#id probably have been had them all if i didnt get that mod to be able to see my kitty ears through helmets after i platinumed vanilla skyrim

[stonecoldaries]

pov: you need to find a moth priest to help stop your evil father but the dragonborn instead drug you across solsteim and then chopped wood for like 4 hours straight

#at one point she kept stepping in front of the wood block to try and stop me from chopping wood #skyrim #serana skyrim #art #serana volkihar #elder scrolls #i have like 6 trophys left until platinum on dg and db dlc 3 for each #id probably have been had them all if i didnt get that mod to be able to see my kitty ears through helmets after i platinumed vanilla skyrim

[lucindamorningstar]

I have a bit of a headcanon in BG3 that I kinda wanna write out like a mini fan-fic. It has to do with my DurgeTav and Astarion (I also have the poly mod on btw): ❗️❗️❗️TW// SI/SH❗️❗️❗️:

Gale chuckles, peering over the book in his hands at Astarion; who is nearly skipping to his tent with delight. Blood is smeared across the vampire’s lips and a smug look plastered to his face.

“Well, well, glad to see you in such high spirits. Been a while since we’ve seen you smile. Many of us had thought you’d forgotten how”, there was a small barb in his comment. Nothing too serious, just making light fun of Astarion’s blatant sour attitude in the last few weeks.

Astarion only rolled his eyes and flicked his hand in Gale’s direction. “If only you were nearly as funny as you think you are, I might have more to smile about”

Gale took it in stride. He hadn’t been in earnest trying to be mean. But he decided to further poke fun at his lover’s other bedmate like one would stoke a fire when bored.

“In all seriousness, you should probably lay off draining Dante dry EVERY night. Need them at full strength for the many battles that lie ahead.” Gale snapped his book shut and tutted like an old schoolmarm.

Astarion narrowed his eyes and snickered, “Why if i didnt know better, id say there was some subtle jealousy layered in that little “reprimand””

Gale blinked in rapid succession in an overly dramatic display.

“Jealousy?” The wizard was incredulous at the claim.

“Why wouldn’t you? When she shares my bed more often than yours”, the pale elf pretended to be bored of the conversation, making a show of examining the sharp claws at the tips of his fingers

Gale guffawed, “At least when she’s in MY bed- I always know it’s for the pleasure of my touch”. His eyes shifting subtly to one of the cots by the bonfire, to see the subject of the conversation grumbling and tossing around in their sleep.

“EXCUSE ME?” Astarion hissed in stunned displeasure. “Next time I’ll make sure we are close enough by your tent so you can HEAR how ridiculous you sound right now”

“I don’t think it would matter how close you got because I see more BLOODLETTING than I do FUCKING from the two of you. And one might wonder why it is you haven’t noticed. Or it could be assumed you don’t care” at this point Gale word’s starting to take on a more biting edge. He was getting legitimately angry at the violent prick’s assumed ignorance.

Astarion’s building anger gave way to confusion. Glancing himself towards Dante, and then back to Gale.

“You don’t know, do you?” Gale’s own rage began to quiet, replaced with what could almost be sympathy. Almost.

“Know what, exactly” if it was even possible, the blood letter’s face became shades paler.

“She’s letting you bleed her to near death on a regular basis not because she considers it a sexual experience like you do-I’ve seen that glossed over look in her eyes before. She is using you to self harm. She wants to die.” The last few words hung in the air with a heavy sense of dread and foreboding.

What would Astarion do now?

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #astarion #bg3 tav #bg3 astarion #bg3 gale #Gale #headcanon #bg3 headcanons #bg3 poly #polyamorous

[randombubblegum]

Comment 1: My take on song girl is after the Ciara dog girl stuff Awsten probably doesn’t want his gf talking about that stuff online. Not to hide it just don’t be public. When song girl was on twitch years ago she’d have little chats w people & I don’t think she thought this time would be different. At the end of her most recent twitch she went oh. Oh. And her eyes got super wide & I think she realized this was a mistake bc of who was watching & the questions. She hasn’t gone on since.

you make good points in this ask!! lemme go point by point lol

i didnt watch all the way to the end of her twitch stream (got bored) so i didnt see the moment youre talking about but yeah, she did get uncomfortable when people would hint they knew she had a bf. but even after she was CONSTANTLY talking about her bf, dropping hints she was seeing someone, talking about getting on european time for the exact duration awsten was in europe……. i dont think its like an unavoidable compulsion for ppl to talk about their significant others so that was like, a choice she was making in conversation to an audience? like i think she didnt realize people already knew, but also a really poor way to keep something apparently ~top secret~ private lol

also, i have to argue, she kinda is public?? she has an insta which is normal but she also has a twitch, with apparently a decent following/mods/subs/etc. id hardly call that private like you or me, yknow? before awsten she dated another musician, albeit one w a much smaller following, so its not like shes new to the idea of online fanbases i think

all that aside tho, like, i get what youre saying about not meaning to open herself up to scrutiny. i think you have a point and thats rly valid. my main thing, and a core belief i hold thats the reason i do literally any amount of discussion about parx on here: my tumblr is not meant to be viewed by the people im talking about, its NOT easy to find (ive never even typed her real name), and theres zero reason song girl (or dog girl, or awsten, or like literally anyone who knows parx) should know it exists much leas be seeing the things i say about them!!!! i rly dont believe they are. i dont wish this girl any ill will, i dont condone (and have specifically warned yall against) leaving comments or messaging her directly or like trying to make her feel bad/harass her. this is just a little tucked-away gossip corner to note the things she and awsten are making public. i guess i am a little harsh when i talk about her sometimes but really the one im mad at is awsten for treating girls like interchangeable clones lol -_-

but also that shit w your ex—i know EXACTLY what youre talking about and honestly your ex and his friends are assholes lol. without getting into too much detail ive been in that situation in different roles and like, friends of mine have actively unfollowed/cut off other friends for slinging mud about their (not abusive just regular) exes after a breakup. if youre warning people that someones abused you thats one thing but talking shit about your ex and having friends join in just to take them down a peg is shitty childish behavior. and it sucks!!!! so i get why you feel that way. i dont think this situation is the same but i get you lol

basically in summary yeah i think she doesnt know what shes gotten into but thats on awsten for not warning her lol. i dont think us making idle chatter on a tiny internet corner shell never reasonably see (and thus will never feel bad about) is the same as harrassment/bullying/deliberately trying to make her feel bad and thats def not my intention. i also dont care about her specifically but ya i agree w u on the principle of the thing. and no worries ur ask was rly thoughtful i appreciate it!!! :) thanks for expressing a logical opinion in a reasonable way lol i feel u

#idle gossip is the same as rpf: as long as the ppl its about never see it its a victimless crimeeeee #at least in my worldview ya feel #mail time! #neg

[spikeinthepunch]

i have my 2022 art summary queued up and just want to ramble about the last year,... lots of stuff happened, good and bad! been a strange time.

i imagine most followers around have probably been here since late 2020 but 2020-21 i did art quite a bit, but the thing that really stuck for that period was i was super involved in warrior cats RP for some time-- i love RPing and these group also got me motivated to draw too! but i feel like i kind of wasnt around in the typical way due to how consumed i was in it. i dont think i need to go into detail of every month during that time, but it wasnt until early this year where i dropped it, and i didnt really publicize in detail why due to the issues surrounding it, but it was probably the biggest impact on me this year mentally, and in terms of art direction. and i feel like itd feel good to document this in a blog after it has now blown over- and why ive shifted my direction too.

i was very happily running my own RP server for just a year before i had to close it this year and it still makes me sad, as much as i moved on. ARP was like... a very big deal for me and i cant deny that. i dont have a lot of projects i get that into or get even close to setting off with its story figured out. i wrote well over 100 pages of documents for the world and the 6 planned arcs. i drew loads of art i couldnt even share until it closed (tbh im not positive i have shared it anyways bc i didnt wanna post it here). i made a website, i made riddles and code, i developed lore that was far outside of the warrior cats scope to it basically just being original!

truly i have never developed a project as far as i made ARP and to shut it down in order to save my privacy and past trauma from being further exposed in such an inappropriate way really sucked ass. a lot. it was a situation where there was no control given to me, no sense of understanding from the community. im not writing this out now to be pointing fingers and calling out names- just venting how it took a toll on me this year. what had happened with my server was that one of my own mods decided to dig into my profiles and found an old nsfw page, which even more indirectly led to an old flist, which exposed various things i was into around 17-19, reflecting trauma and abuse id been through (in it, voiced wanting to take part in certain kinks; ex. being a victim to violence and dubious consent scenarios). this information was at first presented as a threat to minors viewing my RP page (as in "ppl can see your nsfw profile from the blog!") which wasnt true/accessible as they said it was and required many many clicks to find, and then slowly revealed to me the people exposing this were in fact two of my own mods and was promptly cut off from explaining anything else as it spread in a private mod discord in the RP community. Which was worse to me than everything else that could have happened honestly, and i only learned this second hand from a person who saw it in that discord and thought it was horrible this information was spreading like that behind my back. in some ways things were okay-- i didnt get "called out" openly as i did my best to explain how these pages were not current to those around me, and that they had dug into some deep cutting trauma and a period where i wasnt getting any help to cope properly. it still didnt stop the fact i left every other RP i was in due to connections w those exposing it, and in turn closing my own. i dont want to say im thankful i didnt get called out publicly, but the damage was bad enough in so many other ways because i couldnt continue my server at all, and in the end people's obsession with purity culture in the fandom still made them deem me "bad" because i had nsfw accounts in any capacity. thats not a space i want to be around anyways...

ill forever be thankful for those who stuck it out to the end and witnessed the documents i got to share before closing it for good. but this was a HUGE part of my life for the last years of the pandemic, and i wasnt there for warriors cats- i was there for the people i knew, and the stories i made. i still miss RP a lot, and i want to host projects like that again after moving on mentally from that ordeal.

but my 2022 art summary shows a major shift that was 100% in part to disconnecting from wcrp. humans everywhere! seriously. for a solid few months i couldnt even bare to look at anything related to ARP. i didnt want to think about how i lost this story i developed so hard for so long.

honestly didnt really start drawing properly again until the summer- my art during my HL phase was very very light and very messy. i fell into a hard depression early summer and i only crawled out when i got into mcyt- and even then i was hiding it from this blog. i think i just needed to not feel like i was "online", because August included me joining a onceler RP and again, not saying anything about it. which Weehawken was the first RP thing I had done since i closed ARP too, and it was weird. not the RP itself, it just felt weird to try that again.

and it wasnt my favorite month, i just felt so tired and exhausted- that depression was kinda lingering and drawing a lot for an RP again was something i wasnt really used to anymore.

the past three months have been.... better? or i have at least enjoyed what i am drawing more. i think im far enough removed from what happened with ARP too that it doesnt weigh on me as strongly. i wasnt blaming myself for anything but it doesnt feel good when you know you have to kill something. we talked about recovering it, i had ideas, but i just knew it wouldnt be worth trying to with so much damage caused in my own self, and the impression that whole community left on me knowing people would willingly spread such personal information without question. having trauma exposed after going to therapy and relearning how to use the internet in a way that doesnt lean on trauma dumping and whatever unhealthy bullshit? its quite a blow. i dont make personal blogs like this often because i have good methods to deal with my shit these days.

despite this messy year im doing well. its been ups and downs. overall i know im far more confident in myself, i moved out to live on my own, and im just doing my thing. whatever bull shit happened this year, call out or not, i know im still just gonna keep doing whatever it is im doing. and heres to hoping i can bring a world to life like i did with ARP again, bc i really have a lot i want to tell and show and do.

#2022 art summary #art summary #if someone from wc is lurking and comes to my inbox to shit #i will snipe you on the spot

[vczcv]

so the other day i decided to download sims 4 on my new pc (haven't played it on pc for 8 yrs since my pc broke) ive been playing it on my xbox ever since. so i downloaded it and wicked whims, extreme violence, and some other cc including animations and cas stuff, which was working perfectly up until a little less than an hour ago. A couple hours ago, I decided to get more cc including more cas stuff, but i spent hours looking for the perfect britney spears sim, finally found it, proceeded to find same one for free, found that, got it, worked fine in cas, and probably wouldve worked fine in game if i didnt go on a download spree for outfits before i transfered britney cc to mods, i decided to download lots of clothes and hairs, then when i got bored of searching, i transferred them to mods and proceeded to launch sims, go into cas and make britney, she was perfect and so was all the other cc in cas. after i was done, moved her in my main household, moved my house hold to an empty lot, spent hours making a britney themed house (dw its safe i didnt use cc so i still got a house with a britney shrine) , when i was finished i decided to go into live mode after saving and made britney flirt with one of my sims, then that sim's wife snatched britneys wig lmao, but then i noticed my notifications from my wall were blank.. then the sim that got pressed asked her girl to get some, so they went to a random corner and started doing one of the new animations i don't remember the exact name of but that isn't important, really none of this is..., but anyways i then immediately noticed my sims booty cheeks were invisible, i was hoping it was just something wrong with that animation, but honestly wasn't believing it because of my notifications being blank.. and then i went to switch animations and most of the choice tabs were blank, so i had my sims stop what they were doing and continue else where with a different animation, for a moment i thought it was working then turned to see my sims cheeks were still invisible during the animation, invisible qussy being eaten?? im really upset and none of my choice tabs would load, also when id click on a sims emotions the descriptions were blank, also kept getting ine notification that wasnt blank "wickedwhims is sad :(" and itd direct me to the ww request an issue page, and so i knew what was wrong immediately, I either had doubled a file somehow, skipped one, got one that is either incompatible, out of date, or it just clashed with another in someway, or it was corrupt. So i spent awhile rearranging my mods file and transferring and retracting files back to downloads, I even took all the files i downloaded today out of my mods folder, restarting sims trying again and again and again, still the same, i got super upset and figured the only way to fix this was to either delete added cc in my mods folder or delete it all (not resource ess) and so i deleted 90% of it, leaving base packages, wicked whims and extreme violence. I decided to give up on switching, moving, rearranging, and deleting extra files so instead i deleted all extracted files instead of keeping them in downloads.... im really stressed out and theres nothing anyone can do to help me with that, i just hope i can get it all fixed tomorrow, i got really irritable and decided to head to bed, its 5:17am now.. i shoyld sleep tomorrow is a bad day probably because i have to get all 3000 million plushies off my bed because i have to changw my sheets and i dont feel comfortable putting my plushies on the floor or just getting my heart rate up. it sounds teally bad i know i sound bad but i donr want to do anyrhing i have to take a shower tomorrow which makes me feel disgusting and i feel each shower head hole spraying water on my head which feels like needles poking my braincells. ineed sleep its so late early late early late goodnight i hope i sonr have nightmare and i hope i dont sweat thst much i canr wahr ti get off my meds so i can be extra suicidal instead of having cold sweats everu night and waking up in layers of pools of sweat ka

[mourningmoth]

hi free post to infodump about starbound as much as you'd like :]

bruh bruh bruhh im having a moment where its like "lol i didnt think id get this far" but MM

listen i like how its basically such a sandbox for lore tbh bc theres not a huge amount of things about the races specifically and u can just headcanon urself to death with it and its funnn to do that bc its so easy to integrate whatever u want into the existing lore anyway (which!! i like the existing ancient lore and i wish it was a bit more developed so we had some more to go on!)

also as far as vanilla races go florans are my forever Fav and i wish their connections to agarans was more developed in-game. i mean i just got done saying i like the minimal-lore sandboxiness of it, but certain things could use a little more fleshing out tbh theres like NOTHING to even go on with agarans

which is a shame bc theyd be very cute as a fully fleshed out race whichhhh gives me another unfortunate mod idea honestly so thanks for sending this ask and letting me just stream-of-conscious abt my silly little spacey game

i also recently got one of my friendssss into playing it and im in the midst of juggling modding with figuring out ways to play together with different mod lists and so on LOL

im also still developing an update to my moth mod thatll include a bunch of new wings im excited about. theres a set of them i call "referential" because theyre references to other media (mostly pokemon wings)

heres a preview of the ones ive finished thus far:

that wont be all tho, thats not even the finished set of pokemon wings i intend to make >:3c im very excited about my lepidoptian development can u tell sdhjfhd

idk what else to say tho tbh i just love this game, its just fun 4 me even tho ive been playing it for SO LONG like back when it was rly bare bones alpha

it was rly cool to see it develop and change in real time as i played unstable tbh! itd be rly fun to experience that with a game again

somewhere along the way the game also became one of my special interests, so thats probably also why ive stuck with it for such a long time.

i wanna also mention, i love the variety and effort and love the modding community puts into the game as well?? theres so MANY different mods, and i especially love peoples custom races, so many of them are such creative concepts id never seen before

idk i just love the modding community's creativity u can find a lot of rly neat concepts and artwork in some of the bigger mods!

[marge meme] i just think its neat!

#starbound #the dreamer is awake #askbox #awful-roffle

[lettersfromkokichiouma]

ehehehe hEYyyyyy Kokichiii~~~ I, 🍬 anon have returned!!

ik i sent in an ask not too long ago but likE-

i lowkey needa vent rn and srry if this ends up long as hell lmao (feel free to answer this whenevr you want mod no pressure <3 )

just for some context, a few months or so ago (i have no clue lol) i realized that im a trans demiguy instead of being genderfluid because i realized i was forcing myself to accept she/her pronouns cause i didnt wanna be an inconvience to people but i still liked really feminine stuff which is why i thought i was genderfluid at first, but i just needed some time to really think about it yk? also in case you wanna know my pronouns are he/him or they/them <3

aNyWaY sooo a few days ago i bought a chest binder on amazon and not even a day after it arrived, my parents sat me down and asked me why i bought it behind their backs. cause i never told them i bought it in the first place. they ended up practically forcing me to come out to them because there was no other way i couldve gotten out of the situation, and the reactions i got wheerrreeee mixed to say the least. it could've been much worse, but it felt like it couldve gone so muhc better. my mom started crying and said that she'll accept me no matter "whether you have short hair, long hair, or whatever you wear" which like.... lowkey feels transphobic to me??? like being trans (in my opinion) is hardly ever about what you wear or what you look like, wear whatever the hell you want whether its feminine or masc or whatever. all that matters is what your comfortable with yourself yk? it just kinda feels like she has this incredibly shallow understanding of what being trans is and doesnt even want to try to learn more about it. she was also more concerned about the fact that i didnt tell them before hand which in my opinion isnt something i have to do. just because i didnt come to them about it doesnt mean i dont trust them. she said that she doesnt think she'll be able to use my preferred name and pronouns too soo thAnKs mOm. my dad on the other hand was much more understanding, but still said stuff like "your young" and "your feeling lots of different emotions right now" and my mom said similar things as well. bUUuUut it kinda gets a bit worse... the day after all of this happened, for the entire day, my mom completely ignored me, not even bothering to look me in the eye or even speak to me. while she and my younger brother had a full conversation about his day when i got back from school, she never said a word to me. she didnt even talk to me for the rest of the day until recently where she said "good night". IS THAT IT- its honestly like she doesn't care that she practically ghosted me the entire day. id probably understand if she had a rough day and didnt feel like talking, but she was just fine talking to my brother, so now im wondering if she's transphobic. and ignoring someone let alone her own kid the whole day is something thats really really not like her usual self, so yeah. tbh, i had a gut feeling that she had at the very least internalized transphobia, so now i really wish that i had gotten to test the waters first but instead i was flung straight into the deep end of the pool. metaphorically. although, im not completely sure how this will all play out... in the meantime though, thank you so much for listening kokichi~~ <333 can i have some comfort cuddles please? 👉👈

*covers your face in kisses and cuddles you softly*

“wellll first of all, im super glad you figured that out about yourself!

congratulations! im really proud of you!

...but im sorry your parents didn’t have a good reaction.

if my child came out as trans, i’d throw them a party and buy them anything they want! buuut some parents aren’t like that....

sometimes they do accept you but they’re just reallllyyy bad at understanding what’s going on.

orrrrrr they’re transphobic which is totally awful! i don’t tolerate those types of people!

and you shouldn’t either! you shouldn’t have to deal with dumb people like that or dumb things like transphobia!

you are who you are! and i think you’re amazing!

the easiest thing to give people is respect y’know? and it’s soooo dumb that they can’t give you that right away!

...you’re valid, whether or not they choose to respect you though!

that’s the most important thing to remember! no one can hurt you if you know how incredibly amazing you are y’know?

and im not lying about that. i think you know me enough by now to know i don’t lie about stuff like that!!

and yup! of course i’ll give you comfort cuddles!

*opens arms*

you deserve them after all.”

-Kokichi Ouma

#(me when im trans-) #(and sorry this is so late!!! i know you said no pressure but you deserve a quicker response!!) #(and i completely get it i think my parents might be the same way when i come out) #(but our gender identities are valid no matter what anyone says. it’s our identity not theirs :)) #kokichi oma #kokichi ouma

[vanillatalc]

i do feel quite low atm + cried on ben about it for a while earlier

he had to request that i talked about it again and im continually frustrated by myself for forcing a distance that doesnt need to be there - like literally what is the purpose? he has to ask me all the time to not write my problems on tumblr INSTEAD OF talking to him about them irl. and i just find it so fucking hard to talk irl?! :/ i guess the solution is not to just refuse to do things that are hard for me tho (as usual) so i did talk to him about it

im continually stressed / triggered i suppose by this bullshit w/ my sister and the knowledge we’re going back to my parents for christmas has compounded that a lot bc im terrified of my mum commenting on my body, and im terrified of being compared to my extremely thin sister, and i have been weighing myself 2x a day to check that the number is going down rather than up. i did tell ben this and he was immediately in favour of throwing the scales out but i feel that id be more anxious if i didnt know the number. i know how this all sounds, and it sounds like that bc that’s how it is. it’s already a deeply sad + unhealthy mindset to be in, but i don’t know how to get out of it. i’m fine + eating normally, but im sad that i’m doing this again. (by ‘this’ i mean weighing myself in the morning and evening + thinking constantly about my weight + body) and ashamed :(

also as ive mentioned i feel very battered by the relationship OCD + the gay thoughts OCD (lol irl at that phrase but like... it’s what it is) and i spent a while last night doing absolutely stupid shit in response - like reading all these articles about comphet, measuring my index and ring finger WITH A RULER bc of that study that suggested lesbians are more likely to have a longer ring finger than index finger. and just like being totally batshit about it. ben asked for a list of thoughts but going into detail about that specifically just felt Not Doable so ill probably do my usual thing of writing him an email about it lol. im not a fucking lesbian holy shit! the absolute irrationality!!! i did also do some googling + found a number of bisexual women in a similar thought spiral which was quite interesting - the same kind of shit - terrified of being a victim of comphet, terrified of their relationship not being ‘valid’, terrified of not being ‘true to themselves’. i guess i have to wonder how many of them actually have gay thoughts OCD and how many of them genuinely are victims of comphet bc i do bet it’s a non-zero number. however that’s not a very helpful thought for me specifically lol

plus this latest chess bullshit is also just like depressing me to my core bc i have to spend a significant portion of my online life in a group w/ people who like even if previously i thought they had my back they clearly fucking dont. i do think some of them do, but i thought the mod i talked about yesterday did as well so like fucking hell maybe none of them actually do :| and that’s a really desperately sad thought to have when i do despite my understanding of the situation desperately want to be around to help improve the chess situation wrt women. its just fucking sad and too depressing to even think too much about

anyway. i daresay this is kind of all due to the shit about my sister at its core bc i feel like i was fine before that all kicked off. i am gonna think of another diorama to complete bc i always feel much much happier when im working on an art project + i havent been doing one since i finished the last one, and i think i’ll feel much better once i start up something else. other than that: i dunno, just gonna keep keeping on

[ao3-sucks]

my own ao3 experience was that i got into it when i was in a huge fandom that had a bunch of underage and incestuous pairings and fics. i really started getting into it when i was like fresh into middle school and not soon after that id start reading a bunch of explicit fics. basically pretty sure reading that stuff is what made me feel anxious around my 2 older siblings and like if i showed any kind of affection like even a hug or just laughing at a joke sometimes itd be seen as a sign of attraction. im in my 20s now and it still really affects me. i feel like less valid with my online trauma somehow bc i did it to myself lol.

  Anonymous said to ao3-sucks:

I got manipulated by an adult into writing an extremely triggering fic about rape and abuse between two young siblings, and ended up having to draw on my own traumatic experiences for it. I pretended to be okay with it, and let them say it was my fault it was like that, and when I finally got tired of hiding it and publicly called them out on it, multiple people defended them, using that pretense against me. I still haven't fully recovered from that. Sometimes I wonder if it really was my fault. 

Anonymous said to ao3-sucks:

thank you SO MUCH for this blog, I was groomed into thinking the wildest of things were acceptable by fandom people, and it wasnt until i was about 15 or 16 that i finally wised up and dropped the thinking once and for all. thank you again and have a really good week!

Anonymous said to ao3-sucks:

I don’t really know how old the post that talked about the experience of one of the mods with ao3 is, but just in case, this is about that post that had mentions of r//pe and @“cest. And damn, I’ve never stopped to think that my aversion to sex maybe came from my early exposure to that kind of stuff, now I know that I’m asexual, but it’s comforting to see that I’m not alone in this, so thank you for sharing your story

Anonymous said to ao3-sucks:

god this is probably stupid and you dont have to post this if you don't want to, but thank you so much for making this page. ive had similar experiences in online fandom and ive really struggled with classifying any of it as "real" since it was all online. that post talking about your experience with everything was really eye opening for me. thank you for reminding me im not alone.

Anonymous said to ao3-sucks:

wrt your ao3 essay // thank you for sharing your story about ao3. ive had some similar experiences, but i never interacted with anyone on ao3, just read ff. in around a 1-2 years of consuming that content, i had developed some psychosis relating to sexual trauma, but i never had anything happen to me so i didnt really know what to think. i was just scared. its nice to know that.. it wasnt just random? that more people are talking about this? something like that. thank you. i hope you are well.

Anonymous said to ao3-sucks:

i just read through your experiences and while i was never really involved with fanfiction during my childhood, i WAS exposed to plenty of other weird interactions on other sites starting probably as early as 11  and just realized that me starting to use the internet more probably coincides with me showing similar things such as starting to hate being touched and consider myself asexual/sex repulsed. it was nothing that i'd considered to be that impactful or big a deal before and there weren't really specific people to blame, but i definitely don't know how to feel about this knowledge now.

Anonymous said to ao3-sucks:

just read that post abt your ao3 experience and holy fuck, so sorry you had to go through that. but also, thank you. its scary to think tht ive cldve been in the same situation since i was browsing the internet from a v young age. i was huge into roleplaying and thereve been a few times where it became, uuh... not completely sfw (unknowingly to me, i just wanted to rp). but the moment it became too weird, i ghosted n blocked (i had a very anti-internet-stranger policy). again, thanks. take care

Anonymous said to ao3-sucks:

I was 12 when I got my first ship. I got into it because of the cute art online and I never once thought about it being bad. It was pedophilic amongst other things. I just started writing fic, so I wrote for this ship. I was asked to write straight up human AU "porn where xyz is a pedo" by people far older than me. I didn't know any better, I wrote it and every other request like it. It go so bad that I though that pedophilia was OKAY. It took me so long to unlearn that and many other things because of that ship and I still feel bad for ever having shipped it. So when people say things like "fiction doesn't effect reality" it makes me mad. It teaches little kids that things like pedophilia and rape are okay.

I opted to answer these as a group because they are all so similar. It breaks my heart how often I get anons, post replies, and reblogs about my AO3 essay from people saying that my experiences closely mirrored theirs. I hope that everyone who has sent me these messages can forgive themselves for what happened to them, and know that it’s not your fault that other people decided to take advantage of you. I’m working on healing, and I hope you can all do the same.

- Mod Daft

#testimonials #anti ao3 #ao3 critical #fandom critical #mod daft posts #Anonymous

[goatpaste]

opinions on. fack it. all da fo4 companions.

Ough

Its been dhsjjf a few years since I touched f4 and still haven't finished it so I straight up had to look up the list

I have over 120+ hours in that game and I still haven't met nick valentine properly

Preston Garvey: 10/10

The most perfect man!!! My 120 hours of game play have been lovingly traveling and building settlements with my husband preston Garvey.

I love him very very much and the way the Fandom and game treated him was a fucking crime. The fact that everyone reduced him to that one meme sucks because then NO ONE talked about his very nice in depth character thats really compelling and sweet. Then the game itself should known better than to make your fucking companion the minuteman quest giver! Or at least change how it worked! Or just give to a minuteman at the castle so you would have a reason to go there after the quest

Not to mention how fucking scummy the nuka cola dlc is to him with making him one of the biggest victims to what you have to do to play that dlc

Hancock: 9/10

Big fan I think he's very very funny and also my husband. Its very fun to have mods that let me travel with both him and preston. They don't psychically talk to each other but their general comments are very funny to hear next to each other.

But hancock a good man I care him and his whole like outlook and deal.

Sometimes I feel his story is a lil idk I think there's more personal shit we could do with him. But again its been a few years so I maybe im misremembering

Cait: 6/10

Iv never traveled with cait myself and she's probably one of the companions i know the least about

But from what I do know

Shes my daughter and love to fight and I love that

BuT iv heard some like mixed opinions on how caits drug addiction is written and yeah iv heard mostly its kinda not great!

But I care her shes my daughter a solid 7/10!

Codsworth: 4.5/10

truely no offence to codsworth, but i really just dont care djgh about him. like no reaL strong opinions. and this comes from me! someone who had a bIG robot interest! 

i think codsworth is my friend but more or less just kinda blends into the background for me so much i forget he’s a companion

Curie: 4/10

i also havent traveled or even met curie this is based again on what i know from reading about her

but man fallout 4 sure said were gonna have some real fun robots in the mechanist DLC but all the main story robots are gonna be just not that good

and curie, man i really really dont like her becoming a totally human looking synth. idk her whole deal with doing that but djksg i hate it become i like robot not human skin waman. 

curie seems like she could be a friend but just weird tiddy boob robot horny

Paladin Danse: 3/10

i rEALLY dont get the hype on Danse. i SEE where danse can be a lot more interesting but its not actually there as far as i know. again iv met danse but didnt travel with him because i didnt care about BOS stuff but i know with f4 you kinda have to do that

the other half of danse stans i see just think he’s hot buT LIKE he loOKS like the generic fallout 4 man model! there cuter men in fo4 Danse just looks like the base player character when you start the game. he looks like sturges and every other man 

i do not care about him

i care more about the rest of the BOS if they were written how I wanted them to be written

Deacon: 6/10

iv never met or traveled with deacon, he is probably one of the companions i know the least about in Fo4

he seems fine, i realLY dont have a feel for his character to give a solid opinion beyond im glad he seems like a goober and like a good person. aND his disguise shit is a very fun game mechanic i do love that and wish id known about it sooner i went so many places he apparently is without knowing he does that

Dogmeat: 10/10

thats a good boy! 

Maccready: 8/10

i havent traveled with maccready but im an avid Fo3 lover so i know his deal p well. i love him that is mY SON

i kill for Fo4 to have more intertwining Fo3 characters for a lot of reasons but im happy Maccready is there he is my terrible son who is grounded grounded grounded

as far as i can tell tho like his character seems so contained to Fo4 and almost feels like they dont want any Fo3 characters who were put in Fo4 to ?? like acKNowledge the Fo3 events?? its so weird to me

Piper Wright: 4/10

this is probably a huge unpopular opinion but i sdjkgh dont care for piper. she seems like a good person and everything but i think she is kinda a lot to deal with sjkgh. she just kinda isnt in my wheel house of like characters i enjoy!

also i literally have no idea what her companion quest is beyond how weirdly interested she is in the player character. i couldnt guess what her companion quest is to save my life, i havent traveled with her but i also like feel iv heard NO one talk about her goals and only that shit she mentions having done sounds p neat, wish i could be there

Strong: 6/10

not bad, i like strong he is my friend. but also i very much see the big issues that come with the bad super mutant writing

and i was spoiled with Fawkes and Lily i just love them so much and it just feels like Strong took the most obvious and boring route with a super mutant companion 

X6: 6/10

have not met or traveled with X6 and i have heard a loT of like differing opinions on him

i like him! i think he seems sweet and i like the potential he could be

but he isnt! his character story and writing is just bad because the institute writing is so bad

Ada: 10/10

I LOVE YOU MISS ADA! underrated companion. i know she is a dlc companion but i actually like the mechanist DLC and ada is a sweetheart she is my friend

Porter Gage: 1/10

listen, i havent played nuka world and really dont have full interest in it so im limited to fan interpretations of gage and what i know from the wiki and ect

but he seems like?? a shit head?? like just another raider bastard? like not even a complex multi dimensional raider with opinions, he just seems to be a raider? idk what im missing but i dont get the hype and why i see more art of him drawn than of preston garvey :///

and im not gonna do longfellow because im gonna be real cheif, no idea. i couldnt even start to know shit about him

#goat chatter

[autisticlalna]

mmmmmmm the lore goes so deep my mind is going brrrrrr!!! this is all so cool im all mmmmmmmm, !!!!!!! Its So Cool!!!

ive now read the wiki page on the first wyatt masoning! i cannot believe how unbelievably cool the events are in blaseball! the whole frequency thing and some players didnt get their names fully changed back and!!! NaN!!! i see why you love NaN bc i now also adore NaN. that is. fantastic. AND i saw ur art on MaX's page its still so pretty ahhhhhh!!!!! bro all ur contributions to blaseball and MaX r so cool!!!! aw uve got such good ideas i cant wait to see the wiki page once its al done

aw but ye getting good pics of mc skins can be hard. if u know someone w a minecraft account they can equip em and then u can see them on namemc, which can give good pics, but then u need to know someone who has a minecraft account

a waffle house existing in another dimension is the least weird part of all of this lore. that fully checks out. MaX should enjoy xer time there, that is good vibes. and yeee, definitely all the wyatts hang out and vibe together!! do status effects never go away then? or they dont happen on purpose? i assumed any of the wyatts would have to, like, intentionally activate their echoes, so no echoing out of existence by accident

gfhfhdsHDSADD dont make me emotional abt original wyatt mason now the microphone!!! have hope????? i dont even go here and id cry abt that wht the hey!!! bro the coin is so mean, can't believe the true enemy to baseball was capitalism all along. do boss battles happen often? it sounds like a boss battle against the coin is upcoming

thats So Much Cool Necromancy Lore tho!!!! dude!!! this is the coolest baseball simulator in the history of both baseball and simulators!!!! the modifiers are so cool, im in awe of all the work the devs must do. that is such a cool series of things. BUT OH NO ON MAX ECHOING DEBT. that would be so dangerous. MaX isnt even the only one with echo, right, isnt it all the wyatt masons? that is so much potential risk, oh no. thank goodness for sure for siestas, that is a lot to unpack. this is all So Cool

GOD YEAH BLASEBALL RULES the most fun part abt the first Wyatt Masoning to me is like. it was a glitch! the Grand Unslam was a glitch bc the site broke and the devs had to roll it back. the Wyatt Masoning was a glitch that happened when the devs tried to do Something to Wyatt / the Tacos in general and everything broke. and now there’s this whole entire ongoing plotline that’s still a thing SEASONS LATER, and !! the devs are so fuckin cool when it comes to rolling with whatever the fuck happens. its like a ttrpg but its baseball

i love NaN so so so much,,, NaN is like. one of the fan favs fhgxkldhdflkf their lore is so cool and !! ive been super attached to them for forever now. which i lovingly blame my taco friend for, thanks aquelon MAN the fact that the Wyatts exist now so theres like 13 copies of who NaN Used To Be around and , fuckin. smth that came up in the lore jam was MaX is like, trying to figure out who xe is besides just A Wyatt, yeah? MaX looks up to NaN!! NaN has gone through A LOT, like a lot has happened in blaseball since the Wyatt Masoning and with how many teams they’ve been a part of and they’ve learned and grown and MaX hasnt yet because MaX didn’t exist until last season. so NaN is like, even though MaX is potentially older NaN is still more Mature and someone that MaX could Be Like and aaaaaaaaaaa

i have a mc acc so i should probably just. do that fhglxhkgf cant wait to forget to change my skin next time i stream mc so it’s two palanauts and then a blaseball

a joke-y thing is that MaX works at the Elsewhere Waffle House and might be the manager? bc of being stuck there over siesta. like, xe has nothing else to do, xe might as well. i have a semi-shitposty twitter rp acc for xem and xe ate grass bc xe was bored and Coolname Galvanic, pitcher for the Tokyo Lift, told xem to

status effects are like!! so there’s several kinds of mods, some of which are permanent, some of which only last a season, and some of which are like. have a chance to fade. Elsewhere is one of the ones that has a chance to fade, like each time the player that’s Elsewhere would normally have a turn there’s a chance that they’ll show back up. MaX got sent Elsewhere late in the season and we didn’t make it to the playoffs, so xe didn’t return before siesta and won’t have a chance to return until next season the Echo modification is permanent, but it only activates in Feedback and Reverb weather (w/ the Echo copying the modifications of the opponent team in Feedback and the mods of their team in Reverb) and when it activates it just like. Goes. in xer first game, MaX echoed like 3 times back-to-back and all of us were going WHAT THE FUCK???? bc that was us finding out what Echo DOES lmao. like any time MaX is up to bat in Feedback or Reverb, xe has a chance to start echoing and then will copy other players until xe gets an out or a hit. the lore on how intentional echoing is is a bit wiggly rn but i hc it as involuntary bc it really does just fuckin Happen and MaX gets stuck with shit mods fghlkxfhlkxf

IM GONNA FUCKIN CRY OVER THE MICROPHONE!!!!!!! i went through his twitter today bc it got pointed out that he mentions Wyatts, plural, a few times and i got super emotional bc he’s just!! he’s doing his best!!!!!! he wants to help his friends but he’s Stuck and the entity he thought he could trust to keep everyone safe has probably just tried to fuckin, either assassinate him or at least cut his connection!!!!!!! and we dont know what happened to him or if he’ll be back or what and aaaAAAA capitalism is very much the enemy. fuck the Coin, at least the Peanut was upfront abt hating us fhglkhdxkghf the Coin is like. gatekeep gaslight girlboss. mostly girlboss. so far the only boss battle has been against the Peanut-- there was like, two rounds? there was Season 9, Day X when the Charleston Shoe Thieves won the championship and then got fuckin Obliterated by the Peanut coming down, pulling together a team, and curbstomping them, and then Season 10 Day X was the Peanut kicking the shit out of the Baltimore Crabs before the Monitor and Jaylen, with help from the Microphone, were able to counterattack. that’s been the only instance so far, but the fandom is Definitely gearing up for a fight against the Coin. there’s some theories that the Absurd Amount Of Wyatts is gonna lead to another situation of like, the Wyatts are gonna end up being a team on their own? vs a Coin-led team. im not really sure on that one myself bc it feels too much like a repeat of vs the Peanut but either way the Coin is going the fuck down

the amount of work the devs do is honestly Staggering, especially w how much of this is practically on the fly? like, dude. blaseball is a fucking marvel. AND YEAH LIKE,, ALL THE WYATTS MASON HAVE ECHO,,, only MaX and Ivy are still in play right now but uh. you know how i mentioned the Receivers? so, it turns out, whenever a Wyatt echoes a mod, that mod gets copy-pasted across all the Receivers (there was, like, four of them. we are now down to three because Something Tragic Happened). so if MaX echoes Debt, which could be very possible if we play in Reverb weather because of us having a necromancied player on our team, that could get spread to NaN, Moses Mason, and Sixpack Dogwalker. NaN and Sixpack are both in Mild High rn, but Moses is in... Wild Low, i think? Moses is in Wild with Ivy. so, uh, even Wild ain’t safe

#im so glad to share my love of how fuckshit wild blaseball is fhgkldhlgk #Anonymous #blaseball #leo.txt

[the-ss-zemyx]

PVP(umpkin Spice Lattes)

Zexion and Arpeggio are Discord friends. They chat in private messages, raid in Verum Rex together, and may or may not have feelings for each other.

Ienzo and Demyx are college roommates. They hate each other, for the most part. At least they can both agree on pumpkin spice lattes.

Happy 2nd Zemyx Day of 2020!!

Specifically for today, the S.S. Zemyx Discord Server hosted a collaborative fic-writing event! Over the course of the past five days, four of our writing members teamed up on a Google Doc in one glorious, inspirational, chaotic, frankenstein-esque fic-writing bonanza! That's right, the fic you're about to read is the product of -four- people's efforts!  Enjoy!! :D

(A HUGE thanks to my co-writers: Aliceslantern, Ennarcia, and Carbonpixel. This was a hell of a lot of fun to do and I'm immensely proud of us!! - Mod Arxsia)

Also available on AO3!

__________

      Demyx hated his roommate. Okay, no, hate was a strong word, and Demyx did his best to be a friendly, outgoing sort of guy, so ‘hate’ was definitely too strong a word. He liked to make friends. Having friends was nice. Having friends was very nice, and so, he tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But his roommate was a different story, and Demyx did not like his roommate very much at all.

At least he was easy on the eyes, because everything else about him got on Demyx’s last nerve. His name was Ienzo, but his name might as well have been "Jerk," with a capital J. When he wasn't hogging the Internet bandwidth doing God-knows-what on a chunky Alienware laptop, he was lecturing Demyx on the virtues of keeping the floor free from dirty clothes and giving empty soda cans a proper burial in the plastic wastebasket by the door. Lame. Also, he was a little condescending. That jerk . 

One day, Ienzo burst into their dorm room with the gusto of a hurricane aiming to speak to a manager about a botched coffee order. He swung his laptop bag onto his mattress. It bounced when it landed. "Out," he commanded.

Demyx looked up from his phone. He sat with his legs crossed on his own bed, his Discord app open to a private message thread on his phone. In a few minutes, one of his server friends, a guy with the display name "The Cloaked Schemer" but going by his Discord handle, Zexion#1309, would be starting a voice call with him. It was kind of a big deal--they had been chatting in their shared server for almost a year, and in private messages for almost as long, but they had yet to actually speak to each other. "I'm actually busy," Demyx said.

"I don't care. Out."

It turned into an argument, of course, neither yielding and probably disturbing their neighbors with the yelling. Yep, Demyx didn’t like his roommate one bit. 

He ended up in the lounge by the kitchen, utterly fuming, cursing his idea to “go rando” with a roommate all the while. It’s the best way to make friends, Demyx , his mother had told him. What better friend than a roommate?

Very funny.

At least he’d been able to grab his phone. Of course, Zexion was wondering where the hell he was. 

The Cloaked Schemer: Do you need to reschedule?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: roommate’s being a dick and kicked me out. Sorry!

The Cloaked Schemer: Ah, I too am having roommate troubles. I can sympathize. I know too well what it’s like when one’s privacy is denied.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: he’s driving me NUTS! 

The Cloaked Schemer: Have you tried talking to him about it?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: He didn’t exactly uh seem receptive to talking

The Cloaked Schemer: It’s always a good idea to try for maturity first.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I did! Not my fault the guy wasn’t having it.

Anyway. Id hate to let that guy take up any more time.

Hru?

The Cloaked Schemer: Doing as well as I can, I suppose. I’m enjoying my classes so far. It seems a little easy, but then again, it is only one of the first weeks. Things should pick up more by midterms.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: ure too smart zexy. And didnt you skip a grade?

The Cloaked Schemer: A year, yes. I don’t think they call them grades in college.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Considering some of the people ive met, couldve fooled me.

The Cloaked Schemer: If I’m hoping to have a grad degree within five years, I have to fast track it. I’d rather not spend much more time in undergrad than necessary.

Though I am especially resentful that, despite the fact that I am technically a sophomore, I’m considered enough of a freshman to still be required to dorm.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: That blows

But dude, ure here. Might as well try to enjoy the journey, yaknow?

The Cloaked Schemer: Oh, Arpeggio. Your naivete is too obvious sometimes. It’s sweet, I think.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: har har

The Cloaked Schemer: I am disappointed though. I was looking forward to meeting you--in a manner of speaking. You’re probably one of the most sane people from our Verum Rex server.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Issa game, bro. Some of them, idk, take it a little too seriously

The Cloaked Schemer: Well, aspects of it are worth being taken seriously, but I understand what you mean.

Though the ship wars are grating.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: ha! Yeah.

The Cloaked Schemer: We’ll have to find some other time, then.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Mann i was hoping to see if you sound as smart as you type

The Cloaked Schemer: You flatter me.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Do you think if we lived near each other we would hang out?

The Cloaked Schemer: If it’s all the same, I’d prefer to keep my location anonymous.

At least for now.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I know. Just a hypothetical question

The Cloaked Schemer: I’d like to say yes.

But for all I know, you’re actually a forty year old serial killer who lives in his mother’s basement.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: harsh

You listen to 2 many true crime podcasts 

Anyway, I g2g. See if the roomie will let me back in. Got homework.

The Cloaked Schemer: Enjoy your night, Arpeggio.

Hopefully one of us has a good one.

Demyx closed the app and repocketed his phone. He flopped back on the lounge couch, eyes squinting at the fluorescent lights above and his limbs ragdolling in uncomfortable directions. A good night, huh? It’d be better if he could spend time in his own room without having to engage in guerilla combat whenever he wanted to exist in his own space. Wishful thinking, he thought.

__________

      Ienzo stared at the chatlog open on his computer screen. The circle next to Arpeggio’s icon turned a dull gray, and the remaining bits of Ienzo’s hope for decent conversation dulled with it. He had finally caught up enough with his classwork to have some free time to spend, finally arranged to voice chat with Arpeggio, finally gotten Demyx to leave the god-forsaken room so he could have the one conversation he’d been looking forward to for weeks , and now… nothing. All that planning, gone to waste. Another wave of irritation hit him, and suddenly he was out of bed and grabbing his keys. He needed some tea.

Ienzo didn’t get tea at the coffee shop, despite his plans. The alluring, hipster scent of pumpkin spice hit his nose instead, and he caved before he could stop himself.

The college employed students as baristas in the campus coffee shop, as part of the work-study financial aid, so it wasn’t uncommon to see one’s peers at the shop. “Hey, Ienzo,” Riku said. It was getting late; chairs were already on top of all the tables. They’d met in Ienzo’s anthropology class.

“I’m not too late, am I?”

“I can bend the rules for you.” He went back behind the counter. “What��ll it be? Your usual?”

He blushed guiltily. “Pumpkin spice. Please.” Curse that glorious, wonderful scent.

He smirked. “Coming right up.”

“I know it’s dreadfully popular.”

“Yeah, cause it’s good ,” Riku said. “As long as you’re not one of those “half-caff, no whip, vanilla and almond, five shots” type of people.”

“Why complicate coffee so much?”

Riku handed him the paper cup. “At that point, just drink coffee-flavored syrup.” There was a pleasant lull for a moment. Riku began cleaning the espresso machine. “So why are you out so late? Don’t you have an early class tomorrow?”

Ienzo grimaced. “My roommate and I got into a fight.”

“...Again?”

“We are not well suited for each other.” A sigh. “I went to the Residence Life office to try and apply for another room, but the period for that is over. I was told, and I quote, “unless he’s hurting you, tough it out.””

Riku chuckled. 

“He is simply-- obnoxious ,” Ienzo continued, the pressing need to vent taking over. “Slobby, loud, and always around at precisely the most inopportune times. I was supposed to have a call with a good friend of mine, and it took some doing just to get him out.”

“Right, your Discord friend.”

“You have a good memory.” Ienzo swished the coffee around a little; it was slightly too hot to drink.

“The one you have a crush on,” Riku said with a grin.

Ienzo flushed painfully. “I do not have feelings for him,” he said.

“Dunno. You managed to bring that call up in almost every conversation we’ve had. If he was really just your friend, would you be that excited? Enough to hype about it for weeks?”

Ienzo shrugged. “I do not know where he’s from, I don’t know his real name, I don’t even know what he looks like. For all I know, he only uses he/him pronouns online.”

“And?”

“I just… see no reason to desire something I cannot have.”

Riku wiped at the counter. “Oh, don’t be so doom and gloom,” he said. “If the call matters so much, it’s going to happen eventually.”

“I know.” He smiled. “Well, thanks for the tea and sympathy. Er, coffee and sympathy.” 

“Any time.”

“Enjoy the rest of your night.”

“You too. Play nice.” 

“Just promise to bail me out if things go awry, will you?”

“Ha, on my salary?” Riku winked.

Ienzo left the coffee shop. He didn’t want to return to the dorms yet, but the fall night was calm and quiet. He checked his phone (maybe Arpeggio was free? Though he did say he had homework…).

As a stroke of luck, he had a message waiting for him.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I have a room again! \o/ 

the jerk was gone when I got back!

The Cloaked Schemer: How fortunate for you. I assume you’re flying through your homework now?

Mel0d10us N0cturn3: nope! :p 

this science paper is kicking my ass!

Im really no good at this sort of thing

The Cloaked Schemer: Do you have any tutors available? Ordinarily I’d love to help but it might be easier and more private to go there instead.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: \o/

We actually do have one of those tutoring centers I think! Thanks for the idea!

Don't want you to waste your special brain-powers on little ol’ me lol

The Cloaked Schemer: I’d hardly call helping you a waste of my “special brain powers.”

It’s not a bad idea to check your local resources though.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: o7

Don’t think I’m gonna make any progress on this paper tonight tho lol

The Cloaked Schemer: Giving up already? I didn’t have you pegged for a quitter.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Awww, come on! Don’t guilt meeee

My poor brain!

It’s mush!

;-; will you not spare some mercy for my poor mushy brain?

The Cloaked Schemer: I suppose just this once, provided you use your resources and go to the tutoring center.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: o7 Yes sir !

First thing in the morning!

My mushy brain thanks you for your mercy and endless kindness!

Ienzo’s cheeks grew warm, but whether it was from the message on the screen or the sip of pumpkin spice coffee currently running down his throat, he neither knew nor was willing to explore.

Despite the late hour, there were plenty of students milling about campus, taking up their little spaces. It had taken him some time to find an empty bench to sit on, but one eventually caught his eye and he claimed it immediately, sitting down with his coffee in one hand and phone in the other.

The sky was inky black, dotted with stars, the sun long gone by now. Nights were starting to grow just a tad chilly, the beginnings of autumn seeping into the atmosphere. It was Ienzo’s favorite season and the aroma of pumpkin spice wafting past his nose was just what he needed to make up for the disappointment of having his voice call with Arpeggio abruptly cancelled.

Well, maybe not entirely. He’d been really looking forward to hearing Arpeggio’s voice for the first time, but this did nicely enough, he supposed. It was better than sitting around stewing in annoyance over his damned roommate anyway.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: so what are you up to right now?

The Cloaked Schemer: It’s a lovely night out. I needed some tea. Got coffee instead.

What is it about pumpkin spice that’s so irresistible? 

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Never wouldve pictured YOU as a devotee of the PSL.

The Cloaked Schemer: Guilty pleasure. 

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: theyre so good. I can’t have that many of them cause caffeine makes me SLEEPY

The Cloaked Schemer: Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me at all.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: whats that supposed to mean?

The Cloaked Schemer: Nothing derogatory, I assure you.

Though the idea of you being hopped up on caffeine amuses me.

You seem like one of those people who has energy all the time.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: i wish

The Cloaked Schemer: I should--begrudgingly--head back to my room.

You should try working on that paper.

I mean it about the tutor.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: yeah, yeah. I hear ya

Hopefully your roommates not being a dick anymore

The Cloaked Schemer: Fat chance. M3l0d10us N0cturn3: enjoy your coffee~~

__________

      Demyx sat for a long time looking at that exchange. He could’ve heard Zexion say those words. He was just so painfully smart, but Demyx could listen to him say anything. About anything. For hours.

He showered and got ready for bed, hoping that Ienzo would stay gone. But as it was, he was back. Ienzo scowled in greeting.

“Nice to see you too,” Demyx muttered. He noticed the coffee cup Ienzo had set down. Ienzo seemed to live on caffeine and spite. 

“I needed to clear my head, as I do not have the luxury of privacy.”

“Well I gotta sleep somewhere,” Demyx said. He crawled into bed. Ienzo rolled his eyes. Demyx saw him grab his own shower caddy and head out to the communal bathroom. He thought he smelled--he blinked. Slowly, ever so slowly, he got up, crossed over to the cup, and sniffed it.

Of course he likes pumpkin spice lattes, Demyx thought bitterly. Ugh.

He went back to bed and fell asleep listening to music.

__________

      The universe thought it was just so funny. Demyx had taken Zexion’s advice and the tutor he’d met with was his jerk of a roommate. At least Ienzo was unhappy too, if the scowl on his insufferably nerdy face was anything to go by.

“What are you doing here?” Demyx blurted before he could stop himself.

“I work here,” his jerk of a roommate answered in response, “as a tutor, for my work study. I take it your procrastinating finally caught up to you and you need some last-minute help?” Did he really have to be so damn condescending though?

Demyx hiked his backpack strap a bit higher on his shoulder and rapped his fingers on the tutoring center's reception desk. Ienzo could glare daggers at him all he wanted from his seat at the computer behind the desk, but the curious eyes of the other tutors and students around meant that he would have to maintain decorum. They both would, lest Ienzo lose his job and Demyx lose his tutoring privileges. He took a deep breath. "I need help with a biology paper."

Ienzo's expression tightened. "Would you like to make an appointment?"

"No? You said it yourself: this is last-minute." Demyx tapped on the desk. "I need to talk to the science tutor on duty, please."

"It seems like we're both out of luck tonight, then," Ienzo replied dryly, absently clicking at something on the computer monitor. "I'm the science tutor on duty at the moment."

"You? Gross." 

"I'm not particularly happy about it right now, either."

Demyx considered his options, and cringed at his conclusions. His paper was due in two days, and it was only half-drafted. Without a passing grade on the assignment, he would set himself up to fail the class. Petty squabbles were not worth the hit to his GPA. He sighed. "Well, can you help? I'm kind of desperate, here."

Ienzo returned the sigh. "Fine. Follow me."

Demyx followed Ienzo around the reception desk to a square table in the far corner, a plastic chair on each side. Ienzo alighted onto the seat closest to the wall. "This better not be a waste of time."

Demyx pulled his laptop out of his backpack before sitting down across from Ienzo. "Has anyone ever told you that you have excellent people skills? Because if they did, they lied to you."

Ienzo rolled his eyes. Yep , Demyx thought, amazing people skills. They were off to a great start. Getting through this paper was going to be agony. "I'm paid to tutor, not practice social niceties."

The laptop screen lit up as Demyx swiped one finger over the trackpad. A screenshot from one of his more memorable raids in Verum Rex guarded the rest of his files behind his login password. Demyx typed his password as quickly as he could, shooing the image of his and Zexion's avatars away before Ienzo could ask any unwanted questions. Evidently, he did not type fast enough. 

“Verum Rex? You're familiar with it?” 

Demyx nearly jumped, shoulders tensing. He knew Ienzo was there; that shouldn’t have startled him as badly as it had.

“Duh? It's only the best MMO on the market right now. Not that you would know, since you're so committed to the whole 'smug asshole' thing,” He snarked on reflex, feeling slightly guilty about it afterwards. Ienzo was being friendly for once, or was at least making something of an attempt at it. Yikes. Demyx wasn't usually one to make low blows like that. He opened the Biology folder on his computer and selected the draft of his paper, making an effort to get along with Ienzo while they were forced to sit together. "Please help me with this? If you would be so kind, please?" Demyx made praying-hands in Ienzo's direction in apology.

Eyebrow rising - was it just one, or both? - Ienzo shot him a look, obviously unamused in the slightest. “If you’re trying to be cute, it’s not going to work.”

Demyx pouted and opened up his biology paper, turning the laptop toward Ienzo. “Fine, fine, just help me?”

Rolling his eyes yet again, Ienzo was just about to lean in to read what Demyx had so far, when the familiar sound of a Discord ping had Demyx scrambling to turn the laptop back toward himself. Shit. He’d forgotten to close his Discord window before showing up at the tutoring center.

While Demyx closed the Discord app, Ienzo watched him carefully, contemplative. “You use Discord?”

Turning the laptop back, Demyx gave him a look, half in disbelief because surely Ienzo was too much of a nerd, but not in the cool way, to know what Discord was, and yet he did. Shit, it would be really awkward to end up in a server together. “Yeah, who doesn’t use Discord these days? I mean, especially if you play games or are into, I dunno, any fan community stuff.”

For a moment, Ienzo said nothing, slowly turning to look at Demyx’s biology paper on the screen. “Alright, let’s see what we have to work with so far, if anything.”

Demyx sighed. Asshole.

__________

      Was this some kind of joke? Ienzo was being pranked, wasn’t he? Any moment now Demyx would start laughing about wasting his time and walk out, like the lazy slacker he was. Halfway through, he half collapsed on the table.

“This is impossible,” Demyx whined. “You don’t really understand this stuff, do you? You’ve gotta be lying.”

Ienzo felt his eye twitch. “Not all of us are lazy fools who give up after 15 minutes. Why are you even here?”

“Because my friend said I should, and I trust his advice. He never leads me wrong, so even if I have to spend time with you , I’m gonna do this.” 

"Your friend sounds like he has the sense that you very much lack," Ienzo deadpanned, scrolling through Demyx's paper. He took stock of the misformatted section headings, missing in-text citations, and the off-center data table in the middle of the mess. The topic of the paper did not appear in any of Demyx's written work. "Can you tell me what this assignment is supposed to be? I can't tell from what you've given me."

"It's…" Demyx shrank back in his seat. "I don't know what it's supposed to be. My professor gave us all a table of data-results-things and told us to organize and analyze them. I don't know what he wants, exactly."

Ienzo huffed, and almost slammed Demyx's computer closed on the spot. Thankfully, his better faculties kept him from breaking Demyx's laptop. "There's your problem. You can't complete an assignment if you don't know what the assignment is . Email your professor for clarification and request an extension. If you do it early enough, they might grant you leniency."

"Really? That's your advice? Beg my way out of it?"

"Not begging. Requesting. It shows forethought, self-awareness, and emotional maturity, even if you don't actually possess any of those things. The adage of faking proficiency to gain proficiency has some truth to it." Ienzo pushed the laptop over to Demyx. "Is there anything else I can help with?"

Demyx's arms crossed, and his expression took on the quality of a betrayed toddler. "You didn't even help me with what I came in for, asshole."

Ienzo waved away Demyx's indignation with a dismissive hand. "There's only so much I, or any tutor, can do without having a good idea of what your professor expects. Emailing is the best advice I can give right now."

"So if I email my professor, you’ll help me?” 

“I give you my word.” A promise made in haste, if only to appease the barest responsibilities of his job. Hopefully Demyx wouldn’t make him live to regret it.

Not long after Demyx was gone, Ienzo checked his Discord app, surreptitiously on his phone behind the reception desk, to find a message from Arpeggio.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Zexy, this worst thing ever just happened!

My roommate is my tutor!

Save meeeeeee

The Cloaked Schemer: That is peculiar. Though colleges are small worlds, so I hear.

What did he have to say re: the paper?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Ugh he couldn’t even help

Because I had licherally no idea what the professor wants

I mean, the dude has an F on ratemyprofessor so

He said to email and beg for clarity and an extension

The Cloaked Schemer: ...That is sound advice, actually.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Youre taking his side???

The Cloaked Schemer: Not exactly.

But in academic situations, it always looks good on you to take the initiative and seek help when you need it.

I guarantee the professor will work with you, and perhaps be able to refine that same assignment in the future.

If he’s worth his salt, he’s seeking to improve himself the way you are.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I GUESS

You wanna do a raid tonite? 

The Cloaked Schemer: Alas, I, too, am a college student with coursework.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: RUDE

Ienzo leaned back in his chair in the campus library. How coincidental, he thought. He’d just given Demyx the same advice. Then again, college papers--especially in the sciences--were not always diverse on the gen ed level. He recalled Demyx’s paper; he should’ve asked him to see the email, or post, or handout with the assignment on it. Chances are the moron had merely misunderstood.

Demyx liked Verum Rex. Perhaps they could have this to talk about. Ienzo wondered who he mained. Probably Yozora, he thought with a sneer. 

The Cloaked Schemer: Actually, I can do one raid.

ONE. Brief. Raid.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Thats more like it! \o/

One raid turned into two, then Ienzo ended up staying in the library, at the tutoring center, until it closed.

__________

      Demyx begrudgingly took Ienzo’s advice. After his marathon raid session with Zexion, he sent a brief email--agonizing over the wording--to his professor, who responded almost instantly with an apology. Several students had already asked him about the assignment, it turned out, so he was going to extend the entire class’s deadline. But if Demyx needed a few days after that, he could have it.

“You were right,” Demyx murmured out loud, as he read the email the next morning. 

“Of course I was,” Ienzo said, not looking up from his desk. “See? All it takes is a little maturity.”

The irony. Demyx grimaced. He looked over at him. “So you’ll help me?”

“When--and only when--I am on duty,” he said. “I have a life outside of work, you know.”

Demyx wondered how true that was. Ienzo spent a lot of the time in the room if he were not in class or in the library. Did he have friends? Did he go to societies? He nearly asked. Then he looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time in weeks. He had bags under his eyes, and was washed out, books spread in a circle around him. “Outside of studying, too?”

Ienzo opened his mouth, then shut it. “I am not here to socialize. I am here for a degree.”

“But don’t you… have any friends?”

“Of course I do,” Ienzo said, just a little too quickly. 

Like he would honestly tell Demyx. “Sure,” he said, shutting his laptop and tucking it into his bag. “Well. I got class. I’ll see you at the center later?”

“Much to my chagrin,” Ienzo responded evenly.

Demyx’s day was ordinary other than that. After the professor clarified what he wanted in class (and, to Demyx’s immense relief, it was much less daunting than what he’d thought), he stopped by the library to check out some books which might point him in a vague direction. Ienzo could tell him if they were any good. He stopped by the coffee shop to grab a croissant and a coffee, and, on impulse, got one for Ienzo as well. The idea of it made him nervous. Maybe I’ll say they made an extra by mistake, he thought. He already knew Ienzo drank them.

There Ienzo was, sitting in the office. “It’s you,” he said in an unreadable tone.

“It’s me.” He cleared his throat. “Um…” He thrust out the coffee without saying anything else.

“Is this for me?”

“Uh, yeah.” He felt his face heat--though why? 

Ienzo took it, looking confused, and sniffed the small hole in the lid. “Oh,” he said softly.

“I wasn’t sure if you liked--”

“No. I do. That was kind of you.” He blinked, his expression odd, slackened; Demyx realized it was without malice. “Let’s get to work, shall we? I don’t want this to take any longer than it has to.”

Ienzo helped him structure the paper, and reviewed proper citations with him. It would take a little work, but seeing it outlined, Demyx felt a lot less overwhelmed. Something he thought was a mammoth project would maybe take an hour or two to write.

“Once you have it written, come back and I can help you with grammar and syntax,” Ienzo said.

“Awesome.” He took a deep breath. “I feel… a lot better now.”

“One typically does when one stops procrastinating,” Ienzo said. He leaned back in his seat. For a second--but just one--he sounded like Zexion, all firm and proper, genteel without being rigid.

__________

      "You got your grade back already?"

Demyx beamed as he held his laptop screen-out, his browser logged into the university's online grading system. One score was listed under BIO 101, labelled "Paper 1." The percentage displayed next to the assignment name was higher than Ienzo expected from Demyx. "I didn't completely fail!" he practically cheered.

"So you didn't," Ienzo agreed, nodding slightly at the number from his desk. "It's amazing what a bit of work will do."

Demyx dropped himself onto his bed and turned his laptop. He bounced on the mattress a few times while he looked at the number. "This is the best news I've gotten all semester and it's the best feeling. Is this what it's like to be a genius and get good grades all the time?"

Ienzo returned his attention to his own laptop, where a half-drafted essay mocked him with its blinking text cursor and nonsensical thesis statement. He clacked another line of bullshit into the document. It was for English class, he reminded himself. Any answer was correct if it could be argued well. "No, not really. You get used to it."

"I… I should thank you," Demyx said, after a beat of silence. "For your help. I wouldn't have had anything to turn in at all if you hadn't told me to email my professor."

Another line of bullshit trailed across the screen. Ienzo squinted at it, unsure of what he had typed. "Don't mention it. It's my job."

"But still. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Ienzo could hear Demyx shuffling on his bed. "So… you play Verum Rex?"

"Fairly regularly, yes."

"Do you do raids or multiplayer at all?"

Ienzo shot Demyx a warning glance. "I already have a raiding group. I'm not looking for another one."

Across the room, Demyx had tucked himself into bed, his Star Wars sheets pulled all the way up to his chin. He blinked at Ienzo unceremoniously. "Jeez, forget I asked. No need to be snippy about it."

Demyx's head disappeared under the covers, and Ienzo returned his attention to his essay. At least, he tried. The Discord notifications in the corner of his screen kept distracting him.

Eventually, Ienzo admitted defeat and opened Discord. All of the messages were from Arpeggio.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: hey, do we have an opening on our raiding party?

Zexion?

Oh nvm he said no

What are you up to?

I'm taking a victory nap after getting a good grade on that paper I had to 

write a while back

My roommate is typing something and he's so loud

What is he writing that makes him so angy

The Cloaked Schemer: I am also typing angrily at something

It is a universal collegiate experience

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: still so angy tho

Are you angy atm?

The Cloaked Schemer: I am… frustrated

I'm meant to be dissecting the themes in a short story but I feel like I'm only spewing garbage on the page

Perhaps if I present the garbage with enough conviction, I will be able to maneuver through this class

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: if youre writing it, it's definitely not garbage :P

you need to have more confidence in yourself, Zexy

The Cloaked Schemer: Ha. I think my roommate would disagree

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: well then he's a bum

Tell him that

Arpeggio says so

Ienzo looked back at Demyx, cocooned in spaceship bed sheets and doing who-knows-what under the cover of bed linens. He thought he saw the flash of a phone screen through the fabric, but the light disappeared as quickly as he caught it.

The Cloaked Schemer: I'll pass. He seems busy.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Busy doing what? Bum things?

The Cloaked Schemer: I certainly hope not. We're in the same room right now.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: oh. Awkward

The Cloaked Schemer: I’ll say.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: so you know ive been thinking

The Cloaked Schemer: Have you? What a concept.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: ha ha.

Its been a while since we tried voice chatting

Maybe we could try again?

The Cloaked Schemer: You would want that?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I want to hear your voice. To see if youre actually as smart as you write

Maybe youve got, like, a transatlantic accent, or something. Thatd be cool

Ienzo blinked, staring hard at the screen. His heart beat a little faster. It was so hard to determine tone through text. 

The Cloaked Schemer: Maybe I’m not as cool as I seem.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: highly, HIGHLY doubt it

Youve kept me sane

I really appreciate our

Ienzo saw him type “thing” and then frenetically edit to “friendship.” He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

The Cloaked Schemer: The feeling is mutual.

A long, long pause. Ienzo did not know what else to say. His face was burning.

The Cloaked Schemer: Normally I’d rather be caught dead than admit this.

But it does get somewhat lonely here.

It’s nice to have someone to talk to.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: I know what u mean

Sometimes i feel like i dont really know who i am

And like college is supposed to be about finding that

But its hard.

The Cloaked Schemer: You don’t have to tell me twice.

Part of why it’s so easy to exist in online spaces, in games. Appearance doesn’t matter. It’s like being a more concentrated version of oneself.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Do u feel like a more concentrated version of yourself?

The Cloaked Schemer: When I talk to you.

Ienzo’s heart was pounding. He thought he heard Demyx sigh across the room. Was he typing too hard?

Arpeggio started and stopped typing several times, just making Ienzo more nervous. What is he going to say? Did I push it too hard? Was I too forward?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Me too, Zexion

I wish we knew each other. Like, irl

Getting to do raids in person

That would be so fun

And i dunno, maybe do other things

Go out to eat. Go to the movies. Maybe go dancing.

Do u like clubs?

The Cloaked Schemer: I’ve never been.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: it takes some getting used to

But the energy of a crowd is electric

Especially with people you know

Oh god oh god oh god , Ienzo thought. His hands were trembling. 

The Cloaked Schemer: Where would we go to eat?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: anywhere you want

Well. on a college students budget anyway

-laughs in poor

The Cloaked Schemer: Ah, so, five star cuisine, then.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Just dont order the lobster

In all seriousness. We need to vc sometime

The Cloaked Schemer: Yes.

There’s going to be a raid event on Saturday. Perhaps then?

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Depends on if i have the room :/ 

Wanna say yes so bad

The Cloaked Schemer: I know the feeling.

I suppose if I get desperate enough I can rent out a study cubicle in the library.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Awww you’d do that for little ol’ me?

The Cloaked Schemer: Yes, I

His finger slipped, hitting the enter key a moment too soon before he could even finish the thought in his head. His hands felt almost clammy, the inner mechanizations of his mind working on overdrive, as if trying to race against the pitter-patter beat of his heart. Shit. Perhaps… Riku was right after all? Had Ienzo, usually so level-headed, actually developed a crush on Arpeggio? It was utterly nonsensical, and yet he couldn’t deny that he felt a comfort with Arpeggio that he didn’t feel with anyone else he knew, online or offline. Was it possible to fall- ...to develop a smattering of feelings for someone based on typed text alone?

Well, wasn’t that a theme in literature? Two people falling in love over written letters? For all Ienzo knew, there could very well have been instances of it happening in real life, in the days of old, long, long before the age of technology and the internet. A pair of penpals, miles and miles of distance between them, communicating through the written word; it could happen, couldn’t it?

Hold on. When the hell did he turn into a sap ? Frowning, Ienzo ran a hand over his face, feeling like a lovestruck fool.

No. No, this couldn’t be a crush. Just because it was so easy to talk to him, just because they’d been talking for a year or so by now, it didn’t mean-

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Zexy?

You ok?

Shit, how long had he zoned out for? 

The Cloaked Schemer: Sorry. Got distracted.

But regardless, I think we should aim for Saturday.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Great!

Hoping we don’t get interrupted by our dick roomies

The Cloaked Schemer: Quite. It’s a date, then.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Yes :3

Ienzo took a deep breath. Regardless as to whether or not this was practical, it seemed that Arpeggio reciprocated his flirting.

Wait. Ienzo looked at the screen, cheeks heating up as he realized he’d typed the word ‘date,’ and Arpeggio said ‘yes .’ He couldn’t deny the little flutter of his stomach in that moment.

__________

      Demyx set his phone aside, his heart beating heavily in his chest, his face bright red. He swallowed. There was no way sleep would come easily now, and it probably wouldn’t be until Saturday.

He thought about the nature of crushes. He’d never seen Zexy’s face, or heard his voice, but he was so adept at weaving words in the way Demyx wanted to be with music. He tried to imagine him, what he might be like.

He rolled onto his back. Ienzo’s frenetic, noisy typing had stopped. Demyx sat up, rubbed his eyes, and pretended he’d been napping the whole time. “You good?”

Ienzo shut his computer quickly, like he’d been doing something questionable. “Yes. Fine.” He was a little out of breath. What the hell had he been writing?

Demyx blinked. “I’m gonna go get a coffee,” he said instead. “Want me to bring you one back?”

“Sure,” Ienzo said, his face flushed.

Demyx shook his head. Well. If Ienzo needed to take care of that he had at least a few minutes now. “Cool.”

The whole time he was at the coffee shop, he kept thinking about Zexion, all their little conversations. It was evolving, and evolving fast. Demyx knew from brief experimentation with dating apps that just because a person sent you some flirty words didn’t mean anything would come of it. For all he knew, Zexion lived in New Zealand, or something.

That didn’t stop him from wanting it.

He drew a deep breath, exhaled. Well. Saturday he would find out.

Demyx wasn’t going to let Ienzo ruin his chances of meeting Zexion. He decided to strike preemptively, pausing at the door of their dorm room and sucking in a breath, steeling himself. He could do this. He could ask his roommate for the room for one night, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Hey, so, I have a thing Saturday,” he said vaguely. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t coming off as strongly as he intended, but he could still try. “Mind if I hang here alone for a few hours?”

Ienzo glanced up. The flush was gone, and he seemed much more composed. “Yes, that’s fine. I was going to go study anyway.”

“Study? Don’t you ever have any fun?”

“Perhaps I find studying fun,” Ienzo said.

“Suit yourself.” As he passed on his way back to the bed, he saw out of the corner of his eye that Ienzo had Discord open.

__________

     Friday night, Demyx barely slept. He wasn’t sure why he was so nervous. Crushes didn’t usually… hit him this hard. It’s dumb. It’s so dumb. His loneliness was getting to him. Even Saturday morning, there were some hours until the events started. He looked at his DM history with Zexion. They’d spoken briefly, only to confirm a time and place for their characters to meet and chat. He sat at his desk, his hands trembling, as the game booted up.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: You ready?

The Cloaked Schemer: Of course.

M3l0d10us N0cturn3: Cool.

My mic isnt like great

But you can still hear me

He was shaking. He was shaking. “Get it together,” he muttered to himself.

The Cloaked Schemer: You’re a broke college student. I’m not expecting a professional setup here.

Though I will say my booth is pleasantly soundproofed.

Let me connect.

And Demyx thought his heart might stop. I’m so gay, he thought. A second later he heard that familiar call connection. He twitched a little, and his mic clattered loudly on the floor. Shit!

“Arpeggio? Are you alright?”

“I just dropped the--”

A long, long pause.

He knew that voice.

“Zexion?” He picked up the mic and set it down.

“Arpeggio?”

“I dropped the mic.” Demyx swallowed.

“You…” Zexion fumbled for words. “Speak a little more, please.”

“Is that really you?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re in a library right now.”

“And you had an event… Saturday.” 

“Ohh my god,” Demyx mumbled. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, just that he was feeling a lot of it. “Ienzo. You’re Zexion?”

“It’s an anagram,” he said, his tone numb.

“Seriously, this whole time--”

“Evidently.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but at the same time, there was something warm in his chest.

Wait, no. No. This was Ienzo, and they hated each other--

Demyx realized he was panicking. He also, vaguely, in the back of his mind, realized the call had disconnected.

Demyx spent the next few minutes desperately trying to control his breathing, trying to not focus on how Zexion- No, Ienzo- was so disgusted it was him that he’d immediately dropped the call.

Of course. Of fucking course. The universe hated him. The universe had it out for him, surely. Why else would this have happened? He finally meets this sweet, smart, wonderful guy who takes him seriously and actually likes talking to him, on a regular basis , and then… And then… It turns out to be the very same roommate who hates him. That would just be his damned luck, wouldn’t it?

Grabbing his pillow, Demyx face-planted into it, pressing it furiously against his eyes to stop them from burning, to stop the tears that threatened to spill. Of all the people it could’ve been. Why Ienzo ? 

Demyx had been nervous enough as it was, afraid the person on the other end would think him annoying - his voice, his tone, the way he just couldn’t fucking shut up sometimes when he got excited about something. Alternatively, the filter between his brain and his mouth was immensely weaker than the filter between his brain and his fingers, and he could’ve said the wrong thing, unable to stop himself in the same way his hand can catch itself on the enter key before hitting it, or quickly delete the message before Zexion could read it.

But this was so much worse, because Ienzo already knew him, already had an impression of him, and that impression was far from good. It’s no wonder he disconnected the call so suddenly. He likely couldn’t stand hearing the truth any longer, stomach churning with disgust, head filled to bursting with regret, and not just regret over the voice call, but everything .

An almost entire year’s worth of conversations, soiled now, because Demyx was, well, Demyx . A slob. A slacker. An idiot. He wasn’t worth Ienzo’s time, and now he knew he wasn’t worth Zexion’s.

A sharp ache spread over his chest, cold and numbing, all of him tense with it. He… liked Zexion. He very genuinely liked him, so excited to get to talk to him, his bristling nerves aside. All week he’d thought about it, daydreaming, wondering what the person on the other end would sound like, if he’d love that voice as much as he loved the text on his Discord screen.

It no longer mattered, not when it was now clear that Zexion - no, Ienzo , was utterly disgusted with him.

It was over. It was all over - their friendship, a year’s worth of personal conversations, these budding feelings he was beginning to have, or that he’s been having for a while now…

On the flipside, was Demyx disappointed that it turned out to be Ienzo? He… didn’t know the answer to that, still reeling in the fact that Zexion, his dear friend and crush, hated him. The pillow was starting to suffocate him and he instinctively pulled it away from his face, eyes still burning. He sucked in some deep breaths and just when he was finally on the cusp of calming down, his door swung open so fast Demyx feared it’d break off the hinges. 

Ienzo leveled him with a determined stare. “You.”

__________

      Ienzo sat.

And sat.

And stared, and sat some more.

He was dizzy. Slowly, so slowly, all the pieces clicked together. The coffee. The references to Verum Rex. How they were always just missing each other. The whole tutoring scenario. Good god . So this person he’d been harboring feelings for this whole time was--

He pressed a hand to his forehead. And yet, a small part of him… was relieved?

It could be…

No, it couldn’t be anything! They hated each other! They’d complained to each other about each other more times than Ienzo could count. They had--

Ienzo felt the walls of the study booth begin to close in around him, pushing the breathable air out of the room. His ribcage constricted around his lungs, and his heartbeat pounded at his temples. He gathered his laptop and microphone in his arms and burst out of the room, chest heaving.

He braced himself against the outer wall of the study booth and willed himself to breathe normally, his head tilted all the way back to rest on the door. This was real life, and he was fine. He would be fine, anyway, with a bit of finessing. Okay, perhaps a little more than a bit.

Ienzo retrieved his backpack and stowed his equipment inside as he analyzed the situation. Arpeggio and Demyx were the same person. A strange revelation, but not world-ending. He could find another raiding party. He could join another server. There was more than one person with whom to play Verum Rex.

But--

Ienzo caught himself zipping and unzipping the top pocket of his backpack, more forcefully than necessary each time. A new server didn't sound appealing. A new raiding party, even less so. He would have to chat with new people, learn their idiosyncrasies and fighting styles, learn their pseudonyms and remember how they differed from their usernames. It all sounded so… hard, and boring, and unnecessary. 

He zipped his backpack closed for the last time and held it at his side by its tiny top handle. Its back straps kicked at his calves as he raced out of the study area, through the main lobby, and into the courtyard. His mind was set. His choice was clear. The only thing to do was follow through.

Ienzo made a beeline back to the room. He found Demyx sitting cross-legged on his own bed, his computer accessorized with a small budget microphone and his face awash with something that looked like guilt. His eyes widened when Ienzo crossed the threshold. 

"You." Ienzo's statement rang out like a gong.

Demyx swallowed. "Yeah?"

"We need to talk." Ienzo shut the door behind himself. It slammed closed, though Ienzo had not intended for that. 

"...yeah." Demyx turned back to his computer, fiddling at the USB port where his microphone connected to the rest of the machine. "Ienzo, I--"

"Shut up." Ienzo stalked into the room, single-minded. He stopped at the edge of Demyx's bed. "Shut up and listen, for once."

Demyx's shoulders rose to his ears. He stayed quiet.

Ienzo dropped his backpack to the floor. Though his fingers trembled, his resolve held firm. The moment of reckoning was upon him. "Did you know?"

Demyx shook his head.

"Did you want to know?"

He responded in a whisper, pained and hushed. "I wanted to meet Zexion."

Ienzo's hands trembled faster. He balled them into fists to compensate. "And now that you know," he said, "do you regret it? Wanting to know? Learning the truth?"

A tear trailed down Demyx's downcast cheek. "No."

Something deep inside Ienzo wanted to reach out and wipe away the tears that followed, while Demyx's breath caught in gasps over his laptop keyboard. Ienzo steeled himself. "I… don't regret it, either."

"You don't?" Demyx looked up and met Ienzo's gaze with caution. Aside from the red tinge at their edges, his eyes looked almost hopeful. 

Ienzo softened, relaxed his fists. "I don't want to find a new server, or a new raiding party."

Sniffling, Demyx nodded. "I don't, either."

"I don't want to stop talking to Arpeggio," Ienzo continued, his heart playing timpanis in his chest. "He is a close friend of mine."

"He's also your lazy roommate." Another tear escaped, this time going down the side of Demyx's nose. Demyx wiped at it with the heel of his hand. "Ienzo, I--"

"We've had differences. We've also had commonalities, albeit in virtual space. There's no reason we cannot bring the two together."

"Ienzo--"

"There's no reason we should be at each other's throats. We--"

"Ienzo!" 

He blinked. The drum performance in his chest missed a beat, then started from the top at full speed. "Yes?"

Demyx unplugged the microphone from his computer, sighed, and tossed it to the far edge of his bed. "I don't think that will work."

Ienzo frowned and crossed his arms. He was beginning to remember why he and Demyx didn't get along in meatspace. "Why, pray tell, is that?" he asked.

Demyx swallowed again, more conspicuously than before. "It's just… I…"

Ienzo leaned forward, his head cocked to the side. "You what?"

"I, um, I…"

"Go on. I don't have all night."

Demyx pushed his computer aside and drew his knees into his chest. "I… shit. I had a thing for Zexion." His shoulders hitched with sardonic laughter. "Shit. Fuck. This sucks." He reached behind himself for his pillow and buried his face in it. "This is so embarrassing," he whined, his voice muffled.

Ienzo's budding anger deflated. "You… you did?"

Demyx nodded into his pillow. "Uh-huh. And now you know, too."

Ienzo opened his mouth to respond, but couldn't make the words in his head form coherent phrases. His throat sputtered with half-formed consonants instead. Words. For fuck’s sake, wasn’t he good at words? Why was this suddenly so damn hard?

"This is the worst," Demyx groaned. "Just kill me now. Make it look like an accident. Tell my family I loved them. Don't let my sister take my bedroom at home."

Ienzo's faculties returned in the bumbling, clumsy way that drunkards stumbled home from dank local pubs. "I... don't think that will be necessary," Ienzo managed, through his own confusion.

"No?" Demyx put his pillow back in its place, and faced Ienzo with dried saline clumping in his eyelashes. "What, are you gonna torture me instead? Make me regret being born? Because you're a little late on that front, buddy, I already do."

Ienzo took a deep breath. His crossed arms dropped to his side, then held each other at the elbows. "I may have developed… similar feelings. For Arpeggio." Ienzo's mouth went dry. The drum performance upgraded itself to a full marching band drumline, twenty-five snare drums pounding paradiddles and rolls in synchronized sweeps. 

A silence consumed the space between them, interrupted only by Demyx's sniffling and Ienzo's heartbeat. It stretched into the abyss and the stratosphere in equal measure, and stung more acutely than the idea of never speaking to Arpeggio again.

Demyx broke the silence by clearing his throat. "So…"

Ienzo coughed. "So..."

"Are we…" Demyx unfolded his legs and swung them over the side of his bed. His hands grasped at his mattress, and his head hung from his shoulders  "Are we, y'know… do we still, like…"

"Do you want to be?" Ienzo shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Friends, cohorts, party members, server mutuals? Or…"

"Or what?" 

"Or…" Ienzo trailed off. Or what, indeed? Friends with benefits? Significant others? Boyfriends? The mere thought made Ienzo's palms sweat. "Or…"

In the moment between Ienzo's efforts to name his emotions and act on them, Demyx had sprung up from the bed and slipped his hands around the sides of Ienzo's face, his thumbs resting just below the apples of Ienzo's cheeks. His breath tickled at Ienzo's nose and lips. "Or… this?"

Heat seared at every inch of Ienzo's face. If he could feel Demyx's breath, Demyx could feel his as well. "...I suppose, yes."

"In that case," Demyx murmured, somehow purring and wavering at the same time, "tell me no." He rested his forehead on Ienzo's. "Tell me no, and we won't. I promise. Things can go back to normal."

A whimper, wholly undignified and unbidden, escaped from Ienzo's higher register. "I can't," he whispered.

Demyx leaned forward, and Ienzo followed. At some point, they met in the middle, and the world's axis shifted two degrees to the left. It was a tentative press of lips, but Demyx’s hands on his face kept him anchored. It didn’t feel like Ienzo thought it would, and self-consciousness invaded. Suddenly Ienzo felt very young and immature; vulnerable .

But… after a moment or so, not so much. Demyx was so warm against him, and Ienzo realized it was a learning curve, one he was picking up with his usual speed. He was shaking a little in disbelief. It was so-- nice.

Demyx pulled away and brushed his fingers across his cheek. "You're trembling."

"Forgive me. I--" He swallowed.

"No, it's cool." Demyx pulled away and smiled, brighter than Ienzo had ever seen someone smile before. "Do you… want to go again?"

Ienzo did, very much so. "I'm not opposed, per se, but I think we should… explore our relationship a bit. Perhaps starting with our mutual interest in pumpkin spice flavors." 

“Sounds like a plan to me, Zexy,” Demyx grinned.

__________

      Riku set the pair of pumpkin spice lattes down on the little square table in the back corner of the coffeeshop, glancing at Ienzo, then Demyx, then back at Ienzo, one eyebrow shooting up into his hair. “Is the world ending? Did I miss a memo on the corkboard in the back room?”

Ienzo coughed. He was vaguely aware of the heat rising in his cheeks. Damn it all to hell. Of course Riku was here, why would it have been anyone else? Sighing, he gestured to Demyx, bracing himself for the inevitable bit of humiliation, courtesy of the one friend who knew about his very apparent crush on his Discord friend. “Riku, meet Arpeggio.”

Riku’s other eyebrow shot up into his hair. “You’re shitting me.”

Demyx looked across the table at Zexion, clearly trying to fight the incoming of a shit-eating grin. “You talked about me to people?”

"Only the unimportant ones," Ienzo said, picking up his cup and sipping loudly.

“Psh,” Riku spat with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah, and every damn minute of the day. If I had a dollar for every time you made heart eyes at the ceiling while talking about him, I could quit this job and pay off my tuition.”

Ienzo balked at that, nearly choking on his latte. “It was not that often.”

Waving a hand, Riku corrected himself, looking pointedly at Demyx. “Wait, no, he’s right. I’m forgetting that half the time, he’d be complaining about his horrible room-”

“Shouldn’t you be behind the counter?” Ienzo hissed, glaring at Riku. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Demyx’s gaze flicking between him, like he was watching a game of ping-pong. “Or should I text Sora and Kairi about all those little hearts you like to draw around their names on the garbage receipts every time they come in?”

"Go ahead. I'm ninety percent sure they're both into me, anyway."

Ienzo pulled his phone from his pocket and brandished it at Riku. "Are you willing to test that theory?"

"Make sure you write it down," Demyx chirped, blowing into the hole in his drink's lid. "If you write it down, it's science. I learned that in Biology this semester."

"I'll do more than that," Ienzo said, tapping on his phone screen with both hands. After his phone played a short 'whoosh' sound, he placed it face-down on the table. "Images sent. Now we wait for our results."

Riku scoffed, then balked, then turned beet-red. "You're an asshole," he hissed through his teeth.

"Relax. I was just kidding,” Ienzo said with a glint in his eye that Demyx barely caught.

"Forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical." Riku scowled for a moment, but eventually softened into a smirk. "Whatever. Enjoy your Discord date, Casanova." He knocked on the table once before returning to the checkout counter.

"Discord date?" Demyx asked, taking a swig of his pumpkin spice latte. "I thought we were hanging out in real life."

"Let's not split hairs. We're about to see a show." Ienzo jutted his chin in the direction of the cafe's front door. As if on cue, Sora and Kairi burst through it like a duo on a mission.

“Oh Riiiiiiiiku!” they chorused in sing-song at the top of their lungs.

"Sometimes," Ienzo said, turning back to Demyx, "I like to watch the world burn."

“Yeah, I know. That’s actually kind of hot,” Demyx admitted, taking another sip of his latte. "Remind me not to piss you off again, though."

#Zemyx #Demyx #Ienzo #Zexion #Kingdom Hearts #fanfiction #Zemyx Day #Zemyx Day 2020

[time-to-write-and-suffer]

hi, i'm someone who was in the violet vineyard discord before it was closed (and then archived, then deleted). i joined semi-recently and the entire time it was like a regular writing server. not around for the drama 'cause timezones.just want to say that the reason **given to the people in the server** for its closure was related to the mirror sites thing. some people on vv didn't like tumblr in general, this was just extra incentive to leave. mods said "a lot of people are leaving writeblr and

vv is a tumblr-based community so we're shutting down." mina herself said she'd leave discord and writblrr cuz security.  i personally did find their reasoning weird cause not a lot of vvers actually left writblr. ig cuz the mirror sites incident happened around the time that the drama happened it was convenient? (idk much about the drama btw, not one of the vvers involved)  also, i haven't had any negative experience in vv myself. other people haven't said anythng to me either

im a fly on the wall ig. the dogpiling was limited to just a couple of people who had been mina's friends. most of us didn't really keep up with the drama? i didnt engage with the drama myself, i just backread sometimes. im going anon not because im scared of the mods but because tbh idk what's even going on,dont have much info to give, this is wild to watch and also probs a waste of time. idk all i can say is that the server itself was never culty, normal writing server.

also not really secret? anyone could send in an application to join.   but again im a fly on the wall, this whole incident tbh is stupid to watch, tho honestly sometimes the behaviour of ppl clsoer to mina ws weird. didnt interact much w/them so didnt care. a lot of us didnt really even talk to mina? ever?  idk i just dont think id call it a cult. it was sketchy&i agree the closure was clearly mina trying to cover her back, but as long as you didn't engage with drama it was fine.

First of all. Mirror sites? Huh what huh? Was it one of those that uploads people’s stuff to make money off of? Cuz that would be an ironic reason to close, wouldn’t it? Forreal tho can someone fill me in on this cuz I’m curious and I would like to know.

I personally think that she’d probably leave with much more fanfare if she hadn’t been called out, to make sure as many of her existing audience would follow her to her new destination. Obviously we can all only speculate on why it happened and why the server closed. AND SPECULATE WE SHALL. LIKE VULTURES WE DESCEND UPON THE CARCASS OF THIS ONLINE PERSONALITY. Until I get bored, that is.

Second of all: Yeah, I imagine the vast majority of people in VV were probably super chill and not involved in the drama, just based on how huge the server was. And while it’s hard for me to judge what the atmosphere in there was like since I wasn’t in it, all my judgments are based on like, the most extreme reactions in the server/on tumblr itself, which will obviously consist of the most vocal minority. For what it’s worth, the cult comments are a jab at those people and not the rest. Again, I had friends in the server.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience!

#writeblr drama #long post #Anonymous #vv drama

[gallickingunexposed]

Tl;dr - morgan and leaf (one of the mods) are both guilty of kicking people in the server by personal preference and enable the possibility of plagiarism happening again within bnhabookclub

I wasnt going to send this bc frankly im unbothered. However, ik this is smth that can easily happen to someone else and they may undermine their experience if they believe theyre the only one this has happened to. And since i have made attempts to get answers from leaf (since morgan and i are mutually blocked) but havent been able to get through, i might as well speak up to help others since the bookclub admin/mod team wont

Ik she said she wishes she did things differently so some may believe she regretted her actions, but her actions are still the same. When a blogger was concerned over her keeping a picture of their ID and morgan refused to acknowledge it, she kicked them by her personal choice and didnt tell mods. Recently, she did the same to me. When i asked a mod, i was told that this mod had no idea this happened and had to ask, as of which only one other mod (leaf) knew about it. I tried to contact leaf weeks ago on discord and she still wont accept my friend requests. Ive sent and re-sent it jic she missed it since i was told shes busy, but at this point its clear that discussion is being avoided again, similar to the previous time someone was kicked without notice or breaking rules.

The reason i was in the server until this point was bc there was a mutual understanding between me and the bookclub staff team that id be there to make sure they didnt continue to steal from my friend’s server and my server. This was discussed months ago and we barely managed to get bookclub to properly attribute us and stop using my friend’s content when he said it made him uncomfortable. The mods had agreed during the “inactivity” kicking session that i could remain (even if inactive) in the server and leave of my own accord to make sure that bnhabookclub didnt continue to take credit for things they took from our servers. I expressed i wanted to leave but was staying and will continue to stay until i was sure that they wouldnt plagiarize from us; however, i sent one message within the server during that time jic to cover my back about being kicked for inactivity. that purge never happened, but suddenly morgan and leaf went back on their word months later and kicked me, not informing the entirety of the mods of their actions so they can get away with it (since again i was told morgan believed she’s in the right for this). If theyre to say they never agreed to this, i have ss of my conversation with the mod who helped me through this whole situation. I dont believe she would made that stuff up and put herself in the hot seat.

It’s convenient that im someone who morgan plagiarized from and also one of the many people she scammed and tried to prevent giving a refund to, and now shes removed me from the server because she “saw no issue with it” (quoted from the mod i did talk to that was unaware of the situation) even though the server is where half of those offenses occurred. Now that im not there, she has full capability to reimplement the stolen ideas and procedures that she got from me and my friends, which is likely since she is repeating other actions the same as she did in the past without remorse. I had remained in the server this whole time to make sure she didnt continue to plagiarize our content. Morgan as well as the entire mod team was aware of that since it was discussed months ago during the time these things were being properly attributed, but they kicked anyway and will probably say it was “unrelated” to the plagiarism, but that merely overlooks and gaslights the situation. Kicking for personal choice can only be regrettable if it doesnt happen again, but morgan and leaf have made it even easier for her to get away with the same issues and have continued to solidify bnhabookcoub as a space that isnt run by the rules shown, but simply run by morgan.

Is that a community i want to be in? Ofc not, but if it meant ensuring morgan and her team didnt continue to steal from me and my friends then that was fine with me. They know the sole reason i was there was to make sure they didnt plagiarize me and my friends — there should be no issue with that unless there was intent to oick up where they left off and continue plagiarizing. Had i been able to leave of my own accord then i feel like no flag wouldve been raised, but morgan and leaf are simply solidifying the accusations from before: removing and silencing ppl that were wronged.

All of this leads into me saying, please take her words of regret with a grain of salt and believe in her actions objectively instead. Victims of morgan’s theft, bullying, etc have no reason to lie — theres no prize or pot of gold for saying these things, and also it is difficult for some people to speak abt what shes done to them. However, morgan has lied to cover her ass when people come forward and made herself the sole victim through words while she continues to act the same. Please just be careful about the spaces you join, esp if its one that she and her friends run or are apart of.

psa

#hq x reader #mha x reader #bnha bookclub #bnhabookclub #bnha book club #tw: discourse #lilhemmo #submission #kirishimaseijirous #bnhq book club #bnhq bookclub #bnhqbookclub #gallickingunlies #gallickingunarchive #gallickingunsteals #gallickingun #gallickingunexposed

[faunusrights]

OFFAL HUNT REMASTERED LIVEBLOG // CHAPTER 17

IN THIS EPISODE OF CRYING CAT GALLERY:

“Nice?” Cinder laughed under her breath once, and returned to examining her threads. “Oh, come on, Glynda. Favor isn’t in my vocabulary, remember? It’s just a shame about your cape. The emblem looked good, and your new outfit would look much better with it. That’s all.”

CINDER FALL IS REALLY BAD AT NOT BEING GAY ON MAIN

we’re bacc baby B) let’s hop right in

When Glynda awoke from her dream of being consumed,

alright calm down we’ve literally JUST started we’ve literally JUST woken up can we chill Out,

“Cinder?” she yawned, surveying the room.

sneak peek of that Sweet Domestic Life we dream of once this enemies-to-lovers malarkey reaches the ‘lovers’ bit but no we’re just surrounded by enemies. two of them being the writers!

Still, she couldn’t go wandering around Cinder’s apartment in only her underwear, but rooting through the drawers and closet didn’t seem— 

STEAL HER CLOTHES BABY!!!! PRACTICALLY MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The clothes didn’t seem Cinder’s size or style; they were casual and soft, a black t-shirt and steel-gray sweatpants.

okay but the idea of cinder getting up and being like ‘do i have ANYTHING this Unit of a woman will fit into’ and like actually having to think abt it and then folding em up and leaving em there like ‘hope she finds em okay’????? peak. absolutely peak. shes so gay but does she know it? no,

The fabric had enough give to make it work, even if only barely, and she looked in the mirror to see the loungewear looking more like tight athletic wear. Funny that.

kc and diesel envisioning this: oh yes. oh YES. ohhohughohguhghuhu yessssssssss--

She had—trusted? Been trusted? She had told Cinder fragile little things, and had heard similarly earnest words in return. It had been strange. Nice.

i love glynda like. feeling out of the edges of her own comfort and Pleasant Feelings with this almost-wariness? like every word she uses to describe it just Edges a little closer to Softness but she has to taste the word first to see if it fits. her narration is SO fun 2 read yall what the shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

This was Cinder’s house. It wasn’t just any house. These were Cinder’s belongings, Cinder’s resting places, and she was wandering around without Cinder.

Voyeuristic was putting it mildly. Glynda needed to find Cinder, fast.

HJGDKJGHDFSSDF GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! glynda just. losing it at such LITTLE THINGS is so goddamn funny jesus christ. this is cinders house!!! her THINGS!!! fuck she NAPS IN HERE. SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

god i love how soft this is. i know exactly why this is happening and i know exactly how [REDACTED], but i’m living for this moment. living IN it.

Spread out on the table was a wanted poster with a mugshot of Cinder on it, defaced with black permanent marker and crease marks.

cinder: yeah they didnt get the eyebrows sharp enough and im mad abt it

“Well, your clothes are in the wash.” Cinder said, turning around, coffee in hand. It was so…domestic. “It would help if you had more than one set.”

shouting from a distance: you two should get MARRIED

“You’ve been wearing the same dress the entire time I’ve known you.”

look at these lil JABS... the JESTS... the JOQUES... i cant believe theyve been married 10 years already. im also deeply enjoying how very indulgent this section is. I Am Seeing,

Glynda scoffed, and when Cinder reached for the sugar on the counter, she gave it a subtle nudge with her Semblance. It slid out of Cinder’s reach.

JESUS CHRIST LOOK AT THIS WHAT THE HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! soulmates.

Cinder shrugged, still looking elsewhere. “Mercury thought it was funny.”

“Mercury?”

cinder: my son and BOY. and, one day, yr son and boy, tho he won’t take it lying down.

Cinder scoffed. “You just don’t appreciate my good tastes.”

i feel like the evidence is truly stacking up to very much prove this statement wrong but u kno what lets let her figure that one out for herself

“A souvenir from the brats,” she said. “And a letter excusing the mess they made of the place.”

KIDS KIDS KIDS KIDS

She said, “I just didn’t know you had kids.”

KIDS KIDS KIDS KIDS KIDS

“It’s fine,” said Cinder tersely, but not harshly. “It isn’t wise to advertise in my business, so keep it to yourself.”

KIDS KIDS KIDS KIDS KIDS KIDS KIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GOD YES that little like... indirect admittance that em and merc r basically her own kids is a fucking BLESSING from ON HIGH are you SEEING THIS SHIT????????????? we have been fed today. my crops r watered and my lambs bouncing over the green fields as we feast. what a moment. wow. what a chapter.

When Cinder finally finished hers and rose to get another cup, Glynda allowed some of her thoughts to solidify. She said, “I want new clothes.”

as a side note, i think it rly shows the strength of the writing that the feeling of the narrative can change so much, esp when u take into consideration that we jump between the points of view of TWO characters? like with cinder we’ve gone from sheer fury to gruesome sickness, and with glynda we’ve gone from Complete Dissociation to this gentle and soft morning and you can feel it absolutely fluffing up in every word! still love how good the writing in this fic is its NUTS

Cinder shrugged. Her usual clothes were still in the wash; right now, she was wearing high-waisted black pants and a loose top tucked in.

diesel i want you to know im thinking abt what u said abt the high-waisted pants mods in sims 4 and im giggling

The necklace with Glynda’s earring hung from her throat.

i didnt mention it before but this is the... second time this chapter its been explicitly mentioned? and i know we could be like ‘ah the MEANING’ but honestly im like glynda r u rly not over the bobbies y

“You aren’t dead in there, are you?” came Cinder’s voice.

“No.”

“Well. At this pace, I will be before we get out of here.”

cinder, who probably once spent 7+ hours choosing an outfit: look its only cool if i do it, dipshit,

Unsnapping the lone earring left to her, she brought it to her collar and fixed it there, under the clasped button to dangle just over her sternum.

When she stepped out of the changing room, Cinder looked up. A slow dawn of interest eclipsed the boredom on her face. Glynda stood very still as her gaze flowed up and down again, pausing over the earring.

Cinder touched the matching one hanging from her own neck, almost in surprise. She cleared her throat. Her tone was very deliberately mocking: “Cute.”

OOOOOOOOOOOH MY GOD are we for SERIOUS right now??? jesus christ. jesus christ. we’ve moved on past married now this is ride-or-die shit right here what the FUCK. jesus CHRIST. theres- i- i have THOUGHTS on this matter that are spoilery and so i will SIT ON THIS EGG but HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLY SHIT

“Nothing,” Cinder said, smoothing her expression into something unreadable. “I was just thinking—nevermind.” 

no, no, go on, speak yr mind, please do, because if u were abt to offer to embroider that shit then PLEASE say it aloud for the audience at home

“If I was a cop, you’d already be in jail.”

“You’re welcome to try to take me in, darling.”

im sure its obvious but im BESIDE myself @ this flirting. im losing it. this is SUCH a treat and i KNOW that [REDACTED] [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] but AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

“That’s because of your—” Cinder was already gone. Glynda pressed her lips together, but watched her go. Rolling her eyes, she finished, “—Grimm tattoos.”

Whatever. She could gloat about figuring it out later.

/CHOKES

WHAT

@kc and diesel: CALL ME RIGHT NOW WHAT THE FUCK

okay okay. wait. okay. wait. theres. wait. okay. i cant. am i safe to say anything. probably not. so. im not gonna. but. you WILL be seeing me in dms, friends,

okay okay im moving on im gonna. keep going. okay. okay. im going. (but i will be in dms)

there was a brief discussion of dinner: namely, that neither of them wanted to make it.

oh god why is this me

“Give me your new cape.”

“What?”

Finally looking up, Cinder said, “Your cape. Let me have it, and I’ll put your emblem on it.”

THANK YOU MA’AM AND THANK YOU FOR READING THE FIC HAS ENDED ITS ALL OVER WITH!!!!!! WE DID IT!!!!!!! WE RODE THIS WHOLE TRAIN TOGETHER!!!!!!!!!!!!! UNFORTUNATELY IF ONLY IT WERE SO EASY.

Glynda ignored it for the time being and sent the vector of her emblem to Cinder.

i deeply love the idea of all hunters and huntresses carrying a vector of their emblem JUST IN CASE,,, SMTHNG HAPPENS,,, its right alongside the list of their next of kin and their will and testament,

Cinder Fall was a name built on Dust and money and extravagant demonstrations.

But Cinder Fall was also a woman with a family. A home. A favorite blend of coffee.

this is absolutely kicking me in the dick for reasons i cant say but also for reasons of SNOFT because oh my god. this is. like. this is why i rly vibe w. cinder in this fic and is also like one of my favourite characterisations of cinder of ALL TIME (which is why all my fav cinder fics typically have it as a Theme). shes SO good and SO dimensional and i just. god. GOD. i LOVE HER!!!!!!!!! ID DIE FOR HER!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA CINDER FALL IS MY ANGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL

It felt like being told a secret, like being told a thousand secrets, and not knowing what to do with them. All she could do was hold them in her palms, delicate as she could, trying not to break anything.

GIMME ARMS TO PRAY WITH INSTEAD OF ONES THAT HOLD TOO TIGHTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! /goes apeshit

And because of that, Glynda asked, “Do you have any more stories?”

Without looking up, Cinder drawled, “About Witches?”

“Or dragons.”

Gold flickered her way.

👈😳👈

“They’d already been built by the Witches that came before her,” Cinder replied. “But she’d been a headmaster at one of them, and a teacher before that.”

Something in Glynda’s chest gleamed.

lore lore lore lore LORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lets GET THAT LORE as i peer blearily thru tears,

“...You haven’t just been pretending not to remember things, have you?”

firstly: called out lmao JHGSDFKJHGFSD and SECONDLY:

“The moon?” Cinder made a face. “I’m not sure if it’s that literal. Your soul is powerful, but it’s not a physical thing. Besides, the moon is…”

“Broken,” Glynda finished for her.

“Yeah.”

hm what a fascinating thing hm how interesting hm hm HMMMM 👈🤔👈

Even as they ate, they both seemed lost in their own heads, but somehow, to Glynda, it seemed perfectly clear that both of them were wondering the same thing.

wait glynda. hey glynda. did u uh. ever. did u uh. text winter back or w

WE DID IT CHAPTER 17!!!!!!!!!!! this was a Lot (4,500 words? yall better be careful before those 10k chapters return to Haunt Us) and was also, a Lot. holy shit. theres. i. id make a spoiler edition but tbh its just the SAME SPOILER thats like. rly driving this chapter. i know what its for. i know it. i feel it. dont trust winter more like dont trust the writers

ANYWAY I LOOK FORWARD (?) EAGERLY (???) to chapter 18, unsure when the vibes will turn rancid for the worse. when. honey. theres a big storm coming.

#rwby #offal hunt #liveblog #what the HELL just happened

[somnilogical]

davis tower kingsley (listed here on the cfar instructor page) who harassed a cis woman about her appearance another cis women reported this to acdc (the people who wrote the thing about how brent was great) and afaict they did nothing, claims that if trans people and gay people dont "repent and submit to the pope" they will burn in hell, defended the spanish inquisitions, wrote about how the mission system werent actually abductions, slavery, forced conversions and this was propaganda, defends pretty much any atrocity that an authority, "believes" the catholic god exists and does not try and destroy them, submits to them. and so much more.

born into another era they would actually work for the california mission system and say it was good.

said thing that cached out to that emma and somni should repent and submit to the rationalist community. wrote up a rant about "how about fuck you. go lick the boots of your dark mistress anna salamon." didnt send. got kicked by some rationalist, reasoning is probably that what id say would disrupt their peaceful machinations of omnicide, would be infohazards, because... the information is hazardous to their social order.

a few of these things are subjects of future blog posts.

--

cfar has never hired a trans woman, i have lots of logs of them trying to do what people did to porpentine. claiming emma thinks torturing children is hot, claiming emma was physically violent, claiming emma was indistinguishable from a rapist, claiming ziz was a "gross uncle style abuser", claiming somni was enticing people to rape, claiming that anna salamon was a small fragile woman and ziz was large and had muscles. as if any of our strength or speed had anything to do with our muscles in this place. all of these things are false except relative size difference between ziz and anna which is just transmisogynistic and irrelevant.

if they lie about are algorithms claim that we are using male-typical strategies and then they can fail by these lies and be sidelined by callout posts that transfered 350,000$ from miri despite their best efforts to cover this up. (all benefited by having relative political advantagr flowing from estrogenized brain modules. men are kind of npc's in this particular game of fem v fem cyberontological warfare for the fate of the multiverse, mostly making false patriarchal assumptions that ziz was doing things for social status. like status sensitivity is hormonally mediated, your experiences are not universal. or saying like kingsley is saying that people should repent and submit to whatever authorities in the rationalist region they submit to. NO. FUCK YOU. i will not repent and submit to your abusive dark mistress anna salamon.

i knew anna salamon was doing the edgy "transfems are all secretly male" thing before i talked with ziz. it was a thing, {zack, carrie}, ben hoffman, michael vassar were also in on it. ppl had men trapped in mens bodies on their bookshelves because the cool people were reading it. didnt think she was being *transmisogynistic* about it until i talked with ziz. in retrospect i was naive.)

also? anarchistic coordination ive had with people have been variously called lex's cluster, somni's cluster, ziz's cluster by authoritarians who cant imagine power structures between people that arent hierarchical. like based on who they want to say is "infohazardously corrupting people" emma goldman had to deal with this shit too where the cops tried to say she was friends with anyone who thought anarchism made sense. people she didnt know at all who did their own anarchism. because authoritarians dont think in terms of philosophy, they think any challenge to their power is a disease that needs to be eliminated and you just need to doxx their network.

like if ziz and somni and emma were all actually infohazardous rapists as people keep trying to claim we are and then saying "oh no i didnt mean it i swear" and then doing it again. what would happen isnt that a bunch of infohazardous rapists start talking and working together for a common goal. what actually happens with people of that neurotype is they partition up the territory into rival areas of feeding on people like gangs do.

like they dont get together and start talking a lot about decision theory and cooperate in strange new ways.

not that the people lying about emma, ziz, gwen, somni and others are trying to have accurate beliefs. they are trying what all athoritarians try with anarchist groups. unfortunately for them, ive read the meta, i know dread secrets of psychology and cooperation that they claim are like painful static and incomprehensible, yet despite being "incomprehensible" are almost certainly harmful. if harm is to be judged against upholding the current regime, and the current regime is evil, then lots of true information and good things will look harmful. like ive tested this out in different social spheres what people claim is "incomprehensible" is the stuff that destroys whatever regime they are working in. like someone said i sounded like i was crazy and homeless and couldnt understand me when i pointed out that reorienting your life, your time, your money, to a human who happens to be genetically related to you for 16 years is altruistic insanity. just do the math. eliezer, anna, michael, brian tomasik all once took heroic responsibility for the world at some point in their lives and could do a simple calculation and make the right choice. none of them have children.

pretending that peoples "desires" "control them", when "desires" are part of the boundary of the brain, part of the brains agency and are contingent on what you expect to get out of things. like before stabbing myself with a piece of metal would make me feel nauseated, id see black dots, and feel faint. but after i processed that stabbing myself would cure brain damage and make me more functional, all this disappeared.

most people who "want" to have children have this desire downstream of a belief that someone else will take heroic responsibility for the world, they dont need to optimize as much. there are other competent people. if they didnt they would feel differently and make different choices.

you can see the contingency of how people feel about something on what they get out of it lots of places. like:

<<Meanwhile, a Ngandu woman confessed, "after losing so many infants I lost courage to have sex.">>

but people lie about how motivation works, in order to protect the territory of saying "well i just need a steady input of nubile fems so i can concentrate and be super altruistic!" or "i just need spend 16 years of life reorienting around humans who happen to be genetically related to me and my friends so i can concentrate and be super altruistic!" when neither of these are true. these people just want nubile fems, they just want babies. (the second one has much much less negative externalities though. you could say i am using my female brain modules to say "yeah the archetypically female strat, though it has the same amount of lying, is less harmful". but like it actually is less directly harmful. the harm from gaslighting people downstream of diverting worldsaving resources and structure to secure a place to {hit on fems, raise babies} is ruinous. means that worldsaving plans that interfere with either of these are actively fought. and the knowledge that neither of these are altruistic optimizations, neither is Deeply Wise they are as dumb in terms of global optimization as they seem initially, is agentically buried.

this warps things in deep ways, that were a priori unexpected to me.)

this is obvious, but when i talk about it, the objection isnt that it doesnt make utilitarian sense, the objection is that "im talking like a crazy person". authoritarians say this to me too when i assert my right to my property that they took, act like im imposing on them. someone else asked if i could "act like a human" and do what he wanted me to do when i was thinking and talking with my friends. all of these things authoritarians have said to me "act like a human" "talk like a normal person i cant understand you" were to coerce my submission. they construct the category of "human" and then say im in violation of it and this is wrong and i should rectify it. i am talking perfectly good english right now. you can read this.

anna salamon, kelsey piper, elle, pete michaud, and many others all try to push various narratives of somni, emma, ziz, gwen and others being in the buckets {RAPIST, PSYCHO, BRAINWASHED}. im not a rapist, im not psychotic, im not brainwashed. before ziz came along, people were claiming i was brainwashing people, its a narrative they keep reusing.

porpentine talks about communities that do this, that try and pull trap doors beneath trans women:

<<For years, queer/trans/feminist scenes have been processing an influx of trans fems, often impoverished, disabled, and/or from traumatic backgrounds. These scenes have been abusing them, using them as free labor, and sexually exploiting them. The leaders of these scenes exert undue influence over tastemaking, jobs, finance, access to conferences, access to spaces. If someone resists, they are disappeared, in the mundane, boring, horrible way that many trans people are susceptible to, through a trapdoor that can be activated at any time. Housing, community, reputation—gone. No one mourns them, no one asks questions. Everyone agrees that they must have been crazy and problematic and that is why they were gone.>>

https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/

(a mod of rationalist feminists deleted this almost immediately from the group as [[not being a good culture fit]], not being relevant to rationalism, and written in the [[wrong syntax]]. when its literally happening right now, they are trying to trapdoor transfems who protest and rebel asap. just like google.)

canmom on tumblr talks about the strategic use of "incomprehensibility" against transfems. and how its not about "comprehensibility". i have a different theory of this, but her thing is also a thing.

<<Likewise, @isoxys recently wrote an impressively thorough transmisogyny 101, synthesising the last several years of discussions about this facet of our particular hell world. But that post got just 186 notes, almost exclusively from the same trans women who are accused of writing ‘inaccessibly’.

Perhaps they’d say isoxys’s post is inaccessible too, but what would pass the bar? Some slick HTML5 presentation with cute illustrations? A wiki? Who’s got the energy and money to make and host something like that? Do the critics of ‘inaccessible’ posts take some time to think about what kind of alternative would be desirable, and how it could be organised?>>

https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/185908592767/accessibility-in-terms-of-not-using-difficult

alice maz talks about the psychology behind the kind of cop kelsey piper, david tower kingsley, elle and others are:

<<the role of the cop is to defend society against the members of society. police officers are trivially cops. firefighters and paramedics, despite similar aesthetic trappings, are emphatically not. bureaucrats and prosecutors are cops, as are the worst judges, though the best are not. schoolteachers and therapists are almost always cops; this is a great crime, as they present themselves to the young and the vulnerable as their friends, only to turn on them should they violate one of their profession's many taboos. soldiers and parents need not be cops, but the former may be used as such, and the latter seem frighteningly eager to enlist. the cop is the enemy of passion and the enemy of freedom, never forget this>>

https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/alien.html

anna salamon wrote a thing implying that ziz, somni, gwen suffered some sort of vague mental issues from going to aisfp. (writing a post on this.) alyssa vance tried to suggest i believe cfar is evil because im homeless. but sarah constantin, ben hoffman, {carrie, zack}, jessica taylor (the last three who have blogged a lot about whats deeply wrong) (not listing others because not wanting to doxx a network to authoritarians, who just want to see it contained. and the disease of "infohazards" eradicated.) are not homeless and ive talked with many of them and read blog posts. and they know that cfar is fake. jessica (former miri employee) left because miri was fake.

anna and others are trying to claim that theres some person responsible for a [[mass psychotic break]] that causes people to... independently update in the same direction. and have variously blamed it on ziz, somni, michael vassar. but like mass psychotic breaks arent...really a thing, would not be able to independently derive something, plan on writing a blogpost on it, and then see ben hoffman had written http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/engineer-diplomat/ and i was like "ah good then i dont have to write this." and have this happen with several different people.

like this is more a mass epistemic update that miri / cfar / ssc / lw are complicit in the destruction of the world. and will defend injustice and gaslight people and lie about the mathematical properties of categories to protect this.

they all know exactly what they are doing, complicity with openai and deepmind in hopes of taking the steering wheel away at the last second. excluding non-human life and dead humans from the CEV to optimize some political process, writing in an absolute injunction to an fai against some outcome to protect from blackmail when that makes it more vulnerable.(see:

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/hyperexistential_separation.html

hyperexistential separation: if an fai cant think of hell, an fai cant send the universe to hell in any timeline. this results in lower net utility. if you put an absolute injunction against any action for being too terrible you cant do things like what chelsea manning did and i believe actually committed to hungerstriking until death in the worlds where the government didnt relent, choosing to die in those timelines. such that most of her measure ended up in a world where the government read this commitment in her and so relented.

if chelsea manning had an absolute injunction against ever dying in any particular timeline, she would get lower expected utility across the multiverse. similarly, in newcombs problem if you had an absolute injunction against walking away with 0$ in any timeline because that would be too horrible, you get less money in expectation. for any absolute injunction against things that are Too Horrible you can construct something like this.

--

a lot of humans seem to be betting on "nothing too horrible can happen to anyone" in hopes that it pays off in nothing too horrible happening to you.

the end result of not enacting ideal justice is the deaths of billions. at each timestamp saying "its too late to do it now, but maybe it would have been good sometime in the past". with the same motive that miri wants to exclude dead people from the cev, they arent part of the "current political process". so you can talk about them as if they were not moral patients, just like they treat their fellow animals.

(ben hoffman talks about different attitudes towards ideal justice coming upon the face of the earth.)

--

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

cev:

<<But again, we fall back on the third reply: "The people who are still alive" is a simple Schelling circle to draw that includes everyone in the current political process. To the extent it would be nice or fair to extrapolate Leo Szilard and include him, we can do that if a supermajority of EVs decide* that this would be nice or just. To the extent we don't bake this decision into the model, Leo Szilard won't rise from the grave and rebuke us. This seems like reason enough to regard "The people who are still alive" as a simple and obvious extrapolation base.>>

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

this is an argument from might makes right. because dead people and nonhuman animals cant fight back.

->"i think we should give planning of the town to the white people, then extrapolate their volition and if they think doing nice things for black people is a good idea, we'll do it! no need to bake them in to the town planning meetings, as they are arent part of the current political process and no one here will speak up for them."

i dont plan to exclude dead people or any sentient creatures from being baked in to fai. they are not wards of someone else. enslaving and killing fellow sentient life will not continue after the singularity even if lots of humans want it and dont care and wont care even after lots of arguments.) and so much else.

the list of all specific grievances would take a declaration of independence.

like with googles complicity with ICE having a culture of trapdooring transfems (for some reason almost the only coherent group that has the moral fiber to oppose these injustices, that is p(transfem|oppose injustice in a substantiative way) is high, not necc the reverse.) who question this sort of thing.

thinking of giving sarah constantin a medal thats engraved with "RIGHTEOUS AMONG CIS PEOPLE: I HAD SEVERAL SUBSTANTIAL DISAGREEMENTS WITH HER ABOUT LOAD BEARING PARTS OF HER LIFE AND SHE NEVER ONCE TRIED TO CALL ME A RAPIST, PSYCHOTIC, OR BRAINWASHED" thats where the bar is at, its embedded in the core of the earth.

kelsey piper, elle benjamin, anna salamon, pete michaud, and lots more have entirely failed to clear this bar. anna and kelsey saying they dont understand stuff somni, emma, ziz and other transfems talk about but its probably dangerous and infohazardous and its not to be engaged with philosophically. just like the shelter people acting as if my talking about their transmisogyny was confusing and irrational to be minimized and not engaged with. just like any authoritarian where when you start talking about your rights and what is right and wrong and what makes sense they are like "i dont understand this. you are speaking gibberish why are you being so difficult? all we need you to do is submit or leave."

and no i will NOT SHUT UP about this injustice. all miri/cfar people can do at this point is say "the things these people write are infohazards" then continue to gaslight others they cant engage on a philosophical level. all the can say is that what i am saying is meaningless static and yet also somehow dangerous.

::

it doesnt make sense to have and raise babies if you are taking heroic responsibility for the world. doesnt make sense to need a constant supply of fems to have sex with if you are taking heroic responsibility for the world. people who claim either of these pairs of things are lying, maybe expect someone else to take heroic responsibility for the world or exist in a haze.

the mathematics of categories and anticipations dont allow for the thing you already have inside you to be modified based on the expected smiles it gives your community. this is used to gaslight people like "calling this lying would be bad for the institutions, not optimize ev. thus by this blogpost you are doing categories wrong' this is a mechanism to cover dishonesty for myopic gains.

using the above, a bunch of people colluding with the baby industrial complex get together and say that the "beat" meaning of altruism includes having babies (but maybe not having sex with lots of fems? depending on which gendered strategy gets the most people in the colluding faction) because other meanings would make people sad and unmotivated. burying world optimizers ability to talk about and coordinate around actual altruism.

openAI and deepmind are not alignment orgs. cfar knows this and claims they are, gaslighting their donors, in hopes of taking the steering wheel at the last moment.

alyssa vance says paying out to blackmail is fine, its not.

CFAR manipulated donation metrics to hide low donations.

MIRI lied about its top 8 most probable hypotheses for why its down 350,000$ this year.

anna salamon is transmisogynistic, this is why cfar has never hired a trans women despite trans women being extremely good at mental tech. instead the hire people like davis kingsley.

kingsley lied about anna not being involved at hiring in cfar in order to claim anna couldnt be responsible for cfar never hiring a trans woman.

a cfar employee claimed anna salamon hired their rapist, was angry about it. mentioned incidentally how anna salamon, president and cofounder of cfar, was involved in hiring at cfar.

acdc wrote a big thing where defended a region of injustice (brent dill) because of their policy of modular ethics. when really, if you defend injustice at any point, you have to defend the defense and the thing iteratively spreads across your organization like a virus.

miri / cfar caved to louie helm.

not doing morality or decision theory right. among which is: https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/hyperexistential_separation.html and https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

and so much more.