Due to tumblr tricking me into becoming a professional writer I’m currently working on about a million and one writing projects. Most of them vampire related for some bizarre unknown reason.

The most well known is likely Hunger Pangs which is available for pre-order via my Patreon, and in a mere matter of weeks, on Amazon too. Cause that’s right, I took that shit post and turned it into a poly-queer-paranormal-satirical-romance novel featuring vampires, werewolves and punching undead fascists (It wasn’t intended to be politically relevant but here we are).

A fairly concise summary of it can be found here and excerpts can be found by searching for the tag #the vampire werewolf thing, which is the unofficial tagline for Hunger Pangs or #Phangs as some people have started to tag it. By request there is going to be two versions of the book, one which contains sexual content, and one which does not for those who are not interested in smut and like a little more fluff with their fangs. 

Along with Phangs I’m also working on a gritty Scottish romance novella (extract) based on a pun; a pun based bakery romance (extract), a pun based werewolf Scottish romance (have you noticed a theme yet), and  a modern day romantic comedy concerning Scotsmen with questionable morals. Which also has an excerpt on my Ao3. Oh and also a vampire wedding planner romcom because apparently I have lost complete control of my life. 

All of my work is tagged appropriately, with anything that is 18+ being placed under a cut and tagged as #NSFW or #NSFW Text for ease of blacklisting if you would like avoid it. If you are under the age of 18, I do ask that you respect my boundaries and refrain from interacting with anything on my blog that is labelled 18+. I try very hard to keep my blog as safe for everyone as I can. No mean feat when you’re known across the Internet as “the crucifix vampire nipple lady” :P

All of my work that I intend to publish professionally will also be available smut free in plain romance/fluff versions if that is a thing you are interested in. If you need me to tag something for trigger purposes, no matter how silly you think I might think it is, please let me know, I will be more than happy to do so.

If you’re completely new here you might notice some people calling me “mom” or other variations therein of familial relation. It’s perfectly okay to greet me as such if you wish to, but it is by no means an obligatory title and not something I gave to myself. Tumblr decided to adopt me sometime last year after I did some helpful life advice posts and I’ve been doing my best to be worthy of the honorific ever since. You can also just call me Joy, cause that is my name :)

Please have patience if you are sending me asks or IMs. I am but a humble smut peddler, peddling my weres, and have some pretty profound chronic health problems ranging from autoimmune issues to nerve damage which make keeping up with a high traffic blog as well as my work schedule rather difficult. So I’m sorry if you ever send me something and I don’t see it. 

If you get tired of seeing my health posts, you may wish to blacklist the following tags: #chronic health tag & #chronic health tag: teeth, that way I can bitch and moan into the void and you don’t have to put up with me if you don’t want to.

Also sometimes we stream things in my chatroom, the link to which you can find in my navigational bar, and are welcome to check out at any time though we are currently on hiatus. There is also a discord chat set up by my friends and followers, where people often hang out just to chat. The link to this can also be found via my chatroom. Oh and you can now follow me on Twitter if that is a thing you are interested in. 

All of these things aside, welcome, I hope you’re having a good day, and whatever made you click on me was worth it. Take care <3

#gif warning #new followers #18000 followers #long post #navigational post