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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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A link-clump demands a linkdump

Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/

All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.

It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.

But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.

Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.

This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands

I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.

The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:

https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/

The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.

Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!

Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/

But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/

The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":

https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.

The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges

The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money

The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.

All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/

These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.

The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:

https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/

Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.

Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.

Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.

But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/

In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/

He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.

That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":

https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/

Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

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2hiit · 7 months

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hello again, dashboard.

my name is jenga, and you might recognize me from @2hiit, @mikucaptor, @spellbookbindings, @oberonnie, @goodnatured, @uzufoxy, and @autochaton. if you do, you may have also noticed my various absences from the tumblrsphere in the last year or so. although i've been trying to stay as uninvolved from this as i can, i've reached my breaking point. this is in part due to the newest of the false allegations sunnie has lobbied against me, and in part due to the health of my wife, who was supposed to be wearing a heart monitor this month to track some irregular beating, but whose results have most definitely been skewed due to the repeated stress sunnie has been putting our family through this past week.

this post will include every shred of evidence i have against sunnie (@sunniehub), with the hope that once i've said everything i can, i never have to address this again. i deserve peace. my family deserves peace. i have been forced to accept we will not get any if i continue to just wait for this to blow over.

sunnie runs the following blogs:

sunniehub / carcins / softdweller / 8ad / goresports / paiinball / w2f / stuckyfanfiction / w33dgod69 / diqqiebitch / hissassin / dowwn / eredan / hotdoxxed / apedshit / acabemy / mistaklen

xe has been relentlessly block evading and stalking my various blogs, as well as attempting to tarnish my online reputation beyond repair with false accusations in an effort to drive me off of this site. i have been dealing with sunnie and xer inexcusable behavior ever since i blocked xem on january 2nd, 2023 for the sake of my mental health. i made a response post once before addressing these false allegations against me, but i now realize that will no longer be sufficient, as sunnie seems to be content with making up new and worse accusations when the previous ones fail to stick.

content warnings for this document include: mentions of r/pe, mentions of CSA, stalking, harassment, emotional abuse, gaslighting, guilt tripping, suicidal thoughts, and mentions of transphobia. there are also descriptions of physical stalking, as well as graphic descriptions of violence, but these things are warned for before they occur, and are skippable if need be.

over the course of THIS DOCUMENT, i’ll be showing you chat logs, screenshots, and data supporting the claims i’ve made about sunnie, as well as offering you some context as to how this situation came to be. this is quite an extensive log and i'm aware it may be hard to follow, and some of you may want to skip to the parts that are most striking to you. i have taken the liberty to include an outline in the sidebar for the ease of moving around the document at your own pace, and i’ll be using formatting to make it as neurodivergent friendly as i possibly can. please bear with me.

i truly believe sunnie is a danger to this community, most especially those xe interacts with on a regular basis, just like i once did.

[as a disclaimer: while i have censored sunnie's previous name, i will not be altering any outdated pronouns as they appear in our chat logs. this is to maintain the integrity of the logs and readability. i no longer use xer former pronouns or name, and there are plenty of people who can vouch for this fact.]

i will be temporarily disabling anonymous asks, because i will not be addressing this matter publicly any longer. when i do eventually re-able them, any asks pertaining to this post, or the events this post addresses, will be promptly deleted. replies, reblogs, and DMs are fine, but otherwise, i am considering this matter closed until further notice.

furthermore, i do not want to see any commentary, speculation, or prodding for details whatsoever regarding the individuals in this document whose identities i have censored. this is a stalking accusation. they are censored for their protection.

they are not the focus of this document, sunnie is.

#unfortunately 99% of my interactions with sunnie were verbal so i was only able to provide 100 pages of receipts.#.ooc #rape ment /#csa ment /#stalking /#harassment /#emotional abuse /#gaslighting /#guilt tripping /#suicidal thoughts /#transphobia ment /#i have chosen not to ping sunnie directly as i am confident xe will find this of xer own accord.#rbs ok /#replies ok /#i may not respond for a while #im gonna need to let this one air out

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sleepykittypaws · 11 months

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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Well, folks, the time has come for me to bid holiday movie tracking adieu.

This was never anything but a (more-than-slightly-weird) hobby which, quite honestly, became overwhelming several years ago, when the TV Christmas movie explosion made keeping track of the annual influx of holiday content way more time consuming than I ever bargained for. But, something—for instance, needing a distraction from a global pandemic, combined with a Type-A personality that loathes leaving a job left undone, plus a few fellow Christmas movie-loving online pals I'd made along the way—always kept me going…Until now.

As someone congenitally unable to do anything halfway, I've felt increasingly uninterested in keeping up with all the ins-and-outs of holiday movie production for a while now. That, combined with Twitter's increasing lack of usability, has led me to the decision it's time to rest my paws, and hang up ye olde Santa hat.

In real life, I'm just a boring, stay-at-home mom who used to work in (non-Christmas movie) TV production. I started keeping a holiday movie list for a few like-minded pals, and when they wanted to share it with a few others, posted it online for easy access. What started as a couple updates annually (a did-you-see-this-article? sort of thing), morphed into a year-round hobby, and then something more akin to unpaid, part-time employment—not that making this a job was ever a goal. (In fact, I’ve studiously avoided being public and declined the very small amount of opportunities people have offered.)

While I did (very) occasionally hear a few things from folks I'd become friendly online with, none of that is what I shared publicly. Everything I posted was gleaned from publicly available news stories, press releases, IMDb listings, production info, casting notices, and social media posts. Though there was some dot connecting on my part, it's all stuff absolutely anyone half-decent at research and logic could easily find and readily duplicate. (TL;DR I’m not special, and never thought I was.)

Thanks to those who were so kind to me over the years, and all who share my fascination with cheesy holiday fare. I will most definitely still be watching, and if Twitter still exists this holiday season, quite possibly will return there to share what I loved, and what I didn't, but I'll no longer be keeping a holiday movie list, with my apologies to the twos of folks this likely disappoints.

For what it's worth (likely, not that much) I've updated all the upcoming lists—theatrical and TV, for 2023 and 2024—one last time (UPDATE: Well, now that the season is upon us did my best to keep the 2023 schedule up-to-date, least as of November 15, as a final hurrah), with what I know, as of today. There are, I’m positive, typos and errors and things that will be out of date as soon as tomorrow. But there it is, the end.

Cheers, and a very merry everything to all!

💛 Sleepy Kitty Paws

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emmalostinwonderland · 4 months

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I can't believe this year is already just about over... 2023 has been huge for me in terms of fandom and in real life spaces. This was my first full year publicly out as queer, and it felt at times like the rest of the world was kinda celebrating with me. I made so many new fandom friends and got a lot more involved with the things I'm passionate about. I joined 5 fandom discord servers, beta'd more than a few fics, cheer-read a few others, and participated in 4 fanfiction events. I spent most of the year whining about how I can't get any writing done, but apparently I wrote and posted more fics this year than in 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined! I wrote nearly 50,000 words this year. Thank you to everyone who supported me, encouraged me, laughed and cried with me, or spent time with me in any capacity. I cherish you all.

Anyway, now for the part people actually want lol- here are the 6 fics I published in 2023:

Embers Barely Showing (Proof of Life in the Shadows)

Pairing: Steve/Bucky Rated: M Word Count: <1k Summary: Steve freezes in the doorway. He makes himself breath slowly and deeply, and he takes a moment to get his heart rate back to normal before addressing the man holding a gun to his temple. “Buck, it’s me." // Steve comes home while Bucky is having a dissociative episode.

Judged By The Cover (collab w/ @louikazooie)

Pairing: Steve/Bucky Rated: E Word Count: 32k Summary: Bucky Barnes, award-winning romance novelist, is dismayed to learn that his publisher is sending him on a book tour with Steve Rogers, a fantasy author who recently topped the NY Times Bestseller list for his first and only romance novel and Bucky’s personal authorial adversary. As they’re sent off to spend several months touring 50 US cities together, they’ll attempt to overcome their differences and leave the past behind them… maybe they’ll even find love.

The Hazards of Falling in Love (Rescue Me)

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rated: T Word Count: 4k Summary: “So that’s your name?” Rogers hasn't looked away from him once. His eyes are a piercing blue, and Tony barely manages to keep from squirming under his gaze. “Yeah. Or Telecommunications Operator Stark, if we’re getting technical about it.” “Are we?” Tony tilts his head slightly. “Depends. Can I call you Steve?” The man grins. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Tony.” // Tony Stark doesn't date firemen. But he'll make an exception for Battalion Chief Steve Rogers.

Promises, Promises

Pairing: FirstPrince Rated: E Word Count: 1k Summary: “Works for me. Let me get undress-” Henry stops him with a hand over his. “Slow down, love. I’m going to make you listen to me for once.” “Oh my god,” Alex whispers, seemingly unintentionally. // Alex breaks his promise of a work-free trip. Henry gives him just what he deserves.

Should History Forget Us

Pairing: Steve/Bucky/Tony Rated: E Word Count: est 15k (WIP) Summary: War is over for the kingdom of Starkholde, and King Anthony's knights have returned home at long last. With peacetime comes many changes... as well as its own dangers. Through joy, through pain, through fear, through love- Steve, Bucky, and Tony must navigate the shifting tides together and make their mark on history.

StarDads Secret Santa 2023

Pairing: Din/Luke **This fic is part of a gift exchange and creator reveals are not until after the new year. I'll post the link to my fic once it's available, but for now, the whole collection is linked here.

#stucky #stony #dinluke #firstprince #stuckony #fanfiction #ao3 #writing #year in review #2023

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cathalbravecog · 8 months

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long ramble, haven't had one of these in a while! if you read this, have fun. it's headcanons/thoughts on some stuff. i don't talk about my thoughts on story stuff publicly much anymore especially because 1) i'm shy 2) trust issues 3) bad rsd 4) i forgot the last point

i was writing for oNCE yesterday (some headcanon stuff, for myself, won't be posting that unless i change the wording of some of it to make more sense because i ramble a lot and it's a mess. like i am doing right now. also that turned into being mostly about hr in the end because i am ill. now hopefully this motivation will get me to write my mary and archie stuff.)

and when i went to bed i was thinking about some stuff in toontown, mostly the cogs - and how things work. these are things i ponder on very often and have talked about with my friends many time, throwing ideas back and forth and my headcanons for how things work.

though, there's one thing i really wonder about, and that's where cogs come from in ttcc exactly. in 'that' way though of course to keep things on the same rating as the game is i won't discuss anything explicit so don't worry. (besides they're robots and also are sexless to me, anything related to gender is purely cosmetic to them. you are usually assigned a certain expression when built though, but can change that later on. that's how i explain trans cogs.)

i think about how there are canonical families and children, and that they have "built" dates and places where they've been built. it's obvious as they're robots, they're not born they're built and made.

it's a bit difficult to explore with the limited info we have, which is kind of both an hassle to work with, but also beautiful because you can let your creativity go and make up your own headcanons, without things being set in too much canon. it's also difficult due to how different the suit culture is to us humans and also what we see from the toons which is by nature more familiar to us.

we also do not know much about suitopia, or other possible places where cogs live.

(i, personally, imagine suitopia as essentially a big country where most if not all cogs live. it has it's own regions, cities... all that. where as c.o.g.s. inc has built itself to be essentially it's own small country/community, if that makes sense. though cogs don't always only mention suitopia, at least once 'the whole world' is used. this is irrelevant tho so i won't discuss that but it's still a 'core' headcanon i have - as other things i may hc rely on this personal interpretation / headcanon.

but be aware i do not know everything is canon and can discuss things outside my realm of HCs and interpretations, but if i go deeper into like, let's say, analyzing a cog and imagining their backstory, instantly assume i'm using all these things. sorry for the side ramble, i want to make things clear for possible future reference.)

i wish it will be expanded upon slightly in the future, even a slightest crumb of what it's like out there and i can have a field day with it. i do enjoy the vagueness tho, again, as i've said we do not need to have all the information out there and it's not necessary to the main stories that are being told but MAN my brain itches for MORE. i demand EXPLANATIONS. and so i make up my own lol and i love that i can do that /gen (there's some stuff i do have an issue with that it was not explained better, but again, fixed that with hcs. talking abt atticus but im not getting into that rn)

there also may be things i am missing - i have known of ttcc's existence since it's early days, but i wasn't there for it and missed being there in person for any lore until i started playing for real in early 2023 and became a part of the community. like, there ARE things i have missed AND small details i am missing. that's one criticism i have about some info being more difficult to access now, but the main stuff is on the wiki an all luckily.

anyways that ramble out of the way... how the heck are cogs made? there's a few ways, that seem contradictory in some ways at first but i just see it as different methods.

we know cogs can change their appearances (their shell) and be "upgraded". we know cogs can even choose to be just their skelecogs (Atticus) and i suppose every other skelecog we see.) we know cogs have families and have their own kids. (cathal and bobby jr come to mind, and also belle's own kids and grandkids. not to mention, we have siblings too - thomas and robert. and their whole family drama DOES involve their unseen parents.) we know many cogs, mostly the managers, come into the company as their are - but also new parts are built, at least for the employee cogs in sellbot hq. (recently re-read the dialogue which confirmed this - literally as you're building your sellbot suit.)

we know cogs are more than just some working machines and do have deeper lives and desires and even relationships, though all instances of a parent/child relationship in ttcc have only one parent. makes sense after all they don't reproduce sexually to put it that way, again they're built and they're robots.)

it's easy to conclude, that, cogs are just built. which is true. but it just makes me wonder. we know they age. we have at least 1 cog who is a literal child, and bobby, in human years at least, looks no older than like, 8 years old. (we also don't know how cogs age. we also know cog's don't die like that, due to the whole deal with atticus. i will talk about this one day i have so many thoughts on it)

we know they grow up and even have schools - they're not programmed with everything. they earn experience as they live life and even have?? education systems? like they're more like people than we thought. (ttcc does make cogs more easily sympathized with and gives us INDIVIDUAL cogs and not just... 'The Cogs'. cogs are the focus of ttcc so of course they're developed more and are more 'human' despite being machines.)

so clearly, there's cogs like bobby. who are built young and eventually grow up. we have not seen a cog growing up yet, at least i don't think. but i wonder how that works. through cartoon logic, do they just grow up? their skelecog and perhaps their shell, too? or do they periodically get upgraded to be larger - wouldn't it make sense to built a cog as, well, an adult already? to program all these things? there may be more limits to this than we think, but also just... cultural things possibly.

the only cog CHILD (not just the child of someone - cathal's an adult. also, redd mention, but redd's adopted so he doesn't count) we ever see is bobby and, he is the child of robert, who is known to be very short. we don't know if bobby's going to grow up, or if this height is what he's just going to be like. we have one image where he's way smaller than robert, and other, more recent ones, where they're a similar heights. is that just art inconsistency due to the nature of all the (amazing) artwork being, well, volounteer work and that not everything is (or has to be) perfect? or did bobby really grow up. i'm talking about the wallet picture and the comics featuring bobby, by the way.

though, as things are, i'm sort of assuming that bobby's going to grow up or be upgraded in some way to "grow up"? i don't think we need an clear explanation for that, and in a universe like this 'cartoon logic' would be enough, but it's still something to think about.

like...how do cogs go about having kids, anyways? all instances we see are visually similar as well. cathal has the same gear for his neck as allan's body does, and they have the same head lightbulbs and wires. bobby jr and robert are both furniture.

i've always assumed that it's like in robots (the movie, that i havent watched in years which would be helpful for all this, probably.) if you decide to have a child just for the experience of raising a child, to have a legacy, or due to a bond with a partner - you literally just build one. perhaps not in the same way as in the movie - in here it definitely requires more paperwork and blueprints. but again, it's interesting to think about! hey company i want a CHILD. i look like this build them like me thanks here's some blueprints. (this also explains the amount of single parents. though belle has to have been married/is married as her honorific is listed as mrs. hey fun fact, non native english speaker here. i didnt know 'mrs' means a lady is married until like this year. i've been on this earth for 19 years.)

like the concept of family is possibly just more social there than anything. duh... can't exactly have the same oil and wires inside of you as Robots .

anyways, so that explains kids... but what about the others? some cogs don't have any families mentioned but it's not hard to assume they come from families with parents and siblings as well. what about the employee cogs? who are quite literally very disposable in a way?

we do have to take into account that after all, employee cogs we see just on and about on the streets are mostly a game mechanic, and there are some individual cogs who ARE cogs who would typically be employees cogs. (jennifer comes to mind first, she's a micromanager but also a secretary and counts as a manager. same goes for judy and so forth.)

and y'know, the game won't have a personality and backstory for each random flunky on the streets you fight. but with often they get destroyed and repaired and that there's just... so many of them! of the same model and appearance... makes you think. is that why they were made? are they truly more robotic than the others, more devoid of 'humanity'? or were they different cogs, perhaps more lower class, who's appearances were changed entirely to fit into more easily fixable and replaceable shell forms? something that's less expensive for the company and for them? i swear i am missing some details on this, but that's for me to re read the wiki and cogs ink for on my own later. (i need to have full info n everything and if i dont bring up that i know one small detail i will explode bc someone will bring it up and make me feel dumb and that's the rsd part and it's often physically painful!)

very hard to tell, i'm sort of content with my thoughts on how cogs have kids, but i hope we ever get a bit more clarity on employee cogs - though it is a bit problematic as these are the guys you beat up on the daily who don't have individual personalities.

like i'm just rambling as i go here man, it was gonna be cohesive but i'm just spitting thoughts here now. like, we have 3 seperate skelecog types - all cogs come with a skelecog like we have a skeleton so that also comes into play. it can be adjusted in ways, most notably the head and also in size. though we do have a 4 arm cog. jason please i love you /p we need more jason content. it's wacky, it's tacky - it's toontown!

fun stuff to think about but i just deep fried my brain. tdlr i guess.

how cogs made. how cogs have kids. how cogs work in general. very swag very cool. guzma cathal spades spamtongender goes on 1568854 different tangents while saying they wont aka your swagesty your adhd symptoms are showing

that's it fellas enjoy 2k words of incomprehensible rambles that i am happy to finally get out! you see the way i explain things is precisely why i almost never do it publicly and i need practice shortening things.

#long post #rambles #hcs #its very all over the place its not meant to be streamline but if i made a genuine post about this id never get to it #bc its too much effort and id see it as a chore and not me just autistically rambling about toontown stuff #im prolly forgetting stuff but... dont bring it up at least not for now please - maybe later!#or tell me about it phrased as a question! like yes ask me abt stuff but maybe make it smaller questions/one question at a time bc i wont #know where to start #BUT!! theres stuff i know about but just didnt think to mention or i forgot as i got increasingly more tired writing this because yeag

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eryiss · 10 months

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Summary: When one dates a superhero, he accepts danger into his life. When one designs costumes for superhero’s, he accepts danger into his life. When one does both, he best be able to protect himself. The question is: when it comes to it, can Freed Justine protect himself? Laxus wished he could be sure.

Notes: Hello all. Just because superheroes didn’t get chosen in the prompts, it doesn’t mean I can’t write one. Again, very self indulgent, so enjoy. Make sure to check out @fuckyeahfraxus for other event posts.

Links: Ao3, Event Masterlist

The World at Their Feet

July - 2023

"You know, we have a perfectly usable elevator."

Freed pushed open the glass doors to his office balcony, hair flowing back as the wind struck him. On the ninetieth floor, it was a crisp and battering gust which typically rendered the balcony functionally pointless. Freed had considered building it up and extending his office into the space, but every once in a while, a situation like this would arise where the balcony proved its worth. With the doors open, the occupant of the balcony walked in.

Raijin, as he was publicly known, was a monolithic man. He stood tall and broad in an ensemble of spandex and leather, a cape hanging limp around him. His hardened jaw and firm mouth were the only parts of his face not hidden behind a black mask. His shocking blonde hair was slicked back, and his piercing blue eyes hidden behind protection. Lighting popped and crackled around him, remnants from his last show of power that had landed him on the balcony to begin with. He walked with a straight back and a high held head; power personified.

"I think I'd stand out a little in an elevator," Raijin said, voice warped by a modulator. "And it's fun scaring you."

"You don't scare me, dear man. You irritate me," Freed scolded. "Now. Show me the damage, will you?"

Raijin complied, stepping onto a small circular platform in the middle of the room. Bright lights hit him from all angles, bathing him in harsh brightness. He raised his arms, allowing Freed to circle him, glasses perched on his nose and a frown contorting his face. Raijin's laugh was as warped as his words, and Freed's gaze snapped to his own.

"Care to share the joke?"

"Just funny how pissed off you get at me."

"So you do this to my work on purpose? Are my reactions worth it?"

"Definitely. But I don't do it on purpose."

Freed tutted and didn't show whether or not he believed him. His eyes looked Raijin up and down with keen assessment. His suit, which had just been finalised mere months ago, was unrecognisable. There were burns, rips, stains and scents radiating off it that Freed really didn't wish to know the origins of. It had taken Freed a whole month to make this suit as flexible, as protective and as flattering at it was. Now, after whatever ridiculous situation Raijin had gotten himself into, it was hardly worth wearing at all.

With a sniff of annoyance, Freed approached the superhero and removed the mask from his face. Gone was Raijin, replaced by Laxus Dreyar. He was a little battered and a little bruised, and his cocky façade was quickly replaced by a genuine smile. Freed, as he always did, melted at that smile. He leant forward and cupped Laxus' cheek, kissing him gently.

They didn't speak for a while, a well-rehearsed routine. While Laxus being in Freed's office was a rarity, the personal side of their relationship meant that Freed often saw the change from Laxus to Raijin, and vice versa. Laxus always needed time to adjust, to come to terms with whatever he'd done throughout the day. About a month into dating Laxus, Freed had realised the best thing to do was to let Laxus decompress and think through the day, and not speak until he was ready. It was unconventional, but it worked.

Freed got to work as Laxus closed his eyes. In one of the many closets, Freed pulled out a small metal belt. It was a dark black, with a small, unassuming button on the side. With a glance over his shoulder, he saw Laxus' posture had relaxed. He would be ready to speak soon, so Freed walked back to his desk and sat behind it, waiting for Laxus to be done.

"I guess you wanna know what happened?" Laxus asked, voice teasing. It had been a good day, then.

"Why you destroyed a work of art, you mean?" Freed admonished. "Yes, I very much would like to know what happened."

Laxus gave him an abridged version of the day's events. The day had begun in a 24-hour diner, where customers and staff alike were being held up by a group of gunmen. Raijin had stormed in, shot bolts of lightning at their guns and rendered them useless. The gunmen acted in a panic and tossed both hot coffee and a large cauldron of tomato soup at Raijin. It hadn't hurt him, of course, but it had stained the fabric and left it stinking.

Next, a knife fight had broken out in the streets. Raijin had gotten in the middle of them both and promptly knocked them both out, but not before they cut through the spandex and left a few nicks in Laxus' skin.

Finally, Raijin had stormed into the base of a crime syndicate that he'd been following for a few months. The groups boss had finally been seen in Magnolia and Raijin knew that he had a short period of time to act. He's crashed into the warehouse in a hail of lightning and thunder. The syndicate has been semi prepared, with acid blasting weapons that didn't slow Raijin down, but certainly left his suit in a mess. Burn marks and sizzling fabric were the only thing left of the group by the time Laxus was done with them.

Freed allowed Laxus to finish his retelling of the day before he sighed and leant forward. "And what, I dread to ask, is that."

Laxus followed Freed's gaze to his right foot. He flushed a little and mumbled. "I don't wanna tell ya."

"I recommend that you do."

"I landed in the park," Laxus muttered. Freed gestured for him to go on. "The police had their horse patrol out."

"Oh don't tell me it's-"

"Horse crap? Yeah. I landed in horse crap!"

"Face first, perhaps?"

"No. Just my right foot," Laxus' eyes widened. "Do I have horse crap on my-"

"No no. Just wishful thinking. It would have been karmically appropriate after what you did to my masterpiece," Freed huffed, standing up. He pushed a button in his desk which shuttered all the blinds and crossed his arms. "Well, it's no longer usable. Take it off."

"That's another thing. One of the assholes with a knife hit the belt," Laxus gestured to his belt, which would have been identical to the one Freed had just retrieved from his closet, if it weren't for the big slash halfway through. "The retraction mechanism isn't working. Could you help me out."

Freed put on a show of thinking, then shook his head. "No, take it off yourself. This will be your penance."

Laxus groaned, then looked down at his suit. With a resigned sigh, a final look of pleading aimed at Freed, he began to peel the fabric off himself. It was an inelegant and laughable show, the tightness of the fabric not designed for easy disrobing.

Each of Freed's superhero suits had a secret, they were made out of nano bots that took on the properties of any fabric required. The belt, when pushed, would bring forth the suit and fit it onto the person within a second without the need for actually changing. Once the superhero was done, they pushed the button on the belt again and the suit retracted and was replaced by a civilian outfit that suited their specific style. As such, Freed rarely put much thought into how easy it was to change into and out of in normal circumstances. That was why Laxus was struggling so much in getting his broad shoulders through a hole designed to stretch to the size of a neck.

After about a minute of struggling, Freed heard Laxus mutter a quiet 'fuck this' before tearing the chest of the suit open. It ripped under his strength and fell to the floor, leaving him naked and with a glare on his face. Freed met him with a smile.

"I've had dreams where you did that," Freed mused. "And quite a few nightmares. You'd be influenced by an evil force; you'd destroy my work intentionally then try to kill me."

"Yer funny," Laxus grunted. "You got anything that'll fit me. I ain't flying home naked."

"I've got civilian clothes for you and a replacement suit waiting," Freed assured him. "Though, perhaps you should use my shower before you leave. The scents have mingled and not into something pleasant."

Laxus nodded and walked to the small bathroom attached to Freed's office, kissing Freed on the cheek as he passed him. Freed smiled and sat at his workbench, placing the belt around a mannequin that was Laxus' exact body type. He pushed the button and the newest form of Raijin's costume sprung out. It was a golden and white ensemble: a new pallet for a new era of Raijin's identity. He had started off in the shadows, but now wore his heroics proudly. Raijin was a beacon of hope, and now he would be dressed like one.

Although, Freed really wished he could convince Laxus to ditch the cape: a fur lined monstrosity. It was impractical, garish, and – if Freed were honest with himself – hid Laxus' ass. There were only negatives to it, but Laxus insisted.

"Shit," Laxus whistled as he walked out of the bathroom a few minutes later, towel wrapped around his waist. "It looks great. You've been busy."

"I intended it to be your birthday gift, but needs must," Freed shrugged.

He retracted the suit back into the belt and tossed it to Laxus. Laxus dropped his towel and put on the belt, pushing the button immediately. The costume covered his bulk, and he experimentally took a few steps. With a grin, he dropped to the ground and did a few sit ups, testing the flexibility. He obviously seemed satisfied.

"More flexible than the last."

"I've been experimenting," Freed waved the compliment off. "I was thinking we could have take-out tonight. I don't feel like cooking, and I doubt you do…"

Freed's face had fallen as he looked at his computer monitor, and Laxus took a step forward. "What?"

"Invaders," Freed said, voice dropped of all mirth as he slammed a hand on a small button under his desk.

Metal sheets clanked down over the windows and all exterior doors. A warning began playing in the earpiece of everyone in the building, informing them to get to a safe zone if they could, and how to survive a threat if they couldn't. He wordlessly picked up Laxus' mask from the desk and tossed it at him. Laxus adorned it without complain, turning back to Raijin within a moment. His posture straightened and lightning danced across him.

Freed himself took a single strand of dark purple fabric and slowly wrapped it around his hand, as if readying himself for a bare-knuckle fight. Raijin caught sight of this and stepped forward, grabbing Freed by the wrist.

"Stay here," He ordered.

"No."

"You can't stop a bullet with a punch, Freed."

"Perhaps you can't. I can."

Freed snatched his hand out of Raijin's grasp and continued to wrap the fabric around his right hand, walking towards the door of his office. He pushed the button to the intercom and spoke into it, his voice echoing around the building from every speaker.

"Dear intruders, I give you a warning," He taunted, and Raijin growled. What the hell was wrong with the man? "You are not to touch a single one of my employees. Not one of them. You will find that I am the most valuable asset in this building, and you will find me on the top floor. I have opened all elevators and you can come and try to retrieve me at your pleasure. Or you can drop each of your weapons, place your hands on your heads, and stand in the room to the left of the reception. A gas will be released that knocks you out until the proper authorities have you in custody."

"Fucks sake," Raijin whispered. "Stop goading them."

"And, let me reiterate this," Freed continued, ignoring Raijin entirely. "If you hurt a single one of my employees, I will make the rest of your lives a living hell. Do not test me."

Freed stepped away from the intercom and stared Raijin down, who was radiating anger. "What the hell was that?"

"We can defend ourselves. My receptionists, accountants and office workers might not be able to," Freed shrugged. He clicked on the monitors that showed the cctv, and saw a hoard of gunmen piling into elevators and climbing the stairs.

"We? Freed, these guys are gonna kill ya. You can win a fight one on one, but you ain't like me. You won't last."

"We'll see."

Raijin growled, then reached back. He used his lightning on the new suit, tearing off the cape and letting it drop to the floor. He heard Freed's sound of displeasure – dammit, why was he more annoyed at that than his likely death? – and felt his patience snap. He stormed over to Freed and wrapped him up in the cape; it was bulletproof and would offer Freed some protection.

"You're an idiot."

"You're a patronising ass," Freed bit back.

Before their domestic could move further, the doors to the office were pushed open and gunfire split the quiet. Raijin stood in front of Freed on instinct, and at least Freed was quick to duck behind the cape to avoid the hailstorm of bullets. They bounced off both the cape and Raijin's new suit. Raijin narrowed his eyes as he looked over the six or so men, armed with machine guns and looks of outraged determination. He didn't know who they were or what they wanted with Freed, but they couldn't fucking have him.

The second their bullets stopped, Laxus sprang forward propelled with lighting. Faster than any human should be able to move, he danced between them delivering lightning infused punches to their throats, stomachs, and heads. They fall to the floor and Raijin blasted their weapons with heavy lightning, burning through them.

"Who the hell do you work for?" Raijin demanded of the only man still conscious.

"Someone with a grudge," The man spat, wearing a blood splattered smile. He looked towards Freed with a grin. "But not for much longer."

Raijin turned in time to see a single gunman ducked behind Freed's desk. He must have snuck in as his teammates were filling the room with bullets. He had a simple pistol aimed directly at Freed, and he was grinning a manic smile. Raijin stood, but the man spoke before he could act. "Move, and I'll kill him."

"Good luck with that," Freed taunted.

Raijin didn't have the same confidence. He'd been in enough of these situations to know when someone was serious about this threat, and this man would kill Freed without a second thought. Raijin slowly turned to the man and relaxed his body slightly, trying to look none imposing. This was not a hostage negotiation.

"We can do this without anyone dying," Raijin said carefully. "Just tell us-"

Freed lurched forward the man the man, and the gun went off.

Laxus' heart jumped into his throat as he stormed forward, hoping desperately that the bullet had missed or had hit somewhere non vital. He saw Freed doubled over, and dread flooded him. Fuck, if he'd been shot in the chest then he would almost definitely be dead. Shit. Why the fuck hadn't Laxus gotten him out? Why hadn't he stopped him from getting to the intercom? Why hadn't he saved him?

Freed's laughter cut through the spiral of panic, and he looked up. Freed was doubled over, yes, but grinning almost madly. He slowly stood up, and Laxus watched in horror, expecting blood to be staining his Armani suit. But he didn't. He didn't see the suit at all. Instead, he saw ribbons of dark purple fabric wrapped around him.

With a flurry, Freed pushed his fist forward. It didn't reach the man, but it didn't need to. From his knuckles, tentacles from an Eldritch horror shot forward. They wrapped around the man, binding him tightly and lifting him off the ground. Freed moved and slammed the man into the window, glass shattering and metal shutters denting. He did it again and again, until the dent in the metal became a gaping hole. The tentacles squelched out, carrying the gunman with them. Laxus gaped as the tentacles retreated, without the gunman.

A moment later, the resounding thud and splash echoed through the city. He had fallen from the top of the skyscraper into the ornamental fountain below. He wouldn't have survived.

Laxus turned to Freed, eyes wide below the mask. "What the fuck?"

"I told you not to underestimate me."

"You can- why the hell didn't tell me you have powers?"

"I don't."

Laxus was ready to argue that point, but then saw a flash of purple cover Freed's right eye. He looked back to the ribbon of fabric wrapped around Freed's knuckles and realised what had happened. Freed had mentioned a few times over the past month that he was experimenting with more uses for his nano bots. Apparently, weaponry and eye controls were part of that.

Freed now stood tall, turning to the door for the next rush of gunmen. Coils of floating fabric wrapped around him, ready to strike and entirely under his control. His perfect suit and Laxus' cape billowed in the wind from the hole in the window.

"Fuck, I love you so goddamn much," Laxus whispered.

"Of course you do, I'm spectacular," Freed lowered his voice. "And if you love me now, you'll be proposing when you realise the treat I've put into that new suit."

"Treat?"

"It vibrates and massages you in strategic places," Freed teased, and Laxus once again found himself wondering what the hell went on inside of Freed's mind. Whatever it was, Laxus loved it. "Now, back straight and mind focused. As much as I love exciting you, there are cameras in here and it's undignified to be seen fighting with an erection."

"You're an ass," Laxus laughed, but then became solemn for a moment. "But you are safe, yeah? No bullshit."

"I'm as safe as you. The fabric reacts instinctively and is as protective as everything I've made for you. I'm just as safe as you."

"Couldn't you make a suit for yourself?"

"I could, but I didn't. I haven't discovered my aesthetic yet," Freed grinned, and Laxus didn't know whether to laugh or shake some sense into him. "Although, the tentacles seemed to be the obvious choice. Perhaps some kind of lovecraftian visage is what I need. What do you think?"

"I think you're insane," Laxus mumbled.

They didn't have time to speak further, because every elevator shot open, and the room flooded with men with guns. The initial rush was nothing compared to what came forward. There were countless masked men, carrying weapons of all sorts, each with bloodlust dancing in their eyes. Freed's taunting must have pissed them off, because Laxus doubted a single one of them would hesitate to kill if given the chance.

But this time, Laxus wasn't worried. He trusted Freed. He was a cocky son of a bitch but had enough sense to know his own limits. If Freed wasn't backing down, it was because he could win.

Side by side, they fought together. Laxus unleashed a hell of lightning onto the men, while ribbons of fabrics and coiling tentacles shot up and threw them around the room. The sound of gunfire got ever quieter as one by one; the men fell.

It was almost an anticlimax. So many men with so many bullets, and yet it could have only lasted two minutes before each of them were knocked out or tied up beyond any movement. Freed and Laxus stood side by side, panting as exhaustion began to take over. Freed strode through the discarded bullets that covered the floor and flicked the cctv monitors to the exterior cameras and hissed as he saw a small group of gunmen who had been locked out of the building. They had congregated by the front door and had a few passers-by at gunpoint. Laxus looked over Freed's shoulders and spoke lowly.

"How good are you with heights?"

"My shock absorbers are as good as yours."

Laxus watched as fabric wrapped tight around Freed's feet and legs. They grinned at each other for a second before running through the hole in the shutters and jumping off the building. They landed side by side in a superhero pose, the pavement cracking under their weight.

Fabric flew and lighting thundered, and the gunmen were taken care of within a second. Cameras flashed, and Laxus switched back into his Raijin persona, who played up to the cameras in a way Laxus never would himself. As he flexed – quietly feeling like an idiot but knowing it would throw anyone off the scent of who he was – he saw Freed contorting his fabrics to hide his face.

The hostages cried their thanks, the shutters rose from the building, and the crime was stopped. All in all, a good day.

——

"And of course, the topic on everyone's mind, the mysterious man who fought by your side."

Freed watched with idle curiously as the reporter angled the microphone into Raijin's face. Raijin laughed, looking calm and suave in front of the camera despite Freed knowing how panicked it made Laxus feel. He sometimes felt bad for insisting Raijin should be such a public figure, but anyone who knew anything about Laxus would immediately dismiss the idea of him being so happy to be recorded.

"So, Raijin, who is this mysterious man? Partner in crime? A rival superhero? A lover perhaps?"

Raijin laughed, run a hand through his hair, and looked directly into the camera. "That was Albion," He said, and Freed could see mischievous delight in his eyes. "My sidekick."

Freed gaped, leaning forward. He tapped his earpiece, which opened a communication link to the earpiece in Raijin's suit. He spoke clearly and darkly, eyes trained on the live feed of Raijin's interview. "I am no man's sidekick, Laxus Dreyar. And make no mistake, you will regret saying it."

On the screen, Laxus' smirk got even more smug. "Well, he's my sidekick for now. He still has to prove himself. He's kind of a brat."

"You are so going to regret this," Freed promised.

Laxus laughed on the screen and got an odd look from the journalist. Freed sighed and resigned himself to his sidekick fate. It could be worse; at least he'd gotten rid of Laxus' cape.

#Fraxus Week 2023 #Fraxus Week #Fraxus #Freed Justine #Laxus Dreyar #Fairy Tail #Fanfic #Writing #One Shot #Writing Event #Modern AU #Superhero AU

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citroenaficionado · 4 months

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Blog post 2023

One year ago, at the end of 2022, I created a time capsule in video form. About 15 minutes ago, when I was lying in bed hoping to fall asleep early in order to not lose too much sleep tonight (as I will most likely want to wake up extremely early in the morning), I decided to make a blog post this year, at the end of 2023 (cutting it extremely close mind you, which is typical of course).

So much has happened and so much has changed this year, I can't remember al of it. I can't even remember most of it. I've spent an abnormally large amount of time the last few months thinking about what happened when and what started when and trying to get a grip on a timeline in my head.

Of all the things that changed, I might have changed the most, giving much more significance to my 18th birthday than most. Of course it wasn't a sudden change, although it did feel quite sudden. I was a buildup of tons of vicious cycles and time itself running a young boy around. I'm still a young boy on the inside for the record, and I'm sure I still don't look like a man on the outside yet (no, thank you).

There actually was a moment, a moment I had planned, from which things could have changed very sudden, if I had let it happen, if I had made it happen. But I'm glad I didn't, in hindsight.

Woah- Deja vu... I have a feeling I wrote something like that before, with Tumblr being the colour scheme it is now (canary, because lemons), and me deciding to click off and discard the draft. Possibly that happened in a dream?... Deja vu is still a mystery to me.

The moment (that didn't happen, for the record) is quite personal to me, so I doubt whether I should put it publicly on the internet for everyone to see. It was that exactly one year after I asked a group of friends to form a - "student group" shall we call it? - with me (which ran it's course and was disbanded because another took its place), I would ask that group of friends whether they wanted to be friends (with me) again.

In hindsight I think that gradually entering that circle of friends was a better option than dramatically asking to. And so that is one of the few occasions for which I'm glad I only speak out if I find the perfect moment, a character trait which often is unhelpful when you want to be social, by the way.

I didn't want to start the blog on that moment actually, I wanted to either attempt a chronological list or talk about recent events, as in the past three days. I don't know how long it took you to read until here, but I started roughly 45 minutes ago. I'm slow like that.

In the month of my birthday there was a sports day I have a fond memory from, I don't remember the exact words that were said but they made me feel helpful and I liked being helpful and the memory is something I've referenced before (not on this blog obviously).

Around that time was when I really started wanting to break from the cycle of every day feeling the same without progress towards anything. I asked for a notepad and pen(cil) for my birthday that I was planning to bring with me from then onwards to write stuff in. Those who know me well know which little book I'm referring to.

Though I don't remember any example right now, I was starting to try to be more social around that time. Then the summer holidays happened. And something weird happened. From the past holidays (before that summer) I had concluded that I did not like traveling and going on holiday. And I really didn't want to go anymore. But against better judgement I went anyway.

And looking back I'm definitely glad I did. Because I learned that I strongly dislike physical labour when money is the only goal I am working towards. And I learned that there are people out there who I actually really like being around. 'Introvert' and 'extrovert' have become meaningless to me, because it depends entirely on who I am around and how I am feeling.

The end of the summer holidays, although I slightly doubt it, might have been the first time I actually had the feeling of "I'm going to miss this person" aimed towards a human being. Before then I had always been more of an animal person. I remember that at the start of the summer holidays I had already changed, because someone who knew me well mentioned it.

I tried to bring this social change with me back to school, but failed horrendously, getting hit with all of the problems being in the last year of highschool gives you. I don't remember exactly what happened, probably because not much out of the ordinary happened, but after a couple of days I gave up. And I gave up hard.

I decided to stop trying. And to just focus on school. This is getting personal again and it is getting late (22:22 ha) so my brain is slowing down, sorry for any inconveniences caused. I have written about this before, in a script for a video I never finished, so I want to keep this relatively short.

Everyday, I would come into class, sit alone in the front, be the first to leave when the bell rang, and I would not go to the aula in the break. Instead I would wander round the building or go to a study area or something. Being in the aula became overwhelming and the noise scared me away. Only in two lessons would I sit next to someone, and only then because I didn't want to make my old friends worried about how I was.

After five school days of keeping this up I started wearing a paper bracelet to school on which I kept track of how many school days I had been like this. I have also referenced to this bracelet before. I still have this bracelet on my shelf beside me now, the numbers on it span from 6 to 15. It was hard to know when to stop.

After an Earth science project that I was looking up against included a nice conversation with a friend and a trip home with four people that I wanted to be friends with (taking that ferry instead of waiting for the one after was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I didn't hesitate to take it too when I saw them actually boarding it), I took off the bracelet. I hoped it was the end. Of course the next school day went badly again so I kept it on for a couple of days more, but it didn't take long before I- forgot to put the bracelet on one day. And to be perfectly honest, that is a perfect ending to the whole thing and a typical example of me, really.

Then (or around that time) Operation Friendship started (yes I called it that). I gradually started sitting next to people in lessons instead of on my own all the time. I made a list of everyone who I wanted to become friends with or get to know better (writing this makes me feel so embarrassed) as well as ranked them on how much I had talked to them or how well they knew me so far. It lasted a surprising two months before I finally wrote down in my notebook that OpFr was discontinued in order for me to focus on the friends I already had at that point.

Do not make the mistake of thinking I never questioned what I was doing. There are plenty of times that I wondered whether what I was doing counted as something a psychopath would do. And there were plenty of times where I was tempted to shut OpFr down before I finally actually did.

Anyway, one of the people whose name I wrote down but never actually got to talk properly with is someone I'll call target Kela. The reason I bring Kela up is because of the first half of 2023, before the summer holidays. I kind of feel like that storyline is unfinished though, if you know what I mean? Maybe I still find it too personal to talk about Kela...

I'll move on to recently instead. In the beginning it was really hard being part of two friend groups, every time I moved from one to the other it felt like I was abandoning one for the other. Now it still feels off, but it's tolerable and I don't think anybody judges me for it. That's one of the things that changed over a smaller vacation.

The other thing that changed is how I perceive the world, which suddenly changed back to how it was before I merged into a "new" friend group and only then did I realise that how I felt had been different in the first place. Suddenly I was back to my old socially scared self, but then with more friends and with memories and pre-made plans for me of who to befriend next (/exaggeration).

It's been weird, thinking about the past and where I am now, but I need to wrap this up now as in less than fourty minutes it will be 2024!

A couple of days ago was my first time playing D&D, which is notable because I have been interested in D&D for almost a year and ten months. Afterwards I was frustrated with myself for how it went, but I've already vented those feelings so I won't do that here. Yesterday I was still in a really bad mood so even walking for two and a half hours and having a house to myself didn't change anything.

Today we did the floor of my room, in one day instead of two, even though I was tired the whole way through. And tonight I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep early so I could wake up after the fireworks and be mentally active at three in the morning. But then I got the idea to do this!

I guess that means that my idea hyping brain is working again, so that's good. I originally had the idea of reacting to my time capsule video from last year and turning that into a video of it's own, which I could still do, but there is so much I could still do, and there is so much I should still do.

There is probably a ton of stuff I forgot to say and a ton of stuff I will remember not long after having posted this. But if you read all of this, first of all, who are you? and second of all, why did you just read *that* much text willingly?

-Aaaand my sibling just came in and completely halted my train of thought. Happy 2024!

Edit 1 (at 00:33): I completely forgot to say that part of the reason I got the idea to do this is because I realised when I was lying there that I missed people. And I really didn't often miss people in the past. Talking to a friend in a voice channel helps a lot temporarily, but I generally dislike holidays nowadays because I rarely see friends during them.

Second thing I completely forgot to mention is the memory right before the summer holidays of being at the graduation ceremony and seeing the people of the "student group" (who now I would say are my friends) being super happy in a group photo together. I stood and smiled from the sidelines. :')

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shion-yu · 7 months

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Day 5 - Kidnapping

Rey backstory. Haven’t posted my writing publicly in literal years but here goes nothing, Whumptober 2023. Am using the @ailesswhumptober's prompt list. This story is an intro to my OC Rey - here’s his profile if you’re so inclined: https://toyhou.se/23741197.rey

TWs: Minor whump (Rey is 15 here), mentioned death

How long had it been since he left home? It felt like years, though in reality it had only been a few weeks. He'd been so desperate to get away, to see the world and everything there was to explore beyond the high palace walls of Almacen - but now all he wanted was to go back home. Marriage, which once seemed like the worst thing in the world, now sounded thoroughly more appealing. It probably wouldn't have been so bad, he thought to himself with a pang of guilt. Ilsa was a nice girl. But Rey didn't understand why he had to get married when he wasn’t even going to succeed the throne. His sister, Mira, was first in line. They were twins, but it only made sense that the smarter, stronger, more adept of the pair would be chosen. That didn't bother Rey; it never had. What bothered him was being touted around as a political tool, no matter what his opinion was. In hindsight, he thought, maybe his parents had just wanted him not to be lonely.

He’d fallen for a trick as old as time. A decrepit beggar on the street asked Rey to help him get across town and Rey, ever a bleeding heart, had fallen for it. As soon as they were off the main path a group of men pounced on him from the bushes that lined the road. He was bound and gagged, tied at the wrists and ankles. He stayed like that for a week in a cage so small he couldn’t sit up straight, until he was sold for a decent price to the scientists who provided Rey with a new “home”. A dark, damp dungeon at the bottom of a long staircase with no windows. Without any natural light, the only indication that days were passing at all was because each morning the scientists would clamber down those echoey stone stairs and drag one or two of their subjects away to experiment on.

Rey wasn’t the first, nor was he the last child to be taken for the scientists’ questionable purposes. They were all given a number: Rey was number 6 of 10 children that eventually were crammed into that cold hell hole. Each child was injected with a serum that, from what they could gather, was meant to intensify any small amount of inborn talent for power. The purpose was to force these children to manifest these powers and then use them as living weapons. For Rey, that was the power to heal, a brilliant win for the scientists who realized they could now push the children far past their natural limits because Rey would be able to keep them alive. However his power was not natural to him, it was a bastardized version of something that he may have been able to bring forth only with intensive meditation had he not been forced. As a result, healing others brought Rey great pain himself. That didn’t matter to him, though; he could bear the pain. He used his powers as instructed because his friends’ lives depended on it.

As the eldest of the group of children, and also the one keeping them all alive, Rey felt like he had to be a leader to them. He told them each day that they’d get out of here, no doubt about it. They’d see their families again, their friends and animals. He refused to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, this was a fate worse than death. Giving up wasn’t an option, not while there were still other people to be strong for.

But eventually, over two years that seemed to drip by like molasses, his last companion had died. He was all alone. Rey’s body could no longer withstand the demand and he was falling apart himself. He had tried his best to keep them all alive, but in the end it was useless. He was alone now and had no reason left to live. He lay motionless on the ground, the dirt below him zapping what little warmth his body could naturally produce away.

One of the scientists came down and grabbed Rey by the elbow, pulling him up. “March,” he said as he always did when instructing him to go up the stairs. Rey didn’t move. There was nothing worse they could do to him for disobeying than had already happened, he figured. The scientist shouted at him a few more times and tugged, but Rey remained limp. He was thrown to the ground with a scowl and the scientist stalked back up the stairs, leaving him alone again. Rey could hear his own breathing in his ears, and each exhale felt like it was laden with guilt. He just wanted to die now... It had been years. No one was going to rescue him, not after all this time.

He wasn’t sure how long he lay there - hours, days - when he heard a loud crack of the gates at the top of the stairs opening. Then there was some shouting and several thudding noises. Suddenly, at the foot of the steps, a boy only slightly older than Rey himself lay unconscious. Rey crawled towards him slowly. There had been no new prisoners since the initial wave of captives, so why now...? Then he remembered what the scientist had said as he unsuccessfully tried to convince Rey to move earlier. “Little brat, need a new job to keep you distracted do you?”

This new cellmate... It was his fault. Rey felt sick with panic. Someone else had been kidnapped just to keep him motivated. Someone who had a home to go back to, just like he himself had once upon a time. He could barely remember the faces of his parents, now. Rey’s stomach clenched and he put his hands over the other boy’s chest. Was he playing into what the scientists wanted exactly - to stay alive for the sake of keeping others alive? Maybe. But Rey couldn’t just let someone else die in front of him when he could help it. And so, the vicious cycle began again.

#ShionWrites #oc: Rey #ailesswhumptober2023 #ailesswhumptoberday5 #ailesswhumptober #day 5 #whump #kidnapping #minor whump #torture #male whump #angst

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konnfusion · 1 year

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You've tagged so many cool posts with Odessa that I'm officially intrigued, I would love to hear about her!

I hope you're okay that I posted this publicly because you're the first person to ask about OC lore in quite some time, and I am ECSTATIC!

I will put a "read more", however, as I tend to ramble, and will mostly assume anyone reading this knows something about Doctor Who.

so a brief tldr; primer is that about a decade or so ago, my now-husband and I were intensely into Doctor Who and did a very cheesy, self-indulgent (pretty poorly-written but fun) RP here on tumblr with a companion character I'd created traveling with the Tenth Doctor. cut to now in 2023, and he's fully back into DW (classic and new), and dragged me along with him. I'd been reworking this character I'd created off-and-on for years (changing her name, her faceclaim, backstory, everything; I just felt like she deserved an update as my writing developed and improved!), and now that the hyperfixation is back in full swing, so is she.

pinterest board for vibe check // story pinterest board with working title for extra vibe check // said posts I've tagged with her name

basically, Odessa is a young woman living in an isolated cottage in the countryside following personal turmoil (including the mysterious and untimely death of her parents and possibly leaving a man at the altar, her neighbors are unsure about that last part; she's a little bit of a "champagne problems" gal), and barely has any contact with anyone. she's just chosen to shut herself up for whatever time she has left on Earth, and tend to her garden and books and be alone until she dies.

but, on her way home from a trip to town one day, her bike runs into a big blue police box that definitely hadn't been on this rural dirt before, and there's man nearby who says he's investigating some strange, not-of-Earth communication signals in the area. I won't give all the details since we're intending to publish portions of this at some point (I hope!), but she decides to help The Doctor find the source of the signals and hopefully stop whatever's going on before it can hurt anyone. it turns out the mystery is linked to her and to the death of her parents, and shines a new light on the tragedy and on her decision to live an isolated, quiet life alone. so, when they've deal with the threat and The Doctor invites her to travel through time and space with him, she agrees. might've been a little bit of a "Getaway Car" situation in the beginning, but developed into something so, so much bigger.

we've been planning lots of original adventures with her, as well as some stuff that adds her into canon episodes, all going through the end of Ten's run, through Eleven's, and into Twelve's and beyond. and, yes, she does get to find romance because I am a romantic at heart, so how can I resist?

there's so much I love about her that I wish I could put into concrete words, but I recently realized that the arc I'd been writing for her was seeing her start as someone who decided to lock away her love because all she ever did was lose the things she loved; to grow into someone who forged this huge, time-and-space-spanning family that she could love unabashedly and wholeheartedly. sort of a coming-of-age out of linear time, and one that she never got to have because she just always felt stuck in the same place (derogatory). she gets the chance to fight to protect the things she cares about, and be openly who she is without fear of judgement or shame--and feel like she matters in her own life. (I do like to joke, though, that she locked away her love because, for her, all love does is end, but then she fell in love with someone who is functionally immortal, so did she really ever unpack that fear? it's sweet, though, I promise.)

it's been fun morphing her into a character that sometimes is just so unapologetically weird, too. I mean, to travel with a centuries-old alien through all of time and space, you have to be a little weird, but I feel like I just poured all my wonderful weird into her and let her run wild. (and this is the first post I tagged her in during this little revisiting, SO. this somewhat references a plot point that my husband doesn't even know about yet, but that will be deliciously angsty and link back to Odessa and The Doctor's very first meeting.) it's been really satisfying to rework a character I've had in my back pocket for a decade and feel like she's more fully-realized, even if just in my own head. less of an avatar, and more of an actual character with needs and an arc. (an actual character who has a proclivity for going after Daleks with a baseball bat and relates a little too hard to the bridge of "Mastermind", but I digress.)

it's also been so gratifying revisiting a story that my now-husband and I were working on in the very beginnings of our friendship, and develop the romance plot from just romance to eventually a marriage between two characters we both really love. hell, we've already formed a spin-off AU, and one-off adventures with different incarnations of The Doctor outside of their shared linear timeline. (one of my husband's creations is a story where she's put on trial for perceived "crimes" against the known universe, and for being accessory to "crimes" committed by The Doctor. we love a chaotic woman wanted for multiple violations against the space-time continuum. ✨)

as I'm re-reading this, it feels kind of vague for how much lore I have in my brain, but honestly sometimes it's like when someone asks what your favorite movie is, and you suddenly forget every movie you've ever seen. 😅 I'm always so, so happy to talk about my characters (and their pinterest boards and playlists and such), please feel free to ask me to elaborate on anything if you're still curious!!! 💕 Odessa is a constantly-shifting, ever-developing, total-failed-misanthrope-beause-her-heart-is-just-too-big, time-traveling madwoman in my mind, and I love her so, so much and love that you reached out to ask about her!!!

#ask #kaijueiga #oc talk #odessa #text #anyone is always welcome to ask about my OCs oh my god I could make powerpoint presentations on all of them #like I am geeking right now this ask has made my whole day!!!!

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