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thewertsearch · 2 years

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Asks Compilation 13/05

They really are. A lot of these kids seem very isolated (I mean, we know Jade is), and it makes a lot of sense why they’d gravitate to online friendships the way they did. Plus, they subconsciously know they’re going to be co-players, so maybe they were always destined to vibe well together.

I’ll think about it! Honestly, though, I don’t know if it’d add much. I might try and experiment with different formats down the line, especially for ‘event’ flashes like that - we’ll see.

[ Super popular (half-serious) fan headcanon is that Prospit = you make your bed, Derse = you don’t make it. you got lots of asks about this but lots have spoilers so I thought I’d just tell you directly since I know you’d want to know 😂 - Cat ]

What do ya know, I’m a Derse girl!

Damnit, I wanted those prophecy clouds. Instead, I’m stuck with an asteroid belt, a sky full of monsters. and close proximity to a gang of murderous Agents. Derse’s perks better be good!!

Lot of fun Charles Barkley Lore here. I can always count on you guys to explain Hussie’s latest reference to me.

Now we know where Rose got this enigmatic quote. I like to think that in this world, T.S. Eliot never existed, and Barkley actually wrote all of Eliot’s poems himself, juggling Modernist poetry with his basketball career.

Yeah, it’s just edging out Doom. It’s a weird pair of elements (aspects?) to be associated with, and I kind of love it.

Combining the two just makes me think of this guy!

Thanks for the recs, guys! Other than Dumbing of Age, I haven’t heard of any of these, but based on their about pages:

Never Satisfied is a webcomic about politics, and also being a cool wizard. Strangely enough, I think those two would mesh pretty well.

Sleelpess Domain is a dark magical girl webcomic with an urban-fantasy setting. I really like the artstyle for this one.

Widdershins is an anthology fantasy series in a Victorian-inspired setting. Anthologies are a lot of fun - I find they really help the worldbuilding unfold.

Black Book is a card-based RPG, a type of game system that I used to shun, but one that I’ve really been getting into recently.

Dumbing of Age, which I keep meaning to check out, is, I think, a slice-of-life story about college students. They’re just like me fr

You really have be on the ball with Homestuck. The recap was one of the most information-dense pages in the comic so far, and if I’d been reading casually, I probably would have skipped it!

I guess the character naming pages were Hussie’s author avatar all along.

This gif kind of mirrors WV’s terminal introduction, and when you think about it, authors are kind of ‘super-Exiles’, sending ‘commands’ which can’t be disobeyed.

Like, I get it. John has no memory of that timeline, and is already primed not to trust Dave, but it still hurts to see him so dismissive of Davesprite. I think the ‘real Dave’ fuckup was because part of him still isn’t buying it.

I honestly think one of the Daves might end up snapping eventually, and then John will get his wakeup call.

Yup, it matches the kids’ introduction order, as most other things do.

These patterns show up everywhere, and when they do, it’s impossible to tell in advance whether they’re going to be subverted. Hussie caught me out this time!

.....oh my god?

Sweet!

It’s a good Cal. It’d have been hard to fully capture Comic Cal’s aura in realspace, so changing his design a little was the right move here.

#asks #full liveblog #act 4 #classpect

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zee-has-commitment-issues · 2 years

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how do u and dani know each other , is it thru tumblr or elsewhere? x

Anon you have opened a can of worms that you did not mean to open, but now you must suffer the consequences.

Long story short: Dani and I did not meet on Tumblr. For those of you who would like a Dani and Zee origin story, continue reading.

Dani and I met when we were 8? I think. Fourth grade. Our Girl Scout Troops merged into what we call a “super troop” which essentially means one troop lost their leader so another troop absorbed them. That is how Dani and I met.

That absolutely does not mean we liked each other. Dani and I hated each other for the first 4-5 years we knew each other. I thought she was weird, she thought I was a bitch, we didn’t get along.

During those years though, we still were really close with each other’s moms because of Girl Scouts. So despite the fact that we really didn’t like each other, we both saw each other’s mom as a “second mom” figure. I can clearly remember my mother being on the phone and being like “Oh I’m talking to Dani” and I can remember calling Dani’s mom just to ask questions about life. Like we hated each other but then loved each other’s mom.

In 8th grade we had to lead a badge together for the Girl Scout troop. It was a writing badge. We quickly realized that we actually had a lot in common (things like writing) and we’d been avoiding each other for 4 years for literally no reason. And our moms had already integrated themselves into our lives and they were friends.

In high school we got close for a few different reasons. All of which are absolutely and entire batshit insane. Truly some of the most unhinged shit I’ve ever done.

The first reason is fanfic. I bet Dani that I could write the worst Harry Potter fanfic she had ever read. And I did. No matter what she tells you, I won that fucking bet. I wrote 7 novel length fics for it. And it was horrid. Truly some of the worst shit I’ve ever written in my life.

The second reason was Golden Retriever Friend. The two of them did wrestling together and I was friends with Golden Retriever just from classes and mutual friends and stuff. So the three of us became kind of a trio. Actually we became a lot of a trio. Our moms started calling us “Dolliez” because it was a combination of all of our names.

Dani and I got each other through some really tough times during high school. She came out before I did. I got outed. In our small town there were some… less than accepting people to me. “Dolliez” was quite literally my/our safe haven. We even started a school club together. I do not think I would have survived high school without them. I know I wouldn’t have.

Covid hit during our Junior Year and we were each other’s designated safe people. The three of us isolated from pretty much everyone except each other. Again, I don’t know if I would have made it through the pandemic if I didn’t have them. And, if you read my recent post about my dark and mysterious past, then you know Dani got me through some pretty messy shit.

We are now Sophomores in college and still closer than ever. We read and edit each other fanfic, we text every day, we help each other with homework. I text Dani in the middle of the night sometimes the most random shit that comes to mind. She’ll yell at me when I’m doing something self destructive.

At this point Dani isn’t even a best friend. She’s certainly a sister but more than that she’s like an extension of my brain. She sometimes has thoughts for me before I can even have them. Dani is one of 2 friends of mine that will be at my mother’s official wedding ceremony. We grew up together, we’ve gotten awards together, we graduated high school together.

That’s Dani.

Fell free to add to this @the-navistar-carol

#ask #anon #Dani and Zee Origin Story

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chronically-autistic-dinosaur · 2 years

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Please, please, please take your mental health/your loved ones’ mental health seriously. It’s just as important as one’s physical health. We all know the direction this post is going so…yeah.

1. An almost 24 year old (yes, I will continue to mention his age because he is still a baby) cancelled his world tour today because of his mental health. I don’t know what he’s dealing with mentally, but it’s obviously something. I know he has anxiety/an anxiety disorder, and that can be brutal to deal with. I deal with this 💩 on a daily basis and I’m not a celebrity.

2. We (as the general public) are only seeing what Shawn wants us to see-and that’s him appearing happy and ok. He most definitely is not. If he was, he wouldn’t have cancelled a world tour. Like him, I can look fine but I am mentally fragile and can have a breakdown at any moment 🙃

3. I don’t have a clue what his comfort level is being near/around so many people after the pandemic. His anxiety may rise knowing there’s a real chance of him catching COVID from one of his shows. As a singer, him getting COVID wouldn’t be good. He can’t afford damaging any respiratory organs.

4. People have been giving Shawn 💩 for being in Costa Rica and recently California. Apparently if you’re working on your mental health and taking time for yourself, you shouldn’t be going places 🙄 Uhm? No. He SHOULD be doing this. He needs to be around friends/family/a support system at a time like this. Staying holed up isn’t going to help. Traipsing around the world being away from his loved ones definitely isn’t going to help him heal. Let Shawn heal in his own way ✌🏻

5. Being a celebrity doesn’t mean he can’t have mental health issues. He’s human. He’s young. He’s almost 24. He’s essentially been touring since he was 15. Let the guy have some “him” time that didn’t include being quarantined/self-isolated for over two years. He finished a world tour in late 2019. Then the pandemic started. He spent the majority of that time in quarantine and away from family and friends. Now everyone just expected the guy to embark on a world tour and spend even MORE time away from everyone? Ya, he has a lot going on mentally now.

6. Yes, fans are going to be mad/disappointed/upset. But Shawn’s mental health is number one. It takes priority over his world tour. It’s not fair for him to sacrifice his mental well being to satisfy the needs of his fans. I‘d rather he takes off as much time as he needs to heal and be mentally stable than to continue his tour and burn out and have another mental breakdown or worse.

7. Don’t say he’s being a wuss and that he needs to “be strong.” Him cancelling the tour is strength, whether you think it or not. He didn’t make this decision lightly. Just because he’s a male doesn’t mean he can’t have mental health issues/anxiety.

I’m super happy he has made this decision. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. He went on tour too early after the pandemic and I’m glad he’s realized that. He needs to put himself and his needs first. The stigma surrounding mental health NEEDS to be broken and even more when it involves males. They’re just as sensitive (and Shawn is a sensitive dude) and fragile as females and they need to have their mental health taken just as seriously. NOTHING will change my opinion on this and I will continue to stand with Shawn because I know what he’s going through. I have been in his position just on a smaller scale. I’ve had to increase the dosage of my medication so I can properly function. I still get major anxiety being in/near/around large groups of people and ironically the last large event I attended was a Shawn Mendes concert. It would have been his third last show of the tour.

I hope all the best for Shawn and I just want him happy and healthy ❤️

#my post #long post #shawn mendes #mental health #pretty much a compilation of my previous posts #take care of your mental health #this is a hill i will die on

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dikanamai · 2 years

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Since I've seen many comments about the "After you save the miracle, come visit" moment, and recently crossed with one of those again, now I can't stop thinking about it too, because… am I the only one who felt really "what the actual fuck, Bruno" when he says that? Like, the hell are you saying, man.

This thing intrigues me, because he makes this face when Mira says she's gonna bring him home:

And that's not the face of someone willing to keep away from his love ones. That's the face of someone who's almost begging to come back.

Ten years are a very long time. Thinking about it, I wonder about the different phases he came through during those years and how his feelings developed. He hid in a hurry, out of desperation. He thought it was the better option, to keep Mira safe but also to protect the whole family. He sacrificed himself. But he was still there, so he saw what his absence triggered. He saw how Alma's stress, fear and paranoia rocketed, which translated into more pressure for the whole family. He saw Pepa cracking and losing even more stability. He saw Julieta focusing so much on Mirabel, trying to ease her baby's suffering, that she neglected totally Isabela and Luisa, who had to endure their suffering on their own. The family went to hell after he left, though he thought he was helping them by leaving. And I wonder if at some point, over all those days of isolation… did he start thinking "omg I made a mistake"?

Perhaps, in the first weeks or even the first months, he thought "if I come out now, I still could fix this". Maybe he thought about it every day, getting frightened by the simple idea of showing up again after such a disaster. So time passed and months turned into years, and then the question would be: if I come out now… could I still fix this? I'm sure he was perfectly aware of the pain he had caused, that's why he tried so hard to apologize at the end of the movie. But while he was alone inside the walls, that pain probably looked irreparable. Maybe he thought if they discovered he was there (he had been there all the time) and had left them in the dark for years, seeing them suffering without raising a finger, no one would ever forgive him. Maybe he thought he didn't even deserve to be forgiven. His hypothetical confrontation with the family wasn't just a confrontation with the family; it was also a "Dorian Gray facing his painting" situation.

I always see Bruno being portrayed as a poor, helpless victim of other's perception about him, feeling miserable for it, or as a resentful man towards Alma and the rest of the family for not supporting him enough in the past. But I never see anyone exploring this feeling of guilt about the mistakes he actually made, the resentment towards himself for the help he didn't offer or the regret towards his wrong decisions. Not the made up shit other people put over him, but the shit he really did. And I find all of that far more powerful.

For me, the "come visit" moment is not cute or endearing at all. It's the lowest moment of a man so overwhelmed by his own guilt and shame that feels unable to face the consequences of his decisions (consequences he's been avoiding for ten years, btw). He's there waiting for someone to tell him "I'll bring you home", because he's so trapped in his own super plan to protect the family that he has no idea of how to break free of it. He needs to be told "you're still welcome and this is your place", and it has to be his 15 years old niece the one who saves him, instead of the opposite. What a shame, Bruno (I'm joking, don't worry, I honestly pity him).

And yeah, he finally manages to gather enough courage to face Alma at the river to defend Mirabel, and don't take me wrong, I'm not saying that moment isn't dramatic and moving and important for his own character arch. But it's also funny for me how he represents then perfectly (just like everyone of us who suffer anxiety) the meme of "yeah, you'll be glad to know it took me five minutes to accomplish the task I'd been avoiding for ten years", lol.

#encanto #encanto analysis #bruno madrigal #Bruno has a lot of layers and a lot of potential #it's a pity most of them get erased by the over victimization the fandom applies on him #yes he was a victim #as everyone else in the family #and he was guilty too #also as everyone else in the family

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artistfingers · 3 years

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There’s one ~silver lining~ of my iPad being broken: I’ve had loads of time to think about my many half-formed undercover phantom au ideas! Since I have no idea when or what will make it to comic form, here’s the lowdown…. AKA, everything that’s been rattling around my brain recently :P

For context: Danny, Sam and Tucker have never met, and nobody knows Danny is Phantom. When Vlad’s newest bit of tech gets Danny stuck in ghost mode (with the rest of his powers on the fritz to boot), he meets Tucker and Sam—who instantly see through his disguise and lend a helping hand. (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4!!)

So. After that, Danny—no, Phantom—becomes friends with them. It’s exciting! He was invisible at school even before the ghost powers; he was pretty isolated and lonely and being Phantom for the last year hasn’t exactly been a social boon. Kid’s lonely, ok?

But now… two human friends? Who’re his age & share his interests? It’s like a dream come true! If only they weren’t exclusively friends with his ghost self… and if only they didn’t wanna be so involved in his dangerous ghost hunting things…Uhhh. Hm. Could be a problem.

Danny angsts about the danger he’s putting his new friends in, and about not being able to befriend them as a human. He plays with the idea of telling them Everything but that’s… risky to say the least. He’s only known them a few weeks! ugh….!! it’s too much. maybe he should just throw the towel in.

Buuut Sam & Tucker don’t take no for an answer. Especially after they rescue him a third time.

Thus… Phantom friendship shenanigans!!

Sam filched some parts from the Fentonworks Lab when Phantom took them there, and later convinced Tucker to help her build a custom mini ectogun in case of emergency. They didn’t tell Phantom.

Danny is really sentimental about that DP hat he wore when he first met Sam & Tucker. He wore it as Phantom for a while but it got singed in a fight. He still wears it when he hangs out with Tucker & Sam but otherwise keeps it squirreled away for Sentimental Reasons.

“So Phantom, how old are you?” “I’m 15.” “15 now? Or 15 when you died?” “Yes.”

Tucker has a bunch of awful 90s button up shirts, and gives one to Phantom

They aren’t able to convince Sam to wear one too, but they sure do try.

Phantom won’t tell them when he died, so once he starts wearing 90s shirts they start using terrible 90s slang with him

“I am NOT from the 90s!!! They didn’t even SAY that then!!!” “methinks the lady doth protest too much…..home slice” “NOOO!!!”

“Phantom I have an extremely important question. Like, life or death. SHIT is on the LINE here. Are you listening?? I really need to know…. Do ghosts play video games”

The answer may surprise you (no it won’t)

Sam is completely convinced they can ACTUALLY get a good working guess of when Phantom lived and died based on the fact he liked Nasty Burger when he was alive, since NB’s a regional chain with a not-so-distant past. Tucker meanwhile thinks Phantom probably has a good reason for keeping them at arm’s length—but regardless of method, they can agree: they want to break down Phantom’s walls.

The next arc is less “Undercover Phantom” and more “Undercover Fenton” because the juxtaposition of him having to do hidden identities squared (squared again) is too good for me to pass up. It boils down to this: during a ghost attack at school, Danny finds himself stuck being “protected” by Sam and Tucker.

Sam and Tucker take their new jobs as Phantom’s ghost hunting companions too seriously to let this skinny stranger they just met run TOWARDS the danger. WHY does he keep trying to run TOWARDS the danger

NO YOU CANNOT GO TO THE BATHROOM THE SCHOOL IS ON G H O S T L O C K D O W N

Sam pulls out her ectogun.

Danny: WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?!

Sam does not tell him.

“Wait, your last name’s Fenton? Like Fentonworks Fenton?” “No, the other Fenton.” “Oh… well, that’s too bad…” “YES LIKE FENTONWORKS FENTON”

Sam is initially wary of Danny because of his parents’ super strong anti-ecto views. Danny is clueless as to why she isn’t very friendly to him-as-a-human when she’s great with him-as-a-ghost. but she warms up after he helps resolve the ghost issue in a way that shows he doesn’t subscribe to his parents’ views.

afterwards you get this excellent situation where Danny is now friends with Sam and Tucker as Phantom and as Fenton, and they’re not connecting the dots as quickly as they did when it was just “that’s Phantom wearing a hoodie and a cap with his own logo on it”.

the potential here? *chefs kiss* here’s a few things but honestly? the possibilities are limitless

Danny pretending to not have a cell phone because he already gave them his number as Phantom

Tucker: *dials Phantom*

Danny, standing directly next to him: *frantically attempting to silence his phone*

Sam & Tucker try to introduce Danny and Phantom. Danny has to make excuses to avoid this happening in both forms.

Danny takes Sam & Tucker down to the Fentonworks Lab to get them some real equipment. Sam & Tucker pretend (very badly) that they’ve never been there before

Rooftop chill sessions as Phantom, late night teenage hijinks as Fenton, plus school AND fighting ghosts does not do any favors for Danny’s sleep deprivation. Tucker introduces him to caffeine pills with… mixed results.

Tucker and Sam teach Phantom some sign language. Later Danny slips up and uses it casually with them as Fenton

…. And many other silly mixups that I’ve yet to think of because I live for that shit

Sam & Tucker have theories about the Fenton-Phantom connection and they’re all wrong but somehow also plausible and that freaks Danny out just a little bit if he ever overhears them

Ultimately, I see this AU having a final arc where a New Situation occurs in which Danny-as-Phantom has to—once again—pretend to be human. This time, he’s with Sam & Tucker as Phantom from the get go, and can’t disappear or transform, even if being Phantom is extremely dangerous at that moment. Somehow this scenario would lead to the Fenton-is-Phantom (or, in this case, Phantom-is-Fenton) reveal…. But the details still escape me :P

so in short………… I really like hidden identities

#danny phantom #danny phantom au #danny fenton #tucker foley #sam manson #undercover phantom au #no one knows au #DP #WHY is this 1000 words long IM SO SORRY #PS if you are reading these tags and you left tags on any of the comics so far with your own ideas for this au THANK YOU I LOVE YOU #PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE feel free to add on ideas to this au any way youd like 🙏#it is just a big ol hidden identities sandbox with also lots of teenages hijinks #im hoping to have my ipad fixed by wednesday-ish so more comics........ eventually :"D #in the meantime please enjoy this long text post and maybe some sketchbook things #if i can work up the nerve to post something straight out of the sketchbook lmfao #long post #fic #art writes

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baya-ni · 3 years

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The Queer Appeal of Sk8

Recently @mulberrymelancholy reblogged a post of mine with a truly galaxy brain take about how Sk8 “is a show made for queer fans” and generally how sports anime often depicts love and relationships in a way that’s more accessible and relatable to ace/arospec people than other mainstream media does.

Just, *chef’s kiss* fucking brilliant. I urge you to read their post here (note I’m referring to the reblog not the actual post).

And basically, it got me thinking about this concept of Sk8 as a Queer Show, and the kinds of stories and dynamics that tend to attract queer audiences in droves, regardless of whether its queerness is made explicit or hell, whether that queerness was intended.

And that’s what I’ve been pondering: What are the cues, markers, or coding, in Sk8 that set off the community’s collective gaydar?

I obviously can’t speak for the community. So here’s what aspects of the show intrigued me and what, for me, marks Sk8 as a Queer Show beyond the subtextual queer romances: a punk/alternative aesthetic, Found Family, Shadow as a drag persona, and The Hands.

1.) The Punk Aesthetic

All three of the above screenshots are taken from Ep 1, and every single one of them depicts background characters. They’re nameless and ultimately unimportant characters, yet each of them designed so distinctly and so unique from one another, one could mistake each of them for the main character(s) of another story.

Of what little I know about Punk subculture, I do know this: that the ethos of Punk is heavily built around a celebration of individuality and non-conformity. Sk8 seems to have incorporated this ethos into the very fabric its worldbuilding, and the aesthetics and culture upon which it takes inspiration appeals specifically to a queer audience.

I don’t really need to explain why Punk has such deep ties with the queer community. For decades, queer people have found community and acceptance within punk spaces, and punk ideology is something that I think is just ingrained in the queer consciousness as both lived experience and a survival tactic.

Therefore, a show that adopts punk aesthetics is, by association, already paying homage to Queer culture, intentional or not.

Queer fans notice this- like recognizes like.

2.) Found Family

This also needs little explanation.

Too often, queer individuals cannot rely on their “born into” families for support and acceptance. Too often, we are abused, neglected, and abandoned by those who we were taught would “always be there for us.”

And so, a universal experience for queer people has been redefining the meaning of Family, having to build our families from scratch, finding brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers in people with whom we have no blood relation, and forming communities tied together by shared lived experience rather than shared genetics.

And this idea of Found Family is also built into Sk8′s narrative.

Like, for example, the way that Reki promises MIYA that he and Langa will “never disappear from [his] sight,” filling the void that MIYA felt after his friends abandoned him.

And in the way that JOE becomes a paternal figure for Reki, teaching him ways to improve in skateboarding, and ensuring that Reki doesn’t self isolate when he’s feeling insecure.

And in the whole Ep 6 business with Hiromi acting as babysitter to the Gang.

Hell, even ADAM (derogatory) is associated with this trope. Abused as a child, he finds solace in an underground skateboarding community and culture he helped create- his own found family (or some powertrippy version of it anyway).

Again, queer fans see themselves depicted in the show, but this time in the way that the show gives importance to Found Family relationships between its characters.

3.) Shadow and Drag

This is one that’s more of an association that I personally made. But I was intrigued by the way that Hiromi adopts his SHADOW persona. He wears SHADOW like a mask, and adopts a personality seemingly so opposite to his day-to-day behavior.

Further, the theatricality and general “gender fuckery” of his SHADOW persona, to me, just seemed so similar to a the characteristics of a drag persona (I don’t know a whole lot about drag but enough that I’m drawing superficial similarities).

There’s also this aspect of a “double life” that he, and actually all the other adult characters of the show, have to adopt, which is a way of living that I’m sure a lot of queer viewers see themselves reflected in.

4.) The Hands

Ohhhh the Hands.

One of the things I noticed very early on is the way the show constantly draws our attention to Reki’s hands, which I thought was a little strange for an anime about skating. After all, skating doesn’t really involve the hands, or at least the show doesn’t really draw attention to hands within the context of skating.

I count 3 times so far between Eps 1-9 in which hands are the focus of the frame.

First, when Reki teaches Langa how to fist pump after Langa lands his first ollie, second, when Reki and Langa make their Promise, and finally, when Langa saves Reki from falling off his board.

And you know what they say, twice is a coincidence but thrice is a motif (no one else actually says this I think I’m the only one who says this lol).

I’m not really certain why hands seem to be such a shared fixation among queer people (at least among those I interact with). All I know is that gay people are just fucking obsessed with them.

I have a Theory as to why, and at this point I’d love for other people to chime in and “compare notes” if you will, but I think it basically has to do with repression. And in the same way that queer people have had to redefine the meaning of family, we’ve also had to redefine intimacy.

Being overtly physically affectionate with someone of the same sex, even if they’re your significant other, or often specifically BECAUSE they’re your significant other, can still be dangerous, even now despite the “progression” of society. Queer people know this, this vigilant surveillance of our environment and ourselves, always asking ourselves, “Am I safe enough to be myself?”

Already, Western culture is pretty touch-averse. That is, it’s considered taboo to touch someone unless they’re a family member or a romantic partner. And to touch a person of the same sex in any way that could be misconstrued as romantic (which is most things tbh) is a big no no.

There’s just A Lot to unpack there.

But basically I think that queer people, by necessity, have had to learn to romanticize mundane or unconventional ways of being physically intimate so that we can continue to be romantic with one another without “being caught” so to speak.

Kissing and hugging is too obvious. But a handshake that lingers for just a second too long is much more likely to go unnoticed, braiding someone’s hair can easily be explained away as just lending a helping hand, touching palms to “compare hand sizes” is just good fun.

But for queer people, these brief and seemingly insignificant touches hold greater meaning, because it’s all we are allowed, and all we allow ourselves, to exchange with others.

God, I’ve gone off and rambled again. What’s my point? Basically that the way the show draws attention to Reki’s hands, and specifically how they’re so often framed with Langa’s hands, is one of the major reasons why I clocked Sk8 as a Queer. It’s just something that resonated with me and my own experience of queerness, and I know that I’m not the only one who noticed either.

So in conclusion, uhhhh yeah Sk8 the Infinity is just a super gay show, and it’s not even because of the homo-romantic subtext (that at this point is really just Text).

Because what’s important to understand is that Queerness isn’t just about same-sex romance.

Queer Love isn’t just shared between wives/girlfriends, husbands/boyfriends, and all their in-betweens. Queer Love can be two best friends who come out together, queer siblings who rely and support one another, a gay teacher who helps guide one of their questioning students, a queer community pitching in to help a struggling member.

And that all ties with another important thing to consider, that what we refer to as the “queer experience” or “queer culture” isn’t universal. In fact, it wrongly lumps together the unique experiences and struggles of queer BIPOC all under one umbrella that’s primary White and middle class.

So I think what drives a lot of my frustration about labeling a show like Sk8 as Queerbait is this very issue of considering queerness and queer representation within such narrow standards, and mandating that a show must pass a certain threshold of explicit queerness to be considered good representation.

I get that someone might only feel represented by an indisputable canonization of a same-sex couple. That’s fine. But labeling Sk8 as Queerbait for that reason alone ignores the vast array of other queer experiences.

The aspects of Sk8 that resonate most deeply with my own experiences of queerness is in the way that Reki and Langa share intimacy through skating (intricate rituals heyo). For me, them officially getting together ultimately doesn’t matter- I’ll consider Sk8 a Queer show regardless.

Similarly, @mulberrymelancholy finds ace/arospec representation in that very absence of an on-screen kiss. A bisexual man might find representation in Reki, not because he enters a canon relationship, but in the depiction of Reki’s coming of age, growing up and navigating adolescent relationships. A non-binary person might feel represented through CHERRY’s androgyny.

That’s the thing, I don’t know how this show will resonate with other members of the queer community, and it’d be wrong to make a judgement on Sk8′s queer representation based on my experiences alone.

That being said, Straight people definitely don’t get to judge Sk8 as Queerbait. Y’all can watch and enjoy the show, we WANT you to enjoy these kinds of shows, and we want you to share these shows and contribute to the normalization and celebration of these kinds of narratives.

But understand that you don’t have a right to tell us whether or not Sk8 has good or bad queer representation.

And even members of the queer community are on thin ice. Your experience of queerness is not universal. Listen to the other members of your community, and respect that what you might find lacking in this show may be the exact representation that someone else needs.

#and scene #i was up till 4am writing this instead of doing my hw #bc i hav Opinions dammit #sk8 #sk8 the infinity #sk8 meta #sk8 theory #queerbait

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deadorcaffeinated · 3 years

Text

Sparks, Pt. 4

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Chapter Summary: You get ready to confront the God of Mischief. But are you ready for that?

A/N: Finally, a bit more Loki.

TW: Eating

After a year consisting mostly of isolation and non-consensual experimentation, it was strange, to say the least, to have people actually give a shit about your well-being.

Shortly after Fury called the meeting to a close, Nat took you to a sort of staff room, oddly normal for a ship like this. State of the art, but with all the basic workings of a regular office’s staff room.

“You must be starving,” she said, pulling some things out of an impressive reach-in refrigerator. “Sandwich? I make a mean ham and cheese.”

Your stomach suddenly let out a worrying growl, and you winced.

“Sounds fantastic, actually,” you realized you couldn’t remember the last time you’d eaten. The lab hadn’t exactly been feeding you five star meals.

A comfortable silence settled into the room while Natasha assembled the sandwich. The quiet sounds of her work lulled you into a sort of trance, as you stared at the wall, and definitely didn’t think about how an agent of a secret organization was preparing you lunch on a giant aircraft carrier thousands of feet in the air which was also occupied by two gods, a historic super soldier, and the most famous tech genius in the world.

No. You didn’t think about it at all.

She presented you with her finished product and a glass of water with a flourish, which also included a bag of chips and an apple. “It might be too much, so only eat as much as you want. It’s better to take it easy when your stomach isn’t used to meals like this.”

You nodded and gave her an expression which you hoped looked more grateful than grimace. Truth be told, you were holding back emotion as even this small kindness felt overwhelming after the past year.

But as you picked up the sandwich to take a bite, a heavy set of footsteps stopped at the door.

It was Thor, his large frame standing almost sheepishly in the doorway. “Apologies for interrupting. May I speak with you?”

To your surprise, the question was for you, and after a nod, Nat touched your wrist and said, “I’ll be right outside. You can have the room.”

After she exited, Thor approached your table with a sort of caution.

“Oh, sorry, uh, would you like to sit down?” You stuttered lamely, when noticing his hesitation.

He nodded and did so, dwarfing the chair and the table. You hadn’t really taken the time to notice before, how huge his arms and shoulders were. A single bicep was larger than the size of your own head.

“Don’t let me interrupt your meal. You need your strength,” Thor said, eyes flicking to the plate. “Especially if you’re going to be facing my brother.”

Ah. That.

“Is that…” You were still having a bit of trouble processing the identity of who you were talking to. “Is that what you wanted to speak with me about?”

“Loki’s always been deceptive. I just wanted to warn you not to listen to anything he says, especially not at face value. He will try to distract you, deceive you, and it will seem he knows more about you than he should.”

As he spoke, you noticed he kept eyeing the potato chip packet next to your plate. You pushed it towards him, and he gratefully accepted, popping the bag open and nervously munching on its contents.

You hummed in thought. “I understand. Maybe it would help to know what kinds of abilities he has? What sort of tricks he’s able to pull?”

Thor seemed to relax slightly, having something to occupy his mind and hands. He regaled you with a few anecdotes of how Loki had used his magic to trick him, some from their childhood, and some more recently.

You found yourself both more reassured and more nervous, afraid there might be something you would miss allowing Loki an out. Or a way to hurt you. But all of that aside, it was almost fun to converse with Thor like this… being nearly immortal led to having many interesting stories to tell, and the more he told the more animated he became. He even had you laughing at some points.

“Thank you,” he held up the empty chip bag. “I haven’t had these since my last visit to Earth. A favored Midgardian dish, if I recall.”

You smiled. “No problem. And thank you for warning me. I know it must be difficult to... fight with family like this.”

“Yes,” a sad half smile lifted one side of his lips, “I’m afraid that is something I am still coming to terms with.”

Before he rose from his seat, Thor clapped you on the shoulder. “You know, you remind me of my first Midgardian friends. I believe they would like you. One of them zapped me with a small device that even mimics your powers.”

With that strange but kind remark, Thor left the room.

….

Natasha said she had things she needed to attend to, but that you were welcome to walk around as you pleased, and to just be careful not to stumble into anything that looked even mildly secret or dangerous.

So you aimlessly wandered the giant airship, mostly in an attempt to walk off some nerves. You tried to memorize your paths, memorize the turns and rooms, but after a while you realized just how much you’d fucked up. It was a fruitless endeavor, and you eventually found yourself quite lost.

“Great,” you muttered to yourself.

You turned the way you came, but as you did so, something shifted in the corner of your eye. Whipping frantically towards the movement, you felt your body tense like an animal being hunted, and thoughts of the masked man from the labs flooded your mind.

No, he couldn’t be here. Your mind was playing tricks, your anxiety was getting the better of you.

“My, my,” a silvery voice said into your ear. “You are jumpy, aren’t you?”

Reeling back, you slammed into the opposite wall, nearly knocking yourself out with the force of it. You still didn’t see the source of the voice.

“What is the reason for this skittishness, I wonder?”

Loki.

He materialized in front of you, and you froze like a deer in the headlights. He rolled his eyes. “Calm yourself. This is not an escape attempt.”

You did not find that convincing.

“This is merely a projection. My real body is still in that cell… Here, see for yourself.” His right hand swept out to beckon to you, palm up.

Did he want you to… touch him? Your earlier conversation with Thor filtered through your head, and you knew it would be a bad idea. You did not move. Again, frustration showed on Loki’s creased brow.

“Fine, look.” Then, through a wall of solid steel, Loki passed his hand as if he were just a hologram.

“What do you want?” you asked abruptly.

He looked faintly surprised that you had spoken, but schooled his expression quickly. “I want to know more about you.”

“What?” It was your turn to be surprised (not that you’d stopped since he materialized from nowhere). “Why?”

“It’s not every day I meet a mortal who can withstand an Infinity Stone’s power,” he chuckled, as if that were clearly obvious.

Your blank stare must’ve clued him in to the fact that the significance of this ‘Infinity Stone’ was lost on you, because he only sighed.

“Rest assured, it’s not something a normal human should be able to do,” he said. “So… what is different about you?”

He stepped closer, and though you knew he couldn’t touch you, you recoiled further into the wall. His stare was piercing, and he clearly enjoyed that it made you squirm.

Finally you mustered up the courage to respond. “I’ve already told this story once today,” you said, sounding more like a petulant child than you meant to.

“Touchy subject?”

“It’s not particularly fun to talk about, no.”

He didn’t move any closer but didn’t relinquish you your space either. He just studied you as if he could discern your entire history from your visual being.

You wondered if you should just turn and walk away, or if he had some way of stopping you. Even more unexpected though, was the realization that you wanted to talk to him, that maybe this conversation could help you in your real life encounter that was to happen soon.

“Why did you approach me in the pub?” you asked, and though it wasn’t the answer he apparently wanted, he looked pleased that you were engaging him now. “I was curious.”

“And when you blasted me with the scepter?”

“I wanted to see what would happen.” He shrugged, as casual as if he were discussing the weather.

“And now that you have? What do you want?”

A beat of silence. Then, “What do you think?”

You thought, if he had had a plan before, your presence must have thrown quite the wrench and that if he were smart, he would be trying to figure out exactly how big and disastrous that wrench would be. “I think you didn’t expect me to be involved.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That is true.” Then a smirk began to form on his mouth and he squinted at you. “They’re planning something with you, aren’t they? Fury and his subordinates.”

Your widened eyes must have been all the answer he needed. How did he know?

With a laugh, “They have so much at their disposal, weapons of mass destruction, all of Stark’s technology, and they defer to the prowess of a child they’ve only just met?” Loki leaned in so close the green of eyes felt overwhelming. “They must be truly desperate.”

A familiar voice, Tony’s, called your name from around the corner, echoing off the metal walls of the hallway. But Loki didn’t move. His eyes remained on you, so sharp and curious, you felt like an animal on a dissection tray.

“Until next we meet, then.”

And with that, he vanished.

“Sparks,” Tony came around to your stretch of hallway. “Thought that was your voice. You lost? Talking to yourself? You know, cabin fever usually takes a lot longer than a few hours to set in.”

Still a little too stunned to speak, you gulped and nodded.

Tony’s eyes narrowed with concern. “You good? Looking a little green around the gills, Pikachu.”

“Yeah… yeah, I’m alright.” Your voice returned to you. “And.. Pikachu? Really?”

Tony wasn’t entirely convinced but seemed to let it go. He shrugged. “I like to change it up-- and are you, or are you not, electrically charged at all times?”

You sighed, rolling your eyes. He clapped you on the shoulder.

“Come on,” he turned, waving you to follow him. “Want you to see what we cooked up for ya.”

————

The conducting table was ready. Only a few moments before you stepped into Loki’s cage, the first time you would be in the same physical space as him since he basically almost murdered you.

Cool. All cool. You were definitely not feeling a panic attack setting in. You were definitely breathing at a normal rate and not feeling your lungs seize up in your chest.

“We’ll be right here, if anything goes wrong,” Steve said, laying a hand gently on the back of your shoulder.

“Aye,” Thor said. “I’ll be standing with you.”

There was a stone in your throat as you looked at Loki through the thick glass. He seemed to feel your gaze, and slowly turned to look, grinning when he saw you watching.

Loki’s hands were shackled, sitting on the table in front of two conducting handles, which were mirrored on the other side. The idea was that you both grip them, and you would be able to dig through his mind… theoretically.

“I don’t know if this is going to work,” you said. You felt sweat under your arms, and your face getting hot with anxiety.

Fury eyed you. “Just do what you can.”

The door to his cell whooshed open, and flanking you on either side as you entered were Cap and Thor. Loki regarded them with that same smirk as they entered, soon followed by Fury and Natasha. Tony and Dr. Banner remained on the other side of the glass.

“Is this the best you can do?” He said, his eyes flaring at you. “Insulting, really.”

Fury ignored him, directing you to the empty chair at the other end of the table.

“On my go,” he said, and stood to the right of the table. He pinned Loki with a stare.

Loki shot back a challenging look before his gaze settled on you and his hands moved to grip the handles. “On your go.” And at that moment, in full purview of that slanting grin, you understood why he was called the God of Mischief.

Fury nodded at you.

Now or never.

And, sparing a passing thought to the entropy that was your life and the risks of what you were about to do, you grabbed the handles.

Tags: @purplekitten30 @scorpionchild81 @mjaudrey @srhxpci @the-maroon-panda @lirinstaalem

#sparks #loki #loki x you #loki x reader #avengers reader insert #loki imagine #loki x original character #loki laufeyson

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justalarryblog · 3 years

Note

Hey beca! How are you? Do you have any recommendations fic like hl already in relationships, mpreg harry, they struggle to have a baby? Or arranged married? That have 100k words above? Thanks

Hi anon, thanks for the message! I'm doing fine, I hope you are too. :)

The only one I have mpreg!Harry that they struggle to have a baby is this one:

I Hope You Dance by @wickedarcher_08 (83k) | Explicit

Louis and Harry have been struggling with infertility for over a year. After many failed attempts, they decide to seek a specialist, but they end up with more than they ever dreamed.

For mpreg!Harry that is +100k words, I have:

Say Something by @kingsofeverything (105k) | Explicit

At fifty years old and recently divorced, Omega Harry Styles isn’t interested in dating. When his doctor suggests a heat and rut matching service, he signs up out of necessity. It’s the only use he has for an Alpha in his life.

Twenty-eight-year-old Alpha Louis Tomlinson aims to change that.

I also have a tag for Mpreg fics in case you wanna check if there's any other to your liking.

For arranged married, I've read these:

Through Eerie Chaos by @mediawhorefics (102k) | General Audiences

For as long as anyone can remember, Old Hillsbridge Manor has always been believed to be haunted. Everyone in the village agrees and keeps a respectful, fearful, distance. New in town after a bad breakup and an internship that led to disappointment rather than a permanent job, Harry Styles figures taking pictures of the decrepit building could be a great new creative project. Or at least a much-needed distraction while he searches for a job and crashes at his parents’ new house. No one warned him about the apparitions though; about the music, the laughter, the people who flicker and vanish when you call after them, the echoes of a past that should be long gone… Harry has never believed in spirits but even he can admit that there’s something weird going on. What starts as mere curiosity evolves into a full-blown investigation and soon enough, Harry finds himself making friends with an aristocrat from the 1920s and struggling with finding the best way to tell him that he’s dead.

The Ghost Hunter AU where Niall lives to prove ghosts are real, Zayn is a skeptical librarian and Harry gets caught up in a century-old mystery and catches feeling in the process.

Part 1 of Through Eerie Chaos

tastes like summer, smiles like may by @outropeace (47k) | Explicit

“Is this true?” Harry grabbed the beta by the shoulders. “Bryce, where did you hear that?”

“There’s rumors going around the castle,” he smirked. “stories about his beauty and his cold attitude. They know he is an omega only because of his scent, but he has never had a heat.”

“Do you know what this means?”

Bryce smirk grew into a big smile. “He can’t give you an heir.”

A cold prince, an alpha with nothing left to lose and a kingdom with a secret.

Praise the Mutilated World by @creamcoffeelou, @delsicle (106k) | Explicit

It was August when everything changed.

By October, the leaves changed, and so did Louis’ heart.

OR: An enemies to lovers dystopian au where Harry is an elite alpha and Louis is a rebel omega with too much to fight for. Every move made is monitored, and a fertile omega’s purpose in life is one thing: to give children to their alpha.

a dream is a wish your heart makes by orphan_account (22k) |Teen And Up Audiences

Fairytale retelling of Cinderella, where Harry is a servant boy who’s too kind, Louis is a prince in an arranged marriage, Liam is Harry’s step brother, and Niall is Louis’ dutiful grand duke.

Si Pudiera Volar by @softfonds (68k) | Explicit

When Harry’s fiancé leaves him for his cousin, he looks the other way for the sake of his happiness. He’ll do anything to forget about him, including joining a monastery. It isn’t until his cousin’s former lover, a pirate, appears that he realizes everything is not as it appears, and an honest pirate might be the only person worthy of his heart.

Or, a fic loosely based on Corazon Salvaje.

The Murmur of Yearning by @mediawhorefics (93k) | Mature

Four years ago, Harry Styles was forced into a marriage of convenience to enrich and ally both his and his promised’s families. The sudden, and slightly suspicious, death of the Marquess of Haxshire, however, brings great disturbance to Crescentfield Hall and, as his late’s husband’s closest male relative, Harry unexpectedly finds himself the head of a family he never felt he belonged to. Between a meddling distant cousin hellbent on inserting himself in Harry’s life, his wicked and mistrustful mother-in-law and his late husband’s advisors refusing to help or take him seriously, Harry struggles in the fight to keep what he’s earned and make the Estate finally feel like home.

Luckily, he doesn’t stand completely alone and finds himself an unlikely ally in Mr Tomlinson, the elusive Land Stewart who has been taking care of the property in the shadows for years. Louis Tomlinson is caring, patient, and unlike everyone else, he doesn’t seem to think Harry committed a murder.

the sanctity of patience by @scrunchyharry (22k) | Teen And Up Audiences

When young Lord Harry was chosen by King Louis of Bavaria to become his husband and prince consort, Harry thought all of his dreams had come through. His illusions came crashing down when he understood it meant living in isolation in the alpine castle of Neuschwanstein with a husband who turned out to be far from what he had hoped for.

His illusions vanished, Harry will have learn to appreciate what has and even, perhaps, fall in love with his imperfect husband and his castle.

Winter Pines and Ocean Eyes by @binarysunsets (14k) | Teen And Up Audiences

Harry is awoken by the sudden weight of his dog across his chest, and he yawns and stretches his arms above his head, relishing the crack of his back the gesture produces and sending Fen tumbling down onto the bed. There’s a niggling sensation that he has something important to do that day, but in his still-sleepy state he’s struggling to recall what it is. When it hits him, he freezes mid-rub of his eyes, and his hand slowly falls to the furs strewn across the bed. His fingers tangle into the fur and he bites his lip.

Right. It’s that day.

The day he’s meant to travel south.

Or, the arranged marriage au between young viking Harry, son of his clan’s chief, and a certain caesar by the name of Louis, heir to the empire.

Liberté by @larriebane(64k) | Mature

AU. 1647. “Pretending you don’t have a heart is not the best way to not get it broken. It’s just the easiest.”

Or the pirate AU I always wanted to write

Teenage Rebellion Never Worked Out So Well by @panda_bear21 (55k) | Not Rated

“I’m an adult!” He glanced down at Harry, who seemed anything but at the moment, where he was definitely on the brink of a temper tantrum. “We’re both adults!” Jay glanced to Anne again, before breathing out a heavy sigh. “Yes, but you’re both adults that do not have jobs and who live off of our money… Which means, you have to do what we say… or you’ll have to find a new place to live.” “You wouldn’t do that.” Louis dared, hoping his glare was enough to guilt trip his mother into calling the whole thing off. Or to tell them that it had all just been a huge joke and they weren’t actually being forced into marrying a complete stranger. “Oh, but we would.”

Or the super cliché arranged marriage fic where things escalate way too quickly.

infinitely all for me by @swallowsmateforlife (10k)| Explicit

The Alpha Louis’ been betrothed to since he was 14 has finally come of age and Louis’ been delivered to his home.

or: the one where they figure it all out

keep me safe, keep me sane, keep me honest by @hilourry (8k) | Explicit

Louis is the Prince of England. All past omega princes and princesses have been married and pregnant at age 18, so his parents arrange him to be married to Harry Styles, the royal family’s PR guy.

Sail Across Me by @iwillpaintasongforlou (21k) | Explicit

Harry is a prince that is about to be forced into marriage against his will and running away to sea seems like a much better option. Louis is the captain of the infamous pirate ship The Rogue and he has a thing for helping defenseless creatures. Especially when they're as pretty as this one.

London is well worth a mass by @dolphinaaaa (93k) | Not Rated

Louis is an Omega prince of France. When he is 13, he is betrothed to Harry of England for politics. The wedding will seal the alliance between the two coutries. This is their story.

Please feel free to check my fic tags if you want to search for other fics! Happy reading, anon!

#anon #answered #fic rec #mpreg fics #mpreg!harry #arranged marriage

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pateldevs · 3 years

Note

Hi! I hope I'm not bothering you, but I love your mood board edits and was wondering if you could explain how you go about making/colouring them? I see lots of places to find gifs but turning them into a set is so hard. Thank you in advance!

hi! first of all thank you so much and second of all it’s not a bother at all! i am happy to give some of my own tips even if my explanation probably isn’t super helpful. i won’t give like a ps tutorial but below the cut (since i included example gifs, it’s VERY long) is my process for my latest jily aesthetic:

i keep track of all my ideas/sets in a spreadsheet (which i won’t show bc there’s a lot of info i’d have to blur/black out) but i always have a list of what scenes i need to gif/what gifs i’m editing and where i’m getting them from. i also include a couple extra ideas in case the gifs i have planned end up being too hard to color or don’t fit in the set. i’ve found it’s best/easiest to start w the list bc there is literally nothing worse than spending hours on a set and then not being able to complete it.

as for actually finding the material, i have a pretty healthy number of scene packs saved in my giffing folder, esp. for things i know i will gif frequently. most of the time i will peruse youtube, vimeo, and instagram for any aesthetic scenes. i also have a lot of gif packs saved specifically for the purpose of making mbs (usually i mix my own gifs w gif packs), if you msg me i’m happy to direct you to some gif packs i use regularly or you can check my #resources tag. a couple tips for finding material:

always opt for download when possible, i used to screen record and the difference when i switched to downloading was astronomical. (it’s easy to lose quality and esp if you’re on mac, quicktime duplicates frames so either you have to manually delete those extras or you get sort of choppy gifs when you load them into ps.)

always use 1080p or better, 720p will work in a pinch for 268px or 177px gifs since you can make up some of that resolution loss with sharpening, but don’t go any lower than that, just love yourself.

for pale sets, look for the right colors. i tend to look for scenes w high color contrast especially if it features poc so it’s easier to color without whitewashing, ie if the subject is a person then i look for light colored or blue/green/violet/white backgrounds. it’ll make your life wayyyyy easier. this also means if you’re making a set try to find scenes with already similar lighting bc you won’t have to work so hard to make it look cohesive.

here’s a quick rundown of what i do before coloring:

import all frames and save all the files in a folder together!!

play around with frame delay so all the gifs are moving at about the same speed, usually keep it between 0.03-0.05s

crop and resize gifs (i use 268x145 most of the time)

convert to timeline

when it comes to coloring it can be really hit or miss, i’ve recently gotten back into my groove but i was having sooo much trouble earlier this year. in general, don’t stress yourself out!! sometimes it’s easier to just find a new scene/gif (hence my list of extras!) than to try too hard to fit a gif into your set. i color all my gifs by scratch (ie no psds) but i tend to follow the same pattern, i’ll explain using these gifs/psd as an example since then i can also explain how to fix white-washing:

first off when you’re coloring gifs with poc always always always make a layer mask so you can compare the edited and unedited skin tones directly! i use the marquee tool to make a selection in the middle of the character’s face, select the folder of my adjustment layers, and hit ‘add vector mask’ (the third button from the left on the layers panel, it’s a white rectangle with a circle in it).

i almost always begin by using hue/saturation layers to highlight and delete certain colors. here i highlighted red and raised the lightness on yellow by a lot since it’s a very yellow scene. then i use a combination of brightness/contrast, levels, and curves layers to brighten the scene. here’s what i have now:

i add a gradient map set to black/white, change the blending to exclusion, and lower the opacity to between 5-10% (depending on the scene) to lighten the contrast further:

then i add back a little depth with selective color in neutrals and blacks:

now i have two main goals: 1. add contrast between the background and the subject, and 2. brighten the scene into a pale gif. to do this, i use color balance to tweak the color of the background, taking out the yellows. this step works best if there’s at least some shade difference between your subject and background, otherwise isolating the two will be impossible. here’s what i have after adding color balance:

i use hue/saturation to selectively highlight the background color. in this case i chose to adjust magenta and used the color picker (the first eyedropper on the left) to identify the exact shade i wanted to lighten. now i have a fairly neutral background and a colorful subject, which gives a sort of pale effect:

and now i use a curves layer and a selective color (white) layer to brighten further:

before i go further, i start fixing white-washing. keep in mind that some variance is normal since you are naturally changing the lighting of the scene; this gif shows it rlly clearly bc of how yellow and dim the lighting is, so some lightening is to be expected. however, both because the vector mask shows a lot of whitening and because i’ve giffed dev patel before and have a general idea of what he looks like in this type of lighting, i know what needs to be fixed, so i go back in under the psd/adjustment layers with a combination of selective color (red and neutral) and hue/saturation layers to darken his skin again:

now that some more contrast has been added in, i can go back to working on the psd and use curves and selective color to play around with the background again:

i use another hue/saturation layer and a black/white gradient to tone down oversaturation:

usually i leave those layers on top, so if i want to make any adjustments (like lightening the background more), i go in under those two. in this case i tweaked the whites and reduced the contrast a little to get this:

again, you can see his skin tone has changed from the original, but variation is to be expected given how much brighter the room is, the fact that i took out a lot of yellow lighting, and the brightening effect of the computer screen in front of him. some other things to keep in mind when coloring:

when you add layers to correct white-washing, you’re likely to end up with overly red/orange skin tones (red-washing). this can be fixed by upping cyans in the reds, desaturating/darkening the reds, or adding b/w or desaturation later on.

when in doubt, it’s better to be darker than lighter (the issue with white-washing is that it promotes colorism, and there is nothing inherently wrong with a darker skin tone) but really. just put in the effort to color poc correctly.

when changing the lighting a lot it helps to look at pictures of the subject in natural/bright lighting, since you get a better idea of what their normal skin tone is.

don’t try to squeeze all your selective color layers into one. you’ll get less grainy gifs if you separate them out and work one by one.

TURN OFF NIGHT SHIFT/NIGHT MODE! yes i KNOW it’s bad for your eyes (especially if you’re like me and gif at night, when the lighting outside isn’t changing every 20 seconds) but your gifs will look VERY different under f.lux or night mode compared to daytime screens. especially if you’re giffing at different times of day, blue light filters can really change the way your coloring appears. best to keep it consistent.

my sharpening settings vary depending on what i’m giffing but in general i do two layers of smart sharpen (500% with radius between 0.2-0.4, 10% with radius at 10px) and then gaussian blur at 2.5px and adjust the opacity so it’s somewhere between 15-20%. i try to strike a balance between smoothing out the graininess from selective color, and sharpening details like clothes and hair. here’s what i ended up with for the gif above:

then i rinse and repeat for the rest of the gifs in the set! i tend to start with the gifs that i know will be hardest to color, which is usually the darker ones (coloring is limited by how much i can brighten the scene) and those that include poc (again, limited by how much i can brighten and adjust the scene’s lighting without white-washing). then i check set cohesion as i go, using those first few gifs as benchmarks. once i have all 8 (or 9 or 10) gifs, i play around with composition and try to balance and vary the subject, colors, and composition of gifs next to each other. i go back and make a couple of adjustments here and there according to what i observe and what i think might improve the overall appearance.

and that’s pretty much it! i hope this was helpful, if you have other questions feel free to message me and i’d be happy to help/troubleshoot. happy giffing!

#Anonymous #*#resources #answered #sorry this was sO long but i hope it helped on the coloring end #tbh i exceeded my own expectations with the dev gif lol #yeahps #completeresources #chaoticresources #tutorial #coloring tutorial

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alistonjdrake · 3 years

Text

June’s World Building Cheat Sheet Part Nine: Multicultural

I kind of touched on these subjects before but as I’ve been doing lately I’ve had more thoughts and I want to do a deeper dive.

Honestly while I’ve been thinking about this for a while and briefly mentioned it in a previous post, it really hit me when I was playing Crusader King’s 3 and my character became the Norwegian-Irish Emperor of Britannia and France, and a lot of my subjects had some qualms with my cultural identity and as I watched areas of England get Norwegian-nized and names changed I started thinking about cultural markers.

To put it simply, a “cultural marker” is basically just something to quickly pinpoint where someone is from or what their heritage is. Of course these are not always super specific and there is overlap. Like, me saying I speak English does not immediately make it obvious that I’m American. But if I talked about what I grew up eating, regional slang, some things people wore commonly, you would probably be able to narrow it down. There’s also what I tend to refer to as the stereotypical cultural markers so if someone was to say “I’m from X” what’s the first thing that comes to people’s mind that they relate to that place and that culture?

I also started thinking deeply about language and language as an extension of someone’s identity. This also stood out to me in the case of empires or in places were dozens of cultures have blended. At some point, language either is or isn’t an extension of someone’s background but the language someone does speak can say a lot about them or the area they grew up as I mentioned in my last post with regional dialects or when a certain language might be considered the “default” among some characters.

Now, as always, I have to say I do not think it’s extremely pressing to give fantasy cultures so many layers. I don’t think it’s always necessary to have a throwaway line about people speaking multiple languages in your metropolitan city or the fact that the culture is either not a monolith on its own or new people have moved in. Do I think it spices things up a little bit? Of course. That’s why I’m talking about it.

The lack of especially falls short to me in settings, as mentioned, that are empires or densely populated or considered “centers” of the world. How many times have I read a fantasy university or guild settings or these expansive cities and all the characters were more or less from the exact same place, all spoke the same language, pretty much ate the same things, and had the same opinions on anything not a huge plot point.

So Let’s Talk About Language (Again)

I’m not gonna lie. My nerd brain loved it when my Norwegian-Irish emperor took over England and instead of the names of familiar places changing completely they were just changed to sound slightly more Norwegian while still looking enough like what it used to be. I am upset with myself for never considering this before in my own work or thinking about it when I craft fantasy worlds, especially in settings where one group or place takes over another. The language would change or there would be shifts due to either

The sounds for the original thing they’re trying to say do not exist in their language

That’s simply how they pronounce it

Maybe they were feeling frisky that day and decided to change it just because.

I think we see this most often especially with borrowed words. When a word more or less exists in several languages maybe because they’re taking on a title or a position, it’s not so much that the word changes but each one has to put their spin on it. Not always intentionally it might just be how they say it given either the limitations of their own tongue or how they heard it.

In my last post I began to touch on this with the introduction of people speaking the same language differently in my Grazan Escan vs “regular” Escan dialect (the basis of this discussion just that people who live in Graza in my setting speak the language slightly different than non-Grazans which sometimes makes the language hard to understand for even native speakers). Last night I had another breakdown about how much I hate the common tongue and the concept of the common tongue and I’d like to also mention that if there is going to be a “common” language in a setting, I myself tend to use Escan as the common language because Escan is an imperial nation and have intentionally spread their language all over the place so a lot of my characters speak it, I think it is important to have some context as to why a language would be so widespread/ common. Someone would have had to go to these far places and teach people how to speak this language (and somehow walk away with it having no regional differences). Why would people in this setting think it a good idea to even learn this language if they have their own and rarely communicate with people outside of their community? What is the impact of a character having to take up another language in order to? In my recently finished draft of The Night Court, due to my own temporarily fleeting memory I forgot one of the main characters was going to a place where he could not speak the language and spent that entire half of the book asking for translations and not being able to speak to certain characters directly. Which, now that I’m done with the draft I appreciate more because I’ve definitely been in situations where I’m in a new place and my poor planning and education made me the only one who couldn’t speak the language and I had to have friends help me.

This is where language as an extension of identity comes in. Could this character have assumed that his first language was dominant enough where he could travel to new places and not have to learn anything else? Or was it just bad luck and now he feels isolated in a setting where he cannot speak to anyone? What are the implications behind someone’s first language based on where they live? I just wrote two posts now talking about Prince Toli of the Escana Empire’s first language not being Escan and how that impacted his early life and how he appears by the time we meet him in the books. What does it say about the world characters live in where what language they speak and what language they learned to speak first has such an impact?

And in the reverse, what is the perception of someone being multilingual? It is expected in a setting? It is a bonus? A requirement of certain jobs or positions? A necessity to live in certain areas? Given how much court intrigue and political scheming I write I tend to have characters switch languages to avoid spies or eavesdroppers but on the other hand it’s also easier to make new allies if you extend the branch by speaking their language.

Are there official languages? Court languages? Trade tongues? Coded languages you’d only learn for very specific purposes?

Clothes And Culture: Sumptuary Laws & The Fashion Police.

This is a point I missed completely in my fashion post and I’m sorry about that. As with all my “advice” I feel it important to note I don’t ever expect anyone to go the extra mile nor do I usually think people need to. These are just things I like to sprinkle into a setting to give in breathing room or background information so it doesn’t feel like it was created just to serve a story purpose, but that it’s a world people live in.

On that note. I’m very passionate about clothing. I’m encountered a lot of fantasy fashion in my day and I understand why people don’t ever find it relevant to mention certain things but as my setting is a late 18th century world in which the common people are starting to realize that royalty kinda sucks, it’s something I can talk about.

Like, the extensive labor that goes into making sure my royal characters have 100s of different outfits. Fashion is cheaper than its ever been but that was not always the case. There’s a reason why often see people in ye old days with only like 2 outfits for any given occasion. Characters and people who had constant changes weren’t just fashion forward, they were showing off wealth whether or not that was front of mind. To give some context as a lover of historical fashion and beautifully detailed garments, I did some quick math to see how long it would take me to recreate one of my favorite gowns by and. Given the intricate details, all the delicate beading and lace and all the fabric I’d have to buy (I didn’t even get into costs) it would have taken me at minimum 50 years.

Now does anyone need characters going around talking about how Princess Zurina is wearing a gown that would have taken one man 50 years if not for the staff of seamstresses who likely work on her wardrobe? No. If a character in a setting is a seamstress or if the story has anything to do with wealth distribution and the extravagance and waste of the super rich, sure maybe throw it in there. One half of the book I’m working on is about political cartoons criticizing the royalty and wouldn’t you know if I go back to the time period I’m basing my work off of, you can find a lot of jokes and slights towards outrageous dress because people back then understand the labor that went into these garments.

This is where I’m going to mention sumptuary laws. Basically, whenever I do my dives into fashion history I’ll find a lot of policing towards the way people dress. I mean we still have them now but maybe they’re not as apparent to us? And a lot of them used to be more class-oriented. One should not dress above their “means” or status which is where we get certain fabrics or colors meant only for certain types of people. But it also happened in the reverse where certain groups are designated things to wear so other members of the community know who and what they are. People not being allowed to wear certain things either because they would be related to deviance or offensive. Like characters in my setting cannot wear any shade of green around the king because dark green is the Escana mourning color and it would be considered as cursing the king to die.

Are there punishments for wearing the “wrong” thing? Is exaggerated wealth or having too many outfit changes something calls criticism if the character is at the top of the food chain (or maybe criticism them no mater social standing)? Are there any unwritten dress codes in a setting that people unknowingly follow? In settings where multiple cultures might exist or people from different backgrounds exist in the same place, do their choices in dress reflect cultural markers? And is there a stark difference between traditional (to a culture) clothing and modern dress?

I think really I’m spewing this out because I want to see more culturally rich settings that reflect some of the stuff that I think is the most interesting things about a person which is what they wear and how they speak. But again, this is a personal preference and it’s just stuff I think about.

#world building #worldbuilding #long post #is this advice so much as me talking about things I think are cool?#idk really #I want to be clear I don't expect to open a book and see like outlines of fashion laws or something but I like small added details like the #green thing or maybe a character saying they had to learn a new language in order to be in x place #y'know this is also relevant to sci-fi #I think if I see another character travel to a different planet and have no mention of language barriers or having had to learn #I'm going to explode #it's just one line I'm not asking for a conlang

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myautisticpov · 4 years

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So, I made a post a while ago that got popular enough to just destroy my mentions.

And, like, I’ve been on and off annoyed about that because it was venting about how being autistic can lead to developing a specific kind of social anxiety through you not recognising the social cues of rejection, and that leading to you seeing them everywhere as you overcompensate.

And it really was venting, and it had a kind of negative energy that I don’t 100% avoid at all times, but I try not to rely on, and so it’s frustrating that it’s so popular and most of my notifications now are just reblogs that have that same negative energy (which I specifically avoid posting because I know seeing it all the time isn’t good for my mental health).

Anyway, another blog reblogged it recently to add a positive spin, of like, “actually, it’s important to remember that this anxiety is just anxiety and most people do actually want you around.”

And this was good. 10/10, the only reason I haven’t reblogged it back here with an addition of “actually, I’m really glad someone added something positive to this post” is that I’ve been busy.

Except now, the reblog chain has turned into “Yeah, no one ever rejects you ever, You. Are. Valid. And. Loved.”

And, like...

That feels like too far in the other direction.

Like I’m being told that my actual experiences of rejection never happened.

And, like, “loved” by whom?

“Valid” by whose authority?

Some rando on the internet?

Because, like, at this point in my life, yes, the problem is that I have learned defences that need to come down.

But I didn’t learn those defences in a vacuum.

Some people aren’t loved.

Or the people who do love them can’t be there enough to form a real emotional support.

That is a cold, hard fact of life that I don’t think it helps anyone to ignore.

I have gone through years of my life when I had No One.

When my family had bigger problems than my isolation and I had no friends.

And, like, don’t get me wrong, I get a lot out of “uwu you’re valid” statements, this is not a blanket “this has no value” thing.

But when someone says “hey, I have trauma because X happened and now I have to unlearn my defence mechanisms”

“But X never happens! And don’t forget that strangers on the internet think you’re valid!” is kind of... super invalidating?

X might be unlikely. The defence mechanisms might do more harm than X itself.

But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, and it doesn’t mean that certain marginalised groups aren’t more affected by it than others.

I’ve had this a lot with different kinds of posts. Like, it’s been incredibly common for me to talk about a difficulty I’ve had and for people to think they’re helping by pretending that it never happened because that’s the easier narrative.

“No one ever thinks badly of strangers, that’s just in your head!”

Or “No one ever has a bad therapist, that’s just an excuse not to seek help!”

Or any number of other responses to posts where I’m like “hey, maybe the bad thing does happen, and while that doesn’t mean that I don’t need to get over it in my personal life, maybe we also need to address it on a broader scale”.

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scripttorture · 3 years

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Not sure if this would really be relevant, but you're the best resource I can think of for prison systems. In a secluded supermax prison with all male staff & all male prisoners, they suddenly get a single (like 19 or 20 y/o) female prisoner who "can't go anywhere else & needs to be kept heavily restrained." What's the warden's best option for making sure she's safe & treated with respect for the first few days/weeks till they can get female guards? Modern setting, mostly American style prison.

I feel like I know enough about this to be helpful but I’ve never claimed to be an expert on prisons and I think you should try to double check what I say. Partly because I think that the ‘best option’ in a case like this would be heavily biased by opinion and what you consider the best outcome to be. I don’t want you to mistake my opinion for fact or discount the idea that you might think differently presented with the same evidence.

I also think this is the kind of case where there’s a big difference between what should happen and what would likely happen.

It’s also worth stating at the outset that, in my opinion, the American prison system is set up in a way which inherently makes abuse more likely. And that makes a difference. When the system itself is already set up in a way which makes torture more likely the efforts of individuals within those systems are… less likely to be effective.

We’re talking about a system where solitary confinement is the first rather then the last resort. Use of solitary confinement over the safe period (1 week) is routine, with prisoners in maximum security facilities often being kept in isolation for months or years.

Which causes mental health problems to a disabling degree and drastically increases the chances of suicide or self mutilation.

Rape is still common and while it’s often discussed in terms of attacks by fellow prisoners, a lot of attacks are by guards. Especially when you’re talking about women prisoners and juvenile prisoners. Incidentally it was only in 2012 that the US started recommending against cross-gender searches of women prisoners.

And a lot of guards in American women’s prisons are men. I found figures of 40% based on data from 2007 and up to 70% for federal facilities from 2011. Both of these were cited figures from books I don’t have full access to. I can’t confidently say how accurate these figures are or how the authors came by them. I can confidently say that there are male guards in female prisons and that this has been linked to abuse (based on the testimony of rape survivors in American prisons).

While we’re on the subject the kind of restraint use I think you’re referring to is torture. You can find descriptions of its use in Chinese prisons over here.

Essentially humans are not designed to withstand long periods with little to no movement, or holding the same position for a long time. It is unhealthy. It causes a significant amount of damage to the body. Sometimes it’s lethal.

Now if you didn’t know this that is OK.

I’m here because I know a lot of this kind of information isn’t common knowledge and that it’s hard to find. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing something, we all learn sometime.

We’ll circle back to restraint tortures and alternatives in a moment. For now let’s focus on prisons

I think that the most likely thing to happen in an American prison is that this character would be thrown in solitary confinement and kept there.

You can read about how harmful that would be here.

I also think that it’s unlikely an American prison, having decided to house a woman in a male prison, would hire female guards specifically to accommodate one prisoner. And I think a woman in this environment would be especially vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.

You can read about that here.

There’s an in-depth Reuters investigation on the deaths of women in American jails that you can find here. It contains a graphic description of a dead baby, born in a jail, as well as descriptions of systemic racism towards black women and abuse of the mentally ill. (Seriously if you’re a black woman and pregnant or a mother of a young child don’t read it.)

If you want to write a female character being put into an institution designed for men in America… that’s what it looks like. Higher rates of preventable deaths.

Here’s the thing though: You do not have to make the situations in your story as bad as they are in real life.

There is nothing wrong with deciding that the characters in your fiction get treated with more care and respect then is the norm in real life. It might not be realistic but we are writing fiction.

And there is a difference between a story which is unrealistic in favour of the torturer and one which is unrealistic in favour of the victim.

Having said that: If you want to create a fictional, less abusive prison system for this story it will not look anything like an American prison.

I have… some rather complicated feelings about the idea of setting the story in America and then presenting the prison system as better then it is. Remember that I am a pacifist and I was raised in Saudi Arabia. I say this because I feel as though the abuses in the American prison system are whitewashed in the media America exports.

If I was writing a story set in Saudi which involved imagining a better, less abusive prison system I’d feel confident my readers would know this didn’t reflect the reality. I feel like they would understand without being told that I was trying to imagine a better version of my home rather then trying to accurately show the prisons there.

I do not think that would be the case if you did the same thing in an American setting.

I’ve talked enough about the negatives. Let’s move on to how we can make this idea work.

The way I see it the big choice here is whether you want to keep the setting and the abusive use of restraints or whether you want the character to be safe and treated with respect while incarcerated.

If you’re picturing the character being held in a way that renders her more or less completely immobile (like a restraint chair or a bed) then there’s a pretty decent chance she’d die within the first couple of weeks regardless of any other abuse. There’s a reason restraints aren’t commonly used in hospitals and mental health facilities any more: they increase the chances of sudden death. Even in young healthy people.

There’s a case you can read about here that’s a decent example. Young, 27 year old man, partially restrained for ten days after a mental health episode. Dead from a heart attack in ten days.

Obviously not everyone who is completely restrained for weeks dies of a heart attack. But bed sores exist. So do bladder infections caused by catheters and muscle wastage and a host of other ailments that are cured by simply letting someone move around.

Honestly combined with solitary and the high chance of sexual abuse I think that full body restraint is probably throwing too many tortures into the story. Because all of these individually are complex issues and the harm each of them does is routinely downplayed. Handling all of them in the same narrative would be really tough and the restraints are the easiest one to get rid of.

If you’re picturing something more like the restraint torture (constantly wearing hand and leg cuffs) described in the Chinese case I linked to above, survival is a lot more likely. That’s to do with the degree of movement victims are capable of.

A person who is immobile with their muscles under strain is in a stress position. The death rates for those rise sharply after 48 hours. A person who is immobile when their muscles aren’t under strain (eg restrained to a bed with six point restraints) is not in a stress position. But they’re at greater risk of a heart attack or stroke and after weeks they’ll start to develop bed sores (assuming they’re not lying in a pool of their own waste.)

A person who’s restrained in a way that lets them walk, but slowly, lets them stand, but not straight, is experiencing a restraint torture. They probably won’t get kidney failure (the cause of death in stress positions) and they’re less likely to get a heart attack or a stroke.

There are still serious health effects. Muscle wastage and weakness afterwards is very common. Survivors of this particular torture tend to report chronic pain and joint problems. I’m not entirely sure what causes this but since it’s very consistent I’d guess it’s a physical effect of long term restraint use.

Survivors also tend to report some mobility problems afterwards. There’s a loss of fine motor control and often some difficulty performing day to day tasks that require raising and lowering the arms. Like putting on a jacket unaided or hanging washing on a line or taking things down from a cupboard above the head. This could be due to nerve damage, damage to muscles or ligaments at the joints or both.

These sorts of restraints don’t leave victims in a stress position; which is why they can survive for months or more rarely years while restrained (stress positions are only consistently survivable up to 48 hours.) But nonetheless they do leave victims in a constant state of pain. The restraints dig in. The position and inability to straighten is painful, especially for the joints. A lot of victims report being unable to sleep because of the restraints.

And sleep deprivation causes it’s own problems which you can read about here.

I might be on the wrong track here but generally no one has to be restrained. So the inclusion of that in the ask made me think this story might have elements of fantasy, sci fi or super hero genres: a character with a special ability that can only be used under certain circumstances.

I had a problem with something like that in one of my stories recently. The character in question can manipulate how people think and feel using her voice. And I racked my brains trying to think of a way the police in the story could keep her imprisoned once they caught her. I looked up all sorts of sedatives, thought about solitary and all kinds of over the top abusive stuff that fiction teaches us is a go-to practical solution.

I didn’t want to use them. I didn’t want her to be tortured.

And then it hit me: her guards could just wear noise cancelling headphones.

Sometimes the answer really is that simple.

Think about this character’s power set, if that’s part of the problem here. Really consider what she can do and how she does it. Have you got an underlying chemical process going on? If it’s magic what’s the cause and effect for it? What are her limits? What is her range?

Use that to think about when the power breaks down and why. And if you’re writing fanfiction based on a canon with poorly defined magical abilities…. Make something up to define how she does what she does.

Focus and concentration is a commonly used way of doing this. I saw a brilliant program a while back where the main character actually had no idea how his powers worked and was as surprised and elated as everyone else when they did. I try to come up with strict, simple definitions of a character’s powers/abilities. Then I work to try and find inventive ways of applying that. Find a method that works for you and don’t be afraid to try a few different approaches.

Unless you’ve written yourself into a corner, chances are this character (like mine) doesn’t need to be restrained or isolated.

And if you have written yourself into a corner, you can write yourself out of it again. Either with the choices you make now or by going back and editing what you already have.

On a similar note if you want this character to be in a better, less abusive system does she have to be in a male prison and does she really, absolutely have to be in America?

Because if you want the lowest possible rates of violence and abuse today that means the Scandinavian prison system. You can find out more about it here and here for Norway.

You can read more about global prison systems here.

The gist of it is that there are huge systematic differences. Prison guards in Norway are trained for 2-3 years on specially designed course and the ratio of staff to prisoners is almost 1:1. (For contrast in the UK, which is closer to the US system training takes 12 weeks and the ratio is 1:4.) Prison guards in Norway are well paid, facilities are well staffed and guards are allowed generous breaks and holidays.

This creates a system where staff are not overly stressed, sleep deprived or pressured to achieve unreasonable ‘results’. Training focuses on conflict resolution, this along with a less pressurised working environment this creates a better overall environment for staff and prisoners. Force is really considered a last resort and staff are provided with the tools, training and support necessary to make that a reality.

There’s also effort put into the physical construction of these facilities: cells aren’t cramped, overcrowded or unsuitable for human habitation.

I’m not trying to claim these prisons are perfect. There is still a big trend of prolonged solitary confinement use in Norway and other Scandinavian countries. There is still abuse in prisons.

But- Well I can’t compare directly with US prisons because I didn’t find statistics using similar measures for violent attacks. However I can compare with the UK. With a prison population of about 3,200 Norway had 181 attacks on staff. The UK, with a prison population of 83,300, had a little over 10,000 attacks.

I think if you really want to write something with the least potential for abuse then you’re better off imagining an international (or explicitly Scandinavian) institution built more along the lines of the Norwegian system.

If you’ve got your heart set on an American, male prison being the only place this character can be then I think the ‘best’ thing a well intentioned warden in that position could do is throw her in solitary and have her kept on suicide watch.

The safe period for solitary confinement is about a week.

After that she’d start to show signs of mental health problems which would get worse the longer she was held. By about the 1-2 month point these problems are probably going to be permanent. Beyond that the chances of self harm and suicide attempts starts to rise. So does the chance she’ll have a psychotic break and start hallucinating. After a year you’re looking at multiple suicide attempts and chances of self mutilation. By which I mean things like trying to destroy your own hands, legs, face etc.

The decision about what’s right for your story is always yours. You know these characters, the setting and the kind of narrative you’re telling best.

Pick the options that best fit with what you want from the story and the characters. Because that’s the best decision for the story.

But if you’re writing about an abusive system don’t gloss over the abuse. If you’re writing about a torturous practice in prisons (like solitary confinement) don’t ignore the life long damage it causes.

I hope that helps. :)

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nightswithkookmin · 3 years

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Hi Goldy! I am curious about your take on how Jikook are edited in the behind the scenes clips since October (such as the ones for the Life Goes on music video, ABC Holiday Dynamite, and the Japan one (search on youtube for BTS japan shoot || behind the scene of Japan)). Do you think Jikook are interacting less, being just friends, being more professional, or is BigHit editing their interactions out? It just seems so different from the ones before Oct (FILA, Dynamite MV, Season's Greetings 2021)

Huh???😲😲😲

BigHit is doing what what now?😥

Do you mean that as a fact or theory?🤔

Why though?👀 They are not Tae Kook? 😥

There's Bangtan video of Jimin with his third leg dangling loose in the air somewhere on the internet, I don't think BigHit is that savvy.

Lmho. I mean I see what you mean but they are editors and cutting is what they do for a living. But this is Jikook sis. I don't see BigHit's incentive for 'cutting' Jikook's moments and you shouldn't assume that-

Unless...

You don't think Jikook's been groping eachother homoerotically on set lately have you? Cos, chile I'll believe that! I don't trust Jikook anywhere near eachother's vicinity and personal space.

I've seen enough to traumatize the devil himself. Chilee. Lol.

Bighit, in recent times, mostly tend to cut scenes and moments if they are a bit risqué. Like JK shoving his butt in Jimin's groin face, sliding his hands down Tae's chest...

Often times too they cut moments if its redundant. If a part of a scene is already in the main content they don't bother showing it in the behind scenes. From my observation.

When an interaction is awkward they skip it too, I feel. I mean I am still waiting to see JK touching all over Jimin and feeling him up in Run 106- honey, I'll pay to watch that shit with my kidneys. Lol.

Often too they save some scenes for memories or some other shit that they use all those pent up footages for. Lol.

BigHit is a business, they produce content that per their research and analytics garners more engagement, audience retention and a whole other metrics. They put a lot of creativity into what they do as creatives and artists- I mean if the baby noises is anything to go by. Those bites are tired!

But often times too, they're tired and they're lazy, and they just put anything together and toss it out there without giving it much thought- isn't that how they leave Jin or Tae out of packages, how certain Jikook moments that should have never made it into screen time ended up in screen time- how JM's third leg made it to the internet? They should have cut that shit before uploading it with those subtitles and yet here we are.

I think people give BigHit too much credit- talking about JK shouldn't gay panic and run away from certain moments with JM if he knows BigHit editors are going to cut those moments.... JM's dixk begs to differ. Chilee, Jimin you should have just worn pants. Can't trust these phony ass editors my guy.

The editing is really not a big deal. Not to me. But I love your question anyway. Especially the bits about what's different about Jikook and the content BigHit has been putting out since October.

Well something sure did go down in October, I don't care what anybody says.

I keep saying BigHit banks on the bond and intimacy of the boys, and the boys are more than happy to showcase their bond for the cameras just as Tae said and confirmed in a recent interview- Tuktukkers y'all did an Oopsie on the whole Taekook don't like to show their bond on cameras! Lol

Tae said it himself not me- he lives to showcase his bond with the other members. *where is my skull head emoji. Lmho.

I think what has changed since JM's birthday in October to now, to me where BigHit is concerned, is the general marketing strategy of the company.

It seems to me the company is adopting a marketing module opposite of the strategy they had been using before the pandemic. I think I've talked about this though...

Hate to say I said it, but I said it. Lol.

They are limiting access to the boys to drive sales as and when. BTS dominates the internet and have amassed greater reach and attention partly due to the free content they put out on the internet. But those were never monitised- not in a direct or significant way.

In the wake of the virus, they've had to monetize their online presence. A single tweet from their Twitter account is a phone brand promotion as I pointed out in past posts. There's been an increase in their sponsorship collaborations, in Soop and many of the content they've put up this year. They even turned on ads on their YT channels it seems.

Like I've been saying, this situation is global and novel, they are going to experiment with means and methods till they find that sweet spot and that is what I feel we are experiencing- amongst other things.

Unfortunately for us, our access to Jikook is gonna take a hit like I said before because the numbers are in their favor. I mean go to their YouTube page and see the metrics for yourself.

Jikook's holiday remix pulls way ahead of their counterparts. If their going to monetize any ship brand in BTS it's Jikooks. Trust. But that doesn't mean any ship in BTS is spared.

Someone asked me a while back, when I talked about this, whether all these changes the company was going through was going to affect the way Jikook interact on camera and I couldn't answer that with conviction then.

But I mean we are seeing a subtle, if not drastic change in the way Jikook interact with eachother and with their glass closet.

What that means for us, I think, is the company is going to choose when and where to show us content and certain interactions but that doesn't mean Jikook aren't interacting- know what I mean? I mean they have them. The juicy moments that's gonna make us slap our mamas. BigHit has it all. They are just gonna save it for as and when based on their marketing strategy, if you know what I mean.

I mean we all saw that blackswan performance, we all saw the holiday remix performance etc.

And you are right about the less interactions post October and I've shared my thoughts on it so I won't go into it. But I will state again that they are not broken up either, not to me. Lol.

I think we need to examine what interacting less means. To me, I consider Jikook interacting less if they have an opportunity to interact and they don't interact in a way that is usual of them.

Majority of the content we've gotten in recent times are pretty much very official contents, interviews, etc. The entire BE era, as I said is not about Jikook or even BigHit.

It's about BTS, all seven and Jikook can't monopolize the shine like they tend to do in other BigHit marketed contents in my opinion.

Jimin tried to be funny and chill in the dynamite mv and RM nearly went ninja turtle on his ass when he called him out for not taking things seriously enough during the shoot- Left to grandpa Joonie, the kids will sleep at five. Lol.

Seriously though, there is a huge gap between what BTS views as marketing and marketable and what Jikook or even BigHit views as marketing, in my opinion. And conversations like that between RM and Jimin goes to prove it.

Another interesting thing about this whole marketing approach is how BigHit isn't substituting any other particular pair in Jikook's stead. I see them giving equal screan time to the individual members- well not in a technical sense but I think you know what I mean.

Are Jikook required to be professional in certain situations, absolutely. And in previous years, I think they took too many liberties with it. But as I said, now more than ever they are learning and need to learn to read the room because they wouldn't be able to get away with much if they don't.

BE is a self produced project, after Soop- after when they were isolated to help them bond and repair fractures in their bond. If there were anything they were not happy with that led to Soop, trust that they are going to fix it post Soop and it's going to reflect in every sphere of their interactions.

RM for example has chilled on his monitoring and censorship of Jikook, Jikook have been pretty considerate of the group and have tried not to do anything to have RM pop a vein, Tae has been stepping up too- with the members going out their way to praise him and push him to the fore front of the group unlike in previous years *cough cough I don't want trouble but chilee.

I mean Jimin pointed it out in the Be behind when he said Tae was working hard and putting his best foot forward because the members had been showering him with lots of compliments in recent times and he wasn't kidding.

In the LGO comeback live, RM praised Tae for working hard forgetting it wasn't just Tae and JM's reaction was telling. Of course he backpedaled to compliment JM too.

Suga did the same thing in the Be behind video when he was talking about JM and praising him- I mean it's Suga and his Jimin, uWu. But then he too backpedaled to compliment Tae when he realized what he was doing and I was like CAN SOMEONE PRAISE KOOKIE TOO PLEASE AND THANK YOU. Lol.

Anywho, the company is equally chilling on their Jikook agenda which I have speculated on several ttimes so won't get into- it's all so very kumbaya and God, I hate it. Lol.

Give me the chaos goddammit!

I feel Jlkook loosen up in contents that aren't like super official business moments and that's when you see their domesticity. Lol.

You see them having their me time in the background of some of the content, and in one of the interviews where they were sat a good feet apart but they kept moving closer and closer till eventually after their lunch break cut, they were sat very close to each other.

I'm not a fan of the cameras being shove in their faces during their private moments- Kookie certainly doesn't appreciate that either.

But they are working for a living nonetheless and making content is what they do for a living. So we are definitely gonna get the content from them alright, the fanservice, the organic moments passed off as fanservice, the moments that should never make it to screen- all nine. Lol.

We are just not going to get them in a way we are accustomed to. And it certainly doesn't help that they are each on their own personal growth journeys- gradually disconnecting from their fanbase, I mean Jk's been long gone duh, and Jimin did say he has come to the realization not everyone in the fandom loves him and he is learning to react less strongly to them; which to me translates as bye bitches you don't deserve me. Lol.

I mean dude didn't bother posting for new year this year- y'all Jimin is done with our ass. We might as well pack our bags and join him in Kookie's Casa. I call dibs on the broom closet under the stairs. Lol.

Jikook gets called fanservice and other creepy slurs in this fandom but people forget all of this is their choice too. They choose, are choosing to share all the bits of them they share with us, with us. Inspite of all the hate and insults, they choose to do that- if they did it for the fanservice don't you think they would have called a time out on it long ago because it's not worth it?

I hate it here.

I guess what I'm saying is, you are right about these observations you've made and some of the things you've pointed out are facts.

But we have talked about all of that so it really shouldn't be anything new? Kindly check my previous posts. I think I shared my point of view on what I think is going on with Jikook, BigHit and BTS.

Other than those, I don't think there is anything major up with Jikook honestly. I keep saying I don't think they are broken up. I don't see either of them closed off, emotionally open to connecting with the others.

If anything I said I feel Jimin is falling in love all over again with Kook. I mean when he looks at him he looks to me as if he is seeing Kook in a different light.

And it's funny how all through out 2020 he kept reiterating how his friends and family and relationships were important to him, shading the ef out of Kook during the Japan Stay Gold promos claiming his relationships were important to him and was what was Gold in his life.

He even went on to talk about picking an accent spending time around his friends and talking with his friends around his birthday but suddenly in the Be behind scenes he was talking about how he's come to the realization BTS is his only true friends and how friends come and go.

Clearly he's had an epiphany of a sort and has been through something post his birthday that has him setting his priorities straight in the aftermath.

In his Weverse magazine, he mentioned how he's recently discovered something about himself, about how he loves to be loved. He then went on to clarify that when during festa he talked about having a desire to perform with the members for a long that that he meant to say he wanted to be with them for a very long time.

But then JK said Jimin said that bit to him first. And if this is the interpretation Jimin is giving to that statement then- one plus one is two honey. Numbers don't lie.

Dude don whispered those sweet empty nothings in JK's ear telling him he wants to be with him for a very long time and shit.

And now homeboy out here setting up roots in gay boulevard. I don't think their well is drying up any time soon. Lol.

They are in a honeymoon phase again and they are not showing us. Stingy bastards! Lol

And when JK said to JM in response, that BTS is his home- wow. He really said that...

He is Jimin's home. Literally. Please, my heartu😭

Jikook is real. Please support them.

Signed,

GOLDY

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kjack89 · 3 years

Note

11 :)

Me, using a completely innocuous prompt for something super self-indulgent? It’s more likely than you think.

E/R, Modern AU, established relationship. CW for mentions of suicide attempts, suicide ideation, and depression.

For everyone who’s struggling right now.

11. Morning kisses that are exchanged before either person opens their eyes, kissing blindly until their lips meet in a blissful encounter.

Grantaire knew it was morning without opening his eyes, and not just from the faint sunlight he could feel filtering through the blinds to play across his face. He also knew from the fingers he could feel skimming up his side, and the lips pressed against his shoulder. “Mmm,” he murmured, turning over, his eyes still closed, and he reached out automatically.

“Good morning,” Enjolras muttered sleepily as Grantaire drew him close, and Grantaire’s lips curved into a smile, his fingers lightly brushing against the light stubble he could feel along Enjolras’s jaw. He knew if he opened his eyes, he would never see it, since Enjolras’s hair was so light.

But he sure as hell could feel it, and it was as much a revelation that morning as it had been the first time they’d done this, over a year ago now.

His nose brushed against Enjolras’s, and for one brief moment, they breathed the same air before their lips met. As much as Grantaire had always dreamed of hot, passionate kisses exchanged after one of their many fights, nothing could compare to gentle morning kisses.

It was the absolute best way to wake up in the morning. And Grantaire wouldn’t trade it for anything.

He finally opened his eyes, blinking a few times to focus on Enjolras, his smile widening. “There you are,” he murmured, leaning in and kissing him again.

Enjolras returned his kiss for a moment before pulling away, the blanket slipping down to reveal his pale skin, and Grantaire tracked the motion with hungry eyes, already planning on a reprise of the previous night’s activities.

But before he could get too distracted – before all his blood could rush somewhere more south – Enjolras’s brow furrowed, and Grantaire’s smiled faded slightly. “Uh-oh,” he said, his voice low. “That’s never a good sign.”

Enjolras scowled. “What’s not a good sign?” he asked.

“The premature worry wrinkles on your forehead.” Enjolras looked briefly affronted before, with seemingly considerable effort, his expression evened and his worry lines smoothed out. “That’s better,” Grantaire said with a smirk. “So what’s going on?”

“How are you?”

Grantaire blinked, taken aback by the question. “Well, I’m in bed with you, so how do you think?”

For some reason, his answer caused Enjolras’s forehead to crease again. “No, that’s not – I mean, how are you?”

“I was doing a lot better before you asked me that,” Grantaire said, eying Enjolras warily, the warm, contented feeling he’d woken with fading rapidly. “What’s going on?”

Enjolras’s eyes narrowed. “You’re deflecting.”

Grantaire just arched an eyebrow at him. “Pot, meet kettle.”

Enjolras sighed, skimming his fingers up Grantaire’s side again, seemingly more interested in watching the way his pale fingers looked against Grantaire’s darker skin than in meeting Grantaire’s eyes. “I’m worried about you,” he admitted quietly.

“Mmm,” Grantaire murmured, his expression unreadable, and he caught Enjolras’s hand with his own. “Have I done something recently to make you worry?”

Enjolras snorted lightly and gave him a look. “I mean, you always do something to make me worry.”

Grantaire half-smiled. “I am quite gifted in that regard.”

“But in this case, it’s less of what you’ve done and more…”

Enjolras trailed off, and Grantaire propped himself up on his elbow, frowning down at Enjolras. “More what?” he asked.

After worrying his lower lip between his teeth for a moment, Enjolras finally blurted, “You’ve been in a really good mood recently.”

“And that’s a cause for concern.”

Grantaire didn’t pitch it as a question, but Enjolras still shrugged in response. “It could be,” he said quietly.

“What in the world makes you think that?” Grantaire asked, trying not to sound as exasperated as he felt at his good mood rapidly fleeting.

Enjolras met his eyes. “Because it’s happened once before,” he said, harsher than he likely intended, and Grantaire flinched and looked away. “Where you seemed like you were in a very good mood. And instead…”

“Instead I wound up in the hospital on a 72 hour involuntary hold,” Grantaire finished quietly. “Because I tried to kill myself.”

The silence that stretched between them was absolute, and Enjolras swallowed hard as he looked away. “Right,” he said. “And now, with everything going on in the world, I can’t help but worry that…”

He trailed off, but Grantaire knew exactly where he was going. “That because of a pandemic and a looming recession and not having a job for over six months now, my depression has gotten bad again, and I’m hiding it from you,” he said, nodding slowly. “I guess I can’t really fault you for that leap.”

Enjolras cocked his head slightly. “Is it really a leap?”

Grantaire returned his look with one of his own. “What makes you think that it isn't? Other than my preternatural good mood.”

“Because so many people are hurting now,” Enjolras said, his voice low. “So many people who haven’t been through what you’ve been through. So it only stands to reason—”

“Depression doesn’t quite work like that,” Grantaire interrupted, his voice even. “Logic doesn’t account for much here. And I’m in a very different place now than I was back then.” He took Enjolras’s hand again, lacing their fingers together. “I was really lucky, Enj. My attempt didn’t work. And because of that, I got help, pharmaceutical and otherwise.” He raised Enjolras’s hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “So, yeah, things are pretty fucking bleak, and I definitely don’t judge anyone who’s struggling right now. But I’m very lucky to not be one of them.”

Though Enjolras nodded, he didn’t quite look convinced, and Grantaire sighed. “What?” he asked tiredly.

A muscle worked in Enjolras’s jaw before he blurted, “How?”

“How what?”

“How are you not struggling?”

Grantaire stared at him. “I don’t follow.”

Enjolras gestured helplessly. “With everything going on in the world...do you just not feel it?” he asked, a desperate edge to his voice. “How do you, of all people, hear everything on the news, and Twitter, and in our Les Amis meetings, and not just want to give up?”

“Me, of all people?” Grantaire repeated quietly. “Do you...do you want me to be struggling?”

Enjolras’s eyes widened. “No, of course not,” he said immediately. “That’s not– I didn’t mean it like that. I just…” He broke off, looking almost frustrated. “I guess I’m just curious why you aren’t as affected as other people.”

Grantaire paused, considering it. “I guess it’s because I’ve been through this already,” he said slowly. “The isolation, the despair, the feeling like nothing is ever going to get better...It’s not new to me. So it’s easier.” He huffed a dry, humorless laugh. “I mean, it’s not easy watching the world fall to shit, especially on this scale, but I’ve still been here before. I know that it does get better. So watching other people struggle with the same things I did...it doesn’t make me want to give up. It makes me want to show them that it can get better.” He shrugged, reaching out for Enjolras’s hand again. “It’s not gonna get better in the same way for everyone, and for some folks, things may never be the same, but things will still get better. And knowing that I can help other folks realize that...for me, that’s enough.”

Enjolras nodded, his expression oddly closed. “I guess I didn’t think of it that way.”

Grantaire searched his expression for a moment. “Can I be honest about something?” he asked quietly.

Enjolras looked up at him. “Of course,” he said.

Grantaire wet his lips almost nervously. “I think you do want me to be struggling.”

Enjolras dropped his hand, and it took everything in Grantaire not to immediately reach for it again. “The only thing that I want is for you to be happy,” Enjolras said, a hard edge to his voice. “I thought you knew that.”

“I do,” Grantaire said. “But I also think that I were struggling, it would be easier for you.”

Enjolras stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, then you wouldn’t be alone,” Grantaire said softly. “You wouldn’t be the only one who was struggling.”

Enjolras went very still, his expression dark. “I don’t...I don’t know what you mean,” he said stiffly.

Grantaire cocked his head. “Don’t you?”

“No!” Enjolras said, too loudly and too quickly to be sincere, and he looked away, his cheeks red. “I mean...no. I’m not...not like you were.” Again, his tone was harsh, but Grantaire didn’t take it personally, just watching him closely. “I don’t want to kill myself.”

“Ok,” Grantaire said evenly. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not struggling.”

“Everyone’s struggling,” Enjolras snapped. “Anyone who pays even an ounce of attention realizes that.”

Grantaire nodded slowly. “Maybe,” he agreed. “But not everyone is struggling to the same extent. Not everyone stays up late at night working on untenable solutions to unbearable problems just to give themselves something to do and a reason to not feel useless.”

Again, Enjolras went very still. “You don’t...you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice shaking slightly. “That’s...if you think that’s what I’m doing here, you clearly have no idea—”

Grantaire held his hands up in a gesture that was equal parts soothing and defensive. “Maybe I don’t,” he said. “But maybe it’s time that you tried talking to someone about it.”

Enjolras’s lip curled. “I don’t need to talk to someone,” he said dismissively. “I don’t – it’s not – I don’t need help.”

“There’s nothing wrong with needing help,” Grantaire said quietly.

“I know that,” Enjolras snapped. “I donate monthly to the suicide prevention hotline for that very reason.”

“You do?” Grantaire asked, momentarily distracted.

Enjolras frowned. “Of course. Because of what could have happened to you.”

“I– That’s very sweet,” Grantaire said, and he leaned in and kissed Enjolras on the forehead before sighing, running his fingers lightly through Enjolras’s sleep-snarled curls. “But I have to be honest, the fact that during this conversation you went straight from me suggesting that you might be struggling to suicide has me really worried.”

Enjolras’s eyes widened. “I don’t want to kill myself,” he said firmly. “I swear to God, Grantaire—”

“That’s not the only thing I’m worried about,” Grantaire interrupted. “I’m worried that you think that struggling only looks like being suicidal.” He paused, looking at Enjolras closely. “I’m worried that you don’t think you need help just because you don’t want to kill yourself, no matter how much you may be struggling.”

Enjolras couldn’t seem to meet his eyes. “That’s not why I don’t think I need help,” he muttered, trying less like he was trying to convince Grantaire and more like he was trying to convince himself. “I– There are so many people who are so much worse off. I have my health, my job, the man I love, the work I love…”

“And you are surrounded everyday by people who have lost everything, by our democracy crumbling around us, by a corrupt system that lets cops get away with murdering unarmed Black and Brown men, by the despair that there is so much that we can’t do to help those who are so much worse off,” Grantaire said softly. “That would take a toll on anyone.”

Enjolras managed a small, sad smile. “Well, there is that.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “So you think I need help.”

Grantaire nodded. “I think at the very least, you should talk to someone.”

Enjolras smiled again. “I’m talking to you,” he said, nudging Grantaire lightly.

But Grantaire didn’t smile. “I meant a professional.”

Enjolras made a face. “You want me to see a shrink?”

“I want you to talk to a mental health professional, yes.”

“I prefer talking to you,” Enjolras said, leaning in to kiss Grantaire, but Grantaire stopped him.

“No.”

Enjolras frowned. “No what?”

Grantaire took a deep breath. “I love you,” he said, searching Enjolras’s expression for understanding. “And if you asked it of me, you know that I would try to be that person for you. That I would listen to you, for as long as you needed. That I would...I would bear it for you, as much as I could, to make it easier for you. To help you.” Enjolras’s brow was furrowed and Grantaire took another deep breath, steeling himself for what he needed to say. “But that might actually break me. I’m not strong enough for that, Enjolras. I still struggle sometimes, too – a lot of the time, if I’m being honest – and it takes everything that I have to keep going. If you put all of that on me, I’d have nothing left for myself.”

Enjolras reached out, taking both of Grantaire’s hands in his. “I would never, ever ask you to do that,” he said, his voice low.

“And that’s why you need to talk to someone else.”

Silence stretched between them again, but it was a different kind of silence now, both men coming to a tentative understanding. “Do I have to agree to this right now?” Enjolras asked finally.

Grantaire barked a laugh and shook his head. “You don’t have to agree to this at all if you don’t want.”

Enjolras looked surprised. “You’re not going to make me get help?”

“Enjolras, if I thought I could make you do anything…”

Enjolras grinned. “Fair.”

“But just know that when you are ready to get help,” Grantaire continued, squeezing his hand, “when you’re done with struggling with this on your own, I’ll be here to help.”

“Yeah?”

There was something almost desperate in Enjolras’s voice and without hesitating, Grantaire leaned in and kissed him. He rested his forehead against Enjolras’s, starting to say something but stopping, a small smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. Enjolras nudged him. “What?”

“Nothing.” Enjolras gave him a look and Grantaire laughed lightly. “Nothing, really. It was going to be nerdy.”

“Which is so completely out of the ordinary for you,” Enjolras said dryly.

Grantaire laughed again and kissed Enjolras once more. “Just...I meant what I said before. I can’t carry it for you. But I can carry you. Or at least help to.”

Enjolras snorted softly. “Lord of the Rings,” he said with a sigh. “I should’ve known.”

Grantaire grinned. “Not the first time I’ve been the Sam to your Frodo.”

“Genuinely cannot tell if I’m supposed to be flattered by that comparison or not.”

“Anyone’s guess, really,” Grantaire said with a laugh.

But Enjolras did not laugh, just leaning in again to kiss him once more. “I love you,” he said, suddenly serious. “And...I can’t promise…”

“I know,” Grantaire said, because he did. “I’m not going anywhere regardless.” He kissed Enjolras, trying to put everything he couldn’t bring himself to say into the kiss, and mostly trying to tell him that he wasn’t alone, that if Grantaire had his way, he never would be. “And I love you, too.”

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thewakingcloak · 3 years

Text

Debugblog: Darn Diagonals

I love and hate debugging. It’s frustrating to have a problem and have to work it out before you can continue being creative. On the other hand, it’s a puzzle, and I like puzzles. Working them out feels really good. Like beating that boss.

Anyway I don’t know if this is helpful to y’all, but I decided to write up a blog on my debugging process. (Maybe I’ll do more in the future under the “Debugblog” series??)

So here’s the issue.

In this gif, I’m ONLY pressing one key at a time: left, right, up, or down. But the player is moving at an angle somehow.

The weirdest part: this doesn’t happen all the time, and it only happens in daytime. This is baffling.

So the first step in debugging is we need to replicate the issue. When I initially found this bug, it was only happening on a random screen and just slightly so. I ignored it for a while. When I saw it happen again, I started making mental notes of the conditions in which it occurred.

Eventually I found a place where I could reproduce the issue consistently (in the gif above). This will be invaluable when testing! If the issue is hard to replicate, it’s harder to test and harder to check when it’s working.

The next step is usually the biggest one: finding the cause of the bug. Usually you want to isolate the issue, which you’ll see come up a lot as I move forward...

So anyway, the bug is with movement. I have two “movement” scripts. One that takes into account various environmental variables and modifies velocity--move_actor()--and one that actually moves the object and factors in collision--movement_and_collision().

I figured the first place I should go is my move_actor() script. I want to know if the extra variable in movement is being added to the velocity before movement_and_collision() is called.

One of the most common ways to debug is using a breakpoint. I could use a breakpoint here, but the issue is that this line runs every single frame I’m moving, so that makes movement difficult. Instead, I’m going to use show_debug_message() (I created console_log() as shorthand which also shows time and frame information).

(Full disclosure, I actually was looking at the code in the “else” block first, and the velocity was always being logged as 0,0 lol... because that only runs when the player isn’t moving. It’s okay to make mistakes!)

So I played the game and duplicated the issue. My guess was that there would be an extra y value added here, but lo and behold, there wasn’t. Check out some of the debug output:

[14:51:34.16493] x: -1.20, y: 0

[14:51:34.16511] x: -1.20, y: 0

[14:51:34.16527] x: -1.20, y: 0

[14:51:34.16543] x: -1.20, y: 0

[14:51:34.16560] x: -1.20, y: 0

This is what we’d expect: the player is moving left at 1.2 pixels per frame and y movement is 0. However, I am still seeing extra y movement in game. Unfortunately this means we did not find our issue yet, but it also means we can discount everything in move_actor() and before! Basically this extra movement is almost certainly in movement_and_collision().

Okay, so let’s clean up move_actor() and move into movement_and_collision(). This is an asset I bought from Pixelated Pope, so I won’t show you the whole thing (not that I was showing you all of move_actor() either), but I’ll show you the important stuff. This is near the end:

Yeah, so this never gets hit, lol. Let’s try earlier in the script.

Uhh... sorry this is hard to read (tumblr is not great for posting code). I’m logging lengthdir_x and lengthdir_y in the initial tile_and_place_meeting_3d() check.

Alright, so here are some logs. Yep. Here’s our unwanted diagonal movement.

[15:05:12.10597] x: 1.17, y: -0.24

[15:05:13.10613] x: 1.17, y: -0.24

[15:05:13.10630] x: 1.17, y: -0.24

Okay, so this script actually does have some recursiveness built in (it calls itself under certain conditions). That’ll make debugging this a little bit trickier. Let’s figure out which “recursion” this is being called on. In other words, I want to know if this is happening on the first run of the script every frame, or when the script calls itself. Luckily, this recursion functions via a “count” variable (which stops the script from infinitely calling itself lol). I’ll add that into my console_log().

I forgot to add a space, but that’s okay, we can still read it. it looks like it’s occurring when it calls itself (count is “2”).

[15:13:40.11644] count: 2x: -1.17, y: 0.24

[15:13:40.11661] count: 2x: -1.17, y: 0.24

[15:13:40.11677] count: 2x: -1.17, y: 0.24

I’m actually going to move this outside of the if block and see if it occurs during all calls or just on the second. Here are the logs.

[15:17:38.12612] count: 1, x: -1.20, y: 0

[15:17:38.12612] count: 2, x: -1.17, y: -0.24

[15:17:38.12628] count: 1, x: -1.20, y: 0

[15:17:38.12628] count: 2, x: -1.17, y: 0.24

Okay, we’ve confirmed it’s occurring only when the script calls itself. However, I think this is actually “correct” behavior. The movement_and_collision() script is doing something called “angle sweeps” for its collision checking. If it can’t find an opening (i.e. runs into a wall), it tries again at a slightly different angle. This allows the player to move along diagonal collision walls.

That means the issue seems to actually be in the collision check. It’s finding a collision where there should not be any, meaning the angle sweep gets triggered!

Okay, so the issue seems to be in tile_and_place_meeting_3d. This is my tile_and_place_meeting_3d() script:

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so I’m going to actually break this up so I can figure it out easier. Basically we want to narrow down to exactly where the issue is occurring. Isolating the issue.

The output of this is weird as heck, but yeah, it’s occurring in tile_meeting_precise(). I’m not colliding with any tiles--or shouldn’t be.

[15:36:49.45138] tile: 0, instance: 0

[15:36:49.45139] tile: 1, instance: 0

[15:36:49.45154] tile: 1, instance: 0

[15:36:49.45155] tile: 0, instance: 0

[15:36:49.45155] tile: 1, instance: 0

[15:36:49.45171] tile: 1, instance: 0

[15:36:49.45171] tile: 0, instance: 0

[15:36:49.45172] tile: 1, instance: 0

[15:36:49.45188] tile: 1, instance: 0

Okay, I could debug further, but we know which script the issue is in. I happen to know I’ve made a few recent changes to this script, so first I want to share the magic of version control!

I use git and store my code on a private github repository. This means I can go back and see a history of all changes made to this file.

Okay yeah, so what I’m gonna try first is to just take the old version and put it in GameMaker and see if that fixes the issue. I do need the changes from the new version, but if I can pinpoint the issue as having been part of this specific change, I can rework it (probably).

You can usually do this via a revert but I was dumb and copy+pasted the old version and deleted the new version. Way jankier, BUT the old version fixed the issue! That means some change I introduced in the new version is causing the issue.

The next step is to redo the new changes one by one until we figure out which one is the culprit.

I recreated all my changes and the issue only occurs when I enable “SD tile collision checking”. How exactly SD collision works isn’t important to this debug process, but it’s essentially the opposite of “HD tile collision checking”, which is for the player so they can slide smoothly along walls. HD tile collision can be smooth because it uses enlarged colliders (the reason for this is a long story).

However, logging shows that the player object never hits SD collision checking. Interesting, right? Why would the player have a collision only when SD collision checking is added but the player never hits it? Well, I think the answer goes back to some of our initial discoveries when replicating the bug: it only happens in the day. Now, nothing changes for the player physics/movement between day and night, but other objects do call this script that are affected by day and night.

I quickly added a log to print out object names to see what other objects use this. It’s easier than doing a search all files for the script name because that could end up with all sorts of results, some of them not directly being called by the objects. [Note: I later found this actually is what is happening; an object is calling this script indirectly via another script] Anyway, here’s the log:

show_debug_message(object_get_name(object_index)); is a super handy way to print out the names of objects calling a script.

The logs showed a handful of items are checking collision: keys, heart containers, teleporters, etc. I want to start with the teleporters, though, since so far those always seem to be present where the weirdness is happening. Just a hunch.

Oh and guess what? Teleporter_obj is calling tlie_meeting_ground() in the daytime only. We know the issue only occurs in daytime. And tile_meeting_ground() seems like it could easily be related to tile_meeting_precise() right?

So the quick and easy check here is to comment out lines 8 and 9. And guess what? No more weird player collision! So now we have the culprit. But we do actually need this code. So... why is this interfering with the player?

First, I confirmed that it was indeed the tile_meeting_ground() script by removing it. Then I put it back and did some more digging. Interestingly, this script never calls tile_and_place_meeting_3d() (remember, that’s the script I modified and is causing the issue). So that’s a bit baffling. This is all it does.

I need to narrow this down more. I started by returning early if the object was a teleporter. I first did this on line 59 before calling tile_get_at_point(), then on line 60, etc.

Eventually I broke out each individual check and tested returning after each one so I could pinpoint which part of this script was causing the issue. Turns out it’s ground_z_get().

ground_z_get() determines... well, where the ground is. And guess what? It does call tile_meeting_precise(). AHA! Another mistake on my part. But we’ve established that’s okay. :)

The ground_z_get() code is not pleasant to post here, so suffice it to say, I changed the part where it calls tile_meeting_precise() to skip when it’s the teleporter calling.

This is definitely the problem.

Now we know where obj_teleporter is calling tile_meeting_precise() and this is starting to make more sense. When I was confused about the tile_meeting_ground() code not being related to the tile_meeting_precise() code, I was wrong, because tile_meeting_ground() indirectly calls it. And we already knew that obj_teleporter called tile_meeting_precise() somehow (otherwise it wouldn’t have shown up in the output log). This is it.

Okay but that’s a patch, not a true fix. I’m going to undo it, roll up my sleeves, and dive back into tile_meeting_precise(), the source of all our woes.

Looking at this script further, I think I may know vaguely what’s going on here. It creates a checker object that matches tile collision. Now, this is a local variable, and when place_meeting() is called, it’s against the instance id, not against all obj_precise_tile_checker. But just for kicks, I’m going to destroy the instance before the script returns to see if this is the issue.

This worked!!!

As to why, I was a bit confused at first. This is all local variables, right? One object calling this script will have local variables that should not ever affect another object calling this script with its own local variables.

But the secret is up here:

A bit of optimization so that we’re not constantly creating a bunch of collision checkers every single frame. What is happening is the first time this script is run (say an SD one), it creates a tile checker and sets the size (later in the script). Then when another object comes in (say the player with HD/smooth checking), it sees that a checker object is already created and does not create an appropriately scaled one.

I’ve got a better idea than using instance_destroy()... I’ll create an SD and an HD tile checker object. That way we can create both and they can exist at the same time without interfering with each other.

Here we’re just creating an HD checker if we wanna use HD collision checking (just the player right now lol) and SD checker if we wanna use SD checking. Boom. I removed the instance_destroy() from this script and here we go...

That fixed it!

And the final step: test everything! Of course you should be testing after each incremental change so you know exactly what fixes or causes the issue (which we did). And I already tested walking. But let’s make sure our teleporters still work. :)

I tested a bunch of ‘em, but here’s everything working as expected!

Yay!

I hope this was helpful to you!

Peace

#gamedev #devlog #devblog #debugging #debugblog

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