#i plan on doing the rest once their designs actually..exist

[klbwriting]

Finally Home - Jason Todd Blurbs

Tim Sets You Two Up

Fandom: Red Hood

Pairing: Jason Todd x gn!reader

Warnings: none

Summary: Tim knew that his TA and Jason would love each other, so he tricks them into meeting

Notes: this is a request for a DM to have Jason meet the reader because Tim is tricky

               Jason hadn’t expected you to be his perfect match when the two of you first met.  It was a blind date set up by Tim of all people.  He had a TA in a class of his that he thought Jason would like and he convinced (tricked) the two of you meeting in the campus library, saying he needed to study, and Jason needed to bring him coffee.  You were there to tutor him, even though you weren’t sure what problem he was having in the class you TA’d for, but you went to the designated study room, seeing a stack of books in the corner of the small room.  You went to pick them up, laughing at seeing both Pride and Prejudice and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on top.  You heard the door close and turned around, expecting Tim but instead seeing possibly the most gorgeous person to ever exist. 

               “O, sorry, I was looking for Tim Drake?” he said, carrying a couple coffees.  You were about to speak when you looked through the window that faced the rest of the library and there was Tim, locking the door. 

               “O that little shit,” you said, going to the door and trying the handle.  The rooms were soundproof to keep distractions from the studiers so you knew yelling was pointless.  Tim held up a piece of paper with ‘You’ll Thank Me Later’ before walking away. 

               “I may shoot him,” Jason said, looking like he actually might.  You turned to him and offered an embarrassed smiled.

               “I don’t know what that kid is thinking, hi I’m YN, I’m a TA in his required literature class, he’s doing great, it was very suspicious that he asked for tutoring…I’m sorry I ramble sometimes,” you said, blushing now as this guy stared at you.  He didn’t seem annoyed, in fact the little smile on his face made you think he was actually listening intently to you, and it was nice.  You were a lit major who took a lot of extra technical classes because you liked science fiction so much, most people looked at you like your rambling was annoying and like you didn’t belong. 

               “I’m Jason, Tim’s my little brother,” he said.  You looked confused for a moment and then he chuckled.  “We’re all adopted, there’s quite a few of us.”  You thought for a second and it dawned on you, Tim had mentioned once that his dad was Bruce Wayne.  And Bruce Wayne had a gaggle of children he had adopted.  “He told me he needed coffee, which is weird, I figured it was in an IV drip at this point.”

               “It should be for that one,” you said with a laugh.  “Wonder why he left these books.”  Jason walked over and picked up a couple.  “I mean, don’t get me wrong I would love to ramble about the absolute silliness of putting zombies into Jane Austen I’m not sure if you would be into that.” 

               “You would be surprised,” he said.  “Although still not sure how I feel about that weird parody of adding dumb things into classics.”  You stopped and stared at him.

               “Ok, listen, zombies are a fantastic form of describing the crumbling of civilizations without blaming a specific group of people for the crumbling…” and that started what turned into a three-hour discussion about books while locked in a study room at Gotham university.  By the time Tim remembered to come back and let you guys out you had exchanged numbers and were planning on meeting at a bookstore, and you had a list of books that Jason needed to read and he had a list that you had to get. 

               “Thanks Tim,” Jason said as he slung an arm around his brother’s shoulder, waving to you as you headed towards your apartment.  Tim smiled, proud of himself.

               “I knew you two would fall in love, next time you see her can you tell her to grade my symbolism paper nicely?”

#jason todd x y/n #jason todd #jason todd x reader #jason todd x you #jasontodd #red hood x reader #red hood x you #redhood #red hood #red hood x y/n #jasontoddblurbs

[carionto]

I just wanna know if it'll work!

The Monolith!

A massive perpendicular structure - 1 meter deep, 4 meters wide, 9 meters tall - with a perfect 81 centimeter diameter circle cut, with its center 64 centimeters from the top.

Naomi Glasnikova was grinning like mad. She couldn't figure out where to put squares of 4, 5, 6, or 7 in the design without overcomplicating things, so decided to just forego them. It'll be fine, she's sure everything will work out just as planned.

What is the plan, her fellow scientists from the Coalition species ask? To see if placing ominous black metal alloy structures around a planet with primitive lifeforms will make their brains go "Oh, this is different, I should... *think* about it. Yes. Thinking is a thing I can do now. Thus, with the power of thoughts I can look at other things and go "Oh, what if I did this!" and make myself evolve into a civilization (once I figure out how to come up with prerequisite concepts)."

Is the inner dialogue Naomi was having. Her colleagues, both Human and Alien alike, had long abandoned the idea of trying to talk to her about her projects. She would just get into this deep staredown with you while simultaneously not paying any attention to your existence. Her mind begins to race with the possibilities, the what ifs, who dunnits, why nots, etc., and after a few minutes of complete stillness she would suddenly rush out, writing furiously on her digi-pad, often bumping into chairs, tables, walls, other people, one time she almost vented herself from the station. They put a micro-tag on her pad that would wirelessly turn off nearby lights at any intersections that didn't lead to her office. She subconsciously veers toward bright lights.

This latest monolith project came about after one of her equally eccentric interns (nobody knows where they come from, she just seems to naturally attract ones with similar brainwaves or something) showed her an ancient fictional documentary about possible technological developments in the early 21st century. The image of this simpler monolith instantly embedded itself into her mind.

WAIT! I've got it! Four groups of monoliths arranged in different patterns. The group of 16 will make a perfect square. 25 a star. 36 a hexagon, and 49 a... hmm heptagon would be too similar, and it doesn't look right no matter how you shape it.... hrrnnn No wait, a seven layer circle! One in the center, fourteen in the outermost and the rest... I'll do the math later. The areas will need to be perfectly cleared and flat too. Oh! Line patterns on the ground itself. Ones that show core scientific truths! One of the primitives will surely one day follow the lines and map them out either in its brain or on a simple data recording apparatus and see Science! They'll be so stunned! Gotta write that down, get one of the helpful people (her interns, whose names or faces she doesn't even know, yet they don't care either. Look, it's weird, but their kind of non-relationship works out somehow) to begin production. They will need to be made of non-corrosive alloys, of course. Each with a different core metal though. But then the color might change. No paint, that is an unnecessary element. Hmm... Evolution will take millennia, hopefully a few less with my help.

Last month her focus was on making a fully transparent species of frogs to see whether they would go extinct due to being unable to see their partners, or overrun the ecosystem. Nobody has seen the results of that yet.

We also don't know what she's actually a PhD of. Her diploma just says applied robotics, and it is a legit diploma from the Henderson University of Greater Estonia. But her published thesis is on viral infection vectors in sub-tropical moths. We thought she might be a fraud, but the science checks out in whatever she has put out so far. Whatever she is, she is allowed to do whatever she wants. Like most scientists out on these stations now that I think about it.

What are we even doing here, other than... Science?

Mmmm, fuck it, unlimited funding. Let's go!

#humans are space orcs #humans are space australians #humans are space oddities #humans are deathworlders #humanity fuck yeah #carionto #FOR SCIENCE

[gaybananabread]

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ Perfection is Relative ˖ ݁݁ 𖥔.

~Soooo I’m in my rewatch-comfort-shows era, and Helluva Boss is next. I can’t wait for the newest episode, so I’m trying to get the insanity out with this. For anyone who happens to read this, I hope you Enjoy!~

Lee: Moxxie

Ler: Millie

Summary: Moxxie is second-guessing himself and stressing out about his appearance. Millie notices and decides to lovingly remind her husband what the word “perfect” truly means in this life.

Warnings: spoilers for Helluva Boss and fluffy couple romance (few kisses)! This is a tickle fic, so if you don’t like that, scroll away!!

Moxxie had always had confidence issues. Be it moral dilemmas, other’s perceptions or just general life itself, he would second-guess himself and shy away. However, there was one thing he could always trust himself to nail: his presentations.

Whenever Blitz had a performance-based job, Moxxie put his best hoof forward and found a rare spark of assurance and self-confidence. His outfits were on point, any makeup was flawless, and he got into the metaphorical zone. Nobody could ruin that for him, or so he thought.

At the summer camp, Moxxie had spent a good few hours designing his persona and the look of it. He was actually pretty proud of it. That was, until those teenage girls and everyone else at the camp insulted his appearance and disregarded his existence.

Millie and him had already discussed how it made him feel, and while he was incredibly happy for and proud of his wife, he couldn’t get those thoughts out of his head. It bled into his everyday planning, making him critique every little detail about himself. Like that morning, where he’d spent half an hour adjusting his bowtie position.

“Maybe a bit lower to point the focus…” Moxxie mumbled to himself, loosening his bowtie once again. He’d left the bedroom door open, too focused on the mirror to notice. He didn’t even notice as his wife peeked in, nor he did he catch her small, knowing sigh.

“Honey…what’re you doing?” Millie came up behind him, resting her hands on his waist. She’d noticed his extra self-consciousness lately, but she hoped it was something he’d work out. It was apparently deeper than that, though, so she was at the ready with support and a - hopefully - helpful conversation.

“Adjusting my bow. It’s not really symmetrical, and I want it to send a certain message about me.” His words were a bit rushed, giving his wife a peek into the swirling storm of his mind. She wasn’t happy with what she saw.

“You really don’t need to worry, Mox. You look amazin’ already.” Millie gently grabbed his chin, turned him and kissed him. He sighed at the affection, pulling away after a second. Moxxie felt bad about kissing her; he wasn’t good enough yet. Millie deserved the world, and he couldn’t help but feel inadequate.

“If you say so, Mills. Just let me fix up a few more things.” Moxxie tugged at his collar, adjusting the bow and tugging his hair into place.

Now, Millie could’ve just left her husband to finish getting ready. However, doing so would’ve meant letting him think he needed any of the extra glitz and ritz he was putting forth. He was handsome and wonderful enough as-is; she was determined to get that through to him.

With a suppressed smirk, the female imp grabbed his chin once again, her tail snaking around his waist. Moxxie was oblivious to her true plot, just suspecting she wanted attention. “Millie, just gimme one seco- EEP!”

He cut himself off with a squeak as Millie’s claws skittered across his neck. Down below, the pointy tip of her tail was dragging along his side. The smirk was no longer suppressed, her adorable tooth gap showing in the playful grin.

“Mihihillie! Whahat are youhu dohohohoing?!” Moxxie squirmed and wriggled, trying to slip away from his wife. Millie wrapped her free arm around his waist, securing him while adding more wiggling fingers to his stomach.

“Gettin’ you outta your head, Mox. You got too much judgmental crud about yourself up there.” Millie placed a fluttery behind his ear, making him squeak once again. Her fingers were still going at it, dragging the pointed claws along his belly and neck while her tail teased his side.

Moxxie instinctively folded like a lawn chair, his giggles squeaky and scratchy. His wife’s arm was the only thing keeping him from dropping to the floor.

“Mihihills! I cahahan’t- KYAAhahaha!” The sharpshooter kicked his hooves, each impact making a small clack against their wooden floor. Millie couldn’t help but coo at this.

“Aww, there we go, sugar~” She purred, chuckling against the warm skin of his neck. His careful bowtie placement was all messy now, skewed and crooked from Millie’s evil affection. She was hoping to get him all nice and messy before she stopped. He needed to see how amazing he was at his least dolled-up.

While his giggles were certainly music to her ears, she was looking for something with a bit more gusto. Millie wanted to really make him laugh.

Quickly spinning her husband around, she pushed him down onto their bed and grabbed his thighs. Moxxie’s eyes went as wide as saucers, but before he could say a word, her claws were wiggling into his sensitive skin.

“NAHAHAHO! MIHIHILIHIE PLEHEHEASE!” Moxxie’s precious giggles quickly rocketed up to loud, screeching cackles as Millie targeted his worst spot. He thrashed on the bed, ruining his hair and untucking his shirt in the process. She was quick to take advantage of that, slipping her tail underneath the fabric to tease his stomach once again.

“O-OHOHO MY SAHAHATAN!” Small tears of mirth gathered in the corners of his eyes, his cheeks stained a deeper, purple-ish red. The blush was adorable to Millie, though his tears showed she had gone far enough. She stilled her fingers, kissing his smiling lips.

“Ihihihi… oho cruhuhums…” Moxxie took a few deep, giggly breaths as he tried to regain his composure. That attack had come out of nowhere, but he didn’t exactly hate it. “Whahat was thahat for?”

“I already told ya, hon. You’re bein’ too hard on yourself.” Millie rolled off him, lying down beside her husband. He sighed, shaking his head.

“I juhust…I dunno, Millie. It’s just not enough. I need to be perfect.” She brushed a bit of his unruly hair back in place, humming. “I think you look pretty damn perfect right now, Mox. You’re only perfect when you’re you.”

Moxxie felt himself tear up at that. Millie was just…so herself. He thought she was perfect, so…maybe she was right. Leaning forward, he kissed her lovingly, his tail wrapping around hers.

Millie smiled into the soft embrace, cupping his face with one hand as the other held him close. He was so adorable just then: rosy cheeks, loving eyes, messy hair and love-drunk eyes. She could gaze at him for eternity and never tire of his most natural beauty.

“Uhum…what were we getting ready for again?” Moxxie asked as he pulled away, finally remembering that they had planned on going somewhere. It did kind of spoil the moment, but he genuinely couldn't remember.

“Well, I think…Blitz called us in? Somethin’ about a pop-up client.” Millie sighed, knowing that their boss was probably ready to kill them for not being there yet. She didn't regret a damn thing, of course; Moxxie was more important than work.

“Shit…you wanna get ready together?” Moxxie shrugged, offering the small moment. Millie looked him over one last time, taking in her perfectly amazing mess of a husband before nodding.

“Sounds good, Mox. But no spendin’ forever on silly things, got it?” She booped his nose for emphasis, wiggling a few sneaky fingers on his side. Moxxie giggled and jerked away, playfully glaring at her.

“Gohot it,” he agreed, sticking his tongue out with a smirk. Millie rolled her eyes before hopping off the bed as well, joining him by the mirror.

Moxxie looked into the reflective glass, seeing himself in near complete disarray. But, with Millie’s smiling figure by his side, loving every bit of him unconditionally, he couldn't help but like what he saw just that much more.

#hb tickle #lee!moxxie #ler!millie #ticklish!moxxie #sfw tickling community #tickle #tickle fic #helluva boss tickle #hb moxxie #hb millie #helluva boss #tickle fluff #fluff fic

[panicatthediaz]

Can you feel it?

What is this? A brand new fic for @eddiemonth? And so soon after?? (shut up this feels soon)

This is day 06, crush, and is in the same continuity as day 5. Named after Mansionair's Astronaut (Something About Your Love), that like. Please listen to them. They are a whole vibe, I love their music.

Warnings: None, this is just even more fluff. Extremely sappy get together. Steddie. I should start calling this section, like. tags or smth.

Wordcount: 2968

If he were to be honest with himself, Eddie hadn't expected to keep this monster hunting party in his life, not for long. He expected everyone to go on their way, while he was fumbling just to get out of the town.

Well, some people did go their own way. Older Byers was off to college in California with Argyle, after some extensive talk with his family and with Nancy, and Nancy herself was off in Boston.

But everyone else? Well, the kids had to finish high school before going anywhere, and Robin had decided to take a gap year that was about to end. And Steve…

Between joint recoveries and sharing almost the same group of people (and eventually truly having all the same friends), they had spent a lot of time together. They had become friends, good friends, not necessarily by choice, but the truth was that Eddie wouldn't change it for the world.

But sometimes, it was nice to just… exist. To be able to not think about the feelings he’d realized that were growing not too long ago. About how, even though he’d only noticed them recently, the feelings hadn’t been really new. About how it looked reciprocated, sometimes.

Eddie expected to hear about Steve’s plans to get out of town any day now, maybe tag along with Robin, so why do anything about the something that was brewing, right?

Deep down, Eddie knew Steve wouldn’t leave before the kids’ senior year started. At the earliest. Eddie felt pretty much the same already, after knowing them for only a little over a year. According to Robin, they did have that effect somehow.

(Something about how young they all were to have been at the whole supernatural thing for years.)

After dropping El and Will back home, he’d driven himself to a secluded little clearing, having to go the long way around so he’d actually be able to drive his van into it. But it was worth it, it’d always been worth it.

Eddie grabbed a few of the blankets stashed at the back of his van and threw them on top of it before climbing up himself. Setting up his little makeshift bed up there was a quick process; a couple of blankets to make the roof a little more comfortable, and the rest bunched together into a pillow.

It wasn’t particularly good, but it was part of his summer routine at this point, so he settled down, lying on the roof of his van. He watched the clear, evening summer sky fade into night, watching the stars come out slowly and then all at once as the animal sounds faded and changed to accompany the sky.

Some birds — owls, if he had to guess — and bats were flying overheard, occasionally cutting his vision of the stars and changing the tracks of his thoughts; the song he’d been working on, the campaign Will wanted to run for Hellfire next, Robin’s entirely too chaotic packing process, and how that girl might have surpassed him in terms of organizational chaos. At least Eddie could find his shit in half the time it had taken her to find the shoes she was taking with her.

The crunch of steps on fallen branches drew him out of his thoughts, making him turn in its direction.

“Jesus, how far is this place,” Eddie heard in a very familiar grumble. Steve was closer than he probably expected to be, and it didn’t take long before Eddie could see him on the treeline. “Uh… Hi.”

“Hi,” Eddie returned, waving at him from where he lay with a grin. “Funny seeing you here.”

Steve rolled his eyes and walked closer. He was wearing some ridiculous yellow shorts and what looked like an old NASCAR shirt, color and design faded with time. It was a little different from what Eddie was used to; more relaxed, like he didn’t have anyone to impress. Which was good, Eddie didn’t need to be impressed by style.

(Eddie knew, objectively, that Steve genuinely enjoyed the polos and all that, but it was still nice to see him in something else. Something softer.)

“What are you doing out here?” Steve asked once he was close to the van, just enough to still be able to see Eddie.

“Looking for Scorpius,” he stated simply, gesturing for Steve to come up. While Steve climbed to the roof of the van, Eddie adjusted the pillow of blankets so they could lie side by side. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I was expecting to find you in the trailer,” Steve started, leaning back on top of the blankets on his elbows with a frown on his face. “Wayne directed me over here.” Steve looked around, frowning even harder when he glanced at the ground. “You said you’re looking for scorpions?”

“Scorpius, not scorpions,” Eddie corrected softly, turning back to the stars. “The constellation.”

Steve let out a soft “Oh,” turning to glance at the sky before lying down and making himself comfortable.

Eddie had the vague knowledge that Scorpius was closer to the horizon line, but he’d have to drive up to Hop’s old cabin and the nearby hill to actually look for it, and he just… didn’t want to go that far.

(Didn't really want to be looking over all of Hawkins.)

“What’s the story?” Steve asked after a couple of minutes spent in silence. When Eddie turned to look, Steve was already watching him, his little smile illuminated by the moon. After a beat, he added, “Constellations have those, don’t they?”

Eddie nodded, struggling a little to find his words with the way Steve was looking at him. “It’s uh…” He cleared his throat and turned back to the sky. “It’s the scorpion that killed Orion.”

He could still feel Steve’s eyes on him, waiting for more.

“Orion was a hunter, the best one humanity had to offer,” Eddie started, gesturing to their surroundings as if it could encompass every person in the world. “But he was just a human, you know? And if even the gods of ancient Greece were flawed, imagine how bad a human could be.”

He glanced at Steve, finding all of his attention still focused on him.

“His flaws are not really the point, though.” He shook his head, continuing the story. “At some point in his life, Orion was hunting with Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and wild animals, and… Well,” he grimaced, “He claimed to be able to hunt every animal on Earth.”

“To the goddess of the hunt?” Steve questioned with that particular tone he had when he thought something was stupid. “Rather arrogant of him.”

“Yeah, but Artemis was fond of him.” Steve raised an eyebrow at that, but it took Eddie a moment to realize how his words could be taken. “Not like that,” he added, chuckling. “Artemis was a virgin goddess, none of that.”

Steve hummed, his expression betraying his surprise. “Good for her.”

Eddie blinked at Steve, at this tone of awe that he had.

“Where does the scorpion come in?” Steve asked, a little furrow appearing between his brow that Eddie wanted smooth out, though he had a story to finish.

“Right,” Eddie sighed out, turning once again to the stars. “Gaia, the personification of the Earth itself, didn’t like Orion’s claim.” He paused, then added, “She’s the mother of all life, so.” He gestured nonsensically upwards, finishing his story with as much a deadpan tone as he could muster. “She sent a giant scorpion to kill him.”

“A giant—” Steve burst out laughing, shaking his head in some kind of attempt to regain his composure. “Sorry, I’m sorry, just—”

“It’s kind of a silly conclusion?” Eddie asked with a smile on his face as well as in his voice. Steve nodded, taking a deep breath to calm himself down. “Greek mythology is kind of… Dramatic, like that,” he explained with a shrug. “Orion’s hubris got him killed by a giant scorpion—” Steve snorted, but reined himself in quickly— “And they were both raised to the sky as constellations as a warning against humanity’s arrogance.”

Steve hummed, gaze unfocused when Eddie looked at him. “Where are they, then?”

“Uh…” Eddie blinked and turned to the sky to blink some more. “Orion is not visible this time of the year, and Scorpius is closer to the horizon,” he said, raising his arm to point in the general direction he remembered the constellation being.

Steve hummed, but didn’t say anything, letting the silence and the warm evening air envelop them. Eddie expected it to grow awkward, for Steve to say something, for himself to end up fidgeting. Instead, it was easy to just exist together like this, lying side by side and watching the night sky.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked, some indeterminate time later. Eddie could feel Steve move about, slowly as to not risk falling off the side, and settle on his side, holding himself up on his elbow. “El was all…” He gestured toward his face. “All frowny, and she only does that when she’s worried. Dustin also said you seemed down.”

Eddie sighed, wishing those kids paid just a little less attention. “I’m good,” he said, keeping his tone light. “Just thinking, you know?”

“About?”

“What happens now, I guess?” He hadn’t meant for it to come out as a question. “We got a couple more practice sessions before Jeff and Arnie are going back to college.”

“Gareth’s not going anywhere out of state, though, right?” Steve asked with a thoughtful little frown that Eddie couldn’t resist smoothing out with a finger this time. It earned him a soft laugh and a smack to his hand. “You guys can keep Corroded Coffin going?”

Eddie shrugged as much as he could while lying down. He tried that once, making it on his own, but it didn’t seem as worth it now.

“Think I’d rather not split the band,” he said, grimacing and knowing that Steve would pick up the story he wasn’t telling.

“So,” Steve drawled, eyes narrowed at Eddie like he’d be able to figure out whatever was going on in his head. “The plan is just to wait?”

Honestly, Eddie hated that idea, but what else could Corroded Coffin do? “Sure.” Steve eyes narrowed further, going unfocused again. “What?”

“The kids will be starting their junior year,” he stated.

Eddie hummed to let Steve know he was listening, but he had no idea where the guy was going with this.

“You should come to Indianapolis with me,” he announced.

Eddie blinked at Steve, processing his words for a moment. The offer seemed to come out of nowhere. He expected Steve to leave Hawkins at some point, he’d been preparing for that news, and now it came with an offer to tag along?

“I don’t really have any plans yet,” Steve continued, probably taking Eddie’s silence as hesitation. “We’d have to look into places, and Indianapolis is just an hour away, but it should be enough for a fresh start, right?”

Eddie nodded, a little numbly. “You, uh…” He shook his head to dislodge his surprise. “I think Gareth’s going to community college in the city, actually.”

“Is he, now?” Steve raised an eyebrow, looking unimpressed and not surprised.

“Right, you two talk a lot now.” It was still rather amusing that the two of them hung out so much, even without Eddie. “Will?”

“Of course it’s about Will,” Steve scoffed, waving a hand in a flourish. “It’s why he picked Indianapolis. But don’t change the subject,” he added with a smack to Eddie’s arm.

“Alright, alright!” Eddie laughed, rubbing his arm. He’d have rolled away from Steve if it didn’t mean rolling off the roof of the van. “I guess Indianapolis is pretty good…”

Steve beamed at him, a smile he’d been seeing more often as the time passed. Usually, Steve was being a little shit when he smiled like that, but sometimes, he just seemed… happy.

“You could, I don’t know, teach kids how to play the guitar.”

That made Eddie laugh, surprised at the suggestion. Not that he necessarily disliked it.

“Who’d even let me?” He asked. “Maybe I’ll find work at a record store, that seems more likely.”

“If you want to, I’m sure you could find something.” Steve shrugged, that grin not fading from his expression. “Who says you can’t do both, anyway?”

And… Well, Steve had a point. Maybe he could find a store that offered lessons?

“Why are you asking me to go to Indianapolis with you?” The question was asked before Eddie even processed that it was something he wanted to know. He grimaced as soon as it was out. “Not that I don’t want to, god knows I wanted to be out of this town three years ago now, but just— I thought you might tag along with Robin?”

Steve’s expression softened, a serene smile replacing the wide grin. “I thought about it. Robin’s going to Indianapolis University anyway, though, and…” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I think I’d like you there too.”

“You think?” Eddie questioned with a raised brow. It was easier to tease and joke than really look into that sparkle of mirth in Steve’s eyes and hope it meant what he wanted it to mean.

Steve shook his head, sending his hair all over the place. “I know. Got used to your noise, Munson.”

“Well, I’m making your life interesting, so you’re welcome.”

They were both smiling when Eddie finally let himself look Steve in the eye, finally relaxed enough even though he hadn’t escaped thinking about Steve, or his actual presence. It was fine. There some tentative plans to get out of Hawkins, together, and maybe Corroded Coffin would forever be a high school band that didn’t really go anywhere — Eddie was only starting to be okay with that idea, though — but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do something else with music.

Steve laid back down on the van after a moment of silence, turning his gaze to the sky. Like this, they were touching pretty much from shoulder to knee, and Eddie was trying not to move too much, conscious of the warmth radiating from Steve.

Steve, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have the same hang-ups, nudging Eddie’s hand until he could take it in his own.

“This okay?” He asked softly, not turning his head and not seeing Eddie already looking at him. Eddie squeezed his hand and intertwined their fingers as response. “I wasn’t planning on talking to you about Indianapolis tonight, you know?” His admission was soft, barely above the ambiance of the woods at night. “I was just gonna keep you company.”

“I’m glad you did.” Eddie let himself take in Steve’s face and what freckles he could see in the dark before turning away. “Easier to think I can actually get out of here when I have a tentative plan.”

“You can, Eddie,” Steve said, firmly squeezing his hand. “I meant it, I’d really like if you came to Indianapolis with me.”

He could feel Steve’s eyes boring a hole into the side of his head, and he refused to loosen the hold on his hand. Eddie sighed, turning to face Steve’s small, determined frown.

“Sometimes,” he started, hesitating before pulling their joined hands closer. “I kinda wish you were still some degree of asshole.” Steve frowned, ready to interject, but Eddie continued before he could. “‘Cause it would make getting over this ridiculous crush so much easier.”

Steve pulled their hands closer to himself this time, and Eddie could see him pursing his lips. He’d been paying too much attention, enough to know this was Steve trying to rein in one of those rare, goofy grins that had been one of the things that made Eddie fall in the first place.

“What if,” Steve started, slowly letting the grin take hold, as he started absently playing with the one ring Eddie forgot to take off before climbing up the van. “I don’t want you getting over this ridiculous crush?”

Eddie blinked at him — he felt like he’d done that a lot tonight, almost constantly surprised by Steve despite how close they’d gotten. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t seen this coming, too close to see what, eventually, might become obvious in hindsight.

“You mean that?”

Steve’s grin came out, full force, in the face of Eddie’s soft tone. He slowly brought Eddie’s hand closer and pressed an oh so soft kiss to his knuckles.

“I mean it.”

Eddie didn’t really know what to say to all that, the smooth jerk knew it and could probably see the blush undoubtedly rising on his cheeks. But there was one thing that he needed to double check.

“You know I’m—”

“Asexual?” He filled in after Eddie cut himself short. “Yeah, I do.” Steve was back to messing with the ring on his hand, looking at it with an expression Eddie still hadn’t figured out. “And I think…” He paused, frowning a little. Eddie kind of wanted to bite him. “It might apply to me too?”

Eddie rolled closer to Steve and pressed a kiss to cheek, feeling the heat rising the longer he stayed there.

“Thanks for telling me,” he mumbled against Steve’s cheek. He pressed another quick kiss before settling back down. “Feels good to know, doesn’t it?”

Steve’s laughter was light, giddy. He rolled onto Eddie this time, hugging him as close as possible.

“It really does.”

Eddie knew they would talk come morning, and they would define just what they wanted and were to each other. But for now, cuddling and laughing under the night sky with ridiculous Greek stories was all Eddie wanted to be doing.

#Stranger Things #Eddie Munson #Steve Harrington #Steddie #Asexual Eddie Munson #Asexual Steve Harrington #eddiemonth #day 6 #WeresWriting #This got so sappy #and not at all what I was originally going for #I wanted a RWRB reference. Ended up sort of there anyway #(Orion is really only visible during winter I didn't know that)

[ibrithir-was-here]

Been a while since i've written for this au! But here's a drabble going off of this post for Corinthian Bros.

“Please don’t cry”

The plea sat heavy on the Corinthian's tounges, sliding down his throat and catching, like a clot congealing blood he couldn't dislodge. The memory of the last time he'd begged--that long ago night in Berlin-- rose up and added to the sour taste of despair curdling within him. He wanted to wash it out with the sharp sweet tang of fury and defiance.

But that defiance was precisely what had gotten them both here in the first place.

“I’m sor-sorry,”  The Kid choked out, wiping furiously at the red tracts streaking down his face, the bloody smears making his shaking form look even more undone.

“ Don’t be sorry either” The Corinthian said, sliding through the nothingness they'd been placed in over to where the Kid sat, curling into himself as though that would keep his sobs locked down, unable to escape.

Just like them. 

The Corinthian reached his arms around the Kid's shoulders and pulled him close, tucking the blonde head under his chin, feeling the tremors of his younger counterpart rattleing his smaller frame, and squeezing him tight as if the embrace might help settle them.

(If anyone had told him a year ago he'd be trying to comfort his replacement while they both faced almost certain Unmaking--well that person would have ended up like all the rest of his victims he supposed. Only much faster and with a lot less "messing around" beforehand.) 

“Nothin’ to be sorry for, I was the one who got us into this mess”

But the Kid shook his head at this, pushing away slightly to look up at the Corinthian, eyes still red and shiny with bloody tears barely held at bay. 

"I was the one who messed up, if I had just been better at—”

“It’s not your fault Kid, alright?" He said sharply, regretting the bite in his tone as he saw the Kid flinch. He pulled the young nightmare close again and went on, softer now, but determined to make him understand.

"It’s mine. I should’ve known better than to provoke his high and mightyness by trying to cut and run again, especially after he laid out pretty explicitly what would happen if I did. ”

Not that he'd ever had any idea of actually obeying Dream's instructions to stay out of the Waking World. He'd just hadn't planned on his escape attempt being made so soon, or having it hinge on trying to keep the Kid clear of the results of Dream's displeasure.

Of course his efforts had thrown them both right into the thick of that. 

Maybe he really was poorly made. He'd screwed things up for both of them. Both by getting caught and by…by not teaching the Kid well enough to take his place. 

"I will admit the new Corinthian has not filled his role as I'd wished. Some adjustments may need to be made as such…"

He'd know what that meant, and he wasn't about to let the Kid get unmade, not if he could help it. He'd made a b-line to the Waking as soon as he'd overheard Dream expressing his disappointment. 

( Maybe there was just something wrong with the whole design of him, The Corinthian, that had poisoned the chances of the Kid before he'd even tried.  Maybe they'd both been doomed from the start.) 

“What’s gonna happen now?”

The Kid's whispered question pulled him from his despairing reverie. He hoped she was getting her money's worth at least. 

“ I dunno” He admitted.

Another stifled sob. Another quick squeeze of the shoulders.

“ I’m gonna make sure nothin’ happens to you though, you're gonna be ok" 

It felt like an empty promise, in this empty place between existence and annihilation. But he'd do his best to keep it. He owed the Kid that much. 

"But he was so angry," The Kid choked out, shuddering at the memory of the Lord of Nightmare's fury when he found them trying to flee. Well, when he'd found the Corinthian trying to pull an-- even then-- still reluctant to disobey Kid after him. 

"Once more you seek to undermine me Corinthian?! After against my better judgment, I granted you mercy, a chance to keep your place in existence, and yet you still seek to set yourself against my will?" 

Dream had held both their fates literally in the palm of his hand, and when the Corinthian had tried to stab that hand once again--never mind how well it had or hadn't worked last time--Dream had simply cupped his other great hand over them, like trapping a pair of insects, and they'd found themselves here, in limbo, awaiting their lord's decision. 

"He's angry at me, not you"  The Corinthian said, praying it was true. 

"But you were trying to help me! "  The Kid cried, piercing directly into the heart of the argument with all the skill his function invoked.

 "I've lost you your second chance! I took your place and I wasn't even good at it and I-I've ruined your life--"

The Corinthian seized the Kid's shoulders, hauling him up so that they were staring face to face, eye-teeth to eye-teeth. 

"You're the best thing that ever happened to my life!"  

The Corinthian's voice was a rumbling growl, echoing around the emptiness as he pushed every ounce of conviction he had into that admittance. 

"And no matter what happens next, I don't regret a minute of having you in it, ok?" 

He gave the Kid a small shake, trying to push the understanding of just how much he meant his words into him. "Ok?" 

" E-even when I accidentally stabbed you during practice?"  The Kid rasped half a laugh escaping from him despite his efforts to hold it down.

It was a pale reflection of the Kid's usual deflecting snark, but it was more like him than he'd been in the hours, days, since they'd been sent here, and the Corinthian couldn't help but grin back. 

"That was an accident?" He said, feigning disappointment, "And here I was thinking you'd actually managed to get one up on me" 

The Kid gave him an indignant smack on the arm, the Corinthian faked returning a cuff to the ear, and then the Kid was in his arms again. Not crying anymore, but holding onto him like a lifeline, face pressed into his chest, fingers gripping his jacket till the knuckles went white. The Corinthian held him back just as tightly. 

"No matter what happens kiddo, we'll be together, I promise" 

Then the sky split open.

Light flooded into the darkness, blinding them both with its intensity. When their sight returned, they were kneeling at the bottom of the stairs, in the throne room of the palace, and Dream himself was standing above them.

"Let us begin" 

#my writing #Corinthian Bros AU #it does work out and Dream tells them he wasnt gonna unmake Cori 2 he was just saying he didn't seem to be enjoying the full role #so they end up sharing it and Cori 1 does the gorier dreams #after serving some time doing community service for trying to break parole and taking 2 with him #the sandman #the corinthian #the second corinthian #dream of the endless #sandman netflix

[runwayrunway]

No. 45 - BermudAir

Sometimes, when I'm especially bored at work, I find myself idly checking to see if there are any interesting planes at Logan Airport. It's common to see an MD-11 or A380, but every once in a while we get Blueprint, for example, or Vatnajökull or Hekla Aurora, or the Blackpink plane, and I always have my fingers crossed one day Xáat Kwáani will be there.

Today, the 23rd of August, I opened FlightRadar24 and was startled to see we were graced with the presence of a British Midland Embraer E175.

What is an airline which hasn't existed since 2012 doing operating a flight to an airport it never served using a type it never flew? Well, disappointingly, they aren't.

As far as consolation prizes go, though, I'm perfectly happy with a brand new airline to discuss.

So I'm reasonably sure what happened here is that BermudAir is using British Midland's old ICAO designator, BMA, and FlightRadar hasn't updated its data to match yet. They do this. I regularly get a kick out of the fact that their map insists Cape Air's Tecnam P2012s are jets.

Regardless, it was a good way to grab my attention! When I say BermudAir is new I do mean brand new - as in, they haven't flown a single revenue flight yet. Their plan is to begin service to Boston Logan and Westchester County Airport (located just north of New York City) on the 31st of August and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood on the 15th of September, connecting all three destinations with Bermuda's L.F. Wade International Airport.

So let's take a look at this girl, temporarily local to me! This is VQ-BLU, but you can call her Topsey, which is an adorable name. She's an eleven-year-old Embraer E175, formerly of Flybe. And wow, is she tropical. Fort Lauderdale is one thing, but just imagine this plane parked in Boston in the middle of a blizzard. Oh, no...it'd just be her bright little tail poking out in a sheet of white...

If you look closer you can see that the interior of the winglet is a very washed out blue with the BermudAir logo on it.

She's vibrant! She's tropical! I love this design, obviously. It would be difficult not to. It's just...visually pleasing, right? It's bright and pink and colourful and gorgeous. While I initially thought this design was sort of familiar I think it might just be a very popular style, because if it's actually taken from a specific preexisting piece rather than commissioned for BermudAir it's certainly not one I could identify. Anyway, it looks nice.

...wish they'd painted the rest of the plane, though.

So this is VQ-BLW, Willy to her friends. If the names Topsey and Willy have any particular origin, it's not one I'm aware of, but as always I prefer named airplanes to unnamed ones. Willy is also eleven years old and a Flybe veteran, and is currently parked at Muskoka, presumably waiting to be ferried to her new home.

One thing I do quite like is the degree to which the design changes depending on the lighting. This sort of fuchsia is great for that. It looks pastel in the light and luminescent in the shadow, but never looks washed out or dusty. The composition of the blues and pink is absolutely beautiful.

For a minute there I thought the engines had some sort of pink design which made me think of a flower for some reason, but upon closer inspection it appears to just be an engine cover lashed on with ropes of a similar dusty pink colour. This is a shame. More airlines need to do creative things with their nacelles. Even if they're subtle, it can make a huge difference when you consider it's one of the most foreground things period when seeing the plane from the side.

That's a shame. Oh, well.

As for the primarily white portion of the body, it could be worse. They've chosen a tolerable sans serif, and they've made it dark grey rather than black to avoid it looking too harsh and out-of-place. I also like the location beneath the window-line, something more typical of turboprops which I think adds a nice bit of variety when done in large text on a jet like this. The stylized A in the logo and Topsey's name are both rendered in cyan, keeping some of that tropical energy throughout the airframe. That said, while the text is quite legible (the generous but not excessive space between letters and the size it's printed in are both excellent) I really wish the cyan-on-white was a bit easier to read.

While somehow the abstract nature of the tail design combined with the massive wordmark at the front prevents the plane from feeling lopsided as many similar layouts do, I still think this could be improved. Beyond the simple fact that it's boring, I distinctly dislike the very luxury-hotel feeling of combined tropical colors and sterile white. That sort of thing has always given me the ick, and also just feels unsure of what it wants to be. Are you having fun or are you going to perform a surgery? Are we a bunch of businessmen in suits having their meeting inside of a hot tub drinking Mai Tais or are we a group of seven to ten college-aged girls with modest Instagram followings playing beach volleyball in a conference room? You can't be both.

But, I mean...in terms of vacation branding, this is about as standard as you get. This is every big resort on St. John's and every luxury cruise to the extremely teal oceans of some archipelago somewhere. So despite my personal distaste for the style in general I have to admit this is a well done instance of it. That art on the tail really is nice, it really just is. I wish I knew who the artist was, because they know their way around a color palette.

So how do we...well, I don't want to say fix this, because I do think it gets the job done. I think I need to reframe my phrasing for this and future reviews: how do we make this an A? And I don't know. There's the obvious, extending the design to the whole plane, but I don't even think you need to go that far. A bit of light colored remnant trailing off into the rest of the plane, maybe a shift for the fuselage itself from pure white to a dusty pink or cyan...or, if you commit to the idea of the beach, both, for a sunset over an ocean. Add something to the engines, you might have something!

But this livery is already kind of admittedly more than adequate. I feel like people who are more receptive to this...vibe than I am would really rate this. And that isn't not a factor in my decisions. I don't just base these off aesthetics, or my rating for Saudia wouldn't be what it is. There's a degree of...trying, here, and a degree of succeeding, even. I do think it's well designed even though it reminds me of the little bottles of shampoo you get at hotels.

So, um...B-, I think. That's what I'm going with for the moment - could someone please "accidentally" get some grapefruit juice on the front fuselage, though? Just as a favor to me.

Okay, wow, Runway Runway. Nice post, but uh...is this really what took you so long to finish? And don't you normally give some background on the airline you're talking about? Is this some sort of joke?

Well...no. I wanted to put the review in the start of the post for a couple of reasons, but I'd appreciate if you continue reading for some background on BermudAir. There's a lot about the airline that requires some pretty extensive context, and I think it would be actively irresponsible not to talk about. The rest of this post is going to be long, but that's for a good reason, so please bear with me.

BermudAir is actually a milestone - Bermuda's first airline, apparently. I was startled to learn this, and it made me pretty excited. Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory - this is to say, a colony of the English Empire which even in the modern day has not gained its independence and retains the King of England as its head of state despite being self-governed in every practical sense of the term. It would be fantastic to see Bermuda establish its own flag carrier, to have more of its own infrastructure, and just broadly more to call its own that isn't imposed by the British Empire.

And that's when this stopped really being a normal Runway Runway post.

I was surprised to learn that BermudAir is the first airline in Bermuda's history. It turns out that's because it isn't true - though it might appear that way until you roll up your sleeves and root around in the compost bin of publicly available records. While Bermuda's Bermuda Civil Aviation Authority (BCAA) has issued Air Operator Certificates (AOC) multiple times in the past, most were for startups that fell through. People have been trying and failing now for literal decades to make an airline stick. But while no scheduled passenger airlines have gotten off the ground, BermudAir is not the literal first airline in Bermuda. Leisure and charter airline Freedom II appears to mostly fly to Anguilla and is headquartered in Florida but is registered in Bermuda, and supposedly an airline called Brisair also operated from Bermuda but Planespotters.net says it's Swiss and all photos seem to be from Finland, and they don't appear to so much as have a website, so...I'm not sure. I don't even know if Brisair is still in operation. There's also charter and cargo airline Longtail Aviation, which made the news in 2021 when one of its planes disgorged a few assorted engine gubbins while flying over the Netherlands.

This is at least two and potentially three things operating in Bermuda which I would definitely describe as airlines, so BermudAir is not the first Bermudian airline! They appear to be the first Bermuda-founded airline to operate scheduled service to Bermuda, and will be the only one to operate year-round service from the island, but that isn't the same thing as being the first Bermudian airline. You can't just say things that aren't true! And even the government seems to be repeating this.

"We are very happy to welcome BermudAir as Bermuda's first carrier, as they work toward setting a new standard for travel," Bermuda's Minister of Transport Wayne Furbert said in a statement celebrating the carrier's launch. "This partnership represents an exciting milestone for our island, as it enhances connectivity and strengthens our position as a premier destination. With BermudAir's commitment to providing convenient connections, we anticipate a significant boost to our tourism market."

And this just feels wrong. The Bermudian government's enthusiasm about this project doesn't actually fill me with very much optimism given the context in which they're saying this and in which BermudAir exists.

All of what I'm going to say right now is incredibly oversimplified and I don't have the necessary background to not oversimplify it, so keep in mind these are very broad statements and that for a better picture you would need to seek out Bermudian writers. But even my simple version is pretty long, and a little bit technical. All of my sources are going to be at the bottom of this post and I'm sure there's a lot I've overlooked, so if you have anything to add or correct please do so. This said, BermudAir is not for Bermudians.

The flag of Bermuda. Pay close attention to the best coat of arms I have ever seen in my life. Can you imagine how good this would look without the Union Jack cluttering it up?

Bermuda is a very 'prosperous' place, a statement which is deeply misleading. It has a colossal GDP, driven not by any domestic industry but from its status as one of the world's best-reviewed tax havens. Indeed, tariffs imposed by the US have essentially meant that agricultural exports are a nonstarter as an economic pursuit and their wealth comes instead from tourism and thousands of foreign businesses with no real connection to Bermuda flocking there to take advantage of the almost nonexistent taxes.[10]

At various points anywhere between 20 and 30 percent of those residing in the country have not held Bermudian status. This is a term that should be clarified upfront. Bermudians, and anyone born in Bermuda, are British nationals but do not have British citizenship. They instead have 'British Overseas Territories Citizenship', which does not confer the rights associated with actual citizenship, such as that of work or abode. Many Bermudians accordingly do not consider themselves to be British.[17]

However, there exists a local 'citizenship' called Bermudian Status. Bermudian Status is given to those with at least one parent who holds Bermudian status, or by formal government award. It is not given to those born on Bermudian soil, cannot be bought, and is very difficult to obtain if not born into. I have literally never seen such stringent requirements for a citizenship in my life, and this does actually have meaningful consequences. Rights such as those to work, own businesses, obtain scholarships, and vote are restricted to those with Bermudian status. They also cannot purchase property - with one exception.[17]

All of the above sounds pretty horrible, and I'm sure it sometimes is, but it needs to be taken in the context it exists in. Bermuda is an incredibly popular tax haven for the ultrawealthy[10] and accordingly flocked to by nationals of other countries. Although Archibald[17] makes it out as if there is some sort of epidemic of arbitrarily disenfranchised Bermudian-born individuals this doesn't actually seem to be true, as 97% of those born on Bermudian soil actually do hold Bermudian status, as do 31% of those born elsewhere.[18] It may be difficult to obtain, and that may well be a problem, but this does not appear to be an epidemic of people disenfranchised from birth, which does exist elsewhere. For instance, former USSR citizens in Latvia and Estonia were not granted citizenship and many remain functionally stateless, and residents of American Samoa are considered US nationals but not citizens. This makes them, among other things, ineligible for any government benefits for disability or medical care.

These people without Bermudian status aren't just stateless, though. They hold the same British Overseas Territories Citizenship as Bermudians, and may well hold others - for instance, those born on US military bases are US birthright citizens. The majority of these non-Bermudians are foreign-born and thus presumably hold a different citizenship. And citizenships can be something pretty lopsided. A US, UK, or EU passport holds an absolutely outsized amount of power and convenience when it comes to free travel and may entitle you to myriad benefits from said governments. I know a lot of people with dual citizenships who have no love whatsoever for the US or UK but keep their passports because life without one is measurably harder. And think of it this way: a non-Bermudian living in Bermuda is less like someone born in American Samoa, who has no nationality other than the US but cannot vote or derive government benefits, and a little bit more like a permanent resident, who can't vote, a system had by just about every country.

And there's probably a reason Bermuda is so stingy about Bermudian status. I'll be honest, it's pretty telling that unlike many other jurisdictions Bermuda doesn't allow one to pay their way into citizenship. I'm sure some people want that to be the case, given the demographics of non-Bermudians in Bermuda, but the distinction between people actually from Bermuda and those who are just using it for a tax break is actually meaningful. I'm sure there are people genuinely harmed by this law, but there's one more thing I need to point out: non-Bermudians are allowed to own land. The only restriction is that they're limited to the most expensive 5% of it. This sends a pretty clear message about who non-Bermudians are.

Since agriculture is mostly a non-starter and so much of the country is foreigners, aside from tax breaks and registering yachts Bermuda's main industry, particularly for employment of locals, is tourism. The need to satisfy tourists makes everything else frequently secondary to avoid upsetting the fulcrum of the economy and can impede efforts of worker's unions. What taxes do exist are placed on workers and end consumers rather than those who own businesses and property. The majority of taxes come from customs, and though payroll is taxed personal income is not, meaning that all income tax is paid off of wage labor and none off of personal accumulated capital. Land tax does exist, but makes up the smallest portion of tax income.[4] The cost of living is commensurate with the GDP and benefits for the elderly and disabled are notably lacking[13]; most disabled and elderly residents are Black[11].

As with many places with a similar history under colonial rule, Bermuda has an extensive history of violent racial oppression and the effects are still clearly seen today. According to the most recent data I could find, admittedly from 2012, though Black Bermudians make up the majority of the population their average income is 22% lower than that of White Bermudians and their median income 30% lower[1]. While I don't have the data on hand, just the analysis the government itself published, my assumption would be that this means that, though the wealthiest Black Bermudians still make less than the wealthiest white Bermudians, they are still significantly pushing up the average, and a heavily disproportionate number of Black Bermudians make up the ranks of the absolute most impoverished Bermudians.

Most tellingly, from my own perspective, non-Bermudians have a 20% higher median income than Bermudians of any race, and this is increasing at a higher rate than that of Bermudians as well. In the past decade the greatest increase has been seen by non-Bermudian women, and the least by Bermudian men, suggesting that the gender gap is slowly closing while the nationality gap is widening[1]. The Tax Justice Network's 2018 report notes that the Bermudian government has 'conspicuously' never produced a study of income inequality and does not provide equivalized numbers, which makes it difficult to properly derive true numbers and compare to other countries. Still, here is what they found:

While while wages did rise between 2008 and 2016, the highest-earning only just kept up with inflation while those earning lower wages have, in real terms, had their earnings fall by 5%. Although clerical jobs are low-paying compared to the (very inflated) average, they're doing fantastic compared to the 32% drop seen by workers in Agriculture & Fisheries.[4] While in countries like the United States these jobs are primarily sloughed off to migrants with little to no recourse against poor treatment and pitiful wages, in Bermuda these jobs are presumably similar in implementation but half of them are worked by native Bermudans.[4] Black Bermudians are the majority of the workforce, yet 65% of those in managerial and professional occupations are white.[11] This means that most of the people having their wages functionally decrease were Black, further exacerbating the racial wealth gap.

When comparing average to median income Bermuda has some of the highest income inequality in the entire world, comparable to that of the United States and worse than that of London.[4] That is unbelievably dire, especially given how often Bermuda is represented as some sort of poverty-free paradise when attempting to galvanise tourism among the US's upper classes.

As for independence, a referendum was actually held in 1995, and the prospect was defeated by 74%, with a worryingly low voter turnout of 59%. While this clears the required bar of 40% of eligible voters opposing independence, it is still not an inspiring number. Apparently this is fairly normal, with only 60% of eligible voters registered[13] and reliably low turnout[10] suggesting this is the norm rather than the exception. This becomes all the grimmer when a Cabinet Minister "[...] compare[s] the Country to a business that had prospered under Bermudian management". Additionally, said Minister "had detected 'a shift in attitude' against blacks in the UBP. Caucus members who she would not name felt 'too many concessions were being made for black people,' and Government was doing too much to level the playing field.'"[2] Bermuda has for most of its history been ruled by a conservative party which remained in power despite being supported primarily by the white minority, and has had consistently low voter turnout[11]. Their Governor is still appointed by the English Crown, and in 2020 Bermuda was generously granted its first ever Black Governor! She is not, however, a Black Bermudian, and in fact many in the government expressed displeasure at the fact that Bermuda is still not independent, calling for at least a Deputy Governor who is actually from Bermuda, and mentioning that they had been asking for a Black Governor for a majority Black society twenty entire years ago![12]

Now pair that with the knowledge that the Governor appoints the Premier and Senate as well and that these positions are held until the Crown decides otherwise and that racial wealth disparity begins to make more sense. Legal power is concentrated in the same hands it has since its inception as a British Territory, that of wealthy white Britons. It didn't surprise me to learn where the opposition to independence came from. "The powerful families who control much of the island's commerce wish the issue of independence would simply go away," wrote Aline Sullivan for the International Herald Tribune in the leadup to the referendum. From the same article: "One private trust manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if Bermuda became independent, the financial community would 'have to rethink everything. Unless we are careful, we may start losing business' to the Cayman Islands and elsewhere, the manager said. 'People may not think of us if we can no longer market Bermuda as a British colony.'"[3] It seems blatant, reading over this, that while there was a genuine push for independence by the primarily Black permanent population, the question for the actual government was always one of optics and how best to cater to the financial giants using Bermuda as a tool.

The takeaway from this is that Bermuda's wealth is not generated via authentic economic prosperity but by offshore banking conducted by already-wealthy individuals born elsewhere exploiting the country's permissive tax laws, while those who are truly Bermudian have essentially no choice but to lean heavily on tourism as a source of income. Bermuda is not unique in this sense, but it surprised me they'd never so much as had a national airline. That's right, this is a blog about airlines. As best I can tell, this is because it's a particularly popular destination for yachts, and presumably nobody in a position to start an airline ever wondered about whether things should be made a little easier for the yachtless underclasses. When I heard this was going to be the first airline founded in Bermuda, I foolishly assumed that it would be an attempt at a flag carrier to make travel to and from Bermuda broadly more accessible.

Oh, and as for the concerning lack of figures - Bermuda appears to be ridiculously understudied. Although plenty has been written on the wildlife and ecology, and in some specific fields like midwifery, I had a very hard time finding detailed studies of the population and for each useful thing I found I also got around seven articles about marine invertebrates and occasionally something like this.

So if people have done analyses of the publicly available census data, or research of their own, most of it is in places where my student-going-into-archival-science's ability to use databases and my university's JSTOR credentials can't reach. And, well, that's bad. It's pretty bad that aside from the sources I'm using the only thing I could find was one study conducted on seniors' ability to access healthcare. It's not great, by the way.

But that is literally not even why I'm meant to be here.

Okay, enough of the politics! Time for some business speculation! As an undergraduate history student I have even less authority to speak on this than I do on the history of Bermudian wealth inequality, so take this with an even larger grain of salt, but I'm going to spend a moment to discuss the most noteworthy thing about BermudAir - its business model.

BermudAir is a boutique airline which will operate nonstop flights to three destinations on the US East Coast from Bermuda year-round.

This is already a weird concept. To begin with, this isn't a service anyone is in dire need of. Although the only one of their three destinations which currently has a direct flight to Bermuda is Logan (operated daily by a jetBlue A220), flights from the East Coast are not lacking. Delta, United, JetBlue, and American Airlines all fly to Bermuda, and the fact that Westchester doesn't currently have one isn't strange given it's mostly a regional airport and the nearby JFK absolutely does have direct flights to Bermuda. This makes me think they may well be frozen out of business for half of the year. Sure, their passengers won't have to deal with seeing poor people at the airport, but they also won't be able to use their SkyMiles.

This service will be non-stop and year-round. Right now tickets are $199 or so, but when they get their planned cabins installed in November prices will immediately jump to quadruple digits.[6] (...this honestly makes me a little angry. That is an immense difference in price for a service that differs only in initial cost of installation.) This is because the entire airplane will be business-class only. This is actually pretty cheap for business class, apparently. I wouldn't know, I'm not really BermudAir's target audience. The Business Insider article opens with the phrase "Bermuda just got a little more accessible," which is really...a thing that they said in their article.

Business-class-only travel isn't unheard of or anything. Private jet rentals are a thing (for people willing to spend between tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour) and carriers like Qatar Airways and British Airways have had similar models on a limited number of retrofitted planes. There's also La Compagnie, an airline which flies in an all-business-class configuration primarily Orly to Newark. And, I mean, that makes some sense, Paris to Newark is a popular route for business travelers...not sure about Boston to Bermuda.

image: Adam Moreira They're actually one of the airlines I wanted to talk about when I first started this blog. Still might do.

A 'boutique airline' is meant to be the equivalent of a boutique hotel - nice fluffy transport for wealthy business and leisure travelers. This definition gets a bit fuzzy - Asiana Airlines and TAP Air Portugal have both been described this way at least once, and that's definitely not true - but I think BermudAir has helped codify the definition. Though Bangkok Airways self-describes as such, I think airlines like BermudAir and La Compagnie are the true exemplar of the category. A luxury vacation airline that isn't quite renting a private jet or owning a yacht, but is still a luxury airline for luxury. There have been attempts at such before. David Neeleman, known recurring character of this blog, has been involved in two such ventures - Superior Air Charter (formerly JetSuite) and Climb. But those are just affordable jet cards with a Neeleman management style (Neelemanagement?). BermudAir and La Compagnie are fundamentally different. They've just eliminated economy class so they can fit more business class on the plane.

image: BermudAir Pay particular note to the pink mood lighting! Apparently it's meant to evoke the color of the sand on a Bermudian beach.

They refer to it as 'Aisle Class', because everyone gets both a window and an aisle seat (and enough storage space that overhead bins just aren't in the equation, which begs the question of...what if I want to put my things away?). 30 such 'suites' will be installed on each plane on the first of November, but for now passengers can pay a steep discount to fly in a normal cabin where only half the seats are actually sold. I don't know if this is a good business class cabin before, I've never flown business class as I'm not the sort of US national who has a bank account in Bermuda. The pillows have the same design as the airplane's livery, which is nice. An entire paragraph on the website is devoted to describing the luxury meals available to passengers. The real Bermuda experience - clean white walls and a Dark ‘n Stormy, am I right?

image: BermudAir

Hey, um...where are the leg rests? Do those seats even recline? I know this is a mock-up but...are there no seatback screens available? Seriously, what if I want to put my bag somewhere? I know checked bags are free, but I kind of...don't think I would want to do it anyway, because normally it's a waste of time when I can just toss my luggage into a bin large enough I could comfortably ride in it if they were out of seats. Also, are there not...seatbelts? Are passengers going to go flying into the seat in front of them every time the plane lands? Is any of this...even remotely crashworthy? Honestly, is it even comfortable? That's so many hard surfaces and just one little pillow and you can't even move the head-rest. This is worse than the average seat on ferries I've been on.

But enough about the interior! They don't even actually have it yet. What are they doing? In their own words, "BermudAir was created to provide frequent‚ well-timed and comfortable flights for business and premium leisure travellers between Bermuda and the East Coast of the U.S.". So...not much of a flag carrier, is it? That said, the government is pretty jazzed, according to Travel Market Report - it'll be fantastic for tourism, of course![5] Up to 18 weekly flights, and maybe even charters if the FAA allows it[6]. That is a stunningly large output for an airline just starting up with only two planes, and I am honestly afraid.

(And there is a bit of worry in my brain that I have no idea what sorts of regulations airlines with Bermudian AOCs are held to. Ben Schlappig of One Mile At A Time thought maybe the 30-passenger limit was to stay within Part 135 instead of the more restrictive Part 121, but that shouldn't matter as they aren't a US carrier - but what are they, then? Does Bermuda even have the necessary infrastructure to oversee a full-service air carrier with multiple regularly scheduled routes, or are they just going to let BermudAir do whatever it wants? That never ends well at all.)

That said, I'm also not sure it will work in the simplest sense. I'm kind of lost as to how putting less seats on an airplane will create more tourism. Founder Adam Scott claims that somehow their fleet of two E175s makes them equipped to serve the demand for the route, unlike airlines like Delta and American[7], which makes me wonder if he lives on a different planet. Delta and American have the two largest fleets in the entire world, plus regional subsidiaries, and they operate regional jets like the A220 and A319 which are both more efficient than an eleven-year-old E-Jet and filled to capacity. Besides, they have a little advantage called 'the ability to not cancel half their flights if one plane has a mechanical fault'. He also claims using Westchester Airport will save passengers time, and I'm just not too sure about that. Sure, JFK has delays on landing, but at least you don't have to then drive to New York City proper, if that's where you're going (and statistically speaking it probably is).

So how about that founder? His name is Adam Scott, so I will until told otherwise assume he is the same Adam Scott as the actor best known for his role as Jacques in my 7th-favorite Hellraiser movie, "Hellraiser IV: Bloodline" (1996).

If you think of Hellraiser: Bloodline as a Hellraiser film, it's really quite bad. But if you think of it as a Dr. Who special where people have their skin torn and warped in extremely graphic and upsetting ways, it's decent, I suppose. Did you know this was his first ever major role, by the way?

Jokes aside, this Adam Scott is Canadian and a former Goldman Sachs executive. He was among the people who worked on the now-discontinued British Airways business-class-only transatlantic A318 service, and after that ceased operation he became involved with similar startup Odyssey, which planned to replace it. They haven't made a peep since 2018 despite wanting to start service in 2020, but Scott does claim it still exists[7].

Well, I will have things to say about this if it ever launches, considering I now specifically hate this particular man.

Scott describes Bermuda as a 'mini version of London City with very similar demographics and a similar target audience',[7] which sort of made me laugh a little bit, although I'm not sure what emotion was primarily driving said laughter. This feels like a parody of a parody. But they're definitely way closer to being a reality than Odyssey, whether they can make enough money to keep it that way notwithstanding. Their chances are probably better than Global Airlines, at least. But hey, wait a minute...Bermudian airline, Canadian founder...weird, isn't it? I mean, who is this airline for?

image: BermudAir

I know, they said business and leisure travellers, but...isn't that so strange? 'Bermuda' is in the name, but the one year-round service to the US East Coast is going to be inaccessible to most of the people who live there, deliberately carrying as few people as possible!

image: BermudAir

This is actually a reminder that I needed - whenever I find something happening in the US to be cynical and disturbing, there is something out there even worse in a place I'm not supposed to care about. Breeze Airways having first class is pretty philosophically horrifying but at least they do still mostly sell affordable plane tickets. Azul leans quite heavily into its Brazilian branding, but David Neeleman is Brazilian, and their tickets are affordable and their service is accessible. That's just worlds apart from this! I've described flag carriers as being a service provided to a country, but this isn't that, and it's not even a product being sold to a country. This is an airline named BermudAir that Bermudians are just not meant to be involved with. I wonder if this is just something Scott never realized, or if he realized and doesn't care, or if that's actually part of the draw! I wonder the same things about the government, given they seem to have a mindset less suited for a government and more suited for the board of directors of a bank.

And I'm sure they could actually find a bit of a market for direct flights to major cities in the US year-round, when the vacation market's dried up and the only way for someone living in Bermuda to get someplace like New York is to pay way more than the asking price of a BermudAir ticket for long and inconvenient multi-stop flights. But that's so clearly not the point. A lot of those people also probably can't afford BermudAir, and the marketing clearly isn't targeting them.

Here are some posts from their Facebook. Some of the most recent, too. An "idyllic island paradise" where a smiling local Black man will serve you some delicious beverages! How tropical. He might even tell you some anecdotes about how wonderful it is to live in a sunny beach utopia where taxes don't exist. Just take a look at that palm tree! And something that frustrates me even more: just a picture of two Gombeys. The Gombey tradition of dance, costume, music, and performance is unique to Bermuda, and particularly its Black population, originating from the African slaves brought there by British colonists. I find it beyond tasteless to just post a picture of them without so much as a mention of what these costumes represent or who is wearing them, just a caption of boilerplate about your airline's upcoming launch. BermudAir's marketing places these people as literally just part of the scenery. I find this extraordinarily disrespectful.

There's nothing wrong with mentioning Gombey exists - in fact, there are events specifically for it! Gombey festivals! Boxing Day is the biggest day of the year for Gombey, don't you want to book a ticket for December? You could be in Boston eating swallowing mouthfuls of snow every time you try to breathe while a man with a Dunkin Donuts cup in his hand screams rude things at you from his car window, or you could be watching Gombey performances in Bermuda! You could even, for example, describe what these people do, or what troupe they're from, or even just mention them. Just mention them at all. I do find it pretty disrespectful when specific traditions are just waved off with a little vague non-description like 'two individuals on a beach in their traditional costume', but BermudAir didn't even do that little insufficient trifling amount.

It's the complete inverse of BWIA's steelpan logo. Steelpan is a major part of Trinidad and Tobago's history as the birthplace of dozens of musical traditions. Music is a huge part of the cultural history of the country, and part of that music was steelpan. The artisans who make steelpans and musicians who play them are something the people who created BWIA's logo thought was so fundamental to the very idea of their country that they put it on their government-owned national airline, making it the very first thing people who travelled to Trinidad and Tobago on a BWIA flight would see. I didn't end up mentioning it in the post (which is weird, because I have a false memory of including it - I think I may have in an earlier draft but then decided I couldn't fit it in even though in retrospect I obviously could and should have? Or maybe I mentioned it in reply to an ask I now can't find) but when I did my research I kept finding people talking about how much they adored BWIA and reminiscing about everything from watching their planes flying overhead to specific people they worked with, and it was really clear that this airline, beyond just nominally being owned by the government, was created by people who put real love for their country's heritage into their design.

BWIA certainly carried tourists and foreign businessmen but it wasn't made by them. That really, historically, hasn't been how things worked. You wouldn't make an airline in one country with a primary purpose of serving a market in another.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony following BermudAir's AOC being issued, featuring Adam Scott, the guy holding him, and tourism-and-aviation-related government personnel of Bermuda. One of them appears to be wearing a navy suit jacket, black-and-yellow tie, and pink shorts. image: Akil Simmons

Adam Scott describes Bermuda as his 'happy place', where he has 'developed links' for ten years.[14] Even when discussing BermudAir he doesn't describe himself as Bermudian, just 'linked' to it, a vacationer. There are spaces in BermudAir for Bermudians, though, he makes sure to clarify. They can provide "the flavours of Bermuda and the island’s renowned hospitality" to the actual clientele. Minister of Transport Wayne Furbert expresses his enthusiasm at the new jobs brought on by increased tourism[14], as if a year-round way for his actual constituents to get to and from Bermuda is simply...not something he's concerned about.

I think I need to cut myself off here, but the last thing I need to mention is this: a Bernews article was written on BermudAir, and their website allows comments. Here are some things people had to say.

Daniel G DeSilva: Although this is an “elite” air service, with BERMUDA emblazoned on the fuselage, it would be great if the tail design even remotely connected visually with Bermuda.

Paid off government: First of all this airline will be flying to other places. People forget that there are hundreds of Russia aircraft registered here that have never been in or out if Bermuda. This is not a Bermuda airline. Its just conveniently named after Bermuda and registered here. [...] And if you have to ask about the price then this airline is not for you!

(There was also some scattered speculation about it being some sort of front or scheme, which I definitely have no idea about, though I won't pretend it didn't occur to me while attempting to reconcile just how much this airline is definitely not going to make money. Having looked at their various publicly listed employees they all seem fairly credentialed, but...who even knows at this point. Maybe this was all an elaborate proof of concept for Odyssey all along. This is all so cynical it makes me want to scream.)

And that's just the thing, isn't it?

BWIA used beautiful colors vivid colors, never hiding the fact that Trinidad and Tobago are, indeed, very sunny islands with nice beaches, but that wasn't the point of it. It's so easy to make a plane that looks tropical, but BWIA didn't do that - they made a plane which represented Trinidad and Tobago.

And if I'm being fully honest, I like Topsey. I think she's adorable, and I think the design on her tail is pretty. But she wasn't designed by Bermudians and she doesn't represent Bermuda. BermudAir is an airline for the East Coast US, where people are taught in schools that the victims of an empire are colonists, taking a necessary stand against the iniquity of taxes, and the Wampanoag are no longer mentioned once the first Thanksgiving is over. The people who make up Bermuda are treated as structural parts of the tax haven England built, not citizens of a state or members of a culture. "Bermuda's first airline" ends up having very little to do with Bermuda, somehow. And I couldn't really bring myself to talk about Topsey without talking about Bermuda.

Will BermudAir fail? In my opinion, probably. But in the meantime, one of their airplanes is parked at Logan, and that's because this airline is for people from Boston, not people from Bermuda.

Sources:

[1] Government of Bermuda Cabinet Office, Department of Statistics. "Personal and Household Income: A 2010 Census Analytical Brief." www.gov.bm. Bermuda, December 2012. [2] Egan, Paul and Jeremy Deacon. "UBP about to Self-Destruct, Says Gordon." The Royal Gazette, August 8, 1995. [3] Sullivan, Aline. "Will Independence Spoil Bermuda?" nytimes.com. April 8, 1995. [4] Fowler, Naomi and Stubbs, Robert. "Bermuda: Inequality and Poverty in UK Overseas Territory." Tax Justice Network. Bristol, United Kingdom, June 21, 2018. [5] Bonfiglio, Briana. "BermudAir, the First Bermuda-Based Airline, Launches with All-Business Class Seats." Travel Market Report, August 24, 2023. [6] Schlappig, Ben. "Bermudair: New Bermuda-Based All-Business Class Airline Launches Flights." One Mile At A Time, August 24, 2023.  [7] Rains, Taylor. "A New All-Business Class Airline Is Launching Flights between the US and Bermuda — See What It’ll Be like Aboard."Business Insider, August 24, 2023. [8] BermudAir Fleet Details and History [9] Bernews. "BermudAir Aircraft Arrives In Bermuda," August 20, 2023 [10] "Bermuda." United States Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs, 1985. [11] "2010 Census of Population & Housing Final Results." Hamilton, Bermuda: Bermuda Department of Statistics. [12] Bell, Jonathan, and Fiona McWhirter. "First Black Woman to Be Appointed Governor." The Royal Gazette, June 14, 2020. [13] Forbes, Keith Archibald. "Bermuda’s Resident Population of 63,779 and Local Expatriate Organizations: Origins of Citizens and Residents, 64% Black, 32% White, 4% Asian and Other." Bermuda Online, 2020. [14] Finighan, Gareth. "BermudAir Spreads Its Wings." The Royal Gazette, July 27, 2023. [15] Jeffries, Bayyinah S. 2022. "Race and Racism in Bermuda" Genealogy 6, no. 4: 89. [16] airlinehistory.co.uk [17] Forbes, Keith Archibald. "Bermuda Citizenship or Status: Deserving long-term foreign tax-paying residents including those with over 25 years residency are denied this." Bermuda Online, 2020. [18] “NATIVITY, MIGRATION AND BERMUDIAN STATUS.” Bermuda: Government of Bermuda, 2000.

#tarmac fashion week #grade: b- #region: north america #era: 2020s #bermudair #long haul #cabin fever #neelemanverse #region: bermuda #bwia

[maydayissleepy]

Creation lore for my AU GO!! !

For those of you who thought this au was a recent thing for me I'm proud to say it's not. Just ignore the fact that I have less than half of the plot written I am chronically unable to finish projects

. Anyway it was ORIGINALLY just about the visual themes in my mind but then that lore bit about Chen and Clouse got me Thinkin and. Well. Yeah

I'll likely have a second post with like actual story and plot things but for this one I just wanted to show off the aesthetic stuff, because as much as I loved the vermillion and snake theme it did not mix in my mind with time travel.

So, for my AU, the Twins do not have the vermillion for their villainous faction (respectfully, I would still love for them to exist with the rest of the serpentine because their concept is so so cool) and, instead, I've created some steam powered robots to go with Krux's theme! And also attempted to redesign the Iron Doom to resemble a dragon more so than a snake. However for both of these I was once again realizing that I have a tad bit trouble designing robots and mechs

Aaaaand the last visual aesthetic change I think I made was changing the swamp to an ancient city's ruins in the desert? Because, yknow, desert, sand, hourglass theme? But also I think a past city's ruins plays on Krux's past theme a bit

WAAH I don't have a good drawing for the ruins city so here take this and also a lego build of the clock tower

I do plan to push the ninjas' outfits for the season more twoards steampunk or cyberpunk individually, but that's something I have yet to work on

But of course, as I will also note when I eventually make a post for the story things over my au, I do my best to write and draw these things as respectfully as possible! I genuinely appreciate feedback on my work and I want to create things that everyone can enjoy, though, having not really interacted with the fandom I may be a bit out of the knowledge on what you guys like and accept. Though I try very hard not to, I tend to be a bit oblivious at times, which is usually my main deter for interacting with fandoms. So being said, I would love and appreciate kind pointers if you guys have any feedback!

#wow i forgot to mention but my AU is called The Eleventh Hour!! #mayday's the eleventh hour

[bestworstcase]

i do think the key to how things will fall out regarding death on remnant is the jabberwalker, bc like

the brothers created death by creating him

the god of light, fearing they had disrupted the balance, tried to get rid of him. the god of darkness refused to countenance this, and they fought about it.

they leave the ever after. jabber remains, implying one of three possibilities: 1. dark ‘won’ the argument and both brothers agreed to let jabber live, 2. dark recreated jabber one last time in secret before they left, or 3. jabber came back later a la modern humans. given light’s general inflexibility my inclination is 2 or 3.

in any case the tree seems to accept jabber as part of the ever after and the presence of his figurine on the blacksmith’s worktable implies that he will continue to exist in some form.

during the creation of remnant, the brothers agree that death will be permanent. their reasons are not yet fully clear, but light was the only one concerned about enforcing this rule; i think it is almost certainly a rule that originated with the god of light.

“but balance cannot be restored by force or calculation; true balance finds its own equilibrium”

force = destroying jabber. calculation = creating a new world with permadeath.

—

the god of light conceives of balance as a fragile order that must be meticulously maintained or else fall apart: his purpose, as he sees it, is to maintain order. everything he does comes from this. he cannot tolerate change because he lives in abject fear of ‘disrupting the balance’ again—as he believes they have already done once, by creating jabber.

so there is a certain narrative equivalency being drawn here between removing jabber and making death permanent for remnant. both decisions are predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of what balance is.

thus the problem of death is not that it exists, per se. the problem is that death is the locus of light’s anxiety about change.

he first attempts to fix the ‘problem’ by getting rid of jabber, eliminating death. but he can’t, because dark won’t let him. so plan b is to leave the ever after and create a new world where death is part of the design—which isn’t contradictory at all if the intention is to prevent disruption of the existing order.

and something to keep in mind here is that 1. the cat and the jabberwalker were both deathless and unable to ascend, and 2. the brothers created death by mistake. for light these are crucial factors that must be accounted for in the new design. the only way to ensure that the disruptive introduction of death can never happen again is to include death from the start, transforming the accident into a deliberate choice.

which is all well and good except for one teeny, tiny wrinkle: for humans, death is not actually annihilative. they don’t simply cease to exist when they die.

i think it’s extremely likely that wasn’t supposed to happen. in a system where death is final and forever, spiritually immortal humans pose an obvious risk of disruption—and the ‘afterlife’ is evidently just permanent unconscious stasis, so it doesn’t seem like human souls were preserved for any purpose.

if your aim is to design an orderly system that can be maintained exactly as-is forever, and one of your core building blocks is that death is permanent, no exceptions, then why would you ever create beings capable of rising from the dead? you wouldn’t!

but once humans with immortal souls exist you’re sort of stuck with them, aren’t you? and i think that dilemma makes the most sense of why light’s afterlife is… like that. the souls of the dead ‘resting’ in everlasting oblivion in another realm that living humans cannot enter is the same in practice as annihilative death as long as every being capable of reaching the afterlife follows the stated rules.

the instant dark decides to make an exception, the whole system collapses. it reveals to salem that death isn’t inherently final or forever—that this is an arbitrary rule that the brothers decided, and one of them is open to the idea of changing those rules. then the gods make her immortal and light reprimands her for failing to understand how important his rules are (rules his brother just broke with no consequence except that light got mad), but ultimately what she learns is that the brothers are fallible and their rules can be changed. her rebellion is underpinned by this revelation.

the divine order suffers one small disruption and almost immediately, catastrophically fails, just as the god of light feared.

but that failure did not happen because of the disruption; the system failed because it was artificial. the brothers designed it a certain way and then light focused all of his efforts to keeping it that way, unchanging, forever—because their world wasn’t an ecosystem so much as it was a lawn in arizona. that lawn can only exist for as long as someone is doing the work to keep it on life support.

anyway the point i’m getting to is that remnant still isn’t in stable equilibrium, largely because of salem’s immortality and ozma’s reincarnations but also in the more general sense: the people of remnant are spiritually immortal but made to spend the vast majority of their existence essentially comatose because One God is afraid of change.

you can’t bring remnant into equilibrium by eliminating death: killing the jabberwalker isn’t the right answer. and you can’t restore balance by restoring the old system of divine rule and rigid adherence to the original design, because that system was a spindly papier-mâché machine that imploded the second somebody breathed on it wrong. and you can’t just yank the dead back to ameliorate your grief because that isn’t your choice to make, that’s an ethical position the narrative has made very clear.

which… really leaves changing the nature of the afterlife as the likeliest direction. death isn’t the problem, the afterlife of eternal stasis is. death isn’t the problem, light’s refusal to allow beings with immortal souls to keep going after their first life ends because the rules say death is final is the problem. because that finality is just… not reality. a person’s soul persists after death, ipso facto death isn’t the end.

but the reverse idea that death shouldn’t happen at all is not reality either. salem can’t die and her immortality is isolating and endlessly painful. ozma can’t stay dead and it’s eroded him down to a miserable shell of who he used to be. afterans choose to leave their memories behind when they ascend—nothing can happen to you in the tree except what you want to happen. without destruction, creation stagnates. death is part of life, not its enemy.

i doubt very much that the endgame here is for afteran ascension to be directly ported over into remnant—these are different worlds, different peoples, different systems, and while people from remnant can spiritually connect with the tree they are still fundamentally not part of it. afterans are emanations of the tree; humans and faunus are not. when afterans ascend they return to the roots of the tree and flow upward to blossom again from its crown, and that is, to put it mildly, not a system of reincarnation that physically makes sense for remnant, where things reproduce and have babies instead of new lives budding from the cosmic tree. if reincarnation brings equilibrium to remnant then it will presumably happen in a manner more natural to remnant’s people, and may not even involve passage through the tree at all.

it’s also not the only possibility: for example, there’s no reason that remnant’s afterlife has to be eternal sleep. it could just be… a new realm, a new world to live in after your life on remnant is ended. the brothers’ departure from the ever after into the boundless potential of the unknown is as likely a model as ascension. maybe remnant’s dead can’t return except by an act of god, but “gone from remnant forever” can coexist with the afterlife being… alive, as opposed to cold storage for inconveniently immortal souls.

basically the narrative setup isn’t toward rejecting death, it’s toward rejecting the state of affairs where you die and then millions of years later a god wakes you up and you have no awareness or memory of your existence since the moment of your death because you were kept unconscious until that god needed a servant. the point is that death isn’t the natural end of existence (because souls are immortal, on remnant as in the ever after) and remnant’s dead shouldn’t be held in stillness by light’s futile effort to make the facts of reality conform to his intended design.

the jabberwalker has existed for eons without bringing the ever after to ruin; the balance shifted, things changed a little, and life went on. remnant is existentially threatened by the factual reality of life-after-death only because light is so convinced of this danger that he is determined to prohibit it by any means necessary, including “demolish everything and start over from scratch.”

even a god can tilt at windmills.

#it’s also just darkly hilarious in a way #afterans are eternal #the cat was immortal #jabber was immortal and light TRIED and FAILED to unmake him #the b r o t h e r s a r e e t e r n a l #they make a world where death is supposed to be The End #and then fill it with beings #MADE OF THEMSELVES! #MADE WITH THEIR OWN NATURE! #light rattling the cosmic blueprints #what do you mean humans are eternal #WE AGREED THAT THINGS SHOULD DIE #THIS IS A DISASTER #dark like you SAID you wanted to make them like US #sorry for listening to you bro it won’t happen again #by the way i gave them magic instead of eradicating the grimm like you asked #they’re exploding beowolves with fireballs now it’s awesome #light like WHY ARE YOU THIS WAY #it’s hysterical. the divine blorbos

[xuune]

dropping this here because I kinda wish I'll snap out anytime soon from listening to the playlist you made for your last art, but here I am, booming 8:00, get me some, wyd, wounds will h.eal, and enclosed in my earphones at midnight. i think your music taste is fire, i'll give you that. mygods (ง •_•)ง

anw, I wanted to ask on how you decide and plan expressions/interactions for the characters when you draw your works? I always find your works to be so expressive. thanks in advance if you ever see this :OOO

p.s. I LOVE YOUR OCs, i think i'm in love with rael i genuinely wish they'll give me a headlock or smthn and i'll be happy p.p.s. i would marry your art if I could (i'm this fkn close 🤏 pls dont sue me)

(sorry for taking so long to reply, you'll know why once you read the rest of this lol)

im so glad that you had those as your faves bc those are some of mine too :D i've been seeing a few ppl rly enjoy 8:00, and if it wasn't for my friend recommending me that song, we wouldnt be here, and those drawings wouldnt have existed either, let alone the animatic i did

thank you for thirsting over my ocs, you don't know how much of a compliment that is whenever i see ppl react that way to them LOL. thats how i know i peaked with their design 😎 stay tuned for some other oc art, cuz im currently working on a piece for my friend's ocs. his ocs exist in the same universe as mine :)

i'll answer your question about planning expressions and interactions below, bc i have a lot to say about that:

when planning for expressions and interactions, i'm usually trying to answer a couple of these things:

what moment do i want to highlight

why is this moment significant

how do these characters feel in the moment, how to they react to each other, what's their motivations

what body language best answers the question above ^

basically, i'm asking myself "what's the scene?" -> "what do the characters feel in that moment?" -> "how do they act this out to convey that?" (that's how i was taught to read scripts for plays. you must understand character motivations before you figure out how to act their feelings out)

it's very important to have a good balance of body language and dialogue to convey the mood if/when appropriate, since sometimes strictly relying on dialogue to sell the moment w/o body lang or vice versa can tank the execution

i assume that you're more interested in how i planned the interactions for them sharing music? lmk if there's like specific ones, bc i can explain more for whatever else it may be

anyways, i start off with scripts of some kind. my scripts can be very barebones that just note a specific scene (i.e. "working at desk, listen to music together before class starts"), or that i build a moment based on a piece of dialogue (i.e. "better not queue anything lame"). here's the notes i made when i made the 8:00 animatic, since thats big on body language

i wanted to get down my main ideas first, which was figuring out the the lyrics i wanted to use paired with dialogue to match. i dont show my thinking much on some of my notes, but what i was getting at this:

story moment: dk connecting the context of the song to his intimate moment with bkg

key moments: waking up, playing with hands, eye contact w/ bkg

i didn't expand on the ideas for how those moments would look until i actually started thumbnailing for the animatic, which i showed briefly here. here's what i kept in mind for their expressions/interactions:

dk shies away from directly confronting bkg outwardly expressing his feelings for him via the song. he avoids it and changes the topic verbally to make the conversation lighthearted -> "what expresses avoidance?"

bkg is direct about his feelings, his actions and expressions must convey a direct confrontation, an attempt to make dk acknowledge how he feels about him thru the song and potentially get a response from him -> "what expresses straightforwardness?"

here's what i decided would visually answer those questions

the implications of character's expressions also factors in the circumstances of their situation. without the context, the execution tends to fall flat. if you didn't know that they were listening to a song that's all about romantic pining, then you probably would've been questioning why the fuck are they just staring at each other, or assumed that one is shy of the physical interaction when that's not the point; its the dawned realization and the acknowledgement of the other's feelings.

my other drawings for that thread followed the same kind of planning tbh, lol. all those drawings had the lyrics set the stage for how the characters are feeling, and i'd have to figure out what about their facial expressions and body language best matches the context of the situation. here's this brief example:

but yeah, that's generally how i plan for expressions/interactions. sometimes i just get a rush of interaction ideas that is centered on one specific question i want to explore, like:

what do their mundane parts of life look like?

how do they physically react to realizing their feelings for the other?

how is someone anxious about the other person's perception of them in the comic i'm drawing?

and then build off from there. hope that helped :D

#answered asks

[trickstarbrave]

i actually do find it baffling that there is no documentation at bethesda game studios. like with their sheer size and scope of their projects that is absolutely a batshit thing to do. you have hundreds of ppl in different departments and disciplines working together on this project with literally no fucking actual central document for guidance. the plan was "just meet with todd howard personally for clarification on anything" and todd is the director of MULTIPLE studios. he doesnt have the time to sit in his office and let you pitch ideas like he did back in 2001.

"well it just takes too much time to update the document. we have to get in there and implement stuff in the game before we can decide if its working or not. it's not a strict, planned thing and it takes SOOOO much time to update it for every little thing--" documentation is supposed to SAVE TIME. that is what it's there for.

i will give some leeway to emil pagliorulo for once. i am a creative person who prefers to ad lib everything. i do not enjoy outlining when writing and find it stifling. i will not know exactly how a scene plays out until i sit down to write it. i'll often write out of order, or move things around. i sometimes get better ideas literally in the middle of writing a scene and change it and the stuff before it, or smth that greatly impacts the rest of the story going forward. i know how much things can change on the fly.

BUT I STILL HAVE DOCUMENTATION.

i have a discord channel for all my major fics (and a misc one) just for ideas, references, things im considering or might be handy to have later, etc. stuff that i cant immediately recall on the fly, because i'm human working on stuff long term. i have forgotten really interesting stuff i was excited abt bc i just thought "eh i'll remember later" and then i DIDNT.

but with large projects with multiple people documentation is even more important. it is what is there to help guide people on the goals, overall picture, how things will work with other aspects of the project, what still needs work, etc. it exists to make work more streamlined and easier, not to mention faster. "but then we have to sit down and keep updating the document!!" means you need someone or a couple of people who's main job is meeting with people, checking in on various projects, and updating the documentation for everyone else in the team. people have managers for that reason. you as the director should not be personally in charge of updating it every single day once projects have reached a scope beyond a handful of people.

which means this is a problem with the entire structure of their teams being just. unoptimized. either the teams are way too small and they need more people working with more managers, or they need to restructure it, stick a few managers in, and work out the development process into something more robust. why the fuck would emil think "its so annoying to update the game design documentation.... i guess we better just throw it out! no one needs this! why did we even have this in the first place?" rather than just... finding someone else to do it. so he can focus more on his directing????

[feyre-darling92]

A welcome distraction

Obi-Wan x reader

When Obi-Wan and Y/N are on a mission things don’t go as planned. Still, that won’t stop them from completing the mission. And solving the big question of their relationship.

T/W: Not exactly 18+ but minors do not interact, sexual content, kissing, swearing, slightly dirty talking, Anakin (yes he is a warning himself), bad writing, let me know if I missed anything

Word Count: 1,560k

A/N: So, this little dirty idea came while I was listening the “Tell me the truth” by two feet, so I would recomend that you hear it while reading this. Also this is the first dirty thing I write so be gentle.

Many names are made up so don’t search for any characters that may seem unknown. They just don’t exist!

Anyway, enjoy.

“Ready, dear?” Obi-Wan knocked on your door.

“Always, Kenobi” you opened it and stayed still.

Tonight Obi-Wan was not the Jedi you knew. Tonight he was a Sith Lord. A very hot Sith Lord if you dared to say.

You took a better look at him.

His once perfectly styled hair was now messy, strands of auburn hair falling on his forehead, his usual light brown Jedi robes had now a dark red colour, black knee length boots and the lighsaber you had stolen from actual Sith Lords gently resting on his hip.

And his eyes. Their blue colour that promised love and care and softness was now replaced with yellow, that promised mischief and roughness, lust and desire.

“What happened, darling? Did anyone cut your tongue?” he smirked.

“No, Kenobi. Let’s go” you said and walked past him.

Your mission was hard but simple. You were pretending that you had turned to the dark side after you “killed” the two other Jedi you were with.

 In fact they were very alive training younglings and going on missions.

But they didn’t know that.

You had to gather informations somehow hence you being stuck with him.

You walked, the fabric of your dress flowing on every step you took.

You didn’t like this dress, the black colour was depressing and the way it was designed did hide only the important parts, but you felt confident in it.

You walked into the ballroom, Obi-Wan holding the door for you.

You would tease him later for his mannerisms.

As you both walked in you felt everyone staring at you.

 Every lady turned and smiled as Obi-Wan passed through the crowd and you felt anger filling in your chest. 

A forbidden emotion, yet so useful for tonight.

“Well, well, if it’s not for the fallen Jedi” you heard a voice coming from behind.

“Lord Makon. What a pleassure” Obi-Wan replied with his devil smirk.

“So it’s true! The mighty Obi-Wan Kenobi has joined the dark side” he laughed.

“Don’t tell me this is the famous Y/N L/N!” he turned to you. “How did you convince her to join us?”

Obi-Wan turned to you a flash of mischief passing through his eyes.

“We’re together” he said and gently held you by the lower waist.

“Oh” Makon said surprised, “and I thought I may stand a chance” he laughed and you laughed along.

“Never say never” it was your time to smirk. Leaving the two men speechless you walked away.

This night had just begun being interesting.

An hour had passed and Obi-Wan was out of sight. You had tried to overhear conversations but you had no luck with that. Until you located your personal target.

If anything, he would know everything.

“Lord Dukov” you tapped him on the shoulder.

 He turned to you annoyed that someone had interrupted his conversation but when he saw you his expression changed.

“Maker, Y/N. So the rumours are true!”

“Oh, yes. I decided I want to have some... fun” you smiled, the smile the devil would use to befool his victims. “If you know what I mean”

“Of course, dear. It will be wonderful to have such a ...nice presence like yours around”

You fake blushed and smiled. He was handsome, you had to admit it.

“But why don’t we dance?” he offered you his hand and you took it.

You stood in the middle of the dancefloor, the music unlike what you’d heard before.

The beat getting faster and slowed again, the steps designed to bring the partners closer, the lyrics written by a lover.

You let him guide you, touch you as the dance required.

“So” he whispered in your ear when your faces met, a few inches separating you “what’s the plan dear?”

“What plan?”

“You know perfectly well what, darling”

“I don’t have a plan. I’m here to stay” you whispered back in a tone you had rarely heard yourself talk to, “if you want me” you continued but your eyes were glued elsewhere.

To him.

He stared back while talking to a man and a woman, making this harder for you.

“Oh, darling” he breathed in your neck “I could fuck you all night” he spun you the music becoming more and more intense and when you landed again in his hands he continued “I would have you beg me to stop”.

You felt the hair at the back of your neck standing up. He was not the one who you wished to say these words to you.

It was the man that was currently looking at you with eyes that promised what the other had said.

“And what’s stopping you?” you turned to him.

You didn’t actually mean it. But by managing to lead him somewhere that you’d be alone, you’d manage to get the information you need.

“What stops me? Your boyfriend”

“Screw him”

“Already a sinner, I see”

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course”

“Then find me in five minutes in the hallway” you winked and left him.

You took a glass of some alcoholic drink and drank it,you were gonna need this for what was coming next.You walked towards the exit but not before spotting Obi-Wan, talking with two other men and the woman from before.

He looked in your way and you winked at him smirking as you opened the door to leave.

You would deal with him later.

You walked to the end of the hallway when two hands grabbed you from behind and led you into a small room the only light the moonlight that entered from the small window.

“You promised me something” he said with a husky voice grabbing you by the neck.

 You wasted no time in making him fall, you standing on top of him.

“So dominant darling. Will you be that way while I tear you up?” he kissed your neck, “Or when I make you scream?” his mouth made its way to yours kissing you with greed and lust.

There was nothing sweet in this. Only forced passion.

While he was busy whispering dirty promises to you you took your lightsaber and ignited it, placing it against his throat.

“What are you planning?” you asked.

“And I thought that you’d finally come to your senses” he mocked but you put your lightsaber closer.

“Answer me, darling, if you want to say these things again to another woman”

“Do you really think you will get away with this? Sweetheart, we’re everywhere”

“Just tell me and you will walk out of this room alive”

“They plan to attack at the next senate’s meeting” he finally said.

“See? Wasn’t that hard” you said and knocked him out.

 You got out of the small chamber, straightening the fabric of your dress when Obi-Wan appeared in the hallway.

“What the hell happened?”

“Nothing you should worry about”

“Yeah, fine,” he said and opened the door of the chamber only to quickly close it again.

“Are you mad? Why is he unconscious?”

“I took the information I needed. He won’t cause any trouble until we leave this place” you said but saw two guards and three sith lords coming your way.

Quickly he pushed you against the wall and started kissing you.

The lust of the past two years was finally manifested in this kiss. 

You were completely lost, silently saying the words that no one dared to say, strengthening the bond between you, your force signatures dancing together.

He grabbed the back of your neck bringing you closer and deepening the kiss while you ran your hands through his hair.

Three words you couldn’t say were said with this action.

He gripped your tight pressing you harder against the wall, his knee separating your legs.

While the enemies were gone for long, he continued.

He continued kissing you across your jawline then across your neck earning soft moans from you until he turned back again, giving you another kiss.

“I want to do this since the day I met you” he kissed you again “Darling”

“Obi-Wan” you breathed and he hummed against your neck, his hands gripping your hips tightly.

“I love you” you cupped his face and kissed him, softly this time “But we have to go,” you said and he let go of you.

“Only if you promise that we’ll continue what we started”

“Of course”

“Then we can go”

And you left, your hand holding in his tightly, fingers tangled together.

Thankfully, your way out was clear and you made it to the ship which was camouflaged.

“Took you long enough” Anakin commented when you entered the ship hands still together. But you didn’t know if he meant about the two of you or the mission.

“Did you take the information we needed?”

You both nodded and sat next to each other.

 “Where are we heading now, Master?”

“Home, Anakin”

“Oh, to finish what you started?” he asked a grin on his face and you both stayed still. The comm. You had forget it open.

You and Obi-Wan exchanged a worried look.

“Don’t worry, Masters. Your secret is safe with me. Just make sure you turn off the comm link the next time”

“Anakin”

“Sorry, sorry”

With that, he started the ship and you headed home.

And because Obi-Wan is a man that keeps his promises, you indeed finished what you started.

#obi wan x reader #obi wan kenobi x reader #obi wan imagine #obi wan x you #obi wan fanfiction #obi wan kenobi x you #star wars x reader #feyre-darling92 #feyre darling92 #my fic #my writing #my story #fanfic #my fanfic writing

[lotusprotocol]

dreamcatcher devlog: november 2023

(messy concept art sketch for one of the story pages)

it's time for the first proper devlog post on this blog! this is my first time writing something like this, so hopefully i'll do it fine. without further ado, here's what happened in november:

i did some work on music at the start of the month and made some progress on a few tracks; here's the tutorial music:

i also decided to redo the movement mechanics, since i wasn't satisfied with what i had before. i ended up finishing them, and i'm still working on tweaking everything until it feels just right.

on the 12th, i opened up a discord server for dreamcatcher! i'd actually created the server months ago, but was finally ready to share it this month.

if you're interested in joining for more updates, asking questions, or just to hang out, here's the link (also in pinned post): https://discord.gg/umPNp5QTCu

a few days later, i remembered that krita existed and decided to try it out. it's been a good upgrade from the app i used to use (autodesk sketchbook), and i'm still learning as i use it.

to be honest, not much happened for about a week and a half. i was off for thanksgiving break and struggled to find motivation even though i had so much free time.

once i finally felt like making progress again, i finished up the menu animations! once i learned about tweens, they weren't very hard to implement. here's a video showcasing them:

i also downloaded audacity so i could make sound effects, and i've been learning to use that as well.

to finish off the month, i made a github repo for the game and set up github desktop! now i don't have to worry about making backups, and i can also use github's issues and projects features to help with development. also i get so much satisfaction when i commit a new change, so that's been really helping with staying motivated.

that's all for november! i think i've made some good progress this month, and i would like to keep this pace into this month. speaking of which, here's some things i plan on doing in december:

i'll be hosting playtester applications this month! they'll open on the 15th, and close on the 22nd (both are in utc time). you'll be able to find the form in the discord server, but i also might post it here as well.

i want to get as much of the core game mechanics done as possible, such as level transitions, save data, the notebook, etc. i think i'll mainly be focusing on level design for the first few months of next year, and i want to be prepared for that.

i'm buying a stylus and smudgeguard this month, so hopefully that'll improve my drawing process. i've been using my finger to draw for years now, and i'm excited to have those tools to help.

there's plenty more that i'll be doing this month, but this post is getting pretty long, and the rest aren't as significant. if you want to keep up with progress, please consider following this blog, or joining the discord server!

and if you made it this far, thank you so much for reading! it means a lot to me <3

that's all for this month, cya!

#devlog #gamedev #godot #indiedev

[spacegoathours]

alright this has been sitting in my wips for weeks and it was gonna be a ref sheet but I sort of already did one so /shrug

since I did a buncha your OCs today now you get to hear ‘bout mine here goes

some stuff that will probably contradict itself bc I’m bad at writing AND!! bad at continuity. but here’s A LOT of story/personality stuff.

while on Irk in the “early years” whatever you wanna call her smeethood until whenever she gets banished, Callie gets away with small things that other Irkens wouldn’t get away with simply bc she’s Tallest Miyuki’s…idk…protege? she’s expected to be as powerful and successful as she is.. especially after Miyuki dies in the vort station 9 accident

by small things I mean wearing an outfit that doesn’t fit normal Irken-in-training or Irken Elite standards (she’s elite right before being forced away from Irk). and stepping out of line when talking with her peers and ESPECIALLY when talking with those taller than her. and befriending Vortians while observing the research teams. she gets away with all of this bc if someone were to speak up they’d get in trooooubleeee

Callie can be very cheeky sometimes but doesn’t necessarily take advantage of her unwanted “status” while on Irk. things like hanging out with the Vortian scientists and dressing slightly differently than her Irken peers are very normal, to her at least. it’s fucked up Irken society that doesn’t allow anyone else to converse with those filthy Vorts or wear whatever they want.

Despite thinking differently - and of course knowing early on that this means she’s defective - Callie feels a ton of regret and anxiety when she’s banished for going against the new Tallests’ plans for her. she knows deep down that it’s fine to be your own person and make your own way, but again, ✨Irken society baybeeeeeee✨ and she carries that anxiety, well, forever after that.

(I basically always skip the Earth portion of Callie’s story bc I wrote it when I was 14 and it was bad and stupid. All you need to know is that Callie REALLY LOVES EARTH. yes this doesn’t match the vibe of the show at all but who cares: she learns that being herself and engaging in her true interests and goals is ALLOWED and even ENCOURAGED on earth and her anxiety ebbs away while she lives there. then she dies. oh well. as to who’s fault that is, it used to be Zim’s fault in my old story but I just HAVE NOT visited this enough to work out why/how that would even happen.)

Her human disguise was a design I used to draw ALL THE TIME in 2005 and even a bit in 2019. good times! she dressed very grunge/emo which is how I dressed in high school bc of course!!! of course she is more of a self-insert than I WANT her to be and always was!!! AUGRHHRGGH

After Callie is revived by the Resisty - attaching her dormant PAK to Nyx’s dying body - she looks like the bottom left pic. wears a beat up hospital gown all the time, still has a good amount of Nyx’s attributes, and is HIGHLY irritable and actually, really fucking dangerous. she’s aware that she’s Callie, but is experiencing some serious trauma: this isn’t her fucking body, she’s in severe pain and has to eat and sleep while her PAK tries to heal her, and she’s been ripped away from Earth where she finally felt safe and happy away from her old, demanding life.

She nearly kills Lard Nar at least once, trying to convince him to bring her back to Earth. the rest of the crew thinks their captain has completely lost it allowing a mentally unstable Irken on board. or really an Irken at all for that matter considering uhhh the whole reason the Resisty exists in the first place. Lard Nar tries to get his crew to understand that Callie is not a threat (knows this bc they knew each other on vort research station 9) and would be a great asset to the resistance once she recovers

but yknow it’s not going well. Callie is NOT NICE to anyone on the ship, least of all Laksa, the nurse trying to help her recover, and a lot of this has to do with the fact that Nyx’s attributes are still present. Callie’s defective PAK, while mostly functional, is taking ages compared to a healthy PAK to make this new body completely “her” again. I mean, side note, Nyx was a model Irken: so uh, ASSHOLE. and did her job well, nearly getting the Resisty killed. so having all of THAT basically still present…..hmmm, bad.

Luckily Laksa has endless patience and Callie does start to recover, and her eyes start working their way back to just blue as opposed to the one blue and one teal when she first woke up. looks like the bottom center pic. she starts to calm down and fly off the handle way less. Starts appreciating Laksa for all the work she’s tirelessly put in to make sure Callie is okay. she’s still really far from ok and processing all the trauma from her past and present.

that’s where all the angst happens that I’ve been writing oops we won’t get into THAT (something something callie and lard nar eventually end up as a couple bc I need to live my life sorry guys. I’ll talk about that uhhhhh ANOTHER TIME…or never.)

and finally after all THAT that we won’t talk about for the moment she’s much better, lost her right antennae and is essentially deaf on that side but is otherwise back to her old self but BETTER!! last pic on the right. someone made her a new uniform or something idk but she does want to dress the way she used to in the end. (does she or does her creator just really like drawing it so she has to? we may never know)

so like. Now you know where she is in the timeline based on how I draw her???? No one cares about this but me???????? Why does my dumb brain tell me I need to explain anything I slap down on this tallest forsaken website fuck it all

#irken oc #mina arts #I AM SUPPOSED TO BE SLEEPING #WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELFFFF #long post

[nonstandardrepertoire]

so we finished watching season 2 of Picard last night, and just. whew, friends, what? a truly baffling array of choices. things i simply cannot get over:

the commitment to doing every Single joke from The Voyage Home while simultaneously Strenuously Avoiding doing anything campy or goofy

like, the reason TVH works is that the main cast are all just Buffoons — Kirk does not know how money works, Spock is dressed as a jogger in a bathrobe, Scottie tries to talk into a computer mouse, and it is all GREAT. in Picard S2, it's like, they say they don't know much about this period in history, but they all seem to click into place fairly seamlessly. in general watching this new era of Trek, it feels like the writers have simply forgotten the pleasure of a good silly camp romp, and constantly referencing one of the best silliest campiest romps in the canon is uh, not helping

the climax of the season revolves around?? Q's character development??? Q???? QUEUE?????? baffling

in general what was even Q's plan here. is he . . . trying to sabotage the Europa mission or not? why is All Of This necessary for Picard to forgive himself, if that's Q's real goal? just like generally this framing does not make sense to me and so resting the entire season on it is. a choice, i guess

also when have we ever been asked to care about Q's interiority before, when have we ever been asked to be On His Side as opposed to whatever human he's fucking with

how are we relating to canon here. h o w. there are some Real deep cuts, but then also some like, fairly prominent episodes that are just?? ignored???

like, ok:

Guinan and Picard have a fairly significant adventure together in 1800s San Francisco (in “Time’s Arrow”). it is canon then that she doesn't know Picard yet. this is an incident she will remember for 500+ years and reference on board the Enterprise D. but in this season of Picard, she appears not to know him at all and to once more be meeting him for the first time. these two first meetings are . . . difficult to reconcile

but we are apparently doubling down on “Wesley Crusher was just the super specialest boy and he managed to transcend the limits of physical reality because of his big special brain”

we are apparently pretending that Robert Picard just . . . doesn't exist? isn't around for Jean-Luc's childhood? this isn't really technically a continuity error but Robert and Jean-Luc's relationship felt real and specific and grounded in the particulars of their two characters whereas Yvette just feels like generic sexist “ooooooh his mother was ~crazy~” schlock, and losing the former for the latter is uh. not an improvement

we're doubling down on Gary Seven, tho! Gary fucking Seven!!!!! remember that beloved character from an episode that was definitely a good idea??? why

actually, specifically, tho: it feels like this is a continuation of Star Trek’s reluctance/inability to grapple with the less savory parts of Gene Roddenberry as a human being, particularly his misogyny. to stick only to the example at hand, he made the “Assignment: Earth” filming experience so miserable for Teri Garr (by, for example, relentlessly shortening the length of her skirt, even over the objections of the costume designer) that Garr has absolutely refused to talk about Star Trek in subsequent interviews. i was obviously not on set, but the vibe i get is extremely that filming that episode would clearly and unambiguously been a hostile workplace environment by contemporary standards of sexual harassment. so i, personally, have a hard time being like “ah yes, ‘Assignment: Earth’, what a fun bit of forgotten canon to incorporate wholesale into our new series without grappling with the specifics of its creation in any way!”. the vibes are just . . . rancid

anyway, moving on from continuity gripes,

it feels like a real missed opportunity to have not cast David Duchovny as the FBI agent. this is really not the showrunners’ fault, but i’m in a hating sort of mood, so i’m going to take off points anyway

“Dark Page” was not a great idea in 1993 and it isn’t any better now

circling back to “covering the hits without any understanding of what made them good”, Raffi’s encounter in a camp of unhoused people feels like a nod to “Past Tense” without any willingness to actually . . . engage with what “Past Tense” was saying. for all that i have some issues with some of its narrative choices, “Past Tense” devotes significant, sustained screen time to characters that society has decided to discard and is relentless in hammering home the message that “this is not just and it cannot be reformed into justness”. here, Raffi stumbles across an encampment, someone immediately tries to mug her at gun point, she beats him up, she shares a rueful quip about “gosh, wild that such a prosperous society can’t be assed to take care of people”, and then we just move on and never mention this again. like, we get Words saying that Homelessness Bad, but what we are shown is “unhoused people are scary and dangerous and it’s ok for our heroes to beat them up”

(i actually think that In General there is a lot of wasted potential with Raffi, altho mostly the fault here lies in season 1. “very competent Starfleet officer who is also dealing with paranoid delusions and falling apart at the seams about it” is an interesting premise for a Star Trek character if done well! and then S1 is just like “oh, nope, actually, she was right about everything, there was a massive, bizarre conspiracy that did exactly what she thought they did, she's fine and correct and everyone who ever doubted her is an ass”)

(i also think that the “love always ends in grief” sequence from Discovery S4, for all of that season’s considerable messiness, is a much tighter and more powerful expression of that theme than the wandering, haphazard approach to it here. i think these shows are meant to be watched in concert, but the back-to-back seldom does Picard any favors)

we continue to lean into Human Exceptionalism and i continue to roll around on the floor going “ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” about it

more elaborate thoughts on that go in my “if i were making Enterprise” post, tho

THAT SAID

on the topic of exceptionalism, i hate the FUCK out of the bit in Crusher’s recruitment speech where he’s like “do you want to be ordinary, or do you want your life to have purpose and meaning?” as tho???? ordinary lives????? cannot have purpose and meaning???????????? look me in the eyes, writers. no, no, look me Directly in the eyes: fuck you, fuck that, i am doing cartoon violence to you. the mindset that only extraordinary lives are worth living is toxic bullshit that distorts so much of our mental, political, and artistic landscape. ordinary lives can have so much meaning and purpose, they can be so very beautiful and rich. ordinary lives can be very good to live. i think Star Trek, in general, focuses too much on elites as The Only People Who Really Matter, but to elevate that to the level of explicit text is just. fucking devastating. unspeakably bleak. absolute philosophical train wreck of a season finale, on a par with Discovery’s “a Starfleet admiral actively and deliberately planned and tried to carry out a genocide and faced zero career repercussions for it that we can see”. clown car nonsense

in conclusion: i have drunk the haterade, g-d this season sucked, i can’t wait to make April 13 “Jurati eating car batteries day” and take it away from the Homestucks

#let's take a walk thru these here stars #did i have a Picard tag? i feel like i can't possibly have #thinky thoughts #Star Trek: Picard #Picard S2 #unabashed hatery #i promise we can stop doing Wrath of Khan again now i promise i promise i promise #also like #i don't even want to get into the "why did we have to just sit thru an entire fucking fascist rally #or the implication that uh. fascist Earth would be really successful at fighting the Borg actually #IN GENERAL i think our fiction is Way too ready to paint fascists as Very Competent At War #they are not #i don't know how many people know this but there was a small little tiff called World War II #and the fascists did not win it #because fascists are incompetent and fascism is inherently unstable as an ideology #Umberto Eco said that fascists are condemned to lose wars because they are incapable of realistically assessing the strength of their enemi #and he was RIGHT #obviously that should be “enemies” but APPARENLY my tags are too long #whatever #anyway #rants #sigmastolen #i feel like you will appreciate this even if you don't watch Picard

[rirururu]

Mika could be based off the Greek God Hermes

If you look at the back of Mika's design, his hoodie seems to have wings at the top. Not only that but inside his hoodie looks to be a helmet. The "Missive Windspear" that is given for free in the 3.1 event is also evidently meant to be (at least aesthetically) his signature weapon. It has a very peculiar design in that it looks more like a staff or wand than an actual polearm.

" A beacon that shows the direction of the wind. Not every idyll carried on the breeze remains a gentle thing… "

Mondstadt lore states that polearms were once banned in Mondstadt by nobility because they were considered inferior weapons only meant to be used by the common folk and rebels. In fact, the reason why a sacrificial polearm doesn't exist is because that set came from Mondstadt. Even though polearms aren't banned anymore, there still seems to be residue influence from that stigma since only Rosaria, who is an outsider, wielded a polearm out of all the characters in Mondstadt. Mika isn't an outsider since his family was confirmed to have lived and grown up in Mondstadt-- so why does he have a polearm?

It's weird. Hoyoverse seems to be very strict with the lore in Genshin Impact so I doubt that they'd mess this up. The best explanation is that they're INSISTANT that Mika wields a polearm. But why would they be so adamant on that?

My theory is that Mika is actually meant to be based off Hermes. In Greek god mythology, there is an Olympian Deity known as Hermes who shares the same characteristics as Mika in that he also wears a winged helmet and wields a winged wand/polearm. Since Genshin Impact doesn't have wands / staves as a weapon type, the closest thing they could classify Mika as was polearm-- then give him a strangely shaped signature weapon.

The interesting thing about Hermes is that he's considered "the fastest god" or the "god of speed." The Sky Lid artifact set which was datamined from Genshin Impact beta test matches the feathers on Mika's design. They are rumored to have originally been planned to increase movement speed.

One more interesting thing to note about Hermes is that he's also known as the herald of the gods-- meaning that his responsibility is to deliver messages. What is Mika doing in the 3.1 event? He's delivering a message from Varka to the rest of the Knights of Favonius.

This is all one convoluted way of me theorizing that Mika will be our first character with a kit that centers around movement speed and attack speed. His constellation might also be related to Hermes. His attack animations might actually be more that he wields the polearm like a wand rather than the traditional melee style. I think this would be a very neat piece of lore for him if it ends up being true. This could be one extremely far-fetched theory but all the information that we know about Mika seems to line up so perfectly that it might not be a coincidence.

(I also posted this theory on Mika Mains Reddit and Genshin Lore Reddit)

#genshin impact #genshin mika #mika #theory #genshin #meta

[cogbreath]

please tell me your best 9/11 facts im actually curiojs

1. This is my favorite fact of all. there exists a photo of one of the hijackers doing bong rips. the sad part is we aren't allowed to see it. I asked all the right ppl but unfortunately its not something the public will probably get to see :(

2. Mohamed Atta once went to see the jungle book in theaters with his roommate in germany. He (Atta) got so mad about all the people talking during the movie that he kept angrily muttering "Chaos!" the entire time and was so mad about the whole ordeal he shut himself in his room the rest of the day.

3. So lets talk about jet fuel and steel beams. Sure, jet fuel itself cant melt beams. What really happened is the impact of the plane crash blew off the fireproofing in the towers. The jet fuel and the explosion ignited a lot of fires, and the steel beams of the towers started to become malleable (not melted!) from the intense heat, causing the walls of the towers to bend in on themselves. Eventually the force of the walls sagging became so intense that the building collapsed in on itself, causing a sort of domino effect. The twin towers were constructed with a method that is characteristically different than other skyscrapers have been built with. I am not too well versed on the physics of it all, but basically, a unique construction led to a unique collapse and that is "the deal" with the way the towers fell. Also, some of the jet fuel fell into the elevator shafts and exploded into flames on lower floors. Basically, the fact the towers were built to be more open and hollow compared to other skyscrapers meant that a lot of fires were able to spread in these circumstances.

4. The architect for the WTC actually worked with The Saudi Binladin Group, a construction conglomerate founded by Osama Bin Laden's Father. As far as I know, thats as far as the connection goes between the two and anything that says theres more to this is just kind of unfounded theorizing

5. observers actually thought that flight 77 (the one that crashed into the pentagon) was a military aircraft, because the speed and advanced manuevers they saw made them think it was a military plane. On that note, the hijacker pilot of this flight, Hani Hanjour, was unique in that he had a career as a commercial pilot beforehand in the 90s.

6. Ziad Jarrah's roommate in florida once saw him crash a plane into a building while playing microsoft flight simulator. He (the roommate) found it funny at the time, but not in hindsight, of course.

7. Also, according to this same roommate, Jarrah really enjoyed watching the show F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

8. Ironically, when designing the WTC, they did wonder about a situation if a jet airliner were to crash into the towers.

9. Also when designing the world trade center, they increased the floor space plan to be (coincidentally) about as large as that as the pentagon.

10. Mohamed Atta's email was discovered to have contained file attachments infected with the SirCam malware. (i just like this fact bc its a crossover between my special interests. malware and 9/11.)

11. Lastly, they actually didnt decide on what targets to hit in the attack until July of 2001 despite having planned the attack for the past 3 years!!! crazy!