Matched appears quite readable. It looks like one of the millions of interchangeable anti-imagination scifi distopias I read when I was younger. I look forward to learning why it's terrible that dumb sixteen year old girls can't marry whoever they want.

So, I was reading a perfectly decent Eridan fanfic one day. No woobie apologism or anything. It had Eridan going underwater to meet Feferi and feed her lusus and being miserable about it, an element that's popped up in various fanfics. And suddenly I remembered that we've seen her lusus feeding before, and it never required Eridan to do any such thing, and that if he'd been visiting Feferi underwater she probably wouldn't have said he never goes underwater.

And I started to consider Eridan's character and to what degree the fanfic versions are built off canon. Eridan has few pesterlogs and was never a major character, so it's actually quite easy to reread his appearances.

( Let's start at the first log. )

They are roughly humanoid, but obviously not human. They don sports jerseys, suit jackets, windbreakers, they tie shoes to their 'ankles' by the laces, and can make some basic language-like sounds. And they try to infiltrate into human groups like this. They will knock on the door of your safehouse, a twisted 'help' coming from whatever hole they spew sound from, but everyone knows it's one of them. If, for some reason, you let them in, they will do their best to blend in, they won't hurt anyone. They might start to try and use some piece of human technology, a radio, a padlock, a cash register, an aerosol, something, anything, only to fail and ask for 'help' from someone. If a group of them find a lone human, they will do the reverse, take the human into one of their safehouses, and try to get the unfortunate person to show them how to work things. Every time the group runs into one, they are a little better at looking and acting human. This one can talk just like us, albeit with a limited set of phrases, the next one had shoes and trousers on, the next has a gun, empty, but it still points it at you and pulls the trigger, and the next has a still bloody human face strapped to its head, and so on. This is if a group of them runs into a lone human, or if one of them alone runs into a group of humans. A lone one of them running into a lone human will probably do nothing more aggressive than just follow the human, copying what he or she does, only responding with violence if attacked, never initiating. A group of them will fight with a group of humans.

On one hand, having one of them in your group might be a good thing, since they seem to know fairly well how to deal with all the mist-things you encounter. On the other hand, they are creepy as hell, and are definitely trying to learn as much about you as you are trying to learn from and about them and other mist-things. And the group will have certainly seen what they do to humans when they beat us in a fight, awful things.

My first thought was how creepy it would be to have these broken nightmare things running around trying and failing to be people. But then the part about them actually learning very fast made me think of all the times characters try to infiltrate monster groups by clumsily disguising themselves, including covering themselves in corpse parts. If I was writing about people dealing with monsters, they wouldn't really be capable of understanding or learning, their attempts to interact would stay as uncanny and wrong as the rest.

And if I was writing about a species that's ultimately comprehensible and is making these mistakes just out of inexperience and rushing, I think I'd make the monsters the humans. Has anyone ever written that story?

Just caught up on Korra.

Kind of meh, unfortunately. The animation continues to be gorgeous and I love the characters, but I'm not really pleased with the plot.

( The televised revolution... )

Are gigantic and yet Snowman/Slick is still one short of a confirmed team (which ties it with MsPaint/Slick and if that gets in but Snowman/Slick doesn't I will rage. Triply so if it turns out to be people doing it because they couldn't get PS/SS). Also, looks like PM<3WV isn't going to make it, although PM<3WV<3AR is apparently full, so maybe people will shift around. Actually, do people prefer being on full teams? Presumably? I'd rather a team with fewer people to get bonus points and a better chance that my own stuff would actually get into a round.

Looks like the Arada<3Droog is doomed since there's only one person. Shame, I was curious what they'd produce. And Jack doesn't even appear. But that means no Jack/PM so I guess I'm okay with things there.

Doing a quick page search of confirmed teams:
♥ 86 times
♦ 8
♠ 9

...huh, that'll be kind of dull. Maybe it's time to give up the idea this is about celebrating all the quadrants and go for celebrating all the quadrants that aren't exactly the same as normal romance.

Nonconfirmed has more variety:
♥ 85
♦ 32
♠ 19

but so far the two to graduate are both <3 so things may not change much.

And so far it's 35 het to 19 f/f to 29 m/m (ignoring the 3+ ships). That's more balanced than last year.

Hey, so there's our inevitable nadir where we progress from PS/SS to switched PS/SS to switched and genderswitched PS/SS ending in girlSS being written like an angry kitten flailing cutely at suave PS.

Also apparently Slick/PM has become popular because PM's totally fine with Slick as long as he's not the guy who actually murdered everyone, just the one who would have if he'd gotten the chance. Expect to hear more detailed rage when, ten years from now, I actually reach that point in the archive.

Holy fuck there's fifty carapace and vaguely carapace related fics in the next section. And that won't even wrap up November, that's only days 9-22. There's an Ealasaid wall coming up, unless I piss them off early.

Finished all my Easter cookies. They were absolutely delicious, I've mastered the recipe. I'm torn between making more, because delicious, and not, because special Easter cookies.

Now I'm eating Easter candy. I love holiday gift candy for the novelty aspect. I ate some yellow cotton candy that was in this see-through container with a chick face on it, which was cute, and it's banana-flavored which is something I generally avoid but cotton candy is so mild that it's really enjoyable.

Ridiculously tired. Took a nap and had a really awful dream. The less disturbing half of it had me trying to escape with little kids from a giant compound that was nothing but straight corridors and alcoves while we were chased by my superpowered former compatriot. Then the machineguns were turned on and if we stepped into the corridors to continue we'd be shot apart, so I was watching them from the other side of the hallway. Compatriot reached us and got into the alcove with the kids, I pulled her out with me, and I managed to get behind cover and watched them shoot her down, then for a while she kept inching toward me and getting blasted further apart with each movement. Then I had to go out again to try to open the gates for the kids to escape through the lower levels, and the end of the dream was nothing but staggering and crawling around in the hope I'd opened enough, and something was going for the kids in a lower level I couldn't reach.

It's really my fault for reading the Dawn of the Dead script.

Now trying to decide if I should go to sleep or wait a while.