#a part of me feels like a lot of terminally online stuff these days is really out of touch | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

daydreamodyssey · 4 months

Text

This ended up being longer than I planned, so I'm sorry beforehand. It was about a whatever video of a girl using heightism, saying something stupid but possibly insidious, and me reflecting on our culture toward smallness, particularly with men and how it deals with gender.

(There's a fun present for those who read the whole thing, I promise!)

I saw a tiktok of a girl candidly and cheerfully saying she'd never date a short guy (5'8 or below, she was 5'2) because of a Napoleon complex.

Standard stuff, though still crossing into prejudice.

But then she goes off, in a chipper mood, about deleting them. That really stuck with me.

Best scenario, she just means deleting them off dating sites. Which is still crass and wouldn't fly if she said something similar about other attributes.

Worst scenario, which wouldn't be the first time I heard it, she means literally and physically delete them. She was talking to a guy out on the streets too, so this isn't done terminally online jerk. A lot of women saying they want men dead isn't cute or funny.

I hope people understand that having a preference or having a bad history with whatever group are different than this rhetoric. Even if that person can control something, as opposed to the near permanence of height, it shouldn't mean this group is inherently bad. The issue is the personality, not how long your limbs are or what genes you have. It's a really weird bioessentialism that says if you look different than your gender norm, you are a suspect and a creep in waiting.

There's also this other connection with many men smaller than (the US) average being men of color, which can have a racist and nativist tone. And since height can be affected by the environment, along with making many short people less likely to have high paying jobs and roles, there's probably a classist element, too. A lot of trans men are also short if you want to include transphobia, who already get barely any acknowledgement about how they're treated.

With a lot of women saying "it's in our genes or brains," and one I saw saying for short men to Stay In The Gym, there is this unspoken rule that men MUST be large and dominant or they're not seriously men. With the whole obsession over genetics and strong men, there is a dangerous overlap with trad and fascist ideals, especially with how radical right wing propaganda works (in the 30s/40s and now with the Chad Trad shit).

I don't think a lot of people, men or women, consciously think about this stuff. They could just be shallow assholes. But smallness is almost always seen as infantilism or criminality with no nuance in humanizing, let alone respect as lovers and workers. Maybe there's some taboo part of our private brain that still latches onto "big = strong against predators and rivals" and we don't want to admit and question it like with women and how we judge their looks.

When people say Napoleon complex, it's always vague, like it can mean anything from being aggressive to just being confident to someone taller. It doesn't mean anything and it just causes a Catch 22; you either accept your place on the arbitrary social ladder or you're insecure and in the spotlight. You can't win because you're not supposed to win.

For every short jerk, there's also a tall jerk. A tall jerk who has popularity, fans, girls, money, and literally more weight to throw around. Am I surprised there's a preference? No. I can still be upset about it because I'm human and I'm naturally going to be mad at things that feel unfair and need leverage. And I'm going to be upset when it feels ignored or derided because people don't want to admit they have biases that are more socially acceptable. I'm going to be upset that I and others who are around my height or even shorter have to push limits every day just be treated equally. I can't imagine having dwarfism and seeing these videos or hearing others on the street.

I hear pretty much everything from "short men are rapists for wanting women to be attracted to them" to eugenics and wanting us just dead. There's definitely other traits that compound the toll on a person (weight for myself) that can be greater or lesser, but it's definitely consistent and I've been seeing it rise over the years after some acceptance in the mid '10s.

We need to have honest conversations and reflections about our relationship with size and what it means to be a man. If you want to abolish the patriarchy but still insult a guy because he doesn't look as big and strong and dominant as other men, then you're playing the same side as the men in power or manosphere chuds. The amount of radfems I see hating short men is honestly funny. Like there's no tall misogynists or abusers out there.

If short men, or just A short man messed you up, I'm sorry you had to go through that. But it wasn't like he was infected with the Small Virus, he might've been just a jerk, the same way tall people might be jerks. Just understand that you're overlooking many people because of a bad experience and how dangerously close that mentality is when applying to other people, or toward yourself.

If you read long enough, I congratulate you, and I offer you this one hell of a title I saw in a flea market the other day.

#heightism #short men #social justice #toxic masculinity

4 notes · View notes

mrawkweird · 1 year

Note

So the teaser for Invincible season 2 dropped a while ago looking more polished in the animation department due to being directed by animator Balak. Some time after a tweet started to make the rounds about how someone was shocked to find out this incredibly fine looking animation for a tv show was done by a nsfw artist. Now they clarified that they didn't say this in a negative sense but the damage was kinda sorta done.

Now I'm sure I'm gonna sound cringe when I say this but I feel like this comes from the result of stuff like cancel culture, or the amount of terminally online kids who don't know anything but have learned to try get the moral highground as fast as possible and even the recent stigma against nsfw artist being the "easy way" to popularity.

Everyone is back to assuming "what you see is what you get" or judging a book by it's cover especially when it comes to nsfw artist. Hell it's even worse now cause it's general pornography as well the more taboo art.

I'll never forget or forgive that shit that happened last year when someone on the Amphibba crew was revealed to draw nsfw art of the shows characters got attacked and forced into hiding.

I feel like a decade ago when becoming a nsfw artist in the open was becoming a thing a lot a people were worried that it meant any dream of making into the industry was probably not gonna happen but look at Bruce Timm, Rebecca Sugar (yes really), Ian Jones Quartly and now Balak.

Hell, what am I talking about? Balak already made it before this dude is part of the main team of a popular comic as well as it's tv adaption, which has some of the most tasteful sex/nudity and hard hitting violence western animation has possibly ever seen especially for tv as well being a part of independent small animation studio.

Anyone genuinely shocked and confused that someone can draw porn and general good art is someone who is admitting that they can't think outside the box.

I saw when someone mentioned who animated it and I was wondering when the cluster fuckery would begin. I don't know why some people even bother trying to come out talking as if some of these NSFW animations isn't some of the most legit looking shit these days. It shouldn't be surprising because once you mastered fuck psychics in animation you mastered the world and that should become a test before you get brought on to animate a project. "Oh, you wanna animate on the OK KO Movie? Well, just get me a test animation of Carol and Wilhamena double teaming Captain Planet by next week and I'll see if there's a spot for you".

Also, nobody should be playing the moral high ground card when they're clearly showing that they know of these things a little too well. It's like when teachers get fired for having an Onlyfans. Like, how the fuck did y'all find out? How did y'all confirm it?. And I still remember when the streets tried to come for Rebecca. Shit, Walt Disney legit got a secret stash out there too. For every single person that always wants to point fingers just let their search history pop up one time.

#Balak #Animation

8 notes · View notes

sapphos-darlings · 2 years

Note

is there a way to be somewhat sure of what your sexuality is when you haven't actually been in a relationship with anyone yet?

unfortunately i spent quite a good part of my teens on the internet and generally stuck inside, due to the pandemic and mental health issues, so again unfortunately i am quite terminally online lol.

when i was younger and to this day i spent a lot of time consuming/reading about lgbt related topics, getting somewhat involved in some online communities, etc, so i'm afraid that spending so much time on that during my formative years may have caused me to unconsciously fabricate my attraction to women as a way to feel included. i feel like i can't trust my feelings, bc how can i know if they're genuine or products of me essentially psy-oping myself into trying to be something i'm not?

i understand that i should probably give it time, let real experiencies with real people tell, but this uncertainty kills me because this is incredibly important to my life. i need to know if i'll ever have to come out to my parents, whether i'll live a "normative" (for the lack of a better word) life or not, whether all that time i spent was me finding myself or invading spaces never meant for me as a confused teen.

really sorry for the long rambly ask and the personal stuff, i wish i could simplify it but idk how to. thank you in advance, and a good day/night to the mods <3

Hey there!

First off - you haven't been invading spaces, or taking up resources, or fabricating anything. Finding yourself is a key part of one's teen years, and questioning people have always walked hand in hand with the LGBT community. It's okay to question! None of us would be here if we hadn't. Now, that said, I think you're getting up on the wrong foot here.

Let's take a person in a friend group that loves chocolate ice cream. The person walking in hasn't made up their mind about chocolate ice cream, but suddenly, it's the talk of the town. Everyone around them is talking about chocolate ice cream and the new kinds of chocolate ice cream the shop in town sells, like, oh my god did you try out the flavour with hazelnuts in it?? And this person goes with their friend group to have ice creams at the shop, and of course they try out the chocolate ice cream, since it's been hyped so much.

Now... how do you feel, as the friend who tried out the chocolate ice cream? Did you hate it, or just find it kind of nasty, but because your friends loved it you figured it's kind of part of the experience, that that's part of the appeal of chocolate ice cream that it kind of feels foreign to be eating it, and you'd rather be having mint? Or did you go, wow, this is actually pretty good, wow, I like this ice cream, if I came here all on my own I might order this again? Or would you, coming to the shop alone, only buy that ice cream because you feel that your friends might find it weird if you didn't buy chocolate ice cream?

See, you can't really lie to yourself about what you like. There's an instinctive reaction of oh, god that happens one way or the other when you're tasting something. If you dig women, and feel fuzzy and excited at the thought of women, and like thinking of women and daydreaming about women, and you find yourself drawn to women in media and around you, going, "wow she's so pretty", maybe even "wow I'd like to kiss her", or "I'd love to wake up in the morning to have her sitting in my kitchen like she belongs there", the chances are that this is just who you are, and this is natural to you. If your gut reaction is more along the line of... well, women are pretty, sure, but I don't have any particular interest in touching them or being close to them, and the thought of them doesn't really make me feel any way in particular, it's all just, meh, whatever, then you probably aren't interested in women. And, of course, if you think about women and go, "good lord this is kind of gross, I'm gonna think about something else now", that's a good sign that you're really not attracted to women at all.

You don't need to try people out like food to know that you like them, actually. People are more like shoes - even if one pair doesn't fit you, you already know by the looks of it that you like them. Like, wow, this pair feels like shit when I'm wearing it, but I love the looks of it, so I'm going to keep looking for ones like these that actually fit me. Similarly, as you grow and age, you might come to decide that the type of shoes you liked before is past you now, and you're moving on to a different look next. It's similar with people.

Most importantly: if you're expecting a grand revelation upon entering a relationship with someone, you probably won't find it there. Attraction, or lack thereof, predates official statements. If you enter a relationship with someone you don't feel a particular way about before, you'll continue feeling that way after, and at worst because you didn't really care, all that added expectation will just make you aversed to them and the relationship as a whole. Sex with someone you're not sure about won't give you a big revelation, aside from whether you like or don't like or want sex with that particular person. Interest, attraction, is an innate experience, not an external one. So you can find yourself sitting inside in front of your screen all your life the same you can find yourself out there in the world, making mistakes with real people while you try to read your own inner dialogue. Neither path guarantees that you'll end up on the right track.

Finally - whether you have to worry about coming out tomorrow, as important as it feels to you to feel secure in your life today, is actually not important. You can work towards making it a possibility, making it safer, by making clear to the people around you that you support and embrace LGBT rights and are open to these experiences. You can work towards better legislation, safety and security for LGBT people now, so if you have to join the ranks tomorrow, it'll be a world in which you feel more comfortable doing so then. But right now, there's no foolproof, fast track way to figure yourself out. We're on this journey our whole lives, and sometimes hearing your inner voice and understanding your feelings takes a long time. You can't hurry up your own development, your own life experience. It all comes to you with time.

#mod sade #lgbt #ask

7 notes · View notes

grenadineghost · 2 years

Text

warning im getting introspective on main

idk i think i need to stop caring abt what strangers (not mutuals) on the internet believe or care about. even in trans circles! im... weird around other transfems. i feel this need to be validated by them to be a Real Trans Woman and its just a shitty feeling. and this happens irl and online but like... focusing on online spaces, ppl get so weird and insular and like... i dont blame trans women online for doing that, we're far from the only people who do that + the horrors of dealing with transmisogyny make it important to watch out for each other + all my closest friends are trans but like... idk. whenever i get sucked into this rabbit hole of "what are the girls online saying" it kinda distracts me from like... who i am and from my personal relationship to gender. im a girl who's making strides in her transition (laser has been going wonderfully!) and i have trans loved ones i want to take care of and who'll take care of me and i have to deal with transmisogyny a lot and it SUCKS but when its irl it gives me a face to get mad at and it makes it easier to find solace in my friends. im a girl whos done work to help my local queer community, whos helping her friends through some rough shit, whos morals arent based in terminally online discourses but on the real shit happening in my life. idk im making a post very specific to my life ghjk but this is all to say like... i dont need those toxic online spaces to validate myself. i have my trans friends and gf, i have my connection to transfeminity through hyperpop and trans art and queer history, i have the knowledge of transmisogyny ive encountered personally and how it works in my life, i have my pills and my lasers and the knowledge that im ME.

idk this is so rambly and im definitely deleting this in the morning but just... looking at shit online ruins my day sometimes, even in places that obstentibly make me happy and like... idk. its... almost like a high school-esque drive to be Popular. but i have an irl life and it makes me . so much happier than this hellscape does lol

im not deleting my tumblr or unfollowing anyone lol this is just me saying im gonna limit myself to the parts of online that make me happy and feel like part of my life

also when i talk about irl stuff im including mutuals? i havent met most of yall and i need to get better abt talking to you folks but like. youre Real People, not weird parasocial tumblr ghosts

#delete later #probs dont read this #its long and doesnt make much sense

4 notes · View notes

eurofox · 2 years

Text

Ok, I have gained a lot of new followers because of a certain post.

And I kind of feel the need to make some things clear.

While I'm pretty harsh on men at times, that's really because I have good men in my life so I know stuff like 'men are simple creatures' or 'men need submissive housewives' is bullshit when I see it. I just think I think it would be helpful if more women were aware of the shitty ones, especially the ones getting radicalised online, they often regurgitate the same talking points over and over. Don't give them so much benefit of the doubt (they certainly don't do it for us) . And learn to spot fake male feminists too.

Also I don't hate housewives or sahms. Unless they come out with bullshit about being a woman's one and only calling, yknow, that shite they say about how literally anything else is an 'attempt at imitating men'. It's an important and difficult job, that unfortunately, in the real world, is undervalued and leaves you dependent on someone else money wise. It's never a good idea, even the most wonderful man could have an accident or something, and it's a precaution position. The right to work and personal control of money is less about fulfillment imo, rather survival. There's countless of examples of sahms being left high and dry, I just think it's romanticised to much. And I guess these days it goes for sahds too.

I don't hate sex workers either. I suppose a few do enjoy it. And I don't hate the girls who do onlyfans either, but I just don't think having people who know you irl paying peanuts for nudes of you is a good idea. I think slut shaming is disgusting, but I also feel girls feel pressured into doing more than they are comfortable with because they don't want to be seen as prudes. And I know a lot of women who've had boundaries crossed in the bedroom because their man watches so much porn, myself included. I don't think it's harmless at all and imo, it can't be compared to titty mags in the past.

Also seen reblogs lately talking about female seperatism. I can see the merits of that in certain scenarios, like DV shelters, convents or lesbian islands or something, but otherwise it's a bit confusing to me tbh.

And I think transmen and transwomen are real, but I also think a lot of this gender identity stuff is getting regressive in a way. Example, the masculine and feminine urge memes. An uncomfortable amount of it is just conforming to stereotypes. And this neo pronoun stuff I really thought was a joke, I'm not ever taking that seriously sorry. And I don't think cis women discussing the very real and often shitty parts of being born female is insensitive to transwomen, which is real and baffling take I've seen too fucking often on this site. Periods,pregnancy, lack of physical strength expectations of subservience and people pleasing are all shitty fucking things and I'm glad women are finally discussing it, it's not 'white feminism' either. I know transpeople irl who aren't so fucking weird about 'exclusion' so maybe it's a terminally online thing idk.

#so yeah #I'm not actually that radical #i just don't like bullshit

6 notes · View notes

lady-azarashe · 4 months

Text

Normally I'd rant on Reddit, or on my IG stories, or even on some random Chatterbox thread on Gaia Online so that I could scream into the void without actually bothering anyone. But I ran away from the former two and I've been trying to use Tumblr more since the Reddit migration, so I guess I'll rant here for a bit and delete it afterwards.

So... 2023 was one of the worst years of my life, a solid runner up for the top spot, in fact. I think it barely edges out the former champion of 2014 to take the podium, and that's because this year my grandma died.

Between getting fired from a decently enjoyable job, to landing on several other horrible jobs, lack of money due to my time unemployed in between said horrible jobs, having had to move back with my family because they needed someone to take care of my grandpa (poor man had a stroke and I was the only one who could drive him daily to the hospital), and having to deal with all this while people were still treating me like a child with no agency of her own... Well, shit got bad, and my head went to some very dark places. I got a bit better, but then my grandma died and I got very sick physically, so I've spent most of December and a good chunk of January on a fever-fueled daze.

In so far, this has been mostly rationalized already and I'm ok with it. Well, it's not like I'm really ok with it, you know, but I've gotta keep rolling with the punches and all that. I know sometimes life sucks, shit's whack, and you gotta play with the cards you've been dealt. Been doing that for a long time now, but there were certain things that never changed and I relied heavily on them to trudge along everyday.

It's always the little things, though, that drive me over the edge and into a puddle of despair. And it's today that I noticed something these little things seem to have in common lately, and why they hurt so much.

A bunch of YouTubers I follow have either given up and disappeared quietly, or they've announced that they're quitting due to burnout/wanting to take their lives back from YT/etc. I am incredibly happy for them and wish them the best, but I sadly spend a lot of time alone and relied a lot on other people's content to make my life less monotonous. It's not a worrying parasocial relationship, but they do feel like friendly familiar faces and knowing they're not going to stick around any longer kinda hurts a little.

In fact, it hurts just as much as when I got kicked out of Reddit. Deapite being mostly a lurker I was active on a few communities there, and I even managed to make a few friends. But I never really felt like part of the community, and after the whole API thing I felt pushed out even more than usual. I don't want to go back, things have changed quite a lot since my days, but I miss being able to talk about stuff with random people and get memes or advice in return. For some reason I'm not managing to do the same here on Tumblr. :(

And in the end, I think that's what's going on here. I feel incredibly lonely in my life these days. I can't reconnect with my friends because my life has spun out of control and I'm ashamed of it (plus, adulting makes it much more difficult). I can't connect with people online because I'm a terminal lurker and have trouble adapting to digital environments, and the few pillars of stability in my life seem to be twisting or crumbling right in front of me. And due to my new job I work as a retail clerk alone most of the time. No connections here either.

I'm scared, Tumblr. I still have friends and a partner, but I feel so alone. I am trying to fight against the existential dread that hunts me down relentlessly, but I am losing this fight. :(

0 notes

caguaydreams · 4 years

Text

A thorough analysis on why Vah Medoh’s dungeon theme makes me want to cry

Yep, that’s an accurate title. Hi there! do you have a moment to hear about Breath of The Wild soundtrack? posting for yet a third time in hopes that tumblr won't hide it. I'm so tired

What started as a quick and harmless post, pretending to simply point out a couple of things, rolled downhill, out of my grasp and turned into a massive snowball of a short essay. How and why did this happen? Well, I assume a lot of people know about this song, and know what I’m talking about when I say that it makes me tear up and sob uncontrollably with every change in key as the seconds tick by and I spiral down into a dwell of misery from where I struggle to find the exit and to later recover.

……No?…..At the VERY LEAST it makes you a little uncomfortable. And I state this with much certainty, because after reading hundreds of comments everywhere online where this song is present, I picked up on a vast majority of people who expressed to feel the same way I did when it came down to our current music subject. See, statistics don’t lie… normally. So, naturally, my intrigue got the best of me. I wanted to find out exactly why this soundtrack was mercilessly stirring up everyone’s emotions, so I caved in and we ended up with this.

Buckle in, fellas.

Out of all Divine Beasts’ dungeon themes, Vah Medoh’s is the one that I can’t sit through. Not without growing antsy and wanting to turn it off as soon as possible. I find it genuinely difficult to listen to, and it’s not only because Revali is my favorite character and the song is just, plainly put, depressing, mind you.

We’ll start from 0 terminals activated.

It opens up similar to the other three dungeon themes; the pace is slow but eerie, gives off the impression that it sounds broken somehow. Something is off here, and it’s easy to figure out what that is from the get go: you’re basically entering a majestic, ancient, mechanical mausoleum, where everything went terribly wrong a century ago. Someone is gone, someone you knew, someone who was probably close to you, but it’s impossible to be sure. You don’t remember a thing, and this entire ordeal is confusing at best, and terrifying at worst. It’s your duty to make things right again.

It’s the same for all four Divine Beasts upon entering, save for the obvious little differences that separates them from each other and make them unique. Ruta’s is played on a major key, adhering to a sense of hopefulness. Naboris’s begins with a startling smashing of the piano keys, much like thunder of a sudden lighting strike. And Rudania’s theme starts threatening, dangerous, like scalding lava.

But now, back to Vah Medoh. The tone here is… alienating. The dissonant chords are all over the place, and feel disconnected, cold. It’s almost as if someone doesn’t want us to be here, or just like the elusive key, our presence is unexpected. Fitting, for a Divine Beast that’s high above the land, impossible for most to reach, yet we somehow made it. Apart from the piano, we have the occasional hint to rito culture, in the shape of a short, synthetic version of the rolled chords at the very beginning of Rito Village. A quiet reminder of where we come from. There is also, of course, the morse code distress signal, but we’ll talk more about that later.

As soon as this formal introduction is over, we finally get to the more, say, intimate stuff. Oh, and wouldn’t you know, it’s just tragic.

One terminal activated.

There’s no better short way I can describe this passage, other than anxiety-inducing. Especially when the strings come into play, and there’s two reasons I can think of why I feel this is an important thing to point out:

1- Characters and Symbolism.

I tend to associate stringed instruments, all of those which compose the violin family, with rito culture. And Revali, most specifically. In Creating a Champion we can see the early concept art and designs for all or most major characters in the game, and Revali’s highlighted rough design might be the one that changed the most throughout proper development of the character, out of all champions. He looks quite different from our usual depiction of him, it’s fascinating. What truly catches my eye, however, is the design of his bow.

You thought bird puns were bad? Oh boy, how do you feel about Revali having a bow that looks like a violin/cello/viola??? And do you need a bow to play it also??? Like, is it even an instrument or it’s nothing more than a mere fashion statement?-

Anyway. I believe this was originally going to be a not-so-subtle wink to rito culture, being heavily musically inclined as we can see and conclude for ourselves. Perhaps Revali was going to be a musician as well, now how cool it that!

Needless to say, the idea was eventually scrapped. But one detail I am CERTAIN carried over to the character we know and love today(okay not all of us love him but seriously if you dislike him why are you still here lol): strings. The association between bows(weapon) and stringed instruments, aside from being a quite clever and creative one, goes beyond the concept art and remains strong as part of Revali’s character, settling for having a presence via score. After all, Revali is a master of archery, so in that way it makes sense to keep strings as symbolism to reinforce the idea and drive it home.

But can you guess what other thing Revali excels at? That’s right: flying. He’s the only rito we know of who successfully managed to take advantage of wind currents and bend them to his will. And do you know what musical instruments are often used to evoke the feeling of flight and gale? If you thought of bowed strings, you’re correct! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much support on this topic online, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I am most certain that this is fact, although not something worth discussing on the Internet, by the looks of it.

Anyhow, violins/cellos/etc are ever-present whenever we’re close to Rito Village or dealing with a rito related mission. Attack on Vah Medoh, for example, features a sequence of strings that is meant to evoke the strong winds we’re fighting against in that particular moment(*). Another great example is The Final Trial, the song that plays at the shrine of resurrection nearing the end of the Champions’ Ballad. Preceding the activation of each terminal, you’ll notice that a new instrumental element joins the crowd: the first one corresponds to the tambourines, related to the zora and Mipha; the second one are strings, referencing the rito and Revali, etc. I tell you, the moment I heard this during the trial I almost started crying like a baby. And, although strings have a lot to do with Rito culture in general, they tie most strongly to Revali, since he was the champion of his people, and his legacy carried over throughout the years. His accomplishments became material of folk tale, a legend, a source of pride and inspiration for the village. And let’s not forget that, at the end of the day, Revali is the crucial and foremost connection Link has to this place. Other than appeasing Vah Medoh, Link’s responsibility here is to free his past fellow champion’s spirit from Ganon’s malice. The soundtrack is referencing Revali first, and by extension his devotion to his home.

With all that in mind, let’s move on to our next point:

2- Nowhere to Go.

You shoot the canons, land on top of the Divine Beast, do what you gotta do, activate the first terminal and the soundtrack goes off unannounced. Like some sort of surprise anxiety bomb. The rhythm turns fast, the melody erratic, incredibly desperate in its execution. There’s this sheer despair, fear, this feeling of suffocation almost, which are so well achieved in this particular piece.

And that is, partially, because a quite familiar resource is used here as well; one that we’ve heard before in songs such as Rito Village or Revali’s theme. You could even think of it as a motif: two notes are played in an semitone interval, repeatedly and in quick succession. For the sake of later convenience, we’ll call this the Flight Motif, now let me explain why. In Breath of The Wild, this semitone loop is often followed up by some form of resolution. In Rito Village, formerly known as Dragon Roost Island(**), that resolution consists of a graceful descent of the melody, from a high that was built up previously during the motif. On the other hand, if you listen to Revali’s theme, you’ll notice that the interval repeats itself for a couple of times as thought charging up, to then rise fast and determined into a triumphal reprise of Revali’s distinctive assigned melody. This juxtaposition supposes the difference that lays between common rito flight and Revali’s trademark ability; both musical sequences are speaking of flight, albeit in two different languages depending on the way to achieve it. While the rito traditionally use their wings to glide and let themselves get swayed by the air currents Buzz Lightyear style, Revali takes full advantage of his flying capabilities to somehow create an updraft of his own, rising meters above the ground whenever he likes or needs to.

So, now that I layed out my base of thought when focusing on the strings, this’ll be much easier to explain. We’ve settled what the instruments themselves are a symbolic representation of Revali, in this scenario specifically. He was the only one inside Vah Medoh, and the score is, in a way, a retelling of what we can vaguely assume went down here during the Great Calamity, as much as it is what sets the tone and ambience for Link’s mission. But what are we hearing exactly? What we talked about, the Flight Motif, is being repeated nonstop. And that’s the thing, remember how I mentioned that this sequence usually finds resolution at the end? Well. Inside Vah Medoh,… it never does. The melody picks up in numerous occasions, but it’s not nearly as graceful, or calculated, as we’ve grown used to by now. It gets tangled and lost, and then inevitably falls to the ground in disarray. The pattern repeats itself, reaching higher after a handful of failed attempts, but no matter how much it tries, the cycle never ends. What used to tell us about flying and freedom in the skies, has morphed into an almost sinister musical incarnation of a tornado, and there is no way out of this trap. What do you think it must feel like to mindlessly flap your wings against wind currents so strong and violent, that it is impossible to get anywhere nearby, let alone take off every time you lose your balance. Or every time you’re shot down. On top of that, trying to aim and fight back in whatever short breaks and opportunities you get, at an enemy that’s much more powerful and relentless, who’s using your own element as a weapon to destroy you… it’s a risk Revali surely had to take in order to put up a fight. Even knowing full well that the odds were not in his favour, that he was most likely going to lose this battle, that he was going to die. Let that sink in. I’ll skip the activation of the second terminal, since there’s barely any change registered in the theme in general. So-

Three terminals activated.

I know this post is supposed to be a breakdown of the song purely, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for a little theorising, and the following scrutiny is also quite relevant for our discussion. Bear with me for a bit. I’ve read almost everywhere about people’s most common interpretations on the Divine Beasts SOS signals, and how everyone thinks that Revali’s coming in last (a few seconds later than the other champions) has to do with him holding on for longer. Or, also, overconfident as he was, it means that the idea of calling out for additional support didn’t cross his mind until it was too late, and that’s why the beeping sounds more frantic and panicked than the others’ when it does appear. After giving it some thought myself, I’m betting on the latter option holding more ground, and that’s not all. I want to touch upon a detail of the piece that I never acknowledged was there until very recently(after seeing myself obliged to listen to this song fully and a handful of times, suffering every minute of it for the sole purpose of this analysis. It’s okay I didn’t need my heart anyway). Soon after activating the third terminal, the SOS signal disappears, or grows distant and faint enough that we can’t make it out from the background anymore. In its place, we’re confronted by this… shrill, piercing and painfully slow tune. It sounds synthetic, artificial, devoid of life. And it’s funny, because you know what it reminds me of? I’ll tell you:

A heartbeat flatline sound.

And I want to highlight that this doesn’t happen in any of the other Divine Beasts themes. All their SOS signals carry on, but Medoh’s is no more. This abrupt stop, followed by this bone-chilling tune…. makes me believe that Revali was the first of the champions to fall. A few days ago I came across SuperZeldaGirl’s video on a similar topic, theorising that this could very much be the case. There is not much evidence to support this claim other than some visual cues that could be suggesting to it, but after I found this in the soundtrack, and if we’re to rely on it for anything, I believe Revali was either the first champion to be ambushed by Ganon, or well…. the first to be killed. It is plausible, because short after Calamity Ganon unleashes his power, Revali parts from the group and flies directly to Vah Medoh, and he very well could’ve been the first pilot to arrive.

On this note…. we’ll have to wait and see for ourselves, when Age of Calamity provides long-awaited answers to many of our questions.

Four terminals activated.

An interesting melody is being played on what, for me, would qualify as a glockenspiel or a celesta, which are keyboard based instruments that produce a sound similar to that of a music box(***). If you want to pay more attention to it, I suggest listening to Vetrom’s Instrumental Mix Cover of the theme, where they practically zoom in on this part of the song (keep in mind that it uses the All Terminals’ time signature so it’s being played faster). For some reason, this particular addition makes me feel profound empathy. The sound of this instrument could be described as cute or childlike, magical, even. It is more often than not used to represent innocence, but I highly doubt that’s specifically the intention here. Much like the leading strings’ melody, the melodic contour of this one is trapped in a loop of going up and down constantly, but the difference is that this time around it sounds more under control. And much more uniform too. It doesn’t lose focus or takes risky, fruitless leaps, but rather chooses to stay on a path of waves that consistently rises and falls without taking detours. Like a determined battle strategy, giving it your all. You fall, but get back up again, and try again, and again. It reminds me of Revali’s approach to training, being persistent to the point of overworking himself. He had discipline nailed down to a tee, which I also think served him well in combat. It’s not just about being hard on yourself, either, but being confident and having complete faith in your abilities; believing that you’ll make it. For this to appear now, that the SOS signal is almost completely gone, is significant because it means that by this point, being so close to success on Link’s behalf, the music is sparing genuine encouragement for once, in spite of the tragic outcome of the past and the danger of the current situation. But, in all honesty, this is probably just me reading too much into it. Perhaps the composer just thought this addition sounded pretty bitching and there’s not much else to it, which is completely fine. Although, intentional or not, sometimes coincidences do happen, and at the end of the day, interpretations like this are a form of appreciation for an artist’s work and for what they can unknowingly accomplish.

All terminals activated.

This is the moment when the song finally lightens up. Notice how the strings abandon the wave pattern for a more even contour. The beat quickens, the melody stabilizes. At first I thought, coming from our flight analogy, that this meant a cease in movement entirely, and it was partly one of the reasons why the song in general makes me anxious. But thinking about it now, …there is something different going on here. The strings are playing on a steady rhythm. It resembles a march, it’s like a pounding heart. It’s a lively, hopeful statement. And what’s interesting is that, up until this point, there was so much fear and helplessness present in the score, even going as far as to reach a dead end when we activate the third terminal. But that’s it, isn’t it? the music just keeps going further.

It’s saying: this isn’t over yet. Even after complete and utter defeat, there’s still hope and an underlying wish to overcome this predicament, and we started to hear this as soon as a fourth terminal is activated. The melody we previously talked about? it’s here as well, and its beat is much more daring and confident.

And I just want to say… this is so powerful. Because this sentiment is deeply tied to the game’s story and Revali’s character arc. You see, he is introduced as someone who resents Link for being the manifestation of his failure, in a way, because Revali has trained arduously his whole life to be where he is, to be recognised. And yet… this hylian gets chosen by a magic sword and some tale of divine destiny and, apparently, that’s all it takes for him to be deemed the hero that will save the land. In Revali’s eyes, Link has done nothing to prove his worth before him, so it is easy to see why he despises the silent knight so much; he is yet another individual that was born into their destiny. Meanwhile, Revali has had to build his reputation from the ground up, earning him a place among the greatest warriors of Hyrule, and even then he finds himself surrounded by people who grew up praised for being born gifted. We can see how Revali is the odd one out, and can map out the reason for him acting so antagonistic towards Link.

But once we’re on Medoh, things start to change. When Link enters the Divine Beast, Revali greets him with disdain, as per usual. Of course, Link has no recollection of whatever happened a hundred years ago, other than a small glimpse of the rito champion talking down to him, a memory that came and went in a flash. So as Link, we more than expect Revali to act cold and mocking, which he does. He provides us with as little help as needed in order to free Medoh, reluctantly, shielding his wounded pride over having to wait for Link, of all people, to come to their rescue. But you can hear him starting to open up bit by bit(I wish I could translate his dialogue directly from Japanese but I’ll make do with a couple of dubs and other numerous sources from translators online). With each little step Link takes towards success, activating the terminals, the perception Revali has of him shifts from one of resentment to one of genuine admiration and respect. By the end of it all, he is willing to not only cheer on Link during the boss battle, but to trust him with his life’s worth achievement. And once left alone, he admits defeat and lets go of his bitterness, realising that he was wrong to underestimate Link, and later wishes he could’ve had a chance to measured up to him. To take all of this into consideration and work with it in the soundtrack I think it’s genuinely splendid. And for once, I am grateful that it ends in somewhat of a positive note that puts my soul to rest. I still have a hard time listening to the first two thirds of the entire thing, but now I can look forward to a hopeful and earnestly heartening conclusion for all the pain that this composition puts me in. I must admit that it’s beautifully and brilliantly crafted, and that I am enamoured of it regardless.

That is why I wrote roughly 4k words about it! I hate myself!

If you’re as crazy as me about the soundtrack of this game, I recommend you read the published cd interview with the composers themselves! if you haven’t already. I just found it yesterday(unbelievable but it’s true) and… after writing all of this and checking it out, I felt validated. It sure is a one of a kind feeling.

Alright folks, we’ve made it to the end. Congratulations for sticking around and thanks being interested in my nonsensical rambling!

I also hope that you, like me, will now be unable to listen to bowed strings without being reminded of Revali. Good luck!

————– Annotations/Sidenotes/Whatever

(*)The Flight Motif(in point number 2) is also present in this track. We can hear it in the background right after the Rito leitmotif, as per usual. It starts with a clarinet, I think, before the strings take the lead. (**) Note that the Flight Motif only comes into play in the Breath of The Wild rendition of the song. (***)I strongly associate this instrument with Mipha, given that it is used in her theme, in every “response” to the initial melody. It can be heard in Attack On Vah Ruta, as well, it enters the scene when the notes Mi(E) and Fa(F) are played. The initial tune, Si and Do(B and C) are played on a clarinet or oboe, wind instruments just like the flute that leads Sidon’s respective theme. The celesta can also be heard inside Vah Ruta, activating the first terminal…. when the song really takes a turn just like Medoh’s. Mipha has nothing to do with the song of this analysis, however. We must understand that instruments, although they are attached to characters/various story elements in some cases, can always be used outside of that context, for that is the nature of an orchestral soundtrack. If you have this many tools at your disposal, you will make good use of them.

#Revali #Vah Medoh #botw #loz #aoc

252 notes · View notes

goshiki-kun · 2 years

Note

invading your inbox with a matchup req😎

i’m a minor, my pronouns are she/her, female, 5”2 *sobs* idk if this helps but libra sun aqua moon idk rising i’ll have to check snapchat for that. i’m and INTP with a 5w4.

personality: i only loud over text; kinda quiet in person. like the lesser the people around me, the more i’ll interact. for my sake we’ll say i’m funny. i’m the therapist friend if the group and fluent in sarcasm.

hobbies: playing the guitar and keyboard, reading, painting, reading and writing poems, making fb memes, math (i’m gonna get hated for this bye)

other random stuff

i’m fluent in three languages

love oversized clothing

love dogs

listen to music 24/7

make playlists every two days

i have tarot cards😎

i need my space at times

i’m sorry if that’s too much anyways hope you have a great day <33

oh hell yeah!!! you're my first request ever so congratulations and thank you! also, tbh, there is never too much when it comes to this! more makes it a lot easier for me!

okay so, since i'm split on who exactly i would match you with, you get two characters! lucky!!

my first pairing for you is....

SUNA RINTARŌ!

────────────────────

HOW YOU MET

✦ You two didn't actually meet in person; and didn't even see each other until you were already friends for a couple of months.

✦ That's right– you're internet friends with everyone's favorite terminally online e-boy!

✦ Like I'm gonna be honest here, he saw your memes and really liked them. That's just how you two became friends: he messaged you on a whim, and you two meshed really well together!

✦ He really loved your sarcastic bantering, and has laughed himself to tears more than once from your jokes and memes– something which is pretty rare for him! That's kind of when he realized that you were going to be someone really, really special to him. But like, in a best friend way. ...unless? 👀

HOW YOU STARTED DATING

+ more first impression shenanigans

✦ Honestly, you two didn't start dating until after you've met in real life.

✦ He was kind of surprised at how quiet you were in person, compared to how bombastic you were online– not that he thinks it's a bad thing! Suna definitely thought it was interesting at just how different you were, while still retaining all the same qualities that made you his friend in the first place.

✦ Also, he really finds it cute that you wear very oversized clothing when you're already so small– it just accentuates how adorable you are and- oh shit. That was when Suna really, truly, definitely knew he had a thing for you.

✦ About eight months into your friendship, you're both hanging out together. You both have made it routine to take the one-and-a-half hour train ride to each other's prefecture every Saturday; on odd-numbered days, he'll come to yours, and visa versa on even days. It's nothing out of the ordinary for you guys, until Suna says something completely out of the blue while you opine about your mutually lackluster relationship experience: “Y'know, I definitely wouldn't mind dating a girl like you.”

✦ Before he could even regret the phrase that just came out of his mouth, you agreed with your own similar sentiments. As is typical for Suna, there's no fireworks or anything too over-the-top; i was just the two of you, and he wouldn't have changed it for the world.

WHAT HE THINKS ABOUT YOU

✦ You're his little pogchamp.

✦ Okay, seriously though, he really can't wrap his head around just how lucky he was to have stumbled across you. He's really, really glad that you're a part of his life.

✦ Conversation just comes so naturally to the two of you? And you can even just communicate entirely through memes and references? And it doesn't feel awkward or forced? Just god, he is whipped.

✦ He thinks it's kind of weird how you like doing math for fun, but hey, who's he to judge? Maybe you'll let him cheat off of your homework, too.

✦ Will listen to every single playlist you make, and will make playlists for you, too. Not even romantic ones, either, just songs that he likes, or that he thinks you would like, or that just remind him of you.

DATE IDEAS AND OTHER HEADCANONS

✦ Y'all go on really chill dates, and they often consist of you two just hanging out in proximity to each other; he's just happy enjoying your company, no matter the context.

✦ High-key, you're both gonna end up raiding a convenience store at, like, 2 AM for snacks, and then loitering around outside to scarf them all down. And, just for good measure, he's gonna hit you with that: “Tsuki ga kirei desu ne?” even though he's just looking over at you.

✦ Not only will he let you steal his clothes, he'll just sometimes give them to you. If he sees that you're cold, you are getting his jacket, and whoops– looks like he forgot to ask for it back! Guess it's yours now! 🤷‍♀️

────────────────────────────

But, that was just the second of the two I was split about– and now, it's onto my main choice for you, which is....

────────────────────────────

KUROO TETSURŌ!

────────────────────

HOW YOU MET

✦ You two were seated next to each other in your homeroom class when you were both first years in high school, and you just stuck together ever since then.

✦ He just kind of introduced himself to you– in like, the way any kid does when they're in a class without anyone they know. Like, Kuroo didn't expect to be friends with you for so long, and he definitely didn't expect to actually catch feelings for you.

✦ At first, he noticed that you were both the student closest to him, and just how quiet you were; you didn't approach anybody, nor did they approach you. It kind of reminded him how Kenma was when they first met, so he just naturally gravitated towards you.

✦ Congratulations! You're now under the wings of Kuroo Tetsurō, resident extrovert and rooster-haired smartass. Good luck.

HOW YOU STARTED DATING

✦ I'm sorry, but this is a slow-burn friends to lovers situation that you've found yourself in. It's gonna take a good, long while of mutual pining for him to actually ask you out.

✦ Kuroo being Kuroo, though, he's gonna flirt with you so much– mostly in the form of shitty jokes and "intentionally" cheesy pick-up lines (he actually thought they were good, but he'll never admit it).

✦ He passes you notes like: “Are you made up of C12H22O11? 'Cause you're really sweet!” and he thinks he's so clever. Even if he elicits just a light chuckle from you, he'll still count that as a victory in his books.

✦ You both have this sort of tongue-in-cheek relationship, where your feelings are always spoken in at least three layers of irony, sarcasm, and inside jokes that neither of you can really tell if the other is serious or not. You've got the type of friendship where it's painfully obvious to everyone else that you like each other but, for some reason, you guys can't put two and two together.

✦ Like honestly, y'all were already dating four months before you even made it official– but like, ironically, as friends. Just two besties going on purely platonic dates. Nobody believes you, but they humor it anyways; by the start of your second year, Morisuke and Kai have both started making bets about it.

✦ Finally, though, near the tail end of summer break, Kuroo decided that he had had enough– it was gonna be now, or never, and he needed to put the months of tiptoeing around you to an end.

✦ “Hey, do you that one time, back in Japanese last year?” he mused into the warm, lazy breeze, eyes trained firmly at the emptiness in front of you.

✦ “...You mean the required fives hours each week for an entire year? Yeah, totally.”

✦ “No, that's not–! You know, that one time where we got caught passing notes and you had to read it out loud– but, you lied about what it said. That time.”

✦ Of course you remembered it. Given what was actually in the note, it was hard to forget.

✦ It was such a simple note, really, but one that made your heart do summersaults within your ribcage whenever you even thought about it; all from just three simple words.

✦ “I like you.”

✦ Written in red ink, the same red he used to emphasize important words whenever he was taking notes– he never used that pen for anything else. It was that ink that made you question whether or not he really was serious about all the little jokes you two made.

✦ “Well– yeah, of course I remember,” you replied, slightly more hastily than you would've liked. “What about it?”

✦ He paused, just for a moment– taking a deep breath in, and a deep breath out. He looked just as he would before he made a decisive serve during a tough match: focused, invigorated, and nervous. This is the first time you've really seen him nervous around another person like this.

✦ “I meant every word of it: liking you, I mean.”

WHAT HE THINKS ABOUT YOU

✦ You're amazing. Plain and simple: not just to him, but as a whole. You're amazing.

✦ Like, wow. You're smart, funny, and kind? You're just a triple threat, aren't you?

✦ He thinks it's really cool that you can speak not just two, but three different languages! He will ask you to teach him at least one of them, so you can have your own secret language that no one around you guys can understand. He's a quick learner, and, within a week, he's already learned the worst pick-up lines you've ever heard in your life.

✦ At least his pronunciation is pretty alright.

✦ Kuroo kind of thinks the whole tarot card thing is a bit silly, but he isn't gonna think any less of you because you're into that stuff. He'll give an off-handed mention about it not being scientific, but that he'll give it a shot– after all, if it's something you believe in, maybe it is worth giving a second glance.

✦ He still does admire how smart and witty you are! He loves that you can keep up his bantering energy with your own retorts, and that you guys can keep riffing like that before one of you inevitably breaks.

✦ And, if you need space, he's willing to give it to you. Kuroo is good at reading people, and he can usually pick up on when you need some time alone. He'll still check in on you every couple of hours, just to see how you're doing.

DATE IDEAS AND OTHER HEADCANONS

✦ Study dates? Study dates.

✦ Like, you two just spending an afternoon cramming the last couple of chapters of a textbook you really should've read, cracking jokes about just how bland it really is. Helping each other understand concepts they didn't quite get the first time over. Swapping and comparing notes. These are usually either at home or at a café.

✦ Also: museum dates. Please take this nerd to the museum. These dates are so chaotic, honestly? It's just you two being public nuisances while also kind of learning about science. He especially loves it if they have really immersive and interactive exhibits!

✦ He buys you the absolute largest hoodie they have in the gift shop. It completely dwarfs you, but he thinks it's really cute.

✦ If you thought his shitty puns and double entendres would get any better now that you guys are official– you're wrong. They're 1000% worse.

✦ Whenever you're at one of his matches, he looks into the crowd and gives you this wild grin after he scores a point. His hair is all messed up and his eyes are bright, and he looks so proud of himself when he hears you cheering him on.

✦ To be honest, I headcanon Kuroo as a dog person, so like.. y'all text each other pictures of dogs all the time. Whenever he goes out jogging, he snaps quick pictures of each one he sees: your favorite regular is the dopey Shiba Inu who always manages to trip as soon as Kuroo gets his phone out.

✦ In summary: chaos nerds. Goblins of entropy and harbingers of mischief. Why are y'all so cute together 😭😭😭

────────────────────────────

— vince.

hoo boy! this was a lot longer than i expected it to be, but i think i'm pretty happy with the results! i hope you enjoy your match-ups as much as i enjoyed writing them!

my requests are open!

#my writing #vince's match-making #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu matchups #suna rintarou #kuroo tetsurou #haikyuu fluff #sunbeamx #my amazing mutuals

7 notes · View notes

mugasofer · 3 years

Text

It seems like many, perhaps most, people historically believed in some immanent apocalypse.

Many philosophies claim that the world is passing into a degenerate age of chaos (Ages of Man, Kali Yuga, life-cycle of civilisation), or divine conflict will shortly spill over & destroy the Earth (Ragnorok, Revelations, Zoroastrian Frashokereti), or that the natural forces sustaining us must be transient.

Yet few panic or do anything. What anyone does "do about it" is often symbolic & self-admittedly unlikely to do much.

Maybe humans evolved not to care, to avoid being manipulated?

Many cults make similar claims, and do uproot their lives around them. Even very rarely committing mass suicide or terror attacks etc on occasion. But cults exist that don't make such claims, so it may not be the mechanism they use to control, or at most a minor one. "This is about the fate of the whole world, nothing can be more important than that, so shut up" may work as as a thought terminating cliche, but it doesn't seem to work that strongly, and there are many at least equally effective ones.

Some large scale orgs do exist that seem to take their eschatology "seriously". The Aztecs committed atrocities trying to hold off apocalypse, ISIS trying to cause it. Arguably some Communist or even fascist groups count, depending on your definition of apocalypse.

But even then, one can argue their actions are not radically different from non-apocalypse-motivated ones - e.g. the Aztecs mass-executed less per capita than the UK did at times & some historians view them as more about displaying authority.

I'm thinking about this because of two secular eschatologies - climate apocalypse and the Singularity.

My view on climate change, which as far as I can tell is the scientific consensus, is that it is real and bad but by no means apocalyptic. We're talking incremental increases in storms, droughts, floods etc, all of which are terrible, but none of which remotely threaten human civilisation. E.g. according to the first Google result, the sea is set to rise by 1 decimeter by 2100 in a "high emissions scenario", not to rise by tens or hundreds of meters and consume all coastal nations as I was taught as a child. Some more drastic projections suggest that the sea might rise by as much as two or three meters in the worst case scenario.

It really creeps me out when I hear people who confess to believe that human civilisation, the human species, or even all life on Earth is most likely going to be destroyed soon by climate change. The most recent example, which prompted this post, was the Call of Cthulhu podcast I was listening to casually suggesting that it might be a good idea to summon an Elder God of ice and snow to combat climate change as the "lesser existential risk", perhaps by sacrificing "climate skeptics" to it. It's incredibly jarring for me to realise that the guys I've been listening to casually chatting about RPGs think they live in a world that will shortly be ended by the greed of it's rulers. But this idea is everywhere. Discussions of existential risks from e.g. pandemics inevitably attract people arguing that the real existential risk is climate change. A major anti-global-warming protest movement, Extinction Rebellion, is literally named after the idea that they're fighting against their own extinction. Viral Tumblr posts talk about how the fear of knowing that the world is probably going to be destroyed soon by climate change and fascism is crippling their mental health, and they have no idea how to deal with it because it's all so real.

But it's not. It's not real.

Well, I can't claim that political science is accurate enough for me to definitively say that fascism isn't going to take over, but I can say that climate science is fairly accurate and it predicts that the world is definitely not about to end in fire or in flood.

(There are valid arguments that climate change or other environmental issues might precipitate wars, which could turn apocalyptic due to nuclear weapons; or that we might potentially encounter a black swan event due to our poor understanding of the ecosystem and climate-feedback systems. But these are very different, as they're self-admittedly "just" small risks to the world.)

And I get the impression that a lot of people with more realistic views about climate change deliberately pander to this, deliberately encouraging people to believe that they're going to die because it puts them on the "right side of the issue". The MCU's Loki, for instance, recently casually brought up a "climate apocalypse" in 2050, which many viewers took as meaning the world ending. Technically, the show uses a broad definition of "apocalypse" - Pompeii is given as another example - and it kind of seems like maybe all they meant was natural disasters encouraged by climate change, totally defensible. But I still felt kinda mad about it, that they're deliberately pandering to an idea which they hopefully know is false and which is causing incredible anxiety in people. I remember when Greta Thurnberg was a big deal, I read through her speeches to Extinction Rebellion, and if you parsed them closely it seemed like she actually did have a somewhat realistic understanding of what climate change is. But she would never come out and say it, it was all vague implications of doom, which she was happily giving to a rally called "Extinction Rebellion" filled with speakers who were explicitly stating, not just coyly implying, that this was a fight for humanity's survival against all the great powers of the world.

But maybe there's nothing wrong with that. I despise lying, but as I've been rambling about, this is a very common lie that most people somehow seem unaffected by. Maybe the viral tumblr posts are wrong about the source of their anxiety; maybe it's internal/neurochemical and they world just have picked some other topic to project their anxieties on if this particular apocalypse wasn't available. Maybe this isn't a particularly harmful lie, and it's hypocritical of me to be shocked by those who believe it.

Incidentally, I believe the world is probably going to end within the next fifty years.

Intellectually, I find the arguments that superhuman AI will destroy the world pretty undeniable. Sure, forecasting the path of future technology is inherently unreliable. But the existence of human brains, some of which are quite smart, proves pretty conclusively it's possible to get lumps of matter to think - and human brains are designed to run on the tiny amounts of energy they can get by scavenging plants and the occasional scraps of meat in the wilderness as fuel, with chemical signals that propagate at around the speed of sound (much slower than electronic ones), with only the data they can get from input devices they carry around with them, and which break down irrevocably after a few decades. And while we cannot necessarily extrapolate from the history of progress in both computer hardware and AI, that progress is incredibly impressive, and there's no particular reason to believe it will fortuitously stop right before we manufacture enough rope to hang ourselves.

Right now, at time of writing, we have neural nets that can write basic code, appear to scale linearly in effectiveness with the available hardware with no signs that we're reaching their limit, and have not yet been applied at the current limits of available hardware let alone what will be available in a few years. They absorb information like a sponge at a vastly superhuman speed and scale, allowing them to be trained in days or hours rather than the years or decades humans require. They are already human-level or massively superhuman at many tasks, and are capable of many things I would have confidently told you a few years ago were probably impossible without human-level intelligence, like the crazy shit AI dungeon is capable of. People are actively working on scaling them up so that they can work on and improve the sort of code they are made from. And we have no ability to tell what they're thinking or control them without a ton of trial and error.

If you follow this blog, you're probably familiar with all the above arguments for why we're probably very close to getting clobbered by superhuman AI, and many more, as well as all the standard counter-arguments and the counter-arguments to those counter arguments.

(Note: I do take some comfort in God, but even if my faith were so rock solid that I would cheerfully bet the world on it - which it's not - there's no real reason why our purpose in God's plan couldn't be to destroy ourselves or be destroyed as an object lesson to some other, more important civilization. There's ample precedent.)

Here's the thing: I'm not doing anything about it, unless you count occasionally, casually talking about it with people online. I'm not even donating to help any of the terrifyingly-few people who are trying to do something about it. Part of why I'm not contributing is, frankly, I don't have a clue what to do, nor do I have much confidence in any of the stuff people are currently doing (although I bloody well hope some of it works.)

And yet I don't actually feel that scared.

I feel more of a visceral chill reading about the nuclear close calls that almost destroyed the world in the recent past than thinking about the stuff that has a serious chance of doing so in a few decades. I'm a neurotic mess, and yet what is objectively the most terrifying thing on my radar does not actually seem to contribute to my neurosis.

#x risk cw #futurism #we live in the future #long #rambly late night posting #history #religion

21 notes · View notes

starrypawz · 2 years

Text

Under a cut as this is a bit morbid and relates to funerals, death etc and i’m basically just processing some feelings involves both pet death and parental death

But I saw this post earlier today (funnily enough via the discworld reddit as someone found it quite pratchettesque)

and yeah it got me thinking about what happened around my mum’s death last summer. (I think most people whove been following me for a while know about this? But short version my mum passed last summer from cancer)

And yeah how like it really did sort of feel I was pulled into a ritual that I didn’t really want to participate in but I still had to.

For me I found like her funeral felt more like it was for ‘other people’ and I didn’t really ‘need it’ and tbh I think it would’ve served me better if i hadn’t have gone. I think for me it was part my brain sort of hit a point somewhere in 2020 that kind of went ‘you know what fuck this im out im not emotionally processing anything more ciao’ so I’ve been probably more numb than is wise at times and also the fact I think due to the nature of her passing which was fairly sudden but like also not as although I wasn’t directly told it was terminal (Actually quite a lot about her prognosis was kept from me for better or worse)

I think I’d sort of connected dots and like especially in the last few weeks it was pretty obvious and she was to me sort of uh... gone before she was gone? (idk if that sounds insensitive but you know?) and made peace with the idea and so by the time she did pass I’d sort of processed a lot of it already. (also probably my own personal feelings on death and mortality etc) also i’d dealt with a lesser but also painful loss early 2020 when my dog Barney passed fairly suddenly (he’d been ill for a little while but was... holding in there then suddenly got worse, he had to be rushed to the vet one night and had to be overnight and he seemed somewhat ok, but then whilst sedated for an xray our vet found a large (probably not cancer) mass in his chest that was causing the problems so it was decided not to bring him around and put him to sleep whilst he was still under so in a way I didn’t really get to say goodbye to him properly. And it’s oddly similar to what happened to my childhood cat who was rushed to the vet one morning with a heart attack but she passed just before my parents could get her to the vet, as in they were at the last set of lights before the vets

And yeah it was like I was pulled into this weird ritual, I was despite the fact it was my mother who died still expected to act a certain way, do certain things and shoulder other people’s stuff. And like I had people around me and for me I actually found it very suffocating as like people were very much deciding for me what I needed when actually what I needed/wanted was space alone but I wasn’t allowed that I had to participate in this instead.

(I also had another lesser loss in this time, like about a week before my mum was brought home to be put into end of life home hospice care I was very suddenly informed that my volunteering role that I had at a local zoo (that yet again if you’ve been with me a while you’ll know about) was terminated and I wasn’t needed like I’d been there for about 8ish years? and then just boom nothing gone )

(weirdly i’ve just realised sort of sudden, closureless endings are quite a common theme in my life of varying degrees, the way i ‘lost’ a childhood friend of mine in primary school as she started hanging around with my bullies, the online friend I had when I was around 12 who one day I sent my usual greetings too and she just told me straight blank that the fact I always opened our conversations like ‘hi, how are you, what you doing?’ was boring and then... yeah friendship over boom in an instant, the way the volunteering role i’d had for a few years at an animal rescue ended pretty abruptly because higher ups decided to close the site, the time i was fired from a job the day after i graduated with my masters degree and a few other motments)

Like I really felt during that period and also the last month or so when things were nearing the end I sort of just... lost a lot of my autonomy I think and it was a weird experience. Because of course my mum’s needs were greater than mine and I had a role to play but it was sort of pushed on me at the expense of everything else where I had to shoulder and manage other people’s emotional expectations and have pressure put on me that I 1. didn’t ask for 2. couldn’t really cope with. And yeah it sort of felt like suddenly I wasn’t a person for a while as my needs straight up didn’t matter for a while.

And yeah just... idk how to conclude this but that’s just how it felt I was just pulled out of everything and pushed into a ritual i wasn’t prepared for and didn’t want to be in but it Had To Be Done and it was a weird time.

#something something being a social creature is a weird thing

4 notes · View notes

bluejayblueskies · 3 years

Text

storge

n. familial love, born out of familiarity or dependence; a natural, unforced, instinctual love

Words: 3.3k

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Relationships: Danny Stoker & Tim Stoker, Sasha James & Tim Stoker (background)

Characters: Tim Stoker, Danny Stoker, Sasha James, Minor OCs

Additional Tags: AU - No Supernatural, AU - Everyone Lives/No One Dies, Internalized Acephobia/Arophobia, Implied/Referenced Arophobia (minor), Aromantic Character, Asexual Character

Summary:

Danny finished the last slice of the pizza they’d ordered, stared at the credits scrolling across Tim’s television screen from the cheesy Valentine’s Day rom-com they’d just finished watching, and said with feigned casualness, “I don’t think that’s for me.”

Tim, who had wanted that last slice of pizza, thank you very much, rolled his eyes and said, “Well, then I’m picking the pizza toppings next time. Maybe then we won’t have a pizza that only tastes like jalapeños.”

Read on Ao3

Or, read below (additional warnings below the cut):

Additional warnings: - character forcing himself to stay in a romantic situation even after he becomes uncomfortable - character mentioning the possibility of forcing himself to have sex with someone (doesn’t actually occur)

So here’s the thing: Tim is terrible at giving gifts. It doesn’t matter how long he’s known someone or how many of their favorites he can list off the top of his head—he still always ends up getting them something so incredibly, horribly generic because he just can’t do it. Sasha’s never going to let him live down the time he got her the exact same mug she keeps in the archives because he panicked, okay? And it was the only thing he could think of that wasn’t just candles or soap.

(“I honestly would have preferred soap,” Sasha said as she covered her mouth with one hand to stifle her laugher, the other still grasping the mug. Tim was significantly less amused.)

The one silver lining to the whole thing is that it’s never been a problem with Danny. Not because Tim is necessarily any better at getting gifts for him, but because Danny treats each and every gift from Tim like it’s something incredibly special and unique. Once, Tim got him a six-pack of plain black socks—just to test his theory that Danny was just being nice, or maybe just as a joke (or possibly both)—and Danny said, with a million-dollar smile, “You know, I was just thinking the other day how cool it would look to pair a patterned sock with a black one. This is great, Tim!”

Yeah, Tim’s pretty sure that Danny’s just fucking with him at this point. But honestly, Tim doesn’t really mind. It takes a lot of pressure off him during any of the traditional gift-giving seasons because he knows that whatever he gets Danny, Danny will just smile and thank him like it was what he’d always wanted.

Maybe that’s why Danny does it, Tim thinks as he stares at the dozens of tabs open on his computer, each for a different online retailer. To relieve the pressure.

If so, then Tim’s really ruining the whole thing now, isn’t he? Because instead of doing that follow-up Jon requested two days ago, Tim’s been agonizing over whether to get a mug or a shirt or a pin, or maybe something more personal like those sunglasses he’d seen the other day, or—

Or maybe something from the million other terrible ideas Tim’s had. With a long, drawn-out groan, he pushes back from his desk, stands with a too-loud pop of his back that has Sasha glancing up from her paperwork with a grimace, and makes his way to the breakroom.

He needs coffee.

As he waits for the pot to brew—because he’s the only one who drinks coffee in the archives (and yes, Sasha’s intricately named espresso beverages are technically coffee, but he doesn’t deign to count them)—he closes his eyes and tries to convince himself, yet again, that there’s a good reason he’s putting himself through this, and that no, it is not a stupid idea that has a ninety-nine percent chance of backfiring horribly.

It had gone like this:

Four months ago, Danny had finished the last slice of the pizza they’d ordered, stared at the credits scrolling across Tim’s television screen from the cheesy Valentine’s Day rom-com they’d just finished watching, and said with feigned casualness, “I don’t think that’s for me.”

“Oh, absolutely not. Last time you put pineapple and pepperoni on it, which is grounds for termination from topping-decisions for life.” Danny paused, and then he took his eyes away from the television, looked at Tim, and said, with distinctly less casualness, “I meant the movie. Um. The romance part, specifically.” Then, with a disarming smile: “I’ve got the comedy more than covered, after all. I told you I got that wedding gig, right? Maybe I can try some of my jokes on you.”

Danny opened his mouth again, clearly ready to launch into a demonstration of his latest vocational pursuit, but Tim’s brain had finally parsed Danny’s words enough to say, maybe a bit too abruptly, “Hold on, hold on. Let’s go back to the romance bit, yeah?”

He really, really hoped the statement had come off less accusatory and more encouraging. It must have worked because Danny’s smile faded into an expression that didn’t look afraid, only nervous. Still, Tim felt the need to add, with the edges of his words sanded down into something softer, “Obviously, you don’t have to tell me anything you aren’t comfortable with. But I’m all ears.”

“Mm, they are pretty big,” Danny quipped. “Only going to get bigger, too.”

Tim just sat back on the couch, crossed his arms, and waited. The credits on the screen continued to roll, the peppy pop music that accompanied them disrupting what might have, in any other situation, been an awkward silence. It still felt like an awkward something.

Then, Danny sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, worried it for a few seconds, and said, “Okay, so- you remember telling me about when you figured out you were ace, right?”

“Right,” Tim said.

“Right,” Danny echoed. He fiddled with the silver ring on his left thumb absently, like he always did when he was nervous or when he had a million things racing through his head and he was trying to decide which thread to pull that would make them all come together into a neatly-stitched pattern. “Well, I guess all the stuff you said about liking sex but not wanting it with anyone in particular got me thinking about things that I like. And, uh. Things that I don’t.”

There was another pause. The television screen had gone dark and the silence that stretched over them didn’t feel awkward anymore. Just heavy. Danny gave the ring on his finger another twist and said, “It had never really occurred to me that I could like to do something but not with anyone in particular, you know? Like- okay, so I enjoy flirting. I think all those stupid, cheesy pickup lines are hilarious, and seeing how people react to them is really fun. I mean, sometimes people laugh, sometimes people get annoyed, and sometimes people blush. But I never want anything out of it, you know?”

Danny stared at the blank screen; the profile of his face showed a smile, but the lines of his forehead and the creases around his eyes were tight. Wordlessly, Tim moved closer so that his shoulder pressed against Danny’s, light enough that it wasn’t oppressive but a grounding presence all the same. From the way that Danny relaxed slightly at the touch, Tim decided that it was a good move.

“One time, actually, someone offered to buy me a drink. You would have liked him, Tim—he had this really strong jawline, little bit of a five o’clock shadow, bright red hair. So I got the drink, and we talked, and even though he was funny and I had to stop sipping my drink because I kept choking on it when he would tell another joke, I just had this itching underneath my skin, like I just couldn’t get comfortable. But,” Danny said with a tight smile, “I ignored it. I told myself, You flirted with him first, Danny Stoker, and this is what happens when you flirt with people. Sometimes, they flirt back. So I had my drink. And then another, you know, because drinks are like potato chips, you can’t have just one.

“He didn’t ask me to- to come back to his place or whatever, which was- god, I don’t know what I would have done.” Danny bit his lip, leaned more heavily into Tim’s shoulder. “Probably would have said yes? And I don’t need you to tell me that that would have been stupid. I know.

“Instead, he gave me his number on one of those fancy business cards—I don’t really remember for what company, I threw it away as soon as I got home—and told me to call him. And I knew, as soon as he said that, that I wasn’t going to. That it- it wasn’t fun anymore, because there was this expectation to deliver.” Danny’s forehead creased, and he shook his head slowly. “No, that’s- that’s not quite right. An expectation to reciprocate, maybe?

“The thing is, the idea of romance and dating and all of that sounds interesting in theory, and sometimes I can even imagine myself doing it—albeit not with anyone in particular, just like as a thought exercise I guess. I tried, a few times, to put a specific face to whoever I was going on lovely Italian wine tours with or- or hand-feeding grapes to on a bed on some island. Tim, don’t make that face, wine tours and grape feeding are peak romance. Uh, I think.

“Anyway, anytime I tried to imagine dating someone instead of just dating, I got that same itching feeling under my skin. And I thought, well, I’m just not picking the right people. It’s got to be someone I really like, you know, someone I care about. Clearly, red-haired guy had not been the one.

“And then… I found someone. Her name was Ash and she was just everything I ever could have wanted. She was funny and brave and did this little thing with her nose when she laughed that made me laugh, and she was a much better rock climber than me but I was better at rappelling because she could never trust herself to lean back unless someone guided her down, and I really, really thought that it could be her, you know? I knew that I loved her, and even though most of my standard lines bounced right off her, a few stuck. If I tried, really tried, I even thought I could picture it: every single corny, cheesy date I’d ever imagined, with her face cut and pasted into the image. It was a bit like a bad Photoshop edit, you know, where the edges clearly didn’t fit? But I ignored it because it fit well enough, and she made me happy.”

Danny took a long breath and let it out just as slowly. Tim thought of a million things to say, a million reassurances, that he eventually let sink to the back of his mind and dissipate. Instead, he fought back against the instinct to break the silence with a laugh or a word or just a noise and instead leaned further back against the couch. Patience was not his strong suit, but he could do it for Danny.

Finally, Danny continued, “And then one day, she… she asked me out. I guess I must have looked pretty shocked because she laughed and said that she’d been flirting with me for weeks, just like I’d been with her, and so there was no need to look so surprised. The thing is, I hadn’t even noticed. Every time she’d made some joke and I’d laughed, I’d thought that was just normal. Being friends, you know? Maybe that’s stupid, given that I’d been flirting with her too. Maybe not. I don’t know.

“I said yes. And spent the next four days regretting it. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. We were planning on going out to dinner that Friday, and the entire night before I got maybe an hour of sleep? I just kept thinking, you know, is she going to want to hold hands? Is she going to want to kiss me? Is she going to want to do more than kiss? What about other things, the wine and the grapes and rings and weddings and kids and—”

Danny cut off with a sigh, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Yeah, so I called her an hour before I was supposed to meet her at the restaurant and said that something had come up and I couldn’t make it. Which was a lie of course, and I’m pretty sure she could tell because instead of asking what was wrong or what had come up, she just said okay. In a voice that sounded like it very much wasn’t okay. And when she hung up, I realized we hadn’t scheduled a new date. And it filled me with so much relief that I just felt guilty, because I still loved her, you know? And I just couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong, why I liked to flirt but felt so uncomfortable when it actually worked, why the idea of dating didn’t bother me until it became a reality, why every single ‘crush’ I had just felt so forced even if I cared about the person so much it hurt.

“And then you told me that you were ace, and you talked about how it felt to be ace, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about Ash. I didn’t think that your situation was the same as mine, but it just—it felt close? So I finally thought to look up how I felt. And I’m still not one-hundred percent sure what label fits or whatever, but just knowing that there’s labels at all, that there are people out there who feel the way that I feel and that I’m not just- just doing it wrong—god, it was just this huge weight lifted off my shoulders.”

Danny laughed, a bit harshly, born more of a release of nerves than of humor. “Is it a bit weird that I still really like to flirt? Maybe I should give a disclaimer before every pickup line: Hello, I’m Danny Stoker, I’m some flavor of aromantic and asexual, this flirting is purely platonic. Hmm, that’s a bit wordy.”

Then, a smile cracked Danny’s face in two, tinged with more than a hint of devilish teasing. “Maybe I’ll make a business card.”

Finally, Tim broke his vow of silence with a snort. He nudged Danny’s side with his elbow and said, “It can be a family venture. Stoker and Stoker, aspec brothers in crime.”

Danny’s smile softened into something subtler, and he said, with an unusual amount of sincerity in his voice, “Thanks, Tim. I… I mean, I didn’t think you would react badly, but still. Thanks.”

And Tim’s heart broke just a little, and he pulled Danny to his side and wrapped his arms around him tightly. “Never,” he said firmly. “I’m really glad you told me, Danny. Really, really glad.”

So yeah. Tim can’t mess this gift up, because Danny had trusted him with this part of himself, and Tim really, really wants to support him in every possible way. Even if that way involves cheesy novelty mugs striped with the colors of the aromantic flag.

Ugh.

Tim grabs his distinctly not cheesy plain black mug of coffee and makes his way back to his desk, entirely absorbed in a swirling mess of thoughts filled with blacks and greens and whites and purples. Which is why he doesn’t notice Sasha sitting at his desk until he nearly sits on top of her.

“Christ,” Tim says, jumping back so quickly he nearly spills his coffee. Sasha barely acknowledges him; she’s too busy typing away at something on his computer, and when Tim looks over her shoulder, he realizes with a sickening horror that she’s closed all but a few tabs on his computer. Tabs that he’d carefully curated. Tabs that he needs.

(Tabs full of indecision and terrible, terrible ideas. But he needs them all the same.)

“I hope,” Tim says with a voice that’s only slightly on the saner side of panic, “that there’s a perfectly good reason why you’ve thrown a wrench the size of a small house into my gift planning process? Because otherwise, I am three seconds away from freaking out.”

Sasha waves a hand at him, still not looking away from the screen. “All your gifts suck, Tim.”

“Hey!”

This time, Sasha does look at him, something apologetic in her eyes. “Sorry. But they do.”

Sullenly, Tim says, “Danny doesn’t think my gifts suck.”

Sasha sighs and turns back to the computer. “Danny loves you a lot more than he loves your gifts. But that’s not the point.” She types something on the keyboard, navigates through a few windows without even taking the time to look at their contents. “You’ve been scowling at your screen all day, Tim. And I know it’s not because of that Remmier case that Jon assigned because I finished that yesterday.”

“Oh. Thank you?”

“Yup. You owe me coffee.” Sasha types a few more things, squints at the screen, then makes a noise of triumph. “There. Get him that and thank me later.”

Then, Sasha’s out of his chair and back at her own desk, leaving behind only a warmth that Tim can feel as he takes his own seat and finally gets a good look at what’s on the screen.

Huh.

Tim orders it. And a few days before Danny’s birthday, he has an idea. Maybe the only good gift-giving idea he’s ever had.

So the next time he’s at the shop, he picks up some supplies. And for someone who majored in anthropology and doesn’t know the first thing about graphic design, he’s quite happy with the final product.

And when Danny unwraps the box on his birthday, sat on Tim’s couch with empty boxes of Thai takeout in front of them, the first thing he sees are the cards, set right on the top. It’s a silly little design, a set of two mountains striped with the aromantic and asexual colors, and next to them:

Stoker & Stoker, Inc.

Aspec brothers in crime

Where the flirting is platonic, NOT erotic!

Underneath the cards, there’s a new climbing rope, striped with greens and whites and greys and blacks, and a matching set of metallic purple carabiners, something that Tim absolutely never would have thought of but that’s perfect nonetheless. Danny takes a card in one hand, runs the thumb of the other over the edge of the climbing rope, and looks at Tim.

And Tim thinks he gets it, then. Why people put so much time and effort into giving people thoughtful, meaningful gifts. Because Danny’s expression isn’t fucking with him or relieving the pressure or just being nice or even this was what I’d always wanted. It’s something truer, something softer, something that sits in the pit of Tim’s stomach and burns softly, warming him gently from the inside out

Yeah, Tim’s never going to be able to go back to generic gifts after this. He’s going to need a much larger coffee budget.

(This conviction lasts, at least, until later in the evening, when Tim confesses that Sasha helped him with the gift and Danny laughs and says I figured, before saying in a quieter voice that the climbing equipment is great but the cards were Tim. That the black socks and novelty mugs and vanilla candles were generic but that they were Tim as well and that Danny had made it a game to try and guess what Tim was going to get him that year, keeping a bet with Sasha on how long it would take Tim to accidentally give him the same gift twice.

Hey, Tim says, but his mouth is twisted into a smile. He ruffles Danny’s hair in that way he hates and says that he’ll stick to the basics from now on, then, and they put on some shitty comedy that Danny insists on watching and eat ice cream until their stomachs hurt.

And if Tim sees Danny glancing at the business card every so often, wearing a smile so soft it’s almost melting, he certainly isn’t going to mention it.)

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #the magnus archives fic #aspecarchives #tim stoker #danny stoker #sasha james #my writing #my fic #internalized acephobia //#internalized arophobia //#acephobia //#arophobia //#aroace danny stoker #asexual tim stoker #sex-favorable tim stoker #i am once again on my stoker brothers bs

52 notes · View notes

cipheramnesia · 3 years

Note

I'm the one who sent the long vent ask, and I wanna thank you for taking the time to give me such a well thought out response, I wasnt expecting a lot and I really appreciate it. I do want to clarify that I only briefly used circumgender when I was younger because I was not able to recognize the predeterministic and overall transphobic nature of it, but it was admittedly the closest to get to explaining how I felt, seeing the origins of it and how it was used, hurt. And I do want to apologize for the ways in which I generalized, I've never gotten the chance to speak about this outside of my immediate circle, and its helped me work through stuff I wouldnt have otherwise. There is no way a transfem person looks, that was me projecting my own desires for my appearance, which is most often inspired by trans women I see online (but not every one, which is the important part lol), onto an entire group of people, which isnt fair. I did also play into the stereotypical narrative of "born and raised a boy and came out/transitioned later" because that's what I wanted and was rooted in my limited understanding of what transness could be admittedly, but no that is also not applicable to all people. In struggling to process through my own feelings and not really having a soace to do so, I guess it became easier to project onto a group that, like you said, has no set traits. I do wonder if I am more envious of the way I see certain transfem subcultures express gender and femininity than a set gender itself. And splitting hairs or not, that opposing, not as transphobic, more open conceptualization of gender is exactly what I needed to hear. I struggle with incredibly binaristic thinking, which can be, really hard to break down especially when you've spent the last three years of your adolescence terminally online in trans discourse spaces.

But yeah. That was what I needed to shake myself out of the "there is a set ways of experiencing this thing" thinking I didnt realize I had, or at least identify it. Blindly fumbling or not, your perspective has helped soothe something that's hurt for a long time.

Oh and I am genderfluid and I do have to cope with (and joyfully experience) everything that comes with that, imcluding the shifting dysphoria, euphoria, and gender that almost never match up, this is just something I've specifically struggled with. I know what labels I like, I know the box I fit most comfortably in when I describe this feeling, and the words we use to communicate identity are so nuanced and loaded that maybe there is no way to find the word that's gonna match you down to the core, I can settle for close enough, and maybe one day I'll be brave enough to use them in a way that's just for me, and not so rooted in self hatred and ingrained ideas about gender and other people. I hope you have a good day, queen.

Thank you and also I'm very glad to hear your process, and more about how you're growing and learning. We're all just like trying to do our best for each other and stuff, so I'm glad to help a little.

10 notes · View notes

linae-isle · 4 years

Text

ACNH Guide by an AC Newbie

Planning / Decorating Your Island

you might see a lot not to worry about placement of houses or buildings because you can change it later. while this is true, moving things is expensive and takes a LOT of time. so at least try to space them in a way that isn’t too cluttered (a good rule of thumb is don’t stick everything behind/right next to resident services unless you want it to be there a WHILE

getting a 5 star island doesn’t require placing random objects everywhere. i got mine by accident just by creating little hang out areas and cute spots for fun. so take your time and build your island the way you want!

it is easy to get overwhelmed looking at all the aesthetic island posts online which makes it harder to focus on what YOU want. a good starting place is to pick a general feel for your island. are you wanting more of a natural, spread out feel? a modern, urban getaway? a super tropical paradise? a fandom-based escape? keeping a general idea in mind can help when decorating.

Harvesting Materials / Getting Items

when harvesting materials, dig three holes behind you when hitting rocks to get 6-8 materials in stead of three. you can shake trees indefinitely for branches.

every day you can harvest 3 bundles of wood from each tree, up to 9 materials from each rock, find one DIY bottle on the beach, 4 fossils, and shake 1-2 items from trees.

when shaking trees for items or branches, always stand directly in front of the tree with a net equipped. if a wasp nest falls out, your villager will automatically face it with a look of terror. click a and you should catch them with no stings ^u^

additionally, you can always get extra materials going on nook miles tours. you also have the chance to shake out an extra item on the island from trees without fruit.

be careful shooting down balloons over flowers/highly decorate areas. if there is no open square (with no flowers, furniture, etc) for the present to land on, it will glitch and disappear.

you can always buy new items/clothing from nook’s cranny and able sisters. nook’s cranny closes at 10 p.m. and able sisters closes at 9 p.m.

if you want duplicates of items you’ve already had, order up to 5 of them using the terminal in customer services.

***specific note, you have to register songs for radios, cassette players, etc. i honestly thought this meant finding a way to transfer real songs but NOPE. there are adorable K.K. tracks you can buy each day from the terminal under nook shopping. it’s always at the bottom for special items.

Villagers

there are 8 personalities for villagers.

females: normal, sisterly, snooty, and peppy

males: lazy, cranky, smug, and jock

everyone starts with a combination of sisterly and jock.

when you eventually get to search for villagers, feel free to be a little picky. find ones you vibe with. i didn’t realize that there are over 400 potential friends out there when i first started looking.

it fun to see how different personalities interact, so i do recommend giving all of them a try. but find your own balance that fits you. love the jocks? get 7! want all normals? do it! can’t stand peps? it’s ok!

don’t ask nook to sell plots of land UNLESS you have the nook miles to get plenty of tickets to fill them. otherwise, the house will automatically be sold to a random villager the next day. (or, if you like to have fate pick for you, go wild and sell as many as you want!)

coaxing a villager to move out doesn’t have to be cruel. i honestly can’t smack my little animal friends with nets and the posts calling them ugly or trapping them in cages or fences makes me sad. just don’t talk to them often and they’ll decide to go when they’re ready.

alternatively, you can get villagers to leave via amiibo or camper. my understanding is with amiibos you can pick who you want to leave. with campers, they pick a random villager to go talk to. if you wanted a different animal to move out, press the home button on your switch, then close the game by clicking x. you might lose a bit of saved time, but should be able to speak with the camper again to try for a different villager.

Being a Good Friend

want your villager to know how much you love them? talk to them every day.

after a few days, you will unlock the option to give them a gift. i love giving mine clothing. note, for the most part villagers cannot wear pants, socks, or shoes. so i wouldn’t recommend them as gifts, though your villagers will still appreciate the thought

send letters. in the airport there is a letter kiosk. you can send a note to your villagers with a gift each day.

DIYS

at first, you can get large amounts of DIYs by attending nook’s workshops and buying DIY packs at nook’s cranny. soon, there will be no more packs to buy, in which case you can get new DIYs the following ways

bottled messages wash up on the beach once each day

shooting down balloons

Several villagers each day will be using their DIY bench at home. speak to them to receive the recipe for what they are making

when visiting mystery islands, bottled messages can wash up on shore. it doesn’t happen every time

Making Money

catching bugs and fish can bring in lots of bells! however, some are worth way more than others. looking up a guide for prices isn’t a bad idea, but it’s your call!

ALSO! there are npcs called flick and cj who buy bugs and fish respectively at higher rates. if you have the storage or don’t mind a mountain of tanks and cages, you can save your critters for these visitors. just keep in mind it might be a while between visits.

hunting and fishing not your thing? try being a DIY guru. gather materials and go crazy. build a ton of stuff and sell it to the nooklings for profit

blathers already has the fossils you dug up today? sell the duplicate fossils for a nice payday.

play the stalk market to try and make bank! every sunday daisy mae visits til 12 p.m. to sell turnips. buy as many as you can and sell them when the prices go up. note, you do risk losing money as prices won’t always be in your favor. additionally, if you keep the turnips til the next sunday they will rot.

Having Fun

do it your way. really. that’s the advice. you might prefer to spend all day harvesting and fishing. that’s so cool. you might prefer to build endless projects and redecorate every day. completely valid. maybe you just wanna chill with your animal friends and aren’t in any hurry to decorate. that’s an amazing plan!

that said, here are some things to do if you aren’t sure where to start.

place a radio next to the plaza. enjoy listening to your villagers sing.

follow a villager throughout the day to catch them napping, chasing bugs, snacking, and otherwise being adorable

look at the nook miles+ tasks for the day and complete them all

look at your DIY catalog and build an area based on what you have. parks, restaurants, cafes, and item stalls tend to be easiest at the beginning and you can always change it later if it no longer fits

visit your museum exhibits and really take your time. it is a very soothing place

try your hand at designing your own outfit using a custom design

if you have nintendo online, visit a friend’s island and play hide and seek, buried treasure, or have a fashion show!

If any other players have advice to add, please reblog or reply so I can edit and add to the list! Thanks for reading!

#anch #animal crossing new horizons #animal crossing #new horizons #acnh guide #this is the stuff i wanted to know

177 notes · View notes

lakesbian · 3 years

Note

nah, u really don't have arguments as i saw, i wish i had money enough to pay therapy for you 😔

it's not that i don't have arguments, it's that you're wrong about so many things that it'd literally take me an hour to correct you. and i'm uninterested in spending that much time on some random terminally online dipshit with bad opinions and even worse attempts at insults. so this is now a promo post for my fics instead :) i'm a rlly talented writer so you guys are missing out if you haven't read my stuff

i'll go ahead and stick this under a cut to keep the post nice & compact lookin' ✌ the organization here is title, summary, and word length/basic tags

for everyone's favorite found-family travel siblings, we have...

Kintsugi: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30264702 Kintsugi - A method of repairing broken items with gold, the idea that by embracing wounds and imperfections, an even more beautiful piece of art can be created.

There are a lot of terrible new things for Lake to experience after escaping the train--nightmares, C-PTSD symptoms, the feeling of helplessness when the only thing left to fight is her own trauma and there's nowhere she can run. But it's not all bad; there are happy firsts, too. The sun always shines in the morning, and things are looking up.

(3.3k words, hurt/comfort, optimistic/uplifting, developing sibling relationship between jesse & lake)

Hold Me Closer to the Sun: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31806910 Next to her, Jesse quietly bounced his feet against the ground. It had been long minutes since either of them last said a word. They had nothing to do yesterday, and they would have nothing to do tomorrow. She wanted to spend endless summer-nothings with him.

Hazy summer evenings are meant for self-discovery, deep conversations, and shared Cola slushies.

(1.6k words, coming out/pridefic, comforting/gentle, established sibling relationship, super slice of life)

there's also my Fandom-Iconic four-part rymin series! it was written pre-release so there are a couple of inaccurate details, but on an emotional/plot level i predicted ryan and min-gi's pretty perfectly, so the series still holds up. i'll also be releasing more canon-compliant edited versions at Some Point. in the meantime, check out the original series--it's popular for a reason.

The Hungry Years: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30210351 From his palm, Min-Gi shot him a slight smile, hoping he looked amused enough to be reassuring. Ryan loosened slightly. "You're one to talk. I should grow a pair of tits, huh?" His fingers curled around his arm. He grinned like a dare. "Kinda faggy."

Or: Min-Gi's guide to making taking a girl to prom as gay as humanly possible, ft. Ryan.

(6.1k words, pining, period-accurate, yearning romance)

Misunderstanding: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30576827 He could kiss him, even. Grab him by his polo collar and kiss him. Strong hands and vanilla shakes and thrumming electricity. It would be so easy. The idea ran through his mind and he burned.

About a year or two before Ryan and Min-Gi get on the Train, things start getting awkward.

Alternative title: Ryan & Min-Gi's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

(3.5k words, angst/hurt-no-comfort, period-accurate, exploration of internalized bigotry, pining)

Bizarre Love Triangle: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30681233 Ryan was very, very good at lying to himself. He had done it for years. Pushing past certain feelings. Justifying certain thoughts. Ignoring certain dreams. But tonight he was tired. He couldn't explain away the pit in his stomach.

There was someone missing.

(1.3k words, angst/hurt-no-comfort, period-accurate, exploration of internalized bigotry, pining, songfic-adjacent)

Don't Dream It's Over: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30245277 He cracked his eyes open and turned to Ryan. He was looking at the sunset, a faint smile on his face. Cute, Min-Gi thought, and he didn't hate himself for it. He remembered kissing Ryan, and he wanted to do it again.

After escaping the Train, Ryan and Min-Gi have a talk in the park. Sequel to "The Hungry Years." Rymin fans come get your juice--you wanted more, and I'm delivering.

(1.7k words, fluff, overcoming societal hardships, romance, realization of mutual pining)

if reading a whole series doesn't sound good to you right now, there's always my rymin oneshots :) both are so cute trust me on this one

Jock Ryan Propaganda: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30575321 Min-Gi reflects on three times Ryan held him.

(1.7k words, fluff with a side of mildly angsty wistfulness, childhood fic, romance/pining)

Piranha Tank: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30873185 "Relax, Min. Nobody is gonna go 'Damn, that dude is fistpumping real loud. He must be having gay sex. Better call the cops.'"

"I'm going to call the cops if you don't sit back down. Get over here."

Ryan and Min-Gi buy donuts, have idle conversation, and learn how to cover hickeys with makeup. It's a good day.

(2.4k words, fluff/humor, established romance, slice of life, character exploration + gnc ryan)

#infinity train #my post #my fics are SO good u don't even know.#specialest little infinity train fic maker #i have like 3-4 fics on the Most Kudosed Rymin Fics AO3 Page for a Reason #i am so good at words!! i never don't go off!!!#ask

3 notes · View notes