WindsOfTime on Ao3. 30+, she/her, ace/aro. I'm a multi-fandom writer and binge-reader, of the type to jump into the wagon 3 years after everyone has left it. Also slightly dragon-obsessed.
All my latest personal news are in the my posts tags, and the writing updates are in winds fanfics. For my other most common tags, see this page.
My asks box is currently open, so feel free to come talk fandom with me! However, do not send me fundraisers. I’m not in a position to handle them, and all that would happen is you’d force me to close the asks again for my own mental health.
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“oh no, my audience has begun to guess the big twists of my story and are accurately predicting what will happen!”
incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go
(you’re not stupid. I posted this thinking it would amuse a handful of mutuals who all knew the context and that would be about it, so I didn’t think about providing any other explanation. I had no idea it would spread this far.)
I’ll start from the very beginning just to be thorough. so this is Alex Hirsch, creator and head writer of Gravity Falls, a show which had a big focus on mystery, conspiracies, codes and ciphers, etc. the whole plot is kicked off by one of the main characters finding a mysterious old journal in the woods, which detailed all kinds of weird and supernatural things, but then ended abruptly with the author saying they had to hide the journal because they were being watched. the central driving mystery of the show, therefore, was the question of who wrote the journal and what happened to them.
now, the thing about Gravity Falls is that, while it must be said that the writers weren’t always quite as sure of their plans as we tend to like to think they are, it is very much a fair play mystery, with legitimate clues to what was going on. but the writers were caught off guard by how quickly the show attracted a dedicated audience, including a lot of people outside the primary presumed demographic, who started solving the clues faster than expected. so some of the fans were able to correctly guess who the author was before it was revealed in the show, and the theory started spreading. this put the writers in something of a panic, because this was THE mystery that the whole story revolved around, with ¾ of the show building up to the dramatic reveal in the middle of season 2. they wanted it to be a mystery that could be figured out, sure, but they weren’t prepared for people to solve it so far in advance of when it was planned to be revealed, which would have really taken away from the big moment. they weren’t going to change the main story itself, but having been caught unaware by how much attention the fans were paying, they wanted to up the ante and make the mystery more complex to solve going forward–but first they needed to buy some time and throw the fandom off the scent for a little longer.
hence, Alex’s plan as described above. they whipped up a fake shot that appears to give away the identity of the author as being another character in the show, put it on a screen in the studio as if it was a real animation frame, took a picture of it, and ‘leaked’ it online. it was initially decided to be a hoax (albeit, I think, presumed to be a hoax originating from outside the production team), until Alex posted this tweet:
…before quickly deleting it (though not so quickly that it didn’t get seen, of course).
it worked well enough to distract most people for a while, and wasn’t revealed as a hoax until a year later, when an episode aired that definitively proved that the supposed screenshot could never have happened, at which point Alex owned up to the whole thing as seen in the tweet above. by then the episode with the real reveal wasn’t far off, and while people did still work it out ahead of time, it was more of an “OH MY GOD I KNEW IT!” moment than a “booooooring, we’ve known that for ages” moment, which of course was what the writers wanted all along.
personally I find this a fascinating approach to dealing with the problem of spoilers, because it doesn’t affect the story itself at all; if you watch Gravity Falls today–or if you were watching it when it aired without any significant contact with the fandom–you’d never know about it. ultimately, the problem the writers were facing wasn’t that some people might guess the answer to the mystery–they never wanted to make it completely impossible to predict–so much as it was that they hadn’t designed the story to stand up to so many people working on the puzzle together, which resulted in a sort of total output of puzzle-solving ability that far outstripped the capability of any one solo human being. so their solution is something that’s very much targeted toward delaying that group problem-solving, without actually affecting the experience of any individual person watching the show.
plus, it’s very in keeping with the overall tone of the show.
reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way
#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)
HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")
In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.
A good boss (liege lord) is:
Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.
Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.
Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.
Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.
Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).
Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"
Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.
Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.
Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.
Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.
Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.
Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.
The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.
TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"
(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)
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So I just read up on some copyright laws and found out fanart and fanfic are technically illegal. Now I’m laughing at the thought of someone getting sued in court for writing smut about their favorite character 😂
Fanworks are not illegal. Most all fanart and fanfic are “transformative works,” which fall under the protection of Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law, the statute of fair use. Fair Use allows you to use sections and elements of copyrighted material to critique, expound on, or create using that material as long as you’re creating something new. You can read about fair use here: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/. And learn about how to decide if something is fair use using this simple guide of the four factors of fair use: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/.
Why is AO3 built by the Organization for TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS???? Because it stands by fair use and creators of new, unique fanworks.
FANWORK IS NOT ILLEGAL. READ ACTUAL COPYRIGHT LAW.
Also know your fandom history Anne Rice used to literally sue our asses over this shit which is why old school LJ fanauthors used to always have the “don’t own not mine just playing” disclaimers on their shit
fwiw, I wrote my thesis on this and fic is neither illegal nor illegal – it’s a legal grey zone that has never been tested in any court (in the US, unless there’s an explicit law about something, we function in a common law system, meaning most of the rule of law in our country is a mish-mash of court precedents, differing and debating between jurisdictions, like this this case). There has never been a lawsuit by the copyright holder of a commercial, fictional work, against someone producing a non-commercial, derivative fictional work; thus, there is no case law about fanfic and we’re all living in the grey zone. There have been a few lawsuits from the copyright owners of commercial, fictional work against commercial, fictional derivative work; one lawsuit from the copyright owners of commercial, fictional work against a commercial, non-fictional derivative work.
But the fanwork we all make every day *may* be protected under fair use; fair use is the right the hire a lawyer, being an affirmative defense, and is rarely tested. The other affirmative defense folks might be familiar with is self-defense in the case of a murder – you say ‘yes, your honor, I did murder him, but it’s ok for x, y, z, reasons.’ Then the trial is about deciding if x, y, and z, reasons are good enough, not if you did the murder (since you had to admit it to use the affirmative defense). Using fair use is like saying, ‘yes, I did infringe on their copyright, but I believe it was acceptable’ and then you have to pay lawyers about it.
I believe that fair use for non-commercial works should be assumed, and the burden should be on the copyright holder to prove harm and infringement, rather than on the non-commercial producer to prove they are covered by fair use.
But, given that there’s no case law, and no explicit laws, tons of high-powered lawyers for commercial content producers like to make stuff up, like to send scary cease and desist letters, like to threaten fans who don’t have the money to fight back. Most major content producers have decided that terrorizing their fans is Bad Business Practice and they’ve stopped calling us all pirates and thieves and are instead madly catering to our whims (often, not always); but that’s a marketing trend, not an indication of any actual change in the status of fan works.
If you’re interested in supporting folks working to change copyright law or protect fans within it, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Organization for Transformative Works are excellent places to spend a bit of money, if you’re flush. Our current copyright system isn’t fulfilling its constitutional mandate to encourage the arts and sciences, since some of the most amazing creative work in both spaces is happening in exactly the grey zones we all operate in, which is not how it used to be and not how it should be.
</copyright-soapbox>
The thing about law, it’s not some Black Box you push Facts in, and you get a Decision out – it follows certain rules that you can easily study and go over yourself.
Common law countries like the US make this more difficult through the vagaries of a system based on precedent and pontification by judges; civil law countries make this more difficult through judges being biased and on power-trips and refusing to read statutory law in the abstract way it is meant to be read, that is: applied to real life at this moment in time, not in their heads, or a distant past.
(Ya, judges. Can’t live with them; can’t live without ‘em.)
Either way, worry not about your fanfic if you do it the classic way, i.e. if you don’t sell it. There’s a longer reasoning behind that, but I’d consider that the lynchpin reason.
Speaking as one who was affected by the Anne Rice thing when it happened - which was WELL before LJ was a gleam in a Russian bot’s eye - I’d like to clarify that it never got as far as a court of law. She had her lawyer send Cease & Desist orders out to various high-profile members of the fanfic side of fandom. Some of those C&Ds implicated the private businesses of the people involved. Because all of us were poor, we didn’t challenge the C&Ds. Instead we took our stuff off of the websites they knew about and hid the fic away.
Also to be clear: we had warnings on our fic WELL before that (edited to add: I mean the “not mine, no profit made” type warnings). We did that as common courtesy in the fanfic world at the time. And long as I’m going down memory lane and spilling tea along the way, I’m gonna point out that many of us who got those C&Ds also worked hand in hand with Anne, her publisher, and her family business to promote her books and business dealings purely for the love of the fandom. I, personally, left a part-time job at a web company when they asked me to do what amounted to allowing them to profit off of Vampire Chronicles fanfic. When I told them that legally and ethically I could do no such thing they said I could do it or they’d find someone else. I said see ya. (AFAIK they never found someone else).
So the amount of respect those of us in fandom had for Anne’s work and right to profit off of her material was large. What changed in our case was when 1) Anne got some of the rights back to her characters which meant she could profit off of them in ways she couldn’t before and 2) she realized us fans and our fanworks made for GREAT free market research into what her personal company could try to profit off of. The most perfect example of this, and how Anne’s greed ruined so much, was the Talismanic Tour company which was created by fans, worked with Anne and her official biographer to come up with walking tours of New Orleans based on things from Anne’s life and books, fully had Anne’s blessing, then, once it proved successful, Anne gave THEM a C&D and created her own tours at ridiculously jacked up prices.
Karma being what it is, nobody wanted to pay for that bullshit and Anne’s tours ultimately failed. But since she used her lawyers to scare the fan business out of running this then became another example of why Anne is the reason the fandom can’t have nice things.
(Can you tell I have so much tea from the VampChron days? Oh Anne. Bless your fandom-destroying black heart.)
Making this more fandom general, the points to take away here are a few:
Sometimes it’s not about law, or what the law “should” be. If a well known author, or TPTB from a TV show or a movie studio sent you, personally, a C&D letter for your fanworks, would YOU have the ability to thumb your nose at it? Do you have the resources for that lawyer battle and possible court case? Or are you like us Anne Rice fans were, living meager paycheck to paycheck, and not having it in you to even put up the fight with your ISP, let alone a millionaire’s legal team?
The blessing of the original creators means nothing. They love us until they don’t. Relying on their goodwill to keep fanworks safe is like relying on the skills of the person driving you around to keep you out of an accident: sure it’s possible, but you wanna put that seatbelt on and hope the car has airbags just in case.
Appreciate and support those who have done the work to explain WTF fanworks even are, let alone why they should be legally allowed (so let me repeat the earlier links to Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Organization for Transformative Works ). If you can donate money to them, great. If you can’t, at least appreciate and be grateful to the teams of people who took the risk of putting their real names out there (C&Ds are another reason many of us write under pseudonyms) at all, let alone on legal documents, and appeared before the US government in person to defend your right to make fanfic and fanvids.
When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:
“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”
Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either.
Op I’d like to thank you for sharing this. Ever since the first time I’ve read it I’ve held it in my mind and it really has helped me to be kinder to others and to myself.
There’s a pretty famous Tweet that goes around from someone’s therapist, who told her “You can’t do your best all the time. If you did, it would be your normal.”
I was wondering if you had any tips for characterizing KDJ, YJH, and the rest of the cast. I love how you wrote the interactions in ‘The Unwritten Prologue’ and ‘An Alternate Story,’ so I was curious about your process.
Thanks!
Aww I'm glad to hear it 🥺
Hmmm... It's a bit hard to explain. I don't particularly have anything for the rest of the cast (namely because I haven't written them all that much in those stories) but for Thing 1 and Thing 2...
(This is gonna get long, so under Read More)
Both men don't like to express themselves emotionally. It really does take more extreme circumstances to get them to voice their actual emotions. In my fics, they've known each other for long enough and are more open/honest than canon Yu Junghyeok and Kim Dokja would be.
Yu Junghyeok canonically struggles with confrontation (as in, the verbal kind/fighting between friends and allies, not fighting enemies) and isn't good at navigating them. So, he comes off as stiff and blunt. He has a very mechanical way of thinking, and he doesn't actually express everything he wants to say in words. That's why I usually write Kim Dokja reading between the lines and responding to what he's actually wanting to say rather than what he's really saying (unless he's purposefully doing it just to be a brat). This way of speaking usually causes misunderstandings and discomfort in the people around him, since he's not polite about what he says and has a rough way of speaking. But those who get to know him (like KimCom and especially Kim Dokja, who is fine-tuned to Yu Junghyeokese, even if he doesn't always understand Yu Junghyeok's feelings) come to interpret what he's saying.
He's also, straight up, a tsundere. As in, he's not honest and will say stuff that will on the surface mean one thing but he's actually saying another. This is stuff that Kim Dokja usually willfully misunderstands in his "Yu Junghyeok is a psychopath and can't possibly care about me" way. Some examples from canon (somewhat paraphrased):
Yu Junghyeok shows upset about Kim Dokja's death after the Nirvana fight. We saw proof he was worried he wouldn't wake up when he rescues Yu Sangah (though Kim Dokja interpreted it differently. Ignore his unreliable narrator). Then when they meet again in the Banquet, Yu Junghyeok says:
"When will you revive? The others are worried."
What he actually means is that he was worried, but he's using other people as a shield. You'll notice from the fic I used this method a few times (Yu Junghyeok using Yu Mia as an excuse "Yu Mia misses you" rather than "We miss you"), but he does it in canon too.
Another tsundere moment is with the Skybreaking Sword Saint (the only person other than Kim Dokja who knows Yu Junghyeok very well and is close to him) being like "Is that your friend?" (about Kim Dokja) and Yu Junghyeok, embarrassed, being like "No, we're not", but since the scene is from SBSS's POV, the narration exposes how she saw through his lie by saying "She looked at her disciple's friend".
So basically, yeah, Yu Junghyeok is blunt and dishonest. He's more likely to show this cute dishonest side to people he cares about. He does it during the Lee Seolhwa scene talking about the Moisturization skill too.
Kim Dokja is harder. He also lies, but he does it in a way that's usually misleading. He'll acknowledge an emotional conversation (or one that touches on a subject he doesn't want to talk about), but will typically try to steer it away by dismissing the first topic. One example is with Jeong Huiwon hearing him say "Mother" in his sleep. Internally he's like "No way, did I really do that?" but out loud he just dismisses it by saying "Well, even I worry about people. More importantly-" and changes the subject. Usually, he's good about this. But depending on how stubborn the person he's talking to is (usually Yu Junghyeok, but Han Suyeong to some extent too. She typically allows him to change the topic, but in a way that tells us she's well aware of what he's doing and why, while Yu Junghyeok will force the conversation back to the previous topic if he isn't done yet or doesn't want to follow Kim Dokja's convo direction), he'll have to try a few ways to dodge the topic. He's someone who gets uncomfortable when things get too emotional, but unlike Yu Junghyeok, he's more willing to have heart-to-hearts (when it's about another person, rather than him). And when he does have emotional talks about himself, it's going to be in private one-on-one situations. If he feels he's being too raw, he'll try to backtrack, but other times he'll actually just live in the moment. It really depends on the mood of the conversation.
Kim Dokja also likes teasing people. He likes joking around, but his jokes tend to be awkward. In canon, Kim Dokja's jokes are lame, and Yu Sangah is pretty much the only one who genuinely finds them funny (and will go along with them). However, Kim Dokja and Jeong Huiwon have a great buddy-buddy teasing dynamic where they will mess with each other (though Jeong Huiwon is usually the one who starts it). Kim Dokja is more likely to tease/bully teenagers and Yu Junghyeok. So, most of his teasing will be directed toward them. He has a distinctly more casual and familiar way of messing with Yu Junghyeok at every point in ORV (which is why YJH calls him out on it in the beginning). Picture how you would mess with good friends you have known for a while vs how you would tease people you're friendly with but you're not comfortable enough they understand your humor to be completely at ease around them. That's the difference between how KDJ teases YJH vs others.
Yu Junghyeok and Kim Dokja are also so petty. Like, they're not ones to let an offense slide, especially in regards to one another. They always like to even the scales. They are also both likely to think "Yu Junghyeok/Kim Dokja would never let me live this down if he found out" because they're both correct. Yu Junghyeok won't bring it up as much, but he'll use Kim Dokja's silly screw ups against him, and Kim Dokja will 1000% tease Yu Junghyeok if he saw something funny. That's actually one of the primary reasons Yu Junghyeok did NOT want Kim Dokja finding out about his Punisher form because he fully expected Kim Dokja would mess with him about it. And both of them are too prideful to wanna suck that up.
Kim Dokja is actually pretty good at navigating social situations. He's not really awkward, but rather, trapped by polite conventions (such as when he's talking to superiors or coworkers) and his inherent disinterest in wanting to engage. Depending on his level of affection, he'll be anywhere from friendly to polite conversation to outright rude. He's more likely to be rude around those he has a grudge against, but it's situational. He has enough ability to recognize Time and Place to know when he has the power to be as audacious as he truly is. He normally doesn't try to stir the pot when it can fuck him over, but sometimes he just can't help himself.
Yu Junghyeok, on the other hand, bulldozes his way through. He canonically doesn't really understand the inner thoughts of people or normal social conventions. He grasps some of it enough to know when to respond or be polite (at least, pre-scenarios) but normally doesn't bother because the end result doesn't really change. He'll say what he wants when he wants it, but he's not one to talk all that much to begin with. That's why Kim Dokja often says that Yu Junghyeok manages to shoot himself in the foot with his arrogance (which canonically resulted in even the SBSS beating him to death in the 8th turn for it). Don't expect Yu Junghyeok to have social grace. His specialty lies on the battlefield.
Kim Dokja also is very attentive to those around him. He doesn't say so much in the narration of ORV, but we get multiple times where he talks about others (for example, his conversation with Jeong Huiwon about the Jeong Huiwon he knows) that tells us he pays close attention to them. He's excellent at reading people, and he listens very well. This is why KimCom like him so much. He can come off as dismissive, but he cares very deeply. He's empathetic and kinder than he says he is, and he's someone who, once he learns their story, will come to sympathize with them even when they're an enemy. He holds grudges, but if he sees someone is genuinely repentant, he's usually quick to start to let go of that grudge (as opposed to Yu Junghyeok who will literally hold that grudge forever in a "I can forgive but never forget" kind of way. Though, whether or not he forgives at all depends on the offense. He STILL holds grudges against Han Suyeong even up through the epilogues). For example, both Iris and Kim Namwoon are characters he explicitly says he hated (and he shows as much). But he forgives Kim Namwoon in the Underworld, and he helps Iris during the Gourmet Association (more to spite Anna Croft and to help Selena Kim, who he actually likes, but also because Iris is a child and he's kinder to children), though he puts up a firm boundary between his assistance and his actual kindness. He is in no way kind to Iris in that scene, which is his resentment.
As for the dynamic between Joongdok (generally)
Both of them give the other more grace when they're being annoying. They'll bicker, but it's typically just their way of communicating. There's a lot of "Yu Junghyeok says one thing, but Kim Dokja can read between the lines and respond to that" going on. He understands that Yu Junghyeok isn't good at expressing himself but understands him well enough to know what he actually wants to say...except when he's being willfully blind (which is normally in canonverse because his knowledge of TWSA genuinely holds him back from reading Yu Junghyeok as an actual person who is dynamic and changes with interaction vs the stagnant factual characterization he knows from TWSA). Kim Dokja can and does get angry with Yu Junghyeok, but he has a major soft spot for him and forgives very quickly. He's very protective of him in a "Hey, NOBODY is allowed to mess with him EXCEPT ME!" kind of way (unless it's people he's good with, in which case, they're welcome to tease him). When he's just friends, he acts like he's aloof about his feelings toward Yu Junghyeok when it's talked about with others, but he's always the first one to get offended and riled up on Yu Junghyeok's behalf.
For Yu Junghyeok, he's not someone who will defend Kim Dokja verbally, but physically. He's an action-over-words kind of guy, and this goes for any of his relationships. This also includes when he's in a romantic relationship. He struggles with words, so he would rather just take direct action.
Romantically, I personally see Kim Dokja as having brat behavior toward Yu Junghyeok. He's likes to tease and be flirty, purposefully flustering Yu Junghyeok (who doesn't show it, but his silences or his frustrated "Shut ups" are what tell Kim Dokja he won this one). And he will have this push-pull dynamic with Yu Junghyeok, bantering in almost a comedic way (though usually with Kim Dokja leading and Yu Junghyeok giving shorter answers). Kim Dokja normally leads every conversation no matter who starts it, so keep in mind the intent of the conversation and have Kim Dokja lead it there. If it's meant to lead to kissing, direct it toward flirting. If Kim Dokja doesn't want a conversation to go a particular way, have him purposefully steer it off course. If he's trying to manipulate, have him twist words and act like a con artist. And if Yu Junghyeok wants to go along with it or not will decide how their actual conversation goes, though Kim Dokja normally will get the last word in no matter what.
Honestly, whether it's dokjoong or joongdok, Kim Dokja will verbally take the lead in any situation, except when actions speak louder. Then, Yu Junghyeok is the one who normally leads (in my opinion. Dokjoongs have their own dynamics for them I don't necessarily agree with, but that's why I'm a joongdok main).
Overall, both men are very private. I don't see either of them enjoying any PDA whatsoever. If they're going to be affectionate in public, it will be very subtle or done more through their energy and vibes together rather than physical intimacy or verbal stuff. But in private is where they both become more relaxed. I see them both as enjoying physical affection (though they would never say it) and they give gifts to show their love (since both struggle to be honest). Kim Dokja canonically likes giving gifts to those he cares about when he can afford it (and doesn't want to be stingy. Just look at how he gave Han Suyeong a bunch of coins for her to go shopping with the kids and Lee Hyeonseong in the Context of Constellations, and how he bought a sword and fancy new fits for himself and Jeong Huiwon). And Yu Junghyeok will give practical gifts that usually show he's paying attention to what the people around him need or want (which is why in my story he "randomly gifted" Kim Dokja a reading chair that Kim Dokja fell in love with).
I have a personal headcanon that Yu Junghyeok, when he feels very comfortable, gets very clingy in his sleep. So, I always have that. But I think it's funny for the two to argue about who is "the cuddler" when both of them are physically affectionate in private. It's just that they refuse to acknowledge their own clinginess and instead blame it on the other.
Anyway, this was an extremely long ramble. I hope this helps at all!
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researching the history of education in japan and learning that, pre–Meiji Restoration, peasants/commoners formed their own schools to become educated because it was the best way of fighting tax fraud.
That is, when an official told you, a rice farmer, that you owed more taxes than you really did, it was very useful if you were good enough at math to know he was lying (and could prove it) and if you were good enough at writing to write a letter to your government defending your case.
all of which is to say it's crazy that mega-corporations are now pushing education to be "what if you paid us whatever we tell you to for the rest of your life and never do math or write anything ever again"
At first I read “as an optometrist” and was just ready to accept the statement as is like oh yeah maybe some kind of pun about if people’s views weren’t clouded by hatred and biases they could be normal about aro and aspec in general but then I reread it was like “sigh, time for my nearsighted ass to go back to the optometrist.”
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Maybe it's naive of me, but whenever I see portraits like this, with just a father and daughter, it restores my faith in humanity a little. Because people seem to love this idea that fathers never loved their daughters in the past and only saw them as bargaining chips for marriage or whatever, but look at the guy in the first portrait on the left, he loves that little girl! And the dad trying to do his work while his daughter bothers him with an Old Timey Barbie. The man teaching his daughter geography, his expression is so soft! The way the man in the last portrait holds the little girl's hand! And none of these are incidental, these aren't photographs, someone (probably the father) paid good money and sat down for hours so that they could have a painting of themselves and their daughter. Probably because they loved their daughter.
From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough
(this is probably somewhat related to my other favourite genre of painting, Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife)
oh I love those! People being people is one of my favourite kinds of paintings and an important reminder that people in past times were not all that different. There were dads who loved their daughters fiercely. There were fathers who happily looked after their babies too. The German reformer Philip Melanchton for example had a cradle in his office. His wife was busy organising a household for 20 people- she was out and about, he mostly worked in his office, it made sense for him to look after their babies too babies while she dropped by at snack time.
in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:
The left is “the busy father” by Theodore Weber, the right one is “At the china repairer’s “ by Wenzel Tornoe. All dads who are actively involved in childcare and a painter who thought it was a cute topic rather than anything ridiculous.
