...clever boy.

I talk about tokusatsu, video games, video game music, cosplay, and randomness.

[crow-caller]

as a child there's nothing cooler than a kid who gets subjected to evil experiments and gains special abilities. it's even cooler if these abilities also cause unfathomable suffering to use/against others. children love stories like this.

[demi-shoggoth]

The children yearn to be Mewtwo

[nightowlqueen]

best part of KPop Demon Hunters is all the ridiculous faces the girls make

[aiviwave]

Hi! It's been a long time!

I wanted to share what I've been up to over the years. In 2022, I decided to step away from soundtrack work to start a label called Infloresce Records. This project has meant a lot to me because it's given me the freedom to make the gentle yet enthralling kind of music that I love.

My label has released 15 albums since then, and now we've launched a Patreon. If you like the music I make, please consider checking it out and supporting us there!

🌸 Patreon 🌸

🌸 Bandcamp 🌸

— aivi 💙

[tritoch]

Have you got any thoughts to share about Sphene? I saw your post about how misrepresented FFXIV’s female characters are, and I’ve been hoping to see anything more than the typical “Evil AI colonizer etc.” or “Tragic woman who can never change ever” or “Wuk Lamat’s girlfriend”. Maybe our interpretations will differ but I’ll be happy if you can provide anything more complex than those.

Sure! Throwing all this under a read-more for anyone who hasn't finished 7.0 yet. I think I'll probably expand on this more later but wanted to get initial thoughts down. (Note after writing: I meant this to be brief but uhhhh brevity is not my strong suit sorry. This take just sort of ends abruptly because I realize I'm rambling.) Again, spoilers through the end of 7.0 MSQ.

I think Sphene is the sharpest work the game has done yet in casting the antagonist as the noble double of the protagonist (a well it returns to a lot with Emet, and Zenos, and Golbez, and...). But because the protagonist here is Wuk Lamat and not the Warrior of Light, that's also a much more defined and interesting role. To me, Wuk Lamat is, above all, the Righteous Queen, who rules thoughtfully, wisely, and justly, and whose claim to the throne is justified by her moral clarity. Sphene, in turn, is also a wise and good queen, one who undertakes all her actions with her people first in her hearts, a sense of compassion towards all, and a clear eye for the consequences and costs of her intended course of action. And it leads to utter disaster, for her, her people, and the people of Tural. That rocks!

The first half of 7.0 is about justifying the fact that Wuk Lamat's going to be Dawnservant. Wuk Lamat is compassionate, curious, wise, and open-minded. She wins over rebels and malcontents not by asserting her authority or by strength of force, but by taking her obligations to them (as her subjects) seriously. She knows many of her subjects personally and takes a great interest in their lives, and she respects even those who openly oppose her.

And everything Wuk Lamat does, Sphene does to 11. Wuk Lamat respects her subject peoples and is curious about their cultures? Sphene forcibly annexes Yyasulani, but goes out of her way and expends Alexandria's limited resources to enable the remaining Xak Turali to live in their accustomed way if desired (…to the extent allowed by the new permanent lightning storms and the internal conflicts caused by regulator adoption). Wuk Lamat cares about her people not just in the abstract but as individuals? Sphene visits sick kids, knows them by name! Wuk Lamat understands the burden of rulership is too great and cedes half her power to her brother? Sphene recognizes her own weaknesses and makes a deal with the devil to keep Alexandria's culture alive! Wuk Lamat is willing to die for her people? Sphene will forcibly traumatize herself into being a better queen, if that's what rulership demands.

For an expansion that spends the first half being like "wow isn't this perfect candidate for the crown so likable and humble? wouldn't it be nice to be ruled by a good king?," it sure is funny that the final boss is THE QUEEN ETERNAL and she hits you with attacks like LEGITIMATE FORCE and ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY and ROYAL DOMAIN. This, to me, is Sphene's role: she complicates and questions the themes we've developed in the first half. Most importantly to me, she makes us ask: what is devotion to a people or culture even worth?

There's a thing I kept thinking of constantly during Dawntrail, not because I think it directly influenced the game in any way but because the parallels were so stark and startling. It's Jonathan Hickman's New Avengers #18 (2014). Truthfully, I'm not a big comics guy; I only know this sequence because Ta-Nehisi Coates cited it as inspiration for his Black Panther run on Twitter once (I also didn't read TNC's run, I was following him for politics talk). Forgive me, comics people, if I get any details wrong. The parallels are almost comical, though. It goes like this:

A superhuman secret society formed of some of the smartest heroes (and villains) in the land re-forms to oppose an existential threat caused by incursions from other dimensions that threaten to cause literal collisions between Earth and its alternate dimension counterparts. Seeing no other alternatives, they undertake work on a weapon to destroy these other worlds. T'challa—king of a fictional hyperadvanced nation called Wakanda, and also the superhuman Black Panther—meets with his ghostly predecessors, the previous Black Panthers/kings, for he fears the moral stain on his soul and the souls of the people of Wakanda, if they survive explicitly by killing their alternate counterparts, will be too heavy to bear. His ancestors are not impressed.

To them, there is no question at all. A king's duty may be complex in the execution, but it is simple in its conception. Your people come before all others. Always. This is, must be, the fundamental ethic of a good king. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the social order on which this imagined good monarchy is built. In a situation like this, the only option is to do what you must to protect them. "Will there be a cost? Yes. Might the universe burn? Let it. . . . You will kill them all if it means Wakanda stands. The golden city must never fall."

"I will do what I must" is Sphene's guiding principle. It is so important to her that when she recognizes that her sentimental attachments are making her waver in her duty, she severs them entirely, sacrificing her whole identity to the throne. It is also implicitly Wuk Lamat's position: she has no choice but to fight Sphene because to do otherwise would be to fail to protect her people. In fact, it's briefly even sort of the Warrior of Light's position, as when you tell Sphene before her trial that you understand what you must do, which is shut her down to protect others.

(One quick thought about the Warrior of Light: one cool thing about the antagonist this time being a double in a more exact way than Emet or Zenos is that it means other characters get a chance to relate to her differently than Wuk Lamat. The Warrior of Light, for example, is pressed into her service immediately upon your first meeting as the Queen's Champion, there to defend her if need be against all evil. This role is further affirmed by both robot Otis and Endless Otis, who essentially hand off their role as her knight to you, and reinforced when you flash back to the "might I call upon your aid" moment right before the end. Except, of course, you are loyal not just to her, but to the principles she represents, which her own acts betray, and so your ultimate act of aid is to essentially pass judgment on her and execute her. In a sense, you become the internal safeguard that a political system is supposed to have to protect against this very issue, and which Alexandria explicitly lost when it cast out/forgot Otis. Very Voeburt/ShB tank quests, it owns.)

But really, it's Sphene who embodies this sort of grim logic best. Aside from her transformation into the Queen Eternal, it's also why she suggests you simply become Alexandrians. It's the only way for her to reconcile her values and worldview, which have backed her into a corner where preserving Alexandria has come to mean a maximalist declaration of war on all life outside its borders because the kind of absolutely pain-free life she envisions for her citizens is completely unsustainable.

In this reading, one of Sphene's main beats is to unsettle what has preceded her in MSQ. In nearly all respects, she shares your values. She prizes life, is curious about other cultures, believes in the greatest good for the greatest possible number. But she is also a queen, and therefore irrevocably (in her eyes) tied to her state. Gulool Ja Ja and Wuk Lamat (and Koana) are the mythical wise rulers, thank god--but what if Wuk had inherited a Turali state that wasn't desperately in need of cross-cultural understanding, but one in a state of war? What value would her deep love for the people of Tural have held then? Sphene says, it would have held no value. If the survival of your people means harming the innocent, you harm the innocent. Kingship allows for no alternatives.

But she also concedes, in the very next breath, that she is still kind of wrong. Because what happened here was not inevitable, despite her programming (a brief note: to me Sphene being programmed is exactly the same as Emet being maybe-tempered, it's a fantasy gloss on the idea of social and cultural education. "I was programmed for this" is really no different from "I was trained and educated for this"), because the truth is that this kind of thoughtful, principled devotion to the state and its people is also a form of sentimental attachment, in the end. One that is maintained not because it is natural, and necessary, but because the monarch, too, likes it, and gets something from it.

In so many ways, in so many senses, the monarch is the state. Kings and queens may fancy themselves merely a reflection of their people's needs and desires, but of course even a cursory glance at history will tell you that far more often, states reflect their rulers. Sphene and Wuk Lamat both suggest that their conflict was inevitable, but was it? Or is the truth, as Sphene glancingly acknowledges here, that she turned her own fears and desires into the same policy goals that led to this tragedy? And if so...what does that say of our Good Queen, Wuk Lamat? Perhaps this could be different if they met earlier, says Wuk Lamat. But when? When did Wuk Lamat ever not love her people so dearly that she would not have sacrificed herself for them, or caused mass death for the sake of their survival? When did Sphene not believe the Endless to be people, or the preservation of Alexandria to be the most important thing? Maybe she means "had we met before you met Zoraal Ja," but of course, we the player actually saw their meeting. And we know that Sphene even then was not the hapless naif she'd like to pretend. She always knew exactly what she was doing.

We know the price of this kind of thinking, this Hobbesian view that states are engaged in a struggle of all against all. Living Memory lets you walk through it. To preserve Tural, we exterminate the Endless. We befriend them, learn about their lives, promise to remember them, and then we destroy them and their homes, leaving nothing but a bleak blank landscape and the sound of wind. This is what Sphene would have done to Tural and Eorzea. Indeed, it's what she's already doing to the people of Yyasulani, because no amount of well-intentioned aid can make up for trapping people under the dome for 30 years and systematically eroding their culture through the resonators.

To me, this is what makes Sphene really work, that way she has of forcing Wuk Lamat and the player to commit the same kinds of sins she has. We'd like to think ourselves better than her, but of course, we've already reconciled with and integrated Mamook's brutal eugenicist regime back into Turali society well before we ever met Sphene. At the end of our long "wow isn't having a wise queen cool???" expansion, we are met with "Legitimate Force" and "Absolute Authority" and see them for what they truly are: nothing but tools of violence. No longer does the idea of the Warrior of Light hanging around Tural as Wuk Lamat's advisor have the same attraction, now that we have been reminded of the way the putatively unquestionable logic of kingship can ultimately lock even the wisest and kindest rulers into a path of war and exploitation and destruction.

I think Sphene is FFXIV's most interesting and nuanced depiction yet of a leader. She really, truly, wants nothing more than to save her people and protect them from pain. But even seemingly loving and compassionate goals like these can readily lead us down dark paths. She's a "hard men make hard choices"-type character, a noble but misguided opponent, but as a loving and elegant fairy queen instead of a grizzled knight or extremely sad man. She fucking rocks.

[thesecondbatgirl]

Why you should play the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, part whatever

Previously, two impassioned “BUT IT’S SO GOOD” posts with very little details. (Part 1, Part 2)

Okay, so, I have previously talked about the themes and the tropes and just that the game is super fun (and did you know you can play the base game + first expansion for free? Because you can) but this time I’m going to try to give a little bit more detail. I’m *mostly* only going to cover characters from A Realm Reborn (shortened to ARR or 2.0) but probably spoilers for later expansions will show up.

(A quick note: Each expansion has the base (x.0) and then 5 patches of content, and they get shortened to those. So ARR runs through 2.0 and 2.55 since the .5 patch is always divided into two. Also, 1.0 no longer exists because it was so awful they literally dropped a moon on it.)

Summary: It is five years after the invading Garlean Empire dropped a moon on us. Except the moon was actually a technological prison created by an ancient civilization that contained a fucking dragon. It was defeated at a great cost, which will be recapped after you start the game. You can watch the super awesome cinematic here!

You arrive in the city of your choice (forest city, pirate city, desert capitalist city, your choice of which does not actually matter other than you get different introductory quest lines so basically pick whatever class you want to start with and/or whichever city you think sounds cool as you can be all the classes eventually) in which you, the adventurer, turn out to be super competent and do a great service to your starting city. Oh, and you are having visions of a giant crystal.

Shockingly, it turns out that you have a power called The Echo which basically means you can get visions of past stuff which is very useful for exposition, and also you are completely immune to tempering (brainwashing) by the primals (gods) of the various beast tribes. Which is good, because the fact that the primals will basically turn anyone who tries to fight them into their worshippers, and their very existence harms the land, so really only people with the Echo can fight them.

Due to your awesomeness, you get recruited to a super secret organization, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, whose goal is to fight Primals and stop the Garlean Empire. And fight the Ascians, quasi-immortal beings who are secretly manipulating everything so that they can free their God.

And then shit gets real.

Keep reading

[fostersffff]

Joke: Gyrados was originally the final evolution of the Dratini line because they are all long and blue.

Broke: Game Freak swapped around Butterfree and Venomoth during development, which is why Butterfree has more similarities to Venonat than Caterpie and vice versa.

Woke: Blastoise was originally completely unrelated to Squirtle and Wartortle, with its own pre-evolution, but was made into the final evolution at some point during development, presumably due to redundancy.

[furbearingbrick]

Bespoke: Gyrados was originally a sandworm

[eileenleahy-deactivated20241003]

no i dont care about the macys day parade but. the snoopy balloon......

[eileenleahy-deactivated20241003]

50 ft tall beagle balloons just mean so much to me

[brawltogethernow]

hey hey hey brawl. write the spiderman fic where anti-mutant bigots think jj is one of them because of how he is about spider-man and he experiences no personal insight whatsoever in reaction to this but is so offended he dedicates the front cover of the Bugle to spotlighting the X-Men for like three days straight and peter is keysmash feelings. do iiiiit i want to read.

Because you sent this more than a month after you pitched it, I was briefly like, "This sounds so familiar. I didn't propose this...right...?;;" Anyway I finally assembled myself, here you go.<3

--

The Daily Bugle didn't take walk-ins.

Three men knocked on J. Jonah Jameson's office door. One was young and tall and pale. One was middle-aged, short, and approximately dumpling-shaped. The third had a waxed, curly mustache, which completely distracted from all his other features.

JJJ himself threw open the door and glowered at them. "Who the hell are you people supposed to be?" he barked.

The short one crinkled his eyes up in a winning grin. "We hate people like Spider-Man."

The Daily Bugle didn't take walk-ins...theoretically.

Jonah's forbidding countenance melted at once into perfect amicability. "Well, why didn't you say so? Come in, friends!"

-

Peter sidled into the Bugle bullpen. He did not strictly work there right then, but no one ever revoked his keycard.

He wove his way to Betty Brant's desk and stole the remains of her bagel off her plate. "What's the news, beautiful?"

Betty predicted her old ex's carb crimes and waved a hand around to intercept him, but missed completely because her gaze was fixed on her boss's office door, her eyes alight as she worried the end of her pen distractedly between her teeth.

"Jonah's with some guys," she said. "I'm pretty sure they're HAM."

"Jonah's finally getting better deli meat for the breakroom?" Why did that sound familiar?

Betty gestured abstractly with the pen. "Not ham,like meat. HAM, like meatheads. It's one of those armchair extremist movements Twitter keeps pretending they don't know how to ban."

"That narrows it down."

"It's short for... Rats. Something militia?"

Peter twitched abortively for the door.

Betty reached over and smacked his arm without taking her eyes off Jonah's office. "Honestly, Peter," she said, "you haven't changed since we were teenagers. It's not a real militia. Don't go anywhere."

He would sense it if they were armed, right? Right?

-

Jonah stuck a cigar in his mouth. He chewed it. He was trying to quit.

"--so nice to see a man in your position who cares about the important things," the short one was saying. He seemed to be the main mouthpiece.

Jonah's mustache quivered pleasantly.

"About upholding accountability for people dragging down our community."

"Yeah, yeah," agreed Jonah, succumbing to autopilot and lighting a preemptive celebratory cigar.

"People who don't know what 'neighborhood' means."

"EXACTLY," exclaimed Jonah, smacking his hand on his desk.

-

Betty swiped out of the search engine on her phone. "Okay, it stands for 'Humans Against Mutants'," she said. "Sorry, I was remembering a sarcastic nickname." She fussed with the phone a little more and then put it down.

Right, right, Peter remembered why it was familiar now. He had punched some of them. Shoulda guessed.

He fixed his own hard glare on Jonah's silent door, still feeling twitchy even though his spider-sense stayed silent. "Betty," he said. "Darling Betty. Why are you giving me this news like a gift? Why is this a good thing?"

Betty finally turned to him and smiled in a mischievous way that reminded Peter of gleefully murderous little housecats.

She said, "You don't want to see what happens once Jonah figures out what their angle is?"

-

"I would love to collaborate with you gentlemen," said Jonah, shaking hands vigorously and indiscriminately. "You're an upright, civic-minded bunch, I can tell." He gestured his good cigar box at them. The younger one took one. Jonah spread his arms wide, biting off a half-manic grin. "I think this is the start of a beautiful partnership. Where do you want to start?" He took a cheerful puff of his not-for-lighting cigar.

"Well, we're especially focused on the mutant threat," said the short one.

Jonah choked on his inhale and started coughing around the cigar.

"Public opinion about them is very in their favor these days," he continued obliviously. "It's just disgusting. Dangerous. But your Spider-Man platform is the perfect jumping-off point. Start with one target and then ease people in from there."

"Boiling frogs," nodded the mustache sagely.

Jonah reached over to his 'decorative' ashtray and ground out his cigar with force. His lips peeled back to reveal crooked tombstone teeth. He inhaled.

-

Robbie walked over to Betty's desk and knocked on it, two short knuckle taps. "What are you two standing around gawping at?" he asked. "Peter, didn't I fire you?"

"Can't write about bloodshed you don't watch," said Betty. "It's a good day in the office, Mr. Robertson."

"...And why is that?" inquired Robbie, who loved Betty like a daughter and knew her very well, with trepidation.

"Wait for it," said Betty.

With the decisive violence of an erupting volcano, there was a blast of raw sound from behind the office door that was only just distinguishable as a voice everyone in the building was familiar with screaming: "W H A T ?"

Robbie scrunched up his face and braced himself against the desk like the sound had had the hair-ruffling gale force it seemed it must have. "...Why is that good, Miss Brant."

Betty twirled her pen on her fingertips and beamed up at him, squinching her eyes. "He isn't mad at us!"

Jonah's door slammed open, the knob bouncing off the abused brass wall guard. "Out, out!" bellowed Jonah, pursuing his visitors waving both arms, one of which was holding an empty mug that read ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ's ᴍᴏsᴛ ʙᴏss like a club. "Out, out of my office, out of my building, out! Hell, leave the state while you're at it! I used to be the mayor of this town! I still have connections!"

"I thought--" sputtered the short one. Jonah brandished the mug at him and he skipped out of the way. "With your vigilante-combatting crusade-- Surely you--" He panted. "You must see that our priorities--"

"I don't hate Spider-Man because he has powers!" shouted Jonah, "I hate him because he's a--"

"Wow," Peter said about a minute into the following deluge. "That's not fit for print."

"You want mutants in my paper so badly!?" finished Jonah, backing the little posse up against the exit. "I'll run nothing but mutants for weeks! --You, wait!"

This last was directed at the tall one, who was at the back of the group. Before he could scurry out of the room Jonah seized him by one shoulder, spun him around, and (juggling the mug) reached into his shirt pocket and plucked out his gifted cigar.

He dropped it in the mug and then pushed the man out the door. He kicked it shut, visibly aiming to clip any lingering ankles.

"Beautiful," said Betty. She tapped her phone to wake it, revealing that it was already open to a contact labeled "Sid S. (Bugle Security)". She hit the call button.

"Would somebody," projected Jonah, "call security and--"

"I'm already doing it!" chirped Betty, waving at him with her phone hand.

"Wh-- Well, good! The rest of you layabouts, take a note of Miss Brant's work ethic!"

Betty mugged a little smugly.

Peter had drifted over to a street-facing window and was looking down out of it, forehead practically touching the glass.

"Bigots!" Jonah was muttering, pacing back and forth strangling the air with his hands. "Hate groups! Trying to use my editorials as propaganda! Me! J. Jonah Jameson!" He twisted his grip on nothing viciously. "As if I would allow that! As if I would think like that! Nobody without their head so deep underground it's coming up in Australia would believe that of me! I'm not... I... ...Do people...really think...I'm like that?"

Silence.

Someone shuffled papers. The sound carried.

Jonah inhaled, deep and angry, then let the breath out as a sigh, his shoulders slumping. The room tensed further in a way it hadn't when it had seemed like he was about to yell.

For a moment, with his posture crumpling, Jonah came dangerously close to looking his age.

Then he straightened back up, recovering his usual vim. "Well, we'll just see what they think this time next month! That's a good idea--somebody put up a comparative poll on the website. Now, speaking of layabouts--" He swiveled his head back and forth, scouring the bullpen. "Wait, where's Parker?"

"He left," supplied Betty. "Just now. Tore out of the room like he thought you were going to hit him."

Jonah huffed. "That punk! Some people just don't know how to act."

-

"What a bust!" the short man said. He kicked a piece of trash viciously off the sidewalk in front of the Bugle building and into the road. "This city is crawling with pamphlet-hawking, soy-drinking, gene sympathizers."

"There's no hope for mutie-lovers," grumbled the tall one.

"Eyyy-men," sighed the one with the mustache.

"Hey," said a new voice, coming from directly overhead.

They looked up.

Blank white lens eyes greeted them.

"We're nonviolent," said the squat one.

"Bully for you," said Spider-Man. "I'm not."

-

"Interviews!" barked Jonah. "Aren't we supposed to not talk over people? Amplify voices?"

"Suppose we are," said Robbie.

"WELL, SOMEBODY FIND ME SOMETHING TO AMPLIFY!"

"Oh, really?" Betty was saying into her phone. "No, just let him have them. Past the doors is public property; we aren't liable." She hung up, satisfied.

"--and if he isn't back here by the time I've set one up I'll get pictures from Grant, and next time he darkens my doorstep I'll mail him to the Globe in a giftwrapped box!"

-

"Well, fellas," said Spider-Man, dusting off his hands, "I'm not sure you've brought me around to the whole 'path of nonviolence' thing. But I've never been very zen. Maybe next time."

He leapt up onto the wall and started creeping around to the back of the building. He had had to bolt down two floors to find an unobserved window to jump out of. Totally worth it. "Honestly," he said. "Some people just don't know how to act."

-

Jonah paced around in an even higher dudgeon than his usual. "Somebody get me a mutant!" he barked. "Why haven't we got any mutants in this room!?"

"Good question," muttered Robbie.

"I had better not hear that we don't have any in the whole building!"

"That's oddly noble," said Glory, who had persisted in picking at the assignment she had open on her laptop at her desk right by Jonah's door through the whole ruckus.

"If I consult somebody who's not already salaried I'll have to PAY them!"

"Aaaaand there it is."

"Do something about it! Start a new hiring program!"

"We have hiring programs now?" asked Peter.

"WHOA, where did you come from," said Betty, startling hard.

Peter shrugged with the arm that wasn't braced on Betty's desk. His hair was mussed and his face was a little flushed. "I had to call my aunt," he said. "For an emergency...fashion consultation. For her. Not me. I think my sense of style is great, don't you?"

"No comment. Do you remember when we met and you wore yellow vests every single day?"

"That is a blistering lack of comment."

"I didn't say I didn't like the yellow vests. Whatever happened to them?"

"I think someone I dated after you might have burned them. Just shows you have superior taste."

"MJ?"

"I think it might have been Felicia.... Have you met Felicia?"

"It's not right!" Jonah continued to rant in the office foreground. "Ostracizing people just because they have powers! It's not right!"

Peter cupped his hands around his mouth and called over, "Gee, does that mean you're going to go easier on the old wallcrawler?" Then he jammed his fingers into his ears.

"SPIDER-MAN GOES OUT EVERY DAY OF HIS OWN VOLITION AND--"

Betty whapped Peter on the arm.

"--A PEST, WHO GOES WHERE HE IS NEITHER WANTED NOR NEEDED-- Wait, Parker?" Jonah did enough of a double take to finally stop pacing. "Why is it you're never here when I want you--"

"I don't work here," said Peter.

"--but the walls spit you out whenever there's an opportunity for a smart comment-- Huh? Well why the hell are you here if you don't work for me!?"

"Can't I drop in to visit my first love, and, frankly, the only woman I've ever--"

"Aren't you back with MJ again?" interrupted Betty.

"While she's on the clock," said Jonah, "no, you cannot."

"Oh, shame," said Peter. "In that case, my rates have increased by twenty percent."

Jonah spluttered. "In my eye they have--!"

"Fifteen."

"Five and I'll send May a gift basket.'

"Make it an edible arrangement and we've got a deal."

They shook on it. Betty rolled her eyes fondly between them.

Jonah plunked his ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ's ᴍᴏsᴛ ʙᴏss mug down on Betty's desk, fished the cigar out of it, and jammed it between his teeth, unlit.

"I am not a bigot, Parker," he chewed out around it.

"No, sir."

"I am not always ahead of the times, but I am a fair man."

"It's true, sir."

"And if people don't see that, I'll just make them see!" He slammed his fist on Betty's desk. "So I want PICTURES! PICTURES OF X-MEN!"

"....It just doesn't sound right...." muttered Peter. Betty shook her head.

"And if that's not close enough to your specialty, then I don't even know why I keep you around! --Not," he added, "that the X-Men and all the other X-people are anything like that Spider-Man!"

"Oooof course not," said Peter.

"But they've got to be the same kind of tricky shot!"

"So you admit I take tricky shots."

"WHY DO YOU THINK I PAY YOU SO MUCH, HUH?"

"I don't think you--"

"Parker!"

"Alright, alright."

Jonah thrust out his hand, expression a picture. "You'd better actually have something good for me after all this haggling."

"Of course!" said Peter, waving his hands in a very unconvincing reassuring/defensive combo motion. "Just hold that pose while I get a flash drive made up."

Jonah's mustache flexed. "How long will that take?"

"Couple hours?"

Jonah inhaled preexplosively.

"Here," said Betty, turning her laptop around and pushing it at Peter. "Just get them off the cloud."

Peter stared at her. He blinked once, slowly. "I'm not...in the cloud?

"The camera I gave you last winter backs up automatically to the cloud. I set it up before I gave it to you because I knew you wouldn't. I wrote the account information in the card and told you to change the password. Did you even look at the card?"

Peter began to look alarmed. "It does?"

-

After several minutes of Betty reassuring him he wasn't going to be in a data leak ("Honestly, what's in your camera roll? State secrets? Nudes?"), Peter hunched over and started picking at the keyboard. "You're in luck," he said. "Tuesday the original lineup took some newbies out and closed a portal to the prehistoric era out in Hamilton."

"And you were in Hamilton?" put in Betty. "With your camera?"

"My rent just went up," said Peter. "Thing is, JJ, they were teaming up with--"

"Son," interrupted Jonah, "I've done so much for you. I value you as an employee--as family even. Now, for me: Don't say Spider-Man."

"...Bernie Sanders."

Jonah sighed and ran his hands down his face. Several desks over, Robbie stifled a laugh into his fist in a passable impression of a cough.

Leaving one hand over his eyes, Jonah pointed at Betty's laptop. "Show me the damn pictures, Parker."

-

"Not bad...." gruffed Jonah, clicking through the pictures rapidly. "It's good the original five are there--they're classic, reliable, people are used to them capturing their imaginations.... --Do people call them that? The Oh-Five."

"Wow, you really have no mutant opinions," marveled Peter. "Or mutant thoughts. Your head is just empty, like a flower vase."

"Cut the sass, Parker," Jonah said perfunctorily.

"Seriously, don't you run a newspaper?"

"It would be perfect," said Jonah, mercilessly changing the subject, "if Spider-Man weren't in all the good photos."

"Look here, bossman, normally you like that," said Peter. "Demand it, even. Seems like you're cursing your own Pavlovian conditioning."

"We can edit him out," muttered Jonah, ignoring him, still clicking the mouse pad with unnecessary gusto. "Maybe he was attacking them. What do you think, team? 'Vigilante Pesters Helpful Citizens'."

"Boy," said Peter under his breath as Jonah straightened up. He fought to hold a sour expression, and failed. "Some things never change."

Jonah smacked Betty's desk decisively. (She tried to nudge his hand off with the back of her pen.) "But I still need somebody to talk to--a personal account to write out in lights!"

"Jonah," said Robbie moderatingly.

"STATISTICALLY," projected Jonah, who was difficult to moderate, "I KNOW THERE HAS GOT TO BE A MUTANT ON THE PREMISES, SO COUGH THEM UP! THIS IS A HUNT, PEOPLE."

"I cannot imagine why people would think you might be willing to participate in some sort of minority witch hunt," drawled Kate.

"Isn't Beatrice down in Accounting a mutant?" offered Betty.

"I didn't know you were a proponent of hum-- sentient sacrifice, Bets," said Peter.

"You are no better than me," said Betty.

"..."

"She quit last month," said Robbie. "Moving to Florida to be closer to her mother."

"Oh, good for her," said Glory.

"Florida," said Peter distrustfully. Jonah nodded.

Jeff from HR, who did not work in the bullpen but was 23 and as such had been drafted by one of the editors to help her fix a problem with her e-mail and had been there for most of the morning, slowly raised his hand. "I'm a mutant," he said. "Sir."

Jonah's full attention, which was a terrible thing to bear, shifted to focus on him. Jeff's hand drifted downward, and he looked at it like he was second-guessing the body language choice.

"That's wonderful, my boy!" exclaimed Jonah, suddenly overflowing with powerful avuncular energy.

"Ummm," said Jeff from HR. "Thank you."

"Wonderful, stupendous," insisted Jonah. "What do you do?" He fluttered his hands at Jeff. "What's your--special thing?"

Jeff from HR, in less than one second, visibly considered how verbose just the cliff notes on the topic of asking mutants about their powers in a PC way were and discarded the idea of trying to convey them. "I can turn my fingers into French fries, sir."

"...What?"

"French fries. I can generate French fries out of my hands, sir."

"Like...a McDonald's?"

"Homestyle, sir."

Jonah performed a contemplative chewing motion that made his mustache flutter. "...Do you want to be in the paper?"

"Not at all, sir."

"Understandable, kid. Understandable."

-

"God," said Peter, leaning against the wall with his arms folded to watch as Jonah dragged Jeff from HR with him back to the conversation about page layouts he had put on pause to be bothered by his photographer, shadowboxing the ethics of hiring him as a consultant en route. "For once Jonah is running on spite in the right direction."

"Now, Pete," said Robbie, who had likewise stepped back until he was reactivated by an impending major ethics violation, "you know he does that more often than not. Otherwise we wouldn't all still be here."

"...Yeah," admitted Peter. ("The photos need to be bigger," insisted Jonah. "Really use the wing guy to frame the others--") "I do know that."

He fished around in his jacket and got out his phone.

-

"Do you have one of those little flags that look like tropical drinks?" Jonah was asking.

Glory abortively started to raise her hand to cover up the subtle bi triangle pin on her hat band and then lowered it.

"Being a mutant isn't a sexuality, Jonah," said Kate.

Jeff from HR coughed into his fist. "There is a flag," he said.

They looked at him.

"Other things have flags," he said.

"Ha!" said Jonah, pointing at Kate triumphantly.

-

"Who are you texting?" asked Robbie.

Peter's head was bowed over his phone, typing something. He tapped things out with one index finger at a bizarre speed that could not reasonably be called hunt and peck.

"No one," he said. The contact name read: SCOTTY BOY. The last two messages were "Lol, you're in luck," (on the left) and "Don't say 'lol,' what are you, 12?" (on the right). He raised his head to address Jonah, pocketing his phone. "Hey, you still shopping for mutants? If I get you a good one, will I get a commission?"

Jonah swiveled in the ergonomic chair he had commandeered from Kate when she stood up. Once it was facing the right direction he leaned forward forebodingly. "Now, Parker," he said. "I might not be on the ball all the time, but even I know not to hawk this 'one of the good ones' horsesh--"

"NO," interrupted Peter, "I mean-- Not like-- I meant famous, if I can pull in a--"

There was a knock on the outside of the window.

Most of the rabble surrounding Jonah silenced. Betty reached into her purse, gripped something inside of it, and then left her hand there. The action movie gun clicking sound Peter thought he heard was almost definitely imaginary. They were on the highest floor.

"--An X-Man," finished Peter.

Outside the window, a woman in a green body suit, masses of red hair pulsing around her in a telekinetic breeze, raised her hand and twiddled her fingers in a little wave.

Jeff from HR unsubtly sunk down behind a desk.

-

After gibbering a demand that "Everyone stop gibbering, someone let the poor woman in" and eventually giving Jean a polite hand inside, Jonah looked back and forth between her and Peter.

"How do you two...know each other," he asked.

"We're in the same pilates class," said Peter.

"He has a deep, inexplicable bond with my boyfriend," Jean said at the same time.

They looked at each other.

"...Okay," said Jonah eventually, deciding he did not want to know about it if his freelancer had had a threesome with Phoenix and Cyclops.

-

After overcoming the awkwardness of introductions, Jean assumed a businesslike patter out of sync with her dramatic entrance. Peter extricated himself back to the noncombat zone with the nonchalant speed of a man who was hiding something.

"Bets," said Peter.

Betty was back to staring from her desk. "Yes, Pete?"

"Are we about to become the most pro-mutant news outlet in New York?"

Betty worried the end of her pen some more. "I rather suspect it."

"Hell, I rather expect it," cut in Robbie, stepping up behind them and joining their huddle. "Might even swap news outlet with employer."

"--run organizations," Jean was saying while Jonah watched her perched on a desk in a Thinker pose and waved at Glory to take notes. "I can put you in touch with some of our school to work programs."

Robbie ran his hands down his face, looking tired. "There's so much to do," he said. "And always so much to learn, before you can do any of it. I can't claim the high ground on this one--I hadn't noticed we hadn't taken a clear enough stance on this either. It's impossible to stay on top of all of it. ...But we're journalists. We have to keep trying."

"Is that why you stick around?" Peter asked. "...Sir?"

Robbie snorted. "You asking if I never cut the apron strings for long because Jonah tries so hard? Maybe among other things. Don't get too cheeky, Parker."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"He always tries," repeated Robbie. "Now if only he would just let go of his vendetta with--"

"--that rat, Spider-Man?"

Jean pursed her lips and tipped her head to consider whatever character defamation Jonah had asked her to confirm. "He is slightly less funny than he thinks he is," she conceded. "Which is much more annoying than you'd think it would be."

Peter made a drain unclogging noise. Robbie pointedly did not look at him.

"She's not wrong," muttered Betty, whose attention was rapt on the exciting part of the room and as such missed any fine nuances being brandished beside her.

Peter made the noise again.

Jean looked over and stuck her tongue out at him.

-

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy STORY TIME, PEOPLE. I FEARED FOR MY LIFE OR AT LEAST MY DIGNITY AT WORK TODAY (view all replies) . . . JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy i'm wearing my worksona rait. i physically cannot stop saying "sir". i think i said sir 47 different times out of sheer social what the hell

YBY Call Me @belovedssdarling i don't think you have a worksona i think you;re a genuinely boring person

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy okay wow. . . . JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy When i say i hid behind a desk i wish i was exagerating for comedy. but.

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy "wow jeffavorite you hid from marvel girl? you must really be a radical!" no she's just really tall OK

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy Also once i met an actor i worshipped and his personality didnt hold up. i cant let that happen again. i'm traumatized . . . JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy The effort it took to not say "yeah but it does look like a pride flag probably because every single xman is some kind of gay"

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy god

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy he immediately asked me what my deal was and i was so overwhelmed by the sheer ... yeah that i didn't tell him youre not supposed to ask that... i need to go back in there before he publishes something don't i

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy hes a nice very loud old man i cant let the word choice nitpickers have him

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy fuck

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy he's a coot but like i get it now. that's my coot.

JEFF!❀ @theother_jeffy i'm gonna see if i can get him to wear a magneto was right pin

-

A week later, Peter flopped face first into bed. There was a newspaper clutched in his hand which if uncrumpled would have read "Iɴᴛᴏʟᴇʀᴀɴᴛ Cᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴛɪᴇs ᴛʜᴇ REAL Mᴜᴛᴀɴᴛ Pʀᴏʙʟᴇᴍ".

"Awwwwwwwww, Tiger," cooed Mary Jane from where she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed. She put down the script she was looking over. "Are you feeling cherished?"

"Whamph?" said Peter into the bedsheet. "No. By Jonah? No. Why? He's not cherishing me."

MJ patted him consolingly on the back, snickering.

--

AO3

[nifflerdream-blog-deactivated20]

me as a writer: Oh no I can’t write that, somebody else already has

me as a reader: hell yes give me all the fics about this one scenario. The more the merrier

[obsessivewriter]

This one is so hard to accept. Reblogging to knock that into my brain.

[primarybufferpanel]

Me as a writer: I feel like I’m repeating myself, I’ve already used that theme, I’ve already written that kink, that other character uses that speech pattern so this one in another fandom can’t, I feel like I’m writing predictable things, is this different enough from that other thing I wrote, are people filling out bingo cards by my work? :sobbing:

Me as a reader: oh hell yeah this hit the spot exactly, I hope this writer has written 20 more just like it

[deelaundry]

As one friend said when I felt I was reusing a theme too much, nobody ever says, Did Agatha Christie write about murder again?

[caledoniaseries]

I actually laughed out loud at the last one. A very good point.

[giraffeter]

“I love this, I hope there isn’t anything else out there like it!” Said no one ever

[peter-is-a-bean]

@ literally all my writer friends!!!

[brucebocchi]

[skellaloose]

First rule of being a graphic designer…they will absolutely just print and use your fake placeholder copy so just go into it expecting that

[strangerstarsandlands]

a fistful of datas is a really good episode 

[gamespite]

This post is factually correct, but I would like to note that the ending shot, in which the Enterprise rides off into the sunset, elevates the entire hour of television to Actual Art.

[sprachgefuehle]

When your native language uses gender for all kinds of words and you desperately try to talk about your enby friend without using words that misgender them

[thoodleoo]

i know that a lot of what pliny the elder says is kind of bullshit but i've never wanted to believe him more in my life than when he says that hedgehogs collect apples for the winter by rolling onto them so the apples stick on their spines and they can carry them off

[thoodleoo]

oh my god...

[nepofledgling]

Straight men who always joke about hating their girlfriend are so fucking weird like imagine having a girlfriend and not treasuring and loving her every day smh grow up

[hardtostayaway-deactivated20180]

“treasuring” and “loving” your girlfriend will result in her quickly leave you. Girls HATE guys who treat them like goddesses. They view it as pathetic and weak.

[nepofledgling]

I hate it when people say shit like this like we get it you’re an

[locketship]

[accidental-muse]

[bratmcnugget]

[commiethot]

yall hurt him so bad he deleted his Manchild Manifesto

[nickaroooo]

Y’all missed the best fucking part

[theuntoaster]

Also, “treating her like a goddess” is not always “treasuring and loving” her. If you’re obsessing over her, objectifying her, literally worshipping her, etc, you’re being creepy af and most girls won’t stick around. Treat your girlfriend like a human being who you enjoy being around, not an unwanted obligation (ex: “I hate my girlfriend”), and not some higher power (ex: “I am showering her with presents to the point it becomes uncomfortable and am incapable of having a normal conversation with her without it devolving into how my life is meaningless without her”)

[systlin]

purge of 2002? of 2012? what ARE those?

Oh, how quickly the past is forgotten. 

They are part of the reason A03 is a thing now. Not the whole reason, but part of it. 

The Great Purges of 2002 and 2012 are when ff.net got a wild hair up their ass about THINK OF THE CHILDREN and nuked any fic posted on there that was explicit. Thousands upon thousands of nc-17 smutfics were lost.

It’s what led to the creation of alternate hosting sites for smutty fic…AdultFanfiction was the one I went to…but thousands of fics would never be recovered. 

[systlin]

Shit like the Great Purges and the Strikethrough of Livejournal eventually led to fans banding together to create A03, which I would have absolutely KILLED for when I was 15.

[persephonebooklover]

Back up ao3 was created by fans?

[systlin]

It’s…right on the main page. 

[fanfictionanthology]

I love this because I will bet you that persefv has read that bit we are all so inundated with hyperbole and advertising that says that the consumer is somehow in charge of whatever product they are shilling that we all just assumed this was another sales tactic.

[naryrising]

But we’re not even… selling anything…  *quiet sobs*

[wrangletangle]

No ads. No subscriptions. No data selling.

We are the definition of “what it says on the tin.”

[elfwreck]

Is there any way to spread this info? 

THE OTW WAS CREATED BY FANS SO WE’D HAVE AN ARCHIVE THAT WASN’T SUBJECT TO CORPORATE REVIEW. 

Nonprofit, so that nobody could ever say, “this isn’t making enough money; it’s getting shut down.” (See: Geocities, Quizilla, Figment, G+.) With lawyers involved and a firm awareness of the legalities of fanfic, so nobody would decide “we’ve gotten a nasty letter from a megacorporation with lawyers, so we’re hiding because we can’t afford to face a lawsuit. (Jedi Hurtaholics, Trevizo’s Millennium site.) With teams, so that an argument between co-mods didn’t result in the destruction of a whole archive. (Gryffindor Tower, Detention.)

AO3 IS OUR SITE.

It is by fans, for fans. Fans do all the coding. All the legal paperwork. All the abuse/tos violation complaints. Fans make all the choices about policies. Fans decide how to run the fundraisers. Fans write the blog posts. All the volunteer staff are fans; all the people who train them are fans. Fans wrangle all the tags. 

(And the other OTW projects, too. Fans manage the entries at Fanlore. Fans run the Open Doors project. Fans publish Transformative Works and Cultures.)

EVERYONE WORKING FOR THE OTW LOVES FANDOM. Wants it to survive. Wants it to be awesome for everyone.

(Knows that it can’t be awesome for everyone; some approaches to fandom just clash hard. But they strive to minimize those clashes as much as possible, because they love fandom.) 

AO3 is not some company that decided, “we’ll make a site for fanfic and then…” I don’t know what people are thinking is the reason. Money? Data harvesting? Tax shelter? Amusement and pity?

Nope; AO3 was fans saying, “Livejournal sucks; we’re tired of this fucked-up ‘rebuild every three years’ garbage; WE NEED TO OWN THE DAMN SERVERS.”

That’s the “of our own” part of the name. OTW isn’t a “them” running the site “for us.” It’s “us” making places for “us” to share what we love with others of “us.” 

[dirtydragonthoughts]

This this this.

I was there for all of that shit, and AO3 is a godsend. If you enjoy or create fanworks, support AO3, donate if you can, and remember why it’s there in the first place!!

[olderthannetfic]

Fandom history really does get lost quickly. For current 20-something fans, AO3 has always been there.

[breelandwalker]

CAN CONFIRM. I was there in the dark times. I remember the purges. The fights. The servers wiped and the sites removed and the thousands upon thousands of works lost. I remember how hopeless it felt, like every time we got something going, it was doomed to failure. What was the point of even trying to create something if it would just be deleted anyway?

Y'all think fandom infighting is bad now? Picture it with sites where the ban system worked like YouTube and TikTok - you could get slapped with one for any reason or no reason at all. No way to appeal it. Picture it with fans getting in legal trouble because someone didn’t like their work and reported it. Picture it with people getting sued over fanfiction. Because it happened.

That’s why so many fics written by oldtimers like me have that knee-jerk, “I own nothing, please don’t sue.” There was a time when that was necessary.

AO3 changed all that. No more crashes, no more purges, and at least some protection under the law. (We all knew the bit where fanfic is technically covered under the “parody” clause of copyright law, but not a single one of us could have made a case in court cause the thing that unites fans apart from their fandoms is that we are by and large broke.) And OTW has endured not because it’s got all the funding or corporate backing in the world, but because it’s run by people who give a damn.

Always support the existence of fandom, but more importantly, support places and organizations that help fandoms continue to exist.

[janisar]

And never forget the reason why we lost so much back in the day.  “The Great Purges of 2002 and 2012 are when ff.net got a wild hair up their ass about THINK OF THE CHILDREN and nuked any fic posted on there that was explicit.”  Use the tags, keep out of what you don’t want to see and tailor your own experiences instead of trying to shut down the one good thing we fic writers have 

[gehayi]

There’s a REASON that the Archive of Our Own exists, and that’s because other sites have been trying to shut down fandom for a very long time. The following list is from this Fanlore article.

Cease and Desist by FOX against fan sites (mid-1990s)

The Viacom Crackdowns (1995, 2005)

PotterWar (2001-2002)

Tripod Massacre (March 2001)

FanFiction.Net’s NC-17 Purges: 2002 and 2012

Quizilla’s purge (2006)

LiveJournal’s Strikethrough  (May 2007) and Boldthrough (August 2007)

GeoCities Shutdown (2009)

tagging policy decisions at Delicious (2011)

The Snappening (Tumblr) (2018)

Tumblr NSFW Content Purge (2018)

Yahoo! Groups Content Purge (2019)

Oh, and AO3? As of March 1, 2020, it’s banned in China–most likely to prevent the Chinese people from accessing queer and/or explicit fiction.

[magdalyna]

once again, you dont like ao3? build your own, the source code is opensource. have at it

[iguanamouth]

Have you ever thought of a Chinese dragon combined with a dachshund or a ferret?

you mean like. a little. weiner dog dragon ohhohoohh man

[ginormouspotato]

OH NOOOOOO I LOVE THIS SO MUCH

[xivnomnom]

“Guilty Pleasure”