AonEne

... Ene stared at Salad's hands, tight but careful on their mug. So he wasn't the only one who had a hard time being casual now. Yet here they sat, drinking what they always used to drink, back in the day...back when they'd been... He let out a breath. "Yeah, most people aren't. Some people think alternate universes or timelines, but that's not really it. Or - it sort of is? But not, like..." He rubbed his eyes. His thing was words, not science. "It's other ways that things could have gone, yeah, like the theoretical timeline furthest away from ours, but there aren't actually other timelines, there's not a multiverse, none of that stuff. You can't go to another dimension, unless you count the Spiritual Realm as another dimension, I guess, but it's like all things in one, and sometimes it like, snaps? And the stuff that doesn't really want to be one because it's so far apart un-becomes one and snaps - I said that already - it unravels, and the world as we know it just...glitches." He waved a hand vaguely before reaching down to pluck up another marshmallow. (At his wave, unnoticed by Ene, the white-painted wall flickered to a light pink, then flickered back.) "But it's never permanent. Almost never. Should be never, you know. Everything goes back to normal, the world re-ravels...reweaves...and it's okay again. If someone got elected, they lose their position. If something started a fire, it gets put out." His breathing was shaky. "If someone died, they come back." He took a sip. "Me dying wasn't a paradox, originally. But you dying was. They say you don't remember it." Ene held the next sip he took in his mouth for a second, letting it sear his tongue before swallowing. He remembered it. Remembered dying, too. "Probably better that you don't. It's not fun."

I am probably not going to be too free for the next couple months at least, still ping me if you need any OOC stuff but I don't think I'll be able to hop in with writing soon. Creative brain is sapped

Sorry for the delay in reading this but it looks good! You've put thought in building and balancing him and I'm comfortable giving the thumbs up if Koloss is.

Changes made - everyone say thank you to Paleo for his admin and tech wizardry!

Could try getting a book club edition, a casewrapped book, an ARC, and one of the mass marked-sized hardcovers. For other languages, of the ones I own, I think the Czech Rithmatist and Taiwanese Arcanum Unbounded are cool.

You're not alone here, lots of people found Cytonic to be the worst of the series. I thought it was fine, but definitely weaker than the others for me, on par with Sunreach and ReDawn. Evershore, meanwhile, is my favorite work in the series tied with Defiant. Oh, I high-key disagree on nearly every point, though it's been a year or so since I read Evershore. Jorgen is fighting with Spensa for my favorite character of the series so far, I find him super relatable and definitely boyfriend material if he was real. He was interesting from the first book - not perfect, sure, but far from a villain; he was an antagonist only because Spensa chose him as one. She antagonized him first. He had privilege that he didn't necessarily deserve, but he worked to earn it and clearly cared about his flight, even as Spensa continually harassed him. To be clear, I find Spensa also incredibly relatable, especially early on! I want her to succeed! But Skyward is supposed to show that her fiery approach to the world can't be applied unilaterally. She and Jorgen did better when they worked together, and when Spensa reached out, Jorgen did the same. He wasn't being "redeemed" to be the love interest: he and Spensa were growing as people, together, and learning more about each other, and letting each other in. There was no redemption because there was never one necessary (unlike Ironsides, who debatably got a last-minute redemption?). When reading Starsight, I also was a bit surprised that Jorgen was cytonic, and did figure Brandon had done it because he was the book one love interest (Janci wasn't involved in the writing until the novellas). I understood it more as we learned that different cytonics specialize in different abilities, though - you need more than one character to display all the cool powers so that no individual is too OP, so of course the main cast would have more than one cytonic in it. I checked out chapter 14 and genuinely have no idea where you're seeing any of that, except I guess him not inspiring confidence? Which I think is kind of the point, they're all in a bad position during Evershore and nobody's confident! Their only leaders are terrible at their jobs, and Jorgen has to step up because he's one of the only people with actual experience who will do the right thing. Yeah he's young because it's YA, but with the situation the way it is, he's one of the best people they've got - ideally he wouldn't have to fight at all at his age, but he does; they do. Of the available characters, he has far better leadership skills than Stoff or the nameless admins. Cobb is probably better, but Cobb wasn't able to do it anymore. I think calling what he does whining is a pretty ungenerous reading of the situation - the dude's got PTSD on top of PTSD, what with them all being active soldiers at a young age and then losing his parents in front of him. I found the symptoms to be clear and well-written, and my heart went out to him throughout the book. He argued with FM (which was a growth moment for both their arcs), but that doesn't mean he was 100% wrong in all his choices. As someone who also appreciates structure and rules and knowing what to do, I really love Jorgen and the way he thinks about things. Who he is is a strength in the end, and I could not disagree more that he is boring or annoying. It's valid for you to like or dislike any character or to be bored or annoyed by them, but yeah, I don't see anything you're saying here myself.

I don't have access to member stats, but anecdotally it seems to be.

Most active users in North/South America should be asleep then - it's always going to be daytime somewhere, but at least most people should be able to sleep through the site being down for a bit and not be disturbed.

No comment. *shoves a pixie under the rug*

Hey guys! I'm bringing some news about a few of the profile fields, which we'll be updating at 2am MST Friday. The site will be down for a short while as these changes are made. First, the Contact Methods - previously Website URL, AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber, and Skype - are being updated to things that are more relevant to users today: Discord, YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. There are more social media websites we could add, but in the hopes of not letting it get out of hand, we're keeping it to some that are most popular and active in the fandom. We also could keep Website URL, but decided to let that one go because so many bots use it - there will still be bots, but hopefully this will allow them one less avenue of spam and anyone with a real website can link it in their About Me. This update will wipe any current text in those fields, so if you want to save anything you have there, now's the time to do so. The second update is that the Gender dropdown will be switching to a Pronouns field - this will mean that instead of selecting from a limited list, you will be able to add something more personalized. What you type there will then show up under your profile picture on posts (or next to your name on mobile). We changed from Gender to Pronouns because pronouns are what's relevant on a practical level - if you look at someone's profile to see what their gender is, it's because you want to know what to call them or how to think of them in your head - so this gets right at that. If your selected gender is Male, this field will be automatically filled in with he/him, and if it's Female, she/her. If you haven't selected anything or selected Other or Not Telling, it will be left blank. Whether it's auto-filled or not, you will be able to change or delete what's there at any time. As always, let us know here if you have any questions or feedback, or if these updates are not working or have an error.

Happy Pride

Fair question to have! What happened here is that queer started out as a slur, it was something that people were called as an insult, but then queer people went "no, actually, you don't get to do this, we're stealing this back from you and OWNING it", and reclaimed it. There are still some people who don't like to use it for themselves because they remember that, or have had it used against them, but on the whole it has been reclaimed as a word that's ours now. We've stolen this sword from the attackers and we're not giving it back! It's not a term that only queer people can use, but if an individual asks you not to use it for them, honor that. If you're not sure, defaulting to the acronym or any specific term that you know they use is good. It's an easier way to refer to anyone with a minority sexual orientation or gender identity without typing out the whole acronym or worrying about leaving anyone out, it just encompasses everyone.

I haven't met Brandon. He seems like a fairly decent guy? I like him sometimes. Wouldn't say I love him

I won't change your mind