#or I guess I’m viewing it from the scope of having like… been a human with feelings as an adult now

[hufflepuffwithaslytherinkink]

Tacenda - Chapter 11 Snippet

Once she reaches the stop of the stairs she pushes open the door, making her way out onto the open aired classroom. There’s still some light though the sun is about to set casting an orange glow over everything.

Eleanor stops, her breath catching as she glances over the railings at the magnificence of Hogwarts grounds and further out into the Scottish Highlands. It’s beyond beautiful.

Her hands grip the railings as she smiles at the scenery in front of her, the black lake reflecting the sun making it almost look aflame. A soft halo surrounds the trees, casting an angelic look on the land and the colours burst with brightness. Everything looking strange and darker yet so beautiful.

Eleanor’s so lost in the view she doesn’t notice Theo watching her silently from beside his telescope.

She only notices him when he drops his book on the floor, the sound making her jump.

Eleanor spins around, her heart beating rapidly, to spot Theo bent over, retrieving it from the stone floor.

Theo looks up to see her staring at him, fear in her eyes from the unexpected scare.

“Finished?” He asks.

Eleanor flushes realising he caught her staring at the scenery. She wonders how long he’d been there, probably the whole time considering his telescope is set up and he’s conjured a stiff wooden chair to sit on.

“Yes.” She says as strongly as she can whilst walking towards him with her head held high. She wasn’t going to be embarrassed about looking at something so beautiful.

 “Good, we can get to it then. I’ve set the scope up at the co-ordinates the moon should start to rise. It’s not due for another 10 minutes though.” He says gesturing in the direction the telescope is facing.

Eleanor nods, she knew it would be in that general direction and she trusts Theo enough to know he wouldn’t want to sabotage his own education just to ruin hers.

“So we wait then.” She says dropping her bag to the floor.

Theo hums as he skims through his notes.

Eleanor glances at his chair, it doesn’t look comfortable in the slightest.

She pulls her own wand out transfiguring one of her quills into a beanbag. She smiles as she looks down at the fluffy, purple, human trap.

She moves forward happily sinking down into it, knowing she’s going to struggling getting out of it later but more than willing to make that sacrifice for the current comfort.

Theo looks up at the sound of the beanbag moving under her weight. His eyes widen before narrowing as he furrows his brow at her.

“What on Earth is that thing?” He asks eyeing the beanbag sceptically.

“A beanbag.” Eleanor replies happily wiggling her bum further into it.

Theo looks horrified as he stares at it.

“What’s wrong with a good chair?” He asks.

“What like yours?”

“Precisely.” He answers.

“That thing looks stiff and awkward and uncomfortable. Whilst this thing is comfortable, cute and hugs my bum comfortingly.” She beams at him.

Theo’s mouth parts a little when she mentions it hugging her bum, she has to refrain herself from giggling at his shocked expression.

“It’s utterly ridiculous.” He tells her before returning to his notes.

Eleanor shrugs. “It’s comfy is what it is. No need to suffer if you don’t have to.”

“The difference between you and me is I have standards.” Theo mutters continuing to skim his work.

Eleanor sets her jaw as she shoots an annoyed look at him. He always has to let her know how much lesser he thinks of her compared to himself.

“I guess our standards differ.”

“Obviously.” Theo drawls not even looking up at her.

Eleanor rolls her eyes as she lets her head roll back. Great start, excellent, start as you mean to go on and all that.

They sit in near silence for the first four hours, Eleanor thinks she might die of boredom as Theo continues to jot down notes and she continues to stare through the telescope in the hope the moon might do something. Anything.

As it nears 11 o’clock she lets out a frustrated groan.

“Ugh, I think I’m going to die.” She complains.

Theo glances up at her, giving her a sceptical look.

“Unless some internal organ has unexpectedly ruptured I highly doubt that.” Theo states.

Eleanor’s head shoots up to look at him.

“You know about organs rupturing?” She asks in surprise. She didn’t think wizards knew about that.

“Yes Eleanor, I know organs can rupture. What you think wizards don’t get appendicitis?” He asks shaking his head.

Eleanor blinks in shock. No, for some reason she did not think wizards got appendicitis.

“Huh. It just seems so muggle.” She answers honestly.

Theo pulls a face at that.

“We have better treatment of course. If we capture it before it ruptures there are spells and potions to get rid of it easily. Once the organ, such as an appendix, has already ruptured it’s a bit more complex but still probably easier than whatever it is muggles do.” He tells her, disgust lacing his voice at the word muggles.

“They cut it out.” Eleanor tells him.

Theo turns to stare at her horrified.

“What?” He asks aghast.

“Hmm?”

“They cut it out? How would that even work?” He asks.

“Oh, they use a knife to make a hole in the skin. Then they sort of pull the organ out. They either stitch where the appendix was removed, or they can use a sort of string thing to tie it off so it doesn’t bleed. Then they stitch the skin closed and voila.” She says spreading her hands at the end.

Theo looks at her with sheer terror.

“They stab each other? How do you know this?”

Eleanor rolls her eyes as she stares at him. “They don’t just stab each other. Surgeons, specialised healers, go to medical school and have to learn how to do it properly. The knives are special too, they use scalpels, they’re small and sterile. It’s completely safe. My little cousin had to have his appendix removed when he was 7, I was about 9 at the time.”

Theo stares at her unblinkingly. Eleanor is starting to wonder if she’s broke him.

“Bloody barbarians.” He mutters in disgust.

Eleanor glowers at him.

“It’s not barbaric. They’re saving people’s lives by doing that.”

“They’re stabbing each other.”

“To save their lives. They don’t have magic and magical cures, they have to fix everything themselves with science and their own hands. There’re no short cuts for them.”

Theo doesn’t say anything but she can see his jaw tense, he turns his attention to look out over the grounds.

Eleanor lets herself sink further into the beanbag as silence takes over, the only sounds that of nature. Of the wind, birds and the water of the black lake breaking on the shore.

“What’s science?” Theo eventually asks his voice so quiet Eleanor wonders if he even said anything.

“What?” She asks shocked.

“What’s science?” Theo repeats staring at Eleanor intently.

Eleanor shifts under his gaze, sitting herself more upright as she thinks of the best way to answer him.

“Well.” She starts. “It’s a mix of different things. There’s biology, the way bodies work and how we evolve, reproduce and so on. Then there’s physics, which looks at gravity, velocity and force. Chemistry is looking at things like the periodic table and reactions, it’s sort of like potions for muggles. There’s so much to science and it’s brilliant, there are so many different aspects and they’re so specialised it’s amazing.” Eleanor gushes.

Theo watches her with interest.

“Muggles can make potions?” He asks.

Eleanor purses her lips. “I mean in a way, yeah, they can. They mix different chemicals and create reactions. They can be used for a multitude of different things, including healing.”

Theo sits back as he processes her words.

“But they’re not magic.” He states.

“In a way they are. They figured out all of this stuff without actually having magic. They can make pictures move and it was science that did that.”

“That’s not true, I’ve seen some muggle pictures when people have things from home.” He says smugly.

“Not all pictures move. But there’re movies and TV.” Eleanor explains.

“What are they?” Theo asks leaning forward.

“Moving pictures but they tell a story. It’s sort of like theatre but in a box. They also have other things on TV too like the news, so someone reading the newspaper to you, music videos, documentaries teaching you about different things, cooking shows. You name it there’s probably something on the TV about it.” Eleanor tells him happily.

“But muggles can’t do things like that.” He states slowly, as though he can’t get his head around the fact muggles don’t live in dark caves with nothing but rocks as entertainment.

“Muggles are extremely advanced, and I’d say smarter than most wizards. As I told Bulstrode the other day, I can use a microwave.” She smiles at Theo.

He grimaces letting out a moan.

“Please don’t mention her.” He begs.

“Bulstrode? Why not?” She asks eyeing him suspiciously.

“Because she’s insane and I can’t seem to get rid of her.” He moans his face becoming glum.

Eleanor feels her heart flutter at the idea of him being annoyed by Bulstrode. She shakes her head not liking that feeling being associated with Theo, again.

“You could do something really repulsive to put her off you.” Eleanor suggests, a smile forming on her lips as she thinks of different ways Theo could embarrass himself.

“You think I haven’t tried it?” He scoffs. “I swear she has no self-respect.”

Eleanor turns her gaze to stare at Theo properly, he genuinely seems upset about this. Her brow furrows at the thought. She doesn’t care who Theo is, no one should be made the feel uncomfortable because someone won’t take no for an answer.

“You could tell a teacher if she keeps persisting.” Eleanor suggests.

Theo lets out another scoff. “I wouldn’t be that pathetic to go crying to a teaching because of a clingy girl. Besides what would they do? What would I even say?” He sighs.

Eleanor frowns at his response. Did he think they wouldn’t take it seriously? Or was he ashamed?

“It’s not pathetic to not want someone to pester you. It’s your right to say no and she should respect that decision.” Eleanor tells him.

Theo looks at her though his lashes and Eleanor’s breath catches. She’d almost forgotten how beautiful his eyes are.

She quickly looks away before turning to him with a smile.

“I can’t stop your stalker situation but I can help with something else.” She announces eagerly.

Theo looks her up and down.

“I’m flattered Eleanor but I’m not really in the mood.” He states.

Eleanor stares at him for a moment before it clicks what he’s implying. She lets out a noise of disgust.

“Ew. No, your pervert. I meant I’m going to change your arse numbing chair for a comfortable arse hugging one like mine.”

Theo stares at the beanbag with distaste.

“I’d rather not thank you.” He tells her, his mouth pulling into a grimace at the thought.

Eleanor rolls her eyes at him. “Oh come on.” She presses. “Just try it.”

He shakes his head.

“It looks ludicrous, what if someone saw?”

Eleanor raises her eyebrows at him.

“You’re worried about someone seeing you sat on a beanbag, in the middle of the night on the astronomy tower?” She asks with disbelief.

“Yeah.” Theo answers as though that’s completely normal.

“Come on, just try it. I doubt anyone is going to come up here and even if they did, so what?” She tells him.

Theo eyes her for a few seconds before letting out a sigh and nodding.

Eleanor let’s out a happy noise, she quickly stands up grasping her wand as Theo moves away from the chair.

“Do not make it purple and fluffy.” He warns her.

Eleanor deadpans him before a smirk crosses her face.

She waves her wand and a red, velvet beanbag appears in place of his stiff, wooden chair.

Theo shoots her an annoyed look making her giggle.

“Red? Really?” He asks.

Elanor shrugs at him. “You never specified any colour other than ‘not purple’.” She beams at him before settling back down into her own beanbag.

Theo grumbles as he walks over to his. He looks at it in annoyance before kicking it suspiciously.

Eleanor watches with amusement as he seems to examine it like a wild animal, afraid it might attack him at any moment. Hesitantly he lowers himself down before dropping and landing heavily in the middle of it.

She giggles at his expression. His panicked shock quickly dissolving into a pleased shock.

“Oh.” He mutters.

“Good isn’t it?” Eleanor smirks.

“It’s not bad.” He says wiggling further into the beanbag.

“It’s bloody amazing and you know it.” Eleanor tells him.

He raises his eyebrows at her but she notices a barely there smile on his lips.

#ao3 #ao3fic #theo nott fan fic #theo nott fanfiction #theodore nott #theo nott #theodore nott fanfiction #golden trio era #harry potter fandom #original character #hogwarts #gryffindor x slytherin #slytherin x gryffindor #gryffindor #slytherin #friends to enemies #friends to enemies to lovers #enemies to lovers #muggleborn #pureblood x muggle born #muggle born x pureblood #muggle born #chapter snippet #tacenda fic #tacenda chapter 11

[shuckle24]

Ramblings of a Writer

The pouring rain inspires me to write. But it’s not really an inspiration, is it? Writing is not something you are inspired to do.

I was staring at the rain morosely, as one does when the relief of the promised holidays renders you purposeless, and with the clouds came the reminder to close YouTube and open a fresh Google Doc. Writing is almost like urging yourself to complete a freelance job that you aren’t exactly compelled to do, yet such that you must do it anyway. But it isn’t quite like that either, not completely.

Looking out of my fourteenth floor window, I was watching the puddles on the roofs of others ripple with the falling rain and my eyes chanced on a woman squatting, almost hiding, in the midst of a patch of potted plants. She had the exact figure and features of a woman, the exact make of a human, save for a lack of animation, save for whatever it is that gives an object life. 

She was a statue, and she scared the bejesus out of me.

I guess I have to write now. I must. Except that I don’t want to write about hoverboards or hovering aircrafts or birds that hover through the rain. I do not want to write about maglev trains that hover above their tracks and accelerate to unimaginable speeds or about mean tortoises or mean pelicans or words that do not mean what you think they mean or the mean that means average. 

The waning rain intensifies and my eyes keep stopping on that statue. I suppose it is an idol of some sort, it must be. The placement of it is peculiar. Why is it sitting in the middle of all those plants? That must be a tedious and cumbersome storage facility, having to sidestep all those branches to get at it; and if it is a dump, which it most likely is, why in the middle? Why not in the corner or on the other end where other clutter has already accumulated? Why an idol? Why there? I’m overthinking this. Its surroundings and my elevated vantage point makes it look larger than it really is. Maybe it's religious, a blessing for the plants perhaps. Maybe that spot is more accessible than it looks from my biased field of vision. Maybe it's a hiding place. Maybe its placers gave it much less thought than I.

The rain gives rise to other sights as well. It gives rise to similes and imageries and activities. It tints the window view of a city a certain emotion. But I don’t want to write about those either.

I have to write. Writing is an office, but not in the temporal sense. It’s like a cosmic duty, like an that angel exists to do the bidding of God, like a potato that exists- before anything else- to be a potato. It is like fulfilling a post not because you want to, not because of salary, not because you are forced to, but because you are. 

The rain has thinned to the point where the water falling down the drainage pipe makes a louder noise than the collective raindrops. Tangent: is rain just a collective noun for raindrops?

My eyes flit about, watching the rain and the city being drenched in it. I am mostly watching the rain, not the city; and my eyes mostly get caught on the two sights, the statue of the idol and the other sight, neither of which I wish to write about.

I see why sloth has been listed as one of the greater sins. Nothing gets done when there is a lot of time to do things. Nothing is particularly relaxing when you have a wide scope to relax. 

Can we talk about how easy it is to lose sight of the individual. You don’t watch a single raindrop. You don’t think of a specific person when you’re viewing the skyline of a congested city. You don’t hear one spectator when the whole stadium cheers. You might mourn the death of a person, but you never mourn the deaths of people when a large group dies as a whole. You mourn the day, the event, the tragedy, but never really the people, not specifically, not really.

The rain is now barely a drizzle, but from my seat in front of the laptop it might as well be sunny outside. I have grown used to the sight of the idol statue, though definitely not the idea of it, and the other thing has also ended, and thank God for it. 

The skies have cleared, the stream of clogged rainwater issuing from the drainage pipe and imploding on the ground below is now the majority of the background noise. It is a nice noise, a soothing noise, as close to a spring or a babbling brook as you can get in a city. The roofs are now clear of bathers, no one wants to bathe in a drizzle, and the idol statue still remains petrifying and largely unknown. 

The rain is about to stop any moment. I wonder what defines the conclusion of a rainfall. Is there a definition set in stone? Maybe it is when the last drop reaches the ground. Maybe it is when the mood of rain lifts. Maybe it is when we collectively decide that it has. Do we even need a definition for the end of rainfall? And for that matter, does rainfall even have a concrete definition or are its edges blurred? Whatever, I am not a lexicographer. The rain has stopped and I give up. 

#fiction #original fiction #my writing #writing #short fiction #writers on writing #what it is like to write #rain #rambling #musing #on writing #thoughts #thinking #inspiration

[selormohene]

day 117 (saturday, october 28th 2023)

I went to see Killers of the Flower Moon "today" with a bunch of people from my department. (Also went to a Harvard football game beforehand, which was a lot of fun, and a house party afterward, which was also a lot of fun in its own way.) It was an incredible movie. I genuinely think — or at any rate genuinely thought in the immediate aftermath, though the judgment has been moderated — that it’s one of my top three movies ever. It’s up there with Boyhood. (I guess I have a liking for extremely long movies, partly because they allow for longer stories, for broader scope, and for a portrayal of the more mundane moments and stretches that make up the course of real life.)

There’s a lot that made it appealing. Part of it is the fact that the movie doesn’t try to beat you over the head with its moral message. It’s a story of great moral complexity and subtlety. There’s the question of what could have driven the main character Ernest — what could have led him to display what appears by most indications to be love, and yet to brutally murder his wife’s family. The best way I can explain it, at least at this point, is that the very possibility of the intelligibility of such a mindset as Ernest’s is a case in point of the superiority of the sort of understanding of moral agency held by Nietzsche and Williams over the Kantian sort. More concretely, you could say that Ernest’s love of his wife, however genuine it may have been, did not exist within a context that could have allowed it to count for anything. It was limited to her, it didn’t extend beyond the boundaries of the human person coextensive with her — and perhaps not even that far to the extent that she was partly constituted by her external relations to other people — and it was limited to his limited view of her. He didn’t take her values to be genuinely valuable; he was incapable of reaching beyond himself. There is a sort of flatness to his character in general. He seems rootless and unmoored, and shallow.

One criticism I had of the movie, which was both a sense I had and a sense that seems to have been shared by critics, was that the Native characters were somewhat underwritten. I definitely felt like Lily Gladstone’s character, in particular, Ernest’s wife Mollie, became more credulous the more the movie progressed. I also felt like there was no redeeming value or agency attributed to the Osage community as a whole or anything, although there’s a question of whether or not this isn’t just a distaste for stories which don’t seem to have endings which are somewhat happy. But this is definitely a movie I’m going to watch again. I appreciated that it demanded sustained and close attention, and that it was able to express a more meaningful moral message precisely by eschewing the temptation to be moralistic in a more simplistic way.

[venusstadt]

If you have any interest in the art world or just use social media, you might have heard about “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” an artificial intelligence-generated image that won first place at the Colorado State Fair in fall 2022. 

That this piece had been created by A.I. as opposed to a human as initially assumed sparked a debate not only about the ethics of A.I. and transparency (Roose 2022), but also the value of art and artists in the age of automation. Jason Allen, who typed the prompt into the generator to make the image, received backlash for what people viewed as him passing off the image as his own work. Defending himself in a New York Times interview with Kevin Roose, Allen declared: 

“Art is dead, dude. It’s over. A.I. won. Humans lost” (Roose 2022). 

Since then, even though A.I. content generators have been around for years, it seems as if A.I. content has begun to flood the internet, ranging from one-off profile pictures to meme fodder to genuinely weird and worrying content.  

Has A.I. killed art? No—and, honestly, I wouldn’t advise anyone to take Jason Allen’s word as gospel. 

Does A.I. have the potential to kill art? Only time will tell. 

If anything, what A.I. content reveals a continued cultural commitment to a pre-existing trend: the devaluation of artists in favor of instant gratification and profit. 

Hello, and welcome to Venusstadt, a channel devoted to discussing women in the realm of arts and culture. I’m Jiana; today, I’ll be widening my scope to throw my hat into the A.I. content discourse ring. 

CAN A.I. MAKE ART?

My working opinion on the idea of “A.I. art” is this. People create art. A.I. creates “content.” 

Feel free to disagree; after all, art is subjective, and is as dependent on socio-historical context as it is personal taste. There was once a time where photography was not considered art. However, we now know that though photography is not the same medium as painting, what it does have in common is that it is the product of human creativity and expression.  

By contrast, A.I.-generated work is just that—the output of A.I. It churns out content quickly and cheaply, using images that have been compiled for it, and spitting out what it is told. 

Like art, people have different definitions of content, but the best explanation I’ve come across is that content is created “for utilitarian exchange” (Bevan 2022). Content is produced quickly and cheaply in exchange for followers, subscribers, engagement, and sponsorships, after which it is rendered forgettable and disposable. The speed and convenience of A.I. makes it excellent at producing content; and thus far, most of the content produced by A.I. is utilitarian, existing predominantly to fill Instagram and TikTok feeds or extoll the virtues of A.I. art over contemporary artworks. 

No, feeding prompts into an A.I. does not count as creative rigor or expression, and does not make you an artist. It is the A.I. that brings the prompts to life, not the user. There is no human effort, and ultimately no human interpretation, neither on the part of the artist and certainly not on the part of the viewer, since the search for meaning is reduced to a guessing game about the prompts used or the artists the A.I. “borrowed” from (Hilliard 2023). The content produced may look beautiful, but art is not just beauty; if it were, we would have missed out on a lot of good art.

But A.I.-generated work could be used by people to create art. Lone A.I. content is not art any more than a paint brush sitting on a table is. Generators like Midjourney and DALLE 2 are a medium. It’s what you do with the tool that matters. 

The pessimistic part of me knows that while A.I. generators might be marketed as the next wave of human creativity and artistic talent, like any supposedly promising invention, it’ll mostly be used to cut corners and screw a lot of people over.

WILL A.I. KILL THE ARTIST?

Will A.I. kill the artist? No; photography didn’t kill the painter and video didn’t kill the radio star. 

Still, artists are justified in worrying about what these content generators mean for them, despite the articles that downplay their concerns (or outright demean them) while platforming so-called “A.I. artists.”  

To the media, in the face of applications that will revolutionize fast and inexpensive content generation, the voices of the artists who rely on work and fair wages to survive are irrelevant. After all, this is an attention economy, where catering to short attention spans and providing instant gratification can make or break a publication or a creator. They are content as long as they receive engagement on social media. 

Meanwhile, these A.I. have been trained using the work of historical and contemporary artists that have been scraped from the internet. If you use the internet to host a portfolio, it’s likely your art has been swept up in this scrape as well and is being used by A.I. to reproduce cheap images for other people to increase their social media engagement or to earn money. 

Because it has mashed together the work of actual artists, some of this A.I. content is indistinguishable from that of digital art created by humans. Even if the A.I. is terrible at teeth, hands, and arms, those details can be edited away in Photoshop or eventually ironed out by developers. 

“Who cares?” A.I. art proponents say. “Artists are simply angry because they aren’t special; anyone can do their jobs!” 

A.I. content makes people feel like they can call themselves “artists” without the rigor of creativity, of learning when to add and when to take away. Here, everyone is an artist. This isn’t inherently bad—everyone has a capacity for creativity. Everyone has the ability to pick up a pen and pencil or Blender or GIMP, hone their craft, and start expressing themselves creatively. But there are people that wish to be instantly “good,” and thus do not have the patience to hone this talent, or simply do not have the patience to commission an artist to do the work for them. Ultimately, if we can pass off the ability to feed a prompt to an A.I. that does the work for you as “creativity,” then no one is truly creative. If anyone can call themselves an artist, this naturally decreases the value of artists and of creative work—something that the cruelest of A.I. content supporters have already picked up on. 

But this is par for the course. Many creative fields are already maligned as useless, and artists demeaned and devalued. To make a living, you must either have 1.) many social media followers and a high rate of engagement, 2.) go to an art school and network, or 3.) live in a major cultural center where there are many creative opportunities available. 

If A.I. does replace human artists for many functions (video game design, stock images, commercial art, etc.) and work opportunities do decrease, in addition to harming those already in the field, it may discourage new, fresh voices from entering creative spaces. Since it is those who are poor and/or people of color who often don’t have access to the aforementioned necessities for artistic success, this could lead to a loss of working class and racially diverse voices that are vital to a functioning democratic society. 

In a world where A.I. replacing human artists, these new “tastemakers” who type the prompts (or buy it from a company) will produce even more content that’s prompt and profitable, without much emotional stake, for people to consume and readily forget. It will not teach; it will not convey human experiences. It will simply look interesting. 

Or worse.

CONCLUSION.

If you feel like this is doom and gloom, remember: it’s only my opinion. A.I. content generators are still being developed; no one knows what direction it might take in the next few years. As such, my opinion on this subject, as with any other, has the potential to change.

If you liked this video and would like to be notified for more videos like it, be sure to click the subscribe button. I also provide updates via the social media links listed in the description below. Thanks for watching!

SOURCES.

Bevan, Thomas J. “Content Versus Art.” The Commonplace, 23 Dec. 2022, https://thomasjbevan.substack.com/p/the-day-manager. 

Hilliard, Wesley. “AI art generators targeted in lawsuit for intellectual property.” Apple Insider, 16 Jan. 2023, https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/01/16/ai-art-generators-targeted-in-lawsuit-for-intellectual-property-theft. 

Roose, Kevin. “An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy.” New York Times, 2 Sep. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html. 

#ai art #ai art generator #digital art #Youtube

[bryregrad702]

Week 4 Proposal/Pitch

Pitching my idea today, I came away feeling very overwhelmed. I’ve been feeling quite anxious about this project, and I think this is because what I am currently trying to do is just way too much. I need to take some time to scope the project again, pitching this as an 8 week undergraduate project - not a masters level project. 

I think that all the contextual reading, and all the positioning that I’ve been doing, as well as all the reserach I need to do in order to feel like I am in an okay position to even begin this project is just feeling so insurmountable in the amount of time I have here. I’m getting pretty snowed under with everything I need to read, let alone reaching a place where I can begin to design. 

So I think I need to do a few  things:

Choose what contextual areas I need to reserach, and not read outside of these areas (for now) because I just do not have the capacity to learn it all

Stop looking at Te Ao Māori as something I need to understand. I am spending time reframing my views, breaking down some bias and scratching the surface of what it means to be a tauiwi designer designing in response to Māori contexts. But I do not need to be an expert, nor can I be. There is a lifetime worth of learning you could do, this cannot be fast tracked, and it would be ridiculous to think it can be. So instead, I need to create and stay in conversation with Māori people. Maybe I could make it easier by looking more into aspects of Te Ao Māori that I have already identified e.g, Te Ao Mārama, and having conversations with Denise about language used in the layers framework

Start creating. Stop being paralysed by researching and justifying everything, and just begin to make. From there, you will have something that can be critiqued to be more culturally appropriate, and you’ll start to feel like you have actually moved forward. 

‘We build our ideas so that we can test them, and because actually making something reveals opportunities and complexities that we’d never have guessed were there. Making is also a fantastic way to think, and it helps bring into focus the feasibility of our designs. Moreover, making an idea real is an incredibly effective way to share it. And without candid, actionable feedback from people, we won’t know how to push our ideas forward.’

IDEO, The Field Guide to Human Centred Design. 

I’m starting to recognise that this anxious feeling about a design project is a warning sign that what I am attempting to do is way too big. I am small, and design, I believe can only act to serve, in the little ways it can. And that is doing its part, and that is enough. To create change, we need to work together, all people with all their different expertise. 

[magicalhistorytour]

wow ok after like 2 weeks of being on here y’all got me into mcl*nnon again 🙄

#not again #it’s like from an adult point of view now which makes it way more interesting #or I guess I’m viewing it from the scope of having like… been a human with feelings as an adult now #when I was in hs all I knew was Beatles and theatre #I didn’t have the range to understand their relationship but like #fuuuuuuuuu #it hort #anything ab John in general right now lately hort #John Lennon #mclennon #paul mccartney #bug talks #Michelle if ur seeing this hmu

[ragingbookdragon]

And I Will Still Be Here Stargazing

Batsis x Batfamily Story

Word Count: 1.6K Warnings: Explicit Language

Author's Note: I shouldn't be allowed to make new stories when I've already got WIP's to do. Oh well, HERE'S ANOTHER STORY! -Thorne

**********************************************************************

She glanced through the telescope once more, scanning the expanse of the night sky before her. Giddiness ran through her at the thought of seeing the supposed comet coming back around. Apparently, it was one that hadn’t been seen in two hundred years. It’d taken almost two whole days to convince her dad to let her go out on her own in the field three miles out of town.

Of course, that convincing came with a massive surprise—not—of taking a tracker with her just in case—being the only non-vigilante in her family did make her vulnerable to trouble, but most of their enemies wanted nothing to do with her, so she figured she was alright.

Pulling away from the scope, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket, and she sighed as she answered it, putting it to her ear. “Dad, I already told you, I’m fine.”

You weren’t answering your brothers’ texts. They were worried.

“Oh, for the love of—dad, I’m twenty-one. I shouldn’t have to check in every five freakin’ minutes.”

We worry about you, (Y/N).

“I know,” she griped. “C’mon, one night where I can actually be treated like I have a functioning brain inside my skull. Let me have it.” She glanced up again, seeing something streak across the sky. “Oh, there it is!” (Y/N) grinned. “I gotta go dad! I love you!”

Wait, (Y/N)—

Hanging up, she stowed the phone in her pocket before looking into the glass. “Oh wow,” she breathed. “It’s so beautiful…and big.” (Y/N) hummed and pulled back slightly. “Really, really big. Almost like it’s…coming to earth.”

She took a step back when she realized that was exactly what was happening. The comet, or whatever it was, was barreling towards the field near her and she gasped, taking another step back. Her foot slipped in the mud, and she fell, but the thought of being obliterated made her scramble to her feet and run as fast as she could away from it and while she wasn’t sure she’d outrun the devastation, she was going to try.

That being said, whatever it was, hit the ground with a thundering explosion, sending dirt and gravel flying, along with her and she screamed as she was thrown to the ground. (Y/N) covered her head, crying in pain as debris scraped her arms and legs, but she stayed still until the world calmed around her.

When it did, she peeked through her arms and gaped at the destruction around her. Trees had been blown from their roots and in the middle of where her telescope had once been, was something smoking inside a hollowed dip in the ground, dirt and rocks thrown away.

(Y/N) shakily got to her feet and crept closer, terrified that she was going to find some horror movie come alive. Alien and Predator stuck in the back of her mind and part of her wanted to flee. The other part—and curse her Wayne curiosity—wanted to know what it was.

“Hello?” she whispered as she neared the rim of the crater, peering in. A groan sounded and she gasped, pulling away before she took another glance and she saw a woman. At least it looked like a woman.

Her body was unlike anything familiar to (Y/N), in the form of an average woman, but she had no skin. Instead, her body looked like the night sky, swirling pools of stars and dark matter, and her hair was long and white, shimmering like glitter. Her hips and wrists were plated with some type of metal, gold and inlaid with what looked like diamonds.

(Y/N) slid down the side of the crater against her better judgement, nearing the woman carefully. “Hello?” she called again. “Are you alright?” The woman groaned and rolled onto her back, eyes opening at her. She gasped at the white eyes, like stars.

“Help,” she weakly moaned.

Hurrying over, she knelt beside the woman. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.” She reached out to touch the woman but stilled when she felt the warmth radiating off her body.

“Please…help me,” she begged. “They’re…coming.”

(Y/N) shook her head and took the woman’s hand; it made her skin tingle. “Who’s coming?”

“The Insentients,” the woman said. “They’re coming in a years’ time.”

“I…I don’t understand,” she replied. “What are Insentients?”

“Terrible creatures that destroy life.” The woman grasped her hand. “I am Astra, Queen of the Stars. And you must help me.” (Y/N) couldn’t believe a thing she was hearing, simply gaping at her. “I have battled the Insentients for billions of years, but I am at my end.” She squeezed tightly, reaching up to cup (Y/N)’s cheek, white eyes widening. “You must take my place as queen and protect the life of this galaxy.”

She couldn’t even form words, mouth opening and closing like a fish and all she could muster was, “I’m sorry? What?”

Astra coughed and something splattered on (Y/N)’s clothes before fading from sight. “Please, you must do this or life as you know it will cease in one year. Take my place.”

“But I’m—I’m not some alien queen! I’m a human!” She spluttered. “What do I even do?!”

The queen sighed tiredly. “Child, nothing will stop the Insentients unless you help. They will destroy all in their path.”

(Y/N) shook her head and happened to glance towards the sky. “The stars,” she breathed. “They’re so…dull.”

“My life is fading…so they are too.” Astra whispered. “They will die.”

“What?!” she shouted. “But the sun?! It’ll go out!”

“Yes.” The queen murmured.

Bewildered, she asked, “What can I do?”

Astra gazed at her. “Take my power. Be reborn as the Queen of the Stars.”

“How do I?” She questioned and Astra took (Y/N)’s hands, placing them on her chest.

“Grasp my heart.”

“Grasp your what?” she repeated.

“My heart.” The woman’s chest opened, and she stared in surprise as a small, but brilliant light came into view. “Bring it to your own.”

“I better not die,” (Y/N) deadpanned as she cupped the light carefully. Her fingers tingled like she was being shocked, and she swallowed thickly as she brought it up to her chest, just above her heart. “What now?” she asked, and Astra’s form began to fade, starting at her feet.

“Your body will absorb all that I am…all that I…have been.” She smiled. “Place it within your chest.”

“That’s not possible.” (Y/N) retorted, though she moved her hands against her chest. “My body can’t just absorb—holy shit it’s working,” she blurted, and she went still as her something jolted her spine, all the way up her spinal cord to her brain.

Her jaw went slack as he eyes widened, head tipping back to stare at the sky above her. Memories flashed across her vision, faster than she could keep track of and then her mind felt like it was imploding. She let out a strangled gasp and tipped backwards, fatigue overcoming her. The last thing she remembered was Astra’s eyes and her smile before she disappeared from sight and (Y/N) descended into darkness.

***

When she came to, all she could think about was the pounding headache in her skull and the lack of memory the night before. (Y/N) sat up and looked around. The sun was high in the sky and her telescope was sitting neatly where it had been. She blinked, feeling as though she’d forgotten something important. When she couldn’t remember, she shrugged and got to her feet, beginning to take the scope apart and put it away.

(Y/N) rolled the sleeping bag up and put it in the tote, carrying both back towards the side of the road. Her butler should’ve been around to pick her up but when she didn’t see him, she frowned. Huh…I thought Alfie was coming to pick me up? Blinking in confusion, she patted her pocket for her phone and pulled it out, though her eyes went wide when she saw the shattered screen and burnt phone.

“What the hell?” she questioned. “What happened to my phone?” It looked like it’d been blown up. Now she was really confused. What the hell happened last night? (Y/N) sighed heavily and shoved the phone in her pocket. “I guess I’m walking then.” She grunted and heaved the telescope and sleeping bag over her shoulders, starting back towards the city in the distance.

***

GCPD was the first important building she came upon and as tired as she was, she knew they’d let her use one of their phones to call home. (Y/N) lethargically wandered into the department, stopping near the counter.

“Excuse me, can I use your phone?”

The man at the counter looked up and suddenly shot to his feet. “(Y/N) Wayne!” he shouted, and she blinked.

“Uh…yeah, that’s me?”

He rubbed his eyes. “Holy shit, you’re here.” Gesturing to her, he added “Wait right there! Don’t move!”

“Wait, but I—” the man sprinted off and she sighed. “Great. Probably going to get everyone so we can do pictures.”

Next thing she knew, Commissioner Gordon was running into the entry way. “Miss Wayne!”

(Y/N) looked at him. “Yes sir. That’s me.” She pointed to the phone at the desk. “I was wondering if I could use the phone to call home? Mine’s…busted.”

He reached out, grasping her arms. “Are you hurt? We should get you checked out immediately.”

“I’m fine?” she answered confusedly. “What’s going on? Why is everyone panicking?”

Gordon gaped at her. “You don’t know what’s going on?” she shook her head. “(Y/N), you’ve been missing for an entire week.”

#batfamily x reader #batfamily x reader imagines #batfamily x reader imagine #batfamily imagines #batfamily imagine #batfamily #batfamily x batsis #batfamily x batsis imagines #batfamily x batsis imagine #batsis x batfam #batsis x batfamily #batsis x batfamily imagines #batsis x batfamily imagine #batsis imagines #batsis imagine #batsis #bruce wayne #batman #dc comics #dc imagines #dc imagine #dc

[therealvinelle]

I've always wondered this, but what do you think the Cullen's political viewpoints would be, given their individual backgrounds? if vampires don't change after they turn, then surely they would all be extremely racist (especially Jasper). would this not come up at some point? they aren't like the Volturi because the Volturi are too old to care, but the Cullens are young enough that they have been brought up with opinions on stuff like sexism, racism, homophobia and the like.

Oh fuck.

You get an early answer because otherwise I'll just chicken out and delete this one, pretend I never saw it.

UMMM.

Since I'm guessing you meant American political viewpoints, we need a disclaimer. I am not American, and not too knowledgeable about your politics. Not just in the sense that I don't follow the day-to-day drama, but as I am not an American citizen there are several things I don't know, can't know because I've never lived in your country and therefore can't know what the effects of living in a country ruled by American policies is like. What I do know is based off of the news in the foreign section, social media (by which I mean tumblr posts), and Trevor Noah's Daily Show.

I am an outsider looking in.

Which is really rather appropriate, since the Cullens are too.

The Cullens go to high school and college, Carlisle works, they pay taxes, they own real estate, and submerge themselves in American culture. Esme, Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, and Bella are young enough that this is in many ways their world, and apart from timeouts they've more or less spent their entire lives, human and vampire, integrated into American society.

Not fully integrated, mind you, they do what they need to to fit in and get to school or, in Carlisle’s case, to work. They go no further. No extra-curriculars for the kids, no book clubs for Esme, no game nights for Carlisle. They walk parallel to humans, not among us.

In addition to this they're obscenely rich, which puts them another thousand miles from the experiences of your average American. They won't deal with the health system, which means healthcare is a non-issue, they're not going to need welfare or other social programs, unemployment is another non-issue. Name your issue, and the Cullens don't have personal stake in it. Even the climate crisis won't be a problem for them the way it will for us.

What I'm trying to say is, American political issues are a concept to them, not a lived reality. Just like they are for me. So hey, you made a great choice of blog to ask.

I'll also add here that you say the Volturi are too old to care, and I agree- from an ancient's point of view, racism is a matter of "which ethnicity are we hating today?", and it all looks rather arbitrary after a while. Same with every other issue - after a while it all just blends together into "what are the humans fighting over today? Which Christian denomination is the correct one? Huh. Good for them, I guess."

I can't put it any better than this post did, really. The Volturi are real people, humans are nerds and tumblr having Loki discourse. Aro thinks it's delightful and knows entirely too much about Watergate (and let's be real, Loki discourse as well), but the point I wanted to get at is that politics really don't matter to vampires.

And I don't think they matter to the Cullens either.

So, moving on to the next point while regretting I didn't put headlines in this post, I'll just state that I don't think vampires' minds are frozen. Their brains are unable to develop further, and they can never forget anything, but... well, this isn't the post for that, but in order for this to be true of vampires they would barely be sentient. They would not be able to process new impressions, to learn new things, nor to have an independent thought process. Yes, we see vampires in-universe (namely, Edward, who romanticizes himself and vampires) believe they're frozen and can never change, but there is no indication that this is a widespread belief, or even true. Quite the contrary - Carlisle went from a preacher's son who wanted to burn all the demons to living in Demon Capital for decades and then becoming a doctor and making a whole family of demons. Clearly, the guy has had a change in attitude over the years. Jasper, in his years as a newborn army general, slowly grew disenchanted with his life and developed depression. James initially meant to kill Victoria and hunted her across the earth, then became fascinated and changed his mind about it.

Had these people been incapable of change, Carlisle would still be hating demons, Jasper would be in Maria's army, and James would still be hunting Victoria.

It goes to follow, then, that they are able to adapt to new things.

The question is, would they?

Here I finally answer your question.

So, we have these people who don't really have any kind of stake in politics, who keep up to date all the same (or are forcibly kept up to date because high school) and are generally opinionated people.

Where do they then fall, politically?

(And this is where you might want to stop reading, anon, because I'm about to eviscerate these people.)

Alice votes for whoever's gonna win. She also makes a fortune off of betting each election. Trump's 1 to 10 victory in 2016 was a great day to be Alice. MAGA!

The actual policies involved are completely irrelevant, she does this because it's fun. Election means she gets to throw parties. Color coded parties for the Republican and Democratic primaries, and US-themed parties for Election Night! (Foreigner moment right here: I at first wrote "Election wake" before realizing that's not what y'all murricans call it.)

Alice loves politics. Doesn't know the issues, but she sure loves politics.

Bella votes Democrat. She actually knows about the issues, and cares about them. This girl is a Democrat through and through.

Carlisle doesn't vote. I can't imagine it feels right. Outside of faked papers he's not a US citizen, this is meddling in human affairs that he knows don't concern him.

More, this guy has never lived in a democracy.

In life, Carlisle lived under an absolute monarchy that, upon civil war, became an absolute theocracy. From there he learned that vampires live under a total dictatorship.

For the first 150 years of his life, democracy was that funky thing the Athenians did in history books thousands of years ago, no more relevant to him than the Ancient Egyptian monarchy is to me. Then the Americans, and later other European countries started doing this.

Good for them.

There's this mistake often made by those who view history from a... for lack of a better term, a solipsistic standpoint. A belief that the present day is the culmination of all of history. “My society is the best society, the most reasonable society; all the others had it backwards. Thank god we’re living in this enlightened age!”

The faith in our current system of government is one such belief. We (pardon me if this doesn’t apply to everybody reading this post) have grown up in democracies, being told this is the ultimate form of rule, and perhaps that is true - but remember the kings who have told their subjects they had were divine and the best possible ruler based on that. Remember also that most modern democracies haven’t actually been democracies for very long at all, America is the longest standing at some 230 years (not long at all in the grand scope of things) and they have a fracturing two-party system to show for it.

Every society, ever, has been told they’re the greatest, and their system of government the most just. Democracy is only the latest hit.

This is relevant to Carlisle because he’s immortal and decidedly not modern. Democracy has not been installed in him the way it was the rest of the Cullens, Jasper included. To him- well, it’s just not his world. He has no stakes in our human politics, and as he is older than every current democracy and has seen quite a few of them fall, he’s not going to internalize the democratic form of rule the way a modern human has.

I think the concept of voting is foreign to him.

It requires a level of participation in human society that he’s simply not at. He does the bare minimum to appear human so he do the work he loves, but nothing more, and I find that telling.

As it is I think he'd be iffy about his family doing it. He won’t stop them, but in voting they’re... well it’s kind of cheating. They’re not really citizens, none of this will affect them, and by voting they’re drowning out the votes of real human voters. He does not approve.

Edward votes Democrat. He's... well he’s the kind of guy who will oil a girl’s bedroom window so he can more easily watch her sleep without being discovered, justifying it to himself as being okay because if she were to tell him to get lost he’d stop immediately. Same guy is so sure that he’d leave and never return again if she wanted him to, except this is the man who returned to Forks to hang around his singer, knowing there was a significant chance he might kill her. To say nothing of his Madonna/Whore complex, or of the fact that he tried to pimp out his wife twice, and was willing to forcibly abort her child.

This guy is very much in love with chivalry, with being an enlightened and feminist man who supports and respects women, while not understanding the entire point of feminism, which is female liberation.

He votes Democrat because he’s such an enlightened feminist who cares about women’s rights.

Emmett doesn’t care to vote, but if he has to he votes Republican. The guy is from the 1930′s, and has major would-be-the-uncle-who-cracks-racist-jokes-if-he-was-older vibes.

Esme doesn’t vote, that would require getting out of the house.

More, I just... can’t see it. I can’t see her being one to read up on politics and The Issues, period, but if she has to then I doubt she’d be able to decide.

Jasper doesn’t vote. Alice can have her fun, he does not care.

There’s also the whole can of worms regarding the last time he went to bat for American politics.

I imagine he stays out of this.

Renesmée doesn't vote. She has no stock in the human affairs. Who would she vote for, on what grounds? When Bella tries to pull her to the urns, she points out that she's three years old.

Rosalie, guys, I’m sorry, but that girl is definitely gonna vote Republican. Perhaps not right now as it’s become the Trump party of insanity, but the Mitt Romney type of Republicans? Oh yes.

And for the record, yes I imagine she does vote. To step back from politics would be another way she was relinquishing her humanity, and that’s not allowed to happen. So, yes, she goes to the urns, less for the sake of the politics involved and more because like this, she’s still a part of society in some way.

Now, onto why I think she’s Republican, I think it’s both fiscal and social.

This girl was the daughter of a banker who somehow profited off of the Depression, and who then became part of a family with no material needs that would soon become billionaires thanks to Alice. Poverty to Rosalie is a non-issue, as it is I imagine she views it as a much lesser issue than what she’s had to deal with. The humans can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, Rosalie’s infertility is forever.

Rosalie’s empathy is strongest when she’s able to project onto others, and she won’t be able to project onto the less fortunate at all.

Then there’s the fact that the Republican party is all about traditional family values, and pro-life.

Rosalie, a woman from the 1930′s who idolizes her human life and who‘d love nothing more than to get to live out this fantasy, is down for that. And as of Breaking Dawn she’s vocally pro-life, so there’s that.

This all being said I don’t think Rosalie cares to sit down and fully understand these politics she’s voting for, the possible impact they’ll have- that’s not important. What’s important is what voting does for her.

TL;DR: I bet anon regrets asking.

#long post #twilight #twilight vampires #twilight meta #twilight renaissance #politics #history #twilight history #carlisle cullen #alice cullen #bella swan #renesmée cullen #jasper hale #rosalie hale #emmett cullen

[blockgamepirate]

Technoblade’s purpose in the political narrative of the Dream SMP

I can’t sleep so I decided to finally write the post I’ve been struggling with for literal months, except way more casual because I can’t be bothered anymore and also I’m sleep deprived.

So the thing is: to me the DSMP storyline has always been primarily political, probably because I was introduced to it through Wilbur who was definitely going for political, and also because I’m just generally interested in political narratives right now. Obviously I appreciate the character work and the personal relationship stuff, that’s what makes it more interesting than just dry allegory, but when it comes down to it, this story is about politics to me. So that’s the angle I’m going to approach it from.

Also not to spoil the conclusions here, but I’m an anarchist, that’s my lens.

(Obviously all of this is about rp from here on out unless otherwise specified)

Basically the situation as Techno joins the server is this: L'Manburg exists as an autonomous nation and is de facto independent although not officially recognised by the Dream SMP. The self-appointed president Wilbur Soot decides to hold an election and rig it in order to consolidate his power over the nation he founded and he gets his VP Tommyinnit to join in on the plan. Their scheme fails and they end up voted out instead. The new president, Schlatt, immediately establishes himself as an authoritarian figure and exiles Wilbur and Tommy.

A couple of points on what the election arc demonstrates:

1: the appearance of democracy can be used for distinctly undemocratic purposes.

2: even if the elections aren’t rigged, the electoral system could be massively flawed and end up favouring a party that in fact didn’t have the popular vote

3: even if the winning government (the coalition in this case) has the majority vote, that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll actually act according to the popular will.

4: the supporters of the losing parties basically just have to let the majority overrule their wishes, espcially since apparently L’Manburg doesn’t have an established role for an opposition, yikes. That’s actually a MAJOR oversight in the system but I’m not gonna go into that too much.

5: frankly as an anarchist I am just deeply cynical towards representative democracy, and just because you have a token appearance of choice and consent doesn’t mean that it isn’t a hierarchical and authoritarian system. And to be fair, from my point of view this applies even to so-called liberal democracies and progressive parties. Full disclosure: even if L'Manburg was the ideal example of a representative democracy (which it very much isn’t) I would still be opposed to it because I fundamentally do not believe in top down systems, even electoral ones.

6: despite all these flaws, all the characters seem to implicitly accept the electoral system as legitimate. There’s criticism against the actions of individual characters acting within the system, such as Quackity calling out Wilbur for trying to rig the election, but nobody is questioning the system itself.

So at this point I’m sitting there, watching all this go down, and thinking “man, this would be so much more bearable if there was an anarchist point of view being represented in the story.”

And hey, look who IMMEDIATELY SHOWS UP.

Okay, I’m not gonna lie, early installation Technoblade is not the best representation of anarchism. I was mostly rooting for him out of sheer contrarianism initially. I didn’t really even care if it would be another Killmonger/Magneto/Zaheer situation because I’m used to reading against the authorial intent when it comes to these things. Sometimes any representation is better than no representation, even with political ideologies. That’s not to say that him just straight up spouting this hobbesian notion of a “dog-eat-dog world” didn’t grate on me, obviously it did.

That kind of worldview of humanity needing authority in order to prevent chaos and conflict is literally antithetical to anarchism and is the favourite talking point of authoritarians, the least anarchist people there are. It’s literally what people use to argue AGAINST anarchism. I think it’s mostly because cc!Techno obviously wasn’t particularly educated on anarchist thought and was just basically having fun roleplaying with his friends at this point. Which is frustrating but fair enough I guess.

Cynical ideas about human nature are pretty deeply rooted in the mainstream, unfortunately, most people just consider it common sense. And like I said, it’s a huge talking point in the propaganda against anarchism.

(… even though in fact these arguments were originally used against proponents of representative democracy. Hobbes himself was very much a monarchist, the idea of letting normal people vote for their representatives would have been terrifying to him. Like surely the world would descent into a free-for-all war, all against all. Imagine letting commoners have OPINIONS, the horror.)

So yeah, that stuff was pretty ehhhhh. It was basically what I’d expected though: cc!Techno isn’t an anarchist and we just don’t get accurate representation from non-anarchists, ever. What I dared to hope was that Techno’s character would at least stay consistent about his opposition to ALL governments. I was pretty sure that he would, even though it seemed like the majority of the fandom at the time was convinced that he would switch over to Schlatt’s side or something. It would have been a really shitty twist, I would have ragequit immediately. I mean what would have been the entire point of his character then? He might as well have been a random mercenary. Why even have his character be an anarchist if you were just going to make him work for a government?

(ftr this is kinda my biggest problem with the Hypixel Skyblock revolution event lol, honestly I think that was a worse depiction of anarchism than early DSMP Technoblade. I mean the speech was good, but… still became a government official, tho. booooooooo, cringe)

And yes, I was rooting against L'Manburg, obviously, and I would have even if it had meant having to deal with another badly written anarchist villain character. I never understood why people saw L'Manburg as the good guys, they were nationalist and exclusionary and their whole existence was based on trying to scam people for money.

I mean they were definitely funny, they were great entertainers. I have no problems with people rooting for them because they’re fun to watch; I did that for a bit too. But people were starting to get really into the story and talk about Wilbur and Tommy, the corrupt politicians, and the country that literally excluded people based on nationality as the heroes, unironically, which was wild to me. And when Wilbur started his “villain arc” well: people called it a villain arc, as if he hadn’t been pretty much a bad guy from the beginning, constantly just out for money and power and taking advantage of the people around him and then pretending to be the victim when challenged. I mean yes he got worse, but I wouldn’t call it a villain arc, more like just a mental breakdown arc.

More importantly, to me L'Manburg represented so many things I hate about the status quo in real life, and seeing the fandom mostly unquestioningly accept it as good just pissed me off. Still pisses me off tbh. I mean, to be diplomatic I could say that I understand the emotional attachment and the way L'Manburg was built up mirrors a lot of how real nations are built and how they create a sense of patriotism out of symbols and a sense of honour and loyalty, and it’s actually really fascinating how it even works in a Minecraft roleplay. Says something about the human mind I guess. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.

Anyway, I just wanted to see literally any kind of opposition to power, even if it had to come from a character that was unquestionably a villain, which I fully assumed Techno would be. Because political narratives so often just leave us out, or at best barely mention us. And even from a narrative point of view, adding an anarchist perspective to a political story just objectively broadens its scope and actually challenges people who are used to only arguing along the lines of conservative or liberal, welfare state or privatization, nationalism or multiculturalism, etc. Even if the original work dealt with it poorly, at least it would give me the excuse to rant about it on Tumblr, which is kinda why I revived my old Minecraft sideblog for this. (That and pig!Techno fanart.)

Also how can you have a story so fundamentally about power without its counterpoint: the rejection of power?

(Yes, Dream SMP as a whole is definitely a narrative about power, it’s a huge theme for Wilbur, Quackity, Dream, Eret and the Badlanders at least, as well as obviously the anarchist characters from the opposite direction.)

So yeah, the build up to November 16th for me was mainly about the anticipation for what Techno would do, how would Techno’s character respond to the seemingly inevitable formation of a new government. THAT was the point of interest for me, that was what I was the most invested in. Would we get an actual anarchist opposition as a new side to the conflict or would they just awkwardly drop that whole angle? Or even have him team up with Schlatt like a complete sellout? There was so much potential but I worried they might just waste it.

And I was right to worry since apparently in the original script Techno wasn’t supposed to do anything, he was just there to help fight Schlatt and witness the explosion along with everyone else.

And WOW that would have been so incredibly boring

Not even just from the political perspective, just talking about the narrative in general terms here: imagine November 16th without Techno’s plot points. Not only would it have been boring for Techno’s character but it would have been equally boring for basically everybody but Wilbur and Philza. An anticlimactic fight followed by a big explosion that pretty much everybody had seen coming already. Yes, the button room scene is dramatic and heartbreaking… for Wilbur and Phil. But nobody else was there to see it. For everybody else, it was just a big explosion. It would have been such a huge disservice to anyone watching the other POVs.

Techno’s intervention gave everyone an ACTUAL climactic fight, it allowed characters other than Wil and Phil to witness some actual drama happening and to participate in it, rather than just waiting around for the explosion, while also foreshadowing the explosion. Even better, it provoked SO MUCH discussion in the fandom AND gave a perfect hook for future conflicts to arise. Wilbur’s end was tragic but it was, at the time, final. L'Manburg would have still suffered a catastrophe but it would have been left with just the same exact antagonist as before: Dream.

And at this point Dream’s core goals had barely changed, just his approach was now different. Yes, that makes a difference for the plot, but it doesn’t really change much in terms of ideological conflict. Especially since there really isn’t that big of an ideological difference between Dream and Tommy, because arguably neither of them are particularly big on ideology in the first place, they just have conflicting goals and use different tactics to achieve those goals (well, the tactics aren’t always even that different *cough Spirit cough*).

Techno’s conflict with Tubbo and especially Quackity (and honestly most of the other characters in general) brings in so much more depth to the story, just by introducing another angle, not to even mention how much it brings to focus questions about power and violence. These are themes that exist in other characters’s storylines too but nowhere in the same way or as central as with Techno.

I’m getting kind of ahead of myself here, though.

The real twist of November 16th was the fact that Techno WASN’T a straight up villain, actually. It was a twist to me anyway, because with all my cynicism I just didn’t see it coming, I didn’t expect him to actually start making reasonable criticisms. I didn’t expect him to drop the hobbesian arguments entirely and start making points that actually sounded like anarchism.

I have to assume that cc!Techno must have seen some of the criticisms of his character and been inspired to adjust because the difference is pretty notable.

(Sidenote: I’m just forever kinda sad that Techno’s “I may seem like the villain here” monologue was cut from the video and most people never heard it.)

And I felt SO validated by the way, because it works so well in the story! Everyone is mostly content with the restoration of a status quo of some sort, Schlatt is gone, this is supposed to be the good ending, and then Techno calls them all out and turns the narrative around completely: This was just a coup d'état. This was just the previous political leadership retaking power by force. Why is everyone celebrating the same exact system that lead to Schlatt’s authoritarian rule in the first place?

What he does there is force the audience to question the narrative they’ve been presented so far, that they’ve accepted without a thought. It might not convince them, but they can’t just ignore it either.

Whatever you wanna say about the discourse around Techno on that day, in the ideological narrative THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART. Not who betrayed who or when is political violence justified, that’s about personal relationships and morality and it’s mostly all more relevant to the aftermath than the event itself. In my opinion, the REAL point in the moment is that the characters and the audience were comfortable with the ending only to be presented with a completely new perspective on the events.

It also recontextualises the finale, including Wilbur’s actions! It’s a much more ambiguous end to the Pogtopia vs Manburg arc and to Wilbur’s original run as the head writer. Wilbur’s “even with Tubbo in charge I don’t think [that ‘special place’] can exist again” is vague enough to be dismissed as just part of his paranoia and internal conflict, but with Techno, there’s a concrete question: what if Tubbo, given the same powers as Schlatt, will turn out to be just a new Schlatt? And suddenly you have to wonder what Wilbur meant by his words too. And was all this foreshadowing something about L’Manburg’s future?

Okay I’ve only made it to November 16th and there’s so much more DSMP to talk about but the post is getting too long and I’m starting to lose my energy. Will I ever make a part two? No idea. But I’ll try.

Standard disclaimer: I’m not the spokesperson of anarchism, other anarchists might disagree with my reading

#technoblade #bladeblr #dream smp #dreamsmp #dsmp #l'manburg critical #c!wilbur soot critical #for courtesy tags #anarchy pog

[eldritchqueerture]

Point of View - Original Statement Fic

Point of View (5004 words) by LadyNikita Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Statement Giver(s) (The Magnus Archives) Additional Tags: Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), this was intended as the eye but evolved into the vast as well, happens, cosmic horror, attempt at Eldritch Madness, unreality, Discussions of pointlessness and meaninglessness, Canon-Typical The Vast Content (The Magnus Archives), from the eps about space, Mentions of Death, Compulsion, discussions of free will (kind of), Dissociation, Panic, Mentions of addiction, Leitner Book (The Magnus Archives), except it was not possessed by Leitner, Pretty Colours <3, Neurodivergent Protagonist, Queer Protagonist, because I can project a bit as a treat, Can Be Read Without Prior Knowledge of the Podcast (I think)

Summary: "Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?" --- Statement of Lyria Ellison regarding a different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.

Notes: Hiiiiii <3 I've been reading Lovecraft recently and as much as I hate the dude, The Colour Out of Space gave me so much inspiration that I immediately sat down and produced this in one sitting. I've been meaning to play with the concept of eldritch madness for a while; something about this trope is really appealing to me and I'm really enjoying my attempts at shaping it with words. Lyria is a preexisting OC of mine, I will give some background on her in the end notes because I love her very much. This is a form of practice for me; I'm playing with horror themes and I'd like to get acquainted with them to better incorporate them into my overall writing. Therefore I will accept constructive criticism if anyone wants to give it, but only in the form of DMs, either on Tumblr (your-queer-vampire-dm) or on Discord, if we know each other through a server. All of the warnings I think should be mentioned are in the tags, but if you think something should be added then please tell me!

Date: May 10th , 2018

Name: Lyria Ellison

Subject of experience: A different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.

—

How do you start telling a story that changed your heart, your mind, and your soul so profoundly that you can barely still function in a society? How do you say all that without sounding borderline insane? Nobody knows what I’ve seen, what I’ve been through. I know they would all say I’ve hallucinated it all and should seek treatment. But I know it won’t help. I know… I know so much now. Too much and not enough. Never enough. I know what happened was real . I don’t have proof so I’m guessing you won’t believe me either, but I need to tell someone about it. So I might as well tell you.

My name is Lyria Ellison and I’m a neuropsychology major. Ex-major, I should say. I dropped out after… Yeah. I dropped out; there’s not much point in continuing studying things about the feeble, insignificant human brain. Utterly pointless venture.

Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?

Just a year ago, I was convinced I was going to finish my degree. I was so passionate about it too, eager to learn more and more, to research and seek knowledge. Curious and fascinated by the world around us. What a foolish thing it was to give into that drive. My mind was open to the supernatural, although I always approached it scientifically; I never said the supernatural existed, but I also never said it didn’t. It was plausible; all in all, every scientist must accept that there is still a vast amount of knowledge we don’t have about the world.

The ignorance was a blessing. But I shall not get ahead of myself.

It started around December last year; my dad had died, and my girlfriend, Shawala, and I were clearing out his house. There wasn’t really anyone else to do it; my mother had passed a couple years prior, I had no siblings, and extended family was out of the picture as well; and my dad had gathered a lot of things in his adventurous life; he was a traveller, and he loved the world, loved learning about it, just like me. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with it all; my dad meant a lot to me back then, and Shawala proved an excellent support at that first shock. She promised to do some first view assessments of the ground floor, while I went to scope out how things looked in the attic.

It’s always either basements or attics, isn’t it? I used to read horror, Lovecraftian was my favourite – how ironic, isn’t it? How stupid . How utterly ignorant. The hubris of the human race at its finest.

Anyways, the attic was half-lit from the small windows in the roof, and dust was swirling in the faint light of the afternoon sun. It was cold here, but I didn’t pay much mind; the house was old, and it wasn’t surprising that there was draft. To say the space was cluttered would be an understatement; I could barely walk around the numerous boxes, old furniture, crates, and overflowing bookshelves; all of which made something in my chest curl tight, bringing tears to my eyes. I steered my steps towards the nearest bookshelf; I’ve always been a bookworm, fascinated by nearly any tome I came across; I’ve been reading popular science books since I was eight. So naturally, I was drawn to the books, taking huge steps above the cardboard boxes and careful not to hit anything else.

The books were old, of course, and dusty. Some of them had loose pages, and I treated them very gently, almost reverently. I have a little bit of a bookbinder streak, and I decided I would take them home and try to put them back together. As I rifled through them, I saw they pertained to a vast variety of subjects, from poetry, drama, and history, to science, metaphysics, and maths. The deeper I looked into this stunning collection, the more reverence rose in my heart; at my fingertips I had the oldest and the biggest accumulation of knowledge I had ever seen. I saw some books dated back even two hundred years ago.

At that point Shawala called me to check if I was alright. I put the book I had in my hands back and my knuckles brushed against the black leather cover of the next one on the shelf. I felt pleasant tingling in my palm at the touch and my heart leaped at the prospect; I didn’t know why –  the book seemed ordinary enough on the shelf and there was no title on its spine.

I sometimes wonder if I could have just left it there and gone downstairs; chosen to come back later and then maybe, it wouldn’t have enticed me as it did. If, by that point, I had had any choice left on the matter.

Alas, intrigued by the book, I placed my palm on the spine and took it out. The leather was soft and smooth, probably sheep, with familiar subtle grains all over the texture. I remember it striked me as odd that it was warmer than the rest of the books in the drafty attic, but I shrugged it off. The front cover had a title, small but visible in the centre, etched in gold – Punctum Visus .

I, by all means, cannot read or speak Latin, but I figured it was something to do with vision. I opened the book, an unknown anticipation buzzing in my stomach. The pages were worn and old, their texture was slightly rough but pleasant under my fingertips; as I opened the front page, I saw the title again, this time in thick but still elegant, black letters, and the smell came up to my nostrils.

I tried to describe it in my head countless times after. I always loved the smell of old books, and I knew it very well, so it came to me as a surprise to realize it wasn’t the only smell I could feel from the book. It was… cold, somehow, distant but prickling at my nose, a little bit the way peppermint tastes. It reminded me of the night sky and distant stars somehow. The smell awakened an unease within me, as I couldn’t quite place what it was and why it seemed so weird , but it wasn’t by any means unpleasant. It was… enticing. Like a promise of a mystery.

I breathed it in again through my nose, closing my eyes, and for a moment I lost all feeling in my body. I was untethered and immaterial, somewhere in deep darkness that seemed to envelop me whole. It felt cold on my mind, stretching it thoughtlessly in the empty vastness, and I saw distant flickering lights of stars. Before I could form a coherent thought, I was back in myself, panting and shaking, staring at the front page of the Punctum Visus . I looked around with shaky breaths; the attic looked the same, and Shawala’s steps on the stairs reached my ears, with her voice calling my name. A shiver passed down my spine, causing goosebumps to bloom on my skin; was it the draft, the dread, or the excitement I couldn’t tell.

I knew I had to read this book, no matter what it took for me to do so.

I took it home, almost forgetting about the rest of the books upstairs. It had spent the next month laying in my room, as I dealt with the formalities and moving the rest of things that weren’t sold from the house either to my place or to charity. After the day we left the house for the last time, I collapsed in my bed, exhausted, but instead of closing, my eyes fell on the book unassumingly waiting on my nightstand.

A surge of excitement passed through me, waking me right up. I sat up and reached for the book. It was still warm; I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad, but warm it was. I think it made me subconsciously assign it more… being? Like, even before I knew anything, I somehow subconsciously accepted that it was more than just an object; that it was, in a sense, alive on its own. I brushed my fingers on the cover, feeling the texture of the leather and the etching of the letters. In the meantime during this month I had checked the meaning of the title – Point of Sight; a position from which a thing is or is supposed to be viewed. It makes so much sense now.

But then I didn’t know what dangers it held; or I didn’t want to think about them. I do remember feeling anxious, my hands trembling every time I opened the cover, but it was so mingled with exhilaration of the certainty I was discovering something important that I must have disregarded it. As I turned the pages, I wasn’t surprised to find the text in Latin; though I still felt a pang of frustration that it meant I couldn’t read it for now. I rifled through the pages, looking curiously at the letters that formed words yet unattainable to me. There was a hunger inside of me; a hunger to Know. As I turned the pages past various symbols, illustrations of the constellations, and of Earth, I determined it must be some sort of a metaphysical work. The point of view on the world around us.

Normally I just skim through works like this and leave them. While they are an interesting read sometimes, they’re not my favourite genre and, looking objectively, putting in the effort of learning a whole language just for the sake of reading a treatise on the meaning of cosmos by an unknown author seems strange at best. But somehow it seemed obvious to me that I had to read it. It called to me, sang into a part of my being that begged to be filled, promising knowledge that would finally leave me satisfied. I know now that it’s impossible. Once you’ve tasted the hunger for knowing, you will never find satisfaction; it’s like an addiction. You just crave more and more, and the knowledge never ends. After a certain point you know too much and when it all connects, when it starts to make sense… you slip. I didn’t know that, even though maybe I should have. I didn’t know what those things I was feeling meant then and I didn’t stop to question them; I gave into it as soon as it touched me. I was stupid.

What followed were a busy couple of months. Every waking moment that wasn’t spent keeping up the pretence of being interested in my major (back then I only thought it a brief hyperfixation, of course, and wouldn’t have called it a pretence at all), I was learning Latin online or staring into the incomprehensible words on the pages. This period of my life is a blur; I remember my friends checking up on me if I was alright, since I wasn’t particularly social anymore. Shawala got progressively more worried, but it fully escaped my mind to care. I know that staring thoughtlessly at the book took up more and more of my time; once, I remember, I returned from my classes at three PM and took the book out; when I came back to myself it was well past midnight. That’s when I started to feel truly uneasy about it. It was the second half of April; I looked back on what I’ve been doing these past months and this cold dread started creeping up to my throat. I realized I didn’t know why I wanted to read the book so much and I remembered the “vision” or the hallucination I had that first time in my dad’s attic. I had set it aside completely as unimportant, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why. I started shaking and theorizing in my head about the book being able to influence my mind somehow, to control it. Had my actions not been my own? How much of it was my own will and how much was the book? Was it even possible for it to influence me like that; could it be that it was supernatural in some way?

The house became cold, unnaturally so. It was dark and all the windows were closed, but a chill draft managed to find its way into the corridor I was in anyway. I sank to the floor and hugged my knees, trembling in panic. I was all alone in the flat, everyone I knew was surely already asleep in their homes, and I was small and weak in the face of something that maybe could have controlled my mind. I suddenly became aware of the leatherbound book in my hand, and I threw it along the corridor at the front door with a whimper, as far away from me as possible. The book thumped against the door, then the floor, and opened on a random page.

I’ve read enough horrors. I knew that the page would be significant, and that knowledge made me sob and hug my knees tighter. I didn’t know what was happening; I felt like I’d just woken up from a months-long dream… and perhaps I was right. The recent past felt alien.

I felt tears sting my eyes and that’s when the smell reached me. Again that mixture of old paper and peppermint cold, distantly sweet but freezing the blood in my veins. My breath came in ragged and shallow, and tears streamed down my face as I stared at the open book that was calling me in an inaudible whisper. The logical side of my mind was trying desperately to make sense of it, to assign the dissociative feeling to my father’s death and yeah, it was plausible, but somehow it just didn’t feel right. The whispers sounded again, swirling around my head, the golden sound almost touching the back of my neck, making me wince. It was enticing and promising, but this time, I felt terror instead of excitement. Disregarding how my mind was trying to rationalize the situation, I knew the book was cursed somehow. I knew that I was its victim. And I knew that I would not be strong enough to resist it.

I don’t know how much time I sat there, trembling, and sobbing into my knees, before I calmed down from the panic and decided I had to do something. I had to find out what this book was and how it found itself into my dad’s library. I couldn’t remember seeing anything in his diaries that would mention it at all, but then again, I didn’t read them all cover to cover. On wobbly legs I carefully made my way back to my room and searched the Internet until the sun started peeking out of the window; I found nothing about any book titled Punctum Visus . I tried all the libraries that I’d known of, that had their assortment online, all the research databases; nothing.

So, at the crack of dawn, with a fast-beating heart, I stood in the door of my room, staring out into the corridor, where the book still lay by the front door, unmoving. The golden strings of a wordless melody made it to my ears; it promised an explanation; that this time if I looked close enough, I would find what I was looking for.

What was I looking for?

Where else could I find the answers if not in the book itself?

I could feel its cold fingers slowly wrap around my mind, steering me to come closer. It called me with a hypnotising voice that awakened all the red signals in my brain, telling me to run and hide, but I didn’t. The voice meant danger, but I knew it also meant knowledge.

Dangerous knowledge. The pull dragged me through the corridor step by step; I hadn’t been fighting it as strongly as I could have had and I was about to start, since I was getting closer to the book, but suddenly I felt the chill of the influence let go, hovering close but out of reach. It was still compelling me to come, to Look, but I could move my own limbs. I had a choice to make.

Knowledge of danger. Did I believe my own warning thoughts that I would regret looking into the book? Did I take my own logical, rational side seriously? Was I ever good at resisting my own impulses?

I’ve never been addicted to anything, but then again, I never really had the opportunity, as it were; my friends were more of a no-alcohol types and I really ever smoked cigarettes once. I’ve never seen drugs in real life. So who’s to say if I’m not an addictive personality? And this, this was addictive. The thrill of mystery, the exhilarating process of learning, the anticipation of the answers.

Was it ever really my choice?

No supernatural force guided my steps that night; no cold fingers made me kneel next to the book and carefully cradle it in my arms, looking at the page with a shaky breath and tears in my eyes, as if I was coming back home like the prodigal son. But I’m sure it was by some paranormal means that this time I could understand the text on the pages.

I honestly don’t remember what it said. As I read the unfamiliar words, the meaning presented itself in my mind, not entirely unlike that first “vision” I had in the attic; as soon as I started reading I knew that I had made the choice and there was no turning back. That cold draft enveloped me, sat on my skin, and started to bite; I felt that smell again, stronger than ever before, something intangible but unmistakably inhuman . It was then that I realized that’s what had felt wrong to me about the smell since the beginning. It was inferior and alien. My hands started shaking as my eyes, glued to the text, moved now on their own down the page, drinking the words in. I was terrified out of my mind, but the pleasant tingling along my nerves was back, the anticipation of the promised understanding.

My mind was drowned with the tide of knowledge. This was just a prologue; a true discovery would require preparation, but I was almost ready. The voice said I was chosen, that I was a perfect candidate to bring It what It needs and that I would be rewarded. I cried tears of amazement and horror at the sheer scope of the voice – it seemed to encompass the entire world. I couldn’t comprehend it, but I didn’t know then that it was a blessing. I wanted to know, I craved to know what It was and how I could be of use to something so powerful, so huge. Divine. That was a word that crossed my mind, as much as I don’t like that. I don’t like many things, but I can’t change any of them.

The voice said I’m on the right path. I would Know and Understand. First, I needed to do something. As It told me what that was, doubt started to creep up to my mind. What was I doing? What was happening? How could this be real?

I came to on the floor by my front door, the cursed book in hand, with a tear-stained face and a bloody nose.

I knew what I had to do to get ready and, as I calmed down and went over everything in my head, I was surprised by how trivial it was. Honestly, by this point I was kind of afraid It would tell me to hurt someone, so I was glad this was just about reading a bunch of words in a specific location at a specific time. I was aware of the fact that this was most probably a ritual, and I was quite apprehensive. I kept arguing with myself in my head, over and over whether I should follow through, but deep down I knew that I would, no matter what I told myself. This part, I think, scared me the most; how compelling the promise of knowledge was, how reverently I’d found myself thinking of the book and its owner (which I assumed was the voice), how fanatical some of my thoughts sounded. I’ve never been religious, never really felt idealistic either. I was always focused on facts, on the here and now. Can knowledge be an ideal? Can you be a fanatic of Seeing and Knowing?

How much had I changed since I’d found Punctum Visus in that old attic.

I found a good, quiet spot, on the north-west side of the New Forest National Park near Southampton. I told no one about this, deeming it unimportant. I would come back after my big discovery, I would explain everything. I laugh at myself now; at my naivety.

The night of April 28 th was clear, and the starry sky looked back at me as I parked my car on the road in the forest and locked it. I tied a piece of a long red string to the wheel, not to lose my way in the forest, and started to walk forward. I held the book close to my chest, as if it could protect me from the dark, eerie outlines of the trees, swaying gently on the wind and whatever the darkness around me held. I didn’t light the torch; the moon was nearly full, bathing everything in its gentle light, and besides, for some reason it seemed that the crude yellow light would somehow break the sanctity of what I was about to do. I could see the ground in front of me and managed to lose sight of my car and everything else besides trees pretty fast.

I stopped when I found a small clearing. The moon was high in the sky, shining down on me like a big eye; I didn’t know why this comparison seemed the most fitting, but it did. I took a deep breath, feeling a chill plant little dots all over my skin, making my hairs stand on end. The wind died down and the trees froze, as if in anticipation. I felt something watching me closely; I was not alone here anymore.

The realization made my breath catch in my throat and the last streaks of sanity broke through my thick skull. Run! Drop the book and run! I didn’t. My hands trembled, my muscles tensed, and I stood there, frozen with fear as something stared at me, seemingly for eternity. Something bigger than me, bigger than anything I have ever seen was watching me, waiting. My eyes dropped to the book in my arms. The black leather was warm, as always, but this time I felt a pulsating sensation from it. A heartbeat.

I screamed. The book landed discarded on the ground, and I stumbled backwards and tripped, landing in the grass as well. It was cold and wet, and it glistened with something in the faint moonlight. At first I took it for water, but upon closer inspection I saw it was the grass itself that glittered – a shy rainbow, glowing iridescently in an impossible way. I froze, stunned, for I have never seen such colours before. It seemed utterly alien, something unfitting for the human eye to see; simultaneously beautiful and horrifying.

As I looked around, I noticed that everything alive in the forest – the trees, the grass, the bushes, the plants – had taken on that iridescent mixture of faint light that prickled my eyes and sent a shiver of terror down my spine. It was beautiful, utterly gorgeous in a way that nothing a human eye can perceive could be. It was horrifying in how different, alien, and other it was. My senses could tell this is not of the Earth; not of this reality, not of this world; everything in me that still had common sense tried to recoil from the inferiority of this magnificence and the danger it brought, but I had abandoned common sense a while back. Maybe even when I touched the book for the first time. I stared then, breathless and trembling, at this scenery as if from a fairy tale and decided to lock away my rational thoughts. I wanted to See, to Know; I wanted to experience and if this was the death of me then hell, it was a pretty good way to go. To behold such a sight, I thought, was a reward in and of itself.

Of course, I had no idea what any of it meant. I slowly rose to my knees and patted the ground down until I felt the book. It still pulsated with this heartbeat and the letters etched in the leather glowed with golden light. My hands were sweaty, and I didn’t know whether I was shivering from fear or the cold. I opened the book on the first page.

What I saw was not what I had expected. I remembered that the first page, after the titular one, was the beginning of the introduction, that much I had understood, but now it was a big picture in black and white; a night sky, with an almost full moon and strewn with stars. It was a shot from the ground and treetops could be seen at the edges of the picture. As the book swayed in my hands, the stars glittered, and the perspective shifted ever so slightly, as if it was in 3D. Stricken by a surge of dread and cold certainty, I looked up. My suspicion was right – the picture in the book depicted the exact image that was now above me. I gasped quietly and looked down at the book—

And this is where things started to really go horribly, horribly wrong.

The book was gone. What’s more, the ground was gone too and suddenly everything was not where it should have been. I blinked but it did nothing to ease the dizziness; and when I composed myself enough to register what I was seeing I froze, the most intense horror I have ever experienced crushing my body from all sides and inside out.

I realized that I was Seeing. I was finally Seeing, and I Understood it all.

I don’t know how to convey in words what I saw. I don’t believe it’s possible; humans were never made to see and understand such things. I should have never touched the book, I should have never asked for knowledge. All my life I believed that knowledge was the point; it was a tool, and it was power. I don’t know what I think anymore. I think some knowledge should always be hidden because we were not made to know everything. We can’t , it’s physically impossible for us to comprehend.

For one moment in my life. For one moment I became something else, and I saw the world in the way It sees the world. For one moment I shared a mind with an eldritch being, a thing that is Fear itself, and I saw the Earth through Its Eye. I can’t… I can’t tell you just how horrible it is. How… How meaningless; we’re all intertwined things, guided by strings of web that lead us through life, and we’re all connected in this maze of fear . We’re not individuals; we’re not special. We don’t have souls and none of our experiences matter. We’re just fear. These… These entities are a part of all of us. They’re our fear and they live inside of us, inside of every living creature that can feel fear. Can you comprehend that? How can you be sure you are yourself when there’s a cosmic entity, a power as old as life itself, living you ? And no one has any idea. Nobody knows and if I tell someone they’ll think I’m crazy. Sometimes I think I’m crazy. But deep down I know what I saw. I know it was real. And I’m terrified. I’m terrified because I know that this Being of eyes that I became a part of watches everything I do. I feel Its presence here very strongly, and I guess it makes sense. It will never leave me. It’s a part of me, just like the rest of them; just like they’re all a part of every one of you, yet you have no idea. But I know. And I know I’m all alone with that knowledge, the knowledge that I can’t comprehend, but I know I could in that one moment. It’s a very lonely place to be and I’m scared.

I’m scared as I have never been before; this fear doesn’t leave me anymore. Every second of every day I’m aware I’m watched by something as great as cosmos. I’m aware I shared my mind with that being and it makes my skin crawl.

I don’t know what to do now, but I don’t expect any advice from you. I’m leaving the book with you, as proof. Its heart doesn’t beat anymore, and I’ve seen what I was supposed to.

Don’t read it.

Notes: If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving me a comment!! For people interested in a little bit of background: Lyria is a D&D character I have created that still awaits her chance to play in a campaign. She's an arcane scholar that has a dark little secret of actually being a warlock of a being she doesn't know a lot about. She's in love with knowledge and she seeks to learn about her powers as well as the world around her. I'm currently DMing a Ravenloft campaign and I just couldn't miss the fact how much potential for a corruption arc she has. Then I listened to TMA and I was like, she would definitely become the Avatar of the Beholding.

#i discovered you can copy tags straight from ao3 #ive been using that site for how many. 5 years now #:| #anyways #tma #the magnus archives #tma original statement #cosmic horror #niki.writes #lyria elerieth #goes in my oc tag because thats technically an au #im really happy with this one guys!

[ninjakittenarmy]

I’m really fucking tired of people automatically accusing people of hating redemption arcs and not realizing people can change because they complained about ONE redemption arc being ill conceived or poorly executed. Like yeah, people can change and grow to be better people, and being redeemed doesn’t mean others need to forgive them, but guess what? That doesn’t mean that the redemption arc was good! It doesn’t mean that the arc was satisfying or well suited to the show! If your villain crosses certain lines, then they’re going to be very hard to sympathize with when they have a face turn. That’s just how it is.

Take Steven Universe: I’ve been an avid fan of that show for years, I love it to death, and I will be the first person to tell you that anyone saying that it supports fascism is a fucking idiot. HOWEVER, I also think the Diamonds’ redemption arc was horrible. It basically required one to focus on the family drama and relationships of the diamonds at the expense of what made them actually EVIL.

Sure, perhaps they were always meant to be a depiction of toxic family relationships as viewed through a lens of cartoon heroes fighting cartoon villains, but the fact of the matter is that even if you want the whole conflict to be a metaphor/consequence of realistic family drama with much more wide reaching consequences-which can TOTALLY be done btw, that’s perfectly fine- you still need to set things up in a way that makes reconciliation believable and not a huge miscarriage of justice.

The Diamonds were HORRIBLE people who killed countless of their own subjects, turned dead revolutionaries into twisted monsters still suffering in immense pain in a bid to destroy humanity, and wiped out countless worlds (admittedly, the writers said that humans were the first sentient organic life they found), and yet because they had an epiphany about their home life, we’re just supposed to accept that and move on. It doesn’t work like that. Even if the whole conflict is a dramatization or metaphor for familial strife, you still need to pay attention to the literal events actually happening. I’m not going to disregard the actual war going on and the consequences thereof because we’re focusing on the personal feud at the center of it all and it happens to be resolvable. I admire their attempts to resolve some of these issues in Future, where Yellow is shown in the process resurrecting the subjects she murdered, but the arc itself was still very forced.

Steven Universe really is the perfect example for this discourse because it has one terrible redemption arc amidst a sea of good ones. Lapis and Peridot had great redemption arcs that dealt with their personal issues in ways that made us like them and sympathize with them. Peridot was easy because she was mainly comic relief, but it was still a very moving redemption when she was shown getting her first taste of freedom and growing to love the planet. Lapis, while somewhat divisive, was an even better one in my opinion. Sure, it took a while, and even towards the end, she still had major issues throughout, but her character was built in a way that made it so you WANTED her to come around, and even though she had major issues throughout, it was always clear to the audience that she was never a BAD person at heart, and she never went too far down the path of evil to be forgivable.

Spinel is probably the one of the best redemption arcs I’ve ever seen, definitely in my top 3. I’d even put her above Zuko in some respects, though mostly due to personal preference. That’s really impressive considering that not only did she try to blow up the planet, like the diamonds did, but she also came soon after the polarizing Diamond redemption arc I just cited as a bad example. Spinel was everything the Diamonds should have been. Menacing and clearly unhinged, irrational in her goals of vengeance, and extremely dangerous, willing to end the world for what is for all intents and purposes a personal dispute with a relative (a very serious one but nonetheless), yet somehow still sympathetic throughout.

Unlike the Diamonds, Spinel was a character the audience WANTED to see redeemed throughout the whole film, even through her actions were still pretty terrible. A part of this is that we see more of her personality and struggles in the film than we see of the Diamonds’ in the whole series. We learn to like her and sympathize with her plight. It helps that she’s extremely entertaining. The other part is the main crux of the issue at hand really, and that is: SPINEL NEVER KILLED ANYONE!

This is the main issue I have with this whole debate. People get accused of refusing to let people change or let characters have any flaws when all they do is hold people accountable for anything AT ALL. Yeah, if a character crosses certain lines, I won’t want them redeemed. Sure, what those lines are depends on the scale and scope of the work and how seriously these actions are treated/ what consequences they had, but they exist and some crimes simply aren’t forgivable.

It’s easy for me to forgive Spinel because her actions caused mostly temporary damage. No one died. The Diamonds killed tons of people, including humans defending their home from destruction. Liking one doesn’t mean I have to like the other. Forgiveness doesn’t come for everything. Yes, I know the victims don’t need to forgive the villains as part of a redemption arc, but you know who does? THE AUDIENCE. The audience is pissed at these people too, you need to win them over. Their forgiveness doesn’t come just because the author says it should.

“Oh, but some people are more forgiving than you.” Fine, let them like this stuff, but if every fucking show I watch redeems villains after making them seem like the worst people ever, I won’t like it and I WILL express my opinion on the matter. I’m sick of every villain NEEDING a redemption arc. So many works go for the forgiveness angle in the end with little to no buildup.

To be clear, I don’t hate redemption arcs. In fact, I love them. Some of my favorite characters are ones who underwent redemption arcs. My favorite character ever (Crona from Soul Eater, but you don’t necessarily need to be familiar with them for this) started out as a villain before becoming a hero. I actively prefer the anime version of the show they’re from because it gave them a happier ending. Catra from Spop is another fantastic example. Both of these characters hit many of the same notes as the positive examples I listed above. Those are just the two best examples I can think of for redemption arcs in my opinion, but there are certainly more.

I’ve even desired redemption arcs for characters we WEREN’T supposed to want one for. Chara from Undertale, Seryuu Ubiquitous from Akame Ga Kill, possibly Toga from MHA though I’m actually somewhat hopeful about her (if Endeavor can have one, she should too). All of these characters are ones I feel are compelling enough characters that I actually waved my usual threshold for crimes I can forgive. I still get why it didn’t happen, mind you, I’d just kind of like it.

So yeah, I love redemption arcs. When used well, they can result in some of the most interesting characters in the work. But that doesn’t mean my love for the trope is unconditional. Like any trope, it is a tool. It can be misused, and when it is, it’s fucking infuriating. Nothing is more rage inducing than a villain not facing consequences for their actions. A redemption arc that doesn’t work is literally just that presented as a good thing. Few things are as infuriating as a work have something infuriating happening and telling you to celebrate. It’s like someone punching your teeth out and demanding payment for the dental work.

#redemption arc #fandom discourse #steven universe #atla #soul eater #shera #spop #akame ga kill #undertale #my hero academia

[jinruihokankeikaku]

summary bulletpoint review of Shin Eva

[obligatory disclaimer that this is all, just, like, my opinion, man<3]

POSITIVE

Shinji's instrumentality scene with Gendo

Ryoji Kaji the Younger and Misato's development as an actual mother was great, deeply moving and deeply painful (as Eva should be.)

the entire first act of the film, honestly

more characterization for Asuka Shikinami and Ayanami/Rei 3, perhaps the best in all of the Rebuilds

it's a beautiful film, the animation in magnificent (even the CG, if you ask me), and the setpieces and action scenes all worked really well and didn't seem to have a disproportionate presence relative to other parts of the film

cannot emphasize enough how good the first act is. If the entire film had carried on that tone, atmosphere, and theming, I think my overall impression of it would have been much more favorable.

i liked the music, especially the callback to "The Passage of Emptiness" around 0:20:00 (I'm sure there are other score callbacks that I didn't catch, too)

many of my issues with / questions about 3.0/Q were resolved in a serious, focused way

the third act was nothing short of stunning visually and narratively, despite my thematic objections

I had fun with it. It was an enjoyable film, and still a cut above a lot of both recent anime and recent Western scifi blockbusters I've seen. For all my issues with the film, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it on both of my viewings so far, and I've no doubt I'll come back to it. I would unequivocally recommend Shin Eva to both fans and non-fans, despite....everything I'm about to say.

NEUTRAL / MIXED

everything about the Book of Life (whatever that is) and the non-resolution given to the question of whether or not the Rebuilds constitute a sequel or a separate continuity. It'll doubtless be a subject of debate for years to come.

by extension, everything to do with Kaworu, frankly. I thought he was great in Q, and because of that, my feelings on his presence in 3.0+1.0 amount to something along the lines of "he was great, insofar as he was there, but I wish we'd more of him."

the resolution of Gendo and Yui's relationship. I know it was pretty polarizing, and while I understand both the "perfect narrative resolution" and "misogynistic and deeply unsatisfying" takes, I'm not sure I'd entirely agree with either of them. It's well-executed for what it is, but still fundamentally unbalanced and not quite on par with the way it was handled in The End of Evangelion, imo.

the resolution of Shinji and Kaworu's relationship. I almost put this in the negative section, but to be frank, I never expected them to end up together, and as much as I love Kawoshin, I understand that that's not the direction the Rebuilds were ever going to take, nor is it a direction I think Shin Eva should've taken. Furthermore, I think the way the concept of the Time Loop was handled about as well as it could have been - an excellent balance between Nonetheless, I think the Kaworu section of the Instrumentality sequence was weak and overly dismissive towards the validity of Kaworu's feelings, his actions, and (if you'll pardon the irony) his humanity.

the balance of action / atmosphere / characterisation. It's not perfect, but it's better than any of the other Rebuilds, with (as previously stated) the first act carrying most of my favorite atmospheric/character moments, and the second act containing the best action sequences.

the general tone of the film. It started off very strong, with a feeling reminiscent to that which The End of Evangelion left me with, and maintained a suitably dark-yet-hopeful tone for most of the second act as well. However, it fell apart entirely for me in the third act, and especially in the final scene (which I'll comment on further later).

Rei 3 / Ayanami. I adored her. For exactly that reason, I think it's a damn shame she had to LCL-splode less than halfway through the film.

Ryoji Kaji the Elder. Everything we saw of him was magnificent! So I sure wish there was more of it! Given the scope of Shin Eva's content, I guess that's more of an objection to 3.0, but...I guess I just dearly hope we get more material covering the 14-year timeskip, WILLE's revolt, Kaji's sacrifice, and everything leading up to it. It feels like a missed opportunity (unique to the Rebuilds) for character development Kaji might've received. But on the whole, that's a minor quibble relative to how fond of his and Misato's relationship in the Rebuilds were handled in 3.0+1.0.

NEGATIVE

Mari / "Mary Iscariot". Enough has been said about Mari's "enigmatic" character, so I'll not harp on this too much, but....as someone who loved Mari's presence in 2.0 and was basically okay with her role in the Rebuilds as a whole, there was still a remarkable dearth of character development for her, which left me disappointed on the whole, especially considering...

...the final scene. That final scene. Oh man. I don't want to devalue the personal meaning it has for Anno, or the sense of satisfaction some of my fellow Eva fans got from it. But the more I think about it, the more it doesn't work for me. After the credits started rolling on my first viewing, I remember writing in my notes app - "How am I supposed to feel about this?". After my second viewing, I was left with.....exactly the same feeling. The scene is framed as unambiguously positive, and yet....it simply doesn't come across that way, upon further contemplation. Even setting aside my abiding love for KawoShin and AsuShin, I think even from a ship-neutral perspective the scene doesn't quite carry across the message of Hope what it seems to intend to.

The film's themes. For all its narrative and visual strengths, the film left me feeling confused, empty, and....fucking confused. And not in the same way EoTV or EoE did - my confusion was not to do with the actual events of the film, but with the emotional and psychosocial messages conveyed. I won't presume to know Anno (or his co-directors') intentions, but....it's hard for me to not feel like I'm being told to set aside the past and hope for a deus-ex-machina to fix my life. This is also something about which a lot of ink has already been spilled, so I'll keep my thoughts on this front short (especially since I can't tell if I'm giving the filmmakers too much credit, or not giving them enough), but....the plain fact that Shin Eva seems, at least superficially, to present itself as a thematic antithesis to The End of Evangelion is enough to leave me upset or at least unsettled. That's more of an emotional reaction on my part than an actual critique of the film, I know, but....I'd be remiss in not including it in my review.

Ritsuko - specifically, the fact that she was reduced to a side-character at best, with arguably less of a presence than even Fuyutsuki, and perhaps even comparable to the minor roles of the rest of the Bridge Crew. She was so very compelling in Neon Genesis Evangelion and even in her brief screentime in The End of Evangelion, and while I can hardly say I was expecting her to play a key role in Shin Eva after her diminished presence in the previous Rebuild installments, I can't say I wasn't hoping for that, either. Ritsuko deserved better, but like a few other things I've mentioned, that was more of an issue with Rebuild of Evangelion as a whole than it was an issue with Shin Eva.

Asuka Shikinami. She had her moments, but fell short of the intensity and depth of character Asuka Soryu was given. There's much more to be said here, but frankly it merits its own post, cos this one is getting long already.

And finally, I'll just say again that more than anything else this film left me confused. It left me questioning the value of the Rebuilds as a whole, the messages of NGE and EoE, and my own character as a person. Maybe that was the point. After my first viewing, I said out loud something to the effect of "So this must be what so many people felt after seeing The End of Evangelion. Now I get it!". Perhaps that speaks to the power of the film - it certainly speaks to Anno's enduring talent as a writer/director - but, for a film that was meant to be a spiritual successor to The End of Evangelion, it's impossible for me to say that it didn't fail to carry on that film's message of Hope despite everything, Hope in the face of despair, Hope against the hopelessness of the human condition, and the abiding power of the human person to persist beyond both the indignities it suffers at the hands of others and the indignities it inflicts upon others. It failed in that regard, to my view, and for all that I loved about Shin Eva, that's one failing I'm afraid I might never be able to get past.

TL;DR

I loved Shin Eva. I hated Shin Eva. I respect it for what it is, but I can't bring myself to put it on the level with Neon Genesis Evangelion or The End of Evangelion. Watch it. Definitely watch it, if you haven't already (and if you haven't, why are you reading this?!). The film leaves you with a closing sequence that demands that you draw your own conclusions, and ultimately, I think that's all you can do with a work that carries with it such personal weight (for both the creators and the viewers) and such heavy expectations.

#shin eva #neon genesis evangelion #evangelion spoilers #evangelion 3.0+1.0 #shin evangelion #3.0+1.0

[bigskydreaming]

I don’t often muse upon PJO, but when I do, its random as hell. 

Anyway, tonight’s thought (singular, also: derogatory, as in very possibly a mistake) is about exploring aspects of the Greek gods that are extrapolations of like, what they’d be like in the modern world instead of just in terms of their ancient myths.....and how that might widen the scope of their demigod children and their powers.

Like take Hephaestus for instance. God of the forge and fire, of invention and artifice......now widen the scope on those things through the lens of the modern age.....might he also be considered the god of modern science, not just in terms of things like engineering and technology, but also physics, chemistry? Or would those things fall more under Athena’s purview......unless you separated them into finer divisions. Like, you could consider Athena’s overview of knowledge and wisdom to make her the goddess of science and higher learning or whatever in general........OR you could separate it like.....Hephaestus is the god of natural or physical sciences like physics and chemistry, and Athena is the goddess of not just wisdom and tactics but things like psychology, computer sciences, etc.

Or OR get Dionysus up in there too, and make it like Hephaestus is the god of chemistry, of chemical reactions and the like, Athena is the goddess of physics, of the most full and complete understanding of the physical universe via things like the unified field theory and its comprising forces of electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force, etc, and then Dionysus the god of biology, hmmmm.....

Cuz imagine then, demigod children of Hephaestus, where instead of pyrokinesis, some get powers like transmuting elements.......oh man, the things you could do with that??? Not just lead into gold but they’d be terrors in battle because they could transmute the very air someone breathes into chlorine gas, blood into acid, flesh into stone. Or using that power defensively, making them able to keep guns from firing by dampening the chemical reaction that comes from igniting gunpowder, or just knocking someone out or putting them to sleep by just tanking their metabolic reactions. Mingling magic with modern know-how and creating their own version of truth serums by turning the water someone drinks into something akin to sodium pentathol when just brushing their fingers against someone’s glass, or rendering all drugs or toxins that might have been slipped into their drink null and void by transmuting them into harmless H20. 

(I know that Luke was mentioned briefly as being good at making potions aka alchemy due to being a son of Hermes, but frankly, transmutation as a mastery of the periodic table makes waaaaay more sense for Hephaestus’ kids, I’m just saying. And plus the Greeks didn’t so much consider Hermes an actual god of alchemy as they more just kinda viewed him as their god of all things miscellaneous and tended to lump anything they didn’t have particularly strong feelings about and/or a grasp of under his umbrella. Hermes was really just the patron god of being random as fuck and oh great gods of Olympus I have no idea what I want to do with my life, give me a sign. Hermes: poofs into existence on their shoulder and says SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED TO GO BE GAY AND DO CRIME YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, DIVINE MANDATE, LETS GOOOOOOO).

Give children of Athena more practical applications for being heirs to her wisdom, knowledge and strategic acumen by also giving her dominion in the modern age over humanity’s quest to better understand the universe we live in and all its rules, the ins and outs of the laws that govern reality itself.......thus Annabeth and others’ potential acumen for magic being here not the end result of them stepping on Hecate and her kids’ toes, but rather more a function of making them the embodiment of ‘magic is just sufficiently advanced technology’ as they - via an innate and heightened understanding of the very nature of the physical universe - find holes in the fabric of space and time that let them slip from Point A to Point B as easily as crossing the street, play tricks with gravity and relativity and things that leave others baffled and amazed and them just shrugging and being like its all in the wrist, dude, and also, the fact that our mom just GETS reality in a way that everyone else will still be playing catch-up to a thousand years from now.

Children of Dionysus (yes I know he barely has any shhh we’re not paying attention to the series we’re just musing on demigod powers here) who combine the godhood of grapes and revelry with loud music and laughter......the way music can help with plant growth, because music is essentially just VIBRATIONS and vibrations stimulate activity in plant cells in a variety of ways.....and thus similar to Mr. D’s tricks with controlling vines and rapidly growing plants, AND his ability to affect the psyches of others, which is described as inflicting or curing madness and I’m like ehhhh do we have to describe it thus though.....put all that in a pot, shake it, not stir, and abrakadabra, alakazam, other psychic pokemon random Psyduck shout-out and voila! ALL of that could be afixed to and made the end product of godly and demigodly control and manipulation of vibrations, cuz Dionysus is literally the god of just vibing in all its infinite forms.....and thus its all just about how vibrations affect plant life on a cellular level, how they can affect brain chemistry in a variety of ways, triggering a lot of the more primal centers/functions of the brain, etc. You kids are driving me crazy, he’d yell at his demigod kids, and they’re like umm wow, like ACK CHOO UGHLY, father, welcome to the 21st century, all we’re really doing is directly stimulating the prefrontal cortex of your cerebellum with our banging rock music, and its making you angy, what about it?

And speaking of actually, if we and by we I mean me cuz I am and its wheee, are theorizing about Athena’s brood getting to be all magical wunderkind whizkids with their scientific acumen and divine cheat-sheets for the physical universe, maybe Aphrodite and her kids could snatch up those psychology and psychiatry job titles instead. Love, desire, also things like obsession, hyper-fixation......is Cabin Mighty Aphrodite really just pheromone central or are its campers more like magical dopamine and serotonin factories just pumping out good vibes all around them, being like come hang out, its free brain juice. Like, imagine kids of Aphrodite who just by their mere presence could help the legions of ADHD demigods focus better, concentrate easier, get shit done because the goddess of passion and her children like....have the gift of helping people to more productively pursue their passions in ALL forms, not just the physical desires they hold for others but the passions they hold for arts and crafts and sports and y’know, saving the world on magical coming-of-age quests when their milkshakes bring all the monsters to the yard. 

And then Ares not just as a god of war and conflict, but of entropy....the tendency of the universe to trend towards disorder, randomness, uncertainty....the kind of things that so often incite or enflame conflict......but applied at large not just to interpersonal dynamics but to the world itself. With his children possessing demigod abilities that disrupt or weaken bonds, both in the form of emotional ties between allies and commitments towards various ideals or courses of action, but also the ability to PHYSICALLY weaken bonds, resulting in an enemy’s weapon falling apart at a touch, or increasing the instability or volatility of an object so it blows up akin to how Gambit of the X-Men’s powers work and can turn even playing cards into a weapon, etc, etc.

And don’t even get me started on Hermes! No, seriously, don’t. Mostly because I haven’t thought that one through yet and I got nothing. I mean I got some things but they are nebulous and have yet to spring forth fully formed from my head like Athena from the fuckhead of Zeus, that absolute fuckhead of legend and yore. In my defense though, I haven’t like, eaten any primordial goddesses of thought and memory, so.......like, idk, I’m taking the longer route here I guess.

[walkerwords]

“In Her Sights” F!Reader & Negan (Daryl x Reader Background)

Summary: You are a former special ops member. When Negan killed Glenn and Abraham you were on a run for weapons. When you learned of what happened, you were pissed, especially since Negan now had your husband, Daryl. When Negan comes for week one pick up, you are waiting for him, unseen and with demands.

Word Count: 2250

Warnings: cursing

Song I Wrote To: “Bloodlust” by The Phantoms

Note: some things are different, just go with it! :) Requests are welcome, go ahead and send prompts for everything TWD.

-------

The rumble of the trucks alerted the scouts on the edge of the perimeter. 

Tobin immediately called in the arrival of the Saviors. You wasted no time in getting into position. Since you had arrived back in Alexandria and learned about Abraham and Glenn, the rage that you normally kept at bay boiled in your chest. Then Rick had told you about Daryl. You had destroyed half of your bedroom when hearing of that particular news.

The guilt was heavy in your heart. You were their wild card, the one that always kept them safe. You were the one who took out the snipers at Grady and even most of the Termites that threatened them when Carol attacked Terminus. It was your job to be invisible. You and Abraham were the two veterans of the group and while he took charge with war tactics, it was you, the former special-ops member, to take out their enemies unseen and show their true strength. 

However, the night that Maggie was sick and needed to get to Hilltop, You were out on a run to a nearby Air Force base with Jesus. You needed a few extra trinkets to work on your weapons and incendiary devices. When you had returned home to the news, you swore you wouldn’t leave them undefended again. 

You made your way to the vantage point in the trees. You and Sasha had managed to camouflage it perfectly with the help of Eugene and Carl. It was invisible unless you knew what you were looking for and it gave you the perfect view of the front gate and the hostiles that approached Alexandria. You readied your rifle, adjusting the silencer on it as well as the laser sight. Through your scope, you could see both sides of the wall. Rick and Aaron were waiting for your orders. Aaron on the ground and Rick hidden on the watch post. Two other weapons were at your side on the platform as well as three soaked sheets of Walker blood to detract the Dead from circling your hiding spot. 

You trained your weapon on the approaching vehicles, counting the Saviors and gaining a perspective on their weaponry. While they may have more ammo, they didn’t know about you, and Rick was careful to keep it that way for as long as possible. The Saviors exited their trucks and readied their weapons as the boss finally made an appearance. You sneered as Negan strutted towards the gate. His leather jacket hugging his broad chest and his infamous baseball bat hitched onto his shoulder as if he was putting on a show. 

“Little pig! Little pig! Let me in!” He bellowed and you switched on your laser sight. You aimed it right at Negan’s heart. Immediately, the man to his right pointed it out. The man with the pornstache, Rick called him Simon, pointed to his boss, taking a step back. Negan glanced down and anger filled his face. “What the shit!” he yelled. 

“Aaron,” you said into your walkie and the gate slowly slid open. The Saviors all turned their weapons on Aaron who ignored them and walked towards Negan. He held out the walkie to the leader without saying a word. Negan stared at him, unmoving, so you raised the laser to right between his eyes. Simon grabbed the walkie and offered it to his boss, a warning look in his eyes. Negan snatched the radio and Aaron walked back inside the walls, shutting the large gate behind him. Aaron nodded to you and you then lowered your sight back onto the man’s sternum. 

“What the fuck is this, Rick?” Negan said into the walkie. 

“This isn’t Rick, asshole,” you said calmly into the radio. Negan looked around, trying to guess where the shooter was, but he would never find you. Even if he discerned where you were held up, you had activated traps around the tree. The Saviors would be blown sky high before they even got the chance to reach you.

“Whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to?” Negan asked, slipping back into his cocky performance. 

“That’s not your concern,” you said, your teeth grinding together. “You know, we haven’t met, but I like to think we have something in common, Negan.” 

“And what’s that?” he asked, gripping his bat harder. 

“The whole ‘we are Negan’ bullshit. That’s how I work too. I’m everywhere you sick son of a bitch. The only reason you are still alive is because when you slaughtered my friends, I was out on a weapons run. If I had been in that RV, your first roadblock would be a pile of charred bones right now.”

“You’re real brave to threaten me, sweetheart,” he growled. “Why don’t you come on out and we can discuss this like grown-ups?”

“I prefer to keep my distance,” you responded. 

“Sounds a bit cowardly to me,” Negan spat back. 

“At least I didn’t kill an unarmed soldier and the husband of a pregnant woman who kneeled at your feet as she struggled to keep her unborn child alive,” you returned with as much venom as you could muster, feeling both Glenn and Abraham’s loss in your chest. Negan had gone quiet, looking at Simon.

“She was pregnant?” Negan finally asked. 

“No, she just had a bad case of food poisoning. God if you were even still remotely human you would have asked what was wrong with her. Not that any of that matters now. Maggie is dead along with her son.” Negan hung his head slightly as he heard the news. You, of course, knew that Maggie was fine. The widow was now at Hilltop with Sasha and Enid as she finished her pregnancy. However, Negan didn’t need to know that. “Congratulations, asshole, you killed a pregnant woman.” 

“What the hell do you want?” Negan fired back. “What game are you playing?”

“This isn’t a game, Negan, this is just how things are going to be from now on. I have some demands and you’re going to meet them or you die.” 

“Again with the threats, darlin’,” he said, still searching the trees. It was silent for a moment. “Did you disappear on me?” You raised the laser sight to his throat. 

“I know you have Daryl,” you said, your tone deadly calm. 

“I do,” Negan said smugly. “What interest is he to you?” You watched as the man on his left, Dwight, you figured, glance back at one of the trucks. Even at this distance, you could see the unmistakable mop of hair of your husband. 

“You’re going to release him,” you told him, “You are going to let him go and you will return both his vest and his crossbow or I start shooting.” Negan glanced around, nearly laughing amongst his Saviors as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. 

“Here’s a question for you mystery lady,” he said, taking a few steps towards the main gate. “Who is he to you and why shouldn’t I just put a bullet in his brain right now?” You flexed your hands around your weapons, trying to stay calm. Rick had warned you that Negan would try to get under your skin and that you needed to be careful. You were trained to control your emotions, but even you had to admit that this man knew how to get under people’s skin. It made you want to shoot him even more. 

“If you even try to pull a gun on my husband, I will fill your body with so many holes that even your Walker body won’t be able to get up and walk again,” you threatened evenly. Negan nearly dropped the walkie at your words. 

“Woah! Husband! Did you hear that, D? Your man Daryl has a goddamn woman to warm his bed!” Negan said to Dwight who was looking like a fidgeting weasel. “Well, shit, sweetheart, I didn’t know our Daryl was such a lucky man. Tell me, what it is that you find so fucking special about him? Cause if I’m being honest, he’s not much to look at, at least not since we’ve had him.” Negan sent a smile in your general direction, clearly enjoying all of this very much. However, you were tired of playing this back and forth shit. 

“You have ten seconds to do what I asked or my rifle finds its first target,” you said. 

“I have a better idea,” Negan said, “why don’t you take that rifle and shove it up your ass?” 

“Fine,” you said and then quickly retrained your weapon, “Ten,” you counted and fired, shooting a Savior right between the eyes. The body dropped quickly. “Nine,” you shot another man. “Eight,” a woman to Negan’s left went down in a spray of blood. “Seven,” the man next to Dwight dropped. 

“Stop!” Negan bellowed and your finger stalled on the trigger. Simon stared around in horror at the scene, seeing his four dead comrades creating pools of blood across the asphalt. 

“Daryl. Now,” you repeated. 

“Shit!” Negan cursed and then looked at Dwight. “Get him,” he ordered. Dwight wasted no time in running to the truck Daryl was being held in. You watched every move as Daryl stumbled out of the truck and besides a few bruises and cuts, he seemed to be in one piece. You would make sure Rosita took a look at the gunshot wound that must have still been bothering him. Dwight shoved Daryl towards the gate, past Negan who glared at him.

“And the vest,” you said into the walkie. Dwight shrugged out of the leather vest and shoved it into Daryl’s hands. Daryl approached Dwight, getting into his face. Leveling a stare that made the other man swallow hard. “I believe he wants his weapon,” you said, easily reading the body language of your husband. Dwight just stared back, being stubborn. Daryl took a few steps back and then raised his right hand hooking his fingers towards you. You adjusted your aim and shot at Dwight’s feet, causing him to jump a foot or so back. 

“Dammit Dwight!” Negan yelled and Dwight grabbed the bow from the back of his truck and tossed it to Daryl who caught it easily. You then moved the laser sight towards Aaron and then back to Daryl and Aaron opened the gate. Daryl wasted no time in turning and walking back into his home, not even bothering to glance back at his captors. 

“Great,” you said, “now, kindly fuck off because I still have six more bullets with Savior names on them.” Negan nearly crushed the radio in his hands. 

“I’m going to kill you,” Negan promised. 

“That’s funny,” you laughed, “my friend said the same thing to you.” You then turned to see Rick stand up and make himself known. Negan turned to the leader of Alexandria with a sneer. Rick stood on top of the gate like a king as he stared at the Saviors below. His hand was resting on his gun. Negan noticed that immediately. Rick smiled. “A friend recently made a visit to the Sanctuary while you were on the road,” you explained. “Don’t worry, Fat Joey is still alive, he’s just missin’ a few fingers.” Jesus had retrieved the colt only an hour before the convoy had arrived. It was just icing on the cake for your plan.

“Why don’t you just pull the trigger?” Negan said into the radio, but his eyes remained on Grimes. 

“All in good time, Negan,” you said, recentering your crosshairs on him. “I want you to live for a little bit longer knowing that any point I can blow your brains out with a twitch of my finger. It makes me sleep better at night. So, you’re going to get back in your cars and leave Alexandria and if you come back, I will not only kill you, but everyone with you and then take them all back and let them loose on the Sanctuary and have your people fend for themselves. Do you understand?” 

“We had a deal, dick!” Negan called up to Grimes, swinging Lucille around in his hand. 

“She doesn’t make deals, Negan!” Rick called back. “Now go before I do kill you.” You didn’t wait for another witty comeback as you took aim and fired on another Savior. 

“Six,” you said. Negan threw the walkie down on the ground and strutted back to his truck. You watched them leave, their vehicles disappearing down the road. You then turned the channel on your radio and called to Tobin and Carl who were on standby at the end of the drive. “You can release them now.” 

————

A mile or so down, Tobin and Carl released two Walkers that stumbled out into the road.

As Negan’s convoy came across them, he slammed on the breaks. You and Rick had taken your time to perfect the art project. Both Walkers were male, dressed in biker boots, jeans, and leather jackets that they had found in the back of the closet of an empty house in Alexandria. Rick then had found two baseball bats and tied them to the Walkers’ hands. Letting them loose for Negan to see was Carl’s idea and you had loved it immediately. 

Negan got out of the car much to Simon’s disapproval. He wasted no time in swinging Lucille and killing both of the Negan-Walkers. He smashed their heads until there was nothing left but red. He turned his face back towards Alexandria, roughly wiping the blood from his face. “I’m going to kill that bitch.” 

#the walking dead #the walking dead imagine #the walking dead imagines #twd #twd imagines #daryl dixon #reader #negan #negan imagine #badass reader #twd imagine #daryl dixon imagine #reader insert #daryl dixon x reader #reader x negan #rick grimes #aaron #tobin #carl #alexandria #twd season 7 #AU

[saltymiraculer]

Dragon’s Wrath (pt. 6)

Previous // First // Next

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CAT KAGAMI HAHAHAHAHA

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“So, Plagg, I assume Adrien is not happy about this new…arrangement?“ Kagami asked in a very dignified voice, presumably to hide the satisfaction she got from it.

“Bingo,“ Plagg sighed. “The kid looks like he just survived a robbery. And not in a g–wHOA!“ The ground shook, knocking over what was left of Kagami’s straw dummy and making Kagami herself fall on her stomach. “You will feel the pain of your life being uprooted, just as I did! Ladybug and Chat Noir, reveal yourselves!“

“Time to transform?“

“Time to transform. Just say Plagg, claws out!“

“Got it. Plagg, claws out!“ When the green light faded, Kagami’s hair was much longer and pulled back into twin braids, she was wearing a hexagon-patterned black catsuit with red highlights, combat boots, and a gold-hexagon-patterned black mask.

“So cool.“

She used the baton she found at her side to hoist herself up onto the roof of a building, where she was able to scope out the playing field.

“Exciting, isn’t it?“ a voice said from beside Kagami, making her jump. “Scary, too. I’m Ladybug, but you probably already knew that. Who are you?“

Once Kagami calmed herself down, she said “I am…Chat Siam. I’m Chat Siam.”

“Welcome to the team!“ Ladybug said jovially. Kagami felt her stomach unclench a bit. 

“Thank you, Ladybug. Now, let’s get back to destroying this thing.“

“Right.“ They turned back to the giant mound of dirt and grass that was enveloping the Eiffel Tower.

“There you are!“ it screamed, tearing up the ground as it raced towards them. As soon as it made contact with the building that they were standing on, Kagami and Ladybug jumped, landing on top of the plant mound. “Lucky charm!“ Ladybug yelled. An empty matchbox fell from the sky.

“What am I supposed to do with…of course!“ She started running off to the left, to where Kagami could just barely see a beige-y yellow stalk.

A clump of dry grass.

Genuis.

“Yoo-hoo, over here!“ Ladybug said, waving the matchbox dramatically. “Look what I’ve got!“

“No!“

The grass wilted slightly and vines shot up from where Ladybug was standing, making her dance around them to avoid being caught.

“Chat Siam! To your right!“ Kagami saw it. In the middle of the browns, greens, and beiges, one pristine white dahlia flower. The eye of the storm. “Cataclysm!“ Kagami shouted, diving for the stalk. The flower crumbled to dust, and the dirt mound evaporated.

Ladybug threw the matchbox into the air, watching the magic ladybugs fix the damage to the city, including the poor akuma victim. “Wha–Ladybug? Chat Noir? What am I doing here?”

“You were akumatized.“

“And I’m not Chat Noir.“ she interjected. “I am Chat Siam.“ While Ladybug was comforting the victim. Kagami saw a freshly-restored Adrien being swept in by the ladybugs. She shot him a glare and hung her arm around Ladybug’s shoulders like she would with Marinette.

“Pound it?“ she asked. Ladybug threw her arms around Kagami instead.

“You did amazing! That was great!“ she cried, letting go. She made the subtlest, almost nonexistent head movement towards Adrien. “Way better than the old cat.“ Kagami understood immediately.

“it was very fun, Ladybug. You’re a great partner to have.“

“Thanks, kitty!“ Ladybug said, beaming. Adrien spluttered indignantly behind them. “Oop. I’m about to transform back, See you!“ With that, she swung off. Kagami shot another glare at Adrien and lifted herself up onto the roof of a building some twenty meters away, then dropped into an alley to detransform.

“That was good, kid!“ Plagg praised as he swirled out of the ring. His stomach growled loudly. “But, uh, do you happen to have any cheese on hand? Camembert, preferably?“

“Of course, back at the mansion. Let’s go.“ She strolled down the sidewalk, enjoying the view the whole four blocks to her house. When she walked in, she was met with quite the welcome.

“Kagami!“ her maid cried. “Where have you been?“

“I got caught up in the akuma attack.“

“Oh. Well, in any case, your tracker was disabled, which should be physically impossible!“

“The akuma broke it.“

The maid huffed. “Well, fine, then. Head up to your room, Teresa will alert the chefs, the menu is on your bedside table. Goodbye.“ She walked off stoutly.

Kagami shrugged and walked up to her room, sinking down onto her plush bed. “So, how about that cheese?”

She hesitated. “Plagg, have you ever tried fried Camembert?“

“No.“

“Well, we don’t have any other cheese options other than mac and cheese with four types of breadcrumbs, so fried it is. I’ll have some soup.“

Fifteen minutes later, a cart carrying their dinner was wheeled in by a short woman. “Enjoy.” she grouched, slumping out and slamming the door.

Two bites and a dish of redcurrant sauce later, Plagg had finished the three orders of camembert. He moaned.

“That was so good, I don’t know why rich boy never got it for me,“ Kagami flinched and put down her spoon. “Sorry, kid. I won’t talk about the other cat if you want.“

“No, no, it’s all right, just…I really did like him, Plagg. I thought we could actually have something together.“

“Hey, hey, don’t cry!“ Plagg said as Kagami’s eyes filled with tears. “He didn’t deserve you anyways. He didn’t deserve Ladybug, either.“

“Thank you, Plagg. You’re the first person I can really open up to.”

Plagg smiled. “It’s nothing, kid.“

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@elmokingkong @smolplantmum @iggy-of-fans @enchanted-nerd @kuroko26 @dawnwave16 @chocolatecatstheron @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen @more-or-less-human-i-guess @gwennex @jinxthe1 @schrodingers25 @justafanwarrior @agentofscifi @zalladane @miraculousgay @professionalfangirl1738  @sturchling @lavenderjunes @shippernaturalsanderspjoandscifi

#ml salt #ml salt fic #adrien #adrien agreste #adrien agreste bashing #adrien agreste salt #adrien salt #adrien bashing #chat noir #chat noir salt #chat noir bashing #lila #lila rossi #lila rossi salt #lila rossi bashing #lila salt #lila bashing #kagami #kagami tsurugi #kagaminette #kagami is precious #kagami x marinette #marinette #marinette dupain cheng #marinette deserves better #marinette x kagami #alya #alya salt #alya sugar #alya bashing

[thechekhov]

Hey, so I have a crush on someone who’s non-binary but it’s very confusing for me. I just wanted to know what your explanation of non-binary is because I’m quite confused by it and I’m not sure how to feel about liking a non-binary person? Like what sexuality would that make me, you know. For context, I’m a guy and I’ve been trying to stop liking people other than girls but it obviously ain’t working, and I’m just trying to know more about it I guess, but I don’t wanna offend them?

The fact that you want to learn more about the person you have a crush on and care about their gender enough to ask is, first of all, super kind of you. I wanted to mention that. As a non-binary person who ended up with someone who ISN’T nonbinary, let me tell you… having that person respect your identity and presentation feels like a warm blanket around your shoulders every day. 

Okay, now onwards to the actual explaining. 

I think you probably are already somewhat aware but as a general blanket idea, non-binary people are people who don’t feel like their gender identity fits within the gender binary. 

The gender binary is a word we use to refer to the two.. hm… for lack of a better word ‘traditional’ genders - men and women. 

Everyone sees it a little differently, but personally I subscribe to the theory that gender IS a social construct. That isn’t to say it’s not real - it IS. But gender is not a set standard in society. Never has been. The roles, expectations, social status of men and women across the years has always been in flux. (How does each gender dress? What is ‘expected’ of each gender? etc) And across a variety of cultures and communities, humans have always had gender identities that HAVEN’T been ‘men’ or ‘women’ but instead identified as something else - either something in-between, or something removed from that binary altogether.

Since gender is a socially constructed and maintained identity, some people DON’T fit into the ‘traditional’ parameters and prefer to define their experiences in their own way. 

What this means, simply speaking, is that you MAY have grown up, been raised in the identity of ‘boy’ - and that feels comfortable for you. You are satisfied that other people view you as a guy, you are set in this part of your identity and it (presumably) affects how you act with other people and what you expect from yourself. Maybe that means being masculine. Maybe it means being a good boyfriend to someone and cooking them meals. Maybe it means moving to the countryside and raising sheep! Who knows. 

In the case of non-binary people, this default gender they are assigned at birth (the one based on genitals) is not actually in line with their personal expectations of themselves. They don’t identify with the blanket idea of being a ‘man’ or being a ‘woman’. They don’t feel like the label of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ defines the role they want to take in society accurately. 

There’s a sort of ‘mind game’ many people use to think about gender and stuff that goes like this - “Imagine you’re a guy and you wake up tomorrow in a woman’s body. How would you feel?”

It’s meant to put you into the shoes of transgender people and make you think about how society interacts with you when your gender identity and body don’t match. And it has some value….. to an extent. 

Personally I feel that it’s more accurate to put it this way: 

Imagine you wake up tomorrow, and nothing changes. You get dressed in your regular attire and go about your day to run errands or go to work, but people keep casually referring to you as ‘Blue’ and commenting that your clothes are odd and aren’t the right color. You go into a store and people give you weird looks. Some old lady comes up to you and says ‘Why are you out in public wearing green and khaki? Don’t you know you’re giving other Blue children the wrong idea?’ 

You feel confused - you just put on a shirt that’s comfortable, and it happened to be green. Other people around you constantly talk about their assigned ‘color’ and what it means to them. You have no idea what anyone is talking about, but you quickly figure out it has something to do with your eye color being blue. You try to go along with it for a while but it ends up being exhausting. You want to wear and do things you like, you have a personal connection to, but almost everything is influenced by your being ‘Blue’. 

Colored contacts are an option, but they bother your eyes and they’re expensive - plus if someone noticed you wearing them, they tend to get violent. Some people even suggest that if you don’t identify as blue, you could get eye surgery and change your eyes to green or brown. But you don’t want that either - it’s dangerous, and besides, you ultimately feel that none of these colors fit you, specifically. 

This is kind of a metaphor, as I’m sure you guessed, but it’s what I’ve personally felt like since I was a young child. I’m agender (part of the nonbinary crew) and I personally have NO idea what the fuck gender feelings are about. I know people HAVE them - I know people care about gender a LOT. People have tried to get me to adhere to the standards of my assigned gender since I was little and have been emotionally devastated on my behalf when puberty did not ‘gender me up’ as much as had been expected. And despite all this, I feel no sense of belonging to either of the binary gender roles. If I woke up tomorrow in a body with completely different genitals I wouldn’t give a single shit beyond the obvious logistics of like… having to change information on my driver’s license. I would feel absolutely no more ‘at home’ than I currently do. 

Your non-binary crush MAY or MAY NOT experience the world this way. Maybe they have different feelings about it. Thinking ‘this person doesn’t want to be identified as a man or a woman’ is a good place to start, but it’s not the end-all-be-all.

So what does that mean for your sexuality?

Well, that’s up to you! If you’re worried about not being straight, that’s fair (I feel like that’s honestly a given in a society that STILL associates non-straightness with a variety of negative stereotypes). But remember - just because you’re attracted to a non-binary person doesn’t mean to HAVE to reinvent yourself. You’re still you, you still have the same preferences - you maybe just discovered that your attraction scope is a bit wider than you thought. 

You can define your identity in a variety of ways - straight with some exceptions, bi-curious, pansexual... I know many people jump to say ‘if you’re in a relationship with a non-binary person that relationship is already NOT STRAIGHT, YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT THAT’ but I personally see no positive benefits to defining people’s relationships for them.

I’d gather that for the time being, the best thing to do is to keep getting to know your crush - not as a gender, but as a person! See what they’re into, see what they like - how they like to spend time, what they prefer to be called, what they want out of life. Don’t focus on their gender unless they want you to. If and when the time comes to discuss your attraction and define it, then you can ask them to help you figure it out. :) 

Unfortunately necessary disclaimer: As I’ve mentioned, all things here are my own personal experiences, and are not meant to be statements defining of the community. If you disagree with how I parse gender, feel free to make your own post and explain YOUR ideas! Please be kind in the comments - we’re all just trying to make it to the end of the decade. :) 

#Anonymous #gender #genderqueer #nonbinary #non-binary #enby #NB #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqa #lgbtqia #queer stuff #agender