Honesty

empathy:

is responding to a person’s emotions by experiencing the same emotion as them (i.e. feeling sad when something sad happens to that person, or happy when something happy happens to that person.)

is an automatic response that cannot be controlled

cannot be learned

sympathy:

is recognizing that another person is in pain, even if you do not experience that pain, and offering comfort to that person

is something a person must actively choose to do

can be learned

compassion:

is showcasing care and support via words and actions

is something a person must actively choose to do

can be learned

if you need an example of a person with no empathy who practices sympathy and compassion, look no further than data from star trek: the next generation. he doesn’t have emotions at all, but he’s still kind to people and wants to help them.

So a while back (I can’t remember exactly when but I think it was some time around the 40s/50s), a bunch of penguins escaped. A keeper left the gate open so a bunch of penguins just… followed them. And the people loved it. Look at these adorable birds outside their cage just following that guy around! So they get all the penguins back inside and realise that none of them really ran off, they just followed the keeper and went back inside and crowd thought it was amazing, so why not make it a regular thing? Get enough people there that if one of them goes to make a run for it (which at least one has in the past), they can’t get past the people, and let the ones who want outside have a little wander. So every day, they get a crowd, they open the gate, and whatever penguins want to get out can go, waddle about, squawk at people, and then hop back inside.

And also — not to get nitpicky with deadly tragedies, but they’re called “human crushes,” not “stampedes.” It’s an important difference in description and also in respect. The deaths usually happen because the victims are pinned together in a tight space, they can’t breathe (as in the video) and they suffocate. “Stampede” doesn’t convey what actually happened to those people. The crush that happened in Seoul recently wasn’t because people “stampeded,” it was because they couldn’t move at all and they suffocated. But calling it a “stampede,” you’d think it was the people themselves that ran over each other, like wild animals. It’s disrespectful and untrue.

1. Stand like a boxer. Nice wide stance, arms up like you’re preparing to either throw a punch or shield against one, i.e. elbows bent by your waist and fists by your shoulders. That will keep some space around your chest

They’re all wrong.

Look, I obviously adore the white knight/black king motif, and it works really well for that very specific discussion of Nate’s shift in morality and position at the opening of the series. But the show as well as I and other fans have then tried to take that equation and apply it to other jobs and to the crew as a whole. This is fun and awesome, but I believe you’re going to get it wrong every time if you start from the white knight/black king line. 

Because in all other situations, Nate is not the king.

Couple important things about kings in chess: 1. They don’t move much. They can only move one space at a time, and for most of the game they stay in their own little box, well guarded by other pieces. This is because 2. When the king is checkmated (threatened with capture and no possible escape), it’s game over. There is no more hope. This is the sole requirement for losing the game. No matter who else is in play, if the king is down, you lose.

This is NOT how Nate operates. Yeah, he makes the plans, but he doesn’t just hide in the office while everybody else carries them out. He’s almost always right up in there playing the most obnoxious guy you’ve ever met or smashing windows or something. And if Nate gets captured, it’s not game over, in fact, it often isn’t even a PROBLEM. Let’s look at a few times that happens, just for fun: - In The King George Job, Nate’s getting beat up and Eliot slightly panics and is about to run to help, when Sophie says “NOPE, don’t do that, I can fix this without blowing our cover” and saunters in at her leisure. The jig isn’t up and she’s not even particularly concerned about him getting punched. I love it. - In the Maltese Falcon Job, Nate sacrifices himself to save the team. This is a classic thing to do in chess and chess metaphors, but, I cannot stress this enough, you cannot sacrifice your king. That’s just called LOSING. -In The Long Goodbye Job of course the whole con is structured around Nate getting caught. I guess this one kind of makes sense because the whole point is to look like they HAVE completely lost, but then at the end it appears that Nate’s going to secret prison and everyone else is escaping WITH the black book, so they STILL would be losing Nate but winning the job. 

So if Nate isn’t the king, who is?

Hardison.

Let’s look at our points about kings again:

1. Doesn’t move as far or as quickly: Yes, Hardison ALSO gets out there and participates in the cons, everybody does. But Hardison does stay in the background more often, because that’s where his power is. He does the behind the scenes tech stuff and the remote stuff, he can wreck your shop without showing up through the power of the internet. He also does the forgeries of identities and objects, which are also done in his own space. At the same time, he has less physical power and less range – you don’t want him in a fistfight, or a gunfight, and his grifts are notorious for being a little… uh… interesting. So he has limited physical range and power but at the same time… .

2. The game is over if you lose him. That far-reaching behind the scenes power is absolutely vital for 90% of the jobs. He does the massive amounts of research and hacking legwork needed just to START a job, even before you get to actually completing the job. You are pretty much dead in the water without Hardison. But that’s just from a practical standpoint. Losing Hardison is also a crisis from an emotional standpoint. He’s our moral compass and our sweet baby brother and when Hardison gets in trouble there is no “well he’ll be fine for a few minutes” and no “well he kinda had it coming.” No, when Hardison is in trouble everything else grinds to a halt and everyone comes running. (See: The Experimental Job, The Grave Danger Job, The Long Goodbye Job.)

So like, yes Nate is in charge. But the king isn’t in charge on a chessboard, the king is just a piece with a very unique role, which Hardison fills much better than Nate does. So, now that we have our real king, who are our other pieces?

Queen: Parker. This has nothing to do with her dating Hardison. The thing about the queen is she can do a little bit of everything – she can move in any direction, making her the most dangerous piece on the board. Parker’s whole character arc is about learning all the different roles and how to access the whole playing field. She’s the only one who plans and executes an entire episode-length job by herself (okay, with a little help from her girlfriend). Plus, the other cool thing about a queen is she has a built-in transformation story – a pawn that crosses the board can become a queen, which Parker mimics by initially being dismissed as “the crazy one” and ultimately becoming the mastermind.

Knight: Sophie. I know, I wanted Eliot to be the horsie too, but this makes more sense. The knight’s deal is that it’s sneaky – it’s the only piece that can turn corners – and it can jump over obstacles. Sophie’s whole philosophy of grifting is that she shouldn’t need to know about safes or security systems, she should be able to bypass (jump over) all that by insinuating herself with the mark (being sneaky by playing a character to get behind enemy lines)

Rook: Eliot. This is the straightforward one – it goes in a straight line. It also literally represents the castle walls. It’s also so, so fucking helpful to have around, I fucking hate losing my rooks. It’s your solid right hand man, basically. Is this a little reductive of Eliot? Absolutely, but I’m jamming five complex characters into five predetermined boxes, it’s not all gonna be nuanced. And I think Mr. Punchy would like being seen as the fortress that everybody depends on, and to let all the nuance go under the radar. That’s where he likes it. 

Bishop: Finally, here’s where Nate is hiding. While the rook can only go straight (lol), the bishop can only go diagonally. Nothing can be straightforward for the bishop, he always has to come at things from an angle. Like, you know, constantly looking at all the different angles of a situation and finding the right angle to come at a mark from. Also, the bishops sit right in the middle right next to the king and queen. I don’t know that this is historically accurate, but when my dad taught me to play he told me that was because the bishops were important councilors to the rulers, they were the ones who had important wisdom that would tell them the best plan of attack. So the king here isn’t necessarily the one making the plans – that’s the bishop. And finally, apparently the bishop is called lots of different things in other languages, but we’re operating in English, which means it makes Nate a priest, and that makes me happy.

@digitalbusker

Our bus had to go through the aisle, actually, before the bride.

I've noticed a little flower girl struggling with her shoes and I got out of the bus to help her and another friend came out when she kept falling down no matter what we did. The bus ended up leaving without us and we got stranded in this city, in the middle of somebody's wedding.

A kid bridesmaid came to us and said she really liked my friend and wanted her to stay as her babysitter. The two of us ended up being kidnapped by the rich family of the two young girls and the bride, who appeared in an extravagant dress.

The family was going to murder me because they only wanted to keep my friend for their older daughter, but the little flower girl protected me and promised to get me out of there, which she managed to do.

since some people asked me to share some other forgotten tumblr lore and since i’ve been on here basically since the very making of the site, i’ve decided to tell you another story that i remember (and no, it’s not about tumblr prom, i’ll leave that one for another time) - the story of Darryn and Jade

Darryn (url - darrynek) and Jade (url - jadeita) were two tumblr bloggers who started a long distance relationship after meeting up on here years and years ago (think: 2013 tumblr). She was from the UK, I believe (her and I shared a mutual friend, will mention him once again later, but I never met or interacted with her, I just knew of her relationship with Darryn), and Darryn was one of the first and biggest at the time tumblr ‘funnymen’ who lived in the USA iirc. His blog was huge and he was immensely popular and had a lot of legendary posts that have long ago been forgotten, such as

and the way these posts were wildly popular back then explain pretty dArn well the state of tumblr from years and years ago and the kind of things that would get notes and attention back then and the kind of humor that was popular

their interactions always got a lot of notice as well

Jade was less popular, a lot of her popularity came after the two of them started openly dating and their followers started shipping them, but if i remember correctly she was a talented artist and had fans in her own right and deservedly so, and also she was very, very pretty

a lot of users had a crush on Darryn, but I think Jade was the real catch

anyway, so for months, maybe years, the two of them were saving up for their big meetup and I think move? pretty sure Darryn was going to move to the UK to be with Jade, and their followers, especially his, helped fund that over the time, people on this site genuinely sent them money 

and there was a counter until their meetup and we all waited for such a long time to see the two of them meet for the first time, it was like a huge deal, the biggest event in tumblr history, bigger even than Dashcon (also leaving that for another story)

and the day finally came and Darryn boarded the plane and the friend I mentioned earlier went with Jade to pick him up after he arrived and he filmed them seeing and meeting each other for the first time and running into each other’s arms and full on snogging in the streets of whichever UK town this took place in

i distinctly remember how we all freaked out over that video and reblogged it and made gifs of it, me included, which can still be found in their tags

found the video of it reuploaded to youtube, the original is gone i believe but it had at least 100k views, that’s how big it was (that’s my friend speaking in the background -  fun fact, RORY, YOU MAD LAD - WHERE ARE YOU? HOW ARE YOU? IT’S BEEN YEARS)

and anyway, this was all fine and dandy, we were all so excited, we were patiently waiting for updates, waiting for the promised and expected content, the UK bloggers from their crew were all going to meet up with them, there were pictures, we were gonna hear more from them, except

Darryn then gave his blog to a friend of his who never really did anything with it and left tumblr, Jade stayed here a little longer on her art blog but then left as well, and there were never any updates! never!

a lot of the people who basically funded their meetup were disappointed, saddened, hurt, people felt like they were owed at least some closure, but it never really came and we never found out how things went down later on, if they are still together, if he really moved, and so on

after and during their reign on tumblr, other long distance real and even pretend couples tried to emulate their story and success and get the popularity and money that these two received so they could meet up, but no one was ever successful in replicating the formula, i believe because Darryn and Jade’s story was genuine and others were trying to be like them too much

shipping was becoming huge on tumblr at the time they were on here and they were the real deal, people shipped them so much

Darryn and Jade, if you’re out there, hope you’re doing well

they now have a budget-friendly trial pack so you no longer have to worry which pad fits best for you. you can just buy the pack to get one pad of each size!!

Dracula Daily has made me realize that Mina has pretty much *hated* Dracula on sight. Took one look at his rancid vibe having ass and said “take even one more look at Jonathan and I will not be held responsible for what happens next…”

Which made me realize, if you HAVE to make Mina and Dracula connected through reincarnation and shit, then make it accurate to the source material: make Mina the reincarnation of Draculas greatest enemy.

Mina was a peasant girl who got tired of Drac’s lizard bullshit, rallied the peasantry, besieged Castle Dracula, burnt it to the ground, and then chased dracula into the wilderness with an army of pissed off serfs behind her.

Everytime she reincarnated, Dracula lives in absolute fear that she’ll show up and beat him up before shoving him into a locker again.

He takes one look at her in London, shrieks like a banshee, and just hightails it back to his lair. Jonathan is confused but happy, Mina feels pleased and isn’t sure why.