#doesn't mean i'm no less invested but!

[snoopyisbisexual]

NGL my only friend at college is a rly bad friend and also has some unbearable flaws that I can't even address w her. but she is funny sometimes + I have nobody else

#she is a poli sci major who's obviously been told her whole life that she's smarter than everyone else around her #but she's a poli sci major + has literally defended public christmas only lights with ''ppl of other religions celebrate christmas'' #she is literally a very ignorant white person but bc she's a hair less ignorant than everyone else where she's from #she thinks she's exempt despite saying mad classist + weird ass shit unprompted #she also never asks me about anything + only talks about herself + assumes random shit about me + treats me like I'm a baby #bc im not hooking up w ppl all the time. like just bc I'm not as out there as her doesn't mean I'm clueless #it genuinely doesn't feel like she's at all interested in me + just wants someone to talk to without engagement #and I'm kind of tired of it tbqh #me + the femme r on hiatus which is kind of hard bc she's one of like the few ppl in my life rn who i feel like actually enjoys + #understands who i am + is invested in me personally but im not abt to be like. can we resume the relationship you're not prepared for so i #can feel wanted by someone like that's literally insane #also super selfish #but im hanging out w heaven tomorrow+ forgot to take my meds so it's probably fine #but also whenever my meds lapse i get kind of pissed off about this friend so idk #part of my problem is that im not talkative that much bc im autistic so im either super verbal or just thinkin' #but tbh I'd rather have silence than to feel like my voice is only 5% of the conversation does that make sense #but maybe im being unreasonable idk #also she actively prevents me from hanging out w her other friends + im kind of tired of being ostracized on behalf of ppl #who otherwise like me ?? like im acquaintances w her friends but she like. will not hang out w me + them #like i feel like thats wild behavior esp bc she knows i want to ? like i want to party but she's always like #''oh i just thought you wouldn't lke it'' which likr. why tf did you decide for me ?? #she always does this + never asks me like. ''lh i thought it would be weird to bring you'' but you brought your roommate who literally met #thrm last month + I've known them since last year + we literally had classes together ????? #smth fishy af going on

[loregoddess]

love how I finally get some news on the FF7 remake stuffs (with more remake/remaster stuffs!?!) and my brain casually goes and brushes off the “time to think about these REAL obscure characters for a good 24+ hours” thoughts

#do you think they're going to like actually expand Angeal as a character? will Lazard actually get more backstory and character development? #does anyone aside from me and a handful of people care about the latter? #will Reeve get more story in Rebirth? WILL MY SON NANAKI AKA RED XIII GET MORE LOVE FROM THE WRITERS #I mean yeah I'm here for everyone more or less basically bc this is one of the few stories where I'm invested in most all the characters #which is...a rarity... #but that doesn't stop me from loving weird side characters who didn't actually get a lot of love from the writers #oooh also I hope some more stuff from Before Crisis gets brought in bc that is a lot gem of a game and I wanna see the characters from that #I mean again we're going out on teeny tiny tree limbs here but IMAGINE if some of the characters showed up in Rebirth #I know I can probably rely on Ever Crisis for what I actually want but I want the new timeline weirdness to ALSO have my obscure faves #ANYHOW #the stream was an absolute DELIGHT today #I just couldn't gush earlier bc I had to go make dinner and like...food important #but I am SO excited you have no idea #oracle of lore

[headspace-hotel]

I went down the internet rabbit hole trying to figure out wtf vegan cheese is made of and I found articles like this one speaking praises of new food tech startups creating vegan alternatives to cheese that Actually work like cheese in cooking so I was like huh that's neat and I looked up more stuff about 'precision fermentation' and. This is not good.

Basically these new biotech companies are pressuring governments to let them build a ton of new factories and pushing for governments to pay for them or to provide tax breaks and subsidies, and the factories are gonna cost hundreds of millions of dollars and require energy sources. Like, these things will have to be expensive and HUGE

I feel like I've just uncovered the tip of the "lab grown meat" iceberg. There are a bajillion of these companies (the one mentioned in the first article a $750 MILLION tech startup) that are trying to create "animal-free" animal products using biotech and want to build large factories to do it on a large scale

I'm trying to use google to find out about the energy requirements of such facilities and everything is really vague and hand-wavey about it like this article that's like "weeeeeell electricity can be produced using renewables" but it does take a lot of electricity, sugars, and human labor. Most of the claims about its sustainability appear to assume that we switch over to renewable electricity sources and/or use processes that don't fully exist yet.

I finally tracked down the source of some of the more radical claims about precision fermentation, and it comes from a think tank RethinkX that released a report claiming that the livestock industry will collapse by 2030, and be replaced by a system they're calling...

Food-as-Software, in which individual molecules engineered by scientists are uploaded to databases – molecular cookbooks that food engineers anywhere in the world can use to design products in the same way that software developers design apps.

I'm finding it hard to be excited about this for some odd reason

Where's the evidence for lower environmental impacts. That's literally what we're here for.

There will be an increase in the amount of electricity used in the new food system as the production facilities that underpin it rely on electricity to operate.

well that doesn't sound good.

This will, however, be offset by reductions in energy use elsewhere along the value chain. For example, since modern meat and dairy products will be produced in a sterile environment where the risk of contamination by pathogens is low, the need for refrigeration in storage and retail will decrease significantly.

Oh, so it will be better for the Earth because...we won't need to refrigerate. ????????

Oh Lord Jesus give me some numerical values.

Modern foods will be about 10 times more efficient than a cow at converting feed into end products because a cow needs energy via feed to maintain and build its body over time. Less feed consumed means less land required to grow it, which means less water is used and less waste is produced. The savings are dramatic – more than 10-25 times less feedstock, 10 times less water, five times less energy and 100 times less land.

There is nothing else in this report that I can find that provides evidence for a lower carbon footprint. Supposedly, an egg white protein produced through a similar process has been found to reduce environmental impacts, but mostly everything seems very speculative.

And crucially none of these estimations are taking into account the enormous cost and resource investment of constructing large factories that use this technology in the first place (existing use is mostly for pharmaceutical purposes)

It seems like there are more tech startups attempting to use this technology to create food than individual scientific papers investigating whether it's a good idea. Seriously, Google Scholar and JSTOR have almost nothing. The tech of the sort that RethinkX is describing barely exists.

Apparently Liberation Labs is planning to build the first large-scale precision fermentation facility in Richmond, Indiana come 2024 because of the presence of "a workforce experienced in manufacturing"

And I just looked up Richmond, Indiana and apparently, as of RIGHT NOW, the town is in the aftermath of a huge fire at a plastics recycling plant and is full of toxic debris containing asbestos and the air is full of toxic VOCs and hydrogen cyanide. ???????????? So that's how having a robust industrial sector is working out for them so far.

#CAPITALISM IS THE PROBLEM #AAAAAAAAAA #farming #sustainability

[bredforloyalty]

damn that's embarrassing as fuck

#eek!!!! i really do think this show is great like it has its pointless and tedious and tasteless parts but the core is very strong #and if someone asked me why something so silly has got me in a serious chokehold i'd have to be like‚ do you want a list or.. #(my own sister doesn't quite understand so that's funny. i don't even know how she copes like legitimately if she's so normal what does she #Do to distract from the everyday shitshow. basically why is she not me !!!) #(i mean she's never as invested or invested in the same way as me so i'm struggling to conceptualize how she works. you know) #trailing off. what the fuck was i talking about #oh yeah this is embarrassing this sucks i hate this i wish to be less self-aware

[kaladinkholins]

uhhh thinkin about how mizu and taigen's relationship was described as "this meeting of the minds, this meeting of the swords, that they could not share with anybody else" in one of the netflix articles about the show

and i'm going crazy because YEAH they're both equally invested about swords and fighting in a way that nobody else in their lives are. and that's just. so important considering we're talking about mizu, who sees her sword as her own soul.

and it's not JUST mizu who's obsessed with fighting. taigen is too. cuz like after their duel at the shindo dojo, as taigen is examining his bald spot in the mirror where mizu cut off his hair, he literally interrupts his own turmoil over losing his honour, just to express his awe, openly admiring mizu's skill DESPITE the fact that mizu just beat his ass and stripped his honour and status from him

then in the next episode, mizu says a very similar line when she examines the cut flower that fowler had pinned to heiji shindo's robe.

this was also such a sudden thing to notice in the middle of their conversation (my interpretation of this is that it hints to fowler's own skills with a blade, and gives mizu information about her enemy being a formidable opponent), but the fact that mizu had such a keen eye and managed to hone in on such a tiny detail from like a foot or two away is interesting because it shows us just how attentive mizu is, especially when it comes to blades and anything to do with them

to mizu (when she's not spiralling and agonising over her own self-hatred and the way the world treats her), swords are not a mere tool for revenge, but an art form which she is fascinated by and loves and admires. we see this from time to time, during rare moments of respite, like when she admires the duel in the beginning of ep4

mizu also takes to heart all the teachings from her years training, while taigen is interestingly less strict about them, basically disregarding some of those teachings as mere pedantry, or even if he doesn't actually really think so, he at least tells mizu as much in his attempt to comfort her after her sword breaks

but that doesn't mean he doesn't care for the more formal aspects of his training at all. because in ep3 when he says this

this line about mount sumeru is not talking about the literal mountain in front of them, but is a recitation of a line from the lotus sutra, which is among the mahayana sutras that they learned as part of their spiritual training, as zen buddhism forms a lot of the basis for samurai doctrines and philosophy. the sutra given more emphasis in the show is the heart sutra that mizu writes on her body in ep7 during her rite of rebirth

so taigen saying this line, as i see it, is a way to bond with mizu, or at least make conversation over their shared knowledge, as we see him await a reaction as soon as he says this. but mizu gives him none, and he looks disappointed/annoyed/frustrated or what have you as he watches her walk off without a word

also we see a little more of their shared knowledge of swordsmanship in the last episode when it's clear that mizu has been training ringo in sword fighting techniques

and later taigen recognises it instantly

they're both nerds about swords and fighting!!! they both respect each other's skills!!!

GOD i really hope in future episodes they get to bond some more over their shared passion and common training and just samurai camaraderie in general!!! mizu clearly loves the artistry of sword fighting so much, she deserves to have a confidant who shares that with her, someone she can talk openly about these things to!!!

because like remember when mikio was telling her about the naginata, she looked soooo uwu in love!!! admiring her husband as he showed off the weapon and told her the benefits of using it!!! believing at the time that she'd found a match who she could openly share her love of martial arts with!! she was having so much fun sparring him too. everyone says fighting is part of her love language and YES it IS!!!

except the difference is that mikio—due to, among other things, their large age difference and subsequent gap in life experience—believes he is mizu's teacher, rather than her equal. this is the role he's readily taken throughout their marriage, from teaching her how to throw a knife to cut down fruit (not like she needed that particular lesson), to teaching her equestrian skills.

meanwhile taigen and mizu were both kids growing up poor in the same backwater fishing village, which means that they are and always have been PEERS. and this becomes even more pronounced once taigen is stripped of his giant ego and unlearns his prejudice, allowing them both to fully respect each other and view each other as equals

which is again why it frustrates taigen when mizu admits later in this scene that she basically doesn't care about saving the shogun. like he gets mad because it upends his initial belief in their shared goals and aligned values, believing them both to be samurai of equal standing and honour.

ALSO i'd like to add, that though mizu is the better swordsman as we see her win all their brawls and matches, she doesn't surpass him by that much, and mizu knows this.

these words coming from mizu is such a huge compliment all things considered, acknowledging that he was strong enough to deserve fighting her, because shortly before this mizu was just about to say "no one has given me much of a challenge" only for taigen to enter the scene and, well, challenge her.

now combine this with her saying that chiaki's broken blade suits him well, giving to him HER sword which SHE made AND won, as a surety, promising him a duel that he "deserves". it's proof that even though she finds taigen an annoying brat and oftentimes an obstacle to her mission for revenge, she DOES respect him and does value his skills.

IN CONCLUSION nobody else is on their level, nobody else shares their love of swordsmanship and that is such an important factor to their bond and the way they relate to each other. i rest my case your honour

#mizu x taigen #taigen x mizu #taimizu #taizu #blue eye samurai #mizu blue eye samurai #taigen blue eye samurai #blue eye samurai meta #i caaaant stop thinking about THEM #like im soooo sorry im being annoying and cant shut up about these two #the brainrot is real yall. pray for me in these trying times #shut up haydar #meta dissertations.pdf #fandom.rtf

[starstrike]

I'm obsessed with how Shivers will outright tell you that the anodic music kids will fail. I think this implies that, even if you build up the club, nobody will ever visit it.

I think this was one of the times in Disco Elysium that I really... got it. After reading this, I decided to tell the kids to scram. They wouldn't succeed anyways. It felt terrible. I reloaded my save; I couldn't stand to do anything else. Just because hope, beauty, or love are temporary, does that make them any less valuable? Just because you know something will be snuffed out doesn't mean you shouldn't try. That hope and love is valuable for its own sake.

At the time, I was going through a severe depressive episode. I was moving out in six months before moving cross country, so why should I bother investing into my environment? I had this old fish tank I'd poured effort into, once. Got some new fancy aquasoil that would be great for my plants, but it needed time sitting underwater. I left it like that for… oh, months. This damaged, empty, sad little thing that I had once loved immensely.

But building that nightclub with those kids made me change my behavior. I got myself a $6 betta fish, shoplifted some plants from petco, and built my tank up again. Even knowing I'd need to break it apart. So what if it ends? So what if the dance club never becomes popular? You build something and dance with your community, even if your dream fails. Even if it ends. There was love there.

And I think that's one of the things Disco Elysium is about. The kids and their nightclub is a microcosm of the knowledge that the pale is enroaching on Insulinde and the rest of the world. There is a literal, tiny, hole in the world inside of that church. The hole is another reminder of entropy, of the End. And all of this takes place in an edifice of a centuries-old regime and a religion of maintaining the status quo. A religion of broken glass and broken promises. But you take those shards and build on top of them, transforming their meaning. You grow, you build, instead of apathetically letting things remain the same. You find hope and beauty and love even though you know it's unsustainable.

Because the 'now' is valuable in itself. And I love that about this game.

#disco elysium #disco elysium meta #shivers #acele #also pls rb if u like this teehee #ren meta #ren rambles

[sarucane]

How did Stede know that Ed wanted to "watch the world burn"?

This one is fun because it's such a smooth and well-written character development that it's actually really easy to miss what a big shift happens for Stede in the first three episodes of S2. But in E1, Stede is saying this about Ed

and in less than an hour of screentime, he's mostly caught up with what's actually been happening to Ed.

So how'd Stede figure that out? Get to know Ed better, despite being separate from him?

By letting go of ego.

Stede's decision to bail on Ed in S1E10 is driven by selfish low self-esteem. He thinks he doesn't matter to Ed, that he's brought Ed to ruin and Ed will be better off without him. And that's actually held back his emotional investment in the relationship: Stede clearly misses Ed, but he's not devastated over the breakup to the same degree that Ed is.

But by the end of S1E10, Stede's gotten to understand himself better, and his relationship to other people. But he's also gone from not understanding that he's in love to idealizing the relationship between him and Ed, telling people they're "on a break." At the beginning of S2, he's projecting his own insecurities onto Ed, while at the same time trying to believe in a torrid love story starring himself (idealized) and an idealized version of Ed. An Ed who's still got Blackbeard's black beard.

These ideas are rooted in the same conviction that made Stede leave in the first place: he doesn't understand that he's important to Ed, so he can't absorb the fact that what he did was immensely hurtful.

In the second episode, Lucius forces him to really deal with the things he's been denying. He tells Stede "you broke him." And he does the thing that Stede just wasn't managing to do: he gets Stede to think about what's been happening from Ed's perspective, without Stede's insecurities blocking his imagination. To think about just how badly Stede hurt Ed. And to think about what pain and loss like that might mean for someone as damaged as Ed: hopelessness.

Far from Ed's life being "better without me," Stede has to face the idea that Ed might think his life will never get better again. That while Stede has been holding out hope for a reunion, Ed may have given up on both Stede and himself.

That means it's all on Stede, to hope and to act. And he rises to the challenege.

Stede doesn't hesitate when he thinks Ed is in trouble. And he doesn't doubt that Ed needs him, shouting "I'm here!" as soon as he sees the Revenge. He faces what he finds on the ship, and sets about fixing what can be fixed, pulling the knives out of the walls.

He doesn't quite know how bad it's gotten. That Ed couldn't hold onto the ideal-pirate dramatic "watch the world burn" drive. That Ed hit a point of actual cruelty and suicidal despair.

But Stede knows Ed enough to be able to absorb that information when he gets it. To face and accept the reality of the darkness inside the man he loves.

And then to embrace his own role in keeping that darkness from consuming Ed. In the first episode, Stede was putting off looking for Blackbeard because he thought he'd make Ed's life worse. In the third, Stede tells Ed he can come back to life because he's safe now that Stede's here.

And then Stede, again, embraces some selfishness. Asks Ed to come back to him. But this time, it's not the kind of unhealthy selfishness that makes someone obsess over what they mean to others. It's the kind of selfishness that makes people hope life might get better again. Lets people choose relationships they want, and exist in them consciously. Makes someone a strong enough person that they can give, and receive.

#ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd #ofmd s2 #our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #ofmd meta #ed teach #stede bonnet #blackbonnet

[mylasteverlution]

Disco Elysium has a lot of fascinating fictional technology but I have been rotating the radiocomputer in my mind for months now. From what I can gather, they operate in a way very similar to modern cloud computing. It doesn't seem like the mainframes we interact with have any processing capability. Instead, they use antennas to process "on air":

SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER - "Alright, well... All radiocomputers perform operations up on air, so in order to gain more processing power you need to invest in a *good antenna*."

The only information we get about what "on air" really means is from the same conversation with Soona:

YOU - "Wait, what's 'on air'?" SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER - "On the *front*. The unified front of radiowaves, licensed and controlled by Lintel in the East-Insulindic region." SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER - "It's all around us," she waves her hand, "that's what 'on air' means."

The nonspecific language used here really invokes cloud computing to me. I think there are two main possibilities for how this could work, one being much more likely than the other.

The more likely answer is that information is sent to and from the in-game equivalent of data centers, which would host massive computers with processing capabilities. I'm not sure what their processors would look like, but they'd almost certainly be analog (the lost Feld tape computers are most likely the in-game equivalent of early digital computers).

The significantly less likely (but more interesting) answer is that in-game radio waves are somehow capable of processing information on their own. I have no idea how this would work, and as far as I know there's no real-world analog. But it's clear the world of Disco Elysium has some crazy things happening with radio waves (see how they interact with the pale), so I'm not ruling it out entirely.

The filament memories are like hard drives, but my guess is they would function more similarly to an optical disc (CDs, DVDs), which use patterns in the disc to encode information that's read using lasers or light. The filaments glow inside the mainframe, so it's not a huge leap to assume they're read using light.

The amount of thought put into radiocomputers is so fascinating. As far as I can tell, their version of the internet has been wireless from the get-go, which makes perfect sense! Antennas and other wireless radio technologies would have to be pretty damn powerful to communicate across and force dimensions on the pale. And you have to assume huge amounts of government money has gone into funding their research and development for those purposes. The technology of radiocomputers is so tailored to the world of Disco Elysium, and it's been a lot of fun trying to untangle how exactly they would work.

#i would loooove to hear other people's thoughts on this!! i tried to find conversations abt it and didn't come up with much #also if anyone wants me to elaborate on the feld tape computer thing lmk... its a long post so i didn't want to go into more detail #but i do have Thoughts about it #cyan.txt #disco elysium #disco elysium meta #soona the programmer

[piracytheorist]

I love how even silly short missions manage to have their share of wholesomeness and family connection. It's like family is important in a series called Spy x Family or something.

Anyway, Anya is a kid that gets very attached to certain things - and despite being bold enough to use the knowledge she has due to her telepathy in order to make Loid do what she wants, she's not exactly a spoiled kid. She still sticks to Mr. Chimera, the only toy she had while she was in the orphanage. She doesn't ask for new clothes, or toys, or gadgets, what she asks for is experiences (the castle rescue, adopting Bond in specific after she was emotionally invested in him)... and peanuts, too.

So to her, the penguin plush is not just one toy from her plethora of toys that got ruined. It's a toy that her dad got for her. It's a souvenir of their aquarium adventure, where she helped him locate the penguin he needed to find and even arrest the criminal who wanted to get the secret information about the weapon. It's a reminder of how she took part and helped him in his mission. Just a replacement stuffed penguin won't do. It's not the toy itself, it's the memories connected to it. I mean, of course she's sad a toy of her got destroyed - by the dog she asked to have, no less - but it hurts even more knowing what this toy means to her.

And the show takes Anya's feelings seriously with that. The soft "Little by Little" score plays while Loid fixes the penguin, with Yor looking with anticipation. Bond feels sad and regretful, understanding the consequences of his actions and wanting to make it up to Anya. They're all invested in things getting better.

And once the penguin is ready, though with visible "scars" now, Loid reassures Anya that his new appearance is nothing to be ashamed of.

And the interesting thing? Twilight, Best Spy of Westalis, Master of DisguiseTM... stutters. He does so in Japanese both in the manga and the anime.

Which makes me wonder, considering his background and profession, how big his experience with scars is (and if we're gonna learn more about that, come on give the whump fan some scraps here 👀👀) (pls don't spoil me about the manga if we do, I want the whump but on its own time!) and if reaching into his own personal feelings about scars in order to resonate with Anya hit him just a little more than he expected. Or if he was so serious about it that he didn't know whether he should tell her something so grim. He's here dedicating himself into a deadly dangerous job so that kids like Anya won't have to suffer like he did as a kid, and yet he has to pass on to her something he learned the hard way.

Yeah yeah I'm here putting too much thought and grimness into what was supposed to be a wholesome moment. Hi I'm Nette and you'll be getting a lot of those in the future :)

#Spy x Family #Anya Forger #Loid Forger #sxf meta #500 #1k #2k #3k

[cinnamontoastcrunch-15]

Today's @wolfstarmicrofic prompt is unrequited!

(936 words.)

"Oh, just fuck right off!" Sirius snaps, grip tightening on his butterbeer.

"God, what's gotten into you?" Marlene asks, arching an eyebrow. To be perfectly honest, Sirius doesn't want to talk about it.

James is more than happy to, though.

"Don't worry about him. He's all pissy because of his unrequited love." Sirius' head immediately snaps up, alarmed.

"Prongs," He says, warning. His eyes almost involuntarily dart to Remus for half a second, panic seeping through him. James, however, is teetering on the line between tipsy and drunk, completely missing the hint.

"Mm, completely hung up on some girl, right?" Peter chimes in, and Sirius almost wants to laugh. The urge to drop dead is much stronger, though. To crawl into a hole and say there until this conversation ends.

"Something like that," Sirius says quickly, before turning away from them both. Fingers crossed, he can just shut this down. "Hey, Lily, that potions essay..."

Unfortunately for him, Lily seems just as invested.

"How do you know it's unrequited?" She asks curiously. Remus lifts his head, then, nose out of his book. For some reason, that's what tips him over the edge. He needs everyone to stop. This is difficult enough.

"Because I asked, okay?" He says hurriedly. It causes his friends to lapse into silence, but it's like he's just burst a dam. The explanation starts before he can hold it back. "I asked, and they said no. They said it was a bad idea, we were too close for that."

"Huh," Mary hums.

"What?" Sirius asks with a frown.

"They didn't say they don't like you?" Mary asks, and it really throws Sirius. He hasn't considered that.

"No, not exactly," He muses, frowning. "But why would anyone reject someone they like?"

"Maybe they were scared of ruining the friendship you two have," Remus speaks up gently, almost inaudibly from across the common room; capturing Sirius' attention in less than a second.

"That makes no sense," Sirius says without missing a beat, eyes locking with Remus. "They should know me well enough to know that I wouldn't let that happen. I know they wouldn't. We've survived worse."

From the corner of his eye, he can see confusion flit across James' face at that comment. Yeah, it was a bit of a risky thing to say. He's practically handing James the truth. It doesn't matter, though. Not right now. His eyes are fixed on Remus.

"Depends on what you think is worse. They might be worried about a messy breakup getting in the way."

"No, that can't be it," He says, imploring. The longing to see into Remus' mind, figure out what he means is too strong. He'll have to unravel it this way instead. "If they're already thinking about a breakup, then clearly they don't like me that much. Unrequited." He wants nothing more than to drop the matter now that he's proven his point to himself. Maybe he doesn't need to see inside Remus' mind. He goes to down the rest of his drink, but Remus is shaking his head, and Sirius is losing sight of everyone else in favour of Remus.

"Or they just care too much about you." There's something in Remus' eyes, an ache that Sirius wants to heal.

"Really? Why would they reject me when I told them how I feel, then?!" Sirius asks desperately. It seems to snap Remus' resolve, burst his ambigious speech.

"Because I'm in love with you, Sirius! Okay?! Christ, this isn't just some- some joke, or some experiment to me! You looked me in the eye and told me you liked me, and that- that made me hope, okay? I don't want to hope. To think that you liking me means you'll fall in love with me. I mean," He releases a breathy laugh, seemingly unaware to the way Sirius' world is turning on it's axis, "I'm me, and you're- you're perfect."

He seems to have reached the end of his tangent, pattering out as everyone looks between the two of them, stunned. Sirius searches his brain, which may or may not be short circuiting, for some way to voice his thoughts. There are so many things he could say, so many ways to tell Remus everything, but none of them seem to be enough. Enough to encompass everything. A better solution comes to him as his yearning overwhelms him.

With that, he sets his butterbeer down and crosses the common room. Remus' eyes widen, suddenly unsure, until Sirius pulls himself into Remus' armchair, facing him. He reaches out, pressing a hand against Remus' cheek and finally, finally connecting their lips. It's everything he could have imagined and more.

Remus' lips are soft, warm against his, overwhelmingly perfect, and making Sirius desperate to stay there forever, mapping out every inch of Remus' mouth, the way it fits against his like they should have been doing this forever. It's a feeling Sirius knows he's never going to forget, causing the words he has been desperately repressing for years bubbling up inside him.

"I love you," Sirius murmurs against Remus' lips after a moment. "I love you so much, Moony."

Their eyes meet again, Sirius watching as Remus' eyes go from searching to joyful, a grin splitting across his face. It took a whooping cheer from James to break the spell that Remus' eyes got him in. They both turn to their friends, a laugh escaping Sirius as he drops his head into Remus' shoulder.

"Thank fuck that's sorted, then!" Lily says brightly, a wry smile on her face.

Okay, Sirius is really grateful for his oversharing friends.

#teenage wolfstar are my faves #they're so oblivious and stupid I LOVE THEM #wolfstar #sirius black #wolfstar oneshot #marauders #remus lupin #remus x sirius #young marauders #moony x padfoot #atyd marauders #marauders oneshot

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I've been thinking about the pacing this season, and I think a lot of the issues with telling instead of showing we've been noticing come down to two big factors.

ALL the episodes this season are sticking very strictly to 30 minutes or less. Most of s1 did that, too, to be fair, but some of the most important episodes - 4, 8, and 10 - are all closer to 35 minutes. It doesn't sound like a lot but that's extra breathing room that we're not getting now, it means some things that were almost important enough to make the cut had to get chopped. We're probably missing a lot of little lines that would've rounded things out because the writers had to bank on us getting it from context.

I wouldn't be surprised if the writers went in expecting a 10 episode second season and Max hit them with cutting down to 8 eps, or they had to make the hard choice to save as much money as possible to increse the odds of getting renewed and decided to cut it to 8 themselves. Either way, I definitely think they'd planned on 10 episodes and because of that some things feel rushed; it's really starting to show in ep 7 and I think that's because they just haven't had the space to set things up they thought they'd get.

I really think that we're missing an episode here, and I'm pretty sure it would've gone between 5 and 6. That would've been the logical place to let Ed and Stede's relationship breathe a bit between their second kiss and having sex in 6, and it would've been the right spot to wrap up some lose plotlines (when did Ed get off probation? How does he feel about it? The crew seem so much more comfortable with him in 6, does that make him feel safer and more loved?) and forshadow what's coming up (literally just one line with Olu feeling bad about what happened with Zheng Yi Sao would've made that so much less jarring).

On the whole, I genuinely think the writing this season has been smart and efficient, but not to the same standard as season 1 (which, to be fair, was a very high standard, but still). And I really think the things that matter (Ed and Stede's arcs) are largely done very well.

But it has still been so obvious that they tried to make this season as cheap and palatable for Max to produce as possible. I really hope it pays off. I think it will - like I said, I think the writers always managed to keep sight of what matters, and that's Ed and Stede's story. And I'm grateful that, despite trying to make this show an easy one for Max to make the decision to renew, they didn't compromise on the queerness.

But it stings. You know any other show that's so successful and has not only such a devoted fanbase but such a deeply invested cast and crew would've been renewed a long damn time ago. I am so, so happy we got s2, and I've loved it, really I have, but I'm still a bit sad thinking about what we could've had.

#ofmd #ofmd s2 spoilers #our flag means death #really hope it pays off and we get s3

[olderthannetfic]

I found AO3 pretty intuitive. Took me like 5 minutes to realize how all the little buttons work. They're pretty straightforward. Apart from the AND filters - took me a while to realize what type of filters AO3 used. Beyond that, I'm not sure why people have a hard time? Wattpad and FFnet are way more of a pain in the ass.

--

It's all about familiarity.

I mean, look, AO3 works how my brain works. When we first set it up, it was what we were all used to, more or less, but an upgrade. It was hard to even see how it could ever be unintuitive because this was just How Things Were. From the style of trope tags to the fact that there's an index of fandoms by media type, it was all familiar.

But that thinking is a trap.

It's easy to say "Oh, well, that person's just an idiot", and sometimes, the problem really is laziness or sleep deprivation, but a lot of the time, it's different cultural context.

By the time we were designing AO3, I'd had many rounds of formal instruction in how to use library catalogues of various sorts, familiarity with Delicious, years in LJ slash fandom whose assumptions form the metadata structures of AO3, etc.

There's nothing strange about going "Why are ship types a top level system of organization?" or "How do I search for genre X in any anime fandom but not in non-anime fandoms?"

It's strange to me, but it's not strange in the context of people who read fanfic overall.

It's not just about learning the search features that do exist: it's about unconscious assumptions about what metadata must exist.

If you don't know to look for something and you aren't coming from a culture where poking buttons is encouraged, you're going to take a lot longer to find things than if you already have a good idea of what's probably there somewhere.

To pick two very obvious examples:

If I were designing a gen-focused archive, I'd make genre a top-level organization system, like on FFN.

If I were designing a more x-reader-focused or One True Character-focused archive, I'd make the ship searches work like Character X/Anyone instead of having to click on each ship of your blorbo or each ship with Reader.

If someone has years of experience searching for some bullshit 'trickyfish' style nonsense ship name because they're on sites with garbage searches, they'll go to AO3, plug some words into the search bar at the top, and then feel like they can't find any relevant results because everything that turns up is just that word in author's notes on an irrelevant fic. They might even go to advanced search...

...and then totally miss that the sidebar filters are the best part of AO3, and they don't appear when you do a search search as opposed to starting from a tag.

Isn't Advanced Search the most... well... advanced search? On every other website, it is, but not on AO3.

--

Each new site/technology/culture/etc. a person has to learn takes time and attention. If you're exhausted and burnt out, that's hard. Even if you're not, it takes at least some effort. It doesn't Just Happen, not for every person and every new thing.

We should tell people to read the damn FAQ, yes.

But I can't say I always do that myself on every site unless I'm both having a problem and invested enough to care about solving it.

--

On an average day, most of us don't need to care why some people have a hard time figuring out AO3.

But if anyone is planning to design a site or needs to teach a bunch of kids how to use the library or something, it's worth keeping in mind just how many unconscious assumptions are hiding behind the idea of something—literally anything—being "intuitive".

[rthko]

i'm not a gaylor, couldn't care less about that woman, but ngl that thread got me thinking. do you think it would be fair to posit that classic pop fandom presumes heterosexuality from the female stars it consumes? the figure of the diva specifically feels very straight woman centered, the only exception i can think of being maybe lady gaga. well i guess everything presumes heterosexuality from everyone, but it does feel slightly different in this case imo

I think it's a fair observation. A lot of gay men, starting in childhood, strongly identify with women in media. As kids without known queer friends or role models, who knew we didn't relate to most other boys, we often thought of ourselves as more similar to girls. I obviously can't say this is universal among gay men but it's common enough that, for example, I can talk about how badly I wanted to be Anne Hathaway with a group of like minded gays and no one will find it unusual. Others will even chime in with the women they wanted to be! And I think this sort of identification often comes down to identification with women as desiring agents (making it easier to express attraction to men) and as siblings in abjection. Like, the boys are mean to you? Us too. Let's play house at recess about it.

I make it sound very adolescent, and that's where it seems to start, but it's also because there's no guarantee it will turn into any sophisticated friendship or political affiliation with women. I think diva worship, fag/hag relations, and anything similar are morally neutral. It can speak to genuine interest and support, or it can be a patronizing charade that refuses to relate to women beyond an expected shared attraction to men. I can't say that diva worship is any one thing because it can come from a place of genuine respect for a woman's artistry and be a symbolic outlet of gender expression or a parasocial mess.

Lady Gaga is herself an interesting example because yes, she is bisexual, but that doesn't really come up in her diva treatment. But the example of Taylor Swift, as discussed in the thread you're mentioning, is also unusual. The accusation, for the unacquainted, is that gay men aren't sympathetic to "Gaylor" because they want her to be straight so they can give her the diva treatment. But, and I mean no offense by this, that's not really the reason most people like her. Everything about her public image is too personal and "relatable" for her to fit that larger-than-life mold. Clearly that works for her, clearly that has yielded results, but personally I find her most interesting when she knows she's delivering a fantasy. If this seems like a superficial way of viewing art, I would counter that treating an artist as a detached patron saint of glamour and obsessing over every detail of their personal life are two sides of the same parasocial coin.

I think the ideas that are really in conflict in the "Gaylor" vs "Hetlor" debate (and for the love of God come up with a more tasteful name for the latter) is not really whether Taylor Swift is queer or straight. I'm sure you'll agree that not being onboard with Gaylor does not mean someone has a specific investment in her heterosexuality, because most of us don't really care. The conflict is between two different ways of relating to art. Rather, it's about relating versus resonating. Even if Taylor Swift is gay, hardly anything about her life, as might be explained by her wikipedia page, is relatable. But maybe one resonates with the pressures of having to please everyone, to the dehumanization of men's "Madonna-whore" complex towards women, to heartbreak, to dancing it all away. And maybe one specifically relates from a queer perspective. Go for it! It's unfortunate that Creep by Radiohead has a bad reputation, because I and a lot of other queer people find it really resonant. I don't get crushes on straight guys like I used to, but when I did it was humiliating! It wasn't the prospect of their rejection that hurt, but the idea of being repulsive and looking in from the outside at a world you will never belong to. It speaks to a queer perspective, but I don't have to wonder if this was intentional or if Thom Yorke himself is gay to see it.

I think, memes aside, the Internet is excessively cruel to Swifties. Even with Gaylors, I feel for their need to identify with an artist they feel feel expresses an underrepresented point of view. No, James Somerton, a handful of children's cartoons does not prove that lesbians are winning the representation war. But I also want to say to them that, a perceived lack of representation aside, no one is forcing you to speculate about this woman's sexuality. If she is just as straight as she claims to be, that doesn't have to ruin your queer readings of her work. If a straight woman sang the words "you can want who you want; boys and boys and girls and girls," and it came from the heart, good for her.

This was all very characteristically meandering of me and only kind of answered your question. I agree that a lot of gay men's interest in women is stunted by the expectation that they could only bond over shared attraction to men. I think gay men owe queer women the world. I also just don't really think this applies to the Gaylor thing. She is, as far as anyone knows and as far as she herself has stated, a heterosexual woman. That said, I do agree that the lesbian diva is an under-explored archetype that I'd love to learn more about.

[hiskillingjar]

hi!!what do you think strade, law, and ren would react to a goth mc? love your blog btw💗

YEAH GOTHS RISE UP!!!!!!!!! as a fellow goth, love this ask and I'm gonna be totally normal about it 🖤

ren 🦊

urghhhhhhhh

he's one of those fucking "need a thicc goth to sit on my face and ruin my life" assholes on twitter so. he'd be normal for sure!

no he wouldn't, ren sucks, he would be so fetishy and gross about it

okay i'm being mean. he just...likes high aesthetic in any circumstance, so he'd instantly be attracted to an mc that has something specific to them

dolly fashion, e-girl, goth, lolita, he'd be obsessed whatever it was.

that being said, he'd only really be involved for the aesthetics

like (depending on what kind of goth you are) he'd be down with the eyeliner and the fishnets and the black on black

more than down, he'd love it! he thinks the fishnets and the leather and latex is super hot, and he'd loveeee any opportunity to see your makeup get messed up (lipstick smearing, tears ruining your eyeliner, etc)

but like. he's not going to be invested in much else. that's something for you, he just likes the way you look

law 🥀

law is basically goth already, change my mind

like in spite of not having much of an aesthetic about them, they're death-obsessed, super macabre and morbid, collect animal bones and make ART with said animal bones

that's not even discussing the poetry, the journalling, the melancholy they feel on a day-to-day basis. they've got a smiths album somewhere in their shitty apartment

they're goth!! tell me i'm wrong!

if you gave them a The Cure cd, they would be sooooooo into it. just staring at the ceiling like "yeah...he gets it".

they still prefer the smiths though. morrissey just gets them (unfortunately)

you'd be a goth power couple.

you're in your goth get-up reading poppy z brite out loud in a cemetery, they're prepping a wet specimen for you to display on the shelf they gave you in their apartment

you'd be full poppy z brite, drawing blood actually! maybe they try to kill you once or twice, just so you can see the river and they can make sure you're really like them, but that's okay.

it's just the gothic beauty of your relationship

they still love you <3

strade 🔨

i think that strade is a little alt in his own right too

like. he's got the cunty new rocks. he's got piercings. he's got long hair as a man. okay goth eurotrash, i see you! <3

this was definitely when he was younger, he looked a lot more alt, but as he gets older, it settles down

but he still likes your goth look a lot <3

just kind of in the dirty old man way though

wearing something short or low cut? you're going to get a wolf whistle and a slap on the ass

fishnets? come on now, you're just asking for trouble~

if you had more of a modest goth approach, he'd be less horned up but he might comment on it all the same. your legs look good in that, your waist looks pretty small in that belt, have you thought about throwing a harness on that?

granted, maybe a harness would be a bad choice...give him too much leverage for throwing you around and pulling you in close <3

and naturally, he'd get pretty excited from making you upset by ruining your clothes and makeup

he can only keep his sadistic inclinations at bay for so long now. what do you expect?

definitely doesn't help if and when you show up in his streams and his audience gets a good look at the 'new pet' he's keeping all to himself

you know what they say about goth girls, right? they're all kinky as fuck, you'd probably get off on whatever he did to you...

nice to see you living up to that particular stereotype <3

#ren hana #ren btd #ren x mc #ren x reader #lawrence oleander #lawrence btd #lawrence x reader #lawrence x mc #strade btd #strade x reader #strade x mc #headcanons #qs #sorryyyy for all the headcanon posts lately i'm in phd mode. they say. haven't written anything for their PhD yet. lol

[txttletale]

Hi I'm kind of an economic newbie (besides a few of the shorter books by Marx), and you recently said something that intrigued me: that it is good for nations to be in debt. Why is that? I'm somewhat familiar with the liberal myth that nations must always spend less money than they create, but surely there's more to it?

when a government spends money that money is in almost all cases going back into the nation's economy. if $20 billion is borrowed and then spent on building a railway, that money doesn't just vanish into thin air--that money is used to buy things and pay people which creates demand (the workers who get paid buy commodities, the railway itself requires materials which have to be mined and refined and delivered, etc) which in turn boosts production and grows the economy, which leads to larger government revenues in the future. obviously this doesn't mean that debt is always good, because if a government's creditors decide they can't rely on it to pay that debt back (because of instability or economic crisis) then you will suddenly have a bad problem. but as long as the people you're borrowing from believe you can pay it back government debt is basically good for the same reason that it's good to borrow money for any venture where you're sure to see return on investment

#ask #this is not very comprehensive this is like baby's first keynes #this field of economics is not my specialty but hopefully this explains things

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

the thing that allistics talking about social skills never seem to grasp is that i do not SEE body language or facial expressions. i am not some innocent adorably stupid little darling who's never been taught what a frown means and so now i feel like everyone is hostile to me because i'm not participating in the Necessary And Unbiased social ritual that lets everyone know i'm Safe and a Real Person.

no, i spent 10 years regularly attending social skills courses. as in, weekly at minimum, for a lot of it daily. i still cannot read body language or facial expressions because i LITERALLY CANNOT SEE THEM. i am partially faceblind. my visual processing is ganked to the point that even though i am not blind i need to use IDs to understand images. these are VERY common traits in autism, this isn't a special "just me" thing. if someone makes a face at me, i can't SEE it. sometimes i can tell that some of their facial muscles are moving, but i have no idea what they're doing and very little ability to piece together what the end result looks like as a whole picture. sometimes i can see when someone is leaning away from me, or if their whole body is shaking or something, but anything less whole-body and cartoonish than that is literally invisible to me.

allistic social norms are built around treating me as scary and unsafe for not participating in them, and i LITERALLY CANNOT SEE a good portion of what they're based on. the less physical bits--implications and social context, etc--are 10x harder when you essentially can't speak half the language, and that's not even touching on how those parts can be near impossible on their own if you have a slow processing speed--which i also do. it takes me 30-60 seconds minimum to fully process a spoken sentence and understand what the unspoken and nuanced implications of it could be, and by then i have already been slotted into "unsafe creep" territory by being entirely silent for 45 seconds. and i am considered socially adept and to have very fast processing among my autistic peers. my barriers here are MINOR compared to someone very severely socially impaired.

this is why explaining to autistics the purposes of allistic social rules and nuances and giving us tips on how to navigate them is condescending and cruel as hell. you're dangling in our faces how important and necessary and integral it is to do something we literally CAN'T do and implicitly justifying us being seen as dangerous and socially undesirable for not doing it. and you're framing it as helping because you're "teaching" us. but it's like teaching a colorblind person color theory; maybe once in a while someone will be interested, but it'll always be significantly harder for them to learn than someone who isn't colorblind, and their experience with it will always be profoundly qualitatively different and produce different results, even subtly. and their existence doesn't mean that the REST of colorblind people who don't have that energy and time and investment should just put up with literally every road sign being written in red on green when you could just make signs that are black on white to begin with.

#dyspunktional #actuallyautistic #antipsych #actually autistic #autism appreciation #anti psychiatry #autpunk