#This is Just my opinion but Ive seen a couple people with similar experiences to me and wanted to make a post to see if anyone else | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blackpearlblast · 4 months

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hey, if my ask is insensitive or simply too much work/you dont want to give your opinion/energy thats ok, and im sorry for bothering you if it is. ive seen many jewish people say "from the river to the sea" is a dogwhistle/generally antisemitic phrase to use, but you used it in your golem art's text part(incredibly moving text btw.) im asking you bc you mentioned youre jewish and i thought you might have insight or thoughts to give on why you use it/what you think about the first statement about the phrase?

hi, yes, i would be glad to talk about my perspective on this! first of all, i do want to say that i think a lot of palestinian bloggers have already talked about this and their voices will always be what you want to seek out first when educating yourself. however, i do know the crowd of people claiming that "from the river to the sea" is antisemitic/genocidal has been very loud so i understand why you would want to hear a jewish perspective on it too. second, in order to explain why i think "from the river to the sea" is not antisemitic will involve me comparing it to actual antisemitic, nazi slogans and dogwhistles and talking about what they mean. so just a heads up for that before it comes up.

the full phrase is "from the river to the sea, palestine will be free!" i think a lot of times in accusations of antisemitism people leave off the second half of the phrase in order to claim it is calling for something else to happen from river to sea (like the expulsion or execution of all jews.) but that's just like, not, ever, a thing? that is said? you can tell the pieces of the phrase go together because they rhyme and also are said together by palestinians and allies near constantly. it's "from the river to the sea, palestine will be free." and i think all of the fearmongering relies on a good bit of ambiguity beyond that too. "what does a 'free palestine' mean? could it meant they want to throw all the jews into the sea?" - some zionist when i tried to look up the origin of the phrase in case there was anything really important i was missing that i should cover in this. there's like this idea that they can't really be asking for a free palestine, there has to be some kind of catch.

i think it's also important to look at the circumstances that this slogan was born under. the thing about modern day palestine and occupied palestine, on which israel tries to build itself, is that even though spatially the land stretches from river to sea, the people's experience of it does not. because of the apartheid system of checkpoints, ID-based restriction of movement, and blockades (in the case of gaza), there exist great gulfs in the land that are impossible or near impossible for people to cross. there can be a place a couple miles away, that due to lacking the "proper credentials", is more distant for palestinians living under apartheid than perhaps a destination a cross-country trip away would be for you. so i see the call for a free palestine specifically "from river to sea" to remove those gulfs and allow freedom of movement for everyone. i find very little of this has to do with jews, personally. the only connection is that the people who set up and maintain this system of apartheid happened to be jewish. and i hope that we would all agree that resisting one's oppressors- even if those oppressors are also marginalized and oppressed in other ways- is not a bad thing.

but it is true that many white supremacist/antisemitic slogans may focus more on the creation of a (white) nation than actually the jews themselves, since they have already established among themselves that a white nation has to mean no jews. so let's look at some of the more famous nazi rallying cries and how different they are from "from the river to the sea."

the fourteen words are most primarily known to be "we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." wow! i guess we could find some superficial similarities between this and river and the sea, like if we really wanted to stretch it. but personally, there's a ton of alarm bells in my head that this phrase sets off while river to the sea doesn't. the emphasis of "we" and "our" when used in this way really implies an us versus them narrative. and here the ambiguity really is present and malevolent! a "free palestine" is a palestine unrestricted by apartheid and colonialism. a "secure existence" and "future for white children" is uhhh, what does that Mean. like, we Know what that means right. but they aren't saying it. we can very easily find people saying what a free palestine means if we listen to palestinians. please, please listen to palestinians. there are so many people talking about what their idea of a decolonized palestine looks like, but the basics are generally one state, for all people, with equal rights for all, and the ability for those who were expelled from their homes in the nakba and all of the many long years following it, to return.

"blood and soil" is even vaguer. but thankfully(?), nazis were very enthusiastic about explaining what the phrase meant to them. "blood" is the superior aryan bloodlines and eugenic values that they wished to propagate and the "soil" represents the land of germany and the desire to "reject modernity and embrace tradition" by leaving urban life behind and living in the idealized countryside. (see we got a twofer here!) the only possible connection i could make to from the river to the sea here is the emphasis on the land but that on its own doesn't feel significant to me. land and the place where you live is very important to all kinds of humans all over the world. and i think another particular aspect of "blood and soil" is the emphasis of how you are living on the land. it's not just enough to be able to live in your homeland with freedom of movement and the ability not to be killed with impunity by occupying soldiers (lucky you!), you want to live there in a state of racial purity exemplified by eugenic values. in general, in nazi slogans, there is a particular fixation with a society shaped to represent these specific values. the call is not for freedom from repression, from an actual occupying colony, but instead from the considered bad actors and impure values coming from within their society. freedom from having degenerates sullying their perfect aryan nation. there is a plea to be able to get rid of those who do not match their view of a perfect society. the plea for a free palestine is, so much, a plea to be able to keep their family members, their friends, the friendly stranger down the block. that is not a fascist ideology, that is the will to live. and though i am referring to the ideology surrounding "blood and soil" in past tense because i am referencing the coining of the phase, these sentiments and slogans are obviously (and unfortunately) alive and well today. though, there is a particular irony to white american neo-nazis chanting it on stolen land.

"they will not replace us"/"jews will not replace us" refers to the "great replacement" theory, that jews are orchestrating a mass replacement of white people with immigrants (specifically non-white, often muslim immigrants.) i do not think this slogan has even any superficial similarities to from the river to the sea. you could definitely compare this sentiment to israel's attempts to maintain an artificial ethnic majority, since in many ways the potential "solution" to the "great replacement" would also need to involve creating/maintaining an artificial ethnic majority. (this is obviously not saying that israel subscribes to the great replacement theory, but that the tactic of maintaining artificial ethnic majorities is shared between zionism and great replacement theorists, since both ideologies rely on a specific ethnicity being the majority in their country.)

dogwhistles like 88, triple parenthesis, etc. rely on being vague symbols so that only those who know what the symbols stand for know what they mean. (88=HH=heil hitler, the triple parentheses representing the supposed (((echoes))) of jewish influence throughout history.) "from the river to the sea, palestine will be free" is a complete phrase that directly names its cause. people who say "free palestine" want you to know they stand with palestine. i guess if you wanted to be going for the most bad faith reading possible you could say "free palestine from what?", to which every palestinian and everyone who has been remotely paying attention to what palestinians are saying would shout: "from apartheid, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and currently, very open and deliberate genocide!" like, it is true that if you felt you did not glean every aspect and detail of what the people in the occupied territories are calling for, you would be correct! but they are answering this. they want to talk about it. the reason i do not believe from the river to the sea is genocidal or antisemitic is because i have been reading and listening to what palestinians are saying and none of them have said they want to kill all jews. they do not want genocide, they want to go home! they just want to go home. i don't know most of this was written pretty tongue in cheek because i was talking about nazi slogans and nazis are pathetic and even more pathetic when held up against a movement of people who are legitimately trying to fight against a great wrong that was committed against them, but i just get so sad saying this. they just want to go home. haven't you ever felt that way before?

in the end, words mean things, and even more importantly, the contexts they're said in mean things. and while it's true that antisemites do hide behind dogwhistles and vague statements for plausible deniability, the alternative meaning does have to actually be established somewhere for them to be effective. from the river to the sea lacks an established alternative meaning. fearmongering from people who refuse to listen to what palestinians are actually saying does not make sense to me as legitimate definitions of the phrase.

also!!!! i'm sorry this got so Fucking long, thank you if you actually made it this far! i intentionally used "from the river to the sea" in my artists statement because it frustrates and upsets me so much to see people making such a big fuss about it when actual antisemitism goes unpunished. like a lot of the phrases i talk about here were chanted at the charlottesville neo-nazi march in 2017 and while many people were deeply upset and angry at what happened, the jewish community was not rallied around even Close to as much as it right now. and with joe biden saying "if it weren't for israel, not a single jew in the world would be safe" at a fucking hanukkah celebration i just. i don't know. the push back against "from the river to the sea" has so much to do with backing colonial and imperial interests and so so little to do with our actual safety. the concept of our identities and safety is being weaponized against palestinians, and at the same time makes it harder to identify actual antisemitism. and that hurts.

#received #no sources and minimal proofreading because i already spent way too long on this but everything i mention #should either be easily google-able or my opinion #nazism #antisemitism #racism #islamophobia #ask to tag

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twistedastrology · 13 days

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🪐 my take on the outer planets 🪐

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saturn is constantly given a bad rap just because it does its job- saturn's placement in your chart isn't always a bad thing- it can signify difficulties in that area of your life, yes, but it can also tell you what you have unwavering resolve in (especially if you're saturn ruled or saturn is positively aspected)

for example, my saturn is in my 1st house in leo (cancer rising) and I've seen people say that saturn in the 1st house can indicate a fear of growing old or being lonely, whatever- my personal experience with this placement is, ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you i am fucking petrified of losing myself- losing my mind, losing who i am and dying early are my worst fears (dreams in which im dying are NOT the best ive ever had 😮‍💨)

but as a result of this, i know myself SO well. i do think saturn in the 1st house can indicate issues with finding yourself IF it's afflicted, which mine isn't (thank god 💔💔💔)

im also very scared of growing out of touch with the world around me- dont get me wrong, i love being a hermit, but if im ever that old man that can't understand trends or whatever and is overly cynical of younger generations... dawg- take me the fuck out 😕

uranus i LOOOOVEEEEE and i think it stands for so much more than just rebellion- my uranus has a LOT of power in my chart (so does my neptune but they're in mutual reception 😮‍💨) because my moon is cusped (1° pisces, but i feel both pisces and aquarius influence 💔), and it and my mercury im pretty sure are why i think backwards as fuck- (fun fact, my mercury is FIRMLY direct but it likes to act like it's in retrograde 💔💔💔💔)

but!! more interestingly, i have a very specific mental process where whenever im goin thru it, i cant stay goin thru it for a while- if my brain is fucked up for a little too long and i start getting pissed about it, my uranus takes over and legitimately propels me through the pain in almost an instant. i could be going through something for weeks and once i start getting pissed about it or legitimately bored of it, the next day it's like nothing ever happened BUT i still learned from it

ofc I have to do something to trigger that effect, which is where my mars in cancer comes in and i do a workout to tap into the physical catharsis and BOOM, go to bed and wake up the next day a new man 🙏🙏🙏 god bless 🙏🙏🙏

neptune Ok i am not entirely sure what made whoever said neptune is the higher octave of venus think that but I've never been able to see it. this might be controversial as hell but neptune is the higher octave of the moon to me and jupiter is the higher octave of venus. THAT BEING SAID-

neptune is an absolutely fascinating planet to me lately and im not sure why- i do have a couple transit aspects with it right now but ive wanted to write about it literally all day now- U KNOW i might love it so much bc it's in my 8th house actually that would make sense- ANYWAY-

neptune to me is the source of all the visions from god i get, especially my creative ones- (source: it came to me in a vision from god.) the moon is a very creative placement in my opinion (i have a WILDLY different idea of the moon that i can go over in another post), so neptune follows a similar current, but neptune is higher creativity, higher emotion, etc- it's the planet of spirituality and the absolute depths of our subconscious, like to the point of past lives, that's the kinda shit neptune fucks with

but because it's also the higher octave of the moon, to me it can absolutely represent addictions and vices, everything garbage- personally, my neptune isn't very afflicted at all but i also have a major lack of earth in my chart so i Do find myself experiencing classic neptune-based paranoia sometimes- fuck dude i went neurotic for a week at one point, that was some serious neptune delusion- But my uranus/saturn pulled me back from it, because like i said, saturn makes me petrified of losing myself, so those two joined forces like "ya this shit ain't cool actually take it out back and shoot it"

i might make a post on specifically neptune stuff soon and/or right after this bc the hyperfixation is hyperfixating 💔💔

pluto i FUCK with because it's such a soul searchy planet (my 8th house is very active so ofc i fuck with pluto) in the darkest ways and i love that shit- jonathan davis has his pluto in a fucking mastery degree (29° virgo) and i am to this day like 😦 over it- and it makes SO much sense for him to have PLUTO of all planets in a mastery degree- and i have mine in 26° sag so like im not that far behind... 💔

but dude that's mastery of some SERIOUS transformative powers- that's mastery of the wildly darker shit in life and that is so fucking tight to me- i value that kinda stuff more than anything dude- probably why korn is my fav band (been listening to them as i write this 😭😭)

one thing abt pluto that i DONT agree with tho, and this is more of a scorpio thing BUT i know everyone loves to say scorpios are the sexy signs but dawg... it's cancers... i swear 2 god it's cancers- i will write an entire fucking post on cancers and why i HATE everyone's interpretations of them bc everyone's like "cnanncers are cRYBbaueiis and tHyeyre the most emOtIknal siGnsns 💔💔💔" Bro. Bro. Bro dont do me like that for the love of god. that shit made me hate my rising sign for SO long and also not relate to it!!!! then i started doin my own research and found out "Oh fuck nvm im totally a cancer"

BUT if you look at pluto like the actual God- nowhere in his mythology (that I read anyway- i could be wrong i dont wanna act like i know everything) does it say anything abt him ruling over sex or sumn like that- but everyone says pluto rules over sex!!!!!! Where!!!!!!!!!!! dawg they said he was a god of abundance bc he ruled over the underworld and gems and stuff were found underground 😭😭😭

i do think pluto fucks with taboo shit though But back in the ye olden days when astrology was being developed, sex was not taboo at all, that's a new development that i think uranus fucks with more because uranus is a very future focused planet in my humble opinion

i could definitely keep writing but i think this is already a novel SO- to specify tho, this is all my opinion of the planets, ive read PLEEEEEENTY of books and stuff so by no means do i not know how this shit works, but my uranus makes me rip everything apart and make my own take so 💔

#astrology #astro observations #astro community #outer planets #saturn #uranus #neptune #pluto #astrologer #space

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arodabi · 3 years

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okay, i’m finally getting around to writing this, and uhh ill say its for aro week too. this is written as an aro person directed at alloromantic people. when i refer to writing, i’m kind of using it as a general term for creative works. Here’s me throwing my hat in on the question:

Can you ship aromantic characters?

and my answer is,,,,, actually a question. Why do you want to ship aromantic characters?

I want alloros to realize that for a lot of aros, we do not get to see ourselves represented often. I can actually count on like one hand how many popular canon aro characters there are, and on the whole, none of their identities are respected. people constantly try to weasel their way out of actually writing aro characters, or they just ignore or deny their identity outright. fandom spaces (hell creative spaces in general) are at best not welcoming to aros, and at worst actively hostile towards us. So when the first question brought up when a character gets canonically confirmed as aro is “okay cool but can i ship them???” or “that’s nice but how can i still write about my fave ship that involves them??” i want to fucking scream. its a slap to the face and it shows that people really do not give a shit about aros. you say stuff like that and all i hear is “my fictional ship is so much more important than representing your marginalized minority identity” so instead of me just sitting here and saying “yes you can totally ship aro characters, as long as you’re respectful!!!” i’m saying “can you stop and think why you want to shove an aro character into a romantic relationship at the first chance you get?? maybe you have some arophobia you haven’t worked on?? maybe since we live in an amatonormative world, you’re letting that influence your views??” because that question being the first thing out of your mouth when you see a character you like confirmed as aro? that’s already disrespectful towards aros in my book.

So back to my question, Why do you want to ship aromantic characters? is it because you can’t write characters without them being in romantic relationships? or because you think a character without a romantic relationship is boring? Because if so, that’s a bad reason and it sounds like amatonormativity is rotting your brain.

Is it because you just really like a ship with the aro character? Because you can write two characters with a strong relationship without writing them as a couple. A strong friendship can hold just as much power as a romantic relationship.

Is it because fuck aros, i will write what I wanna write and I don't wanna write this character with their canon identity? because then you’re just an arophobic asshole that needs to work on your shitty opinions. aro representation is just as important as any other lgbtqia+ representation.

Now if you’re reading this and thinking “well i heard aros can be in queerplatonic relationships!” I want you to think for a second. Are you writing a qpr or are you writing a romantic relationship with the serial numbers filed off? Have you talked to aro people or read stuff actually written by us? because, yes, some qprs can look a lot like a romantic relationship from the outside, but that’s just it, you’re looking at it from the outside. qprs are more than just “romantic relationship with extra steps”, and i think it’s really telling how many times i see alloromantic people saying they’re depicting an aro character in a qpr, not a romantic relationship, but then they never ever make any effort to distinguish the qpr from any other romantic relationship they write or draw. It just feels like qprs are getting used by alloros as a gatcha any time an aro person objects to how they depict (or don’t depict) aromanticism. if you want to write a character in a qpr then go for it! but you need to actually do research, talk to aros, get multiple opinions and not just take the first opinion that agrees with you and run with it.

“But what about headcanoning a character as arospec?” now i will say before i go into this, i am aro, not arospec, so if an arospec person wants to come in and correct me at any part here im happy to listen. but my problem when alloros bring up arospec identities is a very similar problem to how qprs are often depicted. I remember when Peridot Stevenuniverse got confirmed aro (she did, do not argue this with me) people were jumping over themselves to assure everyone that “a character getting confirmed as aro just means they are any arospec identity” which,, uhh,, not true? i mean if an arospec person wants to see a canon aro character as, say, aroflux, i’ve got no problem, aro and arospec people can do what they want really. but, i do have a problem with all the alloro fans who were spreading this. because, do you really see the character as demiromantic? or are you using that identity to deflect criticism from erasing aro identities? are you actually trying to write a good depiction of a demiro person? or are you just writing normal ship stuff and slapping a “uwu ive never felt romantic attraction until i met you! and now i will act exactly like any alloromantic person!” at the beginning? being in fandom spaces, i do see the occasional fic actually depicting an aspec identity (i say aspec her because aro is so rare that most of these examples i’ve seen have been acespec identities rather than arospec) but like 99% of the time, that’s written by someone who actually shares the identity. before you use our terms and identities to cover your ass when you erase us, consider not fucking doing that. consider listening to all aros and getting our thoughts and input.

And last here is “but what about romance positive aros?” now i think most of what i’ve said previously can be applied here. the only thing i wanna add is, i think its very interesting that almost every time i see non aros depict aros, they always write them as very into romance, very open to be in romantic relationships, and very quiet about their aro identity. despite the character in canon not showing any of these traits. romance positive aros are good and important, but not every aro is romance positive. there’s quite a few of us that are romance repulsed, and alloros only depicting aros as super romance positive no matter what is suspicious to say the least. if an aro character is shown to be open to participating in romantic activities in canon then of course write them that way. but if an aro character is shown to be uninterested in, or even actively against romantic activities then respect that too.

so, to wrap up my thoughts in this ramble: please ask yourself why you want to ship aro characters so bad, because if the only reason is that amatonormativity has brainwashed you into not being able to write, or draw, or do anything with a character without them being in a romantic relationship, then you uhhh need to work on that, that’s honestly a writing/creative flaw imo. if you like the relationship dynamic between an aro character and another character, consider making them friends. friendship is not less powerful than romantic relationships. nobody is ever too old for the power of friendship trope. If you’re erasing an aro character’s identity because fuck aros, then fuck off somewhere far away from me and work on your bullshit. qprs, arospec identities, and romance positive aros are all very real, very important parts of the aro community, but please talk to other aros about them and actually make an effort to understand how these things work, dont just assume. And also don’t use these things as a way to erase aro identities and cover your ass if get called out. its disrespectful towards all aros.

The most important thing to do before writing or creating work with aro characters is to talk to aros, and not just the aros that agree with you. look up what a qpr actually is, learn how aros experience their arospec identities, talk to aros with multiple outlooks on romance. and if you can’t bring yourself to reach out, at least read through our own writings, whether that’s fiction, or informational posts, fuck, look through our memes if u wanna. Just please actually make an effort.

So, Can you ship aro characters? its complicated. look at trends in your fandom, question why you want to, and do research. Be an aro ally, listen to us. That’s really the most important thing.

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nextstopparis · 2 years

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Why do you think people ship merthur? What is it about them that makes them so ✨ (I'm asking this as a merthur shipper myself just because I'm interested in your opinion coz I love your merthur posts)

first off anon, thank you!!! that means a lot:D secondly, i think you should 200% check out this post (if u hvent seen it already) because it sums up everything i could ever hope to say better than i could ever hope to say it, lol. (ALSO THANK YOU @bellamyblakru FOR FINDING IT FOR ME!!!)

as for my opinion from my own brain (yikes) ive been think abt this question for the WHOLE DAY and still hve no idea how to answer it.

honestly? i think it’s the potential of their story, more than anything. i don’t know how to explain this very well, but ill try.

you have these two boys who grew up lonely, and then found a home within each other. these two people that, at first, wanted nothing to do with the other, and then got to know each other and decided that actually. i misjudged him. i do like him. i do want him as my friend. and just the fact that they became so important to each other so quickly, too. they compliment and contrast each other well - one is the best swordsman, while the other is the most powerful sorcerer ever. they’re both, fundamentally, good people. they could rule the kingdom together or they could run away and say screw it all, and either story would be fascinating. either story could be possible. they have that forbidden love possibility. they have the soulmate trope. they have the screw destiny, i would still choose you trope. they have the yearning and antagonistic-but-interested strangers to (potential?) lovers trope. they have they id do anything for you trope. they love each other in that very overwhelming and heart wrenching sort of way thats always been romanticized. across hundreds of lifetimes. like theyre made from the same star. so different but not really all that much. they have an equal chance for one of the happiest endings or one of the saddest ones.

its also just. its also interesting, you know? like all that potential for their story aside, they’re funny together. they have good chemistry. there’s something about bantering couples that makes people just like them, and merthur fits into it. they have sweet moments but they’re also lightly teasing each other bc thats just. idk. them. they are comfortable around each other to be playful and tease. they both enjoy it. theyre compatible and a good match for each other so it doesn’t get boring. merlin usually has the last laugh and arthurs either trying to hide a smirk or endures it with an eye roll bc they just!!! understand each other!!! idk!!!

i also think theres a lot to be said about how so many song lyrics or poems or excerpts flawlessly fit them (and how they parallel canon couples). all these things about romantic love, so separate from each other, not written about merthur at all, all about the same thing, being so applicable to merthur, anyway. you know, everyone has their own experiences w romance and all but there are just some fundamental similarities and!! they apply to merthur a lot of the time!! ive made like 3 web weaves about this. ive seen a lot more web weaves about this. all different and still just showcasing that, you know. all these lines written about romance and tragedy and undying love from however long ago (maybe not that long ago at all)… they apply to them, too.

#this makes no sense im so sorry brain doesnt work when i need it to #mostly i think shipping just comes down to personal preferences for dynamics btwn characters #and merthur probably just fits into a lot of peoples preferences #probably also why there are a lot of multi shippers - bc theres overlap too #im so sorry anon i hope you like the other post though!!! its a lot better than mine #bbc merlin #merthur #ask

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i-did · 3 years

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hi hello i couldn't sleep last night so i was scrolling thru all ur asks and stuff and ur opinions and analyses are so interesting!!! and then afterwards i was thinking about what u were saying about mlm smut and i'd also been thinking about such things a little bit recently bc like.....at a certain point it becomes quite clear that the vast majority of smut-writing is just imitation. like there's the sex noise verb list and all and the whole general mechanics of the sex and those things just .... replicate over and over. and the whole thing w people writing mlm vs wlw smut regardless of their own sexual orientation..... like i feel like a big part of that is just a self-perpetuating thing. like if u have not had sex and u r getting all ur (pleasure-related) sex ed from fandom (even if u do watch porn, that doesn't rlly tell u how to describe stuff? idk) regardless of What fandom , the majority is going to be mlm smut. which is itself majority imitation of other mlm smut, imitating and imitating back to whoever knows what the first smut fanfic was etc. there's just way More to mimic than there is on the women side of things. which then becomes a self-perpetuating thing, bc the mimicry continues and generates more and more. and---if there are fundamental misunderstandings of anatomy involved---those self-perpetuate as well. and maybe even exaggerate. and yeah. does this all make sense? idk i was just thinking about it. like all the stereotypes and stuff continue bc writers are getting their inspo from other writers rather than their own brains. or something. idk!!!!! it's just all... divorced from reality? bc words. or something!! i hope u get what i'm trying to say. just thoughts i've been thinking. anyway i think ur thoughts are cool. and ur writing. ok bye have a good day!!

Okay yeah this is kinda messy but hope u see this, uhh yeah I think you're right about the echo chamber effect fr about stuff. I think it's a mix of projecting too sometimes. talk more under the cut and also link to a video essay since I love video essays.

Here’s a video that sort of touches on this topic:

“Gay fanfiction” by Sarah Z. (has CC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8E_C00dKwI

This video begins to talk about fetishization at the end, but also… not really. The words “gay fanfiction” is used as a catchall, when really gay fanfiction is largely mlm written by non-mlm.

Fandom is a largely women's space dominated by the female gaze in a media industry world that is dominated by men and the male gaze. I'm really glad women have this space to explore creativity and queerness, and I don't expect the female gaze to go away, but I am still ultimately bummed out I can’t read most fanfic or interact with most fandom spaces without having fetishization in my face.

So about 80% of fandom is women, and most of those women aren't straight, but 90% of those women prefer mlm ships. Why don’t they prefer wlw ships? Well definitely part of it is the fact that queerbaiting is centered around white straight men, and then there is also the fact that women tend not to be written as well charcter wise. But the fact still remains that you get jerjean getting priority over Layla and Alvarez who are in canon just as much and are a canon wlw couple who actually interact as well as Alvarez could likely be a woc because of her Hispanic last name. Korasami doesn’t get nearly as much hype as zuko and saka, despite the fact that they are 2 fully dimensional characters who canonly kiss and hold hands, something the creators fought for and ended up having to sacrifice another reboot for.

I do believe the fandom echo-chamber is largely responsible for… a lot of things, like you're saying. But what's interesting is that the complaints I've heard about visual porn from non mlm in the fandom space is that they can’t get off to it because its for the male gaze and misogynistic usually. But they also don't seem to notice how the mlm smut circles has the female gaze and is also… almost always mlm. If it was a pure anatomical not knowing thing, I get that, but I also think that leads to the question of “then why the male body for porn, and not your own? The one you know and are familiar with?”

I know some people want to get outside of their own body for porn and don’t want to think of their own anatomy at all, but overall I'm still uncomfortable. If an anglo said “well I watch porn of only Mexicans so I don't self insert” I'm gonna be like … hhhh in a similar way. I understand people “like what they like” but I wish they also noticed said patterns in the first place. I understand the t4t tumblr porn circle, and how it's different from cis people who only watch trans porn.

I actually wished that instead of fandom focusing on mlm ships where some asshole guy hits on bottom troupe charcter for top troupe character to save, was instead… a wlw character experiencing said shitty getting hit on and other wlw swooping in. what's interesting is fandom writes a lot about misogynistic experiences without often realizing it. Ive read fanfic where guys get called sluts for sleeping with people or called bitch for speaking their mind, these arent things men usually experience, but rather women. Fandom has a lot of internalized misogyny and also queerphobia imo. Women characters often get pushed to the sidelines and men become the canvas for female fans to project onto.

There is this natural inclination to mlm. When people are talking about “gay shipping” or “gay books” or “gay feels” or even just “gay” mlm is what’s largely in mind. I honestly am kinda saddened by this because if gay fanfiction was really solely about writing more to feel represented, then you would see a lot of bi and ace and lesbian rep, but this isn't the case. Queer women are seriously underrepresented, and I want to hear their stories and read them in fanfiction as well as published. 50% of lgbt literature is mlm, and of that its largely written by women. Becky Albertalli, Rainbow Rowell, Maggie Stiefvater, are the YA big names and are all women writing mlm. Red white and royal blue is written by Casey McQuiston and Captive prince (which is not YA) is written by C. S. Pacat, who is non-binary, but is also TME and not mlm. These are all the big names in mlm lit, behind them is some gay men, but honestly their stories aren't preferred, they're not the right “flavor” for the consumers usually, who are largely women. In general YA consumers and authors are women, but I wish that they… just wrote about women too. I think there is a certain… snowball effect to the overrepresentation of mlm representing the whole LGBT community that leads to fetishization, as well as misogyny playing a factor in: less women characters being written well to write fanfic on, when they are written well they're taken less seriously or the audience struggles to relate to them, they're less marketable then men.

Idk I never feel “seen” or “represented” by any of the books above, which don't address boyhood and manhood and queerness intersecting really, and AFTG doesn’t either. I relate to AFTG as a trauma victim who has experienced a lot of what many of the characters go through and have gone through in the EC as well as them just overall being very well written characters, but I don't relate to it as a mlm really. I've never seen like.. gay voice or being straight passing or femphobia or how boyhood can be affected from a young age by those around you sensing you're ‘other’ or if you didn't experience this you feel outside the mlm community. Let alone sub cultures like bear and leather and pup, at most you see the word “he's such a twink” in fandom which... i fr hate non mlm using that word because it's usually used to replace the f-slur essentially, used derogatorily or to call him “such a bottom” and stuff like that. It’s like a joke or an insult.

Long story short, idk mang this was a ramble and I think I'm coning down with something. I wanna see more queer women rep and women authors writing about being a queer woman too. I think it's a complex web of fetishization and a bit of forbidden love yaoi culture (or it used to be in the BOYXBOY days) as well as misogyny on an industry level, creator level, as well as reader/consumer and fandom level. I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to explore other peoples stories and what we read has to be segregated, “only mlm are allowed to read and write mlm, only wlw are allowed to read and write wlw,” but I also think author’s intent and audience and background is telling, as well as overall statistics. Like about an hour ago I was looking for cookbooks in spanish or in english, and I was looking for some mexican food cook books, but I had to look for them using words in spanish because otherwise what came up was a bunch of “fiesta party, easy as uno dos tres authentic cooking!” and I was like… hm. Since I could tell they were marketing to anglos. (also the author’s last names were like michelle smith, james cooper, and this could be for a variety of reasons, but I trust Hispanic names more tbh and deadass would look at the authors pictures and if they had other books in Spanish or what their specialties were.)

anyways. not sure how to end this. uhm if anyone has any book recs (my to read list is like 500 books tho no joke) preferably not YA white mlm written by a white lady, hopefully queer women written by queer woman, LMK, I need more wlw and queer women stories on my list. I have a decent amount but always looking for more. I kinda wanna link my goodreads or my storygraph but I also don't want to get doxxed and it has my legal name on it so.

Also, I'm dyslexic and using spell check but if there's like some wild typos my b.

#ask #fandom politics #fandom culture #fandom psychology #mailob

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masterthespianduchovny · 3 years

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actually I just realize how they are also touchy with one another, sure that's just well a human thing and whatnot but there are unintentional ones like for example, her hand going to his thigh and his mouth shutting close, or the way in the cutting room where he 'jokingly' tried to pull on her dress and her never flinching about it and rather laughing at him doing so. They always somehow imply that's how colleagues would act towards one another?But sorry I doubt so.

It’s not how colleagues would act towards one another....

NOTE: this response got waaaaaay longer than intended because I added some thoughts ive been having the last few days. Lol.

Gillovny doesn’t exist just based on chemistry, it’s about how David and Gillian behave. I’ve been thinking about this a lot and, whether you are an OG fan or a new fan, many fans who get in to the show either think David and Gillian were involved or should be. 😂 and, honestly, I don’t think it’s just based on Mulder and Scully, you know?

It’s perplexing that literally generations of people think these two were fucking at some point in time despite their persistent denials that they haven’t.

And I believe my “relationship” with Gillovny is similar to some others. Initially, I thought they’d look cute together IRL, but never thought they were together because my opinion was just based on their chemistry on the show. I’m not sure when wiki became the go to source of information, but when I originally read up on Gillian I thought she was still married, so I was like, “oh, so that’s a no between her and David.” Lol. Then I saw that she was divorced and he was married and still married, which made me repeat “that’s a no.” Clearly, they weren’t involved, right? (And, I’m not saying they are or were, I really don’t know.) this was around 04ish.

But their chemistry and dynamic always fascinated me. While I thought it was cute, I just thought it was cute because there was no proof of them ever having a thing. Besides, Gillian got married in the first season and David later got married and was still married.

Then Gillian got pregnant on the set of IWTB and there was a little freak out in the community before she introduced Mark.

It was like...🤔, but okay. (I’m not arguing that David is the father, it was just wild when it was revealed when she got pregnant. Lol)

And, around this time, I’d read about how they “hated” each other during the run of the show.

Then, 2013 happened. I believe this the year they announced they were separated/divorced from their partners on each other’s birthdays, which is like the weirdest thing ever. Why on each other’s birthdays? The timing of that was a mindfuck.

David and Gillian had some good con interactions before that, but we started seeing more intimacy between them post separation announcements. They were kinda different, but in a good way.

Over time, i started to reflect on what I knew, what I was told, what I’ve seen, and how I understood that information. If you’re wondering what this has to do with your ask, here’s my point: out of context, their behavior is noteworthy, but you can hand wave it if you try. In context, it paints a fascinating picture of two people with a complicated history.

Two people who “hate” each other, yet are very touchy and handsy with one another. Two people who make out for fun and crack sexual jokes with one another that includes physical demonstrations. People who’ve been around them the longest, both years and time, describe actual love and care between them.

They have brought out the worst in one another, but they also bring out the best in each other as well. Their comfort levels with one another is insane considering their “canon” history framed by the media and because they didn’t have to get physically intimate with each other on screen. And I mean like fictional couples do when they hug and kiss a lot and shit like that. Not just simulated sex.

David can pull on her shirt and she just comes to him without thinking twice about what he’s doing. He doesn’t react to Gillian spitting her food in his hand because it’s not gross to him (why???). They were touching all over each other during the Kimmel interview like it was the most natural thing in the world.

They are more touchy then actors who’ve had fake sex scenes together and the ones who are/were dating IRL.

So, when I said many fans, gillovnies, experiences match mine, I’m saying: we start out thinking they’d be cute together, and then see interviews and shit and come to the conclusion that there is more going on than they’re letting on. It’s not that we’ve convinced ourselves of it because we want it to be true, but rather, unless their relationship is unconventional as fuck, but platonic, it doesn’t make any sense outside of that.

Things that stick out to me that isn’t speculation:

1. An interview where David and Gillian interview each other and Gillian point blank says he must’ve been serious about tea to marry her so quick, and then asked David why she wasn’t invited to their wedding. Gillian was clearly pissed and it was so left field. If that wasn’t noteworthy as hell, David response is baffling (since they “hated” each other) because he says, “you’re still mad about that, huh?” This exchange is wild as hell because Gillian shouldn’t have given a fuck and she does and David’s an ass about it, but they’ve clearly talked about this and he’s over it. To top it all off, this was during an interview for the movie. Like, what??? The question nor the response was professional.

2. The filming of the unnatural. A fan came to see David direct, some sets were open for fans, and witnessed David humping Gillian as a joke and Gillian is enjoying herself and going along with it. The kicker is, I mean besides the playful humping, is that tea left when she saw Gillian arrive on set and this happened shortly after tea left. And there is evidence that David humps his costars for fun: Mitch and nick in bloopers. However, David and Gillian were supposed to hate each other, yet during the batting scene he’s holding her close and grinding against her for giggles. I AM confusion.

3. ‘97 GG. He was her emotional support during the announcement of her divorce. They held hands all night, the affection during the ceremony, and the suspicious lipstick on David’s face. Shortly after this, David meets and marries tea, which is around the time the dark ages starts between them.

4. How unusual it is for them to constantly compare their romantic relationships with how long they’ve known each other. I literally don’t see any other actors talk about their relationship in the context David and Gillian do.

Point being: as you mentioned, their behavior isn’t how colleagues act (even those who are or were dating) and their dynamic isn’t normal by any means. Whether or not they’ve been involved in any capacity, physically or emotionally, they have some complicated shit they don’t want others privy to, which is their right. However, they’re trying their best to downplay whatever their relationship is all while telling on themselves via their behavior, actions, or unintentional replies to questions.

#anon mail

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aprito · 3 years

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hello <3 since i got these asks at the same time i decided to combine my thoughts on them in this post. yet another annoying sjw essay from yours truly on this blog

before i get into these i think i need to preface why im like. i guess overly hyperfocused on a certain unproblematic base (same age au / platonic canon) for them and avoid the ped0philic content like the plague lol

tw for pedophilia ment, rape ment if that makes you squicky. ALSO THIS IS LONG AND RAMBLY

as i’ve mentioned a couple times already, ive been into the ship since i was 12, back when it was very very common to not only post untagged (nsfw) canonverse content of the two in writing and in drawing but also non con and the like, so you can imagine how bad my first impression online was. thinking back on it ...as a child i found it disturbing but didnt really register how problematic it really was?? (i know, but i also lived in the middle of nowhere and had no one explain this to me)

skip to 2014 aka me coming back to naruto at 17ish and i had kinda become hyper aware of the fact that there was an increasing amount of people online who had come forward with explaining how fictional problematic content, mostly pedophilia, had been used to groom them into starting relationships with adullts. it was also a time where a lot of people didnt believe these victims, not registering how common it was for minors to be online friends with adults who had no boundaries and no qualms exposing them such content. not gonna get into my personal life here but i was lucky to not having gone through this myself. like... it kinda was my first time truly realising how fiction can EASILY be used to manipulate others irl (and yes i will not argue this, if you dont think fictional media can form and manipulate people’s opinions on attitudes, countries, cultures and virtues, pick up a book about the effects of propaganda media at least once please)

i, being young, still liking the dynamic but not really the romance, would point this out here and there in the fandom and get into fights with grown adults in their mid 20s who assumed i automatically hated the ship(s) and tried to restrict their freedom of speech or whatever, heard everything from the “age of consent doesnt exist in naruto” to the “sasori looks like a child what does it matter” despite people clearly playing on him being older and experienced. it made me so upset that people were just consuming all this content uncritically and exposing children to it tbh?? not really just sos but a lot of minor/adult ships in naruto in general. and thats where i sat down and thought, i do not want to be a grown adult talking down to children that point out how unsafe the fandom is. theyre absolutely right in drawing these boundaries and calling out adults who defend the uncritical consumption and creation of this content. i do not want to consume or create content that predators could use to groom minors, and i absolutely do want to let younger people in fandom know that i am respecting their comfort zones and want them to have a safe and fun experience. after all, naruto is not an adult show and i think a lot of people forget that!!!! i am not perfect in that regard but its something that i, at the age of 23, am very passionate about and strive towards to.

and i guess thats where same age au was born for me and i have been sticking to it ever since.

so finally we can move to the first question

aside from the fact that we both dont like canon sos, i dont think it would work out even if i wasnt prejudiced to it anyways. in all honesty, 35 year old canon sasori is not a redeemable character to me, given the fact that he’s easily amongst the cruelest villains in naruto (torturing and killing and taxiderming people for his own fun personal gain, never for a goal that served anyone but himself. how do you redeem having over 300 corpses in your backpack that you felt absolutely no remorse for killing). sasori was legit one of the only cruel villains that didnt had someone else pull the strings, which sends a clear message on kishi’s part, who absolutely loves to redeem villains LOL.

being that old, he obviously had already been very manifested in what he believed in, even if it was shakey, to the point where the first crack in that world view (sakura and chiyo protecting each other) immediately had him give up on his life all together. that, in my opinion, is not a man who’s going to know what healthy relationships would look like, regardless of it being romantic or not. 35 year old sasori to me has the same appeal as an expired can of tuna and he’s probably very happy 6 feet under. he’s supposed to be a failed gaara in that sense that he had no one to look out for him and therefore was never going to experience anything but a bad ending in life. its fine that hes dead honestly, it wraps up his short character development the best IMO.

adding to that, seriously, sakura was obviously interested in knowing why he was that way, and called him out for being seriously fucked in the head, but it’s weird to me that people assume she had any interest in actively rehabilitating him, let alone starting a serious romantic relationship with him. sakura who’s not only very, uhm, immature and straight forward when it comes to her romantic viewpoints also, as a big bootlicker, wouldnt soil her standing in the village by starting anything with a disgraced and far too gone criminal like sasori. shipping that version of sasori with sakura intimately is still going to set her up for a huge power imbalance that would be difficult to handle imo, even if she was the one in the fight ultimately exerting her power over him. i would still look at it and think damn she deserves better than having to play therapist for man like that lol.

additionally, even if you ignored all of this, you cant really ignore that sasori had already known her as a child, and that had been his first and most impactful impression of her. i dont think that sasori would look at 35 year old sakura and see her as a grown woman and not the little green girl she was in the fight. plus, you easily fall into predatory comparison territory between the “childish” and “womanly” and i have seen way too often in fic just being boiled down to her now being fuckable. a lot of of ships do this and i would just like to remind yall thats it not normal for adults to want to start relationships with children they have seen grown up or known as a child when they themselves were fully grown adults. therefore, maybe if sakura hadnt met sasori before it would be less of a problem? but that also obviously defeats the point of the dynamic and the reason he died in the first place. so yeah, it sounds kind of doomed especially if you were to make it romantic.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE SECOND QUESTION

let me preface this that im not fundamentally against age gaps, even if im not super interested in it. after all, colorblind had a 5 yr age gap (with sakura being 21), even if, say, i wrote similar fics today i probably would make it smaller lol. i think it can be handled well if both parties have enough life experience to deal with it, and the author is cautious of where the age gap starts, i think a 10+ year age gap would be fine in a scenario where the younger party (i guess sakura) was at least 25-27ish, meaning she has completed most of her most formative life stages and probably had been in relationships before, meaning she would be able to handle it without having to fear a huge power imbalance. the older the younger party is the less the age gap is going to matter tbh .TsukiHoshino and AngelOfDeath10 both handle age gaps in their fics really well imo, so i do not mind reading about them.

unfortunately, a lot of people in this fandom think making sakura barely "”””legal””””” (18, not even 20 which is hilarious to me because the source material is obviously japanese) because they both cannot stand her being past her “prime years” of being young fertile and fuckable to much older men as well as thinking a 20 year old is automatically old enough to handle that type of relationship. ive seen a lot of unironic takes that believe it will absolve them of callout posts if they throw around age of consent and “shes 18 now suckers!!!” enough lmfao. absolutely hilarious. aging a minor up without aging the adult down seriously reeks of predatory “cant wait until youre 18″ narratives and thats why i find it similarly disturbing as straight up pedo shipping.

ultimately, sasosaku is and will always be a inherently problematic ship in canon, which is why i think it should always be handled a little more responsibly in fandom spaces, ignoring or outright excusing the main problem factor, which is sasori, isnt going to convince anyone that the dynamic in itself is well written and interesting enough to explore in aus, like giving sasori the redemption most of us wanted him to have by aging him down to a point in time where he was still realistically going to allow being positively influenced, similar to gaara.

so really, what i think is well handled age gap and how most people handle age gap in the naruto fandom are two different worlds at times lol

tl;dr

canon shippers have never been anything but gross when i was younger and i didnt wanna be like that, even if youre “smart”enough to differenate, actual creeps dont really care and might use your content to blur the lines, sasori isnt rly redeemable so romantic canonverse realistically wouldnt make much sense and is still iffy, age gaps are fine if they are handled well, but given that the dynamic doesnt really need the age gap to still work im not that invested on making that an essential part of my shipping experience.

thank you for reading and hope this makes sense!

#nonitxt #meta #another hot take from me #but seriously if you're offended over these #unfollow me lol idc #defending predatory content is not a hill im gonna die on in this life

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skeltonjunction · 4 years

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what ive seen about the mlm-only spaces on tumblr are more of posts that speak very generally about love or tenderness that say "women dni", and i think that can come across as women shouldnt be allowed to share these ideas on love and tenderness?? (those are just a couple of ideas ive seen a lot, not saying thats what all the posts are about) idk, im a wlw and theres definitely wlw-only spaces on tumblr, i totally see what you mean though and im open to hearing what you think

Hey sorry if this is really late, I made that post before going to bed and then slept in lol, anyway

I totally get how seeing a generic-looking post about love and then it having “women dni” at the end seems really jarring. I can only assume in these cases that it’s a case of every post on the blog being tagged as that, and certain (probably more generic) posts gaining more traction and ending up on dashboards outside of the mlm sphere. Honestly I don’t have an exact answer to whether this is “good” or “bad” so I’m probably just going to say that if it’s from an mlm blog the post is specifically about love and tenderness between men. Whether it would be better / less controversial for the text of the post to specify this... 🤷‍♂️ probably?

But often mlm-only blogs kinda exist for the purpose of being a collection of posts/sentiments within a closed space (either the OP blog page or generally just within mlm blogs) rather than for being shared across dashboards, if that makes sense. So having a periodic reminder that the blog/space you are scrolling is designed for men if you were browsing it can be helpful. Again, when posts do end up “leaking out” into general tungle that’s when the “women dni” thing starts looking weird.

My main gripe really was more to do with things that are OBVIOUSLY mlm content being shared by fetishists (approx. 90% of this site in 2014 lol) and also some related drama going on about “nblm dni” - if you want to know, my opinion is that since nonbinary people aren’t men, they have no reason to be in a men-only space.

What you said about there being wlw only spaces, I don’t want to draw a direct comparison because obviously our communities experience objectification in different ways, moulded by misogyny/patriarchy/etc. But a man taking wlw-specific posts and claiming they are relatable to him as a “mlw” (I’ve just made that acronym up - is it a thing?) would be incredibly dodge and gross and uncomfortable, and it would be the same for a woman taking posts about loving men (obvi I am assuming that is specified in the post in this example) from an mlm blog and making it about her would be the same.

Men don’t love men in the same way women love men - our expected behaviour and gender roles have an inpact on the way we experience our sexuality (and our sexuality is a direct rejection of gender roles, but that’s a whole other post in itself) - so many sentiments around being a man who loves men will not be relatable to eg. straight women. As I understand it the reverse applies in a similar way to women who love women.

This got very sidetracked and long but to answer your point, expressing love & tenderness in the context of being a man who is into other men, against the backdrop of patriarchy and toxic masculinity and male gender roles, is super important and IS different than disussing love & tenderness in general, and taking a post about men being tender towards other men and reshaping it or assuming it applies to everyone reduces the importance of the post.

#ask #anonymous #Does This Make Any Sense #discourse

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laughingpinecone · 4 years

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Press Start letter

I am laughingpineapple on AO3

It’s a long list of character combos so the specific requests aren’t overly detailed, please draw at will from my general likes and general fandom likes in addition or as an alternative to any of those!

All requests are art or fic - for art, the stuff I like is the kind that depicts the characters doing something. I’ll always be happier with a very simple drawing of two characters walking together or sharing a cup of coffee than with an ambitious composition that looks like an Avengers poster. I also enjoy seeing them wear different clothes, getting a feel of what their fashion sense is like beyond their canon outfit(s).

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic, hurt/comfort or just comfort from the ample canon hurt, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, canon-adjacent tropey plots, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploration of secondary bits of canon, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played straight, sensory details, sickfic, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships)

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, nerdy canon references, unrequested characters popping up

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay), canon retellings, consent issues

Dark Souls

I’m only familiar with the first game+DLC! It’s probably relevant to mention that I think that linking the fire is kind of a dumbass move and Gwyn is an ass, but on the other hand Kaathe has his own agenda and there’s no winning move in this world, or at least no obvious one. Feel free to deviate from anyone’s canon endings, to make things happen that’ll stave off their hollowing. I am interested in any of these people meeting and possibly striking up a friendship, and also in exploring Lordran’s temporal/dimensional fuckery, where it’s possible to meet people who have been gone for ages…

Group: Solaire of Astora & Siegmeyer of Catarina: so much fanart of Sun Bro & Onion Bro being bros, so little fic. And yet, the potential! How’d they bounce off each other, what about the fact that Siegmeyer is apparently a proper Catarina knight after all while Solaire just painted his self-made insignia and left, what would Sieg think of Solaire’s quest?

Group: Alvina the Cat & Sieglinde of Catarina: dunno, kitty. I love them both and I want everyone cool to go on adventure with each other. What’s left for Alvina now that Sif is gone, Artorias’ grave desecrated? For her part, did Sieglinde, you know, (mimics Ash Lake)?

Ghost Trick

I am very interested in various characters finding about the erased timeline, but not getting their memories back, and having to live with being told about what they did but never remembering it. Exploring the ghost lore is great. All what-ifs welcome (what if they managed an acceptable happy ending but didn’t reset the timeline, what if a different party went back to the past and kept their memories, what if Alma’s ghost stuck around…) Also open to AUs here, especially for generic fantasy or sci-fi settings or the Final Fantasy ones I prompted last Yuletide.

For the non-canon sides of Jowd/Alma/Cabanela, please no infidelity? I’d be good with either setting the fic during the game timeline or some what-if thereof when the other spouse is dead or unavailable, or simply keeping them offscreen and not mentioning them (eg Alma/Cabanela beach day, Jowd/Cabanela precinct shenanigans)

For Jowd in general, I do love my big boy and enjoy milking that size difference for all it’s worth. In gen contexts too, it’s neat. him big.

Group: Jowd & Yomiel: I’d love to read about the intimate understanding that comes from their shared memories and the horrors they’ve mutually forgiven (and a penchant for morbidity they’ve gained from such horrors probably). Cat dads things welcome.

Group: Alma/Jowd/Cabanela: maybe once Alma and Jowd have figured out he’s smitten and that they do in fact reciprocate... they tease him to death, slowly and deliberately? Is it even a Jowd romance if there’s not an exhausting amount of teasing involved, I ask?

Group: Alma/Jowd & Cabanela: Cabs’ life is wild; his best friends’ home is a safe haven...

Group: Emma & Pigeon Man: Emma’s unsuspected beta reader...

Group: Alma/Cabanela: (taps mic) legs. And fashion!

Group: Cabanela/Jowd: a recent tumblr post made a convincing argument for Cabs liking to be in charge (the argument is just pointing at Cabanela, honestly). Jowd is... agreeable, by his own admission. But is it that simple?

Kentucky Route Zero

I love the ending and I’d love to see its themes and setting explored. I’m all for exploration of any of the game’s themes and for including any staples from adjacent genres - wanna go full-on American Gothic? Dip into surrealism? Take a leaf from Twin Peaks with tulpa / split narratives to explore the characters’ issues? I love AUs so that’s an option too. Or of course there’s Xanadu at the height of its glory, an infinite what-ifs generator. Were the requested characters part of it, what were their digital counterparts up to? A Xanadu narrative would be great! I’d also love to hear about any new spot along the Zero or the Echo river, or an expansion of some place that’s only mentioned by Will in HATATE or only gets a few paragraphs of text. Mostly, I just love all these characters so much and I’m going through the tagset’s options like a hyperactive cat. Any fragment of their lives will make me happy.

Group: Shannon Márquez & Conway & Conway's Dog: does Shannon get to see them after the ending? Even for a moment?

Group: Lula Chamberlain/Joseph Wheattree/Donald: so Lula went back to Mexico. Joseph is pensive. Did the events of the night shake up Donald, or what will it take?

Group: Junebug & Lula Chamberlain: artists! Outspoken... artists... with a complicated personality. Put them in the same room and...?

Group: Junebug & Johnny: where’s the strangest place they played in, and what did Johnny find there?

Group: Conway & Johnny & Junebug (Kentucky Route Zero): their story is about finding individuality, his is about succumbing and losing it. Would any of them pick up on this mid-Act IV? Or just... talking about limbs and stuff?

Group: Cate & Will & Shannon Márquez (Kentucky Route Zero): a few months later, Shannon finds herself on the Mucky Mammoth again...

Group: Carrington & Weaver Márquez & Shannon Márquez (Kentucky Route Zero): maybe the cousins were trying to bond or reminisce or whatever and Carrington dive-bombed into the conversation, but in the end it was an enriching experience... of sorts?

Group: Carrington & Lula Chamberlain (Kentucky Route Zero): I don’t usually look for college shenanigans but this may be the exception? Or Art Opinions?

Group: Carrington & Clara (Kentucky Route Zero): would she even... get a word in? Maybe with the right topic?

Group: Carrington & Cate & Will (Kentucky Route Zero): Mammoth life! ...what does theater have to say about mushrooms again?

Group: Shannon Marquez & Weaver Marquez (Kentucky Route Zero): at the end of it all, Weaver was waiting. After this end, they can stand side by side again...

Group: Emily & Ben & Bob (Kentucky Route Zero): so what does it mean, like, poetically, that they were temporally displaced and Act I is in their future from Act V? Is it possible they were not aware of it?

Mutazione

The island, the sense of community, newcomers joining the community, gardens and music... I love the mood of this little game. Got ideas for some part of the island we haven’t seen? What stories do they tell each other about Moon Dragon and the first days of the new life it brought? The plants encyclopaedia was great - do Yoké’s archives hide some other cool tome? Please, if Graubert is mentioned, I would much prefer a sympathetic portrayal - he’s got his issues but I felt that the game was much harder on him than anyone else.

Group: Yoké & Karoo: I love the friendship between Yoké and Nonno and filtering it through Karoo feels even cooler to me. When did the big spooky bird first visit, did Yoké know or perceive what was going on?

Group: Yoké & Claire: book club book club book club!

Group: Spike/Claire: they’re so cute! Dinner at Mori’s? Swimming together?

Group: Nonno & Spike: I love Nonno’s role in the community and Spike’s role in the community, and they’re the two people who landed there and decided to stay. Could they bond over this?

Group: Dennis & Nonno: Important Tree Health Business!

Group: Bopek & Jell-A: Jell-A is the absolute coolest and Bopek grew on me a lot. Their friendship is adorable! What could they do together? As a side note, Jell-A’s place has the tightest interior decor in the whole game. How’d that happen, and does Bopek get a flair for vintage shapes and volumes in his weaving?

Group: Mori & Nonno & Yoké: FRIENDS. Friends for a long time, through so much pain. An evening together while The Youths (tm) are at Spike’s bar?

Yoké: catch-all Yoké request because he’s my fave! Doing Yoké things, being a big nerd, caring for books and plants and stuff

Pyre

The burning found family feelings, the revolutionary passion, the tension between topside social constraints and the kind of freedom allowed by the Downside! Thoughts about finding oneself at the end of an age, as everything crumbles down to form something new. I love all the themes, the solemnity, the heart of this game. I adore everyone in that Blackwagon+Dalbert+Celeste, so if you want to add a Nightwing or two to any prompt, please do! I also love all the Scribes and find Erisa a compelling tragic figure. Out of the other triumvirates, I’m “love to hate them” for Manley, Brighton, Udmildhe and Deluge and would not like to see them featured in sympathetic roles. My main interest usually lies in post-canon exploration when applicable, but I’m also into various adventures during canon. Pick a location or a place outside the map and see what happens? As for the ending variables, I’d ask for a peaceful revolution and Oralech alive, but no preferences for who’s up and who’s down, pick whatever works best for any given plot bunny.

Group: Tariq & Soliam: what were Tariq and Celeste like in their earliest days? Were they made or summoned from some sort of preexisting star consciousness? They’re wildly different scenarios! I’m good with either. Does Soliam then see Tariq as a child of sorts, someone he made, or something greater than himself? Did he mean to do that, to have these two immortals around? What does Tariq learn from the First Scribe?

Group: Tariq & Dalbert Oldheart: Any excuse for Tariq to hang out with the Fates for a little while, and treasure and be treasured by dear Dalbert...

Group: Oralech & Vagabond Girl: after all is said and done, Oralech’s view of the Scribes is probably... understandably... dire. So of course I want to see him talk it out with ae!

Group: Celeste & Ignarius: look, listen, if the various triumvirates just camped out near their respective Scribe’s place during the Nightwings’ years-long absence (not the only possible explanation for how you find them all neatly lined up before the first lib rite, but an explanation nonetheless, I think. just let me have my crack), that means Iggy was Celeste’s neighbor for a long time. Neighborly hijinks please?

Group: Bertrude/Pamitha: Pam returning from her travels, again and again, and finding a home in Bertrude’s lab, finding an understanding there... Bertrude’s attitude being thorny in a way that’s just what Pam needs to allow herself to open up... also: snake kisses.

Group: Volfred Sandalwood/Oralech: waking up and remembering that the mourning that’s set deep in your roots is for someone who never died, waking up and remembering that the bitterness that consumed you had made up a betrayal that never was, finding each other through these crumbling walls...

Molten Milithe: that’s the pov for a love letter to the Downside, right? And/or which Scribe did she bond with the most? Or the least for that matter?

Volfred Sandalwood: catch-all Volf’n’anyone request. I want to see our tree interact with any friend and foe you might fancy! Arguing for his beliefs, being a history professor through and through, finding himself in a tight spot and getting unexpected help, verbally tearing Brighton a new one if they ever cross each other’s path again...

group: Volfred Sandalwood/Tariq | The Lone Minstrel: Volfred’s zodiac sign is Cancer and Cancer is ruled by the Moon, so there’s that. I love how they both hold the other in the highest esteem, especially on Tariq’s part since he’s the immortal Herald of the Scribes and Volfred is, all in all, a history teacher, but listen to him and you’d think the roles were inverted. I love my nonviolent canon but could anything happen to either of them that may require a rescue, and/or some good old-fashioned h/c? What’s something that could make Tariq of all people lose it? How’s life 100 years on?

Shenmue

This game cares for the little things. I’d love to see fanworks that try to out-slice-of-life canon...

Group: Qiu Hsu & Xianzi Bei: cormorant kung fu adventure! Do they hang out sometimes?

Group: Hazuki Ryo & Shenhua Ling: any moment, discussion, small adventure from their travels together! I love their bond! For all its waifufication of Shenhua, S3 really sold me on their friendship and a shared brand of dorkiness. Alternatively, sometimes I remember that they’d be 50ish in the present day - how and where do you picture them?

The Silver Case

I‘m all for the surrealism, big things being introduced and never picked up again, Rashomon’ing it up with six explanations for the same thing where no single one can be true, people dying and then popping up again like nbd... maybe the thing I like the most is characters transcending their humanity and looming over the dystopian world like ominous avatars. Correctness’ first ending had me swooning, that kind of mood is unparalleled. I have played TSC, FSR and 25W so far and have vague memories of K7. I’m aware of the “everything’s connected” readings but that’s not my main interest in these games. For FSR-focused requests, I see Lospass as a real island but also a metaphysical place of transformation first and foremost, where strange things happen that don’t make sense elsewhere.

Group: Toriko Kusabi & Remy Fawzil: What’s Toriko up to when she’s not chasing Chris? I think it could be fun to throw her at Remy and see the island from their point of view!

Group: Tokio Morishima & Edo Macalister: since Tokio stayed at the Flower Sun and Rain... I’m interested in peculiar happenings on Lospass that are not centered on Sumio...

Group: Tetsugorou Kusabi/Sumio Kodai: Tetsu picked one hell of a crush, huh! What’s it like in the aftermath of the games, when Sumio is Like That? How does Tetsu grapple with Parade? Is Tetsu an anchor of sorts for Correctness Sumio, who seems (at best) to be existing on a slightly different plane of existence at any given time and could disappear if you blink too hard?

Group: Tetsugorou Kusabi & Shinko Kuroyanagi: I’m joining the “let these two be foulmouthed friends” masses - who’d be more fed up with the other’s nonsense, and in which ways would they be an unstoppable team?

Group: Shinkai Tsuki & Tetsugorou Kusabi: Both of them end their stories in the shadows one way or another, and defending their protégé may have had a hand in their misfortune one way or another. What kind of understanding could they reach? What IS Tsuki up to anyway?

Group: Christina & Catherine: anthro Catherine, as per the Placebo bonus chapter Yami, was unexpectedly charming. What was Chris before reaching Lospass, and did he also have a chat with her on the plane or on the island?

#letter

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happyhealthycats · 5 years

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Hi! re: your outdoor cat post, I'm curious about your opinion on people who say they can't transition their cat to be happy indoors? Sure truly feral cats aren't going to be lap cats overnight and possibly not ever, but especially with strays/socialized outdoor cats, I don't think I've ever seen one not be happy to be inside within a few months. So I'm wondering if all the people who SWEAR their cat needs to be outside to not be miserable don't even try, or if my anecdotal experience is skewed.

So there’s a couple complicated tiers to this question.

While I will remain by my statement that all cats will be better off inside, for multiple reasons that I’ve spoken about pretty much ad nauseum at this point.(Like here: https://happyhealthycats.tumblr.com/post/182461501550/hi-ive-been-following-you-for-a-while-and-today and here: https://happyhealthycats.tumblr.com/post/167894116755/letting-the-cats-out-of-the-bagerhouse)

There are situations where certain cats cannot have their needs met by certain cat guardians if they’re taken inside. Typically in those severe, very feral cases. That is NOT meant as a dig at the cat guardian, OR a statement that the cat cannot be happy inside, but sometimes a cat will require SO much that a particular cat guardian is unable to provide them exactly what they need. For instance, the cat may be unable to walk on a leash to to aversion to being handled, and a catio may be the best option. But the guardian may not have the money or space for the catio. There are a million other issues that can arise similar to this one, as well.

The cat guardian may have other cats, and having a feral cat in the house, with limited space, the biggest issue people usually run into is getting two or more cats to get along. It can be a VERY long and tedious process that a lot of people do not have the ability to see through. Not from lack of trying on their end, but because it can be very difficult to do.

And even in other situations, a feral cat may not be safe to be around other cats. Being feral means the cat will almost always be insecure about their food, and while long-term work will definitely help, the cat may not overcome it. If another cat is in their territory, or they feel threatened by the presence of another cat, it’s very possible that the feral cat may become very aggressive. Instead of learning to share their territory, if they had to defend their own while outside, it can be very difficult to shake off.

The solution for multicat harmony is options, and sometimes it gets to a point where the only options you can add is literally cutting holes in your walls for cat walkways. Yes, technically this IS an option, and of course, there are people who can afford to do things like this. But for the most part, a lot of people cannot.

So does this mean that some feral cats can’t be transitioned to inside only? Nope. They all can. They all SHOULD. All outdoor cats can become indoor cats. HOWEVER not every cat guardian can realistically become a feral cat guardian, if that makes sense. I’m also talking about VERY extreme cases. INCREDIBLY extreme. Rare, severe, atypical cases that are NOT average in any way. For the MOST PART, carefully monitoring cats, offering INCREDIBLY slow introductions, multiple feeding options, multiple litter box options, prime cat situations can lead to incredibly wonderful and fulfilling relationships for previously feral cats.

The very severe cases usually involve extremely special care. Single cat households that can cater very specifically to the needs of the feral cat. And while it’s ideal, I don’t think everyone has the ability to provide that. Not for lack of trying or care or well meaning, but because it can be tough to do.

But for the most part when I see the “my cat can’t be only indoor”, they aren’t talking about those rare cases. They’re talking about not trying anything else, or trying something for a week and having it not work, getting frustrated, and then just letting the cat back outside. If they even try anything else at all.

#happy healthy cats #cat behavior #feline behavior #feline #cat #outdoor cat #ask box #ask #question #allonsymiddleearth

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journeysintowebcomics · 5 years

Text

Worm Liveblog #97

UPDATE 97: Conspiracy

Last time Skitter seems to have managed to convince Parian to give her a chance. Does Flechette know? I’m not sure. She’ll find out sooner or later, anyway. So, what will happen now that Parian may actually lend the Undersiders a hand? You won’t find out today! Today it will be an interlude. Let’s get started!

It’s August of 1986, a couple decades before present day. What character may be this one, I wonder? It’s a female character, seems to be quite young at this point so they must be an adult right now. Let’s see...looks like she’s under some sort of treatment.

Somewhere along the line, they had stopped telling her that the chemotherapy would make her better. The smiles had become even more strained. There was more emphasis on making her comfortable. Less explanation of what was going on.

Oooooh that sounds rather...terminal. Death may be coming someday. There aren’t that many diseases that need chemotherapy as a treatment, so chances are it’s cancer. Golly, the interlude just started and it’s already throwing some heavy stuff at me!

This sick girl pretends to be asleep when her mother comes, and although she hates doing that, it’s better than pretending she’s okay enough to endure conversations. The silence gives her mother carta blanche to start talking, though. That can’t be much better than what this girl hoped.

“Becca,” her mother murmured from behind her. “You awake?”

Becca? Hmmmm...doesn’t sound familiar. I can’t remember a character that’s named Becca or Rebecca. If there’s one, I may have forgotten.

“You’ve been so brave,” her mom whispered, so quiet she was barely audible.

I’m not brave. Not at all. I’m terrified. I’m so frustrated I could scream. But she couldn’t. Everyone had painted her as being so courageous, so noble and peaceful in the face of the months of treatment. But it was a facade, and she’d passed the point of no return. It was too late to break composure, too late to stop making bad jokes, faking smiles of her own. She couldn’t complain or use her mother’s shoulder to cry on because everyone would fall apart if she did.

She was their support.

That’s quite the heavy load on a deathly sick child. I can’t imagine what that’s like, having to swallow all your frustration and then realizing you can’t let it show because everyone thinks you’re taking it much better than you actually are. It’s even more harrowing when you’re a child, I guess. You know what? This is a rather fitting situation for a trigger event. The thought of death looming above you, all that pent-up frustration, the physical and mental suffering...there’s plenty of stimuli here. Since this person must have survived until the present day – I guess – then she must have survived this sickness.

“My little superhero,” her mother said.

That’s quite the thing to say in this story.

The mom’s choice of words makes Rebecca realize she’s dying. It brings the expected mix of emotions: anger, relief...especially anger at the situation and at others, for not telling her sooner she’s dying. It affects Rebecca enough for her to cry once her mother leaves. It’s dark, she’s seeing the cityscape from her window, and there’s so much she hasn’t done at her age, and so much she’d like to do again.

It struck her that she would probably never get to eat there again, never get a special kids meal with the dinky plastic toy that was meant for kids ten years younger than her.

Oh. She’s older than I thought she was. From the way she was being treated, I thought she’d be like...eight. From this it sounds like she’s like thirteen or fourteen. Still rather young, but she’s not so young people would think they can hide the truth of her situation from her. No wonder she’s frustrated!

There’s a series of things she wished she could have done. Get fast food, read a book in a series, see a movie adaptation, have a real boyfriend...it’s the tragedy of dying, you always wish you had done more than you did.

While Rebecca is letting her pain and sadness show in a manner I’m sure nobody else has, she hears a voice nearby, offering her morphine. It’s a voice she doesn’t know, and turning around confirms it’s a stranger. Hmmm...

“I’m going to increase the drip just a little, Rebecca Costa-Brown.”

Rebecca Costa-Brown? I’m pretty sure if I had seen that full name somewhere before I’d remember. Costa-Brown is quite a memorable name. So, there are two possibilities: either Rebecca Costa-Brown is a character that’s been around before but whose name hasn’t appeared yet, or she’s a character hasn’t made her first appearance yet.

The description of the person who is currently messing with the IV bag is familiar. I’m like 50% sure this was how the Doctor from Cauldrom was described. If so, then that’d mean Rebecca is involved with Cauldron, possibly as an employee. Or maybe, if this is the Doctor, she’s putting some power serum into the IV bag, meaning Rebecca would be a superhero under Cauldron’s thumb.

Rebecca confirms this person in her room isn’t one of her doctors and barely has much time for more before she feels the effect of the morphine. Guess it really was morphine and not soup of superpower. If I’m taking correctly the way this woman said ‘Not yet’ to when Rebecca said she wasn’t one of her doctors then...yeah, I’m growing increasingly more certain this is the Doctor from Cauldron.

Yup, she is. She’s here to make a deal with Rebecca, and she says she can make superheroes. This interlude is happening during the time superheroes were a rarity – in a relative term –and it was predicted in a couple decades there’d be thousands. Well, she’s not wrong, by now all over the world there must be thousands and thousands of parahumans.

By now it’s very clear the offer she’s going to offer Rebecca is to give her powers. She’s showing her the risks of giving powers. This wouldn’t be happening if Rebecca was going to be an employee and not a hero, I think. Photos are shown, parahumans that’d fit the Case 53s very easily. It’s possible it’s precursors of them, or maybe they were already being called Case 53s.

This here is still the early stages of the power serum. Two out of seven die horribly, four experience physical changes that ensure they won’t be in society anymore as normal people, and one gets powers without further consequences. Pretty low odds, all things considered. The Doctor tries to sweeten the deal by saying she could mix things up so there’d be less change of physical changes and there’d be restorative effects – meaning Rebecca here would be healed. Well doesn’t that sound too good to be true?

“I’m not asking for money. Only that you take this leap of faith with me and help me build something. I know the risks are great, I wouldn’t normally ask someone to face them, but I suspect you don’t have much left to lose.”

So, I don’t doubt Rebecca has been in the hospital for quite some time already. It’s to be expected, what with her very deadly illness and what not. Cauldron may be able to access to her medical records. That said, I do wonder why she was the one they picked. It’s unlikely Rebecca is the only child with a terminal illness in the entire world. Maaaaybe it’s more of a geographical thing, and she was the only viable candidate in this part of the world? Or perhaps something about her psychological and emotional state made her a better candidate than other sick children? I really wonder why Cauldron picked her and not someone else, hmmm...

The Doctor was right, though: she doesn’t have anything left to lose, she’s on the verge of death, and in Rebecca’s opinion she already looks so awful she may as well be one of the monstrous parahumans from the photos. Why not to go out in a blaze of glory or possibly be saved even if in the end she looks like a monster? She accepts.

The interlude changes to the next day. The very first line says things went well. Congratulations, Rebecca! You have powers. And it seems the Doctor was right about heightening the chances of everything going just peachy. I wonder what powers she got!

Rebecca extended one arm. Her skin was a healthy pink, her hand thin but not so emaciated as it had been.

“I’m better?”

“I would guess so. In truth, I’m not sure how the regeneration affected the cancer, it might even have exacerbated the symptoms. For the time being, however, you seem to be well.”

This is going to be one hell of a thing to explain to Rebecca’s parents. One day their daughter is dying of cancer and looking like she’s in slow agony, the next day she’s heaps better and may be cancer-free. I don’t doubt the happiness of having her alive and better would triumph over most emotions, but there’ll be a lot of demands for explanations.

Since it still is relatively early in Cauldron’s projects, they don’t even have yet a way to categorize the results. They’ll have to test the serum a few more times. Well, if they need people with nothing to lose, there’s no shortage of them in the world. They’ll find all the test subjects they want.

Oh, well then! Looks like the way to avoid giving explanations to the parents and the doctors is to not be there at all. The Doctor asks Rebecca to stay with them for two years, and then she’ll be free to decide if she wants to return or not. Hmmm...I wonder if the teenager who is with the Doctor right now joined under similar circumstances to Rachel’s.

And so, Rebecca stayed with Cauldron for two years. Before I continue, let’s see what powers she has...so, from what I see here, there’s strength. There may also be some physical immunity, so she doesn’t get hurt. I’m not sure if her mental processes are better now than before, because the reason why they feel sharper and faster now could be that her illness had her so numbed she didn’t notice a decrease in mental processing speed. So far there’s nothing particularly noteworthy or unique, no parahuman character from Worm comes to mind.

So, around one year and half pass.

“Alexandria,” the Doctor called.

It seems Rebecca is Alexandria! Alright, that’s fun! This should be an interesting interlude to read. It also confirms further the ties between the big fishes of the Protectorate and Cauldron go way back.

Alexandria waited patiently as Contessa adjusted her cape, then strode through the door. The Doctor was there, of course. Professor Manton, too. The boy with the math powers was there, standing next to a boy who was staring off into space.

Contessa may be the teenage girl who was with the Doctor. I see the Siberian’s real body is here, from the time he was an investigator in Cauldron’s payroll. There’s also...the Number Man, perhaps? Maybe he was like Rebecca – a teenager or preteen who was brought into Cauldron’s forces.

Turns out Hero™®© is here! He really was with the rest as a Cauldron hero. Legend is also here, and it doesn’t seem like Eidolon is around. Maybe Eidolon will arrive later into the group. So, by now Alexandria has managed to build a reputation of some sort. She also has a nice costume already, possibly provided by Cauldron.

The Doctor spoke, “She’s as strong as any parahuman we’ve recorded. Flies at speeds that match your own, Legend. Near-perfect memory retention, accelerated processing and learning.”

So she does have increased mental processing. Alright!

Oh, Eidolon is here already. Alexandria was the last person to join this group, then. So, the reason why all the powerful capes and also Manton and Possibly-The-Number-Man are here is because there’s a proposal Alexandria wants to make. The newcomer wants to propose something! This should be interesting.

She starts by saying how this room has the most powerful parahumans in the world, and that parahumans would tend to be villains because of the traumatic events they go through. That’s rather true, a trigger event sure would bring all kinds of negative emotions. Taylor wanted to be a hero because she had heroic role models – the Protectorate and others of their kind. I’m sure others were like that too, but yeah, most new parahumans would choose to be villains because of their traumatic experiences.

The Doctor cut in, “And I’m producing more heroes than villains. For now, the proportion favors us, and you’ve been able to keep the criminal element in line. For the most part. But even as I expand my operations, I have come to the realization that I can only produce so much. And the rate of parahuman growth is expanding. The next twenty years are projected to produce a total number of six hundred and fifty thousand people with powers, worldwide.”

Sounds about right. It’s a lot of people. True, compared to the total population of the world it doesn’t seem like a considerable amount, but when you consider the amount of power each one has and what they can do, 6500 parahumans are way too many. Can you imagine how awful things would be if there were 6500 powerful villains all over the world?

Since Alexandria and the Doctor worked on the numbers, I’m sure they’re right. Things like these are easier when you have fast processing speeds in your brain. At the rate parahumans keep happening, the heroes Cauldron makes will be outpaced. I find interesting that what they are focusing is in that Cauldron makes heroes. Perhaps this group isn’t the threat they had seemed at first? It could be rather interesting, really.

So, to avoid the inevitable, Alexandria says they should be what the governments are trying to do: regulate. As expected, the reactions to such suggestion aren’t of joy and immediate cooperation.

Turns out having Legend as the leader was Alexandria’s idea. Either Legend or Hero™®© would have worked. Alexandria didn’t look as kind and positive as the candidates to leader, and Eidolon was too powerful. Alexandria is also the one who thought and planned how to incorporate parahumans into society. From what I have seen in Worm I can see it worked decently well!

Looks like the Protectorate and the Wards were also Alexandria’s idea. It really is like everything in parahumans’ lives was planned by Alexandria. II never thought a single person, superpowered or not, could have so much involvement in society.

“I expect we’ll be able to employ the remainder of the plan, the eight-stage integration of parahumans with the public, because I will be in a position of power in the government. I, my civilian self, can be in charge of the government-sponsored superhero teams within eight years.”

Could she still be holding that job, I wonder...does that mean Alexandria may have a job in the PRT in a national level, perhaps?

To give everyone else some time to think about her proposals, she prepared booklets and is willing to give them time to think about the plans. It’s a foregone conclusion there was enough support for it to happen, but I’m intrigued about if someone in the Protectorate objected! Eidolon did, of course. Did he change his mind at some point? What do Legend and Hero™®© think? So many questions and most likely there won’t be any answers!

Ah, the parahuman who can make portals is called the Doormaker. For a moment I thought I had read ‘Doormaster’. That would have been kind of cool, haha. This interlude is taking in an era when the building in Côte d'Ivoire still hadn’t been built – or at least I imagine that’s that place, because the Doctor says that will be her base of operations in the future.

“Where is it?”

“Another Earth.”

“Like Earth Aleph? The one Haywire opened the portal to?”

I’m not sure I like the thought of getting other Earths involved in this story, honestly...I mean, it’s okay for worldbuilding and stuff, but I hope it won’t have a big role in the story or anything. I just feel there’s too much already involved in this story to need something like alternate Earths. It would kind of...bloat the story?

Once everyone leaves, the Doctor and Alexandria talk. Turns out Alexandria and the Doctor kept a few things to herself about the long-term goals. Oho, keeping secrets, Alexandria? How devious! She’s turning out to be more calculating and with a bit of a devious streak, I like her.

“You have your end of the project. I feel they’ll come around. Focus on that. I’ll handle the projected issues on my side of things. Just need to find the right individual. Someone I can groom, perhaps. Between you and I, one of us is bound to succeed.”

There’s something very sinister about the Doctor saying anything about having someone to groom. I’m sure by the time things reach the present she already has someone, but can you imagine if she didn’t? Who in the present would she choose? Not Skitter, I think, because Skitter already has a million people going after her, but yeah.

Almost two years have passed, and Alexandria doesn’t feel particularly compelled about returning home. I still am curious how exactly they covered up Rebecca being gone all of a sudden. I feel bad for Rebecca’s parents – or at least for her mother, since she was the one that appeared in the story. Her daughter was dying of cancer and then she was gone or went away, and now she won’t return. That must hurt a lot.

December 13th of 1992. Something huge is coming out of the ground. It’s a bizarre, terrifying creature I’m pretty sure is an Endbringer, because the description reminds me a lot of Leviathan. Leviathan was aquatic, this one clearly is related to ground. The descriptions mention obsidian and magma.

His skin was crusted with black stone that might have been obsidian, layers of what might have been cooled magma sloughing off of him as he planted his feet on the ground and stood straight.

‘Straight’ might have been too generous. He was built like a caricature of a bodybuilder, or a bear-human hybrid. He rippled with muscle, his skin gray, thick and leathery like the hide of a rhinoceros or elephant. His black obsidian horns were so heavy his head hung down. They weren’t rooted in his forehead, but in the middle of his face, a half-dozen curved shafts of black crystal twisting their way out of his face and back over the top of his head, some ten feet long. A single red eye glowed from between the gap in two horns, positioned too low. His mouth was a jagged gap in his lower face, twisting up to a point near his temple, lined by jagged horn-like growths that were too irregular to be called teeth.

His claws were the same, not hands in the conventional sense, but mangled growths of the same material that made up his horns, many of the growths as large as Alexandria herself. He could flex them, move them, but they were clearly weapons and nothing else.

Can someone send me an image of this beast, please? I’m curious to see how the fans depicted this thing.

The Protectorate is here, and so is the team of local heroes. The exact place they’re at is unspecified. The maybe-Endbringer roars, already injuring one of the heroes, and then points at that person with a claw. That’s a death sentence immediately:

The man ignited from the inside out, flame and smoke pouring from every orifice as he was turned into a burned-out husk in a matter of seconds. His skeleton disintegrated into fine dust and ash as it crashed to the ground.

...okay, I’m sure at least one person must have ended traumatized by this sudden death. Goodness, that’s horrible!

Soon Alexandria is targeted directly, and although she’s invincible, it seems she still needs to breathe. She actually was in danger for a moment while Behemoth – it is Behemoth! – drove her into the ground with fire. Interesting weakness...to think one of the most powerful heroes could die by, say, drowning.

There’s major oil fields near the huge monster that clearly has fire powers to some extent. I’m already marking those oil fields as a total loss, I’m sure those will explode.

Behemoth doesn’t control fire or rocks or earth or lightning. There’s a better way of having all those abilities under the same name.

Her eyes widened. Not individual powers. Those were all the same power. She pressed one hand to her ear, opening communications to the rest of her team. “He’s a dynakinetic! He manipulates energy! No Manton limitation!”

I didn’t even know that word existed. Clearly they managed to make Behemoth surrender. No idea how, but they did! Too bad I don’t get to see how, because the moment ends there. Oh well. Maybe it was like it happened with Leviathan – they hit the Endbringer enough and with enough force to convince it to turn around and leave after it caused widespread destruction.

They’d been right after all. Dumb luck had created a parahuman as dangerous as what the Doctor could create by design.

It’s not like I ever thought Cauldron had created the Endbringers, but it’s somewhat of a relief it’s confirmed they didn’t. Also, what kind of traumatic event would create something like an endbringer? Was this the moment it emerged for the first time? Was the person who turned into Behemoth under the ground? Maybe it was a worker from the oil fields or something.

Next scene. Alexandria swears on the constitution to defend the United States. This must be a public event of some sort, and since it’s her cape identity swearing, I imagine this is the end result of her plan to bend to the government’s regulations – regulations she would impose through her civilian identity. Things went according to plan, I guess!

Her mother is here. Doesn’t seem to me like she returned home, but at least she did see her mother again. That’s the least she could have done, so I’m glad about it. So, this was the moment they founded the Protectorate in front of everyone. Judging by the way everyone is cheering, they did manage to way the public’s feelings about parahumans towards supporting the heroes.

That was a short scene, it changes to seven years later. It takes me a couple lines to realize what this moment may be: the Siberian when it killed Hero™®© because the setting is what I kind of remember it was. Alexandria feels sick because they’re leaving a victim be with whatever’s there. Despite Alexandria’s gray alignment – as far as I’m concerned – she really wants to save lives. Nice to know she has the right purpose despite everything.

Until recently they didn’t know Manton was the Siberian’s real body, but it seems Alexandria thought she was familiar. She may have seen Manton’s daughter before. It was just a feeling of familiarity. I also notice Manton didn’t hesitate to brutally murder someone he had worked before in Cauldron. Did Cauldron care one of their best creations was killed by Manton?

As anyone may have imagined, Hero™®© dying was shocking to everyone. Panic ensued on the bystanders, it was a frantic moment. It’s the kind of situation that would cause more victims, I’m ready to scroll down and see something along the lines of ‘the Siberian lunged through the crowd, tearing apart several unfortunate bystanders’.

Alexandria moved in close, hoping to stop Siberian, to catch her and slow her down, saw Siberian swing, pulled back out of the way.

Her visor fell free, clattering to the ground. Then she felt the blood.

Saw, in her one remaining good eye, the chunks of her own face that were falling to the ground around her, bouncing off her right breast, the spray of blood.

...okay, it’s more or less what I expected, but it happened on someone I didn’t think it would. Alexandria has gotten mangled! Thank goodness Eidolon has some healing powers, but still! That must hurt!

The next day, it is said Eidolon’s healing couldn’t do much. She has lost her eyesight in one eye, it will be replaced with a glass eye. Can glass eyes see? I don’t think they do, from what little I know. Anyway, the glass eye isn’t what’s important here. What’s important is that the Doctor told Alexandria who exactly the Siberian’s real body is. Alexandria knew all along, yet Manton was left to go around and join the Slaughterhouse Nine, and killing who knows how many people. Trying to save people, huh, Alexandria? By letting a mass murderer go around freely? Well, I imagine Cauldron insisted Manton should be free to do whatever he wants, I guess.

“I suppose he thought he was qualified to oversee all that. Despite my strict instructions that staff weren’t to partake. Or he had other motivations. It could have been a gift from a father trying to buy his daughter’s affections.”

So what happened to his daughter was his own fault. He’s taking out his grief over whatever happened to her, and it was his own fault. It’s rather tragic, but I can’t really feel any sympathy over this because I don’t know Manton at all. The Siberian’s role in the story has been to be a mass murderer and no more. It’s a shame, really, because Manton has all the traits of the kind of villain you would feel pity at.

Eidolon maybe knew. I suppose Legend was the only one who didn’t know. Eidolon also knows about the plans and projects Alexandria and the Doctor are concealing. Whatever they are sure didn’t please him. Mr. Wildbow sure is beating around the bush when it’s about those plans! They must be quite a shocking swerve, then.

As I thought, the Doctor says they should let Manton do whatever he wants.

“So long as he’s active, people will be flocking to join the Protectorate-”

Alexandria slammed her hand on the stainless steel table beside her cot.

I’m just glad Alexandria didn’t accept that right away. I’m very glad about it. Unfortunately her objections will be ignored because Manton was left to do whatever he wanted until present day, but it means a lot that she didn’t approve at all.

“You’re right,” the Doctor said. “I… must be more shaken by Manton’s betrayal than I’d thought. Forget I said anything.”

As if!

It seems that by the time they saw the Siberian for the first time the Doctor still didn’t have the individual she wanted to turn into...whatever she’s trying to do. Instead she’s now thinking about making the right individual. Perhaps through giving that person powers? In that case, if someone in the present is this individual, then their powers were given by Cauldron, perhaps?

It’s present day, and bombs are raining down. I think it’s the present because this brings to mind the bombing against the Slaughterhouse Nine.

I was wrong, it isn’t. Alexandria is somewhere else that isn’t Brockton Bay, and she’s bringing people into Cauldron the same way she was brought in: find someone who is on the brink of death and offer them life. In the case that’s written right here in the text she doesn’t tell exactly what will happen, but that’s because the guy he rescued was almost dead. In Cauldron’s cells, there are many who are Case 53s, or at least that’s my guess because they’re monstrous. They all have alterations to their memories and fabricated weaknesses, too. The guy Alexandria rescued is given the dose of serum, and he starts undergoing changes. It’s not pleasant, although any powers he gets aren’t shown.

The irony of placing others in the same situation she used to be in isn’t lost on Alexandria. I bet she never thought she’d ever do this too.

Ah, now it is the present day! They’re talking about Manton and about Jack’s role in the end of the world. They just finished their talk, and were ready to stop.

The Doctor turned to Eidolon, “You want another booster shot?”

“Probably another Endbringer attack coming up, it’s best if I’m in top form.”

“A month or two, either Simurgh or Behemoth if they stick to pattern,” Alexandria said. She watched as Legend strode out of the room. Eidolon paused, then gave the hand signal. No bugs, and Legend wasn’t listening in.

So the other Endbringers are bound to attack someday? Goodness, one big problem more for the already filled future of Worm. Maybe the problem of knowing the number of arcs ahead is that I keep wondering when there’ll be enough time to cram all the plotlines that are being opened. My guess is that the arcs will get even longer and longer!

That aside, they’re all actively hiding stuff from Legend. He already suspects it, that’s obvious thanks to the lie detector he had been using, but I’m sure they’re hiding a lot of huge stuff. He’s not going to take it well once he realizes the extent of what they’re hiding. Heck, I’m the reader and I’m sure the secrets I have seen so far are just a small part of their bunch of secrets.

“We’ll manage,” the Doctor replied. “In the worst case scenario, we’ll explain the circumstances, explain our plan.”

“He won’t like it,” Eidolon spoke.

“But he’ll understand,” the Doctor said. “If the Terminus project is a success, the end of the world isn’t a concern. And I believe we will succeed.”

I’m pretty sure that the Doctor’s plans of grooming someone and the Terminus project are the same thing. I suppose this means she got someone – possibly the guy Alexandria saved -- and now the project is underway. There’s a chance they’re different projects, but yeah, I’m reasonable sure it’s the same.

“So that leaves only my end of things,” the Doctor said.

“Coil,” Eidolon said. “And if he fails?”

Ah, there it is. The Cauldron plotline is starting to be tied with Skitter’s plotlines. I was looking forward to finding out how it would be. Perhaps something Coil is doing in Brockton Bay is very important for Cauldron? He does have a huge money debt towards them. Maybe he would do a favor or two for them, even if money isn’t really something he cares a lot about – I imagine. He always can make more.

The end of the world is a troublesome matter because it gives no more time for projects. That should mean the Terminus project will end in the span of the next two years...interesting.

“If we assist him-”

“No,” the Doctor spoke. “If we assist him, there’s no point.”

“In short?” Alexandria leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “He doesn’t even know it, but everything rests on his shoulders.”

You know what this means? Skitter is going to inadvertently ruin the Protectorate and Cauldron’s plans at once. Whatever Coil has to do or they’re relying on surely needs his resources and everything he has, so if he loses it, he won’t be able to do anything. It’s possible that simply being alive is enough for him to be of use to Cauldron, but I don’t think so. I really can’t wait to see how Skitter ruins everything and possibly dooms the world when she defeats Coil. This is going to be fun.

That was the interlude. It was pretty interesting! I was glad to see more of Cauldron, honestly they’re starting to be the most interesting force in this story. Even more interesting than the Undersiders, I’d dare to say. I hope they and their plans appear more often in the story.

Next time I suppose the next arc will start? Last chapter had a nice ending for an arc, I would be kind of surprised if the arc continued further.

Next time: next update

#worm #worm liveblog #webserial #webserial liveblog #liveblog

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turntechhex · 6 years

Note

all of them B)

Significant Other Asks.

okay its under the cut you shit

1. Tell the story about how you met.

the first time avi and i actually spoke was in a stream i was holding and i was just about to close it off because nobody popped in but then he did and then that lead to punk rock points

2. Was it a gradual increase of trust and love, or was there a specific moment where you knew “I want to be with this person for a long time”?

it was gradual for me but it hit me that i wanted to love him

3. Describe their eyes. Describe their hands. Describe their laugh.

his eyes are really sensitive to the light so he wears his shades a lot but god when he takes them off i get to see his eyes

theyre red and kind of like mine but not in the freaky albino way like mine

his are a beautiful deep red and when i look close enough i can see the little flecks of whatever mixed in

his hands arent scarred and scabbed like mine theyre soft but with a slight toughness to them and when we intertwine our fingers i can really feel that and i love kissing his fingertips just to show him that

and his laugh

god his laugh

i never want to hear anything else

the way it bubbles up and his head falls and his smile is so wide its beautiful

4. What’s your zodiac sign and mbti type? What about your partner’s? Do things like that reflect your actual compatibility or is it just bunch of bunk?

we are both the same sign and i dunno about that mbti stuff and i dont think any of it works for compatibility its kinda dumb

5. Are you long distance? Have you met in person before? When do you get to see them again?

we live together

6. Tell me a story about a happy experience you two shared. Something that makes your heart warm whenever you think about it.

i had lit a bunch of fancy rose candles and turned out the lights and we just showered each other with so many kisses and then fell asleep together smiling stupidly it was nice

7. Tell me a funny story. Did they do something silly? Did you do something silly? Talk about your inside jokes.

he always does something silly

he has this silly smile when he falls asleep and apparently when i sleep i look “angry or apathetic as fuck”

sometimes he walks in when im shaving my legs early in the morning with my hair in a bunch of mini pony tails so i can see and he knows hes seen a demon

8. Are your families supportive? Does it matter if they’re not?

avi doesnt have much of a family other than his sister and i havent met her

and dirk and hal are all ive got and dirk is pretty supportive and i think hal is too

if they werent it would hurt but i couldnt stop loving him yknow

9. Would you ever have a pet together? Do you already have one?

he has four cats and i have an owl

10. Do you have children together? If not, are you both interested in raising children some day?

we do not but maybe someday i havent really thought about it all too much

11. If they’re having a bad day, what do you do to help?

listen the best i can and do whatever i can

give him space if he needs it

hold him if he needs it

12. If you’re having a bad day, what do they do to help?

he listens

fuck he listens

he lets me cry and yell or whatever i need to do and he helps me

he lets me talk to him

he is everything to me when im having a hard time

he knows when to hold me and rub my back and hush me

he knows when to give me space and let me yell

he knows me so well

13. What’s something that your partner does that would be annoying if anyone else did it, but it’s cute when they do it?

he moves a lot in his sleep

he has grabbed my ass on more than one occasion

14. Have you ever went on a vacation or adventure together? Tell me about it. If not, do you have plans to do something fun in the future?

we drive out to the coast sometimes its fun just driving away so yes

15. What’s something that you learned about yourself because of being with your partner?

i learned that im allowed to be confident with my body and im beautiful and nothing anybody can say will crush that

i really started to stop wearing makeup to cover my spots because of him

16. What’s a piece of advice that your partner gave you that has resonated with you?

“please dont ever talk about corpses in public again”

17. Which one of you kills the bugs (or captures the bugs and places them safely outside)?

18. Describe the perfect day with your partner. It can be something that’s already happened, or something that you plan to do.

like i mentioned before just driving out to the coast

both of us laughing the whole way there

his smile as he watches the road that reflects in his eyes

watching the sun set when we finally get there and we just leave the car by the road and nobodys on the beach anymore and i run out to the water with him and it was cold as fuck so we just sat in the sand and held each other and looked up at the moon and he was so beautiful like he is everyday

and then we reluctantly got into the car and drove home mostly in silence expect the whispers of i love you

and we got back home and fell asleep with smiles on our faces it was perfect

19. Do you prepare meals together? Does one person enjoy cooking more than the other?

i usually cook when we arent just having eggs

avi isnt the best cook >BP

20. What are the best restaurants to go to? Do you see movies at the theater? Do you do things like golf or bowling, just to bond more?

theres a really not too fancy nice one downtown that we like

we watch movies at home and dont do much of that stuff

21. Tell me about a time that you got into an argument over something silly.

the ghost in the kitchen that insulted his butter spreading skills was being annoying

22. Tell me about a time that you got into an argument over something serious. How did you compromise? What did you learn?

it was just about family shit it was dumb

we just ended talking

i learned that we both need to talk more and we do now

23. Is there a famous couple, fictional or otherwise, that reminds you (or other people) of you and your partner?

not really

24. Do you have a shipname?

not that i know of

25. Do you two have a “song”? What is it and how did it become your song?

do we have a song

26. Has your partner ever inspired something creative like your art, writing, etc?

ive painted him a few times and he helps me with colours and stuff when im stuck

27. Do you have extremely similar personalities and interests? Or extremely opposite? Or is it a balance that just makes sense? How do you try to better understand each other? Do you ever have to experience things you’re not interested in, or vice versa?

we are pretty similar but other than that its just a good balance

we talk to each other

sometimes i suppose

28. Has your partner ever changed one of your opinions on morals, politics, society, etc?

i dunno

29. Tell me about a time that you were really proud of them.

his dance performance in january he worked so hard for that and i brought him roses afterwards and he did so good

30. Does physical affection and/or sexuality have a role in your relationship? Are both of your needs being respected and fulfilled?

yes we both love physical shit and we make sure that its fulfilled and respected too

31. How often do you talk? On the phone, Skype, in person? Are you two the type that stays up too late because the conversation is too good to end?

we talk and text everyday

32. Talk about your sense of humor, and your partner’s. Do you laugh a lot together? Which one of you is funnier?

we laugh a lot of course

i dont know whos funnier

33. Is there anyone who doesn’t like the idea of your relationship? What’s the reason? How do you and your partner overcome disapproval from others?

not that i can think of

34. Have there been any hardships that have ultimately brought you closer than before?

yeah

there have

35. What’s their contact name in your phone?

my love 💕💕

36. Tell me about what your partner is good at. Are they an artist, are they good at math, do they play a sport, etc?

he is an amazing dancer

37. Get really sappy and gross for a moment. Be so gushy that your friends would groan in mock annoyance if you told them. What’s adorable about your partner? What makes your heart melt? What’s something cute that they did that you’ll always remember no matter what?

david rae strider

he is everything to me

he is my present and my future

he is the rest of my life

falling asleep next to him and waking up next to him is such a privilege and i feel like the luckiest goddamn man in the world to be able to love him

he makes me feel like the happiest man on earth to be able to love him

hes so understanding and patient and he listens to me

his movements are soft and not quick

he comforts me

he cries and i feel like im bleeding from tha inside out and i want to make sure he never has any reason to sad cry

he cries with a smile and i know that i am so in love with him

he kisses my nose and holds me

he kisses every single one of my spots and tells me im beautiful

he traces my scars on my back my arms my face my legs everywhere and kisses my neck still

he holds my hand in public and does fake proposals for free dessert

he knows all the words to every single grease song and so do i

his voice is so nice to hear and his smile is all ive ever wanted to see

his hair is soft and i like to kiss his stubble cheeks when he doesnt shave for a while

hes cute

hes beautiful

he realizes his mistakes

he bought me roses once and put a note inside that he wanted to have roses like that at our wedding someday

he kisses me without regret

he says that he loves me and i believe him

when he got down on his knees and asked me to marry him with tears in his beautiful eyes and held out a shaky beautiful hand with an earring in it

i knew that i loved this man with my entire being

and i said yes

god i said yes

38. Let’s talk about life goals and hopes. Do you two have a similar idea for the future (regarding careers, getting a home, family, finding meaning)? Do you two make a good team? Can you imagine spending the rest of your life with them?

we are moving into his sisters old place once hes done with school and we are getting married in the summer

we just know we want the rest of our lives to be together

39. Reflecting on all of your experiences, what advice would you give to a young couple?

talk to each other and dont try and hide important things and your feelings

dont be stupid but also do stupid things

40. Is your partner on tumblr? Tag them here and write them a small message, it can be anything.

@bromosapiens

ur gross

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eldritchsurveys · 4 years

Text

876.

5k Survey IV

151. What is louder and more annoying: 200 adults talking or one four-year-old screaming? >> I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard 200 adults talking at one time. Regardless, I’m sensory-defensive, so many things register as the same level of “too loud” for me. Both of these things would be simply “too loud”. 152. Do you believe the stories about planes, boats and people mysteriously disappearing into the Bermuda triangle? >> I find them vaguely interesting. I liked the X-Files episode about it, Gillian Anderson’s character (it wasn’t Scully, technically...) was excellent in it lol. 153. Who are you the most jealous of? >> I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it. 154. What is the happiest way you can start your day? >> In an Inworld cuddle pile. 155. Do you ever have moments where you feel like everything is all right in the world? >> Occasionally.

156. Who thinks that you are offensive? >> I don’t know who thinks I’m offensive. It’s not like people go out of their way to tell me that or anything. 157. If you had to teach a class in something, what would you be able to teach people? >> I’d rather not. I greatly prefer being a student, anyway. 158. Have you ever had a spiritual experience (an experience that cannot be explained by science)? >> I’m sure science could contrive a reasonable enough explanation for the things I experience (and if it can’t now, it probably will eventually). Regardless, I prefer my explanations, and I’ll stick to them. 159. Do you believe that this experience was truly mystical or do you think there is some scientific explanation for it, only you don’t know what it is? >> An experience being explained in a scientific fashion doesn’t prevent it from being mystical. There are plenty of mystical experiences that science has an explanation for, after all, but the people involved in those experiences keep their own counsel. I think both a mystical explanation and a scientific explanation can exist comfortably side-by-side in my brain; they’re both useful for different reasons, particularly when it comes to communicating the experience to others (I wouldn’t use a mystical explanation when speaking to a hard materialist, for example, because, like... what would be the point...?). 160. Do you get offended easily? >> I wouldn’t say that, no. But I tend to be automatically distrustful of people who seem to go out of their way to be “offensive”. Just because whatever they’re saying doesn’t directly hurt me doesn’t mean I want to hang out with someone who says the kinds of things they say. 161. Would you still love and stay with your significant other if he or she had to have a breast or testicle removed? >> I can’t imagine being affected by that sort of thing at all. 162. Do you believe in fate or free will? >> I don’t care to choose a side. I think the discourse around it is interesting. 163. Do you believe that only boring people get bored? >> Of course not. That’s a rude (and, of course, entirely inaccurate, but mostly rude) thing to say. 164. Can life change or are we all stuck in vain? >> What does this even mean? 165. What changes are you afraid of? >> The kind that cause me pain. 166. Are you a day person or nocturnal? >> I prefer to be awake in the daylight and asleep at night. 167. What one CD could you listen to for an entire week (no mixed CD’s, it must be an album)? >> Why would I even have to do this anymore? It’s 2020. 168. Which is worse, working in retail, food service, or an office? >> For me, all of them are equally bad. Well, okay, maybe food service is worse because there’s the added layer of having to handle food and be around mucky gross things. 169. What’s the coolest job you ever had? >> Manning merch tables at local shows. 170. What is one central idea that your thoughts seem to come back to? >> There is no central idea...? I’m not sure how one even determines this. 171. Have you ever wanted to be an actor/tress? >> I was one in Inworld’s first iteration, when I was physically a child. But I have never really had interest in being one in this world. 172. If you had the power to control one person and make this person do anything you wanted for a whole day, who would you pick and what would they do? >> Total power exchange is totally not my scene, I’d get bored of it way too easily. I could absolutely see myself snapping, “make a fucking decision for yourself for once” after like an hour or two, lmao. 173. What star sign are you and what is your sign like? >> Gemini. I’m not going to go into an explanation of Gemini’s commonly-recognised traits, Google can take care of that for you. 174. Did the Blair Witch Project scare you? >> I haven’t seen it. The new Blair Witch game looked vaguely interesting. 175. Are you in constant fear of death? >> Not constant. I did spend about a year or so like that, recently. It sucked pretty bad. 176. Does fear of death keep you from building a life? >> No. Sometimes I get that bone-deep “what’s the point” feeling, but like... that feeling will just have to exist on its own while I go ahead and keep doing stuff. I can’t give in to that. 177. Do you like all your movies to be in wide-screen? >> I’m not sure what the alternative is, or what the difference is or whatever. 178. Are you a fan of any comic books? >> Sure. 179. At what age did you attend your first funeral? >> I don’t remember. I vaguely recall one happening when I was young, but I have no idea what exact age I was. 180. What do you smell like (lotion, cologne, sweat)? >> Just... like, a person. I showered this morning, but the fragrances from soap and lotion don’t linger very long, and it hasn’t been long enough for me to start smelling like sweat or anything. So I’m somewhere in the middle. 181. What are your greatest sources for wisdom? >> Oh, you know. People. 182. When you were little, where did your parents tell you babies come from? >> My father never had that discussion with me, I figured it out from reading books. 183. What is your favorite band? >> I don’t have one. 184. What’s the best cheesy 80’s song? >> Come On Eileen. /picks one at random 185. What’s the best kind of movie to see on a date? >> I’m not the person to ask. 186. Do you like to sit in the front, middle or back of the Movie Theater? >> Back, absolutely. And woe unto the people who have the same idea and try to sit near me. 187. Have you ever been inside an abandoned building? >> Yeah. 188. Under what circumstances would you agree to work for free? >> The circumstances where I really just want to do whatever-it-is and it isn’t too intensive, I guess. And where I feel like my work is valued in some other way if not financially. 189. Candles or strobe lights? >> Candles. Although sometimes in a dark area, a candle flame dancing around on the wick will have a kind of strobe-y effect, and I hate it. 190. Do you think the Lord of the Rings movies are true to the books or did Hollywood change the story too much? >> I don’t know, I didn’t read the book. 191. When you see a stranger on the street does your first reaction lean towards thinking of this person as a potential friend or as a potential threat? >> I don’t think of them as a potential anything. 192. Is it natural for human beings to fear and distrust each other, or is it cultural? >> Obviously it’s cultural, or every human being in every society on earth would fear and distrust everyone else with or without cause... which... is not the case... 193. What do you really want to buy? >> Nothing. I don’t have the money to buy anything right now, anyway. 194. You have to choose. Would you be happier marrying someone rich for their money or living in the streets and subway tunnels with someone you love? >> God, do I hate this question. First of all, neither money nor love are “everything”, but “love” is work, not some kind of magic bubbly gushy feeling that happens no matter what, and that work starts to take a backseat when all one’s energy is devoted to simply surviving from day to day. How do I know? Take a wild guess. Second of all, the question doesn’t take into account whether you can also love someone you’ve married for the sake of financial security. (Spoiler: remember, love is action and will and intent, not magic, so yeah, you can.) Third of all, can I stress that there’s nothing fucking romantic and movie-like about being homeless? Because sometimes I feel like people imagine “we’ll share a cardboard box and be free of the shackles of modern society <3″ or some shit and meanwhile I’ve seen homeless couples, many homeless couples. I’ve been homeless couples. It sucks. That’s the end of the story. It sucks. (There’s probably similar romantic notions about marrying some tycoon and being a kept lady/boy, or whatever, which do not at all measure up to the reality. I’m sure a lot of people end up abused and neglected and miserable in their gilded-cage master bedrooms, afterwards. But since that’s not my experience, it wasn’t the focus of my fathomless ire with this question, lol.) 195. If someone wanted to understand you what book could they read that would help? >> That’s not going to happen. 196. Do you think it’s odd that Americans have freedom of religion and yet call themselves ‘one nation under god’? >> I don’t think it’s odd because I’m pretty used to how the United States works in that respect. I know it operates under conservative, Christian hegemony while playing the role of secular, progressive Western nation on the outside.

197. In what sense are you a minority? >> I’m Black, disabled/neuro-atypical, socially considered female, trans, and queer. I think that covers it. 198. Are you anti social? >> No. I have a few asocial behaviours and inclinations, but I’m not anti-social. 199. Do you photograph well? >> Sometimes. Not often, in my opinion. 200. Do you think that human beings would survive through a nuclear winter? >> I don’t know. I’m not knowledgeable enough about either human biology (and psychology) or the specifics of nuclear winter to say.

#surveys #survey #5000 question survey

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ourworldofenergy · 5 years

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Canada and Energy: Part 2 – The Bad

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley In the previous blog about energy in Canada, I presented evidence that Canada has abundance of energy, ranging from hydrocarbon to existing renewable energy supplies. In essence, Canada has similar potential to Norway and even at a larger scale. Norway, like Canada, has been a prolific producer of oil and gas and continues to be so, but Norway is already in a position to be able to transition fully to renewable energy and has undertaken steps in that direction and to curtail fossil fuel consumption (see Independent.co.uk, and Fortune.com).

But where Norway has long term vision and broad social and political consensus, Canada has acrimony, mismanagement and corruption.

I. Oil and Gas Wealth Squandered

Back in 1976, Alberta had the good idea of establishing a “Heritage Fund” to accumulate some oil wealth into a fund to benefit Albertans (and Canada) to save for the future, to diversify the economy (away from fossil fuels) and to improve the quality of life for residents. At about the same time, Alaska established its Permanent Fund and around 15 years later, Norway established its Sovereign Wealth Fund with similar goals. Let’s compare the growth of these funds (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

The values in Fig. 1 are not adjusted for inflation. If I adjusted the figures for inflation then it would appear that the Canadian Fund is losing real value and that they should just throw in the towel. Reading the annual reports for the Heritage Funds it becomes obvious that Canadian governments did not have the discipline necessary to achieve the fund’s objectives and then through constant changes in policies, raided the fund for pet projects.

Why does this matter? Because Norway now has ample financial resources to pay for a transition to a fully renewable energy economy and to diversity its economy away from hydrocarbon production. Canada has no similar fiscal resource to accomplish such lofty objectives in the time frame espoused by its politicians. In the prior blog, I noted that the Prime Minister praised the good fortune of having 173 billion barrels of oil sands resources. However, just two months before that speech in Houston the same Prime Minister gave a speech in Ontario in which he argued that it is necessary for Canada to divest itself from oil sands.

The net result is that Canada, and Alberta in particular, is going into the age of oil retirement without any pension or any real plan to live out the post oil age comfortably.

II. Canadian Oil and Gas Assets Will be Stranded in the Future and Therefore Be Worthless

For the last few years, Canada has struggled to get its oil to market. Any online search will deliver tons of news about pipeline problems, foreign funded protester problems, production problems, and ineffective government action. Coupled with flattening global oil demand and increasing oil supply, the result is that for the better part of a year Western Canada Select has been trading at a discount (Fig. 2 – sources Statista.com, Ceri )

Fig. 2

In effect for the whole last year, producing and selling Canadian oil has a zero sum game, most likely a negative undertaking, because in Fig. 2, I only use the lowest production costs and lowest transport costs.

If Canada can’t find markets and continues to sell oil at a discount, especially if that discount results in producing oil at cost or even below cost, then instead of having $800,000 per capita in the bank (less production costs) Canadians will now have $0 in the bank. Carbon taxes won’t kill Canadian oil production, lack of access to markets will.

Aside: Online searches will also bring about loads of stories about how toxic Canada’s oil is. Newsflash, all oil is toxic. Comparing again to Norway, both Norway and Canada have some of the strictest environmental, health and safety standards for oil production. Whereas other less open and democratic states focus on maximizing production without giving a care about environmental or safety issues. So really, where should environmentalists focus their protests, in Canada or in Venezuela?

Fig. 3 Common site in Venezuela these days (source Bloomberg)

Without pipelines to transfer oil to ports to access world markets, Canada will be very dependent upon the U.S. to buy its oil using existing pipelines and existing rail services. American refiners along the Gulf Coast have been happy to buy cheap Canadian oil to blend for products, especially in the wake of oil production failures in Venezuela, but now comes another scary part for Canada. American refiners may find other suppliers, or worse yet, if Venezuela falls, then the new regime in Venezuela will be quick to ramp up production. The best market for heavy oil is the U.S. Gulf Coast refiners who can use either Canadian heavy crude or Venezuelan heavy crude in their production. There are pipeline constraints and protesters along the route from Canada to the U.S. refiners, but there are no such blockages on the sea between Venezuela and the Gulf of Mexico.

Furthermore, transporting crude by rail from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast can cost from $10 to $15 per barrel. Shipping a barrel of crude from Venezuela by tanker costs around $2.

III. Hydropower

A big impediment to developing more hydropower in Canada is the poor relationship that the Federal Government has with indigenous nations. There are other reasons, but this one is important enough to address specifically and I’ll give a small, true story, which local folks will be happy to discuss if you ask.

On Vancouver Island the village of Tahsis is located within the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation area. There is hydropower potential in the area and a few years back a power developer started to develop a Run of the River hydro plant. Run of the River hydro is supposed to be the least environmentally altering means of producing power. However, the firm working on the project decided that it would be necessary to alter the river run and without consulting anyone started dynamiting the river which then affected fish stocks. (The engineering firm was from the U.S. working for a Canadian developer.) That type of blast first approach to development is horrible but unfortunately characteristic of a lot of large Canadian projects. Fortunately, in Tahsis the First Nations managed to stop the project (and, if I had been there at the time, I would also have jumped all over the dumb-dumb engineering firm and developer for such an approach). Houston is the oil and gas capital of the world, and had tempestuous beginnings, but we’ve long since learned that it’s not prudent nor necessary to throw one’s weight around by dynamiting things or running rough shod over environments and indigenous residents. There are better ways.

IV. Wind Power

The first commercial wind farm in Canada was located in Alberta and became operational in 1993. Since then all provinces have been adding windfarms, with most capacity additions coming on line between 2010 and now. But let’s focus on Alberta and Ontario. Fig 4 compares historical electricity prices for those two provinces. In 2013 Alberta added its largest windfarm to date, about 150 MW capacity. Ontario, since then has been adding a lot more wind, as seen in Fig. 5.

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

What was going on in Ontario? It seemed that the more wind power that Ontario added, the higher its electricity prices went. “Correlation is not Causation”, correct. But in this case, Fig. 5 actually show a causation-effect graph. It’s true, because in Ontario, the Liberal government mismanaged implementation of wind energy (and other renewable energy) which consequently drove up electricity prices. During the same time, in Alberta, they got it right, with electricity prices falling.

V. Invest in Energy, Just not in Canada?

As we’ve seen, even if one can produce heavy oil in Canada and get it to market, it’s likely that one will lose money. Instead of working on ways to improve the oil business in Canada, governments seem hell bent on destroying it even more by applying carbon taxes and implementing other insanities. Diversification into plastics is, in my opinion, a dubious long term solution as the plastics industry faces pressure to reduce output as the world moves towards using less plastic (see prior blog) or using bio-plastics materials that are degradable. Politicians in Canada at times get their priorities by looking backwards and working accordingly.

The situation with natural gas is almost as convoluted as with Canadian oil. There are bottlenecks to export. And unlike oil demand, which is forecast to fall soon enough, gas demand will remain strong for some decades.

Hydropower could be brought on line if, and it’s a big if, the Federal Canadian government and its preferred contractor would stop patronizing indigenous nations as charities and instead treat them with dignity and respect and as equals.

The experience of wind power in Ontario has damaged the case for wind power in Canada and elsewhere. But if people could look past the government mismanagement in Ontario and instead to the successes in Alberta and Texas, Canada could then benefit from cheap, renewable power.

But these are a lot of “ifs” and Canada will have to get past the ugly in order to thrive again. It’s a choice between lower taxes, cleaner energy for all, and allowing initiative and ingenuity, or the government taking a share in home ownership, mandating speech, and dictating economics.

Published by Our World of Energy

Canada and Energy: Part 2 – The Bad was originally published on OurWorldofEnergy

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