#it's so inaccessible and also not safe for so many people
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I know it's my mast cell disease and my gluten + wheat allergy making my life difficult, but the fact that when I'm trying to find PLASTIC cutting boards, wheat fiber boards keep showing up in my search results sure is an anaphylaxis episode waiting to happen.
Also makes me wonder how many people might be using these trendy eco things and might accidentally kill someone because they didn't know a house guest has a severe wheat allergy/the person with the allergy isn't aware wheat-based cutting boards exist.
And before anyone tries to "well actually" me over them being a health risk--I've had anaphylaxis from biodegradable plates, cutlery, and straws. The risk might be low, but it's not low enough.
#chronic health tag#mcas#life with allergies#I really hate this side to eco stuff#it's so inaccessible and also not safe for so many people
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thread of things you can do to feel more puppy!!
warning, this is not for puppy regressors!! this is an nsfw post and probably not safe for u if you regress while online. stay safe, sfw puppies.
anyway. back to content for puppies who r fucking degenerates. i’m a switch & not only do i own a puppy sub but i am also one!! this is applicable for both partnered and solo pups, dw, there’s likely to be something here for everyone.
૮( ˃ ꒳ ˂)ა
◟/づ🦴
🐾 grind on pillows and/or furniture!! pillows are an accessible option for everyone, not everyone has furniture they can feel comfortable doing that on because maybe they don’t live alone or what have you. but pillows are an amazing option for any and all needy puppies.
🐾 snacks can help u feel puppy a lotttt!! while it can be fun to have your partner feed you little treats, you can also absolutely do this on your own. while you’re not in the headspace, set up small little snacks for you to have for when you follow rules or actions you set up for yourself. ppl often underestimate how satisfying solo play can be!! but it can be awesome. good ideas for pup snacks can be small cookies reminiscent of dog treats (scooby snack graham cracker cookies if you’re in the u.s., highly recommend), little cubes of meat and cheese, or dry cereal. it doesn’t have to be those things though, it can be anything broken up into small pieces. be creative!!
🐾 some people enjoy eating or drinking out of dog bowls but for some, that’s inaccessible or maybe just not to their taste. another option can be water bottles with spouts you have to suck on (oral fixation is so so so puppy!!). smaller sized snack bowls also work well for this. anything notably small can help a lot with headspace i find because a large part of puppyspace for many is feeling tiny and :3. if you know you know pfffft.
🐾 here’s a simple one!! have an article of clothing or jewelry you wear only during puppy time :) of course there’s the obvious ones; harnesses, ears, collars. but even just a bracelet or a sweater can work if you only wear it during pupspace and get your brain to associate it.
🐾 if you go into the headspace online (as i’m sure many of you reading do if ur here), you can do certain typing things to help you feel even more puppy. using certain emojis or doing a little :3 or :> it’s pretty common to have your voice change tone and your words get more simple when in a smaller mindset so it can be fun to have your typing also reflect this!! typing out “woof” or “arf” r silly but they r cute and i recommend it, 10/10.
🐾 find something you can safely bite on!! nothing you could choke on or that could hurt you. chewelry is rlly good for this, i’d recommend looking on etsy for some. but you can also just buy a new actual dog toy (fresh, not used, clean it before). puppies need to teethe!! the urge to bite is super common.
🐾 if you have enough privacy, play fetch with yourself. why not?? you can bounce a ball off the walls and even if you’re in a small room where you don’t have far to get to it, you’re still pretty likely to get excitable abt it!! if you’re doing this outside don’t put the toy in your mouth, if you’re indoors you can probably feel more comfortable to do this safely if you’re using something big enough not to choke yourself with.
🐾 ride toys!! it’s hard to do things yourself, riding or suction cupping a toy to a wall so you can just lay down and move ur needy hips against it can be wonderful for puppyspace.
🐾 suck your fingers or your partners fingers!! puppies need our mouths occupied. gently chewing on fingers, probably not enough to hurt (maybe tho, good for you), just enough to feel like you’re gnawing a bit, is SO so so good. this doesn’t even have to be sexual, drifting off to sleep with fingers or a gag (nothing that you could accidentally swallow) in your mouth can help you wake up puppy!! i wouldn’t recommend sleeping with a gag in long term, that’s more for naps or on special occasions. like i mentioned before; oral fixation oral fixation oral fixation!! you should also suck toys and cock 🤍🤍
🐾 wag your hips or kick your feet!! it’s like wagging ur tail :> wiggles can come naturally when in pupspace so embrace them as ur “phantom tail” pfffft
🐾 “puppyparts” “puppycunt” “puppyholes” “puppycock” “puppyanything”🏃🏃
remember, if some of these aren’t applicable to you and how you like to play, you are not any less puppy. these are general, not one size fits all. there are countless different ways to be puppy and i don’t think any two people should be doing it the EXACT same way. we all have our quirks, we all have our individual headspaces.
have fun and play safe, puppies 🐾🦴🎾
#nsft puppy#petpl4y#petpl@y#t4t nsft#mlm nsft#bd/sm pet#mlm petpl@y#t4t mlm#t4t petpl@y#p3t play#trans nsft#ftm nsft#ftm puppy
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The reason I am harping in on spiderverse so much is because it is otherwise a really good film and story and premise.
People are not wrong for enjoying it. I don't want people to stop enjoying it. But I want them to acknowledge that it's not normal for many even non neurodiverse people to leave the cinema with a headache. You don't need epilepsy to have a photosensitive seizure.
There is a lot of great art and great ideas in this movie beyond the rapid Glitch effects, highly contrasting bright colors on large screen areas, pulsing lights and patterns etc
The film goes on to inspire other main stream and indie animation projects to take after its visuals
But if a large part of those inspiring visuals is inaccessible then I am just worried this inaccessibility will invade media that has otherwise been safe for me or others to consume.
Spiderverse is a trend setting piece of art but the execution and apparently exploitative work environment has lead to the film being a real safety hazard.
Looking at the discourse and responses I keep seeing to the photosensitivity posts surrounding it, I worry that more than just the viewers , but also many great artists may think the bright flashing dangerous lights and colors are the reason the art is good, rather than creative scene transitions or fantastic character design and the excellent blending of various frame rates.
And if strobe lights and all these effects are realy what gets you hyped and pumped for any type of art. Then that is okay too. I suppose there is an audience for everything.
But it would still be nice if there was a safe viewing option for people to whom these things are genuinely dangerous.
I want to be wrong about strobes and the dangerous art direction decisions of spiderverse spreading. But I have not yet reason to think otherwise.
#actually epileptic#epilepsy#photosensitivity#seizureverse#itsv#atsv#spiderverse#i can like the heavy metal movie and still think that some tropes and themes are rather yikes#i can enjoy media and still adress the issues with it
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Whenever I see the discourse about disability stalls I'm like "You guys didn't have your physical disability all your life and it shows" because I've been using the disability stall all my life and therefore have seen people entering or coming out of it all my life. It's not a philosophical question for me, it's just a normal fact. I KNOW who uses the disability stall.
I know that it's different when you have a progressive disability or suddenly became physically disabled/impaired as a teen or adult and were told "This is for wheelchair users" all your life and then later learned "Alright, it's also ok for cane users" and then at some point "Well, some people need a hook for their stoma, they're allowed too." You have to constantly adjust your "worldview" about for whom disability stalls are made then.
But whenever I need to pee and someone with no visible disability aids and no carer leaves the bathroom, we just nod in passing and that's it.
And if there's a long queue, those with incontinence who need to change so that they don't stay wet for a long time are let go first. Or those who let us know that it's really very urgent for whatever reason. No questions asked.
When I first realised that this is a real discourse on here I was so confused because I wasn't aware that people who weren't "significantly" disabled all their life have different opinions on that. It's as if you've been crossing the street when the light is green all your life, and suddenly people argue that this light is only for people in green clothes because the "man" is green. And then they say that alright, it's also ok for others as long as you have the shape of the "green man", i.e. don't wear skirts. And later they agree that animals are ok too, as long as they accompany a human.
And you just look at them, absolutely confused, because you learned that it's for those who want to cross the street safely, nothing more nothing less.
Maybe it started because some of us were complaining about people who can use a normal toilet misusing the disability stall. But that doesn't mean "Leave if your disability isn't obvious", it means "Stop occupying the only toilet we can use for your lunch break."
If you can't use a normal toilet, or if the normal toilets are inaccessible/use up too many spoons/are unsafe, use the disability stall. But please use it only for things it's made for.
That's it. That's really it. If you're blind and the public toilets are inaccessible, use the disability stall; especially if you can't hear your white cane in crowded public toilets. The sinks usually have sensors, so you don't have to touch too much dirt or accidentally get water all over you. Use the handrails for orientation and balance. You have access to the complete roll of toilet paper, not just one or two strips. You won't accidentally scratch your hand on dispensers.
As long as you only use it for things it's made for, use the disability stall. Just make sure that people who may need it more can go first. How? Just ask.
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Okay fuck it I'm making this post.
So, we all know the dsmp fandom, especially on twitter, has a bit of a problem with leaktwt and often lots of controversy springing from stuff obtained by kiwifarms. I'd like to talk about this, because it's been pissing me off for months and it's getting ridiculous.
Please stop trusting information like this, or at the very least be cautious with how you interact with it, take it with a large grain of salt or maybe even a handful, don't take it at fucking face value and consider to yourself: why did they obtain this information and how did they obtain it.
Especially the how, because I've noticed the amount of illegally obtained data, from information unobtainable without some form of hacking to a lot of cases of spear phishing. Spear phishing, for those who don't know, is a targeted form of phishing against a specific person; phishing is often described as trying to obtain personal or sensitive information, and here the definition is applicable as digging through years worth of information otherwise inaccessible to the average user without purposefully searching everywhere for it, specifically information from or about a specific person.
This happens a lot, we see many cases, from the people who keep doxxing ccs, to the more recent things with certain information from Steam about Wilbur being made public despite the fact it's inaccessible without some sort of digging or manipulation, and now with (I believe, idk i've not really been looking at it for obvious reasons) the whole Tubbo thing and I believe that was leaked private messages of a friend, I could be wrong there. Either way, there's been so many cases of doxxing, leaked private messages, information inaccessible on the front end of things and it's getting to a genuinely worrying point.
And this isn't because I care about content creators, but I do care about upholding data privacy. Yes, even if they've said shit in the past, please don't go digging and digging because that does fall into spear phishing, and at the end of the day it is very dubiously legal at best. This is something we're taught about in fucking cyber security courses, for even further perspective on how bad it is. Not to mention, often this information is dug up by infamous leaktwt or kiwifarms, which are pretty known for bad faith digging up of shit.
These people dig it up for clout, they dig it up for attention, they do not care who gets fucking hurt and often bringing up old shit is going to harm more people than it fucking helps. It's even worse when you try to hold someone accountable for something someone else did, especially years in the past like it's their fault.
Just, please, stop supporting this, stop circulating this shit like morning gossip, because you're not only hurting people for no good reason, it's also often spreading illegally obtained information from people who commit cybercrimes on the regular. It breaks data protection laws, it breaks someone's fucking privacy.
Content creators are people. Respect their privacy, for fuck's sake, and stop egging on leaktwt/kiwifarms, because at the end of the day you're just telling them it's perfectly fine.
And their campaign of digging things up and harming people in bad faith doesn't end at your favourite cis white boy. They will harm minorities, and they already do, just for clout and fun. Stop it while you can before it gets out of hand, and make it clear they aren't welcome, because the fandom doesn't make it clear enough.
This isn't, of course, to say you cannot be critical of information found about ccs, but please don't allow a side effect to be encouraging or inadvertently making leaktwt/kiwifarms believe it's safe for them here, and that they are supported. Be critical when your fav is found to have said awful shit in the past, give them time to clarify, but also just... be a little critical about how accurate that info is, and who is supplying it. If you find yourself thinking 'now is this really legitimately obtained?' then maybe don't spread it, because it could be fake but a lot of the time it's already been addressed and is simply spread in bad faith.
And sure, they're exposing shitty stuff right now, but what happens when they doxx someone's address for fun?
Data privacy is important, it affects everyone, and even the worst people deserve to keep it. Sure, law enforcement and courts might be able to obtain this stuff, but you're not law enforcement nor a court and you're not entitled to personal data whenever.
#void echos#discourse#this just. has to be said I think. i'm sick of seeing this shit#not to mention how dehumanised ccs are often but that's a whole other thing#respect data privacy or die by my fucking hands for fuck's sake.#yes it's not normal or fucking good to dig up old discord messages and dear god is it not normally obtained to 'find' private messages#those are illegally obtained dear god have some critical thinking about this shit.#this took a lot of courage to post tbh hopefully i don't get clowned on for respecting the fucking law and being a cybersecurity shill.
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After the flood, The Batman uses his grappling hook and other gadgets to expertly maneuver his way to sections of the city that are inaccessible.
He can’t rescue victims on his own because the hook can only carry so much weight so he lights flares on the roofs of buildings where people are trapped and two flares if someone needs immediate medical attention.
He relays more information through Gordon about how many people there are, whether or not they’re accessible by boat or helicopter. A paramedic team provides him with a walkie talkie and rudimentary first aid training, only to learn that The Batman is already an expert in EMT protocol and how to provide CPR for over twenty minutes if necessary.
The only people he can safely evacuate himself are small children. (The “safety” is still shaky, but the Bat refuses to leave children behind. The paramedics hesitantly provide him with child and infant evacuation harnesses in hopes they’ll help.) Some kids don’t want to leave their parents so The Batman waits for up to an hour to make sure they’re rescued. Other children’s parents refuse to trust the masked vigilante with their child’s safety. He accepts that but makes sure to let the paramedics know this one is also priority.
But some desperate parents, especially those with newborns, have no choice but to trust him if it means their children get medical attention sooner. He has blank hospital bands and a few pens with him so the parents can write down their name, birth date, allergies, an emergency contact outside of the city, etc. As long as they’re lighter than 90 lbs, he has no doubt he’ll be able to bring their child to safety.
The orphanage takes two days to evacuate, and many of the staff and kids are apprehensive of him at first, but by the afternoon, The Batman has helped twenty kids to safety and found a safe landing spot on the building for a helicopter to fly. The hospital was, of course, also a priority, and The Batman evacuated many patients there, but it was thankfully up to date on evacuation protocol and took just under a day.
He rescues cats and small dogs and a pet lizard at one point too, all with their own hospital band with the owner’s info or wherever they were found scrawled on it. The Batman performs CPR on drowning victims, most of whom he was too late to save, but he does it anyway, over and over and over and over again.
He learns that kids are more likely to trust him if he carries stickers and lollipops to help calm them down. It feels manipulative the first few times he does it. He also wonders if he should bring something healthier, but he doesn’t have enough pockets, and the kids and parents weirdly trust him more when he asks what their favorite flavor is. (It also helps when he finds a few diabetics suffering from low blood sugar.)
By the end of his fifth day, The Batman has several stickers on his suit that he can’t bear to take off because the kids smile more when they see them. Somehow, he finds room in one pocket to fit a stuffed dog for the kids that are afraid of heights but need to be evacuated as soon as possible.
His cape makes for a good emergency shock blanket. He coaches many survivors through panic attacks and grief-stricken anxiety attacks. He tells them how to breathe and asks them to count down from 12 with him.
At one point, a kid asks for his name. The Bat’s never had to answer that question to someone that isn’t a criminal. He’s not vengeance anymore. That’s behind him. He’s just a guy in a gothic, bat-themed suit of armor. That name GCPD gave him, The Batman, comes to mind. He never really gave himself that. “The Batman” is too formal and ominous for a child anyway. He thinks for a moment then says he’s “Batman.”
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Just cause I'm seeing a lot of people sharing scams on their blogs
Scammers always use tragedy's to try to take advantage of people's empathy so here's what to look out for (this is written from on top of my head, feel free to share more stuff in the comments)
1) This is Tumblr
First of all it's important to be realistic about it. Most people in Gaza do not have Tumblr, most people do not use tumblr as their first ask for help. Gaza does not have stable WiFi, most people are not using that WiFi to use tumblr / create a Tumblr account. Do they have another reliable social media account? Can you verify that Tumblr belongs to them?
2) Check the accounts first posts / first mention of Palestine/Gaza
I've seen so many 2 day old accounts that just reblog 3 Palestine posts and that's it. Most people in Palestine would have mentioned this before October 7th. Again, most people aren't using the SIM cards to sign up to Tumblr
3) Is this just a fundraising account?
This is a big red flag.
4) Are they using stolen pictures?
Reverse image search the images used. A lot of them are stolen from fundraisers.
5) Nobody in Gaza is sending you a direct ask to donate
Unless you're a big account, or a big Palestinian account, nobody is personally asking you to spread anything. Be realistic about it. Nobody goes to a 17 year old kid as their first attempt.
6) Just a PayPal link.
PayPal is used for a lot of scams. It usually isn't the first choice for people who are fundraising. PayPal is also very inaccessible to places it isn't officially supported (such as Palestine) Also check a few things
-The name (is it a real name, it is a well known scammer etc)
-what currency are you being asked for?
7) Do they have no pictures?
This is also a big red flag.
Anyways stay safe!!!! And be careful !!!!
If you aren't sure, that's okay, you can always share the links of official charities/fundraisers such as PCRF, URAWA and Care for Gaza
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Chico
a long Vaas and little pirate story
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Unlike most souls who resided on Rook Island, Y/N was not born there, she did not choose to go there, and she had not been captured by pirates.
No, she was just on a boat passing by the island, which had sunk due to an explosion in the poorly constructed engines, and she had managed to survive by clinging to debris and swimming to the beach.
No one had seen her. No one knew she was here. Without money, without a phone, without an identity card, but with enough intelligence to understand where she had landed, Y/N had accepted that she had to be discreet and wait for the right moment to leave the island.
For the first few months, she hid in caves and the jungle. It was not easy, because there were many poisonous plants, wild animals, in addition to the pirates and natives.
The natives weren't mean, but a bit stupid. Talkers. They could speak about the foreign girl who wandered near the villages, and Y/N would have became a prey for the pirates.
Then, after nearly dying of starvation, thirst, freezing, or being eaten by a tiger, Y/N wondered if the best hiding place wasn't staying right in the lair of Rook's most dangerous creature.
Vaas camp.
Y/N had seen the leader of the pirates several times, from afar. He was quite scary, especially when he stopped in the middle of the forest to sniff the air and stare at the bushes, as if he could sense she was there.
There were also the stories she had heard about him. It looks like he was as mad as he was violent, uncontrollable, unpredictable. Always on drugs. Thinking only of money and control.
It was for these latter reasons that Y/N thought she had a chance hiding among the pirates.
Maybe she was small, and didn't really know how to fight, but she was good. Smart. Polite and disciplined. If she did the tasks the leader demanded, and didn't piss off the other pirates, then she would find herself a safe lair.
With some regret, she cut her hair, hiding her face as much as possible with two bandanas and sunglasses. Red bandanas, like the t-shirt she had taken from a corpse, covered by a bulletproof vest. With the headband that flattened her breasts, the oversized pants, the gun at her waist, and boots, she looked like a little man.
A little pirate.
As if everything was normal, she joined a group of pirates patrolling the north of the island. They didn't comment, asking her if she wanted some rum, and snickering that the new one was tiny.
They laughed less when a wild dog tried to attack them and Y/N killed it. Living in the jungle for months was learning to survive.
When they offered her rum again, it was with gratitude and respect.
Y/N first stayed in an outpost. It was simple, it was easy. She wandered far into the jungle to urinate or wash herself. She slept little, and in inaccessible places. Conversations were minimal, only when necessary.
No one seemed to suspect anything or care about her.
Nico and Benny were funny. Almost sympathetic, if she forgot that they tortured and killed the people the group caught.
Carlos was a bit scary. He didn't stay at the outpost, he only came by from time to time, to check that everything was fine.
The first time he had seen Y/N, he had made a funny face.
'Who's the little guy ?' he asked.
"New recruit. He's good with a knife."
"... I didn't know we had a new recruit."
But he had left without adding anything, and everything had gone well.
Until it's time to switch teams. It was hard and boring to guard the outposts and those who did a good job were rewarded by being able to return to camp for a while.
Vaas camp.
Contrary to what Y/N had hoped, not only was the pirate leader there when she arrived, he noticed her right away.
"So, you're the new little recruit with a knife ? It's true that you are small, hermano. A real baby. Easy to eat. You know I could easily eat you, huh chico ?"
"Yes, boss." decided to answer Y/N, staying calm and looking at him in the eye.
This seemed to surprise him, before he burst out laughing. He pulled out his gun, pointing it at her.
"Do you think you're funny, chico ? Do you think I'm kidding ?"
"No, boss."
"... No ? You're just a calm and polite little chico then ? Hmm. We'll see about that."
It was seen very quickly. Like at camp, Y/N found a quiet place to sleep, and she avoided everyone when she had to undress. For the rest, she obeyed orders, she was silent, polite, calm, discreet.
Which did not escape Vaas, who seemed to have eyes everywhere, and who seemed to appreciate this unusual behavior.
His fascination didn't lessen after she saved him from a large stone. Chico, as he decided to call her, had become his hero, his little favourite.
"There was the rock, there were the caves. Mi chico is like a lucky charm, hermano. I can't stay away from him, or I'll be screwed. And he's so cute. Isn't he cute, Carlos ?”
"Yes, Jeff."
"You sound like him. So fucking polite. I love it when he calls me boss. Huh, chico ?"
"Yes, boss."
"That's right, my little chico ! My lucky charm."
Everyone knew that Vaas loved chico. The pirates kinda laughed at her because of that, kindly. They could have been cruel, or jealous, but Y/N didn't really get any special treatment, and the boss was calmer since the arrival of the little guy, whom they really liked.
That didn't stop the jokes.
Some spoke of the fact that Vaas was in love. Y/N didn't believe it. It was just stupid remarks about the fact that two men couldn't be close in being gay. Vaas visited the whores of Bad Town. He wasn't looking at any man.
No, he was simply fascinated by his chico, nothing more.
Another joke, very amusing, was invented by Juan.
To tell Y/N that the boss was asking for old and very expensive bottles, abandoned in a cave that is difficult to access by sea, and that he wanted his chico to go get them.
It was not true.
Vaas hadn't asked for anything, and there were no bottles.
On the other hand, the cave was indeed difficult to access, and once inside, Y/N was unable to come out from where she had entered. She wandered the dark tunnels for hours, days.
There was no water. Her flashlight eventually died. And despite the fear of ending up like this, Y/N was still thinking of the bottles, and of Vaas who was waiting. So while looking for an exit, she looked for the imaginary bottles.
She only found an exit, after almost a week, having to climb against a wall, slipping several times, falling, breaking her fingers and a few ribs, but Y/N managed to get out.
First reflex, drink. Second reflex, find bottles. Any kind of bottle, before returning to camp.
It was almost as hard as getting in and out of the cave. The camp was far away. She was exhausted.
When she arrived, she didn't even notice the silence. The bodies near the door, including Juan's. Bullet and burn marks on the walls. Y/N didn't understand at all the looks and whispers of the other pirates when they saw her coming.
Vaas also looked at her weirdly, as she placed two bottles in front of him.
"Sorry, boss, I couldn't find your bottles." she muttered before trying to go to her little hiding place, to sleep. She fell after taking ten steps.
"Chico !" shouted a voice. "Chico, wake up ! Carlos, give me some water and call the doctor ! Chico, no, stay with me. My chico. Mi cielo."
Y/N was really too tired to move, or even open her eyes. She felt hands on her face, a mouth on hers, liquid in her throat, then nothing.
When she woke up, she didn't recognize the room she was in. Pink. It had been months since she'd seen that color, it wasn't a color that lasted long on Rook.
Children's toys. And Doctor Hernarch.
The good doctor, who made the good pills, according to Benny.
He sighed when Y/N tried to move, then when she realized that she no longer wore her bandana on her face, nor her bandage around her chest.
"Are you all right, young lady. Young man ? Vaas brought me a young pirate boy, and he still thinks I'm treating a young pirate boy. I haven't told him, and I won't tell him."
"... Thanks."
"Don't thank me. It's my job. You might have preferred not to wake up. He seems to like you very much. You hold his heart and his madness in your hands. He threatened me a lot, saying he'll kill me if you don't wake up. Maybe he'd like to know your secret, maybe not. Maybe it would be worse, for everyone. I won't say anything, rest."
Y/N lay down as long as possible, so no more than a few minutes, before jumping out of bed to get her things, and cover herself.
Then, holding her stomach, she went downstairs.
Like a lion in a cage, Vaas walked around the living room in a circle, biting his fingers until they bled. He often did this when he was nervous, or when he had taken too many drugs. It could be both. He looked really worried.
"Boss, your fingers." Y/N said, staying near the stairs.
"Chico ? Chico !"
He ran over to hug her, kissing her neck, cheek and forehead over and over, muttering insults and tender words.
"Mi chico... Don't ever do that again. Ever ! Fucking Juan, motherfucker. He thought he was funny, and now he's used as fertilizer in my garden. Asshole ! I could have lost you because of him ! You shouldn't have listened to him, chico. I'm the one giving the orders, directly. You don't leave the camp without me anymore. I should put a leash on you."
"Yes, boss."
"Ah, my chico. Always so polite, always so calm. You worried about my fingers ? It's okay, the doc is going to give me some meds, and you could kiss them better. We're going home !"
In the car, Carlos was silent, glancing at Y/N in the rear view mirror. At Vaas too, who refused to leave her, hugging her tightly. The big pirate had been worried too, for her, and for everyone, because during his absence, the boss had started to lose his head completely.
It was a miracle and a relief that she came back.
Purring, Vaas started rubbing against her again, smiling, repeating how happy he was that his chico had returned.
Y/N then thought that the doctor was not wrong. She held Vaas' madness in her hands, and perhaps his heart, and she couldn't decide if it was a good thing or not.
"I missed you, chico. I feel dead inside without you."
"Me too, boss."
"Mi chico." he whispered, laying his head on her shoulder, relaxed at last.
She had answered to be polite, as always. But also because she meant it, and that too, she didn't know if it was a good thing or not.
#far cry 3#vaas#vaas montenegro#vaas montenegro x reader#vaas montenegro imagine#vaas montenegro fanfiction#vaas and the little pirate
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Fiction C2 Post-Campaign Essek’s Mobility Aid
I appreciate that Matt didn’t want to make Essek disabled and fall into the disabled villain trope, but as a disabled person I love the idea that Essek’s floating is a disability aid and that ableism played a role in isolating him and pushing him into over-achieving at all costs. Essek’s such a complex character, I don’t think he falls into simple tropes like that.
Story
After Essek goes on the lam, he often has to walk without magic. He was partly lying about floating being a trick he got stuck with as an expectation. It was also that, but the real reason he learned to do it was the debilitating joint pain he developed in early adolescence. Having to walk again rapidly exacerbates it again, with an extra century of age on top.
He tries to keep it to himself since he was accused of faking it as a kid, punished for it, pushed harder, or excluded for not keeping up. Especially compared to his athletic brother. The doubt in his overall ability was one of the things that had pushed him so hard to prove himself at every turn, and ultimately led him to some really awful behavior he didn’t want to return to. But eventually, it becomes so debilitating he can't hide it. At least not from Caleb.
He'd get to Caleb’s house and more than anything just need to sit down and rest. The pain was cascading into general nerve pain that made all touch into an over-stimulated agony. A silent internal war from nerves that want no sensation, and a heart that wanted the soothing grounding of being held by this man who somehow loves him so deeply. But the pain in his face and the flinching he can’t stop eventually give him away.
Caleb is gentle with him and understanding. He opens up about the torture Trent put him through with the embedded residuum. Going to class with long sleeves pretending to be fine when he could barely hold a pen. Sometimes the scars still have a stabbing ache. How lonely it was when touch of the only people who knew and cared was too much. They talk about inadequate pain scales. There is comfort in that shared understanding.
They brainstorm what Essek could do. On the road alone he can still float. It's cities that are the problem. For his safety he already tries to stick to solitary remote research but supplies and contacts are always needed. They consider different mobility devices. Essek's only hesitation is that the ones that meet his needs would be expensive, custom, and distinctive, making them more identifiable even as he changes disguises and personas and could give him away. The same reasons why he's had to give up the sleek and fashionable clothes he loves for plainer ones people don't notice.
That leads them to the idea of modifying Essek's floating magic to essentially function like a series of braces. He could still look like he's walking without aid, but the magic would take the actual weight off his joints. It proves trickier than just floating, with more concentration and more exhaustion, but it’s harder to detect and easier to disguise to keep his cover. It’s harder to keep his balance this way and does find a plain cane makes it much easier, even if it rarely supports his weight to protect his arms.
Caleb asks for Essek's help with a second kind of slower cover. Now that he knows the floating was a mobility aid, can Essek teach it to him so that Caleb can teach it to his disabled students and others in the community? It could help many of them with quality of life (especially the Academy's inaccessible buildings). And over time if they teach the technique and encourage it to be retaught, it will be less unique and identifiable. One day it will be safe for Essek to float in public again, and he'll get his best mobility tool back.
Slowly things get easier. Essek is able to travel more easily again with fewer bad pain days and come back to the house of green beans without wanting to collapse. The brace magic gets easier for him to manage over time. It’s still a little easier to use a cane, but he can forego it for short periods if he needs the extra stealth. Caleb and Essek teach both the floating and the bracing and find each works for different disabilities and injuries better. It takes some decades for it to be widespread, but his floating technique is eventually widespread enough as a mobility tool that it’s safe to use. While he still prefers floating, he uses both with different personas to throw off the trail.
Every time he comes across another disabled person using this magic he developed in his room, alone in pain and trying to hide through an impressive trick, and now commonplace, it’s a reminder that for all the lives he hurt causing the war, there are now many others his magic has helped to live fuller more accessible lives. And that is a great comfort through the rest of his life.
#critical role#critical role fanfiction#Essek Thelyss#Caleb Widogast#Shadowgast#Disability#Disability Fanfiction#fanfiction#critical role C2 post-campaign
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As semi-promised on Thursday night: here is a fuller explication of my thoughts after reading @zephrunsimperium's post about Ford and anger (which you should go check out their various Ford analysis pieces if you haven’t, they’re excellent and, unlike me, actually get to the point in a timely manner!)...thoughts which ultimately melded with some attempts at another essay I had semi-abandoned a few months ago, so hold on tight, friends, you’re in for quite the long ride with this one, should you choose to wade through it to the end, for this essay is more than 10,000 words long. Numbers in parentheses indicate endnotes, which can be found at the, well, end. Trigger warnings for extended discussions of multiple kinds of abuse portrayed/only thinly made into metaphors in the GF canon, and for discussion of mental health. For anyone feeling up to dealing with all that...read on below the cut.
To my way of thinking, one of the most essential things for understanding Ford lies in recognizing all the gaps between who he is, who he wants to be, and who he wants other people to think he is, and the intersection of anger, the performance of masculinity, and his long, long history of relational traumas is the fateful crossroads which those gaps emanate from. At the risk of sounding unduly like a pop psychologist, I also think his father is an important individual to consider in light of these issues.
Filbrick, as Stan tells us in ATOTS, was a strict man who had “the personality of a cinderblock.” Stan is not always a terribly reliable narrator, but he seems to lack the ability to lie to the flashback camera, and the first few flashbacks of the episode give us a glimpse at what the Pines family was like in the sixties which supports Stan’s assertion about his father. In those scenes, Filbrick is the only character we don’t see expressing strong emotion of some kind before the science fair, something that makes the ‘sound and fury’ of the scene where Stan is disowned, when it comes around, all that much more shocking. Until this point, Filbrick came about as close to physically resembling a cinderblock as his personality was said to; even when he expressed approval of Ford in the principal’s office, it was a relatively muted display, barely more emotive than his earlier “I’m not impressed” or his silent disappointment in the season one flashback when Stan recalls the summer Filbrick first sent him to boxing lessons. We learn after the science fair that he can, apparently, express anger very vividly, but “Lost Legends” further underlines how he is otherwise mostly emotionally inaccessible to his family; Stan (despite being far more aware of his emotions than he might like to admit that he is) cannot just talk to his father about how he feels, and once again, the only concrete emotion Filbrick shows on-screen is anger. Pictures near the end suggest possible mild experiences of a few other feelings, and the adult Ford, narrating many years after the fact and very probably after Filbrick’s death, speculates about what might have been going on in his head, but those feelings are never made explicit the way his anger is. We don’t know why Filbrick is this way (the closest thing to a hint we get is the information that he was a World War II veteran - there is, after all, a reason for the common portrayal of the Stan twins’ entire generation as one which was saddled with cruddy fathers in the aftermaths of World War II and Korea – but for all we know, Filbrick could have been like that before the War, too. What was his family life like, growing up? His financial condition? Could he just be someone who was born with a strong predisposition toward an emotional or personality disorder, regardless of whatever else happened in his life? We just don’t have enough information about him to say for sure), but it seems safe to speculate that he was this way pretty consistently: whatever else was going on with him, the only emotion he seems to have felt comfortable expressing was anger.
And this is the guy Ford and Stan had held up to them as their first, and quite possibly most influential, example of what being a man is.
I’d argue that – when they were children, at least – this was more of a problem for Stan than for Ford. Filbrick presumably saw them both as shamefully weak as children, but Ford, at least, had another route to the old man’s approval readily available to him. If Filbrick was at least grudgingly proud of Ford’s intelligence, then Ford could receive the measure of parental approval which Stan craved and could never get; we also see that Ford could apparently hold his own while sparring with Stan by the time they were teenagers, so it’s likely enough that he no longer had to worry about physical assault from his classmates by the time he was in high school, either. Though still isolated and insecure underneath it all because of his childhood experiences and probably in part due to his ongoing social isolation, Ford was able to find a path to a kind of self-esteem: he was both brilliant and quite capable of using his six fingers to break your nose if you had too much to say about them, and he knew it, and everyone else knew it, too. He also had his brother as a constant source of support. When Ford was made to look ridiculous by having a drink thrown in his face in public, Stan promptly threw a drink in his own face in order to look even more ridiculous. When Ford won competitions, which he seems to have started doing at an impressive rate very early in life, Stan seems to have been almost over-enthusiastic in his approval: he looks as delighted about Ford winning the science fair (at the time, before the meeting with the principal) as Ford himself does, if not even happier about it. Even his habit of copying off Ford’s papers in class could have served as a reinforcement for Ford’s ego: he not only could manage for himself, but he could even allow someone else to depend on him.
In this way, by the time everything went wrong, the teenaged Ford had probably already developed a degree of self-respect and self-sufficiency that Stan was still struggling to reliably maintain forty years later. Neither of them could ever be the kind of man Filbrick was, or of which they thought he would approve, they were both too emotionally vulnerable and expressive for that, but it’s probably noteworthy that Ford kept pictures of famous scientists (instead of family photographs) around him during his college and young adult years: because he could also do something Filbrick never could, he was able, to some degree, to carve out an idea of “how to be a man” on his own terms. If Filbrick’s approval was an immovable object in the path between Stan, Ford, and healthy expressions of adult masculinity, then where Stan flailed against it, Ford simply walked around it by choosing new conscious role models.
Tesla, Sagan, Einstein, and company were “great men,” successful (well, at least remembered posthumously) and respected, who were also given to Nerdy Enthusiasms. Said enthusiasm, an open delight in the marvels of the natural world, was therefore an emotion besides anger that Ford could express freely without compromising his view of himself, and it seems that he did so regularly. This appears to have worked well for him; we know very little about his college years – only that he worked very hard, that he made at least one close friend and (based on his usage of the plural ‘friends’ when discussing DD&MD) possibly even had a social group of sorts, and that he continued to indulge his creative side to a degree by playing DD&MD, which was as close as someone in his late teens and early twenties could probably get to continuing the kind of fantasy play he’d enjoyed as a child without sabotaging his probable adolescent desire to feel very grown up – but it seems they were productive and reasonably happy. Six years after them, a slice of his life comes into focus for us in the form of his journal. He was probably around thirty to thirty-three years old when it was written(1), give or take a year or two, and we find him several years into the circumstances he was in when he says, as a much older man, that he’d finally found somewhere to belong. He could be lying - Ford, unusually, even has the ability to lie to the flashback camera, or at least omit things - but we don't really have any reason to believe this; when the flashbacks turn to Stan making an abortive attempt at contact, Ford on the phone sounds cheery. His lack of paranoia and surprise about someone phoning him is also not the only evidence that, at this time, he may not even have been totally socially isolated in Gravity Falls – in the same years, he goes to the public library with some regularity, he declines to buy cookies from a zombie Boy Scout, he converses sometimes with the mailman, and he is on friendly enough terms with Dan Corduroy, even some years after Dan finished building Ford’s house, to know that Dan’s family had a holiday cabin and to ask to use it. Clearly nobody was too close to Ford even then, but his chosen path was going reasonably well for him; it's possible that Stan might have found him rather harder to replace at this point than he did later, after an unspecified time lapse, which may have lasted as long as a year,(2) during which Ford had gradually became a complete recluse as he became more and more consumed by his relationship with Bill Cipher. Before that time lapse, Ford the man seems like a logical enough place for Ford the boy to have ended up; after it…..
Well, after it is where we get back to the topics of anger and its intersection with various aspects of identity and self-concept.
A decent place to begin is with Fiddleford, and with why, exactly, Ford asked him to come to Gravity Falls. Ford tells us that he asked Fiddleford to come because he (Ford) did not have the technical know-how to complete the Portal. There is some evidence to support the veracity of this idea: Fiddleford is, after all, the man who later proves able to build astonishingly lifelike robot monsters whilst homeless (and thus, it seems safe to assume, without conventional sources of funds or supplies), and he is the one who sees the flaws in the Portal design. Indeed, he seems to start spotting them before he even has a chance to physically see them: Ford tells us that Fiddleford started suggesting revisions to the plans over the phone while still in California, in the same conversation where he agreed to come. In the third portion of the Journal, the sixtysomething Ford also mentions hearing about how a Parallel Earth Fiddleford was convinced to come back to the project, at which point the Parallel Portal was stabilized and became something that could be used the way Ford had intended to use it (as opposed to how Bill had intended to use it). The implication is that Ford not only didn’t understand how to complete the Portal, but that he also didn’t understand the plans even as far as he thought he understood them. Certainly the Fiddleford of the main timeline, who would have worked with him before, was instantly suspicious about the existence of a third collaborator once he saw how far Ford had gotten without him, which further supports the idea that Ford was more of a theoretician than a mechanic. This does, however, run somewhat against the grain of much of what we see Ford do on-screen. As a teenager of modest economic means, he was shown to be as comfortable working with his hands as with his pencil, and he was able to build something which acted enough like a perpetual motion device that he won a state-wide competition and drew the attention of an elite university. At university, he created the mind control tie – something which appears, both by its existence and by the glimpse we get of how it’s wired in “The Stanchurian Candidate,” to involve electronics more sophisticated than what Fiddleford was shown working with in roughly the same time period. I tend to run with the idea that the events of the episode “The Stanchurian Candidate” only happened in a particularly vivid nightmare of Stan’s, and therefore include the tie simply because it was in the Journal, but if one goes with official canon and accepts that “Stanchurian Candidate” happened, then Ford somehow, in a matter of hours, with no budget or supplies, invented a thousand-year lightbulb that also improves the complexion of the user in the same episode that shows us the wiring of the tie. In the eighties, he also seems to have developed his mind-encrypting machine as a private project, and in the Multiverse, he survived entirely on what he could steal or construct for thirty years, and it seems he had progressed a long way toward the development of the Quantum Destabilizer on his own before he stumbled into the ‘Better World’ dimension; Parallel Fiddleford really just sped the completion process up because he’d happened to discover a useful fuel source for presumably completely unrelated reasons years before Ford showed up. Clearly, Ford can more than hold his own as an engineer, and as one with a particular flair for doing impossible things with electricity and the laws of energy conservation; even Fiddleford trusted his gift in that area enough to, however reluctantly, briefly accept his claim that he had been working alone despite his serious doubts about the idea, and to allow Ford to bully him into silence about the Portal’s design flaws for weeks or possibly months before the confrontation at the diner. Why, then, did he suddenly become convinced, during that fateful July, that he could not finish the Portal without Fiddleford?
The answer may lay a few pages further back in the Journal. Not long before he calls Fiddleford, Ford makes notes on the plans for the Portal that Bill had showed him in a dream. One of these notes is “I MUST NOT LOSE MY NERVE!” Later, in a state of mind where he is increasingly paranoid and beginning to lose a degree of touch with reality, he reflects repeatedly about Fiddleford’s nerve in similar terms. There may well have been some level, deep down, on which Ford knew he was getting in over his head, and he was scared out of his mind by that realization. If this is true, then, on some level, he knew something was...off, with what was going on around him. He knew he needed help from someone he trusted and who was not Bill. And so he reached out to his college roommate for that help, and he did so in a way that allowed him to still plausibly deny just how much trouble he was in, both to himself and everyone else, and he didn’t only need that deniability because he was inviting a third party into the isolation of an increasingly abusive relationship and would need an excuse if Bill took exception to the idea of Ford relying on anyone or anything other than Bill. He also needed that plausible deniability to preserve his self-concept, because by this time, whatever he had or hadn’t been earlier, Ford Pines had become a deeply, deeply dishonest man.
One of the key moments for understanding this - and, in many ways, the character overall - occurs in “Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons.” There, Ford delivers the exasperated line, “if my hands were free, I’d break every part of your face!” If that line was taken totally out of context and shown to a casual viewer, the casual viewer would likely misidentify it as a line of Stan’s. Stan is, after all, the character with the hair-trigger temper and violent tendencies, right?
To an extent, yes. In “The Golf War,” Stan asks Soos if it would be “wrong” to punch a child (Pacifica) – probably more of an indirect threat in response to Pacifica’s insults toward the Pineses than a true question, but Stan’s moral code is sufficiently different from the standard issue that one can’t completely dismiss the possibility that he really wanted to, well, punch a child. And who can forget his antics in “The Land Before Swine” or “Scaryoke,” where he punches his way single-handed through monsters which had defeated the rest of the cast? Or in “Not What He Seems,” where he takes on multiple government agents in zero gravity while, for at least part of the time, he had his hands fastened behind his back? Or that glorious moment in the finale when he did, in fact, break every part of Bill Cipher’s glitched-out face? Stan is also the character who lost his temper to the extent that he lashed out at Ford physically in the middle of the save-the-world ritual, and Stan is the one who keeps his old boxing gloves around his bedroom, along with owning at least one set of brass knuckles. As an old man, he still seems to take pride in having learned to fight back against the world physically as a child, and he recommends that Dipper try knocking Robbie unconscious bare-handed when Dipper is challenged to a fight. And, of course, the man is a menace whenever he gets within a certain radius of the Stanmobile, the vehicle that can take out roadway railings, light poles, and theme park gates without showing a scratch. There’s no denying it: Stan is perhaps many other things, too, but he’s also a very physically aggressive kind of guy. If, therefore, someone in this series was going to threaten to break someone’s face, it seems obvious it would be Stan…but it wasn’t. It was his supposedly milder-mannered, “goody nerd-shoes,” brother who, on examination, actually behaves far more casually violently than Stan does throughout his sadly short time in the series. To demonstrate:
Ford sets foot in his house for the first time in thirty years and identifies the first person he sees as his brother. Later, writing in his reclaimed journal, Ford describes his own reaction thus: “instinct took over and I punched him right in the face. I feel kind of bad about that!”
In the very next episode - aside from his antics in the first scenes(3) and the already-mentioned description of what he’d like to do to Probabilitator after the wizard captures him - we also have Ford’s immediate reaction to the wizard’s materialization. Stan is, naturally, most clearly unnerved by an evil math wizard suddenly materializing in the TV room, but there’s a moment where he glances sideways at Ford after Ford pulls a gun; to me, at least, this glance made it seem like he found that behavior pretty disturbing as well. For the past several hours, after all, Ford had been playing board games. Most people do not bring concealed guns to game night with their nephews. Ford does.
Stan and Ford both have wanted posters that show up ‘on screen’ – Stan’s in his box of memorabilia in “Not What He Seems,” and Ford’s in Journal 3. Stan’s talks about “scams, frauds, and identity theft” - all potentially serious crimes that can ruin the lives of the people on the other ends of them, but ones which follow the general tendency (per the reading I did last March) of real-world con men to avoid violence in the commission of their crimes. Ford’s, on the other hand, refers to its subject as ‘armed and dangerous,’ and as someone with a bounty on his head. From the way Ford depicts his own appearance in it, it seems likely that particular version of the poster is at least ten to fifteen years old, but in “Lost Legends,” he is still instantly recognizable in the multiverse for his criminal shenanigans, even in the company of his near-identical twin. In his own words, “a number of dimensions consider me an outlaw to this day.” If one uses the dictionary definition of the term - and considering how much variety comes up just in the few examples Ford gives of worlds he’s visited, there’s no reason to assume he hasn’t visited a few Premodern Justice Dimensions - this means there could be multiple dimensions out there where the authorities took the time and trouble to formally declare that he had done something shocking enough to justify the revocation of all rights and protections he might have otherwise enjoyed under the law, thus allowing anyone to do anything they could physically manage to him with no fear of any negative repercussions except those he could personally inflict on them. He also refers to his own exploits as “swashbuckling” (a term which brings piracy to mind) and offhandedly mentions travels with “bandits” (a term which describes practitioners of behavior usually classified under the ‘organized crime’ umbrella due to the cooperative nature of the often violent or potentially violent crimes in question).
Much of this behavior, it’s true, can be attributed to a combination of trauma responses and, in the Multiverse, sheer necessity. He refers in the journal to talking “my way into and out of food and shelter,” and the “out of” comment underlines how, like Stan before him, he very abruptly went from having a relatively stable situation (at least in the material sense) to being homeless, which would be at least a serious shock to the system of almost anyone, including people in much better mental health than he was in at that time. Then there’s the more complicated non-material aspects of his previous situation. As an adult reader, it’s stomach-knotting to go through the 1980s portion of the journal, because if you look at the behaviors and dynamics and leave out the “incorporeal eldritch abomination” element, it only takes a very little extrapolation from the material for his ‘partnership’ with Bill becomes an uncomfortably realistic depiction of a domestic abuse situation. Considering that either of these major traumas of 1981-1982 could (and, if the fantastical elements are stripped out, regularly do) induce PTSD in nearly anyone, and considering how many more traumatic events he doubtless went through in the years following, it’s not implausible that the man would develop a tendency toward believing that the best defense is a good offense. However, there is also evidence that at least some of these tendencies predated Ford’s major traumas, and that – despite how he would very likely insist this was not the case - the trigger-happy adrenaline addict we meet in “A Tale of Two Stans” may not represent a total change in character from who he was before the Portal – or even before Bill. The evidence here is admittedly scarcer and more ambiguous, but to illustrate:
In Journal 3, Ford seems sincerely puzzled about why Fiddleford would show signs of trauma after the gremlobin incident. This incident involved Fiddleford being shown his worst fear (something which ended in tourists being removed from the Mystery Shack via stretcher in apparent catatonic states. Fiddleford was a man who probably had an anxiety disorder to begin with, who was just accepting the reality of the supernatural, and who was living, for at least several months, hours away from where his wife and young son were, something which seems to have troubled him at the best of times. It's remarkable he was functioning at all after the gremlobin incident). He was also hit with a bunch of venomous quills, and flown through the air by something which clearly had no good intentions for him in mind…and that was all before the solution to the situation ended up involving Ford crash-landing everyone through the roof of a barn, breaking Fiddleford’s arm in the process.
The gremlobin incident is not the only time Ford, even before the multiverse, appears bewildered by perfectly ordinary responses to frightening stimuli. While Fiddleford admittedly may have had some form of anxiety or compulsive disorder to begin with (an idea supported by events like his tearing out his own hair under stress and his need to correct the Cubik’s Cube), his reactions to monsters appear far more reasonable than Ford’s offhand assertion that he has survived many monster attacks without registering any of the experiences as traumatic.
When Fiddleford was in danger, Ford’s automatic response involved, essentially, jumping off a cliff and hoping the magnet gun-to-hyperdrive attraction would first catch and then carry him long enough for him to catch up…and that he would then somehow figure out how to land the improvised gremlobinmobile without killing himself, Fiddleford, and the monster all in one go.
When we go into the bunker in “Into the Bunker,” Soos finds a candy dispenser in a cabinet filled with weapons. These weapons appear to be a mix of firearms alongside various medieval or Renaissance-style pieces. It is, of course, possible - though to my mind, improbable; Fiddleford seems to prefer indirect methods of aggression, mostly in the form of homicidal robots - that some or all of these weapons belonged to Fiddleford, but there is also evidence that there was a similar mix of weapons in the house which later became the Mystery Shack: sside from Ford’s singular ideas about how to answer a door in “A Tale of Two Stans,” we also see a box of other manual weapons which Dipper has access to in “Boss Mabel,” and which Stan is seen rifling through to find a crossbow - presumably the same one which had come alarmingly close to his nose thirty years earlier – at the beginning of “Love God.” Stan further asserts there are ten guns in the Shack during “Fight Fighters,” but we never see them; even while fighting against zombies, while following pterodactyls into caverns beneath the town, and during Weirdmageddon, Stan routinely arms himself with bludgeoning weapons, not ranged ones. The only time we see him use a ranged weapon (at least that I can recall) is the time he aims the crossbow at a balloon, which was out of reach. Ford, however, despite demonstrating almost immediately upon arrival that he’s quite capable of fighting without one, repeatedly uses ranged weapons even in close quarters: the crossbow in Stan’s face, the handgun in the living room, the Quantum Destabilizer during Weirdmageddon, the spear in the closing montage of the finale. These examples are, of course, all justifiable enough in their various contexts, but the combination of several incidents and all the weapons around the house and its environs makes it seem eminently possible that Ford was a bit of a weapons nut long before he became an interdimensional fugitive, and that if there actually are ten guns in the house, Stan may have more or less 'inherited' them along with the Stanford identity.
When Bill - who knew Ford very well before the Portal - shows Ford a vision of a possible future in an attempt to convince Ford to join him in his conquest of the universe, it is a vision of complete destruction. We see Bill’s giant finger tearing cities apart in an uncomfortable amount of detail, and are treated to the sight of planets being munched on like apples…and this is Bill’s sales pitch, the ‘party’ he is inviting Ford to and really, really wants Ford to agree to attend. This leaves us with two options: either Bill can’t understand that anyone might ultimately desire anything beyond or besides the chance to participate in unlimited, consequence-free violence (something which doesn’t square too well with Bill’s otherwise apparently excellent grasp of human motivation and how to manipulate it to serve his own ends), or Bill has some reason for thinking that the prospects of immortality and a group of ‘friends’ to destroy things with on a massive scale might genuinely appeal to his “old pal” just as much as the prospect of being “all-powerful” and “all-knowing” would. This is also hinted at by how Bill appears to try to convince Ford to relate to him by revealing that he was once mortal himself and explaining that he burned his dimension before offering Ford the chance to effectively do the same to the universe of the canon timeline. 'Become a god of destruction' or 'get tortured a lot' were also not the only possible options Bill could have offered; he could, for instance, have tried to convince Ford that if he (for all intents and purposes) became a god, then he could save at least some sapient life-forms in the universe from Bill by setting up his galaxy as a benevolent dictatorship or the like, with the alternative being that everyone would die if Ford didn’t take that deal. Bill did not attempt anything of the sort. Bill, at least, thinks Ford is not only capable of observing or even committing acts of great violence, but that he is capable of relishing the opportunity to do so.
Why are all these things easy to overlook? In part, it is because Ford wants us to overlook them, because they do not ‘fit’ with the person Ford wishes that he was. He wants, very much, to see himself as a cool-headed, utterly rational, cultured figure – not least because this would represent a total contrast to his twin brother and everything Stan stands for, either in reality or inside Ford’s imagination - and so he uses long words and is usually fairly softly-spoken. He emphasizes his “well-ordered and scientific mind” even as he behaves in ways which suggest he’s highly volatile and puts in writing (however carefully concealed the information might be behind veils of words) that he planned to make his name on a scientific project which wasn’t of his own design, a behavior which indicates a comfort with shortcuts even more potentially disastrous than Stan’s. When he does, rarely, have to acknowledge something that he would rather not acknowledge directly, he always immediately justifies the potentially unflattering behavior in fairly grandiose ways - stealing radioactive materials, for instance, is rationalized as a ‘doing a public service,’ and all the things he did to become a wanted man in multiple dimensions are, similarly, lumped together and dismissed as crimes committed “for a noble purpose.” No doubt some of them were, but on the page about the Infinity Die, one doesn’t really get the impression that he was particularly discriminating about when he used that thing, considering the usage statistics we’re given. The page informs us that the Die saved Ford’s life three times, endangered it “around 20,” permanently changed the color of a sky one time…and that it’s been used enough other times besides these that he can note the odd frequency of rolling a four(4). When talking to Dipper, he also seems quite confident about just how far the Die can warp reality - he doesn’t speak as if “the universe could turn into an egg” is an exaggeration. Use of the Infinity Die would not be a reliable way to limit damage or even to advance his goals while committing other crimes, so it becomes a bit difficult to justify his apparently relatively casual use of it as something he did only as a last resort and/or only in service of a noble purpose. Most fans recognize that he clearly started over-identifying Dipper with himself toward the end of the series, but he identifies Dipper with himself only when it comes to traits he is proud of having; otherwise, the “grammar, Stanley” remark is one of the few criticisms he has of Stan which doesn’t also come across as something he might want to say about himself and his own less desirable qualities, if he could only bring himself to acknowledge them for what they are in plain language. It reads, to borrow from someone I once talked about the character with on Reddit, like “my man is just as chaotic [as Stan], he just manifests it differently.”
Part of this difference lies in their respective approaches to the truth. Neither is anything you could reasonably call an honest man, but the distinction lies in how Ford appears to lie to himself a lot more often than Stan does. Stan, outside of ‘working hours,’ is utterly up-front about who and what he is and what he cares about: he’s a crook and a grifter and a liar, interested only in that which benefits him and the small number of people he personally cares about. Only once, when contemplating his epitaph in “The Stanchurian Candidate,” does he show anything even vaguely resembling shame about this, and even then, he still includes the detail that he would, of course, be a crooked mayor if he became one. It's entirely possible that the only ultimately sacrificed himself to destroy Bill because of the direct and imminent threat Bill represented to his individual relatives. As the man himself once said: it wasn’t enough for him to be the town’s hero, because his real agenda was being Dipper and Mabel’s. Ford, on the other hand, seems to have shared many of Stan’s desires (wealth, respect, shortcuts to these things) as a young man, but also to have always felt some need to convince himself that he wanted more (for lack of a better term) socially acceptable ‘side features’ as well. When he dreams of scientific accomplishment, he will admit he looks forward to riches and glory...but he also throws in that he wants to revolutionize science to enhance the well-being of all mankind, too. When he writes down the story of how he began his quest to kill Bill, he acknowledges that he wished to “wreak vengeance for the life he stole from me” - but only after saying he would “save the multiverse from [Bill’s] wrath.” Later, though, when talking about his meeting with a parallel Fiddleford, he refers to his vow as a “vendetta” - a word defined as “a blood feud in which the family of a murdered person seeks vengeance on the murderer or the murderer's family; a prolonged bitter quarrel with or campaign against someone.” The word can be used far less precisely in casual conversation, of course, and he probably does sincerely see it as his duty to atone for his mistakes by removing the entity which seeks to exploit them, but at the end of the day, despite his attempts to frame his behavior in terms of doing what is objectively right, there’s also a massive degree to which his quest is personal. Anger and revenge and personal concerns ultimately prove just as important to him as they are to his brother, if not even more important. This is illustrated perhaps most dramatically in the lead-up to the Final Deal: one can only imagine what Bill’s back-up plan was, because Bill came close to not needing one. Ultimately, when put to the test, the principles which went along with the persona Ford tried so hard to project crumbled: the family was, in the end, more important to him than saving the world, just as it was for Stan. He never mentioned the idea of making any attempt to save himself in the deal (on top of doubtless believing that such an effort would be doomed to failure, there are hints that Ford always planned to die in the execution of his revenge, or at least never saw a way around doing so), but he was willing to let Bill take over the galaxy “or worse” just to save (or at least exempt himself from the responsibility of personally dooming) three other people on a probably quite temporary basis. If Bill was unraveling reality all around them, after all, where exactly were Stan and the twins supposed to go?
“What other choice do we have?” It took no few viewings of the finale for it to register why I always find that line so wrenchingly uncomfortable to watch. At that moment, finally, for the first time on screen, Ford admits that he cannot save the situation, or even himself. That he’s been backed into a corner – trapped – forced to acknowledge that another entity can and will hurt him, and that it can and will hurt him on as many levels as it pleases. He’s been taken right back to where he was when his first grade classmates nearly put him in the hospital, and he can’t hide it from himself or anyone else anymore...and it’s after this moment that we almost immediately see a dramatic change in Ford’s behavior and self-representation. The same man who remained remarkably defiant, all things considered, when tied up by an evil sorcerer who was gloating about its plans to consume his brain, or even in the midst of what was probably several days of severe torture,(5) visibly flinches, his hands shaking, while using the memory gun; in the aftermath of that moment, we then see him standing in a corner, looking helpless and at a loss for what to do while other people (specifically, mostly Mabel) try to figure out a solution without his assistance, as he's meekly accepted the situation instead of trying to change it. Dipper notes that some point in that day was the “only time” anyone had ever seen Ford cry, a statement that implies there had been other occasions where Dipper expected him to cry when he didn’t do so – perhaps it’s just because Dipper is used to Stan, who cries rather a lot, but for some reason, Dipper regarded this observation as specific enough to underline the severity of the situation during the first hours of Stan’s amnesia. The closest Ford really gets to his pre-Weirdmageddon demeanor again is when he takes the long way around the block in order to ask Stan to accompany him to investigate some anomaly up north, just as he’d previously made the same excuse about being too old to manage on his own anymore for asking Dipper to stay in town after the summer ended; since even unbending enough to, effectively, ask anyone not to leave him was already a step away from his isolated-hero act, it’s far from one of his more distinctive adult characteristics reasserting itself. Something, it seems, in the man profoundly broke in the throne room of the Fearamid, and based on his worryingly fervent attempts in the last pages of his journal to represent both Stan and Fiddleford as plaster saints, it doesn’t seem like it’s getting fixed any time soon.
I noted earlier that I suspected Ford had no intention of surviving his duel with Bill in the Nightmare Realm during “Not What He Seems.” There are a few reasons for this. One is simple probability, of course (even if he had destroyed Bill, there would have still been plenty of creatures around that would have been more than happy to eat him, and his death ray was almost out of power). More pertinent, however, are a few of Ford’s own words. Twice, he refers to Stan as having “saved” him – not ‘rescued’ ‘retrieved’ ‘gotten back’ or any other possible combination of words, but “saved.” The first, where he’s still grumbling about it, is when he shows Dipper the Rift and explains why he was angry at Stan for this seemingly charitable behavior: he saved Ford’s life, but at the cost of endangering the world, and at that time, Ford was still deeply committed to the idea of himself as someone who sacrifices, not someone who sacrifices are made for. On the second occasion, while trying to explain what just happened to Dipper and Mabel after they realize that Stan no longer recognizes them, he sounds almost bewildered as well as moved as he makes the statement. Shortly before that second occasion, in the Fearmid itself, he also, infamously, uses the word “suicide” on the Disney Channel, when he tells Dipper and Mabel that any attempt to take on Bill – or, in other words, to undertake the very task he was attempting when the Portal reopened in NWHS – was a “suicide mission.” His behavior, from the moment he comes back, is usually varying degrees of reckless, and the Journal illustrates that this isn’t an entirely new tendency: aside from vowing to undo the damage he’d done “or lose my life in the attempt” at the end of the 1980s section, he also put himself through the kind of work conditions that can literally kill a person for, it seems, months before he realized Bill had played him; afterward, he proceeded to have a breakdown while continuing, or even increasing, his dangerous habits of sleep deprivation and stimulant overuse. And even before that, as previously noted: he once didn’t think twice about jumping off a cliff. There has, at least since he came to Gravity Falls, always been a part of Ford which seems to have had some inclination toward self-destruction; he may not have been suicidal as such in the early years, but even then, he seems to have been more than merely indifferent to his own well-being. It is at this point that all the disparate threads of this essay will begin to gather back together into a single line, because this behavior can be interpreted as Ford, essentially, daring the universe to so much as try to make a victim of him, because it was at in those years that he began to feel the need to assure himself that he wasn’t one. After he admits he’s out of ideas in the Fearamid, though, he finally has no other choice but to admit that he has in fact been victimized – specifically, by Bill Cipher.
When Ford chose to adopt famous scientists as his models for how to be a man, he began to lie to himself about himself to some degree. He insisted he was rational and unemotional when he was anything but. He retained some pride in being in better physical condition than the other men close to him during both his scientist and hero arcs, but he downplayed his quite real attraction toward violence (recall that on two of the three occasions where he and Stan came to blows, Ford was the one who escalated the conflict) and thrill-seeking, trying to veil them from himself as well as the reader. Ford’s tendency toward black-and-white thinking didn’t disappear at the end of the show; he simply reversed the polarity, so that now, instead of him being the hero, he recast others in that role and was at least attempting to accept a place among the ranks of those who’d needed saving. This was something that he’d been denying he was for a very long time, even at the price of focusing on anger-inducing aspects of the past, perhaps distorting them out of proportion in his memory so he could keep his mind on the future. Unable to cope with the loss of control implicit in his situation with his 'Muse,' acting as the agent of something else and being manipulated in deeper and deeper over his head, he directed his attention to a future where he would be on top again, focusing on anger toward the past instead of on his fear of the present.
For most of the show, Ford has real issues with anger, and I tend to believe that quite a lot of them had to do with the need to protect two things after the disintegration of his relationship with Bill Cipher. One is his image of himself, and the other - arguably, something dependent on the maintenance of his self-concept - is his sanity – or at least, if not his sanity, then his ability to function. As noted the other night – anger might not feel good, exactly, but it can feel so much better than hurting that it can be mistaken for feeling good. Fury can be paralyzing, yes, but it can also, when directed outward, keep you moving – spite, as they say, is the source of many an accomplishment Self-loathing, on the other hand, will crush you like a boulder, sooner or later...and it’s painfully obvious, in the scrambled, increasingly unhinged journal entries between the Portal test and his decision to call Stan, that Ford is capable of intense self-hatred. Even in later years, when he has focused his entire mind on revenge for decades and reviles the traits in his brother that he dislikes in himself, there’s still that undercurrent of guilt and self-hatred running just beneath the surface, so close to the top that even he can never really fully ignore it. He doesn’t really know how to accept help while maintaining his self-respect, and here’s where we get to him being both an abuse survivor and, arguably, specifically a male one.
Earlier, I referred to his partnership with Bill as an uncomfortably realistic depiction of a domestic abuse situation when you strip the supernatural frills away. Bill could well have marked off items on some kind of manipulation checklist: he would flatter Ford to draw him in, and then withdraw without explanation, leaving Ford despondent and thus that much more dependent on Bill upon Bill’s return. Bill convinces Ford that nobody else really understands him like Bill does, and that nobody else ever could do so. They are all parasites who want to ride on Ford’s coattails, or steal his work, or are people who will hurt him because they are jealous of him; Bill is the one who inspires him, because he’s just that deserving of inspiration...except, of course, when he isn’t. When the Muse would go silent for long stretches of time, waiting with highly uncharacteristic patience until he got just close enough to desperate for a breakthrough. Then the whole cycle would begin all over again, until finally, by 1980-1981, Bill had succeeded in reducing Ford’s world to little more than himself. Based on the state of Ford’s study, he was, by the end, probably literally worshiping Bill as a god.(6) It is therefore possible to argue that the relationship included spiritual abuse in addition to the blatant psychological, physical (“enjoy the mystery bruises”), and financial (in that much of the grant ended up being used to pursue Bill’s agenda instead of for its intended purpose) abuse...and all of that happens before the possession sub-plot after the Portal test, where any illusion that their association is consensual or in any way for Ford’s benefit falls apart. Bill systematically violates every understood boundary within the relationship during the weeks between the Portal test and the Portal incident, and Bill very clearly enjoys doing so. He takes the time to taunt his victim by scribbling in the Journal when Ford blacks out. He seems to derive a great deal of satisfaction not only from the ability to completely deprive Ford of all mental and bodily autonomy on a whim, but from reminding Ford that he had this ability: he seems to have gotten a twisted satisfaction from knowing that Ford knew that, sooner or later, he would be unable to physically prevent himself from sleeping any longer. The hopelessness and inescapability of his situation are thrown in Ford's face again and again, and apparently for no better reason than that Bill is a physical and psychological sadist. Other people's misery and horror are like a drug to Bill, and we see, again and again, in the series that Bill will even undermine the pursuit of his own goals in order to enjoy it.
And the person he did all this to was Ford. Someone who already had profound trust issues (from his point of view, everyone he ever cared for had betrayed him to one degree or another), and whose formative years were during early fifties. This is significant, even aside from the impact of personality flaws specific to Filbrick Pines on his son’s development. Even today, in our rather better-informed times, many people dismiss the idea that men and even boys can be victims of abuse entirely, and even some of those who acknowledge the possibility won’t take it as seriously as the idea of men abusing women and girls. When Ford was physically and verbally bullied in elementary school, the only solution his father could offer was “learn to hit harder than the other guy.” If someone hurts you, you hurt them back; this, in the earliest examples he seems to have had, is how you reclaim power, and if you can’t do that, then Filbrick thinks you’re weak, that you’re an embarrassment, and that he just wishes you were gone, to very nearly quote Stan from “Dreamscaperers.” This was also a general attitude of the surrounding culture, without a lot of prominent examples of better options. Years later, it follows - horrible though it is to say – reasonably enough that when Ford realized he’d been manipulated and used by something that couldn’t be punched in the face, he began to have a breakdown, which only began to resolve in a small way when he convinced himself there was, in fact, a way to do something at least equivalent to punching Bill in the face. His plan was irrational and poorly strung together, and it did require him to ask someone for help, which must have galled – but it’s only Stan he has to ask, after all, and Stan doesn’t really count, and Stan owes him anything he might choose to ask for anyway, and besides, he’s not really asking Stan to help him deal with the problem, is he? He’s going to be the one who defeats that bastard or dies trying. Stan’s just...going to hold his beer, so to speak. Or book, as the case may be. Because he doesn’t need Stan. He doesn’t need anyone. Because he’s in control of this situation. He’s going to save the universe, and then everything will be fine again (or so he tells himself), because then he will be, once and for all, beyond the reach of anyone who might want to hurt him again. Because if he can pull this one off, then who would dare? Who would even want to? He’ll be a hero, a savior, someone deserving of everyone’s respect – and if not, he’ll at least be a martyr, which to him likely seems like a better second choice than continuing to live with the thought that he’s vulnerable and that everyone knows it.
An interesting thing to examine at this point is the similarity between his approaches to Fiddleford and Stan in the eighties. Earlier, it was argued that Ford may have reached out to Fiddleford as much out of repressed fear as from any real need for technical assistance. When Fiddleford first comes to Gravity Falls, Ford cannot stop talking about Fiddleford’s excellence, praising it even above his own. Fiddleford is his friend, his partner, his companion on this path to glory. Slowly, though, it changes. He begins to cast more and more doubt on Fiddleford’s capabilities, in a way, at first, which almost seems reasonable due to Fiddleford’s neuroses. He begins to feel that he is doing Fiddleford a favor – many favors, in fact – by allowing him to participate in “making history” like this. He projects and lashes out. This shows up even more clearly when he writes to Stan. He does not, admittedly, start out with praise in that case, but he still clearly goes through the same process of progressing from acknowledging a need to twisting it around in his own head so he no longer has to do so, just at a higher rate of speed. Almost as soon as he decides to write to Stan, he adds in his journal that “perhaps he can prove his worth to me.” This is followed by some prevarication – the line about how perhaps the mistakes of the past can be made right could apply to his thoughts on how he feels Stan wronged him, his thoughts on his situation with Bill, or even his past actions toward Stan, and when Stan arrives, Ford initially seems to present the matter as one where he needs a partner-in-crime because Stan is the one person he can trust – but within minutes, he shouts about how he’s offering Stan the one chance he’ll ever have to do something meaningful in his entire life. He’s progressed again to the idea that he doesn’t need help, and that he’s just doing these people - people who he has ostensibly asked for help - a favor. He is still in control. Because he doesn’t need them. He doesn’t need anyone. And when he triumphs over Bill, then….
...Then….
...Then we get to the bit I did write about on Thursday night. Specifically, how there’s very likely going to come a day when Ford will start finding it very, very hard not to have Bill around to hate anymore. To paraphrase zephyrsimperium - even when anger is hurting you so much that even you can see that it’s doing so, even when you know, intellectually, that it doesn’t really feel very good at all, it still hurts less than actually cleaning out the psychological wound.
To a certain extent, Ford’s anger did save him in 1982. Coping mechanisms can be necessary, for a time, when a trauma is too close to deal with. Truly dealing with it would be healthier, but there are situations where some distance has to be put between oneself and the trauma before it can be addressed; situations where you’ve just very suddenly become homeless and are being hunted by your reality-warping abuser would, it seems safe to say, be among these. Too much pain from too many sources could not be addressed all at once, especially by someone who, for reasons both cultural and innate, possessed none of the psychological tools or self-awareness to even begin to work through it all, and so when survival became a priority, focusing on hating Bill more than he hated himself probably was the only choice Ford realistically had in that moment. At the end of the show, however...Bill’s gone. Ford no longer has that mission to focus on, and at some point, that’s likely to mean waking up and realizing – if I may be forgiven for quoting a song from the Dark Ages, aka, my childhood -
“Wherever you go, there you are/You can run from yourself, but you won’t get far.”
Learning to defend himself as a child wasn’t enough – he still had to seek validation, acceptance of some kind, through all those competitions. Winning the competitions wasn’t enough – he still needed to find a place where he could fit in, somehow, either as a genius or as an anomaly. Going to college, finding someone he considered even more brilliant than himself, winning a grant – somehow, it still wasn’t enough, he needed to discover a new theory and emblazon his name in the history books...never realizing that even if he’d succeeded in that endeavor, it still wouldn’t have been enough. And all that was before Bill. Afterward, sure...he killed Bill. The being that made him feel weak and stupid and helpless all those years ago, it’s gone now. He won. And it still won’t be enough, because removing Bill doesn’t undo what Bill did to him. It doesn’t take away the difficulty of trusting anyone else after such an acute betrayal. It doesn’t take away the anger at himself for being someone who got duped. It doesn’t take away all those years out in the Multiverse, and the memories of whatever less-than-ideal things he had to do to survive them, or the impulse to hit first and ask questions later that he’s developed, or anything else. Nor is throwing himself into being the Perfect Friend or Perfect Brother in an attempt to make up for the past going to ultimately help much – he can’t undo whatever wrongs he did Fiddleford or Stan any more than they can undo the ones they did him, and all three of them are likely in for a rough ride of learning how to have relationships where sometimes you clash and disagree, but you trust the other person enough that you can have a relationship with them when neither of you is a Perfect Anything to the other…and where you trust the other person to still want to be your friend after you demonstrate that you aren’t perfect, or even able to perfectly fit into a simple, clear mold. As hard as accepting onself as a flawed individual with vulnerabilities that can be exploited is, it's probably still child's play compared with then, after having been taken advantage of in the past, to trust anyone to not do so at the first opportunity again.
Despite the somewhat gloomy tone of this essay, there are reasons for hope. One lies simply in the fact that Ford got this far. His story, after all, follows the arc of many a tragic hero, and yet, he manages to end the show alive and without having gone over to the Dark Side (even if he came dangerously close and was only pulled back from the edge by Stan’s quick thinking and acting skills). Another, more promising, is in "Lost Legends," where we get a glimpse of the Pines family in the week between Weirdmageddon and the birthday party. We see that Stan has recovered his normal personality and memories enough that he and Ford manage to annoy each other throughout the adventure. They disagree on how to proceed, which of them is more competent to look after the twins, etc...and the incident ends with a truce, rather than each of them slinging blame at the other for the situation Mabel ultimately has to rescue them both from. Ford is able to accept that they both contributed to the problem, rather than it being a black-and-white situation, the way he seems to have viewed most situations for quite some time. He even lets Stan play with the super-glue gun of science. It's progress. Here's hoping, for everyone's sake, that it's one step among many to be taken.
Notes
(1) See my essay “The Trouble With Timelines” on AO3 for an explanation of this assertion.
(2) Reasoning for this hypothesis can also be found in “The Trouble With Timelines.”
(3) Based on his lack of alarm when a second specimen later attacks him in the lab, my theory is that Ford staged the near-escape of the Cycloptopus at the beginning from first to last - note how he appears to have a pretty solid grip on it when he enters the gift shop, and later turns to the family, holding it up and smiling brightly, after subduing it as though looking for approval from others before indicating that he’d like to be included at meal times. Later, in “The Last Mabelcorn,” we learn from the read-out of his thoughts that he lurked closely enough behind the vending machine to eavesdrop for at least long enough to hear Stan refer to him as a “dangerous know-it-all;” since his other thoughts in that sequence all involve loss, anxiety, regret, and childhood bullying, it seems reasonable to assume that whatever he had hoped to overhear, it wasn’t that. Considering how Ford agreed to avoid the children at the end of “A Tale of Two Stans,” it seems likely to me that Ford staged the Cycloptopus incident just for an excuse to interact with the rest of the family for a moment without obviously trying to do so, and that the creature was not actually especially dangerous.
(4) Though it is possible that some of the times Ford rolled a four were among the 20-odd times the Infinity Die allegedly endangered his life; if he was already in a bit of a bind and decided to risk getting a solution that way, rolling a four with something that is highly illegal to own - and, therefore, probably even more highly illegal to roll - would be unlikely to improve his situation
(5) I saw an essay once where someone actually tried to figure out what, if Bill was accurately portraying his own usage of electricity, happened there: best-case scenario involved convulsions violent enough to dislocate joints accompanied by severe internal and external burns. It seems, considering the contrast between his first appearance in “Take Back The Falls” and his relatively physically normal behavior during the rest of the episode, that being turned into gold again resulted in the instantaneous restoration of his pre-torture physical condition, but this would probably provide small comfort if you are under the impression that every time you ‘wake up,’ you’re just going to go right back through the same thing again...and again...and again….
(6) Comments in the codes of all Journals and in invisible ink in the blacklight journal make the question of Ford’s religious beliefs another interesting one; we know he was raised Jewish, but his few remarks after dealing with Bill could suggest that, by the story’s main time, he may have become some form of dualist. An argument which can be used either for or against this idea is the apparent existence of the Axolotl cult, as shown in exclamations by space refugees, carvings in Jheselbraum’s shrine, Bill’s dying invocation, and a bumper sticker in “Lost Legends.” On one hand, Ford expresses confusion about what the refugees meant by “praise the Axolotl!” and makes no explicit connection between the statement and the carvings he later sees in Dimension 52; when he speculates on “the opposite of Bill?”, it is unclear if he is referring to Jheselbraum or her background art/presumed patron deity (“Oracle” is suggestive of the Oracles of Delphi, who were priestesses of Apollo and were supposed to prophesy through divine inspiration, so it does seem likely that Ford, Jheselbraum, or both believe that another entity is the source of her prophetic gift). It is also unclear what, exactly, the power dynamic between Bill and the Axolotl is; the fact that Bill invokes it in the hopes of returning from his deletion implies it is far more powerful than him, but it is unclear (both in Bill’s invocation and in the Axolotl’s prophecy in “Time Pirates’ Treasure”) if the Axolotl could choose to ignore the invocation if it wished to do so. Bill, we know (or are at least told), was once a mortal being which sought escape from all laws, including the laws of nature which dictated his own mortality; we do not know how the Axolotl came to exist outside of time and space, or what this implies about its nature. When Bill muses on his enemies, however, he swears that neither Time Baby nor “the big frilly jerk” will stop him; this could imply that he sees Time Baby and The Big Frilly Jerk (most likely Axolotl, unless the canon version really does have a twin brother) as equal threats, and that perhaps “the ancient power” is something they are all in some way bound to/reliant upon for their seeming immortality? Bill was able to reduce Time Baby to his component molecules, but word of author is that TB is not actually dead and will eventually manage to pull said molecules back together into a Time Baby-like shape again, which renders the issue of power levels even murkier.
#gravity falls#gravity falls characters#gravity falls analysis#character analysis#essay#footnote time!#stan pines#ford pines#thoughts form as typing happens#drafts
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Where SlashGirl.EXE just exists to be a general denizen of the world, TokeiWoman.EXE has more of a narrative direction.
I doubt I would ever get around to doing something more complete with this idea, but this is the general gist of her arc, for the time being.
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It’s any other day, and Lan and his buddies head out to do typical after-school kid things. However, along the way, they happen to pass by a HUGE demonstration at large corporate building. They learn from attendees that the company inside (Zenith Hyperprocessing) had installed a program/NetNavi to centralize a large portion of HR and finances across multiple subsidiary tech companies, which in turn lost them their jobs (or jobs of family members and/or NetNavis working Web-side) and they're protesting it, to the company's deaf ears.
This is seen as a mild annoyance by the general public at most, but word gets out that some of the displaced workers have banded together a fund where they'd pay a good amount to anyone who can break into Zenith's system to permanently delete that program and get them their jobs back... and several established 'villain' Operators feel this is a great way to make a quick buck at the expense of a large corporation.
However, Zenith’s position gives it the backing of the government, and they call any city NetBattlers to help defend it, citing the damage that losing the program would cause to the many other jobs/livelihoods of the people still working at the companies under its jurisdiction. So the city NetBattlers and their NetNavis form a sort of perimeter around Zenith’s central server, stopping some of the opportunists. However, a few of the 'evil' Navis get through the blockade.... only for their Operators to suddenly lose contact with their Navis completely.
After that incident, some time passes, when suddenly the 'program' starts to act... strangely, doing things that are not to it’s owner company's bottom line interests, which causes a bit of a ruckus. The authorities in control can't seem to get in to deal with it due to the digital defenses set up, but don't want to unplug or delete it completely right off the bat due to the potential dangers to the mainframe, and the costs that would incur, but they're worried that the NetNavis that went 'missing' weren't deleted, and somehow were corrupting the program from within the program's bubble of inaccessible influence.
So city NetBattlers are called in again to find the root of the problem, joined by official ones, and once within the strange anti-communication zone, MegaMan DOES manage to break defenses to find Tokei’s true body. He discovers that she had managed to freeze and capture any NetNavis that made it to her prior; they had no effect on her decision to start disobeying Zenith for the welfare of hard-working employees over the ‘lazy and ineffectual management.’ The company did that to themselves. She's 'fixing' their problems, as far as she's concerned. She at least agrees to free the NetNavis she trapped, provided they leave her alone and stop wasting her time.
MegaMan can’t find it in himself to delete her, not that he could in the state he found himself in, given he notices his energy being sapped at an astronomical rate, which prompts an explanation of the Overclocked domain, which also covers why he couldn’t communicate with Lan. Before he can leave to an area where he can safely Jack Out, ProtoMan arrives, with enough energy to fight, having not had to fight through all the defenses that had been defeated prior, and MegaMan has to prevent ProtoMan from deleting Tokei, allowing her to speak her piece.
With that resolved, MegaMan returns and simply reports his findings. It raises the question of the 'rights' of NetNavis. He returns from time to time - at great risk to himself, given the Overclocked server - to check on her out of sympathy, but she is always too busy to hold much of a conversation, sending him away. He insists she needs to take a break once in a while... even computers need to rest.
Finally there’s a breaking point, and MegaMan - instead of returning to a safe zone to resume contact with Lan and Jack Out - stays put, in an almost child-like tantrum. His ultimatum; she turn off the Overclock on the server and return to normal time and see how it feels to run at a normal, non-stressed speed... or she keeps it on at the cost of his own safety/life.
Unable to bring herself to hurt MegaMan, Tokei concedes with great effort and turns everything off... and while it does prove that it’s a huge weight lifted, it has the downside of suddenly bringing her activity back into observable time, putting both of them under immediate scrutiny. With Lan also able to weigh in, they argue until suddenly another party joins; Zandra Hertz, Zenith’s CEO.
To show the ‘children’ the error in their own thinking, Zandra uses Tokei’s unprotected state to violently tear the NetNavi’s consciousness out of the supercomputer housing (appearing, Web-side, as a large claw appearing and physically ripping Tokei out from her desk into the darkness), sticking it in an extremely outdated, dilapidated PET, to show both the NetNavi AND the employees she stood up for how much Zenith can’t afford to let her take time off for extended periods. Zandra’s last words to Tokei are, “Fine. Take a vacation. See what good that does you, and everyone else.”
With Tokei gone, the rest of Zenith and its subsidiaries start to feel the pressure of that work not being done. The chaos caused by this, and the ineptitude of the management who had become so painfully reliant on her for HR functions, means they can’t even hire or rehire workers to replace her quickly enough to prevent things from crashing and burning. When Zandra is contacted to take care of matters, it’s discovered she conveniently took a vacation to let everyone fend for themselves. Typical upper management behavior.
Tensions peak after a few days and Lan or someone else chooses to break in to steal the PET Tokei was consigned to and get her out, only to find that the poor condition of the PET and its lack of visual interfaces causes it to act like a sensory deprivation chamber (or worse, if damage to the PET such as electrical shorts or overheating components can actually affect the NetNavi inside). It’s so archaic that while MegaMan can enter the device via Jack In, they don’t know how to get Tokei out of it without first taking it to SciLab for analysis, and in the mean time, they can’t actually charge the device without damaging it further.
To make matters worse, the disappearance of Tokei and the PET she was on becomes an issue of company property theft. In the kids’ hands, nobody knew where the device had gone, but the moment they take the PET to SciLab to either be repaired or to have Tokei transferred into a new device, the lab gets implicated for it and come under legal scrutiny (it turns out Zandra had predicted it would happen and set it up intentionally, banking on the ‘reckless heroism of youth’ to forego critical thinking). She was hoping to use that criminal lawsuit against SciLab for stealing critically proprietary ‘software’ to pad her other earnings.
Fortunately for everyone, this starts to get the public riled up the more they learn about what was happening. A lot of people - even so-called ‘villain’ sorts - cite their own close connections to their NetNavis, as well as the existence of independent NetNavis, as proof that they are more than just feelingless tools for humans to use.
Eventually, public outcry causes Zandra’s plan to backfire, when hundreds of NetNavis from outside Zenith break into its mainframe to help the panicking employees rectify its problems temporarily, and Zandra is forced to step down for endangering the livelihoods of so many people... but not before trying to spitefully take down as much as she possibly can by firing up Tokei’s supercomputer and expanding the Overclock zone to encompass a large portion of the Cyberworld in hopes of melting down as much of the Web as she can in the process, by running malicious code into every connected device.
It’s revealed she never believed humans should have become so reliant on such fickle cyberspace beings in the first place; she lost her injured brother to a hospital mishap caused by the machines failing at the worst possible moment. Her whole plan from the start was to make as much money as she could exploiting the system before ultimately taking it out.
Since the Zenith server cannot be approached via the web without the Navis involved getting hit directly with the wave of Overdrive code, the situation has to be diffused by manually reinstalling Tokei into the supercomputer in person, which possesses its own difficulty as the Overclocked machine is physically overheating and threatening to explode and take the whole company building with it. Suffice to say, though, they succeed (because Lan has protag power).
Zandra is arrested and control of the company is handed over to temporary management, but eventually is given to Tokei herself. She was already doing so much work she practically ran the company upon initial installation, anyway. Since she has no need of money, she simply lets what she would have been making as CEO fall back into the company to promote a better workplace, and to hire employees to keep things running smoothly over the long-term; she’d crunch the numbers initially to get things back on track, and then slowly let the workload redistribute so she could take on a more humane level of management... and finally get a proper damn vacation without worrying about everything going to crap.
She also offers to do the kids’ families’ taxes for free on her off-time. As thanks. Compared to what she’d been doing prior, a handful of tax forms is just a few grains of sand in an hourglass to her.
#art#fanart#fancharacter#mega man#mega man battle network#mmbn#netnavi oc#dai's mega man dump#the reference intended with zandra is mostly a nod to tokay's arc over in classic#it's a pretty heavy-handed nod but i think it's funny#my frame of reference for the most part is mmbn 1-3 and a little of 4#since dani has been streaming it and suffering through the truly delightful tedium masquerading as game mechanics#this is a real game with real mechanics and real dialogue written by real people it's honestly quite incredible
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A thought on my mind I wanted to type before I go to bed.
Although there are a lot of allusions to time and time travel, I'm thinking there won't be literal time travel. If you don't know what I mean, my two main focus points being:
Will's original S1 outfit being a reference to Marty McFly from Back to the Future and various other Back to the Future references
Henry/Vecna's obsession with time and clocks
Even though I don't think time travel will literally happen, what if the team has to figuratively "step back in time" to find the answer to something? Retrace their footsteps?
They revisit vital locations from the past, finding clues to defeat Vecna along the way.
I'm not a Harry Potter fan but I saw all the movies once and I'm aware of the "horcrux" lore. Did they do something similar in the final movies to find all Voldemort's hidden soul pieces to kill him?
I have a different similar example from my favorite manga/anime called Natsume Yuujinchou (Natume's Book of Friends). To keep it simple, Natsume is an orphan who has been passed around from family member to family member and suffered a lot of abuse along the way. Why? Because he has the rare ability to see, interact with, and talk to yokai. Despite his best efforts, he can't lie about his abilities to himself or the people around him. Luckily, at the start of the series, he is taken in by distant relatives of his father and his life finally starts to get a bit better. I highly recommend you check it out.
In Natsume Yuujinchou, there is a chapter about a powerful mirror that is split apart by a thunderstorm. While venturing in the woods, a piece of the mirror falls into Natsume's eye. The owner of the mirror (a yokai) demands Natsume help them piece the mirror back together or else (threats, as yokai tend to do). How? Well, because a piece of the mirror fell into his eye, Natsume feels pain whenever he starts getting close to another shard. The pain is only relieved when he finds it.
The locations are a little random, but they're all around the small rural town Natsume now lives in. Some places are recurring important places in the story like a shrine, he's friend's house, or Natsume's school. Others not so much.
So think of it this way. The team with Will and El in the lead going from spot to spot looking for.... "something" that will help them learn information or maybe grow stronger? Maybe a way to defeat Vecna who knows.
So that leaves us with what are the "vital places" where they would find such clues to Henry's defeat. Let me put my brain to work
The Byers home. Reason? From the audience's point of view, this is where everything kicked off. The place where Will was taken. I find it unlikely though simply because the real life Byers house got sold off a while ago and might be inaccessible
Mirkwood, the street where Will first encountered the Demogorgon. It's also near where Castle Byers was and where The Party found El. Many significant things happened there Upside Down related or not. I find this one very likely since they posted a picture of what is probably a flashback in Castle Byers
Hawkins Middle School. Like Mirkwood, a lot of significant things happened here. It was where the Mind Flayer finally caught Will. It was also the place of El and Henry's reunion even though it was taking place in Max's mind.
Ruins of the Starcourt Mall. This might be unlikely but depending on how much has been cleaned up/repaired, maybe there is something to be found there as well.
Hawkins Lab. Of course, the lab is the true place where all this begins. Surely if there's a vital place that will help them figure things out, it must be the lab right?
Hopper's cabin. Maybe a stretch since they were only briefly there in S3 to hide away. But it was attacked by the Mind Flesher and deeply wounded by El there. It was also El's special safe place for such a long time relative to how long it's been since she was free.
Mike's house??? Nothing supernaturally interesting has happened here but it's a vital place of safety for most of the cast for pretty much every season so I dunno. Eh, this one is probably a stretch.
Well, that's all I had on my mind but maybe someone else has other ideas for these "vital places" and what they might find there?
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I Am ThInKiNg AbOuT ThE FAN CLUBS AGAIN!!
Specifically naming them. Like I know Sephiroth’s fans get the silver elite, which I like but whenever I see the red leather fan club for Genesis I’m like “Absolutely not. Where is the poetry, the flavour!”
So here have this!:
Personally I think Genesis’ fans would be known as the ‘Crimson guard’. Why? Because its dramatic as fuck. Gen is absolutely the kind of person who trade marks his jacket colour; or at least the Rhapsodus estate does for him. And I feel like his fans exude early 2000s vampire fans. Like they’ve either read loveless and cite it as THE piece of literature; or they haven’t read it but STILL site it as seminal reading.
The Crimson guard wear red in all their outfits. They all have an earring they never take off instead of a club card or whatever. They are obnoxiously debating the subtlety and meaning of that one look Genesis have the camera in Junon. They are insufferable.
Angeals fans are called ‘The honourable few’ because their isn’t as many of them but the ones there are are Loyal as fuck. Genesis named them (as founder of the club, shhhhhh) and likes interacting with them more than his fans.
Angeals fans are very passionate about defending Angeals place in the trinity and there’s a nice balance of men, women and other identifying people in the club. They hold fundraisers for causes Angeal cares about, and run support classes to help each other with their dreams and honour. It’s a very accepting community and concentrates on being accessible and friendly.
The ‘Silver Elite’ are mostly male, and also very toxically straight. Sephiroth hates the fan club with a burning passion. The fandom he’s fine with, but the official fan club he despises. There is absolutely a difference between the two. The fan club makes itself out to be inaccessible to anyone who isn’t ‘of worthy status’ and gives off major toxic fraternity vibes. Cloud has a membership card but doesn’t actually attend meeting because it really wouldn’t be safe for them.
The silver Elite fandom however, are just REALLY avidly obsessed with how pretty Seph is. The fandom is also more LGBT friendly and get along well with the crimson fandom who are also vastly different from the club.
Zacks fan club is honestly the most wholesome. The fandom and the fan club are one in the same with Zack. They are called ‘The Zoomers’ and yes Zack did choose that name himself.
They are openly LGBTQIA+ friendly, basically everyone is neurodivergent, and there’s a big focus on having fun and achieving goals. Zacks fans find him super inspirational and they have an ongoing fund for neurodivergent causes. They do meet ups and plan days out; there’s a community page where you can find likeminded fans to go do fun stuff with. They are honestly the best.
Their only major flaw is maybe being a little too protective of Zack. They can get quite vicious if Zacks character is called into question. And both Cloud and Aerith have had a little bit of shit for being close with him. But generally the majority of the fandom also jump to the defence of Cloud and Aerith when it happens and call out the people being mean.
Cloud also may have a Zoomer club card but he will NEVER tell Zack!
#ffvii#ffvii crisis core#headcanons#fan club shenanigans#genesis rhapsodos#sephiroth#angeal hewley#zack fair#cloud strife#gender queer cloud strife#I will die on that hill#aerith gainsborough#crisis core#final fantasy 7
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STAYEducated: Plagiarism 101
What is plagiarism?
“Presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement."
- University of Oxford
Reposting content instead of reblogging/retweeting/sharing it.
Reposting content without asking the original creator for permission, or doing so even if they deny permission.
Sharing or reposting content without giving full, proper credit to the original creator.
Taking someone else's original work and claiming it is your own creation or content.
Why is plagiarism bad?
Plagiarism is unethical. While most general content plagiarism will not be pursued legally, plagiarism is lazy, demoralising, disrespectful and selfish.
Someone whose content is frequently stolen might be dissuaded from creating content at all, or might choose to make their content more inaccessible. It also emotionally harms the content creator.
Plagiarism can often have pretty serious consequences, even if you weren't maliciously plagiarising. Your account could be deleted, your details banned from creating further accounts, certain features on your account(s) being blocked, and it could garner you an ugly reputation within your community which can stick around for a long time.
Plagiarism essentially tells the original creator you don't respect them or value what they do. They're just a tool for you to benefit from.
Plagiarism can also harm the original content creator, who might have to go through undue process to prove they own the content you've stolen from them.
How can I avoid plagiarising?
Link to, share, reblog/retweet or tag people in content you want them to see rather than re-uploading the content.
Give proper credit, even in private spaces. If you send someone's art to a private group chat, tell them who made it and where to find it, or better yet, only send them a direct link to the original post.
"Credit to the original poster" and "not mine" are NOT proper credit.
Avoid sharing content from Pinterest and similar 'sharing' websites. Pinterest's entire model is based on people re-uploading things that do not belong to them and their DMCA process is a nightmare. Use the reverse image search or check the Pinterest post for the original content link and share it straight from the source.
If you're unsure who made something, don't share it or use it. Often it takes me less than 10 minutes to find out something is stolen and who it belongs to originally. If you need to, ask around! Often other people will know if something has been re-uploaded or if its safe to share.
Do your due diligence, always.
I found plagiarised content, what should I do?
Alert the original creator. On many websites only the original creator can get stolen content removed unless you can prove you're acting on their behalf.
Alert others the content is stolen. Be wary that on some sites the uploader can choose to hide or remove your comments, so its often best to take screenshots and make a separate post in conjunction with leaving a comment.
Report the content where possible. In some cases you can use flagging it as spam or stolen content to make a report or you can contact customer support directly and alert them to stolen content.
Don't positively engage with the stolen content. If you have, do your best to remove your engagement by unliking it, deleting your reblogs, ect.
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something annoying that i’ve encountered as a writer that many other writers have spoken about is that googling any kind of, like, anything about drugs overloads the page with 5 million “DO YOU NEED HELP CALL THIS NUMBER RIGHT NOW” popups when i’m just trying to figure out the symptoms or proper usage of something and you know it’s annoying for me but i have to wonder if it’s also detrimental to people genuinely trying to find resources to educate themselves on possible side effects, withdrawal symptoms, and overdose symptoms of the drugs they’re using because all of the resources on those are buried under resource after article after phone number after talking-down-to on how to get clean. doesn’t help either that after wading through that shit the most common kind of link was inaccessible medical journals locked behind paywalls.
i don’t know it just seems counterintuitive for wanting to help people use safely to make sure that the list of symptoms and side effects they should be given access to to make sure they’re not like, dying, is so difficult to access. you can’t even google “can [x] withdrawal cause headaches” without having to go on some kind of quest.
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Hmm.... thinking of it now, I wonder if all these angels and demons are actually aliens and MC is an alien who wanted to be human because in the aliens' culture, humans are like deities, hence "I want to be holy".
It would be an interesting twist on how aliens are usually the ones being worshipped in some human religious institutions— that WE are the aliens in question being worshipped by an entirely removed and foreign species from outer space.
Aliens appear like angels or demons to humans because they utilize the human culture as well by taking a shape of form they would be familiar with— most cultures and religious have concepts similar to it, after all.
When that angel/demon attacked MC, it was noted that despite their wrist being torn, there are injuries at MC's palm— coupled with circuit board resemblace, I wonder if that creature wanted to expose MC's true nature. Why? I have no idea. Perhaps they wanted to save their brethren. Perhaps they didn't think anyone should try to be "holy" like "How DARE you even think you can have a place among our GODS, stop this masquerade IMMEDIATELY!!"
MC's emergence from underground also reminds of how in the 'War of the Worlds', it would be revealed aliens placed their technology on Earth long before humans came, waiting for the right moment to come out.
Io is the name of an ancient Greek princess who was once turned into a cow and constantly stung and chased by a gadfly as punishment from Hera for being Zeus' lover, but she would later be restored to her human form and become the ancestor to many heroes like Hercales (Hercules) as foretold by Prometheus— who is another Greek mythological figure punished for bringing fire (holy knowledge) to humans. The potential connections are.... interesting. 👀
It's mentioned "magic" is something some people are "genetically" able to use safely, and even that's not a guarantee you won't perish along the way. Maybe magic in question is the ability to use alien technology, or mutations/powers/vibes that came to Earth with aliens. Like them coming altered something within the magnetosphere or whatever and some people can use it for themselves before it starts to harm them because it's not what their bodies are used to. And the reason why MC can naturally, without seeming harm, is because, well, it's their species' own nature— why should they get hurt from something that is as natural to them as breathing?
Within all this theory, that makes Sanity/Divinity stat more of a Human/Alien stat— are you adapting to your new life as a human, being scared of the "unknown", of odd glowing creatures with sharp teeth, of stealing from someone else's garden because it's wrong and you fear criminal punishment, or are you slowly remembering your past as an alien, touching touchpads, getting close to your once brethren and communicating with them, enjoying the Garden of Eden and its forbidden inaccessible fruits like someone who got the amazing chance to get to the Realm of the Gods?
Of course, this is all just a theory— just because this is sci-fi doesn't mean religion and magic cannot exist side by side. Angels can exist next to aliens— that would actually be fascinating, actually.
Either way, in case it's not clear, I am crying screaming frothing in the mouth tearing my clothes apart over this story. I am eagerly waiting for the rest of the story. 🤩
bro you are so close I am looking you in the eyes I am beaming thoughts into your brain you and I are on the same deeply specific wavelength
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