Hey Sam! Since it's currently AO3 donation time, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on it? I'm asking because you've written RPF and it's one of many "anti-AO3/anti-AO3 donations" people's favourite things to bring up when they're complaining about AO3 getting so many donations that it continuously obtains an excess of its donation goal whenever donation time rolls around? (Wow, how many times can I say "donation" in an ask?)
Sorry if this question bothers you! I don't mean to offend or annoy.
Hey anon! Sorry it took a while to get to this, I don't even know if the drive is still going on, but the question came in while I was traveling and I didn't really have the time for stuff that wasn't travel-related. In any case, let's dig in! (I am not offended, no worries.)
So really there are two issues here and as much as some people who are critical of AO3 want to conflate them, they are different. While some criticism of AO3 may be valid, rhetoric against AO3 tends to misinterpret both in separate ways.
First there's the issue of what AO3 hosts -- RPF, yes, but more broadly, varied content that some people find distasteful or think should be illegal, which is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the archive and more broadly a dangerous attitude towards the concept of freedom of expression.
Second, there's the issue of AO3 generally outpacing its fundraising goals while not allowing monetization, which is a misunderstanding of the legal status of AO3 and to an extent a misunderstanding of philanthropy as a whole.
The longer I watch debates about content go on, the more I come to the conclusion that I was fortunate to have a teacher who really wanted to instill in us an understanding of free speech not as a policy but as an ongoing dialogue. It's not only that freedom of expression "protects you from the government, not the Justin" as the meme goes, but also that freedom of expression is not a static thing. It's an ongoing process of identifying what we find harmful in society and what we want to do about it.
Should the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater be restricted? Should the freedom to yell slurs at drag performers? Should the freedom to teach prepubescent kids about gender, sexuality, and/or safe sex? Should the freedom to wear a leather puppy hood at Pride? Who gets to say, and why?
I was nine when my teacher did a unit on freedom of speech and the intersection of "harm prevention" and "censorship", which is (and should be) a discussion, not a set of ironclad rules. This ambiguity has thus been with me for over thirty years, and I'm comfortable with the ambiguity, with the process; I'm not sure a lot of people critical of AO3's content truly are. Perhaps some can't be, especially those affected by hate speech, but RPF is not hate speech. It's just fiction. Or is fiction "just fiction"? This is a question society as a whole is grappling with, although fandom seems to be a little out ahead of society in terms of how explicitly we discuss it.
The idea that prose can incite violence or cause harm is both valid to examine (witness the rise of fascism on the radio in the 20s, on Facebook and Twitter in the past ten years; they're very similar processes) and a very slippery slope. Because again: who decides what harm is, and what causes it, and what we do about it? Our values align us with certain beliefs, but those are only our values, not universal truths. So AO3 is part of the ongoing question of harm and benefit both to society and individuals.
AO3 itself, however, has a fairly defined policy that it is not meant to police content; it is an archive, not a bookstore or a school board. AO3 refines its TOS and policies as necessary, but the goal is always open access and as much freedom of expression as possible, and if that's uncomfortable for some people then that's a discussion we have to have; ignoring it won't make it go away. But it has to be a discussion, it can't be a unilateral change to the archive's TOS or a series of snaps and clapbacks, and I don't see a lot of people ready to move beyond flinging insults. Perhaps because they were taught a much more binary view of freedom of expression than I was.
So, self-evidently, I support AO3 and I don't have a problem with RPF. Whether other people do is something we're going to have to get to grips with, and that's likely to be a process that is still going on when most of us are dust. I'd rather have a century of ambiguity than a wrong answer tomorrow, anyway.
But whether AO3 hosts RPF is truly a separate issue from its donation drives, because it's a criticism some people level at the site which exists whether it's fundraising or not. So people can criticize AO3's open policy and they can give it as a reason not to support the site, but it's just one aspect of the archive and the fundraising as a whole should be examined separately.
I think AO3's fundraisers are deeply misunderstood (sometimes on purpose) because even people who are anticapitalist get a little crazy when money gets involved, and this is, to fandom, a lot of money -- a few hundred thousand, reliably, every fundraiser. To me, a fundraiser that pulls in three hundred grand is almost quaint; my current nonprofit pulls in better than ten million a year and my previous employer had an endowment of several billion dollars. At my old job I didn't even bother researching people who couldn't give us a hundred grand.
On the other hand, AO3 is an extreme and astounding outlier in the nonprofit world, because basically it's the only one of its kind to work the way it does. It is entirely volunteer-run on the operational side (ie: tag wranglers, coders, lawyers, etc) and has no fundraising staff (gift officers, researchers, outreach officers) as far as I'm aware. To pull in three hundred grand from individual one-time donations, without any paid staff and without even a volunteer fundraising officer? That's insane. That doesn't happen. Except at AO3.
What people misunderstand, however, is the basic status of a nonprofit, which is a legal status, not simply a social one. (I'm adding in some corrections here since it gets complicated and the terminology can be important!) The Organization for Transformative Works, the parent of AO3, is a nonprofit, which indicates how it was incorporated as an organization; additionally it is registered federally as tax-exempt, which carries certain perks, like not paying sales tax, and certain duties, like making their financials transparent to a certain extent. (Religious nonprofits are exempt from the transparency requirement.) If you're interested in more about nonprofits and tax-exempt status a reader dropped a great article here.
Nonprofits, unlike for-profit companies, cannot pay a share of their income to stakeholders. Nonprofits don't have financial stakeholders, only donors. They can have employees and pay them a salary -- that's me, for example -- but if a nonprofit pulls in $10M in donations, my salary is paid from that, I don't get a percentage and nobody else does either. That's what it means to be a nonprofit -- the money above operational costs goes back into the organization. The donations we (and AO3) receive must be plowed under and used for outreach, server maintenance, further fundraising, services expansion, et cetera. You can see this in the 990 forms on Guidestar or ProPublica, or in their more accessible breakdowns on Charity Navigator. Nonprofits that do not put the majority of their income towards service provision tend to get audited and lose their nonprofit status. So nobody's getting paid from all that money, and the overage that isn't spent goes into what is basically a savings account in the name of the nonprofit. (I'm vastly simplifying but that's the gist.) Using that money for personal purposes is illegal. It's called "private inurement" and there's a good article here about it. The money belongs to the OTW as a concept, not to anyone in or of the OTW.
So the biggest misunderstanding that I see in people who are mad at AO3 fundraisers is that "they" are getting all this money (who "they" are is never clearly stated but I'm pretty sure people think @astolat has a special wifi router that runs on burning hundred dollar bills) while "we" can't monetize our fanfic. But "they" get nothing -- nobody even earns a salary from AO3 -- and you can easily prove that by looking at the 990 forms they file with the government, which are required to be made public. You can see the most recently available 990, from 2020, here at Guidestar. Page seven will show you the "highest compensated" employees, all of whom are earning zero dollars or nonmonetary perks (that's the three columns on the right).
Either AO3 is entirely volunteer-run or someone's Doing A Real Fraud. The money the OTW spends is documented (that's page 10 and 11 primarily) and while they may pay for, say, the travel and lodging expenses of a lawyer going to DC to defend a freedom-of-expression case, they don't pay the lawyer for their time, or give them a cut of the income.
Despite what you've read, the reason "we" can't monetize our fanfics on AO3 has nothing to do with the site being the product of volunteer handiwork or AO3 having it in their terms of service or it being considered gauche by some to do so; it's because
IT'S ILLEGAL.
I cannot say this loudly enough: It is against the law for a nonprofit to be used by its staff, volunteers, or beneficiaries to earn direct profit from the services provided by the nonprofit.
You can be paid to work at one, but you cannot side-hustle by selling your handmade friendship bracelets for personal gain on the nonprofit's website. If the nonprofit knowingly allows monetization of its services, it can lose nonprofit status, be fined, be hit with back taxes, and a lot of other unpleasant bullshit can go down, including prosecution of those involved for fraud. If you put a ko-fi link on your fanfic, you are breaking the law, and if AO3 allows it, they are too.
Okay, that was a sidebar, but in some ways not, because it gets to the heart of the real complaints about AO3 fundraising, which is that people in fandom are sick or unhoused or in some form of need and other people in fandom are giving to AO3, a fan site that is financially stable, instead of giving to peoples' gofundmes or dropping money in their Ko-Fi or Paypal. And while it is a legitimate grievance that there are people who are in such desperate need while we live in an era of unprecedented abundance, that's not AO3's fault. AO3 doesn't solicit actively, there's no unasked-for mailings or calls from a gift officer. They just put a banner up on their website, and people give. (Again, this is incredibly outlier behavior in the nonprofit world, I'd do a case study on it but the conclusion would just be "shit's real, yo.") You might as well be mad that people give to their local food bank instead of someone's ko-fi.
You cannot lay at AO3's feet the fact that people want to give to AO3 instead of to your fundraiser. That's a choice individuals have made, and while you can engage with them in terms of why they made the philanthropic choices they did, to blame an organization they supported rather than the person who made the choice to give is not only incorrect but futile, and unlikely to win anyone over to supporting you. We know from research that guilt is not a tremendous motivator of philanthropy.
It is also not necessarily a binary choice; just because AO3 gets a hundred grand in $5 donations doesn't mean most of the people giving don't also give $5 elsewhere. I support the OTW on occasion, and I also fundraise for UNICEF and the Chicago Parks Foundation and BAGLY and others, in addition to giving monthly to several nonprofits that I have longterm relationships with -- my alma mater, the animal rescue where I got the Cryptids, my shul. And I give, occasionally and anonymously, to fundraisers that pass through Radio Free Monday, which are mainly individuals in need, because I was once in need and now I pay it forward. These are the choices I have made. Nobody twisted my arm. I respond poorly to someone making the attempt to do so by attacking places I've given.
I think the upshot is, after all of this that I've written, that we cannot begin to come to grips with questions of institutional inequality in philanthropy, or freedom of expression and censorship, until people actually understand what's going on, and too few do. So all I can do is try and explain, and hopefully create a forum for people to learn and grow when it comes to charitable giving.
Archive Of Our Own and the Organization for Transformative Works are products of our community and as that community changes, we will necessarily continue to re-evaluate what aspects of it mean and how AO3/OTW express the community sentiment. I hope that the ongoing discussion of support for AO3 also leads to people learning more about their philanthropic options. But criticizing AO3 for fundraising by attacking it for fulfilling one of its stated purposes is silly, and attempting to guilt people into giving in the ways one thinks they should give rather than how they do give is just going to make one extremely unlikable.
As members of this community, we have to be a part of the push and pull, but it's difficult to do that competently in ignorance. So, I do my best to be knowledgeable and to educate my readers, and I hope others will do the same.
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On the court, in the middle of the immediate celebrations after the US Court wins the Exy World Cup, a rather brave reporter asks 35-year-old, two-time Olympic gold medalist Neil Josten his thoughts on retirement and does he have any post-Exy plans?
As Kevin Day is busy trying to appear as a good sportsman to the cameras while simultaneously being unbelievably smug that his teamâs beaten Japan at the Olympics and the World Cup back-to-back, heâs too distracted to curb Neilâs base instincts.
Andrew Minyard, of course, about-faced and started walking away the moment the final buzzer sounded because he doesnât waste his time on parasitic reporters looking for soundbites.
Neil Josten, on the other hand, is a veritable treasure-trove of soundbites, which is why heâs absolutely surrounded by microphones and cameras when he looks straight at that rather brave reporter and says, with utter seriousness:
âIâm playing Exy until I canât anymore and then Iâm going to be Andrewâs trophy husband.â
So as we all know, reality sucks and our poor anibabies don't get a happy ending, but in my denial oriented brain I would like to ask you if there's any AU you could think of that could have given them a YA Novel/anime style complete happy ending.
Marco would be the most open in-your-face unapologetic mental health advocate the 1990s ever saw. Heâd advocate for other stuff as well â disaster relief, representation in films, LGBTQ+ rights â but his big thing would be going into interviews with âthe other day IN THERAPY, by the way I was talking to A THERAPIST, and she said the funniest thingâŚâ Heâs amazing at walking up to the elephant in the room and hanging a party hat from its tusk, and thatâs exactly what heâd use as his primary weapon. Heâd be the celebrity who would lean across the table and loudly announce the hidden assumptions behind interview questions: âSo youâre saying my appearance is the only thing that matters about me?â heâd say loudly, or âOh, sure, since the American public is toootally entitled to know personal information about celebrities.â And heâd do it with such flair, such aplomb, such grinning self-deprecation, that most of the time itâd get aired anyway. Heâd probably still be bored some of the time, but any time the itch started under his skin heâd go find a hurricane in need of an elephant or orca to help pull people out of the mud, or a village in need of a famous actor to show up with a camera crew and loudly demand enough donations to build a new school.
Rachel would probably start out by finishing high school (sheâs a Packard Foundation Outstanding Student; she canât waste all that good work) and then go straight on to college and law school. Whereas Marco would play the press like a finely-tuned violin, Rachel would come at them with chin raised and jaw clenched. Sheâd earn a reputation for responding to people who stared or took pictures or whisper about her in public by simply pointing right at the gawkers and loudly announcing âThose people are staring at meâ to see how they like getting gawked at for a change. In spite of her brains and dedication and painfully direct style, sheâd probably take a few extra years to finish her education. Not only would she be almost as direct as Marco about fighting for her need to take mental health days and work-life breaks, sheâd have a quadrillion other things to do: skydive straight into the Arctic Ocean without a parachute, sneak a âborrowedâ Bug fighter out of a dry dock and go joyriding with Tobias, find that lady who called Jake a war criminal and punch her in the faceâŚÂ Rachel would do the full college experience, from white-water rafting trips to silly philosophy electives, from guest lectures at current events seminars to blackout drinking at bars downtown. And at the end of it sheâd be certified to go out there and start building a career: first as a paralegal, then as a D.A., then in her first political job as mayor, all the way on up.
Cassie would just jump straight into politics without bothering to get the kind of credentials that would make racist conservative pundits cry. Sheâd have too much to do, with almost five hundred thousand yeerk hosts â and twice that number of yeerks â whose interests sheâd try and represent. Cassieâs the type who sure as hell knows privilege when she sees it, so Cassie would use her brand-new host of privileges (wealth, fame, media attention, humanity, political power) to advocate as loudly and thoroughly as possible for everyone who didnât have access to those powers. Although she would cede to Rachel the need to play the game of appearances, she wouldnât let herself lose sight of herself: sheâd show up to board meetings in slightly used designer jeans and animal-safe mascara, attending benefit banquets in gowns custom-tailored by designers dedicated to ecological conservation in all of their product choices.
Jake would find his way after the war almost accidentally. Out of a desire to help, to make up for the damage however he could, heâd probably join a bucket line carrying water to one of the burning houses downtown in the first hours after the war. From there heâd find himself rushing over to help a group of relief workers bringing medical supplies to injured hork-bajir, and itâd be almost an accident when heâd sign his name to spend the next month sorting donations at a FEMA warehouse⌠So on and so forth. Whereas Marco would understand the value of attracting the cameras to places that need the worldâs attention, Jake would instead embrace the value of ignoring them and responding to âHey, arenât youâŚ?â with a shrug and a subject change. Eventually Jake would be a full-time volunteer at a nonprofit in need of manual labor. Heâd work a hammer and saw and only rarely work a rope line in order to earn more funds for UNICEF or Doctors Without Borders. Jake would find that kind of steady, repetitive work soothing, and he would derive deep satisfaction out of getting to spend the rest of his life building rather than destroying.
Ax would sweep Tobias up in his mad quest to visit every country on planet Earth for the express purpose of eating as many local foods as it is possible to sample. The blog he started would be an incidental thing â just a place where heâd ask the denizens of the internet for assistance in finding where to go next â but soon it would be its own thing. The reviews wouldnât be so much reviews, per se (every single one would give the food 10 stars, no matter how many times Tobias told him that he was supposed to cap it at 3 stars at most to imitate Michelin) as they would be rambling thoughts on everything Ax got to see about planet Earth. By the time his quick trip around the world was in its eighth year and his blog was the most-visited site of 2007, heâd give in to the inevitable and start writing full-time. Of course, The Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill would already be a bestseller on five planets by this time (much to Axâs embarrassment) so offering a whole series of books with an outsiderâs perspective on the entire food industry of the planet would be almost a natural next step. Plus, the perks would outweigh the annoyances right around the time restaurants started offering all-you-can-eat deals in exchange for Axâs patronage.
Tobias would start out just helping Axâs crazy travel plans for something to do, readjusting to the benefits of opposable thumbs and the drawbacks of human eyes in little two-hour increments. And then, when heâs ready, he spends the afternoon hanging out with Rachel and simply doesnât bother morphing back at the end of it. He tries hard to keep any of his friends from making it a big deal, because then heâd have to acknowledge for himself that itâs kind of a big deal, and he mostly succeeds. Tobias would end up at a different college halfway across Boston from Rachel, close enough to see her every day but far enough to let them figure out who they are without yeerks or birds or war. Much to Tobiasâs amusement â and concern about imposter syndrome â heâd find himself squeaking into Harvardâs legacy program. Much to Marcoâs amusement, Tobias would end up majoring in biological anthropology. Tobias would bump into Cassie at ecology conferences where heâd be one of several presenters in work on human evolution. Heâd show up at ancient civilization dig sites to find Marcoâs flock of news helicopters getting footage for UNHRC promotional materials, and heâd stop into a local cafe in an economically precarious Iraqi town only to find Jake on the crew of contractors building a water treatment plant next door. Heâd be on the lookout for new cuisines and new types of food to recommend to Ax every time the job took him to a research site in Lesotho or Laos or Kosovo. And at the end of every monthslong project that had him crouching for endless hours in the unforgiving sun to extract miniscule bone chips which could tell us where we came from or where weâre going⌠heâd be able to come home to where Rachel and the rest of his family would be waiting.Â
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo weâve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and itâs revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
I suddenly woke up stupid early on my day off with multiple weird random aches and pains and a revelation about the Leverage chess metaphors.
Theyâre all wrong.
Look, I obviously adore the white knight/black king motif, and it works really well for that very specific discussion of Nateâs 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 youâre going to get it wrong every time if you start from the white knight/black king line.Â
Because in all other situations, Nate is not the king.
Couple important things about kings in chess:
1. They donât 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), itâs 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 doesnât just hide in the office while everybody else carries them out. Heâs almost always right up in there playing the most obnoxious guy youâve ever met or smashing windows or something. And if Nate gets captured, itâs not game over, in fact, it often isnât even a PROBLEM. Letâs look at a few times that happens, just for fun:
- In The King George Job, Nateâs getting beat up and Eliot slightly panics and is about to run to help, when Sophie says âNOPE, donât do that, I can fix this without blowing our coverâ and saunters in at her leisure. The jig isnât up and sheâs 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. Thatâs 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 Nateâs going to secret prison and everyone else is escaping WITH the black book, so they STILL would be losing Nate but winning the job.Â
So if Nate isnât the king, who is?
Hardison.
Letâs look at our points about kings again:
1. Doesnât 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 thatâs 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 â you donât 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 thatâs just from a practical standpoint. Losing Hardison is also a crisis from an emotional standpoint. Heâs our moral compass and our sweet baby brother and when Hardison gets in trouble there is no âwell heâll be fine for a few minutesâ and no âwell he kinda had it coming.â 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 isnât 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 â she can move in any direction, making her the most dangerous piece on the board. Parkerâs whole character arc is about learning all the different roles and how to access the whole playing field. Sheâs 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 â a pawn that crosses the board can become a queen, which Parker mimics by initially being dismissed as âthe crazy oneâ and ultimately becoming the mastermind.
Knight: Sophie. I know, I wanted Eliot to be the horsie too, but this makes more sense. The knightâs deal is that itâs sneaky â itâs the only piece that can turn corners â and it can jump over obstacles. Sophieâs whole philosophy of grifting is that she shouldnât 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 â it goes in a straight line. It also literally represents the castle walls. Itâs also so, so fucking helpful to have around, I fucking hate losing my rooks. Itâs your solid right hand man, basically. Is this a little reductive of Eliot? Absolutely, but Iâm jamming five complex characters into five predetermined boxes, itâs 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. Thatâs where he likes it.Â
Bishop: Finally, hereâs 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 donât 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 isnât necessarily the one making the plans â thatâs the bishop. And finally, apparently the bishop is called lots of different things in other languages, but weâre operating in English, which means it makes Nate a priest, and that makes me happy.
My mind went to the same place as the last commenter, and I have to say that thereâs only really one piece left for Hardison, because @gnar-slabdash is right; thatâs exactly where the others belong.
Heâs The Pawn.
Or rather, to correct myself: The Pawn Sss. Because while pawns individually are limited, weak pieces that are often taken out and used only to support others, The Pawns as a unit are an ever-present force on the board, one which shapes the flow of the battle. Pawns create a protective barrier thatâs the first thing the enemy must engage with if they want to interact with your pieces. Pawns create openings, drawing out pieces by creating threats they canât ignore and must respond to. Pawn are in constant flux, being taken, creating threats that are meant to be eliminated, when in actuality drawing your opponent into a trap.
Hardisonâs role as the hacker means that his job is to allow the others to do their job unhindered. Heâll set up identities that let them get where they need to go. Heâll drain accounts or conjure phantom opponents, forcing the enemy to react and allow the team to strike. And often, when the mark thinks theyâve beaten him, pulled the plug, uncovered the false identity, transferred the money to safety⌠It turns out that that was the plan all along.
However, one of the biggest arguments for Hardison as the pawns? If you ever. Ever. Turn your back on hardison for too long, he will have crossed the board, promoted to Queen, and be a whole new problem right where you can least afford it.
He has the files. He has the recordings. He has the money. He has deleted everything you ever owned except for what he just stole, locked you out of your own house, and given the evidence to the FBI. Age of the Geek indeed.
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so fun fact, our concept of time as, like, a human society has changed throughout history. âfree timeâ is a literal invention. keeping time has changed. our perceptions of the course of a day, of weeks and months and seasons, have changed.
...who tf is legitimately using tumblr as their news source?? listen, there is a valid argument to be made about the efficacy of certain social media platformsâ ability to dispense news but, uh,
okay so like I still donât know if Iâm on the book of nile ship, like, Iâm still standing on the dock, looking at the brochure and going hmmm, yes, my sappy heart loves love but like, these two? Hmmmmmmmm.
but I will say, part of the appeal is very specifically a post-100-year-soul-journey booker and a into-her-second-century nile. just. like, actually getting to know each other for the first time. because, while very exciting and full of adrenaline and all, a few days of fighting for your immortal lives is not conducive to. you know. learning who this new person is. like, you get some of the important stuff but youâre still basically strangers. who fought together, sure. but still strangers. and you know. the betrayal.
so! when they do start interacting day-to-day, we have a very interesting dynamic where: a) nile is no longer new to immortality, still relatively young, but has gotten her shit together and b) this has happened away from booker, he has had no hand in this meaning c) the potential age difference / grooming dynamic is not there to squick me out (not that I believe booker is that kind of person but the potential itself is just. not good for me. thus, my hesitance to fully engage and just wave from the dock instead.)
and hey! d) booker gets a fresh start with nile because she didnât know the person he was pre-Merrick, only just met him during the Merrick fiasco, and thus has basically no expectations / memories to compare him to, which is pretty damn nice probably because heâs worked hard to heal. and hey! nile saw him at his worst okay? and yet. all she wanted was a damn apology. like. he is curious, okay? who is this woman?
like, two relatively young immortals that have always cared about each other by virtue of basically just knowing the other person existed and empathized with their pain? and theyâve also done their own, separate, work on coming to terms with immortality (some more gracefully than others, ahem, sorry, had to be said) before having the space to finally get to know each other and drift closer together and just. quietly fall in love. like. legit. they just turned around and oh, itâs you. a quieter, maybe more simple, love story, sure, but no less beautiful.
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Does Quynhâs name start with an English Q sound or a G sound? Each character seems to say it differently (as does every online pronunciation guide it seems) and itâs making me insane
As a Vietnamese, I confirm both of them are right.
Northern Vietnamese pronounce it as the Q sound [kw]; Southern Vietnamese (as Veronica Ngo) pronounce with the G sound [gw].
The northern accent is kind of âstandardâ accent, because the government is in the north. Thatâs quite clear why Nile and Nicky (and Joe) pronounce it as [kween] (they spoke her name only one time in movie).
But Andy (Charlize Theron) pronouces it as [gween]- because- thatâs her wifeâs name Andy and Quynh are in a relationship, right? So Veronica might talk to Theron a lot more than the other actors. Veronica told her about the [kw] and the [gw] thing, and she is southern Vietnamese so she mostly uses [gw] and Theron got it. Who-are-you-to-be-a-6000-year-old-woman-that-no-languages-she-canât-speak-can-not-say-your-wifeâs-name-in-a-proper-way?
I am doing on my post about âhow to pronounce âQuynhâ properlyâ but itâs still- a draft lol. I mean it might take a few more days but I promise Iâll give you more information about this mind-blowing Vietnamese thing.
Thanks for explaining this @itsme-imhere ! Iâm really happy that we have the opportunity to all share our various langauge backgrounds and learn from each other thanks to these pesky polyglot immortals, lol.
Nicky casually dropping into conversation that âhe struck me in the heart, the first time I set eyes on himâ whenever someone asks him how he met his husband, and people going âawwwâ cause they think Nicky is just being romantic and *Italian* about his and Joeâs introduction, but Nicky and Joe are just like ( ͥ° ÍĘ ÍĄÂ°) at each other
Joe replying âwhen I saw him, I was rendered speechlessâ and winking at Nicky and people going âawwwâ because of the romance of the poet at a loss for words but actually Joe was fucking choking on his own blood because Nicky cut his throat when they met
Um i have a weird question. I want to write a like one shot old guard fic about reincarnation or descendent stuff. But i dont know if it would be seen as racist if i were to say that the old guard member who died was reincarnated into Nile? I say that because some people are annoyed when characters are related to each other just because of their race.
I am SUPER DUPER not the person to ask about this sort of thing, Anon, I do my best to research thoroughly but I have no authority whatsoever to say anything besides do your research and maybe get a beta reader to double-check your draft.Â
hi @avelera, hereâs my two cents for your anon (and forgive my bluntness):
I really donât like the idea of Nile = Lykon because youâve just a) taken two black characters and mashed them into one, b) erased Nileâs individuality because now sheâs just Lykon reborn which means c) youâve made her story about Lykon not Nile and d) both Nile and Lykon deserve their own stories
(more under the cut)
We know nothing about Lykon. We know a lot about Nile. When you say Lykon has been reborn into Nile, what about her stays hers?
Writing about Lykon is great! But using Nile as a placeholder for him is a cop out. Youâre saying: Iâm going to write about this black character, but we know very little about him in canon so Iâll just use this other well-built main black character to be him and do the narrative work for me. Why would Nile be the reincarnation of Lykon? Or somehow a descendent of his? Because theyâre two black characters who are both immortal so they must be connected? Exploring reincarnation and immortality and family lineage is a cool idea. But examine why youâve leapt to connecting Nile and Lykon. The only thing they share is a connection to Africa. Joe has that too, if you ascribe to a Maghrebi Yusuf headcanon. Nicky and Booker are both European but have you imagined any connection between them?
Hereâs the thing: it sounds like Anon just had an idea they thought was cool and wanted to check if it wasnât harmful to poc. Thatâs good. Thank you for that, Anon. Because thatâs a first step. And hey, in a perfect world, your idea is cool and chill to explore without any of the damaging implications Iâm pointing out above. But weâre not in a perfect world.
There have been countless examples of fandom taking white male characters with 0.31 screentime and turning them into fleshed out main characters in fic. There are compartively very few poc characters that get as much attention as white characters in fandom, even with major screentime devoted to them. So how fandom treats poc and writes them becomes charged. So a cracky Booker is Nickyâs many-greats-nephew idea is funny but a Nile is Lykonâs reincarnation / descendent is not. Itâs instantly sparking the question: why can we not have two poc characters of the same race / ethinicty that are not in any way related to each other and fleshed out in their own right within the same fandom?
In the end, people can write what they want. I will die on that hill. But you then have to face the harm your writing can do to poc, face the harm you can accidentally be perpetrating. Just. Be thoughtful. Question yourself. Examine your biases. Think about the implications you may be creating. Write what you want, but donât blind yourself to it.
this is a bit of a silly nitpick, but in the south sudan scene where we see the squad walking through the desert all carrying their guns, ive seen multiple people say nicky is holding an assault rifle or a machine gun here
(its IMPOSSIBLE to find a good picture of nicky holding this gun)
but its actually neither of those things, thats a pistol slapped inside of a carbine conversion kit. heres a random picture i found of something similar (w/ no sight attached tho)
a gun like this has the exact same firepower capabilities as a regular old pistol. it is *quite literally* a pistol with a shoulder brace and a sight attached to it. thats why you dont see nicky use it in the kill floor fightâ its the same thing as the pistol he uses with his sword, except bulkier.
we see andy use the same exact gun at copleyâs house, and then later nile uses it briefly when she kills those three guards at the penthouse.
the only reason i point this out is bc andy & nicky both have this ?quirk? i guess, where we never see either of them use any kind of automatic weapon. those two ALWAYS use pistols (excluding the sniper of course)
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Unpopular opinion: I know it was for plot purpose, but I donât know if Iâll ever be over the fact that Nile didnât help Andy and Booker saving Joe and Nicky and she left them in capture. I understand she was tormented for what happened her but how could she left Nicky and Joe, the two of all the team that the most helped her to understand and be confortable with this new situation.
I understand her doubts and her desire to stay with her family the most she can, but before go back to her life she should have helped Booker and Andy saving Nicky and Joe.
This got long, so itâs under the cut but tl;dr Nile leaving was understandable, we canât fault her for it, and she wasnât âabandoningâ anyone because she had every indication that Andy and Booker could handle things themselves and hereâs why:
Well, Nile backs out explicitly because sheâs struggling with having killed a man. She talks about it right before she leaves: that they taught her how in the military but they didnât teach her how to live with it, that she needs to have a reason, a purpose behind it. That she needs to know the Old Guard does what they do for some cause. Sheâs asking âwhyâ from the moment she meets Andy, sheâs asking if theyâre âthe good guysâ at the safe house and no one can give her a straight answer. Nile leaves because she needs to find that answer, that reason to keep fighting. Sheâs not willing to commit more violence, more murder, before that and we canât fault her for that. This is the crux of her struggle, not just missing her family, and we canât ignore that.
Also: Nile has just seen the aftermath of Andyâs warpath at the church. She has every reason to think Andy and Booker are competent enough to take care of this themselves. And sheâs not wrong to do so: weâve seen what even one of them can do and all her interactions with them have supported this. At this point, Nile isnât bringing anything to the table that would be essential if lost. In fact, itâs been re-iterated that the Old Guard is going to protect Nile, not the other way around. She doesnât believe they need her and thatâs a fair conclusion to make.
Nile returns because she makes the instant connection between âempty gunâ + âBooker gave out the gunsâ = âbetrayal.â She heads back when she realizes that Andyâs heading into a trap and that sheâs the only one that can stop it, even though she still does not have the answers sheâs looking for at this point! When itâs clear that the rescue mission is in jeopardy and that they need help, she puts aside her misgivings! And who else is going to help? The Old Guard lives in secrecy, they have no one to rely on except each other, Nile knows this and knows that walking away now would mean truly leaving them to a terrible fate.
I think youâre splitting hairs here and going âNile wanted to rescue Andy but not Joe and Nicky!â when thatâs not the case. The circumstances changed, Bookerâs betrayal means that Andyâs in trouble, that Joe&Nickyâs rescue operation has failed, and that there is literally no one else who can save them. Nile is the only one left. Sheâs the only option. This was not the case when it was only Joe and Nicky that needed rescue. Then Andy and Booker were there and, frankly, the driving force. Then, Nile could step back and think âtheyâll be fine, they donât need meâ and take the time to figure shit out for herself. She takes the time to talk it out with Andy and explain her reasons. She gives Andy the space to say, âno, we need you.â And then goes back when she realizes, oh wait, yes they do need her.
Nile Freeman is the kind of person who reminds her colleagues to âkeep it respectfulâ, who tries to give medical aid to the person she just shot out of reflex, who wonât leave anyone behind even if theyâre a traitor, who gains immortality and immediately wants to know what good can be done with it. I donât know where you see the kind of person who would willfully abandon someone if she thought they truly need her help?
So note: while the term âcatholicâ was around since about the 2nd century, itâs consistent use to refer to what we now call the Catholic Church shifts throughout history.
After the East-West Schism of 1054, the Eastern Church adopts the term âorthodoxâ as an adjective. Technically, its official name is Orthodox Catholic Church but in practice, we know it as the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The Western Church, also known as the Latin Church, similarly takes on âcatholicâ as a descriptor but this is consistently applied to the entirety of the âRoman Catholic Churchâ after the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Because then we needed language to refer to both sides of the split that occurred during the reformation and by then, the Eastern Church had already well established that âorthodoxâ was theirs. Thus, the whole protestant vs catholic dicotomy.
But important here is that, to consistently refer to a Catholic Church when talking about Nickyâs life pre-immortality is weird as weâve got about 500ish years before Martin Luthor nails some complaints on a church door. Even the Great Schism is only about 50ish years old when he first dies. The Catholic Church as we know it, in the 21st century, is an entirely different beast in 1099, my friends. (Historically speaking; theologically, I have no idea.)
But also, imagine all the Catholic Churchâs transformations and related events that Nicky has lived through. And then imagine his reaction to them. Just off the top of my head: Henry VIII of England, that time Europe had three popes running around, all the illegitimate children popes had running around during the 15th-16th century, when mass was no longer in Latin, Joan of Arc, etc.
(Disclaimer: My knowledge of the Catholic Church is entirely historically based, not theological, though I have picked up some things. Iâm also not Christian. And this was written at 4am. So apologies for any mistakes and feel free to point them out.)
As a catholic, I can assure you that theology has changed since then too. Also, celibacy for priests was sort of a thing, but not really - not like today. Priests were encouraged to be chaste and not sleep with their wives (!), but it was only made a papal rule after Nickyâs death. Which might be important for peopleâs fic writing purposes....?
Oh, Iâm sure it has! I was trying to say that I canât speak to what those changes are, theological speaking, because thatâs not my area. I can see where I was unclear, though. Consequences of 4am posting, lol.
I noted illegitimate children of popes during the 15-16th century because they were one of the reasons why Martin Luthor was very pissed off at everyone, which is why I mentioned anything about them because Luthor was such a ballsy dude and I love the image of him just hammering complaints onto church doors.
I only vaguely remember that rules for celibacy shifted but not when or how, so thank you for the addition! My brain is telling me this was to cover for people who were already married before they became priests, not so they could get married afterwards but I may be wrong? Idk if that makes much of a difference to Nickyâs personal experiences though...