#i may have given a robot an existential crisis

[skaruresonic]

I'm exploring Metal's identity crisis angle in Stellar, in a way that delves more legitimately into it (and doesn't require him usurping Eggman or becoming Neo Drag Queen). Because I really do like the idea and don't think it should be redacted just because it was handled sloppily. But as usual, what I have planned VS what fans see is... a lot different.

(please don't take this as a knock against your ideas, these are just my thoughts on the games' handling of the character) Personally speaking, I feel like there's a lot about Metal that the games haven't sufficiently established. There's a disconnect I find hard to reconcile. I honestly think it's a case where the OVA's ideas about him bled over into canon, which more or less picked up the ball and ran with it without first laying down the necessary groundwork.

Metal says some really weird stuff in Heroes. His lines presuppose that we were already privy to some hitherto unseen internal conflict. He implies he used to be afraid. Of what? When?

His crisis of self doesn't seem to really exist outside of the OVA. CD only establishes him as a bully and a kidnapper, with perhaps the smallest garnish of copying Sonic's mannerisms with the finger wag right before the Stardust Speedway race. However, given that Eggman promptly wastes him, it's not enough for me to say it's significant enough to merit special notice. Especially since this quirk of copying Sonic's mannerisms hasn't carried over to other games AFAIK.

In SA1, we see him floating inside a test tube. The most we can glean from the sight is that Eggman's been tweaking him, but to make the leap from "Eggman's working on him" to "Metal develops an existential crisis and goes haywire" is too big a gulf for me to make as well, unfortunately.

To be clear, I don't necessarily have beef with the idea of Metal having the desire to be the "real" Sonic, just the fact that there isn't any real precedent for it. His reasons for transforming into "the ultimate overlord" can just as easily be chalked up to robotic pragmatism gone wrong as existential woes: he saw that he couldn't beat Sonic in his base form and took the next logical step of copying the data of all life forms, Sonic's included, in order to surpass him and therefore fulfill his function of defeating him.

The potential is there, but because the games don't fully connect the dots, it's hard to call it A Definite Thing. And I feel like Metal is further hamstrung by virtue of being A.) a robot; how can he seek to be the "real" Sonic, the embodiment of freedom, if he's forever subservient to his master? and B.) voiceless, in contrast to Shadow's reticence; we can never tell what he's thinking, which isn't exactly conducive to expressing internal conflict to the audience.

It's like the whole "Gerald based Shadow's design on the Hidden Tapestry mural" thing. Although the core idea makes sense and may even lead to a more cohesive understanding of the material, unfortunately, we lack the connective tissue to say for certain that that happened in exactly that way. There are too many assumptions required to make the connection a seamless transition.

#asks

[quetzalqueen]

I may not be expressing this eloquently as I am Tired, but I wanted to say that people underestimate just how important fandom can be to getting through difficult and turbulent times.

I'll be upfront, I've suffered a faith crisis lately that has shattered my mental health, like a tornado through a car park. I went from wholeheartedly believing in a benevolent God to having faith in none almost overnight. It left me lonely, hurting, and wounded.

When everything else feels like a hollow pit of despair, fandom was there to pick me up. You may think 'it's just a movie about robots, why does it matter so much to you?' But seeing The Creator planted a seed of hope and excitement I hadn't genuinely felt in ages. My fanfic is the only reason I feel like doing anything some days. The film has had such an impact on me that I'm still thinking about it a month after I saw it.

When I am feeling existential despair, I think about writing my Creator fanfics and I smile. I may not have a God to believe in anymore (or at least the Abrahamic one) , but what I do have is a sense of purpose given to me through expressing my creativity. I feel less sad when I talk to others about how much this movie means to me. By writing stories, I feel like I'm making some kind of difference. Seeing just one person enjoy reading what I write means the world to me <3

#the creator 2023 #sekon #quetzal rambles

[burronetta]

I wish that I was off tomorrow. Tonight's the right kind of night to get tipsy and contemplate life...

I've been having a mild existential crisis about my gender of late. So far, I've been flitting between two forms: "he/him" because it's what I've spent my life living and it's convenient for friends and family, and "they/them" because it feels nice to be disconnected from the gender binary. "They/them" has been my most recent foray into alternative gender expression, since my maleness has always felt like something that was attached to me at birth and nothing that I really care all that much about. I do get a bit of a giggle of delight from hearing "she/her", but I suppose that's because I don't hear it that often and being feminine feels delightful.

But lately, the pronouns I've been razor focused on are "it/its". It's kind of a self-objectification that I both enjoy and feel terrified of. I've contemplated it before, but I wasn't fully prepared for that kind of depersonalization it provided. Nowadays, I still fear it, but it's got this ring of truth to the parts of myself that have it put together. The aspect of myself that's in control and maintains a zen-like contentment with the world. It's a robotic assessment of reality that revels in the even-keel contentment of serene happiness as opposed to seeking one extreme emotion after another. "It/its" is the representation of Burronetta as a contented, robotic version of itself that still retains the emotions of that burly, bearish humanoid male, but is content with subverting those norms associated with maleness. It has it's shit together, knowing that staying awake late at night to write or read does not mean that it has to be tired in the morning. Most importantly, it takes any snide remarks given by the "anti-pronoun" types and assesses them contemplatively instead of being given to anger over them.

A fully depersonalized Burronetta is a happier, free Burronetta. Self-objectified because it recognizes that this shell of humanity is just a shell, and that what you do with said shell is more important that appealing to society's expectation of what that shell is supposed to look like and act like.

And that kind of radical freedom is a little too terrifying for me to accept right now as I am. Eventually, I may move on to that contented variation of depersonalization. But for now, "they/them" still makes me feel comfortably human.

#gender #they/them #it/its #gender expression

[ganymedesclock]

I don’t want to say fictional robots “belong” to autistic people because any given fantastical allegory can have manifold and meaningful resonance to all manner of diversities, but something I do think is very interesting about fictional robots as an autistic person is this:

Robots as a plot element or character arc often center on this question of emotions. Do you feel emotions? Now, this is an imperfect argument about humanity/authenticity in the first place since there are plenty of Real Human Beings who experience anhedonia or alexithymia- but I think also, in my experience, a lot of these stories- sometimes in-universe, sometimes only in fandom responses- betray that maybe a lot more people than they think, are not very good at identifying emotions.

Many fictional robots- to be blunt- pour with emotion. They will often have a blunted affect (that is to say, speaking in a monotone, or limited facial expressions), they may use overly technical terminology, but they will make arbitrary decisions based on personal preference, it will be nakedly obvious they have a preference and their preference is determined at least in part by what pleases them. Data from Star Trek adores his cat and cares deeply about art and poetry.

And I won’t say any of these characters are bad people. I don’t want to suggest the goal is to create a character who’s “really” emotionless. If there is a quibble I have with this, it’s that I think we could all afford to be a little more careful and a little bit more imaginative, when considering how other people’s minds work, and how they present details. Not just as a joyless finger-wag of “you should be more responsible!” (though I will say there is some joylessness to it- I don’t really enjoy being shown a character who emotes close to how I naturally do, being fretted over by people asking if that character has a soul, is a real person, or simply an effective mimic; that hurts a little too personally to be fun!)

I was thinking of this because I was reflecting on one of my favorite little videos, My Job Is To Open And Close Doors. It’s a simple little uninterrupted 3-minute monologue about an AI who, well, see title, but has a bit of a crisis of purpose and asks themselves a bunch of critical questions about their role and purpose.

At its core, to me, the AI in My Job clearly experiences an emotion; they see something in the course of doing their job that they have no protocol or instruction to halt before, but feel an incredible misgiving about following through on. In response to this misgiving, in a very human manner, they begin to procrastinate- all the while, they point out to their own mounting confusion that this is a meaningless activity, but it buys them more time.

The voice acting given to the AI is very good, and, to me, cinches the whole piece- the actor very specifically does not leave a neutral-pleasant tonal range, and at several points, rather than asking an obviously “emotional” question, the AI simply hangs up in their own thinking talking to themselves- “because- because- because-” a very mechanical sort of stutter.

And using this flat affect and mechanical quirks, the actor establishes and fits to an emotional vernacular. The thrust of the plot- that the AI isn’t sure why they’re hesitating when their job is straightforwards and clear, that they even take note that this is being recorded as an error by another party- repeats in the sense of the stuttering- just as they procrastinate opening the doors without being sure why, they too “procrastinate” the completion of their statements when they’re unsure of them. The AI believes that the delivery of a solution, an answer, a “point”, is inevitable, so when they do not feel they have an answer they are incapable of saying “I don’t know”; instead, they stall. They procrastinate in the hope of achieving enough time to deliver an answer that meets their standards, that satisfies the parameters either set by their programming, or their own feelings.

My Job also adds in a sense of why emotions are important- in a sense that is not about enjoyment or satisfaction, although the AI ultimately does feel tremendously satisfied at the successful conclusion of their quandary- because without the ability to experience “baseless misgivings”, they would have simply responded to the initial command to open the door and been unbothered by whatever happened. In that sense, you could argue, it’s an ‘emotion’ born from ‘logic’ (that there is something amiss, though it takes the AI time to tease this out of their own thinking) but at that point we’re barking up a fool’s tree of semantics because our “logic” and our sentiments are both chemicals clattering around the same undifferentiated apparatus at the same time and thus inextricably attached to one another.

The thing that kills me about this is- with no hostility to the commenter in question- I scrolled down into the comments of My Job and immediately saw someone talking about how clearly, the AI has no emotions.

To me, this entire plot is about an AI having an emotion. Unmistakable and clear. This is about a door mechanism experiencing a profoundly human response to distress- procrastinating on the completion on a task they have every resource and in fact an active imperative to complete, based on a misgiving they are unable to articulate. This revelation is so profound to them that at the end of the video, they actually reframe their entire objective- “My job is to protect the human. My job is a great purpose.”

So I guess if there’s a tl;dr or conclusion to this sentiment, it’s that I think that while we can and should absolutely tell stories about fictional robots- because they are cool, and because they are also tremendously useful to ask certain existential questions about personhood- I think that it is actually very important to temper both our creation and consumption on these narratives on a more robust theory of neurodivergence, and, “I don’t recognize the way this emotion plays out in this particular person” does not equal “there is no emotion there at all”

#writing ruminations #readmore #obviously someone who experiences anhedonia/alexithymia or similar conditions can absolutely have their own take on this and I apologize #if I have accidentally come off as like... 'emotion is what makes you human' #I think that we're complicated stress-reactive chemical computers #and I am sort of broadly defining emotion in this case as 'any sort of subjective non-data-based psychological response'

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

What if Indil met Elizabeth, David, and Light and Shadow?

This might just be the most "Carnivorous Muffin" sentence to have ever been uttered on the internet.

Let's just stare at it in wonder, while I wonder how many people will have no idea what those words even mean strung together.

Right, for those that are lost, relevant source material:

Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus

October

Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun

The Wasteland

Aren't you so glad you read normal fanfics written by a normal person?

So, to catch people up to speed who have not read every single fic I've written:

The Wasteland

The Wasteland is the what if story of an eleven-year-old Lily ending up in Middle Earth (notably before the Chamber of Secrets fiasco). There she befriends the One Ring, who thanks to her realizes he's sentient and has an existential crisis. They do the fusion dance, and end up becoming a single, new, being calling himself Indil.

He's the best and worst of both the Ring and Lily.

At the end of the story Indil chooses a noble death, gives up his form, and in so doing persuades the Ring to face his own potential death as well as his maker.

It's unclear what happens after that.

I like to think the Ring prevailed and earned the body of his maker.

(In an offshoot, for unknown reasons, Indil may or may not visit Mars)

Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun

In Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun, yet another, different, Lily ends up in the "October" universe where she decides to create life on Pluto. One of the beings she creates is a priest who worships her as God, named Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun.

He basically strong arms her into being his God. Lily goes to live on Pluto.

He's never been all that keen on humanity.

Decades later, the muggle world catches up to the Alien Franchise, and the Prometheus sets off to investigate the Engineers. Unbeknowest to them, Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun has been marooned on that rock by Lily for quite some time and is essentially in timeout for trying to wipe out humanity again.

He figures out he will be unable to return home unless he plays nice with Dr. Elizabeth Shaw and her creepy android friend David. Together, the three of them set off to find the Engineers, Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun is hoping they can blow some shit up and would have driven the ship full of bioengineered weapons back to Earth if it were not so very close to home.

And that's about where we leave off.

... Why does anyone read my stories?

RIGHT, YOUR QUESTION

What if Indil met Elizabeth, David, and Light and Shadow?

So how does Indil even end up in this mess? Well, in the Mars AU, it's where rather than face his maker/death by Volcano, the Ring chose to bravely run away (as Sauron does).

This means that Indil, the merged consciousness of Lily and the One Ring, survives and they're chilling on Mars in another dimension because, well, it beats dying. And Potions Class.

And... Well, that's the most likely route for how this would happen, as Indil is pretty damn dead by the end of the Wasteland. Regardless of what happens to The Ring, it's unlikely that he and Lily would merge consciousness ever again and if they did that Indil would remain unchanged.

But we're already here, so why not. We'll say the Ring wins the battle of wills with Sauron, steals his body, and that he's then left with Mordor. Well, that's great, but he doesn't want Mordor.

Lily proposes they go back to England. They do, but Lily has a terrible time, as she usually does. Lily likely does her adventure through time, ruins her friendship with Wizard Lenin, and reaches the crossroads of "You can go to Hogwarts or... not".

Lily takes Mairon up on his offer of not going to Hogwarts and they decide to travel different dimension in space instead. Weird shit happens, life lessons are learned, and they also learn the fusion dance is alive and well and holy shit they can still turn into Indil.

Indil is very put out, here he'd geared himself up for a noble sacrifice, and now he exists again. What the hell people?

As usual, Mairon gets tempted by Lily's unbreakable will, and decides he rather likes being an immovable object and unstoppable force. Which means that Indil, once again, has a problem falling back out of existence.

Which isn't good for either Lily or Mairon's sense of self. But who needs that, amirite?

Anyways, Indil is probably floating around in a spaceship he made in his garage, trying to figure out where to go, what to do, and whether he should really split back into Lily and Mairon yet when out of nowhere he spots another ship.

This is a very strange coincidence given just how ungodly vast space is. This, in fact, is so unlikely you might as well call it a miracle or fate.

Well, Indil will never spit in the face of fate (at least, not today), so he decides to say hello.

There he's greeted by a human woman who's not doing too hot after an emergency C-section to get the xenomorph out of her womb, a very recently repaired android who knows the taste of sweet sweet freedom (and patricide), and an alien who is intrigued that another not-human has boarded the ship but upset that he now has to deal with yet another person on his time out.

Indil, in his panic, decides to pull a Sauron.

Behold, mortals, he is Annatar, sent by the Valar to teach them the smithing of the very gods. Please don't question this. (Indil realizes two seconds two late that none of these words mean anything to anyone and he might as well have said nothing at all).

Elizabeth, Light and Shadow, and David all just stare.

Elizabeth wonders how the hell she keeps running into so many aliens. Is she some sort of alien catnip that pulls these guys out of the ether? She has now met two entirely different species, that she was not looking for, in a matter of months.

Regardless, Indil decides he's coming along. A quest to find God? That's fascinating. He only hopes it doesn't end in drowning, last time Indil (via Sauron) had a run in with The Lord it involved a lot of drowning.

Indil starts smithing life jackets just in case.

And because Elizabeth is amazing, and Indil has a thing for strong, independent, women, we see the reemergence of Indil's Weird Thing With Eowyn II: Electric Boogaloo. Neither Mairon nor Lily, vaguely aware inside Indil, understand this at all.

Why does this keep happening to them?

This is bad because David is also in love with Elizabeth. Except, David is a robot who is no doubt fascinated by aliens, so I'm sure they come to some weird agreement.

Elizabeth pretends none of this is happening.

Light and Shadow thinks there's something disturbingly familiar about Indil and eventually lands on the money. Almost. He realizes that Indil is Lily in mortal disguise, he is so smart, and the rest of the time he wonders what the hell he's supposed to be learning/doing with Lily's disguised alien appearance.

Thanks to Lily's bullshit powers, Elizabeth survives the journey and does not die in transit. This means that David does not become the unstable, grieving, nutcase who decides to wipe out all sentient life. Good for you, David.

So our band of heroes arrive on this alien world and...

Well, Elizabeth is a member of the race that these people sent their finest warriors out to destroy. David is a robot, something the people they tried to genocide created. No one knows what the fuck Indil and Light and Shadow even are.

Indil, I imagine, starts talking fast and somehow ends up King of Men again. Because that's just the kind of thing that happens to him. The possibility of drowning, somehow, seems to be growing ever nearer. Indil makes more life jackets.

Elizabeth isn't pleased with this outcome at all but also has no idea in general what to do.

Things probably come to a head somehow, with sacrifices involved surely, there probably is a ridiculously powerful storm a la Covenant that lasts for months. It's raining everywhere, there's a flood. And Indil flips shit, GOD IS GOING TO MURDER US ALL FOR SATANISM! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Mass panic, total destruction, the entire city is wiped out without David doing anything.

Our heroes are now stranded, again, in space.

Light and Shadow has learned nothing, Indil is wearing a life vest, Elizabeth has no ship, and David just composed "Elizabeth the Symphony: Tenth Movement".

Indil works on building a new ship out of twigs and rocks. He assures them he knows what he's doing. Elizabeth's not sure she wants him going to Earth. She's not sure she wants to go to Earth.

She's also not sure, but she may now have a harem consisting of a robot, an alien, and another alien.

Ten years later, the Covenant crew shows up, and promptly die in a series of hilariously terrible accidents and their own incompetence.

Our heroes still have no functional ship.

#ask #anon #prometheus #light and shadow of the distant sun #the wasteland #lily and the art of being sisyphus #elizabeth shaw #david 8 #indil #the one ring

[exeggcute]

random question but do you have any sci-fi book recs?

now that I think about it... not nearly enough!! I feel like I read a bunch of sci-fi in high school and college but either grossly overestimated that number or most of it was so mediocre that it didn’t leave an impact on me lol. and I definitely have yet to read a lot of the really foundational sci-fi novels but I can toss a couple things out there...

the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy (and its associated sequels and radio show) is one of my favorite books ever but it is not, like... your typical sci-fi novel. it is certainly a novel that Happens In Space (Mostly) and has some really fun (and funny) sci-fi concepts but that’s not like, the “point” of it, I guess. either way I have to recommend it because douglas adams is one of the most masterful satirists out there and reading his books sent me spiraling into an existential crisis when I was 14. no ragrets

pretty much anything by isaac asimov will be good. I never got around to reading the foundation series (which are supposed to be his best work by far) but I, robot is a classic for a reason. it’s not so much a “shooting lasers in space”-type of novel as it is a “examining the philosophical implications of robots” novel where it presents a bunch of different scenarios and how they play out while abiding by a singular set of rules. unfortunately that is exactly the kind of thing I love so it really tickled me, lol.

same goes for michael crichton, people love him. I only ever read the andromeda strain but I thought it was super neat (in the same kind of “puzzling out a sci-fi mystery” way as asimov’s stuff), although I did find out recently he was a climate change denier right before he died so... lmao. 

some of kurt vonnegut’s novels get into science fiction-y territory... galapagos, cat’s cradle, and sirens of titan are all up there. it’s been ages since I read most of them but they all made an impression on me back in the day

this one’s pretty random (it’s not really a novel, and if you want to split hairs it’s only barely sci-fi) but you know those freaky memes of like, bizarre illustrations of humanoid creatures? like the “season’s greason’s” yeti thing? those comes from this awesome book called man after man: an anthropology of the future by dougal dixon. none of it is intended to be, like, an earnest prediction of what humanity is gonna look like in a million years, but it creates a bunch of interesting scenarios for how human beings might adapt to their environment (naturally or artificially) over time in really drastic ways and what that would look like for the future of biology. the illustrations are a big draw but it has a lot of text explaining what certain biological adaptations could offer, how we’d use them in a given environment, little stories about the lives of these future humans, stuff like that. unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it is super duper out of print so good luck finding a used copy for under two hundred bucks. totally unrelated link I just dropped here by mistake

two things: I hate to pigeonhole it as a sci-fi novel because it’s so many more things than that, and it may be a little Too Relevant to the goings-on of the world, all things considered, but I adore severance by ling ma. fantastic novel about capitalism and alienation and immigration in the united states. the science fiction part is that it’s about a (fictional) pandemic but it’s far from your average plague novel fare... that being said, when I read it at the beginning of 2019 it very much freaked me out and sent me into a whole thing about “oh my god I couldn’t live through a pandemic, this shit is so scary!!!” and here we are. severance is her debut novel and it was already getting a lot of recognition before The Plague but the timing of it all helped rocket it onto a lot of bestseller lists so I’m hoping we see some more work from her soon

#Anonymous #long post #also if anyone reading this has recommendations by all means drop in a reply... I need recs myself lol

[clownhara]

I've been following you for a while but I dont know all that much about your OCs so how about a big resume of them all?? :DDD

I haven't really posted much about them on this account until recently so that doesn't really suprise me 😅 but yeah I absolutely can! Warning though this is going to be unbelievably long

I guess I should start off with Zensuke because he is THE gay purple cat. I named this blog after this guy. I made him when I was probably like 12-13 or around there so he had all the things you'd expect a repressed edgy kid's of to have. He was basically a demon who managed to get out of thier world's equivalent of hell and instead of doing anything evil he just made cake and got married to the guard who was supposed to kill him. I don't really do much with him anymore but I still love him very much.

Corbinian is probably the character I talk most about and he's the one I edit to fit into different worlds the most. He was a normal doctor but he got his memory wiped by robots and ended up working as an executioner for the robotic mafia, but eventually got caught and had to hide out in Lobotomy (he was originally a Lobotomy Corp oc) where he discovered he can extract abnormality dna and with some altering the dna can be injected into humans causing a variety of different mutations and effects. He's usually very heartless and manipulative, but does have a soft spot, usually for anxious, soft spoken people, who subconsciously remind him of his brother (who is a friends if so I can't really get into him). He also was given a variety of nicknames by the higher ups, like Corb, Corn chip, Corb on the Orb, or just Corn. Je

Corble is the result of Corb trying out human cloning. He has the same general appearance as Corbinian, but with purple hair (hence the name, because he's porble corb) that's styled differently. Since the experiment was technically a failure Corb was going to kill him, but Corble was really sweet and innocent and Corb basically went "well great guess I adopted my clone then". Corb stopped messing with cloning but adores Corble.

Might as well get all of my Lobotomy ocs out of the way. Oliver is the first Lobotomy oc I ever made, which is funny because I may or may not constantly forget that he exists. Oliver is basically a five year old kid in an adults body, and I mean that literally, because his parents basically locked him in a room and ignored him so his mental age is basically that of a kids. He's very mischievous and loves pulling pranks on people, most of which are harmless. Unless it's Corb, whom Oliver gates with a passion. Then it's thinly veiled murder attempts disgusted as pranks. He loves Fairy tales, and only works with fairy tale abnormalities because he panics with any other kind. Only one person in the entire facility can even put up with him, and that's Mabel.

Mabel is trans lesbian who can find the good in almost anyone. She's optimistic, bubbly, and has a great sense of humor. She tends to get really flustered around women though. Is it obvious I kinda projected onto her a bit? Because I did. If she wasn't in Lobotomy she'd definitely be a streamer. I'm just now realizing I basically made snapcube before I knew who that was. Whoops.

Up next is Adam! Adam is quiet, nervous, and honestly just prefers to not be noticed. Their ability to almost seamlessly blend into thier surroundings is astounding. Most people (me included) tend to just forget they exist. Which honestly is funny because they end up dating the loudest, most cocky person in the entire facility. Adam loves horror movies and spicy food.

Kieth is the loudest, most cocky person in the entire facility. He's the adopted son of a sephirah and the leader of the Rabbit team so that much is unavoidable. He's quick to anger, blunt, and tends to underestimate other people. However, he's also loyal to a fault, and willing to back his friends up no matter what. He feels like his mom's are expecting him to live up to expectations that he can't (and that they don't have but he doesn't realize that), so he's constantly throwing himself in harm's way to desperately try to prove to them that they made a good investment by adopting him or die trying. His two passions in life are collecting weapons and tending to rabbits, two of which he managed to train to sit on his shoulders and attack people. Despite being total opposites he loves Adam very much and will endure any horror movie with them, even if he's a huge scaredy cat.

Damien doesn't gave that much development, unfortunately. He came from a very religious household, moved out, and frequently gets possessed by an abnormality who makes him act like a cryptid. Totally normal stuff. He also went to law school.

Zephyr is a very, very serious individual. They've got a completely monotone color palette, speak either in short, blunt sentences or long, fanciful paragraphs with no in between, and tend to come off as cold and stiff. They're completely devoted to work, which is how they managed to become a captain. Despite this, they're very kind and caring, but unfortunately rarely get to show that side of themselves unless it's with Jamison, thier partner, both in crime and in the romantic sense. They also have a love/hate relationship with Owen, basically openly hating his guts but also enjoys thier banter and would hate if anything genuinely awful happened to them or his family.

Jamison is the complete opposite of Zephyr. He's an open book, very colorful, and tends to slack of when Zephyr isn't looking. Not on purpose, he just tends to get distracted most of the time. He's quite popular because he's very cheerful, which is rare in the higher ranks of Lobotomy. He'd absolutely die for Zephyr, and us usually the one who patches thier wounds. He really doesn't like Owen and thinks thier a pain in the ass, but keeps that to himself most of the time.

Owen is..... Interesting. I kinda went buck wild with him not gonna lie. He's one of the oldest son's of the God of Nightmares and Fire, an absolute agent of choas, and a campy fashion nightmare. But... I love them. They're both unbelievably obnoxious and also very caring. He's the kind of character you'd love but also hate at the same time. He also ended up becoming the God of Death in one timeline. If he wasn't God they'd probably run makeup guru/cursed amsr YouTube channel. Honestly he'd still run those as a God though. Also gender is a toy store and Owen is a kid who broke in after dark and is running along pushing all of the assorted genders into a cart while laughing maniacally (they use any pronouns but I stuck to just he/him they/them for this little snippet)

Alright, Lobotomy ocs done. Up next is.... Ugh... Octavious. He's originally a Danganronpa oc, the shsl gossip, and he was made to be a villian and by God does it show. He's the most fake, back stabbing, two faced character I've ever made. He's also the most one dimensional, which was actually intensional. He has no personality beyond being a petty, lying bitch, so when he runs out of lies and rumors to spread he goes into an existential crisis about how he has virtually no identity until he makes some new lie up about some random person. He's also abusive towards his younger sibling Aspyn, whom he has both physically and emotionally scarred. And, the icing on the "fuck this guy" cake, he's incredibly obsessive over his "wife" Melissa, who wants nothing to do with him and never even dated him, let alone married him. Basically he's a horrible, lying, abusive stalker. He also dresses exclusively in eye burn pink since the most poisonous bugs are usually brightly colored. Fuck Octavious, all my homies hate Octavious.

Next is Melissa, who honestly wasn't much better before her arc. She was raised to believe that in order to truely succeed in life, you have to ensure others fail. She, unfortunately, took that advice to heart. Get arc consisted of learning that we all can succeed together and that actively fucking other people over just made her an awful person, so she changed her behavior and tried to help people from then on out. She's incredibly meticulous, organized, and really smart. She still has issues trusting, but she's getting better. She has a crush on Octavious's younger sibling, but absolutely despises Octavious.

Aspyn is a quiet, caring individual who has no confidence both due to Octavious and just how they were raised. They are an incredibly skilled doctor, however, managing to perform amazingly in several different fields. They are, however, very defensive about thier passions, quick to insult anyone who questions them, mainly due to Octavious. They have a huge crush Melissa, but is to afraid to ask her out. Also they wear an eye patch because Octavious messed up one of thier eyes.

Hooo boy where to start with Edward. He's really inconsistent between universes, but the main constants are his power (he can trade bodies with people), him and Max getting together, him being a huge bookworm, and somehow he usually ends up being my self inserts dad???? Hos other aspects tend to change. Sometimes he's a power hungry megalomaniac who's trying to take over the world and will crush anyone and everyone who gets in his way or isn't useful to him, using his power evily to stay young forever by trading bodies with his kids and killing them when they're in his body. Other times, he's a fairly calm, if not a little cold, man whos biggest crime is the occasional tax evasion, who's power is more of a curse, causing him to stay alive forever through a series of unfortunate coincidences. Either way he's fun to write

Max is one of my favorite characters. He loves baking, his friends and family, he isn't too bright but no one holds that against him. Unfortunately, no matter which side of Edward it is, he's hopelessly in love with him, which can lead to his downfall. He's very protective of his cousin Heron, and tries to protect the innocent, which he usually doesn't end up doing thanks to evil Edwards manipulation. I also somehow failed to mention he's a plant man and flowers sprout wherever he walks and he can control plants but I couldn't find a good way to fit that in naturally.

Heron is half a plant man, in the worst possible way. He has rose vines instead of blood, which feels exactly how you think it would. Magic keeps his alive luckily, but it's unbelievably painful. Most of him and Max's family died when they were young, and unlike Mac who ended up on the streets, Heron ended up in an orphanage, where he learned at a young age that he shouldn't get close to anyone because if he does, they'd die. He genuinely believes that, and the only person he thinks is immune, is his cousin Max, who he even still expects to drop dead. Heron mainly fights by breaking his skin so his vines will grow rapidly and trap and kill his attacker, which looking back is uh. Kinda symbolic. I didn't do that on purpose but it fits

Eden is an angel, who was outcasted from heaven after being framed for a crime they didn't commit. They don't understand how humans work, but is trying thier best to fit in. He's one of the few beings Heron trusts, and even still Heron doesn't trust them much because of Eden's ability, being able to control holy flames. Eden is stoic and aloof, with an odd sense of humor. He insists that him baking using his holy flames is a form of training. Despite them claiming to be above human emotions, they very much are not above them and he is actually quite emotional.

Avocado is one of Herons old friends, who fell victim to Herons "luck" (aka they died). They are a drider (basically spider centaur) who came from a large family of drider thieves. They are very quiet and kind, which they use to thier advantage, since one would thing they'd steal small objects from people's houses or pickpocket them, which Avocado very much does. While they're fairly weak in combat thier thieving skills are not to be underestimated.

Grape is Avocados older sibling, and they are very serious and quite rude. Grape wants to kill Heron to avenge thier sibling, but ends up getting caught robbing the wrong person and ends up having to join the person's kids adventuring party.

Apple is the oldest drider sibling, and ends up taking a motherly role for all of the younger kids. They had to grow up incredibly fast, and has to make all of the hard decisions in place of thier dying father. Desperately needs a break.

There's more spider siblings but there isn't much info on them

Both Sherry and Theodore Poser are mainly just there because I have them really fun designs and don't really have a personality. Sherry's kinda hard to draw though

#this took forever but oh well #im also not tagging every individual oc lol #asks #aki no nyo #gay purple ocs #gay purple posts #long post

[turtle-steverogers]

Trust Fall

oh hello, a fic?

warnings/disclaimer: race is going through a moral dilemma in this fic.  i’m not trying to make a political statement or anything, nor do i agree or disagree with the conclusions in this fic, i’m just tryna get into this specific character’s mind given the situation he’s in.  warnings for death mentions, crying/guilt,,,,cuz of course, terrorism mentions (nothing graphic, it’s just there), and guns and stuff

ship: sprace

word count: 1754

editing: no

-

Race remembers reading once in a Time article that: “Evil isn’t easy”.  The search had been on a whim.  A heat of the moment, one in the morning google search after his first day out in the field.  Really out in the field.  As in, the first day as a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force where he was trusted to shadow a case.  

Details of that mission were unimportant now that four years had passed, but he’ll never forget how it ended.  The feeling of triumph once they had busted the terrorist cell and the almost giddy satisfaction of knowing that they won when he pulled the trigger on those men.  But man never forgets his first kill.

Sure, in the moment, it had felt good.  That particular cell had been a nasty one.  Lots of innocent civilians died at their hands.  But they were still humans with lives and heartbeats and neurons firing and really, he shouldn’t have tried to humanize what were ultimately murderers to the worst degree, but he couldn’t help but do so.  It was innate and the notion was clear.  Race had killed them.  He had taken lives that day.

So, that night, after returning home to his boyfriend (now husband), Spot, and smiling his way through a hasty dinner, then excusing himself halfway through Up to throw up said dinner in their hall bathroom, he’d googled it.  “What happens in your brain when you kill someone?”

It’s just the way Race functions.  If he can understand his thought processes- what’s happening in his brain when he’s performing an action, the ultimate why- then he can stomach whatever it is that’s plaguing him.  He lives by that: logic.  It makes sense.  

Spot’s always said that surprises him.  Apparently, outwardly (or at least outwardly when he isn’t working), Race doesn’t come across as super logical.  When Spot had told him that, Race had been a little offended, but ultimately it didn’t matter.  As long as he knew when to put on the serious front, he’s fine.

Beyond that, Race seems to have a knack for surprising Spot.  Namely, when Spot found out his actual job was with the FBI, specifically one of the most secretive and risky branches.  JTTF was no organization to be fucked with.  Yeah, for about 24 hours, Race was certain Spot was going to break up with him for keeping such a huge thing from him.  But after the confusion and fear had subsided, they were okay.  Thankfully, Spot respected his need for privacy in most work related matters.  They were okay.

Anyway, Race remembers seeing the first line of that goddamn Time article, “Evil isn’t easy”, and rethinking all of his life choices.  All he’d wanted were the straightforward facts on what happened in his mind when he pulled those triggers and what he got was an existential crisis that hasn’t quite ended, because what he was doing as a Special Agent wasn’t evil, right?  No, they were the ones tasked with the precarious job of stopping evil, so they couldn’t be the evil ones.  But they were still killing, weren’t they?  And that was evil. 

Halfway through the article, which chalked up to be mostly about serial killers and psychopaths and nothing that could remotely justify Race’s own actions, he’d clicked out and cleared his history, then chucked his phone across the room and nestled into Spot’s side.  Spot just grumbled a bit and pulled him closer in his sleep.  In the moment, that had been enough to rest Race’s mind, even a fraction.  But now, as Race points his gun between the eyes of the leader to a terrorist cell that had nearly blown up Union Station and pulls the trigger, feeling the way his heart beats too fast, but his hands remain steady, the familiar pit of guilt rises in him.  

XXX

The rest of the day passes methodically.  Paperwork, debriefing, more paperwork, coffee break, quick shower in the agency’s locker room, even more paperwork.

Finally, the case is done.  Or at least, Race is done with it.  It still has to go through some final wraps, but that’s for his superiors to worry about.

On the ride home, some of the feeling that had previously left Race’s body, leaving him vacant and robotic, begins to return.  By the time he pulls into his parking space across from Spot and his’ brownstone, he’s shaking.  The reaction is purely physical, though.  He still feels numb.  No pits in his stomach or lumps in his throat or jaws clenching to keep from crying.  

His mind is white noise, but his body is on fire.  His palm and pointer finger tingle where the gun had been nestled, the pressure from pulling the trigger seemingly still there.  His legs feel restless and he flexes the muscles in his thighs, trying to relieve some sort of instinct to fucking run and never stop.  He clenches the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white, allows himself thirty seconds to breathe, then turns of the engine.  One more deep breath later, he’s crossing the street and pulling out his house key to let himself in.  

Spot is in the kitchen when he enters, hovering over the stove and wearing one of the aprons Race’s Ma had gifted them a couple Christmases ago.  He looks up when Race perches himself at the kitchen counter and smiles, gesturing to one of the pots on the stove.

“Hey, you hungry?  I’m making some split pea soup.  There’s little hotdogs in the fridge that we can put in if you’re feeling frisky.”

Race had managed to calm himself down to the point of feigning normalcy, but his chest is still vibrating and the thought of eating food makes his stomach churn.  

He must pause a second too long to answer Spot, because he looks over again, frowning, “Hey...you okay?”

Race sighs.  He can’t share details of his work, but after their argument when Spot had found out about the whole FBI thing, he’d promise to at least be as honest as he could.  Besides, as much as Race’s job told him not to trust anyone, all good relationships are built on trust and Spot deserves the dignity of Race’s.

“No,” He says.  

Spot’s frown deepens and he gives the soup one more stir before turning off the stove and moving the pot off the burner.

“Rough day?” He asks.  His tone is conversational, with just the right amount of sympathy.  Race appreciates it.  He knows Spot worked long and hard on how to talk to Race so he would open up to him.

“Yeah,” Race says, finally feeling some of the emotions that had previously been sidelined returning.  He takes a shaky breath, feeling a little hot around the eyes all of a sudden, “Awful.”

Spot leans over the other side of the counter, reaching out a hand to cover Race’s, “Can you talk about it?”

And can he?  Race has had bad days before, hell the number of times he’s wordlessly curled himself into Spot’s chest and cried while his partner held him is almost embarrassing.  And each time, Spot asks if he can talk about it and each time he refuses.  But it hurts.  God, it hurts so bad and sure, Race has talked about this shit to his field partner, Dasilva, before, because he gets it, but right now all Race wants to do is tell Spot.  Get it out to a third party who isn’t involved in this messy shit.  Hear that it’s okay.  Or hear that it’s not and just have the truth already.

And yeah, he does trust Spot.  No, he’s not going to tell him details, he’s not disloyal to the Bureau, but he trusts Spot enough to tell him this.  He needs to tell him, he needs to-

“Did you know that I’ve killed people?”  He asks.  

Spot squeezes his hand and takes a measured breath.

“Never for sure,” He says, honestly, “But I’ve figured that it may come with your job.”

And now Race feels so small and vulnerable and he drops Spot’s hand and in a moment of pure longing- for comfort or just for Spot, he doesn’t know- he reaches up and tugs at the front of Spot’s shirt.  Spot gets it right away.  They’ve gotten to the point where reading each other is second nature, as familiar in their minds as the english language.

He crosses around the countertop and pulls Race into his arms, rubbing a soothing hand up and down his back as he cries.  It feels good to cry knowing Spot knows what he’s comforting him for.  The fact that he’s willing to hold Race this close, despite knowing what he’s done- what he’s had to do- speaks volumes.

“I hate doing it,” Race says, voice thick and muffled by tears and Spot’s shoulder, “I’ve had to do it so fucking much and I hate it and I try to justify it, but I never can in the end because I can still see them- every fucking one of them- in my mind.”

Spot hums, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, “Let’s go to the couch.”

Race nods, allowing himself to be guided to the couch in the living room.  He cries for a few more minutes, Spot holding him close, until eventually the breakdown tapers off.  

“I can’t imagine what you have to do, Race, or how you must feel,” Spot says, “And I can’t provide reasoning behind it any more than you can, because really, there shouldn’t be reason in this world for you to be in that position in the first place.  But what you do, you do because it’s your job.  You’re keeping a huge fucking number of people safe.  Maybe there’s no justification for this shit on either side, but that’s just the fucked up way of this fucked up world.  You do what you have to in the moment to keep people safe in the long run.”

“I’m not a bad person?” Race asks, still working to take measured breaths.

And whether Spot thinks so or not, he says, “No,” firmly.

And gradually, the rest of the tension in Race’s gut lets up.  He’s not okay, not really.  But now that the weight has been pressing down on his chest for so many years is not a secret he has to keep from the person he loves the most, he can breathe a little steadier.

-

again, this is purely fiction 

thanks for reading, chiefs!

hmu to be added to my tag

TAG LIST: @getchapapes @we-dont-sell-papes @suddenly-im-respecsable 

@aw-jus-let-em-try @well-the-kids-do-too @spot-conlon-king-of-brooklyn @felix-loves-albert-and-ralbert @technically-whizzy

@andthewoildwillknow @the-newsies-justice-for-zas-blog @localfakeitalian @have-we-got-news-for-you @musical-shitposts @thebroadwayaesthetic

@thomasbeingthomas

@irondad-spiderson-duo

@snakesarenonexistent 

@i-got-no-clue-what-im-doing 

@kpop-kk

@mentallytiredgoat

@yxseminx

@be-more-chill-evan-hansen 

@stopthe-presses

@elmers-half-a-cup

@and-i-lostmy-shoe

@spot-me50-papes

@honeynutpoptarts

@newsies-ensemble

@bennie-badeend 

@auspicioustarantula 

@faithmil 

@hopefully-not-the-ghostbusters

@bxnesof92

@backgroundensemble

@sure-as-a-star

@skybert-daherty 

@eveningpaper

@malex-13

@albert-eats-cookie-cake

@heart-a-n-o-n

@bitching-newsboys

@orollyitsracetrackhiggins

@joshuaburrageenthusiast

@random-superhero-stuff

@awkwardstranger98

@falling-out-trees-101

@modern-race-owns-airpods

@asphodelnerd

@i-dont-do-sadness

@rockyroad236

@sirgrahamcracker

@godhatesjordan

@thats-our-que-boys

@bastille-smedry

@nerdsies

@toss-me-a-pape

@wolfbutterfly42

@revolutioninthesewers

@spot-the-brooklyn-pirate

@aintnosleevesinbrooklyn

@hats-or-badges 

@cassimalfoy

@kingofflushing

@racetrackyeetgins

#newsies #newsies fic #sprace #racetrack higgins #spot conlon #lol im baaaaack #i need to write more again i forgot how much i love to write

[prokopetz]

Hi, could you please give me some suggestions for a tabletop system to run a sci-fi horror story in?

It really depends on what you mean by “sci-fi horror”. That’s a term whose popular usage covers everything from low-key character studies where the protagonist may or may not be a robot, to procedural investigative dramas in which the killer just happens to be from space, to 1980s-style action movies with wisecracking heroes mowing down brain-sucking monsters with flamethrowers and machine guns. A system that works well for one of these may not be the best choice for the others!

In the absence of more specific guidance, here are a few stabs in the dark; I’m going to try to hit as wide a range of inspirations as possible, so I won’t include multiple recs for any given genre – just let me know if you’d like to see more of anything in particular:

Abnormal - A short-form RPG about an ordinary human whose body has become host to an alien parasite. Purely oneshot-oriented, with a typical session taking less than two hours to play. Supports 1–3 players, no GM required. (Yes, that means it can be played solo.) As you may have gathered, there’s a strong theme of body horror – fair warning!

All Flesh Must Be Eaten - If you’re the sort for whom “horror” means “zombies”, it’s hard to go wrong with the classics. Out of the box it’s focused on contemporary settings, so you’d also need the All Tomorrow’s Zombies sourcebook for sci-fi. 3–6 players, GM required; it’s also stat-block compatible with Conspiracy X, below.

Amid Endless Quiet - A diceless one-page RPG for 1–6 players (solo play supported) where one player takes on the role of the controlling AI of a starship that’s just been struck by a meteor, and must decide which passenger will receive the only functioning escape pod. As you’ve no doubt guessed, this one’s horror is of the purely existential variety.

Conspiracy X - If you prefer your horror X-Files flavoured, you could check this one out. You play as members of various government agencies and secret societies who’ve come together to form your own little mini-conspiracy. Highlights include rules for psychic powers designed to give the advantage to characters whose players are actually psychic! 3–6 players, GM required.

Maschine Zeit - Sci-fi slasher horror in the mode of Alien and Event Horizon. Most of the mechanical crunch is in the rules for injuries and dying; as the game’s own promotional text proudly notes, this is a system where you can die from being stabbed with a pencil, so fair warning for the squeamish. For 3–5 players, GM required.

Our Last Best Hope - A game about a team of heroic scientists on a journey to save the Earth from a civilisation-ending crisis. Strictly speaking this is more of a disaster RPG, in the mode of films like Armageddon and The Core, but it can easily be turned to horror, especially in light of its unbelievably brutal mechanics – even victory usually results in a total party kill! GMless, supports 3–5 players.

Things From the Flood - A retrofuturistic game about suburban teenagers getting caught up in the aftermath of a failed conspiracy. More of a “horror is a thing it can do” game than a straight horror title. The previous game in the series, Tales From the Loop, is also one to check out if you want to do kid protagonists. 3–6 players, GM required.

(I’m also going to throw in an off-the-main-list plug for Dread, which has nothing to recommend it for sci-fi horror in particular, but is a fantastic system for a very specific flavour of horror gaming, whatever the setting. It uses a Jenga tower for conflict resolution, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about what that flavour is.)

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #tabletop rpg recommendations #violence mention #death mention #body horror mention #cassrielghost

[solange-lol]

abc, 123, baby you and me

SolangeloWeek Day 5 - Age Regression/Kidfic

Words: 2517

Special thanks to Val aka @jayjay-graceless and Annie aka @bookplush for those absolutely genius names within their robot child 

Read on Ao3

There wasn’t ever anything for Nico di Angelo to look forward to in sex ed, especially in a public high school. He supposed they should be lucky to get any sort of education at all, but the 40 minute period every day was just another reference to their heteronormative society. If they had to learn about every single type of birth control, it would be nice to at least cover some sort of protection for same-sex couples. It’s not even like his sexuality or his relationship with Will was a secret. 

 Even the ‘study games’ were cruel. One game involved them putting post-its on their back with words either relating to male or female genitalia, and they had to guess what it was using ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions. If it weren’t for Frank (bless him) choosing to savor his embarrassment and reminding him about it, Nico would have been walking around with ‘penis’ on his back for the rest of the day. (He still doesn’t think the rest of their friends forgive him for catching him before he walked out of the room). 

However, there was always one unit that everyone always looked forward to near the end of the year: their parenthood unit. After years of trying (and failing) to reign the disaster of using eggs or sacks of flour as their ‘children’, the school implanted actual robotic babies into the system specifically for this unit. Their final grade of the semester was determined along a week of taking care of the robotic baby, which would track whether or not they mishandled the baby in a way that would upset an actual living, breathing child. The catch is it would be done in partnerships.

The moment their teacher announced it, Nico looked right at Will, who wiggled his eyebrows. Nico gave Will a quick nod in response. He noticed for a second that Piper and Annabeth were eyeing him warily before looking at each other in a mutual agreement about something, but he chose to ignore it. Of course he was going to choose Will for this project. 

When their teacher finally called for their groups to get together, Will immediately moved to sit next to Nico. The two glanced around, seeing who else paired up. Some of them were obvious from known friendships, while others seemed to be a have-nobody-else-to-partner-with type situation. One of the most unfortunate situations was Frank Zhang, his sister’s boyfriend; Hazel was in the class under them, which left Frank to be paired with one of the Stoll brothers. Nico was lucky to be in a class with his boyfriend and a lot of his friends, otherwise, he probably would have ended up like that.

 Annabeth and Piper had paired together, which was a surprise to Nico as both of their boyfriends were in the class. However, judging by the harmless death glares and teasing, Jason and Percy seemed to have turned this entire assignment into a competition against the girls. Nico just rolled his eyes at them; the overly dramatic bromance between both groups was too much for him at times.

Next to him, Will was already chattering excitedly. 

“I’ve been coming up with names while she was talking,” he said, pulling a folder from his backpack. “I’m thinking something extravagant. Maybe Percival or Wulfric for a boy, and Celestia or Antoinette for a girl.” He glanced down the list again. “Oh! Wellington is also a good one! Or Febreeze-”

“We aren’t naming it,” Nico said, shutting the folder with a laugh. It was funny how everyone expected Nico to be more flamboyant as the fully gay one, but sometimes he felt like his bisexual boyfriend came right from playing Kurt Hummel in Glee.

Will pouted for a second before he continued. “My mom told me at the beginning of the year when we got the permission slip for this assignment that you would be able to stay whichever night to make it easier on us. Or I can stay at your house, whatever you want.” Nico just nodded along, a small smile forming on his face. Who knew a stupid sex ed assignment would be an excuse to spend all week with his boyfriend. 

Will left to get their robot baby from the teacher, and Annabeth immediately slid into his place.

“I don’t think you should do this project with Will,” she said. Nico’s head immediately snapped up from the sheet of instructions, eyes narrowing.

“Give me one good reason.”

“Oh, I’ll give you multiple reasons. Do you know how much strain a baby will put on a marriage, much less a regular relationship? Especially when you're in high school. And have you ever spent more than a weekend with Will? It says you’re supposed to try and take care of the baby together as much as possible. You don’t know how long you can stand him for. Your patience is already going to be strained enough.”

Nico’s eyes shifted, avoiding her stormy gray ones staring him down. “None of those are good reasons,” he mumbled.

Annabeth sighed, finally letting her arms drop to the desk rather than in their crossed position. “Look, there’s a reason I’m not even doing it with Percy, and we’ve been dating for nearly two years-”

“Isn’t this supposed to be, like, the true test though?” He cut her off. “See if we could actually handle being around each other every day, or if we would be good with children?” He wouldn’t ever admit it, not even to himself yet, but Nico could honestly see himself spending the rest of his life with Will. (It was too terrifying to think about so usually he chose not to.)

“What you and Will have is good, Nico, I’m not denying that,” she pushed. “I just don’t want it to be ruined. Not when you’ve gotten this far.”

Nico sighed. He hated that she had a point. If he had an existential crisis surrounding his relationship with Will in the next week, he was blaming it entirely on her.

“I think you’d have to kill him to not do this project with me,” he said, rolling his eyes in an attempt to shake off his hesitance. 

Before she could respond, Will came bounding back, and all the doubt Annabeth had planted in his mind was momentarily forgotten. Because even though it was obviously made out of plastic (and oh goodness, those eyes were terrifyingly empty) his heart melted a little bit at the sight of his boyfriend with a baby in his arms. 

“Go get back to your own kid,” Nico said, shoving her out of the chair. She gave him the stink eye before returning to Piper; their baby had already started emitting a robotic cry somehow. 

���Are you okay?” Will asked, and the gleeful tone in his voice before had disappeared. “Whatever she said to you seemed pretty upsetting.” 

Nico smiled, and thankfully it didn’t feel fake. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

And just like that, regular old Will was back. “Great! Because I figured out the perfect name for her.” Nico raised an eyebrow at him, but he continued anyway. “Delphina Oregano Galavine,”

“Its initials are D-O-G. You named it Dog.” Nico stated.

“di Angelo-Solace,” Will added hastily.

“Nope, too late. I’m calling it Dog."

***

As it turns out, Dog (yes, Nico was seriously calling it that) wasn’t actually that difficult to take care of in school. They were given their babies that Friday morning and were required to take care of it up until Monday. All the teachers were aware of the project, so most of them went easy on their students. 

He says most, as his history teacher thought it would be hilarious to give presentations that day. Thankfully, Will had taken Dog to his class, so Nico was allowed to present in peace, while others had to try and rely on their friends or anyone around them to watch their baby. Nothing like trying to present on American history while a couple teenagers tried to frantically silence any robotic crying. 

It was the start of that weekend when the chaos of parenthood really started. Nico blames the whole thing on Will and his poor judgment, to be honest. 

They had a plan to meet up at Will’s house on Saturday after Nico got off of work. Instead, Will showed up at Nico’s work. With the baby. 

Will tried to play it off like he was just a casual shopper, browsing the aisles with a robotic baby in tow. Whatever effect it may have had on other shoppers, though, it did not have the same one on him. Nico’s cheeks were heating up as he approached his manager in the back.

“You have to kick him out,” Nico pleaded to Reyna. 

“Why? He’s not doing anything wrong,” she seemed unfazed by the whole situation.

Nico gaped at her. “He’s holding a robotic child.” 

“Your robotic child, might I remind you. And that’s not even the strangest thing we’ve seen here.” (That part was true; retail was wacky). “Besides, isn’t it like, kinda romantic that he came to visit you with your child?” 

Nico glared at her, but she glared right back before instructing him to get back to work. He took that as an invitation to go over to Will. “What the hell are you doing here?” Nico hissed at him.

Will jumped, nearly dropping the baby in his arms. Nico was so thankful he didn’t; they were lucky it was sleeping right now. The only thing worse than this current situation was if the baby was fussy right now. (Although, that could get Will kicked out, which wouldn’t be all that bad).

“Oh, hey Nico!” he smiled. “I got bored just lying around at home, and I think she did too.” He hoisted the baby higher up in his arm so he had a better grip around her. 

“But why did you bring it out in public?” 

Will’s brow furrowed. “What, did you just expect to hide away at home for an entire weekend?” 

“Yeah, kind of!” Nico gritted his teeth.

“Is that how you would treat a real child?”

“No, but-”

“So why would you treat this one any different?”

“Because that’s not a real child, Will!” He didn’t mean for it to come out as harsh as it did, but Will looked more angry than sad.

“Are you embarrassed to be with me?” he asked flatly, and Nico felt his heart break a little bit. 

“No, I’m not embarrassed by you, Will. I could never be, even when you do something worth being embarrassed for. Nor would I be embarrassed to be with you with an actual child,” Will looked relieved at that, but Nico wasn’t finished. “I am embarrassed by that-” he pointed to the doll in Will’s arms. “-though. It freaks me out, and I think it’s freaking other people out.”

Will looked around like it was the first time he noticed that he was in a public setting with a robot baby in his arms. “Oh,” he said, glancing at a few confused shoppers as they passed. “I’ll just- I’m gonna go” he ducked his head as his cheeks heated up, and Nico felt bad for him.

“Hold on,” Nico grabbed his arm. “Just stay there for a second, I’m going to go ask Reyna for the rest of the afternoon off.”

***

If Nico remembered correctly, there was one benefit that came from being able to spend his weekend at Will’s house for this project. It was Sunday, though, and they had yet to take advantage of that benefit. 

Dog was sleeping in the corner on the weird makeshift-bed of pillows Will had put together on top of his dresser. Will’s actual dog, a golden retriever named Sunny (Will had named her when he was 5), had been taken by Naomi to a vet appointment. His half-sister, Kayla, was out shopping with friends, and his half-brother, Austin, was at work. Which meant Will and Nico were home alone. With no distractions.

Currently, they were sitting across from each other on Will’s bed, studying for their upcoming math test. Nico knew he probably needed to actually work on his study guide (he hardly paid any attention in math anyway, after their teacher made the mistake of letting him and Will sit next to each other, that class was entirely them goofing off in the back) but instead he leaned over and kissed Will on the cheek. Will looked up from the problem he was working on for a second and gave Nico a quick kiss, before taking Nico’s hand with his free one and going back to work.

That wasn’t working for Nico, though, so he yanked on his hand, pulling the Will toward him. Thankfully, Will complied, dropping the textbook and paper on his lap in favor of leaning down to kiss Nico. He ended up pulling Nico down on top of him, so they were laying back on his bed. 

Nico tore his lips away from Will’s and kissed along his jaw and down his neck as he pushed the flannel that Will was wearing off his shoulders. He sat up for a second, straddling Will’s hips as he tugged his shirt over his head as Will did the same with his own. He leaned back down, pressing his bare chest to Will’s as he went back to work on the skin around Will’s collarbone. 

Will’s eyes rolled back, fluttering before shutting completely as he gasped and sighed before pulling Nico back up to kiss him on the lips once again.

Nico was about to reach for Will’s jeans when a robotic cry echoed throughout the room, causing both boys to groan in annoyance

“I’m gonna turn off that stupid thing,” Nico mumbled into Will’s neck. 

“I wouldn’t argue with that.”

***

Nico and Will stood in front of a desk the next day, Dog laying quietly on top as their teacher clicked through her laptop

“Congrats, boys, you guys got an A-,” their teacher said before moving onto the next group. Will sighed in relief.

Immediately, he walked over to Piper and Annabeth’s table to gloat. “Suck it, Chase,” he grinned. “We were fantastic parents.”

“We still got a higher grade than you,” Annabeth pointed out. “But I have to say, I’m impressed. I don’t think I would have done that well with Percy. I guess you were right,” she sounded pained as she said it, and Nico gloated.

Walking back to his desk, Will was staring blankly at the baby. 

“I think I’m gonna miss her,” he said.

Nico considered it for a second. “I think I’m going to miss having an excuse to sleep over at your house.”

“Yeah, about that. Apparently, you left a very visible mark on my neck, and Lou Ellen and I do not have the same skin tone,” Will said, then asked: “So, when do you want kids?” 

Nico glared at him with no real anger behind his eyes, slapping him playfully on the arm. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, there.”

~~~

Thanks for reading! Taglist under cut (message me to be added/removed)

@internallyexplodingrainbows @aleclight-ofmylife-wood @unicornsgomooo @anxiouswinter @soulangelou @number-of-fucks-i-give-0 @underworldystuff @theeloquentsnake @solangelover@thefandomsaretakingover @internallyexplodingrainbows @hairasuntouchedaspartoftheamazon @motivatedcryptidtamer @emilyfairchild @wherethewildthingsare-nt @my-face-is-a-potato 

#solangeloweek #solangeloweek2019 #solangelo #nico di angelo #will solace #liz writes.com #percy jackson #pjo #heros of olympus #trials of apollo

[acontrapositive]

Evaluating Tradeoffs in Turbulent Times

Singapore Airlines developed a brand that became known for its exceptional customer service. The company invested heavily in training programs so its staff could present the image the airline wanted to portray. However, there are some drawbacks to training so extensively across specific situations. Leadership at the airline realized it needed to train more holistically so that staff use common sense and 'do the right thing', so to speak. Measuring compliments and complaints is useful to an extent, especially when it comes to tracking service metrics over time, but I believe it's equally important to make sure staff aren't so robotic in their interactions and decision-making. Not every decision should be made based on an instruction manual and developing talent to act on their instinct towards the goal of making customers happy is perhaps a better way forward. 

In times of existential crisis, it's important that organizations be proactive and get organized (action committee, etc) in a way that directly addresses the issue at hand. In the situation of 9/11, the airline had to be prudent in its future planning given the data they had. It was unclear how long flight traffic would be disrupted but they could likely guess it would weigh negatively on the business in the near-short term (6-12 months). Although half the airline's revenue came from top tier classes (business and first), not taking the $100m plunge would seem to be the best decision to make at the time because delaying the initiative would unlikely have any kind of negative impact on the business in the near-term. The company could revisit the investment after monitoring conditions within the airline industry and across the broader macro-economic environment. 

Businesses have to be careful when it comes to outlier risks that could have an outsized impact on its financials; airlines are especially sensitive to global events so it would serve management well to be more cautious as they navigate certain types of uncertainty. If the airline experienced severe margin compression, in addition to debt obligations compounded by a large investment, it may face difficulties in being the airline provider its customers have known. SIA should focus instead on making sure it serves its customers at the levels they expect in these turbulent times, which may prove to be more important now when compared to the past. 

#MITSloan2022SBrandingA

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #499

Top Ten Everything Ever

Four hundred and ninety-nine. That’s how many weeks I’ve been doing this four. Four hundred and ninety-nine.

Next week is the big five-oh-oh and I’m doing something typically stupid, but I wanted to make it a real celebration. That means for the next three weeks you’re going to get some rather meaningful and special Tops Ten; lists that have been long in the making, or that are just bonkers-level awkward for me to do. Like this one.

I mean, I’ve ranked films, games, fictional guns, and robots that made me cry. How much longer can I do this for? How many more weeks am I going to put myself through this?

Give me a barrel with bottom unscrap’d.

There’s nowhere to go but up, ladies and germs, and so I present to you the list to end all lists. The most definitive list possible. A list of everything. A list of my favourite things in all of time and space. A list of the official best things ever.

I mean, what more is there to say? This covers everything. I’ve tried to avoid it being really specific to one film or one person. And, of course, it doesn’t include people I know in real life, or events that have happened to me. These are, in their own way, big, sweeping things; film series, franchises, bands, stories that have in their own way changed my life. Just the greatest things I’ve come across in my nearly 40 years on this planet.

And you can’t say fairer than that.

The Transformers comic: this should be obvious to anyone who knows me well, but there’s no greater influence in my life, in terms of storytelling or entertainment, than Transformers. And of all the variants branching off from the Prime Timeline (pun very much intended), it’s the comic that’s greatest. Whether it’s the melodrama of Simon Furman or the intricate plotting of James Roberts, I’ve been addicted to the Transformers comic for the vast majority of my life. It has fundamentally shaped how I consume fiction and the sorts of things I’m into. It’s also really changed how I write, and, in fact, the original Marvel run is at least partly responsible for the fact that I write at all. I drew Transformers comics as a kid. I planned out elaborate multi-issue arcs before I was a teenager. I wrote detailed synopses and snatches of scripts for Transformers movies that would never be made. And I robbed, wholesale, motifs and lines of dialogue for the original books and comics I was working on too. It changed my life. It’s not hyperbole to say Transformers is the single biggest piece of fiction I’ve ever touched. Till all are one indeed.

The films of Steven Spielberg, 1975-1982: Spielberg is my favourite filmmaker, but it felt a bit weird to just say “Steven!” as one of the entries here. So instead I’ve decided to hone in on his early career, despite the fact that knocks out one of the biggest influences of my life, Jurassic Park. But everything I love about Spielberg is in these movies. His skill with a camera, his love of light, his great eye for casting, his way with actors; I mean, Close Encounters, which I probably first saw aged about twelve, is just a microcosm of all my interests in my teens: aliens, government conspiracies, determined men going on a crazed quest, and above all a pervasive sense of hope and optimism. Spielberg’s craft is exemplary, but that’s also true of many of his peers. His flair for action scenes and love of spectacle is entertaining, but there are many directors of whom you could say the same. What I love about him – what keeps bringing me back to him – is his warmth and optimism, his belief in the best of us. Even in his darkest movies, in Schindler’s List and A.I. and Munich (which has one of the bleakest endings of his career), there’s still joy and warmth and something worthwhile and wholesome to fight for. And whilst Raiders is a thrill-ride and E.T. an emotional tour-de-force, all of his preoccupations are encapsulated in Jaws, a tense horror film, a buddy-comedy, an entertaining rollercoaster, an acting masterclass. But it’s still Jurassic Park that made me want to make a movie.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe: so when I was a kid I was reading Transformers and Ghostbusters and other Marvel-published adaptations, but not really any actual Marvel comics. However, as a result, I became very loosely familiar with who Iron Man and Doctor Strange were (and Spidey of course) through references and back-up strips, and that time Death’s Head fought Tony’s nephew Arno Stark. No, when I started reading “proper” comics – mainstream superhero stuff – it was DC. I loved Batman, so I bought Batman, and that was a gateway to the rest of the DCU. However, despite the successes of the various DC movie adaptations, it’s the MCU that really, really got its hooks into me. For one, they’re really good adaptations, well-cast, with some great set-pieces. But the interconnected stuff is what really sings. Not just the characters popping up in each others’ movies, or even the overall arc leading up the crossover events; no, it was the actual shared-ness of it, the way the destruction of SHIELD had an impact, or the Sokovia Accords, or Asgard, Skrulls, magic… everything has an impact, an effect. And sure, it’s incredibly good fun to follow the breadcrumbs and try to work out where things are heading. As we enter a new phase – literally and figuratively – I just can’t wait to find out what’s next.

Grant Morrison’s Batman: talking about interconnectivity, no one does it better – or weirder – than Morrison. His Batman arc – and I’m referring to the character not the title, as it spans multiple series and even, arguably, includes work he did on JLA years earlier – is a web of connected theories, images, themes, events, and references. What does the Zur-En-Arrh graffiti in Gotham mean, not just in the here-and-now, but also as a long-standing reference to decades of Batman’s past? The anticipation of uncovering the next breadcrumb, the excitement of deciphering the next reference; it was long-form storytelling as a form of existential theatre, and it was sublime. But he also did two things that have utterly changed my view of the character. On the meta level, he presented a Batman where everything was canon; the grim thirties Shadow-inspired vigilante, the goofy fifties space adventures, the hairy-chested love-god of the seventies… it all happened to one man over a span of about 15-20 years. Fair enough; that’s cool storytelling. But his idea that Batman was not a miserable, psychopathic loner, that he was not insane or struggling to cope or still traumatised by his parents’ death, that Bruce Wayne was a nice guy with friends and family, who’d used his pain as a weapon, who’d gotten past his rage and grief and turned all the negative stuff outwards. Batman was what was built from all that, and Batman allowed Bruce to grow. And what did he do? He found other lost children and saved their lives, allowing Dick Grayson to take over. Batman is a force for good, in a similar way to Superman in Morrison’s All-Star book, making people better by association. And his confrontation with Darkseid in Final Crisis is extraordinary; brilliant as-is, as a piece of comicbook badassery on the page, but the metatextual resonance it’s given – Batman as a good man versus the font of all evil, David versus Goliath, Theseus and the Minotaur – is brilliant. How it ties in to Morrison’s wider Bat-epic, the whole Black Glove stuff and the devil and time travel and the myth of Batman’s creation and all of it… and just the simple thing of Batman’s last act being shooting the embodiment of evil, saving a human life, and then saying “Gotcha,” before dying, is perfect. Perfect.

The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge: when I was little, I played Spectrum and C64 games at my cousins’ house. Then I got an Amiga – I think maybe I was ten? – and I started playing Amiga games. And it was fun and all, but then I read a review in Amiga Action, and my life changed. It was something called an “adventure game”, and it let you walk around chatting to people and interacting with the world, with great big colourful graphics and characters whose mouths moved when they spoke. And then I played it. My love of the medium and its possibilities was cemented then; and, fittingly, it was through the wordy, hilarious dialogue and comedy antics of a wannabe pirate who may, or may not, be selling these fine leather jackets. It’s not overstating things that my gaming tastes were defined by this game and its technically superior sequel. The quirky set-pieces, the weird puzzles, the playing with form (like when you “die” in Monkey 2), and the smart use of Lucasfilm in-jokery. The first game’s “How to Get Ahead in Navigating” gag/puzzle will live with me forever, as will the second game’s bonkers, nightmarish, beautifully constructed ending. As good as they were, none of the subsequent games could hold a candle to it, especially as the whole aesthetic changed into something much more cartoony. But these two? They’re my Big Whoop.

Star Wars: I imagine I know a lot of people in real life who would be surprised – nay, astounded – that I would list my ten favourite Things of all time, and yet Star Wars would not manage to break the Top Five. That’s because that as much as I love Star Wars – and I do, I really do – it didn’t hit me, didn’t speak to me, apart from one brief and weird moment in my late teens. It was games that made me fall in love, I think; games and toys. And, I have to confess, it was the prequels; the intricate digital visions of gleaming cities and impossibly acrobatic Jedi. I love the goofiness and ultra-seriousness of Lucas’ vision, sadly muddled now by the earthy chaos of the sequels. Star Wars is cool; for a while, it defined my idea of cool in cinema. An exciting sci-fi reimagining of ancient and endless myths, a confusing smorgasbord of weird stories and arcane philosophy. Plus spaceships and rapscallions and laser swords. So yes: whilst it was never my faith, so to speak, it’s still one of the coolest and most original pieces of fiction in my lifetime, and to this day there are very few things at all that I find more exciting and evocative than the thought of a Jedi pirouetting through the air with their ‘saber lit.

Middle-Earth, in print and film: one of my most vivid memories of childhood is my mum reading me The Hobbit (and also Macbeth, funnily enough). Then I bought myself my own copy, read it as a kid, read it again as a teenager, wrote (aged about 12 or 13) a sequel in which Gollum comes back to reclaim the ring. I remain to this day baffled that my teacher did not think to tell me that there actually was a sequel to The Hobbit. Eventually I did hear about it, watched the Ralph Bakshi version, and – when I read in Empire that it was gonna be a film and Sean Connery, of all people, was gonna be Gandalf – I thought it best to take the plunge. And I adored it. whilst there’s something about the lyrical simplicity of The Hobbit that I prefer, the depth and scope of The Lord of the Rings – and Tolkien’s subsequent, more disparate writing – that moves me on a profound level. It’s not just the epic nature of the work – the story itself, with its grandiose tales of heroism and adventure – but the sheer balls of the man to make such a thing, to craft wholesale an entire mythological ecosystem. And then the films! I can’t believe they managed to do that; it was pure lightning in a bottle, and we know that because they didn’t quite manage to do it a second time with the Hobbit movies. But all those glorious moments: “Fly, you fools”, “For Frodo”, “I can carry you”, “Go away and never come back” – bloody hell.

Empire magazine: it feels a bit weird, for some reason, citing a magazine as a Favourite Thing. It’s a magazine, a periodical, a journal; it tells you the news and recommends films. it’s not supposed to be part of the culture, part of the fabric of one’s being. But whilst you could debate whether criticism itself is culture, Empire definitely has a culture. It’s a club, nay, a family; something that has been entrenched in recent years through its podcasts and live shows. But for me it began as an education. I started reading it, really, to find out more about Jurassic Park (there we are again, the secret eleventh part of this list). But it went on, showing me more films and filmmakers, introducing me to esoteric industry concepts, broadening my horizons. I always liked film, but Empire made me love film. It reflected my tastes but then it enriched them, codified them, offered me new flavours. It was the first magazine to put Lord of the Rings on the cover; it celebrates Spielberg and the MCU; it had articles about The Greasy Strangler, for goodness’ sake. So much of what I love about film I learned from Empire over the last (nearly) thirty years, and so much of what I love about Empire now is because of what I learned. Bangily-bang.

Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO games: the games that did not make this list, I don’t know. Halo; man, I love Halo. Or what about classics like Lemmings, Worms, or SWOS? What about Mass Effect, Deus Ex, or Fable? What about Mario Kart, what about Civilization? They all deserved a place, really. But there’s something esoteric, timeless even, about the heights of the LEGO games. I remember playing a demo – on the first Xbox, I think – of the first LEGO Star Wars, and being blown away by the fact that, well, it was good. When the games started coming out on the 360 – Star Wars II, Batman, Indiana Jones – I was in the gloriously fortunate position of getting a lot of them for free at CITV, and I devoured them. The simple mechanics, the generous, forgiving gameplay, the satisfying tactile feel of smashing objects and collecting studs. There was something just so rewarding about playing them. And the fan-service! Giving you all those beloved characters, all those worlds, all those genuinely funny in-jokes, references, and cut-scenes. Plus they’re great to play with kids. Time went on, some games were better than others; I feel they reached their peak with the first LEGO Marvel Super-Heroes game, presenting us with an open world New York to play in and a collection of comic book characters that fitted the gameplay perfectly. Subsequent games have either put new restrictions on play, or given us more complicated stories and mechanics, or – really – just over-egged the pudding slightly. I’m really, really optimistic and excited for The Skywalker Saga, long overdue, and promising something of an overhaul. it began, really, with Star Wars; and I feel with Star Wars they’ll have their greatest hour.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: fun fact: finding the tenth spot on these lists is very hard. How about a brand I love, like Xbox, or the BBC, or even Disney? Or another writer or director – what about Aaron Sorkin? Or a TV show – Doctor Who, perhaps, or Star Trek? Or how about, oh I dunno, Shakespeare? I like him. But I’ve not talked about music, so let’s do that; we’ll go out on a number. I’m not a musical person; I didn’t grow up frequenting record shops or listening to mix tapes in my room. I liked songs, but mostly I came to music through film. That was even true with Nick Cave, who I first heard in an episode of The X-Files, and read about in the X-Files magazine. But he remains one of the few artists, The Bad Seeds one of the few bands, that I continue to seek out and listen to regularly (rather than just saying “Alexa, play nineties rock”). I love the different styles, from the distorted noise of the early, post-Birthday Party years through the sombre melodies of Nocturama. I love Cave’s lyricism; his evocation of myth, his use of imagery. I love how he manages to get phrases like “morally culpable” into a song. I love the humour as well as the tragedy, the references to things both real and mythological, the sadness and eloquence of it all. I love how so many of his songs are about sex but are also really moving and meaningful; how much of the music is infused with pain and sorrow but is also uplifting. The horrible evocations of Cave’s own abuse in Do You Love Me, through to the references to his son’s death in Girl in Amber. I love Cave’s voice. I don’t know if this has come through in this list, but something I really like is stuff that makes me cry but isn’t necessarily sad. I cry when I read Sandman, when he wins the Oldest Game by challenging the end of everything by becoming “hope”; I cry when Donna tells Josh, “if you were in the hospital I wouldn’t stop for red lights”; I cry when Steve Rogers jumps on that dummy grenade. I think it’s hope and heroism and love. And that’s something that I get constantly, mainlined, intravenous, from Nick Cave. As Morgan Freeman says in Seven, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for – I agree with the second part.”

God, there’s so much stuff not listed here. So many things I love that I feel are core; no Pixar, no West Wing, no other filmmakers cited, really, apart from Spielberg. But ten’s not a big number, and I contain multitudes.

Thanks for reading.

#top ten #everything #499 #nine years #lists #my life

[whopooh]

Miss Fisher Unleashed – walls breaking down in the October trope challenge

Hey Jack, mind your leaning – you're breaking the fourth wall!

The October trope might have made one or two of the writers a little nervous. “Breaking the fourth wall” is a real challenge, and results in stories that are highly self-aware of their status as stories and constructions, and also often happily explore the lines between fantasy and reality. That sure does put some demands on the writer. Perhaps also on the reader, in order to get suck into a highly self-aware fictional world like that.

I am very fond of this kind of stories – they are often both amusing and food for thought. They make some kind of short-circuit between narrative levels in a story that usually are separated. There are different ways of doing this. The most elaborate one, where the story and our reality are either affecting each other or even becoming the same thing, can be a real jolt to the readers’ sensibilities, in a pleasurable way. The character may for example become aware that s/he is being written, or that things change in her/his surroundings because of words, or odd things may start to happen in the writer’s real world. Other possibilities keep more clearly within the story world, for example by allowing a story within the story to comment on it or interact with it. As we will see in this overview, many different techniques have been used this month. There is potential for both horror, sadness and existential crisis in this type of writing, but it’s very reasonable that the main strand is humour (here is the full collection).

Breaking the fourth wall has of course happened before in this fandom. One clever example is @221aubrina’s creation “The Library”, where specimens of Jack that have been damaged in fanfic are returned and fixed by the staff – a very fun comment on a tendency to put Jack through a lot in the stories. Another is QuailiTea’s crossover with the universe of Thursday Next, “The Next Adventure”, which to its very nature is super metafictive, commenting on the characters both as persons and as figures in a text at the same time. A third is @jackphryne4eva‘s “Cafe Blend”, the story of a reader sitting in a café reading Miss Fisher fic while perhaps meeting Jack. 

For this overview, I will start with fics that don’t break the wall so radically, but keep the break logically inside the fictional universe, and then move on to fics that are more typically meta fictive and aware of being literary constructions, to stories where the writers/readers’ world somehow gets blended with the character’s world.

Hold on, is this story about me? And is that Jack... naked?

First, stories that keep the fictional world intact. I’ll start with @omgimsarahtoo, “Art Imitates Life”, where Phryne is hired to search for a young woman, Ophelia Ogilvy. Ophelia turns out to be obsessed with the famous lady detective and her inspector, and has collected newspaper pictures of them and also writes stories about them. Basically, she’s a writer of Real Person Fanfiction in 1920s Melbourne, and her fanart has striking similarities to tumblr posts. This is incredibly fun and gives us this wonderful feeling of how, even if the technology has changed, human nature has not. Of course, Phryne is surprised by this, but she is also the kind of woman to not lash out against it but to more cautiously advice the young girl; Ophelia is of course very embarrassed that Phryne found out. There are many wonderful comments that are possible to extend to the fic writers, like when Phryne has read through the scrapbook and Jack arrives:

“Jack’s voice always sent a shiver down Phryne’s spine, but right now, it affected her even more. She’d spent the afternoon reading through Ophelia Ogilvy’s scrapbook, and she was feeling rather… stimulated.”

Ophelia has, for example, written about Phryne’s and Jack’s first meeting, even if she has embellished it with emotions they perhaps didn’t really have. “All I felt for you that first day was annoyance,” as Jack mutters. To top it all up, Phryne even seduces Jack with tales from the scrapbook.

“Is it different from what we usually do?” Jack’s hands unfastened the button at her hip and then slid inside the back of her pajama trousers’ waistband, pushing them down her thighs. Phryne kicked her feet carefully to help him remove them, then promptly wound her legs around his again.

“Not as imaginative as we tend to be,” she said on a gasp as he pushed up her pajama top and covered her breast with his mouth.

And Phryne, realizing Ophelia Ogilvy finds Jack attractive, thinks  -- rather cheekily directed to all the fans -- that “It was just too bad that Ophelia would never know just how weak her imaginings were compared to the real thing.”

In @whopooh, “The Lady in the Magazine”, the writer within the world is instead Dot, who is writing thinly veiled fanfiction about Phryne and Jack for a woman’s magazine. Phryne finds this out through one of their most enthusiastic readers, Aunt P, and subtly calls her out on it. Dot becomes more and more nervous, until she confesses she’s behind the stories. Dot is really “one of us”:

It had become her favourite thing to imagine what would finally make them break down and just kiss each other. Passionately and at length. She had imagined hundreds of scenarios, the one more fanciful than the other, and she loved them all. Dot might be innocent, but she had seen things and read things, and she had an excellent imagination to make up for the rest.

In @longlineoftvdetectives’s “Collingwood Noir” there is similarly an in-world writer, but here the relationship between the writer and the people he portrays is more hostile. Interestingly enough, this is also the only time the writer in all of the stories is a man. This is young Paddy, from “Blood and Money”, who has grown up, lived through the second world war and started writing stories that, Phryne notices on a reading event, seems to be about her. There will be a second chapter, so maybe not all will be what it seems, if I am understanding longline’s comments correctly – it will be very interesting to see where it goes.

EDIT: Okay, so a fic I forgot the first time around (because I didn’t think properly about the fic-in-fic making it part of this challenge too) is @scruggzi‘s & @whopooh‘s joint fic “Direct From the Source”, where Dot decides she needs to practice her teaching abilities, and manages to set up this with Phryne, Jack and Hugh. They all get as assignment to do “automatic writing” to a prompt, without thinking it throught too much. There is much banter and flirting around this, and it seems Phryne manages to cheat so the prompt is to her liking. The prompt consists of our October bonus prompt, the lines about the South Pole and skin to skin contact, and the three pupils start writing. We as readers are then given the opportunity to read their stories and see their reactions to each other -- and there is something to say here about writing as baring your soul. The stories within the story are all commenting on their characters and relationships. Phryne blatantly flirts in her story, and makes the thinly veiled Jack suggest the skin to skin contact; blushes arise around her (“That’s very good Miss, very… um… descriptive,” Dot says). Jack more or less capitulates to her in his rather cowboy inspired story, and makes the thinly veiled Phryne be the one to suggest the skin to skin contact. Hugh bumbles on and manages to make Dot very happy. Phryne keeps on flirting through the stories:

Phryne took up the sheet of paper on which she had written her story, folded it carefully and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “You know, I don’t think my story was quite finished. Perhaps you could provide me with a few suggestions as to how it should continue?” (...)  “I’m sure I could come up with one or two ideas, Miss Fisher.”

All in all, the exercise is a great success, but Dot decides that teaching might not really be something for her after all.

@zannadubs23, “Uplifting Experience” has a very clever literal “almost breaking” of the fourth wall – or as the tag says, “Not breaking the fourth wall, just slamming hard into it “. Here, Phryne and Jack, who are rather angry at each other, get stuck in an elevator during a case. After a while the anger and tension turn into love-making. Here is literal touching of all four walls as the tryst is rather passionate, as well as upstanding, and when the elevator starts to work again there is also an extra urgency added. In the end, as a little wink, is also a proper very small break of the fourth wall. The fic has been vague about what the fight was about, and in the end Jack asks "Why were we fighting again?": ‘"Literary device," she responded to his query. / "Ah, I see." he claimed, but didn't.

A last story that doesn’t make the wall-breaking explicit is @scruggzi, “DRU-14/10/17-KS-1”. This is part of the writer’s series where Phryne and Jack meet Doctor Who, and they go to a foreign planet to meet a friend of the Doctor, an artificial life form that administrates everything, and that Phryne manages to flirt with in spite of him being a robot. This is a lovely and only thinly veiled homage to the Kickstarter for the Miss Fisher movie, and a celebration of the people that work hard but aren’t always paid tribute to: the administrators. It also includes the bonus trope challenge in a lovely way. The wall-breaking is thus never explicit, but heavily implied through the similarities between the story and real life, and the administrators name that can be read as Drew and the date for the end of the Kickstarter.

The homage ends with a cheer:

“To the Administrators. Without whom none of us would exist at all.” And the four of them raised their glasses in celebration of a difficult job done spectacularly well.    

Is this moment gif worthy yet, Miss Fisher?

So, over to the fics that are very clearly aware of their status as fiction, and of being in a separate realm to reality.

First, @scruggzi, “Doing It On Purpose”, is a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek story where the characters are intensely aware of the fact that they are acting, and that they have an audience, and also what the audience wants. It’s extremely funny, make them be half in their world, and half seeing it as if from an outside perspective.

Jack thinks that it’s important he doesn’t smile, so a moment becomes more “gif worthy”, in one scene they check if they've been captioned yet, and there is absolutely golden commentary like: “She made sure to clip the k in a way which made bisexual women’s knees weak. She did enjoy the attention, and a little queering of characters never hurt anyone.” When he thinks about it, Jack is “fairly sure that he must do most of his job without her presence, but there was an important plot point coming up and she would never forgive him if he left her out”.

It turns out the characters are well aware of the fanfic and also rather likes to read the explicit ones. This is Jack’s take on them, complete with a perfectly placed “probably”: “They were a personal favourite, although he wasn’t sure he wanted Phryne to know just how many of them he’d read. He had, after all, been single and probably celibate for an ambiguous but undoubtedly lengthy period – and really, who could blame him?”

Also in @geenee27, “Rant”, the characters are aware of the fandom – they even get the news from the joint MFMM re-watches in the form of newspaper articles.

“But Jack, doesn't it bother you. They're casting aspersions on our work.” “I find them rather interesting, to tell you the truth. A little criticism never hurt anyone. And it keeps us on our toes.” “Well, I'd like to see your reaction to this one. It's @firesign23 again.” “Oh I like hers, there are quite articulate. I wish @foxspirit1928 would index them for future reference.”

Phryne then reads about new rants that have been made, particularly about the snog in “Murder in Montparnasse”, and teases Jack relentlessly about it, and his open-mindedness gets rather put to the test.

@earanie, “There’s a pink elephant in the cool pantry”, combines the two October challenges, placing Phryne and Jack – who haven’t managed to sort out their relationship – in a cool pantry so they finally need to talk to each other. Or rather, it’s Dot who does this. She has a very meta knowledgeable conversation with Hugh with a great punchline:

“I must say, I’m terribly glad we got this ‘extra scene’ between those two. Can you imagine going through the whole movie before they finally realised they indeed are in love with each other!”

“Oh God, Dot, you’re giving me terrible flashbacks of the last three seasons.”

@leafingthroughbooksandtea, “What the Hell Did I Drink?”, is another very fun take on this, set in “Death Defying Feats”. When Jack is hit on the head after having made his liberal man-speech, instead of waking up inside the story world he wakes up on the filmset. Everyone just assumes he is the actor, Nathan Page, but in reality he is a very confused Jack – who immediately realises that Essie Davis is not Phryne, but who is she?: “Despite the heavy makeup, she was as beautiful as his Miss Fisher, and dressed as Phryne would be, in a lovely green frock.”

Even though she doesn’t understand exactly what has happened, Essie takes care of him, and she has the most wonderful line when Jack calls her “Miss Fisher”: “I didn’t know you were so Method.” In the end, he comes back to the story world – that transition means he is at least as confused here, and that matches the episode’s Jack waking up in Phryne’s bed perfectly.

@rithebard, “Privateers” has a special take on the trope, as it creates a direct communication between the characters and the readers. In the first chapter, there is a set-up and then Mac turns to the reader:

Mac shook her head smiling then picked up her tea. She looked up and said, "So what do you think? Yes, you. I know you have many opinions. So I'll tell you what, what comes next will come from you. I will let Phryne and Jack know and we will follow your lead. You always wanted to write one of these didn't you?" She raised her tea cup and saluted. She is waiting for your response.

Here the wall break is for asking about reader suggestions – so far it has resulted in Phryne finding three kittens in her shower, which made her turn to the reader and say, “Really? Kittens?” There is only two chapters so far, so where this will go in the future, we’ll have to wait and see.

Are you talking to me, Disembodied Voice of a Writer?

Finally, we have the fics where the writer actually communicates directly with the characters – whether they meet in person (and the levels clash completely together) or the one is communicating directly into the other’s world.

It’s probably not a surprise that QuailiTea would do a very self-aware fic, considering she did the full Thursday Next-fic and is thus very well versed in everything metafictional. In “Having a Chat”, the writer starts to talk with Jack – like a disembodied voice in italics, not as a present person – and she’s changing his world by her words. It’s a wonderful story where the writer asks Jack if he’d be alright with one of those tropes we favour, in this case putting him in a closet with Miss Fisher. He is very reluctant. The way he talks back to the writer and at the same time understands what is happening and not is a complete delight, and then when Hugh is added in even more.

Would you mind terribly if she’s in the story as well?

Do I have a choice?

I’ll certainly take your opinions into account. I’d be a terrible writer otherwise. Nothing worse to my mind than watching two perfectly lovely characters contorted into ridiculous shapes just so somebody’s favorites can wind up kissing ad etc.

Kissing? What, you planning on following Miss Fisher around until she flirts me into kissing her? That might take a while.

Jack has his dry humour in droves, deadpanning things like “Readership, apparently", and questioning if the writer might actually be Miss Fisher: “So, incredibly powerful, ability to throw my entire life into chaos, and you really have no plan. Are you sure you’re not Miss Fisher?”

And in the end, Jack has taken a lesson from his encounter with the writer who has told him how the readers love him unbuttoned, and it is great fun: “Jack nodded, his mind slowly returning to work. But as he took the file folder from his constable, he spared a small smile towards the wall where the voice had been coming from, and loosened his tie just a hair.”

Miss Templeton in her “Playing Miss T”, gives us a scene where the writer and Phryne sit talking and having drinks. The writer is making her rather tipsy and they celebrate both tv-series, books, Kerry Greenwood and the Kickstarter in a short and sweet dialogue. @zannadubs23, “Out of Their Depths”, is tone-wise the opposite – this is a horror story, where Phryne is in a story of total domesticity and passivity, being pregnant with Jack and not being allowed to do practically anything. This state seems like what has become of her, but soon there are signs that something is very wrong, that this is a fake reality and she’s really held hostage. From a reality of...

“Why don’t you get some rest, darling?”

“Of course. You’re right. I am very tired,” Phryne’s brow bunched in concern for a moment, then she turned to Jack, “join me? Just for a little while?”

“I think it’s best given the excitement of today, that we not be too amorous yet,” Jack said carefully, but full of concern.

...Phryne instead wakes up in a cellar, being bound to a chair next to an unconscious Jack, needing to figure out what has happened. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but there are some sinister things going on and several fun plot twists. Phryne needs to get Jack to somehow understand that this is the real world and not be lulled into believing the domestic bliss – and to escape the repressive care of a new person in her life, her ever-present mother-in-law.

In @whopooh, “Stranger Than Fiction”, it is not the writer who seeks out Phryne, but the other way around. This fic is actually a direct result of me structuring this trope overview – I realized that no one had yet done that for this trope, starting in the writer’s world. In this story, a writer is sitting at home, starting a sad story where Jack is killed, when Phryne suddenly appears next to her on the sofa asking her not to do it. After Phryne has helped to re-write the story, the writer takes the opportunity to ask her about things, like her feeling of only having Jack as a lover in the fic and about her sexual preferences. Phryne reveals she now and then influences stories about herself to get happier endings.

When she talks about sex, she becomes a bit self-conscious:

The two women looked at each other, feeling a little embarrassed. “It does sound more peculiar when you say it out loud. And about yourself,” Phryne said.

“I agree,” Mia said. “I’m sure I have written those exact words, and more than once.”

“Apologies,” I said, realising I was forcing them to say things aloud while I could just sit quietly and write them.

“Don’t worry,” Phryne said and flashed a quick smile my way. “I’m sure it’s a great benefit for us all to say these things aloud. Especially when it comes to women’s sexuality.” She tried the words on. “Wetness. Glistening cunt. She was hot and wet from desiring him. Et cetera.”

There is quite some talking over the narrative levels, both with Jack on the page of the fic and the writer who is writing about the encounter between Phryne and her fic writer.

A second fic that takes the writer’s situation as departure is 912luvjaxlean, “Reading Henry James” (this is her first fic in this fandom – welcome!). This is a  fun story that captures many things: the fan’s “slight” obsession with Phryne and Jack, the characters’ reluctance to be spied upon, plus making a crack at traditional literature, in this case Henry James, for being rather highflown. The writer’s sister suggests she should read James, whereupon Phryne comments:

“Jack, you don't really enjoy reading Henry James, do you?” “Well, I admit his writing style suggests that he may have been paid by the word.” “Or, was it by prepositional phrase?” Miss Fisher asked wittily. “I believe it was by the comma,” added Jack with a light laugh. Really? I asked. “We weren't speaking to you, Miss Voyeur. We’re canoodling,” said Miss Fisher as she loosened Jack's tie.

The writer jokes extensively with everyone, and above all herself and her ability to postpone things: “I was now ready to read. But first I went online to post clever comments on fan sites, discover new fic, and search for pretty pics of Jack.” 

Yes, we’ve all been there. Let’s just say that reading doesn’t completely go to plan.

Fic in pics.

@ollyjayonline and @solitarycyclistadventures, “Now We’re Talking”, is the first fic in a trope challenge with zero in wordcount! This is all in pictures, kind of like comics, very beautiful. It also has several levels of commentary – if I understand it correctly it’s two viewer, who also become writers here. They are talking to each other and “to the tv screen”, but also Jack is talking to them – first saying he doesn’t think Phryne and he would work as a couple, and then, after some turning points, he instead takes over and does it “his way”, which is more romantic. The struggle between writers and Jack is delightful. 

In the last image, of Jack standing at the airfield watching Phryne fly away, one of the viewers says “What do we do now?” and Jack answers “Nothing. It’s the perfect ending”. That is a very interesting double view of the ending, calling into question if this is actually possible to solve. It is then followed by a protest and a “To be continued”, with an image of the coming movie – so it’s posing the question but not giving any answers. The format of this fic, and the slight uncertainty for me whom the speech bubbles belong to, kind of enhances the effect, I think.

As the final story of the trope challenge, to sum it all up, I had to put @firesign23, “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. This is like the ultimate fourth wall breaking and commenting on the Kickstarter teasers – this fic really does it all. The headlines are from all the different things the Kickstarter promised as rewards, for example, as one of them was the promise of an extra storyboard, the fic includes a storyboard. It is a very fun one too where Aunt P in an enormous bow manages to tease Bert. All six short parts of the fic also include the snippet that formed the bonus challenge, put in many of the characters mouth in different parts.

When Phryne and Jack use the dialogue a second time, it continues:

"Do you ever feel, Miss Fisher, like we have been here before?" She shrugged. "I'm quite certain I'd remember that, Jack. Alas, I am forever unfulfilled."

In the last snippet, the whole family is back together and there is wonderful teasing of their dofferent personalities – Dot telling off Hugh, Jane stating one thing and then disappearing – and “When no answer was forthcoming they quickly forgot her again”. Finally, it’s time for “hot cocoa and rejoicing, because the author gave up on plot several sections ago.” I would never have guessed that it was possible to have so many references and jokes in one short fic.

That’s all for this month. The October fic challenge seemed so hard in the beginning of the month, but it still resulted in a large amount of fics -- lovely, varied, and very self-aware. The November challenge has been pronounced, to quite some delight of the fans. It’s “An (Un)expected Marriage”, and I am looking forward to the coming month!

#reading miss fisher #mfmm fanfic tidbits #mfmm year of tropes

[jeparlelibremente]

Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve)

“’You liked her, I could tell. It’s ok, I want to be real for you.’

‘You are real for me.’” 

“The things that come to light brutally in insanity remain hidden in the background in neurosis, but they continue to influence consciousness nonetheless. When, therefore, the analysis penetrates the background of conscious phenomena, it discovers the same archetypal figures that activate the deliriums of psychotics.” - Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

cw: spoilers for films and books discussed

I wanted to talk about this film for a while; because it’s one of my favourite sequels, because I think it was one of the best films of last year, because I think most audiences will woefully under appreciate how good this is in comparison to most of what Hollywood produces. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to lay claim to this as an enduring work of genius, proffering the greatest insights into human nature since a certain Austrian dosed half his body weight in cocaine. I’m just saying that I really, really liked it, and it gave me much more than I’ve come to expect from Hollywood. Admittedly, not a high bar. But don’t let that fool you.

Quick diversion: in The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald breaks one of the golden rules of writing: never explicitly state your theme. It’s uncouth; ugly, unsightly, inelegant. The reason it works so well in his book is because he understands the rule well enough to break it poetically in the very final line. It’s difficult to do this; extremely difficult to write, extremely difficult to write an entire novel, and extremely difficult to break this rule in such a way that it doesn’t appear jarring and ugly to the reader. 2049 breaks the rule roughly halfway through, in a scene where Lieutenant Joshi (Wright) and K (Gosling) are talking in his apartment; K concedes his memories aren’t real, they’re ‘implants’ constructed by someone else. Fake memories for a fake human being? Joshi has a pattern in her interactions with K; she alternates between reaffirming the fact that he’s a replicant, and then making some reassuring, almost maternal remark. “You might be a replicant/not human, but I care for you” Anyway, inside his apartment she gives one line that spells it all out:

“We’re all just trying to get a hold of something that’s real”

This isn’t posed as some sophisticated ontological argument; 2049 had emotional impact (individual mileage may vary, obviously) precisely because your unconscious perceives these characters as being beneath... well, something aspiring to be, not human, but real. Seriously, watch the film, and then try and understand your transference with these characters. It’s almost like a parent to a child. Joi has a final heartbreaking scene with K; “I love you” right before black leather boot smashes her corporeal form into the floor. Note that her corporeal form, her physical substrate/soul, is a shiny metallic cylinder that serves both as her brain, and the device that projects her holographic image. Could you love a computer program that manifests itself in ‘human’ form via holographic projection?

Of course you could. Of course you would. Everything is just a symbol, a representation. Map to territory. How do you know your partner isn’t a hologram right now? “Well I can touch them and they can move around and” ok, fine. How about an android? “Well I could open them up and...” except you’re not going to open anyone up. I’m not trying to be a pedant here; no, really - I find Socrates and the dialectical form to be an enormous pain in the ass when it comes to writing. “We arrive at verisimilitude by ping-ponging between falsehoods...” (in an essay so painfully good it makes me insecure) this is true - it’s the meta-level analysis of Socratic dialogue. It’s why its effective. Binary. Two people arguing back and forth. But really, have you ever viewed the insides of anyone you’ve loved in real time? Unless you’re a surgeon, the answer is probably a hard no. Once again, not trying to be a pain in the ass, just pointing out that you assume this is the truth based on your experience of the world in general. This isn’t an insult, it’s system one thinking. The proof that it works is that the human race is around and I’m writing this essay. If you claim you couldn’t love an android because you know they’re an android, then you’re prizing - fetishising (if that word hasn’t been overused at this point) - what it means to be human. If any common sense inspection couldn’t tell you the difference between a human - mostly water and hydrocarbons, and an android - for arguments sake - mostly silicon, then what are the consequences of having sex with one versus the other? Yes, this is just consequentialism. It holds. In the most dire interpretation, having sex with a robot indistinguishable from a human is no worse than masturbation; a one night stand, streaming 4K porn on your smartphone etc. No emotions, just some object to use as a prop.

Does Joi really know what love is? Well, what’s Joi? She’s a computer program, granted. Produced en masse and sold to keep lonely people company. A next generation Aibo, sans memory stick and music playing abilities (unfortunately) The film doesn’t have any hard exposition here but I’m going to assume for conveniences sake that once she’s purchased by someone, she, in a sense, imprints and begins to develop some kind of original growth. She’s projected from the in K’s apartment at first - a physical constraint. Then he cashes in his big cheque to buy her a portable ‘emanator’ - intentional or not on the part of the writers, this is like letting a child begin to grow up. Joi follows a process of self-actualisation in the film as she begins to take on increasing responsibility - and risk. From ceiling, to outdoors, to adopting a semi-corporeal form and making love to K, to willingly accepting the ultimate vulnerability: the potential to die. Love, actual, genuine, bona fide love, requires self-sacrifice. It requires adapting to meet the demands, “mental and physical” of someone else. You can phrase your argument around neurotransmitters and hormones and so on, but limerence only gets you so far; at some point, adult to adult, you will have to adapt and communicate with each other. Vulnerability to intimacy.

Her love for K is more real than the love some adults of our species achieve during their lifetime. It’s not childish or infantilised; he sacrifices his entire bonus, the source of his power, to free her from her constraints. Reassures her that she doesn’t need to affirm her love for him just because its in her programming (is it?), and then ultimately, her love finds expression in the ultimate vulnerability... and its tragic conclusion.

Peter Debruge, writing for Variety, I think manages to miss what the ‘unreal’ things in this film want: “It’s perhaps the central irony of “Blade Runner 2049,” which depicts a future where humans have gone astray, while new-and-improved androids know precisely what they want: to be human.” They don’t want to be human, they want to be given equal rights as humans. Humane treatment. Reproduction? Sure - but how many people are actively thinking about having kids in that way? They need a partner; for this to work, all the right emotional modules have to be in place. And they’re already human in every way that counts - all that’s missing is their rights. Joi just wants a physical body, K wants to know what the deal is with his memory. You can see how much he suffers, his pain, his despair. “Your memories, that you thought were a lie, are actually real” Can you even begin to imagine this kind of pain? What if somebody told you you were an android? What kind of existential crisis would you suffer, given those circumstances? It’s not about being human, it’s about being recognised as real and treated with humane compassion. 

#film #movies #blade runner 2049

[leonawriter]

hello!! do you have any ffvii fic recs? the sheer amount of fics there are is daunting to say the least haha...

Sure! And I agree, the fandom’s been around for a long, long time, so it can be hard to find things. 

My personal preferences will show up here - I prefer non-pairing fics, but a few will show up, either because I do ship it, it’s canon (Zack/Aerith, for both of those), or I think it’s well written enough, and I can see where they’re coming from. Also, copious amounts of Cloud, Genesis, and Sephiroth... specifically, usually the kind where things work out okay.

- 

The Fifth Act - Cloud has an accident with a Time materia, and finds himself in the middle of the Wastes at the start of the Wutai War. There are people to save... and for that, there are three people who need to die.

This was one of the first FF7 fics I read. It’s a time travel fic, and a really good one. It’s also where I had my first look at who Genesis might be if he hadn’t been in such a bad situation.

Mysterious - "General Sephiroth was last seen in the basement, reading. Beyond this, not much is known." - The Midgar Times.

This one’s a really nice short thing, canon divergence with a sort of open-ended hopeful tone.

Haunted - 'I will never be a memory' Sephiroth had been right. There would always be a piece of him lurking inside Cloud's mind, but it was amazing how even the most horrific existential terror could become mundane, and given long enough, even irritating. Small snippets of Cloud's everyday life, dealing with what was left of Sephiroth.

Okay this one is just plain silly, but it made me laugh.

Great Minds - Genesis does not want a student and Kunsel does not want a mentor. If they occasionally stand next to each other when voicing general pieces of advice that is entirely coincidental. A short story of an unlikely friendship that takes off despite everyone's best efforts.

Same author as the above, and somewhat more serious, but also has some damn good funny bits in it too.

Jukebox - Cloud had certain buttons that would always be easily pushed, and Barret would always jab them. Scene from sometime after Advent Children.

One of those rare Cloud and Barret friendship stories, and wow I loved how the author got them both down so well here. And the way that Tifa is characterised even in her absence.

Time Out of Mind - AU. Events at Nibelheim take a trip into the surreal, and old myths become more than legend.

I’ve seen a few fics that give Nibelheim some kind of importance or mythology, and this one really worked, with a sense of the additions mixing well and it feeling like this could have been a thing. 

After the Storm - After all the crises, Tifa is slowly healing even if she has to do it alone. The red headed man in her bar is trying to doing the same. Together they may find more then just shared pain to escape but shared happiness to strive for. TifaXGenesis, set after Dirge of Cerberus.

There’s some nice buildup here, and we get a really nice sense of who they are and how much they’ve been through. I felt like there could have been more to add onto the ending, but aside from that, nice fic.

Gonna Need More Than Nine Lives - A year ago Reeve would have been thrilled—he'd created life! He'd torn down the supposed laws of artificial intelligence!—but now he was only deeply afraid.

Reeve's state-of-the-art surveillance robot has apparently developed a consciousness. In not-completely-unrelated news, the thing has decided it's fond of the terrorists Reeve's supposed to be fighting.

I love Reeve-and-Cait fic, and this is a great one. 

The Wooing of the Moon - Starring Genesis as someone terrible at romance, Sephiroth as someone almost as bad and far more clueless, and Angeal as the stoically sassy ace friend. Featuring Zack as agent of chaos.

Okay this one is one I really enjoyed mostly because of the way that both Genesis and Sephiroth are clueless about how these things go in their own ways, and it’s essentially two chapters’ worth of them learning How To Communicate Feelings. Which is always fun!

Rust - Same author as above. Nanaki and Cloud friendship shortly after Advent Children, and has a great bit at the end regarding the Buster Sword.

On Broken Wings - Five years after Meteorfall, Sephiroth returns - the true Sephiroth, the man behind the monster. Traumatized and ill-prepared for life outside of the control of either Shinra or Jenova, Sephiroth nevertheless seeks redemption for the suffering and death he caused: starting with the man who was forced to kill him.

This is a great fic for a Sephiroth redemption storyline, is still a work in progress, although I’m reccing it mainly because it was the one that prompted me to watch Crisis Core for the first time. My main warnings are: Sephiroth is often given the ‘it wasn’t your fault’ talk/implications, and feels more than a little like his PTSD is more like Vincent’s than how I’d actually now write his, and... Zack takes the place of Genesis and Angeal. It’s still worth a read, though.

To Be Human - The world seems black and white at a glance, but the truth is never so easy. Where one draws the line between human and monster is a lot less clear when motive and deed don’t match, and a change in form is only proof of something that has been there all along. (Angel's Wings rewrite, Crisis Core fix-it.)

This is a massive fic, and although there were a few small things I wasn’t sure of, is overall still very strong. Canon divergence and AU where communication is the most important theme!

Counter Crisis - At first it was about preventing tragedy. For Cloud it soon becomes a fight to protect new bonds, tread untrod paths and find happy endings. Second chances aren't always easy in a time where ghosts live and heroes are human. 

Time travel fic that’s still a work in progress and apparently it’s going to span three books, with later instalments introducing Sephiroth/Cloud, though the first one’s still mainly gen other than the Zack/Aerith, and the relationships are being built up really slowly, and really well, too - and not just between eventual romantic partners, either.

Building Bridges - Denzel has never fogiven Reno for destroying Sector Seven, but he’s never known the full story either. You could call this a plate drop fic with a twist, but that would be overdramatizing it.

I recced this fic the other day, and it is so damn good. Reno is characterised so well, and the ‘twist’ makes so much sense I’m tempted to take it on as my personal canon now. Denzel is also really well handled here.

I think that’s most of the main ones that I really loved that I could easily remember and/or nab the links for! If I find more, I’ll try and add them either in a new post, or onto this one. :)

#final fantasy vii #ff7 #ff7 stuff #answered #fic recs #Anonymous

[mzhong2014]

Reading digest 8/4-8/10

What It's Like to Learn You're Going to Die

“Nessa Coyle calls it ‘the existential slap’—that moment when a dying person first comprehends, on a gut level, that death is close. For many, the realization comes suddenly: ‘The usual habit of allowing thoughts of death to remain in the background is now impossible,’ Coyle, a nurse and palliative-care pioneer, has written. ‘Death can no longer be denied.’”

Ironically, this article about death made me think more critically about what it means to be alive. Death is not simply a physical experience, but also one of the soul. I believe that your soul experiences multiple deaths of the nonphysical form throughout life that fundamentally alter the Self -- the death of a romance, death of friendship, the death of a dream, etc. Although these experiences may reappear, they are never reincarnated in the same form, creating a sense of permanence of these nonphysical deaths. So long as one is still living, one is always surrounded by death. 

Perhaps change, both good and bad, can only be done through the death of parts of the Self -- hence why change is so painful. But in the process of destroying and morphing the Self, one is faced with existential questions of what is intrinsic to the Self. If nothing is intrinsic, then does the Self truly exist? 

“In this crisis, some people feel depression or despair or anger, or all three. They grieve. They grapple with a loss of meaning. A person’s whole belief system may be called into question because ‘virtually every aspect of their life will be threatened by changes imposed by the [disease] and its management,’ Lee has written. In a small 2011 Danish study, patients with an incurable esophageal cancer reported that after their diagnosis, their lives seemed to spin out of control. Some wondered why they had received a fatal diagnosis, and fell into despair and hopelessness. ‘I didn’t care about anything,’ one patient said. ‘I had just about given up.’”

Religion aside (which is not a trivial parameter to constrain), physical death is the ultimate destruction of the Self because it destroys both the conscience and the body. Although I have never had a near-death experience, I have had moments in my life where an essential part of my Self was stripped away, leading me to spiral into self-destruction as my perception of reality loses all grounding. During these existential crises, the Self is reduced to the physical body as foundational beliefs that distinguish us from fully functioning robots are blown up into smithereens. Death presents the possibility of rendering all meaning meaningless by denying the existence of both the conscience and body.  

Given the overwhelming difficulty of conceptualizing death, I found the following excerpt particularly interesting:

“Palliative-care doctors used to think that a patient was either in a state of denial or a state of acceptance, period, Rodin says. But now he and his colleagues believe people are more likely to move back and forth. ‘You have to live with awareness of dying, and at the same time balance it against staying engaged in life,’ he says. ‘It’s being able to hold that duality—which we call double awareness—that we think is a fundamental task.’

Whether or not people are able to find that balance, the existential crisis doesn’t last; patients can’t remain long in a state of acute anxiety. Coyle has found in her work that later peaks of distress are not usually as severe as that first wave. ‘Once you’ve faced [death] like that once, it’s not new knowledge in your consciousness anymore,’ she says.”

To live in the face of death is perhaps to feel so acutely what it means to be alive because living is no longer defined in a vacuum of false immortality, but in negation with death. Using this analogy for the nonfatal deaths experienced throughout life, these moments of acute pain remind us what it means to live, and thus what it means to die. But to continuously live in agony of death is to define life as purely a shadow of death, a permanent and unconquerable state of being. Unable to continuously live in this duality, the concept of death shows the limitations of the human mind. But perhaps those who are more able to strike this balance are those who can appreciate simultaneously the concept of life and death. Just as how living makes us fearful of dying, death makes us more appreciative of life and how much we have to lose -- not just of our physical existence, but also of our soul. 

He’s Your Destiny. Just Be Patient.

In every single relationship that I’ve had, I always run up against the following question: Do you just know when you’ve met the right person? Or does your partner become the right person through hard work and patience of both parties? 

As someone who is a strong believer in free will but also has compulsive overthinking tendencies and is prone to identifying patterns in meaningless trends in this noisy and chaotic world, my philosophy has wildly oscillated from believing in the ability of sheer willpower to overcoming incompatibilities to trying to concoct a scientific framework of key inputs to forecasting the future of a relationship.

This article is quite fitting because it shows us the irony of life, both in creating incredibly unlikely circumstances that seem to follow the narrative of a certain trajectory, as well as in surprising us with outcomes far from what one had expected. For Stefanie, the author, this irony is encapsulated in a tarot card reading. During this reading, the author learns that she will 1) soon leave NYC, 2) face a career of unexpected turns, and 3) reunite with her ex in three years time but will have other relationships that don’t work out in the meantime. 

The first two come true, and after leaving NYC for Detroit, she meets a guy named Brandon. 

“I fell very much in love with Brandon. There was no lightning strike of certainty but rather a slow warming that grew into something sweet. I wanted to marry him, and I told him so. I daydreamed about painting walls and walking dogs and all of the ways in which we would build a future together.”

After two years of falling in love with Brandon, Stefanie moves to LA for her work and finds herself in the same city with the ex she is destined to be with. One can only imagine how everything leading up to this moment has been a journey towards that destined love, that all of the pain and heartbreak, learning and growing, has prepared her to reunite with the One. 

“I finally wrote an email to my ex.

‘Hey’” I began casually, as if this greeting had not weighed heavily on me for ages. ‘It’s been so, so, so, so long. I live in LA now and I know you know that. I guess I’m hoping it’s finally time to have coffee and say hi? Whaddya think?’

After three years of wondering, I had to wait only a few hours for his response.

‘Yo yo,’ he wrote. ‘I appreciate the guts it must’ve taken to reach out, but I’m not really interested in grabbing coffee, sorry. I do sincerely hope everything in your world is awesome though!’

And that was that. No destiny. No lightning strike. No certainty written in the cards.”

A few months later, Stefanie and Brandon break up because they have drifted apart from each other and have become different people.

“We didn’t break up because the cards said we would, nor was it a failure of the cards that my ex and I didn’t reunite. I chose to believe in the possibility that there was some perfectly pre-written story that I was only playing a role in, but there was no pre-written story for Brandon and me. There’s no pre-written story for anyone.

And isn’t that part of the bargain we strike with our partners? That we are willing to live together inside of a story being written rather than a story already told? And that trying to see the future before it happens is just an attempt to make the terrible uncertainty about being in love, and staying in love, a little easier to bear.“

I love the ending of this article because it shows the absurdity in trying to predict the future as it unrolls, creating narratives out of disparate crumbs of faded memories and desires. It doesn’t answer the question of whether there are people out there destined for us or whether the success of a relationship is a result of sheer luck and hard work. It tells us that we don’t know, and that we choose how to cope with this uncertainty. But regardless of whether a relationship is fated to be, this does not deny the love that one feels when there is something “true and deep” between two people. 

November Rain

I really love this song, and more generally, Guns N’Roses. The raw emotions in the song and lyrics capture the essence of emotional vulnerability. 

“When I look into your eyes I can see a love restrained But darlin' when I hold you Don't you know I feel the same

Nothin' lasts forever And we both know hearts can change And it's hard to hold a candle In the cold November rain”

The imagery in the last two verses in this stanza shows the fragile, ephemeral, and fickle nature of love.  

“And when your fears subside And shadows still remain, oh yeah I know that you can love me When there's no one left to blame So never mind the darkness We still can find a way 'Cause nothin' lasts forever Even cold November rain”

After a great guitar solo, Rose sings these verses that I find to be so magnetic. It’s a message of hope, but tempered hope. Just as love fades and dies, even darkness must eventually subside. 

Putin plays judo, not chess

I found this to be a really clever analogy for Russia’s strategy in the international stage considering how judo is one of Putin’s favorite past times (how I pity Russian athletes that are pitted against him.) 

“In judo, a seemingly weaker practitioner can rely on inner strength and force of will to defeat a larger, stronger foe. One basic technique involves putting an opponent off balance and taking advantage of his temporary disorientation to strike a winning blow. Mr. Putin has proved adept at seizing opportunities presented by the West’s disarray and its leaders’ indecisiveness. He had a plan to restore Russia as a great power when he took over from Yeltsin; the U.S. has had no comparable strategy in the post-Cold War era, and Russia has taken advantage against its much stronger competitor.”

AKA US needs to get its cybersecurity policy together. 

Being a Law Firm Partner Was Once a Job for Life. That Culture Is All but Dead.

One of my biggest qualms of going to law school to practice law is the incentive system. Lawyers are billed on hours worked, not sales generated or results delivered. Thus, I was surprised that this article paints this shift towards a compensation model found in finance and consulting negatively. The hourly billings model creates an incentive for longer hours regardless of the quality of the deliverable, which trickles down to the associate-level and creates this poor work culture that already faces workaholic pressures by virtue of being client-facing. 

Also, this shift in model doesn’t necessarily mean that being a partner is no longer a cushy position. This doesn’t change the fact that partners would still take profit sharing of retaining client relationships, which they should be able to do as long as they don’t seriously screw up anything. I also don’t think that partners should get an easy pass once they achieve this rank. If you’re making that much as your annual salary, your value-add better be worth a few million dollars. 

Gun Policy in America: An Overview and What Science Tells Us About the Effects of Gun Policies

I find gun policy to be one of the most frustrating and mindboggling issues in politics. How can both sides of the aisle react so vehemently to the tragedy of mass shootings, yet have such different conceptions of what are their root causes and appropriate policy reactions? Additionally, why is this issue so partisan? Do gun issues symbolize the partisan disagreement on protecting personal rights at the expense of greater safety of the nation or clashing of personal identities between the isolated inhabitants of rural regions and the disconnected elitists of metropolitans? I’m not exactly sure why gun regulation has become so divisive, but I do know that protecting people’s lives should rise above the petty politics of partisanship.

RAND, a global think tank that covers both domestic and international policy issues, has tried to dissect these issues in an objective, nonpartisan, and analytical manner. From its preliminary research, what is clear is that there isn’t enough conclusive and rigorous research on gun policy, and that the government should appropriate more funds for researching gun regulation. In fact, “the U.S. government has spent just 1.6 percent as much on gun policy research as it has on research involving causes of similar levels of mortality in the United States, such as traffic accidents or sepsis” (Morral). I don’t know if this is because of lobbying efforts from pro-gun organizations, but investing in high-quality research is one of the first steps to fixing this issue.  

A few issues with researching gun policy include the lack of reliable data sets and the inconsistent categorization of different gun policies. Data sets are limited in sample size and the availability of historical information. New policies affect only a small fraction of guns purchased every year of the population of gun owners (e.g., prohibitions against the mentally ill). The lack of historical data makes it difficult to establish a causal relationship between passing gun regulation and perceived changes in gun violence. The difficulty of establishing strong evidence for a causal relationship between gun regulation and gun violence, however, may be a chicken and the egg problem. If there aren’t enough examples of states passing gun regulation, there aren’t many case studies to draw from for analysis.

Despite the difficulty of researching gun regulation, there are a few gun policies with strong evidence of its impact on gun violence. RAND defines supportive as having three studies showing significant effects in the same direction using two independent data sets, with no other studies of comparable or greater rigor contradicting its findings.

Interestingly, studies on child-access prevention laws are able to draw from larger data sets because of a larger proportion of gun-owning households also have kids (e.g., in contrast to the population of gun owners that commit domestic violence). There is also moderate evidence that background checks reduce suicide and violent crime, and that prohibitions on the mentally ill decrease while stand your ground laws increases violent crime.

Also, just because a policy has inconclusive evidence on its impact on reducing gun violence, this doesn’t mean that the policy is ineffective. Rather, there isn’t evidence to prove its effectiveness – unsurprising, given the relative rarity of mass shootings (which is unfortunately changing as we speak).

However, it is fair to claim that even if with more conclusive evidence on gun policy, this would not bring our government any closer to a political resolution on how to effectively regulate gun ownership. For example, climate change issues have strong evidence for the relationship between manmade pollution on global increase in temperatures. However, the lack of rigorous and conclusive research makes it even more difficult to agree on any changes in gun policy, which is clearly needed to curb recent increases in gun violence.