Too Young to be Too Old for This Shit

you'd think that klingon horror movies are gorefests, but it's actually quite the opposite: gore is honorable, and nothing is scarier than dishonor. they often show a person whose life falls apart despite their own valiance and virtues: like an earth tragedy but with someone who clearly doesn't deserve it. at the end, there's often an operatic number where the protagonist exclaims that there's nothing they could have done to prevent their abysmal fate.

umamusume textually have strength and speed that vastly exceeds that of any normal human. historically it would obviously have been massively impractical to apply the same gender role constraints to them that were applied to normal human women in many cultures. you need your horse women to both be allowed to go to war and want to go to war, and while obviously you do also want them to reproduce you don't want them to then spend years raising the kids, something normal humans can do, when they could be using their time on things normal humans can't do.

so i feel like in a lot of cultures there would be similar kinds of social developments to machismo but for horse women (horschismo) to incentivise their participation in physically dangerous activities, they would overall be subject to different social pressures and expectations from normal human women, and probably to varying extents they would often be considered a separate gender from human women.

however, like horses in real life, since the industrial revolution umamusume in industrialised countries have become an entertainment commodity when previously they would have been vital to labour and warfare. and being cute girls makes them more consumable as entertainment.

so obviously the idol shit is a deliberate 20th century invention to emphasise the girlness of horse girls, which both makes them more marketable and folds horse woman gender roles into the broader concept of "women" for everyone's social comfort. probably there is a lot of in universe scholarship on this and different umamusume have and have had a lot of different opinions about it. like i expect in the early 20th century there would have been plenty of umamusume who were totally hype to be able to be "normal girls"

WERE UMAMUSUME IN WORLD WAR 1? i feel like the first world war would be one of the last times umamusume were involved in warfare in a capacity normal human women weren't, much like real life horses, because their superior leg strength wouldn't make much difference against tanks and machine guns. so they were there but their participation was in the process of being reduced and i think probably it was mostly talked about in the context of their help with getting wounded soldiers to safety and carrying supplies and stuff like that. there were horse girls in the trenches though. there were some horse girl fighter pilots. at least one horse girl war poet for sure

WHAT ABOUT THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE? that was all horse girls yeah

DID ALEXANDER THE GREAT BANG HORSE GIRL BUCEPHALUS? realistically one must imagine he did, right. like presumably they would have met as 13 year olds where bucephalus was a rude but very strong kid who was adamant that she wasn't going to join the army like horse girls were generally required to because she did what she wanted. but alexander managed to convince her with talk of the glory of battle, and after that she was his loyal subordinate and massacred thousands at his side. i think in a lot of historical cultures where umamusume were key to the military it would have been pretty common for them to sleep with their comrades and commanding officers but they wouldn't generally be viewed as a romantic prospect, or as competition with a man's legitimate wife. when they had children they would be raised by the family of their patron regardless of who the father was presumed to be - i don't think bucephalus or other umamusume in her society would have had many rights

WAS JOAN OF ARC A HORSE GIRL? logically no but let's be real here. the people in charge of umamusume pretty derby are absolutely champing at the bit (🙂) for an excuse to depict or mention umamusume joan of arc in some capacity, so like. it's a soft no. no but with the knowledge i will have to incorporate joan of arc being a horse girl into my worldview at some point in the future.

WHICH CHARACTERS FROM THE CHINESE CLASSIC SHUIHU ZHUAN/WATER MARGIN WERE HORSE GIRLS INSTEAD OF HUMAN MEN? li kui the black whirlwind

The points are assigned thus: A new unlocked fic is created: +1 The tag is added to an old fic: +1 An old fic is unlocked: +1 A tag wrangling descision syns an old fic into the tag: +1 A new chapter is added to an existing fic: +0 A new locked fic is created: +0 A new unlocked fic is created and then locked: +0 A new fic is created and then deleted: +0 An old fic is deleted: -1 An old fic is locked: -1 The tag is removed from an old fic: -1 A tag wrangling descision de-syns an old fic out of the tag: -1

We can have conversations about which fics should be counted when we're talking about which ships are most popular within a timeframe. I like to use "created_by" searches in my posts about fic stats because those links are more futureproof, but an "updated_by" search, if you catch it close enough to the time, more accurately reflects fic-writing activity and quantity of new reading material. If we're doing a deep dive, we need to talk about which searches we're using and why.

We can also talk about if we should include archive locked works or not. I haven't heard any convincing arguments for excluding locked works from year-end stats presented to regular users with accounts, but there is absolutely value in doing both counts and comparing them.

But all of the above assumes that the number we end up with is a tally of all the fics on the archive that meet our inclusion criteria, and I don't think anyone is going to argue that a tag wrangling descision that re-sorts a ten year old fic reflects a ship being more or less popular this year.

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The bad fic stats chart tells us that Jayce/Viktor "gained" 13261 works between August 2 2024 - July 29 2025.

But that "works gained" column is mislabeled, because it's actually that ship's score. The thirteen thousand is not a count of individual fics, and so we cannot go looking at those fics to determine anything about them.

When I tell you that there are 14,621 works in the Jayce/Victor tag that were created August 2 2024 - July 29 2025 and give you this link as my source, you can click on it and go read the fics. You can check the same link both logged in and logged out to see how many are archive locked. You can let me know if I'm being an idiot and searched the wrong time frame by accident. You can make observations about Jayce/Victor fic posted during that timeframe -- you can note, for example, that there are very few crossovers and that Trans!Victor is the top freeform tag. Maybe you're interested in how the percentage of Trans!Victor fics might change over time, maybe you want to do an academic textual analysis of how Jayce's ethnicity is approached by fic authors, maybe you're curious about how long Jayce/Victor fics tend to be or what other ships tend to show up in this search. These are all things that you can do when you're looking at a list of the actual fics.

And these are all things that you can't do with a score that does not count actual fics.

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Since the numbers are scores and not counts, we can neither trust nor critique the info in other columns.

Multiple rounds of these stats have inspired wank over the fact that Hermione's ethnicity is listed as "ambiguous". Because the chart lists a score, all we can do is wank about canon. But if, instead of a score, if we're looking at the actual nine thousand Hermione/Draco fics posted in the timeframe in question, we can further filter that search and see that only 33 of them are tagged POC Hermione. And if we have the time and skills for it, we can do a textual analyses of those fics and see how she's protrayed when an ethnicity isn't tagged.

There was a shimmer - a demon appeared.

"Curious. What ritual is this?"

"I got it from ChatGPT. I included all protections in my prompt!"

"Your first mistake was entrusting your work to the hallucination machine." It reached down to pinch the mixture, give it a sniff. "Potassium chloride? What ash is this?"

"Um." The disciple nudged a bucket with their boot.

"Tastes like ... maple. And potatoes. Blech." It wiped its fingertips clean on their robes. It paused, rubbing its tongues against the roof of its mouth. "Damnation, what did you anoint the candles with? Is that ... PAM?"

The disciple whimpered. "It wasn't specified."

"Pfft. Of course not." It sighed, and extended its tri-fingered hand. "Let me see that incantation." Shakily, the parchment was extended, and snatched with irritation. " 'Bene! Ecce incantatio initiorum ...' What the seven hells is this? You didn't even trim the auto response."

"Well, I don't speak Latin..."

The demon snorted. The parchment sailed over its shoulder to a candle and hovered there, alight, then disappeared in a puff of ash and smoke. "Right. Legally I could take at least a limb for this, but hey, you like your limbs, right? Pretty attached to them, you'd say?" The disciple desperately nodded. "Great. So here's what we're gonna do: you're going to write me an essay --"

"What?!" The disciple gasped, paled. "Wait, no, maybe an arm would be okay..."

"-- shut up. You're going to hand-write a 2,000 word essay -- listen, no -- and you're going to write it on the perils of sourcing research from generative AI. You are going to source this in MLA format -- yes the fuck you are --" tired of the protestations, the demon's hand loosely threatened the human's throat, and quickly made its point, "and you will do this and turn it in in two weeks' time, with a proper summoning ritual. And -- and this part is very important, mind you -- you are going to tell all your little demon-summoner buddies that if this ever happens again I will simply eat your fucking souls and be done with it. Do you understand me?"

The disciple nodded again, with wetter pants.

"Good. Fine." The demon roughly patted the student on the head and retreated back to the ruined glyph where it stood expectant, hands on what must have been its hips. "Alright. Banish me and call me up properly in two weeks. Don't make me come looking for you."

"I -- uh -- well, that is to say, I don't... um."

The demon's shoulders dropped. "You don't know how to banish."

"I don't know how to banish, no."

The demon let loose a series of deep, frustrated grumbles that had some resemblance to speech, enunciated with emphatic gestures, and gave the vague impression of a dinner getting cold. "Get a pen."

"What? Oh, I --"

dragons

Which is why when dick does that thing where he's like "I'm a bad guy now i have no morals im working for the MOB" slade pulls up and in spite of literally saying "you're lying, youre playing these people for fucking fools" follows that up with "so come work for me instead". like if youre gonna swindle someone can it please be me? daddy misses you kitten please come home and destroy my life please kitten. daddy wants to put you in a jar with a twig.

and this is why Dick pulls one over in him every single time because no matter what Slade cannot stop himself from wanting dick to want him. and so he goes into these interactions w his eyes wide open and literally watches as Dick betrays lies and backstabs his way back out of the cage, because Slade can never lock the door behind him. Because he wants Dick to want to be in there with him more than Dick wants to leave.

i mean that's exactly it right. he wants to entrench Dick into his family because he wants dick to want him. LIKE A LITTLE BIT HES TRYING TO BABYTRAP DICK WITH ROSE. Rose is everything Dick likes! like if youre baiting a trap for dick grayson rose wilson is the thing shes a young hereo she's in a bad situation shes looking for guidance and friends and family. that's catnip to him! Slade values what dick will do before he inevitably betrays him higher than he values whatever the betrayal will do to him, such as the relationship with his only daughter, who was at the time his only child. if i fill the cage with enough treats and toys and favors maybe he wont leave the cage this time.

Arada: that's nice. So how long have you known each other...?

ART: Two, maybe three weeks.

SecUnit: I was unconscious for a couple of those days too.

Arada: that's quite a whirlwind

SecUnit: I mean I agreed to let it do surgery on me after 2 days.

A man in Inner Mongolia, China, comparing the sizes of goats at different ages.

congratulations to my new favorite minor murderbot diaries character,