☝️🤓 it’s because the further you move toward the earth’s poles, the lower the angle of the sun is at the hottest parts of the day, meaning the radiation hits your whole body, causing it to feel 10-20 degrees warmer than the thermometer reading will tell you. People from tropical climes, aka close to the equator, are used to the sun’s radiation hitting a much smaller target- their head and shoulders.
Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.
People keep saying the humidity, and yes a humid heat is a specific kind of misery and can be dangerous… but critical to remember, many many tropical climes are humid as well.
Infrastructure and citified heat islands also very much play a factor. And here the angle you’re at on earth also makes it worse. The sun being lower on the horizon can double the amount of solar energy affecting your house. The sun beating through your windows for 16+ hours a day when you have a house built for cold and no AC adds to the misery.
But what I’m talking about here is how hot you feel in your body when experiencing solar radiation from a lower angle. On the upside the sun’s rays have to pass through more atmosphere, weakening the UV strength, hence why populations that migrated north eons ago lost melanin (you still need SPF though). And in general the warming effect on the atmosphere is lessened. The warming effect on your body is magnified. To the tune of 10-20 degrees (yes Fahrenheit) above ambient. Winter gear prioritizes insulating your torso because that’s where all your vital organs are. It follows that the sun beating on your chest and back warms you up fast and with little relief except to get in the shade.
Visitor to Alaska are often surprised at how warm temperatures in the 70°s and 80°s feel. Read about how this phenomenon occurs.
My eye doctor also told me living in Alaska made you more likely to get cataracts younger because the low-angle sun gets directly in your eyes in the summer (unless you’re big on sunglasses) and the snow and ice in winter reflect a lot of UV back up, doubling your exposure. Though the prevalence of cataracts in Alaska and other far-north locales is contributed to by other factors, notably poverty and the resulting lack of medical care. And is still not as likely as in people who live in equatorial climes or high altitudes and get the super-strength UV exposure all year round.
The thing about worrying about whether or not a character is a good person is that good people don’t really exist. Just people. Who do some good things and some bad things and mostly a lot of average everyday mediocre things. Hopefully the good adds up to more than the bad.
So having a character who is sometimes selfish or hypocritical or short-sighted or just deeply emotionally unprepared for something that they struggle to grow into… is not a failing. That’s the point of the story! How do they navigate the plot despite and because of their flaws, and do they learn anything? They don’t always have to learn and improve, either, though that should be intentional, not simply a reset to zero for its own sake. Sometimes you come out of An Experience unchanged or even worse off for it! That happens!
They’re not a bad character because they’re imperfect. In fact perfect characters are bad characters because they’re less interesting. And funnily enough, sanding off their edges for broadest appeal is exactly the shit we’re always complaining about Disney doing. So it’s kind of ironic to see fandom do it to characters over and over again, forcing them into the same archetypes and set of tropes. Giving them their Thor’s Poptarts.
And I’d say this is no great sin in itself except for how it can overwhelm the actual character in people’s mind because endlessly repeating something loudly works to do that. As does angrily rejecting other angles and interpretations. And it contributes to an environment where original fiction is more and more bland and sanitized to appeal to that very same broadest possible audience. It lends to the idea that people don’t want new stories, they want another remake or reboot or sequel to consume the familiar and safe and borrrring tropes and archetypes as always. Creators become leery of challenging their audience because their audience is their livelihood and their audience hates being challenged.
And I love fanfiction, I truly do, I love examining a story through a thousand different lenses and picking apart where and how things could have gone differently (for better OR worse) than the original. I love giving tragic characters a happy ending or digging deeper into angst and drama than the original did. There are fan authors who have shared stories that I still think about years after reading, who made me laugh and cry and kick my feet. The infinite possibility and infinite variety is intoxicating.
So I guess it’s just kind of sad to see it becoming very samey, very house style, very decided by committee rather than one weirdo’s brilliant vision. And I’m sure in part it’s a natural consequence of the kind of volume fanfic is produced at these days. Numbers we could barely dream of in most fandoms over the decades. As a simple law of averages, most of it is going to be mid.
Since fanfic is supposed to be a labor of love you’re supposed to never say anything bad about someone’s fanfic unless they invite criticism, and I do understand and support this unwritten rule of fandom. But much like fandom tends to overlook racism and misogyny and homophobia as isolated instances, when you step back and add it all up there are overarching trends that absolutely should be talked about. Flattening characters into tropes is minor in comparison to the bigotry that becomes apparent when you view fanworks in aggregate from a distance.
The unsolvable problem of leaving autocorrect off and just accepting the inevitable typos from working on a tiny phone keyboard, or turning it back on and dealing with it just inserting random words that it thinks i’m trying to say…
Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.
Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.
so. my electricity just got cut off, despite my payment plan (again). sometimes they just ignore it and we have no other options. I owe them about $300 so far. plus with my phone/internet renewal next week... that's about $130
I've put a goal of $450 (due to fees) on my ko-fi and of course I'm offering proofreading and VA services but I'm putting out an emergency mutual aid request
kofi goal
venmo
cashapp
any help and reblogs are so appreciated I know y'all are sick of me
I work with marginalized folks pro bono to help track and fill out paperwork to access disability and government services, and that's what my proofreading and VA services help fund, so if you have anything that needs proofing, my rate is $3/1k words and it helps keep a Black person of undeterminable gender fed so I can help the marginalized members of my community with no resources try to access the benefits they're entitled to
reblogging for phone/internet renewal that is coming up due on the 21st. a three month term is ~$130 (taxes and fees) so if you need proofreading without bots I only use three liters of water a day!
About four months into their relationship, Evan's lying with his head on Tommy's shoulder one night and reading a passage from The Absolutely Bonkers and Horrifically Sad Tales of Evan Buckley's Misspent Youth—this one involves some snot-nosed turd who dared Evan to jump off the Rockville Bridge into the Susquehanna, and Evan being so desperate for someone's approval that he did it—when he pauses mid-sentence. He lifts his head and looks at Tommy with the face of someone who just got accidentally beaned in the head by a stray softball.
"W-Wait, I just realized—I don't think I've ever asked you where you're from. I kind of assumed… but you don't strike me as an LA native."
Tommy snorts. "Did the lack of lip fillers and ass injections give it away?"
The grin that breaks across Evan's face is downright filthy. "Oh, I've examined every inch of that ass and would testify in a court of law that it's 100% real."
Evan always makes him laugh, but sometimes he's just plain hilarious when he wants to be. He's got a killer wit that would give even Howie a run for his money if he ever really let it loose.
Rolling his eyes, Tommy gently cups Evan's cheek tenderly and then shoves his head back down, which makes Evan crack up. Tommy's never had so much fun in bed with anyone before. The sex is insane and he loves every minute of it, but if someone put a gun to his head, Tommy would admit that this is his favorite part: when they're tangled up in sheets that smell like the two of them, their skin stuck together with dried sweat and come, content to just exist in each other's space and talk about nothing in particular. He likes this ridiculous man so much.
"No, but seriously," Evan whines, tilting his chin to sink his teeth playfully into Tommy's collarbone. "Where'd you grow up?"
Tommy actually has an answer for this. He came up with it during the red phase of his basic training—after he made the mistake of telling some kid (who ended up washing out three weeks later) the truth and had to put up with the idiot's incessant questions about whether or not Tommy had ever seen them in action—and has been practicing it ever since.
He opens his mouth to say, "Porterville, up in Tulare County; I was a solid-B student at Strathmore High where there were 104 people in my graduating class; ask me about the town's smog problem or the Tule River War of 1856," because he's padded out the lie with enough research to make any Porterville native believe he's the real deal, but what slides out is, "Angel Grove."
He regrets it immediately when Evan goes stock-still against him and then fights against the push of Tommy's hand to lift his head again. Howie once made a joke about that Studio Ghibli was going to sue the Buckley siblings for copyright infringement when it came to their sad eyes. Tommy hadn't really understood what he meant by that until now.
"Jesus, you could kill someone with those," he mutters, looking away.
"Tommy," Evan says, quietly devastated. "Y-You were there?"
He stares at the thousands of little mountains jutting out from Evan's popcorn ceiling and wishes he could throw himself off of one, but instead he bites out, "Yup."
"I-I was in the third grade, which means you would've been in high school," Evan says, because while the difference between their ages isn't a big deal he's contractually obligated to bring it up in the worst possible ways. "But my friends and I—we watched the news coverage for weeks. We wanted to see footage of them, you know? Hell, w-we wanted to be them. We pretended to be. Scotty Anderson assigned one to each of us and Jamal Bello's mom made us costumes."
That gets Tommy to look back at him. It's not the first time he's heard of kids claiming their colors and mock fighting at recess, but it's definitely the first time he actually cares to hear more. "Yeah? Which one were you?"
"Blue."
"Good choice," Tommy says.
That ought to be that. The next steps for the night should be for Tommy to kiss Evan, lose a layer of skin peeling his body away, and then go hide in the shower for ten minutes before getting out and Door Dashing something from his favorite Haitian place in WeHo. He's been craving fried plantains for a week.
But Evan's always read from a different script, because he follows that up with, "Yeah, I guess, but that's who Jamie picked for me. I wanted to be gree—"
"No, you didn't."
It explodes between them like the crack of a whip, and Evan startles back from the sheer vehemence of it.
Tommy's a little taken aback, too. He's never let his voice rise above a certain volume unless he's trying to be heard over wind and rotor blades. He's never yelled at a significant other. It drove Abby insane that he wouldn't shout during their fights. She thought it meant he didn't care. He didn't know how to explain that he used to shout so much that he had a constant sore throat for the entirety of his junior year and didn't want to feel that particular pain ever again.
"I—Christ, I'm sorry." Tommy clears his throat, swollen with a phantom rawness. "Sorry, Evan. I-I didn't mean to yell. I just meant… blue really was a good choice. Suits you, honestly. I always liked that one."
A tentative smile tugs at Evan's mouth and Tommy hates that he's the reason there's even a little uncertainty in Evan's expression, but one of the many things he admires about Evan is his ability to rally.
"So… you really were there," Evan says again. "That day."
Exhaling through his nose, Tommy thinks fondly of the shower he's not currently taking. "I was."
"D-Do you mind me asking… what it was like? I know it must've been scary, but… it must've been so cool, too. I mean, getting to see them fight. Was it cool?"
He doesn't remember the actual fight, but he does remember how his helmet cut into his cheek because the visor had shattered. He remembers Zach's gasping breaths and the sound of Kimberly sobbing and Billy's frantic mumbling about probabilities and timelines, and how Jason screamed that none of it would have happened if Tommy had just been strong enough to withstand Rita. He remembers wondering why victory felt so much like defeat. He remembers how heavy Trini's body was in his arms as he carried it to the riverbank on the edge of town and how she was swallowed up by the small bed of daisies he laid her on. He remembers the grinding pain of his broken ankle and ribs with every step he took toward home. He remembers the way gold stuck like treacle to every surface in the city center and how it smelled like absence. He remembers the massive burial they held for everyone who died. He remembers sneaking his dad's revolver out of its safe and sitting in the yard with the barrel in his mouth, waiting to see the sun one last time. He remembers how hard his dad's fist hit his healing cheekbone when his dad found him with it. He remembers the name of the recruiter he talked to the next day—Mark Machado. He remembers the pen he used to fill out the forms was a Uni-ball Vision with blue ink; Mark let him keep it after welcoming him to the Army. He remembers trying to salute, but being unable to because of his ribs. He remembers throwing his power coin at Kim when she found him at the bus stop and begged him to stay.
"Yeah," Tommy rasps. "It was cool."
A smug smile splits Evan's face as settles back down, snuggling as close as possible. "I knew it."
