#actually if function was on a scale it would be in the negatives because its a nuisance

[hoardingpuffin]

Autistic Person rates Autistic Characters in Media

In this post, I will be rating some autistic characters in media (specifically TV and movies) based on how well represented I feel by them as an autistic person. Keep in mind that this is thus a subjective list since autism is very individual and no two autistic people will have the same experience or opinions. I would also like to add that I am what would be considered a Low Support Needs autistic person, seen that I can generally live without too much assistance or accommodations, which means that my experience is going to not be relatable to autistic people with higher support needs than mine. On that note, also please keep in mind that “low functioning” and “high functioning” are harmful labels and that they are not the same as “low support needs” and “high support needs”. Also, obviously, since this is subjective, I am not saying that nobody else on the spectrum can’t like or relate to any of these characters; this is my own opinion, not a purely objective rating. Finally, whilst I will be rating these characters on a scale of 1 (worst) to 6 (best), I will not be ranking them in this post.

This list includes characters that are explicitly named to be autistic or that are widely accepted to be autistic, for example because the creators or actors confirmed it in retrospect or because the canon very strongly implies it and the creators have not spoken out in denial of it. Also I can obviously only rate the media I have actually seen so if your favourites aren't on this list, this is why.

CONTENT WARNINGS THAT APPLY: mentions of antisemitism (briefly), mentions of Autism Speaks, mentions of ableism, mentions of an autistic male character acting creepily towards women.

I will be signalling Pros/positive points with a + sign and Cons/negative points with a – sign.

Dr. Isidore Latham (Ato Essandoh) – Chicago Med (2/6)

- “curing autism” theme in the episodes centric on his personal experiences

- usage of the outdated and antisemitic term “Aspergers” over “Autism” (this is especially harmful considering Dr. Latham is Jewish)

+ Black autistic representation (which is rare seen that most autistic characters tend to be White) and Jewish autistic representation

+ whilst Dr. Latham is shown to not be the most social man and to be very direct, he isn’t outright rude or unprofessional

- as far as I could find out online, the actor is allistic (it is always better to cast a disabled actor for a disabled role)

Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) – The Good Doctor (0/6)

- the show collaborates with Autism Speaks, who are known to be a hate group not actually looking to help or listen to autistic people

- allistic actor

- extremely stereotypical in its portrayal (extremely antisocial, no friends, always literal, no social awareness – even though autistic people struggle with allistic tone patterns, usually they would be able to pick up at least somewhat what other people consider rude behaviour and would try to avoid it, something Shaun never seems to do)

- transphobia from the one autistic character, implying directly that autistic people are unable to understand the concept of a transgender identity (when in truth, studies show that many people on the spectrum also often identify as not on the gender binary or as transgender)

- Autistic Savant trope (portraying autistic people as geniuses when in fact, less than 5% of all autistic people are a Savant and even if we are very interested in a topic such as medicine, we still need to learn and study just as allistic people)

Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) – The Community (4/6)

+ writer of the series is on the spectrum

+ PoC autistic representation

+ whilst not clearly being labelled as autistic, the character is recognizable as an autistic person without hitting all the stereotypical tropes such as being antisocial, never joking, always being literal or being a “genius” without ever studying etc. - allistic actor

- whilst generally not labelling a character as autistic is not a bad thing, it makes it harder for autistic people to definitely say “this character is autistic”, meaning that allistics can ignore the coding if they wish to cling to their own, often stereotyped idea of what autism “looks like”

Dr. Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor) – Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (3/6)

- allistic actor

- stereotypical, but not as badly as other portrayals

+ avoids the trope of autistic people not having emotions, instead showing Alfred’s struggle expressing and understanding tone and emotions

+ generally good portrayal of a special interest being made part of the life via the job (salmon and fly fishing)

Music Gamble (Maddie Ziegler) – Music (0/6)

- creator Sia has openly shown ableist behaviour, putting down autistic people, not listening to autistic voices and criticism etc.

- allistic actress

- collaboration with Autism Speaks

- extremely stereotypical portrayal and infantalization of autistic nonverbal people

- harmful techniques such as restraining being shown on screen

- graphic meltdown scenes being shown

Sam Gardner (Keir Gilchrist) – Atypical (1/6)

- allistic actor

- in-universe infantilization of autistic people (via Mother Elsa)

- having the autistic character act dangerously, for example locking someone in the closet because they annoy him or borderline predatorily pursuing his therapist, sheds a harmful light on autistic people

- as far as is known, no autistic people were included in the production or writing process

- many instances show autistic-related habits or traits, for example wearing noise cancelling headphones, but frame it in a way that the audience is supposed to find it funny or laugh at the protagonist

- instead of making Sam sympathetic, he is largely just shown to make everyone around him uncomfortable

+ the ongoing portrayal of Sam’s special interest is generally well-done

- an ongoing theme is Sam’s girlfriend Paige restricting his info-dumping and by extension his special interest (something autistic people get active joy from) to three “dumps” a day so he can act “more normal” – this might teach allistic viewers that this is something they can do to their autistic friends

Sara Eriksson (Frida Argento) – Young Royals (5/6)

- usage of “Aspergers” both in the show and by the actress

+ actually autistic actress

+ autistic traits like mirroring, struggling with social context or tone and directness/bluntness as well as a special interest (horses) are shown whilst tropes like Sara being entirely unempathetic, rude and antisocial being avoided

Isadora Smackle (Ceci Balagot) and Farkle Minkus (Corey Fogelmanis) – Girl meets World (2/6)

- usage of “Aspergers”

- the original title of the episode centric on autism was “Girl Meets Normal”, implying autism is something abnormal, which is a potentially very harmful rhetoric

- autism is shown as something bad, with Farkle’s friends actively trying to fight over him being not autistic, insisting he is “normal”, generally treating autism as something they don’t want their friend to be associated with – a very harmful take in a show for kids and young teens

+ Smackle is a major, long-term autistic character rather than a One Episode throwaway character, even though she is generally quite stereotypical (but given that this show generally has every character act over the top and often fitting in specific categories this is not as bad, it just makes her fit in the framework of the show; she is not the only one who is largely stereotypically portrayed)

+ actor Ceci Balagot is themselves autistic (according to their twitter that is)

Renee (Madison Bandy) – Loop (6/6)

+ PoC nonverbal autistic character portrayed by a nonverbal autistic voice actress

+ in production, an active effort was made to make the actress feel comfortable, so that her experience working on the film would be accommodating and positive rather than unnessicarily stressful

+ generally very well-done portrayal of both sensory seeking and sensory overstimulated behaviour and the experience as an autistic person

Matilda (Kayla Cromer), Nicholas (Josh Thomas) and Drea (Lillian Carrier) – Everything is gonna be okay (6/6)

+ autistic actors playing autistic characters and autistic writer

+ very realistic portrayal of autism and how it differs in different people, as well as how it can affect interpersonal relationships (also having the sister mention that she thought she understood autism as a whole but later realized she only understood her sister's autism specifically because it is so individual)

+ realistic portrayal of sensory overload, stimming, communication between different autistic people etc.

+ queer autistic people – gay and asexual autistic main characters

+ autistic people joking, showing emotions, humour without the autistic people being the butt of the joke

+ empathetic portrayal of an adult realizing they might be on the spectrum and the denial and questioning that comes with that

+ portrayals of autistic special interests and autistic joy

Quinni (Chloé Hayden) – Heartbreak High (5.5/6)

+ autistic actress playing an autistic character

+ autistic queer representation

+ themes of ableism are included but dealt with sensitively and without making the ableism seem harmless

+ realistic portrayal of stimming, struggle with abrupt change of plans, overstimulation, meltdowns, autistic joy, info dumping etc.

+  autistic character having genuine friendships and friends who support her and know her sensory needs etc.

- because it is set in high school, this is a very specific group being represented so it is possible that the largest part of the autistic community won’t see themselves completely accurately portrayed, but chances are they can relate to Quinni nonetheless at least in aspects.

#autistic characters #autism #autistic representation #autistic characters rated #autism representation #actually autistic #heartbreak high 2022 #heartbreak high quinni #everything is gonna be okay #atypical #loop pixar #salmon fishing in the yemen #abed the community #music movie #chicago med #young royals sara #young royals #girl meets world autism #girl meets world #farkle minkus #the good doctor #shaun murphy #fuck autism speaks #autism speaks doesn't speak for me

[firubii]

ok you know what fuck it 2 am kirby research dump time: kirby fighters 2 story mode/buddy tower stones since thats what ive been researching recently while mapping out the game's exefs (main executable) in ghidra

first off, every level for each stone is its own item. while this seems like a weird decision at first, it does make checking for the cursed stones for the debuffs a lot easer since the game only needs to check if you have any amount of the level 5 stone

each stone has a specific function for calculating that specific buff. first, the game gets the amount of each level stone you have, then multiplies each count by the corresponding stone's bonus, and finally adds the products of all of them together.

(L1_count * L1_bonus) + (L2_count * L2_bonus) + (L3_count * L3_bonus) + (L4_count * L4_bonus) + (L5_count * L5_bonus)

because you will never have more than one of each level, this works very nicely!! if you don't have a specific level, that will result in 0 due to multiplying by 0, and if you do have one, itll produce the bonus due to multiplying by 1. this also has the side effect of being able to stack multiple of one level stone, though this wont happen in normal gameplay, but it would be fun to mess around with!

there are two stones that are actually completely unused!! they're unobtainable in normal gameplay since the item table has them disabled for every single chapter, but they are fully implemented in both the native code and hal's scripting bytecode, mint!!

BlowAway the "BlowAway" stone causes opponents launched by your throws to be in hitstun for a longer period of time, and as such more susceptible to buddy tosses. the base amount of frames is 40, so the hitstun for each level is:

45 frames (+5)

53 frames (+8)

64 frames (+11)

78 frames (+14)

96 frames (+18)

98 frames is a lot of time for a video game, especially a fighting game!! specifically, its 1.6 seconds of hitstun!!! this stone was probably way too strong and was cut because of that. interestingly, the maximum this stat can go is 200 frames, which is 3 and 1/3 seconds. that is WAY too much hitstun for any game, even if its just what you deal to opponents in a situation that isnt super common unless you're one of the two grapplers in the game.

ShieldTime this stone is interesting due to the fact that everything related to guarding isn't handled in mint, but rather the native game code itself in exefs!! what the "ShieldTime" stone does is reduce how much your guard meter depletes while holding the button.

the base is a multiplier of 1.0, and has a minimum of 0.25. this stone's formula subtracts the bonus from the maximum value instead of adding to the minimum. so, for each level, this multiplier is:

0.7x

0.25x (result is 0.2, which goes under the minimum)

0.25x (result is -0.45, which would cause the guard gauge to increase rather than decrease)

0.25x (result is -1.25)

0.25x (result is -2.25)

looking at how this starts to scale negatively, this stone was probably scrapped pretty early before the values could be actually fine-tuned.

interestingly, the level 5 stone items are referred to as "PieceDevil__Ex", while the level 4 stones are called "PieceDevil__". these probably were going to have a negative health drawback like the level 5 stones. in fact, the yaml file that dictates which items can appear inbetween floors actually tells us this!! there's a "name" property that is named uniquely for only the two unused stones i just talked about, and at the end of that for both of those there is a short description of the stone's effects not present in the other stones's name properties. this actually includes the health debuff!!

it seems like the level 4 stones used to take away a quarter (25%) of your health, and the level 5 stones were actually buffed in the final game!! originally, it looks like they were going to take away 40% of your health instead of half of it (50%)!!

thats about it for now, this has been very fun to document and i will probably make more big posts like this when i can!!!

#kirby #reverse engineering #kirby fighters 2 #programming #i had to completely rewrite this entire post and take new screenshots because it all got wiped when i pressed ctrl+z a single time

[as8bakwthesage]

Why Endo Exclusion from DID/OSDD Spaces Is Actually Fine

I think it’s important to discuss syscourse (system discourse) with nuance at times.

One of the most mind-boggling things is when traumagenic systems (aka the only real way to be a system) want to allow self proclaimed endogenic systems in DID/OSDD communities when really it should be the opposite.

For the sake of argument, I’m going to use very specific terminology to describe ppl with DID/OSDD and people who claim to be endos, so mind that.

Ppl with DID/OSDD, aka people who are Plural via the means of repeated childhood trauma and who experience some form of amnesia, are traumatised. We’re disordered, we have a mental disorder that can often times hurt us in social settings. Memory problems can cause alters not to know what’s going on if they front out of nowhere. And the frequent dissociation isn’t fun either.

While having DID/OSDD isn’t the worst thing in the world and there are a lot of negatives, it’s not a completely horrible experience. While my system gets along and functions relatively well, that wasn’t the case in the past. But now we actually have integrated pretty well.

(When I say integrated, I mean that we didn’t merge or become one person, I mean that we have less stress and amnesia between switches and also we’re healthier as a result. That’s what integration actually means, not merging.)

But people who are endogenic, from my experiences in their communities, are decidedly not traumatised. Some of them could certainly be traumagenic and not even be aware of it (because, hey, that’s what OSDD/DID is supposed to do - protect you from horrible memories in childhood), others are not. These others are usually people who have a high number of introjects that come from fictional characters (aka fictives) but, according to them, the reasons for why they are plural is because of non-traumatic reasons (ie. spiritual practices, some form of tulpamancy (which is contentious in its own right), etc.)

As a result, people who are endos do not have the same experiences as people with DID/OSDD. And that’s perfectly fine.

It’s perfectly okay to have your own experiences that you can’t fully explain in a medical diagnosis. I would still ask that you go and speak to a psychiatrist about it, but your experiences are your own, no matter who are you on the Plural scale.

However.

This does not mean it’s okay for endos to claim terms and want spaces in DID/OSDD spaces. You inherently do not have DID/OSDD, you do not have our experiences, and as has been demonstrated in the past, endos who want to wiggle their way into our spaces and who therefor spread misinformation about DID/OSDD experiences and terminology can and do hurt our community.

And before someone comes at me with “you sound like a truscum” -- being trans is not a mental illness. And while there are legitimate issues in the fields of psychiatry and psychology excluding POC and minority folks out of proper help and statistics, this is not a case of exclusion.

A trans woman is a woman because she is a woman. Her gender is her gender. But someone who is endogenic does not have DID/OSDD (*unless your trauma is really well hidden) and that is the issue here. You cannot claim to have DID/OSDD or any of the terms associated with it because you, by your own admission, are not part of that community, you do not that that mental disorder.

“But trans people experience dysphoria and that’s a disorder!”

Actually, it’s not. The NHS literally says, if you google “is gender dysphoria a mental disorder?” the first thing that pops up is an article by the NHS that literally says “Gender dysphoria is not a mental illness, but some people may develop mental health problems because of gender dysphoria.“

But ultimately, being trans is not about gender dysphoria or mental illnesses. They can exist side by side due to external factors like oppression and lack of acceptance, but being trans is ultimately about gender euphoria. The good feelings you get when you are gendered correctly, the happiness you feel to exist as your true self.

So if an endo or anyone wants to use the “truscum” argument with me, you are just wrong. No two ways about it, it’s just wrong and inaccurate.

And while I personally am suspicious of endogenic plurals, that is only because of people who are endos trying to get into communities where their experiences are not the same as mine or many people like me. We’ve been traumatised because of it and I know others who have been too.

You can exist and your experiences are valid, but due to our very different experiences living as plural people, I’d much rather you don’t try to be involved in DID/OSDD spaces because they just aren’t suited to you. Same with me. I don’t get involved in your community or say I’m a part of your community. I think we can definitely learn from and talk to each other, but we are verrryyy different in many important ways.

Let’s not pretend that you and I are the same.

#sage rambles #sage writes an essay again #did #dissociative identity disorder #endogenic

[sublimeobservationarcade]

The Secret Life Of Money

It may seem strange to talk about the secret life of money when a lot of people devote their lives to it. It’s not really when you consider the same thing has been happening around God for many millennia. Human beings have a propensity for this sort of thing, it seems. Money has a secret life because most of us do not understand what it is and how it actually works. Modern economies on the national scale are very large and complex things. Macro economics does not operate in the same manner as our own individual financial set up functions. This is why most people struggle to grasp how money and the economy as a whole really work.

Secrets About Money In America

Did you know that the US Federal Reserve, America’s central bank pumped $29 trillion into the economy post-GFC? This was not made public, as the Federal Reserve is under no compunction to declare its hand. Americans were jumping up and down about the $800 billion the US Government put in under the Obama administration to bail out the banks, but the real amount was far, far greater. The thing about sovereign currencies in the modern era is that countries and their central banks can just push buttons to virtually print more money. There is no constraint on this ability. Nations like the US cannot run out of their own currency and go broke. Australia is in the same position. So all this negative talk about such worries is political BS. The debt ceiling in America is an artificial constraint imposed by Congress and can be extended (as it so often has been) and could be removed. The deficit will not economically bring down the country directly– it is a political farrago of lies, mistruths, and misunderstanding. “The extraordinary scope and magnitude of the recent financial crisis of 2007–09 required an extraordinary response by the Fed in the fulfillment of its lender-of-last-resort function. The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive account of the Fed’s response to the recent financial crisis. It begins with a brief summary of the methodology, then outlines the unconventional facilities and programs aimed at stabilizing the existing financial structure. The paper concludes with a summary of the scope and magnitude of the Fed’s crisis response. The bottom line: a Federal Reserve bailout commitment in excess of $29 trillion.” - (https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_698.pdf) Photo by Anna Nekrashevich on Pexels.com

Money & Its Clandestine Roots

The thing about money is that many of us don’t understand where it came from in the first place. Therefore, we have basic misunderstandings as to its nature and purpose. Money did not primarily emerge out of some Robinson Crusoe like barter system, as is taught in schools around the world. There is no archaeological evidence for this anywhere. Rather, assumptions and origin stories have been made up over time and by those with vested interests in having people see it this way. The evidence in the ancient world points toward ‘wergild’ or blood money being the main culprit in the evolution of money. This was the price paid to families of those you may have transgressed against by killing or maiming one of their members. Eventually, this debt payment would be owed to the state instead of the aggrieved family, which is where we find ourselves today. The state fines folks for petty crimes and sends them to prison for more serious one’s. Money grew out of this need to pay what is owed to the state. Taxes are the main thing that citizens are required to give over to the state. Money and taxes are inextricably linked on this basis. The important takeaway here is that money is a state invention and operates as an IOU from the state today. The state owns the money via its central bank. Philosophically, this acknowledgement may change things for some people. Money, the thing that they have been striving for their entire lives, is what links them to the state. Photo by Sharefaith on Pexels.com The Financial System The US financial system is being driven by private equity, by the pension funds and their money managers. It is their might and power which propels the economy in different directions. Where and how that volume of money is invested makes waves. The GFC came about because of securitization, the bundling up of securities into financial products to be bought and sold and bet upon. The enormous appetite for risk, which equates to big returns on investment, and the lax oversight in the mortgage sector produced a perfect storm. This was turned into a tsunami when the major players stopped bankrolling the investment banks and it flattened the global economy. “What actually happened is that default rates on risky mortgage loans rose sharply while home prices plateaued. Megabanks took a look at their balance sheets and realized they were not only holding trashy mortgage products, but also lots of liabilities of other mega financial institutions. It suddenly dawned on them that all the others probably had balance sheets as bad as theirs, so they refused to roll-over those short-term 7 liabilities. And since the Leviathans were highly interconnected, when they stopped lending to one another the whole Ponzi pyramid scheme collapsed.” - (https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_681.pdf) Photo by David McBee on Pexels.com Of course, something motivated those in the sector to behave in the ways that they did, which set up this house of cards to fall so spectacularly. Greed is an old fashioned word, but this was structurally inserted into the compensation equation for those in the financial sector. “In 1990 the equity-based share of total compensation for senior managers of U.S. corporations was 20%. By 2007 it had risen to 70%. Meanwhile, the investment management industry has been transformed by the rise of private equity firms and hedge funds, both of which prominently feature market-based compensation as the basis of their supposed virtue. The norm at these funds is the “2 and 20” rule, whereby compensation is tied to the size of assets being managed (the 2%) and to managers’ performance as measured by the financial markets (the 20%, or “carried interest”). As detailed below, the rise of the alternative-assets industry has altered behavior through much of the financial sector. Financial-markets-based compensation has become the norm in modern American capitalism.” - (https://hbr.org/2012/03/the-incentive-bubble) The secret life of money beats at the heart of our financial institutions and drives the lives of all those who work within them. It is a measuring stick for success everywhere you look. It is meanly carved out at the micro level where you and I have to make a living. In contrast to this, it is churned out en masse at government levels via central banks, as if they were channelling oceans or bodies of water. In nations with tens or hundreds of millions of people the amounts considered are in the billions and trillions. It is very hard for individuals to comprehend such sums. Macro economics is rarely understood by the general populace. Politicians make use of this ignorance to stir up trouble for their opponents by suggesting stuff like national bankruptcy and other awful fates, which cannot really happen. Applying personal fears and anxieties to these things provides them with political leverage in the polls. Government debt is compared to personal debts in the mind’s of the voter, which do not actually correlate. You and I cannot print our own money without going to prison if caught, whereas national governments with a sovereign currency can. Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com Inflation & Secret Money Inflation is the echo of the travails of secret money, in some instances. The creation of money via quantitative easing, where the central bank injects new funds into the economy by purchasing government bonds does not, generally, result in higher inflation. This is because it is all about how the new money enters the economy. Often it just sits on the balance books and does not make spending waves within the economy. The hard and fast rule is that too much money supply chasing too few things pushes the prices up of those things. This can, then, trigger inflationary spirals as the players within the economy chase each other’s tails to meet the demands of higher prices. During times of high inflation governments can employ fiscal policies of lowering spending and raising taxes to dampen demand within the economy. The latter strategy is politically unpopular and so, reducing government spending is more often employed. Central banks raise the cash interest rate as their main monetary policy lever to combat high inflationary times. Sticky Inflation & High Migration Intake Levels “The most important way in which a booming population is affecting inflation, however, is via the rental market. CBA’s Ottley points out the vacancy rate in capital cities fell to a record low of 0.9 per cent last month, which is causing advertised rents to surge by about 10 per cent and feeding into higher inflation generally. House prices aren’t part of the consumer price index, but they, too, are being pushed higher by the combination of fast population growth and a lack of supply of new homes. Economists, who were wrong-footed by the surprising strength of house prices despite rapid interest rate rises, are pointing to the migration surge as a key reason for the market’s buoyancy. So in economic jargon, the surge in population growth is having some big impacts on both the supply and demand sides of the economy. Migration has eased skills shortages and there are signs it is causing parts of the labour market to loosen. That should ultimately flow into lower inflation as wage costs ease, but it’s a gradual process. In the shorter term, the population boom is boosting demand.” - (https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/booming-population-is-part-of-our-sticky-inflation-dilemma-20231102-p5egyo.html) Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com Governments like the influx of new migrants because they are cashed up to spend, which improves bottom line productivity in the economy. Many of them also have the skills in demand by the businesses within the economy. It is a dance really with multiple pros and cons being triggered within the economy. The housing and rental crisis is stretching things for the working poor, as they cannot afford to live where they work. The cost of living, high inflationary period is also stripping them of their savings. Meanwhile, the government has to remain committed to lowering its spending. The poor always get shafted during these challenging economic times, it seems. Money is the government’s IOU to its citizens and that is in short supply during this high inflationary period. Getting by on the smell of an oily rag is hard too because of the high petrol prices thanks to Russia invading Ukraine and now the Israeli war in Gaza. Energy prices are very high too with the price of gas and electricity in the upper reaches due to similar global issues and the transition to renewables required by the economy. It is expensive to live in a modern economy in the 21C at the moment. The secret life of money is a real thing because we are born into systems that we don’t truly understand and most of us just go along with what is happening. Most human beings are unquestioning about stuff like money and God. These things are seen as too big to take apart; and we are encouraged by our parents and the status quo to shut up and get working. Security is very much tied up with money and probably God too, especially as we get a lot older. Not understanding how the economy functions is not advantageous. Indeed, there will come a time in everybody’s life when not knowing this stuff will bite and bite hard. Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt, and Financial Freedom.  ©MidasWord Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Read the full article

#America #Australia #bloodmoney #centralbanks #economics #money #RBA

[ultramagicalternate]

ULTRAMagic Alternate Lore #7 The Cosmology - Part 1

Previous | First | Next

Master Post

Relevant Lore Posts: Dimensions

The Cosmology:

The Micro

The Macro

The Collections

The Minor Abstract

The Major Abstract

The Spheres

The cosmology of ULTRAMagic Alternate is fairly extensive and expansive. It encompasses multiple realms and dimensions, seemingly unendingly. For those that are not in the know, a cosmology in this context refers to the nature of existence and what lies within it. It is the study of what lies around us to better comprehend how life, the universe, and everything works. We will be looking at the layers and levels of existence to understand just what we are living in.

For context before we get too deep into this, dimensions do not correlate to levels of the cosmology. They indicate how much of the cosmology you can comprehend.

The Micro

The Micro is what we cannot see in regards to everything around us. The name “Micro” is not entirely accurate as these things are vastly smaller than the microscopic scale. It is better to look at this name metaphorically rather than literally. Here one finds the building blocks of reality and how it functions. Life cannot exist here nor can one actually visit this section of existence. Trying to force oneself into this realm often results in a black hole or something equally confusing.

The Zero Dimension:

Starting from the smallest realm possible, we have the pri… NOPE! The “smallest” realm is technically the Zero Dimension. 0D is a placeholder used to define all other dimensions, both positive and negative. Zero is “nothing,” but what is nothing?

Nothing is empty space. It is a distinct lack of standard objects. Despite the name, there can never truly be “nothing.” If you can identify something as nothing, than that nothing is something

0D and the Void go hand in hand as they both represent “nothing” and serve to contain or define everything.

Life is not supposed to exist here, yet it does. There is nothing conventional for life to exist off of. 

While technically below the Prima Materia/1st Dimension, it also not because it is supposed to be nothing.

The Prima Materia + The 1st Dimension:

Prima Materia is the base form of all matter, making up the fabric of reality itself. Prima Materia exists within the 1st Dimension and builds upon itself from there.

Prima Materia cannot be observed as it is smaller than a photon. Trying to compress a Photon enough to see Prima Materia will result in a singularity.

5th Dimensionals and higher know what Prima Materia looks like due to being one with the flow of time. Many say that it resembles “strings,” vibrating and weaving into what we see all around us.

Unlike the Zero Dimension, life cannot actually exist here… but raw Prima Materia can escape the 1st Dimension. If it enters The Unlight or the Zero Dimension, the forces that normally keep it line are not present. It will vibrate uncontrollably until it takes a shape that we could define as life. Despite Raw Prima Materia being used all the time, it will never run out. Prima Materia is infinite and everything returns to base matter eventually.

The Subatomic

This is where particles smaller than atoms exist. This realm has its own physics and laws, poorly understood by anyone under 6D.

The Subatomic establishes the rules for everything bigger than it. There are particles that determine what we look like and how everything behaves.

Many have noticed that the subatomic has its own equivalent of the vibration seen in the Prima Materia. This would be “spin” or angular momentum. Particles at this scale have a specific way their wave function behaves which allows them to be separated into different groups and be distinct from each other.

Many of the details and nuances of the subatomic are only truly known to 6th dimensionals and higher. These specific details are completely incomprehensible to 3rd dimensionals.

The Atomic Realm:

This is the scale at which atoms exist. These “clouds” of particles make up everything with various atoms of differing amounts of particles. Atoms are very chaotic despite the structure created by the subatomic realm. They are also huge despite how small they are.The Atomic realm is often viewed as the end product of the subatomic realm acting upon the Prima Materia. To explain this:

Prima Materia moves. It vibrates and weaves into something. That something begins acting in a specific way, creating forces and laws. These give shape and form to Atoms. Atoms go on to clump together as dictated by these forces and laws to form us and everything around us.

Essentially Atoms are collections of refined Prima Materia. Everything is made of this. If another base matter exists aside from Prima Materia, it has yet to be found.

The Macro

The Macro is what we can see and directly interact with in regards to everything around us. This is the other half of the metaphor that the Micro started. Obviously life can easily exist here and thrive. The Macro is the best environment for life as it is the most stable. The most common residents of the Macro are 3rd dimensionals and some occasional 4th dimensionals. 

Planets:

This is a celestial body that orbits around a star. What sets it apart from other objects is its size, shape, mass, and gravity. These objects are known for being able to sustain any form of life. Earth is a notable example of a life sustaining planet. Another is Atlangea, a planet that never ended its Permian era. And one last example is Neo Terra, the current home of the lost civilization of Atlantis.

Solar Systems:

This is a group of objects (usually planets) orbiting a star. Most space faring civilizations consider the minimum amount of non-star objects needed for a solar system to be considered a solar system is two. Whether or not this minimum of two planets are life bearing is a complete crapshoot. Many solar systems are usually full of rocks, gas giants, ice giants, and dwarf planets.

Galaxies:

These are collections of stars, planets, and objects in close proximity to each other, orbiting a singularity. Galaxies tend to cluster together, much like how Universes do in the Multiverse. In the Milky Way Galaxy (the name used by humanity), there are only 30 known space faring civilizations across the galaxy. This number is considered abnormal for space. Many planets end up dying off due to violent and overly-excessive in-fighting.

The Collections

The Collections is a term used to refer to the state of things at this scale. This is where you can observe clusters of objects clumping together, forming recognizable patterns and groups. The best example of this from the Macro are Galaxies. The most popular example of this are universes. While life does technically exist at this scale (see “The Macro”), it is uncommon to see life specifically existing at this scale.

Universes:

Similar to galaxies, this is a collection of celestial objects in close proximity to each other. Unlike galaxies, universes have the distinction of expanding and contracting in cycles. The border of a universe is tricky to define. Typically it is the point where everything is behind you and nothing is ahead of you. There is also a great deal of space between objects in this region of space. 

Universes are difficult to explore without time travel or faster than light travel. Expansion invalidates speed and contraction invalidates going outward. Most just stick to their own galaxy or galaxy cluster. Of course, there are those mad enough to leave their own universe…

The Multiverse:

As stated previously, matter can only arrange itself in so many patterns before it starts repeating. This is what distinguishes alternate universes. A collection of universes in close proximity to each other is what is known as a multiverse.

An alternate universe is what indicates repeating patterns of matter

The most notable feature of a multiverse are universe clusters, which are very similar to galaxy clusters

It is common to see universes interact with each other within a cluster

It is not wrong to say a multiverse is just a large-scale universe. It also should be noted that timelines and universes are one in the same. An alternate timeline usually means small differences while an alternate universe indicates large differences.

The Megaverse:

A megaverse is a large-scale multiverse. It contains multiple multiverses within it. The megaverse was an interesting discovery for the Multiverse Patrol and the Reality Walkers. They figured it was possible, but were not sure of it. The application of this knowledge is minimal as traveling outside of your own multiverse is pointless. The initial discovery was accidental, occurring when someone from another multiverse warped into our multiverse.

The Ultraverse:

This is the next theoretical step above the megaverse, encompassing multiple megaverses. This has yet to be defined. The fact that multiple multiverses exist implies that pattern repetition happens on a macro scale (relative to the scale of the collections). The issue is that another megaverse would need to be discovered. The Unlight seems to be the best means of finding these other megaverses.

- - - - -

Next

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Quick Author Disclaimer: While I am an enthusiast for quantum physics and physics in general, I am by no means an expert. This should NEVER be interpreted as a scientific document/paper/study and should ALWAYS be viewed as a fictitious (albeit grounded) take on quantum physics and physics in general. If new discoveries are made in the future, I will update this lore at my discretion. Also please refrain from getting angry at me if this doesn't adhere to your views on dimensions, physics, quantum physics, etc.

ULTRAMagic Alternate © 2022 William Ford II (ChaoticTempleKnight)

#chaotictempleknight #ultramagic alternate #fantasy #sciencefiction #sciencefictionfantasy #lore #lore post #fiction #world building #writing

[homeruncleaning]

Breakroom Cleaning Tucson

I ’m the kind of person who NEEDS to make my bed everyday. However, the rest of my day feels accordingly out, If I do n’t start the morning by negotiating this duty. I really believe that this simple undertaking is a strong visual and physical cue that boosts a feeling in drawing tasks that promote order and agency can have analogous goods on plant effectiveness and workers’ sense of achievement when enforced rightly.

Although we occasionally suppose of the Breakroom Cleaning as being ever separate from the further “ sedulous” office space, it’s actually an extremely important place where workers can retreat to clear their minds and engage in informal,cross-functional dialogue with associates. We’ve come up with three helpful office drawing tips that encourage association, minding and provocation as the keystones to making breakroom drawing a breath.

Suppose about transubstantiating a part of the Breakroom Cleaning at Command Center. Then you might hang a whiteboard where workers can indicate when drawing inventories are running low or when certain  tasks need fulfillment in tucson. Model responsible citizenship for your workers on a larger scale by concluding for green cleaning products that do n’t use dangerous chemicals and are responsibly sourced. Having an multifariousness of recovering lockers( barrels, glass, paper,etc.) is another way to stress how largely your company values the ultimate participated space, earth Earth.

An unkempt breakroom can fluently breed disunion and negativity between associates because, at its heart, keeping the office clean is an exercise in responsible citizenship. This would also be an ideal place to hang a Breakroom Cleaning schedule that lets workers know who’s charged with which tasks( more on this latterly). Cleaning up after yourself when you ’ve say, exploded a coliseum of pasta in the breakroom microwave oven is a way of letting your associates know that you value their time and the participated space.

Indeed the most fairly workers might feel like deep cleaning “ is n’t their job, ” especially when they've a multitude of other, putatively further work- acquainted liabilities to manage. Let your workers know that keeping the Breakroom Cleaning is part of their workload by showing appreciation. Treat the deep- cleaning crew of the month/ week to lunch, or buy them a gift card to a original coffee shop. These charges are still likely to bring lower than hiring a cleaning crew, and have the added benefit of making workers feel responsible to one another and proud of their office.

[lightholme]

As many have said, you won't have a civil war.  Because logistically that just isn't feasible.  We are split far more along rural/urban lines than one giant chunk of the nation against another.  Without geographic alignment of opposing forces, there's no logical way for any military to organize.  You'd have to have millions upon millions of people up and migrate into one geographic region that would then cecede, and that's just not how anything works at all.

Instead, divided modern Ireland is a better example.  You'll have decades of civil unrest.  Terrorist attacks, pockets in different states of shit basically being taken over by militias that reject federal authority.

You'll have total stagnation in the federal government as terrorist antagonists win seats in these areas and work against anything and everything.  You'll have secessionist movements that go nowhere but cause huge disruption.

The net result is that the country will not be able to make progress on laws, won't be able to keep up with the times, won't be able to spend tax revenue effectively, and will virtually cease to function.

Government, contrary to some radical libertarian delusions, actually is essential.  Laws need to be passed.  Conflicts need to be resolved, consensuses need to be reached.  Government needs to be agile enough to respond to negative externalities caused by new technologies (like social media).  We need government, and we need it to not just be empty seats but to conduct its designated functions.  It isn't an option, it is an essential, non-negotiable component of large-scale societies.

Terrorism never really aims to win.  They aim to hurt, to disrupt, to stall, to inflame.  And it's shockingly easy to do that.  And that's what Republicans are discovering.  They will not win hearts and minds.  Most newer generations despise them and they have long abandoned the efforts to win those hearts and minds, resorting instead to theft, organized crime, and radical terrorism, culiminating most recently in an actual coup attempt at the US Capitol.

They were rebuffed, and that has cost them a lot of political capital.  I don't see them really being able to pull out of their party's death spiral in the coming decades.  They may pick up a handful of additional seats.  They may flip the Presidency to them again.  But each time they will try to advance their nightmarish dystopian agenda, and they will cement greater unified resistance against them, and they simply don't have the numbers.  Much the contrary to their shared delusion, they are far from the majority, and have an aging population of supporters which declines each day, thanks in no small part to the cruelty and neglect inherent in their own policies.

So, absent any realistic ability to cling to power and build coalition in a meaningful way, they will increasingly turn to the levers that remain to them - terrorism, chaos, and disruption.

We will cease to function as a nation, and as such you will have a generations-long brain drain into Europe and other more attractive areas.  The best and brightest will leave, innovation and entrepreneurship will go places with less turmoil, and the country will become a husk mired in intractable, widespread and irresolvable civil unrest.  This will be exacerbated by climate change and other factors that will put increasing pressure on the population, fueling discontent, anger, unrest and chaos.

The wheel will come to a halt, and in half a century at earliest, maybe a century at longest, the country will likely fracture without any large-scale war, simply under the weight of its dysfunction, into component states or some arrangement that will depend upon the fault and fracture lines that begin to form between rough geographic centers as increasing political polarization creates mass exoduses between states and organizes people more geographically around political ideologies.

Because of our utter inability to legislate, innovate, invent, or do anything other than pay politicians to sit in total gridlock, other countries will rapidly overtake us as our inaction and their forward momentum compound, and eventually they will leave us behind.  The dollar will cease to be the world reserve currency, we'll lose economic power and geopolitical clout, and the buzzards will pick at our fringes.

This has happened to every major world order throughout history.   Empires boom, then they bust.  The world order shifts.  Usually through violence.  Countries become overcome by the bloat and greed of their administrators and power-holders, and that greed and bloat mires the country in debt and legislative stagnation until it simply falls apart.

The terrorists will not get what they want.  There will be no white christian ethnostate, no Jesus codified into law, no magical harmony free from "liberals."  They will simply make everyone else as miserable as they are, and a generation or more of Americans will be born into a country of decline, sporadic violence, dysfunction and collapse.

That doesn't have to be where we end up, but it most certainly is where we are headed, all else remaining the same.

[goalangle82]

Metaphysics 101 - Your Personal Spiritual Ladder

There is an additional great invention in the market at this moment. The all the thrilling excitment in locality. We are talking concerning the gorilla hierarchy. Say goodbye to that rickety old wooden thing you employed to call a ladder and say hello to sturdiness, strength, versatility, durability and adaptability. Gone are those days when you should interlock their fingers and enquire you to stand on them if you wanted to grab something. Gone too would be the days 1 set of muscles had to take a seat on shoulders if you want to peep over a wall to find out if your parents were home yet so you could sneak back up the house because now all you have to do through using utilize a gorilla steps. step ladder stool

Throughout earlier years most were made of wood, today they are done out of either steel or top class plastic. If it's made out of wood, prior to using it vegetables and fruit visually inspect it. Wood ladders are prone to decay and rot and can easily break if damaged. Check for warping, especially in your feet for the ladder. Not having make the ladder wobble and become very unsteady. If this is actually the case, chuck the ball ladder and get another manufactured with a higher quality material. Step Ladder: These are suitable for jobs close to your house. These are shorter and when opened they possess a 'A-shaped' adornment. Step Ladders can be easily folded for storage. The steps out of all these are wider and hence it a lot safer and comfy to work. Aluminum - Aluminum is often a metal. Merely like all metals, aluminum is a really good conductor of electricity. Therefore if you are planning to paint in places where you will find a regarding electrical wires, aluminum ladder is not the smartest choice for users. The good thing about aluminum is its light-weight. It is, therefore, portable, easily transported and stored. Set up a ladder only on the surface that's level and flat. If you need extra height, do not place the ladder on the table or platform. Function extension ladder instead. Never place a Step Ladder against a vertical surface including a wall and then use it like a straight step ladder. ladders are designed to be free standing not leaned against a wall where such placement renders them inherently unsound. Most stepladders have a mechanism that locks the legs set up. Before climbing step ladder, ensure that this mechanism is fully and properly engaged. Some stepladders possess a shelf for resting tools or a can of paint. Never stand inside this shelf, as the not created for this basis. Likewise, never stand on the top platform to a step ladder. Finally, never leave a ladder unwatched. Lay it down when not made use of. While treatment of snow, keep your core of one's body inside the ladder rails. Do not lean to the side so you are hanging outside the rails, can be lead to be able to serious be. Instead, move the ladder should you need to reach to the inside. How exactly what you think has a powerful correlation to how you are feeling and what folks will see when appear at a. The stepladder is like an idea ladder. Making it work for you personally personally requires discipline and totally focus. Watching your thoughts is powerful. You will constantly need to boost the positive, forward thinking thoughts and judge more of them, yet still time squash the negative, depressing, and downward spiraling thoughts of can't, don't and probably will not. Whenever you must get storage up or down you can turn to your a-frame scale. Whenever you need to hold something up or reach that plate that is hidden typically the back for this cupboard you can reach for this ladder. If possible soon find that they are way too useful which can potentially allow you to daily once you go concerning your work.

#step ladders

[asset35-maya]

.When the party’s over.

>REINITIALISING…

>ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE

>WIRELESS CHARGING: 69%

>RK900 SYSTEM HEALTH: STABLE

>24H FILE RECOVERY: 45%

Nines slowly regained consciousness. He was lying on his side and everything around him was quiet.

>ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN IN PROGRESS…

>THREAT ANALYSIS IN PROGRESS…

Layers of fabric covered his body and something soft and warm was pressed against his face. Eyes still shut, he nudged it gently with his nose and it emitted a low vibration.

>2% THREAT DETECTED: FELINE SUBJECT

The cat sprang upwards and hopped off the surface that Nines was lying on. It was ostensibly a bed, but Nines didn’t own any furniture apart from a couch and work table. The logical conclusion was that he was not in his own apartment.

>RUN LOCALISATION PROGRAM: Y/N?

>Y

>ERROR: PROGRAM FAILED TO EXECUTE

>ERROR: MEMORY FILE CORRUPTION

Nines had no absolutely recollection of his whereabouts or how he had arrived. He had not been compromised as his system health was stable, so there was probably another reason for being completely disoriented. It was voluntary.

He had gotten the android equivalent of blackout drunk.

It was not the first time and he feared it would not be the last. Such were the hard-partying ways of his friends and colleagues. They were all terrible influences. He loved them dearly, but they were terrible.

At 6PM every Friday, Chen and Miller would start things off rather innocently. “Hey there’s a new brewery downtown.” Or “My bartender cousin just hooked us up with a thirty percent discount!”

From there it wouldn’t take long for the DPD’s resident frat boys Connor and Gavin to gather a steady crowd of officers and check out the venue. If the vibes were good (which they almost always were), Sixty would get wind of things. Then the rest of the frat house would descend and total chaos would reign until the break of dawn.

SWAT Unit 32 was famous for its particularly destructive brand of revelry. Skinny dipping in private swimming pools, scaling skyscraper rooftops and causing media scandals were all par for the course. The day after Captain Allen’s birthday, the DPD crew spent the entirety of their bonuses to repair the collapsed ceiling of the Eden Club.

Nines couldn’t remember how he exactly he was coopted into the madness. Probably peer pressure. Connor insisted that he try thirium alcohol. Sixty said that he would regret being a loser and not joining them. Gavin had just held out a hand and double-winked. That did the trick.

One night blended into another and soon Nines had worked up quite a reputation of his own. He was the Casanova of the homicide department. The handsome devil… the hunter… the sex god. People would actually come by his desk and congratulate him on Monday morning.

Nines hated it but he couldn’t stop himself from doing the same thing over and over. Perhaps it was the appreciative clap on the shoulder from Gavin the morning after Sixty posted photos of a high-end Traci model giving Nines his very first lap dance.

Life at the DPD was the epitome of work hard, play hard. It seemed like one big party but deep down Nines knew they were all just slaves to their compulsions. He wondered whether it was because they needed to celebrate every demon they vanquished or whether they needed to wipe the troubling memories of doing so.

In Nines case, there were definitely things he needed to kill within himself. Some were nightmare inducing crime scenes, but some were memories so heart-wrenchingly sweet that he thought he might self-destruct if he were to dwell on them too long. There were things he couldn’t have and things he needed to erase from his brain.

Something touched his face gently.

>PERIPHERAL OBJECT DETECTED: HUMAN HAND

>THREAT ANALYSIS: NON-COMBATIVE

The hair on his forehead was brushed aside and fingers ran over his features. A thumb swept over his bottom lip and caressed his cheek.

Nines couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes and come face to face with his most recent conquest. He lay still, frozen with regret as the hand continued to stroke his face.

The hand travelled down his neck and fell upon his chest. Nines caught it abruptly. It wasn’t even the month-end and his savings were badly depleted. He couldn’t afford round two. He retracted the synth skin down to his wrist and prepared the electronic payment credentials.

Fingers merely intertwined with his.

“Just take your money and go. I’ll tip extra if you delete everything from your hard drive.”

“What the phck are you talking about?”

Nines eyes flew open. Steel blue met storm green.

>SYSTEM ALERT: THIRIUM PUMP OVERLOAD

“Fuck!”

“Wow that’s flattering.”

Nines pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes in a vain attempt to remember what had led to this absolute, unmitigated disaster.

“What the hell happened last night?”

Gavin looked affronted.

“You ruined our housewarming for one.”

>MEMORY ARCHIVE SEARCH: housewarming, Gavin

>RESULT: TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM “G.REED” IN GROUPCHAT “CLUBBERCOPS”, 15:33 18 JULY 2040: Assholes. Party at our new place. Next Friday. From seven till LATE. Bring booze, bring bitches. Nah. Actually, don’t. Our landlord’s a bastard and we already got three noise complaints.

>RESULT: TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM “CONMAN” IN GROUPCHAT “CLUBBERCOPS”, 15:34 18 JULY 2040: Yeah we should keep this one PG. Bring food if you wanna eat. This mf can’t cook and I don’t care to. See y’all!!

Oh right. Fuck. Gavin’s housewarming. Gavin and Connor’s housewarming. His two closest friends who were somehow even closer to one another. Nines hadn’t realised until it was far too late and there was nothing for him to do but smother the bitterness with his favourite coping mechanisms: android alcohol and paid sex.

The circumstances definitely explained the state he was in, but things still didn’t add up.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Did we… did we…”

“No. Nothing happened between us. You were completely shitfaced. I just put you to bed to stop you from embarrassing yourself.”

Nines looked up at the ceiling, struggling to put the pieces together. His system offered him no useful prompts. The fermented thirium had done its job of code corruption extremely well. He looked back down and met the green eyes focused on him with deep concern.

“What did I do?”

“Sixty has videos, but I don’t think you want to see them. God, Nines… why didn’t you just tell me?”

“I’m really sorry, Gavin. I didn’t mean to ruin your night… and Connor’s.”

“He’s fine. He and Sixty moved the crew to Hank’s place. Which is what we should have done in the first place… there’s really no point throwing a party in this shoebox and telling people like Tina Chen to be quiet. Honestly if it wasn’t you it would have been her bringing the house down. Good thing they had all of Michigan Drive to tear up. Hank’s neighbours can sleep though a bombing.”

“What did I do?”

Gavin put his hand back on Nines’ face, his expression unintelligible. The human touched him often enough, but never like this. Never so intimately. Nines forced down the twisting sensation in his torso. He couldn’t get his hopes up. This was pity.

Nines braced himself to hear the worst. He prepared for the shredding of all his dignity and the collapse of his falsely extroverted and confident identity.

What came though was a soft press of lips to his forehead.

“It wasn’t pretty and I wish it hadn’t happened like that, but I think it was a long time coming… I’ve never seen you so emotional before. I’m sorry I didn’t notice anything all this while.”

“Gavin, please.”

“I’m going to focus on the positives, because really… there were a LOT of negatives. Oh boy. You… uh…”

“Gavin.”

The detective dipped his head and looked away.

“Phck, I shouldn’t be so embarrassed…

You told me you loved me.”

Nines closed his eyes. That was it. He should quit his job and move to another state. Hell, he should go to Cyberlife and request a factory reset on compassionate grounds.

“I’m so sorry. I… I should leave.”

He made to sit up, but was pushed back into the mattress. Gavin curled into his side.

“Nah. You’re good.”

“What?”

“You threw up on my plants and smashed Connor’s RA9 sculpture, buuuut you’re good.”

“I don’t understand.”

Gavin wrapped his arms around Nines and edged closer until the android was forced to turn on his side and reciprocate.

“What do you think, genius? If a guy like me doesn’t throw a guy like you out of the house after all that… what does it mean?”

“That you have a high tolerance for toxic friendships?”

“It means I want you to stick around, dipshit.”

>SYSTEM ALERT: THIRIUM PUMP RATE FLUCTUATIONS. OVERLOAD IMMINENT.

“You mean you like me?”

“Of course I do! I always have, but it never seemed right to bring it up. We’re actually really good friends. I didn’t think it would be possible when we first met but we have so much in common.”

“Bad habits for sure.”

“Come on, Nines. We’ve had a really great time together. Some of my best memories at the DPD are with you. Don’t ever quote me on it but you’re a phcking amazing partner. Can’t believe you thought I had something going with Connor when it’s always been you.

So yeah, I do like you. And I’m willing to try… I dunno… being with you. Like for real.

Stop drinking like that, though. I know I’m a hypocrite but you really scared me last night. I lost my Dad and I nearly lost Hank to the bottle. You might be this super advanced android, but that liquid courage shit is a death trap, man.”

>SYSTEM ERROR: THIRIUM PUMP AT MAX FLOW RATE. PUMP OVERLOAD. REDUCE PRESSURE IMMEDIATELY!

Nines nodded quickly and blinked away the tears that welled up in his eyes. Gavin grasped the android’s chin and tipped his face down gently. Their eyes fluttered shut simultaneously and their lips met.

>SYSTEM RECOVERY MESSAGE: THIRIUM PUMP FUNCTIONALITY RESTORED

They broke apart after several golden moments and Gavin hugged Nines tightly under the sheets.

“What am I supposed to say to the others? I don’t think I can look any of them in the eye ever again.”

“Are you serious? You got nothing on the insanity that bunch is capable of. Sixty thinks he’s hot shit with his blackmail material, but I got receipts that’ll glue his mouth shut for decades. Anyway, that’s what friends are meant to be like. You have dirt on each other but you’re not meant to use it.

The same applies to us too, by the way. Don’t feel like you gotta be… apologetic about what happened last night. Yeah, you better replace my fancy new plants but I’ll never judge you for what happened. I want you to know that I’ll always be in your corner, Nines.”

Nines hummed thoughtfully and ran a hand though Gavin’s hair, marvelling at the fact that he could now do so whenever he wanted. He didn’t say anything in response, and just settled for cuddling closer to the human.

>>RK900 SYSTEM HEALTH: EXCELLENT

#tw: alcholism #reed900 #happy ending #rk900 #gavin reed #dbh fanfic #detroit become human #dbh rk900 #dbh nines #dbh #my writing #my work #long post

[on-the-pechka]

The Moe Cycle

I previously imagined a moe circle, an endless cycle going from moe to ironic moe to post-ironic moe and back to moe until the god damn sun blows up. Upon more thorough analysis, however, I decided on this:

This interpretation makes more sense to me, because things keep getting worse. The common misconception is that moe peaked at some point in the mid 2000s and anime as a medium matured, with only a small and dedicated subset of the viewers remaining true “otakus”. Of course anime is bigger than ever, more figurines and Blu-rays are sold than ever, and contrary to popular belief, people’s relationship with anime is more backwards than ever.

Analysis

The equation I am using to illustrate the moe cycle here is a sinusoidal function composed with a linear function. I came up with this equation for demonstration purposes, I cannot be certain just what the short term graph should actually compose with, any mathematicians are welcome to give their comments.

I suspect the real observed data over a long period would resemble a regular sine curve, after all anime is in its infancy relative to human existence, so if anime (and moe by extension), continue to evolve over an extremely long period, the long run graph will likely resemble a sinusoidal function. We are essentially looking at a super zoomed in version of what (on a normal scale) is just a sine curve.

Nowadays we look back at entire thousand year periods as self contained eras ( think "The Middle Ages"), on that scale I suspect there is no composition or the composition that does occur is negligible. The reason for the composition with a linear function is to demonstrate the increase in the principal amount of moe; it increases with each cycle because a trace of the old high point must remain in the satirised post-ironic version, and the return to unironic moe is always the new global high point. We can refer to this increasing principal amount of moe as residual moe. Residual moe obviously cannot decrease barring a large scale cultural shift or disaster (perhaps another nuke would do it). Since in the short term residual moe can only increase, when the graph dips that is actually an indication of negative moe. To verify the trajectory of moe (or instant moe) at any point, one would only need to take the first derivative at said point.

Serious Anime

Monster, Death Note, Attack on Titan, High School DxD. These are all highly regarded works that pushed the boundary of what an anime can be, but they are outliers, most anime exists well within the conventions of the medium. Ultimately, there have always been better and worse anime out there, I don’t think that much has changed, the change I want to highlight is an entirely different one: The very nature of moe has transformed.

Refinement

Old moe. Little sisters, fantasy worlds, childhood friends; these are all tropes that still prevail in anime, but there was no real attempt at realism in earlier works. The entire appeal was to get sucked into an obviously unrealistic world, and it was nothing like your actual life. If we understand moe as an industry that is working hard to ruin young men’s lives and rob them of their vitality, we can look at how this industry has evolved and learned to camouflage. 

New moe is not ridiculous. The waifus aren’t made to look like ants, and they are not made to behave in unreasonable ways, their character can’t be readily associated with an archetype (x-dere, etc). These waifus are designed to make you think they are real women. They’re not even fictional anymore. You no longer have to insert yourself into the main character’s shoes, waifus now exist as an abstract concept, something metaphysical that no longer requires a medium to exist. The modern waifu does not take the form of a character on screen, but an ideal form in the mind. There is something missing in the neo-waifu from the waifus of old that used to flip a switch in 90% of viewers heads like “this isn’t an actual woman”. 

I can then assert with relative certainty that the ideal form of a woman in many young men’s minds is not a woman at all, but an anime girl. To the women reading this, first of all, DM me, second of all, you must understand that ideal forms are how men’s brains tend to function. While it is extremely common for women to have celebrity crushes, It is relatively rare for men (I mean actual crush, not “would”), because men have a crush on an ideal form in their head at all times and compare women they meet against it. Now this woman is an anime girl. How fucked is that. This is the future we were doomed to face the moment we started travelling down this road, it was only a matter of refinement, and refinement is only a matter of time.

#anime #moe #animecore #80s anime #90s anime #evangelion #monster #air #kyoani #clannad #k-on #miss kobayashi's dragon maid #kanojo okarishimasu #rent-a-girlfriend #math #mathematics #waifu #metaphysics #philosophy #otaku #weeaboo #death note #High School DxD #attack on titan #sigma grindset

[ruby-whistler]

The "redemption questionnaire" - the survey results.

Hello! Welcome back to the results of this survey, which is now closed - I really didn’t expect this amount of interest and am thankful for the ability to collect this much data on the subject.

Now, the reason I made this survey in the first place was this post crossing my dash. It talks about people wanting to see characters or people who they dislike suffer, even if healing is completely possible or even the better option - it’s about people denying that there is such a thing as bad people “deserving” things that we humans need to function, such as being loved.

This post talks about fictional characters, but despite that fact, it made me lose my faith in humanity just a bit. I am a pretty cynical person, but I also consider myself quite empathetic to existing and fictional people alike.

So, I got curious, and wondered - in the Dream SMP fandom specifically, is there a way to get input as to what people actually think about the issue of redemption?

[ tw for brief mentions of torture and abuse ]

So, the goal of the survey was get information to answer certain questions;

Do people think that some characters shouldn’t be redeemed or are irredeemable because of their actions, however don’t hold this true for others?

Are there people, who despite disliking certain characters, still believe that they deserve healing?

Would people want characters to suffer or even die for their actions rather than heal and be happy?

Do people think certain characters in the story don’t deserve to be happy?

Now, I did get some responses that were asking to include or exclude certain characters from the main three (Quackity, Dream and Wilbur - all names are talking about the characters only), however there was a very specific reason I chose these people.

Quackity and Dream have both done actions that have similar weight, while Wilbur serves as an outlier; someone who hurt people in more indirect, but still impactful ways. All three of them have been hurt - Wilbur mostly by Eret’s betrayal, Quackity by Schlatt and others, and Dream by Sam and Quackity. All three have contributed to a toxic and harmful environment, which in turn hurt them back even more and drove them deeper into becoming destructive.

Such a comparison between them would test the fandom’s ability to separate their feelings from in-story morality, as well as bring double standards to light.

Let’s see the demographic part of the survey first, as to see what we are working with;

Of the 390 people partaking in the survey, 44.9% like the direction the Dream SMP plot is heading at the moment, 3% do not and 52.1% are not sure.

Of the characters whose redemption arcs are most anticipated, 71% of participants are expecting a BadBoyHalo or Eggpire redemption arc, Niki/Jack and Wilbur coming close in second and third with 59.2% and 51.8% respectively. As for the main trio of this survey, Quackity lands with 28.2%, Dream with 43.3% and Wilbur with 51.8% of participants thinking a redemption arc for them is likely in the near future.

I would like to express right now that the characters included in the “possible redemption” section do not in any way, shape or form reflect on what I personally think about the characters. I don’t think certain characters need a redemption arc, however I left in the option in order to let people pick it if they wish to do so.

As for the healing arc question, quite understandably, Tommy and Tubbo are the characters most expected to get a healing arc in the upcoming storylines, sitting at 76.2% of participants. Niki and/or Jack come in second with 62.1%, and Quackity, Wilbur and Dream land at 25.4%, 45.9% and 42.8% respectively.

For the aforementioned questions, 3.6% or participants thought none of the Dream SMP characters would get a redemption arc, and 5.4% thought none of them would heal - and with the track record the story has so far, I honestly cannot blame them.

Now we move more towards the main trio;

48.7% of participants have positive feelings towards Quackity’s character, and 23.1% have negative ones. The majority of the participants (66.2%) think that his actions are intentional and hurtful, but interestingly enough, only 25.4% say they find them inexcusable and awful.

For c!Dream, 51.5% feel positively towards him and 35.7% do negatively. Luckily, 53.8% find his actions inexcusable and awful, while 40.3% find them intentional and hurtful.

c!Wilbur breaks the trend with 58.7% of people feeling positively towards the character and only 17.2% feeling negatively, however such a discrepancy can be expected when we compare his actions (found 65.1% of the time to be intentional and hurtful).

I want to preface this next section by saying that I have nothing against people who find redemption arcs unappealing, or wouldn’t find them narratively appealing in the specific story. These answers will be counted as merely neutral ground in the upcoming questions; you are completely valid if you think certain character arcs would not fit the themes or style of storytelling, or if you want bad people to stay bad for the sake of conflict.

However, 79.5% of people find well-done redemption and healing very appealing within the story, and 19% like it for certain stories and characters, so this shouldn’t impact the results on a large scale.

1. Do people think that some characters shouldn’t be redeemed or are irredeemable because of their actions, however don’t hold this true for others?

People’s reasoning for not wanting characters to heal varies, however the contrast between c!Quackity and c!Dream in this scenario is very intriguing.

Despite the two having done comparably disgusting things, one with more and one with less selfish reasons but neither excusable, both classifying under abuse, the people who think c!Dream shouldn’t get a redemption arc (9.7%) because of his actions greatly overshadow the people who think c!Quackity doesn’t deserve a redemption arc (1%) because of his actions. Hell, even c!Wilbur’s percentage is higher, sitting at 2.1%.

This is extremely surprising considering the demographic - and seems to hint at the fact that people who think positively of c!Dream are far more likely to think that c!Q and c!Wil deserve redemption and healing (despite the common argument that both have hurt him greatly) than it is the other way around.

Even sending a bad message is a lot higher with c!Dream (30.5%), despite the fact that c!Quackity’s actions and him as a character could be similarly triggering, and he himself sits at 2.6% of participants. Of course, this question could be partially taken as what he went through in prison making him better, which would definitely be a bad message to send, but considering the percentage (42.1%) of people who don’t want Dream to be redeemed, that’s still insanely high.

Overall, people from a very balanced demographic of people who are positive and negative towards the three characters, only 52.6% want Dream redeemed as opposed to the 83.8% with Quackity and 86.7% with Wilbur - and the reasons given seem to be largely based on bias and double standard, or even hypocritical in context.

For the fandom, this question’s answer seems to be yes, although from the people who are c!Dream positive, this sort of thinking seems to be of a much lesser extent and amount towards characters they dislike.

2. Are there people, who despite disliking certain characters, still believe that they deserve healing?

Let’s look at some of the comments given to this answer;

“On the one hand I do want Dream to recognize that his actions have hurt people, but I really don’t want torture to have ‘made him better’ or for the people he hurt to have to forgive him.”

“as much as I hate c!quackity and dislike c!wilbur, I believe that evil is not something you are, its what you do and as such I think every person deserves to heal and grow.”

“Quackity is the closest - he's spiraled far, but we got to see some of what he could be as a more moral man. Dream's arc would be....incredibly difficult to pull off, and while everyone deserves a chance to change, not everyone who does is ever owed forgiveness. And Wilbur....I dont know what would make him want to get better, but I want him to.”

“I wouldn’t like some of these characters to get redeemed(c!Quackity), but I know everyone deserves a chance at redemption because no one is mentally stable and not traumatized.”

“bastard men. on a serious note ive noticed a lot of evil in dsmp come from the perpetuation of the cycle of revenge and punitive punishment and i think excluding someone from them would. just not be a good message. and yeah c!dreams motives and methods being seen in separate characters is just proof of this - nothing that made any of these men villains are unique to them, and they are all shit-infested holes other characters can fall in.”

“i think every character on the smp has done horrible things and is morally grey, but i think everyone deserves the chance and the ability to heal and try to be better.”

“listen, i love big q, and i know he doesn't mean it, Wilbur also deserves better (far from tommy tho, they're not good for each other rn) and dream can go f**k himself, the only "healing " Arc that would ever make sense is if he escapes the prison and f**ks off to the middle of nowhere (wich is unlikely)”

“Even if I don't like some of the characters they deserve a chance at healing and moving on”

“Controversial opinion but Wilbur has been pretty shady from the start, so a redemption/healing arc just wouldn't make sense to me. He antagonized Dream to sell drugs.”

“i would like to qualify all my answers towards redemption as that they are /all/ allowed to get better, just not necessarily near those they've hurt. those they've hurt are under no obligation to forgive them or be involved in that.”

“REDEMPTION IS POG F**K IT EVERYONE GETS REDEEMED THE ONLY BIG BAD THAT EXISTS IS SYSTEMIC”

“Clarifying about my wilbur answers. A character can only get a redemption if he wants to change. Wilbur doesn’t want to change. I still think he deserves to heal but not to be redeemed. Those are two very seperate things”

“PLEASE JUST LET THEM GET HELP. ALL OF THEM.”

“i'm at sort of an impasse with c!quackity & c!wilbur. i don't like c!quackity in the slightest. i think he has great potential for a redemption arc, but i probably wouldn't be interested in watching it. on the other hand, with c!wilbur, i actually would watch his redemption arc, but i don't see it happening any time soon.”

“I answered " he deserves to heal and get better despite the actions he's commited; everyone deserves to heal and get better " for c!Wilbur but I partially Disagree with the "Everyone deserves to heal and get better" part. simply because some characters are irredeamable eg : c!dream”

“If c!Wilbur gets a redemption arc (I hope he does) I really hope it comes with learning that ethnostates and nationalism are not poggers. I'd be worried about the message it would send if he didn't learn that & it only focused on interpersonal stuff instead.”

“maybe a bit weird that i want c!dream to have a redemption arc but not c!q or c!wilbur, but hear me out. c!dream is being tortured in pandoras vault and we all know (no matter what the c!dream antis say) no one deserves torture. we have something to sympathize with with c!dream. with c!q and c!wilbur, i cant think of anything to sympathize with …. im not trying to say that c!dream is better than them, or that he didnt do bad things, but i sympathize with him much more than i do with c!q and c!wilbur because q and wilbur caused their own problems while a lot of dreams problems come from other people”

“We have both seen Wilbur and Quackity be relatively good people, or at the very least morally Gray people who had genuine love and care to those close to them. While with Dream we have never seen that, as he has always been focused on chaos, fun, and power.”

“I just want everyone to be happy and get along. C!Wilbur to get his problems fixed. C!Quackity to be happy and not have to worry about being the next c!Schlatt. C!Dream to finally tell us his side of the story and potentially join the syndicate?”

“Redemption isnt something any one can say is deserved or not”

“For me the main difference is thay wilbur and quackity (although having done bad things) did them out of grief or bc they felt like it was the only thing they could do for a sense of security (both after they lost something important to them). Dream on the other hand went out of his way and hurt others maliciously when he DIDNT have to or there were other less horrible/long-lasting actions he could done”

“The message that some people dont deserve to learn and grow from their past mistakes is harmful”

“listen.. i really hate c!quackity and c!wilbur right now so.. erm..in emotionally, i don't want them to have redemption arc because i hate them..BUT by using my brain i know that is a stupid excuse, everyone deserve redemption so..yeah sorry if it confusing you but honestly..the reason i hate them so much is probably because of the arc they on so..give them time and i think i will say i welcome their redemption arc with an open arm”

“i answered twice for dream because i have mixed feelings, while i think he is an atrocious person, i believe personally that forgoing forgiveness from others, he deserves to be happy and healthy and heal. hes clearly got issues of his own, and while it doesnt excuse his actions he also deserves the basic right to heal”

“I personally regard redemption as the act of simply becoming a better person, seperate from whether or not they are accepted or forgiven by their victims. With that definition, I think there is no being "deserving" of a redemption arc, it's something that everyone is entitled to if they chose to. Therefore, everyone, and I mean everyone, in as something as morally gray as the Dream SMP is capable of becoming a better person. It doesn't mean they get rewarded or forgiven for it, it just means they are capable of change and are able to fulfil character potential beyond being a villain.”

It seems to me like there definitely are a lot of people in each side of the spectrum, so this test seems to have come back positive; however, there are more questions that we have yet to answer.

3. Would people want characters to suffer or even die for their actions rather than heal and be happy?

Here is probably a good place to mention this questionnaire was more of a psychological experiment than a survey. Most of the answers were specifically designed and in such an order that would get your mind thinking about certain things before shoving your psyche into a difficult question.

Well, here comes the moment of truth; what sort of redemption arc do people prefer? Would they rather the character get better and reap the “rewards” (which are actually simply things every human being needs and deserves; love and happiness), atone for their actions but not get to be happy, or would they like them to suffer or be punished instead? Do people really treat basic human needs as “rewards” for being a good person; or are they only reserved for characters that were never bad people in the first place? Remember; all of these characters have inarguably gone through pain during their life. Just how much do people enjoy punitive justice, and should I literally just stick to my corner of the fandom for my own good?

The answer probably won’t surprise you!

Starting off, 82.8% want a happy or neutral ending for Quackity, 59.4% of which think he should experience good things in the end. 54.4% of participants want a happy or neutral ending for Dream, 62.7% of which think it should lead to him being happy and loved. 89.2% of people want a happy or neutral ending for Wilbur, 49.4% of which lean towards happiness over closure.

17.2% of participants would prefer Quackity to experience pain as part of his redemption arc. 8.5% want him to be mentally tormented by the weight of his own actions, and 5.6% think he should be punished before being allowed to get better.

For Dream, these percentages are way higher- and here is the funny thing, I thought that pretty much no one would say he should suffer before healing, because he’s already suffering for his actions indirectly by being abused by people who hate him for them. However, 7.2% of people think he has yet to be punished enough for his crimes in order to deserve being redeemed. 21.5% want him to suffer under the weight of his own actions, and 6.9% would want him to die instead of getting a happy ending. Overall, 45.6% would prefer a redemption arc for Dream in which he is subjected to pain or punishment.

10.8% of participants would want Wilbur to have a more difficult character arc, with the percentages pretty evenly divided between the options.

4. Do people think certain characters in the story don’t deserve to be happy?

“Deserving” basic human needs, or not deserving them for being bad people/being bad people in the past, is something I don’t personally agree with, however this is tumblr, not thought police, so let’s just look at the survey results.

While 68.5% of participants believe all of the characters in the story deserve to be loved and happy, only 66.2% think Wilbur does, 61.5% think Quackity does, and 38.5% think Dream does.

Let’s look at some closing thoughts on the subject as a closing note;

“I want everyone to have a sort of personal redemption. Where they realize they have hurt people. But I think it’s difficult. I mean Dream abused a child. Quackity tortured Dream relentlessly. I think the redemption arc that is the easiest is one for Wilbur because of cc!wilburs acting and emphasis on his characters mental health. But I think Wilburs also done so much f**ked up shit too. I think it’s difficult. I just think the redemption arcs are really really difficult.”

“i genuinely can't help myself, i want everyone to have the chance to be better.”

“i think that wilbur, quackity and sam should be redeemed because we as an audience know that they all believe they're doing the right thing and regret/didn't enjoy hurting people with their actions. but with c!dream, there's a lot more evidence that he knew what he was doing wrong and actively enjoyed doing it.”

“everybody deserves to heal. if someone wants to be better and strives to be better, who is anyone to deprive them of that?”

“I don’t like some of these characters and their actions, but everyone deserves a chance to heal. To work through their trauma.”

“dream doesn’t deserve shit, quackitys probably gonna keep riding the las nevadas train until it crashes and burns and wilbur should move on from being “the villain” and stop seeing everything as black and white”

“No one is beyond deserving help. That's not how the world works and that's not what the story should show in my opinion.”

“narratively, i want redemption and happy endings for all characters but morally, i really despise some of them and i'm also really conflicted about some of them as well”

“I want my faves to be better and I think it's the best possible option for everyone involved, even the characters they've hurt.”

“c!wilbur and c!quackity go to therapy. c!dream get hit by another train /hj”

“Hurt people hurt people. If given a chance to distance yourself from your victims and abusers, if given a safe environment with a support network of people you haven't formerly harmed, you can then heal and let the others heal. Live and let live, but living is harder for everyone when we don't give others the chances they need to grow and change themselves.”

“all of them deserve to find growth and happiness but under no circumstances are those who have been hurt by them obligated to be involved in any aspect of that arc. most obvious example- c!dream is allowed to grow and realize that what he's done is awful, but c!tommy is not obligated to forgive him or even be near him.”

“They can all improve and get better and be better people …. They all deserve a chance to be better and be happy. However. Wilbur and dream should get their "redemption" arcs away from esp. Tommy and all the other people they hurt. Big Q. should get his redemption arc away from Dream and stuff. If the prison was less focused on detainment and more focused on rehabilitation and then Dream had no contact with Tommy for example that's a scenario that I'd like.”

“is quackity actually considered a villain in this story? What has he done wrong lol Create a casino? be emotionally manipulated? have rejection sensitive dysphoria? I don't think he's a good person based on his current actions but i don't think hes a villain. I think he's trying hard to become something hes not. … I hate c!dream and I don't think he can ever get better. hes a manipulator gaslight gatekeep girlboss and i think he deserves to stay in prison and rot. watching the tommy exile arc would make me so angry that i had to stop watching.”

“i'm so CONFLICTED about this! i want the angst, but god the angst has been going on for a LONG time. honestly, i think the conclusion i would be happiest with would be for c!dream, c!quackity, c!sam, c!tommy, and c!wilbur to calm down, get some therapy, and stay VERY FAR AWAY FROM EACH OTHER. god damn, it's like they WANT to get more traumatized,,”

“the loathing i feel directed at c!dream specifically is so goddamn strong. my god i hate that guy. uhhh regarding quackity no i dont feel like he shouldnt feel ANY pain or anything hes done some f**ked up stuff but i mean..? with the exception of the torture hes the most redeemable guy up there for me which is probably because we have seen his entire downward spiral.”

“I have to admit that although I strongly believe no one on the Dream SMP deserves to be tormented and deprived of their healing and happiness, I feel really icky about c!Quackity. I really hope that the ccs find a way to make his redemption logical and satisfying to watch. If that is not the case, I will still welcome it with open arms, but secretly I will be a little bit salty about it.”

“For the last question bit there i wanted to check more then once because i want them all to feel guilty and tormented for what they have done.”

“Yknow.... basic human rights... to be happy and loved isn't something that should be deserved it should be something that everyone is allowed to obtain for themselves and it shouldn't be allowed it should just be…”

“While i think that all of the characters should the chance to get redemption and healing, I’d probably be less likely to watch redemption arcs from c!Quackity and c!Wilbur than c!Dream, just because I dislike them. Not to say that they shouldn’t get them, because I hope they do, I’m just more like to be going “Good for them” in the distance.”

“I JUST WANT THEM ALL TO BE HAPPY PLEASEEEEEEEE -dr3”

“for the final question it doesnt provide a none of the above option or a some of the characters but not all option. since I dont think c!Dream deserves to be happy and loved but I do the other two (to some degree) but answering "all of the characters .. " I feel Includes c!dream who I ultimately just really hate and want to have nothing but a fictional death!”

“therapy. therapy for everyone.”

“f**k c!dream <3 i honestly don’t think people who abuse kids (or anyone) for fun should ever be redeemed i think they should just rot in a hole somewhere”

“It would be hypocritical to say that one character deserves redemption more than another, especially considering they've all done (almost equally) horrible things. Either everyone deserves redemption, or no one does.”

Conclusion: in the end, this is all the ways in which we like to enjoy fiction. However, for some completely unrelated reason, I am now about 45.6% less likely to attempt to interact with anyone outside my immediate group of friends in the fandom.

Thank you for reading!

#dream smp #dsmp fandom critical #tw abuse ment #tw torture ment

[fatehbaz]

@kurapikawithagun​ - sorry, i know there’s a lot of text here. but was it one of these?

on second thought, post is way too long, so i edited this with a “keep reading” section. includes excerpts about how “plant collectors followed the Conquistadors”; Spanish and British botanists wanted to “de-territorialize” or “de-anthropologize” knowledge of plants by removing plants from local cultural context, gatekeeping and systematizing knowledge, and subverting local Indigenous/traditional knowledge-holders; creation of Britain’s first botanic gardens including world-famous Kew Gardens were designed to service plantation owners and the East India Company; how 18th/19th-century European naturalists were “agents of empire” who collected “green gold”; how plantations and imperial botanists turned plants from “companions into commodities” and established racial hierarchy; early science of botany functioned as a “teletechnique,” a way for an empire to “act-at-a-distance” on and against colonized lands and peoples; how British military commanders and economists ran the botanic gardens at Calcutta, Madras, and in the Caribbean; how British administrators dismantled local Indian knowledge and land systems by using key legislation in the 1780s/1790s to dispossess people of their lands before compelling those former gardeners to become forced laborers on tea plantations; gardens as part of American nationalist imaginary and “moral improvement” in the 1800s; how native plants and traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples, Black communities, and the rural poor have been appropriated by “overwhelmingly white metropolitan homeowners” looking for “ecologically friendly ways of aesthetising their properties” in fads of contemporary South Africa; how imperial botany created a “monoculture of knowledge” to overshadow or control a multitude of other local “ecologies of knowledges” and ways-of-knowing; etc.

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In a 1998 interview [...], in advance of the release of her third novel, Gardens in the Dunes (1999), Leslie Marmon Silko explains how she became interested in plants: “They come from all over the world, and they’re also another way of looking at colonialism because everywhere the colonials went, the plants came back from there.” [...] Silko confesses that “it wasn’t too long before I realized how very political gardens are …. I had actually stumbled into the most political thing of all – how you grow your food, whether you eat, the fact that the plant collectors followed the Conquistadors.” [...] Gardens revolves around the colonization of indigenous minds and bodies through a variety of processes under the flag of manifest destiny: the loss of land and natural resources in general and the disruption of Native foodways in particular. […] Moreover, it problematizes the privatization of food commons and its negative impacts on local communities from the Gilded Age to the present. […] Silko, a writer of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and Anglo-American ancestry, employs the trope of the garden as a means of critiquing and revising modern America’s ecological imperialism, which has attempted to naturalize the conquest of Native lands and foodways. […]

Plant collectors served as what David Mackay calls “agents of empire,” their inventories full of precious and at the time unknown plants and medicinal herbs collected from indigenous peoples that they then shipped to various libraries, museums, and botanic gardens in the Western world. According to historian of science Linda Schiebinger, while “early conquistadors entered the Americas looking for gold and silver,” naturalists, their successors in the eighteenth century, were more interested in “green gold.” Whether they were “voyaging botanists” sponsored by trading companies or sent by the government, the central task of these botanists was to bring valuable plants “all into production within the boundaries of the empire itself.” […] [T]he trope of “I am monarch of all I survey” […]. The power relations between “seeing” and “being seen” suggest that Western science aids the conquest of the Americas by positing a distance between the colonizer and the colonized. […] Collecting, whether via bioprospecting or photography, thus exemplifies the colonial ideology inscribed in Western science that transforms Indigenous peoples and their traditional knowledge into possessable objects and buttresses the structural inequalities that cement the colonizer’s privilege. In her provocative essay on mushrooms as companion species, Anna Tsing has convincingly argued that the plantation system served as “the engine of European expansion” because it was able to produce enormous wealth based on “the superabundance of a single crop” and “cultivation through coercion.” To manage many plantations in colonies more effectively, Europeans eliminated the affective relationship between humans and plants: the labor needed for plantation cultivation was forced through slavery and indentured servitude, a racial hierarchy was created to draw a clear line between white property owner and colored worker, and plants were treated as commodities rather than companions. The legacy of the plantation system, as Tsing puts it, lies in the ways it has shaped the conditions of racial capitalism and environmental exploitation and in the ways it continues to structure “how contemporary agribusiness is organized. […] Commenting on the interrelationship of imperial botany and commerce during the colonial period, Schiebinger explains that “the botanical sciences served the colonial enterprise and were, in turn, structured by it.” Silko’s novel, then, shows how botanical gardens in Europe functioned, in Schiebinger’s language, as “experimental stations for agriculture and way stations for plant acclimatization for domestic and global trade, rare medicaments, and cash crops” against the common view that gardens like the Kew were centrally “intended to delight city dwellers.”

Source: Yeonhaun Kang. “The Garden in Motion: Botanical Exchange and Transnational Collaboration in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes.” 2019.

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After numerous false starts, and with the crucial aid of the practical embodied knowledge of the many Chinese gardeners who were literally kidnapped to India together with the tea plants, the Calcutta Botanic Garden and the pre-colonial Saharanpur Garden that was re-developed by the colonial administration, played pivotal roles in the emergence of colonial India as the major producer of tea. The practical knowledge possessed by the initial group of abducted Chinese gardeners eventually fed into incipient botany in the colonial setting. The tea plants transplanted from China to the botanic gardens in India were eventually transplanted to the massive rationalised tea plantations in Assam and parts of South India such as Ooty and the Nilgiris (Sharma 2011; Philip 2004). The lands for these plantations were acquired after the large-scale dispossession of the populations of Assam and Ooty, and the relocation and deployment of the people alienated from their lands as forced labour on the very lands they once possessed and cultivated. The setting up of the colonial botanic gardens, spurred by the crises generated by colonialism, also set in motion multiple transfers and transplants, local and global, of plants, people, culture, agriculture and the eventual transformation of practical knowledge into formal botanical science devoted to [...] production [...] and productivity [...]. These experiments conducted at the Calcutta Botanical Garden also provided institutional and intellectual opportunities for botanical careers for many colonial officials.

Source: Zaheer Baber. “The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge.” May 2016.

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In this conception operating in the eighteenth century, there is no Nature without Empire. […] To “de-anthropologize” the knowledge of plants, also involved “de-locating,” or better still, “de-territorializing” it. Botany was emerging as a science separate from medicine, but also from chorography as territory became a vegetal mantle, a sort of carpet for plants to lie upon. […] Botanical nomenclature was also a matter of political nomenklatura: the exclusion of native names from the field of science defined new power relations. It acknowledged the authority of imperial botanists and belittled local herbalists and herbal practitioners. Nomenclature, indeed, displaced traditional wisdom: Nahuatl came to be considered as an unintelligible, garbled language [...]. This spatial strategy tends to identify certain regions with some characteristic species. This allowed a selective fostering of farms and forestry in those areas rich in species of particular interest to the Spanish Crown. Plants ceased to be the business of experts and became the concern of politicians. Botany came to strengthen imperial politics. [...] The plants themselves and not their products became the stuff of trade, and what circulated through the networks were ideas on how to mobilize species and how to denature  them. Botany began as atechnoscope – a way to visualize at-a-distance – but, at the end of the eighteenth century, it was already a  teletechnique – a way to act at-a-distance. Its success as an imperial undertaking was linked to the ability to set up an international network of professorships, gardens, expeditions and publishing companies able to produce aversion of Nature easily put into words, and deducible from very little data. […]

Source: Antonio Lafuente and Nuria Valverde. “Linnaen Botany and Spanish Imperial Biopolitics”. 2011.

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“’These are my conquests,” Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, is reported to have said of the roses and lilies in her renowned garden showcase,” Bennett writes. […] “She would spend as much as 3000 francs on a single rare bulb […].” Gardens are “the most political thing of all – how you grow your food, whether you ear, the fact that the plant collectors followed the Conquistadors,” Leslie Marmon Silko told Ellen Arnold on the eve of the publication of Gardens in the Dunes [1999]. “You have the Conquistadors, the missionaries, and right with them were the plant collectors.” […] In Gardens, Silko uses the image of the garden to illustrate imperialism on international, national, local, and domestic levels. […] Silko offers a microcosmic history of ancient conquest, European imperialism, and modern botanical piracy, while demonstrating commercial trivialization of the sacred. […] The gardens […] exemplify America’s nineteenth-century gardening ideologies. In his 1782 Letters from an American Farmer, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur wrote of the spiritual benefits of agricultural labor. By the mid-nineteenth century, this idea had evolved into gardening as a form of moral calisthenics. […] According to historian Tamara Plakins Thornton, in the 1820s “[h]orticulture entered the mainstream of American life … as a movement [that] promised … moral benefits to an entire nation.” […] Further, by the 1890s, thanks to the early-nineteenth-century efforts of America’s premier landscape gardener, A.J. Downing, and, later, British gardening authority Gertrude Jekyll, landscape gardening had achieved the status of a fine art (Thornton; Bisgrove). It was in 1893 that historian Frederick Jackson Turner announced that the American frontier was “closed.” With […] Native peoples more or less incarcerated [...], the American landscape garden provided a blank canvas on which the gardener could impose control and exercise her fine art […].

Source: Terre Ryan. “The Nineteenth-Century Garden: Imperialism, Subsistence, and Subversion in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes.” Studies in American Indian Literatures. Fall 2007. 

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Many colonial administrators were of course active in mobilising the   tremendous economic potential of plants in the imperial project. At the same time however, there were many others who, although they were key actors in the colonial project, were also specifically interested in enhancing their cultural and intellectual capital by becoming “scientists.” [...] The British Empire, as well as the other European empires of that period, constituted one of the many institutional crucibles in which the sciences of plants literally germinated, took root and flowered. Plants constituted an integral element of colonial power [...]. This goal of setting up a rationalised system of administration and revenue collection was a major impetus behind the “great surveys” initiated by the East India Company. [...] The company officials were also familiar with the existence of a pre-colonial Botanical Garden in Saharanpur in northern India (Hyde 1962) and of course Kew Gardens in London, even though the latter was set up primarily for the cultivation of medicinal plants and had not as yet emerged as the major scientific institution that it would become later. The company had also set up smaller gardens in St Vincent in the West Indies for the transfer of the breadfruit tree from Tahiti to provide, in the words of the President of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks, “food for slaves” (Mackay 1985, 127). In the context of a dramatically transformed Indian social structure coupled with serious concerns over the erosion of the legitimacy of their rule in the eyes of their Indian subjects, officials of the company were extremely receptive to the idea of a major botanical garden and its potential for restoring stable revenues. […] In less than four years after Kyd’s original letter of 1786, generous grants from the Court of Directors in London made possible the establishment of the first modern Botanical Gardens in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, as well as in distant St Helena. […] Unsurprisingly, the first superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Gardens was Lieutenant-Colonel Kyd himself and the plants that were transplanted there from Southeast Asia were exclusively those that were essential for trade and competition with other colonial powers (Burkill 1959). These included cinnamon, coffee and black pepper. [...] In the same vein, the Bombay Botanic Garden was established due to the initiative of Dr Helenus Scott – a friend of Banks, President of the Royal Society – with the express aim of conducting botanical experiments for the cultivation of sugar, indigo, tobacco, coffee and more.

Source: Zaheer Baber. “The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge.” May 2016.

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Imifino is the collective noun isiZulu speakers in KwaZulu-Natal use when referring to auto-propagating leafy green vegetables that have a penchant for thriving in marginal soil. As interest in indigenous plants has grown, these vegetables – long an unheralded staple of the rural poor – are now at the centre of state and scientific attention. Plans are afoot to codify, patent, and popularise ‘indigenous knowledges’ for a variety of ends: the enhancement of national competitiveness; revalorisation of indigeneity; pursuit of food security; and of course the stimulation of profit-making. […] Subsistence cultivators, however, are not alone in cultivating indigenous flora. About three hours south, in the city of Durban (and throughout South Africa) something called ‘indigenous gardening’ has gained popularity since the end of formal apartheid. As we elaborate later, ‘indigenous gardening’ is a name reserved for a specialised field of activity, a metropolitan affair practised by conservationists, botanists, real estate developers, horticulturalists, architects, and enjoyed by mostly white upper class homeowners for a variety of purposes, especially those associated with conservation. It is sanctioned by science and other kinds of credentialed expertise, and geared towards enabling overwhelmingly white metropolitan home owners to pursue ecologically friendly ways of aesthetising their properties, rather than towards matters of subsistence undertaken by those deemed the black rural poor. From the vantage point of our conversations with subsistence cultivators like Gogo Qho, we wonder, ‘Why do overwhelmingly white metropolitan homeowners specifically want indigenous plants to adorn their properties? What kind of desire for indigeneity is being pursued here? What is Indigenous about Indigenous gardening other than plants?’ […]

Source: Narendran Kumarakulasingam and Mvuselelo Ngcoya, “Plant Provocations: Botanical Indigeneity and (De)colonial Imaginations.” 2016.

-------

Landscapes and vegetation are not simply the backdrop against which violence and dispossession unfold, but are mobilised as the very medium of violence [...]. Key here is the space of the garden, in multiple ways. Gardens in the Western imagination often have utopian, pre-lapsarian associations, but are in fact riven with ambivalences that stem from questions concerning who is displaced in order to demarcate their boundaries, and whose labour is exploited to maintain them as sites of nourishment and enjoyment. [...] As such, the colonised subjects remain cast out of the [...] garden of earthly delights, even if its is precisely through their knowledge and labour that the actual garden feeds and sustains the symbolic garden -- notably, the plantation system [...]. In the context of imperial botany the space of the garden was vital, with the frontrunners of the modern scientific botanic garden, which were established in sixteenth-century Italy, combining ‘the scientific ideal of comprehending universal nature’ [...] ‘by gathering together all the creations scattered at the fall of man.’ As such, the botanical garden can be understood as a laboratory of empire, as can tropical island colonies (also incubators for the revival of European Edenic dis/course) and the space of the plantation more broadly. Moreover, the construction of the category of the ‘damnes’ of the earth needs to be read in the context of this wholesale classification of forms of life enacted by imperial science. Notable botanists such as Linnaeus, as well as Hans Sloane and Joseph Banks, were influential in the development of scientific racism, as well as the endorsement of slavery and colonisation of foreign territories. Colonial natural science [...] was central in the construction of race and sexuality [...]. By and large, imperial science (what we might call a ‘monoculture of knowledge’) excluded other, ‘minor’ histories and systems of knowledge (’ecologies of knowledges’), as well as modes of being-in-the-world that are not premised upon the value, profitability and usefulness of plants [...].

Source: Ros Gray and Shela Sheikh. “Introduction” to The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions. Third Text. 2018.

[tomatograter]

What would you say is the very core of dirkjake? I struggle to put it into words beyond dirk being afraid jake will get tired of him

Ok this is a fun one hang on, strap in,

Much like vrisrezi, and in fact a reoccurring theme throughout HS as a work in full -represented in varying levels of relevance to its cast of core characters- dirkjake is about the masks we willingly fashion ourselves after to starve off insecurity. Everything else is a permutation of that.

But also akin to vrisrezi, their interpersonal relationships and character arcs are heavily about how said performances can be turned into destructive weapons that hinder the development of one's growth and personal identity, rippling through friend groups and plot events. That's a lot of words. So let's break it down like this: 

Vriska's Mindfang performance is a defense mechanism created to strengthen her resolve when dealing with isolation and an abysmal monster as a mother, and serves to advance the plot, but is highly harmful to vriska and those around her. (Of note - Vriska doesn't see herself as a villain, it is incredibly important that she's a HERO, just a highly polarizing and problematic one.)

Terezi's Legislacerator ((space cop)) performance is an elaborate persona created to make sense of an antagonistic and temperamental environment, and seemingly dole out punishments that would ensure things continue to function as they should, even to terezi's personal detriment. Vriska is far from the first troll or human terezi has killed, but it's the one that breaks the scale, because terezi knows she's just another victim of the system.

Neither of the above make up the entirety of vriska OR terezi as characters, simply the masks they've chosen to slot themselves into a narrative that will not stop for them, or anybody else for that matter, to have time to 'figure themselves out' before steamrolling them. Vriska and terezi's relationship relies in the bond they formed through the cracks on their masks, to a point in which hopefully they can help eachother to get rid of them.

When talking about dirkjake, instead of focusing on the alternian or human society we have the introduction of dystopic hyper isolated homescenarios that will define their viewpoints as Characters in this story. If vrisrezi is cops-and-robbers, dirkjake is princesses and dragons. Oh yeah, they're both simplistic morality plays.

It is precisely how set apart they are from everyone else but immediate danger (may it be rogue lusii naturae or imperial drones) that molds them into people who crave connection but are too cocooned inside their own walls to let anybody through, even those they care for. Taking the brunt of responsibility for a Legacy and attaining a greater future plays a key role for most of the alphas, but in dirk and jake's case this is demonstrated through the necessity for brash, masculine heroism and the suppression of fragility or sentimentality. Before the story has a chance to admonish them for stepping out of line, they'll do it to themselves out of habit.

The situation gets a little worse when the roles they've picked to enact (invariably, The Hero!) don't match with the roles the story wants them to play.

Jake is the archetypal swooning and good for nothing princess who's there to look pretty and provide motivation To others, modernized into the cool action girl trope we've known to find and despise in every other movie, those who often say 4 lines about how cool and smart they are or how they were raised by their older brothers with big guns and then spend the rest of their screentime in varying states of distress, undress, or concerning unconsciousness. Sometimes all three!!!!! 

It is because of this lack of agency that jake stresses his role as a charming gallivanting and STUPID action hero, thereby providing a excuse for his lack of control over his own life, and makes stumbling into situations ass-first look charming. He wants his friends to be impressed with him, and he'll lie to achieve that effect, because he wants to be liked and to be taken seriously. The problem is that he's all too aware of how he's been set up, and he vehemently rejects it.

Dirk is the dragon. Yup. Function? To be slayed. Duty? To make your life a nightmare in just about every possible way, giving the eventual story payoff a grander climax. Inadvertently, accidentally, well-intentionally, and yet sometimes on purpose, dirk strider ends up in the antagonist role. His awareness of the fact and penance for its weight is such he'll preemptively take the blame for things that aren't even his fault, like a loser. While jake eventually has to deal with how he ends up breaking things on accident to provide a backdrop motivation for others, dirk is stuck in a self-fulfilling loop of having mostly negative input in everyone's lives, including (if not specially) his own.

Dirk's hyper-investment in playing the Knight, like his brother before him, and ensuring his input on everyone's stories remains constructive and ever-helpful even if he doesn't know what the FUCK he's talking about or what is happening 99,9% of the time is a byproduct of multiple timelines spent in less glorious ways.

The core of dirkjake, then, is how they're simultaneously the one person who's the closest to seeing the other for what they truly are, but ashamed of their own shortcomings, they do their best to advance the fantasy version instead. To know and value a loved one is to become aware of your own lies, and to acknowledge the performance panic that comes with it. Ye olde jingle of "Self-recognition through the eyes of the other" and "the pants-soiling fear that actually you're still a faker and you will never be enough", weaved up and remixed. Their problem is that Princesses don't marry Dragons, and in a realistic setting neither do Princes and Knights for that matter, they're too busy with- doing the other stuff!!!!! The stuff that should be done! Even if they wanted to! 

Which actually goes right back to my claim that dirkjake is exactly like Shrek, The Movie, And This Is Why.

#meta #vrisrezi #dirkjake #dirk strider #jake english #shrek #again.

[nepenthendline]

S/O that self-harms and has an eating disorder -  Tsukishima, Tendou and Sugawara

TRIGGER WARNING AHEAD: SELF HARM AND EATING DISORDERS

I’m dumb and accidentally posted this half done so thats why the requests are in screenshots 

I’ve added these two requests together as they’re about the same topic. Firstly I just wanted to let anon though that I’m absolutely fine writing about these topics so you don’t need to worry! I will, however, make it extremely clear on these posts about the trigger warnings and I won’t go into intense detail so that it’s more accessible, I hope that’s ok! And thank you for your lovely words! 🥰🥰 I have added trigger warning tags for those who need to blacklist this, but please please let me know if you need me to add any others

I know there are so many people who are struggling with these issues, especially at the moment with covid, I’ve been there too and I’m still dealing with these things myself so I want you to know that if you need to talk to someone, or you’d like an emergency request, then my askbox and messages are always open. You are not alone, you are not ‘strange’ for dealing with these things, and I promise you things will get better, I’m already proud of any progress you have made and you should be too. It’s ok to have worse days and to fall back into negative spaces, you’re human!

Also, these will be following my own mental health hcs of these guys that I’ve already posted so check that out first!

Tsukishima:

Tsukishima is the one who understands this the most

he’s been there, he’s struggled with those things and he is still fighting

if you didn’t tell him upfront about your struggles, he would have easily found out by himself quite quickly

since he has been through it himself, he knows the warning signs to look out for, so when you start covering your arms more often even with the hotter weather, or make a passing comment that you aren’t hungry at meal times, he knows it’s his time to step up as a support system

he isn’t going to be particularly forward about it, he’s not the type to come up to you out of the blue and ask questions because he knows some of them can’t be answered, so he takes things into his own hands

he spends more quiet time with you, just the two of you cuddling in your bed as he brushes his fingers over your body

while it may seem like a usual calming display of affection, he is really searching your body for any marks or wounds that are new

he tries to coax your feelings and worries out of you, telling you that you can trust him and that he isn’t going to run away

he knows that he can’t expect you to open up without him doing so either, so he lays himself out for you

he tells you what he has been through, he shows you the scars on his body, he lets you into his heart and his head so that you know you aren’t alone

once you both spill your stories, you don’t talk about it much after that, you both know what is going on so it’s just a matter of taking care of each other

regarding food, he isn’t going to force you to eat huge meals, because he has a small appetite even when he’s eating perfectly fine

but he is going to try and get you eating little amounts consistently throughout the day

you don’t want to eat a full meal? that’s fine, but he is going to be passing you little snacks every few hours so that you at least have some fuel in your body

he’s a smart guy, he knows how the body functions at its best and he will do his best to teach you too in hopes that knowing what your body needs and how it reacts to certain situations will aid you to treat it better

he’s not going to wrap you up in bubblewrap and shield you from the world either, but he will do his best to make sure that there isn’t anything you can easily hurt yourself with in your reach

he’ll put sharp objects on the top shelves, saying it’s just to piss you off about your height

he also always keeps a first aid kit on him in case of emergencies, something he has gotten into the habit of over the last few years

he’s not going to sit there and tell you everything is going to be perfect or to just ‘get over it’, it’s going to be a long process with both of you learning and fluctuating every day, but you’ll both get there eventually

Tendou:

Tendou is extremely attentive, he knows exactly when your mood has changed or if something is wrong

he’ll leave it for a little while to see if you’ll come to him yourself, but if you don’t, then he’ll start asking questions

they start off as simple, casual questions to check up on you, like ‘how are you feeling today?’, ‘how was your day today?’, before they go into specifics if he feels like you aren’t being honest with him

he’s the type of guy that makes ‘jokes’ about his depression, even going as far as joking about suicide or self-harm, and when he notices you flinch ever so slightly at his words, he knew what was going on

he brings it up one day as if talking about the weather while reading manga together

“you’ve been hurting your own body, haven’t you?”

he tries to keep the conversations a light-hearted as possible, saying how you are now ‘scar buddies’ as he lifts up his shorts to show you his thighs

he understands that what he says isn’t really going to do much, but he’s still going to shower you with compliments and affection in the hopes that it brightens your mood and distracts you even a little

distraction is his main way of helping you - if he can keep you busy then there’s less chance of you hurting yourself in his eyes

he’s going to call you over or turn up to your room unannounced with a book in hand to read together, or invite you to cuddle with him as you have an anime binge session, he also wants to make sure you’re getting outside enough so walks to get ice-cream and sit in the park happen frequently

he knows he can’t ‘cure’ you or actually make things better, so he mentions about seeing a therapist if you aren’t already and he will support you every step of the journey if you do decide to seek help

like Tsukishima, he also has a smaller appetite in general so he doesn’t expect you to eat tons

he uses prompts often to try and get you to eat more, such as “babyyyy I’m hungry, let’s go down to the cafeteria together and get some food ok?” or “I bought this jumbo pack of ramen but I can’t eat it all myself, come give me a hand?”

he likes getting you sweet treats too, they often make him feel a little perkier so he hopes they will for you as well

he isn’t going to give them any details, but he will ask his team to keep an eye on you if he isn’t around

he likes to use rating systems with you to determined how you’re doing in the day, whether that be on a scale of 1-10, or texting him a particular emoji that signals if you’re having a bad day

he will never get mad or annoyed at you if you relapse, he understands its a journey that will have it’s ups and downs, but he always reminds you of how far you’ve come and how proud he is

Sugawara:

out of these three boys, Sugawara is the one who understands this the least

he’s never dealt with this issues himself, and he has never been around those who have besides those who struggle with anxiety

even though he can’t empathise, he is naturally an extremely caring person so he wants to do his best to understand

he reads up on self-harm and eating disorders to learn about how they originate, how to notice warning signs and what he can do to help you best

he comes to you a lot as well, asking if there is anything he should know or that he can do for you

while he may not notice these issues themselves straight away, he is always checking up on you in general so he can tell if there is something a little off

it breaks his heart to know that you intentionally harm yourself and it takes him a little while to wrap his head around it

he knows he can’t do much to help the issues you face directly, so he makes sure you are keeping up with more general self-care, such as showering, getting some little exercise everyday, indulging in your hobbies and talking to him and other friends

if you need to rely on him for a little while you’re trying to get back on your feet then that’s fine with him, he is more than happy to remind you to do things to take care of yourself and help you do them too

Sugawara is the most forward when it comes to you getting help from a doctor or therapist

he has a couple serious talks with you about how you need to find a method of battling this, whether that be therapy or medication

as much as he wants to be, he can’t take this away from you

he starts stocking his bag with emergency items too, things like bandages, healing ointment or any safe foods that you can eat

to help your eating, he does his best to make food become part of your regular routine in hopes that it will make eating become more familiar and less daunting

this means regular meal times and creating lists of safe foods with you that you feel you can eat better than others

he will do his best to make sure all your meals have the right nutrients for your body and also recommend you take vitamin supplements daily in case you have a bad eating day and cannot get them through your food

it frustrates him that he can’t do more for you, or that he can’t understand exactly how you feel, but he never shows you that

he will always have his arms open for you if you need support and he will never ever blame you for the struggles you deal with, he reminds you constantly that there will be better days and he is going to be with you through all of them

#haikyuu #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu!! #haikyuu headcanons #tsukishima kei #haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu scenarios #Tsukishima x reader #tsukishima kei x reader #tendou satori #tendou x reader #Tendo satori #Tendou satori x reader #sugawara koushi #sugawara x reader #Sugawara koushi x reader #tw self harm #tw eating disorders #tw eating disorder #tw mental health

[class1akids]

don’t you think that todoroki is a bit weak, especially since he’s been training all his life? i mean, he got folded during his round in the JTA arc and he doesn’t compete AT ALL with bakugou and deku 

What a shitty bait, but fine, I’ll bite, because I do see these moronic takes from time to time. Way to miss the entire point of Shouto’s arc, dear anon. 

Look up any number of articles that talk about pushing children way too young and way too hard in sports and you will find that it will cause severe emotional, psychological and physical consequences. 

For Shouto, his “trainer” was his abusive, asshole father, who made him HATE his fire so much, he even refused to use it for YEARS - making him completely one-sided: a pro-hero level competence with his ice, and a beginner with severe psychological issues with his fire. Like Shouto explains again and again, switching to both sides, not only requires him to add his left, but to DECONSTRUCT moves that have become autopilot due to excessive training. 

Not to mention, Shouto grew up with no childhood, no mom, no emotional support, no agency, lost a brother - all of this connected to his fire - don’t you think this level of trauma maybe, kind of holds him back somewhat and is its own obstacle to overcome? And just because the obstacle is mental, it is no less hard and no less painful than classmates who can progress just by lifting weights or doing pushups or whatever...

If anything, it shows that all the training Endeavor put Shouto through his childhood didn’t even give him advantage beyond the first few months of school. Because the others, with age-appropriate and non-abusive training methods can and do catch up. 

Calling Shouto weak singling out the JTA is like calling Bakugou weak just based on the Moonfish fight. Shouto did not get FOLDED in the JTA - read the chapter again or watch the anime and notice what happens:

(1) I don’t know remember Bakugou and Deku or anyone else on that battle field walking into a low-stakes class, mere days after their father almost dies on national TV and being triggered into a PTSD episode even before the fight starts - so let’s not pretend that they are remotely in the same situation as Shouto, but still:

(2) At the beginning of the fight, it takes Honenuki’s softening + Pony’s horns + Tetsu’s steel combined to counter Shouto’s ice attack (we already know fire would have been better, but we also know the reason why he used ice)

(3) Tetsu’s quirk is a perfect counter to Shouto’s half-cold half-hot, and was recently upgraded which took Shouto by surprise  

(4) After the initial surprise, Shouto still managed to counter Tetsu, despite having literal flashbacks in the middle of the fight, and reach for flashfire - that move that his father tried to shove down his throat violently beating him as a small child - and actually make a flashfire fist. And to me, that’s someone who is STRONG. Not just physically, but mentally. 

(5) He was about to take Tetsu out, when Honenuki reappeared and softened the ground under him, so Shouto lost his footing and got hit by a metal pipe. 

So Shouto did not lose his 1-on-1 (this is why Tetsu is taking it as a loss), despite having to face not only a perfect counter to his quirk, but also fighting his trauma at the same time. 

It’s not like Bakugou or Deku didn’t get into trouble - they both had to be saved at some point by their teammates and if in those moments their teammates didn’t step up, they could have “FOLDED” just as much as fandom thinks Shouto or Momo did. This is what a team-battle boils down to; nobody can win it alone, and there are a bunch of other factors, like how balanced the groups are, whose quirk is a counter to whose. Or just the fact that in the first battle Shinsou’s support item was a total surprise to everyone (giving a huge advantage to class A), while by the time Deku’s group faced him, they already knew to expect it. 

So anyway, the JTA performance does not in any way show that Shouto is so WEAK compared to anyone else - it was an obstacle that the story put in his path specifically on that day to push his character arc of conquering his trauma and his fire further. That’s all there is to it.  

And most importantly, Shouto comes out of the JTA arc with a renewed motivation to seek out the help of his abuser, because he wants to be better for his friends and not feel like he’s letting anyone down. I don’t know how you can’t see that, but that takes a lot of STRENGTH to do. To face his father, to put himself under his guidance, to accept his moves... all of that. 

And the Endeavor internship arc shows the Origin Trio very explicitly head-to-head several times. Shouto is not “weak” compared to the other two. He’s equal. That’s the point of the Ending fight.

Sure, their quirks have different strengths and shine in different situations and in different ways. Bakugou is faster and more dynamic, Deku is physically stronger (he’s a strength-type) and starts to have a bunch of utility functions, Shouto can do long-range and AoE better, etc. - but all three of them are working also on their weaknesses to become well-rounded heroes who can do everything.  There will always be situations to which one of their quirks is better suited (like Bakugou holding the kid in his teeth during evacuation vs Deku lugging a whole bus, Shouto large-scale freezing the debris, giving them a crucial moment to be able to get away from the Decay). 

And while they have been balanced with Deku up until now, I don’t know if it’s worth talking about it much more, because OFA’s entire point is that it’s an incredibly broken OP power - Deku not only has power-levels available that will probably be out of reach both for Shouto and for Bakugou, he also now has a specific quirk for any imaginable situation, which Shouto and Bakugou will have to pull off with a single quirk.

But during the war arc, you can see that Shouto’s contributions aren’t any lesser than for example, Bakugou’s. (And while Deku does a lot of 100% smashes, by trying to do everything alone, he does a lot of cross-purpose acting with the rest of the team).

So I think Shouto is plenty strong. Not only his quirk (which has a huge open potential, and a lot of versatility, not just for beating people, but also for rescue, something Bakugou doesn’t have to the same extent, for example - Shouto could use his ice to stabilize a collapsing building, make massive slides for evacuation, etc), but more importantly, he’s mentally very STRONG because he’s putting in a lot of work to heal from his trauma, to overcome his negative feelings for his father and by extension for his fire. While those memories and negative feelings made him give up at the Sport Festival, and keep resurfacing at the most inconvenient times, Shouto gets up again and again, each time stronger, to the point he’s able to act when it matters, even in the middle of a complete breakdown.

He’s found his true motivation - and it’s not to beat Deku or Bakugou - but to be the best version he can be, so he can reassure people that things will be ok, because he’s strong enough to face whatever threat, because his trauma won’t hold him back from helping and saving. 

How can you call that weak?

#bnha meta #todoroki shouto #shouto positivity #shouto's quirk development #i'm so sick of people with moronic takes on shouto #he's one of the strongest characters around #and it's not even because of his power #or his quirk #but finding the strength to overcome his trauma for others

[waveypedia]

omg a video about animal jam would be so interesting!! i played it like a lot back in those years and man the game changed so much these days and i also remember when all the new features like parties or diamonds were introduced and a new animal would come out it was a wild time and my first ever account got hacked and the hacker deleted everything haha anyways yeah animal jam is pretty interesting to talk about haha

yeah!!! oh man you were around for the introduction of parties and diamonds? that was before even my time :0 i remember new animals and parties coming out though! oh shit you got hacked? that sucks :( i got scammed a whole bunch, but never outright hacked. that's one of the things i would probably research and talk about in my hypothetical video essay.

what really interests me is the way influencer culture and a fully functional economy naturally spawned in a kid's game, to the best of my knowledge. everything seemed to stem from a furious desire for clout - the economy revolved around coveted items like spikes, which were just status symbols at the end of the day. they don't get you any money or anything, so... more obviously, the rise of youtube around that time also saw the formation of many animal jam youtubers, many of whom became very famous very quickly in animal jam circles. people would literally send them all their rare items that they would open in glorified unboxing videos where they would read an obviously rehearsed thank-you and the gifter's name, which i guess gave people the illusion of clout, even though i highly doubt anything ever actually came to the gifters. (my brother and i watched them for a time, since we were like "hey, new aparri upload" or whatever, but even back then we mutually agreed they were boring as fuck and stopped watching!) people would flock to their dens and around them in the hopes of getting their tag in a video. on the flip side, there were, of course, a bunch of small youtubers vying to hit it big and a bunch of people who pretended to be filming in certain situations. people would say they were filming to get clout from the players around them or to scare off potential scammers/hackers. and then there were scammers themselves only looking for clout! aside from trying to get good items, which ties back to clout, my brother did have a yt channel for a bit to very little success (which, looking back, was probably a good thing) where he exposed a scammer. the only audience engagement was the scammer themself commenting frustratedly on the video. since the chance of them finding this video naturally is extremely low, they probably searched their username in hopes of clout.

my brother and i went back and looked at some of the old animal jam youtubers we used to watch back in the day and see what they've gotten up to in the seven-odd years it's been since we checked up on them last. wisteriamoon, who's now in her mid-to-late twenties from what i could discern, became a regular influencer/vlogger. julian2, who was involved in a ridiculous amount of youtube drama (which is fairly par for the course for influencers but not so much for the animal jam community, especially the animal jam community of that time. i think it got worse after that.), no longer uploads videos, but his channel and more notably his merch store are still up. he also is active on a second instagram account to keep in touch with his fans. (this is worrying to me because he is a university student and most of his fans are much younger than him. besides they have no reason to be fans anymore since he's not actually uploading content?? it's very suspect.) that brings me to another interesting point - most of the majorly successful youtubers were older teenagers, which is much older than animal jam's target audience. it got to the point where animal jam created an entire spinoff game, fer.al (which is actually kinda fun), aimed at an older userbase. the majority of their fans were probably mostly preteens.

then there's the economy system, and the strictness with which the players upheld it. people would go to such great lengths to game the system and cheat other players out of good items, such as scamming and even hacking. although other games like this had items you could buy and even trading systems (iirc), i cannot recall any other game with an economy and culture of this significance and scale. (of course if this were a real video essay i'd need to do a lot more research on this claim.) it consumed most players to the extent where almost no one played the game for its intended purpose - learning about animals and nature, hence the partnership with national geographic that eventually got terminated because kids weren't engaging correctly (i'm guessing). after that, it mostly went downhill, with ajhq trying to varying degrees of success to mine money through memberships and diamonds off of their userbase. it went to the extent where animal jam went through a real-life equivalent of inflation when ajhq reintroduced spikes to circulation in adventure prizes. that sparked a massive negative reaction. it's kind of crazy how passionate we all were about it.

there are also other things, like the really extravagant and serious warrior cats and general anthro roleplays (that seem to have died off in recent years for some reason) and all the notorious hackings, like fman122. there's also probably a whole slew of recent (as in, the past five years) stuff i have no idea about. it's just fascinating. and this is literally all from memory. god an entire, fully-researched video essay has so much potential.

sorry for rambling haha

#my asks #bluebellthesponge #animal jam #wavey speaks #can you tell i hyperfixated on animal jam when i was 10? because i can #i have also been watching video essays all day which probably influenced this quite a bit