#Guiding Principle

[bonefall]

Since you mentioned only cats and a few other distant animals are sentient, does this mean foxes are getting their sentience removed? Midnight can talk to foxes in the books and even convinces some foxes to leave a patrol of cats alone (the foxes are WEIRDLY violent and talk about eating the cats too lmaoo).

I assume Hollyleaf's changes mean the Fox Cub Incident is either being moved or just removed entirely, I always found that small plot point interesting in face of all those "Non-cat in clan" AUs. Seems like something that could be interesting if an "us vs them" argument was formed from it, especially if it was targeted against Midnight and calling her unholy yknow?

Yeah, that sapience is gone completely. In this universe, language is limited only to humans, cats, and some distant animals that are far outside the range of Albion (elephants, bottlenoses, some parrots, etc)

And Hollyleaf's story especially. Ngl to you, I don't like that fox idea. Or anything about Hollyleaf's Story. I think it was the worst possible route to take.

"Hollyleaf will be a mother to this evil creature to learn what it's like to love something that hates you. It is so sad to be your mom Leafpool (Squirrel-who?). Don't you feel like a shitty daughter now, Holly? Let's not ask any questions about the code btw, or how you were already filled with crushing shame from it. Or how it made you so disgusted about the idea of pregnant nuns that you flipped your shit and ruined the lives of your entire family. No, what really mattered about this situation was maternal empathy. Also here take the nearest male character we can find to ship you with, we accidentally made Cinderheart too gay when she was upset about your death lmao"

But, digressing, putting my distaste of that novella aside,

WC is profoundly xenophobic already with just the cats, and I think it was a CATASTROPHIC mistake to make it so every animal is secretly intelligent but speaks animal language. Now every conflict between cats and their predators is an ethnic dispute! You're chasing out groups of people perfectly capable of reasoning if you bridged the language barrier, but they're also ACTUAL PREDATORS.

AT BEST; It's the same uncomfortable situations that Zootopia and Lion King ends up tripping over. In Zootopia, predators are used as an allegory for oppressed groups... but predators are MADE to eat prey. A rabbit is RIGHT to be terrified of a fox, twice its size with a jaw made for catching bunnies. In Lion King, lions have divine authority to rule over their dinner/subjects, and chase out any animal based on their personal ideology... which just so happens to only be leveraged against rival predator species.

(Nerd preemption: yes i know about lion guard. I do not think diverse Lion Cops were the solution you think it is.)

Carelessly adding sapience to "natural systems" often ends up accidentally justifying bigotry. Bigotry doesn't MAKE SENSE, it's bullshit we made up and perpetuate through culture, but food webs are completely logical. The rabbit fears the fox because the fox eats rabbits. The lion hates the hyena because they compete for the same food. Gazelles don't happily submit to an overlord who is divinely capable of deciding who should live and who should die, it's just nature.

But it gets even worse-- because it's actually WORST CASE; the Erins saw that complicated moral problem and went, "don't worry! They're actually born evil! Foxes just talk about food and killing things :)"

like... my brother in cats, YOU gave them language in the first place! What was the fucking point if they were just going to be evil barbarians anyway?!? For ONE scene where Midnight could show off her Duolingo streak???

So to summarize,

It was an awful idea to start with

It was executed in the worst possible way

In a series that is already plagued with xenophobic sentiment, this somehow made it even worse and more direct

If it was completely nuked it from the story, the series would be immediately better with minimal change. Holly caring for what is essentially the clan cat-equivalent of an exotic animal like a chimp or a tiger cub would have done the same thing

There is not even a glimmer of an idea here that justifies the poison that full sapience does to the wider implications of the series.

Don't even get me started on the Badger Debaucle in TNP, which is actually in my top 5 for most vile things in WC

So if I don't explicitly say that a species in BB is capable of true language, assume it is non-sapient. Talking animals like Midnight and Rat Leader are magical individuals-- gods, curses, etc.

#Guiding principle #I don't even like the name of Holly's novella. Like. Really. Couldn't think of a better title? #You're really that strapped for ideas? #Couldn't call it her Solitude. Or her Tunnel. Or whatever. #Or hell even call it her Fox #Holly's Story... tune in next week for Lion's Book. Or Jay's 634 Pages. #Our exciting new novella. Squilf's Thing.

[sohannabarberaesque]

"Life is either an adventure or nothing."

--the motto of Sherry Manufacturing Co., manufacturer of tourist-trap souvenir T-shirts

Which could also be something of a mantra among much of The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera ... especially when you have Snagglepuss and Huckleberry Hound on the road in their motorhome for the former's weekly postcards ... Peter Potamus and his intrepid(?!) Magic Divers, not to mention the Three Wolves and the Divin' Wolf Pups ... or even the Hair Bear Bunch out on the road during bear mating season, letting their inner juvenile sexual curiosity loose.

That's just for starters--can you imagine other likely possibilities Hanna-Barberian in this vein?

#hanna barbera #headcannons #sherry manufacturing #resort wear #souvenirs #t shirts #guiding principle #guiding mantra #on the road #life is for living #life is either an adventure or nothing #hannabarberaforever

[tomwambsgans]

tomgreg is not "i could fix him" nor "i could make him worse" but "i could make him feel like a real person." from both ends.

#tomgreg #there is genuine incompleteness on either end without each other #i'm thinking nrpi and the mutual obsession and being (successfully) singularly inclined toward monetary success #EXCEPT in regards to each other #greg having only the most naive aspirations until he meets tom #tom having an essentially directionless desire to be a caretaker until he meets greg #i'm thinking of that one rebvilla tg art with the caption #'doderick fell from the fantasy doggy land and became a real boy in the arms of a guy named tom' #i'm thinking of how the last time greg smokes weed onscreen has him throw it away when tom shows up #how he first does coke. an upper. onscreen directly as tom shows up #tom wakes him up and guides him #greg gives him someone to guide #they're both sponges that soak each other up bc they were sorely missing something #the ethics of their behavior are besides the point #the point is that they cease to be performative about it. tom gets less conservative greg gets less liberal #bc both were masks that weren't necessarily real #'don't be an asshole greg you don't have PRINCIPLES' <- tom accurately calling greg out for being fake #i'm thinking we don't change minds. maybe we do change minds. #once again whether it's in the direction of being 'good' or 'bad' could not be FURTHER from the point #bc the human condition does not condern those things. LOVE does not concern those things. #they just push each other in the direction of being complete people. of being fucking real #mine

[dr3amofagame]

no consistency to my c!dream design in art except for the thought "would this make character sam awesamdude lose his entire mind" pinging around in my head like the sony screensaver as i work on the piece from start to finish

#this is kind of a lie im trying my best to be a bit more consistent lol #but this is one of the guiding principles yes #to be fair character sam awesamdude would lose his entire mind w/ most c!dream designs. to be fair. #like this is the guy that canonically scrapbooked sam bucket #but still

[ravenkings]

play stupid games, win stupid prizes

#this is what happens when your party has no other guiding principle except ''own the libs'' #politics #news #usa

[not-available-for-comment]

“Image-obsessed celebrity can’t be struggling behind the scenes because being ultra-famous and almost pathologically protective of your public image is famously a very mentally healthy experience with no psychological downsides” is just as much of a dogshit parasocial take as “famous straight conventionally attractive if sometimes cryptic celebrity is leaving secret puzzles to prove to me specifically that she’s gay”.

You don’t know these people. YOU DON’T KNOW THESE PEOPLE. You can just like or dislike the music and it will be ok. I will not send the art cops to your house. Go to a coffee shop and put a tenner in the busker’s guitar case if you’re that exercised about it.

Also, not for nothing, being wealthy can be helpful with mental illness, but pushy stage parents and legions of obsessive fans historically Are Not. We’ve somehow blown straight past “money can’t buy happiness but it can pay for rent and doctor’s appointments which sure fucking help” to “no rich person has had a real problem ever” and I regret to inform you that that second statement is what the original platitude is about. It is, tragically, possible to have rent and groceries and doctors bills and cute clothes paid for without a second’s thought and still have a bad time of it, because even rich people are human beings who come from families of human beings and have human friends and lovers and staff and coworkers and part of the human condition is that sometimes some of us suffer.

I get the impulse to be resentful of someone singing about having a hard time when the spare change from between her couch cushions would easily save your life. I’ve been through a period of my life where I tried not to obviously resent my friends for *having food*. It’s ok if you can’t listen to her for that reason and in fact I’d argue that you shouldn’t. It’s painful, and it’s not the kind of pain that produces anything worthwhile, just more resentment. But “she’s making up alcoholism for clout” is such a deeply stupid way to phrase that. You don’t know her. What if she isn’t? What if she IS? Making up personas is literally part of her brand. Do you need a hug? Sincerely. I think a hug would maybe be more productive here. I’m sorry things are hard. It’s not fair. You’re right. It isn’t.

I just think one slightly overexposed pop singer is maybe not the main reason it’s hard.

#I’m probably not making any sense #but the utterly unhinged fanfic that just crossed my dash while masquerading as cultural analysis made me see red #I don’t even particularly care about tswift #I own 3 of her albums and don’t keep up with new releases #she’s done several things i deeply disliked #but i don’t think she’s a bad person #just young and out of touch #but the idea that having nice things is the same thing as being mentally or even physically healthy is rancid #it’s the cornerstone of the self-care bilking machine #and a way of making you miserable without giving you any tools to actually make your life better #HUMAN. CONNECTION. IS. HEALTHY. MONEY. IS. NOT. #that’s an oversimplification #rent obviously is healthy #abusive family isn’t #but your guiding principle needs to be forging strong healthy connections #not accumulating so much stuff that god can’t touch you

[normalbrothers]

machiavellian figure vs sadeian figure

#who's worse? one guided by principles however contestable vs one driven by pleasure and pleasure alone #one always takes consideration and 'doing the maths' #the other is to see the ends of what pleasure promises

[whentherewerebicycles]

a bunch of people have already registered for my mentoring workshop! unfortunately this means i have to plan and host a workshop aaaaaa

#i want to think aloud through it on here at some point #but i think i am going to structure it around the theme of cultivating student autonomy #because i think one of the primary goals of mentorship is to prepare students to be self-directed learners who can set realistic goals + #evaluate their own progress + reflect on what they've learned and what they still don't know #+ take initiative without sitting around waiting for someone to tell them what to do next #so i think we will do some thinking around like #when we have a student we think of as really capable or driven what qualities and behaviors do we observe in that student #and maybe ill also share some of the research on intrinsic motivation + self-direction + locus of control #which i think is all really interesting esp in light of the contemporary College Mental Health Crisis concerns #and then we will look at a range of tools + structures + strategies that i think are useful for fostering student autonomy over time #and maybe leave them with some core principles/guiding values that i think are useful when you are trying to like #avoid jumping in and doing stuff for kids #or solving their problems for them #idk i need to think through specifics a bit more #but i feel like on this campus #people do a lot of 'workshops' that are really not interactive at all #it's just someone talking from slides #and i kind of want to show off my ability to structure more engaging workshops #but idk. gotta think about how to do it well #and how to build in lots of opportunities for like crowdsourcing strategies too

[channel17]

Observe and pay attention to the reality around you, it is a mirror, reflecting you to your self

As within so without

#magick #advice #spiritual #higher consciousness #new age #spiritual journey #spiritual awakening #esoteric #spiritual guide #guru #spirit guide #spiritual alchemy #esoteric knowledge #esotericism #law of manifestation #law of attraction #hermetic principles #hermeticism #conscious community #consciousness #conscious living #spirit lifestyle #thoughts #words #positive words #self help #self improvement #self awareness #self reflection #self discovery

[bonefall]

so are wild boar still considered “extinct” locally by the humans? given that wild boar in england are currently considered extinct, even though there are pockets of population

(context: i was looking up animals that england has driven to extinction with my partner last night because we were both feeling Some Kind Of Way about species conservation, and how england is basically the worst monster historically in terms of driving entire species to extinction, and continues to be hugely negligible. then i remembered boars in better bones i was like “aren’t there boars?” and then saw that they were also considered extinct, which surprised me)

Yeah England is a fucking monster in terms of bad conservation, and its colonial influence in how OTHER places view conservation can't be understated. But anyway I'll save that for another time

(But like it fucks me up that you guys only have one protected river in the whole UK and it's mostly in Wales. What the fuck. It's been 30 years and they're just now thinking about adding another. Brits in the audience who can i kill for you? If we throw someone in the thames maybe they'll dissolve)

Here's the thing I have in mind; England is so fucked that people don't even know how fucked it is. Do you know how important hogs are to a mixed-oak woodland? What types of moors need burning, grazing, or being left alone? That the entire island of Great Britan is supposed to have a thriving freshwater pearl mussel population? That England isn't supposed to have pine forests?

There is so so so much here to cover and talk about, AND I'm telling this story from the perspective of cats! They have to have encountered the things to know about them, even if it was culturally!

And what that means is that I am willing to bend a couple of things SO that I can include them as part of the story! Things that SHOULD be here, that should be or ARE being reintroduced, especially when they're lesser known.

(In fact I think your boar thing is a perfect example. You're telling me the story I want to hear-- that you heard something offhand, went "woah arent those in this work I'm a fan of?" And then you learned more. Goal accomplished!)

In my head I file boars and mussels under the "Eagle Exception." Something that, with a bit of alt history, could be seen in this environment.

It's based off the canon eagles (which ironically I'm massively downplaying in my rework of the BB!Tribe). The golden eagle has been extinct in England for a very long time, but it's right there in canon, so logically there could be similar animals or reintroduction projects.

List so far;

(Also BB!Great Britan is called Albion to mark that it's a little different.)

Freshwater Pearl Mussels (extinct in White Hart, populated in Sanctuary Lake)

Boars (rare in White Hart, populated in Sanctuary Lake. Replacing the majority of deadly badger and fox encounters because badgers arent bears and foxes arent coyotes, Erin :/)

Golden Eagle (exclusive to Tribe mountain)

Beavers (Being actively reintroduced to parts of Albion in the 2010s)

Wolves (extinct)

Lynxes (suspected extinct; there may be some around specifically because I want to make an example of how non-domestic cats in this universe are non-sapient.)

Salmon (uncommon in White Hart, populated in Sanctuary Lake)

Atlantic Sturgeon (exclusive to Sanctuary Lake, rare even there)

Medicinal Leech (dying population in White Hart since Chelford expansion, extinct in Sanctuary Lake)

Additionally I'm keeping my eye on the European Buffalo (wiseant) reintroduction, but that's not in my modeled region and I don't want to jump the gun on it. Last I checked the project JUST managed to get its bull this year after a long 2020-induced delay

#better bones au #Ecological Overhauls #Guiding Principle

[pochapal]

I shall tempt fate!

Thoughts on the thirteenth doctor?

I didn’t like the era much but 13 is awesome imo ^^

[approximately 1 trillion turrets taking aim] okay SO the thing with 13 is that everyone who watched her and hated her was a needless redditbrained loser who didn't understand a thing. yes she was kind of mid in the end BUT not for a single reason any of her detractors like to espouse.

she was on track for a very good slow burn tragic arc of over-correcting twelve's flaws (he got too attached and this burned him over and over and over again) where in her attempts to protect her companions from the same doomed fate as every previous human to enter the tardis she ends up not showing how she really feels at all until it's too late for it to count because whether or not she's attached or distant all humans die in the end and to travel with the doctor is to in part indulge in a death drive because by nature of being a companion it means eventually you are going to collide face first with tragedy. all the pieces for this are there very much in her first two seasons and this reading even explains why the finales were kind of lacking oomph (her distancing in attachment also extended to Being The Doctor on some level; this could have compounded with all the latent Gender stuff real nicely but didn't) since it was kind of all building to one core tragic break.

this likely would have happened in her third season but then covid kind of destroyed production and obviously every ambition/plan had to be downscaled into flux which was like. fine??? nothing really bad to say about it other than it feels a touch truncated but that was mostly due to pandemic filming restrictions than anything else (and will never be as terrible as the parts of the moffat era which suffered extensively as a result of sherlock existing and taking up the lead writers/producers time and effort). only issue with it was that it shifted tone/direction in a way that kept all of 13's era on this same flat note right at the moment when this naturally should have been shifted up a gear for the third act.

unironically in an ideal world we got a full length third season for thirteen and the one thing that needed to happen was yaz dying. like i liked yaz and everything but girlie needed to die so badly in some episode and for her to die thinking that the doctor never actually cared about her, forcing thirteen to realize becoming disattached doesn't prevent tragedy from happening it just deprives her of love. continuing this ideal scenario the next beat that needed to happen was thirteen absolutely fucking snapping as yaz's death serves as the catalyst for all the other billion emotions she's been pointedly Not Feeling in this incarnation - this in turn would allow us to see shades of the rogue doctor or whatever her name was (renegade doctor? fugitive doctor? exile doctor?) and create an interesting interplay between the two. this'd then lead to an "Oh Fuck I Have Really Fucked Up At Being The Doctor Huh" moment where she starts aggressively Being The Doctor (maybe strongarming dan into being a companion semi against his wishes to fill the void?) and maybe fucking with her own history/reputation or w/e which might've fed into the timeless child mystery thing somehow (don't ask me i'm spitballing on half-remembered information). also identity crisis heartbroken thirteen at the end of her life reaching back into herself and re-using ten's face as a kind of "second chance" at all the parts of herself that ten embodied and she didn't (the absolute love for companions and humanity) where the tension is now whether or not fourteen ignores the literal centuries of history separating himself from the last time he wore this face and that feeding into the new rtd era.

even a small number of these things would have made thirteen probably one of the best doctors in the series in all the metrics that really matter but we didn't get that so we have to contend with what we do have and that was mostly just...okay. thirteen for me is like. she was brimming with potential to go down a certain route i would have eaten up but things never quite fell into place. probably a whole bunch of reasons behind the scenes why thirteen's era fell short of total greatness but i still enjoyed good chunks of thirteen more than certain doctors who i can and will name (doctor eleven they could never make me like you) so she has that going for her at least. also can't be fully mad at the writing because i actually have an unjustified soft spot for chibnall (this is my biases talking but the countrycide episode of torchwood top 1 piece of doctor who media and i'm so mad he didn't lean back into the folk horror aesthetic again for the witch trials episode in thirteen's run) and overall thirteen's era was just. it was consistent. i really wish covid hadn't fucked over the final season so the nascent themes in her arc could've come to a more satisfying fruition because i will always be a forever truther thirteen's era was slow-building up to something really good. the haters will never convince me otherwise.

#coolstuffiseverywhere #my thinking is guided by the sole principle that doctor who is only good when it's both melodrama and tragedy #this might be because i infinitely prefer melodrama/tragedy over scifi. this is also because i am huge brained and beautiful all the time

[neotaissong]

In the end everything can be reduced to the simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love.

That element can grow within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life.

My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love and be aware that beauty is summoning him.

Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

#undeniable #neotai's song #master teacher #andrei tarkovsky #preach andrei preach #guiding principles #the supreme factor #movies

[dayoungs]

taking the train tomorrow to see a boy and im a little terrified about the uncertain ratio of fun to awkward it will most definitely be .. haven’t seen him in ten months and it’s not romantic (i don’t … think??) but there’s lots of complicated baggage also im staying with his parents ddhdhsbxhshsbh happy weekend to me !!

#nyc for the first time using that as my guiding principle to have fun

[ferociouslycreativemystery]

I reblog quite a lot of fan theories and metas about s2, many of them contradictory, so I I feel I should probably explain my perspective on them.

When I reblog something, it's not necessarily because I believe it to be true, or even because I think it's is particularly plausible. Sometimes it is, but far from always—I've reblogged many things that I don't believe to be 'true' in the slightest. What I do reblog are things that I find interesting, and that tickle my understanding of the story in enticing ways. I'm not looking for any Ultimate Theory to Explain Everything, I'm an explorer on the seven seas collecing my favourite sketches of all the mythical creatures that other sailors have spotted in the deep.

Yo-ho-ho everyone :)

#that said I do have some criteria for which theories I am willing to believe sincerely: #1) the emotional weight of the final 10 min cannot be undermined. what happened happened and core to it happening was their own characters #2) it must resonate thematically with the established story (a bit vague but a good guiding principle) #3) sort of follows from the other two but: being invested in the story as it's being told should still pay off for the casual viewer #aka there's a limit to how 'out there' the theory can be #in the end it needs to remain logically and emotionally gounded in the story we've been shown #any misgivings should be properly motivated. engaging in good faith. innocent until proven guilty and all that #maddie debrief #maddie's go tag #go2 meta

[aeide-thea]

an impulse i don't get—

or rather, so as not to be disingenuous, an impulse i get perfectly well but strongly dislike when i'm faced with it, which means i need to reexamine it in myself when i generate it—

is the impulse to sit in judgment about What Counts As Queer. like. yeah, okay, i do get it really, we're all disempowered by hegemonic culture and setting ourselves up as petty kings shores up our egos! but if there's anything i've loved about discovering queerness in and for myself, it's been the realization that there were worldviews beyond my own—and that there still are, almost certainly! that the world is a firework show of exploding possibility, and that i and my current understanding of myself and everyone else are just one bright spark in a whole connected series of them, and that more will come after me, bringing new colors and configurations to my field of vision, if i just keep my eyes open…

and so i just always feel. god. how close-minded, to shut your eyes to someone else's vision of queerness, to say not just 'that isn't a version of queerness that i recognize or feel represented by,' but to say categorically, 'that isn't queer'! if someone's saying in all sincerity, 'this feels alien to the framework i grew up with, and exciting or comforting or both to me'—i want to hear them out, and make space in my own understanding for a multiplicity of queernesses. i'm not always perfect at it! but i want to.

because what's the alternative? join with the biphobes and transphobes who would've said my gq4gq relationship with my transfem ex was really just straight, or at least enough of a union of opposites for government work? join with the aphobes and arophobes who are constantly insinuating that if you're not actively sucking or fucking, you're a square—never mind those of us who are isolated, or traumatized, or anxious, or any of the thousand other reasons why our queerness might not be siting itself in sex or romance, right now or ever! join with the people who sneer at poly and flinch from kink, as if reexamining those relational conventions were somehow cleanly separable from reexamining all the other ones—as if we should want it to be?

anyway, this is about a lot of things, really, and at least one of them i pretty actively don't want to talk about in specific; but i just think, god, i wish we could all learn a little more generosity, and a little more humility. we know the world, and the human heart, encompass more than is dreamt of in kyriarchal philosophy; why then are we so resistant to the idea that they might also encompass more than is dreamt of in our own? movement after movement of queers have come, and built, and been built upon in turn; our personal convictions are not, i feel certain, the final course to be laid down on the great work of enlightenment and liberation—and how depressing it would be, if they were!

#there's an invisible Works Referenced here that includes a post i keep not reblogging bc it's too aggro #but it's about like. there's no single masculinity or femininity #similarly i think. there's no single queerness‚ because there's no single straightness; it's a complex construction—constriction— #and so our resistance to it must necessarily be equally complex‚ to meet it where it crops up and set it aflame #and so like. just because something isn't your queerness‚ or mine‚ doesn't mean it can't be someone else's! #there's something else i was thinking of‚ too‚ but i forgot it already‚ lol #this isn't the like. clearly-structured post i wanted to write‚ i got mad and florid instead #and i expect i've left out some of what i meant #but like. sometimes you—i—have to just run with that‚ or else express nothing at all… #anyway i just think like. yeah‚ models of maybe-queerness we see in the world might wound us‚ or anyway look as though they might! #it's a possibility! #but what's not a possibility‚ but a certainty‚ is that the rhetoric i've seen used to *dismiss* various representations #as Not Queer Enough #has for SURE wounded me! and almost certainly wounded others who've just curled up silently and said nothing about it! #anyway. idk. 'NOT HET BUT HETERODOX‚' proclaims my protest sign #is this coherent without specifying all its context? maybe not. but the fundamental stance isn't contextual for me— #it's something i think is important to uphold‚ and where i fail at it (which i do!)‚ to give myself a good hard squint #and work out how to realign my reactions with the principles i actually want guiding them #anyway. good morning‚ lmao. have a diatribe

[jb2w2yloonaxezktor2xa2le]

small space big solution really stumping me rn

#last thing i need before i 100% the game #this puzzle is insanity #talos principle #the talos principle #not looking up a guide though #gonna have to big brain this