fun fact about american history: george washington was apparently so sexy that when he was 17 he went swimming a river and some girl that had a crush on him stole his clothes and watched as he walked around naked looking for them
aaron burr, the guy who shot alexander hamilton and also the second vice president of the united states, tried to start an empire out in texas
marquis de lafayette literally had to sneak out of france to come aid america and while some versions of the story claim that he disguised himself as a commoner, other versions say he dressed up like a woman
literally all the founding fathers had daddy issues, specifically alexander hamilton who refused to even befriend george washington initially because he didn’t want to grow close to someone who had the potential to become a father like figure to him
thomas jeffereson kept a bust of alexander hamilton in his house at monticello for no reason other than the fact that hamilton was his sworn enemy and he felt as though he needed a very expensive bust of his sworn enemy in his house
I love all of this please keep going.
they didn’t let hamilton try this one course of study at king’s college because it was so intense that it made one student literally get sick and have to go home for months on end and that student was james madison
the marquis de lafayette was such a popular figure in america that ladies wore gloves with his portrait on them, and he would refuse to kiss their hands in greeting because he found it to be excessively narcissistic to kiss himself
Random Headcanon: The bit where character A walks into a room and finds character B entangled in some utterly ludicrous situation, and after a long, awkward pause, B calmly states “okay, I can explain” is a popular trope in both human and Vulcan comedy, albeit for totally different reasons.
What would the reason be for Vulcans?
One of the major genres of Vulcan comedy consists of long, complicated explanations or debates establishing that something absurd is, though a series of unlikely contrivances, actually perfectly logical. The moment of comedic catharsis arrives when the audience realises that some seemingly innocuous assumption they’d made about what’s going on is wildly incorrect.
okay, favourite city in alleirat and what the street food is like there
Oh my god, let me talk to you about my very favorite Alleirat city: Dase, the city of stone, called by her own people and all those with sense the jewel of the east.
Perched on the easternmost coast of the Alleirai continent, Dase (pronounced dah-SEH) is the biggest city in terms of population if not physical size, and presides over the finest harbor in the world (the southern coast, with their sprawling river delta, politely begs to differ, but look, they’re wrong, okay, good talk). Beyond her size, Dase’s claim to fame is her towering four-hundred-foot coastal cliffs, and the semispherical harbor the ancient citizenry excavated straight into the stone wall with a combination of magic, explosives, and sheer determination. The harbor is massive, able to comfortably house even the tallest ship without scraping the mast along the ceiling and protect quite a number of vessels in the event of a storm. The city itself was originally built almost entirely out of the excess stone removed from the harbor, and as further expansions have been executed under the eye of the city stone workers, the buildings have been expanded since then with the same material, either taken from expansions to the harbor or knocked off another part of the cliff. Dase mostly gets expanded up rather than out, since it’s approximately a half-circle facing against the cliffs on one side and there’s a city wall hemming it in along the curve, but it’s still sizable, about three miles in radius. It’s also the place where Crispin and Brenneth grew up and lived until things went badly–Brenneth used to own a smithy on the blacksmith’s row that’s still standing, and her old sword is mounted in the audience chamber of the gothkenla (like a city hall crossed with a citadel, literally ‘city center’).
Because I have no impulse control, here’s a brief excerpt of Brenneth and Crispin returning:
“Welcome
back to Dase, the jewel of the East,” Crispin said, switching fluidly back to
Alleirai and raising his bound hands as if presenting me a gift. I turned, and looked, and all my exasperation
with Crispin drained away to be replaced by the sun-warm, dizzy ecstasy of
being back.
Dase
was less beautiful and more striking—all its beauty was in strong lines and
hard angles, like the cliffs it commanded.
It was tall, about three or four stories on average, and built almost
entirely out of the hard silver-grey stone of the cliffs, with wide windows cut
into the walls and the sun turning it into a labyrinth of brilliant light and impenetrably
dark shadows. The air smelled of salt at
the cliff face, but the city wind itself could change on a dime, bringing the scent
of the farmlands from the inland fields. From our angle were the places where Kal Dase—Dase Below, the subcity of tunnels—could
be accessed were invisible, but we could see where the stone was ragged enough
to be scaled to the eaves of the roof level.
Shadows moved, quick as starlings, overhead, thieves about their
business in Lai Dase, Dase
Above.
…From
above, the city would look like a ragged half-circle, butting right up against
the edge of the cliffs with an absolute disregard for the potential drop on the
other side. At what would be the center
of the circle, if it were complete, was the gothkenla,
the city center—the citadel building where the gothed lived, received audiences, passed judgement, and completed
all their other duties. City-side of the
kenla was a sprawl of empty space
that spread all the way to the cliff, serving as the central marketplace and, occasionally,
execution grounds. The ten major streets
radiated out from the city square, a nest of alleyways interconnecting them,
and led all the way to the city limits.
Every sector had its own markets, its own hierarchies and systems—the
city in miniature, divided up by class. The
path to the cage, sardonically marked Drop
Alley with a wooden sign, butted up against one of the major throughways,
the one that ran immediately cliff-side.
Unless they had moved everything around rather a lot, which I imagined
would be a challenge, the kenla was
about an hour walk from where we stood, depending on foot traffic.
But so, as you might imagine, food in Dase tends toward fish for meat and depends on her protectorate lands for kestho (the main grain grown in Alleirat, a very hardy, adaptable plant that produces dense breads that taste sort of like…rye?) and other farm products. The ten city sectors often have smaller markets to service day-to-day needs, with the large market outside the gothkenla being a once-or-twice-a-week thing for more variety, but that’s, like, raw cooking material.
Since street food is generally stuff that can be acquired and cooked with a minimum of effort and expense on the vendor’s part, I’m guessing that smoked meats (maybe venison/other wild-hunted meats in seasons where they’re plentiful and therefore cheaper, chicken/beef if a vendor could get a good deal, most commonly fish) play a big part. I’m kind of thinking of a kabob-like situation, with chunks of smoked meat served on a skewer with whatever suitable vegetables are in season. Spices and seasoning would be easy, it’s a trade city and you can make spices last a long time if you know what you’re doing, so please assume that all of these are very flavorful.
Straight-up fruit vendors are also a pretty common thing, especially in the richer parts of the city where the fruit is nicer and possibly imported (maybe from the west where apples do better, or the south where everything does great, or even the Outrigger Islands where more tropical stuff can be found). Fruit vendors also do phenomenally well in the hostel district where there are always sailors who miss real fresh stuff and are willing to shell out of their wages accordingly. Like, the fruit vendors in the hostel district charge more than they maybe ethically should but the sailors don’t care enough to try to change it.
Oh, and bread stuff, that should fill out the basics. Since kestho grain doesn’t easily grind down into really fine flour and tends to be very dense, fluffy pastries aren’t really a thing like they are here, but miniature loaves of bread (like, the size of two fists) with various things baked into them are a hit. You can go with meat/veggies for savory or (often dried) fruits for sweet–they’re often baked as an easily transported ration, too, although not so elaborately. Kestho loaves with meat and hot Island spices do a booming business on the training grounds and as a traveling ration for the city guard, because they’re quick and easy to eat with protein and carbs for energy and a good kick. That specific combination is actually called a soldier’s meal, because they were the original kestho loaf cooked by soldiers during the ancient pre-unification wars.
I wrote this on a bus with no dinner in sight and now I’m ravenous and I could murder a soldier’s meal with like some strawberries after, Jesus this was a bad idea.
Bulgaria just appointed a facist and neo-Nazi, Valeri Simeonov (who is also Deputy Prime Minister), to lead their council on how to “deal” with the Romani people in Bulgaria.
Valeri Simeonov literally talked about creating modern concentration camps, and in 2016, when speaking of Bulgaria’s Roma minority, he told the parliament: “They are brazen, feral, human-like creatures that demand pay without work, and collect sickness benefits without being sick. They receive child benefits for children that play with pigs on the street, and for women that have the instincts of stray dogs.” His party has literally called for the demolition of “Gypsy ghettos” and for Roma to be instead isolated in closed reservations that could “generate income as tourist attractions”
Asides from this Ilian Todorov from the far-right ATAKA party (ultranationalist, racist, especially antisemitic and anti-Roma, xenophobic, especially anti-Muslim and anti-Turkish) is now Bulgaria, Sofia’s regional governor.
The opposition party, Yes Bulgaria, warned that this “toxic national-populism” can only divide society and “heighten the risk of stirring up ethnic enmity” when we have already long gone past the “risk” stage as proven by recent submissions of the European Roma Rights Center and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee – Both reports detail recent violent events which include mass attempts to storm Roma neighbourhoods, an increase in hate speech, failures by the authorities to deal properly withracially motivated hate crime, as well as incidents such as the brutal assault in April by police of a Romani father and son outside the village of Bohot in Pleven province. The son sustained serious injuries, but his father died at the scene of this assault. The authorities justified the police action by claiming that the men were found in possession of stolen pesticides and had resisted arrest.
The former vice-deputy of the ATAKA party, went on TV to praise the police for “neutralising the two thieves,” for sending a clear message, and spreading the kind of fear that will cause “all crooks and thieves to lay down.”
The situation of Roma in Bulgaria is worsening. And if those events listed are not enough already Roma are still racially segregated in education and housing, being forcefully evicted and having their properties demolished as well.
SINCE YOU HAPPENED TO MENTION ALLEIRAT I was wondering what the government system looks like? You've mentioned lords, who seem to have a pretty solid grip on their domains, so I'm guessing something vaguely feudal? Is there a monarchy? A parliament? An oligarchical council of the major nobility? A mix? How does the reigning body feel about Brenneth's return? How do they react to her grabbing Crispin and running for the hills shortly after arriving?
AHHHH ALL VERY GOOD AND HELPFUL QUESTIONS TBH.
Me, upon receiving this ask: Wait Jesus Christ did I ever figure out how power is passed on.
Turns out the answer was “I half-assed the fuck out of it” so anyway now I have a real answer.
Right, so, it’s important to know why Alleirat politics works the way it does, so buckle up for a real fast history lesson. Alleirat, way back in their ancient history, operated as a bunch of city-states run by variably decent lordlings who were perpetually at war with each other–think of Germany during the waning Holy Roman Empire (circa ~1630), not Renaissance Italy. Each city state was centered around the largest local city, and the immediate countryside was allied closely with the city in question. So, once Alleirat exhausted their armies (literally, like, okay, when you’re throwing armies of magic users around like snowballs there’s a huge death toll, they literally started to run out of armies), they drew up unification treaties as a way to solve the Gordian knot of blood feuds and bitterness they’d landed themselves in. This is their version of BC/AD, by the way, things are measured before/after unification, which was some four thousand years before Brenneth and Crispin came for the first time (this number may be subject to change later if I feel like it). In order to protect the newly unified country (named after the continent so as not to give preference), they mostly did away with the hereditary title thing, but they ran into an issue: smaller villages and farms had depended on the protection and help of the bigger cities, which relied on the villages and farms for food and raw materials. Not to mention that the old alliances between city and country ran bone-deep–colorism had a pretty short life in Alleirat, but they’re still working on the very real prejudices against people from other cities–so they couldn’t be gotten rid of entirely.
The balance they struck was the protectorate system, which largely preserved the pre-unification lines of alliance by formally denoting protectorate lands of each sizable city, but also protected the citizenry by laying down clear responsibilities that each has to the other. For example, the great eastern city Dase has a sizable protectorate that pays taxes to the Dase coffers and generates a majority of the farmed food (Dase being…like 90% rock), while Dase provides the farms with protection from both natural and human threats with her city guards as well as manufacturing that the smaller villages wouldn’t be able to do. Dase, like all other cities holding their own protectorates, is run by a gothed, which literally means ‘city servant’, an office subject to reelection by popular vote every eight years and falling somewhere between a prince and a governor as far as power goes. The gothed appoints a given number of advisors (there are ten in Dase, five from the city and five from the protectorate) who represent the interests of their district–if the district feels ill-represented, they can petition the gothed to remove the advisor in question from office and appoint a new one. The gothed is also responsible for selecting a representative to the Unified Council, which is sort of like a senate and which makes the small handful of decisions pertinent to the country at large. The list of things the Unified Council is responsible for is significantly shorter than, say, our Congress because the protectorates have much more hands-on management from their gothedan.
Incidentally, if the gothed dies while in office things can get real interesting. In theory, a new gothed can be promoted out of the ranks of the advisors, but if proof of corruption is revealed in the chaos, all of the advisors are required to be removed from office. The guards in each city (more like a small occupying army, called the lathan) take loyalty oaths to the city and citizens, not to the political figures of power, which means that technically they have the power to arrest any sitting politician as long as they have evidence. Furthermore, there are several functioning criminal bodies in any given Alleirai city, most pertinently the White Touch, a dubiously legal organization of flesh workers whose work covers everything from facial reconstruction (illegal) to assassination for hire (SUPER illegal). The Touch has been known to work in tandem with lathan before, in order to take down politicians. It’s a risky business, being a corrupt politician in Alleirat, far more so than on Earth.
There are some capital P Problems with this system, among them that it takes approximately forever to get things done and also it’s not very adaptable to a crisis–the logical issues you run into when a goodly percentage of your population might be looking at a several century lifespan. Also, money talks, as in our world, also a problem. That being said, the only real requirement to be gothed or to be appointed as such is literacy, and Alleirat has decent literacy rates, so there are and have been plenty of gothedan who were craftspeople, soldiers, farmers, or even minor criminals (the definition of ‘criminal’ is flexible and also Alleirat doesn’t believe in incarceration pretty much at all) before their election to office.
And as for the response to Brenneth ‘Worst Plan Ever’ Fireheart and her highly terrible plan, well.
“The first time I called the CDC, I said that I wanted to talk to someone about possibly designing a zombie virus. …So every time I came up with a new iteration of Kellis-Amberlee, I would call back and say, “If I did this, this, this, this, this and this, could I raise the dead?” And every single time they would say, “No.” And I’d say, “OK,” hang up, and go back to working. After about the 17th time, I called and said, “If I did this, this, this, this, this, this and this, could I raise the dead?” And got, “Don’t … don’t do that.” At that point, I knew I had a viable virus.”—
#somewhere there is a CDC employee #who is both all out of fucks to give #and experiencing a mild level of perpetual background anxiety about maybe being complicit in the future zombie apocalypse #like I’m just imagining this one specific person fielding all of seanan’s phonecalls #maybe two a day over a period of weeks #and progressing from bemused politeness #to genuine amusement #to steadily escalating panic #’what if she’s not really a writer?’ #’what if I’m actually helping a supervillain??’ #’oh god I’m not paid enough for this’ #’I LIKE VIRUSES NOT THE GENERAL PUBLIC’ #’PLEASE TAKE ME OFF PHONE DUTY OH GOD’ #lowering their head gently into their cupped hands with the phone braced between ear and shoulder #’ma’am-’ #’ma’am we really don’t recommend-’ #’ma’am, no, that wouldn’t-’ #’ma’am please I really think-’ #’don’t… don’t do that-’ #and then she just STOPS CALLING #and after three days of radio silence this person starts discreetly checking the news for x-files-style stories about zombies #getting shit from their colleagues for their sudden fascination with trashy newspapers and trying to play it off #’HAHA YOU GUYS YOU’RE SO FUNNY’ #’YEAH ZOMBIE RACCOONS, IT’S TOTALLY HILARIOUS’ #’WHO WOULD EVEN DO THAT AM I RIGHT?’ #’IT’S NOT LIKE THEY’VE GOT US ON THEIR SIDE’ #’HAHA’ #’HAHAHAHAHA’ #*nervously wipes sweat from forehead*
something i think about a lot is what if alien species have less biodiversity on their planets. like if they’ve got maybe 20, 25 species of bugs, total. so they come to earth and they’re like “whoa.” or they’ll like be like walking down the street and they’re like “ok what’s that” pointing at a st bernard and you’re like “oh that’s a dog” and they’re like “whoa, neat, i’ve heard about dogs.”
and you walk for a while longer and then they point at a yorkie and they’re like “what’s that?” and you kind of have to be like “…that. that’s also a dog.” and they’re like “wait, really?” and you’re like “yeah.” and it takes them a while to absorb this but then you just keep walking.
and like you’re going for a while and somebody’s walking their bull terrier and you’re like trying to walk faster hoping your alien friend doesn’t see but no dice they’re like WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT and you’re like “that. that is a dog” and they let out an anguished wail
and like every time after that they see a weird four legged creature they’re like “that BETTER not be a goddamn dog” and half the time you gotta wince and be like “actually,”
yknow the more jk rowlings world falls apart in america (race relations, international history, population, etc) the more i like to think that america just straight up doesnt have the statute of secrecy. european countries are falling over themselves hiding magic but come to georgia and theres a drunk redneck wizard wingardium leviosa-ing the shit out of a tractor to the delight of his drunk redneck muggle buddies in a walmart parking lot.
wizard on muggle violence is prevented by virtue of there being like a 50/50 chance that muggle is packing heat. muggle on wizard violence is prevented by knowing that wizard can give you boils spelling LIL BITCH on your forehead if you try to start something.
america is the weird redheaded stepchild of the magic world.
im not gonna stop reblogging this until this is the next Hot Fanon
english muggles come back to england and suspicious wizards meet them at the airport.
‘did you witness any strange or inexplicable acts while you were in america?’ they demand.
the english muggles just laugh in their dumb fucking faces. mate, it’s america.
what’s the difference between a werewolf and an animagus?
english wizard: *two hour lecture on legal history*
american wizard: six beers
@jumpingjacktrash congrats ive read hundreds of comments on this dumpster fire of a headcanon and yours is the best
This was ….. Amazing! Can we have more? * holds up bowl ala Oliver Twist
Sephie opens her eyes and the woman is still standing over her, but the asphalt is…cold. And dry. It’s dark, no rosy dawn colors fingerpainted across the sky, and the woman is dressed all in white–different white, not, thick swathes of cloth like burial shrouds draping down her arms and falling to puddle at her feet like water. Sephie thinks something might be on fire to provide enough light to see, but the light is pale and wan rather than being warm and golden. The woman is leaning on her scythe, and her eyes glint like the blade when the light catches them, metallic and sharpened to a cutting edge.
“You’re awake,” the woman says without looking down, and it doesn’t sound like she’s asking.
Sephie sits up and it’s easy, blissfully easy, no pain or tacky blood sticking to her skin. She’s wearing something unfamiliar, a plain dress in the same white liquid cloth that the woman is wrapped in, leaving her arms bare, and when she presses a hand against the floor, she thinks it’s stone. Marble, maybe, with only a trace of gloss, stretching away in all directions until it meets the walls, where it seems to merge seamlessly into the vertical climb to the cave-like ceiling, dripping with stalactites. The throne at the far side of the room is plain, barely more than a chair with a table beside it, both apparently sculpted wholly out of the floor.
“I’m not, though,” Sephie says, and it’s only by speaking that she realizes her voice works. It’s strong and firm and not at all lifeless, and Sephie closes her mouth, gathers her will to stand.
“You know,” the woman muses as Sephie considers the matter. The stone is very hard–if she tries to stand and falls, she might hurt herself. Or, of course, she might not. She doesn’t know if it’s currently possible to hurt herself. “I expected a great many things when I went on my sabbatical, but you were not among them.”
“I’m sorry,” Sephie says as she pulls her legs beneath her and nudges the dress out of the way. “I think.”
The woman looks down at her at last, startled, almost distressed, and says, “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. My sister may have some adjusting to do, but you wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t quite attached.”
“Your sister,” Sephie repeats as she rises cautiously to her feet. She doesn’t know if it’s that her mind still expects her body to be broken or simply that it’s been a very long day already, but she wavers dangerously, and the woman puts out a hand that Sephie catches hold of at once. The hand is long-fingered and delicately calloused and pale–unhealthily pale, deathly pale, Sephie had always thought, and she bites back a titter now. Deathly pale! The hand is also strong, and the arm attached to it equally so, and the smile on the woman’s face is warm enough to make up for the cold stone still chilling Sephie’s bare feet. “I’ve met your sister.”
“Yes,” the woman says. “We fought in your coffee shop. Or, rather, my sister came to yell at me in your coffee shop. She has some strong opinions about my sabbatical.”
Sephie nods, slowly, and realizes that she’s still clutching awkwardly at the woman’s free hand. The long, strong fingers hold her own in a grip as firm as stone, though, and so instead of trying to let go, she holds on tightly and asks the obvious question.
“Am I dead, then?”
“That’s correct, Persephone,” the woman says, apparently delighted.
“And this place is?”
“The audience chamber.”
Sephie nods again, even more slowly than before, and looks up at the woman. It was less noticeable with the counter between them, but the woman is a full head taller than she is, her masses of white curls storming down her back like a crashing wave. The scythe does not reflect light, for all its perfect polished shine, and the letters on it are in a language Sephie has never seen and yet seems to be a textual equivalent of a long-forgotten tune. She can read them anyway, for all that they try to skitter from under her eye, and thinks of a Latin phrase she heard once.
“And…” Sephie takes a deep breath with lungs that do not breath and listens for her heart that does not beat and thinks to herself–with neurons that do not fire–that she is hardly even surprised. “And who are you?”
The woman smiles at her, and gives a small twist of their hands so that the grip is less awkward, and raises the knuckles of Sephie’s hand to her lips. The touch is electric–quite literally. It kicks through Sephie’s chest like the time she let a finger rest on the prong of a plug as she touched it to the outlet, her vision flaring brightly for a moment until the woman’s lips leave her skin.
“I have many names,” the woman says as she lowers their hands again. “Many of them forgotten, some of them remembered. You can call me Death.”
I’m still watching Liberty’s Kids because REASONS and I watched an episode with Baron von Steuben, and I get why they didn’t include this in a kid’s show, but this dude is THE BEST PART of the winter at Valley Forge.
LET ME TELL YOU WHY, WITH ABUSE OF CAPS LOCK AND BAD LANGUAGE AND IRREVERENCE.
Okay, some background. Baron von Steuben was a Prussian baron who shipped his ass over to America in 1777 in order to help Washington whip the bunch of random farmers, miners, tradesmen, etc who formed the Continental ‘Army’ at the time into shape. He reached Valley Forge in early 1778 (after almost getting his own soldiers ARRESTED IN BOSTON because he accidentally outfitted them in red coats, honestly this dude’s life is just PRIME HISTORICAL COMEDY MATERIAL, someone get the fuck on that) and immediately made a name for himself as a complete–but effective!–wackjob. He would go outside in the middle of winter in full military dress and have all the soldiers (many of whom were lacking a coat and boots at the time, because the goddess of efficiency Martha Washington had not yet made her presence known) run drills from sunup to sundown, whereas most military commanders of the day were Pointedly Uninvolved in the messy day-to-day shit. He also continued the trend of having commanders who were still learning English (Lafayette spoke almost no English upon his arrival, for example), because when von Steuben reached America he spoke zero English and had to write all his orders in French and give them to either HIS aide de camp to translate or the aide Washington periodically lent him (fun fact: Lt. Colonols Hamilton and Laurens were his usual lent-out aides because they both spoke French).
NOW YOU HAVE SOME BACKGROUND AND WE CAN GET TO THE GOOD STUFF.
I’m watching Turn and I’ve just finished the set of episodes on Valley Forge and honestly can someone just point me towards literally any media that includes the Pantless Party.
Fam Im so happy sense8 is getting a 2hr finale but like that cliffhanger left so much to be explained and season 2 openee up a whole new world to explore i just dont know how they can do it all in 2hrs. Im happy but also nervous but mainly happy
the most telling thing about the political climate this year is that usually my dash is filled with 4th of July posts by now but there’s been absolutely nothing… like nobody can even find the strength to post ironic eagle memes are you guys alright over there
Online friendship has the weirdest progression sometimes. Like, I know some of the most intimate belief structures and personal moments of some people, but I have no idea what their eye color is or how they like their coffee.
Black. Blonde espresso with a dash of cream.
Three creamers, 4 sugars. Or just get me a Vietnamese iced coffee.
Black, no sugar.
Blue, skimmed milk and a little syrup.
Green, don’t drink coffee
I love coffee so much and in any fashion you could literally just throw some coffee beans in really hot water and I’d say thank you.
I’m not dead, just on a trip to visit my best friend @lathori plus some other close friends. So like. I’m fine, just busy, and will probably not be online a whole bunch in the next few days.
I hate when men smirk and gloat and say shit like “Women are attracted to powerful men,” like that negates any feminist impulse, like they think that at the heart of all women is this little, mincing girl that wants to be dominated.
I just roll my eyes because, dude. If you ever read the second half of any fucking harlequin novel ever, and saw how the hero always ends up blubbering on his knees and saying shit like “I can’t live without you! You unman me!” you’d realize that being attracted to powerful men is just the first part of a two-step plan.
The second step is to completely fucking annihilate him.
Apparently this is the most important thing I’ll ever say.
Let’s talk about
Themyscira and just how different their society would be when it comes to sex and love
First of all as we saw there is no taboo on nudity. The naked body is not considered a big thing. Things like scars and skills in battle are quite considered a far sexier thing then nudity could ever be
Second it’s very likely that due to their immortality and isolation from the rest of the world long term romantic relationships live side with with polyamourous ones as well as casual sex
Which brings me to Diana….the only child on the entire island. Literally every single Amazon on the island would have known her since she was a tiny baby,.
Her fighting skills would be decades if not centuries behind the other Amazons, her skin would be flawless and barely have any scars on it and her muscles while adequate were nothing to really write home about. By the standards of Amazonian society she would probably be the least sexually attractive Amazon on the island. So imagine teenage Diana with her hormones raging, reading all night about the pleasure of the flesh and trying cringe worthy attempts to flirt with the other Amazonian warriors. And nothing works so frustrated she puts all her energy into her training until one day years later…she beats Antiope in a training match. The very same night she gets asked out by three Amazonians and suddenly Diana is finally the new hot thing in town and she is loving it
TL;DR: To the outside world Diana is the most attractive woman in the universe in Themyscira she was an awkward skinny nerd who couldn’t get laid for decades
Where is the lie
Or what if, because everyone saw her as the baby for the longest time, that she struggled to make everyone think and look at her as an adult.
We’re talking two centuries (according to Patty Jenkins Diana is 800 years old by the time Wonder Woman starts). It is one of the more frustrating things in her life.
Two centuries.
And even before she leaves the island the Senators still call Diana, ‘Child’. Imagine the things she did so the other Amazons would stop thinking she was the ‘baby’. We all know Diana can get pretty intense: she’d probably out extra even Antiope’s shooting an arrow on horseback while going through a ring of fire.
It got to a point that even Antiope was concerned.
So the first time an Amazon finally showed interest in Diana, after defeating Antiope and performing a (stupidly risky her mother would say) stunt that involved multiple fires, and then kissed her, Diana cried. It was embarrassing.
So wait, let me just say: if Diana’s used to having to put all her effort into making someone actually take her overtures seriously, the first time she tries to flirt with a mere mortal that person probably reacts like they’ve been struck by lightning.
Okay okay okay. So I’ve seen Star Trek: First Contact about a hundred times and I can’t believe I never noticed this.
So first contact with the Vulcans happens, right? The Vulcan ship lands…
Ooh look an alien. Pointy ears!
He offers what we as Star Trek fans recognize as the traditional Vulcan greeting.
Zefram Cochrane tries to copy…
Haha he can’t do it.
So he of course offers what he knows to be a traditional greeting, namely a handshake.
And ah yes, what a wonderful moment. Two cultures are exchanging greetings, learning about each other. It’s awesome.
Until you remember that Vulcans kiss with their hands.
So basically, this Vulcan offered a nice polite “how do you do” and Zefram Cochrane offered smoochies.
I really hope this came up in conversation later.
The Vulcans did a Kirk on the whole human race.
LET ME JUST STOP YOU ALL FOR A SECOND.
The person above was right, Vulcan’s kiss with their hands. But typically, the way they kiss only involves their index and middle finger being pressed against another person’s. That is a kiss.
In, “The Search for Spock,” you see that in the Vulcan culture, just running your fingers against someone else’s can be considered sex (the scene is super strange, but it’s heavily implied, forgive me if I’m wrong).
So, going on that thought, this isn’t just a kiss.
This is like, a make-out session, or at least a long, passionate kiss.
I just, I just can’t get over it because:
1. There are are other Vulcan’s watching these guys, but the Vulcan in front just fucking accepts the kiss.
2. This takes a second right? Like, Zefram can’t do the Vulcan salute so he offers his hand and this Vulcan just gives him this face like, “oh, um, alright? I guess I shouldn’t refuse.” And he just ACCEPTS IT.
The best thing over all is, after they connect, this Vulcan just gives this guy bedroom eyes. It’s like he’s thinking, “well, bold of you sir, bold. Such a strong grip. Perhaps we can do this again in private.”
I just…
THIS GUY.
I love the beat after the human sticks out his hand. Where the Vulcan looks down and realizes what he’s expected to do and just internally goes “Humans are fucking WILD” and fucking goes for it, full on macks on the first human he’s ever met.
Okay, but let’s also consider that Spock’s dad was a famous ambassador. Who also famously married an alien and had the hybrid baby that was Spock.
Let’s be real. Given the differing touch standards of other species (and humanity is by no means the first alien race that the Vulcans have met), it’s almost 100% guaranteed that in Vulcan society, you want your Captain Kirks i.e. your bold and kinky types to be your First Contact ambassadors. Because they are the ones who, when the brand new alien they’ve just met tries to make out with them, just roll with it and avoid kicking things off with a diplomatic incident.
Now also consider this - Vulcans had as much of a hand in shaping the Federation as humans did. While humans ultimately took prominence in the ‘exploration’ side of things, and Vulcans dominated more of the R&D end, a lot of Starfleet’s protocols were heavily influenced by them both.
So it seems extremely likely that the reason why early Starfleet captains especially were pretty wild, is because it was intentional. The Vulcans took one look at someone like Jim Kirk and were just like ‘yup, captain material, fast track him to some kind of ambassadorial position if you can but otherwise at least make sure he’s on the ship that does a lot of First Contact stuff’ and the humans were just like ‘??? well?? okay???’
i realize i’m maybe like, the Nichest of markets here, but i really really really desperately want to watch further adventures of Diana Prince, Curator of Antiquities™
…like, imagine the interdepartmental meetings
Diana: we have recently acquired several exquisite pieces of very early minoan kamares ware. i feel a refresh of the gallery might encourage our visitors to–
some marketing dipshit: look, we can’t get people in the door for pottery. we need another big show, like can you get a vermeer or–
Diana of Themiscrya, Amazon, God-Killer, Daughter of Hippolyta: pottery is important
some marketing dipshit, lightly pissing himself: i agree
THIS but also I just wanted to add that although logic dictates that Diana has to move around bc of the whole immortal thing I’m so enamored with the idea of “Mlle. Prince Has Always Been At the Louvre” in which everyone who works there just thinks it’s too gauche to bring up that she should be 95.
oh my God, yes, headcanon 100000000% accepted
“non, emil. never again ask why her file system uses the pre-war numbering. you are new here. we do not speak of this.”
I read this book, a hard sci fi novel in high school. Fucked if I can remember the title but the basic premise was that there was a brain-nanite thing that you could inhale and it would change things. Also the Aliens enclosed the whole solar system in some sort of shield. Nothing in, nothing out.
There was a woman who was part of an experiment in probability. Her brain-mod would allow her to not only predict, but alter the ‘up’ or ‘down’ spin of some sort of ion or another that was completely random.
But think about it. Humans are against ALL ODDS the craziest, most intelligent, cruelest, most compassionate, gentlest, harshest beings. There’s no predicting a human because we don’t actually follow the universal laws of probability. To attempt to graph our behavior patterns in a sane quantifiable manner leaves you a little nuts. We perservere, survive. We have NO CHILL when it comes to some things, and are extremely lax about others. We can’t really be predicted, because we’re always altering our realities.
Even our greatest heroes face ‘impossible’ odds and survive. Especially, even. A human is at their shining best when the entire universe is in a point of flux. When choices become the most important things we have. We stare into the blackness between the stars and wonder. Hope. Dream. Wish. We change energy with a thought. We reach out and touch not just things but people, hearts, minds.
Aliens just watch us and are either baffled, indulgent, or terrified. We’re tiny beings in the grand scheme. Numerous but fragile. Perfectly adapted to hostile environs. We have taken aggressive adaptation to the point of modifying our bodies for our environments synthetically. We can take a situation from ‘we’re all gonna die’ to ‘holy shit we lived’ with just one flash of genius. We can stare into the face of danger and smile. We live for those life or death adrenaline scenarios. Some of us have made entire careers out of being batshit crazy.
Humans warp probability.
It’s technically classed as a psi ability in some alien lexicons, but one that’s passive. There’s various grades of it too. Captain Kirk, for instance, is like ‘Let’s make some noise’ and they all survive. Han Solo says ‘Never tell me the odds!”. Arthur Dent reaches into a bag and produces the question that fits the answer. River Tam turns the tide of battle with a mental flip of a switch. Samantha Carter again and again builds doorways between stars, sometimes with nothing more than her wits and the equivalent of a paperclip and tinfoil. Jane Foster survives longer than anyone else ever has with the literal force of chaos flowing through her veins. If she wasn’t human, she’d never have lived long enough to save her world.
These are all people who are extraordinary, who through their sheer humanity have built new futures.
Aliens can’t quanitfy us because we’re chaos in motion. Rogue physics, the edges of cosmic constants. Variables with no fixed value. We make choices, and reach out and touch other beings, and we take logic and probability and the most likely outcome of things and twist them into new shapes. It’s more than just creative thinking, high-stakes adaptation, or even empathy.
A human can literally even the odds.
That’s why alien crews like keeping humans around. We’re crazy and unpredictable and able to survive just about anything. We’re loyal for the most part, to love or money or Crew. Once a human decides that you’re theirs, they will literally warp the universal constants for their crew.
That’s our alien superpower, I think.
I was listening to some guy (can’t remember his name now!) on the radio the other day who was talking about how we don’t fully understand the human consciousness. Humans control their environment without even realizing what they are doing in most cases.
.Some interesting watching you might like: What the bleep do we know? A documentary about human consciousness. Will legit blow your mind.
What is wrong with mint and mint relatives? Thank you.
They’re lovely, but they MUST be kept in a pot, or a raised bed, or on a good-quality leash with a chest harness, because mint and its cousins spread like… IDEK, like a rash. Like dandelions. They’re tough, hardy and highly motivated. Even a tiny root fragment will suddenly turn into a Mint Tree if you don’t tear it up. I swear I’ve seen new plants popping up from BURIED SCRAPS OF LEAF. Once they’re in the ground they establish a beachhead and spawn secretly, possibly through osmosis. I cannot advise you to stick a mint plant in the ground unless you are a bold and unconventional disciplinarian.
The joke is that after running around after the mint like a spaniel chasing a whack-a-mole for a year, Dr Glass then planted a plant that would do the same thing.
Great plants, hard to kill, keep them in a pot (ESPECIALLY where invasive)
you know what also pissed me off about supernatural, though? the inability to commit to their own worldbuilding. even while clinging to a static paradigm, where The Masquerade is in full effect, they couldn't be consistent about what sort of underground magic communities do and don't exist. I know this can be blamed on multiple writers and all, but it drives me up the wall. f.ex. witches are All Evil and tend to work alone, until that episode with the familiars when you find a bunch of nice(r)
witches who go to witch
bars and hardly ever poison each other’s drinks, oh and also familiars are a
thing. a while later spike and cordelia are witches who’ve had a tempestuous
relationship for… centuries I think, aka witches can live for a really long
time, so there’s no way the bigger/older ones don’t all know each other. there
ought to be SOME sort of witch ‘society’, even if it’s just loose
communication. but no, after this you never hear of witches ever again, much
less familiars or witch
bars. then you’ve got
Bela, who caters to rich people who know magical artifacts exist, but there’s
no exploration of what that could MEAN – if Bela can hold down a job, then
enough of the country’s elite own and exploit magic stuff that it could –
SHOULD – have at least some effect on US politics, as in who gets power.
there’s never a whisper of that, but okay, this isn’t exactly the winchester
boys’ social scene. but failing that, some of these magic-obsessed rich people
should turn up for a
few episodes, either
haunted or else guilty of inflicting a monster-of-the-week on someone. heck,
one of them could be a recurring vaguely-helpful character that the boys stop
by and menace a bit whenever they need access to some excessively obscure
artifact. you already mentioned the mess of all those Alpha Monsters who were
powerful and unkillable and stuff, and had their own dread agendas with
potentially far-reaching consequences for their respective species, and then
just… vanished. I don’t
even remember how. and
then there’s the hunter community, which is the most inconsistent of all. first
it’s just these two and their dad, and then they start finding out their dad’s
old friends were all actually hunters or oracles or whatever. so far so good;
these are just Mysteries Of Our Father’s Past, and valid character/plot
development stuff. but there’s Bobby, who Knows Everyone, and Ellen, whose bar
every hunter in the country frequents sooner or later, and this means hunters
know each
other, know about each
other, they have a network of communication and they share intel, gossip, trade
secrets. but the moment the bar blows up there’s just no network, no
connection, nothing at all binding hunters together, even though Bobby still
knows everyone and Ellen and Jo are still around and plenty able to found a new
bar if they wanted to, or at least keep in touch with at least half of the
people who used to swing by their bar. oh and also the demons! they talk about
complex politics
happening in Hell, they
have some sort of prophesied demon queen who takes the body of a young girl and
has glowing white eyes (I don’t even remember what happened to her), they have
demon religion and spirituality to the point where Lucifer is basically Demon
Jesus – I’m pretty sure this is explicitly stated, Lucifer is to the demons
what Jesus is to really devout Christians, semi-mythical status and prophesied
second coming and everything – and the show makes an effort to flesh out its
demonic
characters, give them
personality and desires and drives, and it shows distinct differences in how
different demons feel about humanity, and about what they do, and all that. yet
despite all this, the only demon we meet who doesn’t immediately try to murder
the boys is Ruby. no one tries to bargain honestly with the boys, no one but
Crowley tries to aim the boys at their own enemies, no one begs for mercy or
lies about repentance. nothing. can you imagine if those demons who told Sam to
take up
his antichrist mantle
and lead a demon army decided that, since their Chosen One was unwilling, they
ought to convince him? what if a bunch of demons had started discreetly tailing
the boys, showing up sometimes to rescue them from really bad fights or offer
up dead monsters like housecats offering dead birds? ‘hey chosen one, we caught
you this demon who’s high up in Crowley’s hierarchy, do you want to torture him
for information yourself or do you want us to do it?’ they solemnly swear that
that they’ve stopped
killing humans, they keep quietly growing in number, and they always scram
before the boys are conscious enough to kill them properly. sam and dean have
many arguments about whether they were REALLY too concussed to stab their
latest demonic rescuer and get absurdly angsty and argumentative about it. I
know my rant has gotten pretty thoroughly disorganized and this is moving back
into must-have-a-static-paradigm territory, but I am a little bitter.
THIS IS ALSO SUCH A GOOD POINT there is just so much to be bitter about with this show, like, good god, you’d think that sooner or later they’d run out of basic narrative rules to fuck up.
Speaking of rules, I think this is a manifestation of one of Supernatural’s wider problems, which is that they just DO NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THE RULES OF THEIR OWN UNIVERSE. Like, all they’ve REALLY nailed down is that demons can be exorcised, but anything that isn’t a demon is pretty much at the mercy of the plot for A) how powerful it is, B) how hard to kill it is, and C) how ‘human’ it’s considered. Like, everything from werewolves to wendigos are stated to be at least PART human, but basically their ‘humanness’ and subsequently the amount of sympathy accorded to them is predicated on how benign (or how attractive) they look in their human form. The magic of this universe is wildly unpredictable–the Winchesters sometimes do/dabble in magic themselves, but we never really learn how magic works. Does it require a focus? Does it require badly-pronounced Latin? Is it an expression of the user’s willpower? Is it similar to what demons do (implied when All Witches Are Wicked for the first few seasons) or not? Does it require natural talent or can anyone learn it? THERE ARE SO MANY QUESTIONS THAT ARE TOTALLY IGNORED. THEN there’s the question of societies in this supernatural underworld. Like, I think I’ve expressed in my John Wick comments how much I like functional underworld societies with rules and systems, but honestly it’s CRITICALLY necessary if you’re doing what SPN does and having the society Matter. I cringe every time I think about how clumsy and slapdash the hunting community was in Supernatural, because it had SO MUCH POTENTIAL, don’t talk to me about it, I made it work better when I wrote my spite novel. I’m sure I can think of fifty million more incomplete universe rules, but I can honestly feel my blood pressure rising right now so I’m going to stop.
OH MY GOD GUYS, please, if you’re a writer, let me beg you right now in person to figure out the rules of your universe and then commit. Here are some pointers.
Magic should work in a conceptually similar way to gravity: its rules should be consistent and should be able to be broadly extrapolated from the general effect, and if you’re going to BREAK those rules you’ve got to have a damn fine reason.
The sliding scale of ‘humannness’ should…slide less, to be completely honest, work your shit the fuck out EARLY or make working your shit the fuck out a plot point (please see Stormdancer for a good example).
If you’re dealing with questions of what makes someone human (@SPN FOR LIKE FOUR FUCKING SEASONS) then you should actively question like “Hey, my dude, can we morally kill this person for something they have no control over” unless your character took the trait ‘Callous’ somewhere in their history (which is also fine).
If you have an underworld society–or any society tbh???–WORK YOUR SHIT OUT. How do they work together (ex: hunters pretending to be ‘the boss’ when someone calls the number on that fake business card)? How do they support each other (ex: safehouses? maybe? this is never discussed in SPN? and I hate it?)? What are the things people differ on (ex: whether or not to murder the Winchesters, which, like, I know you’re supposed to be against that because they’re the protagonists, but by the time I bailed I def wanted someone to shoot them)? Is there an assumption of free exchange of favors or is there a strict financial/bargaining system? How much does one person vouching for another matter in the community? ANSWER SOME BASIC QUESTIONS FFS
Finally, most crucially, for the love of all that is good, Pick A Plot. One plot. It can have subplots (example: an overarching plot broken up by smaller missions, a la your average TV show) or multiple acts (as in a play, where you’ve got a couple major pieces that assemble into the main plot, like Much Ado where you’ve got (roughly) the matchmaking, the wedding, the vengeance, and the resolution), but it should be One Plot and you need to tie up those motherfucking loose ends.
This has been “Hey look turns out that 6K later I have Even More Complaints about Supernatural” with Moran.
Right, so, the absolute MOST loopholey bit of law in Alleirat is based on the ongoing detente between the two criminal organizations in most major cities and the lathan, the city guards. The way the major cities (there are four) and some of the smaller cities (to a lesser degree) operate is that there’s an undercity (Kal [city name], as in Kal Dase) in sewer tunnels or foundations and an overcity (Lai [city name], as in Lai Dase) on rooftops and abandoned balconies/etc. There’s generally a boss of Kal and Lai sub-cities, with ‘Below’ criminals specializing in more rough-and-tumble crimes and ‘Above’ criminals having a more cat burgler rep. Now, in order to prevent any gang-vs-law wars that might risk the Streets (the civilians between Kal and Lai), the lathan have a deal, and the deal goes something like this.
Any criminal from Above or Below is at jeopardy for the crimes they have committed for a given amount of time, and during that time capture by the lathan can result in trial and sentencing, which can range from labor to execution. However, the lathan cannot trespass onto Kal or Lai subcities without a writ for the arrest of a criminal and proof of their identity. If one of the lathan does enter the subcities without a writ, no crime committed against them in that location can be charged against any individual. On the other hand, the latha cannot be charged for any actions they take in self-defense.
The balance is extremely delicate and largely predicated on the fact that Kal and Lai operate on a certain code of honor. Other situations, like the ongoing bandit problem in the most rural areas and the White Touch, do not so much have that code, although the Touch has their own rules.
you know what also pissed me off about supernatural, though? the inability to commit to their own worldbuilding. even while clinging to a static paradigm, where The Masquerade is in full effect, they couldn't be consistent about what sort of underground magic communities do and don't exist. I know this can be blamed on multiple writers and all, but it drives me up the wall. f.ex. witches are All Evil and tend to work alone, until that episode with the familiars when you find a bunch of nice(r)
witches who go to witch
bars and hardly ever poison each other’s drinks, oh and also familiars are a
thing. a while later spike and cordelia are witches who’ve had a tempestuous
relationship for… centuries I think, aka witches can live for a really long
time, so there’s no way the bigger/older ones don’t all know each other. there
ought to be SOME sort of witch ‘society’, even if it’s just loose
communication. but no, after this you never hear of witches ever again, much
less familiars or witch
bars. then you’ve got
Bela, who caters to rich people who know magical artifacts exist, but there’s
no exploration of what that could MEAN – if Bela can hold down a job, then
enough of the country’s elite own and exploit magic stuff that it could –
SHOULD – have at least some effect on US politics, as in who gets power.
there’s never a whisper of that, but okay, this isn’t exactly the winchester
boys’ social scene. but failing that, some of these magic-obsessed rich people
should turn up for a
few episodes, either
haunted or else guilty of inflicting a monster-of-the-week on someone. heck,
one of them could be a recurring vaguely-helpful character that the boys stop
by and menace a bit whenever they need access to some excessively obscure
artifact. you already mentioned the mess of all those Alpha Monsters who were
powerful and unkillable and stuff, and had their own dread agendas with
potentially far-reaching consequences for their respective species, and then
just… vanished. I don’t
even remember how. and
then there’s the hunter community, which is the most inconsistent of all. first
it’s just these two and their dad, and then they start finding out their dad’s
old friends were all actually hunters or oracles or whatever. so far so good;
these are just Mysteries Of Our Father’s Past, and valid character/plot
development stuff. but there’s Bobby, who Knows Everyone, and Ellen, whose bar
every hunter in the country frequents sooner or later, and this means hunters
know each
other, know about each
other, they have a network of communication and they share intel, gossip, trade
secrets. but the moment the bar blows up there’s just no network, no
connection, nothing at all binding hunters together, even though Bobby still
knows everyone and Ellen and Jo are still around and plenty able to found a new
bar if they wanted to, or at least keep in touch with at least half of the
people who used to swing by their bar. oh and also the demons! they talk about
complex politics
happening in Hell, they
have some sort of prophesied demon queen who takes the body of a young girl and
has glowing white eyes (I don’t even remember what happened to her), they have
demon religion and spirituality to the point where Lucifer is basically Demon
Jesus – I’m pretty sure this is explicitly stated, Lucifer is to the demons
what Jesus is to really devout Christians, semi-mythical status and prophesied
second coming and everything – and the show makes an effort to flesh out its
demonic
characters, give them
personality and desires and drives, and it shows distinct differences in how
different demons feel about humanity, and about what they do, and all that. yet
despite all this, the only demon we meet who doesn’t immediately try to murder
the boys is Ruby. no one tries to bargain honestly with the boys, no one but
Crowley tries to aim the boys at their own enemies, no one begs for mercy or
lies about repentance. nothing. can you imagine if those demons who told Sam to
take up
his antichrist mantle
and lead a demon army decided that, since their Chosen One was unwilling, they
ought to convince him? what if a bunch of demons had started discreetly tailing
the boys, showing up sometimes to rescue them from really bad fights or offer
up dead monsters like housecats offering dead birds? ‘hey chosen one, we caught
you this demon who’s high up in Crowley’s hierarchy, do you want to torture him
for information yourself or do you want us to do it?’ they solemnly swear that
that they’ve stopped
killing humans, they keep quietly growing in number, and they always scram
before the boys are conscious enough to kill them properly. sam and dean have
many arguments about whether they were REALLY too concussed to stab their
latest demonic rescuer and get absurdly angsty and argumentative about it. I
know my rant has gotten pretty thoroughly disorganized and this is moving back
into must-have-a-static-paradigm territory, but I am a little bitter.
THIS IS ALSO SUCH A GOOD POINT there is just so much to be bitter about with this show, like, good god, you’d think that sooner or later they’d run out of basic narrative rules to fuck up.
Speaking of rules, I think this is a manifestation of one of Supernatural’s wider problems, which is that they just DO NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THE RULES OF THEIR OWN UNIVERSE. Like, all they’ve REALLY nailed down is that demons can be exorcised, but anything that isn’t a demon is pretty much at the mercy of the plot for A) how powerful it is, B) how hard to kill it is, and C) how ‘human’ it’s considered. Like, everything from werewolves to wendigos are stated to be at least PART human, but basically their ‘humanness’ and subsequently the amount of sympathy accorded to them is predicated on how benign (or how attractive) they look in their human form. The magic of this universe is wildly unpredictable–the Winchesters sometimes do/dabble in magic themselves, but we never really learn how magic works. Does it require a focus? Does it require badly-pronounced Latin? Is it an expression of the user’s willpower? Is it similar to what demons do (implied when All Witches Are Wicked for the first few seasons) or not? Does it require natural talent or can anyone learn it? THERE ARE SO MANY QUESTIONS THAT ARE TOTALLY IGNORED. THEN there’s the question of societies in this supernatural underworld. Like, I think I’ve expressed in my John Wick comments how much I like functional underworld societies with rules and systems, but honestly it’s CRITICALLY necessary if you’re doing what SPN does and having the society Matter. I cringe every time I think about how clumsy and slapdash the hunting community was in Supernatural, because it had SO MUCH POTENTIAL, don’t talk to me about it, I made it work better when I wrote my spite novel. I’m sure I can think of fifty million more incomplete universe rules, but I can honestly feel my blood pressure rising right now so I’m going to stop.
OH MY GOD GUYS, please, if you’re a writer, let me beg you right now in person to figure out the rules of your universe and then commit. Here are some pointers.
Magic should work in a conceptually similar way to gravity: its rules should be consistent and should be able to be broadly extrapolated from the general effect, and if you’re going to BREAK those rules you’ve got to have a damn fine reason.
The sliding scale of ‘humannness’ should…slide less, to be completely honest, work your shit the fuck out EARLY or make working your shit the fuck out a plot point (please see Stormdancer for a good example).
If you’re dealing with questions of what makes someone human (@SPN FOR LIKE FOUR FUCKING SEASONS) then you should actively question like “Hey, my dude, can we morally kill this person for something they have no control over” unless your character took the trait ‘Callous’ somewhere in their history (which is also fine).
If you have an underworld society–or any society tbh???–WORK YOUR SHIT OUT. How do they work together (ex: hunters pretending to be ‘the boss’ when someone calls the number on that fake business card)? How do they support each other (ex: safehouses? maybe? this is never discussed in SPN? and I hate it?)? What are the things people differ on (ex: whether or not to murder the Winchesters, which, like, I know you’re supposed to be against that because they’re the protagonists, but by the time I bailed I def wanted someone to shoot them)? Is there an assumption of free exchange of favors or is there a strict financial/bargaining system? How much does one person vouching for another matter in the community? ANSWER SOME BASIC QUESTIONS FFS
Finally, most crucially, for the love of all that is good, Pick A Plot. One plot. It can have subplots (example: an overarching plot broken up by smaller missions, a la your average TV show) or multiple acts (as in a play, where you’ve got a couple major pieces that assemble into the main plot, like Much Ado where you’ve got (roughly) the matchmaking, the wedding, the vengeance, and the resolution), but it should be One Plot and you need to tie up those motherfucking loose ends.
This has been “Hey look turns out that 6K later I have Even More Complaints about Supernatural” with Moran.
