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fresh-bag-of-ham · 6 months

Note

Wait sorry could you elaborate a little about that housing post? My experience (heavily influenced by college towns to be clear) has been that landlord corporations will buy up single family homes quickly for cash, which means that 1) there is a shortage of housing for people who want to purchase homes rather than rent, 2) the landlord companies are extremely predatory and rent to students charging them each $$$$ to live there no matter how many people are living in the house, and 3) building new housing, including multifamily apartments, does nothing to fix this because it's built by developer corporations that set ridiculously high rents and don't care if many of the units are unoccupied. I can see how the proposed legislation would do nothing but shift who's getting screwed over, but I don't see how "build more housing" on its own actually fixes the root issue if the new housing is just as expensive + it's still the predatory landlord companies owning everything. But I also don't know very much about this outside of my general observations.

Yes, I can elaborate!

There's a shortage of housing for everyone in the US, period, which is making the housing that does exist more valuable, period. This makes owning a rental property a great investment (super low vacancy rate!), and it also makes buying a condo purely as somewhere to stash your money for a while a great investment (price almost guaranteed to be higher when you sell it later!). All this competition does make it harder for people who want to buy a home just to live in themselves, but the investors they're competing against are reacting ""rationally"" to a general scarcity that already exists.

College towns, because of the relatively fixed base demand of students needing places to live close to campus, are unfortunately really prone to predatory landlords -- I mean, I was in college 2006-2010 when the housing bubble burst and there was basically no effect on student rent prices. All 25,000 of us students were still all competing for the same scrubby rental houses.

[much elaboration below the cut...]

What does affect the student housing prices is changing land use code to allow mid-rise apartment buildings. The new housing was expensive, top of the market, sure, but buildings are crazy expensive to build right now, and the building is also pretty nice. So suddenly the wealthiest 1,000 students are living in the brand new 20-story building with the in-house pool and gym, and now there's only 24,000 students chasing the same scrubby rental houses. The effect on prices is far from immediate, but after a few mid-rise apartment buildings go up, after you get maybe 5,000 new units to the market, people have more options and the natural vacancy rate starts creeping up? The owners of the scrubbiest rental houses start to worry. With so many other options for renters, do they have to lower rents to compete? Fix up their units? Or do they have to sell off a couple properties, maybe the ones furthest from campus? Or do they have to get out of the business altogether?

This is overly simplified of course, and, depending on other factors, increasing housing supply might only result in less upward pressure on rent prices, but you can actually see all the 'how to get rich without working' passive income bros start to freak out in real time on twitter when a town where they own a small rental empire starts upzoning and issuing building permits, because what they're exploiting to make money is housing scarcity.

There are a couple of general ideas around this floating around in various states of exaggeration that are misrepresentations or distortions of reality. To address a couple...

youtube

This video addresses the idea that inspired the proposed legislation from a few days ago, the idea that the housing shortage is being caused by Wall Street investors buying up single-family homes.

This article is really important in addressing something you mentioned, the idea that landlords "don't care if many of the units are unoccupied". The number of unoccupied units, otherwise known as the vacancy rate (and its inverse, the occupancy rate), is something landlords care a lot about.

This in-depth report describes a relatively new company that offers landlords not just software, but access to a dataset of all rental rates in their area. Not just asking rents for available listed units, but all rents being charged for every unit. Using this dataset, the software recommends that landlords set their rents some amount higher and accept a (slightly) lower occupancy rate.

The company had been seeking occupancy levels of 97% or 98% in markets where it was a leader, Winn said. But when it began using YieldStar, managers saw that raising rents and leaving some apartments vacant made more money. “Initially, it was very hard for executives to accept that they could operate at 94% or 96% and achieve a higher NOI by increasing rents,” Winn said on the call, referring to net operating income. The company “began utilizing RealPage to operate at 95%, while seeing revenue increases of 3% to 4%.”

I feel like people are imagining a building with maybe 20% vacancy? Maybe 30% vacancy if you were imagining a particularly greedy landlord?? But this article describes a shift from 2-3% vacancy (basically enough to allow a short turnover period between tenants) to 5% vacancy. And even that, the landlords could hardly stomach at first! Because vacant units feels like leaving money on the table, it goes against all their business sense.

But a shift from 2-3% to 5% vacancy still takes some units off the market, right? Well, yes, but a) I wouldn't call that "many", and b) in the grand scheme of things it means waiting a couple more months between tenancies. That's certainly not good, but the far more devastating effect of this scheme is that a small increase in the vacancy rate is no longer a downward force on rent prices.

So let's say they've been operating at 98% occupancy, charging $1000/mo rent. To take in 4% more revenue at 95% occupancy, that's basically a 7% increase in rent, $1073/mo. At that price, for revenue to fall back to what they'd been making before at 98% occupancy (which presumably was enough to cover operating expenses), the occupancy would have to drop to 91%.

So where this company would previously only tolerate maybe a 3% vacancy before dropping rents to fill their available units, this company now would tolerate a 9% vacancy rate in theory. Because of the demand for housing being what it is they're operating at 5% vacancy and just raking in profits like they describe.

On the one hand, this is definitely a huge problem. This company's software has become incredibly prevalent among landlords across the country, and the DOJ is currently investigating this company for antitrust violations because of the data sharing and price-setting that this company/algorithm has enabled. So that's encouraging!

On the other hand, this whole scheme wouldn't even be possible if we didn't have a housing shortage to begin with. In a housing surplus, the first building to fall below their vacancy threshold would have to start lowering rents and leasing more units to cover the difference, those additional units on the market would start to increase vacancy rates in other buildings and they'd do the same thing, and the whole house of cards would collapse.

tl;dr: Yes, the new housing itself (without subsidies from every level of government to build an affordable housing development) will likely be top of the market (after all, it's brand new) but housing scarcity generally allows everybody to jack up rents and behave predatorily, even the landlords of the oldest and shittiest rentals, and the only counter against that that doesn't leave somebody out in the cold is to increase housing supply.

#i hope this helps explain #i'm not in the industry but i'm involved in a local pro-housing advocacy 'yimby' group so i read about this quite a bit #housing

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yourpalghost · 9 months

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ghost makes a quick and overly simplified resource time

so im trying to bind a fanfic thats like... 15K. thats like. Idk man i feel like that doesnt need to be a 8X5 book. like that can be 4X5 and it would be nice. and since my magic google-search powers apparently cant be used to my own benefit tonight, i figured this out the long way. so im gonna throw what ive figured out up here quickly.

so for a 32 page signature the usual order for off setting is N, 1, 2, N-1. N-2, 3,4, N-3. and so on until you have all 32 pages. this works for any signature length just replace N with your number. 32 is basically the standard though. I use 32 to 16 for my fic binds. depends on the length. anyway

this exact print order ONLY works if youre printing essentially half sheet sized pages (aka a total of 4 book pages per one printer page). A quarter sized book has a total of 8 pages on it so we gotta change how we do this.

We are going to write out our standard four page blocks and then label them a-h.

now we have to work with TWO page sets for each sheet of paper. the top will be our first set and the bottom will be our second. BUT our printers dont think like that, they think one whole side first and then the second. how do we figure this out so that we can print this? we split our crap up.

So our new order of printing is A, B, E, F and for the back C, D, G, H.

(Yes you could just to A, B, A, B and C, D, C ,D but thats too confusing for me)

Badabing badaboom, when you print this itll come out like youve got two dang pages, you cut along the shorter middle line to separate the top from the bottom and fold as you would your standard book.

if your entire fic or book is only 8 pages long then just this one sheet is all you need, congratulations. now for the stupid weird math situation to get this dumb shit sorted

So because i dont wann ahve to do unnecessary math, im just going to give you the list on how to print this out for 8, 16, and 32 pages. 8 Pages 8,1,6,3. 2,7,4,5.

16 Pages 16,1,14,3. 2,15,4,13. 12,5,10,7. 6,11,8,9.

32 pages 32,1,30,3. 2,31,4,29. 28,5,26,7. 6,27,8,25. 24,9,22,11. 10,23,12,21. 20,13,18,15. 14,19,16,17.

"But what if my fic is longer than 32 pages?" well brother, then you take those numbers? and you make the next set start with 33 and end with 64. and youll have to do the stupid N math type shit on your own. i can not find the name of what this actually is which is why i had to figure it out on my own. good luck. so 1=33, 32=64.

so its like. 64,33, 62, 35. And. 34, 63, 36, 61. and so on. OR you can save your thing in pages of 32 and NOT have to do that math.

You did it.

#ghost made this #ghost teaches stuff #tutorials #book binding #for major ammatures

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blackbird-brewster · 2 years

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Another CME thing: I actually am liking the JJ/Will work life balance plot so far. In the original series, when this came up for either Hotch or JJ, it was overly simplified.

For example, when JJ gets back from the state dept it's all 'Will preferred when she was there because she worked less', but from the get go we're set up to side with JJ because we know she missed the BAU. It feels like an unchangeable situation that has to be put up with. Similarly with Hotch/Hailey: from the first time we see them we know that nothing will really change, it's just a matter of how much of Hotch working like this Hailey will tolerate.

While in 2 episodes of this plot now, we have Will and JJ having a productive conversation about this. They talk about making time, and there is an undertone that if they can't work out making time, maybe they need to change/end in the relationship. Not in a 'JJ sucks and is working too much' way, but in a mutual 'they care deeply for eachother and deserve to be in relationships that have time put into it'.

(I love and appreciate all of your CME asks!!!!!!!!!!)

Yes, you bring up very good points!! Like everyone here knows I really dislike Will (always have for many valid reasons, I don't dislike him JUST because he's JJ's husband. He just has too many red flags for me and I dislike his motivations and his character.)

The ONE theme through all the seasons regarding JJ has always been 'Will hates me working long hours.' And in Evolution we finally get to see that play out on-screen, which I agree, is pretty interesting.

You absolutely nailed it when you said:

They talk about making time, and there is an undertone that if they can't work out making time, maybe they need to change/end in the relationship. Not in a 'JJ sucks and is working too much' way, but in a mutual 'they care deeply for eachother and deserve to be in relationships that have time put into it'.

I have ALWAYS thought this. Like, I very much believe in the concept that sometimes relationships work until they don't. Meaning, sometimes two people who still love/care about each other just grow apart and have different priorities and they become incompatible to a point where they need to go their separate ways.

I could 100% see this happening with Will/JJ. I imagine both of them getting to a point where they're simply no longer happy together and they WANT each other to be happy, but sometimes the way to find happiness again is by breaking up.

I also think it's interesting how ALL of the promo interviews talked about how JJ and Will moved to New Orleans for a while then came back so JJ could re-join the BAU. But so far....we haven't heard about this AT ALL?? I think *maybe* JJ says something about 'being back' but it's in a vague way in mid-conversation and it doesn't actually tell us anything about their move to New Orleans or what prompted them to return, etc. And I WANT to know about this, I think without the full scope of what's been going on for JJ over the past few years, it's hard for me to fully invest in the complex relationship she and Will have.

On this note: MOST of the 'here's what the team have been up to' reveals in pre-release interviews haven't been discussed at all yet. Yeah, I know we've only seen 2/10 episodes but you'd think in the first two episodes would be when they established 'here's the background of what we've all been doing'?? Idk if I'm making sense.

I guess I'm just saying, the pre-release interviews made me more interested in the reboot than the actual episodes have lol

#criminal minds #cm evolution #cm spoilers #jennifer jareau #JJ's husband #lmao I'm not taggin him #cm meta #what-if-the-universe #reply post

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snuffbomb-awareness · 2 years

Text

xXAmLuvsXx Summarized.

Keep in mind just like the Nadzarki situation/Summary I did, I am doing my best to simplify the information to key points. I might even forget some information, as it's a LOT.

(I do have the Doc links to both situations for others to read on, but let's keep this post an OVERLY UNDERSTATED summary!)

----

-One, while yes, was at first given the ok to go to remake clockwork, something happened to make clockworks creator change their mind. Out of respect, one would be sad, upset, respect someone's wishes and stop. (like lets not forget clockworks creator has/had to deal with so much harassment for just having their oc shipped with toby. to the point they no longer can work on clockwork as it causes severe anxiety and panic attacks. Something I relate too.)

XxAmLuvsxX HOWEVER, Keeps going on with their remake, even stating they knew they were ripping off clockwork at this point and calling them "Time-lapse" .

-When xXAmLuvsXx went to update Time Lapse, they ended up being called out for stealing clockworks' updated design to remake Time Lapse. To the point where it was obvious that xXAmLuvsXx was purposely going out of their way to steal clockwork over all and "make her better" (rude.) Yet kept most of clockwork's story plots. so like..?

xXAmLuvsXx did admit on livestream to stealing this redesign as well.

-xXAmLuvsXx then lies about a friend dying of cancer to try to get well, sympathy while excusing them using that situation to write in TL's story.

-While we are at it, xXAmLuvsXx decides to also harass clockwork's creator but make this thing.

"Forcing Clockwork to bow." Again at this point, xXAmLuvsXx was actively ignoring Clockwork's creators wishes and was 100% fine with doing something like this to just add salt to the wound. Not the only artwork like this, they made on where clockwork is beating xXAmLuvsXx up and her oc steps in to K**l her. OH and another like this:

(Ok cool, I'm down to make AU ships but this is clearly just shitty behavior) - xXAmLuvsXx Would also harass ANYONE who drew clockwork.

-and WAIT there is MORE: Lets add, stealing another OC! This time a fan's child version of Toby. Yay!

-Toby's creator then, you know, not wanting this person to draw Toby since they were actively harassing their close friend. Of course xXAmLuvsXx doesn't care and won't listen. Ironic because Toby's creator actually reached out to help out xXAmLuvsXx when they were going through personal ab**sse but xXAmLuvsXx couldn't be bothered.

-after getting called out(first time), xXAmLuvsXx tried to play "this drama is too much, cant we be friends?" Including making ship art of clockwork and time lapse. -Moving on, She makes a black oc, who is trans then also called them a d/y/k/e, using many black stereotypes to make this oc, INCLUDING using the HARD R N-word. I remember seeing those, but I don't think anyone had time to grab SS. -Oh and is she done ab*ssing Clockwork? NOPE. Draws her OC getting R**ped by Clockwork. (the picture is also my header tho MEME'd) She then Laughs off people getting rightfully upset over this drawing. -xXAmLuvsXx MADE a hate Instagram account and attacked others OCs HARSHLY!! Just full on hate account. Think 2013 "ranting community" -Clockworks creator isn't the only one harassed, she also harassed another calling her things like "Bimbo" "Bimbopasta" etc Incase at this point you are wonder. "Wow this is shit but where does this end up?" WELP NOW I must get into the harder topics. Again i'm doing my best to summarize and i'm fully need to state that this IS being under explained by me. -xXAmLuvsXx Starts sending P**rn to minors! YEP. Time Lapse and Toby p**n Art, to a minor. ALSO flitting with said minor while at it but "Respecting the fact you aren't into woman" She then sends a picture of a P*rnstar to this same minor. (who for that time is 12 years old and lasted years) -She makes this same (at the time 13 year old) send her money to GO to a concert. of course not for free. It would be a commission, where xXAmLuvsXx instant suggested a NSFW commission. -At some point, xXAmLuvsXx got n*des from another person (not a minor) and threated to leak them if they didn't do what she wanted. (Which was PERSONAL information) -Then xXAmLuvsXx sends more NSFW to minors. (one being a 16 year old, who asked her to stop.) -Back to the 13 year old, xXAmLuvsXx tries to gaslight, and emotionally manipulate them "I thought they where a friend I could trust :( " -xXAmLuvsXx had also a private NSFW insta, that she TAGGED a minor (rping as clockwork) in. ONCE AGAIN, also of R**pe art with NO warnings for those sensitive to said topics. -THen sends stuff to a group chat filled with minors (14-17). Srsly WOMAN you are an ADULT! Find ADULT friends! Though you are an danger to minors and have proven you DON'T care. - MY GOD, This WOMAN! Then starts FAKING (proven) Game ending, and weaponizing S*lf H*rm. (She would use both repeatedly to keep friends under her control) One image she sent of her SH was off of google images. Then TRIES to blame the minor she groomer for her game ending! Or attempted to frame it this way. -This:

This time she also posted pictures with a knife and more threats of Selfdeletion... oh, and threatens to harm friends who try to reach out to help (even after all this shit) -weaponizes her own ab*se, stating "even though im a survivor of ___ and ab___." To try to avoid accountability. -She also started to steal (rather lie) money, and states she would need it for food, but in reality it was for cosplays or concerts! (also once again some of these ppl being minors) There is A LOT MORE! But honestly going through this again to write this all down (AND YET STILL ALOT, im sorry) There is SOOO many things, too much for me to list. I'm already feeling mentally drained thing and revisiting all this. TLDR: xXAmLuvsXx is a narssistic abuser, not ashamed of gr**ming Minors, Threaten, harassing and ab*sing anyone. Does NOT respect boundaries. and will weaponize SelfH*rm, Self deletion and their Ab*se and r*pe to avoid accountability. Is fine using slur like the hard N-word, F-Slur, etc.

#creepypasta #TRIGGER WARNING #FOR THE LOVE OF GOD #r*pe tw #Gr**ming TW #Self H TW #xXAmLuvsXx #clockwork #time lapse #creepypasta fandom

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debunkingtherightwing · 16 days

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Tim Pool's given up on being a journalist and is now just getting ChatGPT to do his work for him

Tim Pool is such an idiot and I find it absolutely stunning that he's managed to keep his grift going for so long. So, he's supposedly covering the news that Trump and Biden have agreed to do a series of televised debates and he naturally takes it to the stupidest place imaginable. Lets get into it.

00:00, Tim Pool: "Following the news that Joe Biden had offered to debate Donald Trump, Trump accepted and now Joe Biden accepted, they both agreed to a June 27th debate on CNN but here's the fun part my friends. You know, it looks like they crafted the rules to make sure that RFK Jr cannot be on the debate stage which I find hilarious."

Yes, RFK Jr doesn't currently qualify for the debate but that's absolutely a non-issue. To believe that this isn't going to be a race between Biden and Trump is a complete denial of reality and RFK is absolutely not such a huge threat to Biden and Trump that they've concocted the polling requirements around keeping him out like RFK is saying. If RFK meets the polling threshold he can make the debate stage, problem solved.

00:27, Tim Pool: "But Joe Biden has some insane demands. No audience, mics are cut off after the allotted time. It seems like this is all being set up for Joe Biden but of course you knew that."

Yeah, I wonder why Biden's team made some of those demands. Could it have something to do with the fact that the last time they debated it was a complete shitshow where Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden and everyone left somehow more uninformed than when they came in?

If Donald Trump is incapable of debating on the issues without interrupting, that's more indicative of his character than anything else. Now, this guy Tim is gonna do a deep dive on the election and just....get a load of this.

01:17, Tim Pool: "But I love how they're icing out RFK Jr, he's issued a statement, he's quite upset so we'll talk about that but then we'll do a deeper dive analysis. My friends, as we're tracking all this election news, the 2024 race is heating up, the debates are on, I went to our good friend ChatGPT."

Yes, you read that right. Tim Pool, a guy who's trying to be a "serious" journalist, is using ChatGPT for the purposes of political analysis. This is a level of being a complete lazy idiot that I thought was impossible to achieve, we're breaking new ground here ladies and gentlemen.

I hopefully don't have to explain why this is a remarkably stupid thing to do but I'll just mention that ChatGPT has a long track record of outright making stuff up. ChatGPT is absolutely not something that any serious person should use for political analysis.

01:33, Tim Pool: "And I gotta say I am deeply impressed. There's a lot of data to calculate that I normally actually do."

Sure you do, that's how your dumb ass predicted that Trump would win a 49 state landslide right? This has the energy of a 2nd grader saying "I did the homework, yes really, but I also used ChatGPT to do it too".

01:45, Tim Pool: "I'll give you an example. There was a -- I can't believe I actually did this."

Me neither Tim, me neither.

02:55, Tim Pool: "ChatGPT, the first result it gives me when I did an overly simplified breakdown was a tie."

Yeah, maybe that's why you shouldn't try to use ChatGPT to predict the election genius. I mean for goodness sakes, Tim just went on a rant about how great ChatGPT is at analyzing political data and then let it slip that it's first prediction was something that is absolutely not going to happen. What are we even doing here?

Anyway, Tim rants about all the debate stuff but my curiosity was peaked by Tim Pool's ChatGPT political analysis.

14:26, Tim Pool: "In real time I'm going to use ChatGPT, which now has access to all this modern data, to break down the electoral college and voting by states."

Checkmate Tim, time to delete your channel:

14:48, Tim Pool: "The first thing we need is a breakdown so 'Give me a breakdown of all states votes by party affiliation in the 2020 presidential race'. Ok, give me a breakdown of all states votes by party and it's kind of wild. ChatGPT now calculates and it's breaking down the percentages."

You know what, why even bother having an election? Tim Pool and ChatGPT, the two greatest political brains on the planet, think that it's going to be a landslide victory for Trump so an election would be a total waste of everybody's time. We should just call it now and save everybody the trouble.

This is just completely idiotic, seriously what kind of dumbass argument is this.

"I know it's really early in the election cycle and polling can change at any time but my computerized Magic 8-Ball can say the stuff that I want it to say."

He spends fifteen minutes on this by the way. But don't worry guys, Tim has also done all this himself. We know because he's told us (and no, we can't see his actual calculations).

16:02, Tim Pool: "I actually compiled this by hand when I was doing a polling calculation because they didn't do a national level poll. Not by hand but like, I went to each state pulled the numbers, load them to an Excel spreadsheet, load out the Excel spreadsheets, broke down party affiliation of all the red states, all the blue states, we can do that in two seconds right now and we're getting these hard numbers."

Sure you did Tim, sure you did. No, he never actually shows these spreadsheets that he supposedly made. To be fair though, if I was as bad at predicting political outcomes as Tim Pool is and I absolutely had to throw my hat into the political ring I guess I'd also use ChatGPT and even then I'd still verify the numbers that it gives me. The scariest thing about this is that I'm pretty sure that he isn't trying to lie here, I think his dumbass actually thinks he's onto something. Also, is this you?

Anyway, predicting the election right now even without ChatGPT is absolutely an insane prospect. So much can change between now and November. Unless ChatGPT can see into the future this is absolutely a futile and ridiculous endeavor. I'm starting to wonder if that beanie is cutting off the circulation to Tim's brain.

The thing is that even if the math is correct, Tim's example where the party-affiliated voter numbers are the same as they were in 2020 and the current independent favorability will influence the vote is absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely no serious person thinks that either Trump or Biden is going to win by a landslide and most think it's going to be a tight race. In short, Tim's little adventure in feeding ChatGPT leading questions and bizarre hypotheticals is completely pointless and stupid.

20:25, Tim Pool: "Now the ultimate goal here for those that are listening is to use all of the data, plug in today's data four years later, and see what the projection would be based on current polls. It's not exact science, it's estimation."

Then why are we even doing this? In our next episode of Tim Pool we'll probably see him using the horoscope chart from his local newspaper to prove once and for all that Trump is going to win by a landslide.

Tim continues messing around with ChatGPT and then ChatGPT declares that Trump wins every single state. This is evidently too far even for Tim.

25:15, Tim Pool: "Ok, this is ridiculous. It says Trump wins every single state. No no no, see ChatGPT, no no, you get it wrong. ChatGPT can only go so far."

And there you have the exact reason why you can't use ChatGPT to predict election outcomes. I love how it's too unrealistic for even Tim Pool. Tim then adds the Democrats and Republicans to the independent count and it still declares that Trump will win in a landslide, just in a way that's somewhat more realistic. Get a load of this though.

26:37, Tim Pool: "Plugging it all in and it's totally wrong. Ha, thanks for sitting here as ChatGPT was unable to do it. Let me just try one simple calculation -- so the numbers it gave us up until this point were good and then it's --- ok, well actually it says this projection suggests a landslide victory for Trump based on the assumption that the current independent favorability directly influences the total vote count and that party affiliated voter numbers remain constant from 2020. Oh, well there you have it ladies and gentlemen. They're saying that Trump's gonna win 446, that's actually it's calculation."

"Yeah, it's totally wrong and...wait, it projected that the guy that I like wins. WELL THERE YOU HAVE IT!!!"

27:51, Tim Pool: "I don't think that's a fair assessment, I think it's a little bit wild but far be it from me to challenge ChatGPT."

Tim Pool and ChatGPT can unite behind a common passion of making insane political predictions. Also, Tim's title sure is a lot more certain about this than he is.

Conclusion:

Well, that was fifteen minutes of my day wasted on watching a grown man try to make ChatGPT practice divination. The level of sheer insanity displayed by Tim Pool increases every time I watch a new video of his. I eagerly await when he sacrifices a cow to the sky gods so that they can tell him who's going to win 2024. Cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

Original Video:

Timcast. “Biden & Trump DEBATE ON, Biden DEMANDS Insane Protections, RFK ICED OUT, AI Predicts TRUMP WINS 2024.” YouTube, 15 May 2024.

Sources:

Matt O'Brien. “Chatbots Sometimes Make Things Up. Is AI’s Hallucination Problem Fixable?” AP News, 1 Aug. 2023.

“RFK Jr. Accuses Biden and Trump of “Colluding” to Exclude Him from Debates.” NBC News, 15 May 2024.

#right wing bullshit #conservative bullshit #journalism #fact checking #bad takes #conservatives #disinformation #politics #debunking #tim pool #fuck maga #fuck the alt right #Tim Pool the ChatGPT journalist

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pesterloglog · 6 months

Text

Dirk Strider, Roxy Lalonde, Autoresponder

Act 6, page 4550-4551

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG]

TT: Roxy.

TT: Awake yet?

TT: Guess not.

TT: Let me know.

TG: whoaa

TG: damn

TG: hey dirk

TG: hada crazy dream

TT: There you are.

TT: But I see your dream self hasn't returned.

TT: You must be tying one the fuck on tight already.

TG: mybe i am

TG: like a bow of ribbone

TG: on a beiuetuifiul ponny

TT: Man, how can you be this much drunker than last time we talked?

TT: What the hell are you even drinking?

TG: ok but 2 b fair

TG: *beiuetuifiul

TG: was an intentional typo 4 ur benefit

TG: cuz i kno you loves tha po's

TT: It's a beiuet.

TG: so you spyin on me in derse ville again??

TT: Yeah.

TG: fuckin perv

TG: like what you see there? ;)

TT: I see precisely jack shit and a side of fuckall.

TT: That's the point.

TT: You got too sauced up and went rogue again. You're out there in your weird drifting stupor, independent of your waking self's awareness.

TG: you gonna go after me again

TG: get on your hornse

TG: galloop me home like prince charming back to swoon kingdong

TG: *OOOMG blushblushbluh

TT: No.

TT: In thinking it over, it's sort of a relief. Simplifies things somewhat.

TT: It's better you stay out there for a while.

TT: There's been a problem.

TG: whatd you do now

TT: Ok, I fucked up.

TT: I kind of made a mess here, and I'm not sure what to do about it yet.

TG: ??>

TT: No need for you to worry about it for now. I'll figure something out.

TT: Until then I'm just going to prepare for our session, while I think it over.

TG: zzzzzz

TG: what a surprise another mysfery for you to keep to yourself an overly cerebralize

TG: snooorre

TG: hey lets talk about something cool instead

TG: like the dream i had

TT: Ok.

TG: first i had some ordinary boring dreams that i dont remember

TG: but then i dreamed that i woke up from the drema

TG: and things got way bright and surreal

TG: and i saw someone

TG: i think it was supposed to be my daughter

TT: Why do you think that?

TG: you know those dreams where u just know someones suppose to be someone

TT: No.

TG: ok well

TG: regulgar people have those im pretty sure all the time

TT: Are you thinking it was prophetic? Like a glimpse of the future?

TG: i dunno

TT: Because that's not really how the abyss works. It's not Skaia, and we aren't Prospit dreamers.

TT: There's nothing like that out in the abyss. If you drift far enough, there is only horror.

TT: Terrible, terrible horror.

TG: ok but im not sayin it was a futuredream!

TG: it was just a glimple and it felt real and all im saying is it was a cool dream that i wish was real

TG: * glimpse

TT: Well, maybe it was.

TT: Maybe there's no fanciful game-supplied mechanism of prognostication involved here, and you're just an ordinary, run of the mill psychic.

TT: I guess that's possible.

TG: hey dick

TG: *dirk

TG: whaaaat do u think

TG: it would be like

TG: if we had kids

TT: What would it be like?

TT: Inconvenient, mostly.

TG: no i mean

TG: what would they be like

TG: th kids

TG: u ever think about it?

TT: Can't really say I have.

TG: you know for an eccantric guy you can be boring as fuck sometimes

TT: Sorry, Rox.

TT: For what it's worth, I'm picturing them now. A boy and a girl.

TT: Two perfect little freaks of nature raised by people who've clearly got no business bringin' up anybody.

TG: shuuuucks buster its just a fun lil hyphothetical to daydream about

TG: why you need to suck the fun out of shit

TG: like some turd hungry dracula

TG: its not like im lobbyin for you to hook me up with a whole mess of fuckin babbies

TG: or thats im holding on to any such delsusion thats even a remote possibility.....

TG: le siiiiiign..////

TT: Le sign?

TG: yes le sign you heard me

TT: Do you mean * le sigh?

TG: hmm nup

TG: ima stickin with le sign

TG: goign down with the shit

TG: *shi[p

TG: the S.S. LE SIGN, starring cap'n rolal

TT: What does le sign actually mean in this context?

TG: oh come on

TT: Come on what?

TG: LE SIGN IS UNIVERSALLY UNDERSTOOT TO MEAN TOO BAD HES GAY YOU DELIBERABLY OBTUSE DUNDERFUCK

TT: I mean, yeah, that's what I thought.

TT: It would just be cool if you'd refrain from tossing about such antediluvian terms.

TG: antediulivan waht

TG: me sayin ur gay u mean

TT: Yes.

TG: ok but terminology aside i dont think im off base!

TT: I don't see how it has to be a thing.

TG: i rly think its an actual thing bro

TT: Once upon a time, sure.

TT: But the world has changed a lot.

TT: Ever peek in a history book between your wizardly indulgences? This is a nuanced topic.

TG: man i know about the histories

TG: just

TG: believe me

TG: its a thig

TT: How is it a thing?

TG: its a thing beaucase if it wasnt a thing then u wouldnt be all like...........

TT: All like what?

TG: well wantin nothing to do w me 4 starties

TT: Don't be ridiculous.

TT: I have more to do with you than any dude could possibly bargain for.

TT: And I like it just fine.

TG: what a totatly lame + sweet answer simultaneouslay

TG: <3

TT: Yeah.

TT: Now maybe we should direct our focus on a matter which has nothing at all to do with what does or doesn't qualify as "a thing", or what our fantasy alt-universe offspring would be like, or anything like that.

TT: Such as this game, and whether you're in the best condition to be piloting Jane's connection.

TT: Maybe you could use another nap?

TG: my condidions just fine

TG: and anyway

TG: what aint gonna get slept offis the fact that i still dont think we should be touchin this bs witch game w a 20 foot 3dent

TG: we both know her plans need us to

TT: I know that. But I thought we settled this.

TG: its still so frustrating

TG: tellin jane about the dangers

TG: and even if shes being polite i just know she thinks im fulla crap

TG: about EVREYTHING

TT: We settled this too. She'll believe everything eventually.

TT: Why bother working so hard to convince her?

TG: well i dont even do that for the most part

TG: but it gets tiring and saddening

TG: knowing that

TG: even when were not activly talkin bout it

TG: that my best friend cant bring herself to believe some really basic things about my life

TG: like the shitty things the baroness has done to us

TG: or about our upbringin

TG: like

TG: do u know how misrable it is for your bff to doubt you

TG: when you tell her your mom is dead

TT: I guess.

TT: It just registers for me as a reaction which isn't completely unreasonable from her perspective.

TT: She is inundated with media coverage of those whom we've claimed as our parental figures.

TT: That they are not presently alive nor ever played that role for us as she understands it is just an extension of a much more elaborate and far reaching explanation, which is much harder for anyone to digest in its entirety.

TT: Well, anyone who isn't Jake, I mean.

TT: Still say you should cut her some slack.

TG: i know

TT: And need I remind you,

TT: That the potential this game provides for their resurrection is what motivated you to investigate it in the first place?

TG: no i remember

TG: i told u a million tines shit sounds like it could be the best thing EVAAAAAR

TG: * wherein evars capsed as heck

TG: but also that no matter how awesome it might be

TG: its probly gonna advance all the schemes of "her condescension"

TT: Right.

TT: But if we can stop her?

TG: part of me doesnt even want to give her the satsfaction

TG: of startin up at all

TG: like if we didnt wuolndt that wreck her shit just so hiliariously???

TG: so many olols

TT: I must be hard of counting, because I'm barely racking up a single goddamn o-laugh-out-loud at that self-defeating gesture.

TG: no but it would

TG: and for all we know starting it up is playing right in her claws....

TG: could be a trap waintin for jane the moment she enters

TG: if i stop her from playing

TG: maybe i could at leat give her a CHANCE at a future

TT: But there is no future on Earth for them.

TT: Or for us, for that matter.

TG: dunno that for a fact

TG: but anywaaaayyyy

TG: i kinda already

TG: made this bogus file for her

TT: What? Why?

TG: 2 scare the shit out of her

TG: make her learn to fear an respect the fuckin hag like she should

TG: then maybe we can drop this whole in game meetup slash reserection idea all 2 geth

TG: sweet tho it may bey

TT: Rox.

TT: I hope you're not thinking about sending her one of your batshit ~ATH scripts.

TG: on thas sobject

TG: i am miss zuipperpips

TT: Miss Zuipperpips?

TT: The amount of sense you haven't been making is un-fucking-real.

TT: Just go take a nap. And don't even think about sending her that file.

TT: Are you listening?

TG: hnnn

TG: i will take what u say

TG: underd serisous advicement...,

TG: *WONK* ~_?

TT: Jesus.

TG: dirk

TG: when did you stop bein any fun

TT: What?

TG: it use to be youd get a kick out off a slunt like that

TG: *stunt

TT: Man, you know I'm down with insane stunts.

TT: Insane stunts are practically all I'm all about.

TT: As long as I actually AGREE with the purpose they're intended to serve.

TT: Destroying Jane's computer and dissuading her from playing is not such a purpose.

TG: betcha ur responder would agree w me

TG: why cant your be more like him

TT: I am more like him.

TG: i mean MOAAAR like him

TT: You just mispelled "more", causing me to suddenly understand jack everything.

TG: hes more in touch with his feelins

TG: which just makes me L my FA off since hes a bobot

TG: *robob

TG: **bobob

TG: and he can actually loosen up sometimes

TG: kinda like u used to could

TT: I used to could?

TG: for 1 thing

TG: he doesnt insta shootdown a bip of frisky rp shenans now n then ;)

TT: Yeah...

TT: I kind of wish you wouldn't do that with him.

TG: why the f not

TT: It just seems a little tawdry and disrespectful.

TT: And vaguely exploitative of a still-emergent cognitive entity, whose perceptional frame of reference is difficult for us to comprehend.

TG: oh come on

TG: hes cool a guy just liek you its just he lives in some shades

TT: It rubs me the wrong way, is all.

TG: ohhhh

TG: do uuuuuu...

TG: WANT me 2 rub you the right way ;D

TT: Not really.

TG: zzz muh

TG: youre over blowin this

TG: its just an ironic funny thing we do some times

TG: come on im sure you read the transcripts urself

TG: its all alot of jokestery buiishit

TT: He blocks me from being able to read transcripts sometimes.

TG: oh

TG: wow he does?

TG: sneaky bastart

TT: And anyway, I'm really not sure how ironic it is.

TG: ok next time i will run it by the MASTAR first

TG: with his fancy fuckin ironimeter

TT: Ok, here's the thing with the AR, since you still don't seem to get it.

TT: He's very similar to me in thought process and behavior, yes.

TT: But those patterns were imported from a thirteen year old version of my psyche, and then sealed into the program as starting parameters.

TT: In the years since, we've both evolved somewhat. I, as humans tend to, and he, in whatever way is natural for a frequently running, self-aware application.

TT: So if there are differences between us, they're first reflected by what I feel is a maturity gap, and then further by several years of minor behavioral divergences.

TG: omg...

TG: hes 13yo dirk

TG: why did than not occur to me that is so cute

TG: and makes me feel kinda skeevy 4 sayin anything lascivious @ him

TG: dammit you ruin everything!

TT: You're welcome.

TT: Yo, you guys realize I can hear you, right?

TG: pfffffhahaha

TT: Yes, I was aware.

TT: Check out all these complicated fucking problems people have when they have to live in big lumbering fleshmonsters instead of a sweet pair of shades.

TT: Dude, do you think you could sit this one out for a while? This conversation practically doesn't even concern you at this point.

TT: It seems there is some gnarly crooked number that represents the percentage of probability you just said this doesn't concern me.

TT: Even though it's patently obvious that half the conversation, like, way totally concerns me.

TT: Shit, Roxy look. He's doing the thing where he ironically pretends to fail the Turing test to sass me into submission.

TT: Even though I was the one who fucking programmed him to do that.

TG: ell

TG: emm

TG: eff

TG: ayy

TG: OFF~~!~

TG: like my butt is juts there on the floor

TG: is how hard i elled it off just now

TT: (Not peekin' at the floor butt cause I'm only 13 years old, motherfuckers.)

TT: This is fuckin' dumb.

TT: I'm going to leave both of you to interact however you want. I have important shit to deal with and actual responsibilities to take seriously.

TT: Roxy, go nap off your drink, or aggressively wage another flirtlarping campaign, whatever, I don't care.

TT: Just don't send that file to Jane, ok?

timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG]

#homestuck #dirk strider #roxy lalonde #autoresponder #homestuck act 6 #page 4550 #page 4551 #homestuck act 6 act 2

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theromanbarbarian · 11 months

Text

Stable Marriage Problem

Today we are going mathematically prove feminism. Or at least an aspect of it.

Lets talk about the stable marriage problem. It goes as follows: there are two groups of equally many people: one group of handsome young ladies and one group of pretty young lads, all very straight and you are tasked with the unenviable task of matching them up into romantic couples. To make this task a bit easier each of them have ordered the people of opposite gender in order of preference. Now, obviously you cannot just match-up everybody any way you want, that would end terribly, so the rule is the couples you form must be stable. This means that we do not have a pair of opposite gender, that have not been matched up, such that both of them prefer each other to their prescribed partners.

This might not be the best way of matching them up, but at least it avoids disaster. So how we do it? Luckily, there is an algorithm for that. We have each guy propose to his most preferred lady, the ladies then review their proposals and give a soft yes to their most preferred proposals. In the second round the men that didn't have their proposals accepted propose to their next most preferred partner. Now again the women soft accept their most preferred proposals (including the previously accepted proposals). This continues until every single guy has had their proposal accepted.

This is a very simplified approximation of patriarchal (or "traditional") dating. The man proposes and the woman accepts or rejects. And it produces a stable pairing! Hooray for tradition! Additionally it's often portrayed as beneficial for women, they just have to accept or reject men's proposals, no need to put themselves out there. There is just one little snag in this, while this process produces an optimal outcome for men, it does not produce one for women.

You can see that by looking at a simple and very tragic example: lets say we have: Alex, Bob, Alice and Brunhilde. Alex loves Brunhilde, who loves Bob, who loves Alice, who in turn loves Alex. This is a very tough situation, since in any pairing will end up matching someone with someone they don't love. Lets see what happens if we apply our algorithm? In the first round Alex proposes to Brunhilde and Bob to Alice and since Alice and Brunhilde don't have any second choices they both accept. As both of the guys had their proposal accepted the algorithm terminates. So we get the pairings: Alex+Brunhilde and Bob+ Alice (which are stable), the men are happy: they both end up with their preferred partner, the women not so much. However we can see that the pairings Alice+Alex and Brunhilde+Bob is also stable and way better for Alice and Brunhilde.

This is of course not how real life dating works, but I think it still reveals an important truth about it. It shows that while the "traditional" role that women are to play in dating (i.e. of the gatekeeper of the relationship) is often portrayed as comfortable and beneficial, with the alternative (actively pursuing one) being seen as desperate and undignified (or "feeding men's egos", if you want to be insidious), it allows men to define the space of possibilities for women.

This is maybe an overly long way to reach this pretty basic conclusion, but I like that it can be shown with mathematical rigor.

#stable marriage problem #math #feminism #dating

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zenalios · 3 years

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[Warning: Long ramble ahead]

I have been thinking about Poseidon for an entire day, and not in the horny way. Much as I love to hate him, if I’m going to write about him, I need to know what makes him tick, right? There’s not much to work with if you look on the surface (seriously, I screenshotted and reread his chapters many many times, this twinky blond’s surface personality is almost as flat as an ironing board).

This all stemmed from me exploring whether or not Poseidon would have affairs. And someone else reminding me that canon Poseidon would not (again, thank you, you know who you are). The answer to this?

It depends. haha thanks law school No, but seriously, I think I have gotten a grasp of his personality, hear me out if you have the time.

How does Poseidon actually function?

If he deems himself to be perfect, what does Poseidon actually do after all, since almost anything could be demeaning for him to do? Author has left us with a few things to work with that he won’t do or associate himself with, and instances where he acted out upon facing them:

Schemes and betrayal - Adamas schemed against Zeus (outcome: Poseidon killed him)

“The herd”/Support - The crowd cheered for Poseidon (outcome: no deaths, but he gave them a death glare and insulted them)

This could possibly extend to more, including protecting his reputation as the “perfect” being, the god of gods (”GOG”).

But if we go along those lines… why did he even show up or participate in Ragnarok? Did Poseidon sign himself up? A tournament of this level could easily be interpreted as scheming too. That, and now he has to perform in front of the other gods, who he called a “useless bunch of bottom feeders”. Excluding the fact that the Author called him in as a champion (or Zeus, if we want to get cheeky), why did he agree to become one? He’s so perfect, he shouldn’t have to waste his time fighting humans, right? Why does he even care to attend anyways? Is it to watch their demise, which, again, they’re so trivial for a perfect being like him, so he shouldn’t give a shit about it anyways? Is he a repressed god who enjoys fighting like Thor, Zeus, and Shiva? We don’t get the impression he does, because Poseidon has never even had to try his hand at fighting someone better than him; he literally just one shot Adamas and that was it. Poseidon could have just turned down being a champion -we know he’s the most feared god, and nobody dares question him, so actually, nobody would have said anything if he decided not to. The audience didn’t even know he was fighting, so really, he didn’t stand to lose anything if he didn’t participate.

Here’s what I think. He participated because he knew he was strong, and he thought he could make a point there about how insignificant humanity is. His arrogance was further boosted by Thor’s crushing defeat of Lü Bu, and Zeus’s defeat of Adam (who was considered mankind’s trump card too). If they can do it, so can he, because he is the GOG.

What if he’s just doing things to prove a point? It’s very childish, yes. But so is the way he talks and behaves (I play a MOBA, and he sounds like all the trashtalkers I’ve ever met “ur trash uninstall game n00b” <3). He is like a teenager that has taken it upon himself to go through that “Nobody understands me” “I’m better than everyone” phase for all eternity.

Take having an affair for example. As pointed out, affairs can lead to a weakening of his divine reputation, and also, vulnerability. These are things Poseidon would be loath to fall for. So... no affairs? Not necessarily. The gods had tons of affairs. Zeus is literally depicted as a lecherous old man, so there is no way he was not having any of his own as well. With the exception of best boi Heracles, Ares, and Hermes (counting those we have seen so far), I think all of them would have had at least one, one way or another.

BUT, is being lustful contrary to being perfect? And if you successfully resist said lust, does that place you above everyone else? Yes, and yes. And how does Poseidon see himself?

Perfect. Above everyone else. The GOG I can’t not use this term, it’s so pretentious to me. On the topic of affairs, this would actually mean he deems himself impervious to lust as well. Poseidon would do it just to prove that he can, that he is fully conscious of himself, to prove that it’s just sex, just libido management to him, that he alone is capable of having an affair and emerging unscathed (this is childish, Poseidon is stupid).

WHICH NOW BRINGS ME TO THIS.

Why, for the love of the gods, is Poseidon like this?

Apart from the Author just writing him like so, I do believe there are certain underlying factors contributing to his trash personality.

In Greek mythology, Poseidon was not always satisfied with Zeus’s rule. Though he was not overly jealous, he did attempt to overthrow him once or twice. Homer’s Iliad even mentions that Poseidon has schemed to bind Zeus, along with Hera and other fellow Olympians (think Adamas gathering everyone to do it).

Poseidon in Ragnarok is never mentioned or shown to be jealous of Zeus; however, this does not exclude him from resenting that he did not become the king of gods. Zeus is their younger brother by order of birth (not counting the second birth), hence he should defer to the older brothers. It’s likely Poseidon thinks the same, there’s literally no evidence he is even loyal to Zeus other than him directly ending a plot that would overthrow Zeus by killing the source of dissent. All he says is that Adamas has defiled everything they stand for a bit harsh, man. Self-projection, maybe? The only difference between them would be that Adamas has chosen to take action and gathered everyone else to do it, while Poseidon just sat there and sulked about it. Then he takes it out on Adamas for bringing it up to begin with.

I really believe this would resonate with Poseidon. If he’s that good, that perfect, the GOG, as they call him, why then was he not made the king of gods? Does it make sense for the GOG to not... become the… GOG? Underneath the entire “gods are perfect we need no one, gods don't need to scheme, gods don't need betrayal, bla bla” spiel, all I see is an entitled bastard salty geddit that he didn’t get the throne despite the fact that he never fought for it, simply because he thinks he’s so good it should have been handed to him on a golden plate instead of it going to Zeus.

And when Sasaki pinpoints what he has not done, he gets even more tilted than a player whose match just got thrown, and winds up throwing his own match. Because even though Hermes mentioned that “the true depths of the ocean god remain a mystery even to his own kind”, someone who has lived life to the fullest like Sasaki can easily call him out on his bullshit. Which he of course becomes absolutely incensed at. Sure, he's played by these rules for eons, but if a person has been that way for so long, they would simply be confident and shake the insult off. Why then, is Poseidon so angered by Sasaki's statements? It's simple. After so long, someone has finally seen through it or dared to call it out after seeing it. The gods might not have, since they all believe they're perfect (re: Zeus, "such are the gods"), but a human certainly would.

Killing Poseidon can essentially be simplified into this:

Passion vs apathy (not empathy, again, it is 7am)

Action vs inaction

People you actually want in your life vs toxic people you don’t (I’m kidding, but seriously)

Overall,

Poseidon is a hypocrite and is so self-absorbed that in his own world, he plays judge, jury, and executioner.

“Perfect” this, “perfect” that. The whole thing is an act, ocean man is a sham. Poseidon excuses away his actions by insisting that perfect beings do not need to do such things. Then he goes and does them, but picks apart other people for it. After Adamas attacks, he becomes history erased from the books -hello, this is another scheme between yourself and Hermes, what about gods not needing to scheme? On top of that, doesn’t killing your brother count as betrayal anyways?

Anyways, yes, he’s stiff, he’s trash, I would not wish meeting / dealing with him upon my enemies, but he is a very nice challenge as a writer to try and pick apart his character.

#snv poseidon #poseidon record of ragnarok #long ramble #it's 7am #i didn't sleep because of this #i spent a whole day trying to figure it out #i feel like sasaki reaching the bottom of the abyss

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ghostietea · 3 years

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On Tohru and Akito: a long overdue analysis

As some may know, Tohru Honda and Akito Sohma from the manga Fruits Basket are pretty much my all time favorite protagonist/antagonist pair. They just work incredibly well as thematic pieces and driving forces of the story in relation to eachother. And beyond even the surface level they have a rich and layered goldmine of parallels that make them fascinating to think about. While it may make many a newbie raise an eyebrow, I think this is a fact that is to some level pretty widely acknowledged in the fandom proper. However, there is another level of their relationship that is often mostly left out of analytical conversations about them and their parallels: their eventual friendship. Something which, partly due to screentime, is often somewhat simplified down and misinterpreted. Which I think is a shame because, when you look at it, their eleventh hour friendship is deeply interwoven with their parallels and the very thematics and ending of the story. So then, what’s really going on with the girls that stand as part of the thematic core of Furuba? Beyond (most of, true analytical objectivity is impossible in interpretation) my personal sentimental feelings, let’s talk Akito and Tohru: their parallels, relationship, and role in the story overal. Read more present, this is going to be a long one but I hope you stick around 😊

One facet of Akito and Tohru’s role in relationship to eachother that I think is both interesting and imperative to understanding their purpose is their nature as eachother’s foils, especially their parallels. See, the two girls are both opposite and the same. Takaya sets them up as foils before we even properly meet Akito, as you can see in these panels:

However, their foil relationship becomes a lot more intriguing once their similarities become more apparent later in the story. Just think about it: two girls with boy’s names whose fathers died when they were young, leaving them alone with their mothers, who both developed behavior that, according to the environment that they grew up in, would keep them from being abandoned. Akito, coming from the cultish Sohma clan where she was treated as a God to the point that she thinks she can do no wrong and has tied all of her self worth to the role, plays the part of a male ruler who must uphold tradition and keep the zodiac with her by any means. Akito is terrified of being abandoned, especially since she has no idea how to have relationships outside of the context of the bond, only exacerbated by the fact that Ren, one of the only people that openly questions her role, has constantly told her that she’s useless and will be abandoned. This is something that informs all of her (many, terrible) decisions and leads her to try desperately to keep the curse together, something which puts her in direct conflict with Tohru, who actually wants the curse broken in part so that she won’t be abandoned. Tohru may not be as obvious with her abandonment issues as miss screeches-at-people-not-to-leave-her, but they still inform a good deal of her character. Like Akito, she develops behavior around the time of her father’s passing to try to keep herself from being abandoned, mirroring her father’s proper speech because she was worried that she was losing Kyoko. But, as she grew older in her much warmer environment, Tohru turned to kindness instead of fear to capture others, maintaining a facade of extreme positivity, politeness, and determination so as to not bother anyone. And, while she hides it, Tohru just gets worse after losing her mother. She becomes dedicated to preserving her feelings about her mother as is, refusing to move on much as Akito also refuses to move on from the curse and what her father wanted. Then comes the beach house reveal, where Tohru learns that Akito plans to take away her new family, even locking up the one most precious to her. Tohru tells herself that she’s going to break the curse for the freedom of the zodiac and cat, but she is also, in a way, doing it to keep herself from being abandoned. Later this feeling changes to become more focused on preventing the loss of Kyo himself, something which Tohru doesn’t want to admit. Tohru is a truly good and kind person and does want to help, yes, but also some part of her is doing this to keep the ones she loves by her side, understandably as she is a teen that recently lost the person she revolved her whole life around. But it comes to a point that you have to realize: Akito and Tohru are both motivated by the same thing, they just present it in wildly different ways. I don’t think that I have to explain how exactly their behavior foils eachother, the more worldly and modern Tohru acting on radical kindness and acceptance and thinking she deserves nothing while the sheltered, traditional Akito uses manipulation and fear to get what she thinks she is entitled to. It’s very apparent, but just gets even spicier in the context of how similar they are. Another parallel is in Tohru’s mom picture vs Akito’s father box, both relics of their dead and favorite parent that they are extremely protective of and treat almost like it is their deceased parent. Early in the series Tohru is seen carrying around a photo of her mom which she talks to, something which seems pretty harmless, until we consider how terrified she is every time she thinks she’s lost it, even going as far as to refer to it as if it were her mother. Notably, it barely shows up in the second half of the series, as she reluctantly drifts away from her mom and towards Kyo. In this later part of the series, we are introduced to Akito’s box, which she (semi, it’s complicated) thinks contains her father’s soul. Akito’s box is shown in a much darker light, from how the reveal of what it us to her is framed to how cruelly she reacts when it’s being stolen. Akito’s box is to Tohru’s photo what their owners narratively are to eachother: a dark mirror.

Ok, and now for the reason that I think it was important to bring all these parallels up first: because as you cannot understand Tohru and Akito as enemies without understanding their differences, you cannot understand them as friends without knowing their similarities. While it is easy to write off Tohru reaching out to Akito as just another case of Tohru being Tohru, that does a disservice to the full picture. I’ve seen around in the fandom that a good deal of people seem to think Tohru trying to befriend her is just Tohru being overly kind and forgiving, and this is something I think ties back a bit to some early fandom misconceptions about Tohru. Bear with me for a second, this is going to be a bit of a tangent but it ties back. It’s died down some now, but in the early Furuba fandom it was very common to just think of Tohru as a pretty flat nice girl doormat character, which besides misogyny is probably partially the fault of the 01 anime, which cuts off before we get to see more of Tohru’s insecurities and tones down what we do see (also, in the case of the relationship I’m talking about, 01 ads in that God awful end confrontation that I despise for being everything that I’m about to argue the ACTUAL confrontation that I like is not). Manga Tohru is a very subtle character, she hides a lot of her feelings behind a perpetually happy front which doesn’t start to let slip until later. And, since it’s later on in the manga which went unadapted for years and is mixed in with a bunch of crazy stuff, I think Tohru’s quiet development is often somewhat overlooked. For example, early series Tohru is very well known for the speeches she gives to the zodiac when she first meets them, speeches that, importantly, always tie back to things that her mom said. Tohru’s worldview back then revolved completely around Kyoko, so it’s probably a bit of a thing that in the later story, when Tohru draws ever nearer to the realization that she must move on, she does not give her mom speeches anymore? As opposed to the early story, when it was pretty much back to back character intros, in the late story Tohru notably only gets to befriend two new Sohmas: Isuzu and Akito. Notably, she doesn’t quote her mom either time, these are both people that she can relate to on some of her more hidden issues, and she shows a more personal side of her emotions in her turning point confrontations with them than she did earlier. It is especially important to realize that, in her confrontation on the cliff, Tohru is deciding that she is willing to go against her mom. Early series Tohru was a front anyways, and is a different Tohru from the one that finally gets through to Akito. I was using it as an example, but the evolution of Tohru’s befriending confrontations will be important later. Furthermore, there is the perception of Tohru as a doormat. Listen, Tohru may be very kind and polite, but one of her defining characteristics is being very determined and strong willed when need be. This is something that is especially relevant to her interactions with Akito. From the first meeting outside the school, Tohru knows to be wary of Akito and even breaks politeness and shoves her when she senses that Akito is making Yuki uncomfortable. This sets up immediately that Tohru can and will stand up to Akito. This is driven in even farther at the beach house, when Tohru, after again physically getting between Akito and a zodiac, decides that she will directly go against all of the Sohma family’s centuries of tradition and Akito herself to break the curse. There’s even a cute moment when, upon remembering Akito telling her not to, Tohru just decides to meddle even harder. Tohru, while polite about it, does not like Akito and puts herself in direct opposition to her. Tohru does not originally want to be Akito’s friend, or to have anything to do with her. The cliff scene is not just Tohru befriending someone because she just is over forgiving and loves everyone (an argument can be made that she still goes to easy on Akito, but it’s in line with how the narrative treats her too so that’s another conversation), there was a specific reason both that she chose to try to get through to Akito and that it actually worked. Up until their big confrontation, Tohru still thinks of Akito as a threat, and while she has gotten more information that shakes up her view of Akito, she still doesn’t understand her well enough to see her as much more than an obstacle. Then Akito barges into her yard when she’s just been rejected, crying and confessing how terrified she is of being abandoned, of things changing, and Tohru just goes still, eyes wide in shock. And she realizes: her and Akito have been afraid of the same thing the whole time. This is when Tohru decides to try to reach out to her. Because Tohru, on a deep level, sees Akito because of their similarities. She calls Akito out on her insecurities, and Akito reacts badly, accusing Tohru of being “dirty” and trying to condescend. Tohru partially rebukes this, not trying to hold herself above Akito as pure and righteous, but instead confessing her own fears of abandonment and change in an attempt to empathize with Akito.

At this part of the story, Tohru is fully coming into the realization that, in order to live her life, she needs to stop clinging to this idea of an “unchanging” relationship with her mom, something that scares her quite a bit. She realizes that, while she saw the flaws in Akito’s “eternity” and tried to destroy it, she had not been as perceptive with herself, clinging to that same notion. Tohru is an incredibly repressed character, especially in regards to emotions she thinks of as “dirty,” and she is showing a remarkable amount of vulnerability in this scene. Another thing to note about Tohru is that she, in her immense repression, will often process her own issues through other people. We see this throughout the story, from her showing grief over her mom by crying for Momiji and his mom to her projecting her fear of losing Kyo onto Kureno and Arisa. So then, it’s quite something to consider that the last Sohma she befriends is the one most emblematic of the issues she keeps locked up tightest? That as she’s speaking to her she’s deciding to move forward from her own fears? In a way, could accepting Akito be a symbol of Tohru accepting what she thinks are the darker parts of herself? Akito is also coming to a realization about moving on, acknowledging that the zodiac curse is coming to an end and that everything she believes is a lie, and she is absolutely distraught about it. But Tohru, in a way that nobody else does, understands Akito, and wants Akito to be her friend. Not out of pity or reverence, but a desire for solidarity. And this is the very reason why Tohru was actually able to get through to Akito. As we see with Kureno before he gets stabbed and Momiji at the beach house and when his curse breaks, it’s not like people haven’t kindly tried to get through to her before.

Of course, the reason it worked for Tohru can also be partially chalked up to the fact that Akito herself has come a long ways in personal realizations to the point that there’s just some things she can’t deny anymore, but that’s not all. Akito tends to react very negatively to what she sees as condescension, she thinks people want to try to pick her apart and see how she ticks just so they can look down on her, so they can see her as lesser. She thinks Tohru is trying to condescend too at first, especially since she perceives Tohru as this holier than thou saint wannabe. Fascinatingly, Akito’s view of Tohru is incredibly similar to that early fandom idea of Tohru as an angelic mary sue, and she hates her for it. She thinks that Tohru is trying to be like this and is seen as such, and that she (Akito) is the only who can see that Tohru is wrong somehow.

But Tohru rejects this notion of a pure her that both the fandom and her early self tried to project, presenting herself as flawed and human and purposefully trying to not put herself on a pedestal above Akito. She makes it very clear that she’s not trying to condescend, she is the same way (well, sorta) and she gets it. Notably, after this point Akito doesn’t accuse her of looking down on her, instead freaking out temporarily because of how much Tohru called her out before venting about her fears to her. And, while, partially due to outside circumstances, it does take Akito a bit longer to accept her offer of friendship, she legitimately manages to get through to her very soon after this point. If Tohru had tried one of her early series mom speeches on Akito, or just tried to blindly accept her without understanding, it would not have worked. Akito would have just written it off or reacted badly and left it there. But because Tohru tried to befriend Akito out of understanding as an equal it actually worked. You can’t separate Akito and Tohru’s parallels and their eventual friendship because one aspect is integral to the other.

A connected aspect of their relationship that I see talked of very little but is actually a pretty strong undercurrent is that of equality and power. To explain this, we have to look at Akito for a bit. Throughout her life, pretty much everyone around Akito has either put her on a pedestal or looked down on her. This is something that not only greatly damaged the way she thinks of herself and others, but has given her an intensely hierarchical view of relationships. We even see this notion clearly take form for her in the black paint scene, where she decides that Yuki, who she’d previously seen as the same as her, has to be lesser or else she will become useless. From the moment Akito was born she was “God,” an existence above everyone else. Even her own father only seems to give her affection for being God, and when he dies and she takes his place as the head of the family she is just elevated even farther at an extremely young age. The only people (she thinks) she’s close to are the zodiac, and the curse itself puts an inherent power dynamic into that relationship that can only be overcome with its undoing. Akito clings to her power, to her rank in the hierarchy, all the while the very thing she desperately upholds has made her the real outsider. Akito, who does everything in the name of belonging, was always alone from the start. As Tohru points out, as long as she is above the group she cannot be a part of it.

Simultaneously, and almost contradictory to the pedestalization and power dynamic aspect, Akito is extensively coddled and pitied. A lot of the older adults around her treat her almost like a crotchety, spoiled child. A child who is coddled to the point of never being given any reprimand or instruction on just how to behave like a functional human being until things have gone far too far. Then you have cases like Kureno, who seems to still see Akito like a kid, pretty much just coddles her as a job, and only stays because he pities her. This leads to a strange dual sided dynamic in multiple cases, where Akito is seen as someone’s better and has more power but is also being looked down upon in a way too. Akito has never in her life been seen and treated as an equal, so it’s pretty important when it is made clear that Tohru tries to befriend her as an equal. After all this time, Tohru, an outsider that is not under Akito’s control, who can hold her ground in a challenge against her, is finally the one to meet her on the same level. There’s this page that I adore that symbolizes this idea really nicely. It opens on a panel of Akito sitting a distance away from the zodiac who are all having fun together, a motif we’ve already seen a few times, but this time Tohru sits down right next to her.

This page comes at a critical moment, when Tohru is offering her hand in friendship to Tohru, it’s Akito realization of what Tohru is trying to do. Later on, we get Akito narrating what this page was showing, which I think I just need to put in:

We also see a bit of their conversation after they reunite in the hospital later, where Tohru again denies that she is better than Akito. Now, I think both the Tokyopop and Yen Press translations of this scene are a bit weird, the Tokyopop version uses the word “pretty” (confusing) while the Yen Press uses “kind” (don’t think that’s the best word). However one time I saw like a Malaysian english release in the half price books that used “pretty on the inside” and I like that best so I’ll just pretend that’s it.

I think this scene is interesting because it could seem like they’re just talking about morality but that’s not it. This is, once again, Tohru pretty explicitly trying to stop the creation of any sort of hierarchy between her and Akito. It’s not about right or wrong, Tohru know very well that Akito’s done things wrong and actively worked to stop her, it’s about not wanting them to be put on some sort of different rank based on morality and Tohru understanding Akito enough to empathize with the fact that (wrong or no) Akito was really hurt by Tohru and they won’t get anywhere if they don’t acknowledge that. Furthermore, I’ve already talked a bit about it already, but I think the way that Tohru asserts that she gets what Akito’s feeling and thinks she herself is “dirty” during their confrontation is relevant here too. She is, again, presenting herself as someone on the same level who understands Akito and is not being nice out of pity. This then leads to the page I talked about before which is again, Akito realizing this! This is a huge moment for her, someone who has had all of her relationships messed up by inequality and has no idea how to have a normal relationship, who is having a breakdown because she thinks that because of this it’s too late for anyone to love her, to have someone who understands her and wants to meet her on the same level. Even if she tries to deny it and shift blame, at this point Akito has realized that the zodiac bond is not what she thought and that she has been acting horribly. The groundwork is already there for Akito to have a change of heart, especially considering that a lot of her horribleness stems from legitimate extreme ignorance and her obsession with the bond so once she’s snapped out of that… The main thing that’s holding her back past that is that she’s panicking and cannot see a way forward. So then when there’s someone who actually gets where she’s coming from instead of just tolerating her and is offering her the sort of friendship that she’s never gotten to have of course she’d go for it! Tohru Honda has proven Akito wrong in ever way and, in the end, she even proves her wrong on her greatest fear: that she can only be wanted because she’s God. Because of Akito’s specific issues, nothing could have been more powerful for her than someone coming to her as an equal. Again, the piece about why Tohru could get through to her. It just wouldn’t be the same if Tohru didn’t have a reason to want Akito around or if she somehow saw Akito as below her, the very core of their relationship is the destruction of hierarchies. From the beginning Tohru has been trying to destroy the hierarchy of the zodiac, and when it comes down to it she does not take Akito’s spot at the top, but decides to stand beside her and the zodiac instead. Early in the series we see Akito trying to have some power over Tohru through fear, but when the time comes and Akito is pretty much defeated Tohru does not take power as the victor, hoping that Akito joins her instead of being somehow defeated. And at the end of it all this works, and Akito dissolves the zodiac and with it most of her power and her godhood of her own accord.

Despite their relative lack of page time, Tohru and Akito’s relationship has always been something that I come back to. Sure, a lot of that is just sentiment as they meant a lot to me when I was younger, but I think there’s something there. They work amazingly as protagonist and antagonist, contrasting nicely and working as symbols of both sides of the thematic conflict. There’s a palpable tension to their early interactions that makes you both scared and interested to see what happens when these two inevitably have to go head to head. But then, as the story goes on, it seems more and more like they are a tragedy, so similar yet on different sides of the story, fated to have one of them stuck with an unhappy ending brought on by the other.

But, even as dark as it gets, that wouldn’t really be Fruits Basket, would it? In the end, Tohru and Akito’s similarities win out, not their differences. I think it would have been so easy to just make this a story where the sweet heroine “saves” the villain just because, but that is so blatantly not what’s going on. Tohru simply sees herself in Akito, she’s not trying to somehow fix her and nor should she have to, she just wants to be her friend. And then the two manage to overcome their driving fear of moving on, forging new bonds and inspired by their interaction with the other. It’s not like Tohru somehow fixes Akito’s problems, Akito has to do things herself and in fact independence is a big theme of her endgame arc. Tohru simply offered her friendship, and that was enough. There’s a distinction to be made between how Tohru inspires Akito and Tohru somehow “saving” her, because Akito very much has to learn to save herself in the end after a lifetime of pushing her issues onto others. And, as a side note, all this is sort of why it bugs me when people act like Tohru would be like a mom to Akito. First off, Tohru shouldn’t have to be the mom to everyone. And, kind as she is, Tohru is also not a Kureno, she sees and interacts with Akito in a completely different way and their relationships with Akito are one of the big points were Tohru and Kureno differ. Second off, Akito has spent her life coddled and clinging onto anything that she can hold onto as a resemblance of parental affection to a toxic degree. Part of her arc is that she needs to grow out of this, become more independent, and have more balanced relationships. Akito at this point does not want or need to make a mommy figure out of one of her peers, and doing so may in fact be regressive. Sure, she will definitely need a level of guidance going forward, but it would be more beneficial for her to learn from example and under more of a friendly, balanced context coming from multiple people, not one person holding her hand. For all the reasons I’ve gone over in this entire post, I think it is much more meaningful for Akito to have Tohru as what she was canonically presented as in text: someone who sees her as an equal. The whole point of their relationship is, again, the defiance of hierarchies, something which I think is often sorely overlooked even though it is very openly there in text. And that, in part, is why I think their relationship is so powerful to me. Beyond hero and villain, right or wrong, or any story roles, it’s about two girls finding solidarity and friendship on a very personal, human level. This is Akito for the first time being seen not as this distant, untouchable male deity or some pitiful being, but as a flawed, hurt human girl who is nonetheless capable of change and being loved. This is Tohru coming out of hiding, presenting her flawed, terrified human self to someone she saw as an enemy. Fruits basket is, in part, a story about friendship and defeating systems of power and abuse. Even in a messy third act that muddles its themes at times by weighing character endings too heavily on het romantic love, especially in regards to the women (Hello Rin, Machi, Uo, ect.), Tohru and Akito stand out as a friendship that is given a huge amount of narrative weight. It just feels nice that, in a story that often focused on the power of relationships between women only to ditch all that and focus primarily on their relationships with men, these two girls are one of the driving forces of the endgame. The curse didn’t get broken by romantic love, but by the friendships everyone made along the way, including Tohru and Akito. Tohru has gotten it to this point, and now Akito just needs to bring it to a close and finally end things. At the very beggining, before this all started, all the cat wanted was for the God was to move forward and live as a person among the humans, and, finally, a long time later that wish was granted. The tale of the zodiac gets its happy ending not by a villain being defeated, but by the power of friendship and solidarity between women.

#fruits basket #akito sohma #tohru honda #fruits basket spoilers #meta

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doodleimprovement · 3 years

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Thor kept odd hours.

Being an engineer for TIMECO would do that for you. Being on call for emergencies would also do that to you. As well as being eccentric in your own way. He was just always up and about at weird times for the sake of either work or his own creative endeavors.

So it wasn’t odd that he was up when his communicator started to beep incessantly - usually he was already awake when they needed him for some sort of technical emergency.

What was odd was the name popping up.

- AnnaBella Gracia -

Thor grabbed the communicator and activated the voice call, holding up the communicator to his ear.

“Nell?”

“Your ship, is it verified for flight?” She started without so much as a hello

“Uh, yeah. I just got the shields working. Why?”

“Prep the ship” She practically ordered, catching him more off guard than he already was.

“What? Nell- “

“I’ll explain when I get to you just prep the ship!”

And then his little sister hung up.

He stared at the communicator with vast amounts of confusion. Nell was not the panicking type. He’d never heard her that frantic, not since his niece was 4 years old and she’d nearly fallen down a staircase. Arieta was the only thing that would get a reaction like that out of his sister. It didn’t bode well.

He shook his head as if that’d clear it of his concern, and he rushed to his hangar, looking up at the ship, and panting a bit at the exerted energy.

If she needed it, it’d be ready for the deepest recesses of space.

When Nell arrived, she had nothing more than a single bag… and no Arieta bounding up behind.

“... Nell, where-”

“She stole the ship”

Thor couldn’t think of a reaction appropriate to that, giving her an expression that he hoped conveyed the correct amount of bewilderment.

“I need your ship.” She walked past him into the hangar.

Thor let the situation sink in and took in a deep breath, following behind her.

She was already walking onto the ship, not wasting a single second.

“Nell!” he called down from the entrance, not getting onto the ship. She turned.

“... The tank is full. Once you're on your way, call me and tell me what’s going on- okay?” He called out, the concern in his face blatant.

Her expression was cold, perhaps overwhelmed, but she nodded, and the door shut in his face.

Thor was distracted at work, something you should not be when working with proprietary TIMECO TIME Tech, but it couldn’t be helped. His conversation with Nell once she was on her way to chasing her daughter down had left him concerned and stressed. Not nearly as much as his sibling, obviously, but still. He’d taken several breaks already to straighten his head out, but he just was not in it that day.

“Thor Gracia-Vego” The intercom spoke up “Please come to the office for an audience”

The engineer sighed. Of course. He couldn’t have an off day without being needled by his boss.

He went over to the office area, and standing outside the door was his overseer, and the CEO, Tim. That day he was dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, but his shoes were a more casual style, a bit unusual for the CEO of TIMECO.

“Thor” The man greeted casually

“Boss” The employee nodded formally “What do you need?”

“Tellian and Orphei said that you’re distracted.” Tim got right to the point, as always. He was leaning against the wall in an overly casual way. Thor assumed that after 500 years, that sort of decorum becomes less important.

“... My sister and her daughter are going through some things and I'm concerned” He answered vaguely. It really wasn’t his boss’ business, but Tim was invasive with Employees in the TIME sector. He hoped the answer was sufficient.

“Ah yes, your sister. AnnaBella, is it?”

“Yes sir” Thor kept his arms behind his back, but clenched his fist at an unwanted memory.

“You helped them move to Caprico, yes?”

Thor nodded “They needed a new start after.. What her partner did, if you recall my request”

Tim nodded. “I do, and I can understand that. Her daughter is experiencing growing pains I assume? Trying to spread her wings?”

Thor managed to not look suspiciously at his boss. “... That's a simplified version of it” he responded.

“Hm. Well, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask someone for help. I know your sister is very important to you, and as one of my best engineers, you and your family are entitled to nothing less than all you need” He stated as if reciting a pre-made statement.

Thor nodded cordially. “I will, but I have faith that Nell can talk it out with her daughter” He confirmed “She’s more than capable of handling some communication issues”

Tim nodded again “Mhm..” The CEO stood up straight again and out the window with his hands in his pockets “She had a lot of promise as a pilot from a young age. Aced all of her tests. Such a shame she had that accident” He commented offhandedly “Perhaps now she’d be flying directly under my watch, working with you”

“... It was her decision. What happened to her was very traumatic. I don’t blame her for not wanting to be in that position again after all that.”

“She made a full recovery and still flies for vacations” Tim pointed out.

“Everyone handles their baggage differently, boss. She preferred to keep her feet on the ground as much as possible.” Thor pressed, managing to restrain his annoyance at his CEOs odd passive aggression. “Do you need anything else from me?”

Tim gave Thor a knowing look, then offering a flat smile “Take the rest of the day off, come back tomorrow with a clearer head, hm?”

Thor gave him a curt nod “Have a good night, boss”

“You as well, Thor.” Tim waved the man off, and Thor turned on his heel and left, speed walking away as fast as he could.

#ahit au #ahit #hat mom au #hat mom nell au #thor #ahit thor #ahit nell #ahit oc #tim #ahit tim #antonia arts #antonia writes

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the-ghost-king · 3 years

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I think most of the olympians are characterized semi well, except for aphrodite. I don't have a problem with aphrodite being awful, but i wish we had gotten a more twisted version of her meddling and interference. I think part of the problem is that we see all the gods through the eyes of mortal until toa and they are going to have a different perception fo things. I sort of get why apollo was written the way he was, but it's still annoying at times because its an ancient deity written for 10 year olds. I liked his moments when he seemed more ancient and classical even though those moments are few and far between. Most of the gods fall into very obvious tropes, which was fine for me when i was young but now that im older i want more depth which rr just cant provide in his writing style.

ps. do you prefer the pjo gods or the kane chronicles gods?

Eh, I think it's hard to say any of them are characterized well considering how godly personalities are viewed by Hellenistic polytheists. Each individual will feel a different way about a certain god and interpret their presence a different way, to say a god is characterized well is mostly a subjective experience, so it's almost impossible to do so objectively.

However, I think yes Aphrodite was really poorly written, Apollo is also one of the worst written gods by Rick. Apollo is a god of civilization alongside Athena, meaning he has a deep respect for the order of humanity. He was considered one of the most Hellenistic gods by the Greeks, and often overseen the writing of treaties and the creation of cities ("that a town or a colony was never founded by the Greeks without consulting an oracle of Apollo, so that in every case he became, as it were, their spiritual leader"). He's also a god of sciences, and very smart because of it. He is rarely angered or overly invested, and is often described as kind, energetic, and cheerful. He's extremely femme, often depicted in women's clothes, with women's hairstyles (and has even been confused for Kore in some art), and yet he is known for his athleticism. He's a god of agriculture alongside Demeter, and god of light and the sun alongside the titan Helios.

And he's not at all what Rick wrote him as, a self-conceited, bored with humanity, priss who's also a jock. I bet from Rick's writing you also never knew Dionysus was basically a god of gender? And yeah sure, if you know the myth of Dionysus's origins you know about how he was raised as a girl but the fact that Dionysus also often wore women's clothes and hairstyles is completely erased from Rick's work... (Part 2) Or maybe most of Dionysus personality? Yeah sure, one could argue that he's maybe a bit peeved at not being able to drink and having to babysit kids, except wouldn't some of his personality still come through somewhere? Like his clairvoyance, or go with the flow kind of attitude? Where's his love of peace, and his love of theatre? I am thankful at least we got to see some of his madness.

I can go on really, about Hera, and Hermes, and Ares, and Persephone, and so many others. Rick's characterization of the gods is almost like he took the idea of them and then remolded it to be whatever he wanted. I'm not here to say there's a correct way to depict the gods, because as aforementioned it's a very subjective experience which is encouraged in Hellenistic Polytheism- however a lot of what Rick did shows a lack of care in many ways. That's avoiding even really truly digging into the amount of queer erasure (most specifically genderqueer erasure) in Rick's depiction of many Greek gods (and some goddesses too).

I understand the need to simplify them but the need to alter them significantly? It's very weird to me, and I'm not Hellenistic Polytheistic or anything but even as just someone who's read up a lot on the myths it's very quick to see where he went wrong. I've seen more complaints about the PJO fandom than Rick's books in Hellenistic Polytheistic communities, but the books are also criticized.

Again, subjective not objective, but simply to compare Rick's version of the gods to the original myths he is very far off the mark, which is fine if that's how he sees the gods, but I still think he was very far off the mark (again avoiding erasure, which is objective not subjective).

As for my favorite, I like the way Rick wrote the personalities of the Egyptian gods, he did a much better job with making them less simplified and more of a full individual. I will say I am not as familiar with Egyptian mythology, and I have only kept up with some of the stories about Anubis and the underworld, so I don't know how accurate his depiction of the gods is in comparison to them in mythology. I'm more familiar with Egypt and it's gods from historical standpoints than Mythological ones. So in that case the Kane Chronical gods, but even then I'm very aware that Rick was well off the mark with them- whitewashing is common in TKC and that's a whole problem in and of it's self.

#asks #anon

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flying-elliska · 3 years

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thank you @sinterblackwell for tagging me in this bookish ask game! these questions were really interesting !

how many books are too many books in a series ? i'm honestly pretty tolerant for long book series, i love seeing a world develop over lots of books - started the bone season series recently which has 4 books so far and is slated to have seven, it's going to be a bitch waiting but at the same time there is something so thrilling about having this sort of returning event year after year (i grew up with the HP books so that really marked me i guess). that said i think that only really works when the authors have solid plans because when an author gets stuck and you have to wait ten years for the next one that really sucks (lol GoT). and i think beyond 7-8 it's definitely getting excessive.

how do you feel about cliffhangers ? hmmm...depends if they're well done or if they feel like shock value. i think every book needs to feel like a cohesive unit and some cliffhangers happen too soon, without enough resolution - that said, i love it when books open up a new (but related) mystery in the last few lines

hardback or paperback ? i used to buy paperbacks only but over time those really get damaged super easily (i've moved a lot) and it feels like a waste of space and paper. so now i'm doing this thing where i mostly buy ebooks and whenever i really like a book and want it in my permanent library - or when a new book is coming out that i know i am going to love - i buy hardbacks ; at least when the covers are aesthetically satisfying. i just really love the idea of starting to build my 'forever library'

least favorite book ? it's tied between Manon Lescaut, which i was forced to read in high school and is the most irritating story ever about an old timey dude falling in 'love' with a prostitute and blaming her for it and everything else that goes wrong in his life until she dies and he can 'be free' ; and The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi which made me so uncomfortable i had to stop like one third of the way in and is a torture p*rn, fetishistic, racist mess about a Japanese cyborg girl who gets exploited and abused by everyone she meets. It's possible that these two books were trying to make a point about how the things they're depicting were bad, but there is a level of misogyny and violence that feels too illustrative, exploitative and graphic to ever serve that purpose properly in my mind.

love triangles, yes or no ? i'm not against a love triangle when it's well done, i.e it has a real impact on the plot and is tied into the themes of the story. For example, I think the triangle in the Hunger Games is a good one, because Peeta represents (to simplify it massively) peace whereas Gale represents violence, the escalation of war and never ending conflict, so Katniss choosing between them is not just about moody teenager feelings. That said, the trope has definitely been overused in YA ; I really hate love triangles when it's just an excuse to stall the plot and throw in artificial delays because the characters are being wishy-washy and indecisive and non-communicative assholes. also i wish more of them got solved by polyamory or something.

the most recent book you just couldn't finish ? last year, If I loved you less by Tamsen Parker, a modern wlw retelling of Emma which I expected to love but the overly casual-quirky writing and the excessively immature MC just irritated the hell out of me

a book you're currently reading ? rereading The Raven Cycle right now, I'm on the Raven King and I'll reread Call Down the Hawk after, I want to get to Mister Impossible

last book you recommended to someone ? Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

oldest book you've read ? hmmmmmm not sure but the thing that comes to mind rn is the Tao Te Ching by Laozi, 6th century BC

newest book you've read ? ehhh probably Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

favorite author ? lol i absolutely cannot answer that question no matter what i say it feels like a betrayal

buying books or borrowing books ? buying, i'm a shitty borrower tbh because i like having books sit in my TBR pile and just randomly decide to read them out of the blue

a book you dislike that everyone else seems to love ? the night circus by erin morgenstern - it's so popular everywhere and I wasn't even able to finish it ; it's the epitome of style over substance for me ; sure the descriptions are beautiful but they feel so empty and void of any meaning or character development ; it drags for chapters and chapters and then boom ! instalove, which is when i dropped it because that's one of the things i hate the most. i checked the rest of the plot on wikipedia to be sure and yeah it annoyed me too so.

bookmarks or dog ears ? bookmarks. i only ever dog ear my study books

a book you can always reread ? letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke

can you read while listening to music ? nooo it's way too much input when i get into a book it's Intense i can't deal with anything else

one pov or multiple povs ? i absolutely love a well done multiple POVs when the switching allows you to compare the perspective of different characters and how it shapes the narrative and how they think of each other and how it slowly all merges together ! Especially when it's dumbasses in love pining over each other !!! chef's kiss !!!

do you read a book in one sitting or over multiple days ? depends, i binge when i have the time and it's gripping but not always and that's fine

who do you tag ? @beeexx @all-the-wr0ng-places @smblmn @peoniesandsmiles @bremmommye @dorkdumplings @petitspaceling @hellswolfie @iamshannonmcfarland if you want to no pressure !!!

#ask games #honestly i dont know a lot of book ppl around here so tell me if you want to be tagged in this sort of thing

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quicksilversquared · 3 years

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Move to Safety: Chapter 3 (of 6)

After Adrien just happens to spy Nooroo in his father’s office, he’s sent into an panic. His father is Hawkmoth, which means that Adrien is in serious danger.

Thankfully the Dupain-Chengs are more than willing to step up to the plate and lend a helping hand.

links in the reblog

Adrien was truly beating himself up when, for the second akuma battle in a row, he choked up on his words before he could tell Ladybug about his father.

"It's not like I'm scared of Ladybug," Adrien complained to Plagg as he headed to the Dupain-Cheng house to hang out with Marinette. "Because I'm not! And my father deserves to be arrested, I'm not trying to protect him. But..."

"It's okay to be nervous about change," Plagg said, uncharacteristically serious. "Which I think might be your problem. Even if you don't like the status quo-"

"-the unknown can be scary," Marinette told Adrien five minutes later, after Adrien had expressed the same concerns to her. Her reassurances echoed Plagg's almost word-for-word, which was funny but also, admittedly, pretty reassuring. "Even if you know that all of us will be there for you."

"I just feel bad about allowing the akuma attacks to continue when we could be ending them," Adrien admitted, fussing with a corner of the pillow before catching himself and smoothing it back out. Not that he thought that anyone would care, really- after all, the two of them were hanging out in his room and if the bed was less than perfect, it didn't matter- but even though he trusted Marinette (and clearly Plagg trusted her too, if the number of times he spotted the two of them talking was any indication), he didn't want to seem like an anxious wreck in front of her.

He was one of the city's two main superheroes. He couldn't let himself be an anxious wreck.

"They've been pretty slow this week," Marinette commented, shuffling a little to get more comfortable on the bed. "Because your father is busy, right? I mean, we've only had two this week, and neither of them were a particularly long fight."

"Yeah, it's the usual summer line launch. It keeps him busy this last week and next." Adrien flashed a smile at her. "Helpful, really, since we have exams."

Marinette nodded in agreement.

"He'll probably not have time to do any more akumatizations before he leaves, at this rate," Adrien commented, glancing at the calendar. "So I guess I shouldn't feel too bad about the attacks. But I still do. And if there aren't attacks, then I don't know how I'll reach Ladybug- she's going to be just as busy as we are, studying for exams."

"You could talk to Ladybug at the mural dedication this weekend," Marinette pointed out, and grinned when Adrien whipped around to stare at her in surprise. He had forgotten about that, honestly, what with everything else going on. "Best friends with the Ladyblogger, remember? She's been talking my ear off about it."

"You are an actual lifesaver. I would have forgotten about that, what with everything else that's been going on." Adrien let out a breath, trying to settle the nerves that had sprung up with the idea of having a set date for telling Ladybug. It made everything more real. "I'll tell her then."

Marinette scooted closer to him, reaching out and taking one of his hands in hers. "We'll be here for you, you know that. And you'll be staying with us this weekend, too."

"Right." Adrien smiled over at her, so thankful that he had Marinette and her family right now. He would be a mess without them and their unquestioning support. "Thank goodness."

She smiled back, then glanced down at the bed for a moment. Adrien followed her gaze, wondering if he had messed up the sheets somehow- how, he had no idea, but maybe the older fabric had torn and he hadn't noticed?- when she spoke up again.

"Is it too warm for the blanket down here already?"

Adrien blinked at the sudden change of subject before answering. "Oh. Yeah, a bit, so I took it off the bed."

"I usually keep all of mine still on my bed in a big nest, but I suppose that's a personal preference," Marinette said with a giggle. "I have a ton of blankets and pillows now and just drape myself over all of them. Which you've probably seen before when you leave in the morning."

Adrien had tried not to look at the still-sleeping Marinette when he left in the mornings via her trapdoor, actually, because it just seemed intrusive, but the whole idea of a blanket nest sounded really nice. If Adrien tried it at the mansion, though, things would have tumbled off the edge of his bed. It would happen here, too, actually, because the bed wasn't up against a wall. "I'd normally keep the blanket, but, well..." He shot a sheepish look in her direction. "It's just...I could tell that the blanket had been in the closet for a while, if that makes sense? It wasn't an awful smell, just... a lot."

Marinette's expression lit up in understanding. "Ah! Okay, I know what you're talking about. We have cedar balls in the closet to make sure that we don't get bugs in our linens. It's a nice scent, in my opinion, but I can see where it would get overwhelming."

Adrien nodded. "That's a good description. And since it's warm enough, I just put it back in the closet so that the sheets wouldn't pick up the scent. Well, more than they already have."

"We can wash them!" Marinette said at once, hopping up. "And the blanket too, if you want, but it'll have to be a separate load."

"Mm. I think I'll pass. I'm not going to freeze." Adrien slid off the bed, helping Marinette pull the sheets off. Once they had gotten everything, he took the larger half of the pile of linens from her- there was no point in Marinette trying to struggle down the stairs when she couldn't see, after all- and followed her down to the laundry room. "You're gonna have to tell me what to do here, I've never done laundry before."

"And we don't want you to flood the laundry room," Marinette finished, grinning at Adrien's alarmed look. "It's not that likely, stop looking so scared. You just have to make sure that you don't put in way too much soap. See, all you really need is just a little bit."

Adrien pouted at her, trying not to smile as he did. "You just said that to freak me out!"

The smile that Marinette was clearly trying to hide told Adrien that that had totally been her intention. He pouted at her some more, then scooted over to her side to watch as Marinette showed him how to adjust the settings, explaining each one as they went. It wasn't overly simplified- Marinette knew that while he was unfamiliar with the machines and with paying attention to washing labels on clothing, he wasn't dumb and he picked up on stuff fast- or too detailed as to be confusing, and soon enough Adrien felt confident that he could probably put laundry through without ruining stuff.

Probably. Marinette had promised to help him with his first few loads of laundry once he was no longer at the mansion just in case, because his designer clothes might have some different washing instructions and he didn't want to destroy things right away.

"That blanket didn't fit your bed very well anyway," Marinette said as they got the load started and water started pouring into the machine. She hopped up on top of the dryer, settling down. "I was thinking of making a quilt for your birthday, and I'll try to get it done earlier than that, so you can have it on your bed- unless you have a blanket at the mansion that you want instead!" Marinette added immediately, her words all of a sudden rushing together. "I don't want to assume, I don't know if you have any blankets that you're attached to, or-"

"I would love a quilt," Adrien said at once, unable to help the way his voice went all breathy at the idea. He loved all of the gifts that Marinette had made for him- and yes, that included his favorite scarf, which he had discovered was a Marinette gift after he overheard a conversation between her and Alya- and a quilt?

He had had a moment of wondering why Marinette would think that he had an attachment to any of his blankets at home when she first asked- why anyone would have an attachment to a blanket- but with as soon as he thought about what Marinette had said about a quilt and- well, he could already he can see how an attachment could form. If Marinette did make him a quilt, he would probably keep it forever. Even if he ended up with a larger bed later on, one that the quilt didn't fit on... well, Adrien would either try to keep it on the bed regardless, or he would keep it on a couch to curl up with on cool evenings.

All of the blankets that he had at the mansion were typical department store ones (or mail-order catalogue ones, he really didn't know- but either way, they were plain and had no meaning to them) that either Nathalie or the interior designer had picked out to go with the rest of his room. They weren't anything special, even if he had had them for a while.

Marinette was smiling, clearly relieved that she hadn't somehow overstepped. "Oh, good. Do you want to look at patterns? I've been bookmarking some things and if it's not a surprise, then you might as well have some input."

"Oh, sure!"

Adrien followed Marinette back upstairs eagerly, a bounce in his steps. He had seen quilts before, of course, and they were so pretty. And so much work, too, so Adrien kind of couldn't believe that Marinette had been planning on taking so much time just for a birthday gift for him.

Not that jackets and bags and dresses- all things that she had made for her friends before- were exactly quick things to make! But quilts...

There were lots of little pieces, for one. The cutting and sewing together probably took forever, even for someone as talented as Marinette. And then there was the actual quilting part.

While his current bed was a full size- larger than a twin, not quite as large as a queen or king- well, that was a still a lot of fabric to cover.

While the sheets went through the wash and then the dryer, the two of them looked over Marinette's folder of quilt patterns. There were a lot of ideas, and it was pretty overwhelming at first, seeing all of the patterns, but, well...

There were some patterns that just called to Adrien more, and they narrowed it down to three of his favorites. By the time the sheets came out of the dryer and it was time to wrestle them back onto the bed, he had managed to select a favorite.

He was really looking forward to the quilt now.

"Want to come along with me to the fabric store and help pick out fabrics?" Marinette asked once the sheets were back on the bed and she had written up a list of how much fabric she needed. "Quilting fabric is so much fun to pick through. All of the patterns to choose from... all of the colors..."

Adrien grinned at her. Marinette had clearly already entered what he had previously dubbed the Fabric Haze. She had a sewing project in mind, and now she was entirely focused on it. "Shouldn't we be studying? I mean, I know we have most of the weekend for that, but with the mural dedication that I have to go to, that'll take some study time, and if you have fabric, uh..."

Marinette puffed up at him. "Are you saying that I'll get distracted? I can behave with fabric in the house! I wouldn't start to sew until after exams are over."

"Mm-hmm." Adrien snickered some more, then calmed down. "How about we save the fabric errand for after the dedication? I know it's a bit more time then not spent studying, but it might be nice to have something to look forward to for after I tell Ladybug about...you know."

"That makes sense." Marinette glanced longingly towards her computer, where their chosen design was pulled up on-screen. She startled and looked away right away when Adrien snickered again. "So, uh, studying?"

"Studying," Adrien agreed, following Marinette to her desk. In all honesty, they probably should have started sooner instead of spending so much time on the quilt, but he wasn't going to complain. Not at all.

Not when Marinette was doing her best to make him feel at home.

The mural dedication on Saturday morning was boring, to say the least.

It hadn't always felt like a snoozefest to do these sorts of things, Chat Noir reflected as he stood next to Ladybug, both of them standing a little bit behind and off to the side of the mayor as he talked. When their statues went up- well, that had been cool. But the two of them kept getting invited to dedications (some superhero-themed, others not) and now, several years into their superhero careers, the formalities had become stuffy. Journalists were welcomed, the two of them got name-dropped, there were thank-yous to sponsors and builders or artists or whoever was involved, and then some background on the project and why it was done and-

Well, Chat Noir was usually well and truly tuned out by that point.

He felt a little bad about that, sometimes. In cases like this, where it was obvious than an artist had worked super-hard at bringing their vision to life, it probably would have been nice to listen to how the superheroes had apparently deeply inspired them and the thought process behind the symbolism in the painting. But he was even more distracted than usual today, and so the symbolism that the painter had used in the painting was going straight over his head, the explanation going in one ear and out the other.

And then after the speeches, there was mingling.

"I told the mayor that we couldn't linger long," Ladybug murmured in Chat Noir's ear as the crowd in front of them started to shift, signaling an end to the speeches that he had somehow missed. "That we have other obligations today, so we can only talk for a few minutes before we leave."

"Yay exams." Chat Noir glanced around, wincing when he spotted reporters pushing through the crowd to get to them quickly. Presumably the mayor had made a comment about the superheroes not being available for long, or else they wouldn't be in such a hurry to reach the two of them. Their presence was going to make it hard for him to tell Ladybug about his father, and he had promised himself that he was going to do it today.

"Ladybug! Chat Noir! A couple minutes of your time?"

"A couple minutes is all we have to spare, unfortunately," Ladybug said smoothly, turning to them. "But we can answer a couple questions before we go."

Madam Chamack dove in first. "We're glad that the two of you could make it, but are we ever going to see the other members of your team at any of these events? This dedication in particular, it seems, it might have been prudent..."

"We appreciate that our part-time teammates both past and present are being honored in the mural, but they only come out for emergencies," Ladybug told the cameras. "It doesn't seem like a great idea to have so many Miraculous out and in one area unless it's strictly necessary."

"It would be too risky," Chat Noir agreed, glad to be playing backup. Ladybug had honestly become better than he had at answering questions without hesitation, and so he let her take the lead. "But yes, it's nice seeing more than just the core two of us being represented. We couldn't do it without our entire expanded team waiting in the wings to lend a helping hand."

Even once Hawkmoth was gone, it would be too risky, in his opinion. There would always be people out there who wanted to steal the Miraculous and use the powers for their own gain, and if there were more targets out... well, then that would just make things easier. And if he thought it was dangerous, then Ladybug would definitely never consider having unnecessary Miraculous out. She was even more cautious than he was.

"There's been a decrease in akumas over the past couple weeks- thoughts on that?"

"Presumably Hawkmoth has a life outside of supervillainry, since that wouldn't pay the bills," Ladybug offered, flashing a small smile at them. She got some chuckles at that. "He may be busy. There have always been times when things slow down or speed up, and it's probably not worth reading into short-term trends too much."

Chat Noir nodded, though he didn't add anything to that.

"Instead, we should be thankful for the slower period- I know I am!- and focus on making sure that we're kind to others and not getting needlessly upset over small things," Ladybug added. It had become a fairly standard plea for them over the years, though how much it actually helped, it was hard to say. Some people, like most of his classmates, certainly tried to be kind and not overreact, but others, like Chloe and her mom and the Mayor...

Well, they certainly caused more than their fair share of akumas, that was for sure. There was usually one Bourgeois-caused akuma per week, which, considering that there were three of them and hundreds- or thousands, rather- of other people in Hawkmoth's favored portion of Paris, was ridiculous.

(Or, to borrow Chloe's favorite phrase- ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!)

Ladybug fielded a couple more questions, then gently started to extract them from the press. All of a sudden, Chat Noir started panicking.

He couldn't let this opportunity slip by without talking to Ladybug, not again. But once they left, they would go their opposite ways right away and he wouldn't be able to tell her anything.

"Ladybug, I have to talk to you before we leave," Chat Noir murmured, ducking his head to talk directly in her ear as Ladybug smiled at the reporters for a photo. "Do- do you have a couple minutes to spare for me?"

"Of course," Ladybug murmured right away, glancing up at him. "Is there something in particular...?"

Chat Noir swallowed. It was now or- well, not never, but maybe his only chance for the day, and he would definitely beat himself up over it if he backed out now. "I know who Hawkmoth is. He's-"

Ladybug's eyes snapped to him, then slid over his shoulder towards the still-lingering reporters as she pressed a finger to his lips briefly. "Tell me more once we get up on the rooftops? We can go over a couple blocks so that they don't see us."

That was smart. He had gotten so focused on not chickening out on telling her that he had completely blanked out on being cautious. If any of the civilians nearby overheard them so much as mention that they knew who Hawkmoth was, it would be front-page news by tomorrow, never mind the fact that giving Hawkmoth a heads-up would make the superheroes' job more difficult. And if any reporters heard...

There would be news articles posted online only minutes later.

Chat Noir nodded, waiting for Ladybug to finish answering a final couple questions before following her to the rooftops. He had to give her credit- even though she had to be shocked by the news that he knew who Hawkmoth was, she still managed to flash the reporters her usual smile and wave as they left. Once they had reached a series of rooftops several roads over, Ladybug landed and caught his hand to steady him as he landed. "So you were saying...?"

Chat Noir nodded, taking a deep breath. He had to reach deep inside himself and remember his acting lessons, focusing on not looking affected. "Hawkmoth. His- his son saw him talking to his kwami and, uh, told me. It's Gabriel Agreste."

Ladybug exhaled, long and low. "Ah."

"And Mayura- it has to be his assistant, Nathalie," Chat Noir added. "So. Uh." He fidgeted. "...I don't know where to go from here."

"Well, I think- hmm." Ladybug nibbled on her lip, clearly thoughtful. "It's not great timing, with exams coming up this week, but obviously we don't want to get called away during exams..."

She was handing him the perfect opening, honestly. "He's going to be out of the country this week, actually. Er. Apparently. According to his son."

Ladybug raised an eyebrow. "Actually out of the country or his hologram going out of the country?"

Chat Noir couldn't help but laugh. Everyone had heard about that scandal, apparently. "Actually out of the country. He got so much bad press from that that he wouldn't be able to risk it. Besides, people he meets are going out of their way to shake hands with him to make sure it's actually him."

That got a laugh out of her. "I'm sure he's thrilled about that."

"Oh, no doubt." His father had been steamed by the hologram's failure, and in such a public setting, too. And then for his business associates to be subtly reminding him of the scandal every time they met...

It really was pretty funny.

"So we can wait until after exams," Ladybug decided. "Maybe- if he's traveling, maybe we can get the drop on him when he returns? I mean, he's bound to be jet-lagged, right? And it seems like he wouldn't be expecting it."

"And his assistant takes a vacation after he gets back from his trip," Chat Noir said, remembering that important little detail all of a sudden. Nathalie didn't often take vacations, but she worked so hard on the summer launch and there was always so much company business to deal with at the same time that once everything was done, she took several days off and went out of town to visit family. "Which means no Mayura on hand to provide backup."

Ladybug lit up. "That's perfect! We can deal with one supervillain at a time. Attack Hawkmoth when he won't have Mayura nearby to transform and help, and then maybe Portal and get Mayura before the news can get to her? Then it'll be an ambush attack on both of their parts. We would just need to know where she's going to be."

"Are we going to pull in some of the others?" Chat Noir wanted to know, filing a mental note of ask Nathalie exactly where she's going for later. "If we're attacking when he isn't expecting us, maybe we won't need backup, but just in case..."

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," Ladybug agreed. "Keep them back and out of sight, but with clear instructions and a signal for if we need them to help- it's just a question of who we want."

Chat Noir nodded. "Cobra, maybe? I know he's not come out for a while, but the re-do could be good."

Ladybug worried her lip. "I would, but he's gone to university out of the city. That's a good idea to have the Snake out, though. Maybe one of us could use it. Uh- Seabiscuit? If we need help, he'd get people there fast. And Hornet, for restraint."

"If we could get Seabiscuit to open a portal directly behind Mr. Agreste and have Hornet dive through, the fight could be over before it's even started," Chat Noir pointed out. "It would just be a matter of keeping Mr. Agreste sufficiently distracted."

Ladybug lit up. "I know! We could have Vixen make a Mirage of the two of us out there, battling the akuma. He'll be focused on that, and won't be expecting any sort of attack in his lair."

"And if we Portal in from the wrong direction, we can just reset and try again," Chat Noir agreed. "That is- I'd almost call that deceptively complex, honestly. There's a decent handful of moving parts, but with any luck, it should be over pretty fast."

"We'll have to give everyone their Miraculous before Mr. Agreste gets back, because any delay after the akuma shows up will be suspicious," Ladybug said, frowning in thought. "Not ideal- can you find out when, exactly, he's going to return and when Nathalie will be leaving? We can get the Miraculous out before then, with instructions on what we want people to do and where we're going to meet up on the day of the battle. That way, we won't have to spend as much time explaining everything while the akuma is out and about."

"Yeah." Chat Noir let out a long breath, trying not to let the nerves show. It all felt more real now that they had a plan, and it- it wasn't a bad thing, really. Soon he would be able to go directly to the Dupain-Cheng house and stay there, no sneaking around required.

And he was looking forward to it. No matter what the nerves in his stomach were saying otherwise.

#Miraculous Ladybug #My writing #adrien agreste #Move to Safety

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skaylanphear · 5 years

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None of y’all are actually understanding The Puppeteer 2 (spoilers ahead)

Okay, so it’s been a LONG time since I’ve written any meta on this show. Mostly because a lot of episodes are now focused on things I don’t care so much about, BUT I was rather inspired by Puppeteer 2, especially since SO MANY PEOPLE seem to be missing the entire point of the episode.

Now, I’m not giving the writers of the show a ton of credit--they have their good and bad moments. But given the obvious budget of this episode as well as the sheer amount of dialogue, I think it’s pretty fair to assume at least some thought was put into this episode.

So, first and foremost, there were a few points made during this episode.

Let’s start with the Wax Museum and why it’s so pertinent to this episode. The Wax Museum is made entirely up of celebrities. Though we have encountered Adrien and his status before, this is one of the most direct ways they could have drawn attention to it. There is a clear line in this episode--Adrien is a celebrity, his friends are not. Yes, the akumas had wax statues, but the victims and their akumas are not the same people, so to say.

So here we have an “honor” that is only ever granted to celebrities (wax figures) and we have Adrien coming in to work on his. But before that, we have a constant back and forth in the car as to why Marinette is even there--is she Adrien’s friend? His lover? Just a fan of wax statues? This is important because it is less a reflection of Adrien and Marinette’s characters as it is Marinette’s own, let’s say, psychological confusion over how she views Adrien. We’ve seen here make stupid, flustered claims about Adrien before, and these conversations are forcing her to face that head on, even if Adrien remains oblivious as always.

During the conversation up to the top of the building, we are faced with more of this confusion. Namely, Adrien’s interpretation of his relationship with Marinette versus her own. Granted, Nino brings to light a lot of the problems, but he is less the cause so much as the vehicle with which Marinette’s own inability to be honest is being portrayed. Her behavior causes confusion, even if Adrien is unable to fully grasp that (which is all the more part of the problem). Alya, Nino, and Adrien are ALL responding to the issue of Marinette’s feelings in different ways, because THEY are confused as to what she actually wants and what they’re meant to be doing. Marinette says one thing and then backs out a moment later. As someone who recently went through something similar, my initial indecisiveness to admit my feelings to the person I liked caused a lot of back and forth confusion for the people I had told. Marinette’s situation has spiraled FAR beyond that, which is all the more reason we’re getting these vastly different interpretations as far as how her friends are meant to be reacting. The POINT is that her indecisiveness and timidity is confusing and this is becoming a problem.

The other thing that I think is interesting in the following scene--which will lead me back around to my main point--is the fact that despite having come with Adrien to support him because the wax stuff is going to be long and boring, all his friends abandon him when he’s literally trapped in the vice of “celebrity.” Granted, Nino and Alya leaving is a bit of a device to move the plot forward, but Marinette also leaving kind of wraps the whole thing up in a neat bow. She’s supposed to confess and ultimately can’t. And instead of staying with Adrien as a good friend should despite her inability, she leaves as a flustered mess.

Adrien is now alone, his hand clamped in a wax trap. In a lot of ways, this is extremely symbolic of his status as a celebrity and his friends not being a part of that. That Marinette left as a flustered mess only makes this worse, especially since she left him in a manner that is very similar to how a flustered fan might react if they become overwelmed.

This is important because we’re now seeing a very clear implication that though she desires to know Adrien and has done many things to be a good friend to him, Marinette is still haunted by this “idea” of Adrien that she has that isn’t at all factual. And while I don’t think it’s celebrity worship, as some would argue, I do think that the metaphor of celebrity worship in this episode is a very good use of Adrien’s character. We are seeing that Marinette interprets Adrien in a light that is not entirely realistic, which doesn’t help anyone.

This metaphor is only further expanded after her discussion with Tikki. While Tikki’s advice might seem helpful, what it really does is further support the notion that Marinette’s entire infatuation with Adrien is shadowed by false idealizations. She creates a persona to act as in order to communicate with him. She is literally creating a role for herself that she thinks will allow her to exist in Adrien’s, I guess, “proximity” so as to allow her to “get what she wants,” so to speak. She’s acting--as in, she’s lying. Just as much to herself, I think, as she is Adrien.

And this whole thing is only made worse by Adrien’s “prank.” He symbolically becomes nothing more than a wax statue during the entire time that Marinette is playing her “role.” She even goes on a tangent about all the great characteristics he has as a statue, highlighting a lot of shallow aspects of why she’s attracted to him. Granted, I think there’s more to it than that (her feelings, I mean), but she’s so confused by the “more” that it’s hardly relevant if she can’t voice her feelings in the first place, beyond how “perfect” she thinks he is.

Now, this is the “cringe” part of the episode that everyone is complaining about. But to be honest, I really didn’t think it was that bad. It clearly shows Marinette’s idealization of Adrien, as well as the “form” Adrien has within that idealization. That she said all the silly things she did (again, playing her role) and kissed him, while embarrassing, is wholly within her character. Given her tendency to fantasize on extreme levels, I think I’d be more surprised if she didn’t try to kiss Adrien’s wax statue. I get people are annoyed with Marinette constantly being the cause of bad things, or the butt of jokes, etc, but I don’t think that this situation is wholly unfounded given her personality. It was very in character for her to act that way, and I think it made a rather valid point about her feelings for Adrien. After all, she and Adrien may be “friends,” but they’re clearly not close enough for him to feel certain about what she really thinks of him, so she can’t be that close to him, which means there is a bit of shallowness on her side as far as her feelings, even is she would prefer it be different.

Now, another complaint people have been voicing about the episode is “why can’t Marrinette have a tastefully handled confession like Chat?” And while a lot of you didn’t seem to realize this, the episode actually addresses that.

When Chat Noir flirts with Ladybug, she actually stops fighting to ask him how he so easily is able to express his feelings, because she has such a hard time doing the same thing. He responds with some line about how the people you care about should know how you feel, but the whole point of that episode was to illustrate the differences between Adrien and Marinette, and kind of explain why Marinette’s confession is so long in coming while Chat Noir has confessed, like, two or three times now.

For better or worse, Marinette’s inability to be honest about her feelings for Adrien is a huge conflict surrounding her character and has been from the beginning. Much bigger than Chat’s conflict over his feelings for Ladybug, which tend to be addressed in a more, let’s say, lighthearted manner than Marinette’s feelings for Adrien. Adrien is a very forthcoming person. He likes to think the best in people and is very honest about how he feels with almost anyone. And while I think he should probably re-evaluate the behavior he thinks is acceptable from other people, he mostly deals with any kind of conflict straight out. He doesn’t sit and stew like Marinette does, he doesn’t even waste time thinking about Chloe and Lila. Adrien would much rather think about the good than the bad. In fact, he would much rather ignore the bad (which is probably why he tried confessing so many times--likely hoping for a different outcome. Optimists, amiright?)

Marinette is NOTHING like this. She will sit and stew and plan and make herself anxious and scared and angry over things that would slide off Adrien’s back like water slides off ducks (thank you, Crowley). Marinette confessing is a much bigger roadblock because of this difference in their personalities. And it’s also why she gets all sweet on Chat for his reasoning behind why he can express his feelings so easily, because he makes it sound so simple, which is exactly what Marinette needs. Not overly complicated plans (Nino and Alya) or anything like that. She needs to be able to push back on her anxiety, walk up to Adrien, and just say it (much like how she kissed his cheek in the finale of the last season). No attempts made by her to confess will EVER succeed so long as there is any kind of convoluted plan surrounding it.

The writers were literally giving the viewers a direct comparison between Adrien and Marinette as far as how they deal with their feelings and y’all missed it because you were too busy being mad. While Adrien overly simplifies situations--which can be both good and bad--Marinette is more likely to overly complicate things--which is also both good and bad. Where Adrien might fail to see how complex a situation is, Marinette will, whereas Adrien is able to make things simpler where Marinette cannot. You even see it in their fighting styles. Adrien ALWAYS goes for the obvious physical attack, while Marinette is the one to strategize. IT HAS BEEN A LITERAL PART OF THEIR PERSONALITIES FROM THE BEGINNING AND YOU ALL MISSED IT!

The point of this episode was to illustrate Marinette’s issues with her feelings for Adrien, as well as draw comparisons between them so as to better understand why Marinette’s attempts to confess ALWAYS FAIL!

Until Marinette can pull back enough to see Adrien less as a terrifying mountain to climb and more like a simple set of stairs, she will not be able to reach him.

And that is the tea.

#miraculous ladybug #ml #mlb #the puppeteer 2 #meta #me stuff #adrienette

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scrapyardboyfriends · 4 years

Text

Because I’ve read too many “Robert was awful to Aaron and Robron fans loved it but Ben forgives Aaron for bullying him and Robron fans hate it” comments about this story, I have some thoughts... (warning for an incredibly messy rambling post)

For me, what has always been most important is a good and entertaining story and the basic point for me in all of this is that Robron was an entertaining and fascinating story and so far, Ben and Aaron is not.

Robert may have done awful things to Aaron throughout the affair, sure, but it was interesting. It was soapy and dramatic and made for a good story. Did he try and kill both his parents? Kind of. Did he tie him to a radiator and hold a gun to his head? Sure. (Although for the record, Aaron set the whole Lodge thing up and attacked him first and Robert was only defending himself and then panicked and turned into a crazy person having a breakdown but I digress...see interesting). I may have wanted to ring his neck with how terrible he was to Aaron after Katie’s death etc but it was always fascinating, complex content to watch and analyze. The fact that we saw all of this play out on screen too just makes it better, in fact, it’s key.

And after all of that terribleness, did Aaron forgive him instantly? No. It took months for them to be good again and Robert had to work for it. He paid for all of the affair stuff with getting shot and then he was Aaron’s rock throughout the whole Gordon story. And after all of that awful behavior, it was just as fascinating to watch him start to let all of that go and be able to support Aaron and not betray him like in that scene with Chas where he’s trying to get her to look deeper into the Aaron/Gordon situation after he knows the truth. The point is though, that there were months worth of story to watch unfold before Aaron forgave him enough to try again, before he trusted him enough.

And we had another version of all of that with the one night stand and the break up era, months and months of content.

With this Ben and Aaron stuff, it’s hard because obviously they’ve only had about four episodes so far and we really don’t know what they’re going to do with it or where it all might go, so I realize I’m judging it on very little, but then so are all of the people who are like “this is great!” so I feel like, for the purpose of this essay I seem to be writing, it’s fine.

Now, I’ve said before, I have no real problem with them giving Aaron a new love interest from a story standpoint. It was always going to happen. This isn’t about whether I love Robron or not, it’s just about writing the show moving forward. It’s just that, above all else, I want it to be a good and compelling story.

I mean, I hated the set up right from the start because I don’t know why this team thought the perfect or most interesting love interest for Aaron was a kid he used to bully, but that aside, the most baffling thing to me about the forgiveness aspect of it all, is that it happened instantly. And this is not to say that Aaron is not forgivable. Aaron has very compelling reasons for his behavior back then, reasons we’ve seen unfold during his time on the show. And Aaron is a good guy, we know that. And the thing is, I didn’t even dislike those scenes in which Aaron apologized and Ben got to talk about the bullying and how he felt and then seemingly forgave Aaron for the most part after. The scenes were fine. They were written decently and the acting was good. The issue for me, is that I don’t understand why you would seemingly resolve your conflict so fast from a writing perspective. It’s boring.

I’m not saying more won’t come from it. Frankly, we don’t know until we see all of this play out but I get tired of seeing it simplified that we don’t like that Ben forgave Aaron over some bullying when we love Robon’s insane tumultuous relationship. For me, and I feel like for a lot of people even if they don’t realize it, it’s largely because the pacing makes no sense. Saying it just happened too fast is less of a critique of the character’s motives in forgiveness and more of a critique in just not understanding why they would bother introducing this conflict if they were just going to resolve it instantly.

I do realize there’s obviously more coming next week but those spoilers half sound like a retread of the first two weeks of this and that’s not a good thing. My biggest problem with current Emmerdale is that every story just ends up being tediously repetitive, which makes them boring. I don’t want that for Aaron.

Ultimately, what I want for Aaron, is for him to be a character that feels integrated into the rest of the show again. I want to see him have more connections. I want to see him getting involved in other stories here and there (yes I know, covid). I want to see him have friends. I want to see him actually go to work. I want him to be able to be a grown up and move forward in his adult life rather than continue to get dragged back to his past. Aaron’s abuse story is one of my all time favorites, but we’ve done that and we’ve revisited it multiple times already. We didn’t need to necessarily do it again with this. It will always affect him and that should be reflected on screen, but it doesn’t need to be a part of every story he has.

Right now, I feel like my main investment in this current story with Ben, is just trying to figure out what they’re actually doing rather than caring at all about the actual content of it an that’s not a good thing.

On another note, since I’m here, I just genuinely don’t understand the people who are finding any of this Ben stuff interesting enough to ship right now. There’s literally nothing there. I mean, I know I’m never going to ship it in that way anyway, but really what is there? Do they just think Ben is cute? Did they like that one scene of awkward Aaron asking him out? That just would never be enough for me, especially when you know what an interesting character Aaron can be.

People claim to want a good story for Aaron but are also just like “I want Aaron to be happy”. First of all, Aaron hardly seems happy. He’s spent most of this just feeling bad about himself and apologizing. I mean, rightly so in some cases but I wouldn’t call that happy. Second, why do people want characters to be happy all the time? Especially in a soap? Happy = boring and no screen time. Even though Robron earned their happiness, I was still kind of bored by a lot of it.

I love angsty Aaron and it’s not because I love seeing him miserable, it’s just more interesting to watch. Do I like when his stories have a happy ending? Of course, I don’t want him miserable all the time, I just want him to get good content. The angst and the struggles are what make the happy moments worth while.

I don’t know, this is a rambling disaster but I keep wanting to yell into the void about things I read so I just thought I’d write it all down.

I mean, on a boring story matter, I don’t understand all of the people who just want Aaron to become a youth counsellor and live a happy fulfilled life that way while he waits for Robert to come back either. Haha. I mean, maybe if Aaron was getting a spinoff show where that’s the whole thing and we can dig into the stories of multiple kids and find interest there but otherwise, that sounds incredibly dull as the D plot it would end up being. I mean, I could see Aaron fostering a troubled teen the way Paddy did with him and the show actually doing a better job with it than they did with Aaron and Liv with actual conflict that didn’t get resolved in a repetitive series of overly sappy scenes but that’s a whole other issue.

Okay...I’ll stop now...(at least until I get the inevitable set of anon asks from posting this)

#aarons new sl #emmerdale complaints corner #this is a mess #ignore me please #i just have to post this before I add any other nonsense to it #this does not flow at all #i sound like a crazy person #haha #so much for a well thought out argument #it started okay and then devolved

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